“Horaj,” he said.
He spoke in a low voice and I doubt if any heard him, or if they did, they paid him no notice. The more ignorant of the humans of Thanator, among which the Chac Yuul must certainly be numbered, consider the great stalking warriors of the Yathoon Horde as little more than monsters, and certainly they do not count them as intelligent beings on a par with mankind. Hence if any of the members of Loguar’s war party heard the single word which Koja enunciated, they put it down to a bestial grunting. But I have dwelled in the war camps of the Horde and I know that while the arthropods are degraded and cruel and belong to the lowest rung of civilization, being merely nomad warrior clans devoid of the nobler sentiments and immune to the beauties of the arts, they are nonetheless as fully intelligent as men.
What did Koja mean by that single word horaj, which he doubtless spoke for my ears alone? Horaj means “urgent.”
By this enigmatic term, did he mean to communicate that he possessed vital information for my ears alone? I could put no other construction on his remark. And surely Koja and Lukor had not run the risk of entering the city of Shondakor for any other reason than to communicate with me.
I paused in the entranceway for a few moments, indecisively.
The forced marriage of Darloona was but hours away. And if Valkar and I were to attempt any sort of rescue, we must lay our plans at once. And even now he awaited my coming in our wineshop rendezvous.
But I must forgo that meeting, for all its urgency.
I turned on my heel and reentered the palace.
Despite the fact that time was running out, I could not delay having speech with Koja and Lukor. Some mission of overwhelming importance had caused them to dare the risk of entering the city of the Ku Thad. And I must find out what it was.
BOOK FOUR
THE BOOK OF OOL
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AT SWORD’S POINT
The Pits lay beneath the lowest levels of the palace, and although I had never had cause to visit them during my tenure in the service of Prince Vaspian, I was well enough aware of their location to find them without difficulty.
Getting in to see Koja and the gallant old Swordmaster would be another problem. But it seemed likely that my rank as a member of the retinue of the Prince would be sufficient to get me past the guards.
If it did not work, well, frankly, I did not know what I should do. If the secret network of passages within the palace walls continued into the depths of the dungeons, I was not aware of the fact. And I had no time to go exploring. Time, as I have already observed, was running out; and to employ yet another cliche, matters were coming swiftly to a head.
I had a hunch that the masquerade was about over. My imposture had escaped detection up to now, and my false history had survived scrutiny. But things were moving too fast for me now, and, as my reader will observe, I was beginning to take risky chances. I had no valid reasons to be in the Pits at all, and if queried by Vaspian or Arkola, I would not be able to satisfactorily explain my curiosity regarding these prisoners. But my friends were in danger, and that justified my taking even the most enormous chances―I was willing to risk even the disclosure of my true identity―willing even to jeopardize my entire mission.
I could do no less for those who had done so much for me.
And thus I descended into the Pits.
Luckily for me, they were not heavily guarded. Since the entire palace was in the hands of the Chac Yuul, how could an enemy of the Chac Yuul penetrate to this place? Such, at least, was the thinking that had decreed the Pits need not be heavily guarded. Were it not so, I could not have gotten as far as I did before a guard confronted me.
Down a long stone corridor I went, striding rapidly, my cloak tossed back from my right shoulder so that it would not impede the use of my right arm, my fingers brushing the pommel of my rapier.
Grim walls of rough stone lay about me; the air was chill and dank, and it reeked of the fetor of men held in long imprisonment with but the rudest of sanitary facilities.
What light there was, and there was but little, came from oil-soaked torches of black jaruka wood clamped with brackets of rust-eaten iron against the moldering stone masonry. These crude attempts at illumination cast a wavering orange glare and painted huge black shadows upon the walls. To me it seemed momentarily unreal. All of this scene through which I moved was like a movie set; I felt that I myself was unreal, a mere actor playing a role in some historical epic; even my garments, cloak and buskins and the slim rapier that slapped against my bare thigh with every step, added to this feeling of unreality.
Suddenly I turned a corner and found myself facing a large and nearly empty room paved with stone which was bestrewn with moldy straw.
In one corner of this large open area stood a rough wooden table, its top surface marked with rings of dried wine and ale, hacked with knives, as if generations of bored and idle guards had carved their initials upon it. A bucket of water and a dipper stood beneath the table, and upon it stood a candelabra of brass with three guttering candles. A wooden stool was drawn up to this table, and sprawled dozing thereon a burly guard could be seen. Only one guard! That was a stroke of fortune.
Opening off this large room were several cells. I could not, at first glance, tell what persons were immured within, for the shadows were deep and thick. But even if my friends were not imprisoned in one of these cells, it seemed likely that the dozing guard could tell me where they were being held.
The guard―his head was turned away from me, resting on his folded arms, so that I could not see his face―was a komad, as I could tell from the emblems clipped to the shoulders of his leather tunic. In other words, he was of the same rank as myself. This meant I could not use my position as a superior officer to bid him answer my queries; but my favored place in the retinue of the Crown Prince of the Black Legion would doubtless suffice to wring cooperation from him, as few officers of the Chac Yuul would be so foolish as to willingly go against the wishes of the man who would, with luck, someday stand in the highest place of the Legion.
“Sleeping on duty, komad?” I asked sharply, as I entered the room. It seemed at the time a good idea to put the fellow in the wrong at the beginning; that it was not at all a wise notion became evident almost immediately.
He started away from his nap and raised his face to look at me, with apprehension and anger mingling in his expression. He was a coarse, crude-looking oaf, with fleshy, unshaven jowls and mean little piggish eyes―eyes which narrowed the moment they rested upon my features.
His snarled curse broke off as delighted recognition dawned upon him. A gloating smile crossed his coarse visage, and my heart sank into my boots, for I had recognized him almost in the same instant, and I knew I should get no cooperation from this particular officer.
For it was Bluto, the swaggering bully I had beaten and humiliated at the city gate when first I entered the walls of Shondakor!
Silently, I cursed my vile luck. Of all the officers in the Black Legion who might have been assigned to this particular post at this particular hour, it had to be the one man in all the Legion least likely to cooperate with my wishes.
“And if I am, what is it to you, little man,” he grunted, rising to his feet and laying one huge hairy hand on the pommel of his cutlass. “What be your business here, and where be your authorization?”
I have stated earlier in this narrative that this hulking brute was one of the biggest men I have ever faced, and it was truly so. He was a colossus, towering above me almost as much as Koja did. He was not in the best of fighting trim, for a swag-belly hung over his girdle and there’ was soft flab in his jowls and upper arms, and he looked somewhat the worse for drink. But the rest of him was solid beef and he had the advantage on me as far as weight and reach went. He would make a dangerous opponent.