A second the charge had halted, as the Verulians had noted the second man on the landing; now they came on again, bounding up the steps in the moonlight, blades aflame, eyes wild with desperation. Kull met the first with an overhand smash that crushed helmet and skull, then Dalgar was at his side and his blade licked out and into a Verulian throat. Then began the battle of the stair, since immortalized by singers and poets.
Kull was there to die and to slay before he died. He gave scant thought to defense. His axe played a wheel of death about him and with each blow there came a crunch of steel and bone, a spurt of blood, a gurgling cry of agony. Bodies choked the wide stair, but still the survivors came, clambering over the gory forms of their comrades.
Dalgar had little opportunity to thrust or cut. He had seen in an instant that his best task lay in protecting Kull, who was a born slaughter machine, but who, in his armorless condition was likely to fall any instant.
So Dalgar wove a web of steel about the king, bringing into play all the sword skill that was his. Again and again his flashing blade turned a point from Kull’s heart; again and again his mail clad forearm intercepted a blow that else had killed. Twice he took on his own helmet slashes meant for the king’s bare head.
It is not easy to guard another man and yourself at the same time. Kull was bleeding from cuts on the face and breast, from a gash above the temple, a stab in the thigh, and a deep wound in the left shoulder; a thrusting pike had rent Dalgar’s cuirass and wounded him in the side, and he felt his strength ebbing. A last mad effort of their foes and the Farsunian was overthrown. He fell at Kull’s feet and a dozen points prodded for his life. With a lion like roar Kull cleared a space with one mighty sweep of that red axe and stood astride the fallen youth. They closed in–
There burst on Kull’s ears a crash of horses’ hoofs and the Accursed Gardens were flooded with wild riders, yelling like wolves in the moonlight. A storm of arrows swept the stairs and men howled, pitching headlong to lie still, or to tear gibbering at the cruel, deeply imbedded shafts. The few whom Kull’s axe and the arrows had left fled down the stairs to be met at the bottom by the whistling curved swords of Brule’s Picts. And there they died, fighting to the last, those bold Verulian warriors–catspaws for their falseking, sent out on a dangerous and foul mission, disowned by the men who sent them out, and branded forever with infamy. But they died like men.
But one did not die there at the foot of the stairs. The Masked One had fled at the first sound of hoofs, and now he shot across the Gardens riding a superb horse. He had almost reached the outer wall when Brule, the Spear-slayer, chief of the Picts, dashed across his path. There on the promontory, leaning on his bloody axe, Kull saw them fight beneath the moon.
The Masked One had abandoned his defensive tactics. He charged the Pict with reckless courage and the Spear-slayer met him, horse to horse, man to man, blade to blade. Both were magnificent horsemen. Their steeds, obeying the touch of the bridle, the nudge of the knee, whirled, reared and spun. But through all their motions, the whistling blades never lost touch of each other. Brule, differently from his tribesmen, used the slim straight sword of Valusia. In reach and speed there was little to choose between them, and Kull watching again and again caught his breath and bit his lip as it seemed Brule would fall before an unusually vicious thrust.
No crude hacking and slashing for these seasoned warriors. They thrust and countered, parried and thrust again. Then suddenly Brule seemed to lose touch with his opponent’s blade–he parried wildly and wide, leaving himself wide open–the Masked One struck heels into his horse’s sides as he lunged, so that the sword and the horse shot forward as one. Brule leaned aside, let the blade glance from the side of his cuirass–his own blade shot straight out, elbow, wrist, hilt and point making a straight line from his shoulder; the horses crashed together and together they rolled headlong on the sward. But from that tangle of lashing hoofs Brule rose unharmed and there in the high grass lay the Masked One, Brule’s sword still transfixing him.
Kull awoke as from a trance; the Picts were howling about him like wolves, but he raised his hand for silence. “Enough! You are all heroes! But attend to Dalgar–he is sorely wounded. And when you have finished, you might see to my own wounds. Brule, how came you to find me?”
Brule beckoned Kull to where he stood above the dead Masked One.
“A beggar crone saw you climb the palace wall, and out of curiosity watched where you went. She followed you and saw you go through the forgotten gate. I was riding the plain between the wall and these Gardens when I heard the clash of steel. But look–who can this be?”
“Raise the mask,” said Kull. “Whoever it is, it is he who copied Tu’s handwriting, who took the signet ring from Tu–and–”
Brule tore the mask away.
“Dondal!” Kull ejaculated. “Tu’s nephew! Brule, Tu must never know this. Let him think that Dondal rode with you and died fighting for his king!”
Brule seemed stunned: “Dondal! A traitor! Why, many a time I’ve drunk wine with him and slept it off in one of his beds.”
Kull nodded. “I liked Dondal.”
Brule cleansed his blade and drove it home in the scabbard with a vicious clank. “Want will make a rogue of any man,” he said moodily. “He was deep in debt–Tu was penurious with him. Always maintained that giving young men money was bad for them. Dondal was forced to keep up appearances for his pride’s sake and so fell into the hands of the usurers. Thus Tu is the greater traitor for he drove the boy into treachery by his parsimony–and I could wish Tu’s heart had stopped my point instead of his.”
So saying, with a vicious snap of his teeth, the Pict turned on his heel and strode somberly away.
Kull turned back to Dalgar who lay half senseless while the Pictish warriors dressed his wounds with experienced fingers. Others attended to the king, and while they staunched, cleansed and bandaged, Delcartes came up to Kull with the mystery of the moon in her dark eyes.
“Sire,” she held out her small hands, now torn and stained with dried blood. “Will you now not have mercy on us–grant my plea if–” her throat caught on a sob–“if Dalgar lives?”
Kull caught her slim shoulders and shook her in his agony of spirit.
“Girl, girl, girl! Ask me anything except something I cannot grant. Ask half my kingdom, or my right hand and it is yours. I will ask Goron to let you marry Dalgar–I will beg him–but I cannot force him.”
Tall horsemen were gathering through the Gardens whose resplendent armor shone among the half naked wolfish Picts. A tall man hurried up, throwing back the vizor of his helmet.
“Father!”
Goron bora Ballin crushed his daughter to his breast with a sob of thanksgiving, and then turned to his king.
“Sire, you are sorely wounded!”
Kull shook his head. “Not sorely–not at least for me, though other men might feel stiff and sore. But yonder lies he who took the death thrusts meant for me; who was my shield and my helmet, and but for whom Valusia had howled for a new king.”
Goron whirled toward the prostrate youth.
“Dalgar! Is he dead?”
“Nigh unto it,” growled a wiry Pict who was still working above him. “But he is steel and whalebone; with any care he should live.”
“He came here to meet your daughter and elope with her,” said Kull while Delcartes hung her head. “He crept through the brush and saw me fighting for my life and hers, atop yonder stair. He might have escaped. Nothing barred him. But he climbed the sheer wall to certain death, as it seemed then, and fought by my side as gayly as he ever rode to a feast–he not even a subject of mine by birth.”
Goron’s hands clenched and unclenched. His eyes kindled and softened as they bent on his daughter.
“Delcartes,” he said softly, drawing the girl into the shelter of his steel clad arm. “Do you still wish to marry this wild reckless youth?”
Her eyes spoke eloquently enough.
Kull was speaki
ng: “Take him up carefully; bear him to the palace; he shall have the best–”
Goron interposed: “Sire, if I may ask–let him be taken to my castle. There the finest physicians shall attend him and on his recovery–well, if it be your royal pleasure, might we not celebrate the event with a wedding?”
Delcartes screamed with joy, clapped her hands, kissed her father and Kull and was off to Dalgar’s side like a whirlwind.
Goron smiled softly, his aristocratic face lighted.
“Out of a night of blood and terror, joy and happiness are born.”
The barbarian king grinned and shouldered his stained and notched axe.
“Life is that way, Count; one man’s bane is another’s bliss.”
The King and the Oak
The King and the Oak
Before the shadows slew the sun the kites were soaring free,
And Kull rode down the forest road, his red sword at his knee;
And winds were whispering round the world: “King Kull rides to the sea.”
The sun died crimson in the sea, the long grey shadows fell;
The moon rose like a silver skull that wrought a demon’s spell,
For in its light great trees stood up like specters out of Hell.
In spectral light the trees stood up, inhuman monsters dim;
Kull thought each trunk a living shape, each branch a knotted limb,
And strange unmortal evil eyes flamed horribly at him.
The branches writhed like knotted snakes, they beat against the night,
And one great oak with swayings stiff, horrific in his sight,
Tore up its roots and blocked his way, grim in the ghostly light.
They grappled in the forest way, the king and grisly oak;
Its great limbs bent him in their grip, but never a word was spoke;
And futile in his iron hand, the stabbing dagger broke.
And through the tossing, monstrous trees there sang a dim refrain
Fraught deep with twice a million years of evil, hate and pain:
“We were the lords ere man had come, and shall be lords again.”
Kull sensed an empire strange and old that bowed to man’s advance
As kingdoms of the grassblades bow before the marching ants,
And horror gripped him; in the dawn like someone in a trance
He strove with bloody hands against a still and silent tree;
As from a nightmare dream he woke; a wind blew down the lea
And Kull of high Atlantis rode silent to the sea.
Kings of the Night
Kings of the Night
The Caesar lolled on his ivory throne–
His iron legions came
To break a king in a land unknown,
And a race without a name.
–The Song of Bran
The dagger flashed downward. A sharp cry broke in a gasp. The form on the rough altar twitched convulsively and lay still. The jagged flint edge sawed at the crimsoned breast, and thin bony fingers, ghastly dyed, tore out the still twitching heart. Under matted white brows, sharp eyes gleamed with a ferocious intensity.
Besides the slayer, four men stood about the crude pile of stones that formed the altar of the God of Shadows. One was of medium height, lithely built, scantily clad, whose black hair was confined by a narrow iron band in the center of which gleamed a single red jewel. Of the others, two were dark like the first. But where he was lithe, they were stocky and misshapen, with knotted limbs, and tangled hair falling over sloping brows. His face denoted intelligence and implacable will; theirs merely a beast-like ferocity. The fourth man had little in common with the rest. Nearly a head taller, though his hair was black as theirs, his skin was comparatively light and he was gray-eyed. He eyed the proceedings with little favor.
And, in truth, Cormac of Connacht was little at ease. The Druids of his own isle of Erin had strange dark rites of worship, but nothing like this. Dark trees shut in this grim scene, lit by a single torch. Through the branches moaned an eery night-wind. Cormac was alone among men of a strange race and he had just seen the heart of a man ripped from his still pulsing body. Now the ancient priest, who looked scarcely human, was glaring at the throbbing thing. Cormac shuddered, glancing at him who wore the jewel. Did Bran Mak Morn, king of the Picts, believe that this white-bearded old butcher could foretell events by scanning a bleeding human heart? The dark eyes of the king were inscrutable. There were strange depths to the man that Cormac could not fathom, nor any other man.
“The portents are good!” exclaimed the priest wildly, speaking more to the two chieftains than to Bran. “Here from the pulsing heart of a captive Roman I read–defeat for the arms of Rome! Triumph for the sons of the heather!”
The two savages murmured beneath their breath, their fierce eyes smoldering.
“Go and prepare your clans for battle,” said the king, and they lumbered away with the ape-like gait assumed by such stunted giants. Paying no more heed to the priest who was examining the ghastly ruin on the altar, Bran beckoned to Cormac. The Gael followed him with alacrity. Once out of that grim grove, under the starlight, he breathed more freely. They stood on an eminence, looking out over long swelling undulations of gently waving heather. Near at hand a few fires twinkled, their fewness giving scant evidence of the hordes of tribesmen who lay close by. Beyond these were more fires and beyond these still more, which last marked the camp of Cormac’s own men, hard-riding, hard-fighting Gaels, who were of that band which was just beginning to get a foothold on the western coast of Caledonia–the nucleus of what was later to become the kingdom of Dalriadia. To the left of these, other fires gleamed.
And far away to the south were more fires–mere pinpoints of light. But even at that distance the Pictish king and his Celtic ally could see that these fires were laid out in regular order.
“The fires of the legions,” muttered Bran. “The fires that have lit a path around the world. The men who light those fires have trampled the races under their iron heels. And now–we of the heather have our backs at the wall. What will fall on the morrow?”
“Victory for us, says the priest,” answered Cormac.
Bran made an impatient gesture. “Moonlight on the ocean. Wind in the fir tops. Do you think that I put faith in such mummery? Or that I enjoyed the butchery of a captive legionary? I must hearten my people; it was for Gron and Bocah that I let old Gonar read the portents. The warriors will fight better.”
“And Gonar?”
Bran laughed. “Gonar is too old to believe–anything. He was high priest of the Shadows a score of years before I was born. He claims direct descent from that Gonar who was a wizard in the days of Brule, the Spear-slayer who was the first of my line. No man knows how old he is–sometimes I think he is the original Gonar himself!”
“At least,” said a mocking voice, and Cormac started as a dim shape appeared at his side, “at least I have learned that in order to keep the faith and trust of the people, a wise man must appear to be a fool. I know secrets that would blast even your brain, Bran, should I speak them. But in order that the people may believe in me, I must descend to such things as they think proper magic–and prance and yell and rattle snakeskins, and dabble about in human blood and chicken livers.”
Cormac looked at the ancient with new interest. The semi-madness of his appearance had vanished. He was no longer the charlatan, the spell-mumbling shaman. The starlight lent him a dignity which seemed to increase his very height, so that he stood like a white-bearded patriarch.
“Bran, your doubt lies there.” The lean arm pointed to the fourth ring of fires.
“Aye,” the king nodded gloomily. “Cormac–you know as well as I. Tomorrow’s battle hinges upon that circle of fires. With the chariots of the Britons and your own Western horsemen, our success would be certain, but–surely the devil himself is in the heart of every Northman! You know how I trapped that band–how they swore to fight for me against Rome! And now that their chief, Rognar, is
dead, they swear that they will be led only by a king of their own race! Else they will break their vow and go over to the Romans. Without them we are doomed, for we can not change our former plan.”
“Take heart, Bran,” said Gonar. “Touch the jewel in your iron crown. Mayhap it will bring you aid.”
Bran laughed bitterly. “Now you talk as the people think. I am no fool to twist with empty words. What of the gem? It is a strange one, truth, and has brought me luck ere now. But I need now, no jewels, but the allegiance of three hundred fickle Northmen who are the only warriors among us who may stand the charge of the legions on foot.”
“But the jewel, Bran, the jewel!” persisted Gonar.
“Well, the jewel!” cried Bran impatiently. “It is older than this world. It was old when Atlantis and Lemuria sank into the sea. It was given to Brule, the Spear-slayer, first of my line, by the Atlantean Kull, king of Valusia, in the days when the world was young. But shall that profit us now?”
“Who knows?” asked the wizard obliquely. “Time and space exist not. There was no past, and there shall be no future. NOW is all. All things that ever were, are, or ever will be, transpire now. Man is forever at the center of what we call time and space. I have gone into yesterday and tomorrow and both were as real as today–which is like the dreams of ghosts! But let me sleep and talk with Gonar. Mayhap he shall aid us.”