"Show me mercy," she begged.

"Spread the furs," I said.

"Please," she begged.

"I have no slave whip at hand," I said, "but I trust my belt will serve."

She leaped to her feet. "I will spread the furs, Master," she said.

"Then lie on them on your belly," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

She spread the furs on the grass by the tree, and then lay on them, on her belly.

"Throw your hair forward and over your head," I said.

She did so. The collar was now clearly visible on her neck. I stood behind her, and dropped my accouterments to the side.

"Why did you make me a slave?" she whispered.

"It pleased me," I said.

I crouched beside her and took her by the right arm and hair, and turned her to her back on the furs. She was delicately beautiful. She would ravish well.

"In Torvaldsland," I said, "it is said the woman of Kassau make superb slaves." I looked at her. "Is it true?" I asked.

"I do not know, Master," she said frightened.

"How marvelously beautiful you are," I said.

"Please be kind to me, Master," she begged.

"I have not had a woman in four days," I told her. Then she cried out.

The three moons were high.

The night was chilly. I felt her kissing softly at my thigh.

"Is it true," she asked, "what they say in Torvaldsland, that the women of Kassau make superb slaves?"

"Yes," I said.

"I never knew that I could feel this way," she said. "It is so different, so total, so helpless."

I touched her head.

"It is only the feelings of a slave girl," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

I lay on my back, looking upward.

"Please, Master," she whispered, "subject me again to slave rape."

"Earn your rape," I told her.

"Yes, Master," she said, kissing me.

"Stop," I said.

"Master?" she asked.

"Be quiet," I said. I was listening. I rolled from her side and crouched in the furs. I was now certain that I heard it. I slipped my tunic over my head and looped the scabbard at my left shoulder. She crouched in the furs naked, beside me.

I drew the blade.

I could see him coming now, running over the fields, stumbling.

He was a large man, exhausted. At his hips he wore a rag. An iron collar, with broken chain, was at his neck.

He came near us and then stopped, suddenly. He stood unsteadily. "Are you with them?" he asked.

"With whom?" I asked.

"The hunters," he said.

"No," I said.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"A traveler, and a slave girl," I said. She shrank hack in the furs, pulling them about her throat.

"You are of the warriors?" he said.

"Yes," I said.

"You will not kill me, nor hold me for them?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Have you seen them?" he asked.

"A girl, and four guardsmen?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Earlier today," I said. "You are then the sport slave?" I said.

"Yes," said he, "purchased from the pens at Lydius, for a girl's hunting."

I recalled the dark-eyed, dark-haired girl, vital and trim in her carefully tailored hunting costume, with the tunic and hose, the boots, cape and feathered cap. It was an attractive outfit.

"You have done well to elude them this long," I said. "Would you care for food?"

"Please," said he.

I threw him meat and he sat down, cross-legged. Seldom had I seen a man so tear at food.

"Would you care for paga?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"I see that it is your intention to survive," I said.

"That is my intention," he said.

"Your chances," I said, "are slim."

"I now have food," he said.

"You are a courageous fellow," I said.

"Did they have sleen?" he asked.

"No," I said. "They were, it seems, making it truly a sport."

"Those well-armed and mounted can afford nobility," he said.

"You sound bitter," I said.

"If they do not find me tonight," he said, "they will return with sleen in the morning."

"That," I said, "would be the end." The sleen can follow a track better than a larl or a Kur. It is tireless and tenacious, and merciless.

"I have one chance," he said.

"What is that?" I asked.

"They had formed a hunting line," said he, "the girl in the center. It was in her path that I left a bit of rag, and did not deign thenceforward to conceal my trail. She should have come upon the bait by now."

"She will summon her guardsmen," I said, "and you will be finished."

"I assess her vanity differently," he said. "It is her sport, not theirs. She will pull away from her guardsmen to be first to the quarry."

"They will pursue," I said.

"Of course," he said.

"You will have little time," I said.

"True," he said.

"Do you think that you, afoot, will be able to elude a mounted archer, be she even female?" I asked.

"I think so," he said.

"There is little cover," I said. I looked at the fields.

"There is enough," he said. Then he rose to his feet and wiped his hands on his thighs. Then he walked over to the pond several yards away. He lay down on his belly and drank from the water.

"Yes," I said. 'There is cover. He is a clever fellow."

The man left tracks by the side of the pond, and then waded into the chill water. He broke off a reed and then waded deeper into the water.

I felt the girl beside me touch me, timidly. "May I labor now to earn my rape, Master?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

I smiled to myself. The slave fires, which lurk in any woman, had been particularly easy to arouse in this girl. I recalled that the men of Torvaldsland regarded the women of Kassau as superb slaves. I saw now the justice of this assessment. Gorean girls, however, who are aware of the cultural implications of their collar, and its meaning, usually spend little time, once it is helplessly locked on their throats, in fighting their womanhood. They must bend, or die. In bending, in submission, in total, will-less submission to a master, they find themselves free for the first time from the chains of egoism, liberated from the grasping pursuits of the self, readied for the surrenders of love.

"Disgusting!" said the free woman, on the tharlarion, in the hunting costume.

I rolled over, looking up. The blond girl by my side, the slave, cried out with misery, and dared not meet the eyes of her free sister.

"Greetings," I said.

"Do not permit me to interfere with your pleasures," she said cooly.

The slave girl whimpered and put down her head. How shamed she was before the freedom and grandeur of the free woman.

"Have you found your sport slave yet?" I inquired.

"No," she said. "But he is quite near."

"I have not been paying much attention," I said.

"You have been otherwise engaged." she, said loftily. I wondered at the hatred which free women seem to bear to their imbonded sisters. This hatred, incidentally, is almost never directed at the master, but almost always at the slave. Do they envy the slaves their collar?

"That is true," I admitted.

"It is fortunate I am here," said the free woman. "You might need my protection."

"You think there is a dangerous fellow lurking about?" I asked.

"I am sure of it," she said.

"We shall be on our guard," I said.