No one else said anything further. From time to time others would come to watch, but, as it became clear what was occurring, they would leave. At most times there were, however, some seven or eight individuals, including myself, who were watching.
Finally, it grew late in the end game and it would be but a matter of four or five moves and the Player's Home Stone must be lost. The Vintner had taken his three-move option late in the game to build up an incredibly devastating attack. The Player was now in such a predicament that I doubted that Centius of Cos, or Quintus of Tor, or even the city champion, Scormus of Ar, could have done much. I, and others in the crowd, were angry.
I spoke. The Player, of course, could only hear my voice.
'A tarn disk of gold and of double weight,' said I, 'to red, should red win.'
The crowd gasped. The Vintner acted as though struck. The Player lifted his sightless eyes toward my face.
I took from my belt a tarn disk of double weight, and of gold, and gave it to the Player, who took it in his fingers and felt its weight, and then he put it between his teeth and bit it. He handed it back to me. 'It is truly gold,' he said. 'Do not mock me.'
'A double tarn,' said I, 'to red, should red win.'
Such an amount I knew would not be likely to be earned in a year by a Player.
The Player turned his head toward me, lifting the scarred remains of his eyes, as though he might see. Every nerve in that old face seemed strained, as though trying to understand what might lie there beyond him in the darkness that was his world, save for the memory of the movement of pieces on a checkered board. He put out his hand over the board, and I grasped it, firmly. I held his hand for a moment and he held mine, and I felt his grip, and smiled, for I knew then, blinded and branded, weak and old, he was yet a man. He released my hand and sat back, cross-legged, his back straight as that of a Ubar, a smile playing across the corners of his mouth. The sightless eyes seemed to gleam.
'Second Tarnsman,' said he, 'to Ubara's Builder Nine.'
A cry of astonishment coursed through the crowd. Even the Vintner cried out.
He must be insane, I said to myself. Such a move was utterly unrelated to the game. It was random, meaningless. He was subject to one of the most devastating attacks that could be mounted in the game. His Home Stone, in four moves, would fall. He must defend, for his very life!
With a trembling hand, the Vintner shoved his Second Spearman to the left, capturing the Player's First Spearman, which had not been defended.
I inwardly groaned.
'Ubar's Rider of the High Tharlarion,' said the Player, 'to Ubar's Physician Eight.'
I closed my eyes. It was another meaningless move. The crowd looked on, staggered, puzzled, speechless. Was this man not a Player?
Relentlessly the Vintner forced through again with his Second Spearman, this time capturing the Player's Ubara's Rider of the High Tharlarion.
'Ubar's Scribe to Ubara's Scribe Six,' said the Player.
Under other conditions I would have left at this point, but as I held the gold piece in question I knew that I would have to remain until the end, which, as some consolation, would be but shortly now.
Even the Vintner seemed disturbed. 'Do you wish to reconsider your last move?' he asked, offering a rare concession among players of the game, and one I had never expected from the Vintner, from what I had seen of him, to offer. I decided he was perhaps not such a bad fellow, though perhaps winning meant more to him than it should.
'Ubar's Scribe to Ubara's Scribe Six,' repeated the Player.
Mechanically the Vintner made the move on the board for the Player.
'My first tarnsman,' said the Vintner, 'captures Ubara's Scribe.'
The capture of the Player's Home Stone would take place on the next move.
'Do you wish to reconsider you move?' asked the Player, looking across the board, not seeing, but smiling. There seemed something grand about him in that moment, as though it were a gesture of magnanimity worthy of a victorious Ubar.
The Vintner looked at him puzzled. 'No,' he said. 'I do not.'
The Player shrugged.
'I capture your Home Stone on the next move,' said the Vintner.
'You have no next move,' said the Player.
The crowd gasped and they and I, and the Vintner, studied the board.
'Aii!' I cried, though the outburst was scarcely in keeping with the somber black I wore, and an instant later the Tarn Keeper and the Saddle Maker cried out, and began to stamp their feet in the dust, and pound their fists against their left shoulders. Then others watching cried out with glee. I myself remove my sword from its sheath and with it struck my shield. Then the Vintner began to howl with pleasure and slap his knees so pleased he was at the wonder of it, though he himself was the victim. 'Magnificent!' he cried weeping, taking the Player by the shoulders and shaking him.
And then the Vintner himself, as proud as though it had been his own, announced the Player's next move. 'Scribe takes Home Stone.'
The crowd and I cried out with delight, marveling on it, the now apparent simplicity of it, the attack which had been not so much mounted as revealed by the apparently meaningless moves, intended only to clear the board for the vital attack, coming from the improbable Ubara's Scribe, one of the least powerful pieces on the board, yet, when used in combination with, say, a tarnsman and a rider of the high tharlarion, as devastating as the Ubar itself. None of us, including the Vintner, had so much as suspected the attack. The Vintner pressed the copper tarn disk, which the Player had won from him, into the Player's hands, and the Player placed the coin in his pouch. I then pressed into the hands of the Player the tarn disk of gold, of double weight, and the man held it clenched in his hands, and smiled and rose to his feet. The Vintner was picking up the pieces and putting them back in the leather game bag, which he then slung about the man's shoulder. He then handed him the board, which the Player hung over his other shoulder. 'Thank you for playing,' said the Vintner. The Player put out his hand and touched the Vintner's face, remembering it. 'Thank you for playing,' said the Player.
'I wish you well,' said the Vintner.
'I wish you well, said the Player.
The Vintner then turned and left. As he did so I heard some of the bystanders, the Saddle Maker and the fellow who was the Tarn Keeper, he who wore the patch of the Greens, discussing the game. 'It was really quite simple,' the Saddle Maker was explaining, 'even obvious.'
I smiled and I noted that the Player, too, smiled.
'You are a Merchant?' asked the Player.
'No,' I said.
'How is it then,' asked he, 'that you have such riches?'
It means nothing,' I said. 'Can I help you to your home?'
'You are surely of High Caste,' said the Player, 'to have such gold.'
'May I take you to your home?' I asked.
The Tarn Keeper, breaking away from the Saddle Maker, came over to us. He was a short man, with close-cropped brown hair, a squarish face. I noted the patch of the Greens on his shoulder. He smiled at me. 'You did well,' said he, 'Killer,' and with a grin turned and left.
I turned again to the Player, but he was now standing there in the street, seeming somehow alone, though I stood at his side.
'You are of the Assassins?' he asked.
'Yes,' I said, 'it is my caste.'
He pressed the piece of gold into my hand and turned away, stumbling from me, reaching out with his right hand to guide himself along the wall.
'Wait!' I cried. 'You have won this! Take it!' I ran to him.
'No!' he cried, striking out wildly with a hand, trying to force me away. I stepped back. He stood there, panting, not seeing me, his body bent over, angry. 'It is black gold,' he said. 'It is black gold.' He then turned away, and began to grope his way from the place of the game.
I stood there in the street and watched him go, in my hand holding the piece of gold which I had meant to be his.
4 — CERNUS
'Place your first sword before me,' I said, 'that I may kill him.'
Cernus of Ar, of the House of Cernus, studied me, his large face impassive, his eyes revealing nothing, like gray stones. His large hands rested over the arms of the curved curule chair in which he sat, which was mounted on a platform of stone, about a foot high and twelve feet square. In the base of the platform there were mounted six slave rings.
Cernus of Ar wore a course black robe, woven probably from the wool of the bounding, two-legged Hurt, a domesticated marsupial raised in large numbers in the environs of several of Gor's northern cities. The Hurt, raised on large, fenced ranches, herded by domesticated sleen and sheared by chained slaves, replaces its wool four times a year. The House of Cernus, I had heard, had interests in several of the Hurt Ranches near the city. The black of the garment of Cernus was broken only by three stripes of silk sewn length-wise on his left sleeve, two stripes of blue enclosing one of yellow.
When I had spoken, several of the men-at-arms of Cernus had shifted uneasily. Some had grasped their weapons.
'I am the first sword in the House of Cernus,' said Cernus.
The room in which I stood was the Hall of the House of Cernus. It was a large room, some seventy feet square and with a ceiling of some fifty feet in height. Set in the wall to my left, as in the base of the stone platform, were slave rings, a dozen or so. The room was innocent of the energy bulbs of the Caste of Builders. In the walls were torch racks, but there were now no torches. The room was lit, and grayly, by sunlight now filtering in through several narrow, barred windows set very high in the thick stone of the walls. It reminded me, in its way, of a room in a prison and such, in its way, it was, for it was a room in the House of Cernus, greatest of the slave houses of Ar.
Cernus wore about his neck, on a golden chain, a medallion which bore the crest of the House of Cernus, a tarn with slave chains grasped in its talons. Behind Cernus, on the wall, there hung a large tapestry, richly done in red and gold, which bore the same sign.
