"Better now, boy?"
Besan grunted. A sullen growing anger was blotting the fear and acquired timidity of Terra from his mind. If his hands were free....
"I'll do." He turned to see Nard Rost, and behind him the girl, with the balance of the fierce-looking savages strung out behind them.
"They're taking us to their caves," Nard Rost told him.
"To eat, I suppose." Besan turned his face to the front again.
Nard Rost's chuckle reached him. "Nothing so bloody as that. We're to be slaves, cultivating their patches of vegetables and goorn."
"Relsa too?"
"Unless Detch—he's the sub-chief who captured us—wants her."
Besan stumbled and the huge warrior ahead of him, the leader apparently, swung his spear again. It caught Besan across the ear and cheek. He staggered and his hatred for this grinning pulpy-nosed brute grew. Once he got his hands on a spear, or a club, or a knife—then let this gargoyle giant watch for his life!
He who had never killed an animal, or struck a blow in anger, was praying to all the unknown powers of space that he might strike the life from Detch's hulking body!