My hand again picked up Tafa’s chain, where it was fastened to the plate near mine. Instantly, her eyes, which she had closed, her arm under the left side of her head, opened. I took up a fist of the chain. “Salt slave!” she said. She rose to her knees. She jerked with her weight against the chain. This time I did not release it. Her hands slipped on the chain. She tried to jerk it again, holding it more firmly. I did not release the chain. It was as though it had been fastened anew, but a fist shorter than it bad been. “No!” she cried. I took up another fist of chain. She sprang to her feet. “No! No!” she cried. I put my two hands on the chain. I drew it another few inches toward me. She stumbled forward some inches, then stood, bracing herself, her hands on the chain. “No!” she cried. I took up another fist of the chain, her neck and head were pulled forward. She was in an awkward position. She could not brace herself. She gave some inches and again braced herself, throwing her weight back against the chain. It did not yield. She wept. “No! No!” she said. It interested me that she would attempt to pit her strength against mine. The strength of a full-grown woman is equivalent to that of a twelve-year-old boy. Goreans read in this an indication as to who is master. Foot by foot, slowly, across the floor of the cell, she slipping, screaming, struggling, I drew her toward me. I saw the small oil lamp was growing dim, the oil almost depleted, the wick smoking. Then my fist was in the girl’s collar and I threw her to her back at my side. With my left band I lifted the heavy collar chain from her body and threw it over her head and behind her. I saw her wild eyes, frightened. With some straw I wiped her mouth, cleaning it, for earlier, in her revulsion and terror, her horror at the place and manner in which she found herself incarcerated, she had from her own mouth soiled both herself and the cell. “Please,” she said. “Be silent,” I told her. The lamp sputtered out.

An Ahn before dawn I had been aroused. Tafa, sweet and warm, on the cool stones, on the straw, lay against me, in my arms. Five men, two with lamps, entered the cell. A loop of chain was placed about my belly. My wrists were manacled before me, the manacles fixed with a ring in the chain. Two of the men, one on each side, then thrust a bar behind my back and before my elbows, by means of which, together, they could control me. The fifth man unsnapped the collar from my throat, and dropped it, with its chain, to the stones. I was pulled to my feet.

Tafa, frightened, awake, knelt at my feet. She bent to my feet. I felt her hair on my feet. I felt her lips kiss my feet. She knelt as a slave girl. In the night I had conquered her.

By means of the bar, not looking back, I was thrust from the cell.

We had stood, the salt slaves being readied for the march to Klima, at the foot of the wall of the kasbah of the Salt Ubar. The moons were not yet below the horizon. It was cooling, even chilly at that hour in the late spring. Dawn, like a shadowy scimitar, curved gray in the east. I could see Tama’s kasbah, some two pasangs away. Hassan stood, some four men from me, similarly manacled. Our feet had already been wrapped in leather. I saw the collar of the chain lifted, snapped on his throat. Dew shone on the plastered walls of the kasbah looming over me, on rocks scattered on the desert. A rider, on kaiila, was moving toward us, on the sand about the edge of the wall. The scarlet sand veil of the men of the Guard of the Dunes concealed his countenance, and a length of it fluttered behind him as he rode, and the wide burnoose lifted and swelled behind him. The cording of the agal, over the scarlet kaffiyeh, was gold. Men beside me lifted the chain and collar. The rider pulled the kaiila up beside me, drawing back on the single rein. The collar was snapped about my throat. I felt the weight of the chain.

“Greetings, Tarl Cabot,” said the rider.

“You rise early, noble Ibn Saran,” said I.

“I would not miss your departure,” he averred.

“Doubtless in this there is triumph for you,” said I.

“Yes,” said he, “but, too, regret, Comrade. One gains a victory, one loses an enemy.”

The men of the Guard of the Dunes were fastening slave hoods on the prisoners of the chain. There were several men behind me. This slave hood does not come fitted with a gag device. It is not a particularly cruel hood, like many, but utilitarian, and merciful. It serves four major functions. It facilitates the control of the prisoner. A hooded prisoner, even if not bound, is almost totally helpless. He cannot see to escape; he can not see to attack; he cannot be sure, usually, even of the number and position of his captors, whether they face him, or are attentive, or such; sometimes a hooded prisoner, even unbound, is told simply to kneel, and that if he moves, he will be slain; some captors, to their amusement, leave such prisoners, returning Ahn later, to find them in the same place; the prisoner, of course, does not know if they have merely moved a hundred feet away or so, to rest or make camp, all he knows is that if he does move a foot from his place he may feel a scimitar pass suddenly through his body. In the hood, too, of course, the prisoner does not know who might strike or abuse him. He is alone in the hood, with his confusion, his ignorance, his unfocused misery, his anguish, helpless. The second major function of the hood is to conceal from the prisoner his location, where he is and where be is being taken, it produces disorientation, a sense of dependence on the captor. In the case of the march to Klima, of course, the hood serves to conceal the route from the prisoners of the chain. Thus, even if they thought they might live for a time in the desert, in trying to flee, they would have little idea of even the direction to take in their flight, The chance of their finding their way back to the kasbah of the Salt Ubar, and thence, say, to Red Rock, would be small, even if they were not hooded; hooded, on the Klima march, of course, the chance, unhooded, of finding their way back at a later time would be negligible. This disorientation tends to keep men at Klima: fewer of them, thus, die in the desert. The second two functions of the slave hood, relative to the march to Klima, were specific to the march. Mercifully, the hood tended to protect the head from the sun; one does not go bareheaded in the desert: secondly, the darkness of the hood, when the salt crusts were reached, prevented blindness, from the reflection of the Tahari sun off the layered, bleak, white surfaces.

These hoods, used on the march to Klima, have a tiny flap, closed and tied with a leather string, at the mouth, through which, several times during the day, opened, the spike of a water bag, carried by kaiila, is thrust. The men are fed twice, once in the morning, once at night, when the hood is opened, and thrust up some inches to permit eating. Food is thrust in their mouths. It was generally dried fruit, crackers and a bit of salt, to compensate for the salt loss during the day’s march, consequent on perspiration. Proteins, meat, kaiila milk, vulo eggs, verr cheese, require much water for their digestion. When water is in short supply, the nomads do not eat at all. It takes weeks to starve, but only, in the Tahari, two days to die of thirst. In such circumstances, one does not wish the processes of digestion to drain much needed water from the body tissues. The bargain would be an ill one to strike.

Ibn Saran had turned his kaiila toward Hassan. He looked at him for a time. Then he said, “I am sorry.” Hassan did not speak. It had puzzled me that Ibn Saran had spoken thusly to Hassan, a bandit. Then Ibn Saran turned his kaiila again, and prepared to depart the chain.

“Ibn Saran,” I said.

He paused, and guided the kaiila to my side. The men were closer now, fastening on the prisoners the slave hoods.