As they drew near the mountain, Price sent out scouts.
Five miles from the black, basaltic mass, the head of the column reached the edge of a shallow wadi, a valley a thousand yards across. Three scouts, upon fleet hejins, were half across its level floor, when the low black lava-crowned hills above the opposite slope burst into menacing life.
Scores of blue-clad men appeared from nowhere, dragging to the hill-crest great, silvery, ellipsoid mirrors that flickered in the sun; mirrors supported upon metal frames, like the one that had slain the Arab Hamed with an invisible ray of cold, in the mountain pass.
Broad bright ellipsoids wavered and shimmered in the sun. Queer flashes of violet darted from them, strangely painful to the eye.
At first appearance of the enemy, the three scouts turned and dashed madly back, but not swiftly enough to escape the mirrors. The camel in the lead stumbled and fell. Rider and mount shattered, splintered, when they struck the ground, bodies suddenly chilled to the point of brittleness. The fragments quickly were silvered with frost.
An instant later the second man went down, in a swirl of snow-flakes. Then the third, with a crash like breaking glass.
Fear swept the column on the low lava hills above the wadi. The brooding menace of the mirage had been endurable because it was distant, half unreal. These mirrors of cold were as terrifyingly strange, and they were immediately dangerous. Bedouins and Beni Anz stirred uneasily, but at sight of Price and Jacob Garth unmoved ahead of them, held their ground.
Defense was swiftly organized. Garth boomed rapid orders. The Krupp mountain guns, the four Hotchkiss machine-guns, the two Stokes mortars, were quickly unpacked, mounted in covered positions along the hilltop.
The sheikh Fouad El Akmet’s men were gathered behind the tank to follow it in the first charge. The four hundred and eighty warriors of the Beni Anz, armed, save for a hundred archers, only with long swords and spears, were held for the moment in reserve, in the rear.
The two little cannons were soon thudding regularly, sweeping the opposite slope of the wadi with screaming shrapnel. The Hotchkiss guns broke into rattling music, and snipers, flung prone, nursed barking rifles.
A few minutes longer the mirrors flashed with eye-searing violet. Little swirls of frost appeared in the air about the gunners, and several men fell, shivering, temporarily paralyzed. But the range was apparently too great for effective use of the mirrors. They were dragged back beyond the lava ridge, out of view again.
Price and Jacob Garth, near the guns, scanned the opposite side of the wadi through binoculars. A dozen still blue forms were sprawled there, victims of bullets and shrapnel splinters. But the living had vanished.
“Our move,” Garth observed, serenely bland as ever. “Can’t afford to leave the initiative up to them. And the ammunition for the Krupps won’t hold out all day.”
He turned to boom orders.
The gray-armored tank lumbered over the crest of the hill. At top speed it rumbled down the slope and clanked across the wadi’s stony floor, machine-guns hammering. Behind it raced Fouad’s Bedouins, with their new Lebel rifles.
In undisciplined but splendid charge the Arabs dashed after the tank, throwing up their rifles to fire in headlong career. They were half-way across the valley when the mirrors of cold were pushed back to the hill before them, from concealed trenches.
One Arab fell with his camel into a frosty heap of shattered fragments. Another, then two more, went down in clouds of glittering ice. Then the tank was abruptly white, gleaming argent.
A few seconds it lumbered on. Price hoped that its armor had been proof against the ray; remembered how nearly he had been frozen in it, back in the Jebel Harb. The roaring motor faltered, died. The tank veered, turned broadside to the enemy, stood silent and motionless, a silvery ghost of itself. He felt quick regret for old Sam Sorrows.
Though the Krupps and machine-guns were still raining death upon the blue-clad crews of the mirrors, the tank’s failure shattered the morale of the Arabs. Wheeling their racing dromedaries, they plunged back in mad retreat. And two more fell as they fled.
Disaster was unpleasantly near, Price realized. The proudest weapon of the farengi had fallen a quick victim to the mirrors of cold. Another such reverse would set the Arabs in panic flight.
“Want to try a charge with your natives, Durand?” asked Garth. “That’s about the only chance. We’ll be helpless when the ammunition’s gone.”
Price looked across the wadi with narrowed eyes. It would cost many lives to gain the opposite hill; but, if they retreated now, the Beni Anz would never find courage to advance again.
“All right,” he told Garth.
“Good luck. I’ll keep up the fire.” The big man took his hand in that puffy paw that was so surprisingly strong.
Five minutes later Price rode down into the wadi, swinging the golden ax and raising his voice in the barbaric chant of Iru. Behind his racing hejin came the Beni Anz warriors, in long, irregular lines and scattered groups, scattered purposely.
Half a mile ahead was the low, lava-crowned hill, glittering with half a score of huge, spinning mirrors. Blue-robed men crowded about them, many falling beneath Garth’s fire, but others springing from the hidden trenches to replace them.
Camels’ feet beat upon the stony ground with a vast, hollow thunder. Eager, exultant cries rang out, repeated phrases of the ax-song: “Kill… Korlu the red doom… Drinker of life-blood… Keeper of death-gate.”
Ellipsoid mirrors swayed and spun, flashed painfully violet.
Price did not look back. Shouting the ax-song, he charged straight on; but he heard the screams of terror, and sharp, splintering crashes, like the shattering of myriad panes of glass—the sound of frozen men and camels, smashing to fragments on the rocks.
A blast of icy air struck his face, misty with floating ice-crystals—breath-taking. A freezing ray had come perilously near.
He rode on. The wild drumming of feet behind did not falter.
At last Price’s dromedary was leaping up the hill, toward the nearest mirror. The broad, shimmering ellipsoid swung toward him—a six-foot sheet of silvery metal, mounted upon a delicate, elaborate mechanism.
Two blue-robes were behind it, the glittering brand of the snake upon their foreheads. As one turned the mirror, another manipulated a little knob.
Price saw a violet glow flush the argent metal.
Then he had leapt his camel upon the machine. It collapsed, with a rending and crashing of metal. The hejin fell sprawling. Price sprang clear of the saddle, plunged for the two blue-robes with the great ax.
It all took place with the disordered swiftness of a dream.
One moment, a dozen blue-clad snake-men were surrounding Price, with wicked, double-curved yellow yataghans. The next, the charging Bern Anz were rolling about him like a resistless wave.
Fire from Krupps and machine-guns had ceased as they neared the ridge. And the mirrors of cold ceased to function as their crews were ridden down by camel-mounted warriors.
Savage battle raged for a few minutes along the hilltop, with no quarter given. Two hundred of the Beni Anz had fallen upon the wadi floor, but those who survived to reach the hill exacted a terrible price for their fallen comrades.
A little time of utter confusion. Blue snake-men rallying about their mirrors. Camels crashing through them, kicking, slashing with yellow tusks. Men and camels falling, before arrow and yataghan and spear.
Price, on foot, held his own. The great ax drank blood, and the barbaric song of Iru still rang out.
Then, abruptly, amazingly, the battle was won.
Along the crest of the hill stood the great mirrors, twisted, wrecked. Around them, and in the shallow, lava-walled trenches behind them, lay motionless, gory blue-clad bodies—the snake-men were down, to the last man. Here and there were camels, dead or dying. The survivors of the Beni Anz, no more than half the number that had begun the charge, were swiftly stripping the dead, loading camels with t
heir loot.
Behind lay the grim black wadi floor, scattered with white, shattered heaps that had been men and camels, the silvery, silent tank among them.
Price looked toward the mountain.
Five miles away across the bleak, dark desolation of the lava fields rose its forbidding basaltic masses; Cyclopean black pillars and columns, soaring up two thousand feet, to the glittering splendor of snowy marble and burnished gold that was the palace of the yellow people.
From the dome of the highest gorgeous tower yet spread the fan of lanced rays of rose and topaz light. Above the rays, the weird mirage still hung. Braving the serpent’s hypnotic eyes, Price ventured another glance at it.
The yellow woman, still beside the giant snake, still caressing it, met his glance with a mocking, derisive smile, and shrugged her slim yellow shoulders, as much as to say: “Perhaps you have won, but what of it?”
“Malikar!” wailed one of the Arabs in sudden terror. “Malikar comes! On the golden tiger!”
Dropping his eyes from the mirage, Price saw the yellow tiger running across the lava plain from the mountain. A gigantic beast, fully the size of an ordinary elephant, it carried the ebon howdah, with Malikar, the golden man, seated in it.
Still several miles away, the giant cat was covering distance at a surprising rate. Obviously terrified, the Beni Anz warriors frantically loaded the last of their plunder, and began leading their camels back into the wadi.
16. THE STRANGE EYES OF THE SNAKE
IT WAS now high noon. Merciless white sun-flame drove down upon the lifeless volcanic plain beyond the ridge, across which the yellow tiger was running, and beat upon the rugged lava slopes below the towering, basaltic cone of Hajar Jehannum. No wind stirred; the air trembled with stinging heat.
After a few moments’ thought, Price decided to retire into the wadi he had just crossed at such expense in human lives, to await Malikar’s coming. He did not like to retreat before a single man. But he was not sure that Malikar was a man; he wanted to get beneath the cover of Jacob Garth’s guns.
Midway across the stony floor, where the grisly piles of white were now turning red, he stopped the Arabs, waited, dispatching a note to Jacob Garth to inform him of the victory on the hill and warn him of Malikar’s coming.
Very soon the yellow tiger appeared upon the hill, among the wrecked mirrors of cold and the bodies of the blue-robed dead. For a time the gigantic beast stood there, Malikar sitting in the howdah, robed in red, staring about him.
Then the Krupp guns began to fire again. Price heard the whine of shrapnel above his head. And he saw white smoke burst up near the motionless tiger, where high explosive shells were falling.
Then a strange thing happened.
Malikar stood up in the howdah, turned back to face the mirage still hanging in the sky above the black mountain. He flung out his arms in a gesture of command.
The yellow woman turned, and appeared to speak to the snake.
Gigantic, incredible, bright scales glittering metallic, xanthic yellow, the great serpent moved in the sky. The broad flat wedge of its head was lifted high, upon the slender, shining gold column of its neck. To and fro it swayed, slowly, regularly, purple-black eyes hypnotically a-glitter.
Price tried to draw his eyes away from the snake—and could not! Strange and coldly evil, those swaying, hypnotic orbs riveted him with baleful fascination. His whole body was paralyzed. He could scarcely breathe. A throbbing oppression was in his head; his throat was dry, constricted; his limbs were cold.
Sounds of firing ceased, from the guns across the wadi; Price knew that the others had also been seized by this incredible paralysis.
Brilliant purple-black, the serpent’s eyes shone with cold force of utter evil. Dark wisdom filled them—wisdom older than the race of man. Overwhelming, resistless will.
Price began a battle to move. Deadly paralysis claimed him. A dull weight rested on his brain; his head swam. Suffocation choked him. Coldness crept up his limbs, prickling deadness.
But he was not going to surrender. He wasn’t going to let himself be hypnotized by a snake. Not even a golden snake, in a mirage of madness. A matter of wills. He would not be mastered!
His head was turning, involuntarily, to follow the swaying serpent’s orbs. He tensed the muscles of his neck, struggled to keep his head motionless, to turn his eyes downward.
Then his whole body tensed. He had the incredible sensation that the snake realized his resistance, was increasing the hypnotic power that chained him. Price set his jaw, jerked his head down.
All his will went into the effort. And a cord of evil seemed to snap. He was free. Weak, trembling, with a feeling of nausea in the pit of his stomach, but free! He dared himself to look back at the snake’s eyes. And the dread paralysis did not return. He had proved his mastery.
Price turned, reeling uncertainly. He saw a sickening thing.
Standing about him were two-score Beni Anz warriors, afoot, as he was. All were frozen in rigid paralysis, staring up into the mirage. Mute, helpless terror was on their white, sweat-beaded faces. Their eyes were glazed, they breathed slowly, gaspingly. And Malikar was murdering them.
The gold giant had dismounted from the yellow tiger, which stood two-score yards away. Swiftly he was passing from one to another of the motionless, paralyzed men, methodically stabbing each in the breast with a long, two-edged sword.
The men stood in tense paralysis, staring at the fatal mirage, heads turning a little to follow the swaying, hypnotic eyes of the snake. Helpless, naked horror was on their faces; they were unaware of Malikar, so near.
The yellow man worked swiftly, driving his blade with dexterous skill into unguarded breasts, withdrawing it with a jerk as he pushed his victims backward, to sprawl with red blood welling out.
Outraged, half sick with the brutal horror of it, Price shouted something, sprang toward him.
Malikar turned suddenly, his red robe dripping with new blood. A moment he was startled, motionless, with fear unmistakable in his shallow, tawny eyes. Then he leapt to meet Price, brandishing his reeking blade.
Price met the sword-thrust with the golden buckler, and swung the ax. The yellow man sprang back; but the ax-blade grazed his shoulder, the bloody sword clattered from his ringers.
Price ran forward over the rocky ground, to follow up his advantage. Luck was against him. A loose stone turned under his foot; he stumbled, went heavily to his knees.
As he staggered back to his feet, Malikar leapt away, picked up a heavy block of lava, flung it at him. Price tried in vain to dodge. He felt the impact of the missile against his head; crimson flame seemed to burst from it, flaring through all his brain.
When Price groaned and sat up it was just past sunset. The cool wind that had roused him was blowing down from the black mass of the mountain across the bleak lava flows northward. In the fading, rosy light the gold-and-white palace above the frowning walls was a splendorous coronal. And the mirage was gone.
Price woke where Malikar had felled him. The wadi’s stony floor was red with piles of thawed flesh and shattered bone. Near him were the score of men Malikar had stabbed as they were helpless in that dread fascination of the snake, dark abbas and white kafiyehs scarlet-stained.
He was alone with the dead. Malikar was gone, with the tiger. And the Beni Anz, and Fouad’s men, and Jacob Garth’s. But the little tank still stood there, where the ray of cold had stopped it, in the middle of the wadi.
With a dull and heavy sense of despair, Price realized that once again Malikar had defeated him. Bitterly he recalled the stone that had turned under his foot. The Durand luck had failed again.
His allies must have retreated in mad haste; perhaps they had broken the spell of the mirage, even as he had done, and fled. The abandonment of the tank, of himself and the possessions of the men about him, was proof enough of flight.
Not again, after this reverse, would the Beni Anz follow him, he knew. “Iru” would be discredited. And Aysa
—lovely Aysa of the many moods, serious and smiling, demure and gay, strange, daring fugitive of the sand-waste—was still locked in the mountain fortress ahead, more than ever hopelessly lost.
A missile flicked past Price’s head and clattered startlingly on the bare lava. He heard the clatter of running feet, a hoarse shout of rage and hate. Still dazed, stiff of movement, Price staggered to his feet, turned to face the assailant who had crept up behind him in the twilight.
Wicked yellow yataghan upraised, the man was charging at him in the dusk, a dozen yards away. A tall Arab in a queerly hooded robe of blue. He must, like Price, be a survivor of the battle. He limped as he ran, or hopped grotesquely. And one side of his face was red horror, from which a wild eye, miraculously unharmed, glared with fanatic hate. On his high forehead was the gleaming yellow brand of a coiled serpent.
17. THE SLAVE OF THE SERPENT
AS PRICE DURAND stumbled to his feet, the world tilted and spun beneath him. His head drummed with pain. He reeled, and fought to keep his balance, while the stony wadi floor, strewn with the dead, whirled around him.
The black, basaltic mass of Hajar Jehannum, its gold-and-marble crown sullen in the red sunset, was first on one hand, then on the other. A wave of blackness rose about him, receded. Then the rocking desert steadied.
For a moment Price lost his attacker. Then he saw the Arab again, limping fiercely forward, whirling the yataghan. One leg half dragging, he came with a series of bounding hops. Half his face was a scarlet, grinning smear; in his eyes was the lust of the killer.
Price fought to master his dizziness, and staggered backward to gain time. The heavy golden ax lay on the ground behind him, but he had neither time to reach it, nor strength, at the moment, to wield it.
He stumbled on the rough lava, swayed, regaining his balance with difficulty. But a measure of his strength was returning.
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