I wondered who she might be.

On the whole, it seemed to me that Kamchak treated his little barbarian slave notably well, considering that he was Tuchuk. This does not mean that she was not worked hard, nor that she did not receive a good drubbing now and then, but, on the whole, considering the corneas lot of a Tuchuk slave girl, I do not think she was ill used. Once, it might be noted, she returned from searching for fuel with the dung sack, dragging behind her, only half full. "It is all I could find," she told Kamchak. He then, without ceremony, thrust her head first into the sack and tied it shut. He released her the next morning. Elizabeth Cardwell never again brought a half-filled dung sack to the wagon of Kamchak of the Tuchuks.

Now the Ka.s.sar, mounted on his kaiila, his lance under the tip of the girl's chin. who knelt before him, looking up at him, suddenly laughed and removed the lance.

I breathed a Sign of relief.

He rode his kaiila to Kamchak. "What do you want for your pretty little barbarian slave?" he asked.

"She is not for sale," said Kamchak.

"Will you wager for her?" pressed the rider. He was Albrecht of the Ka.s.sars, and, with Conrad of the Ka.s.sars, had been riding against myself and Kamchak.

My heart sank.

Kamchak's eyes gleamed. He was Tuchuk. "What are your terms?" he asked.

"On the outcome of the sport," he said, and then pointed to two girls, both his, standing to the left in their furs, "against those two." The other girls were both Turian They were not barbarians. Both were lovely. Both were, doubtless, well skilled in the art of pleasing the fancy of warriors of the Wagon Peoples.

Conrad, hearing the wager of A1brecht, snorted derisively.

"No," cried Albrecht, "I am serious!"

"Done!" cried Kamchak.

Watching us there were a few children, some men, some l r :.

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66.

NOMADS OF (]OR.

slave girls. As soon as Kamchak had agreed to Albrecht's proposal the children and several of the slave girls immedi- ately began to rush toward the wagons, delightedly crying "Wager! Wager!"

Soon, to my dismay, a large number of Tuchuks, male and female, and their male or female slaves, began to gather near the worn lane on the turf. The terms of the wager were soon well known. In the crowd, as well as Tuchuks and those of the Tuchuks, there were some Ka.s.sars, a Paravaci or two, even one of the Kataii. The slave girls in the crowd seemed particularly excited. I could hear bets being taken. The Tuchuks, not too unlike Goreans generally, are fond of gambling. Indeed, it is not unknown that a Tuchuk will bet his entire stock of bask on the outcome of a single kaiila race; as many as a dozen slave girls may change hands on something as small as the direction that a bird will fly or the number of seeds in a tospit.

The two girls of Albrecht were standing to one side, their eyes shining, trying not to smile with pleasure. Some of the girls in the crowd looked enviously on them. It is a great honor to a girl to stand as a stake in Tuchuk gambling. To my amazement Elizabeth Cardwell, too, seemed rather pleased with the whole thing, though for what reason I could scarcely understand. She came over to me and looked up.

She stood on tiptoes in her furred boots and held the stirrup.

"You will win," she said.

I wished that I was as confident as she.

I was second rider to Kamchak, as Albrecht was to Con- rad, he of the Ka.s.sars, the Blood People.

There is a priority of honor involved in being first rider, but points scored are the same by either rider, depending on his performance. The first rider is, commonly, as one might expect, the more experienced, skilled rider.

In the hour that followed I rejoiced that I had spent much of the last several months, when not riding with Kamchak in the care of his bask, in the pleasant and, to a warrior, satisfying activity of learning Tuchuk weaponry, both of the hunt and war. Kamchak was a skilled instructor in these matters-and, freely, hours at a time, until it grew too dark to see, supervised my practice with such fierce tools as the lance, the quiva and bole. I learned as well the rope and bow. The bow, of course, small, for use from the saddle, lacks the range and power of the Gorean longbow or crossbow; still, at close range, with considerable force, firing rapidly, arrow after arrow, it is a fearsome weapon. I was most fond, perhaps, of the balanced saddle knife, the quiva; it is about a foot in length, double edged; it tapers to a daggerlike point. I acquired, I think, skill in its use. At forty feet I could strike a thrown tospit; at one hundred feet I could strike a- layered boskhide disk, about four inches in width, fastened to a lance thrust in the turf.

Kamchak had been pleased.

I, too, naturally had been pleased.

But if I had indeed acquired skills with those fierce arti- cles, such skills, in the current contests, were to be tested to the utmost.

As the day grew late points were acc.u.mulated, but, to the zest and frenzy of the crowd, the lead in these contests of arms shifted back and forth, first being held by Kamchak and myself, then by Conrad and Albrecht.

In the crowd, on the back of a kaiila, I noted the girl Hereena, of the First Wagon, whom I had seen my first day in the camp of the Tuchuks, she who had almost ridden down Kamchak and myself between the wagons. She was a very exciting, vital, proud girl and the tiny golden nose ring, against her brownish skin, with her flashing black eyes, did not detract from her considerable but rather insolent beauty.

She, and others like her, had been encouraged and spoiled from childhood in all their whims, unlike most other Tuchuk women, that they might be fit prizes, Kamchak had told me, in the games of Love War. Turian warriors, he told me, enjoy such women, the wild girls of the Wagons. A young man, blondish-haired with blue eyes, unscarred, b.u.mped against the girl's stirrup in the press of the crowd. She struck him twice with the leather quirt in her hand, sharply, viciously. I could see blood on the side of his neck, where it joins the shoulder.

"Slave!" she hissed.

He looked up angrily. "I am not a slave," he said. "I am Tuchuk."

"Turian slaver" she laughed scornfully. "Beneath your furs you wear, I wager, the Kes!"

"I am Tuchuk," he responded, looking angrily away.

Kamchak had told me of the young man. Among the wagons he was nothing. He did what work he could, helping with the bask, for a piece of meat from a cooking pot. He was called Harold, which is not a Tuchuk name, nor a name used among the Wagon Peoples, though it is similar to some of the Ka.s.sar names. It was an English name, but such are not unknown on Gor, having been pa.s.sed down, perhaps, for more than a thousand years, the name of an ancestor, per"

haps brought to Gor by Priest-Kings in what might have been the early Middle Ages of Earth. I knew the Voyages of Acquisition were of even much greater antiquity. I had determined, of course, to my satisfaction, having spoken with him once, that the boy, or young man, was indeed Gorean; his people and their people before them and as far back as anyone knew had been, as it is said, of the Wagons. The problem of the young man, and perhaps the reason that he had not yet won even the Courage Scar of the Tuchuks, was that he had fallen into the hands of Turian raiders in his youth and had spent several years in the city; in his adoles- cence he had, at great risk to himself, escaped from the city and made his way with great hardships across the plains to rejoin his people; they, of course, to his great disappoint- ment, had not accepted him, regarding him as more Turian than Tuchuk. His parents and people had been slain in the Turian raid in which he had been captured, so he had no kin.

There had been, fortunately for him, a Year Keeper who had recalled the family. Thus he had not been slain but had been allowed to remain with the Tuchuks. He did not have his own wagon or his own bask. He did not even own a kaiila.

He had armed himself with castoff weapons, with which he practiced in solitude. None of those, however, who led raids on enemy caravans or sorties against the city and its outlying fields, or retaliated upon their neighbors in the delicate mat- ters of bask stealing, would accept him in their parties. He had, to their satisfaction, demonstrated his prowess with weapons, but they would laugh at him. "You do not even own a kaiila," they would say. "You do not even wear the Courage Scar." I supposed that the young man would never be likely to wear the scar, without which, among the stern, cruel Tuchuks, he would be the continuous object of scorn, ridicule and contempt. Indeed, I knew that some among the wagons, the girl Hereena, for example, who seemed to bear him a great dislike, had insisted that he, though free, be forced to wear the Kes or the dress of a woman. Such would have been a great joke among the Tuchuks.

I dismissed the girl, Hereena, and the young man, Harold, from my mind.

Albrecht was rearing on his kaiila, loosening the bole at his saddle.

"Remove your furs," he instructed his two girls.

Immediately they did so and, in spite of the brisk, bright chilly afternoon, they stood in the gra.s.s, clad Kajir, They would run for us.

Kamchak raced his kaiila over to the edge of the crowd, entering into swift negotiation with a warrior, one whose wagon followed ours in the march of the Tuchuks. Indeed, it had been from that warrior that Kamchak had rented the girls who had dragged Elizabeth Cardwell about the wagons, teaching her Gorean with thong and switch. I saw a flash of copper, perhaps a tarn disk from one of the distant cities, a.n.a.l one of the warrior's girls, an attractive Turian wench, Tuka, began to remove her fur.

She would run for one of the Ka.s.sars, doubtless Conrad.

Tuka, I knew, hated Elizabeth, and Elizabeth, I knew, reciprocated the emotion with vehemence. Tuka, in the mat- ter of teaching Elizabeth the language, had been especially cruel. Elizabeth, bound, could not resist and did she try, Tuka's companions, the others of her wagon, would leap upon her with their switches flailing. Tuka, for her part, understandably had reason to envy and resent the young American slave. Elizabeth Cardwell, at least until now, had escaped, as Tuka had not, the brand, the nose ring and collar. Elizabeth was clearly some sort of favorite in her wagon. Indeed, she was the only girl in the wagon. That alone, though of course it meant she would work very hard, was regarded as a most enviable distinction. Lastly, but perhaps not least, Elizabeth Cardwell had been given for her garment the pelt of a larl, while she, Tuka, must go about the camp like all the others, clad Kajir.

I feared that Tuka would not run well, thus losing us the match, that she would deliberately allow herself to be easily snared.

But then I realized that this was not true. If Kamchak and her master were not convinced that she had run as well as she might, it wool not go easily with her. She would have contributor to the victory of a Ka.s.sar over a Tuchuk. That night, one of the hooded members of the Clan of Torturers would have come to her wagon and fetched her away, never to be seen again. She would run well, hating Elizabeth or not. She would be running for her life.

Kamchak wheeled his kaiila and joined us. He pointed his lance to Elizabeth Cardwell. "Remove your furs," he said.

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70.

NOMADS or GOR Elizabeth did so and stood before us in the pelt of the larl, with the other girls.

Although it was late in the afternoon the sun was still bright. The air was chilly. There was a bit of wind moving the gra.s.s.

A black lance was fixed in the prairie about four hundred yards away. A rider beside it, on a kaiila, marked its place. It was not expected, of course, that any of the girls would reach the lance. If one did, of course, the rider would decree her safe. In the run the important thing was time, the dispatch and the skill with which the thing was accomplished. Tuchuk girls, Elizabeth and Tuka, would run for the Ka.s.sars; the two Ka.s.sar girls would run for Kamchak and myself; naturally each slave does her best for her master, attempting to evade his compet.i.tor.

The time in these matters is reckoned by the heartbeat of a standing kaiila. Already one had been brought. Near the animal, on the turf, a long bask whip was laid in a circle, having a diameter of somewhere between eight and ten feet.

The girl begins her run from the circle. The object of the rider is to effect her capture, secure her and return her, in as little time as possible, to the circle of the whip.

Already a grizzled Tuchuk had his hand, palm flat, on the silken side of the standing kaiila.

Kamchak gestured and Tuka, barefoot, frightened, stepped into the circle.

Conrad freed his bole from the saddle strap. He held in his teeth a boskhide thong, about a yard in length. The saddle of the kaiila, like the tarn saddle, is made in such a way as to accommodate, bound across it, a female captive, rings being fixed on both sides through which binding fiber or thong may be pa.s.sed. On the other hand, I knew, in this sport no time would be taken for such matters; in a few heartbeats of the kaiila the girl's wrists and ankles would be lashed together and she would be, without ceremony, slung over the pommel of the saddle, it the stake, her body the ring.

"Run," said Conrad quietly.

Tuka sped from the circle. The crowd began to cry out, to cheer, urging her on. Conrad, the thong in his teeth, the bole quiet at his side, watched her. She would receive a start of fifteen beats of the great heart of the kaiila, after which she would be about half way to the lance.

The judge, aloud, was counting.

At the count of ten Conrad began to slowly spin the bole.

It would not reach its maximum rate of revolution until he was in full gallop, almost on the quarry.

At the count of fifteen, making no sound, not wanting to warn the girl, Conrad spurred the kaiila in pursuit, bole swinging.

The crowd strained to see.

The judge had begun to count again, starting with one, the second counting, which would determine the rider's time.

The girl was fast and that meant time for us, if only perhaps a beat. She must have been counting to herself because only an instant or so after Conrad had spurred after her she looked over her shoulder, seeing him approaching.

She must then have counted about three beats to herself, and then she began to break her running pattern, moving to one side and the other, making it difficult to approach her swiftly.

"She runs well," said Kamchak.

Indeed she did, but in an instant I saw the leather flash of the bole, with its vicious, beautiful almost ten-foot sweep, streak toward the girl's ankles, and I saw her fall.

It was scarcely ten beats and Conrad had bound the struggling, scratching Tuka, slung her about the pommel, raced back, kaiila squealing, and threw the girl, wrists tied to her ankles, to the turf inside the circle of the boskhide whip.

"Thirty," said the judge.

Conrad grinned.

Tuka, as best she could, squirmed in the bonds, fighting them. Could she free a hand or foot, or even loosen the thong, Conrad would be disqualified.

After a moment or two, the judge said, "Stop," and Tuka obediently lay quiet. The judge inspected the thongs. "The wench is secured," he announced.

In terror Tuka looked up at Kamchak, mounted on his kaiila.

"You ran well," he told her.

She closed her eyes, almost fainting with relief.

She would live.

A Tuchuk warrior slashed apart the thongs with his quiva and Tuka, only too pleased to be free of the circle, leaped up and ran quickly to the side of her master. In a few moments, panting, covered with sweat, she had pulled on her furs.

The next girl, a lithe Ka.s.sar girl, stepped into the circle and Kamchak unstrapped his bole. It seemed to me she ran excellently but Kamchak, with his superb skill, snared her _.

72.

easily. To my dismay, as he returned racing toward the circle of the boskhide whip the girl, a fine wench, managed to sink her teeth into the neck of the kaiila causing it to rear squealing and hissing, then striking at her. By the time Kamchak had cuffed the girl from the animal's neck and struck the kaiila's snapping jaws from her twice-bitten leg and returned to the circle, he had used thirty-five beats.

He had lost.

When the girl was released, her leg bleeding, she was beaming with pleasure.

"Well done," said Albrecht, her master, adding with a grin, "For a Turian slave."

The girl looked down, smiling.