Civitatis Ar, Plus!

Transportation - Land

Tharlarion - Rogue through Magicians - Page Three

For Additional Tharlarion Quotes see:  Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3

Instruments - Tharlarion Drums | Animals - High | Low/Draft/Broad | Racing | River | Water

For more on Transportation see Marking Time - Travel Time:

Tarns | Kaiila | Wagons | Afoot | Torvaldsland Ships | Gorean Ships

The kaiila lance is used in hunting kailiauk as well as in mounted warfare. It is called the kaiila lance because it is designed to be used from kaiilaback. It is to be distinguished in particular from the longer, heavier tharlarion lance, designed for use from tharlarionback, and often used with a lance rest, and the smaller, thicker stabbing lances used by certain groups of pedestrian nomads. The kaiila lance takes, on the whole, two forms, the hunting lance and the war lance.  SAVAGES OF GOR-, Pages 42-43

"I can handle high tharlarion," I said. Long ago I had ridden guard in a caravan of Mintar, a merchant of Ar.
"I mean the draft fellows," said the driver.
"I suppose so," I said. It seemed likely to me that I could handle these more docile, sluggish beasts, if I had been able to handle their more agile brothers, the saddle tharlarion.
"They take a great deal of beating about the head and neck," he said.
I nodded. That was not so much different from the high tharlarion, either. They are usually controlled by voice commands and the blows of a spear. The tharlarion, incidentally, at least compared to mammals, seems to have a very sluggish nervous system. It seems almost impervious to pain. Most of the larger varieties have two brains, or, perhaps, better a brain and a smaller brain-like organ. The brain, or one brain, is located in the head, and the other brain, or the brain-like organ, is located near the base of the spine.
I looked down at Feiqa, walking beside the wagon, the rope on her neck. "Tharlarion," I told her, expanding on the driver's remark, "show little susceptibility to pain."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"In this," I said, "they closely resemble female slaves."
"Oh, no Master!" she cried. "No!"
"No?" I said.
"No," she said, looking up earnestly, frightened, "we are terribly susceptible to pain, truly!"
"Doubtless you were as a free woman," I said. "but now you are a slave."
"I am even more susceptible to pain now," she said, "for now I have felt pain, and know what it is like, and now I have a slave girl's total vulnerability and helplessness, and know that anything can be done to me! Too, my entire body has become a thousand times more responsive and sensitive a thousand times more meaningful and alive, since I have been locked in the collar. I assure you Master, I am a thousand times more susceptible to pain now than ever I was before!"
I smiled. Such transformations were common in the female slave. Just as their sensitivities to pleasure and feeling, sexual and otherwise, physical and psychological, conscious and subconscious, were greatly increased and intensified by being imbonded, so too, concomitantly, naturally, were their sensitivities to pain. The same changes that so considerably increased their capacities in certain directions increased them also in others, and put them ever so more helplessly, and hopelessly, at the mercy of their masters.
"Ah," she said, chagrined, putting down her lovely head, "Master teases his girl."
"Perhaps," I said.
She kept her head down. She blushed. She looked lovely, the light, locked, steel collar on her throat.
I reached down and lifted her up, by the arms, swinging her up, and back, into the wagon. She would be weary from her walking. "Thank you, Master," she said, much pleased. She then knelt behind us, rather close to us, on some folded sacks in the wagon bed, the rope attaching her to the wagon still tied on her neck. I began to consider in what ways I should have her this evening.  MERCENARIES OF GOR-, (21) Pages 34-35

Besides the ax Alars are fond of the Alar sword, a long, heavy, double-edged weapon. Their shields tend to be oval, like those of the Turians. Their most common mount is the medium-weight saddle tharlarion, a beast smaller and less powerful, but swifter and more agile, than the common high tharlarion. Their saddles, however, have stirrups, and thus make possible the use of the couched shock lance. Some cities use Alars in their tharlarion cavalries. Others, perhaps wisely, do not enlist them in their own forces, either as regulars or auxiliaries. When the Alars ride forth to do battle they normally have their laager behind them, to which, in the case of defeat, they swiftly retire. They are fierce and redoubtable warriors in the open field. They know little, however, of politics, or in siege work and the taking of cities. In the cities, normally one needs only to close the gates and wait for them to go away, compelled eventually to do so by the needs of their animals.  MERCENARIES OF GOR-, (21) Page 45

"I doubt two tharlarion can pull this grade from the ditch, with this weight, with the footing," said the driver.
...
He moved about the wagon and climbed to the wagon box. I heard, in a moment, his shouting to the lead beast, and the crack of the tharlarion whip. The whip, incidentally, seldom falls on the beast. Its proximity, and noise, are usually more than sufficient. Too, it often functions as an attention-garnering device, a signal, so to speak, preparing the beast for the sequent issuance of verbal commands, to which it is trained to respond. Too, of course, like a staff of office, a rod, a baton, or scepter, it is an authority device. To be sure, the device has its authority largely in virtue of what it genuinely stands for, and what it can do. Much the same, incidentally, can be said for the whip in the master/slave relationship. There, too, normally, it seldom falls on the woman. it is not necessary that it do so. She sees it, and knows what it can do. That is usually more than sufficient. She will have felt it at some time, of course, so that her understanding in the matter will be more than theatrical. She knows, of course, that if she is in the least bit displeasing or recalcitrant, it will be used upon her. Indeed, she knows that she might be, from time to time, placed beneath it, if only that she may be reminded that she is a slave. It is my belief that women have an instinctual understanding of the whip.  RENEGADES OF GOR-, (23) Pages 11-12

More Cosians came over the wall. There were pockets of them, embattled, here and there along the walkway. The men I had sent to the west end of the land wall, past the west bastion, had actually sped by them. There are in battle, I have found, often oddities, which seem inexplicable, and yet they occur. I had sometimes seen a man walk among combatants, threading his way here and there, almost as though among crowds in a market, no one bothering to challenge him or pay him the least attention. But if eye contact is made, then there is not unoften a fight to the death. Also, I have seen two pairs of men fighting, those of each pair side by side, as though fellows, and yet they are enemies, and each engages another foe. The riderless tharlarion or kaiila, like the riderless horse in battles of Earth, can sometimes be seen whirling about, obeying the trumpet calls for charging, and retreating, and such, just as though his master were still in the saddle. Too, sometimes such animals may be found calmly standing about, or grazing, while the fiercest of fighting surges about them. I have seen, too, wounded men being carried to the rear, their bearers unmolested, through clashing ranks, and other fellows pausing to loot a body, blades flashing about them. Sometimes, too, in a moment's lull, one notices little things, to which one has perhaps hitherto paid scant attention, the movements of an ant, how rain water irregularly stains a rock, moving and spreading, depending on the texture of its surface.  RENEGADES OF GOR-, (23) Pages 286-287

The dust rose like clouds, stirred by the heavy, clawed paws of the tharlarion.  VAGABONDS OF GOR-, (24) Page 84

"Way, make way!" we heard. Now, moving south on the Avenue of the Central Cylinder, toward the great gate of Ar, were several riders of tharlarion.
"That is the personal banner of Seremides!" said a man.
The riders were muchly cloaked. From the precision of their lines, however, and the ease and discipline of their seat on the tharlarion, I took them to be soldiers. Too, if the fellow was right, that one of the banners in the group was that of Seremides, then presumably he, or his empowered agent, was one of the riders.  MAGICIANS OF GOR-, (25) Page 80

In a moment then, startling me, and doubtless many others in the crowd, there was a blast of trumpets and a roll of drums to our right. Regulars of Cos, regiments of them, in ordered lines, in cleaned, pressed blue, with polished helmets and shields, preceded by numerous standard bearers, representing far more units than were doubtless in the city at the moment, and musicians, advanced. Tharlarion cavalrymen, of both bipedal and quadrupedal tharlarion, flanked the lines. The street shook under the tread of these beasts. Turned on the crowd they might, in their passage, have trampled hundreds.  MAGICIANS OF GOR-, (25) Page 89

In a moment a large bipedialian saddle tharlarion, in golden panoply, its nails polished, its scales brushed bright, wheeled to a halt before the standard bearers. Behind it came several other tharlarion, resplendent, too, but lesser in size and panoply, with riders. Myron, or he who was acting on his behalf, then, by means of a dismounting stirrup, not the foot stirrup, the rider's weight lowering it, descended to the ground. It was curious to see him, as I had heard much of him. He was a tall man, in a golden helmet, plumed, too, in gold, and a golden cloak. He was personally armed with the common gladius, the short sword, the most common infantry weapon on Ar, and a dagger. In a saddle sheath, remaining there, was a longer weapon, a two-handed scimitar, the two-handed scimitarus, useful for reaching other riders on tharlarion. There was no lance in the saddle boot. He removed his helmet and handed it to one of his fellows.  MAGICIANS OF GOR-, (25) Page 90

We were astride rented tharlarion, high tharlarion, bipedalian tharlarion. Although our mounts were such, they are not to be confused with the high tharlarion commonly used by Gorean shock cavalry, swift, enormous beasts the charge of which can be so devastating to unformed infantry. If one may use terminology reminiscent of the sea, these were medium-class tharlarion, comparatively light beasts, at least compared to their brethren of the contact cavalries, such cavalries being opposed to the sorts commonly employed in missions such as foraging, scouting, skirmishing and screening troop movements. Rather our mounts were typical of the breeds from which are extracted racing tharlarion, of the sort used, for example, in the Vennan races. To be sure, it is only select varieties of such breeds, such as the Venetzia, Torarii and Thalonian, which are commonly used for the racers. As one might suppose, the blood lines of the racers are carefully kept and registered, as are, incidentally, those of many other sorts of expensive bred animals, such as tarsks, sleen and verr. This remark also holds for certain varieties of expensive bred slaves, the prize crops of the slave farms. Venna, a wealthy town north of Ar, is known for its diversions, in particular, its tharlarion races. Many of Ar's more affluent citizens kept houses in Venna, at least prior to the Cosian war. To date, Venna, though improving her walls and girding herself for defense, had not been touched in the Cosian war. This is perhaps because it is not only the rich of Ar who kept properties within her walls, but those of many other cities, as well, perhaps even of Kasra and Tentium, in Tyros, and of Telnus, Selnar, Temos, and Jad, in Cos. We were some pasangs outside Ar. We wore wind scarves. Dust rose up for feet about us. The season was dry. Where our beasts trod the prints of their feet, and claws remained evident in the dust. In places the earth cracked under their step.  MAGICIANS OF GOR-, (25) Page 290
 

Kudos to you, Mr. Norman for writing the Gorean series!
A rich, yet utterly simple saga; a world, a time, a people;
those of the Counter-Earth .. the planet .. Gor.
Thank you!

The material presented herein was researched and compiled by me, naia{Saul}.
The material referenced comes from John Norman's Gor Series, The Counter-Earth Saga.
This is a work in process.
Please, do not take, copy, duplicate, or use this work as your own.
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