I was in the chains. I felt heat behind me, so anomalous and frightening in the cold morning. The back wall of the kennel might be aflame. Through the door I saw smoke, billowing like dark, ugly, suffocating clouds, and then there was a sudden gust of wind, which tore apart the smoke, and flung before it a shower of sparks, and then more sparks began to fall about, the wind softening, in the clearing, these now descending like hot, bright rain. I began to choke. I pulled, weeping, at the chains, coughing.
A large, dark figure appeared in the doorway. I saw it outlined, black, with flames bright behind it. It coughed, and cast about. I think it had one hand before its face. “Master!” I cried. It felt its way, through the smoke, uncertainly, toward me. I could hardly keep my eyes open, for burning tears, for the stinging of smoke in my eyes. I was aware of a key being forced into locks. A beam, burning, dropped from the ceiling to my right. Then, by a powerful hand grasped on my wrist, I was jerked to my feet, and dragged, stumbling, from the kennel, out, into the clearing, and then I was pulled across the clearing and out the gate.
“Master!” I wept, my hand imprisoned in his grip.
We stopped several paces from the gate, and I sank to my knees, gasping for air, on the grass between the stockade gate and the head of the stairway leading down to the river, and he was crouching beside me, his head down, coughing. It was he who had chained me there, to whom my keeping had been allotted.
The air seemed acrid with smoke. Behind us the stockade and kennel was aflame. I could see across the river, and Shipcamp, too, was aflame. There was a crash behind us where, I conjectured, the roof of the kennel had collapsed.
“Master has risked his life to save the life of a slave,” I gasped.
“You are valuable,” he said.
“Valuable to Master?” I said.
“Certainly,” he said. “You might bring two silver tarsks off the block.”
“You risked much for two silver tarsks,” I whispered.
“I would have done as much for a tethered verr,” he said, “or an urt on a neck string.”
“A slave is grateful,” I said. “May her lips not repay Master?”
“Do you wish to be cuffed?” he asked.
“No, Master!” I said.
“A slave,” he said, “has nothing, nothing with which to either pay, or repay. One simply takes from her whatever one might wish, whenever one wishes it, and however one wishes it.”
“Yes, Master,” I said.
He rose to his feet, looking across the river.
I remained kneeling. It is seldom wise to rise to one’s feet in the presence of a master, if one has not received permission. I did go to all fours, which seemed acceptable for a beast, and joined him, in looking across the river. “Shipcamp is afire,” I said.
He looked down upon me, and reached into his wallet. He flung me a small handful of wadded cloth. “Put it on,” he said.
“Yes, Master!” I said, gratefully.
“I had little time,” he said.
In a moment I had pulled on the tunic, and fastened the disrobing loop at the left shoulder.
“It is too long,” he said, “but it can be considerably shortened later.”
I thought it already short, quite short.
“A slave thanks Master for the privilege of a garment,” I said. How strange, I thought, remembering my former world, that a girl would be almost tearfully grateful for so tiny a bit of cloth, in which she was next to naked, a Gorean slave tunic. A Gorean free woman, I thought, might almost die of shame at the mere thought of being placed in such a garment, but would learn to prize it soon enough if she were collared.
My rescuer, whom I shall choose to refer to as my “captor,” for it was he who had captured me, and he in whose keeping I remained, suddenly looked about, to his right.
“On your stomach,” he said, “hands behind your back.”
Instantly I was prone, as directed. A Gorean master is to be obeyed instantly, and unquestioningly.
“Look toward the river,” he said.
I turned my face, on the grass, toward the river, which was to my left. I felt my hands fastened behind me, in slave bracelets.
“Ho!” said a voice. “What have we here?”
“On your feet,” said my captor, and I rose to my feet, and kept my head down. “A slave,” he said.