I translated for Kutaituchik and Kamchak.
"Ask," demanded Kutaituchik, "if she begs to be a slave girl."
I translated the question.
"Yes," wept Elizabeth Cardwell, "yes I beg to be a slave Perhaps in that moment Elizabeth Cardwell recalled the strange man, so fearsome, gray of face with eyes like glass, who had SO examined her on Earth, before whom she had stood as though on a block, unknowingly being examined for her fitness to bear the message collar of Turia. How she had challenged him, how she had walked, how insolent she had been Perhaps in that moment she thought how amused the man might be could he see her now, that proud girl, now in the Sirik, her head to the pelt of a larl, kneeling to barbari- ans, begging to be a slave girl; and if she thought of these things how she must have then cried out in her heart, for she would have then recognized that the man would have known full well what lay in store for her; how he must have laughed within himself at her petty show of female pride, her vanity, knowing it was this for which the lovely brown-haired girl in the yellow shift was destined.
"I grant her wish," said Kutaituchik. Then to a warrior nearby, he said, "Bring meat."
The warrior leapt from the dais and, in a few moments, returned with a handful of roasted bosk meat.
Kutaituchik gestured for the girl, trembling, to be brought forward, and the two warriors brought her to him, placing her directly before him.
He took the meat in his hand and gave it to Kamchak, who bit into it, a bit of juice running at the side of his mouth; Kamchak then held the meat to the girl.
"Nat," I told her.
Elizabeth Cardwell took the meat in her two hands, confined before her by slave bracelets and the chain of the Sirik, and, bending her head, the hair falling forward, ate it. She, a slave, had accepted meat from the hand of Kamchak of the Tuchuks.
She belonged to him now.
'La Kajira," she said, putting her head down, then cover- ing her face with her manacled hands, weeping. "La Kajira. La Kajiral"
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 gather 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 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 55.
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 with its own riders, spreading out over the prairie, pawing through the snow, snuffing about? pulling up and chewing at the grass, mostly worthless and frozen. The animals began to die and the keening of women, crying as though the wagons were burning and the Turians upon them, carried over the prairies. Thousands of the Wagon Peoples, free and slave, dug in the snow to find a handful of grass to feed their animals. Wagons had to be abandoned on the prairie, as there was no time to train new bask to the harness, and the herds must needs keep moving.