Almuric - Robert E. Howard (trending books to read TXT) 📗

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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