As I was led away, I saw the girl being brought forward, and suddenly I realized what was about to happen.
The servitor who had removed my torn tunic fumbled at the fastening of Darloona's garment. The girl stared straight ahead with a cold, proud expression of disdain on her features, which were, however, paler than usual. Gamchan, impatient at the inability of the fumbling servitor to remove the garment, strode forward and seized the open neck of Darloona's tunic in the grasp of his long segmented fingers.
I realized that in the next instant the girl would be stripped bare and the symbols of her slavery would be painted across her naked breasts!
My gorge rose at the thought of this young, lovely girl of birth and breeding standing nude before the cold unwinking gaze of these stalking arthropods. Some innate chivalry, whose presence in my character I had not been cognizant of until this moment, arose within me.
Without a moment's hesitation I snapped my bonds, which were tough enough to secure the forelimbs of a Yathoon arthropod but which offered only a feeble restraint against the more powerful leverage of terrene muscles. While the warrior holding my leash stared blankly, I sprang forward and grabbed Gamchan by his upper forelimb, snatching his fingers from the girl and, in the fury of my emotion, whirling him half around and letting him sprawl at full length in the dirt.
I think I could have killed him then. A red haze of fury hung before my eyes and my hands were trembling with rage. Gamchan lay asprawl on the ground, regarding me with astonishment.
I looked around and suddenly laughed. The cadet warriors and servitors likewise stared at me with utter amazement. I had come by this time to understand that the arthropods of Thanator are not quite as emotionless as I had first assumed them to be. I had discovered that Koja was capable of feeling something akin to friendliness; and Gamchan, in the envy he displayed towards my former captor, revealed very human emotion. What I had assumed a total lack of emotion was due to a misunderstanding: humans read emotions by gesture, intonation, facial expression; but the arthropods are all but incapable of facial expressiveness save the twitching of their antennae, and their metallic and monotonous speech mode lacks the human range of tones. They rendered shades of emotion by a different vocabulary of gestures than do terrene humans. I had come, bit by bit, to realize this. Astonishment is registered by a frozen immobility and an erratic jerking of the brow antennae, which the Yathoon about me now displayed.
For I had done an unheard―of thing. With their extreme fatalism, their almost Moslem sense of Kismet, servitors consider it their irrevocable fate to be slaves and would never dream of revolting or of seeking their freedom. The most prestigious warrior, fearless and brave almost beyond human conception, if overcome in battle and taken prisoner, becomes a meek servitor and will endure harsh treatment without a thought of protest, resentment, or anger. For a slave to strike his master is virtually unheard of in the annals of this most unusual people.
But for an amatar to do so verges on ultimate blasphemy. For how can a possession, a soulless thing,, be capable of anger or violence against the chieftain who owns him?
The retinue of Gamchan regarded me incredulously. They could hardly believe what their own eyes had seen; that an amatar should lay violent hands on its owner was, to them, a complete impossibility.
I met the amazed eyes of Darloona. Her people, I was later to learn, did not keep slaves as they had achieved a higher and more humane level of civilization than that of the poor arthropods. Hence her astonishment was not at my un-amatar-like action, but stemmed from curiosity regarding my motive.
She thought me a Judas, a traitor who acted as bait to entrap my own kind into the slavery of the Horde. The human inhabitants of Thanator regard the arthropods with extreme revulsion and loathing. They are considered the most vile and despicable of all species. To be enslaved in a Yathoon encampment is a doom beyond description; hence, a human who induces his fellows into such slavery is considered beyond all humanity. Since she thought of me in such terms, due to the confusion of my recapture and her seizure, she could not understand why I had torn the claws of my master from her body. Since I had already proved myself a traitor to my species by luring her into a trap―why in the world should I react so violently to her being stripped and painted with the amatar symbols?
The moment of paralyzed astonishment was over almost immediately and I was ringed with naked steel. I stood panting and glaring about like a trapped beast while one of Gamchan's cadets, a youth named Duthor, assisted his master to his feet. It was a tense moment. I expected to feel the agony of sword-steel tearing out my life upon the next instant. And I still do not quite understand why Gamchan did not order me killed on the spot. Perhaps he was too dumbfounded by my incomprehensible act of violence to give the command; or possibly the rigorous code of punishments that served the Horde as its law contained no variety of death lingering enough to fittingly reward so blasphemous an act, and he required leisure to dream up a suitable one.
At any rate, instead of being cut down on the spot, I was imprisoned among his other treasures in the innermost tent of his area. The flimsy ropes of braided grass which had proved too weak to hold me were replaced by shackles of steel. Chained to the tent pole, I was left to languish until the manner of my demise could be decided.
I smiled wryly in the darkness. My desperate action had proved futile, for Gamchan assured me that Darloona would nonetheless be stripped and painted. And it was likely to prove fatal, as well.
The second period of my captivity in the Horde would prove much shorter than the first, I believed.
True enough, it came to a rapid end―but not at all the sort of end I had imagined!
The following day I was led forth in chains to face chastisement. The cadet warriors of Gamchan's household led me down an aisle of Horde warriors who regarded me in utter silence. The day was hot and still, the sky clear and bright. As it was likely to be my last day on Thanator, I observed every detail about me with great attentiveness.
I felt the eyes of Darloona upon me and turned my head to catch her gaze. Her face was grave and somber, her eyes sad as they lingered on me. Then, as she caught my glance, she drew herself up haughtily and her expression turned to one of icy contempt. I laughed. The eternal woman! The female of the species was the same on this alien moon as on my own far-distant world.
And then, as I lifted my gaze to the clear golden skies to have one last look at this strange and beautiful and terrible world before I went down into the darkness of a nameless tomb, my eyes widened in disbelief.
That which I gazed upon was, of all the marvels and oddities that thronged this weird world, the most spectacular I had yet encountered.
Cruising silently through the bright morning skies, a group of incredible aircraft were hurtling straight for the camp of the Yathoon Horde.
I could not, for a moment, believe my eyes. Like quaint, ungainly sailing ships of yore they were, with gilded figureheads and ornamental scrollwork about the prow. There were three of the amazing flying ships, which appeared to be built of wood, and which resembled nothing so much as fantastic galleons from the Spanish Armada, outfitted with great flapping batwings.
They came cruising down the wind, casting enormous running shadows over the meadow and the camp, while the arthropods exploded into a frenzy of activity, racing about, clacking commands back and forth, snatching up their war bows and seeking cover.