I spun another rock down the road, after the lines and wagons.

I should not have demonstrated the skill with the sword that I had, I supposed.

Indeed, I had resolved, as a part of a disguise, to pretend to only modest skillwith the weapon, unless it proved necessary to do otherwise. As soon as the twoblades had touched, however, I had seen what could be done, and had done it. Thematter was reflexive as much, or more, than rational. The steel, as is often thecase, had seemed to think for itself. But I did not regret what I had done. Ichuckled. Let them see, said I to myself, the skill of one who had once trainedin the martial courts of Ko-ro-ba. I laughed. I wondered what these agents ofKurii would if they had known that Tarl Cabot had been in their midst. But theywould have no reason to suppose him in the vicinity of the Barrens. They wouldknow only that they had encountered one who, obviously, was not unaccustomed tosteel.

Once again I thought of the Lady Mira of Venna. Yes, I thought, she would lookwell, like any other beautiful woman, stripped and collared, crawling to thefeet of a man.

6 Kailiauk

I looked down into the broad, rounded, shallow pit, leaning over the waist-highwooden railing. In the pit, about five feet below the surface of the ground,there were nineteen girls. They wore wrist and ankle shackles, their wristshaving some six inches of play and their ankles some twelve inches of play. Theywere also chained together by the neck. None of them stood, for such a girl, insuch a pit, is not permitted to stand, unless given an express order to do so.

The pit was muddy, for it had rained in the morning. They looked up, some ofthem who dared to do so, at the men looking down at them, from about thecircular railing, assessing their qualities as females. Did they look into theeyes of their future masters? They had not yet even been branded.

"Barbarians," said the fellow next to me.

"Clearly," I said.

"There are two other pits," said the fellow. "Did you see them?"

"Yes," I said. "I have already perused their contents." It is pleasant to seenaked, chained women, either slaves or those soon to be slaves.

I had spent a night on the road and had arrived in Kailiauk, hungry and muddy,yesterday, shortly after the tenth Ahn, the Gorean noon. Indeed, I had heard thestriking of the time bar, mounted on the roof of the Administrator's store, as Ihad approached the town's outskirts. In Kailiauk, as is not unusual in the townsof the perimeter, the Administrator is of the Merchants. The major business inKailiauk is the traffic in hides and kaiila. It serves a function as well,however, as do many such towns, as a social and commercial center for manyoutlying farms and ranches. It is a bustling town, but much of its population isitinerant. Among its permanent citizens I doubt that it numbers more than fouror five hundred individuals. As would be expected it has several inns andtaverns aligned along its central street.

Its most notable feature, probably, is its hide sheds. Under the roofs of theseopen sheds, on platforms, tied in bundles, are thousands of hides. Elsewhere,here and there, about town, are great heaps of bone and horn, often thirty ormore feet in height. These deposits represent the results of the thinnings ofkailiauk herds by the red savages. A most common sight in Kailiauk is the comingand going of hide wagons, and wagons for the transport of horn and bones. Thenumber of kailiauk in the Barrens is prodigious, for it affords them a splendidenvironment with almost no natural enemies. Most kailiauk, I am sure, have neverseen a man or a sleen.

The Barrens are traversed by a large number of herds. The four or fivebest-known herds, such as the Boswell herd, he for whom the Boswell Pass isnamed, and the Bento herd and the Hogarthe herd, named after the first white menwho saw them, number, it is estimated, between two and three million beasts. Thetremors in the earth from such a herd can be felt fifty pasangs away. It takessuch a herd two to three days to ford a river. It has occasionally happened thatenemy tribes have preyed on such a herd at different points and only afterwards,to their chagrin and amusement, realized their proximity to one another. Besidesthese major herds there are several smaller, identifiable herds numbering in thehundreds of thousands of animals. Beyond these, as would be expected, are manysmaller herds, the very numbers of which are not even calculated by the redsavages themselves, herds often range from a few hundred to several thousandanimals.

It is speculated that some of these smaller herds may be subherds of largerherds, separating from the major herd at certain points during the season,depending on such conditions as forage and water. If that is the case then thenumber of kailiauk may not be quite as large as it is sometimes estimated. Onthe other hand, that their numbers are incredibly abundant is indubitable. Theseherds, too, interestingly enough, appear to have their annual grazing patterns,usually describing a gigantic oval, seasonally influenced, which covers manythousands of pasangs. These peregrinations, as would be expected, tend to take aherd in and out of the territory of given tribes at given times. The same herd,thus, may be hunted by various tribes without necessitating dangerous departuresfrom their own countries.

The kailiauk is a migratory beast, thusly, but only in a rather special sense.

It does not, for example, like, certain flocks of birds, venture annually inroughly linear paths from the north to the south, and from the south to thenorth, covering thousands of pasangs in a series of orthogonal alternations. Thekailiauk must feed as it moves, and it is simply too slow for this type ofmigration. It could not cover the distances involved in the times that would benecessary. Accordingly the herds tend not so much to migrate with the seasons asto drift with them, the ovoid grazing patterns tending to bend northward in thesummer and southward in the winter. The smell of the hide sheds, incidentally,gives a very special aroma to the atmosphere of Kailiauk. After one has beenthere for a few hours, however, the odor of the hides, now familiar andpervasive, tends to be dismissed from consciousness.

"Some of them are quite pretty," said the fellow next to me, looking down intothe pit, his elbows on the railing.

"Yes," I said. We stood within the compound of Ram Seibar, a dealer in slaves.

It is a reasonably large compound, for he also handles kaiila. It is, I wouldestimate, something over three hundred feet square, or, say, a bit less than atenth of a pasang square. It contains several slave pits but only three were nowoccupied. It also contains several larger and smaller wooden structures,primarily holding areas, barracks for men and various ancillary buildings. Theentire compound is enclosed by a wooden palisade. On the largest building, themain sales barn, about seventy feet wide and a hundred and twenty feet inlength, there flies the pennon of Seibar, a yellow pennon on which, in black,are portrayed shackles and a whip.

"Do you know Grunt, the trader?" I asked the fellow.

"Yes," said he.

"Is he in the vicinity?" I asked.

"I do not know," said the man.

I had sought this fellow in the various inns and taverns of Kailiauk. I couldfind no one who seemed to know of his whereabouts. Indeed, I had begun todespair of finding him.

This morning, at the Five Horns stables, in Kailiauk, I had bought two kaiila.

Bridles, a saddle, various sorts of gear, supplies, and trading goods, too, Ihad purchased in the town, at the store of Publius Crassus, of the Merchants,who is also Kailiauk's Administrator. Too I had purchased a short bow, modeledon the sort used by the savages, fit for clearing the saddle, and a quiver oftwenty sheaf arrows.