is difficult to use from a saddle; it is impractical in close quarters, as in defensive warfare of in fighting from room to room; and it cannot be kept set, loaded like a firearm, as can the crossbow; the crossbow is the assassin's weapon, par excellence; further, it might be mentioned that, although it takes longer to set the crossbow, a weaker man, with, say, his belt claw or his winding gear, can certainly manage to do so; accordingly, for every man capable of drawing a warrior's long bow there will be an indefinite number who can use the crossbow; lastly, at shorter distances, the crossbow requires much less skill for accuracy than the long bow.

I smiled to myself.

It is not difficult to see why, popularly, the crossbow should be regarded as a generally more efficient weapon that the long bow, in spite of being inferior to it, in the hands of an expert, in range, accuracy and rate of fire. Well used, the long bow is a far more devastating weapon than its rival, the crossbow; but few men had the strenght and eye to use it well; I prided myself on my skill with the weapon.

I paddled along, gently, kneeling on the rushes of my small, narrow craft. It is the weapon of a peasant, I heard echoing in my mind, and again smiled. The Older Tarl, my former master-at-arms, had so spoken to me years before in Ko-ro-ba, my city, the Towers of the Morning. I looked down at the long, heavy, leather-wrapped bow of supple Ka-la-na wood in the bottom of the rush craft. I laughed.

It was true that the long bow is a weapon of peasants, who make and use them, sometimes with great efficiency. That face, in inself, that the long is a peasant weapon, would make many Goreans, particularly those ont familiar with the bow, look down upon it. Gorean warriors, generally drawn from the cities, are warriors by blood, by caste; moreover, they are High Caste; the peasants, isolate in their narrow fields and villages, are Low Caste; indeed, the Peasant