Nomads Of Gor

I set her on the saddle of the tarn, telling her to hold to the pommel of the saddle. When I myself mounted I would tie her to the pommel with binding fiber. I would fasten about myself the broad safety strap, usually purple, which is an invariable portion of the tarn saddle.

Elizabeth did not seem affrighted to be astride the tarn. I was pleased that there were some changes of clothing for her in the pack. I observed that she needed them, or at least one of them.

Kamchak was there, and his Aphris, and Harold and his Hereena, still his slave. She knelt beside him, and once when she dared to touch her cheek to his right thigh he good- naturedly cuffed the slave girl away.

"How are the bosk doing?" I asked Kamchak.

"As well as might be expected," he responded.

I turned to Harold. "Are the quivas sharp?" I inquired. "One tries to keep them that way," said Harold.

I turned back to Kamchak. "It is important," I reminded him, "to keep the axles of the wagons greased."

"Yes," he said, "I think that is true."

I clasped the hands of the two men.

"I wish you well, Tarl Cabot," said Kamchak.

"I wish you well, Kamchak of the Tuchuks," I said.

"You are not really a bad fellow," said Harold, "for a Koroban."

"You are not bad yourself," I granted, "for a Tuchuk." "I wish you well," said Harold.

"I wish you well," I said.

Swiftly I climbed the short ladder to the tarn saddle, and tied it against the saddle. I then took binding fiber and looped it several times about Miss Cardwell's waist and then several times about the pommel of the saddle, then tying it. Harold and Kamchak looked up at me. There were tears in the eyes of both men. Now, diagonally, like a scarlet chevron coursing the flight of the cheek bones, there blazed on the face of Harold the Tuchuk the Courage Scar. "Never forget," said Kamchak, "that you and I have together held grass and earth."

"I will never forget," I said.

"And while you are remembering things," remarked Harold, 'you might recollect that we two together won the Courage Scar in Turia."

"No," I said, "I will not forget that either."

"Your coming and going with the Wagon Peoples," said Kamchak, "has spanned parts of two of our years."

I looked at him, not really understanding. What he said, of course, was true.

"The years," said Harold, smiling, "were two the Year in which Tarl Cabot Came to the Wagon Peoples and the Year in which Tarl Cabot Commanded a Thousand."

Inwardly I gasped. These were year names which would be remembered by the Year Keepers, whose memories knew the names of thousands of consecutive years.

"But," I protested, "there have been many things of much greater importance than those in these years the Siege of Turia, the Taking of the City, the Election of the Ubar San" "We choose most to remember Tarl Cabot," said Kamchak.

I said nothing.

"If you should ever need the Tuchuks' Tarl Cabot," said Kamchak, "or the Kataii or the Kassar or the Paravaci you have only to speak and we will ride. We will ride to your side, be it even to the cities of Earth."

"You know of Earth?" I asked. I recalled what I took to be the skepticism of Kamchak and Kutaituchik long ago when they had questioned myself and Elizabeth Cardwell of such matters.

Karnchak smiled. "We Tuchuks know of many things," he said, "Of more than we tell." He grinned. "Good fortune attend you, Tart Cabot, Commander of a Thousand Tuchuks, Warrior of Ko-ro-ba!"

I lifted my hand to them and then drew on the one-strap and the wings of the great tarn began to strike the resistant air and the Tuchuks on all sides fell back stumbling in the dust and the driven wind smote from beneath the mighty wings of the bird and in that instant we saw the wagons fall away beneath us, extending in their squares for pasangs, and we could see the ribbon of the creek and then the Omen Valley and then the spires of distant Turia, far off. I Elizabeth Cardwell was weeping, and I put my arms about I her, to comfort her, and to protect her from the blasts of the swift air. I noted with irritation that the sting of the air had made my own eyes moist as well.

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1

For purposes of convenience I am recounting directions in English terms, thinking it would be considerably difficult for the reader to follow references to the Gorean compass. Briefly, for those it might interest, all directions on the planet are calculated from the Sardar Mountains, which for the purposes of calculating direction play a role analogous to our north pole; the two main directions, so to speak, in the Gorean way of thinking are Ta-Sardar-Var and Ta-Sardar-Ki-Var, or as one would normally say, Var and Ki-Var; 'Var' means a turning and 'Ki' signifies negation; thus, rather literally, one might speak of 'turning to the Sardar' and 'not turning to the Sardar', some- thing like either facing north or not facing north; on the other hand, more helpfully, the Gorean compass is divided into eight, as opposed to our four, main quadrants, or better said, divisions, and each of these itself is of course subdivided. There is also a system of latitude and longitude figured on the basis of the Gorean day, calculated in Ahn, twenty of which constitute a Gorean day, and Ehn and Ihn, which are subdivisions of the Ahn, or Gorean hour. Ta-Sardar-Var is a direction which appears on all Gorean maps; Ta-Sardar-Ki-Var, of course, never appears on a map, since it would be any direction which is not Ta-Sardar-Var. Accordingly, the main divisions of the map are Ta-Sardar-Var, and the other seven; taking the Sardar as our "north pole" the other directions, clockwise as Earth clocks move (Gorean clock hands move in the opposite direction) would be, first, Ta-Sardar-Var, then, in order, Ror, Rim, Tun, Vask (sometimes spoken of as Verus Var. or the true turning away), Cart, Klim, and Kail, and then again, of course, Ta-Sardar-Var. The Cartius River incidentally, mentioned earlier, was named for the direction it lies from the city of Ar.

2

The omens, I understood, had not been favorable in more than a hundred years. I suspected that this might be due to the hostilities and bickerings of the peoples among themselves; where people did not wish to unite, where they relished their autonomy, where they nursed old grievances and sang the glories of vengeance raids, where they considered all others, even those of the other Peoples, as beneath themselves, there would not be likely to exist the conditions for serious confederation, a joining together of the wagons.