Gito trembled.

"I wish you well," said the peasant.

"I wish you well," whispered Gito.

The peasant smiled, and put his great hands affectionately on Gito's small shoulders. He then rose, turned about, and, soundlessly, left.

Yes, I must be dreaming, I thought.

But, a moment after the peasant had vanished, I would surely in any event have been awakened, for Gito leaped to his feet screaming. "Awake! Awake! He was here! He was here!"

In the room there was consternation instantly. "What? Where?" cried the leader of the strangers. "There!

There!" cried Gito, pointing to the portal. "Where is the guard?" cried the leader of the strangers.

"You were dreaming," said a man to Gito.

"No, no!" cried Gito.

"The guards are not at their post," said the lieutenant.

"To arms!" cried the leader of the strangers. "Out into the hail! Run!

Search!"

"The lamps in the hall are out," said a man, drawing back into the room.

"Torches, light lanterns, hurry!" cried the leader of the strangers.

The pit master sat up in his blankets, rubbing his eyes. The officer of Treve, too, bestirred himself.

Gito was jabbering incoherently.

"Bring some slaves!" screamed the leader of the strangers. Five or six of us. including Fina and myself, were quickly freed of our chains and pulled by the hair to our feet, and were thrust toward the portal. We were to be used, I gathered, as shields, or as tests, thrust before the men, of the pa.s.sages, their possible dangers.

In a moment we were thrust out into the corridor, men, most with drawn swords, some with armed bows, behind us. Lanterns and torches cast light about.

"This way!" cried the leader of the strangers, pushing Fina forward.

THIRTY SIX

Fina screamed, drawing back.

It was something like half of an Ahn that we had been hurrying through one adjacent pa.s.sage after another.

I think only the pit master's skill kept us from becoming lost in what seemed sometimes, in our alarm and haste, an eerie, dreadful, unfathomable subterranean labyrinth.

The leader of the strangers had hoped to follow the dark pa.s.sages, the extinguished lamps indicating the path taken by the prisoner but, at a joining of several pa.s.sages, it was seen that the lamps of each were still lit, dimly flickering into the distance, thus giving no indication which, if any, might have been trod.

The pit master pressed forward. He had been almost at the elbow of Fina. She was shaking.

"Lift the torch," said the pit master.

The pit master turned over the body in the corridor.

"It is Emmerich," said a man.

There were coa.r.s.e marks on the throat. The cartilage of the throat had been crushed.

"He was strangled with chain," said the lieutenant.

There was little doubt as to what had left its savage imprint there.

"He has been dead several Ahn," said the officer of Treve. He was of the scarlet caste.

The men looked about themselves, uneasily.

"Where can he have gone?" asked a man.

"He is here somewhere," said another.

"He must be weak," said a man. "He has had nothing to eat."

"When was he fed last?" asked the leader of the strangers.

"He was fed yesterday evening," said the pit master.

"By now his reflexes will be slowed, his actions will be erratic, he must grow weaker soon, if he is not already considerably weakened," mused the leader of the strangers.

"If he has not eaten in the meantime," said the pit master. "What is there to eat?" asked the leader of the strangers. The pit master tore back a part of the black tunic.

"Aargh," cried a man, in disgust.

"Peasants are beasts," said a man.

There was no dearth of water in the pits, of course, particularly in the lower corridors.

"We will return to the chamber," said the leader of the strangers.

"Where was the guard?" asked the lieutenant.

"Consider sleen, Captain," urged a man.

Gito pressed closely to the leader of the strangers, looking fearfully about himself. The leader of the strangers angrily brushed him back. Gito retreated, but he remained so close that he might have reached out and seized his sleeve.

In a few minutes we had returned to their headquarters. Within we found two of the blacktunicked men, lying to one side. "Knaves!" cried the lieutenant. "They have slept through the alarm!"

"Kill them," said the leader of the black-tunicked men.

"That will not be necessary," said the officer of Treve. "Their throats have been cut."

"They are the guard," said the lieutenant.

They had not been noticed at the beginning of the alarm, being taken for men asleep. They had not been noticed in our haste to rush into the corridor, in our pursuit of the prisoner. He must have drawn them earlier within the chamber, and put them like that, to one side, as though they slept. If one were to awaken, and see them thusly, lying there, with others about them, men clearly asleep, breathing deeply, one might not suspect anything was amiss.

"He was truly here," said a man.

More than one of them, I am sure, suspected that the alarm had been a false one, occasioned by the trepidation of Gito, awakening from some terrible dream.

"How is it that he can come and go as he pleases?" asked a man.

"He is like the savages of the Barrens," said a man.

"He is a beast," said the leader of the strangers. "He has the cunning of a beast. He has the stealth of a beast. He has the savagery of the beast."

One of the men murmured a.s.sent.

"He is not human," said the leader of the strangers. "We are hunting something which is not human."

"Captain," said the lieutenant.

"Yes," said the leader of the strangers.

"Emmerich had a bow, and quarrels. They were not with the body."

"I know," said the leader of the strangers, irritably.

"I think we may then a.s.sume," said the lieutenant, "that the prisoner is in possession of, or has access to, a missile weapon."

"I think that is a fair a.s.sumption," said the leader of the strangers.

The black-tunicked men exchanged glances.

Gito whimpered.

As the two guards had been slain, and the other man, he who had been missing, had been found strangled in the corridor, there were left of the strangers, other than their leader, his lieutenant and Gito, just seven men.

"He is not human," said the leader of the strangers. "He is a beast, a mad and dangerous beast."

"Let him then be hunted as a beast," said the lieutenant.

"You have changed your position on the matter then?" said the leader.

"Yes, Captain."

"You have two sleen available?" asked the captain of the pit master.

"Yes."

"Hunters?"

"Yes."

"They are similar beasts, similarly agile and aggressive?"

"Yes," said the pit master. "It is unlikely that one could far outdistance the other."

There would be then time only for one shot with the bow.

"Have them here in the morning, ready to hunt," said the leader of the strangers.

"As you wish," said the pit master.

"Set a double guard, four men, in two pairs," said the leader of the strangers.

"Yes, Captain," said the lieutenant.

"It seems he was indeed here," said a man to Gito.

"Yes," said Gito, looking about himself, "yes."

"Why did he come here?"

"He came to bid me farewell," said Gito.

"Why?" asked the man.

"I am his friend," said Gito.

"I see," said the man.

"Secure the slaves," said the leader of the strangers.

"Slaves, prepare to be secured," said a man.

We, those of us who had been freed earlier in the alarm to accompany the men, there were six of us, quickly hurried to the wall and knelt there, close to it, facing it. We were aligned now, spatially, with the others, as we had been before the alarm. I felt my bound wrists pulled up and inspected. They were still well tied. I then, in a moment, felt the ankle ring snapped shut about my ankle. I was then again fastened to the wall. When we were all secured, the men left us, and we lay down, or reclined, frightened, as we might.

"The sleen will finish him, in the morning," said a man.

"Yes," said another.

I saw Gito across the way. I did not think he would sleep. I did not think I would sleep either. But, in a few moments, despite my fear, my aching arms, the hardness of the stone, I had lost consciousness.