Nomads of Gor (18 page)

 
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 A1brecht, snorted derisively.

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

 
"Done!" cried Kamchak.

 
Watching us there were a few children, some men, some

   
                        
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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 Kassars, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 grass, clad Kajir,