Talena blanched, but, as Kazrak chuckled, she knelt before me, her fists clenched.
'Read it,' I ordered.
Talena looked at the engraved collar and shook with rage.
'Read it,' I said. 'Out loud.'
She read the simple legend aloud: 'I AM THE PROPERTY OF TARL OF BRISTOL.'
I snapped the slender steel collar on her throat, placing the key in my pouch.
'Shall I call for the iron?' asked Kazrak.
'No,' begged Talena, now, for the first time, frightened.
'I shall not brand her today,' I said, keeping a straight face.
'By the Priest-Kings,' laughed Kazrak, 'I believe you care for the shetharlarion.'
'Leave us, Warrior,' I said.
Kazrak laughed again, winked at me, and backed with mock ceremony from the tent.
Talena sprang to her feet, her two fists flying for my face. I caught her wrists.
'How dare you?' she raged. 'Take this thing off,' she commanded.
She struggled fiercely, futilely. When in sheer frustration she stopped squirming, I released her. She pulled at the circle of steel on her throat. 'Remove this degrading object,' she commanded, 'now!' She faced me, her mouth trembling with rage. 'The daughter of the Ubar of Ar wears no man's collar.'
'The daughter of the Ubar of Ar,' I said, 'wears the collar of Tarl of Bristol.'
There was a long pause.
'I suppose,' she said, attempting to save face, 'it would perhaps be appropriate for a tarnsman to place his collar on the captive daughter of a rich merchant.'
'Or the daughter of a goat keeper,' I added.
Her eyes snapped. 'Yes, perhaps,' she said. 'Very well. I concede the reasonableness of your plan.' Then she held out her small hand imperiously. 'Give me the key,' she said, 'so that I may remove this when I please.'
'I will keep the key,' I said. 'And it will be removed, if at all, when I please.'
She straightened and turned away, enraged but helpless. 'Very well,' she said. Then, her eyes lit on the second object Kazrak had donated to the project of taming what he called the she-tharlarion — the slave whip. 'What is the meaning of that?'
'Surely you are familiar with a slave whip?' I asked, picking it up and, with amusement, slapping it once or twice in my palm.
'Yes,' she said, regarding me evenly. 'I have often used it on my own slaves. Is it now to be used on me?'
'If necessary,' I said.
'You wouldn't have the nerve,' she said.
'More likely the inclination,' I said.
She smiled.
Her next remark astonished me. 'Use it on me if I do not please you, Tarl of Bristol,' she said. I pondered this, but she had turned away.
In the next few days, to my surprise, Talena was buoyant, cheerful, and excited. She became interested in the caravan and would spend hours walking alongside the colored wagons, sometimes hitching rides with the strap masters, wheedling from them a piece of fruit or a sweetmeat. She even conversed delightedly with the inmates of the blue and yellow wagons, bringing them precious tidbits of camp news, teasing their as to how handsome their new masters would be.
She became a favorite of the caravan. Once or twice mounted warriors of the caravan had accosted her, but on reading her collar had backed grumblingly away, enduring with good humor her jibes and taunts. In the early afternoon, when the caravan halted, she would help Kazrak and me set up our tent and would then gather wood for a fire. She cooked for us, kneeling by the fire, her hair bound back so as not to catch the sparks, her face sweaty and intent on the piece of meat she was most likely burning. After the meal she would clean and polish our gear, sitting on the tent carpet between us, chatting about the small, pleasant inconsequentialities of her day.
'Slavery apparently agrees with her,' I remarked to Kazrak.
'Not slavery,' he smiled. And I puzzled as to the meaning of his remark. Talena blushed and lowered her face, rubbing vigorously on the leather of my tharlarion boots.
Chapter 11
The City of Tents
FOR SEVERAL DAYS, TO THE sound of the caravan bells, we made our way through the Margin of Desolation, that wild, barren strip of soil with which the Empire of Ar had girded its borders. Now, in the distance, we could hear the muffled roar of the mighty Vosk. As the caravan mounted a rise, we saw spread far below us, on the banks of the Vosk, a sight of incredible barbaric splendor-pasangs of brightly colored tents stretching as far as the eye could see, a vast assemblage of tents housing one of the greatest armies ever gathered on the plains of Gor. The flags of a hundred cities flew above the tents, and, against the steady roar of the river, the sound of the great tarn drums reached us, those huge drums whose signals control the complex war formations of Gor's flying cavalries. Talena ran to the foot of my tharlarion, and with my lance I hoisted her to the saddle so that she could see. For the first time in days her eyes filled with anger. 'Scavengers,' she said, 'come to feast on the bodies of wounded tarnsmen.'
I said nothing, knowing in my heart that I, in my way, had been responsible for this vast martial array on the banks of the Vosk. It was I who had stolen the Home Stone of Ar, who had brought about the downfall of Marlenus, the Ubar, who had set the spark that had brought Ar to anarchy and the vultures below to feed on the divided carcass of what had been Gor's greatest city.
Talena leaned back against my shoulder. Without looking at me, her shoulders shook, and I knew she was weeping.
If I could have, I would in that moment have rewritten the past, would have selfishly abandoned the quest for the Home Stone — yes, willingly would have left the scattered hostile cities of Gor to face, one by one, the imperialistic depredations of Ar, if it were not for one thing — the girl I held in my arms.
The caravan of Mintar did not camp as usual in the heat of the day but moved on, attempting to reach the City of Tents before darkness. As it was, my fellow guards and I earned our pay those last few pasangs to the banks of the Vosk. We fought off three groups of raiders from the camp on the river, two of them small, undisciplined contingents of mounted warriors, but the other a lightning strike of a dozen tarnsmen on the weapons wagon. They withdrew in good order, driven off by our crossbows, and couldn't have gotten much.
I saw Mintar again, the first time since I had joined the caravan. His palanquin swayed past. His face was sweating, and he fumbled in his heavy wallet, taking out tarn disks and tossing them to the warriors for their work. I snapped a tarn disk from the air and put it in my pouch.
That night we brought the caravan into the palisaded keep prepared for Mintar by Pa-Kur, the Master Assassin, who was the Ubar of this vast, scarcely organized, predatory horde. The caravan was secured, and in a few hours trade would begin. The caravan, with its varied goods, was needed by the camp, and its merchandise would command the highest prices. I noted with satisfaction that Pa-Kur, Master Assassin; proud leader of perhaps the greatest horde ever assembled on the plains of Gor, had need of Mintar, who was only of the Merchant Caste.
My plan, as I explained to Talena, was simple. It amounted to little more than buying a tarp, if I could afford it, or stealing one if I could not, and making a run for Ko-ro-ba. The venture might be risky, particularly if I had to steal the tarn and elude pursuit, but, all things considered, an escape on tarnback seemed to me far safer than trying to cross the Vosk and make our way on foot or tharlarion through the hills and wilderness to the distant cylinders of Ko-ro-ba.
Talena seemed depressed, in odd contrast to her liveliness of the caravan days. 'What will become of me in Ko-ro-ba?' she asked.
'I don't know,' I said, smiling. 'Perhaps you could be a tavern slave.'
She smiled wryly. 'No, Tarl of Bristol,' she said. 'More likely I would be impaled, for I am still the daughter of Marlenus.'
I did not tell her, but if that was decreed to be her fate and I could not prevent it, I knew she would not be impaled alone. There would be two bodies on the walls of Ko-ro-ba. I would not live without her.
Talena stood up. 'Tonight,' she said, 'let us drink wine.' It was a Gorean expression, a fatalistic maxim in which the events of the morrow were cast into the laps of the Priest-Kings.
'Let us drink wine,' I agreed.
That night I took Talena into the City of Tents, and by the light of torches set on lances we walked arm in arm through the crowded streets, among the colorful tents and market stalls.
Not only warriors were in evidence, but tradesmen and artisans, peddlers and peasants, camp women and slaves. Talena clung to my arm, fascinated. We watched in one stall a bronzed giant apparently swallowing balls of fire, in the next a silk merchant crying the glories of his cloth, in another a hawker of Paga; in still another we watched the swaying bodies of dancing slave girls as their master proclaimed their rent price.
'I want to see the market,' Talena said eagerly, and I knew the market she meant. This vast city of silk would surely have its Street of Brands. Reluctantly I took Talena to the great tent of blue and yellow silk, and we pressed in among the hot, smelling bodies of the buyers, forcing our way toward the front. There Talena watched, thrilled, as girls, several of whom she had known in the caravan, were placed on the large, rounded wooden block and sold, one by one, to the highest bidder.
'She's beautiful,' Talena would say of one as the auctioneer would tug the single loop on the right shoulder of the slave livery, dropping it to the girl's ankles. Of another, Talena would sniff scornfully. She seemed to be pleased when her friends were bought by handsome tarnsmen, and laughed delightedly when one girl, to whom she had taken a dislike, was purchased by a fat, odious fellow, of the Caste of Tarn Keepers.
To my surprise, most of the girls seemed excited by their sale and displayed their charms with brazen gusto, each seeming to compete with the one before to bring a higher price. It was, of course, far more desirable to bring a high price, thereby guaranteeing that one's master would be well-fixed. Accordingly, the girls did their best to move the interest of the buyers. I noted that Talena, like others in the room, did not seem in the least to feel that there was anything objectionable or untoward in this commerce in beauty. It was an accepted, ordinary part of the life of Gor.
I wondered if, on my own planet, there was not a similar market, invisible but present, and just as much accepted, a market in which women were sold, except that
