Nomads of Gor (15 page)

 
ing, which takes place far north of Turia, the equator being

 
approached in this hemisphere, of course, from the south; the

 
third and final portion of the Omen Year is the Return to

 
Turia, which takes place in the spring, or as the Wagon

 
Peoples have it, in the Season of Little Grass. It is in the

 
spring that the omens are taken, regarding the possible elec-

 
tion of the Ubar San, the One Ubar, he who would be Ubar

 
of all the Wagons, of all the Peoples.

 
I did manage, however, from the back of the kailla, which

 
I learned to ride, to catch a glimpse of distant, high-walled,

 
nine-gated Turia.

 
It seemed a lofty, fine city, white and shimmering, rising

"Be patient, Tart Cabot," said Kamchak, beside me on his

 
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.

_

 
;~

 
8

                     
The Wintering

 
If I had hoped for an easy answer to the riddles which

 
concerned me, or a swift end to my search for the egg of

 
Priest-Kings, I was disappointed, for I learned nothing of

 
either for months.

 
I had hoped to go to Turia, there to seek the answer to the

 
mystery of the message collar, but it was not to be, at least

 
until the spring.

 
"It is the Omen Year," had said Kamchak of the Tuchuks.

 
The herds would circle Turia, for this was the portion of

 
the Omen Year called the Passing of Turia, in which the

 
Wagon Peoples Bather and begin to move toward their winter

 
pastures; the second portion of the Omen Year is the Winter-

 
ing, which takes place far north of Turia, the equator being

 
approached in this hemisphere, of course, from the south; the

 
third and final portion of the Omen Year is the Return to

 
Curia, which takes place in the spring, or as the Wagon

 
Peoples have it, in the Season of Little Grass. It is in the

 
spring that the omens are taken, regarding the possible elec-

 
tion of the Ubar San, the One Ubar, he who would be Ubar

 
of all the Wagons, of all the Peoples.

 
I did manage, however, from the back of the kailla, which

 
I learned to ride, to catch a glimpse of distant, high-walled,

 
nine-gated Turia.

 
It seemed a lofty, fine city, white and shimmering, rising

"Be patient, Tart Cabot," said Kamchak, beside me on his

 
55

_

       
56

    
   
kaiila. "In the spring there will be the games of Love War

       
and I will go to Turia, and you may then, if you wish,

       
accompany me."

       
"Good," I said.

       
I would wait. It seemed, upon reflection, the best thing to

       
do. The mystery of the message collar, intriguing as it might

       
be, was of secondary importance. For the time I put it from

       
my mind. My main interests, my primary objective, surely lay

       
not in distant Turia, but with the wagons.

       
I wondered on what Kamchak had called the games of

       
Love War, said to take place on the Plains of a Thousand

       
Stakes. I supposed, in time, that I would learn of this.

       
"After the games of Love War," said Kamchak, "the

       
omens win be taken."

       
I nodded, and we rode back to the herds.

       
There had not been, I knew, a Ubar San in more than a

       
hundred years. It did not seem likely, either, that one would

       
be elected in the spring. Even in the time I had been with the

       
wagons I had gathered that it was only the implicit truce of

       
the Omen Year which kept these four fierce, warring peoples

       
from lunging at one another's throats, or more exactly put, at

       
one another's bask. Naturally, as a Koroban, and one with a

       
certain affection for the cities of Gor, particularly those of

       
the north, particularly Ko-ro-ba, Ar, Thentis and Tharna, I

       
was not disappointed at the likelihood that a Ubar San would

       
not be elected. Indeed, I found few who wished a Ubar San

       
to be chosen. The Tuchuks, like the other Wagon Peoples,

       
are intensely independent. Yet, each ten years, the omens are

       
taken. I originally regarded the Omen Year as a rather

   
    
pointless institution, but I came to see later that there is

       
much to be said for it: it brings the Wagon Peoples together

       
from time to time, and in this time, aside from the simple

       
values of being together, there is much bask trading and

       
some exchange of women, free as well as slave; the bask

       
trading genetically freshens the herds and I expect much the

       
same thing, from the point of view of biology, can be said of

       
the exchange of the women; more Importantly, perhaps, for

       
one can always steal women and bask, the Omen Year

       
provides an institutionalized possibility for the uniting of the

       
Wagon Peoples in a time of crisis, should they be divided and

       
threatened. I think that those of the Wagons who instituted

       
the Omen Year, more than a thousand years ago, were wise

       
men.
     

 
How was it, I wondered, that Kamchak was going to Tigris

 
in the spring?

 
I sensed him to be a man of importance with the wagons.

 
There were perhaps negotiations to be conducted, perhaps

 
having to do with what were called the games of Love War,

 
or perhaps having to do with trade.

 
I had learned, to my surprise, that trade did occasionally

 
take place with Turia. Indeed, when I had learned this, it had

 
fired my hopes that I might be able to approach the city in

 
the near future, hopes which, as it turned out, were disap-

 
pointed, though perhaps well so.

 
The Wagon Peoples, though enemies of Turia, needed and

 
wanted her goods, in particular materials of metal and cloth,

 
which are highly prized among the Wagons. Indeed, even the

 
chains and collars of slave girls, worn often by captive Turian

 
girls themselves, are of Turian origin. The Turians, on the

 
other hand, take factor or trade in trade for their goods obtained by manu-

 
with other cities principally the horn and

 
hide of the bask, which naturally the Wagon Peoples, who

 
live on the bask, have in plenty. The Turians also, I note,

 
receive other goods from the Wagon Peoples, who tend to be

 
fond of the raid, goods looted from caravans perhaps a

 
thousand pasangs from the herds, indeed some of them even

 
on the way to and from Turia itself. From these raids the

 
Wagon Peoples obtain a miscellany of goods which they are

 
willing to barter to the Turians, jewels, precious metals,

 
spices, colored table salts, harnesses and saddles for the

 
ponderous tharlarion, furs of small river animals, tools for

 
the field, scholarly scrolls, inks and papers, root vegetables,

 
dried fish, powdered medicines, ointments, perfume and wom-

 
en, customarily plainer ones they do not wish to keep for

 
themselves; prettier wenches, to their dismay, are usually

 
kept with the wagons; some of the plainer women are sold

 
for as little as a brass cup; a really beautiful girl, particularly

 
if of free birth and high caste, might bring as much as forty

 
pieces of gold; such are, however, seldom sold; the Wagon

 
Peoples enjoy being served by civilized slaves of great beauty

 
and high station; during the day, in the heat and dust, such

 
girls will care for the wagon bask and gather fuel for the

 
dung fires; at night they will please their masters. The Wagon

 
Peoples sometimes are also willing to barter silks to the

 
Turians, but commonly they keep these for their own slave

 
girls, who wear them in the secrecy of the wagons; free

 
women, incidentally, among the Wagon Peoples are not per

      
misted to wear silk; it is claimed by those of the Wagons,

      
delightfully I think, that any woman who loves the feel of

      
silk on her body is, in the secrecy of her heart and blood, a

      
slave girl, whether or not some master has yet forced her to

      
don the collar. It might be added that there are two items

      
which the Wagon Peoples will not sell or trade to Turia, one

      
is a living bask and the other is a girl from the city itself,

      
though the latter are sometimes, for the sport of the young

      
men, allowed, as it is said, to run for the city. They are then

      
hunted from the back of the kaiila with bole and thongs.

      
The winter came fiercely down on the herds some days

      
before expected, with its fierce snows and the long winds that

      
sometimes have swept twenty-five hundred pasangs across the

      
prairies; snow covered the grass, brittle and brown already,

      
and the herds were split into a thousand fragments, each