The Ship from Atlantis

by H. Warner Munn

  It glowed in pastel shades indicating peace, above the unafraid Abenaki, rosy pearl, shimmering metallic blue, fluctuating yellow, and sped onward in wide curve out to sea.

  Its contours had not changed when it poised over Nor-um-Bega, but its color ranged in tinge from blood to flame and now a wrathful aura fringed it like smoke. It hung there, menacing, and hurried on, beyond the world's great round to meet the rising sun.

  Caranche heard about it and hastened from his bed to scan the sky, laughing in his strength to see the good omen which meant to him only success in another spring raid. Beneath him in separate cells below ground, where they could see nothing, Corenice nodded secretly to herself and her two imprisoned friends slept uneasily, unknowing of the portent.

  VII

  THE FIGHT FOR THE TOWER

  The king's throne had been set up in a small courtyard, when the prisoners were brought before him, blinking in the strong light of dawn. Beside him, held lightly, stood Corenice, still disguised. Facing them were two stone posts, their bases blackened with soot, as were also the fire-corroded chains hanging from it. A group of attendants stood close by, near bundles of fagots. Except for these, the enclosure was empty.

  Caranche beamed down upon them with a heavy benig-nancy and indicated their weapons, piled in a small heap at his feet.

  "Because you have told me what I wanted to know, however unwittingly, I am minded to spare your lives. Say, therefore, will you be my men? I will make you overseers."

  For answer, Gwalchmai spat at him.

  Caranche did not fly into a fury, but signed for the two men to be fastened against the posts. While this was being done, he said:

  "Since you refuse and, by his silence, so does your companion, most mighty Glooskap who are perhaps no more than an impostor after all, let me mention for your delight that you will soon have ample opportunity to show proof of your divinity.

  "An hour, I think you said, in the heat of the sun? Then the toy yonder will be fully recharged? First we will have wood piled around you." His attendants commenced this work.

  "And then, when all is ready, a little practice, eh? If it is fully charged, you should not feel much pain when we burn your legs off—to the hips! If so—well, the burning wood will soon end your troubles.

  "Of course, if you are Glooskap it will doubtless not affect you. Surely a god would not permit his friends to feel distress if he could save them—or would he? It is a matter of some interest to me.

  "Now, take this thought with you, Glooskap, as you go. In the spring—when the maple leaves are the size of the squirrel's ear—that is the time for war! It is very near.

  "Then we will fall upon the Abenaki with axe, knife and fire. We will leave nothing alive, not even the cur at the wickam door! We need no more new slaves. Their work is done once we recharge the weapons of the Old Ones.

  "We will blast out the bottom of the Hole during my own lifetime! We will reach the Land of the Dark Sun as they did, learn the powers of that land and become lords among the heathen! Yea, the whole world shall yet bow to the might of Nor-um-Bega! The Island of Heroes shall subdue continents!

  "Still we must wait nearly an anxious hour, must we not, in order to find if you have told the truth? Waiting is such a tedious thing that I and thy woman, Glooskap, will while it away in tender dalliance!"

  He turned to Corenice, standing patiently, face hidden in her fur-trimmed hood.

  "And as for you—you shall come to me for a time… then to the commanders of my hundreds… and finally to the cauldrons, that the slaves may be fed!"

  His men roared with laughter, bending over, slapping their knees, as Corenice with suspicious meekness followed the king into a little chamber. The thick door closed behind them with as final a thud as if a chapter of history closed with it.

  A few quiet seconds followed. Then, even t as the men were stooping for fagot bundles, they were stopped by a dreadful long screaming from the dark interior of that inner chamber. It was a sound which held the very quintessence of horror—agony—and surprise!

  Amost before the startled men could straighten up, Car-anche came hurtling out, carrying the door from its hinges. He was no more than a mangled mass of flesh with white ribs protruding from his crushed chest. With all life gone, he flew through the air, to thud with flapping arms and legs upon the stones twenty feet away.

  Nunganey gave a wild whoop of exultation as Corenice strode out, but the men-at-arm^ stared aghast at this stalk-ing figure from their most ancient legends. Her hood was thrown back from off her glittering hair and with her sleeve she had wiped away the masking stain upon the shining metal of her cheeks.

  No longer could she be mistaken for anything even remotely human, and the strong men shrank back against the courtyard wall, leaving the stone posts and the prisoners as she approached.

  Her face was set in the grim lines of a sad destroying angel intent upon carrying out a just sentence. She swept up the flame-gun and snapped down the butt plate. Her expression did not change or her hand tremble when, with one smooth motion, she waved them out of existence.

  The instrument flared briefly and quickly discharged itself again, but it had lasted long enough to bring the wall of the courtyard tumbling down. The street beyond was empty.

  She turned to her bound companions and, not bothering to unhook their chains, she twisted the thick links apart as though they had been cast from wax. It was then she spoke in a voice of doom:

  "Thus perish the first of the defaming enemies of Ahuni-i!"

  Nunganey said glumly, "We got in here easily enough, but we may have trouble getting out."

  Corenice laughed.

  "Spoken with your usual optimism, my friend. Yonder lies the road and here are your weapons. Let us go, then."

  Gwalchmai grunted. "Whither can we go, maiden of Atlantis? There is no spot in all this land that holds a friend to us, except beyond the Slave Wall. There we would be not better off. We are but three!"

  She bowed her pretty head. "Nay, man, we are four. Ourselves—and Ahuni-i, for whom I act. As for our des-tination, I am instructed to take the Tower and wait there for whatever may chance to befall!"

  "We go to our deaths," said Nunganey, under his breath. While Corenice was assisting Gwalchmai with the buckles of his sword belt, he surreptitiously rubbed soot off the greasy chains, smearing it upon his cheeks and forehead. Afterward, feeling more suitably dressed for his last battle, he trotted after the others, plotting out a new and magnificent stanza for his death song.

  Although the sun was high overhead, it was still early dawn for the late rising city dwellers overshadowed by the dark rim of water. No one was afoot in the mean district that the three passed through to the ziggurat, which was easy to discern, being the highest edifice in the city. Avoiding the ways they had been led before, they passed by heavily shuttered houses, their doors locked and barred against the fear of midnight assassination.

  In Nor-um-Bega, no man trusted a neighbor.

  Luck was with them also in the next street, a foul lane wandering between heaps of moldering garbage, but it could not long continue. As they turned to the right into a prouder avenue, they saw a man coming toward them not far away. He was fully armed and armored and as he came he was whistling gaily and looking carelessly about him. They shrank back around the corner into the' squalor they had just left.

  "A change of guard for the Hole," Corenice murmured. "Can you take him Nunganey? Silently?"

  A savage gleam of white flashing teeth was her answer and the Abenaki slipped loose his war hatchet from its sheath and weighed it in his hand, testing its well tried balance.

  On came the unsuspicious guard, obviously in no hurry to take his place in the deep shaft. He strode jingling by the street entrance without seeing them in the deep em-brasure of a doorway. As he passed on, Nunganey stepped out to gain the room for a long cast. His hatchet flew, wheeling, spinning, to bury its keen flint edge to the thong wrapped handle, just where basinet did not q
uiet meet gorget and red locks escaped, parted and severed, redder now than ever before.

  It was the work of a few moments to strip the dead guard, in the filthy alley nearby. When they were done, out from that alley came an armored man, with brown hair well tucked out of sight. His face was masked with a dropped visor and his sword was out. With it he prodded on before him a red-skinned slave and a hooded girl. The bundles both carried contained Gwalchmai's and Nunganey's own weapons wrapped in the dead guard's inner tunic.

  Thus disguised, they came into familiar places which they could no longer avoid and passed down a broad avenue where people were, but without attracting much curious attention. Their next turning took them into the miserable settlement where again the silver cauldron was boiling for the morning meal. Few children were awake, and they pushed on through the square without hindrance or comment. At last they came again to the grass grown pavement which circled along the base of the perpendicular cliff of brine which perpetually menaced this sea-girt land.

  Now here, as they walked hurriedly beside the dark un-moving water, they noticed mysterious, ill-defined movements beyond the intangible obstruction between them and the submerged land. They became aware that a blurred and shadowy form was following their progress—outside the invisible wall.

  It swerved toward them, avoiding some rise in the sea bottom, and they could see it clearly, nosing against the other side of that transparent dam against the ocean's ponderous weight. A long-bodied prowling shark, looking for food, with others behind it in the murk! Gently fanning the water, it swam beside them, watching them intently with its little piggish eyes.

  "The sea-wolves of Ahuni-il" said Corenice. "They have been sent for and they are gathering!"

  Their road veered away from the trailing pack, but they knew that they were still being dogged.

  So they came at last to the black stone tower, unchallenged and unharmed, against all of. Nunganey's somber expectations. As they set their feet to the first steps of that winding stairway a great shouting and uproar burst out not very far away. They wheeled and saw a confused mass of red-bearded soldiery rushing in pursuit, without discipline or apparent leader.

  It was evident that they would soon be overtaken, but the three ran up a dozen steps to a little landing and here, with Corenice and the Abenaki thrust behind him, Gwalchmai turned to fight.

  Strong as he was and with the elevation of his stand also in his favor, only his fine Roman sword saved him in the first encounter. It was fortunate that his father Venti-dius, the former centurion, had trained him well. He had a skill which no Aztec could possess, for the maccahuitl with its teeth of volcanic glass was essentially a striking, smashing weapon without a point. The Roman gladius was a thrusting blade also.

  At first, he had no time for science. By sheer weight they pushed him back from the landing, up and up the contested stairs, his blue steel dripping, singing in a circle no man could step inside and live.

  Luckily for him, their armor was not the strangely alive orichalcum, but only an alloy similar in color. Like bronze, it turned the edge of a soft iron weapon or hindered an axe of the same alloy, but the good legionary steel shore through it like tin.

  Up and back they pushed him along the broad stair-way until, when halfway around the first spiral, Gwalchmai heard the thrum-m-m of Nunganey's stout bow. There was a whir above his shoulder and an attacker groaned and fell in mid-stroke.

  A tall, finely armored man ran out from the crowd, tossing his axe from hand to hand. His head was bare and his almost scarlet locks flew free as a flame. There was a rapt look on his face and it was easy to see that he cared little for life.

  As he ran, he chanted the Song of the Sun:

  "Earth and Sky are things eternal,

  Man must die!

  Old age is a thing of evil!

  Charge and die!"

  He coughed once as Nunganey's arrow took him in the throat, and went down on his knees at the edge of the stair. He cast himself over and down, out of the way of those who came behind him—and even while falling, his joyous expression did not change.

  Like venomous angry bees the avenging arrows whizzed and flew, until from very lack of room to fight, the Nor-um-Begans were forced to give way and dodge the rolling dead. Gwalchmai leaned against the wall and panted. Core-nice tore loose one of the slabs of stone set here and there to serve as benches and hurled it into the crowd. The three had a short respite.

  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. The
y 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.