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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.
      I could hear the other three men of the Wagon Peoples,
      the Kataii, the Kassar, the Paravaci, striking their shields
      with their lances. "Well done," said the