guardsman.
He looked at me, his grey eyes frank in the Y-slot in his sombre blue helmet of Tharna. 'It is for the Tatrix to decide,' he said.
'You must shackle him!' wheezed Ost.
'Quiet, worm,' said the guardsman, and the conspirator subsided into squirming silence.
I followed the guardsman, yet ringed with his men, to the palace of the Tatrix. Ost scurried along behind us, puffing and gasping, his short, bandy legs struggling to keep pace with the stride of warriors.
I felt that even had I chosen to forswear my pledge, which as a warrior of Gor I would not, my chances of escape would have been small indeed. In all likelihood three spears would have transfixed my body within my first few steps toward freedom. I respected the quiet, efficient guardsmen of Tharna, and I had already encountered her skilled warriors in a field far from the city. I wondered if Thorn were in the city, and if Vera now wore her pleasure silk in his villa.
I knew that if justice were done in Tharna I would be acquitted, yet I was uneasy — for how was I to know if my case would be fairly heard and decided? That I had been in possession of Ost' s sack of coins would surely seem good prima-facie evidence of guilt, and this might well sway the decision of the Tatrix. How would my word, the word of a stranger, weigh against the words of Ost, a citizen of Tharna and perhaps one of significance?
Yet, incredibly perhaps, I looked forward to seeing the palace and the Tatrix, to meeting face to face the unusual woman who could rule, and rule well, a city of Gor. Had I not been arrested I guessed I might, of my own free will, have called upon the Tatrix of Tharna, and, as one citizen had expressed it, spent my night in her palace.
After we had walked for perhaps some twenty minutes through the drab, graveled, twisted streets of Tharna, its grey citizens parting to make way for us and to stare expressionlessly at the scarlet-clad prisoner, we came to a broad winding avenue, steep and paved with black cobblestones, still shiny from the rains of the night. On each side of the avenue was a gradually ascending brick wall, and as we trudged upward the walls on each side became higher and the avenue more narrow.
At last, a hundred yards ahead, cold in the morning light, I saw the palace, actually a rounded fortress of brick, black, heavy, unadorned, formidable. At the entrance to the palace the sombre, wet avenue shrunk to a passage large enough only for a single man, and the walls at the same time rose to a height of perhaps thirty feet.
The entrance itself was nothing more than a small, simple iron door, perhaps eighteen inches in width, perhaps five feet in height. Only one man could come or go at a time from the palace of Tharna. It was a far cry from the broad- portaled central cylinders of many of the Gorean cities, through which a brace of golden- harnessed tharlarions might be driven with ease. I wondered if within this stern, brutal fortress, this palace of the Tatrix of Tharna, justice could be done.
The guardsman motioned to the door, and stepped behind me. I was facing the door, first in the narrow passage.
'We do not enter,' said the guardsman. 'Only you and Ost.'
I turned to regard them, and three spears dropped level with my chest. There was a sound of sliding bolts and the iron door swung open, revealing nothing but darkness within.
'Enter,' commanded the guardsman.
I glanced once more at the spears, smiled grimly at the guardsman, turned and, lowering my head, entered the small door.
Suddenly I cried out in alarm, pawing at nothing, hurtling downward. I heard Ost scream with surprise and terror as he was shoved through the door behind me.
Some twenty feet below the level of the door, in the absolute darkness, with brutal impact, I struck bottom, a stone floor covered with wet straw. Ost' s body struck mine almost at the same time. I fought for breath. My vision seemed ringed with gold and purple specks. I was dimly conscious of being seized by the mouth of some large animal and being tugged through a round tunnel-like opening. I tried to struggle, but it was useless. My breath had been driven from me, the tunnel allowed me no room to move. I smelled the wet fur of the animal, a rodent of some kind, the smells of its den, the soiled straw. I was aware, far off, of Ost' s hysterical screams. For some time the animal, moving backwards, its prey seized in its jaws, scrambled through the tunnel. It dragged me in a series of quick, vicious jerks through the tunnel, scraping me on its stone walls, lacerating me, ripping my tunic.
At last it dragged me into a round, globelike space, lit by two torches in iron racks, which were set into the fitted stone walls. I heard a voice of command, loud, harsh. The animal squealed in displeasure. I heard the crack of a whip and the same command, more forcibly uttered. Reluctantly the animal released its grip and backed away, crouching down, watching me with its long, oblique blazing eyes, like slits of molten gold in the torchlight.
It was a giant urt, fat, sleek and white; it bared its three rows of needlelike white teeth at me and squealed in anger; two horns, tusks like flat crescents curved from its jaw; another two horns, similar to the first, modifications of the bony tissue forming the uper ridge of the eye socket, protruded over those gleaming eyes that seemed to feast themselves upon me, as if waiting the permission of the keeper to hurl itself on its feeding trough. Its fat body trembled with anticipation.
The whip cracked again, and another command was uttered, and the animal, its long hairless tail lashing in frustration, slunk into another tunnel. An iron gate, consisting of bars, fell behind it.
Several pairs of strong hands seized me, and I caught a glimpse of a heavy, curved, silverish object. I tried to rise but was pressed down, my face to the stone. A heavy object, thick as a hinged beam, was thrust beneath and over my throat. My wrists were held in position, and the device closed on my throat and wrists. With a sinking sensation I heard the snap of a heavy lock.
'He' s yoked,' said a voice.
'Rise, Slave,' said another.
I tried to rise to my feet, but the weight was too much. I heard the hiss of a whip and gritted my teeth as the leather coil bit at my flesh. Again and again it struck downward like lightning bolts of leather fire. I managed to get my knees under me, and then, painfully, heaved the yoke upward, struggling unsteadily to my feet.
'Well done, Slave,' said a voice.
Amidst the burning of the lash wounds I felt the cold air of the dungeon on my back. The whip had opened my tunic, I would be bleeding. I turned to look at the man who had spoken. It was he who held the whip. I noted grimly that its leather was wet with my blood.
'I am not a slave,' I said.
The man was stripped to the waist, a brawny fellow wearing buckled leather wrist straps, his hair bound back on his head with a band of grey cloth. 'In Tharna,' said he, 'a man such as you can be nothing else.' I looked about the room, which curved to a dome some twenty- five feet above the floor. There were several exits, most of them rather small, barred apertures. From some I heard groaning. From some others I heard the shuffling and squealing of animals, perhaps more of the giant urts. By one wall there was a large bowl of burning coals, from which protruded the handles of several irons. A rack of some sort was placed near the bowl of coals. It was large enough to accomodate a human being. In certain of the walls chains were fixed, and here and there, other chains dangled from the ceiling. On the walls, as though in some workshop, there hung instruments of various sorts, which I shall not describe, other than to say that they were ingeniously designed for the torment of human beings.
It was an ugly place.
'Here,' said the man proudly, 'peace is kept in Tarna.'
'I demand,' I said, 'to be taken to the Tatrix.'
'Of course,' said the man. He laughed unpleasantly. 'I shall take you to the Tatrix myself.'
I heard the winding of a chain on a windlass, and saw one of the barred gates leading from the chamber slowly lifting. The man gestured with his whip. I understood I was to go through the opening.
'The Tatrix of Tharna is expecting you,' he said.
