Post by marvis on Jul 3, 2005 12:35:09 GMT -5
"I was looking on the faces of four men, warriors of the Wagon Peoples. On the face of each there were, almost like corded chevrons, brightly colored scars. the vivid coloring and intensity of these scars, their prominence, reminded me of the hideous markings on the faces of Mandrills; But these disfigurements, as I soon recognized, were cultural, not congenital, and bespoke not of natural innocence of the work of genes but of glories, and status, the arrogance the prides, of their bearers. The scars had been worked into the faces, with needles and knives and pigments and the dung of bosk over the period of days and nights. Men had died in the fixing of such scars. Most scars were set in pairs, moving diagonally down from the side of the head toward the nose and chin. The faces of the men I saw were all scarred differently, but each was scarred. I recalled what I had heard whispered of once before, in a tavern of Ar, the terrible Scar Codes of the Wagon Peoples, for each of the hideous marks on the face of these men had meaning, a significance that could be read by the Paravaci, the Tuchuks, the Kataii, the Tuchuks, as clearly as you or I might read a sign in a window or a sentence in a book. At that time I could read only the top scar, the red, bright, fierce cord like scar that was the courage Scar. It is always the highest scar on the face. Indeed, without that scar, no other scar can be granted. The wagon peoples value courage above all else."