Tarnsman of Gor

Chapter 5 Lights of the Planting Feast

I MOUNTED MY TARN, THAT fierce, black magnificent bird.

My shield and spear were secured by saddle straps; my sword was slung over my shoulder. On each side of the saddle hung a missile weapon, a crossbow with a quiver of a dozen quarrels, or bolts, on the left, a longbow with a quiver of thirty arrows on the right. The saddle pack contained the light gear carried by raiding tarnsmen — in particular, rations, a compass, maps, binding fiber, and extra bowstrings. Bound in the saddle in front of me, drugged, her head completely covered with a slave hood buckled under her chin, was a girl. It was Sana, the Tower Slave whom I had seen on my first day in Gor.

I waved a farewell to the Older Tarl and to my father, drew back on the one-strap, and was off, leaving the tower and their tiny figures behind me. I leveled the tarn and drew on the six-strap, setting my course for Ar. As I passed the cylinder in which Torm kept his scrolls, I was happy to catch a glimpse of the little scribe standing at his rough-hewn window. I now realize he might have been waiting there for hours. He lifted his blue-clad arm in a gesture of farewell — rather sadly, I thought. I waved back at him and then turned my eyes away from Ko-ro-ba and toward the hills beyond. I felt little of the exhilaration I had felt in my first soaring venture on the back of the tarn. I was troubled and angry, dismayed at the ugly details of the project before me. I thought of the innocent girl bound senseless before me.

How surprised I had been when she had appeared in the small room outside the Chamber of the Council, after my father! She had knelt at his feet in the position of the Tower Slave as he had explained to me the plan of the Council.

The power of Marlenus, or much of it, lay in the Mystique of victory that had never ceased to attend him, acting like a magic spell on his soldiers and the people of his city. Never defeated in combat, Ubar of Ubars, he had boldly refused to relinquish his title after a Valley War some twelve years ago, and his men had refused to withdraw from him, refused to abandon him to the traditional fate of the over ambitious Ubar. The soldiers, and the Council of his city, had succumbed to his blandishments, his promises of wealth and power for Ar.

Indeed, it seemed their confidence had been well placed, for now Ar, instead of being a single beleaguered city like so many others on Gor, was a central city in which were kept the Home Stones of a dozen hitherto free cities. There was now an empire of Ar, a robust, arrogant, warlike polity only too obviously involved in the work of dividing its enemies and extending its political hegemony city by city across the plains, hills, and deserts of Gor.

In a matter of time Ko-ro-ba would be forced to match its comparative handful of tarnsmen 'against those of the Empire of Ar. My father, in his office as Administrator of Ko-ro-ba, had attempted to develop an alliance against Ar, but the free cities of Gor had, in their pride and suspicion, their almost fanatical commitment to protecting their own independent destinies, refused the alliance. Indeed, they had, in the fashion of Gor, driven my father's envoys from their Council Chambers with the whips normally used on slaves, an insult which, at another time, would have been answered by the War Call of Ko-ro-ba. But, as my father knew, strife among the free cities would be the very madness which Marlenus of Ar would welcome most; better even that Ko-ro-ba should suffer the indignity of being thought a city of cowards. Yet if the Home Stone of Ar, the very symbol and significance of the empire, could be removed from Ar, the spell of Marlenus might be broken. He would become a laughingstock, suspect to his own men, a leader who had lost the Home Stone. He would be fortunate if he was not publicly impaled.

The girl on the saddle before me stirred, the effect of the drug wearing off. She moaned softly and leaned back against me. As soon as we had taken flight, I had unfastened the restraining straps on her legs and wrists, leaving only the broad belt which lashed her securely to the back of the tare. I would not permit the plan of the Council to be followed completely, not in her case, even though she had agreed to play her part in the plan, knowing it meant her life. I knew little more about her than her name, Sana, and the fact that she was a slave from the City of Thentis.

The Older Tarl had told me that Thentis is a city famed for its tare flocks and remote in the mountains from which the city takes its name. Raiders from Ar had struck at the tarp flocks and the outlying cylinders of Thentis, and the girl had been captured. She had been sold in Ar on the Day of the Love Feast and had been purchased by an agent of my father. He, in accordance with the plan of the Council, had need of a girl who would be willing to give her life to be avenged on the men of Ar.

I could not help feeling sorry for her, even in the stein world of Gor. She had been through too much and was clearly not of the stock of the tavern girls; slavery would not have been a good life for her, as it might have been for them. I felt that, somehow, in spite of her collar, she was free. I had felt this even when my father had commanded her to rise and submit to me, accepting me as her new master. She had risen and walked across the room, her feet bare on the stone floor, and dropped to her knees before me, lowering her head and lifting and extending her hands to me, the wrists crossed. The ritual significance of the gesture of submission was not lost on me; her wrists were offered to me, as if for binding. Her part in the plan was simple, though ultimately fatal.

The Home Stone of Ar, like most Home Stones in the cylinder cities, was kept free on the tallest tower, as if in open defiance of the tarnsmen of rival cities. It was, of course, kept well-guarded and at the first sign of serious danger would undoubtedly be carried to safety. Any attempt on the Home Stone was regarded by the citizens of a city as sacrilege of the most heinous variety and punishable by the most painful of deaths, but, paradoxically, it was regarded as the greatest of glories to purloin the Home Stone of another city, and the warrior who managed this was acclaimed, accorded the highest honors of the city, and was believed to be favored by the Priest-Kings themselves.

The Home Stone of a city is the center of various rituals. The next would be the Planting Feast of SaTarna, the Life-Daughter, celebrated early in the growing season to insure a good harvest. This is a complex feast, celebrated by most Gorean cities, and the observances are numerous and intricate. The details of the rituals are arranged and mostly executed by the Initiates of a given city. Certain portions of the ceremonies, however, are often allotted to members of the High Castes.

In Ar, for example, early in the day, a member of the Builders will go to the roof on which the Home Stone is kept and place the primitive symbol of his trade, a metal angle square, before the Stone, praying to the Priest-Kings for the prosperity of his caste in the coming year; later in the day a Warrior will, similarly, place his arms before the Stone, to be followed by other representatives of each caste. Most significantly, while these members of the High Castes perform their portions of the ritual, the Guards of the Home Stone temporarily withdraw to the interior of the cylinder, leaving the celebrant, it is said, alone with the Priest-Kings.

Lastly, as the culmination of Ar's Planting Feast, and of the greatest importance to the plan of the Council of Ko-ro-ba, a member of the Ubar's family goes to the roof. at night, under the three full moons with which the feast is correlated, and casts grain upon the stone and drops of a red, wine like drink made from the fruit of the Ka-la-na tree. The member of the Ubar's family then prays to the Priest-Kings for an abundant harvest and returns to the interior of the, cylinder, at which point the Guards of the Home Stone resume their vigil.

This year the honor of the grain sacrifice was to be accorded to the daughter of the Ubar. I knew nothing about her, except that her name was Talena, that she was rumored to be one of the beauties of Ar, and that I was supposed to kill her.

According to the plan of the Council of Ko-ro-ba, exactly at the time of the sacrifice, at the twentieth Gorcan hour, or midnight, I was to drop to the roof of the highest cylinder in Ar, slay the daughter of the Ubar, and carry away her body and the Home Stone, discarding the former in the swamp country north of Ar and carrying the latter home to Ko-ro-ba. The girl, Sana, whom I carried on the saddle before me, would dress in the heavy robes and veils of the Ubar's daughter and return in her place to the interior of the cylinder. Presumably, it would be at least a matter of minutes before her identity was discovered, and, before that, she would take the poison provided by the Council.

Two girls were supposed to die that I might have time to escape with the Home Stone before the alarm could be given. In my heart I knew I would not carry out this plan. Abruptly I changed course, drawing on the four-strap, guiding my tarn toward the blue, shimmering wave of a mountain range in the distance. The girl before me groaned and shook herself, her hands, unsteady, going to the slave hood, which was buckled over her head.

I helped her unbuckle the hood and felt delighted at the sudden flash of her long blond hair streaking out beside my cheek. I placed the hood in the saddle pack, admiring her, not only her beauty but even more that she did not. seem frightened. Surely there was enough to frighten any girl — the height at which she found herself, the savage mount on which she rode, the prospect of the terrible fate that she believed to await her at our journey's end. But she was, of course, a girl of mountainous Thentis, famed for its fierce taro flocks. Such a girl would not frighten easily.

She didn't turn to look at me, but she examined her wrists, rubbing them gently. The marks of the original restraining straps, which I had removed, were just visible.

"You unbound me," she said. "And you removed my hood — why?"

"I thought you would be more comfortable," I replied.

"You treat a slave with unexpected consideration," she said. "Thank you."

"You're not — frightened?" I asked, stumbling on the words, feeling stupid. "I mean — about the tarn. You must have ridden taros before. I was frightened my first time."

The girl looked back at me, puzzled. "Women are seldom permitted to ride on the backs of tarns," she said. "In the carrying baskets, but not as a warrior rides." She paused, and the wind whistled past, a steady sound mingling with the rhythmical stroke of the tarn's beating wings. "You said you were frightened — when you first rode a taro," she said.

"I was," I laughed, recalling the excitement and the sense of danger.

"Why do you tell a slave that you were frightened?" she asked.

"I don't know," I replied. "But I was"

She turned her head away again and looked, unseeing, at the head of the great tarn as he plowed the wind.

"I did ride once before on the back of a tarn," she said bitterly, "to Ar, bound across the saddle, before I was sold in the Street of Brands."

It was not easy to talk on the back of the great taro, with the wind, and, besides, though I wanted to communicate with the girl, I felt I could not.

She was looking at the horizon, and suddenly her body tensed. "This is not the way to Ar," she cried.

"I know," I said.

"What are you doing?" She turned bodily in the straps, looking at me, her eyes wide. "Where are you going, Master?"

The word "Master," though it had come appropriately enough from the girl, who was, legally at least, my property, startled me.

"Don't call me Master," I said.

"But you are my Master," she said.

I took from my tunic the key my father had given me, the key to Sana 's collar. I reached to the lock behind her neck, inserted the key and turned it, springing open the mechanism. I jerked the collar away from her throat and threw it and the key from the tarn's back and watched them fly downward in a long, graceful parabola.

"You are free," I said. "And we are going to Thentis.

She sat before me, stunned, her hands unbelievingly at her throat. "Why?" she asked. "Why?"

What could I tell her? That I had come from another world, that I was determined that all the ways of Gor should not be mine, or that I had cared for her, somehow, so helpless in her condition — that she had moved me to regard her not as an instrumentality of mine or of the Council, but as a girl, young, rich with life, not to be sacrificed in the games of statecraft?

"I have my reasons for freeing you," I said, "but I am not sure that you would understand them," and I added, under my breath, to myself, that I was not altogether sure I understood them myself.

"My father," she said, "and my brothers will reward you."

"No," I said.

"If you wish, they are bound in honor to grant me to you, without bride price."

"The ride to Thentis will be long," I said.

She replied proudly, "My bride price would be a hundred tarns."

I whistled softly to myself — my ex-slave would have come high. On a Warrior's allowance I would not have been able to afford her.

"If you wish to land," said Sana, apparently determined to see me compensated in some fashion, "I will serve your pleasure."

It occurred to me that there was at least one reply which she, bred in the honor codes of Gor, should under stand, one reply that should silence her. "Would you diminish the worth of my gift to you?" I asked, feigning anger.

She thought for a moment and then gently kissed me on the lips. "No, Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba," she said, "but you well know that I could do nothing that would diminish the worth of your gift to me. Tarl Cabot, I care for you."

I realized that she had spoken to me as a free woman, using my name. I put my arms around her, sheltering her as well as I could from the swift, chilling blast of the wind. Then I thought to myself, a hundred tarns indeed! Forty perhaps, because she was a beauty. For a hundred tarns one might have the daughter of an Administrator, for a thousand perhaps even the daughter of the Ubar of Ar! A thousand tarns would make a formidable addition to the cavalry force of a Gorean warlord. Sana, collar or no, had the infuriating, endearing vanity of the young and beautiful of her sea.

On a tower of Thentis I left her, kissing her, removing from my neck her clinging hands. She was crying, with all the incomprehensible absurdity of the female kind. I hauled the tarn aloft, waving back at the small figure still wearing the diagonally striped livery of the slave. Her white arm was lifted, and her blond hair was swept behind her on the windy roof of the cylinder. I turned the tare toward Ar.

As I crossed the Vosk, that mighty river, some forty pasangs in width, which hurtles past the frontiers of Ar to pour into the Tamber Gulf, I realized that I was at last within the borders of the Empire of Ar. Sana had insisted that I keep the pellet of poison which the Council had given her to spare her from the otherwise inevitable tortures that would follow the disclosure of her identity in the cylinders of Ar. However, I took the pellet from my tunic and dropped it into the wide waters of the Vosk. It constituted a temptation to which I had no inclination to succumb. If death was easy, I might seek life less strenuously. There would come times when, in my weakness, I would regret my decision.

It took three days to reach the environs of the city of Ar. Shortly after crossing the Vosk, I had descended and made camp, thereafter traveling only at night. During the day I freed my tarn, to allow him to feed as he would. They are diurnal hunters and eat only what they catch themselves, usually one of the fleet Gorean antelopes or a wild bull, taken on the run and lifted in the monstrous talons to a high place, where it is torn to pieces and devoured. Needless to say, tares are a threat to any living matter that is luckless enough to fall within the shadow of their wings, even human beings.

During the first day, sheltered in the occasional knots of trees that dot the border plains of Ar, I slept, fed on my rations, and practiced with my weapons, trying to keep my muscles vital in spite of the stiffness that attends prolonged periods on tarnback. But I was bored. At first even the countryside was depressing, for the men of Ar, as a military policy, had devastated an area of some two or three hundred pasangs on their borders, cutting down fruit trees, filling wells, and salting the fertile areas. Ar had, for most practical purposes, surrounded itself with an invisible wall, a bleached region, forbidding and almost impassable to those on foot.

I was more pleased on the second day and made camp in a grassy veldt, dotted with the Ka-la-na trees. The night before, I had ridden over fields of grain, silvery yellow beneath me in the light of the three moons. I kept my course by the luminescent dial of my Gor compass, the needle of which pointed always to the Sardar Mountain Range, home of the Priest-Kings. Sometimes I guided my tarn by the stars, the same fixed stars I had seen from another angle above my head in the mountains of New Hampshire.

The third day's camp was made in the swamp forest that borders the city of Ar on the north. I had chosen this area because it is the most uninhabitable area within tam strike of Ar. I had seen too many village cooking fires on the last night, and twice I had heard the tarn whistles of nearby patrols — groups of three warriors flying their rounds. The thought crossed my mind of giving up the project, turning outlaw, if you will, deserter, if you like, but of saving my own skin, trying to get out of this mad scheme if only with my life, and that only for a time.

But an hour before midnight, on the day I knew was the Planting Feast of Sa-Tarna, I climbed again to the saddle of my taro, drew back on the one-strap, and rose above the lush trees of the swamp forest. Almost simultaneously I heard the raucous cry of a patrol leader of Ar, "We have him!"

They had followed my tarn, trailing it back from its feeding in the swamp forest, and now, like the points of a rapidly converging triangle, three warriors of Ar were closing in on me. They apparently had no intention of taking me prisoner, for an instant after the shout the sharp hiss of a bolt from a crossbow passed over my head. Before I had time to gather my senses, a dark winged shape had materialized in front of me, and, in the light of the three moons, I saw a warrior on a tarn passing, thrusting out with his spear.

He surely would have struck home had not my tarn veered wildly to the left, almost colliding with another tarn and its rider, who fired a bolt that sank deep in the saddle pack with a sound like slapping leather. The third of the warriors of Ar was sweeping in from behind. I turned, raising the tare-goad, which was looped to my wrist, to ward off the stroke of his blade. Sword and tare-goad met in a ringing clash and a shower of glittering yellow sparks. Somehow I must have turned the goad on. Both my tarn and that of the attacker withdrew as if by instinct from the flash of the goad, and I had inadvertently purchased a moment of time.

I unslung my longbow and fitted an arrow, yanking my tam in an abrupt wing-shuddering arc. I think the. first of my pursuers had not realized I would turn the bird. He had been expecting a chase. As I passed him, I saw his eyes wide in the «Y» of his helmet, as, in that split second, he knew I could not miss. I saw him stiffen suddenly in the saddle and was dimly aware of his tarn streaking away, screaming.

Now the other two men of the patrol were circling for their attack. They swept toward me, about five yards apart, to close on either side of me, to force the. wings of my tarn up and hold it for the moment they would need, trapped motionless between their own mounts.

I had no time to think, but somehow I was aware that my sword was now in my hand and the taro-goad thrust in my belt. As we crashed in the air, I sharply jerked back the one-strap, bringing the steel-shod talons of my war tarn into play. And to this day I bless the tam keepers of Ko-ro-ba for the painstaking training they had given the great bird. Or perhaps I should bless the fighting spirit of that plumed giant, my war tarn, that terrible thing the Older Tarl had called a tarn of turns. Beak and talons rending, uttering ear-shattering screams,l my tam slashed at the other two birds.

I crossed swords with the nearer of the two warriors a in a brief passage that could have lasted only an instant. I was suddenly aware, dizzily conscious, that one of the enemy tarns was sinking downward, flopping wildly, falling into the recesses of the swamp forest below. The other warrior pulled his tarn about as if for another passage at arms, but then, as if suddenly realizing that his duty was to give the alarm, lie shouted at me in rage and wheeled his tare again, streaking for the lights of Ar.

With his start, he would be confident, but I knew that my tarn could overtake him easily. I brought my tarn into line with the retreating speck and gave him his rein. As we neared the fleeing warrior, I fitted a second arrow to my bow. Rather than kill the warrior, I loosed the arrow into the wing of his tarn. The tare spun about and began to favor the injured wing. The warrior could no longer control the mount, and I saw the tare dropping awkwardly, descending in drunken circles to the darkness below.

I drew back on the one-strap, and when we had climbed to a height where my breath came in gasps, I leveled our course for Ar. I wished to fly above the normal patrol runs. When I neared Ar, I crouched low in the saddle and hoped that the speck against a moon which might be seen by the watchmen of the outlying towers would be taken for a wild tarn, flying high over the city.

The city of Ar must have contained more than a hundred thousand cylinders, each ablaze with the lights of the Planting Feast. I did not question that Ar was the greatest city of all known Gor. It was a magnificent and beautiful city, a worthy setting for the jewel of empire, that awesome jewel that had proved so tempting to its Ubar, the all-conquering Marlenus. And now, down there, somewhere in that monstrous blaze of light, was a humble piece of stone, the Home Stone of that great city, and I must seize it.