Soul of an Eagle by Edwin Skinner

Author:Edwin Skinner [Skinner, Edwin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-31T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Goovon was moving along almost mechanically. His muscles ached and his body was weak but he had to keep moving. He stumbled forward, his arms together in front of his body as if in an attitude of prayer. The rope around his wrists that trailed off toward the nomad pony ahead of him dictated both his bodily position and his constant forward motion.

He had been preparing to cook the late afternoon meal when they had burst upon him in great numbers. The howling nomads had come at him from several directions at once. One of them had ridden him down and struck him over the head with the hilt of a sword. Goovon had never even managed to place his hands on a weapon in his own defense.

When he came to, he was bound hand and foot. The warriors were busy pillaging the campsite. The foodstuffs were already divided up among the warriors and someone had confiscated his crossbow, sword and knife. Pots and pans, too, were being taken. The small pup tents were ripped to shreds, being a style that nomads did not care for. Goovon could see his riding pony and the four pack ponies that had been left in camp, standing among the group of nomad mounts at one end of the clearing.

There had been about twenty warriors or so in the raid on the camp. Once the camp goods were divided up, they broke into two parties. Half went off on the trail of Helvon and Kit and the others had collected most of the booty, taken their prisoner and captured ponies in tow and headed toward the southwest. Even though there were more than enough ponies, Goovon was made to walk along behind his captors. Once, he had tripped and fallen. The warrior he was attached to had dragged him, laughing all the while, for about a hundred feet before pausing just long enough to allow him to scrabble back on to his feet.

Goovon knew what was in store for him and, as he stumbled along, his mind raced furiously trying to think of some way to avoid that fate. The nomads loved having 'sport' with their prisoners. Women were repeatedly raped. If they were comely, they eventually wound up in some warrior's harem. Men were eventually killed. Nomads had no need of slaves to do the back breaking chores around their camps. That was one of the functions of a nomad woman. Male captives were sometimes kept alive for a time but their life among the nomads was anything but pleasant. Both the male and female members of the tribes enjoyed the dispensing of pain and suffering to their enemies. Cruelty was, for many of them, what they enjoyed most and they had diabolically clever minds when thinking up ways to torture their unfortunate prisoners.

Finally, the procession stopped. Goovon looked around and realized that he was in a small nomad camp which had been set up in a little, hidden valley. There were

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