It was large, but not large for those I had seen in the pits. It probably weighed no more than twenty or thirty pounds. Most species of urts are small, weighing less than a pound. Some are tinier than mice.
Gito had fled back. He now hid behind us.
“What is it doing in the passage?” asked the lieutenant.
“Someone must have left the panels open,” said the pit master.
“Look,” said a man. “There is another behind it.”
“There seems much carelessness in the management of the pits,” said the lieutenant.
“You have had us dismiss the guards,” said the pit master.
“The prisoner must have opened the panels,” said a man.
“But the beasts are here, beyond the gate,” said a man.
“The gate, it seems, was not locked,” said the pit master.
“that would seem an unfortunate oversight,” said the lieutenant.
“Yes,” said the pit master, “it would seem so.”
“Doubtless it was lifted by the prisoner,” said a man.
“Doubtless,” said another.
“Will the urt charge?” asked the lieutenant.
“I do not know,” said the pit master. “I would not approach it too closely.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Quite.”
“Kill it,” said the lieutenant.
“Perhaps your colleague, Gito, can turn it,” suggested the pit master.
“No, no!” said Gito.
But the urt did turn then, of its own accord, and scampered back down the passageway. The other, which had been behind it, hesitated for a moment, and then followed it.
“Advance,” said the lieutenant.
I felt the butt of a crossbow prod me.
We continued down the passageway. We came, in a moment, to a turning.
“The lamps are out,” said a man.
“He must be ahead,” said a man.
“He must be trapped,” said another.
“Take lamps from the passage,” said the lieutenant.
Two of the men went back and fetched the nearest lamps.
“Will you truly walk down this passage, carrying light?” asked the officer of Treve.
“Free slaves, that they may do so,” said one of the black-tunicked men.
“They are the shield,” said a man.
“You,” said the lieutenant to the officer of Treve, “will do so.”
“I think not,” he said.
“Prepare then to die,” said the lieutenant, angrily.
“The pit guard will be reporting in soon,” said the pit master.
“You will dismiss them, as before,” said the lieutenant.
“They may be looking for us now. I doubt that they would be pleased to learn that you had slain a captain of Treve. Too, perhaps your men would like to leave the depths alive.”
The black-tunicked men exchanged glances.
“You will dismiss them,” said the lieutenant.
“That is difficult to do until they have reported,” said the pit master.
But at that moment we heard, from down the passage, in the darkness, a hideous, but unmistakable human cry, which was followed, almost instantly, by a violent squealing of urts.
“Urts!” cried a man.
“They have him!” cried another.
“Our work is done for us!” cried another elatedly.
The lieutenant, followed by his sex men, thrust about us, and between us, pushing us to the side, lifting the rope on our necks. Gito remained behind us. The officer of Treve and the pit master followed the black-tunicked men in their rush forward. “Hurry!”
said Fina, dragging her group forward. Ours, perhaps fearing to be separated in this place, we helpless, urts about, hurried behind. I could see the two lamps flickering down the passage. Also, in a moment, I could see a mound of twisting, squealing urts, clambering over and about something, biting at it. Some scampered about the edge of the group, as though seeking some avenue of approach, some entrance into that heap of squirming, frenzied animals, some ingress into that broiling tumult of glistening fur and slashing fangs, that they, too, might feast. The peasant, I assumed, from the horrifying cry I had heard, must be beneath that terrible living hill of beasts. Behind them I could see the bars of the gate. The gate was down. The darkness of the walk ringing the urt pool was behind. I also became aware, vaguely now, of a woman’s screaming. That must be the Lady Ilene, whom I had met in the chamber of the commercial praetor, kept now, I knew, pending the arrival of her ransom, in the tiny cage suspended over the urt pool, that cage which had been for some time the residence of the Lady Constanzia, that cage which could be opened at the tug of a cord.
The lieutenant, the six men, two with lamps, stood back from the pile of frenzied urts. The fur of some of them was bloodied, they apparently having been, crowding in and about, in the haste and excitement of the feeding, bitten by their fellows. “Pull them off,”said the lieutenant, to one of the men who had not attacked the sleen.
The woman was screaming, from within, over the urt pool.
The man put aside his bow and reached into the pile of animals, seizing one after another and throwing it to the side. I thought this took great courage. To be sure the animals seemed on the whole hardly aware of him. Some did twist about to tear at him, as might have fighting dogs. As soon as he would fing one to the side it would turn about and try to thrust its snout back into the pack.
The two men with lamps lifted them higher.
The smell of blood was strong in the passageway. The passageway, too, was loud with the squealing of the beasts. From within, over the urt pool, we could still hear the screaming of the woman.
“It is a dead urt!” said a man, suddenly.
“We heard a cry,” said another. “It was human.”
The fellow who had been pulling the urts aside now stood back. His hands and forearms were covered with blood, but much of it, I am sure, was from the fur and jaws of the urts. He had been bitten at least twice. His left sleeve was in shreds. The urts now dragged the body of the dead urt, now half eaten, its bones about, to the wall, where they continued their feeding.
“He must have been attacked on the other side of the gate,” said a man.
One of the black-tunicked fellows went to the bars of the gate peering though, into the darkness. “Bring a lamp,” he said.
“How did the urt die?” asked a man.
Urts seldom attack their own kind unless their fellow behaves in an erratic fashion, as it might if injured or ill.
“What difference does it make?” asked a man.
“What do you see?’ asked the lieutenant of the fellow by the bars. He now seemed to be gripping them with great tightness. Indeed, he seemed to have pulled himself closely to them, even pressing himself against them. Too, oddly, he seemed taller now, as though he might have stood on his toes.
“What do you see?” asked the lieutenant, again.
“There is a quarrel in the urt!” said a man, suddenly, the beasts, in their feeding, moving about.
“Extinguish the lamps!” cried the lieutenant.
I heard the heavy, vibratory snap of the cable, but did not see the quarrel. It must have been fired from only a foot or so behind the bars of the gate. I did see the lamp move strangely in the hand of the fellow who held it, he who had been summoned to the bars. The other lamp, in the hand of the other fellow, had been dashed from his hand by the lieutenant. “Fire though the gate!” cried the lieutenant, wildly. I heard three bows fire, one after the other. Then I heard a fourth. Urts still squealed and stirred to the side.
“Draw back, reload!” said the lieutenant.
Men must trust past us. Indeed, we fell, or my “cord” did. I was bruised by a weapon as someone went past us.
“Get the slaves across the passage,” said the lieutenant. “Block it!”
The girl next to me cried out with pain. I think she had been grasped by the hair and pulled to her feet. Certainly the cord on my neck, rasping, jerked upward. I cried out in misery. I crouched. The cord was still taut. I must rise. I was subject to the cord. I must be compliant. I scrambled to my feet, in misery, in the crowded darkness, obedient to the imperative of my constraint. The rest of the “cord” rose, too. I then heard another girl cry out with pain, perhaps Fina, kicked, and then that “cord,” too, to the side of us, to our right, was on its feet.