sleen,” I said, “men have trailed women, the most delectable of quarries.”
“You have had some experience in this?” he said.
“It is in my caste training,” I said.
“It would be better to have a sleen,” he said.
“Much,” I said, “but I have no sleen.”
“You do find the slave attractive,” he said.
I shrugged. “Somewhat,” I said. “It might be interesting to see what I could get for her in a market.”
“That is your only interest in her?” he asked.
“Certainly,” I said.
“Fortunately for you,” he said, “she is not a Panther Girl, familiar with the forest, adept at concealing her presence, and trail.”
“True,” I said.
“She is a barbarian,” he said.
“True,” I said.
“That should make things easier,” he said.
“No more so than for a Gorean girl,” I said, “provided she is from the cities.”
“For your sake,” he said, “let us hope she is as ignorant and untutored, as clumsy and naive, as inept and foolish, as lost and helpless, as easy to follow, as she is beautiful and desirable.”
“You find her so,” I said, “beautiful and desirable?”
“Yes,” he said, “do you not?”
“Perhaps I will one day consider the matter,” I said.
“I do not think you will find her,” he said.
“Perhaps not,” I said.
“There are better trackers than you in the forest,” he said.
“Oh?” I said.
“Wild sleen, panthers,” he said. “They will find her first.”
I supposed that might well be true.
“I wish you well,” he said. He then turned about, and strode away. Tiomines looked at me, as though puzzled, and then padded softly after him.
Chapter Forty-Six
By evening I was quite sure I was not followed.
A loose tracking sleen, if preceding its hunters, would have found me by now. I had also lingered twice to determine if a leashed sleen, in the keeping of a hunter, or hunters, might be seeking me. It seemed reasonably clear, given the intervals involved, that that was not the case. My conjectures concerning the urgency of a return to Shipcamp, the great ship poised for departure, seemed well warranted.
I found it hard to grasp my feelings.
In one sense I was muchly pleased to have escaped the camp and be, as far as I could tell, without pursuers. My original flight, disrupted by Panther Women, and fearfully terminated by the foiling arrival of a menacing hunting beast, had now been resumed. I was now successful. I was now muchly relieved. In particular, I had escaped a fearsome man, a large, impatient, powerful brute before whom I doubted I could now find the strength to stand upright, before whom I would now tremble in terror. Originally it seemed I might have been unimportant to him. I had been merely scorned and ignored, and, to my chagrin and fury, treated with contempt and indifference. But now, matters had muchly changed. Now, whereas he might continue to view me with contempt and scorn, as a worthless and meaningless slave, no longer would he be likely to ignore me, or treat me with indifference. Things were now muchly different. It was he on whom I had, in the way of a slave, well avenged myself. But then, soon after, he was no more at my mercy, helplessly roped by the strength of men. I had not anticipated that. What a transformation of fortune was there! He was then free, and armed. I had seen his eyes on me in the camp, those of a master who looks upon a slave who has been less than pleasing. He well remembered what I had done, how I had treated him, how I had humiliated him and made a fool of him. I had been profoundly alarmed. I must run! I must escape! And now I had run, and had escaped. Surely I must be overjoyed. Was I not now safe? Yet, strangely, I did not feel elated. How pleased I should be that I had escaped from the brute I hated, and now so terribly feared, but, too, strangely, and piercingly, I felt alone and incomplete, even lost, with each step, apart from him, apart from his attention, his size, power, and presence, almost as might, I supposed, a kajira separated from her master. Could it be I was somehow his, I asked myself, that I belonged to him as an object to its owner, as a slave to her master? Had I not sensed such things before, of this callous, uncompromising, dominant brute, many times? Could I return, somehow, retrace my steps, seek him out, put myself to his feet, begging forgiveness as a penitent