"No, no!" she said.
"Why not?" I asked.
"They will capture me," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"Do not leave me here," she said.
"Who wants a woman who is too stupid to know that she is a prisoner," I said.
"Do not leave me here," she begged.
"You will be left here as a trussed, female fool," I said, "to be a prisoner for others, others who presumably will be less particular about the intelligence of their captives."
"I am not stupid," she said, struggling futilely. "I am not a fool. I am not unintelligent!"
I stood up.
"Do not leave me here," she begged.
I turned away.
"I know that I am your prisoner," she wept.
I hesitated.
"Captor!" she cried.
"Yes," I said.
"Please do not leave me here," she begged. "Take your prisoner with you."
"Are you a prisoner?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"Whose?" I asked.
"Yours, yours!" she said.
"Is it true?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. "You know it is true, you beast," she said.
"And you knew it before, as well, did you not?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, angrily, "I knew it before."
"But only now have you admitted it," I said.
"Yes," she said, angrily, "only now have I admitted it."
I laughed.
"Do you laugh at your prisoner?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
She cried out in rage.
I turned away again.
"Please do not leave me here," she begged. "Take your prisoner with you."
I turned, again, to face her. I heard her squirm, piteously, in the darkness.
"Do you beg it?" I asked.
"Yes, my captor," she said.
"Very well," I said. I whipped loose the strap from her ankles. I jerked her gasping to her feet and pulled her behind me. She ran behind me, gasping, uneasily, her wrists in my tether, her bare feet soft in the loose dirt of the tunnel.
We ran for something like a minute, and then we stopped.
"Why have we stopped?" she asked.
"Do you remember this place?" I asked.
"It is dark," she said.
"It is where you once caught two slaves rutting in the darkness," I said, "and where you once, kindly, sent me a "new slave" to content my needs."
"Let us hurry on," she said. My hands were on her arms. Then, suddenly, I thrust her arms up, and back, so that her bound wrists were now over her head. "No," she said, "you beast!"
"Are you not my prisoner?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"I think that I shall amuse myself with my prisoner," I said.
"No," she said.
"I shall assert the rights of the Gorean captor over his beautiful female prisoner," I said.
"Beast, beast!" she said. I forced her down. Then she was on her back in the dirt. She squirmed. "You are mad," she said. "They are in the tunnel now. Their torches are coming! Oh! Oh!" She lowered her arms, with their bound wrists, putting them about my neck. She kissed at me, helplessly. I pulled her to her feet. I dragged her beside me in the darkness. "I hear them ahead!" shouted a voice. I heard the clank of weapons. We sped on, the girl, naked, my former mistress, running and stumbling beside me. No longer did I conduct her by the wrist leash. It trailed behind her. I had felt how her body had clasped me in the darkness. I now held her by the hair. I now ran her beside me, bent over, her head at my hip.
27 I SEE TO IT THAT THE LADY FLORENCE PERFORMS FOR ME
"Clean it," I told her.
"I am doing so," she said, angrily. She was facing away from me, on her knees, a large brush grasped in her two hands, a bucket of water at her side.
"Do you think they have gone?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "We waited sufficiently. Such men, too, must make their escape. They must not linger too long in the vicinity of their brigandage."
"Then we are alone, absolutely alone," she said, "on my estates."
"On the remains of your estates," I said. "The house, and many of the buildings, were burned."
She sobbed.
"Continue your work," I told her.
"Yes, Jason," she said.
I watched her.
"You are a clever man, Jason," she said. "I had thought we would have been captured. Yet you saved us."
"No," she had cried, "it is madness. No!" But I had thrown her to her side on the sand of the incubation shed and freed her wrists from before her body. I had then turned her to her belly and rebound her wrists behind her back and, pulling up her ankles and crossing them, lashed them to her wrists. I had then taken her by the arms and thrown her, in a kneeling position, onto the blackened sticks and gray ashes of the flame ditch. I had then kicked sand from the sides of the ditch about her. I jerked her head back as she cried out in misery. I kicked and scooped sand about her until only her eyes, and her nose and mouth, were exposed. I had then heard men pounding at the trap door leading into the. incubation shed. I had flung shut its bolt.
"Open this door!" I heard.
I hurried across the shed and kicked open the outer door to the shed. I scuffed away my tracks back to the flame ditch. I heard pounding at the trap door, men straining beneath it. I looked down at the Lady Florence and saw her terrified eyes. Then I hurled a tharlarion blanket over her. Then I kicked and dug into the sand near her and, as the trap door splintered up, drew the tharlarion blanket over my head.
My left hand clutched her hair, tightly. If she moved so much as a muscle I would know it, and she, too, would know that I would know it. The short sword was grasped in my right hand. The point of it, ever so slightly, was entered into her back. We heard several men come up the ramp through the trap door. We heard them talking, casting about.
"This way," had said one of them, and they had exited through the outer door.
We had remained hidden in the sand for several Ahn, and probably long after the brigands had departed. About the seventeenth Ahn I had eased myself from the sand and reconnoitered. The brigands, indeed, had taken their departure, bringing their tarns to flight, their loot sacks bulging and, tied helplessly at their saddle rings, lovely, naked slaves. I had drawn the Lady Florence from the sand.
"Release me," she had demanded but then had gasped, lying on her back, the point of my sword thrust into her belly. "Forgive me, Jason," she begged.
"Be silent now," I said, "or I will fill your mouth with sand."
"Yes, Jason," she had whispered.
I had then left her on her back, her knees drawn up, tied, in the incubation shed, while I had investigated certain buildings and sheds, gathering such supplies as I thought I might wish.
"Does it amuse you, Jason," she asked, "that I am cleaning your stall?"
"Are you finished?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. She was beautiful, on her knees, in the light of the small lantern, it hanging from an outjutting perpendicular fastened to one of the stall posts.
"Empty the water," I said. "Rinse and dry the bucket. Rinse the brush. Then put these articles back where you found them."
I watched her as she did these things. In a few moments she stood again before me. "I have done as you ordered," she said.
"Put now fresh, clean straw in the stall," I said.
I watched her.
Then she was standing in the stall, the clean, fresh straw to her knees.
"I have done as you have ordered," she said. "What do you want of me now?"
"I was successful many times in the bouts," I said.
"That is known to me, Jason," she said.