Nomads of Gor coc-4

by John Norman

  “All hail Kamchak,” rang throughout the hall, “Kamchak Ubar San!”

  It was late in the afternoon before the business of the day had subsided and the great hall emptied.

  At last only a few remained in that place, some commanders and some leaders of Hundreds, and Kamchak and Aphris.

  Harold and I were there, too, and Hereena and Elizabeth.

  Shortly before Albrecht and Tenchika had been there, and Dina of Turia with her two Tuchuk guards, who had kept her safe from harm during the fall of the city.

  Tenchika had approached Dina of Turia.

  “You wear no collar now,” Dina had said.

  Tenchika had dropped her head shyly. “I am free,” she said.

  “Will you now return to Turia?” asked Dina.

  “No,” said Tenchika, smiling. “I will remain with Albrecht With the wagons.”

  Albrecht himself was busy elsewhere, talking with Conrad, Ubar of the Kassars.

  “Here,” said Tenchika, thrusting the small cloth sack she held into Dina’s hands. “These are yours you should have them you won them.”

  Dina, wondering, opened the package and within it she saw the cups and rings, and pieces of gold, which Albrecht had given her for her victories in the runnings from the bola.

  “Wake them,” insisted Tenchika.

  “Does he know?” asked Dina.

  “Of course,” said Tenchika.

  “He is kind,” said Dina.

  “I love him,” said Tenchika, kissing Dina and hurrying away.

  I approached Dina of Turia. I looked at the objects she held. “You must have run well indeed,” I remarked.

  She laughed. “There is more than enough here to hire help,” she said. “I shall reopen the shop of my father and brothers.”

  “If you like,” I said, “I will give you a hundred times that.”

  “No,” she said, smiling, “for this is my own.”

  Then she lowered her veil briefly and kissed me. “Goodbye, Tarl Cabot,” she said. “I wish you well.”

  “And I,” I said, “wish you well noble Dina of Turia.”

  She laughed. “Foolish warrior,” she chided, “I am only the daughter of a baker.”

  “He was a noble and valiant man,” I said.

  “Thank you,” said she.

  “And his daughter, too,” I said, “is a noble and valiant woman and beautiful.”

  I did not permit her to replace her veil until I had kissed her, softly, one last time.

  She refastened her veil and touched her fingertips to her lips beneath it and then pressed them to my lips and turned and hurried away.

  Elizabeth had watched but she had shown no sign of anger or irritation.

  “She is beautiful,” said Elizabeth.

  “Yes,” I said, “she is.” And then I looked at Elizabeth.

  “You, too,” I told her, “are beautiful.”

  She looked up at me, smiling. “I know,” she said.

  “Vain wench,” I said.

  “A Gorean girl,” she said, “need not pretend to be plain when she knows that she is beautiful.”

  “what~true,” I admitted. “But where,” I asked, “did you come by the notion that you are beautiful?”

  “My master told me,” she sniffed, “and my master does not lie does he?”

  “Not often,” I said, “and particularly not about matters of such importance.”

  “And I have seen men look at me,” she said, “and I know that I would bring a good price.”

  I must have appeared scandalized.

  “I would,” said Elizabeth firmly, “I am worth many tarn disks.”

  “You are,” I admitted.

  “So I am beautiful,” she concluded.

  “It is true,” I said.

  “But,” said she, “you will not sell me — will you?”

  “Not immediately,” I said. “We shall see if you continue to please me.”

  “Oh, Tarl!” she said.

  “Master,” I prompted.

  “Master,” she said.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I shall,” she said, smiling, “strive to continue to please you.”

  “See that you do,” I said.

  “I love you,” she said suddenly, “I love you, Tarl Cabot, Master.” She put her arms about my neck and kissed me.

  I kept her long in my arms, savouring the warmth of her lips, the delicacy of her tongue on mine.

  “Your slave,” she whispered, “Master, forever your slave.”

  It was hard for me to believe that this marvellous, collared beauty in my arms was once a simple girl of Earth, that this astounding wench, Tuchuk and Gorean, was the same as Miss Elizabeth Cardwell, the young secretary who so long before had found herself inexplicably thrust into intrigues and circumstances beyond her comprehension on the plains of Gor. Whatever she might have been before, a clock number, a set of records in a personnel file, an unimportant employee, with her salary and benefits, under the obligation to please and impress other employees, scarcely more important than herself, she was now alive, and free in her emotions though her flesh might be subject to chains; she was now vital, passionate, loving, mine; I wondered if there were other girls of Earth in whom a transformation might be wrought, others who might, not fully understanding, long for a man and a world a world in which they must find and be themselves, for no other choice would be theisms world in which they might run and breathe and laugh and be swift and loving and prized and in their hearts at last open and free though paradoxically perhaps, for a time, or until the man should choose otherwise, wearing the collar of a slave girt

  But I dismissed such thoughts as foolish.

  None remained now in the court of the Ubar other than Kamchak and Aphris, Harold and Hereena, and myself and Elizabeth Cardwell.

  Kamchak looked across the room to me. “Well,” said he, “the wager turned out well.”

  I recalled he had spoken of this. “You gambled,” I said, “when you did not surrender Turia to return to defend the bosk and wagons of the Tuchuks that the others, the Kataii and Kassars, would come to your aid.” I shook my head. “It was a dangerous gamble,” I said.

  “Perhaps not so dangerous,” said he, “for I know the Kataii and the Kassars better than they knew themselves.”

  “You said there was more to the wager though,” I remarked, “that it was not yet done.”

  “It is now done,” said he.

  “What was the latter part of the wager?” I asked.

  “That,” said he, “the Kataii and the Kassars and, too, in time the Paravaci would see how we might be divided against ourselves and singly destroyed and would thus recognize the need for uniting the standards, bringing together the Thousands under one command”

  “That they would,” I said, “recognize the need for the Ubar San?”

  “Yes,” said Kamchak, “that was the wager that I could teach them the Ubar San.”

  “Hail,” said I, “Kamchak, Ubar San!”

  “Hail,” cried Harold, “Kamchak, Ubar San!”

  Kamchak smiled and looked down. “It will soon be time for hunting tumits,” he said.

  As he turned to leave the throne room of Phanius Turmus, to return to the wagons, Aphris lightly rose to her feet to accompany him.

  But Kamchak turned and faced her. She looked up at him, questioningly. It was hard to read his face. She stood quite close to him.

  Gently, ever so gently, Kamchak put his hands on her arms and drew her to him and then, very softly, kissed her.

  “Master?” she asked.

  Kamchak’s hands were at the small, heavy lock at the back of the steel, Turian collar she wore. He turned the key and opened the collar, discarding it.

  Aphris said nothing, but she trembled and shook her head slightly. She touched her throat disbelievingly.

  “You are free,” said the Tuchuk.

  The girl looked at him, incredulously, bewildered.

  “Do not fear,”
he said. “You will be given riches.” He smiled. “You will once again be the richest woman in all of Turia.”

  She could not answer him.

  The girl, and the rest of us present, stood stunned. Most of us knew the peril, the hardship and danger the Tuchuk had sustained in her acquisition; all of us knew the price he had been willing to pay only recently that she, fallen into the hands of another, might be returned to lam

  We could not understand what he had done.

  Kamchak turned abruptly from her striding to his kaiila, which had been tethered behind the throne. He put one foot in the stirrup and mounted easily. Then, not pressing the animal, he took his way from the throne room. The rest of us followed him, with the exception of Aphris who remained, stricken, standing beside the throne of the Ubar, clad perhaps Kajir, but now uncollared, now free. Her fingertips were before her mouth. She seemed numb. She shook her head.

  I walked behind Kamchak, on his kaiila. Harold walked beside me. Hereena and Elizabeth followed us, each, as was proper, some two paces behind.

  “Why is it,” I asked Harold, “that he spared Turia?”

  “His mother was Turian,” said Harold.

  I stopped.

  “Did you not know?” asked Harold.

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I did not know.”

  “It was after her death,” said Harold, “that Kamchak first tasted the rolled strings of kanda.”

  “I did not know,” I said.

  Kamchak was now well in advance of us.

  Harold looked at me. “Yes,” he said, “she had been a Turian girl taken as slave by Kutaituchik but he cared for her and freed her. She remained with him in the wagons until her death the Ubar of the Tuchuks.”

  Outside the main gate of the palace of Phanius Turmus, Kamchak, on his kaiila, waited for us. Our beasts were tethered there, and we mounted. Hereena and Elizabeth would run at our stirrups.

  We turned from the gate, to ride down the long avenue leading toward the main gate of Turia.

  Kamchak’s face was inscrutable.

  “Wait!” we heard.

  We turned our mounts and saw Aphris of Turia, barefoot, clad Kajir, running after us.

  She stopped beside Kamchak’s stirrup, standing there, her head down.

  “What means this?” demanded Kamchak sternly.

  The girl did not respond, nor did she raise her head.

  Kamchak turned his kaiila and began to ride toward the main gate, the rest of us following. Aphris, as Hereena and Elizabeth, ran by the stirrup.

  Kamchak reined in, and we all stopped. Aphris stood there, her head down.

  “You are free,” said Kamchak.

  Without raising her head, she shook it negatively. “No,” she said, “I am Kamchak of the Tuchuks.”

  She put her head timidly to Kamchak’s fur boot in the stirrup.

  “I do not understand,” said Kamchak.

  She lifted her head and there were tears in her eyes.

  “Please,” she said, “Master.”

  “Why?” asked Kamchak.

  She smiled. “I have grown fond of the smell of bosk,” said she.

  Kamchak smiled. He held his hand to the girl. “Ride with me, Aphris of Turia,” said Kamchak of the Tuchuks.

  She took his hand and he drew her to the saddle before him, where she turned, sitting across the saddle, and placed her head against his right shoulder, weeping.

  “This woman,” said Kamchak of the Tuchuks, brusquely, his voice stern but almost breaking, “is called Aphris know her she is Ubara of the Tuchuks, she is Ubara Sana, of my heart Ubara Sana!”

  We let Kamchak and Aphris ride ahead, and followed them, by some hundred yards, toward the main gate of Turia, now leaving the city, and its Home Stone and its people, returning to the wagons and to the open, windswept land beyond the high walls of the city, once-conquered, nine-gated Turia of the southern plains of Gor.

  Chapter 28

  ELIZABETH AND I DEPART FROM THE WAGON PEOPLES

  Tuka, the slave girl, did not fare well at the hands of Elizabeth Cardwell.

  In the camp of the Tuchuks Elizabeth had begged that I not free her for but another hour.

  “Why?” I had asked.

  “Because,” she had said, “masters do not much care to interfere in the squabbles of slaves.”

  I shrugged. It would be at least another hour before I was ready to take wing for the Sardar, with the egg of Priest-Kings safe in the saddle pack of my tarn.

  There were several people gathered about, near the wagon of Kamchak, among them Tuka’s master, and the girl herself. I recalled how cruel she had been to Elizabeth in the long months she had been with the Tuchuks, and how she had tormented her even when she was helpless in the cage of a sleen, mocking her and poking at her with the bosk stick.

  Perhaps Tuka gathered what might have been on Elizabeth’s mind, for no sooner had the American girl turned toward her than she turned and fled from the wagon.

  Within something like fifty yards we heard a frightened squawk and saw Tulca thrown to the ground with a tackle that might have done credit to a qualified professional player of the American form of football. There shortly thereafter followed a vigorous and dusty broil among the wagons, involving much rolling about, biting, slapping, scratching and, from time to time, the easily identified sound of a small fist, apparently moving with considerable momentum, meeting with venous partially resistant, protoplasmic curvatures.

  There was only so much of this and we soon heard Tuka shrieking for mercy. At that juncture, as I recall, Elizabeth was kneeling on top of the Turian maiden with her hands in her hair pounding her head up and down in the dirt. Elizabeth’s Tuchuk leather had been half torn from her but Tuka, who had been clothed only Kajir, had fared not even this well. Indeed, when Elizabeth finished, Tuka wore only the Curia, the red band that ties back the hair, and this band now knotted her wrists behind her back. Elizabeth then tied a thong in Tulca’s nose ring and dragged her to the creek, where she might find a switch. When she found a suitable implement, of proper length and flexibility, of appropriate diameter and suppleness, she then secured Tuka by nose ring and thong to the exposed root of a small but sturdy bush, and thrashed her soundly. Following this, she untied the thong from the root and permitted the girl, thong still streaming from her nose ring, wrists still bound behind her, to run for her master’s wagon, but pursued her each foot of the way like a hunting sleen, administering innumerable stinging incitements to greater and ever greater speed.

  At last, panting, bleeding here and there, discoloured in places, half-naked, triumphant, Elizabeth Cardwell returned to my side, where she knelt as a humble, obedient slave girl.

  When she had somewhat caught her breath I removed the collar from her throat and freed her.

  I set her on the saddle of the tarn, telling her to hold to the pommel of the saddle. When I myself mounted I would tie her to the pommel with binding fibre. I would fasten about myself the broad safety strap, usually purple, which is an invariable portion of the tarn saddle.

  Elizabeth did not seem affrighted to be astride the tarn. I was pleased that there were some changes of clothing for her in the pack. I observed that she needed them, or at least one of them.

  Kamchak was there, and his Aphris, and Harold and his Hereena, still his slave. She knelt beside him, and once when she dared to touch her cheek to his right thigh he good-naturedly cuffed the slave girl away.

  “How are the bosk doing?” I asked Kamchak.

  “As well as might be expected,” he responded.

  I turned to Harold. “Are the quivas sharp?” I inquired.

  “One tries to keep them that way,” said Harold.

  I turned back to Kamchak. “It is important,” I reminded him, “to keep the axles of the wagons greased.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I think that is true.”

  I clasped the hands of the two men.

  “I wish you well, Tarl Cabot,” said Kamchak.

&
nbsp; “I wish you well, Kamchak of the Tuchuks,” I said

  “You are not really a bad fellow,” said Harold, “for a Koroban.”

  “You are not bad yourself,” I granted, “for a Tuchuk.”

  “I wish you well,” said Harold.

  “I wish you well,” I said.

  Swiftly I climbed the short ladder to the tarn saddle, and tied it against the saddle. I then took binding fibre and looped it several times about Miss Cardwell’s waist and then several times about the pommel of the saddle, then tying it.

  Harold and Kamchak looked up at me. There were tears in the eyes of both men. Now, diagonally, like a scarlet chevron coursing the flight of the cheek bones, there blazed on the face of Harold the Tuchuk the Courage Scar.

  “Never forget,” said Kamchak, “that you and I have together held grass and earth.”

  “I will never forget,” I said.

  “And while you are remembering things,” remarked Harold, “you might recollect that we two together won the Courage Scar in Turia.”

  “No,” I said, “I will not forget that either.”

  “Your coming and going with the Wagon Peoples,” said Kamchak, “has spanned parts of two of our years.”

  I looked at him, not really understanding. What he said, of course, was true.

  “The years,” said Harold, smiling, “were two the Year in which Tarl Cabot Came to the Wagon Peoples and the Year in which Tarl Cabot Commanded a Thousand.”

  Inwardly I gasped. These were year names which would be remembered by the Year Keepers, whose memories knew the names of thousands of consecutive years.

  “But,” I protested, “there have been many things of much greater importance than those in these years the Siege of Turia, the Taking of the City, the Election of the Ubar San”

  “We choose most to remember Tarl Cabot,” said Kamchak.

  I said nothing.

  “If you should ever need the Tuchuks’ Tarl Cabot,” said Kamchak, “or the Kataii or the Kassar or the Paravaci you have only to speak and we will ride. We will ride to your side, be it even to the cities of Earth.”

  “You know of Earth?” I asked. I recalled what I took to be the scepticism of Kamchak and Kutaituchik long ago when they had questioned myself and Elizabeth Cardwell of such matters.