they sold themselves, were themselves both merchandise and merchant. How many of the women of my native planet, I wondered, did not with care consider the finances, the property of their prospective mates? How many of them did not, for all practical purposes, sell themselves, bartering their bodies for the goods of the world? Here on Gor, however, I observed ironically, bitterly, there was a clear division between merchandise and merchant. The girls would not collect their own profit, not on Gor.
I had noticed that there was among the crowd one tall, somber figure who sat alone on a high, wooden throne, surrounded by tarnsmen. He wore the black helmet of a member of the Caste of Assassins. I took Talena by the elbow and, though she protested, moved her gently through the crowd and out into the air.
We purchased a bottle of Ka-la-na wine and shared it as we walked through the streets. She begged a tenth of a tarn disk from me, and I gave it to her. Like a child she went to one or two stalls, making me look the other way. In a few minutes she returned, carrying a small package. She gave me the change and leaned against my shoulder, claiming that she was weary. We returned to our tent. Kazrak was gone, and my suspicion was that he was gone for the night, that he was even now tangled in the sleeping robes of one of the torchlit booths of the City of Tents.
Talena retired behind the silk partition, and I built up the fire in the center of the tent, not wishing to retire as yet. I could not forget the figure on the throne, he of the black helmet, and I thought perhaps that he had noticed me and had reacted. It had been, perhaps, my imagination. I sat on the tent carpet, poking at the small fire in the cooking hole. I could hear from a tent nearby the sound of a flute, some soft drums, and the rhythmic jangle of some tiny cymbals.
As I mused, Talena stepped forth from behind the silk curtain. I had thought she had retired. Instead, she stood before me in the diaphanous, scarlet dancing silks of Gor. She had rouged her lips. My head swam at the sudden intoxicating scent of a wild perfume. Her olive ankles bore dancing bangles with tiny bells. Attached to the thumb and index finger of each hand were tiny finger cymbals. She bent her knees ever so slightly and raised her arms gracefully above her head. There was a sudden bright clash of the finger cymbals, and, to the music of the nearby tent, Talena, daughter of the Ubar of Ar, began to dance for me.
As she moved slowly before me, she asked softly, 'Do I please you, Master?' There had been no scorn, no irony in her voice.
'Yes,' I said, not thinking to repudiate the title by which she had addressed me.
She paused for a moment and walked lightly to the side of the tent. She seemed to hesitate for an instant, then quickly gathered up the slave whip and a leading chain. She placed them firmly in my hands and knelt on the tent carpet before me, her eyes filled with a strange light, her knees not in the position of a Tower Slave but of a Pleasure Slave.
'If you wish,' she said, 'I will dance the Whip Dance for you, or the Chain Dance.'
I threw the whip and chain to the wall of the tent. 'No,' I said angrily. I would not have Talena dance those cruel dances of Gor, which so humbled a woman.
'Then I will show you a love dance,' she said happily, 'a dance I learned in the Walled Gardens of Ar.'
'I should like that,' I said, and, as I watched, Talena. performed Ar's strangely beautiful dance of passion.
She danced before me for several minutes, her scarlet dancing silks flashing in the firelight, her bare feet, with their belled ankles, striking softly on the carpet. With a last flash of the finger cymbals, she fell to the carpet a before me, her breath hot and quick, her eyes blazing,s with desire. I was at her side, and she was in my arms. Her heart beat wildly against my breast. She looked into my eyes, her lips trembling, the words stumbling but audible.
'Call for the iron,' she said. 'Brand me, Master.'
'No, Talena,' I said, kissing her mouth. 'No.'
'I want to be owned,' she whimpered. 'I want to belong to you, fully, completely in every way. I want your brand, Tarl of Bristol, don't you understand? I want to be your branded slave.'
I fumbled with the collar at her throat, unlocked it, threw it aside.
'You're free, my love,' I whispered. 'Always free.'
She sobbed, shaking her head, her lashes wet with tears. 'No,' she wept. 'I am your slave.' She clenched her body against mine, the buckles of the wide tharlarion s belt cutting into her belly. 'You own me,' she whispered. 'Use me.'
There was a sudden rush of men behind me as tarnsmen broke into the tent. I remember turning swiftly and seeing for the fraction of a second the butt of a spear crashing toward my face. I heard Talena scream. There was a sudden flash of light, and then darkness.
Chapter 12
In the Tarn's Nest
MY WRISTS AND ANKLES WERE bound to a hollow, floating frame. The ropes sawed into my flesh as the weight of my body drew on them. I turned my head, sick to my stomach, and threw up into the turbid waters of the Vosk. I blinked my eyes against the hot sun and tried to move my wrists and ankles.
A voice said, 'He's awake.'
Dimly I felt spear butts thrust against the side of the hollow frame, ready to edge it out into the current.
I cleared my head as best I could, and into my uncertain field of vision moved a dark object, which became the black helmet of a member of the Caste of Assassins. Slowly, with a stylized movement, the helmet was lifted, and I found myself staring up into a gray, lean, cruel face, a face that might have been made of metal. The eyes were inscrutable, as if they had been made of glass or stone and set artificially in that metallic mask of a countenance.
'I am Pa-Kur,' said the man.
It was he, the Master Assassin of Ar, leader of the assembled horde.
'We meet again,' I said.
The eyes, like glass or stone, revealed nothing.
'The cylinder at Ko-ro-ba,' I said. 'The crossbow.'
He said nothing.
'You failed to kill me that time,' I taunted. 'Perhaps you would care to risk another shot now. Perhaps the mark would be more suited to your skills.'
The men behind Pa-Kur muttered at my impudence. He himself showed no impatience.
'My weapon,' he said, simply extending his hand. A crossbow was immediately placed in his grip. It was a large steel bow, wound and set, the iron quarrel placed in the guide.
I prepared to welcome the bolt flashing through my body. I was curious to know if I would be conscious of its strike. Pa-Kur raised his hand with an imperious gesture. From somewhere I saw a small, round object sailing high into the air, out over the river. It was a tarn disk hurled by one of Pa-Kur's men. Just as the tiny object, black against the blue sky, reached its apogee, I heard the click of the trigger, the vibration of the string, and the swift hiss of the quarrel. Before the tare disk could. begin its fall, the quarrel pierced it, carrying it, I would judge, some two hundred and fifty yards out into the river. The men of Pa-Kur stamped their feet in the sand and clanged their spears on their shields.
'I spoke as a fool,' I said to Pa-Kur.
'And you will die the death of a fool,' he said. He spoke with no trace of anger or emotion of any kind.
He motioned to the men to thrust the frame out into the river, where it would be swept away.
'Wait,' I said, 'I ask your favor.' The words camehard.
Pa-Kur gestured to the men to desist.
'What have you done with the girl?'
'She is Talena, daughter of the Ubar Marlenus,' said Pa-Kur. 'She will rule in Ar as my queen.'
'She would die first,' I said.
'She has accepted me,' said Pa-Kur, 'and will rule by my side.' The stone eyes regarded me, expressionless.
'It was her wish that you die the death of a villain,' he said, 'on the Frame of Humiliation, unworthy to stain our weapons.'
I closed my eyes. I should have known that the proud Talena, daughter of a Ubar, would leap at the first chance to return to power in Ar, even though it be at the head of a plundering host of brigands. And I, her protector, was now to be discarded. Indeed, the Frame of Humiliation would be ample vengeance to satisfy even Talena for the indignities she had suffered at my hands. It, if anything, would wipe out forever from her mind the offensive memory that she had once needed my help and had pretended to love me.
Then, each of the men of Pa-Kur, as is the custom before a frame is surrendered to the waters of the Vosk, spit on my body. Lastly, Pa-Kur spit in his hand and then placed his hand on my chest. 'Were it not for the daughter of Marlenus,' said Pa-Kur, his metallic face as placid as the quicksilver behind a mirror, 'I would have slain you honorably. That I swear by the black helmet of my caste.'
'I believe you,' I said, my voice choked, no longer caring if I lived or died.
The spear butts pressed against the frame, shoving it away from the bank. The current soon caught it, and it began to spin in slow circles farther and farther out into the midst of that vast force of nature called the Vosk.
The death would not be a pleasant one. Bound helplessly, without food or water, my own body would torture me by its weight dragging on the hand and ankle ropes, suspended a few inches above the roiling, muddy surface under the fiery sun. I knew that I would not, some days hence, reach the delta of the Vosk and the cities in the delta except perhaps as a bound corpse, withered by exposure and the lack of water. Indeed, it was unlikely my body would reach the delta at all. It was far more likely that one of the water lizards of the Vosk or one of the great hook beaked turtles of the river would seize my body and drag it and the frame under the water, destroying me in the mud below. There was also the chance that a wild taro might swoop down and feed on the helpless living morsel fastened to that degrading frame. Of one thing I was certain there would be no human assistance or even pity, for the poor wretches on the frames are none but villains, betrayers, and blasphemers against the Priest-Kings, and it is a sacrilegious act even to consider terminating their sufferings.
My wrists and ankles had turned white and were numb. The oppressive, blinding glare of the sun, the heavy weight of its heat bore down on me. My throat was parched, and, hanging only an inch or so above the Vosk, I burned with thirst. Thoughts, like prodding needles, vexed my brain. The image of the treacherous, beautiful Talena, in her dancing silks, as she had lain in my arms, tormented me — she who would gladly give her kisses to the cold Pa-Kur for a place on the throne of Ar, she whose implacable hatred had sent me to this terrible death, not even permitting me the honor of a warrior's end. I wanted to hate her — so much I wanted to hate her — but I found that I could not. I had come to love her. In the glade by the swamp forests, in the grain fields of the empire, on the great highway of Ar, in the regal, exotic
