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been fed my your Mistress,” she said.
    “I have been fed by my Mistress,” I said.
    “What is your name, Slave?” asked she.
    “Tarl,” said I.
    She struck me savagely across the mouth, flinging my head to one side.
    “A slave has no name,” she said.
    “I have no name,” I said.
    She walked about me. “Your back is broad,” she said. “You are strong, but
    stupid.” She laughed. “I shall call you Bosk,” she said.
    The Bosk is a large, horned, shambling ruminant of the Gorean plains. It is
    herded below the Gorean equator by the Wagon Peoples, but there are Bosk herds
    on ranches in the north as well, and peasants often keep some of the animals.
    “I am Bosk,” I said.
    There was laughter.
    “My Bosk!” she laughed.
    “I should have thought,” said he with the headband, formed of the pearls of the
    Vosk sorp, “that you might have preferred a man for a slave, one who is proud
    and does not fear death.”
    The girl thrust her hands into my hair and threw back my head. Then she spat in
    my face. “Coward and slave!” she hissed.
    I dropped my head. It was true what she had said. I had feared death. I had
    chosen slavery. I could not be a true man. I had lost myself.
    “You are worthy only to be the slave of a woman,” said Ho-Hak.
    “Do you know what I am going to do with you?” asked the girl.
    “No,” I said.
    She laughed. “In two days,” she said, “at festival, I will put you at stake as a
    prize for girls.”
    There was laughter at this, and shouts of pleasure.
    My shoulders and head fell forward and, bound, I shook with shame.
    The girl turned. “Follow me, Slave,” said she, imperiously.
    I struggled to my feet and, to the jeers of the rence growers, and blows,
    stumbled after the girl, she who owned me, my mistress.
    4       The Hut
    In the stem of the girl’s rence craft, she poling the craft from the stern, I
    knelt, cutting rence. It was late in the year to cut rence but some quantities
    of the rence are cut during the fall and winter and stored on covered rence
    rafts until spring. These stores of rence are not used for adding in the making
    of rence paper, but in the weaving of mats, for adding to the surface of the
    island, and for the pith, used as a food.
    “Cut there,” said the girl, moving the rush craft into a thicket of rence.
    One holds the stem of the plant in the left hand and, with the right, with a
    small, curved, two-inch knife makes a diagonal upward stroke.
    We were towing a small rence raft and there was already much rence upon it.
    We had been cutting since before dawn. It was now late in the afternoon.
    I cut again, dropping the tufted, flowered head of the rence stem in the water,
    and then I tossed the stem onto the raft of rence, with the piles of others.
    I could sense the rence craft move as teh girl shifted her weight in it,
    balancing it and maintaining it in position.
    I cut more.
    She had not seen fit to give her slave clothing.
    About my neck she had coiled and tied a length of marsh vine.
    I knew her to be barefoot behind me, in the brief-skirted tunic of
    yellowish-brown rence cloth, cut away at the shoulders to give her freedom of
    movement. She wore a golden armlet. Her hair was bound back with the bit of
    purple rep-cloth. She had, as the girls do in rence craft, tied her skirt high
    about her thighs, for ease in moving and poling. I was terribly conscious of
    her. Her rather thick ankles seemed to me to be strong and lovely, and her legs
    sturdy and fine. Her hips were sweet, her belly a rhythm made for the touch of a
    man, and her breasts, full and beautiful, magnificent, tormenting me, strained
    against the brittle rence cloth of her tunic with an insolence of softness, as
    though, insistent, they would make clear their contempt for any subterfuge of
    concealment.
    “Slave,” had cried the girl once, “do you dare to look upon your mistress!”
    I had turned away.
    I was hungry. In the morning, before dawn, she had placed in my