I think we were all startled to hear him exclaim in this fashion. Certainly we were exquisite slave flesh, all of us! I doubted that there were many slave bars on Gor to which five women such as we were fastened. To be sure, almost all female slaves on Gor must expect to be put to domestic labors, cooking, sewing, cleaning, washing, ironing, and such. We were women. Even free women, in households without slaves, perform such labors. How, then, could we expect to be exempt from them? Sometimes even high pleasure slaves in the palaces of Ubars must, if only to remind them that they are slaves, on their hands and knees, stripped and chained, scrub floors. Still, surely we were good for far more than such things. Did the beauty of our faces, and our slave curves, not suggest that? Surely the first and most essential office of the female slave, and, indeed, of any sort of female slave, is to be pleasing to the master.

"But," said the small fellow, "whatever you choose to call them, or however you choose to think of them, we made a bargain!"

"You have no Home Stone," said the bearded man.

I shuddered. In such a fashion he had informed the small fellow that he was not such that one need keep faith with him. There is a Gorean saying that only Priest-Kings, outlaws and slaves lack Home Stones. Strictly, of course, that is an oversimplification. For example, animals of all sorts, such as tarsks and verr, as well as slaves, do not have Home Stones. Too, anyone whose citizenship, for whatever reason, is rescinded or revoked, with due process of law, is no longer entitled to the protections and rights of that polity" s Home Stone. That Home Stone is then no longer his. This suggested to me, again, that the small fellow might have been cast out of Tharna, perhaps exiled or banished. He did not seem to me a likely candidate for an outlaw, at least in the fullest sense of the word. Indeed, the fellows with whom he was dealing, such rough, dangerous, unkempt brutes, seemed to me much more likely candidates for such an appellation.

"Beware," said the small fellow.

The leader of the five men regarded him, puzzled. "What then is your Home Stone?" he asked.

The small fellow looked down, angrily. He pulled up a handful of grass. "You do not have a Home Stone," announced the leader, with a grin.

"Twenty-five silver tarsks for the women," said the small fellow. "And meat, much meat!"

"You do not have a Home Stone," grinned the leader.

"Five for each," said the small fellow, "not three!"

"Very well," said the leader.

"Good!" said the small fellow.

"Not three," said the leader, "but two."

"No!" cried the small fellow.

"Then one for each," said the leader.

"Beware!" cried the small fellow.

"Beware?" inquired the leader. "Are you mad? To whom will you sell these pot girls, if not to us? Will you take these two back to Vacchi, to see if he will buy them back? Will you take the other three back to Venna?"

"Deal with us fairly," said the small man.

"There are five of us here," said the leader, indicating himself with a jerk of his thumb, and then the others, behind him. "I have three more waiting with a closed slave wagon on the other side of the trees. That is eight. There are three of you."

"There was to have been more meat," said the small fellow. The leader laughed. "Apparently you are reluctant to sell these women to us, in spite of your agreement to do so. Very well. The decision is yours. We shall not buy them. We shall simply take them with us."

Tupita and I, and the others, shrank back in our bonds, then, in terror, pushing back against the rail to which our necks were tied. If we could have we would have forced it from its posts.

The leader of the five men looked at us, and laughed. But did he think our terror was motivated by the fear of coming into the clutches of such masters, distressing though such a disposition might be? The small fellow, and his two cohorts, squatting behind him, to his left, did not move. They were all very still.

"What is wrong?" asked the leader.

Then suddenly one of his men screamed weirdly, lifted up, his legs jerking wildly. We screamed. The thing must have been eight feet tall. We had seen it lift its head, in the tall grass, some seven or eight yards behind the five men, and to their left. It had perhaps been hidden in a pit, or burrow. Its ears had been upright. It bit through the back of the neck of the man and cast the body down, with the quarter of the dried tarsk which they had brought.

Almost instantly another of the men had begun to draw his sword, but the beast, before the blade was half from the sheath, on all fours, scrambling, tearing the grass behind it, moving with incredible swiftness, not like anything on two legs, seized him and tore open his throat with a single slash of those terrible fangs.

We screamed in terror, bound, twisting at the railing, half choked.

"Do not draw your swords!" cried the small fellow. "Do not draw your swords! It is harmless! It is harmless!"

The beast then regarded the men, who shrank back from it, their hands at the hilts of their swords but not daring to draw them. The beast then took the second body and threw it with the first, together with the quarter of a dried tarsk.

"Do not run," said the small fellow, quickly. "It will pursue you then. Stay here. Do not move. Do not draw your weapons. It is friendly. It will not hurt you."

The beast now crouched near the two bodies. Its mouth was red, and the fur about its jaw and snout. It looked up at the men, balefully, and a deep growl warned them back.

"Do not approach it closely," said the small fellow.

That I surmised was the last intent of the three men.

The beast then lowered its head, but its ears remained up. I think even a tiny sound, perhaps a movement of grass, might have been audible to it, certainly the slipping of steel from a scabbard.

I looked away, sick.

"There is little to fear," said the small fellow. "It prefers tarsk." "It is not eating tarsk," said one of the men.

"It is hungry," said the small fellow. "Do not be harsh with it. The tarsk is dried. The other is fresh. You should have brought more meat."

The beats looked up at them, feeding.

"See the hand," said one of the men.

The paw, or hand, had long, powerful, thick, multiply jointed digits. Such hands, those of this creature, or of one like it, had held the bars of the girl pen, and thrust them apart, admitting its bulk.

"There are six fingers," whispered another man.

"What is it?" asked the leader of the men.

"A beast," said the small, lame man, noncommittally. "I do not really know what it is called. I met them outside of Corcyrus, last year."

"Them?" asked the leader.

"Yes," said the small fellow. "There are two more, somewhere about." The men looked about, frightened. Even the two cohorts of the small fellow, who had remained much in their places, seemed uneasy. This thing had arisen as though by magic from the grass. As large as these things were they were apparently not unskilled at concealment, and perhaps stalking.

"What do you mean, you "met them outside Corcyrus?" said the leader. "When Corcyrus fell to Argentum, in the Silver War," said the small fellow, "when proud Sheila, the ruthless Tatrix of Corcyrus, was deposed, they apparently fled the city."

I had heard something of the Silver War when I was in Argentum. Sheila, the Tatrix, said to be as beautiful as she was proud and ruthless, had apparently escaped for a time but, later, had been caught in Ar, actually, and amusingly, and doubtless to her shame and humiliation, by a professional slave hunter. She had been put in a golden sack and taken back to Corcyrus to stand trial. Her final disposition was as follows: she became the property of the man who had taken her, the professional slave hunter.