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

soiled tunic of white and gold, stained with sweat and spilled paga.
"Collar," said the Assassin.
The man took a key from a line of hooks on the wall behind him.
"Seven," he said, throwing the Assassin the key.
The Assassin caught the key and taking the girl by the arm led her to a dark
wall, in a low-ceilinged corner of the sloping room. She moved woodenly, as
though numb. Her eyes seemed frightened.
There were one or two other girls there, kneeling, who drew back, with a sound
of chain.
He thrust the dark-haired girl to her knees by the seventh collar and snapped
it
about her neck, turning the key, locking it. It gave her about a two-foot
length
of chain, fastened to a slave ring bolted into the stone. Then he looked down
on
her. Her eyes were lifted to his, frightened. The yellow of her livery seemed
dark in the shadows. From where she knelt she could see the low-hanging
tharlarion oil lamps of the main portion of the Paga tavern, the men, the
girls
in silk who, in a moment, belled, would move among them, replenishing the
paga.
In the center of the tables, under a hanging lamp, there was a square area,
recessed, filled with sand, in which men might fight or girls dance. Beyond
the
area of the sand and the many tables there was a high wall, some twenty feet
or
so high, in which there were four levels, each containing seven small
curtained
alcoves, the entrances to which were circular, with a diameter of about
twenty-four inches. Seven narrow ladders, each about eight inches in width,
fixed into the wall, gave access to these alcoves.
She saw Kuurus go to the tables and sit cross-legged behind one, a table
against
the wall on her left, that there might be no tables behind him, but only the
wall. The men who had been at that table, or near it, silently rose and left
the
area.
Kuurus had placed his spear against the wall behind him, and he had taken from
his left shoulder his shield, his helmet and the sheathed short sword, which
blade he had placed at his right hand on the low table.
At a gesture from the proprietor, the grimy man in the tunic of white and
gold,
one of the serving slaves, with a flash of ankle bells, hurried to the
Assassin
and set before him a bowl, which she trembling filled from the flask held over
her right forearm. Then, with a furtive glance at the girl chained at the side
of the room, the serving slave hurried away.
Kuurus took the paga bowl in both hands and put his head down, looking into
it.
Then, somberly, he lifted it to his lips and drank.