I laughed and hurled the cloak back to him. "A steel-collar girl," I said, "should not have so fine a cloak!"

He laughed. "And one with pierced ears!" he said.

"Yes," I laughed, "and one with pierced ears!"

I turned about and sped down the hill to the shed for female work slaves. I was ravenously hungry. I had little doubt that Ute would have saved me a roll from the feeding pan. I loved her! She would also, however, have a full roster of work for me to perform this day. She played no favorites. I was one of her girls. She would treat me no differently than the others. I loved her! And I loved, too, my master.

I turned. He was watching me, from the hill. I smiled, and waved to him. He lifted his hand. I turned again, and ran toward the work shed.

Before I appeared before the shed, I stopped and, secretly, pressed my fingertips to my lips and then to the lettering on my collar, which proclaimed me the slave of a Gorean warrior. I loved him! I laughed. You could read his name, that of my master, on my collar. It was Rask of Treve. I was not displeased that I had been chained under the moons of Gor. I hurried to the shed.

"I have saved a roll for you," said Ute.

"Thank you, Ute, I said.

"Eat it quickly," she said." You have much work to do today."

"Yes, Ute," I cried, kissing her. "I will! I will!"

17 Port Kar

The past few years had been the most happy and beautiful of my life. "Hands to the rear. Cross your wrists," said the man.

I did so.

I felt the straps through the heavy wicker. My wrists were pulled back, tight against the wicker, and bound there. I shared the tarn basket, my knees drawn up, with five other girls. We were naked. Our ankles were tied together at the center of the basket.

"They will be in Ar by nightfall," said the man.

My head fell forward on my breast.

Yet I had few regrets, for in the past weeks I had been happy, and I had been alive.

I would never forget the face, nor the touch, of Rask of Treve, nor the long walks, and the speakings, and touchings beyond the palisade.

"Will they be sold in the Curulean? asked a nearby warrior.

"Yes," said the man.

Two of the girls, bound helplessly in the basket, squealed with pleasure. In the beginning, following my total conquer by Rask of Treve, I had been summoned night after night to his tent. I had served him in a delicious variety of ways, to our mutual pleasure, for I had been well trained. I had feared only that my imagination might fall short of the invention of new and exciting ways to please him. Sometimes to my fury, he had tried to put me from him, and had summoned other women to his tent, but often he would send them away again, and it would be I, El-in-or, who would again be commanded to the tent of scarlet canvas, red-silk lined, on its eight poles.

"Did master summon me?" I would ask.

"El-in-or," he would say, opening his arms, and I would run to him. And then he no longer summoned other women to his tent. Then it was only El-in-or, whom he summoned. And then I, to the anger of some of the other girls, was the acknowledged favorite of Rask of Treve, his preferred slave. A heavy, long strap thrust through the wicker, behind me and to the left. It was passed several times about my throat and then drawn through the wicker behind me and to my right. I felt my throat jerked back against the wicker by the strap. The same strap, passing in and out of the wicker, similarly fastened the other girls in place.

Inge and Rena were not in the basket with me. They had been given to the huntsmen, Raf and Pron. In the fashion of Gorean huntsmen, both girls had then been freed and give a head start of four Ahn, that they might escape, if it were in their power. After four Ahn, Raf and Pron, running lightly, carrying snare rope, left the camp. The next morning they had returned, leading Inge and Rena. The thighs of both girls had been bloodied. Their wrists were bound behind their backs with snare rope. Their slave leashes, too, were formed of a loop of snare rope.

"I see you have caught two pretty birds," had laughed Rask of Treve. About the throats of the girls were locked new collars, again of inflexible steel, but now those of huntsmen, vine engraved and bearing the names of their masters.

No scribe it seemed would own Inge, but she would belong to a brutal and powerful huntsman, the handsome Raf of Treve' and Rena's captain of Tyros, he who had contracted for her capture, must now surely be disappointed, and his gold lost, for his lovely prize had been taken by another, at whose feet she kneels joyfully, the handsome and splendid Pron, skilled huntsman of lofty Treve. The next day they left the camp, taking their girls with them. We kissed one another good-bye. "I love you, El-in-or," had said Inge. "I love you, too, Inge," I had wept. "I love you, El-in-or," had said Rena. "I, too, love you," I had said. "I wish you all well."

They then, in the brief green tunics of the slaves of huntsmen, shouldered their burdens and followed their masters through the double gate of the palisade. Their lives would be hard, but I did not think them dismayed, nor unhappy. The huntsman lives a free and open life, as wild and swift, and secret as the beasts he hunts, and his slaves, whom he insists on accompanying him, must, too, learn the ways of the forests, the flowers and the animals, the leaves and wind. I do not know where Raf and Pron may now be, but I know them well served by two wenches, the slave girl, Inge, and the slave girl, Rena, who were well trained in the pens of Ko-ro-ba, and who loves them.

I looked up.

The heavy lid of wicker was now being placed on the tarn basket. Immediately, on the body of the girl across from me, there was a reticulated pattern of shadows. I could not free myself.

The lid was tied down.

The man who would fly the tarn then went to the kitchen shed, to have his lunch. I had sought to please Rask of Treve in many ways, and found, to my astonishment, that I was eager to do so, and took great pleasure in doing so. I wanted to be many women to him, and yet the same, always El-in-or. A man is a strange beast I think, for he both desires one woman and many women, and perhaps most he desires one woman who will be to him many women, others, delicious others, and yet always, too, herself. I became many women to Rask of Treve, fresh females, yet again El-in-or. Sometimes I would be a new girl, frightened, young, much fearing him, as Techne might have been; sometimes I would be as though of the scribes, much as Inge might have been, refined, dismayed at her fate' sometimes as a fine lady, of wealth and position, of high caste, as Rena had been, who now must find herself to be humbled as a mere, rightless, collared wench' and sometimes I would be a lonely slave, or a drunken slave, or a defiant girl, determined to resist, or a cruel red-silk slave, determined herself to conquer, and in all this, always, his El-in-or.

But, too, sometimes Rask of Treve, after touching me, would hold me, and kiss me, for long hours. I did not truly understand him in these hours, but in his arms lay content and fulfilled. And then one night, when the fires were low, for no reason I clearly understood, I begged that I might be permitted to know him. "Speak to me of yourself," he said. I told him of my childhood, my girlhood, and my parents, and the pet my mother had poisoned, and of New York, and my world, and my capture, and my life before it had begun, before he had seen me naked in the cell of the Ko-ro-ban pens. And, too, in various nights, he had spoken to me of himself, and of the death of his parents, and of his training as a boy in Treve, and his learning of the ways of tarns and of the steel of weapons. He had cared for flowers, but had not dared to reveal this. It seemed so strange, he, such a man, caring for flowers. I kissed him. But I feared, that he had told me this. I do not think there was another to whom he had ever spoken this small and delicate thing.