"When will you return?" asked Samos.

"After the matches," I said.

"You will see others, too," he asked.

"Of course," I said. "Do you know that Philemon of Teletus will play Stengarius of Ti, and that Hobart of Tharna will match wits with Boris of Turia?"

"No," said Samos, ruefully. "It escaped my attention."

I shrugged. Samos, I decided, was hopeless.

He conducted me even to the first gate of his house, where I threw about myself the cloak of the admiral.

In a few moments, I sat at the tiller of the longboat, for the simple task of guiding the craft pleased me, and was being rowed to my house. I saw the silken head of an urt in the canal, a few feet from the boat It was a large urt, some forty pounds in weight. They live on garbage cast into the canals, and on bound slaves who have not been pleasing.

I looked back at the house of Samos. The slim, blond-haired girl would have been branded by now. We had not heard her scream for she, when it was done, would have been below, far away, in the pens.

I thought of the message:

Greetings to Tarl Cabot,

I await you at the world's end.

Zarendargar.

War General of the People.

I smiled to myself.

The prow of the ship of Tersites pointed even now to the world's end.

None had returned from the world's end.

The canal turned then and I guided the craft about the corner. As we turned I glanced once more at the house of Samos. It loomed high and formidable, over the canal, a slaver's house, a high, dark, frightening fortress.

In the pens far below the fortress there was a new slave, a slim, blond-haired Earth girl. She would be caged now. I wondered if she seized the bars of her cage, pressing her face against them, trying to understand what had happened to her. She had mixed in the affairs of worlds. She was now a slave. Probably she lay naked on her stomach on the cement flooring of her kennel, her hands over her head, screaming. On the exterior of her left thigh there would be a brand. On the interior of her thigh there would be blood. She had mixed in the affairs of worlds. It had not turned out well for her. She was now a slave. She would be soon sold off.

I wondered if she would learn swiftly to be pleasing to a master.

Another urt's head, sleek and glistening, surfaced near the boat, then it submerged.

I expected she would learn swiftly.

I considered the upcoming match between Centius of Cos and Scormus of Ar.

I would wager heavily on Scormus of Ar. I did not expect, however, that I would get good odds.

"Make way! Make way!" laughed the brawny young fellow. He had a naked girl over his shoulder, bound hand and foot. He had won her in Girl Catch, in a contest to decide a trade dispute between two small cities, Ven and Rarn, the former a river port on the Vosk, the second noted for its copper mining, lying southeast of Tharna. In the contest a hundred young men of each city, and a hundred young women, the most beautiful in each city, participate. The object of the game is to secure the women of the enemy. Weapons are not permitted. The contest takes place in an area outside the perimeters of the great fair, for in it slaves are made. The area is enclosed by a low wooden wall, and spectators observe. When a male is forced beyond the wail he is removed from the competition and may not, upon pain of death, reenter the area for the duration of the contest. When a girl is taken she is bound hand and foot and thrown to a girl pit, of which there are two, one in each city's end of the "field." These pits are circular, marked off with a small wooden fence, sand-bottomed, and sunk some two feet below the surface of the "field." If she cannot free herself she counts as a catch. The object of the male is to remove his opponents from the field and capture the girls of the other city. The object of the girl, of course, is to elude capture.

"Make way!" he called. "Make way!" I, with others in the crowd, stepped aside.

Both the young men and women wear tunics in this sport. The tunics of the young women are cut briefly, to better reveal their charms. The young man wears binding fiber about his left wrist, with which to secure prizes. The young women, who are free, if the rules permit, as they sometimes do not, commonly wear masks, that their modesty be less grievously compromised by the brevity of their costume. Should the girl be caught, however, her mask is removed. The tunics of the girls are not removed, however, except those of the girls of the losing city, when the match has ended and the winner decided. The win is determined when the young men of one city, or those left on the field, have secured the full hundred of the women of the "enemy." A woman once bound and thrown to the girl pit, incidentally, may not be fetched forth by the young men of her city, except at the end of the match, and on the condition that they have proved victorious. The captured women of the victorious city at the conclusion of the contest are of course released; they are robed and honored; the girls of the losing city, of course, are simply stripped and made slaves. This may seem a cruel sport but some regard it as superior to a war; surely it is cleaner and there is less loss of life; this method of settling disputes, incidentally, is not used if it is felt that honor is somehow involved in the disagreement. Honor is important to Goreans, in a way that those of Earth might find hard to understand; for example, those of Earth find it natural that men should go to war over matters of gold and riches, but not honor; the Gorean, contrariwise, is more willing to submit matters of honor to the adjudication of steel than he is matters of riches and gold; there is a simple explanation for this; honor is more important to him. Strangely the girls of the cities are eager to participate in this sport. Doubtless each believes her standard will be victorious and she will return in honor to her city.

The young man brushed past me. The girl's hair was still bound, knotted, on her head; it had not yet even been loosened, as that of a slave girl. Looped about her neck, locked, was a slender, common, gray-steel slave collar. He had wired a tag to it, that she might be identified as his. She had been of Ram, probably of high caste, given the quality of her beauty. She would now be slave in the river port of Ven. The man appeared to be a young bargeman. Her lips were delicate and beautiful. They would kiss him well.

I watched him press on through the crowds, toward the looming palisade which ringed the Sardar mountains, black and snow-capped, behind it.

The numbers in the game are set at a hundred young men and a hundred young women, in order that there be a young woman for each winning male.

This was the first year, incidentally, in which masks had been permitted to the young women in some of these contests. The masks, however, had been brief and feminine. They concealed little and did little more than to excite the men and stimulate them to the beauty's pursuit, culminating in her rude assault, capture and unmasking. Still I suspected the innovation, next year, would be dropped. It is easier to gamble on the taking of given girls, and how long they will be at large, if their beauty is better visible to the bettors.

I looked after the young man. He was going to the palisade. There he would climb one of the platforms and, putting the girl on her knees, her ankles and wrists crossed and bound, at his feet, facing the Sardar, he would unbind her hair. Then he would lift her in his arms, hair unbound, before the mountains of the Sardar, rejoicing, and giving thanks to Priest-Kings that she was now his.

"Where are the merchant tables," I asked a fellow from Torvaldsland, with braided blond hair and shaggy jacket, eating on a roast hock of tarsk, "where the odds on the Kaissa matches are being given?"