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about
pay until you've earned your keep."
Before I could close my gaping mouth and begin to think again, the man was
gone.
When the two of us were alone again, my nephew said: "Damn it all, Herc, a
stable is never going to be spotless. Not with live beasts penned up in it.
And
they'll be moving more back in tomorrow. The way he talks, we could spend our
lives here shoveling and still owe him money."
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I grunted and nodded. The true state of affairs had begun to dawn on me some
hours ago, but I had said nothing until I could decide how best to deal with
it.
And for once Enkidu had been a little slow to catch on.
"Does he think we're stupid or something?" Enkidu steamed.
"I guess he does. Or at least he's sure we're scared."
On top of everything else, my valuable though not very useful bow was
suddenly
missing, and naturally none of the other workers whom I asked knew what had
happened to it or so they said. Most of them seemed afraid to talk to me at
all.
Neither did anyone seem interested in anything but their own immediate
survival.
Not for the first time, I wished that I was six and a half feet tall and
muscled
like a god, with thick, dark stubble on my cheeks and a frowning brow. Then,
I
thought, no one would have touched my bow.
When we next encountered the foreman, he also suggested, in the manner of a
calculated afterthought, that we should not think of running off before we
got
the stable cleaned out properly there were a couple of large fierce dogs that
the master employed to find those who departed without paying what they owed.
With grim satisfaction at what he assumed to be our helplessness, he took his
leave.
"I want my bow back," I said in a low, thoughtful voice, when he was steps
away.
Almost eagerly he whirled around again. His ears were keener than I had
thought,
and he evidently thought that we were not worth trying to deceive. "S'pose
you
don't get it. What'll you do about it?"
My fists were clenching automatically, but I remained silent, backing away
from
a physical confrontation.
When the man was gone, my nephew looked bitterly disappointed. "Why'd you let
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him do that?" he demanded.
"Because. If I fight one man, I'll have to fight another, and another. And if
I
fight I'll break someone's bones . . . and someone else would draw a weapon .
.
. there'd be all kinds of trouble. It's no fun killing people."
Enkidu was silent for a time, trying to assess my mood. At last he asked me:
"Hercules? What will we do?"
"Let's forget about our pay and hit the road. We'll head out about midnight,
when they're mostly all asleep. We can live without the pay."
"What about the dogs?"
"I'll take care of them, if they come after us. But I don't want to start
killing people and have to fight a war." Yet, having said that to my friend,
still I dallied; neither did I want to leave without relieving my anger.
* * *
Shortly after dark on that evening, the girl we had seen riding reappeared.
Obviously some relative of the owner's, I thought. Maybe his mistress, though
she seemed too young.
This time she came deliberately to seek us out. She rode her cameloid
straight
up to where Enkidu and I were standing, and sat in the saddle looking down at
us
as if we were a problem that duty required her to solve somehow. Straight
brown
hair, parted in the middle, framed an entrancing face. Seen at close range,
her
green eyes and slender body were more fascinating than ever.
"My name is Hercules," I volunteered, to start a conversation. "And this is
Enkidu, who happens to be my nephew."
The girl appeared to have no interest in our names, nor did she tell us hers.
Well, I had to admit it was really none of our business.
"I just happen to be visiting here," she said at last. Her tone was almost
that
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of one offering an apology. She sighed and seemed to come to a decision. "I
heard them talking, up at the house, about you two. They were making jokes."
"Is it your father's house?" I asked.
"It belongs to Augeus, who is my uncle. I don't like him much. He's a cruel
man.
So are his foreman, and his slave drivers."
"I had begun to form that impression myself," I said. And Enkidu put in,
indignantly: "We're not slaves."
She turned her gaze in his direction. "My advice to you is, if you don't want
to
become slaves, you'd better make some plan to get away from here." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]