I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of the woolen robe. I returned to stand above the board.

My Home Stone was threatened.

Yet I felt hard and strong. I wore steel at my side. I was Bosk. I was once of the warriors.

“Home Stone of Ubar’s Tarnsman One,” I said.

Samos made the move for me.

I nodded my head to the chained, nude male slave, flanked by his guards, to one side.

“Is this the slave?” I asked Samos.

“Bring him forward,” said Samos.

The two guards, helmeted, threw him to his feet, and half dragging him, half carrying him, their hands on his arms, brought him before us. Then they forced him again to his knees, and thrust his dark, shaggy head down to the tiles before our sandals.

The slave girl laughed.

When the guard removed his hand from the slave’s hair, he straightened his back, and regarded us.

He seemed proud. I liked this.

“You have an unusual barber,” said Samos.

The slave girl laughed again, delightedly.

The strip which had been shaven on his head, from the forehead tot he back of the neck, signified that he had been captured, and sold, by the panther girls of the northern forests. It is among the greatest shames that a man can know, that he had been enslaved by women, who had then, when weary of him, sold him, taking their profit on him.

“It is said, “ said Samos, “that only weaklings, and fools, and men who deserve to be slave girls, fall slave to women.” The man glared at Samos. I could sense, again, that, in his manacles, behind his back, his fists were clenched.

“I was once the slave of a woman,” I told the man.

He looked at me, startled.

“What is to be done with you?” asked Samos.

I could see the heavy metal collar hammered about the man’s neck, not uncommon in a male slave. His head would have been placed across the anvil, and the metal curved about his neck with great blows.