by John Norman
With one hand the pit master bent down and pulled against a crossbar of the gate.
"Try it," said the lieutenant to his fellow.
Reluctantly the man put down his bow and, with two hands, tried to lift the gate.
"It is locked," he said.
I heard urts in the pool below. Some, it seemed, had just entered it, from the tunnel leading to the nest. The noises about the walkway may have aroused their curiosity. Too, once they had come to the tunnel opening, which was beneath the surface of the pool, reached from the nest, on a higher level, on the other side, they may have seen the light from the lamps and torches on the water. Such things were probably associated in their minds with the possibility of food. There were several urts in the pool area, I knew, and, save for their fellow, and what they had had of the man by the gate, they had not eaten for two days. They would doubtless, most of them, be hungry. The guard had been dismissed. When one urt leaves the nest, others tend to follow.
"Hold," said the man behind us.
We stopped.
He looked about himself.
The first man, with the two slaves, who had gone to the left, was now well ahead of us, and had reached the first of the three opposite gates which was accessible from our side of the pool.
He stood to one side, against the wall, back from the gate. He did not care to try it. Given its weight, it was unlikely that the slaves could have raised it, even if it had been unlatched.
"Stand before the gate," he said to the slaves.
The slaves did as they were told.
"What do you see?" asked the man.
"Nothing, Master," said Tira, peering into the corridor beyond.
The man carefully confirmed this, looking about the edge of the wall.
He then, the light behind him, put aside his bow and, crouching down, struggled to lift the gate.
He stood up, wiping his hands on his tunic, recovering his bow.
"It is locked?" called the lieutenant to him.
"Yes," said the man.
"Then it is the center gate which is unlocked!" said the lieutenant. "Hurry!" he urged the fellow before him.
"Move, move!" said that fellow to the slaves before him.
The two parties, the first group from the left, the black-tunicked man with two slaves, and the two groups from the right, the one man and the lieutenant, with the slaves at their disposal, now converged at the opposite gate, the center gate of the three gates across from that through which we had entered, one party to its left, the other, the larger party, to its right. Neither party wished to simply present itself before the opening.
Gito had remained behind. He had not even entered the pool area.
The other fellow, who had been first in our advance, guarded the portal through which we had entered.
I looked up, again, at the cage, hanging there in the shadows, near the ceiling. We had, earlier, heard the free woman screaming. We had heard nothing from her, however, since our entry into the pool area. I was sure she was still in the cage. I thought I could see her small form within it. To be sure, this was difficult to determine in the shadows. I thought that perhaps she was frightened. I thought that perhaps she might by now have developed some sensitivity to the possible indiscretion of unsolicited speech. In the cage women, as in chains and kennels, tend to become sensitive to many things, in particular, that they are females.
"Titus!" called the lieutenant.
"Move," said the man behind us. We hurried then about the pool, he following.
"Lift the gate," said the lieutenant to the pit master.
"It is locked," the pit master said.
"That is absurd," said the lieutenant.
"It is locked," said the pit master, again.
"Illuminate the passage," said the lieutenant, thrusting Fina and her cord-mate before the gate.
The pit master, already before the gate, did not object.
"Look," said the lieutenant, angrily, to the man nearest him.
The fellow looked, carefully.
"The passage seems to be empty," he said, "as far as the light carries."
"Lift the gate," said the lieutenant.
The man put down his bow and, with great caution, crouching down, strove to raise the gate.
"It is locked," he averred, confirming the word of the pit master, who stood by, his torch lifted.
"I do not understand," said the fellow to the left of the gate, Titus, he whom Fecha and I had preceded.
"He could not have passed us," said the fellow at the gate, who recovered his bow, and stood.
The other fellow, he with the lieutenant, looked across the pool, to the portal across the way. The fellow who had led our approach was still there, his bow cradled in his arms. "Herminius is on guard," he said.
"He could not have passed him," said he who had been at the gate.
The lieutenant looked at the pit master.
"It would seem to me that the inference is clear," said the pit master.
There was a sudden, half-strangled cry from across the pool as Herminius, clutching at his throat, legs kicking, seemed, somehow, to fly upward, into the darkness. He was trying to get his fingers, it seemed, at something on his throat.
"He is here!" screamed the lieutenant, gesturing wildly toward the portal across the way. "Hurry! Run!"
The men, two to the left, and two to the right, the man with the lieutenant and the lieutenant, fled about the walkway.
"He is above, somewhere in the shadows!" cried the lieutenant. "Get those torches up!"
I could see the dark, jerking shadow of Herminius over the portal. The two slaves who had been with him had fled to the right, as one would enter the pool area. One had dropped her lamp. We could see the men hurrying about the pool area, toward the portal. "Torches, light!" cried the lieutenant, near the portal.
"Go," said the pit master, "go," pushing Fina down the walkway. Fecha started, too, to follow, and I, corded to her by the neck, hurried with her. A splash of hot oil from the lamp fell on my leg. I cried out. The lamps and torches were wild in the darkness. The pit master and the officer of Treve followed, going about, however, to the left, as one would face the portal from the inside.
I was sure the prisoner had not gone through the portal. He was still in the chamber. Too, Gito was somewhere down the passage and presumably would have cried out had the prisoner passed him.
"Sluts!" cried the lieutenant. "Lift the torches! Lift the lamps! Lift them up!"
Fina screamed and stepped back, turning about. I, too, shrank back, sickened.
Near the portal, at its threshold, there lay two severed hands.
Herminius, it seemed, had not been permitted to interfere with the effectiveness of the noose which had drawn him up, into the shadows.
His body was quiet now, some thirty feet above us. It moved only as the rope, and its weight, would have it.
"He is somewhere up there, in the shadows," said the lieutenant. He took care, I noted, not to stand where he was illuminated.
The bows were lifted. It was almost as though they were alive, seeking prey.
Suddenly in back of us, and above us, over the pool, we heard a bolt, that of the cage latch, jerked loose.
The cord which went to the latch on the bottom of the cage over the pool went, with the other apparatus, chains and ropes, connected with the control of the cage, from the cage to the wall, over pulleys, and then down to the level of the walkway, where it, like the other devices, was secured. The trigger cord, which would release the latch at the bottom of the cage, was intended to be drawn, if drawn, at all, from the level of the walkway, but the cord, itself, naturally, stretched across the darkness, as I have indicated, and came to the wall.
It had apparently been drawn, then, from above, by the wall, in the darkness.
The gate bolt on the cage drawn, the bottom of the cage dropped downward on its hinges, opening the cage. There had been a rattle of metal and a creaking of chain, the cage swinging, emp
tied of its occupant, and the sound of a body suddenly caught short in its fall. We spun about and saw the Lady Ilene, her small ankles tied together, her hands tied behind her back, a rope under her arms, swinging over the dark waters of the urt pool. She twisted wildly. She bent her legs at the knees, trying to pull her feet up. We saw her eyes, now that she was lower, over what seemed to be her veil. They were hysterically wild. She spun about on the rope, squirming helplessly. We could now hear tiny, helpless, terrified sounds from her. Her veil, it seemed, had been used to gag her. One did not know if she would have remained prudentially silent, daring not to mix in the business of men, daring not to call attention to herself, a female, or not, but the option had not been granted to her. Urts began to knife instantly toward the vicinity of the pool over which the Lady Ilene was suspended.
"Look to the wall! Look to the wall!" screamed the lieutenant. "It is only a diversion!"
"Ai!" cried a man.
The body of Herminius seemed to rise on the rope, and stand for a moment erect, in the air, and then it seemed to fly outward from the wall. It struck into the water, over the railing, opposite the portal. It would be bloody.
"There, there he is!" cried the lieutenant. "There! Fire!"
I, too, saw for a moment, in the shadows, a huge shape. It had hurled Herminius from the wall as easily as the pit master might have thrown a joint of meat into the pool.
Titus, the black-tunicked fellow whom Fecha and I had shielded, was, I think, a man of suspicious and subtle instincts, of wary caution. He had dallied in moving with us about the walkway. He had let others move first. He had remained back, like a coiled spring, ready to fire. I thought him perhaps the most dangerous of the black-tunicked men. He must have seen the black shadow, too. He had turned back, after the cage had opened, before any of us, before even the lieutenant had called out. His bow was the first realigned with the wall. That must have marked him out as the next to die. He pitched back, over the railing, the fins of a quarrel half hidden in his tunic.
"He has fired!" cried the lieutenant, elatedly. "Find him! Find him! Fire! Fire!"
But suddenly, from a place high on the wall, now feet from where the body of Herminius had been thrown, on one of the ropes which were intended to control the movements of the cage, a dark figure swung over the urt pool. There was a quiver and bow slung at its back, a sword dangling behind it.
"Tensius to the left, Abnik to the right!" screamed the lieutenant. "You have him now. He has no time to reload."
The figure had alighted on the opposite side of the walkway, before the middle gate of the three gates on that side of the pool.
I thought the prisoner might have time to reload, but he, surely would not have time to fire twice.
"Run! Run!" screamed the lieutenant.
One man, Tensius, sped to the left. It was he who had been the first of the two men who had refrained from attacking the sleen, and had later been bloodied, separating the urts. The other man, Abnik, limping, hurried to the right. He it was whose foot had been injured yesterday in the cell, in the stirrup of the crossbow. He had been the man with the lieutenant, in the investigation of the gates.
The prisoner would not have time to fire twice.
"You have him!" cried the lieutenant.
Only a few feet below me urts were tearing at the bodies of Herminius and Titus. The water of the pool was scarlet. The Lady Ilene, out of the cage, tied to it by a rope fastened under her arms, bound hand and foot, gagged, dangled over the urt pool. But she seemed of no interest now to the urts. None circled beneath her. None tried to leap up to seize a foot or leg. Readier meat lay within their province now. I did not know, but I thought that the urts would not be able to reach her. It was a risk, of course, which the peasant had been willing to take. I wondered what thoughts went through her head. She had figured, but a bit ago, as a diversion. Now she had another role to play, I suspected, one which had doubtless been projected for her earlier, one independent of the entry of the determined, tenacious black-tunicked men onto the walkway, the role of a dangling lure, one which might serve, for some purpose, as a distraction to urts. Certainly she had figured at least once in the plans of a man. Perhaps she understood herself better now as a female, and what might be done with her. Surely to the collar would now be but a short step for her. To be sure, she now seemed, as things had turned out, of little current interest to the urts. They, feeding eagerly, had been drawn away from her, to the blood and bodies below the railing. The peasant, presumably, would not have been able to count on that development. It was, presumably, a fortunate one for the Lady Ilene, particularly if the peasant had underestimated the capacity of the urts to leap from the water.
Tensius, from the left, Abnik, from the right, hurried toward the peasant.
But he did not load the bow, for a last shot. Rather, to my horror, he took a quarrel between his teeth and, bow in hand, leapt over the railing, into the urt pool itself.
"He is insane!" cried the officer of Treve.
Almost at the same moment Tensius had come to the place on the walkway from which the peasant had dived into the pool. He looked into the water, in consternation. Abnik, a moment later, came to the same place.
"Fire! Fire!" cried the lieutenant.
Uncertain, Tensius and Abnik, judging as they could the likely path beneath the water of the peasant, loosed their quarrels. They hissed down into the water. "Reload!" cried the lieutenant. He himself bent down and picked up the bow which had been that of Herminius. Its quarrel had become dislodged but, in a moment, it was again fitted in the guide. I did not doubt but what, at one time or another, the lieutenant had been quite practiced with such a weapon. It, like the dagger, would doubtless be familiar to the wearers of the dark habiliments.
"Illuminate the pool!" cried the lieutenant.
We all, then, save the pit master, with his torch, brought our lamps or torches to the railing.
The light reflected up from the surface of the pool. Below me the urts were still feeding.
The lieutenant scanned the water tensely.
No body surfaced, penetrated with quarrels.
There seemed no sign of the peasant.
Then Tensius and Abnik had reset their bows.
"Where is he!" cried the lieutenant, his bow in hand.
But he received no answer.
We waited, about the railing. The urts continued to feed. The remains of the bodies rolled about in the water, under the stress of the feeding. Sometimes they were tugged under, and then, again, in a moment, surfaced. They were pulled back and forth.
The light of the torches and the lamps shone, reflected, from the water.
"He must have drowned," called Tensius, from across the pool.
Certainly one would have expected the peasant to surface by now, if he were still alive. It was, of course, dark in the pool, and the light was uncertain.
"Urts have taken him, under the water," called Abnik.
"Is there an exit from the pool!" demanded the lieutenant of the pit master, standing behind him, his torch lifted. "Of course," said the pit master, "that through which the urts enter it, through their nest."
"Where is the exit?" demanded the lieutenant.
"There, under the water, at the side," said the pit master, indicating an area of the pool to our right, as we faced the pool, we near the portal through which we had entered the pool area, the point indicated rather opposite where the cage dangled.
"Close the panels which permit access to the walkway!" said the lieutenant.
This took but a moment to do, as the pertinent levers were just outside the portal.
The peasant now could not return through the nest, even if he survived there, to the walkway.
I did think it possible, as doubtless so, too, did the lieutenant, that the peasant might now, at this time, the urts otherwise occupied, successfully reach the nest, which would be above water, on the other side of the wall. Indeed that might explain why he had not surfaced. To be sure
, he might have surfaced, unnoticed. As I have indicated, the light was uncertain.
"Tensius, Abnik, into the water!" cried the lieutenant, gesticulating to the pool.
They looked across the pool as though their officer might be mad.
"I am bloodied," said Tensius. He had lost blood from the bites of urts, when he had separated them, near the closed gate, earlier.
"It is safe now," said the lieutenant.
The urts did seem to be feeding now. To be sure, I doubted that all of them, and there must have been seventeen or eighteen of them, had had their fill.
"The nest opening is there!" pointed the lieutenant. "Enter it! Find him! Kill him!"
"Would you send them to their deaths?" asked the officer of Treve.
"We have taken fee," said the lieutenant.
I supposed that the nest might be empty now. But it would not be likely to long remain empty.
I shivered.
In dealing with urts there are certain things to be kept in mind. One does not intrude into their nest. One tries to avoid placing oneself between them. And one never denies them an avenue of escape.
"Into the water!" screamed the lieutenant.
The men looked at him.
"It is safe now," said the lieutenant. "The urts feed. Go! Go!"
"He is drowned!" cried Tensius.
"Urts took him!" said Abnik.
"Bring me the body!" said the lieutenant.
The lieutenant, this officer of the men in the black habiliments, seemed as tenacious as might be a sleen itself, this world's finest and most relentless tracker, a sleen on its scent, single-minded, implacable, driven. He wanted confirmation of the kill. Too, I supposed, in a short while, the urts about, it might be difficult to obtain remains sufficient to constitute convincing evidence to a fee giver that the task which had been agreed upon had been successfully accomplished.
Tensius first, who had refrained from attacking the sleen in the passage, but who had later separated the urts, removed his helmet and set aside his bow. The black dagger was still on his forehead, from yesterday morning. He then put his knife between his teeth and, with great care, lowered himself over the railing, and dropped down into the pool. He did this as gently as was possible. Abnik followed him, similarly. The lieutenant remained on guard, with the bow, surveying the water.