She lifted her head and smiled pertly. "Oh?" she asked. dyes," I said, "quite."
She leaned back on her heels, drawing the yellow silken sheet more closely about her shoulders, and looked at me, smiling.
"Am I slave or free?" she asked.
'Free," I said.
She laughed. "I do not think you want to free me," she said. "You keep me chained up like a slave girl!"
I laughed. "I am sorry!" I cried. To be sure, Elizabeth Cardwell was still in Sirik.
"Where is the key?" I asked.
"Above the door," she said, adding, rather pointedly, "just beyond my reach."
I leaped up to fetch the key.
"I am happy," she said.
I picked the key from the small hook.
"Don't turn around!" she said.
I did not turn. "Why not?" I asked. I heard a slight rustle of chain.
I heard her voice from behind me, husky. "Do you dare free this girl?" she asked.
I spun about and to my astonishment saw that Elizabeth Cardwell had arisen and stood proudly, defiantly, angrily before me, as though she might have been a freshly collared slave girl, brought in but an Ahn before, bound over the saddle of a kaiila, the fruit of a slave raid.
I gasped.
"Yes," she said, "I will reveal myself, but know that I will fight you to the death."
Gracefully, insolently, the silken yellow sheet moved about and across her body and fell from her. She stood facing me, in pretended anger, graceful and beautiful. She wore the Sirik and was, of course, clad Kajir, clad in the Curia and Chatka, the red cord and the narrow strip of black leather; in the Kalmak, the brief vest, open and sleeveless, of black leather, and in the Koora, the strip of red cloth that bound back her brown hair. About her throat was the Turian collar with it' chain, attached to slave bracelets and ankle rings, one of the latter attached to the chain running to the slave ring. I saw that her left thigh, small and deep, bore the brand of the four bask horns.
I could scarcely believe that the proud creature who stood chained before me was she whom Kamchak and I had referred to as the Little Barbarian; whom I had been able to think of only as a timid, simple girl of Earth, a young, pretty little secretary, one-of nameless, unimportant thousands of such in the large offices of Earth's major cities; but what I now saw before me did not speak to me of the glass and rectangles and pollutions of Earth, of her pressing crowds and angry, rushing, degraded throngs, slaves running to the whips of their clocks, slaves leaping and yelping and licking for the caress of silver, for their positions and titles and street addresses, for the adulation and envy of frustrated mobs for whose regard a true Gorean would have had but contempt; what I saw before me now spoke rather, in its way, of the bellowing of bask and the smell of trampled earth; of the sound of the moving wagons and the whistle of wind about them; of the cries of the girls with the bask stick and the odor of the open cooking fire; of Kamchak on his kaiila as I remembered him from before; as Kutaituchik must once have been; of the throbbing, earthy rhythms of grass and snow, and the herding of beasts; and here before me now there stood a girl, seemingly a captive, who might have been of Turia, or Ar, or Cos, or Thentis; who proudly wore her chains and stood as though defiant in the wagon of her enemy, as if clad for his pleasure, all identity and mean- ing swept from her save the incontrovertible fact of what she now seemed to be, and that alone, a Tuchuk slave girl. "Well," said Miss Cardwell, breaking the spell she had cast, "I thought you were going to unchain me."
"Yes, yes," I said, and stumbled as I went toward her. Lock by lock, fumbling a bit, I removed her chains, and threw the Sirik and ankle chain to the side of the wagon, under the slave ring.
"Why did you do that?" I asked.
"I don't know," she responded lightly, "I must be a Tuchuk slave girl."
"You are free," I said firmly.
"I shall try to keep it in mind," she said.
"Do so," I said.
"Do I make you nervous?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
She had now picked up the yellow sheet and, with a pin or two, booty from Turia probably, fastened it gracefully about her.
I considered raping her.
It would not do, of course.
"Have you eaten?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"There is some roast bosk left," she said. "It is cold. It would be a bother to warm it up, so I will not do so. I am not a slave girl, you know."
I began to regret my decision in freeing her.
She looked at me, her eyes bright. "It certainly took you a long time to come by the wagon."
"I was busy," I said.
"Fighting and such, I suppose," she said.
"I suppose," I said.
"Why did you come to the wagon tonight?" she asked. I didn't care precisely for the tone of voice with which she asked the question.
"For wine," I said.
"Oh," she said.
I went to the chest by the side of the wagon and pulled out a small bottle, one of several, of Ka-la-na wine which reposed there. "Let us celebrate your freedom," I said, pouring her a small bowl of wine.
She took the bowl of wine and smiled, waiting for me to fill one for myself.
When I had done so, I faced her and said, "To a free woman, one who has been strong, one who has been brave, to Elizabeth Cardwell, to a woman who is both beautiful and free."
We touched the bowls and drank.
"Thank you, Tart Cabot," she said.
I drained my bowl. I
"We shall, of course," Elizabeth was saying, "have to make some different arrangements about the wagon." She was? glancing about, her lips pursed. "We shall have to divide it somehow. I do not know if it would be proper to share a wagon with a man who is not my master."
I was puzzled. "I am sure," I muttered, "we can figure out something." I refilled my wine bowl. Elizabeth did not wish more. I noted she had scarcely sipped what she had been given. I tossed down a swallow of Ka-la-na, thinking perhaps that it was a night for Paga after all.
"A wall of some sort," she was saying.
"Drink your wine," I said, pushing the bowl in her hands toward her.
She took a sip, absently. "It is not really bad wine," she said.
"It is superb!" I said.
"A wall of heavy planks would be best, I think," she mused.
"You could always wear Robes of Concealment," I ven- tured, "and carry about your person an unsheathed quiva." "That is true," she said.
Her eyes were looking at me over the rim of her bowl as she drank. "It is said," she remarked, her eyes mischievous, "that any man who frees a slave girl is a fool."
"It is probably true," I said.
"You are nice, Tarl Cabot," she said.
She seemed to me very beautiful. Again I considered raping her, but now that she was free, no longer a simple slave, I supposed that it would be improper. I did, however, measure the distance between us, an experiment in specula- tion, and decided I could reach her in one bound and in one motion, with luck, land her on the rug.
"What are you thinking?" she asked.
"Nothing that I care to inform you of," I said.
"Oh," she said, looking down into her bowl of wine, smiling.
"Drink more wine," I prompted.
"Really" she said.
"It's quite good," I said. "Superb."
"You are trying to get me drunk," she said.
"The thought did cross my mind," I admitted.
She laughed. "After I am drunk," she asked, "what are you Being to do with me?"
"I think I will stuff you in the dung sack," I said. "Unimaginative," she remarked.
"What do you suggest?" I asked.
"I am in your wagon," she sniffed. "I am alone, quite defenseless, completely at your mercy."
"Please," I said.
"If you wished," she pointed out, "I could in an instant be returned to slave steel simply be reenslaved and would then again be yours to do with precisely as you pleased." "That does not sound to me like a bad idea," I said. "Can it be," she asked, "that the commander of a Tuchuk Thousand does not know what to do with a girl such as I?" I reached toward her, to take her into my arms, but I found the bowl of wine in my way, deftly so.