Later I wished that I had had binding fiber to lash her so innocently proffered wrists. I was speechless for a moment, but then, remembering that harsh Gorean custom required me either to accept the submission or slay the captive, I took her wrists in my hands and said, 'I accept your submission.' I then lifted her gently to her feet.
I led her by the hand toward Nar, helped her to the glossy, hairy back of the spider, and climbed up after her. Wordlessly Nar moved rapidly through the marsh, his eight delicate feet scarcely seeming to dip into the greenish water. Once he stepped into quicksand, and his back tilted suddenly. I held the daughter of the Ubar tightly as the insect righted himself, floating in the muck for a second, and then managing to free himself with his eight scrambling legs.
After a journey of an hour or so Nar stopped and pointed ahead with one of his forelegs. About three or four pasangs distant, through the thinning swamp trees, I could see the verdant meadows of Ar's SaTarna land. The mechanical voice of Nar spoke. 'I do not wish to approach nearer to the land. It is dangerous for the Spider People.'
I slid from his back and helped the daughter of the Ubar down. We stood together in the shallow water at the side of the gigantic insect. I placed my hand on Nar's grotesque face, and the gentle monster lightly closed his mandibles on my arm and then opened them. 'I wish you well,' said Nar, using a common Gorean phrase of farewell.
I responded similarly and further wished health and safety to his people.
The insect placed his forelegs on my shoulders. 'I do not ask your name, Warrior,' he said, 'nor will I repeat the name of your city before the Submitted One, but know that you and your city are honored by the Spider People.'
'Thank you,' I said. 'My city and I are honored.'
The mechanical voice spoke once more. 'Beware the daughter of the Ubar.'
'She has submitted herself,' I replied, confident that the promise of her submission would be fulfilled.
As Nar raced backward, he lifted a foreleg in a gesture that I interpreted as an attempt to wave. I waved back at him, touched, and my grotesque ally disappeared into the marshes.
'Let's go,' I said to the girl, and I made for the fields of Sa-Tarna. The daughter of the Ubar followed, some yards behind.
We had been wading for about twenty minutes when the girl suddenly screamed, and I spun around. She had sunk to her waist in the marsh water. She had slipped into a pocket of quicksand. She cried out hysterically. Cautiously I tried to approach her, but felt the ooze slipping away beneath my feet. I tried to reach her with my sword belt, but it was too short. The tarn-goad, which had been thrust in the belt, dropped into the water, and I lost it.
The girl sank deeper in the mire, the surface of the water circling her armpits. She was screaming wildly, all control lost in the face of the slow, ugly death awaiting her. 'Don't struggle!' I cried. But her movements were hysterical, like those of a mad animal. 'The veil!' I cried. 'Unwind it, throw it to me!' Her hands tried to tear at the veil, but she was unable to unwind it, in her terror and in the moment of time left to her. Then the muck crept upward to her horrified eyes, and her head slipped under the greenish waters, her hands clutching wildly at the air.
I frantically looked about, caught sight of a half-submerged log some yards away, protruding upward out of the marsh water. Regardless of the possible danger, not feeling my way, I splashed to the log, jerking on it, hauling on it with all my might. In what seemed like hours but must have been a matter of only a few seconds, it gave, leaping upward out of the mud. I half-carried, half-floated it, shoving it toward the place where the daughter of the Ubar had slipped under the water. I clung to the log, floating in the shallow water over the quicksand, and reached down again and again into the mire.
At last my hand clutched something — the girl's wrist and I drew her slowly upward out of the sand. My heart leaped with joy as I heard her whimpering, choking gasps, her lungs spasmodically sucking in the fetid but vivifying air. I shoved the log back and finally, carrying the filthy body soaked in its absurd garments, made my way to a ledge of green, dry land at the edge of the swamp.
I set her down on a bed of green clover. Beyond it, some hundred yards away, I could see the border of a. yellow field of Sa-Tarna and a yellow thicket of Ka-la-na, trees. I sat beside the girl, exhausted. I smiled to myself; the proud daughter of the Ubar in all her imperial regalia quite literally stank, stank of the swamps and the mud and of the perspiration exuded beneath that heavy covering, stank of heat and fear.
'You have saved my life again,' said the daughter of the Ubar.
I nodded, not wanting to talk about anything.
'Are we out of the swamp?' she asked.
I assented.
This seemed to please her. With an animal movement, contradicting the formality of her garments, she lay backward on the clover, looking up at the sky, undoubtedly as exhausted as I was. Moreover, she was only a girl. I felt tender toward her. 'I ask your favor,' she said.
'What do you want?' I asked.
'I'm hungry,' she said.
'I am, too,' I laughed, suddenly aware that I had not eaten anything since the night before. I was ravenous. 'Over there,' I said, 'are some Ka-la-na trees. Wait here and I'll gather some fruit.'
'No, I'll come with you — if you permit me,' she said.
I was surprised at this deference on the part of the daughter of the Ubar, but recalled that she had submitted herself.
'Surely,' I said. 'I would be pleased with your company.'
I took her arm, but she drew back. 'Having submitted myself,' she said, 'it is my part to follow.'
'That's silly,' I said. 'Walk with me.'
But she dropped her head shyly, shaking it. 'I may not,' she said.
'Do as you please,' I laughed, and set out for the Ka-la-na trees. She followed, meekly, I thought.
We were near the Ka-la-na trees when I heard a slight rustle of brocade behind me. I turned, just in time to seize the wrist of the daughter of the Ubar as she struck savagely down at my back with a long, slender dagger. She howled with rage as I twisted the weapon from her hand.
'You animal!' I yelled, blind with fury. 'You dirty, filthy, stinking, ungrateful animal!'
Wild with anger, I picked up the dagger and for an instant felt tempted to plunge it into the heart of the treacherous girl. Angrily I shoved it in my belt.
'You submitted,' I said to her.
In spite of my hold on her wrist, which must have been tight and painful, the daughter of Marlenus straightened herself before me and said arrogantly, 'You tharlarion! Do you think that the daughter of the Ubar of all Gor would submit to such as you?'
Cruelly I forced her to her knees before me, the filthy, proud wench.
'You submitted,' I said.
She cursed me, her greenish eyes blazing with hatred. 'Is this how you treat the daughter of a Ubar?' she cried.
'I will show you how I treat the most treacherous wench on all Gor,' I exclaimed, releasing her wrist. With both hands I wrenched the veil back from her face, thrusting my hand under it to fasten my fist in her hair, and then, as if she were a common tavern girl or a camp slut, I dragged the daughter of the Ubar of all Gor to the shelter of the Ka-la-na trees. Among the trees, on the clover, I threw her to my feet. She tried frantically to readjust the folds of her veil, but with both hands I tore it fully away, and she lay at my feet, as it is said on Gor, face-stripped. A marvelous cascade of hair, as black as the wing of my tarp, loosened behind her, falling to the ground. I saw magnificent olive skin and those wild green eyes and features that were breathtakingly beautiful. The mouth, which might have been magnificent, was twisted with rage. 'I like it better,' I said, 'being able to see the face of my enemy. Do not replace your veil.'
In fury she glared up at me, shamed as my eyes boldly regarded the beauty of her face. She made no move to replace the veil.
As I looked upon her, incredibly perhaps, my rage dissipated and with it the vengeful desires that had filled me. In anger I had dragged her, helpless, mine by all the Codes of Gor, to the shelter of the trees. Yet now once
