"Wake, lord from outside," she said tenderly. "You must not stay here longer ■—my brother would be angry."
Clark was careful to awake slowly, blinking and rubbing his eyes dazedly. "More wine," he muttered thickly. "Got to have more wine—so I can tell you— how beautiful you are "
"You shall have opportunity for that in the next few days," Yala promised with a provocative smile. "You had best return to your chambers now and sleep, my lord. It seems that you are almost overcome by my beauty—or the wine!"
She went to the door and called, as Clark stumbled to his feet. A warrior in the crimson armor answered quickly.
"This soldier will conduct you to your chambers," Yala told him. "Until tomorrow, lord from outside."
Her fingers clung warmly to his in caressing promise. Clark nodded dazedly and staggered out into the hall. He stumbled with his guide by shadowy, torchlit corridors, up a stair to the upper floor. The warrior took him to the door of their chambers, bowed and left.
But Clark's apparently owlish gaze took in the fact that now there were a score of armored guards posted unobtrusively along the corridor outside their chambers. That showed that Thargo was
still taking no chances—and that was going to make things difficult.
Ephraim quell looked up in surprize when Clark stumbled into the torch-lit rooms and slammed the door. Quell's eyes ran over Clark's disordered hair and flushed face, and the girl Lurain, sitting taut as a trapped tigress in a chair, watched with bitter contempt.
"There's a Book that says, 'Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging,' *' twanged Quell, his bony face condemnatory. "Figger you might ought to have read that, before you went down there."
1 I'm not drunk," Clark rasped. "But I've found out a lot and it adds up to the total news that our lives are not worth a plugged nickel if we stay around here."
Quell jumped to his feet in alarm.
"Go down and get the others up here," Clark told him. "Don't appear too urgent about it—but get them!"
Ephraim Quell nodded tightly, and went out of the room. Clark Stannard went rapidly across the room to Lurain.
Clark's mind, racing at top speed ever since he had discovered Thargo's contemplated treachery, had hit upon a desperate plan. It was a hazardous one but the only one, as far as he could see, that would give him and his men a chance to reach the Lake of Life now.
To stay longer in K'Lamm would merely allow Thargo to make pawns of them and then kill them. There was but one other possible course of action by which they might win to the lake.
Lurain's blue eyes blazed hatred as Clark approached. To her amazement, he cut her bonds.
"Lurain, I must talk with you and talk fast," he said swiftly. "I've discovered that Thargo intends to kill me and my men, as soon as we've helped him conquer your city of Dordona."
"I am glad!" she blazed. "Now you
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learn the full evil of these Red spawn. They will kill me, but you also will die."
"Listen, you and your men came spying on K'Lamm to learn when Thargo and his forces will attack your city, didn't you?" Clark demanded, heedless of her hate. "Well, I can tell you that. Thargo and his men will ride toward Dordona in four days."
"Four days?" whispered Lurain, her face suddenly going dead white. "But we did not dream he would attack so soon—my people will be surprized—he will overwhelm Dordona!"
"Exactly," rasped Clark. "He will, unless we carry a warning to Dordona."
"You mean you strangers will help me escape, help me warn Dordona?" the girl exclaimed, with sudden desperate hope.
'"We will," Clark said grimly, "and what is more, we will fight on the side of Dordona in the coming battle. You have seen how powerful our weapons are—it may be that our help will turn the tide against K'Lamm. But, for all this, there is a price."
"What price, for your aid?" Lurain demanded.
"The price," Clark told her, "is this: that when we reach Dordona, you shall take me down the pit to the Lake of Life, so that I may fill a flask with its shining waters to take back to the world outside. For that price, I and my men will aid your people."
"No!" flamed Lurain, leaping erect, her face blazing with wrath. "By the sun, never will I pay that price! Ages on ages have we of Dordona faith fully obeyed the commandments given us long ago by the Guardians below. Never have we permitted one blasphemer to descend to the lake. To allow you to do so would be supreme sacrilege. I reject your proposal. I would rather die!"
"But Dordona will die too, if it is not warned," Clark pointed out. "Yes, all its
people will perish when Thargo leads the armies to K'Lamm into the city in surprize attack. And then Thargo will be able to descend to the lake and drink of it."
"The Guardians are there and will destroy Thargo and his horde if they dare descend," Lurain retorted fiercely.
"Are you so sure the Guardians are there?" Clark said. "Are you sure they exist? None in your city has seen them for ages."
"The Guardians are there!" Complete, unshakable faith of generations rang in the girl's voice. "Though Thargo and his spawn doubt their existence, they exist and still ward the sacred lake. Their powers are vast and they will slay any who approaches the lake, doubt it not."
"But then, why not agree to let me descend to the lake?" Clark pressed quickly. "If the Guardians are there, they will not let me touch the shining waters anyway, will they? The blame will not be yours, for you warned me. And by agreeing to let me go down there, you will save Dordona from surprize and death."
Lurain's face expressed doubt, hesitation, agony for her imperilled city. Clark hung on her answer. He was hoping the girl's blind faith in the legended Guardians of the lake was strong enough so that she would agree to let him go, as she supposed, to his death.
She said finally, her voice low and shaken, "It is true that the Guardians will kill you when you descend to the lake. The sin of letting you descend there will be on my soul. But—Dordona will be warned in time to prepare for Thargo's attack.
"Yes, I agree," she continued with desperate resolution on her face. "Help me escape from K'Lamm, promise to give my city your help in the coming war, and when we reach Dordona I will show
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you how you may descend the sacred shaft."
"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 d
ark 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
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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 aninials 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 unfear-ful but urgent, as she snatched up one of the swords of the fallen men.
The yell of alarm had been repeated
WEIRD TALES
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 horse-court 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. Clark 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 diat 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 might)' bronze valves, were closing them.
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P. Dor dona
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.
Weird Tales volume 30 number 04 Page 15
