The bosk were being cut loose and stampeded. There was no effort to turn the wagons in a single defensive perimeter. Such a perimeter had little meaning when the enemy can strike from above. Rather, men, hauling on the wagon tongues and thrusting with their shoulders, were putting the wagons in a dense square, with spaces between them. This formation permits men to conceal themselves under the wagons, the floors of the wagons providing some protection above them. The spaces between the wagons provides opportunity at the attackers, and gives some protection against the spreading of fire, wagon to wagon. In many of the wagons there were still girls chained, screaming. Men there tore back the covering of blue and yellow canvas, that they might be seen.

"Unchain them!" cried Ute, as though someone might here. "Unchain them!" But they would not be unchained, unless the day went badly for the caravan, in which case they would be freed and, like the bosk, stampeded.

In the meantime their bodies served as partial cover for the defenders under and between the wagons.

The raiders wanted the girls. Indeed, that was the object of their enterprise. Accordingly, unless they wished to destroy the very goods they sought, their attack must be measured, and carefully calculated.

Swiftly the formation of tarnsmen wheeled and withdrew.

"The attack is over," I said.

"They will now use fire," said Ute.

I watched with horror as, in a few moments, again the sky filled with tarns, and the beating of wings and the screams of the great birds.

Now, down from the skies rained fiery quarrels, tipped with blazing, tarred cloth wound about the piles.

Wagons caught fire.

I saw defenders unchaining screaming girls. One's hair was afire.

The girls huddled under the wagons, many of them burning.

I saw a defender forcing the head of the girl whose hair burned into the dirt, extinguishing the flames.

I saw two girls now fleeing across the grass, away from the wagons. Tarnsmen now struck the earth, leaping from their birds, to the east of the wagon square and, swords drawn, rushed among the burning wagons.

The clash of steel carried dimly to the hill, where Ute and I watched. "Unbind me!" cried Ute. The straps we wore about our throats were broad, and the strap, too, that joined us. But, about the throat, the broad strap, for each of us, was perforated in two places, and it was by means of narrow binding fiber, passed several times through the performations and knotted, that it was fastened to our throats. The guard had knotted the binding fiber, tightly.

My fingers fought at the knot, futilely, picking at it. I was upset. I could not loosen it.

"I cannot see to untie the knot," cried Ute. "Untie it!"

"I can't!" I wept. "I can't!"

Ute pushed me away and began to chew at the leather strap, desperately, holding it with her hands.

I wept.

Not all the tarnsmen had dismounted. Some still rode astride the great birds, though the birds stood now on the grass.

I saw men fighting between the wagons, some falling.

I saw one of the tarnsmen, yet mounted on his tarn, remove his helmet and wipe his forehead, and then replace the helmet. He was their leader. I could not fail to recognize him, even at this distance.

"It is Haakon!" I cried. "It is Haakon of Skjern!"

"Of course, it is Haakon of Skjern!" said Ute, biting at the strap, tearing at it with her fingers.

Now Haakon of Skjern stood in the stirrups of the tarn saddle, and waved his sword toward the wagons. More warriors dismounted now and rushed among the wagons.

Several of the wagons were now flaming. I saw men rushing about. Two girls fled from the wagons, across the fields.

There must have been more than a hundred tarnsmen with Haakon. When he had come to Ko-ro-ba, he had had little more than forty men, if that many. Others, mercenaries, he must have recruited in the city.

His men outnumbered those of Targo, considerably.

The sounds of blades carried to where we knelt. I was terrified. Ute was savagely tearing at the strap with her teeth.

Then, suddenly, from under the burning wagons, across the fields, there fled dozens of girls, running in all directions.

"He's driven the girls out," cried Ute, furiously. She jerked at the strap. She had not been able to chew it through. She looked at me, savagely. "They had not see us," she said, "We must escape!"

I shook my head. I was afraid. What would I do? Where would I go?

"You will come with me or I will kill you!" screamed Ute.

"I'll come, Ute!" I cried. "I'll come!"

I now saw the tarnsmen returning from the burning wagons, racing to their tarns. They had no interest, or little interest, in the wagons or the supplies. In Targo's gold they might have had interest but they would have to spend men to obtain it. Meanwhile the real treasure was escaping.

Targo, a rational man, and a brilliant slaver, had chosen to purchase his own life, and that of his men, and the safely of his gold, by the flight of the slave girls.

It had been a desperate measure, and one not willingly adopted by a merchant. It was clear evidence that Targo had recognized the seriousness of his predicament, and the odds by which he was outnumbered and the probable result of continuing the engagement.

"Come, El-in-or!" screamed Ute. "Come!"

Ute pulled with both her hands on the strap that bound us together and I, choking, stumbling, fled after her.

We turned once.

We saw tarnsmen, in flight, riding down running girls, the tarns no more than a few feet from the grass, beating their wings, screaming.

Often a tarn would clutch the girl in its talons and alight. The tarnsmen would then leap from the saddle and force the bird's talons from its prey, binding the hysterical girl's wrists and fastening her to a saddle ring, then remounting and hunting another. One man had four girls bound to his saddle. Another would fly low and to the side of the running girl, and a beat of the tarn's great wings would send her rolling and sprawling for a dozen yards across the grass. Before she could arise, the tarnsman would be upon her, binding her. Another would strike the victim in the small of her back with the butt of his spear, felling her, numbing her, for the binding fiber. Others, flying low and to the side, roped the girls as they ran, using their slender ropes of braided leather, familiar to tarnsmen. Such warriors do not even deign to dismount to bind their fair prisoners. They haul them to the saddle, in flight, there securing them, stripping them and fastening them to the binding rings.

It is a favorite sport of tarnsmen to streak their tarns over an enemy city and, in such a fashion, capture an enemy girl from one of the city's high bridges, carrying her off, while the citizens of the city scream in fury, shaking their fists at the bold one. In moments her garments flutter down among the towers and she is his, bound on her back across the saddle before him, his prize. If he is a young tarnsman, and she is his first girl, he will take her back to his own city, and display her for his family and friends, and she will dance for him, and serve him, at the Collaring Feast. If he is a brutal tarnsman, he may take her rudely, should he wish, above the clouds, above her own city, before even his tarn had left its walls. If he should be even more brutal, but more subtly so, more to be feared by a woman, he will, in the long flight back to his city, caress her into submission, until she has no choice but to yield herself to him, wholly, as a surrendered slave girl. When he then unbinds her from the saddle rings, she, so devastatingly subdued, well knows herself his.

I saw Rena of Lydius running, frantic, from the wagons, in her camisk. I saw a tarnsman wheel his tarn after her.

She fled.