Tribesmen of Gor

24 I Bind a Girl, Reserving Her for Myself, I Then Address Myself to the Duties of Steel

The outcome of the battle, some twenty pasangs from the kasbah of the Salt Ubar, had never been in doubt. That Ibn Saran met us at all, with the twenty-five hundred mercenaries be could muster does him much credit.

He was swiftly enveloped. Many of his men, I believe, did not understand the nature of the forces they faced until we swept over the hills upon them. We outnumbered them four or five to one. Many of the mercenaries, unable to escape, discarded their bucklers and dismounted, thrusting their lances and scimitars into the ground. There was hard fighting, however, in the vicinity of Ibn Saran’s own men, those of the Salt Ubar and his allies, those who had fought with Tarna. I came once within one hundred and fifty yards of Ibn Saran; Hassan, or Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, came within twenty yards of him, fighting like a wild animal, but was turned back at last by a wall of bucklers, a hedge of lances. I did not see Tarna in the battle. I did see her men, but they fought under Ibn Saran. I gathered she had been relieved of her command.

Late in the afternoon, Ibn Saran, with four hundred riders, broke through our lines and fled northwest.

We did not pursue him but consolidated our victory.

“He will take refuge in his kasbah,” said Hassan. “It will be difficult to take the kasbah.”

That was true. If it could not be taken swiftly, it might not be possible to take it at all. We did not have enough water to maintain our men in the field.

At best we might be able, failing to take the kasbah, to invest it with a smaller force that it would be practical to supply with water from Red Rock.

Such a siege might last for months. Our extended, thinned lines would invite attack; it would be difficult, too, even if our investing lines were not broken in force, to prevent the escape of small parties at night.

“Ibn Saran,” I said, “may slip through your fingers.”

“We must take the kasbah.” said Hassan.

“Perhaps I can help you,” I said. I fingered the ring of the Kurii, which hung about my neck on its leather string.

The girl knelt before the low vanity with the natural, insolent grace of the trained slave. She combed, with a broad, curved comb of kailiauk horn, her long, dark hair. The comb was yellow. She wore a bit of yellow slave silk, her collar.

She was beautiful in the mirror. How like a fool I felt that I had ever surrendered her. She knelt on broad, smooth scarlet tiles. About her left ankle, looped, were several golden slave bangles. The light in the room was from two tharlarion-oil lamps, one on each side of the mirror.

She had not yet noticed the bit of silk I had left to the side.

I regarded the slave, as she combed her hair. She, in a dungeon, in a holding somewhere of agents of Kurii, had betrayed Priest-Kings. Chained nude in a dungeon, in the darkness, among the urts, she had screamed for mercy. She had revealed all she knew of the Sardar, the plans of Priest-Kings, their practices and devices, the weakness of the Nest. If she fell into the hands of Samos I had little doubt he would have her bound and thrown to the urts, among the garbage, in the canals of Port Kar. Emptied of information she had been brought by Ibn Saran to the Tahari. Here she had, for him, identified me, when I entered the Tahari. I remembered her as one of the slaves who, bangled, in the high, tight vest of red silk, the sashed, diaphanous chalwar, had served wine in the palace of Suleiman at Nine Wells. She had been in the audience chamber when Suleiman had been struck. She had testified that it bad been I who had attacked him, I had seen her smile, when taken from the rack, after her testimony. Once she had served Priest-Kings; then, later, she had well served others, the Kurii and their agents; I watched her comb her hair, now I suspected she was for most practical purposes useless in the politics of planets; but she had been spared; I watched her movements; I smiled; I, too, would have spared her; surely she was not now completely without use; she retained. I noted, doubtless the reason for which she had been spared, the general utilities of my charming, pretty slave girl. Her flesh would bring a high price. To see her was to wish to own her.

Pretty Vella. She put down the comb and reached for a tiny bottle of perfume.

She touched her neck, below the ears, and her body, about the shoulders, with the scent. I knew the scent.

I had carried it with me to Klima. I had not forgotten it.

Her eye, as she put aside the tiny bottle of perfume, was caught by the bit of silk, lying to one side on the vanity.

She looked at it, puzzled, curious.

I recalled the morning I had, in chains, waited to be herded with other wretches to Klima. I had looked up. In a narrow window in the wall of the kasbah, high over my head, there had stood a woman, a slave girl, veiled and robed in yellow, a slave master behind her. With the permission of the slave master she had removed her veil. With what contempt, and scorn, and triumph she bad looked upon me, a mere male slave, chained and bound for Klima, below her. She had thrown me a token, a square of silk, slave silk, red, some eighteen inches square, redolent with the perfume fitted by some perfumer, on the order of her master, to her slave personality, her slave nature and slave body. It was something by which I might remember her at Klima, I had vowed to return from Klima. She had wished to see me hooded and led away. This treat, as useful discipline, despite her pleas, had been denied her by the slave master. She had thrown me a kiss, and then, before the slave master, hurried from the window.

I stood back in the room. I flicked the switch on the ring I wore, that I might be visible to her.

She picked up the bit of silk. She opened it. It was tattered, faded, almost white. She held it open before her, looking at it. She took it in her hands and held it to her face, inhaling it. Suddenly she cried out in joy “Tarl!” She turned, springing to her feet. “Tarl!” she cried. “Tarl!” She ran to me, with a clash of bangles, and took me in her arms, her head at my chest, weeping. Tarl!” she wept. “Tarl! Tarl! I love you! I love you!”

I took her wrists, and forced them, slowly, from my body. I held them. She struggled to reach me, to press her lips to my body. I did not permit this. She threw her head, in frustration, from side to side. Her face was stained with tears. She wept. “Let me touch you,” she cried. “Let me hold you! I love you! I love you!”

I held her, by the upper arms, from me. She looked up into my eyes. “Oh, Tarl,” she wept. “Can you ever forgive me? Can you ever forgive me?”

“Kneel,” I told her.

Slowly, numbly, the beauty slipped to her knees before me. “Tarl?” she said.

I drew from my garment a rag. It was thin, brief, tattered, much torn; it was cheap rep-cloth, brown and coarse; it was stained with dirt, with grease. I had found it in the kitchens of Ibn Saran.

I threw it against her body. “Put it on,” I told her.

“I am a high slave,” she said.

“Put it on,” I told her.

She parted the bit of yellow silk she wore, dropping it to one side. She reached for the bit of rep-cloth.

“Remove first the bangles,” I told her. She sat on the tiles and, one by one, slipped the bangles from her left ankle. Then she stood up, and pulled the rag over her head. Her body involuntarily shuddered as the grease-thick rag slipped over her beauty and clung snug, revealingly, about it; I examined her, walking about her; I tore the neckline down, to better expose the beauty of her breasts; I ripped away a strip from the garment’s hem, shortening it; she must now walk with exquisite care; I ripped the left side of the garment a bit more, to better reveal the delicious line from her left breast to her left hip.

I backed away a few feet from her.

She faced me. “The gown much reveals me,” she said, “Tarl.”

“Cross and extend your wrists,” I told her. She did so. With a strip of leather binding fiber, I fastened them together. The strip was long and enough was left to lead her, serving as tether.

“We do not have a great deal of time,” I told her. “There will soon be fighting in the kasbah.”

“I love you,” she said.

I looked at her with fury.

She was startled at my anger. “I am sorry I have so offended you,” she whispered. “I have suffered much for it. You cannot know how I have suffered, weeping in the nights. I am so sorry, Tarl!”

I did not speak.

“I was cruel, and terrible,” she said, “and petty.” She looked down, miserably.

“I can never forgive myself,” she whispered. She looked up. “Can you forgive me, Tarl, ever?” she asked.

I looked about. I could use one of the tharlarion-oil lamps by the large mirror.

“I testified against you at Nine Wells,” she said. “I lied. I spoke falsehood.”

“You did as you were told, Slave Girl,” I told her.

“Oh, Tarl!” she wept. She looked at me, fearlessly. “For Lydius,” she said, “I wanted to send you to Klima!”

“Your wishes are not of interest to me,” I told her.

She looked at me with horror. She wept then, and put down her head. “I identified you for Ibn Saran,” she said.

I shrugged.

“Are you not angry!” she cried.

“A slave girl,” I said to her, “owes her master absolute obedience.”

She looked aside, angrily. “I dare not even speak to you what else I did,” she said.

“You betrayed Priest-Kings,” I told her, “fully, and to the best of your ability.”

She turned white. “Will it make a difference?” she said.

“I do not know,” I told her. “It could mean the loss of Earth and Gor, the ultimate victory of the Kurii.”

She shuddered. “I was weak,” she said. “There was a dungeon. I was stripped, chained. It was dark. There were urts. I was terrified. I could not help myself.

They told me I would be freed.”

By the leather strap I yanked her wrists, indicating to her that they were well tied. “You will not be freed,” I told her.

“Oh, Tarl,” she wept. Then she asked, “Will what I did make a difference?”

“I do not know,” I told her. “Perhaps those on the steel worlds will not believe your protestations. They may believe you only spoke sincerely what you believed to be true, not what, necessarily, was true.”

She shuddered miserably.

“There are many who know of your treachery,” I said. “Doubtless some will he captured, or fall into the bands of agents of Priest-Kings. Soon your life will be worth little among the agents of Priest-Kings.” I thought of Samos. He was not a patient man.

She lifted her eyes to me. “I could be tortured and impaled,” she said.

“You are a slave girl,” I told her. “No such honorable death would be yours. You would be given one of the deaths of a slave girl, who has not been pleasing. In Port Kar, doubtless, you would be given the Garbage Death-bound naked and hurled to the urts in the canals.”

She sank to her knees in horror. I looked at her. In time she again lifted her head.

“Can you forgive me,’’ she asked, “for what I have done?”

“What seems to concern you,” I said, “does not to me seem to require forgiveness. You are a slave girl. You were simply obedient to your master. No man objects to a girl obeying her master.”

“Then,” she said, softly, “you will not even have the kindness to be cruel to me?”

“I am not lenient,” said I, “Girl, with certain other gratifications you permitted yourself, which were not commanded of you.”

She looked at me. “What?” she asked.

“At Nine Wells,” I said, “following your testimony, falsely accusing me, when removed from the rack, you looked upon me, and smiled.”

“So tiny a thing?” she said. “I’m sorry, Tarl.”

“And when I was chained, and bound for Klima’ “ I said, “again you smiled upon me. You cast me a token, a bit of silk. You blew me a kiss.”

“I hated you!” she cried, from her knees.

I smiled.

“I acted like a slave girl,” she said, her head down.

“Do you know why you acted like a slave girl?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

I looked upon her, in the brief garment, bound kneeling before me, looking up at me. “Because you are a slave girl,” I told her.

“Tarl!” she cried.

There was a sudden pounding on the door. I slipped instantly behind the girl, my hand over her mouth, my dagger across her throat. She could feel its edge.

“You will not cry out or give the alarm,” I told her.

She nodded, miserably. I removed my hand from her mouth.

“Vella! Vella!” called a voice. There was more pounding.

“Do you not trust me, Tarl?” she asked, softly. “

“You are a slave girl,” I whispered. “Answer. The knife was still at her throat.

“Yes, Master!” called the girl.

“You know that at the twentieth hour you are to give pleasure to the guards in the north tower!” called the man.

“I am applying my cosmetics,” she called, “I shall hurry!”

“If you are late by so much as five, Ehn, “ be called, “you will be caressed by the five fingers of leather.” This was an allusion to the Gorean five-strap slave whip, commonly used on girls because of the softness and width of its lashes. It punishes severely but, because of its construction, does not permanently mark the girl.

“I hurry, Master! I hurry!” cried Vella.

The man left.

“You are in great danger,” said Vella. “You must flee.” I sheathed the dagger I had held her in obedience with.

“Those in the kasbah are in greater danger than I,” I smiled.

“How did you get in?” she said. “Is there a secret entrance?”

I shrugged. “I entered unobserved,” I said. “I looked at her. “Curiosity is not becoming in a Kajira,” I said.

She stiffened.

I had waited near one of the gates of the kasbah, in the shelter of the ring’s invisibility. When a reconnoitering party left the kasbah I had simply slipped unseen within. I had stopped in the kitchens of the kasbah to find a suitable garment for Vella. Then I had examined various areas, until I found her, in a room in which girls, who are to be summoned to the pleasure of men, may prepare themselves.

I looked to the lamps at the side of the mirror. One of them would do well.

Soon, Vella closely before me, her wrists bound, the tether looped about her forearm, I entered one of the long, tiled halls, carrying one of the lamps.

We passed only one or two men. I wore garments of the men of the Salt Ubar, taken from a prisoner. There were new mercenaries in the kasbah. No notice was taken of me, though much notice was taken of the luscious slave who, so briefly and shamefully clad, preceded me, I saw Vella, the vain wench, lift her body, instinctually, beautifully, brazenly, as the eyes of each man fell upon her.

She, a slave girl, found much pleasure in being well displayed before masters.

I chuckled. She tossed her bead, angrily.

When I came to one of the narrow windows, not wide enough to admit the body of a man, facing the desert on the north, I lifted and lowered the lamp, and then did this once again. I blew out the lamp. I put it down. We stood in darkness, save for the moonlight at the window.

We heard the sentry’s bar, on the wall, striking the twentieth hour.

“They will want me, Tarl, in the north tower,” said Vella. “It is the Twentieth Hour.”

“I think not,” I said. I looked out over the desert. We heard the sentry’s bar.

“When I do not appear, they will come for me. They may find you. Escape while you can.”

I saw men, riders, pouring out of the desert.

“They await me in the north tower,” she said.

“I think, in the north tower,” I said, “They have other things now on their mind than a slave girl.”

“I do not understand,” she said.

I had paid a visit to the north tower, which commanded the north gate.

“The kasbah,” I said, “will fall.”

“The kasbah will never fall,” said the girl. “There are water and supplies here for months. One man on the walls is worth ten in the desert. No force sufficient to invest the kasbah can be long maintained in its vicinity.”

At the north gate, in the gate room, at the foot of the tower, ten guards struggled, come recently again to consciousness, finding themselves bound and gagged. Above the gate, in the tower itself, lay another ten.

We heard the last stroke of the bar. It was the Twentieth Hour.

“Flee!” whispered Vella. “Flee!”

The north gate, deplorably, perhaps, from the point of view of those within the kasbah, and surely from the point of view of the guards, had been left ajar.

“Flee!” said Vella.

“Look,” I told her. I put my hand over her mouth, and held her to the window. I beard her gasp, and struggle. She squirmed. A girl within the kasbah, she was terrified at what she saw. Like any beautiful female, slave or free, she knew what it might portend for her. She tried to cry out. She could not do so. “Cry out, Slave Girl,” I whispered. “Give the alarm.” Her voice, beneath my large, heavy hand, was muffled. She moaned in misery. She was helpless. Her eyes were wild over my hand.

Riders streamed toward the kasbah. I saw the white burnoose of Hassan, swelling behind him, in their lead.

In a moment someone on the walls had seen the riders. There were shouts. The alarm bar, struck by its great hammer, began to ring madly. Men began to appear in the yard below. Men swarmed to the walls. But to their horror riders were already within the yard, fighting with defenders. Men leaped from their kaiila, climbing, scimitars flashing, up the narrow stairs, toward the walls. The enemy was within. The enemy was behind them. Riders streamed in through the gate, and, too, men afoot, running over the sand. The north gate had fallen. The north tower was theirs. More men entered, flooding within the walls of the kasbah.

Defenders rushed forth. Everywhere there was swordplay, the ringing of steel, on bucklers. I saw torches. There was much shouting. I heard the crying out of men.

I stepped back. I removed my hand from the mouth of the-slave girl. Vella looked at me, her eyes wide with horror.

“Cry out now, Slave Girl,” I said. “Give the alarm.”

“Why did you not let me cry out?” She asked. “They will kill us all!”

She had the instinctive fear of the girl of riders of the desert.

I turned her about, and thrust her before me, down the hall. “I am one of them,”

I told her. She moaned.

I could hear shouting in the kasbah. By the arm I thrust her again into the room where I had first found her, where there were the broad, scarlet tiles the vanity, the mirror, now a single tharlarion-oil lamp at the side of the mirror.

“You have returned for me,” she said, pressing her body to mine, lifting her head. “I wanted you to come back for me. I dreamed that you would!”

I thrust her back. I could hear shouting outside. “I have come back for you,” I told her.

“You love me!” she cried.

She cried out with misery when she saw my eyes.

“Then why?” she begged, piteously.

“I want you,” I told her.

“You love me,” she whispered.

“No,” I said.

“I do not understand,” she whispered.

“Foolish female of Earth,” I laughed, “do you still understand so little of your incredible desirability? Do you not yet know that it drives men mad with desire to look upon you? Have you no sense, foolish woman, of the madness of passion the very sight of you inspires in men?”

She turned away. “I know that I am attractive,” she said. Her voice was uncertain, frightened.

“You are an ignorant female,” I said. “You do not know what the very sight of you does to men.”

She spun to face me, her eyes flashing. “What does it do?” she demanded.

“To see you is to want you,” I told her, “and to want you is to want to own you.

“Own!” she cried, in horror.

“Yes,” I said. “Every man wants to own his woman, completely. He wants to have her in his absolute power. He wants to have absolute control over her, in every respect, however, minute. Dominance is genetically dispositional in his nature.

Males are divided into those who satisfy their nature and those who do not.

Males who satisfy their nature are vital and joyful, and, statistically, live long; those who deny their nature are miserable and, statistically, shorter lived, their tortured body chemistry falling prey frequently to hideous diseases.”

“Men want women to be free!” said Vella.

“Men, sometimes,” I said, “will accord small freedoms to women, thinking that these will make them more pleasing. Surely you are familiar with the master who, at certain moments, permits his girl to speak her mind. And at these moments she does so, well and boldly. But she knows that these permissions may, at his whim, be withdrawn. This torments her with joy, and she revels in his strength. He gives her what she most deeply desires, in the female genetic depth of her, the delicious feeling of her own domination, the subjection of her beauty and weakness to the will of a strong male.”

“Men on Earth,” she cried, “will be dethroned by law!”

“Earth has a complex and intricate political history,” I said. “Policies and institutions, over hundreds of years, may have consequences unforeseen by their authors, consequences which would have horrified them. On Earth, men have succeeded in building a complicated trap from which they may perhaps be unable to escape. Perhaps they can shatter its bars. Perhaps, in the cage they themselves have built, they will merely languish and die.”

Vella said nothing.

“Do you feel,” I asked, “that the women of Earth are happier than those of Gor.”

“No,” she said. “No, no.

“Kneel,” I said.

She knelt.

“On Gor,” I asked, “who have been the happiest women you have known.”

“Many of the happiest women I have known on Gor,” she whispered, “have been mere slave girls.”

“Man has a genetic disposition to dominance,” I said. “This is doubted by no one qualified to form an opinion on the matter. It may, in certain circumstances, be politically expedient to deny this truth, but that is a separate question and involves separate issues.”

“I do not doubt men have a disposition to dominate,” said Vella. “But they must control this disposition.”

“Tell a man not to breathe,” I told her. “Tell his heart not to beat.” I looked at her. “Tell a man not to be himself.”

Vella looked at me, stricken.

“I know little of rights,” I said, “for I am more accustomed to attending to realities, but permit me to ask you this question? Does a man have the right to be a man?”

“Of course,” said Vella.

“What if,” I asked, “in being a man, it was necessary to exercise the disposition for dominance?”

“Then,” said Vella,” no man has the right to be a man.”

“What if,” I asked, “in order to fulfill oneself as a woman, it was necessary, at least at crucial times, to be subject to the total domination of a male?”

“Then,” said Vella, “no woman would have the right to be a woman.”

“Under these circumstances outlined then,” I said, “neither a man nor a woman would have the right to be themselves.”

“Yes,” said Vella.

“The circumstances I have outlined,” I told her, “are reality. It is undeniable men have a genetic disposition to domination. Does it seem likely to you that this disposition could have been selected for in isolation?”

She looked at me, kneeling, not answering.

“Does it not seem likely that men and women, together, in a complementary fashion, forming a race, a kind of animal, Were conjointly shaped by the long, harsh application of evolutionary forces? Does it seem likely to you that biology would have shaped the man and neglected the woman?”

“No,” said Vella. “It does not.” She put her head down.

“Nature, in teaching man to dominate, has not faded to provide his victim.”

Vella looked up, angrily.

“Luscious and beautiful women,” I said. “And what must be the genetic dispositions of these women, beneath the overlays, the encrustations, the conditionings of impersonal, mechanistic, industrial societies, to which sex is an embarrassment and human beings a puzzle?”

“I do not know,” she said.

“There is in them, perhaps,” I suggested, “a disposition to respond to dominance, to yearn for it, to seek it out, to, by their behavior, beg for it, They try to control, but in their hearts, they yearn to be controlled, totally, for they are females.”

“What you say goes against much of what I have been taught,” said Vella.

“Do females,” I asked, “wish to relate to strong or weak males?”

“Strong males,” she said.

“Why would this be?” I asked.

She looked down, not answering. “What if, Tarl,” she asked, “I should have these feelings, these terrible, unworthy feelings? What if I should, in my heart, desire domination by Men?”

“A healthy society,” I said, “would make provision for the satisfaction of these feelings.”

She looked up at me.

“Gorean society “ I said, “makes provision for them. Surely you have heard of the relation of master and slave?”

“I have heard of it,” she snapped.

“The most complete and perfect institution for the total domination of a woman is that of female slavery,” I said. “How could a woman be more perfectly and completed dominated, more helpless, more dependent on a male, more vulnerable, more subject to a man’s will, more at a man’s mercy than to be literally his, an owned slave?” I looked at her. “Pretty Vella,” I said, “to look at you is to want you, to want you is to want to own you, completely, every bit of you, to have you completely at one’s mercy-completely.”

“It is such lust,” she wept. “It is such a complete and uncompromising desire.

What could compare with it? I had not known such passion, such desire, could exist. It overwhelms me. I can scarcely breathe. And I am to be its helpless victim.”

I heard men shouting, in the balls, not far from the door.

“No!” she wept, rising to her feet, trying to turn and run. I was on her in an instant and, taking her in my arms, put her on the floor, sitting. I took her wrists and, with the length of the tether, bent her forward and tied her wrists to her ankles. The end of the tether I knotted in and about the leather on her wrists, so that she would be unable to reach it, even with the fingers of one of her hands. I looked upon her. She sat, bound, the rag I had given her high about her thighs. She was incredibly desirable. She saw herself in the mirror. She could not rise, tied as she was, so she could not reach the other tharlation-oil lamp, high, hanging from a chain, at the side of the mirror.

“Free me!” she wept. “Free me!”

I checked the knots. They were satisfactory. She would be held perfectly.

There was the sound of scimitars clashing down the hall. “Am I not to be freed?” she asked.

On her left thigh, rather high, small and deep, was the sign of the four bosk horns. I fingered it. She recoiled. “Kamchak branded me,” she said.

“What does it mean that you have bound me?” she asked.

I decided that I would have her rebranded.

She looked at me. I took a long set of strands of her dark hair, some inch and a half in thickness. I loosely knotted them at the right side of her cheek.

“The bondage knot,” she whispered.

“This will mark you as having been taken,” I said.

“Taken?” she asked. I stood up. She struggled. I strode from her, going toward the door.

“Tarl!” she cried.

I turned to face her.

“I love you!” she cried.

“You are a consummate actress,” I told her.

“No!” she cried. “It is true!”

“It is of no interest to me whether it is true or not,” I told her.

She looked at me, tears in her eyes, sitting, bound, the loosely looped bondage knot at the side of her face, at the right cheek.

“Does it not matter to you?” she cried.

“No,” I said.

“Do you not love me!” she wept.

“No,” I said.

“But you have come here,” she said. “She struggled. “You have risked much.” She wept. “What is it then you want of me?” she asked.

I laughed. “I want to own you,” I said.

“You are a man of Earth!” she protested.

“No,” I told her. “I am of Gor.”

She shuddered in her bonds. “You are,” she whispered. “I see it in your eyes. I am at the mercy of a man of Gor.” Her beauty, helpless in its leather bonds, shuddered with the comprehension of what this might mean.

I turned away.

“Tarl!” she cried.

I turned again, angry.

“Am I to be kept as a slave?” she asked.

“Yes,” I told her.

“Under full discipline?” she said, disbelievingly.

“Yes,” I said.

“To the whip?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Could you, Tarl,” she asked, “whip me? Could you be capable of that, if I displeased you? Could you, once of Earth, be so strong?”

“You have already much displeased me,” I told her. I recalled Nine Wells, when she had smiled. I remembered the window in the wall of the kasbah, the kiss she had flung me, the token of silk.

“Am I to be whipped now?” she asked. It would have been easy, parting the back of the rag she wore, she tied as she was, to whip her then. She knew that.

“No,” I said.

I went to her and took the bit of faded silk, which I had carried to Klima and back. She looked at it, in misery. I tied it about her left wrist, above the binding fiber. She wore it as I had worn it.

“When will you whip me?” she asked.

“When it is to my convenience,” I said.

The door burst open and two men, back to me, backing through the door, embattled, fighting, others outside the door, entered the room. Scimitars clashed. One of them turned wildly. I unsheathed my scimitar. He knew me then for an enemy. We engaged. He fell back from my blade. The other fellow was cut down by the door. I threw aside the robes of the man of the Salt Ubar. Those outside the, door lifted their scimitars to me.

“I shall join you presently,” I told them.

With my boots I rolled the two fallen men from the room closed the large double door and again turned to face Vella. We were then again alone in the room, in the light of the single tharlarion-oil lamp.

I turned again to face her. She sat on the floor, bent forward, her wrists tied to her ankles; the rag she wore was well up her thighs; the pleasures of her breasts were not much concealed, as I had torn the garment; the calves of her legs, drawn up, were marvelous; her face, her hair, was beautiful.

“You are an exquisitely beautiful slave, Vella,” I said.

“One men wish to own?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“And on this world,” she wept, “I can be owned!”

“You are owned,” I told her.

“Yes,” she wept. “I know. I know that I am owned.”

“I think,” I said, “that I will give you to Hakim of Tor.”

She suddenly looked at me. “No! No!” she wept. “No, please, no!”

“I can do what I wish,” I informed her.

“Oh, no, no, no!” she wept. She knew then the true misery of the slave girl.

I went to her and pulled down the rag from her right shoulder. With a lipstick, from one of the tiny drawers in the vanity, I inscribed Taharic script on her shoulder.

“What does it say?” she wept.

“It says,” I said, “‘I am the slave girl of Hakim of Tor.”

She looked at the writing in horror upon her body. “No, Tarl, please, no!” she cried.

I stood up. She looked up at me.

“Tarl!” she wept.

“Be silent,” I said, “Slave Girl.”

She put her head down. “Yes,” she said.

“Yes?” I asked.

She looked up. There were tears in her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered, “Master.”

I strode from her, and closed the door behind me. There was slaughter to be done in the halls. It was the work of men. There was a time for work, and a time for the pleasures of slave girls. It was now the time for work. I strode toward the sound of metal clashing in the distance.