The spear, slender, some seven feet in length, hit into the mud near my hand.

"Raiders!" cried Ayari.

We heard screaming.

Kisu tore at the mud, scratching for one of the shields and stabbing spears.

A fellow leaped to the surface of the raft. I slipped under the water.

I thrust my way through submerged marsh grass. A spear struck down at me. Then I managed to get beneath the canoe and stood up, suddenly, screaming, tipping its occupants into the water. There, suddenly, over the waters of the marsh, roared the war cry of Ko-ro-ba. I dropped one man lifeless, his throat wrenched open, into the water. One man thrust at me with his spear and the others, startled, stood back. I tore the spear from him and kicked him from it. He slipped and I thrust the iron blade into him and thrust him down, pinning him, blood and bubbles bursting up, to the bottom of the marsh. I regarded the other four men, standing back, who faced me. I saw they did not move to attack. I pressed the body of the man under the surface from the spear blade with my foot and drew the weapon up. The body, twisting, now head down, emerged in the grass.

I stepped to one side. The men facing me were standing still.

Kisu stood on the raft, like a black god, the shield on his arm, a bloodied stabbing spear in his right hand. In the water, to his left, struck from the raft, lifeless, inert, buoyant, rolled two bodies.

I waved my hand. "Begone!" I cried. "Begone!"

I do not think they understood my words but my meaning was clear. The four men backed away and then turned and fled.

I righted the canoe. Kisu, leaving the raft, fetched two sealed calabashes of meal from where they floated in the marsh. Tied in the canoe itself was a long, cylindrical basket of strips of salted, dried fish.

Ayari waded out to the canoe. "Do you think they have gone?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Perhaps there are others," he said. He was retrieving paddles from the water.

"I think it is late now for raiders," I said. "Perhaps they will come again in a few days, to again attack the workers at the canal. I think there is little to fear from them at the moment."

"Bila Huruma will burn their villages," said Kisu.

"He must be careful," I said. "He would not wish to alienate the friendly shore communities, either of the marsh or of Ngao."

"He will do what he thinks is necessary to achieve his ends," said Kisu.

"Doubtless you are right," I said. Indeed, I had no doubt but what Bila Huruma would design a sober and judicious course, gentle, if necessary, harsh, if necessary, to bring about those ends which he might seek. He, a Ubar by nature, would not be an easy man to deal with, or to stop.

Ayari placed the paddles he had found, some six of them, in the canoe. This gave us, altogether, a total of eight paddles, not counting two which were lost, floated away, for there were two paddles, extra paddles, tied in the canoe. It is quite common, of course, for a war canoe or raiders' canoe to carry extra paddles, a sensible precaution against the loss of one or more of these essential levers. Indeed, even a canoe which is not one of war or raiding may carry extra paddles, particularly if it is to be propelled through turbulent waters.

I moved the canoe to the side of the raft. From the heaped mud on the raft, unobtrusively, protruded three hollow stems, of broken marsh reed. Kisu, with his hands, dug in the mud. He reached under the mud and seized the blond hair of a slave girl, cords of pierced shells looped about her neck. He pulled her free, by the hair, from the mud. The reed, through which she had breathed, fell from her teeth. Her eyes were frightened, and wide. Her wrists were tied behind her and her ankles, too, were crossed and bound. Kisu submerged her, shaking her, rinsing mud from her body. Then he handed her to me.

"Master," said the blond-haired barbarian.

"Be silent, Slave," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

I carried her to the canoe. I placed her us the canoe, on her belly, as a slave.

Kisu had then freed. the second blond-haired slave from the mud and, submerging her, she also bound hand and foot, rinsed her clean. He then handed her to me and I placed her, as I had the first, she who had once been Janice Prentiss, in the canoe. I placed the second girl forward in the canoe, so that her feet were at the head of the first girl, the blond-haired barbarian. This would make communication between them difficult. Such small touches aid in the control and management of girls.

"Beast!" screamed Tende to Kisu, sputtering and coughing as she was pulled up from the water. "Free me! Free me!"

"I did not think you spoke to commoners," he said. Ayari grinned, affording me the translation of their remarks. If I had spoken Ushindi more fluently I could probably have made out their discourse, as Ayari did, for the Ukungu speech is a closely related language. My Ushindi, of course, was poor. In the next few days I would learn to make transpositions between Ushindi and Ukungu. The vocabularies are extremely similar, except for pronunciation. The grammars, in their basic structures, are almost identical. I have little doubt that most of the black equatorial stock on Gor, descendants of individuals brought to this world by Priest-Kings on Voyages of Acquisition, perhaps hundreds of years ago, derive from one of the Earth's major linguistic families, perhaps the Bantu group. Gorean itself shows innumerable evidences of being derived largely from languages of the Indo-European group.

Tende stifled an angry cry.

Kisu threw her, in her soiled robes, to the surface of the raft. He untied her hands from behind her back and, turning her roughly, almost as though she might have been a slave, retied them before her body, leaving a long loose end which might serve as a tether. She gasped with indignation and, lying on her side, looked at him with anger. He then untied her ankles and threw her from the raft. He led her by the bound wrists, she stumbling in her robes, about the raft and tied the tether on her hands to the sternpost. of the canoe. The tether was some seven feet in length. She stood in the water, in the muddied robes. The water was to her hips. She was slender and about five and a half feet tall.

"Let us untie the two slaves," said Kisu. "They may aid us in paddling."

I unbound the two white girls and knelt them, frightened, in the canoe. They were bare-breasted. About their throats and left ankles were coils of white, pierced shells. About their thighs, now muddied, were brief, wrap-around skirts of red-and-black-printed rep-cloth, suitable garments for slaves. I thrust a paddle into the hands of each.

"We must make haste," said Ayari, taking a position forward in the canoe.

The two girls, one behind the other, knelt behind him. I knelt, paddle in hand, behind the second slave, she who had once been Janice Prentiss. She was attractive. I was pleased that I had taken her.

Behind me, also with a paddle, was Kisu. We had placed weapons in the canoe, the shields and stabbing spears from the two askaris, and some spears and another shield, from the raiders.

Tende screamed, and we turned about. We saw the body of one of the raiders, seized in the jaws of a tharlarion, pulled beneath the surface. It had been drawn to the area probably by the smell of blood in the water, or by following other forms of marine life, most likely the bint or blue grunt, who would have been attracted by the same stimulus. It is not unusual for tharlarion to follow bint and grunt. They form a portion of its diet. Also they lead it sometimes to larger feedings.

Kisu and I, the girls following, lowered our paddles into the water, and moved the canoe eastward.

Tende, tethered to the sternpost, stumbled after us. Looking back I saw two more tharlarion nearby.