Tarnsman of Gor Read online

  "Yes," I said.

  The insect seemed relieved. "I am pleased," he said. "I do not think it is appropriate for rational creatures to speak loudly."

  "You have saved my life," I said. "Thank you."

  "My web saved your life," corrected the insect. He was still for a moment, and then, as if sensing my apprehension, said, "I will not hurt you. The Spider People do not hurt rational creatures."

  "I am grateful for that," I said.

  The next remark took my breath away.

  "Was it you who stole the Home Stone of Ar?"

  I paused, then, being confident the creature had no love for the men of Ar, answered affirmatively.

  "That is pleasing to me," said the insect, "for the men of Ar do not behave well toward the Spider People. They hunt us and leave only enough of us alive to spin the Cur-lon Fiber used in the mills of Ar. If they were not rational creatures, we would fight them."

  "How did you know the Home Stone of Ar was stolen?" I asked.

  "The word has spread from the city, carried by all the rational creatures, whether they crawl or fly or swim." The insect lifted one foreleg, the sensory hairs trembling on my shoulder. "There is great rejoicing on Gor, but not in the city of Ar."

  "I lost the Home Stone," I said. "I was tricked by her I supposed to be the daughter of the Ubar, thrown from my own tarn, and saved from death only by your web. I think tonight there will again be gladness in Ar, when the daughter of the Ubar returns the Home Stone."

  The mechanical voice spoke again. "How is it that the daughter of the Ubar will return the Home Stone of Ar when you carry in your belt the tarn-goad?"

  Suddenly I realized the truth of what he had said and was amazed that it had not occurred to me before. I imagined the girl alone on the back of the fierce tarn, unskilled in the mastery of such a mount, without even a tarn-goad to protect herself, if the bird should turn on her. Her chances of survival seemed now more slim than if I had cut the ladder over the cylinders of Ar when she hung helplessly in my power, the treacherous daughter of the Ubar Marlenus. Soon the tarn would be feeding. It must have been light for several hours.

  "I must return to Ko-ro-ba," I said. "I have failed."

  "I will take you to the edge of the swamp if you like," said the insect. I assented, thanking him, this rational creature who lifted me gently to his back and moved with such dainty rapidity, picking his way exquisitely through the swamp forest.

  We had proceeded for perhaps an hour when Nar, the spider, abruptly stopped and lifted his two forelegs into the air, testing the odors, straining to sift out something in the dense, humid air.

  "There is a carnivorous tharlarion, a wild tharlarion, in the vicinity," he said. "Hold tightly."

  Luckily I did immediately as he had advised, fixing my grip deep in the long black hairs that covered his thorax, for Nar suddenly raced to a nearby swamp tree and scuttled high into its branches. About two or three minutes later I heard the hunger grunt of a wild tharlarion and a moment afterward the piercing scream of a terrified girl.

  From the back of Nar I could see the marsh, with its reeds and clouds of tiny flying insects below. From a wall of reeds about fifty paces to the right and thirty feet below, stumbling and screaming, came the bundled figure of a human being, running in horror, its hands flung out before it. In that instant I recognized the heavy brocaded robes, now mud-splattered and torn, of the daughter of the Ubar.

  Scarcely had she broken into the clearing, splashing through the shallow greenish waters near us, than the fearsome head of a wild tharlarion poked through the reeds, its round, shining eyes gleaming with excitement, its vast arc of a mouth swung open. Almost too rapid to be visible, a long brown lash of a tongue darted from its mouth and curled around the slender, helpless figure of the girl. She screamed hysterically, trying to force the adhesive band from her waist. It began to withdraw toward the mouth of the beast.

  Without thinking, I leaped from the back of Nar, seizing one of the long, tendril-like vines that parasitically interlace the gnarled forms of the swamp trees. In an instant I had splashed into the marsh at the foot of the tree and raced toward the tharlarion, my sword raised. I rushed between its mouth and the girl, and with a swift downward slash of my blade severed that foul brown tongue.

  A shattering squeal of pain rent the heavy air of the swamp forest, and the tharlarion actually reared on its hind legs and spun about in pain, sucking the brown stump of its tongue back into its mouth with an ugly popping noise. Then it splashed on its back in the water, rolled quickly onto its legs, and began to move its head in rapid scanning motions. Almost immediately its eyes fixed on me; its mouth, now filled with a colorless scum, opened, revealing its teeth ridges.

  It charged, its great webbed feet striking the marsh water like explosions. In an instant the mouth had snapped for me, and I had left the mark of my blade deep in the teeth ridges of its lower jaw. It snapped again, and I knelt, the jaws passing over me as I thrust upward with the sword, piercing the neck. It backed away to about four or five paces, slowly, unsteadily. The tongue, or rather its stump, flitted in and out of its mouth two or three times, as if the creature could not understand that it was no longer at its disposal.

  The tharlarion sunk a bit lower in the marsh, half closing its eyes. I knew the fight was over. More of the colorless exudate was seeping from its throat. About its flanks, as it settled into the mud, there was a stirring in the water, and I realized the small water lizards of the swamp forest were engaged in their grisly work. I bent down and washed the blade of my sword as well as I could in the green water, but my tunic was so splattered and soaked that I had no way to dry the blade. Accordingly, carrying the sword in my hand, I waded back to the foot of the swamp tree and climbed the small, dry knoll at its base.

  I looked around. The girl had fled. This made me angry, for some reason, though I thought myself well rid of her. After all, what did I expect? That she would thank me for saving her life? She had undoubtedly left me to the tharlarion, rejoicing in the luck of a Ubar's daughter, that her enemies might destroy one another while she escaped with her life. I wondered how far she would get in the swamps before another tharlarion caught her scent. I called out "Nar!", looking for my spider comrade, but he, like the girl, had disappeared. Exhausted, I sat with my back against the tree, my hand never leaving the hilt of my sword.

  Idly, with repulsion, I watched the body of the tharlarion in the swamp. As the water lizards had fed, the carcass, lightened, had shifted position, rolling in the water. Now, in a matter of minutes, the skeleton was visible, picked almost clean, the bones gleaming except where small lizards skittered about on them, seeking a last particle of flesh.

  There was a sound. I leaped to my feet, sword ready. But across the marsh, with his swift prancing stride, came Nar, and in his mandibles, held gently but firmly, the daughter of the Ubar Marlenus. She was striking at Nar with her tiny fists, cursing and kicking in a manner I thought most improper for the daughter of a Ubar. Nar pranced onto the knoll and set her down before me, his pearly luminescent eyes fixed on me like blank, expressionless moons.

  "This is the daughter of the Ubar Marlenus," said Nar, and added ironically, "She did not remember to thank you for saving her life, which is strange, is it not, for a rational creature?"

  "Silence, Insect," said the daughter of the Ubar, her voice loud, clear, and imperious. She seemed to have no fear of Nar, perhaps because of the familiarity of the citizens of Ar with the Spider People, but it was obvious she loathed the touch of his mandibles, and she shivered slightly as she tried to wipe the exudate from the sleeves of her gown.

  "Also," said Nar, "she speaks rather loudly for a rational creature, does she not?"

  "Yes," I said.

  I regarded the daughter of the Ubar, now a sorry sight. Her Robes of Concealment were splattered with mud and marsh water, and in several places the heavy brocade had stiffened and cracked. The dominant colors of her Robes of Concealment were subtle reds, yell
ows, and purples, arrayed in intricate, overlapping folds. I guessed it would have taken her slave girls hours to array her in such garments. Many of the free women of Gor and almost always those of High Caste wear the Robes of Concealment, though, of course, their garments are seldom as complex or splendidly wrought as those of a Ubar's daughter. The Robes of Concealment, in function, resemble the garments of Muslim women on my own planet, though they are undoubtedly more intricate and cumbersome. Normally, of men, only a father and a husband may look upon the woman unveiled.

  In the barbaric world of Gor, the Robes of Concealment are deemed necessary to protect the women from the binding fibers of roving tarnsmen. Few warriors will risk their lives to capture a woman who may be as ugly as a tharlarion. Better to steal slaves, where the guilt is less and the charms of the captive are more readily ascertainable in advance.

  Now the eyes of the daughter of the Ubar were blazing at me furiously from the narrow aperture in her veil. I noted that they were greenish in cast, fiery and untamed, the eyes of a Ubar's daughter, a girl accustomed to command men. I also noted, though with considerably less pleasure, that the daughter of the Ubar was several inches taller than myself. Indeed, her body seemed somehow to be out of proportion.

  "You will release me immediately," announced the daughter of the Ubar, "and dismiss this filthy insect."

  "Spiders are, as a matter of fact, particularly clean insects," I remarked, my eyes informing her that I was inspecting her comparatively filthy garments.

  She shrugged haughtily.

  "Where is the tarn?" I demanded.

  "You should ask," she said, "where is the Home Stone of Ar."

  "Where is the tarn?" I repeated, more interested at the moment in the fate of my fierce mount than in the ridiculous piece of rock I had risked my life to obtain.

  "I don't know," she said, "nor do I care."

  "What happened?" I wanted to know.

  "I do not care to be questioned further," she announced.

  I clenched my fists in rage.

  Then, gently, the mandibles of Nar closed around the girl's throat. A sudden tremor of fear shook her heavily robed body, and the girl's hands tried to force the implacable chitinous pincers from her throat. Apparently the Spider Person was not as harmless as she had arrogantly assumed. "Tell it to stop," she gasped, writhing in the insect's grip, her fingers helplessly trying to loosen the mandibles.

  "Do you wish her head?" asked the mechanical voice of Nar.

  I knew that the insect, who would allow his kind to be exterminated before he would injure any rational creature, must have some plan in mind, or at least I assumed he did. At any rate, I said, "Yes." The mandibles began to close on her throat like the blades of giant scissors.

  "Stop!" screamed the girl, her voice a frenzied whisper.

  I motioned to Nar to relax his grip.

  "I was trying to bring the tarn back to Ar," said the girl. "I was never on a tarn before. I made mistakes. It knew it. There was no tarn-goad."

  I gestured, and Nar removed his mandibles from the girl's throat.

  "We were somewhere over the swamp forest," said the girl, "when we flew into a flock of wild tarns. My tarn attacked the leader of the flock."

  She shuddered at the memory, and I pitied her for what must have been a horrifying experience, lashed helpless to the saddle of a giant tarn reeling in a death struggle for the mastery of a flock, high over the trees of the swamp forest.

  "My tarn killed the other," said the girl, "and followed it to the ground, where he tore it to pieces." She shook with the memory. "I slipped free and ran under the wing and hid in the trees. After a few minutes, his beak and talons wet with blood and feathers, your tarn took flight. I last saw him at the head of the tarn flock."

  That was that, I thought. The tarn had turned wild, all his instincts triumphant over the tarn whistle, the memory of men.

  "And the Home Stone of Ar?" I asked.

  "In the saddle pack," she said, confirming my expectation. I had locked the pack when I had placed the Home Stone inside, and the pack is an integral part of the tarn saddle. When she had spoken, her voice had burned with shame, and I sensed the humiliation she felt at having failed to save the Home Stone. So now the tarn was gone, returned to his natural wild state, the Home Stone was in the saddle pack, and I had failed, and the daughter of the Ubar had failed, and we stood facing one another on a green knoll in the swamp forest of Ar.

  7

  A Ubar's Daughter

  The girl straightened, somehow proud but ludicrous in her mud-bedaubed regalia. She stepped away from Nar, as if apprehensive that those fierce mandibles might threaten her again. Her eyes flashed from the narrow opening in her veil. "It pleased the daughter of Marlenus," she said, "to inform you and your eight-legged brother of the fate of your tarn and of the Home Stone you sought."

  Nar's mandibles opened and shut once in annoyance. It was the nearest to anger I had ever seen the gentle creature come.

  "You will release me immediately," announced the daughter of the Ubar.

  "You are free now," I said.

  She looked at me, stunned, and backed away, being careful to avoid Nar by a safe distance. She kept her eyes on my sword, as if she expected me to strike her down if she turned her back.

  "It is well," she finally said, "that you obey my command. Perhaps your death will be made easier in consequence."

  "Who could refuse anything to the daughter of a Ubar?" I said, and then added—maliciously, it seems now—"Good luck in the swamps."

  She stopped and shuddered. Her robes still bore the wide lateral stain where the tongue of the tharlarion had wrapped itself. I glanced no more at her, but put my hand on the foreleg of Nar, gently, so that I might not injure any of the sensory hairs.

  "Well, Brother," I said, remembering the insult of the daughter of the Ubar, "shall we continue our journey?" I wanted Nar to understand that not all humankind were as contemptuous of the Spider People as the daughter of the Ubar.

  "Indeed, Brother," responded the mechanical voice of Nar. And surely I would rather have been a brother to that gentle, rational monster than many of the barbarians I had met on Gor. Indeed, perhaps I should be honored that he had addressed me as brother—I who failed to meet his standards, I who had so many times, intentionally or unintentionally, injured those of the rational kind.

  Nar, with me on his back, moved from the knoll.

  "Wait!" cried the daughter of the Ubar. "You can't leave me here!" She stumbled a bit from the knoll, tripped and fell in the water. She knelt in the green stagnant water, her hands held out to me, pleading, as if she suddenly realized the full horror of her plight, what it would mean to be abandoned in the swamp forest. "Take me with you," she begged.

  "Wait," I said to Nar, and the giant spider paused.

  The Ubar's daughter tried to stand up, but, ridiculously enough, it seemed as if one leg were suddenly far shorter than the other. She stumbled again and fell once more into the water. She swore like a tarnsman. I laughed and slid from Nar's back. I waded to her side and lifted her to carry her back to the knoll. She was surprisingly light, considering her apparent size.

  I had hardly taken her in my arms when she struck my face viciously with one muddy hand. "How dare you touch the daughter of a Ubar!" she exclaimed. I shrugged and dropped her back in the water. Angrily she scrambled to her feet as best she could and, hopping and stumbling, regained the knoll. I joined her there and examined her leg. One monstrous platformlike shoe had broken from her small foot and flopped beside her ankle, still attached by its straps. The shoe was at least ten inches high. I laughed. This explained the incredible height of the Ubar's daughter.

  "It's broken," I said. "I'm sorry."

  She tried to rise, but one foot was, of course, some ten inches higher than the other. She fell again, and I unstrapped the remaining shoe. "No wonder you can hardly walk," I said. "Why do you wear these silly things?"

  "The daughter of a Ubar must look do
wn on her subjects," was the simple if extraordinary reply.

  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.

  "Do you ask my favor?" I asked, which, on Gor, was much like asking if the person was willing to make a request—more simply, to say, "Please." To that small particle of respect it seemed I had a right.