John Norman (25 page)

“You must learn to kick well, my pretty,” cooed the old woman, kindly, to Brenda Hamilton.

Brenda Hamilton struggled, trying to escape the old woman’s hands. But she could not do so. With her left arm, the old woman held her still, and, with one finger, not entering her, very gently, on the side, tested her.

Brenda Hamilton hung miserably on the pole.

“Well?” asked Spear.

Old Woman removed her hands from Brenda Hamilton, and turned to face Spear.

“Her body is alive,” said Old Woman. “I do not understand why she would not kick well.”

Then she turned again to Brenda Hamilton, puzzled.

Brenda Hamilton looked at the other women standing about Never had she seen such women. They seemed vital, sensual, alive, half animal. Their femaleness seemed one with their person, as much as a smell or a pigmentation. How different the men and women seemed, the men hard, strong, tall, the women so much smaller, so lusciously curved, so vital, so shamelessly female.

These, of course, were women from before the agricultural revolution, before a man became bound to a strip of soil, and became obsessed with the ownership of his land, the authenticity of his paternity, the reliability and legitimacy of inheritances. These were times before a man owned, privately, his land, and his children and his women. The economic system was not yet such that, before effective birth-control procedures, it was desirable to inculcate frigidity in females, a property useful in the perpetuation and support of patriarchal monogamy. The cultural conditioning processes, abetted by religions, whose role was to support the institutions of the time, had not yet been turned to this end.

Brenda Hamilton, looking on the women of the Men, realized that they had not been taught to be ashamed of their bodies and needs.

They are like animals, she thought. Brenda Hamilton, though enlightened, though informed, though historically aware, was yet a creature of her own times and conditionings, of a world in which her attitudes and feelings had, without her knowing it, been shaped by centuries of misery,. un – happiness and mental disease, thought to be essential in guaranteeing societal stability, thought to be the only alternative to chaos, the jungle and terror. Fear and superstition, often by men whose gifts for life were imperfect or defective, and hated or feared life, poured like corroding acids into the minds of the young, had been a culture’s guarantee that men would fear to leave their fields, that they would keep the laws, that they would pay the priests and the kings, that the hunters would not return.

But the women, and the men, on whom Brenda Hamilton looked, had not felt this oppressive weight.

They were free of it, simply free of it.

They still owned the world, and the mountains, and hunted the animals, and went where Spear decided they would go.

They were as free as leopards and lions, as once men were, as once men might be again, among new continents, among new mountains, once more being first, now among the stars.

“Her body is alive,” said Old Woman, looking up into the face of Brenda Hamilton. “I do not understand why she would not kick well.”

Brenda Hamilton looked away from her.

“You must learn to kick well, my pretty,” said the old woman to her. “You must learn to kick well for the men.”

Brenda Hamilton turned to her, miserable, looking down into her face.

The old woman looked up at her, and cackled. “You will learn to kick well, my pretty,” she said, “if you would eat.”

Then she turned away.

Spear looked at her. Then he said to the men, “Let us go to the men’s hut.”

The men turned and went between the huts, leaving the women and children at the rack.

Spear was the last of the men to leave.

Before he left he faced Brenda Hamilton. “You are a slave,” he told her. She looked at him, blankly. Then he said to the women and children about, “Teach her that she is a slave.” Then he, too, walked away, following the men, between the huts.

The women and children pressed closely about her, poking at her, smelling her, feeling her body.

“Please untie me,” begged Brenda Hamilton.

One of the women struck her, sharply, across the mouth.

Brenda Hamilton hung, wrists apart, hands now numb, from the pole, her feet some six inches from the ground.

She tasted blood in her mouth, where the blow had dashed her lower lip against her teeth.

She closed her eyes.

Suddenly, from behind her, she heard the hiss of a switch and she cried out in pain, the supple, peeled branch unexpectedly, deeply, lashing into the small of her back, on the left side; she twisted in the thongs, agonized, to look behind her, and another switch, swiftly, cut across her belly; she cried out in misery, writhing in the thongs; first on one side and then the other, and in front and back, and the length of her body, the women and the children, chanting, circling her, leaping in and out, struck her.

Brenda Hamilton saw the ugly girl, the stupid, horrid one, crouching, naked between the huts, watching her.

Then the switch fell again, and again.

Then she saw, limping from between the huts, the woman with the scar, who had screamed something before, and had later, after the sticks had been thrown, left the group. She demanded a switch from one of the other women. It was immediately given to her. And then the others fell back. Short Leg looked at Brenda Hamilton. Then she lashed her with the switch, making her cry out with pain. She lashed her methodically and well, with care and strength, and then Brenda Hamilton, broken, blubbering, wept in the thongs. “Please stop,” she wept. “Don’t hurt me,” she wept. The older woman with the scar, Short Leg, held her face to hers, by the hair. Brenda Hamilton could not meet her eyes, but looked away.

She knew that she feared this woman terribly, that she was dominant over her.

Short Leg, angrily, threw away the switch, and limped away.

Hamilton saw another woman pick up the switch, a darkhaired woman, one of the two women who had left with the hunter who had captured her. It was Antelope. Behind her was the shorter woman, blond, thick-ankled, who had accompanied them, Cloud.

Antelope strode to her and struck her five times, and then gave the switch to Cloud, who, too, lashed her five times. Antelope smiled at her over her shoulder, as she walked away. She had the hip swing of a woman who has been muchly pleasured by a man.

A little later the young, blond girl, who had left with the other hunter, Flower, strolled to the rack, and she, too, smiling, lashed Brenda Hamilton.

“I don’t want him!” wept Brenda Hamilton. “Don’t beat me! He’s yours! He’s yours!”

Flower threw away the switch and strolled from the rack.

Then the old woman was among the other women and the children.

She pushed them away, and they, weary now, from striking, and taunting and chanting, left the pole.

Brenda Hamilton hung, beaten, alone. Her body was a welter of lash marks.

To her left hung the deer, hind feet apart, tied upside down, with its cut throat.

The sun passed the noon meridian and none paid more attention to her. She watched the shadows of the poles then creep across the ground.

Her hair was half across her face. In the early afternoon she fell unconscious.

She awakened in the late afternoon, when the shadows were long.

She saw most of the men sitting cross-legged, watching her. Among them, though, were not the hunter who had captured her, nor the small man who had thrown the sticks. Too, the small, quick man, Fox, was not among them. He was to her left, beginning to skin the deer. He began at the bound foot to his left, cutting around the leg with a small stone knife, and then made a deep vertical incision down the animal’s body. In a few minutes he had freed the skin from the meat.

The men watched impassively.

When he had jerked the skin free and thrown it to one side, to the grass, he looked at Brenda Hamilton, who regarded him, numbly.

Then, to her horror, with his knife he reached up to her bound wrist, that on his left and laid the knife against it.

“No!” she screamed. “No! No!”

The quick man, with a wide grin, took the knife away, and the other men, all of them with but one exception, the heavy-jawed, dour man she would learn was Stone, roared with laughter. And across even his face there was the trace of a smile.

She blushed, so completely had she been fooled. She was still shuddering, when she was lifted in the thongs, untied from the pole, and carried to a place on the grass.

She was sat on the grass, naked, the men about her.

The one who was their leader handed her a broken gourd, filled with water.

Gratefully she drank.

She was then handed small bits of meat, dried. She ate them.

She saw some of the women now-untying the skinned deer from the pole. Others were preparing a large, rectangular fire in a clearing between the huts. Poles would be set up; it would be gutted and roasted. Another woman had picked up the skin, and was taking it away with her.

Her body felt miserable, from the beating. She could scarcely move her hands; she could not feel her fingers. Her wrists bore deep, circular red marks, where the thongs had bitten into them.

She was given more water, more pieces of meat. She drank, and ate.

The men sat about, watching her.

She felt less frightened with them than with the women.

She knew that, to them, she was an object of curiosity, of interest, of pleasure. To the women she sensed she was only another woman, a rival, competitor. Moreover, she had recognized, with a woman’s swiftness and awareness, that she was among the most delicious of the females in the camp. She had seen only one she had felt was her superior in beauty, the young, blond girl, whom she would learn was Flower. It was not without reason that the new slave feared the other women in the camp. She hoped the men would protect her from them. She sat now among them, naked, shielded from the women. She could see that they were pleased that she had been brought to the camp, that they were pleased that she was theirs.

She felt some strength coming back to her body. She looked about herself, at the men.

Suddenly she realized that they would have nothing to do until the women prepared the meat.

She leaped to her feet, but one of the men, the dour-faced, heavy fellow, Stone, seized her ankle, and she was hurled to the grass, again among them.

Spear pointed to a hide spread on the grass, that she should take her place upon it.

The men were watching her.

“Please, no,” she said.

Spear pointed again to the hide on the grass.

She crept to it, and sat upon it.

“No,” she whispered, “please, no.”

She saw them inching toward her. She tried to move back on the hide.

With a sudden cry, as of animals, they leaped upon her, she screaming, and thrust her shoulders back to the hide. She felt her ankles being jerked apart, widely, the hands and mouths of them eager and hot all about her body, holding her, caressing her, licking at her, biting at her, pinioning her.

The first to claim her was Spear, for he was the leader.

Brenda Hamilton thrust her fingers in her mouth. They were still sore from the blow of Old Woman’s stick. She did not know whether or not they might be broken. She had tried to take a piece of meat. Screaming, striking her again and again with the stick, beating her on the back, Old Woman had driven her away from the roasting meat. Then Hamilton had fallen, stumbling, her ankles fastened, one to the other, with about a foot of play, like those of Ugly Girl, with rawhide. Spear had done this, when the men had finished with her, then turning her loose. Hamilton had fallen to the ground, helpless under the blows of Old Woman’s stick. And then two other women, too, attacked her, striking at her with their hands, kicking her with their feet. Even a child hit her. Hamilton had knelt down, head down, her hands over her head, crying out in misery. Then Old Woman had said something, and the blows had stopped. And Hamilton had crawled, abused, from the light of the fire. She had learned that she could not take meat. She was a female. But she had seen Old Woman take meat, and the large, heavy-breasted woman, too, take meat. She had learned now that they were special, and that she was not. She was only another female. Old Woman, in the cooking, was assisted by two other women, but, like the other women of the Men, they, too, were not permitted to feed themselves. The meat, like the women, belonged to the hunters. It was theirs to dispense. The only exception to this practice was that taken, usually in the course of the cooking, by Old Woman and Nurse. Old Woman did much what she wanted, and few interfered. Nurse, too, was privileged. Without Nurse some of the young might die. Nurse and Old Woman were not thought of by the Men, perhaps strangely, as being of the women. They were women, but somehow not the same, not in the same way of the women.

Brenda Hamilton knelt outside the circle of the firelight. The smell of the roasted deer was redolent in the air, with the smell of ashes and fat, and bodies.

“They are fools,” thought Brenda Hamilton. “Anyone could untie the knots on my ankles. When I wish to do so, I will, and run off.”

A few feet from her, crouching in the darkness, round shouldered, head set forward on her shoulders, eyes peering at the roasting deer, was the squat, clumsily bodied girl, with the blank, vacant eyes, the slack jaw, the hair down her curved back like strings.

Brenda shuddered, repulsed, and edged to one side, to be farther from her.

She was terribly hungry, for she had had little during the day, only the fruit and meat which her captor had given her, she bound, in the half darkness of the morning, and the bits of meat given to her by Spear before the men had put her to their pleasure. And that meat, both that of the morning and that given her by Spear, had been insufficient, and had been terribly dry, almost like cubes of leather.

She could see the fat dripping from the roasting carcass of the deer into the fire, sizzling and flaming.

She moved her fingers. She was pleased to see that Old Woman’s stick had not broken them.