Civitatis Ar, Plus!

Transportation - Land

Wagons

For more on Transportation see Marking Time - Travel Time:

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

Ar, beleaguered and dauntless, was a magnificent sight. Its splendid, defiant shimmering cylinders loomed proudly behind the snowy marble ramparts, its double walls - the first three hundred feet high; the second, separated from the first by twenty yards, four hundred feet high - walls wide enough to drive six tharlarion wagons abreast on their summits. Every fifty yards along the walls rose towers, jutting forth so as to expose any attempt at scaling to the fire from their numerous archer ports. Across the city, from the walls to the cylinders, I could occasionally see the slight flash of sunlight on the swaying tarn wires, literally hundreds of thousands of slender, almost invisible wires stretched in a protective net across the city. Dropping the tarn through such a maze of wire would be an almost impossible task. The wings of a striking tarn would be cut from its body by such wires.  TARNSMAN OF GOR-, (1) Pages 162-163

...most heavy hauling, of course, is done by tharlarion wagon;  ASSASSIN OF GOR-, (5) Page 95

I looked, idly, at the people on the avenue. It was not excessively crowded on this day of the week, nor at this hour; yet there were ample numbers of shoppers and passers-by. Here and there there were borne palanquins, as richer individuals were carried about their business. Some light, twowheeled carriages passed, drawn by tharlarion. I saw, too, more than one bosk wagon, drawn by gigantic, shaggy, wickedly horned bosk. Their hoofs were polished; their horns were hung with beads. One of these wagons had a cover of blue and yellow canvas, buckled shut with broad straps. From within I heard the laughter of slave girls. A man followed the wagon, walking behind it, with a whip. In such a wagon the girls are commonly chained by the ankles to a metal bar which runs down the center of the wagon bed. I saw a girl lifting up the canvas a bit, and peeping out. I wondered if she were pretty. She belonged to someone. Then the canvas was pulled down, quickly. All the girls might be whipped, I supposed, for such a transgression. They were slaves.  FIGHTING SLAVE OF GOR-, (14) Page 177

The column had now disappeared. When departing from main roads such troops can be followed by bosk wagons or tharlarion wagons, bearing supplies. Too, by tarn, they can be supplied from the air. It should also be mentioned that it is not unusual nor impractical for such troops, which are usually in fairly small numbers, to live off the game-rich Gorean countryside. Levies, too, within certain territories, can be imposed on villages for their provisioning. Mobility and surprise are often features of Gorean warfare. Much of it is more akin to the raid than to the siege or the open conflict of large bodies of men over large areas. It would be extremely unusual, for example, for a Gorean city to have more than five thousand men in the field in a given time.  FIGHTING SLAVE OF GOR-, (14) Page 180

There are varieties of slave wagons on Gor. A common type, used to transport female slaves, is covered with blue and yellow canvas. A central metal bar, hinged at one end, near the wagon box, and locked at the other, near the wagon bed's gate, usually occurs in such wagons. The girls' ankles are then chained about this bar. When the bar is freed and lifted they may then, still in their shackles, be removed through the rear of the wagon, the wagon gate being lowered. Another common type of wagon used generally in the transportation of women is the flat-bedded display wagon, with its mounted iron framework. The girls chained and manacled in various positions within and to this framework, sometimes compellingly attractive positions, are then visible. Sometimes buyers follow such wagons to the markets toward which they are bound. Sometimes, however, the girls are sold directly from such wagons, the wagons being in effect themselves traveling markets. In such cases usually one side of the flat wagon bed is used as an auction platform, a small but suitable scaffolding on which may be well displayed the lineaments of the girl's beauty, and on which may be exacted from her the provocative performances demanded by cruel and merciless vendors of their beautiful, degraded merchandise. Another common type of slave wagon on Gor is the cage wagon which, depending on the stoutness of its bars and security, may be used for either men or women. The particular slave wagon in which I was fastened combined the features of the cage wagon and common slave wagon. It was a converted tharlarion wagon and, with bars and extra planking, was unusually stout, probably because its purpose was to transport fighting slaves. It was a heavy wagon, with high sides and covered with a brown canvas. About the whole a cage had been built, with heavy bars, which opened by means of a small door in the back. Within the wagon, in low-sided, heavy stalls, by means of rings at the front and back of the stall, and on the side of the stall near our necks, we were chained by the ankles, wrists and neck. We had, thus, far less freedom of movement than is commonly accorded to females. On the other hand this additional security was only to be expected. We were male slaves, and fighting slaves. I pulled against the chains. They held me well. Gorean masters, for most practical purposes, simply do not lose slaves.  FIGHTING SLAVE OF GOR-, (14) Pages 325-326

"There are wagons," I said, pointing over the parapet. There were some five wagons approaching the city, in a line. Each was being drawn by two strings of harnessed male slaves, about twenty slaves in each string.
"Those are Sa-Tarna wagons," said Drusus, "bringing grain to the city."
"What is that other wagon," I asked, "the smaller one, there near the side of the road, which has pulled aside to let the grain wagons pass?" I had been watching it approach. I thought I knew well what sort of wagon it was. It was the sort of wagon whose contents are of so little value that it must yield the road in either direction to any vehicle that might care to pass it. It was a squarish wagon. It was drawn might care by a single tharlarion, a broad tharlarion, one of Gor's quadrupedal draft lizards. It was covered by a canopy, mounted on a high, squarish frame, of blue-and-yellow silk.  KAJIRA OF GOR-, (19) Page 104

I moaned. I could see men approaching, with rope. Too, behind them, drawn by two tharlarion, came a flat-topped wagon. At the back of this wagon was an arrangement of beams, with a projecting, supported, perpendicularly mounted beam that extended forward, some fifteen feet in the air, toward the front of the wagon. At the forward portion of this projecting beam there was a ring, not unlike the one on the top of the cage.
Miles of Argentum surveyed me, and the chains, and the cage.
"Yes," he said, "these arrangements all seem suitable and efficient. I think we may count on your arriving in Argentum in good order."
A rope was being passed through the ring at the top of my cage. The flat-topped wagon was being drawn near. I gathered that the cage would be suspended from the ring on the projecting beam on the wagon, that it would hang suspended over the surface of the wagon, some feet from the flat bed of the wagon. From within the cage, it suspended thusly, I would not even be able to touch anything outside of the cage.
I was totally in their power.
I was inutterably helpless.
"What are you taking me to Argentum for?" I asked.
"For impalement," he said.  KAJIRA OF GOR-, (19) Page 188

"Well," he said, seemingly perhaps a bit mollified, "we shall see." He then put down the whip and took his place on the wagon box. He released the brake, pulling its wooden handle back on its pivot with his left hand, freeing its leather-lined shoe from the front wheel. "Ho!" he cried to the tharlarion and, with a crack whip, a creak of wood, a rattle of chain traces, and a grunt from the beast, was on his way. I watched the wagon for a moment or two, trundling down the road on its wooden-spoked, iron-rimmed wheels. I tied a rope on Feiqa's neck. "Come along," I told her.  MERCENARIES OF GOR-, (21) Page 28

It was Dietrich of Tarnburg who had first introduced the "harrow" to positional warfare on Gor, that formation named for the large, rake-like agricultural instrument, used for such tasks as the further leveling of ground after plowing and, sometimes, on the great farms, for the covering of seed. In this formation spikes of archers, protected by iron-shod stakes and sleen pits, project beyond the forward lines of the heavily armed warriors and their reserves. This formation, if approached head-on by tharlarion ground cavalry, is extremely effective. It constitutes, in effect, a set of corridors of death through which the cavalry must ride, in which it is commonly decimated before it can reach the main lines of the defenders. When the cavalry is disorganized, shattered and torn by missile fire, and turns about to retreat, the defenders, fresh and eager, initiate their own attack.
He was also the initiator of the oblique advance in Gorean field warfare, whereby large numbers of men may be concentrated at crucial points while the balance of the enemy remains unengaged. This formation makes it possible for a given army, choosing to attack only limited portions of the enemy, portions smaller than itself, to engage an army which, all told, may be three times its size, and, not unoften, to turn the flank of this much larger body, producing its confusion and rout. Too, if the attack fails, the advanced force may fall back, knowing that the balance of their army, indeed, its bulk, rested and fresh, not yet engaged, is fully prepared to cover their retreat.
Most impressive to me, perhaps, was Dietrich of Tarnburg's coordination of air and ground forces, and his transposition of certain techniques and weapons of siege warfare to the field. The common military response to aerial attack from tarnsmen is the "shield roof" or "shield shed," a formation the same as, or quite similar to, a formation once known on Earth as the testudo, or "tortoise." In this formation shields are held in such a way that they constitute a wall for the outer ranks and a roof for the inner ranks. This is primarily a defensive formation but it may also be used for advancing under fire. The common Gorean defense against tharlarion attack, if it must be met on the open ground, is the stationary, defensive square, defended by braced spears. At Rovere and Kargash Dietrich coordinated his air and ground cavalry in such a way as to force his opponents into sturdy but relatively inflexible defensive squares. He then advanced his archers in long, enveloping lines, in this way they could muster a much broader front for low-level, point-blank firepower than could the narrower concentrated squares.
He then utilized, for the first time in Gorean field warfare, first at Rovere, and later at Kargash, mobile siege equipment, catapults mounted on wheeled platforms, which could fire over the heads of the draft animals. From these engines, hitherto employed only in siege warfare, now became a startling and devastating new weapon, in effect, a field artillery, tubs of burning pitch and flaming naphtha, and siege javelins, and giant boulders, fell in shattering torrents upon the immobilized squares. The shield shed was broken. The missiles of archers rained upon the confused, hapless defenders. Even mobile siege towers, pushed from within by straining tharlarion, pressing their weight against prepared harnesses, trundled toward them, their bulwarks swarming with archers and javelin men. The squares were broken. Then again the ponderous, earthshaking, bellowing, grunting, trampling, tharlarion ground cavalry charged, this time breaking through the walls like dried straw, followed by waves of screaming, heavily armed spearmen. The ranks of the enemy then irremediably broke. The air howled with panic. Rout was upon them. Spears and shields were cast away that men might flee the more rapidly. There was little left to be done. It would be the cavalries which would attend to the fugitives.
"I had thought rather," I said, "of perhaps joining the wagons for a time."
"They need drivers," said the fellow. "Can you handle tharlarion?"
"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.
"Bread! Bread!" cried a woman to one side. There another Sa-Tarna wagon had stopped. The driver, who had apparently been adjusting the harness of his beast, was now again on the wagon box, his reins and whip in hand.
"Away!" cried the driver.
She threw herself before the wagon. "Bread!" she screamed. He cracked the whip and the beast lurched forward, the woman screamed, barely scrambling from its path. I had little doubt that had she not moved as she had she would have been run over.
"They will try almost anything," said my driver, as our wagon rolled past the woman. She was shuddering. She had just escaped death or crippling. "Sometimes they will send their children out beside the road to do the begging. They themselves hide in the brush. Sometimes I throw them some bread. Sometimes I don't. It seems the women themselves should beg, if they want the bread."
"Perhaps they do not want to pay for it, in the way of women," I said.
"They will pay for it, and in the way of women, when they are hungry enough," said the driver.
I nodded. That was true, I supposed. This driver, incidentally, seemed to me a decent, good-hearted fellow. Certainly he had stopped and fed some of the women along the road. That I had seen. Too, he had doubtless done that in spite of the fact that he would now come in with a short load. Many of the drivers, I speculated, would not have behaved so. Also, he had not objected to my riding with him, nor to carrying Feiqa. Yes, he seemed a good fellow.
"How far ahead are the troops?" I asked.
"Their lines of march extend for pasangs, with intervals, too, of pasangs," he said.  MERCENARIES OF GOR-, (21) Pages 32-36

"Way! Make way!" called the driver. He sat on the wagon box, some yard or so below, and separated from, the high railed wagon bed, serving, with its benches, as the passenger area. The wheels of the cart were narrow, and some seven feet in height. There were two of them. They were treaded with strips of metal. The cart was drawn by a bipedalian tharlarion, a slighter breed than, but related to, and swifter than, the common shock tharlarion used generally by the lancers of the Gorean heavy cavalry.  MERCENARIES OF GOR-, (21) Page 229

When groups are traveling together the wagons are often arranged in a circle, end to end, tongues inward, narrowing gaps between the “sections” of the improvised rampart, and chained together, the front axle of the next, the camp, and the draft animals, and any accompanying livestock, within the circle. This forms a wagon fort or laager. The circle contains more interior space than any other geometrical figure, so the camp is thus as large as possible, given the number of wagons. Too, as every point on the circumference is normally visible from, and equidistant from, the center, this facilitates defense, for example, the prompt and pertinent deployment of reserves. This arrangement, incidentally, is not common with the southern wagon peoples, such as Tuchuks, if only because of the vast numbers of wagons. There the wagons congregate almost to form wagon cities. It is fairly typical, however, with some of the less numerous wagon peoples of the north, such as the tribes of the Alars, particularly when separated from one another on the march, though there one might note the circle is often very large and as many as four or five wagons deep.  RENEGADES OF GOR; 23; Pages 7-8

I withdrew my pack from the wagon beside which I was walking and let it pass me, and then, following diagonally behind it for a moment, crossed to the left side of the road. Another vehicle passed me, then, behind me. I looked up. In a new flash of lightning I saw the stony plateau, surmounted by the inn of the Crooked Tarn. The wind and rain lashed at the right side of my head and body. I stepped from the road. There was a graveled wide place here, connected with the inn. It was at least fifty yards deep and wide, affording room where even wagons pulled by ten tharlarions might turn. A lantern was hung on a post ahead of me. I made toward it. In other flashes of lightning I saw roads wending about the plateau. There would be flat places, where wagons might camp.  RENEGADES OF GOR-, (23) Pages 22-23

The depot, incidentally, had been muchly crowded, thought not with fee carts. Most of the wagons, coaches, fee carts, and such were gone. No longer were the schedules within and outside of the city, being kept. Tharlarion, and such transportation, were now said to be worth their weight in gold. I had heard that certain rich men had exchanged as many as fifteen high slaves, choice "flowers" from their pleasure gardens, trained even to Curulean quality, for a single tharlarion and wagon.  MAGICIANS OF GOR-, (25) Page 68

In Gorean cities it is often the case that many streets, particularly side streets, little more than alleys, are too narrow for wagons. Local deliveries in such areas are usually made by porters or carts. Similarly, because of considerations such as congestion and noise, and perhaps aesthetics, which Goreans take seriously, wagons are not permitted on certain streets, and on many streets only during certain hours, usually at night or in the early morning. Indeed, most deliveries, as of produce from the country, not borne on the backs of animals of peasants, are made at night or in the early morning. This is also often the case with goods leaving the city, such as shipments of pottery and linens.
We were walking in the Metellan district, and then turned east toward the Avenue of Turia. Phoebe was heeling Marcus.
This morning, some Ahn before dawn, a convoy of wagons had rattled past our lodgings in the Metallan district, in the insula of Torbon on Demetrios Street. Our room, like many in an insula, had no window, but I had gone to the hall and thrust back the shutters of a window there, overlooking the street. Below, guided here and there by lads, with lanterns, were the wagons. There had been a great many of them. Demetrios Street, like most Gorean streets, like no sidewalks or curbs but sloped gently from both sides to a central gutter. The lads with the lanterns, their light casting dim yellow pools here and there on the walls and paving stones, performed an important function. Without some such illumination it is only too easy to miss a turn or gouge a wall with an axle. Marcus had joined me after a time. The wagons were covered with canvas, roped down. It was not the first such convoy which we had seen in the past weeks.
"Well," Marcus had asked, "what is being borne?"
"Who knows?" I had asked.
He laughed.
To be sure, we knew, generically, what was being borne. It was not difficult to tell. Normal goods, exports of bar iron, and such, do not move in the city in such numbers. It is true, of course, that sometimes wagons would congregate at meeting places near gates, the wagons, say, of various manufacturers and merchants, and then travel on the roads in convoys, as a protection against brigandage, but in such a case the wagons, having different points of origin, would not form their convoy until in the vicinity of the gates, and, indeed, sometimes outside them, in order to avoid blocking streets. But the formation of such convoys, too, are usually advertised on the public boards, this information being of interest to various folks, say, merchants who might wish to ship goods, teamsters, guards, and such, who might wish employment, and folks wishing to book passage. Sometimes, incidentally, rich merchants can manage a convoy by themselves, but even so they will usually accommodate the wagons of others in their convoys. There is commonly safety in numbers and the greater the numbers usually the greater the safety. A fee is usually charged for entering wagons in a convoy, this primarily being applied to defray the costs of guards. Too, in some cases, it may be applied to tolls, drinking water, provender for animals, and such. Some entrepreneurs make their living by the organization, management and supply of convoys. But these convoys, those of the sort now passing, were not such convoys. For example, they were not advertised. Indeed, many in Ar might not even be aware of them. Another clue as to the sort of convoys they were was that the wagons were not uniform but constituted rather a diverse lot. Some were even street wagons, and not road wagons, the latter generally of heavier construction, built for use outside the city where roads may be little more than irregular paths, uneven, steep, rugged and treacherous. Some Goreans cities, for example, perhaps as a military measure, in effect isolate themselves by the refusal to allocate funds for good roads. Indeed, they often go further by neglecting the upkeep of even those tracks that exist. It can be next to impossible to reach such cities in the spring, because of the rains. Besnit is an example. Beyond this, although many of the wagons were unmarked, many others, in the advertising on their sides, bore clear evidence of their origins, the establishments of chandlers, carders, fullers, coopers, weavers, millers, bakers, and so on, wagons presumably commandeered for their present tasks. As a point this convoy, and those which had preceded it on other days, seemed overstaffed, particularly for the city. Instead of having one driver, or a driver and a fellow, a relief driver or one to help with the unloading, and perhaps a lad to help through the city in the darkness, each wagon had at least four or five full-grown men with it, armed, usually two or three on the wagon box, and another two or three on the cargo itself, on the canvas, or, in some cases, holding to the wagon, riding on sideboards or the step below the wagon gate. Others, too, here and there, were afoot, at the sides.  MAGICIANS OF GOR-, (25) Pages 101-103

"When did you receive the collar of Appanius?" I asked.
"The next day," she said, "affixed on me by one of his agents. Later I was called for at the edifice of the magistrates by one of his slaves, driving a tharlarion wagon. He tied my hands behind my back and put a rope on my neck, by means of which he tied me to the back of the wagon. I was not to ride in the wagon. I was a female slave. I would follow it afoot, on my rope. It was thus, naked, that I was conducted to the house of my master. Twice in the streets I was struck by free women. My introduction to slavery had begun."
"Were you angry with the slave who bound you?" I asked.
"No," she said. "Rather I was afraid of him. He was a male. Too, I realized I could be given to him for his pleasure, if my master wished."  MAGICIANS OF GOR-, (25) Page 309
 

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.
If you find it valuable enough to share, please .. share the link to this page.

To Top