Between the major cities there are countless thousands of small villages, most of which have up to a hundred or so huts build around a hub... presumably where the village Ubar's hut surrounds the Home Stone. It is often said that peasants are the very backbone upon which Gor rests. While many of the upper castes tend to look down upon their lot with disdain, I find them to be remarkably resilient in many ways. Their political justices are swift and simple, and they have a comraderie that knows no distinction or boundary.

It was near a certain peasant village that our caravan had stopped for the eve along the roadside, and I took Athamé by the hand down the hillside and toward the hub of thatched-roof huts, allowing her to walk the grassy terrain in her bare feet.

We met a peddlar among them who had a surplus of second hand commodities, and for a time while he and I negotiated, I allowed myself to be hustled. Yet not completely, once the deal was struck and agreed upon. The seer now wore a verr wool cloak with buttons down the front, and a pair of shoes that did not match. And for a brief moment I had to look away, because the joy on her face... this woman born into the caste of scribes and abundant wealth... was almost unbearable.

She was beautiful in a slave's hand-me-downs. At that moment I wanted to lay her down in the tall grass behind one of the huts and hold her in my arms in a reckless profane act. And yet the moment was usurped by another act, equally profane and reckless.

Crouched low to the ground and with my hand covering her mouth to keep her silent, I peered around the hut's outer wall as a small group of mercenaries, Initiates, and peasantsd had gathered round something laying there in the open field. Their voices had risen to angry boilings in the midst of them before they each turned and went their separate ways.

It was Primo Acadia's voice that rose above the others as he fled the scene, giving the edict that the caravan would not be stopping there for the night, afterall. Now it is dangerous to travel at night, for there are predators of every sort roaming the open spaces. I was convinced Primo was deranged, and quite unused to the treacheries of life outside his pampered temple life inside the walls of Ar.

I pulled Athamé by the hand, out from our hiding place and went to have a look at the thing that had caused such a turmoil. It was another Initiate, laying face down in a puddle of his own congealed blood. Embedded into his skull was an arrow' tip... either from a peasant's bow. Or an assassin's.

I turned and fled from the scene as well with my lover in tow, only to glance back at the village down the hill once we reached the confusion and meleé of the caravan's hasty reformation. More than a hundred flaming darts sailed overhead moments before every single hut's roof had burst into flames, blotting out the moons' and stars' light with great black plumes of smoke. And even as some of the villagers sought to flee the inferno, they too were shot down and left as carion.

Violence begets violence. Its sacrifices often insurmountable. And as the seer wept, I held her close to me, wrapped in my embrace. This had been her own doing. In the pit of my gut I knew it to be true. And yet here she found her absolution in me. For as a slave is no longer entitled to any of her former holdings in clout and estate, or even name... she is equally absolved of any crime committed prior to her erasure. I assured her of this over and over as I held her trembling, guilt-ridden body in my arms.