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

Putting the bowl down he wiped his mouth on his forearm and looked at the
Musicians. "Play," he said.
The three Musicians bent to their instruments, and, in a moment, there were
again sounds of a paga tavern, the sounds of talk, of barbaric music, of
pouring
paga, the clink of bowls, the rustle of bells on the ankles of slave girls.
Scarcely a quarter of an Ahn had passed and the men who drank in that room had
forgotten, as is the way of men, that a dark one sat with them in that room,
one
who wore the black tunic of the Caste of Assassins, who silently drank with
them. It was enough for them that he who sat with them did not this time wear
for them the mark of the black dagger on his forehead, that it was not they
whom
he sought.
Kuurus drank, watching them, his face showing no emotion.
Suddenly a small figure burst through the door of the tavern, stumbling and
rolling down the stairs, crying out. It bounded to its feet, like a small,
hunched animal, with a large head and wild brown hair. One eye was larger than
the other. It could stand, even if it straightened, no higher than a man's
waist. "Do not hurt Hup!" it cried. "Do not hurt Hup!"
"It is Hup the Fool," said someone.
The little thing, misshapen with its large head, scrambled limping and leaping
like a broken-legged urt to the counter behind which stood the man in the
grimy
tunic, who was wiping out a paga bowl. "Hide Hup!" cried the thing. "Hide Hup!
Please hide Hup!"
"Be off with you, Hup the Fool!" cried the man slapping at him with the back
of
his hand.
"No!" screamed Hup. "They want to kill Hup!"
"There is no place for beggars in Glorious Ar," growled one of the men at the
tables.
Hup's rag might once have been of the Caste of Potters, but it was difficult
to
tell. His hands looked as though they might have been broken. Clearly one leg
was shorter than the other. Hup wrung his tiny, misshapen hands, looking
about.
He tried foolishly to hide behind a group of men but they threw him to the
center of the pit of sand in the tavern. He tried, like a frantic animal, to
crawl under one of the low tables but he only spilled the paga and the men
pulled him out from under the table and belabored his back with blows of their
fists. He kept whimpering and screaming, and running one place or the other.
Then, in spite of the angry shout of the proprietor, he scrambled over the
counter, taking refuge behind it.
The men in the tavern, with the exception of Kuurus, laughed.
Then, a moment later, four men, armed, brawny men, with a streamer of blue and
yellow silk sewn diagonally into their garments, burst through the door and
entered the room.
"Where is Hup the Fool?" cried their leader, a large fellow with missing teeth
and a scar over his right eye.