"But it was the length of the leather dresses of the Tuchuk women," Elizabeth had dared to protest.
I translated.
"But you are slave," had said Kamchak.
I translated his remark.
She dropped her head, defeated.
Miss Cardwell had slim, lovely legs. Kamchak, a man, had desired to see them. Besides being a man, of course, Kamchak was her master; he owned the wench; thus he would have his desire. I will admit if need he that I was not displeased with his action. I did not particularly mind the sight of the lovely Miss Cardwell moving about the wagon. Kamchak made her walk back and forth once or twice, and spoke to her rather sharply about her posture, then, to the surprise of both Miss Cardwell and myself, he did not chain her, but told her she might walk about the camp unattended, warning her only to return before dusk and the release of the herd sleen. She dropped her head shyly, and smiled, and sped from the wagon. I was pleased to see her that much free.
"You like her?" I asked.
Kamchak grinned. "She is only a little barbarian," he said. Then he looked at me. "It is Aphris of Turia I want," he said.
I wondered who she might be.
On the whole, it seemed to me that Kamchak treated his little barbarian slave notably well, considering that he was Tuchuk. This does not mean that she was not worked hard, nor that she did not receive a good drubbing now and then, but, on the whole, considering the corneas lot of a Tuchuk slave girl, I do not think she was ill used. Once, it might be noted, she returned from searching for fuel with the dung sack, dragging behind her, only half full. "It is all I could find," she told Kamchak. He then, without ceremony, thrust her head first into the sack and tied it shut. He released her the next morning. Elizabeth Cardwell never again brought a half-filled dung sack to the wagon of Kamchak of the Tuchuks.
Now the Kassar, mounted on his kaiila, his lance under the tip of the girl's chin. who knelt before him, looking up at him, suddenly laughed and removed the lance.
I breathed a Sign of relief.
He rode his kaiila to Kamchak. "What do you want for your pretty little barbarian slave?" he asked.
"She is not for sale," said Kamchak.
"Will you wager for her?" pressed the rider. He was Albrecht of the Kassars, and, with Conrad of the Kassars, had been riding against myself and Kamchak.
My heart sank.
Kamchak's eyes gleamed. He was Tuchuk. "What are your terms?" he asked.
"On the outcome of the sport," he said, and then pointed to two girls, both his, standing to the left in their furs, "against those two." The other girls were both Turian They were not barbarians. Both were lovely. Both were, doubtless, well skilled in the art of pleasing the fancy of warriors of the Wagon Peoples.
Conrad, hearing the wager of Albrecht, snorted derisively. "No," cried Albrecht, "I am serious!"
"Done!" cried Kamchak.
Watching us there were a few children, some men, some slave girls. As soon as Kamchak had agreed to Albrecht's proposal the children and several of the slave girls immedi- ately began to rush toward the wagons, delightedly crying "Wager! Wager!"
Soon, to my dismay, a large number of Tuchuks, male and female, and their male or female slaves, began to gather near the worn lane on the turf. The terms of the wager were soon well known. In the crowd, as well as Tuchuks and those of the Tuchuks, there were some Kassars, a Paravaci or two, even one of the Kataii. The slave girls in the crowd seemed particularly excited. I could hear bets being taken. The Tuchuks, not too unlike Goreans generally, are fond of gambling. Indeed, it is not unknown that a Tuchuk will bet his entire stock of bask on the outcome of a single kaiila race; as many as a dozen slave girls may change hands on something as small as the direction that a bird will fly or the number of seeds in a tospit.
The two girls of Albrecht were standing to one side, their eyes shining, trying not to smile with pleasure. Some of the girls in the crowd looked enviously on them. It is a great honor to a girl to stand as a stake in Tuchuk gambling. To my amazement Elizabeth Cardwell, too, seemed rather pleased with the whole thing, though for what reason I could scarcely understand. She came over to me and looked up. She stood on tiptoes in her furred boots and held the stirrup. "You will win," she said.
I wished that I was as confident as she.
I was second rider to Kamchak, as Albrecht was to Con- rad, he of the Kassars, the Blood People.
There is a priority of honor involved in being first rider, but points scored are the same by either rider, depending on his performance. The first rider is, commonly, as one might expect, the more experienced, skilled rider.
In the hour that followed I rejoiced that I had spent much of the last several months, when not riding with Kamchak in the care of his bask, in the pleasant and, to a warrior, satisfying activity of learning Tuchuk weaponry, both of the hunt and war. Kamchak was a skilled instructor in these matters-and, freely, hours at a time, until it grew too dark to see, supervised my practice with such fierce tools as the lance, the quiva and bole. I learned as well the rope and bow. The bow, of course, small, for use from the saddle, lacks the range and power of the Gorean longbow or crossbow; still, at close range, with considerable force, firing rapidly, arrow after arrow, it is a fearsome weapon. I was most fond, perhaps, of the balanced saddle knife, the quiva; it is about a foot in length, double edged; it tapers to a daggerlike point. I acquired, I think, skill in its use. At forty feet I could strike a thrown tospit; at one hundred feet I could strike a- layered boskhide disk, about four inches in width, fastened to a lance thrust in the turf.
Kamchak had been pleased.
I, too, naturally had been pleased.
But if I had indeed acquired skills with those fierce arti- cles, such skills, in the current contests, were to be tested to the utmost.
As the day grew late points were accumulated, but, to the zest and frenzy of the crowd, the lead in these contests of arms shifted back and forth, first being held by Kamchak and myself, then by Conrad and Albrecht.
In the crowd, on the back of a kaiila, I noted the girl Hereena, of the First Wagon, whom I had seen my first day in the camp of the Tuchuks, she who had almost ridden down Kamchak and myself between the wagons. She was a very exciting, vital, proud girl and the tiny golden nose ring, against her brownish skin, with her flashing black eyes, did not detract from her considerable but rather insolent beauty. She, and others like her, had been encouraged and spoiled from childhood in all their whims, unlike most other Tuchuk women, that they might be fit prizes, Kamchak had told me, in the games of Love War. Turian warriors, he told me, enjoy such women, the wild girls of the Wagons. A young man, blondish-haired with blue eyes, unscarred, bumped against the girl's stirrup in the press of the crowd. She struck him twice with the leather quirt in her hand, sharply, viciously. I could see blood on the side of his neck, where it joins the shoulder.
"Slave!" she hissed.
He looked up angrily. "I am not a slave," he said. "I am Tuchuk."
"Turian slaver" she laughed scornfully. "Beneath your furs you wear, I wager, the Kes!"
"I am Tuchuk," he responded, looking angrily away. Kamchak had told me of the young man. Among the wagons he was nothing. He did what work he could, helping with the bask, for a piece of meat from a cooking pot. He was called Harold, which is not a Tuchuk name, nor a name used among the Wagon Peoples, though it is similar to some of the Kassar names. It was an English name, but such are not unknown on Gor, having been passed down, perhaps, for more than a thousand years, the name of an ancestor, per" haps brought to Gor by Priest-Kings in what might have been the early Middle Ages of Earth. I knew the Voyages of Acquisition were of even much greater antiquity. I had determined, of course, to my satisfaction, having spoken with him once, that the boy, or young man, was indeed Gorean; his people and their people before them and as far back as anyone knew had been, as it is said, of the Wagons. The problem of the young man, and perhaps the reason that he had not yet won even the Courage Scar of the Tuchuks, was that he had fallen into the hands of Turian raiders in his youth and had spent several years in the city; in his adoles- cence he had, at great risk to himself, escaped from the city and made his way with great hardships across the plains to rejoin his people; they, of course, to his great disappoint- ment, had not accepted him, regarding him as more Turian than Tuchuk. His parents and people had been slain in the Turian raid in which he had been captured, so he had no kin. There had been, fortunately for him, a Year Keeper who had recalled the family. Thus he had not been slain but had been allowed to remain with the Tuchuks. He did not have his own wagon or his own bask. He did not even own a kaiila. He had armed himself with castoff weapons, with which he practiced in solitude. None of those, however, who led raids on enemy caravans or sorties against the city and its outlying fields, or retaliated upon their neighbors in the delicate mat- ters of bask stealing, would accept him in their parties. He had, to their satisfaction, demonstrated his prowess with weapons, but they would laugh at him. "You do not even own a kaiila," they would say. "You do not even wear the Courage Scar." I supposed that the young man would never be likely to wear the scar, without which, among the stern, cruel Tuchuks, he would be the continuous object of scorn, ridicule and contempt. Indeed, I knew that some among the wagons, the girl Hereena, for example, who seemed to bear him a great dislike, had insisted that he, though free, be forced to wear the Kes or the dress of a woman. Such would have been a great joke among the Tuchuks.