"Why?" I asked.

He looked at me and smiled. "Because," said he, "we have together held grass and earth."

Kutaituchik, Karnchak and I then regarded Elizabeth Cardwell.

I knew that, as far as the interrogation was concerned, she had served her purpose. There was nothing more to be learned from her. She, too, must have sensed this, for she seemed, though she did not move, terribly frightened. Her fear could be read in her eyes, in the slight, tremulous movement of her lower lip. In the affairs of state she was now without value. Then uncontrollably, piteously, suddenly, trembling in the Sirik, she put her head down to the pelt of the larl. "Please," she said, "do not kill me."

I translated for Kamchak and Kutaituchik.

Kutaituchik addressed the question to her.

"Are you zealous to please the fancy of Tuchuks?"

I translated.

With horror Elizabeth Cardwell lifted her head from the pelt and regarded her captors. She shook her head, wildly, "No, please no!"

"Impale her," said Kutaituchik.

Two warriors rushed forward and seized the girl under the arms, lifting her from the pelt.

"What are they going to do?" she cried.

"They intend to impale you," I told her.

She began to scream. "Please, please, please!"

My hand was on the hilt of my sword, but Kamchak's hand rested on mine.

Kamchak turned to Kutaituchik. "She seems zealous," he said.

Once again Kutaituchik addressed his question to her, and I translated it.

"Are you zealous to please the fancy of Tuchuks?"

The men who held the girl allowed her to fall to her knees between them. "Yes," she said, piteously, "yes!"

Kutaituchik, Kamchak and I regarded her.

"Yes," she wept, her head to the rug, "I am zealous to please the fancy of Tuchuks."

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.

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.