Swordsmen of Gor (35 page)

“And how may I be of service to you?” I had then inquired of Lord Nishida, in the pavilion.

“I understand you have commanded, in the far south,” said Lord Nishida.

“In the land of the Wagon Peoples, long ago,” I said, “I was honored to command a thousand, kaiila riders of the Tuchuks.”

“You are familiar, then,” said Lord Nishida, “with the tactics of a cavalry, its movements, its applications, and such.”

“Light cavalry,” I said. I had never commanded the massed, thundering, earth-shaking charges of war tharlarion.

“Excellent,” said Lord Nishida.

The riders of the Tuchuks were subtle clouds of war, almost impossible to close with, dangerous archers, with the short, horn bow, fit for clearing the saddle, to left or right. A thousand arrows could be loosed in an instant, like death rain, on a foe, and then the riders were gone. And then, again, the storm of death might appear on another horizon, tiny dots on the horizon, and then, in moments, be upon one again. And when the Tuchuk did close it was the quiva in flight, and the light, black temwood lance, thrusting and drawing back, and thrusting again, often against a foe on foot, fleeing, being ridden down.

The Tuchuk, all in all, was a subtle and dangerous foe. His tactics tended to be executed swiftly, and precisely. They might have been better known, had more survived to spread their fame. Even his flight might well be a ruse, for one of his favorite tactics was the backward flighted arrow, loosed from the platform of the smooth-gaited kaiila. Tuchuk war was characterized by deception and cunning. It was also ruthless.

“You did command on the 25th of Se’Kara,” said Lord Nishida.

“Yes,” I said.

However, I thought, what was done that day was surely unlike the clash of cavalries in the sky.

“You have an opponent in mind?” I asked.

“You understand, do you not,” he asked, “the drums, the synchronization, the ascents and descents, the circlings, the wheelings, to left and right?”

“You do not need me, great lord,” I said, “surely a thousand tarnsmen might serve you as well, or better.”

“But you understand such things?” asked Lord Nishida.

“Yes,” I said.

“Excellent,” he said.

“Perhaps others might serve as well,” said Thrasilicus, “a possibility which I lack the expertise to dispute, but the Priest-Kings have chosen you.”

“Someone it seems,” I said, “has chosen me.”

“Priest-Kings,” said Thrasilicus.

“Why?” I asked.

“Is that not lost in the wisdom of the Sardar?” asked Thrasilicus.

“Doubtless,” I said.

“Who would not wish these things to be in the hands of Bosk of Port Kar,” said Lord Nishida.

“I would suppose many,” I said. “And perhaps Priest-Kings.”

“The Priest-Kings,” said Thrasilicus, “command you to take Lord Nishida as your captain, to follow his instructions, and in all ways possible to abet his projects.”

“I understand,” I said.

Surely Kurii were well aware of my ambivalence toward Priest-Kings. With the new dynasty in the Nest had they not turned against me? Had I not been imprisoned in the holding capsule on the Prison Moon, in such a manner as to torture me, and jeopardize my honor?

Might I not, then, of my own will, so treated, have turned from the Sardar to the Steel Worlds?

“Our loyal servitor, Tajima,” said Lord Nishida, “will explain much to you, and will often attend upon you.”

I gathered the interview was then concluded, and I turned and left the pavilion, followed by Tajima.

Outside the pavilion I had turned to Tajima. “You are to spy on me?” I had asked.

“I fear so,” he had said, “Tarl Cabot, tarnsman.”

****

Tajima and I emerged from the path which led to a great plaza cleared in the forest.

About the edges of this area, which was better than a hundred yards in width, there were several structures. Most of these were rudely timbered, and most were windowless. Some, on the other hand, had an open wall, facing the area. Two seemed to be shops, with an open wall, one for metal workers, the other for leather workers. Some of these structures, it seemed, served as storehouses, for supplies and tack, such as saddles and harnessing, and others as shelters, for trainers and craftsmen, and doubtless, too, for those whom one might think of, in a way, as recruits. There was a larger building, too, which had a plank floor and an open wall. This, I would learn, was a
dojo
, or training hall. To one side there was a tank for water and there were several racks from which hung meat, probably tabuk, forest tarsk, and forest bosk. The greater forest tarsk, unlike the common tarsk, can be quite large. When I first came to Gor I saw a tapestry depicting the tarn hunting of such beasts, and, from the sizes involved, I had thought the tapestry to be based on some fantasy or myth. Only later did I discover that there were beasts of such a size. The common tarsk, on the other hand, is much smaller. When a slave, or even a free woman, is disparaged as a “she-tarsk,” the smaller animal, the common tarsk, is invariably in mind. Otherwise the metaphor would be unintelligible. Indeed, many Goreans have never seen the forest tarsk, and many do not know of its existence. The forest bosk tends to be territorial, and, as I have already suggested, it can be quite dangerous. Most interestingly to me were the cots in the area, of which there were several. These cots were mostly improvised, walled with rope nets strung between trees, and, too, large, heavy poles, doubtless from local trees, trimmed of bark and branches. Rope netting is used rather than wire to protect the birds. Tarn wire, for example, sometimes used to “roof a city,” to defend it from tarn attack, is almost invisible, and can easily cut the wing from a descending bird. A lighter form of wire is called “slave wire,” and it, too, is dangerous. A slave attempting to escape through such wire is likely to be found suspended within it, piteously begging for help, half cut to pieces. Two of the cots were large and conical. Their framing, formed of light metal tubing, fitted together, was not untypical of a form of cot found in open camps. I supposed it derived from Thentis, and might have been brought to the coast by wagon, and then north by ship, as doubtless was the case with many forms of supplies.

“There are many tarns here,” I said.

“There are more than a hundred and fifty now,” I was told, “and more are due to be delivered.”

“Who are the tarnsmen?” I asked.

“Some are tarnsmen,” he said, “but many of your people, and mine, must learn the tarn.”

Training was going on in the open area.

Between two sets of poles were slung ropes and a saddle, and in each saddle was a fellow who was being flung from side to side, and dropped, and lifted, and spun about, by others, and even, by ropes, on each side, being whirled about a vertical axis. Shortly both had been pitched into the sand some ten feet below. Their place was then taken by others. The two who had fallen were placed on a narrow plank, to the side, and forced to walk its length, while being screamed at, and execrated, from both sides. If one fell from the plank, in dizziness, he was struck with switches.

“The proper tarn saddle,” I said, “has a safety strap. There is no way one can lose the saddle if it is fastened.”

“True,” said Tajima. “But what if the safety strap is cut in battle?”

“One then seizes, as one can, if one is in danger of falling,” I said, “one of the saddle rings.”

“Yes,” said Tajima, “but he who just fell, it seems, missed the ring.”

“True,” I smiled.

“So let him improve his skills,” said Tajima.

“True,” I smiled. It was better to learn this while threatened with a ten-foot fall to the sand rather than a thousand-foot plunge to the ground.”

I saw another fellow, one of the people of Tajima, fall from the plank, and then submit, unprotestingly, to being shouted at and beaten.

“I was not trained like this,” I told Tajima.

“It was not necessary,” said Tajima. “Such training would have dishonored you.”

“How is that?” I asked.

“In your veins,” he said, “flowed the blood of warriors, of tarnsmen.”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“No one,” he said, “teaches the tarn to fly, the kaiila to run.”

Elsewhere in the open area, which was, it seems, a training plaza, some tarns were out, some with wings bound, others, farther along in their training, hobbled, a heavy log chained to a taloned foot, and, in each case, held in ropes, so that if the tarn charged one trainer, it could be restrained by three or four others. The ropes were choke ropes.

“I see no tarn goads,” I said.

“No,” said Tajima. “The mechanism might malfunction, the charge might fail. A discipline wand may be used, or even a branch, with a blow to the cheek or beak. Too, the strike of the goad, with its shower of sparks, might attract attention at night.”

In another area I saw a fellow mounted on a bird, the bird prevented from flying, hobbled, as were several others in the area. Its beak was strapped shut, so it could not turn and seize the rider. When it flung its head about, it was struck a terrible blow on the side of the head. Another fellow, further along, had the harnessing in place, with the rings and straps, by which he moved the head of the bird, back, or down, or to the sides.

“I note no slave girls here,” I said. “I thought they might be used, to content the men, to cook, to fill the tank with water, such things.”

“In the vicinity of tarns,” said Tajima, “it is best for women to be hooded and bound.”

“Doubtless on the whole,” I said. It was true that most women were terrified of tarns, and with good reason, particularly the more imaginative, intelligent women, well aware of the danger of the bird and their own slightness, weakness, and vulnerability. Indeed the only experience many women had with tarns was to be slung naked as one of a pair, one on each side, fastened to a saddle ring, or to be, if a single quarry, hauled aloft by a tarnsman’s braided, leather rope and then, their clothing cut from them, to be put on their back across the saddle, before their captor, their wrists crossed and bound to one ring, their ankles crossed and bound to another, their first writhing then, and crying out, to take place on the saddle, under the idle caresses of their captor, on the long flight back to his city or camp. It was less terrifying, of course, to be bound in a tarn basket, slung beneath a tarn, usually a draft tarn. “Some slaves work in the cots, in the cities,” I said. “They grow accustomed to tarns.”

“They are rather like stable sluts?” asked Tajima.

“Yes,” I said. I thought of the former Miss Wentworth. She was now, technically, a stable slut.

“The men,” said Tajima, “are brought food by tharlarion wagon, and, if they wish, they may visit the cook houses in the main camp.”

“Some relief is provided, I trust,” I said, “for the ferocity of other hungers, as well.”

“For slave hunger, of course,” said Tajima. “In the slave houses there are mats aligned, a row on each side, and each mat has its ring and chain, and slave. As the house is dark one carries a taper within, and picks out a slave. When one enters one is given a switch, which may be used, if one is not pleased, the switch being surrendered upon one’s exit.”

I supposed that some of the slaves brought in by Torgus and his fellows, whom I had encountered on the beach, former free women of Ar, might, if not yet disposed of to private masters, be found on the mats of the slave house. Far were such now, surely, traitresses, profiteers, and collaborators, from their jewels and palanquins, from their delicate viands and sweet wines, from their balcony gardens and lofty tower apartments. Muchly had their lives changed, and doubtless that of many others, as well, following the rising in Ar. So let their necks be closely and well encircled in slave steel, and let them lie in the darkness, waiting to be illuminated by a taper, thence to their knees and the kissing of feet, and beggings to be found pleasing.

My attention was then drawn to an area of the training plaza where a fellow was standing quietly before a hobbled tarn. Its beak was unbound. It lifted its unhobbled taloned foot as though to rake the fellow from head to foot. It opened and closed its large, razor like beak. In a tarn strike on a tabuk the animal’s back is usually broken by the strike, and then the beak, like a shearing engine, slashes through the back of the neck. The fellow had no disciplinary wand, no branch, no club in his grasp. He was defenseless if the bird were to attack. I would not have wished to be placed in that position. The tarn screamed hideously, menacingly. Then it made a hissing sound. That sound is intended to intimidate. It is not uncommon in intraspecific aggression. At that sound the smaller bird, or younger bird, or less aggressive bird, usually backs away. That response has presumably been selected for. Had it not been presumably there would be commonly but one male in a flock. The male which retreats one day, of course, may not retreat another day, and then a fight to the death, or to the disabling of the defeated, is likely to take place. Eventually the younger bird will grow stronger and fiercer and the older bird weaker and less fierce, and, sooner or later, a new Ubar, over the body of its torn, quivering foe, will scream its conquest, and its claiming of the flock.

But the fellow menaced by the tarn did not move.

“He will be a tarnsman,” I said.

“I think so,” said Tajima.

Then the fellow put his hand out, on the bird’s beak, which touch the bird, as though puzzled, suffered without protest. It is hard not to show fear in the presence of the tarn, but it is extremely dangerous to do so, for the tarn, as many animals, can sense fear, and this stimulates its aggression. The fellow, of course, was not another bird, or a tabuk, or verr, but a different life form, the human, which is not an unknown form of prey for a tarn, but it is certainly not its customary prey. Too, the tarn commonly attacks from the air. It is not unknown for tabuk to graze in its presence, if it has alighted. The fellow then embraced, as he could, its large head. The bird’s eyes gleamed, brightly, wickedly, but it did not pull away. The fellow then began to groom the bird, smoothing its feathers. The tarn raised its crested head to the sky, and then lowered its head, again, for the pleasure of the fellow’s touch. I could not hear, but I supposed the fellow was speaking to it, soothingly. Human speech, even a soft crooning, can settle a restless tarn. The girls who tend tarn cots sometimes, in the evening, after the feeding, sing to their charges. It is sometimes hard to know when the tarn is asleep as it, as many birds, sleeps with its eyes open. To be sure, interestingly, it apparently does not see then, although the eye is open. It seems to be something like a window through which no one at the time is looking. Occasionally in its sleep the tarn moves uneasily, and tosses its head, and a taloned foot will move, sometimes marking the floor of the cot. One supposes that the bird is dreaming, doubtless of flight, perhaps of the hunt. Some human beings, incidentally, occasionally sleep with their eyes open. This tends to be somewhat unnerving, for an observer. To be sure, sleepwalkers sleep with their eyes open, as well, but, clearly, they are seeing at the time, given their avoidance of obstacles, and such.