The soldiers' tavern was like others Blade had seen in many Dimensions. It was overcrowded, hot, noisy, and smoky. Here in Kaldak the smoke came from something burned in brass pots hung from the ceiling on chains. To Blade it smelled like old rubber tires, but the Kaldakans didn't seem to mind it. He wondered if it was a narcotic, an aphrodisiac, or simply intended to make people get drunk faster so they wouldn't have to go on smelling it!

The brass pots hung so low that Blade had to duck his head to get under most of them. Many of the Kaldakans were short enough not to have this problem, but Ezarn had already knocked himself out. Now he lay snoring quietly in one corner. A comrade mounted guard over him, to keep people from robbing, trampling, or vomiting on him.

Blade had put down several large jugs of beer. The dark-haired girl on his lap kept trying to make him drink hard liquor. He kept refusing. Kaldakan liquor was bad enough straight. Taking it on top of beer-well, he didn't want to show up for his first day at the Commander's School with a history-making hangover.

After a while the girl started to plaster herself against Blade. She was pleasantly curved and felt warm and comfortable against him. It helped that her blouse was now open and her skirt hiked up to mid-thigh, and she wasn't wearing any underclothes.

As her blouse slipped down off her shoulders, Blade saw tattoos on the upper slopes of both breasts. He prodded them with a forefinger.

«Tribe?» he said.

The girl wouldn't meet his eyes. He put a hand under her chin and lifted her head gently until she did. «Yes,» she said finally. «I was taken when I was fourteen. The son of the farmer who bought me freed me when I was twenty. But what could I do with the freedom, except come here?» Blade caught the note of desperate defiance in her voice. She'd swallowed her pride enough to let her earn a living as a tavern whore, but it was still there.

Blade decided to make the Tribal girl's evening profitable and his own a little more enjoyable. He ran a hand up her leg to the edge of her skirt. When she didn't protest he ran it up farther. As he stroked the inside of her thigh, she opened his shirt and ran her hand over his bare chest.

«Old scars,» she murmured. «Not from the battle we've all heard about. Where did you get them, Voros?»

«I wish I knew,» he said. «I know I was a soldier, because I remember everything about how to fight. I don't remember where I fought.»

«Hmmmm,» she said, laying her lips against Blade's bare skin. «Couldn't you have them truth-see you?»

«I suppose I could,» said Blade, more casually than he felt. «But what if something happened to me to make me lose my memory? Something so horrible that I had to forget it or go mad? Would I gain anything by remembering it now?»

«I understand,» the girl murmured. «If I could forget the night they took our village. .»

A gong sounded from the end of the room. «Fill up, fill up, my friends,» shouted the tavern owner. «Fill up, and do justice to Rokhana, the unique, wonderful, exquisite Rokhana. You can't see any of her anywhere else but you can see all of her here tonight and every night at the Defenders' Rest!»

He repeated this announcement several times in a whiskey baritone, beating the gong all the while. The tavern girls circulated with bottles and pitchers, filling everybody's cups and glasses, dancing out of the way of any man who grabbed at them. Some didn't-they'd «brought their own» in the form of a female comrade. Blade saw two of the women soldiers leading their men toward the stairs to the upper floors of the tavern. Up there were forty or so «sleeping rooms»; sometimes they really were used for sleeping.

The tavern owner went on beating the gong until Blade felt a strong desire to stuff the padded stick he was using down his gullet. A drummer and a horn player came out from behind the bar and sat under the gong. The drummer started pounding a steady beat in time with the gong, while the horn player tuned his instrument. At least Blade supposed he was tuning it; one dying-cow blast sounded very much like another.

Finally the band was ready. At a signal from the tavern keeper the girls pulled back half a dozen tables to make a clear space in the middle of the floor. The horn player blew such a long blast that Blade wondered where he got the breath for it. Then the curtain over the door to the stairs flew aside and the long-awaited Rokhana pranced into the room.

She was a tall, well-built blonde, who moved in a way both erotic and graceful at the same time. Everything she wore was in a shade of green which went well with her hair-cloak, hat, jacket, blouse under the jacket, calf-length skirt, and boots so floppy Blade wondered how she was going to dance in them.

A moment later, Blade found out. Rokhana simply swayed and wiggled in time to the musicians' beat where she stood. With most women that would have been unimaginative or even boring. With Rokhana it was exciting by itself, and gave promise of better things to come.

After a minute she undid the clasps of her cloak and shrugged it free of first one shoulder, then the other. She caught it before it hit the floor, without missing a beat. Then, still in time with the musicians, she threw it accurately onto the sleeping Ezarn. Blade joined in the roar of laughter.

The hat followed. It passed so close to Blade that he could have caught it without the girl on his lap. Then Rokhana kicked high twice, sending her boots sailing over the bar. Somehow she managed the high kicks without showing anyone what she wore under the skirt. She did show off long, elegant legs. Laughter turned into bawdy shouts.

Now Rokhana could move freely about the floor. Her bare feet seemed to twinkle-or was it the beer and the smoke making Blade's vision uncertain? All he knew was that suddenly the jacket was flying toward him, draping itself over the girl on his lap. There was something ugly in the laughter this time. Blade thought he heard the girl curse in her Tribal tongue.

By the time Blade got his girl untangled, Rokhana was undoing her blouse a hutton at a time. It didn't really matter that much, since she was wearing something under it. The cheers and the handclapping still swelled until they began to drown out the musicians. The musicians played louder, and the din hammered at Blade's ears.

Rokhana's blouse had buttons at the wrists as well as down the front. She undid the wrist buttons with her teeth, while holding the free hand modestly in front of her gaping blouse. Then she started wriggling her shoulders and torso. Slowly the blouse slid down, while an inch at a time she pulled it out of the waist of her skirt. She had to stand still while she was doing this, but nobody would have been watching her feet in any case.

Rokhana's upper body seemed to move. in three directions at once, and suddenly the blouse was on the floor. Under it she wore a sort of halter top, which did nothing to hide the shape of her breasts or much to restrain their movement. For a moment one long-fingered hand rested lightly over a nipple. Then Rokhana was on the move again. So was her skirt-down her hips.

Things began to flow together now for Blade. He suspected he was actually calmer than most of the men in the tavern. All around he heard heavy breathing, as if the soldiers had run hard or lifted heavy weights. In one corner a man and a woman stood locked so close together he couldn't tell if they were actually making love or not.

Rokhana stepped out of her long skirt and pranced freely in a short skirt and the halter. Somehow her hair had come undone, and as her dancing grew wilder it tossed like a golden mane around her head. It caressed her bare freckled shoulders, and Blade felt his hands, itching to do the same. He also felt the girl on his lap moving, and her hand between his legs. The raw sex in the air of the tavern was getting to everyone.