Assassin of Gor coc-5

by John Norman

  "Some authorities," I told her, "favor Ubar's Initiate to Scribe Three at this point, others recommend the withdrawal of Ubara's Spearman to cover Ubar Two."

  She studied the board closely for a few Ihn. "Ubar's Initiate to Scribe Three is the better move," she said.

  "I agree," I said.

  I placed my Ubar's Initiate, a perfume vial, on Scribe Three.

  "Yes," she said, "it is clearly superior."

  It was indeed a superior move but, as it turned out, it did not do me a great deal of good.

  Six moves later Sura, as I had feared, boldly dropped her Ubar itself, a small rouge pot, on Ubar five.

  "Now," she said, "you will find it difficult to bring your Ubar's Scribe into play." She frowned for a moment. "Yes," she mused, "very difficult."

  "I know," I said. "I know!"

  "Your best alternative move at this point," she explained, "would be, would it not, to attempt to free your position by exchanges?"

  I glared at her. "Yes," I admitted. "It would."

  She laughed.

  I, too, laughed.

  "You are marvelous," I told her. I had played the game often and was considered, even among skilled Goreans, an excellent player; yet I found myself fighting for my life with my beautiful, excited opponent. "You are simply incredible," I said.

  "I have always wanted to play," she said. "I sensed I might do it well."

  "You are superb," I said. I knew her, of course, to be an extremely intelligent, capable woman. This I had sensed in her from the first. Also, of course, had I not even known her I would have supposed her a remarkable person, for she was said to be the finest trainer of girls in the city of Ar, and that honor, dubious though it might be, would not be likely to have been achieved without considerable gifts, and among them most certainly those of unusual intelligence. Yet here I knew there was much more involved than simple intelligence; I sensed here a native aptitude of astonishing dimension.

  "Don't move there," she told me, "or you will lose your Home Stone in seven."

  I studied the board. "Yes," I said at last, "you are right."

  "Your strongest move," she said, "is first tarnsman to Ubar one."

  I restudied the board. "Yes," I said, "you are right."

  "But then," she said, "I shall place my Ubara's Scribe at Ubar's Initiate Three."

  I tipped my Ubar, resigning.

  She clapped her hands delightedly.

  "Wouldn't you like to play the kalika?" I asked, hopefully.

  "Oh Kuurus!" she cried.

  "Very well," I said, resetting the pieces.

  While I was setting them up I thought it well to change the subject, and perhaps to interest her in some less exacting pastime, something more suitable to her feminine mind.

  "You mentioned," I said, "that Ho-Tu comes here often."

  "Yes," she said, looking up. "He is a very kind man."

  "The Master Keeper in the House of Cernus?" I asked, smiling.

  "Yes," she said. "And he is actually very gentle."

  I thought of the powerful, squat Ho-Tu, with his hook knife and slave goad.

  "He won his freedom at hook knife," I reminded her.

  "But in the time of the father of Cernus," she said, "when hook knives were sheathed."

  "The fights with hook knife I saw," I said, " were contests with sheathed blade."

  "That is since the beast came to the house," she said, looking down. "The knives are sheathed now that the loser will survive to be fed to the beast."

  "What manner of beast is it?" I asked.

  "I do not know," she said.

  I had heard it cry out and knew that it was not a sleen, nor a larl. I could not place the roar, the noise.

  "I have seen the remains of its feeds," she said, shuddering. "There is little left. Even the bones are broken open and splintered, the marrow sucked out."

  "Is it only those who lose at hook knife who are fed to the beast?" I asked.

  "No," she said. "Anyone who displeases Cernus might be given to the beast. Sometimes it is a guard even, but normally a slave. Generally it is a male slave from the pens. But sometimes a girl is bloodied and fed to it."

  I remembered that the slave who had lost in hook knife had been wounded slightly before being taken to the beast.

  "Why bloodied?" I asked.

  "I do not know," she said. Then she looked down again at the board, that square of silk marked with rouge. "But let us forget the beast," she said. She smiled looking at the silk, the vials and beads. "The game is so beautiful," she said.

  "Ho-Tu," I observed, "seldom leaves the house."

  "In the last year," said Sura, "he left it only one time for an extended period."

  "When was that?" I asked.

  "In last year's En'Var," she said, "when he was gone from the city on the business of the house."

  "What business?" I asked.

  "Purchases of slaves," she said.

  "To what city did he go?" I asked.

  "Ko-ro-ba," she said.

  I stiffened.

  She looked up at me. "What is wrong, Kuurus?" she asked. Then suddenly her eyes widened and she threw out her hand. "No, Ho-Tu!" she screamed.

  18 — THE END OF KAJURALIA

  I leaped across the rouged square of silk, scattering the vials and beads that were the pieces of our game, flinging Sura to the floor, pressing myself across her body that she might be protected. In the same instant the hurled knife struck a chest behind us and I had rolled over throwing my legs under me, trying to draw the sword from my sheath, when Ho-Tu, running, hook knife in hand, leaped upon me, the curved blade streaking for my throat; I threw my left hand between the knife and my throat and felt the sudden hot flash of pain in my cut sleeve, the sudden splash of blood in my eyes, but then I had my hands on Ho-Tu's wrist, trying to force the knife back, and he, with his two hands, leaning his weight on his hands, his feet slipping on the floor, stepping on the square of silk, pressed down again toward my throat.

  "Stop it!" cried Sura. "Ho-Tu, stop!"

  I pressed up and then, knowing his full weight was on the knife, I suddenly ceased resistance, removing my counter-pressure, and rolled from under him. Ho-Tu fell heavily on the floor and I slipped free, rolled and had the sword from my sheath, standing.

  He scrambled to his feet, his face a mask of hate, looking about, saw the slave goad, ran to it and whipped it from the wall.

  I did not pursue him, not wanting to kill him.

  He turned and I saw, in almost one motion of his finger, the goad switch to on, the dial rotate to the Kill Point. Then crouching, the goad blazing in his hand, he approached me warily.

  But Sura stood between us. "Do not hurt him," said Sura.

  "Stand aside," said Ho-Tu.

  "No!" cried Sura.

  I saw the dial rotate back from the kill point and Ho-Tu swept the goad toward her, angrily. There was an intense eruption of needle-like sparks and Sura screamed in pain and fell stumbling to one side, weeping, crying out on the stones of the floor.

  For an instant the face of Ho-Tu seemed in agony, and then he turned again to me. Again I saw the dial rotate and the goad now seemed a jet of fire in his hand.

  I had backed to the chest, resheathed my sword, and drawn forth the knife which had been thrown. It was a killing knife, short, well-balanced for throwing, tapered on one side.

  It reversed itself in my hand.

  With a cry of rage and anger Ho-Tu hurled the goad at me. It passed to the left of my head, struck the wall with an explosion of sparks and lay burning on the stones.

  "Throw!" ordered Ho-Tu.

  I looked at the knife, and the man. "It was with a knife such as this," I said, "that you slew a Warrior of Thentis on a bridge in Ko-ro-ba, in En'Var, near the tower of Warriors."

  Ho-Tu looked puzzled.

  "You struck him from behind," I said, "the blow of a coward."

  "I killed no one," said Ho-Tu. "You are mad."

  I felt a cold fury mo
ving through me. "Turn around," I told him, "your back to me."

  Woodenly, Ho-Tu did so.

  I let him stand that way for a moment. Sura had now, shaken, still feeling the pain of the goad, risen to her hands and knees.

  "Do not kill him!" she whispered.

  "When will it strike, Ho-Tu?" I asked.

  He said nothing.

  "And where?" I probed. "Where?"

  "Please do not kill him!" cried Sura.

  "Throw!" cried Ho-Tu.

  Sura leaped between us, standing with her back to Ho-Tu. "Kill Sura first!" she screamed.

  "Stand aside!" cried Ho-Tu, not turning, his fists clenched. "Stand aside, Slave!"

  "No!" cried Sura. "No!"

  "Do not fear," I said. "I will not kill you with your back turned."

  Ho-Tu turned to face me, with his arms pushing Sura to one side.

  "Pick up your hook knife," I said.

  Ho-Tu, not taking his eyes much from me, found the hook knife, and lifted it.

  "Do not fight!" screamed Sura.

  I crouched down, the killing knife now held by the hilt in my hand.

  Ho-Tu and I began to circle one another.

  "Stop!" cried Sura. Then she ran to the slave goad and picked it up; it was still incandescent, brilliant; one could not look on it without pain. "The goad," said she, "is at the Kill Point. Put down your weapons!" Her eyes were closed and she was sobbing. The goad was clenched in her two hands, moving toward her throat.

  "Stop!" I cried.

  Ho-Tu flung away his hook knife and rushed to Sura, tearing the goad away from her. I saw him rotate it to minimum charge, turn it off, and fling it away. He took Sura in his arms weeping. Then he turned to face me. "Kill me," he told me.

  I did not wish to kill a man who was unarmed.

  "But," said Ho-Tu, "I killed no man-in Ko-ro-ba or elsewhere."

  "Kill us both," said Sura, holding the squat, ugly Ho-Tu to her, "but he is innocent."

  "He killed," I told her.

  "It was not I," said Ho-Tu. "I am not he whom you seek."

  "You are he," I said.

  "I am not," said he.

  "A moment ago," I charged, "you attempted to kill me."

  "Yes," said Ho-Tu. "That is true. And I would do so again now."

  "You poor fool," said Sura sobbing, to Ho-Tu, kissing him. "You would kill for a simple slave?"

  "I love you," cried Ho-Tu. "I love you!"

  "I, too," said she, "love you, Ho-Tu."

  He stood as though stunned. A strong man, he seemed shaken. His hands trembled on her. In his black eyes I saw tears. "Love," asked he, "for Ho-Tu, less than a man?"

  "You are my love," said Sura, "and have been so for many years."

  He looked at her, hardly daring to move.

  "Yes," she said.

  "I am not even a man," said he.

  "In you, Ho-Tu," said she, "I have found the heart of a larl and the softness of flowers. You have been to me kindness, and gentleness and strength, and you have loved me." She looked up at him. "No man of Gor," said she, "is more a man than you."

  "I killed no one," he said to her.

  "I know that," said Sura. "You could not."

  "But when I thought of him with you," sobbed the Master Keeper, "I wanted to kill-to kill."

  "He did not even touch me," said Sura. "Do you not understand? He wanted to protect me, and so brought me here and freed me."

  "Is this true?" asked Ho-Tu.

  I did not speak.

  "Killer," said Ho-Tu, "forgive me."

  "He wears the black tunic," said Sura, "and I do not know who he is, but he is not of the black caste."

  "Let us not speak of such matters," I said, sternly.

  Ho-Tu looked at me. "Know," said he, "whoever you are, that I killed no one."

  "I think I shall return to my compartment," I said, feeling it well to be on my way.

  "I wanted to hurt you," said Ho-Tu, looking at me.

  "But," said Sura to Ho-Tu, "it was me whom you hurt, Ho-Tu."

  There still was a trace of pain in her voice, the memory in her nerves of the strike of the slave goad.

  "Forgive me," sobbed Ho-Tu. "Forgive me!"

  She laughed. "A Master Keeper begging the forgiveness of a slave for touching her with a slave goad!"

  Ho-Tu looked down at the square of silk, the tumbled vials and beads.

  "What were you doing here?" he asked.

  "He was teaching me to play the game," she laughed, "with such things."

  Ho-Tu grinned. "Did you like it?" he asked.

  "No, Ho-Tu," laughed Sura. She kissed him. "It is too difficult for me," she said.

  Ho-Tu spoke to her. "I will play with you, if you like," he said.

  "No, Ho-Tu," said she. "I would not like that." Then she left his arms, to pick up the kalika in the corner of the compartment and sat down, cross-legged, for the instrument is commonly played that way, and bent over it. Her fingers touched the six strings, a note at a time, and then a melody, of the caravans of Tor, a song of love.

  They did not notice me as I left the compartment.

  I found Flaminius, the Physician, in his quarters, and he, obligingly, though drunk, treated the arm which Ho-Tu had slashed with the hook knife. The wound was not at all serious.

  "The games of Kajuralia can be dangerous," remarked Flaminius, swiftly wrapping a white cloth about the wound, securing it with four small metal snap clips.

  "It is true," I admitted.

  Even from the Physician's quarters we could hear, at various points in the House, the laughing and sporting of drunken slaves in their cells, drunken guards running down one hall or another playing jokes on each other.

  "This is the sixth hook knife wound I have treated today," said Flaminius.

  "Oh?" I asked.

  "Your opponent is, I suppose," said Flaminius, "dead."

  "No," I said.

  "Oh?" asked Flaminius.

  "I received this wound," I said, "in the quarters of Mistress Sura."

  "Ha!" laughed Flaminius. "What a wench!" Then he looked at me, grinning. "I trust Mistress Sura was taught something this evening."

  I recalled instructing her in the game. "Yes," I said, dourly, "this evening Mistress Sura learned much."

  Flaminius laughed delightedly. "That is an arrogant slave," he said. "I would not mind getting my hands on her myself, but Ho-Tu would not permit it. Ho-Tu is insanely jealous of her, and she only a slave! By the way, Ho-Tu was looking for you this evening."

  "I know," I said.

  "Beware of Ho-Tu," said Flaminius.

  "I do not think Ho-Tu will bother Kuurus, of the black caste," said I, rising to my feet.

  Flaminius looked at me, with a certain drunken awe. Then he rose in his green quarters tunic and went to a chest in his room, from which he drew forth a large bottle of paga. He opened it and, to my surprise, poured two cups. He took a good mouthful of the fluid from one of the cups, and bolted it down, exhaling with satisfaction.

  "You seem to me, from what I have seen and heard," I said, "a skilled Physician."

  He handed me the second cup, though I wore the black tunic.

  "In the forth and fifth year of the reign of Marlenus," said he, regarding me evenly, "I was first in my caste in Ar."

  I took a swallow.

  "Then," said I, "you discovered paga?"

  "No," said he.

  "A girl?" I asked.

  "No," said Flaminius, smiling. "No." He took another swallow. "I thought to find," said he, "an immunization against Dar-kosis."

  "Dar-kosis is incurable," I said.

  "At one time," said he, "centuries ago, men of my caste claimed age was incurable. Others did not accept this and continued to work. The result was the Stabilization Serums."

  Dar-Kosis, or the Holy Disease, or Sacred Affliction, is a virulent, wasting disease of Gor. Those afflicted with it, commonly spoken of simply as the Afflicted Ones, may not enter into normal society. They wander th
e countryside in shroud-like yellow rags, beating a wooden clapping device to warn men from their path; some of them volunteer to be placed in Dar-kosis pits, several of which lay within the vicinity of Ar, where they are fed and given drink, and are, of course, isolated; The disease is extremely contagious. Those who contact the disease are regarded by law as dead.

  "Dar-kosis," I said, "is thought to be holy to the Priest-Kings, and those afflicted with it to be consecrated to Priest-Kings."

  "A teaching of Initiates," said Flaminius bitterly. "There is nothing holy about the disease, about pain, about death." He took another drink.

  "Dar-kosis," I said, "is regarded as an instrument of Priest-Kings, used to smite those who displease them."

  "Another myth of Initiates," said Flaminius, unpleasantly.

  "But how do you know that?" I queried.

  "I do not care," said Flaminius, "if it is true or not. I am a Physician."

  "What happened?" I asked.

  "For many years," said Flaminius, "and this was even before 10,110, the year of Pa-Kur and his horde, I and others worked secretly in the Cylinder of Physicians. We devoted our time, those Ahn in the day in which we could work, to study, research, test and experiment.

  Unfortunately, for spite and for gold, word of our work was brought to the High Initiate, by a minor Physician discharged from our staff for incompetence. The Cylinder of Initiates demanded that the High Council of the Caste of Physicians put an end to our work, not only that it be discontinued but that our results to that date be destroyed. The Physicians, I am pleased to say, stood with us. There is little love lost between Physicians and Initiates, even as is the case between Scribes and Initiates.

  The Cylinder of the High Initiate then petitioned the High Council of the City to stop our work, but they, on the recommendation of Marlenus, who was then Ubar, permitted out work to continue. Flaminius laughed. "I remember Marlenus speaking to the High Initiate. Marlenus told him that either the Priest-Kings approved of our work or they did not; that if they approved, it should continue; if they did not approve, they themselves, as the Masters of Gor, would be quite powerful enough to put an end to it."

  I laughed.

  Flaminius looked at me, curiously. "It is seldom," he said, "that those of the black caste laugh."

  "What happened then?" I asked.