Assassin of Gor

by Norman, John;

  “Are you not grateful?” inquired Cernus, puzzled.

  Elizabeth dropped to her knees, head down. “I am unworthy of so great an honor, Master,” said she.

  Then Cernus pointed to me, indicating that the girl should turn.

  Elizabeth did so, and suddenly, superbly, she threw her arm before her mouth and cried out, as though just seeing me for the first time, and remembering me with horror. She was marvelous.

  “It is he!” she cried, shuddering.

  “Who?” inquired Cernus, innocently.

  I then began to suspect that my gamble, based on the often unpleasant sense of humor common among slavers, might begin to bear fruit.

  Elizabeth had her head down to the stone floor. “Please, Master!” she wept. “It is he, the Assassin, who forced me in the streets to accompany him to the tavern of Spindius! Protect me, Master! Please, Master! Protect me, Master!”

  “Is this the slave,” asked Cernus sternly, “whom you forced to accompany you to the tavern of Spindius?”

  “I think she is the one,” I admitted.

  “Hateful beast!” wept Elizabeth.

  “You are only a poor little slave,” said Cernus. “Was he cruel to you?”

  “Yes,” she cried, her eyes gleaming, “Yes!”

  Elizabeth, I had to admit, was a really remarkable actress. She was an extremely intelligent and talented girl, as well as beautiful. I hoped she would not be too successful in her exhibition or I might end up bubbling in a vat of boiling tharlarion oil.

  “Would you like me to punish him, for you?” asked Cernus, kindly.

  Elizabeth threw him a look of incredible gratitude, her eyes wide with tears, her mouth trembling. “Yes!” she wept. “Please, oh Master! Punish him! Punish him!”

  “Very well,” said Cernus, “I will punish him by sending to his quarters an untrained slave girl.”

  “Master?” she asked.

  Cernus turned to Caprus. “When she is not in training, 74673 will keep the quarters of the Assassin.”

  Caprus noted this with his stylus on his tablet.

  “No!” howled Elizabeth. “Please Master! No! No!”

  “Perhaps,” said Cernus, “if your training proceeds rapidly and favorably you may, after some months, find other quarters.”

  Elizabeth collapsed weeping before the stone platform.

  “Let that be an incentive to be diligent, Little Slave,” said Cernus.

  I threw back my head and laughed, and Cernus threw back his head and laughed, pounding on the arms of the curule chair, and the men-at-arms, too, roared with laughter. Then I turned and followed a man-at-arms, who would lead me to my quarters.

  5

  In the House of Cernus

  Kneeling back on her heels in my quarters, in the traditional fashion of Gorean women, Elizabeth laughed merrily and slapped her knees, so pleased was she.

  I, too, was pleased.

  “How smoothly it has all gone!” she laughed. “And poor Vella, who must keep the quarters of the Assassin! Poor, poor Vella!”

  “Do not laugh so loudly,” I cautioned her, smiling, while moving about the room.

  I had closed the door, which was of wood and heavy, and barred it with the double beam. When not barred it might be opened from the outside, if the latch string were thrust through the latch hole. Otherwise one would have to cut through the wood. I reminded myself to remember and put the latch string through when I left the room. The disadvantage of such a door, naturally, is that when no one is in the room and the latch string is out, anyone might enter, and either search the room or wait within. Valuables, in such a room, are kept in a heavy, iron-banded chest which is bolted to the wall and kept locked. Most doors giving entry into a compartment, or set of compartments, on Gor do, however, have locks, generally hand-crafted, highly ornate locks, usually set in the center of the door and controlling a long bolt.

  Most of these locks, interestingly, though hand-crafted, are of the pin-tumbler variety, in which the locking is secured by a set of heavy pins extending into the lock plug; when the key is inserted the pins, of various lengths, are lifted to the surface of the lock plug, freeing it, so that when the key turns the plug may rotate, thereby moving the bolt. There are a number of other forms of lock also found upon occasion, a common variety being the disk lock in which moving disks, rather than pins, are used.

  The small, heavy lock on a girl’s slave collar, incidentally, may be of several varieties, but almost all are cylinder locks, either of the pin or disk variety. In a girl’s collar lock there would be either six pins or six disks, one each, it is said, for each letter in the Gorean word for female slave, Kajira; the male slave, or Kajirus, seldom has a locked collar; normally a band of iron is simply hammered about his neck; often he works in chains, usually with other male slaves; in some cities, including Ar, an unchained male slave is almost never seen; there are, incidentally, far fewer male slaves than female slaves; a captured female is almost invariably collared; a captured male is almost invariably put to the sword; further, the object of slave raids, carefully scouted, organized and conducted expeditions, is almost always the acquisition of females; commonly one cylinder is struck, its bridges sealed off, its compartments broken into and ransacked for gold and beauty; the men of the compartment are slain and the women stripped; those women who do not please the slavers are slain; those that do have the goods of the compartment tied about their necks and are herded to the roof, with whip and slave goad, either to be bound across tarn saddles or thrust bound into wicker slave baskets, covered and tied shut, carried beneath the great birds in flight; sometimes, after only a quarter of an Ahn, before adequate reinforcements can be summoned, the slavers depart with their booty, leaving behind a flaming cylinder; slavers can strike any city but they are particularly a scourge to those cities which have not trained the tarn, but depend on the ponderous tharlarion.

  On Gor, though most locks are of metal, wooden locks are not altogether unknown. In the most common variety there are two sets of matching pins, one fixed on a wooden spatula-like key and the other set, movable, falls into the bolt, securing it. With the key placed under the bolt, and pressed upward, the movable pins are lifted over the bolt, permitting its movement. This form of lock, however, as one might suspect, provides a poor sort of security, for the pins may be lifted individually by tiny sticks wedged in the holes until the bolt is free.

  Another form of lock, providing perhaps even less security, is the notched beam lock which may be opened by a heavy sickle-like key which is inserted through a hole in the door, fitted into the notch, and then rotated to the left or right, depending on whether the door is being locked or opened. These keys are quite heavy and are carried over the shoulder, and can, if necessary, even function as weapons.

  Padlocks, it might be mentioned, are common on Gor. Also, combination locks are not unknown, but they are infrequently found. The most common combination lock consists of a set of lettered rings which conceal a bolt. When the letters are properly aligned the bolt may be withdrawn.

  Some locks, on the compartments of rich persons, or on the storehouses of merchants, the treasuries of cities, and so on, are knife locks or poison locks; the knife lock, when tampered with, releases a blade, or several of them, with great force, sometimes from behind the individual at the lock. On the other hand, knife locks are seldom effective against an individual who knows what to look for. Much more dangerous is the poison lock, because the opening through which the tiny pins, usually coated with a paste formed from kanda root, can emerge can be extremely small, almost invisible to the eye, easy to overlook in the crevices and grillwork of the commonly heavy, ornate Gorean lock. Another form of lock difficult to guard against is the pit lock, because of the natural crevices in Gorean tiling commonly found in corridors of cylinders; when tampered with a trap falls away beneath the individual, dropping him to a pit below, usually containing knives fixed in stone, but upon occasion osts, or half-starved sleen or water tharlarion;
sometimes, however, the pit may be simply a smooth-sided capture pit, so that the individual may later be interrogated and tortured at length.

  Lastly it might be mentioned that it is a capital offense for a locksmith, normally a member of the Metal Workers, to make an unauthorized copy of a key, either to keep for himself or for another.

  The door to my compartment, however, in the House of Cernus, did not have a lock. The two beams, of course, could effectively secure it, but they could only be used when someone was inside. The fact that my compartment did not have a lock was, I assumed, no accident.

  I decided it would not be wise to insist that a lock be placed on the door. Such a demand might seem importunate or to evince a concern for secrecy not in place in a house where I, supposedly, had taken gold for the use of my steel. Such a demand might have incited suspicion that I was not what I seemed. Further I was confident that the lock would be placed, for Cernus would insist, by one of his own smiths, and thus that the nature of the lock would be known to him and that a duplicate of its key, in spite of the injunction against such, would doubtless be his.

  I was not altogether without an expedient, however, as, upon examination, I discovered that the door had, as well as the latch string hole, another small hole bored below the latch bar, doubtless put there by someone who had used the room before myself.

  “This permits,” I said to Elizabeth, indicating the small hole below the latch bar, “the complex knot.”

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Observe,” I said to her.

  I sprang to my feet and looked about the room. There were several chests in the room, including the iron-banded one with its heavy lock. There were also some cabinets against one wall, filled with plate and cups, some bottles of paga and Ka-la-na.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “String,” I said, “or cord, anything.”

  We began to rummage through some of the chests and, almost immediately, Elizabeth discovered some five pairs of sandal thongs.

  “Will these do?” she asked.

  “Excellent,” I said, taking a pair from her.

  She knelt and watched me as I took one of the thongs and sat cross-legged by the door, and split it carefully over the edge of my sword. I now had, in effect, a piece of boskhide cord. I then looped the cord over the latch bar and then put both ends of the cord through the small hole, so they dangled on the outside of the door. I then swung the door inward.

  “Suppose,” I said, “I now tied a relatively fair-sized knot with these two ends of the cord.”

  Elizabeth looked at the cords for a moment. “Then,” she said, “you would have tied the latch bar down, so it could not be lifted with the latch string.”

  I smiled. Elizabeth was quick, always quick. In tying such a knot, with the cord looped on the inside about the latch bar, and the knot too large to slip through the hole, I would have fastened the bar down.

  “But someone could untie the knot,” she pointed out, “and enter.”

  “Of course,” I said, looking at her.

  She looked at me for a moment, puzzled. Then suddenly her face broke into a smile and she clapped her hands. “Yes!” she laughed. “Marvelous!” Elizabeth was one of the quickest girls I had ever known. She, of Earth, had never heard of this trick, and yet, from the barest of hints, she had understood what could be done.

  “Observe,” I said. I then took the two dangling cords and began to tie what must have seemed to her an incredible knot. “Actually,” I informed her, as I continued to weave the cords together in an ever larger and more complex fashion, “this is only a fifty-seven turn knot. It is, however, my own invention, though I never thought I’d need it. This trick was taught to me by Andreas of Tor, years ago, of the Caste of Singers, for doors in the city of Tor are commonly of this variety. His own knot was a sixty-two turn knot, his father’s was seventy-one; one of his brothers used a hundred-and-four turn knot, which, as I recall, Andreas thought a bit pretentious.”

  “It is always the same knot though,” said Elizabeth.

  “Yes,” I said, “each man has his own knot, as distinctive as a signature, and each knot is his own secret. Only he can tie it, and, more importantly, only he knows the reverse turns by which that knot, provided it has been untouched, is untied.”

  “Anyone then,” said Elizabeth, “could untie the knot.”

  “Surely,” I said. “The problem is to reconstruct the knot after it has been untied.”

  “The owner of the compartment,” said Elizabeth, “returning to the compartment and untying the knot can tell immediately whether or not it is his own knot.”

  “Correct,” I said.

  “And thus he knows,” said Elizabeth, “whether or not the compartment has been entered in his absence.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Sometimes,” I added, “someone enters the compartment and has a confederate on the outside attempt to duplicate the knot, that the man inside may surprise the occupant on his return, but commonly this stratagem is unsuccessful, because of the difficulties of duplicating the knot.”

  Elizabeth then watched in silence while I, trying to recall the intricacies of my signature knot, worked the boskhide cords.

  At last, with a sigh, I leaned back, finished.

  “It is a regular Gordian Knot,” she said.

  “The Gordian Knot,” I said, “was quite possibly just such a knot.”

  “Alexander,” she remarked, smiling, “cut it with his sword.”

  “And in so doing,” I laughed, “informed the entire world that the room, or whatever it was, had been entered.”

  I then untied the knot, slipped the cords through the hole below the latch bar, swung the door shut and set the two beams in place, securing it.

  I turned to Elizabeth. “I will teach you the knot,” I said.

  “Good,” said Elizabeth, undaunted by the complex prospect. Then she looked up at me. “I should have my own knot, too,” she said.

  “Surely,” I said, apprehensively, “we can use the same knot.” It is, after all, not much fun to learn a signature knot.

  “If I am going to learn your knot,” she said, “there is no reason why you cannot learn mine.”

  “Elizabeth,” said I.

  “Vella,” she corrected me.

  “Vella,” said I, “in spite of all you have been through on this world you yet retain certain of the taints of the Earth woman.”

  “Well,” she said, “it seems to me only fair.” Then she smiled mischievously. “My knot will be quite as complex as yours,” she said.

  “I do not doubt it,” I said, dismally.

  “It will be quite enjoyable to invent a knot,” she said, “but it must be feminine, and it must reflect my personality.”

  I groaned.

  She put her arms about my neck and lifted her eyes to mine. “Perhaps,” she said, “after Vella has been fully trained Master will find Vella more pleasing.”

  “Perhaps,” I admitted.

  She kissed me lightly on the nose.

  “You cannot even dance,” I informed her.

  Suddenly she stepped back, threw back her head, thrust one leg to the side, and lifted her arms. Then, eyes closed, not moving, except the heel of the right foot, which beat the rhythm, she began to hum a Tuchuk slave song; on the second measure, her hands came to her hips and she opened her eyes, looking at me; on the third measure, her body began to move and, to the melody, she began to sway toward me; when I reached for her she swept back, and danced, her hands at the side of her head, fingers snapping with the melody.

  Then she stopped.

  “It’s all I know,” she informed me.

  I cried out in rage.

  She came to me and put her arms again about my neck. “Poor Master,” said she, “Vella cannot even dance.”

  “Nonetheless,” I said, “I see that Vella has possibilities.”

  “Master is kind,” she said. She kissed me again, lightly on the nose. “Mas
ter cannot have everything,” she said.

  “That is a sentiment,” I said, “which few Gorean masters will accept.”

  She laughed. “It could be far worse,” she said. “At least I am a Red Silk girl.”

  At this I swept her from her feet and carried her to the broad stone couch in the room, where I placed her on the piles of furs that bedecked it.

  “I have heard,” she said, smiling up at me, “that it is only a Free Companion who is accorded the dignities of the couch.”

  “True,” I cried, bundling her in the furs and throwing the entire roll to the floor at the end of the couch, beneath the slave ring. With a flourish I unrolled the furs, spilling Elizabeth out, who shrieked and began to crawl away, but my hand caught at the loop on the left shoulder of her garment and she turned suddenly, trying to sit up, her feet tangled in the garment and I kicked it away and took her in my arms.

  “If you like me,” she asked, “will you buy me?”

  “Perhaps,” I said, “I do not know.”

  “I think,” she said, “that I would like you for my master.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “So I will try to please you,” she said, “that you will buy me.”

  “You are not now in the purple booth,” I said.

  She laughed. The allusion was to certain practices having to do with the merchandising of Red Silk Girls, in private sales for individual and important clients of the House. At certain times of the year several such booths are set up within the courtyard of a slaver’s house; in each, unclothed, chained by the left ankle to a ring, on furs, is a choice Red Silk Girl; prospective buyers, usually accompanied by a member of the Caste of Physicians, in the presence of the slaver’s agent, examine various girls; when particular interest is indicated in one, the Physician and the slaver’s agent withdraw; when, after this, the girl is not purchased, or at least seriously bid upon, she is beaten severely or, perhaps worse, is touched for a full Ehn by the slave goad; if, after two or three such opportunities, the girl is not sold, she is given further training; if after this she is still not sold she is usually returned to the iron pens whence, with other girls, considered to be of inferior value, she will be sold at a reduced price in one of the smaller markets, perhaps even in a minor city. Most girls, it might be mentioned, even extremely choice specimens, are never in the booths; generally the slaver has a chance at a higher price when there are many buyers bidding against one another in the heat of an auction.