She laughed. "In two days," she said, "at festival, I will put you at stake as a prize for girls."

There was laughter at this, and shouts of pleasure.

My shoulders and head fell forward and, bound, I shook with shame.

The girl turned. "Follow me, Slave," said she, imperiously.

I struggled to my feet and, to the jeers of the rence growers, and blows, stumbled after the girl, she who owned me, my mistress.

4 The Hut

In the stem of the girl's rence craft, she poling the craft from the stern, I knelt, cutting rence. It was late in the year to cut rence but some quant.i.ties of the rence are cut during the fall and winter and stored on covered rence rafts until spring. These stores of rence are not used for adding in the making of rence paper, but in the weaving of mats, for adding to the surface of the island, and for the pith, used as a food.

"Cut there," said the girl, moving the rush craft into a thicket of rence.

One holds the stem of the plant in the left hand and, with the right, with a small, curved, two-inch knife makes a diagonal upward stroke.

We were towing a small rence raft and there was already much rence upon it.

We had been cutting since before dawn. It was now late in the afternoon.

I cut again, dropping the tufted, flowered head of the rence stem in the water, and then I tossed the stem onto the raft of rence, with the piles of others.

I could sense the rence craft move as teh girl shifted her weight in it, balancing it and maintaining it in position.

I cut more.

She had not seen fit to give her slave clothing.

About my neck she had coiled and tied a length of marsh vine.

I knew her to be barefoot behind me, in the brief-skirted tunic of yellowish-brown rence cloth, cut away at the shoulders to give her freedom of movement. She wore a golden armlet. Her hair was bound back with the bit of purple rep-cloth. She had, as the girls do in rence craft, tied her skirt high about her thighs, for ease in moving and poling. I was terribly conscious of her. Her rather thick ankles seemed to me to be strong and lovely, and her legs st.u.r.dy and fine. Her hips were sweet, her belly a rhythm made for the touch of a man, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, full and beautiful, magnificent, tormenting me, strained against the brittle rence cloth of her tunic with an insolence of softness, as though, insistent, they would make clear their contempt for any subterfuge of concealment.

"Slave," had cried the girl once, "do you dare to look upon your mistress!"

I had turned away.

I was hungry. In the morning, before dawn, she had placed in my mouth a handful of rence paste. At noon, in the marshes, with the sun burning at meridian, she had taken another handful of rence paste from a wallet worn at her waist and thrust it in my mouth, again not permitting me the dignity of feeding myself.

Though it was now late in the afternood and I was hungry I would not ask to be fed again from the wallet at her side.

I cut another rence stem, cut away the tufted, flowered head, and threw the stem onto the raft.

"Over there," she said, moving the rence craft to a new location.

She had made little attempt to conceal her beauty from me. Indeed, she used it to torment and shame me, using it, like blows and abuse, to increase my miseries.

This morning, before dawn, she had affixed my collar.

I had spent the night in the open, a foot or two from her tiny hut on the rence island, my wrists tied to my ankles, my neck tethered to an oar pole thrust deep through the rence of the island.

Before dawn her foot awakened me.

"Awake, Slave," she had said.

Then, as casually as one might untether an animal, fearing nothing, she unbound me.

"Follow me, Slave," she had said.

At the edge of the rence island, where her rence craft was drawn up on the sh.o.r.e, as well as several others, together with some rafts for transporting cut rence, she stopped, and turned, and faced me. She looked up into my eyes.

"Kneel," she had said.

I had done so, and she had drawn out a handful of rence paste from the wallet at her side, and she fed me.

"Stand," she had said.

I did so.

"In the cities," she asked, "they have slave collars, do they not?"

"Yes," I said.

Then she had taken a length of marsh vine from a packet on her rence craft.

The, looking up into my eyes, smiling, close to me, her arms about my neck, she insolently wound the vine five times about my neck, and knotted it in front.

"Now," she said, "you have a collar."

"Yes," I said, "I have a collar."

"Say," said she, her arms still about my neck, "I am your collared slave."

My fists clenched. She stood within my grasp, her arms on my neck, taunting me with her eyes.

"I am your collared slave," I said.

"Mistress," she taunted.

"Mistress," I said.

She smiled. "I see," said she, tauntingly, "that you find me beautiful." It was true.

The she struck me suddenly, with savagery. I cried out with pain.

"Dare you aspire to me!" she cried. "I am a free woman!" Then she hissed out, "Kiss my feet, Slave!"

In pain, on my knees, I did so, to her laughter.

"Put now the rence craft in the water," she said, "and attach to it a raft for cut rence, Slave. We must cut rence today, and be quick, be quick, My Slave!"

I cut another rence stem, lopping away the tufted head, and throwing it onto the rence craft. And then another, and another.

The sun, though it was late afternoon, was still hot, and it was humid in the delta of Vosk, and my hands ached, and were blistered.

"If you do not obey me in all things, and swiftly," had said the girl, "I will have the men bind you and throw you to the tharlarion. And there is no escape in the marches. You will be hunted down by men with marsh spears. You are my slave!"

"Over there," said the girl. "Cut there."

She moved the craft to a new thicket of rence, and I obeyed.

It was true what she had said. Naked, without weapons, alone in the delta, without aid, without food, I could not escape. It would not be hard for the men of the rence islands, in their hundreds, to cut off escape, to find me, if the tharlarion did not manage to do so first.

But most I was miserable in my heart. H had had an image of myself, a proud image, and the loss of this image had crushed me. I had lived a lie with myself and then, in my own eyes, and in those of others, I had been found out. I had chosen ignominious bondage to the freedom of honorable death. I now knew the sort of thing I was, and in my worthless heart it so sickened me tha tI did not much care now whetehr I lived or died. I did not even much care that I might spend the rest of my life as an abject slave, abused on a rence island, the sport of a girl or children, the b.u.t.t of cruelty and jests of men. Such, doubtless, was deserved. How could I face free men again, when in my own heart I could not even face myself?

It was hot, and the coils of marsh vine around my throat were hot. Beneath the coils my neck was red, and slippery with sweat and dirt. I put my finger in the collar, to pull it a bit from my throat.

"Do not touch your collar," she said.

I removed my hand from the collar.

"There, cut there," said she, and again I cut rence for my mistress.

"It is hot," she said.

I turned.

She had loosened the cord that laced the tunic, refastening it more loosely. In the narrow innuendo of the slightly parted tunic I sensed her perfection.

She laughed. "Cut rence, Slave."

Again I turned to my work.

"You are pretty in your collar," she said.

I did not turn to face her. It was the sort of remark one would address to a slave girl, a simple, comely wench in bondage. The rence knife flashed through a stem and then I cut the tufted, flowered head, it falling in the water, and threw the stem on the rence craft, with the numerous others.

"If you remove your collar," she said, "you will be destroyed."

I said nothing.

"Do you understand?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Mistress," said she.

"Yes," I said, "I understand, Mistress."

"Good," said she, "Pretty Slave."

The rence knife flashed through another stem, and I cut away the flowered, tufted head, and threw the stem in the piles on the raft.

"Pretty Slave," she repeated.

I shook with fury. "Please," said I, "do not speak to me."

"I shall speak to you as I wish," said she, "Pretty Slave."

I trembled with fury, the rence knife in my hand. I shook with humiliation, with the degradation of her scorn. I considered turning upon her and seizing her.

"Cut rence," said she, "Pretty Slave."

I turned again to the rence, trembling with fury, with shame, and again, stem by stem, began to cut.

I heard her laughter behind me.

Stem by steim, and pile by pile, the time was marked in strokes of rence.

The sun was low now and insects moved in the sedge. The water glistened in the dusk, moving in small bright circles about the stems of rushes.

Neither of us had spoken for a long time.

"May I speak?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"How is it," I asked, "that so many of the rence islands are now gathered together?" I had wondered abut this.

"It is near the festival of Se'Kara," said she.

Indeed, I knew that tomorrow was festival for the rence islands.

"But so many?" I asked. "Surely that is unusual?"

"You are curious for a slave," she said. "Curiosity is not always becoming in a slave."

I said nothing.

"Ho-Hak," said she, "has called the nearby islands to a council."

"How many are there?" I asked.

"Five," said she, "in the general area. There are others, of course, elsewhere in the delta."