Assassin of Gor

23 — I FINISH MY BUSINESS IN THE HOUSE OF CERNUS

I waited in the hall of Cernus, on his own great chair. Before me, on the wooden table, there lay my sword.

I had had little difficulty in arriving at his House before him. I had ridden the black tarn. My eyes had not permitted any to dispute my passage, and, indeed, the halls of his house were now largely empty. Word had apparently reached the House of the doings at the Stadium of Blades before it had come to the Stadium of Tarns, much farther away.

I had walked through the largely deserted halls, empty save for a scurrying slave or a furtive man-at-arms, gathering his belongings, preparing to make away. I passed numerous prisoners, slaves, male and female, some chained to walls, many locked behind bars.

In her chamber I had found Sura.

She was lying on the straw of a slave, but she had wrapped about her body the garment of a free woman. The collar, of course, was still at her throat. Her eyes were closed; she was extremely pale.

I rushed to her side, took her in my arms.

She opened her eyes weakly, and did not seem to recognize me.

I cried out in anger.

"He was a beautiful boy," she said. "He is a beautiful boy."

I put her down and tore rags to wrap about her wrists.

"I will call one of the Caste of Physicians," I whispered to her. Surely Flaminius, drunk, might still be in the house.

"No," she said, reaching for my hand.

"Why have you done this?" I cried in anger.

She looked at me in mild surprise. "Kuurus," she said, calling me by the name by which she had known me in the house. "It is you, Kuurus."

"Yes," I said. "Yes."

"I did not wish to live longer as a slave," she said.

I wept.

"Tell Ho-Tu," she said, "that I love him."

I sprang to my feet and ran to the door. "Flaminius!" I cried. "Flaminius!"

A slave running past stopped on my command. "Fetch Flaminius!" I cried. "He must bring blood! Sura must live!"

The slave hurtled down the hall.

I returned to the side of Sura. Her eyes were closed again. She was pale. The heartbeat was all but inaudible.

About the room I saw some of the things with which we had played, the silk marked with the squares of the game, the small bottles, the vials.

Sura opened her eyes one last time and regarded me, and smiled. "He is a beautiful boy, is he not, Kuurus?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, "he is a fine boy."

"He is a beautiful boy," she said, a smile a reproach in her eyes.

"Yes," I said. "Yes."

Then Sura closed her eyes. She smiled.

Flaminius came in but a few moments. With him he carried the apparatus of his craft, and a cannister of fluid. There was paga on his breath but his eyes were sober. At the door, suddenly, agonized, he stopped.

"Hurry!" I cried.

He put aside the things he had brought with him.

"Hurry!" I cried.

"Can't you see?" he asked. "She is dead."

Flaminius, tears in his eyes, came and knelt with me beside Sura. He choked and put his head in his hands.

I had risen to my feet.

I waited now in the Hall of Cernus. It was empty. I looked about me at the tables, at the tiled floors; at the slave rings by the wall; at the square pit of sand between the tables. I had taken my seat on the chair of Cernus; I had drawn my sword, and laid it across the wood before me.

I could hear shouting outside in the streets but, because of the thick walls of the House of Cernus, it seemed distant. Here and there I heard snatches of the song of Ar's glory.

It was dark and cool in the hall. It was quiet. I waited. I was patient. He would come.

The door burst open and five men entered, Cernus, wild-eyed, suddenly haggard, and behind him Philemon, of the Caste of Scribes, the man who had commanded the fifty tarnsmen who had ridden against me in the Stadium of Tarns, and two Taurentian guardsmen.

As the men burst into the room I stood behind the table, in the half-darkness, setting the point of my sword in the wood, holding the hilt with both hands, surveying them.

"I have come for you, Cernus," said I.

"Kill him!" cried Cernus to the man who had ridden against me, a Taurentian, and to the other two Taurentians, guardsmen.

The man who had ridden against me threw me a look of hatred and drew his sword, but, angrily, he threw it to the tiles.

Cernus cried out in rage.

The other two Taurentians, one after the other, drew their swords and threw them to the tiles.

"Sleen!" cursed Cernus. "Sleen!"

The three Taurentians turned and ran from the room.

"Come back!" screamed Cernus.

Philemon, of the Caste of Scribes, his eyes wide with fear, threw a look after the guards, and then he, too, turned and fled.

"Come back!" screamed Cernus. "Come back!" Then he spun and faced me.

I regarded him, not speaking. My face must have been terrible to look upon.

"Who are you?" stammered Cernus.

In that moment I believe perhaps I did not appear Tarl Cabot, whom Cernus surely knew me to be, but some other. It was as though he had never looked upon the face that now, dispassionately, regarded him.

"I am Kuurus," I said.

I had, in my passage from Sura's chamber to the Hall of Cernus stopped in the chambers where I had resided. There I had once more donned the black of the Assassin. There, once more, I had affixed on my forehead the mark of the dagger.

"The killer?" said Cernus, his voice breaking.

I said nothing.

"You are Tarl Cabot!" he cried. "Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba!"

"I am Kuurus," I told him.

"You wear upon your forehead the mark of the black dagger," whispered Cernus.

"It is for you," I told him.

"No!" he cried.

"Yes, Cernus," said I, "it is for you I wear the black dagger."

"I am innocent!" he cried.

I would not speak.

"Menicius!" he cried. "It was he who slew the Warrior of Thentis! Not I!"

"I have taken gold," I told him. I would not yet speak to him of Sura.

"It was Menicius!" he wept.

"It was you who gave the order," I said.

"I will give you gold!" he cried.

"You have nothing," said I, "Cernus." I regarded him evenly. "You have lost all."

"Do not strike me," he begged. "Do not strike me!"

"But," I laughed, "you are first sword of the House of Cernus. You are even, I hear, of the Caste of Warriors."

"Do not strike me!" he whimpered.

"Defend yourself," I said.

"No," he said. "No. No."

"Noble, proud Cernus," I scoffed.

"No," he said. "No. No. No."

"Very well," I said. "Disarm yourself and surrender. I will see that you are conveyed safe to the courts of the Ubar, where I trust justice will be dealt."

"Yes," whimpered Cernus, "yes." He reached humbly, brokenly, into his robe, drawing forth a dagger. I eyed him narrowly. Suddenly he cried, "Die!" and hurled it at me. I had expected the move and had turned. The knife struck the back of the chair before which I stood, striking through the wood, stopping only with the hilt.

"Excellent," I commented.

He stood now with his sword in hand, eyes bright.

I cried out with a shout of exultation and leaped over the table towards him.

In an instant our blades had met in the swift discourse of flashing steel.

He was an excellent swordsman, very fast, cunning, strong.

"Excellent," I told him.

We moved about the room, over the tables and behind them, across the square of sand.

Once Cernus, moving backward, defending himself, fell over the dais, and my sword was at his throat.

"Well," I said, "will it be my steel or the impaling spear of Ar's justice?"

"Let it be your steel," he said.

I stepped back and permitted him to regain his feet. Again we fought.

Then I drew blood, from the left shoulder. I stepped back. He tore his robe from his body and wore only the belted house tunic; the left shoulder was soaked with blood.

"Yield," I told him.

"Die!" he screamed, rushing again towards me.

It was a superb attack, but I met it and drew blood twice more, once from the left side, once from the chest.

Cernus reeled back, his eyes glazed. He coughed and spit blood.

I did not follow him.

He regarded me, breathing hard. He wiped a bloody forearm across his face.

"Sura is dead," I told him.

He looked startled. "I did not kill her," he said.

"You killed her," I said.

"No!" he cried.

"There are many ways in which a man can kill," I said.

He looked at me, haggard, bloody.

I moved my position. He looked over his shoulder, saw the door from the hall which led to the stairs and passage leading to the chambers of the beast. I saw a sudden, wild elation cross his features. He set himself as though to receive my attack. Then, suddenly, he spun and ran for the door.

I let him reach the door, jerk it open, take his stumbling flight up the stairs, into the passage.

At the head of the stairs, I at the foot, he turned. "It will protect me!" he cried. "You are a fool, Tarl Cabot!" He hurled his sword down the stairs at me. I stepped aside and it clattered past. Then he turned and fled down the passage.

I climbed the stairs slowly.

At the head of the stairs I saw that the room at the end of the passage was open. As I had expected there were now no guards posted.

I saw the trail of blood on the boards of the hall, marking the flight of Cernus.

"You would never make a Player, Cernus," said I to myself.

I heard the horrid scream from the room at the end of the hall, and a frightening roar, and strange noises, human, and snarling and feeding.

When I had come to the room, sword ready, the beast was gone.

I ran through the room. It opened into a larger room. One with a vast portal open to the air, sheer on all sides. In the larger room I smelled the odor of a tarn, mixed with another odor I could not place, but animal. Outside the room, mounted in the wall of the cylinder of Cernus, was a tarn perch. I saw, in the distance, something large on the back of a great tarn, humped, shaggy.

I turned back and looked into the room. In it I saw the rifle which had been brought from Earth. About the walls of the room there was much delicate apparatus, reminding me somewhat of instrumentation I had seen in the Nest long ago; complex paneling, wires, disks; the dials, I noted, were adopted for a visually oriented organism, needles quivering against a metric of spaces; a cone was flashing on and off in the instrumentation; I lifted a matching cone from its placement on a horizontal panel; putting the cone to my ear I heard a splattering of signals of varying pitch; they came more and more frequently, and at greater and greater intensity; then, to my amazement, the signals stopped; there was a pause; then there came a strange sound, which could have been uttered by no human throat, but articulate, repeated again and again.

I put the cone down. The sound continued.

Ho-Tu, his hook knife in his hand, entered the room. "Cernus?" he asked.

I pointed to the rags and the part of a body that was thrown into a corner of the room, mixed with litter and bones.

"What more could you have done?" I asked.

Ho-Tu looked at me.

"Sura," I said, "told me to tell you that she loved you."

Ho-Tu nodded. There were tears in his eyes. "I am happy," he said. Then he turned and left the room.

I saw on the part of the body lying among the bones the chain and medallion of Cernus, now stained with blood, the tarn, gold, slave chains in its talons.

I pulled it through the body and threw it onto the horizontal panel, next to the flashing cone, to the other cone that kept repeating its request.

I looked about. Throughout the room there was the heavy animal odor. I saw the webbing on which the thing had apparently slept, judged its strength, noted its width. I saw the small boxes which had been brought from the black ships. I saw cases of metallic disks, perhaps mnemonic disks or record disks. Priest-Kings could make use, I supposed, of the contents of this room. I expected they could learn much.

I went to the horizontal panel and picked up the cone through which the voice was being transmitted; I noted a switch in the cone and pushed it; immediately the voice stopped.

I spoke into the cone. I spoke in Gorean. I did not know to whom I spoke. I was certain that my transmission, like others, would be taped or recorded in some fashion. It would, now, or later, be understood.

"Cernus is dead," I said. "The beast is gone. There will be no answer."

I clicked the switch again. This time it was silent.

I turned and left the room, barring it on the outside, that others might not enter it.

In passing again through the hall of Cernus I encountered Flaminius. "Ho-Tu," he said.

I followed him to the chamber of Sura.

There Ho-Tu, with his hook knife, had cut his own throat, falling across the body of Sura. I saw that he had first removed from her throat the collar of Cernus.

Flaminius seemed shaken. He looked to me, and I to him.

Flaminius looked down.

"You must live," I said to him.

"No," he said.

"You have work to do," I told him. "There is a new Ubar in Ar. You must return to your work, your research."

"Life is little," he said.

"What is death?" I asked him.

He looked at me. "It is nothing," he said.

"If death is nothing," I said, "then the little that life is must be much indeed."

He looked away. "You are a Warrior," he said. "You have your wars, your battles."

"So, too, do you," said I, "Flaminius."

Our eyes met.

"Dar-kosis," I said, "is not yet dead."

He looked away.

"You must return to your work," I said. "Men need you."

He laughed bitterly.

"The little that men have," I said, "is worth your love."

"Who am I to care for others?" he asked.

"You are Flaminius," I told him, "he who long ago loved men and chose to wear the green robes of the Caste of Physicians."

"Long ago," he said, looking down, "I knew Flaminius."

"I," I said, "know him now."

He looked into my eyes. There were tears in his eyes, and in mine.

"I loved Sura," said Flaminius.

"So, too, did Ho-Tu," I said. "And so, too, in my way, did I."

"I will not die," said Flaminius. "I will work."

I returned to my own chambers in the House of Cernus. Outside I could hear the song of Ar's glory. I washed away from my forehead the mark of the black dagger.