 BushesHere are relevant references from the Books where bushes are mentioned. I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. Arrive at your own conclusions. I wish you well, Fogaban Bush Berry Brak Kanda Rep Sweet Thorn Tospit Turl Brush Flower Scrub Brushland Brushwood Shrub Berry Desert Festal Flower Flowering Kes Tes Thorn Tor Telekint Thicket Blossoming Thorn
the sable tarn dropped me to the sticks and brush of its nest Tarnsman of Gor Book 1 Page 142 Here and there swarms of night insects began to stir, lifting themselves under the leaves of bushes by the road. Accordingly, in spite of my eagerness to return to Ko-ro-ba, I decided that I would withdraw from the road, wrap myself in my cloak and spend the night in the shelter of some rocks, or perhaps crawl into the tangle of some thorn bushes, where one might sleep in relative security. I was silent, not moving, seeking the shelter of stillness and immobility. My head turned imperceptibly as I scanned the rocks and bushes about the road. The file continued its journey through the trees and brush, threading its way through the darkness and branches. He wore a common Gorean male house tunic, rough and brown, with leggings, such as are sometimes worn by woodsmen, who work in brush. In my anger I did not notice the man, standing back in the brush, near the shore of the stream. We wiped our hands on the grass, and threw the bones into the brush. "Look!" whispered Ute. Through the brush, some two hundred yards away, moving in the darkness, we saw two torches. Four days later, in yet another thicket, one afternoon, Ute requested that I set one of our snares on a small game trail we had found earlier. I heard the sound of a man's voice. I slipped from the soft, gentle, green path between the trees and brush, and fell to my stomach, concealed among the brush and grasses. They were not coming along the trail. Ute waited sitting for me on the bank, while I pulled up the sticks of the trap and cast them into the bushes. I crawled into some brush, frightened. They had always spoken only of "she." As far as they knew, there was but one girl to be caught. I hid in the brush beside the trail, clutching the rock. Suddenly, some hundred yards away, I heard a man's shout. My heart leaped. They had taken her! But then I heard the shouts of another man, and then of both, and a crashing through brush. To my dismay, terrified, frantic, her eyes wide, hands extended, fleet as a Tabuk, Ute was fleeing back down the trail. "El-in-or," she cried. "Slavers! Run!" "I know," I said. She looked at me, startled. I struck her suddenly in the side of the head with the stone. They must find her, not me! Ute, moaning, stunned, sank to her hands and knees, shaking her head. I threw the rock down beside her. The men would assume she had fallen and struck her head. Quickly I fled back into the brush and hid. Softly, stealthily, the long bow of yellow Ka-la-na, from the wine trees of Gor, in my hand, I moved through the brush and trees. There was not much breeze today. The forest, for the trees were more widely spread and the brush thick, was hot. I continued on, through the brush and trees. I continued on, through the brush and trees. Leaves, gently, brushed my face. Twice more arrows sped from the underbrush, passing beside me, losing themselves in the greenery behind me. There was no movement in the brush ahead. I lifted my head to the trees in the thicket ahead, the tangles of brush and undergrowth. I noted where the birds moved, and where they did not. I plunged into the underbrush, hearing the sounds of pursuit. I do not know how far I ran. I do not think it was far. I fell in the brush. The girls had tangled themselves in the brush not twenty yards into the trees. By the binding fiber on their throat I pulled them loose and led them back to the beach. Ilene, in a scrap of yellow pleasure silk, a barefoot slave girl, terrified, fled through the brush, breaking branches, head twisting, hair sometimes caught, breathing heavily, eyes wide, legs and body scratched and cut. She stumbled. She rose again, gasping. Her hands were outstretched, trying to force away the branches that impeded her progress, striking at her face and eyes. She stumbled again, and rose again. Then, gasping, crying out with fear, stumbling, pushing her way through lashing branches, she continued her flight. After much snarling and growling the sleen turned to the side, its snout still stinging, and seized up the tabuk and disappeared in the brush. There was a great cheer from the men of Ivar Forkbeard. The serpent turned slowly between the high cliffs, and entered the inlet. Here and there, clinging to the rock, were lichens, and small bushes, and even stunted trees. She came and stood before him, naked in the tent, on the mats. Her body was covered with sweat. The legs, from the thighs down, were covered with dust, dark in her sweat, and scratched by the myriad thrusts of brush through which, tethered, she had been dragged at her captor's stirrup. "Gather brush and dung," he said. "Make a fire. Heat well an iron." "I took the body," said Hassan. "In a great pyre of brush I saw it burned. Its ashes I had committed to the sands." Suddenly Tarna kicked her kaiila in the flanks and bolted from the column. The chain tore at the back of my neck and I was thrown from my feet and dragged through the brush and dust, twisting. She rode for a hundred yards and reined in the kaiila. "Have you stamina? Can you run?" she asked. I looked at her, coughing, covered with dust, cut by brush. We had come to the edge of the dune country. I looked out on the rugged hills, the cuts, the rocks, the brush. There was a rustle in a thicket of brush, at which the man had been directing his attention. The line of march would take its way rather closely to us. We were concealed in brush, silent. I fled through the thickets. I heard men crashing through the brush behind me. I ran, stumbling, striking branches and brush away from me. My robes were torn. "We have a long trek ahead of us," said my master. "We must move through brush, and woods, and over fields. You must be attired for such a journey in a more practical fashion." I considered the forest behind her. The trees were thick, the brush, near the river, heavy. "I am, too, made uncomfortable by the thickness of the brush and trees in these areas, both before and now. They seem fit to conceal the numbers of an ambuscade." I plunged through brush, dragging the bound, gagged blond girl, running and stumbling, bent over, by the hair at my side. We took the canoe to the shore and drew it up among the roots and brush. "Run!" said Kenneth. "Scatter!" "She is not here," said Miles of Vonda to his men. "We shall search elsewhere, in the vicinity, in the brush near the roads leading to Vonda." I gasped for breath, and then submerged, and swam underwater for the brush and trees, half sunken, which bordered the channel leading to the gate. I emerged among roots and reeds. "It is difficult to remain fresh and presentable," she said, "when run through brush at the side of a kaiila, a thong on one's throat." The Kaiila will usually camp near water but in the open, a pasang or so from timber. They seem unusually cognizant of the possibilities of ambush. The Fleer will usually camp in the open but near timber, probably for the convenience of firewood. Yellow Knives often camp in open timber. Sleen, interestingly, often make their camps in thick timber, and even in brush and thickets. What seems to one tribe to present a dangerous possibility of ambush may, to another, seem to provide cover and shelter. To our right was the great, circular brush lodge. It was some forty feet in height. It enclosed a packed-down dancing space of some fifty feet in diameter. It was ceilinged with poles and branches. In the center of the lodge, visible now through a hole torn in the brush, was the tall, slim, peeled, twice-forked pole which, days ago, Winyela had felled. The paraphernalia of the dance, with the exception of some long, narrow, braided ropes, had been removed from the pole. The pole itself had apparently been attacked with hatchets and knives. It was marked and gashed. From the sides of the dance lodge huge gouts of brush had been torn away. It was through these gaps that Yellow Knives had perhaps entered the lodge. Inside, in several places, the dust was bloodstained. In places, marked by successions of linear stains, and marks in the dust, bodies had apparently been dragged from the lodge. This, presumably, would have been done later by Kaiila. Suddenly we heard the shaking of rattles, the beating of small hand drums. The Yellow Knives opened their lines. The soldiers, too, drew back. In the corridor then formed, in the gloom, their bodies painted, brush tied about their wrists and ankles, chanting, stomping, turning about and shuffling, came dancers. They wore masks. The hobbling log had been dragged to this place, by two kaiila, in the night. The dirt from the pit is hidden under brush or scattered in the grass. "The torch!" I called. "Light the brush!" A torch was brought. With it we set fire to the great bundles of brush, on ropes, which had been prepared earlier. These flaming bundles, on their ropes, were then hurled over the edge, to hang burning against the rocky face. Yesterday night we had lit a great brush beacon which we had prepared. This beacon, whether used for the emission of smoke in daylight hours, or for its flame at night, could be seen for pasangs across the prairie. "Perhaps if your camp is close, I might, dragging myself through the underbrush, arrive there by morning." "Doubtless I am to be exercised in the tall grass or in the brush," she said. After a time it moved aside a bush, concealing a tunnel, and then dragged me after it, through it. I knelt down, across the fire from him, in our small camp in the woods, not far from the meadow. It was dark now. There was a space of some fifty feet of cleared ground behind him. Closer to me there were some trees and brush. "Accordingly," he said, "if someone did not wish to be observed in approaching the camp, he might come from that direction which lies more behind you, where there are trees and brush." Then, after a time, I took a small rock and, when the figure had passed, hurled it over and behind the figure, so that it alit across from it, to the east of the road. As there was no cover on the east the figure did as I expected. It spun about, immediately, moving laterally, crouching, every sense alert, its pack discarded. It faced the opposite direction from whence had come the sound. The danger in a situation such as this, given the sound of the rock, surely an anomaly coming from the figure's left, most clearly threatened from the hill and brush, not from the grass. The late-afternoon sun flashed from the steel of the bared blade. He was already yards from his pack. In moments he would move to the cover of the brush. Here, in this part of the forest, there was a great deal of shrubbery, brush, broken branches, fallen timber, debris of various sorts. Occasionally one waded through leaves, as through thigh-high surf. Here the trees were muchly together, each challenged by the others, leaves competing for sunlight, roots engaged in their subterranean contests to absorb water and minerals. Beast by beast, over the past Ahn, several of the stampeded tharlarion, now slowed or milling, even grazing, many hemmed in by trees, and snared by brush, had been gathered in. The forest floor is far from uniform. It has its thousand rises and falls, its heights and valleys, its fallen timbers and rotting wood, its scarred, blackened trunks and scorched, lightning-fired wastes, its scattered boulders, its bare places, its flowered meadows and blossoming thickets, its crags and cliffs, its rills, and streams and rivers, its rock-cupped ponds, its galleries of tall trees with quiet aisles of leaves between them, its jumbled barriers of nigh-impenetrable brush, its innumerable geodesics, and textures. There are countries within it. Your slave is a stupid little fool, even a barbarian. She put her blanket to the laundry, how clever; unaware that her scent saturates her chaining place in her kennel, that it lies in pools in each footstep she takes, that it lingers in grass, mud, and brush, even for a time in the very air through which she passes." A larl in undergrowth may be difficult to detect, and can come at you unexpectedly, and very quickly. Similarly, given the javelin's smaller size it is less cumbersome, and easier to take through brush and thickets. But wines, as is well known, may be derived not only from the clustered fruits weighting the branches of the ka-la-na tree in the autumn, but, as on my former world, from vine fruit, tree fruit, bush fruit, even from some types of leaves. At that moment there came from our right a plunging through brush and leaves. At that moment, to the right, high above the brush, higher than the blade of a war spear, we saw a broad, wide, triangular-shaped head. Nor is the terrain itself uniform, for there may be streams and basins, and clearings, and meadows, elevations, canyons, and depressions, brush, thickets, even jumbles of rocks, from ancient glaciers, and weathered, winter-and-ice-cracked hills of stone. I crouched in the bushes, elated. There was a seeming movement to the side, and I glanced to my right, quickly. But it was only a rustle, and shadows, stirred by the wind in the brush. He then turned about and, again, regarded the beach, east and west, and then, again, he looked out, into the brush, to the south. I muchly feared he would see us. "Twice," said Tajima "tarnsmen returned, circling about, at a great height, and we must conceal ourselves, once in the reeds and mud near a small stream, once in leaves and brush." "You merely wish to escape," he said, "to splash across the pool and hurry into the brush."
At bushes I stopped and nibbled at berries. Elinor Brinton, the Gorean slave girl, quickly bent down and, with her fingers, pulled berries from the twigs of a small bush, and put them in her leather bucket.
On the first day of the Waiting Hand, the last five days of the old year, the portals of Ar, including even that of the House of Cernus, had been painted white, and in many of the low-caste homes had been sealed with pitch, not to be opened until the first day of En'Kara. Almost all doors, including that of the House of Cernus, had nailed to them some branches of the Brak Bush, the leaves of which, when chewed, have a purgative effect. It is thought that the pitch and the branches of the Brak Bush discourage the entry of bad luck into the houses of the citizens. . . . Then, at dawn, on the first day of En'Kara, in the name of the city, the Administrator of Ar, or a Ubar if it be Ubar, greets the sun, welcoming it to Ar on the first day of the New Year. The great bars suspended about the walls of the city then ring out for more than an Ahn with their din, and the doors of the city burst open and the people crowd out onto the bridges, clad in the splendor of their finest, singing and laughing. The doors are painted green and the pitch washed away, and the branches of the Brak Bush burned in a small ceremony on the threshold. The Waiting Hand, the five-day period preceding the vernal equinox, the first day of spring, is a very solemn time for most Goreans. During this time few ventures are embarked upon, and little or no business is conducted. During this time most Goreans remain within their houses. It is in this time that the doors of many homes are sealed with pitch and have nailed to them branches of the brak bush, the leaves of which have a purgative effect. These precautions, and others like them, are intended to discourage the entry of ill luck into the houses. At dawn on the day of the vernal equinox a ceremonial greeting of the sun takes place,
The roots of the kanda plant, which grows largely in desert regions on Gor, are extremely toxic, but, surprisingly, the rolled leaves of this plant, which are relatively innocuous, are formed into strings and, chewed or sucked, are much favored by many Goreans, particularly in the southern hemisphere, where the leaf is more abundant. I examined the paws of the kaiila. I found that for which I searched inserted in the right forepaw of the animal. I removed from its paw the tiny, rounded ball of wax, held in place by threads; within the wax, which would soon, in the riding and pounding, and by the heat of the animal's body, disintegrate, concealed, I found a needle; I smelled it; it was smeared with kanda, a deadly toxin, prepared from the ground roots of the kanda bush; I wiped the needle, with a tipping from my shirt sleeve, cleaning it, and discarded needle and cloth in a refuse pile.
Rep is a whitish fibrous matter found in the seed pods of a small, reddish, woody bush, commercially grown in several areas, but particularly below Ar and above the equator; the cheap rep-cloth is woven in mills, commonly, in various cities; it takes dyes well and, being cheap and strong, is popular, particularly among the lower castes. Raiders of Gor Book 6 Pages 10 - 11 Some rep is grown, for cloth, but most cloth comes to the oases from caravans. Tribesmen of Gor Book 10 Page 37
A small fire, of sweet-brush and needles, from needle trees, is then built. Blood Brothers of Gor Book 18 Page 308 I wondered if the smoke of sweet-brush and needles, if the rubbing with white clay, might not have its effect not so much in encouraging the approach of medicine helpers but in lessening the probability of the approach of sleen.
I decided that I would withdraw from the road, wrap myself in my cloak and spend the night in the shelter of some rocks, or perhaps crawl into the tangle of some thorn bushes, where one might sleep in relative security. Outlaw of Gor Book 2 Pages 26 - 27 As it grew dark I cut and dragged thorn brush about the girls, to form a makeshift defensive perimeter. I thrust the last bush, spreading and thick, of thorn brush into place. I went inside the brush wall, and knelt down. I turned to the wall of thorn brush. I feared it. It was high and thick. The guard was not watching. The camp was not his concern. His concern was elsewhere, with possible approaches to the camp, the fields beyond the valleys. I cried out with misery. I screamed, frightened. The brush sank beneath me. It would not support my weight. My right leg was deep in it, my right arm. I turned my head to the side, keeping my eyes closed. I felt the thorns. They seemed to tear at me. I was half immersed in the brush. I was caught. I dared not move. I began to weep and scream. My master was first to my side. He was not much pleased. I immediately fell silent. Another man came, bearing a torch, lit from the stirred ashes of the fire. Some other men arose but then, seeing it was only a slave girl, returned to their furs and tenting. Eta hurried over to me, but a curt word from my master hurried her back to her rest with dispatch. "I'm caught, Master," I whimpered. Only too obviously had I been trying to escape. In the torchlight he pulled my head back, by the hair, to clear it of the thorns. He did not want me blinded. I managed, suffering long scratches, to extricate my right arm. He looked at me. I was afraid he was going to leave me as I was. I could not pull my right leg back because of its position in the brush. I had no leverage, as I stood, to lift my leg out. "Please help me, Master," I begged. I had no wish to remain caught in the thorn brush until morning. It was embarrassing, and I was helpless, and it was painful. "Please, Master," I begged, "help me. My master, with a spear and a loop of rope, under the torchlight, the torch held by one of his men, opened a passage in the thorn bush. It was some eighteen inches wide. He pointed to the passage. The way to flight was open. I need only run. I looked at my master in the moonlight. My knees felt that they might give way. I began to tremble. The way to flight was open. I looked with dread down the narrow corridor forced between the walls of fierce thorn brush, into the darkness beyond. I needed only run. The naked slave girl shook with terror before her master. Then I knelt before him and pressed my lips to his feet, trembling. "Keep me, Master," I begged. "Keep me!" I looked up at him, clutching his knees, tears in my eyes. "Please, Master," I wept, "let me stay." I remained kneeling, shuddering, as he turned from me and reclosed, with the spear and rope, the corridor in the thorn brush. We stopped once. I was still clothed at that time. I was held by the ropes before Bran Loort. I was covered with sweat and dirt; I was gasping; I was trembling, shaken with muscular stress from the cruel march, as well as with fear, knowing myself fully in their hands, not knowing what fate they might choose to inflict upon me. We stood in the vicinity of a thicket of thorn brush, of the sort which is occasionally used to wall camps. "You are still clothed," said Bran Loort observing me. "Let me tear away my clothes before you," I begged, "that the beauty of a poor slave girl may be bared to you." "Do so," he said. I cried out in anguish. Again the ropes would not let me strip myself. "You have apparently not yet learned your lesson," he said. "Please, Master!" I wept. "Let the thorn brush strip her," said Bran Loort. "No!" I cried. By the ropes I was dragged into the midst of tenacious, barbed brush, that thicket of such. I screamed with misery. I begged mercy. I was shown none. The brush tore at my clothing and body. Rudely I was drawn through it. I cried out, throwing my head from side to side. I kept my eyes closed, that I be not blinded. "Please, Masters!" I cried. They did not see fit to show a girl mercy. Bloodied, my body a welter of scratches and linear wounds, I was pulled from the brush. The Earth-girl slave was now naked. "Tal, Mistress," Jane and I said to her. We were sewing some garments of the men, earlier washed, which had been torn in man sport, in this case hunting wild verr on the passes about the Crag of Kleinias, rents mostly from thorn brush, some, it seemed, from climbing, a loss of footing on rocky slopes, or such. I cried out, and pulled away from the thorn shrub, my tunic rent on the right side, at the waist. There was a scratch there, small, the width of two of my fingers, inside the tunic. It occurred to me that the masters might not be pleased that my tunic was torn. But then, I thought, what difference does that matter now!
On the back of the kaiila, the black lance in hand, bending down in the saddle, I raced past a wooden wand fixed in the earth, on the top of which was placed a dried tospit, a small, wrinkled, yellowish-white peachlike fruit, about the size of a plum, which grows on the tospit bush, patches of which are indigenous to the drier valleys of the western Cartius. They are bitter but edible. Nomads of Gor Book 4 Page 59 This afternoon Kamchak and I, leading four pack kaiila, had entered the first gate of nine-gated Turia. Nomads of Gor Book 4 Page 87 He looked at me shrewdly and, to my surprise, drew a tospit out of his pouch, that yellowish-white, bitter fruit, looking something like a peach but about the size of a plum. He threw me the tospit. "Odd or even?" he asked. I had resolved not to wager with Kamchak, but this was indeed an opportunity to gain a certain amount of vengeance which, on my part, would be sorely appreciated. Usually, in guessing tospit seeds, one guesses the actual number, and usually both guessers opt for an odd number. The common tospit almost invariably has an odd number of seeds. On the other hand the rare, long-stemmed tospit usually has an even number of seeds. Both fruits are indistinguishable outwardly. I could see that, perhaps by accident, the tospit which Kamchak had thrown me had had the stem twisted off. It must be then, I surmised, the rare, long-stemmed tospit. . . . "Most tospits," Kamchak informed me, "have an odd number of seeds." "I know," I said. "Then why did you guess even?" he asked. "I supposed," I grumbled, "that you would have found a long-stemmed tospit." "But they are not available," he said, "until late in the summer." Nomads of Gor Book 4 Page 149 Larma and tospits are also grown at the oases, in small orchards. Tribesmen of Gor Book 10 Page 37 A boy passed, spitting out the seeds of a tospit. The thought of Kamchak, of the Tuchuks, passed through my mind. I smiled. Only the rare, long-stemmed tospit contained an even number of seeds. On the Plains of Turia, or in the Land of the Wagon Peoples, it was available only late in the summer. Here, in Tor, however, with its two growing seasons, they might be available much earlier. Still, if pressed, I would have guessed that the boy's tospit contained an odd number of seeds. Most tospits do. I would not, however, have been likely to wager on the matter with Kamchak of the Tuchuks. I was mildly surprised that the boy had been eating the tospit raw, for they are quite bitter, but, I knew, that people of the Tahari regions, these bright, hot regions, relished strong tastes and smells. Tribesmen of Gor Book 10 Pages 45 - 46
From the long, leather tube, Kog removed what appeared to be a large piece of closely rolled, soft-tanned hide. It was very light in color, almost white, and tied with string. There was a slight smell of smoke about it, probably from the smoke of the turl bush. Such hides may be waterproofed by suspending them from, and wrapping them about; a small tripod of sticks, this set over a small fire on which, to produce the desiderated smoke, the leaves and branches of the turl bush are heavily strewn.
"It is barren," said Thurnock. "It seems so," I said. "There is some clutter, some brush, debris, dried seaweed, driftwood, such things." I looked away from the ship, up the beach toward the rimming brush and scrub. We could see some brush, and huts, some drying nets, and some small fishing boats, these beached on the grayish, flattish, featureless surface. One or two men were looking at us. One waved, to which gesture we responded. "I have seen brush on at least one living island," I said. "The men do that," she said. "Some soil, some seeds, some plants. That is done to fool strangers into thinking that the living island is an ordinary island. Too, for those who are familiar with these islands, it makes clear that a given island is spoken for, that it is claimed." I stood up and called to my men, hidden in the grass. "Close the gate! Brush! Flames! Fire arrows!" Some twenty fellows rushed to the gate and pulled it shut, tying the two, in-swinging leaves together, and another twenty hurried to the closed gate with thick bundles of brush, grass, and straw which they piled before the tethered gate. At the same time, small fires were lit in clay pans and arrows, the heads of which were wrapped in oil-soaked cloth, were ignited and fired into the village, which shortly thereafter roared with flames, the heat of which jarred the air and carried even to our positions surrounding the village. Not a moment after the gate had been tied shut and the first arrows fell looping down into the thatched roofs of the huts, the corsairs were hacking at the ropes binding the gates closed. But no sooner had they freed the leaves of the gate and swung them inward than the brush, dried grass and straw which had been heaped up in the threshold was fiercely burning, creating a wall of fire behind which we could scarcely mark dark, moving figures. As the village had been carefully emptied of water before its evacuation the corsairs began to scoop up dirt in their helmets and cast it on the fire. Through the flames into the village flew arrows, several of which found targets in the figures trying to extinguish the flames. Within the village we could hear screams of rage, terror, and pain. I had placed archers about the village, and some corsairs, trying to climb over the palisade to escape the flames, were detained by arrows and soon several bodies were wedged lifelessly between the pointed palings, and some lay outside the palisade, inert, bristling with feathered shafts. A few Ehn later the flames at the gate, from the bundles of brush, grass, and straw, had lessened.
Her gleanings of fuel from the grasslands near the camp, primarily cord and flower brush, had been supplemented with some of the wood carried in the wagon. Prize of Gor Book 27 Page 651
Like the camps of many nomads the camp was on high ground, which commanded the terrain, but was itself concealed among scrub brush and boulders. Tribesmen of Gor Book 10 Page 137 A second common sort of mirage, more private than the first, but quite normal, is the interpretation of a mixed terrain, usually rocks and scrub brush, mixed with rising heat waves, as an oasis with water, palms and buildings. Tribesmen of Gor Book 10 Page 173 The paw encircled the heavy, twisted interlacings of stems of a thick clump of narrow-leaved scrub brush. Like most desert plants it is deeply rooted. With one motion the Kur tore the brush from the ground and lifted it over his head, and threw it from him. Tribesmen of Gor Book 10 Page 276 I looked away from the ship, up the beach toward the rimming brush and scrub.
And Thassa beneath us was suddenly streaked with the cold sunlight of Se'Kara, and the bird was across and through the storm. In the distance we could see rocky beaches, and grass and brushland beyond, and beyond that, a woodland, with Tur and Ka-la-na trees.
It seemed we had little to fear, and we had passed several of the pasang stones that line the side of the highway without seeing anything more threatening than a line of peasants carrying brushwood on their backs, and a pair of hurrying Initiates. Tarnsman of Gor Book 1 Page 113
In the morning we left our camp early. A swallow of water from the flask and small, dry berries gathered from the nearby shrubbery were our only sustenance. Tarnsman of Gor Book 1 Page 115 "You are aware, of course," I mentioned, "that the Pleasure Gardens of so rich a man as Saphrar of Turia may contain a large number of female slaves - not all of whom might be trusted to keep silent - and some of whom will undoubtedly notice something as unusual as two strange warriors wandering about among the shrubs and ferns?" Besides the trees there were numerous shrubs and plantings, almost all flowered, sometimes fantastically; among the trees and the colored grasses there wound curved, shaded walks. In a short while Harold, carrying the struggling Hereena, retraced our steps to the central hall and descended the steps of the porch and returned by means of the curving walks between the shrubs and pools to the flower tree by means of which we had originally entered the Pleasure Gardens of Saphrar of Turia. In the summer this tundra, covered with mosses, shrubs and lichens, because of the melted surface ice and the permafrost beneath, preventing complete drainage, is soft and spongy. "Yes," said the fellow, "and she will stay where I left her, on her back, as I tied her hair about the base of a stout shrub." I looked off, through the shrubbery and trees, behind Titus. There was something there of interest. The youth thrust the last of the hard bread in his mouth, took another swig of water from the bowl, put it down, leaped up, and seized Ina by the hair, and then, holding her by the hair, her head at his waist, dragged her, she gasping, into some nearby shrubbery. As swiftly as I could, wincing, hurting myself on the stones, I withdrew from the wall. It was my intention to circle about, though the shrubbery, and the tiny, lovely trees of the garden, to the vicinity of the fountain. Here, in this part of the forest, there was a great deal of shrubbery, brush, broken branches, fallen timber, debris of various sorts. Occasionally one waded through leaves, as through thigh-high surf. Here the trees were muchly together, each challenged by the others, leaves competing for sunlight, roots engaged in their subterranean contests to absorb water and minerals. She indicated a place, across the grounds, near some shrubbery, not far from the large, central portal of the castle, perhaps fifty yards away. I saw Tiresias approach, some short, gnarled branches in his grasp, and some shrubbery, dirt still about the roots. I sat in the shade, on a bench, near the small bridge which spanned the tiny brook wending its way amongst the rocks, the tiny terraces, the shrubberies, the flowers, and trees of the garden.
In the morning we left our camp early. A swallow of water from the flask and small, dry berries gathered from the nearby shrubbery were our only sustenance.
On the twentieth day of the siege there was great rejoicing in the camp of Pa-Kur, because in one place the wires had been cut and a squad of spearmen had reached the main siege reservoir, emptying their barrels of toxic kanda, a lethal poison extracted from one of Gor's desert shrubs.
"What did you see?" I asked. "Nothing," he said. "What did you see?" I asked. "Shrubbery," he said, "some grass, some rence, two trees." "What sort of shrubbery?" I asked. "Some festal," he said, "some tes, a bit of tor." "You are sure it is a tor shrub?" I asked. He looked. "Yes," he said.
This garland was woven of shrub flowers, a white Lirillium, and was in width some seven or eight inches.
There were trees, and grass, in the small courtyard, and flowers, mostly talenders, and dinas, some veminium. A tiled walk wound its way through the vegetation. Flowering shrubbery was about. Here and there, there were small, concealed nooks in the garden. In one corner, there was a small reservoir, with a slatted wooden lid.
The principal ingredients of Sullage are the golden Sul, the starchy, golden-brown vine-borne fruit of the golden-leaved Sul plant; the curled, red, ovate leaves of the Tur-Pah, a tree parasite, cultivated in host orchards of Tur trees, and the salty, blue secondary roots of the Kes Shrub, a small, deeply rooted plant which grows best in sandy soil.
"What did you see?" I asked. "Nothing," he said. "What did you see?" I asked. "Shrubbery," he said, "some grass, some rence, two trees." "What sort of shrubbery?" I asked. "Some festal," he said, "some tes, a bit of tor." "You are sure it is a tor shrub?" I asked. He looked. "Yes," he said.
I cried out, and pulled away from the thorn shrub, my tunic rent on the right side, at the waist. There was a scratch there, small, the width of two of my fingers, inside the tunic. It occurred to me that the masters might not be pleased that my tunic was torn. But then, I thought, what difference does that matter now!
"What did you see?" I asked. "Shrubbery," he said, "some grass, some rence, two trees." "What sort of shrubbery?" I asked. "Some festal," he said, "some tes, a bit of tor." "You are sure it is a tor shrub?" I asked. He looked. "Yes," he said. "I, too, think it is a tor shrub," I said. The shrub has various names but one of them is the tor shrub, which name might be fairly translated, I would think, as, say, the bright shrub, or the shrub of light, it having that name, I suppose, because of its abundant, bright flowers, either yellow or white, depending on the variety. It is a very lovely shrub in bloom. It was not in bloom now, of course, as it flowers in the fall. He looked at me. "So?" he asked. "Do you notice anything unusual about it?" I asked. "No," he said. "How high is it?" I asked. "I would say some five feet in height," he said. "That, too, would be my estimate," I said. "I do not understand," he said. "Does that not seem interesting to you?" I asked. "Not really," he said. "It does to me," I said. "Why?" he asked. "The tor shrub," I said, "does not grow higher than a man's waist." "How did you know I was spying on you?" he asked. "The tor shrub," I said, "does not grow higher than a man's waist."
The drover threw back the hood of his burnoose, and pulled down the veil about his face. Beneath the burnoose he wore a skullcap. The rep-cloth veil was red; it had been soaked in a primitive dye, mixed from water and the mashed roots of the telekint; when he perspired, it had run; his face was stained.
I set her down on a bed of green clover. Beyond it, some hundred yards away, I could see the border of a yellow field of Sa-Tarna and a yellow thicket of Ka-la-na trees. Tarnsman of Gor Book 1 Page 96 Gripped in the talons of the tarn was the dead body of an antelope, one of the one-horned, yellow antelopes called tabuks that frequent the bright Ka-la-na thickets of Gor. Tarnsman of Gor Book 1 Page 145 Once I brought the carcass of a tabuk, one of Gor's single-horned, yellow antelopes, which I had felled in a Ka-la-na thicket, to the hut of a peasant and his wife. Outlaw of Gor Book 2 Page 48 The tabuk is the most common Gorean antelope, a small graceful animal, one-horned and yellow, that haunts the Ka-la-na thickets of the planet and occasionally ventures daintily into its meadows in search of berries and salt. It is also one of the favorite kills of a tarn. In many places it is too shallow to float even the great flat-bottomed barges and, more importantly, a path for them would have to be cut and chopped, foot by foot, through the thickets of rush and sedge, and the tangles of marsh vine. It was pointless to unsheath my sword, or to take up a weapon. From the safety of the yards of marsh water separating me from my enemies I could have been immediately slain, lost in a thicket of the two- or three-pronged marsh spears. "Cut there," said the girl, moving the rush craft into a thicket of rence. She moved the craft to a new thicket of rence, and I obeyed. In the distance, away from the forest, I could see a yellowish thicket, it, too, of trees, but not green, but bright and yellow. In the distance, near the yellowish thicket, I saw a small, yellowish animal moving, delicately. It was far off and I could not see it well. I thought it might be a deer or gazelle. It disappeared into the thicket. We had run for perhaps an Aim, when, gasping, exhausted, scarcely able to move, we had reached the edge of a large Ka-la-na thicket. In this thicket, still tethered one to the other, we had thrown ourselves down on the grass. "Come along," she said. "We must go deeper into the thicket." We had been free for five days. We had stayed in Ka-la-na thickets by day, and had moved across the fields at night. We had seen no other human beings since our escape. We had slept by day in Ka-la-na thickets, and moved southwestward by night. We moved southwestward through the great thicket, and then, finally came to its edge. Together, at the edge of the thicket, we ate the remains of our meal, which I had carried. From the thicket, running together, we fled southwestward. Four days later, in yet another thicket, one afternoon, Ute requested that I set one of our snares on a small game trail we had found earlier. "At the edge of a thicket to the northeast, days ago," said the second man, "we found the bones of brush urts!" I moved by night, and, by day, slept in Ka-la-na thickets. I was stirring in my bed of soft grasses, hidden in such thicket, half asleep. I was drowsy. In my camisk, I climbed to my feet, lifting my head. There was a din, coming from the direction of the village, seeming to move towards me, gradually, through the thicket. Only from before me was there no sound. I was terrified. I began to run in that direction, toward the edge of the thicket, but then I was afraid. Then, in the sunlight of the bright morning, late, almost at noon, I fled from the thicket, across the grass of the open field. I stood in the bright, knee-high grasses of that windblown, flowing field. I felt the sun on my body, the grass touching my calves. My feet felt beneath them the black, warm, root-filled, living earth of Gor. The Ka-la-na thicket was yellow in the distance, the peasants standing at its edge, not moving. The sky was deep, and blue, and bright with sunlight. I inhaled the fresh, glorious air of the planet Gor. How beautiful it was! I became aware, as well as I could see, that we stood in the midst of a clearing in a peasant village. I could see, my head hanging down, in the distance a great thicket of Ka-la-na. I smiled. The attacker was at bay. The attacker was concealed in the thicket ahead, waiting. I lifted my head to the trees in the thicket ahead, the tangles of brush and undergrowth. I noted where the birds moved, and where they did not. I surmised that the attacker, aware of my hot pursuit, would have turned within the thicket, and would have waited, bow drawn. Perhaps I had gone ahead, perhaps I had evaded the thicket, perhaps I had turned back. He stumbled forth from the thickets, and, behind them, the lofty trees of the forest. I watched my enemies from the thicket. Then I awakened suddenly. I was in a thicket, on a strange world. It was warm, and the sun, high, filtered through the branches of the trees. I looked up at the sky. It was darker now, through the trees. The man in whose company I was, and in whose power I was, had left the thicket. There was a rustle in a thicket of brush, at which the man had been directing his attention. By the ropes I was dragged into the midst of tenacious, barbed brush, that thicket of such. I screamed with misery. I begged mercy. I was shown none. The brush tore at my clothing and body. Rudely I was drawn through it. I cried out, throwing my head from side to side. I kept my eyes closed, that I be not blinded. "Please, Masters!" I cried. They did not see fit to show a girl mercy. Bloodied, my body a welter of scratches and linear wounds, I was pulled from the brush. The Earth-girl slave was now naked. "Let us continue on," said Kisu, and, again, the river before us, broad between the moist, tangled green thickets of the banks, backed on each side by the enclosing jungle, we dipped our paddles into the muddy, sluggish water. It had taken days to effect our escape, against the thickets of vines, and the renewal of growth. I had been told that larls stalking tabuk would sometimes delay their charge until their prey grazed beside a cliff, a wall of stone, a dense thicket. Indeed, sometimes they would herd, and drive, their prey against such barriers. Nor is the terrain itself uniform, for there may be streams and basins, and clearings, and meadows, elevations, canyons, and depressions, brush, thickets, even jumbles of rocks, from ancient glaciers, and weathered, winter-and-ice-cracked hills of stone.
The forest floor is far from uniform. It has its thousand rises and falls, its heights and valleys, its fallen timbers and rotting wood, its scarred, blackened trunks and scorched, lightning-fired wastes, its scattered boulders, its bare places, its flowered meadows and blossoming thickets,
We stood in the vicinity of a thicket of thorn brush, of the sort which is occasionally used to wall camps. By the ropes I was dragged into the midst of tenacious, barbed brush, that thicket of such. I screamed with misery. I begged mercy. I was shown none. The brush tore at my clothing and body. Rudely I was drawn through it. I cried out, throwing my head from side to side. I kept my eyes closed, that I be not blinded. "Please, Masters!" I cried. They did not see fit to show a girl mercy. Bloodied, my body a welter of scratches and linear wounds, I was pulled from the brush. The Earth-girl slave was now naked. |       | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
