'That is true,' I admitted.
'It is fortunate I am here,' said the free woman. 'You might need my protection.'
'You think there is a dangerous fellow lurking about?' I asked.
'I am sure of it,' she said.
'We shall be on our guard,' I said.
'I will take him soon,' she said. 'He is not far.' She wheeled the tharlarion away. 'Return to the pleasures of your slut,' she said.
'But we must be on our guard,' I called.
'There is little need,' she said. 'I will take the fellow within minutes.'
I turned to the girl beside me, who was crying.
'Are you shamed?' I asked her.
'Yes,' she said.
'Good,' I said.
She looked at me.
'You are a slave,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said, her head down.
'Watch,' I said. She lifted her head.
The free woman was at the edge of the pond. She did not dismount. Her bow was ready. In an instant it might clear the saddle to either side. From the saddle she studied the tracks in the moonlight. She moved the tharlarion into the water. Doubtless she thought the pond had been waded, to obscure tracks, which would emerge on the other side. Had she been a more experienced hunter she would have circled the pond to determine this for certain.
The blond girl beside me kissed me. 'What does she know of being a woman?' she asked.
'Very little,' I said. 'But perhaps by tomorrow at noon she will know more.'
'I do not understand, Master,' said the girl.
'Watch,' I said.
The girl, astride the tharlarion, moved deeper into the pond.
'She is an arrogant girl, is she not, Master?' asked the slave.
'Yes,' I said.
Suddenly emerging from the water at the very side of the tharlarion there was the large, fierce figure of a man. His hand closed on the girl's left arm and dragged her swiftly, forcibly from the saddle, she crying Out, startled, dashing her shoulder and headfirst into the water at his side. He thrust her under the surface following her under.
'She knew too little of men even to fear them,' I said.
In a moment the figure of the man reared up shaking his head to clear his eyes of water. The girl's knife was in his right hand; his left hand held her head, grasped by the hair, beneath the surface. He looked about. He jerked her head up from the water and she gasped and sputtered. When she could scream he thrust her head again beneath the surface. The tharlarion moved about, water at the stirrup, shifting, tossing its head about. Then its reins hung in the water. It was a small, hunting tharlarion, controlled by bit and bridle. The large upright tharlarion, or war tharlarion, are guided by voice commands and the blows of spears. The man put the knife in his teeth and, fiercely, smote the tharlarion. It grunted and, splashing, fled from the water, running in its birdlike gait across the fields. The man again pulled up the girl from the water. She spit water into the pond, and vomited, and coughed. The man then tore the belt from her and fastened her hands behind her back. He thrust the knife he had held in his teeth in his belt. He broke off a tube of reed. The girl looked at him, frightened. In the distance I could see the four guardsmen, moving swiftly, trying to catch up with the girl who had broken away from them in the rash vanity of her hunt, desiring to be first upon the prize. She had apparently broken the hunting line without informing them. Perhaps, too, her tharlarion was swifter than theirs. It bore less weight. I saw the man take the tube of reed he had broken off and thrust it in her mouth; then the knife he carried, hers, lay across her throat; I saw her eyes, wild, in the moonlight, and then he, another bit of reed in his mouth, pulled her quietly below the surface.
In a few moments the four guardsmen, distraught, reined up beside my furs.
I looked up from the collared slave in my arms.
'Tal,' said their leader.
'Tal,' I said.
'Have you see aught of the Lady Tina of Lydius?' inquired one of the men.
'The huntress?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said.
'She was here, inquiring about a sport slave,' I said.
'Where did she go?' asked one of the men.
'Have you not taken the sport slave yet?' I asked. 'It is late.'
'Have you see the Lady Tina?' asked the leader of the men.
'Yes,' I said, 'earlier.'
'Where did she go?' asked the leader.
'Are there tracks?' I asked.
'Here,' said one of the men, 'here, see here. There are tracks.'
They followed the tracks to the side of the pond. Had they crossed the pond they might, in the breadth of their passage, have struck the submerged couple. These men, however, apparently more skilled than the girl, first circled the pond to discover emergent tracks. They found these, of course, almost immediately, those of the running tharlarion. In their haste, and in their desire to overtake their lovely charge, they sped into the night. It was not even clear to me that they, in their concern with the tracks of the tharlarion, observed the tracks of the man leading to the pond. Too, as I determined later, his tracks had been, for the most part, obscured by the tracks of the beast of his lovely huntress. Some of the more obvious ones, too, I had erased with a branch.
I assumed the couple might be chilled upon emerging from the water and so I took the liberty of building a fire. The wood was gathered by my slave, whom I named Constance.
In time I saw the man's head lift slowly, almost imperceptibly, from the pond… He reconnoitered, and then, dragging the girl with him, her wrists bound behind her back, approached the fire.
'You had better get out of those wet clothes,' I told the girl.
She looked at me with horror.
'Don't,' she begged her captor.
She squirmed, held, as he cut the tunic and cape from her, and then she was thrown on her belly on the grass and the wet hose and boots were drawn from her. He then knelt across her body and freed her hands. With the knife he slit the belt into narrow strips, improvising binding fiber. He then retied her hands behind her back and, crouching beside her, crossed and bound her ankles. She struggled to her knees. She faced us.
'I am the Lady Tina of Lydius,' she said. 'Free me!'
We looked at her.
'I am the Lady Tina of Lydius,' she said. 'I demand to be immediately freed.'
I thought she would look well dancing naked in a paga tavern before men.
'Free me!' she cried.
I had once owned a slave named Tina, who also had been from Lydius. It is not that uncommon a name. The Tina whom I had known was now free, an esteemed member of the caste of thieves in Port Kar, one of the most skillful in the city. She was doing well for herself.
I looked at this Tina. She was obviously too beautiful to free. She would be kept as a slave for men.
'You have won,' she said to the slave. 'I acknowledge that in the generosity of my freedom. Release me now and I shall petition that you not be slain.'
'In the morning,' he said, 'they will bring sleen.'
'Yes,' she said.
'Will you discuss the matter with them?' he asked.
'Perhaps they will be leashed,' she said.
The man laughed. 'Do you think me a fool?' he asked. 'They will be run free from the kennels. Do you think
