He stood high in the Council of Captains. And was it no he who had been victor on the 25^th of Se’kara, in the great engagement of the fleets of Port Kar and Cos and Tyros? He had come to love Telima, and had freed her, but when he had learned the location of his former Free Companion, Talena, once daughter of Marlenus of Ar, and vowed to free her from slavery, Telima had left him, in the fury of a Gorean female, and returned to the rence marshes, her home in the Vosk’s vast delta.

A true Gorean, he knew, would have gone after her, and brought her back in slave bracelets and a collar. But he, in his weakness, hadwept, and let her go.

Doubtless she despised him now in the marshes.

And so, Tarl Cabot gone, Bosk, Merchant of Port Kar, had gone to the northern forests, to free Talena, once his Free Companion.

There he had encountered Marlenus of Ar, Urbar of Ar, Urbar of Urbars.He, though only of the Merchants, had saved Marlenus of Ar from the degradation of slavery. That one such as he, had been of service to the great Marlenus of Ar, doubtless was tantamount to insult. But Marlenus had been freed. Earlier he had disowned his daughter, Talena, for she had sued for her freedom, a slave’s act. His honour had been kept. That of Tarl Cabot could not be recovered.

But I recalled that I had, in the stockade of Tyros, recollected the matter of honour. I had entered the stockade alone, not expecting to survive. It was not that I was the friend of Marlenus of Ar, or his ally. It was rather that I had, as a warrior, or one once of such as caste, set myself the task of his liberation.

I had accomplished this task. And, in the night, under the stars, I had recollected a never-forgotten honour.

But wounds had I to show for this act, and a body heavy with pain, whose left side I could not move.