"That is true," said Kamchak.
"There must be a winner," said Albrecht.
"I have ridden enough for today," said Kamchak.
"I, too," said Conrad. "Let us return to our wagons." Albrecht pointed his lance at me. "You are challenged," he said. "Lance and tospit."
"We have finished with that," I said.
"The living wand!" shouted Albrecht.
Kamchak sucked in his breath.
Several in the crowd shouted out, "The living wand!" I looked at Kamchak. I saw in his eyes that the challenge must be accepted. In this matter I must be Tuchuk. Save for armed combat, lance and tospit with the living wand is the most dangerous of the sports of the Wagon Peoples.
In this sport, as might be expected, one's own slave must stand for one. It is essentially the same sport as lancing the tospit from the wand, save that the fruit is held in the mouth of a girl, who is slain should she move or in any way withdraw from the lance.
Needless to say many a slave girl has been injured in this cruel sport.
"I do not want to stand for him!" cried out Elizabeth Cardwell.
"Stand for him, Slave," snarled Kamchak.
Elizabeth Cardwell took her position, standing sideways, the tospit held delicately between her teeth.
For some reason she did not seem afraid but rather, to my mind, incomprehensibly infuriated. She should have been shuddering with terror. Instead she seemed indignant. But she stood like a rock and when I thundered past her the tip of my lance had been thrust through the tospit. The girl who had bitten the neck of the kaiila, and whose leg had been torn by its teeth, stood for Albrecht. With almost scornful ease he raced past her lifting the tospit from her mouth with the tip of his lance.
"Three points for each," announced the judge.
"We are finished," I said to Albrecht. "It is a tie. There is no winner."
He held his saddle on his rearing kaiila. "There will be a winner!" he cried. "Facing the lancer"
"I will not ride," I said.
"I claim victory and the woman" shouted Albrecht.
"It will be his," said the judge, "if you do not ride." I would ride.
Elizabeth, unmoving, faced me, some fifty yards away. This is the most difficult of the lance sports. The thrust must be made with exquisite lightness, the lance loose in the hand, the hand not in the retaining thong, but allowing the lance to slip back, then when clear, moving it to the left and, hopefully, past the living wand. If well done, this is a delicate and beautiful stroke. If clumsily done the girl will be scarred, or perhaps slain.
Elizabeth stood facing me, not frightened, but seemingly rather put upon. Her fists were even clenched.
I hoped that she would not be injured. When she had stood sideways I had favored the left, so that if the stroke was in error, the lance would miss the tospit altogether; but now, as she faced me, the stroke must be made for the center of the fruit; nothing else would do.
The gait of the kaiila was swift and even.
A cry went up from the crowd as I passed Elizabeth, the tospit on the point of the lance.
Warriors were pounding on the lacquered shields with their lances. Men shouted. I heard the thrilled cries of slave girls. I turned to see Elizabeth waver, and almost faint, but she did not do so.
Albrecht the Kassar, angry, lowered his lance and set out for his girl.
In an instant he had passed her, the tospit riding the lance tip.
The girl was standing perfectly still, smiling.
The crowd cheered as well for Albrecht.
Then they were quiet, for the judge was rushing to the lance of Albrecht, demanding it.
Albrecht the Kassar, puzzled, surrendered the weapon. "There is blood on the weapon," said the judge.
"She was not touched," cried Albrecht.
"I was not touched!" cried the air!.
The judge showed the point of the lance. There was a tiny stain of blood at its tip, and too there was a smear of blood on the skin of the small yellowish-white fruit.
"Open your mouth, slave," demanded the judge.
The girl shook her head.
"Do it," said Albrecht.
She did so and the judge, holding her teeth apart roughly with his hands, peered within. There was blood in her mouth. The girl had been swallowing it, rather than show she had been struck.
It seemed to me she was a brave, fine girl.
It was with a kind of shock that I suddenly realized that she, and Dina of Turia, now belonged to Kamchak and myself.
The two girls, while Elizabeth Cardwell looked on angrily, knelt before Kamchak and myself, lowering their heads, lifting and extending their arms, wrists crossed. Kamchak, chuckling, leaped down from his kaiila and quickly, with binding fiber, bound their wrists. He then put a leather thong on the neck of each and tied the free ends to the pommel of his saddle. Thus secured, the girls knelt beside the paws of his kaiila. I saw Dina of Turia look at me. In her eyes, soft with tears, I read the timid concession that I was her master. "I do not know what we need with all these slaves," Elizabeth Cardwell was saying.
"Be silent," said Kamchak, "or you will be branded." Elizabeth Cardwell, for some reason, looked at me in fury, rather than Kamchak. She threw back her head, her little nose in the air, her brown hair bouncing on her shoul- dcrs.
Then for no reason I understood, I took binding fiber and bound her wrists before her body, and, as Kamchak had done with the other girls, put a thong on her neck and tied it to the pommel of my saddle.
It was perhaps my way of reminding her, should she forget, that she too was a slave.
"Tonight, Little Barbarian," said Kamchak, winking at her, "you will sleep chained under the wagon."
Elizabeth stifled a cry of rage.
Then Kamchak and I, on kaiila-back, made our way back to our wagon, leading the bound girls.
"The Season of Little Grass is upon us," said Kamchak. "Tomorrow the herds will move toward Turia."
I nodded. The Wintering was done. There would now be the third phase of the Omen Year, the Return to Turia. It was now, perhaps, I hoped, that I might learn the answer to the riddles which had not ceased to disturb me, that I might learn the answer to the mystery of the message collar, perhaps the answer to the numerous mysteries which had attended it, and perhaps, at last, find some clue, as I had not yet with the wagons, to the whereabouts or fate of the doubtless golden spheroid that was or had been the last egg of Priest-Kings.
"I will take you to Turia," said Kamchak.
"Good," I said.
I had enjoyed the Wintering, but now it was done. The bask were moving south with the coming of the spring. I and the wagons would go with them.
There was little doubt that I, in the worn, red tunic of a warrior, and Kamchak, in the black leather of the Tuchuks, seemed somewhat out of place at the banquet of Saphrar, merchant of Turia.
"It is the spiced brain of the Turian vulo," Saphrar was explaining.
It was somewhat surprising to me that Kamchak and I, being in our way ambassadors of the Wagon Peoples, were entertained in the house of Saphrar, the merchant, rather than in the palace of Phanius Turmus, Administrator of Turia. Kamchak's explanation was reasonably satisfying. There were apparently two reasons, the official reason and the real reason. The official reason, proclaimed by Phanius Turmus, the Administrator, and others high in the govern- ment, was that those of the Wagon Peoples were unworthy to be entertained in the administrative palace; the real rea- son, apparently seldom proclaimed by anyone, was that the true power in Turia lay actually with the Caste of Mer- chants, chief of whom was Saphrar, as it does in many cities. The Administrator, however, would not be uninformed. His presence at the banquet was felt in the person of his plenipo- tentiary, Kamras, of the Caste of Warriors, a captain, said to be Champion of Turia.
I shot the spiced vulo brain into my mouth on the tip of a golden eating prong, a utensil, as far as I knew, unique to Turia. I took a large swallow of fierce Paga, washing it down as rapidly as possible. I did not much care for the sweet, syrupy wines of Turia, flavored and sugared to the point where one could almost leave one's fingerprint on their surface. It might be mentioned, for those unaware of the fact, that the Caste of Merchants is not considered one of the tradi- tional five High Castes of Gor the Initiates, Scribes, Physi- cians, Builders and Warriors. Most commonly, and doubtless unfortunately, it is only members of the five high castes who occupy positions on the High Councils of the cities. Nonethe- less, as might be expected, the gold of merchants, in most cities, exercises its not imponderable influence, not always in so vulgar a form as bribery and gratuities, but more often in the delicate matters of extending or refusing to extend credit in connection with the projects, desires or needs of the High Councils. There is a saying on Gor, "Gold has no caste." It is a saying of which the merchants are fond. Indeed, secretly among themselves, I have heard, they regard themselves as the highest caste on Gor, though they would not say so for fear of rousing the indignation of other castes. There would be something, of course, to be said for such a claim, for the merchants are often indeed in their way, brave, shrewd, skilled men, making long journeys, venturing their goods, risking caravans, negotiating commercial agreements, among themselves developing and enforcing a body of Merchant Law, the only common legal arrangements existing among the Gorean cities. Merchants also, in effect, arrange and administer the four great fairs that take place each year near the Sardar Mountains. I say "in effect" because the fairs are nominally under the direction of a committee of the Caste of Initiates, which, however, largely contents itself with its cere- monies and sacrifices, and is only too happy to delegate the complex management of those vast, commercial phenomena, the Sardar Fairs, to members of the lowly, much-despised Caste of Merchants, without which, incidentally, the fairs most likely could not exist, certainly not at any rate in their current form.