“They are rather like stable sluts?” asked Tajima.
“Yes,” I said. I thought of the former Miss Wentworth. She was now, technically, a stable slut.
“The men,” said Tajima, “are brought food by tharlarion wagon, and, if they wish, they may visit the cook houses in the main camp.”
“Some relief is provided, I trust,” I said, “for the ferocity of other hungers, as well.”
“For slave hunger, of course,” said Tajima. “In the slave houses there are mats aligned, a row on each side, and each mat has its ring and chain, and slave. As the house is dark one carries a taper within, and picks out a slave. When one enters one is given a switch, which may be used, if one is not pleased, the switch being surrendered upon one’s exit.”
I supposed that some of the slaves brought in by Torgus and his fellows, whom I had encountered on the beach, former free women of Ar, might, if not yet disposed of to private masters, be found on the mats of the slave house. Far were such now, surely, traitresses, profiteers, and collaborators, from their jewels and palanquins, from their delicate viands and sweet wines, from their balcony gardens and lofty tower apartments. Muchly had their lives changed, and doubtless that of many others, as well, following the rising in Ar. So let their necks be closely and well encircled in slave steel, and let them lie in the darkness, waiting to be illuminated by a taper, thence to their knees and the kissing of feet, and beggings to be found pleasing.
My attention was then drawn to an area of the training plaza where a fellow was standing quietly before a hobbled tarn. Its beak was unbound. It lifted its unhobbled taloned foot as though to rake the fellow from head to foot. It opened and closed its large, razor like beak. In a tarn strike on a tabuk the animal’s back is usually broken by the strike, and then the beak, like a shearing engine, slashes through the back of the neck. The fellow had no disciplinary wand, no branch, no club in his grasp. He was defenseless if the bird were to attack. I would not have wished to be placed in that position. The tarn screamed hideously, menacingly. Then it made a hissing sound. That sound is intended to intimidate. It is not uncommon in intraspecific aggression. At that sound the smaller bird, or younger bird, or less aggressive bird, usually backs away. That response has presumably been selected for. Had it not been presumably there would be commonly but one male in a flock. The male which retreats one day, of course, may not retreat another day, and then a fight to the death, or to the disabling of the defeated, is likely to take place. Eventually the younger bird will grow stronger and fiercer and the older bird weaker and less fierce, and, sooner or later, a new Ubar, over the body of its torn, quivering foe, will scream its conquest, and its claiming of the flock.
But the fellow menaced by the tarn did not move.
“He will be a tarnsman,” I said.
“I think so,” said Tajima.
Then the fellow put his hand out, on the bird’s beak, which touch the bird, as though puzzled, suffered without protest. It is hard not to show fear in the presence of the tarn, but it is extremely dangerous to do so, for the tarn, as many animals, can sense fear, and this stimulates its aggression. The fellow, of course, was not another bird, or a tabuk, or verr, but a different life form, the human, which is not an unknown form of prey for a tarn, but it is certainly not its customary prey. Too, the tarn commonly attacks from the air. It is not unknown for tabuk to graze in its presence, if it has alighted. The fellow then embraced, as he could, its large head. The bird’s eyes gleamed, brightly, wickedly, but it did not pull away. The fellow then began to groom the bird, smoothing its feathers. The tarn raised its crested head to the sky, and then lowered its head, again, for the pleasure of the fellow’s touch. I could not hear, but I supposed the fellow was speaking to it, soothingly. Human speech, even a soft crooning, can settle a restless tarn. The girls who tend tarn cots sometimes, in the evening, after the feeding, sing to their charges. It is sometimes hard to know when the tarn is asleep as it, as many birds, sleeps with its eyes open. To be sure, interestingly, it apparently does not see then, although the eye is open. It seems to be something like a window through which no one at the time is looking. Occasionally in its sleep the tarn moves uneasily, and tosses its head, and a taloned foot will move, sometimes marking the floor of the cot. One supposes that the bird is dreaming, doubtless of flight, perhaps of the hunt. Some human beings, incidentally, occasionally sleep with their eyes open. This tends to be somewhat unnerving, for an observer. To be sure, sleepwalkers sleep with their eyes open, as well, but, clearly, they are seeing at the time, given their avoidance of obstacles, and such.
“I wanted you to see the training area, and the tarns,” said Tajima. “There is little for you to do now, though you are welcome, as you wish, and whenever you wish, to visit this area. The training will continue. Also, we are awaiting the arrival of more leather for saddles and harnessing. Once we have a hundred or more men who have flighted a tarn and lived, we will begin a more disciplined endeavor, and will try to form riders, with such skills as they will then have, into prides, which you may then form into a cavalry.”
The expression ‘pride’, in this context, was a metaphor, of sorts, taken from the usual grouping of larls, such a group being commonly called a pride. The term is Gorean, but, like a great many terms in Gorean, not surprisingly, given the voyages of acquisition, it is taken from another language, in this case, English.
“I am anxious to begin work,” I said. I had considered, for a long time, possible innovations in the tactics of tarn attack, and the armament of riders. Too long, in my view, had the common tarnsman been too much of a mounted foot soldier, too long had he been the passenger of the mount, rather than a component in a single, unified weapon. An analogy, though quite imperfect, might have been the early transition from cavalry as a supportive arm, used to reconnoiter, harass, and ride down stragglers, to a central arm, a shock arm, of stirruped lancers fit to strike, split and disrupt serried ranks. The latter role on Gor, of course, belonged to war tharlarion. But I thought much might be done with tarn cavalries. For example, it seemed to me that much might be learned from the almost evanescent appearing and disappearing of Tuchuk cavalry. Too, the usual missile weapon of the tarnsman, as the longbow, or peasant bow, was impractical, was the crossbow, but it was difficult to reload from the saddle, and its rate of fire, accordingly, was slow. Usually one quarrel would be discharged, and then the crossbowman was well advised to withdraw from action until it was possible to ratchet back the cable for another load, or, if a foot stirrup was used, which was quicker, but gave less power, to haul it back with two hands, get it over the catch, and then, with an additional operation, set another missile in the guide. In either case, the rate of fire was, in my view, prohibitedly slow.