Plunder of Gor (23 page)

We were being followed!

Our wagon went faster and faster. The domestic tharlarion, both quadrupedalian and bipedalian, differ considerably from most wild tharlarion, most commonly in tractability, stamina, and speed. They are bred, over generations, for such attributes. Even so, the ancient brain lurks within those broad skulls, and ancient instincts, bred for the rivers, swamps, and flood plains, sometimes reassert themselves, and the beasts, as though then strangers to harnesses, reins, and drive wands, become uncontrollable, and, in some cases, dangerous. Most domestic tharlarion are draft beasts, but they also have their applications in sport and war. There are, for example, racing and hunting tharlarion, and tharlarion bred for battle, some of which, ponderous, and armored, can shatter lines and topple siege towers.

We made a sudden turn, and the wagon, veering, was on two wheels, and I was rolled to the side, and then, the vehicle righting itself, we plunged on.

I guessed the metal-rimmed wheels struck sparks in the night, coursing over the cobbles of Market of Semris.

I fought my bonds. I could utter only tiny sounds.

The wagon veered again, and I was rolled to the other side.

“On!” cried Tullius Quintus.

We continued, apace, for several minutes.

“On, on!” cried Tullius Quintus.

I now heard a protestive bellowing from our beasts. I feared that Tullius Quintus, whom I supposed was not a drayman, might drive them to their death. Surely the pounding thunder that had previously marked our pace had become less assured, more erratic. “On!” cried Tullius Quintus. “On!” There were more strikings from the drive wand, now delivered savagely, again and again.

Suddenly, the massive brake was applied, and the wagon, wheels squealing against the pressure, stopped.

“The ferry!” cried a voice. “Are you mad? Come about! Onto the ferry!”

I knew that a waterway, a barge canal, separated east Market of Semris from west Market of Semris, and gathered we had reached that point.

Almost at the same time, I heard a cry from behind. “Hold that wagon! Hold that wagon!”

Instantly Tullius Quintus released the brake and struck the beasts forward, and the wagon, tipping downward, rattled down a slope and struck into the water. The draft tharlarion are quadrupedalian and, as all such animals, willing or not, borne up by their configuration, have no difficulty in negotiating a liquid terrain. As they would walk on land, so they swim in water. Water surged into the wagon bed. Cold water rushed into the sack within which I was confined. I thrashed. Gagged, I could not scream. The gag was tight and sopped. Then the wagon, drawn, swaying and bobbing, was lifted by the water, and sheets of water drained from the wagon bed, and I lay then in no more than two or three inches of water, which quantity would remain in place, the wagon, as any wooden object, displacing water, having found its equilibrium in the medium.

“On, on!” called Tullius Quintus to his beasts.

I heard no evidence of a pursuit, and conjectured that it had been abandoned, or that the pursuing vehicle, rather than risking the water, and the possible confusion or rebellion of its team, would utilize the ferry. If so, Tullius Quintus would have gained an advance of some minutes on he, or those, who followed us. Perhaps this delay, I conjectured, would be acceptable to a pursuer, as the track of a wagon would be difficult to conceal. Tullius Quintus had tharlarion furnished by the stable of Lysander, presumably average beasts. A pursuer, realizing a pursuit would take place, would presumably supply himself with strong, agile beasts, beasts of superior quality, a lighter wagon, and such. I suspected the pursuer was astute, determined, and patient. If an encounter was inevitable, the expenditure of some minutes, spent to eliminate a variety of risks, would be understood as an excellent bargain. If an encounter is assured, it makes little difference whether it takes place now or nearly now.

After some four or five minutes I heard the bluntly clawed feet of the tharlarion scrambling on a bank, tumbling pebbles about, and the wagon, tilted upward, sharply, was dragged from the water. I slid to the back of the wagon bed.

In a moment the wagon was level again.

But Tullius Quintus had halted the vehicle.

The gate of the wagon bed was unlatched, and I was dragged, apparently by the laces on the sack, near my feet, from the wagon bed, and placed on the ground. The laces were then, hurriedly, cut, not untied, and I was drawn from the sack. I lay on the bank of the waterway then, on wet grass, while it was still dark. Tullius Quintus was cutting at the sack, now removed from my body. He cut off the top quarter, or so, of it. He then, by the hair, jerked me to a sitting position, and drew that part of the bag over my head. It fitted, hoodlike, and extended down over my arms, almost to my elbows. I whimpered, but he paid me no attention, not even commanding me to silence. He then seized up the drive wand and smote the tharlarion several times, running beside them, driving them to the right. He then returned, and bent to my ankles, and, with the knife, severed the thongs that had bound them. He then jerked me to my feet, I unable to see, in the improvised hood, by the left arm.

My hands were still tied behind me.

“He will follow the wagon,” he said to me.

I had no idea, of course, of whom he might be speaking. But I suspected he, my master, knew.

“He will soon discover the wagon is empty,” he said. “But we will have time.”

He then began to move rapidly away from the bank, to our left, and then forward. He rushed me beside him, his right hand hard on my left arm, I stumbling, and I would have fallen several times, were it not for his grip.

I was miserable with cold, in the predawn air. My legs began to ache. The coarse grass, knife grass, cut at my ankles.

I whimpered, again, for mercy, that I might be pitied.

I was not a peasant woman, not a large, coarse woman, not a brothel mistress, not a female fighting slave.

For whatever reasons men had seen fit to put me in a collar, it was clearly not for such purposes.

“It is not far now,” he said. Shortly thereafter, he began to tread more slowly, more carefully, as though he might be treading amongst stakes. He held me closer to him, tightly, by the arm. Then I felt boards beneath my feet. I was not aware of having entered a dwelling, passing through a portal, or such. I might be on some sort of platform.

“No footprints,” said he, “appear on clouds. Not even a sleen can traverse the tarn road.”

I understood nothing.

But then I heard a scratching on wood, as though heavy, restless knives were drawn through it.

I sensed something large, and alive, was on the platform with us.

I was conducted to the side.

Something was done before me.

I made a tiny noise, as I was lifted, and then, lowered, placed, sitting, on some heavy wickerwork surface.

My ankles were then, again, crossed, and bound.

A heavy leather belt was fastened about my waist.

The remains of the sack, which had enveloped my head and shoulders, hoodlike, were pulled away and cast aside, through what appeared to be an open, wickerwork gate to my right.

I blinked, and shook my head, my hair loose about me.

I found myself sitting, bound hand and foot, the heavy strap about my waist, holding me in place, in some sort of sturdy basket, its opened wickerwork gate to my right.

I could see little from within the basket other than through the opened gate, the boards outside, but there were numerous, tiny openings between the woven fibers.

I could see the gray sky above me.

Tullius Quintus then inserted his knife, carefully, between the side of my neck and the gag straps, and cut away the gag. I expelled the sodden wadding into his open, waiting hand, which device he then cast aside, as he had the improvised hood, and I looked up at him, confused, and frightened.

“Master!” I exclaimed.

I was cuffed, sharply, the blow jerking my head to the right.

“Forgive me, Master,” I said. “May I speak?”

“No,” he said, and lashed my face to the left with a second cuff, a sharp, stinging, backhand slap.

“Forgive me, Master,” I said, tears in my eyes.

Tullius Quintus then withdrew from the basket.

He, now outside, closed its door, or gate, and tied it shut. Save for looking upward, to the sky, fastened as I was, I could see very little. Ropes were at the corners of this holding device. I did not understand what their role might be. In one corner of my tiny wickerwork prison, the security of which, save for my bonds, seemed dubious, was a ragged blanket. I could not reach it.

As we had stopped, and I had been incarcerated in this small, unlikely wickerwork cell, I gathered that we had eluded our pursuer, or pursuers.

Tullius Quintus, outside, seemed to be looking about. Then he turned, and regarded me, I sitting, below him, bound and tethered. “I am victorious,” he said. “All is as planned.”

“I beg to speak,” I said.

“You are refused permission to speak,” he said.

My cheeks still stung, from his earlier ministrations.

Why was I now his? I did not think I had been purchased. Lysander, the Administrator of Market of Semris, had apparently surrendered me to him, and readily. “She has never been in my house,” he had said. Surely this sort of transaction, if it were a transaction, was unusual. What slave could anticipate it? It made no sense. What was to be done with me? When a girl is purchased off a shelf, or a block, she will normally have a very clear idea of why she has been purchased, and what will be done with her. Can she not see it in the eager eyes of the brute who has spent his coins on her, and expects to obtain a thousand times his money's worth? But why had I been obtained? Could I truly believe that Tullius Quintus was smitten with my charms, those of a work slave, those of a cheap kitchen slave? And my name had been of importance for some reason, and then it had been quickly changed. I was now “Lita.” There were doubtless hundreds, if not thousands, of girls on Gor named ‘Lita'. I had encountered several in the past few months. And why was I surreptitiously removed from Market of Semris? I was not a free woman, selected for a collar in some distant town or city, whose abduction might involve considerable risk. And who was it from whom Tullius Quintus fled? How desperate he had been to escape! Whom did he so fear? Who had been our pursuer? Where was that pursuer now? Surely, by now, he was more than aware of my master's ruse, and the falsity of the track on which he had been set. And what was the meaning of my present situation? What temporary prison was this sturdy device in which I found myself? Why the slack corner ropes? What were they for? Were they to tether me further? They were much too large, too coarse and bulky, for that. What was the point of the black strap on my belly? Did my master really think I might easily, bound as I was, hand and foot, climb out, and flee away, from this open-ceilinged cell, this temporary slave-holding device? Its walls were not even metal. It was of mere wicker, even if of sturdy wicker. Too, it was light. Should a holding device not be formed of sterner, weightier stuff?

I then, again, heard the scratching, or drawing, on wood, as though it were being raked by heavy knives.

How clear much of this would have been to me had I been natively Gorean, or even longer on this strange, green, beautiful, fresh, unspoiled, perilous orb!

I looked about, listening intently, straining to see, but I could see nothing but now-manifest threads of morning light glittering amongst the fibers of the wicker walls.

I did not know the whereabouts of my master.

Suddenly, I heard, for the first time, a mighty sound, deafening, but feet away, shrill and sustained, annunciatory, the long, shrieking, readiness cry of an awesome, dangerous, incredible form of life. Doubtless the sound might be familiar to some but it was not to me. It might have rung out in the mountains of Thentis, reflected from peak to peak, causing all who heard it to pause, and tremble, and raise their eyes apprehensively to the sky. My blood froze. For a moment I could neither move nor breathe. Had I seen its source, given its proximity, and understood its meaning, I know not what my response might have been. Can one die of such things? How frightening, and amazing, it would seem to me, later, to understand that men, some rare, few men, dare to share the sky with such things.

But a moment after this startling sound, I heard a human voice, from some yards away. “Hold!” it cried. “Hold! Gold or steel! Hold!”

“Gold!” cried Tullius Quintus, “as and when it pleases me!”

“Sleen!” cried the other voice.

There was suddenly a great crack, as of the smiting of wind, like the crack of sails, like the snapping of a mighty banner, or whip, and the very basket in which I was held shook, and then, suddenly, the ropes were taut, and the basket, as I screamed in fear, thrown back, helpless in my bonds and strap, slid rapidly across the wooden platform, and, a moment later, it seemed to leap from the planks and it swung free, how far above the land I did not know.

Then I screamed, again, for suddenly, with a ripping of fiber, an object, short, narrow, cylindrical, pointed, metal-finned, had burst up through the floor of the basket in which I lay.

It was the first quarrel I had ever seen, and it had introduced itself not more than a foot from my side.

“Kajira,” called Tullius Quintus back and down to me, I thought from yards away, “do you live?”

“I live, Master,” I called back.

I then heard Tullius Quintus, my master, laugh. “Things proceed,” he said, “as I have planned.”

I turned to my side.

It was now morning.

I found a narrow aperture in the floor of the container, through which I might peer, and saw the shadow below, of a great winged shape, coursing across the green fields of Gor.

I recalled that footprints are not left on clouds, nor, I gathered, do sleen, a tracking beast, tread the tarn road.