The other slaves, the red men, lay close by. The north end of the ground roofed over a pit, an old cellar or dungeon, with an oval opening looking into it from above, covered by a grating of green crusted metal. The fires shone dimly now and then into this hole, and I could make out a mass of bodies and shadows, and hear them crooning and groaning their discontent. They were past the bawling stage, and past the fighting stage too, maybe. They had had a night and day of forced marching, a caress or two from gemmed whips like that which I had noted hung from the belt of the sentry, little food, if any, and no hope.

No one had challenged me this far. Now a man stepped out of his pavilion. His mask was an eagle’s head like mine, but silver, with a green stone between the eyes. He nodded at the grating.

“The trash are unhappy with their lot,” he said. The clearness of his speech shocked me at last, for it could have been a tongue I had had since birth.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m sick of their noise.”

I was looking for a means to get in the pit, other than the grating. The last section of the northern wall sloped down into a kind of gully, which seemed a likely entry point. I was formulating some story in the alien language about visiting our prisoners and offering them the whip for their racket, when the silver face strode up to me and grasped my arm.

“You are not Slarn,” he said.

The masks of the city men had no apertures at the mouth and the voices that came from them were filtered and changed.

I could tell this much, however: he was neither a young man nor a nervous one.

“True, sir, I am not Slarn.”

“Who then?”

I had been careless, trusting too much my peculiar luck, the occult demon-guide delivered from me.

“Come,” he said. “Unmask. I will know you.”

“As you wish,” I said.

I hazarded I should have the advantage of him; whatever trick he intended to detect, he would not look for me.

I loosened the cloak first, getting my knife ready to hand as I did so. As he took in my black hair, I heard him catch his breath in his throat. Then I had pulled off the mask.

I had been ready for all manner of things, but not for what he did. He fell back, and his arm went up, weaponless, instinctive, in a gesture of deference and denial. He blurted out two syllables I guessed to be an oath. Yet aware of his speech and still unable to fathom the word, I realized in a moment it was not an oath but a name.

“Vazkor.”

Unreasonably, receiving this unknown title terrified me.

A chasm gulped for my feet: I had lost my identity. I had intended a smooth killing, like the other on the track, but I went at him in a blank panic, and drove in the blade vilely, missing the vital organ so he yelped with agony and fear before he fell. So much done amiss, I did not even have the sense left to lean and be certain he was dispatched. I waited only long enough to hear if an answering hubbub would respond to his cry. When the night stayed peaceful, I ran and jumped down into the northern gully, without another caution.