Nomads of Gor

Book #4 "NOMADS OF GOR"

 
by John Norman

"Run" cried the woman. "Flee for your life"

 
I saw her eyes wild with fear for a moment above the

 
rep-cloth veil and she had sped past me.

 
She was peasant, barefoot, her garment little more than

 
coarse sacking. She had been carrying a wicker basket con-

 
taining vulos, domesticated pigeons raised for eggs and meat.

 
Her man, carrying a mattock, was not far behind. Over his

 
left shoulder hung a bulging sack filled with what must have

 
been the paraphernalia of his hut.

 
    
He circled me, widely. "Beware," he said, "I carry a Home

 
Stone."

 
    
I stood back and made no move to draw my weapon.

 
Though I was of the caste of warriors and he of peasants,

 
and I armed and he carrying naught but a crude tool, I

 
would not dispute his passage. One does not lightly dispute

 
the passage of one who carries his Home Stone.

 
    
Seeing that I meant him no harm, he paused and lifted an

 
arm, like a stick in a torn sleeve, and pointed backward.

 
'They're coming," he said. "Run, you fool Run for the gates

 
of Turia"

 
    
Turia the high-walled, the nine-gated, was the Gorean city

 
lying in the midst of the huge prairies claimed by the Wagon

 
Peoples.

 
Never had it fallen.

 
Awkwardly, carrying his sack, the peasant turned and

 
stumbled on, casting occasional terrified glances over his

 
shoulder

 
    
I watched him and his woman disappear over the brown

 
wintry grass.

 
In the distance, to one side and the other, I could see other

 
human beings, running, carrying burdens, driving animals

 
with sticks, fleeing.

 
    
Even past me there thundered a lumbering herd of star-

 
tled, short-bunked kailiauk, a stocky, awkward ruminant of

 
the plains, tawny, wild, heavy, their haunches marked in red

 
and brown bars, their wide heads bristling with a trident of

 
horns; they had not stood and formed their circle, she's and

 
young within the circle of tridents; they, too, had fled; farther

 
to one side I saw a pair of prairie sleen, smaller than the

 
forest sleen but quite as unpredictable and vicious, each

 
about seven feet in length, furred, six-legged, mammalian,

 
moving in their undulating gait with their viper's heads mov-

 
ing from side to side, continually testing the wind; beyond

 
them I saw one of the tumits, a large, flightless bird whose

 
hooked beak, as long as my forearm, attested only too clearly

 
to its gustatory habits; I lifted my shield and grasped the long

 
spear, but it did not turn in my direction; it passed, unaware;

 
beyond the bird, to my surprise, I saw even a black larl, a

 
huge catlike predator more commonly found in mountainous

 
regions; it was stalking away, retreating unhurried like a

 
king; before what, I asked myself, would even the black tart

 
flee; and I asked myself how far it had been driven; perhaps

 
even from the mountains of Ta-Thassa, that loomed in this

 
hemisphere, Gor's southern, at the shore of Thassa, the sea,

 
said to be in the myths without a farther shore.

 
    
The Wagon Peoples claimed the southern prairies of GOR,

 
from the gleaming Thassa and the mountains of Ta-Thassa to

 
the southern foothills of the Voltai Range itself, that reared

 
in the crust of GOR like the backbone of a planet. On the

 
north they claimed lands even to the rush-grown banks of

 
the Cartius, a broad, swift flowing tributary feeding into the

 
incomparable Vosk. The land between the Cartius and the

 
Vosk had once been within the borders of the claimed empire

 
of Ar, but not even Marlenus, Ubar of Ubars, when master

 
of luxurious, glorious Ar, had flown his tarnsmen south of the

 
Cartius.

 
    
In the past months I had made my way, afoot, overland,

 
across the equator, living by hunting and occasional service in

 
the caravans of merchants, from the northern to the southern

 
hemisphere of GOR. I had left the vicinity of the Sardar

 
Range in the month of Se'Var, which in the northern hemi-

 
sphere is a winter month, and had journeyed south for

 
months; and had now come to what some call the Plains of

 
Turia, others the Land of the Wagon Peoples, in the autumn

 
of this hemisphere; there is, due apparently to the balance of

 
land and water mass on GOR, no particular moderation of

 
seasonal variations either in the northern or southern hemi-

 
sphere; nothing much, so to speak, to choose between them;

 
on the other hand, Gor's temperatures, on the whole, tend to

 
be somewhat fiercer than those of Earth, perhaps largely due

 
to the fact of the wind-swept expanses of her gigantic land

 
masses; indeed,` though GOR is smaller than Barth, with con-

 
sequent gravitational reduction, her actual land areas may

 
be, for all I know, more extensive than those of my native

 
planet; the areas of GOR which are mapped are large, but

 
only a small fraction of the surface of the planet; much of

 
GOR remains to her inhabitants simply terra incognita.*

 
______________________________________________________________

 
*For purposes of convenience I am recounting directions in English

 
terms, thinking it would be considerably difficult for the reader to

 
follow references to the Gorean compass. Briefly, for those it might

 
interest, all directions on the planet are calculated from the Sardar

 
Mountains, which for the purposes of calculating direction play a

 
role analogous to our north pole; the two main directions, so to speak,

 
in the Gorean way of thinking are Ta-Sardar-Var and Ta-Sardar-Ki-

 
Var, or as one would normally say, Var and Ki-Var; 'Var' means a

 
turning and 'Ki' signifies negation; thus, rather literally, one might

 
speak of 'turning to the Sardar' and 'not turning to the Sardar', some-

 
thing like either facing north or not facing north; on the other hand,

 
more helpfully, the Gorean compass is divided into eight, as opposed

 
to our four, main quadrants, or better said, divisions, and each of

 
these itself is of course subdivided. There is also a system of latitude

 
and longitude figured on the basis of the Gorean day, calculated in

 
Ahn, twenty of which constitute a Gorean day, and Ehn and Ihn,

 
which are subdivisions of the Ahn, or Gorean hour. Ta-Sardar-Var

 
is a direction which appears on all Gorean maps; Ta-Sardar-Ki-Var,

 
of course, never appears on a map, since it would be any direction

 
which is not Ta-Sardar-Var. Accordingly, the main divisions of the

 
map are Ta-Sardar-Var, and the other seven; taking the Sardar as
    

 
our "north pole" the other directions, clockwise as Earth clocks move
  

 
(Gorean clock hands move in the opposite direction) would be, first,

 
Ta-Sardar-Var, then, in order, Ror, Rim, Tun, Vask (sometimes spoken

 
of as Verus Var. or the true turning away), Cart, Klim, and Kail,
  

 
and then again, of course, Ta-Sardar-Var. The Cartius River inciden-

 
tally, mentioned earlier, was named for the direction it lies from the
  

 
city of Ar. From the Sardar I had gone largely Cart, sometimes Vask,

 
then Cart again until I had come to the Plains of Turia, or the Land

 
of the Wagon Peoples. I crossed the Cartius on a barge, one of
 

 
several hired by the merchant of the caravan with which I ww then
   

 
seeing. These barges, constructed of layered timbers of Ka-la-na wood,
   

 
are towed by teams of river tharlarion, domesticated, vast,herbivo-

 
rous, web-footed lizards raised and driven by the Cartius bargemen,

 
fathers and sons, interrelated clans, claiming the status of a cast

 
for themselves. Even with the harnessed might of several huge thar-

 
larion drawing toward the opposite shore the crossing took us several

 
pasangs downriver. The caravan, of course, was bound for Turia. No

 
caravans, to my knowledge, make their way to the Wagon Peoples,

 
who are largely isolated and have their own way of life. I left the

 
caravan before it reached Turia My business was with the Wagon

 
Peoples, not the Turians, said to be indolent and luxury-loving; but

 
I wonder at this charge, for Turia has stood for generations on the

 
plains claimed by the fierce Wagon Peoples.

 
For some minutes I stood silently observing the animals

 
and the men who pressed toward Turia, invisible over the

 
brown horizon. I found it hard to understand their terror.

 
Even the autumn grass itself bent and shook in brown tides

 
toward Turia, shimmering in the sun like a tawny surf

 
beneath the fleeing clouds above; it was as though the unseen

 
wind itself, frantic volumes and motions of simple air, too

 
desired its sanctuary behind the high walls of the far city.

 
Overhead a wild Gorean kite, shrilling, beat its lonely way

 
from this place, seemingly no different from a thousand other

 
places on these broad grasslands of the south.

 
I looked into the distance, from which these fleeing multi-