"John Norman - Gor 20 - Players of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

It was now two days before the Twelfth Passage Hand, in the year 10,129 C.A. Soon it would be
Year Eleven in the Sovereignty of the Council of Captains, in Port Kar. It seemed, somehow,
only recently that the five Ubars, who had divided Port Kar between them, had been deposed.
Squat, brilliant Chung and tall, long-haired Nigel, like a warlord from Torvaldsland, had fought
with us against the fleets of Cos and Tyros, participating with us in the victory of the Twenty-
Fifth of SeтАЩKara, in Year One of the Council of Captains; remained in Port Kar as
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high captains, admirals in our fleet. Sullius Maximus was now a despised and minor courtier at
the court of Chenbar of Kasra, Ubar of Tyros, the Sea Sleen. Henrius Sevarius, freed, now a
young man, had his own ship and holding in Port Kar. He owned a luscious young slave, Vina,
whom he well mastered. She, now a love slave, had once been the ward of Chenbar, Ubar of
Tyros, and once had been intended to be the free companion of gross Lurius of Jad, the Ubar of
Cos, thence to be proclaimed Ubara of Cos, which union would have even further strengthened
the ties between those two great island ubarates. She had been captured at sea and had fallen
slave. Once marked and collared, of course, her political interest had vanished. A new life had
then been hers, that of the mere slave. I did not know the whereabouts of the fifth Ubar, Eteocles.
We were in the great hall in the holding of Samos, in Port Kar. The room was lit by torches.
Many of his men, sitting cross-legged at low tables, as we were, were about. They were eating
and drinking, being served by slaves. We sat a bit apart from them. Some musicians were
present. They were not now playing.
I heard a slave girl laughing, somewhere across the room.
Outside, in the canal traffic, I heard a drum, cymbals and trumpets, and a man shouting. He was
proclaiming the excellencies of some theatrical troupe, such as the cleverness of its clowns and
the beauty of its actresses, probably slaves. They had performed, it seems, in the high cities and
before Ubars. Such itinerant troupes, theatrical troupes, carnival groupings, and such, are not
uncommon on Gor. They consist usually of rogues and outcasts. With their wagons and tents,
often little more than a skip and a jump ahead of creditors and magistrates, they roam from place
to place, rigging their simple stages in piazzas and squares, in yards and markets, wherever an
audience may be found, even at the dusty intersections of country crossroads. With a few boards
and masks, and a bit of audacity, they create the mystery of performance, the magic of theater.
They are bizarre, incomparable vagabonds. They are denied the dignity of the funeral pyre and
other forms of honorable burial.
The group outside, doubtless on a rented barge, was not the first to pass beneath the narrow
windows of the house of Samos this evening. There were now several such groups in the city.
Their hand-printed handbills and hand-painted posters, the latter pasted on the sides of buildings
and on the news boards, were much in evidence. All this had to do with the approach of the
Twelfth Passage Hand, which preceded the Waiting Hand.
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The Waiting Hand, the five-day period preceding the vernal equinox, the first day of spring, is a
very solemn time for most Goreans. During this time few ventures are embarked upon, and little
or no business is conducted. During this time most Goreans remain within their houses. It is in
this time that the doors of many homes are sealed with pitch and have nailed to them branches of
the brak bush, the leaves of which have a purgative effect. These precautions, and others like
them, are intended to discourage the entry of ill luck into the houses.
In the houses there is little conversation and no song. It is a time, in general, of mourning,
meditation and fasting. All this changes, of course, wit the arrival of the vernal equinox, which,
in most Gorean cities, marks the New Year.
At dawn on the day of the vernal equinox a ceremonial greeting of the sun takes place,
conducted usually by the Ubar or administrator of the city. This, in effect, welcomes the New
Year to the city. In Port Kar this honor fell to Samos, first captain in the Council of Captains, and