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Kassar.
      The Tuchuk removed his helmet and threw it to the grass
      He jerked open the jacket he wore and the leather jerkin
      beneath, revealing his chest.
      He looked about him, at the distant bosk herds, lifted his
      head to see the sky once more.
      His kailla stood some yards away, shifting a bit, puzzled,
      reins loose on its neck.
      The Tuchuk now looked at me swiftly. He grinned. He did
      not expect nor would he receive aid from his fellows. I
      studied his heavy face, the fierce scarring that somehow
      ennobled it, the black eyes with the epicanthic fold. He
      grinned at me. "Yes," he said, "well done."
      I went to him and set the point of the Gorean short sword
      at his heart.
      He did not flinch.
      "I am Tarl Cabot," I said. "I come in peace."
      I thrust the blade back in the scabbard.
           For a moment the Tuchuk seemed stunned. He stared at
      me, disbelievingly, and then, suddenly, he threw back his
      head and laughed until tears streamed down his face. He
      doubled over and pounded on his knees with his fist. Then he
      straightened up and wiped his face with the back of his hand.
      I shrugged.
           Suddenly the Tuchuk bent to the soil and picked up a
      handful of dirt and grass, the land on which the bosk graze,
      the land which is the land of the Tuchuks, and this dirt and
      this grass he thrust in my hands and I held it.
      The warrior grinned and put his hands over mine so that
      our hands together held the dirt and the grass, and were
      together clasped on it.
      "Yes," said the warrior, "come in peace to the Land of the
      Wagon Peoples."
      I followed the warrior Kamchak into the encampment of
      Tuchuks.
      Nearly were we run down by six riders on thundering
      kaiila who, riding for sport, raced past us wildly among the
      crowded, clustered wagons. I heard the lowing of milk bask
      from among the wagons. Here and there children ran be-
      tween the wheels, playing with a cork ball and quiva, the
      object of the game being to strike the thrown ball. Tuchuk
      women, unveiled, in their long leather dresses, long hair
      bound in braids, tended cooking pots hung on "em-wood
      tripods over dung fires. These women were unscarred, but
      like the bask themselves, each wore a nose ring. That of the
      animals is heavy and of gold, that of the women also of gold
      but tiny and fine, not unlike the wedding rings of my old
      world. I heard a haruspex singing between the wagons; for a
      piece of meat he would read the wind and the grass; for a
      cup of wine the stars and the flight of birds; for a fat-bellied
      dinner the liver of a sleen or slave.
      lithe Wagon Peoples are fascinated with the future and its
      signs and though, to hear them speak, they put no store in
      such matters, yet they do in practice give them great consider-
      ation. I was told by Kamchak that once an army of a
      thousand wagons turned aside because a swarm of rennels,
      poisonous, crablike desert insects, did not defend its broken
      nest, crushed by the wheel of the lead wagon. Another time,
      over a hundred years ago, a wagon Ubar lost the spur from
      his right boot and turned for this reason back from the gates
      of mighty Ar itself.
           By one fire I could see a squat Tuchuk, hands on hips,
      dancing and stamping about by himself, drunk on fermented
      milk curds, dancing, according to Kamchak, to please the
      Sky.
           The Tuchuks and the other Wagon Peoples reverence
      Priest-Kings, but unlike the Goreans of the cities, with their
      castes of Initiates, they do not extend to them the dignities of
      worship. I suppose the Tuchuks worship nothing, in the
      common sense of that word, but it is true they hold many
      things holy, among them the bask and the skills of arms, but
      chief of the things before which the proud Tuchuk stands
      ready to remove his helmet is the sky, the simple,