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Tal Goreans,
Welcome once again to the Booknotes column. At the end of the first instalment of “Tribesmen of Gor”, Tarl Cabot had just broken Rule #1 for anyone visiting a foreign country: “Don’t get framed for murdering the king”. The king in question is Suleiman, Pasha of Nine Wells, to whose court Tarl had come hoping to gain passage to the interior of the Tahari in the hopes of clearing up a mystery to which he has several clues, none of them especially clear. We had better find out how he is getting on.
Chapter Six Despite the cries of “Cut him down!” uttered by the villainously smooth Ibn Saran, Tarl is taken alive by Suleiman’s many guards, and shortly afterwards he is brought to trial. There turn out only to be three witnesses to what happened in Suleiman’s court: Ibn Saran and his two black-wine slaves. The first of these, named Zaya, is put to the question on the rack, as slave testimony is exacted under duress, and she claims that Tarl was the would-be assassin (we may say “would-be” for now, as Suleiman was not dead when last seen), sticking to her story under torture. Then the second is brought forward. This is Vella, formerly Elizabeth Cardwell, and she corroborates Zaya’s story. She adds “We are slaves. We fear to lie,” which is doubtless the case, but you would really think that any Gorean would understand that a slave also fears to disobey her master. Still, Tarl is not a local and all his accusers are or else are the slaves of locals, which historically has never augured exceptionally well for the prospects of true justice, and as Vella smiles slightly in Tarl’s direction, the judge pronounces himself satisfied.
Chapter Seven Whereupon Tarl, not for the first time, is clapped in irons and put into an inescapable prison, where he reflects on the hopelessness of his quest and the mysterious ultimatum delivered to the Priest-Kings: “Surrender Gor”. Since Suleiman has indeed survived, the punishment for Tarl’s “crime” will be merely (hah!) a sentence of lifetime slavery in the salt pits of Klima, a thousand waterless pasangs deep in the dune country. But as Tarl is waiting, his nostrils catch the scent of a Kur, and all at once the guard outside Tarl’s cell is horribly killed, there is the sound of someone pilfering the body, and Tarl hears the door unlocked and sees it swing open - but there is no Kur to be seen. He senses it standing before him; but before anything untoward can happen, Ibn Saran himself and a posse of guards come hastening down to the dungeons. A short, strange battle follows, focussing mostly on Ibn Saran and what seems for all the world to be an invisible Kur. Ibn Saran’s conduct shows him to be no coward, for that matter. However, the Kur is plainly not short on smarts, and it manages to engineer a distraction and escape. Ibn Saran, returning a little later from the pursuit, assures Tarl that it is dead, and taunts him with descriptions of the hellish salt mines and the perfidy of Vella, whom Ibn Saran’s associates found in the tavern of Lydius whence Tarl had refused to free her. (He fails to draw the lesson here. Having shown many times during his career that an act of random kindness may sometimes result in an unexpected and most welcome reward, he does not make the connection that an act of random pettiness - which is what Tarl’s refusal to free Elizabeth amounted to, dress it up how he will - could come back to bite him.) There may be serious consequences attendant on Vella’s capture, since she was privy to a number of interesting secrets about the Nest of the Priest-Kings, and the only mitigating factor that keeps this from being a truly stellar disaster is that the Kurii suspect that her memories might have been deliberately planted. Tarl fully expects to see Ibn Saran again, and this is so. Returning unescorted a little later, except for the company of Hamid, Ibn Saran is greeted by Tarl’s cheery explanation that he fully understands the subterfuge that he has been practising, since he, Ibn Saran, is plainly an agent of Priest-Kings and has only been bluffing otherwise to put his supposed masters, the Kurii, off the scent. Ibn Saran confirms that this is so and that there is an escape all ready for Tarl: a saddled kaiila, provisions, and weapons. Tarl’s end of the conversation is interesting, since he voids himself of the odd double-edged remark that seem intended to apprise Ibn Saran of the fact that Tarl isn’t taken in by this seeming kindness. And indeed it is only seeming kindness, for Tarl soon establishes that his kaiila has a poisoned needle in its foot, wanting only a little time to work into the poor animal; that his water supply is undrinkable; and that his scimitar is unusable. Having been expecting something of the sort, Tarl conceals himself and watches amusedly as Ibn Saran and Hamid go by in search of him. So much for over-complex plans.
Chapter Eight The next day, in disguise, Tarl learns that Suleiman’s would-be murderer has escaped into the desert. His response is witty: “ ‘Incredible,’ I said… for I, for one, did not believe it.” While his exhausted and frustrated pursuers are recuperating, Tarl makes good his escape. A little later, Tarl watches from a distance as a desert raider goes about his unlawful occasions, and then makes for their camp, where he meets up with Alyena (for whom, see last month’s column). He discusses the change in her fortunes, as maid-of-all-work and sex toy to a bandit chieftain and, where necessary, all his men. She is by no means unhappy with her lot. Still, she has a little affection for Tarl and begs him to flee before her master returns and kills him - and also fears that he may harm her master. So he renders her incapable of interference and then, as the owner of the tent approaches, he helps himself to a drink of water in plain sight. By Tahari custom, this makes him a guest and his person becomes sacrosanct.
Chapter Nine Tarl gets to see justice, Tahari style, being meted out to a woman who gave Hassan, the bandit leader, the information necessary to sack the caravan in the previous chapter. He rewards her with gold and sets her free - in the middle of the desert, with no clothing, transport or water, where she must surely die. Having no alternative, she pleads for slavery. We might assume that Hassan’s rough honour has been compromised by association with her treachery - or we could assume that those who choose to profit from treachery have no business assuming the moral high ground over the traitor. Personally I would opt for the latter standpoint, but this may prove nothing more than that I would not last five Ehn in the Tahari. At any rate, pleased with his day’s work, Hassan takes tea with Tarl, and the two doubtless exchange much witty banter and many philosophical insights.
Chapter Ten Home base for Hassan is the Oasis of Two Scimitars, and when he arrives there he is displeased to learn that there has been a recent raid by Aretai (of Suleiman’s tribe, though not necessarily under his direct command on this occasion), and dismayed to learn that a well has been broken. The extremity of such an outrage in a desert oasis need hardly be stressed, and Hassan is initially reluctant to believe any such deed by a fellow Tahari-dweller, even his worst enemy. The evidence of the broken well speaks for itself, though, and war must surely follow as a result. Gathering what news he can, including the remarkable tidings that the raiders were led by a woman, Hassan sells the slaves he has captured and fences his other plunder, before leaving the oasis to avoid official attention. He discusses the news with Tarl, and it is plain that there is more afoot than meets the eye. On several pieces of evidence, Hassan deduces that the well-breaking raiders were not Aretai and that the whole thing is a put-up job designed to foment war and make the desert impassable. This is interesting to him, since he, no less than Tarl, has business in the interior - and it was to enlist Tarl’s cooperation that he abducted Alyena in the first place, intended to induce Tarl to pursue. They agree that Alyena is not, of course, a bone of contention between them (and Tarl goes off on another of his digressions about the proper relationship between men and women) and Hassan explains his interest in the stone that bore the inscription “Beware the steel tower”: the unfortunate traveller who inscribed the stone was Hassan’s brother.
Chapter Eleven So, braving the pitiless sun of the Tahari, a dreadful sandstorm (though Hassan remarks that it is mild and urges Tarl to be grateful that the wind did not blow from the East) and one of the desert’s rare rainstorms and its subsequent plague of flies, Tarl, Hassan, Alyena and a handful of Hassan’s men spend many days in search of the steel tower. Unfortunately no-one seems to have heard of one. Although Alyena is still serving as mentioned in the notes to Chapter Eight above, Hassan seems to be growing fond of her; still, he does not let this compromise his mastery or her servitude. She also has the amusing but slightly irritating experience of being given the once-over by a young nomad boy, somewhat to the annoyance of his sister, but, of course, has no alternative but to do as a free male commands and exhibit herself to his satisfaction. They come, after Tarl has experienced a mirage and so been educated a little in the ways of the Tahari, to the Oasis of Red Rock, once the scene of a great battle in which the defeated commander Ba’arub tried to come to blows with his opposite number and came within ten yards of him. This is not an especially important fact, but it is reiterated several times. Of more relevance to Tarl and Hassan’s mission is that there is still no news of the tower of steel, and this oasis is the last before the terrible dune country, which it is looking increasingly likely that they will have to search. Before they can do so, the Oasis comes under attack by a band of raiders yelling the battle-cry of the Kavars, one of the principle players in Tahari politics (the Aretai, under Suleiman, are the others, and there are many lesser tribes). There is no time or opportunity to make a defence, and Hassan is able only to organise an escape for his men and Alyena, though she protests. Hassan himself is most curious to learn more about these Kavars, and when Tarl insists on coming with them, the two men share the salt of their own sweat and so pronounce themselves brothers. The two of them just have time to compare a tattoo on one of the raiders to one that Hassan himself reveals, proving that the “Kavars” are imposters, when they are captured by a whole passle of hostiles under the command of a woman warrior named Tarna. She pronounces them “not without interest” and has them taken as slaves.
Chapter Twelve Tanya drags the pair off to a distant stronghold in the desert, where she has them bathed and suitably clothed for her amusement. It pleases Tarna’s whim to give her female slaves male names and vice versa, but Tarl soon acquaints one of the two seraglio females, Ali (or Lana, to use her previous, female name) with a few biological realities and it is readily apparent that she is, in best Gorean fashion, gasping for the attention of a strong man. He cheerfully warns Hassan to be ready for the long kaiila ride they will be in for that night, and then taken off to see Tarna. She receives him in her sumptuous bedchamber and addresses him as “Slave”, but he is not having any of this, since he has neither submitted nor been branded or collared. Instead he addresses the female warlord as though she were herself a slave, and she evidently finds this unusually stimulating, for instead of summoning her guards to discipline him, Tarna instead encourages him to treat her to more of the same. To an extent he obliges her; but when the time is right, he binds and gags her and makes good his escape, and goes and retrieves Hassan from the seraglio. He for his part has dealt with both the female seraglio mistresses and the male silk slaves, and has also helped himself to the virginity of one of the girls, leaving Lana for Tarl. Lana, for one, seems rather pleased at the change in her fortunes, though it doubtless means that she will be just another female slave henceforth. And so, pleased with their evening’s work, Tarl and Hassan make good their escape.
So far so good; but it does not seem as though matters with Tarna have been brought to a wholly satisfactory conclusion, and there is still no sign of the steel tower, or the mysterious invisible Kur, and we can be sure that we have not seen the last of Ibn Saran either. All these, however, will have to wait for another month, and another march through the great Tahari desert.
I wish you well, Socrates |
