"Tie it there," said Flaminius.
The sack was tied on my back. Flaminius then turned his tharlarion about. The chain on my neck swung in front of me, then looped up to his saddle horn.
"Captain," said one of Flaminius's men to him.
"Yes?" he said.
The man indicated the kneeling Lady Telitsia with his head. She knelt in the dust, small among the great, clawed hind legs of the shifting tharlarion.
"Very well," agreed Flaminius.
Several of the men dismounted. T3wo of them pulled her to her feet by the upper arms.
"After your uses," Flaminius informed her, "you will follow us back to camp."
"Yes, Master," she said. She was then dragged to the side of the road.
Flaminius then urged his tharlarion slowly forward and I, his captive, afoot, on his chain, carrying the burden, followed him. Most of his men followed, too, strung out behind us. After a time the other fellows, too, caught up with us. At the crest of a hill I paused and looked back. Several hundred yards behind us, following slowly, moving in pain, awkwardly, her head down, came the slave, Lady Telitsia.
I clutched the bars of the narrow cell window, looking out onto the courtyard. I stood on a table which I had dragged to the side of the wall, in order to be able to look out. Behind me, on his straw, crouched the small, narrow-shouldered, spindle-legged representative of the urt people.
I looked from the window down into the courtyard. There, some thirty feet in width, was a shallow, iron-railed pit. this pit was encircled with several tiers of bleacherlike wooden benches. These benches were filled with colorfully garbed, screaming spectators. I squinted against the sun. The noise was loud, resounding and reverberating as it did within the walls of the courtyard. I myself did not much care for such spectacles. Some men enjoy them. Too, they provide an occasion for betting.
"Look, look?" squeaked the creature on the straw below me. It scratched about on the straw, backwards with its feet, while looking up at me.
I turned about and reached down, extending my hand to it. Agilely it scurried across the stone floor of the cell and leapt to the table on which I stood. Then, clinging to my arm, and boosted by my hand, it seized the bars beside me, thrusting it's forearms through and about them, clinging to them, using them to support its weight.
I then returned my attention to the courtyard below.
The three sleen in the pit, snarling, tails lashing, their hunched shoulders scarcely a foot from the ground moved in a menacing, savage, twisting, eager circle about the center of their interest. This object, alert, every nerve seemingly tensely alive, was chained in the center of the pit.
An attempt on my life had been made in Port Kar. That attempt had seemed tied in, somehow, with Brundisium. this speculation had been amply confirmed in my dealings with the Lady Yanina and Flaminius. It had seemed likely, further, to me, that there must then be some connection between Brundisium and either the Priest-Kings, or Kurii. Over the past weeks, for several reasons, it had come to seem more and more likely to me that it was not the Priest-Kings who had any special dealings with, or interest in, Brundisium. I was then forced to the conclusion that it must be the Kurii who were active in Brundisium, that their subversions must be in effect in that city as once in Corcyrus. Now, however, I found myself forced to abandon what had hitherto seemed a coercive hypothesis.
There was a wild scream of a charging sleen below and its sudden, frightened squeal, and I saw it flung, half bitten apart, to the side. The two other sleen charged, too, fastening themselves like eels on the chained creature. The crowd roared. I saw blood in torrents run down the legs and arms of the attacked creature. It rolled in the scattered, bloody sand, twisting and fighting, the sleen hanging to it. I heard the chain, the screams of the crowd, the howls of the beasts.
"Pretty! Pretty! Bet! Bet!" cried the creature next to me, clinging to the bars.
Kurii, it now seemed clear to me, no more than Priest-Kings, held any special privileges of influence or power in Brundisium.
The attacked creature seized the sleen clinging to its leg and, from behind, with one paw, broke its neck. It then tore the other sleen from its arm and thrust its jaws open and thrust its great clawed paw deep into the creature's throat, down through its throat, forcing its way into its body, clawing and grasping and tore forth, up through the creature's own mouth, part of its lungs. It then flung the creature down at its fee, threw back its head, its fangs and tongue bright with fresh blood, and howled its defiance to the hot noonday sun, to the towers of Brundisium, and the crowd.
"Three times!" cried the creature clinging to the bars, beside me, "three times! It lives again!"
This was the third time, apparently, the creature had survived the pit.
"Bet! Bet! Pay me! Pay me!" cried the creature near me, clinging to the bars.
I saw soldiers now, warily, with leveled crossbows, and with spears, approaching the creature. They threw ropes upon it. It now seemed scarcely to notice them. Its head was down. It was feeding on the bodies of one of the sleen before it.
No, it did not seem likely to me that Kurii were in power in Brundisium.
The creature beside me released the bars, slipping down to the table, from the surface of which it leaped to the floor. It then went back to its straw in the corner, poking about in it for scraps of food.
I stayed at the window for a time, until, half led, half dragged, prodded, the creature below was conducted form the pit. It left, snarling, but apparently docile. It still dragged part of one of sleen behind it.
No, it seemed clear now that Kurii were not in power in Brundisium.
The creature now leaving the pit, bloodied, furrowing the sand behind it, dragging part of a sleen, was a Kur.
I found this, in its way, of course, quite disconcerting. An entire architecture of explanatory hypotheses, of judicious speculations, had collapsed. It seemed now that neither Priest-Kings nor Kurii had any special connection with Brundisium. What then could be the explanation for the attempt on my life in Port Kar, and for the obvious interest of certain parties in Brundisium in me? What, if anything, could be my importance to them? What, too, was the meaning of the messages I had intercepted? They had apparently been intended for certain parties in Ar. I understood nothing. I did not know what to think. One thing, of course, was quite clear. I was in a cell in Brundisium, at the disposition of my captors.
I withdrew from the window, and leaped down to the floor. I looked back again at the high window; then I put the table back in the center of the cell. I put it between two benches. IN such a cell, a humane one as Gorean cells went, the table and benches served a practical purpose. They helped to keep food out of the reach of urts, and, at night, could be used for sleeping.
"Back against the wall, on your knees!" said a voice.
The representative of the urt people and I complied. It was time to be fed.
The first day in this captivity I had lurked near the bars, hoping to be able to get my hands on the jailer. I had, in consequence of this, not been fed that day. I obeyed promptly enough the next day. I wanted the food. The evening of my second day in this captivity, which was the fourth following my capture, the representative of the urt people had been thrust in with me. I did not much welcome his company. He was, however, familiar with the routines of the prison.
The jailer looked into the cell. "The table has been moved," he said. He could tell this, I assumed, from the markings in the dust on the floor. It had not occurred to me that there might be any objection to this. If I had thought there would have been, I would pave posted the representative of the urt people near the bars and, presumably warned by him in time of any approach on the part of a jailer, replaced the table carefully in its original position. I hoped this new offense, if offense it was, would not result in the withholding of food. I wanted it, what there was of it.