"Turians are responsible for this," he said.
"Saphrar?" I asked.
"Surely," said Kamchak, "for who could hire tarnsmen but Saphrar of Turia or arrange for the diversion that drew fools to the edge of the herds."
I was silent.
"There was a golden sphere," said Kamchak. "It was that which he wanted."
I said nothing.
"Like yourself, Tart Cabot," added Kamchak.
I was startled.
"Why else," asked he, "would you have come to the Wagon Peoples?"
I did not respond. I could not.
"Yes," I said, "it is true I want it for Priest-Kings. It is important to them."
"It is worthless," said Kamchak.
"Not to Priest-Kings," I said.
Kamchak shook his head. "No, Tart Cabot," said he, "the golden sphere is worthless."
The Tuchuk then looked around himself, sadly, and then again gazed on the sitting, bent-over figure of Kutaituchik. Suddenly tears seemed to burst from Kamchak's eyes and his fists were clenched. "He was a great man!" cried Kam- chak. "Once he was a great man."
I nodded. I knew Kutaituchik, of course, only as the huge, somnolent mass of man who sat cross-legged on a robe of gray boskhide, his eyes dreaming.
Suddenly Kamchak cried out in rage and seized up the golden kanda box and hurled it away.
"There will now have to be a new Ubar of the Tuchuks," I said, softly.
Kamchak turned and faced me. "No," he said.
"Kutaituchik," I said, "is dead."
Kamchak regarded me evenly. "Kutaituchik," he said, b 'divas not Ubar of the Tuchuks."
"I don't understand," I said.
"He was called Ubar of the Tuchuks," said Kamchak, "but he was not Ubar."
"How can this be?" I asked.
"We Tuchuks are not such fools as Turians would be- lieve," said Kamchak. "It was for such a night as this that Kutaituchik waited in the Wagon of the Ubar."
I shook my head in wonder.
"He wanted it this way," said Kamchak. "He would have it no other." Kamchak wiped his arm across his eyes. "He said it was now all he was good for, for this and for nothing else."
It was a brilliant strategy.
"Then the true Ubar of the Tuchuks is not slain," I said. "No," said Kamchak.
"Who knows who the Ubar truly is?" I asked.
"The Warriors know," said Kamchak. "The warriors." "Who is Ubar of the Tuchuks?" I asked.
"I am," said Kamchak.
Turia, to some extent, now lay under sedge, though the Tuchuks alone could not adequately invest the city. The other Wagon Peoples regarded the problem of the slaying of Kutai- tuchik and the despoiling of his wagon as one best left to the resources of the people of the four bask. It did not concern, in their opinion, the Kassars, the Kataii or the Paravaci. There had been Kassars who had wanted to fight and some Kataii, but the calm heads of the Paravaci had convinced them that the difficulty lay between Turia and the Tuchuks, not Turia and the Wagon Peoples generally. In- deed, envoys had flown on tarnback to the Kassars, Kataii and Paravaci, assuring them of Turia's lack of hostile inten- tions towards them, envoys accompanied by rich gifts. The cavalries of the Tuchuks, however, managed to maintain a reasonably effective blockade of land routes to Turia. Four times masses of tharlarion cavalry had charged forth from the city but each time the Hundreds withdrew before them until the charge had been enveloped in the swirling kaiila, and then its riders were brought down swiftly by the flashing arrows of the Tuchuks, riding in closely, al- most to lance range and firing again and again until striking home.
Several times also, hosts of tharlarion had attempted to protect caravans leaving the city, or advanced to meet sched- uled caravans approaching Turia, but each time in spite of this support, the swift, harrying, determined riders of the Tuchuks had forced the caravans to turn back, or man by man, beast by beast, left them scattered across pasangs of prairie.
The mercenary tarnsmen of Turia were most feared by the Tuchuks, for such could, with relative impunity, fire upon them from the safety of their soaring height, but even this dread weapon of Turia could not, by itself, drive the Tuchuks from the surrounding plains. In the field the Tuchuks would counter the tarnsmen by breaking open the Hundreds into scattered Tens and presenting only erratic, swiftly moving targets; it is difficult to strike a rider or beast at a distance from tarnback when he is well aware of you and ready to evade your missile; did the tarnsman ap- proach too closely, then he himself and his mount were exposed to the return fire of the Tuchuks, in which case of proximity, the Tuchuk could use his small bow to fierce advantage. The archery of tarnsmen, of course, is most effective against massed infantry or clusters of the ponderous tharlarion. Also, perhaps not unimportantly, many of Turia's mercenary tarnsmen found themselves engaged in the time- consuming, distasteful task of supplying the city from distant points, often bringing food and arrow wood from as far away as the valleys of the eastern Cartius. I presume that the mercenaries, being tarnsmen a proud, headstrong breed of men made the Turians pay highly for the supplies they carried, the indignities of bearing burdens being lessened somewhat by the compensating weight of golden tarn disks. There was no problem of water in the city, incidentally, for Turia's waters are supplied by deep, tile-lined wells, some of them hundreds of feet deep; there are also siege reservoirs, Bled with the melted snows of the winter, the rains of the spring.
Kamchak, on kaiilaback, would sit in fury regarding the distant, white walls of Turia. He could not prevent the supplying of the city by air. He lacked siege engines, and the men, and the skills, of the northern cities. He stood as a nomad, in his way baffled at the walls raised against him. "I wonder," I said, "why the tarnsmen have not struck at the wagons with fire arrows why they do not attack the bask themselves, slaying them from the air, forcing you to withdraw to protect the beasts."
It seemed to be a simple, elementary strategy. There was, after all, no place on the prairies to hide the wagons or the bask, and tarnsmen could easily reach them anywhere within a radius of several hundred pasangs.
'`They are mercenaries," growled Kamchak.
"I do not understand your meaning," I said.
"We have paid them not to burn the wagons nor slay the bosk," said he.
`'They are being paid by both sides?" I asked.
"Of course," said Kamchak, irritably.
For some reason this angered me, though, naturally, I was pleased that the wagons and boss; were yet safe. I suppose I was angered because I myself was a tarnsman, and it seemed somehow improper for warriors astride the mighty tarns to barter their favors indiscriminately for gold to either side. "But," said Kamchak, "I think in the end Saphrar of Turia will meet their price and the wagons will be fired and the bask slain" He gritted his teeth. "He has not yet met it," said Kamchak, "because we have not yet harmed him nor made him feel our presence."
I nodded.
"We will withdraw," said Kamchak. He turned to a subor- dinate. "Let the wagons be gathered," he said, "and the bosk turned from Turia."
"You are giving up?" I asked.
Kamchak's eyes briefly gleamed. Then he smiled. "Of course," he said.
I shrugged.
I knew that I myself must somehow enter Turia, for in Turia now lay the golden sphere. I must somehow attempt to seize it and return it to the Sardar. Was it not for this purpose that I had come to the Wagon Peoples? I cursed the fact that I had waited so long even to the time of the Omen Taking for thereby had I lost the opportunity to try for the sphere myself in the wagon of Kutaituchik. Now, to my chagrin, the sphere lay not in a Tuchuk wagon on the open prairie but, presumably, in the House of Saphrar, a merchant stronghold, behind the high, white walls of Turia. I did not speak to Kamchak of my intention, for I was confident that he would have, and quite properly, objected to so foolish a mission, and perhaps even have attempted to prevent my leaving the camp.