GEOGRAPHY
           North Pole     Ax Glacier     Himrgar Mountains     Pole Sea    
           Ice Mountain     The Aurora Borealis    
RED HUNTERS
           The Innuit     Camps     Lodgings     Igloos     Travelling    
FREE MEN
           Imnak     Kadluk    
FREE WOMEN
           Clothes     Hairdo     Weapons     Courtship    
SLAVES
           General     Clothes     Slave Yoke     Collars    
ECONOMY
           The Herd of Tancred     Ice Hunting     The Great Hunt     Traps     Trade    
CULTURE AND TRADITIONS
           Gifts     Carvings     Music     Songs     Games     Religion    
FAUNA
           Snow Bosk     Gants     Insects     Leems     Parsit     Snow Lart     Sleen     Sorp     Tabuk     Verr    
           Hunjer Whale     Karl Whale     Baleen Whale    
FLORA
           Flowers     Plants     Tundra    

GEOGRAPHY

North Pole

"Many people do not understand the nature of the polar north. For one thing, it is very dry. Less snow falls there generally than falls in lower latitudes. Snow that does fall, of course, is less likely to melt. Most of the land is tundra, a coo, generally level or slightly wavy, treeless plain. 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. In the winter, of course, and in the early spring and late fall, desolate, bleak and frozen, wind-swept, it presents the aspect of a barren alien landscape. At such times the red hunters will dwell by the sea, in the spring and fall by its shores, and, in the winter, going out on the ice itself."
"Beasts of Gor" page 196

"A nail struck by a hammer can shiver into fragments. Urine can freeze before strking the ground. The squeal of a sleen may be heard for ten to twelve miles. A common conversation can be heard half a pasang away. A mountain which seems very close, given the sharpness of visibility in the clear air, may actually be forty pasangs in the distance. The cold air, touching the body of a sleen, forms a steam which can almost obscure the animal. A running tabuk can leave a trail of such steam drifting behind it. One's breath can freeze in a beard, leaving it a mask of ice."
"Beasts of Gor" page 205

"The sun was low on the horizon. We heard more laughter from the feasting house. The polar night is not absolutely dark, of course. The Gorean moons, and even the stars, provide some light, which light reflecting from the expanses of the snow and ice is more than adequate to make one's way about. Should cloud cover occur, of course, or there be a storm, this light is negated and one, remaining indoors, must content oneself with the sounds of wind in the darkness, and the occasional scratching of animals on the ice outside."
"Beasts of Gor" page 265

Ax Glacier

"Ax Glacier was far to the north, a glacier spilling between two mountains of stone, taking in it’s path to the sea, spreading, the form of the ax. The men of the country of Ax Glacier fish for whales and hunt snow sleen. They cannot farm that far to the north. Thorgeir, it so happened, of course, was the only man of the Ax Glacier country, which is usually taken as the northern border of Torvaldsland, before the ice belts of Gor’s arctic north, who was at the thing-fair."
"Marauders of Gor" Page 139

"Perhaps I was struck most by the absence of trees.
Some five days after I had acquired the slave girl, Arlene, following the herd of Tancred, generally climbing, I came to the edge of Ax Glacier. There I found the camp of Imnak, and Thimble and Thistle."
"Beasts of Gor" page 187/8

Hrimgar Mountains - Pass of Tancred

"There are tiers of mountains, interlaced chains of them, both east of Torvaldaland and north of her. Ax Glacier lies in one valley between two of these chains. These chains, together, are sometimes called the Hrimgar Mountains, which, in Gorean, means the Barrier Mountains. They are surely not a barrier, however, in the sense that the Voltai Mountains, or even the Thentis Mountains or Ta-Thassa Mountains, are barriers. The Hrimgar Mountains are not as rugged or formidable as any of these chains, and they are penetrated by numerous passes. One such pass, through which we trekked, is called the pass of Tancred, because it is the pass used annually by the migration of the herd of Tancred."
"Beasts of Gor" page 192

Polar Sea

"He crouched over the mosaic where it delineated the sea, and arm of Thassa, crescentlike, extending northward and eastward, tangent upon the polar shores. The sea in this area was frozen for more than half the year. Winds and tides broke the ice, crushing and piling it in fantastic shapes, wild, trackless conformations, the sport of a terrible nature of play, the dreaded pack ice of the north."
"Beasts of Gor" page 37

"It took ten days to cross Ax Glacier. There are many glacial lines among the rocks and mountains of the north, but Ax Glacier is easily the broadest and most famous. These glaciers, like frozen rivers or lakes of ice, or emptying seas, depend to the shores of Thassa, seeking her, flowing some few feet a year, imperceptibly like stone, to her chill waters. More than once we heard gigantic crashes as hundreds of feet or more of ice broke away from the glacial edge and tumbled roaring into the sea. It is thus, of course, that icebergs are formed. These great pieces and mountains of ice, shattering from the brinks of Ax Glacier and her smaller sisters, in time, drifting, carried by currents, would reach the northern sea, that eastward-reaching extension of Thassa rimming the polar basin. It was in that northern, or polar, sea that there was said to exist, if it were not myth or invention, the "mountain that did not move," that iceberg which, in defiance of tide, wind and current, stood immobilely fixed. Sometimes we could see, from where we stood, the sea, with these great pieces of ice within it. Some of these pieces of ice reared more than a thousand feet into the air. Sometimes they are even miles long. Their occasional vastnesses, and the might of the forces that have formed them, become even more impressive when it is understood that what one can see above the surface does little more than hint at what lies below. The fresh-water ice from which such blocks are formed is less dense than the salt water in which they float, weighing only about seven eighths as much. Thus, in a given piece of such ice, there is some seven times more beneath the surface than appears visible above it. These pieces of ice, like moving, drifting reefs, can be hazardous to shipping. The smaller ones, especially at night, can be particularly dangerous."
"Beasts of Gor" page 190/1

"Gorean ships, however, seldom run afoul of them. They are, generally, very shallow-drafted, which permits them to come much closer to such ice without the danger that would threaten deeper-keeled craft; too, the Gorean ship, because of the shallow draft, can occasionally run up on such ice, sliding onto it, rather than breaking apart when it strikes it; too, the Gorean vessel, because it is usually light in weight, tends to be extremely responsive to its helm or helms, this permitting such obstacles to be avoided on shorter notice than would be possible with a heavier more sluggish vessel; too, Gorean vessels, except when manned by those of Torvaldsland and the northern islands, usually beach at night; thus, when visibility is poor, they are not abroad; if they do not beach they will sometimes lower their masts and yards and throw over their anchors; that most Gorean ships are oared vessels, too, gives the crewmen recourse in an emergency; they are not at the mercy of the wind and they can, if necessary, back the ship off the ice; lastly, few Gorean ships ply the northern waters in the months of darkness; sufficiently far north, of course, the sea freezes in the winter. A much greater danger to Gorean shipping than the iceberg is the sea itself, when it begins to freeze. A ship caught in the ice, if not constantly cut and chopped free, its men on the ice itself, can become solidly frozen, arrested, in the ice; then it is at the mercy of pressures and bucklings; the ice, grinding, shifting, can shatter a ship, breaking it apart like a lacing of frozen, brittle twigs."
"Beasts of Gor" page 191

"The very night of our catch the sea had begun to freeze. It had first taken on a slick greasy appearance. In time tiny columns of crystals had formed within it, and then tiny pieces of ice. Then the water, in a few hours, had become slushy and heavy, and had contained, here and there, larger chunks of ice. Then, a few hours later, these reaches of ice, forming and extending themselves, had touched, and struck one another, and ground against one another, and slid some upon the others, forming irregular plates and surfaces, and then the sea, still and frozen, was locked in white, bleak serenity."
"Beasts of Gor" page 289/290

"As I may have mentioned the arctic night is seldom completely dark. Indeed, the visibility is often quite good, for the light of the moons, and even the stars, is reflected from the vastness of the ice and snow. I looked about at the irregular and jagged shapes, weird and mighty, which loomed about us, of the pack ice, eerie in the deep shadows, and bright, strange light of the moons and snow. We stood small in the midst of incredible and fearful geometries. There was a beauty and a menace in these gigantic structures, fashioned by the bitter gnawing of the wind and the upheavals of the sea stirring beneath us. Sometimes we could feel the ice move. Sometimes we bridged, carefully, leads of open water, broken open by the groaning, shifting ice, soon to close again, almost beneath our feet."
"Beasts of Gor" page 318/9

Ice Mountain

"Samos referred to an iceberg. Some of these are gigantic, pasangs in width, hundreds of feet high. They break from glaciers, usually in the spring and summer, and drift in Thassa, moving with the currents. The currents generally moved eastwards above the polar basin. Gorean has no expression specifically for an iceberg. The same expression is used for both mountain and iceberg. If a reference should be unclear the expression is qualified, as by saying, "ice mountain." A mountain is a mountain to Goreans, regardless of whether it be formed of soil and stone, or ice. We tend to think of mountains as being land formations. The Gorean tends to think more of them as being objects of a certain sort, rather than objects of a certain sort with a particular location. In a sense, English does, too, for the expression "berg" is simple German for "mountain", and the expression "iceberg' then is a composite word which, literally translated would yield, "ice mountain" or 'mountain of ice'. "berg", of course, in actual German, would be capitalized, for it is a noun. Interestingly, Goreans, although they do not capitalize all nouns, do capitalize many more of them than would be capitalized in , say, English or French. Sometimes context determines capitalization. Languages are diverse and interesting, idiosyncratic and fascinating."
"Beasts of Gor" page 37

"There is here an iceberg," said Samos, pointing to the map, " which is not following the parsit current." Samos had said, literally, of course, "ice mountain". The parsit current is the main eastward current above the polar basin. It is called the parsit current for it is followed by several varieties of migrating parsit, a small, narrow, usually striped fish. Sleen, interestingly, come northward with the parsit, their own migrations synchronized with those of the parsit, which forms for them their principal prey. The four main types of sleen found in the polar seas are the black sleen, the brown sleen, the tusked sleen and the flat-nosed sleen. There is a time of year for the arrival of each, depending on the waves of the parsit migrations. Not all members of a species of sleen migrate. Also, some winter under the ice, remaining generally dormant, rising every quarter of an Ahn or so to breathe. This is done at breaks in the ice or at gnawed breathing holes."
"Beasts of Gor" page 38

The Aurora Borealis

"I looked up at the sky, at streaks and curtains of light, mostly yellowish green, hundreds of miles in height. This is an atmospheric phenomenon, caused by electrically charged particles from the sun bombarding the upper atmosphere. It was unusual for it to occur at this time of year. The autumnal and vernal equinox times are the most frequent times of occurrence. In different light conditions these curtains and streaks can appear violet or red or orange depending on their height. This silent storm of charged particles, flung from millions of miles across space, raining upon an atmosphere, was very beautiful. On Earth this type of phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the Northern Lights or the Aurora Borealis. It occurs also, of course, in the south, in the vicinity of the southern polar circle.
"Beasts of Gor" page 337

RED HUNTERS

The Innuit

"With Imnak's help we would cross Ax Glacier and find the Innuit, as they called themselves, a word which, in their own tongue, means "the People." I recalled that in the message of Zarendargar he had referred to himself as a war general of the "People." He had meant, of course, I assumed, his own people, or kind. Various groups are inclined to so identify themselves. It is an arrogance which is culturally common. The Innuit do not have "war generals." War, in its full sense, is unknown to them. They live generally in scattered, isolated communities. It is as though two families lived separated in a vast remote area. There would be little point and little likelihood to their having a war. In the north one needs friends, not enemies. In good years, when the weather is favorable, there tends to be enough sleen and tabuk, with careful hunting, to meet their needs. One community is not likely to be much better or worse of than another. There is little loot to be acquired. What one needs one can generally hunt or make for oneself. There is little point in stealing from someone what one can as simply acquire for oneself. Within given groups, incidentally, theft is rare. The smallness of the groups provides a powerful social control. If one were to steal something where would one hide or sell it? Besides, if one wished something someone else owned and let this be known, the owner would quite possibly give it to you, expecting, of course, to receive as valuable a gift in return. Borrowing, too, is prevalent among the red hunters. The loan of furs, tools and women is common.
I looked downward, out across the ice of Ax Glacier. Beyond it lay the polar basin.
The north is a hard country. When one must apply oneself almost incessantly to the tasks of survival there is little time to indulge oneself in the luxury of conquest.
Thimble and Thistle dismantled the hides and poles of Imnak's tent, and began to load them on the sled.
Violence, of course, is not unknown among the Innuit. They are men. Aside, however, from consideratiolis such as the fewness, comparatively, of their numbers, and their geographical separation, and the pointlessness of an economics of war in their environment, the Innuit seem, also, culturally, or perhaps even genetically, disposed in ways which do not incline one to organized, systematic group violence. For example, they seem generally to be a kindly, genial folk. Hostility seems foreign to them. Strangers are welcomed. Hospitality is generous, honest, open-hearted and sincere. Some animals, doubtless, have better dispositions than others. The Innuit, on the whole, seem to be happy, pleasant fellows.'Perhaps that is why they live where they do. They have been unable, or unwilling, to compete with more aggressive groups. Their gentleness has resulted, it seems, in their being driven to the world's end. Where no others have desired to live the Innuit, sociable and loving, have found their bleak refuge."
"Beasts of Gor" page 188

"The red hunters lived as nomads, dependent on the migrations of various types of animals, in particular the northern tabuk and four varieties of sea sleen. Their fishing and hunting were seasonal, and depended on the animals. Sometimes they managed to secure the northern shark, sometimes even the toothed Hunjer whale or the less common, Karl whale, which was a four-fluked, baleen whale. But their life, at best, was a precarious one. Little was known of them. Like many simple, primitive peoples, isolated and remote, they could live or die without being noticed."
"Beasts of Gor" page 36

"The red hunter, he of the polar basin, had not knelt. Perhaps he did not speak Gorean well enough to understand the command. There are several barbarian languages spoken on Gor, usually in more remote areas. Also, some of the dialects of Gorean itself are aimost unintelligible. On the other hand, Gorean, in its varieties, serves as the lingua franca of civilized Gor. There are few Goreans who cannot speak it, though with some it is almost a second language. Gorean tends to be rendered more uniform through the minglings and transactions of the great fairs. Too, at certain of these fairs, the caste of scribes, accepted as the arbiters of such matters, stipulate that certain pronounciations and grammatical, formations, and such are to be preferred over others. The Fairs, in their diverse ways, tend to standardize the language, which might otherwise disintegrate into regional variations which, over centuries, might become mutually unintelligible linguistic modalities, in effect and practice, unfortunately, separate languages. The Fairs, and, I think, the will of Priest-Kings, prevents this."
"Beasts of Gor" page 153

"Though they are reticent to speak their own names, have little reservation about speaking the names of others. This makes sense, as it is not their name, and it is not as if, in their speaking it, the name might somehow escape them. This is also fortunate, It is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to get one of these fellows to tell you his own name. Often one man will tell you the name of his friend, and his friend will tell you his name. This way you learn the name of both, but from neither himself. The names of the red Hunters incidentally have meaning, but, generally, I content myself with reporting the name in their own language. 'Imnak,' for example, means "Steep Mountain"; 'Poalu' means "Mitten"; 'Kadluk' means "Thunder". I have spoken of 'Thimble" and 'Thistle." More strictly, their names were 'Pudjortok' and 'Kakidlamerk'. However, since these names, respectively, would be 'Thimble' and 'Thistle', and Imnak often referred to them in Gorean as 'Thimble" and 'Thistle" I have felt it would be acceptable to use those latter expressions, they being simpler from the point of view of one who does not natively speak the tongue of the People, or Innuit."
"Beasts of Gor" page 194

"I did know the red hunters were extremely permissive with their children, even among Goreans. They very seldom scolded them and would almost never strike a child. They protected them as they could. Soon enough the children would learn. Until that time let them be children."
"Beasts of Gor" page 266

"There is no one in the feasting house who is of my people, who is not a child," he said, "who has not seen people starve to death. Many times, too, it is not the fault of the people. There is sickness, or there is bad weather. Sometimes there is a storm and the snow hides the breathing holes of the sleen." He spoke very quietly. "Sometimes," he said, "there is an accident. Sometimes one's kayak is rent. Sometimes one falls. Sometimes the ice breaks." He looked at me. "No," he said, "do not think too lightly of my people. Let them laugh and be happy. Do not despise them that they are joyful that for once their meat racks are heavy."
"Forgive me, my friend," I said.
"It is done," he said.
"You are a great hunter," I said.
"I am a terrible hunter," he said. "But once I did slay six sleen in one day," he said. He grinned.
"Let us return to the feasting house," I said.
Together we returned to the feasting house."
"Beasts of Gor" page 266/7

"Although the red hunters can and do experience intense cold their lives, generally, are not made miserable by their climate They have intelligently adapted to it and are usually quite comfortable both indoors and outdoors. Also, it seems to me objectively true that they are less sensitive to cold than many other types of individual. For one thing they are generally short and heavy, a body configuration which tends to conserve heat; for another there are serological differences between them and even other red races of Gor; these serological differences, presumably selected for in the course of generations, doubtless play some role in their adaptation to cold. I think it is probably true, though it is difficult to tell, that a given degree of severe cold will not be as unpleasant to one who is a red hunter as it would be to someone who is not of that background or stock. Red hunters, for example, will often go about cheerfully stripped to the waist in weather in which many individuals of the south would find both a tunic and a cloak comfortable."
"Beasts of Gor" page 268

Camps

Imnak shrugged. "If Karjuk does not want to be found, he will not be found," he said. "No man knows the ice like Karjuk. We will go to the permanent camp and wait for him there. Sometimes he comes to the permanent camp."
"Where is that camp?" I asked.
"It is by the shore of the sea," he said.
"But what if he does not come to that camp?" I asked.
"Then we will not be able to find him." said Imnak. "If the ice beasts cannot find Karjuk, how can we expect to do so?"
"Beasts of Gor" page 257

"Although there were some fifteen hundred red hunters they generally lived in widely scattered small groups. In the summer there was a gathering for the great tabuk hunt, when the herd of Tancred crossed Ax Glacier and came to the tundra, but, even in the summer, later, the smaller groups, still pursuing tabuk, would scatter in their hunts, following the casual dispersal of the tabuk in their extended grazings. At the end of the summer these groups, loosely linked save in the spring or early summer, would make their ways back to their own camps. There were some forty of these camps, sometimes separated by journeys of several days. Imnak's camp was one of the more centrally located of the camps. In these camps the red hunters lived most of the year. They would leave them sometimes in the winter, when they needed more food, families individually going out on the pack ice to hunt sleen. Sleen were infrequent in the winter and there would not, often, be enough to sustain ten or twelve families in a given location. When game is scarce compensation can be sometimes achieved by reducing the size of the hunting group and extending the range of the hunt. In the winter, in particular, it is important for a family to have a good hunter."
"Beasts of Gor" page 263/4

"There are other villages," I said. "Let us travel to them, to see if Karjuk has been there." "There are many villages," said Imnak. 'The farthest is many sleeps away." "I wish to visit them all," I said. 'Then, if we cannot find news of Karjuk, I must go out on the ice in search of him."
"Beasts of Gor" page 290

Lodgings

"The feasting house, except for being larger, was much like the other dwellings in the permanent camp. It was half underground and double walled These two walls were of stone. Between them there were layers of peat, for insulation, which had been cut from the boglike tundra Hides too, were tied on the inside, from tabuk tents, affording additional protection from the cold. There was a smoke hole in the top of the house. One bent over to enter the low doorway The ceiling, supported by numerous poles. consisted of layers of grass and mud. There was the feasting house, and some ten or eleven dwellings in the camp."
"Beasts of Gor" page 263

"The feasting house, because of its structure, the lamps and the heat of the many bodies within it, is quite warm. I have no way of knowing precisely what its temperature often was but I would have conjectured it would often have been in the eighties. The huts, and even the houses of ice sometimes built by the hunters in their journeys and hunts, can be quite comfortable, even when the weather outside may be dozens of degrees below zero. Often, however, in the night and near morning, the lamps extinguished, and the guests departed, it can become quite cold in such dwellings, often falling below the freezing point. Often, in the morning, one must break through a layer of ice in the drinking bucket. When the houses are cold, of course, the hunters are generally sleeping in their furs, together with their women. Because of the body heat of the companion it is much warmer to sleep with someone than to sleep alone. The furs, being impervious to the passage of air, of course, tend to trap the generated body heat. It is thus possible to sleep quite comfortably in a dwelling whose objective interior temperature may be well below freezing. Also, sleeping is usually done on a sleeping platform. This is raised above the floor level. The platform is warmer than the floor level of the dwelling, of course, because of the tendency of warm air to rise. A yard of height can make a difference of several degrees of temperature inside a typical dwelling of the red hunters."
"Beasts of Gor" page 267/8

"Outside, objectively, it was rather dark. Also, the feasting house had no windows. It is harder to heat a building with windows, of course. Too, hides, from tents, were hung about the inside of the feasting house, supplying additional insulation and warmth. Light in the feasting house was supplied generally from lamps. These were now extinguished, and the smoke hole covered. It was quite dark within."
"Beasts of Gor" page 268

"Imnak and I drew on our mittens and parkas and emerged from the lamp-warmed, half-underground hut."
"Beasts of Gor" page 290

Igloos

"Imnak, with his heel, traced a circle, some ten feet in diameter, in the snow near the sled. "Trample down the snow inside the circle," he said. "Then unload the sled and place our supplies within the circle."
I did as I was told, and Imnak, with a large, curved, bone, saw-toothed knife, a snow knife, began to cut at a nearby drift of snow." (...)
He had begun to take snow blocks from the drift and place them in a circle, within the edge of the area I was trampling down. The first block was the most difficult block to extract from the bank. The first row of blocks were about two feet in length, and a foot in breadth and height. (...)
Imnak placed the first block of the second row of blocks across two blocks in the first row. The blocks of the second row, those forming the second ring of the circular shelter, were slightly smaller than those of the first row. (...)
Crouching inside the ring, among supplies, Poalu began working near the lamp. Striking iron pyrites together she showered sparks into tinder, dried grass from the summer. The lamp was lit.
Imnak completed the low, second row of snow blocks.
"Thistle," said Poalu, to Audrey, "bring the cooking rack and the water kettle." One of the first things that is done, following the lighting of the lamp, which serves as light, heat and cook stove in the tiny shelters, is to melt snow for drinking water, and heat water for boiling meat. (...)
Imnak had managed only to build two rows, and part of a third, in the shelter. He did not cease, however, to cut blocks from the drift. One uses a drift, when possible, which has been formed in a single storm. The structure of the drift, thus, is less likely to contain faults, strata and cleavages, which would result in the blocks being weaker and more likely to break apart. (...)
He continued to cut blocks of snow, though he now made no effort to place them in the walls. One normally places such blocks from the inside. When the domed shelter is completed, as ours was not, the last block is placed on the outside and the builder then goes within, and, with the snow knife, trimming and shaping, slips it into place. A hole is left for the passage of air and smoke. Imnak's walls were rough, and not too well shaped. The snow knife suffices, when there is time, to shape the dwelling. Chinks between blocks are filled with snow, as though it were mortar. (...)
Imnak now, with a knife, cut down at the ice some twenty feet from the partially erected shelter.(...)
Imnak hurried to the low wall of the half-erected shelter. There, instead of joining us, he took from Poalu a slice of meat and, in the other hand, the handle of the water kettle. He hurried to the hole he had cut in the ice. He thrust the meat on the blade of the knife and then thrust the handle of the knife down into the hole he had cut in the ice. He poured the water then into the hole in the ice, about the handle of the knife. He waited only a moment, for the water, poured into the icy hole in the subzero temperatures, froze almost instantly, anchoring the knife with the solidity of a spike in cement. (...)
Imnak added the new blocks to the snow shelter and, with his snow knife, cut those blocks he needed to finish the low, domed structure. It does not take long to construct such a shelter, if the snow is appropriate. I do not think he had worked longer, altogether, than some forty or fifty minutes on it. With the snow knife, on the outside, he trimmed and shaped the dwelling, and filled in the chinks with snow. Inside Poalu had relit the lamp and was already melting snow for drinking water and setting a pot to boil, hanging from the cooking rack, for meat."
"Beasts of Gor" page 325/333

"It had been four sleeps now since we had left the first snow shelter, where we had been threatened by the sleen pack. Each sleep we had again constructed such a shelter."
"Beasts of Gor" page 333

"We will now make a shelter," said Imnak.
Once again, as he had before, he found a suitable drift of snow and began to cut blocks. We may call this type of shelter an igloo, or iglu, I suppose, for that is the word, an Innuit word actually, by which we would think of it. Yet in the language of the Innuit, or of the People, the word 'igloo' or 'iglu' designates more generally a dwelling or house. For example, it is not necessary for an igloo to be made from snow or ice. Imnak's half-underground hut, or house, at the permanent camp, for example, was also called an igloo."
"Beasts of Gor" page 336

"Crouching down I edged toward the opening. The roof of the exit tunnel was about a yard high, at the inner end. Usually a hide tent is hung inside the snow shelter, which provides additional insulation. It is fastened by pegs within the shelter, which are anchored outside, on the rounded outer roof. We had not set the tent within the shelter this sleeping period, however. I had brushed aside a hide flap, though, which was hung over the inner entrance. At the outer end of the tunnel, where one emerged to the outside, the ceiling of the tunnel was about four and one half feet in height The general reason for the tunnel dimensions is to prevent wear and tear on mittens and clothing, which can be a very serious matter in subzero temperatures; a needle and thread in the arctic can be as important as a knife and a harpoon. Another value of the tunnel dimensions, of course, is that one may emerge from the shelter with a weapon at the ready. This can be of value in a country where there may be dangerous animals.
I began to move down the tunnel. I heard Imnak behind me.
At the outer end of the tunnel, gently, I edged out the snow blocks which, for most practical purposes, closed the opening. One does not seal the shelter, of course; that can be extremely dangerous; it must be adequately ventilated, particularly when the lamp is lit. Air from the entrance, or another aperture, moving into or through the shelter and, warmed, rising, escaping at the smoke hole in the roof, supplies the required ventilation."
"Beasts of Gor" page 338

Travelling

"He drives his pretty beasts before him," I said. Imnak had fashioned a sled, which would be of use in crossing Ax Glacier. Thimble and Thistle drew it now across the tundra toward the snows." "Beasts of Gor" page 175

"This morning Imnak, walking behind and to one side of the sled, had left the camp's area. Because it was warm he had not permitted the girls to wear their hide shirts or parkas. Northern women often do not do so in warm weather. When he had cracked his whip they had put their shoulders to the traces. The sled was heavily laden, but with little gold. More significant to Imnak had been sugars and Bazi tea, and furs and tools. Interestingly he had also placed much wood on the sled, both boards and poles, for it is of great value in the north. Wood can be used for sleds, and tent frames and the frames of kayaks and umiaks, the large, broad vessels which can hold several individuals, sometimes used in whaling. Trees do not flourish in the land of Imnak and their needs for wood must largely be satisfied by occasional finds at the shore, driftwood, from hundreds of pasangs south, dragged from the chilled water. Imnak's whip cracked and she who had been Barbara Benson, a middle-class girl, and she who had been the rich, upper-class Audrey Brewster, now Thimble and Thistle, cried out and began to draw their master's sled."
"Beasts of Gor" page 176

"Into the traces," said Imnak.
Thimble and Thistle bent down and each looped the broad band of her trace across her body.
"You are animals, aren't you?" called Arlene to them.
"Can you rig another trace?" I asked Imnak.
"Of course," he said.
Soon Arlene, too, to her fury, stood in harness.
Imnak cracked his whip over their heads and they threw their weight against the traces and the long, narrow, freighted sled eased upward, over the rocks, and then slid down onto the ice of Ax Glacier. Imnak and I held the rear of the sled that it not move too rapidly downward. The ice of Ax Glacier, where we crossed it, had been cut by the countless hooves of the herd of Tancred; leaving a trial of marked ice more than one hundred and fifty yards wide. We would follow the herd."
"Beasts of Gor" page 190

"Four days after leaving the northern edge of Ax Glacier, we climbed to the height of the pass of Tancred, the mountains of the Hrimgar flanking us on either side. Below the height, the pass sloping downward, we could see the tundra of the polar plain. It is thousands of pasangs in width, and hundreds in depth; it extends, beyond horizons we could see, to the southern edge of the northern, or polar, sea.
I think this was a moving moment for Imnak. He stopped on the height of the pass, and stood there, for a long time, regarding the vastness of the cool tundra.
"I am home," he said.
Then we eased the sled downward."
"Beasts of Gor" page 192

"From time to time, then standing on the runners. Imnak would turn to regard the jagged terrain behind him. This is a habit of red hunters. It gives a check on what may be behind one, and, too, it shows him what the country will look like on his return. This is a procedure which helps to prevent the red hunter from becoming lost. It makes it easier to find his way back because he has already, in effect, seen what the return journey will look like. He has, so to speak, already filed its appearance in his memory. This habit, of course, tends to be less fruitful in a terrain of sea ice, such as that in which we now found ourselves, because of the bizarre, twisted sameness of much of the ice scape. There remain, of course, the stars and the winds. Winds are extremely important in direction finding to the red hunter, for at certain seasons they prevail in different directions. Indeed, even in the darkness, the total darkness of an overcast sky in the arctic night, when the winds do not blow, he may often find his way simply by feeling with his mittened hands the alignment of ice crystals on slopes and blocks, which are a residue of the earlier passage of such winds. This is not to say that red hunters cannot become lost. They can. On the other hand an experienced trekker usually has a good idea of his whereabouts. The lay of the land, the winds, the stars, help him with directions, as well as, of course, his own keenly developed sense of orientation, probably selected for in the harsh environment. Distance he tends to measure in terms of sleeps. Interestingly, in his descriptions and rude maps of terrain, scratched in the snow, he shows little awareness of or interest in land masses or shapes. His interest tends to lie in given geographical points and landmarks. The shape of a peninsula on which he may have a permanent camp, for example, is of less interest to him than is the direction and distance to the next nearest camp. I suppose this makes sense. If one had to choose between cartographical fidelity and arriving alive in the next camp perhaps one would sooner sacrifice the former excellence to the latter desideratum. And even if a red hunter should become lost it is normally possible for him, at least for a time, to live off the land. He generally carries such things as hooks, fish line, knives, snare strings and harpoons with him. Sometimes, when one does become lost, as on a trading journey south, it takes months to find his way back to his camp. "Where have you been?" he is asked. "Oh, I have been hunting," he says. Sled sleen, too, of course, may be killed for food. It is important, of course, to be the first to kill in such a situation. A sufficiently hungry snow sleen will turn and attack its driver. There is much danger in the north, and much to know."
"Beasts of Gor" page 321/2

"I, too, from time to time, looked back. This was not only to consider the terrain as it might appear on a return journey, something I had learned from Imnak, but for another reason as well, one held in common by warriors and red hunters. It is well to see what might come behind one."
"Beasts of Gor" page 322

FREE MEN

Imnak

"I saw a short fellow in the street crows. He was passing by. he was squat and broad, powerful, apparently very strong. Though the weather was cool in the early spring he was stripped to the waist. He wore trousers of fur, and fur boots, which came to the knee. His skin was dark, reddish like copper; his hair was bluish black, roughly cropped; his eyes bore the epicanthic fold. About his shoulder, he had slung some coils of braided rope, fashioned from twisted sleen hide, and in his hand, he carried a sack and a bundle of tied furs; at his back was a quiver containing arrows, and a short bow of sinew-bound, layered horn. Such men are seldom seen on Gor. They are the natives of the polar basin."
"Beasts of Gor" page 48

Kadluk

"Greetings, Kadluk," I called.
A coppery face poked itself outside the tent. It was a very broad face, with high cheekbones, and very dark, bright eyes, a face framed in cut, blue-black hair, with bangs across the forehead.

"Beasts of Gor" page 211

"Light lamps, boil meat!" called Kadluk, who was the chief man in the village. "We must make a feast to welcome our visitor!"
"Beasts of Gor" page 291

Karjuk

"Where is this Karjuk?" I asked. "I would speak with him."
"He is not here," said Imnak.
"Where is he?" I asked.
"In the north," said Imnak.
"Where in the north?" I asked.
"In the far north," said Ininak. "No man lives north of Karjuk," he added.
"Who is Karjuk?" I asked.
"He is the guard," said Imnak.
"The guard?" I asked. "Yes," said Imnak, "he guards the People against the ice beasts."
"Beasts of Gor" page 256

FREE WOMEN

Clothes

"She was very lovely and attractive in her hunting costume, brief tunic and long hose, brown, a scarlet cape and cap, the cap with a feather. She carried a short, yellow bow, of ka-la-na wood, which could clear the saddle of the tharlarion, its missile being easily released to either side. Her black boots, click and shining were spurred. A quiver of arrows, yellow, was at the left of her saddle...She had had dark hair, dark eyes." Beasts of Gor, page 111

"She looked at me angrily. She wore the high fur boots and panties of the woman of the north. As it was, from their point of view, a hot day, one which was above the freezing point, she, like most of the women of the Red Hunters, was stripped to the waist. About her neck she wore some necklaces. She seemed pretty, but her temper might have shamed that of a she-sleen. The fur she wore, interestingly, was rather shabby. Her carriage and sharpness of tongue, however, suggested she must be someone of importance. I would later learn that the unmated daughters of even important men, ,namely, good hunters, were often kept in the poorest of furs. It is up to the mate, or husband, if you wish, to bring them good furs. this is intended as an encouragement to the girls to be a bit fetching, that they may attract a man , and subsequently, have something nice to wear. If this were the plan, however, clearly it had not worked in the case of my pretty critic. I was not surprised. It would be a bold fellow indeed who would dare make her a present of fine feasting clothes.
"Beasts of Gor" page 193

"Women of the red hunters are furred differently from the hunters. Their boots, soft, of sleenskin, are high, and reach the crotch, instead of the knee. Instead of trousers of fur they wear brief panties of fur. When they cover their breasts it is commonly with a shirt of beaded lartskin. In cold weather they, like the men, wear one or more hooded parkas of tabuk hide. Tabuk hide is the warmest pelt in the arctic. Each of the hairs of the nothern tabuk, interestingly, is hollow. This trapped air, contained in each of the hollow hairs, gives the fur excellent insulating properties. Air, incidentally, is extremely important, generally, in the effectiveness of the clothing of the red hunters. First, the garments, being of hide, are windproof, as most other garments are not. Cold air, thus, cannot penetrate the garment. The warming factor of the garment is a function of air trapped against the skin. This air, inside the garment, is warmed by the body, of course. The garment, because of the hood, and the weight of the garment on the shoulders, tends to trap this warm air inside. It does not escape from the bottom because warm air, being less dense than cold air, tends to rise. The major danger of these garments, interestingly, is the danger of the wearer becoming overheated. Perspiration in the arctic winter, which can freeze on the body, and soak the clothing, which can then become like ice, brittle and useless, is a peril to be avoided if at all possible. Yet the garment's design permits this danger to be nullified. When the hunter becomes overheated he pulls down the neck of the parka. This permits the warm air to escape and its place is taken by fresh, cold air from the bottom. He thus, by closing or opening the throat of the garment, regulates its effectiveness according to his needs. The warmth of most normal clothing, incidentally, is a function of layers of cloth, not of trapped, warmed air. These many layers of clothing are, of course, heavy, cumbersome and difficult to work in. Also, of course, since this sort of clothing is not normally windproof cold air penetrates the garment and, meeting the warm air of the body, tends to precipitate moisture. The garments thus become wet and more heavy, and more dangerous, at low temperatures. Also, there is no simply way of avoiding this danger. One may, of course, remove layers of clothing, but this, in arctic temperatures, can be dangerous in itself. Also, when one wishes to replace the clothing, it may be, by then, frozen. At arctic temperatures moisture in a garment can turn to ice in a matter of seconds. The armholes in a parka, incidentally, are cut large enough to allow a man to pull his arms and hands inside and warm them, if he wishes, against the body. The clothing of the arctic hunter seems ideally suited to his needs in the north. It is warm, light in weight and permits great freedom of movement."
"Beasts of Gor" page 163/4

Hairdo

"She tossed her head and turned away. Her hair was worn knotted in a bun on the top of her head, like that generally of the women of the Red Hunters. Their hair is worn loose, interestingly, out of doors, only during their menstrual period. In a culture where the gracious exchange of mates is commonly practiced this devise , a civilized courtesy, provides the husbands friends with information that may be pertinent to the timing of their visits. this culture signal, incidentally, is not applicable to a mans slaves in the north. Animals do not dress their hair and slaves, generally, do not either."
"Beasts of Gor" page 193

Weapons

"The ulo, or woman's knife, with its semicircular blade, customarily fixed to a wooden handle, is not well suited to carving. It is better at cutting meat and slicing sinew."
"Beasts of Gor" page 262

“She carried a short, yellow bow, of Ka-la-ha wood, which could clear the saddle of the tharlarion. . .”
"Beasts of Gor" page 111

Courship of Poalu

"My business," said Imnak, "concerns Poalu, the daughter of Kadluk."
"Your business is more serious than mine," I said. "Mine pertains only to the saving of the world." I well remembered Poalu, the coppery spitfire whose kicked leather ball I had unwisely permitted to strike me.
"I do not understand," said Imnak.
"It does not matter," I said. "What of Poalu?"
"I love her," said Imnak.
"That is unfortunate," I said.
"Do you love her, too?" he asked.
"No," I said. "I thought that it was unfortunate for you."
"Oh," he said. Then he said, "That is not unlikely, but it is difficult to help matters of that sort."
"True," I said.
"And Poalu loves me, too," he said.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "once when I took feasting clothes to her father's house she threw the urine pot at me."
"That is a hopeful sign," I said.
"Another time," he said, cheerfully, "she beat me with a stick, calling me a good-for-nothing."
"It is clear she is very interested in you," I said.
"It is strange that so beautiful a girl has so few suitors," he said.
"Yes, it is quite strange," I admitted.
"Akko, who is my friend," said Imnak, "says that to take such a woman would be to leap naked into a pit of starving snow sleen. Do you think so?"
"I think so," I said. Actually I thought Akko's appraisal of the potentialities of the situation was overly hopeful, it being colored by his native good humor and optimism, vices endemic among red hunters.
"But I am shy," he said.
"I find that hard to believe," I said. "You seem to me a bold fellow."
"Not with women," he said.
"You are certainly fierce enough with Thimble and Thistle," I said. "They live in terror of displeasing you in the least."
"They are not women," he said.
"Oh?' I asked.
"Oh, they are women of a sort," he said, "but they are not of the People. They are nothing, only pretty, white-skinned slave beasts. They do not count."
"That is true," I said. They did not count. They were only slaves.
"Poalu is different," he said.
"That is for certain," I granted him.
"I will have Poalu!" he said, suddenly. He climbed to his feet. "Yes!" he said. "I will have Poalul"
The tabuk trotted away.
"The tabuk have gone," I said.
"But I am shy," he said. "You must help me."
"The tabuk have gone." I said.
"You must help me," he said.
"Very well," I said. 'The tabuk have gone," I added.
"I knew I could count on you," he said.
"The tabuk have gone," I said.
"Yes, I know," he said.
"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
"I am too shy to do it," he said.
"You are too shy to do what?" I asked.
"I am too shy to carry her off," he said.
"You want me to carry her off?" I asked.
"Of course," he said. "Do not worry. No one will mind."
"What about Poalu?" I asked.
He frowned. "Well, I do not know about Poalu," he admitted. "Sometimes she is moody."
"Perhaps you should carry her off yourself," I suggested.
"I am too shy to do this," he said, miserably.
"I suppose it might be done," I mused, "under the cover of darkness."
"But then you could not well see what you are doing," said Imnak. "Besides it will not be dark for several weeks."
"I know," I said. "We could wait."
"No, no, no, no, no," said Imnak.
"You want her carried off in full daylight?" I asked.
"Of course," he said. "That is the time for carrying girls off."
"Beasts of Gor" page 207/9

"What if Kadluk does not approve of my carrying off his daughter?" I asked. "Why should he disapprove?" asked Imnak.
"Oh, I do not know," I said. "It was just a thought."
"Do not fear," said Imnak, reassuringly. "All the arrangements have been made." "Arrangements?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Kadluk, then, knows that I am to carry off his daughter?"
"Of course," said Imnak. "Surely one would not wish to carry off Kadluk's daughter without his permission.
"No," I said, "from what I have heard of Kadluk, I think not."
"That would not be polite," said Imnak.
"True," I granted him. Also I did not want a harpoon in my head. The thought of the steely-eyed Kadluk drawing a bead on me with his harpoon was unnerving. I could not get the sea sleen out of my mind.
"Does Poalu know she is supposed to be carried off?" I asked.
"Of course," said Imnak. "how else could she be ready on time?"
"I just was not thinking," I said.
"That is all right," said Imnak, generously.
"Well," I said, "let us return to the tent. The tabuk are gone and I am soaked and freezing. I will well relish a hot cup of Bazi tea."
"Ah, my friend," said Imnak, sadly, "I am sorry there is no Bazi tea."
"Recently," I said, "there was a great deal of it."
"True," said Imnak, "but now there is not."
"You used the tea to buy Poalu?" I asked.
Imnak looked at me, horrified. "I made a gift to Kadluk," he said.
"Oh," I said.
"Also," said Imnak, "there is no sugar left, and few furs."
"What of the gold pieces you took for trading?" I asked.
"I gave them to Kadluk, too," said Imnak. "and most of the wood."
"At least we have the tabuk slices from the kills we made earlier," I said, glumly.
"Kadluk likes tabuk," said Imnak.
"Oh," I said.
We trudged back, wet and miserable, to the encampments of the People."
"Beasts of Gor" page 209

"Greetings, Kadluk," I called.
A coppery face poked itself outside the tent. It was a very broad face, with high cheekbones, and very dark, bright eyes, a face framed in cut, blue-black hair, with bangs across the forehead.
"Ah," beamed Kadluk. "You must be the young man who has come to carry off my daughter."
"Yes," I said. He seemed in a good mood. He had, perhaps, waited years for this moment.
"She is not yet ready," said Kadluk, shrugging apologetically. "You know how girls are."
"Yes," I said. I looked back a few yards to where Imnak stood, lending me moral support. He smiled and waved encouragingly. Reassured I stood waiting outside the tent.
I waited for several minutes.
Another figure emerged from the tent, a woman, Tatkut, or Wick-Trimmer, the woman of Kadluk, the mother of Poalu. She smiled up at me and bowed slightly, and handed me a cup of tea.
"Thank you," I said, and drank the tea.
After a time she returned and I handed her back the cup. "Thank you again," I said.
She smiled, and nodded, and returned to the tent.
Imnak sidled up to me. He was looking worried. "It should not take this long to carry a girl off," he whispered. I nodded.
"It should not take this long to carry a girl off," I called. Imnak backed away, expectantly.
Inside the tent then we heard an argument in course. There was much expostulation. I could make out Poalu's voice, and that of Kadluk and Tatkut. They spoke in their own tongue and I could pick up but few of the words. I did hear the expression for Bazi tea a few times. I gathered that Kadluk had little intention, or desire at any rate, to return Imnak's quantities of Bazi tea, or other gifts, to him.
After a time Kadluk's head reappeared. "She does not want to be carried off," he said.
"Well, that is that," I shrugged. I turned to Imnak. "She does not want to be carried off," I said. "Let us return to our tent."
"No, no!" cried Imnak. "You must now rush into the tent and carry her off by force."
"Is Kadluk armed?" I asked.
"What possible difference could that make?" asked Imnak. "I thought it might make a difference," I said. I still remembered the harpoon and the sleen.
"No," said Imnak. "Kadluk!" he called.
Kadluk came outside the tent.
"It seems your daughter must be carried away by force," said Imnak.
"Yes," agreed Kadluk. This reassured me.
"Go ahead," said Imnak. "Go in and get her."
"Very well," I said.
"She has a knife," said Kadluk.
"Go ahead," urged Imnak.
"We need not make haste in this matter," I observed. "Are you sure you really want to have Poalu in your tent? Perhaps you should subject the matter to further consideration."
"But we love one another," said Imnak.
"Why do you not go in and get her yourself?" I asked.
"I am too shy," said Imnak, hanging his head.
"Perhaps she will listen to reason," I said, hopefully.
Kadluk turned about, holding his sides. In a moment he was rolling on the ground. Red hunters are often demonstrative in the matter of their emotions. In a few moments ho had regained his composure, wiping the tears from his eyes."
"Beasts of Gor" page 211/3

"I lifted aside the tent flap, cautiously, Inside was Poalu. She was dressed in feasting clothes. Near her was her mother, Tatkut, beaming her pride in her daughter.
I dodged as the knife sailed past my head, narrowly missing Imnak outside.
"You will never carry me off by force!" she cried.
"I grant you the likelihood of that," I said.
She seized a heavy iron pan, of the sort used out of doors across stones for cooking.
It would not be pleasant to have that utensil beating on my head.
"Look," I said, "I am supposed to carry you off."
"Don't touch me," she said.
"The arrangements have all been made," I pointed out.
"I did not make them," she said.
That seemed to me a good point. "She says she did not make the arrangements," I called out to Imnak.
"That does not matter," called Imnak in to me.
"That does not matter," I told her.
"It does matter," she said.
"It does matter, she says," I relayed to Imnak, outside.
"No, it does not matter," he 'said.
"It does not matter," I relayed to Poalu, from Imnak outside.
"She is only a woman," pointed out Imnak.
"You are only a woman," I told her, relaying Imnak's point. It seemed to me a good one.
She then rushed forward, striking down at me with the heavy, flat pan. I removed it from her. I did this that I not be killed.
She then fled to the back of the tent. She looked about, but found nothing else which seemed suitable as a weapon. Kadluk, I then understood, had wisely removed his gear, such as knives and arrows, from the tent before Imnak and. I had arrived.
His daughter was as well known to him as others, of course.
"Would you please hand me the blubber hammer behind you," asked Poalu. Obligingly I handed her the hammer. I thought I could probably avoid or fend its blows. The object, wooden-handled, with a stone head, is used for pounding blubber to loosen the oil in the blubber, which is used in the flat, oval lamps. "Thank you," said Poalu.
"You're welcome," I said.
She then faced me, holding the hammer.
"If you do not wish to be carried off," I said, "why are you wearing your feasting clothes?"
"Isn't she pretty?" asked Tatkut, smiling.
"Yes," I admitted.
Poalu looked at me, shrewdly. "I am not your ordinary girl," she said, "whom you may simply carry off."
"That seems certain," I granted her.
"Where is Imnak?" she asked.
Surely she knew he was just outside the tent. "He is just outside the tent," I said.
"Why does he not carry me off?" she asked.
"I wish that he would," I said. "He is shy."
"Well," she said, "I am not going."
"She says she is not going," I called out to Imnak.
There was a pause. Then I heard Imnak say, "That is all right with me."
Poalu seemed startled. I was relieved. I turned about to take my departure. "Wait," she said. "Aren't you going to carry me off?"
"I would be content," I said, "if it were up to me, to leave you in your father's tent forever."
I heard Imnak outside. "Yes," he said, "it is all right with me if she does not come."
"I will give you back your gifts, Imnak," said Kadluk, rather more loudly than was necessary.
"You may keep them," said Imnak, expansively.
"No, I could not do that," said Kadluk. I found myself hoping that he would indeed return Imnak's gifts. We in Imnak's tent could use that Bazi tea, those furs and the tabuk steaks.
"It will be amusing to hear the songs they will sing in the feasting house about Poalu," said Imnak, loudly, "how no one wants her."
"How can you carry me off?" called Poalu. "You have no sled."
"There is no snow," I said to her.
"There is a proper way and an improper way to do things," said Poalu to me. "Oh, look," said Imnak, "here is a sled."
Poalu, still clutching the blubber hammer, poked her head outside. There was indeed a sled there, that which Imnak had built at the wall, and which the girls had drawn, that sled by means of which his supplies and gear had been transported across Ax Glacier.
Harnessed to the sled, in their full furs, were Thimble, Thistle and Arlene. "Ho! Ho!" called Poalu, derisively. "You would expect to carry a girl off in a sled drawn by white-skinned slave beasts! What a scoundrel you are! How insulting!"
"I will borrow a snow sleen," said Imnak. "Will that be sufficient?"
I thought a snow sleen, one of those long, vicious animals, would surely be puzzled to find itself attached to a sled where there was no snow.
"Perhaps," called Poalu.
Imnak unhitched Thimble, Thistle and Arlene. They stood about, puzzled. He then turned and left the vicinity of the tent. "Would you like more tea?" asked Tatkut.
"Yes, thank you," I said. I was at least getting some of the tea back which Imnak had given to Kadluk.
In a few minutes Imnak returned with a snow sleen on a stout leash. Soon it was hitched to the sled. It was Akko's animal, and he, in the fashion of the red hunters, had cheerfully volunteered its services.
"Someone has a snow sleen hitched to a sled outside of the tent of someone," called Imnak.
"It is a poor beast," said Poalu. "Find a better."
"Someone has not even looked at it," said Imnak.
Poalu stuck her head out the tent. "It is a poor beast." said Poalu. "Find a better."
Imnak, for no reason that was clear to me, scouted about and located another snow sleen.
"That is worse than the other," said Poalu.
Imnak angrily unhitched the second animal, and rehitched the first one, that which belonged to Akko.
"Surely you do not expect me to ride behind so poor a beast?" inquired Poalu.
"Of course not," said Imnak. He made ready to leave.
"What are you doing?" asked Poalu.
"I am going away," said Imnak. "I am going to my tent."
"I suppose it will have to do," said Poalu.
"You could strike her heavily along the side of the head." said Kadluk to me. "That is what I did with Tatkut." Tatkut nodded, beaming.
"It is a thought," I said.
"Will no one protect a girl from being carried off!" cried Poalu.
She still carried the blubber hammer. If struck properly with it one might be brained.
"Is there no one who will save me?" wailed Poalu.
Kadluk looked about, anxious should anyone interfere. There were by now several bystanders about.
"Naartok," cried Poalu, "will you not save me?"
A heavy fellow nearby shook his head vigorously. He still carried his right arm high and close to his body, his shoulder hunched somewhat. I recalled that Poalu had in the past driven her blade into his body somewherer in that vicinity. Imnak had warned me that Naartok, his rival, might try to kill me, to prevent my carrying Poalu off. Naartok, however, seemed competely willing that I should undertake that task. It was clear that I had his best wishes for success in this endeavor. Naartok, like many of the red hunters, was not a fellow to be bitter about such things.
"Come along," I said to Poalu. "It will soon be dark." That was true. In a few weeks the Arctic night would descend.
She hurled the blubber hammer at my head and I slipped to the side. It sped past me and struck Naartok a cruel blow on the forehead.
She fled back into the tent and I nimbly pursued her. In the tent I scooped her up and threw her over my shoulder. Her small fists beat rapidly on my back. "Will you stop that?" I asked.
"I do not want to go," she said.
"Oh," I said.
I put her to her feet and turned about, leaving the tent. "She says she does not want to go," I told Imnak.
"Go back," urged Imnak.
"Nonsense," I said. "Look, Imnak," I said, "I value your friendship but I have really had enough of this. I frankly do not think Poalu wants to be carried off by me."
Imnak looked at me, miserable.
"That is my considered opinion," I told him, confirming his fears.
"You will just have to carry her off yourself," I said.
"I am too shy," he wailed.
"Well, let us go home then," I said, "for I have drunk enough tea at the tent of Kadluk and evaded enough missiles to last me for several years."
"It is true," said Imnak, glumly. "You have endured more than one could rightfully ask of a friend."
"Beasts of Gor" page 213/7

"Where are you lazy men going?" asked Poalu.
"Home," said Imnak.
We began to trudge back toward Imnak's tent. It was some two hundred yards away. Imnak led the snow sleen, drawing the sled on the tundra, and I walked beside him. Thimble, Thistle and Arlene walked beside the sled.
"Imnak is a lazy fellow!" called Poalu. "Imnak cannot sing in the feasting house! Imnak cannot paddle a kayak! Imnak is a poor hunter!"
"I am getting angry," said Imnak to me.
"Red hunters do not get angry," I told him.
"Sometimes red hunters get angry," said Imnak.
"I did not know that," I said.
"Yes," said Imnak.
"Imnak is a lazy fellow! Imnak is a terrible hunter! I am fortunate not to be Imnak's woman. Pity the poor woman who goes to Imnak's tent! I am pleased that I am not going to his tent! I would not go to his tent for anything!"
"I have had enough," said Imnak suddenly.
"A man does have his pride," I said.
"It is unfortunate that I am so shy," said Imnak between gritted teeth. "Yes," I said, "that is unfortunate."
Suddenly Imnak threw back his head and howled at the sky. He made a wild animal noise and, wheeling about, in his fur boots, sped rapidly back toward the tent of Kadluk.
"Let us continue on," I said to the girls. We continued on, toward Imnak's tent, not looking back. The snow sleen padded along behind us, drawing the sled over the trodden turf.
Behind us we heard cheering.
We did not look back until we came to the threshold of Imnak's tent.
A large crowd was approaching, yet in such a way as to give Imnak room. Leading the crowd, but seeming half in the midst of it, came Imnak. He was pulling a bent over, stumbling, screaming, fighting figure behind him, his hand in her hair. She wore feasting clothes.
At the opening to his tent he threw her over his shoulder. Her feet were then off the ground, and she was helpless. She could be carried wherever he chose, and placed wherever he chose to place her. He carried her inside the tent, and threw her to the furs at his feet.
She looked up at him in fury. She tried to get up, but he pushed her back down. "You are wearing feasting clothes," he said. "Do you think you are going to a feast?"
She looked up at him.
"No," he said, "you are not going to a feast. You do not need to wear feasting clothes."
"Imnak," she said.
"Take them off, everything!" he said.
"Imnak," she cried.
"Now!" he said.
Frightened, she stripped herself, and crouched on the fur in his tent. Nudity is not unusual among the red hunters. But even for them it is a treat to see a girl as pretty as Poalu stripped naked. I suspected that we would have numerous guests in the house of Imnak.
Imnak then bound her wrists together before her body and pulled her to her feet. "Imnak!" she cried. He pulled her from the tent, stumbling, to the pole behind the tent, that from which tabuk meat was sometimes hung to dry. A few days ago Arlene had been tied to the pole. Imnak fastened Poalu's hands over her head and to the pole.
"Imnak!" she cried. "What are you going to do?"
Imnak, who had returned to the tent after fastening her in place, returned to the pole. He carried a sleen whip.
"Imnak," she cried, "what are you going to do?"
"Only one can be first," cried Imnak.
"Imnak!" she cried, struck.
The hunters and the women gathered about cheered Imnak on. He put the leather to her well.
Then she cried out, "It is Imnak who is first in his tent!" She shuddered in the straps that bound her. Then she was struck again. "Imnak is first!" she cried. "Imnak! Imnak!"
He thrust the whip in his belt.
He went before her, where she could see him. "You are first, Imnak," she wept. "I am your woman. Your woman will obey you. Your woman will do what you tell her."
"No, Imnak!" she cried.
"Aiii," cried a man in the crowd.
He tied bondage strings on her throat.
The men and women in the crowd roared their approval. They stomped on the turf. Some began to sing.
None, I think, had thought to see so rare and delicious a sight as bondage strings on the throat of the arrogant, fiery Poalu.
Her temper and sharp tongue, I think, had made many enemies among the red hunters and their women. There were few there I think who did not relish seeing her in bondage strings. She might now be beaten with impunity, and must obey free men and women.
"Now," said Kadluk, her father, "you will not come running home to the tent." He rubbed his nose affectionately on the side of her face, patted her on the head and turned away.
"Father!" she cried.
"Do I hear the wind?" he asked, his back to her.
"Father!" she cried.
"Yes," he said, "I hear the wind." Then he left.
Indeed, she could not now go running home to the tent of her father. Imnak, if he wished, could slay her for such an act. She wore bondage strings.
The crowd began to dissipate, leaving Imnak and Poalu much alone.
"Why have you done this to me, Imnak?" asked Poalu.
"I wanted to own you," he said.
"I did not know a man could want a woman so much that he would want to own her," said Poalu.
"Yes," said Imnak.
"I did not know you would be strong enough to own me," she said.
"I am strong enough to own you," he said.
"Yes," she said, "it is true. I see in your eyes that it is true."
He said nothing.
"And you will own me?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
"It is a strange feeling, being owned," she said. Imnak shrugged.
"I have loved you since we were children, Imnak," she whispered. "I have thought for years that I would someday be your woman. But I did not think, ever, that I would be your beast." She looked at him. "Will you truly make me obey you, Imnak?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
She smiled. "Your beast is not discontent," she said.
He touched her softly with his nose about the cheek and throat. It is a thing red hunters do. It is a very gentle thing, like smelling and nuzzling.
Then his hands were hard on her waist.
She looked up at him. 'The lamp must be lit," she said, "and the water heated, that I may boil meat for supper."
"Supper may wait," he said.
He began to caress her, with tender, powerful caresses, gentle yet strong, possessive, commanding, as one may touch something which one owns and loves. She began to breathe more swiftly. "Imnak," she whispered, "you may do what you want with a beast, and a beast must do, fully, what you want."
"That is known to me," he said.
"Oh, Imnak!" she cried. "Please! Please!"
Then her hands were untied from the pole, and freed, and she knelt at his feet. At his gesture, she, frightened, pressed her lips to his boots, and then looked up at him, waiting to be commanded.
He indicated that she should crawl to the tent. She did so, and he walked behind her, the whip now loose in his hand. I saw him thrust it, crossways, between her teeth and throw her back to the furs. She looked up at him, the whip clenched, in her teeth. This is a device which helps to keep a slave girl quiet in her ecstasies. She can then do little more than gasp and squirm. Imnak looked about, and drew shut the flaps of the tent."
"Beasts of Gor" page 217/221

SLAVES

General

"The red hunters are generally a kind, peaceable folk, except with animals. Two sorts of beasts are kept in domestication in the north; the first sort of beast is the snow sleen; the second is the white-skinned woman.
"Ho," said the red hunter, and strode from the platform. The two beasts he had purchased hurried after him.
"Theirs will be a hard slavery," I said to the slaver's man.
"They will learn to pull a sled under the whip," he said.
"Yes," I said. Such women were used as draft animals. But they would serve, too, as slave girls do, many other purposes.
"Wait until the red women get hold of them," laughed the slaver's man.
"They may kill them," I said.
"They have one 'chance for life," he said, "to obey with total perfection."
"But," I asked, "is that not every slave girl's one chance for life?"
"Beasts of Gor" page 75/6

"What have we here!" cried a man cheerfully.
"Slaves!" cried others.
"Hold," said I. "We are honest men, and are not thieves. Release them."
The man loosed the hair of the girls. Swiftly they knelt, frightened.
"These girls," said I, "belong to Imnak."
"He is a red hunter," said a man.
"He is one with us," I said.
There was an angry cry. I drew my blade. "None may use them without his permission," I said. "I shall maintain discipline, if need be, my comrades, by the blade."
"Beasts of Gor" page 174

Clothes

"Before he had left, he had them sew northern garments for themselves, under his instruction. From the furs and hides among the spoils at the wall they had cut and sewn for themselves stockings of lart skin and shirts of hide, and a light and heavy parka, each hooded and rimmed with lart fur. Too, they had made the high fur boots of the northern woman and the brief panties of fur, to which the boots, extending to the crotch, reach. On the hide shirts and parkas he had made them sew a looped design of stitching at the left shoulder, which represented binding fiber. This designated the garments as those of beasts. A similar design appeared on each of the other garments. About their throats now, too, they wore again four looped strings, each differently knotted, by means of which a red hunter might, upon inspection, determine that their owner was Imnak."
"Beasts of Gor" page 176

Slave Yoke

"The Northern yoke is either of wood or bone, and is drilled in three places. the one thistle wore was of wood. It was not heavy. It passed behind her neck at which point one of the drilled holes occurred. the other two holes occurred at the termination's of the yoke. A leather strap is knotted about the girls wrist, passed through the drilled hole at one end of the yoke, usually that on her left, taken up through the hole behind the neck, looped twice about her neck, threaded back down the end, usually the one on her right, and tied about her right wrist. She is thus fastened to the yoke. From each end of the yoke there hung a large sack."
"Beasts of Gor" page 196

Collar

"Under the tether on the throat of each there was tied an intricately knotted set of four leather strings. In such a way the red hunters identify their animals. The owner of the beast may be determined from the knotting of the strings."
"Beasts of Gor" page 153

ECONOMY

The Herd of Tancred

"Have you heard," he asked, "of the herd of Tancred?"
"No," I said.
"It is a herd of northern tabuk," said Samos, "a gigantic herd, one of several. The herd of Tancred winters in the rims of the northern forests south and east of Torvaldsland. In the spring, short-haired and hungry, they emerge from the forests hind migrate northward." He indicated the map. "They follow this route," he said, "emerging from the forest here, skirting Torvaldsland here, to the east, and then moving west above Torvaldsland, to the sea. They follow the shore of Thassa north, cross Ax Glacier here, like dark clouds on the ice, then continue to follow the shore north here, until they then turn eastward into the tundra of the polar basin, for their summer grazing. With the coming of winter, long-haired and fat, they return by the same route to the forests. This migration, like others of its kind, occurs annually." "Yes?" I said.
"It seems not to have occurred this year," he said.
I looked at him, puzzled.
"Red hunters of the polar basin, trading for tea and sugar, have reported the failure of the herd to appear."
"That is puzzling," I said.
"It is more serious than that," he said. "It means the perishing of the men of the polar basin, or their near starvation. They depend on the tabuk in the summer for food."
"Is there anything that can he done?" I asked.
"I think not," said Samos. "Their winter stores of food, from the ice hunting. will last them for a time. Then they must hunt elsewhere. Perhaps some can live by fishing until the fall, and the return of the black sea sleen.
The red hunters lived as nomads, dependent on the migrations of various types of animals, in particular the northern tabuk and four varieties of sea sleen. Their fishing and hunting were seasonal, and depended on the animals. Sometimes they managed to secure the northern shark, sometimes even the toothed Hunjer whale or the less common Karl whale, which was a four-fluked, baleen whale. But their life, at best, was a precarious one. Little was known of them. Like many simple, primitive peoples, isolated and remote, they could live or die without being noticed."
"Beasts of Gor" page 36

"Never have there been hides in this quantity in Lydius," said Ram to me, "either in the spring or fall."
"They are perhaps from the herd of Tancred," I said.
"There are other herds," he said.
"That is true," I said. But I was puzzled. If the herd of Tancred had indeed emerged from the forests why had it not yet crossed Ax Glacier? Surely hunters, even in great numbers, could not stay the avalanche of such a herd, which consisted of doubtless two to three hundred thousand animals. It was one of the largest migratory herds of tabuk on the planet. Unfortunately for the red hunters, it was also the only one which crossed Ax Glacier to summer in the polar basin. To turn such a herd from its migratory destination would be less easy than to turn the course of a flood. Yet, if reports could be believed, the ice of Ax Glacier had not yet, this year, rung to the hooves of the herd."
"Beasts of Gor" page 139

"They were northern tabuk, massive, tawny and swift, many of them ten hands at the shoulder, a quite different animal from the small, yellow-pelted, antelopelike quadruped of the south. On the other hand, they, too, were distinguished by the single horn of the tabuk. On these animals, however, that object, in swirling ivory, was often, at its base, some two and one-hall inches in diameter, and better than a yard in length. A charging tabuk, because of the swiftness of its reflexes, is a quite dangerous animal. Usually they are killed from a distance, often from behind shields, with arrows."
"Beasts of Gor" page 152

"The fur and hide of the tabuk provides the red hunters not only with clothing, but it can also be used for blankets, sleeping bags and other articles. The hides can serve for harnesses for the snow sleen and their white-skinned, female beasts. Too they may be used for buckets and tents, and for kayaks, the light, narrow hunting canoes of skin from which sea mammals may be sought. Lashings, harpoon lines, cords and threads can he fashioned from its sinews. Carved, the bone and horn of the animal can function as arrow points, needles, thimbles, chisels, wedges and knives. Its fat and bone marrow can be used as fuel. Too, almost all of the animal is edible. Even its eyes may be eaten and, from its stomach, the half-digested mosses on which it has been grazing."
"Beasts of Gor" page 169/170

Ice Hunting

"As hunters they live with blood and death."
"Beasts of Gor" page 74/5

"The pebbled shore lay some half pasang away, behind us.
I could see smoke from the permanent camp.
Five men, besides myself, waited in the large skin boat, the umiak. It was some twenty feet in length and some five feet in its beam. The skins which were sewn over its frame, interestingly, were those of tabuk and not sea sleen. The skins were stretched over a framework, lashed together with sinew cord, of driftwood and long bows of bone.
The waters did not stir.
Usually such a boat is paddled by women, but no women were now within it. One would not risk a woman in our current work, even a slave beast.
"It is nearly time now," said Imnak.
Many times the umiaks, or the light, one-man vessels, the kayaks, do not return. "Be ready," said Imnak.
The waters seemed very still."
"Beasts of Gor" page 257/8

"I grasped the long harpoon. It was some eight feet in length, some two and a half inches in diameter. Its major shaft was of wood, but it had a foreshaft of bone. In this foreshaft was set the head of the harpoon, of bone, drilled, with a point of sharpened slate. Through the drilled hole in the bone, some four inches below the slate point and some four inches above the base of the head, was passed a rawhide line, which lay coiled in the bottom of the boat. As the hole is drilled the line, when it snaps taut, will turn the head of the harpoon in the wound, anchoring it.
Suddenly, not more than a dozen feet from the boat, driving upward, rearing vertically, surging, expelling air in a great burst of noise, shedding icy water, in a tangle of lines and blood, burst the towering, cylindrical tonnage of the black Hunjer whale.
I hurled the harpoon.
"Now!" cried Imnak.
Four feet of the shaft disappeared into the side of the vast mammal.
The line, uncoiling, snapping, hurtled past me, upward. The monster, as though it stood on its flukes, towered forty feet above us, the line like a tiny thread, billowing, leading downward to the boat.
Suddenly, not more than a dozen feet from the boat, driving upward, rearing vertically, surging, expelling air in a great burst of noise, shedding icy water, in a tangle of lines and blood, burst the towering, cylindrical tonnage of the black Hunjer whale.
I hurled the harpoon.
"Now!" cried Imnak.
Four feet of the shaft disappeared into the side of the vast mammal.
The line, uncoiling, snapping, hurtled past me, upward. The monster, as though it stood on its flukes, towered forty feet above us, the line like a tiny thread, billowing, leading downward to the boat.
"Look out!" cried Imnak.
The beast, grunting, expelling air, fell downward into the water. There was a great crash, that might have been heard for pasangs. The line was now horizontal. The boat was half awash. We were drenched. My parka began to freeze on my body. With leather buckets four men began to hurl water from the boat. The air was thick with vapor, like smoke, the condensing moisture in the monster's warm breath, like a fog, or cloud, on the water. I saw the small eye of the monster, that on the left side of its head, observing us.
"It is going to dive," said Imnak. As he pointed ice broke from his parka. Imnak and another man began to draw on the line, to pull us to the very side of the monster.
The other hunters in the boat, discarding their buckets, seized up their lances, slender hunting tools, with fixed heads, commonly used not in throwing but in thrusting.
I reached out with my hand and pushed against the side of the mammal. The Hunjer whale is a toothed whale.
Beside me now Imnak and the other hunters, ail with lances, began to drive them, like needles, into the side of the animal, again and again.
Its flesh shook, scattering water. I feared the side of the umiak would be stove in.
It grunted.
"Hold the line!" cried Imnak.
I held the line, keeping the umiak at the beast's side, so that the hunters could thrust into it at point-blank range.
Then the animal's eye disappeared under the water. I saw the flukes rearing up. "Give it line!" cried Imnak.
I threw line over the side.
The flukes were now high above us, and the animal's body almost vertical. The line disappeared under the water.
It was gone.
"Now we will wait," said Imnak. "And then it will begin again.
I looked down at the placid waters. We would wait, until it began again. The waters seemed very calm. It was hard to believe that we were attached, by a thin line, to that great form somewhere below us. There was some ice in the water about us. The wind scattered the breath of the monster, dispelling the cloud of vapor.
On the pebbled shore, some half pasang away, behind us, I could see smoke from the permanent camp.
I was very cold. I would like some tea when we returned to camp.”
"Beasts of Gor" page 258/9

"Two weeks ago, some ten to fifteen sleeps ago, by rare fortune, we had managed to harpoon a baleen whale, a bluish, white-spotted blunt fin. That two whales had been taken in one season was rare hunting, indeed. Sometimes two or three years pass without a whale being taken.
"It is good," said Imnak, looking at the meat racks. "It may be that this winter the families will not have to go out on the ice."
Ice hunting can be dangerous, of course. The terrain beneath you, in wind and tides, can shift and buckle, breaking apart.
The sun was low on the horizon. We heard more laughter from the feasting house. The polar night is not absolutely dark, of course. The Gorean moons, and even the stars, provide some light, which light reflecting from the expanses of the snow and ice is more than adequate to make one's way about. Should cloud cover occur, of course, or there be a storm, this light is negated and one, remaining indoors, must content oneself with the sounds of wind in the darkness, and the occasional scratching of animals on the ice outside.
"I cannot remember the racks being so heavy with meat in my lifetime," said Imnak.
"It is little wonder the people are so pleased in the feasting house," I said. Besides the whales many sleen and fish had been taken. Too, the families, coming north, had dragged and carried what dried tabuk meat they could with them. Even the children carried meat. With them, too, they had brought eggs and berries, and many other things, spoils from the summer, though not all for the larder, such as horn and sinew, and bones and hides. They did not carry with them much grass for the boots or mosses for the wicks of lamps as these materials could be obtained readily somewhat inland of the permanent camps. When the sun dipped beneath the horizon it would not be seen again for half a year. I would miss it.
"I think we have enough food for the winter," said Imnak. "When night falls we will have enough to eat."
"Beasts of Gor" page 265/6

“I set the light harpoon into the notch on the throwing board and, even mittened, an instant before the beast turned toward me, grunted, snapping the throwing board forward and downward, speeding the shaft toward the enraged animal.”
"Beasts of Gor" page 285

“The horn bow, unfortunately, formed of pieces of split tabuk horn, bound with sinew, is not effective beyond some thirty yards, One must, thus, be almost upon the animal before loosing the shaft.”
"Beasts of Gor" page 205

"I laid the two-headed paddle on the leather of the kayak behind me. I pulled off the mitten on my right hand and held it in my teeth. I picked up the beaded throwing board and the light harpoon, and fitted the harpoon shaft into the notch on the throwing board. The harpoon had a foreshaft of bone, with a bone .liead and point. A light rawhide line, of twisted tabuk sinew, ran to the head. In a flat. rounded tray directly before me, on the leather, there were coiled several feet of this line. At my right, alongside the outer edge of the circular wooden frame, bound with sinew, within which I sat, lay the long lance. "There," whispered Imnak, in his own kayak, a few feet from that which I was using, which belonged to Akko.
The head of a sleen, glistening, smooth, emerged from the water. It was a medium-sized, adult sea sleen, some eight feet in length, some three to four hundred pounds in weight.
I had missed four sleen in a row and I was not too pleased with my performance. I looped some of the line loosely over the palm of the mitten on my left hand. I tried to keep the stem of the kayak pointing roughly toward the beast in the water. One does this, when not using the paddle, by moving one's legs and body inside the frame.
The head of the sleen disappeared beneath the water. I put down the harpoon and throwing board; I took the mitten which I had held between my teeth and pulled it back on. It had two thumbs, like the one on my left hand. They were paddle mittens. When they are worn on one side they may be turned to the other.
"You are too slow, Tarl, who hunts with me," said Imnak.
"Last time," I said, "I was too hasty."
"Yes," Imnak agreed, "last time you were too hasty."
"The kayak moved," I said.
"You should keep it steady," said Imnak.
"Thank you, Imnak," I said. "That would not have occurred to me."
"What are friends for?" asked Imnak.
"Imnak!" I cried. His kayak had suddenly flipped over and was bottom side up in the chilled water. In an instant, however, it was right side up again. Water was running from the kayak and Imnak's gutskin jacket. "It is too dark to see under the water," he said.
"You did that on purpose," I said.
"Yes, someone is a big show-off," he said, grinning. He was in a good mood. He had taken two sleen which now lay near us in the water. With a tube he had blown air under the skin of the sleen and, with wooden plugs, closed their wounds. This served to keep the animals afloat. When he returned to shore he would tow them behind his kayak.
"It is difficult to throw from a sitting position;" I said, "and I am not used to the throwing board."
"It is lucky for the sleen that you are here," said Imnak. "Otherwise it might be dangerous for them."
"With encouragement such as you afford," I said, "doubtless I shall soon become a great hunter of sea sleen."
"Perhaps you are not friendly enough to the sea sleen," said Imnak. "Perhaps they think you do not like them."
It had not hitherto occurred to me that one might like sea sleen.
"Perhaps that is the trouble," I admitted.
"Talk to them, be friendly," said. Imnak. "Coax them. They like to be coaxed."
"They would cheerfully permit themselves to be harpooned by someone who is friendly to them?" I asked.
"Would you like to be harpooned by someone who was an enemy?" asked Imnak.
"No," I said, "but I would not like to be harpooned by someone who was a friend either."
"But you are not a sea sleen," said Imnak.
"That is true," I admitted." (...)
"Hello, Sleen," I said.
"Do not be silly," said Imnak. 'That is a very dangerous animal."
"Am I not supposed to talk to it?" I asked. I thought I might give Imnak back a bit of his own medicine.
"One must be careful what sleen one talks to," said Imnak. 'There is a time to talk and coax, and a time to be quiet."
"I see." I said, smiling.
"You may talk to it if you wish," said Imnak, "but I would not do so if I were you."
"Why not?" I asked.
"It might listen," he said.
"Is that not the point?" I asked, chuckling.
"That is one sleen you would just as soon not have listened to you," said Imnak. "That is a rogue broad-head, and I think he has been hunted before."
"One must be careful what sleen one takes up with," I said.
"Precisely," said Imnak. (...)
"Look out!" cried Imnak. "He is coming!"
I dropped the harpoon for it would be an extremely difficult cast to strike the animal head on. The bone point of the harpoon, thrown, would probably not penetrate the skull and it would be difficult to strike the submerged, narrow forepart of the body knifing toward the kayak. I thrust the lance point into the rushing, extended, double-fanged jaws and it penetrated through the side of the mouth, tearing, the animal's face a yard up the shaft. It reared six feet out of the water vertically beside the slender hide vessel. With two hands on the shaft I forced the twisting body to fall away from the craft. One of the large flippers struck me, buffeting me, spinning me and the vessel about, the animal then slipping free of the shaft of the lance. It circled the craft its mouth hot with blood flowing into the cold water. It was then I retrieved the harpoon again from the water by its line, for it had been once more struck away from me. I set the light harpoon into the notch on the throwing board and, even mittened, an instant before the beast turned toward me, grunted, snapping the throwing board forward and downward, speeding the shaft toward the enraged animal. The bone head, vanishing, sunk into its withers and it snapped downward, diving, bubbles breaking up to the surface, and swift blood. The line snapped out from its tray darting under the water. In moments the harpoon shaft and foreshaft bobbed to the surface, but the bone harpoon head, its line taut, turning the head in the wound, held fast. I played the line as I could. The animal was an adult, large-sized broad-head. It was some eighteen to twenty feet in length and perhaps a thousand pounds in weight. At the length of the line I feared the kayak and myself would be drawn under the water. Imnak, too, came to the line, and, straining, together we held it. The two kayaks dipped, stems downward. "He is running," said Imnak. He released the line. The kayak spun and then nosed forward. I held the line being towed by the beast somewhere below the water. "Loose the line!" called Imnak. "He is running to the ice!" I saw a pan of ice ahead. "Loose the line!" called Imnak. But I did not loose the line. I was determined not to lose the beast. I held the line in my left hand, wrapped about my wrist. With the lance in my right hand I thrust against the pan of ice. Then the lance slipped on the ice and the line slipped to the side and I in the kayak was dragged up on the ice skidding across it and then slipped loose of it and slid into the water to the side. "It is running to the sea!" called Imnak. following me as he could in his own vessel. Then the line went slack. "It is turning," said Imnak. "Beware!" But in a few moments I saw the body of the sleen rise to the surface, rolling, buoyant. It was some sixty feet from the kayak. "It is not dead," said Imnak. "I know," I said. It was easy to see the breath from its nostrils, like a spreading fog on the cold water. The water had a glistening, greasy appearance, for it bad begun to freeze. It was dark about the animal, from the blood. We brought our kayaks in close, to finish the animal with our lances. "Beware," said Imnak. "It is not dead." "It has lost much blood," I said. "It is still alive," he said. "Beware." We nosed our kayaks on each side of the beast, approaching it from the rear. (...)
We waited in the polar dusk. After a time Imnak said, "Be ready. I have been counting. It must soon breathe." We readied our lances, one of us on each side of the beast. Suddenly with a great, exploding noise, expelling air, the sleen leaped upward. At the height of its leap we struck it with our lances. It pulled free of the lances and, sucking in air, spun and dove. Again the harpoon line darted downward. "We struck it fairly!" said Imnak. "Watch out!" he cried. The line had grown slack. I peered downward into the water. Then I felt the swell of the water beneath me, clearly through the taut hide of the kayak. I thrust downward with the lance and was half pulled from the kayak, myself and the vessel lifted upward, as the sleen's impaled body reared up almost beneath the craft. Imnak struck again at it from the side. It fell back in the water and I, jerking free the lance, thrust it again into the wet, bloody pelt. It attacked again, laterally in the water, fangs snapping, and I pressed it away with the lance. Imnak struck it again. It thrashed; bloody in the icy water. It turned on Imnak and I thrust my lance deeply into its side, behind the right foreflipper, seeking, hunting, the great, dark heart. It expelled air again. I pulled the lance free to drive it in again. The beast regarded me. Then it rolled in the water.
"It is dead," said Imnak.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"The nature of your stroke, and its depth," said Imnak. "You have penetrated to the heart." (...)
"You should thank the sleen for letting himself be harpooned by you," said Imnak. "Not every sleen will do that."
"Thank you, Sleen," I said.
"Good," said Imnak. "That is a simple courtesy. You surely cannot expect sleen to come over to be harpooned if you are not even going to be civil to them." "I guess you are right, Imnak," I said.
"Of course I am right," said Imnak. "Sleen have their pride."
We had then arrived at the two sleen he had left floating in the water, beneath whose hides he had blown air. He deferentially thanked the two sleen for having permitted themselves to be slain by him. Then he tied them behind his kayak and, together, paddling, we headed back toward the pebbled shore."
"Beasts of Gor" page 280/9

"Some three weeks ago, more than twenty sleeps past, Imnak and I had taken three sleen in kayak fishing. But then kayak fishing had been over for the year. The very night of our catch the sea had begun to freeze."
"Beasts of Gor" page 289

The Great Hunt

"I smelled roast tabuk.
The great hunt had been successful. I did not know if it were morning, or afternoon, or night. In these days the sun, low on the horizon, circles, it seems endlessly, in the sky.
Six days ago Imnak and I, and our girls, had descended from the height of the pass of Tancred. The great hunt had been already in progress. Hundreds of the women and children of the red hunters, fanned out for pasangs, shouting, beating on pans had turned the herd toward the great alley of stone cairns. These cairns, of piled stone, each some four or five feet high, each topped with black dirt, form a long funnel, more than two pasangs in depth. The herd, which in the grazing on the tundra, has scattered is reformed to some extent by the drivers. It, or thousands of its animals, fleeing the drivers, pour toward the large, open end of the funnel. The stone cairns, which are perhaps supposed to resemble men, serve, perhaps psychologically, to fence in and guide the herd. The animals seem generally unwilling to break the imaginary boundary which might be projected between cairns."
"Beasts of Gor" page 195

Traps

"Imnak hurried to the low wall of the half-erected shelter. There, instead of joining us, he took from Poalu a slice of meat and, in the other hand, the handle of the water kettle. He hurried to the hole he had cut in the ice. He thrust the meat on the blade of the knife and then thrust the handle of the knife down into the hole he had cut in the ice. He poured the water then into the hole in the ice, about the handle of the knife. He waited only a moment, for the water, poured into the icy hole in the subzero temperatures, froze almost instantly, anchoring the knife with the solidity of a spike in cement."
"Beasts of Gor" page 330

"He took a long strip of baleen, about fifteen inches in length, and, with his knife, sharpened both ends, wickedly sharp. He then, carefully, folded the baleen together, with S-type folds. Its suppleness permitted this, but it was under great tension, of course, to spring straight again, resuming its original shape. He then tied the baleen, tensed as it was, together with some stout tabuk sinew. The sinew, of. course, held the baleen together, in effect fastening a stout spring into a powerfully compressed position. If the sinew should break I would not have wished to be near that fierce, compressed, stout strip of sharpened baleen.
"Put it away," I said to Imnak, Imnak made several of these objects. He then inserted them into several pieces of meat, one in each piece of meat.
He threw one of these pieces of meat, containing the compressed baleen, outside the shelter.
"Now, let us sleep," he said.
"It is a horrifying thing you are doing, Imnak," I said to him.
"Do you wish to live?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Then do not object," he said. "It is us or it is the sleen."
I lay awake for a long time. Then, suddenly, piercing, horrifying, I heard the cry of the animal. The sinew had dissolved in its stomach. (...)
After we had awakened after our most recent sleep and hitched the sleen to the sled Imnak had thrown out yet another of the cruel pieces of meat. Some hours later, when we heard the startled pain squeal of the mortally wounded beast, Imnak turned about in his tracks.
"Hurry!" he said. "It is meat!"
"Beasts of Gor" page 335/6

Trade

"The hunter pulled a pelt from the bundle of fur he carried. It was snowy white, and thick, the winter fur of a two stomached snow lart. It almost seemed to glisten. The slaver's man appreciated its value. Such a pelt could sell in Ar for half a silver tarsk. He took the pelt and examined it."
"Beasts of Gor" page 74

"Hot Bazi tea I wanted. This is an important trade item in the north. I now knew why. The southern sugars are also popular. I had originally supposed this was because of their sweetness, there being few sweet items, save some berries, in the north. I now began to suspect that the calories of the sugars also played their role in their popularity. The red hunters think little of eating half a pound of sugar at a sitting."
"Beasts of Gor" page 206

"Do you have Bazi tea?" asked Akko. "Do you have sugar?" asked Naartok. The word 'Naartok' in the language of the Innuit means 'Fat Belly'. In many cases there is no particular correspondence between the name and the individual. In Naartok's case, however, the name was not inappropriate. He was a plump, jolly fellow with a weakness for sweets prodigious even among red hunters.
"Yes," said Ram, "I have tea and sugars. And I have mirrors, and beads and knives, and many other trade goods."
This news was welcome indeed. No traders, because of the wall, had come to the north for months."
"Beasts of Gor" page 291

CULTURE AND TRADITIONS

Gifts

"I had a ship sent north," said I, "with food for the men of the polar basin, when I heard the herd of Tancred had not yet trod the snows of Ax Glacier." Imnak smiled. "How many skins would you have demanded in payment for this provender?" asked he. "I had not thought to make a profit," I said. Imnak's face darkened. The people of the north are proud. I had not meant to demean him or his people. "It is a gift," I said. He would understand the exchange of gifts. "Ah," he said. Gifts may be exchanged among friends. Gifts are important in the culture of the men of the polar basin. There need be little occasion for their exchange Sometimes, of course, when a hunter does not have food for his family another hunter will invite him to his house, or will pay a visit, bearing meat, that they may share a feast. This pleasantry, of course, is returned when the opportunity presents itself. Even trading in the north sometimes takes on the aspect, interestingly, of the exchange of gifts, as though commerce, obvious and raw, might somehow seem to offend the sensibility of the proud hunters. He who dares to pursue the twisting, sinuous dangerous sea sleen in the arctic waters, fended from the teeth and sea by only a narrow vessel of tabuk skin and his simple weapons and skill, does not care to be confused with a tradesman.
"Beasts of Gor" page 160

Carvings

"Imnak sat in the corner of the tent, aimlessly whittling at a piece of tabuk horn.
Once in a while he would stop and turn the ivory, and look at it. Sometimes he would whisper, "Who hides in there? Who are you?" Then he would begin to carve again. Then, suddenly, he said, "Ah, sleen!"
I watched him flake and trim ivory from the horn. Slowly, as I watched, I saw the shape of a sleen emerging, almost as though it had been hidden in the ivory, the snout and legs, and the long, sinuous shape. Its ears were flat back against its head.
Often the red hunter does not set out to carve something, but rather to carve, patiently waiting to see if there is something there, waiting to be released. It is a little like hunting. He is open to what may be found. Sometimes there is a shape in the ivory or bone, or stone. Sometimes there is not. He removes the excess ivory and there, where it had lain hidden before, now revealed, is the shape."
"Beasts of Gor" page 252

“Imnak’s knife had a wooden handle, some fourteen inches long. Its point was some three inches in length. He braced it on his leg in carving, his fingers near the blade end where they might delicately control the movement of the metal. Bracing the knife permits force from the leg to be applied, whereas balance and control are not sacrificed, because the point is subtly guided by the movement of the fingers.”
"Beasts of Gor" page 253

"The ulo, or woman's knife, with its semicircular blade, customarily fixed to a wooden handle, is not well suited to carving. It is better at cutting meat and slicing sinew."
"Beasts of Gor" page 262

Games

~ Catch Game

"There were six lamps in the feasting house.
One after the other began to be extinguished. Imnak had his eye on Poalu. Arlene, Barbara and Audrey looked at one another, uneasily. "What is going on?" asked Barbara. "If they put out the last lamp, the room will be dark."
The last lamp was extinguished. I saw hide pulled over the smoke hole. "Walk around!" called Akko, cheerfully. "Do not touch anyone! Change your places!"
I moved about. It was, after all, the culture of the red hunters. Outside, objectively, it was rather dark. Also, the feasting house had no windows. It is harder to heat a building with windows, of course. Too, hides, from tents, were hung about the inside of the feasting house, supplying additional insulation and warmth. Light in the feasting house was supplied generally from lamps. These were now extinguished, and the smoke hole covered. It was quite dark within.
No one spoke while they moved around.
I heard Barbara whimper. She was frightened. There was nothing to be frightened about. It was only that someone, she would not know who, would find her, catch her and have her.
"Now" cried Akko. "Who can you catch?"
I heard women laugh, and move swiftly. Men groped about.
I felt my way around, as I could. I heard a woman cry out with pleasure, caught. "Be quiet!" called Akko.
I heard a pair, struggling, near me. Then the woman was, as I determined by putting forth my hand, put down on her back, on the floor of the feasting house. She squirmed in the dirt, pushing futilely up against the aggressive male who pinioned her beneath him for his pleasure. He was surprised at her resistance, so he struck her, and then she was quiet, until, in a few minutes, she began to cry out with pleasure. I felt bondage strings on her throat. I did not know if it was Thimble or Thistle. In touching the hair I knew it was not Poalu, whose hair was bound high on her head, in the usual fashion of her people.
I heard more women caught. One brushed past me but I missed her in the darkness. Suddenly a nude girl, fleeing, struck against me. "Oh," she cried. And my arms had closed about her. She was caught. She was helpless. I put her to the floor. She squirmed. I did not permit her struggles to be successful.
In a few moments her belly and haunches were writhing with pleasure which I had enforced upon her.
Then, helpless, she yielded.
When the lamp was relit I looked down into the face of Barbara. (...)
I looked about. Many of the women were laughing, and the men, too. Poalu, I saw, was beside Imnak. I suspected they had cheated. Thistle, or Audrey, and Arlene looked at me, still held by the men who had caught them.
"Let us feast!" called Akko.
The lamps were relit. The women who had been caught by given men must now serve them.
In the hours that followed this game was played again, and again, five times in all, interrupted by feasting.
In the second and third round I caught women of the red hunters. In the fourth round I got my hand on Audrey's neck and threw her down to the floor. She was quite good. I spent a long time with her. In the fifth round, when the lamps were relit, it was Arlene who looked up at me from my arms."
"Beasts of Gor" page 268/9

~ Bones

"Imnak and I sat across from one another, both cross-legged. He dropped a tiny bone to the fur mat between us. Each player, in turn, drops a bone, one of several in his supply. The bone Imnak had dropped was carved in the shape of a small tabuk. Each of the bones is carved to resemble an animal, such as an arctic gant, a northern bosk, a lart, a tabuk or sleen, and so on. The bone which remains upright is the winner. If both bones do not remain upright there is no winner on that throw. Similarly, if both bones should remain upright, they are dropped again. A bone which does not remain upright, if its opposing bone does remain upright, is placed in the stock of him whose bone remained upright. The game is finished when one of the two players is cleaned out of bones. (...)
The tiny tabuk which Imnak had dropped remained standing upright.(...)
I dropped the tiny carved tabuk I held. It, too, remained upright.
Imnak picked up his tiny carved tabuk and held it over the fur mat.(...)
I dropped the tiny carved tabuk which was mine, that which was my piece in the game. It did not land upright.
"I have won," said Imnak.
"What are you gambling about?" asked Arlene. She was folding her garments.
"Put away the garments," I said, "drop to all fours, and come here."
Arlene put the folded garments to one side in the tent, and, in fury, on her hands and knees, crawled to where we had played.
I put my hand in her hair and pulled her to her stomach. "Here she is," I told Imnak.
"Master!" she cried.
Imnak took her and turned her over, pulling her on her back across his legs. "Master!" cried Arlene.
"Imnak has won your use, until he chooses to leave the tent," I told her. "Obey him as though he were your own master."
"Please, no!" she cried.
"Obey him," I said, sternly, "as though he were your own master." "Yes, Master," she said, miserably.
Imnak then dragged her to the side of the hide tent."
"Beasts of Gor" page 184/5

~ Kick Ball

"You spoiled her kick," said a man to me, in Gorean. "I am sorry," I said. The girl, with the other youths, had been playing a soccer like game with the leather ball, with goals drawn in the turf. I had not realized, until too late, that I had been traversing the field of play."
"Beasts of Gor" page 193

~ Cat's cradle

"In another place several women sat on a fur blanket playing a cat's cradle game. They were quite skilled. This game is generally popular in the Gorean north. It is played not only by the red hunters, but in Hunjer and Skjern, and in Torvaldsland, and as far south as the villages in the valley of the Laurius."
"Beasts of Gor" page 196

~ Tag

"Two children raced past me, playing tag."
"Beasts of Gor" page 196

Drums

"The drum of the red hunters is large and heavy. It has a handle and is disk like. It requires strength to manage it. It is held in one hand and beaten with a stick held in the other. Its frame is generally of wood and its cover, of hide, usually tabuk hide, is fixed on the frame by sinew. Interestingly the drum is not struck on the head, or hide cover, but on the frame. It has an odd resonance. That drum in one hand of the hunter standing now in the midst of the group was some two and one half feet in diameter. He was now striking on it and singing."
"Beasts of Gor" pages 261

Songs

"I could not make out the song, but it had to do with the mild winds which blow in the summer. These songs, incidentally, are rather like tools or carvings. They tend to be regarded as the singer's property. It is unusual for one man or woman to sing another's songs. One is expected to make up one's own songs. It is expected that every man will be able to make up songs and sing them, just as every man is supposed to be able to carve and hunt. These songs are usually very simple, but some of them are quite beautiful, and some are quite touching. Both men and women sing, of course. Men, interestingly, usually do the carving. The ulo, or woman's knife, with its semicircular blade, customarily fixed in a wooden handle, is not well suited to carving. It is better at cutting meat and slicing sinew. Also, carving ivory and bone requires strength. But women sing as well as men. Sometimes they sing of feasting clothes, and lovers, and their skill in quartering tabuk."
"Beasts of Gor" pages 262

"Another man now took the drum and began to sing. He sang a kayak-making song, customarily sung to the leather, wood and sinew, with which he worked, that it not betray him in the polar sea. A fellow after him sang a sleen song, usually sung on the water, encouraging the sleen to swim to where he might strike them. The next song dealt with a rascal who, supposedly hunting for tabuk, lay down and rubbed his boots on a rock, later returning to his companions with a report of luckless hunting, indicating his worn boots as evidence of his lengthy trekking. From the looks cast about the room I gathered the rascal might even be present. One fellow, at least, seemed quite embarrassed. He soon leaped up, however, and sang a song about the first fellow, something about a fellow who could not make good arrows. Two women sang after this, the first one about gathering birds' eggs when she was a little girl, and the other one about her joy in seeing the face of a relative whom she had not seen in more than two years."
"Beasts of Gor" pages 262

"It is rather commendable, I think, that the red hunters make up songs. They are not as critical as many other people. To them it is often more important that one whom they love sings than it is that his song is a good song. If it is a "true" song, and comes from the heart, they are pleased to hear it. Perhaps then it is a "good song" after all. Songs, even simple ones, are regarded by the red hunters as being precious and rather mysterious They are pleased that there are songs. As it is said, "No one know from where songs come."
"Beasts of Gor" pages 262/3

Religion

"I climbed the stairs to the platform. I would look upon the Sardar in the morning light. At this time, particularly in the spring, the sun sparkling on the snow-strewn peaks, the mountains can be quite beautiful.
I attained the height of the platform and found the view breath-taking, even more splendid than I had hoped. I stood there very quietly in the cool, sunlit morning air. It was very beautiful.
Near me, on the platform, stood the red hunter. He, too, it seemed, was struck to silence and awe.
Then, standing on the platform, he lifted his bare arms to the mountains.
"Let the herd come," he said. He had spoken in Gorean. Then he reached into a fur sack at his feet and, gently, took forth a representation of the northern tabuk, carved in blue stone. I had no idea how long it took to make such a carving. It would take many nights in the light of the sloping, oval lamps. He put the tiny tabuk on the boards at his feet, and then again lifted his arms to the mountains. "Let the herd come," he said. "I give you this tabuk," he said. "It was mine, and it is now yours. Give us now the herd which is ours." Then he lowered his arms and reached down and closed the sack. He left the platform.
There were other individuals, too, on the long platform. Each, I supposed, had their petition to make to Priest-Kings. I looked at the tiny tabuk left behind on the boards. It looked toward the Sardar."
"Beasts of Gor" pages 82/3

"We had then arrived at the two sleen he had left floating in the water, beneath whose hides he had blown air. He deferentially thanked the two sleen for having permitted themselves to be slain by him. Then he tied them behind his kayak and, together, paddling, we headed back toward the pebbled shore.
"When the sleen are dead, how can you expect them to know they are thanked?" I asked.
"That is an interesting and difficult question," said Imnak. "I do not really know how the sleen manage it."
"It seems it would be hard to do," I said.
"It is a belief of the People," said Imnak, "that the sleen does not really die but, after a time, will be reborn again."
"The sleen is immortal?" I asked.
"Yes," said Imnak. "And when he comes again he will hopefully be more willing to let himself be harpooned again if he has been well treated."
"Are men. too, thought to be immortal?" I asked.
"Yes," said Imnak.
"I know a place," I said, "where some people would think that men are immortal but animals are not."
"They do not like animals?" asked Imnak.
"I do not know," I said. "Perhaps they think they are immortal because they are smart and sleen are not."
"Some sleen are pretty smart," said Imnak. He thought for a bit. "If sleen were to talk these things over," he said, "they would probably say that they were immortal and men were not, because they were better at swimming."
"Perhaps," I said.
"Who knows what life is all about?" asked Imnak.
"I do not know," I said. "Perhaps it is not about anything."
"That is interesting," said Imnak. "But then the world would be lonely."
"Perhaps the world is lonely," I said.
"No," said Imnak.
"You do not think so?" I asked.
"No," said Imnak, drawing his kayak up on the shore, "the world cannot be lonely where there are two people who are friends."
I looked up at the stars. "You are right, Imnak," I said. "Where there is beauty and friendship what more could one ask of a world. How grand and significant is such a place. What more justification could it require?"
"Help me pull the meat up on shore," said Imnak.
I helped him. Others came down to the shore and helped, too.
I did not know what, sort of place the world was, but sometimes it seemed to me to be very wonderful."
"Beasts of Gor" page 288/9

FAUNA

Snow Bosk

"What lazy animals those sleen are," said Imnak. "They are not even really hungry, but they are keeping us in mind. They should be out hunting snow bosk, or basking sea sleen, or burrowing and scratching inland for hibernating leems."
"Beasts of Gor" page 334

Gants

"I stepped aside to let a young girl pass, who carried two baskets of eggs, those of the migratory arctic gant. They nest in the mountaim of the Hrimgar and in steep, rocky outcroppings, called bird cliffs, found here and there jutting out of the tundra. The bird cliffs doubtless bear some geological relation to the Hrimgar chains. When such eggs are frozen they are eaten like apples."
"Beasts of Gor" page 196

Insects

"At certain times in the summer even insects will appear, black, long-winged flies, in great swarms, coating the sides of tents and the faces of men."
"Beasts of Gor" page 196

Snow Lart

The snow lart hunts in the sun. The food in the second stomach can be held almost indefinitely. It is filled in the fall and must last the lart through the winter night, which lasts months, the number of months depending on the latitude of his individual territory. It is not a large animal. It is about ten inches high and weighs between eight and twelve pounds. It is a mammalian, and has four legs. It eats bird’s eggs and preys on the leem, a small arctic rodent, some five to ten ounces in weight, which hibernates during the winter.
"Beasts of Gor" page 74

Leems

"What lazy animals those sleen are," said Imnak. "They are not even really hungry, but they are keeping us in mind. They should be out hunting snow bosk, or basking sea sleen, or burrowing and scratching inland for hibernating leems."
"Beasts of Gor" page 334

"It eats bird’s eggs and preys on the leem, a small arctic rodent, some five to ten ounces in weight, which hibernates during the winter."
"Beasts of Gor" page 74

Parsit

"Sleen, interestingly, come northward with the parsit, their own migrations synchronized with those of the parsait, which forms for them their principal prey."
"Beasts of Gor" page 38

Sleen

"The four main types of sea sleen found in the polar seas are the black sleen, the brown sleen, the tusked sleen and the flat-nosed sleen."
"Beasts of Gor" page 38

"The animal was some twenty feet in length, some eleven hundred pounds in weight, a forest sleen, domesticated. It was double fanged and six legged.
"Beasts of Gor" page 12

"The hides can serve as harnesses for the snow sleen"
"Beasts of Gor" page 169

"The head of the sleen, glistening, smooth, emerged from the water. It was a medium-sized, adult sea sleen, some eight feet in length, some three to four hundred pounds in weight."
"Beasts of Gor" page 280

"I looked out across the icy water, where he had pointed. To be sure, there was the head of the sleen, about a quarter emerged, the eyes and nose flat with the water. What I could see of the head seemed very large. It was eighteen inches or more in breadth.
"That, I think, is a rogue sleen," said Imnak. "It is a broad-head, and they are rare in these waters in the fall. Too, see the gray muzzle and the scarring on the right side of the head, where the fur is gone?" The animal was an adult, large-sized broad-head. It was some eighteen to twenty feet in length and perhaps a thousand pounds in weight."
"Beasts of Gor" page 283

Sorp

Tabuk

"They were northern tabuk, massive, tawny and swift; many of them ten hands at the shoulder, a quite different animal from the small, yellow-pelted antelope-like quadruped of the south. On the other hand, they too were distinguished by the single horn of the tabuk. On these animals, however, that object, in swirling ivory, was often, at its base, some two and one half inches in diameter, and better than a yard in length. A charging tabuk, because of the swiftness of its reflexes, is quite a dangerous animal."
"Beasts of Gor" page 152

"At the end of the wall, Inmak wept, seeing the strewn fields of slaughtered tabuk. The fur and hide of the tabuk provides the red hunters not only with clothing, but it can also be used for blankets, sleeping bags and other articles. Too, they may be used for buckets and tents, and for kayaks, the light narrow hunting canoes of skin from which sea mammals may besought. Lashings, harpoon lines, cords and threads can be fashioned from its sinews. Carved, the bone and horn of the animal can function as arrow points, needles, thimbles, chisels,wedges, and knives. It's fat and bone marrow can be used as fuel. Too, almost all of the animalis edible."
"Beasts of Gor" pages 169/170

Verr

"Behind them came another of their caste, leading two milk verr which he had purchased."
"Beasts of Gor" page 47

Hunjer Whale

"Suddenly, not more than a dozen feet from the boat, driving upward, rearing vertically, surging, expelling, air in the great burst of noise, shedding icy water, in a tangle of lines and blood, burst the towering, cylindrical tonnage of the black Hunjer whale."
"Beasts of Gor" page 258

Karl Whale

"Sometimes even the toothed Hunjer whale or the common Karl whale, which was a four-fluked, baleen whale."
"Beasts of Gor" page 36

Baleen Whale

"Two weeks ago, some ten or fifteen sleeps ago, by rare fortune, we had managed to harpoon a baleen whale, a bluish, white-spotted blunt fin."
"Beasts of Gor" page 265

FLORA

Flowers

"The tundra at this time of year belies its reputation for bleakness. In many places it bursts into bloom with small flowers."
"Beasts of Gor" page 196

"But now songs had come to Imnak. He was no longer lonely of songs. They welled from within him, like the surfacing of the great Hunjer whale, like the dawning of the sun after the long night, like the bursting of the tundra into flower, the tiny white and yellow flowers emerging from their snowy cocoon-like buds.
"Beasts of Gor" page 437

Plants

"Almost all of the plants of this nature are perennials, as the growing season is too short to permit most annuals to complete their growing cycle. In the winter buds of many of these plants lie dormant in a fluffy sheath which protects them from cold. Some two hundred and forty different types of plants grow in the Gorean arctic within five hundred pasangs of the pole. None of these, interestingly, is poisonous, and none possesses thorns. During the summer plants and flowers will grow almost anywhere in the arctic except on or near the glacial ice."
"Beasts of Gor" page 196

Tundra

"Most of the land is tundra, a cool, generally level or slightly wavy, treeless plain. 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. In the winter, of course, and in the early spring and late fall, desolate, bleak and frozen, wind-swept, it presents the aspect of a barren, alien landscape. At such times the red hunters will dwell by the sea, in the spring and fall by its shores, and, in the winter, going out on the ice itself."
"Beasts of Gor" page 196