“They are brave men,” said the officer of Treve.
Tensius and Abnik swam to the edge of the pool, to our right.
They looked back.
The lieutenant pointed to the place where the pit master had indicated lay the underwater entrance to the nest.
I saw Tensius first submerge. He was followed, in a moment, by Abnik.
“Look!” said the pit master.
One of the urts, an arm in its jaws, was swimming back toward the nest.
“Kill it!” urged the pit master.
“It takes time to reload,” said the lieutenant.
“It may just brush past them,” said the officer of Treve. “It has its meat.”
“Yes,” said the lieutenant, surveying the surface of the water, “that is what it will do.”
“Not if there are young in the nest,” said the pit master.
“Are there young in the nest?” asked the officer of Treve.
“Yes,” said the pit master.
“It takes time to reload,” said the lieutenant.
“It is too late now,” said the officer of Treve.
The urt, too, had submerged.
“Space the light about the pool,” said the lieutenant, with a gesture of his arm.
The slaves spaced themselves then more about the pool. I remained with Fecha a little to the left of the entrance, as one would enter the area of the pool. The lieutenant was a few feet to our right. The pit master was behind him, holding aloft his torch. The officer of Treve was nearby. Gito was not in the pool area, but back in the passage. I had glimpsed him. He was crouched down, his back to the wall of the passage, looking toward the portal.
We waited, it seemed for a long time.
“Should your men not have returned by now?” asked the officer of Treve.
The lieutenant did not respond. He continued to survey the flickering surface of the pool.
There was a sound of chain as the cage swung a little. It was a few yards away, above us. It had been moved by the weight of the bound, gagged free woman, dangling on the rope over the pool.
She looked at me.
I was suddenly, intensely, ashamed, aware of my nudity. How such as she must scorn such as I! In what contempt must she hold me! How she must despise me! But I was not such as she! I was a slave! I was collared! I must be as men would have me! If they saw fit to deny me clothing then I would not have clothing! If they ordered me to dance, I must dance. If they wished me to serve, I must serve! I was not such as she! But then I, for anything, would not have wished to be such as she! I had learned my womanhood! I would never, never surrender it, not now that I had tasted it, not for all the garbage and politics in the world. I had learned it at the hands of strong men, their precious gift to me, an inestimable treasure, men to whom I would be forever grateful. I had now found myself, and accepted myself, and loved myself! I was not a man, or a kind of man. I was a woman, something radically different and wonderful. I pitied men not being women! But then, suddenly, even though I knew her to be free, I did not sense contempt or scorn in her. It was strange. I quickly looked away. It is seldom wise for a female slave to look directly into the eyes of a free woman. But then I recalled that she had been in the cage. There, suspended in the darkness, helpless, alone, perhaps she had had time to think, to ask herself what she was, and wanted to be, and might be, and where she herself might be found.
“Surely your men should have returned by now,” said the officer of Treve.
“It is not clear what has occurred,” said the lieutenant.
The urts continued to feed, turning the two bodies about in the water.
I saw another swimming toward the nest, a shred of muscle trailing behind it.
“By now,” speculated the officer of Treve, “it seems he should have been taken, or the body found.”
“The two of you,” said the lieutenant, not taking his eyes from the water, “have been insufficiently cooperative. Your actions, you may be assured, will be reported to the administration.”
The pit master continued to hold his torch aloft, as he had, rather behind the lieutenant.
“They must have found him, they must have killed him, by now,” said the lieutenant.
“Undoubtedly,” said the officer of Treve.
“Perhaps they have all died in the nest,” said the pit master.
“He may have drowned.” Said the lieutenant.
“Possibly,” said the pit master.
“Where is he?” cried the lieutenant.
“Somewhere, one supposes,” said the officer of Treve.
“Masters,” cried Gito, from back in the passage, “let us go to the surface!”
“Go!” said the lieutenant, not taking his eyes from the pool.
“I do not know the way!” cried Gito.
“Where is he?” asked the lieutenant. He received no response.
“He must have drowned,” said the lieutenant. He received no response.
“Where are my men?” asked the lieutenant.
“I would not know,” said the pit master.
“They are in the nest,” said the lieutenant, “waiting for the way to clear of urts.”
“Perhaps,” said the officer of Treve.
“They are clever fellows,” said the lieutenant.
“Doubtless,” said the pit master.
“Picked men.”
“I do not doubt it,” said the pit master.
It was an elite squad, I gathered, which had come to Treve. To someone, it seemed, their mission must have been of great moment.
“They have with them the body, or the head, of the prisoner,” said the lieutenant.
“Possibly,” said the officer of Treve.
“They will return any moment,” said the lieutenant, determinedly.
“Possibly,” said the officer of Treve.
“There is something across the way,” said the pit master. He gestured toward the opposite wall, several yards from the nest entrance. There, something humped, like a cloth filled with air, had come to the surface.
“Where?”
“There.”
“What is it? A dead urt?”
“It is a body,” said the pit master.
“Excellent!” said the lieutenant. “It has come to the surface!”
An urt swam to the object and began to bite at it. Once it pulled it beneath the surface. It then emerged, again, closer to us. Another urt then swam toward it.
“It is Tensius,” said the lieutenant.
The eyes were still open, staring upward. One could see the dagger on the forehead. When the body was pulled back, again, one could see that the left leg was gone, and the left hand.
“Urts,” said the lieutenant.
I did not know if Tensius had reached the nest or not. I supposed that he might have, as we had not detected a disturbance in the water near the entrance to the nest. But if he had been killed in the nest, why had the urts not fed on him there?
When I looked away from the water I saw that the lieutenant’s attention was returned, intently, to the pool. Indeed, he held his bow more at the ready than before.
It was indeed an elite that had come to Treve.
Had the prisoner died in the pool it seemed his body would have surfaced before that of Tensius.
But the body of Tensius, it seemed, had not served as a diversion.
It was merely meat, floating in the water, being eaten.
The moments taken for its identification, the lapse of attention to the tunnel entrance occasioned by its appearance, had been without cost.
The lieutenant lowered his bow.
One could not climb from the pool to the walkway without a rope, or some such device, the tunnels to the walkway having been sealed.
“The prisoner,” said the officer of Treve, “may have died in the nest. Too, he may have been trapped beneath the water, wedged under an outcropping, or between rocks.”
The latter hypothesis was an interesting one, as water urts sometimes secure prey under the water, saving it for later, rather as certain predatory beasts will bury a kill, or place it in a tree, to be finished later. Some birds impale insects on thorns, for a similar purpose.