Planet of the Complete Bloody Psychopaths, Part 4
aka "Tarnsman of Gor", by John Norman, © 1966
Make sure you have your antacids handy for this, the ride gets even bumpier--
After the revelation that Talena forced her slaves to play Mata Hari for her so that she could learn about the world outside the screens of the Women's Quarters, Tarl is so revolted at her callous utilitarian treatment of women that he resolves to part with her, and starts divying up the supplies so that she can go her own way. She objects with all the dangers that an unarmed woman would face in Gor, but he isn't swayed by his dick her appeals to his compassionate nature, showing - for one of the very few times in the book - a flash of common sense.
"Alone," she said, "I will be eaten by animals or found by soldiers." She shuddered. "At best, I would be picked up by slavers and sold in the Street of Brands."
I knew that she spoke the truth or something much like it. A defenseless woman on the plains of Gor would not have much chance.
"How can I trust you?" I asked, weakening.
"You can't," she admitted. "For I am of Ar and must remain your enemy."
"Then it is to my best interest to abandon you," I said."
"I can force you to take me," she said.
"How?" I asked.
"Like this," she responded, kneeling before me, lowering her head and lifting her arms, the wrists crossed. She laughed. "Now you must take me with you or slay me," she said, "and I know you cannot slay me."
I cursed her, for she took unfair advantage of the Warrior Codes of Gor.
"What is the submission of Talena, the daughter of the Ubar, worth?" I taunted.
"Nothing," she said. "But you must accept it or slay me."
Furious beyond reason, I saw in the grass the discarded slave bracelets, the hood and leading chains.
To Talena's indignation, I snapped the slave bracelets on her wrists, hooded her, and put her on a leading chain.
"If you would be a captive," I said, "you will be treated as a captive. I accept your submission, and I intend to enforce it."
I removed the dagger from her sash and placed it in my belt. Angrily I slung both bags of rations about her shoulders. Then I picked up the crossbow and left the glade, dragging after me, none too gently, the hooded, stumbling daughter of the Ubar. Beneath the hood, to my amazement, I heard her laugh." [Ch. 8]
Yup, she's got him riiiight where she wants him, the sneaky slut, wrapped around her little finger, tight in her silken toils.
"We traveled together through the night, making our way through the silvery yellow fields of Sa-Tarna, fugitives under the three moons of Gor. Soon after we had left the glade, to Talena's amusement, I had removed her hood and, a few minutes later, her leading chain and slave bracelets. As we crossed the grain fields, she explained to me the dangers we would most likely face, primarily from the beasts of the plains and from passing strangers. It is interesting, incidentally, that in the Gorean language, the word for stranger is the same as the word for enemy. [...]
I was heading, as nearly as I could determine, in the general direction of Ko-ro-ba. Surely Ar was out of the question. It would be death for us both. And, I supposed, a similar fate would await us in most Gorean cities. Impaling the stranger is a not unusual form of hospitality on Gor.
Like I said, planet of the Complete Bloody Psychopaths.
Moreover, owing to the almost universal hatred borne to the city of Ar by most Gorean cities*, it would be imperative in any case to keep the identity of my fair companion a secret. Theoretically, given the seclusion of the High Caste women of Ar, their gilded confinement in the Walled Gardens, it should be reasonably easy to conceal her identity.
But I was troubled. What would happen to Talena if we did, by some outstanding stroke of fortune, reach Ko-ro-ba? Would she be publicly impaled, returned to the mercies of the Initiates of Ar, or would she perhaps spend the rest of her days in the dungeons beneath the cylinders? Perhaps she would be permitted to live as a slave?
Ah, flower of English manhood!
He didn't even want to watch when she took a bath:
Toward morning we ate some of the rations and refilled the water flasks at a secluded spring. I allowed Talena to bathe first, which seemed to surprise her. She was further surprised when I left her to herself.
"Aren't you going to watch?" she asked brazenly.
"No," I said.
"But I may escape," she laughed.
"That would be my good fortune," I remarked.
She laughed again and disappeared, and I soon heard the sounds of her splashing delightedly in the water. She emerged a few minutes later, having washed her hair and the blue silk gown she wore. Her skin was radiant, the dried mire of the swamp forest at last washed away. She knelt and spread her hair to dry, letting it fall forward over her head and shoulders.
I entered the pool and rejoiced in the invigorating, cleansing water. We slept afterward. To her annoyance, but as a safety measure I thought essential, I secured her a few feet from "me, fastening her arms about a sapling by means of the slave bracelets. I had no wish to awake to a dagger being thrust into my breast.
Because of his poor preparation for life at Oxford, he doesn't know how to keep her chained up at night very well.
"We must make a better arrangement than this," she said, pushing away the bracelets. "It's uncomfortable."
"What do you suggest?" I asked.
She looked about and smiled brightly.
"Here," she said, "I have it!" She took a lead chain from my pouch, wrapped it several times about her slim ankle and snapped it shut, placing the key in my hand. Then, carrying the chain, which was still attached to her ankle, she walked to a nearby tree, bent down, and looped the loose end of the chain around the trunk. "Give me the slave bracelets!" she ordered. I gave them to her, and she placed the bracelets through two links of the part of the chain that encircled the tree, snapping them shut and handing me the key. She stood up and jerked her foot against the chain, demonstrating that she was perfectly secured. "There, bold Tarnsman," she said, "I will teach you how to keep a prisoner. Now sleep in peace, and I promise I won't cut your throat tonight."
I laughed and held her briefly in my arms. I suddenly sensed the rush of blood in her and in myself. I wanted never to release her. I wanted her always thus, so locked in my arms, mine to hold and love. Summoning all my strength, I put her from me.
"So," she said contemptuously, "that is how a Warrior tarnsman treats the daughter of a rich merchant?" [See? She really DOES want to be raped! She's daring him to do it!]
I rolled onto the ground, turning away from her, unable to sleep.
It's not just sixties censorship, btw. I mean, this is the era of Mailer and James Jones, it's not like you couldn't even mention frustrated guys whacking off (or nailing each other even) without having your book banned in the US then. This is because male self-pleasuring isn't cool for fanboys. They want to wank, not to think about themselves whacking off, which is different.
But we will soon meet Tarl's real Soul-Mate on the road to Ko-ro-ba:
In the afternoon we moved on again, this time daring to use one of the wide paved highways that lead from Ar, highways built like walls in the earth, of solid, fitted stones intended to last a thousand years. Even so, the surface of the highway had been worn smooth, and the ruts of tharlarion carts were clearly visible, ruts worn deep by centuries of caravans. We met very little on the highway, perhaps because of the anarchy in the city of Ar. If there were refugees, they must have been behind us, and few merchants were approaching Ar. Who would risk his goods in a situation of chaos? When we did pass an occasional traveler, we passed warily. On Gor, as in my native England, one keeps to the left side of the road. This practice, as once in England, is more than a simple matter of convention. When one keeps to the left side of the road, one's sword arm faces the passing stranger.
And yet he's not going, like any sane 20th c man would, GET ME OUT OF HERE, I WANT TO GO HOME! - And yet, Norman himself has made no move in all these years to leave oppressively-liberal New York for the wilds of Albania or Eritrea or even to move to the Outback or the Alaskan tundra - or even to the nearer, easier to reach and live in, 95% vacant unorganized zones of the White Mountains of NH, like some of his fellow ideologues have done. Dare I suggest that Prof. Lange has more in common with his self-insert than we know, namely the both being poseurs part?
It seemed we had little to fear, and we had passed several of the pasang stones that line the side of the highway without seeing anything more threatening than a line of peasants carrying brushwood on their backs, and a pair of hurrying Initiates. Once, however, Talena dragged me to the side of the road, and, scarcely able to conceal our horror, we watched while a sufferer from the incurable Dar-kosis disease, bent in his yellow shrouds, hobbled by, periodically clacking that wooden device which warns all within hearing to stand clear from his path. "An Afflicted One," said Talena, gravely, using the expression common for such plagued wretches on Gor. The name of the disease itself, Dar-kosis, is almost never mentioned. I glimpsed the face beneath the hood and felt sick. Its one bleared eye regarded us blankly for a moment, and then the thing moved on.
Who can spell "Foreshadowing", children? Oddly enough, it never occurs to Tarl to observe to himself or anyone else, "Wow, that's just like leprosy on earth in the old days. But we've come up with much better ways of handling it, with our modern medicine and our humanitarianism, you know. It turns out it wasn't as contagious as our panic made it seem, either." It really is never clear - rather, never consistent - whether we're supposed to buy Tarl as Displaced 20th Century Englishman, or whether this is a retcon stuck on a Planetary Native Barbarian Hero, no more aware of alternate modes of being than would be Conan. It very often feels like that, never the more so than when Tarl suddenly remembers he's supposed to be being 20th Century Gulliver On Mars...for a couple seconds.
In the morning we left our camp early. A swallow of water from the flask and small, dry berries gathered from the nearby shrubbery were our only sustenance. We had not been on the road long when Talena clutched my arm. I listened carefully, hearing the distant clank of a shod tharlarion on the road. "A warrior," I guessed.
"Quick," she commanded. "Hood me."
I hooded her and snapped her wrists together in the slave bracelets.
The ringing of the tharlarion's shod claws on the road grew louder.
In a minute the rider appeared in view- a fine, bearded warrior with a golden helmet and a tharlarion lance. He drew the riding lizard to a halt a few paces from me. He rode the species of tharlarion called the high tharlarion, which ran on its two back feet in great bounding strides. Its cavernous mouth was lined with long, gleaming teeth. Its two small, ridiculously disproportionate forelegs dangled absurdly in front of its body. [See? Velociraptor!]
"Who are you?" demanded the warrior.
"I am Tarl of Bristol," I said.
"Bristol?" asked the warrior, puzzled.
"Have you never heard of it?" I challeged, as if insulted.
"No," admitted the warrior. "I am Kazrak of Port Kar," he said, "in the service of Mintar, of the Merchante Caste."
I did not need to ask about Port Kar. It is a city in the delta of the Vosk and as much a den of pirates as anything else.
The warrior gestured at Talena with his lance. "Who is she?" he asked.
"You do not need to know her name or lineage," I said.
The warrior laughed and slapped his thigh. "You would have me believe that she is of High Caste," he said. "She is probably the daughter of a goat keeper."
I could see Talena move under the hood, her fists clenched in the slave bracelets.
"What news of Ar?" I asked.
"War," said the mounted spearman approvingly. "Now, while the men of Ar fight among themselves for the cylinders, an army is gathering from fifty cities, massing on the banks of the Vosk to invade Ar. [What did I say? Are we really supposed to believe both that a) Matthew Cabot is a brilliant Administrator and ex-Dictator and b) didn't anticipate this?] There is a camp there such as you have never seen- a city of tents, pasangs of tharlarion corrals; the wings of the tarns sound like thunder overhead. The cooking fires of the soldiers can be seen two days' ride from the river."
Talena spoke, her voice muffled in the hood. "Scavengers come to feast on the bodies of wounded tarnsmen." It was a Gorean proverb, which seemed to be singularly inappropriate, coming from a hooded captive.
"I did not speak to the girl," said the warrior.
I excused Talena. "She has not worn her bracelets long," I said.
"She has spirit," said the warrior. [!!!]
"Where are you bound for?" I asked.
"To the banks of the Vosk, to the City of Tents," said the warrior.
"What news of Marlenus, the Ubar?" demanded Talena.
"You, should beat her," said the warrior, but responded to the girl. "None. He has fled."
"What news of the Home Stone of Ar and the daughter of Marlenus?" I asked, feeling it would be the sort of thing the warrior would expect me to be interested in."
"The Home Stone is rumored to be in a hundred cities," he said. "Some say it has been destroyed. Only the Priest-Kings know."
"And the daughter of Marlenus?" I insisted.
"She is undoubtedly in the Pleasure Gardens of the boldest tarnsman on Gor," laughed the warrior. "I hope he has as much luck with her as the Home Stone. I have heard she has the temper of a tharlarion and a face to match!"
Talena stiffened, her pride offended.
"I have heard," she said imperiously, "that the daughter of the Ubar is the most beautiful woman on all Gor."
She never seems to grow out of being Too Stupid To Live, or at least to know when to keep her mouth shut and her head down and pretend to be a peasant so as not to be spotted as an exiled aristo fleeing Madame of the sharp nose.
"I like this girl," said the warrior. "Yield her to me!"
"No," I said.
"Yield her or I will have my tharlarion trample you," he snapped, "or would you prefer to be spitted on my lance?"
"You know the codes," I said evenly. "If you want her, you must challenge for her and meet me with the weapon of my choice."
The warrior's face clouded, but only for an instant. He threw back his fine head and laughed, his teeth white in his bushy beard."
"Done!" he cried, fastening his lance in its saddle sheath and slipping from the back of the tharlarion. "I challenge you for her!"
"The sword," I said.
"Agreed," he said.
We shoved Talena, who was now frightened, to the side of the road. Hooded, she cowered there, the prize, her ears filled with the sudden violent ringing of blade on blade as two warriors fought to the death to possess her. Kazrak of Port Kar was a superb swordsman, but in the first moments we both knew that I was his master.
Okay, I'm not typically one to read lots of slashy subtext into everything, at least not counter to what's put down in the originals; I tend to work with what's there or in the interstices, and explore that, by my nature. But damn, sometimes you just can't get away from the alternate interpretations, not when they're that obvious & backed up by all the references to the Spartans elsewhere in the text. It is after all the natural and historical outcome of the belief that women are defective males, and only full males are worthy of friendship, after all, so why not make it "friends with benefits"?...and they did traditionally study a lot of Classics at Oxford...
His face was white beneath his helmet as he wildly attempted to parry my devastating attack. Once I stepped back, gesturing to the ground with my sword, the symbolic granting of quarter should it be desired. But Kazrak would not lay his sword on the stones at my feet. Rather, he suddenly launched a vicious attack, forcing me to defend myself as best I could. He seemed to fight with new fury, perhaps enraged that he had been offered quarter.
At last, terminating a frenzied exchange, I managed to drive my blade into his shoulder, and as his sword arm dropped, I kicked the weapon from his grasp. He stood proudly in the road, waiting for me to kill him.
Of course he doesn't, they become best buds, life-debt and all that, and you're not supposed to ask why this Oxford lad who (I know about Jericho, all right?) has minimal interest in girls, and has to be dragged off by his tutor to lose his virginity (it sure sounds like, doesn't it?) to prove his manhood, and is perpetually baffled by the obligatory heteronormativity of his culture (why do these girls keep coming on to me? Why does my pop think I'd want a woman? What would I do with her? Why does she think I'd want to watch her wash?) to the point where it becomes a joke, cannot do enough for the awesomely-bearded Kazrak, caring for his wound, making sure that he doesn't go broke as a result of his defeat and loss of his job as caravan guard - sharing his tent with him as well as Talena, who we are told over and over again is his Grande Amour, just in case we start to forget...
Led by Kazrak, I went with Talena, walking back along the line of wagons to see where she would be placed. Beside one of several long wagons of the sort covered with yellow and blue silk, I removed the bracelets from her wrists and turned her over to an attendant.
"I have a spare ankle ring," he said, and took Talena by the arm, thrusting her inside the wagon. In the wagon there were some twenty girls, dressed in the slave livery of Gor, perhaps ten on a side, chained to a metal bar which ran the length of the wagon. Talena would not like that. Before she disappeared, she called over her shoulder saucily, "You're not rid of me as easily as this, Tarl of Bristol."
"See if you can slip the ankle ring," laughed Kazrak, and led me back among the supply wagons.
Stop that! It's not going where you think! You fangirls and your dirty minds, sheesh. This ain't Xenophon.
...actually, now that I think about it, we don't really KNOW where it was going from the text, do we?
We had gone scarcely ten paces and Talena could hardly have been fastened in the wagon before we heard a female scream of pain and a bevy of howls and shrieks. From the wagon came the sound of rolling bodies, slamming and cracking against the sides, and the rattle of chains on wood, pierced by squeals of pain and anger. The attendant leaped into the back of the wagon with his strap, and there was added to the din the sound of his curses and the crack of the strap as he smartly laid about him. As Kazrak and I watched, the attendant, puffing and furious, emerged from the wagon, dragging Talena by the hair. As Talena struggled and kicked and the girls in the wagon shouted their approval and encouragement to the attendant, he angrily hurled Talena into my arms. Her hair was in wild disarray; there were nail marks on her shoulder and four strap welts on her back. Her arm was bruised. Her dress had been half torn from her.
"Keep her in your tent," snarled the attendant.
"Let the Priest-Kings blast me if she didn't do it," said Kazrak with admiration, "A true she-tharlarion."
Talena lifted a bloody nose to me and smiled brightly.
It becomes ever more reminiscent of late WoT as the chapter progresses:
The next few days were among the happiest of my life, as Talena and I became a part of Mintar's slow, ample caravan, members of its graceful, interminable, colorful procession. It seemed the routine of the journey would never end, and I grew enamored of the long line of wagons, each filled with its various goods, those mysterious metals and gems, rolls of cloth, foodstuffs, wines and Paga, weapons and harness, cosmetics and perfumes, medicines and slaves.
Mintar's caravan, like most, was harnessed long before dawn and traveled until the heat of the day. Camp would be made early in the afternoon. The beasts would be watered and fed, the guards set, the wagons secured, and the members of the caravan would turn to their cooking fires. In the evening the strap-masters and warriors would amuse themselves with stories and songs, recounting their exploits, fictitious and otherwise, and bawling out their raucous harmonies under the influence of Paga. [You'd think, if he were really a True Englishman and Oxbridge product, Tarl's first exclamation of joy upon Planet Gor would be "Oi! You have BEER! Praise Ganymede! Oh sweet beverage of the gods of my homeland!" and that he'd call a fermented alcoholic beverage made from grain by his own native word for it, but oh well.]
In those days I learned to master the high tharlarion, one of which had been assigned to me by the caravan's tharlarion master. These gigantic lizards had been bred on Gor for a thousand generations before the first tarn was tamed, and were raised from the leathery shell to carry warriors. They responded to voice signals, conditioned into their tiny brains in the training years. Nonetheless, the butt of one's lance, striking about the eye or ear openings, for there are few other sensitive areas in their scaled hides, is occasionally necessary to impress your will on the monster.
[Skipping over several long paras of thalarian husbandry - not that kind - with the passing thoughts that a) Dinotopia it ain't, b) I wouldn't let Norman handle a mule, let alone a horse, c) I hope Norman doesn't have any dogs either, d) what if only women had the latent gene allowing tel/empathic communication with thalarions, and one of them figured out how to talk to the war lizards? is it wrong to imagine a Pern/Gor crossover parody fic?]
Kazrak, as he had promised, turned over the balance of his hiring price to me- a very respectable eighty tarn disks. I argued with him to accept forty, on the ground that he was a sword brother, and at last convinced him to accept half of his own wages back. I felt better about this arrangement. Also, I didn't want Kazrak, when his wound was healed, to be reduced to challenging some luckless warrior for a bottle of Ka-la-na wine. We, with Talena, shared a tent, and, to Kazrak's amusement, I set aside a portion of the tent for the girl's private use, protecting it with a silk hanging.
[Um. Yeah. Whatever you say, Tarl.]
Because of the miserable condition of Talena's single garment, Kazrak and I procured from the supply master some changes of slave livery for the girl. This seemed to me the most appropriate way to diminish any possible suspicion as to her true identity. From his own tarn disks, Kazrak purchased two additional articles which he regarded as essential- a collar, which he had properly engraved, and a slave whip.
We returned to the tent, handing the new livery to Talena, who, in fury, regarded the brief, diagonally striped garments. She bit her lower lip, and, if Kazrak had not been present, would undoubtedly have roundly informed me of her displeasure.
"Did you expect to be dressed as a free woman?" I snapped.
She glared at me, knowing that she must play her role, at least in the presence of Kazrak. She tossed her head haughtily. "Of course not," she said, adding ironically, "Master." Her back straight as a tarn-goad, she disappeared behind the silk hanging. A moment later the torn rag of blue silk flew out from behind the hanging.
A moment or two after, Talena stepped forth for our inspection, brazen and insolent. She wore the diagonally striped slave livery of Gor, as had Sana- that briefly skirted, simple, sleeveless garment.
Okay okay holdit - on top of everything else, Norman isn't just content to stuff his slave-girls into humiliatingly-short minidresses, he has to inflict DIAGONAL STRIPES on us too??! I mean, I know this was the Sixties, but still! Even Star Trek didn't go that far.
She turned before us.
"Do I please you?" she asked.
It was obvious she did. Talena was a most beautiful girl.
"Kneel," I said, drawing out the collar.
Talena blanched, but, as Kazrak chuckled, she knelt before me, her fists clenched.
"Read it," I ordered.
Talena looked at the engraved collar and shook with rage.
"Read it," I said. "Out loud."
She read the simple leged alod:
"I AM THE PROPERTY OF TARL OF BRISTOL."
I snapped the slender steel collar on her throat, placing the key in my pouch.
"Shall I call for the iron?" asked Kazrak.
"No," begged Talena, now, for the first time, frightened.
"I shall not brand her today," I said, keeping a straight face.
"By the priest-Kings," laughed Kazrak, "I believe you care for the she-tharlarion."
"Leave us, Warrior," I said.
Kazrak laughed again, winked at me, and backed with mock ceremony from the tent.
Talena sprang to her feet, her two fists flying for my face. I caught her wrists.
"How dare you?" she raged. Take this thing off," she commanded.
"She struggled fiercely, futilely. [Hint to all wannabe Spunky Princesses: a swift knee to the groin is considered the best method under these circumstances, although the kneecap crunch also has its advocates, as does the nosebreaking headbutt.] When in sheer frustration she stopped squirming, I released her. She pulled at the circle of steel on her throat. "Remove this degrading object," she commanded, "now!" She faced me, her mouth trembling with rage. "The daughter of the Ubar of Ar wears no man's collar."
"The daughter of the Ubar of Ar," I said, "wears the collar of Tarl of Bristol."
There was a long pause.
"I suppose," she said, attempting to save face, "it would perhaps be appropriate for a tarnsman to place his collar on the captive daughter of a rich merchant."
"Or the daughter of a goat keeper," I added.
Her eyes snapped. "Yes, perhaps," she said. "Very well. I concede the reasonableness of your plan." Then she held out her small hand imperiously. "Give me the key," she said, "so that' I may remove this when I please."
"I will keep the key," I said. "And it will be removed, if at all, when I please." [So much for his 20th-c Earth ethics...]
She straightened and turned away, enraged but helpless. "Very well," she said. Then, her eyes lit on the second object Kazrak had donated to the project of taming what he called the she-tharlarion- the slave whip. "What is the meaning of that?"
"Surely you are familiar with a slave whip?" I asked, picking it up and, with amusement, slapping it once or twice in my palm."
"Yes," she said, regarding me evenly. "I have often used it on my own slaves. Is it now to be used on me?"
"If necessary," I said.
"You wouldn't have the nerve," she said.
"More likely the inclination," I said.
She smiled.
Her next remark astonished me. "Use it on me if I do not please you, Tarl of Bristol," she said. I pondered this, but she had turned away.
If you didn't think it could get more nauseating that that - think again.
In the next few days, to my surprise, Talena was buoyant, cheerful, and excited. She became interested in the caravan and would spend hours walking alongside the colored wagons, sometimes hitching rides with the strapmasters, wheedling from them a piece of fruit or a sweetmeat. She even conversed delightedly with the inmates of the blue and yellow wagons, bringing them precious tidbits of camp news, teasing them as to how handsome their new masters would be.
She became a favorite of the caravan. Once or twice mounted warriors of the caravan had accosted her, but on reading her collar had backed grumblingly away, enduring with good humor her jibes and taunts. In the early afternoon, when the caravan halted, she would help Kazrak and me set up our tent and would then gather wood for a fire. She cooked for us, kneeling by the fire, her hair bound back so as not to catch the sparks, her face sweaty and intent on the piece of meat she was most likely burning. After the meal she would clean and polish our gear, sitting on the tent carpet between us, chatting about the small, pleasant inconsequientialities of her day.
"Slavery apparently agrees with her," I remarked to Kazrak.
"Not slavery," he smiled. And I puzzled as to the meaning of his remark. Talena blushed and lowered her face, rubbing vigorously on the leather of my tharlarion boots.
OMG IT'S NEGAVERSE SIUAN SANCHE!!! --Ahem. Sorry about that. I meant, LOLZ, the spoilt princess can't cook, snicker snicker, but she's having SUCH fun playing house for the Lost Boys, and let's just not go anywhere near what the two half-naked leather-belt-clad warriors are doing in their half of the tent every night, and whether or not she peeks, okay?
Next: tragedy strikes as the lovers are parted by cruel fate! Talena gets kidnapped by another powerful warlord, too. (Don't worry, we're more than halfway through, and Talena goes missing and it turns to good old-fashioned hurt/comfort-hurt-hurt the Manly Hero so that he can even more improbably rise from his sickbed his chains fighting and raring to go, despite being half-starved and beaten to a pulp and kept in chains before breaking free...Stop raising your eyebrows! I'm SURE there's nothing supposed to be erotic about all that bondage-torture-bondage-torture...)
* I emphasize this line about Gor intramural politics because it's relevant to his subsequent alignment switcheroo.
Make sure you have your antacids handy for this, the ride gets even bumpier--
After the revelation that Talena forced her slaves to play Mata Hari for her so that she could learn about the world outside the screens of the Women's Quarters, Tarl is so revolted at her callous utilitarian treatment of women that he resolves to part with her, and starts divying up the supplies so that she can go her own way. She objects with all the dangers that an unarmed woman would face in Gor, but he isn't swayed by his dick her appeals to his compassionate nature, showing - for one of the very few times in the book - a flash of common sense.
"Alone," she said, "I will be eaten by animals or found by soldiers." She shuddered. "At best, I would be picked up by slavers and sold in the Street of Brands."
I knew that she spoke the truth or something much like it. A defenseless woman on the plains of Gor would not have much chance.
"How can I trust you?" I asked, weakening.
"You can't," she admitted. "For I am of Ar and must remain your enemy."
"Then it is to my best interest to abandon you," I said."
"I can force you to take me," she said.
"How?" I asked.
"Like this," she responded, kneeling before me, lowering her head and lifting her arms, the wrists crossed. She laughed. "Now you must take me with you or slay me," she said, "and I know you cannot slay me."
I cursed her, for she took unfair advantage of the Warrior Codes of Gor.
"What is the submission of Talena, the daughter of the Ubar, worth?" I taunted.
"Nothing," she said. "But you must accept it or slay me."
Furious beyond reason, I saw in the grass the discarded slave bracelets, the hood and leading chains.
To Talena's indignation, I snapped the slave bracelets on her wrists, hooded her, and put her on a leading chain.
"If you would be a captive," I said, "you will be treated as a captive. I accept your submission, and I intend to enforce it."
I removed the dagger from her sash and placed it in my belt. Angrily I slung both bags of rations about her shoulders. Then I picked up the crossbow and left the glade, dragging after me, none too gently, the hooded, stumbling daughter of the Ubar. Beneath the hood, to my amazement, I heard her laugh." [Ch. 8]
Yup, she's got him riiiight where she wants him, the sneaky slut, wrapped around her little finger, tight in her silken toils.
"We traveled together through the night, making our way through the silvery yellow fields of Sa-Tarna, fugitives under the three moons of Gor. Soon after we had left the glade, to Talena's amusement, I had removed her hood and, a few minutes later, her leading chain and slave bracelets. As we crossed the grain fields, she explained to me the dangers we would most likely face, primarily from the beasts of the plains and from passing strangers. It is interesting, incidentally, that in the Gorean language, the word for stranger is the same as the word for enemy. [...]
I was heading, as nearly as I could determine, in the general direction of Ko-ro-ba. Surely Ar was out of the question. It would be death for us both. And, I supposed, a similar fate would await us in most Gorean cities. Impaling the stranger is a not unusual form of hospitality on Gor.
Like I said, planet of the Complete Bloody Psychopaths.
Moreover, owing to the almost universal hatred borne to the city of Ar by most Gorean cities*, it would be imperative in any case to keep the identity of my fair companion a secret. Theoretically, given the seclusion of the High Caste women of Ar, their gilded confinement in the Walled Gardens, it should be reasonably easy to conceal her identity.
But I was troubled. What would happen to Talena if we did, by some outstanding stroke of fortune, reach Ko-ro-ba? Would she be publicly impaled, returned to the mercies of the Initiates of Ar, or would she perhaps spend the rest of her days in the dungeons beneath the cylinders? Perhaps she would be permitted to live as a slave?
Ah, flower of English manhood!
He didn't even want to watch when she took a bath:
Toward morning we ate some of the rations and refilled the water flasks at a secluded spring. I allowed Talena to bathe first, which seemed to surprise her. She was further surprised when I left her to herself.
"Aren't you going to watch?" she asked brazenly.
"No," I said.
"But I may escape," she laughed.
"That would be my good fortune," I remarked.
She laughed again and disappeared, and I soon heard the sounds of her splashing delightedly in the water. She emerged a few minutes later, having washed her hair and the blue silk gown she wore. Her skin was radiant, the dried mire of the swamp forest at last washed away. She knelt and spread her hair to dry, letting it fall forward over her head and shoulders.
I entered the pool and rejoiced in the invigorating, cleansing water. We slept afterward. To her annoyance, but as a safety measure I thought essential, I secured her a few feet from "me, fastening her arms about a sapling by means of the slave bracelets. I had no wish to awake to a dagger being thrust into my breast.
Because of his poor preparation for life at Oxford, he doesn't know how to keep her chained up at night very well.
"We must make a better arrangement than this," she said, pushing away the bracelets. "It's uncomfortable."
"What do you suggest?" I asked.
She looked about and smiled brightly.
"Here," she said, "I have it!" She took a lead chain from my pouch, wrapped it several times about her slim ankle and snapped it shut, placing the key in my hand. Then, carrying the chain, which was still attached to her ankle, she walked to a nearby tree, bent down, and looped the loose end of the chain around the trunk. "Give me the slave bracelets!" she ordered. I gave them to her, and she placed the bracelets through two links of the part of the chain that encircled the tree, snapping them shut and handing me the key. She stood up and jerked her foot against the chain, demonstrating that she was perfectly secured. "There, bold Tarnsman," she said, "I will teach you how to keep a prisoner. Now sleep in peace, and I promise I won't cut your throat tonight."
I laughed and held her briefly in my arms. I suddenly sensed the rush of blood in her and in myself. I wanted never to release her. I wanted her always thus, so locked in my arms, mine to hold and love. Summoning all my strength, I put her from me.
"So," she said contemptuously, "that is how a Warrior tarnsman treats the daughter of a rich merchant?" [See? She really DOES want to be raped! She's daring him to do it!]
I rolled onto the ground, turning away from her, unable to sleep.
It's not just sixties censorship, btw. I mean, this is the era of Mailer and James Jones, it's not like you couldn't even mention frustrated guys whacking off (or nailing each other even) without having your book banned in the US then. This is because male self-pleasuring isn't cool for fanboys. They want to wank, not to think about themselves whacking off, which is different.
But we will soon meet Tarl's real Soul-Mate on the road to Ko-ro-ba:
In the afternoon we moved on again, this time daring to use one of the wide paved highways that lead from Ar, highways built like walls in the earth, of solid, fitted stones intended to last a thousand years. Even so, the surface of the highway had been worn smooth, and the ruts of tharlarion carts were clearly visible, ruts worn deep by centuries of caravans. We met very little on the highway, perhaps because of the anarchy in the city of Ar. If there were refugees, they must have been behind us, and few merchants were approaching Ar. Who would risk his goods in a situation of chaos? When we did pass an occasional traveler, we passed warily. On Gor, as in my native England, one keeps to the left side of the road. This practice, as once in England, is more than a simple matter of convention. When one keeps to the left side of the road, one's sword arm faces the passing stranger.
And yet he's not going, like any sane 20th c man would, GET ME OUT OF HERE, I WANT TO GO HOME! - And yet, Norman himself has made no move in all these years to leave oppressively-liberal New York for the wilds of Albania or Eritrea or even to move to the Outback or the Alaskan tundra - or even to the nearer, easier to reach and live in, 95% vacant unorganized zones of the White Mountains of NH, like some of his fellow ideologues have done. Dare I suggest that Prof. Lange has more in common with his self-insert than we know, namely the both being poseurs part?
It seemed we had little to fear, and we had passed several of the pasang stones that line the side of the highway without seeing anything more threatening than a line of peasants carrying brushwood on their backs, and a pair of hurrying Initiates. Once, however, Talena dragged me to the side of the road, and, scarcely able to conceal our horror, we watched while a sufferer from the incurable Dar-kosis disease, bent in his yellow shrouds, hobbled by, periodically clacking that wooden device which warns all within hearing to stand clear from his path. "An Afflicted One," said Talena, gravely, using the expression common for such plagued wretches on Gor. The name of the disease itself, Dar-kosis, is almost never mentioned. I glimpsed the face beneath the hood and felt sick. Its one bleared eye regarded us blankly for a moment, and then the thing moved on.
Who can spell "Foreshadowing", children? Oddly enough, it never occurs to Tarl to observe to himself or anyone else, "Wow, that's just like leprosy on earth in the old days. But we've come up with much better ways of handling it, with our modern medicine and our humanitarianism, you know. It turns out it wasn't as contagious as our panic made it seem, either." It really is never clear - rather, never consistent - whether we're supposed to buy Tarl as Displaced 20th Century Englishman, or whether this is a retcon stuck on a Planetary Native Barbarian Hero, no more aware of alternate modes of being than would be Conan. It very often feels like that, never the more so than when Tarl suddenly remembers he's supposed to be being 20th Century Gulliver On Mars...for a couple seconds.
In the morning we left our camp early. A swallow of water from the flask and small, dry berries gathered from the nearby shrubbery were our only sustenance. We had not been on the road long when Talena clutched my arm. I listened carefully, hearing the distant clank of a shod tharlarion on the road. "A warrior," I guessed.
"Quick," she commanded. "Hood me."
I hooded her and snapped her wrists together in the slave bracelets.
The ringing of the tharlarion's shod claws on the road grew louder.
In a minute the rider appeared in view- a fine, bearded warrior with a golden helmet and a tharlarion lance. He drew the riding lizard to a halt a few paces from me. He rode the species of tharlarion called the high tharlarion, which ran on its two back feet in great bounding strides. Its cavernous mouth was lined with long, gleaming teeth. Its two small, ridiculously disproportionate forelegs dangled absurdly in front of its body. [See? Velociraptor!]
"Who are you?" demanded the warrior.
"I am Tarl of Bristol," I said.
"Bristol?" asked the warrior, puzzled.
"Have you never heard of it?" I challeged, as if insulted.
"No," admitted the warrior. "I am Kazrak of Port Kar," he said, "in the service of Mintar, of the Merchante Caste."
I did not need to ask about Port Kar. It is a city in the delta of the Vosk and as much a den of pirates as anything else.
The warrior gestured at Talena with his lance. "Who is she?" he asked.
"You do not need to know her name or lineage," I said.
The warrior laughed and slapped his thigh. "You would have me believe that she is of High Caste," he said. "She is probably the daughter of a goat keeper."
I could see Talena move under the hood, her fists clenched in the slave bracelets.
"What news of Ar?" I asked.
"War," said the mounted spearman approvingly. "Now, while the men of Ar fight among themselves for the cylinders, an army is gathering from fifty cities, massing on the banks of the Vosk to invade Ar. [What did I say? Are we really supposed to believe both that a) Matthew Cabot is a brilliant Administrator and ex-Dictator and b) didn't anticipate this?] There is a camp there such as you have never seen- a city of tents, pasangs of tharlarion corrals; the wings of the tarns sound like thunder overhead. The cooking fires of the soldiers can be seen two days' ride from the river."
Talena spoke, her voice muffled in the hood. "Scavengers come to feast on the bodies of wounded tarnsmen." It was a Gorean proverb, which seemed to be singularly inappropriate, coming from a hooded captive.
"I did not speak to the girl," said the warrior.
I excused Talena. "She has not worn her bracelets long," I said.
"She has spirit," said the warrior. [!!!]
"Where are you bound for?" I asked.
"To the banks of the Vosk, to the City of Tents," said the warrior.
"What news of Marlenus, the Ubar?" demanded Talena.
"You, should beat her," said the warrior, but responded to the girl. "None. He has fled."
"What news of the Home Stone of Ar and the daughter of Marlenus?" I asked, feeling it would be the sort of thing the warrior would expect me to be interested in."
"The Home Stone is rumored to be in a hundred cities," he said. "Some say it has been destroyed. Only the Priest-Kings know."
"And the daughter of Marlenus?" I insisted.
"She is undoubtedly in the Pleasure Gardens of the boldest tarnsman on Gor," laughed the warrior. "I hope he has as much luck with her as the Home Stone. I have heard she has the temper of a tharlarion and a face to match!"
Talena stiffened, her pride offended.
"I have heard," she said imperiously, "that the daughter of the Ubar is the most beautiful woman on all Gor."
She never seems to grow out of being Too Stupid To Live, or at least to know when to keep her mouth shut and her head down and pretend to be a peasant so as not to be spotted as an exiled aristo fleeing Madame of the sharp nose.
"I like this girl," said the warrior. "Yield her to me!"
"No," I said.
"Yield her or I will have my tharlarion trample you," he snapped, "or would you prefer to be spitted on my lance?"
"You know the codes," I said evenly. "If you want her, you must challenge for her and meet me with the weapon of my choice."
The warrior's face clouded, but only for an instant. He threw back his fine head and laughed, his teeth white in his bushy beard."
"Done!" he cried, fastening his lance in its saddle sheath and slipping from the back of the tharlarion. "I challenge you for her!"
"The sword," I said.
"Agreed," he said.
We shoved Talena, who was now frightened, to the side of the road. Hooded, she cowered there, the prize, her ears filled with the sudden violent ringing of blade on blade as two warriors fought to the death to possess her. Kazrak of Port Kar was a superb swordsman, but in the first moments we both knew that I was his master.
Okay, I'm not typically one to read lots of slashy subtext into everything, at least not counter to what's put down in the originals; I tend to work with what's there or in the interstices, and explore that, by my nature. But damn, sometimes you just can't get away from the alternate interpretations, not when they're that obvious & backed up by all the references to the Spartans elsewhere in the text. It is after all the natural and historical outcome of the belief that women are defective males, and only full males are worthy of friendship, after all, so why not make it "friends with benefits"?...and they did traditionally study a lot of Classics at Oxford...
His face was white beneath his helmet as he wildly attempted to parry my devastating attack. Once I stepped back, gesturing to the ground with my sword, the symbolic granting of quarter should it be desired. But Kazrak would not lay his sword on the stones at my feet. Rather, he suddenly launched a vicious attack, forcing me to defend myself as best I could. He seemed to fight with new fury, perhaps enraged that he had been offered quarter.
At last, terminating a frenzied exchange, I managed to drive my blade into his shoulder, and as his sword arm dropped, I kicked the weapon from his grasp. He stood proudly in the road, waiting for me to kill him.
Of course he doesn't, they become best buds, life-debt and all that, and you're not supposed to ask why this Oxford lad who (I know about Jericho, all right?) has minimal interest in girls, and has to be dragged off by his tutor to lose his virginity (it sure sounds like, doesn't it?) to prove his manhood, and is perpetually baffled by the obligatory heteronormativity of his culture (why do these girls keep coming on to me? Why does my pop think I'd want a woman? What would I do with her? Why does she think I'd want to watch her wash?) to the point where it becomes a joke, cannot do enough for the awesomely-bearded Kazrak, caring for his wound, making sure that he doesn't go broke as a result of his defeat and loss of his job as caravan guard - sharing his tent with him as well as Talena, who we are told over and over again is his Grande Amour, just in case we start to forget...
Led by Kazrak, I went with Talena, walking back along the line of wagons to see where she would be placed. Beside one of several long wagons of the sort covered with yellow and blue silk, I removed the bracelets from her wrists and turned her over to an attendant.
"I have a spare ankle ring," he said, and took Talena by the arm, thrusting her inside the wagon. In the wagon there were some twenty girls, dressed in the slave livery of Gor, perhaps ten on a side, chained to a metal bar which ran the length of the wagon. Talena would not like that. Before she disappeared, she called over her shoulder saucily, "You're not rid of me as easily as this, Tarl of Bristol."
"See if you can slip the ankle ring," laughed Kazrak, and led me back among the supply wagons.
Stop that! It's not going where you think! You fangirls and your dirty minds, sheesh. This ain't Xenophon.
...actually, now that I think about it, we don't really KNOW where it was going from the text, do we?
We had gone scarcely ten paces and Talena could hardly have been fastened in the wagon before we heard a female scream of pain and a bevy of howls and shrieks. From the wagon came the sound of rolling bodies, slamming and cracking against the sides, and the rattle of chains on wood, pierced by squeals of pain and anger. The attendant leaped into the back of the wagon with his strap, and there was added to the din the sound of his curses and the crack of the strap as he smartly laid about him. As Kazrak and I watched, the attendant, puffing and furious, emerged from the wagon, dragging Talena by the hair. As Talena struggled and kicked and the girls in the wagon shouted their approval and encouragement to the attendant, he angrily hurled Talena into my arms. Her hair was in wild disarray; there were nail marks on her shoulder and four strap welts on her back. Her arm was bruised. Her dress had been half torn from her.
"Keep her in your tent," snarled the attendant.
"Let the Priest-Kings blast me if she didn't do it," said Kazrak with admiration, "A true she-tharlarion."
Talena lifted a bloody nose to me and smiled brightly.
It becomes ever more reminiscent of late WoT as the chapter progresses:
The next few days were among the happiest of my life, as Talena and I became a part of Mintar's slow, ample caravan, members of its graceful, interminable, colorful procession. It seemed the routine of the journey would never end, and I grew enamored of the long line of wagons, each filled with its various goods, those mysterious metals and gems, rolls of cloth, foodstuffs, wines and Paga, weapons and harness, cosmetics and perfumes, medicines and slaves.
Mintar's caravan, like most, was harnessed long before dawn and traveled until the heat of the day. Camp would be made early in the afternoon. The beasts would be watered and fed, the guards set, the wagons secured, and the members of the caravan would turn to their cooking fires. In the evening the strap-masters and warriors would amuse themselves with stories and songs, recounting their exploits, fictitious and otherwise, and bawling out their raucous harmonies under the influence of Paga. [You'd think, if he were really a True Englishman and Oxbridge product, Tarl's first exclamation of joy upon Planet Gor would be "Oi! You have BEER! Praise Ganymede! Oh sweet beverage of the gods of my homeland!" and that he'd call a fermented alcoholic beverage made from grain by his own native word for it, but oh well.]
In those days I learned to master the high tharlarion, one of which had been assigned to me by the caravan's tharlarion master. These gigantic lizards had been bred on Gor for a thousand generations before the first tarn was tamed, and were raised from the leathery shell to carry warriors. They responded to voice signals, conditioned into their tiny brains in the training years. Nonetheless, the butt of one's lance, striking about the eye or ear openings, for there are few other sensitive areas in their scaled hides, is occasionally necessary to impress your will on the monster.
[Skipping over several long paras of thalarian husbandry - not that kind - with the passing thoughts that a) Dinotopia it ain't, b) I wouldn't let Norman handle a mule, let alone a horse, c) I hope Norman doesn't have any dogs either, d) what if only women had the latent gene allowing tel/empathic communication with thalarions, and one of them figured out how to talk to the war lizards? is it wrong to imagine a Pern/Gor crossover parody fic?]
Kazrak, as he had promised, turned over the balance of his hiring price to me- a very respectable eighty tarn disks. I argued with him to accept forty, on the ground that he was a sword brother, and at last convinced him to accept half of his own wages back. I felt better about this arrangement. Also, I didn't want Kazrak, when his wound was healed, to be reduced to challenging some luckless warrior for a bottle of Ka-la-na wine. We, with Talena, shared a tent, and, to Kazrak's amusement, I set aside a portion of the tent for the girl's private use, protecting it with a silk hanging.
[Um. Yeah. Whatever you say, Tarl.]
Because of the miserable condition of Talena's single garment, Kazrak and I procured from the supply master some changes of slave livery for the girl. This seemed to me the most appropriate way to diminish any possible suspicion as to her true identity. From his own tarn disks, Kazrak purchased two additional articles which he regarded as essential- a collar, which he had properly engraved, and a slave whip.
We returned to the tent, handing the new livery to Talena, who, in fury, regarded the brief, diagonally striped garments. She bit her lower lip, and, if Kazrak had not been present, would undoubtedly have roundly informed me of her displeasure.
"Did you expect to be dressed as a free woman?" I snapped.
She glared at me, knowing that she must play her role, at least in the presence of Kazrak. She tossed her head haughtily. "Of course not," she said, adding ironically, "Master." Her back straight as a tarn-goad, she disappeared behind the silk hanging. A moment later the torn rag of blue silk flew out from behind the hanging.
A moment or two after, Talena stepped forth for our inspection, brazen and insolent. She wore the diagonally striped slave livery of Gor, as had Sana- that briefly skirted, simple, sleeveless garment.
Okay okay holdit - on top of everything else, Norman isn't just content to stuff his slave-girls into humiliatingly-short minidresses, he has to inflict DIAGONAL STRIPES on us too??! I mean, I know this was the Sixties, but still! Even Star Trek didn't go that far.
She turned before us.
"Do I please you?" she asked.
It was obvious she did. Talena was a most beautiful girl.
"Kneel," I said, drawing out the collar.
Talena blanched, but, as Kazrak chuckled, she knelt before me, her fists clenched.
"Read it," I ordered.
Talena looked at the engraved collar and shook with rage.
"Read it," I said. "Out loud."
She read the simple leged alod:
"I AM THE PROPERTY OF TARL OF BRISTOL."
I snapped the slender steel collar on her throat, placing the key in my pouch.
"Shall I call for the iron?" asked Kazrak.
"No," begged Talena, now, for the first time, frightened.
"I shall not brand her today," I said, keeping a straight face.
"By the priest-Kings," laughed Kazrak, "I believe you care for the she-tharlarion."
"Leave us, Warrior," I said.
Kazrak laughed again, winked at me, and backed with mock ceremony from the tent.
Talena sprang to her feet, her two fists flying for my face. I caught her wrists.
"How dare you?" she raged. Take this thing off," she commanded.
"She struggled fiercely, futilely. [Hint to all wannabe Spunky Princesses: a swift knee to the groin is considered the best method under these circumstances, although the kneecap crunch also has its advocates, as does the nosebreaking headbutt.] When in sheer frustration she stopped squirming, I released her. She pulled at the circle of steel on her throat. "Remove this degrading object," she commanded, "now!" She faced me, her mouth trembling with rage. "The daughter of the Ubar of Ar wears no man's collar."
"The daughter of the Ubar of Ar," I said, "wears the collar of Tarl of Bristol."
There was a long pause.
"I suppose," she said, attempting to save face, "it would perhaps be appropriate for a tarnsman to place his collar on the captive daughter of a rich merchant."
"Or the daughter of a goat keeper," I added.
Her eyes snapped. "Yes, perhaps," she said. "Very well. I concede the reasonableness of your plan." Then she held out her small hand imperiously. "Give me the key," she said, "so that' I may remove this when I please."
"I will keep the key," I said. "And it will be removed, if at all, when I please." [So much for his 20th-c Earth ethics...]
She straightened and turned away, enraged but helpless. "Very well," she said. Then, her eyes lit on the second object Kazrak had donated to the project of taming what he called the she-tharlarion- the slave whip. "What is the meaning of that?"
"Surely you are familiar with a slave whip?" I asked, picking it up and, with amusement, slapping it once or twice in my palm."
"Yes," she said, regarding me evenly. "I have often used it on my own slaves. Is it now to be used on me?"
"If necessary," I said.
"You wouldn't have the nerve," she said.
"More likely the inclination," I said.
She smiled.
Her next remark astonished me. "Use it on me if I do not please you, Tarl of Bristol," she said. I pondered this, but she had turned away.
If you didn't think it could get more nauseating that that - think again.
In the next few days, to my surprise, Talena was buoyant, cheerful, and excited. She became interested in the caravan and would spend hours walking alongside the colored wagons, sometimes hitching rides with the strapmasters, wheedling from them a piece of fruit or a sweetmeat. She even conversed delightedly with the inmates of the blue and yellow wagons, bringing them precious tidbits of camp news, teasing them as to how handsome their new masters would be.
She became a favorite of the caravan. Once or twice mounted warriors of the caravan had accosted her, but on reading her collar had backed grumblingly away, enduring with good humor her jibes and taunts. In the early afternoon, when the caravan halted, she would help Kazrak and me set up our tent and would then gather wood for a fire. She cooked for us, kneeling by the fire, her hair bound back so as not to catch the sparks, her face sweaty and intent on the piece of meat she was most likely burning. After the meal she would clean and polish our gear, sitting on the tent carpet between us, chatting about the small, pleasant inconsequientialities of her day.
"Slavery apparently agrees with her," I remarked to Kazrak.
"Not slavery," he smiled. And I puzzled as to the meaning of his remark. Talena blushed and lowered her face, rubbing vigorously on the leather of my tharlarion boots.
OMG IT'S NEGAVERSE SIUAN SANCHE!!! --Ahem. Sorry about that. I meant, LOLZ, the spoilt princess can't cook, snicker snicker, but she's having SUCH fun playing house for the Lost Boys, and let's just not go anywhere near what the two half-naked leather-belt-clad warriors are doing in their half of the tent every night, and whether or not she peeks, okay?
Next: tragedy strikes as the lovers are parted by cruel fate! Talena gets kidnapped by another powerful warlord, too. (Don't worry, we're more than halfway through, and Talena goes missing and it turns to good old-fashioned hurt/comfort-hurt-hurt the Manly Hero so that he can even more improbably rise from his sickbed his chains fighting and raring to go, despite being half-starved and beaten to a pulp and kept in chains before breaking free...Stop raising your eyebrows! I'm SURE there's nothing supposed to be erotic about all that bondage-torture-bondage-torture...)
* I emphasize this line about Gor intramural politics because it's relevant to his subsequent alignment switcheroo.