Information for Tarnsman

"One does not learn to master a tarn. It is a matter of blood and spirit, of beast and man, of a relation between two beings which must be immediate, intuitive, spontaneous. It is said that a tarn knows who is a tarnsman and who is not, and that those who are not die in this first meeting." --Tarnsman of Gor, page 51

Tarn Training Knowledge

"Tarns, who are vicious things, are seldom more than half tamed and, like their diminutive earthly counterparts, the hawks, are carnivorous. It is not unknown for a tarn to attack and devour his own rider. They fear nothing but the tarn goad. They are trained by men of the Caste of Tarn Keepers to respond to it while still young, when they can be fastened by wires to the training perches." --Tarnsman of Gor, page 52

"Whenever a young bird soars away or refuses obedience in some fashion, he is dragged back to the perch and beaten with the tarn goad. Rings, comparable to those which are fastened on the legs of the young birds, are worn by the adult birds to reinforce the memory of the hobbling wire and the tarn goad. Later, of course, the adult birds are not fastened, but the conditioning given them in their youth usually holds, except when they become abnormally disturbed or have not been able to obtain food." --Tarnsman of Gor, page 52

"I wondered sometimes if that bird, my Ubar of the Skies, that tarn of tarns, of a race of birds spoken of by Goreans as Brothers of the Wind, might have considered himself as above the goad, resented its shock and sparks, resented that that puny human device would pretend to teach him he, a tarn of tarns, how to fly, how swiftly and how far. But I dismissed such thoughts as absurd. The tarn was but another of the beasts of Gor. The feelings I was tempted to ascribe to it would lie beyond the ken of so simple a creature." --Outlaw of Gor, page 125

"The tabuk cry is the only word to which a tarn is trained to react. Beyond this it is all a matter of the tarn straps and the tarn goad." --Outlaw of Gor, page 129

"Mip was a chipper fellow, and a bit dapper considering his caste and his close cropped hair, for his brown leather was shot with green streaks, and he wore a Tarn Keeper's cap with a greenish tassel; most Tarn Keepers, incidentally. crop their hair short, as do most metal workers; work in the tarncots and in training tarns is often hard, sweaty work." --Assassins of Gor, page 168

"I patted the tarn on the neck. 'This is a domestic tarn,' I said. 'It is trained. Not only will it be unnecessary to break it but it will be of great use, in a brace harness, in training the two tarns we have already caught.' This is a common method of training new tarns." --Blood Brothers of Gor, page 341

Tarnsman/Warriors

"The tarn is one of the two most common mounts of a Gorean warrior; the other is the high tharlarion, a species of saddle lizard, used mostly by clans who have never mastered tarns." --Tarnsman of Gor, page 52

"It was perhaps the foolish affection which a tarnsman feels for these dangerous, fierce mounts, almost as much a threat to him as to anyone else." --Outlaw of Gor, page 120

"Once one has been a tarnsman, it is said, one must return again and again to the giant, savage birds. I think that this is a true saying. One knows that one must master them or be devoured. One knows that they are not dependable, that they are vicious. A tarnsman knows that they may turn upon him without warning. Yet the tarnsman chooses no other life. He continues to mount the birds, to climb to their saddle with a heart filled with joy, to draw upon the one-strap and, with a cry of exultation, to urge the monster aloft. More than the gold of a hundred merchants, more than the countless cylinders of Ar, he treasures those sublime, lonely moments, high over the earth, cut by the wind, he and the bird as one creature, alone, lofty, swift, free." --Outlaw of Gor, pages 130-131

"Tarnsmen, riders of the great tarns, called Brothers of the Wind, are masters of the open sky, fierce warriors who battleground is the clouds and sky; they are not forest people; they do not care to stalk and hunt where, from the darkness of trees, from a canopy of foliage, they may meet suddenly, unexpectedly, a quarrel from the crossbow of an invisible assailant." --Captives of Gor, page 63

"I do not know why it is that women fear tarns so terribly, but we do. But most men do, too. It is a rare man who will approach a tarn. It is said that the tarn knows who is a tarnsman and who is not, and if one approaches him who is not, he will seize him and rip him to pieces. It is little wonder few men approach the beasts." --Captives of Gor, pages 91-92

"They were wild men, of the caste of warriors, who spent much of their time in the taverns of laura, fighting and gambling and drinking, while slave girls, excited and with shinning eyes, served them and pressed about them, begging to be noticed and ordered to the alcoves. It was no wonder that some men, even warriors, hated and envied the arrogant, regal tarnsmen, one night rich, the next impoverished, always at the elbow of adventure, and war and pleasure, wearing their pride and their manhood in their walk, in the steel at their side and the look in their eyes." --Captives of Gor, page 92

Combat Techniques from Tarnback

"I saw a warrior on a tarn passing me, thrusting out with his spear. He surely would have struck home had not my tarn veered wildly to the left, almost colliding with another tarn and its rider, who fired a bolt that sank deep in the saddle pack with a sound like slapping leather. The third of the warriors of Ar was sweeping in from behind. I turned, raising the tarn goad, which was looped to my wrist, to ward off the stroke of his blade. Sword and tarn goad met in a ringing clash and a shower of glittering yellow sparks." --Tarnsman of Gor, pages 74-75

"I was aware that my sword was now in my hand and the tarn goad thrust in my belt. As we crashed in the air, I sharply jerked back the one-strap, bringing the steel shod talons of my war tarn into play." --Tarnsman of Gor, page 75

"I crossed swords with the nearer of the two warriors in a brief passage that could have lasted only a instant. I was suddenly aware, dizzily conscious, that one of the enemy tarns was sinking downward, flopping wildly, falling into the recesses of the swamp forest below. The other warrior pulled his tarn about as if for another passage at arms, but then, as if suddenly realizing that his duty was to give alarm, he shouted at me in rags and wheeled his tarn again, streaking for the lights of Ar." --Tarnsman of Gor, pages 75-76

"I wondered if it too recalled the thunder of the wind, the clash of arms as tarnsmen dueled in flight, the sight of Gor's tarn cavalries wheeling in formation to the beat of the tarn drums, or the long, steady, lonely soaring flights we had known together over the green fields of Gor." --Outlaw of Gor, page 122

"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." --Renegades of Gor, page 139

"Ubar of the Skies reared back, talons raking, screaming. I saw tangles of intestines torn from the body of a tarn. I turned the stroke of a lance with my small shield. I heard a man scream, his arm gone. The disemboweled tarn fell away from us, fluttering, spinning downward. With a shake of its mighty head my tarn flung the shield from its beak, a hundred feet away, the arm still inserted in the shield straps. Then the tarn was climbing, climbing. Tarns swirled about us, below us. Some struck one another. I gave the tarn his rein. Four tarns began to follow us. Still did my tarn climb. Through clouds, such bright, lofty fogs, did we ascend. Below us, like birds springing wondrously from the snow, tarns and their riders emerged from the clouds, following us." --Blood Brothers of Gor, page 436

"'Will you seek the sun?' I laughed. Could it be that, after all these years, the tactics of combat on tarnback remained so fresh, so vivid, in the eager, dark brain of my mighty mount? Could they be retained so perfectly, with such exactness, seemingly as terrible and sharp as in the days when they were first imprinted, high above grassy fields, the walls of Ko-ro-ba in the distance?" --Blood Brothers of Gor, pages 436-437

"Out of the sun struck the great tarn. As I had been trained to do I drew as deep a breath as possible before the dive began. It is not impossible to breathe during such a descent, but it is generally recommended that one do not do do. It is thought that breathing may effect concentration, perhaps altering or complicating the relationship with the target. The bird and the rider, in effect, are the projectile. The tarn itself, it might be noted, does not draw another breath until the impact or the vicinity of the impact, if the strike fails to find its mark. The descent velocities in a strike of this sort are incredible, and have never been precisely calculated. They are estimated, however in the neighborhood of four hundred pasangs per Ahn." --Blood Brothers of Gor, page 437

"The fourth rider made good his escape, descending through the clouds, disappearing. I swung the tarn about, for a moment, over the clouds, and then entered them, several hundred feet from where the foe had disappeared. An escape trajectory, if one is dealing with a wily foe, can prove to be a tunnel of ambush." --Blood Brothers of Gor, page 438

"Signals were conveyed not by tarn drums, however, but, in one of the manners of the Barrens, by Herlit-bone whistles." --Blood Brothers of Gor, page 439

"As soon as I had entered the clouds I whipped out my small bow and put an arrow to the string, and held two in the bow hand, and, reseized the reins, brought the tarn about, and yet it seemed it needed no guidance. Dark and silent in the fog it veered about. One by one the Kinyanpi, consecutively, as I had hoped, entered the cloud. This was the tunnel of ambush, as it is called. The trained tarnsman is taught to avoid it. Three tarns, rider less, returned to the formation below." --Blood Brothers of Gor, page 440

Weapons of Tarnsman & Use

"I mounted my tarn, that fierce, black magnificent bird. My shield and spear were secured by saddle straps; my sword was slung over my shoulder. On each side of the saddle hung a missile weapon, a crossbow with a quiver of a dozen quarrels, or bolts, on the left, a longbow with a quiver of thirty arrows on the right." --Tarnsman of Gor, page 64

"Not hurrying I strung the bow. It is small, double curved, about four feet in length, built up of layers of bosk horn, bound and reinforced with metal and leather; it is banded with metal at seven points, including the grip, metal obtained from Turia in half inch rolled strips; the leather is applied diagonally, in two inch strips, except that, horizontally, it covers the entire grip; the bow lacks the range of both the longbow and the crossbow, but, at close range, firing rapidly, it can be a devastating weapon; its mall size, like the crossbow, permits it to clear the saddle, shifting from the left to the right, or to the rear, with equal ease, this providing an advantage lacked by the more powerful but larger longbow; but, like the longbow, and unlike the crossbow, which requires strength and time to reset, it is capable of a considerable volume of fire; a Tuchuk warrior can, in swirling combat, from the saddle of the running kaiila, accurately fire twenty arrows, drawn to the point, in half a Ehn." --Assassins of Gor, page 365

"The small bow, interestingly, has never been used among tarnsmen; perhaps this is because the kaiila is almost unknown above the equator, and the lesson of kaiila back fighting has not been much available to them; perhaps it is because of tradition, which weighs heavily in Gorean life, and even in military affairs for example, the phalanx was abandoned only after more than a century of attempts to preserve and improve it; or perhaps the reason is that range is commonly more important to tarnsmen in flight than maneuverability of the bow." --Assassins of Gor, pages 365-366

"I suspect, however, that the truest reason is that tarnsmen, never having learned respect for the small bow, tend to despise such a weapon, regarding it as unworthy a Warrior's hand, as being too puny and ineffective to win the approval of a true Gorean fighting man." --Assassins of Gor, page 366

"The tarnsman commonly carries, strapped to the saddle, a Gorean spear, a fearsome weapon, but primarily a missile weapon, and one more adopted to infantry." --Assassins of Gor, page 366

"Far away, through the sky, from the east of Laura, following the forest line, there came a flight of tarnsmen, perhaps forty of them, mounted on the great, fierce, hawk like saddlebirds of Gor, the huge swift, predatory, ferocious tarns, called Brothers of the Wind. The men seemed small on the backs of the great birds. They carried spears, and were helmeted. Shields on the right sides of the saddles." --Captives of Gor, page 84

Capture Techniques & Transporting of slaves

"The girls had been now been placed on their stomachs and two tarnsmen, with short lengths of binding fiber, were fastening the ankles of each together and binding the wrists of each behind her back. Then, because the baskets in which they were to be transported did not have covers, the girls were placed in pairs, head to feet. The throat of each in each pair was tied to the ankle of the other. This device used, when transporting slaves in open baskets, to prevent one from struggling to her feet and in flight throwing herself over the side of the basket. The precautions, however, considered that the girls were drugged, seemed to be unnecessary. On the other hand these men were slavers and not accustomed to take chances with merchandise." --Assassins of Gor, page 100

"The institution of capture is universal, to the best of my knowledge on Gor; there is no city which does not honor it, provided the females captured are those of the enemy, either free women or their slaves; it is often a young tarnsman's first mission, the securing of a female, preferably free, from an enemy city, to enslave, that his sisters may be relieved of the burden of serving him; indeed, his sisters often encourage him to be prompt in the capture of an enemy wench that their own tasks nay be made the lighter; when the young tarnsman, if successful, returns home from his capture flight, a girl bound naked across the saddle, his sisters welcome her with delight, and with great enthusiasm prepare her for the Feast of Collaring." --Assassins of Gor, page 159

"'Hold still,' I said. I then, with a piece of scarflike cloth taken from my pouch, a wind veil, sometimes bound across the mouth and nostrils of a tarnsman, usually at high altitudes, blindfolded her. A great many women, particularly the most sensitive and intelligent among them, fear tarns greatly. It is not unusual for them to become hysterical in their vicinity. It is not uncommon then for the tarnsman to hood or blindfold them. This aids in their control and management. Too, of course, if the women is a captive, or slave, one may not wish her to understand where she is, or be able to retrace her route, or know where she is being taken." --Renegades of Gor, pages 132-133

"I had been gagged, and hooded and manacled, and put on my belly, because the first sight of such a beast, at close hand, I was told, not unoften, in its size and ferocity, and terribleness, produces a miasma of terror in a female, and she is unwilling even to approach it, whips being often necessary." --Dancers of Gor, page 148

Raids

"The saddle pack contained the light gear carried by raiding tarnsmen--in particular, rations, a compass, maps, binding fiber, and extra bowstrings." --Tarnsman of Gor, pages 64-65

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