Nomads of Gor (14 page)

 
this for them?" He pointed at the opened collar lying before

 
him on the rug. "Do you think Priest-Kings would use a

 
Turian message collar?" He pointed his broad finger at Bliza-

 
beth Cardwell. "Do you think Priest-Kings would need a girl

 
to find you?" Kamchak threw back his head and laughed

 
loudly, and even Kutaituchik smiled. "No," said Kamchak,

 
slapping his knee, "Priest-Kings do not need Tuchuks to do

 
their killing!"

 
What Kamchak had said then seemed to make a great

 
deal of sense to me. Yet it seemed strange that anyone, no

 
matter whom, would dare to use the name of Priest-Kings

 
falsely. Who, or what, could dare such a thing? Besides, how

 
did I know that the message was not from Priest-Kings? I

 
knew, as Kamchak and Kutaituchik did not, of the recent

 
Nest War beneath the Sardar, and of the disruption in the

 
technological complexes of the Nest who knew to what

 
primitive devices Priest-Kings might now find themselves

 
reduced Yet, on the whole, I tended to agree with

 
Kamchak, that it was not likely the message came from

 
Priest-Kings. It had been, after all, months since the Nest

 
War and surely, by now, to some extent, Priest-Kings would

 
have managed to restore-significant portions of the equip-

 
ment, devices of surveillance and control, by means of which

 
they had, for such long millennia, managed to maintain their

 
mastery of this barbarian sphere. Besides this, as far as I

 
knew, Misk, who was my friend and between whom and

 
myself there was Nest Trust, was still the highest born of the

 
living Priest-Kings and the final authority in matters of im-

 
portance in the Nest; I knew that Misk, if no other, would

 
not have wished my death. And finally, I reminded myself

 
again, was I not now engaged in their work? Was I not now

 
attempting to be of service to them? Was I not now among

 
the Wagon Peoples, in peril perhaps, on their behalf?

 
But, I asked myself, if this message was not from Priest-

 
Kings, from whom could it be? Who would dare this? And

 
who but Priest-Kings would know that I was among the

 
Wagon Peoples? But yet I told myself someone, or some-

 
thing must know others, not Priest-Kings. There must be

  
others, who did not wish me to succeed in my work,

 
Alto wished Priest-Kings, the race, to die, others who were !

  
capable even of bringing humans from Earth for their pur- !

  
poses technologically advanced others who were, perhaps, I

  
cautiously, invisibly, at war with Priest-Kings who perhaps

  
wished as prize this world, or perhaps this world and Earth

  
as well, our sun and its planets others, who perhaps stood

  
on the margins of our system, waiting perhaps for the

  
demise of the power of Priest-Kings, perhaps the shield

  
which unknown to men, had protected them perhaps frown

  
the time of the first grasping of stones, from the time even

  
before an intelligent, prehensile animal could build fires in the

  
mouth of its lair.

  
But these speculations were too fantastic, and I dismissed

  
them.

  
There was remaining, however, a mystery, and I was deter-

  
mined to resolve it.

  
The answer possibly lay in Turia.

  
In the meantime I would, of course, continue my work. I

  
would try, for Misk, to find the egg, and return it to the

  
Sardar. I suspected, truly as it turned out, that the mystery

  
and my mission were not utterly unconnected.

  
"what," I asked Kamchak, "would you do if you thought

  
the message were truly from Priest-Kings?"

  
"Nothing," said Kamchak, gravely.

  
"You would risk," I asked, "the herds the wagons the

  
peoples?" Both Kamchak and I knew that Priest-Kings were

  
not lightly to be disobeyed. Their vengeance could extend to

  
the total and complete annihilation of cities. Indeed their

  
power, as I knew, was sufficient to destroy planets.

  
"Yes," said Kamchak.

  
"Why?" I asked.

  
He looked at me and smiled. "Because," said he, "we have

  
together held grass and earth."

  
Kutaituchik, Karnchak and I then regarded Elizabeth

  
Cardwell.

  
I knew that, as far as the interrogation was concerned, she

  
had served her purpose. There was nothing more to be

  
learned from her. She, too, must have sensed this, for she

  
seemed, though she did not move, terribly frightened. Her

  
fear could be read in her eyes, in the slight, tremulous

  
movement of her lower lip. In the affairs of state she was

  
now without value. Then uncontrollably, piteously, suddenly,

 
trembling in the Sirik, she put her head down to the pelt of

 
the larl. "Please," she said, "do not kill me."

 
I translated for Kamchak and Kutaituchik.

 
Kutaituchik addressed the question to her.

 
"Are you zealous to please the fancy of Tuchuks?"

 
I translated.

 
With horror Elizabeth Cardwell lifted her head from the

 
pelt and regarded her captors. She shook her head, wildly,

 
"No, please no!"

 
"Impale her," said Kutaituchik.

 
Two warriors rushed forward and seized the girl under the

 
arms, lifting her from the pelt.

 
"What are they going to do?" she cried.

 
"They intend to impale you," I told her.

 
She began to scream. "Please, please, please!"

 
My hand was on the hilt of my sword, but Kamchak's

 
hand rested on mine.

 
Kamchak turned to Kutaituchik. "She seems zealous," he

 
said.

 
Once again Kutaituchik addressed his question to her, and

 
I translated it.

 
"Are you zealous to please the fancy of Tuchuks?"

 
The men who held the girl allowed her to fall to her knees

 
between them. "Yes," she said, piteously, "yes!"

 
Kutaituchik, Kamchak and I regarded her.

 
"Yes," she wept, her head to the rug, "I am zealous to

 
please the fancy of Tuchuks."

 
I translated for Kutaituchik and Kamchak.

 
"Ask," demanded Kutaituchik, "if she begs to be a slave

 
girl."

 
I translated the question.

 
"Yes," wept Elizabeth Cardwell, "yes I beg to be a slave

 
Perhaps in that moment Elizabeth Cardwell recalled the

 
strange man, so fearsome, gray of face with eyes like glass,

 
who had SO examined her on Earth, before whom she had

 
stood as though on a block, unknowingly being examined for

 
her fitness to bear the message collar of Turia. How she had

 
challenged him, how she had walked, how insolent she had

 
been Perhaps in that moment she thought how amused the

 
man might be could he see her now, that proud girl, now in

 
the Sirik, her head to the pelt of a larl, kneeling to barbari-

 
ans, begging to be a slave girl; and if she thought of these

 
things how she must have then cried out in her heart, for she

 
would have then recognized that the man would have known

 
full well what lay in store for her; how he must have laughed

 
within himself at her petty show of female pride, her vanity,

 
knowing it was this for which the lovely brown-haired girl

 
in the yellow shift was destined.

 
"I grant her wish," said Kutaituchik. Then to a warrior

 
nearby, he said, "Bring meat."

 
The warrior leapt from the dais and, in a few moments,

 
returned with a handful of roasted bosk meat.

 
Kutaituchik gestured for the girl, trembling, to be brought

 
forward, and the two warriors brought her to him, placing

 
her directly before him.

 
He took the meat in his hand and gave it to Kamchak,

 
who bit into it, a bit of juice running at the side of his

 
mouth; Kamchak then held the meat to the girl.

 
"Nat," I told her.

 
Elizabeth Cardwell took the meat in her two hands,

 
confined before her by slave bracelets and the chain of the

 
Sirik, and, bending her head, the hair falling forward, ate it.

 
She, a slave, had accepted meat from the hand of

 
Kamchak of the Tuchuks.

 
She belonged to him now.

 
'La Kajira," she said, putting her head down, then cover-

 
ing her face with her manacled hands, weeping. "La Kajira.

 
La Kajiral"

 
If I had hoped for an easy answer to the riddles which

 
concerned me, or a swift end to my search for the egg of

 
Priest-Kings, I was disappointed, for I learned nothing of

 
either for months.

 
I had hoped to go to Turia, there to seek the answer to the

 
mystery of the message collar, but it was not to be, at least

 
until the spring.

 
"It is the Omen Year," had said Kamchak of the Tuchuks.

 
The herds would circle Turia, for this was the portion of

 
the Omen Year called the Passing of Turia, in which the

 
Wagon Peoples gather and begin to move toward their winter

 
pastures; the second portion of the Omen Year is the Winter-