Hepthe next told about what became of him after the Centaur ambush, which I have already described, revealing all that had transpired afterwards: “What I say concerns things which I witnessed shortly after our infamous day of being ambushed all those years ago. The Centauri took the donkeys, loaded with the tomes, and me, East and South to the vast grasslands of Mahanaxar. Naked, bound about the torso with chain and kept alive on sollick lizard flesh, the trek was most grueling. My feet soon developed bruises, as I was tied to them and forced to run at a horse’s trot. How I longed to return to the comparative ease my former lot as house slave rather than to endure the new and savage servitude. The centuars used several volumes of the precious tomes as kinder-fuel for the evening campfires. Each night a few pages they tore asunder and burned. At one solar setting they amused themselves by coercing me. into casting your own books into the bonfire, for they knew of your fame, and that I was your slave. These same savage Centaurs, some forty of them, drank themselves into a frenzy, had wrestling matches, and devised various war-games. When relaxing they would roll dice stolen from the dead Regulian legionaires. After they were sufficiently intoxicated, they sparred in boxing with each other while the sun sank beyond the western shores. My feet were sore for weeks after the savage trek through the unforgiving wilderness. The Centaurs handled me as if I were captured game. These were not the worst of torments. The horrid horseflies of Mahanaxar brought me to the point of insanity whilst they stung my face and back frequently under the sweltering heat. On the ninth sun fall, after all day spent jogging with a brass coil around my neck, one of the centaur-masters saw fit to beat me harshly for daring to speak. This Centaur called ‘Orgo of the swift council”, being a creature of high intellect and of some savage charm, with lyre did sing many a song of the high plains. Of their worship of five planets which sail the heavens, and of centaur-battles he sang, mocking the hated Lapiths who had driven them out of their homeland a century ago. I memorized his favorite ballad. It is an ancient poem from the savage Orcodon Penisula in the tropical South-Eastern Furth. The Spartans, the only men brutal enough to settle in colony in those monster-infested lands, had conducted many wars against the native inhabitants. In one song, the King of New Sparta, Sopoliton, sings of how after being blessed by the gods with victory in war, he in turn lost his beloved horse Dandylon, the most beautiful horse in the world:

Let me tell you of my steed Dandylon

Who drinks from the river Eurotas

Cooling his mane beneath the shady cypress

Let me speak of his long waiting

Untold of the beastly Gyrops

Who dwells in the caves of Kakon

Who drinks from the river Eurotas

Who sings the song of our longing

Who bewails the death of our brothers

And grows the beard of long living

Dandylon danced on the banks of the river

Tall mighty and proud,

Dandylon shed gold from his eyelashes

when he beheld the setting sun

As the sun sunk upon the pillars of night

Dandylon startled in sleep and neighed

Gyrops tore at his flesh afrenzied

In the dawn I came a mightily

Eyes weathered in the Bacchanal of night

In the dawn I came sorely

Upon the steed Dandylon lacerated and dead

I saw bees feasting on his carcass

upon the steed Dandylon once fair

Who drunk from the river Eurotas

For whatever reason, the centaur Orgo loved this rhyme. To avoid his brutality I would soothe his wrath by singing it for him. He would soon drift off into his drunken slumber. Then one day, when he was praising my ability outloud to the others, I foolishly offered to write it down. The Centauri roam the lands lawlessly and live by ransoms pressed upon the plains-folk. Learning nothing of writing they keep their life and history upon the winged words of evening song. My offer therefore was taken as insult. For offense this Orgo beat me senseless. After all the bitter pain had begun to fade, starry Night covered heaven's dome with her tresses. All the horse-beasts slipped into sleepy oblivion of wine-induced stupor. Suddenly a cool breeze stirred the thunder-footed centaur Orgo, ever-restless, awake. I feared yet another round of pain. So uprose this one and he stood looking upon the darkening horizon. He looked over the many centaurs reclined in slumber about the dying bonfire, oblivious beneath the Milky Way. He saw me there too, his captive, laying in bloody ruin. Perhaps caught something of remorse or pity. He picked up one of the wineskines that had remained untouched, and about to put it to his lips, tossed it to me instead. It was something which before they never had afforded me. Mayhap chastened by the thought of his own earlier ferocity and cruelty towards me, the heavenly powers put it in his bestial heart to leave a way of escape for the prisoner, and he offered only this word: “A captive once, I myself had been. So now likewise unlock yourself, human, secretly escaping by the pick of my comb. Give thanks to great Valherc, son of Ulthuring, gladiator of the Uriod, who was once my liberator. Now my debt to him is paid.” So he spake and letting fall his hairpin and comb to the ground nearby, the centaur returned to his slumber aside the swirling embers of bonfire. I did prevail to free myself with the hairpin that very night, for I was certain that they were saving me as an offering, a sacrificial victim for the planet Saturn, which was to rise in two days, according to the Astronomia Prophetica, and they were to meet with a great wizard from Nystol, one “Arizel” Divine protection was accorded to me, for the Centauri do each day sleep off their wine late into morning. Away from them far I ran. Not even the horseflies could keep up. The next day the Sun mercilessly cast noon shafts of punishment upon the earth. Miserable and in pain I went, but I was free.”