Tal Goreans,
Greetings visitors,

Welcome once again to the Booknotes column.

Last month Jason and his friends were conducting a spirited defence of the Vosk river against the pirate fleet of the Voskjard, before being ground down by the weight of numbers and the absence of the reinforcements commanded by Callisthenes. But Jason resourcefully bluffed his way into the stronghold of Policrates, taking advantage of the fact that the master of the house was absent and there was only the rascally but not too smart Kliomenes to deal with. This has led to the capture both of the stronghold and of much of the fleet of the Voskjard, as well as the unmasking of Callisthenes as a traitor, but unfortunately Policrates himself is still at large. Although the stronghold seems adequate to their present needs, Jason’s chief ally Callimachus, once an alcoholic and now a thoroughly capable Warrior once again, only says soberly “You do not know Policrates.” So let’s find out what that blackguard can do in such a pinch, and turn once again to Guardsman of Gor.

Chapter Thirteen

And in the space of less than a page, discounting the chapter heading, we find that Policrates has demanded that Jason and Callimachus surrender themselves as the price of sparing Victoria, the defenceless river-town that they call home, and this they have done. For this reason the two heroes are, as we rejoin them, bound to the shearing blades of Policrates’s ship, and the dirty dog is bound for Victoria anyway.

Chapter Fourteen

Policrates and Ragnar Voskjard meet on the river, and the latter pirate discovers to his fury that the losses sustained in the river battle were his to bear alone, and that Policrates now holds the whip hand over him. He is a little mollified to learn that two of the authors of his misfortune now await his pleasure, but this may not be much compensation for having to knuckle under to Policrates. Still, there is doubtless much plunder in Victoria, which has a proven track record of not standing up to pirate raids.

Chapter Fifteen

Arriving in Victoria, the pirates find the place deserted and silent, whereupon they moor up alongside and disembark. Jason entertains hopes of freeing himself from the ropes tying him to the shearing blade, but seems to be doing more harm to himself than to his bonds.

Chapter Sixteen

Policrates summons his men to the business of loot, pillage and rape with a few choice phrases, but they are scarcely out of his mouth when the alarm bar begins ringing, and the entire male population of Victoria sets about them with every weapon they can find, be it naught but a shovel. Inexpertise might have told against them, but they are too many for the pirates to stand up to, and over Policrates’s furious attempts to rally his men, a headlong flight to the ships ensues. Bound to the shearing blade, Jason can do nothing but cheer; he does so, volubly.

His attempts to free himself are achieving nothing except to make himself bleed; and yet that works to his advantage, as the commotion attracts lots of eels, and Jason manages to interest them in his blood-soaked ropes. Their sharp teeth and strong jaws soon accomplish what his own muscles could not, and he even manages to throw them a pirate by way of a thank-you. Soon, a plundered sword in his grasp, Jason beholds the gloriously welcome sight of a multitude of ships abroad on the river, all with the common aim of putting paid to the pirate scourge once and for all. He frees Callimachus, who promptly deals with Callisthenes and Policrates while Jason goes in search of Ragnar Voskjard. That worthy does not put up any kind of a fight and is bound hand and foot and begging for mercy in hardly more time than it takes me to summarise it. Finally Kliomenes makes an entrance and discovers that Jason is his match and more, and that is pretty much all she wrote for the pirates.

Chapter Seventeen

But what is this? The scene shifts to the street, where Jason encounters Beverly yet again. Now she is being forced to work as a Coin Girl, a mere street prostitute in Gorean style with a coin-box around her neck, under the supervision of another slave girl. What is more, she is overdue for return to her master and has not yet made any money, even at a tarsk-bit per trick. Kindly Jason undertakes to bail her out, though he must not disgrace her master by giving her money for nothing; and the supervisor tactfully absents herself while Jason and Beverly get down to brass tacks amid the usual philosophical discussions.

It transpires that Beverly has been parcelled out with the rest of the loot formerly belonging to the pirates, and does not know who her new master is, only that he is cruel and demanding, and keeps her in a cellar where she is fed on scraps. The conversation comes around to the time when Beverly saw Jason exacting “payment” from another slave girl for a drink of water (back in Fighting Slave of Gor) and she admits what the rest of us suspected all along: that her anger on that occasion was simple envy at not being the one getting such use from her beloved Jason. The night passes with several coins paid into the box and ends with Beverly proclaiming undying love and begging Jason to buy her; but he sends her on her way with only the reassurance of the coins in her box to comfort her.

Chapter Eighteen

Jason observes Beverly being prepared for presentation to her master, whose identity she still does not know. He in his turn masks himself as he did before, as the courier of Ragnar Voskjard, in which guise he well mastered Beverly when she was loaned to him for hospitality's sake. Then Lola, who was her supervisor in the previous chapter, brings Beverly in. She is delighted to see who her master is, for she has by no means forgotten him, and he remains silent and allows her to prattle on for quite a while, serving as a background for more philosophical observations which in this case are rather padding out a book that ran out of plot a chapter or two back.

She recounts her experiences as a Coin Girl and her dismay at finding that men would pass her by in the street as though she were not even worth Gor’s smallest coin (a set-up by Jason, of course, with the willing collusion of Victoria’s grateful townsmen). She even confesses to her master that Jason, to her surprise, brought her to orgasm as thoroughly as only her master had ever done before, at which Jason pretends to be angry with her; but he only binds her and hoods her, with no word spoken.

Chapter Nineteen

He carries her to his house and administers that beating which is commonly visited on a new slave, which he has to step up a notch when she seems a little too pleased with herself, and then collars her, to her delight, though still he has not spoken to her, far less revealed his face. Then, in startling contrast to her earlier conduct, Beverly appears to regress into Earth-woman mode for a time. She no longer calls Jason “Master” and acts as though the whole thing is a big joke and that he will shortly uncollar her and treat her as an equal. Perhaps she has forgotten begging Jason’s collar before.

At all events, she soon bites off a hort too much, daring to defy Jason to the extent of calling him by name. At this she earns herself a thorough hiding. She is soon volunteering, in some very stilted and unrealistic dialogue, to let Jason kiss her, to let him make love to her, to be his “love employee,” to expect only a low wage for such, to expect no wages at all, even to serve him “sometimes” as if she were a slave. He will, of course, have no such conditional submission from her at all, but only the uncompromised surrender of the Gorean kajira; and after some more of the whip, she acknowledges her fault and lets the blame fall on the momentary confusion caused by seeing that it was the man she knew from Earth who was now her legal owner. Her attempt to exploit his supposed weakness was partly her Earth instinct reasserting itself whether she willed or no, and partly an act of defiance purely to ensure that he would overcome it. At all events, such behaviour is now firmly in the past. Jason therefore resolves to keep her; but he puts Lola over her, with switching rights into the bargain, to put Beverly firmly in her place.

Chapter Twenty

Jason throws a party, entertaining the great and the good of Victoria and her allies, including Callimachus and Miles of Vonda. He is a lavish host, bringing in some rather good contract caterers for the occasion, and the guests are soon toasting each other and the newly-formed Vosk League, an alliance of nineteen Vosk towns. Only Ar’s Station has not signed up, at the insistence of her parent city, who though well-disposed to the League and its aims has enough political considerations to worry about. We learn that Krondar, Miles’s prize fighting slave, has been freed and is now embarking on a venture of his own, to buy and free fighting slaves and organise fights between free men. Miles finds this odd, but Jason confirms that such is not unheard of.

Now Beverly is brought in and performs a lovely and personal dance, costumed in imitation of her Earth clothing and in a setting intended to mimic the Earth restaurant where this whole story began. It ends, naturally, with Beverly presenting herself nude before Jason and declaring her slavery. Then someone dressed as a free woman enters, recognises the ship captain Calliodorus, and reveals herself to him as Lola, the only woman he has ever truly wanted. But it is now a Lola who is collared and irrevocably a slave, and this pleases them both exactly, at least once Jason has made a present of her to Calliodorus. Their story is briefly recapitulated: how they were pledged to each other in companionship some years ago, how she discovered and confessed slave needs, and then believing that she was disgraced and Calliodorus was proceeding with the companionship only out of duty, fled. Now everything is straightened out, and after a moment’s confusion, Lola realizes that, now as then, Calliodorus is indeed prepared to accept her as a slave. So they go their way rejoicing.

This is the cue for Tasdron, the tavernkeeper who provided the premises on which the plotting of the embryonic League was carried out, to dance Peggy, the former hat-check girl in the Earth restaurant mentioned above, before the men. Most especially this is for the benefit of Callimachus, before whom Peggy’s little bosom has been heaving whenever she thought herself unobserved; and at the conclusion of the dance she is presented to him, and another ideal love-master and slave are matched.

Such matters attended to, the remaining plot elements are tied up. Callimachus is appointed supreme commander of the united forces of the Vosk League. Calliodorus gets Callisthenes’s old job in Port Cos. The topaz, which before is was broken in two was the Home Stone of Victoria, goes in its two halves to the representatives of Port Cos and Ar’s Station, Calliodorus and Aemilianus; but Victoria will have a new Home Stone, and this will be just a lump of plain rock. As for Jason, he is to go as second in command to Callimachus and thus a very high-ranking guardsman indeed.

Thereupon Jason and Beverly, the guests all having departed, get on with some urgent business of their own.

Chapter Twenty-one

This they continue, that night and the next morning, with a cup of black wine to refresh themselves (an expensive treat to lavish on a slave, though there is little danger that Jason, now a rich an important man, cannot afford it) before Jason names his slave. Following the custom usual in these books, he places her own name back on her.

So we leave them in blissful content, Beverly confessing one final truth about the wicked slave fantasies that used to so disturb her: that the master in her dreams was always Jason. Finally she has put aside all thought of manipulating and controlling Jason in Earth fashion, just as he has now seen the wheel turn full circle and grown to his full Gorean manhood; and we may be reasonably confident that they will live as happily ever after as Gor allows.

This is the last of the Jason Marshall stories, and we need not spend much time looking for him again (though he may pop up briefly later on); and in the next book, the focus returns to Tarl Cabot, our usual narrator, and those who wish to know what he is about had better join me for a look at the seventeenth Gor book, Savages of Gor.

I wish you well,

Socrates