Tribesmen of Gor

13 An Acouaintance is Renewed

My left foot broke through the crust of salt. “Kill us! Kill us!” I heard a man cry. I heard the stroke of the lash behind me, and another cry, long miserable.

My left leg, to the thigh, slipped into the brittle layers of crust. I fell, unable to break my fall because of the manacles confining my wrists at my waist, fastened to the loop of chain, burning in the sun, about my waist. I could not see, for the slave hood. My back, and body, burned. Our feet, to the knees, were wrapped in leather, but, in many places, in making our way across the crusts, the weight of our bodies forced us deeper than this into the crusts. The salt, working its way into the leather wrappings, found its way to the feet, I could feel blood inside the wrappings. Some men, though I did not know how many, had gone lame. They were no longer with the chain. They had been left behind, their throats cut, lying in the crusts. The chain on the collar at my throat jerked. I lay still for a precious moment in the burning crusts. The lash struck me. The chain jerked again and I struggled to my feet. Again the lash fell. I stumbled on. The path is broken by a kaiila, whose long, haired legs, with broad pads, break through, and lift themselves free, of the crusts, “I did not think a woman could hold you,” had said the man.

Scarcely had Hassan and I, clad in the garments of guards, astride kaiila taken from the stables of Tarna’s kasbah, emerged from the fortress’s gate than, on the path to Red Rock, clouds of riders had swept before us. Wheeling our kaiila we had sought escape, only to discover we were surrounded. In the bright moonlight of Gor’s three moons we turned. On every side were riders, many with crossbows.

“We have been waiting for you,” said one of the riders. “Will it be necessary to kill the kaiila?” The riders were veiled in red.

“No,” had said Hassan. He had disarmed himself, and dismounted. I followed his example.

Ropes were put on our throat; our hands were tied behind our backs.

On foot, among our captors, tethered by the neck to saddle rings, bound, we trudged to the larger of the pair of kasbahs, that other than Tarna’s. The journey was not long, only some two pasangs.

At the foot of the great gate we stopped. The walls were more than seventy feet high. The battlements, square and looming, of which there were seventeen, assuming general symmetry and counting the two flanking the central gate, soared to ninety feet. The front wall was some four hundred feet in length; the side walls were some four hundred and fifty feet in length. The walls in such a kasbah are several feet thick, formed of stones and mud brick; the walls in this kasbah, as in most, too, were covered with a sheen of plaster, whitish pink, which, in the years of exposure to the heat and sun, as is common, had flaked abundantly.

“You are Tarl Cabot,” said the leader of the men who had captured us, indicating me.

I shrugged. Hassan looked at me.

“And you,” said the man, indicating Hassan, “are Hassan, the bandit.”

“It is possible,” admitted Hassan.

“It is as naked prisoners that you will enter this kasbah,” said the man.

We were stripped by the scimitar.

Naked, bound, standing in the sand, tethered, surrounded by kaiila, and riders, we looked up at the lofty walls of flaking plaster, the battlements flanking the great gate. The moonlight reflected from the walls of pinkish, flaking plaster.

Two of the kaiila snorted, pawing the sand.

The great gate, on its heavy hinges, opening in the middle, slowly swung back.

We faced the opening.

“You two have been troublesome,” said the rider. “You will be troublesome no more.”

We could see the whitish courtyard, its sand, beyond the gate, lamps set in walls.

“Whose kasbah is this?” I asked.

“It can be only,” said Hassan, “the kasbah of the Guard of the Dunes.”

“That of the Salt Ubar?” I asked.

“That,” agreed Hassan. I had heard of the Salt Ubar, or the Guard of the Dunes.

The location of his kasbah is secret. Probably, other than his own men, only some few hundred know of it, primarily merchants high in the salt trade, and few of them would know its exact location. Whereas salt may be obtained from sea water and by burning seaweed, as is sometimes done in Torvaldsland, and there are various districts on Gor where salt, solid or in solution, may be obtained, by far the most extensive and richest of known Gor’s salt deposits are to be found concentrated in the Tahari. Tahari salt accounts, in its varieties, I would suspect, for some twenty percent of the salt and salt-related products, such as medicines and antiseptics, preservatives, cleansers, bleaches, bottle glass, which contains soda ash, taken from salt, and tanning chemicals, used on known Gor. Salt is a trading commodity par excellence. There are areas on Gor where salt serves as a currency, being weighed and exchanged much as precious metals. The major protection and control of the Tahari salt, of course, lies in its remoteness, the salt districts, of which there are several, being scattered and isolated in the midst of the dune country, in the long caravan journeys required, and the difficulty or impossibility of obtaining it without knowing the trails, the ways of the desert. A lesser protection and control of the salt, though a not unformidable one, lies in the policing of the desert by the Salt Ubar, or the Guard of the Dunes. The support of the kasbah of the Salt Ubar comes from fees supplied by high salt merchants, the measure of which fees, of course, they include in their wholesale pricings to lesser distributors. The function of the kasbah of the Salt Ubar, thus, officially, is to administer and control the salt districts, on behalf of the Tahari salt merchants, primarily by regulating access to the districts, checking the papers and credentials of merchants, inspecting caravans, keeping records of the commerce, etc. For example, caravans between Red Rock, and certain other oases, and the salt districts, will travel under an escort of the Guard of the Dunes. Many salt caravans, incidentally, travel only between the districts and the local oases, while others travel between the local oases and the distant points, often culminating with Kasra or Tor. Some caravans, of course, journey through from the distant points to the salt districts, accepting the danger and inconvenience of trekking the dune country, but thereby avoiding the higher charges of picking up salt from the storehouses in the local oases. Even these caravans, of course, once in the dune country are accompanied by the men of the Guard of the Dunes.

The Guard of the Dunes, however, does not obtain the title of the Salt Ubar in virtue of his complacent magistracy of the salt districts, subservient to the Tahari merchants. There are those who say, and I do not doubt it true, that it is he, and not the merchants, who controls the salt of the Tahari. Nominally a sheriff of the Tahad merchants, he, ensconced in his kasbah, first among fierce warriors, elusive and unscrupulous, possesses a strangle bold on the salt of the Tahari, the vital commerce being ruled and regulated as he wills. He holds within his territories the right of law and execution. In the dunes he is Ubar and the merchants bow their heads to him. The Guard of the Dunes is one of the most dreaded and powerful men in the Tahari.

“Kneel, Slaves,” said the rider, the leader of the men who had captured us.

Hassan and I knelt.

“Kiss the sand before the gate of your master,” said the man.

Hassan and I pressed our lips to the sand before the great, open portal.

“On your feet, Slaves,” said the man. Hassan and I rose to our feet.

“You have been troublesome, Slaves,” said the man. “You will be troublesome no more.”

The gate stood open before us. We could see the courtyard, whitish beyond, the moonlight on its sand, the small lamps set in the far walls.

“Herd the slaves before their master,” said the rider, be the leader of our captors.

I felt the point of a scimitar in my back.

“What is the name of the Salt Ubar?” I asked Hassan.

“I thought everyone knew his name,” said Hassan.

“No,” I said. “What is his name?”

“Abdul,” said Hassan.

The scimitar pressed in my back. I, and Hassan, entered the kasbah of the Guard of the Dunes, the Salt Ubar, he whose name was Abdul.

Opulent were the halls and lofty chambers of the kasbah of Abdul, the guard of the dunes, he known as the Salt Ubar of the Tahari.

Rich and smooth were the variegated, glossy tiles, sumptuous the hangings, slender the pillars and columns, ornate the screens and carvings, brilliant and intricate the stylized floral inlays, the geometrical mosaics. High vessels of gold, some as tall as a girl, gleaming dully in the light of the lamps, were passed on our journey through the halls, into the upper rooms, too, great vases of red and yellow porcelain, many of which were as large as a man, imported from the potteries of Tyros. Beaded curtains did we pass, and many portals, looming and carved.

We did not soil the polished floors, nor bring sand within. At the foot of the great stairs, marble and spiraling, leading to the upper rooms, we, and our guards, those accompanying us, some dozen men, paused. Their desert boots were removed by kneeling slave girls, who then, with lavers and veminium water, and oils, pouring and cleansing, washed their feet. The girls were not of the Tahari, and so dried the men’s feet with their hair. To make a Tahari girl, even though slave, do this, is regarded as a great degradation. As discipline, of course, what is routine for a girl not of the Tahari, in miserable Tahari enslavement, may be forced on a slave girl whose origin is itself the Tahari.

When the men’s feet were cleansed, they were fitted by the girls with soft, heel-less slippers, of the sort commonly worn indoors in permanent residences in the Tahari, with extended, curling toes. The feet of myself, and those of Hassan, too, were washed, and dried. The girl who cared for me had long, hair, almost black. She bent to her work. Once she looked up at me. She might once have been of high family in Ar. She was now only a Tahari slave girl. She looked down, finishing her labors. “In there,” said the man who had led our captors. We had now stopped before a great portal, narrower at its bottom, then swelling, curving, gracefully expanding, outward and upward, then narrowing again, gracefully concluding in a point. It might have been in the design of a stylized lance, or flame or leaf. This portal lay at the end of our trek, through several balls, and up more than one flight of stairs.

There were men within, seated about a central figure, on rugs, on a dais. The men were veiled, in the manner of the Char. Girls, docile, belled and collared, served them.

A girl emerged from the room. Our eyes met. Her eyes fell. She did not know us.

She found herself examined. Her body blushed red, from hair to ankles. Though Hassan and I were stripped, she was more naked than we, for she wore Gorean slave silk.

“In there,” said the man. Again I felt the incitement of the point of the scimitar in my back.

On ropes, hands bound behind our back, Hassan and I entered the lofty chamber.

Those within the chamber looked up.

We were thrust before the dais. “Kneel, and kiss the tiles before the feet of your master,” the man. Hassan and I knelt. Scimitars stood at the ready. We kissed the tiles. We straightened ourselves. Failure to comply in such a situation means immediate decapitation.

The man on the dais, sitting cross-legged, regarded us.

We said nothing.

He lifted his finger. “You may again show respect,” said the man behind us.

We again kissed the tiles. We again straightened ourselves. Again we said nothing.

“I did not think a woman could hold you,” smiled the man on the dais.

We did not respond.

“I expect to have better fortune,” said the man. He was veiled, in the manner of the Char, as were the others with him. He picked a grape from a bowl of fruit on a small table near him, and, holding the veil from his face, as do the men of the Char, put the bit of fruit into his mouth, and bit into it. It was pitted.

He chewed on the fruit.

I looked about the room.

It was a marvelous and lofty room, high ceilinged, columned and tiled, ornately carved, open and spacious in aspect, rich in its decoration. A vizier, a pasha, a caliph, might have held audience in such a chamber.

“She is an excellent tool,” said the man on the dais, finishing the fruit, rinsing the fingers of his right band in a small bowl of veminium water, and drying them on a cloth to his right. “But only, when all is said and done, a woman. I did not think she could hold you. You were little more than twenty Ahn in her keeping.”

“We fell well into your trap,” said Hassan.

The man shrugged, a Tahari shrug, tiny, subtle, like a swift smile, acknowledging the compliment of Hassan.

“It is not clear to me,” said Hassan, “why a simple date merchant, like my friend. Hakim of Tor, and I, a lowly bandit, would be of interest to one so august as yourself.”

The man regarded Hassan. “Once,” said he, “you took something from me, something in which I was interested.”

“I am a bandit,” said Hassan, in cheerful explanation. “It is my business.

Perhaps I could return it to you, if you were serious about its recovery.”

“I have recovered it myself,” said he.

“Then I have little with which to bargain,” admitted Hassan. “What was it I took, in which you were interested?”

“A trifle,” said the man.

“Perhaps it was another bandit,” suggested Hassan. “Many of us, veiled, resemble one another.”

“I witnessed the theft,” said he. “You did not deign to conceal your features.”

“Perhaps that was unwise on my part,” volunteered Hassan. He was clearly curious. “Yet I do not recollect purloining anything upon an occasion on which you were present. Indeed, this is my first visit to your kasbah.”

“You did not recognize me,” said the man.

“I did not mean to be uncivil,” said Hassan.

“You were in reasonable haste,” said the man.

“My business must often be conducted with dispatch,” admitted Hassan. “What was it I took?” he asked.

“A bauble,” said the man.

“I hope that you will forgive me,” said Hassan. “Further, in the light of the fact that you have recovered that in which you were interested, whatever it is, I trust that you will be willing to let bygones be bygones, and permit myself and my friend to depart, returning to us our kaiila, garments and accouterments, and perhaps bestowing upon us some water and supplies. We will then be on our way, commending your generosity and hospitality at the campfires, and will bother you no longer.”

“I am afraid that will not be possible,” said the man.

“I was not optimistic,” admitted Hassan.

“You are a bandit,” pointed out the figure on the dais.

“Doubtless each of us has our own business,” said Hassan. “Being a bandit is my business. Surely you would not hold one’s business against him.”

“No,” said the man, “but 1, too, have my business, and part of my business is to apprehend and punish bandits. You would surely not hold my business against me.”

“Of course not,” said Hassan. “That would be riot only irrational, but discourteous.” He indicated me with his head. “I have been traveling with this fellow,” he said, “a clumsy, but well-meaning oaf, a boorish date merchant, Hakim of Tor, not overly bright, but good hearted. We fell together by accident.

Should you free him, your generosity and hospitality would be commended at the campfires.”

I did not care greatly for Hassan’s description. I am not boorish.

“They must find other things of which to speak at the campfires,” said the man.

He looked about himself. On the dais, with him, were several men, low tables of food, fruit, stews, tidbits of roast verr, assorted breads. He and the males were veiled. About the dais, kneeling, waiting to serve, were slave girls, some in high collars, clad in strands of slave silk. They were not veiled. Among the upper classes in the Tahari, it is scandalously erotic, generally, that a female’s mouth should not be concealed. To see a girl’s lips and teeth is a charged experience. To touch a girl’s teeth with your teeth is prelude to the seizure of her body, an act that one would engage in only with a bold, brazen mate, or with one’s shameless slave girl, with whom one can do with, to her joy, precisely as one pleases.

“I have waited long to have you at my feet,” said the man. Then he lifted his finger. Four of the girls, with a jangle of slave bells, fled to Hassan and myself. They regarded the figure on the dais, veiled, sitting cross-legged.

“Please them,” he said. We struggled. With lips, and tongue, and small fingers, the girls addressed themselves to our pleasures. The binding fiber cut into our wrists. The ropes on our neck held us in place. We could not free ourselves.

Again the veiled man lifted his finger. Other girls, with bits of food, gave us to feed, with their tiny fingers placing tidbits, delicacies, into our months.

One girl held back our head, and others, from goblets, gave us of wines, Turian wine, sweet and thick, Ta wine, from the famed Ta grapes, from the terraces of Cos, wines even, Ka-la-nas, sweets and drys, from distant Ar. Our heads swirled.

We heard music. Musicians had entered the room. “Feast,” said the man on the dais. He clapped his hands. We shook our heads, trying to clear the wines from them. We struggled. I pulled with my head away from the eager lips and hands of the slave girl who sought to hold and kiss me. “Tafa loves you, “ she whispered, kissing me. A guard’s hand held my hair, keeping my head in place. I felt the ropes burn on my neck. I closed my eyes. I felt her lips beneath my left ear, biting and kissing. “Tafa loves you. Master,” she whispered. “Let Tafa please you.” I was startled. Suddenly I realized that this was the same girl who had been one of the pair captured by Hassan in the desert, shortly before I had first made his acquaintance. She had been the proud free woman, sold at Two Scimitars, with Zina, the traitress. It was difficult now to see in this lascivious, delicious slave, who seemed born to the collar, the proud free woman whom Hassan had earlier captured, and who had been later sold at the Bakah oasis of Two Scimitars. Some Goreans maintain that all women are born to the collar, and require only to find that man strong enough to put it on them.

I tried to pull away, but was held. “Tafa loves you,” she whispered. “Let Tafa give you pleasure.” I felt the lips of another girl at my leg and waist.

The men, veiled, observed complacently.

Again the man on the dais clapped his hands. Before us now on the tiles, in the basic position of the slave dance, too, her hands lifted over her head, wrists back to back, stood a chained girl.

Hassan’s eyes were hard.

It was Alyena.

“Do you remember this one?” asked the veiled man, of Hassan.

“Yes,” said Hassan.

“This is that of which,” said the man, “I spoke earlier. This is that in which I was once interested. This is that which you once took from me. This is the trifle, the bauble. I have now recovered it.”

Alyena trembled under the eyes of Hassan. She wore graceful, golden chains.

“It was recovered,” he said, “in the vicinity of Red Rock.”

There were tears in Alyena’s eyes. She stood in the position of the slave dance, a girl waiting to be commanded to please men.

“She was with several men,” said the man on the dais. “They fought well, with skill and savagery, and broke through to the desert beyond Red Rock.”

How was it then, I wondered, that lovely Alyena stood here, on these tiles, slave? “Then, most peculiarly,” said the man, “when apparently safe, escaped with her escort, she, suddenly, turned her kaiila about, returning, fleeing back to Red Rock.”

The oasis, or much of it, I knew, would have been in flames at that time.

“She was, of course, almost immediately captured,” said the man.

“She was crying the name ‘Hasan’.”

I could see that this did not please Hassan at all. His will had been disobeyed.

Further, I recalled that the girl had, in Red Rock, under stress, cried his name, speaking it, though she was only a girl in bondage.

“I love you, master,” cried the girl. “I wanted to be with you! At your side!”

“You are a runaway slave girl,” he said.

She wept, but did not break the position of the slave dance. “Too,” said he, “at the oasis you cried my name.” These were serious offenses.

“Forgive me, Master,” she cried. “I love you!” She had risked her life to return to Hassan. She loved him. Yet a slave girl owes her master absolute obedience.

She had violated his will in two particulars. I did not think it would go easily with her. Love on Gor does not purchase a girl lenience; it does not mitigate her bondage, nor compromise her servitude, but rather renders it the more complete, the more helpless and abject.

“Master,” wept the girl.

What a beautiful piece of slave flesh Alyena was, so vulnerable, so feminine, but how could she have been otherwise when owned by Gorean men? The man on the dais languidly lifted his finger. The musicians readied themselves. Alyena looked upon Hassan, agonized.

“What shall I do, Master?” she begged. She wore a golden metal dancing collar about her throat, golden chains looped from her wrists, gracefully to the collar ring, then fell to her ankles; there are varieties of Tahari dancing chains; she wore the oval and collar; briefly, in readying a girl, after she has been belled and silked, and bangled, and has been made up, and touched with slave perfume, she kneels, head down in a large oval of light gleaming chain, extending her wrists before her; fastened at the sides of the top of the oval are two wrist rings, at the sides of the lower loop of the oval two ankle rings; the oval is then pulled inward and the wrist and ankle rings fastened on the slave; her throat is then locked in the dancing collar, which has, under the chin, an open snap ring: with the left hand the oval is then gathered together, so the two strands of chain lie in the palm of the left hand, whence, lifted, they are placed inside the snap ring, which is then snapped shut, and locked; the two strands of chain flow freely in the snap ring; accordingly, though the girl’s wrists and ankles are fastened at generous, though inflexible limits from one another, usually about a yard for the wrists and about eighteen inches for the ankles, much of the chain may be played through, and back through, the collar ring; this permits a skillful girl a great deal of beautiful chain work: the oval and collar is traditional in the Tahari; it enhances a girl’s beauty; it interferes little with her dance, though it imposes subtle, sensuous limits upon it; a good dancer uses these limits, exploiting them deliciously; for example, she may extend a wrist, subtly holding the chain at her waist with her other hand; the chain slides through the ring, yet short of the expected movement; the chain stops her wrist; her wrist rebels, but is helpless; it must yield; her head falls; she is a chained slave girl.

“Master, what shall I do?” begged Alyena. How beautiful she was.

All eyes were upon her. Aside from her jewelries, her bells, the oval and collar, the cosmetics, the heady slave perfume, she wore six ribbons of silk, yellow, three before and three behind, some four feet in length, depending from her collar. I had always admired her brand. It was deep and delicate, and beautifully done.

“Master!” cried Alyena.

The finger of the man on the dais, he veiled in red, prepared to fall.

“Dance, Slave,” said Hassan. The man’s finger fell languidly, the musicians began to play. Alyena, before us, in the chains of the Tahari, danced. She was a most beautiful trifle, a most lovely bauble.

We feasted late, and were much pleased by the beauties of the Salt Ubar.

Finally, he said, “It is late. And you must retire, for you must rise before dawn.”

Hours before, Alyena had been dismissed from the audience chamber of the Guard of the Dunes, the Salt Ubar.

“Take her to the guard room,” he said. “There let her give pleasure to the men.”

Alyena, still in her chains, was pulled by the hair from the room.

“You veil yourself in the manner of the Char,” I said, “but I do not think you of the Char.”

“No,” said the man on the dais.

“I had not known you were the Salt Ubar,” said 1.

“Many do not know that,” said the man.

“Why are you and your men veiled?” I asked.

“It is customary for the men of the Guard of the Dunes to veil themselves,” said he. “Their allegiance is to no tribe, but to the protection of the salt. In anonymity is a disguise for them. Freely may they move about when unveiled, none knowing they are in my fee. Veiled, their actions cannot be well traced to an individual, but only to an institution, my Ubarate.”

“You speak highly of your office,” I said.

“Few know the men of the Salt Ubar,” said he. “And, veiled, anonymous, all fear them.”

“I do not fear them,” said Hassan. “Free me, and give me a Scimitar, and we shall make test of the matter.”

“Are there others here, too, I know?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” said the man. Then he turned to the others. Unveil yourselves,” he said.

The men removed the scarlet veils. “Hamid,” said I, “lieutenant to Shakar, captain of the Aretai.” I nodded.

The man looked at me with hatred. His hand was at a dagger in his sash. “Let me slay him now,” he said.

“Perhaps you would have better fortune than when you in stealth struck Suleiman Pasha,” I said.

The man cried out in rage.

The leader, the Salt Ubar, lifted his finger and the man subsided, his eyes blazing.

“There is another here I know,” I said, nodding toward a small fellow, sitting beside the Salt Ubar, “though he is now more richly robed than when last I saw him.”

“He is my eyes and ears in Tor,” said the Salt Ubar.

“Abdul the water carrier,” said I. “I once mistook you for someone else,” I said.

“Oh?” he said.

“It does not matter now,” I said. I smiled to myself. I had thought him to be the “Abdul” of the message, that which had been placed in the scalp of the message girt, Veema, who had been sent mysteriously to the house of Samos in Port Kar. I still did not know who had sent the message. As now seemed clear to me, the message must have referred to Abdul, the Salt Ubar. He who had sent the message had doubtless been of the Tahari. It had doubtless not occurred to him that the message might have been misconstrued. In the historic sense, the planetary sense, there would have been only one likely “Abdul” in the Tahari at this time, the potent, powerful, dreaded Guard of the Dunes, the Salt Ubar. He would be a most formidable minion of Kurii. Neither Samos nor myself, however, though we had heard of the Salt Ubar, had known his name. Further, his name is not often casually mentioned in the Tahari. It is difficult to know who are and who are not his spies. His men belong to various tribes. I might have behaved differently in the Tahari had I earlier known the name of the Salt Ubar. I wondered who had sent the message, “Beware Abdul.” How complacent I had been, how sure that I bad earlier penetrated that mystery.

“May I cut his throat?” asked the water carrier.

“We have other plans for our friend,” said the Salt Ubar. He had not yet unveiled himself, though his men, at his command, had done so.

“Have you long been known as Abdul?” I asked the Salt Ubar.

“For some five years,” said be, “since I infiltrated the kasbah and deposed my predecessor.”

“You serve Kurii,” I said.

The man shrugged. “You serve Priest-Kings,” said he. “We two have much in common, for we both are mercenaries. Only you are less wise than I, for you do not serve upon that side which will taste the salt of victory.”

“Priest-Kings are formidable enemies,” said I.

“Not so formidable as Kurii,” said he. “The Kur,” said he, “is persistent, It is tenacious. It is fierce. It will have its way. The Priest-Kings will fall. They will fail.”

I thought that what he said might be true. The Kur is determined, aggressive, merciless. It is highly intelligent, it lusts for blood, it will kill for territory and meat. The Priest-King is a relatively gentle organism, delicate and stately. It has little interest in conflict, its military posture is almost invariably defensive; it asks little more than to be left alone. I did not know if Priest-Kings, with all their brilliance, and all their great stores of knowledge on their scent-tapes, had a glandular and neurological system with which the motivations and nature of Kurii could be understood. The true nature of the Kurii might elude them, almost physiologically, like a menacing color they could not see, a terrible sound to which their sensors were almost inert. A man, I felt, could know a Kur, but Priest-Kings, I suspected, could only know about a Kur. They could know about them, but they could not know them. To know a Kur one must, perhaps, in the moonlight, face it with an ax, smell the musk of its murderous rage, see the eyes, the intelligence, the sinuous, hunched might of it, the blood black at its jaws, hear the blood cry, stand against its charge. A creature, who had not known hatred, lust and terror, I suspected, would be ill fitted to understand the Kur, or men.

“What you say is quite possibly true,” I said.

“I shall not ask you to serve Kurii,” said the man.

“You honor me,” I said.

“You are of the Warriors,” he said.

“It is true,” I said. Never had I been divested of the scarlet. Let who would, with steel, dispute my caste with me.

“Well,” said the man on the dais. “It is late, and we must all retire. You must be up before dawn.”

“Where is Vella?” I asked.

“I have confined her to quarters,” he said.

“Must I address you,” I asked. “As Abdul?”

The man lowered his veil. “No,” he said, “not if you do not wish to do so.”

“I know you better under another name,” I said.

“That is true,” said the man.

Hassan began to struggle. He could not part the fiber on his wrists. The ropes burned on his throat. He was held by the guards on his knees. The blade of a scimitar stood at his throat He was quiet.

“Are we to be slain at dawn?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

I looked at him puzzled. Hassan, too, seemed shocked.

“You will begin a journey, with others, at dawn,” said the man. “It will be a long journey, afoot. It is my hope that you will both arrive safely.”

“What are you doing with us?” demanded Hassan.

“I herewith,” said Ibn Saran, “sentence you to the brine pits of Klima.”

We struggled to our feet, but each of us, by two guards, was held.

“Tafa, Riza,” said Ibn Saran, to two of the girls, “strip.”

They did so, to collar and brand. “You will be taken below, to the dungeons,” said Ibn Saran to us. “There you will be chained by the neck in separate cells.

In the cell of each, we will place a naked slave girl, she, too, chained by the neck, her chain within your reach, that you may, if you wish, pull her to you.”

“Ibn Saran is generous,” I said.

“I give Hassan a woman,” said he, “for his audacity. I give you, too, a woman, for your manhood, and for we are two of a kind, mercenaries in higher wars.” He turned to one of the girls. “Straighten your body, Tafa,” he said. She did so, and stood beautifully, a marvelous female slave. “Chain Riza,” said he to one of the guards, selecting the women who would serve us, by his will, “beside Hassan, this bandit, and Tafa by the side of this man, he of the Warriors, whose name is Tarl Cabot.”

Metal leashes were snapped on the girls’ throats.

“Regard Tafa, Tarl Cabot,” said Ibn Saran. I did so. “Let Tafa’s body give you much pleasure,” he said. “For there are no women at Klima.”

We were turned about and taken from the audience hall of the Guard of the Dunes Abdul, the Salt Ubar, he who was Ibn Saran.