I descended through the trap and climbed down the ladder to the first level beneath the keep's roof. There was food and water there, enough for another week of fight- ing. But I did not think we would need that much. Before nightfall doubtless more assaults would take place, and in the first, or the second, or in another, we would surely fall.

I looked about the room. The men were sleeping. It was and littered. They were unshaven. Several of them, men of Samos, were unknown to me, but others, mine, I had cared for. Some were even slaves, who bad fought with poles and hammers. Others were men who had been slaves, whom I had freed and trained with weapons. Others were seamen, and two others were mercenaries, who had refused to leave my service. I saw the boy Fisk sleeping, Vina in his arms. He had done well, I thought.

"Master," I heard.

In one comer of the room I saw Sandra, the dancer. To my surprise, she had arrayed herself in pleasure silu and cosmetics. She was truly beautiful. I went to her side. She was kneeling before a bronze mirror, touching an eyebrow with a brush.

She looked up at me, frightened. "When they come," she asked, "they will not kill Sandra, will they?"

"I do not think so," I said. "I think they will Bad her beautiful, and permit her to live."

She shook with relief, and returned to her mirror, anxiously studying her countenance.

I lifted her gently to her feet and looked into her eyes.

"Please do not disturb my cosmetics," she begged.

I smiled. "No," I said, "I will not. They will find you very beautiful." I kissed her on the side of the neck, beneath the ear, and descended to another level.

She looked after me.

On this level, sitting against a wall, her knees drawn up, I found Luma. I went to her, and stood before her.

She stood up, and touched my check with her bancl There were tears in her eyes. "I would free you," I said, "but I think they might kill free women, if they found theml" I touched her collar.

"With this," I said, "I think you might be permitted to live."

She wept and put her head to my shoulders. I held her in my arms.

"My brave Luma," I said. "My fine, brave Luma."

I kissed her and, pressing her gently from me, descended another level. There Telima had been caring for two men who had been wounded.

I went to one wall and, on a cloak that was lying there, sat down, my head in my hands.

The girl came to be beside me, where, in the fashion of the Gorean woman, she knelt, back on her heels "I expect," she said, after a time, "the fleet will return in a few hours, and we shall be saved."

Surely she knew the fleet, as well as I, had been driven pasangs south, and would not be able to reach the harbor of Port Kar for another two or three days, at the least.

"Yes," I said, "in a few hours the fleet will return and we shall be saved." She put her hand on my head, and then her face was against mine.

"Do not weep," I told her.

I held her against me.

"I have hurt you so," she said.

"No," I said, "no."

"It is all so strange," she said.

"What is so strange?" I asked.

"That Samos should be here," said she.

"But why?" I asked.

She looked at me. "Because," said she, "years ago, he was my master." I was startled.

"I was taken slave at the age of seven in a raid," she said, "and Samos, at a market, bought me. For years he treated me with great concern and care. I was treated well, and taught things that slaves are seldom taught. I can read, you know."

I recalled once, long ago, being puzzled that she, though a mere rence girl, had been literate.

"And I was taught many other things, too," said she, "when I could read, even to the second knowledge."

That was reserved, generally, for the high castes on Gor.

"I was raised in that house," she said, "with love, though I was only slave, and Samos was to me almost as a father might have been. I was permitted to speak to, and learn from, scribes and singers, and merchants and travelers. I had friends among other girls in the house, who were also much free, though not as free as I. We had the freedom of the city, though guards would accompany us to protect us."

"And then what happened?" I asked.

Her voice grew hard. "I had been told that on my seventeenth birthday a great change would occur in my life." She srnfled. "I expected to be freed, and to be adopted as the daughter of Samos."

"What happened?" I asked.

"At dawn that morning," she said, "the Slave Master came for me. I was taken below to the pens. There, like a new girl taken from the rence islands, I was stripped. An iron was heated. I was marked. My head was placed across an anvil and, about my throat, was hammered a simple plate collar. Then my wrists were tied widely apart to wrist rings mounted in a stone wall, and I was whipped. After this, when'l had been cut down, weeping, the Slave Master, and his men, much used me. After this I was fitted with slave chains and locked in a pen, with other girls. These other girls, some of them rence girls themselves, would often beat me, for they knew what freedom I had had in the house, and they knew, as was true, that I had regarded myself as far superior to such as they, only common girls, simple merchandise. I thought there was some great mistake. For days, though the other girls would beat me for it, I begged the Slave Master, the guards, to be taken before Samos. At last, kneeling, in a simple plate collar, beaten and shackled, stripped, I was thrown before him."

"What did he say?" I asked.

"He said," said she, "take this slave away."

I looked down, but held her.

"I was taught the duties of the slave girl in that house," she said, "and I learned them well. The girls among whom I had been first would no longer even condescend to speak to me. Guards who had formerly protected me would now, as they chose, take me in their arms, and I must well serve them or be beaten." "Did Samos himself use you?" I asked.

"No," she said.

"The most miserable of tasks were often given to me," continued the girl. "Often I was not permitted clothing. Often I was beaten, and cruelly used. At night I was not even chained, but locked in a tiny slave cage, in which I could scarcely move." She looked at me, angrily. "In me," said she, "a great hatred grew, of Port Kar and of Samos and of men, and of slaves, of whom I was one. I lived only for my hate and the dream that I might one day escape, and take vengeance on men."

"You did escape," I said.

"Yes," she said, "in cleaning the quarters of the slave master I found the key to my collar."

"You were then no longer wearing a plate collar," I said.

"Almost from the beginning, after my seventeenth birthday," said Telima, "I was trained as a pleasure slave. One year after my enslavement I was certified to the house by the slave mistress as having become accomplished in such duties. At that time the plate collar was opened by one of the metal workers and replaced with a seven-pin lock collar."

The common female slave collar on Gor has a seven-pin lock. There are, incidentally, seven letters in the most common Gorean expression for female slave, Kajira.

"It seems careless," I said, "that the slave master should leave, where a slave might find it, the key to her collar."

She shrugged.

"And, too," she said, "nearby there was a golden armlet." She looked at me. "I took it," she said. "I thought I might need gold, if only to bargain my way past guards." She looked down. "But," she said, "I had little difficulty in leaving the house. I told them I was on an errand, and they permitted me to leave. I had, of course, run errands in the city before. Outside the house I removed the collar, that I might move more freely, being unquestioned, in the city. I found some beams and rope, and a pole, bound together a simple raft and through one of the delta canals, which were not then barred, made my escape. As a child I had been of the marshes, and so I did not fear to return to them. I was found by the men of Ho-Hak and accepted into their community. He permitted me, even, to retain the golden armlet."