I became aware of the pounding of kaiila pads on the dry surface. Suddenly I was alert, awake.

I spun the kaiila, and stood in the stirrups.

A man was riding by, the length of the caravan, one of the points. “Riders!” he cried. “Riders!”

I could see them now, more than a hundred of them, sweeping toward us over the crest of one of the hills, to my left, the west.

Their burnooses whipped behind them as they mounted the crest of the hill and, the animals half sliding, descended the other side, approaching us. Guards from our caravan were hastening outward to meet them. I stood in the stirrups. I saw no one approaching from other directions. There might be, of course, such delayed charges. Reassured I was to see points riding out about the caravan, outriders, to guard against such surprise. I saw Farouk, merchant and caravan master, ride by, burnoose swirling behind him, lance in hand. With him were six men. I saw drovers, holding the reins of their beasts, shading their eyes, looking over the dust to the west. One of the kinsmen of Farouk went to the kurdahs of slave girls, hobble chains at his saddle pommel; he would rein in before a kurdah, throw the girl the hobble and order her, “Shackle yourself”; he would wait the moment it took for the girl to snap the small ring about her right wrist and, behind her body, the larger one about her left ankle; the rings are separated by about six inches of chain; they are not sleeping hobbles, which confine only the ankles; then he would rush to the next kurdah, fling a hobble to the next girl, and repeat his command. I rode down the caravan until I came to Alyena’s kurdah. She thrust her head out, veiled, her fists holding apart the rep-cloth curtain.

“What is going on?” she cried.

“Be silent,” I told her. She looked frightened.

“Stay within the kurdah, Slave,” I warned her. “And do not peer out.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I turned the kaiila, loosened the scimitar in the sheath.

“They are Aretai!” cried a man.

I thrust the scimitar back, deep, in the sheath.

I saw, some hundred yards from the caravan, the riders reined up. With them I saw Farouk, conversing with their captain. The caravan guards, on nervous, prancing kaiila, were behind him. Lances were high, butts in the stirrup sheath, like needles against the hills.

I rode my kaiila out a few steps, toward the men, then returned it to the caravan.

“They are Aretai,” said one of the drovers. The caravan, I knew, was bound for the Oasis of Nine Wells. It was held by Suleiman, master of a thousand lances.

He was high pasha of the Aretai.

Several of the newcomers fanned out to flank the caravan, at large intervals. A cluster of them rode toward its head, another cluster toward its rear. Some twenty of them, with Farouk, and certain guards, began to work their way down the caravan, beast by beast, checking the drovers and kaiila tenders.

“What are they doing?” I asked a nearby drover.

“They are looking for Kavars,” he said.

“What will they do with them if they find them?” I asked.

“Kill them,” said the man.

I watched the men, on their kaiila, accompanied by Farouk, the caravan master, moving, man by man, towards us.

“They are the men of Suleiman,” said the drover, standing nearby, the rein of his kaiila in his hand. “They have come to give us escort to the Oasis of Nine Wells.”

Closer came the men, stopping, starting, moving from one man to the next, down the long line. They were led by a captain, with a red-bordered burnoose. Several of them held their scimitars, unsheathed, across the leather of their saddles.

“You are not a Kavar, are you?” asked the drover.

“No,” I said.

The riders were before us.

The drover threw back the hood of his burnoose, and pulled down the veil about his face. Beneath the burnoose he wore a skullcap. The rep-cloth veil was red; it had been soaked in a primitive dye, mixed from water and the mashed roots of the telekint; when he perspired, it had run; his face was stained. He thrust back the sleeve of his trail shirt.

The captain looked at me. “Sleeve,” he said. I thrust back the sleeve of my shirt, revealing my left forearm. It did not bear the blue scimitar, tattooed on the forearm of a Kavar boy at puberty.

“He is not Kavar,” said Farouk. He made as though to urge his mount further down the line.

The captain did not turn his mount. He continued to look at me. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I am not a Kavar,” I told him.

“He calls himself Hakim, of Tor,” said Farouk.

“Near the north gate of Tor,” said the captain, “there is a well. What is its name?”

“There is no well near the north gate of Tor,” I told him.

“What is the name of the well near the stalls of the saddlemakers?” asked the captain.

“The well of the fourth passage hand,” I told him. Water, more than a century ago, had been struck there, during the fourth passage hand, in the third year of the Administrator Shiraz, then Bey of Tor.

I was pleased that I had spent some days in Tor, before engaging in the lessons of the scimitar, learning the city. It is not wise to assume an identity which one cannot cognitively substantiate.

“Your accent,” said the captain, “is not of Tor.

“I was not always of Tor,” I told him. “Originally I was from the north.”

“He is a Kavar spy,” said one of the lieutenants, at the side of the captain.

“Why are you bound for the Oasis of Nine Wells?” asked the captain.

“I have gems to sell Suleiman, your master,” said I, “for bricks of pressed dates.”

“Let us kill him,” urged the lieutenant.

“Is this your kurdah?” asked the captain, gesturing to the kurdah on the nearby kaiila.

“Yes,” I said.

In making their examination of the caravan they had, with their scimitars, opened the curtains of the kurdahs, for there might have been Kavars concealed therein. They had found, however, only girls, slaves, their right wrists and left ankles locked in five-link slave hobbles.

“What is in it?” he asked.

“Only a slave girl,” I told him.

He pressed his kaiila to the kurdah, and, with the tip of his scimitar, prepared to lift back the curtain to his right.

My scimitar, blade to blade, blocked his.

The men tensed. Fists clenched on the hilts of scimitars.

Lances were lowered.

“Perhaps you conceal within a Kavar?” asked the captain.

With my own scimitar tip I brushed back the curtain. In the kurdah, kneeling, frightened, naked save for collar and veil, the girl shrank back.

“Thigh,” said the captain.

The girl turned her left thigh to him, showing her brand. “It is only a slave girl,” said the lieutenant, disappointed.

The captain smiled. He regarded the sweet, small, luscious, exposed slave curves of the girl. “But a pretty little one,” he said.

“Face-strip yourself,” I ordered her.

The girl, fingers behind the back of her head, at the golden string, lowered her veil. Her body had lifted beautifully when her hands had sought the string behind her head. I noted how she had done it. I grinned to myself. She was a slave girl and did not know it.

“Yes,” said the captain, “a pretty slave.” His eyes lingered on her unveiled mouth, then he drank in the rest of her, then the whole of her. He looked at me.

“I congratulate you on your slave,” he said.

I acknowledged his compliment, inclining and lifting my head.

“Perhaps, tonight,” he suggested, “she may dance for us.”

“She does not know how to dance,” I said. Then, to the girl, in English, I said, “You are not yet ready to dance for the pleasure of men.” She shrank back. “Of course not,” she said, in English. But I could see that, in spite of her anger, her denial, her eyes had been excited, curious. Doubtless she had, from time to time, wondered what it would be like, a collared slave girl, to dance naked in the sand, in the light of the campfire, laboring vulnerably under whip-threat to please Gorean warriors. It would be a long time, I thought, before the cool, white-skinned Alyena would beg, “Dance me! Dance me for the pleasure of men!”