The Harigga of the Tuchuks

General Quotes on the Tuchuks

“Run!” cried the woman. “Flee for your life!”
“They’re coming, ” he said. “Run, you fool, the Tuchuks are coming!"
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 1

​

"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."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 4

​

They are among the proudest of the people 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."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 4

​

"...the people that were, to the Goreans’ knowledge, the most free, among the fiercest, among the most isolated on the planet.“ 
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 6 

​

"Then for the first time, against the horizon, a jagged line, humped and rolling like thundering waters, seemed to rise alive from the prairie, vast, extensive, a huge arc, churning and pounding from one corner of the sky to the other, the herds of the Wagon Peoples, encircling, raising dust into the sky like fire, like hoofed glaciers of fur and horn moving in shaggy floods across the grass, toward me."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 10

 

"It was said a youth of the Wagon Peoples was taught the bow, the quiva and the lance before their parents would consent to give him a name, for names are precious among the Wagon Peoples, as among Goreans in general, and they are not to be wasted on someone who is likely to die, one who cannot well handle the weapons of the hunt and war. Until the youth has mastered the bow, the quiva and the lance he is simply known as the first, or the second, and so on, son of such and such a father."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 11

​

"Wagon Peoples, incidentally, keep a calendar of fifteen moons, named for the fifteen varieties of bosk, and functions independently of the tallying of years by snow."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 12

​

"Few can read, though some can, perhaps having acquired the skill far from the wagons, perhaps from merchants or tradesmen."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 12

​

"Now the rider in front of me lifted the colored chains from his helmet, that I might see his face. It was a white face, but heavy, greased; the epicanthic fold of his eyes bespoke a mixed origin. I was looking on the faces of four men, warriors of the Wagon Peoples. On the face of each there were, almost like corded chevrons, brightly colored scars. The vivid coloring and intensity of these scars, their prominence, reminded me of the hideous markings on the faces of mandrills; but these disfigurements, as I soon recognized, were cultural, not congenital, and bespoke not the natural innocence of the work of genes but the glories and status, the arrogance and prides, of their bearers. The scars had been worked into the faces, with needles and knives and pigments and the dung of bosks over a period of days and nights. Men had died in the fixing of such scars. Most of the scars were set in pairs, moving diagonally down from the side of the head toward the nose and chin. The man facing me had seven such scars ceremonially worked into the tissue of his countenance, the highest being red, the next yellow, the next blue, the fourth black, then two yellow, then black again. The faces of the men I saw were all scarred differently, but each was scarred. The effect of the scars, ugly, startling terrible, perhaps in part calculated to terrify enemies, had even prompted me, for a wild moment, to conjecture that what I faced on the Plains of Turia were not men, but perhaps aliens of some sort, brought to Gor long ago from remote worlds to serve some now discharged or forgotten purpose of Priest-Kings; but now I knew better; now I could see them as men; and now, more significantly, I recalled what I had heard whispered of once before, in a tavern in Ar, the terrible Scar Cods of the Wagon Peoples, for each of the hideous marks on the face of these men had a meaning, a significance that could be read by the Paravaci, the Kassars, the Kataii, the Tuchuks as clearly as you or I might read a sign in a window or a sentence in a book. At that time I could read only the top scar, the red, bright, fierce cord-like scar that was the Courage Scar. It is always the highest scar on the face. Indeed, without that scar, no other scar can be granted. The Wagon Peoples value courage above all else. Each of the men facing me wore that scar."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 15 -16

​

"The Wagon Peoples value courage above all else."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 16

 

"The children of the Wagon Peoples are taught the saddle of the kaiila before they can walk."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 17

​

"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 he? How skillful is he?  He would be both skillful and vain.  He was Tuchuk!"
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 25

​

"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."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 27 - 28

​

"Kamchak said nothing, but then he got up and from a chest in the wagon he took forth a goblet and filled it with an amber fluid, into which he shook a dark, bluish powder. He then took Elizabeth Cardwell in his left arm and with his right hand gave her the drink. Her eyes were frightened, but she drank. In a few moments she was asleep."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 61 - 62

​

"No Tuchuk, I knew, cares to be the butt of a joke, especially a Turian joke."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 97

​

"Kamchak laughed. "It is one thing to order the death of a Tuchuk," he said. "It is another to kill him."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 97

​

"He grinned a Tuchuck grin.
'How are the Bosk?' He asked.
'As well as may be expected,' said Kamchak.
'Are the Quivas sharp?'
'One tries to keep them so,' said Kamchak.
'It is important to keep the axles of the wagons greased,' observed Kutaituchik.
'Yes,' said Kamchak, 'I believe so.'
Kutaituchik suddenly reached out and he and Kamchak, laughing, clasped hands."
---Nomads of Gor, pg 44

​

"Tomorrow, " I said, "you fight on the Plains of a Thousand Stakes."
"Yes, " he said, "so tonight I will get drunk."
"It would be better, " I said, "to get a good night's sleep."
"Yes, " said Kamchak, "but I am Tuchuk--so I will get drunk."
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 111

​

On long lines of tharlarion I could see warriors of Turia approaching in procession the Plains of a Thousand Stakes. The morning sun flashed from their helmets, their long tharlarion lances, the metal embossments on their oval shields, unlike the rounded shields of most Gorean cities. I could hear, like the throbbing of a heart, the beating of the two tharlarion drums that set the cadence of the march. Beside the tharlarion walked other men-at-arms, and even citizens of Turia, and more vendors and musicians, come to see the games. On the heights of distant Turia itself I could see the flutter of flags and pensions. The walls were crowded, and I supposed many upon them used the long glasses of the Caste of Builders to observe the field of the stakes. The warriors of Turia extended their formation about two hundred yards from the stakes until in ranks of four or five deep they were strung out in a line as long as the line of stakes itself. Then they halted. As soon as the hundreds of ponderous tharlarion had been marshaled into an order, a lance, carrying a fluttering pennon, dipped and there was a sudden signal on the tharlarion drums. Immediately the lances of the lines lowered and the hundreds of tharlarion, hissing and grunting, their riders shouting, the drums beating, began to bound rapidly towards us.
"Treachery!" I cried. There was nothing living on Gor I knew that could take the impact of a tharlarion charge. Elizabeth Cardwell screamed, throwing her hands before her face. To my astonishment the warriors of the Wagon Peoples seemed to be paying very little attention to the bestial avalanche that was even then hurtling down upon them. Some were haggling with the vendors, others were talking among themselves. I wheeled the kaiila, looking for Elizabeth Cardwell, who, afoot, would be slain almost before the tharlarion had crossed the lines of the stakes. She was standing facing the charging tharlarion, as though rooted to the earth, her hands before her face. I bent down in the saddle and tensed to kick the kaiila forward to sweep her to the saddle, turn and race for our lives.
"Really," said Kamchak. I straightened up and saw that the lines of the tharlarion lancers had, with much pounding and trampling of the earth, with shouting, with the hissing of the great beasts, stopped short, abruptly, some fifteen yards or so behind their line of stakes.
"It is a Turian joke," said Kamchak. "They are as fond of the games as we, and do not wish to spoil them." I reddened. Elizabeth Cardwell's knees seemed suddenly weak but she staggered back to us."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 113 - 114

​

"The Warrior of the Wagon Peoples, tends to be a frustrating, swift and elusive foe, striking with great rapidity and withdrawing with goods and captives almost before it is understood what has occurred."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 116

​

I then finished the bottle. I flung it into a refuse hole, dug and periodically cleaned by male slaves. 
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 165

​

"To a Tuchuk," said Harold, "success is courage-that is the important thing-courage itself-even if all else fails-that is success."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 273

​

"It is hard to outwit a Tuchuk in a bargain," remarked Harold, turning back, rather confidently."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 328

​

"Each of you," he said, "the Kassars-the Kataii-the Paravaci-have their own bosk and your own wagons-live so-but in time of war-when there are those who would divide us-when there are those who would fight us and threaten our wagons and our bosk and women-our plains, our land-then let us war together-and none will stand against the Wagon Peoples-we may live alone but we are each of us of the Wagons and that which divides us is less than that which unites us-we each of us know that it is wrong to slay bosk and that it is right to be proud and to have courage and to defend our wagons and our women-we know that it is right to be strong and to be free-and so it is together that we will be strong and we will be free. Let this be pledged."

---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 334 - 335

​

"Kamchak smiled. "We Tuchuks know of many things," he said, "Of more than we tell." He grinned. "Good fortune attend you, Tarl Cabot, Commander of a Thousand Tuchuks, Warrior of Ko-ro-ba!"
---Nomads of Gor, Pg. 344

​

​

​