by Anthology
He was hard at it in the midst of these arrangements when a bandy of Zollarians mounted on gnuppas appeared above a gentle swell in the road, perhaps a mile away, sat watching the work along the hillside for some moments, turned and disappeared in the direction from whence they had come.
Chapter XVII
"They come, O Jadgor of Ahpur!" Lakkon said.
"Let them," Croft said.
The hosts of Zollaria appeared. From the top of the hill above the road Croft and the other two watched. Foot and chariots, the men of the northern nation began to top the rolling hill before them. It was mid-afternoon. The sunlight sparkled upon spear point and chariot, on cuirass and plume-tufted helm.
Croft turned to Jadgor and Lakkon. "You command the wings," he said. "I shall lead the moturs. The next hour shall make us freemen or slaves. Say as much to your men." He began the descent of the hill, reached the motors, each with its load of tensely waiting soldiers, and entered his own—the first and leading car.
He gave the command. The motors roared. A faint cheer broke from the lips of the men behind the barricade. The armored cars gained speed. They left the defile of the pass. Suddenly they broke upon the sight of the Zollarian host.
For a moment it seemed to falter all along the line as the motors left the road and deployed now in the turn to right and left. Then, with a shout, a flashing chariot dashed from their ranks and headed with plunging gnuppas at Croft's own machine. Crash! Crash! Two of the gnuppas were down. The chariot was overturned in a smother of dust and flying hoofs as the stricken creatures dragged their teammates with them in their fall. Croft's motor advanced. The whole line of unwieldy shapes rolled forward. They began to spit acrid smoke and flame.
Crash, crash! The trenches opened fire, shooting above the moving motors toward the Zollarians' ranks.
Men went down in a swift dissolution. Someone sounded the charge. They surged ahead in a roaring human flood. The motors were engulfed, but still they spat fire. Men gathered about them and sought to overturn them. They died. The press of the charge passed toward the hill. The motors lumbered about and fired into the rear of the storming forces. They squatted on the plain and sent a stream of death into the backs of their foes.
And in the faces of those foes a stream of death was pouring. Rifles blazed and grenades began exploding along the sides of the hills. Still they stormed up. This was Zollaria's day—the day—the thing they dreamed of, planned for, through fifty years.
Only by degrees could the thought of certain success begin the waver in the minds of the men in that charge. So in the end Zollaria's men began at first to doubt and then to fear. In front was death, and death was at their backs. Turn where they would that fiery, unknown, roaring death spat at them. They wavered. They turned. They fled. Bowmen, spearmen, chariot, and plume-tossing gnuppa, they streamed down the hillside and out on the plain. And after them came death—and death met them again from the metal-covered motors, which fired and fired into their mass as they retreated in fear.
Croft saw them vanish over the rolling hill which had veiled their recent advance. He opened the door of his motor and called through a trumpet to two of the cars by number. They were under command of trusted men. He ordered tem to take each two others and follow the beaten army, giving it neither respite nor ease while daylight should last. Himself he returned to the defile. He climbed down and mounted the hill to where Jadgor stood.
"O King," he said. "To you for Tamarizia, I give back Mazhur, the lost state. Another meeting such as this and, I think, Zollaria will surely sue for peace."
Jadgor reached out and embraced him—to Croft's surprise. "Jasor of Nodhur—man of wonder!" he exclaimed. "Did I ever doubt Zitu had sent you to Tamarizia's salvation I do not doubt it now."
That night Croft camped where he was. The next day Belzor, with his Nodhurians, having made a forced march from Niera, came up. Gazing on the body-strewn hillside and plain he wept with disappointment not to have been present to witness what took place.
Croft grinned. "Patience. The emperor himself leads the army against Cathur, some of the captives tell me. Today we advance."
Toward midnight his motors had come back to report the enemy still in flight and the road a mass of wounded who had fallen from exhaustion on the way. Croft's heart went out to the poor devils, who were, after all, but the victims of their ruler's lust for power.
It had been somewhat different in Mazhur, where many of the inhabitants were Tamarizian still at heart. But here, should he leave men behind to attend the wounded, he knew, that if discovered, they would perish without any doubt. Hence beyond collecting them in one place, supplying them with provisions, and leaving the lesser wounded to wait upon the others, he could do nothing before he advanced on the main body of the enemy.
That advance lasted for a week. Twice, during it, Croft left his body, satisfied himself the state of things was safe, returned to Earth, and chatted with Mrs. Goss and went back. At the end of the week he found himself once more facing a foe.
His first victory had produced a wonderful effect. Zollaria, driving Cathur before her like chaff, under Kyphallos' treacherous leadership, had made progress when word of Croft's landing and advance from Miera had caused the Emperor Helmor to detach a portion of his army under his son to crush the flank attack. Instead, his son's command was crushed and recoiled in a sorry route. Helmor faced about. Raging at this check to his plans, he rushed north and east to finish the Tamarizian army himself.
And now Croft found the positions reversed. Helmor chose his own ground. He set himself to withstand the shock of battle along a line of gently rolling hills, up which his foe must advance to the attack. Thus his bowmen had a tremendous advantage, according to all his knowledge of war, and his spearmen, at close quarters, could give a most magnificent account of themselves, while the chariots, in the rear of the line, could take care of any small bands of the enemy which might chance to break through.
In this case Croft put his motors in the front. Deploying his men, he instructed them to advance by rushes, keeping well in the rear of the sixteen machines, yet close enough to take advantage of any breaks they made in Helmor's line.
"This day will be the last," he said to Jadgor as he prepared to lead in his own machine.
"Zitu grant it, and victory with it!" Jadgor replied. "Should you carry defeat to Helmor, Tamarizia is yours, to do with as you please."
"There is but one thing in Tamarizia I desire." Croft looked at Lakkon as he spoke and smiled.
"It is yours, my son," said Aphur's prince, and spoke softly to Jadgor. "What think you, O king? Our Jasor desires a maid."
"Aye, Lakkon, I am not a fool! You are willing she should go to him?"
"I have pledged her to him," said Lakkon as he bowed his head.
"And I go to win her now," said Croft as he entered his car. He gave the signal for the advance with a smile on his lips.
Like huge metal turtles the motors began crawling toward the hill where Helmor waited. Flights of arrows and crossbow bolts rattled on their sides and fell harmless. They reached the foot of the hill and began to climb—up and up. They were half lost now in the smoke of their own fierce discharges and the clouds of flying shafts.
Back of them the infantry advanced as Croft directed, dashing forward a hundred yards, and dropping down to fire in crashing volleys which covered their comrades' sprinting rush, rising again and swarming ahead while the other end of the companies covered them in turn. On the hill confusion began to develop after a time. Men fell in heaps without a chance to strike back.
Nearer and nearer, without pause, the odd metal turtles crept up the hill. Nothing stopped them. On the right flank two reached the Zollarian line and crashed against it. Men fell and were ground into bloody pulp beneath metal wheels. The Zollarians tried. They flung themselves in waves upon the monsters. They sought to climb upon them. They gripped at the spitting rifle-barrels. But still the motors plowed on. They turned and began crawling throug
h the sea of men. Flesh and bone could stand no more. The right flank wavered and fled just before the infantry swarming up the slope in a final rush drove its own charging home. They fell back in a disorganized mob, flinging bows and spears from them as they ran.
They left the center unsupported, attacked from both front and side. It wavered, bent, sought to turn itself to meet the double attack, broke in the process, and split asunder. Behind it, in his gorgeous chariot, Helmor raged to no avail. Through the mêlée a monster thing of metal bore down upon him. From it there came a brazen voice as of one speaking through a trumpet.
"Yield, Helmor of Zollaria, and put a stop to slaughter! Yield, Helmor, or perish with your own men!"
This was the end. Helmor swept the lost field with his eyes and knew the truth. He gave the sign of surrender, spoke to his frightened aids, and sent them galloping on gnuppas right and left to carry the word of defeat. A standard shot up from the top of Croft's car. The sounds of battle ceased by degrees and died as car after car raised a similar signal across the battle-front.
Croft opened the door of his car and stepped down. "You will enter, Helmor of Zollaria," he said shortly, and gestured to the door.
The Emperor Helmor bowed. He bent his haughty crest and disappeared from sight. The door closed behind him, shutting him safe beyond all dreams of conquest for all time to come. The great car turned and lumbered back down the hill toward the camp where Jadgor of Aphur had waited and watched. The sun was at its zenith above a field of dead and wounded, but Helmor's sun of ambition had set.
Chapter XVIII
These are the things Croft told me. It was three o'clock in the morning when he was done. "That was a month ago, Dr. Murray," he said, and sighed.
"But what became of Kyphallos?"
Croft smiled. "Kyphallos was placed under arrest and tried with speed," he replied. "He was sentenced to exile in Zollaria. He went forth in a rather boastful fashion and appeared at the capital, Berla, itself. But neither Helmor nor the tawny Kalamita would have aught to do with him since he could be of no further use to them. Only then I think did Kyphallos realize his true position, because then he drew himself up before Kalamita and asked her, for all time, to say he was nothing to her.
"She replied with a sneering laugh.
"Kyphallos gave her one look, drew his sword, held it before his breast, and fell upon it and died."
"And the maid?" I asked. "Pardon me, Croft, but I'm human! And like all human beings I recognize love as the mainspring of existence."
He laughed. "As it is—love, Murray, is life—the cause of all being. The maid is mine, or shall be so, soon as I return."
"You're going back?" I said.
He gave me a glance. "Of course. The wedding-bay is set. It is to be in Himyra, with Magur as the priest. Man, can't you understand?"
"What?" I inquired.
His laugh came again. But it was nervous. "You rather force me to blow my own horn. Murray, I'm Tamarizia today. When we returned to Zitra victors, and learned that Robur had driven the Mazzerians like chaff before the wind, and that Milidhur, outside of a skirmish or two, had found nothing to do, Tamhys gave me new rank. He named be Prince of Zitra, a title never known in Tamarizia before, but next in importance to the imperial throne. Man, I could have been emperor had I wished since Tamhys's term expired one week after we got back."
"Could have been?" I said.
"Yes." He smiled. "But—I didn't take it. Tamarizia is a republic now. She was ready for it. She had come nearly to it before I arrived. There was no reason why she should not set up a true democracy. When they offered me the crown I replied with a request. I called for a council of the states. I put the thing squarely before them. They hailed the suggestion with acclaim. My word was law, Murray—law.
"Last night when you called me back and I returned, we were completing the draft of the republican constitution. Nothing less. When I returned I found them clustered about me—those nobles of the nation. They thought me in a faint, all save Jadgor and Lakkon and Robur, of course. I caught their eyes and knew they understood. But I said nothing, and we finished the draft last night.
"Now Jasor's body, which I have used, lies in Zud's own room in the Zitra pyramid. It is guarded by a priest. Above it, between it and the Temple of Zitu, Murray, between it and God, Naia of Aphur is waiting for my return, in that room where Ga, the eternal woman, broods above the sacred fire. Think you I shall not go back?"
"No—I think I would go myself if I could," I replied.
His eyes filled with a far-away look. "Earth is beautiful," he said. "I love it, its mountains and valleys, its streams and lakes, its fields of grass and flowers, but, Murray—there is something, someone now in my life I love beyond anything else.
"I shall go back. I shall make Naia of Aphur my wife. There will be an election to select a president of the new republic. I have been asked to put up my name. I think—no, Murray, I am sure, that Naia shall be the first lady of all Tamarizia at Zitra itself before long."
"And your body here? What will you do? Shall you tell her the truth?"
"Yes, I think so," he declared. "But—what need have I of an Earthly body any more?
"My life calls me to Palos. Henceforth I am through with Earth. Hence, Murray, my friend, when I return from this final excursion, I shall snap the invisible bond between this body and my spirit, which, until now, I have held intact. I shall remain here a very few days to perform some necessary tasks. I must provide for Mrs. Goss, and I desire my estate to be given to some foundation for the welfare of my race. Then—then, Murray—I shall go to the woman I love—Naia—my God-given mate!"
This is the story he told me that afternoon and night. Was he sane? I think so. Was the story true? I cannot say. A week from the first time she called me, Mrs. Goss came to me again. I went with her to the great couch in Croft's study and—I found him dead! His body lay there lifeless, rigid and cold beyond any power of mine to help. It came over me that the man had kept his word and broken the subtle thread between it and his spirit, just as he had said he would. I straightened and told Mrs. Goss there was nothing I could do.
She wiped her dark, old yes. "I knowed it," she siad. "I knowed it! Somethin' told me I was goin' to lose him this time! I've knowed him from a baby, Dr. Murray. He was always a very strange man."
* * *
Contents
THE MOUTHPIECE OF ZITU
by J. U. Giesy
PROLOGUE
Elsewhere, I have told the full details of my meeting and acquaintanceship with that strangest of all men, Jason Croft. I am Dr. George Murray, in charge of the Mental Hospital in a Western State. It began when his housekeeper came to me one night, in great agitation, and induced me to come with her to Croft's house. I hound him in a state of deep trance, and Mrs. Goss said he had been thus for a week.
My own private studies had been suck as to give me some indication of what Croft's condition might be, and a glance over the esoteric contents of the bookshelves in this library confirmed my suspicions. It was a long, difficult task but I managed to bring him out of what he acknowledged to be a state of astral projection, that strange state, little understood by Western people but well known to the East, wherein a person's consciousness can separate itself from the physical body and wander afield at will. I knew of it from my studies, but had never encountered it before.
Croft told me that his "astral body" had been on a far world, Palos, a planet in the system of the Dog Star, Sirius, and that he must return there at once. He asked me to come and see him the next afternoon, when, he promised, he would tell me the full story and show how I could assist him in a most difficult situation. Realizing that he was in full control of his faculties, I agreed and left him, assuring his frightened housekeeper that all was well.
The next day, Croft told me of his life, his studies, his travels, his meetings with adepts where he learned the technique of astral projection—an art which we of the West unfortunately associate with su
perstition and delusion. He had carried it much farther than any of his teachers, for actually, there are no spatial limits to the extent one can travel in the entire universe once this technique is mastered. He said that, from childhood, he had felt himself drawn to Sirius.
There he found human beings and a civilization which was in some ways very similar to various ancient civilizations here on Earth. In his disembodied state, he became a watcher, and was drawn to the land of Aphur, on Palos. Aphur was a small, autonomous kingdom within the federation of states known as Tamarizia. Opposed to this federation was another one known as Zollaria, and between the two an uneasy truce had been in effect for many years, following a war wherein Zollaria's attempt to conquer Tamarizia had been frustrated.
A crisis was emerging, and Jadgor, king of Aphur hoped to avert it by a closer alliance with the neighboring state of Cathur, through marrying the daughter of Naia, daughter of Lakkon—a prince of Aphur—to Kyphallos, heir to the throne of Cathur. At first, this was little more than pageantry to Jason Croft; but when he saw Lakkon's daughter, Naia, who was to be sacrificed to the dissolute Kyphallos for the good of the state, Croft realized why he had been drawn to Palos. This was the woman who, it seemed, he had been destined to love.
He had found that he could understand the speech of Palos's peoples; he wandered all over Palos, attended classes in the various schools and learned the customs and conditions of Aphur and found an advanced religion in the worship of Zitu here, under the rule of Zud, the High Priest. He spied upon Cathur and learned that Kyphallos cared nothing for Naia, but was in love with one Kalamita of Zollaria. For Kyphallos, this marriage would be a means through which Aphur, situated in a key position geographically, could be subverted and opened to invasion of all Tamarizia. Jadgor and Lakkon suspected none of this.