Yurth Burden by Andre Norton (DAW)

Cover art (and several interior illustrations) by Jack Gaughan. The typeface is Angular Black, designed by Georg Salden in 1973 and distributed by VGC from 1975 on. If you feel there’s something fishy about the overly wide Y, that’s because it’s not by Salden. The original glyph in Angular is asymmetrical and descending (see The Star Wars Portfolio by Ralph McQuarrie, 1977). This was apparently too unconventional for the anonymous cover typographer, so it got replaced by a homemade glyph. Angular is available in digital form as Carree, a revised and expanded version sold by TypeManufactur—including the descending Y.

From the back cover:

The world of Zacar was wracked with storms and life there was hard. Yet two races shared it with no love between them. The Raski were the first people, the Yuth the late-comers.
This is the story of Elossa, the Yurth girl who followed the Call that every Yurth sensitive must follow when the time came. And this is the story of Stans, the Raski, who had to achieve manhood by blood rite against the hated Yurth.
This is a novel of a world where ancient injustices had been done and never righted, where brooding evil and age-old vengeance awaited peace-makers – and of two who brought this terror down upon their own heads.
It’s a new novel, written directly for DAW Books, other-planetary, wonder-filled, and in Andre Norton’s grandest tradition.

Cadwalader Ringgold, otherwise an admirer of Andre Norton’s science fiction, thinks the cover is the best thing about this book:

I cannot honestly recommend Yurth Burden (1978). It was a disagreeable chore to read. The characters were uninspiring and the motivation for their quest was muddled and ambiguous. One senses that Ms Norton wrote only to a point where so could justify terminate the story. The author seamed to lose interest the narrative. Multiple plot point were left unanswered but, thankfully, there was no sequel.

Posted on the suggestion of @soundclamp.