"The red hunters," I said.

"They are not my concern," she said. Then she said, "Take him away."

Two men seized me and conducted me from her presence. I was confident that I saw the point of stopping the tabuk. Its role in the plans of Kurii seemed clear to me. I was puzzled that the girl did not see its import.

She knew no more, it seemed, than she needed to know.

10.

What Occurred In The Vicinity Of The Wall

"Is he still alive?" asked a man.

I lay chained in the slave pen.

"Yes," said the red hunter.

"He is strong," said another man.

I wanted the woman in my power who had had me beaten. I struggled to a sitting position.

"Rest now," said Ram. "It is nearly dawn."

'They have you, too," I said. I had left him in Lydius, in the paga tavern.

He grinned wryly. "Late that night," said he, "in the alcove they surprised me with Tina. At sword point I was hooded and chained."

"How was the girl?' I asked.

"In a quarter of an Ahn," he said, "I had her screaming herself mine." He licked his lips. "What a slave she is!" he marveled.

"I thought she would be," I said. "Where is she?" I asked.

"Is she not here?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Where have they taken her?" he asked.

"I do not know," I said.

"I want her back," he said.

"She is only a slave," I said.

"I want to own her again," he said.

"Do you think she is your ideal slave?" I asked.

"Perhaps," he said, "I do not know. But I will not be content until she is again at my feet."

"But did you not make her serve you paga publicly in her own city, and as a slave girl?"

"Of course," he said. "And then I took her by the hair to the alcove."

"Is that the way you treat your ideal slave?" I asked.

"Of course," he said.

"Excellent," I said. I saw that Ram was a true master. The girl's helplessness was doubtless in part a response to his strength. Slave girls are seldom in doubt as to which men are their masters and which are not.

"What is your name?" I asked the red hunter. "Forgive me," I said.

Red hunters are often reluctant to speak their own name. What if the name should go away? What if it, in escaping their lips, should not return to them?

"One whom some hunters in the north call Imnak may share your chain," he said.

He seemed thoughtful. Then he seemed content. His name had not left him.

"You are Imnak," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"I am Tarl," I said.

"Greetings, Tarl," he said.

"Greetings, Imnak," I said.

"I have seen you before," said a man.

"I know you," I said. "You are Sarpedon, who owns a tavern in Lydius.

"I sold the little slave whom you knew," he said.

"I know," I said. "She is now collared in my house."

"A superb wench," he said. "I often used her for my pleasure."

"Your tavern, now," I said, "seems to be managed by one called Sarpelius."

"I know," he said. "I would that I could get my hands on the rogue's throat."

"How came you here?" I asked.

"I was voyaging upstream on the Laurius," he said, "to see if panther girls had caught any new slave girls, whom I might purchase from them for arrow points and candy, for use in the tavern as paga sluts. But unfortunately it was I, taken by five tarnsmen on the river, who found myself chained. It was part of a plan, of course. My assistant, Sarpelius, was in league with them."

"Your tavern is being used to recruit workers for the wall." said Ram.

Several men grunted angrily.

"Put Sarpelius in my grasp," said Sarpedon, "and I will see you receive rich satisfaction for your inconvenience."

"Admiral," said a man.

"I know you," I said. "You are Tasdron, a captain in the fee of Samos."

"The ship was fired, and then sunk," said he, "the supply ship, that bound for the north."

"I know," I said.

"I am a failed captain," said he.

"It is difficult to defend against tarn attack, the sheets of burning oil to the sails."

"They came again and again," he said.

"You were not a ram ship," I said, "not craft set for war."

"Who would have thought there would be tarnsmen north of Torvaldsland," said Ram.

"It is possible in the spring and summer," said Sarpedon.

"You saved your men," I said. "You did well."

"What ship is this?" asked Imnak.

"I had a ship sent north," said I, "with food for the men of the polar basin, when I heard the herd of Tancred had not yet trod the snows of Ax Glacier."

Imnak smiled. "How many skins would you have demanded in payment for this provender?" asked he.

"I had not thought to make a profit," I said. Imnak's face darkened.

The people of the north are proud. I had not meant to demean him or his people.

"It is a gift," I said. He would understand the exchange of gifts.

"Ah," he said. Gifts may be exchanged among friends. Gifts are important in the culture of the men of the polar basin. There need be little occasion for their exchange Sometimes, of course, when a hunter does not have food for his family another hunter will invite him to his house, or will pay a visit, bearing meat, that they may share a feast. This pleasantry, of course, is returned when the opportunity presents itself. Even trading in the north sometimes takes on the aspect, interestingly, of the exchange of gifts, as though commerce, obvious and raw, might somehow seem to offend the sensibility of the proud hunters. He who dares to pursue the twisting, sinuous dangerous sea sleen in the arctic waters, fended from the teeth and sea by only a narrow vessel of tabuk skin and his simple weapons and skill, does not care to be confused with a tradesman.

"I know you are wise and I am stupid," said Imnak, "for I am only a lowly fellow of the polar basin, but my peoples, in the gathering of the summer, in the great hunts, when the herd comes, number in the hundreds."

"Oh," I said. I had not realized there were so many. One ship would have done little to alleviate the distress, the danger of starvation, even had it managed to slip through the air blockade of the Kurii's tarnsmen.

"Too," said Imnak, "my people are inland, waiting for the herd to come to the tundra grazing. It gives me pleasure to know that you understood this, and knew where to find them, and had considered well how to transport the gifts to them. so many sleeps across the tundra."

"There was only one ship," I said. "And I had not realized the difficulty of getting the supplies to where they would be most needed."

"Do my ears deceive me?" asked Imnak. "I cannot believe what I am hearing. Did I hear a white man say be had made a mistake?"

"I made a mistake," I said. "One who is wise in the south may be a fool in the north."

This admission took Imnak aback for a moment.

"You are wiser than I," I added, for good measure.

"No," he said, "you are wiser than I."

"Perhaps I am wiser in the south," I said, "but you are wiser in the north."

"Perhaps," he said.

"And you are a great hunter," I said.

He grinned. "I have done a little hunting," he said.

"Rouse up! Rouse up!" called a guard, beating on the wooden bars of the pen with his spear. "It is time for your gruel, and thence to your labors."

Two guards were then amongst us, prodding men awake and up.

"Release this man from the chain," said Ram, indicating me. "Yesterday he was beaten with the snake."

It was not unusual that men died under the lash of the snake, that heavy coil laced with wire and flecks of iron.

"It is ordered," said the guardsman, "that he labors today."

Ram looked at me, startled. I was already on my feet. My lovely captor, I recalled, had said that I would labor today. I was to well understand whose prisoner I was. "I am hungry," I said.

The guard backed away from me. He went to check the ankle chains of the others.

We were soon shuffled from the pen. In making our way to the cook shack we passed the large, wooden dais on which the whipping frame had been erected. It was some twelve feet square, and some four feet in height, its surface reached by steps. The whipping frame itself, vertical, consisted of two heavy uprights, some six inches square and eight feet high, and a crossbeam, some six inches square and some seven feet in length. Each upright was supported by two braces, each also six inches square. A heavy ring was bolted on the underside of the high crossbeam; it was from this ring that a prisoner, bound by the wrists, might be suspended. A matching ring was bolted in the beams of the dais, under the upper ring. It was to the lower ring that the prisoner's feet, some six inches above the wood, crossed and tied, might be bound. This prevents undue swinging under the lash.

We were knelt outside the cook shack. We were given wooden bowls. We were served gruel, mixed with thick chunks of boiled tabuk, by the blond, she who had once been Barbara Benson, now Thimble, and the dark-haired girl, who had once been the rich girl, Audrey Brewster, now the slave girl, Thistle. Thimble had been made first girl. She made Thistle carry the metal bucket of gruel while she, with a ladle, filled the bowls. Neither girl any longer wore the strings on her throat, identifying them as a hunter's beasts, nor her brief furs nor the fur wrappings on their feet. Both had been placed in belted woolen camisks, an open-sided garment sometimes worn by female slaves. Though it was chilly both were barefoot.

Blond Thimble cried out, seized by one of the men in the chain. She struck at him with the ladle. She was thrown to the ground beneath him. Instantly guards were on the fellow, striking him with spear butts and pulling him from the girl. They struck him cruelly. "She is for the guards," they told him.

Terrified, Thimble, her camisk half torn away, stumbled back, away from the chain.

"Fill their bowls again," said the head guard. 'They have much work to do today."

Thimble and Thistle began again at the far end of the line to my right. They swayed back, frightened, as far as they could from the line, in their serving.

They knew the terror of slave girls, among men hungry for women.