I approached Thurnus with the Sul paga and knelt before him.

But there is danger, too, in the slave girl's beauty, as any delight who wears the brand knows. As I had, naturally, inadvertently, almost in spite of myself, become more desirable and beautiful, the sexual aggressions of men against me, which I, as slave, might not resist, had become more frequent and powerful. Sometimes I was merely taken by the hair and thrown to the grass and raped, or seized by an ankle and thrown over a log, that I might be used for their pleasure, or kicked to my knees before them, that I might intimately please them. I was much at their mercy. They found me desirable. It is dangerous for a girl to be beautiful on Gor, particularly if she is a slave. The more beautiful and vulnerable she is the more likely it is that her beauty will be seized and dominated, and ruthlessly exploited, by masters. Consequently, though I loved my apparently increasing beauty, and desirability, and was incredibly thrilled with it, and my new attractiveness, I was not unaware that it was attended with risks. It was one thing to be raped by my master's men, and quite another to know that the same passions which I aroused in them I would similarly inspire in the breasts of complete strangers. I was not eager to be slave-raped by strangers, which, Eta assured me, was a not uncommon experience for a pretty slave. On the other hand, I feared slave rape less than abduction. I did not want to be carried away. It was one thing for a man to hastily use me and discard me; it was another to bind me and carry me away, to be his own slave. I did not wish to leave my master, whom I loved.

Thurnus held out his cup. I prepared to put Sul paga in the cup. Then he held the cup closer to him. I must needs approach more closely.

Exciting men is a price a girl pays for her beauty. I was more than willing to pay that price. I was joyful to pay that price. Yet I knew that beauty on a world such as Gor was not without its risks. I suddenly wished I wore a name collar, like Eta, that would make it clear to whom I belonged. My master had not even bothered to put a collar on me. I was a collarless slave.

"Come closer, little beauty," said Thurnus.

I crept a bit closer to him, on my knees, with the paga. I wore the scandalously brief, torn, hooked, sleeveless Ta-Teera, which so displayed a girl's charms.

I feared Thurnus. I had seen his eyes on me often.

I poured Sul paga into his goblet, my head bending quite near to him. My hair was longer now than when I had come to Gor. It was still shorter than that of most slave girls. Most slave girls wear their hair long and loose, though sometimes it is held back with a headband or tied behind the head with a string or ribbon, in a ponytail. My hair fell before my shoulders, over the Ta-Teera.

My master, with his lieutenants, sat cross-legged in the large, thatched hut of Thurnus. It was high, and conical, and floored with rough planks, set some six or seven feet on poles above the ground, that it might be drier and protected from common insects and vermin. The entrance was reached by a flight of rough, narrow steps. The entrances to many of the huts in the village, similarly constructed, were reached by ladders. Thurnus was caste leader. In the center of the hut was a large flat, circular piece of metal, on which, on legs, might sit braziers or the small, flattish cooking stoves, using pressed, hardened wood, common in the villages north and west of Ar. About the walls were the belongings of the house, in coffers and bales. Elsewhere about the village were storage huts and animal pens. Mats covered the rough planks. From the walls hung vessels and leathers. A smoke hole in the top of the hut permitted the escape of fumes. The hut, probably because of its construction, was not smoky. Also, though it was windowless and had but one door, it was not, at this time of day, dark. Through the straw of its roof and sides there was a considerable, delicate filtering of sunlight. The hut in the summer is light and airy. The frame of such a hut is constructed of Ka-la-na and Tem wood. The roof is rethatched and the walls rewoven every third or fourth year. In the winters, which are not harsh at this latitude, such huts are covered on the outside with painted canvas or, among the richer peasants, with ornamented, painted bosk hides, protected and glossed with oil. The village of Tabuk 's Ford lay some four hundred pasangs generally north and slightly west. The Vosk road was the road used many years ago by the horde of Pa-Kur, in its approach to the city of Ar. We had traveled the Vosk road after crossing the Vosk on barges. It is wide, and built like a great wall, sunk in the earth. It is marked with pasang stones. It is, I suppose, given its nature, a military road leading to the north, broad enough to accommodate war tharlarion, treading abreast, and the passage, two or three, side by side, of thousands of supply wagons and siege engines, without unduly, for more than several pasangs, extending and exposing the lines of the march. Such roads permit the swift movement of thousands of men, useful either in the defense of borders, the meeting of armies, or in the expansions of imperialism, the conquests of the weak.

Thurnus looked at me.

"You may kiss my cup, Slave," said he. I pressed my lips to his cup, which he held in his hand. I was weak. I was a girl. I was at the mercy of men.

On the wall of the hut, behind Thurnus, hung the great bow, of supple Ka-la-na. It was tipped with notched bosk horn. It was now unstrung, but the string, of hemp, whipped with silk, lay ready, looped loose upon the broad, curved yellow wood. Near the bow hung a mighty quiver, in which nestled flight and sheaf arrows, and many of each thereof. Such a weapon I could not even bend. It required, too, not simply the strength of a man, but of a man who was unusually strong. Most men, no more than a woman, could use such a fearsome device. It was a common weapon among peasants. It is often called the peasant bow. The other common peasant weapon is the great staff, some six feet in length, some two inches in width. Two such staffs rested to one side, inclining upright against the wall, between a yellow box, about a foot high, and a roll of coarsely woven rep-cloth.

"And do not remove your lips from the cup," said Thurnus, "until given permission."

I kept my lips pressed to the cup, my head bent to the side. A Gorean slave girl dares not disobey.

"Thurnus," said his free companion, a large, heavy woman, in a rep-cloth veil, kneeling to one side. She was squat and heavy. She was not much pleased.

There was a kennel nearby, where Thurnus kept his girls. He did not tend his fields alone.

"Be quiet," said Thurnus, to her, "Woman."

To one side, against the wall of the hut, there rested, on a small table, a piece of plain, irregularly shaped rock, which Thurnus, years earlier, when first he had founded the farm, later to be the community, of Tabuk's Ford, had taken from his own fields. He had, one morning, years ago, bow upon his back and staff in hand, seed at his thigh, after months of wandering, come to a place which had pleased him. It lay in the basin of the Verl. He had been driven from his father's village, for his attendance upon a young free woman of the village. Her brother's arms and legs had he broken. The woman had followed him. She had become his companion. With him, too, had come two young men, and two other women, who saw in him, the young, raw-boned giant, the makings of a caste leader. Months had they wandered. Then, following Tabuk, in the basin of the Verl, he had come to a place which had pleased him. There the animals had forded the river. He had not followed them further. He had driven the yellow stake of claimancy into the dark soil, near the Verl, and had stood there, his weapons at hand, beside the stake, until the sun had reached the zenith and then, slowly, set. It was then he had reached to his feet and picked up the stone, from his own fields. It now rested in his hut. It was the Home Stone of Thurnus.