Sarus and Hura had come safely to the sea.
And it the “slavers” who had pursued them wished more plunder, they had left them seventy-five strong male slaves, helpless for their harvesting to their own chains.
Surely that would be enough to satisfy any slaver.
Sarus had reasoned well.
Only I was not a slaver.
I looked down to the beach.
My enemies, and their prisoners, stood at the water’s edge.
Sarus and Hura had come safely to the sea.
I smiled.
Marlenus in his chains, with Rim and Arn, and the others, stood ankle deep in the water. They were looking out to sea. I saw the fists of the great Ubar clench in his manacles. He stood before the glaring, sunlit waters. He stood facing in the direction in which would lie Tyros. Again those massive fists clenched.
Under the orders of Mira, the twenty-four slave girls in their coffle knelt on the sand, near the water’s edge, in the position of pleasure slaves. They, too, in their bonds, faced toward Tyros.
The men in the tunics of Tyros threw their yellow caps into the air and cheered, and splashed water on one another, laughing. The forest was behind them. They had come safely to the sea. In the darkness of the forest, I smiled. During the afternoon I observed the slave girls, tied in pairs, by the neck, each pair under the guard of a man of Tyros, and a panther girl, gathering driftwood and, from the forest’s edge, broken branches.
They placed this wood at a point on the beach some twenty yards above the line of high tide, forming with it a great beacon.
Lit, this beacon would constitute the prearranged signal to the ships. I noted that Cara and Tina were tied together, forming one pair of slave girls. Sheera and Grenna, both former panther girls, formed another pair. Two men of Tyros watched that pair. Sheera was obviously regarded as a troublemaker. Two men also guarded the pair that contained Verna. I saw that her slave bells had been removed. I was pleased with the way the pairs were determined. It accorded with my plans.
Meanwhile, in good order, with confidence, several men of Tyros entered the forest and cut large numbers of stout saplings. I did not interfere with them. These cuttings they sharpened at both ends. One end they forced into the ground high on the beach, among the stones. The other end stood exposed as a defensive point. In this fashion, sapling by sapling, a rude semicircular palisade, of some one hundred feet in length, swiftly took form. It shielded them from the forest. Across the open side, wood was gathered for animal fires, facing the beach. This shelter would protect them from arrows, should they come, from the forest, and, by means of the fires, should discourage the too close approach of either panthers or sleen, which animals, in any case, seldom leave the forest, seldom prowl on the beach. It was growing dark. It was doubtless for that reason that the palisade was not closed.
Leading from the open side of the palisade to the great beacon was a column of pairs of fires.
By means of these, protected by their flames, in case animals should approach too closely, the great beacon could be fed.
I could not well fire into the palisade without approaching near the water, without leaving the shelter of the forest. Moreover, I was not interested in doing so.
“Light the beacon!” called Sarus. There was a great cheer as, in the falling darkness, the torch thrust down into the oil-soaked wood.
I was not much observed, standing in the background, wearing the yellow of Tyros.
In a moment, like a wind-torn explosion, flame leaped in a breadth of a dozen feet on the still shores, on that lonely beach, of Thassa. The men of Tyros were hundreds of pasangs from civilization, but the flames of that blaze brought pleasure to them. It was their beacon to the Rhoda and Tesephone. The men of Tyros began to sing, standing near it. In the back of the semicircular stockade, miserable, chained, lay Marlenus and Rim and Arn, and the other male slaves. They lay on their stomachs. The manacles on the wrists of slaves, thus, may be easily checked by a guard, with a torch, as he makes his rounds. Further, their heads faced toward the wall of the stockade. The less that a slave can know or see the more easily controlled he is. Lastly, for the night, their ankles were crossed and lashed together with binding fiber. There were quite helpless. Similar precautions were taken with the female slaves. Each now, it being night, was tightly gagged. Further, they were alternated, the ankles of one being crossed and bound, and fastened to the throat of the next. This makes it impossible for the girls to rise to their feet. Their wrists, of course, were still secured, with Gorean perfection, behind their backs. I would have no allies within the stockade.
Marlenus and the other male slaves lay closest to the back wall of the stockade. Then, on the other side of them, closer to the sea, lay the gagged, helplessly thonged slave girls; then came the blankets and supplies of Hura’s twenty-one women’ them came the equipment of the fifty-five men of Tyros, almost at the margin of the animal fires.
Again and again the men of Tyros and their fair allies, the women of Hura, cheered.
I slipped back, unnoticed, into the darkness. I must make rendezvous with the Rhoda and Tesephone before Sarus.
I would need, however, help for my plan to succeed. I would see that I had such help.
Now I must be patient. And I would, for some Ahn, sleep.
I awaken after some two or three Ahn, judging by the flight of the moons. I washed with a bit of water from a stream, ate some tabuk strips from my wallet, and went again to the edge of the forest. The tunic of Tyros, in a tight roll, was tied across my back. I wore green, now black in the darkness, and moved with stealth, as a warrior moves who hunts men, mixing with the shadows, one darkness among others, a movement and a silence.
To my satisfaction I saw that the great beacon was burning low. It would need replenishment.
It was not long that I waited in the shadows before I heard, from within the stockade, commands and the piteous remonstrances of pleading slave girls. I then heard, again and again, the fierce, snapping crack of the slave lash. It fell again and again on the vulnerable, secured bodies of girls in bondage. Its searing cruelty would teach them, and swiftly, that no choice was theirs but immediate complete and abject obedience. I heard no screaming. A girl cannot scream under the lash. She can scarcely breathe. She can scarcely whisper, hoarsely, piteously, begging for mercy. In Port Kar I had seem the fingernails of girls torn to the quick as they scratched at stones against which they were tied. If she is bound against a wall her entire body may be injured, wiped with abrasions, as she tried to escape the whip. For this reason a girl to be whipped is often suspended from a ring or a pole.
In a few minutes as I had expected, I saw some pairs of slave girls, three pairs, each pair tied together by the neck, brutally driven, stumbling, crying out, from the palisade. A man of Tyros, with a whip, followed each pair. I noted that, as I would have supposed, and had been anticipating, that the girls driven forth now to gather wood, and were isolated in the slave line between Sheera and Grenna, both panther girls. The other two pairs, whimpering, were girls from Marlenus’ camp. All of these girls were terrified of the forest. None of hem, presumably, could survive alone in it. It was natural that the pairs had been arranged as they had, particularly that of Cara and Tina, given their location in the coffle. I needed Tina, and I preferred to have Cara, too, though, for my plan, another girl might do as well. If Cara had not been tied with Tina I should still have done what I did. I needed the pair which contained Tina. I had suspected, as long ago as Lydius, that that fantastic little wench might prove of great utility to my enterprises. I had not, however, expected to apply her as I now intended.
The men of Tyros, following the weeping girls with their whips, did not care to enter the forest.
“Gather wood, quickly, and return!” cried the fellow guarding Cara and Tina. “Do not drive us into the forest!” begged Cara. She knelt and put her head to his feet.