As I watched, the Tuchuk took his long, slender lance and thrust it into the ground, point upward. Then, slowly, the four riders began to walk their mounts about the lance, watching it, right hands free to seize it should it begin to fall. The wind seemed to rise.
In their way I knew they were honoring me, that they had respected my stand in the matter of the charging lances, that now they were gambling to see who would fight me, to whose weapons my blood must flow, beneath the paws of whose kaiila I must fall bloodied to the earth.
I watched the lance tremble in the shaking earth, and saw the intentness of the riders as they watched its Lightest movement. It would soon fall.
I could now see the herds quite clearly, making out indi- vidual animals, the shaggy humps moving through the dust, see the sun of the late afternoon glinting off thousands of horns. Here and there I saw riders, darting about, all mounted on the swift, graceful kaiila. The sun reflected from the horns in the veil of dust that hung over the herds was quite beautiful.
The lance had not yet fallen.
Soon the animals would be turned in on themselves, to mill together in knots, until they were stopped by the shaggy walls of their own kind, to stand and grew until the morning. The wagons would, of course, follow the herds. The herd forms both vanguard and rampart for the advance of the wagons. The wagons are said to be countless, the animals without number. Both of these claims are, of course, mistaken, and I the Ubars of the Wagon Peoples know well each wagon and the number of branded beasts in the various herds; each herd is, incidentally, composed of several smaller herds, each |watched over by its own riders. The bellowing seemed now to come from the sky itself, like thunder, or from-the horizon, like the breaking of an ocean into surf on the rocks of the shore. It was like a sea or a vast natural phenomenon slowly approaching. Such indeed, I suppose, it was. Now, also, for the first time, I could clearly smell the herd, a rich, vast, fresh, musky, pervasive odor, compounded of trampled grass and torn earth, of the dung, urine and sweat of perhaps more than a minion beasts. The magnificent vitality of that smell, so offensive to some, astonished and thrilled me; it spoke to me of the insurgence and the swell of life itself, ebullient, raw, overflowing, unconquerable, primitive, shuffling, smell- ing, basic, animal, stamping, snorting, moving, an avalanche of tissue and blood and splendor, a glorious, insistent, invinci- ble cataract of breathing and walking and seeing and feeling on the sweet, flowing, windswept mothering earth. And it was in that instant that I sensed what the bask might mean to the Wagon Peoples.
"Ho!" I heard, and spun to see the black lance fall and scarcely had it moved but it was seized in the fist of the scarred Tuchuk warrior.
The Tuchuk warrior lifted the lance in triumph, in the same instant slipping his fist into the retention knot and kicking the roweled heels of his boots into the silken flanks of his mount, the animal springing towards me and the rider in the same movement, as if one with the beast, leaning down from the saddle, lance slightly lowered, charging. The slender, flexible wand of the lance tore at the seven- layered Gorean shield, striking a spark from the brass rim binding it, as the man had lunged at my head.
I had not cast the spear.
I had no wish to kill the Tuchuk.
The charge of the Tuchuk, in spite of its rapidity and momentum, carried him no more than four paces beyond me. It seemed scarcely had he passed than the kaiila had wheeled and charged again, this time given free rein, that it might tear at me with its fangs.
I thrust with the spear, trying to force back the snapping jaws of the screaming animal. The kaiila struck, and then withdrew, and then struck again. All the time the Tuchuk thrust at me with his lance. Four times the point struck me drawing blood, but he did not have the weight of the leaping animal behind his thrust; he thrust at arm's length, the point scarcely reaching me. Then the animal seized my shield in its teeth and reared lifting it and myself, by the shield straps, from the ground. I fell from some dozen feet to the grass and saw the animal snarling and biting on the shield, then it shook it and hurled it far and away behind it.
I shook myself.
The helmet which I had slung over my shoulder was gone. I retained my sword. I grasped the Gorean spear.
I stood at bay on the grass, breathing hard, bloody. The Tuchuk laughed, throwing his head back.
I readied the spear for its cast.
Warily now the animal began to circle, in an almost human fashion, watching the spear. It shifted delicately, feinting, and then withdrawing, trying to draw the cast. I was later to learn that kaiita are trained to avoid the thrown spear. It is a training which begins with blunt staves and progresses through headed weapons. Until the kaiila is suitably proficient in this art it is not allowed to breed. Those who cannot learn it die under the spear. Yet, at a close range, I had no doubt that I could slay the beast. As swift as may be the kaiila I had no doubt that I was swifter. Gorean warriors hunt men and tarts with this weapon. But I did not wish to slay the animal, nor its rider.
To the astonishment of the Tuchuk and the others who observed, I threw away the weapon.
The Tuchuk sat still on his mount, as did the others. Then he took his lance and smote it on the small, glossy shield, acknowledging my act. Then so too did the others, even the white-caped man of the Paravaci.
Then the Tuchuk drove his own lance into the dirt and hung on the lance his glossy shield.
I saw him draw one of the quivas from a saddle sheath, loosen the long, triple-weighted bole from his side. Slowly, singing in a gutteral chant, a Tuchuk warrior song, he began to swing the bole. It consists of three long straps of I leather, each about five feet long, each terminating in a leather sack which contains, sewn inside, a heavy, round, metal weight. It was probably developed for hunting the tumit, a huge, flightless carnivorous bird of the plains, but the Wagon Peoples use it also, and well, as a weapon of war. Thrown low the long straps, with their approximate ten-foot sweep, almost impossible to evade, strike the victim and the weighted balls, as soon as resistance is met, whip about the victim, tangling and tightening the straps. Sometimes legs are broken. It is often difficult to release the straps, so snarled do they become. Thrown high the Gorean bole can lock a man's arms to his sides; thrown to the throat it can strangle him; thrown to the head, a difficult cast, the whipping weights can crush a skull. One entagles the victim with the bole, leaps from one's mount and with the quiva cuts his throat. I had never encountered such a weapon and I had little notion as to how it might be met.
The Tuchuk handled it well. The three 'weights at the end of the straps were now almost blurring in the air and he, his song ended, the reins in his left hand, quiva blade now clenched between his teeth, bole in his swinging, uplifted right arm, suddenly cried out and kicked the kaiila into its charge.
He wants a kill, I told myself. He is under the eyes of warriors of the other peoples. It would be safest to throw low. It would be a finer cast, however, to try for the throat or head. How vain is hey How skillful is he?
He would be both skillful and vain; he was Tuchuk. To the head came the flashing bole moving in its hideous, swift revolution almost invisible in the air and I, instead of lowering my head or throwing myself to the ground, met instead the flying weighted leather with the blade of a Koro- ban short sword, with the edge that would divide silk dropped upon it and the taut straps, two of them, flew from the blade and the other strap and the three weights looped off pinto the grass, and the Tuchuk at the same time, scarcely realizing what had occurred, leaped from the kailla, quiva in hand, to find himself unexpectedly facing a braced warrior of Ko-ro-ba, sword drawn.
The quiva reversed itself in his hand, an action so swift I was only aware of it as his arm flew back, his hand on the blade, to hurl the weapon.
It sped toward me with incredible velocity over the hand- ful of feet that separated us. It could not be evaded, but only countered, and countered it was by the Koroban steel in my hand, a sudden ringing, sliding flash of steel and the knife was deflected from my breast.
The Tuchuk stood struck with awe, in the grass, on the trembling plains in the dusty air.