She turned white. “Will it make a difference?” she said.

“I do not know,” I told her. “It could mean the loss of Earth and Gor, the ultimate victory of the Kurii.”

She shuddered. “I was weak,” she said. “There was a dungeon. I was stripped, chained. It was dark. There were urts. I was terrified. I could not help myself.

They told me I would be freed.”

By the leather strap I yanked her wrists, indicating to her that they were well tied. “You will not be freed,” I told her.

“Oh, Tarl,” she wept. Then she asked, “Will what I did make a difference?”

“I do not know,” I told her. “Perhaps those on the steel worlds will not believe your protestations. They may believe you only spoke sincerely what you believed to be true, not what, necessarily, was true.”

She shuddered miserably.

“There are many who know of your treachery,” I said. “Doubtless some will he captured, or fall into the bands of agents of Priest-Kings. Soon your life will be worth little among the agents of Priest-Kings.” I thought of Samos. He was not a patient man.

She lifted her eyes to me. “I could be tortured and impaled,” she said.

“You are a slave girl,” I told her. “No such honorable death would be yours. You would be given one of the deaths of a slave girl, who has not been pleasing. In Port Kar, doubtless, you would be given the Garbage Death-bound naked and hurled to the urts in the canals.”

She sank to her knees in horror. I looked at her. In time she again lifted her head.

“Can you forgive me,’’ she asked, “for what I have done?”

“What seems to concern you,” I said, “does not to me seem to require forgiveness. You are a slave girl. You were simply obedient to your master. No man objects to a girl obeying her master.”

“Then,” she said, softly, “you will not even have the kindness to be cruel to me?”

“I am not lenient,” said I, “Girl, with certain other gratifications you permitted yourself, which were not commanded of you.”

She looked at me. “What?” she asked.

“At Nine Wells,” I said, “following your testimony, falsely accusing me, when removed from the rack, you looked upon me, and smiled.”

“So tiny a thing?” she said. “I’m sorry, Tarl.”

“And when I was chained, and bound for Klima’ “ I said, “again you smiled upon me. You cast me a token, a bit of silk. You blew me a kiss.”

“I hated you!” she cried, from her knees.

I smiled.

“I acted like a slave girl,” she said, her head down.

“Do you know why you acted like a slave girl?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

I looked upon her, in the brief garment, bound kneeling before me, looking up at me. “Because you are a slave girl,” I told her.

“Tarl!” she cried.

There was a sudden pounding on the door. I slipped instantly behind the girl, my hand over her mouth, my dagger across her throat. She could feel its edge.

“You will not cry out or give the alarm,” I told her.

She nodded, miserably. I removed my hand from her mouth.

“Vella! Vella!” called a voice. There was more pounding.

“Do you not trust me, Tarl?” she asked, softly. “

“You are a slave girl,” I whispered. “Answer. The knife was still at her throat.

“Yes, Master!” called the girl.

“You know that at the twentieth hour you are to give pleasure to the guards in the north tower!” called the man.

“I am applying my cosmetics,” she called, “I shall hurry!”

“If you are late by so much as five, Ehn, “ be called, “you will be caressed by the five fingers of leather.” This was an allusion to the Gorean five-strap slave whip, commonly used on girls because of the softness and width of its lashes. It punishes severely but, because of its construction, does not permanently mark the girl.

“I hurry, Master! I hurry!” cried Vella.

The man left.

“You are in great danger,” said Vella. “You must flee.” I sheathed the dagger I had held her in obedience with.

“Those in the kasbah are in greater danger than I,” I smiled.

“How did you get in?” she said. “Is there a secret entrance?”

I shrugged. “I entered unobserved,” I said. “I looked at her. “Curiosity is not becoming in a Kajira,” I said.

She stiffened.

I had waited near one of the gates of the kasbah, in the shelter of the ring’s invisibility. When a reconnoitering party left the kasbah I had simply slipped unseen within. I had stopped in the kitchens of the kasbah to find a suitable garment for Vella. Then I had examined various areas, until I found her, in a room in which girls, who are to be summoned to the pleasure of men, may prepare themselves.

I looked to the lamps at the side of the mirror. One of them would do well.

Soon, Vella closely before me, her wrists bound, the tether looped about her forearm, I entered one of the long, tiled halls, carrying one of the lamps.

We passed only one or two men. I wore garments of the men of the Salt Ubar, taken from a prisoner. There were new mercenaries in the kasbah. No notice was taken of me, though much notice was taken of the luscious slave who, so briefly and shamefully clad, preceded me, I saw Vella, the vain wench, lift her body, instinctually, beautifully, brazenly, as the eyes of each man fell upon her.

She, a slave girl, found much pleasure in being well displayed before masters.

I chuckled. She tossed her bead, angrily.

When I came to one of the narrow windows, not wide enough to admit the body of a man, facing the desert on the north, I lifted and lowered the lamp, and then did this once again. I blew out the lamp. I put it down. We stood in darkness, save for the moonlight at the window.

We heard the sentry’s bar, on the wall, striking the twentieth hour.

“They will want me, Tarl, in the north tower,” said Vella. “It is the Twentieth Hour.”

“I think not,” I said. I looked out over the desert. We heard the sentry’s bar.

“When I do not appear, they will come for me. They may find you. Escape while you can.”

I saw men, riders, pouring out of the desert.

“They await me in the north tower,” she said.

“I think, in the north tower,” I said, “They have other things now on their mind than a slave girl.”

“I do not understand,” she said.

I had paid a visit to the north tower, which commanded the north gate.

“The kasbah,” I said, “will fall.”

“The kasbah will never fall,” said the girl. “There are water and supplies here for months. One man on the walls is worth ten in the desert. No force sufficient to invest the kasbah can be long maintained in its vicinity.”

At the north gate, in the gate room, at the foot of the tower, ten guards struggled, come recently again to consciousness, finding themselves bound and gagged. Above the gate, in the tower itself, lay another ten.

We heard the last stroke of the bar. It was the Twentieth Hour.

“Flee!” whispered Vella. “Flee!”

The north gate, deplorably, perhaps, from the point of view of those within the kasbah, and surely from the point of view of the guards, had been left ajar.

“Flee!” said Vella.

“Look,” I told her. I put my hand over her mouth, and held her to the window. I beard her gasp, and struggle. She squirmed. A girl within the kasbah, she was terrified at what she saw. Like any beautiful female, slave or free, she knew what it might portend for her. She tried to cry out. She could not do so. “Cry out, Slave Girl,” I whispered. “Give the alarm.” Her voice, beneath my large, heavy hand, was muffled. She moaned in misery. She was helpless. Her eyes were wild over my hand.

Riders streamed toward the kasbah. I saw the white burnoose of Hassan, swelling behind him, in their lead.

In a moment someone on the walls had seen the riders. There were shouts. The alarm bar, struck by its great hammer, began to ring madly. Men began to appear in the yard below. Men swarmed to the walls. But to their horror riders were already within the yard, fighting with defenders. Men leaped from their kaiila, climbing, scimitars flashing, up the narrow stairs, toward the walls. The enemy was within. The enemy was behind them. Riders streamed in through the gate, and, too, men afoot, running over the sand. The north gate had fallen. The north tower was theirs. More men entered, flooding within the walls of the kasbah.