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It was the first kiss I had taken from the lips of my slave girl, and it had been a kiss of mad joy, one that astonished her, that she could not understand.

I leaped from the couch and went to the portal.

She remained standing on the stone platform, bewildered, her fingers at her lips.

Her eyes regarded me strangely.

'Vika,' I cried, 'would you like to leave this room?'

'Of course,' she said.Her voice trembled.

'Very well,' I said, 'you shall do so.'

She shrank back.

I laughed and went to the portal.Once again I examined the six red, domed sensors, three on a side, which were fixed there.It would be, in a way, a shame to destroy them, for they were rather beautiful.

I drew my sword.

'Stop!' cried Vika, in terror.

She leaped from the stone couch and ran to me, seizing my sword arm but with my left hand I flung her back and she fell stumbling back against the side of the stone couch.

'Don't!' she cried, kneeling there, her hands outstretched.

Six times the hilt of my sword struck against the sensors and six times there was a hissing pop like the explosion of hot glass and a bright shower of scarlet sparks.The sensors had been shattered, their lenses broken and the wired apertures behind them a tangle of black, fused wire.

I resheathed my sword and wiped my face with the back of my forearm.I could taste a little blood and knew that some of the fragments from the sensors had cut my face.

Vika knelt beside the couch numbly.

I smiled at her.'You may now leave the room,' I said, 'should you wish to do so.'

Slowly she rose to her feet.Her eyes looked to the portal and its shattered sensors.Then she looked at me, something of wonder and fear in her eyes.

She shook herself.

'My master is hurt,' she said.

'I am Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba,' I said to her, telling her my name and city for the first time.

'My city is Treve,' she said, for the first time telling me the name of her city.

I smiled as I watched her go to fetch a towel from one of the chests against the wall.

So Vika was from Treve.

That explained much. Treve was a warlike city somewhere in the trackless magnificence of the Voltai Range.I had never been there but I knew her reputation.Her warriors were said to be fierce and brave, her women proud and beautiful.Her tarnsmen were ranked with those of Thentis, famed for its tarn flocks, and Ko-ro-ba, even great Ar itself.

Vika returned with the towel and began dabbing at my face.

It was seldom a girl from Treve ascended the auction block. I suppose Vika would have been costly had I purchased her in Ar or Ko-ro-ba.Even when not beautiful, because of their rarity, they are prized by collectors.

Treve was alleged to lie above Ar, some seven hundred pasangs distant, and toward the Sardar.I had never seen the city located on a map but I had seen the territory she claimed so marked.The precise location of Treve was not known to me and was perhaps known to few save its citizens.Trade routes did not lead to the city and those who entered its territory did not often return.

There was said to be no access to Treve save on tarnback and this would suggest that it must be as much a mountain stronghold as a city.

She was said to have no agriculture, and this may be true. Each year in the fall legions of tarnsmen from Treve were said to emerge from the Voltai like locusts and fall on the fields of one city or another, different cities in different years, harvesting what they needed and burning the rest in order that a long, relatiatory winter campaign could not be launched against them.A century ago the tarnsmen of Treve had even managed to stand off the tarnsmen of Ar in a fierce battle fought in the stormy sky over the crags of the Voltai. I had heard poets sing of it.Since that time her depredations had gone unchecked, although perhaps it should be added that never again did the men of Treve despoil the fields of Ar.

'Does it hurt?' asked Vika.

'No,' I said.

'Of course it hurts,' she sniffed.

I wondered if many of Treve's women were as beautiful as Vika.If they were it was surprising that tarnsmen from all the cities of Gor would not have descended on the place, as the saying goes, to try chain luck.

'Are all the women of Treve as beautiful as you?' I asked.

'Of course not,' she said irritably.

'Are you the most beautiful?' I asked.

'I don't know,' she said simply, and then she smiled and added, 'perhaps…'

With a graceful movement she rose and went back again to the chests against the wall.She returned with a small tube of ointment.

'They are deeper than I thought,' she said.

With the tip of her finger she began to work the ointment into the cuts.It burned quite a bit.

'Does it hurt?' she asked.

'No,' I said.

She laughed, and it pleased me to hear her laugh.

'I hope you know what you are doing,' I said.

'My father,' she said, 'was of the Caste of Physicians.'

So, I thought to myself, I had placed her accent rather well, either Builders or Physicians, and had I thought carefully enough about it, I might have recognised her accent as being a bit too refined for the Builders.I chuckled to myself. In effect, I had probably merely scored a lucky hit.

'I didn't know they had physicians in Treve,' I said.

'We have all the High Castes in Treve,' she said, angrily.

The only two cities, other than Ar, which I knew that Treve did not periodically attack were mountainous Thentis, famed for its tarn flocks, and Ko-ro-ba, my own city.

If the issue was grain, of course, there would be little point in going to Thentis, for she imports her own, but her primary wealth, her tarn flocks, is not negligible, and she also possesses silver, though her mines are not as rich as those of Tharna.Perhaps Treve has never attacked Thentis because she, too, is a mountain city, lying in the Mountains of Thentis, or more likely because the men of Treve respect her tarnsmen almost as much as they do their own.

The cessation of attacks on Ko-ro-ba began during the time my father, Matthew Cabot, was Ubar of that city.

He organised a system of far-flung beacons, set in fortified towers, which would give the alarm when unwelcome forces entered the territory of Ko-ro-ba.At the sight of raiders one tower would set its beacons aflame, glittering by night, or dampen it with green branches by day to produce a white smoke, and this signal would be relayed from tower to tower. Thus when the tarnsmen of Treve came to the grain fields of Ko-ro-ba, which lie for the most part some pasangs from the city, toward the Vosk and Tamber Gulf, they would find her tarnsmen arrayed against them.Having come for grain and not war, the men of Treve would then turn back, and seek out the fields of a less well-defended city.

There was also a system of signals whereby the towers could communicate with one another and the city.Thus if one tower failed to report when expected the alarm bars of Ko-ro-ba would soon ring and her tarnsmen would saddle and be aflight.

Cities, of course, would pursue the raiders from Treve, and carry the pursuit vigorously as far as the foothills of the Voltai, but there they would surrender the chase, turning back, not caring to risk their tarnsmen in the rugged, formidable territory of their rival, whose legendary ferocity among her own crags once gave pause long ago even to the mighty forces of Ar.

Treve's other needs seemd to be satisfied much in the same way as her agricultural ones, for her raiders were known from the borders of the Fair of En'Kara, in the very shadow of the Sardar, to the delta of the Vosk and the islands beyond, such as Tyros and Cos.The results of these raids might be returned to Treve or sold, perhaps even at the Fair of En'Kara, or another of the four great Sardar Fairs, or if not, they could always be disposed of easily without question in distant, crowded, malignant Port Kar.