John Norman - Nomads of Gor

“Each to his own wagon and war!” cried Kamchak.

I saw two yellow lanterns and a red lantern on the high pole.

I was startled by the appearance of tarnsmen on the south em plains. The nearest tarn cavalries as far as I knew were to be found in distant Ar.

Surely great Ar was not at war with the Tuchuks of the southern plains.

They must be mercenaries!

Kamchak did not return to his own wagon but now raced his kaiila, followed by a hundred men, toward the high ground on which stood the standard of the four bosk horns; on which stood the huge wagon of Kutaituchik, called Ubar of the Tuchuks.

Among the wagons the tarnsmen would have found only slaves, women and children, but not a wagon had been burned or looted.,

We heard a new thunder of wings and looking overhead saw the tarnsmen, like a black storm, drum beating and tarns screaming, streak by overhead.

A few arrows from those who followed us looped weakly up after them, falling then among the wagons.

The sewn, painted boskhides that had covered the domed framework over the vast wagon of Kutaituchik hung slashed and rent from the joined em-wood poles of the framework.

Where they were not torn I saw that they had been pierced as though a knife had been driven through them again and again, only inches apart.

There were some fifteen or twenty guards slain, mostly by arrows. They lay tumbled about, several on the dais near the wagon. In one body there were six arrows.

Kamchak leaped from the back of his kaiila and, seizing a torch from an iron rack, leaped up the stairs and entered the wagon.

I followed him, but then stopped, startled at what I saw.

Literally thousands of arrows had been fired through the dome into the wagon. One could not step without breaking and snapping them. Near the centre of the wagon, alone, his head bent over, on the robe of grey boskhide, sat Kutaituchik, perhaps fifteen or twenty arrows imbedded in his body. At his right knee was the golden kanda box. I looked about. The wagon had been looted, the only one that had been as far as I knew.

Kamchak had gone to the body of Kutaituchik and sat down across from it, cross-legged, and had put his head in his hands.

I did not disturb him.

Some others pressed into the wagon behind us, but not many, and those who did remained in the background.

I heard Kamchak moan. “The bosk are doing as well as might be expected,” he said. “The quivas I will try to keep them sharp. I will see that the axles of the wagons are greased.” Then he bent his head down and sobbed, rocking back and forth.

Aside from his weeping I could hear only the crackle of I the torch that lit the interior of the rent dome. I saw here and there, among the rugs and polished wood bristling with white arrows, overturned boxes, loose jewels scattered, torn robes and tapestries. I did not see the golden sphere. If it had been there, it was now gone.

At last Kamchak stood up.

He turned to face me. I could still see tears in his eyes.

“He was once a great warrior,” he said.

I nodded.

Kamchak looked about himself, and picked up one of the arrows and snapped it.

“Turians are responsible for this,” he said.

“Saphrar?” I asked.

“Surely,” said Kamchak, “for who could hire tarnsmen but Saphrar of Turia or arrange for the diversion that drew fools to the edge of the herds.”

I was silent.

“There was a golden sphere,” said Kamchak. “It was that which he wanted.”

I said nothing.

“Like yourself, Tarl Cabot,” added Kamchak.

I was startled.

“Why else,” asked he, “would you have come to the Wagon Peoples?”

I did not respond. I could not.

“Yes,” I said, “it is true I want it for Priest-Kings. It is important to them.”

“It is worthless,” said Kamchak.

“Not to Priest-Kings,” I said.

Kamchak shook his head. “No, Tarl Cabot,” said he, “the golden sphere is worthless.”

The Tuchuk then looked around himself, sadly, and then again gazed on the sitting, bent-over figure of Kutaituchik.

Suddenly tears seemed to burst from Kamchak’s eyes and his fists were clenched. “He was a great man!” cried Kamchak. “Once he was a great man.”

I nodded. I knew Kutaituchik, of course, only as the huge, somnolent mass of man who sat cross-legged on a robe of grey boskhide, his eyes dreaming.

Suddenly Kamchak cried out in rage and seized up the golden kanda box and hurled it away.

“There will now have to be a new Ubar of the Tuchuks,” I said, softly.

Kamchak turned and faced me. “No,” he said.

“Kutaituchik,” I said, “is dead.”

Kamchak regarded me evenly. “Kutaituchik,” he said, “divas not Ubar of the Tuchuks.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“He was called Ubar of the Tuchuks,” said Kamchak, “but he was not Ubar.”

“How can this be?” I asked.

“We Tuchuks are not such fools as Turians would believe,” said Kamchak. “It was for such a night as this that Kutaituchik waited in the Wagon of the Ubar.”

I shook my head in wonder.

“He wanted it this way,” said Kamchak. “He would have it no other.” Kamchak wiped his arm across his eyes. “He said it was now all he was good for, for this and for nothing else.”

It was a brilliant strategy.

“Then the true Ubar of the Tuchuks is not slain,” I said.

“No,” said Kamchak.

“Who knows who the Ubar truly is?” I asked.

“The Warriors know,” said Kamchak. “The warriors.”

“Who is Ubar of the Tuchuks?” I asked.

“I am,” said Kamchak.

Turia, to some extent, now lay under sedge, though the Tuchuks alone could not adequately invest the city. The other Wagon Peoples regarded the problem of the slaying of Kutaituchik and the despoiling of his wagon as one best left to the resources of the people of the four bosk. It did not concern, in their opinion, the Kassars, the Kataii or the Paravaci. There had been Kassars who had wanted to fight and some Kataii, but the calm heads of the Paravaci had convinced them that the difficulty lay between Turia and the Tuchuks, not Turia and the Wagon Peoples generally. Indeed, envoys had flown on tarnback to the Kassars, Kataii and Paravaci, assuring them of Turia’s lack of hostile intentions towards them, envoys accompanied by rich gifts.

The cavalries of the Tuchuks, however, managed to maintain a reasonably effective blockade of land routes to Turia. Four times masses of tharlarion cavalry had charged forth from the city but each time the Hundreds withdrew before them until the charge had been enveloped in the swirling kaiila, and then its riders were brought down swiftly by the flashing arrows of the Tuchuks, riding in closely, almost to lance range and firing again and again until striking home.

Several times also, hosts of tharlarion had attempted to protect caravans leaving the city, or advanced to meet scheduled caravans approaching Turia, but each time in spite of this support, the swift, harrying, determined riders of the Tuchuks had forced the caravans to turn back, or man by man, beast by beast, left them scattered across pasangs of prairie.

The mercenary tarnsmen of Turia were most feared by the Tuchuks, for such could, with relative impunity, fire upon them from the safety of their soaring height, but even this dread weapon of Turia could not, by itself, drive the Tuchuks from the surrounding plains. In the field the Tuchuks would counter the tarnsmen by breaking open the Hundreds into scattered Tens and presenting only erratic, swiftly moving targets; it is difficult to strike a rider or beast at a distance from tarnback when he is well aware of you and ready to evade your missile; did the tarnsman approach too closely, then he himself and his mount were exposed to the return fire of the Tuchuks, in which case of proximity, the Tuchuk could use his small bow to fierce advantage. The archery of tarnsmen, of course, is most effective against massed infantry or clusters of the ponderous tharlarion. Also, perhaps not unimportantly, many of Turia’s mercenary tarnsmen found themselves engaged in the time-consuming, distasteful task of supplying the city from distant points, often bringing food and arrow wood from as far away as the valleys of the eastern Cartius. I presume that the mercenaries, being tarnsmen a proud, headstrong breed of men made the Turians pay highly for the supplies they carried, the indignities of bearing burdens being lessened somewhat by the compensating weight of golden tarn disks.