Then, while a few heavily armored men tried to hook away the bodies and clear the path through the slain, others threw long knives to protect their fellows. This continued until Gwalchmai, in desperation, sprang down and engaged the workers.
Again it was rattle, clang and crash, but the wooden shafted, spears, despite their length, were no match for a steel sword wielded by one who had been taught by the finest swordsman in the personal guard of Arthur of Britain. Presently Nunganey, out of arrows, picked up a quantity of the knives and hurled them back with unerring accuracy, a game he well understood.
So they held the stair for a little time. Fresh waves of fighting men washed up against them from the now fully aroused city. Unblooded, new in strength, insanely delighted in the prospect of battle, their numbers forced the valiant three higher and higher toward the next landing. Corenioe turned and ran toward it.
Nunganey, struck down by a flying axe, lay stunned but not gashed and Gwalchmai bestrode him, hammering and stabbing at a dozen moving, fighting, golden statues, knowing this to be his last stand and determined to die well.
Corenice's clarion voice cried, "Fall, Aztlanian!" As he instantly did so, the flame-gun's blast turned the very air to fire above them, whiffing away his antagonists in a burst of thunder. With them, twenty feet of the ziggurat's ramp crashed into dust, leaving a gap which could not soon be crossed.
Still, though out of reach, they were not out of danger until, in a shower of spears and knives, with now and then a ponderously wheeling axe clattering down to strike sparks from the worn steps, Corenice lifted the two men by the middles. With one beneath each arm, she ran lightly up the steps and around the next bend, leaving the discharged flame-gun where it lay.
She dropped them upon the platform which ran flatly around the black tower, without proceeding to the stair which led to the peak. Their breathing became less painful. The glazed look passed from Nunganey's eyes. He sprang up with a whoop, tugging at his hatchet, the only weapon now left to him.
A sheepish look came over his face almost at onoe. It was strange to see the softening of that stern, grim countenance beneath the death paint. Gwalchmai grinned and a slow, sympathetic smile curved the sweetly formed lips of the metal maiden, for the first time in their long retreat. It quickly passed as cries and the sound of cracking whips came up from below. The three looked over the edge of the platform.
Directly beneath, half a hundred feet away, yawned the gap in the ramp. Toward it a horde of red-skinned Abenaki slaves were being driven, laden with heavy balks of timber, staggering beneath weighty beams and thick planks.
Their respite, it could be seen, would be short.
The work went on swiftly. Planks were stood up on end and allowed to fall and though several rebounded and vanished in the gulf below, finally one lay firm. A slave ran quickly across, holding the end fast, while others carefully slid a beam along it, under the sharp directions of their overseer. With this in place, more beams followed, to be overlaid immediately with planking.
Gwalchmai missed Corenice from her place at his side; looking around, he saw her wedging a pointed bar, torn from one of the windlasses, beneath a ponderous paving stone.
He sprang to help her tip it down upon the bridge, but Nunganey, catching the movement and seeing what they were doing, sprang up, his face working, stoicism forgotten.
"These are my people, BumoleJ" he begged. "Not upon them!"
"They were your people. They no longer are quite human, Nunganey. These men have been brutalized until their very souls are dead. They will fight you with the vigor of their masters if they can reach you!"
"Perhaps," admitted Nunganey, "but not upon these slaves, Night Woman. Wait for the Chenoo to cross."
Corenice stared at him for a long moment, then flung the bar clanging down and stalked forward to look below.
It was already too late. As though some guiding mind had taken authority and foreseen what she had proposed to do, both slaves and the red-haired axe men were surging across the bridge in an intermingled mass.
She waited until the last slave had crossed, then sent a ton of chiseled stone crashing through the scintillating stream of armored Nor-um-Begans. The makeshift bridge collapsed with a splintering boom, falling swiftly away from them. It was pursued into the depths by twisting, wailing figures which struck and rebounded from the lower ramps, to tear wide holes in the milling crowd which packed the Square of the Boats.
"Too late," said Corenice, grimly. Already the first of the pursuit had reached the platform and was racing toward them, almost naked Abenaki waving weapons they had picked up from the littered stairs as they came. They seemed as demoniac in temper and visage as the bearded, better armed, grinning Killers, who impelled them on to take the brunt of the battle.
Nunganey shrilly incited them to turn on their captors, but either disregarding his pleas or totally misunderstanding his motives, the frantic slaves flung themselves upon the three. It was well that the two men had been able to rest, for these antagonists, unimpeded by armor, were agile and quick to leap and dodge. Fighting hard, though unwillingly, Gwalchmai and Nunganey were pressed back upon the last stairway leading to the top of the tower from whence there could be no retreat.
Again, in their former order, they contested the way, striking now only to stun when facing an Abenaki, but to kill when opposed by Nor-um-Begans.
Fortunately, this stairway was narrower, steeper and more winding, for the tower narrowed rapidly toward its peak and thus it afforded less opportunity for knife and axe throwing. This was an advantage to Gwalchmai, for the Roman sword was used best in stabbing between armor joints. His antagonists knew the weak spots of armor better than he and presently he bled even more from new shallow spear wounds and could feel his arm weakening, his sword growing heavier.
It was because of this that he could not parry the axe blow which sent his basinet clanking down the steps and which brought him to his knees.
Nunganey sprang in front of him, protecting his friend with his own naked chest, striking out with his flint hatchet, splintering it on the corselet of a burly giant. He roared with contempt and swung up his weightier weapon for the Stroke which would finish both at once.
Somewhere in the crowd the Abenaki war-cry shivered up—that yell which chills the blood of the stalking cougar— and a scarred one-eyed warrior ploughed through the press.
"Ho! Ho! Cosannip!" shouted Nunganey, falling forward to grapple the Killer's knees, and as he did so Cosannip came down on the enemy with his own terrible half-moon axe. One horn of it protruded from the nape of the Nor-um-Began's neck, while the other was lodged in the teeth of his lower jaw.
The two halves of his split head lay over upon either shoulder as Cosannip yanked out the blade and the red Killer fell.
Nunganey instantly picked up the dead man's axe, and side by side the reunited blood brothers held the stair, cleared the way and drove back the horde for a precious moment. Gwalchmai dazedly reached for his basinet, but all strength seemed gone from his fumbling hands. Nunganey stooped and clapped it on his head. He wavered to his feet, supporting himself by his sword. The end seemed very near.
A plunging body swooped through the air from above to crash among the yelping pack. Another followed, screaming. Mad Baraldabay, the Tower Man who had lamented the lack of war, hurled now from the tower top. All eyes turned to the pinnacle. Corenice stood there, a living statue of avenging Fury incarnate. Her upper clothing had been torn from her gleaming body and with the wind whipping her skirt, she stared out over the fighting, far across the water.
"Look!" she cried. Took well, Killers of Nor-um-Bega, for yonder rides your doom, sent by Ahuni-i!"
The fighting stopped. A gasp of horror ran through the assembled throng. The reinforcements charging over the rebuilt bridge slackened their wild pace as they reached the platform and in their turn, from above water level, could look out through the force wall. Weapons slipped from lax hands and some stout warriors fell to th
eir knees in dread.
For beyond the invisible protection to their little world, only a short distance away, rising and falling lightly to the lift of the waves—the Vimana came hastening over the sea!
8 Vale! Thunder Bird!
Swiftly propelled by its broad webbed feet, the swan-ship of Atlantis breasted the billows. When it drew nearer, Gwalchmai and the two Abenaki could hear, as they hurried up the few remaining steps to stand beside Corenice, the stamp and go of the powerful machinery that drove it
Even over the grumble of the crashing surf upon the impalpable sea-wall, a new sound became audible: a prolonged and dreadful whistling like the angry hiss of a colossal enraged serpent.
Again Gwalchmai sensed that oppressive feeling of merciless hatred which he had so strongly felt aboard the mysterious ship, but not this time directed at himself alone. An alien thought began beating against his consciousness, and it was: "Kill! Kill! Kilir He looked at Corenice. Her face was stern, implacable.
Then the swan-ship drove close, the long undulant neck lay sinuously back upon its shoulders and its beak opened wide. Again the round crystal eyes flared with light and evil Me as a forked stream of blazing wild-fire smashed into the force wall. But it was not like the earlier levin-bolt which Gwalchmai had himself discharged into the sea of weed or the one which had slain the sea serpent. This was a fiercely livid blue ray, narrow and hard and dazzling to the eye.
As the beam impinged upon the tissue thin barrier a shining iridescent halo took form around the spot which it touched, shot with all the hues seen in a bubble just before it bursts. Seemingly without end the rush of energy poured into that shimmering circle,- heating it, breaking down its resistance, destroying the pattern of its composition, rearranging its atomic structure.
The wall bellied in before that wash of fury, deeper, deeper, and in through it tore the strange fulguration to crash half way across the sunken land. It hung and waved there in their sky like a fiery portent to warn those below of the Day of Judgment. Then the ray died, but all around that evenly punched hole, the edges began to burn!
Slowly at first, then more rapidly as more space opened for their feeding, little smokeless flames licked and ate away the curtain of force. No heat could be felt by those on the tower, closer than any others to the torrent of fire that finally raved by them to the sky, burning high to the attenuated edge of the unseen substance which so long had held the ocean back from Nor-um-Bega. A wide rent opened almost to the water's edge. Away rushed the destroying corrosion to left and right. It became hundred foot pillars of flame hasting away to complete the circuit of the doomed island and meet once more at its farther end, dashing on with ever increasing acceleration to unite and pass away forever in that union.
Downward also burned the devouring flames. It appeared to be a heatless, cinderless line of light sinking toward the level of the sea. It dropped slowly, as the energy fed by disintegrating atoms in the rock of the sea bottom rose upward, feeding the force-wall, as it had been meant to do by the engineers of ancient Atlantis. Faster than that energy could be renewed, it could be destroyed!
Now the surf beat over the edge, not extinguishing that steadily lowering mark of destruction. As the waves came in, gusts of salt rain fell down into the Square of the Boats, drenching the upturned faces of the aghast crowd below. A long wail of terror rose up to those on the tower top.
Already the serrated ramps of the ziggurat were crowded with climbers. All knew that soon this would be the only spot projecting above the water and the last place to offer any refuge. Gwalchmai could see people setting the inverted boats upright and knew it to be a hopeless task.
The swan-ship rocked, idly waiting, head craned out as though it could watch and was amused by the scrambling below.
Nunganey and Cosannip were staring toward the Slave Wall. Here there was fighting and already a dark rush of their enslaved countrymen had crossed over. No golden Killers could be seen among them as they streamed through the streets of the ruined city on the way to the Tower.
They too had recognized the doubtful promise of that height.
From the peak, the lamentation of the doomed populace came up as a moan scarcely to be heard above the solemn boom of the deluge and the rumble of tumbling stone houses crumbling like sugar beneath the force of the cataract.
All the upper curtain of force had vanished away and in a hundred places along the edge, where energy units were weaker ihan others, water poured over in spurts and splashes.
Little rivulets shone silver as the spray caught the sunlight or were illumined from beneath by the falling, un-quenched flames. The streams grew to sluices, running together, and cascades came into being as great combers rolled over the brink without interruption. The foam and spindrift curved down the thickening glassy edge in long rivers, tumbling down in an inundation dwarfing the falls of Ne-ah-ga-ah.
Beyond the immediate flood below, the beleagured group could see from their eminence that the water had surged through the running crowd of slaves, washing them back from their objective. Even further away the rushing streams had coalesced and lipped around the edge of the Hole.
Windlasses, cordage and lumber all vanished into that maw. The structure above, with its pulleys and tackle, collapsed and fell and was carried instantly away. The coping of masonry and the mounds of earth and stone melted away and the Hole yawned wider and wider as though Earth gaped thirstily.
Now, even above the heavy roar of the descending ocean, could be heard the measured thud and boom of Workers from the accursed depths who sought to break through the thin shell of rock which separated them from the upper air and domination of the fair green lands above.
Upon that separating layer the cataract thundered down, building up an incalculable tonnage, crushing, splintering away the barrier. A bubble of air rushed up through the zigzag shaft. In it was a mutilated Shape whose form remotely approached the human, but which dwarfed man as the mammoth dwarfs the mouse! With it came a battered tree, its trunk and foliage chalk-white from lack of chlorophyll.
The creature waved a gashed and bleeding arm, once only, above the waters, then sank forever.
Momentarily the waters paused at that shrieking blowhole where spray rose hundreds of feet into the air. The column of froth dwindled, became less high and sank to a widening creamy circle marking where lay the deepest shaft ever sunk by mortal man. This was the only remaining evidence that below lay the ruined labors of a thousand years of toil and slavery. Sealed forever by it was the cavern which to the inhabitants of the Land of the Dark Sun must have been but the merest antechamber.
A tremendous bore of water, carrying with it a scum of debris, rushed down the city's central avenue into the Square of the Boats, overturning the metal craft like chips, washing away the drowning crowd. It thundered high upon the ramps, pounding away the climbers, sucking them under in a welter of spume.
It circled about the ziggurat's base, gnawing into the green hill the structure had been based upon, undercutting its foundation.
The mighty man-made mountain trembled, shook itself and leaned ponderously toward the sea, bowing majestically to superior force, shaking from its shoulders the climbing swarm which infested it.
The long boom swung groaning around, hanging far out over the smooth water where the waves were being flattened level by the suction of the current plunging headlong into the maelstrom below. The Vimana, still obeying the un-spoken commands of Corenice, swam below the end of the boom, fighting the indraught of the vortex. The four companions, finding it impossible to use the attached car, clambered recklessly down the latticework of girders and braces toward the ship.
Gwalchmai cast one hurried glance behind him. A few islanders and slaves were crawling after. Beyond them, no edifice cleared the surface of the flood. Beneath it lay mansion, hovel, palace and fane. Above it rose a titanic, cold, white column of mist and spray, bowing, swaying, like the guardian genius of Atlantis come to moum over the passing moments of its last,
lone colony, however wicked and forgotten.
The others, already clustered upon the back of the Vimana, called to him. The boom shuddered and dipped lower. He leapt upon the wet and slippery metal. Corenice caught him by the sword belt and drew him in to safety.
Once more the trap opened and disclosed the stairway and the four hastened below. Already others were dropping upon the bird's back. The door sealed itself tightly into its flanges and the machinery drummed louder as the swan-ship strove to tear itself away from the suction of the cataract. A terrific blow battered them under the surface and all could hear the collapsing roar of the ziggurat's destruction. Then the boom flailed against the Vimana a second time—the power faltered for an instant and they were drawn into the whirlpool.
Fortunately the depth of water below was now sufficient to cushion their fall, but they were whirled about and up and down, thrown hither and thither by cross eddies. The humans were battered against the unyielding sides of the ship, although Corenice was able to maintain her position at the controls by magnetic attraction, fighting to bring them all safely through.
It was not long before the three men were unconscious.
The scene went out in a burst of sparks for Gwalchmai, as his head struck the metal of the ceiling when they were rolled completely over for the last time. Corenice looked on, unable to help, knowing that none other than they still lived who had seen the beauty and terror of Nor-um-Bega, certain that above their heads rolled only a wild and empty waste of tossing waters.
And so it was that the Thunder Bird came to Murderer's Isle—as had been prophesied of old time.
Far to the north, the Vimana lay placidly in a little landlocked bay. A week of tender nursing had brought back strength and health to pounded human bodies, and two Abenaki had been set regretfully ashore to return to their homes. The others were together in the control room poring over a chart, acid etched upon thin metal.
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