Vagabonds of Gor (66 page)

"We must leave soon," I said. "They are breaking camp even now."

"But you cannot leave me in this state!" she said.

"On your belly," I said.

"Yes!" she said, delightedly, going to her belly in the sand.

I knelt over the back of her thighs.

"Captor?" she asked.

I reached beneath her belly, in the sand, and put a loop of binding fiber about her.

"Oh!" she said.

I had pulled the cord snugly up, about her waist, and knotted it behind the small of her back.

I then drew her hands up, behind her back.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I am tying your hands behind your back," I said, fastening them there, using the two free ends of the cord as a double cord.

I then rose to my feet.

She turned to her left shoulder in the sand, looking up at me, reproachfully. "What is the meaning of this?" she asked.

"We are breaking camp," I said. "I am afraid, until morning, pretty Ina, you will just have to squirm a little."

"No!" she said.

"You may kneel," I said.

She struggled to a kneeling position.

"Sometimes slave girls," I said, "are aroused and then put in their kennels with their hands braceleted behind their backs, held there with a belly chain, or a belly cord. Much the same effect is achieved when they are chained by the neck in a slave bin, on the straw, their wrists chained to their holding collar."

She regarded me, with horror.

"You may rise to your feet," I said. "We trek within the Ehn."

She struggled to her feet.

"Will it be necessary to put you in a leading halter?" I asked.

"No!" she said.

"We are ready," said Plenius.

"We will trek southwest," I said.

"Southwest?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"The young rencer was caught to the west of the camp, was he not?" asked Labienus, the hand of Titus on his arm.

"Yes," said Plenius.

"Do as Tarl says," said Labienus.

"In three or four days we will make our adjustments southward," I said.

"Let us trek," said Plenius.

We then left the sand island. Several times in the first two or three Ahn, Ina, finding her way to my side, pressed herself against me, piteously. Each time I thrust her back. She continued to follow me very closely. Sometimes she would make a tiny moaning noise, not unlike one of the unvocalized need signals of a slave girl.

Once, past midnight, while we stopped to rest, she came very close to me, and looked up at me, piteously. I looked down at her face in the moonlight, streaked with tears.

"May I speak?" she asked. "Yes," I said.

"I am needful!" she whispered.

"Then doubtless you will be warm in the morning," I said.

Such answers are sometimes given to the girls in the kennels, pressing their tear-stained faces and bodies against the bars, their hands braceleted behind them, or the girls in the slave bins, sitting or kneeling, their small hands twisting at their throats, in their manacles.

"I am already aflame," she said, "ragingly aflame!"

"We trek," I said.

"You will give me relief in the morning!" she said.

"Perhaps," I said, "perhaps not."

She moaned. "I am not a slave," she whispered.

"Fortunately you are not," I said, "or you would know what the miseries of deprivation could be."

She looked at me with horror.

"They strive well, to please their masters," I said.

"And what would a slave do in the morning?" she asked.

"One in your situation," I asked, "one not limited by the length of her chain or the placement of her kennel bars?"

"Yes," she said.

"I suppose she might crawl to me, or to another, on her knees," I said, "begging."

"I beg now!" she said.

"In the morning," I said, "you will doubtless beg harder."

"In the morning," she sobbed, "I will crawl to you on my knees, begging."

"But why would you do that?" I asked.

"Can you not guess?" she sobbed.

I then lifted my hand in the moonlight, signaling that we would now resume the trek.

Chapter 32 - RENDEZVOUS

"Yes. Yes!" cried Ina softly.

Well, and prettily, had she begged again, much as might have a slave, and I had seen fit to reward her.

She had first learned to beg, rather as a slave, on the morning after the young rencer had left us, after our trek of the night. I recalled how she had crawled to me on her knees, desperately, needfully, piteously, her hands pinioned helplessly behind her, in her bonds. She had been pretty. Indeed, it had been hard to tell her from a slave. In response to her request I had, in the past few days, taught her various modalities of petition, which I had trained her in, sometimes over and over, to be sure, modalities more appropriate to the female slave than the free woman. The day before yesterday she had crawled to me on all fours. Yesterday afternoon she had crawled to me on her belly, to lick and kiss at my feet. This afternoon, she had approached me on her belly with a switch in her teeth, to be used on her liberally if she were not pleasing. It lay to one side. It had not been necessary to use it. She had been pleasing, quite.

"Yes," she whispered.

The usages to which I had subjected her this afternoon, one might think, would have contented even a lascivious bond-maid, not to mention a mere free woman.

"Oh, yes," she said.

Then I rolled to one side, and lay on one elbow, regarding her.

"A captive is grateful," she said, "for the attentions of her captor."

She then lay on her back, in the sand, looking up. We were near a Tur tree.

"I am sure of it," Titus called down, from the branches of the tree. "I can see fields, some pasangs off. It is the edge of the delta!"

"Good," said more than one man about, but surely they, as I, knew that the most dangerous part of the journey lay ahead of us.

I regarded Ina.

She seemed quiet now, but I knew that in the delta slave fires had been ignited in her belly. She seemed quiet now, but somewhere within her those fires lay smoldering, ready to spring again, persistently, predictably, mercilessly, into flame. I did not know if she could ever return to being a free woman, in the full sense. She was now, I feared, the sort of woman who belongs to men.

I would scout out the edge of the delta, at night, trying to find an avenue of escape for myself, for Ina, and the others. I doubted that it would be easy. Also, beyond the delta, one would not have the cover of the marsh, the rence.

"Are you eager to leave the delta, my captor?" asked Ina, turning to look upon me.

"Yes," I said.

"Yet you seem apprehensive," she said.

"I am," I said.

"I do not know if I wish to leave the delta," she said.

"Oh?" I said.

"I have been happier here," she said, "than anywhere in my life."

"Perhaps you could remain here," I said.

"If I were to remain here," she said, "if I were not devoured, I would be sure to fall to a rencer."

"To be then kept, or sold," I said.

"Perhaps to be recognized," she said, "and then put out for tharlarion."

"It is possible," I said.

"I was seen by hundreds of rencers," she said. "Any one of them might recognize me. It is possible I might not be permitted a veil."

"That is surely possible," I said. I smiled to myself. Not even the free women of the rencers veil themselves. I suspected that the Lady Ina's days of the veil were over. Captives and slaves are commonly denied the veil.

"Stay with me in the rence," she whispered. "Keep me here, with you, as you have been."

"I have business out of the delta," I said.

She looked at me, tears in her eyes.

"And you, too," I said, "should leave the delta. You are not a rencer. You do not belong here."

She lay on her back, the palms of her hands down, her fingers in the sand. "I know." she said. Then suddenly her fingers clawed down, into the sand. "But I am a captive," she said. "I do not know what is to become of me outside of the delta!"

"Perhaps you could return to Ar," I said.

"Oh, yes!" she laughed.

To be sure, she was thousands of pasangs from Ar, and if she ever returned to Ar presumably she would do so only as a scantily clad slave, her former wealth, identity, station and position irretrievably removed from her, no different from other such slaves in the city.

"You cannot remain here," I said.

"I know," she said.

We had moved southwest for two days after the visit of the young rencer to our camp, and had then adjusted our trek to the southeast, and then to the south, to reach the point at which I wished to exit from the delta, a point far enough from both Brundisium, on the coast, and Ven, on the south bank of the Vosk, to be far from any major bases of Cosians. Presumably the Cosians would not expect many of Ar to leave the delta in this area, particularly this late in summer. Too, they would be likely to assume that most of Ar's expeditionary force in the delta would by now have either successfully effected its exit or perished.

I supposed that this late in the summer most Cosian regulars would have been withdrawn from the delta watch. I had even hoped that these areas would not be heavily patrolled. The young rencer had warned me, however, I recalled, that the edges of the delta were infested by Cosians and their hirelings. That had been an unwelcome intelligence, but one I did not find it hard to credit. To be sure, I suspected that he, or his informants, would not be likely to discriminate nicely between complete and selective surveillance, between closed patterns, such as manned perimeters, and random patrols, or even between Cosian regulars and mercenaries.

"Be of good cheer," I said. "Out of the delta you may even be permitted clothing, other than, say, a meager pair of slave strips."

"I might have been granted only one," she said.

"True," I said. I recalled Phoebe, the slim young maid of Cos whom I had taken with me, at her request, from the Crooked Tarn. I had put her in a single slave strip before I had turned her over to Ephialtes, the sutler, to hold for me. He might, by now, I supposed, be in the vicinity of Brundisium. Presumably the balance of Cos' northern forces, mostly mercenaries, would have retired to that city, for mustering out, or reassignment.

"But surely you are distressed," I said, "that you have been garmented as you have, in such a manner that you might at a distance, save for the collar, be mistaken for a thigh-stripped, bare-breasted slave."