The Destroyer - 12 - The Destroyer 012 - Slave Safari by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:52:50+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

"Once we lived in palaces. Our buildings stretched to" the clouds. Our land was rich and we were at peace."

The girl turned away from Remo who lay on his back on a hillock, chewing a piece of grass. "And now, this is our world," she said bitterly, waving her arm across the field of her view. "A land bf thatched huts and poverty, of ignorance and disease. A land in which we are hunted by the Hausa like game animals. We are a people from whose men the courage has been bred out, like milk-giving is bred into a cow."

Remo rolled on his left side to look at the girl. She was tall and lithe, and silhouetted against the white daylight sky of Africa, she seemed blacker than was her dark skin. She wore only a short white robe hi the fashion of a Grecian toga, but its outlines, too, looked dark against the hot white sky. Her back was toward Remo, and out hi front of her, down at the bottom of the hill, he could see the grubby little camp which now represented the once-great Empire.

"Could be worse," Remo said.

"How?" The girl turned and came to Remo, and in a smooth graceful motion slid down to the grass alongside him. "How could it be worse for my Loni people?"

"Take my word for it," Remo said. "You complain that civilization has kind of passed your people by. Well, you haven't missed a thing. I come from what they call civilization, and I prefer it here. At least, if you stay out of the Hausas' way, you've got some kind of peace."

He reached forward and took her left hand in his. She recoiled involuntarily from him, then tried to relax, but Remo released her hand. Princesses of the Loni Empire were virgins till they were wed; they knew not of men and no man entered into them until it was by ceremony and custom ordained. His was probably the first male hand which had ever touched the beautiful artist's hand of Princess Saffah of the Loni Empire.

"Do not release me," she said. "It feels warming, your hand. And you are right, it is peaceful here. But peacefulness is like rain. It isnice, but always to have it pressed upon you is quite another thing."

She took Remo's hand up in hers, silent for a moment as if shocked by her own boldness. "You, for instance," she said. "You lie here now, sucking grass like a cow, and talking of how lovely peace is, and you know that as soon as you can you will go back to this world you hate."

Remo said nothing; she was right. When he found and freed the slave girls and discovered what had happened to James Forsythe Lippincott, he would leave.

"Could I stay if i wanted?" he finally said.

"I do not know. The legend is silent"

"Oh, yeah. The legend."

Since he and Chiun first had arrived two days before, they had heard of little else but the legend.

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