John Norman - Gor 04 - Nomads of Gor

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Book #4 "NOMADS OF GOR"

by John Norman

"Run" cried the woman. "Flee for your life"

I saw her eyes wild with fear for a moment above the

rep-cloth veil and she had sped past me.

She was peasant, barefoot, her garment little more than

coarse sacking. She had been carrying a wicker basket con-

taining vulos, domesticated pigeons raised for eggs and meat.

Her man, carrying a mattock, was not far behind. Over his

left shoulder hung a bulging sack filled with what must have

been the paraphernalia of his hut.

He circled me, widely. "Beware," he said, "I carry a Home

Stone."

I stood back and made no move to draw my weapon.

Though I was of the caste of warriors and he of peasants,

and I armed and he carrying naught but a crude tool, I

would not dispute his passage. One does not lightly dispute

the passage of one who carries his Home Stone.

Seeing that I meant him no harm, he paused and lifted an

arm, like a stick in a torn sleeve, and pointed backward.

'They're coming," he said. "Run, you fool Run for the gates

of Turia"

Turia the high-walled, the nine-gated, was the Gorean city

lying in the midst of the huge prairies claimed by the Wagon

Peoples.

Never had it fallen.

Awkwardly, carrying his sack, the peasant turned and

stumbled on, casting occasional terrified glances over his

shoulder

I watched him and his woman disappear over the brown

wintry grass.

In the distance, to one side and the other, I could see other

human beings, running, carrying burdens, driving animals

with sticks, fleeing.

Even past me there thundered a lumbering herd of star-

tled, short-bunked kailiauk, a stocky, awkward ruminant of

the plains, tawny, wild, heavy, their haunches marked in red

and brown bars, their wide heads bristling with a trident of

horns; they had not stood and formed their circle, she's and

young within the circle of tridents; they, too, had fled; farther

to one side I saw a pair of prairie sleen, smaller than the

forest sleen but quite as unpredictable and vicious, each

about seven feet in length, furred, six-legged, mammalian,

moving in their undulating gait with their viper's heads mov-

ing from side to side, continually testing the wind; beyond

them I saw one of the tumits, a large, flightless bird whose

hooked beak, as long as my forearm, attested only too clearly

to its gustatory habits; I lifted my shield and grasped the long

spear, but it did not turn in my direction; it passed, unaware;

beyond the bird, to my surprise, I saw even a black larl, a

huge catlike predator more commonly found in mountainous

regions; it was stalking away, retreating unhurried like a

king; before what, I asked myself, would even the black tart

flee; and I asked myself how far it had been driven; perhaps

even from the mountains of Ta-Thassa, that loomed in this

hemisphere, Gor's southern, at the shore of Thassa, the sea,

said to be in the myths without a farther shore.

The Wagon Peoples claimed the southern prairies of GOR,

from the gleaming Thassa and the mountains of Ta-Thassa to

the southern foothills of the Voltai Range itself, that reared

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in the crust of GOR like the backbone of a planet. On the

north they claimed lands even to the rush-grown banks of

the Cartius, a broad, swift flowing tributary feeding into the

incomparable Vosk. The land between the Cartius and the

Vosk had once been within the borders of the claimed empire

of Ar, but not even Marlenus, Ubar of Ubars, when master

of luxurious, glorious Ar, had flown his tarnsmen south of the

Cartius.

In the past months I had made my way, afoot, overland,

across the equator, living by hunting and occasional service in

the caravans of merchants, from the northern to the southern

hemisphere of GOR. I had left the vicinity of the Sardar

Range in the month of Se'Var, which in the northern hemi-

sphere is a winter month, and had journeyed south for

months; and had now come to what some call the Plains of

Turia, others the Land of the Wagon Peoples, in the autumn

of this hemisphere; there is, due apparently to the balance of

land and water mass on GOR, no particular moderation of

seasonal variations either in the northern or southern hemi-

sphere; nothing much, so to speak, to choose between them;

on the other hand, Gor's temperatures, on the whole, tend to

be somewhat fiercer than those of Earth, perhaps largely due

to the fact of the wind-swept expanses of her gigantic land

masses; indeed,` though GOR is smaller than Barth, with con-

sequent gravitational reduction, her actual land areas may

be, for all I know, more extensive than those of my native

planet; the areas of GOR which are mapped are large, but

only a small fraction of the surface of the planet; much of

GOR remains to her inhabitants simply terra incognita.*

______________________________________________________________

*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 inciden-

tally, mentioned earlier, was named for the direction it lies from the

city of Ar. From the Sardar I had gone largely Cart, sometimes Vask,

then Cart again until I had come to the Plains of Turia, or the Land

of the Wagon Peoples. I crossed the Cartius on a barge, one of

several hired by the merchant of the caravan with which I ww then

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seeing. These barges, constructed of layered timbers of Ka-la-na wood,

are towed by teams of river tharlarion, domesticated, vast,herbivo-

rous, web-footed lizards raised and driven by the Cartius bargemen,

fathers and sons, interrelated clans, claiming the status of a cast

for themselves. Even with the harnessed might of several huge thar-

larion drawing toward the opposite shore the crossing took us several

pasangs downriver. The caravan, of course, was bound for Turia. No

caravans, to my knowledge, make their way to the Wagon Peoples,

who are largely isolated and have their own way of life. I left the

caravan before it reached Turia My business was with the Wagon

Peoples, not the Turians, said to be indolent and luxury-loving; but

I wonder at this charge, for Turia has stood for generations on the

plains claimed by the fierce Wagon Peoples.

For some minutes I stood silently observing the animals

and the men who pressed toward Turia, invisible over the

brown horizon. I found it hard to understand their terror.

Even the autumn grass itself bent and shook in brown tides

toward Turia, shimmering in the sun like a tawny surf

beneath the fleeing clouds above; it was as though the unseen

wind itself, frantic volumes and motions of simple air, too

desired its sanctuary behind the high walls of the far city.

Overhead a wild Gorean kite, shrilling, beat its lonely way

from this place, seemingly no different from a thousand other

places on these broad grasslands of the south.

I looked into the distance, from which these fleeing multi-

tudes, frightened men and stampeding animals, had come.

There, some pasangs distant, I saw columns of smoke rising

in the cold air, where fields were burning. Yet the prairie

itself was not afire, only the fields of peasants, the fields of

men who had cultivated the soil; the prairie grass, such that

it might graze the ponderous bask, had been spared.

Too in the distance I saw dust, rising like black, raging

dawn, raised by the hoofs of innumerable animals, not those

that fled, but undoubtedly by the bask herds of the Wagon

Peoples.

The Wagon Peoples grow no food, nor do they have

manufacturing as we know it. They are herders and it is said,

killers. They eat nothing that has touched the dirt. They live

on the meat and milk of the bosk. They are among the

proudest of the peoples of Gor, regarding the dwellers of the

cities of Gor as vermin in holes, cowards who must fly behind

walls, wretches who fear to live beneath the broad sky, who

dare not dispute with them the open, windswept plains of

their world.

The bosk, without which the Wagon Peoples could not

live, is an oxlike creature. It is a huge, shambling animal,

with a thick, humped neck and long, shaggy hair. It has a

wide head and tiny red eyes, a temper to match that of a

sleen, and two long, wicked horns that reach out from its

head and suddenly curve forward to terminate in fearful

points. Some of these horns, on the larger animals, measured

from tip to tip, exceed the length of two spears.

Not only does the flesh of the bask and the milk of its

cows furnish the Wagon Peoples with food and drink, but

its hides cover the domelike wagons in which they dwell; its

tanned and sewn skins cover their bodies; the leather of its

hump is used for their shields; its sinews forms their thread;

its bones and horns are split and tooled into implements of a

hundred sorts, from awls, punches and spoons to drinking

flagons and weapon tips; its hoofs are used for glues; its oils

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are used to grease their bodies against the cold. Even the

dung of the bask finds its uses on the treeless prairies, being

dried and used for fuel. The bask is said to be the Mother of

the Wagon Peoples, and they reverence it as such. The man

who kills one foolishly is strangled in thongs or suffocated in

the hide of the animal he slew; if, for any reason, the man

should kill a bask cow with unborn young he is staked out,

alive, in the path of the herd, and the march of the Wagon

Peoples takes its way over him.

Now there seemed to be fewer men and animals rushing

past, scattered over the prairie; only the wind remained; and

the fires in the distance, and the swelling, nearing roll of dust

that drifted into the stained sky. Then I began to feel,

through the soles of my sandals, the trembling of the earth.

The hair on the back of my neck seemed to leap up and I

felt the hair on my forearms stiffen. The earth itself was

shaking from the hoofs of the bask herds of the Wagon

Peoples.

They were approaching.

Their outriders would soon be in sight.

I hung my helmet over my left shoulder with the sheathed

short sword; on my left arm I bore my shield; in my right

hand I carried the Gorean war spear.

I began to walk toward the dust in the distance, across the

trembling ground.

I Make the Acquaintance of the Wagon People

As I walked I asked myself why I did so-why I, Tarl

Cabot-once of Earth, later a warrior of the Gorean city of

Ko-ro-ba, the Towers of the Morning, had come here.

In the long years that had passed since first I had come to

the Counter-liarth I had seen many things, and had know

loves, and had found adventures and perils and wonders, but

I asked myself if anything I had done was as unreasoning, as

foolish as this, as strange.

Some years before, perhaps between two and five years

before, as the culmination of an intrigue enduring centuries,

two men, humans from the walled cities of Gor, had, for the

sake of Priest-Kings, undertaken a long, secret journey, car-

rying an object to the Wagon Peoples, an object bestowed

on them by Priest-Kings, to be given to that people that was,

to the Goreans' knowledge, the most free, among the fiercest,

among the most isolated on the planet-an object that would

be given to them for safekeeping.

The two men who had carried this object, keeping well its

secret as demanded by Priest-Kings, had braved many perils

and had been as brothers. But later, shortly after the com-

pletion of their journey, in a war between their cities, each

had in battle slain the other, and thus among men, save

perhaps for some among the Wagon Peoples, the secret had

been lost. It was only in the Sardar Mountains that I had

learned the nature of their mission, and what it was that they

had carried. Now I supposed that I alone, of humans on

Gor, with the possible exception of some among the Wagon

Peoples, knew the nature of the mysterious object which once

these two brave men had brought in secrecy to the plains of

Turia and, to be truthful, I did not know that even I

should I see it-would know it for what I sought.

Could I, Tarl Cabot, a human and mortal, find this object

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and, as Priest-Kings now wished, return it to the SardarÄ

return it to the hidden courts of Priest-Kings that it might

there fulfill its unique and irreplaceable role in the destiny of

this barbaric world, Gor, our Counter-Earth?

I did not know.

What is this object?

One might speak of it as many things, the subject of

secret, violent intrigues; the source of vast strifes beneath the

Sardar, strifes unknown to the men of Gor; the concealed,

precious, hidden hope of an incredible and ancient race; a

simple germ; a bit of living tissue; the dormant potentiality of

a people's rebirth, the seed of godsÄan eggÄthe last and

only egg of Priest-Kings.

But why was it I who came?

Why not Priest-Kings in their ships and power, with their

fierce weapons and fantastic devices?

Priest-Kings cannot stand the sun.

They are not as men and men, seeing them, would fear

them. Men would not believe they were Priest-Kings. Men con-

ceive Priest-Kings as they conceive themselves.

The object the egg might be destroyed before it could

be delivered to them.

It might already have been destroyed.

Only that the egg was the egg of Priest-Kings gave me

occasion to suspect, to hope, that somehow within that mys-

terious, presumably ovoid sphere, if it still entwisted, quiescent

but latent, there might be life.

And if I should find the object, why should I not myself

destroy it, and destroy thereby the race of Priest-Kings,

giving this world to my own kind, to men, to do with as they

pleased, unrestricted by the laws and decrees of Priest-Kings

that so limited their development, their technology? Once I

had spoken to a Priest-King of these things. He had said to

me, "Man is a larl to man; if we permitted him, he would be

so to Priest-Kings as well."

"But man must be free," I had said.

"Freedom without reason is suicide," had said the Priest

King, adding, "Man is not yet rational."

But I would not destroy the egg, not only because it

contained life, but because it was important to my friend,

whose name was Misk and is elsewhere spoken of; much of

the life of that brave creature was devoted to the dream of

a new life for Priest-Kings, a new stock, a new beginning; a

readiness to relinquish his place in an old world to prepare a

mansion for the new; to have and love a child, so to speak,

for Misk, who is a Priest-King, neither male nor female, yet

can love.

I recalled a windy night in the shadow of the Sardar when

we had spoken of strange things, and I had left him and

come down the hill, and had asked the leader of those with

whom I had traveled the way to the Land of the Wagon

Peoples.

I had found it.

The dust rolled nearer, the ground seemed more to move

than ever.

I pressed on.

Perhaps if I were successful I might save my race, by

preserving the Priest-Kings that might shelter them from the

annihilation that might otherwise be achieved if uncontrolled

technological development were too soon permitted them;

perhaps in time man would grow rational, and reason and

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John Norman - Gor 04 - Nomads of Gor

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