"John Norman - Counter Earth 05 - Assassin of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

framework of crossed spears, lashed together, on which, wrapped in the scarlet
leather of a tarnsman, lay the body.
Kuurus watched, unmoved, as the four Warriors carried their scarlet burden to
the height of the huge, sweet-smelling, oil-impregnated pyre.
Averting their eyes the Warriors threw back the scarlet leather that the body
might lie free on the spears, open to the wind and sun.
He was a large man, Kuurus noted, in the leather of a Warrior. The hair, he
remarked, was unusual.
The procession and those who had been earlier at the pyre now stood back from
it, some fifty yards or so, for the oil-impregnated wood will take the torch
quickly and fiercely. There were three who stood near the pyre; one wore the
brown robes of the Administrator of a City, the humblest robes in the city, and
was hooded; another wore the blue of the Caste of Scribes, a small man, almost
tiny, bent now with pain and grief; the last was a very large man, broad of back
and shoulder, bearded and with long blond hair, a Warrior; yet even the Warrior
seemed in that moment shaken.
Kuurus saw the torch lit and then, with a cry of pain, thrown by the Warrior
onto the small mountain of oiled wood. The wood leaped suddenly alive with a
blaze that was almost a burst of fire and the three men staggered backward,
their forearms thrown across their eyes.
Kuurus bent down and picked up a stalk of grass and chewed on it, watching. The
reflection of the fire, even in the sunlight, could be seen on his face. His
forehead began to sweat. He blinked his eyes against the heat.
The men and women of Ko-ro-ba stood circled about the pyre, neither moving nor
speaking, for better than two Ahn. After about half an Ahn the pyre, still
fearful with heat and light, had collapsed with a roar, forming a great,
fiercely burning mound of oil-soaked wood. At last, when the wood burned only
here and there, and what had been the pyre was mostly ashes and glowing wood,
the men of a dozen castes, each carrying a jar of chilled wine, moved about,
pouring the wine over the fire, quenching it. Other men sought in the ashes for
what might be found of the Warrior. Some bones and some whitish ash they
gathered in white linen and placed in an urn of red and yellow glass. Kuurus
knew that such an urn would be decorated, probably, since the man had been a
Warrior, with scenes of the hunt and war. The urn was given to him who wore the
robes of the Administrator of the City, who took it and slowly, on foot,
withdrew toward Ko-ro-ba, followed by the large blond Warrior and the small
Scribe. The ashes, Kuurus judged, since the body had been wrapped in the scarlet
leather of a tarnsman, would be scattered from tarnback, perhaps over distant
Thassa, the sea.
Kuurus stood up and stretched. He picked up his short sword in its scabbard, his
helmet and his shield. These he slung over his left shoulder. Then he picked up
his spear, and stood there, against the sky, on the crest of the hill, in the
black tunic.
Those who had come to the pyre had now withdrawn slowly toward the city. Only
one man remained near the smoking wood. He wore a black robe with a stripe of
white down the front and back. Kuurus knew that it would be this man, who wore
the black, but not the full black, of the Assassin, who would deal with him.
Kuurus smiled bitterly to himself. He laughed at the stripe of white. Their
tunic, said Kuurus to himself, is as black as mine.
When the man near the smoking wood turned to face him, Kuurus descended the