"Will you stay with me?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"You are going to Port Kar?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"But why?" she asked. "I do not think you are of Port Kar," she said. "I have business there," I said.

"May I ask your name?"

"My name is Bosk," I told her.

Tears formed in her eyes.

I saw no reason to tell her my name was Tarl Cabot. It was a name not unknown in certain cities of Gor. The fewer who knew that Tarl Cabot sought entry to Port Kar the better.

I would take rence from the island, and marsh vine, and make myself a rence craft. There were oar poles left on the island. I would then make my way to Port Kar. The girl would be alright. She was intelligent, and brave, a strong girl, as well as beautiful, a rence girl. She, too, would make a craft, take a pole, and find her way deeper into the delta, doubtless to be accepted by another of the small rence communities.

Before I had finished the bit of food we shared Telima had risen to her feet and was looking about the island. I was chewing on the last bit of fish. I saw her take one of the bodies by an arm and drag it toward the shore. I rose, wiping my hands on the bit of rence tunic I wore, and went to her. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"We are of the marsh," she said, woodenly. "The rence growers," she said, "rose from the marsh, and they must return to the marsh."

I nodded.

She tumbled the body from the island into the water. Under the water I saw a tharlarion move toward it.

I helped her in her task. Many times we went to the shore of the island. Then, turning over the slashed side of some broken matting, that had been part of the side of a rence hut, I found another body, that of a child.

I knelt beside it, and wept.

Telima was standing behind me. "He is the last one," she said.

I said nothing.

"His name," she said, "was Eechius."

She reached to take him. I thrust her hand away.

"He is of the rence growers," she said. "He arose from the marsh, and he must return to the marsh."

I took the child in my arms and walked down to the shore of the rence island. I looked westward, the direction that had been taken by the heavily laden barges of slavers of Port Kar.

I kissed the child.

"Did you know him?" asked Telima.

I threw the body into the marsh.

"Yes," I said. "He was once kind to me."

It was the boy who had brought me the bit of rence cake when I had been bound at the pole, he who had been punished for doing this by his mother.

I looked at Telima. "Bring me my weapons," I said to her.

She looked at me.

"It will take long, will it not," I asked, "for the barges so heavily laden to reach Port Kar?"

"Yes," she said, startled, "it will take long."

"Bring me my weapons," I said.

"There are more than a hundred warriors," she said, her voice suddenly leaping. "And among my weapons," I said, "bring me the great bow, with its arrows." She cried out with joy and sped from my side.

I looked again westward, after the long barges, and looked again into the marsh, where it was now quiet.

Then I began to gather rence, drawing it from the surface of the island itself, long strips, with whick a boat might be made.

8 What Occurred in the Marshes

I had gathered the rence and Telima, with marsh vines, and her strong hands and skill, had made the craft.

While she worked I examined my weapons.

She had concealed them in the rence, far from her hut, weaving the reeds again over them. They had been protected.

I had again my sword, that wine-tempered blade of fine, double-edged Gorean steel, carried even at the siege of Ar, so long ago, with its scabbard; and the rounded shield of layered boskhide, with its double sling, riveted with pets of iron and bound with hoops of brass; and the simple helmet, innocent of insignia, with empty crest plate, of curved iron with its "Y"-like opening, and cushioned with rolls of leather. I had even, folded and stained from the salt of the marsh, the warrior's tunic, which had been taken from me even in the marsh, before I had been brought bound before Ho-Hak on the island.

And there was, too, the great bow, of yellow, supple Ka-la-na, tipped with notched bosk horn, with its cord of hemp, whipped with silk, and the roll of sheaf and flight arrows.

I counted the arrows. There were seventy arrowns, fifty of which were sheaf arrows, twenty flight arrows. The Gorean sheaf arrow is slightly over a yard long, the flight arrow is about forty inches in length. Both are metal piled and fletched with three half-feathers, from the wings of the Vosk gulls. Mixed in with the arrows were the leather tab, with its two openings for the right forefinger and the middle finger, and the leather bracer, to shield the left forearm from the flashing string.

I had told Telima to make the rence craft sturdy, wider than usual, stabler. I was not a rencer and, when possible, when using the bow, I intended to stand; indeed, it is difficult to draw a bow cleanly in any but a standing position; it is not the small, straight bow used in hunting light game, Tabuk, slaves and such.

I was pleased with the craft, and, not more than an Ahn after we returned to the island from our concealment in the marsh, Telima poled us away from its shore, setting out course in the wake of the narrow, high-prowed marsh barges of the slavers of Port Kar.

The arrows lay before me, loose in the leather wrapper opened before me on the reeds of the rence craft.

In my hand was the great bow. I had not yet strung it.

The oar-master of the sixth barge was doubtless angry. He had had to stop calling his time.

The barges in line before him, too, had slowed, then stopped, their oars half inboard, waiting.

It is sometimes difficult for even a small rence craft to make its way through the tangles of rushes and sedge in the delta.

A punt, from the flagship, moved ahead. Two slaves stook aft in the small, square-ended, flat-bottomed boat, poling. Two other slaves stood forward with glaves, lighter poles, bladed, with which they cut a path for the following barges. That path must needs be wide enough for the beam of the barges, and the width of the stroke of the oars.

The sixth barge began to drift to leeward, a slow half circle, aimless, like a finger drawing in the water.

The oar-master cried out angrily and turned to the helmsman, he who held the tiller beam.

The helmsman stood at the tiller, not moving. He had removed his helmet in the noon heat of the delta. Insects, undistracted, hovered about his head, moving in his hair.

The oar-master, crying out, leaped up the stairs to the tiller deck, and angrily seized the helmsman bu the shoulders, shaking him, then saw his eyes. He released the man, who fell from the tiller.

The oar-master cried out in fear, summoning warriors who gathered on the tiller deck.

The arrow from the great yellow bow, that of supple Ka-la-na, had passed through the head of the man, losing itself a hundred yards distant, dropping unseen into the marsh.

I do not think the men of Port Kar, at this time, realized the nature of the weapon that had slain their helmsman.

The knew only that he had been alive, and then dead, and that his head now bore two unaccountable wounds, deep, opposed, centerless circles, each mounted at the scarlet apex of a stained triangle.

Uncertain, fearing, they looked about.

The marsh was quiet, They heard only, from somewhere, far off, the piping cry of a marsh gant.

Silently, swiftly, with the stamina and skill of the rence girl, Telima, unerringly taking advantage of every break in the marsh growth, never making a false thrust or motion, brought our small craft soon into the vicinity of the heavy, slowed barges, hampered not only by their weight but by the natural impediments of the marsh. I marveled at her, as she moved the craft, keeping us constantly moving, yet concealed behind high thickets of rush and sedge. At times we were but yards from the barges. I could hear the creak of the oars in the thole ports, hear the calling of the oar-master, the conversation of warriors at their leisure, the moans of bound slaves, soon silenced with the lash and blows.