Tal, Goreans,

Greetings, visitors,

Welcome once again to the Booknotes column. As promised, we here begin to look at Volume Four, "Nomads of Gor", considered by many to be the best of the series, and certainly a tremendous story. In the first instalment of Booknotes for the previous volume, six months ago, I invoked the shade of Handel and his music Zadok the Priest for the scene where Tarl sat upon what he supposed to be the throne of Priest-Kings; but for "Nomads" I shall recommend the music of that very fine amateur composer and professional chemist, Alexander Borodin. More of him shortly and in the proper place.

Chapter One

Tarl strides across the Plains of Turia rather like a man trying to walk up a down escalator, and not only that, but it’s rush-hour and he’s going the wrong way. Everything that can walk, humans and larls alike (though the larls feign indifference in true feline manner), is making haste to fly before the approach of the dreaded Wagon Peoples. Many are leaving their homes behind; Tarl encounters one Peasant who, armed only with a mattock but carrying his own Home Stone, is not a man to be trifled with.

Tarl gives us a brief footnote to account for his journey here from the Sardar, where he was last seen at the end of "Priest-Kings", and unfortunately the author commits something of a geographical solecism by declaring that same Sardar to be, in effect, Gor’s north magnetic pole. (Reader, equip yourself with an atlas and a compass that instead of pointing North, points at Washington D.C., and try to navigate your imaginary way from Washington D.C. to Seattle. See the problem? The proper place for a magnetic pole is "off the edge of the world", and the better it’s aligned with true north, as defined by the axis of rotation and hence the Pole Star, the simpler for all concerned.)

However, Tarl is too busy to pick holes in Gorean geography and so are we. Ahead, on the vast plains of Turia (and with In the Steppes of Central Asia playing), Tarl observes the smoke rising as the eponymous nomads loot and pillage the settlements in their path – but, mainly, restore them to pasture-land fit for their colossal herds of bosk, the giant cattle that are their chief source of wealth – and heads in what everyone else considers the least wise direction.

Chapter Two

Ignoring the well-meaning advice given him by all the panic-stricken people he is elbowing his way past, he reflects on his purpose here, which is to find and recover the last female egg of the Priest-Kings – the only surviving egg of the now-dead Mother – and all he knows is that someone, somewhere in the vast Gorean equivalent of the Mongol Horde, possesses this object, the exact nature of which is unknown to him. He assumes that it will be roughly egg-shaped and, like the Priest-Kings themselves, golden in colour, but he does not know; still less does he know how he is going to persuade the Wagon Peoples to give it back.

Persuasion seems a better option than force or subterfuge, on Tarl’s appraisal. Alone on the Plains of Turia, he has no tarn on which to take wing, nor even a tharlarion (though such a mount would not be able to outrun the Wagon People’s preferred mount, which we’ll see shortly); and his hopes of escaping on his own two feet would be precisely nil. Like other Goreans, the Wagon Peoples use sleen as herding animals, as guard animals, and for the hunting of fugitives, and for any of these purposes they are quite incomparable. His fate as a would-be thief, captured alive, would be extremely unpleasant, since there is a whole Clan of Wagon Peoples devoted to the profession of torturer.

(They organize things by clan rather than by caste, in contrast to the civilized Goreans we have met up to now. Every man of the Wagon Peoples is a warrior and a herdsman, whatever else he may be, and the various sidelines such as leather-working, facial scarring and so on are performed by members of one clan or another as an adjunct to their more normal functions. Back to the story.)

While he is musing on such an unpleasant fate, he is spotted by the first of a series of outriders from the Wagon Peoples, a kaiila-riding cavalryman armed to the teeth with bow, lance, throwing knives ("quivas"), bola, and rope. Tarl doesn’t give us many details on what a kaiila looks like, but we know it is about seven feet high at the shoulder and carnivorous – it seems to be something between great cat and camel, minus the hump – and can cover more than four hundred miles in a day, which is an impressive feat in anyone’s book.

Soon there are four kaiila riders all looking over Tarl impassively. To his peaceful greeting they offer no response save their names: Tolnus of the Paravaci, Conrad of the Kassars, Hakimba of the Kataii and Kamchak of the Tuchuks. All bear the facial scars of warriors of high rank, and no sooner have they given Tarl their names than they level their lances for the charge.

Chapter Three

They promptly kill Tarl out of hand and the story comes to a premature end.

All right, that is a complete tissue of lies on my part. What actually happens is that Tarl, knowing he cannot effectively combat the coordinated attacks of four lancers and unwilling to hit the dirt under his shield and passively await whatever they might choose to do to him, gambles all on a show of courage. He stands his ground with disdain writ large on his face, and at the last instant all four kaiila screech to a halt, leaving Tarl unharmed.

This ballsy display impresses the riders enough that they each fire questions at Tarl instead of arrows. The Tuchuk takes him for a fugitive outlaw; the Kassar learns that Tarl was afraid but did not show it; the Kataii accuses him of being a spy and reminds him that the Wagon Peoples slay strangers; and the Paravaci conspicuously displays one of his pieces of priceless jewellery, intending to incite Tarl to envy. That ritual concluded, the four riders gather around a lance embedded point-first in the ground and wait for it to fall within reach of one of them; which, Tarl understands, is their means of choosing by lot one of their number to kill him in single combat.

As the immense herd of bosk is brought to its evening quarters in the background, the spear falls to the Tuchuk, who with a virile bellow seizes it and prepares for battle.

Chapter Four

Tarl sets about earning himself some more honour points by refusing to spear the Tuchuk’s kaiila, after making it clear that he knows the weapon well enough to accomplish such a feat. By this time he has lost his shield and has a few marks on him from the Tuchuk’s lance, but his expertise has saved him from worse harm and, when he tosses the spear aside, the riders all applaud his sportsmanship and the Tuchuk, not to be outdone, discards his own lance. Tarl’s next move is to counter the bola, with a combination of lightning speed and astute anticipation, and finally to parry the Tuchuk’s thrown quiva with his sword. Thus outmatched, the Tuchuk takes his loss like a man and congratulates Tarl on his victory, fully expecting to be slain on the spot and seeming not to mind one bit.

At this, Tarl spares him and reiterates yet again his desire to come in peace, and at last the Tuchuk is convinced. He gives Tarl a clod of earth and grass to hold, and makes him welcome.

Chapter Five

Now the music changes into the Polovtsian Dances – extremely suitable and apposite music, since the ballet for which it was written concerned the adventures of a Russian prince held as an honoured prisoner by the Tartars, and Gor certainly has no closer parallel to these than the Wagon Peoples – as Tarl is led into the Tuchuk camp by Kamchak. The evening routine of life among the wagons is under way, with both free and slave about their regular business, and it is evident that the Tuchuks prize a certain wild spiritedness in their slave girls, for we see one making a nuisance of herself to a free woman and getting no worse than a scolding as punishment.

For the most part the free women of the Tuchuks seem much more drab and grim than the feisty slaves, but Tarl soon meets a conspicuous exception in the shape of an imperious young free woman named Hereena, a haughty kaiila-riding princess with strong views on what should be done with him. Kamchak only grins tolerantly and explains about the grass and earth business – a simple ceremony of brotherhood matched in certain Earth traditions, of course – and Hereena goes her nose-in-the-air way. She, Kamchak says, is one of the women of the First Wagon, the wagon of Kutaituchik who "sits on the gray robe", which reference Tarl takes, naturally, to mean that Kutaituchik is the Ubar of the Tuchuks. But that Hereena is "of the First Wagon" means only that she inhabits one of the hundred wagons belonging to Kutaituchik, and not that she is his personal property, still less his own flesh and blood; and her beauty and fiery spirit are no accident, as she has been bred to be a prize in the games of Love War.

Kamchak does not have time to explain further before signal horns are blown to announce the arrival of a prisoner in the camp.

Chapter Six

Kamchak goes at once to see what the matter is. He has just told Tarl that he himself often goes to the wagon of the Ubar, which clearly marks him as a warrior of high rank, and the two kaiila riders who are bringing the prisoner in report to him straight away.

Whatever Tarl might have been expecting, it was surely not a young woman in the tattered remains of some quite good-quality Earth clothing; but that is exactly who it is. Besides her ragged clothes, she has the unusual attire of a broad leather collar. Her bewilderment at her savage surroundings is great, but not enough to keep her from announcing her name: Elizabeth Cardwell, from New York City. She is first convinced that the Tuchuks are all mad, and then that she herself is; and Tarl at this point lets compassion overrule his wiser judgement, and reveals that he can understand her. The thought crosses his mind that this may be a set-up to identify him, but his chivalrous instinct is the stronger. He lets her know that she is no longer on Earth, and this does very little for her equanimity.

Kamchak’s response is to treat her much the same as any other captive female, beginning with throwing her clothing on the nearest fire and getting Tarl to teach her the two words of Gorean she will first need to know if she is to live for five minutes. Tarl, hoping that Kamchak will be kind to her, obliges by teaching her to say "La Kajira"; and once she has dutifully repeated this, learned that it means "I am a slave girl", and collapsed into a quite justifiable screaming fit, Kamchak has her taken away to Kutaituchik’s wagon, and announces that he and Tarl will need to go there. For one thing, that leather collar she was wearing is no mere ornament but will have a message sewn into it.

And since Elizabeth and her message will prove to be of no small importance, it is clearly time to bring this month’s edition of the Booknotes to a close, and urge all readers to join us next month for our second look at "Nomads of Gor"!

I wish you well,

Socrates