Tal Goreans,
Greetings visitors,

Here is where I pick up the baton from Zeb, who originally wrote the Booknotes column, and try to carry it a bit further forward, beginning by finishing the summary of "Outlaw of Gor". Rather than summarise the story so far, I shall point the reader in the direction of the Voice archives for Zeb’s notes. See you back here shortly, then.

But for those who haven’t been and checked the archives: when last seen, Tarl Cabot was under lock and key in Tharna on a trumped—up charge of treason against the city’s Tatrix. Sharing his cell was Lissa, one of the city’s "silver masks" who had so far forgotten herself as to care for a man, the charming Andreas of Tor, of the Caste of Singers; and just at the close of the chapter, the door was opened and that same Andreas was thrown in. Thanks to the hiatus in this column, Tarl has been in the hoosegow for about a year, and it’s time we let him out. Whether he’ll be grateful for the favour remains to be seen...

Chapter 13

Tarl’s fate is to be consigned, along with other enemies of the state and whoever else may have been fool enough to give Tharna’s rulers an excuse, to the Amusements of Tharna. This is a typical gladiatorial arena where the condemned ones are to be made to suffer and die in an interesting fashion for the amusement of the great and good in the tiers. They even have their own version of the "Ave—Caesar—morituri—te—salutant" speech. Our hero and Andreas, having already become firm friends, decide they would rather both die than be forced into mortal combat with each other, but to begin with they and their fellows are divided into teams for "The Contest of Oxen". Here they are harnessed to giant blocks of stone and forced to haul these around a racecourse in the sand. Tarl’s team has the added incentive that Dorna the Proud has a big bet on them and if they lose it for her, they will be boiled in oil. They don’t lose, but one of their team dies from overwork.

The sadistic bitches in the crowd have hardly warmed up, however, and promptly start screeching for "The Battles of Oxen". That great heavy silver yoke on Tarl’s shoulders, and all the others like it, have pairs of sharp horns fixed to them, and the condemned are paired off to fight with these strange but lethal weapons. Tarl’s opponent is Kron, of the Metal Workers, a veteran of the arena who listens with interest to Tarl’s suggestion that they defy the silver masks, even at the cost of their lives; but Kron opts to survive the Amusements of Tharna one more time.

Tarl, of course, isn’t in the habit of losing fights and he doesn’t start now. Kron gives him a good going—over but Tarl’s strength and determination carry the day and he renders Kron senseless. This affords him an opportunity to defy the crowd, who are hooting for Kron’s death, and now the Tatrix deigns to speak up. "Release him," she says, causing Tarl’s heart to leap at the implication that his object lesson in the quality of mercy has struck home. He thanks her before she has even finished the sentence, which is a tad premature of him, as she finishes by saying "...that he may be fed to the tarn."

Chapter 14

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Tarl is still rather more elated than not. He’s a tarnsman himself and views it as fitting to be eaten alive by one of these monsters; and at least the Tharnans do indeed take off the yoke. We’ve seen Tarl survive one variant of the tarn death before now, as well as the Frame of Humiliation, and he has to be pleased with his survival—of—bizarre—executions batting average. In this respect Tarl Cabot is rather like James Bond, of course, and the lesson that enemies of both never seem to learn is that, when you get your hands on the hero, you should just kill him straight away and not fool around with inescapable death—traps, however amusing.

It’s not just any old tarn that the Tharnans are about to feed him to, either, but a savage colossus that has already killed a hundred tarnsmen who&$136;ve tried to ride it and that is now deemed useless for anything but eating men alive. Quite frankly, Tarl is in the fewmets up to his eyebrows here. From all we know of tarns, it would take a whole chain of remarkable coincidences to see him live another five Ehn. But Tarl doesn’t seem discouraged as the tarn is wheeled in on a big platform; quite the reverse. Indeed, he chats amiably with his captors, even warning the whip—master not to upset him now that he is unyoked, even as the tarn is being unhooded in preparation for the big chomp.

With one bound Tarl is leaping up to the platform before the astonished gazes of silver masks and arena—masters alike, and he is undoing the solid silver hobble around the tarn’s leg. Not only does it not bisect him with a single peck, but it seems positively friendly (as far as you can tell with a tarn, at any rate). Tarl’s iron grasp makes short work of the spannered nut securing the hobble—itself a heroic achievement that I’d like to see matched by anyone short of Lt—Cdr Data—and he leaps on the tarn’s back and is outta there.

You see, out of all the tarns on Gor that it could have been, it’s none other than Ubar of the Skies, his old tarn from back in Book One, the one that saved his life when he was being carried off by another tarn and the one he had a number of adventures on back then. It not only remembers him seven years on—who’d have known a tarn’s memory rivalled an elephant’s?—but it is docile and tractable even when unharnessed and when Tarl has no tarn—goad, the very thing he was warned never to be without when handling a tarn, especially one that is by now a hundred times a man—eater. He clings to its unsaddled back and is flown clear of the arena; but then, being Tarl, and the Tarl of his idealistic youth at that, he beats his breast for selfishly celebrating his freedom while there are others yet condemned to Tharna’s cruel Amusements, and opts to raise the stakes. "A million to one chance" is how Tarl puts it, and you have to agree, really; but he hopes that the tarn will make a difference.

He gives Ubar of the Skies the hunting command, "Tabuk", and it immediately divines that in this context the word means "Fly us back over the stadium and carry off the Tatrix." And, of course, it manages this with never a pause, to the dismay and terror of many and the vast but secret elation of some others. The question of who belongs in which camp and why is a very germane one, as we’re soon to see.

Chapter 15

Having freed himself from the Amusements of Tharna and carried off the Tatrix of that fair city, Tarl is by no means at the end of his troubles. He has a tarn but no means of guiding it other than to order it to hunt, unless by yet another miracle it should have remembered the voice—commands Tarl now informs us he gave Talena while teaching her the controls of a tarn seven years ago. It’s a wild hope, since the instruction was brief and not even directed at the tarn, and it hasn’t been used to voice commands ever since; still, Tarl obviously asks himself what he’s got to lose by trying and decides the answer is "Nothing", so he gives it a go and, lo and behold, here’s Gor’s first voice—trained tarn.

Look, if Norman had chosen to subtitle this book "An Everyday Tale of the Believable and Commonplace", who’d have bought it? Personally I can’t help wondering how it is that this bird manages to remember such a set of phrases when, to judge by its recent history, it’s never quite grasped the much simpler and more often repeated utterance "Aargh, aargh, get it off me, aargh!"... but we digress here.

Tarl’s joy at this latest stroke of luck is tempered when a weak sound of distress reminds him that the Tatrix is presently enjoying a somewhat lofty view of the terrain and is terrified out of her wits. He promptly chastises himself for his callousness and makes for a suitable perch, spying one forty pasangs away which the tarn reaches in ten minutes or so. Given that a pasang is 0.7 miles, this gives us the airspeed of Ubar of the Skies as about 170mph, and how Tarl, riding bareback, clings on in that kind of slipstream is left as an exercise for the student. (Lara’s okay as long as the tarn doesn’t drop her, though the ride is less than comfy.)

The tarn, reasonably enough, assumes that it is now to eat the thing it was told to hunt, but Tarl manages to use the versatile word "Tabuk" to convey the rather complex message "Leave this poor woman alone and go and kill something else." And the tarn obliges.

This leaves Lara and Tarl atop a lofty peak, whereupon Tarl sets about coercing her into letting Andreas and the rest go. He threatens her with Ar’s slave—block (and under Gorean law he would be well within his rights, he not sharing her Home Stone nor her being of Ar), turning down all suggestions of ransom and blowing hard about the slave—block alone being enough to satisfy his yearning for vengeance. Lara, struck by inspiration, offers him the liberty of his friends, using his honour as a lever—and thus hitting on the very thing Tarl is after. Tarl congratulates himself on his cleverness and consents with a show of reluctance.

Meanwhile UotS has returned having fed itself and brought back Tarl some raw meat as a present, Lara has looked moodily at a meadow of talenders, the love—flowers of Gor, and been taunted by Tarl for noticing them (it’s hard to see a smouldering look behind a golden mask), and they mount up and head for the Pillar of Exchanges.

Chapter 16

Here’s where the Tharnans meet up with the kidnappers of important citizens, especially the Tatrix, reasoning that any kidnapper is going to be more interested in a huge pile of cash than in the person in question. The exchange party is a small one, consisting of Dorna the Proud, Thorn, and a few "security guards". They are entirely agreeable to Tarl’s terms, and indeed Dorna promptly ups the offer to include a big stash of loot; Lara, playing dominance games with her, doubles the cash offer on the spot. Tarl, bless him, has no use for all this moolah but he goes along with it, reasoning that Andreas, Linna, Kron and the others could use a share.

Of course this tempting offer goes the way of all free lunches before you can say knife; Lara has no intention of keeping her word to a mere man. There is a brief struggle in which, unarmed and outnumbered, Tarl still disables one of the security guards and is giving a good account of himself until he is captured thanks to the doped needles Lara and Dorna carry around—and then the double—crossing Tatrix is herself double—crossed as Dorna informs her that she is not going back to Tharna. If this plot development comes as a surprise, then you weren’t paying attention round about Chapter 11.

Chapter 17

The latest cramp in Tarl’s lifestyle comes in the shape of Tharna’s silver mines, where he is chained underground with Andreas and Kron as well as many others. The presence of the first two is a welcome blessing, but the company of Ost is a slight dampener. As usual, the slave chains are well up to Gorean standards, and in case this was not enough, the mine chambers can be flooded on a few minutes’ notice via a big friendly duct in the ceiling. We soon learn that this is no bluff, that dissidents are drowned at the drop of a hat, and that in extreme cases the Tharnans aren’t too squeamish to flood the entire mine and drown everyone in it.

Oh, well. First on Tarl’s agenda is to set about improving the morale of his chain—fellows. He persuades them to abandon their undignified free—for—all scramble when food is brought to them, gets them to form an orderly queue, and even takes the vile Ost under his wing, letting him do the sharing out and tolerantly giving him a second chance when he starts grabbing his own share first. Soon he has one of the peasants singing a work song to gee them up a bit, he has those who are well covering for those who are sick, and the more the work quotas are increased, the more the output of the team improves. And not even a rant about weak societal Earth values, which in this story are one of Tarl’s main assets.

He’s irrepressible, even in an inescapable dungeon... but how’s he ever going to get out of this one? Find out next month!