Part 11

"Look!" ordered Denham, pointing toward the spot where the little folding stair had been. I looked, and despair rushed over me. For the stair had been removed, and instead of it, steps had been cut into the side of the shaft itself, leading from the spiral stairway in the shaft to the ring of black flooring on which we stood.

"The guards must have cut those steps after you escaped," said Denham, "probably because they would not allow anyone to play on them again the trick you did. We heard of your exploit, in the pit."

Up from the shaft was coming now an increasing clamor, and the battering on the gate far below had increased in fierceness.

"But how, then, are we to hold them in the pit?" I asked, despairingly. "A messenger has gone into time after Kethra and his forces, and if we could only check these hordes until he comes--"

Abruptly the Aztec spoke, calmly, gravely. "We are five," he said, "five strong swords. And the stair is narrow."

There was a moment of silence, for the idea he broached was stunning in its audacity. Then D'Alord laughed in sheer delight. "Good!" he cried. "Why, 'twill be easy! Ixtil is right. We are five blades here, and the stair is narrow. We'll show them sword-play, eh?"

A sudden reckless excitement burned through me like fire. "Good enough!" I cried. The Roman broke in on us. "Down the stair, then, at once! We'll meet them at the very bottom, if possible, and then when they do force us back up, it will give us a long enough delay for the aid you speak of to get here."

We ran toward the steps cut in the shaft, but Denham halted us by an exclamation. "Look!" he cried, pointing some distance along the wall of the temple. "There are suits of the guards' armor, hanging up. We'll need them, before we are through today!"

We saw the wisdom of his suggestion, and hastily acted on it, donning suits of the brazen armor and helmets to match. The Roman alone, who was already attired very similarly, did not join us.

And now we rushed toward the steps in the shaft's side, and down them to the beginning of the spiral stair. Down the stair we ran, recklessly throwing ourselves around the curves of that airy, high-flung pathway. Looking down, I saw that the light in the pit was growing, as the dawn began to flame in the world above, and I glimpsed vaguely through the rising mists a great horde that eddied and swirled about the bottom of the stairway. Up to our ears, stronger and stronger, came the clanging of heavy metal objects striking the barred gate, while there rose at the same time a savage roar from the pit's blood-thirsty hordes.

We raced on, down and down until I was near to dropping with exhaustion. And still the Roman sternly spurred us forward, with the cheering assurance that the farther down we went, the farther up the hordes would need to press us back. Finally we reached the fourth curve of the spiral stair above the ground, a height of perhaps two thousand feet above the pit's floor. And there the Roman halted us.

"We'll make our stand here," he said. The clangor and the roaring below were deafening, now, and for a few minutes we lay upon the steps exhausted, then rose to our feet, one by one. Fabrius stood a step below the rest of us, his heavy shortsword in his hand, calmly looking down toward the pit. I drew my own rapier, my heart thumping wildly, but I strove to appear as calm as the Roman. Denham, with elaborate unmindfulness of the roaring mobs below, drew forth a snuff-box containing a few grains of the brown powder, and offered us each in turn a pinch, which we refused, then daintily took some himself.

"Ha, Ixtil," cried D'Alord, slapping the Aztec on the back gleefully, "this should be a better fight even than those in the pit, eh?" The chieftain smiled darkly, shifting his saw-toothed sword from hand to hand, but made no other answer, and the Frenchman turned to me.

"What of him?" he demanded, pointing to Lantin. "He has no sword."

I turned in dismay, for I had forgotten my friend, almost. "You'd best go back up to the temple's top," I told him. "Wait for the coming of Kethra, and guide him down to us. You can be no good here, you know, so don't risk yourself."

The others seconded my suggestion, warmly urging Lantin to return to the temple's top and await the aid from Kethra, but he refused. "I have this," he said, showing us an automatic which he had snatched up when we sprang from the time-car. Finally we compromised by placing him on the stair some distance behind and above us, where he could use the few but precious shots in his weapon when it was most necessary to do so.

Now we turned from him, for with a sudden mighty clang the great gate below went down. There was a tremendous shout, a savage roar of triumph, and then the tramping of thousands of feet as the hordes in the pit flooded toward the overturned gate and raced up the stair.

* * * * *

Looking down, we saw them ascending toward us, coming in such close-packed order that many were crowded from the low-walled stair and dashed down to death below. But still they came on, a bellowing, blood-thirsty mob, until they were winding around the stair just across the spiral from us.

Denham drew his sword, now, and we stepped down so that we stood in a single line across the stair, the Roman at the center, with D'Alord and Ixtil on his left side and Denham and me on the other.

And now the hordes surged around the bend of the stair, racing up toward us. A sudden cry went up from them as they glimpsed us, and momentarily the human wave sucked back, and the close-packed mob halted. A moment there was silence, while they stared up at us. I stole a glance at my companions. The face of Fabrius was stern but unperturbed, and he gripped his sword firmly, eyeing the mob below with eagle gaze. D'Alord's face was darkly flushed, his eyes gleaming. Ixtil leaned forward in a tense, tigerish crouch, while Denham, beside me, lounged negligently, leaning on his rapier and regarding the crowd below us with a mocking, contemptuous smile.

Only a moment that silence lasted, while the hordes gazed up at us. Then, as they saw that we were but five, a beastlike roar went up and they raced up toward us, vying for the honor of slaying us.

Up, up they came, a sea of ragged figures, a storm of flashing weapons. A catlike Egyptian and a giant Chinaman were first of that mob, with behind them the massed weight of the hordes in the pit, pushing up from far below, to win up to the flying-platforms that would carry them to the loot of Kom.

As though in a dream, I saw the fierce faces coming up toward us, and then there was a clash of steel on steel that brought me to my senses. D'Alord and Fabrius had each leapt forward a step and with two strokes that were like darting flashes of lightning had struck down the Egyptian and the Chinaman. Over their bodies came the others, and for an instant the air seemed thick with darting sword-blades, at which I whirled and thrust and parried.

A brutal-faced man in medieval chain-armor was my nearest opponent, and as I realized the fact, he swung up his heavy sword for a crashing stroke. But while he raised the cumbrous weapon, I darted out my rapier and he fell with a spreading red stain at his throat. A white-robed, sallow man thrust at me with a long spear, over his body, but the sword of the Roman flashed down and cut the head from the spear, then flashed again and the man went down. A dozen blades glinted off my armor and helmet, and I thrust out savagely and blindly, felt the blade pierce through flesh and blood, once, twice. And now, shaken by our first fierce resistance, the mob fell back a little, while we stood panting, surveying the scene of that first clash.

At our feet lay a dozen or more men, dead or dying. As yet none of us had been wounded, with the exception of D'Alord, who was bleeding from a cut on the back of his wrist. The narrowness of the stairway had been our salvation, since only a few men at a time could come at us, and these were hampered by the press of those behind them.

But I saw that the battle had only begun. The mob was again surging up toward us, more fiercely than before. I glanced back up the stair, but there was no sign of Kethra's forces. Then I turned my attention back to the oncoming hordes, for already our blades were clashing with theirs.

A succession of savage faces appeared before me, confused and changing, and I thrust until my wrist was tired to numbness. I heard, even above the clash of blades and shouts of our opponents, the voice of D'Alord, who was mocking his opponents in rapid French, disparaging their skill and crying out when he beat down their guard. And, soaring high over all the other sounds of the battle, rose a weird, piercing cry, the battle-cry of the Aztec.

"Alalala!" he shouted. "Alalala! Alalala!"

The stairs at our feet became slippery with blood, choked with bodies, and we gave back a few steps. This gave us further advantage, for we stood on firm, dry footing, while those who came at us slipped and fell on the smooth metal of the steps below us, smeared as it was with the life-blood of their fellows. Yet they came on, ever on, forced us around and around the spiral, up, up, ever up the stair.

We were forced up until we had entered the shaft and the wall on our right gave us added support. In the semi-darkness of the shaft, too, it was harder for those coming at us to see us, while they were more plainly visible to us against the light of the pit below.

A ragged, squint-eyed little man crept under the legs of those battling us, and jabbed at me with a javelin. In the confusion of battle we had shifted in position until I was now next to the low wall that kept us from the abyss. Now, as the javelin stabbed up at me, I stooped swiftly beside the low barrier, and with a flashing stroke across his neck, finished my squint-eyed opponent. But as I started to rise again, a great figure loomed above me, a giant black who swung up above his head a heavy, horn-hafted ax. He was standing on the low wall itself, balancing himself for a crashing down-stroke of the ax, which I could not resist.

He uttered a fierce cry, whirled the ax about over his head, and swung it down toward me, but as his arm started that downward motion there was a sharp crack from the stair above, and he toppled down into the abyss. In the very nick of time, Lantin's shot had saved me.

But on came the hordes, pushing us up and up by sheer weight of numbers, until it seemed madness that five men should thus stand against thousands. Around and around the up-spiraling stair they forced us, so that sometimes we fought on one side of the shaft and sometimes on another. Now and then, sated with fighting, they would draw back for a few moments, and this gave us precious intervals of rest, but always they came on again, always they pushed us up. Man after man of them hurtled down to death in the pit, for as the hordes came on they threw their own dead and dying over the rail into the abyss, so that the stair might be unencumbered.

We were very near to the temple floor by now, and I was bleeding from a dozen flesh-wounds, nor were the rest of us in better case. Ixtil had a great cut in one cheek, and Fabrius had been wounded in the leg by a thrown spear. D'Alord, too, was a bloody figure, and had ceased to jeer at his adversaries, fighting now in grim silence. Alone among us, Denham remained virtually unscathed, and he fought on unchanged. His slender, needlelike rapier flashed here and there with wonderful speed and precision, always stabbing at the exact right spot, with the exact force needed. And he still smiled scornfully as his blade dealt death.

A half-dozen times Lantin's pistol had saved one of us from death, barking out a grim message when we were pressed too close. But now we were becoming ever more weary, were being pressed ever more swiftly up by fresh opponents, with the weight of the hordes behind them. All down the great spiral, clear to the floor of the pit, the stair was crowded with the hordes, pressing us ever upward, their own weight and numbers hampering with deadly effect those who were nearest us, and who were pushed forward with no chance for choosing their thrusts.

At last we reached the stair's end, and stood on the black ring of flooring around the abyss. When we could no longer hold them from emerging onto that flooring, we suddenly turned and ran toward the other spiral stair which circled the interior of the cylindrical temple, winding from balcony to balcony up to the building's roof.

And there our fight began anew, for when the hordes emerged into the temple they did not stream outside into the city, as I had hoped, but continued to press us up toward the roof, where were the flying-platforms that would carry them to the rich loot of mighty Kom. They could have had freedom, but it was not enough. They were thirsty for the riches awaiting them at Kom. So not a man of them left the temple, all combining to force us up the narrow stair that spiraled up the temple's interior, a replica of the one in the shaft, though much smaller, and the only road to the building's roof.

They were pressing us closely, now, and we could hardly keep to our feet. Then, a hundred feet from the ceiling of the great building, a shout of triumph went up from the hordes, for D'Alord went down, stunned by a blow on the head from a great mace. Fabrius rushed forward to drag him back, and was himself struck down by a blow from the same club. It seemed that our fight was over, then and there, when there came a sharp rattle of shots from behind and some six or seven of our opponents went down, felled by the last shots of Lantin's pistol.

Involuntarily the mob fell back for a few steps, and we seized the opportunity to drag D'Alord and the Roman to their feet. Fabrius was unhurt and D'Alord had only been stunned, quickly reviving. And now, as the mob below hung for a moment hesitant, not knowing how many more shots Lantin had at his disposal, two men sprang out of their number and faced us.

One was a lithe, brown-skinned Malay, who waved a gleaming kris aloft and called to the rest to resume the attack. But the other it was who held my gaze, a blond giant with long, waving hair, who shouted fiercely and waved a battle-ax aloft, calling to his companions to follow him to the attack.

It was Cannell!

Cannell, for whom we had come across the centuries! Cannell, whom we had seen seized by the Raider and taken, whom we had searched for in vain in the city of the pit. There was a great, half-healed wound on his temple, and his eyes were alight with blood-lust, so that I could see that he knew us not.

I was brushed aside, and someone sped by me from above. It was Lantin, and before we could stop him he had passed us and had raced down the intervening steps toward Cannell, his face alight at seeing the friend we had come through time to rescue.

"Cannell!" he cried, rushing toward him with hands outstretched. We looked in that instant to see him slain, but no blow was struck, the mob seeming paralyzed by astonishment. I saw Lantin reach out to Cannell, saw the blood-lust leave him; his eyes cleared as he looked at Lantin, the past coming back to him over his time in the bloody pit.

He dropped his ax and took a step toward Lantin, his face alight with recognition. Then we uttered a helpless groan, for the Malay, who stood at the low rail behind Lantin, had recovered from his surprize and now swept up his curved blade over Lantin's head.

I shouted, and started down toward Lantin, but knew myself too late to ward off that blow. Cannell looked, saw the upflung, menacing blade, and uttered a great shout. He had no weapon in his hand, but with one great bound he leapt up toward the Malay, gripped him in his arms, and then the two swayed, toppled, fell, hurtled down into the abyss, twisting and turning, locked in a death-grip, down through the temple's interior, down into the darkness of the vast shaft below, down to the pit-floor far beneath.

I was down to Lantin now, grasped him and dragged him back, and before the massed hordes recovered from their astonishment, he was behind us. They turned now, saw, and howled their rage, racing up toward our waiting swords.

A torrent of raging swords, they pushed us up until we stood at the stair's end. Behind us was a high, vaulted room, and at its other side the stair continued, leading still up. We turned, ran across that room, the triumphant horde behind us, and when we reached the stair at the room's other side, turned again and faced them.

Up through a half-dozen such rooms they forced us, through dim, great halls with patterns of fire on their walls, with unguessed, looming mysteries lurking in their shadows, vaguely glimpsed by me as we ran through them. The lair of the Raider, those dim halls, I knew. And, at last, the narrow stair from one of them emerged onto the roof itself, and we stood at the point where that stair opened onto the great, flat roof, barring the way of the hordes in our final stand.

Behind us, on the great expanse of the roof, were low-walled, oval platforms of metal, great of size, stacked one upon another. Enough flying-platforms, I knew, to carry all the hordes below us down to the loot of Kom. And the foremost of our opponents saw them also, and yelled with savage triumph.

If we had fought fiercely before, we battled like supermen now, in a last spurt of energy. Our swords clicked and flashed like swift shuttles, weaving strands of death from enemy to enemy, as we used all the mad strength of despair to hold back the hordes for a last moment.

"_Mordieu!_" shouted D'Alord. "This is the end, comrades!"

I turned to answer him, then halted. From above, from the sun-flooded air of early morning, had sounded a long, rising shriek of wind, a piercing whistle of a rising gale. A fierce burst of wind struck us, and cold, ice-cold, flooded through my heart. There was a thundering of wind-sounds above, another buffeting gust of cold air, and then appeared abruptly, a hundred feet above us, the Raider!

"God!" muttered Lantin, behind me. The blades of our enemies and ourselves had ceased to clash, and with a common impulse we gazed up. The Raider's swirling mists contracted suddenly, his three orbs of green changed to purple, and he drifted gently, tauntingly, down toward us.

* * * * *

A howl of triumph went up from the hordes on the stair. Away down and around the spiraling stairway it went, down all their packed masses, down into the shaft to the pit itself, all taking up and passing on that savage, exultant shout.

For we had lost. Kethra had lost. The Raider had somehow eluded him, in time, and had come back to destroy us and to loose his hordes on the flying-platforms, to send them down to Kom in a rain of death, while Kethra vainly searched time for the Raider. We had lost.

Slowly, slowly, the Raider came down toward us, while the hordes below us watched with delighted expectancy. Spinning, twisting, it sank down until it hung a scant twenty feet above us, and we waited, helpless, for the destroying flashes from the central orbs.

Suddenly D'Alord stepped forward, and uttering a yell of defiance, he picked a sword from the floor, whirled it around his head and sent it hurtling spear-wise up toward the Raider.

It fell back, missed by yards. And now the gray, shapeless mass of the Raider spun and laced with inconceivable rapidity, while down upon us darted flash on flash of purple, destroying fire, from the central orbs.

The flashes fell short! Between us and the Raider was hanging a veil of transparent black, a tenuous black net that was suspended in midair above us, and against which the purple flashes splashed and stopped. I turned swiftly, and a little behind and above me was hovering the air-boat of Kethra. It moved toward us, and we stepped on it. And in that same instant, there appeared in the air all around us, above and around the temple and the Raider, score on score of the air-boats, crowded with the men of Kom.

From them darted a hundred black nets like the one that hung before us. The black veils closed upon the Raider, contracted, and while he spun and changed and twisted with mad speed, the veils contracted still until they were a black ball five feet across, in which he was prisoned. Then, from Kethra's air-boat and from all around us, there darted flash on flash of orange flame, which struck the black ball, burned fiercely for a moment, and then vanished. In the air there drifted only a shining mist, and then that too was swept away!

Now, from all the hovering air-boats came the thrumming of the sound-rays, directed at the temple and the city, from all the scores of cars that hung above that city. The ground beneath pitched, heaved up torturedly, and then the city collapsed, sank down with a thundering, ear-splitting roar into the great pit that lay beneath, the earth over the cavern being shattered by the disintegrating vibrations of the sound-rays.

All the city, with the great temple below us, crashed down, and vanished in a mighty cloud of dust. The dust hung, cleared, disappeared. And beneath lay nothing but a great depression in the earth, a vast, raw bowl in the earth's surface, with here and there a white fragment showing in the brown earth. Under that huge sunken bowl, I well knew, lay the city of the cylinders, with its Kanlars and soulless slaves, and under it, too, lay the city of the pit, and the people of the pit, the thousands of fierce warriors who had pressed us up the stair so savagely, seeking to carry destruction and death down to a peaceful city.

Standing there on Kethra's car, we surveyed the scene in silence. And there was silence all around us, for from all the massed cars came no word or shout, the men on them gazing down into the torn depression below as though loth to believe that their victory was won at last, the evil menace of the Raider crushed forever. So we looked, there in the hushed silence.

In the east, the sun was rising higher ... higher....

_CHAPTER 18_

EIGHT MINUTES!

It was hours later, toward the end of the hot, brilliant afternoon, that we parted at last from Kethra and his men. On the green earth around that brown pit where once had stood the city of cylinders, the Khlun air-boats were resting, ready for their long flight homeward across the ice. Our own time-car lay behind us, for in that tense moment before the city had collapsed under the sound-rays' vibrations, a hovering air-boat had spied our car in the little glade where we had left it, and had managed to raise it from the ground before the crash. And now, with our four friends, we stood beside it, bidding Kethra farewell.

We had heard from him the story, as amazing as our own, of what had befallen his forces when they pursued the Raider into the future, how they had chased him almost to the world's end, indeed, pursuing him into time so far that the sun grew old and small, and the world a world of death and twilight; of how they had forced the Raider to desert the Kanlar cars it held, which they had destroyed; and of how it had eluded them in time and come racing back to confront us on the temple's roof. He told, too, of how the messenger sent through time by Lantin and me had finally found him and brought him back in the nick of time to destroy Raider, hordes and city.

Kethra, and all his men, had pressed us to return with them to Kom, but we refused. An intolerable nostalgia, a longing for our own time, filled us, and our four friends were as eager to return to their own centuries as we were. And so, standing with them beside our time-car, we bade our friends of Kom farewell.