The collars, swiftly, were opened and the heavy bands, struck with sharp, expert blows, were bent wide. We thrust the smiths back into their sleeping shed and threw them to their bellies. We tied them hand and foot, gagging them with choking wads of marsh grass, forced into their mouths and fastened in place with wide strips of leather. I tied shut the door of the wooden shelter, to keep it from being pushed inward by tharlarion which might crawl to the surface of the small island.
"Disperse," I said to the men. "It is now each man for himself."
They disappeared into the darkness, making their way in various directions.
Kisu, I, and Ayari, remained on the island.
"Where are you going?" asked Kisu.
"I must go east," I said. "I follow one called Shaba. I seek the Ua River."
"That will suit my purposes well," he said, grimly.
"I do not understand," I said.
"You will, in time," he said.
"Do you menace me?" I asked.
He put his hands on my shoulders. "By the crops of Ukungu, no," he said.
"Then I do not understand you," I said.
"You will," he said.
"I must be on my way," I said. "Time is short."
"You are not facing east," he said. "I have a stop to make first," I said.
"I, too, have some business to attend to," he said.
"That is in accord with some plan of yours?" I asked.
"Exactly," he said. "It is my intention to recover a lost slave," I said. I recalled the lovely blond-haired barbarian, Janice Prentiss. I wanted her at my own feet.
"That is why you brought along the mud raft," smiled Kisu.
"Of course," I said.
"I think I, too, will take a slave," he said.
"I thought you might," I said.
"I do not understand why the askaris have not yet returned," said Ayari. "By now they must understand it to be a false alarm."
"I would think so," I said.
"Let us hurry," said Kisu.
We set off through the darkness, westward, pushing the mud raft with us, our shovels placed upon it.
"Why are you not with the other askaris, fighting in the east?" asked Ayari.
"I am guarding the Lady Tende," he said. "Who are you? What is that?"
"Where is the rogues' chain?" asked Ayari.
"I do not know," he said. "Who are you? What is that raft?"
"I am Ayari," said Ayari. "This is the mud raft used by the rogues' chain."
"The rogues' chain is to the east," said the man. "We passed it earlier today."
"What is going on here?" asked Mwoga, returning from the eastern edge of the platform of planks fixed over the four canoes.
"It is a worker, looking for the rogues' chain," said the askari.
Mwoga peered into the darkness. He could not see Ayari well. Obviously the man was a worker, for he was not chained. Probably the mud raft had broken loose and the worker was intent upon returning it, if unwisely in the darkness.
"One askari," called Ayari, "is not enough to guard so great a personage as the Lady Tende."
"Have no fear, fellow," said Mwoga. "There is another about."
"That is all I wanted to know," said Ayari.
Kisu and I bad located one guard apiece. The others had apparently joined in the investigation to the east.
"I do not understand," said Mwoga.
With the flats of our shovels Kisu and I struck the two guards senseless.
Mwoga had informed us that there were only two to concern ourselves with, and that we might proceed with dispatch. He had been quite helpful.
Mwoga looked from his left to his right. Without speaking further, or attempting to draw his dagger, he leaped from the planks into the water, falling, scrambling up, and plunging away into the darkness.
The chained slaves who drew the platform and were sitting and crouching forward, on its surface, bad, cautioned by Ayari, remained silent.
The darkness was loud with the drums.
"I cannot sleep," said the Lady Tende, emerging from the small, silken shelter, one of two, one for her and her slaves, and one for Mwoga, pitched aft on the platform.
Then she saw Kisu.
24
We Obtain A Canoe; Kisu Makes Tende A Slave
It was getting light.
We thrust the mud raft ahead of us.
Some askaris straggled past, some wounded. A canoe, with bleeding askaris, half drifted, half paddled, passed us, a hundred yards away, on our right.
Mare than an Ahn ago we had passed the point at which the prison raft, from which we had escaped, had been anchored.
"There were raiders," said Kisu.
"It was a good night for them," said Ayari.
We continued to push the mud raft ahead of us. The dawn, a rim of luminescent gray, lay before us. On Gor, as on Earth, the sun rises in the east.
An askari limped past, moving painfully through the thigh-high water. "Do not proceed further," he said. 'There is action in the east."
"My thanks for your advice, my friend," called out Ayari. "Prepare to turn about," he said, loudly, to us. We, pushing from the sides, turned the heavy raft, heaped with piled mud, slowly about. When the askari was some seventy-five yards away we turned about again and continued eastward. He was not, I am sure, aware that we were not following him. If he was, he was in no condition to pursue us.
Concealed by a thin layer of mud on the raft were two shields and two stabbing spears, which Kisu and I had taken from the two askaris we had subdued on the platform of Tende. Our shovels lay in plain sight on the mud heaped on the raft.
We continued to push the raft toward the east.
Ayari looked up at the sky. "It must be about the eighth Ahn," he said.
"How far ahead is Ngao?" I asked Kisu.
"Days," said Kisu.
"It is hopeless," said Ayari. "Let us make for shore."
"They will expect us to do that," I said. "And if we are seen, we may fall to hostile natives or, if they be allies of Bila Huruma, be taken, or our position indicated by the drums."
"Listen," said Kisu, suddenly.
"I hear it," I said.
"What?" asked Ayari.
"War cries, ahead and to the right," I said. "men fighting." I climbed to the surface of the raft. Kisu followed me.
"What do you see?" asked Ayari.
"There is an engagement there," I said, "in canoes and in the water, some hundred askaris, some forty or fifty raiders."
"There may be numerous such engagements," said Ayari. "Let us avoid them."
"To be sure," I said.
Kisu and I clambered down, splashing into the water, and again thrust the raft eastward.
Twice more, before noon, we scouted such engagements. It had rained heavily about the ninth Ahn, but we. drenched, had not ceased to push the raft toward the western shore of Ngao, somewhere ahead of us.
"Down!" said Ayari.
We crouched down in the water, our heads scarcely above the surface, shielded by the raft. On the other side of the raft passed two canoes of askaris returning to the marsh camps of the west. They had seen, from their point of view, only a mud raft, loosed and drifted from the work area.
"Askaris are returning," said Ayari. "The raiders have been driven away."
Kisu lifted the headdress of an askari from the water, and threw it from him. "Not without cost," he said.
"We are safe now," said Ayari.
"Keep a watch for tharlarion," said Kisu. He reached under the water and pulled a fat, glistening leach, some two inches long, from his leg.
"Destroy it," said Ayari.
Kisu dropped it back in the water. "I do not want my blood, pinched from it, released in the water," he said.
Ayari nodded, shuddering. Such blood might attract the bint, a fanged, carnivorous marsh eel, or the predatory, voracious blue grunt, a small, fresh-water variety of the much larger and familiar salt-water grunt of Thassa. The blue grunt is particularly dangerous during the daylight hours preceding its mating periods, when it schools. Its mating periods are synchronized with the phases of Gor's major moon, the full moon reflecting on the surface of the water somehow triggering the mating instinct. During the daylight hours preceding such a moon, as the restless grunts school, they will tear anything edible to pieces which crosses their path. During the hours of mating, however, interestingly, one can move and swim among them untouched. The danger, currently, of the bint and blue grunt, however, was not primarily due to any peril they themselves might represent, particularly as the grunt would not now be schooling, but due to the fact that they, drawn by shed blood, might be followed by tharlarion.