The attacker kept well ahead of me, for more than an Ahn. Yet there was little time to adequately conceal a trail. My pursuit was quick, and hot, and I was close. The attacker, much of the time, fled. It was not them difficult to follow. Crushed leaves, broken twigs, turned stones, bent grass, footprints, all spelled the trail clearly to the detecting eye.
Twice more arrows sped from the underbrush, passing beside me, losing themselves in the greenery behind me.
Often I heard the running from me.
I followed swiftly, not rapidly closing the ground between us.
My bow was strung. At the hemp string, whipped with silk, was a temwood arrow, piled with steel, fletched with the feathers of the Vosk gull.
The attacker, at all costs, must not be permitted to make contact with others. Another arrow struck near me, with a quick, hard sound, followed by the tight vibrating of the arrow.
I lowered my head, bending over. I no longer heard running.
There was no movement in the brush ahead.
I smiled. The attacker was at bay. The attacker was concealed in the thicket ahead, waiting.
Excellent, I thought, excellent.
But it was now the most dangerous portion of the chase. The attacker waited, invisible in the greenery, not moving, bow ready.
I listened, not moving, to the birds, intently.
I lifted my head to the trees in the thicket ahead, the tangles of brush and undergrowth. I noted where the birds moved, and where they did not. I did not draw my bow. I would not immediately enter the thicket. I would wait. I studied the shadows for a quarter of an Ahn.
I surmised that the attacker, aware of my hot pursuit, would have turned within the thicket, and would have waited, bow drawn.
It is very painful to hold a bow drawn for more than an Ehn or two. But to ease the bow is to move, and it is to be unready to fire.
Birds moved about, above me.
I listened, patient, to the drone of insects. I continued to study the shadows, and parts of shadows.
Perhaps I had gone ahead, perhaps I had evaded the thicker, perhaps I had turned back.
I waited, as a Gorean warrior waits.
Then, at last, I saw the slight movement, almost imperceptible, for which I had been waiting.
I smiled.
I carefully fitted the black, steel-piled temwood shaft to the string. I lifted the great bow of yellow Ka-la-na, from the wine trees of Gor.
There was a sudden cry of pain from the green and the sunlight and shadows. I had her!
I sped forward.
In almost an instant I was on her.
She had been pinned to a tree by the shoulder. Her eyes were glazed. She had her hand at her shoulder. When she saw me, she clutched, with her right hand, at the sleen knife in her belt. She was blond, blue-eyed. There was blood on her hair. I knocked the sleen knife from her hand and rudely jerked her hands together before her body, securing them there with slave bracelets. She was gasping. Some six inches of the arrow, five inches feathered, protruded from her shoulder. I cut away the halter she wore and improvised a gag, that she might not cry out. With a length of binding fiber, taken from her own pouch, I tied the slave bracelets tight against her belly. I stepped back. This panther girl would warn no others. She would not interfere with the plans of Bosk, of Port Kar. She faced me, in pain, gagged, her fists in slave bracelets, held at her belly. I stripped her of her skins, and pouch and weapons. She was mine. I noted that she was comely.
I strode to her and, as her eyes cried out with pain, snapped off the arrow. I lifted her from the cruel pinion. She fell to her knees. Now, the arrow gone, her two wounds began to bleed. She shuddered. I would permit some blood to wash from the wound, cleaning it.
I snapped of the rest of the arrow, and, with a knife, shaved it to the tree, that it might not attract attention. The girl’s pouch, its contents, and her weapons, I threw into the brush.
Then I knelt beside her and, with those skins I had taken from her, bound her wound.
With my foot I skuffed dirt over the stains on the ground, where she had bled. I then lifter her lightly in my arms and carried her, gagged and bound, down our back trail, for some quarter of an Ahn.
When I was satisfied that I had carried her sufficiently far, so far that I was confident that she would not be within earshot of any to whom she might wish to call, I set her down on the ground, leaning her against a tree.
She was sick from her wound, and loss of blood. She had fainted as I had carried her. Now she was conscious, and sat, leaning against the tree, her eyes glazed, regarding me.
I pulled down her gag, letting it hang about her neck.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Grenna,” she said.
“Where is the camp and dancing circle of Verna, the panther girl?” I asked. She looked at me, sick, puzzled. “I do not know,” she whispered.
Something in the girl’s manner convinced me that she spoke the truth. I was not much pleased.
This portion of the forest was supposedly the territory of Verna, and her band. I gave the girl some food from my pouch. I gave her a swallow of water from the flask at my belt.
“Are you not of Verna’s band?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Of whose band are you?” I asked.
“Of Hura’s,” said she.
“This portion of the forest,” I told her, “is the territory of Verna and her band.” “It will be ours,” she said.
I withheld the water flask.
“We have more than a hundred girls,” she said. “It will be ours.”
I gave her another swallow of water.
“It will be ours,” she said.
I was puzzled. Normally panther girls move and hunt in small bands. That there should be more than a hundred of them in a single band, under a single leader, seemed incredible.
I did not much understand this.
“You are a scout?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“How far are you in advance of your band?” I asked.
“Pasangs,” she said.
“What will be thought when you do not return to your band?” I asked. “Who knows what to think?” she said. “Sometimes a girl does not come back.” Her lips formed the word. I gave her more water. She had lost blood. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“Be silent,” I said.
It now seemed to me even more important to locate, as swiftly as possible, Verna’s camp or its dancing circle.
Soon, perhaps within two or three days, more panther girls might be entering this portion of the forests.
We must act quickly.
I looked at the sun. it was low now, sunk among the trees.
In another Ahn or two, it would be dark.
I wished to find Verna’s camp, if possible, before nightfall.
There was no time to carry this prisoner back to where Rim, and my men, and Arn, and his men, waited for me. It would be dark before I could do so, and return. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
I took the gag, from where I had pulled it down about her throat, and refixed it, securely.
I then reknotted the binding fiber from where it was fastened, behind the small of her back, and also unknotted it, in front, from the chain of the slave bracelets. I put the binding fiber in my belt. I then unlocked the left slave bracelet.
“Climb,” I told her, indicating a nearby tree.
She stood, unsteadily. She shook her head. She was weak. She had lost blood. “Climb,” I told her, “or I shall bracelet you on the ground.” Slowly she climbed, branch by branch, I following her.
“Keep climbing,” I told her.
At last she was more than thirty feet from the ground. She was frightened. “Edge out on the limb,” I told her, “and lie down upon it, your head to the trunk of the tree.” She hesitated.
“Do so!” I told her.
She lay, her back on the limb.
“Farther out,” I told her.
She edged, on her back, along the limb. Then she was more than five feet from the trunk.
She shuddered.
“Let your arms hang free,” I said.
She did. The slave bracelets, one locked on her right wrist, dangled. I then relocked her left wrist in the slave bracelets. Her wrists were now locked under the branch and behind her. I then crossed her ankles and bound them to the branch. Then, with another length of binding fiber, taken from my own pouch, I bound her by the belly, tightly, to the branch.