John Norman - Nomads of Gor

It might have been the first time ship

Kamchak had not hit her hard, but ship

To be sure there might have been some doubt that the miserable wench thonged behind Kamchak’s kaiila could have been first stake. She was gasping and stumbling; her body glistened with perspiration; her legs were black with wet dust; her hair was tangled and thick with dust; her feet and ankles were bleeding; her calves were scratched and speckled with the red bites of fennels. When Kamchak reached his wagon, the poor girl, gasping for breath, legs trembling, fell exhausted to the grass, her entire body shaking with the ordeal of her run. I supposed that Aphris of Turia had done little in her life that was more strenuous than stepping in and out of a scented bath. Elizabeth Cardwell, on the other hand, I was pleased to see, ran well, breathing evenly, showing few signs of fatigue. She had, of course, in her time with the wagons, become used to this form of exercise. I had rather come to admire her. The life in the open air, the work, had apparently been good for her. She was trim, vital, buoyant. I wondered how many of the girls in her New York office could have run as she beside the stirrup of a Tuchuk warrior.

Kamchak leaped down from the saddle of the kaiila, puffing a bit.

“Here, here!” he cried cheerily, hauling the exhausted Aphris to her knees “There is work to be done!”

She looked up at him, the thong still on her neck, her wrists bound. Her eyes seemed dazed.

“There are bosk to be groomed,” he informed her, “and their horns and hoofs must be polished there is fodder to be fetched and dung to be gathered the wagon must be wiped and the wheels greased and there is water to be brought from the stream some four pasangs. away and meat to hammer and cook for supper! hurry! hurry, Lazy Girl!”

Then he leaned back and laughed his Tuchuk laugh, slapping his thighs.

Elizabeth Cardwell was removing the thong from the girl’s neck and unbinding her wrists. “Come along,” she said, kindly. “I will show you.”

Aphris stood up, wobbling, still dazed. She turned her eyes on Elizabeth, whom she seemed to see then for the first time.

“Your accent,” said Aphris, slowly. “You are barbarian.” She said it with a kind of horror.

She turned in fury and followed Elizabeth Cardwell away.

After this Kamchak and I left the wagon and wandered about, stopping at one of the slave wagons for a bottle of Paga, which, while wandering about, we killed between us.

This year, as it turned out, the Wagon Peoples had done exceedingly well in the games of Love War a bit of news we picked up with the Paga and about seventy percent of the Turian maidens had been led slave from the stakes to which they had been manacled. In some years I knew the percentages were rather the other way about. It apparently made for zestful competition. We also heard that the wench Hereena, of the First Wagon, had been won by a Turian officer representing the house of Saphrar of the Merchants, to whom, for a fee, he presented her. I gathered that she would become another of his dancing girls. “A bit of perfume and silk will be good for that wench,” stated Kamchak. It seemed strange to think of her, so wild and insolent, arrogant on the back of her kaiila, now a perfumed, silken slave of Turians. “She could use a bit of whip and steel, that wench,” Kamchak muttered between swallows of Paga, pretty much draining the bottle. It was too bad, I thought, but at least I supposed there would be one fellows among the wagons, the young man Harold, he whom the girl had so abused, he who had not yet won the Courage Scar, who would be just as pleased as not that she, with all her contempt and spleen, was now delightfully salted away in bangles and bells behind the high, thick walls of a Turian’s pleasure garden.

Kamchak had circled around and we found ourselves back at the slave wagon.

We decided to wager to see who would get the second bottle of Paga.

“What about the flight of birds?” asked Kamchak.

“Agreed,” I said, “but I have first choice.”

“Very well,” he said.

I knew, of course, that it was spring and, in this hemisphere, most birds, if there were any migrating, would be moving south. “South,” I said.

“North,” he said.

We then waited about a minute, and I saw several birds river gulls flying north.

“Those are Vosk gulls,” said Kamchak, “In the spring, when the ice breaks in the Vosk, they fly north.”

I fished some coins out of my pouch for the Paga.

“The first southern migrations of meadow kites,” he said, “have already taken place. The migrations of the forest hurlit and the horned aim do not take place until later in the spring. This is the time that the Vosk gulls fly.”

“Oh,” I said.

Singing Tuchuk songs, we managed to make it back to the wagon.

Elizabeth had the meat roasted, though it was now considerably overdone.

“The meat is overdone,” said Kamchak.

“They are both stinking drunk,” said Aphris of Turia.

I looked at her. Both of them were beautiful. “No,” I corrected her, “gloriously inebriated.”

Kamchak was looking closely at the girls, leaning forward, squinting.

I blinked a few Ames.

“Is anything wrong?” asked Elizabeth Cardwell.

I noted that there was a large welt on the side of her face, that her hair was ripped up a bit and that there were five long scratches on the left side of her face.

“No,” I said.

Aphris of Turia appeared in even worse shape. She had surely lost more than one handful of hair. There were teeth marks in her left arm and, if I was not mistaken, her right eye was ringed and discoloured.

“The meat is overdone,” grumbled Kamchak. A master takes no interest in the squabbles of slaves, it being beneath him. He of course would not have approved had one of the girls been maimed, blinded or disfigured.

“Have the bosk been tended?” asked Kamchak.

“Yes,” said Elizabeth firmly.

Kamchak looked at Aphris. “Have the bosk been tended?” he asked.

She looked up suddenly, her eyes bright with tears. She cast an angry look at Elizabeth. “Yes,” she said, “they have been tended.”

“Good,” said Kamchak, “good.” Then he pointed at the meat. “It is overdone,” he said.

“You were hours late,” said Elizabeth.

“Hours,” repeated Aphris.

“It is overdone,” said Kamchak.

“I shall roast fresh meat,” said Elizabeth, getting up, and she did so. Aphris only sniffed.

When the meat was ready Kamchak ate his fill, and drank down, too, a flagon of bosk milk; I did the same, though the milk, at least for me, did not sit too well with the Paga of the afternoon.

Kamchak, as he often did, was sitting on what resembled a grey rock, rather squarish, except that the corners tended to be a bit rounded. When I had first seen this thing, heaped with other odds and ends in one corner of the wagon, some of the odds and ends being tankards of jewels and small, heavy chests filled with golden tarn disks, I had thought it merely a rock. Once, when rummaging through his things, Kamchak had kicked it across the rug for me to look at. I was surprised at the way it bounced on the rug and, when I picked it up, I was interested to see how light it was. It was clearly not a rock. It was rather leathery and had a rained surface. I was a bit reminded of some of the loose, tumbled rocks I had once glimpsed in certain abandoned portions of the place of Priest-Kings, far beneath the Sardar. Among such rocks it would not have been noticed.

“What do you make of it?” Kamchak asked.

“Interesting,” I observed.

“Yes,” said he, “I thought so.” He held out his hands and I tossed the object back. “I have had it for some time,” he said. “It was given to me by two travellers.”