Assassin of Gor (38 page)

"It is not often," I said, "that one finds a woman who is pleased with the game."

We played yet another Ahn and, even in that short amount of time, her moves had become more exact, more subtle, more powerful. I became now less concerned to suggest improvements in her play and more concerned to protect my own Home Stone.

"Are you sure you have never played before?" I asked.

She looked at me, genuinely delighted. "Am I doing acceptably?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

I began to marvel at her. I truly believe, also, that she had never played before. I realized, to my pleasure, if danger, that I had come upon one of those rare persons who possesses a remarkable aptitude for the game. There was a rawness in her play, a lack of polish, but I sensed myself in the presence of one for whom the game might have been created.

Her eyes sparkled.

"Capture of Home Stone!" she cried.

"I do not suppose you would care to play the kalika," I proposed.

"No! No!" she cried. "The game! The game!"

"You are only a woman," I reminded her.

"Please, Kuurus!" she said. "The game! The game!"

Reluctantly I began to put out the pieces again.

This time she had yellow.

To my astonishment, this time I began to see the Centian Opening unfold, developed years ago by Centius of Cos, one of the strongest openings known in the game, one in which the problems of development for red are particularly acute, especially the development of his Ubara's Scribe.

"Are you sure you have never played before?" I asked, thinking it well to recheck the point.

"No," she said, studying the board like a child confronting something never seen before, something wonderful, something mysterious and challenging, a red ball, some squares of brightly colored, folded orange cloth.

When it came to her fourteenth move for red, my color, I glanced up at her.

"What do you think I should do now?" I asked.

I noted that her lovely brow had already been wrinkled with distress, considering the possibilities.

"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 moving 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."