Nomads of Gor coc-4

by John Norman

  She could not stand in the low, narrow cage, and knelt, wrists braceleted, hands on the bars. “It is not truer” she screamed.

  Kamchak laughed at her. “Female slave,” he said. She buried her head in her hands and wept. She knew, as well as we, that she had showed herself that her blood had leaped within her and its memory must now mock the hysteria of her denial that she had acknowledged tows and to herself, perhaps for the first time, the incontrovertible splendour of her beauty and its meaning.

  Her response had been that of an utter woman.

  “It’s not true!” she whispered over and over, sobbing as she had not from the cruel strokes of the whip. “It’s not truer”

  Kamchak looked at me. “Tonight,” lie said, “I shall call the Iron Master.”

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “I shall,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  He smiled at me grimly. “She was too long in fetching water.”

  I said nothing. Kamchak, for a Tuchuk, was not unkind.

  The punishment of a runaway slave is often grievous, sometimes culminating in death. He would do no more to Elizabeth Cardwell than was commonly done to female slaves among the wagons, even those who had never dared to speak back or disobey in the least particular. Elizabeth, in her way, was fortunate. As Kamchak might have said, he was permitting her to live. I did not think she would be tempted to run away again.

  I saw Aphris sneaking to the cage to bring Elizabeth a dipper of water. Aphris was crying.

  Kamchak, if he saw, did not stop her. “Come along,” he said. “There is a new kaiila I want to see near the wagon of Yachi of the Leather Workers’ Clan.”

  It was a busy day for Kamchak.

  He did not buy the kaiila near the wagon of Yachi of the Leather Workers though it was apparently a splendid beast.

  At one point, he wrapped a heavy fur and leather robe-about his left arm and struck the beast suddenly on the snout with his right hand. It had not struck back at him swiftly enough to please him, and there were only four needle like scratches in the arm guard before Kamchak had managed to leap back and the kaiila, lunging against its chain, was snapping at him.

  “Such a slow beast,” said Kamchak, “might in battle cost a man his life.” I supposed it true. The kaiila and its master fight in battle as one unit, seemingly a single savage animal, armed with teeth and lance. After looking at the kaiila Kamchak visited a wagon where he discussed the crossing of one of his cows with the owner’s bull, in exchange for a similar favour on his own part. This matter was arranged to their mutual satisfaction. At another wagon he haggled over a set of quiva, forged in Ar, and, obtaining his price, arranged to have them, with a new saddle, brought to his wagon on the morrow. We lunched on dried bosk meat and Paga and then he trooped to the wagon of Kutaituchik, where he exchanged pleasantries with the somnolent figure on the robe of grey boskhide, about the health of the bosk, the sharpness of quivas and the necessity of keeping wagon axles greased, and certain other matters. While near Kutaituchik’s wagon, on the dais, he also conferred with several other high men among the Tuchuks. Kamchak, as I had learned before, held a position of some importance with the Tuchuks. After seeing Kutaituchik and the others, Kamchak stopped by an Iron Master’s wagon, and, to my irritation, arranged for the fellow to come by the wagon that very night. “I can’t keep her in a sleen cage forever,” Kamchak said. “There is work to be done about the wagon.” Then, to my delight, Kamchak, borrowing two kaiila, which he seemed to have no difficulty doing from a Tuchuk warrior I had not even seen before rode with me to the Omen Valley.

  Coming over a low, rolling hill, we saw a large number of tents pitched in a circle, surrounding a large grassy area. In the grassy area, perhaps about two hundred yards in diameter, there were literally hundreds of small, stone altars. There was a large circular stone platform in the centre of the field.

  On the top of this platform was a huge, four-sided altar which was approached by steps on all four sides. On one side of this altar I saw the sign of the Tuchuks, and on the others; that of the Kassars, the Kataii and the Paravaci. I had not mentioned the matter of the Paravaci quiva which had almost struck me last night, having been in the morning disturbed about the disappearance of Elizabeth Cardwell and in the afternoon busy following Kamchak about in his rounds. I resolved to mention the matter to him sometime but not this evening for I was convinced this would not be a good evening for anyone in the wagon, except perhaps for Kamchak, who seemed pleased about the arrangements he had made with the herder pertaining to crossing livestock and the bargain, it seemed, he had contracted with the fellow with the quivas and saddle.

  There were a large number of tethered animals about the outer edge of the circle, and, beside them, stood many haruspexes. Indeed, I supposed there must be one haruspex at least for each of the many altars in the field. Among the animals I saw many verrs; some domestic tarsks, their tusks sheathed; cages of flapping vulos, some sleen, some kaiila, even some bosk; by the Paravaci haruspexes I saw manacled male slaves, if such were to be permitted; commonly, I understood from Kamchak, the Tuchuks, Kassars and Kataii rule out the sacrifice of slaves because their hearts and livers are thought to be, fortunately for the slaves, untrustworthy in registering portents; after all, as Kamchak pointed out, who would trust a Turian slave in the kes with a matter so important as the election of a Ubar San; it seemed to me good logic and, of course, I am sure the slaves, too, were taken with the cogency of the argument. The animals sacrificed, incidentally, are later used for food, so the Omen Taking, far from being a waste of animals, is actually a time of feasting and plenty for the Wagon Peoples, who regard the Omen Taking, provided it results that no Ubar San is to be chosen, as an occasion for gaiety and festival. As I may have mentioned, no Ubar San had been chosen for more than a hundred years.

  As yet the Omen Taking had not begun. The haruspexes had not rushed forward to the altars. On the other hand on each altar there burned a small bosk-dung fire into which, like a tiny piece of kindling, had been placed — an incense stick.

  Kamchak and I dismounted and, from outside the circle, watched the four chief haruspexes of the Wagon Peoples approach the huge altar in the centre of the field. Behind them another four haruspexes, one from each People, carried a large wooden cage, made of sticks lashed together, which contained perhaps a dozen white vulos, domesticated pigeons.

  This cage they placed on the altar. I then noted that each of the four chief haruspexes carried, about his shoulder, a white linen sack, somewhat like a peasant’s rep-cloth seed bag.

  “This is the first Omen,” said Kamchak, “The Omen to see if the Omens are propitious to take the Omens.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Each of the four haruspexes then, after intoning an involved entreaty of some sort to the sky, which at the time was shining beneficently, suddenly cast a handful of something doubtless grain to the pigeons in the stick cage.

  Even from where I stood I could see the pigeons pecking at the grain in reassuring frenzy.

  The four haruspexes turned then, each one facing his own minor haruspexes and anyone else who might be about, and called out, “It is propitious!”

  There was a pleased cry at this announcement from the throng.

  “This part of the Omen Taking always goes well,” I was informed by Kamchak.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. Then he looked at me. “Perhaps,” he proposed, “it is because the vulos are not fed for three days prior to the taking of the Omen.”

  “Perhaps,” I admitted.

  “I,” said Kamchak, “would like a bottle of Paga.”

  “I, too,” I admitted.

  “Who will buy?” he asked.

  I refused to speak.

  “We could wager,” he suggested.

  “I’ll buy it,” I said.

  I could now see the other haruspexes of the peoples pouring with their animals toward the altars. The Omen Taki
ng as a whole lasts several days and consumes hundreds of animals. A tally is kept, from day to day. One haruspex, as we left, I heard cry out that he had found a favourable liver.

  Another, from an adjoining altar had rushed to his side. They were engaged in dispute. I gathered that reading the signs was a subtle business, calling for sophisticated interpretation and the utmost delicacy and judgment. Even as we made our way back to the kaiila I could hear two more haruspexes crying out that they had found livers that were clearly unfavourable. Clerks, with parchment scrolls, were circulating among the altars, presumably, I would guess, noting the names of haruspexes, their peoples, and their findings The four chief haruspexes of the peoples remained at the huge central altar, to which a white bosk was being slowly led.

  It was toward dark when Kamchak and I reached the slave wagon to buy our bottle of Paga.

  On the way we passed a girl, a girl from Cos taken hundreds of pasangs away in a raid on a caravan bound for Ar. She had been bound across a wagon wheel lying on the ground, her body over its hub. Her clothing had been removed. Fresh and clean on her burned thigh was the brand of the four bosk horns. She was weeping. The Iron Master affixed the Turian collar. He bent to his tools, taking up a tiny, open golden ring, a heated metal awl, a pair of pliers. I turned away. I heard her scream.

  “Do not Korobans brand and collar slaves?” asked Kamchak.

  “Yes,” I admitted, “they do.”

  I could not rid my mind of the image of the girl from Cos weeping bound on the wheel. Such tonight, or on another night, would be the lovely Elizabeth Cardwell. I threw down a wild swallow of Paga. I resolved I would somehow release the girl, somehow protect her from the cruelty of the fate decreed for her by Kamchak.

  “You do not much speak,” said Kamchak, taking the bottle, puzzled.

  “Must the Iron Master be called,” I asked, “to the wagon of Kamchak.”

  Kamchak looked at me. “Yes,” he said.

  I glared down at the polished boards of the wagon floor.

  “Have you no feeling for the barbarian?” I asked.

  Kamchak had never been able to pronounce her name, which be regarded as of barbarian length and complexity. “E-liz-a-beth-card-vella” he would try to say, adding the “a” sound because it is a common ending of feminine names on Gor. He could never, like most native speakers of Gorean, properly handle the “w” sound, for it is extremely rare in Gorean, existing only in certain unusual words of obviously barbarian origin. The “w” sound, incidentally, is a complex one, and, like many such sounds, is best learned only during the brief years of childhood when a child’s linguistic flexibility is at its maximum those years in which it might be trained to speak any of the languages of man with native fluency a capacity which is, for most individuals at least, lost long prior to attaining their majority. On the other hand, Kamchak could say the sound I have represented as “vella” quite easily and would upon occasion use this as Elizabeth’s name. Most often, however, he and I simply referred to her as the Little Barbarian. I had, incidentally, after the first few days, refused to speak English to her, thinking it would be more desirable for her to learn to speak, think and hear in Gorean as rapidly as possible. She could now handle the language rather well. She could not, of course, read it. She was illiterate.

  Kamchak was looking at me. He laughed and leaned over and slapped me on the shoulder. “She is only a slaver” he chuckled.

  “Have you no feeling for her?” I demanded.

  He leaned back, serious for a moment. “Yes,” he said, “I am fond of the Little Barbarian.”

  “Then why?” I demanded.

  “She ran away,” said Kamchak.

  I did not deny it.

  “She must be taught.”

  I said nothing.

  “Besides,” said Kamchak, “the wagon grows crowded and she must be readied for sale.”

  I took back the Paga bottle and threw down another swallow.

  “Do you want to buy her?” he asked.

  I thought of the wagon of Kutaituchik and the golden sphere. The Omen Taking had now begun. I must attempt this night or some other in the near future to purloin the sphere, to return it somehow to the Sardar. I was going to say, “No,” but then I thought of the girl from Cos, bound on the wheel, weeping. I wondered if I could meet Kamchak’s price. I looked up.

  Suddenly Kamchak lifted his hand, alert, gesturing for silence.

  I noted, too, the other Tuchuks in the wagon. Suddenly they were not moving.

  Then I too heard it, the winding of a bosk horn in the — distance, and then another.

  Kamchak leaped to his feet. “The camp is under attack!” he cried.

  Chapter 14

  TARNSMAN

  Outside, as Kamchak and I bounded down the steps of the slave wagon, the darkness was filled with hurrying men, some with torches, and running kaiila, already with their riders.

  War lanterns, green and blue and yellow, were already burning on poles in the darkness, signalling the rallying grounds of the Oralus, the Hundreds, and the Oralus, the Thousands.

  Each warrior of the Wagon Peoples, and that means each able-bodied man, is a member of an Or, or a Ten; each ten is a member of an Oralus, or Hundred; each Oralus is a member of an Oralus, a Thousand. Those who are unfamiliar with the Wagon Peoples, or who know them only from the swift raid, sometimes think them devoid of organization, sometimes conceive of them as mad hordes or aggregates of wild warriors, but such is not the case. Each man knows his position in his Ten, and the position of his Ten in the Hundred, and of the Hundred in the Thousand. During the day the rapid move-meets of these individually manoeuvrable units are dictated by bosk horn and movements of the standards; at night by the bosk horns and the war lanterns slung on high poles carried by riders.

  Kamchak and I mounted the kaiila we had ridden and, as rapidly as we could, pressed through the throngs toward our wagon.

  When the bosk horns sound the women cover the fires and prepare the men’s weapons, bringing forth arrows and bows, and lances. The quivas are always in the saddle sheaths. The bosk are hitched up and slaves, who might otherwise take advantage of the tumult, are chained.

  Then the women climb to the top of the high sides on the wagons and watch the war lanterns in the distance, reading them as well as the men. Seeing if the wagons must move, and in what direction.

  I heard a child screaming its disgust at being thrust in the wagon.

  In a short time Kamchak and I had reached our wagon.

  Aphris had had the good sense to hitch up the bosk. Kamchak kicked out the fire at the side of the wagon. “What is it?” she cried.

  Kamchak took her roughly by the arm and shoved her stumbling toward the sleen cage where, holding the bars, frightened, knelt Elizabeth Cardwell. Kamchak unlocked the cage and thrust Aphris inside with Elizabeth. She was slave and would be secured, that she might not seize up a weapon or try to fight or burn wagons. “Please!” she cried, thrusting her hands through the bars. But already Kamchak had slammed shut the door and twisted the key in the lock.

  “Master!” she cried. It was better, I knew, for her to be secured as she was rather than chained in the wagon, or even to the wheel. The wagons, in Turian raids, are burned.

  Kamchak threw me a lance, and a quiver with forty arrows and a bow. The kaiila I rode already had, on the saddle, the quivas,-the rope and bola. Then he bounded from the top step of the wagon onto the back of his kaiila and sped toward the sound of the bosk horns. “Master!” I heard Aphris cry.

  Of their ranks with a swiftness and precision that was incredible, long, flying columns of warriors flowed like rivers between the beasts.

  I rode at Kamchak side and in an instant it seemed we had passed through the bellowing, startled herd and had emerged on the plain beyond. In the light of the Gorean moons we saw slaughtered bosk, some hundreds of them, and, some two hundred yards away, withdrawing, perhaps a thousand warriors mounted on tharlarion.

  Suddenly, in
stead of giving pursuit, Kamchak drew his mount to a halt and behind him the rushing cavalries of the Tuchuks snarled pawing to a halt, holding their ground. I saw that a yellow lantern was halfway up the pole below the two red lanterns.

  “Give pursuit!” I cried.

  “Wait!” he cried. “We are fools! Fools!”

  I drew back the reins on my kaiila to keep the beast quiet.

  “Listen!” said Kamchak, agonized.

  In the distance we heard a sound like a thunder of wings and then, against the three white moons of Gor, to my dismay, we saw tarnsmen pass overhead, striking toward the camp. There were perhaps eight hundred to a thousand of them. I could hear the notes of the tarn drum above controlling the flight of the formation.

  “We are fools!” cried Kamchak, wheeling his kaiila In an instant we were hurtling through ranks of men back toward the camp. When we had passed through the ranks, which had remained still, those thousands of warriors simply turned their kaiila, the last of them now first, and followed us.

  “Each to his own wagon and war!” cried Kamchak.

  I saw two yellow lanterns and a red lantern on the high pole.

  I was startled by the appearance of tarnsmen on the south em plains. The nearest tarn cavalries as far as I knew were to be found in distant Ar.

  Surely great Ar was not at war with the Tuchuks of the southern plains.

  They must be mercenaries!

  Kamchak did not return to his own wagon but now raced his kaiila, followed by a hundred men, toward the high ground on which stood the standard of the four bosk horns; on which stood the huge wagon of Kutaituchik, called Ubar of the Tuchuks.

  Among the wagons the tarnsmen would have found only slaves, women and children, but not a wagon had been burned or looted.,

  We heard a new thunder of wings and looking overhead saw the tarnsmen, like a black storm, drum beating and tarns screaming, streak by overhead.

  A few arrows from those who followed us looped weakly up after them, falling then among the wagons.