Tal, Goreans,

Greetings, visitors,

Welcome once again to the Booknotes column. Tarl has made his way to the southern plains where the Wagon Peoples live, in search of the last egg of the Priest-Kings, Gor’s insectoid masters. He has been given a brisk reception in the shape of a duel to the death, and having won this and spared his opponent, Kamchak of the Tuchuks,Tarl has been welcomed as a peaceful visitor. Almost at once the Tuchuks have brought a strange captive into camp, an Earth woman named Elizabeth Cardwell, and she is being taken to the wagon of Kutaituchik, "he who sits on the gray robe", as Kamchak puts it.

Chapter Seven

The wagon of Kutaituchik is an immense mobile palace, with a domed roof reaching a hundred feet high and, presumably, a length and breadth that are no less. Hauling this is a task for one hundred bosk, and for all the animals’ size and strength, I don’t envy them one bit. Kutaituchik, no doubt the Ubar of the Tuchuks, holds court not in that gigantic wagon but on a low dais covered with rugs, and he himself sits on a plain gray boskhide robe. The moral is obvious; wealth is all very well, but at bottom the Tuchuks put their trust in simplicity.

Kutaituchik is some years past his best, and he has a drug habit into the bargain; kanda leaves from a golden box, and Kamchak, Tarl and the unfortunate Elizabeth have to wait patiently while Kutaituchik enjoys his evening hit. But he washes it down with a dose of some kind of medicine, and he and Kamchak exchange the traditional Tuchuk greeting: ritual small talk concerning the welfare of the bosk, the sharpness of the quivas, and the importance of axle lubrication. This attended to, they get on with the business of the unusual prisoner and the message she carries.

Pleased to find out that she has been given a crash course in essential Gorean (see last issue of the Booknotes), Kutaituchik leaves it to Kamchak to get on with interrogating her, which of course requires Tarl’s services as interpreter, and a weird tale soon unfolds of a strange glassy-eyed gray-faced man. (This description is vaguely reminiscent of the Master Assassin, Pa-Kur, who featured very largely in Book One. However, don’t hold your breath waiting for this rather teasing plot thread to be tidied up.) The stranger interviewed her in her boss’s uneasy presence in a New York office on Earth, following which she fell unconscious and reawoke on the plains of Turia, shortly afterwards to be picked up by Tuchuk outriders.

This is the first occasion on which a beautiful Earth girl is abducted and brought to Gor on some trifling errand, with slavery to follow; but it will not be the last, as we may see in due course.

As for the leather collar around her neck, this does indeed contain a written message as Kamchak correctly surmised, and he and Kutaituchik, after affecting illiteracy, get Tarl to prove his trustworthiness by reading it to them. It is short and to the point:

"Find the man to whom this girl can speak. He is Tarl Cabot. Slay him. (signed) Priest-Kings of Gor."

Tarl resists the urge to dissemble, which is just as well as both of the Tuchuks knew perfectly well what it said, but Kamchak pours scorn on the very notion that the Priest-Kings would have sent such a note, or would not have taken more direct action against Tarl had they seen fit. Besides, having held grass and earth with Tarl, Kamchak would thumb his nose at the Priest-Kings themselves rather than injure him, even if the whole Tuchuk tribe were to be punished in consequence; and Kamchak seems to have Kutaituchik’s full approval in this matter.

Of course, Tarl is given furiously to think by the arrival of this strange message, and he hardly supposes that the Priest-Kings are indeed behind it, which leads him to suspect that there may be "Others", not Priest-Kings, who are also interested in the matter of the last egg of Priest-Kings, and he goes off on quite a wild and detailed chain of speculation before dismissing such as too fantastic to be entertained.

Now Kamchak and Kutaituchik turn their attentions back to Elizabeth, and after a spot of prompting she declares herself absolutely bursting with zeal to be a Tuchuk toy, whereupon she receives meat from the hands of her master and bursts into floods of tears; partly through having had a trying day and partly, no doubt, because she is bright enough to grasp the symbolism of this act.

Chapter Eight

Norman indulges in one of his favourite narrative devices, that of jumping the action forwards in time and then recapping on what has happened since the end of the previous chapter, but he does so in a not too irritating manner (many worse examples will follow later in the series). Tarl makes no progress in the affair of the egg during the next few months, instead travelling with the Wagon Peoples to their winter quarters, becoming acquainted with their ways, and learning their various weapons. We saw his natural aptitude back in "Tarnsman", where he speedily learned all that the Older Tarl could teach him, mainly about the sword; and he runs true to form here, mastering the Wagon Peoples’ ethnic arms by way of something to do to pass the long winter evenings. He also learns to ride the kaiila creditably enough.

This gathering of the Wagon Peoples has to do with the possible election of the Ubar San, the One Ubar over all four tribes; and also with a visit to Turia for "Love War", concerning which Tarl speculates but prefers to wait patiently for all to be revealed. Meanwhile Tarl gets into a gambling game for some slave girls, one of whom is Elizabeth. He has to turn in a keen performance with the lance, and then a still better one with the bola in catching a running slave girl, and not just any slave girl but the famous Dina of Turia, one of the best slaves ever to run before the bola. (Elizabeth, by the way, has stood up very well to the rigours of slavery, although she has enjoyed a somewhat pampered existence by ordinary standards, and certainly Kamchak has treated her with unusual kindness and consideration, having evidently grasped that she has started at something of a disadvantage compared to the typical kajira. This isn’t pure altruism on his part, as we shall learn in due course.)

Back to Tarl, who of course astounds everyone with his skill, nerve and luck in roping Dina in record time, having deduced barely in time the secret of her previous successes and boldly followed his hunch. Thanks partly to Elizabeth’s inexperience in this sport, the game has to go to a tie-break in which Tarl must expertly lance a tospit (a fruit the size of a small pear) out of her mouth, which he also manages in splendid style; and the end result of all of this is that Tarl wins himself a slave girl, Dina herself. This puts Elizabeth’s nose somewhat out of joint, but Tarl, bless his innocence, hasn’t the first idea why. This sport over, Kamchak announces that the winter lay-off is at an end and it’s time to head for Turia, where Tarl hopes at last to learn some more about the "doubtless golden spheroid" he’s come in search of.

Chapter Nine

Another time jump sees Tarl and Kamchak at a feast in Turia, guests of the rich merchant Saphrar, where Tarl finds the rich food not entirely to his liking. (Kamchak shovels it away with gusto and a complete lack of finesse, but what unites him and the civilized Turians is a willingness to go for a good chuck-up between courses, an expedient that Tarl finds detestable.) He doesn’t let it distract him from keeping an ear on the table gossip, though, and he overhears a tantalising snippet between Saphrar and Kamchak, in which the "golden sphere" is mentioned as the price that must be paid "if she is to participate".

"She", in this connection, turns out to be Aphris of Turia, a wealthy and no doubt beautiful heiress and also ward of Saphrar; and, almost inevitably, she is as haughty a young miss as ever bestrode the pages of a romantic novel. As she makes her entrance, Saphrar urges Kamchak to trade the golden sphere for her, though no doubt he does not mean a straightforward business transaction, as Aphris is a free woman under the protection of her own Home Stone and hence at no risk of being sold. But Kamchak declines the offer and Saphrar throws a small tantrum, he being that kind of a man. The one comfort Tarl has is that he now knows that the sphere is in Kutaituchik’s wagon, not that this gives him much cause for rejoicing.

As for Aphris, it soon becomes plain that she and Kamchak have crossed paths before. He brought her a love-gift of a diamond necklace two years previously and got nothing but lip for his pains, since when, he cheerfully announces, he has promised himself that Aphris shall be his slave ’ a deliberate insult that brings silence to the whole feasting-chamber and provokes the intimidatingly large figure of Kamras, Champion of Turia, to offer to make Kamchak sorry. Aphris recovers her composure and pretends to be offended not by Kamchak’s words but his smell, and the love-patter continues in this vein until Kamchak offers Aphris another surprise present. It is a necklace again, which he insists on fastening around her neck himself, whereupon Aphris is dismayed to learn that it’s the kind of necklace that’s made of steel and unlocks with a key.

Thus shamed before the cream of Turian society, Aphris flies into a rage and volunteers herself as a prize in Love War if Kamchak will fight for her; and Kamras himself will be her defender. Saphrar might have been expected to dissuade his under-age ward from risking herself in such a manner, but he has a very strange way of going about it’ almost as if he stands to gain by Aphris so standing. Still, Kamras has never lost a fight in his life, and he closes the chapter promising to put Kamchak to a slow and horrible death for the insult to Aphris and, by extension, to Turia.

Chapter Ten

We now discover what Love War is; but first Tarl tells us how he has given his slave Dina her freedom. This is an endearing habit of Tarl’s; he steadfastly refused to brand Talena in Book One even when she was throatily begging for it, he purchased Lara in Book Two solely to spare her such a fate, and now he’s at it again. Dina thinks he deserves a reward for his generosity, and she gives him one. But Elizabeth, when she finds Dina gone, believes that Tarl has sold her and suffers a slight dose of culture shock in consequence. Kamchak, on the other hand, knows that Tarl is much too light in the purse to have sold a valuable girl like Dina, and he enjoys a good laugh at Tarl’s expense. Then the two of them prepare in suitable fashion for the fighting on the morrow by going out for a skinful.

Love War, it turns out, consists of a series of single combats waged more or less concurrently between warriors from Turia and from the Wagon Peoples. Women of both peoples stand as prizes, in order according to their rank and beauty, and the haughty Hereena, last seen looking down her nose at Tarl and pouring scorn on one Harold of the Tuchuks (of whom we shall see a great deal later) is herself at stake, this being what the women of the First Wagon are reserved for. But Kamchak’s business is at the First Stake itself, where the Turian prize is Aphris, as promised. There turn out to be no other challengers for this prize, since even the bloodthirsty Tuchuks are not exactly shouldering one another aside for the privilege of first pop at Kamras. As for Kamchak, he teases Aphris by pretending to have thought better of fighting for her, before eventually consenting with a great show of reluctance.

Having opted to fight, Kamchak is given choice of weapons by an irritated Kamras, who after originally having plumped for the sword was swayed by the Tuchuk’s complaint that he could hardly be expected to know the ways of such a weapon. Given the choice, Kamchak opts for the sword after all, which dismays Tarl, who is well aware of how much chance a novice swordsman stands against an expert. He is even moved to volunteer his services in Kamchak’s stead, though he is told that this is against the rules; and, believing that Kamchak is going to certain death, pleads with him to look upon shame as the lesser evil. Kamchak takes no offence at this, but from his mien we can reasonably deduce that Tarl wouldn’t have got away with making such a suggestion had the two of them not held grass and earth together.

After such a build-up, rendered in excellent comic style by Norman at the peak of his form, the fight itself can have only one outcome. Kamchak gives a convincing display of bumbling incompetence while an increasingly exasperated Kamras tries to kill him, and it gradually becomes clear that, good as the Champion of Turia is, Kamchak is his master. Little by little he takes the fight to Kamras, wounds him again and again, until Kamras, spurred on by Aphris’s increasingly frantic urging to kill Kamchak, collapses in the sand, exhausted and short of a few pints of blood. Thereupon Kamchak, sparing him, informs Kamras, and the world in general, that he has served his turn as a mercenary in Ar and was the First Sword of the guards there; he and Tarl embrace joyously; and he turns his attention to the now-forfeit Aphris of Turia.

And as the sound of pennies dropping begins to overwhelm the horrified ears of that snooty girl, it is time to bring this edition of the Booknotes to a close and urge all readers to join us next month for a further dip into Volume Four, "Nomads of Gor".

I wish you well,

Socrates