Assassin of Gor (53 page)

Mip lay dead across the neck of the bird he had ridden to victory.

"He rode well," I said. "One might have thought him more than a simple Tarn Keeper."

"Long ago," said the crossbowman, "there was a rider of racing tarns. In a given race, attempting the head pass, he misjudged the distance and was struck bodily from the saddle by the high bar of the first of the center side rings. He was dropped broken into the path of following tarns, torn, and fell again to the lower bar of the ring and then to the net. He raced once or twice after that, and then no more. His timing, his judgement were no longer sure. He feared then the rings, the birds. His confidence, his skill, his nerve were gone. He was afraid, deathly afraid, and understandably so. He did not race more."

"Mip?" I asked.

"Yes," said the crossbowman. "It would be well," he said, "if you understand the courage of what he did here today."

"He raced well," I said.

"I watched," said one of the men of the Steels standing nearby. "He did not fear. There was no fear in his handling of the tarn. There was only sureness, and skill, and nerve."

"And pride," added another man.

"Yes, that, too," said the first man.

"I remember him," said another man, "from years ago. It was the Mip of old. He rode as he had ridden years before. Never did he ride a finer race."

There were murmurs of assent from those gathered about.

"He was then," I asked, "well known as a rider?"

The men about looked at me.

"He was the greatest of the riders," said the crossbowman, looking down at the small, still figure of Mip, his arms still about the neck of the tarn, "the greatest of the riders."

"Did you not know him?" asked one of the men of me.

"He was Mip," I said. "I know him only as Mip."

"Then know him now," said the crossbowman, "by his true name."

I looked at the crossbowman.

"He was Melipolus of Cos," said the crossbowman.

I stood stunned, for Melipolus of Cos was indeed a legend in Ar and in the hundred cities in which races were held.

"Melipolus of Cos," repeated the crossbowman.

"He and Green Ubar died in victory," said one of the men present.

The crossbowman looked at him sharply. "I remember only," said he, "the victory perch, Mip lifting his hands, the tarn's scream of victory."

"I, too," said the man.

The judge's bar rang twice, signaling the preparation for the ninth race, that of the Ubar.

I picked up the small knife which had slain Mip, that hurled by Menicius of Port Kar. I thrust it in my belt.

The platforms, bearing the tarns for the ninth race, were being wheeled onto the track area, approaching the starting perches.

Attendants rushed forward.

I picked up Mip in my arms and handed him to one of the Steels. The body of Green Ubar was placed on a platform and taken from the area.

The crowd was stirring in the stands. The caste colors of Gor seemed turbulent in the high tiers. Men rushed here and there securing the clay disks confirming their bets. Hawkers cried their wares. Here and there children ran about. The sky was a clear blue, dotted by clouds. The sun was shining. It was a good day for the races.

On a large board, against the dividing wall, on which the day's results were tallied, and lists and odds kept of the coming races, I saw them place as the winner of the eighth race Green Ubar, and his rider Melipolus of Cos. I supposed it had been years since the board had been so posted.

Menicius of Port Kar would, of course, ride in the Ubar's Race for the Yellows. His mount was the finest in their tarncots, Quarrel, named for the missile of the crossbow, a strong bird, very fast, reddish in color, with a discoloration on the right wing where, as talk had it, protagonists of the Silvers, long ago, had hurled a bottle of acid. I thought it a good bird. I respected it. But I had little doubt Ubar of the Skies, whose name I saw posted now for the Steels, was his master.

The races now stood even between the Steels and the Yellows. The Ubar's Race would decide the honors of the day, and of the Love Feast and, for most practical purposes, the season.

I looked to the box of the Ubar, and to that of the High Initiate, Complicius Serenus. Both boxes were draped with the colors of the Greens. I wondered if Cernus had yet received word of the events at the Stadium of Blades. Even now, through the streets, men were marching.

I walked to the board, where men were entering the information. There was no name following Ubar of the Skies for the Steels.

"Put there," I told the men, "the name Gladius of Cos."

"He is here!" cried one of them.

The other hastened to put up the name, letter by letter. The crowd roared with pleasure. I saw men from the betting tables conferring, some of them then approaching the board. Odds began to shift on the great board.

I heard the judge's bar ring three times, signaling the birds to their perches.

I strode in the sunlight across the sand toward the starting perches.

I saw Menicius of Port Kar standing on the platform, on which, hooded, trembling with anticipation, stood Quarrel, that marvelous reddish tarn, prince of the tarncots of the Yellows.

Before Menicius of Port Kar, and surrounding the platform as well, I saw a guard of Taurentians.

I approached them but did not attempt to penetrate their line. Menicius of Port Kar, his face white, climbed to the saddle of his bird.

I called to him. "Gladius of Cos," I said, "following the race would confer with Menicius of Port Kar."

"Stand away!" ordered the leader of the Taurentians.

"Menicius of Port Kar," I said, "was in the city of Ko-ro-ba during En'Var last year."

Menicius' fists went white on the reins of the tarn.

I took the killing knife from my belt, poising it in my fingers.

"He recalls a Warrior of Thentis," I remarked.

"I know nothing of what he says," growled Menicius.

"Or perhaps he does not recall him," I conjectured, "for I expect he saw little other than his back."

"Drive him away!" cried Menicius.

"A green patch might easily have been placed on the bridge a day before, an hour before. Menicius of Port Kar is skilled with the killing knife. The strike was made doubtless from the back of a racing tarn, a small swift tarn, maneuverable, darting among the bridges."

"You are mad!" cried Menicius of Port Kar. "Slay him!"

"The first man who moves," said the voice of the crossbowman behind me, "will swallow the bolt of a crossbow."

None of the Taurentians moved against me.

An attendant unhooded Quarrel, tarn of the Yellows. Its reddish crest sprang erect and it shook its head, rippling the feathers. It lifted its head and screamed at the sun.

When the attendant had unhobbled the bird it sprang to its starting perch, the first, or inside perch. It stood there, its head extended, snapping its wings.

It seemed to me a fine bird.

My own tarn, on its platform before the fourth perch, was unhooded.

The crowd cried out, as it always did, at the sight of that monstrous bird, the wicked beak, that sable, crackling crest, the round, black gleaming eyes. An attendant for the Steels unlocked the hobble from the right leg of the bird and leaped aside. The steel-shod talons of the war tarn tore for a moment at the heavy beams of the platform on which it stood, furrowing it. Then the bird threw back its head and opened its wings, and, eyes gleaming, as though among the crags of the Thentis Range or the Voltai, uttered the challenge scream of the Mountain Tarn, shrill, wild, defiant, piercing. I think there were none in that vast stadium who did not for the moment, even in the sun of the summer, feel a swift chill, suddenly fearing themselves endangered, suddenly feeling themselves unwitting intruders, trespassers, wandered by accident, unwilling, into the domain of that majestic carnivore, the black tarn, my Ubar of the Skies.

"Mount!" cried the crossbowman, and I did so. I would miss Mip at my stirrup, his grim, his advice, the counsel, his cheery words, the last slap at my stirrup. But I remembered him only now as he had held the saddle of Green Ubar, dying, but his hands lifted, in victory.

I looked across to Menicius of Port Kar. His eyes darted from mine. He bent over the neck of Quarrel.

I saw that he had been given another knife, a tarn knife, of the sort carried by riders. In his right hand, ready, there was a tarn goad. To my surprise I noted, coiled at the side of his saddle, in four loops, was a whip knife, of the sort common in Port Kar, a whip, but set into its final eighteen inches, arranged in sets of four, twenty thin, narrow blades; the tips of whip knives differ; some have a double-edged blade of about seven or eight inches at the tip; others have a stunning lead, which fells the victim and permits him, half conscious, to be cut to pieces at the attacker's leisure; the whip knife of Menicius, however, held at its tip the double-edged blade, capable of cutting a throat at twelve feet.

I noted Taurentians going to the other contestants in the race, conveying messages to them. Some of these men were protesting, shaking their fists.

"It would be well," said the crossbowman, standing by my stirrup, "not to fall behind in this race."

I saw a Taurentian bring Menicius of Port Kar a container, wrapped in silk, which he thrust in his belt.

"Look," I said to the crossbowman, indicating Taurentians, carrying crossbows, slipping into the crowd.

"Race," said he to me. "There are those of ours among the tiers."

I took the great tarn up with a snap of his wings to my starting perch, the fourth.

Menicius of Port Kar no longer seemed white, no longer afraid. His lean face was now calm; there was a cruel smile about his lips, his eyes. He looked to me, and laughed.

I readied myself for the sound of the judge's bar. The starting rope was strung before the tarns.

I noted, to my surprise, that the padding on the rings had been removed by attendants, and replaced with blade-like edges, used not in races but in exhibitions of daring riding, stunts in effect, in which riders appear to court death at the rings.

The crowd, all factions, cried out in protest at this.

The riders, with the exception of myself and Menicius of Port Kar, looked from one to the other warily, puzzled.

"Bring me," I said, to the crossbowman, standing at the foot of the perch, "from the belongings of Gladius of Cos, kept in the compound of the Steels, the bola of the Tuchuks, the kaiila rope, the southern quiva."

He laughed. "I wondered," he said, "when you would understand that you ride to war."

I smiled at him, under my mask.

An attendant of the Steels threw a package up to my saddle.

I laughed.

"We had them ready," said the crossbowman.

Another man, one of the Steels, who had ridden to victory earlier in the day, ran to the foot of the perch. "There are tarnsmen," said he, "Taurentians, but in plain garb, gathering outside the stadium."

I had expected as much. Such men doubtless had been used in the attack on the caravan of the Hinrabians. "Bring me," I said, "the small bow of the Tuchuks, the barbed war arrows of the Wagon Peoples."

"These, too," said the crossbowman, "are at hand."

"How is it?" I asked, "that these things are ready?"

"Mip," said the crossbowman, by way of explanation. "He well knew the race you would ride."

An attendant, from beneath his cloak, threw to the saddle the tiny, swift bow of Tuchuks, the narrow, rectangular quiver, with its forty arrows.

Not hurrying I strung the bow. It is small, double-curved, about four feet in length, built up of layers of bosk horn, bound and reinforced with metal and leather; it is banded with metal at seven points, including the grip, metal obtained from Turia in half-inch rolled strips; the leather is applied diagonally, in two-inch strips, except that, horizontally, it covers the entire grip; the bow lacks the range of both the longbow and the crossbow, but, at close range, firing rapidly, it can be a devastating weapon; its small size, like the crossbow, permits it to clear the saddle, shifting from the left to the right, or to the rear, with equal ease, this providing an advantage lacked by the more powerful but larger longbow; but, like the longbow, and unlike the crossbow, which requires strength and time to reset, it is capable of a considerable volume of fire; a Tuchuk warrior can, in swirling combat, from the saddle of the running kaiila, accurately fire twenty arrows, drawn to the point, in half an Ehn.

The small bow, interestingly, has never been used among tarnsmen; perhaps this is because the kaiila is almost unknown above the equator, and the lesson of kaiilaback fighting has not been much available to them; perhaps it is because of tradition, which weighs heavily in Gorean life, and even in military affairs for example, the phalanx was abandoned only after more than a century of attempts to preserve and improve it; or perhaps the reason is that range is commonly more important to tarnsmen in flight than maneuverability of the bow.