lightning bolt and the explosion. The surviving Amazons clung
frantically to bullwarks and rigging to avoid being washed overboard by
the sheet of foam-flecked water that spread over the decks. Then as
their craft steadied down again, they looked up into the sky. All they
could see was a flock of small birds speeding rapidly inland. They
lifted their weapons to the sky in salute, a tribute to whatever dark
Gods had sped the deadly bolt that wrecked the enemy craft.
Gerry gingerly handed the deadly lightning caster back to the pilot.
"That's an effective weapon," he said. "If these flying cars can only
stay with us for a few hours after we arrive at the city of Larr, we can
probably break up the attack of the Scaly Ones and...."
"We return to Moorn immediately, as soon as we have landed you in Larr,"
the pilot said with cold finality. "Those are the orders of the Council
of Elders."
* * * * *
Dusk caught them just as they passed over the Savissan coast line. They
saw the gleaming lights of various scattered towns and hamlets below
them. An hour later the lights of Larr itself came into view. At first
they were only a glow along the horizon. Then, as the flotilla of flying
cars swept nearer, the lights of the city began to take on definite form
and shape. Closana was again leaning eagerly forward.
"The lights look strange!" she said, "so many of them are unsteady and
flickering!"
Gerry Norton peered ahead through the night. His own eyes were narrowed
and thoughtful.
"Those flickering lights you see are ray-guns," he said at last. "The
city is already under siege."
Before attempting a landing as they came to the Golden City of Larr, the
flotilla of flying cars swept in a wide circle over the city and its
surrounding suburbs. Great fires burned in braziers along the walls.
Other fires had been kindled by the besiegers. Dozens of cottages
outside the circuit of the city walls were also aflame, blazing
furiously. The whole place was suffused with a ruddy and uneven light,
and the observers in the flying cars had a clear view of the scene
below.
Behind the battlements and bastions atop the city's walls crouched the
Golden Amazons of the garrison, loosing their storms of arrows at the
swarming besiegers below them. Other tawny-skinned crews worked the
alta-ray tubes that belched blasts of blue flame at regular intervals.
Wherever the blue beams struck, the ground was blackened while the
twisted and charred shapes of Scaly Ones writhed in brief agony. The
myriad brazen trumpets of Larr sounded hasty rallying calls, or else
tossed staccato signals from one part of the defences to another.
The hordes of Lansa had invested the city on three sides, the marsh-land
on the far border of the city protecting that side from direct assault.
Groups of Scaly Ones took shelter behind tree trunks and mounds of earth
and any other possible cover, firing their gas-guns up at the
battlements in an effort to lessen the arrow fire. Others crept forward
behind movable metal shields. Heavy-caliber gas-guns inched slowly
forward behind wooden mantlets that bristled with arrows, and hurled
their larger explosive bullets up at the walls. Wherever they struck
there was a puff of yellow dust and a scarred place on the stones.
Reptilian trumpets beat with a staccato thunder as Lansa kept in touch
with his various divisions. Not all the advantage was with the
besiegers, however. Even as Gerry watched, a blue heat-ray struck full
on one of the big gas-guns and blew it up with a shattering crash.
In all but one particular the battle was a large-scale edition of the
type of assault that the Scaly Ones had often tried against various
barrier forts in the past. The difference was that they now possessed
the supode ray, which Lansa had been able to prepare for his forces.
Long beams of the familiar murky, reddish light were continually
playing upon the walls of Larr.
The effect of the supode rays seemed to be less serious than Gerry would
have expected. Perhaps Lansa's ray-guns were lacking in power because
inefficiently made. Perhaps the yellow stones that formed the walls of
Larr contained some radioactive substance that partially neutralized the
rays. The walls were crumbling into powder in dozens of small spots as
the searching beams of the rays found a weak point or flaw in the stone,
but there was none of the wholesale collapse that Lansa had probably
hoped to achieve.
The whole scene below was like a macabre nightmare. The fires flashed
and crackled, and the explosive bullets of the Scaly Ones twinkled like
fire-flies through the drifting smoke. Red light glinted on the points
of flying arrows. Savissan trumpets blared defiance to the thunder of
reptilian drums. Most dramatic of all, silent but terribly deadly, was
the duel of the ray-casters as the red beams of the attackers and the
blue rays of the defenders darted back and forth through the night like
the rapiers of fencing giants.
* * * * *
The flotilla of flying cars darted down to the plaza in front of the
Tower of the Arrow. The pilots kept them invisible until they had
landed, lest the nervous crew of a defending ray-machine blast them
before their identity was known. As soon as the dimensional-control was
switched off there were cries of alarm, and a few hasty arrows glanced
harmlessly off the Earthmen's armor. Then Closana shouted reassuringly
and they were recognized.
A little later Gerry and a few of his officers stood with Rupin-Sang on
one of the balconies of the Great Tower. The aged king of Savissa wore
full armor though in the shadows of his gilded helmet his face looked
old and gray and tired. Beside them, a squad of the Golden Amazons
worked a long-range ray-tube that was firing at the rear areas of the
Reptilian position. The muscles of the feminine warriors rippled beneath
their tawny skins as they swung the heavy controls of the big
ray-machine.
"They came against one of our barrier forts from the rear, in great
numbers," Rupin-Sang said wearily. "I cannot imagine how they had
managed to get so many men in behind our lines...."
"Probably brought them under water in that submarine they used when they
took me captive," Gerry said. "Brought them through in relays. I should
have sent you warning to block the river channel against that craft, but
I never thought Lansa would strike so quickly."
"At least we had enough warning to prepare for the defense of the city
after they broke through the frontier," Rupin-Sang said. "We called in
all the surrounding troops. We sent the very young and the very old, the
ill and the crippled back to comparative safety in the hills by way of
secret trails through the swamps. If the walls will stand against the
new rays the Scaly Ones are using, we should be able to hold out for a
long time."
"The armor of my men is proof against either rays or explosive bullets,"
Gerry told him, "and our ray-guns are superior to those that Lansa has
been able to make. We'll use my men as shock troops to beat back any
particularly pressing attack. Between us, we can hang on until Lansa
gets tired of the siege."
"I hope you're right," Rupin-Sang said gloomily, "but I recall the old
prophecy. It is in my mind that the end of the Golden City of Larr is at
hand, and that the sands of my nation run very low. However--we will
fight to the end."
"No bunch of half-lizards led by a white renegade is going to lick me!"
Gerry rasped.
* * * * *
A week later Gerry Norton was less confident. Haggard and unshaven, he
stalked into an inner room and tossed his helmet clattering on the
table. His armor was badly dented by the impact of many explosive
bullets, and one forearm was burned where a supode ray had momentarily
pierced between the chinks of the armor.
"All right, Steve," Gerry said wearily, "it's your watch. Go up on the
walls and take over."
"Anything new?" Steve Brent asked, sitting up on the cot where he had
been sleeping and running both hands through his tousled crop of sandy
hair. His freckled face was as lined and drawn as Gerry's own.
"Another of the bastions on the west wall came down under the rays, but
we're holding the breach all right with archers and a portable
ray-caster. Hurry and get up there, like a good fellow! I left Portok in
charge, and he's dead on his feet."
"I am not so damn much alive myself!" Steve muttered, but he put on his
helmet and went clanking off up the corridor.
Gerry sat down heavily on a bench, at the moment too tired even to take
off his armor. The city of Larr still held out--but that was all that
could be said. The Scaly Ones still pressed the assault day and night
without ceasing. The once mighty walls of yellow stone were crumbling
under the constant attack of the walls while the defense of the steadily
widening breaches put an added strain on the dwindling numbers of the
garrison.
If only the _Viking_ would come! Her duralite hull would withstand
either rays or explosives, and her own powerful ray-tubes should be able
to blast the attacking artillery out of existence and thereby raise the
siege. But he could not raise the space-ship on the radio! That was the
thing that worried Gerry most of all. Tanda had been trying at hourly
intervals for days, but he could not get any answer from McTavish.
At last Gerry stretched out on the cot that Steve had quitted, and
almost instantly went to sleep. It seemed only a moment later that he
awoke to find Portok the Martian shaking him by the shoulder. Gerry
laboriously raised himself up on one elbow shaking his head to clear his
brain. So strong were the bonds of sleep that several seconds passed
before his brain grasped the meaning of the words that Portok was
shouting in his ear.
"Chief! Can't you hear me? The whole western wall has come down,
carrying all the ray-tubes with it. The Scaly Ones are in the city!"
* * * * *
Gerry seized his helmet and weapons from the table where he had thrown
them, and dashed out of the room. From one of the balconies of the Arrow
Tower he could see the swift disaster that had come upon the City of
Larr. The ceaseless, unrelenting play of Lansa's supode ray machines had
finally weakened the city's western wall until the whole rampart had
collapsed.
The once towering wall was now only a long mound of rubble. The
companies of Scaly Ones nearest the wall had been buried in the debris
when it fell, but fresh hordes were pouring forward with a shrill
yelping. The Amazon archers defending the wall from above had been
mainly crushed in the wreckage. Reserve regiments were hurrying into
place at the double, bow strings twanging and long golden hair streaming
out behind them but there was one loss that could not be replaced. All
the alta-ray machines on that wall were shattered and broken.
The despairing courage of Larr's feminine defenders was not enough to
hold that mile-long pile of rubbish whose sloping sides could be easily
climbed by the swarming hordes from Giri-Vaaka. The Amazons were falling
back all along the line. The retreat was a slow and stubborn one, but it
was steady. Such of the alta-ray machines as could be brought to bear
upon the shattered wall from other portions of the fortifications swept
the advancing Scaly Ones with blue blasts that tore gaping holes in
their ranks, but there were not enough of them. The firelight gleamed on
the armor of a few of the _Viking's_ men who were fighting with the
rear-guard, their ray-guns stabbing viciously into the Reptilian ranks
as they fell back. The drums of the Scaly Ones took on a deep-mouthed
bellow of triumph, and the brazen trumpets of Larr were the voice of a
forlorn and fading hope.
Rupin-Sang appeared on the balcony beside Gerry, leaning his gnarled old
hands on the rail. He was smiling, as though final disaster had at least
brought a relief from strain.
"This is the end of the City of Larr," he said. "The ancient prophecy of
Jeddah-Khana comes true after all. Save yourself and your men while you
can, my friend."
"Can't we all escape through the swamps and put up a better fight in the
hills?" Gerry asked. Rupin-Sang shook his head.
"No, my friend. The last survivors will do that when all is over, but we
will defend Larr to the end--street by street and house by house--as is
the tradition of Savissa. We are the last descendants of the Old Ones.
We may die, but we will do it with honor."
The swift advance of Lansa's men bit deeply into the city, halfway from
the shattered wall to the central plaza surrounding the Great Tower,
before it was checked at a line of hasty barricades. There was bitter
house-to-house fighting all across the city. Gerry knew that the stand
at the barricades could not be sustained for very long. The advance of
the Scaly Ones had at the moment outdistanced their supode ray casters
and their heavy caliber gas-guns. For the present the Amazon arrows held
them checked. The advance was sure to resume as soon as Lansa's heavy
weapons could be brought up again.
* * * * *
It was a hopeless fight--and yet Gerry could not bring himself to leave.
Partly it was his affection for the grief-stricken but indomitable
Closana that held him there. Partly it was the sheer courage of the
Amazon's gallant fight against such heavy odds that kept him in the
battle line. By some standards the affair was none of his business but
he could not quit now. However--he had not the right to hold his men in
the stricken city if they wished to leave. As he located the various
members of the _Viking's_ crew in the disorganized Amazon ranks, he gave
each one permission to escape from the city through the eastern marshes.
Portok's reaction was typical.
"Run from these snake-skinned devils?" the little Martian panted
hoarsely, his ruddy face gaunt and his eyes sunken deep in their
sockets. "Not while I can still stand. I'm staying with the rear
guard--as long as there is one!"
New fires had been started by the victory-drunk Reptilians, fires within
the walls. The lurid glow of burning houses made the night hideous.
Fully a third of the city was in flames by now, and only the easterly
wind kept the flames from driving the defenders away from those portions
of the city that they still held.
By noon the next day the tale was nearly all told. The Savissans now
held less than a third of their city, a V-shaped sector with the Arrow
Tower at its apex. The murky beams of supode rays were now continually
playing against the walls of the Great Tower itself, and small cascades
of pulverized rock kept sliding off the face of the stone work as the
weaker parts began to decompose under the steady impact of the rays. And
still the fight went on!
Gerry had forgotten what it was like to lie down and rest. He was
leaning in an angle of the wall, actually asleep on his feet, when
Chester Sand from the _Viking_ hurried across to him.
"Rupin-Sang wants to see you down in the garden right away, Chief!" Sand
panted. "You and Steve Brent both."
"All right. Get Steve," Gerry growled. He sighed, and tightened his
belt, and went wearily down the steps to the lower floor of the tower.
* * * * *
The pleasant walled garden behind the tower was a very different place
from the stop Gerry had seen when he first came to Savissa. The
explosive bullets of the Scaly Ones had ripped up many of the trees, and
shattered the marble statues. A heap of debris fallen from above lay
along the base of the tower wall, while more was constantly trickling
down as the murky beams of the supode rays criss-crossed overhead. The
bodies of dead Amazons were scattered here and there on the trampled
grass. Dense clouds of acrid smoke from the burning city swirled down
over the garden wall.
Closana was waiting in the garden, her armor dim and battered. Her left
arm was heavily bandaged, but she still carried a naked sword in her
right hand.
"I was told that you wanted me," she said. Gerry shook his head.
"No, it was your father who sent for _me_." Just then Steve and Chester
Sand came across the garden. A faint suspicion began to stir in Gerry's
mind.
"Where is Rupin-Sang?" he demanded.
Sand hesitated, and cleared his throat. His eyes were shifty. Then Gerry
heard a slight sound behind him. He spun around--and looked squarely
into the muzzle of a ray-tube held by Lansa himself!
They had been neatly trapped! Lansa and a dozen of his men had come up
through the sewers and slain the Amazon guards posted there.
"Drop your weapons!" Lansa snapped. Gerry shrugged and obeyed, and the
others followed his example. There was a triumphant smile on the
renegade's saturnine face. "I am glad you were not killed in the
fighting, Norton," he said, "because you and Brent and the girl will
make very valuable hostages for me when your space-ship eventually
returns."
Gerry turned and stared at Chester Sand. The _Viking's_ Safety Officer
was pale, but he met the other man's glance with a sort of weak
defiance. Gerry's lip curled.
"So _you_ are the rat who slugged me that time I caught Olga in the
radio room!" he said. "I should have known it. I seem to have left
several loose ends I should have watched, but I'll fix you for this some
day and...."
"You won't be fixing anybody any more, Norton," Lansa said grimly.
"After I've used you to get possession of the _Viking_ you'll die in the
torture chambers at Vaaka-hausen. Thanks to my good friend Sands, I also
know the location of the invisible city. That, too, I will attend to.
But all in good time. Guards! Bind and gag the prisoners...."
He never finished the sentence. There was a sharp hiss, and a thud. A
narrow steel point stood a hand's breadth out beyond his throat. A
wondering expression came into his eyes. Then his knees buckled, and he
went down on the trampled grass. Across the garden, still holding the
air-gun from which he had shot the long steel slug, stood Sarnak of
Luralla!
* * * * *
The Scaly Ones went for their weapons, but a vengeful throng of the
outlaw brood of the Dragon came pouring up from below on the heels of
their leaders. There was no thought of quarter between these hereditary
foes. There was a short, sharp fight--and then the last of Lansa's
raiding party died in the shadow of the wall. Sarnak came striding
forward, his hand outstretched and a cheerful smile on his broad face.
"It seems that I came in very good time, my friends!" he said.
"Perfect," Gerry grinned. "But what does your coming mean?"
"It means that the hour of deliverance is at hand. When Lansa brought
his full force eastward against Savissa, it gave us the opportunity we
have been needing for generations. We of the Dragon's Teeth rose against
the scanty garrisons he left behind, and put them to the sword. The mass
of the people joined us then, when the chances of victory looked so
strong that hope overcame the despair born of generations of oppression.
Now the Green Folk of Giri have thrown off the yoke of the invader at
last, and thousands of them are marching this way to take the army of
the Scaly Ones in the rear."
"But how did you come to arrive in the garden at this particular
moment?" Gerry asked.
"The forces of Giri have forded the river and are marching overland, but
I came ahead with a hundred picked cavalry mounted on swift
saddle-dolphins. We saw a crude type of underwater craft moving in this
direction, and followed it at a distance. You know the rest. After
bringing down the sentries that Lansa had posted below, we left our
dolphins and our water helmets down at the main drain and crept up
through the passages to this place."
"When do you think the rest of the Green Folk will come?" Closana asked.
"Within a few more hours, Princess. They will not be in time to save
your city, but they will be in time to protect the survivors."
"If there are any of us left by then!" the girl said bitterly. Gerry
suddenly pointed upward.
"Look there! The worst is over now!" he shouted. The _Viking_ was
streaking across the sky in a burst of yellow rocket flame.
The big space-ship dropped down over the beleaguered city, her powerful
ray-tubes flashing. Other murky beams stabbed up to meet her, but her
duralite hull was impervious to the rays and Angus kept her high enough
so that the helicopters were protected by the curve of the hull. One
after another the ray casters and heavy gas-guns of the Scaly Ones went
out of action. When the ship's beams had silenced the artillery and
commenced to rip black holes in the ranks of the Reptilian warriors
themselves, they suddenly broke and fled.
* * * * *
The war drums of the Scaly Ones were silent at last, while the trumpets
of Savissa raised a long-drawn paean of vengeance. Out of the ruined and
flaming city fled the Reptilian men, while troops of swift-footed
Amazons hung on their flanks and rear with twanging bows. Back across
the plains toward the border they fled--and ran squarely into the grim
thousands of the Green People who tore them apart with the savagery of
an oppressed race just finding their souls again. The few that survived,
out of the powerful army that Lansa the mad Earth-man had brought
eastward to attack Savissa, were a handful who fled back across the land
of Giri and vanished into the desolate Vaaka marshes from which their
people had first emerged generations before.
The Golden City was hopelessly afire, past saving, and the survivors
gathered on a level field outside the northern wall. Gerry and Sarnak
and Rupin-Sang were standing together as the _Viking_ dropped down to
land on the edge of the field. McTavish stepped out, red bearded and
jovial but showing the effects of sleepless nights himself.
"Sorry we couldn't get here sooner," he said, "but we've been working
night and day to make proper repairs with that queer metal the people of
Moorn gave us. We got your radio messages, but couldn't reply because
the ship's sending set is broken and I figured the helicopters were more
important repairs."
In a few brief words Gerry told McTavish of the fight in the garden. The
big Scot beamed his pleasure. "An' did they get that slinking she-devil
of an Olga along with the rest of the carrion?" he asked.
Gerry shook his head. "No, she wasn't there. At least, we didn't see
her. It wasn't likely though that she would come. She probably remained
back in Vaaka-hausen."
McTavish frowned his disappointment. "Ah, weel," he shrugged, "ye canna'
have ever'thing."
"Don't worry, McTavish," Sarnak grinned, "we'll probably have her in a
few hours. A force of Savissans and Green Men have already left to clean
up Vaaka-hausen."
Gerry grinned. "Good. There's one thing I would like to suggest. I
loathed Lansing as much as any of you, but he is a white man, and I
dislike thinking that he may be hauled off and tossed into a common
grave with the rest of the Scaly Ones. Let's go to the garden, and see
that his body has at least a half-way decent interment."
The rest of the party agreed to this, and they made their way back to
the garden. They went down the steps leading to it, then all stopped in
surprise. The bodies of the slain Scaly Men and Lansa were gone!
McTavish rubbed his eyes unbelievingly. "What kind of devilment is
this?" he whispered. Sarnak shook his head slowly. "I don't understand.
Unless the retreating forces found them, and carried them along with
them. They were all dead, of that I'm sure."
"Lansing, too?" inquired McTavish suspiciously.
Gerry laughed. "Lansing never walked away from here, unless as a ghost.
I saw him go down. And men with an arrow transfixing their throats don't
do much walking."
But the big Scot didn't seem entirely convinced, and as they walked
away, he was still shaking his great, shaggy head in doubt.
With the strain of the siege over at last, many of the garrison had
simply dropped to the ground and gone to sleep where they fell. Gerry
was watching the flames sweep over the last of the city. For a long time
the Arrow Tower remained standing above the sea of fire, but then it
began to tip. Faster and faster it fell, till it came down in a shower
of sparks. Closana dropped her head in her hands, but old Rupin-Sang
touched his daughter on the shoulder.
"Save your grief girl," he said. "It is true that the Golden City of our
fathers no longer exists, but there was a second part to the prophesy.
That, after the great disaster, the people of Savissa would have a
re-birth. A message that just came through from those of our people who
are hidden in the hills tells me that--of ten children who have been
born since we sent all the non-combatants out of the city--seven have
been boys! The curse has been lifted from our race."
* * * * *