'Did you expect to be dressed as a free woman?' I snapped.
She glared at me, knowing that she must play her role, at least in the presence of Kazrak. She tossed her head haughtily. 'Of course not,' she said, adding ironically, 'Master.' Her back straight as a tarp-goad, she disappeared behind the silk hanging. A moment later the torn rag of blue silk flew out from behind the hanging.
A moment or two after, Talena stepped forth for our inspection, brazen and insolent. She wore the diagonally striped slave livery of Gor, as had Sana — that briefly skirted, simple, sleeveless garment.
She turned before us.
'Do I please you?' she asked.
It was obvious she did. Talena was a most beautiful girl.
'Kneel,' I said, drawing out the collar.
Talena blanched, but, as Kazrak chuckled, she knelt before me, her fists clenched.
'Read it,' I ordered.
Talena looked at the engraved collar and shook with rage.
'Read it,' I said. 'Out loud.'
She read the simple legend aloud: 'I AM THE PROPERTY OF TARL OF BRISTOL.'
I snapped the slender steel collar on her throat, placing the key in my pouch.
'Shall I call for the iron?' asked Kazrak.
'No,' begged Talena, now, for the first time, frightened.
'I shall not brand her today,' I said, keeping a straight face.
'By the Priest-Kings,' laughed Kazrak, 'I believe you care for the shetharlarion.'
'Leave us, Warrior,' I said.
Kazrak laughed again, winked at me, and backed with mock ceremony from the tent.
Talena sprang to her feet, her two fists flying for my face. I caught her wrists.
'How dare you?' she raged. 'Take this thing off,' she commanded.
She struggled fiercely, futilely. When in sheer frustration she stopped squirming, I released her. She pulled at the circle of steel on her throat. 'Remove this degrading object,' she commanded, 'now!' She faced me, her mouth trembling with rage. 'The daughter of the Ubar of Ar wears no man's collar.'
'The daughter of the Ubar of Ar,' I said, 'wears the collar of Tarl of Bristol.'
There was a long pause.
'I suppose,' she said, attempting to save face, 'it would perhaps be appropriate for a tarnsman to place his collar on the captive daughter of a rich merchant.'
'Or the daughter of a goat keeper,' I added.
Her eyes snapped. 'Yes, perhaps,' she said. 'Very well. I concede the reasonableness of your plan.' Then she held out her small hand imperiously. 'Give me the key,' she said, 'so that I may remove this when I please.'
'I will keep the key,' I said. 'And it will be removed, if at all, when I please.'
She straightened and turned away, enraged but helpless. 'Very well,' she said. Then, her eyes lit on the second object Kazrak had donated to the project of taming what he called the she-tharlarion — the slave whip. 'What is the meaning of that?'
'Surely you are familiar with a slave whip?' I asked, picking it up and, with amusement, slapping it once or twice in my palm.
'Yes,' she said, regarding me evenly. 'I have often used it on my own slaves. Is it now to be used on me?'
'If necessary,' I said.
'You wouldn't have the nerve,' she said.
'More likely the inclination,' I said.
She smiled.
Her next remark astonished me. 'Use it on me if I do not please you, Tarl of Bristol,' she said. I pondered this, but she had turned away.
In the next few days, to my surprise, Talena was buoyant, cheerful, and excited. She became interested in the caravan and would spend hours walking alongside the colored wagons, sometimes hitching rides with the strap masters, wheedling from them a piece of fruit or a sweetmeat. She even conversed delightedly with the inmates of the blue and yellow wagons, bringing them precious tidbits of camp news, teasing their as to how handsome their new masters would be.
She became a favorite of the caravan. Once or twice mounted warriors of the caravan had accosted her, but on reading her collar had backed grumblingly away, enduring with good humor her jibes and taunts. In the early afternoon, when the caravan halted, she would help Kazrak and me set up our tent and would then gather wood for a fire. She cooked for us, kneeling by the fire, her hair bound back so as not to catch the sparks, her face sweaty and intent on the piece of meat she was most likely burning. After the meal she would clean and polish our gear, sitting on the tent carpet between us, chatting about the small, pleasant inconsequentialities of her day.
'Slavery apparently agrees with her,' I remarked to Kazrak.
'Not slavery,' he smiled. And I puzzled as to the meaning of his remark. Talena blushed and lowered her face, rubbing vigorously on the leather of my tharlarion boots.
Chapter 11
The City of Tents
FOR SEVERAL DAYS, TO THE sound of the caravan bells, we made our way through the Margin of Desolation, that wild, barren strip of soil with which the Empire of Ar had girded its borders. Now, in the distance, we could hear the muffled roar of the mighty Vosk. As the caravan mounted a rise, we saw spread far below us, on the banks of the Vosk, a sight of incredible barbaric splendor-pasangs of brightly colored tents stretching as far as the eye could see, a vast assemblage of tents housing one of the greatest armies ever gathered on the plains of Gor. The flags of a hundred cities flew above the tents, and, against the steady roar of the river, the sound of the great tarn drums reached us, those huge drums whose signals control the complex war formations of Gor's flying cavalries. Talena ran to the foot of my tharlarion, and with my lance I hoisted her to the saddle so that she could see. For the first time in days her eyes filled with anger. 'Scavengers,' she said, 'come to feast on the bodies of wounded tarnsmen.'
I said nothing, knowing in my heart that I, in my way, had been responsible for this vast martial array on the banks of the Vosk. It was I who had stolen the Home Stone of Ar, who had brought about the downfall of Marlenus, the Ubar, who had set the spark that had brought Ar to anarchy and the vultures below to feed on the divided carcass of what had been Gor's greatest city.
Talena leaned back against my shoulder. Without looking at me, her shoulders shook, and I knew she was weeping.
If I could have, I would in that moment have rewritten the past, would have selfishly abandoned the quest for the Home Stone — yes, willingly would have left the scattered hostile cities of Gor to face, one by one, the imperialistic depredations of Ar, if it were not for one thing — the girl I held in my arms.
The caravan of Mintar did not camp as usual in the heat of the day but moved on, attempting to reach the City of Tents before darkness. As it was, my fellow guards and I earned our pay those last few pasangs to the banks of the Vosk. We fought off three groups of raiders from the camp on the river, two of them small, undisciplined contingents of mounted warriors, but the other a lightning strike of a dozen tarnsmen on the weapons wagon. They withdrew in good order, driven off by our crossbows, and couldn't have gotten much.
I saw Mintar again, the first time since I had joined the caravan. His palanquin swayed past. His face was sweating, and he fumbled in his heavy wallet, taking out tarn disks and tossing them to the warriors for their work. I snapped a tarn disk from the air and put it in my pouch.
That night we brought the caravan into the palisaded keep prepared for Mintar by Pa-Kur, the Master Assassin, who was the Ubar of this vast, scarcely organized, predatory horde. The caravan was secured, and in a
