"What is so strange?" I asked.

"That Samos should be here," said she.

"But why?" I asked.

She looked at me. "Because," said she, "years ago, he was my master."

I was startled.

"I was taken slave at the age of seven in a raid," she said, "and Samos, at a market, bought me. For years he treated me with great concern and care. I was treated well, and taught things that slaves are seldom taught. I can read, you know."

I recalled once, long ago, being puzzled that she, though a mere rence girl, had been literate.

"And I was taught many other things, too," said she, "when I could read, even to the second knowledge."

That was reserved, generally, for the high castes on Gor.

"I was raised in that house," she said, "with love, though I was only slave, and Samos was to me almost as a father might have been. I was permitted to speak to, and learn from, scribes and singers, and merchants and travelers. I had friends among other girls in the house, who were also much free, though not as free as I. We had the freedom of the city, though guards would accompany us to protect us."

"And then what happened?" I asked.

Her voice grew hard. "I had been told that on my seventeenth birthday a great change would occur in my life." She srnfled. "I expected to be freed, and to be adopted as the daughter of Samos."

"What happened?" I asked.

"At dawn that morning," she said, "the Slave Master came for me. I was taken below to the pens. There, like a new girl taken from the rence islands, I was stripped. An iron was heated. I was marked. My head was placed across an anvil and, about my throat, was hammered a simple plate collar. Then my wrists were tied widely apart to wrist rings mounted in a stone wall, and I was whipped.

After this, when'l had been cut down, weeping, the Slave Master, and his men, much used me. After this I was fitted with slave chains and locked in a pen, with other girls. These other girls, some of them rence girls themselves, would often beat me, for they knew what freedom I had had in the house, and they knew, as was true, that I had regarded myself as far superior to such as they, only common girls, simple merchandise. I thought there was some great mistake. For days, though the other girls would beat me for it, I begged the Slave Master, the guards, to be taken before Samos. At last, kneeling, in a simple plate collar, beaten and shackled, stripped, I was thrown before him."

"What did he say?" I asked.

"He said," said she, "take this slave away."

I looked down, but held her.

"I was taught the duties of the slave girl in that house," she said, "and I learned them well. The girls among whom I had been first would no longer even condescend to speak to me. Guards who had formerly protected me would now, as they chose, take me in their arms, and I must well serve them or be beaten."

"Did Samos himself use you?" I asked.

"No," she said.

"The most miserable of tasks were often given to me," continued the girl. "Often I was not permitted clothing. Often I was beaten, and cruelly used. At night I was not even chained, but locked in a tiny slave cage, in which I could scarcely move." She looked at me, angrily. "In me," said she, "a great hatred grew, of Port Kar and of Samos and of men, and of slaves, of whom I was one. I lived only for my hate and the dream that I might one day escape, and take vengeance on men."

"You did escape," I said.

"Yes," she said, "in cleaning the quarters of the slave master I found the key to my collar."

"You were then no longer wearing a plate collar," I said.

"Almost from the beginning, after my seventeenth birthday," said Telima, "I was trained as a pleasure slave. One year after my enslavement I was certified to the house by the slave mistress as having become accomplished in such duties. At that time the plate collar was opened by one of the metal workers and replaced with a seven-pin lock collar."

The common female slave collar on Gor has a seven-pin lock. There are, incidentally, seven letters in the most common Gorean expression for female slave, Kajira.

"It seems careless," I said, "that the slave master should leave, where a slave might find it, the key to her collar."

She shrugged.

"And, too," she said, "nearby there was a golden armlet." She looked at me. "I took it," she said. "I thought I might need gold, if only to bargain my way past guards." She looked down. "But," she said, "I had little difficulty in leaving the house. I told them I was on an errand, and they permitted me to leave. I had, of course, run errands in the city before. Outside the house I removed the collar, that I might move more freely, being unquestioned, in the city. I found some beams and rope, and a pole, bound together a simple raft and through one of the delta ca.n.a.ls, which were not then barred, made my escape. As a child I had been of the marshes, and so I did not fear to return to them. I was found by the men of Ho-Hak and accepted into their community. He permitted me, even, to retain the golden armlet."

I looked at the opposite wall. "Do you still hate Samos so?" I asked. "I had thought I would," she said. "But now that he is here, and helping us, I do not hate him. It is all very strange."

I was tired, and I felt I must sleep. I was pleased that Telima had told me these parts of her story, which I had not heard before. I sensed that there was more here than I could clearly understand at the moment, and more than she understood, as well. But I was very tired.

"You know," I said, "the keep will be overrun and most of us, the men, at least, will be slain?"

"The fleet will come," she said.

"Yes," I said. "But if it does not." "It will," she said.

"Where is the collar I took from your throat on the night of the victory feast?"

I asked.

She looked at me, puzzled. "I brought it to the keep," she said. She smiled. "I did not know whether you wished me slave or free."

"The men will come with weapons," I said. "Where is the collar?"

She looked at me. "Must I wear it?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. I did not want her slain, if possible, when the men came. If they thought her a free woman, and mine, she might be swiftly killed, or tortured and impaled.

She found the collar.

"Put it on," I told her.

"Is there so little hope?" she asked.

"Put it on," I said to her. "Put it on."

"No," she said. "If you die, I am willing to die beside you, as your woman."

Port Kar does not recognize the Free Companionship, but there are free women in the city, who are known simply as the women of their men.

"Are you my woman?"- I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Then," I said, "obey me."

She smiled. "If I must be collared," she said, "let it be at the hand of my Ubar."

I placed the collar on her throat, and kissed her. In her tunic I saw, concealed, a small dagger.

"Would you fight with this?" I asked, taking it from her.

"I do not wish to live without you!" she cried.

I threw the dagger to one side. She wept in my arms. "No," I said, "life is what is important. It is life that is important. Life."

Collared, she wept in my arms.

Weary, I fell asleep.

"They're coming!" I heard cry.

I shook my head, and leaped to my feet.

"My Ubar!" cried Telima. "This I brought to the keep."

To my astonishment she handed me the sword that I had brought originally to Port Kar.

I looked at it.

I put aside the admiral's sword.

"Thank you," I said.

Our lips brushed as I thrust her aside, and ran to the ladder. I slipped the blade into the sheath and began to climb the rungs. I could hear shouts and the feet of men above me.

I climbed the ladder. At my side I now wore the sword that I had brought originally to Port Kar, that which I had carried so many years before, even at the siege of Ar, and in Thama, and in the Nest of Priest-Kings and on the plains of the Wagon Peoples, and in the streets of great Ar itself, when I had seemed to serve Cemus, Master of the House of Cemus, greatest of the slave houses of Ar. It did not have the jeweled hilt or the figured blade of my admiral's sword, but I found it sufficient. Telima had found it among my belongings, and had brought it to the keep, that it might'be waiting for me there. Strangely she had apparent- ly not expected me to do anything other than return to my holding. As I climbed the ladder I was glad that the old blade, the familiar steel, with its memories of another life and time, when I had been Tart Cabot, was at my side.

If one must die, how could one better die than with such a blade in hand?

We fought on the height of the keep.

The last four arrows of the great yellow bow were fired, and four who threatened us fell from the delta wall beyond the keep, from which they were attempting to cover the climb of the besiegers.

Standing even on the mantelets under the tarn wire, with spears and swords, we thrust at the tarnsmen drop- ping to the wire, leaving go of the ropes to which they had clung.

We heard grappling irons with knotted ropes fly over the parapet, sc.r.a.pe across the stones, and wedge in the crenels. We heard the striking against the walls of the keep of siege poles, like ladders with a single upright, rungs tied transversely on the single axis. We heard the trumpets of the attack, the running feet, the climbing, the clashing of weapons, the shouting of men.

Then helmeted heads, eyes wild in the "Y"-like openings of the helmets, appeared at the crenels, and gauntleted hands and booted feet appeared, and men were swarming at the walls.

I leaped down from the mantelet on which I had stood and flung myself to the wall.

I heard the ringing of the steel of Samos, the cries of the men behind me.

I caught sight of the boy, Fish, running past, a spear held over his head in both hands, and heard a horrible cry, long and wailing, ending with the abrupt striking of a body far below on the stones.

"Keep more from coming!" I cried to my men.

They rushed to the walls.

Within the parapets we fought those who had scaled the walls.

I saw one invader climbing down the ladder to the lower levels.

Then he cried out and slipped to the level beneath, his hands off the rungs.

I saw Telima's head in the opening. In her teeth was the dagger I had seen. In her right hand, b.l.o.o.d.y, was the admiral's sword I had discarded.

"Go back!" I cried to her.

I saw Luma and Vina climbing up behind her. They picked up stones from the roof of the keep, and ran to the walls, to hurl them at point-blank range against the men climbing.

Telima, wildly, her two hands on the sword, struck a man from behind in the neck and he fell away from the blade. Then she had lost the blade, as an invader struck it from her hand. He raised his own to strike her but I had my steel beneath his left shoulder blade and had turned again before he could deliver his blow.

I saw a man on the parapet fall screaming backward, struck by a rock as large as his head, hurled from the small hands of Luma. Vina, with a shield, whose weight she could hardly bear, was trying to cover the boy, Fish, as he fought. I saw him drop his man, and turn, seeking another.

I threw a man whom I had struck, even before he died, over the parapet, striking another, who, clinging desperately to the siege pole, carried it back in a long arc with him as he fell. I saw one of my former slaves, with a spear shaft, beating another man from the wall.

Samos thrust his blade into the "Y"-shaped opening of a helmet, parried a spear thrust from his body, and met the steel of another man.

We heard the trumpet of retreat, and killed six as they tried to escape back over the wall.

We, panting, b.l.o.o.d.y, looked about ourselves.

"The next attack," said Samos, indifferently, "will be the last."

Samos survived, and I, and the boy, Fish, and the three girls, and, beyond these, other than the dancer, Sandra, who had remained below, only five men, three who had come to my holding with Samos, and two of my own, one a simple mercenary, one who had once been a slave.

I looked out over the delta.

We heard, behind walls, within the holding, the rnarshalling of men, the click of arms. It would not, this time, be a long wait.

I went to Samos. "I wish you well," I said to him. The heavy, squarish face regarded me, still so much the countenance of the predator. Then he looked away.

"I, too," said he, "wish you well, Warrior."

He seemed embarra.s.sed to say what he had. I wondered why he had called me Warrior.

I took Telima in my arms. "When they. come again," I said, "hide below. If you fight you will doubtless be slain. When they come below, submit to them. They may spare you." And then I looked to Vina and Luma. "You, also," I said. "Do not mix in the matters of men."

Vina looked to the boy, Fish.

He nodded. "Yes," he saiid, "go below."

"I, for one," said Telima, "find it stuffy below."