The rence growers market their product either at the eastern or western end of the delta. Sometimes rence merchants, on narrow marsh craft rowed by slaves, enter some pasangs into the delta to negotiate the transactions, usually from the western edge, that bordering the Tamber Gulf. Rence paper is, incidentally, not the only type of writing material used on Gor. A milled linen paper is much used, large quantities of which are produced in Ar, and vellum and parchment, prepared in many cities, are also popular.

I now noted another bit of white re-cloth tied on the rence stem, larger than the first. I assumed it was another trail mark. I continued on. The calls of marsh gants, a kind of piping whistle, seemed more frequent now, and somewhat closer. I looked behind me, and to the sides. Yet, not surprisingly, because of the rence, the rushes and sedge, I could not see the birds.

I had been in the delta now for some sixteen days, drifting and paddling toward the Thassa. I again tasted the water, and the salt of it was even stronger than it had been. And the great, vast clean smell of Thassa was clear.

I rejoiced, moving ahead. There was not much water left in the gourd now, and it was the last of several I had brought with me. The dried bosk meat in the tin, and the bread with it, yellow Sa-Tarna bread, now stale, was almost gone. Then I stopped short, for tied to a rence plant before me now was a sheaf of red cloth.

I then knew that the two pieces of cloth I had encountered earlier had not been simple trail marks but boundary signs, warnings. I had come into an area of the delta wehre I was not welcome, into a territory that must be claimed by some small community, doubless of rence growers.

The rence growers, in spite of the value of their product, and the value of the articles taken in exchange for it, and teh protection of the marshes, and the rence and fish which give them ample substenance, do not have an easy life. Not only must they fear the march sharks and the carnivorous eels which frequent the lower delta, not to mention the various species of aggressive water tharlarion and the winged, monstrous, hissing, predatory UI, but they must fear, perhaps most of all, men, and of these, most of all, the men of Port Kar.