The attention of the lieutenant I noted, to my horror, was not on the struggling figure of Abnik. He was intensely considering, rather, the waters to the side and back.

The head and neck of the urt surfaced again, behind Abnik.

I screamed.

"There it is!" cried out the officer of Treve. "Kill it! Kill it! Save your man!"

"Do not be foolish," said the lieutenant, without taking his attention from the pool. "Do you not understand what is occurring?"

"Please, help me!" cried Abnik.

"Give me the bow," said the officer of Treve. "I will kill it."

But the lieutenant, angrily, pulled the bow away.

The pit master stood rather behind the lieutenant, his torch lifted. I could see the urts below us, at the bodies near the wall, beneath where we stood.

"Kill the thing!" said the officer of Treve. "Kill it!"

"No," said the lieutenant.

"Save him!" begged the officer of Treve.

"I have taken fee, as has he," said the lieutenant.

"Kill it, kill it!" said the officer of Treve.

The man in the water, thrashing about, screamed in misery.

"No," said the lieutenant.

"It is an easy shot," said the officer of Treve, desperately.

"At this distance you could not miss!"

"I will not waste the quarrel," said the lieutenant.

"Help!" screamed Abnik.

"He will die," said the officer of Treve.

"I am hunting," said the lieutenant.

"Shoot!" begged the officer of Treve.

"No," said the lieutenant.

It took time, I knew, to reload.

The lieutenant did not even see the hands of the man in the water raised to him, supplicatingly. Nor did he see the fear in those eyes, the terror and pain. His attention was elsewhere, on the waters behind the figure and the thing at his back.

But it might have been to his advantage had he paid closer attention to the figure in the water for suddenly the thing behind Abnik rose up in the water and, at the same time, we saw the quarrel of a bow emerge and the cable snapped forward and the quarrel took the lieutenant in the side of the throat just under the chin and tore upward through the skull breaking the helmet away from the head and we saw, below, for one terrible moment, cowled in the head and pelt of an urt, the pelt about his shoulders, the eyes, and the fierce visage, of the peasant, and then that head descended again into the water, and it seemed, once more, eerily, only the head and shoulders of an urt. It moved slowly away, across the pool.

It then, near the entrance of the nest, slipped under the water.

The pit master now leaned forward, over the railing. Abnik was now rolling lifeless in the water, lost in the midst of the urts and bodies.

"Is there a way from the urt nest, other than to the pool and walkway?"

asked the officer of Treve.

"Ways are barred," said the pit master.

"But there are ways?"

The pit master shrugged.

"Water must be brought to the pool," said the officer of Treve. "A drain? A conduit?"

"They are impa.s.sable," said the pit master.

"Do you believe that?" asked the officer of Treve.

"They are impa.s.sable by an ordinary man," said the pit master.

"I see," said the officer.

"They are barred, they pa.s.s through tharlarion nests."

"Is there any possibility that the prisoner could escape?" asked the officer.

"None whatsoever," said the pit master.

"Could he live in such pa.s.sages?"

"Perhaps, on urts," said the pit master.

"There is no way out?"

"No," said the pit master.

"Would it be wise to use men, pursuing him in the pa.s.sages beneath the city?"

"I would not think so," said the pit master.

"What has happened?" called Gito, from down the corridor.

"It is over," said the pit master.

Gito crept to the portal, and then he cried out with horror.

The pit master looked down at the body of the lieutenant.

The officer of Treve, crouching down beside the body, carefully removed the helmet. It was already partly forced off. Its crown was filled with blood and hair, "He was an excellent officer," said the pit master.

"Of his caste," said the officer of Treve.

"It is strange," said the pit master. "Had he chosen to save his man, by firing on what we took to be the beast, he would have killed the prisoner."

"Yes," mused the officer of Treve.

"What would you have done?" asked the pit master.

"I would have tried to save the man."

"Even at the risk of losing the quarrel, and not having time to reload before a putative attack?"

"Yes," said the officer of Treve.

"But he did not do so."

"No," said the officer of Treve.

"Why?"

"Castes differ," said the officer. He then, with his thumb, wiped away the dagger on the lieutenant's forehead. "He is no longer hunting," he said.

"The prisoner did not flee," observed the pit master. "He returned for him."

"He, too, it seems, was a hunter."

"Do you think it an inadvertence on the prisoner's part that the one man's body, that of he called Tensius, was returned as it was to the pool?"

"Certainly not," said the officer of Treve. "He wanted the officer to know that he was still alive, that was the point of that, in order that the a.s.sa.s.sin be tensely ready, that he be extremely watchful and alert, and that the preciousness of his quarrel be fully appreciated. He might have but one chance to loose it. He must retain it for the perfect shot. He must in no event waste it."

"But how would he know the officer would not protect his man, that he would not be fired on in the cowl and pelt of the urt?"

"He knew the caste he was dealing with," said the officer of Treve.

"The officer a.s.sumed, naturally enough, that the man in the water was only a diversion.

Accordingly, he did not even consider him, but directed his attention elsewhere."

"And thus permitted the prisoner to approach unseen, to a point at which a miss was impossible."

"It is hard even to understand such Kaissa," said the pit master.

I understood very little of these things. It did seem to me that the peasant had surely manifested a subtlety, ac.u.men, and terribleness far beyond what one might commonly expect of his caste.

"It is interesting," said the officer of Treve, "that so many of the gates in the pa.s.sages were unlocked, but the pa.s.sages remained armed."

"He would use the men of the dark caste to clear the pa.s.sages before him, of course," said the pit master.

"But the three gates here, across the way, were locked."

"Yes, that is interesting," agreed the pit master.

"You are certain that there is no possibility of escape through the urt nest, through drains, or sewers, or such,"

"I think I hear the guard in the corridor," said the pit master. "They have found us."

"I noted you held your torch behind the officer," said the officer of Treve.

"Did I?" asked the pit master.

"That silhouetted his head and shoulders well, even if an approach had been made under water."

"I suppose it might have," said the pit master, "now that I think of it."

"Were the chains of the prisoner tampered with?" inquired the officer of Treve.

"That seems unlikely." said the pit master.

"There is one thing I do not understand," said the officer of Treve.

"What is that?"

"They were prize sleen, trained to perfection. How could it be that they became confused and attacked the captain of those of the dark caste?"

"As you know," said the pit master, "such beasts are unreliable."

"I do not think so," said the officer.

"Oh?"

"How could they make such a terrible mistake?"

"Perhaps they did not make a mistake," said the pit master.

"I do not think they did," said the officer of Treve.

"Perhaps you are right," said the pit master.

"But the blanket was taken from the cell of the prisoner. It was kept, all the while, in a sealed sack. I saw the seal myself."

"It was taken from the cell of the prisoner," said the pit master. "But that does not mean that it was the blanket of the prisoner."

"The hunters insisted on spending the first night in the depths," said the officer of Treve, "presumably to guard against the prisoner being secretly removed."