“I do not know!” she cried.
“I understand little of this,” I said.
“It has to do with tarns, and a ship, a great ship,” she said.
“What woman?” I asked. “What woman?”
“I do not know,” she said.
I untied her hands and she pulled away from the tree, weeping, and fled back some yards into the forest. There I saw her stop for a moment and tear wildly, hysterically, at her collar. She could not, of course, remove it. It was nicely on her, a typical Gorean collar of the higher latitudes, sturdy, flat, close-fitting. She tried to jerk down the hem of the shortened tunic, on both sides, but it sprang upward again. She then cried out in misery, and disappeared into the trees, presumably to warn Pertinax.
Presumably he would see her differently now, given the alterations to her tunic. And he would note, too, from its shortening, and the ragged lower edges, that the key was no longer in its place.
Yes, I thought, he would doubtless see her differently now.
And doubtless she would be well aware that she would now be being seen differently.
To be sure, I did not think she had anything to fear from Pertinax. It would be quite different, of course with a Gorean male.
I then turned to note the ship, now something like a hundred yards off shore.
It was a round ship, more deeply keeled, more broadly beamed, than the long ship.
It would not beach.
A longboat was being put in the water.
It had four rowers and a helmsman, and one individual forward.
The individual forward, I supposed, would be he for whom I had been waiting, the agent of Priest-Kings.
I suspected that Constantina would by now be at the hut, begging, perhaps on her knees, in her desperation, and as she was now clothed, Pertinax to flee.
To be sure, it mattered little to me that she might observe the arrival of the newcomer.
Chapter Five
He waded ashore.
The longboat did not beach.
“You?” I said.
“From the time of the Five Ubars, in Port Kar,” he said.
“Before the ascendancy of the Council of Captains,” I said.
“It has been a long time,” he said.
“Do not approach too closely,” I said.
“I am unarmed,” he said, opening his hands and holding them to the sides. “But others are not.”
I did not unsheathe my weapon.
Two of the oarsmen from the longboat were in the water to their waists, and each held a crossbow, with a quarrel readied in the guide.
The other two oarsmen, oars outboard, and the helmsman, his hand on the tiller, nursed the boat, keeping it, as it was turned, muchly parallel to the shore. It could be easily swung about.
“Sullius Maximus,” I said.
“Officer to Chenbar, of Kasra, Ubar of Tyros,” he said.
“Traitor to Port Kar,” I said. “Mixer of poisons.”
He bowed, humbly.
“You recall,” he said, smiling.
“But you brewed an antidote,” I remarked.
“Not of my own free will,” he smiled.
He had been infected with his own toxin, which produced, in time, a broad paralysis, that he might prepare, if time permitted, its remedy. His lord, Chenbar, had not approved of poisoned steel, and I had once spared the Ubar’s life, on the 25th of Se-Kara. The antidote, proven in the case of Sullius Maximus, had been conveyed to Port Kar.
“I am pleased to see you are looking well,” said Sullius Maximus.
“How is it that I find you here?” I asked.
“Surely you know,” he said.
“Scarcely,” I said.
“Surely you do not think this is some eccentric coincidence,” he said.
“No,” I said.
“You are waiting for the agent of Priest-Kings,” he said.
I was silent.
“I am he,” he said.
“No,” I said.
“How else would I know of your location?”
“Kurii know,” I said.
“Who are Kurii?” he said.
“You do not know?” I said.
“No,” he said.
“How is it that you, an agent of Priest-Kings, know not of Kurii?”
“To serve our lords, the masters of the Sardar,” he said, “one needs know no more than they deem suitable.”
“Perhaps they are your lords,” I said. “They are not mine.”
“Are they not the lords of us all,” he said, “are they not the gods of Gor?”
“And are the Initiates not their ministers and servitors,” I said.
“One must allow all castes their vanities,” he said.
“Doubtless,” I said.
“I understand,” he said, “that you have labored, now and then, on behalf of Priest-Kings.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“I find their choice of agents strange,” he said. “You are a barbarian, more of a larl than a man. You know little of poetry, and your kaissa is commonplace.”
“My kaissa is satisfactory,” I said, “for one who is not a Player.”
“You are not even a caste or city champion,” he said.
“Are you?” I inquired.
“Games are for children,” he said.
“Kaissa is not for children,” I said. Life and death sometimes hung on the outcomes of a kaissa match, and war or peace. Cities had been lost in such matches, and slaves frequently changed hands.
Too, the game is beautiful.
Its fascinations, as those of art and music, exercise their spells and raptures.
“To be sure,” he said, “you do have, I gather, a certain audacious expertise in certain forms of vulgar weaponry.”
“Less sophisticated and urbane, doubtless,” I said, “than the administrations of poisons.”
“Do not be bitter,” he said. “All that was long ago, and seasons change.”
“Seasons, like enmities, and tides, return, do they not?” I asked.
“I come to you in friendship,” he said, “as partisans in a common cause.”
“I do not think you are an agent of Priest-Kings,” I said.
