“Bind the slave,” he said.
Tina was thrown to her stomach in the sand, and bound hand and foot. She was then held by the arms before their leader.
“You are a runaway slave,” he said. “I do not envy you.”
She shuddered.
“Is this the first time you have attempted to escape?” he asked.
“Yes, Master,’ she whispered.
“Perhaps, then,” said he, “ you will not be hamstrung. Perhaps they you will be only lashed.” Tina moaned.
“Look forward to your lashing,” he said.
Tina regarded him with horror.
“Throw her in the boat,” he said.
The bound slave was thrown rudely into the boat.
“To the ship,” said the leader.
Several of the men thrust the longboat back out into the water. Then they, with the leader, lifted themselves into the boat.
As the longboat pulled away, moving back toward the Rhoda and Tesephone, it passed a log, floating in the water, drifting back to shore.
I saw the single lantern on the longboat growing smaller in the distance. I was not dissatisfied.
I slipped ashore, thrusting the log onto the sand, some two hundred yards away, among large rocks, concealed from the light of the beacon.
Tina had one night, perhaps two, to do her work.
From the shadows of the forest I observed the lanterns. The longboat reached the Rhoda. Its lantern was then extinguished. Then the two lanterns, too, both on the Rhoda, the Tesephone, dark, lying off her starboard bow, were extinguished. Tonight both ships would withdraw a pasang or two from shore. There they would lie to until morning. It would not be wise to coast a strange shore at night. Further I had heard they did not expect to make contact with Sarus for another day or two. Accordingly they were not hurried. Besides, I expect tonight there would be some cause for celebrating on the two ships, and that they might be drawn together by lines. They had been long at sea, not putting into land, save for supplies and water, and that in lonely places. It was long that the men of the Rhoda and Tesephone had been at sea. How long was it since they had held the naked, perfumed, collared, responding body of a female slave in their arms? Since the rough port of Laura? Since semi-civilized Lydius, at the mouth of the Laurius? How long would it have been since they had witnessed the swaying body of a chained girl in a paga tavern, perhaps even Ilene in the tavern of Hesius in Laura, or, say, one of the luscious, collared slaves of culturally mixed Lydius, at the mouth of the Laurius, perhaps one of the beauties of the Lydian tavern keeper, Sarpedon, perhaps the wench called Tana, once Elizabeth Caldwell of Earth, now only a belled paga slave. The men would be desperate to hold the softness of a naked woman in their arms, to feel her touch, the caress of her lips and tongue, to hear her cry out their manhood and her femaleness in a single wild cry of pleasure. The men had been long at sea. I had thrown Tina among them.
She knew what she must do.
19 The Stockade of Sarus of Tyros
“Who goes there?” challenged the guard.
I stood in the darkness, on the beach, clad in the yellow of Tyros. His spear, held in two hands, faced me.
“I am your enemy,” I told him. “Summon Sarus. I would speak with him.” “Do not move!’ he said.
“If I move,” I told him, “it will be to kill you. Summon Sarus. I would speak with him.” The guard took a step backward.
“Sarus!” he cried. “Sarus!”
We stood some hundred yards from the palisade erected by the men of Tyros, south of it, on the beach.
From where I stood I could feel the heat of Sarus’ great beacon.
It was now the night following that on which I had, by my will, forced Tina to deliver herself to the men of the Rhoda and Tesephone.
I saw men of Tyros pouring from the palisade, and, too, some of the women of Hura.
Many of them took up positions about the palisade; others scouted the beach to the north, and the nearby forest edges. They were wary. It was wise for them to be so.
I could see a group of five men, one with a torch, making their way toward me across the beach.
The palisade was no longer a rude semicircle, fronted by animal fires. It had now, in the preceding day, been closed. There was even a rough gate, hung on rope hinges, which was now open.
The group of five men picked their way across the stones toward me. They carried weapons. Sarus was among them. Men now streamed past me, to scout the beach to the south.
Today, concealed in the forest, I had seen men cutting more logs. These they trimmed, and dragged to the sand between the stockade and the shore. Obviously Sarus was growing impatient for the Rhoda and Tesephone. Perhaps he thought them overdue. As the men had worked on these logs, fastening them into rafts, slaves, Marlenus and the others, male and female, had been forced to stand between the rafts and the forests.
There was little opportunity to use the great bow, either against the stockade or to prevent the building of the rafts. I could have slain some men cutting in the forest, but little would have been accomplished. I would have informed them that they again stood in danger, which I did not wish them to know. Further, they might then have shielded their work with slaves, or, perhaps, used selected wood from the front of the palisade. The sea and the beach, with their openness, gave them protection. They could shield themselves, either with wood or slaves, from the forest. The most of them, though I could have made some kills, were now substantially safe from the great bow. I could not pin them inside the stockade without exposing myself, and doing so from the beach or shore, and then, of course, they might depart from the stockade secretly from the rear. I did not wish to expose myself on the beach, permitting them the cover of the forest. It would be too easy for them, after a time, to bring me within the range of their steel-leaved crossbows.
It had been my intention to permit Sarus to reach the sea.
I had anticipated, however, that he would make camp and wait for the appointed rendezvous with the Rhoda and Tesephone.
I had not anticipated that he might not choose to keep this scheduled rendezvous.
I had apparently miscalculated.
Perhaps I had not understood the degree of terror which I had apparently, unwittingly, induced in my enemies.
Perhaps Sarus, was unnerved, too, by the escape, the day before yesterday, of Cara and Tina.
This may have precipitated his decision.
Perhaps, too, Mira had informed him that he was stalked by hundreds of panther girls, claiming to have seen evidences of this in the trek. She would dare not reveal her role in the affair of the wine, but she might well convince him of what she believed mistakenly having inferred this from her experiences in the forest, while blindfolded, while being interrogated by Vinca. She need only have claimed to have glimpsed such women, following them, hunting them.
Perhaps Sarus was frightened that the stockade would be stormed.
For whatever reason, Sarus, it seemed, was determined soon, doubtless in the morning, to take his rafts south. It would be dangerous, and perhaps futile, to follow them under the cover of the forest. For one thing, I would have to pass the exchange points. Further, if they kept slaves on the shoreward side of the rafts, as they would, and did not put into land to make camp, there was little that could be done. It was not unlikely that I would lose them.
I was bitter. We had missed the rendezvous with the Rhoda and Tesephone by only a matter of hours.
There was little time to act. I was bitter.
“I am Sarus,” said the long-boned man.
I saw a torch lifted higher, that they might better look upon my face. I carried only my sword, in its sheath, and a short sleen knife, balanced. “He is alone,” said a man, reporting back from the beach to the south. “Keep watch,” said Sarus.
He was not shaved. He looked at me. He seemed a strong man, hard, a leader. “You were the yellow of Tyros,” he said.
“I am not of Tyros,” I told him.