Witness of Gor (105 page)

"Where?”

"There.”

"What is it? A dead urt?”

"It ;s a body," said the pit master.

"Excellent!" said the lieutenant. "It has come to the surface!”

An urt swam to the object and began to bite at it. Once it pulled it beneath the surface It then emerged, again, closer to us Another urt then swam toward it.

The object rolled to its back.

"It is Tensius," said the lieutenant.

The eyes were still open, staring upward. One could see the dagger on the forehead. When the body was pulled back, again, one could see that the left leg was gone, and the left hand.

"Urts," said the lieutenant.

I did not know if Tensius had reached the nest or not. I supposed that he might have, as we had not detected a disturbance in the water near the entrance to the nest. But if he had been killed in the nest, why had the urts not fed on him there? When I looked away from the water I saw that the lieutenant's attention was returned, intently, to the pool. Indeed, he held his bow more at the ready than before.

It was indeed an elite that had come to Treve.

Had the prisoner died in the pool it seemed his body would have surfaced before that of Tensius.

But the body of Tensius, it seemed, had not served as a diversion.

It was merely meat, floating in the water, being eaten.

The moments taken for its identification, the lapse of attention to the tunnel entrance occasioned by its appearance, had been without cost.

The lieutenant lowered his bow, One could not climb from the pool to the walkway without a rope, or some such device, the tunnels to the walkway having been earlier sealed.

"The prisoner," said the officer of Treve, "may have died in the nest.

Too, he may have been trapped beneath the water, wedged under an outcropping, or between rocks.”

The latter hypothesis was an interesting one, as water urts sometimes secure prey under the water, saving it for later, rather as certain predatory beasts will bury a kill, or place it in a tree, to be finished later. Some birds impale insects on thorns, for a similar purpose.

"He is alive, somewhere," said the lieutenant. "I am sure of it.”

"That seems improbable," said the officer of Treve.

"The body of Tensius shows that he is alive," said the lieutenant. "If he had been killed by urts his body would have made that clear. It would have been a mass of bites, or the throat would have been gone. The condition of the body, on the other hand, shows that it was not attacked by urts until either it was dead or unable to defend itself.

And he would not have drowned unless he had been held under the water, in which case the prisoner is alive. I am sure Tensius was stabbed, and the wound washed free of blood.”

"Interesting," said the officer of Treve.

"He is clever," said the lieutenant. "He is cunning. He is magnificent prey. It is a pleasure to hunt him.”

"Those of the black caste are famed for their prowess in hunting," said the officer of Treve.

"But he has miscalculated," said the lieutenant. "He thought to use the body of Tensius as a diversion, to cover his exit from the pool, but he could not leave the pool. Instead, he has only managed, unbeknownst to himself, to inform me that he is still alive.”

"Let us get more men," said Gito, who had crept closer to the portal.

"I need only one clear shot," said the lieutenant.

"He is surely dead," said Gito. "Let us hasten to the surface.”

"I have not seen the body," said the lieutenant.

"You truly think he is alive?" asked the officer of Treve.

"Yes," said the lieutenant. "He has now inadvertently informed me of that fact. That loses him his advantage. I am now ready for him, quite ready.”

"Come away!" begged Gito.

"I need only one clean shot," said the lieutenant.

The quarrel lay ready in the guide, as quiet as a bullet.

Suddenly from the part of the pool near the entrance to the nest vie saw a hand reach up, breaking the surface, and then an arm. A head momentarily broke the surface, and then the body seemed dragged under again. Then it came again to the surface, arms thrashing. It cried out with pain. "It is your man!" said the officer of Treve.

It was the black-tunicked fellow, Abnik, who had had his foot injured in the crossbow's stirrup yesterday morning.

He went under again, seemingly pulled down, and then, choking, spitting water, came again to the surface, closer. "Help! Help!" he cried.

"He is fleeing the nest!" said the officer of Treve.

Abnik tried to swim toward us. It seemed something held him back, under the surface.

"Urts have him!" said the officer of Treve.

"Help! Please!" cried Abnik. Then, choking, he was drawn under again.

One of the girls on the other side of the pool, tied by her neck to her cord-mate, screamed, horrified.

"Keep the torch up!" cried the lieutenant.

I suddenly realized his attention was not on the pathetic figure in the pool but on the waters behind it and about it.

"Help!" cried Abnik.

The water was bloody about him.

An urt beneath the railing turned smoothly in the water, orienting itself toward the figure in the water. It did not, however, approach it. Rather it twisted about, suddenly, and returned to its work at hand. We saw the figure of Tensius pulled under, beneath the railing. Then it surfaced, again. The side of its face was gone.

"Help!" cried Abnik, We could now see, surfaced behind him, the head and neck of an urt, one that was very large.

Then it dove down again and Abnik cried out in misery.

"Please!" he wept.

His face was contorted. It was hideous. His hands clutched at the air as though he might gain purchase there to drag himself to safety.

"Help! Help!" he cried.

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 impassable," said the pit master.

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

"They are impassable by an ordinary man," said the pit master.

"I see," said the officer.

"They are barred, they pass 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 passages?”

"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 passages 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 assassin 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 assumed, 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, acumen, 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 passages were unlocked, but the passages remained armed.”

"He would use the men of the dark caste to clear the passages 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.