Smugglers of Gor

Chapter Forty-Eight



I crouched in the bushes, elated.

There was a seeming movement to the side, and I glanced to my right, quickly. But it was only a rustle, and shadows, stirred by the wind in the brush. I had sensed, from time to time, I might be accompanied in the forest, but if something was there, as I supposed it was not, I did not think it was concerned with me. Certainly it had given no threatening evidence of its presence.

Through the branches I could see the broad, shimmering vista of the Alexandra before me. There were no signs of patrols from Shipcamp along the shore nor of the small sounding boats which might be testing the river or preceding the slow, stately journey of the great ship to the sea. Either the ship had not yet reached this point, perhaps still moored upriver, or had already passed. I saw no advantage in delaying my crossing, supposing that I could manage it. I must manage it, somehow. Making it sooner, rather than later, also minimized the danger of being detected by our visitors from the coast, who had so discomfited Genserich and his band, and left with four stripped, neck-roped slaves, once Panther Women. They would have already passed this point.

I had planned astutely, and had carried out my plan flawlessly. I congratulated myself on my cleverness. How clever was Margaret Alyssa Cameron! Then I lifted my hand and, with my fingers, touched my collar. How absurd was that thought! Who was this Margaret Alyssa Cameron? I was not Margaret Alyssa Cameron. She was a free woman. I was a slave. I was not she. I was Laura, so named at the pleasure of masters, a slave, like many others, of Pani Warriors. I was a slave. I knew that. It was indisputable. The former Margaret Alyssa Cameron no longer existed; she who had once been she was now Laura, merely another Gorean slave girl.

Even on Earth I had sensed myself a slave. And here there was no ambiguity about the matter. Here it was so not only in the aching, longing reality of the heart, desiring to belong to and serve a master, but in the full, implacable reality of fact, truth, and law. I was rightless goods, merchandise, a slight, collared, curvaceous beast, subject to purchase and sale, and knew myself such!

But I was no ordinary slave. I was an extraordinarily clever slave. I had escaped. I had eluded the masters.

I looked across the Alexandra.

How bright, how clever, how superior, I was! I had eluded the masters. What slave can manage that?

And they said there was no escape for the Gorean slave girl! But I had escaped! They would never recapture me! I could not be recaptured. I was too clever for them!

But what could I do, marked, tunicked, and collared, easily identifiable, female and slave, where could I go?

But the difficulty now was to manage the crossing.

I glanced to my left, and my attention was suddenly arrested, fearfully so, in a moment of terror. For an instant I could not move. Again, as I had long ago, on the first day of my escape from Shipcamp, I thought I saw a beast’s head in the shadows, looking at me, a large, broad, motionless head. I had then regarded it with greater care, and found that it was no more than a misconstrued pattern in the forest, an artifact of perception, a misinterpreted mixture of brush and branches, light and shadow. It was no more than the creature of my fear.

I laughed with relief.

But then it emerged the brush, crouching, no taller than my waist. My eyes grew wide; my hand was raised before my mouth. I could not move. It was to my left, and between me and the river. Strangely it did not seem attentive to me. Rather it was looking beyond me, though, when I dared turn, I could see nothing there.

Then the beast stood up fiercely, like a threatening, pulsating mountain, broad and braced, seething, its chest expanded, its paws spread, stood up to each tiny increment of its height, lifted its large, shaggy head angrily to the afternoon sky, and roared, a terrible roar, much like those we had heard when in the camp of Genserich, but then far off, and then closer. From such a sound, even were the monster caged, I think uneasy, awed men might back away and women flee. Then from my right I heard, unmistakably, from within the brush somewhere, an answering, rumbling growl. I had occasionally sensed I might have shared the forest with some unseen companion, like a shadow amongst the trees, but I had dismissed this apprehension as, Ahn after Ahn, even following investigations, I had detected nothing. Too, if there were any warrant for my fears, why had I not, in all this time, if it were a predator, been attacked? To bring down, and feed upon, a prey such as I might be, an unarmed kajira in the forest, would pose no difficulty to any likely predator. I lacked the stealth and speed of the tabuk, the horns of the forest bosk, the tusks of the tarsk boar. But clearly, now, there was not one, but two beasts, that which had emerged from the brush of the riverside, where, suddenly disturbed, it might have been drinking, and the other, still unseen, in the brush to my right.

I remained perfectly still. I think this was less wisdom than a consequence of the fact that I found myself unable to move. I suppose I was too frightened. But, too, more consciously, I did realize, even if I felt I could move, any swift movement on my part would be likely to trigger the pursuit response common in most predators. And turning one way, away from one beast, even had I the agility and speed of the small, graceful tabuk, might have brought myself within the compass of the other. It seemed to me that my body, denying me the capacity for motion, possibly expressed a rationality deeper than one rationality itself might have recognized.

I then saw the second beast. Its mottling would have rendered it almost invisible in the lights and shadows amongst the trees, its common background. There was tall grass and brush here, however, near the river. Seemingly it had availed itself here of this natural cover. However, that might be, the grass now parted like a curtain as it pressed it aside. Half of it was then clearly visible. Its belly was low, but its head was up. It snarled. The jaws were half open. I had seen such teeth before, fangs, pierced and strung on necklaces and armlets of Panther Girls. It was clearly vicious, and determined, this beast, but, too, it was smaller than the beast which had appeared from the side of the river.

The larger beast roared, again, but the smaller beast held its ground, crouched down, snarling.

I suddenly felt miserably sick and helpless.

I now had some sense of what was transpiring. The smaller beast had been following me, seemingly content, at least for the time being, for some reason, to do no more than keep me within its range. I had been unaware of its presence. I was unclear as to why, if it were about, it had not attacked. And, in following me, the smaller beast had strayed into the range of the larger beast. The panther, like the sleen, is highly territorial. The defense of territory selects for size, power, and ferocity. The Ubarship of a territory is not easily won, nor easily maintained. Territory, obviously, contains game for harvesting. If carnivores such as the panther and sleen were permissibly gregarious, the game within a territory would be soon depleted, and starvation would ensue. Larls may pride but they usually frequent, as well, areas where game is abundant, and the prides themselves can be competitive. Larls, as noted, do not frequent the northern forests. It would not be practical for them to do so. Claiming and maintaining a territory can also figure in successful mating, as females of various species will seek out territory masters, and present themselves, wooing and seducing, for acceptance or rejection. Males without well-established territories often remain unmated. In this sense, in several species, the primary competition seems not so much directly for mates, as for food, and survival, for the achievement of territory, a consequence of which is likely to be access to one or more females, depending on the species.

The first beast then roared, again, terribly.

I supposed these threatening displays were intended to be intimidating. Surely they seem so. The hair on my forearms and on the back of my neck rose. It is clearly in the interest of the territory master, wherever possible, to avoid combat. If it can bring about the backing down, or withdrawal, of a challenger, frightening the challenger, convincing the challenger that the challenge is ill-advised, the territory master survives unscathed, and the challenger, as well, who may then try elsewhere, perhaps with better fortune. If combat actually occurs, as it might, one or both animals may be killed, and, if not, both may be weakened, bled, and impaired, with the consequence that the territory master is more vulnerable and the challenger is less well equipped to initiate a new challenge elsewhere.

Despite the fearful roar of the larger beast, the smaller animal did not retreat, but, rather, came into view, fully, parting the grass, moving through it, and, to my uneasiness, came about me, not taking its eyes from those of the larger beast, and crouched down, tail lashing, growling, between the larger beast and myself.

Then, to my further bewilderment, and trepidation, the larger beast moved about me, so that, now, it was behind my position, between me and the forest, and the smaller beast now placed itself between me and the river. Any thought that I might have had of reaching the river or slipping back into the forest, eluding the beasts as they concerned themselves with one another, was gone. They then began, each threatening and snarling, again and again, regarding one another, to traverse the perimeter of the circle in which I found myself the reluctant, trembling center.

I stood there, watching, moving as little as possible.

I could not understand why the smaller animal did not make away. I thought it no match for the larger beast. Then, sick, I thought I understood. Even a small sleen, I knew, will defend its food dish in the face of a larger animal. There are many animals, even animals commonly loyal, and friendly, between whom and their food it would be unwise, even dangerous, to place oneself. One does not attempt to remove a haunch of tarsk from even a pet sleen, once it has been given to him. It is then his. Few animals will surrender their food to another. Nature has apparently not favored that behavior.

I suspected the smaller animal, though it was certainly large enough, and fearsome enough, had been with me since yesterday, when I had fled the camp of Genserich. If it had kept itself with me, as a subtle, lengthy, softly treading, breathing shadow, always nearby, there must have been a reason. The likely reason then became disturbingly clear to me. The panther, the sleen, the larl, seldom feed daily. Indeed, they may go days between meals. The smaller beast, I suspected, for some reason, was saving me. It had not yet been ready to feed.

Suddenly the larger beast, as though some spring in that great body had been released, charged, scrambling, through the center of the circle, and I was buffeted, spinning, to the side, for it struck me in its passage, I felt its ribs, and it hurled itself on the smaller beast which was rolled to its back, and then, in a moment, they were rolling about, biting, and tearing at one another. I could scarcely follow their movements, so rapid they were, so swift and fierce was the tumult of their engagement.

Then I saw the larger beast rear up from that loose, spattering tangle of fur and blood, its jaws on the throat of the smaller beast, and, itself rent, torn, and bloody, its flanks and shoulders red with the furrows of claw marks, it lifted the smaller body half from the ground, and shook it, and shook it, long after it was without life, repeatedly, meaninglessly, in the pointless, spasmodic frenzy of the kill. It then lay down, its scarlet-flowing jaws still clenched on the throat of the smaller beast, whose body now lay across its paws. It was breathing heavily. An ear was half torn away. I could see bone at the side of its face. It was looking toward me. I did not know if it saw me or not.

I was lying on my belly, where I had fallen, near the center of that circle whose periphery had been recently trodden by two dangerous beasts.

I felt my hands pulled behind me and I heard the click of slave bracelets. Then a leash collar was buckled about my throat.

“Kill it, please, kill it, Master,” I begged.

“No,” he said.

“It is dangerous!” I said.

“It is not dangerous now,” he said. “Perhaps later it will be dangerous.”

I recognized the voice.

“You are fortunate you were not eaten,” he said. “I might not have arrived in time.”

“I think I was followed since yesterday,” I said.

“Quite possibly,” he said. “A panther not driven by hunger will often linger in the vicinity of prey, or follow it, at a convenient distance.”

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“I speculated you would regard your escape from the camp as successfully accomplished, not irrationally, and would then, too soon perhaps, return to the river. I thus kept to the shoreline. To be sure, some fortune was involved. I feared, naturally enough, you might be tracked by panthers, or sleen, and thus, when I heard a particular roar, a typical roar of warning, of territorial claimancy, I conjectured a territorial intrusion might have occurred, either deliberately or inadvertently. In any case, I decided to investigate.”

“Did you see it all?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“But you did not intervene.”

“It was not necessary,” he said. He then stood up, and stepped back. “You are in the presence of a free man,” he observed.

“Forgive me, Master,” I said.

I then struggled to my knees, and knelt before him, looking up at him, a Gorean master, my hands braceleted behind me, his leash collar buckled about my throat, the leash itself, twice looped, in his hand.

“Perhaps you thought you had escaped,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” I whispered.

“Did you escape?” he asked.

“No, Master,” I said.

“Why did you run away?” he asked.

“I beg not to speak,” I said.

“Very well,” he said.

“Thank you, Master!” I whispered.

“On your feet, kajira,” said he.

I rose to my feet, and stood before him, head down.

“Are you a slave?” he asked.

“Yes, Master, I am a slave,” I said.

“You understand that, fully?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” I said. Had I not known this, since puberty?

“You have been displeasing,” he said.

“Forgive me, Master,” I whispered.

His hand reached to the disrobing loop at my left shoulder.

“Oh, yes, Master!” I said. “Please, Master!”

“You have been displeasing,” he said.

“Master?” I said.

“You will be lashed,” he said.

“No, Master!” I said. “Please, no, Master!”