Sarkissian halted and turned his head about, looking for someone. Out on the lawn bands of girls were exercising, and the people who jostled us as we stood were nearly all young girls like myself. Each group on the lawn was at a different exercise and each group was differently clad. Some, running, wore tight vests not reaching to their waists; some, being drilled in ranks, wore little white shirts tied with coloured girdles; others, naked, were wrestling in pairs; those in another group, throwing the javelin, wore just a slight harness of narrow white straps. In one place was a team of dancers, swaying and mingling in a mazy figure to a tune played by three little brown boys who pranced up and down piping before them; the dancers' sun−tanned torsos naked and gleaming above gauzy white skirts that swirled round them like foam among rocks. In another place was a group that glinted all bronze and silver: there, pairs of girls were fencing with short, broad swords and round shields on their arms; the bronze was the colour of their haunches and long thighs and the silver, a flashing piece of armour moulded like their own bodies to fit breast and back and ending in a curve at their waists. On their heads were shining, plumed helmets with visors to protect their faces. Plumes also tossed far away on the other side of the lawn where, against a dark−green wood, I saw the flash of turning spokes as the charioteers went back and forth, training their teams.
All were throwing themselves into their exercises with astonishing vigour and speed. None paused for an instant. The dancers wove in and out and the drilling teams shot out their limbs and bent and stretched as if their lives depended on it, and the fencers leapt back and forth and lunged and parried and the wrestlers struggled and writhed as if they dared not for a second stop. And all the time they were being urged on to more and more violent exertions by their instructors. These were all brown, prick−eared little fellows like those I had already seen: impish creatures, no taller than Nuaman, but broad−chested, muscular, active and supple as cats. They wore broad white leather belts round their waists and carried short canes in their hands. Like little demons they darted everywhere, gesticulating, shrilling orders, cutting with their canes, stinging the athletes who dwarfed them into ever fiercer activity.
The colonnade itself was crowded as groups kept coming in panting from the field while others, hastily tying girdles or putting their harness straight, hurried out to take their places. Though I was dressed so differently from any girl there no one took any notice of me. There were so many of them and everything was going at such a speed that it was impossible to take note of all the varieties of costume and accoutrements or to follow all the different games and exercises, some of them strange and complicated, that were going on. It was an assembly of amazing grace and trained young strength; bodies freed for untrammelled action, displaying their taut beauty with confidence. On so much loveliness of form the light or shining dress some wore was a final touch of bravery, like blossom on a graceful tree. I was lost in envy and admiration and felt my will being overcome by an impulse, like that which sets the feet and body moving when dance music begins, to race out with one of those teams and fling my body fiercely into play, to strain and strive to my gasping utmost of physical effort under the wild urgence of one of those goblin commanders—those compact, brown bounding imps whose darting, shrilling fury kept all in fervid motion. But Sarkissian tugged at me.
Dodging in and out of the crowd in the colonnade were a few smaller girls who were taking no part in the exercise. They were slightly−built little things with dark hair and large, dark eyes, whereas most of the athletes were fair. These little girls, who were almost as brown as the boys themselves, were dressed in gaily−coloured little trunks and scarlet, orange or bright blue jerkins. They appeared to be acting as messengers or pages, running after the instructors. Sarkissian called to one of them. She came weaving her way through the people, and I saw that it was Marvan. Sarkissian threw the end of the leash by which he led me to her and left me and her there, waiting in the colonnade. Marvan drew me to the side of the lawn and looked up at me, laughing with friendly impudence.
“This is our school,” she said. “It was very hard for us to behave properly when we were at yours.” She wriggled and pulled a face. “Sometimes we didn't,” she said.
The rim of the sun was now blazing above the Eastern hill and out there on the grass dresses and accoutrements were brilliant against the green. I could feel the promise of heat in the day. The group nearest to us, a team of sword−players, finished their exercise and came crowding into the colonnade, hot and breathless, with the perspiration glistening on all the bare skin their armour left exposed. Beneath the rims of their helmets wisps of hair stuck to their wet brows; their eyes danced and their cheeks glowed. Laughing, talking at the tops of their voices all at once, clanging their embossed shields, waving their plumes, jostling, pushing, slapping at each other with their blunt, wide swords, they blocked the colonnade all round us until their spry little instructor, skipping behind, drove them on in a compact knot with the last ones squealing and scrambling and trying to hold their shields behind them.
While I was still staring after them Marvan pulled me away. Sarkissian was beckoning to us from the court. I was taken to the farther side where a pair of high, bronze−studded doors opened upon the chariot house: an immense, well−lit place with a gallery running round the walls and a flight of stairs leading down just inside the doors. Here, pages and grooms were bustling about manoeuvring the graceful light vehicles, harnessing their teams of two, four or six girls or unyoking those who came perspiring in from the course. Up and down among them went the charioteers with their short−handled whips under their arms, bare except for little shiny cloaks flung back from their shoulders and gleaming white waist−belts bisecting their trim brown bodies. In front of them all, at the foot of the stairs leading up to the gallery, my own chariot had been wheeled out before a group of admiring onlookers. I recognised it by its shape and elegance. It was finished now; its polished metal and red and white leather−work were gleaming new and there was ornamental work in gold on its curving guard−rail. Each side of the bow−shaped bar at the end of its slender pole was furnished now with a pair of manacles of flexible metal. They had already brought out Katia. She was stripped, but wearing light, strong shoes, and her fair hair was confined in a golden net. Quickly, while she stood obediently in her place, the little men clasped the manacles round her wrists; her hands grasped the bar and they began to buckle round the upper part of her body the harness of white leather ornamented with gold which would hold her close yoked to the bar. Sarkissian appeared carrying another set of harness and gave me an impatient nod. Marvan undid the leash by which she held me and twitched my jersey.
I made no move. Then someone came running down the stairs and a well−known voice cried cheerfully: “All ready?”
On the third step stood Nuaman, belted and cloaked like the other charioteers, except that round his head he wore a gold band in the front of which burned a great gem. Behind him, in an orange doublet, Ianthe peeped over his shoulder and grinned at me. Nuaman saw me and raised his brows. Then he laughed aloud.
“Come on! This is yours!” he cried.
He flung up his right arm and the movement made the thin black lash of the whip looped to his wrist writhe suddenly down the steps towards me. Still I did not move. Nuaman gazed at me, and before I dropped my eyes I saw his expression begin to change. The whole court, the whole school, had suddenly fallen silent; everyone seemed to lean a little towards me. Nuaman's arm drew back. I dared not look at his face, but I saw the lash wriggle back up the steps. Then, in the dead silence there came a rapid, loud grinding of iron−rimmed wheels on gravel and the plunging and trampling of a horse's hooves. I whirled round towards the great gates from which the noise had come and shouted with all the strength of my lungs, “Dr Ravelin!”