“Take aim,” said the leader of the strangers quietly.
“No!” cried the pit master.
The two bowmen trained their weapons on the heart of the peasant.
The officer of Treve stood quietly, angrily, to the side, restrained by two men. His blade, his fingers pried from the hilt, one by one, was at his feet. That mound of a human being which was the pit master struggled. Six men clung to him. Fina was sobbing.
The leader of the strangers, stood to one side. He and the lieutenant, now that the pit master was restrained, had sheathed their blades.
“Do not kill him!” said the pit master, moving like a part of the earth beneath those who clung to him.
“Kill him! Kill him quickly!” screamed Gito, from the back.
Again the peasant threw his weight against the chains. There was another sound of metal and rock.
The leader of the strangers smiled. He lifted his hand.
“No!” cried the pit master.
The two bowmen tensed, their fingers on the triggers, their quarrels aligned to the heart of the peasant.
I saw the chains straighten, the rings straighten; the plate on our right, the peasant’s left, out from the stone, and the very stone in which it was fastened, too, I saw, it still fastened to its ring and wall, and the other chain, too, I saw, it still fastened to its ring and plate, these tight on the stone, but there, too, the stone itself, the heavy block of stone in which the bolts of the plate were set, was, like the other, with a scraping and a powder of mortar, a rumbling grating, another granular inch or more emergent from the wall.
Again the peasant lunged against his chains, and there was a squeal of metal and there was, as though reluctant, crying out, protesting, another tiny yielding, a grating of stone, another tiny movement, another tiny fearful slippage, of a ponderous block of stone.
“Do not kill him!” screamed the pit master.
“Shoot!” cried Gito. “Shoot!”
the hand of the leader of the strangers raised just a little, preparatory presumably to its sharp descent, doubtless to be consequent upon the issuance of a word of command.
He smiled.
The chains were tight, straight from the wall. The peasant seemed like a crazed animal, gigantic, leaning forward, straining, bulging with muscle and hate.
“Glory to the black caste,” said the leader of the strangers.
“Glory to the black caste!” said the black-tunicked men.
The hand of the leader of the black-tunicked men lifted a bit more. His lips parted, to utter the signal that would unleash the quarrels.
“Aargh!” cried one of the bowmen reeling back, his face a mass of blood within the helmet, the quarrel slashing into the wall to the right of the prisoner, gouging the wall, showering sparks and the other, too, was buffeted to the side by his fellow, his own quarrel spitting, too, to the side, to the peasant’s right, striking the wall, bursting stone from it like a hammer, flashing sparks in the cell, then turning end over end, sideways, eccentrically, to our left. The block of stone, broken from the wall, torn out of it, still fixed to the plate and bolts, and chain, had burst forth, showering mortar in the room. As it had left the wall it had, with all the violence of the forces imposed upon it, whipped to the peasant’s right, striking the nearest bowman on the side of the head. It had split the helmet and, in the instant before it had split, the metal had been flattened, the skull crushed within. The lights were wild in the cell, the two lanterns being jerked back by those who held them, the light of the tiny lamps obscured by moving bodies. Wild shadows moved about.
“Blades!” I heard. “Lanterns up!”
A dozen blades must have left sheaths.
We screamed. We shrank back. We huddled together, back against the wall.
We then saw, in the light of the swinging lanterns, in the light of the small lamps, the men drawn back, the peasant, standing where he had been, but now bent over, his eyes wild, like something that had tasted blood, a long-forgotten taste, but one which induced a wild intoxication. He was still held to the wall by the right wrist. I doubted that chain cold hold him longer now. He jerked back the stone on the chain still clinging to his left wrist. Men leaped back, not to be caught in the trajectory of that jagged, ponderous weight. The one bowman had crawled to the side. “Cut him down!” said the leader of the black-tunicked men. A man advanced, but leaped back as the block of stone on its chain whirled again through the air. It might have been a meteor on a chain. The peasant gave another great cry and with his right arm he lunged against the chain that still held him. The weakened link, that which could have been slipped earlier, it having been opened, but that not known to him, now parted so that the chain was broken.
“He is free,” said a man, in awe.
“The chains were tampered with,” said another.
Even the pit master seemed in awe. He no longer struggled.
Those who were with him seemed scarcely now to restrain him. The officer of Treve, too, seemed staggered by what he had seen. His sword, which had been pried from his hand, lay at his feet.
“He cannot escape,” said the leader of the strangers, calmly. “Kill him.”
The peasant, now that his hands were free from the wall, took, with both hands, the chain which was on his left wrist, that to which the block of stone was still bolted.
He lifted the stone easily from the floor. It swung on the chain, about six inches from the floor. He was bent over. He was breathing heavily.
None of the men cared to advance.
Gito crept behind the men to our left, and crouched down, by the wall.
The peasant suddenly swung the great stone on its chain about his head in a wicked whirling circle. He stepped out a yard from the wall. The men drew back. Some went to the side. Then the peasant retreated to the wall. His eyes, wolflike, looked to the left and right. He would not permit them behind him. If he should strike a man, of course, that might stop the stone, or even tangle the chain, providing the others with the opportunity they needed, blades ready, to close. But none cared, it seemed, to be the first to tread within the orbit of that fierce satellite, that primitive, improvised weapon.
“You, you,” said the leader of the strangers to two of his men. “Sheath your swords, set your bows.”
The two men, protected behind their brethren, unslung their bows. Some such weapons are set by a windlass, but those these men carried were more swiftly prepared for fire. It is useful in cramped spaces, in close quarters, in room to room fighting. It is an alert weapon, responsive to the trigger; its opportunity need not be more prolonged than the movement of the target across a passageway; it is a patient weapon; it can wait quietly, motionlessly, for a long time, for its target to appear. The two new bowmen set their feet in the bow stirrup, grasping the cable with two hands, one on each side of the guide.
Suddenly, crying out, realizing somehow, in some dark part of that simple brain, in some instinctive fashion, that he had not a moment to spare, risking all, heedless of his back, swinging the stone about his head, the peasant chains flying about his ankles, charged toward the bowmen. His action, as sudden as it was, took the black-tunicked men by surprise. They fell back before him. The one bowman, his foot locked in the stirrup, looked up only in time to see the great stone whipping toward him, the other was protected by his fellow who received the blow, but, he, too, his foot in the stirrup, fell awkwardly to the side. He cried out in pain. “Blades! Close with him! Close with him!” cried the leader of the strangers. But the stone on its chain, the peasant whirling with it, spun about and about. I saw flesh fly from the thigh of one of the men. He staggered back. Blood splashed on the man to the right of the officer of Treve, he holding his right arm. The sword lay still at the officer’s feet. The pit master suddenly, again began to struggle. The six men about him tightened their grip, clinging to him tenaciously. They clung to him like dogs to a bull. He struggled to throw them from him. The bowman who had been struck lay to one side, his head awry, too far back, still in the helmet, half torn from the body. Swords darted at the peasant but none reached him, he protected in the whriling shield of chain and stone. And then the stone struck against the side of the portal and the stone burst from the portal, a cubic foot of wall there broken from its place, but the stone, too, on the chain, shattered, splitting at the bolts, and fell in two halves away. The chain on his wrists flew about. That to which the ring and plate was attached, bolts still on the plate, struck a fellow across the face, lashing him back. And then the peasant was back again, at bay, against the wall. We cried out, we sobbed with fear. Gito was hiding himself in straw to the left of the portal as one would enter.