What could compare with it? I had not known such passion, such desire, could exist. It overwhelms me. I can scarcely breathe. And I am to be its helpless victim.”

I heard men shouting, in the balls, not far from the door.

“No!” she wept, rising to her feet, trying to turn and run. I was on her in an instant and, taking her in my arms, put her on the floor, sitting. I took her wrists and, with the length of the tether, bent her forward and tied her wrists to her ankles. The end of the tether I knotted in and about the leather on her wrists, so that she would be unable to reach it, even with the fingers of one of her hands. I looked upon her. She sat, bound, the rag I had given her high about her thighs. She was incredibly desirable. She saw herself in the mirror. She could not rise, tied as she was, so she could not reach the other tharlation-oil lamp, high, hanging from a chain, at the side of the mirror.

“Free me!” she wept. “Free me!”

I checked the knots. They were satisfactory. She would be held perfectly.

There was the sound of scimitars clashing down the hall. “Am I not to be freed?” she asked.

On her left thigh, rather high, small and deep, was the sign of the four bosk horns. I fingered it. She recoiled. “Kamchak branded me,” she said.

“What does it mean that you have bound me?” she asked.

I decided that I would have her rebranded.

She looked at me. I took a long set of strands of her dark hair, some inch and a half in thickness. I loosely knotted them at the right side of her cheek.

“The bondage knot,” she whispered.

“This will mark you as having been taken,” I said.

“Taken?” she asked. I stood up. She struggled. I strode from her, going toward the door.

“Tarl!” she cried.

I turned to face her.

“I love you!” she cried.

“You are a consummate actress,” I told her.

“No!” she cried. “It is true!”

“It is of no interest to me whether it is true or not,” I told her.

She looked at me, tears in her eyes, sitting, bound, the loosely looped bondage knot at the side of her face, at the right cheek.

“Does it not matter to you?” she cried.

“No,” I said.

“Do you not love me!” she wept.

“No,” I said.

“But you have come here,” she said. “She struggled. “You have risked much.” She wept. “What is it then you want of me?” she asked.

I laughed. “I want to own you,” I said.

“You are a man of Earth!” she protested.

“No,” I told her. “I am of Gor.”

She shuddered in her bonds. “You are,” she whispered. “I see it in your eyes. I am at the mercy of a man of Gor.” Her beauty, helpless in its leather bonds, shuddered with the comprehension of what this might mean.

I turned away.

“Tarl!” she cried.

I turned again, angry.

“Am I to be kept as a slave?” she asked.

“Yes,” I told her.

“Under full discipline?” she said, disbelievingly.

“Yes,” I said.

“To the whip?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Could you, Tarl,” she asked, “whip me? Could you be capable of that, if I displeased you? Could you, once of Earth, be so strong?”

“You have already much displeased me,” I told her. I recalled Nine Wells, when she had smiled. I remembered the window in the wall of the kasbah, the kiss she had flung me, the token of silk.

“Am I to be whipped now?” she asked. It would have been easy, parting the back of the rag she wore, she tied as she was, to whip her then. She knew that.

“No,” I said.

I went to her and took the bit of faded silk, which I had carried to Klima and back. She looked at it, in misery. I tied it about her left wrist, above the binding fiber. She wore it as I had worn it.

“When will you whip me?” she asked.

“When it is to my convenience,” I said.

The door burst open and two men, back to me, backing through the door, embattled, fighting, others outside the door, entered the room. Scimitars clashed. One of them turned wildly. I unsheathed my scimitar. He knew me then for an enemy. We engaged. He fell back from my blade. The other fellow was cut down by the door. I threw aside the robes of the man of the Salt Ubar. Those outside the, door lifted their scimitars to me.

“I shall join you presently,” I told them.

With my boots I rolled the two fallen men from the room closed the large double door and again turned to face Vella. We were then again alone in the room, in the light of the single tharlarion-oil lamp.

I turned again to face her. She sat on the floor, bent forward, her wrists tied to her ankles; the rag she wore was well up her thighs; the pleasures of her breasts were not much concealed, as I had torn the garment; the calves of her legs, drawn up, were marvelous; her face, her hair, was beautiful.

“You are an exquisitely beautiful slave, Vella,” I said.

“One men wish to own?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“And on this world,” she wept, “I can be owned!”

“You are owned,” I told her.

“Yes,” she wept. “I know. I know that I am owned.”

“I think,” I said, “that I will give you to Hakim of Tor.”

She suddenly looked at me. “No! No!” she wept. “No, please, no!”

“I can do what I wish,” I informed her.

“Oh, no, no, no!” she wept. She knew then the true misery of the slave girl.

I went to her and pulled down the rag from her right shoulder. With a lipstick, from one of the tiny drawers in the vanity, I inscribed Taharic script on her shoulder.

“What does it say?” she wept.

“It says,” I said, “‘I am the slave girl of Hakim of Tor.”

She looked at the writing in horror upon her body. “No, Tarl, please, no!” she cried.

I stood up. She looked up at me.

“Tarl!” she wept.

“Be silent,” I said, “Slave Girl.”

She put her head down. “Yes,” she said.

“Yes?” I asked.

She looked up. There were tears in her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered, “Master.”

I strode from her, and closed the door behind me. There was slaughter to be done in the halls. It was the work of men. There was a time for work, and a time for the pleasures of slave girls. It was now the time for work. I strode toward the sound of metal clashing in the distance.

25 The Second Kasbah Falls; What Was Done to Tarna

“Where is Ibn Saran!” demanded Haroun, in the flowing white of the high Pasha of the Kavars.

The man kneeling before him, wrists bound behind his back, cried out, “I do not know! I do not know!”

“The kasbah is invested,” said another man. “It is ours. He is not within the kasbah. He did not escape.

“He must be still within!” cried another man.

Haroun, or Hassan, as I continued to think of him, with his boot, spurned the bound prisoner.

“He must be still within the kasbah!” cried he who had shouted before.

“Burn the kasbah,” shouted another.

“No,” said Haroun. The kasbah was too valuable to burn. He wanted it, for Kavars.

I looked at the bound prisoners in the great room, kneeling. Ibn Saran was clearly not among them.

Outside, in the shadow of the kasbah wall, there were many other prisoners. Ibn Saran was not among them either. Ibn Saran was not the only man missing. I did not detect, among the prisoners or the fallen” the small Abdul, the water carrier and henchman of the great Abdul, Ibn Saran, the Salt Ubar, nor Hamid, traitor to the Aretai, who had struck Suleiman Pasha.

Haroun spun about, his burnoose swirling, and, angrily, leaped to the dais of the Salt Ubar, and strode upon it, like a frustrated larl.

“Let us assume, Pasha,” said I to Hassan, “that Ibn Saran entered this kasbah.”

“He did,” cried a man.

“Let us assume further that our search has been most thorough and that our lines resisted penetration.”