I thrust into her, savagely. She cried out, looking at me. She was hot with sweat. The collar was on her throat.

"I think we have here, too," I said, holding her, "another agent of Kurii."

"No," she said, "no!" Then I began to make her respond to me.

"Oh," she wept. "Oh. Oh!"

"He wanted my tunic," I told her, "to take its measurements, that the jacket of the fur of the snow sleen might be well made."

"Yes," she wept. "Yes! But only for moments! Only for moments!"

"Fool," I said to her.

"I was tricked," she wept.

"You were tricked, or you are a Kur agent," I said.

"I am not a Kur agent," she wept. She tried to rise up, but I held her down, her small shoulders down to the tiles in the blood. She could not begin to be a match for my strength.

"Even if you are a Kur agent," I said, softly, "'know, small beauty, that you are first my slave girl."

I looked down into her eyes.

"Yes, Master," she said. She twisted miserably, her head to one side. "He had the garment for only moments," she said.

"Was it always in your sight," I asked.

"No," she said. "He ordered me to remain in the hall, to wait for him."

I laughed.

"He had it for only moments it seemed," she said.

"Enough time," I said, "to press it between the bars of the sleen cage and whisper to the beast the signal for the hunt."

"Yes!" she wept.

Then I thrust again and again into her, in the strong, increasingly intense rhythms of a savage master until the collared she of her, once that of a civilized girl, screamed and shuddered, and then lay mine, without dignity or pride, shattered, only a yielded, barbarian slave, in my arms.

I stood up, and she lay at my feet collared, in the sleen's blood.

I reached to the great ax of Torvaldsland. I stood over her, looking down at her, the ax grasped in my hands.

She looked up at me. One knee was lifted. She shook her head. She took the collar in her hands and pulled it out from her neck a bit, lifting it toward me.

"Do not strike me, Master," she said. "I am yours."

I looked at the collar and chain. She looked up at me, frightened. She was well secured.

My grip tightened on the ax.

She put her hands to the side, helplessly, and, frightened, lifted her body, supplicatingly, to me.

"Please do not strike me, Master," she said. "I am your slave."

I lowered the ax, holding it across my body with both hands. I looked down at her, angrily.

She lowered her body, and lay quietly in the blood, frightened. She placed the backs of her hands on the tiles, so that the palms were up, facing me, at her sides. The palms of a woman's hands are soft and vulnerable. She exposed them to me.

I did not lift the ax.

"I know little of sleen," she said. "I had thought It a sleen trained to hunt tabuk, in the company of archers, little more than an animal trained to turn and drive tabuk, and retrieve them."

"It is thus that the animal was presented to us," I said. That was true. Yet surely, in the light of such a request, one for a garment, a sleen in the house, her suspicions should have been aroused.

"He wanted a garment," I said.

"I did not think," she said.

"Nor did you speak to me of this thing," I said.

"He warned me not to speak to you," she said, "for the gift was to come as a surprise."

I laughed, looking at the sleen.

She put her head to one side, in shame. She turned then again to look at me. "He had it for only a few moments," she said.

'The cage could be opened later, and was," I said. "The hunt then began, through the halls of the house, in the silence and darkness."

She closed her eyes in misery, and then opened them again, looking at me.

I heard the ship's bell, in the great hail, striking. I heard footsteps in the hall outside.

"It is morning," I said.

Thurnock appeared at the door to my chamber. "Word has come," said he, "from the house of Samos. He would speak with you."

"Prepare the longboat," I said. We would make our way through the canals to his house.

"Yes, Captain," he said, and turned and left.

I put aside the ax. With water, poured into a bowl, and fur, I cleaned myself. I donned a fresh tunic. I tied my own sandals.

The girl did not speak.

I slung a sword over my left shoulder, an admiral's blade.

"You did not let me tie your sandals," she said.

I fetched the key to the collar, and went to her, and opened the collar.

"You have duties to attend to," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said. On her knees she suddenly grasped my legs, weeping, looking up at me. "Forgive me, Master," she cried. "I was tricked! I was tricked!"

"It is morning in Port Kar," I said.

She put down her head to my feet. She kissed my feet. She then looked up at me. "If I do not please you this day, Master," she said, "impale me."

"I will," I told her. Then I turned and left her.

"The arrogance of Kurii may yet prove their undoing," said Samos.

He sat, cross-legged, behind the low table. On It were hot bread, yellow and fresh, hot black wine, steaming, with its sugars, slices of roast bosk, the scrambled eggs of vulos, pastries with creams and custards.

"It is too easy," I said. I did not speak clearly with my mouth full.

"It is a sport for them," he said, "this war." He looked at me, grimly. "As it seems to be for some men."

"Perhaps to some," I said, "those who are soldiers, but surely not to Kurii in general. I understand their commitment in these matters to be serious and one involving their deep concern."

"Would that all men were as serious," said Samos.

I grinned, and washed down the eggs with a swig of hot black wine, prepared from the beans grown upon the slopes of the Thentis mountains. This black wine is quite expensive. Men have been slain on Gor for attempting to smuggle the beans out of the Thentian territories.

"Kurii were ready once," said I, "or some party of them, to destroy Gor, to clear the path to Earth, a world they would surely favor less. Willingness to perform such an act, I wager, fits in not well with the notion of vain, proud beasts."

"Strange that you should speak of vain, proud beasts," said Samos.

"I do not understand," I said.

"I suppose not," said Samos. He then drank from his cup, containing the black wine. I did not press him to elucidate his meaning. He seemed amused.

"I think the Kurii are too clever, too shrewd, too determined," said I, "to be taken at their face value in this matter. Such an act, to deliver such a message, would be little better than a taunt, a gambit, intended to misdirect our attention."

"But can we take this risk?" he asked.

"Perhaps not," I said. With a Turian eating prong, used in the house of Samos, I speared a slice of meat, and then threaded it on the single tine.

Samos took from his robes a long, silken ribbon, of the sort with which a slave girl might bind back her hair. It seemed covered with meaningless marks. He gestured to a guardsman. "Bring in the girl," he said.

A blond girl, angry, in brief slave livery, was ushered into the room.

We were in Samos' great hall, where I had banqueted many times. It was the hall in which was to be found the great map mosaic, inlaid in the floor.

She did not seem a slave. That amused me.

"She speaks a barbarous tongue," said Samos.

"Why have you dressed me like this?" she demanded. She spoke in English.

"I can understand her," I said.

"That is perhaps not an accident," said Samos.

"Perhaps not," I said.

"Can none of you fools speak English?" she asked.

"I can communicate with her, if you wish," I told Samos.