“He was in chains, at the festival camp,” sneered Tersius Major.
“The tarnster then!” screamed the spokesman.
“You rendezvoused in the prairie,” said the officer. “You cannot expect us to believe you pursued these men for days seeking no more than a slave.”
“We had to kill her!” cried out the spokesman.
“Why?” asked the officer. “Surely you can think of better things to do with collar sluts than kill them.”
“You do not understand!” wept the spokesman. “There is more afoot here than you understand!”
“What?” asked the officer.
Kardok growled, menacingly.
“The beast is restless,” said a soldier, uneasily.
“Worlds!” wept the spokesman. “The fate of worlds!”
“Prepare to run,” said the officer.
Kardok crouched menacingly. His powerful back legs were tensed beneath him. His forelimbs were on the ground. The claws scratched a little at the grass. Such beasts can move with great rapidity on all fours, faster than a swift man.
“I will speak!” cried the spokesman.
“Sir!” cried one of the soldiers. “The tarn!”
The tarn which had been farthest away, that in whose basket Tersius Major had arrived, was seen ascending into the air. As far as could be determined, it was not in harness. Certainly there was no tarn basket, nor trailing suspension ropes.
Almost at the same time the nearer tarn, that which had supported the closer basket, that which had soared over the camp near the conclusion of the fray, took flight. It was clearly not in harness. The tarn basket remained in the grass, ropes to the side.
“What?” cried Tersius Major. “No!”
“Use the tarn whistles! Get them back!” cried the officer.
“They are too far away!” said one of the strapmasters.
But he, and his fellow, ran to the edge of the camp, blowing piercing blasts on the whistles. If the tarns heard the blasts they did not respond. In moments they were out of sight.
The strapmasters, pale, returned to the side of the wagon.
“What is out there?” asked Tersius Major.
“Wild sleen?” suggested a man.
“Oh, yes,” said the officer, bitterly. “They chew loose the harness and let the meat escape!”
“How will we get back?” asked Tersius Major.
“We will walk, noble ally,” snarled the officer.
“It is dangerous,” said Tersius Major.
“Something is out there,” said Portus Canio.
“I see nothing,” said Fel Doron.
The soldiers looked to the officer, who was looking out, across the grass.
“Investigate!” said the officer, designating subordinates. “Into the fields!”
It was very quiet for a time, after some men, ten, five going toward the location of the first tarn basket, and five toward the second, made their way out into the grass.
“Secure a perimeter,” said the officer.
Guards took up posts. Arrows were set to bows.
After several Ehn some five soldiers returned to the camp, two from one direction, three from the other.
“We found nothing,” said the first soldier returning to the camp. Others, following him, too, signified negativity as the fruits of their endeavor.
“Where are the others?” inquired the officer.
“Surely they preceded us,” said one of the returned men.
The officer went to the perimeter of the camp. “Report!” he called. “Report!” But for an answer there was only the sound of the wind moving in the grass.
“Something is out there,” said Tersius Major.
“Where is our friend?” suddenly asked the officer.
“He fled, in the confusion, before you set your guard,” said Fel Doron.
“He feared the beasts would kill him,” whispered the sleenmaster.
But the beasts seemed somnolent, sitting together.
“They are harmless,” said the officer. “They are trained animals, performing animals.”
“Do they seem harmless to you?” asked Portus Canio.
“Why would they kill him?” asked the officer.
“I do not know,” said Portus Canio. “Perhaps they did not wish him to speak.”
“That is absurd,” said the officer.
Portus Canio shrugged. “I know as little of this as you do,” he said.
“Shall we run the sleen?” asked one of the soldiers, looking down at the garments which had been ripped away by the spokesman.
“That can be done for days,” said the officer.
“He is a barbarian, ignorant, soft, weak, naked, unarmed,” said a soldier. “He will not last long in the prairie.”
“There is no food, no water,” said another.
“He will last little longer than a stripped, collared, barbarian slave girl,” said another.
Ellen, kneeling, bound, shuddered.
“Take your eyes from the slave,” snapped the officer.
The soldier looked away.
“Sleen will take him,” said another soldier. “Prairie sleen.”
“We saw the spoor of such,” said the sleenmaster, fearfully.
“They may have been drifting with you, unseen,” said the officer.
“What of the freed tarns?” asked one of the soldiers.
“Who has freed them?” asked another, uneasily.
“Send the sleen out to scout?” suggested one of the soldiers.
“Do you expect them to come back and report?” asked the officer. “We have no scent to put them on. I doubt they would leave the camp.”
“They are hunting sleen, not war sleen,” said a soldier.
Ellen, frightened, shuddered, considering the uses to which trained sleen might be put, such as tracking, hunting, herding, guarding, killing.
She knew they were sometimes sent after runaway slaves, usually with the kill command after an escaped male slave, commonly with the herding command for a female runaway, that she may be returned, stumbling, gasping, exhausted, helpless and driven, bleeding, scratched, lacerated, back to the feet of her master, where she might clutch his ankles and beg weepingly that she not be now fed to those tyrannical, inexorable beasts who have ushered her so swiftly and unerringly back to her fate, the mercies of her master.
“If I were you,” said Portus Canio to the officer, “I would kill, or secure, the beasts.”
Kardok yawned.
“Do not be foolish,” said the officer.
Kardok’s large head turned slowly toward Ellen. She shrank back a little, on her knees, an inch or so farther from the beast, an inch or so farther from the sandals of Selius Arconious.
He growled softly, or it seemed a growl, but yet it seemed also somehow articulate. It did not resemble Gorean.
“He is communicating with his fellows,” said Portus Canio.
“Do not be foolish,” said the officer.
“Climb to the wagon bed,” said the officer to one of his soldiers. “See if you can see anything of our men.”
“I do not see them,” said the soldier.
“They are not coming back,” said Portus Canio.
“You claimed to be first here,” said the officer. “What do you know of the robbery of the paymaster’s trove, the fee to be disbursed to regulars and mercenaries in Ar?”
“Very little,” said Portus Canio.
“He knows nothing,” said Tersius Major. “It was his fool’s plan to strike at it himself.”
“Perhaps the tarnster,” said the officer.
“Yes, the tarnster,” said Tersius Major.
“I do know,” said Portus Canio, “that you will not now be able to recover the gold.”
“Why is that?” cried Tersius Major.
“Because the location of the cache has been revealed to patriots of Ar, who will, by now, have removed it.”