Witness of Gor

37

I did not want to be touched by the animals. I feared them terribly. One must have been fifteen feet in length, and the other close to twenty. I could not have begun to put my arms about one. The leg just above the paw in the larger animal must have been some six inches in thickness. They were leashed, the leashes going to rings on huge leather collars, four to five inches in width, an inch or two in thickness. I dreaded even that they might rub against me, those huge bodies, with their glossy, oily fur. It was easy to see how men might not be able to control such beasts. Their tongues lolled out now. They seemed passive enough, at the moment. Their breath was heavy, a sort of panting, as they padded along with us, but it was regular, and showed no signs of particular excitement. Perhaps they were merely being exercised. Their heads, broad at the back, tended to taper toward the snout, rather like those of vipers. The length of their body, too, with its six legs, tended to suggest a furred serpent, or reptile. Such things are mammalian or mammalianlike, however, in the sense of giving live birth and suckling the young.

Two of the black-tunicked men clung to each leash. Again the black-tunicked men did not wish pit guards present. Once again they had been dismissed. Even with two men on a leash I did not think they would be able to hold the animals if they should be determined to go their won way. But, to be sure, these were hunting sleen, and not intended to hunt on the leash, but rather only when unleashed.

I cried out a little as one of the beasts brushed past me. I had felt its ribs, like iron bands beneath the smooth, rippling muscles, sheathed in the oily pelt. Even in that brief, smooth touch I had sensed a considerable force, like a wave in the sea. But such beasts are not only powerful. They are extremely agile as well, and can easily top a thirty-foot wall. Over a short distance they can outrun fleet game. Their front claws, used in burrowing, can tear through heavy doors. Sometimes it takes ten spears to kill one.

“We will loose them here,” said the leader of the strangers.

We stopped.

We were at the intersection of several passages, at a point we had reached last night, and a point we were sure the prisoner had occupied at least once, for it was here that the extinguished lamps had ended.

The beasts looked about, puzzled.

This was surely not their pen.

In our group were the leader of the strangers, his lieutenant, Gito, his seven men, the pit master, the officer of Treve, and ten slaves, in two groups of five each. The members of each group were tied together by the neck, presumably not merely to control us, as a coffle chain might, but to keep us together, making our disposition as a shield, or wall, more effective. The two groups might precede the men, forming a double wall in the passage, or, if the men wished, one group might precede and the other follow, in this fashion providing protection for both the front and rear. I was in the second group as I had been seventh in the slave line, my position there determined by my height. Both groups, however, at this point, were muchly together. As before, we were unclothed. Our hands, too, as before, were tied behind our backs.

“Bring the sack forward,” said the leader of the strangers.

It was done.

This was the sack which contained the blanket which had been taken from the prisoner’s cell yesterday morning. It was sealed, and the seal, with its dangling string, had not been broken.

“Loose the sleen,” said the leader of the strangers.

The heavy collars were removed from the throats of the two sleen. There is a difference in custom here with various sorts of sleen, which might be remarked. War sleen, watch sleen, fighting sleen, and such, when freed, would normally retain the collars, which are often plated and spiked, for the protection of the throat. With hunting sleen, on the other hand, the collars are usually removed. There are two views on this matter. One view is that the collar might jeopardize the hunt, for example, that it might be caught in a branch, or be somehow utilized to restrain the animal before it has located its quarry. The other is that the removal of the collar returns the beast to its state of natural savagery, that it removes from it any inhibitions which might have resulted from its familiarity with human beings. Certainly it is difficult to recollar a hunting sleen until it has made its kill, until it has been pacified, sated with the predestinated blood and meat. The two views, of course, are not mutually exclusive.

When the collars were removed the behavior of the two animals were significantly altered. They seemed to become a great deal more restless.

Usually, of course, such things hunt in the open.

One urinated in the passageway. Its urine has an unusually strong odor. In the wild, urine and feces are used to mark territories.

The head of the larger animal moved from side to side. The smaller animal began to make a tiny, excited, anticipatory noises. I had heard such noises before meat had been thrown to them. Saliva fell from the jaws of the larger animal. It moved between the men to put its head against the thigh of the pit master. It was only he, one supposes, of those in the corridor, it recognized.

I began to cry.

“What is wrong with her?” asked the lieutenant.

“Nothing,” said the pit master.

I could not help myself.

“She attended to the prisoner, for months,” said the pit master.

“Any might weep,” said the officer of Treve, “given the enormity of what you intend.”

I recalled the prisoner, as he had been, before he had rising in his chains, in madness, intent upon the planting. He had been little more than a remote, inert form, as simple as rock, as distant as a far-off mountain, sitting cross-legged, chained, on the stone floor of the cell in the lower corridors. He had seldom even seemed to be aware of my presence in the cell. Now he was somewhere out there in the passages. He would not know for a time that the swift beasts pursued him, padding swiftly though the dark halls. Then I did not think he would be aware of it for long. It was not as though he might see them coming, across a plain, from hundreds of yards away. It was unlikely he could run before them, once he realized them behind him, for more than a few minutes. I shuddered, and wept. Might it not have been better, I thought, if he had died in his chains yesterday morning, in the cell, by the knife? How terrible to die beneath the fangs of beasts!

“Be silent!” said the pit master.

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“Break the seal, open the sack,” said the leader of the strangers.

The seal was broken away by he who had been the custodian of the bag, and the bag was opened.

The leader of the strangers drew out the dark, thick blanket. He thrust it to the pit master.

“Give the command,” said the leader of the strangers.

I beg you not to do this,” said the pit master.

“Give the command,” said the leader of the strangers.

“I do not advise you to pursue this course of action,” said the pit master.

“Give the command!” said the leader of the strangers.

“I will not give it,” said the pit master. “It is a simple “Scent-Hunt” command.”

The larger beast suddenly squealed, hearing these words. It looked eagerly about itself. Men drew back. I and others screamed, shrinking back against the wall of the passage. Swords were loosened in sheaths.

“You will be dealt with later,” said the leader of the strangers. “You,” he said to the officer of Treve.

“I do not set sleen on free men,” he said.

“Do not think your place in this city is so secure,” said the leader of the strangers.

“Give me the blanket,” said the leader of the strangers.

It was surrendered by the pit master.

“It is a simple “Scent-Hunt” command?”

“Yes,”

“Back away, to the sides of the passage,” said the leader of the strangers. “We do not know in which direction the trail will lie.”

My group was thrust to one side of the passage, and the other group to the other side. We were aligned in our groups, close to the wall, side by side, facing outward. I could feel the rock behind me with my bound hands. The others, too, the lieutenant, Gito, the pit master, the officer of Treve, the black-tunicked men, drew to the side, to one side or the other, leaving only the leader of the strangers, clutching the blanket, and the two animals in the center of the passage.

“Beware,” said the pit master. “Where sleen are concerned, there is always danger.”

“Do you think I do not know that the pits of Treve are renowned for the reliability of their hunters?” said the leader of the strangers.

“You cannot always depend upon sleen,” said the pit master.

“Hi, hi,” said the leader of the strangers, slapping his thigh, calling the animals to him.

“Be careful,” said the lieutenant.

“Here,” said the leader of the strangers, crouching down, thrusting the blanket to the snouts of the beasts. “Here, take scent, take scent.”

The two animals, eagerly, tails lashing, thrust their snouts into the wadded blanket.

The larger animal then, as had the smaller, earlier, in its excitement, loosed its urine. This is apparently a behavior selected for in the evolution of the sleen. I do not think that it is simply a device to clear the bladder prior to strenuous activity, for example, to avoid discomfort in the chase. I think, rather, it ahs to do, at least in part, with the common prey of the sleen in the wild, which is usually the tabuk, a single-horned antelopelike creature. A filled bladder, gored, releases wastes into the ventral cavity, with considerable danger of infection. If the bladder is cleared prior to the wound the chance of infection is considerably reduced. Over thousands of generations of sleen this behavior has, I suspect, been selected for, as it contributes to the survival of the animal, and its consequent capacity, obviously, thereafter, to replicate itself.

“Scent! Hunt!” said the leader of the strangers. “Scent! Hunt!”

the blanket was literally torn from the grasp of the leader of the strangers, who then stood up, watching the sleen. They began to scratch at it, and seized parts of it in their jaws, ripping it. At one point it fluttered, shaken, in the passage, like a flag.

“Scent! Hunt! Scent! Hunt!” urged the leader of the strangers.

The two beasts looked up from the blanket, it torn in shreds beneath their paws.

“They are beauties,” said the leader of the strangers, “beauties.”

“It is done,” said the officer of Treve angrily. “They have taken the scent.”

“Watch them!” said a man.

I had never seen sleen hunt in a situation such as this. I had seen them, in a little demonstration which had been staged for my benefit, one I was never likely to forget, seek out and rip apart particular pieces of meat, pieces of meat which had been given particular names. The smaller of the two sleen was one which had been imprinted with my own scent and name. I knew a given command could set it upon me. Both of these sleen had also been imprinted, I knew, with the scent, and some name, or signal, associated with the peasant, and could be set upon him. On the other hand, the pit master had not volunteered the appropriate signals to the leader of the strangers. This was not surprising, of course, given the pit master’s obvious reservations concerning the intentions of the black-tunicked men. One does not need such signals, of course, when one has at one’s disposal an article of such utility as the quarry’s robes, or tunic, or blanket.

“Scent! Hunt!” said the leader of the strangers.

“I do not understand,” said a man.

“Surely they have the scent now,” said another.

The sleen had not left the area. The larger one snarled, menacingly.

“Scent! Hunt!” cried the leader of the strangers.

The larger sleen turned in a circle, as though confused. Then it ran down the corridor for a few yards.

“It is hunting!” cried a man.

But then the animal stopped, and turned about.

“It is coming back,” said a man.

The large sleen thrust past the leader of the strangers and ran a few paces down the corridor behind us. In this it was accompanied by the smaller animal. Then they turned about, together, and returned. They went again to the shreds of the blanket. Then they lifted their snouts into the air, and then they put them to the floor of the corridor.

“What is wrong with them?” asked the lieutenant.

“They seem confused,” said the pit master.

“They are stupid animals. Said a man.

“Scent! Hunt!” said the leader of the strangers.

The two sleen now turned about, then they crouched down, their bellies no more than an inch or so from the floor. I heard a very low growl from one of them. Their tails moved back and forth. I saw their ears lie back, against their heads.

“What is wrong with them?” said another.

The eyes of the first sleen, the larger, the more aggressive, fixed on the leader of the strangers. He stepped back.

The larger sleen snarled. There was no mistaking the menace in that sound.

I could now detect a rumble in the throat of the smaller animal. It, too, seemed to regard the leader of the strangers.

“Something is wrong,” said a man.

The leader of the strangers too another step back and drew his blade. He held the hilt with two hands.

Then the larger sleen, scarcely lifting its belly from the floor, crawled quickly forward a foot or two, snarling, and stopped. His companion, to his right, did the same.

I knew little or nothing of sleen, but the intent, the agitation the excitement of the animals, was evident.

Again the two sleen, first the larger, then the smaller, approached, and stopped.

“Draw,” said the leader of the strangers.

But before blades could leave their sheaths the first animal scrambled forward, snarling, charging, its hind feet scratching and slipping, spattering urine back, just for an instant, on the floor of the passage. The second animal was at its shoulder, scarcely a fang’s breadth behind. The leader of the strangers struck wildly down at the first animal, slashing its jaw and the side of its face, turned to orient its jaws to its pray, cutting into it, with his blade, and the force of its charge struck him back and the beast, shoulders hunched, was on him, he on his back, screaming, the other beast now, too, at his body, seizing it in its jaws, tearing it toward itself in its frenzy. The lieutenant and some five of the black-tunicked men, shouting, kicking, crying out with horror, crowded about the intent animals, cutting down at them with blades, trying to stab into those active, twisting bodies. The larger beast lifted its head from the leader of the strangers, its jaws flooded with blood, part of the body in its grip, it bleeding itself from the stroke of the leader’s blade. The smaller animal continued to feed, being struck with stroke after stroke. Neither animal, in its excitement seemed to be aware of, or even to feel, the attack of the other men. Again and again the blades cut and stabbed at them. One man cried out in pain, wounded, by the thrust of another. Then, suddenly the larger animal, snarling, turned about with blurring speed, caught another man in its jaws, shaking him. A blade then found its heart, and in its death throes, not releasing its new prey, it rolled and shook, and half of it fell free to the side. The smaller animal continued to feed until its vertebrae, at the base of the skull, had been severed.

When it became clear that the animals wee dead the men stopped hacking and thrusting at their bodies. Then they drew back, almost as though in shock, their reddened blades lowered. They were breathing heavily, with their exertion. Blood was about, and the parts of two men. I drew back even more, trying not to let it, in its flow, touch me. I understood for the firs time now, clearly, that there was a certain pitch in this part of the passage. This could be determined from the path taken by the blood. Some of it now, tricking, running here and there, was better than twenty yards down the passage. One could see the reflection of the lamps in it. I did not look at the pieces of the leader of the strangers, or of his fellow, caught by the larger beast. The two sleen were masses of blood and hacked fur. Two paws, even, had been cut away, one supposed after the animals had died, the hacking, frenziedly irrationally, prolonged.

The lieutenant looked at the pit master.

“Sleen are unpredictable,” he said. “They are erratic beasts.”

The lieutenant did not lower his gaze.

“We must sometime find our way out of this place,” said one of the black-tunicked men.

“The pit guard will be reporting in soon,” said another.

The lieutenant then wiped his blade on the coat of the nearest sleen, and sheathed it.

“Where is Gito?” asked a man.

“He fled,” said another. He pointed down the passage. There were no bloody footprints, so his flight had preceded the flood of blood in the corridor.

My neck hurt. When the sleen had attacked there had been amongst us terror and confusion. Some of us had tried to flee to the left, others to the right, whichever was closer to us. As a result we had been tangled, hurt, wrenched, confused, held in place. And the squealing and hissing, the snarling, the crying out, the cutting with blades, had been so close to us that we might, had we not been bound, have reached out and touched the men, almost the bleeding, twisting bodies of the sleen. We had screamed, and begged to be freed, but none had attended to us, of course. More important business was at hand and we were only meaningless slaves. We were now again against the wall, put there by the men, backed against it, side by side, hands bound behind us, the cord on our neck holding us together, frightened.

“Be silent,” said the pit master.

We tried to obey. I bit my lower lip, attempting to control its movement. My shoulders shook. The side of my neck hurt, where the cord had burned it. The floor was sticky with blood.

Two of the black-tunicked men had not joined in the attack on the sleen. They had, in those sudden, unexpected, precipitate, grisly moments, stood back, perhaps fearing to act, perhaps unable to do so. The lieutenant slowly turned to regard them.

“There is no blood on your blades,” he said. The men stepped back a little, looking at one another.

“Surrender your blades,” said the lieutenant. The men looked at one another, uneasily. “I am now in command,” said the lieutenant.

“I suggest,” said the officer of Treve, “that you need every man you have.”

The two blades were surrendered to the lieutenant.

The lieutenant gestured to the two men who had surrendered their weapons.

“Hold them,” said the lieutenant.

The two men were seized, each by the two of their fellows.

“I do not advise this course of action,” said the officer of Treve.

“There will be blood on your blades,” said the lieutenant.

“No!” cried one of the two men, struggling.

“Let us redeem ourselves!” cried the other.

‘You would then be left with only four men,” said the officer of Treve.

The lieutenant’s eyes were cold. The blade was leveled for its thrust.

I closed my eyes that I might not see the blade, his own, pass between the ribs of the first of the two held me.

Then the lieutenant said, “Release them.”

Their fellows stepped away from them.

I expected the two men to turn about then, and run.

But they did not.

Rather they stood where they were. I then gathered something of the discipline of the black caste.

The blade was motionless, steadied on the left forearm of the lieutenant, leveled with the first man’s heart.

“Masters!” we heard. “Masters!” It was Gito’s voice. He was running toward us, coming from down the corridor. He was distraught, gasping. He ran though the blood, spattering it about. “He is ahead!” he cried. “I saw him! He is ahead!”

“In this passage?” asked a man.

“Yes, yes!” cried Gito, pointing backward.

“Why did he not kill you?” asked a man.

“He is my friend,” said Gito. “He is ahead! Hurry! You can kill him!”

The lieutenant did not lower his poised blade. He had not even looked back at Gito.

“Where does this passage lead?” asked the lieutenant.

“To the urt pool,” said the pit master, reluctantly.

“And there is an interposed gate?”

“Yes,” said the pit master.

“Then we have him!” cried a man.

The lieutenant did not take his eyes from the fellow before him.

The fellow, he at whose heart the steel was poised, trembled, but he did not break and run.

“If you would take him, I suggest dispatch,” said the officer of Treve.

The lieutenant then turned to one side and thrust the blade deeply into the body of one of the dead sleen, that closest to him, the larger of the two animals. He then returned the blade to the black-tunicked man. The lieutenant then took the other man’s blade, which he had held in his left hand, and did the same, returning it also to its owner.

“Your blades are bloodied,” said the lieutenant.

“Hurry! Hurry!” urged Gito.

Again the lieutenant regarded the pit master.

“Sleen are erratic beasts,” said the pit master.

“Form the sluts in front,” said the lieutenant. “Set your bows.”

We were thrust a little down the passageway, the first group, that “cord” of five in front, the second group, the second “cord” of five, in which I was one, behind, and in the interstices of the first group. In a moment the bows were set, six of them.

“May I have the first shot?” inquired one of the black-tunicked men.

“Granted,” said the lieutenant.

“When the command ‘Down!’ is heard,” said a man to us, “you will fling yourselves to your belly instantly. When the command ‘Up!’ is heard, you will stand, instantly, arranging yourselves as you are now.”

“Yes, Master,” we said.

There is a common command, familiar to all female slaves, “Belly,” which brings us instantly to our bellies before he who commands us. This particular command expression, however, was not used in this context. I speculate that this was because the context of the two commands, and certainly their connotations, was so different. It is one thing, for example, to aesthetically and beautifully signify submission by bellying, perhaps on the furs at the foot of the couch, we being permitted upon them, and quite another to fling oneself down so that quarrels may be suddenly fired from behind one. Too, normally in the “belly command” one orients oneself toward he who commands, not away from him.

Gito hung back.

The lieutenant took him by the scruff of the neck and threw him some feet down the passageway, before us.

“Proceed,” he said.

Gito hurried a few feet down the passageway. The blood was now viscous in places, half dried. In some places, where he had stepped, it was pulled up, like syrup, clinging to his sandals, exposing the floor of the passageway.

Gito turned about, and looked back.

He went a few feet further down the passageway.

He turned back, again.

“This way,” he said. Then he said, “Let me behind the wall!”

“You are in no danger,” said the lieutenant. “You are his friend.”

Gito moaned, and, looking over his shoulder frequently, reassuring himself of our continued presence, made his way down the passageway, staying close to the wall.

“We will pin him against the gate,” said the man who had requested the first opportunity for fire.

Suddenly, from down the passageway, we saw, blazing in the reflected light of a lamp, two eyes.

“Sleen!” cried a man, alarmed.

We screamed, and tried to draw back, but were held in place.

“No,” said the pit master. “It is an urt.”

It was crouched down, before us.

It was large, but not large for those I had seen in the pits. It probably weighed no more than twenty or thirty pounds. Most species of urts are small, weighing less than a pound. Some are tinier than mice.

Gito had fled back. He now hid behind us.

“What is it doing in the passage?” asked the lieutenant.

“Someone must have left the panels open,” said the pit master.

“Look,” said a man. “There is another behind it.”

“There seems much carelessness in the management of the pits,” said the lieutenant.

“You have had us dismiss the guards,” said the pit master.

“The prisoner must have opened the panels,” said a man.

“But the beasts are here, beyond the gate,” said a man.

“The gate, it seems, was not locked,” said the pit master.

“that would seem an unfortunate oversight,” said the lieutenant.

“Yes,” said the pit master, “it would seem so.”

“Doubtless it was lifted by the prisoner,” said a man.

“Doubtless,” said another.

“Will the urt charge?” asked the lieutenant.

“I do not know,” said the pit master. “I would not approach it too closely.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Quite.”

“Kill it,” said the lieutenant.

“Perhaps your colleague, Gito, can turn it,” suggested the pit master.

“No, no!” said Gito.

But the urt did turn then, of its own accord, and scampered back down the passageway. The other, which had been behind it, hesitated for a moment, and then followed it.

“Advance,” said the lieutenant.

I felt the butt of a crossbow prod me.

We continued down the passageway. We came, in a moment, to a turning.

“The lamps are out,” said a man.

“He must be ahead,” said a man.

“He must be trapped,” said another.

“Take lamps from the passage,” said the lieutenant.

Two of the men went back and fetched the nearest lamps.

“Will you truly walk down this passage, carrying light?” asked the officer of Treve.

“Free slaves, that they may do so,” said one of the black-tunicked men.

“They are the shield,” said a man.

“You,” said the lieutenant to the officer of Treve, “will do so.”

“I think not,” he said.

“Prepare then to die,” said the lieutenant, angrily.

“The pit guard will be reporting in soon,” said the pit master.

“You will dismiss them, as before,” said the lieutenant.

“They may be looking for us now. I doubt that they would be pleased to learn that you had slain a captain of Treve. Too, perhaps your men would like to leave the depths alive.”

The black-tunicked men exchanged glances.

“You will dismiss them,” said the lieutenant.

“That is difficult to do until they have reported,” said the pit master.

But at that moment we heard, from down the passage, in the darkness, a hideous, but unmistakable human cry, which was followed, almost instantly, by a violent squealing of urts.

“Urts!” cried a man.

“They have him!” cried another.

“Our work is done for us!” cried another elatedly.

The lieutenant, followed by his sex men, thrust about us, and between us, pushing us to the side, lifting the rope on our necks. Gito remained behind us. The officer of Treve and the pit master followed the black-tunicked men in their rush forward. “Hurry!”

said Fina, dragging her group forward. Ours, perhaps fearing to be separated in this place, we helpless, urts about, hurried behind. I could see the two lamps flickering down the passage. Also, in a moment, I could see a mound of twisting, squealing urts, clambering over and about something, biting at it. Some scampered about the edge of the group, as though seeking some avenue of approach, some entrance into that heap of squirming, frenzied animals, some ingress into that broiling tumult of glistening fur and slashing fangs, that they, too, might feast. The peasant, I assumed, from the horrifying cry I had heard, must be beneath that terrible living hill of beasts. Behind them I could see the bars of the gate. The gate was down. The darkness of the walk ringing the urt pool was behind. I also became aware, vaguely now, of a woman’s screaming. That must be the Lady Ilene, whom I had met in the chamber of the commercial praetor, kept now, I knew, pending the arrival of her ransom, in the tiny cage suspended over the urt pool, that cage which had been for some time the residence of the Lady Constanzia, that cage which could be opened at the tug of a cord.

The lieutenant, the six men, two with lamps, stood back from the pile of frenzied urts. The fur of some of them was bloodied, they apparently having been, crowding in and about, in the haste and excitement of the feeding, bitten by their fellows. “Pull them off,”said the lieutenant, to one of the men who had not attacked the sleen.

The woman was screaming, from within, over the urt pool.

The man put aside his bow and reached into the pile of animals, seizing one after another and throwing it to the side. I thought this took great courage. To be sure the animals seemed on the whole hardly aware of him. Some did twist about to tear at him, as might have fighting dogs. As soon as he would fing one to the side it would turn about and try to thrust its snout back into the pack.

The two men with lamps lifted them higher.

The smell of blood was strong in the passageway. The passageway, too, was loud with the squealing of the beasts. From within, over the urt pool, we could still hear the screaming of the woman.

“It is a dead urt!” said a man, suddenly.

“We heard a cry,” said another. “It was human.”

The fellow who had been pulling the urts aside now stood back. His hands and forearms were covered with blood, but much of it, I am sure, was from the fur and jaws of the urts. He had been bitten at least twice. His left sleeve was in shreds. The urts now dragged the body of the dead urt, now half eaten, its bones about, to the wall, where they continued their feeding.

“He must have been attacked on the other side of the gate,” said a man.

One of the black-tunicked fellows went to the bars of the gate peering though, into the darkness. “Bring a lamp,” he said.

“How did the urt die?” asked a man.

Urts seldom attack their own kind unless their fellow behaves in an erratic fashion, as it might if injured or ill.

“What difference does it make?” asked a man.

“What do you see?’ asked the lieutenant of the fellow by the bars. He now seemed to be gripping them with great tightness. Indeed, he seemed to have pulled himself closely to them, even pressing himself against them. Too, oddly, he seemed taller now, as though he might have stood on his toes.

“What do you see?” asked the lieutenant, again.

“There is a quarrel in the urt!” said a man, suddenly, the beasts, in their feeding, moving about.

“Extinguish the lamps!” cried the lieutenant.

I heard the heavy, vibratory snap of the cable, but did not see the quarrel. It must have been fired from only a foot or so behind the bars of the gate. I did see the lamp move strangely in the hand of the fellow who held it, he who had been summoned to the bars. The other lamp, in the hand of the other fellow, had been dashed from his hand by the lieutenant. “Fire though the gate!” cried the lieutenant, wildly. I heard three bows fire, one after the other. Then I heard a fourth. Urts still squealed and stirred to the side.

“Draw back, reload!” said the lieutenant.

Men must trust past us. Indeed, we fell, or my “cord” did. I was bruised by a weapon as someone went past us.

“Get the slaves across the passage,” said the lieutenant. “Block it!”

The girl next to me cried out with pain. I think she had been grasped by the hair and pulled to her feet. Certainly the cord on my neck, rasping, jerked upward. I cried out in misery. I crouched. The cord was still taut. I must rise. I was subject to the cord. I must be compliant. I scrambled to my feet, in misery, in the crowded darkness, obedient to the imperative of my constraint. The rest of the “cord” rose, too. I then heard another girl cry out with pain, perhaps Fina, kicked, and then that “cord,” too, to the side of us, to our right, was on its feet.

We were frightened. We gasped for breath.

I think they feared that the gate might be lifted in the darkness. That their foe, blade in hand, in the darkness, might come though, either to do them greater injury or slip past them. But I was sure the gate had remained down. Had it risen, I was sure I could have heard it, in its tracks. Too, the urts were quieter now. We could, however, still hear them feeding.

“An interesting stratagem,” said the officer of Treve, in the darkness.

“Excellent Kaissa,” said the pit master.

It was only later that I understood their probable meanings. I was, at the time, confused, sick, afraid, almost unable to stand, waiting there in the darkness, with the others, not knowing if something, an urt, or the prisoner, armed, intent, might suddenly be upon us, perhaps slashing to one side or the other, in some eagerness to get at the men.

But he did not come through the gate in the darkness.

The lifting of the gate, of course, would have marked his position, if only for a moment.

The prisoner had apparently lifted the panels to the urt nest, permitting them access to the walkway, the gate having been raised to permit them, or some at least, into the passageway, the gate then being lowered. It is terribly dangerous, of course, to trap an urt against a barrier, as it will then fight with terrible ferocity. To approach the gate would have trapped them in this fashion, thus making them his allies. But his plan, it seemed, had been even subtler than this. Urts on the other side of the barrier, the men approaching, the corridor dark, necessitating the bringing of light into it, he had apparently, probably with his own body, if not blood, lured urts back, close to the gate. He had then cried out, as though under attack, and, doubtless at the same time, during that seemingly agonized, hideious cry, fired into the urts at point-blank range, thereby killing or wounding one of them, and initiating the feeding frenzy. By the time it had been determined that the victim was another urt the men would have been within range. I was sure now that the one man who had clung, so closely, so stiffly, to the bars, had been struck, though them, with a thrust of the sword, to the heart. It was sure he had not come back with us. The prisoner would then have lifted the crossbow, the quarrel set, and fired again, though the bars, at the man with the lamp, the light illuminating the target. He had killed two men in this fashion and, had the urts behaved differently, might have accomplished the destruction of one r two others. The lieutenant had four men left.

Gratefully, something like a quarter of an Ahn later, kneeling on the floor of the passage, I rubbed my wrists.

“I do not think he will fire on you,” said the pit master. “There are ten slaves, and he will know that there are several, at least. He is limited in his quiver, and he is not likely to use quarrels on slaves.”

“Yes, Master,” I said. But I was not greatly reassured by these worlds. I was more reassured by the fact that I was in a rear group. Yet I had little doubt that he was sincere in his remarks, as he was obviously willing to let Fina be in one of the forward groups. We had now fetched torches and lamps from the passages, whatever was available. Indeed, even the pit master had fetched himself a torch.

“Let us get more men,” said Gito.

“We have taken fee,” said the lieutenant, “as have you.”

“Where is the pit guard?” asked the officer of Treve.

“They have reported in by now, and have not been dismissed,” said the pit master. “I would suppose they are searching for us.”

“Up,” said a man to the slaves, and we rose to our feet.

We were now differently arranged. We were now in five groups of two each, a pair for each of the black-tunicked men, including the lieutenant. Each girl in a pair was tied by the neck to the other with cord. I was with Fecha, on her left, about two feet from her, that much latitude and no more permitted to me by the cord. She had been given a small torch, and I carried a lamp. As we were fastened together we could not well bolt, as coordination in such a matter would be difficult. Too, tied as we were, we constituted, as before, something of a shield, in this case for the one man behind us. We were the forth group. The pair including Fina, the second group, was appropriated by the lieutenant, who seemed aware of her specialness to the pit master. The pit master, with his torch, stayed close to them. The officer of Treve, too, remained in the vicinity of this group. Gito followed the fifth group, several paces behind. This new arrangement, that of five groups, make possible a more diversified deployment of the men, presumably an advantage on the walkway about the urt pool. On the other hand, it would presumably be less effective in blocking passages or in providing a barrier which could be, at a word, a command, raised and lowered, from behind which volley firing might take place.

“Look,” said the man in the lead. He was the second of the two men who had not joined in the attack on the seen earlier. The first was he who had been given the unenviable task of separating the feeding urts. He had, it seemed, lost a great deal of blood. His bow had been set for him by his fellow.

“The gate is open,” said another man.

I did not look at the remains of the man who lay in the passage. The urts had been much at him. It was he who had requested first short earlier.

He had been left where he was, that the urts would be less dangerous, from a heavy feeding.

The other fellow who had died at the gate, who had brought the lamp forward, had been hauled back in the corridor. In this fashion, if the urts pressed on us again, there would be meat to interpose between us and their reawakened appetites.

Had it been deemed useful. I had little doubt that one of more slaves might have been sacrificed, to accomplish the same purpose.

It would have been easy enough to do so, as we were bound, and conveniently at hand, in our neck-cords.

I feared these sober, strange men in their sable habiliments. A normal Gorean male, I was sure, would have defended a jeopardized kajira to the death. But, too, he would not have relaxed the perfection of his mastery over her in the least. Is she not, it might be asked, a desirable, beautiful animal, worth saving for his pleasure?

An Earth woman, incidentally, if rescued on Gor by a Gorean, might be surprised at the aftermath of her rescue. Half hysterical with relief, overwhelmed with gratitude, say, she was prepared to throw herself into his arms and grant him, even though he is a stranger, the inestimable favor of a kiss. Many Earth women seem to think their kisses are of great value, whereas most of them do not know how to kiss. The kisses of a slave on the other hand, so subtle, and humble, and well-placed, coupled with her entire demeanor, the meaning of her collar, and such, can drive a man mad with pleasure. But then that is understandable, she is a slave. To be sure, as the slave is further and further aroused by the master, in his turn, her kisses may become more and more piteously and helplessly orgasmic. But then to her surprise, and, one supposes, consternation, the Earth woman finds herself enfolded helplessly in mighty arms and kissed in turn and kissed as she had never dreamed she might be kissed, with such ferocity, and mastery and power, and ownership, and then as she reels, giddy and dazed, she is taken in hand and turned about, and thrown to the ground, on her stomach; her clothing, she almost failing to comprehend what is occurring, is ripped from her, all of it; she feels the air on her body and the grass on her belly and breasts; she protests; she struggles; she tries to rise; his hand holds her in place; she cannot rise; her wrists are jerked behind her and enclosed in slave bracelets; she is then leashed, and led from the field; if she resists or dallies she will be whipped; if he has a collar with him it will undoubtedly be put on her; he has saved her life and it now belongs to him, and he will do with it what he wants. He will keep her, have pleasure with her, sell her, or give her away, as he pleases.

This will become more intelligible to her as she becomes more aware of the ways of Gor.

Not all cultures are the same.

She is now a slave, with all that that means on Gor.

She will soon learn.

“Where are the urts?” asked the lieutenant.

“As they did not pass us,” said the pit master, “ and they are not here, one gathers they have returned to the nest, or the pool. Some might be on the walkway.”

It seemed very dark beyond the gate. I could see the railing about the pool.

It was silent within, very silent.

“Perhaps he is gone,” said a man.

“Was he within,” said a man, “he would have left the gate down, as a barrier. It would have been dangerous for us to lift it. He would have fired from behind it.”

“Are there other gates, accessible from the walkway?” asked the lieutenant.

“Yes,” said the pit master.

“Aagh!” cried the lieutenant, in fury.

“Then he is gone?” said a man.

“Are the gates open?” asked the lieutenant.

“No,” said the pit master.

“I do not believe you,” said the lieutenant.

“He is gone then” said the man.

“If he was not within he would have left the gate down,” said a man, “to make us believe he was within, to slow our pursuit.”

“Leaving it up, is to invite us into a trap,” said a man.

“Or have us believe it so,” said another.

“He is not within,” said the lieutenant. “But he has already won his point, buying time, we, like fools, standing about in idle converse.”

“I would, nonetheless, recommend caution,” said the officer ofTreve.

“Step from behind the slaves,” said the lieutenant ordered the lead man.

Reluctantly he did so.

It was he, I recalled, who had been the second of the two men who had not joined in the attack on the sleen.

“Go to the threshold, stand there,” said the lieutenant.

The peasant, I recalled, was not likely to waste quarrels on slaves, at least according to the speculations of the pit master, which speculations I fervently hoped were sound.

The black-tunicked man, on the other hand, would presumably constitute a prime target.

“I do not think he is within,” said the lieutenant.

The man slowly, reluctantly, went to the center of the threshold.

He stood there.

It takes time, of course, to reload a crossbow. That interval of time, I gathered, figured in the lieutenants calculations.

After several seconds, the man standing there in the portal, silhouetted by the light behind him, the lieutenant, unwilling to lose more time, indicated that one man, preceded by his fair shield of two, should enter and go to the left, and another, he, too, preceded by his shield of two, to the right. After an interval of about four paces, the lieutenant, with two slaves, followed the man who had gone to the left. The man who had served as point for our advance, with two slaves, remained at the portal, just within it.

I was with the second man who had gone to the left, preceding him, with Fecha.

We moved cautiously, the light lifted.

There were four gates giving access to the walkway, that though which we had entered, and, across the pool, on the other side, three, each leading to a different tunnel.

I heard a girl scream. An urt, on the walkway, at their approach, had scrambled over the railing, and dived into the pool.

Fecha held her torch over the pool. We could see ripples in the water there. And I saw the wet, glistening head of an urt, just at the surface. The head was very smooth. They swim with their ears back, flat against the head. This was not the urt which had just entered the pool. That one had dived in far back and to our right.

“Hurry!” urged the lieutenant to the man before him. He feared the loss of time.

“Move,” said the man to the slaves before him. They whimpered, and, laps lifted, moved forward. The pair ahead of us stopped.

“Urt!” cried Tira, pointing.

“No,” said the man. “It is only a shadow.”

The lamps and torches threw strange shadows, which moved as the source of the light moved, sometimes giving the impression of a dark body stirring, even moving furtively, or quickly.

I looked above us. The vault of the chamber was lost in darkness. I could see the cage, high, to my left, over the pool, with its various chains and ropes, for controlling its location. There was also the cord which went to the gate latch at its bottom.

“Lift the gate,” said the lieutenant to the pit master. The first man and the lieutenant had come to the first gate, reached by going to the right about the pool. The lieutenant did not wish to risk either himself or his man by standing at the gate, lifting it. A bolt from the other side would not be likely to miss. The fellow who had served as a lure for quarrels was still back at the gate we had entered, guarding it with his bow. The man with the lieutenant was the one who limped, having injured his ankle yesterday morning in the cell, apparently having twisted it in the stirrup of the crossbow, while trying to reset the weapon.

“It is locked,” said the pit master.

“Determine that it is so,” said the lieutenant.

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.

“Yes,” said the man.

“Then it is the center gate which is unlocked!” said the lieutenant. “Hurry!” he urged the fellow to the slaves 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 the 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, emptied of its occupant, and the sound of a body suddenly caught short of its fall. We spun about and saw the Lady Ilene, her small ankles tied together, her hand tied behind her back, a rope under her arms, swinging over the dark waters of the urt pool. She twisted wildly. She bend 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. 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 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 strung 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 the 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.

They 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 though 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 keep 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 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.

“They are brave men,” said the officer of Treve.

Tensius and Abnik swam to the edge of the pool, to our right.

They looked back.

The lieutenant pointed to the place where the pit master had indicated lay the underwater entrance to the nest.

I saw Tensius first submerge. He was followed, in a moment, by Abnik.

“Look!” said the pit master.

One of the urts, an arm in its jaws, was swimming back toward the nest.

“Kill it!” urged the pit master.

“It takes time to reload,” said the lieutenant.

“It may just brush past them,” said the officer of Treve. “It has its meat.”

“Yes,” said the lieutenant, surveying the surface of the water, “that is what it will do.”

“Not if there are young in the nest,” said the pit master.

“Are there young in the nest?” asked the officer of Treve.

“Yes,” said the pit master.

“It takes time to reload,” said the lieutenant.

“It is too late now,” said the officer of Treve.

The urt, too, had submerged.

“Space the light about the pool,” said the lieutenant, with a gesture of his arm.

The slaves spaced themselves then more about the pool. I remained with Fecha a little to the left of the entrance, as one would enter the area of the pool. The lieutenant was a few feet to our right. The pit master was behind him, holding aloft his torch. The officer of Treve was nearby. Gito was not in the pool area, but back in the passage. I had glimpsed him. He was crouched down, his back to the wall of the passage, looking toward the portal.

We waited, it seemed for a long time.

“Should your men not have returned by now?” asked the officer of Treve.

The lieutenant did not respond. He continued to survey the flickering surface of the pool.

There was a sound of chain as the cage swung a little. It was a few yards away, above us. It had been moved by the weight of the bound, gagged free woman, dangling on the rope over the pool.

She looked at me.

I was suddenly, intensely, ashamed, aware of my nudity. How such as she must scorn such as I! In what contempt must she hold me! How she must despise me! But I was not such as she! I was a slave! I was collared! I must be as men would have me! If they saw fit to deny me clothing then I would not have clothing! If they ordered me to dance, I must dance. If they wished me to serve, I must serve! I was not such as she! But then I, for anything, would not have wished to be such as she! I had learned my womanhood! I would never, never surrender it, not now that I had tasted it, not for all the garbage and politics in the world. I had learned it at the hands of strong men, their precious gift to me, an inestimable treasure, men to whom I would be forever grateful. I had now found myself, and accepted myself, and loved myself! I was not a man, or a kind of man. I was a woman, something radically different and wonderful. I pitied men not being women! But then, suddenly, even though I knew her to be free, I did not sense contempt or scorn in her. It was strange. I quickly looked away. It is seldom wise for a female slave to look directly into the eyes of a free woman. But then I recalled that she had been in the cage. There, suspended in the darkness, helpless, alone, perhaps she had had time to think, to ask herself what she was, and wanted to be, and might be, and where she herself might be found.

“Surely your men should have returned by now,” said the officer of Treve.

“It is not clear what has occurred,” said the lieutenant.

The urts continued to feed, turning the two bodies about in the water.

I saw another swimming toward the nest, a shred of muscle trailing behind it.

“By now,” speculated the officer of Treve, “it seems he should have been taken, or the body found.”

“The two of you,” said the lieutenant, not taking his eyes from the water, “have been insufficiently cooperative. Your actions, you may be assured, will be reported to the administration.”

The pit master continued to hold his torch aloft, as he had, rather behind the lieutenant.

“They must have found him, they must have killed him, by now,” said the lieutenant.

“Undoubtedly,” said the officer of Treve.

“Perhaps they have all died in the nest,” said the pit master.

“He may have drowned.” Said the lieutenant.

“Possibly,” said the pit master.

“Where is he?” cried the lieutenant.

“Somewhere, one supposes,” said the officer of Treve.

“Masters,” cried Gito, from back in the passage, “let us go to the surface!”

“Go!” said the lieutenant, not taking his eyes from the pool.

“I do not know the way!” cried Gito.

“Where is he?” asked the lieutenant. He received no response.

“He must have drowned,” said the lieutenant. He received no response.

“Where are my men?” asked the lieutenant.

“I would not know,” said the pit master.

“They are in the nest,” said the lieutenant, “waiting for the way to clear of urts.”

“Perhaps,” said the officer of Treve.

“They are clever fellows,” said the lieutenant.

“Doubtless,” said the pit master.

“Picked men.”

“I do not doubt it,” said the pit master.

It was an elite squad, I gathered, which had come to Treve. To someone, it seemed, their mission must have been of great moment.

“They have with them the body, or the head, of the prisoner,” said the lieutenant.

“Possibly,” said the officer of Treve.

“They will return any moment,” said the lieutenant, determinedly.

“Possibly,” said the officer of Treve.

“There is something across the way,” said the pit master. He gestured toward the opposite wall, several yards from the nest entrance. There, something humped, like a cloth filled with air, had come to the surface.

“Where?”

“There.”

“What is it? A dead urt?”

“It is a body,” said the pit master.

“Excellent!” said the lieutenant. “It has come to the surface!”

An urt swam to the object and began to bite at it. Once it pulled it beneath the surface. It then emerged, again, closer to us. Another urt then swam toward it.

“It is Tensius,” said the lieutenant.

The eyes were still open, staring upward. One could see the dagger on the forehead. When the body was pulled back, again, one could see that the left leg was gone, and the left hand.

“Urts,” said the lieutenant.

I did not know if Tensius had reached the nest or not. I supposed that he might have, as we had not detected a disturbance in the water near the entrance to the nest. But if he had been killed in the nest, why had the urts not fed on him there?

When I looked away from the water I saw that the lieutenant’s attention was returned, intently, to the pool. Indeed, he held his bow more at the ready than before.

It was indeed an elite that had come to Treve.

Had the prisoner died in the pool it seemed his body would have surfaced before that of Tensius.

But the body of Tensius, it seemed, had not served as a diversion.

It was merely meat, floating in the water, being eaten.

The moments taken for its identification, the lapse of attention to the tunnel entrance occasioned by its appearance, had been without cost.

The lieutenant lowered his bow.

One could not climb from the pool to the walkway without a rope, or some such device, the tunnels to the walkway having been sealed.

“The prisoner,” said the officer of Treve, “may have died in the nest. Too, he may have been trapped beneath the water, wedged under an outcropping, or between rocks.”

The latter hypothesis was an interesting one, as water urts sometimes secure prey under the water, saving it for later, rather as certain predatory beasts will bury a kill, or place it in a tree, to be finished later. Some birds impale insects on thorns, for a similar purpose.

“He is alive, somewhere,” said the lieutenant. “I am sure of it.”

“That seems improbably,” said the officer of Treve.

“The body of Tensius shows that he is alive,” said the lieutenant. “If he had been killed by urts his body would have made that clear. It would have been a mass of bites, or the throat would have been gone. The condition of the body, on the other hand, shows that it was not attacked by urts until either it was dead of unable to defend itself. And he would not have drowned unless he had been held under the water, in which case the prisoner is alive. I am sure Tensius was stabbed, and the wound washed free of blood.”

“Interesting,” said the officer of Treve.

“He is clever,” said the lieutenant. “He is cunning. He is magnificent prey. It is a pleasure to hunt him.”

“Those of the black caste are famed for their prowess in hunting,” said the officer of Treve.

“But he has miscalculated,” said the lieutenant. “He thought to use the body of Tensius as a diversion, to cover his exit from the pool, but he could not leave the pool. Instead, he has only managed, unbeknownst to himself, to inform me that he is still alive.”

“Let us get more men,” said Gito, who had crept closer to the portal.

“I need only one clear shot,” said the lieutenant.

“He is surely dead,” said Gito. “Let us hasten to the surface.”

“I have not seen the body,” said the lieutenant.

“You truly think he is alive?” asked the officer of Treve.

“Yes,” said the lieutenant. “He has now inadvertently informed me of that fact. That loses him his advantage. I am now ready for him, quite ready.”

“Come away!” begged Gito.

“I need only one clean shot,” said the lieutenant.

The quarrel lay ready in the guide, as quiet as a bullet.

Suddenly from the part of the pool near the entrance to the nest we saw a hand reach up, breaking the surface, and then an arm. A head momentarily broke the surface, and then the body seemed dragged under again. Then it came back again to the surface, arms thrashing. It cried out with pain. “It is your man!” said the officer of Treve.

It was the black-tunicked fellow, Abnik, who had had his foot injured in the crossbow’s suirrup yesterday morning.

He went under again, seemingly pulled down, and then, choking, spitting water, came again to the surface, closer. “Help! Help!” he cried.

“He is fleeing the nest!” said the officer of Treve.

Abnik tried to swim toward us. It seemed something held him back, under the surface.

“urts have him!” said the officer of Treve.

“Help! Please!” cried Abnik. Then, choking, he was drawn under again.

One of the girls on the other side of the pool, tied by her neck to her cord-mate, screamed, horrified.

“Keep the torch up!” cried the lieutenant.

I suddenly realized his attention was not on the pathetic figure in the pool but on the waters behind it and about it.

“Help!” cried Abnik.

The water was bloody about him.

An urt beneath the railing turned smoothly in the water, orienting itself toward the figure in the water. It did not, however, approach it. Rather it twisted about, suddenly, and returned to its work at hand. We saw the figure of Tensius pulled under, beneath the railing. Then it surfaced, again. The side of its face was gone.

“Help!” cried Abnik.

We could now see, surfaced behind him, the head and neck of an urt, one that was very large.

Then it dove down again and Abnik cried out in misery.

“Please!” he wept.

His face was contorted. It was hideous. His hands clutched at the air as though he might gain purchase there to drag himself to safety.

“Help! Help!” he cried.

The attention of the lieutenant I noted, to my horror, was not on the struggling figure of Abnik. He was intensely considering, rather, the waters to the side and back.

The head and neck of the urt surfaced again, behind Abnik.

I screamed.

“There it is!” cried out the officer of Treve. “Kill it! Kill it! Save your man!”

“Do not be foolish,” said the lieutenant, without taking his attention from the pool. “Do you not understand what is occurring?”

“Please, help me!” cried Abnik.

“Give me the bow,” said the officer of Treve. “I will kill it.”

But the lieutenant, angrily, pulled the bow away.

The pit master stood rather behind the lieutenant, his torch lifted. I could see the urts below us, at the bodies near the wall, beneath where we stood.

“Kill the thing!” said the officer of Treve. “Kill it!”

“No,” said the lieutenant.

“Save him!” begged the officer of Treve.

“I have ten fee, as has he,” said the lieutenant.

“Kill it, kill it!” said the officer of Treve.

The man in the water, thrashing about, screaming in misery.

“No,” said the lieutenant.

“It is an easy shot,” said the officer of Treve, desperately.

“At this distance you could not miss!”

“I will not waste the quarrel,” said the lieutenant.

“Help!” screamed Abnik.

“He will die,” said the officer of Treve.

“I am hunting,” said the lieutenant.

“Shoot!” begged the officer of Treve.

“No,” said the lieutenant.

It took time, I knew, to reload.

The lieutenant did not even see the hands of the man in the water raised to him, supplicatingly. Nor did he see the fear in those eyes, the terror and pain. His attention was elsewhere, on the waters behind the figure and the thing at his back. But it might have been to his advantage had he paid closer attention to the figure in the water for suddenly the thing behind Abnik rose up in the water and, at the same time, we saw the quarrel of a bow emerge and the cable snapped forward and the quarrel took the lieutenant in the side of the throat just under the chin and tore upward through the skull breaking the helmet away from the head and we saw, below, for one terrible moment, cowled in the head and pelt of an urt, the pelt about his shoulders, the eyes, and the fierce visage, of the peasant, and then that head descended again into the water, and it seemed, once more, eerily, only the head and shoulders of an urt. It moved slowly away, across the pool. It then, near the entrance of the nest. Slipped under the water.

The pit master now leaned forward, over the railing. Abnik was now rolling lifeless in the water, lost in the midst of the urts and bodies.

“Is there a way from the urt nest, other than to the pool and walkway?” asked the officer of Treve.

“Ways are barred,” said the pit master.

“But there are ways?”

The pit master shrugged.

“Water must be brought to the pool,” said the officer of Treve. “A drain? A conduit?”

“They are impassable,” said the pit master.

“Do you believe that?” asked the officer of Treve.

“They are impassable by an ordinary man,” said the pit master.

“I see,” said the officer.

“They are barred, they pass through tharlarion nests.”

“Is there any possibility that the prisoner could escape?” asked the officer.

“None whatsoever,” said the pit master.

“Could he live in such passages?”

“Perhaps on urts,” said the pit master.

“There is no way out?”

“No,” said the pit master.

“Would it be wise to use men, pursing him in the passages beneath the city?”

“I would not think so,” said the pit master.

“What has happened?” called Gito, from down the corridor.

“It is over,” said the pit master.

Gito crept to the portal, and then he cried out with horror.

The pit master looked down at the body of the lieutenant.

The officer of Treve, crouching down beside the body, carefully removed the helmet. It was already partly forced off. Its crown was filled with blood and hair.

“He was an excellent officer,” said the pit master.

“Of his caste,” said the officer of Treve.

“It is strange,” said the pit master. “Had he chosen to save his man, by firing on what we took to be the beast, he would have killed the prisoner.

“Yes,” mused the officer of Treve.

“What would you have done?” asked the pit master.

“I would have tried to save the man.”

“Even at the risk of losing the quarrel, and not having time to reload before a putative attack?”

“Yes,” said the officer of Treve.

“But he did not do so.”

“No,” said the officer of Treve.

“Why?”

“Castes differ,” said the officer. He then, with his thumb, wiped away the dagger on the lieutenant’s forehead. “He is no longer hunting,” he said.

“The prisoner did not flee,” observed the pit master. “He returned for him.”

“He, too, it seems, was a hunter.”

“Do you think it an inadvertence on the prisoner’s part that the one man’s body, that of he called Tensius, was returned as it was to the pool?”

“Certainly not,” said the officer of Treve. “He wanted the officer to know that he was still alive, that was the point of that, in order that the assassin be tensely ready, that he be extremely watchful and alert, and that the preciousness of his quarrel be fully appreciated. He might have but one chance to loose it. He must retain it for the prefect shot. He must in no event waste it.”

“But how would he know the officer would not protect his man, that he would not be fired on in the cowl and pelt of the urt?”

“He knew the caste he was dealing with,” said the officer of Treve.

“The officer assumed, naturally enough, that the man in the water was only a diversion. Accordingly, he did not even consider him, but directed his attention elsewhere.”

“And thus permitted the prisoner to approach unseen, to a point at which a miss was impossible.”

“It is hard even to understand such Kaissa,” said the pit master.

I understood very little of these things. It did seem to me that the peasant had surely manifested a subtlety, acumen, and terribleness far beyond what one might commonly expect of his caste.

“It is interesting,” said the officer of Treve, “that so many of the gates in the passages were unlocked, but the passages remained armed.”

“He would use the men of the dark caste to clear the passages before him, of course,” said the pit master.

“But the three gates here, across the way, were locked.”

“Yes, that is interesting,” agreed the pit master.

“Youare certain that there is no possibility of escape through the urt nest, through the drains, or sewers, or such.”

“I think I hear the guard in the corridor,” said the pit master. “They have found us.”

“I noted you held your torch behind the officer,” said the officer of Treve.

“Did I?” asked the pit master.

“That silhouetted his head and shoulders well, even if an approach had been made under water.”

“I suppose it might have,” said the pit master, “now that I think of it.”

“Were the chains of the prisoner tampered with?” inquired the officer of Treve.

“That seems unlikely,” said the pit master.

“There is one thing I do not understand,” said the officer of Treve.

“What is that?”

“They were prize sleen, trained to perfection. How could it be that they became confused and attacked the captain of those of the dark caste?”

“As you know,” said the pit master, “such beasts are unreliable.”

“I do not think so,” said the officer.

“Oh?”

“How could they make such a terrible mistake?”

“Perhaps they did not make a mistake,” said the pit master.

“I do not think they did,” said the officer of Treve.

“Perhaps you are right,” said the pit master.

“But the blanket was taken from the cell of the prisoner. It was kept, all the while, in a sealed sack. I saw the seal myself.”

“It was taken from the cell of the prisoner,” said the pit master. “but that does not mean that it was the blanket of the prisoner.”

“The hunters insisted on spending the first night in the depths,” said the officer of Treve, “presumably to guard against the prisoner being secretly removed.”

“I suspect that was there motivation,” said the pit master.

“Accordingly,” said the officer of Treve, “the blankets of the captain of those of the black caste and the prisoner might have been switched early the next morning, before those of the black caste arrived at the cell.”

“An interesting possibility,” said the pit master.

“And the captain of those of the dark caste then, by using his own blanket, unbeknownst to himself, set the sleen upon himself.”

“That is a possibility,” admitted the pit master.

“You are guilty of collusion in the escape of a prisoner,” said the officer of Treve.

“We need not regard him as having escaped,” pointed out the pit master. “Too, it was not I who kicked a sword to him, putting it within his grasp.”

“I am not fond of murder,” said the officer.

“I only dreamed of honor,” said the pit master. “But I think you may have looked upon her, in a cell, face to face.”

“Sir,” said one of the eleven men, the current posting of the pit guard. They were now in the passage. Gito was far down the passage, crouching down. “We searched long for you.”

The pit master put his torch in a rack, beside the portal.

“The guard reports for duty,” said the man.

“Feed the prisoners,” said the pit master. “Secure the passages, return to your normal duties.”

“Are you safe?” asked the man.

“Yes,” said the pit master.

“There is not one amongst us who will not take up arms on your behalf,” he said. He looked about himself, and toward the darkness of the pool area. He touched his blade, slung over his left shoulder.

“That will not be necessary,” said the pit master. “Our guests have gone.”

The officer of the guard turned about arid went down the corridor, past Gito. His men followed him.

“I wonder if we have done well here,” said the pit master.

“I do not know,” said the officer of Treve.

“I wonder if what we have done here truly comports with honor,” said the pit master.

“I do not know,” said the officer of Treve.

“Nor I,” said the pit master.

“She has many voices, and many songs,” said the officer of Treve.

Before we left the pool area the pit master, by means of the ropes and chains controlling the cage, brought the helpless Lady Ilene, she dangling on the rope, to the wall, where he lifted her up and put her on her knees, on the walkway. He freed her hands and feet, cutting the cords of twisted cloth, taken from her garments, which the peasant had used to bind them. When he freed her of the gag, being careful, in observance of her modesty, not to look upon her features, she pleaded desperately to speak, but this permission was denied to her. She then, kneeling before the pit master, put her head down to the bloody walkway.

“She may soon be ready for a cell,” said the officer of Treve.

“Or even shackles,” said the pit master.

“Perhaps,” said the officer.

The Lady Ilene was then reinserted into the cage, and the cage restored to its place over the pool.

I saw her kneeling in the cage, her small hands on the bars. The light cord ran from the walkway, up, through its rings, over its pulleys, to the latch at the bottom of the cage, that securing its gate.

The urts were still feeding.

The pit master lifted up the body of the lieutenant, and thrust it over the railing.

There was a splash in the dark waters below.

The pit master then cut the cords, in the center, that held the pairs of slaves together.

We then left the pool area.

The slaves preceded the pit master and the officer of Treve. We did wait for a moment, when the pit master stopped beside Gito, in the passage. “You will come with us,” he said. “When we come to the sack in the passage, where it was dropped, you will pick it up, and bring it along.”

“Yes, yes, Masters,” said Gito anxiously. He then hurried along with us.