Tal Goreans,
Greetings visitors,

Welcome once again to the Booknotes column. We ended last month’s episode on a real cliffhanger, when after proving his ability to pay the supposedly impossible wergild set him by Svein Blue Tooth, Ivar Forkbeard refused to actually hand it over. But before the Blue Tooth could decide whether or not he would swallow this rebuke and admit (as everyone knew) that the wergild was unjust and should be set aside, or whether he would go so far as to violate his oath guaranteeing Ivar’s safety in his feasting-hall, matters were taken out of his hands when a small army of heavily armed Kurii burst through the doors intent on massacring all within. We now take up the tale.

Chapter Fourteen

The slaughter is horrible, outmatching even the butchery practiced in the Temple of Kassau so many chapters ago; on that occasion, at least the unarmed templegoers could cry for quarter by “kneeling beneath the axe”, and it is apparent that no such lenity is to be extended to the feasting Torvaldslanders in Svein Blue Tooth’s hall. The men give a poor account of themselves, although this is not to be wondered at; excuse can readily be found in the suddenness of the assault, the inhuman ferocity and strength of the enemy, the well-fed and drunken condition of the feasters, and the extreme crowding in the hall that makes it nearly impossible even to lay hands on their weapons, let alone put them to use.

We can remark somewhat of Svein Blue Tooth’s character in that in spite of the chaos he keeps his head enough to try to issue orders, though there is no chance of their being understood or obeyed, and that he engineers an escape for himself and some of those nearest to him. Tarl does his best to free himself from the press so that he can at least use his sword, though he is massively outreached by the long-armed Kurii with their huge axes, and he locks eyes with the golden-braceleted Kur who is plainly their commanding officer and realizes, as he suspected before, that this is the Kur whose machinations brought him to Torvaldsland in the first place; this is the kidnapper of Telima.

Inevitably, as soon as it comes to hand-to-hand combat, Tarl becomes the first man present to fight back effectively against the Kurii, using speed and dexterity to get behind the guard of a careless Kur and demonstrate the wisdom of the old Roman military axiom, that a few inches of blade in the right place is enough. But this only infuriates the remaining Kurii, and it is plain that mere martial prowess isn’t going to solve the present problem.

However, it is not Svein Blue Tooth’s fate, nor Ivar Forkbeard’s, nor Tarl’s, nor several of the other named characters we have so far encountered, to be so easily murdered as all that. The Blue Tooth succeeds in having a hole cut through the wooden wall of his hall and makes good his escape, while Ivar and Tarl climb up the chains from which the oil lamps are suspended and get out through the smoke-holes in the roof. But the bulk of the feasters are indeed slain where they stand, and our heroes are powerless to prevent it.

Chapter Fifteen

Ivar Forkbeard, however, has a plan even in this extremity. Making good their escape, he and Tarl first visit Ivar’s camp, and on the way notice that the Kurii have some human allies, the men of Thorgard of Scagnar, Svein Blue Tooth’s great rival. Musing on this, Tarl wonders at what the impact this invasion of native Kurii will have on the fate of the world - whether the Priest-Kings will intervene, using their superior technology to defeat the primitively-armed Kurii, or whether they will grant the Kurii the same liberty as men to abide by their weapon laws. He speculates that in either case matters may work out much to the advantage of the Kurii still manning the space fleet somewhere beyond Jupiter’s orbit, whether by spreading dissension among the Priest-Kings themselves, or by allowing an assessment of the current strength of the Priest-Kings, or even by an actual military conquest of Gorean mankind.

Ivar Forkbeard finds little to cheer him in the whole affair. He is, of course, outraged by Thorgard’s treachery, and discovers that his own camp has been sacked, though at least one Kur paid for it with its life; but there is nothing further to be done here and now. Instead he resolves to make for the Torvaldsberg, the lofty mountain glimpsed from afar a chapter or two ago. Tarl, though he doesn’t really understand what’s going on, goes with Ivar; for that matter, there isn’t really a good alternative. It will only be a matter of time before they are hunted down, and although they soon divine that the Kurii and the men of Thorgard are using yellow sashes to mark out those men who are allies and not to be killed, this subterfuge will not last past daybreak, nor even when the Kurii who were in the attack on Svein’s hall come hunting for them.

Tarl reasonably describes the attempt on the Torvaldsberg as madness, since they have no climbing equipment or relevant experience; but Ivar has no intention of stopping and fighting the Kurii revealed as their pursuers with the coming of dawn. He soon shows himself both an excellent mountaineer and a cunning strategist, for he has chosen their route well and the Kurii experience severe difficulty in following them despite their superior physique. This is no accident. Ivar has climbed here before, when being hunted by a Kur, and he takes excellent advantage of the situation to deal with two of their four pursuers.

Logistics still promise to defeat them, though. They have no provisions and no warm clothing, and the remaining pair of Kurii can perfectly well wait them out. Still Ivar looks on the situation with calm assurance and continues his ascent, a puzzled Tarl in his wake.

The next day they reach the peak of the mountain - a truly heroic effort given that the Torvaldsberg is some seventeen thousand feet high - and, after a brief and unsuccessful search by an increasingly despondent Forkbeard and a short skirmish with the two Kurii, Tarl serendipitously locates a cave-mouth that is too small for their foes to enter; and, which is more to the Forkbeard’s liking, is marked with some mysterious runes. They make their way inside, leaving the Kurii to await their return.

Chapter Sixteen

Strangely, this cave seems to be prepared for visitors; there is tinder and flint all ready to be used, and torches to light with them, and there are some amazing carvings, including a crude depiction of a man riding a horse - an animal utterly unknown on Gor (Ivar accepts it calmly as a mythical beast from some saga he does not know). There is also much writing here, but of course Tarl is not familiar with the Torvaldsland runic alphabet, and Ivar is almost annoyed at the mere suggestion that he might be literate. (They have people to do that for you.) Actually, Tarl knows that Ivar is more lettered than he lets on, but it seems likely that he is still telling the truth about his inability to read these particular runes - except for one that he points out, which Tarl guesses must be the name-sign of Torvald himself.

Tarl’s reaction, when this penny drops, is a mixture of awe and sorrow. He at last guesses that Ivar has deliberately come here to seek the aid of the very founder of Torvaldsland - as a desperate man might resolve to beat Drake’s drum - and he knows, of course, that such a man must be long ages dead, if ever he existed. He tries to convince the Forkbeard that there is no Torvald, but he cannot dissuade his friend from entering Torvald’s chamber, where disappointment and black despair inevitably await.

But, even in his despair, Ivar does not lose his wits, and nor does Tarl. They observe that the chamber is laid out not as a tomb - and there are no remains here - but as a bedroom, and Ivar poses the fair question as to why Torvald would have had a vacant sleeping chamber built. “That men might come to the Torvaldsberg to waken him,” Tarl reasons; and on seeing a war arrow in the chamber, such as might be sent to the men of Torvaldsland to summon them to war, he reasons a stage further: that the riddle of the empty chamber is that it is not Torvald, but those who come to the chamber, who will be awakened. Or, to paraphrase Marcus Aurelius:

“Waste no more time searching for a legendary hero. Be one.”

Ivar Forkbeard absorbs the lesson at once, and, taking weapons from the sleeping chamber, he and Tarl go grimly to deal with the two Kurii foolish enough to hunt them.

Chapter Seventeen

A few days later the whole host of Torvaldsland has been summoned by the rite of the arrow, and they lie in wait above the encampment of the Kurii as dawn approaches. Tarl is moved to philosophise on comparing the men in his vicinity, and the business they must do in the next few hours, with the people of Earth he is familiar with, and their petty commercial concerns on their crowded, polluted planet. For what it is worth to know this, on this occasion even thralls, the male slaves of Torvaldsland, are permitted to be armed and to fight, and the thrall Tarsk is among them. He it was who slew the Kur in the camp of Ivar Forkbeard, although even with this service to his credit he was obliged to beg mercy from Ivar for handling a weapon without leave. This the Forkbeard readily gave, no doubt impressed by the young man’s courage.

Despite the numbers of assembled Torvaldslanders, Tarl wonders how they, physically far weaker than Kurii and with smaller, feebler weapons, can hope to stand up to them. Even the gigantic Rollo, and a similarly large stranger called Hrolf, are nowhere near as huge and strong as a Kur. True, their plans are well laid, and even include some undertaking involving the bondmaids, now penned in Kurii corrals awaiting their eventual fate as food, but no matter how Tarl reckons the matter, he still cannot see how the Torvaldslanders can win. But he has left one thing out of his accounting. In common with the Vikings of our own world, at least as far as legend has it, the Torvaldslanders have the ability to drive themselves into berserkergang, “the frenzy of Odin”, and as the sun rises, the horde of Torvaldsland transforms itself into a howling mob, indifferent to fear, fatigue and pain, and breaks on the unsuspecting Kurii like a thunderclap.

Chapter Eighteen

Screaming berserkers put the Kurii as thoroughly to the sword as the Kurii themselves slaughtered the feasters in Svein Blue Tooth’s hall, and the Torvaldslanders also have confusion on their side. By prior arrangement, the bondmaids break out of their corral, not with any intent to join in the fighting - for which they would be hopelessly ill-suited - but to contribute to the general pandemonium. Also, the attackers have equipped themselves with the same yellow sashes worn by the Kurii’s human allies, so that either the attackers will be mistaken for allies or vice versa. And, superior though the weapons of the Kurii might be, iron-bladed spears and axes are still well able to slay them.

But the Kurii are no mere beasts: their leaders are at least as intelligent as men, and possibly even more war-crafty. Order appears out of chaos; a feigned rallying of Kurii is made only so that men might make haste to deal with the ralliers while elsewhere a true regrouping takes place. Still, the berserkergang does not render the Torvaldslanders incapable of organised effort on their own part. As the impetus of the initial assault dies away, the men and the surviving Kurii alike get their ranks and dressing and confront each other. Rollo and the mysterious Hrolf defend the standard while Svein Blue Tooth assembles a formation of axe-men backed by spears, to be faced by a mighty shield-wall of Kurii. The latter charge behind a human shield of bond-maids; but these are too well-trained to serve their purpose. At a signal from the Blue Tooth the bond-maids fall to their bellies and the surprised Kurii take further casualties before regrouping yet again.

Now the Torvaldslanders begin to take serious losses from the Kurii, at last in disciplined order, and after furious fighting in which Svein Blue Tooth shows himself a true leader, able to hold men together by force of will in the face of death, the two sides break apart to draw breath. They eyeball each other from a hundred yards apart, spear hedge against shield wall, and neither seems in a hurry to assault the other’s well-set formation; Svein believes they have no chance of breaking the shield wall, as good as a mobile fortress, and the Kurii are willing to wait it out until dark if they have to, when they will have the advantage. But Tarl has an idea.

Maybe it is a memory of the great fight of the Tuchuks against the Paravaci, for which see “Nomads of Gor”, but Tarl and Ivar disappear, to reappear within the Ahn at the heels of the bosk herd that the Kurii had gathered for meat. Against the momentum of the bosk stampede even a Kur shield-wall is impotent, and as the formation breaks the Torvaldslanders, rested and refreshed, charge them one more time. This is too much for the Kurii. Once again they are broken into a leaderless, planless rabble and the Torvaldslanders go here and there slaying as it pleases them. In one such fight, fittingly, the thrall Tarsk kills a Kur who is dragging off his beloved Thyri, and Forkbeard delightedly awards the brave young man both his freedom (and his former name of Wulfstan) and Thyri herself, who is startled but not altogether unhappy to learn that she will remain slave.

At last the traitorous Thorgard of Scagnar is brought to book, and before the weeping eyes of his own daughter, Hilda the no-longer-haughty, he does single combat with Ivar Forkbeard. Expecting an easy win, he unwisely tires himself, and then is driven back and back until he is cornered on the clifftop. He calls for Ivar to give him the death-blow; but when Ivar “slips”, he dives into the sea. No doubt this is a daring deed in its own right, but we have seen before that men who know what they are doing can dare such a feat and live through it, and Thorgard matches Ivar in his prowess, at least to this extent. And as he is picked up by a boat from his ship, Hilda weeps her gratitude for Ivar’s mercy.

But as Tarl dwells on their triumph, and reflects that he has yet to bring Telima’s abductor (or slayer; he does not know) to account, he feels a spasm as the poison that once paralysed him makes its presence felt again.

Chapter Nineteen

A Kur messenger comes to the camp that night bringing Tarl a note summoning him to the Skerry of Vars, a small islet near at hand.

(Making the summary of this chapter shorter than the chapter itself was a real challenge.)

Chapter Twenty

There on the skerry is Telima, alive and well and having been treated with honour by the Kurii. It is plain that any love she bore him is now gone, partly through jealousy over Talena and partly over that same “weakness” that caused Talena to despise him. She is, she informs him, the means to bring Tarl to the negotiating table, for the misunderstood Kurii desire peace and wish an ambassador to represent them to Priest-Kings.

The Kur leader, introduced by Telima as “Rog”, now makes his entrance, and the brand of peace he desires is evident from the large axe he brings with him. Rog explains that Tarl could not pronounce his real name, but does him the honour of uttering it in his presence, and further explains that his deeds have earned him the distinction of a formal execution. Tarl in his turn compliments Rog’s species and Rog himself for his cleverness, tactical acumen, and ability to rise to high rank in such formidable company. Then, having known better than to come unarmed to such an occasion, he hands Rog a final surprise by demonstrating that nine inches of hard-thrown Tuchuk quiva in the heart can stop even a Kur dead in its tracks. Rog is magnanimous enough to acknowledge Tarl’s own worth as he dies.

Annoyed by Telima’s stupidity and the inconvenience she has put him to, Tarl promptly collars her and hauls her off, taking Rog’s head as a trophy.

Chapter Twenty-One

The Torvaldslanders get on with the business of feasting. In all the excitement Bera, the shrewish Jarl’s Woman, has acquired a collar, and Svein decrees that she shall keep it, a catastrophic drop in station that does not seem to dismay her as much as it might. While he is decreeing, Svein announces that Ivar Forkbeard is formally pardoned and the wergild is no longer payable; Ivar responds first by making a speech about how much he respects Svein and then, as the two strong men embrace each other in friendship, orders the vast treasure he had collected to be distributed among everyone present. Even Hrolf, the mysterious Easterner, takes a carved sapphire as a keepsake.

At the height of the feasting more guests arrive, and are made welcome. They are Samos of Port Kar, and Sarus of Tyros. Samos is startled by the sight of Rog’s staked head, and Tarl’s explanation that it is “Grendel” does not much enlighten him. Leah, the Earth girl whom Tarl won at archery, gets the reference, much to her horror (plainly she is better acquainted with Beowulf than I was when I first read this book). But their business here is to bring Tarl an antidote for his poison.

Sarus explains that the poison was applied to his men’s weapons without his knowledge or consent (there are a few plot inconsistencies we need to wave to one side here) by the vile Sullius Maximus, once a Ubar of Port Kar with a score to settle with Tarl, and now a member of the court of Chenbar of Tyros. Sarus, grateful to Tarl for his mercy (see “Hunters of Gor”) and outraged at the dishonour attaching to him for the poisoning, would have slain Sullius Maximus and then offered his own throat to Tarl in penitence, but the matter came to Chenbar’s attention. That formidable Ubar approves no more of poison than does Sarus and he ordered Sullius Maximus to invent an antidote, on pain of having his own venom inflicted on him. It is a specimen of this, tested on Sullius Maximus himself, that Sarus now brings.

This whole exchange is an excellent illustration of how strong and honourable men conduct themselves, and when a mistrustful Ivar would have had Sarus arrested as a hostage for Tarl’s life, Tarl bids him give over, and drinks the antidote.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Purged of the poison after some more fever-dreams, of a somewhat different nature to those he experienced on the occasion of his poisoning, Tarl talks with Samos as they prepare to take their various ways south. Samos perceives that Tarl has found himself in the north; and Tarl, now elevated to the rank of Jarl in Torvaldsland, decides that he may after all still have dealings with the Priest-Kings. He has, he muses, at last become truly Gorean, having put away both his youthful idealism and his extreme reaction to the shattering of his self-image.

He looks on the distant Torvaldsberg. The mysterious Hrolf has undertaken to return the war arrow to Torvald’s sleeping chamber, and on an impulse Tarl asks him who he really is. He receives the surprising answer: “My name is Torvald” - and thinks of the stabilization serums.

And as the reborn Tarl bids farewell to the northlands, entertaining pleasing thoughts as to what he will do with Elizabeth Cardwell or Talena should either woman cross his path again, it is time for me to bring this column to a close; and for those who wonder where on Gor Tarl’s adventures will take him next, and what work Samos might have for him now he is once again prepared to consider himself an agent of Priest-Kings, I can only ask the reader to join me next month as we turn to the tenth volume of the Chronicles of Counter-Earth, “Tribesmen of Gor”!

I wish you well,

Socrates