Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

CHAPTER 24

FRIGHT, THE MOTHER OF HATRED, POSSESSED the whole militia, but there was nowhere to run. Behind them, the Grasshopper; in front of them, the Emperor. Prowling among them were Chuntar Hadala, and two willing killers of conscripts: the major and Ulad. The flanks were faced with fires, but it was an unusually windless day. The fires had been set in the night, and no one was sure who set them, but because of the calm air nobody worried about them much. Before dawn, Ulad and three husky townsmen unloaded two cannon from the wagons and dragged them forward to face the foe to the east. Then they unloaded two more and aimed them toward the Nomads. The sharf watched them do it, then broke his forces into two equal groups. He moved one group north and one south; they halted so as to face the Valanans from the southwest and northwest. Ulad rearranged the cannon accordingly, but the Nomad movement spoke of no need for cannon. The way west was wide open, by invitation of the sharf. In Blacktooth’s opinion, acceptance was the only sane thing to do, but Chuntar Cardinal Hadala was adamant.

“All you who repent your sins, I absolve you,” he announced to the assembled troops at dawn, “in nomine patris, filii, et spiritus sancti. And if you die in battle for God’s glory and the Holy Father’s righteous cause, you will attain Heaven without purgatory’s purifying pain. I now bless you…”

“This,” Aberlott whispered, “from a man with the Holy Father’s excommunication in his pocket.”

Surprised that other conscripts were not jeering Hadala, Blacktooth asked, “Didn’t you tell the others what I told you to?”

Aberlott was meekly silent. Nimmy looked him in the eye, then laughed bitterly. Everybody knew that Aberlott was an outrageous liar, not to be believed. Besides, where would he get the courage to accuse a cardinal behind the cardinal’s back when every man would in the end point his finger right at Aberlott and say, “I heard it from him”? Well, Blacktooth would have to spread the word himself, or at least enlist one of the Yellow Guard. It was not easy to get close to them, however. They were close only to Cardinal Hadala, as they had always been to Brownpony.

Water was rationed. The supply of jerky was exhausted, and with no hunting possible, the men ate beans and biscuits. The enemy waited for Hadala to move. Hadala waited for gleps from the Valley to attack the enemy from the rear, but this seemed wishful thinking to Blacktooth. On the third day of the standoff, in plain view of the Valana forces, Sharf Bråm sent a messenger under a flag of truce to the Texark commander. This further traffic with the enemy increased the cardinal’s fury. At Cleaver’s orders, several townsmen shot at the messenger, but he was riding beyond range for accurate rifle fire.

That night before the moon rose, fourteen Grasshopper warriors stole into camp, killed two sentries, and stole or drove away most of the horses. After the rise of the gibbous moon, a detachment of Texark cavalry, which had approached noiselessly in total darkness, mounted and rode through the camp screaming and killing with sabers and horse pistols. Several attackers were killed in turn by the well-armed militiamen. After dawn, eighteen bodies were buried, five of them wearing Texark uniforms. There were seven nonfatal casualties as well. Aberlott had lost his right ear to a Texark saber.

“You never left your bedroll, you bastard,” he said to Nimmy.

“I guess I slept through it,” Blacktooth lied.

The loss of the horses drove the Hadala over the edge. He ordered an infantry attack on the now entrenched Texark position. The cardinal took a cross and proceeded to march proudly with it at the head of the army, his red cap and sash making him a conspicuous target. Major Gleaver shot three men who refused to move out. Three companies of green troops with bayonets fixed to their excellent rifles moved forward behind sporadic covering fire from three cannon. Ulad, furious as usual, led the way behind the cardinal crucifer, but kept looking back to see that the others stayed in line. Terror whitened men’s faces as they came into range and some of them began to fall from a crackle of fire by the enemy. Nimmy kept his eyes half closed and prayed to the Virgin. He was astonished that there was no artillery fire directed at them from the Texark rear.

When they had covered half the distance to the enemy lines, he could see that berms of earth and sod had been thrown up. Imperial troops were firing at them from well-protected positions, and the effect was devastating. About a third of the men had fallen. Twice Ulad ordered the attackers to halt and fire, but each time the enemy’s heads ducked behind the berms.

“Double-time march! Shoot while you run!”

In terms of accuracy, it was a waste of ammunition, but it kept the enemy’s heads down. After five shots, it was necessary to slow to a walk in order to reload. Most men had brought two extra cylinders, already loaded, but while it was faster to change cylinders than to reload individual chambers, it was necessary to stop altogether to avoid dropping the pins. And to stop was to be shot by a spook officer.

“Look! They’re clearing out. Run, damn it, run!”

Terror changed to a furious glee as the townsmen realized that the Texark rifle fire from the forward berm had ceased, although there was still shooting in the distance.

“Pope’s children! My people are there!” Hadala was shouting back at them. He kept waving his cross like a club toward the foothills. “They’re attacking from the rear.”

“That explains why cannonballs aren’t raining down,” Nimmy said toward Aberlott’s bandaged ear. The message was not received above the sound of gunfire, but he added, “Maybe the gleps’ cardinal is not as crazy as we thought.”

The Texark army was not at all defeated. Forced by guerrillas from the Valley to defend their rear, they had retreated from the attack out of the west to defend their artillery from an attack out of the east. The retreat was limited. When militiamen climbed the first berm, three of them were shot down as they went over the top.

Gleaver called a halt. Obviously there were defenders of the second berm. But the attackers could use the enemy’s first berm for their own shelter while they ate pocket rations and sipped from canteens.

Nimmy looked up to see Gai-See crawling toward him up a shallow gully. He was not hiding from the enemy, he was hiding from Hadala and the officers.

“Is it true?” asked the Asian warrior monk after taking a careful look around.

“Yes,” Nimmy told him, “if you got it from Aberlott.”

Gai-See nodded grimly and crawled away by the same route.

Now something would happen, he thought, but it did not happen immediately.

The sun was scorching in early August, but by midafternoon a light westerly breeze came up. Blacktooth noticed that the restless Grasshopper had moved again. The Nomads had re-formed and split into three groups, positioned to the north, west, and south of the wagons. They were still out of range, visible against a background of smoke, but the groups to the north and south were in place for a flanking attack against either the Hannegan or the cardinal.

The fires seemed to be moving slowly eastward. They marked the probable confines of the battleground and defined the possible lines of advance or retreat for the Nomad groups who had likely set them.

Soon afterward, during an assault on the second berm, while trying to shoot over a man’s head Nimmy shot him down. Facing Blacktooth, the Texark trooper lay on his back on the sandbank just as he fell when shot. A glep, a glep in Texark uniform, with Hadala’s dappled skin and the rather common hairy ears. He stared up at the former monk, trying to see him against the smoke-blurred orb of the sun. His hands were raised toward his face and they hung limply from the wrists; he looked like a puppy begging for a morsel. Why surrender with a ruined abdomen? He clenched his lids, waiting, hoping to be shot again. But Blacktooth dared not to waste ammunition on pity, or even take time to reload, because Ulad was watching him with deep suspicion. Every time he felt such tension, Wooshin’s face and words came to his mind.

“Life is a dewdrop and a flash of lightning—that’s the way to look at it, Nimmy.”

Touching the point of the bayonet to the man’s throat, Blacktooth severed the carotid artery. A blade of lightning, a drop of red dew. The drop became a spurting stream. He stepped back, looking around. His throat hurt and was dry; it was a hot day and the air was full of smoke from burning grass.

“Each man, each being is a world. There are innumerable worlds, my friend. Each world of this innumerable array contains and inter penetrates all the other worlds throughout the myriad cosmos, for there are no barriers between the worlds.” Metaphysics from an executioner? For the Axe, religion was a martial art. He wanted to talk to Gai-See or Woosoh-Loh about it, but they were always with the cardinal and the officers, and he was made afraid by Gai-See’s crawling to him in a ditch.

It’s just that I have cut my own throat somehow, he thought, looking at the corpse. So murder feels like this to the murderer. Holy Mother of God, forgive me, but I don’t feel very much.

Sergeant Ulad was still watching him from the left, shaking his head. He must be careful not to waver or hesitate. Ulad was suspicious of his piety. He could see two men beyond Ulad. Corporal Victros had climbed to the top of the berm. He motioned the attack party upward.

The sandbank flanked a scythed and well-hoed—but useless— firebreak. Blacktooth climbed the berm and cautiously peered beyond, but the patrol had fled. Why? It was the best place to stop and fight, unless they thought the Valanans’ firepower overwhelming. Or, more likely, they might know that greater safety for them lay ahead, and that the glep guerrillas must be prevented from seizing their artillery. Standing atop the berm, he looked back toward the wagons. What had happened to the men guarding them? He could see Nomads in the distance, but no militiamen with the wagons. Without horses to draw them, they were lost anyway.

Somewhere to the north the tall grass was burning faster. They had been crosswind of the fire whose smoke veiled the foothills in the northeast, but they were almost downwind now and still the breeze was changing. He began to smell the smoke, and could see to the north distant horseback warriors moving west out of the fire’s path. If the wind kept veering, the wagons would be in danger. He motioned to Ulad that the enemy had fled. They went over the sandbank and continued their cautious advance, camouflaged shadows flitting from knoll to knoll in the great ocean of grass.

Watching from a distance on a hillcrest south of the battle, the Grasshopper sharf could see some of the fight going on around the Texark artillery pieces. Texark was temporarily in trouble, and he was pleased. Demon Light hoped to influence the outcome of the battle by moving warriors about in a menacing way from time to time without actually exposing them to fire. His only intention at the moment was to keep the wagons from being captured by anyone except himself, although if he got them, the Grasshopper had no pressing need for extra ammunition, and the horde’s arsenal was already wealthy in new guns. He was not opposed to giving the gleps guns, if it became possible. Now it seemed it might be possible. It was clear that the Texark force was being harassed from the rear. The fact surprised him as much as it did the Texarki.

Demon Light had warned them of Hadala’s expedition, but they had trusted him only enough to send two companies of cavalry, two of light horse, and a few artillery pieces to the region where he told them the townsmen would try a border crossing. Surprising to Eltür was the fact that many of the Texark troops were gleps, drafted from the Valley. They had not expected a glep attack from the rear, and had not come well prepared. They would regret not having taken him seriously enough. Such regret might incline them to trust him more next time. When he sent them amessage under a white flag, they had listened politely to the messenger as he laid claim to the contents of the wagons, and if this claim were honored, there would be no reason for hostilities. He had also warned the Texark commander that he was about to steal the townsmen’s horses. About the wagons, the commander gave a polite but evasive answer, and he smiled on the horse-theft project. In this situation, Demon Light was reluctant to attack his hereditary enemies except to prevent seizure of munitions.

Nothing prevented his enjoyment of the conflict unfolding before him except a report by a scout from his southwest detachment that a band of motherless ones had approached but stopped a few minutes’ ride away and occupied a hilltop there. To Bråm, they were a damn nuisance, and they too wanted the guns. He was aware that many of the motherless ones in the south part of the Wilddog lands had been armed by Dion and sent against the enemy in the Province, but these outlaws were far from that battle, and if they were able to get their hands on the new weapons, they were as likely to shoot at his people as at the Texarki, but they were even more likely to sell the fancy guns to the Hannegan, who had been slow in getting them.

Though it would spoil his view of the fight for a time, he decided to withdraw his detachment from the north where the fire was beginning to crowd his rear, then to skirt around the townsmen’s position and join all his forces together again between the militia and the outlaws. It would give other commanders something to wonder about, and the fires had become the Grasshopper’s allies, as the Grasshopper sharf knew they would when he practiced his family motto and set them. As he rode between the Valanans and a group of his own men to the west, he noticed with approval that the horses stolen from the wagoneers were being kept out of sight beyond a ridge. None of his warriors’ mounts were broken as draft horses, so seizing and keeping the grass-eaters’ animals was essential to his plans. He sent a messenger to tell his cousin to the west of him to post enough men to guard the horses and join the rest of the detachment with Eltür’s main force.

Sundown was approaching when the enemy resumed fire, and Cardinal Hadala was among the first to fall. Elswitch Gleaver rushed to his side, inspected his wound, which he seemed to find in the back, and turned to look around at the men. This time Blacktooth saw Gai-See lift his pistol again and shoot Major Gleaver in the forehead. At the same time, a high-pitched scream came from the rear. Ulad’s voice. The blade of Woosoh-Loh’s sword rose bloody into the air and fell again. Junior officers were shouting angrily.

Brother Blacktooth St. George threw away his rifle, picked up a pistol from the body of a slain officer, and ran south for his life. A bullet struck the ground near his feet, but he was unsure which of three sides was shooting at him.

As he ran around the bend near the crest of the ridge, he noticed a wide tunnel under a rock where something made its home. It was just big enough for him to slip into, and he dived for it, feet first, praying earnestly that the owner was absent. The tunnel sloped downward as he slid into it and it was somewhat deeper than expected. He braked his slide and found his face two feet from the sunlit opening. Between the straps of his sandals, he felt wiggling fur with his feet; something bit his big toe, tiny fangs but sharp. He kicked it off. Other mouths were chewing on his sandal straps. My God, I’m in a cougar’s den, and I am going to die!

Today is like any other day in being the day of death. Today a war is going on and I am not a Daniel in this den, O Saint Leibowitz. Still, it’s the only day I’ve got. Last week it was a thunderstorm, and the wet body of a lightning-struck warrior. Year before last a cyclone killed seventeen Jackrabbit peasants. Then the locusts, the locusts, the locusts, and the emaciated corpses found frozen last winter. Just like any other day, he noted, as a bullet ricocheted off the rock above his head. The spent lump of lead fell into his waist and he picked it up to inspect in the dim light. It was no bullet from a Grasshopper or Valanan weapon, but a musket ball from a Texark or an outlaw piece. The fact gave him a general idea of the direction of the enemy.

He felt around with his feet, kicking kittens away. Their teeth were needles. What was keeping their mother? Afraid of the fires, perhaps. He too feared them. “In here, we’ll choke to death,” he told the kittens.

While he was thus indulging himself in more fear and self-pity than was usual before he had so recently killed a man, something came and darkened the light from the end of the tunnel. He prepared to die.

Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee…

“Ho! Who is down there?” The language was Rockymount, but the accent was from Asia. Nimmy looked up to see a rifle aimed at his face.

“Don’t shoot, it’s Blacktooth. Is it safe to come out?”

“It’s not safe anywhere yet,” said Gai-See, “and the fire is getting too close. Give me your hand.”

Nimmy shook a playful kitten loose from one trouser leg and crawled upward into the smoky light of late afternoon. The din of battle had subsided, except to the east where Texark troops were still holding off gleps trying to get at the weapons. The warrior and the monk climbed the ridge and lay on the ground to look over the top. They could make out the bodies of Chuntar Hadala and Major Gleaver; both had been killed by Gai-See, who, like Wooshin, was prepared to execute anyone who betrayed his master.

“Where is Woosoh-Loh?”

“Ulad shot him when he saw me execute our master’s enemies.”

“But I saw—”

“My brother lived long enough to kill his killer.”

Nimmy observed a detail of Grasshopper warriors hastily hitching three of the wagons to draft horses they had stolen, for the fire was coming closer. The wagons’ defenders had scattered during the infantry skirmish. The Valana Militia had been destroyed, by death, desertion, and the absence of command. From the east, Texark cavalry was riding toward the scene, but warily, for behind the ridge to the south was the Demon Light’s main force, and just to the north was the advancing wildfire. Half a mile from where they lay, a Texark trooper rode to the top of the ridge to observe the Grasshopper order of battle. Gai-See rolled over, lifted his rifle, aimed very high, and fired. The impossible shot fell close enough to frighten the trooper’s horse, and alerted the Grasshopper, who joined Gai-See in firing on the scout. The scout retreated. Gai-See stood up and looked south. Eltür’s warriors were watching. Evidently they were not shooting at militia uniforms.

“Look!” said Gai-See, pointing. “Somebody killed a big cat.”

Blacktooth stood beside him, then went to investigate. The animal lay on the rocks twenty paces west of them. It was a female.

“Come on,” he said to Gai-See, and went back down the ridge to the cougar’s den. Soon they had recovered the kittens, but three Nomads rode up with drawn guns and spoke in Grasshopper.

“Drop your weapons at once, citizens! Surrender.”

They complied, but Nimmy smiled at the polite word “citizens,” and replied in the same language. “The troopers are riding toward the wagons, you know. We’ll gladly surrender, but we’ll need our weapons to get home again.”

One warrior rode to the top of the ridge. The other dismounted and recovered the guns. As he unloaded them, he spoke to Blacktooth.

“You are the man who came out to parley with the sharf. He says you are a servant of the highest Christian shaman. Is that so?”

“It used to be so.”

The warrior handed him back his unloaded pistol, then returned Gai-See’s empty rifle.

“You are the man who killed the cardinal and the major, are you not?”

Gai-See nodded. The other warrior came down from the ridge and said, “We’d better tell Sharf Eltür it’s time to attack. Let’s go!”

They both rode away, leaving the two to follow on foot with empty firearms. As soon as the warriors returned to their command, the main party of Nomads split into two groups, one of which rode to the bottom of the ridge, dismounted, and climbed it on foot; they took prone positions on the crest as snipers. From the fact that heavy smoke was blowing south over the ridge, and that the snipers did not commence firing at once, Nimmy deduced that the fire was delaying the movement of the cavalry toward the wagons. Every time a trooper mounted the ridge to the east to reconnoiter, he was fired upon by the main Nomad party. The Texark commander probably wished to cross the ridge before riding west, but the Grasshopper made it impossible. At least some of the wagons were being pulled west by Valanan draft horses driven by Nomads. The rest would soon be caught by wildfire, if not captured first by Texark.

By sundown, the rest of the wagons had been swept up in the fire; some exploded, all burned. Burned too were the bodies of the slain, but the wind subsided at twilight and the blaze did not cross the ridge. Sharf Bråm had rounded up and fed all the militia survivors who surrendered their arms. The few who refused to give them up, mostly spook officers who feared revenge by Valanan conscripts, he ordered killed. He ordered his warriors to treat the prisoners of war with courtesy, but the Grasshopper fighters were too full of playful malice toward farmers for the farmers’ comfort. Food was shared, but dipped in sand. One warrior lent Nimmy a leather pouch large enough for three cougar kittens, then claimed the monk had stolen it. There were less than forty exhausted captives, but some other deserters had perhaps escaped capture by the Texarki or the Nomads.

When he saw Nimmy among the refugees, Demon Light called him to his side as interpreter. After laughing at the kittens, he returned the monk’s pistol and ammunition. Nimmy immediately asked permission to turn the weapon over to Gai-See. “My eyes are too weak to hit anything. I killed a man by mistake, when I meant to miss him.”

Eltür sent for Gai-See and after a brief conversation through Blacktooth concerning the warrior monk’s continuing loyalty to Brownpony, the sharf gave him his weapons back. Then he looked at the smoky sky.

“Your Pope’s wife has come. Look. The sister of the Day Maiden.”

Overhead, a large bird was circling the battlefield. In the smoke and the light of the late sun, the buzzard appeared to be bright red. Other birds were gathering. They seemed small and dark by contrast, but perhaps they flew at higher altitude.

“It means the battle is over.”

Nimmy and Gai-See were eerily silent.

“Tomorrow we leave for the tents of my tribe,” Bråm said. “The wounded can stay there until they heal. The rest of you will be taken west to be judged by the Qæsach dri Vørdar, Høngan Ösle Chür . Then I imagine you will be escorted back to Valana, or in your case, Nyinden, to your Brownpony. Tell this to the others. Tell them they must travel with us, or they will fall into the hands of the motherless ones. We have recaptured enough of Hadala’s horses for you to ride.”

Demon Light seemed quite friendly, and Nimmy dared ask, “Are you satisfied with today’s outcome, Sharf Bråm?”

“The Burregun will not eat Grasshopper bodies; I lost no men,” said the Nomad leader. “We captured five wagonloads of rifles and pistols before the fire or the motherless got to them. The ammunition wagons exploded. The Texarki must have got about four loads of weapons that went through the fire. Those guns were ruined.”

“Ruined as weapons, maybe, but not as patterns for Texark to copy,” Nimmy said.

“You think so? And how long will that take?”

“I don’t know. Months, probably.”

“There is one other matter I do find troublesome, Nyinden,” said Eltür. “Do you know that there were many gleps among the Texarki?”

Nimmy frowned. “The man I killed was a glep! That surprised me. It seems that the Emperor is either impressing able-bodied gleps from the Valley, or hiring them as mercenaries. It suggests he is short of manpower.”

“Or, he is sending some of his main force to the east of the Great River, as we hoped. There was dissent in the Texark ranks. My messengers told me so. Do you understand why?”

“I think so. Cardinal Hadala was expecting a force from the Valley to strike the troopers’ rear. When they did so, the glep troopers probably refused to fight. Maybe that’s why they retreated from us.”

Eltür snorted. “You townsmen make good corpses but not good killers. It had to be the reason. Now, tomorrow we must go to a messenger family and send today’s news to the Lord of the Hordes and your Pope. You may, if you wish, write to Brownpony yourself, so long as you tell me what you say to him.”

“Of course! You may read it.”

Demon Light laughed scornfully and departed. Blacktooth’s face burned. He had forgotten that the sharf was without letters.

Blacktooth was prepared to write his letter on cowhide with ink made of blood and soot, but the messenger family to which Bråm brought him the following afternoon kept paper and pens for such emergencies, although they themselves were barely literate. He wrote hurriedly, because the sharf was impatient to return to his family and tribe.

The relay horses of the messenger families were fast and frequently changed. In late August, the moon was waxing, permitting them to ride by night. Still, Nimmy was astonished by the speed of Brownpony’s reply. It was very simple. “Honor the slaughtering festival, then come at once,” said Amen II, only three weeks later.

His cousins had been teasing him unmercifully about joining the fourteen-year-olds who would be undergoing the rites of passage to manhood at the festival, which normally occurred during a period of several days around the last full moon of summer, before the autumnal equinox. “They will stop calling you ‘Nimmy,’ if you endure the rite,” the great-granddaughter of his own great-great-grandmother told him.

“Thank you, but the first man to call me ‘Nimmy’ was Holy Madness, the Lord of the Hordes, and he intended no insult. I am not a warrior, I am not a Nomad.”

This was the same festival which had been declared a movable feast last year when its usual time coincided with the funeral of Granduncle Brokenfoot. The farmers celebrated a harvest festival at about the same date, but for the Nomads it marked the beginning of the time of killing off old cattle and weaklings who could not survive the winter. Women culled out the horses not fit for war or breeding, and sold them to farmers north of the Misery River, or had them butchered and barbecued. Many of the slaughtered animals were converted into jerky for the time of deep snow when the wild herds were hard to reach.

It was a time for dancing, for drums, for gluttony, smoking keneb, drinking farmers’ wine, for fighting by firelight, and for celebrating the ravishing by Empty Sky of the Wild Horse Woman. Young men crawled into the tents of sweethearts, and Blacktooth was visited in the night by the dark form of a woman who would not reveal her name, but began removing his clothes. He was careful to do nothing that might offend her, and it turned out to be a hot and sweaty night.

The following morning, one of his female cousins smiled whenever she caught his glance. Her name was Pretty Dances, and she was chubby as a pig, but cute and comely. He thought of Ædrea and avoided her glance as much as possible.

He had established his honor by fighting several young men his own size, and did well enough to avoid further teasing, but they still called him Nimmy more often than Nyinden.

On the day before his departure from the lands of his ancestors, the Grasshopper double agent Black Eyes brought him a book he had obtained in a transaction with Texark soldiers. Black Eyes had occupied the cage across the aisle when he and Brownpony were prisoners in the Emperor’s zoo, and he still admired Blacktooth for an alleged attempt to kill Filpeo.

“The book cost me seven steers,” he told the monk. “The sharf thinks it might help you teach his nephews, because the soldiers said it is written in our own tongue. I don’t understand how a book can have a tongue.”

Nimmy looked at the Nomadic title and felt a rush of grief and shame. The Book of Beginnings: Volume One, by Verus Sarquus Boedullus. The Texark publisher had done a good job of duplicating Blacktooth’s pan-Nomadic orthography, with the new vowels which permitted any Nomad of any horde to hear the words as pronounced in his own dialect. In the front matter, there was an acknowledgment that the translation had come from Leibowitz Abbey, but there was of course no mention of the translator’s name. Blacktooth had not included it in the original.

The face of the late Abbot Jarad loomed large in his mind, and Jarad’s voice spoke to him as before, saying, “All right, Brother St. George, now think—think of the thousands of wild young Nomads, or ex-Nomads, just like you were then. Your relatives, your friends. Now, I want to know: what could possibly be more fulfilling to you than to pass along to your people some of the religion, the civilization, the culture, that you’ve found for yourself here at San Leibowitz Abbey?”

“Why are you crying, Nyinden?” asked Black Eyes. “Is it the wrong book for Nomads?”