There were three hawk-faced, swarthy, turbaned Arabbans, one of whom wielded a vicious whip. At the moment, the three were gathered around a second tree to which was tied a bloodied, frizzle-headed thing which had been a man. Now he was a scarlet ruin whose upper torso was so badly flayed that Khai knew he must soon die. Blood flew as the slaver with the whip again used it on the black, but this time the hiss and crack of its delivery were not followed by a bubbling cry of agony. Instead, the Nubian’s bowels suddenly opened and excrement spattered down his legs and onto the bole of the tree.
One of the Arabbans stepped forward with an exclamation of disgust, jerked up the black’s limp head and stared into his face for a moment. Bulging, blood-flecked eyes were frozen in a blind stare. The slaver let the corpse’s head fall forward and turned to his companions.
“Dead!” he pronounced. “And that only leaves us with five. Well, what do you think? Have they learned their lesson—or will they try to run off again?”
The smallest of the three—whose growth had obviously been arrested or had deviated before he matured, making him stocky, short-legged, long-armed and generally apish—laughed as he took the whip from the speaker. “Why don’t we ask them?” he said, turning to the five remaining Nubians where they were bound to the other tree.
“Right, you lot,” the freakish slaver cried. “You’ve seen what happened to the leaders of your little revolution, and now you know what’ll happen to you if you make another run for it. We lost three days tracking you through the forest, but we caught you again in the end. We always will. By now our brothers have doubtless caught the rest of you, and we’ll be meeting up with them in Phemor. Ah!—but there’ll be faces you’ll never see again, I guarantee it. After Phemor, we go by boat downriver to Asorbes, where you’ll make all the work we’ve put in on you worthwhile.”
He pointed the stock of his whip at the men. “You three bucks will go into the slave quarters to work on Pharaoh’s pyramid. There’s plenty of your sort there already, so you’ll not feel out of it.” He laughed coarsely and reached out callused hands to pull at the breasts of the two girls, black jewels of great beauty. “As for you two: you’ll go to the highest bidder, whether it’s a madame from the whore house or a fatbellied merchant who likes a bit of black!”
The Arabban stepped back and surveyed the captives through eyes which had narrowed now to mere slits. “So you see, you won’t have such a hard time of it—if you’re good. But if you’re not—” He cracked his whip before the expressionless faces of the males, “then you’ll be getting this, like he got it,” and he pointed to the black and red thing tied to the other tree. “Or perhaps you’ll end up swinging,” and he used his shoulder to push against the dangling corpse, setting it slowly turning in mid-air.
“And you two—” he turned to the girls and parted his baggy breeches to produce a great log of a penis that flopped lazily into view. “Well, there’ll be a lot more of this for you two—and you’ll take it wherever it’s offered!”
At last, Khai saw emotion on the faces of the bound Nubian males. Until now they had seemed impassive, completely unaware or uncaring of their predicament, but when the girls were threatened their attitudes changed dramatically. Their dark eyes glinted dangerously and their black muscles flexed. Their bodies, bound though they were, seemed to tense like an animal’s before it springs on the back of its prey.
“Hah! You don’t like that, do you my buckos?” the dwarvish Arabban slapped his thigh in glee. “Well, you’d better get used to the idea, for that’s what these beauties are in for in Asorbes.” By now, his two companions had joined him and stood grinning, arms akimbo, watching him at his play.
“Come to think of it,” the freak continued, “it’s been a long time since I had a bit myself, what with you lot running off and all.” He moved close to one of the girls, stepping up to her until his face was between her naked breasts. His penis stirred sluggishly against her knee. And again the blacks tensed, their muscles straining against tough, tight ropes.
Khai had seen enough of rape and torture, and he had never liked the swarthy Arabbans with their questionable habits and appetites and naturally cruel natures. As he had peeped out upon the savage tableau in the clearing, it had seemed to him that he was back in his hiding-place in the pyramid, gazing in on Khasathut’s “bridal chamber” and the horrors he had witnessed there. In the black figure dangling and turning in the air, he had seen the body of his father as it plummeted down the east face of the pyramid, flung like a rag doll by the God-king’s Black Guard, and in the threat posed to the bound girls he had relived the terror of his own sister’s ravishment atop the high, man-made plateau.
Now, as these red visions cleared from his head and he unconsciously found himself nocking an arrow, he saw that the three Arabbans were slowly and deliberately disrobing, and that already the two Nubian girls were wailing piteously and writhing in their bonds. He wasted no more time. The prisoners were Nubians, weren’t they? And wasn’t he hoping to start a new life in Nubia? Why not go there in triumph, as a hero?
The Arabbans, having stripped off their clothes and put aside their swords and belts, were now naked as the Nubians. Laughing, they converged on one of the quivering girls—
Khai’s first arrow took the stunted man in the spine, knocking him down like a swatted fly. The second of the slavers, in the act of loosening the girl’s ropes, saw the arrow strike home and instantly dropped into a defensive crouch, turning to face the wall of ferns. The third, hearing his colleague’s cry of warning, also turned—in time to take Khai’s second arrow in the breast. Coughing his amazement in a spray of scarlet, he fell to his knees and toppled forward onto his face, uncertain of what had happened even as he died.
The surviving slaver had had enough. Snatching up a sword and an armful of clothing, he went crashing through the ferns at the far side of the clearing and vanished into the forest, the sounds of his panic-flight rapidly growing fainter. Khai waited a moment longer, his third arrow nocked and ready, then slowly stood up and stepped out of the ferns into the glade.
He approached the astounded Nubians and looked at them for a second or two, then quickly took out his knife and set to work slicing at their bonds. As he worked, they began to fire a battery of questions at him in their own tongue, of which he understood only a few words. Then the eldest of the three, a barrel-chested man in his middle thirties, barked a word of command and the rest fell silent.
“Boy,” the Nubian now addressed Khai in broken Khemish, “were they truly your arrows brought down these dogs?”
Khai nodded and finished off his work by severing the bonds of one of the girls where her hands were tied behind her. “I killed them, yes,” he said, but he nevertheless kept his eyes averted from the bodies of the Arabbans where they lay.
“Huh!” The black nodded his appreciation. “Then you’re a fine bowman, lad, and we owe you our thanks. But why?” He took Khai’s shoulders in huge black hands and stared into his eyes. Then he frowned, saying: “Where are you from? You’re not… Khemish?”
“I was,” Khai answered truthfully, “but now I flee Khem. I flee the Pharaoh himself! I was befriended in Asorbes by Adonda Gomba, a Nubian slave—a king of slaves—and he gave me this.” He produced a small piece of leather with Gomba’s family sign branded into its center.