of conventional weapons, primarily swords and lasguns, and their functional advantages and disadvantages for the assassin As with the poisons, subtlety was recommended, for as the Hand book comments, "Any mindless mercenary can commit indiscriminate homicide which will probably rebound upon himself" (In passing, it might be noted mat the manual was written m a style mat was often tren chant raid sometimes characterized by a nch sense of irony) Assassins were instructed to acquire swordmaster training as a matter of course, and, tf at all possible, to develop considerable competence in marksmanship, although tile Handbook implies that the master assassin would whenever possible, leave slaughter with lasguns to ordinary journeymen Section mice of the Handbook provided a detailed analysis of the odds for success in given situations where the assassin might be expected to perform his work The best strategies, for instance, for murdering guests at a formal dinner were evaluated, as well as the methods of avoiding swift reprisal Much space was given to the problems of infiltrating a ducal palace or launching attacks at pubhc events and ceremonies, especially sporting events The fourth part of the Handbook's com meatary presented the rules of the Great Convention and the code of kanly and provid ed numerous suggestions of how these might be circumvented or turned to the advantage of the assassin A favorite method involved bflbmg the judges or Imperial representa lives at various transactions between the great houses The use of poisoned swords at single combat was brought up again here, although much had already been said of this tactic in earlier sections Various means of infiltrating the defenses of ducal castles despite the use of shields and other protections, were also considered at length here This section also presented the conven tions and ritual formulas involved in a War of Ai"&dt>i>iite, from the formal declaration of intent with the Imperial Registrar and the Landsraad Secretariat to the final moment when victory was declared for one side or the other The Handbook however, seemed to imply that even such formal wars were best carried out on a small scale and waged with subtlety by experts rather than becoming engagements involving large groups of soldiers A frequent metaphor in the Handbook is that of the Cheops master and the authors seemed to regard the art of assassination as a profession rather like that of the grand master of Cheops A final note at the end of the Handbook concerned the assassin s need for self-protection He was enjoined to learn much of his employer s pnvate crimes, and to store the information in places beyond the employer s reach, with provisions that would allow it to become public in the event of his own death The assassin was also warned to make himself as valuable as possible to his master yet never to believe himself irreplac-able Most important, the Handbook advised the assassin to respect his profession and to avoid the temptations of political ambition or personal involvement in his work Although many famous assassins found the first easy enough, some authorities doubt mat most of them were able to avoid the second pitfall One fascmdtmg aspect of the study of the Handbook is the discovery of two surviving copies with annotations One that once belonged to the Harkonnen family contains many terse and interesting comments on practical matters of technique, together with a surprising passage near the end where the author, m a vengeful tone, makes several animadversions on a Bene Gessent witch ' The last entry is indeed astonishing, because many of the earlier annotations had remarked on the folly of emotional involvement in the theory and practice of assassination The presence of the initials T H in several places makes the identification of the author as Thufir Hawat, as assassin in the employ ASSASSIN'S HANDBOOK 41 ATREIDES, LADY ALIA of the Atreides House, and later a servant of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, extremely plausible, as Harq al-Ada contends in a note in House Atreides.