Nomads Of Gor

8. The Wintering

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 Bather and begin to move toward their winter pastures; the second portion of the Omen Year is the Winter- ing, which takes place far north of Turia, the equator being approached in this hemisphere, of course, from the south; the third and final portion of the Omen Year is the Return to Curia, which takes place in the spring, or as the Wagon Peoples have it, in the Season of Little Grass. It is in the spring that the omens are taken, regarding the possible elec- tion of the Ubar San, the One Ubar, he who would be Ubar of all the Wagons, of all the Peoples.

I did manage, however, from the back of the kailla, which I learned to ride, to catch a glimpse of distant, high-walled, nine-gated Turia.

It seemed a lofty, fine city, white and shimmering, rising "Be patient, Tart Cabot," said Kamchak, beside me on his 55 _ 56 kaiila. "In the spring there will be the games of Love War and I will go to Turia, and you may then, if you wish, accompany me."

"Good," I said.

I would wait. It seemed, upon reflection, the best thing to do. The mystery of the message collar, intriguing as it might be, was of secondary importance. For the time I put it from my mind. My main interests, my primary objective, surely lay not in distant Turia, but with the wagons.

I wondered on what Kamchak had called the games of Love War, said to take place on the Plains of a Thousand Stakes. I supposed, in time, that I would learn of this. "After the games of Love War," said Kamchak, "the omens win be taken."

I nodded, and we rode back to the herds.

There had not been, I knew, a Ubar San in more than a hundred years. It did not seem likely, either, that one would be elected in the spring. Even in the time I had been with the wagons I had gathered that it was only the implicit truce of the Omen Year which kept these four fierce, warring peoples from lunging at one another's throats, or more exactly put, at one another's bask. Naturally, as a Koroban, and one with a certain affection for the cities of Gor, particularly those of the north, particularly Ko-ro-ba, Ar, Thentis and Tharna, I was not disappointed at the likelihood that a Ubar San would not be elected. Indeed, I found few who wished a Ubar San to be chosen. The Tuchuks, like the other Wagon Peoples, are intensely independent. Yet, each ten years, the omens are taken. I originally regarded the Omen Year as a rather pointless institution, but I came to see later that there is much to be said for it: it brings the Wagon Peoples together from time to time, and in this time, aside from the simple values of being together, there is much bask trading and some exchange of women, free as well as slave; the bask trading genetically freshens the herds and I expect much the same thing, from the point of view of biology, can be said of the exchange of the women; more Importantly, perhaps, for one can always steal women and bask, the Omen Year provides an institutionalized possibility for the uniting of the Wagon Peoples in a time of crisis, should they be divided and threatened. I think that those of the Wagons who instituted the Omen Year, more than a thousand years ago, were wise men.

How was it, I wondered, that Kamchak was going to Tigris in the spring?

I sensed him to be a man of importance with the wagons. There were perhaps negotiations to be conducted, perhaps having to do with what were called the games of Love War, or perhaps having to do with trade.

I had learned, to my surprise, that trade did occasionally take place with Turia. Indeed, when I had learned this, it had fired my hopes that I might be able to approach the city in the near future, hopes which, as it turned out, were disap- pointed, though perhaps well so.

The Wagon Peoples, though enemies of Turia, needed and wanted her goods, in particular materials of metal and cloth, which are highly prized among the Wagons. Indeed, even the chains and collars of slave girls, worn often by captive Turian girls themselves, are of Turian origin. The Turians, on the other hand, take factor or trade in trade for their goods obtained by manu- with other cities principally the horn and hide of the bask, which naturally the Wagon Peoples, who live on the bask, have in plenty. The Turians also, I note, receive other goods from the Wagon Peoples, who tend to be fond of the raid, goods looted from caravans perhaps a thousand pasangs from the herds, indeed some of them even on the way to and from Turia itself. From these raids the Wagon Peoples obtain a miscellany of goods which they are willing to barter to the Turians, jewels, precious metals, spices, colored table salts, harnesses and saddles for the ponderous tharlarion, furs of small river animals, tools for the field, scholarly scrolls, inks and papers, root vegetables, dried fish, powdered medicines, ointments, perfume and wom- en, customarily plainer ones they do not wish to keep for themselves; prettier wenches, to their dismay, are usually kept with the wagons; some of the plainer women are sold for as little as a brass cup; a really beautiful girl, particularly if of free birth and high caste, might bring as much as forty pieces of gold; such are, however, seldom sold; the Wagon Peoples enjoy being served by civilized slaves of great beauty and high station; during the day, in the heat and dust, such girls will care for the wagon bask and gather fuel for the dung fires; at night they will please their masters. The Wagon Peoples sometimes are also willing to barter silks to the Turians, but commonly they keep these for their own slave girls, who wear them in the secrecy of the wagons; free women, incidentally, among the Wagon Peoples are not per misted to wear silk; it is claimed by those of the Wagons, delightfully I think, that any woman who loves the feel of silk on her body is, in the secrecy of her heart and blood, a slave girl, whether or not some master has yet forced her to don the collar. It might be added that there are two items which the Wagon Peoples will not sell or trade to Turia, one is a living bask and the other is a girl from the city itself, though the latter are sometimes, for the sport of the young men, allowed, as it is said, to run for the city. They are then hunted from the back of the kaiila with bole and thongs. The winter came fiercely down on the herds some days before expected, with its fierce snows and the long winds that sometimes have swept twenty-five hundred pasangs across the prairies; snow covered the grass, brittle and brown already, and the herds were split into a thousand fragments, each with its own riders, spreading out over the prairie, pawing through the snow, snuffing about? pulling up and chewing at the grass, mostly worthless and frozen. The animals began to die and the keening of women, crying as though the wagons were burning and the Turians upon them, carried over the prairies. Thousands of the Wagon Peoples, free and slave, dug in the snow to find a handful of grass to feed their animals. Wagons had to be abandoned on the prairie, as there was no time to train new bask to the harness, and the herds must needs keep moving.

At last, seventeen days after the first snows, the edges of the herds began to reach their winter pastures far north of Turia, approaching the equator from the south. Here the snow was little more than a frost that melted in the after- noon sun, and the grass was live and nourishing. Still farther north, another hundred pasangs, there was no snow and the peoples began to sing and once more dance about their fires of bask dung.

"The bask are safe," Kamchak had said. I had seen strong men leap from the back of the kaiila and, on their knees, tears in their eyes, kiss the green, living grass. "The bosk are safe," they had cried, and the cry had been taken up by the women and carried from wagon to wagon, "IT he bosk are safer"

This year, perhaps because it was the Omen Year, the Wagon Peoples did not advance farther north than was necessary to ensure the welfare of the herds. They did not, in fact, even cross the western Cartius, far from cities, which they often do, swimming the bask and kaiila, floating the wagons, the men often crossing on the backs of the seam, ming bask. It was the Omen Year, and not a year, apparently, in which to risk war with far peoples, particularly not those? Of cities like Ar, whose warriors had mastered the tarn and' might, from the air, have wrought great destruction on the herds and wagons The Wintering was not unpleasant, although, even so far north, the days and nights were often quite chilly; the Wagon Peoples and their slaves as well, wore boskhide and furs during this time; both male and female, slave or free, wore furred boots and trousers, coats and the flopping, ear-flapped caps that tied under the chin; in this time there was often no way to mark the distinction between the free woman and the slave girl, save that the hair of the latter must needs be unbound; in some cases, of course, the Turian collar was visible, if worn on the outside of the coat, usually under the furred collar; the men, too, free and slave, were dressed similarly, save that the Kajiri, or he-slaves, wore shackles, usually with a run of about a foot of chain.

On the back of the kaiila, the black lance in hand, bending down in the saddle, I raced past a wooden wand fixed in the earth, on the top of which was placed a dried tospit, a small, wrinkled, yellowish-white peachlike fruit, about the size of a plum, which grows on the tospit bush, patches of which are indigenous to the drier valleys of the western Cartius. They are bitter but edible.

"Well done!" cried Kamchak as he saw the tospit, unsplit, impaled halfway down the shaft of the lance, stopped only by my fist and the retaining strap.

Such a thrust was worth two points for us.

I heard Elizabeth Cardwell's cry of joy as she leaped into the air, clumsy in the furs, clapping her hands. She carried, on a strap around her neck, a sack of tospits. I looked at her and smiled. Her face was vital and flushed with excitement. "Tospit!" called Conrad of the Kassars, the Blood People, and the girl hastened to set another fruit on the wand. There was a thunder of kaiila paws on the worn turf and Conrad, with his red lance, nipped the tospit neatly from the tip of the wand, the lance point barely passing into it, he having drawn back at the last instant.

"Well done!" I called to him. My own thrust had been full thrust, accurate enough but rather heavily done, in war, such a thrust might have lost me the lance, leaving it in the _ 60 body of an enemy. His thrust was clearly, I acknowledged, worth three points.

Kamchak then rode, and he, like Conrad of the Kassars, deftly took the fruit from the wand; indeed, his lance enter- ing the fruit perhaps a fraction of an inch less than had Conrad's. It was, however, also a three-point thrust. The warrior who then rode with Conrad thundered down the lane in the turf.

There was a cry of disappointment, as the lance tip sheared the fruit, not retaining it, knocking it from the wand. It was only a one-point thrust.

Elizabeth cried out again, with pleasure, for she was of the wagon of Kamchak and Tarl Cabot.

The rider who had made the unsatisfactory thrust suddenly whirled the kaiila toward the girl, and she fell to her knees, realizing she should not have revealed her pleasure at his failure, putting her head to the grass. I tensed, but Kamchak laughed, and held me back. The rider's kaiila was now rearing over the girl, and he brought the beast to rest. With the tip of his lance, stained with the tospit fruit, he cut the strap that held the cap on her head, and then brushed the cap off; then, delicately, with its tip, he lifted her chin that she might look at him.

"Forgive me, Master," said Elizabeth Cardwell.

Slave girls, on Gor, address all free men as master, though, of course, only one such would be her true master. I was pleased with how well, in the past months, Elizabeth had done with the language. Of course, Kamchak had rented three Turian girls, slaves, to train her; they had done so, binding her wrists and leading her about the wagons, teaching her the words for things, beating her with switches when she made mistakes; Elizabeth had learned quickly. She was an intelligent girl.

It had been hard for Elizabeth Cardwell, particularly the first weeks. It is not an easy transition to make, that from a bright, lovely young secretary in a pleasant, fluorescently lit, air-conditioned office on Madison Avenue in New to a slave girl in the wagon of Tuchuk warrior.

When her interrogation had been completed, and she had collapsed on the dais of Kutaituchik, crying out in misery "La Kajira. La Kajira!" Kamchak had folded her, still weep- ing, clad in the Sirik, in the richness of the pelt of the red tart in which she had originally been placed before us. As I had followed him from the dais I had seen Kutaituchik, the interview ended, absently reaching into the small golden box of kanda strings, his eyes slowly beginning to close.

Kamchak, that night, chained Elizabeth Cardwell in his wagon, rather than beneath it to the wheel, running a short length of chain from a slave ring set in the floor of the wagon box to the collar of her Sirik. He had then carefully wrapped her, shivering and weeping, in the pelt of the red larl.

She lay there, trembling and moaning, surely on the verge of hysteria. I was afraid the next phase of her condition would be one of numbness, shock, perhaps of refusal to believe what had befallen her, madness.

Kamchak had looked at me. He was genuinely puzzled by what he regarded as her unusual emotional reactions. He was, of course, aware that no girl, Gorean or otherwise, could be expected to take lightly a sudden reduction to an abject and complete slavery, particularly considering what that would mean among the wagons.

He did, however, regard Miss Cardwell's responses as rather peculiar, and somewhat reprehensible. Once he got up and kicked her with his furred boot, telling her to be quiet. She did not, of course, understand Gorean, but his intention and his impatience were sufficiently clear to preclude the necessity of a translation. She stopped moaning, but she continued to shiver, and sometimes she sobbed. I saw him take a slave whip from the wall and approach her, and then turn back and replace it on the wall. I was surprised that he had not used it, and wondered why. I was pleased that he had not beaten her, for I might have interfered. I tried to talk to Kamchak and help him to understand the shock that the girl had undergone, the total alteration of her life and circumstances, unexplained finding herself alone on the prairie, the Tuchuks, the capture, the return to the Wagons, her examination in the grassy avenue, the Sirik, the interro- gation, the threat of execution, then the fact, difficult for her to grasp, of being literally an owned slave girl. I tried to explain to Kamchak that her old world had not prepared her for these things, for the slaveries of her old world are of a different kind, more subtle and invisible, thought by some not even to exist.

Kamchak said nothing, but then he got up and from a chest in the wagon he took forth a goblet and filled it with an amber fluid, into which he shook a dark, bluish powder. He then took Elizabeth Cardwell in his left arm and with his right hand gave her the drink. Her eyes were frightened, but she drank. In a few moments she was asleep.

Once or twice that night, to Kamchak's annoyance and my own loss of sleep, she screamed, jerking at the chain, but we discovered that she had not awakened.

I supposed that on the morrow Kamchak would call for the Tuchuk Iron Master, to brand what he called his little barbarian; the brand of the Tuchuk slave, incidentally, is not the same as that generally used in the cities. which for girls, is the first letter of the expression Kajira in cursive script. but the sign of the four bask horns that of the Tuchuk standard; the brand of the four bask horns, set in such a manner as to somewhat resemble the letter "H." is only about an inch high; the common Gorean brand, on the other hand, is usually an inch and a half to two inches high; the brand of the four bask horns, of course, is also used to mark the bask of the Tuchuks, but there, of course, it is much larger, forming roughly a six-inch square; following the branding, I supposed that Kamchak would have one of the tiny nose rings affixed; all Tuchuk females, slave or free, wear such rings; after these things there would only remain, of course, an engraved Turian collar and the clothing of Elizabeth Cardwell Kajir. In the morning I awakened to find Elizabeth sitting, red- eyed, at the side of the wagon, leaning back against one of the poles that supported the wagon hides, wrapped in the pelt of the red larl.

She looked at me. "I'm hungry," she said.

My heart leaped. The girl was stronger than I had thought. I was very pleased. On the dais of Kutaituchik I had feared that she might not be able to survive, that she was too weak for the world of Gor. I had been troubled that the shock of her radical transposition between worlds, coupled with her reduction to servitude, might disarrange her mind, might shatter her and make her worthless to the Tuchuks, who might then have simply cast her to the kaiila and herd sleen. I saw now, however, that Elizabeth Cardwell was strong, that she would not go mad, that she was determined to live.

"Kamchak of the Tuchuks is your master," I said. "He will eat first. Afterward, if he chooses, you will be fed." She leaned back against the wagon pole. " right," she said.

When Kamchak rolled out of his furs Elizabeth, involun tartly, shrank back, until the pole would permit her to with- draw no further.

Kamchak looked at me. "How is the little barbarian this morning?" he asked.

"Hungry," I said.

"Excellent," he said.

He looked at her, her back tight against the wagon pole, clutching the pelt of the larl about her with her braceleted hands.

She was, of course, different from anything he had ever owned. She was his first barbarian. He did not know exactly what to make of her. He was used to girls whose culture had prepared them for the very real possibility of slavery, though perhaps not a slavery as abject as that of being a wench of Tuchuks. The Gorean girl is, even if free, accustomed to slavery; she will perhaps own one or more slaves herself; she knows that she is weaker than men and what this can mean; she knows that cities fall and caravans are plundered; she knows she might even, by a sufficiently bold warrior, be captured in her own quarters and, bound and hooded, be carried on tarnback over the walls of her own city. More- over, even if she is never enslaved, she is familiar with the duties of slaves and what is expected of them; if she should be enslaved she will know, on the whole, what is expected of her, what is permitted her and what is not; moreover, the Gorean girl is literally educated, fortunately or not, to the notion that it is of great importance to know how to please men; accordingly, even girls who will be free companions, and never slaves, learn the preparation and serving of exotic dishes, the arts of walking, and standing and being beautiful the care of a man's equipment, the love dances of their city, and so on. Elizabeth Cardwell, of course, knew nothing of these things. I was forced to admit that she was, on almost all counts, pretty much what Kamchak thought a little barbarian. But, to be sure, a very pretty little barbarian. Kamchak snapped his fingers and pointed to the rug, Elizabeth then knelt to him, clutching the pelt about her, and put her head to his feet.

She was slave.

To my surprise Kamchak, for no reason that he explained to me, did not clothe Elizabeth Cardwell Kajir, much to the irritation of other slave girls about the camp. Moreover, he did not brand her, nor fix in her nose the tiny golden ring of the Tuchuk women, nor did he even, incomprehensibly, put her in the Turian collar. He did not permit her, of course, to bind or dress her hair; it must be worn loose; that alone, naturally, was sufficient to mark her slave among the wag- ons.

For clothing he permitted her to cut and sew, as well as she could, a sleeveless garment from the pelt of the red larl. She did not sew well and it amused me to hear her cursing at the side of the wagon, bound now only by a collar and chain to the slave ring. time after time sticking the bone needle into her fingers as it emerged through the hide, or fouling the leather-threaded stitches, which would either be too tight, wrinkling and bunching the fur, or too loose, exposing what might eventually lie beneath it. I gathered that girls such as Elizabeth Cardwell, used to buying machine-made, presewn garments on Earth, were not as skilled as they might be in certain of the homely crafts which used to be associated with homemaking, crafts which might, upon occasion, it seemed, come In handy.

At last she had finished the garment, and Kamchak unchained her that she might rise and put it on.

Not surprisingly, but to my amusement, I noted that it hung serveral inches below her knees, indeed, only about four inches or so above her ankles. Kamchak took one look and, with a quiva, shortened it considerably, — indeed, until it hung even more briefly than had the quite short, delightful yellow shift in which she had been captured.

"But it was the length of the leather dresses of the Tuchuk women," Elizabeth had dared to protest.

I translated.

"But you are slave," had said Kamchak.

I translated his remark.

She dropped her head, defeated.

Miss Cardwell had slim, lovely legs. Kamchak, a man, had desired to see them. Besides being a man, of course, Kamchak was her master; he owned the wench; thus he would have his desire. I will admit if need he that I was not displeased with his action. I did not particularly mind the sight of the lovely Miss Cardwell moving about the wagon. Kamchak made her walk back and forth once or twice, and spoke to her rather sharply about her posture, then, to the surprise of both Miss Cardwell and myself, he did not chain her, but told her she might walk about the camp unattended, warning her only to return before dusk and the release of the herd sleen. She dropped her head shyly, and smiled, and sped from the wagon. I was pleased to see her that much free.

"You like her?" I asked.

Kamchak grinned. "She is only a little barbarian," he said. Then he looked at me. "It is Aphris of Turia I want," he said.

I wondered who she might be.

On the whole, it seemed to me that Kamchak treated his little barbarian slave notably well, considering that he was Tuchuk. This does not mean that she was not worked hard, nor that she did not receive a good drubbing now and then, but, on the whole, considering the corneas lot of a Tuchuk slave girl, I do not think she was ill used. Once, it might be noted, she returned from searching for fuel with the dung sack, dragging behind her, only half full. "It is all I could find," she told Kamchak. He then, without ceremony, thrust her head first into the sack and tied it shut. He released her the next morning. Elizabeth Cardwell never again brought a half-filled dung sack to the wagon of Kamchak of the Tuchuks.

Now the Kassar, mounted on his kaiila, his lance under the tip of the girl's chin. who knelt before him, looking up at him, suddenly laughed and removed the lance.

I breathed a Sign of relief.

He rode his kaiila to Kamchak. "What do you want for 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 Albrecht, snorted derisively. "No," cried Albrecht, "I am serious!"

"Done!" cried Kamchak.

Watching us there were a few children, some men, some 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, They would run for us.

Kamchak raced his kaiila over to the edge of the crowd, entering into swift negotiation with a warrior, one whose wagon followed ours in the march of the Tuchuks. Indeed, it had been from that warrior that Kamchak had rented the girls who had dragged Elizabeth Cardwell about the wagons, teaching her Gorean with thong and switch. I saw a flash of copper, perhaps a tarn disk from one of the distant cities, anal one of the warrior's girls, an attractive Turian wench, Tuka, began to remove her fur.

She would run for one of the Kassars, doubtless Conrad. Tuka, I knew, hated Elizabeth, and Elizabeth, I knew, reciprocated the emotion with vehemence. Tuka, in the mat- ter of teaching Elizabeth the language, had been especially cruel. Elizabeth, bound, could not resist and did she try, Tuka's companions, the others of her wagon, would leap upon her with their switches flailing. Tuka, for her part, understandably had reason to envy and resent the young American slave. Elizabeth Cardwell, at least until now, had escaped, as Tuka had not, the brand, the nose ring and collar. Elizabeth was clearly some sort of favorite in her wagon. Indeed, she was the only girl in the wagon. That alone, though of course it meant she would work very hard, was regarded as a most enviable distinction. Lastly, but perhaps not least, Elizabeth Cardwell had been given for her garment the pelt of a larl, while she, Tuka, must go about the camp like all the others, clad Kajir.

I feared that Tuka would not run well, thus losing us the match, that she would deliberately allow herself to be easily snared.

But then I realized that this was not true. If Kamchak and her master were not convinced that she had run as well as she might, it wool not go easily with her. She would have contributor to the victory of a Kassar over a Tuchuk. That night, one of the hooded members of the Clan of Torturers would have come to her wagon and fetched her away, never to be seen again. She would run well, hating Elizabeth or not. She would be running for her life.

Kamchak wheeled his kaiila and joined us. He pointed his lance to Elizabeth Cardwell. "Remove your furs," he said.

Elizabeth did so and stood before us in the pelt of the larl, with the other girls.

Although it was late in the afternoon the sun was still bright. The air was chilly. There was a bit of wind moving the grass.

A black lance was fixed in the prairie about four hundred yards away. A rider beside it, on a kaiila, marked its place. It was not expected, of course, that any of the girls would reach the lance. If one did, of course, the rider would decree her safe. In the run the important thing was time, the dispatch and the skill with which the thing was accomplished. Tuchuk girls, Elizabeth and Tuka, would run for the Kassars; the two Kassar girls would run for Kamchak and myself; naturally each slave does her best for her master, attempting to evade his competitor.

The time in these matters is reckoned by the heartbeat of a standing kaiila. Already one had been brought. Near the animal, on the turf, a long bask whip was laid in a circle, having a diameter of somewhere between eight and ten feet. The girl begins her run from the circle. The object of the rider is to effect her capture, secure her and return her, in as little time as possible, to the circle of the whip. Already a grizzled Tuchuk had his hand, palm flat, on the silken side of the standing kaiila.

Kamchak gestured and Tuka, barefoot, frightened, stepped into the circle.

Conrad freed his bole from the saddle strap. He held in his teeth a boskhide thong, about a yard in length. The saddle of the kaiila, like the tarn saddle, is made in such a way as to accommodate, bound across it, a female captive, rings being fixed on both sides through which binding fiber or thong may be passed. On the other hand, I knew, in this sport no time would be taken for such matters; in a few heartbeats of the kaiila the girl's wrists and ankles would be lashed together and she would be, without ceremony, slung over the pommel of the saddle, it the stake, her body the ring.

"Run," said Conrad quietly.

Tuka sped from the circle. The crowd began to cry out, to cheer, urging her on. Conrad, the thong in his teeth, the bole quiet at his side, watched her. She would receive a start of fifteen beats of the great heart of the kaiila, after which she would be about half way to the lance.

The judge, aloud, was counting.

At the count of ten Conrad began to slowly spin the bole. It would not reach its maximum rate of revolution until he was in full gallop, almost on the quarry.

At the count of fifteen, making no sound, not wanting to warn the girl, Conrad spurred the kaiila in pursuit, bole swinging.

The crowd strained to see.

The judge had begun to count again, starting with one, the second counting, which would determine the rider's time. The girl was fast and that meant time for us, if only perhaps a beat. She must have been counting to herself because only an instant or so after Conrad had spurred after her she looked over her shoulder, seeing him approaching. She must then have counted about three beats to herself, and then she began to break her running pattern, moving to one side and the other, making it difficult to approach her swiftly.

"She runs well," said Kamchak.

Indeed she did, but in an instant I saw the leather flash of the bole, with its vicious, beautiful almost ten-foot sweep, streak toward the girl's ankles, and I saw her fall. It was scarcely ten beats and Conrad had bound the struggling, scratching Tuka, slung her about the pommel, raced back, kaiila squealing, and threw the girl, wrists tied to her ankles, to the turf inside the circle of the boskhide whip. "Thirty," said the judge.

Conrad grinned.

Tuka, as best she could, squirmed in the bonds, fighting them. Could she free a hand or foot, or even loosen the thong, Conrad would be disqualified.

After a moment or two, the judge said, "Stop," and Tuka obediently lay quiet. The judge inspected the thongs. "The wench is secured," he announced.

In terror Tuka looked up at Kamchak, mounted on his kaiila.

"You ran well," he told her.

She closed her eyes, almost fainting with relief.

She would live.

A Tuchuk warrior slashed apart the thongs with his quiva and Tuka, only too pleased to be free of the circle, leaped up and ran quickly to the side of her master. In a few moments, panting, covered with sweat, she had pulled on her furs. The next girl, a lithe Kassar girl, stepped into the circle and Kamchak unstrapped his bole. It seemed to me she ran excellently but Kamchak, with his superb skill, snared her _ 72 easily. To my dismay, as he returned racing toward the circle of the boskhide whip the girl, a fine wench, managed to sink her teeth into the neck of the kaiila causing it to rear squealing and hissing, then striking at her. By the time Kamchak had cuffed the girl from the animal's neck and struck the kaiila's snapping jaws from her twice-bitten leg and returned to the circle, he had used thirty-five beats. He had lost.

When the girl was released, her leg bleeding, she was beaming with pleasure.

"Well done," said Albrecht, her master, adding with a grin, "For a Turian slave."

The girl looked down, smiling.

She was a brave girl. I admired her. It was easy to see that she was bound to Albrecht the Kassar by more than a length of slave chain.

At a gesture from Kamchak Elizabeth Cardwell stepped into the circle of the whip.

She was now frightened. She, and I as well, had supposed that Kamchak would be victorious over Conrad. Had he been so, even were I defeated by Albrecht, as I thought likely, the points would have been even. Now, if I lost as well, she would be a Kassar wench.

Albrecht was grinning, swinging the bole lightly, not in a circle but in a gentle pendulum motion, beside the stirrup of the kaiila.

He looked at her. "Run," he said.

Elizabeth Cardwell, barefoot, in the larl's pelt, streaked for the black lance in the distance.

She had perhaps observed the running of Tuka and the Kassar girl, trying to watch and learn, but she was of course utterly inexperienced in this cruel sport of the men of the wagons. She had not, for example, timed her counting, for long hours, under the tutelage of a master, al against the heartbeat of a kaiila, he keeping the beat but not informing her what it was, until she had called the beat. Some girls of the Wagon Peoples in fact, incredible though it seems, are trained exhaustively in the art of evading the bole, and such a girl is worth a great deal to a master, who uses her in wagering. One of the best among the wagons I had heard was a Kassar slave, a swift Turian wench whose name was Dina. She had run in actual competition more than two hundred times; almost always she managed to interfere with and postpone her return to the circle; and forty times, an incredible feat, she had managed to reach the lance itself. At the count of fifteen, with incredible speed, Albrecht, bole now whirling, spurred silently after the fleeing Elizabeth Cardwell. She had misjudged the heartbeat or had not under- stood the swiftness of the kaiila, never having before ob- served it from the unenviable point of view of a quarry, because when she turned to see if her hunter had left the vicinity of the circle, he was upon her and as she cried out the bole struck her in an instant binding her legs and throwing her to the turf. It was hardly more than five or six beats, it seemed, before Elizabeth, her wrists lashed cruelly to her ankles, was thrown to the grass at the judge's feet. "Twenty-five!" announced the judge.

There was a cheer from the crowd, which, though largely composed of Tuchuks, relished a splendid performance. Weeping Elizabeth jerked and pulled at the thongs re- straining her, helpless.

The judge inspected the bonds. `The wench is secured," he said.

Elizabeth moaned.

"Rejoice, Little Barbarian," said Albrecht, "tonight in Pleasure Silk you will dance the Chain Dance for Kassar Warriors."

The girl turned her head to one side, shuddering in the thongs. A cry of misery escaped her.

"Be silent," said Kamchak.

Elizabeth was silent and, fighting her tears; lay quietly waiting to be freed.

I cut the thongs from her wrists and ankles.

"I tried," she said, looking up at me, tears in her eyes. "I tried."

"Some girls," I told her, "have run from the bole more than a hundred times. Some are trained to do so."

"Do you concede?" Conrad asked Kamchak.

"No," said Kamchak. "My second rider must ride."

"He is not even of the Wagon Peoples," said Conrad. "Nonetheless," said Kamchak, "he will ride."

"He will not beat twenty-five," said Conrad.

Kamchak shrugged. I knew myself that twenty-five was a remarkable time. Albrecht was a fine rider and skilled in this sport and, of course, this time, his quary had been only an untrained barbarian slave, indeed, a girl who had never before run from the bole.

"To the circle," said Albrecht, to the other Kassar girl. She was a beauty.

She stepped to the circle quickly, throwing her head back, breathing deeply.

She was an intelligent looking girl.

Black-haired.

Her ankles, I noted, were a bit sturdier than are thought desirable in a slave girl. They had withstood the shock of her body weight many times I gathered, in quick turnings, in leaps.

I wished that I had seen her run before, because most girls will have a running pattern, even in their dodging which, if you have seen it, several times, you can sense. Nothing simple, but something that, somehow, you can anticipate, if only to a degree. It is probably the result of gathering, from their running, how they think; then one tries to think with them and thus meet them with the bole. She was now breathing deeply, regularly. Prior to her entering the circle I had seen her moving about in the background, running a bit, loosening her legs, speeding the circulation of her blood.

It was my guess that this was not the first time she had run from the bole.

"If you win for us," Albrecht said to her, grinning down from the saddle of the kaiila, "this night you will be given a silver bracelet and five yards of scarlet silk."

"I will win for you, Master," she said.

I thought that a bit arrogant for a slave.

Albrecht looked at me. "This wench," he said, "has never been snared in less than thirty-two beats."

I noted a flicker pass through the eyes of Kamchak, but he seemed otherwise impassive.

"She is an excellent runner," I said.

The girl laughed.

Then, to my surprise, she looked at me boldly, though wearing the Turian collar; though she wore the nose ring; though she were only a branded slave clad Kajir.

"I wager," she said, "that I will reach the lance." This irritated me. Moreover, I was not insensitive to the fact that though she were slave and I a free man, she had not addressed me, as the custom is, by the title of Master. I had no objection to the omission itself, but I did object to the affront therein implied. For some reason this wench seemed to me rather arrogant, rather contemptuous.

"I wager that you do not," I said.

"Your terms!" she challenged.

"What are yours?" I asked.

She laughed. "If I win," she said, "you give me your bole, which I will present to my master."

"Agreed," I said. "And if I should win?"

"You will not," she said.

"But if so?"

"Then," said she, "I will give you a golden ring and a silver cup."

"How is it that a slave has such riches?" I asked. She tossed her head in the air, not deigning to respond. "I have given her several such things," said Albrecht. I now gathered that the girl facing me was not a typical slave, and that there must be a very good reason why she should have such things.

"I do not want your golden ring and silver cup," I said. "What then could you want?" asked she.

"Should I win," I said, "I will claim as my prize the kiss of an insolent wench."

"Tuchuk sleep!" she cried, eyes flashing.

Conrad and Albrecht laughed. Albrecht said to the girl, "It is permitted."

"Very well, he-tharlarion," said the girl, "your bola against a kiss." Her shoulders were trembling with rage. "I will show you how a Kassar girl can run! ) "You think well of yourself," I remarked. "You are not a Kassar girl you are only a Turian slave of Kassars." Her fists clenched.

In fury she looked at Albrecht and Conrad. "I will run as I have never run before," she cried.

My heart sank a bit. I recalled Albrecht had said that the girl had never been snared in less than thirty-two beats. Then she had doubtless run from the bole several times before, perhaps as many as ten or fifteen.

"I gather," I said to Albrecht, casually, "that the girl has run several times."

"Yes," said Albrecht, "that is true." Then he added, "You may have heard of her. She is Dina of Turia."

Conrad and Albrecht slapped their saddles and laughed uproariously. Kamchak laughed, too, so hard tears ran down the scarred furrows of his face. He pointed a finger at Conrad. "Wily Kassar!" he laughed. This was a joke. Even I had to smile. The Tuchuks were commonly called the Wily Ones. But, though the moment might have been amusing to those of the Wagon Peoples, even to Kamchak, I was not prepared to look on the event with such good humor. If might have been a good trick, but I was in no state of mind to relish it. How cleverly Conrad had pretended to mock Albrecht when he had bet two girls against one. Little did we know that one of those girls was Dina of Turia, who, of course, would run not for the skilled Kamchak, but for his awkward friend, the clumsy Tarl Cabot, not even of the Wagon Peoples, new to the kaiila and bole! Conrad and Albrecht had perhaps even come to the camp of the Tuchuks with this in mind. Undoubtedly! What could they lose? Noth- ing. The best that we might have hoped for was a tie, had Kamchak beaten Conrad. But he had not; the fine little Turian wench who had been able to bite the neck of the kaiila, thereby risking her life incidentally, had seen to that. Albrecht and Conrad had come for a simple purpose, to best a Tuchuk and, in the process, pick up a girl or two; Eliza- beth Cardwell, of course, was the only one we had on hand. Even the Turian girl, Dina, perhaps the best slave among all the wagons in this sport, was laughing, hanging on the stirrup of Albrecht, looking up at him. I noted that his kaiila was within the whip circle, within which the girl stood. Her- feet were off the ground and she had the side of her head pressed against his furred boot.

"Run," I said.

She cried out angrily, as did Albrecht, and Kamchak laughed. "Run, you little fool," shouted Conrad. The girl had released the stirrup and her feet struck the ground. She was off balance but righted herself and with an angry cry she sped from the circle. By surprising her I had gained perhaps ten or fifteen yards.

I took the binding thong from my belt and put it in my teeth.

I began to swing the bole.

To my amazement, as I swung the hole in ever faster circles, never taking my eyes off her, she broke the straight running pattern only about fifty yards from the whip circle, and began to dodge, moving always, however, toward the lance. This puzzled me. Surely she had not miscounted, not Dina of Turia. As the judge counted aloud I observed the pattern, two left, then a long right to compensate, moving toward the lance; two left, then right; two left, then right. "Fifteen!" called the judge, and I streaked on kailla back from the circle of the boskhide whip.

I rode at full speed, for there was not a beat to lose. Even if by good fortune I managed to tie Albrecht, Elizabeth would still belong to the Kassars, for Conrad had a clear win over Kamchak. It is dangerous, of course, to approach any but a naive, straight-running, perhaps terrified, girl at full speed, for should she dodge or move to one side, one will have to slow the kaiila to turn it after her, lest one be carried past her too rapidly, even at the margins of bole range. But I could judge Dina's run, two left, one right, so I set the kaiila running at full speed for what would seem to be the unwilling point of rendezvous between Dina and the leather of the bole. I was surprised at the simplicity of her pattern.- I wondered how it could be that such a girl had never been taken in less than thirty-two beats, that she had reached the lance forty times.

I would release the bole in another beat as she took her second sprint to the left.

Then I remembered the intelligence of her eyes, her confi- dence, that never had she been taken in less than thirty-two beats, that she had reached the lance forty times. Her skills must be subtle, her timing marvelous.

I released the bole, risking all, hurling it not to the expect- ed rendezvous of the second left but to a first right, unex- pected, the first break in the two-left, one-right pattern. I heard her startled cry as the weighted leather straps flashed about her thighs, calves and ankles, in an instant lashing them together as tightly as though by binding fiber. Hardly slack- ening speed I swept past the girl, turned the kaiila to face her, and again kicked it into a full gallop. I briefly saw a look of utter astonishment on her beautiful face. Her hands were out, trying instinctively to maintain her balance; the bole weights were still snapping about her ankles in tiny, angry circles; in an instant she would fall to the grass; racing past I seized her by the hair and threw her over the saddle; scarcely did she comprehend what was happening before she found herself my prisoner, while yet the kaiila did still gallop, bound about the pommel of the saddle. I had not taken even the time to dismount. Only perhaps a beat or two before the kaiila leapt into the circle had I finished the knots that confined her. I threw her to the turf at the judge's feet. The judge, and the crowd, seemed speechless.

"Time!" called Kamchak.

The judge looked startled, as though he could not believe what he had seen. He took his hand from the side of the "Time!" called Kamchak.

The judge looked at him. "Seventeen," he whispered. The crowd was silent, then, suddenly, as unexpectedly as a clap of thunder, they began to roar and cheer Kamchak was thumping a very despondent looking Conrad and Albrecht on the shoulders.

I looked down at Dina of Turia. Looking at me in rage, she began to pull and squirm in the thongs, twisting in the grass.

The judge allowed her to do so for perhaps a few lien, may- be thirty seconds or so,"The wench is secured," he said.

There was another great cry and cheer from the crowd. They were mostly Tuchuks, and were highly pleased with what they had seen, but I saw, too, that even the Kassars and the one or two Paravaci present and the Kataii were unstint- ing in their acclaim. The crowd had gone mad.

Elizabeth Cardwell was leaping up and down clapping her hands.

I looked down at Dina, who lay at my feet, now no longer struggling.

I removed the bole from her legs.

With my quiva I slashed the thong on her ankles, permit- ting her to struggle to her feet.

She stood facing me, clad Kajir, her wrists still thonged behind her.

I refastened the bole at my saddle. "I keep my bole, it seems," I said.

She tried to free her wrists, but could not, of course, do so.

Helpless she stood waiting for me.

I then took Dina of Turia in my arms and, at some length, and with a certain admitted satisfaction, collected my win- nings. Because she had annoyed me the kiss that was hers was that of master to a slave girl; yet was I patient because the kiss itself was not enough; I was not satisfied until, despite herself, I read in my arms her body's sudden, involun- tary admission that I had conquered. "Master," she said, her eyes glazed, too weak to struggle against the thongs that encircled her wrists. With a cheerful slap I sped her back to Albrecht, who, angry, with the tip of his lance, severed the bonds that had confined her. Kamchak was laughing, and Conrad as well. And, too, many in the crowd. Elizabeth Cardwell, however, to my surprise, seemed furious. She had pulled on her furs. When I looked at her, she looked away, angrily.

I wondered what was the matter with her.

Had I not saved her?

Were not the points between Kamchak and I, and Conrad and Albrecht event Was she not safe and the match at an end?

"The score is tied," said Kamchak, "and the wager is concluded. There is no winner."

"/Agreed," said Conrad.

"No," said Albrecht.

We looked at him.

"Lance and tospit," he said.

"The match is at an end," I said.

"There is no winner," protested Albrecht.

"That is true," said Kamchak.

"There must be a winner," said Albrecht.

"I have ridden enough for today," said Kamchak.

"I, too," said Conrad. "Let us return to our wagons." Albrecht pointed his lance at me. "You are challenged," he said. "Lance and tospit."

"We have finished with that," I said.

"The living wand!" shouted Albrecht.

Kamchak sucked in his breath.

Several in the crowd shouted out, "The living wand!" I looked at Kamchak. I saw in his eyes that the challenge must be accepted. In this matter I must be Tuchuk. Save for armed combat, lance and tospit with the living wand is the most dangerous of the sports of the Wagon Peoples.

In this sport, as might be expected, one's own slave must stand for one. It is essentially the same sport as lancing the tospit from the wand, save that the fruit is held in the mouth of a girl, who is slain should she move or in any way withdraw from the lance.

Needless to say many a slave girl has been injured in this cruel sport.

"I do not want to stand for him!" cried out Elizabeth Cardwell.

"Stand for him, Slave," snarled Kamchak.

Elizabeth Cardwell took her position, standing sideways, the tospit held delicately between her teeth.

For some reason she did not seem afraid but rather, to my mind, incomprehensibly infuriated. She should have been shuddering with terror. Instead she seemed indignant. But she stood like a rock and when I thundered past her the tip of my lance had been thrust through the tospit. The girl who had bitten the neck of the kaiila, and whose leg had been torn by its teeth, stood for Albrecht. With almost scornful ease he raced past her lifting the tospit from her mouth with the tip of his lance.

"Three points for each," announced the judge.

"We are finished," I said to Albrecht. "It is a tie. There is no winner."

He held his saddle on his rearing kaiila. "There will be a winner!" he cried. "Facing the lancer"

"I will not ride," I said.

"I claim victory and the woman" shouted Albrecht.

"It will be his," said the judge, "if you do not ride." I would ride.

Elizabeth, unmoving, faced me, some fifty yards away. This is the most difficult of the lance sports. The thrust must be made with exquisite lightness, the lance loose in the hand, the hand not in the retaining thong, but allowing the lance to slip back, then when clear, moving it to the left and, hopefully, past the living wand. If well done, this is a delicate and beautiful stroke. If clumsily done the girl will be scarred, or perhaps slain.

Elizabeth stood facing me, not frightened, but seemingly rather put upon. Her fists were even clenched.

I hoped that she would not be injured. When she had stood sideways I had favored the left, so that if the stroke was in error, the lance would miss the tospit altogether; but now, as she faced me, the stroke must be made for the center of the fruit; nothing else would do.

The gait of the kaiila was swift and even.

A cry went up from the crowd as I passed Elizabeth, the tospit on the point of the lance.

Warriors were pounding on the lacquered shields with their lances. Men shouted. I heard the thrilled cries of slave girls. I turned to see Elizabeth waver, and almost faint, but she did not do so.

Albrecht the Kassar, angry, lowered his lance and set out for his girl.

In an instant he had passed her, the tospit riding the lance tip.

The girl was standing perfectly still, smiling.

The crowd cheered as well for Albrecht.

Then they were quiet, for the judge was rushing to the lance of Albrecht, demanding it.

Albrecht the Kassar, puzzled, surrendered the weapon. "There is blood on the weapon," said the judge.

"She was not touched," cried Albrecht.

"I was not touched!" cried the air!.

The judge showed the point of the lance. There was a tiny stain of blood at its tip, and too there was a smear of blood on the skin of the small yellowish-white fruit.

"Open your mouth, slave," demanded the judge.

The girl shook her head.

"Do it," said Albrecht.

She did so and the judge, holding her teeth apart roughly with his hands, peered within. There was blood in her mouth. The girl had been swallowing it, rather than show she had been struck.

It seemed to me she was a brave, fine girl.

It was with a kind of shock that I suddenly realized that she, and Dina of Turia, now belonged to Kamchak and myself.

The two girls, while Elizabeth Cardwell looked on angrily, knelt before Kamchak and myself, lowering their heads, lifting and extending their arms, wrists crossed. Kamchak, chuckling, leaped down from his kaiila and quickly, with binding fiber, bound their wrists. He then put a leather thong on the neck of each and tied the free ends to the pommel of his saddle. Thus secured, the girls knelt beside the paws of his kaiila. I saw Dina of Turia look at me. In her eyes, soft with tears, I read the timid concession that I was her master. "I do not know what we need with all these slaves," Elizabeth Cardwell was saying.

"Be silent," said Kamchak, "or you will be branded." Elizabeth Cardwell, for some reason, looked at me in fury, rather than Kamchak. She threw back her head, her little nose in the air, her brown hair bouncing on her shoul- dcrs.

Then for no reason I understood, I took binding fiber and bound her wrists before her body, and, as Kamchak had done with the other girls, put a thong on her neck and tied it to the pommel of my saddle.

It was perhaps my way of reminding her, should she forget, that she too was a slave.

"Tonight, Little Barbarian," said Kamchak, winking at her, "you will sleep chained under the wagon."

Elizabeth stifled a cry of rage.

Then Kamchak and I, on kaiila-back, made our way back to our wagon, leading the bound girls.

"The Season of Little Grass is upon us," said Kamchak. "Tomorrow the herds will move toward Turia."

I nodded. The Wintering was done. There would now be the third phase of the Omen Year, the Return to Turia. It was now, perhaps, I hoped, that I might learn the answer to the riddles which had not ceased to disturb me, that I might learn the answer to the mystery of the message collar, perhaps the answer to the numerous mysteries which had attended it, and perhaps, at last, find some clue, as I had not yet with the wagons, to the whereabouts or fate of the doubtless golden spheroid that was or had been the last egg of Priest-Kings.

"I will take you to Turia," said Kamchak.

"Good," I said.

I had enjoyed the Wintering, but now it was done. The bask were moving south with the coming of the spring. I and the wagons would go with them.

There was little doubt that I, in the worn, red tunic of a warrior, and Kamchak, in the black leather of the Tuchuks, seemed somewhat out of place at the banquet of Saphrar, merchant of Turia.

"It is the spiced brain of the Turian vulo," Saphrar was explaining.

It was somewhat surprising to me that Kamchak and I, being in our way ambassadors of the Wagon Peoples, were entertained in the house of Saphrar, the merchant, rather than in the palace of Phanius Turmus, Administrator of Turia. Kamchak's explanation was reasonably satisfying. There were apparently two reasons, the official reason and the real reason. The official reason, proclaimed by Phanius Turmus, the Administrator, and others high in the govern- ment, was that those of the Wagon Peoples were unworthy to be entertained in the administrative palace; the real rea- son, apparently seldom proclaimed by anyone, was that the true power in Turia lay actually with the Caste of Mer- chants, chief of whom was Saphrar, as it does in many cities. The Administrator, however, would not be uninformed. His presence at the banquet was felt in the person of his plenipo- tentiary, Kamras, of the Caste of Warriors, a captain, said to be Champion of Turia.

I shot the spiced vulo brain into my mouth on the tip of a golden eating prong, a utensil, as far as I knew, unique to Turia. I took a large swallow of fierce Paga, washing it down as rapidly as possible. I did not much care for the sweet, syrupy wines of Turia, flavored and sugared to the point where one could almost leave one's fingerprint on their surface. It might be mentioned, for those unaware of the fact, that the Caste of Merchants is not considered one of the tradi- tional five High Castes of Gor the Initiates, Scribes, Physi- cians, Builders and Warriors. Most commonly, and doubtless unfortunately, it is only members of the five high castes who occupy positions on the High Councils of the cities. Nonethe- less, as might be expected, the gold of merchants, in most cities, exercises its not imponderable influence, not always in so vulgar a form as bribery and gratuities, but more often in the delicate matters of extending or refusing to extend credit in connection with the projects, desires or needs of the High Councils. There is a saying on Gor, "Gold has no caste." It is a saying of which the merchants are fond. Indeed, secretly among themselves, I have heard, they regard themselves as the highest caste on Gor, though they would not say so for fear of rousing the indignation of other castes. There would be something, of course, to be said for such a claim, for the merchants are often indeed in their way, brave, shrewd, skilled men, making long journeys, venturing their goods, risking caravans, negotiating commercial agreements, among themselves developing and enforcing a body of Merchant Law, the only common legal arrangements existing among the Gorean cities. Merchants also, in effect, arrange and administer the four great fairs that take place each year near the Sardar Mountains. I say "in effect" because the fairs are nominally under the direction of a committee of the Caste of Initiates, which, however, largely contents itself with its cere- monies and sacrifices, and is only too happy to delegate the complex management of those vast, commercial phenomena, the Sardar Fairs, to members of the lowly, much-despised Caste of Merchants, without which, incidentally, the fairs most likely could not exist, certainly not at any rate in their current form.

"Now this," Saphrar the merchant was telling me, "is the braised liver of the blue, four-spired Cosian wingfish." This fish is a tiny, delicate fish, blue, about the size of a tarn disk when curled in one's hand; it has three or four slender spines in its dorsal fin, which are poisonous; it is capable of hurling itself from the water and, for brief dis- tances, on its stiff pectoral fins, gliding through the air, usually to evade the smaller sea-tharlarions, which seem to be immune to the poison of the spines. This fish is also some _ APHRIS OF 85 times referred to as the songfish because, as a portion of its courtship rituals, the males and females thrust their heads from the water and utter a sort of whistling sound. The blue, four-spired wingfish is found only in the waters of Cos. Larger varieties are found farther out to sea. The small blue fish is regarded as a great delicacy, and its liver as the delicacy of delicacies.

"How is it," I asked, "that here in Turia you can serve the livers of wingfish?"

"I have a war galley in Port Kar," said Saphrar the merchant, "which I send to Cos twice a year for the fish." Saphrar was a short, fat, pinkish man, with short legs and arms; he had quick bright eyes and a tiny, roundish red- lipped mouth; upon occasion he moved his small, pudgy fingers, with rounded scarlet nails, rapidly, as though rubbing the gloss from a tarn disk or feeling the texture of a fine cloth; his head, like that of many merchants, had been shaved; his eyebrows had been removed and over each eye four golden drops had been fixed in the pinkish skin; he also had two teeth of gold, which were visible when he laughed, the upper canine teeth, probably containing poison; mer- chants are seldom trained in the use of arms. His right ear had been notched, doubtless in some accident. Such notching, I knew, is usually done to the ears of thieves; a second offense is normally punished by the loss of the right hand; a third offense by the removal of the left hand and both feet. There are few thieves, incidentally, on Gor. I have heard, though, there is a Caste of Thieves in Port Kar, a strong caste which naturally protects its members from such indignities as ear notching. In Saphrar's case, of course, he being of the Caste of Merchants, the notching of the ear would be a coincidence, albeit one that must have caused him some embarrassment. Saphrar was a pleasant, gracious fel- low, a bit indolent perhaps, save for the eyes and rapid fingers. He was surely an attentive and excellent host. I would not Rave cared to know him better.

"flow is it," I asked, "that a merchant of Turia has a war galley in Port Kar."

Saphrar reclined on the yellow cushions, behind the low table covered with wines, fruits and golden dishes heaped with delicate viands.

"I did not realize Port Kar was on friendly terms with any of the inland cities," I said.

"She is not," said Saphrar.

"Then how?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Gold has no caste," he said.

I tried the liver of the wingfish. Then another swig of Saga.

Saphrar winced.

"Perhaps," he suggested, "you would like a piece of roasted bask meat?"

I replaced the golden eating prong in its rack beside my place, shoved back the glittering dish in which lay several theoretically edible objects, carefully arranged by a slave to resemble a bouquet of wild Bowers sprouting from a rock outcropping. "Yes," I said, "I think so."

Saphrar conveyed my wishes to the scandalized Feast Stew- arc, and he, with a glare in my direction, sent two young slaves scampering off to scour the kitchens of Turia for a slice of bask meat.

I looked to one side and saw Kamchak scraping another plate clean, holding it to his mouth, sliding and shoving the carefully structured design of viands into his mouth. I glanced at Saphrar, who was now leaning on his yellow cushions, in his silken pleasure robes, white and gold, the colors of the Caste of Merchants. Saphrar, eyes closed, was nibbling on a tiny thing, still quivering, which had been impaled on a colored stick.

I turned away and watched a fire swallower perform to the leaping melodies of the musicians.

"Do not object that we are entertained in the house of Saphrar of the Merchants," Kamchak had said, "for in Turia power lies with such men."

I looked down the table a bit at Kamras, plenipotentiary of Phanius Turmus, Administrator of Turia. He was a large- wristed strong man with long, black hair. He sat as a warrior, though in robes of silk. Across his face there were two long scars, perhaps from their delicacy the scars of quiva wounds. He was said to be a great warrior, indeed, to be champion of Turia. He had not spoken with us nor acknowl- edged our presence at the feast.

"Besides," Kamchak had told me, nudging me in tile ribs, "the food and the entertainment is better in the house of Saphrar than in the palace of Phanius Turmus."

I would still, I told myself, settle for a piece of bask meat.

I wondered how the stomach of Kamchak could sustain the delightful injuries he was heaping into it with such gusto.