"It's too late." The Nyissan looked on with an ugly grin. "Watch." The swimming man suddenly shrieked and sank out of sight. When he came up again, his face and arms were covered with the slimy, footlong leeches that infested the river. Screaming, the struggling man tore at the writhing leeches, ripping out chunks of his own flesh in his efforts to pull them off.

The Murgos began to laugh.

Garion's mind exploded. He gathered himself with an awful concentration, pointed one hand at the wharf just beyond their own ship and said, "Be there!" He felt an enormous surge as if some vast tide were rushing out of him, and he reeled almost senseless against Mandorallen. The sound inside his head was deafening.

The slave, still writhing and covered with the oozing leeches, was suddenly lying on the wharf. A wave of exhaustion swept over Garion; if Mandorallen had not caught him, he would have fallen.

"Where did he go?" Barak demanded, still staring at the turbulent spot on the surface of the river where the slave had been an instant before. "Did he go under?"

Wordlessly and with a shaking hand, Mandorallen pointed at the slave, who lay still weakly struggling on the Drasnian wharf about twenty yards in front of the bow of their ship.

Barak looked at the slave, then back at the river. The big man blinked with surprise.

A small boat with four Nyissans at the oars put out from the other wharf and moved deliberately toward Greldik's ship. A tall Murgo stood in the bow, his scarred face angry.

"You have my property," he shouted across the intervening water. "Return the slave to me at once."

"Why don't you come and claim him, Murgo?" Barak called back. He released Hettar's arm. The Algar moved to the side of the ship, stopping only to pick up a long boathook.

"Will I be unmolested?" the Murgo asked a bit doubtfully.

"Why don't you come alongside, and we'll discuss it?" Barak suggested pleasantly.

"You're denying me my rights to my own property," the Murgo complained.

"Not at all," Barak told him. "Of course there might be a fine point of law involved here. This wharf is Drasnian territory, and slavery isn't legal in Drasnia. Since that's the case, the man's not a slave anymore."

"I'll get my men," the Murgo said. "We'll take the slave by force if we have to."

"I think we'd have to look on that as an invasion of Alorn territory," Barak warned with a great show of regret. "In the absence of our Drasnian cousins, we'd almost be compelled to take steps to defend their wharf for them. What do you think, Mandorallen?"

"Thy perceptions are most acute, my Lord," Mandorallen replied. "By common usage, honorable men are morally obliged to defend the territory of kinsmen in their absence."