"It is the same chance," said he, "which I in your place would have had."

The five sleen stopped now, tails thrashing, crouched down, shoulders high, heads low, eyes blazing. They were some fifty yards from the girl. Their nostrils were flared, their ears laid back against the sides of their broad, triangular heads. I saw the tongue of one darting in and out.

They crept forward, there must be no mistake of losing the prey.

The girl turned and fled, bound, the rag on her hips to the legs of the tarn. She knelt in the grass. She looked up, her eyes wild.

"Take me with you!" she wept.

"There is no room for free women here," said Ram.

"But I am a slave!" she cried.

"Are you a natural slave?" asked Ram.

"Yes, yes," she wept. "I have known for years in my heart that I was truly a slave. I lack only the brand and collar!"

"Interesting," said Ram.

"Make me your slave!" she wept.

"But perhaps," said he, "I do not want you."

"Want me! Want me!" she begged.

"Do you acknowledge yourself a true slave?" asked Ram.

"Yes, yes!" she cried.

"Do you beg to be my slave?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," she said, on her knees.

"Then beg," said he.

"I beg to be your slave, Master," she said.

The sleen charged. Ram, with his left hand on the tarn harness, managed to get his right hand on her arm. The tarn, given the sudden force on the one-strap, reared and, smiting the air with his mighty wings, lifted itself into the air. The girl screamed, dangling. One of the sleen leaped more than twenty feet into the air, tearing at her, but fell back to the turf, twisting, squealing. She who had been the Lady Tina was held safe in the arms of Ram, her master. He freed her hands that she might hold to him. With his knife he cut the rags from her hips and we watched them fall among the angry sleen who tore them to pieces.

"It seems we have a new slave girl," said Constance.

She who had been the Lady Tina looked at her with fear.

"Yes," I said.

I turned the head of the tarn toward Lydius.

"We are flying in the direction of Lydius, Master," said Constance, her hair lifted by the wind.

"We shall stop there for a time," I said. "I acquired a girl in the fields. She has not yet been branded. It is my intention to have her marked."

She turned white.

"Did you expect to escape the brand?" I asked.

"No, Master," she said. She, Gorean, knew well that slave girls are marked.

She was silent.

I would let her anticipate the iron.

"I, too, acquired a girl in the fields," said Ram. "I may, in Lydius, as well, see that her thigh is clearly marked, that identifying her as what she is, a slave."

I looked at the naked girl clinging fearfully, helplessly to Ram. "She is so beautiful," I said, "there could be little doubt in anyone's mind that she is a slave, whether she is branded or not."

"She is comely," admitted Ram. "But I will nonetheless have her incontrovertibly marked."

"The mark will improve her beauty," I said, "making it doubly desirable."

"True," said Ram, "perhaps even infinitely more desirable."

"Perhaps," I said. It was true that a brand incredibly enhanced the beauty of a female. Some women did not know what male lust was, until they became slaves, and found themselves, suddenly, vulnerably exposed to its full predations.

She who moments before had been free held to Ram, her master, clutching him, desperately, that she might not fall.

I let her hold to Ram for a while; then I said to her, "Extend your wrists to me, crossed."

"I will fall," she wept.

"If your master pleases," I said, "he will hold you."

"Hold me, Master," she wept. "I beg you!'

"Perhaps," he said.

She extended her wrists to me, crossed. I lashed them together with binding fiber.

She knew that it was only her master's hands on her which prevented her from failing to the ground, hundreds of feet below. She depended on him totally for her life, that he would hold her.

Then her hands were bound, and I drew her up and over the saddle. I then lifted up Constance's arms and thrust the new slave's tied wrists over the pommel, then placed Constance's bound wrists over hers.

The load was thus balanced on the tarn, the weight of the two beauties on one side, that of Ram on the other.

I had placed Constance's bound wrists over those of the new slave for Constance was first girl. She would be first to be lifted from the pommel.

"You are first girl," I told Constance.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Constance is first girl," I told her who had been the Lady Tina of Lydius.

"Yes, Master," said she who had been the Lady Tina of Lydius.

"Address her as Mistress," I told the former free girl. "Mistress," said she who had been the former Lady Tina of Lydius, frightened, to Constance.

"Slave," responded Constance to her confirming the former free woman as second girl.

"Now, on to Lydius!" I said.

"Yes, Master," said the two girls, the blond and the brunet, first girl and second girl, yet both really new slaves, neither of whom had as yet even been branded.

7.

I Am Careless In Lydius: I Am Taken Captive

I kicked in the door. It splintered inward. I was through the door, sword drawn.

The man at the desk leaped up.

"Where is Bertram of Lydius?" I asked.

"I am he," said the man, in fur jacket. "What do you want? Are you an assassin? You do not wear the dagger. What have I done?"

I laughed. "You are not the man I seek," I said. "One in the south who meant me harm, who seemed a sleen master, had assumed your identity. I thought perhaps ho might truly have been Bertram of Lydius."

"I do not know you," said the man.

"Nor I you," I said.

I described to him the man who had called himself Bertram of Lydius. But he could not identify him for me. I wondered at who he might truly be.

"You have an excellent name in sleen training," I said. "It is known even in the south. Else I would not have permitted the man to my house."

"I am pleased I am not he whom you seek," said Bertram of Lydius. "I do not envy him."

"The one I seek," I said, "is skilled with the knife. He is, I suspect, of the assassins."

I threw a tarsk bit to the desk. "Your door will need repairing," I said.

Then I turned and left the place. I had not thought the man at my house, he, too, whom I had seen in the tent of the curio dealer, had been truly Bertram of Lydius, but I had wished to clarify that. Too, I had thought he might be one known to Bertram of Lydius, if it were not he. It is easier to assume an identity where one knows a subject reasonably well. Yet one, to assume that identity, would have to know little more than the streets of Lydius and the training of sleen. I hoped to renew my acquaintance with the fellow. Little love is lost betwixt the castes of warriors and assassins. Each deems himself the superior of, and the natural foe, of the other. The sword of the warrior, commonly, is pledged to a Home Stone, that of the assassin to gold and the knife.

I walked through the streets of Lydius until I came to the small metal worker's shop, one out of the main ways of the city.

I entered the shop.

"Are you still crying?" I asked Constance.

She sat in the straw beside an anvil. A chain ran from the anvil and was padlocked about her neck.

"My brand hurts, Master," she said.

"Very well," I said, "cry."

"There," said the metal worker. He eased the heavy iron collar, with the short, dangling chain, from Ram's neck.

"Ah," said Ram.

Beside him, on the floor, knelt Tina, which was now her slave name.

Ram directed the metal worker to saw away an inch and a half of the opened collar. He put it in a vise on his workbench and did so.

"Did you find Bertram of Lydius?" asked Ram.

"Yes," I said.

"You slew him?" asked Ram.

"No," I said. "He was not the man I sought."

"Oh," said Ram.

"I did not think he would be," I said.

I looked down at Tina. "Show me your thigh, Girl," I said. She did so.

"How did she take the iron?" I asked.

"She screamed like a she-sleen," he said, "but she is quiet now."

"The brands," I said, "are excellent, both of them."

"Thank you, Master," said Constance, smiling. Tina, too, I noted, straightened herself a bit.

I threw the metal worker a silver tarsk.

"My thanks, Warrior!" he said.

Both of the girls had been beautifully branded. I was pleased.

The metal worker finished sawing the portion off the heavy collar Ram had worn.