“May I have the first shot?” inquired one of the black-tunicked men.
“Granted,” said the lieutenant.
“When the command ‘Down!’ is heard,” said a man to us, “you will fling yourselves to your belly instantly. When the command ‘Up!’ is heard, you will stand, instantly, arranging yourselves as you are now.”
“Yes, Master,” we said.
There is a common command, familiar to all female slaves, “Belly,” which brings us instantly to our bellies before he who commands us. This particular command expression, however, was not used in this context. I speculate that this was because the context of the two commands, and certainly their connotations, was so different. It is one thing, for example, to aesthetically and beautifully signify submission by bellying, perhaps on the furs at the foot of the couch, we being permitted upon them, and quite another to fling oneself down so that quarrels may be suddenly fired from behind one. Too, normally in the “belly command” one orients oneself toward he who commands, not away from him.
Gito hung back.
The lieutenant took him by the scruff of the neck and threw him some feet down the passageway, before us.
“Proceed,” he said.
Gito hurried a few feet down the passageway. The blood was now viscous in places, half dried. In some places, where he had stepped, it was pulled up, like syrup, clinging to his sandals, exposing the floor of the passageway.
Gito turned about, and looked back.
He went a few feet further down the passageway.
He turned back, again.
“This way,” he said. Then he said, “Let me behind the wall!”
“You are in no danger,” said the lieutenant. “You are his friend.”
Gito moaned, and, looking over his shoulder frequently, reassuring himself of our continued presence, made his way down the passageway, staying close to the wall.
“We will pin him against the gate,” said the man who had requested the first opportunity for fire.
Suddenly, from down the passageway, we saw, blazing in the reflected light of a lamp, two eyes.
“Sleen!” cried a man, alarmed.
We screamed, and tried to draw back, but were held in place.
“No,” said the pit master. “It is an urt.”
It was crouched down, before us.
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.