Three separate groups of travellers left Horta in the early hours of the morning, the first two aware of the fact that they were being followed, the final group that they were following not one, but two others.

Talbrik had persuaded the owner of a cart and two draft deichen to part company with them. At first he had intended leaving the city alone, thinking that he could travel quicker and more easily. But Avelline was not so easily persuaded that he should leave without her.

'You have a better and more secure future here in the city,' he had told her.

'No,' she said emphatically, shaking her head. 'I have discussed the matter with Maximus' girls. They have explained the situation to me. There would have to be a hearing before the city magistrates, which would involve you testifying to the effect that I was your property to begin with, and that you had willingly given me my freedom. You would not want to do that.'

'Why would I not?'

'It would mean telling the magistrates how you came to own me in the first place.'

Talbrik nodded.

'I had not thought of that. I could leave papers.'

'They would not accept that. It has to be personal testimony.'

'Well then, you will have to come with me.'

'I always intended to.'

She glanced away so that he would not see her heightened colour, but it was too late, and he smiled to himself. He clambered onto the driving rail of the cart and held out his hand to help her up beside him.

'Lienne?'

'I did not tell her we were leaving. She will be well looked after in the city. We will return for her.'

He nodded thoughtfully.

'You know what I am setting out to accomplish, I suppose?'

'You seek the man they call Marcellus of Barbessel. Your commission is to kill him because he abducted two of the holy virgins from Prakussara,' Avelline said.

'Exactly that.'

'I hope you are being paid well for this.'

'I do not understand.'

'The man who commissioned you to kill Marcellus of Barbessel, did he pay you well?'

'He gave me my freedom.'

'Ah!' she nodded, a smile playing about her lips.

'You find that amusing? I would be dead by now. They were coming for me.'

Again she nodded.

'Suppose you find him, and you are unable to kill him. Suppose, instead, that he kills you.'

'I do not see that as a problem.'

'That he may kill you?'

'If he does, I shall know precious little about it.'

Now she laughed. He picked up the reins and urged the draft deichen on. As the city gates lumbered open, he was signalled to stop by the guards. He produced the papers Publius Maximus had signed to give him his freedom and they were allowed to pass through. No search was made of the cart. Before them lay two paths. Straight ahead was the lush valley that heralded the border with Pekeesh, perhaps two days ahead of them at the fastest pace they could make with the draft deichen. To the south lay Hor-Lak, where Talbrik was now a wanted man. He hesitated momentarily, then took the path straight ahead. If there was trouble with the plains bronzeskins, they would meet it head on and deal with it as and when the time came.

Already the sun was above the horizon, and a long line of broken white clouds topped the mountains in the far distance. High above them, in the still dark sky, were the two moons of Heraklion, the red and the grey. At this time of the year the larger red moon passed within the orbit of the grey and came to within a few hundred thousand miles of Heraklion. It was a stunning sight, two-thirds of it brightly illuminated by the enormous orb of the yellow-white sun, the final third in shadow, barely visible in the lightening blue of the dawn sky.

They passed through field after field of cultivated crops, corn, wheat, maize, and finally rice fields, where already a sizeable number of peasants toiled to bring in their harvest before the closing in of the winter months. Here and there was evidence of spoiled crops, as though trampled underfoot or scythed to the ground before they were ready for harvesting, and they had little doubt but that this was the what had been attributed to the bronzeskins who were said to have broken the treaty with Barbessel. Having no inside or partisan knowledge of the political machinations that preceded their arrival in the city and leading to the present situation they were unable to form any kind of opinion as to who was to blame for the damage.Beyond the crop fields the trail disappeared over the ridge of the hill that sloped up towards the range of foothills that preceded the mountains at the border with Pekeesh. The draft deichen plodded on like automatons, their tread never varying, a measured step that betokened a low order of existence. Talbrik, aware that another wagon was following them, possibly a mile distant, asked many questions of his companion, in an effort to rid himself of the naivety he had presented each time they had encountered others.

His childhood had been spent mostly in hiding. The woman who had given birth to him had originally been one of the holy virgins of Prakussara, and her own escape from that bondage had itself been nothing short of miraculous. Determined that her offspring should survive, where all others born into the holy city were either executed or castrated and subborned into the service of the virgins, had taken him to the foothills on the north coast of Ancyros where the only inhabitants ran on four legs and lived on the corpses of the slaughtered male infants, tossed from wagons. Talbrik had spent the first few years of his life living in dark caves, living off berries and shrubs, occasionally the white meat of rodents caught by his mother. They moved from cave to cave, dodging the predators with a casualness that defied belief, looking back. Then, with Talbrik barely eight years old, his mother had caught a chill which had turned into a fever, and had died in his arms. From that day on Talbrik was alone. For several more years he had lived off the same diet of berries and shrubs and carcass meat, living more like an animal than a man, until he had summoned up the courage to visit the city of Prakussara in the dead of night, lured there by the flickering yellow lights of the street lamps. Used to scuttling along subterranean passages to avoid predatory silthen and the ferocious carnivorous rodents that inhabited his strange twilight world, he had had little difficulty in keeping out of sight once he had scaled the enormous walls of Prakussara and dropped down unseen into one of its back streets.

Awestruck by its comparative opulence and drawn by the rich world of aromas which attended the preparation of real food, he had spent this first night just wandering along the lonely, dimly-lit alleyways peering into windows, watching people eat, sleep, make love, and their slaves, living still in a luxury he could never have imagined previously in his wildest dreams, washing dishes, cook, wandering naked through the halls and corridors of these vast dwellings in a world far different from any he had ever seen.

Watch was all he did that first night, and get a feel for the layout of the city. It was the beginning of a new life for Talbrik. Subsequently he never went hungry again, never had to catch a rat or an ulver, skinning it quickly and expertly with the sharp knife his mother had brought with them out of Prakussara. Now he waited until households slept, hauled himself through windows and silently helped himself to food from their larders. Even through the lean nights of winter, when security was tightened throughout the city because of earlier thefts of food, he dined in comparative luxury on the scraps that were tossed out of kitchens for the birds and the animals to feed on.

Most of all he had liked to watch the slave girls performing their ritual dances before their masters, men who had helped to build and establish the holy city many years before, and who had since instituted the laws which said that only castrated male infants would be allowed to live in Prakussara, men who lived in fear of their god, Khamen, worshipping his earthly representatives, the holy virgins. These men inhabited a world of opulence which Talbrik could only marvel at and admire from the other side of the walls of their rich and noble households. Night after night he would stare open-mouthed as these men, reclining replete in their red velvet chairs, clapped their hands and waited for their delightful slave girls to perform. In particular he liked to climb to the first floor of the building he believed to be a temple, and to peer through the tiny slit window as the holy virgins performed their nightly rituals of practising their dances, and taking their baths, and grooming each other in readiness for the frequent and mysterious ceremonies. Two of the girls, identical to behold, and for ages he had believed that there was only one, until he at last saw them together, the one brushing the other's hair and assisting with her toilet, caught his eye.

They were blonde, in itself most unusual, for most of the girls in the holy city of Prakussara and therefore in the limited circles inhabited by Talbrik, were darker-haired, and extraordinarily beautiful. Over the months following his eighteenth year, though he had no way of knowing how long he had lived, he made it his business to explore at first the outer walls of the temple, seeking further opportunities to observe the blonde beauties at play or at rest, later the interior, when he found that he could gain access via one of the underground tunnels which housed the pipework for the undefloor heating.

Night after night he would raise the grating and haul himself into the hall, creep across the mosaiced floor of the temple, up the magnificently ornate staircase to the landing where each of the rooms contained at least one of the holy virgins. At this time he had no concept either of virginity, or of holiness. He knew only that these were special girls, kept for the most part away from the sight of men apart from times when there were great gatherings in the hall, and they would be put on show, it seemed to him, and paraded before the people of the city for them to leert at and lust after.

Most nights, after watching the entertainment, and the sexual mastery of the girls afterwards, he would return to the foothills, to the cold, lonely, dark, damp caves he inhabited, sleeping by day with one eye open on the outside world lest they send someone to find him. But as he became more confident he started to remain in the city overnight, exploring its subterranean passageways and sewers in the hours of darkness so that over time he came to live in the city. It was Gennis who had found him, coming upon him one night. A brief scuffle had ensued during which the young Talbrik made it quite clear that he was not going to be captured, and at length, because he spoke very little, only words he had picked up whilst observing others from outside their household walls, Gennis convinced him he meant him no harm and took him back to the safety of his house. For some time a strained and awkward friendship developed between them, but Talbrik trusted no-one, and preferred sleeping rough to the alcove in which Gennis, using a mix of sign language and a few basic Herakian words, promised to hide him. Their paths crossed at irregular intervals, and it was not until Gennis hit upon the plan of using the young giant to gain his revenge on whoever had kidnapped his two daughters from the holy city that he actually went looking for Talbrik.

Gennis realised that the chances of Talbrik ever finding and killing the man who had taken Saria and Lucinda were remote. That abduction had been meticulously planned and executed, by professional soldiers. Talbrik, because of his limited knowledge of even the most basic Herakian, and by reason of the fact that he had not been brought up in civilised society, was to be regarded in more ways than one as a retard. But Gennis had not foreseen the intense desire of the young man to become accepted, his willingness to learn to speak and write properly, and his joy at having secured a real purpose in his young life at long last.

Talbrik now spoke perfect Herakian, and could read and write thanks to the efforts of Avelline and Lienne. Only one thing disturbed him about his new life, and that was the fact that he had come to the business of killing people without any difficulty whatsoever. His first encounter with the men and the wagon had provoked in him a basic desire to take the wagon at whatever cost, and killing the men had come as natural to him as if he had been trained as an assassin, which of course he had not.

The man at the inn where he had rescued Avelline and Lienne, that had been a slightly different matter, for they had been threatened, and he believed at least one of them to be under his protection. Nevertheless, he killed with a feeling of hatred for the man he could not explain, except that he felt a certain revulsion that anyone would try to force a girl as young as Lienne to perform sexual acts with him. Again, the killing of Swarbard and his men had taken place because of what they intended doing to Avelline. He knew that the lives of women on Heraklion, in every great city and in all of the villages and communities across the world, were held in disdain by the men, that women relied on their looks and their charms for their very existence. He was aware that women were owned by men, sometimes kept in chains, forced to do whatever their owners commanded.

He was aware also that for the most part women had no say in the progress of their lives, that they remained, except for a select few, totally dependent on the men they owed their lives to for their continued existence. Displease your owner and you were likely to find yourself cast out onto the streets, into the fields. It was a fact of life he was aware of, one he had now come to see being practised everywhere he had been since leaving Prakussara, and he was not sure he agreed with it.

He glanced across at Avelline, marvelling inwardly at the creamy-smooth slope of her neck, her shoulders and the delicious sweep of her breasts, pushing gently against the thin material of her tunic. He reached across and touched her hand, briefly. She, startled, looked at him, withdrawing her hand, then as quickly replacing it in his, squeezing gently until their fingers entwined.

'I am not sure I can drive the wagon like this,' he said. She smiled.

'They will plod on like this without you. They know the paths well enough.'

He nodded. Beyond them lay the majestic valley floor of the land that was a part of the greatest Herakian province of them all, Barbessel. They had left the city ofHorta far behind, its massive walls barely visible in the gathering morning light.

'We could go into the back of the wagon,' Avelline said, running her other hand down across the slope of her breast, her eyes lowered. He felt a tightening in his throat, and his eyes half closed involuntarily.

'They can find their way without us sitting up here,' she continued, pointing to the deichen.

'I do not think we should.....'

'Talbrik, do you find me attractive?'

'You are the most gloriously beautiful woman I have ever seen.....'

'Talbrik, is there something about me?'

He shook his head and cleared his throat.

'I told you, I find you so attractive.....'

'Are you frightened of me?'

'Should I be?'

'That is just like a man, to answer a question with a question! Talbrik, since you - acquired me, you have kept away from me. What is the reason for that?'

He lowered his face, so that she would not see his heightened colour, but it was too late. She took his face in her hands and raised it so that their eyes again met.

'Talbrik, tell me truthfully, do you desire me?'

'Of course!'

'You have saved my life many times in the brief time we have known each other. Now is the time to take your reward.'

'I.....

She began to undo the string at her neck that held the loose-fitting tunic across her breasts. He stared, open-mouthed, the back of his neck prickling with anticipation. At the last second, as she removed the tunic, letting the sleeve-holes slip gracefully down over her arms, he turned away. She put her hand on top of his, gently tugging it, pulling it away from where he held it, clenched, against his chest. Slowly, inch by inch, she edged it to her, until it was just the thickness of the cotton fabric of her tunic away from the upward swell of her stomach, just above her navel. Finally she pressed it gently against her belly and as his fingers settled against the soft, smooth coolness of her skin, her breath came out and her eyes closed, her belly flattened, contracting with the contact, forcing her breasts outwards. Still he would not look at her, and for what seemed like an age his hand remained where it was, never moving, just gently probing the softness of her skin. Then she moved her hand upwards, and his hand followed, arriving after what seemed a further eternity at the sharp contrast of the underswell of her right breast.

She heard him draw a sharp breath, and make as if to pull his hand away, but she clamped her hand over his and forced it to remain there. Now his wonder, his marvelling at her perfect form took on a new dimension. It is one thing for a man to admire a woman, to know that her shape is pleasing to the eye and so beautiful as to make him dry-throated and wet-skinned with perspiration. It is quite another matter to actually touch that skin, to immerse oneself in the beauty, the almost unbearable beauty of the woman. Of course Talbrik had touched Avelline many times during the course of their journey northwards, not least when he had rescued her from the unwanted attentions of Swarbard's men. But that had been the touch of chivalry, of protection, and although at those times he had been aware of a need to touch her, to want her, those times had not been conducive, and there had been precious few opportunities for further attention to her since they had arrived in Horta. With his hand pressed hard against the underswell of her breast, he at last allowed himself the indulgence of touching her with the beginnings of an intimacy he had longed for for such a long time.

His hand cupped the swell of her young breast, his fingers assimilating themselves into the shape of its perfect roundness, and she removed her own hand, satisfied that at last he would pay her such attention as she desired of him, feeling no further need to persuade him. But as his hand trembled tremulously over the stiffness of her nipple, barely touching its tip, barely moving it this way and that, a sudden thought penetrated the depths of her abandonment to his loving, and she opened her eyes. His face was still turned away from hers, and his breathing was deep. She again put her hand over his, her fingers entwining with his as they played about her nipple.

'You are virgin,' she whispered, and his eyes opene, wide and anxious.

'You can tell?' he said hoarsely.

'I can tell. It does not matter to me. Come, into the back of the wagon.'

He released the reins and they climbed into the back of the wagon, where he spread out some sacking. Abruptly, a further disquietingthought entered her mind.

'Does it matter to you?' she asked quietly, kneeling opposite him, her eyes lowered to the floor, almost in the manner in which a slave would kneel before her master, afraid to meet his eyes until he gave her permission to do so.

'What do you mean?'

'I have been with many men.'

'Why would that matter to me? I have never been with a woman.'

'Most men prefer that their woman has never been with anyone else,' she said, and still her eyes remained downcast. He reached for her hand, squeezed it with something she recognised as affection, and then his other hand was buried in the deep luxuriance of her long soft hair, and he was inching towards her, breathing in her perfume, his hands behind her neck, drawing her closer.

'I will teach you everything I know,' she breathed, and she thought she heard him laugh a little. Gently, timidly, he took the drawstrings of her tunic in each hand and pulled it apart so that it fell, catching on the broader sweep of her hips. Now he marvelled at the beauty of her bosom, and his hands, travelling down across her throat, began to explore the downward sweep of them, moving slowly, savouring each part of her, until the heels of his hands were beginning to brush against the upward straining of her nipples. As his hands closed gently over them, and she felt the hard knob of her nipples pressed against the softness of his palms, she reached for him and found him hard, and stiff, and he shuddered as she took him in her hands. His right hand travelled further down, across the soft mound of her belly, until he felt the cushion of soft curls at her groin. Now she brought her legs forward and stretched out fulll-length on the floor of the wagon, on the rough sacking he had piled up, and as the wagon bobbed gently along, he positioned himself beside her and continued with his exploration of her creamy smoothness, and the gathering moistness between her legs as she continued to hold and stroke him, marvelling at the strength of it and hardly daring to believe that he would continue to treat her with such kindness, in ways so unlike those to which she had been previously subjected by the various men whom she had had to call 'master'.

'Do you know what to do?' she whispered, and saw his eyes smile. He knelt between her legs, pushing them gently apart by the ankles, and lowered himself slowly until his belly rubbed against hers and began to push into her, softly, slowly, gently, not hard, not roughly, but softly, and sweetly, and exquisitely, and she brushed away a tear as his face fell into the hollow cradle of her neck and his hand again sought the firm swell and the hard nipple of her breast. She began to breathe deeply, and moved her buttocks down to pull him further into her, and he began to move, inside her, gently, slipping in and out on waves of moistness that she had never experienced before. Her hands locked about her neck and she put her feet flat on the floor of the wagon so that her knees were raised, gripping the sides of his muscular buttocks, and the gently swaying motion of the wagon as it tumbled slowly along assisted them in the rhythm of their lovemaking. Even after several minutes Talbrik was still only moving slowly inside her, almost languidly, while she was becoming more and more drawn into the state of orgasm she had previously been forced to exhibit by brutal and uncaring men. And then he was speeding up, plunging further and deeper into her, swallowed by her desire for him and assisted by her need for him, until he could contain himself no longer and collapsed finally on top of her, his hard, muscled belly against her soft and downy one.

Eventually she pushed him gently off her, and they lay thus for a long time, staring up at the roof of the wagon, their hands entwined, until she felt him stiffen against her leg again, and as she reached down to touch him, he leaned over her and took her nipple between his lips and gently began to stimulate it with his tongue. The second time around it was better, longer, even more satisfying than the first time, and ages after he had spent his seed inside her, she held him there, locked inside her, his lean, muscular body pressed hard against her soft yielding flesh, his hands buried in her hair, his face against hers, and they simply savoured each other, neither wishing to move, each overwhelmed by the intensity of their released feelings for each other.

Eventually, with the sun climbing to the mid-morning sky, he rolled off her and they both lay, turned to face each other, each exploring the other's bodies with their hands and their lips. It was midsun when the wagon rolled abruptly to a halt. Talbrik frowned, pulled on his breeches and tunic, and clambered out to see what had happened. He could see nothing amiss. The deichen had stopped to graze, that was all, as far as he could tell. He jumped lightly to the ground as Avelline emerged from the wagon, still naked. Before them lay the forest beyond which rose the foothills and then the mountain border with Pekeesh, still a day's ride away at the pace they made with the draft deichen. Behind them they could no longer see the towers and spires of Horta, only league upon league of rolling slopes and valleys, for the most part wild, but here and there exhibiting a degree of cultivation which heralded the existence of some small hamlet or other. Away to the right was the valley which led all the way to the coast, again a day's ride. To their left, a lake.

The deichen lumbered forward, throwing Avelline off balance, and she tumbled backwards into the wagin, her shapely legs waving unceremoniously in the air. Talbrik laughed and watched as the enormous beasts swung their pot-bellied bodies toward the lake. It was perfectly evident that they wished to stop for food and water. He walked to the lakeside and marvelled at how clear it was. At its farthest edge a waterfall discharged white and frothy spring water into the lake. He hesitated for barely a moment, then stripped off and plunged into the cool, clear water just as Avelline again emerged from the rear of the wagon. For a while she could not see him, and then he burst from the surface, the water cascading about him, and smiled, waving to her.

'It is good!'

She climbed down from the wagon, walking carefully past the deichen so as not to agitate them with sudden movements, and sat at the edge of the lake dangling her feet in the water. For the best part of an hour they sported themselves in the water and then lay in the sun to dry, their hands entwined, their legs touching, and then it was time to be on their way again. Talbrik helped her up onto the platform of the wagon and took the reins, urging the deichen to finish their sojourn and start off. But they were strong, and stubborn, and it took all of their combined strength to coax them away from the lake and back onto the track.

Talbrik reckoned that during the time they had taken to stop the wagons travelling in their wake ought to have made some inroads into the distance between them, and at every opportunity he looked behind them for signs of pursuit, but saw nothing, and eventually came to the conclusion that the other wagons had taken a different route to theirs. Eventually, in the late afternoon, they reached a forest which stretched to either side and away into the distance, and there was nothing for it but to take the trail that led through it. The deichen seemed reluctant to enter the woods, though Talbrik suspected that they had trodden it many times before. Yet something seemed to have agitated them, and they stood their ground, snorting and tossing their giant heads, their eyes rolling wildly as Talbrik tried to calm them and coax them out of the direct sunlight and into the shade of the aforested trail. Eventually he came to the conclusion that they might move more willingly were he to lead them holding something they liked to eat, and looked around for a stick of berries with which they had rewarded them once or twice already. At last he saw some, a few steps further back the way they had come, and called to Avelline that he would be but a moment. She called out her acknowledgement, and he turned his back on the wagon.

The next thing he saw was as if in a dream. Flying along at shoulder height, almost in slow motion, and spinning as it went, he saw a long, feathered arrow. That he was not the target he was never in doubt. His attention engaged, he stopped in his tracks and watched with a kind of inevitable fascination as the shaft travelled almost lazily through the air towards the wagon. Abruptly he snapped into action, turning on his heels and running after it, never hoping to catch it, knowing it was travelling at a far greater speed than he was sure he had seen it travelling, and shouting all the while to the girl in the wagon to take cover.

'Avelline! Get down! Avelline! Get down!'

Had he kept his mouth shut, it is just possible he might not have witnessed what he knew, even as he plunged headlong through the brush and the soft earthtowards the wagon, that he was going to see. Still screaming at the top of his voice, he watched in horror to see her head emerge from the front of the wagon, and the arrow, still seeming to travel at a slow enoguh speed for him to remain just behind it, never able to catch it, of course, buried itself deep in her chest and she fell to the ground, laying at the hind feet of the right-hand deichus.

Talbrik ploughed into the earth where she lay, watching in horror as the crimson blood trickled from the hole the shaft had made as it passed into her. He cradled her head in his arms, lifting her slightly, and her eyes flickered open. She said nothing. He lowered her gently to the ground and knlet over her, moving aside the two flaps of her tunic so that he could see what he was doing. The creamy-smooth softness of her breasts moved slowly with the pain of her breathing. He put his hands timidly around the shaft of the arrow and tested its depth. It was deep. So deep, in fact, that he thought it might have passed clean through her and pinned her to the ground. But he was sure, when he had raised her into his arms, that there had been nothing protruding from her back. He braced himself, and began to ease the arrow out of her. Blood gouted from the wound, spattering over her chest and over his arms and face. Brushing it away, he continued to pull, until there was a fountain of blood spraying into the afternoon air. But the arrow was deep, and the head was lodged behind a breast bone. As the flint head of the arrow jarred against the fragile bone of her chest she cried out, a loud, piercing cry that shocked him. He found that there were tears coursing down his face, mixing with the grime of the perspiration and the blood with which he was now covered. He relaxed his grip on the arrow, and the flow of blood ceased abruptly, though there was still a rivulet of it running between her breasts. Avelline's eyes opened again, and there was pain and fear in them. He scrambled off her, and again cradled her head in his arms, putting his face next to hers.

'It hurts, Talbrik,' she said in a faltering whisper.

'I have to get it out of you.....'

'It is too late.....it must be poisoned.....I can feel a numbness creeping down over me.....hold me tight, Talb.....'

He put his lips to hers and felt her respond to his embrace, though feebly, and there was no strength in her arms as they clutched at him.

'Who would have done this?' he demanded, raising his eyes skyward, as they filled with tears. 'Avelline, I have to remove the arrow, it is the only way.....'

'It will not help, Talbrik,' she whispered weakly. 'Let me talk while I still have time.....You treated me well, better than any man.....one day Heraklion's women will be treated as well, as women, rather than as property, or as animals.....you will see to it.....I love you.....'