The high-prowed marsh barge is anchored at both stem and sternn. Soon, each drawn by two warriors, the anchor-hooks, curved and three-pronged, not unlike large grappling irons, emerged dripping from the mud on the marsh. These anchor-hooks, incidentally, are a great deal lighter that the anchors used in the long galleys, and the round ships.

The officer, standing on the tiller deck of the flagship, lifted his arm. In marsh barges there is no time-beater, or keleustes, but the count to the oarsmen is given by mouth, by one spoken o fas the oar-master. He sits somewhat above the level of the rowers, but below the leve of the tiller deck. He, facing the rowers, faces toward the ship's bow, they of corse, in their rowing facing the stern.

The officer on the tiller deck, Henrak at his side, let fall his hand. I heard the oar-master cry out and I saw the oars, with a sliding of wood, emerge from the thole ports. They stood poised, parallel, over the water, the early-morning sun illuminating their upper surfaces. I noted that they were no more than a foot above the water, so heavily laden was the barge. Then, as the oar-master again cried out, they entered as one into the water; and the, as he cried out again, ear oar drew slowly in the water, and then turned and lifted, the water falling in the light from the blades like silver chains.

The barge, deep in the water, began to back away from the island. Then, some fifty yards away, it turned slowly, prow now facing away from the island, toward Port Kar. I heard the oar-master call his time again and again, not hurrying his men, each time more faintly than the last. Then the second barge backed away from the island, turned and followed the first, and then so, too, did the others.

I stood up on the raft of rence reed, and looked after the barges. At my feet, half covered with the rence reeds with which we had concealed ourselves, lay Telima. I reached to my head and drew away the garland of rence flowers which I had worn at festival. There was some blood on it, from the blow I had received during the raid. I looked down at Telima, who turned her head away, and then I threw the bloodied garland of rence flowers into the marsh.

I stood on the surface of the rence island. I looked about myself. I had taken some of the reeds which had been heaped on the raft and, bundling them, had used them, paddling, to move the raft back to the island. I had not wished to place a limb in the marsh, particularly in this area, though, to be sure, it seemed clearer now. I had tethered the raft at the island's shore. Telima still lay upon the raft.

I climbed the curve of the matted shore until I came to the higher surface of the island.

It was quiet.

A flock of marsh gants, wild, took flight, circled, and then, seeing I meant them no harm, returned to the island, though to its farther shore.

I saw the pole to which I had been tied, the circle of the feast, the ruins of huts, the litter and the broken things, and the scattered things, and the bodies.

I returned to the raft and picked up Telima in my arms, carrying her to the high surface of the island where, near the pole, I placed her on the matting. I bent to her, and she drew away, but I turned her and unbound her. "Free me," I told her.

Unsteadily she stood up and, with fumbling fingers, untied the knot that bound the five coils of the collar of marsh vine about my neck.

"You are free," she whispered.

I turned away from her. There would be something edible on the island, if only the pith of rence. I hoped there would be water.

I saw the remains of a tunic which had been cut from a rencer, doubtless before his binding. I took what was left of it and, with its lacing, bound it about my wrist.

I kept the sun behind me that I might follow, in the shadows on the rence matting before me, the movements of the girl. I saw, thus, her bending down and taking up of the broken shaft of a marsh spear, about a yard long, its three prongs intact.

I turned to face her, and looked at her.

She was startled. Then, holding the pronged spear before her, crouching down, she threatened me. She moved about me. I stood easily, turning when necessary to face her. I knew the distance involved and what she might do. Then as, with a cry of rage, she thrust at me I took the spear from her grasp, disarming her, tossing it to one side.

She backed away, her hand before her mouth.

"Do not attempt again to kill me," I said.

She shook her head.

I looked at her. "It seemed to me," I said, "last night that you much feared slavery."

I indicated that she should approach me.

Only when I had unbound her had I noticed, on her left thigh, the tiny mark, which had been burned into her flesh long ago, the small letter in cursive script which was the initial letter of Kajira, which is Gorean for a femal slave. Always before, in the lighted hut, she had kept that side from me; in the day it had been covered by her tunic; in the night, in the darkness and tumult, I had not noticed it; on the raft it had been concealed in the reeds of the rence plant, with which I had covered her.

She had now come closer to me, as I had indicated she should, and stood now where, if I wished, I might take her in my grasp.

"You were once slave," I told her.

She fell to her knees, covering her eyes with her hands, weeping.

"But I gather," said I, "you somehow made your escape."

She nodded, weeping. "On beams bound together," she said, "poling into the marsh from the canals."

It was said that never had a slave girl escaped from Port Kar, but this, doubtless like many such sayings, was not true. Still, the escape of a slave gir, or of a male slave, must indeed be rare from canaled Port Kar, protected as it is on on side by the Tambar Gulf and gleaming Thassa, and on the other by the interminable marshes, with their sharks and tharlarion. Had Telima not been a rence girl she would, I supposed, most likely, have died in the marshes. I knew that Ho-Hak, too, had escaped from Port Kar. There were doubtless others. "You must be very brave," I said.

She lifted her eyes, red with weeping, to me.

"And your master," I said, "you must have hated him very much."

Her eyes blazed.

"What was your slave name?" I asked. "By what name did he choose to call you?" She looked down, shaking her head. She refused to speak.

"It was Pretty Slave," I told her.

She looked up at me, red-eyed, and cried out with grief. Then she put her head down to the rence, shoulders shaking, and wept. "Yes," she said. "Yes, yes." I left her and went to look further about. I went to the remains of her hut. There, though the hut itself was destroyed, I found much of what had been in it. Most pleased I was to find the water gourd, which was still half filled. I also took the wallet of food, that which she had once tied about her waist. Before I left I noted, among the broken rence and other paraphernalia, some throwing sticks and such, the tunic of rence cloth which she had slipped off before me the night previously, before commanding me to serve her pleasure, before we had heard the cry "Slavers!" I picked it up and carried it, with the other things, to where she still knelt, near the pole, head down, weeping.

I tossed the tunic of rence cloth before her.

She looked at it, unbelievingly. The she looked up at me, stunned.

"Clothe yourself," I said.

"Am I not your slave?" she asked.

"No," I said.

She drew on the garment, fumbling with the laces. I handed the water gourd to her, and she drank. Then I shook out what food lay in the wallet, some dried rence paste from the day before yesterday, some dried flakes of fish, a piece of rence cake.

We shared this food.

She said nothing, but knelt across from me, across from where I sat cross-legged.