Renegade of Callisto

On the other hand, Taran would soon enough perceive the wonders of Sargol, for the Garukhs were headed there, so there did not seem to be any particular reason to refuse the boy the information that he sought.

He decided to temporize, to say as little as was. possible, without seeming to be abrupt or secretive.

“Sargol is the name by which we call the place to which we are going,” he said solemnly.

“I thought so,” Taran exclaimed triumphantly. “But, Koja-chan, is Sargol the name of the whole southland where the Yathoon roam and live, or just one particular part of it?”

“It is one particular part of it,” admitted Koja.

Xara of Ganatol, who lay chained near them, and who had been listening to their conversation with interest, now spoke up with a question of her own.

“Is it where your females are kept, Koja?” the Princess inquired. “And the young of your race, as well? For I assume that you keep your females and their children in one particular place, since none are here with the Clan. They can only be living somewhere in the south …”

Koja solemnly agreed that this was the case. But he did not wish to go into further details, and Borak, who lay nearby and who was also listening, spoke up then and came to his rescue by diverting the conversation to another subject.

The Yathoon nation is divided into four great Clans, the Zajjadar, the Angkang, the Haroob, and the Kandar, and two smaller Clans, more recently formed, the Thorome and the Garukh.

Each Clan has its own high chief, or akka-komor, but over them all is one supreme autocrat, the Arkon, or Emperor.

The Arkon and his court are resident in Sargol, where they protect the Yathoon females and their young, and rule all of the southern hemisphere in a desultory fashion. Periodically, the Clans return to the southland to rest, to refurbish their weapons, to lie with the females and thus beget their young. After these brief periods, they return to the outside world in their mighty caravans to hunt for food, which they preserve in a manner peculiar to their kind.

They return with these fruits of the hunt to Sargol, to replenish the supplies of nutriment upon which the Yathoon young and the females depend. For there exists no edible game in the frigid regions of the south, and were the great caravans not to return to Sargol, those who dwell in the sacred homeland would at length perish from starvation.

Once they are beyond that invisible barrier that Yathoon tradition has established as the limit of their southerly domain, each Clan and tribe considers itself at war with every other Clan or tribe, or at least in a posture of armed and wary enmity. But once within the southern regions again, an absolute and ironclad truce is considered to exist, and no male Yathoon is permitted to slay or to attack another male on any conceivable pretext, upon pain of death in the Arena.

This is called the Peace of Sargol, and it has never been broken.

It is obvious to any student of cultures that some such arrangement would have to exist, for otherwise one Clan could seize and occupy Sargol to the exclusion of all other Clans and tribes. They would then possess all of the Yathoon females, and they alone would be able to breed and to beget the next generation.

The Yathoon, you understand, do not mate for life. Instead, they hold their females in common and compete in games of warfare or athletic prowess for the attentions of the females, and for the privilege of lying with them and of begetting offspring.

Each champion, and several of the runners-up, have their choice of females during the period in which their Clan observes the Peace of Sargol. The larva laid by the females are then marked with the Clan or tribal totem mark of the champion who was the parent. When the young are hatched, they are trained for survival, and when they are old enough to begin training for war, they enter the retinues of the various chieftains of their parent tribe or Clan, and are thought of as cadets.

But none of these young ever know their father’s name, nor even the name of their mother. Parenthood is considered a duty and a privilege, but it remains an anonymous one. The reasons for this are obscure and lost in the mists of dim, forgotten ages.

Since they are born to females they can never identify, of a parentage forever unknowable to them, the warriors of the Yathoon never experience the emotions of filial devotion or love. You cannot love a father whose name is unknown to you, nor a mother you have never seen. You can feel no brotherly love for your siblings if you have no way of ever knowing which of the other young in your nest are your own brothers and sisters.

Thus the love between mates, and the love a parent feels for its child, and the emotions which commonly bind children of one family together are completely unknown to the pitiful, cold, ever-emotionless barbarians who inhabit the frigid southlands, who roam and rule the measureless plains, and who live out their empty and loveless lives in an eternal war against every other thing that lives.

Camp was broken, as it had been broken ten thousand times before and would be broken ten thousand times again. The tents were dismantled and packed away in the covered wains. The thaptor pens were taken apart pole by pole, lashed into bundles, and strapped to the backs of the mighty glymphs. The caravan was at last ready to depart.