I myself had paid my bills properly before leaving the Crooked Tarn. It is the thing to do. Inns, after all, if no one paid their bills, would have a difficult time making a go of it. It is not really practical to hold every fellow for ransom, or, every lady for redemption. This is not to deny that some outlying Gorean inns, particularly where female travelers are concerned, function as little more than slave traps, an arrangement usually being in effect with a local slaver.
"He seems to be trying to come in this direction," said the attendant. "Interesting," I said.
If the fellow was really trying to escape without paying his bills, and this was a peculiar direction for him to be coming if that was the case, then I could hardly blame him. The prices at the Crooked Tarn were indeed outrageous. My own bill, for example, all told, had come to nineteen copper tarsks, and a tarsk bit, the latter for the use of the Lady Temione last night. The itemization of that bill, frightful to contemplate, had been ten for lodging, two for the bath and supplies, two for blankets, five for bread, paga and porridge, and the tarsk bit for the use of the Lady Temione, the only particular on the bill which might have been argued as within reason. I had done without breakfast this morning primarily to save time, but it could also have been done, and I think legitimately, in protest over the prices of the Crooked Tarn. Fortunately I had some dried tarsk strips in my pack. I did not know if the Lady Phoebe would find these appealing or not but she would learn to eat them. Too, she would learn to take them in her mouth from my hand. This would help her to learn that she was now dependent on men for her food.
"How is our friend doing now?" I asked.
"He is down! They have him. No! He is up!" reported the attendant. "Hah! Now they have a chain on him!"
"I wish you well," I said to the attendant. I had thought I might wait on the platform in case the fellow managed to reach it, and then take flight, but it did not seem now that he would get this far, at least this morning.
"I wish you well!" called that attendant, clinging then to a stanchion of the tarn gate.
I drew back, decisively, on the one-strap, and the tarn screamed and smote the air with its wings, and, my servant crying out in terror and clutching the pommel, was aflight!
Those who are horsemen know the exhilaration of riding, the marvelous animal, its strength, its pacings, its speed, its responsiveness, how one seems augmented by its power, how one can feel it, and its breathing, the movements of its body, sensing even the blows of its hoofs in the turf. It is little wonder that peoples knowing not the horse fled in terror when they first encountered riders, taking the rider and his mount for one thing, something half animal, half human, an awesome, unbelievably swift, gigantic, armed chimera, something that could not be outrun, that seemed to fly upon the earth, that seemed tireless, something irresistible, merciless and relentless to which it seemed the world must rightfully belong.
To such initial glimpses, fraught with fear, might harken the stories of the centaur, half man, half horse. And the legendary nature of the centaur, its appetites, its rapacity and power, harken back, too, perhaps, in the canny ways in which half-forgotten historical fact colors the fancies of tamer times, to the first perceptions of the horseman, and his ways, among those afoot. And even later, when the separation of man and mount became clearly understood, the fear of the horseman, and his ways, would abide. Fortunate that they lingered largely on the fringes of civilization. And yet, how often, as with the Hyksos, in Egypt, did they ride in from the desert like a storm, their horses among the barley. The mystique of the rider lingered unquestioned for centuries. Alexander would turn cavalry into a decisive arm. Centuries later the stirrup and barbarian lancers would crush the world's most successful civilization. The very word for «Knight» in German is «Ritter», which, literally, means "Rider." The ascendancy of the cavalry would remain unchallenged until the achievement of revolutions in infantry tactics and missile power, such things as the coming of the massed pikes, and the flighted clothyard shafts of a dozen fields. Something of the same joy of the rider, and mystique of the rider, exists on Gor in connection with the tarn as existed on Earth in connection with the horse. For example, if you have thrilled to the movements and power of a fine steed, you have some conception of what it is to be aflight on tarnback. There is the wind, the sense of the beast, the speed, the movements, now in all dimensions, the climb, the dive, soaring, turning, all in the freedom of the sky! There is here, too, a oneness of man and beast. There is even the legend of the tarntauros, or creature half man, and half tarn, which in Gorean myth, plays a similar, one might even say, equivalent, role to that of the centaur in the myths of Earth. Too, the tarnsman retains something of the glamour which on Earth attached to the horseman, particularly so as the technology laws of the Priest-Kings, remote, mysterious masters of Gor, preclude the mechanization of transportation. The togetherness of organic life, as in the relationship of man and mount, a symbiotic harmony, remains in effect on Gor.
I was aflight!
For a time I muchly gave the bird its head, and then, some pasangs out, drew it about, to sweep the sky in a vast circle, this centering about the inn, far below.
"You will caress me again, will you not?" asked my servant.
"Perhaps," I said, "if you beg it."
"I beg it!" she said.
"Hold to the pommel, tightly," I said.
She did so.
I would have time for her later. This was not the moment.
When one first ascends a new mount, or, indeed, masters a new woman, it is well to put them through their paces, to see what they can do, to see what they are like. In this case of the tarn one's very life can depend on such things as understanding its speed, its rate of climb, the sharpness of its turns, and so on.
My lovely, half-naked, blindfolded servant cried out, flung back, her arms almost straight, her small hands, the wrists braceleted closely together, gripping the pommel.
The bird hovered well, arrested in flight.
The girl gasped and cried out again, in fear, her back almost horizontal as the tarn climbed. The ascent was steep and swift. The air grew cold. Such a maneuver is often useful. More than once it had carried me above adversaries, their attack speed prohibiting so swift an adjustment in their trajectory. The girl clung desperately to the pommel. She seemed very frightened, for some reason. Too, now, clad as she was, in what was, in effect, no more than a curla and chatka, fit garments for a slave, not a free woman, she must be very cold. Doubtless she was in extreme discomfort. In a few Ehn I had established the approximate ceiling of the bird. The earth seemed far below. I could see the surface of a lake, like a shimmering puddle, to my right. I had not even hitherto known it was there. On the left, far below, I could see the Vosk Road, like a bright thread in the sun. "Please, let us go down. Let us stop!" she wept.
"You are braceleted," I told her. "Such matters are no longer within your control."
"Let us go down!" she wept.
"Are you cold?" I asked.
"Yes!" she wept. "But I am frightened, too! We are high, are we not? "Yes," I said.
"Please, let us go down!" she begged.
"It was my mistake to let you ride in such honor," I told her. "It is more appropriate for a woman on tarnback to ride differently, to be tied across the saddle on her back or belly, or, say, if she is one of a brace, perhaps wrist-tied to one end of a shared rope thrown over the saddle, or, say, tied to a ring at the side, this, too, providing a balance with the other captive. "I am a free woman," she said. "Surely you would not dare to tie me so." "I would think little of it," I informed her.
She shuddered, though whether with the thought of this restraint which I might, if I wished, impose upon her, or of cold, I do not know.
"Please, let us go down," she said.
"What does your will mean?" I asked.
"Apparently it means nothing," she said.
"Hold tightly, woman," I said.