Dancer of Gor

"Lie on your side," she said. "Pull your legs up. get your knees as close to your belly as you can."

She drew the chain down, from behind me, and, pushing back my ankles, I winced, put it over my feet and ankles. it was then again before me.

"Sit up," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said. She was not the "first girl" of the work slaves, not even the first girl in our pen. Of the two of us assigned to this chain, however, she was surely "first girl."

"You are sure you are all right?" she asked.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

I turned and looked up to the height of the ridge.

"They are gone," she said.

"Yes," I whispered.

"Can you walk?" she asked.

"I think so," I said.

"I think we should follow the chain now," she said.

"Mirus saved my life," I said.

She was silent.

"What is wrong?" I asked.

"I think we should follow the chain," she said.

"What is wrong?" I asked.

"It is lonely here," she said.

"I do not understand," I said.

"I heard them talking, up on the ridge," she said. "Something has happened." "What?" I asked.

The sun was still bright. It was in the late afternoon. The sky was very blue. A soft wind moved between the dunelike hills, stirring the rough grass.

"It happened only a pasang or so from the walls of Venna," she said, "closer to Venna than our camp."

"What?" I asked, uneasily.

"A body was found, that of an official of Venna, an aedile, I think." "I am sorry to hear that," I said. "I gather that he was robbed?" "Apparently he was robbed," she said, "either by the assailant, or another. His purse was gone."

"I am sorry," I said.

"The body," she said, "was half eaten."

I shuddered.

"It was torn to pieces," she said. "The visera were gone. Bones were bitten through."

I winced.

"it is frightening," she said, "to consider the force, the power of such jaws, which could do such things."

"There is a sleen in the vicinity," I said. I remembered Borko, the hunting sleen of my former master, Hendow, of Brundisium, "The tracks were not those of a sleen," she said.

"There are panthers," I said, "and beasts called larls. Such animals are very dangerous."

"As far as I know, there has not been a panther or larl in the vicinity of Venna in more than a hundred years," she said.

"It could have been wandering far outside its customary range," I said, "perhaps driven by hunger, or thirst."

"They were not the tracks of a panther or larl," she said.

"Then it must have been a sleen," I said.

"Sleen have no use for gold," she said, uneasily.

"Surely someone could have found the body and taken the purse," I said. "Perhaps," she granted me.

"It must then have been a sleen," I said. "There is no other explanation." "The tracks," she reminded me, "were not those of a sleen."

"Then of what beast were they the tacks?" I asked.

"That is the frightening thing," she said. "They do not know. Hunters were called in. Even they could not identify them."I regarded her.

"They could tell very little about the tracks," she said. "One thing, however, was clear."

"What?" I asked.

"It walked upright," she said.

"That is unnatural," I said.

"Is it so surprising," she asked, "that a beast might walk upright?" I looked at her.

"Or even that they should walk in power and pride?"

"I do not understand," I said.

"Our masters, the beasts, the brutes, those who put us in collars, and make us kneel, those from whose largess we must hope they will grant us a rag, those whose whips we must fear, do so," she said.

"Yes," I breathed. "They do!" Our masters, the magnificent beasts, so powerful, so free, so liberated and masculine, so glorious in their untrammeled manhood, so uncompromising with us, did so.

"But this thing, I think," she said, "is not such a beast, not a human beast, not a man in the full power of his intelligence, vitality and animality, but some other sort of beast, something perhaps similar somehow, but very different, too."

"I would be afraid of it," I said.

"I doubt that you could placate it with your beauty," she said."Am I beautiful?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "I who was, and perhaps am, your rival, grant you that. You are very beautiful."

"You, too, are beautiful," I said, and then I added, suddenly, "and doubtless much more beautiful than I!"

"I think that is not true," she said. "But it is kind of you to say it." "I am sure it is true," I said.

"We are both beautiful slaves," she said. "I think we are (338) equivalently beautiful, in different ways. I think we would both bring a high price, stripped naked on a sales block. Beyond that it is doubtless a matter of the preferences of a given man."

"You are kind," I said.

"Did you betray me in the matter of the pastry?" she asked.

"No," I said. "Its absence was noted. Your presence in the vicinity was recalled. You were apprehended. In the lick of your fingers was revealed the taste of sugar."

"I was whipped well for that," she said, shuddering.

"I am sorry," I said.

"How I hated you," she said.

"I am sorry," I said.