"No, I cannot walk, I said. "I cannot even stand."

He tied up the shirt in the back, sticking it into the binding fiber. He then went and cut a switch.

When he returned I was on my feet.

"Good," he said. He pulled down the shirt and threw away the switch. I walked before him.

"Targo had already left Laura," he said. "We will join him across the river, at the night's camp."

We walked on.

"If you had left Laura with Targo," he said, "you might have seen Marlenus of Ar."

I gasped. I had heard of the great Ubar.

"In Laura?" I asked.

"Sometimes he comes north, with some hundred tarnsmen, for the hunting in the forests," said the guard.

"What does he hunt?" I asked.

"Sleen, panthers, women," said the guard.

"Oh," I said.

"He hunts for a week or two," said the guard, "and then returns to Ar." He pushed me ahead with the flat of his foot. I had been dallying. "The duties of a Ubar," said he, "are pressing, and Marlenus looks forward to his hunting." "I see," I said.

"When he is finished he sends his catch back by caravan," he said.

"Oh," I said. We walked on.

"Is he after anything in particular?" I asked.

"Yes," said the guard, "Verna, an outlaw girl."

I stopped.

"Do not turn around," he said.

I was irritated. I knew him, and he liked me, but he was my captor. He had not given me permission to face him. In his shirt, I pulled at the slave bracelets, tied against my belly with the binding fiber.

"It was Verna and her band who captured me," I said.

"It is said she is beautiful," said the guard. "Is it true?"

"Ask," I said, "the men at the camp, whom she captured and bound, when she stole me."

His fist was in my hair, bending my head back. "Yes," I said, "she is beautiful. She is very beautiful!"

He released me.

"Marlenus will capture her," he said, "and send her in a cage to Ar." "Oh?" I asked, archly.

"Yes," he said, from behind me. I felt his hands on my shoulders.

I was not displeased that Marlenus was hunting Verna, and her girls. I hoped that he would capture her, and them, and strip them, and put the blazing iron to their bodies, and lock them in collars, and whip them, and make them slave girls!

"Any woman," he said.

"I am white silk," I whispered. I pulled against his hands, and he released me. I hurried on.

I continued to walk ahead of him, in his shirt, my wrists confined before my body.

"Stop," he said.

I did.

He came behind me and, lifting the shirt some inches, tucked it into the binding fiber that was knotted about my waist. He wanted to see more of my legs.

"Continue," he said. He pressed me forward again with the flat of his foot. I stumbled forward, and was now again walking before him.

"Posture," he said.

And so I walked well, as he wished, before him.

From time to time, as we walked, he gave me food from his pouch, which he shoved into my mouth.

In the late afternoon, we rested for an Ahn. Then, at his command, I rose to my feet, and we continued on our journey to Laura, I preceding him, as before. I was acutely conscious of his watching me. I could not turn to look, of course, but I knew that every movement of my body was his to see.

"I shall be interested to see," he said, "how you train as a pleasure slave in Ko-ro-ba."

"You find me pleasing, do you not?" I asked. Then I was sorry I had asked. "You have interesting possibilities as a female slave," he said. "I find myself curious to taste you."

I hurried on. "We must hurry," I said. "We must join the wagons!

"White-silk, She-sleen," he said. "Wait until you are red silk!"

I hurried ahead.

Actually I was not displeased. When, that night, after taking a barge across the Laurius, loaded with lumber, we found Targo's encampment, I was happy. Ute and Inge were there and the other girls I knew. Even Lana. Targo was pleased that I had been returned to his chain. That night, stripped in the slave wagon, lying on the canvas, my ankles chained to the ankle bar, fed, I slept soundly, happily.

We were on our way to the city of Ko-ro-ba, where we would receive training, and from thence we would journey in a southeastern direction toward the great city of Ar.

"What are you thinking, El-in-or?" asked Ute. I lay on my belly, in the straw, in the cage in Ko-ro-ba, poling with a bit of straw at the steel plating.

"Nothing," I said.

I wondered of the man in the hut and the beast. They would not have been able to follow my trail after the rain. They would probably not suppose I could have been returned to Targo. Indeed, Targo had left Laura before I could have reached the city. I supposed that the man and the beast would look for me, if at all, in the vicinity of Laura, or northward, or even in the forest. I supposed they would regard it as likely that I had never escaped the forest. They would regard it as likely that I had fallen to beasts, perhaps, or perhaps had died of exposure.

I was safe.

A slave girl in a pen in Ko-ro-ba.

I had no hope now of returning to Earth. I knew now that on this world I would wear a collar and serve a master.

Further, I had now come to see myself as a slave girl. The panther girls in the forest, and the man in the hut, had taught me that I was slave. I now knew that even on Earth, even when I had been rich, even when I had dwelled in Park Avenue, when I had owned the Maserati, my body had been that of a slave girl, the body of a wench who, from the Gorean point of view, was fit only, and rightly so, for silk, and the whip. I had been found out. The Goreans had found me out, and would treat me accordingly. They have a way with such women. I struck the steel plating in fury, with my small fist. They bring them to heel, teach them to obey, and to serve, and deliciously. I wished that I was on Earth again, where slave girls might go free, live luxuriously, pamper themselves, and even, should it please them, command the weak men of Earth. I heard the step of a guard outside. I knew several of them by their step. It was one of whom I was frightened. I pretended to be asleep in the straw. When he had passed I rolled again to my belly and put my chin on the back of my hands, their palms resting on the plating. I would be a clever slave, a beautiful slave, and exciting one. I was a slave. I would be a superb one. I would use my intelligence and my beauty to make my life on Gor an easy one. I had learned a great deal in my training. I was eager to learn more. Already my body moved as that of a slave girl, and unconsciously, naturally! I smiled. I would bring a high price on the block. I glanced over at Inge. Poor sticklike Inge! What man would want her? And Ute was so little and stupid. Even Lana seemed dull to me. But I was superb. I recalled the man in the hut had said that the indications were that I would make a fantastic pleasure slave for a master. My brow wrinkled and my lip curled. I was irritated. It was I who would conquer. I remembered the panther girls, dancing under the moons of Gor, and how they had writhed helplessly beneath those wild moons. I despised them for their weakness. I did not have such weaknesses. I was a slave, but I did not have such weaknesses. Inside I was cold and hard, and hated men. I would conquer them.

And so I mused, an illiterate barbarian slave girl in a Ko-ro-ba slave pen.

Some four days before we were to depart Ko-ro-ba for Ar, the news swept like tarns through the pens.

"Verna the outlaw girl!" we heard the cry. "She had been taken by Marlenus of Ar."

I rushed to the bars of the cage, thrilled. I wept with joy. How I hated that proud woman, and her band! Let them be slaves! Let them be slaves!" "Poor Verna," said Ute.

Inge was silent.