Explorers Of Gor

24
We Obtain A Canoe; Kisu Makes Tende A Slave

It was getting light.

We thrust the mud raft ahead of us.

Some askaris straggled past, some wounded. A canoe, with bleeding askaris, half drifted, half paddled, passed us, a hundred yards away, on our right.

Mare than an Ahn ago we had passed the point at which the prison raft, from which we had escaped, had been anchored.

"There were raiders," said Kisu.

"It was a good night for them," said Ayari.

We continued to push the mud raft ahead of us. The dawn, a rim of luminescent gray, lay before us. On Gor, as on Earth, the sun rises in the east.

An askari limped past, moving painfully through the thigh-high water. "Do not proceed further," he said. 'There is action in the east."

"My thanks for your advice, my friend," called out Ayari. "Prepare to turn about," he said, loudly, to us. We, pushing from the sides, turned the heavy raft, heaped with piled mud, slowly about. When the askari was some seventy-five yards away we turned about again and continued eastward. He was not, I am sure, aware that we were not following him. If he was, he was in no condition to pursue us.

Concealed by a thin layer of mud on the raft were two shields and two stabbing spears, which Kisu and I had taken from the two askaris we had subdued on the platform of Tende. Our shovels lay in plain sight on the mud heaped on the raft.

We continued to push the raft toward the east.

Ayari looked up at the sky. "It must be about the eighth Ahn," he said.

"How far ahead is Ngao?" I asked Kisu.

"Days," said Kisu.

"It is hopeless," said Ayari. "Let us make for shore."

"They will expect us to do that," I said. "And if we are seen, we may fall to hostile natives or, if they be allies of Bila Huruma, be taken, or our position indicated by the drums."

"Listen," said Kisu, suddenly.

"I hear it," I said.

"What?" asked Ayari.

"War cries, ahead and to the right," I said. "men fighting." I climbed to the surface of the raft. Kisu followed me.

"What do you see?" asked Ayari.

"There is an engagement there," I said, "in canoes and in the water, some hundred askaris, some forty or fifty raiders."

"There may be numerous such engagements," said Ayari. "Let us avoid them."

"To be sure," I said.

Kisu and I clambered down, splashing into the water, and again thrust the raft eastward.

Twice more, before noon, we scouted such engagements. It had rained heavily about the ninth Ahn, but we. drenched, had not ceased to push the raft toward the western shore of Ngao, somewhere ahead of us.

"Down!" said Ayari.

We crouched down in the water, our heads scarcely above the surface, shielded by the raft. On the other side of the raft passed two canoes of askaris returning to the marsh camps of the west. They had seen, from their point of view, only a mud raft, loosed and drifted from the work area.

"Askaris are returning," said Ayari. "The raiders have been driven away."

Kisu lifted the headdress of an askari from the water, and threw it from him. "Not without cost," he said.

"We are safe now," said Ayari.

"Keep a watch for tharlarion," said Kisu. He reached under the water and pulled a fat, glistening leach, some two inches long, from his leg.

"Destroy it," said Ayari.

Kisu dropped it back in the water. "I do not want my blood, pinched from it, released in the water," he said.

Ayari nodded, shuddering. Such blood might attract the bint, a fanged, carnivorous marsh eel, or the predatory, voracious blue grunt, a small, fresh-water variety of the much larger and familiar salt-water grunt of Thassa. The blue grunt is particularly dangerous during the daylight hours preceding its mating periods, when it schools. Its mating periods are synchronized with the phases of Gor's major moon, the full moon reflecting on the surface of the water somehow triggering the mating instinct. During the daylight hours preceding such a moon, as the restless grunts school, they will tear anything edible to pieces which crosses their path. During the hours of mating, however, interestingly, one can move and swim among them untouched. The danger, currently, of the bint and blue grunt, however, was not primarily due to any peril they themselves might represent, particularly as the grunt would not now be schooling, but due to the fact that they, drawn by shed blood, might be followed by tharlarion.

The spear, slender, some seven feet in length, hit into the mud near my hand.

"Raiders!" cried Ayari.

We heard screaming.

Kisu tore at the mud, scratching for one of the shields and stabbing spears.

A fellow leaped to the surface of the raft. I slipped under the water.

I thrust my way through submerged marsh grass. A spear struck down at me. Then I managed to get beneath the canoe and stood up, suddenly, screaming, tipping its occupants into the water. There, suddenly, over the waters of the marsh, roared the war cry of Ko-ro-ba. I dropped one man lifeless, his throat wrenched open, into the water. One man thrust at me with his spear and the others, startled, stood back. I tore the spear from him and kicked him from it. He slipped and I thrust the iron blade into him and thrust him down, pinning him, blood and bubbles bursting up, to the bottom of the marsh. I regarded the other four men, standing back, who faced me. I saw they did not move to attack. I pressed the body of the man under the surface from the spear blade with my foot and drew the weapon up. The body, twisting, now head down, emerged in the grass.

I stepped to one side. The men facing me were standing still.

Kisu stood on the raft, like a black god, the shield on his arm, a bloodied stabbing spear in his right hand. In the water, to his left, struck from the raft, lifeless, inert, buoyant, rolled two bodies.

I waved my hand. "Begone!" I cried. "Begone!"

I do not think they understood my words but my meaning was clear. The four men backed away and then turned and fled.

I righted the canoe. Kisu, leaving the raft, fetched two sealed calabashes of meal from where they floated in the marsh. Tied in the canoe itself was a long, cylindrical basket of strips of salted, dried fish.

Ayari waded out to the canoe. "Do you think they have gone?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Perhaps there are others," he said. He was retrieving paddles from the water.

"I think it is late now for raiders," I said. "Perhaps they will come again in a few days, to again attack the workers at the canal. I think there is little to fear from them at the moment."

"Bila Huruma will burn their villages," said Kisu.

"He must be careful," I said. "He would not wish to alienate the friendly shore communities, either of the marsh or of Ngao."

"He will do what he thinks is necessary to achieve his ends," said Kisu.

"Doubtless you are right," I said. Indeed, I had no doubt but what Bila Huruma would design a sober and judicious course, gentle, if necessary, harsh, if necessary, to bring about those ends which he might seek. He, a Ubar by nature, would not be an easy man to deal with, or to stop.

Ayari placed the paddles he had found, some six of them, in the canoe. This gave us, altogether, a total of eight paddles, not counting two which were lost, floated away, for there were two paddles, extra paddles, tied in the canoe. It is quite common, of course, for a war canoe or raiders' canoe to carry extra paddles, a sensible precaution against the loss of one or more of these essential levers. Indeed, even a canoe which is not one of war or raiding may carry extra paddles, particularly if it is to be propelled through turbulent waters.

I moved the canoe to the side of the raft. From the heaped mud on the raft, unobtrusively, protruded three hollow stems, of broken marsh reed. Kisu, with his hands, dug in the mud. He reached under the mud and seized the blond hair of a slave girl, cords of pierced shells looped about her neck. He pulled her free, by the hair, from the mud. The reed, through which she had breathed, fell from her teeth. Her eyes were frightened, and wide. Her wrists were tied behind her and her ankles, too, were crossed and bound. Kisu submerged her, shaking her, rinsing mud from her body. Then he handed her to me.

"Master," said the blond-haired barbarian.

"Be silent, Slave," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

I carried her to the canoe. I placed her us the canoe, on her belly, as a slave.

Kisu had then freed. the second blond-haired slave from the mud and, submerging her, she also bound hand and foot, rinsed her clean. He then handed her to me and I placed her, as I had the first, she who had once been Janice Prentiss, in the canoe. I placed the second girl forward in the canoe, so that her feet were at the head of the first girl, the blond-haired barbarian. This would make communication between them difficult. Such small touches aid in the control and management of girls.

"Beast!" screamed Tende to Kisu, sputtering and coughing as she was pulled up from the water. "Free me! Free me!"

"I did not think you spoke to commoners," he said. Ayari grinned, affording me the translation of their remarks. If I had spoken Ushindi more fluently I could probably have made out their discourse, as Ayari did, for the Ukungu speech is a closely related language. My Ushindi, of course, was poor. In the next few days I would learn to make transpositions between Ushindi and Ukungu. The vocabularies are extremely similar, except for pronunciation. The grammars, in their basic structures, are almost identical. I have little doubt that most of the black equatorial stock on Gor, descendants of individuals brought to this world by Priest-Kings on Voyages of Acquisition, perhaps hundreds of years ago, derive from one of the Earth's major linguistic families, perhaps the Bantu group. Gorean itself shows innumerable evidences of being derived largely from languages of the Indo-European group.

Tende stifled an angry cry.

Kisu threw her, in her soiled robes, to the surface of the raft. He untied her hands from behind her back and, turning her roughly, almost as though she might have been a slave, retied them before her body, leaving a long loose end which might serve as a tether. She gasped with indignation and, lying on her side, looked at him with anger. He then untied her ankles and threw her from the raft. He led her by the bound wrists, she stumbling in her robes, about the raft and tied the tether on her hands to the sternpost. of the canoe. The tether was some seven feet in length. She stood in the water, in the muddied robes. The water was to her hips. She was slender and about five and a half feet tall.

"Let us untie the two slaves," said Kisu. "They may aid us in paddling."

I unbound the two white girls and knelt them, frightened, in the canoe. They were bare-breasted. About their throats and left ankles were coils of white, pierced shells. About their thighs, now muddied, were brief, wrap-around skirts of red-and-black-printed rep-cloth, suitable garments for slaves. I thrust a paddle into the hands of each.

"We must make haste," said Ayari, taking a position forward in the canoe.

The two girls, one behind the other, knelt behind him. I knelt, paddle in hand, behind the second slave, she who had once been Janice Prentiss. She was attractive. I was pleased that I had taken her.

Behind me, also with a paddle, was Kisu. We had placed weapons in the canoe, the shields and stabbing spears from the two askaris, and some spears and another shield, from the raiders.

Tende screamed, and we turned about. We saw the body of one of the raiders, seized in the jaws of a tharlarion, pulled beneath the surface. It had been drawn to the area probably by the smell of blood in the water, or by following other forms of marine life, most likely the bint or blue grunt, who would have been attracted by the same stimulus. It is not unusual for tharlarion to follow bint and grunt. They form a portion of its diet. Also they lead it sometimes to larger feedings.

Kisu and I, the girls following, lowered our paddles into the water, and moved the canoe eastward.

Tende, tethered to the sternpost, stumbled after us. Looking back I saw two more tharlarion nearby.

I then again lowered the paddle into the marsh.

Some forty yards behind I could now hear the water churning. The tharlarion, when it takes large prey, such as tabuk or tarsk, or men, commonly drags the victim beneath the surface, where it drowns. It then tears it to pieces in the bottom mud, engorging it, limb by limb.

"Please, Kisu," begged Tende, "let me enter the canoe."

But he did not respond to her. He did not even look at her.

"I cannot wade in these robes!" she wept. "Please, Kisu!"

She stumbled and fell, and was, for a moment, under the surface, but the tether on her wrists pulled her again to the surface and, moaning, she regained her feet and staggered to again follow us.

I looked back again to the vicinity of the mud raft. I saw one body move as though leaping out of the water and then saw that it was caught in the jaws of two rearing tharlarion, who fought for it. Each would keep part of it.

I saw four more tharlarion, low on the surface, eyes and nostrils above the surface, knifing toward the feast.

"Kisu!" wept Tende. "Please, Kisu!"

But he did not look at her.

We continued with our paddling.

"It will be only a matter of time, Kisu," I said, in Gorean, "until the tharlarion have fed and there is no more there. Some may then follow a scent in the water, that of sweat and fear."

"Of course," said Kisu, not looking back.

I glanced back once at Tende. She was looking back over her shoulder.

I then continued with my paddling. We did not set a harsh pace. The girl must be able to keep up. And we must not move so swiftly that the tharlarion might become confused or lose the scent.

"Kisu," cried the girl. 'Take me into the canoe!"

But, again, he did not speak to her.

"Kisu!" she cried. "I cannot wade in these robes!"

"Do you wish me to remove them from you?" asked Kisu.

"Were you not once fond of me, Kisu?" she called.

"You are the daughter of my hated enemy, Aibu," said Kisu, coldly.

"Why will you not take me into the canoe?" she asked.

"You are where the tharlarion can take you, within my sight," he said.

"No!" she screamed. "No! No!"

"Ah, but, yes, my dear Tende," he said.

"Please, Kisu!" she begged. "Please!"

"I hear but the voice of the proud free woman, Tende, daughter of my hated enemy, Aibu," said Kisu.

She began to weep. She tried to approach the canoe more closely but Kisu, as she would approach, would, with a powerful stroke, move the canoe more swiftly forward, keeping her at the length of the tether. Once he let her approach the stern but, as she reached out with her bound hands, he, with the paddle, thrust her back. She stood there in the water. He then again moved the canoe forward. Again she followed at the length of her tether.

"Please, Kisu," she begged.

But, again, he did not respond to her.

We paddled on, not speaking, for a quarter of an Ahn.

"Look," said Ayari, after a time, looking back.

"Are they there now?" asked Kisu.

"Yes," said Ayari, "four of them, tharlarion."

Tende looked back over her shoulder.

At first I could not discern them. Then, because of the subtle movement of the water, I saw them. Their bodies, except for their eyes and nostrils, and some ridges on their backs, as they swam, were submerged.

They were about eighty yards away. They did not hurry, but moved with the fluid menace of their kind.

We stopped the canoe.

Tende, lower in the water than we, then saw them.

"Kisu!" she screamed. "Take me into the canoe!"

"You are where I want you," he said, "where the tharlarion may take you, within my sight."

"No!" she screamed. "No! No, please! No, please!"

"I hear the voice of the proud free woman, Tende," said Kisu, "who is the daughter of my hated enemy, Aibu."

"No," she wept, "no!"

"Then what voice is it that I hear?" inquired Kisu.

"The voice of a helpless female slave," cried Tende, "who begs her master to spare her life!"

"You are pretending to be a slave," said Kisu.

"No," she cried, "no! I am a true slave!"

The four tharlarion were now some twenty yards away. They, sensing the static position of their prey, slowed their approach.

"In your heart?" asked Kisu.

"Yes, yes, Master!" she cried.

"A natural and rightful slave?" he asked.

"Yes, I am a natural and rightful slave!" she cried.

The tharlarion stopped swimming now; they drifted toward her. This has the effect of minimizing the pressure waves projected before their bodies, an effect that might otherwise alert a wary, but unsuspecting prey. With tiny backward movements of their short legs they then became motionless, watching her.

"What is your name?" asked Kisu.

"Whatever Master pleases," she wept. The answer was suitable.

"Do you beg slavery?" he asked.

"Yes, yes, Master!" she cried.

"Perhaps I shall consider it, Girl," said he.

"Please, Master!" she cried.

With a tiny, almost imperceptible movement, the tiniest motion of their short legs, the four tharlarion, almost ringing the girl, seemed to drift again toward her, like half-submerged, meaningless logs, save for the methodicality of their convergence. There would then be a sudden lunge, and the snapping of the great jaws, the fighting for the prey.

"Master!" cried Tende.

Kisu, suddenly, reached out and, seizing the girl by the bound wrists, she screaming, wrenched her bodily in a shower of water across the thwart of the canoe.

At the same time, sensing the sudden movement of the prey, the four tharlarion, lashing the water with their tails, cut toward her. Two of them struck toward the stern of the canoe. Another uttered an explosive cry, half grunt, half bellow, which, in rage and frustration, sounded across the marsh. The fourth, jaws distended, more than a yard in width, attacked the side of the canoe. I beat it back with the paddle.

The canoe began to tip backward as another tharlarion clambered, half out of the water, onto its stern. Kisu thrust at it with his paddle. It bit the paddle in two. The girls, clinging to the thwarts, screamed. Ayari moved toward the bow of the canoe, half standing, to try to balance the weight. With the splintered handle of the paddle Kisu jabbed at the tharlarion. It slipped back off the stern. The canoe struck with a clash in the water, nearly capsizing. Another tharlarion struck at the side of the canoe with its snout. I heard wood crack, but not break. It turned, to use its tail. Another tharlarion slipped beneath the canoe.

"Move the canoe!" cried Kisu. "Do not let them under it!"

I thrust at the water with the paddle, and then, as the tharlarion began to surface under the slender vessel, pushed down at it. The canoe slipped off its back, and righted itself. Ayari, seizing one of the paddles, and I, then moved the canoe forward.

The tharlarion were quick to follow, snapping and bellowing. Kisu, with the splintered paddle handle, thrust back one of them.

Then I saw a handful of dried fish fly into the maw of one of the beasts. Ayari, his paddle discarded, was reaching into the cylindrical basket of dried fish, torn open, which had been among the supplies of the canoe. He hurled more fish to another tharlarion, which, with a snapping, popping noise, clamped shut its jaws on the salty provender. He similarly threw fish to the other two beasts.

"Hand me another paddle," I said to the first girl in the canoe. She was crouching, trembling, head down, in the bottom of the canoe.

"Perform, Slave," I said.

"Yes, Master," she whispered. She handed the paddle back to the blond-haired barbarian who, half in shock, numb, handed it back to me. She looked at me, frightened, and then looked away. I think she knew that she again belonged to me. I pulled the paddle from her fingers and passed it back to Kisu, who took it calmly. Kisu and I then began to propel the canoe eastward. Tende, wrists bound beneath her body, lay shuddering between Kisu and myself, in the bottom of the canoe. Ayari then threw bits of fish into the water, where the tharlarion must swim to them, to obtain them. He threw successive tidbits further and further away, behind the canoe. Then he scattered several scraps of fish at one time, in an arc behind the tharlarion. Kisu and I continued to propel the canoe from the vicinity. The tharlarion, distracted and feeding, did not follow.

After a quarter of an Ann Kisu laid aside his paddle. He put Tende to her back, crouching beside her. He untied her hands.

She looked up at him.

"It is right, is it not," he asked, "to enslave a rightful and natural slave?"

"Yes, Master," she said.

He then, gently, removed her clothing.

"You are beautiful," he said.

"A girl is pleased, if Master is pleased," she said.

"It is too bad you are only a slave," he said.

"Yes Master," she said.

I then removed the white shells and cord from the throat and left ankle of the blond-haired barbarian, and snapped the two cords in half. I then retied shells on her throat and left ankle. The two remaining pieces of cord, with their shells, I gave to Kisu. He then tied them on the throat and left ankle of Tende.

"You have ornamented me as a slave, Master," said Tende.

"It is fitting, Slave," said Kisu.

"Yes, Master," she said.

She then saw her clothing, with the exception of a silken strip, a foot in width and some five feet in length, ripped from an undergarment, dropped overboard into the marsh. Kisu carefully folded the silken strip into small squares and slipped it between his waist and his loincloth's twisted-cloth belt. It could serve her as a brief, wrap-around skirt, similar to those of the other girls, if he later saw fit to clothe her.

"Your slave lies naked before you, Master," said Tende.

"I have always desired you, Tende," he said.

She lifted her arms to him.

"You are a slave, aren't you, Tende?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," she said. She put her arms down. She looked up at him.

"Since I was a little girl," she said, "I wanted to be your slave. But I never thought you would be strong enough to make me your slave."

"In Ukungu," he said, "it was not possible." He looked down at her, his hands hard on her arms. "Here," he said, "it is possible."

"Here," she said, "it is reality." Then she winced, for his hands, in his desire, tightened more upon her anus. "oh," she said, "you're hurting me."

"Be silent, Slave," he said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

He looked at her, fiercely. She could not meet his eyes. I think she had not known before that a man could so desire her. She had not before been a slave.

"I name you Tende," he said.

"Yes, Master," she said, now wearing that name like a collar, it having been put upon her as a slave name.

"To whom do you belong?" he asked.

"You, Master," she said.

"Do you think you will have an easy slavery with me?" he asked.

"No, Master," she said.

"You are right," he said. "Your slavery will be a full slavery.

"I desire no other," she said, turning her head to face him. I could smell the heat of her. "Are you now going to claim me, as your slave?" she asked. They seemed oblivious of the others in the canoe. Yet had they not been, it would have made no difference, for the girl was only a slave.

"I claim you, Tende," said he, "as my slave."

"Are you going to take the rights of the Master?" she asked.

"When, and as I please," he said.

"Yes, Master," she said. "Oh!" she said, forced down, roughly, in the canoe.

"I claim you, Tende, daughter of my hated enemy, Aibu," he said, "as my slave, and now, for the first time, I assert over you the full and uncompromising rights of my mastery."

"Yes, Master," she said. "Yes, Master."

Ayari and I, and the two bare-breasted, lovely white slaves, property girls, each of us now with a paddle, not speaking, propelled the long canoe quietly eastward.