Time Slave by John Norman

Author:John Norman [Norman, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 1975-11-09T06:00:00+00:00

17

Brenda Hamilton laughed.

She had made good her escape.

Yesterday night she had fled from the group. The group had come, in the late afternoon, to a group of high, almost sheer cliffs. In them, here and there, high, some of them more than two hundred feet from the ground, there was a set of openings, leading to deep caves.

These were the shelters.

They were the home of the Men, and of their properties, their skins, their flints, and their women and children.

The cliffs, with their height, and the dark openings, had frightened Hamilton.

She was afraid to be owned in them.

Camp had been made at the foot of the cliffs, for the men must investigate the caves again, many with torches, to make certain that the cave bear had not, in their absence, claimed them as his own.

The group was in good spirits. The cave lion had been killed, and such beasts, preying on humans, were extremely rare. Many hides and much meat had been taken at the game camp, and the men had found salt; and much flint had been carried to the foot of the cliffs.

Brenda Hamilton, naked, thonged to Ugly Girl by the throat, her body aching from the weight of the flint sack, had, with the other women, thrown down the flint, and knelt with them, at the base of the cliffs, exhausted. No longer were she and the others hurried forward by the switches of Fox and Wolf. Her body had been struck many times. The other women, except Ugly Girl, were happy; they were home; Brenda Hamilton, her body aching from the weight of the stone, and stinging from the blows of switches which had encouraged her to carry it more swiftly, looked up at the cliffs; she was afraid; they were very high, and the dark openings frightened her; some of them were more than two hundred feet high in the cliff. Ugly Girl did not seem happy or unhappy; she seemed only stupid, docile, vacant; she would do whatever her masters told her; Brenda Hamilton would not; she was determined to escape. She no longer wished to carry flint as a slave; she did not wish, again, to be used as a piece of meat, living meat, to bait a trap. Many of the women had smiled, when she had been tied with Ugly Girl, particularly the dark-haired girl, and the shorter, blond one. And the hunter had looked upon her, when her eyes had pleaded with him, impassively. She would flee.

Her opportunity had come much earlier than she had hoped. The men had gone up the cliffs, to investigate the caves. The women and children, thus, had been left below.

Before the men had left, dried meat had been distributed. Brenda and Ugly Girl had had four cubes apiece. It had been held in the palm of the hand of Runner. They had taken it, as kneeling women often did, in their teeth, directly from his hand.

At the flint lode, in gathering fruit, and roots and vegetables, and watching what was eaten, Brenda Hamilton had learned much.

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