Planet of the Complete Bloody Psychopaths, Part 3
aka "Tarnsman of Gor", by John Norman, © 1966
::waves:: to furikku et al: a big shout-out to all my fellow truculently-critical Amazons in the trenches - there's a special treat for you at the end, I'm saving up John Norman's special new ebook preface containing John Norman's all third person description of John Norman's heroic stand against the rabid forces of the Left with their pitiful "egalitarianism" and cowardice and censorship of John Norman's bold heroic vision! I'll be sure to mark it with a big Coffee & Cats warning, but be careful when you get there...
And yes, John Norman's real name is Lange, and apparently he's still teaching philosophy in New York. (At least it wasn't actually NH, or I'd have to wonder if I had him for a prof, because my school used to be an all-men's institution back in the '60s...and that would be just more Worlds Colliding/< 6º than I could take.)
BTW, I said that Young!Tarl should have seen through Pa Cabot's claims of wanting to avert a wide-ranging war by stealing the enemy empire's Hearth Stone and thereby causing an uprising against their leader from whom the mandate of Heaven has clearly departed, because what immediately follows the loss of the mystic rock is civil war, as the former Ubar flees for his life, and a mad scramble for dominance among the remaining warlords follows upon - big shocker, that. The armies gather and the vultures -er, tarns - come from afar, what?
The Taming of the Shrew, Technobarb Version
When she stood up, now barefoot, her head came only a little higher than my chin. She might have been a bit taller than the average Gorean girl, but not much. She kept her eyes sullenly down, unwilling to raise them to look into my own. The daughter of a Ubar looked up to no man.
"I order you to protect me," she said, never taking her eyes from the ground.
"I do not take orders from the daughter of the Ubar of Ar," I said.
"You must take me with you," she said, eyes still downcast.
"Why?" I asked. After all, according to the rude codes of Gor, I owed her nothing; indeed, considering her attempt on my life, which had been foiled only by the fortuitous net of Nar's web, I would have been within my rights to slay her, abandoning her body to the water lizards. Naturally, I was not looking at things from precisely the Gorean point of view, but she would have no way of knowing that. How could she know that I would not treat her as- according to the rough justice of Gor- she deserved?
"You must protect me," she said. There was something of a pleading note in her voice.
"Why?" I asked, feeling angry.
"Because I need your help," she said. Then she angrily snapped, "You need not have made me say that!" She had lifted her head in fury, and she looked up into my eyes for an instant, and then suddenly lowered her head again, trembling with rage.
Both regulars round here and visitors from Tamora Pierce's blog will recognize (due to recent serendipitously-synched discussions in the 'sphere) our old friend the Spitfire (aka She-Devil, aka Vixen): that oh-so-Feisty/Spunky/Spirited/Strong Gal who crumbles like a stale Nilla Wafer as soon as she's displayed enough inappropriately-obnoxious temper to prove that she's Not A Doormat, and then proceeds to act just that.
Of course she doesn't act like that for every man - just the Hero who is Awesomely Manly - yet Sensitive enough, to realize that what she wants is to be thrown over his shoulder/saddle/on the ground and faded to black, just like in GWTW.
And of course, since the whole point of this, ultimately, is to show just how Awesomely Manly the Hero is, and not to actually give the Love Object any real character arc or personality, this means that none of her actions have to be consistent with each other, nor should they ever have any practical effect. In fact, it's actually required that she be useless, and that her efforts must be futile in order to show how comically absurd the idea that there could be a real Strong Woman who doesn't need to be saved by a man, and better yet, a gallant, chivalrous man who doesn't let her bitchiness to him stop him from saving her from her own bullheaded stupidity, even against her will, and then protecting her from herself as well as the Hordes Of Would-Be Rapists out there, until she realizes that's what she wanted all along.
It's the plot of every bodice-ripping romance novel.
It's also, surprise surprise, the plot of Tarnsman Of Gor. --And Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ("Indy! In-deeee!!!"), and how many other movies, TV shows, and books with Faux Action Heroines who are Too Stupid To Live in them? (It's always heartening to see that someone else has seen and called this stuff - "we are small but we are many" &c). (It even happens to Weinbaum's magnificently-Alexandrian anti-heroine Black Margot of Urbs*, in the end.)
This is why you hear so many femfans going "but I don't have a problem identifying with male charas, in fact I find it easier to do than to identify with the women in movies!"
To which I respond a resounding "No duh!!!"
Thing is, we're supposed to hate/despise/jeer at these women, because that's what the writer is doing. We're NOT supposed to identify with them - in fact, they're made to be impossible to identify with, these so-called heroines of the Manstream. (Sometimes Story and Character take over and they end up having positive qualities and being magnetic charas in their own limited ways, but that's always accidental.) It isn't just that the Spitfire has to (has to HAS to) not upstage the always-male Star. It's worse than that.
They're the author anti-avatar - the embodiment of everything the (almost always) male author loathes/hates/resents/desires/projects onto women, distilled down into one impossible package of physical beauty, physical weakness, moral weakness (including the Withholding Of Sex, a very great sin), and weakness of character combined with the utter absence of any personality, setting them apart from the male characters in yet another key regard.
Thus we get Tarl Cabot's great Love Interest, who is presented to us as someone who is utterly unadmirable, unlikeable, unintelligent and spiritually monstrous - but physically beautiful, and that apparently makes up for everything else, because unlike the Ambiguous Villainesses of Mononoke Hime or Nausicaa she has no other redeeming Tragic Virtues, ideals or goals that are worthy in themselves but which require Evil Be Done That Good May Come Of It.
For Princess Brat, though, even her piety and courage in the service of Ubar and Country is not accounted admirable: it's like the liberal arts dudes at my college who kept going on and on and On and ON about how women ipse facto couldn't BE virtuous, because the word "virtue" comes from Latin vir meaning "male" and therefore it was a contradiction in terms to speak of female and virtues together, QED! Her valor in fighting for their Hearth-stone despite impossible odds, which is mandatory for a Gor guy, is not reckoned at all, because she is just a woman.
Instead of being made the hero's brother-in-arms in her defeat, she's got to be put to shame.
There was a long pause in which neither of us spoke.
"I know what you are waiting for," said the daughter of the Ubar, strangely calm after her earlier fury- unnaturally calm, it seemed to me. I didn't understand her. What was it she thought I was waiting for? Then, to my astonishment, the daughter of the Ubar Marlenus, daughter of the Ubar of Ar, knelt before me, a simple warrior of Ko-ro-ba, and lowered her head, lifting and extending her arms, the wrists crossed. It was the same simple ceremony that Sana had performed before me in the chamber of my father, back at Ko-ro-ba- the submission of the captive female. Without raising her eyes from the ground, the daughter of the Ubar said in a clear, distinct voice: "I submit myself."
Later I wished that I had had binding fiber to lash her so innocently profferred wrists. I was speechless for a moment, but then, remembering that harsh Gorean custom required me either to accept the submission or slay the captive, I took her wrists in my hands and said, "I accept your submission." I then lifted her gently to her feet.
I led her by the hand toward Nar, helped her to the glossy, hairy back of the spider, and climbed up after her. Wordlessly Nar moved rapidly through the marsh, his eight delicate feet scarcely seeming to dip into the greenish water. Once he stepped into quicksand, and his back tilted suddenly. I held the daughter of the Ubar tightly as the insect righted himself, floating in the muck for a second, and then managing to free himself with his eight scrambling legs.
After a journey of an hour or so Nar stopped and pointed ahead with one of his forelegs. About three or four pasangs distant, through the thinning swamp trees, I could see the verdant meadows of Ar's Sa-Tarna land. The mechanical voice of Nar spoke. "I do not wish to approach nearer to the land. It is dangerous for the Spider People."
I slid from his back and helped the daughter of the Ubar down. We stood together in the shallow water at the side of the gigantic insect. I placed my hand on Nar's grotesque face, and the gentle monster lightly closed his mandibles on my arm and then opened them. "I wish you well," said Nar, using a common Gorean phrase of farewell.
I responded similarly and further wished health and safety to his people.
The insect placed his forelegs on my shoulders. "I do not ask your name, Warrior," he said, "nor will I repeat the name of your city before the Submitted One, but know that you and your city are honored by the Spider People." [The empire of Ar was very oppressive and contemptuous towards the peaceful, simple Spider People, so they are glad to be able to be of service to the man who stole the sacred rock of Ar...]
"Thank you," I said. "My city and I are honored."
The mechanical voice spoke once more. "Beware the daughter of the Ubar."
"She has submitted herself," I replied, confident that the promise of her submission would be fulfilled.
As Nar raced backward, he lifted a foreleg in a gesture that I interpreted as an attempt to wave. I waved back at him, touched, and my grotesque ally disappeared into the marshes.
Gee, what do you want to bet that this should be accompanied by Ominous Music? Of course somebody else here is rather Too Stupid To Live, I'd say, given all their brief past history - but when it's The Young Hero acting like a clueless ninny, aka Charlie Brown And The Football, it's supposed to be a sign of his Winsome Innocence and Open & Honorable Nature, I guess.
We had been wading for about twenty minutes when the girl suddenly screamed, and I spun around. She had sunk to her waist in the marsh water. She had slipped into a pocket of quicksand. She cried out hysterically. Cautiously I tried to approach her, but felt the ooze slipping away beneath my feet. I tried to reach her with my sword belt, but it was too short. The tarn-goad, which had been thrust in the belt, dropped into the water, and I lost it. [More Ominous Music]
The girl sank deeper in the mire, the surface of the water circling her armpits. She was screaming wildly, all control lost in the face of the slow, ugly death awaiting her. "Don't struggle!" I cried. But her movements were hysterical, like those of a mad animal. The veil!" I cried. "Unwind it, throw it to me!" Her hands tried to tear at the veil, but she was unable to unwind it, in her terror and in the moment of time left to her. Then the muck crept upward to her horrified eyes, and her head slipped under the greenish waters, her hands clutching wildly at the air.
I frantically looked about, caught sight of a half-submerged log some yards away, protruding upward out of the marsh water. Regardless of the possible danger, not feeling my way, I splashed to the log, jerking on it, hauling on it with all my might. In what seemed like hours but must have been a matter of only a few seconds, it gave, leaping upward out of the mud. I half-carried, half-floated it, shoving it toward the place where the daughter of the Ubar had slipped under the water. I clung to the log, floating in the shallow water over the quicksand, and reached down again and again into the mire.
At last my hand clutched something- the girl's wrist- and I drew her slowly upward out of the sand. My heart leaped with joy as I heard her whimpering, choking gasps, her lungs spasmodically sucking in the fetid but vivifying air. I shoved the log back and finally, carrying the filthy body soaked in its absurd garments, made my way to a ledge of green, dry land at the edge of the swamp.
I set her down on a bed of green clover. Beyond it, some hundred yards away, I could see the border of a yellow field of Sa-Tarna and a yellow thicket of Ka-la-na trees. I sat beside the girl, exhausted. I smiled to myself; the proud daughter of the Ubar in all her imperial regalia quite literally stank, stank of the swamps and the mud and of the perspiration exuded beneath that heavy covering, stank of heat and fear.
See what I mean about needing to Humiliate The Bitch? It's not enough just to have a gratuitous rescue - because I'll give Norman one pass on the swamp-lizard with the chameleon tongue scene, just for the sake of Honoring The Tradition - but there's no earthly reason that it's likelier that the Ubar's daughter would fall into quicksand when Tarl had already crossed the same stretch of ground, and this is inserted simply so that he gets Yet Another Opportunity to save the ungrateful wench, just so that his Nice Guy status and deservingness of The Pussy can be established beyond the shadow of a doubt.
(She hates him! and hurts him cruelly! and tried to kill him! but he spared her life! he rescued her from the monster! he lets her stay with him! he pulls her out of quicksand! and let's just forget about how the only reason he's able to rescue her let alone over again, or to spare her in the first place, is that he's making an attack on people he doesn't know from Adam, on his dad-he-hardly-knows' say-so, and taking away the thing that rational or not is key to their group's survival. And despite this, he still expects her to be all gosh-golly-you're-swell-mister grateful! Gee, arrogant much?)
But then you get this whole protracted inversion of the standard Male Gaze, where Tarl looks at her and despises her for being dirty and disheveled and smelly after her ordeal of being carried off, surviving a tarn battle, escaping into the wilds while it's eating its prey, trying to cross the Swamp to get home despite being unarmed and alone and without suitable clothes or equipment, because it's her duty and she has no place else to go, and nearly falling prey to a Rodent Of Unusual Size carnivorous giant lizard.
Somehow, after a day and a night in the cockpit saddle without so much as a splash in a stream, plus another day tromping through the swamp fighting monsters in the mud, I bet Young Master Cabot isn't so daisy-fresh and sharply-pressed himself.
Doesn't matter, he's the Hero, the Gary-Stu, and so it isn't hypocrisy for him to sneer and get off on her disarray. Women are supposed to be pretty and clean and gracious all the time no matter what, everybody knows that!
And anyway she's a Bad Girl, she's mean to her own slaves** and bigoted to the pacifist Spider-people and haughty to her own "rescuer" the Noble Tarl, so it's just What She Has Coming for being The Bitch. (Remember what I said about not being able to write a world bigger than your own head? This goes double for viewers/readers, too.) It's no more gross hypocrisy than it is for him to mock her for wearing the very garments which the society which he accepts forces upon her as the price of not getting raped because She Was Asking For It By Wearing That Outfit - a modality which Cabot the Red accepts without question, putting him clearly among the some 30% of Britons who believe this trope today.
"You have saved my life again," said the daughter of the Ubar.
I nodded, not wanting to talk about anything.
"Are we out of the swamp?" she asked.
I assented.
This seemed to please her. With an animal movement, contradicting the formality of her garments, she lay backward on the clover, looking up at the sky, undoubtedly as exhausted as I was. Moreover, she was only a girl. I felt tender toward her. "I ask your favor," she said.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I'm hungry," she said.
"I am, too," I laughed, suddenly aware that I had not eaten anything since the night before. I was ravenous. "Over there," I said, "are some Ka-la-na trees. Wait here and I'll gather some fruit."
"No, I'll come with you- if you permit me," she said.
Awww, she's softening up towards dear sweet Tarl! Or is she? After all, she is a woman, and Woman as we all know so well is Fickle and Deceitful. But note well that little throwaway fragment, about her "contradictory" "animal-like" movement - this is a tell that under the hard ladylike surface, she's really just a whore like the rest. (Nevermind that the correct form for flopping over on your back after being hauled out of a bog is hardly something that they cover in Finishing School...)
I was surprised at this deference on the part of the daughter of the Ubar, but recalled that she had submitted herself.
Cue the Ominous Music again!
"Surely," I said. "I would be pleased with your company."
I took her arm, but she drew back. "Having submitted myself," she said, "it is my part to follow."
"That's silly," I said. "Walk with me."
But she dropped her head shyly, shaking it. "I may not," she said.
"Do as you please," I laughed, and set out for the Ka-la-na trees. She followed, meekly, I thought.
We were near the Ka-la-na trees when I heard a slight rustle of brocade behind me. I turned, just in time to seize the wrist of the daughter of the Ubar as she struck savagely down at my back with a long, slender dagger. She howled with rage as I twisted the weapon from her hand.
"You animal!" I yelled, blind with fury. "You dirty, filthy, stinking, ungrateful animal!"
--Later on her father traps him by pretending to be a helpless crippled leper beset by giant leopards and when the Noble Tarl comes dashing unselfishly to his rescue (thus demonstrating yet again his Pure & Spotless Heart), flings off his filthy, shameful robes and summons his tarnsmen to the ambush. They then bind and beat Tarl for days before condemning him to be impaled, albeit after an exchange the ex-Ubar commutes it to being torn in two by wild tame horses tarns.
To which Tarl responds by falling utterly, completely, swooningly, unquestioningly in love with her dad...Seriously. He doesn't just shrug it off as Nothing Personal, he rhapsodizes over Marlenus' rugged good looks, and changes his mind about whether or not he was suited to be Planetary Emperor after all, and aids his attempts to retake the city in the wake of the loss of the Hearth Stone, although he justifies this in part by his purported desire for the Ubar's Daughter.
Again, it's Just Different for guys. Semi-Barbaric Princesses don't get to resort to every sneaky trick and tactic available to effect their escapes and revenges, that's just for Semi-Barbaric Kings.
Wild with anger, I picked up the dagger and for an instant felt tempted to plunge it into the heart of the treacherous girl. Angrily I shoved it in my belt.
"You submitted," I said to her.
In spite of my hold on her wrist, which must have been tight and painful, the daughter of Marlenus straightened herself before me and said arrogantly, "You tharlarion! Do you think that the daughter of the Ubar of all Gor would submit to such as you?"
Cruelly I forced her to her knees before me, the filthy, proud wench.
UST! They hate each other, so obviously they're made for each other!
She cursed me, her greenish eyes blazing with hatred. "Is this how you treat the daughter of a Ubar?"
"I will show you how I treat the most treacherous wench on all Gor," I exclaimed, releasing her wrist. With both hands I wrenched the veil back from her face, thrusting my hand under it to fasten my fist in her hair, and then, as if she were a common tavern girl or a camp slut, I dragged the daughter of the Ubar of an Gor to the shelter of the Ka-la-na trees. Among the trees, on the clover, I threw her to my feet. She tried frantically to readjust the folds of her veil, but with both hands I tore it fully away, and she lay at my feet, as it is said on Gor, face-stripped. A marvelous cascade of hair, as black as the wing of my tarn, loosened behind her, falling to the ground. I saw magnificent olive skin and those wild green eyes and features that were breathtakingly beautiful. The mouth, which might have been magnificent, was twisted with rage. "I like it better," I said, "being able to see the face of my enemy. Do not replace your veil."
In fury she glared up at me, shamed as my eyes boldly regarded the beauty of her face. She made no move to replace the veil.
As I looked upon her, incredibly perhaps, my rage dissipated and with it the vengeful desires that had filled me. In anger I had dragged her, helpless, mine by all the Codes of Gor, to the shelter of the trees. Yet now once again I saw her as a girl, this time as a beautiful girl, not to be abused.
"You will understand," I said, "that I can no longer trust you."
"Of course not," she said. "I am your enemy."
See, girls? As long as you're helpless, and docile - and pretty - a guy won't rape you or smack you around as the price of his protection! It's your obligation to be passive and pretty so as not to provoke him to violence - and if you aren't, well, it's your own damn fault, wench.
Actually, the moral that most of us readers would take from this is that not only is Tarl not fit to be sent out on a critical Top Secret mission without a minder, but he's really only fit for the role of Henchman - he even manages to do the classic Face Heel Turn in the course of the first book. (Or should that be Heel Face Turn?) But I rather think what we're supposed to take from this is how Chivalrously Noble and therefore, how disadvantaged poor naive sheltered young Oxford grad Tarl is, when dealing with the Deadlier of the Species™ - I mean, my god, he didn't rape her after all! How much more proof do you need that he's A Nice Guy™ the Shining Hero? He's practically Galahad Reborn!
"Accordingly I can take no chances with you."
"I am not afraid to die," she said, her lip trembling slightly. "Be quick."
Awwww, girl bravery! Ain't it cuuuute?
"Remove your clothing," I said.
"No!" she cried, shrinking back. She rose to her knees before me, putting her head to my feet. "With all my heart, Warrior," she pleaded, "the daughter of a Ubar, on her knees, begs your favor. Let it be only the blade and quickly."
I threw back my head and laughed. The daughter of the Ubar feared that I would force her to serve my pleasure- I, a common soldier. But then, shamefacedly, I admitted to myself that I had, while dragging her to the trees, intended to take her and that it had only been the sudden spell of her beauty which, paradoxically enough, had claimed my respect, forced me to recognize that selfishly I was about to injure or dominate what Nar would have referred to as a rational creature. I felt ashamed and resolved that I would do no harm to this girl, though she was as wicked and faithless as a tharlarion.
...just in case you needed it spelled out for you...
"I do not intend to force you to serve my pleasure," I said, "nor do I intend to injure you."
She lifted her head and looked at me wonderingly.
Then, to my amazement, she stood up and regarded me contemptuously. "If you had been a true warrior," she said, "you would have taken me on the back of your tarn, above the clouds, even before we had passed the outermost ramparts of Ar, and you would have thrown my robes to the streets below to show my people what had been the fate of the daughter of their Ubar." Evidently she believed that I had been afraid to harm her and that she, the daughter of a Ubar, remained above the perils and obligations of the common captive. She looked at me insolently, angry that she had so demeaned herself as to kneel before a coward.
This, as I noted in my post "You Can't Write A World Bigger Than Your Head," is a HUUUUGE part of latter WoT - the idea that a Strong Woman™ must despise the easygoing chivalrous chap for being "weak", until he wisens up and starts treating her like trash, aka becomes "masterful." It's what utterly, foully, nauseatingly poisons the whole Perrin/Faile relationship, which is a shame because Perrin is the only likeable one of the three, altho' he quickly becomes Too Stupid To Live and remains so, and the Big Honking Target Painted On His Back and Ominious Music that plays whenever he shows up early on turn out to be a red herring, given all the other people around him who die horribly while he plods through angsting and angsting and brooding and angsting some more, the Emo Werewolf (Sort-of Division)... It's like Jordan just based Faile on the Ubar's Daughter, and let her have some Faux Action Girl adventures to show how enlightened he is (remember Perrin ALWAYS has to run and rescue her, she's nothing more than his Adventure Muse, q.v. Graves.)
She tossed her head back and snorted. "Well, Warrior," she said, "what would you have me do?"
"Remove your clothing," I said.
She looked on me with rage.
"I told you," I said, "I am not going to take any more chances with you. I have to find out if you have any more weapons."
"No man may look upon the daughter of the Ubar," she said.
"Either you will remove your robes," I said, "or I shall."
In fury the hands of the Ubar's daughter began to fumble with the hooks of her heavy robes.
She had scarcely removed a braided loop from its hook when her eyes suddenly lit with triumph and a sound of joy escaped her lips.
"Don't move," said a voice behind me. "You are covered with a crossbow."
Don't tell me you didn't see this coming from a league away - or this:
"Well done, Men of Ar," exclaimed the daughter of the Ubar.
I turned slowly, my hands away from my body, and found myself facing two of the foot soldiers of Ar, one of them an officer, the other of common rank. The latter had trained his crossbow on my breast. At that distance he could not have missed, and if he had fired at that range, most probably the quarrel would have passed through my body and disappeared in the woods behind. The initial velocity of a quarrel is the better part of a pasang per second.
The officer, a swaggering fellow whose helmet, though polished, bore the marks of combat, approached me, holding his sword to me, and seized my weapon from its scabbard and the girl's dagger from my belt. He looked at the signet on the dagger hilt and seemed pleased. He placed it in his own belt and took from a pouch at his side a pair of manacles, which he snapped on my wrists. He then turned to the girl.
"You are Talena," he said, tapping the dagger, "daughter of Marlenus?"
"You see I wear the robes of the Ubar's daughter," said the girl, scarcely deigning to respond to the officer's question. She paid her rescuers no more attention, treating them as if they were no more worthy of her gratitude than the dust beneath her feet. She strode to face me, her eyes mocking and triumphant, seeing me shackled and in her power. She spat viciously in my face, which insult I accepted, unmoving. Then, with her right hand, she slapped me savagely with all the force and fury of her body. My cheek felt as though it had been branded.
"Are you Talena?" asked the officer, once again, patiently. "Daughter of Marlenus?"
"I am indeed, Heroes of Ar," replied the girl proudly, turning to the soldiers. "I am Talena, daughter of Marlenus, Ubar of all Gor."
"Good," said the officer, and then nodded to his subordinate. "Strip her and put her in slave bracelets."
[...]
I lunged forward, but was checked by the point of the officer's sword. The common soldier, setting the crossbow on the ground, strode to the daughter of the Ubar, who stood as though stunned, her face drained of color. The soldier, beginning at the high, ornate collar of the girl's robes, began to break the braided loops, ripping them loose from their hooks; methodically he tore her robes apart and pulled them down and over her shoulders; in half a dozen tugs the heavy layers of her garments had been jerked downward until she stood naked, her robes in a filthy pile about her feet. Her body, though stained with the mire of the swamp, was exquisitely beautiful.
"Why are you doing this?" I demanded.
"Marlenus has fled," said the officer. "The city, is in chaos. The Initiates [Priestly caste] have assumed command and have ordered that Marlenus and all members of his household and family are to be publicly impaled on the walls of Ar."
A moan escaped the girl.
But as you can also probably guess without reading the book, Tarl is inspired to superhuman Feats of Strength when he sees the officer gloating as he collars Talena and forcing her to kiss him, and with his manacle-fu kills the one guard, pounces on the officer and tries to throttle him, to be rendered helpless as the officer draws his dagger (!) but is saved when Talena takes the officer's sword and chops off the guy's hand - which instantly kills him (!!), at which point Talena freezes and goes into mental shock at what she's done, and has to be treated like a halfwit and "managed" by Tarl:
Talena, naked, still held the bloody sword, her eyes glassy with the horror of what she had done.
"Drop the sword," I commanded harshly, fearing it would occur to her to strike me with it. The girl dropped the weapon, sinking to her knees and covering her face with her hands. The daughter of the Ubar was apparently not as inhuman as I had supposed.
As you don't even need to guess, this is the beginning of the Thawing of the Ice Princess...
Next: wacky hijinx on the Road To Ko-ro-ba, as random coincidences conspire to part the would-be-lovers just as they begin to own up to their growing attraction to each other, mostly expressed in verbal abuse and humiliation, natch. Don't worry! Eventually our Lust Object will attain her lifelong dream of being publically raped on top of a giant insane bird of prey...
* She's partly Mexican, so she looks Exotic, is all her title means. Weinbaum killed off all black Americans in his long-ago apocalypse, possibly via targeted bio-weapons (it's presented as a history all blurred in the subsequent Dark Age) & thus avoids having to deal with existing ethnicities & current issues in his posited future. The books, like his Martian Odyssey are shocking in their combination of scholarly presentiment for the genre, progressive viewpoints for genre and era, and appallingly retrograde attitudes even back in 1933 - I mean, it all ends in an embrace by the hero of 24/7 surveillance "benevolent" totalitarianism over the cattle-like bred-for-stupidity masses and the ugly or just alien looking mutants, so long as it's done by enlightened Immortals like Margot and her brother and anyone deemed worthy of joining them - like him. It's not like people weren't taking to the streets over this when the books were written...and earlier even.
** [from a little later on in Chapter 7] "How do you know all this?" I asked.
"The women of the Walled Gardens know whatever happens on Gor," she replied, and I sensed the intrigue, the spying and treachery that must ferment within the gardens. "I forced my slave girls to lie with soldiers, with merchants and builders, physicians and scribes," she said, "and I found out a great deal." I was dismayed at this- the cool, calculating exploitation of her girls by the daughter of the Ubar, merely to gain information.
"What if your slaves refused to do this for you?" I asked.
"I would whip them," said the daughter of the Ubar coldly.
::waves:: to furikku et al: a big shout-out to all my fellow truculently-critical Amazons in the trenches - there's a special treat for you at the end, I'm saving up John Norman's special new ebook preface containing John Norman's all third person description of John Norman's heroic stand against the rabid forces of the Left with their pitiful "egalitarianism" and cowardice and censorship of John Norman's bold heroic vision! I'll be sure to mark it with a big Coffee & Cats warning, but be careful when you get there...
And yes, John Norman's real name is Lange, and apparently he's still teaching philosophy in New York. (At least it wasn't actually NH, or I'd have to wonder if I had him for a prof, because my school used to be an all-men's institution back in the '60s...and that would be just more Worlds Colliding/< 6º than I could take.)
BTW, I said that Young!Tarl should have seen through Pa Cabot's claims of wanting to avert a wide-ranging war by stealing the enemy empire's Hearth Stone and thereby causing an uprising against their leader from whom the mandate of Heaven has clearly departed, because what immediately follows the loss of the mystic rock is civil war, as the former Ubar flees for his life, and a mad scramble for dominance among the remaining warlords follows upon - big shocker, that. The armies gather and the vultures -er, tarns - come from afar, what?
The Taming of the Shrew, Technobarb Version
When she stood up, now barefoot, her head came only a little higher than my chin. She might have been a bit taller than the average Gorean girl, but not much. She kept her eyes sullenly down, unwilling to raise them to look into my own. The daughter of a Ubar looked up to no man.
"I order you to protect me," she said, never taking her eyes from the ground.
"I do not take orders from the daughter of the Ubar of Ar," I said.
"You must take me with you," she said, eyes still downcast.
"Why?" I asked. After all, according to the rude codes of Gor, I owed her nothing; indeed, considering her attempt on my life, which had been foiled only by the fortuitous net of Nar's web, I would have been within my rights to slay her, abandoning her body to the water lizards. Naturally, I was not looking at things from precisely the Gorean point of view, but she would have no way of knowing that. How could she know that I would not treat her as- according to the rough justice of Gor- she deserved?
"You must protect me," she said. There was something of a pleading note in her voice.
"Why?" I asked, feeling angry.
"Because I need your help," she said. Then she angrily snapped, "You need not have made me say that!" She had lifted her head in fury, and she looked up into my eyes for an instant, and then suddenly lowered her head again, trembling with rage.
Both regulars round here and visitors from Tamora Pierce's blog will recognize (due to recent serendipitously-synched discussions in the 'sphere) our old friend the Spitfire (aka She-Devil, aka Vixen): that oh-so-Feisty/Spunky/Spirited/Strong Gal who crumbles like a stale Nilla Wafer as soon as she's displayed enough inappropriately-obnoxious temper to prove that she's Not A Doormat, and then proceeds to act just that.
Of course she doesn't act like that for every man - just the Hero who is Awesomely Manly - yet Sensitive enough, to realize that what she wants is to be thrown over his shoulder/saddle/on the ground and faded to black, just like in GWTW.
And of course, since the whole point of this, ultimately, is to show just how Awesomely Manly the Hero is, and not to actually give the Love Object any real character arc or personality, this means that none of her actions have to be consistent with each other, nor should they ever have any practical effect. In fact, it's actually required that she be useless, and that her efforts must be futile in order to show how comically absurd the idea that there could be a real Strong Woman who doesn't need to be saved by a man, and better yet, a gallant, chivalrous man who doesn't let her bitchiness to him stop him from saving her from her own bullheaded stupidity, even against her will, and then protecting her from herself as well as the Hordes Of Would-Be Rapists out there, until she realizes that's what she wanted all along.
It's the plot of every bodice-ripping romance novel.
It's also, surprise surprise, the plot of Tarnsman Of Gor. --And Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ("Indy! In-deeee!!!"), and how many other movies, TV shows, and books with Faux Action Heroines who are Too Stupid To Live in them? (It's always heartening to see that someone else has seen and called this stuff - "we are small but we are many" &c). (It even happens to Weinbaum's magnificently-Alexandrian anti-heroine Black Margot of Urbs*, in the end.)
This is why you hear so many femfans going "but I don't have a problem identifying with male charas, in fact I find it easier to do than to identify with the women in movies!"
To which I respond a resounding "No duh!!!"
Thing is, we're supposed to hate/despise/jeer at these women, because that's what the writer is doing. We're NOT supposed to identify with them - in fact, they're made to be impossible to identify with, these so-called heroines of the Manstream. (Sometimes Story and Character take over and they end up having positive qualities and being magnetic charas in their own limited ways, but that's always accidental.) It isn't just that the Spitfire has to (has to HAS to) not upstage the always-male Star. It's worse than that.
They're the author anti-avatar - the embodiment of everything the (almost always) male author loathes/hates/resents/desires/projects onto women, distilled down into one impossible package of physical beauty, physical weakness, moral weakness (including the Withholding Of Sex, a very great sin), and weakness of character combined with the utter absence of any personality, setting them apart from the male characters in yet another key regard.
Thus we get Tarl Cabot's great Love Interest, who is presented to us as someone who is utterly unadmirable, unlikeable, unintelligent and spiritually monstrous - but physically beautiful, and that apparently makes up for everything else, because unlike the Ambiguous Villainesses of Mononoke Hime or Nausicaa she has no other redeeming Tragic Virtues, ideals or goals that are worthy in themselves but which require Evil Be Done That Good May Come Of It.
For Princess Brat, though, even her piety and courage in the service of Ubar and Country is not accounted admirable: it's like the liberal arts dudes at my college who kept going on and on and On and ON about how women ipse facto couldn't BE virtuous, because the word "virtue" comes from Latin vir meaning "male" and therefore it was a contradiction in terms to speak of female and virtues together, QED! Her valor in fighting for their Hearth-stone despite impossible odds, which is mandatory for a Gor guy, is not reckoned at all, because she is just a woman.
Instead of being made the hero's brother-in-arms in her defeat, she's got to be put to shame.
There was a long pause in which neither of us spoke.
"I know what you are waiting for," said the daughter of the Ubar, strangely calm after her earlier fury- unnaturally calm, it seemed to me. I didn't understand her. What was it she thought I was waiting for? Then, to my astonishment, the daughter of the Ubar Marlenus, daughter of the Ubar of Ar, knelt before me, a simple warrior of Ko-ro-ba, and lowered her head, lifting and extending her arms, the wrists crossed. It was the same simple ceremony that Sana had performed before me in the chamber of my father, back at Ko-ro-ba- the submission of the captive female. Without raising her eyes from the ground, the daughter of the Ubar said in a clear, distinct voice: "I submit myself."
Later I wished that I had had binding fiber to lash her so innocently profferred wrists. I was speechless for a moment, but then, remembering that harsh Gorean custom required me either to accept the submission or slay the captive, I took her wrists in my hands and said, "I accept your submission." I then lifted her gently to her feet.
I led her by the hand toward Nar, helped her to the glossy, hairy back of the spider, and climbed up after her. Wordlessly Nar moved rapidly through the marsh, his eight delicate feet scarcely seeming to dip into the greenish water. Once he stepped into quicksand, and his back tilted suddenly. I held the daughter of the Ubar tightly as the insect righted himself, floating in the muck for a second, and then managing to free himself with his eight scrambling legs.
After a journey of an hour or so Nar stopped and pointed ahead with one of his forelegs. About three or four pasangs distant, through the thinning swamp trees, I could see the verdant meadows of Ar's Sa-Tarna land. The mechanical voice of Nar spoke. "I do not wish to approach nearer to the land. It is dangerous for the Spider People."
I slid from his back and helped the daughter of the Ubar down. We stood together in the shallow water at the side of the gigantic insect. I placed my hand on Nar's grotesque face, and the gentle monster lightly closed his mandibles on my arm and then opened them. "I wish you well," said Nar, using a common Gorean phrase of farewell.
I responded similarly and further wished health and safety to his people.
The insect placed his forelegs on my shoulders. "I do not ask your name, Warrior," he said, "nor will I repeat the name of your city before the Submitted One, but know that you and your city are honored by the Spider People." [The empire of Ar was very oppressive and contemptuous towards the peaceful, simple Spider People, so they are glad to be able to be of service to the man who stole the sacred rock of Ar...]
"Thank you," I said. "My city and I are honored."
The mechanical voice spoke once more. "Beware the daughter of the Ubar."
"She has submitted herself," I replied, confident that the promise of her submission would be fulfilled.
As Nar raced backward, he lifted a foreleg in a gesture that I interpreted as an attempt to wave. I waved back at him, touched, and my grotesque ally disappeared into the marshes.
Gee, what do you want to bet that this should be accompanied by Ominous Music? Of course somebody else here is rather Too Stupid To Live, I'd say, given all their brief past history - but when it's The Young Hero acting like a clueless ninny, aka Charlie Brown And The Football, it's supposed to be a sign of his Winsome Innocence and Open & Honorable Nature, I guess.
We had been wading for about twenty minutes when the girl suddenly screamed, and I spun around. She had sunk to her waist in the marsh water. She had slipped into a pocket of quicksand. She cried out hysterically. Cautiously I tried to approach her, but felt the ooze slipping away beneath my feet. I tried to reach her with my sword belt, but it was too short. The tarn-goad, which had been thrust in the belt, dropped into the water, and I lost it. [More Ominous Music]
The girl sank deeper in the mire, the surface of the water circling her armpits. She was screaming wildly, all control lost in the face of the slow, ugly death awaiting her. "Don't struggle!" I cried. But her movements were hysterical, like those of a mad animal. The veil!" I cried. "Unwind it, throw it to me!" Her hands tried to tear at the veil, but she was unable to unwind it, in her terror and in the moment of time left to her. Then the muck crept upward to her horrified eyes, and her head slipped under the greenish waters, her hands clutching wildly at the air.
I frantically looked about, caught sight of a half-submerged log some yards away, protruding upward out of the marsh water. Regardless of the possible danger, not feeling my way, I splashed to the log, jerking on it, hauling on it with all my might. In what seemed like hours but must have been a matter of only a few seconds, it gave, leaping upward out of the mud. I half-carried, half-floated it, shoving it toward the place where the daughter of the Ubar had slipped under the water. I clung to the log, floating in the shallow water over the quicksand, and reached down again and again into the mire.
At last my hand clutched something- the girl's wrist- and I drew her slowly upward out of the sand. My heart leaped with joy as I heard her whimpering, choking gasps, her lungs spasmodically sucking in the fetid but vivifying air. I shoved the log back and finally, carrying the filthy body soaked in its absurd garments, made my way to a ledge of green, dry land at the edge of the swamp.
I set her down on a bed of green clover. Beyond it, some hundred yards away, I could see the border of a yellow field of Sa-Tarna and a yellow thicket of Ka-la-na trees. I sat beside the girl, exhausted. I smiled to myself; the proud daughter of the Ubar in all her imperial regalia quite literally stank, stank of the swamps and the mud and of the perspiration exuded beneath that heavy covering, stank of heat and fear.
See what I mean about needing to Humiliate The Bitch? It's not enough just to have a gratuitous rescue - because I'll give Norman one pass on the swamp-lizard with the chameleon tongue scene, just for the sake of Honoring The Tradition - but there's no earthly reason that it's likelier that the Ubar's daughter would fall into quicksand when Tarl had already crossed the same stretch of ground, and this is inserted simply so that he gets Yet Another Opportunity to save the ungrateful wench, just so that his Nice Guy status and deservingness of The Pussy can be established beyond the shadow of a doubt.
(She hates him! and hurts him cruelly! and tried to kill him! but he spared her life! he rescued her from the monster! he lets her stay with him! he pulls her out of quicksand! and let's just forget about how the only reason he's able to rescue her let alone over again, or to spare her in the first place, is that he's making an attack on people he doesn't know from Adam, on his dad-he-hardly-knows' say-so, and taking away the thing that rational or not is key to their group's survival. And despite this, he still expects her to be all gosh-golly-you're-swell-mister grateful! Gee, arrogant much?)
But then you get this whole protracted inversion of the standard Male Gaze, where Tarl looks at her and despises her for being dirty and disheveled and smelly after her ordeal of being carried off, surviving a tarn battle, escaping into the wilds while it's eating its prey, trying to cross the Swamp to get home despite being unarmed and alone and without suitable clothes or equipment, because it's her duty and she has no place else to go, and nearly falling prey to a Rodent Of Unusual Size carnivorous giant lizard.
Somehow, after a day and a night in the cockpit saddle without so much as a splash in a stream, plus another day tromping through the swamp fighting monsters in the mud, I bet Young Master Cabot isn't so daisy-fresh and sharply-pressed himself.
Doesn't matter, he's the Hero, the Gary-Stu, and so it isn't hypocrisy for him to sneer and get off on her disarray. Women are supposed to be pretty and clean and gracious all the time no matter what, everybody knows that!
And anyway she's a Bad Girl, she's mean to her own slaves** and bigoted to the pacifist Spider-people and haughty to her own "rescuer" the Noble Tarl, so it's just What She Has Coming for being The Bitch. (Remember what I said about not being able to write a world bigger than your own head? This goes double for viewers/readers, too.) It's no more gross hypocrisy than it is for him to mock her for wearing the very garments which the society which he accepts forces upon her as the price of not getting raped because She Was Asking For It By Wearing That Outfit - a modality which Cabot the Red accepts without question, putting him clearly among the some 30% of Britons who believe this trope today.
"You have saved my life again," said the daughter of the Ubar.
I nodded, not wanting to talk about anything.
"Are we out of the swamp?" she asked.
I assented.
This seemed to please her. With an animal movement, contradicting the formality of her garments, she lay backward on the clover, looking up at the sky, undoubtedly as exhausted as I was. Moreover, she was only a girl. I felt tender toward her. "I ask your favor," she said.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I'm hungry," she said.
"I am, too," I laughed, suddenly aware that I had not eaten anything since the night before. I was ravenous. "Over there," I said, "are some Ka-la-na trees. Wait here and I'll gather some fruit."
"No, I'll come with you- if you permit me," she said.
Awww, she's softening up towards dear sweet Tarl! Or is she? After all, she is a woman, and Woman as we all know so well is Fickle and Deceitful. But note well that little throwaway fragment, about her "contradictory" "animal-like" movement - this is a tell that under the hard ladylike surface, she's really just a whore like the rest. (Nevermind that the correct form for flopping over on your back after being hauled out of a bog is hardly something that they cover in Finishing School...)
I was surprised at this deference on the part of the daughter of the Ubar, but recalled that she had submitted herself.
Cue the Ominous Music again!
"Surely," I said. "I would be pleased with your company."
I took her arm, but she drew back. "Having submitted myself," she said, "it is my part to follow."
"That's silly," I said. "Walk with me."
But she dropped her head shyly, shaking it. "I may not," she said.
"Do as you please," I laughed, and set out for the Ka-la-na trees. She followed, meekly, I thought.
We were near the Ka-la-na trees when I heard a slight rustle of brocade behind me. I turned, just in time to seize the wrist of the daughter of the Ubar as she struck savagely down at my back with a long, slender dagger. She howled with rage as I twisted the weapon from her hand.
"You animal!" I yelled, blind with fury. "You dirty, filthy, stinking, ungrateful animal!"
--Later on her father traps him by pretending to be a helpless crippled leper beset by giant leopards and when the Noble Tarl comes dashing unselfishly to his rescue (thus demonstrating yet again his Pure & Spotless Heart), flings off his filthy, shameful robes and summons his tarnsmen to the ambush. They then bind and beat Tarl for days before condemning him to be impaled, albeit after an exchange the ex-Ubar commutes it to being torn in two by wild tame horses tarns.
To which Tarl responds by falling utterly, completely, swooningly, unquestioningly in love with her dad...Seriously. He doesn't just shrug it off as Nothing Personal, he rhapsodizes over Marlenus' rugged good looks, and changes his mind about whether or not he was suited to be Planetary Emperor after all, and aids his attempts to retake the city in the wake of the loss of the Hearth Stone, although he justifies this in part by his purported desire for the Ubar's Daughter.
Again, it's Just Different for guys. Semi-Barbaric Princesses don't get to resort to every sneaky trick and tactic available to effect their escapes and revenges, that's just for Semi-Barbaric Kings.
Wild with anger, I picked up the dagger and for an instant felt tempted to plunge it into the heart of the treacherous girl. Angrily I shoved it in my belt.
"You submitted," I said to her.
In spite of my hold on her wrist, which must have been tight and painful, the daughter of Marlenus straightened herself before me and said arrogantly, "You tharlarion! Do you think that the daughter of the Ubar of all Gor would submit to such as you?"
Cruelly I forced her to her knees before me, the filthy, proud wench.
UST! They hate each other, so obviously they're made for each other!
She cursed me, her greenish eyes blazing with hatred. "Is this how you treat the daughter of a Ubar?"
"I will show you how I treat the most treacherous wench on all Gor," I exclaimed, releasing her wrist. With both hands I wrenched the veil back from her face, thrusting my hand under it to fasten my fist in her hair, and then, as if she were a common tavern girl or a camp slut, I dragged the daughter of the Ubar of an Gor to the shelter of the Ka-la-na trees. Among the trees, on the clover, I threw her to my feet. She tried frantically to readjust the folds of her veil, but with both hands I tore it fully away, and she lay at my feet, as it is said on Gor, face-stripped. A marvelous cascade of hair, as black as the wing of my tarn, loosened behind her, falling to the ground. I saw magnificent olive skin and those wild green eyes and features that were breathtakingly beautiful. The mouth, which might have been magnificent, was twisted with rage. "I like it better," I said, "being able to see the face of my enemy. Do not replace your veil."
In fury she glared up at me, shamed as my eyes boldly regarded the beauty of her face. She made no move to replace the veil.
As I looked upon her, incredibly perhaps, my rage dissipated and with it the vengeful desires that had filled me. In anger I had dragged her, helpless, mine by all the Codes of Gor, to the shelter of the trees. Yet now once again I saw her as a girl, this time as a beautiful girl, not to be abused.
"You will understand," I said, "that I can no longer trust you."
"Of course not," she said. "I am your enemy."
See, girls? As long as you're helpless, and docile - and pretty - a guy won't rape you or smack you around as the price of his protection! It's your obligation to be passive and pretty so as not to provoke him to violence - and if you aren't, well, it's your own damn fault, wench.
Actually, the moral that most of us readers would take from this is that not only is Tarl not fit to be sent out on a critical Top Secret mission without a minder, but he's really only fit for the role of Henchman - he even manages to do the classic Face Heel Turn in the course of the first book. (Or should that be Heel Face Turn?) But I rather think what we're supposed to take from this is how Chivalrously Noble and therefore, how disadvantaged poor naive sheltered young Oxford grad Tarl is, when dealing with the Deadlier of the Species™ - I mean, my god, he didn't rape her after all! How much more proof do you need that he's A Nice Guy™ the Shining Hero? He's practically Galahad Reborn!
"Accordingly I can take no chances with you."
"I am not afraid to die," she said, her lip trembling slightly. "Be quick."
Awwww, girl bravery! Ain't it cuuuute?
"Remove your clothing," I said.
"No!" she cried, shrinking back. She rose to her knees before me, putting her head to my feet. "With all my heart, Warrior," she pleaded, "the daughter of a Ubar, on her knees, begs your favor. Let it be only the blade and quickly."
I threw back my head and laughed. The daughter of the Ubar feared that I would force her to serve my pleasure- I, a common soldier. But then, shamefacedly, I admitted to myself that I had, while dragging her to the trees, intended to take her and that it had only been the sudden spell of her beauty which, paradoxically enough, had claimed my respect, forced me to recognize that selfishly I was about to injure or dominate what Nar would have referred to as a rational creature. I felt ashamed and resolved that I would do no harm to this girl, though she was as wicked and faithless as a tharlarion.
...just in case you needed it spelled out for you...
"I do not intend to force you to serve my pleasure," I said, "nor do I intend to injure you."
She lifted her head and looked at me wonderingly.
Then, to my amazement, she stood up and regarded me contemptuously. "If you had been a true warrior," she said, "you would have taken me on the back of your tarn, above the clouds, even before we had passed the outermost ramparts of Ar, and you would have thrown my robes to the streets below to show my people what had been the fate of the daughter of their Ubar." Evidently she believed that I had been afraid to harm her and that she, the daughter of a Ubar, remained above the perils and obligations of the common captive. She looked at me insolently, angry that she had so demeaned herself as to kneel before a coward.
This, as I noted in my post "You Can't Write A World Bigger Than Your Head," is a HUUUUGE part of latter WoT - the idea that a Strong Woman™ must despise the easygoing chivalrous chap for being "weak", until he wisens up and starts treating her like trash, aka becomes "masterful." It's what utterly, foully, nauseatingly poisons the whole Perrin/Faile relationship, which is a shame because Perrin is the only likeable one of the three, altho' he quickly becomes Too Stupid To Live and remains so, and the Big Honking Target Painted On His Back and Ominious Music that plays whenever he shows up early on turn out to be a red herring, given all the other people around him who die horribly while he plods through angsting and angsting and brooding and angsting some more, the Emo Werewolf (Sort-of Division)... It's like Jordan just based Faile on the Ubar's Daughter, and let her have some Faux Action Girl adventures to show how enlightened he is (remember Perrin ALWAYS has to run and rescue her, she's nothing more than his Adventure Muse, q.v. Graves.)
She tossed her head back and snorted. "Well, Warrior," she said, "what would you have me do?"
"Remove your clothing," I said.
She looked on me with rage.
"I told you," I said, "I am not going to take any more chances with you. I have to find out if you have any more weapons."
"No man may look upon the daughter of the Ubar," she said.
"Either you will remove your robes," I said, "or I shall."
In fury the hands of the Ubar's daughter began to fumble with the hooks of her heavy robes.
She had scarcely removed a braided loop from its hook when her eyes suddenly lit with triumph and a sound of joy escaped her lips.
"Don't move," said a voice behind me. "You are covered with a crossbow."
Don't tell me you didn't see this coming from a league away - or this:
"Well done, Men of Ar," exclaimed the daughter of the Ubar.
I turned slowly, my hands away from my body, and found myself facing two of the foot soldiers of Ar, one of them an officer, the other of common rank. The latter had trained his crossbow on my breast. At that distance he could not have missed, and if he had fired at that range, most probably the quarrel would have passed through my body and disappeared in the woods behind. The initial velocity of a quarrel is the better part of a pasang per second.
The officer, a swaggering fellow whose helmet, though polished, bore the marks of combat, approached me, holding his sword to me, and seized my weapon from its scabbard and the girl's dagger from my belt. He looked at the signet on the dagger hilt and seemed pleased. He placed it in his own belt and took from a pouch at his side a pair of manacles, which he snapped on my wrists. He then turned to the girl.
"You are Talena," he said, tapping the dagger, "daughter of Marlenus?"
"You see I wear the robes of the Ubar's daughter," said the girl, scarcely deigning to respond to the officer's question. She paid her rescuers no more attention, treating them as if they were no more worthy of her gratitude than the dust beneath her feet. She strode to face me, her eyes mocking and triumphant, seeing me shackled and in her power. She spat viciously in my face, which insult I accepted, unmoving. Then, with her right hand, she slapped me savagely with all the force and fury of her body. My cheek felt as though it had been branded.
"Are you Talena?" asked the officer, once again, patiently. "Daughter of Marlenus?"
"I am indeed, Heroes of Ar," replied the girl proudly, turning to the soldiers. "I am Talena, daughter of Marlenus, Ubar of all Gor."
"Good," said the officer, and then nodded to his subordinate. "Strip her and put her in slave bracelets."
[...]
I lunged forward, but was checked by the point of the officer's sword. The common soldier, setting the crossbow on the ground, strode to the daughter of the Ubar, who stood as though stunned, her face drained of color. The soldier, beginning at the high, ornate collar of the girl's robes, began to break the braided loops, ripping them loose from their hooks; methodically he tore her robes apart and pulled them down and over her shoulders; in half a dozen tugs the heavy layers of her garments had been jerked downward until she stood naked, her robes in a filthy pile about her feet. Her body, though stained with the mire of the swamp, was exquisitely beautiful.
"Why are you doing this?" I demanded.
"Marlenus has fled," said the officer. "The city, is in chaos. The Initiates [Priestly caste] have assumed command and have ordered that Marlenus and all members of his household and family are to be publicly impaled on the walls of Ar."
A moan escaped the girl.
But as you can also probably guess without reading the book, Tarl is inspired to superhuman Feats of Strength when he sees the officer gloating as he collars Talena and forcing her to kiss him, and with his manacle-fu kills the one guard, pounces on the officer and tries to throttle him, to be rendered helpless as the officer draws his dagger (!) but is saved when Talena takes the officer's sword and chops off the guy's hand - which instantly kills him (!!), at which point Talena freezes and goes into mental shock at what she's done, and has to be treated like a halfwit and "managed" by Tarl:
Talena, naked, still held the bloody sword, her eyes glassy with the horror of what she had done.
"Drop the sword," I commanded harshly, fearing it would occur to her to strike me with it. The girl dropped the weapon, sinking to her knees and covering her face with her hands. The daughter of the Ubar was apparently not as inhuman as I had supposed.
As you don't even need to guess, this is the beginning of the Thawing of the Ice Princess...
Next: wacky hijinx on the Road To Ko-ro-ba, as random coincidences conspire to part the would-be-lovers just as they begin to own up to their growing attraction to each other, mostly expressed in verbal abuse and humiliation, natch. Don't worry! Eventually our Lust Object will attain her lifelong dream of being publically raped on top of a giant insane bird of prey...
* She's partly Mexican, so she looks Exotic, is all her title means. Weinbaum killed off all black Americans in his long-ago apocalypse, possibly via targeted bio-weapons (it's presented as a history all blurred in the subsequent Dark Age) & thus avoids having to deal with existing ethnicities & current issues in his posited future. The books, like his Martian Odyssey are shocking in their combination of scholarly presentiment for the genre, progressive viewpoints for genre and era, and appallingly retrograde attitudes even back in 1933 - I mean, it all ends in an embrace by the hero of 24/7 surveillance "benevolent" totalitarianism over the cattle-like bred-for-stupidity masses and the ugly or just alien looking mutants, so long as it's done by enlightened Immortals like Margot and her brother and anyone deemed worthy of joining them - like him. It's not like people weren't taking to the streets over this when the books were written...and earlier even.
** [from a little later on in Chapter 7] "How do you know all this?" I asked.
"The women of the Walled Gardens know whatever happens on Gor," she replied, and I sensed the intrigue, the spying and treachery that must ferment within the gardens. "I forced my slave girls to lie with soldiers, with merchants and builders, physicians and scribes," she said, "and I found out a great deal." I was dismayed at this- the cool, calculating exploitation of her girls by the daughter of the Ubar, merely to gain information.
"What if your slaves refused to do this for you?" I asked.
"I would whip them," said the daughter of the Ubar coldly.