'Please!' said the blond girl.
I looked at Thurnock and Clitus. 'They are yours.' I said.
'Ha!' cried Turnock. And then he seized up a length of binding fiber. 'Submit!' she boomed at the large, blond girl and, terrified, almost leaping, she lowered her head, thrusting forward her hands, wrists crossed. In an instant, with peasant knots, Thurnock had lashed them together. Clitus bent easily to pick up a length of binding fiber. He looked at the shorter girl, who looked up at him with hate. 'Submit,' he said to her, quietly. Sullenly, she did so. Then, startled, she looked up at him, her wrists bound, having felt the strength of his hands. I smiled to myself. I had seen that look in the eyes of girls before. Clitus, I expected, would have little difficulty with his short rence girl. 'What will masters do with us?' asked the lithe girl, lifting her head. 'You will be taken as slave girls to Port Kar,' I said.
'No, no!' cried the lithe girl.
The blond girl screamed, and the shorter girl, dark-haired, began to sob, putting her head to the deck.
'Is the raft fully ready?' I asked.
'It is,' boomed Thurnock. 'It is.'
'We have tied it with the rence craft,' said Clitus, 'abeam of the starboard bow of this barge.'
I picked up the long coil of binding fiber from which I had, earlier, cut three lengths, to bind Telima. I tied one eand about the throat of the lithe girl. 'What is your name?' I asked.
'Midice,' said she, 'if it pleases master.'
'It does not displease me,' I said. 'I am content to call you by that name.' I found it a rather beautiful name. It was pronounced in three syllables, the first accented.
Thurnock then took the same long length of binding fiber, one end of which I had fastened about Midice's neck, and, without cutting it, looped and knotted it about the neck of the large, blond, gray-eyed girl, handling the coil then to Clitus, who indicated that the short rence girl should take her place in the coffle.
'What is your name?' boomed Thurnock to the large girl, who flinched. 'Thura,' she said, '-if it pleases Master.'
'Thura!' he cried, slapping his thigh. 'I am Thurnock!'
The girl did not seem much pleased by this coincidence.
'I am of the peasants,' Thurnock told her.
She looked at him, rather in horror. 'Only of the peasants?' she whispered. 'The Peasants,' cried out Thurnock, his voice thundering over the marsh, 'are the ox on which the Home Stone rests!'
'But I am of the Rencers!' she wailed.
The Rencers are often thought to be a haigher caste that the Peasants. 'No,' boomed Thurnock. 'You are only Slave!'
The large girl wailed with misery, pulling at her bound wrists.
Clitus had already fastened the short rence girl in the coffle, the binding fiber looped and knotted about her neck, the remainder of the coil fallen to the deck behind her.
'What is your name?' he asked the girl.
She looked up at him, shyly. 'Ula,' she said, '-if it pleases master.' She lowered her head.
I turned to the woman and the child I had freed earlier, and had made to stand to one side.
Telima, haltered, bound hand and foot at the bottom of the stairs to the tiller deck, addresed herself to me. 'As I recall,' she said, 'you are going to take us all to Port Kar, to be sold as slaves.'
'Be silent,' I told her.
'If not,' she said, 'I expect you will have the barges sunk in the marsh, that we may all be fed to tharlarion.'
I looked upon her in irritation.
She smiled at me.
'That,' she said, 'is what one would do who is of Port Kar.'
'Be silent!' I said.
'Very well,' said she, 'my Ubar.'
I turned again to the woman, and the child. 'When we have gone,' I said, 'free your people. Tell Ho-hak that I have taken some of his women. It is little enough for what was done to me.'
'A Ubar,' pointed out Telima, 'need give no accounting, no explanation.' I seized her by the arms, lifting her up and holding her before me. She did not seem frightened.
'This time,' she asked, 'will you perhaps throw me up the stairs?'
'The mouth of rence girls,' commented Clitus, 'are said to be as large as the delta itself.'
'It is true,' said Telima.
I lowered her to her knees again.
I turned to the woman and the child. 'I am also going to free the slaves at the benches,' I said.
'Such slaves are dangerous men,' said the woman, looking at them with fear. 'All men are dangerous,' I said.
I took the key to the shackles of the barge slaves. I tossed it to one of the men. 'When we have left, and not before,' I told him, 'free yourself, and your fellows, on all the barges.'
Numbly he held the key, not believing that it was in his hand, staring down at it. 'Yes,' he said.
The slaves, as one man, stared at me.
'The Rencers,' I said, 'will doubtless help you live in the marsh, should you wish it. If not, they will guide you to freedom, away from Port Kar.' None of the slaves spoke.
I turned to leave.
'My Ubar,' I heard.
I turned to look at Telima.
'Am I your slave?' she asked.
'I told you on the island,' I said, 'that you are not.'
'Why then will you not unbind me?' she asked.
Angrily I went to her and slipped the Gorean blade between her throat and the halter, cutting it, freeing her from its tether. I then slashed away the fiber that had confined her wrists and ankles. She stood up in the brief rence tunic, and stretched.
She maddened me in the doing of it.
Then she yawned and shook her head, and rubbed her wrists.
'I am not a man,' she said, 'but I expect that a man would find Midice a not unpleasing wench.'
Midice, bound, leading the coffle, lifted her head.
'But,' said Telima, 'is not Telima much better than Midice?'
Midice, to my surprise, shook with anger and, bound, tethered, turned to face Telima. I gathered that she had regarded herself as the beauty of the rence islands.
'I was first prow,' said Midice to Telima.
'Had I been taken,' said Telima, 'doubtless I would have been first prow.' 'No!' shouted Midice.
'But I did not permit myself to be netted like a little fool,' said Telima. Midice was speachless with fury.
'When I found you,' I reminded Telima, 'you were lying on your stomach, bound hand and foot.'
Midice threw back her head and laughed.
'Nonetheless,' said Telima, 'I am surely, in all respects, superior to Midice.' Midice lifted her bound wrists to Telima. 'Look!' she cried. 'It is Midice whom he had made his slave! Not you! That shows you who is most beautiful!' Telima looked at Midice in irritation.
'You are too fat,' I said to Telima.
Midice laughed.
'When I was your Mistress,' she reminded me, 'you did not find me too fat.' 'I do now,' I said.
'I learned long ago,' said Telima, loftily, 'never to believe anything a man says.'
Telima was now walking about the three girls. 'Yes,' she was saying, 'not a bad catch.' She stopped in front of Midice, who led the coffle. Midice stood very straight, disdainfully, under her inspection. The Telima, to Midice's horror, felt her arm, and slapped her side and leg. 'This one is a little skinny,' said Telima.
'Master!' cried Midice, to me.
'Open your mouth, Slave,' ordered Telima.
In tears, Midice did so, and Telima examined her, casually, turning her head this way and that.
'Master!' protested Midice, to me.
'A slave,' I informed her, 'will take whatever abuse a free person chooses to inflict upon them.'
Telima stepped back, regarding Midice.
'Yes, Midice,' she said, 'all things considered, I think you will make an excellent slave.'
Midice wept, pulling at the binding fiber on her wrists.
'Let us be off,' I said.
I turned to go. Already, Thurnock and Clitus, in loading the raft, had placed on it my helmet, and shield, and the great bow, with its arrows.
'Wait,' said Telima.
To my amazement she slipped out of her rence cloth tunic and took a place behind the third girl in the coffle, the shorter rence girl, Ula.
She shook her hair back over her shoulders.
