I did not thrust her from me.

"May I speak your name, Master?" she begged.

"Yes," I said.

"Tarl," she whispered. "I love you."

"Be silent, Slave Girl," I said.

"Yes, Master," she whispered.

I watched the shadows on the ceiling. I sensed her lips softly kissing me.

You may judge and scorn the Goreans if you wish. Know as well, however, that they judge and scorn you.

They fulfill themselves as you do not.

Hate them for their pride and power. They will pity you for your shame and weakness.

Half-Ear stood somewhere upon Gor.

I did not know where.

Perhaps there was never a time for courtesy and gentleness with an owned woman.

The girl beside me, Vella, was an owned woman.

I laughed. I wondered if I had been tempted to weakness. She trembled then. Still she kissed me, but now frightened, trying to placate me.

How small and weak she was. And how beautiful. How I relished the owning of every bit of her!

I wondered if I had been tempted to weakness. Courtesy and gentleness for a slave? Never!

"Please me," I said. My voice was hard.

"Yes, Master," she whispered. She began to lick and kiss at my body.

In time I ordered her to desist and put her again to her back. I lifted aside the chain which ran to her collar.

"Oh," she said, softly, as I claimed her.

I felt her fingernails in my arms.

She looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears. How helpless she was in my arms.

Then she began to cry out, softly. "Please, please," she begged, "let me speak your name."

"No," I told her.

"Please," she begged.

"What am I to you?" I said.

"My master," she said, frightened.

"Only that," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

I did not let her speak further then, but forced the slave, as my whim had it, to endure the lengthy tumult of a bond girl's degradation, lying chained in the arms of a master who does not choose to show her mercy.

I had her as what she was, a slave.

In a quarter of an Ahn her beauty squirmed helplessly; my arms bled from her fingernails; her eyes were wild and piteous. "You may speak," I informed her. She threw back her head and screamed, jolting with spasms, "I yield me your slave! I yield me your slave!" she cried. How beautiful a woman is in such a moment! I waited until she drew tremblingly quiescent, looking at me. Then I cried out with the pleasure of owning her, and claimed her. She clutched me, kissing me. "I love you, Master," she wept. "I love you."

I held her to me closely, though she was a slave. She looked up at me. Her eyes were moist. "I love you, Master," she said. I brushed back hair from her forehead. I supposed one could be fond of a slave.

Then I recalled that she, had once betrayed Priest-Kings, and had pointed me out to my enemies. She had served the Kurii in the Tahari. She had smiled at me when in a court at Nine Wells she had testified falsely against me. Once, from a window of the kasbah of the Salt Ubar she had blown me a kiss and tossed me a token to remember her by, a scarf, perfumed and of slave silk, to taunt me, when I was to be marched chained to the pits of Klima. I had returned from Klima and had made her my slave. I had brought her back with me from the Tahari to the house of Bosk, captain, and merchant, of Port Kar.

I kept her in the house, slave. Much work was she given. Sometimes, as this night, I let her sleep chained at my feet.

"I love you, Master," she said.

I looked angrily to the slave whip upon the wall.

She trembled. Would I use the lash on her? She had felt it more than once.

Suddenly I lifted my head a bit. I smelled the odor of sleen.

The door to my chamber which, in my house, I did not keep locked, moved slightly.

Instantly I moved from the couch, startling the chained girl. I stood, bent, tensed, beside the couch. I did not move.

The snout of the beast thrust first softly through the opening, moving the door back.

I heard the girl gasp.

"Make no sound," I said. I did not move.

I crouched down. The animal had been released. Its bead was now fully through the door. Its head was wide and triangular. Suddenly the eyes took the light of the lamp and blazed. And then, the head moving, its eyes no longer reflected The light. It no longer faced the light. Rather it was watching me.

The animal was some twenty feet in length, some eleven hundred pounds in weight, a forest sleen, domesticated. It was double fanged and six-legged. It crouched down and inched forward. Its belly fur must have touched the tiles. It wore a leather sleen collar but there was no leash on the leash loop.

I had thought it was trained to hunt tabuk with archers, but it clearly was not tabuk it hunted now.

I knew the look of a hunting sleen. It was a hunter of men.

It swiftly inched forward, then stopped.

When in the afternoon I had seen it in its cage, with its trainer, Bertram of Lydius, it had not reacted to me other than as to the other observers. It had not then, I knew, been put upon my scent.

It crept forward another foot.

I did not think it had been loose from its cage long, for it would take such a beast, a sleen. Gor's finest tracker, only moments to make its way silently through the halls to this chamber.

The beast did not take its eyes from me.

I saw its four hind legs begin to gather under it.

Its breathing was becoming more rapid. That I did not move puzzled it.

It then inched forward another foot. It was now within its critical attacking distance.

I did nothing to excite it.

It lashed its tail back and forth. Had it been longer on my scent I think I might have had less time for its hunting frenzy would have been more upon it, a function in part of the secretions of certain glands.

Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, I reached toward the couch and seized one of the great furs in my right hand.

The beast watched me closely. For the first time it snarled, menacingly.

Then the tail stopped lashing, and became almost rigid. Then the ears lay back against its head.

It charged, scratching and scrambling, slipping suddenly, on the tiles. The girl screamed. The cast fur, capelike, shielding me, enveloped the leaping animal. I leaped to the couch, and rolled over it, and bounded to my feet. I heard the beast snarling and squealing, casting aside the fur with an angry shaking of its body and head. Then it stood, enraged, the fur torn beneath its paws, snarling and hissing. It looked up at me. I stood now upon the couch, the ax of Torvaldsland in my hand.

I laughed, the laugh of a warrior.

"Come my friend," I called to it. "let us engage."

It was a truly brave and noble beast. Those who scorn the sleen I think do not know him. Kurii respect the sleen, and that says much for the sleen, for its courage, its ferocity and its indomitable tenacity.

The girl screamed with terror.

The ax caught the beast transversely and the side of its head struck me sliding from the great blade.

I cut at it again on the floor, half severing the neck.

"It is a beautiful animal," I said. I was covered with its blood. I heard men outside in the hall. Thurnock, and Clitus, and Publius, and Tab, and others, weapons in hand, stood at the door.

"What has happened?" cried Thurnock.

"Secure Bertram of Lydius," I said.

Men rushed from the door.

I went to fetch a knife from my weapons. They lay beside and behind the couch.

I shared bits of the heart of the sleen with my men, and, together, cupping our hands, we drank its blood in a ritual of sleen hunters.

"Bertram of Lydius has fled," cried Publius, the kitchen master.

I had thought this would be true.

I had looked into the blood, cupped in my hands. It is said that if one sees oneself black and wasted in the blood, one will perish of disease; if one sees oneself torn and bloody, one will perish in battle; if one sees oneself old and gray one will die in peace and leave children.