[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
brought captive to my camp.
I continued on, through the brush and trees. Leaves, gently, brushed my face.
It was now near the twelfth Ahn.
My plans were proceeding well. I hoped, by nightfall, to have scouted
Verna s camp.
I could strike before Marlenus of Ar could find it. He was still hunting the
woods in the neighborhood of Laura.
It did not displease me that I should bring his daughter to safety from the
forests before him, or that I should have Verna, and her band, prisoner, tied
in binding fiber, waiting for my iron, while he still, unknowingly, sought
them where they were not.
Marlenus, in Ar, had once banished me, denying me bread, fire and salt.
I had not forgotten that.
I laughed to myself. Let the great Ubar rage, I thought. Let him learn that
one of Port Kar, one whom he once banished from his city, has swiftly,
arrogantly, bettered him at his work.
The glory that was to have been Marlenus would now be mine.
I considered my return in triumph to Port Kar, the flowers in the canals, the
cheerings throngs in the windows and on the rooftops. At my side, in robes
worthy of a Ubara, would stand Talena.
Let official word then be sent to Ar that his daughter now sat safe at my
side, consort of Bosk, Admiral of Port Kar, jewel of gleaming Thassa.
We would make a splendid couple. The companionship would be an excellent one,
a superb one.
Who knew, in time, how high might be raised the chair of Bosk?
I pushed aside more branches, and leaves, slipping between them.
I thought of Sheera, as she had leaped to me, her lips to mine. Then I
dismissed her from my mind. I would dispose of her in the slave market at
Lydius. She was merely slave.
Suddenly I stopped.
The birds had stopped singing.
I lowered my head swiftly.
The arrow struck the trunk of a tree not inches from my face.
It hit with a solid, hard sound, and I saw the shaft, feathered, quiver in the
wood.
Some seventy-five yards through the trees I thought I saw a movement, furtive,
the flash of a thigh.
Then there was only silence.
I was furious. I had been discovered. If the attacker reached her camp, all
hopes of a surprise attack would be lost. The girls, alerted, might abandon
the camp and flee deeply into the forests, taking Talena with them. My most
careful plans would be undone.
I swiftly leaped in pursuit.
In moments I had come to the place whence the arrow had been loosed. I
saw the marks on the leaves and grass where the attacker had stood.
I scanned the woods.
A bent leaf, a dislodged stone, guided me.
The attacker kept well ahead of me, for more than an Ahn. Yet there was little
time to adequately conceal a trail. My pursuit was quick, and hot, and
I was close. The attacker, much of the time, fled. It was not them difficult
to follow.
Crushed leaves, broken twigs, turned stones, bent grass, footprints, all
Page 66
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
spelled the trail clearly to the detecting eye.
Twice more arrows sped from the underbrush, passing beside me, losing
themselves in the greenery behind me.
Often I heard the running from me.
I followed swiftly, not rapidly closing the ground between us.
My bow was strung. At the hemp string, whipped with silk, was a temwood arrow,
piled with steel, fletched with the feathers of the Vosk gull.
The attacker, at all costs, must not be permitted to make contact with others.
Another arrow struck near me, with a quick, hard sound, followed by the tight
vibrating of the arrow.
I lowered my head, bending over. I no longer heard running. There was no
movement in the brush ahead.
I smiled. The attacker was at bay. The attacker was concealed in the thicket
ahead, waiting.
Excellent, I thought, excellent.
But it was now the most dangerous portion of the chase. The attacker waited,
invisible in the greenery, not moving, bow ready.
I listened, not moving, to the birds, intently.
undergrowth. I noted where the birds moved, and where they did not.
wait.
I lifted my head to the trees in the thicket ahead, the tangles of brush and
I did not draw my bow. I would not immediately enter the thicket. I would
I studied the shadows for a quarter of an Ahn.
I surmised that the attacker, aware of my hot pursuit, would have turned
within the thicket, and would have waited, bow drawn.
shadows, and parts of shadows.
It is very painful to hold a bow drawn for more than an Ehn or two.
But to ease the bow is to move, and it is to be unready to fire.
Birds moved about, above me.
I listened, patient, to the drone of insects. I continued to study the
Perhaps I had gone ahead, perhaps I had evaded the thicker, perhaps I
had turned back.
I waited, as a Gorean warrior waits.
the great bow of yellow Ka-la-na, from the wine trees of Gor.
Then, at last, I saw the slight movement, almost imperceptible, for which
I had been waiting.
I smiled.
I carefully fitted the black, steel-piled temwood shaft to the string. I
lifted
There was a sudden cry of pain from the green and the sunlight and shadows.
I had her!
I sped forward.
In almost an instant I was on her.
She had been pinned to a tree by the shoulder. Her eyes were glazed. She had
her hand at her shoulder. When she saw me, she clutched, with her right hand,
at the sleen knife in her belt. She was blond, blue-eyed. There was blood on
her hair. I knocked the sleen knife from her hand and rudely jerked her hands
together before her body, securing them there with slave bracelets. She was
gasping. Some six inches of the arrow, five inches feathered, protruded from
her shoulder. I cut away the halter she wore and improvised a gag, that she
might not cry out. With a length of binding fiber, taken from her own pouch, I
tied the slave bracelets tight against her belly. I stepped back. This panther
girl would warn no others. She would not interfere with the plans of Bosk, of
Port Kar.
She faced me, in pain, gagged, her fists in slave bracelets, held at her
belly. I stripped her of her skins, and pouch and weapons. She was mine. I
noted that she was comely.
I strode to her and, as her eyes cried out with pain, snapped off the arrow.
Page 67
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]