Assassin of Gor by John Norman Page A

them shouting in the corridors of the house.
     
    "I regret to hear it," said Cernus, at last. Then he looked at me. "There will be few in Ar," he said, "who would not wish you well in your dark work."
     
    "Who could kill Tarl of Bristol?" cried out a man-at-arms, not even thinking that Cernus had not acknowledged his right to speak.
     
    "A knife on the high bridge," said I, "in the vicinity of the Cylinder of Warriors---at the Twentieth Ahn---in the darkness and the shadows of the lamps."
     
    The men-at-arms looked at one another. "It could only have been so," said one.
     
    I myself felt bitterly about a poorly lit bridge in the vicinity of the Cylinder of Warriors---and about a certain hour on a certain day---for it was on that bridge that a young man, of the Warriors, had walked perhaps not more than a quarter of an Ahn before I myself would have passed that way. His crime, if he had had one, was that his build was rather like mine, and his hair, in the shadows, the half-darkness of the lamps and the three moons of Gor, might have seemed to one who watched like mine. The older Tarl, the Koroban master of arms, and myself had found the body, and near it, the patch of green caught in a crack in the grillwork of one of the lamps on the bridge, where perhaps it had been torn from the shoulder of a running, stumbling man. The older Tarl had turned the body in his hands, and we had looked on it, and both of us had regarded one another. "This knife," said the Older Tarl, "was to have been yours."
     
    "Do you know him?" I asked.
     
    "No," he had said, "other than the fact that he was a warrior from the allied city of Thentis, a poor Warrior."
     
    We noted that his pouch had not been cut. The killer had wanted only the life.
     
    The older Tarl, taking the knife by the hand guard, withdrew it. It was a throwing knife, of a sort used in Ar, much smaller than the southern quiva, and tapered on only one side. It was a knife designed for killing. Mixed with the blood and fluids of the body there was a smear of white at the end of the steel, the softened residue of a glaze of kanda paste, now melted by body heat, which had coated the tip of the blade. On the hilt of the dagger, curling about it, was the legend, "I have sought him. I have found him." It was a killing knife.
     
    "The Caste of Assassins?" I asked.
     
    "Unlikely," had said the Older Tarl, "for Assassins are commonly too proud for poison."
     
    Then, not speaking, the Older Tarl had slung the body over his shoulders. I took the patch from the grillwork. We took the body, fortunately meeting no one at that late hour, to the nearby compartment of my father, Matthew Cabot, Administrator of the City. The older Tarl, my father and I long discussed the matter. We were confident that this attempt on my life, for that it seemed to be, had something to do with the Sardar, and the Priest-Kings, and the Others, not Priest-Kings, who desired this world of Priest-Kings and men, and, surreptitiously and cruelty, were fighting to obtain it, though as yet, perhaps fearing the power of Priest-Kings or not fully understanding how severely it had been reduced in the Nest War of more than a year ago, they had not dared to attack openly. Accordingly, biding our time, we let it be known in the city that Tarl Cabot had been slain. Now, in the Hall of the House of Cernus, my thoughts became bitter. I had indeed come to avenge. But I did not even know his name. He had been a tarnsman of Thentis. He had come to the allied city of Ko-ro-ba, and had there found his death, for no reason that was clear to me other than the fact that he had had the misfortune to resemble me.
     
    "Why," asked Cernus, breaking into my reverie, "did not Warriors of Ko-ro-ba come to Ar, to search out the killer?"
     
    "It was not an act of war," said I. "Further," I pointed out, "now that Kazrak of Port Kar is no longer Administrator of Ar it seemed unlikely that Ar would welcome Koroban Warriors within her