It was intelligently done by Sarus.
Abandoned in the forest they would die of thirst, or hunger, or of exposure or the attacks of beasts. To protect them, would, of course divert the forces of the enemy; to free them, should the enemy not possess heavy tools, which I did not, would be almost impossible. Either the chains must be broken or the trees cut. It was an excellent plan.
Sarus was not a fool.
Then, of course, after having laid this impediment in the path of his pursuer or pursuers, he, with his choice male prisoners, Marlenus chief among them, and the twenty-four captured slave girls, including Cara, Grenna and Tina, continued their flight to the shores of gleaming Thassa and their projected rendezvous with the Rhoda and the Tesephone.
After having taken the majority of Hura’s girls, drugged at the camp, slave, I had not struck further at Sarus, and his me, or Hura, and her minions. She, with twenty-one girls left, including Mira, had come with Sarus to the sea. The men of Sarus had controlled the slave chain of prize male slaves; the girls of Hura had controlled the coffle of beauties, each with her wrists still in binding fiber confined behind her body, each still fastened to her sisters in bondage by the strong, supple linking of the binding fiber knotted about her throat. How easy it is, I thought, to control women. How simply they may be secured. Each, incidentally, following a standard Gorean slave-keeping procedure, under such circumstances, was tightly gagged at night. That way, of course, they may not chew through the biding fiber in the darkness.
In the morning, they are still as well secured as ever.
I heard the cries of gladness of Hura’s girls as they emerged through the trees and came to the beach.
In the brief skins of panther girls, they ran to the water and waded in it, the cold salt water coming to their calves.
They were laughing and crying out.
Now, behind them, led by bound, stripped Sheera, her body marked with scarlet stripes from the switch, came the coffle of enslaved women. I saw Cara behind her, in the bit of white wool still left her, and behind her, Tina, in the shreds of her simple garment of wool. Behind Tina was Grenna, also in the branch-lashed, white-woolen tatters of a slave garment, for she had been enslaved in my camp before her capture by the men of Tyros. Behind Grenna came the first of Verna’s women, still in their skins of panthers. The panther skins, of course, had stood well the strikings of branches and the tearing of the closely set thickets of their flight. In the midst of the panther girls, now futilely fighting her bonds, was Verna. The only remainder of the luscious slave silk in which she had been marched was a yellow tatter about her neck, caught in Marlenus’ collar, which still she wore. I recalled how superbly she had responded, a helpless female slave, to the masterful touch of the great Marlenus of Ar, the incredible Ubar of Ubars. Now, unable to free herself, she stood disconsolately in the coffle, fastened as helplessly in it as any other woman would be. She still wore large, golden earrings. Behind her came the balance of her girls, in panther skins, and behind them, concluding the coffle, slave girls who had belonged to Marlenus and had served him, and his men, in his camp. They belonged in the coffle simply as captured property.
It interested me that none of the twenty-four girls had been abandoned. But I was not surprised. The female slave, celebrated on Gore for her beauty, her skills and her delights is prize booty. Female slaves are almost never abandoned by Gorean men. He does not care to release such a prize. He keeps it. Mira went to the coffle of slave beauties and, about in its center, before Verna, seized the throat leather and pulled the girls in a “V” toward the shore. “Come, Slaves!” she ordered.
I gathered that Mira still stood high among the girls of Hura, that her part, or her knowing part, in the drugging of the large number of panther girls in the former camp was not understood.
I recalled that she had submitted herself to me as a slave girl. I saw her dragging the girls down the beach toward the water. I smiled. She belonged to me. Doubtless she hoped to escape. She would not.
“To the water,” ordered Sarus.
Marlenus straightened and, proudly, naked, a chain on his neck, his wrist manacled behind him, took his way down the beach toward the water. The other twenty men, Rim behind him, and then Arn, and then men of Marlenus, chained, followed him.
They no longer wore the chain which had been on their left ankle. It has been removed, that they might move more rapidly through the forest, eluding those who pursued the men of Tyros and the girls of Hura.
Further, that they might be more easily managed, and individuals removed from the chain, and perhaps abandoned, they were now fastened in lock chains. If necessary, all might have been, in a moment, abandoned, secured perhaps about trees or rocks, save Marlenus, their chief prize, the central object of their endeavors, their expedition of abduction. Sarus, was wise in the ways of slave control. No longer could I count on the slaves constituting for my enemy an impediment to his motions and strategies.
In the last two days, following the night of the drugging of many of Hura’s girls, I had not struck further at the men of Tyros with the swift arrows of the great bow.
I had not done so, and had deliberately not done so.
I wished them, once again, to grow confident.
They had not known the numbers or nature of the enemy that pursued them. Perhaps the enemy had been a group of slavers. There was reason for them to be of this opinion. None of the arrows had felled a woman. only men. And women, one by one, or in groups of twos and threes, had disappeared, quite possibly to find their fair limbs in the sudden, inflexible clasp of slave steel. The pattern of strikes had not been unlike that which might have distinguished the predations of slavers.
They probably believed their unseen antagonists to be slavers.
Mira, of course, knew better, but she could not speak without revealing her knowing role in the drugging of Hura’s women.
Her mouth was sealed. She wished to live.
Even Mira, by my intent, did not know the number of their stalkers. Doubtless she believed I worked with a band, perhaps a large one, of panther girls.
I watched my enemies from the thicket.
There were no signs of sails on the breadth of gleaming Thassa. The great circle of the horizon was empty. There were swift, white clouds in the sky. I heard the cry of sea birds, broad-winged gulls and the small, stick-legged tibits, pecking in the sand for tiny mollusks. There was a salt smell in the air, swift and bright in the wind. Thassa was beautiful.
Sarus and his men, pressed by my relentless pursuit, had moved much more swiftly to the sea than doubtless he had intended. I counted, accordingly, on his being early for his rendezvous with the Rhoda and Tesephone.
Doubtless Sarus and his men, not attacked since the night of the girl’s druggings, were convinced that the “slavers” who had harried them at last were satisfied. Surely they had left behind, scattered, sprawled in helpless stupor, enough beauty to satisfy the Harl rings of almost any slaver’s chain. What would it matter to Sarus that more than eighty of his fair allies might even now, in chains, in a slaver’s camp, be screaming to the iron’s kiss. He, with his men, and Marlenus of Ar, had escaped. Indeed, doubtless even Hura was not dissatisfied with the bargain. What did she care if most, or all, of her girls fell slave, as long as it was not she who found the bracelets locked on her wrists, as long as it was not she who must now live cowering as a collared girl subject to a man’s pleasure, to his touch, and to the steel of his chains and the leather of his whip.