by Anthology
"Good!" Clark exclaimed, his heart quickening with excitement. "Now if we can just get safely out of K'Lamm——"
The door opened, and Ephraim Quell grimly entered, followed by Clark's other four followers. Mike Shinn was fighting drunk, bawling a song, his battered face glistening. Link Wilson too was flushed with wine, but Lieutenant Morrow and Blacky Cain were sober—the first because the drink had not affected him, the second from abstinence.
"What's the lay, chief?" rasped Blacky. "Something wrong?"
"A lot wrong," Clark snapped. He told them in curt sentences of Thargo's plot. A vicious oath ripped from the gangster.
"Double-crossing us, eh? We'll go down and put the blast on him, damn him!"
"Sure, I'll choke the dirty scut with me bare hands!" raged Mike Shinn furiously.
"Listen," Clark rapped, "we'll have alt we can do to escape this trap without bothering for revenge on Thargo. We're going to get out of here, at once—and join the people of Dordona."
Rapidly he told them of the agreement he had made with Lurain. The Dordonan girl stood tense and pale as he talked.
"It's a great idea!" exclaimed Blacky. The gangster laughed. "We'll hand Thargo a double-cross, and when we get to this other burg, Dordona, we can easy lift the water from the lake below."
"How are we going to get out of K'Lamm?" Lieutenant Morrow asked quickly. "How out of this palace, even?"
"We can't go down through the palace itself." Clark said emphatically. "The guards posted out there in the corridor would give the alarm. There's the way we'll have to take out."
He pointed to one of the big, open windows, that looked out across the dark city and the starry sky.
"We'll slide down from that window on a rope of some kind," Clark said quickly. "Behind the palace I noticed a court where the horses of the palace guards are evidently kept at night. If we can sneak back there and get mounts, we'll make a dash out through the city."
"That's the idea," approved Link Wilson, his eyes lighting. "We can ride right out through these hombres."
"What if the gates of the city wall are closed?" Morrow asked.
Clark shrugged. "I don't think they will be. I doubt if they close those gates every night—this city fears no attack from Dordona."
The six adventurers acted rapidly. While Ephraim Quell listened watchfully at the door, Clark and the others tore down the wall hangings and converted them into heavy, knotted rope. They tied the end of the rope to a heavy chest, then dropped it into the darkness outside.
The men quickly shouldered their packs. Clark peered from the window. There were no sentries in the palace yard immediately beneath, though he heard movement of some at the front of the building. The walled courts in the rear of the palace were silent except for an occasional stamping of the restless horses back there.
Clark hung for a moment, transfixed by the weird beauty of the scene. The moon was rising above the mountain wall in the east, a flood of silvery light pouring across the prisoned land. And bathed in the moon slept the city K'Lamm, a sea of dully gleaming roofs and streets and squares. Solemn and somber bulked the dark mountains, crouched above the city. Then Clark Stannard snapped out of the spell.
"Come on, that moonlight will make it harder for us," he whispered urgently. "Lurain, you follow me closely."
"Yes, Stannar," she whispered, approximating as closely as she could the name she had heard the others call him.
Clark swung over the stone window-rail and slid softly down the knotted rope through the moonlight, to the ground. He poised there in the shadow, gun in hand. No sound broke the sleeping hush.
Now Lurain was following, her black metal-mesh tunic gleaming in the silver moon. Mike Shinn and Lieutenant Morrow came after, and in a moment they all stood in the shadow of the looming palace wall, their pistols glinting in their hands.
They moved at once toward the rear of the sleeping palace, stepping soundlessly on the stone paving. There seemed no guards outside the big building. Neither were there any outside the broad wooden door of the walled horse-court. The door creaked, and they slipped inside.
There were a score of horses in the court, and as the strangers entered, the animals stamped nervously, tossed their heads suspiciously in the moonlight. Clark's gaze searched the court desperately. But it was Link Wilson who spotted the saddles and bridles, hanging on a rail at one side of the court. Quickly they grasped these and approached the restless horses.
The horses snorted, stamped, wheeled away with hoofs ringing loudly on the paving. Clark cursed inwardly as they again approached the nervous steeds. Link Wilson talked to the horses in a low, soothing monotone as he advanced. The ex-cowboy was soon saddling one of them, and Morrow too and also Lurain had got others to stand still. Clark noticed that the girl worked as silently and swiftly as any of the men, her face showing no particle of fear in the silver light. His heart warmed again to her proud, unwavering courage.
He got one of the restive horses by the mane, and quickly attached the high, queer saddle and the rude bridle. Quell also managed to saddle one, but Mike Shinn and Blacky were having the devil's own time, hanging onto horses that had begun to plunge and rear.
"Help Mike, Link," whispered Clark quickly to the Texan. As the other obeyed, Clark hurried to aid the gangster, leading his own saddled steed.
"This damned goat has got the devil himself in him!" whispered Blacky furiously as Clark reached him. "I wish we had a good eight-cylinder jaloppy for the getaway, instead of these plugs."
Clark grabbed the saddle from the gangster and threw it over the plunging, rearing animal.
"Guards!" cried Lurain suddenly, her silver voice stabbing.
Clark whirled, still holding the mane of the plunging horse. Two armored guards, attracted by the commotion in the horse-court, stood framed in the half-opened door, staring. Then with a yell of alarm, drawing their swords, they rushed forward.
Blacky Cain's automatic sprang into his hand, and with a snarl on his lips, the gangster shot. The reports cracked in close succession and the two charging soldiers fell in heaps.
"That ties it!" cried the gangster. "Now we got to crash our way out!"
"More guards come," called Lurain's high voice, completely calm and unfearful but urgent, as she snatched up one of the swords of the fallen men.
The yell of alarm had been repeated near the looming palace, and there was a clank of running men. Clark Stannard fought furiously to tie the girths of the struggling horse. He finally succeeded, and then he yelled to Blacky Cain.
"Here you are! Mount at once, all of you!"
Now an uproar was spreading through the whole pile of the hexagonal palace, and shouts and clash of arms could be heard from all around it, converging on the horse-court.
Clark swung into the saddle. As he jerked the reins to control the rearing animal, he saw that outside the horsecourt a scattered body of twenty or thirty Red guards were rushing forward with drawn swords gleaming in the moonlight.
"We'll have to break out through them!" Clark yelled. "Ride!"
And he dug his heels into his steed's flanks. The nervous animal needed no further urging, and sprang forward toward the door with hoofs clanging on the pavement. Right beside Clark rode Link Wilson, the Texan sitting easily in the saddle, the rest thundering after.
Straight into the scattered band of guards at the door of the court they rode. Clark glimpsed their drawn swords, then heard the boom of a gun beside him, over the din of hoofs and yells. Link Wilson had drawn one of his forty-fives and was shooting as they charged. Three of the guards slumped down as the heavy slugs hit them.
They crashed through the other guards, a mad whirlwind of riders and steeds, the soldiers and stabbing swords seeming to spin around them. Then, with the swiftness of a cinema film, they were through the soldiers, riding full tilt around the big palace toward the great avenue that led to the city wall.
Other guards ran wildly out from the palace, swords raised in the moonlight. Cla
rk had his own gun out now and fired, and heard Link Wilson's pistol booming again. He saw Lurain bending low over her mount's neck and slashing at a guard whose spear struck toward her. The man went down and she rode right over him, and the little band raced clattering down the wide street of the awakening city.
"The spawn of K'Lamm cannot stand against us, Stannar!" cried Lorain's silver, pealing voice as she rode.
"Yippee!" yelled Link Wilson, the ex-cowboy, drunk with reckless excitement as his horse galloped furiously over the paving.
"The whole city is rousing!" shouted Lieutenant Morrow, spurring his horse beside Clark's.
They thundered down that wide dark street to the accompaniment of mad yells of rage from behind them, and startled cries along the street. A few men ran out as though to intercept them, but recoiled abruptly as the desperate little band rode down on them.
Clanging of hoofs on stone, chorus of yells and orders, were wild music in Clark Stannard's ears as he and his men and the Dordonan girl thundered down the street of moonlit K'Lamm. He saw torches flickering and bobbing ahead of them.
"Look!" yelled Ephraim Quell suddenly over the din. "The gates——"
"Faster!" cried Clark wildly, as he saw at what the Yankee skipper pointed.
The great gates in the city wall had been open, as Clark had guessed. But now, alarmed by the clamor at the distant palace, the guards around those gates were hastily pushing against the mighty bronze valves, were closing them.
9. Dordona
If they close those gates, we're trapped!" yelled Clark.
They spurred desperately forward. From the guard-towers on either side of the gate, several dozen soldiers had run out and formed a line in front of the gate. Behind that line, a half-dozen other Red warriors were slowly forcing the great valves shut.
"Ride through them!" Clark shouted. "It's now or never."
They crashed into that solid line of guards—and stopped! For these soldiers grabbed their bridles and stirrups and clung to them, holding them, stabbing at them with their swords. The crazed horses whirled and plunged in a mad inferno of struggle, the riders rising like swimmers above a wave of armored men and slashing swords.
Clark felt a blade sear along his forearm, and glimpsed the brutal face of the Red warrior stabbing at him. His gun kicked in his hand and the man fell with his forehead driven in. Clark shot again, trying to clear away the men clinging to his bridle. Link Wilson's heavy gun was booming, while Blacky Cain, his eyes blazing and a frozen killer mask on his face, was viciously shooting the men trying to pull him down.
"Dordona! Dordona!" pealed a silver cry from the girl Lurain, wielding her sword with wildcat swiftness and fury.
The gates were almost closed! And from far back at the palace of Thargo, masses of soldiers were coming on the run. Clark had a cold, sinking sense that they were trapped. Then he heard a hoarse cry.
"Out of my way, you scum!" Ephraim Quell shouted, forcing through his attackers, clubbing his reversed gun on their heads.
Quell broke through them. Clark saw the bony Yankee skipper break through on his mount to the half-dozen men who now had pushed the gates within a foot of closing. Ephraim Quell's gun-butt smashed down among them, sent them reeling, his horse trampling them. The Yankee leaped from his horse, swiftly pulled on one of the great valves.
He pulled it open a few yards, by frenzied, tremendous effort. But the men he had scattered were on their feet again, rushing at him and stabbing with their swords. Quell reeled back from them.
Clark shouted, his voice ringing over the mad din, and the others heard and pushed desperately forward. The horses, maddened by the struggle to the pitch of frenzy, surged forward crazily toward the gate-opening that promised freedom, trampling down the clinging guards.
Clark's gun blazed the last of its clip, and the men stabbing at Quell fell. Link Wilson spurred in, grabbed the Yankee skipper's horse, helped haul the bony seaman up onto it. Then before the guards they had broken through could reach them again, their horses were bolting out through the opened gates. Wild from the battle and unaccustomed gunfire, they plunged for freedom, Clark's and Lurain's steeds jamming momentarily in the narrow opening.
Then they were all out in the open moonlight of the plain, the dark walls and confusion and raging shouts of K'Lamm behind them. Plunging, racing, snorting, the horses galloped wildly over the moonlit sea of grass and brush. The wild uproar of the Red city receded swiftly.
"Which way to Dordona?" cried Clark to Lurain, shouting to her over the rush of wind.
"We follow the way now," she cried. "Due east from here it lies—we go to the river, and along it to my city."
Now the horses were settling to a steady, rushing lope as their frenzy of panic quieted a little. Clark turned in the saddle, but there was no sign of pursuit as yet from K'Lamm.
But none of them had escaped unscathed. Mike Shinn had a bleeding cut on his forehead; Blacky Cain had one sleeve slashed to ribbons; the rest all had small cut or stab wounds. Only Ephraim Quell, riding grimly forward with jacket buttoned tightly against the wind, appeared to have escaped without injury.
Clark leaned toward the Dordonan girl riding close beside him. Lorain had a cut across one bare knee, but it was not serious. As they galloped, she looked tautly back to where K'Lamm had dropped from sight in the moonlight.
"They will try to follow but they cannot trail us by night, and they dare not go too close to Dordona in small parties," she said. Then she laughed. "I would like to see Thargo's face now."
Ahead in the dim moonlight there soon loomed vaguely a long, low line of dark trees. It marked the river, and they reached it in a quarter-hour. The dull roar of the stream was loud, as it raced with the swiftness of a mountain-flume toward Dordona.
As they rode along it, heading east, the first gray streak of dawn showed ahead. Clark's hopes were soaring. Every beat of the hoofs brought them nearer to Dordona, where lay the pit that was entrance to the Lake of Life. He'd yet succeed in reaching it—he had the girl's word now that he could descend to it.
Ephraim quell suddenly toppled stiffly from his horse. They reined in hastily and Clark ran to the Yankee's side. Quell's bony face was a ghastly, stiff mask, his eyes closed. From under his coat welled a dark stain, and when Clark ripped the coat open, he saw that beneath it had been concealed two deep sword-wounds.
"Good God! Quell was badly wounded when he kept the gate from closing, but he said nothing to us!" Clark exclaimed. Ephraim Quell's glazed eyes flickered at Clark's drawn, tense countenance. A smile glimmered in them.
"I'm—'bout ready to cast anchor," Quell muttered. "Felt the life running out of me, as I rode——"
"Quell; you're not dying!" Clark said desperately. "We'll get you to Dordona, and pull you through."
"No, I'm done for," whispered the seaman. "And—I don't mind. Ever since my ship burned and they took my certificate, I—haven't cared much about living.
His glazed eyes fixed on the eastern sky, pale with dawn. A cool breeze had begun to blow from there, stirring the grass. The Yankee skipper's lips moved, almost inaudibly.
"Fair skies and a good wind—today " he whispered. Then his head lolled laxly, his eyes dull, dead.
Clark let him down and got to his feet. There was a hard lump in his throat but he made his voice harsh.
"Mike—Blacky—keep a watch to the south and west. Link and Morrow and I will bury him."
In the paling dawn, they scooped a grave under a tree beside the roaring river, using a little camp-spade from one of the packs. White mists of morning made everything unreal as they put Ephraim Quell's stiff body into the shallow grave, and covered it.
"Mount! Forward!" Clark ordered.
Again they galloped, hoofs thudding above the river roar, bearing them on through swirling white mists.
"I'm kind of glad," said Link Wilson's drawling voice finally, "that we buried him where he can hear water."
"Yeah," muttered Mike Shinn. "Quell was a good g
uy. He was a great guy."
An hour later, Lurain suddenly reined in her horse and pointed eagerly ahead. "There is Dordona!"
Five miles ahead rose the eastern wall of the great crater, the mighty, looming barrier of the mountains. Close under the frowning cliffs brooded ancient, crumbling Dordona. Black, silent, brooding like a withered ancient who has long ago fallen from greatness, it lay in the chill white mists, strange contrast to the city from which they had come.
Behind the black battlements of an encircling wall whose top had crumbled at places, rose a mass of antique towers and roofs of dull black stone, weathered by the winds and rains of ages. Under a water-gate in the dilapidated wall ran the roaring, mill-race river they had followed. It ran straight toward a building at the center of the city, a huge black dome that towered two hundred feet into the air.
The gates in the black wall were pushed open as they approached. Soldiers in black armor waved their swords in the air and yelled joyful greetings to Lurain, riding now at the head of the little troop. And as they rode on into the city, from somber, crumbling buildings poured men and women with shouts of gladness.
"Lurain! The princess Lurain has returned!" they shouted.
Clark Stannard, looking about keenly, saw that indeed Dordona had long passed the zenith of its glory. Many of the black stone buildings were untenanted, falling to ruins. Green grass grew between the blocks of black paving in the streets.
And the people pouring forth were not nearly so numerous as the Reds, he saw. Clark sensed despair under their momentary joy, read hopelessness on their pale faces, the hopelessness of great fear.
"Say, we'll be the white-haired boys in this joint for bringing back the girl," Mike Shinn said happily.
"There aren't enough men here to defend this city properly," Lieutenant Morrow told Clark keenly. "The place is too big now for its population, and the wall hasn't been kept up."
Clark nodded grimly. "From what Thargo said, the population of this place has been steadily dwindling for a long time."