"Give me my man," said Thorn, gesturing to the figure that lay in the grass, still moving.

I decided that Thorn, whatever he was or wasn" t, was a good officer. "Take him," I said.

The spearman beside Thorn went to the fallen man and examined his wound. The other warrior was clearly dead.

"He may live," said the spearman.

Thorn nodded. "Bind his wound."

Thorn turned to me again.

"I still want the woman," he said.

"You may not take her," I said.

"She is only one woman," said Thorn.

"Then giver her up," I said.

"One of my men is dead," said Thorn. "You can have his share of her selling price."

"You are generous," I said.

"Then it is agreed?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I think we can kill you," said Thorn, plucking a stalk of grass and meditatively chewing on it, regarding me all the while. "Perhaps," I admitted.

"On the other hand," said Thorn, "I do not wish to lose another man." "Then give up the woman," I said.

Thorn looked at me intently, puzzled, chewing on the piece of grass. "Who are you?" he asked.

I was silent.

"You are an outlaw," he said. "That I can see by the lack of insignia on your shield and tunic."

I saw no reason to dispute his opinion.

"Outlaw," said he, "what is your name?"

"Tarl," I responded.

"Of what city?" he asked.

It was the inevitable question.

"Ko-ro-ba," I said.

The effect was electric. The girl, who had been standing behind us, stifled a scream. Thorn and his warrior sprang to their feet. My sword was free of its sheath.

"Returned from the Cities of Dust," gasped the warrior.

"No," I said, "I am a living man, as you."

"Better you had gone to the Cities of Dust," said Thorn. "You are cursed by the Priest-Kings."

I looked at the girl.

"Your name is the most hated on Gor," she said, her voice flat, her eyes not meeting mine.

We four stood together, not speaking. It seemed a long time. I felt the grass on my ankles, still wet from the morning dew. I heard a bird cry in the distance.

Thorn shrugged.

"I will need time," he said, "to bury my man."

Silently, Thorn and the other warrior scooped out a narrow trench and buried their comrade. Then wrapping a cloak about two spears, and fastening it with binding fibre, they formed an improvised litter. On this, Thorn and his warrior placed the wounded companion.

Thorn looked at the girl and, to my astonishment, she approached him and extended her wrists. He snapped slave bracelets on them.

"You do not need to go with them," I told her.

"I would bring you no pleasure," she said bitterly.

"I will free you," I said.

"I accept nothing from the hands of Tarl of Ko-ro-ba," she said. I reached out my hand to touch her, and she shuddered and drew back. Thorn laughed mirthlessly. "Better to have gone to the Cities of Dust than to be Tarl of Ko-ro-ba," he said.

I looked at the girl, now after her long days of suffering and flight at last a captive, her slender wrists encircled at last by Thorn" s hated bracelets, beautifully wrought bracelets, like many, of exquisite workmanship, bright with colour, set even with jewels, but like all slave bracelets, of unyielding steel.

The bracelets contrasted with the meanness of her coarse brown garment. Thorn fingered the garment. "We will get rid of this," he told her. "Soon, when you have been properly prepared, you will be dressed in costly pleasure silk, given sandals perhaps, scarves, veils and jewels, garments to gladden the heart of a maiden."

"Of a slave," she said.

Thorn lifted her chin with his finger. "You have a beautiful throat," he said.

She looked at him angrily, sensing his meaning.

"It will soon wear a collar," he said.

"Whose?" she demanded haughtily.

Thorn looked at her carefully. The chase had apparently in his eyes been well worth it. "Mine," he said.

The girl almost swooned.

My fists were clenched.

"Well, Tarl of Ko-ro-ba," said Thorn, "it ends thus. I take this girl and leave you to the Priest-Kings."

"If you take her to Tharna," I said, "the Tatrix will free her." "I will not take her to Tharna, but to my villa," said Thorn, "which lies outside the city." He laughed unpleasantly. "And there," he said, "as a good man of Tharna should, I will revere her to my heart" s content." I felt my hand clench on the hilt of my sword.

"Stay your hand, Warrior," said Thorn. He turned to the girl. "To whom do you belong?" he asked.

"I belong to Thorn, Captain of Tharna," she said.

I replaced the sword in my sheath, shattered, helpless. I could kill Thorn and his warrior perhaps, free her. But what then? Free her to the beasts of Gor, to another slaver? She would never accept my protection, and by her own actions she preferred Thorn and slavery to a favour from the man called Tarl of Ko-ro-ba.

I looked at her. "Are you of Ko-ro-ba?" I asked.

She stiffened, and looked at me with hatred. "I was," she said. "I am sorry," I said.

She looked at me, tears of hatred burning in her eyes. "Why have you dared to survive your city?" she asked.

"To avenge it," I replied.

She looked into my eyes for a long time. And then, as Thorn and the warrior picked up the litter with their wounded companion and began to depart, she said to me, "Goodbye, Tarl of Ko-ro-ba."

"I wish you well, Vera of the Towers of the Morning," I said.

She turned quickly, following her master, and I remained standing alone in the field.

The streets of Tharna were crowded, yet strangely silent. The gate had been open and though I had been carefullly scrutinised by its guards, tall spearmen in blue helmets, no one had objected to my entry. It must be as I had heard, that the streets of Tharna were open to all men who came in peace, whatever their city.

Curiously, I examined the crowds, all seemingly bent on their business, yet strangely tight lipped, subdued, much different from the normal, bustling throngs of a Gorean city. Most of the male citizens wore grey tunics, perhaps indicative of their superiority to pleasure, their determination to be serious and responsible, to be worthy scions of that industrious and sobre city.

On the whole they seemed to me a pale and depressed lot, but I was confident they could accomplish what they set their minds to, that they might succeed in tasks which the average Gorean male, with his impatience and lightness of heart, would simply abandon as distasteful or not worth the effort, for the average Gorean male, it must be admitted, tends to regard the joys of life somewhat more highly than its duties.

On the shoulders of their grey tunics only a small band of colour indicated caste. Normally the caste colours of Gor would be in abundant evidence, enlivening the streets and bridges of the city, a glorious spectacle in Gor" s bright, clear air.

I wondered if men in this city were not proud of their castes as were, on the whole, other Goreans, even those of the so- called lower castes. Even men of a caste as low as that of the Tarn-Keepers were intolerably proud of their calling, for who else could raise and train those monstrous birds of prey? I supposed Zosk the Woodsman was proud in the knowledge that he with his great broad-headed ax could fell a tree in one blow, and that perhaps not even a Ubar could do as much. Even the Caste of Peasants regarded itself as the "Ox on which the Home Stone Rests" and could seldom be encouraged to leave their narrow strips of land, which they and their fathers before them had owned and made fruitful.

I missed in the crowd the presence of slave girls, common in other cities, usually lovely girls clad only in the brief, diagonally striped slave livery of Gor, a sleeveless, briefly skirted garment terminating some inches above the knee, a garment that contrasts violently with the heavy, cumbersome Robes of Concealment worn by free women. Indeed, it was known that some free women actually envied their lightly clad sisters in bondage, free, though wearing a collar, to come and go much as they pleased, to feel the wind on the high bridges, the arms of a master who celebrated their beauty and claimed them as his own. I remembered that in Tharna, ruled by its Tatrix, there would be few, if any, female slaves. Whether or not there were male slaves I could not well judge, for the collars would have been hidden by the grey robes. There is no distinctive garment for a male slave on Gor, since, as it is said, it is not well for them to discover how numerous they are.