back her head, and uttered a long, wailing, birdlike cry. A bit later a similar cry was heard, farther down the trail.
“You are pretty,” she said. “I will be pleased to show you to them.”
I gathered that my captor, this large, sturdy, blue-eyed, widely shouldered, blond-haired, harsh, strapping woman was first in this small contingent of Panther Girls so unaccountably in the vicinity of Shipcamp.
The point of her small, short, light spear was jabbed into my back. “Move, kajira,” she said.
I preceded her through the trees.
“Faster,” she said. “Run.”
Again I felt the point of the spear.
I moved as rapidly as I could, my hands bound behind me, down the rough, sometimes steep, ground, toward the river.
She strode behind me.
More than once I felt the jab of her spear.
Some yards from the river, near the edge of the small camp, she said, “Stop, stand, head up.”
Then she called out, “Ho, I have snared a vulo! Come see her.”
Three Panther Women, carrying their spears, approached. My captor put her hand in my hair, holding my head back, exhibiting me to her companions.
“How small and weak she is,” said one of the Panther Women.
I was not small, nor weak, for a typical woman, though I was far inferior in size and strength to them. Doubtless they would define womanhood, and value, as they pleased, however eccentrically.
“How pretty, how small, how slight, how feminine, she is,” sneered another of the large women.
I knew myself despised.
I looked beyond the three Panther Women, and saw the two neck-roped slaves, one a blonde, like my captor, and the other a brunette, rather like myself, kneeling down, close to one another. The gags were tight and heavy in their gag-packed, swollen, distended mouths. The rope which linked them was coarse. Their hands were before them, wrists crossed. Their wrists were not bound, by cords or thongs, but by the mistress’ will. One may not, without permission, separate them. It is a convenience with slaves, who dare not disobey. They looked very frightened. Their eyes met mine and I, too, was frightened. Neither dared meet the eyes of any of the Panther Women.
“Heads down,” snapped one of the Panther Women, the one who had not yet spoken of me, and the two slaves lowered their heads. She then turned to me, and regarded me, slowly, appraisingly.
“A runaway,” said my captor.
I suddenly realized it was this other woman, and not my captor, who was first in this tiny band of Panther Women. I should have realized that, of course. My captor would be most likely an outtrekker, a guard or scout of sorts, one who would cover the forest flank of the group’s march, the river on the other side. The leader would be with the main group, where she might apprehend, direct, and command. The leader, who was also blond, with long braided hair, in two plaits, dangling to the small of her back, was the largest of the four women. Her ornaments were the gaudiest, and most abundant, her mottled skins, which would blend well with a background of bark and shadows, seemed the finest and loveliest of the four; they were light, well-worked, form-fitting, smooth, and supple, and might have won the grudging approval of an examining fellow of the caste of leather workers. Too, I had gathered that leadership in such a band was not easily purchased, but often won by the knife or spear. A defeated leader, if surviving, was banished from the group, being driven away into the forest, alone. Sometimes free women, miserable and unhappy in their lives, resentful of the conventional constraints commonly imposed on them in the cities and towns, fleeing unwanted matches, debtors hoping to escape the law, and such, attempted to join a band of Panther Girls. But membership in such a band did not come easily. Most often such candidates, particularly if slight and attractive, found themselves stripped, bound, and sold. Others, thought to have promise, were sent naked into the forest with a spear, to kill a panther, and return with the bloodied skin about their shoulders. Most, I had been told, do not return. The panther is dangerous, elusive prey; it is territorial and aggressive; and in such a situation it is seldom clear who is the hunter and who the hunted. Panther Girls are commonly filled with hatred; they commonly resent and hate men, whom it seems, oddly enough, they appear to envy and attempt to emulate, but, interestingly, perhaps even more, they commonly resent