9 The Hut

I was terrified to enter the forest, but I had no choice. The choke leash is a useful device for controlling a bound slave. I must follow perfectly. I could not offer the least resistance without strangling myself. The girls moved swiftly, single file, through the brush and small trees at the edge of the forest. I could feel leaves and twigs beneath my feet. They stopped only long enough to lift aside some branches and take up the light spears, and bows and arrows, which they had hidden there. Each girl wore, too, at her waist, a sheathed sleen knife.

The tall, blond girl, Verna, beautiful and superb, led the file, her bow and a quiver of arrows now on her back, her spear in hand. Sometimes she would stop to listen, or lift her head, as though testing the air, but then she would resume her journey. Bound as I was, and without the protection of skins, I could not protect my body from the lashing of branches. If I should stop in pain, struck or stumble, the merciless choke leash, closing on my throat, impelled me forward again.

Then, after perhaps an hour of this torture, Verna lifted her hand, and the girls stopped.

"We will rest here," she said.

It had been difficult making our way through the brush and thickset trees. To reach the high trees of the forest, the great Tur trees, would be perhaps better than another hour's trek.

"Kneel," snapped the girl who held my leash.

I did so, breathing heavily.

"As a Pleasure Slave!" snapped the girl. Gagged, I shook my head, No!

"Cut switches and beat her," said Verna.

I shook my head, begging, eyes wild, no, no!

I knelt as I had been ordered.

They laughed.

The girl who held my leash looped it over my back.

I pulled at the binding fiber on my wrists.

The girl bound my ankles cruelly, using the end of the choke leash, making the strap taut between my throat and ankles. My head was strapped back. I could barely breathe.

One of the girls scrambled up a nearby tree. In a moment, in the moonlight, she was throwing down water gourds and strips of meat.

Sitting cross-legged on the leaves, the girls passed about the gourds and began to chew on the meat.

When they had drunk and eaten, they sat about in a half circle, looking at me. "Untie her ankles," said Verna.

The girl did. This released the pressure of the choke leash.

My head fell forward.

When I lifted it, Verna stood before me, her knife at my face.

"Scar her," said the girl who had held my leash.

I looked at Verna in terror.

"Are you afraid you will not be so pretty?" asked Verna. "That men will not like you?"

I closed my eyes.

I felt the blade move between my cheek and the gag, cutting the gag free. I almost fainted. With my tongue I forced the packing from my mouth. I almost vomited.

Verna's knife was again in its sheath.

When I could look at her, I said, as evenly as I could, "I am hungry, and thirsty."

"Your masters fed you!" said Verna.

"Indeed she was fed!" cried one of the girls. "She was fed by hand, like a beast." The girl snorted. "She even, bound, leaped to catch meat with her teeth."

"Men must find you very pleasing," said Verna.

"I am not a slave girl," I told them. "You wear a man's brand," said Verna.

I blushed. It was true that I wore the brand of a man.

"She even had Ka-la-na wine," sneered one of the girls.

"Fortunate slave," said Verna.

I said nothing. I was furious.

"It is said," said Verna, "that Ka-la-na wine makes any woman a slave, if but for an hour." She looked at me. "Is it true?"

I said nothing. I recalled with shame how I had, near the fire, placing my guard's hand in my binding fiber, encouraged by my own ravishment as a slave girl, and how I had knelt, my hair falling about his face, to kiss him. I knew that I had provoked him, and then that I had fought him.

"I fought him!" I cried.

The girls laughed.

"Thank you for saving me," I said.

They laughed.

"I am not a slave," I repeated.

"You wore a camisk," said one of the girls. "You were in the girl cage. You served as a slave!"

"You want to belong to a man!" cried Verna.

"No! No! No!" I wept. "I am not a slave! I am not!"

The girls, and I, were quiet.

"You saw that I struggled," I whispered, desperately.

"You struggled prettily," said Verna.

"I want to join you," I said.

There was a silence.

"We do not accept slave girls among the women of the forest," said Verna proudly.

"I am not a slave girl! I cried.

Verna regarded me. "How many of us do you count?" she asked.

"Fifteen," I told her.

"My band," said Verna, "consists of fifteen. This, it seems to me, is a suitable number, for protection, for feeding, for concealment in the forest." She looked at me. "Some groups are smaller, some larger, but my band," she said, "as I wish, numbers fifteen."

I said nothing.

"Would you like to be one of us?" she asked.

"Yes!" I cried. "Yes!"

"Untie her," said Verna.

The choke leash was removed from my throat. My wrists were unbound. "Stand," said Verna.

I did so, and so, too, did the other girls. I stood, rubbing my wrists. The girls put down their spears, unslung the bows and quivers from their shoulders.

The light of the three moons filtered through the trees, speckling the glade. Verna removed her sleen knife from her belt. She handed it to me.

I stood there, holding the knife.

The other girls stood ready, some half crouching. All had removed their knives from their sheaths.

"The place of which of these," said Verna, "will you take?"

"I do not understand," I said.

"One of these," said Verna, "or myself, you will fight to the death." I shook my head, No.

"I will fight you, if you wish," said Verna, "without my knife."

"No," I whispered.

"Fight me, Kajira!" hissed the girl who had held my leash. Her knife was ready. "Me!" cried another.

"Me!" cried yet another.

One of the girls cried out and leaped toward me, the knife flashing in her hand. I screamed and threw the knife from me, and fell to my knees, my head in my hands.

"No, no!" I cried.

"Bind her," said Verna.

I felt my hands pulled again behind my back. The girl who had held my leash lashed them together, mercilessly. I felt again the snap of the choke collar on my throat.

"We have rested," said Verna. "Let us continue our journey."

The girl, clad like the others in the skins of forest panthers, who had held my leash, and now again held it, she who had bound me, her sleen knife again in its sheath, thrust her face toward mine. It was she who had leaped at me with her knife. She twisted her hand in the metal and leather choke collar. "Kajira!" she said, with contempt. I gasped, choking. I was terrified of her.

Verna regarded me. She wiped the dirt and crumbled leaves from her sleen knife, which I had thrown from me, on the skins of her brief garments, and then replaced it in her sheath. She slung again about her shoulders her bow and quiver, and took up again her light spear. The other girls similarly armed themselves preparing to depart. Some gathered up the water gourds and what meat was left from their meal.

Verna approached me.

I knelt.

"What are you?" she asked.

"Kajira, Mistress," I whispered.

I looked up at her.

"May I speak?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

I knew I was not as these other women. I was not as they were.

"Why," I asked, "was I taken?"

Verna looked at me, for a long time. And then she said, "There is a man." I looked up at her, helplessly.

"He has bought you."

The girls, led by Verna, again began to make their way through the dark, moonlit forest. Again the metal and leather collar slid shut on my throat, and with a gasp of anguish, wrists bound behind my back, not permitted clothing, I followed at my tether, not as they, the proud women of the forest, but only as I could be among them, Kajira.