Then I thrust again and again into her, in the strong, increasingly intense rhythms of a savage master until the collared she of her, once that of a civilized girl, screamed and shuddered, and then lay mine, without dignity or pride, shattered, only a yielded, barbarian slave, in my arms.

I stood up, and she lay at my feet collared, in the sleen's blood.

I reached to the great ax of Torvaldsland. I stood over her, looking down at her, the ax grasped in my hands.

She looked up at me. One knee was lifted. She shook her head. She took the collar in her hands and pulled it out from her neck a bit, lifting it toward me.

"Do not strike me, Master," she said. "I am yours."

I looked at the collar and chain. She looked up at me, frightened. She was well secured.

My grip tightened on the ax.

She put her hands to the side, helplessly, and, frightened, lifted her body, supplicatingly, to me.

"Please do not strike me, Master," she said. "I am your slave."

I lowered the ax, holding it across my body with both hands. I looked down at her, angrily.

She lowered her body, and lay quietly in the blood, frightened. She placed the backs of her hands on the tiles, so that the palms were up, facing me, at her sides. The palms of a woman's hands are soft and vulnerable. She exposed them to me.

I did not lift the ax.

"I know little of sleen," she said. "I had thought It a sleen trained to hunt tabuk, in the company of archers, little more than an animal trained to turn and drive tabuk, and retrieve them."

"It is thus that the animal was presented to us," I said. That was true. Yet surely, in the light of such a request, one for a garment, a sleen in the house, her suspicions should have been aroused.

"He wanted a garment," I said.

"I did not think," she said.

"Nor did you speak to me of this thing," I said.

"He warned me not to speak to you," she said, "for the gift was to come as a surprise."

I laughed, looking at the sleen.

She put her head to one side, in shame. She turned then again to look at me. "He had it for only a few moments," she said.

'The cage could be opened later, and was," I said. "The hunt then began, through the halls of the house, in the silence and darkness."

She closed her eyes in misery, and then opened them again, looking at me.

I heard the ship's bell, in the great hail, striking. I heard footsteps in the hall outside.

"It is morning," I said.

Thurnock appeared at the door to my chamber. "Word has come," said he, "from the house of Samos. He would speak with you."

"Prepare the longboat," I said. We would make our way through the canals to his house.

"Yes, Captain," he said, and turned and left.

I put aside the ax. With water, poured into a bowl, and fur, I cleaned myself. I donned a fresh tunic. I tied my own sandals.

The girl did not speak.

I slung a sword over my left shoulder, an admiral's blade.

"You did not let me tie your sandals," she said.

I fetched the key to the collar, and went to her, and opened the collar.

"You have duties to attend to," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said. On her knees she suddenly grasped my legs, weeping, looking up at me. "Forgive me, Master," she cried. "I was tricked! I was tricked!"

"It is morning in Port Kar," I said.

She put down her head to my feet. She kissed my feet. She then looked up at me. "If I do not please you this day, Master," she said, "impale me."

"I will," I told her. Then I turned and left her.

2.

The Message Of The Scytale; I Converse With Samos "The arrogance of Kurii may yet prove their undoing," said Samos.

He sat, cross-legged, behind the low table. On It were hot bread, yellow and fresh, hot black wine, steaming, with its sugars, slices of roast bosk, the scrambled eggs of vulos, pastries with creams and custards.

"It is too easy," I said. I did not speak clearly with my mouth full.

"It is a sport for them," he said, "this war." He looked at me, grimly. "As it seems to be for some men."

"Perhaps to some," I said, "those who are soldiers, but surely not to Kurii in general. I understand their commitment in these matters to be serious and one involving their deep concern."

"Would that all men were as serious," said Samos.

I grinned, and washed down the eggs with a swig of hot black wine, prepared from the beans grown upon the slopes of the Thentis mountains. This black wine is quite expensive. Men have been slain on Gor for attempting to smuggle the beans out of the Thentian territories.

"Kurii were ready once," said I, "or some party of them, to destroy Gor, to clear the path to Earth, a world they would surely favor less. Willingness to perform such an act, I wager, fits in not well with the notion of vain, proud beasts."

"Strange that you should speak of vain, proud beasts," said Samos.

"I do not understand," I said.

"I suppose not," said Samos. He then drank from his cup, containing the black wine. I did not press him to elucidate his meaning. He seemed amused.

"I think the Kurii are too clever, too shrewd, too determined," said I, "to be taken at their face value in this matter. Such an act, to deliver such a message, would be little better than a taunt, a gambit, intended to misdirect our attention."

"But can we take this risk?" he asked.

"Perhaps not," I said. With a Turian eating prong, used in the house of Samos, I speared a slice of meat, and then threaded it on the single tine.

Samos took from his robes a long, silken ribbon, of the sort with which a slave girl might bind back her hair. It seemed covered with meaningless marks. He gestured to a guardsman. "Bring in the girl," he said.

A blond girl, angry, in brief slave livery, was ushered into the room.

We were in Samos' great hall, where I had banqueted many times. It was the hall in which was to be found the great map mosaic, inlaid in the floor.

She did not seem a slave. That amused me.

"She speaks a barbarous tongue," said Samos.

"Why have you dressed me like this?" she demanded. She spoke in English.

"I can understand her," I said.

"That is perhaps not an accident," said Samos.

"Perhaps not," I said.

"Can none of you fools speak English?" she asked.

"I can communicate with her, if you wish," I told Samos.

He nodded.

"I speak English," I informed her, speaking in that intricate, beautiful tongue.

She seemed startled. Then she cried out, angrily, pulling downward at the edges of the livery in which she had been placed, as though that would hide more of her legs, which were lovely. "I do not care to be dressed like this," she said. She pulled away, angrily, from the guard, and stood before us. "I have not even been given shoes," she said. "And what is the meaning of this?" she demanded, pulling at a plain ring of iron which had been hammered about her throat. Her throat was slender, and white, and lovely.

Samos handed the hair ribbon to a guardsman, gesturing to the girl. "Put it on," he said to her, in Gorean.

I repeated his command, in English.

"When am I to be permitted to leave?" she asked.

Seeing the eyes of Samos she angrily took the ribbon, and winding it about her head, fastened back her hair. She blushed, angrily, hotly, knowing that, as she lifted her hands gracefully to her hair, she raised the lovely line of her breasts, little concealed in the thin livery. Then she stood before us, angrily, the ribbon in her hair.

"Thus it was she came to us," said Samos, "save that she was clad in inexplicable, barbarous garments." He gestured to a guardsman, who fetched and spilled open a bundle of garments on the edge of the table. I saw that there were pants of some bluish, denim-type material, and a flannel, long-sleeved shirt. There was also a white, light shirt, short-sleeved. Had I not realized them to have been hers, I would have assumed them the clothing of an Earth male. They were male-imitation clothing.

The girl tried to step forward but the shafts of two spears, wielded by her flanking guardsmen, barred her way.

There was also a pair of shoes, plain, brown and low, with darker-brown laces. They were cut on a masculine line, but were too small for a man. I looked at her feet. They were small and feminine. Her breasts, too, and hips, suggested that she was a female, and a rather lovely one. Slave livery makes it difficult for a girl to conceal her sex.

There was also a pair of colored socks, dark blue. They were short.

She again tried to step forward but this time the points of the guards' spears prevented her. They pressed at her abdomen, beneath the navel. Rep-cloth, commonly used in slave livery, is easily parted. The points of the spears had gone through the cloth, and she felt them in her flesh. She stepped back, for a moment frightened and disconcerted. Then she regained her composure, and stood before us.

"This garment is too short," she said. "It is scandalous!"

"It is feminine," I told her. "Not unlike these," I said. I indicated the brassiere, the brief silken panties, which completed the group of garments on the table.

She blushed redly.

"Though you imitated a man outwardly," I said to her, "I note that it was such garments you wore next to your flesh."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

"Here," I said, "You wear one garment, which is feminine, and where it may be seen, proclaiming your femininity, and you are permitted no other garments."

"Return my clothing to me," she demanded.

Samos gestured to a guardsman, and he tied up the bundle of clothing, leaving it on the table.

"You see," said Samos, "how she was."

He meant, of course, the ribbon in her hair. She stood very straight. For some reason it is almost impossible for a woman not to stand beautifully when she wears slave livery and is in the sight of men.

"Give me the ribbon," said Samos. He spoke in Gorean, but I needed not translate. He held out his hand. She, lifting her arms, blushing, angrily, again touched the ribbon. She freed it of her hair and handed it to a guard, who delivered it to Samos. I saw the guards' eyes on her. I smiled. They could hardly wait to get her to the pens. She, still a foolish Earth girl, did not even notice this.

"Bring your spear," said Samos to a guard. A guard, one who stood behind, gave his spear to Samos.

"It is, of course, a scytale," I said.

"Yes," said Samos, "and the message is in clear Gorean."

He had told me what the message was, and we had discussed it earlier. I was curious, however, to see it wrapped about the shaft of the spear. Originally, in its preparation, the message ribbon is wrapped diagonally, neatly, edges touching, about a cylinder, such as the staff of a marshal's office, the shaft of a spear, a previously prepared object, or so on, and then the message is written in lines parallel with the cylinder. The message, easily printed, easily read, thus lies across several of the divisions in the wrapped silk. When the silk is unwrapped, of course, the message disappears into a welter of scattered lines, the bits and parts of letters; the coherent message is replaced with a ribbon marked only by meaningless, unintelligible scraps of letters; to read the message, of course, one need only rewrap the ribbon about a cylindrical object of the same dimension as the original object. The message then appears in its clear, legible character. Whereas there is some security in the necessity for rewrapping the message about a cylinder of the original dimension, the primary security does not lie there. After all, once one recognizes a ribbon, or belt, or strip of cloth, as a scytale, it is then only a matter of time until one finds a suitable object to facilitate the acquisition of the message. Indeed, one may use a roll of paper or parchment until, rolling it more tightly or more loosely, as needed, one discovers the message. The security of the message, as is often the case, is a function not of the opacity of the message, in itself, but rather in its concealment, in its not being recognized as a message. A casual individual would never expect that the seemingly incoherent design on a girl's ribbon would conceal a message which might be significant, or fateful.

From the girl's reactions I gathered that she understood now that the ribbon bore some message, but that she had not clearly understood this before.

"It is a message?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"What does it say?" she asked.

"It is none of your concern," I said.

"I want to know," she said.

"Do you wish to be beaten?" I asked.