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hard-braced knotty legs and iron shoulders, the trap gave with a
splintering crash, and light flooded the shaft.
With a wordless yell I heaved up through the splinters of the trap,
the gold shield held above my head. A score of swords descended on it,
staggering me; but desperately keeping my feet, I heaved up through a
veritable rain of shattering blades, and burst into the chamber of
Yasmeena. With a yell the Yagas swarmed on me, and I cast the bent and
shattered shield in their faces, and swung my sword in the wheel that
flashed through breasts and throats like a mowing blade through corn.
I should have died there, but from the opening behind me crashed a
dozen carbines, and the winged men went down in heaps.
Then up into the chamber came Ghor the Bear, bellowing and terrible,
and after him the killers of Khor and of Koth, thirsting for blood.
That chamber was full of Yagas, and so were the adjoining rooms and
corridors. But in a compact circle, back to back, we held the shaft
entrance, while scores of warriors swarmed up the stair to join us,
widening and pushing out the rim of the circle. In that comparatively
small chamber the din was deafening and terrifying—the clang of
swords, the yelling, the butcher’s sound of flesh and bones parting
beneath the chopping edge.
We quickly cleared the chamber, and held the doors against attack.
As more and more men came up from below, we advanced into the
adjoining rooms, and after perhaps a half-hour of desperate fighting,
we held a circle of chambers and corridors, like a wheel of which the
chamber of the shaft was the axle, and more and more Yagas were
leaving the turrets to take part in the hand-to-hand fighting. There
were some three thousand of us in the upper chambers now, and no more
came up the shaft. I sent Thab to tell Khossuth to bring his men
across the river.
I believed that most of the Yagas had left the turrets. They were
massed thick in the chambers and corridors ahead of us, and were
fighting like demons. I have mentioned that their courage was not of
the type of the Guras’, but any race will fight when a foe has invaded
its last stronghold, and these winged devils were no weaklings.
For a time the battle was at a gasping deadlock. We could advance no
farther in any direction, nor could they thrust us back. The doorways
through which we slashed and thrust were heaped high with bodies, both
hairy and black. Our ammunition was exhausted, and the Yagas could use
their bows to no advantage. It was hand to hand and sword to sword,
men stumbling among the dead to come to hand grips.
Then, just when it seemed that flesh and blood could stand no more,
a thunderous roar rose to the vaulted ceilings, and up through the
shaft and out through the chambers poured streams of fresh, eager
warriors to take our places. Old Khossuth and his men, maddened to
frenzy by the arrows that had been showering upon them as they lay
partly hidden in the ditches, foamed like rabid dogs to come to hand
grips and glut their fury. Thab was not with them, and Khossuth said
he had been struck down by an arrow in his leg, as he was following
his king across the bridge in that dash from the ditches to the
temple. There had been few losses in that reckless rush, however; as I
had suspected, most of the Yagas had entered the chambers, leaving
only a few archers on the towers.
Now began the most bloody and desperate melee I have ever witnessed.
Under the impact of the fresh forces, the weary Yagas gave way, and
the battle streamed out through the halls and rooms. The chiefs tried
in vain to keep the maddened Guras together. Struggling groups split
off the main body, men ran singly down twisting corridors. Throughout
all the citadel thundered the rush of trampling feet, shouts, and din
of steel.
Few shots were fired, few arrows winged. It was hand to hand with a
vengeance. In the roofed chambers and halls, the Yagas could not
spread their wings and dart down on their foes from above. They were
forced to stand on their feet, meeting their ancient enemies on even
terms. It was out on the rooftops and the open courts that our losses
were greatest, for in the open the winged men could resort to their
accustomed tactics.
But we avoided such places as much as possible, and man to man, the
Guras were invincible. Oh, they died by scores, but under their
lashing swords the Yagas died by hundreds. A thousand ages of cruelty
and oppression were being repaid, and red was the payment. The sword
was blind; Yaga women as well as men fell beneath it. But knowing the
fiendishness of those sleek black females, I could not pity them.
I was looking for Altha.
Slaves there were, thousands of them, dazed by the battle, cowering
in terror, too bewildered to realize its portent, or to recognize
their rescuers. Yet several times I saw a woman cry out in sudden joy
and run forward to throw her arms about the bull-neck of some hairy,
panting swordsman, as she recognized a brother, husband, or father. In
the midst of agony and travail there was joy and reuniting, and it
warmed my heart to see it. Only the little yellow slaves and the red
woman crouched in terror, as fearful of these roaring hairy giants as
of their winged masters.
Hacking and slashing my way through the knots of struggling
warriors, I sought for the chamber where were imprisoned the Virgins
of the Moon. At last I caught the shoulder of a Gura girl, cowering on
the floor to avoid chance blows of the men battling above her, and
shouted a question in her ear. She understood and pointed, unable to
make herself heard above the din. Catching her up under one arm, I
slashed a path for us, and in a chamber beyond I set her down, and she
ran swiftly down a corridor, crying for me to follow. I raced after
her, down that corridor, up a winding stair, across a roof-garden
where Guras and Yagas fought, and finally she halted in an open court.
It was the highest point of the city, besides the minarets. In the
midst rose the dome of the Moon, and at the foot of the dome she
showed me a chamber. The door was locked, but I shattered it with
blows of my sword, and glared in. In the semidarkness I saw the gleam
of white limbs huddled close together against the opposite wall. As my
eyes became accustomed to the dimness I saw that some hundred and
fifty girls were cowering in terror against the wall. And as I called
Altha’s name, I heard a voice cry, “Esau! Oh, Esau!” and a slim white
figure hurled itself across the chamber to throw white arms about my
neck and rain passionate kisses on my bronzed features. For an instant
I crushed her close, returning her kisses with hungry lips; then the
roar of battle outside roused me. Turning I saw a swarm of Yagas,
pressed close by five hundred swords, being forced out of a great
doorway near by. Abandoning the fray suddenly they took to flight,
their assailants flowing out into the court with yells of triumph.
And then before me I heard a light mocking laugh, and saw the lithe
figure of Yasmeena, Queen of Yagg.
“So you have returned, Ironhand?” Her voice was like poisoned honey.
“You have returned with your slayers to break the reign of the gods?
Yet you have not conquered, oh fool.”
Without a word I drove at her, silently and murderously, but she
sprang lightly into the air, avoiding my thrust. Her laughter rose to
an insane scream.
“Fool!” she shrieked. “You have not conquered! Did I not say I would
perish in the ruins of my kingdom? Dogs, you are all dead men!”
Whirling in midair she rushed with appalling speed straight for the
dome. The Yagas seemed to sense her intention, for they cried out in
horror and protest, but she did not pause. Lighting on the smooth
slope of the dome, keeping her perch by the use of her wings, she
turned, shook a hand at us in mockery, and then, gripping some bolt or
handle set in the dome, braced both her feet against the ivory slope
and pulled with all her strength.
A section of the dome gave way, catapulting her into the air. The
next instant a huge misshapen bulk came rushing from the opening. And
as it rushed, the impact of its body against the edges of the door was
like the crash of a thunderbolt. The dome split in a hundred places
from base to pinnacle, and fell in with a thunderous roar. Through a
cloud of dust and debris and falling stone the huge figure burst into
the open. A yell went up from the watchers.
The thing that had emerged from the dome was bigger than an
elephant, and in shape something like a gigantic slug, except that it
had a fringe of tentacles all about its body. And from these writhing
tentacles crackled sparks and flashes of blue flame. It spread its
writhing arms, and at their touch stone walls crashed to ruin and
masonry burst apart. It was brainless, sightless—elemental force
incorporated in the lowest form of animation—power gone mad and run
amuck in a senseless fury of destruction.
There was neither plan nor direction to its plunges. It rushed
erratically, literally plowing through solid walls which buckled and
gave way, falling on it in showers which did not seem to injure it. On
all sides men fled aghast.
“Get back through the shaft, all who can!” I yelled. “Take the
girls—get them out first!” I was dragging the dazed creatures from
the prison chamber and thrusting them into the arms of the nearest
warriors, who carried them away. On all sides of us the towers and
minarets were crumbling and roaring down in ruin.
“Make ropes of the tapestries,” I yelled. “Slide down the cliff! In
God’s name, hasten! This fiend will destroy the whole city before it
is done!”
“I’ve found a bunch of rope ladders,” shouted a warrior. “They’ll
reach to the water’s edge, but—”
“Then fasten them and send the women down them,” I shrieked. “Better
take the chance of the river, then—here, Ghor, take Altha!”
I threw her into the arms of the bloodstained giant, and rushed
toward the mountain of destruction which was crashing through the
walls of Yugga.
Of that cataclysmic frenzy I have only a confused memory, an
impression of crashing walls, howling humans, and that engine of doom
roaring through all, with a ghastly aurora playing about it, as the
electric power in its awful body blasted its way through solid stone.
How many Yagas, warriors and women slaves died in the falling
castles is not to be known. Some hundreds had escaped down the shaft
when falling roofs and walls blocked that way, crushing scores who
were trying to reach it. Our warriors worked frenziedly, and the
silken ladders were strung down the cliffs, some over the town of
Akka, some in haste, over the river, and down these the warriors
carried the slave-girls—Guras, red and yellow girls alike.
After I had seen Ghor carry Altha away I wheeled and ran straight
toward that electric horror. It was not intelligent, and what I
expected to accomplish I do not know. But through the
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