one side.
She backed away, her hand before her mouth.
'Do not attempt again to kill me,' I said.
She shook her head.
I looked at her. 'It seemed to me,' I said, 'last night that you much feared slavery.'
I indicated that she should approach me.
Only when I had unbound her had I noticed, on her left thigh, the tiny mark, which had been burned into her flesh long ago, the small letter in cursive script which was the initial letter of Kajira, which is Gorean for a femal slave. Always before, in the lighted hut, she had kept that side from me; in the day it had been covered by her tunic; in the night, in the darkness and tumult, I had not noticed it; on the raft it had been concealed in the reeds of the rence plant, with which I had covered her.
She had now come closer to me, as I had indicated she should, and stood now where, if I wished, I might take her in my grasp.
'You were once slave,' I told her.
She fell to her knees, covering her eyes with her hands, weeping.
'But I gather,' said I, 'you somehow made your escape.'
She nodded, weeping. 'On beams bound together,' she said, 'poling into the marsh from the canals.'
It was said that never had a slave girl escaped from Port Kar, but this, doubtless like many such sayings, was not true. Still, the escape of a slave gir, or of a male slave, must indeed be rare from canaled Port Kar, protected as it is on on side by the Tambar Gulf and gleaming Thassa, and on the other by the interminable marshes, with their sharks and tharlarion. Had Telima not been a rence girl she would, I supposed, most likely, have died in the marshes. I knew that Ho-Hak, too, had escaped from Port Kar. There were doubtless others. 'You must be very brave,' I said.
She lifted her eyes, red with weeping, to me.
'And your master,' I said, 'you must have hated him very much.'
Her eyes blazed.
'What was your slave name?' I asked. 'By what name did he choose to call you?' She looked down, shaking her head. She refused to speak.
'It was Pretty Slave,' I told her.
She looked up at me, red-eyed, and cried out with grief. Then she put her head down to the rence, shoulders shaking, and wept. 'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, yes.' I left her and went to look further about. I went to the remains of her hut. There, though the hut itself was destroyed, I found much of what had been in it. Most pleased I was to find the water gourd, which was still half filled. I also took the wallet of food, that which she had once tied about her waist. Before I left I noted, among the broken rence and other paraphernalia, some throwing sticks and such, the tunic of rence cloth which she had slipped off before me the night previously, before commanding me to serve her pleasure, before we had heard the cry 'Slavers!' I picked it up and carried it, with the other things, to where she still knelt, near the pole, head down, weeping.
I tossed the tunic of rence cloth before her.
She looked at it, unbelievingly. The she looked up at me, stunned.
'Clothe yourself,' I said.
'Am I not your slave?' she asked.
'No,' I said.
She drew on the garment, fumbling with the laces. I handed the water gourd to her, and she drank. Then I shook out what food lay in the wallet, some dried rence paste from the day before yesterday, some dried flakes of fish, a piece of rence cake.
We shared this food.
She said nothing, but knelt across from me, across from where I sat cross-legged.
'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.
