Yes,
I knew the reputation of Treve. It was a city rich in plunder,
probably as lofty, inaccessible and impregnable as a tarn's
nest.
Indeed,
Treve was known as the Tarn of the Voltai. It was an arrogant,
never-conquered citadel, a stronghold of men whose way of
life was banditry, whose women lived on the spoils of a
hundred cities.
---Priest-Kings of Gor
, p 63
The
Tarn of the Voltai
TREVE
High in
the scarlet crags of the larl-prowled Voltai mountains sits
a Citadel of men who live off the plundering of other Cities.
Its men are said to be proud and bold, its women beautiful
and spoiled.
Treve
was alleged to lie above Ar, some seven hundred pasangs
distant, and toward the Sardar. I had never seen the city
located on a map but I had seen the territory she claimed
so marked. The precise location of Treve was not known to
me and was perhaps known to few save its citizens. Trade
routes did not lead to the city and those who entered its
territory did not often return.
---Priest-Kings of Gor, pp 60-61
There
was said to be no access to Treve save on tarnback and this
would suggest that it must be as much a mountain stronghold
as a city.
---Raiders of Gor
, pp 60-61
Treve,
I knew, was, nominally, at war with several cities. Strife
is common among Gorean cities, each tending to be belligerent
and suspicious of others. Rask of Treve, in his way, as
other raiders of Treve, carried the war to the enemy.
---Captive of Gor
, p 271
The City of Treve
is said to be one none can enter. Protected by the rugged
terrain of the Red Mountains, its location is said to be
unkown to most. Indeed if the bold Tarnsmen of Treve made
their mark through all of the Gorean world,few are those
who would venture in pursuit of whatever loot was taken
into the skies past the foothills of the Voltai.
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, p 271
It is said that none
enters Treve save under the constraint of a hood; captives
of course, in the baskets of their captors, but even merchants,
and the few allowed in the City for trading, arrived under
conduct, hooded and in bonds.
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, p 191
The People of Treve,
though living in appearance by Gorean City structures, live
of the plunders of its Raiding Tarnsmen, and of the hunting
of its huntsmen, raising and growing little food of their
own, though as the following passage indicates, they tend
to be smug about their lifestyle, claiming the Verr as their
trade.
'They
are deeper than I thought,' she said.
With
the tip of her finger she began to work the ointment into
the cuts. It burned quite a bit.
'Does
it hurt?' she asked.
'No,'
I said.
She
laughed, and it pleased me to hear her laugh.
'I
hope you know what you are doing,' I said.
'My
father,' she said, 'was of the Caste of Physicians.'
So,
I thought to myself, I had placed her accent rather well,
either Builders or Physicians, and had I thought carefully
enough about it, I might have recognised her accent as being
a bit too refined for the Builders. I chuckled to myself.
In effect, I had probably merely scored a lucky hit.
'I
didn't know they had physicians in Treve,' I said.
'We
have all the High Castes in Treve,' she said, angrily
---Priest-Kings of Gor, p 64
She
was said to have no agriculture, and this may be true. Each
year in the fall legions of tarnsmen from Treve were said
to emerge from the Voltai like locusts and fall on the fields
of one city or another, different cities in different years,
harvesting what they needed and burning the rest in order
that a long, relatiatory winter campaign could not be launched
against them. A century ago the tarnsmen of Treve had even
managed to stand off the tarnsmen of Ar in a fierce battle
fought in the stormy sky over the crags of the Voltai.
...Cities,
of course, would pursue the raiders from Treve, and carry
the pursuit vigorously as far as the foothills of the Voltai,
but there they would surrender the chase, turning back,
not caring to risk their tarnsmen in the rugged, formidable
territory of their rival, whose legendary ferocity among
her own crags once gave pause long ago even to the mighty
forces of Ar.
Treve's
other needs seemed to be satisfied much in the same way
as her agricultural ones, for her raiders were known from
the borders of the Fair of En'Kara, in the very shadow of
the Sardar, to the delta of the Vosk and the islands beyond,
such as Tyros and Cos. The results of these raids might
be returned to Treve or sold, perhaps even at the Fair of
En'Kara, or another of the four great Sardar Fairs, or if
not, they could always be disposed of easily without question
in distant, crowded, malignant Port Kar.
'How
do the people of Treve live?' I asked Vika.
'We
raise the verr,' she said.
I
smiled.
The
verr was a mountain goat indigenous to the Voltai. It was
a wild, agile, ill-tempered beast, long-haired and spiral-horned.
Among the Voltai crags it would be worth one's life to come
within twenty yards of one.
'Then
you are a simple, domestic folk,' I said.
'Yes,'
said Vika.
'Mountain
herdsmen,' I said.
'Yes,'
said Vika.
And
then we laughed together, neither of us able to restrain
ourselves.
---Priest
Kings of Gor, pp 60-61
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, p 298
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 enemies, brought back
to Treve, hooded and bound across saddles, soon to meet
the kiss of the iron.
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, p 60
Rask
of Treve, as a raider true to the codes of Treve, that hidden
coin of tarnsmen, that remote, secret, mountainous city
of the vast, scarlet Voltai range, had not, in these circumstances,
much pushed pursuit. In the shadows of the forest the crossbow
quarrel can swiftly touch, and slay. The
element of the tarnsman is not the green glades, and the
branches; it is the clouds, the saddle and the sky; his
steed i