Nomads of Gor (7 page)

 
drawing blood, but he did not have the weight of the leaping

 
animal behind his thrust; he thrust at arm's length, the point

 
scarcely reaching me. Then the animal seized my shield in its

 
teeth and reared lifting it and myself, by the shield straps,

 
from the ground. I fell from some dozen feet to the grass

 
and saw the animal snarling and biting on the shield, then it

 
shook it and hurled it far and away behind it.

 
I shook myself.

 
The helmet which I had slung over my shoulder was gone.

 
I retained my sword. I grasped the Gorean spear.

 
I stood at bay on the grass, breathing hard, bloody.

 
The Tuchuk laughed, throwing his head back.

 
I readied the spear for its cast.

 
   
Warily now the animal began to circle, in an almost

 
human fashion, watching the spear. It shifted delicately,

 
feinting, and then withdrawing, trying to draw the cast.

 
   
I was later to learn that kaiita are trained to avoid the

 
thrown spear. It is a training which begins with blunt staves

 
and progresses through headed weapons. Until the kaiila is

 
suitably proficient in this art it is not allowed to breed. Those

 
who cannot learn it die under the spear. Yet, at a close

 
range, I had no doubt that I could slay the beast. As swift as

 
may be the kaiila I had no doubt that I was swifter. Gorean

 
warriors hunt men and tarts with this weapon. But I did not

 
wish to slay the animal, nor its rider.

 
   
To the astonishment of the Tuchuk and the others who

 
observed, I threw away the weapon.

 
   
The Tuchuk sat still on his mount, as did the others. Then

 
he took his lance and smote it on the small, glossy shield,

 
acknowledging my act. Then so too did the others, even the

 
white-caped man of the Paravaci.

        
Then the Tuchuk drove his own lance into the dirt and

 
hung on the lance his glossy shield.

 
I saw him draw one of the quivas from a saddle sheath,

 
loosen the long, triple-weighted bole from his side.

 
   
Slowly, singing in a gutteral chant, a Tuchuk warrior song,

 
he began to swing the bole. It consists of three long straps of I

 
leather, each about five feet long, each terminating in a

 
leather sack which contains, sewn inside, a heavy, round,

 
metal weight. It was probably developed for hunting the

 
tumit, a huge, flightless carnivorous bird of the plains, but the

 
Wagon Peoples use it also, and well, as a weapon of war.

 
   
Thrown low the long straps, with their approximate ten-foot

 
sweep, almost impossible to evade, strike the victim and the

 
weighted balls, as soon as resistance is met, whip about the

 
victim, tangling and tightening the straps. Sometimes legs are

 
broken. It is often difficult to release the straps, so snarled do

 
they become. Thrown high the Gorean bole can lock a man's

 
arms to his sides; thrown to the throat it can strangle him;

 
thrown to the head, a difficult cast, the whipping weights

 
can crush a skull. One entagles the victim with the bole, leaps

 
from one's mount and with the quiva cuts his throat.

 
I had never encountered such a weapon and I had little

 
notion as to how it might be met.

 
   
The Tuchuk handled it well. The three 'weights at the end

 
of the straps were now almost blurring in the air and he, his

 
song ended, the reins in his left hand, quiva blade now

 
clenched between his teeth, bole in his swinging, uplifted

 
right arm, suddenly cried out and kicked the kaiila into its

 
charge.

 
    
He wants a kill, I told myself. He is under the eyes of

 
warriors of the other peoples. It would be safest to throw

 
low. It would be a finer cast, however, to try for the throat

 
or head. How vain is hey How skillful is he?

 
He would be both skillful and vain; he was Tuchuk.

 
To the head came the flashing bole moving in its hideous,

 
swift revolution almost invisible in the air and I, instead of

 
lowering my head or throwing myself to the ground, met

 
instead the flying weighted leather with the blade of a Koro-

 
ban short sword, with the edge that would divide silk

 
dropped upon it and the taut straps, two of them, flew from

 
the blade and the other strap and the three weights looped

 
off pinto the grass, and the Tuchuk at the same time, scarcely

 
realizing what had occurred, leaped from the kailla, quiva in

 
hand, to find himself unexpectedly facing a braced warrior of

 
Ko-ro-ba, sword drawn.

 
    
The quiva reversed itself in his hand, an action so swift I

 
was only aware of it as his arm flew back, his hand on the

 
blade, to hurl the weapon.

 
It sped toward me with incredible velocity over the hand-

 
ful of feet that separated us. It could not be evaded, but only

 
countered, and countered it was by the Koroban steel in my

 
hand, a sudden ringing, sliding flash of steel and the knife

 
was deflected from my breast.

 
The Tuchuk stood struck with awe, in the grass, on the

 
trembling plains in the dusty air.

 
I could hear the other three men of the Wagon Peoples,

 
the Kataii, the Kassar, the Paravaci, striking their shields

 
with their lances. "Well done," said the Kassar.

 
The Tuchuk removed his helmet and threw it to the grass

 
He jerked open the jacket he wore and the leather jerkin

 
beneath, revealing his chest.

 
He looked about him, at the distant bosk herds, lifted his

 
head to see the sky once more.

 
His kailla stood some yards away, shifting a bit, puzzled,

 
reins loose on its neck.

 
The Tuchuk now looked at me swiftly. He grinned. He did

 
not expect nor would he receive aid from his fellows. I

 
studied his heavy face, the fierce scarring that somehow

 
ennobled it, the black eyes with the epicanthic fold. He

 
grinned at me. "Yes," he said, "well done."

 
I went to him and set the point of the Gorean short sword

 
at his heart.

 
He did not flinch.

 
"I am Tarl Cabot," I said. "I come in peace."

 
I thrust the blade back in the scabbard.

 
    
For a moment the Tuchuk seemed stunned. He stared at

 
me, disbelievingly, and then, suddenly, he threw back his

 
head and laughed until tears streamed down his face. He

 
doubled over and pounded on his knees with his fist. Then he

 
straightened up and wiped his face with the back of his hand.

 
I shrugged.

 
    
Suddenly the Tuchuk bent to the soil and picked up a

 
handful of dirt and grass, the land on which the bosk graze,

 
the land which is the land of the Tuchuks, and this dirt and

 
this grass he thrust in my hands and I held it.

 
The warrior grinned and put his hands over mine so that

 
our hands together held the dirt and the grass, and were

 
together clasped on it.

 
"Yes," said the warrior, "come in peace to the Land of the

 
Wagon Peoples."

 
I followed the warrior Kamchak into the encampment of

 
Tuchuks.

 
Nearly were we run down by six riders on thundering

 
kaiila who, riding for sport, raced past us wildly among the

 
crowded, clustered wagons. I heard the lowing of milk bask

 
from among the wagons. Here and there children ran be-

 
tween the wheels, playing with a cork ball and quiva, the

 
object of the game being to strike the thrown ball. Tuchuk

 
women, unveiled, in their long leather dresses, long hair

 
bound in braids, tended cooking pots hung on "em-wood

 
tripods over dung fires. These women were unscarred, but

 
like the bask themselves, each wore a nose ring. That of the

 
animals is heavy and of gold, that of the women also of gold

 
but tiny and fine, not unlike the wedding rings of my old

 
world. I heard a haruspex singing between the wagons; for a

 
piece of meat he would read the wind and the grass; for a

 
cup of wine the stars and the flight of birds; for a fat-bellied

 
dinner the liver of a sleen or slave.

 
lithe Wagon Peoples are fascinated with the future and its

 
signs and though, to hear them speak, they put no store in

 
such matters, yet they do in practice give them great consider-

 
ation. I was told by Kamchak that once an army of a

 
thousand wagons turned aside because a swarm of rennels,

 
poisonous, crablike desert insects, did not defend its broken

 
nest, crushed by the wheel of the lead wagon. Another time,

 
over a hundred years ago, a wagon Ubar lost the spur from

 
his right boot and turned for this reason back from the gates

 
of mighty Ar itself.

 
    
By one fire I could see a squat Tuchuk, hands on hips,

 
dancing and stamping about by himself, drunk on fermented

 
milk curds, dancing, according to Kamchak, to please the

 
Sky.

 
    
The Tuchuks and the other Wagon Peoples reverence