Several men laughed.

I turned again to my paga.

"You did well," said a man next to me, half-shaven. "That was Surbus." "One of the finest swords of Port Kar," said another.

"Oh," I said.

Port Kar, squalid, malignant Port Kar, scourge of gleaming Thassa, Tarn of the Sea, is a vast, disjointed mass of holdings, each almost a fortress, piled almost upon one another, divided and crossed by hundreds of canals. It is, in effect, walled, though it has few walls as one normally thinks of them. Those buildings which face outwards, say, either at the delta or along the shallow Tamber Gulf, have no windows on the ourward side, and the outward walls of them are several feet thick, and they are surmounted, on the roofs, with crenelated parapets. The canals which open into the delta of the Tamber were, in the last few years, fitted with heavy, half-submerged gates of bars. We had entered the city through one such pair of gates. In Port Kar, incidentally, tehre are none of the towers often encountered in the norther cities of Gor. The men of Port Kar had not chosen to build towers. It is the only city on Gor I know of whihc was built not by free men, but by slaves, under the lash of masters. Commonly, on Gor, slaves are not permitted to build, that being regarded as a privilege to be reserved for free men.

Politically, Port Kar is a chaos, ruled by several conflicting Ubars, each with his own following, each attempting to terrorize, to govern and tax to the extent of his power. Nominally beneath these Ubars, but in fact much independent of them, is an oligarchy of merchant princes, Captains, as they call themselves, who, in council, maintain and manage the great arsenal, building and renting shitps and fittings, themselves controlling the grain fleet, the oil fleet, the slave fleet, and others.

Samos, First Slaver of Port Kar, said to be an agent of Priest-Kings, was, I knew, a member of this council. I had been suppose to contact him. Now, of course, I would not do so.

There is even, in Port Kar, a recognized caste of Thieves, the only such I know of on Gor, which, in the lower canals and perimeters of the city, has much power, that of the threat and the knife. They are recognized by the Thiefs Scar, which they wear as a caste mark, a tiny, three-pronged brand burned into the face in back of and below the eye, over the right cheekbone.

One might think that Port Kar, divided as she is, a city in which are raised the thrones of anarchy, would fall easy prey to either the imperialisms or the calculated retaliations of the other cities, but it is not true. When threatened from the outside the men of Port Kar have, desperately and with the viciousness of cornered urts, well defended themselves. Further, of course, it is next to impossible to bring large bodies of armed men through the delta of the Vosk, or, under the conditions of the marsh, to supply them or maintain them in a protracted siege.

The delta itself is Port Kar's strongest wall.

The nearest solid land, other than occasional bars in the marshes, to Port Kar lies to her north, some one hundred passangs distant. This area, I supposed, might theoretically be used as a staging area, for the storing of supplies and the embarkation of an attacking force on barges, but the military prospects of such a venture were decidedly not promising. It lay hundreds of pasangs from the nearest Gorean city other, of course, than Port Kar. It was open territory. It was subject to attack by forces beached to the west from the tarn fleets of Port Kar, through the marsh itself by the barges of Port Kar, or from the east or north, depending on hte marches following the disembarkation of Port Kar forces. Further, it was open to attach from the air by means of the cavalries of merceneary tarnsmen of Port Kar, of which she has several. I knew one of these mercenary captains, Ha-Kee, murderer, once of Ar, whom I had met in Turia, in the house of Saphrar, a merchant. Ha-Keel alone commanded a thousand men, tarnsmen all. And even if an attacking force could be brought into the marsh, it was not clear that it would, days later, make its way to the walls of Port Kar. It might be destroyed in the marshes. And if it should come to the walls, there was little likelihood of its being effective. The supply lines of such a force, given the barges of Port Kar and her tarn cavalries, might be easily cut. I took another drink of paga.

The men who had come to the tavern were roistering but order, to some extent, had been restored. Two of the ship's lanterns had been broken. There was glass, and spilled paga about, and two broken tables. But teh musicians were again playing and again, in the square of sand, the girl performed, through not now the Whip Dance. Nude slave girls, wrists chained, hurried about. The Proprietor, sweating, aproned, was tipping yet another great bottle of paga in its sling, filling cups, that they might be borne to the drinkers. There was an occasional scream from the alcoves, bringing laughter from the tables. I heard the flash of a whip somewhere, and the cries of a girl.

I wondered if, now that the canals were barred, slaves escaped from Port Kar. The nearest solid land was about one hundred pasangs to the north, but it was open land, and, there, on the edges of the delta, there were log outposts of Port Kar, where slave hunters and trained sleen, together, patrolled the marshes' edges.

The vicious, siz-legged sleen, large-eyed, sinuous, mammalian but resermbling a furred, serpentine lizard, was a reliable, indefatigable hunter. He could follow a scent days old with ease, and then, perhaps hundreds of pasangs, and days, later, be unleashed for the sport of the hunters, to tear his victim to pieces. I expected there was not likely to be escape for slaves to the north. That left the delta, with its interminable marshes, and the thirst, and the tharlarion.

Hunting sleen are trained to scent out and destroy escaped slaves.

Their senses are unusually keen.

Tuchuks, in the sounth, as I recalled, had also used sleen to hunt slaves, and, of course, to protect their herds.

I was becoming drunk, my thoughts less connected.

The sea, I thought, the sea.

Could not Port Kar be attacked from the sea?

The music of the musicians began to beat in my blood, reeling there. I looked at the girls serving paga.

"More paga!" I cried, and anoher wench ran lightly to serve me.

But only Cos and Tyros had fleets to match those of Port Kar.

There were the northern islands, of course, and they were numerous, but small, extending in an archipelago like a scimitar northeastward from Cos, which lay some four hundred pasangs west of Port Kar. But these islands were not united, and, indeed, the government of them was usualy no more than a village council. They usually possessed no vessels more noteworthy than clinker-built skiffs and coasters.

The girl in teh sand, the dancing girl, was now performing the Belt Dance. I had seen it done once before, in Ar, in the house of Cernus, a slaver.

Only Cos and Tyros had fleets to match those of Port Kar. And they, almost of tradition, did not care to engage their fleets with hers. Doubtless all sides, including Port Kar, regarded the risks as too great; doubtless all sides, including Port Kar, were content with the stable, often profitable, situation of constant but small-scale warfare, interspersed with some trading and smuggling, which had for so long characterized their relations. Raids of one upon the other, involving a few dozen ships, were not infrequent, whether on the shipping of Port Kar, or beaching on Cos or Tyros, but major actions, those which might involve the hundreds of galleys possessed by these redoubtable maritime powers, the two island Ubarates and Port Kar, had taken place in the more than a centrury.

No, I said to myself, Port Kar is safe from the sea.