“Hold,” said the man behind us.
We stopped.
He looked about himself.
The first man, with the two slaves, who had gone to the left, was now well ahead of us, and had reached the first of the three opposite gates which was accessible from our side of the pool.
He stood to one side, against the wall, back from the gate. He did not care to try it. Given its weight, it was unlikely that the slaves could have raised it, even if it had been unlatched.
“Stand before the gate,” he said to the slaves.
The slaves did as they were told.
“What do you see?” asked the man.
“Nothing, Master,” said Tira, peering into the corridor beyond.
The man carefully confirmed this, looking about the edge of the wall.
He then, the light behind him, put aside his bow and, crouching down, struggled to lift the gate.
He stood up, wiping his hands on his tunic, recovering his bow.
“It is locked?” called the lieutenant.
“Yes,” said the man.
“Then it is the center gate which is unlocked!” said the lieutenant. “Hurry!” he urged the fellow to the slaves before him.
:Move, move!” said that fellow to the slaves before him.
The two parties, the first group from the left, the black-tunicked man with two slaves, and the two groups from the right, the one man and the lieutenant, with the slaves at their disposal, now converged at the opposite gate, the center gate of the three gates across from that through which we had entered, one party to its left, the other, the larger party, to its right. Neither party wished to simply present itself before the opening.
Gito had remained behind. He had not even entered the pool area.
The other fellow, who had been first in our advance, guarded the portal through which we had entered.
I looked up, again, at the cage, hanging there in the shadows, near the ceiling. We had, earlier, heard the free woman screaming. We had heard nothing from her, however, since our entry into the pool area. I was sure she was still in the cage. I thought I could see her small form within it. To be sure, this was difficult to determine in the shadows. I thought that perhaps she was frightened. I thought that perhaps she might by now have developed some sensitivity to the possible indiscretion of unsolicited speech. In the cage women, as in chains and kennels, tend to become sensitive to many things, in particular, that they are females.
“Titus!” called the lieutenant.
“Move,” said the man behind us. We hurried then about the pool, he following.
“Lift the gate,” said the lieutenant to the pit master.
“It is locked,” the pit master said.
“That is absurd,” said the lieutenant.
“It is locked,” said the pit master, again.
“Illuminate the passage,” said the lieutenant, thrusting Fina and her cord mate before the gate.
The pit master, already before the gate, did not object.
“Look,” said the lieutenant, angrily, to the man nearest him.
The fellow looked, carefully.
“The passage seems to be empty,” he said, “as far as the light carries.”
“Lift the gate,” said the lieutenant.
The man put down his bow and, with great caution, crouching down, strove to raise the gate.
“It is locked,” he averred, confirming the word of the pit master, who stood by, his torch lifted.
“I do not understand,” said the fellow to the left of the gate, Titus, he whom Fecha and I had preceded.
“He could not have passed us,” said the fellow at the gate, who recovered his bow, and stood.
The other fellow, he with the lieutenant, looked across the pool, to the portal across the way. The fellow who had led our approach was still there, his bow cradled in his arms, “Herminius is on guard,” he said.
“He could not have passed him,” said he who had been at the gate.
The lieutenant looked at the pit master.
“It would seem to me that the inference is clear,” said the pit master.
There was a sudden, half-strangled cry from across the pool as Herminius, clutching at his throat, legs kicking, seemed, somehow, to fly upward, into the darkness. He was trying to get his fingers, it seemed, at something on his throat.
“He is here!” screamed the lieutenant, gesturing wildly toward the portal across the way. “Hurry! Run!”
The men, two to the left, and two to the right, the man with the lieutenant and the lieutenant, fled about the walkway.
“He is above, somewhere in the shadows!” cried the lieutenant. “Get the torches up!”
I could see the dark, jerking shadow of Herminius over the portal. The two slaves who had been with him had fled to the right as one would enter the pool area. One had dropped her lamp. We could see the men hurrying about the pool area, toward the portal. “Torches, light!” cried the lieutenant, near the portal.
“Go,” said the pit master, “go,” pushing Fina down the walkway. Fecha started, too, to follow, and I, corded to her by the neck, hurried with her. A splash of hot oil from the lamp fell on my leg. I cried out. The lamps and torches were wild in the darkness. The pit master and the officer of Treve followed, going about, however, to the left, as one would face the portal from the inside.
I was sure the prisoner had not gone through the portal. He was still in the chamber. Too, Gito was somewhere down the passage and presumably would have cried out had the prisoner passed him.
“Sluts!” cried the lieutenant. “Lift the torches! Lift the lamps! Lift them up!”
Fina screamed and stepped back, turning about. I, too, shrank back, sickened.
Near the portal, at its threshold, there lay two severed hands.
Herminius, it seemed, had not been permitted to interfere with the effectiveness of the noose which had drawn him up, into the shadows.
His body was quiet now, some thirty feet above us. It moved only as the rope, and its weight, would have it.
“He is somewhere up there, in the shadows,” said the lieutenant. He took care, I noted, not to stand where he was illuminated.
The bows were lifted. It was almost as though they were alive, seeking prey.
Suddenly in back of us, and above us, over the pool, we heard a bolt, that of the cage latch, jerked loose.
The cord which went to the latch on the bottom of the cage over the pool went, with the other apparatus, chains and ropes, connected with the control of the cage, from the cage to the wall, over pulleys, and then down to the level of the walkway, where it, like the other devices, was secured. The trigger cord, which would release the latch at the bottom of the cage, was intended to be drawn, if drawn, at all, from the level of the walkway, but the cord, itself, naturally, stretched across the darkness, as I have indicated and came to the wall.
It had apparently been drawn, then, from above, by the wall, in the darkness.
The gate bolt on the cage drawn, the bottom of the cage dropped downward on its hinges, opening the cage. There had been a rattle of metal and a creaking of chain, the cage swinging, emptied of its occupant, and the sound of a body suddenly caught short of its fall. We spun about and saw the Lady Ilene, her small ankles tied together, her hand tied behind her back, a rope under her arms, swinging over the dark waters of the urt pool. She twisted wildly. She bend her legs at the knees, trying to pull her feet up. We saw her eyes, now that she was lower, over what seemed to be her veil. They were hysterically wild. She spun about on the rope, squirming helplessly. We could now hear tiny, helpless, terrified sounds from her. Her veil, it seemed, had been used to gag her. One did not know if she would have remained prudentially silent, daring not to mix in the business of men, daring not to call attention to herself, a female, or not, but the option had not been granted to her. Urts began to knife instantly toward the vicinity of the pool over which the Lady Ilene was suspended.
“Look to the wall! Look to the wall!” screamed the lieutenant. “It is only a diversion!”
“Ai!” cried a man.
The body of Herminius seemed to rise on the rope, and stand for a moment erect, in the air, and then it seemed to fly outward from the wall. It struck into the water, over the railing, opposite the portal. It would be bloody.