Standing in the shadow of the ancient tree, the gnarled branches curling like claws and the dark wood cracked and broken by the vicissitudes of time, it was easy to imagine that it was alive.  Alive and angry.  No birds hopped about its branches.  No beetles scuttled in its bark.  It was devoid of life, yet stood with menace, alone on the bluff overlooking the village.  Around its feet grew sprigs of ivy, only the faint glimmer of ivory showed the skulls that had been left here as offerings. The man stood still, breath caught in his throat, half expecting the thing to come alive and to rend him limb from limb.  La Trovis fell away from the heavens behind him, bathing the trunk of the great tree in sky blood.  

 

He waited.

 

Night descended with the certainty of the tarn upon the tabuk - brutal, swift, and with silence.  But even in the light of Gor's moons, the ancient tree seemed to resemble the amalgam of the village's nightmares.  'Not without reason', he remembered.  'This place has always been the place we were taken, the place where the price was exacted.  It has always been a place where men were broken, one way, or another.' His eyes cast down the bluff to the village once more, to where the caste of Peasants slept silently.  There would be no music tonight, no noises to convince fate to take them instead of him.  The man, he knew, was doomed.

 

Footsteps broke the silence that the night had brought with it.  Many footsteps from far off, but which gathered speed and volume as they neared.  Several men, all armed, all wearing helmets, all bearing shields, all carrying spears and swords.  Gorean Warriors.  

 

No, not all.  One strode with them, one that seemed to command them despite only having a mask of silver over her face, and robes of concealment over her body.  Even in the moonlight, he could see her eyes.  When she spoke, her voice was like honey. 

"For as long as man can remember, your village has paid tribute to Tharna with the life of one of its own.  Men are broken here.  Men die, or become slaves.  The choice, we leave to them.  But this night will see you ended, Peasant.  You will be a man no longer."

 

He knew this.  He had known about this price all his life.  He had volunteered for this.  Food was short this year, and not all his family could survive.  He had no sons, he had no companion.  his friends, his brothers, had worried that the lottery would tear them from their wives, their daughters, their sons... And so he had chosen to go.  In the rough ground, surrounded by the accusing stares of the dead, eyes skulls, he knelt.

 

"Rise, slave." came the honeyed voice.

 

Standing in the shadow of the ancient tree, the gnarled branches curling like claws and the dark wood cracked and broken by the vicissitudes of time, it was easy to imagine that it was alive.  Alive and angry.  No birds hopped about its branches.  No beetles scuttled in its bark.  It was devoid of life, yet stood with menace, alone on the bluff overlooking the village.