Nomads of Gor (3 page)

 
perhaps in time man would grow rational, and reason and

 
love and tolerance would wax in him and he and Priest-Kings

 
might together turn their senses to the stars.

 
But I knew that more than anything I was doing this for

 
Misk, who was my friend.

  
  
The consequences of my act, if I were successful, were too

 
complex and fearful to calculate, the factors involved being

 
so numerous and obscure.

  
  
If it turned out badly, what I did, I would have no defense

 
other than that I did what I did for my friend for him

 
and for his brave kind, once hated enemies, whom I had

 
learned to know and respect.

   
 
There is no loss of honor in failing to achieve such a task,

 
I told myself. It is worthy of a warrior of the caste of

 
Warriors, a swordsman of the high city of Ko-ro-ba, the

 
Towers of the Morning.

 
Tal, I might say, in greeting, I am Tart Cabot of Ko-ro-

 
ba; I bring no credentials, no proofs; I come from the

 
Priest-Kings; I would like to have the object which was

 
brought to you from them; they would now like it back;

 
Thank you; farewell.

 
I laughed.

 
I would say little or nothing.

 
The object might not even be with the Wagon Peoples any

 
longer.

   
 
And there were four Wagon Peoples, the Paravaci, the

 
Kataii, the Kassars, and the dreaded Tuchuks.

  
  
Who knew with which people the object might have been

 
placed?

 
Perhaps it had been hidden away and forgotten?

 
Perhaps it was now a sacred object, little understood, but

 
revered and it would be sacrilege to think of it, blasphemy

 
to speak its Barge, a cruel and slow death even to cast one's

 
eyes upon it.

  
  
And if I should manage to seize it, how could I carry it

 
away?
 
I had no tarn, one of Gor's fierce saddlebirds; I had not

 
even the monstrous high tharlarion, used as the mounts of

 
shock cavalry by the warriors of some cities.

 
I was afoot, on the treeless southern plains of Gor, on the

 
Plains of Turia, in the Land of the Wagon Peoples.

 
The Wagon Peoples, it is said, slay strangers.

  
  
The words for stranger and enemy in Gorean are the

 
same.

 
I would advance openly.

  
  
If I were found on the plains near the camps or the bosk

 
herds I knew I would be scented out and slain by the do-

 
mesticated, nocturnal herd sleen, used as shepherds and

 
sentinels by the Wagon Peoples, released from their cages

 
with the falling of darkness.

  
  
These animals, trained prairie sleen, move rapidly and

 
silently, attacking upon no other provocation than trespass on

 
what they have decided is their territory. They respond only

 
to the voice of their master, and when he is killed pr dies, his

 
animals are slain and eaten.

  
  
There would be no question of night spying on the Wagon

 
Peoples.

 
I knew they spoke a dialect of Gorean, and I hoped I

 
would be able to understand them.

  
  
If I could not I must die as befitted a swordsman of

 
Ko-ro-ba.

  
  
I hoped that I would be granted death in battle, if death it

 
must be. The Wagon Peoples, of all those on Gor that I

 
know, are the only ones that have a clan of torturers, trained

 
as carefully as scribes or physicians, in the arts of detaining

 
life.

  
  
Some of these men have achieved fortune and fame in

 
various Gorean cities, for their services to Initiates and

 
Ubars, and others with an interest in the arts of detection

 
and persuasion. For some reason they have all worn hoods. It

 
is said they remove the hood only when the sentence is

 
death, so that it is only condemned men who have seen

 
whatever it is that lies beneath the hood.

  
  
I was surprised at the distance I had been from the herds,

 
for though I had seen the rolling dust clearly, and had felt

 
and did feel the shaking of the earth, betraying the passage

 
of those monstrous herds, I had not yet come to them.

 
But now I could hear, carried on the wind blowing toward

 
distant Turia, the bellowing of the basks. The dust was now

 
heavy like nightfall in the air. The grass and the earth

 
seemed to quake beneath my tread.

  
  
I passed fields that were burning, and burning huts of

 
peasants, the smoking shells of Sa-Tarna granaries, the shat-

 
tered, slatted coops for vulos, the broken walls of keeps for

 
the small, long-haired domestic verr, less belligerent and

 
sizeable than the wild verr of the Voltai Ranges.

  
  
Then for the first time, against the horizon, a jagged line,

 
humped and rolling like thundering waters, seemed to rise

 
alive from the prairie, vast, extensive, a huge arc, churning

 
and pounding from one corner of the sky to the other, the

 
herds of the Wagon Peoples, encircling, raising dust into the

 
sky like fire, like hoofed glaciers of fur and horn moving in

 
shaggy floods across the grass, toward me.

 
    
And then I saw the first of the outriders, moving toward

 
me, swiftly yet not seeming to hurry. I saw the slender line of

 
his light lance against the sky, strapped across his back.

  
  
I could see he carried a small, round, leather shield, glossy,

 
black, lacquered; he wore a conical, fur-rimmed iron helmet,

 
a net of colored chains depending from the helmet protecting

 
his face, leaving only holes for the eyes. He wore a quilted

 
jacket and under this a leather jerkin; the jacket was trimmed

 
with fur and had a fur collar; his boots were made of hide

 
and also trimmed with fur; he had a wide, five-buckled belt. I

 
could not see his face because of the net of chain that hung

 
before it. I also noted, about his throat, now lowered, there

 
was a soft leather wind scarf which might, when the helmet

 
veil was lifted be drawn over the mouth and nose, against

 
the wind and dust of his ride.
                         

  
  
He was very erect in the saddle. His lance remained on his

 
back, but he carried in his right hand the small, powerful

 
horn bow of the Wagon Peoples and attached to his saddle

 
was a lacquered, narrow, rectangular quiver containing as

 
many as forty arrows. On the saddle there also hung, on one

 
side, a coiled rope of braided boskbide and, on the other, a

 
long, three-weighted bole of the sort used in hunting tumits

 
and men; in the saddle itself on the right side, indicating the

 
rider must be right-handed, were the seven sheaths for the

 
almost legendary quivas, the balanced saddleknives of the

 
prairie. It was said a youth of the Wagon Peoples was taught

 
the bow, the quiva and the lance before their parents would

 
consent to give him a name, for names are precious among

 
the Wagon Peoples, as among Goreans in general, and they

 
are not to be wasted on someone who is likely to die, one

 
who cannot well handle the weapons of the hunt and war.

 
   
Until the youth has mastered the bow, the quiva and the

 
lance he is simply known as the first, or the second, and so

 
on, son of such and such a father.

 
   
The Wagon Peoples war among themselves, but once in

 
every two hands of years, there is a time of gathering of the

 
peoples, and this, I had learned, was that time. In the thinking

 
of the Wagon Peoples it is called the Omen Year, though the

 
Omen Year is actually a season, rather than a year, which

 
occupies a part of two of their regular years, for the Wagon

 
Peoples calculate the year from the Season of Snows to the

 
Season of Snows; Turians, incidentally, figure the year from

 
summer solstice to summer solstice; Goreans generally, on

 
the other hand, figure the year from vernal equinox to vernal

 
equinox, their new year beginning, like nature's, with the

 
spring; the Omen Year, or season, lasts several months, and

 
consists of three phases, called the Passing of Turia, which

 
takes place in the fad; the Wintering, which takes place

 
north of Turia and commonly south of the Cartius, the

 
equator of course lying to the north in this hemisphere; and

 
the Return to Curia, in the spring, or, as the Wagon Peoples

 
say, in the Season of Little Grass. It is near Turia, in the

 
spring, that the Omen Year is completed, when the omens

 
are taken usually over several days by hundreds of harus-

 
pexes, mostly readers of bask blood and verr livers, to
  

 
determine if they are favorable for a choosing of a Ubar

 
San, a One Ubar, a Ubar who would be High Ubar, a Ubar
     

 
of an the Wagons, a Ubar of all the Peoples, one who could

 
lead them as one people.*

 
    
The omens, I understood, had not been favorable in more