Once within the common cell, Tharn told enough of his adventure to dull the prisoners' curiosity, then edged away to join Katon.
Thus the day wore on. Now and then guards would enter, pick out a man or two and depart. Once, Brutan came back from the arena with his left cheek laid open from an animal's claw. But the wound had dulled no part of his braggardism and he told a highly colored tale of an encounter against nearly impossible odds.
Later in that afternoon, Katon had been summoned, to be absent for what seemed an age to Tharn. But return he did, unscathed, a broad smile lighting up his face as the cave lord came forward to welcome him.
A bond of friendship, based on mutual respect and admiration, had formed between these two men; a bond which passing days but served to augment. It was destined to be that rare understanding known only between men, wherein each finds within the other something of himself.
Just before the day's end, Brosan went out, a quip on his lips and a careless wave of his hand to the others. That joking remark and carefree gesture remained with every man in the cell, for Brosan never came back....
Darkness came at last, and for a second time the roaring of beasts and shrieks and moans of dying men ceased in the oval above. Food was brought and the weary gladiators ate and drank, doing their best to forget tiredness and strain.
Sleep came slowly that night to most of them. Within every heart was strong desire for the morrow to come—the new day for which all had waited. There were some here who would never see a second sunrise; but, as is usual under such conditions, each man looked for death to single out any one other than himself.
Less than a day's journey to the north of Sephar's walls a party of fifty warriors supped on the freshly-killed meat of Neela, the zebra, shortly before Dyta slid below the western earth-line. All that day they had traveled slowly along a thread-like game trail leading directly south. At times, for hours on end, they had walked through sombre depths of brooding jungle, beneath grotesque shadows of forest kings. Again, their way was across wide reaches of gently undulating prairie, where thick yellow grasses, deep to a tall man's thighs, stirred beneath the touch of baking winds.
Always, however, they had moved into the south, and ever in the lead was he whose decision, based solely on a vague premonition, had brought them so far from home. On this man's left forearm was the painted insignia of a chief....