John Norman - Nomads of Gor

“Do not Korobans brand and collar slaves?” asked Kamchak.

“Yes,” I admitted, “they do.”

I could not rid my mind of the image of the girl from Cos weeping bound on the wheel. Such tonight, or on another night, would be the lovely Elizabeth Cardwell. I threw down a wild swallow of Paga. I resolved I would somehow release the girl, somehow protect her from the cruelty of the fate decreed for her by Kamchak.

“You do not much speak,” said Kamchak, taking the bottle, puzzled.

“Must the Iron Master be called,” I asked, “to the wagon of Kamchak.”

Kamchak looked at me. “Yes,” he said.

I glared down at the polished boards of the wagon floor.

“Have you no feeling for the barbarian?” I asked.

Kamchak had never been able to pronounce her name, which be regarded as of barbarian length and complexity. “E-liz-a-beth-card-vella” he would try to say, adding the “a” sound because it is a common ending of feminine names on Gor. He could never, like most native speakers of Gorean, properly handle the “w” sound, for it is extremely rare in Gorean, existing only in certain unusual words of obviously barbarian origin. The “w” sound, incidentally, is a complex one, and, like many such sounds, is best learned only during the brief years of childhood when a child’s linguistic flexibility is at its maximum those years in which it might be trained to speak any of the languages of man with native fluency a capacity which is, for most individuals at least, lost long prior to attaining their majority. On the other hand, Kamchak could say the sound I have represented as “vella” quite easily and would upon occasion use this as Elizabeth’s name. Most often, however, he and I simply referred to her as the Little Barbarian. I had, incidentally, after the first few days, refused to speak English to her, thinking it would be more desirable for her to learn to speak, think and hear in Gorean as rapidly as possible. She could now handle the language rather well. She could not, of course, read it. She was illiterate.

Kamchak was looking at me. He laughed and leaned over and slapped me on the shoulder. “She is only a slaver” he chuckled.

“Have you no feeling for her?” I demanded.

He leaned back, serious for a moment. “Yes,” he said, “I am fond of the Little Barbarian.”

“Then why?” I demanded.

“She ran away,” said Kamchak.

I did not deny it.

“She must be taught.”

I said nothing.

“Besides,” said Kamchak, “the wagon grows crowded and she must be readied for sale.”

I took back the Paga bottle and threw down another swallow.

“Do you want to buy her?” he asked.

I thought of the wagon of Kutaituchik and the golden sphere. The Omen Taking had now begun. I must attempt this night or some other in the near future to purloin the sphere, to return it somehow to the Sardar. I was going to say, “No,” but then I thought of the girl from Cos, bound on the wheel, weeping. I wondered if I could meet Kamchak’s price. I looked up.

Suddenly Kamchak lifted his hand, alert, gesturing for silence.

I noted, too, the other Tuchuks in the wagon. Suddenly they were not moving.

Then I too heard it, the winding of a bosk horn in the — distance, and then another.

Kamchak leaped to his feet. “The camp is under attack!” he cried.

Outside, as Kamchak and I bounded down the steps of the slave wagon, the darkness was filled with hurrying men, some with torches, and running kaiila, already with their riders.

War lanterns, green and blue and yellow, were already burning on poles in the darkness, signalling the rallying grounds of the Oralus, the Hundreds, and the Oralus, the Thousands.

Each warrior of the Wagon Peoples, and that means each able-bodied man, is a member of an Or, or a Ten; each ten is a member of an Oralus, or Hundred; each Oralus is a member of an Oralus, a Thousand. Those who are unfamiliar with the Wagon Peoples, or who know them only from the swift raid, sometimes think them devoid of organization, sometimes conceive of them as mad hordes or aggregates of wild warriors, but such is not the case. Each man knows his position in his Ten, and the position of his Ten in the Hundred, and of the Hundred in the Thousand. During the day the rapid move-meets of these individually manoeuvrable units are dictated by bosk horn and movements of the standards; at night by the bosk horns and the war lanterns slung on high poles carried by riders.

Kamchak and I mounted the kaiila we had ridden and, as rapidly as we could, pressed through the throngs toward our wagon.

When the bosk horns sound the women cover the fires and prepare the men’s weapons, bringing forth arrows and bows, and lances. The quivas are always in the saddle sheaths. The bosk are hitched up and slaves, who might otherwise take advantage of the tumult, are chained.

Then the women climb to the top of the high sides on the wagons and watch the war lanterns in the distance, reading them as well as the men. Seeing if the wagons must move, and in what direction.

I heard a child screaming its disgust at being thrust in the wagon.

In a short time Kamchak and I had reached our wagon.

Aphris had had the good sense to hitch up the bosk. Kamchak kicked out the fire at the side of the wagon. “What is it?” she cried.

Kamchak took her roughly by the arm and shoved her stumbling toward the sleen cage where, holding the bars, frightened, knelt Elizabeth Cardwell. Kamchak unlocked the cage and thrust Aphris inside with Elizabeth. She was slave and would be secured, that she might not seize up a weapon or try to fight or burn wagons. “Please!” she cried, thrusting her hands through the bars. But already Kamchak had slammed shut the door and twisted the key in the lock.

“Master!” she cried. It was better, I knew, for her to be secured as she was rather than chained in the wagon, or even to the wheel. The wagons, in Turian raids, are burned.

Kamchak threw me a lance, and a quiver with forty arrows and a bow. The kaiila I rode already had, on the saddle, the quivas,-the rope and bola. Then he bounded from the top step of the wagon onto the back of his kaiila and sped toward the sound of the bosk horns. “Master!” I heard Aphris cry.

Of their ranks with a swiftness and precision that was incredible, long, flying columns of warriors flowed like rivers between the beasts.

I rode at Kamchak side and in an instant it seemed we had passed through the bellowing, startled herd and had emerged on the plain beyond. In the light of the Gorean moons we saw slaughtered bosk, some hundreds of them, and, some two hundred yards away, withdrawing, perhaps a thousand warriors mounted on tharlarion.

Suddenly, instead of giving pursuit, Kamchak drew his mount to a halt and behind him the rushing cavalries of the Tuchuks snarled pawing to a halt, holding their ground. I saw that a yellow lantern was halfway up the pole below the two red lanterns.

“Give pursuit!” I cried.

“Wait!” he cried. “We are fools! Fools!”

I drew back the reins on my kaiila to keep the beast quiet.

“Listen!” said Kamchak, agonized.

In the distance we heard a sound like a thunder of wings and then, against the three white moons of Gor, to my dismay, we saw tarnsmen pass overhead, striking toward the camp. There were perhaps eight hundred to a thousand of them. I could hear the notes of the tarn drum above controlling the flight of the formation.

“We are fools!” cried Kamchak, wheeling his kaiila In an instant we were hurtling through ranks of men back toward the camp. When we had passed through the ranks, which had remained still, those thousands of warriors simply turned their kaiila, the last of them now first, and followed us.