We greeted him with cheers.

Telima had prepared a roast tarsk, stuffed with suls and peppers from Tor. There were great quantities of the yellow Sa-Tarna bread, in its rounded, six-part loaves.

We were served by the Kettle Slave, Telima. She poured paga for the men, and Ka-la-na for the women. She tore the bread for us, broke the cheese, ribboned the eels and cut the tarsk. She hurried from one to the other, and the musicians as well, scarcely serving one before being summoned to another. The girls commanded her as well as the men. She was only Kettle Salve and thus, they were of a higher sort than she. Further, I gathered, on the islands, Telima, with her beauty, her skills and arrogance, had not bee popular, and it pleased them no little that she should be, in effect, slave for them as well as their masters. I sat cross-legged at the low table, quaffing paga, my left arm about the shoulders of Midice, who, kneeling, snuggled against me.

Once, as Telima served me, I caught her wrist. She looked at me.

"How is it," I asked, "that a Kettled Slave has an armlet of gold?" Midice lifted her head and kissed me on the neck, "Give Midice the armlet," she wheedled.

Tears appeared in the eyes of Telima.

"Perhaps later," I told Midice, "if you well please me."

She kissed me. "I will well please you, Master," she said. Then she threw a look of contempt at Telima. "Give me wine," said she, "Slave."

As Midice kissed me again, lingeringly, holding my head in her hands, Telima, tears in her eyes, filled her cup.

Across the table I saw Ula, eyes timid, lift her lips to Clitus. He did not refuse her, and they began to kiss, and touch. Thurnock then seized Thura, pressing his lips upon hers. Helpless in his great arms she struggled, but then, as I laughed, she cried out as though in misery and began to yield to him, and then, moments later, her lips eagerly were seeking his.

"Master," said Midice, looking at me, eyes bright.

"Do you recall," I asked pleasantly, looking down into her eyes, "how some days ago you taunted me when I was bound at the pole?"

"Master?" she asked, her eyes timid.

"Have you forgotten," I asked, "how you danced before me?"

She drew back. "Please, Master," she whispered, her eyes terrified. I turned to the musicians. "Do you know," I asked, "the Love Dance of the Newly Collared Slave Girl?"

"Port Kar's?" asked the leader of the musicians.

"Yes," I said.

"Of course," said he.

I had purchased more than marking and collars at the smithy.

"On your feet," boomed Turnock to Thura, and she leaped frightened to her feet, standing ankle deep in the thick pile rug.

At the gesture from Clitus, Ula, too, leaped to her feet.

I put ankle rings on Midice, and then slave bracelets. And tore from her the bit of silk she wore. She looked at me with terror.

I lifted her to her feet, and stood before her.

"Play," I told the musicians.

The Love Dance of the Newly Collared Slave Girl has many variations, in the different cities of Gor, but the common theme is that the girl dances her joy that she will soon lie in the arms of a strong master.

The musicians began to play, and to the clapping and cries of Turnock and Clitus, Thura and Ula danced before them.

"Dance," said I to Midice.

In terror the dark-haired girl, lithe, tears in her eyes, she so marvelously legged, lifted her wrists.

Now again Midice danced, her ankles in delicious proximity and wrists lifted again together back to back above her head, palms out. But this time her ankles were not as though chained, nore her wrists as though braceleted; rather they were truly chained and braceleted; she wore the linked ankle rings, the three-linked slave bracelets of a Gorean master; and I did not thing she would now conclude her dance by spitting upon me and whirling away.

She trembled. "Find me pleasing," she begged.

"Don not afflict her so," said Telima to me.

"Go to the kitchen," said I, "Kettle Slave."

Telima turned and, in the stained tunic of re-cloth, left the room, as she had been commanded.

The music grew more wild.

"Where now," I demanded of Midice, "is your insolence, your contempt!" "Be kind!" she cried. "Be kind to Midice!"

The music grwe even more wild.

And then Ula, bolding before Clitus, tore from her own body teh silk she wore and danced, her arms extended to him.

He leaped to his feet and carried her from the room.

I laughed.

Then Thura, to my amazement, though a rence girl, dancing, revealed herself similarly to the great Thurnock, he only of the peasants, and he, with a great laugh, swept her from her feet and carried her from the room.

"Do I dance for life?" begged Midice.

I drew the Gorean blade. "Yes," I said, "you do."

And she danced superbly for me, every fiber of her beautiful body straining to please me, her eyes, each instant, pleading, trying to read in mine her fate. At last, when she could dance no more, she fell at my feet, and put her head to my sandals.

"Find me pleasing," she begged. "Find me pleasing, my Master!"

I had had my sport.

I sheathed the blade.

"Light the lamp of love," I said.

She looked up at me, gratefully, but saw then my eyes. Her test was not yet done.

Trembling she fumbled with the flint and steel, to strike sparks into the moss bowl, whence by means of a Ka-la-na shaving the lamp might be lit.

I myself thre down, in one cornver, near a slave ring, the Furs of Love. The musicians, one by one, each with a silver tarsk, stole from the room. An Ahn later, perhaps a bit more than an Ahn before dawn, the oil in the lamp of love had burned low.

Midice lay against me, in my arms. She looked up at me, and whispered, "Did Midice do well? Is Master pleased with Midice?"

"Yes," I said, wearily, looking at the ceiling. "I am pleased with Midice." I felt empty.

For a long time then we did not speak.

Then she said, "You are well pleased with Midice, are you not?"

"Yes," I said, " I am well pleased."

"Midice is first girl, is she not?"

"Yes," I said, "Midice is first girl."

Micide looked at me, and whispered. "Telima is only Kettle Slave. Why should she have an armlet of gold?"

I looked at her. Then, wearily, I rose to my feet. I drew on my tunic, and looked down at Midice, who lay there with her legs drawn up, looking at me. I could see the glow of the dim lamp on her collar.

I buckled about me the Gorean blade, with its belt and scabbard.

I went into the kitchen.

There I found Telima sitting against the wall, her knees drawn up, her head down. She raised her head and looked at me. I could see her barely in the light of the coals of the cooking fore, now a flat, reticulated pattern of red and black.

I slipped the golden armlet from her arm.

There were tears in her eyes, but she did not protest.

I unknotted the binding fiber about her throat, and took from my pouch her collar.

I showed it to her.

In the dim light she read the engraving. "I belong to Bosk," she said. "I did not know you could read," I said. Midice, Thura, Ula were all, as is common with rence girls, illiterate.

Telima looked down.

I snapped the collar about her throat.

She looked up at me. "It is a long time since I have worn a steel collar," she said.

I wondered how she had, whether in her escapte or afterwards in the islands, removed her first collar. Ho-Hak, I recalled, still wore the heavy collar of the galley slave. The rencers had no had the tools to remove it. Telima, a clever girl, had probably discovered and stolen the key to her collar. Ho-Hak's collar had been riveted about his throat.

"Telima," said I, thinking of Ho-Hak, "why was Ho-Hak so moved, when together we spoke of the boy Eechius?"