I climbed onto the sand. I would cross the island, and return, again, to the raft.
I had not sheathed the sword.
"Wait!" I heard, a tremulous voice, small, pleading. I did not turn about I had thought she had been killed. I continued toward the other side of the island.
"Wait, please!" I heard.
I then turned about.
I saw her a few yards behind. I could also see her footprints in the sand, where they had followed mine. She approached to within a few feet of me, but no nearer. She stood there, frightened, shuddering. She was filthy.
"I thought you had been killed," she said.
"I thought you had been killed," I said.
"I fell in the water," she said.
"Apparently in a channel," I said.
"I nearly drowned in the mud," she said.
"You look disgusting," I said.
"Is it dead?" she asked, frightened.
"Yes," I said.
I thought her knees might give way, that she might fall to the sand.
"It is dead," I said.
"You are injured," she said. My left leg was covered with blood.
"It is nothing," I said.
"There may be others," she said.
"Probably not in this vicinity," I said. The larger uls, as opposed to the several smaller varieties, some as small as jards, tend to be isolated and territorial.
"But there are many dangers in the delta," she said.
"Some, perhaps," I said.
Suddenly she hurried forward and dropped to her knees in the sand before me. She was sobbing and shuddering, uncontrollably. She put her head tremblingly down to the sand. The palms of her hands were in the sand, the sand coming over her fingers. She kept this position for several Ihn. Then she looked up at me, piteously, pleadingly, from all fours. "Please," she said. "Please!"
She had performed obeisance before me.
"Please!" she wept.
I regarded her, impassively.
She crawled to my knees and clasped them, kneeling before me, looking up at me, tears in her eyes. She held her arms about my legs, closely. I could feel her move and tremble, and shudder. Her face was running with tears. Then she put her cheek down, against my bloody leg. I could feel her tears on my leg. "Please," she \whispered piteously, "Please! Please!"
"Lick the blood from my leg," I said.
"Yes, yes!" she said, eagerly.
I looked down to see that small, lovely pink tongue addressing itself dutifully, eagerly, assiduously, to its task. How in contrast its softness, its color, and its attentive delicacy seemed to the bedraggled, filthy figure, with its matted hair, at my feet. To be sure, the figure was curvaceous.
When she had finished her task, cleaning the blood and dirt from my leg, she looked up at me, hopefully, her hands still on my legs.
"Back away," I said. "Stay on your knees."
She backed away, about two yards, on her knees.
I raised the blade of the sword a little. "Lift your chin," I said.
She complied.
"You are filthy," I said.
"Let me come with you!" she said.
"It is difficult to assess you in your present condition," I said.
She looked at me, startled.
"Go make yourself presentable," I said. Surely she would remember that the men of Ar were to make me presentable before I appeared before her, during our little interview, that which had occurred on another island, several days ago, that in which I had learned she was a Cosian spy, that in which I had first noted that that her ankles would look well in shackles.
Tears sprang to her eyes.
"Make yourself sparkle," I said.
With a sob, she sprang up, and hurried across the sand, and out a little into the water, where she stood, the water to her knees. She then began to wash her limbs and body, and face, the water splashing and falling about her. I watched her. It was not unpleasant. A slave girl, I thought, however, would have done it much better, and, of course, in such a way that an observing master might be driven mad with passion. The Lady Ina, of course, was only a free woman. She did look back, anxiously, from time to time, but this, I think, was less to observe my interest and reaction than for the purpose of reassuring herself that I had not left. Then she knelt in the water, by the shore, and washed her hair. This she did do with a touch of sensuousness, perhaps because she was now reasonably confident I was not about to disappear into the rence. This sensuousness became pronounced when she began to comb her hair out with her fingers, and also when she began to dry it, shaking it lightly about, and lifting it, and moving it about, in her hands, to dry it. Then she threw her hair back over her shoulders and rose to her feet, and approached me, slowly, across the sand.