I lay then at the foot of the wall.
I could scarcely move. I was alive!
The sun had now sunk behind the mountains. Some lamps were brought, and set in mounts on the wall, and elsewhere about the terrace. Bodies were being removed. Those of the city, and those of the intruders, I supposed, would receive quite different dispositions. Artisans, in the light of lamps and torches, began to repair the tarnwire. In the morning, I supposed, slaves would clean the terrace.
It seemed very quiet now.
I realized that the bars had stopped sounding.
Dorna still lay quite near me.
It was well after darkness when I heard the sound of accouterments, and the light of a torch fell upon the wall. I struggled to my knees and put my head down. There must be free men present.
I saw a heavy, bootlike sandal, the sort worn by warriors, which can sustain long marches over stony soils, which provides protection from the slash of course grasses and strike of leech plants, nudge Dorna.
She whimpered.
Again the bootlike sandal moved against Dorna’s body, prodding it.
“Slave girl,” said a voice.
“Master?’ whimpered Dorna, questioningly. As she had said the word ‘Master’ it had not been simply as a customary from of deferential address, suitable for use in the addressing any free man by a female slave, but in it, rather, it seemed that she had, to her relief, recognized, or thought she had recognized, the voice of her won master. And I, too, was sure I recognized the voice. He was not looking at me, but at Dorna, at his feet. I lifted my head a little and then put it down, again, quickly. Yes, it was he, the officer! I did not think he recognized me. But how well I recalled him! In what detail and perfection he had had me! I had served his supper. I had danced before him, as a slave. I had been well put to his uses. He had slept me, later, nude, on the floor beside his couch. Toward morning he had once again drawn me to him and used me once more to slake his lusts. How I had leaped to his touch, how I had clung to him, how I had held him and kissed him, and licked him, and begged him, gratefully, sobbing, not to stop.
“Yes,” he said.
He, being a total man, had made me a total woman. He, being a total master, had made me a total slave.
“Have they gone?” whispered Dorna, frightened.
“It is over now,” he said.
I thought she sobbed, in relief.
He then kicked her, gently, with the toe of the bootlike sandal.
“Oh!” she said, wincing.
“Should you not be kneeling?” he asked. Quickly she knelt before him.
He regarded her.
She spread her knees.
“Master,” she begged, frightened.
“Yes?” he said.
“Were they of Tharna?” she begged.
“They wore no insignia,” he said. “There was nothing to identify them officially.”
“Were they of Tharna?” she begged.
“No,” he said. “They were not of Tharna.”
She looked up at him.
“They had not come for you,” he said.
“And they were not his men?”
“No,” he said.
I was not certain that I understood her allusion. I did recall she had had a former master, one she much feared.
She regarded him, anxiously.
“They had not come for you,” he said.
“But what was their purpose here?” she asked.
“It lay elsewhere,” he said. ‘It lay in the tunnels, in the pits, in the depths. That is where the last of them died, some forty of them. They fought like crazed men. Few could stand against them. Every trap, every secret device, was sprung upon them. They sought alternate routes. In the corridors they met the war sleen and the hunting sleen of the pits. Tharlarion, even, and worse, were permitted into the tunnels. Perhaps a hundred guards died.
“Master is bloodied,” said Dorna.
“The blood is not my own,” he said.
Indeed, he seemed there at night, by the wall, in the torchlight, and the light of the small lamps, a very terrible figure. He was tall and broad-shouldered. Behind him there was a shield bearer. Over his left shoulder hung the scabbard of a sword, the hilt of the weapon visible within it. In his left hand he cradled a helmet. It would muchly enclose the head. On it, mounted over the crown, from front to back, was a crest of sleen hair. The opening in the helmet was something like a “Y” in shape. There was blood on the helmet. Blood, too, was on his thighs. I had seen him before not as a warrior. I had seen him in robes on the height of a tower, on a great chair, as might have been some ruler, some dispenser of justice, and I had seen him in the softness of lounging robes, in his own compartments. In his size, his strength, his intelligence, his power, he had been fearsome enough, even then. But I had not seen him until now in the garb of war, in the leather of the warrior, the sword at his shoulder, his helmet in hand. I did not want to look at him now. I was afraid. And I now understood, better than before, how a man might come to power on this world, and the sort of men that might rise to sit upon the chairs of state.
“The intruders wore no insignia,” he said, “but they were of Ar.”
“Master?” asked Dorna.
“There is no mistaking the accents,” he said. “I know them well.”
Dorna shuddered, it seemed, in relief.
“And many,” he said, “in receiving their death strokes, cried out ‘Glory to Ar!’”
Dorna was silent.
“It is strange that they were here,” he said, musingly. “They could not have been authorized. They must have betrayed oaths.”
“I do not understand,” said Dorna.
“It does not matter,” he said.
“There is the matter of slaves, and of free women, Captain,” said one of the men with the officer.
“Let the slaves return to their masters,” he said.