I could wait. I was patient.
I was furious!
I had failed to rescue Talena! She had been disowned! I and my men had fallen to panther girls. We would have been raped and sold slave had we not been rescued by the incomparable Marlenus of Ar. It was to him that Verna and her girls had fallen. He had won her and conquered her, superbly, even insolently telling her when to place a talender in her hair. he hunted and amused himself while I and my men, his guests, partook of his hospitality at his camp, dining on his largesse. He had defeated me, devastatingly, in the game. And he, when it pleased him, would free Talena, and return her to Ar.
And I, and my men, would return to our businesses, empty handed, our heads bearing the shaved degradation swath of panther girls. Why had we not been raped and sold? Because we had been saved by Marlenus, the great Ubar, the Ubar of Ubars!
He had saved us.
We returned, laughing stocks, empty handed, while he would go back to Ar as its victorious Ubar, again successful. We would have nothing. He would have his acclaims and his glories. Even the shame of Talena would not shame him, for he had cut her off from him. But, in his generosity, he would free her, and return her to Ar and permit her to live, sequestered in his palace.
Noble, great Ubar!
And who would remember Talena, and her shame, after Marlenus, astride a mighty tharlarion, would have his triumph in the streets of Ar, panther girls in tiny cages slung on poles carried by huntsmen, and walking beside his beast, naked and chained to his stirrup, their former leader, Verna, now only a slave. Marlenus, I asked myself, are you always victorious?
How great a man he was. And how small he made me seem. I began to hate Marlenus, Ubar of Ar.
There was little to do now but return to Port Kar. I was now near the Tesephone. Marlenus, it seemed, was always successful, always fortunate. He never, it seemed, miscalculated.
He had not miscalculated Verna, and her band. She, and they, were his, female slaves. And who else might dare to be enemy of such a man? Who else had he to fear? Who else, as danger, might figure as worthy to be included in the calculations of such a warrior, such a Ubar?
Marlenus never miscalculated.
I began to look forward to my return to the Tesephone. My being alone in the forest, my thoughts fierce and angry within me, had been good.
I would permit my men, for a time, to observe and laugh at my hair, joking with them, for otherwise it would be difficult for them, terribly difficult. Then, when their tension had been released, I would reassert my authority as captain. If there were any who cared to dispute it, we could debate the matter with steel.
But none would care to dispute it. I knew this crew. They were picked men, and good men.
I was interested in seeing again the delicious, quick-handed little Tina, Rim’s lovely slave, Cara, and in particular a former panther girl, a proud, sweet-bodied, dark-haired girl, who wore my collar, who had found herself helpless in my hands, whose name was Sheera.
I was anxious to see again Thurnock, and Rim, who had returned to the Tesephone with Grenna, the girl I had captured in the forest, who had stood high in Hura’s band. At her arrival at the Tesephone she would have been branded and placed in my collar. Then her wound would have been tended, as a slave’s wound is tended, with effectiveness, but roughness. She had had good legs. I thought she would look well in a slave tunic. Perhaps I would give her to Arn, when he, with my other men, returned to the Tesephone the day after tomorrow, coming from the camp of Marlenus.
We would then follow the current down river, lay in at Laura, then proceed to Lydius, remain at Lydius for two days, for the pleasure of the men, and then return to Port Kar.
I smiled to myself. I recalled that there should be, at my camp, four paga slaves. I had had Rim rent them in Laura. He had rented them from a tavern keeper in Laura, a man named Hesius. Rim had said the girls were beauties. I had not yet seem them. My steps quickened. I was anxious to do so.
As I strode toward the camp, my hand held the great bow. Over my left shoulder, slung was sword and scabbard. At my belt was a sleen knife; at my hip, in a verr-skin quiver, temwood sheaf arrows, nineteen of them, piled with steel, winged with the feathers of the vosk gull.
Paga slaves are usually lovely girls I recalled Tana, a paga slave I had met in Lydius. She was a lovely girl, a beautiful example, belled and silked, of such a slave.
Strangely Hesius had asked for no deposit on his girls, as a surety for their return. This only now struck me as unusual. Surely we were not known to him. Further, now, as I thought of such matters, I recalled his rent price had seemed very low, particularly for fine girls, as Rim had assured me these were. Prices were supposedly low in Laura. I was prepared to believe that. Yet were prices that low? Could they be that low? Suddenly my hand went white on the great bow. I stopped and strung it. I removed an arrow from the quiver. I set the arrow to the string. I felt very cold and hard, and yet in a rage. We had been fools. I recalled, with savage understanding, with an understanding as sudden and terrible, as that of a lightning flash over Torvaldsland, that this Hesius, this tavern keeper of Laura, had, free of charge, as a gesture of good will, included wine with the shipment of girls to my camp.
Inwardly I howled with rage.
The men of Tyros!
I, like a fool, obsessed with the pursuit of Talena, blind to all, had forgotten them.
I approached the camp of the Tesephone with great caution. One shadow among others, silent, from between branches, observed the camp.
The wall which had been built about the camp had been broken and thrown down. Here and there there were the ashes of campfires. There was debris on the campsite. The sand, in many places, was torn, as though there might have been struggles. There was, deep in the sand, the impression of a keel, leading to the water.
My men, the slaves, the Tesephone, were gone. I clenched my fist, and put my forehead to the green branch behind which I stood.
13 I Re-Enter the Forest
I unclenched my fist. I lifted my head from the branch, against which I had placed it.
I, Bosk of Port Kar, was not pleased.
Doubtless there would be some men of Tyros about, waiting for anyone who might return to the camp.
I decided I would wish to meet these men. I did not care to leave them behind me.
I sat down on the leaves, and waited.
In the late afternoon I saw the, eleven of them, coming toward the camp on the shore side, from downriver, as thought from Laura.
They came rather boldly. They were fools.
I had approached the camp of the Tesephone with great caution. I had been one shadow among others, silent. They had had no guards posted.
One of them carried a bottle.
They knew little of the forests. It was their misfortune. With them, I noted, grimly, were four girls. They were in throat coffle, their wrists behind them, bound. The girls were laughing and joking with them. They wore yellow silk. They were doubtless the paga slaves from Laura.
They had been instrumental in the surprise and taking of my camp. Doubtless they had been told to see that all males in the camp partook of the wine which had been sent upriver with them. They would have understood the plot. They would have been partner to it. Now, charmingly, they, bound, teased and jested with the men of Tyros. They were lovely slaves.
I would meet those men of Tyros. I strode forth to the camp, and stood and faced them.
They were struck for a moment, seeing me, standing some hundred and fifty yards from them, regarding them.
The girls were thrust to one side.
The men drew their blades and rushed forward, charging me. They were fools. At point-blank range the temwood shaft can be fired completely through a four-inch beam at two hundred yards it can pin a man to a wall; at four hundred yards it can kill the huge shambling, bosk; it fires nineteen arrows in a Gorean Ehn, some eighty Earth seconds; a skilled bowman, and not an unusual one, is expected to be able to put these nineteen arrows in an Ehn into a man-sized target consecutively, each a mortal hit, at some two hundred and fifty yards. Shouting the war cry of Tyros, blades drawn, they ran toward me across the sand and pebbles of the northern shore of the Laurius.