The screaming of Tuvo Ausonius’s colleague could be heard from the outer room.
The men, half choking with dust, kicked the panel open, which was now awry on its hinges, and reentered the room.
The colleague of Tuvo Ausonius ran to him. Her eyes were wild. She gasped. It was almost as though she wished to throw herself to her knees before him.
At almost the same time several men, guards at the holding, armed, rushed into the room.
“We are all right,” Julian assured them.
He then turned to face Tuvo Ausonius and his colleague.
“You are under arrest, of course, both of you,” he said.
Their hands were tied behind their backs and they were conducted from the room.
“There is little left of the case,” said Otto, looking about.
“The only prints on it, even on the fragments,” said Julian, “would be those of its messenger.”
“Milord,” said a man, entering, “there is a party approaching, climbing the trail.”
“They are clad in white robes,” said Julian, “there are thirteen of them, twelve preceding, carrying rods and axes, and one following, bearing a scroll case.”
“Yes, milord!” said the man.
“Open the gate,” said Julian. “Admit them.”
“Wait!” called Julian.
“Milord?” said the man, turning.
“Secure all slaves,” said Julian.
“Yes, milord,” said the man.
CHAPTER 29
“What is going on?” cried Flora.
She ran to the door of her cell.
The door at the end of the short corridor had been flung open and Flora saw some five slaves being thrust forward. All were in brief tunics. All were hooded. Their hands were cuffed behind their backs. They were on a common neck chain. She was sure that Renata was among them. Small, stifled noises came from some of the hoods. Doubtless, beneath the hoods, they were gagged.
The door to her cell was flung open.
“Stand! Hands behind you!” ordered a guard.
Two guards entered the cell.
Her hands were cuffed behind her back. A gag was fixed on her, making it impossible for her to speak. A hood was drawn over her head and buckled shut, about her neck. She was then thrust from the cell. In a moment she felt a collar locked on her neck, and the draw of a chain, before and behind. She then was forced along the passage, and down a sloping passage.
In a few moments she felt damp stone beneath her bared feet, and tiny puddles of water.
She was forced to her belly. Her head was forced down. She could feel the stone of the floor through the hood, on the left side of her face. She felt the collar removed from her neck, but, in a moment, another collar, a heavier one, snapped about her neck. A chain ran from this collar to a staple, fixed in the stone. She determined this, feeling it with the side of her face, through the hood.
She felt the dampness of the floor through her gown.
She did not know where she was.
She tried to call out, or inquire, but could utter no more than tiny, helpless sounds.
She then lay there, prone, somewhere, unable to speak, in the darkness of the hood, her hands cuffed behind her, chained.
The chain on her neck, running to the floor, was a short one, only some six inches in length. It would hold her head quite close to the staple. Somewhere, seemingly faraway, she heard gunfire.
CHAPTER 30
“He is escaping!” called Otto.
The magistrate was climbing the interior stairwell, leading to the parapet, that to the left of the left gate tower, as one would view the gate from within.
The magistrate clutched a scroll case in one hand, a pistol in the other.
He fired toward the portal of the left gate tower. There was a shower of stone from the wall. The muzzles of rifles protruded inward from the towers. There were marksmen, too, behind barricades, arranged on the walkways of the walls. Others had fired from the sides of the walls, and others from the external walls of the inner bailey, from gunports.
“There is no escape for him,” said Julian.
The magistrate looked over the wall, and then turned back, wildly. He fired once down, into the outer yard. A tile buckled and leapt up, blackened, to Julian’s right.
Then the figure on the wall, a mass of blood and fire, tumbled into the yard.
Julian lowered his pistol.
“That is all of them,” said Julian.
“No,” said Otto. “There is another, somewhere.”
“He from the summer world,” said Julian.
“There were several from that world,” said Otto.
About the outer yard there were several bodies, twelve bodies, as one counted.
These wore white robes. Near eleven of them, and parts of them, their blood run on the tiles, were weapons, assault rifles which had been concealed within the bundles of rods, each with its ax.
The firing had been brief and fierce, the sudden unbundling of the rods, the revelation of the weapons, but the guards in Julian’s holding had been in place and, almost instantly, almost before fingers had found the triggers of weapons, the white-clad bodies, startled, several blown open, reeling, twisting about, searching for their concealed foes, had begun to succumb to the storm of fire from all sides.
Julian considered the bodies.
“They did not have a chance,” said Julian.
“One is still at large,” said Otto, looking about.
“He lost his rifle,” said Julian. “He is not to be feared.”
“There are only eleven axes here,” said Otto, walking among the bodies.
“We will make a search,” said Julian.
“I do not think he will know how to use the ax,” said Otto. He himself bent down and picked up one of the long-handled axes, double-headed, which had protruded from one of the bundles of rods. The bundles of rods and axes, carried before high officials on certain occasions, are an ancient symbol, one perhaps now rather familiar, almost benign and innocuous, but one once, one supposes, of the power of the state, of its might and terror, its capacity to chastise, and, if it wishes, to kill.
“Be careful,” said Julian.
Otto entered the inner bailey, and made his way upward, slowly, to its parapet. He looked about himself. He saw two guards, adjusting the slings on their weapons. Other than this the parapet was deserted.
Their attention would presumably have been directed to the outer yard, below.
In the forest one notices little things when one is hunting, and many of the skills of war, of course, are much like those of hunting. Perhaps that is one reason that those who live by arms are often fond of the hunt.
A crushed leaf, the dislodgement of a twig, indicated by the tiny depression in which it had formerly lain, such tiny things, can mark a trail.
Accordingly the tiny drop of blood on the stones of the parapet required no great discernment, or acuteness, to interpret.
The opening to one of the towers was nearby.
Otto held his ax ready, in the guard position. Twice, in the arena, he had fought in labyrinth games, where the spectators, tense, silent, as quiet as though holding their breath, observed, from the height and safety of their seats, the men looking for one another, in the maze.
Sometimes they would cry out in excitement, or exultation, as contact, sometimes sudden, and brutal, was made.
Otto entered the tower, and looked up the spiral stairwell leading to its height.
The stairwells in such towers almost invariably ascend in a clockwise fashion.
One might suppose that there is no particular reason for this surprising conformity of structure, but, if one did so, one’s surmise would be in error.
Most men, you see, are right-handed, and will, accordingly, handle weapons with their right hand. In this fashion one who ascends the stairwell, presumably an intruder, must, in order to employ his weapon, expose more of his body, whereas one who is higher on the stairwell, presumably a defender, in such an employment of weaponry, in virtue of the shielding of the masonry, may expose less of his body.