Witness Of Gor by John Norman

Author:John Norman [Norman, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2002-08-09T06:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

“It is for this reason that you have been brought here,” said the pit master.

I had followed him, to the lowest passages in the pits, and to what surely must have been one of the dankest corridors in that dismal place. There was damp straw on the floor of the corridor. Sometimes an urt, a small rodent, not like the large urts in the pool, scurried past.

Water, here and there, dripped from the ceiling of the corridor. I could stand upright in the corridor, but most of the men of this world, I conjectured, could not have done so. The head of the pit master, for all his bulk, he like a bent-over bear, was lower even than my own. In such a place, in such a corridor, I think he, with his terrible strength, and almost like a four-footed animal, would have proved a terrible foe to almost any man, even those of this world. In this place there was a smell of dampness and stench. I was afraid to have come here. The pit master carried a tiny lamp. It cast long, strange shadows about. Fina, who usually accompanied him in the pits, had been left in our quarters, chained to her ring.

The pit master handed me the tiny lamp and, with five keys taken from his belt, undid the five locks on the iron door. He swung the door open and took back the lamp.

He motioned that I should follow him within. Frightened, I crept within. The ceiling within the cell was higher than that in the corridor. Within it a man, say, an interrogator, a guard, might stand upright. “There,” said the pit master, lifting the lamp.

I gasped.

Lying at the back wall of the cell was a crumpled heap. It rose slowly to all fours, blinking against the light. I was not sure it was human at first glance. Then I saw it was a man. It was an extremely large man He was disheveled. His hair was matted and wild. He was heavily bearded. He wore rags. On each of his limbs, and on his neck, there was a heavy chain, each of these fastened to a different heavy ring in the wall behind him.

“This is to be your charge,” he said. “You will add him to your other duties.” “Yes, Master,” I said. “You were purchased for this,” he said, “even before he came into our keeping.” I nodded. “But we did not expect to receive him as he is,” said the pit master. I did not understand this. “He was betrayed into our hands,” said the pit master, I thought with a note of regret. “Ten sleen,” said the pit master, “have been given his scent.” I was startled to hear this.

That is a terrible thing. The sleen is the tenacious, six-legged carnivore I had seen before, on the ledge, and on the surface of the tower. My own scent had been “taken” by two sleen, on the second day I had been in the pits.

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