The Year of the 17 Moons

The Year of the 17 Moons

Blue moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own...
Blue moon
You knew just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for.
- Lorenz / Hart -




"Kazhuye.. am I a part of a wager you have lost?"

"Mmmm." In answer to her unspoken question, (yes, it was good!), I smiled around a rather large mouthful of food... then shook my head while trying to swallow it down. "No, Aiyana."
Then wiping away a bit of the gravy from my chin onto my sleeve, I chuckled for a moment while regarding her. "What makes you ask that?"

"No reason I was just wondering."

"Had I wagered on you, perhaps I'd not have lost." I chuckled just moments before another small stone came sailing across from one of the men on the opposite side of the fire.

Just then it was the Bead Maker, Sakmeta who'd arrived. They
must eat real fast at the First Wagons. "Well Tal there," she said.

"Hey, Year Keeper! How's about a story before you start kissing over there!" They were just not going to let the newest subject of raucous teasing die too quickly. No way. Amidst all the merriment, I threw the stone right back at Cornwall and hit him. My aim is much better than his.

"You itchin' for a fight, Cornwall?" Did anyone ever notice that many a Tuchuk had the strangest names? Harold, Conrad... Glover. Cornwall?

"No. Well... yes. And I wager I'll kick your ass too! But after a story, huh?" All the men laughed again, bringing the din of noise to rise above the level of the music once more. Tuchuks did love the stories afterall. Did they not?

"Perhaps I tell the story of how the Year Keeper took you up on your wager, and made Cornwall cry like a girl after kicking his ass!" I joined in their laughter amidst the ooohs and aahhhs... wager wager wager!

"I seen him throwin quivas at that Kassar the other day, Cornwall. He's pretty sharp," said another fellow, who was laughing at Cornwall by now.

"Pfft! He throws like a girl!" Cornwall scowled as he tipped his paga cup to his mouth. Paga drooled down his chin before he wiped it away on his sleeve.


I did end up telling a story. The Year of the Seventeen Moons, to be precise, and held my audience captively enthralled for more than an ahn. It was a year which had occured precisely in the middle of two Omen Years... exactly twenty-five years ago. It was not the presentation of celestial anomalies that had really been the gist of the year, but rather that the gathered Haruspexes had had a recount of the omens. And something that no Tuchuk had ever known. Til tonight.

While the actual reading of such omens was not revealed to me, the events of the night certainly were. For I am a Year Keeper. And it is my duty to record in the annals for posterity and commit such to memory. I have memorized the names and particulars of over a thousand years.

The nearest I can say for the Year of the Seventeen Moons is this: It was a foreshadow of things to come. Precisely two and one half Omen Years and these things shall come to pass. Things so great and terrible that the lips of every Haruspex from all four Tribes has sealed his or her lips shut and sworn an oath. Can there be a thing greater than the election of a Ubar-san, I wonder? One who shall unite all Wagon Peoples and lead them under one banner?

What I know is this... by the melting of the last snows. By spring when the men meet on the Field of a Thousand Stakes, the Omen foretold shall be revealed. Whether here... or whether far far away, I cannot say for certain. But the Tuchuk Haruspex surely knows.

[ ... ]

Aiyana Cooks

Aiyana Cooks

Cornwall and the other men ribbed me mercilessly when I arrived with a woman they'd never seen before. With thousands and thousands of Tuchuks, it is impossible for everyone to know everyone. But those in my own particular neck of the camp know me very well. And I, them.

My hands were full when we passed by my own wagon on the way to the communal fire, and so I pointed at the dais with my chin, "Grab that pot, Aiyana."

"You are planning a large gathering for your dinner, Kazhuye?"

"Only you." I grinned at her as we reached the fire, where there were already several dour women bustling about their own cooking pots... one of them was now and then beating back some bold slave girl with a stick, who'd dared to try and steal a bit of meat from them. It made the women angry. But it made the men laugh. Ironic, no?



The belled kajira ran right between us both, knocking us out of her way as she scurried off like a jackal with her prize. And several men slapped their thighs in laughter as one of the women who'd been trying to beat her with a stick... gave up and just threw the stick at the bitch!

"Look at her go!" I too, had been laughing. "I bet she wins the bola races every year!"

"Year Keeper! Who's that you got there?" Oh no. It was Cornwall.

"She's the Weaver, from the First Wagons." I was waiting near the fire, still holding Aiyana's things for her, while she hung the cooking pot from the large tripod.

"Are you gonna help her cook?" Cornwall asked, and all the other fellows laughed and slapped their knees. He is a kaiila's ass sometimes. No... he is a kaiila's ass ALL of the time.

"NO!" I shouted back, though I admit it was funny... and soon I too was laughing.

I had left Aiyana at the fire with the other women, while I settled on the ground upon the new blanket and had a bowl or two of paga in the meantime. The women were over there buzzing about something, while we men just watched them cook. Aiyana was looking right at me.
I think I saw her lips moving. If you tell me where your dishes are I shall get them, the meat is about done. But I was lost in thoughts and didn't hear her.

Suddenly a small pebble sailed past and clinked right against the paga bowl I was drinking from. "Hey, Year Keeper! The lady's talking to you." Again there was more raucous laughter from them as they ribbed me. And Cornwall again, cupping a hand to his mouth as he mimicked a woman's voice as best he could, "Where's your dishes, darling!"

"Ahhh... shut up!" I threw the small stone back at Cornwall. "In there, Aiyana," I said, pointing to my wagon.

Afterward there was a chorus of men's voices, repeating in mimicry of me, "IN THERE, AIYANA!" Then laughter, more laughter.

[ ... ]

Supper At My Fire

Supper At My Fire

He was eating a piece of bosk meat in the Tuchuk fashion, holding the meat in his left hand and between his teeth, and cutting pieces from it with a quiva scarcely a quarter inch from his lips, then chewing the severed bite and then again holding the meat in his hand and teeth and cutting again. Without speaking I sat down near him and watched him eat.

Then we sat there together for a time, not speaking further, he eating, I watching while he cut and chewed the meat that was his supper. There was a fire nearby, but it was not his fire. The wagon over his head was not his wagon. There was no kaiila tethered at hand. As far as I could gather, Harold had little more than the clothes on his back, a boskhide robe, his weapons and his supper.

"You will be slain in Turia," said Harold, finishing his meat and wiping his mouth in Tuchuk fashion on the back of his right sleeve. (Nomads of Gor)





I returned the next day for the Weaver as planned, to the First Wagons. But not before I'd tethered Necessity to one of the larger wheels and stopped to assist the other men there with building the fire. In the meantime, Sakmeta was there as well, chatting up some other Year Keeper named Laverne, I think. I cannot recall with any clarity... which is strange.

"Do you know her?" The Bead Maker had asked after Laverne left.

"No, I do not."

"Maybe next time she will tell us a story." And already she was offering to cook for those of the First Wagons. This after inferring that the Weaver had no place at 'our' wagons just yesterday. Was this to imply that she was my woman? I do not begin to understand
the Bead Maker, but after she remarked with a certain hopefulness that the other Year Keeper would tell us a story, I replied...

"That would require listening."

It was then that Aiyana appeared with a basket of meat and other offerings. She looked briefly confused... thinking perhaps I'd changed my mind, and she wondered whether she ought to get her own pot and begin cooking. There. At the First Fire.

"Oh," I grinned, gesturing for her to come. "Not here, Aiyana. But at my fire." I carried her things for her too, all the way back to the camp of wagons where my own were parked.

[ ... ]

The Wintering

The Wintering

At last, seventeen days after the first snows, the edges of the herds began to reach their winter pastures far north of Turia, approaching the equator from the south. Here the snow was little more than a frost that melted in the afternoon sun, and the grass was live and nourishing. Still farther north, another hundred pasangs, there was no snow and the peoples began to sing and once more dance about their fires of bosk dung. (Nomads of Gor)




Considering it is near the first of the year, as they are counted from the First Snow to the First Snow, resolutions are bound to fall into place. Sometimes you don't even have to think or plan for them, and they just fall right in to place.

Sakmeta ran right over, dropping her argument across the camp to solicit a blue-haired slave's announcement that Sakmeta was a great cook. I was so compelled to touch the woman's blue hair, that I failed to really hear what she was saying? Cook? Hmm? Oh... right.

The Bead Maker was shouting again, something about the pot was hers. She'd given it to me, and by rights it was she who ought to cook in it. But knowing her, she is likely to boil up some kaiila excrement in piss, and try to serve it to me. I do not trust her after all the things she has said and done in recent hands.

"Will you cook a supper for me?" It was Aiyana I asked, giving her my attention again.

Strangely... and for reasons I cannot fathom... this seemed to make Sakmeta even more exasperated. You'd think...she would have been secretly glad to palm me off on her worst enemy. I have no idea whether she and the Weaver are enemies, though the Bead Maker did have some trite words to riddle the other woman with.

"But I want to cook for you. It's what I want."

Odd, for just the other day she'd been trying to force the cooking pot on me. When I told her just exactly what I wanted. For her to do what I told her to do, when I told her to do it. And to stop arguing with me! Her reply? "I could care less what you want, Kazhuye! You can rot for all I care!"

And now... as I turned back to Aiyana, Sakmeta was grabbing my arm, wailing and in tears, "Don't ignore me, Kazhuye! I want your attention. I want... I want... I want... me me me... myself myself myself...and I!"

"I haven't ignored you, Bead Maker. You just don't listen." She didn't listen then. And she wasn't listening now.

"Tomorrow then, Aiyana?" The Weaver had gone silent during the Bead Maker's entire scene, yet she finally found her voice again.

"Yes, Kazhuye. Tomorrow."

[ ... ]

The Weaver

The Weaver

Tuchuk women, unveiled, in their long leather dresses, long hair bound in braids, tended cooking pots hung on tem-wood tripods over dung fires. These women were unscarred, but like the bosk themselves, each wore a nose ring. That of the animals' is heavy and of gold, that of the women also of gold, but tiny and fine, not unlike the wedding rings of my old world. (Nomads of Gor)



"Do you ever smile, Aiyana?"
"Yes." Her expression was fairly serious as she looked back at me.

Grinding the heel of my boot into the kaiila's flank, he charged ahead with the swift tug of his reign... round and round those gathered at the First Fires, before he charged dead on for the Weaver. Within horts, I pulled on his reign and stopped him... moments before the Weaver's heart stopped beating. She had froze. And dropped her water cup to the ground, which was promptly buried under a layer of dust and small stones.

On the other side of the First Wagon camp, there arose a small altercation of sorts, one in which the Bead Maker was denying something. Denying any interest in a Salt Hunter whom I'd never met. And yet the frozen expression on the Weaver's face had managed to hold my interest. It was then that I finally dismounted Necessity and tethered him nearby.

When I returned to the fire again, I seated myself right beside her. "You left me a gift in front of my wagon." Because she had. No sense asking her and being redundant.

"Yes, I did."

"Why?" I asked her, though not in a berating way. Just simple curiosity. I assumed it was an olive branch of sorts. Either way, she more or less confirmed my assumption.

"Can you cook, Aiyana?"

"Yes." She looked at me kinda funny for a moment.

"I have this new cooking pot." Would she realize I was trying to ask her to cook something in it for me? It is a woman's thing afterall... the cooking pot.

[ ... ]

The Singer's Song

The Singer's Song

"The ear of his kaiila is notched," I said to Grunt. "Is that an eccentric mutilation or is it deliberate, perhaps meaningful?"

"It is meaningful," said Grunt. "It marks the kaiila as a prize animal, one especially trained for the hunt and war." (Savages of Gor)



"Im not going to ride with you in the same saddle, Kazhuye."

I was a bit confused, I admit. And I withdrew my hand. I would not offer it again.

"But come down here and be civil." She smiled at me, though I had no desire to get down. I liked being up high, for the moment. High enough that I am above the song she sings, even when she makes no sound.

Perhaps it is because she sings it for another... this song that is written upon her. No, not to please the Sky. But to another who is under the Sky.

[ ... ]

Homecoming

Homecoming

There are few things more impressive than the sight of a large Tuchuk encampment springing up out of the desolate prairies of Gor. Composed of thousands of wagons, each gaily painted, and some with roofs of gold brocade, the camp is an iridescent mass of colours. In addition, it is always teeming with movement and sound: the lowing of the bosk, the sharp voices of the free women, the bells of slaves and the hearty laughter of warriors. (Nomads of Gor)




On my way back to camp, my path crossed with that of the Singer's, and several times I steered my kaiila into criss-crossing zags before her until T'zuri was finally forced to stop. Either stop, or crash headlong into the ass of Necessity.

Much of that fire in my kaiila's spirit had been quenched after the long ride across the open Plains and back, neither of us stopping til the day turned to night, and finally into day again. And Necessity was now worn down enough for a woman to ride upon him.

I lowered my hand down. In a truce. Alright... you can ride him. It's what she'd said she wanted the day before. And yet, when I offered her my hand, T'zuri stood back and merely eyed me.

"Why do you want me to ride with you?"

Oh now.... ::skiddddd sound inserted here:: wait just a minute! Why do I want you to ride with me? How do they do that? How do they smoothly turn everything you say against you? Women!

"You said you wanted to ride him yesterday, T'zuri." And once again I offered down my hand. It's a rather big step up from the ground into Necessity's stirrups.

[ ... ]

Sky

Sky

The Wagon People sometimes pray to the "Spirit of the Sky." They are said to dance to "please the sky." They reverence the sky, and their mythology says that the rain created all things. They pray only when mounted on their kaiila. They pray as a Warrior to an Ubar, not as a servant to a god. They are deeply superstitious; they claim not to care for omens, but stories are told of how a warrior turned his entire army around and went back home based on the flight
of a passing bird. (Nomads of Gor)



It is beneath the multi-hued canopy that stretches as far as the eye can see, from horizon to horizon, that a man can truly feel the significance of his life. Far away from the sounds and smells of others. Far from the scorn and ridicule of women. So far from home that a man must even consider how and when his next meal will come.

"I am Kazhuye of the Tuchuks! Warrior and Year Keeper!" This I remind the great Sky Ubar as often as I speak to him, though I am certain he knows full well who I am. "I have come to seek your counsel and your wisdom." It is not merely for victory in crossing weapons with a certain Kassar, but for other entreaties as well that I don't call by name. For if anything, the gods do not favor redundant begging from men. Especially warriors.

[ ... ]

Into The Great Wide Open...

Into The Great Wide Open...

Under them skies of blue
Out in the great wide open
A rebel without a clue
- Tom Petty -


For a moment, just one split second of time... I was certain the Bead Maker would be trampled to a bloody pulp beneath my Necessity's great and terrible claws. I think in that very same ihn, he too wondered whether it was I who would force him to the deed.

Necessity was out of control by the time I'd managed to pluck the knots loose from his tether. T'zuri had approached right around the same time he reared up high overhead and crashed back down again. But I don't think he was much in the mood for sweet talk. No... he needed to be ridden to the edge of the world and back. I lept up into the saddle just before he reared up again, trying to throw me. Stupid beast! And that's when he turned and charged straight for Sakmeta. I... did not do anything to prevent him from trampling her. I did not tug right or left on his reigns. At least I do not recall whether I did. But at the very last ihn, Necessity jumped and sailed right over her... and we were gone. I never did look back either.

[ ... ]