Explorers of Gor (39 page)

“Disperse,” I said to the men. “It is now each man for himself.”

They disappeared into the darkness, making their way in various directions.

Kisu, I, and Ayari, remained on the island.

“Where are you going?” asked Kisu.

“I must go east,” I said. “I follow one called Shaba. I seek the Ua River.”

“That will suit my purposes well,” he said, grimly.

“I do not understand,” I said.

“You will, in time,” he said.

“Do you menace me?” I asked.

He put his hands on my shoulders. “By the crops of Ukungu, no,” he said.

“Then I do not understand you,” I said.

“You will,” he said.

“I must be on my way,” I said. “Time is short.”

“You are not facing east,” he said. “I have a stop to make first,” I said.

“I, too, have some business to attend to,” he said.

“That is in accord with some plan of yours?” I asked.

“Exactly,” he said. “It is my intention to recover a lost slave,” I said. I recalled the lovely blond-haired barbarian, Janice Prentiss. I wanted her at my own feet.

“That is why you brought along the mud raft,” smiled Kisu.

“Of course,” I said.

“I think I, too, will take a slave,” he said.

“I thought you might,” I said.

“I do not understand why the askaris have not yet returned,” said Ayari. “By now they must understand it to be a false alarm.”

“I would think so,” I said.

“Let us hurry,” said Kisu.

We set off through the darkness, westward, pushing the mud raft with us, our shovels placed upon it

“Why are you not with the other askaris, fighting in the east?” asked Ayari.

“I am guarding the Lady Tende,” he said. “Who are you? What is that?”

“Where is the rogues’ chain?” asked Ayari.

“I do not know,” he said. “Who are you? What is that raft?”

“I am Ayari,” said Ayari. “This is the mud raft used by the rogues’ chain.”

“The rogues’ chain is to the east,” said the man. “We passed it earlier today.”

“What is going on here?” asked Mwoga, returning from the eastern edge of the platform of planks fixed over the four canoes.

“It is a worker, looking for the rogues’ chain,” said the askari.

Mwoga peered into the darkness. He could not see Ayari well. Obviously the man was a worker, for he was not chained. Probably the mud raft had broken loose and the worker was intent upon returning it, if unwisely in the darkness.

“One askari,” called Ayari, “is not enough to guard so great a personage as the Lady Tende.”

“Have no fear, fellow,” said Mwoga. “There is another about.”

“That is all I wanted to know,” said Ayari.

Kisu and I bad located one guard apiece. The others had apparently joined in the investigation to the east.

“I do not understand,” said Mwoga.

With the flats of our shovels Kisu and I struck the two guards senseless.

Mwoga had informed us that there were only two to concern ourselves with, and that we might proceed with dispatch. He had been quite helpful.

Mwoga looked from his left to his right. Without speaking further, or attempting to draw his dagger, he leaped from the planks into the water, falling, scrambling up, and plunging away into the darkness.

The chained slaves who drew the platform and were sitting and crouching forward, on its surface, bad, cautioned by Ayari, remained silent.

The darkness was loud with the drums.

“I cannot sleep,” said the Lady Tende, emerging from the small, silken shelter, one of two, one for her and her slaves, and one for Mwoga, pitched aft on the platform.

Then she saw Kisu.

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.