Nomads of Gor Read online

  In the morning I awakened to find Elizabeth sitting, red-eyed, at the side of the wagon, leaning back against one of the poles that supported the wagon hides, wrapped in the pelt of the red larl.

  She looked at me. "I'm hungry," she said.

  My heart leaped. The girl was stronger than I had thought. I was very pleased. On the dais of Kutaituchik I had feared that she might not be able to survive, that she was too weak for the world of Gor. I had been troubled that the shock of her radical transposition between worlds, coupled with her reduction to servitude, might disarrange her mind, might shatter her and make her worthless to the Tuchuks, who might then have simply cast her to the kaiila and herd sleen. I saw now, however, that Elizabeth Cardwell was strong, that she would not go mad, that she was determined to live.

  "Kamchak of the Tuchuks is your master," I said. "He will eat first. Afterward, if he chooses, you will be fed."

  She leaned back against the wagon pole. "All right," she said.

  When Kamchak rolled out of his furs Elizabeth, involuntarily, shrank back, until the pole would permit her to withdraw no further.

  Kamchak looked at me. "How is the little barbarian this morning?" he asked.

  "Hungry," I said.

  "Excellent," he said.

  He looked at her, her back tight against the wagon pole, clutching the pelt of the larl about her with her braceleted hands.

  She was, of course, different from anything he had ever owned. She was his first barbarian. He did not know exactly what to make of her. He was used to girls whose culture had prepared them for the very real possibility of slavery, though perhaps not a slavery as abject as that of being a wench of Tuchuks. The Gorean girl is, even if free, accustomed to slavery; she will perhaps own one or more slaves herself; she knows that she is weaker than men and what this can mean; she knows that cities fall and caravans are plundered; she knows she might even, by a sufficiently bold warrior, be captured in her own quarters and, bound and hooded, be carried on tarnback over the walls of her own city. Moreover, even if she is never enslaved, she is familiar with the duties of slaves and what is expected of them; if she should be enslaved she will know, on the whole, what is expected of her, what is permitted her and what is not; moreover, the Gorean girl is literally educated, fortunately or not, to the notion that it is of great importance to know how to please men; accordingly, even girls who will be free companions, and never slaves, learn the preparation and serving of exotic dishes, the arts of walking, and standing and being beautiful, the care of a man's equipment, the love dances of their city, and so on. Elizabeth Cardwell, of course, knew nothing of these things. I was forced to admit that she was, on almost all counts, pretty much what Kamchak thought—a little barbarian. But, to be sure, a very pretty little barbarian.

  Kamchak snapped his fingers and pointed to the rug, Elizabeth then knelt to him, clutching the pelt about her, and put her head to his feet.

  She was slave.

  To my surprise Kamchak, for no reason that he explained to me, did not clothe Elizabeth Cardwell Kajir, much to the irritation of other slave girls about the camp. Moreover, he did not brand her, nor fix in her nose the tiny golden ring of the Tuchuk women, nor did he even, incomprehensibly, put her in the Turian collar. He did not permit her, of course, to bind or dress her hair; it must be worn loose; that alone, naturally, was sufficient to mark her slave among the wagons.

  For clothing he permitted her to cut and sew, as well as she could, a sleeveless garment from the pelt of the red larl. She did not sew well and it amused me to hear her cursing at the side of the wagon, bound now only by a collar and chain to the slave ring, time after time sticking the bone needle into her fingers as it emerged through the hide, or fouling the leather-threaded stitches, which would either be too tight, wrinkling and bunching the fur, or too loose, exposing what might eventually lie beneath it. I gathered that girls such as Elizabeth Cardwell, used to buying machine-made, presewn garments on Earth, were not as skilled as they might be in certain of the homely crafts which used to be associated with homemaking, crafts which might, upon occasion, it seemed, come in handy.

  At last she had finished the garment, and Kamchak unchained her that she might rise and put it on.

  Not surprisingly, but to my amusement, I noted that it hung several inches below her knees, indeed, only about four inches or so above her ankles. Kamchak took one look and, with a quiva, shortened it considerably, indeed, until it hung even more briefly than had the quite short, delightful yellow shift in which she had been captured.

  "But it was the length of the leather dresses of the Tuchuk women," Elizabeth had dared to protest.

  I translated.

  "But you are slave," had said Kamchak.

  I translated his remark.

  She dropped her head, defeated.

  Miss Cardwell had slim, lovely legs. Kamchak, a man, had desired to see them. Besides being a man, of course, Kamchak was her master; he owned the wench; thus he would have his desire. I will admit, if need be, that I was not displeased with his action. I did not particularly mind the sight of the lovely Miss Cardwell moving about the wagon.

  Kamchak made her walk back and forth once or twice, and spoke to her rather sharply about her posture, then, to the surprise of both Miss Cardwell and myself, he did not chain her, but told her she might walk about the camp unattended, warning her only to return before dusk and the release of the herd sleen. She dropped her head shyly, and smiled, and sped from the wagon. I was pleased to see her that much free.

  "You like her?" I asked.

  Kamchak grinned. "She is only a little barbarian," he said. Then he looked at me. "It is Aphris of Turia I want," he said.

  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 normal 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 Kassar, 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 sigh 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 Kassars, and, with Conrad of the Kassars, 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 Albrecht, snorted derisively.

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

  "Done!" cried Kamchak.

  Watching us there were a few children, some men, some slave girls. As soon as Kamchak had agreed to Albrecht's proposal the children and several of the slave girls immediately 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 Kassars, a Paravac
i 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 bosk 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 Conrad, he of the Kassars, 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 bosk, 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 bola. 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 articles, such skills, in the current contests, were to be tested to the utmost.

  As the day grew late points were accumulated, 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 dark 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, bumped 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 slave!" 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 bosk, 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 Kassar names. It was an English name, but such are not unknown on Gor, having been passed down, perhaps, for more than a thousand years, the name of an ancestor, perhaps 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 adolescence 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 disappointment, 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 bosk. 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 matters of bosk 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 bola 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 grass, 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, and one of the warrior's girls, an attractive Turian wench, Tuka, began to remove her fur.

  She would run for one of the Kassars, doubtless Conrad.

  Tuka, I knew, hated Elizabeth, and Elizabeth, I knew, reciprocated the emotion with vehemence. Tuka, in the matter 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. I
f Kamchak and her master were not convinced that she had run as well as she might, it would not go easily with her. She would have contributed to the victory of a Kassar 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.

  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 grass.

  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 Kassars; the two Kassar girls would run for Kamchak and myself; naturally each slave does her best for her master, attempting to evade his competitor.

  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 bosk 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 bola 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 passed. 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.