The bowmen stood motionless; only their chain-mail seemed possessed of life. It glittered and crawled with scaly scintillations, like the corrugated armor of a dragon.
At the stakes the soldiers drew up; dismounted. One of the manacled men screamed and gibbered as he was being bound—sounds that were like nothing human. Trent turned to Na-chung. The Englishman's face showed no emotion, but his jaw was thrust forward at an ugly angle.
The councillor smiled grimly.
"Their tongues are slit," he informed Trent; then, with a wave of his hand, he added: "Political offenders."
Trent, his features cast in a mold that for sheer inscrutability would have rivalled that of the stoniest idol, turned away—and an instant later he felt a warm breath upon his ear and heard Na-chung's suave voice.
"Thus the Governor punishes treason. Look! There is his Transparency now."
A vermilion-lacquered sedan-chair, borne on the shoulders of four guards, moved through a gateway close to the archers; was placed on the ground at the end of their stances. The official, visible only as a crimson blot in the interior, did not rise, but watched the proceedings from his seat.
Trent's eyes were drawn back irresistibly to the stakes where the prisoners were being bound, manacled wrists above their heads. Silence wrapped the amphitheater about, like tight swathing. To the Englishman, there was a terrible significance in the undernote of red that the late afternoon introduced into the scene: the five bars of the blood-red sunset quivering above the arena and reflecting upon the gilded proscenium, the deep magenta of the lamas' robes, and the red-gold glint on harness and naked metal.
At a signal the archers advanced several paces. Bow-strings were tested; arrows drawn from quivers.
A shudder, half of awful ecstasy, half of horror, swept the amphitheater, like wind rippling the surface of the sea.