Too, how is a woman a woman, truly, until she kneels, ineradicably submitted, hopelessly and irredeemably feminine, in the fullness of her vulnerable femininity, before a man, her master?
How tragic it is that many human females, the product of pathological cultures, cultures and civilizations at war with nature, are unhappy with their sex, even resentful of it. What an astonishing epiphany it is for them, then, to accept that they are females, and are profoundly different from males, that they are gloriously and wonderfully other than males, and come to understand the value, preciousness, and delicious specialness of their sex. Certainly this becomes clear to them when they find themselves being auctioned, offered to heated, competing, eager buyers.
Too, of course, considering matters of motivation, it seems the Lady Bina may have been displeased that Cabot had not proved more amendable to her considerable charms, that whilst both were clasped in breeding shackles.
Beyond the matter of the betrayal of Peisistratus and Lord Arcesilaus, she had, incidentally, as it turned out, no particularly active role in either the debacle of the arsenal or the projected massacre in the Vale of Destruction. Her first escape, that following her acquisition from the place of the slaughter bench, prior to the ambush of the arsenal, had been arranged by Flavion, that all suspicion would fall upon her, whilst he himself, in a putative scouting excursion, had earlier informed Kur patrols of the plan. The girl herself had been picked up shortly after her escape by a Kur outpost, and remanded to the palace. There, taken before Agamemnon, who had viewed her from one of his bodies, her hands had been pinioned behind her, though she was a free woman, in the shameful, but perfectly effective bracelets of a slave. She had then been taken into the forests and released, to be hunted down by, and devoured by, one or another of the sleen which had been released into the world to prey on humans. There were fewer such sleen, however, than Agamemnon realized, as traps had been set, one of which, we may recall, had snared the giant sleen, Ramar, and, too, humans, and their Kurii, had often defended themselves with vigor, often killing the animals, or, if their scent had not been taken, driving them away. After several days, miserable and half starving, still helplessly braceleted, she had stumbled upon a womb tunnel, in which she took shelter, and in which she managed to feed on the remains of small scavengers and compete with them for the nourishing blood ensuing so liberally from the rent wombs, consequent upon a Kur birth. She had been noted by killer humans, and was fleeing them, when she was apprehended by Lord Grendel, Statius, and the human, Tarl Cabot, which party brought her back, a prisoner, to the camp. It was Flavion's expressed speculation that she had earlier lurked about the camp, and learned the plans for marching on the palace, after first meeting at the Vale of Destruction, and that then she had conveyed these plans to the forces of Agamemnon. Supposedly it was after this that she had been captured by human patrols and back-braceleted, patrols from which, however, she had managed to escape, this accounting for the condition in which Lord Grendel and his confreres had found her. Thus, most in Lord Grendel's camp had considered her guilty of three betrayals, the first of Peisistratus and Lord Arcesilaus, the second pertaining to the arsenal, which was costly, and the third, which turned out well due to no fault of hers, given the intervention of the mariners. It was thus no wonder that many Kurii had hungered for her blood. In Lord Grendel's camps, that of the forest, and that later within their lines, she had been terrified to protest her innocence or even to speak, as she had been warned that her tongue might be torn out. Too, as she had no translator, and few were in her vicinity, and she could understand very little of Kur, she was not even clear as to what the nature and extent of the charges against her might be. It had been made clear to her, of course, by Flavion, the dreadful danger in which she stood, information which, if nothing else, would motivate her desire to escape at all costs.
* * * *
There were four females on the personal neck rope of Cestiphon, all women of killer humans. These were Cestiphon's own women, as opposed to the women held in common by his group of killer humans. On that rope there were fourteen. Cestiphon was the leader of his group, which contained some twenty males. It was his group which had flushed the Lady Bina into the open, earlier, when she had been noted by Lord Grendel, Statius, and Cabot, in the vicinity of a womb tunnel.
Perhaps too close to them a small, concealed figure moved, timidly, slowly, trying to pass about them, its motion impeded by the shackles it wore on its slim ankles. It was bent over and clutched a sheet about itself with closely braceleted hands. The sheet was clutched in a such a way that the face was effectively hooded, the opening on the sheet sufficing for little more than a lowered head to survey the next patch of ground on which it might dare to tread.
One of the women of the killer humans sprang to her feet and snatched at the sheet but the small figure hastily, frightened, drew back. But the other women of the killer humans, on the rope, had sprung up, and encircled her.
In a moment the small figure had cried out in misery, the sheet ripped from her, and she knelt in the dirt, cowering, covering her face with her hands, that none could look upon its horror.
Beneath the sheet she had been as naked as the women of the killer humans.
The killer humans keep their women naked.
Surely this is not unusual for the women of primates.
One supposes the hostility of these women of killer humans was the natural hostility of one type of female toward another, say, one of a certain race, breed or group to that of another race, breed, or group, or perhaps it was something like that of the glorious free woman toward the degraded, vulnerable female slave. In any event, these women clearly did not understand that the Lady Bina, for it was she whom they had entrapped, was a free woman, or, more likely, they had no concept at all of a free woman. Too, it is certainly possible that they remembered her from the pursuit of her in the vicinity of the womb tunnel and recognized that she might have been captured and put on their rope, and might perhaps have been more favored of food and caresses than they. Indeed, they may have been aware of her earlier accosting by Cestiphon. But clearly there was little they had to fear from her now.
Two of the women pulled the Lady Bina's hands away from her face, and a third drew her head up by the hair.
They made gleeful noises, the leader pointing to her, and all spat upon her. Their leader danced and posed before her, exhibiting her superior attractions, and lifted and flung her hair about, indicating its sheen and length. And then the Lady Bina's captors pulled her to her feet, and turned her about, and about, displaying her to the camp, but the men turned away, disgusted, and the women shrieked and laughed the more. But then, suddenly, the switch, for he had now obtained such a device, useful for the control of women, of an angered Cestiphon fell amongst them, and they went to all fours, and cowered, sobbing under the blows. “Master!” begged their leader, now on her knees, trying to fend blows. “Master!” The killer humans, this group, were scarcely speeched, but the word for a male, any male, was “Master.” Similarly, their word for a female, any female, was “slave."