Tal Goreans,
Greetings visitors,

Welcome once again to the Booknotes column. In the spirit that made the Emperor Nero the most renowned musician in Roman history, Tarl has been blithely ignoring the fact that Zarendargar, war general of the Kurii, known as Half-Ear, awaits him at the end of the world, and instead has gone to visit the Sardar Fair to watch a game of Kaissa, albeit a historic one between the greatest champions of Gor. Wise old Centius of Cos has defeated brilliant young Scormus of Ar, Tarl has cheerfully kissed goodbye to a fortune in gold as a result, and he has survived a not-especially-brilliant assassination attempt by the way. With the message reiterated, that Zarendargar awaits him, Tarl is all set to return home and take ship aboard the vessel that the mad genius Tersites has spent these many years crafting. Now read on.

Chapter Five

Samos, enraged, rails at Tarl for wasting time in sport, for the ship of Tersites has been fired, and so one particular shaggy-dog story wends its way to an unsatisfactory conclusion, and we need not hold our breath for any definitive pronouncement on where the ship was intended for, or whether my suspicion that it was really Gor’s first icebreaker is well-founded, or who set the ship on fire or why. Samos still wants Tarl to undertake the voyage to the end of the world, believing after the Gorean fashion that this lies in the far west, but Tarl has other ideas, reasoning that the North Pole may be a likelier location to be so viewed by the Kurii. At any rate, that is where he is heading for, and though Samos tries to detain him, Tarl wends his way clear of Samos’s house and of Port Kar.

Chapter Six

Heading northwards towards Lydius, Tarl is minding his own business as usual. In this context, this means that while Tarl has set his tarn free to hunt for itself, he encounters first of all a free woman hunting a sport slave, and then another free woman undertaking a journey with a few slaves and guards. Feeling horny, Tarl asks the latter, Lady Constance of Kassau, to lend him a slave for a moment, and he even volunteers generously to hire or buy one of them. Lady Constance not only refuses all these requests but declares herself insulted, which is bad news for her guardsmen who try to uphold her honour. We know of Tarl’s matchless martial prowess; very well, today is by no means a bad day for him, and he swiftly deals with the captain, sparing his life but making unmistakably clear the fate for all of Lady Constance’s half-dozen guards if they try to continue the fight. To the Lady’s rage, they chuck in the towel with no more ado.

This spells a rapid downturn in Lady Constance’s fortunes, of course, and within minutes Tarl has ordered her to free her male draft slaves, refused her offer of either or both of her female slaves, enslaved her, and bid the female slaves begone bearing the former Lady’s wealth which he is philanthropically donating to the former draft slaves. He then sets about impressing her new status upon her, and of course, being Tarl, he does this exceptionally well, to the effect that by the time the moons are high Constance is eagerly begging to be raped again, and obeying when she is told to earn the privilege.

At this point the sport slave referred to recently makes his appearance. He has been made to run on foot so that the huntress, riding an upright tharlarion (smaller than the high tharlarion used in war) and armed with a bow, can run him down and shoot him; but up to now he has resourcefully stayed ahead of her. Tarl gives him food and offers him paga, but he refuses the latter, needing his wits about him to spring the trap he is laying for his huntress. While Tarl enjoys his slave, the huntress arrives, bids them a haughty good evening, and wades her mount into the nearby pond, searching for her quarry. But he, who has been hiding beneath the surface and breathing through a reed, surprises her and captures her, and forces her to hide with him while her own guardsman come up, miss them, and hurry off into the darkness. So much for the Lady Tina of Lydius.

Tarl, insofar as this is any of his business at all, naturally sides with the man, not only out of sexism (which would be enough) but out of an apparent dislike of people who hunt people for sport, especially in a grossly unfair contest. It turns out well for him that he offers the sport slave - soon freed by Lady Tina, hoping for her own freedom - aid, as he, Ram, an outlaw once of Teletus, has some news concerning the north. The country north of Ax Glacier is in the hands of hide bandits, and there are patrolling tarnsmen, by whom he was captured and sold.

Come the morning, Tarl’s tarn has returned and he makes ready to take off. They hear sleen approaching, set upon the trail of Ram, but these will not bother them once they are aloft. Ram however leaves Lady Tina behind, with the shreds of his scent-bearing clothing on her so that the sleen will hunt her down, and she is forced to beg for slavery in order to escape this terrible fate. Thereupon the two men and their slaves board the mighty tarn and set off for Lydius.

Chapter Seven

In Lydius, Tarl seeks out Bertram of that city, who was implicated in the murder attempts in chapters One and Four; but the Bertram he finds is a respectable businessman, whose identity had been assumed by the assassin, and Tarl does not harm him. Instead he repairs to the tavern of Sarpedon, where some time ago he had met Vella after an absence of some years, although the proprietor is absent and the establishment is in the keeping of one Sarpelius. He is not planning to stay for long, having business in the north, whence for some reason immense quantities of hides are being shipped. Ram volunteers to accompany him, but Tarl quizzes him as to his skill with weapons and Ram admits that unfortunately this is not one of his strong points.

As he prepares to leave, Tarl encounters Sarpelius again, who remarks that he asked many questions; but he does not impede Tarl’s progress. Minutes later though he is bushwhacked by men with crossbows - poisoned crossbows at that, which marks them out as not members of the Caste of Assassins - and forced to drink drugged paga. He hears the cryptic comment “He will be useful at the wall” as he loses consciousness.

Chapter Eight

Tarl recovers to find himself in the presence of a lady boss who is issuing orders having to do with slaughtering and wall maintenance. He shows her utter disrespect and laughs at her outraged blows, and is amused to learn that this agent of Kurii - who, by the way, has no idea what a Kur looks like, no more than Samos knows what a Priest-King looks like - is an Earth girl, an American at that, named Sidney. He asks her if she is still trying to be the boy her parents wanted, and assures her that she will not have a boy’s name when she is his slave, but will be called Arlene. She lectures him on a few facts about the war between Kurii and Priest-Kings, of which she knows rather less than he, and then has him put to work.

Chapter Nine

Tarl finds out what this wall is all about - it is a huge construction erected to bar the passage of the migrating tabuk known as the Herd of Tancred, and the baulked animals are being slaughtered in huge and wasteful quantities. He also gets to meet the supposed Bertram of Lydius, really an Assassin named Drusus, who is none too pleased at being under the command of a woman, and still more furious when she flexes some proxy muscle in order to show off in front of Tarl.

By a strange coincidence, the red hunter previously seen at the Sardar Fair, making an offering to the Priest-Kings and buying a couple of Earth-girl slaves, gets dragged in at this juncture. He angrily demands for the tabuk to be freed before he is dragged right out again, leaving the girls behind to attract Sidney’s attention. We learn that they are called Barbara Benson and Audrey Brewster, now named Thimble and Thistle by their red master.

Once Sidney has finished amusing herself, and Tarl has reiterated the red hunter’s demand for the tabuk to be freed, since the red hunters will starve without them (and Sidney cares not a whit about this), she has Tarl beaten with the dreadful snake whip, after which he will be put to the wall to work. Tarl sees quite clearly the point of stopping the tabuk migration, and is amused to learn that Sidney does not, deciding that on the whole her superiors keep her ill informed.

Chapter Ten

Once Tarl recovers, he renews his acquaintance with Ram, who was captured in the tavern of Sarpedon, though not before putting Tina to the test and finding her superb. By a roundabout route he learns the name of the red hunter who also shares their chain (Imnak) and he also greets Sarpedon, the tavern-keeper of Lydius who is none too pleased at having his business run by the rascally Sarpelius. Also participating in the reunion is Captain Tasdron, one of Samos’s men, who was in command of the relief vessel earlier sent north. Imnak is ironically curious about this, since it would have been prohibitively difficult to locate the people the ship was sent to aid, and if they could have been found, it could not possibly have supplied anything like all of them. Tarl is diplomatic (whereas this writer, in his shoes, might have ironically begged Imnak’s pardon for having had compassion on the starving) and he and Imnak are soon chatting away like old friends.

As soon as Tarl is labouring at the wall, he is forming a plan to have it down and let the tabuk migration resume. He first dupes and then overpowers a guard, and then the captain, and then the last two guards in the vicinity, and sets about forcing a breach in the wall. They do not have long, for they have been seen, but once a log or two has been prized loose, Imnak slips through, which disappoints Tarl. However, as they continue working with desperate haste, a few tabuk push through the weakened wall, and then a few more, and then as Imnak’s voice is heard herding them towards the breach, a perfect torrent of hide and horn begins to spill through. It is enough, of course, in breaking a dam, simply to let the water begin to flood through. After that the rest of the dam generally follows in short order; and so it is here.

Chapter Eleven

The wall is ruined, the guards are fled, including Drusus who has made his escape in good order, and Sidney is now in bondage. Imnak is grief-stricken on seeing the slaughtered tabuk, which supplies the red hunters with practically all of their resources: meat, clothing, tools and building materials. Tarl has to restrain him from visiting summary justice on the hunters responsible.

There was a short battle prior to Sidney’s capture, which is told in a few paragraphs, and Tarl brings us up to speed on the destruction of the wall and all of Sidney’s work. He resourcefully defeats the tarnsmen that were stationed here when they return from patrol, sees everyone started on their several journeys, and prepares to be off on his own business, leaving Sidney behind where she will surely perish. He is no more disposed to show her mercy than she was to relieve the suffering of the red hunters. Of course she follows him, pursuing her only chance for life, and he consents to throw her food and to permit her to beg for slavery. This she does, pronouncing the formula of submission on herself, and he accepts her and names her Arlene, as he said he would.

So we see that the quality of female agents of Kurii has worsened since Tribesmen and Slave Girl, when they at least managed to remain free and act as something of a nuisance for most of the book, instead of being summarily dealt with in a handful of chapters. Now Tarl is to resume his journey north, with the slave Arlene in his keeping for comfort and amusement, and find out more about the whereabouts of the waiting Zarendargar, or alternatively that this whole affair has been a wild gant chase, as they might term it on Gor. Whereof we shall discover more next month, when we once more turn the pages of Beasts of Gor.

I wish you well,

Socrates