Gor - Nomads For Gor Part 25

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 bask 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 burn- ing on poles in the darkness, signaling 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 con- ceive 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 maneuverable units are dictated by bask horn and movements of the standards; at night by the bask 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 bask 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 bask. Kam- chak 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 bole. Then he bounded from the top step of the wagon onto the back of his kaiila and sped toward the sound of the bask horns. "Master!" I heard Aphris cry.

Of their ranks with a swiftness and precision that was incredi- ble, long, flying columns of warriors flowed like rivers be- tween the beasts.

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

Suddenly, instead of giving pursuit, Kamchak drew his mount to a halt and behind him the rus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s 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 control- ling 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 pa.s.sed through the ranks, which had remained still, those thousands of warriors simply turned their kaiila, the last of them now first, and followed us.

"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 center of the wagon, alone, his head bent over, on the robe of gray boskhide, sat Kutai- tuchik, 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 bask 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, Tart 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, Tart 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 Kam- chak. "Once he was a great man."

I nodded. I knew Kutaituchik, of course, only as the huge, somnolent ma.s.s of man who sat cross-legged on a robe of gray 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, b '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 be- lieve," 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 Kutai- tuchik and the despoiling of his wagon as one best left to the resources of the people of the four bask. It did not concern, in their opinion, the Ka.s.sars, the Kataii or the Paravaci. There had been Ka.s.sars 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. In- deed, envoys had flown on tarnback to the Ka.s.sars, Kataii and Paravaci, a.s.suring them of Turia's lack of hostile inten- tions 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 ma.s.ses 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 flas.h.i.+ng arrows of the Tuchuks, riding in closely, al- most 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 sched- uled 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 ap- proach 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 ma.s.sed infantry or cl.u.s.ters 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.

There was no problem of water in the city, incidentally, for Turia's waters are supplied by deep, tile-lined wells, some of them hundreds of feet deep; there are also siege reservoirs, Bled with the melted snows of the winter, the rains of the spring.

Kamchak, on kaiilaback, would sit in fury regarding the distant, white walls of Turia. He could not prevent the supplying of the city by air. He lacked siege engines, and the men, and the skills, of the northern cities. He stood as a nomad, in his way baffled at the walls raised against him.

"I wonder," I said, "why the tarnsmen have not struck at the wagons with fire arrows why they do not attack the bask themselves, slaying them from the air, forcing you to withdraw to protect the beasts."

It seemed to be a simple, elementary strategy. There was, after all, no place on the prairies to hide the wagons or the bask, and tarnsmen could easily reach them anywhere within a radius of several hundred pasangs.

''They are mercenaries," growled Kamchak.

"I do not understand your meaning," I said.

"We have paid them not to burn the wagons nor slay the bosk," said he.