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Chapter One
Tarl strides across the Plains of Turia rather like a man trying to walk up a
down escalator, and not only that, but it’s rush-hour and he’s going the wrong way. Everything that can walk,
humans and larls alike (though the larls feign indifference in true feline manner), is making haste to fly before the approach
of the dreaded Wagon Peoples. Many are leaving their homes behind; Tarl encounters one Peasant who, armed only with a mattock
but carrying his own Home Stone, is not a man to be trifled with.
Tarl gives us a brief footnote to account for his
journey here from the Sardar, where he was last seen at the end of "Priest-Kings", and unfortunately the author commits something
of a geographical solecism by declaring that same Sardar to be, in effect, Gor’s north magnetic pole. (Reader, equip
yourself with an atlas and a compass that instead of pointing North, points at Washington D.C., and try to navigate your imaginary
way from Washington D.C. to Seattle. See the problem? The proper place for a magnetic pole is "off the edge of the world",
and the better it’s aligned with true north, as defined by the axis of rotation and hence the Pole Star, the simpler
for all concerned.)
However, Tarl is too busy to pick holes in Gorean geography and so are we. Ahead, on the vast plains
of Turia (and with In the Steppes of Central Asia playing), Tarl observes the smoke rising as the eponymous nomads loot and
pillage the settlements in their path - but, mainly, restore them to pasture-land fit for their colossal herds of bosk, the
giant cattle that are their chief source of wealth - and heads in what everyone else considers the least wise direction.
Chapter
Two
Ignoring the well-meaning advice given him by all the panic-stricken people he is elbowing his way past, he reflects
on his purpose here, which is to find and recover the last female egg of the Priest-Kings - the only surviving egg of the
now-dead Mother - and all he knows is that someone, somewhere in the vast Gorean equivalent of the Mongol Horde, possesses
this object, the exact nature of which is unknown to him. He assumes that it will be roughly egg-shaped and, like the Priest-Kings
themselves, golden in colour, but he does not know; still less does he know how he is going to persuade the Wagon Peoples
to give it back.
Persuasion seems a better option than force or subterfuge, on Tarl’s appraisal. Alone on the
Plains of Turia, he has no tarn on which to take wing, nor even a tharlarion (though such a mount would not be able to outrun
the Wagon People’s preferred mount, which we’ll see shortly); and his hopes of escaping on his own two feet would
be precisely nil. Like other Goreans, the Wagon Peoples use sleen as herding animals, as guard animals, and for the hunting
of fugitives, and for any of these purposes they are quite incomparable. His fate as a would-be thief, captured alive, would
be extremely unpleasant, since there is a whole Clan of Wagon Peoples devoted to the profession of torturer.
(They
organize things by clan rather than by caste, in contrast to the civilized Goreans we have met up to now. Every man of the
Wagon Peoples is a warrior and a herdsman, whatever else he may be, and the various sidelines such as leather-working, facial
scarring and so on are performed by members of one clan or another as an adjunct to their more normal functions. Back to the
story.)
While he is musing on such an unpleasant fate, he is spotted by the first of a series of outriders from the
Wagon Peoples, a kaiila-riding cavalryman armed to the teeth with bow, lance, throwing knives ("quivas"), bola, and rope.
Tarl doesn’t give us many details on what a kaiila looks like, but we know it is about seven feet high at the shoulder
and carnivorous - it seems to be something between great cat and camel, minus the hump - and can cover more than four hundred
miles in a day, which is an impressive feat in anyone’s book.
Soon there are four kaiila riders all looking over
Tarl impassively. To his peaceful greeting they offer no response save their names: Tolnus of the Paravaci, Conrad of the
Kassars, Hakimba of the Kataii and Kamchak of the Tuchuks. All bear the facial scars of warriors of high rank, and no sooner
have they given Tarl their names than they level their lances for the charge.
Chapter Three
They promptly kill
Tarl out of hand and the story comes to a premature end.
All right, that is a complete tissue of lies on my part. What
actually happens is that Tarl, knowing he cannot effectively combat the coordinated attacks of four lancers and unwilling
to hit the dirt under his shield and passively await whatever they might choose to do to him, gambles all on a show of courage.
He stands his ground with disdain writ large on his face, and at the last instant all four kaiila screech to a halt, leaving
Tarl unharmed.
This ballsy display impresses the riders enough that they each fire questions at Tarl instead of arrows.
The Tuchuk takes him for a fugitive outlaw; the Kassar learns that Tarl was afraid but did not show it; the Kataii accuses
him of being a spy and reminds him that the Wagon Peoples slay strangers; and the Paravaci conspicuously displays one of his
pieces of priceless jewellery, intending to incite Tarl to envy. That ritual concluded, the four riders gather around a lance
embedded point-first in the ground and wait for it to fall within reach of one of them; which, Tarl understands, is their
means of choosing by lot one of their number to kill him in single combat.
As the immense herd of bosk is brought to
its evening quarters in the background, the spear falls to the Tuchuk, who with a virile bellow seizes it and prepares for
battle.
Chapter Four
Tarl sets about earning himself some more honour points by refusing to spear the Tuchuk’s
kaiila, after making it clear that he knows the weapon well enough to accomplish such a feat. By this time he has lost his
shield and has a few marks on him from the Tuchuk’s lance, but his expertise has saved him from worse harm and, when
he tosses the spear aside, the riders all applaud his sportsmanship and the Tuchuk, not to be outdone, discards his own lance.
Tarl’s next move is to counter the bola, with a combination of lightning speed and astute anticipation, and finally
to parry the Tuchuk’s thrown quiva with his sword. Thus outmatched, the Tuchuk takes his loss like a man and congratulates
Tarl on his victory, fully expecting to be slain on the spot and seeming not to mind one bit.
At this, Tarl spares
him and reiterates yet again his desire to come in peace, and at last the Tuchuk is convinced. He gives Tarl a clod of earth
and grass to hold, and makes him welcome.
Chapter Five
Now the music changes into the Polovtsian Dances - extremely
suitable and apposite music, since the ballet for which it was written concerned the adventures of a Russian prince held as
an honoured prisoner by the Tartars, and Gor certainly has no closer parallel to these than the Wagon Peoples - as Tarl is
led into the Tuchuk camp by Kamchak. The evening routine of life among the wagons is under way, with both free and slave about
their regular business, and it is evident that the Tuchuks prize a certain wild spiritedness in their slave girls, for we
see one making a nuisance of herself to a free woman and getting no worse than a scolding as punishment.
For the most
part the free women of the Tuchuks seem much more drab and grim than the feisty slaves, but Tarl soon meets a conspicuous
exception in the shape of an imperious young free woman named Hereena, a haughty kaiila-riding princess with strong views
on what should be done with him. Kamchak only grins tolerantly and explains about the grass and earth business - a simple
ceremony of brotherhood matched in certain Earth traditions, of course - and Hereena goes her nose-in-the-air way. She, Kamchak
says, is one of the women of the First Wagon, the wagon of Kutaituchik who "sits on the gray robe", which reference Tarl takes,
naturally, to mean that Kutaituchik is the Ubar of the Tuchuks. But that Hereena is "of the First Wagon" means only that she
inhabits one of the hundred wagons belonging to Kutaituchik, and not that she is his personal property, still less his own
flesh and blood; and her beauty and fiery spirit are no accident, as she has been bred to be a prize in the games of Love
War.
Kamchak does not have time to explain further before signal horns are blown to announce the arrival of a prisoner
in the camp.
Chapter Six
Kamchak goes at once to see what the matter is. He has just told Tarl that he himself
often goes to the wagon of the Ubar, which clearly marks him as a warrior of high rank, and the two kaiila riders who are
bringing the prisoner in report to him straight away.
Whatever Tarl might have been expecting, it was surely not a
young woman in the tattered remains of some quite good-quality Earth clothing; but that is exactly who it is. Besides her
ragged clothes, she has the unusual attire of a broad leather collar. Her bewilderment at her savage surroundings is great,
but not enough to keep her from announcing her name: Elizabeth Cardwell, from New York City. She is first convinced that the
Tuchuks are all mad, and then that she herself is; and Tarl at this point lets compassion overrule his wiser judgement, and
reveals that he can understand her. The thought crosses his mind that this may be a set-up to identify him, but his chivalrous
instinct is the stronger. He lets her know that she is no longer on Earth, and this does very little for her equanimity.
Kamchak’s
response is to treat her much the same as any other captive female, beginning with throwing her clothing on the nearest fire
and getting Tarl to teach her the two words of Gorean she will first need to know if she is to live for five minutes. Tarl,
hoping that Kamchak will be kind to her, obliges by teaching her to say "La Kajira"; and once she has dutifully repeated this,
learned that it means "I am a slave girl", and collapsed into a quite justifiable screaming fit, Kamchak has her taken away
to Kutaituchik’s wagon, and announces that he and Tarl will need to go there. For one thing, that leather collar she
was wearing is no mere ornament but will have a message sewn into it.
Chapter Seven
The wagon of Kutaituchik
is an immense mobile palace, with a domed roof reaching a hundred feet high and, presumably, a length and breadth that are
no less. Hauling this is a task for one hundred bosk, and for all the animals’ size and strength, I don’t envy
them one bit. Kutaituchik, no doubt the Ubar of the Tuchuks, holds court not in that gigantic wagon but on a low dais covered
with rugs, and he himself sits on a plain gray boskhide robe. The moral is obvious; wealth is all very well, but at bottom
the Tuchuks put their trust in simplicity.
Kutaituchik is some years past his best, and he has a drug habit into the
bargain; kanda leaves from a golden box, and Kamchak, Tarl and the unfortunate Elizabeth have to wait patiently while Kutaituchik
enjoys his evening hit. But he washes it down with a dose of some kind of medicine, and he and Kamchak exchange the traditional
Tuchuk greeting: ritual small talk concerning the welfare of the bosk, the sharpness of the quivas, and the importance of
axle lubrication. This attended to, they get on with the business of the unusual prisoner and the message she carries.
Pleased
to find out that she has been given a crash course in essential Gorean (see last issue of the Booknotes), Kutaituchik leaves
it to Kamchak to get on with interrogating her, which of course requires Tarl’s services as interpreter, and a weird
tale soon unfolds of a strange glassy-eyed gray-faced man. (This description is vaguely reminiscent of the Master Assassin,
Pa-Kur, who featured very largely in Book One. However, don’t hold your breath waiting for this rather teasing plot
thread to be tidied up.) The stranger interviewed her in her boss’s uneasy presence in a New York office on Earth, following
which she fell unconscious and reawoke on the plains of Turia, shortly afterwards to be picked up by Tuchuk outriders.
This
is the first occasion on which a beautiful Earth girl is abducted and brought to Gor on some trifling errand, with slavery
to follow; but it will not be the last, as we may see in due course.
As for the leather collar around her neck, this
does indeed contain a written message as Kamchak correctly surmised, and he and Kutaituchik, after affecting illiteracy, get
Tarl to prove his trustworthiness by reading it to them. It is short and to the point:
"Find the man to whom this girl
can speak. He is Tarl Cabot. Slay him. (signed) Priest-Kings of Gor."
Tarl resists the urge to dissemble, which is
just as well as both of the Tuchuks knew perfectly well what it said, but Kamchak pours scorn on the very notion that the
Priest-Kings would have sent such a note, or would not have taken more direct action against Tarl had they seen fit. Besides,
having held grass and earth with Tarl, Kamchak would thumb his nose at the Priest-Kings themselves rather than injure him,
even if the whole Tuchuk tribe were to be punished in consequence; and Kamchak seems to have Kutaituchik’s full approval
in this matter.
Of course, Tarl is given furiously to think by the arrival of this strange message, and he hardly supposes
that the Priest-Kings are indeed behind it, which leads him to suspect that there may be "Others", not Priest-Kings, who are
also interested in the matter of the last egg of Priest-Kings, and he goes off on quite a wild and detailed chain of speculation
before dismissing such as too fantastic to be entertained.
Now Kamchak and Kutaituchik turn their attentions back to
Elizabeth, and after a spot of prompting she declares herself absolutely bursting with zeal to be a Tuchuk toy, whereupon
she receives meat from the hands of her master and bursts into floods of tears; partly through having had a trying day and
partly, no doubt, because she is bright enough to grasp the symbolism of this act.
Chapter Eight
Norman indulges
in one of his favourite narrative devices, that of jumping the action forwards in time and then recapping on what has happened
since the end of the previous chapter, but he does so in a not too irritating manner (many worse examples will follow later
in the series). Tarl makes no progress in the affair of the egg during the next few months, instead travelling with the Wagon
Peoples to their winter quarters, becoming acquainted with their ways, and learning their various weapons. We saw his natural
aptitude back in "Tarnsman", where he speedily learned all that the Older Tarl could teach him, mainly about the sword; and
he runs true to form here, mastering the Wagon Peoples’ ethnic arms by way of something to do to pass the long winter
evenings. He also learns to ride the kaiila creditably enough.
This gathering of the Wagon Peoples has to do with the
possible election of the Ubar San, the One Ubar over all four tribes; and also with a visit to Turia for "Love War", concerning
which Tarl speculates but prefers to wait patiently for all to be revealed. Meanwhile Tarl gets into a gambling game for some
slave girls, one of whom is Elizabeth. He has to turn in a keen performance with the lance, and then a still better one with
the bola in catching a running slave girl, and not just any slave girl but the famous Dina of Turia, one of the best slaves
ever to run before the bola. (Elizabeth, by the way, has stood up very well to the rigours of slavery, although she has enjoyed
a somewhat pampered existence by ordinary standards, and certainly Kamchak has treated her with unusual kindness and consideration,
having evidently grasped that she has started at something of a disadvantage compared to the typical kajira. This isn’t
pure altruism on his part, as we shall learn in due course.)
Back to Tarl, who of course astounds everyone with his
skill, nerve and luck in roping Dina in record time, having deduced barely in time the secret of her previous successes and
boldly followed his hunch. Thanks partly to Elizabeth’s inexperience in this sport, the game has to go to a tie-break
in which Tarl must expertly lance a tospit (a fruit the size of a small pear) out of her mouth, which he also manages in splendid
style; and the end result of all of this is that Tarl wins himself a slave girl, Dina herself. This puts Elizabeth’s
nose somewhat out of joint, but Tarl, bless his innocence, hasn’t the first idea why. This sport over, Kamchak announces
that the winter lay-off is at an end and it’s time to head for Turia, where Tarl hopes at last to learn some more about
the "doubtless golden spheroid" he’s come in search of.
Chapter Nine
Another time jump sees Tarl and Kamchak
at a feast in Turia, guests of the rich merchant Saphrar, where Tarl finds the rich food not entirely to his liking. (Kamchak
shovels it away with gusto and a complete lack of finesse, but what unites him and the civilized Turians is a willingness
to go for a good chuck-up between courses, an expedient that Tarl finds detestable.) He doesn’t let it distract him
from keeping an ear on the table gossip, though, and he overhears a tantalising snippet between Saphrar and Kamchak, in which
the "golden sphere" is mentioned as the price that must be paid "if she is to participate".
"She", in this connection,
turns out to be Aphris of Turia, a wealthy and no doubt beautiful heiress and also ward of Saphrar; and, almost inevitably,
she is as haughty a young miss as ever bestrode the pages of a romantic novel. As she makes her entrance, Saphrar urges Kamchak
to trade the golden sphere for her, though no doubt he does not mean a straightforward business transaction, as Aphris is
a free woman under the protection of her own Home Stone and hence at no risk of being sold. But Kamchak declines the offer
and Saphrar throws a small tantrum, he being that kind of a man. The one comfort Tarl has is that he now knows that the sphere
is in Kutaituchik’s wagon, not that this gives him much cause for rejoicing.
As for Aphris, it soon becomes plain
that she and Kamchak have crossed paths before. He brought her a love-gift of a diamond necklace two years previously and
got nothing but lip for his pains, since when, he cheerfully announces, he has promised himself that Aphris shall be his slave
’ a deliberate insult that brings silence to the whole feasting-chamber and provokes the intimidatingly large figure
of Kamras, Champion of Turia, to offer to make Kamchak sorry. Aphris recovers her composure and pretends to be offended not
by Kamchak’s words but his smell, and the love-patter continues in this vein until Kamchak offers Aphris another surprise
present. It is a necklace again, which he insists on fastening around her neck himself, whereupon Aphris is dismayed to learn
that it’s the kind of necklace that’s made of steel and unlocks with a key.
Thus shamed before the cream
of Turian society, Aphris flies into a rage and volunteers herself as a prize in Love War if Kamchak will fight for her; and
Kamras himself will be her defender. Saphrar might have been expected to dissuade his under-age ward from risking herself
in such a manner, but he has a very strange way of going about it’ almost as if he stands to gain by Aphris so standing.
Still, Kamras has never lost a fight in his life, and he closes the chapter promising to put Kamchak to a slow and horrible
death for the insult to Aphris and, by extension, to Turia.
Chapter Ten
We now discover what Love War is; but
first Tarl tells us how he has given his slave Dina her freedom. This is an endearing habit of Tarl’s; he steadfastly
refused to brand Talena in Book One even when she was throatily begging for it, he purchased Lara in Book Two solely to spare
her such a fate, and now he’s at it again. Dina thinks he deserves a reward for his generosity, and she gives him one.
But Elizabeth, when she finds Dina gone, believes that Tarl has sold her and suffers a slight dose of culture shock in consequence.
Kamchak, on the other hand, knows that Tarl is much too light in the purse to have sold a valuable girl like Dina, and he
enjoys a good laugh at Tarl’s expense. Then the two of them prepare in suitable fashion for the fighting on the morrow
by going out for a skinful.
Love War, it turns out, consists of a series of single combats waged more or less concurrently
between warriors from Turia and from the Wagon Peoples. Women of both peoples stand as prizes, in order according to their
rank and beauty, and the haughty Hereena, last seen looking down her nose at Tarl and pouring scorn on one Harold of the Tuchuks
(of whom we shall see a great deal later) is herself at stake, this being what the women of the First Wagon are reserved for.
But Kamchak’s business is at the First Stake itself, where the Turian prize is Aphris, as promised. There turn out to
be no other challengers for this prize, since even the bloodthirsty Tuchuks are not exactly shouldering one another aside
for the privilege of first pop at Kamras. As for Kamchak, he teases Aphris by pretending to have thought better of fighting
for her, before eventually consenting with a great show of reluctance.
Having opted to fight, Kamchak is given choice
of weapons by an irritated Kamras, who after originally having plumped for the sword was swayed by the Tuchuk’s complaint
that he could hardly be expected to know the ways of such a weapon. Given the choice, Kamchak opts for the sword after all,
which dismays Tarl, who is well aware of how much chance a novice swordsman stands against an expert. He is even moved to
volunteer his services in Kamchak’s stead, though he is told that this is against the rules; and, believing that Kamchak
is going to certain death, pleads with him to look upon shame as the lesser evil. Kamchak takes no offence at this, but from
his mien we can reasonably deduce that Tarl wouldn’t have got away with making such a suggestion had the two of them
not held grass and earth together.
After such a build-up, rendered in excellent comic style by Norman at the peak of
his form, the fight itself can have only one outcome. Kamchak gives a convincing display of bumbling incompetence while an
increasingly exasperated Kamras tries to kill him, and it gradually becomes clear that, good as the Champion of Turia is,
Kamchak is his master. Little by little he takes the fight to Kamras, wounds him again and again, until Kamras, spurred on
by Aphris’s increasingly frantic urging to kill Kamchak, collapses in the sand, exhausted and short of a few pints of
blood. Thereupon Kamchak, sparing him, informs Kamras, and the world in general, that he has served his turn as a mercenary
in Ar and was the First Sword of the guards there; he and Tarl embrace joyously; and he turns his attention to the now-forfeit
Aphris of Turia.
The sound of pennies dropping begins to overwhelm the horrified ears of that snooty girl.
Chapter
Eleven
Aphris, overconfident in her champion Kamras, turns out to have neglected one vital precaution, that of wearing
slave clothing under the now-forfeit robes of a Free Woman, and consequently winds up stripped bare in front of all onlookers,
including the Kassar girl whose freedom Kamchak’s prowess has just secured. It falls to that unnamed wench to welcome
Aphris to her new condition with a slap and a spit in the face, which lesson is swiftly reinforced with a blow from Kamchak
when Aphris dares to protest.
At a time like this what a young girl mostly needs is her loyal friend and guardian,
in this case Saphrar the Merchant, who has just been enriched to no small degree in that all of Aphris’s enormous fortune
devolves to him. And indeed he happens by in palanquined splendour to survey her lowly state through what seems to be the
Gorean equivalent of lorgnettes, and utters a few pious platitudes on the distressing downturn in her fortunes. Kamchak, knowing
his adversary very well indeed, offers to sell Aphris to him for a beggarly price, which Saphrar refuses, ignoring Aphris’s
tearful pleas to spend, if necessary, her entire fortune to free her. He points out that such a business transaction would
be most unwise, and also that she ceased to have a personal fortune a matter of a few minutes ago, for slaves cannot own any
property whatever, not even a name. Refusing a still lower purchase price, just as Kamchak knew he would, Saphrar retires
to gloat over his new-found riches.
As a small comfort to Aphris, Kamchak reassures her that he would not have sold
her even if Saphrar was willing to do business, for ever since she refused his suit as a free woman he has vowed he would
have her as slave. He accepts her formal submission and makes her run at his stirrup all the way back to camp, an exercise
to which Elizabeth Cardwell is now fully accustomed but which exhausts poor Aphris. Still, it gives her fair warning of what
is going to be expected of her now that she is a Tuchuk’s slave.
We can mention here as an aside that the haughty
Hereena, she of the First Wagon, who was suggesting putting Tarl to death a couple of episodes ago and whose chief sport has
been bating the poor Harold of the Tuchuks (of whom we’ll see more later), has had the ill-fortune to be represented
by a loser and is now a slave of the Turians. For now, though, let’s stay with Aphris, who is dismayed to learn that
she will henceforth be subordinate not only to Kamchak and Tarl, but to Elizabeth as well, whom Kamchak has kept in some privilege
solely for the purpose of making Aphris lower down the pecking order than a barbarian slave.
Celebrating, Tarl and
Kamchak go out for a few drinks, which Tarl pays for after his first lesson in the unwisdom of casual gambling with a wily
Tuchuk, and they return to find that Elizabeth and Aphris have been reinforcing their relative positions. (Kamchak, by the
way, sits on a sort of grey leather footstool, a gift to him from a couple of travellers. Make what you will of this.) He
informs Aphris that she is going to have to learn to dance, and Elizabeth shyly asks for the same lessons ’ which may
be because, as Kamchak observes, she doesn’t wish to lose station in his wagon, or for some other purpose of her own.
But Aphris fights the chain for now, biting Kamchak and then threatening him with a quiva, which doesn’t cause him too
many problems and, as he observes, could have earned her a terminal session with one of the Clan of Torturers. Defiantly she
insists that she will die rather than spread her legs for him, but such isn’t on Kamchak’s agenda for now in any
case. There is the little matter of a taunt about the smell of bosk to be taken care of, for which insult Aphris gets to spend
her first night head-first in the dung sack.
Chapter Twelve
Considering the unpleasant task of burgling Kutaituchik’s
wagon, Tarl finds he can’t even case the joint, as the Tuchuk guards warn him off if he even looks like getting near
it. He has half a mind simply to appeal to either Kutaituchik or Kamchak, disliking the notion of stealing from his hosts,
but this honest approach would rather tip his hand. Putting the matter to one side for now, and thinking that the excitement
of the Omen Taking might give him a better chance to get away with it, Tarl prepares for an evening’s entertainment
with Kamchak and the girls, watching a dancing slave girl.
Aphris seems to be settling in as a slave, no doubt motivated
by her desire to avoid another night in the dung sack. She meekly approaches Kamchak and begs to be allowed to put on a piece
of cast-off slave clothing she has found, since she has been wearing nothing but fresh air for several days, and some jewellery,
just so that every observer will know that her master is wealthy enough to buy her clothes but chooses not to. Pleased with
her humble request, Kamchak grants it, and the happy party make their way to the dancing display. Tarl is paying for their
admission. He has just received his second lesson in wagering with wily Tuchuks, and is starting to get the hint.
Still,
despite Kamchak’s apparent harshness, Tarl can’t help noticing that Aphris is still unbranded and has been allowed
clothing at the first time of asking, and he chuckles to himself. But his musing is interrupted when Kamchak tells him to
chain Elizabeth, who seems to take very readily indeed to his steel. She and Aphris both get quite tipsy on a couple of mouthfuls
of Paga, which suggests that, distilled or not, it is not unlike whisky for alcohol content, even though the average male
Gorean swigs it by the bottle.
The dance itself works its magic on Aphris for a start, as by its conclusion she is
begging Kamchak to make her a slave, and we can conclude that she doesn’t mean collaring and branding. He cheerily carries
her off to the fate which only a few days ago she considered worse than death, and nonchalantly gives Elizabeth to Tarl for
the night. This gives her another dose of culture shock, for it brings home to her that she is indeed mere property, to be
lent, given away or sold at the whim of her Master and without her wishes in the matter needing to be ascertained, let alone
considered. But she seems to fall into a very strange humour when Tarl refuses to use the occasion as an excuse to take advantage
of her, and she runs off into the night.
While our adorable bonehead is puzzling this matter over with the aid of some
more Paga, he is fortunate to survive an assassination attempt by a mysterious hooded Torturer who hurls a dagger at him,
which narrowly misses him and instead sticks in the side of a wagon. The owner emerges to find out what all the fuss is about
and helpfully points out that the dagger is that of a Paravaci.
Chapter Thirteen
Next morning Elizabeth is nowhere
to be found, but after a short panic she turns up with an innocent look on her face and two full water-buckets as evidence
of a complete lack of intention to escape. Kamchak doesn’t buy this story at all, and punishes her by removing her larl-pelt
dress and giving her a whipping, which she endures in splendid style. However, Kamchak also uses the whip for an intimate
caress to which Elizabeth helplessly responds, and locks her in a sleen cage as a further lesson.
Tarl has no opportunity
to bring her comfort or succour, as Kamchak has business to get on with and takes Tarl along for the ride, literally in the
case of a trip out to the Omen Taking. They then go for the inevitable evening bottle of Paga, and this time Tarl doesn’t
even bother with trying to win a wager for the cost of it but gives in straight away. Tarl tries to persuade Kamchak not to
have Elizabeth branded, but he has no success; but Kamchak does offer to sell her to him. While he is wondering whether he’ll
be able to afford Kamchak’s price, or whether he ought to burden himself with a slave right now, Tarl is spared the
necessity of reaching a decision by an alarm call announcing an attack on the Tuchuk camp.
Chapter Fourteen
Kamchak,
already shown to be a man of quite high rank, loses no time in organising the defenders and seems to be in command of all
of them, somewhat to Tarl’s surprise. There has been an attack on the bosk herds, but this is only diversionary, and
while the massed kaiila cavalry are finding this out, the camp itself is attacked by tarnsmen. By the time Kamchak realizes
what is going on, it is too late, and he arrives at the wagon-palace of Kutaituchik to find the guards slain, Kutaituchik
slain, the wagon a ruin and the golden sphere stolen.
The finger of suspicion points at Saphrar, of course, who has
earlier expressed an interest in the sphere and who has the money to hire mercenary tarnsmen (Turia has no tarnsmen of her
own); and Kamchak picks this moment to reveal that he knows that Tarl was interested in the sphere on his own account, and
tells Tarl that it is worthless. Tarl, of course, disagrees; but this is not the time for arguing over the matter, not with
Kutaituchik dead. However, if the object of the exercise was also to kill the Ubar of the Tuchuks then this, at least, has
failed, for Kutaituchik was not the Ubar. That was a convenient fiction to mislead strangers, but the Tuchuk warriors know
differently: the real Ubar is Kamchak.
Chapter Fifteen
War follows, but it is something of a standoff. Tuchuks
are formidable in battle on the open plains, but they are ill-equipped for siegecraft against a walled city, and they do not
even have the assistance of the other Wagon Peoples, who view the quarrel as a purely Tuchuk affair. They are well able to
prevent land traffic to the city; the Turians soon discover, as certain Earth empires did, that nomadic mounted archers can
run rings around heavy cavalry, and infantry are not even in the picture. Tuchuks and tarnsmen are largely impotent against
each other, as kaiila riders make small and elusive targets from the air but have little in the way of effective anti-aircraft
fire. It occurs to Tarl that the Tuchuks’ fixed assets ’ the wagons and the herds ’ would be much more vulnerable
to airstrikes, but when he brings the matter up Kamchak tells him that at present the mercenaries are being bribed enough
to stop them using this particular tactic.
However, Kamchak decides that sooner or later this very threat will be realized,
and in the meantime he cannot get into Turia, so it is foolish to keep the Tuchuks there to no purpose. And as he prepares
to leave, Tarl realizes that he is going to have to sneak into the city if he wants to get his hands on the golden sphere.
He decides not to bother raising the question with Kamchak, who has turned very bitter indeed since Kutaituchik died, to the
disadvantage of both Elizabeth and Aphris, who being Turian naturally catches the rough edge of his temper. The one crumb
of comfort that both girls have is that since the Iron Master is, like all the other able-bodied Tuchuks, busy on military
duty for the present, they have not yet been branded.
There is still aid that Tarl can call upon, in the shape of the
remarkable Harold, who is living a beggar’s life among the wagons. This young outcast, Tuchuk by birth but formerly
slave in Turia, has had all he can do just to live off scraps, with no wealth or station among the Tuchuks nor any means of
gaining such; and he considers Tarl’s proposed expedition an interesting one. He himself quite fancies an excursion
to Turia to steal himself a slave, his erstwhile tormentor Hereena, who is now adorning Saphrar’s Pleasure Gardens;
and he knows a secret way into the city. Indeed, the only reason he hasn’t gone before is that, as he tells Tarl, "Kamchak
told me to wait for you."
Chapter Eleven
Aphris, overconfident in her champion Kamras, turns out to have neglected
one vital precaution, that of wearing slave clothing under the now-forfeit robes of a Free Woman, and consequently winds up
stripped bare in front of all onlookers, including the Kassar girl whose freedom Kamchak’s prowess has just secured.
It falls to that unnamed wench to welcome Aphris to her new condition with a slap and a spit in the face, which lesson is
swiftly reinforced with a blow from Kamchak when Aphris dares to protest.
At a time like this what a young girl mostly
needs is her loyal friend and guardian, in this case Saphrar the Merchant, who has just been enriched to no small degree in
that all of Aphris’s enormous fortune devolves to him. And indeed he happens by in palanquined splendour to survey her
lowly state through what seems to be the Gorean equivalent of lorgnettes, and utters a few pious platitudes on the distressing
downturn in her fortunes. Kamchak, knowing his adversary very well indeed, offers to sell Aphris to him for a beggarly price,
which Saphrar refuses, ignoring Aphris’s tearful pleas to spend, if necessary, her entire fortune to free her. He points
out that such a business transaction would be most unwise, and also that she ceased to have a personal fortune a matter of
a few minutes ago, for slaves cannot own any property whatever, not even a name. Refusing a still lower purchase price, just
as Kamchak knew he would, Saphrar retires to gloat over his new-found riches.
As a small comfort to Aphris, Kamchak
reassures her that he would not have sold her even if Saphrar was willing to do business, for ever since she refused his suit
as a free woman he has vowed he would have her as slave. He accepts her formal submission and makes her run at his stirrup
all the way back to camp, an exercise to which Elizabeth Cardwell is now fully accustomed but which exhausts poor Aphris.
Still, it gives her fair warning of what is going to be expected of her now that she is a Tuchuk’s slave.
We
can mention here as an aside that the haughty Hereena, she of the First Wagon, who was suggesting putting Tarl to death a
couple of episodes ago and whose chief sport has been bating the poor Harold of the Tuchuks (of whom we’ll see more
later), has had the ill-fortune to be represented by a loser and is now a slave of the Turians. For now, though, let’s
stay with Aphris, who is dismayed to learn that she will henceforth be subordinate not only to Kamchak and Tarl, but to Elizabeth
as well, whom Kamchak has kept in some privilege solely for the purpose of making Aphris lower down the pecking order than
a barbarian slave.
Celebrating, Tarl and Kamchak go out for a few drinks, which Tarl pays for after his first lesson
in the unwisdom of casual gambling with a wily Tuchuk, and they return to find that Elizabeth and Aphris have been reinforcing
their relative positions. (Kamchak, by the way, sits on a sort of grey leather footstool, a gift to him from a couple of travellers.
Make what you will of this.) He informs Aphris that she is going to have to learn to dance, and Elizabeth shyly asks for the
same lessons ’ which may be because, as Kamchak observes, she doesn’t wish to lose station in his wagon, or for
some other purpose of her own. But Aphris fights the chain for now, biting Kamchak and then threatening him with a quiva,
which doesn’t cause him too many problems and, as he observes, could have earned her a terminal session with one of
the Clan of Torturers. Defiantly she insists that she will die rather than spread her legs for him, but such isn’t on
Kamchak’s agenda for now in any case. There is the little matter of a taunt about the smell of bosk to be taken care
of, for which insult Aphris gets to spend her first night head-first in the dung sack.
Chapter Twelve
Considering
the unpleasant task of burgling Kutaituchik’s wagon, Tarl finds he can’t even case the joint, as the Tuchuk guards
warn him off if he even looks like getting near it. He has half a mind simply to appeal to either Kutaituchik or Kamchak,
disliking the notion of stealing from his hosts, but this honest approach would rather tip his hand. Putting the matter to
one side for now, and thinking that the excitement of the Omen Taking might give him a better chance to get away with it,
Tarl prepares for an evening’s entertainment with Kamchak and the girls, watching a dancing slave girl.
Aphris
seems to be settling in as a slave, no doubt motivated by her desire to avoid another night in the dung sack. She meekly approaches
Kamchak and begs to be allowed to put on a piece of cast-off slave clothing she has found, since she has been wearing nothing
but fresh air for several days, and some jewellery, just so that every observer will know that her master is wealthy enough
to buy her clothes but chooses not to. Pleased with her humble request, Kamchak grants it, and the happy party make their
way to the dancing display. Tarl is paying for their admission. He has just received his second lesson in wagering with wily
Tuchuks, and is starting to get the hint.
Still, despite Kamchak’s apparent harshness, Tarl can’t help
noticing that Aphris is still unbranded and has been allowed clothing at the first time of asking, and he chuckles to himself.
But his musing is interrupted when Kamchak tells him to chain Elizabeth, who seems to take very readily indeed to his steel.
She and Aphris both get quite tipsy on a couple of mouthfuls of Paga, which suggests that, distilled or not, it is not unlike
whisky for alcohol content, even though the average male Gorean swigs it by the bottle.
The dance itself works its
magic on Aphris for a start, as by its conclusion she is begging Kamchak to make her a slave, and we can conclude that she
doesn’t mean collaring and branding. He cheerily carries her off to the fate which only a few days ago she considered
worse than death, and nonchalantly gives Elizabeth to Tarl for the night. This gives her another dose of culture shock, for
it brings home to her that she is indeed mere property, to be lent, given away or sold at the whim of her Master and without
her wishes in the matter needing to be ascertained, let alone considered. But she seems to fall into a very strange humour
when Tarl refuses to use the occasion as an excuse to take advantage of her, and she runs off into the night.
While
our adorable bonehead is puzzling this matter over with the aid of some more Paga, he is fortunate to survive an assassination
attempt by a mysterious hooded Torturer who hurls a dagger at him, which narrowly misses him and instead sticks in the side
of a wagon. The owner emerges to find out what all the fuss is about and helpfully points out that the dagger is that of a
Paravaci.
Chapter Thirteen
Next morning Elizabeth is nowhere to be found, but after a short panic she turns
up with an innocent look on her face and two full water-buckets as evidence of a complete lack of intention to escape. Kamchak
doesn’t buy this story at all, and punishes her by removing her larl-pelt dress and giving her a whipping, which she
endures in splendid style. However, Kamchak also uses the whip for an intimate caress to which Elizabeth helplessly responds,
and locks her in a sleen cage as a further lesson.
Tarl has no opportunity to bring her comfort or succour, as Kamchak
has business to get on with and takes Tarl along for the ride, literally in the case of a trip out to the Omen Taking. They
then go for the inevitable evening bottle of Paga, and this time Tarl doesn’t even bother with trying to win a wager
for the cost of it but gives in straight away. Tarl tries to persuade Kamchak not to have Elizabeth branded, but he has no
success; but Kamchak does offer to sell her to him. While he is wondering whether he’ll be able to afford Kamchak’s
price, or whether he ought to burden himself with a slave right now, Tarl is spared the necessity of reaching a decision by
an alarm call announcing an attack on the Tuchuk camp.
Chapter Fourteen
Kamchak, already shown to be a man of
quite high rank, loses no time in organising the defenders and seems to be in command of all of them, somewhat to Tarl’s
surprise. There has been an attack on the bosk herds, but this is only diversionary, and while the massed kaiila cavalry are
finding this out, the camp itself is attacked by tarnsmen. By the time Kamchak realizes what is going on, it is too late,
and he arrives at the wagon-palace of Kutaituchik to find the guards slain, Kutaituchik slain, the wagon a ruin and the golden
sphere stolen.
The finger of suspicion points at Saphrar, of course, who has earlier expressed an interest in the sphere
and who has the money to hire mercenary tarnsmen (Turia has no tarnsmen of her own); and Kamchak picks this moment to reveal
that he knows that Tarl was interested in the sphere on his own account, and tells Tarl that it is worthless. Tarl, of course,
disagrees; but this is not the time for arguing over the matter, not with Kutaituchik dead. However, if the object of the
exercise was also to kill the Ubar of the Tuchuks then this, at least, has failed, for Kutaituchik was not the Ubar. That
was a convenient fiction to mislead strangers, but the Tuchuk warriors know differently: the real Ubar is Kamchak.
Chapter
Fifteen
War follows, but it is something of a standoff. Tuchuks are formidable in battle on the open plains, but they
are ill-equipped for siegecraft against a walled city, and they do not even have the assistance of the other Wagon Peoples,
who view the quarrel as a purely Tuchuk affair. They are well able to prevent land traffic to the city; the Turians soon discover,
as certain Earth empires did, that nomadic mounted archers can run rings around heavy cavalry, and infantry are not even in
the picture. Tuchuks and tarnsmen are largely impotent against each other, as kaiila riders make small and elusive targets
from the air but have little in the way of effective anti-aircraft fire. It occurs to Tarl that the Tuchuks’ fixed assets
’ the wagons and the herds ’ would be much more vulnerable to airstrikes, but when he brings the matter up Kamchak
tells him that at present the mercenaries are being bribed enough to stop them using this particular tactic.
However,
Kamchak decides that sooner or later this very threat will be realized, and in the meantime he cannot get into Turia, so it
is foolish to keep the Tuchuks there to no purpose. And as he prepares to leave, Tarl realizes that he is going to have to
sneak into the city if he wants to get his hands on the golden sphere. He decides not to bother raising the question with
Kamchak, who has turned very bitter indeed since Kutaituchik died, to the disadvantage of both Elizabeth and Aphris, who being
Turian naturally catches the rough edge of his temper. The one crumb of comfort that both girls have is that since the Iron
Master is, like all the other able-bodied Tuchuks, busy on military duty for the present, they have not yet been branded.
There
is still aid that Tarl can call upon, in the shape of the remarkable Harold, who is living a beggar’s life among the
wagons. This young outcast, Tuchuk by birth but formerly slave in Turia, has had all he can do just to live off scraps, with
no wealth or station among the Tuchuks nor any means of gaining such; and he considers Tarl’s proposed expedition an
interesting one. He himself quite fancies an excursion to Turia to steal himself a slave, his erstwhile tormentor Hereena,
who is now adorning Saphrar’s Pleasure Gardens; and he knows a secret way into the city. Indeed, the only reason he
hasn’t gone before is that, as he tells Tarl, "Kamchak told me to wait for you."
Chapter Sixteen
Harold
knows a secret way into Turia, the very way by which he escaped from the city after eleven years as a boy slave - a tunnel
through which water runs from one of Turia’s wells. That he dared such a desperate way of escape speaks volumes for
Harold’s cojones, for it is one thing to observe that water drains away from the bottom of a well and quite another
to take the leap of faith that it is possible to follow the same route without drowning and end up in the open. Harold fills
in Tarl on the story of his escape, and leads Tarl to where he emerged, a cleft in the rocks some way outside Turia’s
walls. They have a moderately taxing journey through this tunnel and against the current, and then a lengthy climb up the
well-rope, during which Harold outlines his plan of escape after they have accomplished their respective objectives. This
simple, unambitious plan involves nothing more difficult than the theft of two tarns, one of which Harold means to learn to
ride on the fly, as it were.
This deed will result in Harold getting his hands on a wench and a tarn, but more importantly,
it will earn him the Courage Scar of the Tuchuks, a badge of manhood without which he is doomed never to be accepted and which
he has little chance to acquire by more orthodox means. Although Tarl can see one or two flaws in the plan, he admits to himself
that he certainly doesn’t have a better one and that the unbiased observer might find it hard to judge whether Harold
or himself was the bigger idiot.
The courageous pair emerge in a well-house and decide to amuse themselves for a few
hours, so that their several burglarious deeds can be attempted at a more suitable time. Unfortunately, no sooner are they
out of the well-house than they find themselves netted by Turian guards, who, as it turns out, know perfectly well of Harold’s
secret way - indeed, the well itself is nicknamed "the Passage Well" - and they are promptly frog-marched to Saphrar’s
house and clapped in irons. This was, Harold ruefully admits, not part of his plan.
Saphrar has a couple of house-guests.
One of them is Ha-Keel, the captain of the mercenary tarnsmen, while the other is a hooded Paravaci, identity unknown, except
that Tarl intuitively identifies him with the would-be murderer who nearly did for him a short time previously. Talking of
identities, Saphrar knows Tarl’s perfectly well, and so does Ha-Keel, who has seen him before in his guise as "Tarl
of Bristol", way back in Book One. There are some interesting aspects of Ha-Keel’s history which we can gloss over for
now, as they will not turn out to be important; but Saphrar now reveals that he has been in contact with an agent of some
mysterious faction of whom he knows nothing except that they can pay well - it is this mysterious man, Saphrar’s description
of whom tallies well with Elizabeth’s account of the stranger in her New York office, who was responsible for elevating
Saphrar to his present wealthy and privileged position in Turia.
At least Tarl gets a sight of the golden sphere, and
Saphrar reveals that he has no idea why it is so important, and even has no idea whether or not he is working for the Priest-Kings.
As for Tarl, he deduces from this admission the existence of these "Others" on whom he was fancifully speculating a while
ago, and he also indulges in some leaps of logic as to their nature, strategy, present knowledge of the Priest-Kings’
vulnerability following the Nest War, and so on. Saphrar obligingly offers Tarl the opportunity to fight for his life, which
he graciously accepts, and he is led away to the Yellow Pool of Turia.
Chapter Seventeen
Ha-Keel, a true warrior
at heart, doesn’t stay around to watch what is to come, as Tarl is given a quiva and ushered into a largish swimming
pool. There he waits in anxious anticipation for a while, speculating on the nature of his unknown foe, until Saphrar gleefully
reveals that the creature is the pool itself, which is alive.
Chapter Eighteen
The pool-creature obviously has
a fine sense of the dramatic, since it erupts into life as soon as the words are out of Saphrar’s mouth. It turns out
to be a gigantic (and presumably artificial) single-celled life-form, which makes a determined effort to digest Tarl. But
our hero is equal to the occasion. After a futile attempt to escape, he takes the line of least resistance, straight into
the middle of the creature, and finds that it has some kind of cell-nucleus that is vulnerable to his quiva; and after he
has hacked this about a bit, the creature can stand it no longer and spits him out, forming itself into a hard-shelled sphere
that he cannot assault.
This catches Saphrar and his guards on the hop, and he promptly welshes on his undertaking
to let Tarl go if he survived the encounter with the monster; but Tarl gets the upper hand in the ensuing cinematic action
sequence, and manages to secure both his own escape and Harold’s, although Saphrar himself succeeds in legging it.
Of
course, Tarl’s first thought is that the game is up for their respective quests, and he hopes that they can find the
tarns that Harold was originally thinking of purloining, although some kaiila would be a workable alternative. Harold, though,
came to Turia to steal a wench out of Saphrar’s Pleasure Gardens, and that is exactly what he intends to do. Not without
plenty of misgivings, Tarl follows him.
Chapter Nineteen
One point in Tarl and Harold’s favour is that
the Pleasure Gardens are roughly the size of a public park, and also, as Harold points out, they are about the last place
anyone would think to look for intruders; only a fool would try to hide there. He has a brief think and decides that it will
only be an hour or so before tarnsmen are called in to help with the search, and once this happens, he and Tarl will have
a much better chance to steal a tarn. Meanwhile, he goes in search of his wench, after they have had a short breather.
The
search occupies quite a time, for it is not just any wench that Harold is after, but one in particular, and after a while
they find her. This is Hereena, formerly of the First Wagon, and Harold’s erstwhile tormenter in the days when she was
free and haughty. He awakens her, informs her of what is going on, and gags her when she tries to scream. Once she is suitably
trussed up and silenced, the whole thing being carried out "rather neatly", as Tarl tacitly admits, the plan proceeds to its
next phase.
Chapter Twenty
This, of course, involves finding some tarns to steal, and the search for these leads
via another cinematic sequence to the Keep, where Harold immobilizes a succession of guards by the simple expedient of giving
them Hereena to hold for a moment and then punching their lights out while their hands are full - a thoroughly simple and
workable Tuchuk plan which works again and again in best Three Stooges fashion. There are, of course, a few more guards than
can be overcome by this plan alone, which gives Tarl the chance for a running fight or two, before the pair of them win their
way to the tarn-cot and get their hands on the desired transport.
Harold’s outrageous command of bluff proves
as effective against tarns as against bemused guardsmen, and although he commits the cardinal error of trying to get his tarn
to lift off while it is still hobbled, this earns him nothing more than a reproachful look from the offended bird, itself
showing a workmanlike grasp of comic timing, whereupon he and Tarl make good their escape, thus concluding perhaps the funniest
two chapters in the entire Gorean cycle. But this is not enough for Tarl, of course, who realizes only too well that he is
going to have to go back for another go at a task which is now looking even more hopeless than it was before.
Chapter
Twenty-One
Tarl’s Plan B consists of taking advantage of the fact that, with the withdrawal of the Tuchuk horde,
Turia’s gates are once more open to honest traders. He disguises himself as a pedlar and acquires some wares, then watches
the funeral of Kutaituchik, in which the giant wagon is put to the torch with its late owner inside. Then Kamchak orders the
Tuchuks away from Turia, refusing to discuss with Tarl why he has given up so easily.
With the Tuchuks safely gone,
Tarl effects entry to Turia without much ado, but can’t get near to Saphrar’s house; his merchandise, on which
he spent his last remaining money, turns out to be so far beneath Saphrar’s personal consideration that the merchant’s
servants boot him roughly out, and he nearly falls foul of the now-recovered Kamras and has to run for his life. Then, while
he is cowering in hiding and wondering what on earth to do next, he receives aid from an unexpected quarter. The bread that
he cast upon the waters returns to him after many days, in the shape of Dina of Turia, the girl he freed some time previously,
who manages to make contact with him and hide him in, fittingly, her baker’s shop.
She has no family or business
left, thanks to Saphrar, who murdered Dina’s father and brothers when they would not join his commercial empire, and
is ekeing out a living as a personal shopper for wealthy women. Holding something of a torch for Tarl because of his kind
treatment of her, Dina becomes both protector and pro-tem lover, which is very pleasant for Tarl but doesn’t advance
his cause very much. He manages to scout the city somewhat with a change of disguise, but decides that his best chance of
securing the golden sphere will be to return to the wagons once the hue and cry has died down enough for him to get clear
of Turia, recover the tarn that he stole, and try an aerial raid on Saphrar’s compound.
No sooner has he decided
that he will carry out this plan on the next nightfall than he notices something amiss at one of the gates, where a wagon
has broken down. The wagon-driver is somewhat familiar to his eyes, and he notices besides a column of dust approaching Turia
at speed. Immediately he orders Dina to go home and lock herself in, and himself rushes down to the gate, where Harold of
the Tuchuks is doing all he can to ensure that his broken-down wagon will not be moved clear of the gates before the column
of dust, which is being raised by the Tuchuk horde at a flat-out gallop, reaches the city.
The guards realize what
is afoot slightly too late, although they would have done for Harold had Tarl not intervened opportunely, and another sword-fight
ensues at the gate during which Harold obliges with some more of the comedy, feigning not to recognise Tarl. Then the horde
itself arrives, the fighting gets properly under way, and in rides Kamchak in full battle array. He is a man of simple and
straightforward desires, for as he announce: "I want the blood of Saphrar of Turia."
Chapter Twenty-Two
In best
movie-villain style, of course, Saphrar is not going to come within Kamchak’s reach until the final reel. There is a
whole city to conquer first, and then Saphrar’s own citadel. But Kamchak has caught Turia well and truly napping, and
the conquest is going all his own way. In a trice his picked squads have accounted for both the Ubar and the Champion, and
his kaiila-riding light cavalry are virtually unstoppable in street fighting against an enemy desperately trying to improvise
a defence with no leadership and no plan. Saphrar’s compound is put under siege, but shows no sign of falling just yet.
Harold
and Tarl let the horde get on with the fighting, and content themselves with going on a tour of the battlefield, for as Harold
now reveals, he and Tarl have both been elevated to the rank of Commander of a Thousand for the business at the gate. They
inspect the plunder already gathered, repay Dina’s aid by guaranteeing her freedom and safety at a word to the two Tuchuks
who have just captured her, and make their way to the Ubar’s throne-room, which Kamchak has borrowed for a feast. There
he humiliates the Turian Ubar, Phanius Turmus, and the Champion, Kamras, who has probably had his bellyful of Kamchak one
way and another, but Kamchak does not seem altogether happy. He still wants the blood of Saphrar in revenge for the murder
of Kutaituchik, who as he now reveals was Kamchak’s father.
However, the revels are interrupted when bad news
reaches Kamchak. The Turians have unexpected allies against the Tuchuks, for the Tuchuk wagons are under attack by their fellow
Wagon People, the Paravaci.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kamchak has an airborne reserve consisting of just two tarnsmen:
Tarl himself and Harold of the Tuchuks. These two were both awarded the brevet rank of Commander of a Thousand for their heroic
efforts noted in the last instalment; now Kamchak makes the promotion substantive and gives them a Thousand apiece, doughty
Tuchuk warriors mounted on kaiila, but with a long ride ahead of them before they can even come to the battle and a host outnumbering
them many times over when they do get there. Our two tarnsmen themselves, however, can get there several hours before even
the swift-running kaiila, and their first mission is to appeal for help to the two uninvolved tribes of the Wagon Peoples,
the Kataii and the Kassars.
Tarl pleads as eloquently as he can, but cannot persuade the Kataii Ubar, Hakimba himself,
to come to the aid of the betrayed Tuchuks, even when he invokes the spectre of Paravaci slaughtering Tuchuk bosk-a violation
of the Wagon People’s most sacred taboo. Harold meanwhile enjoys no better success in his negotiations with Conrad,
Ubar of the Kassars, and the digruntled pair prepare to do the best they can with the few numbers that they have. Their small
commands are lent fighting spirit when they see the depradations the unopposed Paravaci have wrought, and their initial assault
deals the enemy a bloody nose, but even after ingeniously stampeding the remains of the Tuchuk bosk into the Paravaci host,
the latter still have a huge advantage in numbers; and it is growing too late for Kamchak to come to their aid even if he
was willing to give up the siege of Saphrar’s citadel.
Norman maintains the dramatic tension through the night
of doubt and sorrow, and through the battle that is joined the following morning between the tired remnant of the two Thousands
on the one hand, and the regrouped horde of the Paravaci on the other, until when all seems lost the Kassars and Kataii come
to their aid after all, deciding that, on reflection, the Paravaci perfidy merits punishment. This they hand out most ably,
leaving Tarl to pick over the ruins of the camp and Kamchak’s plundered wagon, despoiled of everything of value. Only
a few pathetic remnants are left behind, as well as an oddity or two such as Kamchak’s strange grey leather footstool.
Aphris and Elizabeth are nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tarl and Harold return to Turia to find Kamchak
still busy at work evicting the Turians from their conquered city yet, unusually for a Gorean conquerer, allowing them to
take plenty of provisions with them and refusing to raze the city itself. He is pleased to hear how things have turned out
in the battle at the wagons, explaining that it was a Tuchuk gamble to stake all on the Kataii and Kassars coming to their
aid. But there is some deeper meaning behind the business which he does not explain for the present. As to Turia, he has decided
that the Tuchuks need the city, both as a trading outpost and indeed as an enemy to keep them on their toes, although Tarl
still considers that, even so, Kamchak has shown Turia astonishing leniency. This matter Kamchak curtly refuses to discuss.
Harold
cheerfully informs Tarl that he is now the proud possessor of a wagon befitting his status, as indeed is Harold himself, and
the wagons have been theirs since they first entered Turia, as a reward for their courage. Tarl protests that he failed in
his mission, but Harold explains that it is the taking part and not the winning that the Tuchuks consider meritorious, although
since the deeds that made them Commanders of Thousands, the wagons have been upgraded somewhat. Of Aphris there is still no
news, and as to Elizabeth, Harold only remarks that Kamchak gave her to a warrior. Not altogether cheered by this news, Tarl
is still attracted enough by the prospect of a comfortable night in a wagon well stocked with Paga and Ka-la-na to go and
try out his new acquisition.
Chapter Twenty-Five
He is astonished to learn that the warrior to whom Kamchak
gave Elizabeth is none other than himself, and his immediate reaction on learning that Elizabeth is now his is to chivalrously
grant her her freedom on the spot. But Elizabeth’s reaction is an odd one. Once Tarl has helped her over another piece
of culture shock concerning nose piercing (for the benefit of our younger readers, I will remark that this kind of personal
ornamentation was extremely outré, at least to white Anglo-Saxons, when the book was written in the late 1960s), she begins
to behave like a right little minx.
What follows amounts to yet another first in Tarl’s life. He has never owned
a slave in the true Gorean sense-he did, of course, own Dina of Turia for a while earlier in this very story, but that hardly
counts for our present purposes. He and Elizabeth embark on a kind of shared adventure in which they both, rather timidly,
explore the master/slave relationship, albeit in a rather diluted form and with a good deal of prompting from Elizabeth, to
whom Tarl is still relating more or less as an Earth woman and an equal.
After some discussion on the philosophy of
the relationship between men and women according to Gorean thought, and Tarl trying to avoid encumbering himself with a woman
who would be sorely in need of his protection, and a ritual submission from Elizabeth that is designed to force Tarl into
accepting her as a slave (since he must otherwise either slay her or betray the Warrior Code), they engage in a contest in
which Tarl must demonstrate that he can make Elizabeth "truly a slave", bringing her to orgasm in spite of her best efforts
not to be brought there-and, of course (for this is Tarl Cabot we are talking about) he succeeds in doing this. Just as well,
as he had engaged in a wager to accept Elizabeth’s collar, at least in private, if he failed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The
morning after the night before, and with Elizabeth having confessed herself madly in love with Tarl, he returns to the siege
of Saphrar’s compound, to find Ha-Keel’s mercenary tarnsmen being bought off by the greater wealth now in Kamchak’s
hands-all the plunder of Turia-and he looks on as, one by one, Saphrar’s infantry are suborned in the same way. Even
those who might be signed up to the Warrior’s Code see the sense in accepting an immense sum in gold in preference to
an inevitable death at the hands of Kamchak’s Tuchuks, and so Saphrar, who has lived by gold, begins to die by gold.
At
last there are only a handful of warm bodies between Kamchak and Saphrar, one of whom, a young Warrior cut from the same cloth
as Tarl himself, disdains any amount of gold as an inducement to violate his caste codes. Kamchak has him shot, but non-fatally,
and recruits the protesting but helpless youth to the ranks of the Tuchuks, seeing him as senior officer material.
This
leaves only Ha-Keel, the hooded Paravaci seen just before the Yellow Pool episode, and Saphrar himself. Ha-Keel looks on impassively
as Saphrar tries to buy his life and freedom with the threat to destroy the golden sphere, a threat Kamchak sneers at, calling
the sphere worthless. This draws a strenuous protest from Tarl, and at last he and Kamchak discuss the true reason why Tarl
came to the Wagon Peoples. Tarl admits he would, if necessary, have stolen the sphere, but vehemently asserts that he would
not have killed Kutaituchik, and would have returned the sphere to the Sardar. Kamchak believes him, but is still clinging
to his view that the golden sphere is worthless.
Since Ha-Keel can flee on his tarn, the hooded Paravaci, whom Harold
is all for engaging in mortal combat, tries to barter for a passage, offering half the wealth of his tribe; but Ha-Keel wryly
observes that nothing the Paravaci own can be as precious as the last egg of the Priest-Kings, which impels the terrified
Paravaci to try to wrest it from Saphrar. At this, Saphrar, getting the worst of the wrestling match, bites the Paravaci with
a set of hollowed-out canines filled with ost venom, resulting in the sudden and agonising demise of that unworthy fellow
and the accidental shattering of the golden sphere.
While Harold identifies the deceased party as Tolnus, the Ubar
of the Paravaci, and Tarl mourns the shattered egg and consequent extinction of the Priest-Kings and his failed mission on
behalf of his friend Misk, Kamchak first orders that Tolnus’s priceless necklace be returned to the Paravaci so that
they can restore some of the fortunes their Ubar’s treachery has cost them, and then sets off in leisurely pursuit of
Saphrar, who is eventually traced to the Yellow Pool of Turia. Meanwhile he explains to Tarl that the golden sphere really
is as worthless as he has been claiming all along, and reveals the subterfuge, involving a tharlarion egg and some gold dye.
Then he goes to watch Saphrar being digested by his pet-it was that, or being torn to pieces by Kamchak’s hunting sleen-and
lets him know the secret of the egg before he dies horribly. Kamchak had a double grudge against Saphrar, for it was he who
first introduced old Kutaituchik to the kanda habit and made an addict of him, and as Kamchak observes, "It was twice he killed
my father."
Having no love for the horror of the Yellow Pool, Kamchak burns it, and takes his leave of Saphrar’s
compound, receiving equably the news that Ha-Keel has made good his escape. He likens the mercenary captain’s skill
to that of Pa-Kur the Master Assassin, from Book One, who was after all only "missing, presumed dead"; but Kamchak’s
testimony only spins this shaggy-dog story out a little more, and does nothing to resolve the mystery. At last he tells Tarl
the truth about the egg; he has seen it many times in plain view in the wagon of the Tuchuk Ubar-not Kutaituchik’s wheeled
palace, for he was only the false Ubar, but in the wagon of Kamchak himself; it is the leather footstool, which Kamchak assures
Tarl is quite sturdy enough to have withstood the irreverent abuse to which it has been subjected during this time.
Tarl
is pleasantly surprised to learn that Kamchak will give him the egg after all. He has subjected Tarl to a series of tests,
up to and including the destruction of the false egg, to assure himself that Tarl deserves to be given it, and that he wants
it for love of the Priest-Kings and no baser purpose. Thus assured, Tarl cheerfully receives the news that Aphris has been
found, by Albrecht of the Kassars, and that Kamchak succeeded in buying her back for a beggarly ten thousand bars of gold.
Harold laughs his head off at this, and Tarl cracks a smile of his own, seeing Kamchak forced to admit to caring for a slave;
but he’s seen nothing as yet.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
His mission of revenge done, Kamchak not only allows
Turia to remain standing but restores its Home Stone to a grateful Phanius Turmus and frees that worthy with honour. While
all present ponder the meaning of Kamchak’s mercy, the Ubars of the other Wagon Peoples, Conrad of the Kassars, Hakimba
of the Kataii, and an unnamed Paravaci who has held the office for only a few hours, come to announce the results of the Omen
Taking. The omens are, for the first time in centuries, propitious to the appointing of a Ubar San, and it is as this, Ubar-in-Chief
of all the Wagon Peoples, that the victorious Kamchak is now hailed. This, he explains privately, was the other part of his
gamble when he risked the destruction of the Tuchuks: that he could show how the Wagon Peoples might be divided and conquered,
and hence teach them to unify. But it’s clear that he is only interested in the power of the Ubar San in case of emergency,
and will otherwise leave the separate peoples to live their separate ways.
There is one gamble left to him-and I, for
one, believe that this is a genuine gamble on Kamchak’s part, and no "Tuchuk wager"; a gamble in which he certainly
hopes that the outcome will be what he wants, and even guesses that it is more likely than not, but one in which, for once,
he has to put his trust in that hope alone. He grants Aphris her freedom to return to her spared city, with her fortune restored
to her. As Harold explains, Kamchak’s own mother was Turian, and it was only when she died that Kutaituchik turned to
kanda as an anodyne. Stone-faced, Kamchak leaves the palace and heads out of the city while a stunned Aphris tries to comprehend
the enormity of Kamchak’s gift; but she does not think about it for long before running after Kamchak and declaring
that she would rather be his slave than the richest free woman in Turia. At this, Kamchak knows that his gamble has come good
and proclaims Aphris his Ubara Sana, High Queen of the Wagon Peoples.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Elizabeth settles
a long-standing quarrel with a spiteful slave who has been making her life as much of a misery as she could these past few
weeks, and Tarl bids a fond farewell to Kamchak, Harold, and the Wagon Peoples, and the smell of bosk and axle-grease and
so on. They will remember him for ever, having named two years of their calendar after him; and Kamchak promises to bring
the Wagon Peoples to Tarl’s aid if ever he should call. (Once again, don’t hold your breath. In twenty-one succeeding
Gor books, this never happens.) Then, the Priest-Kings’ last egg in his possession and Elizabeth Cardwell a passenger
aboard his tarn, Tarl takes his leave of the Plains of the Wagon Peoples, and we of this book.
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