One of the girls sprang to her feet and ran toward the door, but she was caught there, and held for a moment, and then flung back, forcibly, cruelly, to the stones and straw.
She lay there, her wrists bound tightly behind her back with simple, common cord, sobbing.
And if she were to run, where would she go, nude and bound, in the depths? Would she not be stopped by the first gate? There would be no escape for her, neither here nor elsewhere, no more than for us. We were collared. We were branded. We were slave girls.
We feared, being where we were, seeing what we had seen. We feared the black tunicked men. We feared that we might be disposed of. Perhaps it would be decided that we had seen too much. Yet we understood, surely, little, if anything, of what we had seen. How absurd, if for so little, not even comprehended, our throats might be cut! No wonder we were so miserable, so frightened!
The peasant stood there now like a beast at bay. From the shackles on his left and right angles there hung, their links on the stone, broken chains. Another chain dangled from the ring on the collar on his neck. A link had snapped, but the plate behind him on the wall, too, was half pulled out from the stone. His wrists were still shackled. He did not know that there was an opened link on the chain that held his right wrist. It might have been simplyslipped from its joining link. But he did not know this. And the chain on his left wrist still went back to the metal plate, pulled out, though it was, an inch or so from the wall. It seemed the bolt behind the stone had drawn tight against the stone and I could not move further, not without pulling the very stone itself from the wall.
“Bowmen,” said the leader of the strangers. The two bowmen advanced. Then they stopped, and set, left feet forward, right feet back, crosswise, braced. The peasant hurled himself again against the chains which held him back. The bowmen were no more than a yard from the peasant. The only light in the cell was from the two lanterns, and the tiny lamps. There were several men about. We knelt back, and to the side. Again the peasant, bellowing, threw himself against the chains. We shrank back, frightened. “he is strong,” said a man. Again the peasant hurled himself against the chains. “Kill him,” cried Gito. “Kill him, quickly!” “He is chained,” the leader of the strangers reminded Gito. “Kill him!” urged Gito. “Prepare to fire,” said the leader of the strangers. The bows were lifted. Again the peasant threw himself against the chains. Save for the metal band, the bow, or spring, mounted crosswise, now drawn, and the cable, arched back, the devices, with their triggers and stocks, were not unlike stubby rifles. They were small enough to be concealed beneath a cloak. “Kill him!” cried Gito. Again the peasant threw himself against the chains. I saw the one link bend more. We heard part of the stone scrape outward in the wall. “Kill him,” cried Gito. “Kill him, quickly!” “No!” cried the pit master. Again the peasant threw himself against the chains. There was a sound of tortured metal, a scraping of stone. The entire block of stone in which the plate and ring was fixed on the peasants left, our right, had inched out. “Kill him, kill him!” screamed Gito.
“Take aim,” said the leader of the strangers quietly.
“No!” cried the pit master.
The two bowmen trained their weapons on the heart of the peasant.
The officer of Treve stood quietly, angrily, to the side, restrained by two men. His blade, his fingers pried from the hilt, one by one, was at his feet. That mound of a human being which was the pit master struggled. Six men clung to him. Fina was sobbing.
The leader of the strangers, stood to one side. He and the lieutenant, now that the pit master was restrained, had sheathed their blades.
“Do not kill him!” said the pit master, moving like a part of the earth beneath those who clung to him.
“Kill him! Kill him quickly!” screamed Gito, from the back.
Again the peasant threw his weight against the chains. There was another sound of metal and rock.
The leader of the strangers smiled. He lifted his hand.
“No!” cried the pit master.
The two bowmen tensed, their fingers on the triggers, their quarrels aligned to the heart of the peasant.
I saw the chains straighten, the rings straighten; the plate on our right, the peasant’s left, out from the stone, and the very stone in which it was fastened, too, I saw, it still fastened to its ring and wall, and the other chain, too, I saw, it still fastened to its ring and plate, these tight on the stone, but there, too, the stone itself, the heavy block of stone in which the bolts of the plate were set, was, like the other, with a scraping and a powder of mortar, a rumbling grating, another granular inch or more emergent from the wall.
Again the peasant lunged against his chains, and there was a squeal of metal and there was, as though reluctant, crying out, protesting, another tiny yielding, a grating of stone, another tiny movement, another tiny fearful slippage, of a ponderous block of stone.
“Do not kill him!” screamed the pit master.
“Shoot!” cried Gito. “Shoot!”
the hand of the leader of the strangers raised just a little, preparatory presumably to its sharp descent, doubtless to be consequent upon the issuance of a word of command.
He smiled.
The chains were tight, straight from the wall. The peasant seemed like a crazed animal, gigantic, leaning forward, straining, bulging with muscle and hate.
“Glory to the black caste,” said the leader of the strangers.
“Glory to the black caste!” said the black-tunicked men.
The hand of the leader of the black-tunicked men lifted a bit more. His lips parted, to utter the signal that would unleash the quarrels.
“Aargh!” cried one of the bowmen reeling back, his face a mass of blood within the helmet, the quarrel slashing into the wall to the right of the prisoner, gouging the wall, showering sparks and the other, too, was buffeted to the side by his fellow, his own quarrel spitting, too, to the side, to the peasant’s right, striking the wall, bursting stone from it like a hammer, flashing sparks in the cell, then turning end over end, sideways, eccentrically, to our left. The block of stone, broken from the wall, torn out of it, still fixed to the plate and bolts, and chain, had burst forth, showering mortar in the room. As it had left the wall it had, with all the violence of the forces imposed upon it, whipped to the peasant’s right, striking the nearest bowman on the side of the head. It had split the helmet and, in the instant before it had split, the metal had been flattened, the skull crushed within. The lights were wild in the cell, the two lanterns being jerked back by those who held them, the light of the tiny lamps obscured by moving bodies. Wild shadows moved about.
“Blades!” I heard. “Lanterns up!”
A dozen blades must have left sheaths.
We screamed. We shrank back. We huddled together, back against the wall.
We then saw, in the light of the swinging lanterns, in the light of the small lamps, the men drawn back, the peasant, standing where he had been, but now bent over, his eyes wild, like something that had tasted blood, a long-forgotten taste, but one which induced a wild intoxication. He was still held to the wall by the right wrist. I doubted that chain cold hold him longer now. He jerked back the stone on the chain still clinging to his left wrist. Men leaped back, not to be caught in the trajectory of that jagged, ponderous weight. The one bowman had crawled to the side. “Cut him down!” said the leader of the black-tunicked men. A man advanced, but leaped back as the block of stone on its chain whirled again through the air. It might have been a meteor on a chain. The peasant gave another great cry and with his right arm he lunged against the chain that still held him. The weakened link, that which could have been slipped earlier, it having been opened, but that not known to him, now parted so that the chain was broken.