Welcome once again to the Booknotes column. Tarl’s expedition to the Plains of the Wagon Peoples in search of the last egg of Priest-Kings has not made much progress so far, beyond a tantalising hint that the golden spheroid, which he naturally assumes to be the object of his quest, is in the wagon of Kutaituchik. But when we last saw our hero and his Tuchuk friend Kamchak, the latter had just won a duel on the First Stake of the Love War between the Wagon Peoples and the citizens of Turia, and the full horror of her situation was just beginning to descend upon the proud beauty who stood as prize on the Turian side, the young and wilful Aphris of Turia. It’s time to see how things are going there.

Chapter Eleven

Aphris, overconfident in her champion Kamras, turns out to have neglected one vital precaution, that of wearing slave clothing under the now-forfeit robes of a Free Woman, and consequently winds up stripped bare in front of all onlookers, including the Kassar girl whose freedom Kamchak’s prowess has just secured. It falls to that unnamed wench to welcome Aphris to her new condition with a slap and a spit in the face, which lesson is swiftly reinforced with a blow from Kamchak when Aphris dares to protest.

At a time like this what a young girl mostly needs is her loyal friend and guardian, in this case Saphrar the Merchant, who has just been enriched to no small degree in that all of Aphris’s enormous fortune devolves to him. And indeed he happens by in palanquined splendour to survey her lowly state through what seems to be the Gorean equivalent of lorgnettes, and utters a few pious platitudes on the distressing downturn in her fortunes. Kamchak, knowing his adversary very well indeed, offers to sell Aphris to him for a beggarly price, which Saphrar refuses, ignoring Aphris’s tearful pleas to spend, if necessary, her entire fortune to free her. He points out that such a business transaction would be most unwise, and also that she ceased to have a personal fortune a matter of a few minutes ago, for slaves cannot own any property whatever, not even a name. Refusing a still lower purchase price, just as Kamchak knew he would, Saphrar retires to gloat over his new-found riches.

As a small comfort to Aphris, Kamchak reassures her that he would not have sold her even if Saphrar was willing to do business, for ever since she refused his suit as a free woman he has vowed he would have her as slave. He accepts her formal submission and makes her run at his stirrup all the way back to camp, an exercise to which Elizabeth Cardwell is now fully accustomed but which exhausts poor Aphris. Still, it gives her fair warning of what is going to be expected of her now that she is a Tuchuk’s slave.

We can mention here as an aside that the haughty Hereena, she of the First Wagon, who was suggesting putting Tarl to death a couple of episodes ago and whose chief sport has been bating the poor Harold of the Tuchuks (of whom we’ll see more later), has had the ill-fortune to be represented by a loser and is now a slave of the Turians. For now, though, let’s stay with Aphris, who is dismayed to learn that she will henceforth be subordinate not only to Kamchak and Tarl, but to Elizabeth as well, whom Kamchak has kept in some privilege solely for the purpose of making Aphris lower down the pecking order than a barbarian slave.

Celebrating, Tarl and Kamchak go out for a few drinks, which Tarl pays for after his first lesson in the unwisdom of casual gambling with a wily Tuchuk, and they return to find that Elizabeth and Aphris have been reinforcing their relative positions. (Kamchak, by the way, sits on a sort of grey leather footstool, a gift to him from a couple of travellers. Make what you will of this.) He informs Aphris that she is going to have to learn to dance, and Elizabeth shyly asks for the same lessons ’ which may be because, as Kamchak observes, she doesn’t wish to lose station in his wagon, or for some other purpose of her own. But Aphris fights the chain for now, biting Kamchak and then threatening him with a quiva, which doesn’t cause him too many problems and, as he observes, could have earned her a terminal session with one of the Clan of Torturers. Defiantly she insists that she will die rather than spread her legs for him, but such isn’t on Kamchak’s agenda for now in any case. There is the little matter of a taunt about the smell of bosk to be taken care of, for which insult Aphris gets to spend her first night head-first in the dung sack.

Chapter Twelve

Considering the unpleasant task of burgling Kutaituchik’s wagon, Tarl finds he can’t even case the joint, as the Tuchuk guards warn him off if he even looks like getting near it. He has half a mind simply to appeal to either Kutaituchik or Kamchak, disliking the notion of stealing from his hosts, but this honest approach would rather tip his hand. Putting the matter to one side for now, and thinking that the excitement of the Omen Taking might give him a better chance to get away with it, Tarl prepares for an evening’s entertainment with Kamchak and the girls, watching a dancing slave girl.

Aphris seems to be settling in as a slave, no doubt motivated by her desire to avoid another night in the dung sack. She meekly approaches Kamchak and begs to be allowed to put on a piece of cast-off slave clothing she has found, since she has been wearing nothing but fresh air for several days, and some jewellery, just so that every observer will know that her master is wealthy enough to buy her clothes but chooses not to. Pleased with her humble request, Kamchak grants it, and the happy party make their way to the dancing display. Tarl is paying for their admission. He has just received his second lesson in wagering with wily Tuchuks, and is starting to get the hint.

Still, despite Kamchak’s apparent harshness, Tarl can’t help noticing that Aphris is still unbranded and has been allowed clothing at the first time of asking, and he chuckles to himself. But his musing is interrupted when Kamchak tells him to chain Elizabeth, who seems to take very readily indeed to his steel. She and Aphris both get quite tipsy on a couple of mouthfuls of Paga, which suggests that, distilled or not, it is not unlike whisky for alcohol content, even though the average male Gorean swigs it by the bottle.

The dance itself works its magic on Aphris for a start, as by its conclusion she is begging Kamchak to make her a slave, and we can conclude that she doesn’t mean collaring and branding. He cheerily carries her off to the fate which only a few days ago she considered worse than death, and nonchalantly gives Elizabeth to Tarl for the night. This gives her another dose of culture shock, for it brings home to her that she is indeed mere property, to be lent, given away or sold at the whim of her Master and without her wishes in the matter needing to be ascertained, let alone considered. But she seems to fall into a very strange humour when Tarl refuses to use the occasion as an excuse to take advantage of her, and she runs off into the night.

While our adorable bonehead is puzzling this matter over with the aid of some more Paga, he is fortunate to survive an assassination attempt by a mysterious hooded Torturer who hurls a dagger at him, which narrowly misses him and instead sticks in the side of a wagon. The owner emerges to find out what all the fuss is about and helpfully points out that the dagger is that of a Paravaci.

Chapter Thirteen

Next morning Elizabeth is nowhere to be found, but after a short panic she turns up with an innocent look on her face and two full water-buckets as evidence of a complete lack of intention to escape. Kamchak doesn’t buy this story at all, and punishes her by removing her larl-pelt dress and giving her a whipping, which she endures in splendid style. However, Kamchak also uses the whip for an intimate caress to which Elizabeth helplessly responds, and locks her in a sleen cage as a further lesson.

Tarl has no opportunity to bring her comfort or succour, as Kamchak has business to get on with and takes Tarl along for the ride, literally in the case of a trip out to the Omen Taking. They then go for the inevitable evening bottle of Paga, and this time Tarl doesn’t even bother with trying to win a wager for the cost of it but gives in straight away. Tarl tries to persuade Kamchak not to have Elizabeth branded, but he has no success; but Kamchak does offer to sell her to him. While he is wondering whether he’ll be able to afford Kamchak’s price, or whether he ought to burden himself with a slave right now, Tarl is spared the necessity of reaching a decision by an alarm call announcing an attack on the Tuchuk camp.

Chapter Fourteen

Kamchak, already shown to be a man of quite high rank, loses no time in organising the defenders and seems to be in command of all of them, somewhat to Tarl’s surprise. There has been an attack on the bosk herds, but this is only diversionary, and while the massed kaiila cavalry are finding this out, the camp itself is attacked by tarnsmen. By the time Kamchak realizes what is going on, it is too late, and he arrives at the wagon-palace of Kutaituchik to find the guards slain, Kutaituchik slain, the wagon a ruin and the golden sphere stolen.

The finger of suspicion points at Saphrar, of course, who has earlier expressed an interest in the sphere and who has the money to hire mercenary tarnsmen (Turia has no tarnsmen of her own); and Kamchak picks this moment to reveal that he knows that Tarl was interested in the sphere on his own account, and tells Tarl that it is worthless. Tarl, of course, disagrees; but this is not the time for arguing over the matter, not with Kutaituchik dead. However, if the object of the exercise was also to kill the Ubar of the Tuchuks then this, at least, has failed, for Kutaituchik was not the Ubar. That was a convenient fiction to mislead strangers, but the Tuchuk warriors know differently: the real Ubar is Kamchak.

Chapter Fifteen

War follows, but it is something of a standoff. Tuchuks are formidable in battle on the open plains, but they are ill-equipped for siegecraft against a walled city, and they do not even have the assistance of the other Wagon Peoples, who view the quarrel as a purely Tuchuk affair. They are well able to prevent land traffic to the city; the Turians soon discover, as certain Earth empires did, that nomadic mounted archers can run rings around heavy cavalry, and infantry are not even in the picture. Tuchuks and tarnsmen are largely impotent against each other, as kaiila riders make small and elusive targets from the air but have little in the way of effective anti-aircraft fire. It occurs to Tarl that the Tuchuks’ fixed assets ’ the wagons and the herds ’ would be much more vulnerable to airstrikes, but when he brings the matter up Kamchak tells him that at present the mercenaries are being bribed enough to stop them using this particular tactic.

However, Kamchak decides that sooner or later this very threat will be realized, and in the meantime he cannot get into Turia, so it is foolish to keep the Tuchuks there to no purpose. And as he prepares to leave, Tarl realizes that he is going to have to sneak into the city if he wants to get his hands on the golden sphere. He decides not to bother raising the question with Kamchak, who has turned very bitter indeed since Kutaituchik died, to the disadvantage of both Elizabeth and Aphris, who being Turian naturally catches the rough edge of his temper. The one crumb of comfort that both girls have is that since the Iron Master is, like all the other able-bodied Tuchuks, busy on military duty for the present, they have not yet been branded.

There is still aid that Tarl can call upon, in the shape of the remarkable Harold, who is living a beggar’s life among the wagons. This young outcast, Tuchuk by birth but formerly slave in Turia, has had all he can do just to live off scraps, with no wealth or station among the Tuchuks nor any means of gaining such; and he considers Tarl’s proposed expedition an interesting one. He himself quite fancies an excursion to Turia to steal himself a slave, his erstwhile tormentor Hereena, who is now adorning Saphrar’s Pleasure Gardens; and he knows a secret way into the city. Indeed, the only reason he hasn’t gone before is that, as he tells Tarl, "Kamchak told me to wait for you."

But what this secret way might be, and how Tarl is going to manage to penetrate Saphrar’s stronghold, and why Kamchak is giving up the siege of Turia so easily, are questions too large to be answered within the scope of this month’s column; for which reason, all readers are urged to join us next month for the next dip into "Nomads of Gor".

I wish you well,

Socrates