Blood Brothers of Gor

Chapter 29 HOW IT CAME ABOUT THAT GRUNT SURVIVED

A slave girl screamed, buffeted to the side by a forequarters of my kaiila. She turned, struck, from the animal, her hands tied behind her back, lost her footing and fell. I saw the frightened eyes of another girl, her wrists lifted, bound together with hair, thrown before her face. The hair that bound them hung free before the wrists, dangling from them, in jagged strands, marking where it had been hastily cut free from the hair of the girl before her in a holding coffle. Her own hair, similarly, had been cut short, closely, at the back of her neck, where the girl behind her, with swift strokes of a blade, had been freed.

"Run," a free woman was screaming. "Run! Seek you safety!"

I saw another free woman cutting at the hair of other kneeling beauties, freeing them from the cruel hair coffles, that they might flee as best they might.

Another woman was cutting the bonds at the ankles of another lovely slave. That slave's ankles had been bound more conventionally, with tight thongs of rawhide. Wen the thongs sprang apart, leaping from the knife, I saw deep red circles in the girl's ankles I doubted that she would even be able to rise to her feet for a few Ehn.

I pressed my kaiila forward, through the crowd.

I saw Oiputake to one side.

"Where is Cotanka?" a girl was crying out. "I am the slave of Cotanka! Where is Cotanka!" It was she who earlier, in effect, had functioned as a lure girl. I had captured her. As Cotanka had accepted her as a slave, she had been spared, at least for a time.

I heard a girl beneath me scream as the paws of my kaiila passed over her. I could see another girl, too, ahead of me, to my right, lying on the ground, trembling. There was the mark of a kaiila paw on her back. Other riders, earlier, had passed this way.

To my left and forward, a great section of the overhead netting had been cut down. Some slaves were there, standing or kneeling in the fallen mesh. It was not a capture net, of course, but a mesh designed, in effect, to provide a camouflage against, or a distracton for, overhead archers. The slaves, thus, were not entrapped. I thought it might be a reasonably safe place for them to be. Teh Kinyanpi, presumably, would not be likely to fire on a nude white slave any more than on an unmounted kaiila. Both would fit not inot the category of enemy but rather into the category of booty. It would be a greater danger, presumably, for a girl to hide in a lodge where, perhaps being mistaken for a free person, she might be struck by arrows, the skins of the lodge cover perhaps being riddled from abofe by the swift, flighted riders. I thrust with my lance upward, through the netting, driving it through the body of a soldier, cutting at it. He fell across the netting, then tumbled through it. Then I was beyond the area of the slaves.

The battle, I saw, at an instant's glance, was hopeless.

I heard the heavy vibration of a cable of a crossbow. A Kaiila warrior pitched backwards off his kaiila.

I heard screaming of a free woman.

"Run!" cried a man riding past. "Run!"

I looked back. The Yellow Knives would have to make it through the confusion of slaves.

"Yellow Knives are coming!" I cried out, pointing back. "Yellow Knives, to the west!"

Mahpiyasapa looked about, wildly. Then he fended himself from a lance attack.

A dark shadow hurtled past. My shield lifted, I deflected an arrow from above.

A child ran past.

"Form lines," cried Mahpiyasapa. "To the east! To the west! Women and children between the lines!"

I saw Hci, with an expert thrust, past the buckler of a soldier, drop the fellow from his saddle.

The whooping of Yellow Knives was then upon us. We were cut into small groups, our lines shattered. The battle became a tangled, bloddy melee.

I saw Cuwignaka rolling in the dust, his kaiila gone. I turned my kaiila against the forequarters of a riderless mount, pressing it toward Cuwignaka. Cuwignaka was on his feet, blood about his head. A Yellow Knife, afoot, rushed upon him, knife raised. The gappled. Tehn the Yellow Knife fell backward, blood at his throat. Cuwignaka, a knife ran with blood in his hand, blood on his hand and wrist, too, stood in the dust. I lost sight of him as two warriors passed between us. Then I had my hand on the jaw rope of the riderless kaiila and dragged it, snorting and squealing, to Cuwignaka. He yanked free a lance from the body of a fallen Yellow Knife. He was then in an instant, on the back of te animal I had brought him, and in command of it.

I saw Mahpiyasapa fell a Yellow Knife with his lance. "Shields overhead!" I cried. A hail of arrows fell amongst us. Then great wings smote the air above us, the air tearing at our cloths, rasing dust in affrigted clouds on the field.

"I am here!" called Cuwignaka.

"I am going to find Grunt!" I cried, through the dust. To my left I saw a child run through with a soldier's lance. I saw two women running wildy through the dust.

I struck aside a lance and urged my kaiila toward where Grunt had been tending the wounded.

The area here was like a charnel house. The grounds were covered with the twisted bodies of the slain and mutilated. I wondered if any had escaped. Lodges, even, though not all of them, had been thrown down and burned.

"Aiii!" I heard. I lifted my shield but the Yellow Knife, his eyes wild with fright, rode past, his braids flying behind him.

"Something over there," said Cuwignaka, half a kaiila length behind me, pointing.

We urged our mounts up a small rise, and then down, partly, over it. Here, too, we found the bodies of men who had been wounded. Too, hee, among them, were even bodies of one or two of the woman who had been, with Grunt, tending to them.

"Grunt is alive!" I said.

Grunt, bodies about his feet, stood on a small rise.

"Away!" Grunt was crying, waiving his arm aversively, at two Yellow Knives, mounted, looking at him. "Away!"

In the slaughter it seemed that only Grunt, and Wasnapohdi, too, protected by him, crouching behind him, her head down, the jaw rope of a kaiila clutched in her two hands, had not been killed.

The two Yellow Knives, suddenly, turned about and sped from Grunt.

I choked back a wave of repulsion.

I recalled that long ago, even before I had come to Kailiuk, near the Ihanke, or Perimerter, I had questioned a young man, a tharlarion teamster, as to how it was that Grunt, of all white men, at that time, was permitted to travel so far and with such impunity in the Barrens. "Perhaps the savages feel they have nothing further to gain from Grunt," the young man had laughed. "I do not understand," I had said. "You will," he had said. But I had never understood that remark, until now.

"You see why he is still alive," said Cuwignaka. "It has to do with beliefs about the medicine world."

"I think so," I said.

I moved the kaiila down the rest of the shallow slope, toward the small rise on which Grunt, WAsnapohdi behind him, stood. When Grunt had come into the Barrens he had had with him, among his other trade goods, a coffle of slaves. Although these women had been lovely he had not make use as far as I knew, of any one of them. He had, on the other hand, invited me to content and relieve myself with them as I would, expecting little of me in return other than that I would handle them as what they were, slaves, and prepare them, to some extent, for they were new slaves, for their furture tasks, those of providing a master with exquisite, uncomproised pleasure and service. He had had me teach even the virgins their first submissions. One such had been the former Miss Millicent Aubrey-Welles, the debutante from Pensylvania, who was now Winyela, the slave of Canka, of the Isbu Kaiila. At tht time I had never dreamed we would one day be owned by the same man. It was now clearer to me, as it had not been before, why Grunt had not performed these tasks himself.

"Greetings," said Grunt.

"Greetings," I said.

"Now you see me as I am," said Grunt. "Do not attempt to conseal your repulsion."

I shrugged.

"It has already been done to him," said Cuwignaka. "It is like one cannot be killed or who, killed, has come back from the dead. It is like something from the medicine world."

"Yes," I said.

"Occasionally it proves useful," said Grunt.

It was the first time that I had ever seen Grunt without the familiar, broad-rimmed hat.

"It was done to me five years ago," he said, "by Yellow Knives. I had been struck unconscious. They thought me dead. I awakened later. I lived."

"I have heard of such cases," I said.

"It is hideous," he said.

"Some of the skin has been restored," I said. In other places I could see little but scar tissue. In places, too, the bone was exposed.

"More, too, was done," said Grunt, bitterly.

"It is fortunate that you did not bleed to death," I said.

"Is it?" asked Grunt.

"Yes," I said.

"Perhaps," he said.

"Do many know?" I asked.

"You did not know," said Grunt. "But it is generally not unknown."

"I see," I said.

"Wasnapohdi did not know," he said. "When she first saw she threw up in the grass."

"She is only a slave," I said. Wasnapohdi kept her head down.

"Do you wonder," he asked, "why Grunt seeks the Barrens, why he spends so little time with his own people?"

"The camp is going to fall, imminently," I said. "It is my suggestion that you ride for your lives."

"I prefer the Barrens," said Grunt, angrily. "They have strong stomachs in the Barrens!"

"Riders!" said Cuwignaka. "And kaiila!"

We spun about on our kaiila.

"They are Kaiila!" said Cuwignaka.

Some five warriors, of the Napoktan Kaiila, each drawing a string of kaiila, pulled up near us.

"The women and children," said Cuwignaka, pointing, "are in that direction."

"Wasnapohdi," cried one of the warriors, "is that you?"

Wasnapohdi, from her crouching position, fell immediately, seemingly unable to help herself, to her knees in the grass. She looked up, her lower lip trembling, tears suddenly brimming in her eyes. "Yes, Master!" she said.

"Hurry!" cried the leader of the warriors, and, suddenly, they sped away, in the direction Cuwignaka had indicated.

I had heard the way in which Wasnapohdi had said the word 'Master' to the young man. It had not been used in the mere fashion in which any slave girl might use the experession 'Master' to any free man, expressing her understood lowliness and deference before him, but rather as though he might be her own master.

Grunt, I noted, had drawn on his broad-brimmed hat. He had not wished to be seen as he was before the young warriors.

"That is Waiyeyeca," I said to her.

"Yes, Master," she said, tears in her eyes. I understood now why she had hidden from him in the camp. She feared her feelings. There was no doubt now in my mind, nor, I think, in hers, that she indeed did love him, In her eyes, and in her voice, and in the way in which she had said 'Master' to him, I saw that she still, in her heart, regarded herself as his slave.

Grunt, too, a shrewd man, had noticed this.

Wasnapohdi rose to her feet, looking after the riders. She put out her hand. Tears were in her eyes.

"Let me follow him, Master," she said to Grunt. "Please!"

"Have you recieved permission to rise, Slave?" asked Grunt.

She looked at him, startled. Then Grunt, with a savage blow of the back of his hand, struck her to the grass at his feet. She looked up at him, disbelievingly. There was blood at the side of her mouth. Her hands were then taken before her body and he wrists, crossed, were, at one end of a long tether, tightly tied. She was then jerked to her feet. "You do not belong to him," said Grunt. "You belong to me."

"Yes, Master," she said, tears in her eyes.

Grunt mounted. He looped the free end of her tether three times about the pommel of his saddle. "If we survive," said Grunt, "you will discover that your breach of discipline has earned you a superb lashing."

"Yes, Master," she wept.

With all her heart she wished to run after Waiyayeca, but she would go with Grunt. Her will was nothing. She was a slave.

"I was too much absorbed with myself," said Grunt. "Sometimes I let things bother me too much. I thank you both, my friends, for bringing me to my senses."

"Ride," said Cuwignaka. "It is nearly dark. Hopefully many will be able to escape from the camp, riding or afoot."

"Surely you will come with us?" said Grunt.

"No," said Cuwignaka.

"The fighting is the business of warriors," said Grunt.

"We are warriors," said Cuwignaka.

"I wish you well," said Grunt.

"We wish you well," I said.

"Oglu waste!" said Cuwignaka.

"Oglu waste!" said Grunt, "Good luck!"

He then moved his kaiila away, through the gloom. We saw Wasnapohdi cast an anguished glance over her shoulder, in the direction in which Waiyeyeca had ridden. Then, by the wrists, weeping, stubling, the tether taut, she was pulled along, by the side of Grunt's kaiila.

"He is the only man I know who has survived that," said Cuwignaka.

"In itself," I said, "It is not likely to be lethal. It is only that it is commonly done only to the dying or dead."

"You are right, of course," said Cuwignaka.

"Grunt seems rather sensitive about it," I said.

"It saved his life today," said Cuwignaka. "He should be pleased."

"I suppose one could get used to it," I said.

"It is hideous," said Cuwignaka.

"To be sure," I granted him, "it is not likely to start a fashion."

"I do not think so," laughed Cuwignaka.

"He is a good man," I said.

"Yes," said Cuwignaka, "and a kindly one."

"Yes," I said.

"I wonder if Wasnapohdi will ever realize how Grunt was concerned to save her life."

"She will doubtless understand sometime," I said. "She is an intelligent woman."

"Mahpiyasapa knows the camp is lost," said Cuwignaka.

"Yes," I said. "The young warriors were bringing in kaiila, to help evacuate the women and children."

"Do you think there will be enough kaiila?" asked Cuwignaka.

"I do not know," I said.

"There will not be," said Cuwignaka.