John Norman - Tribesmen of Gor

Larma and tospits are also grown at the oases, in small orchards. Some rep is grown, for cloth, but most cloth comes to the oases from caravans. Kaiila and verr are found at the oases, but not in great numbers. The herds of these animals are found in the desert. They are kept by nomads, who move them from one area of verr grass to another or from one water hole to another, as the holes, for the season, go dry. Smaller water sources are used in the spring, for these are the first to go dry, larger ones later in the year. No grass grows about these water holes because many animals are brought to them and graze it to the earth. They are usually muddy ponds, with some stunted trees about, centered in the midst of an extensive radius of grassless, cracked, dry earth. Meat, hides, and animal-hair cloth are furnished to the oases by the nomads. In turn, from the oases the nomads receive, most importantly, Sa-Tarna grain and the Bazi tea.

They receive, as well, of course, other trade goods. Sa-Tarna is the main staple of the nomads. They, in spite of raising herds, eat very little meat. The animals are too precious for their trade value, and their hair and milk, to be often slaughtered for food. A nomad boy of fifteen will often have eaten meat no more than a dozen times in his life. Raiders, however, feast well on meat. The animals mean little to them and come to them cheaply. Tea is extremely important to the nomads. It is served hot and heavily sugared. It gives them strength then, in virtue of the sugar, and cools them, by making them sweat, as well as stimulating them. It is drunk three small cups at a time, carefully measured.

I finished the cup of water and handed the cup back to the water carrier. He bowed, grinning, the bag, swollen and bulging, damp on his shoulder, and. hooking the cup on his belt, backed away. “Water!” he called. “Water!”

I blinked my eyes against the heat and glare of the sun. The buildings of Tor are of mud brick, covered with colored, often flaking, plasters. But now, in the sun, and the dust, raised by the people in the streets, everything seemed drained of color. I would soon have to buy appropriate garments. In such a city I was too conspicuous.

I made my way toward the bazaar.

I knew the light lance, and the swift, silken kaiila. I had learned these with the Wagon Peoples. But I did not know the scimitar. The short sword, now slung over my left shoulder, in the common fashion, would be of little use on kaiila back. The men of the Tahari do not fight on foot. A man on foot in the desert, in warfare, is accounted a dead man.

I looked up at the buildings. I was now in the shade, descending a narrow, steep street, toward the bazaar. The buildings in Tor are seldom more than four stories high, which is about as high as one may build safely with beams and mud brick. Because of the irregular topography of Tor, however, which is a hilly, rocky area, like most of the Tahari terrain, many of the buildings, built on shelves and rises, seemed considerably higher. These buildings, on the outside smooth and bleak, save for occasional narrow windows, high, not wide enough to admit a body, abut directly on the streets, making the streets like deep, walled alleys. In the center of the street is a gutter. It seldom rains in Tor, but the gutter serves to collect waste, which is often thrown into it, through open doors, by slaves. Within these walls, however, so pressing upon the street, I knew there were often gardens, walled, well-watered, beautiful, and cool, dark rooms, shielded from the heat and sun, many with superb appointments. Tor was, as Gorean cities went, rich, trading city. It was headquarters for thousands of caravan merchants. In it, too, were housed many craftsmen, practicing their industries, carvers, varnishers, table makers, gem cutters, jewelers, carders, dyers of cloth, weavers of rugs, tanners, makers of slippers, toolers of leather, potters, glaziers, makers of cups and kettles, weapon smiths, and many others. Much of the city, of course, was organized to support the caravan trade.

There were many walled, guarded warehouses, requiring their staffs of scribes and guards, and, in hundreds of hovels, lived kaiila tenders, drovers, and such, who would, at the caravan tables, when their moneys had been exhausted, apply, if accepted, making their mark on the roster, once more for a post with some new caravan. Guards for these caravans, incidentally, were usually known by, and retained by, caravan merchants between caravans. They were known men. Tenders and drovers, on the whole, came and went. Elaborate random selection devices, utilizing coins and sticks, and formulas, were sometimes used by merchants to assure that applying tenders and drovers were selected, if they were not known, by chance. Tenders and drovers were assured that this was to insure fairness.

Actually, of course, as was well known, this was a precaution against the danger of hiring, en bloc, unwittingly, an organized group of men, who might, prior to their hiring, have formed a plan to slay the guards and merchants and make off with the caravan. Tenders and drovers, however, like men generally, were an honest sort. When they returned to Tor, of course, they had been long in the desert. At the end of the trip they received their wages. Sometimes, not even a hundred yards from the warehouses, these men would be met by enterprising cafe owners, praising the advantages of their respective establishments. The owners of these cafes, usually, would bring with them a chain of their girls, stripped, as free women in the Tahari districts may not be, purportedly a typical selection of the stock available.

“In my house,” he would call, indicating one or another of the girls, “rent the key to her chains.”

But generally the men would proceed past these enticements, which were, from what I saw, far from negligible, and hurry toward their favorite cafes and hostels, whose wares, I gathered, did not need such blatant advertisement, whose worth, and capacities for total and complete satisfaction were apparently well known. Certain of these cafes I might mention. The Silken Oasis is well known, even in Ar, but it is extremely expensive; in the middle range of price are the Golden Collar and the Silver Chain, both under the same management, that of a Turian named Haran; good, relatively inexpensive cafes are the Thong, which I would recommend, the Veminium, the Pomegranate, the Red Cages and the Pleasure Garden. These various establishments, and more than forty others, from the point of view of tenders and drovers, have one thing in common. They succeed in separating, with celerity and efficiency, a fellow from his money. I do not feel this way myself. I think most of them, with the exception of the Silken Oasis, are reasonable. The drover’s objection, I think, is largely a function of the fact that he does not have a great deal of money to spend. What there is, accordingly, seems rapidly diminished. Tenders and drovers often proceed from one cafe to the other, for several nights. The wages for a caravan trip, which often takes months, commonly will last the fellow about ten days, or, if nursed out, some fifteen days. They are, of course, a rather pleasant ten or fifteen days. At the end of this time, after a day or so of some physiological discomfort, usually violent nausea and blinding headaches, it is common to find the man again back at the tables, once more attempting to vend his services to the master of a caravan.

A fellow walked past me, carrying several vulos, alive, heads down, their feet tied together. He was followed by another fellow, carrying a basket of eggs.

I followed them, as they would be going to the market streets, near which was the bazaar.

The water in an oasis is, of course, at its lowest point. Residences, at an oasis, are built on the higher ground, where nothing will grow. It is the valley, naturally, which, irrigated, usually by hand, though sometimes with clumsy wooden machinery, supports the agriculture. Land, at an oasis, which will grow food, is not wasted on domiciles. Tor, rather similarly, though few crops were grown within its walls, was built high, about its water, several wells in the deepest area in the city. The architecture of Tor, in concentric circles, broken by numerous, narrow, crooked streets, was a function of the radius from its wells. An advantage of this municipal organization, of course, though it is scarcely a matter of intentional design, is that the water is in the most protected portion of the city, its center. Tor’s water, I might mention, was ample to her needs. Though I saw few of them, she boasted many shaded gardens.