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kailiauk, has seen him."
"Of course," said Kog, "but he has given no sign."
"No sign," I said, "which was read by the mounted hunters.
"Yes," said Kog. His lips drew back, over his fangs. There are always signs.
It is only a question of their delectability. They are as small, sometimes, as
the dilation of a pupil.
"The bow is drawn," said Kog.
The small bow has many advantages. High among these is the rapidity with which
it may be drawn and fired. A skilled warrior, in the Gorean gravity, can fire
ten arrows into the air, the last leaving the bow before the first has
returned to the earth. No Gorean weapon can match it in its rate of fire. At
close range it can be devastating.
Two further advantages of the small bow that might be mentioned are its
maneuverability and its capacity to be concealed, say beneath a robe. It can
be easily swept from one side of the kaiila to the other. In this type of
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combat, incidentally, it is not unusual for the warrior to shield himself
behind the body of his racing kaiila, and, circling the enemy, rise up,
suddenly, to fire over the
animal's back or, sometimes, from beneath its neck:
A heel over the animal's back and a fist in its silken neck hair, or an arm
thrust through a leather throat loop, provide the leverage needed for these
feats.
To be sure, these folk are superb riders. A child is often put on kaiilaback,
its tiny bands clutching the silken neck, before it can walk.
Sometimes a strap dangles back for a few feet from the throat loop. This is to
be seized by the warrior who may have been struck from his mount, either to
recapture the beast or, using the strap, being pulled along, with the momentum
of the racing steed, to vault again to its back. This strap, incidentally, is
used more often in hunting than in warfare. It could be too easily grasped by
an enemy on foot, with the result of perhaps impeding the movement of the
kaiila or even causing it to twist and fall. Needless to say, it is extremely
dangerous to fall from one's kaiila in hunting kailiauk, because one is often
closely involved with numerous stampeding beasts, or the given beast one is
pursuing may suddenly turn on one.
In hunting kailiauk the hunters usually scatter about, each selecting his own
animals. Accordingly, one's fellows are seldom close at hand to rescue one.
This is quite different from mounted warfare, where one's fellows are usually
quite close and ready, in an instant, to sweep one up or help one to regain
one's mount. The red savage does not take an industrial or arithmetical
approach to warfare.
He would rather rescue one comrade than slay ten of the enemy. This has to do
with the fact that they are members of the same tribe and, usually, of the
same warrior society. They will have known one another almost all of their
lives; as children and boys they have played together and watched the kaiila
herds in the summer camps together; they may even have shared in their first
kailliauk hunt;
now, as men, they have taken the warpath together;
they are comrades, and friends; each is more precious to the other than even a
thousand coups.
This explains some of the eccentricities of tribal warfare; first actual war
parties, though common, are formed less often than parties for stealing
kaiila; in this sport the object is to
obtain as many kaiila as possible without, if possible, engaging the enemy at
all; it is a splendid coup, for example, to cut a kaiila tether strap which is
tied to the wrist of a sleeping enemy and make off with the animal before he
awakens; killing a sleeping enemy is only a minor coup; besides, if he has
been killed, how can he understand how cleverly he has been bested; imagine
his anger and chagrin when he awakens; is that not more precious to the thief
than his scalp; in actual warfare itself large-scale conflicts almost never
occur. The typical act of war is the raid, conducted usually by a small group
of men, some ten to fifteen in number, which enters enemy country, strikes,
usually at dawn, and makes away, almost at soon as it came, with scalps and
loot, sometimes, too, a woman or two of the enemy is taken; men of most tribes
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