V
They waited. Some distance away a guard leaned against the parapet,huddled in his cloak. He glanced at them incuriously. It was bitterlycold. The wind came whistling down through the Gates of Death, and belowin the streets the watchfires shuddered and flared.
They waited, and still there was nothing.
Balin said impatiently, "How can you know they're coming?"
Stark shivered, a shallow rippling of the flesh that had nothing to dowith cold, and every muscle of his body came alive. Phobos plungeddownward. The moonlight dimmed and changed, and the plain was veryempty, very still.
"They will wait for darkness. They will have an hour or so, betweenmoonset and dawn."
Thanis muttered, "Dreams! Besides, I'm cold." She hesitated, and thencrept in under Balin's cloak. Stark had gone away from her. She watchedhim sulkily where he leaned upon the stone. He might have been part ofit, as dark and unstirring.
Deimos sank low toward the west.
Stark turned his head, drawn inevitably to look toward the cliffs aboveKushat, soaring upward to blot out half the sky. Here, close under them,they seemed to tower outward in a curving mass, like the last wave ofeternity rolling down, crested white with the ash of shattered worlds.
_I have stood beneath those cliffs before. I have felt them leaning downto crush me, and I have been afraid._
He was still afraid. The mind that had poured its memories into thatcrystal lens had been dead a million years, but neither time nor deathhad dulled the terror that beset Ban Cruach in his journey through thatnightmare pass.
He looked into the black and narrow mouth of the Gates of Death,cleaving the scarp like a wound, and the primitive ape-thing within himcringed and moaned, oppressed with a sudden sense of fate.
He had come painfully across half a world, to crouch before the Gates ofDeath. Some evil magic had let him see forbidden things, had linked hismind in an unholy bond with the long-dead mind of one who had been halfa god. These evil miracles had not been for nothing. He would not beallowed to go unscathed.
He drew himself up sharply then, and swore. He had left N'Chaka behind,a naked boy running in a place of rocks and sun on Mercury. He hadbecome Eric John Stark, a man, and civilized. He thrust the senselesspremonition from him, and turned his back upon the mountains.
Deimos touched the horizon. A last gleam of reddish light tinged thesnow, and then was gone.
Thanis, who was half asleep, said with sudden irritation, "I do notbelieve in your barbarians. I'm going home." She thrust Balin aside andwent away, down the steps.
The plain was now in utter darkness, under the faint, far Northernstars.
Stark settled himself against the parapet. There was a sort of timelesspatience about him. Balin envied it. He would have liked to go withThanis. He was cold and doubtful, but he stayed.
Time passed, endless minutes of it, lengthening into what seemed hours.
Stark said, "Can you hear them?"
"No."
"They come." His hearing, far keener than Balin's, picked up the littlesounds, the vast inchoate rustling of an army on the move in stealth anddarkness. Light-armed men, hunters, used to stalking wild beasts in theshow. They could move softly, very softly.
"I hear nothing," Balin said, and again they waited.
The westering stars moved toward the horizon, and at length in the easta dim pallor crept across the sky.
The plain was still shrouded in night, but now Stark could make out thehigh towers of the King City of Kushat, ghostly and indistinct--theancient, proud high towers of the rulers and their nobles, set above thecrowded Quarters of merchants and artisans and thieves. He wondered whowould be king in Kushat by the time this unrisen sun had set.
"You were wrong," said Balin, peering. "There is nothing on the plain."
Stark said, "Wait."
* * * * *
Swiftly now, in the thin air of Mars, the dawn came with a rush and aleap, flooding the world with harsh light. It flashed in cruelbrilliance from sword-blades, from spearheads, from helmets andburnished mail, from the war-harness of beasts, glistened on bare russetheads and coats of leather, set the banners of the clans to burning,crimson and gold and green, bright against the snow.
There was no sound, not a whisper, in all the land.
Somewhere a hunting horn sent forth one deep cry to split the morning.Then burst out the wild skirling of the mountain pipes and the brokenthunder of drums, and a wordless scream of exultation that rang backfrom the Wall of Kushat like the very voice of battle. The men of Mekhbegan to move.
Raggedly, slowly at first, then more swiftly as the press of warriorsbroke and flowed, the barbarians swept toward the city as water sweepsover a broken dam.
Knots and clumps of men, tall men running like deer, leaping, shouting,swinging their great brands. Riders, spurring their mounts until theyfled belly down. Spears, axes, sword-blades tossing, a sea of men andbeasts, rushing, trampling, shaking the ground with the thunder of theirgoing.
And ahead of them all came a solitary figure in black mail, riding araking beast trapped all in black, and bearing a sable axe.
Kushat came to life. There was a swarming and a yelling in the streets,and soldiers began to pour up onto the Wall. A thin company, Starkthought, and shook his head. Mobs of citizens choked the alleys, andevery rooftop was full. A troop of nobles went by, brave in their brightmail, to take up their post in the square by the great gate.
Balin said nothing, and Stark did not disturb his thoughts. From thelook of him, they were dark indeed.
Soldiers came and ordered them off the Wall. They went back to theirown roof, where they were joined by Thanis. She was in a high state ofexcitement, but unafraid.
"Let them attack!" she said. "Let them break their spears against theWall. They will crawl away again."
Stark began to grow restless. Up in their high emplacements, the bigballistas creaked and thrummed. The muted song of the bows became awailing hum. Men fell, and were kicked off the ledges by their fellows.The blood-howl of the clans rang unceasing on the frosty air, and Starkheard the rap of scaling ladders against stone.
Thanis said abruptly, "What is that--that sound like thunder?"
"Rams," he answered. "They are battering the gate."
She listened, and Stark saw in her face the beginning of fear.
It was a long fight. Stark watched it hungrily from the roof all thatmorning. The soldiers of Kushat did bravely and well, but they were asfolded sheep against the tall killers of the mountains. By noon theofficers were beating the Quarters for men to replace the slain.
Stark and Balin went up again, onto the Wall.
The clans had suffered. Their dead lay in windrows under the Wall, amidthe broken ladders. But Stark knew his barbarians. They had sat restlessand chafing in the valley for many days, and now the battle-madness wason them and they were not going to be stopped.
Wave after wave of them rolled up, and was cast back, and came on againrelentlessly. The intermittent thunder boomed still from the gates,where sweating giants swung the rams under cover of their own bowmen.And everywhere, up and down through the forefront of the fighting, rodethe man in black armor, and wild cheering followed him.
Balin said heavily, "It is the end of Kushat."
* * * * *
A ladder banged against the stones a few feet away. Men swarmed up therungs, fierce-eyed clansmen with laughter in their mouths. Stark wasfirst at the head.
They had given him a spear. He spitted two men through with it and lostit, and a third man came leaping over the parapet. Stark received himinto his arms.
Balin watched. He saw the warrior go crashing back, sweeping his fellowsoff the ladder. He saw Stark's face. He heard the sounds and smelled theblood and sweat of war, and he was sick to the marrow of his bones, andhis hatred of the barbarians was a terrible thing.
Stark caught up a dead man's blade, and within ten minutes his arm
wasas red as a butcher's. And ever he watched the winged helm that wentback and forth below, a standard to the clans.
By mid-afternoon the barbarians had gained the Wall in three places.They spread inward along the ledges, pouring up in a resistless tide,and the defenders broke. The rout became a panic.
"It's all over now," Stark said. "Find Thanis, and hide her."
Balin let fall his sword. "Give me the talisman," he whispered, andStark saw that he was weeping. "Give it me, and I will go beyond theGates of Death and rouse Ban Cruach from his sleep. And if he hasforgotten Kushat, I will take his power into my own hands. I will flingwide the Gates of Death and loose destruction on the men of Mekh--or ifthe legends are all lies, then I will die."
He was like a man crazed. "Give me the talisman!"
Stark slapped him, carefully and without heat, across the face. "Getyour sister, Balin. Hide her, unless you would be uncle to a red-hairedbrat."
He went then, like a man who has been stunned. Screaming women withtheir children clogged the ways that led inward from the Wall, and therewas bloody work afoot on the rooftops and in the narrow alleys.
The gate was holding, still.
* * * * *
Stark forced his way toward the square. The booths of the hucksters wereoverthrown, the wine-jars broken and the red wine spilled. Beastssquealed and stamped, tired of their chafing harness, driven wild by theshouting and the smell of blood. The dead were heaped high where theyhad fallen from above.
They were all soldiers here, clinging grimly to their last foothold. Thedeep song of the rams shook the very stones. The iron-sheathed timbersof the gate gave back an answering scream, and toward the end all othersounds grew hushed. The nobles came down slowly from the Wall andmounted, and sat waiting.
There were fewer of them now. Their bright armor was dented and stained,and their faces had a pallor on them.
One last hammer-stroke of the rams.
With a bitter shriek the weakened bolts tore out, and the great gate wasbroken through.
The nobles of Kushat made their first, and final charge.
As soldiers they went up against the riders of Mekh, and as soldiersthey held them until they died. Those that were left were borne backinto the square, caught as in the crest of an avalanche. And firstthrough the gates came the winged battle-mask of the Lord Ciaran, andthe sable axe that drank men's lives where it hewed.
There was a beast with no rider to claim it, tugging at its headrope.Stark swung onto the saddle pad and cut it free. Where the press wasthickest, a welter of struggling brutes and men fighting knee to knee,there was the man in black armor, riding like a god, magnificent, bornto war. Stark's eyes shone with a strange, cold light. He struck hisheels hard into the scaly flanks. The beast plunged forward.
In and over and through, making the long sword sing. The beast wasstrong, and frightened beyond fear. It bit and trampled, and Stark cut apath for them, and presently he shouted above the din,
"Ho, there! _Ciaran!_"
The black mask turned toward him, and the remembered voice spoke frombehind the barred slot, joyously.
"The wanderer. The wild man!"
Their two mounts shocked together. The axe came down in a whistlingcurve, and a red sword-blade flashed to meet it. Swift, swift, a ringingclash of steel, and the blade was shattered and the axe fallen to theground.
Stark pressed in.
Ciaran reached for his sword, but his hand was numbed by the force ofthat blow and he was slow, a split second. The hilt of Stark's weapon,still clutched in his own numbed grip, fetched him a stunning blow onthe helm, so that the metal rang like a flawed bell.
The Lord Ciaran reeled back, only for a moment, but long enough. Starkgrasped the war-mask and ripped it off, and got his hands around thenaked throat.
He did not break that neck, as he had planned. And the Clansmen who hadstarted in to save their leader stopped and did not move.
Stark knew now why the Lord Ciaran had never shown his face.
The throat he held was white and strong, and his hands around it wereburied in a mane of red-gold hair that fell down over the shirt of mail.A red mouth passionate with fury, wonderful curving bone undersculptured flesh, eyes fierce and proud and tameless as the eyes of ayoung eagle, fire-blue, defying him, hating him....
"By the gods," said Stark, very softly. "By the eternal gods!"