well walk into a village clearing, or through the gates of a town or city, and say, “Tal, I am a female slave. Who will put a chain on me?”
Escaped slaves I knew were commonly returned to their masters, as a courtesy, but sometimes there would be some negotiations having to do with a capture fee. My collar, of course, was a plain collar. I might then invent a master, and claim that I was attempting to return to him, not that that would keep the ropes off me. In problematical situations, escaped slaves are commonly publicly exhibited for a time, chained under a pertinent notice and then, if not claimed, auctioned, or delivered to the finder. Sometimes a slave is tortured and, in this case, she is likely to acknowledge herself the slave of anyone whom the magistrate might suggest, perhaps a relative in another village. To be sure, a slave is seldom subjected to any grievous torture, as it might lower her value. An exception is when her testimony is to be taken in a court of law. Then any slave, male or female, will be placed on the rack, the theory being that this will guarantee a veracious testimony, even from the lips of a slave. What it commonly guarantees is that the slave, howling in misery or screaming through tears, will tell the judge whatever he wishes to hear.
I stopped, suddenly, in the dusk. Something was moving, nearby. I remained perfectly still. Then I heard it no more.
I wondered if it had been with me for some time.
But perhaps I had not heard it, at all.
I was now familiar enough with the forest, of course, to realize I should seek shelter before the fall of darkness. Though both sleen and panthers hunt when hungry, they prowl most frequently in darkness.
Both the sleen and the panther can leap well over their length, and may be found on stout branches several feet above the ground, but neither is a climbing animal, as one commonly thinks of climbing animals, probably because of their weight, which would render many branches precarious, either because of a bending, wavering instability or the possibility of breakage.
But it was not practical for me to climb in this area.
The trees about were like lofty, isolated, living columns, separated by wide corridors of leaves. They foliaged in canopies high above the ground. It had been similar, often enough, on the march from the coast to Tarncamp. This arrangement is a consequence, one supposes, of a competition for light, a contest possibly spanning centuries of seasons. Yet, as noted earlier, a forest is not uniform, and there are forests within forests. Nor is the terrain itself uniform, for there may be streams and basins, and clearings, and meadows, elevations, canyons, and depressions, brush, thickets, even jumbles of rocks, from ancient glaciers, and weathered, winter-and-ice-cracked hills of stone.
From where I stood, in the dusk, I could see a large, fallen tree, its trunk black in the light, its exposed roots extended like claws, lying athwart a low sloping outcropping of rocks. I was sure I could wedge myself between the rocks and the tree, but, upon investigating, I found, to my delight, behind the tree, something much better, an open, narrow space between two large rocks. One could enter or leave this opening at either end, and, though the opening was quite narrow, it was large enough for me to enter, and, at the same time, I was sure, too narrow to admit either a sleen or panther. How frustrated they would be, did they discover me, that they could not reach me! In time a panther would look for new game. A sleen would presumably discount my presence, unless he had been following my trail. If he had been following my trail, he would presumably, after a time, depart, allowing me, sooner or later, to leave the shelter, after which, perhaps several Ahn later, he would pick up the trail again. Such things are tenacious. Further, if foresters, or independent huntsmen, were in the vicinity, my shelter would be as invisible to them as it had been at first to me.
Chapter Forty-Seven
I was furious with the girl. Did she not know she was in a collar? Was she unaware she was marked?
Would that I had had the senses of a Tiomines.
So she had sported with me, humiliating me before Genserich and his men, even before slaves! So then I would sport with her, and she would not