Bazi:Treve:
A warlike city, famed for its flocks of wild tarns (enormous
hawklike birds that tarnsmen of Gor ride into battle on),
lying about 700 pasangs North of Ar, towards the Sardar..
The mountain stronghold can only be reached by tarnback. It
has no agriculture, and each year, legions of tarnsmen emerge
from the Voltai falling on the fields of one city or another,
different cities in different years, harvesting what they
need and burning the rest in order that a long retaliatory
winter campaign can not be launched against them. Because
of the protection provided by the rocky crags and high mountains,
there has never been a serious threat to Treve's Home Stone.
Treve is a city rich in plunder, as lofty, inaccessible, and
impregnable as a tarn's nest. It is known as the "Tarn
of the Voltai" and is an arrogant, never conquered
citadel. A stronghold of men whose way of life is banditry,
whose women live on the spoils of a hundred cities. Chief
among its defenses are the vast legions of tarnsmen, riding
the wild tarns found in this land. The wild tarns of Treve
are larger and much stronger than tarns bred in captivity,
and are widely regarded as the best fighting tarns on Gor.
There are two main sources of revenue for Treve: training
wild war tarns and the mercenary use of Treve's vast forces
to neighboring cities. For this reason, the city government
continues to be ruled by an Ubar, as a state of war exists
almost continuously. The neighboring cities pay vast sums
of gold tarn disks to buy protection, but in reality, they
pay to keep Treve from attacking them. Treve does not attack
three cities because of their defenses...these cities being
Ar, Ko-ro-ba, and Thentis.
The tarn flocks of Treve, and the skill of its Tarnsmen, are
known as the best on Gor, comparable perhaps only to those
of Thentis. It is on tarnback that the men of Treve plunder
Cities and make away with the gold and the goods their lofty
lifestyle requires, as well as the women of ennemies, brought
back to Treve, hooded and bound across saddles, soon to meet
the kiss of the iron.
I
turned and, among the furnishings of the tent, found a bottle
of Ka-la-na, of good vintage, from the vineyards of Ar, the
loot of a caravan raid. I then took the wine, with a small
copper bowl, and a black, red-rimmed wine crater, to the side
of the fire. I poured some of the wine into the small copper
bowl, and set it on the tripod over the tiny fire in the fire
bowl... I swirled, slowly, the wine in the wine crater. I
saw my reflection in the redness, the blondness of my hair,
dark in the wine, and the collar, with its bells, about my
throat... I did not know how he cared for his wine, for some
men of Treve wish it warm, almost hot."
Captive of Gor page 331-332
"Treve
is a bandit city, high among the crags of the lari-prowled
Voltai. Most men do not even know its location. Once the tamsmen
of Treve had withstood the tarn cavalries of even Ar. In Treve
they do not grow their own food but, in the fall, raid the
harvests of others.
They live
by rapine and plunder. The men of Treve are said to be among
the proudest and most ruthless on Gor. They are most fond
of danger and free women, whom they bind and, steal from civilized
cities to carry to their mountain fair as slave girls. It
is said the city can be reached only on tarnback."
---Raiders of Gor, page 271
"Indeed,
there was little known even of the city of Treve. It lay somewhere
among the lofty, vast terrains of the rugged Voltai, perhaps
as much a fortress, a lair, of outlaw tarnsmen as a city.
It was
said to be accessible only by tarnback. No woman, it was said,
could be brought to the city, save as a hooded, stripped slave
girl, bound across the saddle of a tarn. Indeed, even merchants
and ambassadors were permitted to approach the city only under
conduct, and then only when hooded and in bonds, as though
none not of Treve might approach her save as slaves or captive
supplicants.
The location
of the city, it was said, was known only to her own. Even
girls brought to Treve as slaves, obedient within her harsh
walls, looking up, seeing her rushing, swift skies, did not
know wherein lay the city in which they served. And even should
they be dispatched to the walls, perhaps upon some servile
errand, they could see, for looming, remote pasangs about
them, only the wild, bleak crags of the scarlet Voltai, and
the sickening drop below them, the sheer fall from the walls
and the cliffs below to the valley, some pasangs beneath.
They would know only that they were slaves in this place but
would not know where this place in which they were slaves
might be. It was said no woman had ever escaped from Treve."
---Captive of Gor, page 191
"Those
men," said Ena, "are Raf and Pron, huntsmen of Treve,
though they range widely in their huntings, even to the northern
forests. By order of Rask of Treve they, by their skill in
weapons and their mastery of the techniques and lore of the
hunt, and pretending to be of Minus, a village under the hegemony
of Ar, made petition and successfully so, to participate in
the retinue of the great Ubar." She smiled at me. "Treve,"
she said, "has spies in many places."
---Captive of Gor, page 298
"Treve
was a warlike city somewhere in the trackless magnificence
of the Voltai Range. I had never been there but I knew her
reputation. Her warriors were said to be fierce and brave,
her women proud and beautiful. Her tarnsmen were ranked with
those of Thentis, famed for its tarn flocks, and Ko-ro-ba,
even great Ar itself."
---Priest-Kings of Gor, page
60
