Nomads of Gor Read Free Page B

remained on his
      back, but he carried in his right hand the small, powerful
      horn bow of the Wagon Peoples and attached to his saddle
      was a lacquered, narrow, rectangular quiver containing as
      many as forty arrows. On the saddle there also hung, on one
      side, a coiled rope of braided boskbide and, on the other, a
      long, three-weighted bole of the sort used in hunting tumits
      and men; in the saddle itself on the right side, indicating the
      rider must be right-handed, were the seven sheaths for the
      almost legendary quivas, the balanced saddleknives of the
      prairie. It was said a youth of the Wagon Peoples was taught
      the bow, the quiva and the lance before their parents would
      consent to give him a name, for names are precious among
      the Wagon Peoples, as among Goreans in general, and they
      are not to be wasted on someone who is likely to die, one
      who cannot well handle the weapons of the hunt and war.
          Until the youth has mastered the bow, the quiva and the
      lance he is simply known as the first, or the second, and so
      on, son of such and such a father.
          The Wagon Peoples war among themselves, but once in
      every two hands of years, there is a time of gathering of the
      peoples, and this, I had learned, was that time. In the thinking
      of the Wagon Peoples it is called the Omen Year, though the
      Omen Year is actually a season, rather than a year, which
      occupies a part of two of their regular years, for the Wagon
      Peoples calculate the year from the Season of Snows to the
      Season of Snows; Turians, incidentally, figure the year from
      summer solstice to summer solstice; Goreans generally, on
      the other hand, figure the year from vernal equinox to vernal
      equinox, their new year beginning, like nature's, with the
      spring; the Omen Year, or season, lasts several months, and
      consists of three phases, called the Passing of Turia, which
      takes place in the fad; the Wintering, which takes place
      north of Turia and commonly south of the Cartius, the
      equator of course lying to the north in this hemisphere; and
      the Return to Curia, in the spring, or, as the Wagon Peoples
      say, in the Season of Little Grass. It is near Turia, in the
      spring, that the Omen Year is completed, when the omens
      are taken usually over several days by hundreds of harus-
      pexes, mostly readers of bask blood and verr livers, to   
      determine if they are favorable for a choosing of a Ubar
      San, a One Ubar, a Ubar who would be High Ubar, a Ubar      
      of an the Wagons, a Ubar of all the Peoples, one who could
      lead them as one people.*
           The omens, I understood, had not been favorable in more
      than a hundred years. I suspected that this might be due to
      the hostilities and bickerings of the peoples among them-
      selves; where people did not wish to unite, where they rel-
      ished their autonomy, where they nursed old grievances and
      sang the glories of vengeance raids, where they considered all
      others, even those of the other Peoples, as beneath them-
      selves, there would not be likely to exist the conditions for
      serious confederation, a joining together of the wagons, as    
      *A consequence of the chronological conventions of the Wagon
      Peoples, of course, is that their years tend to vary in length, but this
      fact, which might bother us, does not bother them, any more than
      the fact that some men and some animals live longer than others;
      the women of the Wagon Peoples, incidentally, keep a calendar based
      on the phases of Gor's largest moon, but this is a calendar of fifteen
      moons, named for the fifteen varieties of bask, and functions inde-
      pendently of the tallying of years by snows; for example, the Moon
      of the Brown Bosk may at one time occur in the winter, at another
      time, years later, in the summer; this calendar is kept by a set of