She will soon learn.

"Where are the urts?" asked the lieutenant.

"As they did not pa.s.s us," said the pit master, "and they are not here, one gathers they have returned to the nest, or the pool. Some might be on the walkway."

It seemed very dark beyond the gate. I could see the railing about the pool.

It was silent within, very silent.

"Perhaps he is gone," said a man.

"Was he within," said a man, "he would have left the gate down, as a barrier. It would have been dangerous for us to lift it. He would have fired from behind it."

"Are there other gates, accessible from the walkway?" asked the lieutenant.

"Yes," said the pit master.

"Aagh!" cried the lieutenant, in fury.

"Then he is gone?" said a man.

"Are the gates open?" asked the lieutenant.

"No," said the pit master.

"I do not believe you," said the lieutenant.

"He is gone then?" said the man.

"If he was not within he would have left the gate down," said a man, "to make us believe he was within, to slow our pursuit."

"Leaving it up, is to invite us into a trap," said a man.

"Or have us believe it so," said another.

"He is not within," said the lieutenant. "But he has already won his point, buying time, we, like fools, standing about in idle converse."

"I would, nonetheless, recommend caution," said the officer of Treve.

"Step from behind the slaves," the lieutenant ordered the lead man.

Reluctantly he did so.

It was he, I recalled, who had been the second of the two men who had not joined in the attack on the sleen.

"Go to the threshold, stand there," said the lieutenant.

The peasant, I recalled, was not likely to waste quarrels on slaves, at least according to the speculations of the pit master, which speculations I fervently hoped were sound, The black-tunicked man, on the other hand, would presumably const.i.tute a prime target.

"I do not think he is within," said the lieutenant, The man slowly, reluctantly, went to the center of the threshold.

He stood there.

It takes time, of course, to reload the crossbow. That interval of time, I gathered, figured in the lieutenant's calculations.

After several seconds, the man standing there in the portal, silhouetted by the light behind him, the lieutenant, unwilling to lose more time, indicated that one man, preceded by his fair shield of two, should enter and go to the left, and another, he, too, preceded by his shield of two, to the right. After an interval of about four paces, the lieutenant, with two slaves, followed the man who had gone to the right, and the other man, with his two slaves, followed he who had gone to the left. The man who had served as point for our advance, with two slaves, remained at the portal, just within it.

I was with the second man who had gone to the left, preceding him, with Fecha.

We moved cautiously, the light lifted, There were four gates giving access to the walkway, that through which we had entered, and, across the pool, on the other side, three, each leading to a different tunnel.

I heard a girl scream. An urt, on the walkway, at their approach, had scrambled over the railing, and dived into the pool.

Fecha held her torch over the pool. We could see ripples in the water there. And I saw the wet, glistening head of an urt, just at the surface. The head was very smooth. They swim with their ears back, flat against the head. This was not the urt which had just entered the pool.

That one had dived in far back and to our right.

"Hurry!" urged the lieutenant to the man before him. He feared the loss of time.

"Move," said the man to the slaves before him. They whimpered, and, lamps lifted, moved forward, The pair ahead of us stopped.

"Urt!" cried Tira, pointing.

"No," said the man. "It is only a shadow."

The lamps and torches threw strange shadows, which moved, as the source of light moved, sometimes giving the impression of a dark body stirring, even moving furtively, or quickly.

I looked above us. The vault of the chamber was lost in darkness. I could see the cage, high, to my left, over the pool, with its various chains and ropes, for controlling its location. There was also the cord which went to the gate latch at its bottom.

"Lift the gate," said the lieutenant to the pit master. The first man and the lieutenant had come to the first gate, reached by going to the right about the pool.

The lieutenant did not wish to risk either himself or his man by standing at the gate, lifting it.

A bolt from the other side would not be likely to miss. The fellow who had served as a lure for quarrels was still back at the gate we had entered, guarding it with his bow. The man with the lieutenant was the one who limped, having injured his ankle yesterday morning in the cell, apparently having twisted it in the stirrup of the crossbow, while trying to reset the weapon.

"It is locked," said the pit master.

"Determine that it is so," said the lieutenant.

With one hand the pit master bent down and pulled against a crossbar of the gate.

"Try it," said the lieutenant to his fellow.

Reluctantly the man put down his bow and, with two hands, tried to lift the gate.

"It is locked," he said.

I heard urts in the pool below. Some, it seemed, had just entered it, from the tunnel leading to the nest.

The noises about the walkway may have aroused their curiosity. Too, once they had come to the tunnel opening, which was beneath the surface of the pool, reached from the nest, on a higher level, on the other side, they may have seen the light from the lamps and torches on the water. Such things were probably a.s.sociated in their minds with the possibility of food.

There were several urts in the pool area, I knew, and, save for their fellow, and what they had had of the man by the gate, they had not eaten for two days. They would doubtless, most of them, be hungry. The guard had been dismissed, When one urt leaves the nest, others tend to follow, "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 to him.

"Yes," said the man.

"Then it is the center gate which is unlocked!" said the lieutenant.

"Hurry!" he urged the fellow 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.

"t.i.tus!" 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 pa.s.sage," 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 pa.s.sage 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, t.i.tus, he whom Fecha and I had preceded.

"He could not have pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 those 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!"