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Indeed, men tried to bring their birds into the center of the flock, to protect themselves from arrows, and the interior positions were then fought for, as the enemy competed with one another, and wounded and lacerated one another, to command this cover. And unto this mass, from above, were hurled dozens of weighted nets, which tangled the birds, and riders, and dozens, half crippled, unable to fly, fell brokenly toward the earth, and some riders freed themselves of the safety straps and tried to leap to the saddle rings of other birds, and some failed to grasp them, and fell screaming to the earth. Others fell with the tarns to earth, the nets half cut to pieces. I saw another net fall gracefully, like a broad, circular, open veil, on a bird starting to climb from the plaza, and the bird fluttered back to the earth, screaming, protesting, rolling in the dust, the rider caught in the safety straps, and then the helmeted head was twisted about, and the body was inert, a raglike, meaningless object in the saddle. I saw one of our fellows, I think Tajima, take a mounting tarnsman, climbing to the saddle, with the temwood lance. The tarnsman was carried a dozen yards before he slipped from the lance, to the stirred dust below. Others of my fellows were soaring downward, lance in hand, hunting targets. - (Swordsmen of Gor, Chapter )