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Then, still beneath its white shroud, they laid it gently on the highest step of the altar. Then the four men fell back, two to each side, heads down. The high Initiate then began to intone a complex prayer in archaic Gorean, to which, at intervals, responses were made by the assembled Initiates, those within the railing originally and now, too, those twelve, still carrying candles, who had accompanied the body from the ship through the dirt streets of Kassau, among the wooden buildings, to the temple. When the high Initiate finished his prayer, the other Initiates began to sing a solemn hymn, while the high Initiate, at the altar, his back turned to the congregation, began to prepare, with words and signs, the grease of Priest-Kings, for the anointing of the bones of Ivar Forkbeard. Toward the front of the temple, behind the rail, and even at the two doors of the temple, by the great beams which close them, stood the men of Forkbeard. Many of them were giants, huge men, inured to cold, accustomed to war and the labor of the oar, raised from boyhood on steep, isolated farms near the sea, grown strong and hard on work, and meat and cereals. Such men, from boyhood, in harsh games, had learned to run, to leap, to swim, to throw the spear, to wield the sword, to wield the ax, to stand against steel, even bloodied, unflinching. - (Marauders of Gor, Chapter )