Each man was golden masked, one in the manner of a hawk, and his saffron hair spilled in his spilled blood—the rider in the thorn wood.

Why this? Lost honor, humiliation that we had come from the slave-pit and beaten them? But these had not even ventured out to fight.

I raised my head. The pavilion was hung with soft dazzling silks, embroideries, and fraying gauzes, which made an effervescence of the amber lamp. Then a gauze stirred and drifted aside like powder. And something stood across from me, silver gleaming, a great dart of fire through a jewel—I leaped back, the sword ready. And lowered the sword like lead in my leaden hand.

It was not a city warrior standing there. I had not considered women might be with them, there had been no others we had seen; besides, at first she did not seem a woman but a sorceress, unheralded, materialized so bright and sudden, and the three dead between us.

She wore some kind of silver dress of snake scales, and a bodice of milky emeralds that left bare her breasts. Her waist was narrow but her breasts were full, a soft tactile whiteness flushing to warm darkness at their tips, and round as little moons. Her breasts might have reassured me she was human, too distracting to be celestial flesh. But her face was masked, the shape of a silver deer with eyes of apple-green quartz, and behind it her hair was like another sort of fire, a fire of glacial gold, burning with coldness.

She spoke to me in the city speech I could no longer interpret. I did not comprehend the words, but her meaning was exactly conveyed: the contempt of the king for his slave—no, worse, of the goddess for a piece of human offal spoiling the pasturage of paradise.

I had never got such a tone from a woman, nor ever considered I should. I was too amazed not to bear it a moment, like the mule his load, and no doubt my mouth was ajar to tempt night-flying insects.

Then I saw how her right hand, half hidden in the folds of her skirt, was clenched on a small shiny star, and I flung myself sideways in the second she threw her dagger at me. It flashed over my shoulder, and sliced among the draperies of the tent wall.

At that, seeing her failure, she cried out. It was a mortal voice, a young voice, rough with grief and fury and fright. It gave me back my sight and I looked again. Now I saw only a girl, trembling with her fear, a masked girl with naked breasts that made my mouth go dry.

“Well,” I said, abandoning the sword, “your luck isn’t with you tonight, deer-headed maiden.”

I knew she could no more understand the tribal speech than I hers. The lack of verbal communion reduced our intercourse to one eternal symbolic channel. I was glad it was so mundane, glad I had now the excuse to forget how she had seemed to me a dagger-cast before.