Golden light again streamed through the windows when I finally woke,
and I realized that in my utter weariness I must have slept the clock
twice round. I swung out of the bunk and stood up, stretching.
There was only one man in the long room besides myself, a man who sat
at the table, some distance away from me. As I looked at him he turned,
saw me, and jumped up and hurried over toward me.
"Lantin!" I cried, extending my hands. He gripped them, his eyes
sparkling.
"Where have you been?" I asked eagerly. "Were you in the city here all
the time?"
"All the time since I left you," he affirmed. "They brought me directly
here, Wheeler, and of course when I got here I knew at once that we had
found the Raider's lair. Your friend Denham found me, a few hours ago,
and told me where you were, but when I came here I saw that you were
sleeping and didn't waken you."
"You should have," I told him. "But where is Denham now?"
"He'll be here soon," replied my friend. "He said he would go after his
friends, who were helping him to look for me, and bring them here."
"But what of Cannell, Lantin?" I asked. "You have seen nothing of him
in your stay here?"
His face clouded. "Nothing," he admitted. "I have searched for him, but
how is one to find a single man in this city of thousands? And we do
not even know that he is here, Wheeler. For all we know, he may have
been killed long ago in some brawl here."
"Don't give up hope," I told him. "With Denham to help us, we have a
far better chance to find him."
Lantin shook his head doubtfully, but before he could answer, our
conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Denham and his three
friends. As they came up to us, I gazed with mounting interest at the
trio of strange companions who accompanied the Englishman.
One of them was patently a Roman, a short, sturdy man with swarthy,
stern-set features, attired in armor and helmet. The man beside him
was brown-skinned and long-haired, with eagle black eyes, dressed in
spotted skins, quilted cotton armor, and head-dress of feathers. He
carried a curious long sword, or weapon, whose edges were serrated, or
saw-toothed, and the weapon gave me the clue to his identity. I had
seen swords exactly like it brought out of the Aztec ruins in Mexico.
But it was the third man who caught and held my gaze. He was a figure
of romance, a slouch-hatted, wide-booted trooper, long sword rattling
at his heels, laughing, dare-devil eyes, and white teeth gleaming
behind a fierce black mustache. As I surveyed him, rather rudely I
think, he smiled at me and exclaimed, in execrable English: "_Mordieu_,
is this the lad who killed that pig, Talerri?"
When Denham nodded, he thrust forth his hand impulsively, and I was
glad to take it. And then Denham made introduction. "The Chevalier
Raoul D'Alord," he said, indicating the laughing trooper, who swept
me a grand bow. "One time captain in the armies of Henry Quatre, King
of Navarre and France, but now a lodger in our pleasant city," and he
laughed at the wry face the Frenchman made.
"This is Ixtil, Cacique of Tlacopan," he went on, indicating the wild
brown figure in the middle, and I looked at him with renewed interest,
now that my surmise had proved correct. An Aztec! One of the fierce
hordes who had swept away Maya and Toltec forever, only to be crushed
in turn by ruthless, steel-shod Cortez. The chieftain bowed to me,
gravely and silently, but did not speak.
Denham turned to the remaining figure. "Fabrius Arminius," he said,
"formerly centurion in the legions of Tiberius Cæsar," and the Roman
stiffly inclined his head. Then, at Denham's suggestion, we seated
ourselves around the end of the long table.
"D'Alord speaks English as well as I do," said Denham, "and between
us we taught it to Ixtil and Fabrius, so you can speak freely. I have
told my friends that you are, like ourselves, ready for an attempt at
escaping. Naturally, though, they would like to hear it from your own
lips."
"It is so," I assured them. "Lantin and I came here to find a certain
man, and if we can find him, we'll take him out of here in spite of
the Raider."
"The Raider?" queried D'Alord, and Denham interjected a brief
explanation. "He means--_him_," he told the Frenchman, jerking a thumb
upward.
The trooper laughed. "_Sacré_, that's a name for the beast! Eh,
Fabrius?"
The Roman nodded, silently, and Denham came back to the subject. "For
some time," he went on, "we four have considered different plans for
escaping, but none has been practical. There are so many obstacles. It
will be necessary to get up the stair, avoiding the guards at bottom
and top. Once up, it will be necessary to pass through the city of the
cylinders, though that should not be too difficult. But once out of the
city, what then? How cross the ice?"
"We are talking at cross purposes," I said. "You must remember, Denham,
that I know next to nothing about this place. Why have all these men
been collected in this under-city? Does anyone know, except the Raider?
What is the purpose of it all?"
"You do not know?" asked Denham, in surprize. "I thought you would, by
now. These men, these thousands of warriors in the city here around
you, have been gathered here by the Raider to act as his armies, his
mercenaries, to pour down in hordes upon the cities of the enemies of
the Kanlars, and destroy those enemies utterly, which the Kanlars are
too few in number to do."
I gasped with astonishment. Denham went on. "You tell him, Fabrius," he
said, addressing the Roman. "You have been here longer than any of us."
The centurion spoke, in a slurred, accented English. "Some things I
have heard," he said, "but whether true or not, I can not say. There
was a man here I knew when first I was brought here, a Persian. Before
he was killed (for he was killed in a drunken brawl) he told me that
once, in the city above, one of the Kanlars had become drunk and had
babbled to him the story of his race.
"As you know, endless fields of ice lie around this land where is the
Kanlar's city. Well, the Persian said that these fields of ice were not
endless, that far to the south there were other green lands and in them
a mighty people and a mighty city, named Kom. He said that long ago the
Kanlars lived in this city, and were of its people, but that trouble
had risen between them and the other people of Kom, _because of the
Raider_. More than this he did not know, but said that because of this
trouble, the Kanlars had fled from the city, with the Raider leading
them, and coming north in their air-boats over the ice-fields, had
found this green, uninhabited land, set in the ice. Its existence had
never been suspected by those in Kom, who thought that the ice extended
clear north to the very edge of earth.
"So the Kanlars had settled here and had built the city of cylinders,
which lies above us. But still they planned to sweep back on Kom, and
annihilate all there. But this they could not do, being too few in
number. So the Raider, who is their god and their king, spoke to them
and said that he would bring them men from every age of earth's past
to be their servants, to fight for them at will. The Raider could
travel at will through time--ask me not how!--and he swept back through
the centuries and brought men by the thousands to the Kanlars, young
warriors to fight their battles for them.
"There was a great cavern far beneath the city of the Kanlars, a great
hollow space formed by inside shiftings of the young earth, and in
this the Kanlars prisoned the men brought by the Raider, piercing a
shaft down to it from their temple above, and placing in that shaft the
stairway down which you came, under the direction of the Raider. They
chose from among their prisoners some to be guards of the others, and
those killed in battle here they brought back to seeming life by their
arts of hell, and used as slaves.
"So, steadily, the hordes here in the pit have grown in number, until
scarcely more could be contained here. Soon there will be enough to
suit the purpose of the Raider and then they will be loosed and hurled
south to carry fire and death to the cities beyond the ice, to Kom and
the people of Kom, who can have no knowledge whatever of the peril that
hangs over them. Up on the great roof of the temple, which is the home
of the Raider, there are scores of great flying-platforms which the
Kanlars have been constructing. They have made strange weapons, too,
and so when their hour strikes, they will open the gates here and allow
the hordes to pour up the stair, up to the roof of the temple, where
they will crowd into the flying-platforms, under the leadership of the
Kanlars, and race south over the ice to rain down death and destruction
on Kom. And thus will the Raider and the Kanlars be revenged upon the
people who cast them out."
* * * * *
Fabrius stopped, and I looked at Lantin, then back toward the Roman.
Was this the true secret of the Raider's activity?
"But will the hordes here do this?" I asked. "Will they follow the
Kanlars, and obey them?"
Fabrius laughed shortly, and D'Alord replied for him. "Ha, friend,"
he said to me, "you are new here, and do not know these men. They are
evil, I tell you. They boast always of what they will do when they are
loosed on Kom, for they know that soon they are to be thus loosed.
Some subtle poison from the Raider's self has entered into them, I
think. They are like tigers waiting to be freed upon a helpless prey."
"It is so," said Lantin, "for short a time as I have been here, I have
found that this is so. There is no hope from the hordes here in the
pit, for they will follow the Raider to a man."
There was a silence after that. Suddenly Denham spoke. "I think it
would be possible for some of us, at least, to get out of the pit
here," he said, "for I have a plan that would effect that much. But
what then? Do you suppose it would be possible to get up to the roof of
the temple and steal one of the flying-platforms you speak of? Or steal
one of the Kanlars' air-boats? If we could do that, we could fly south
over the ice-fields and warn the cities there of their peril, get their
aid and come back and crush the Raider and these damned Kanlars."
For the first time, the Aztec spoke, shaking his head. "It can not be
done," he said, speaking in precise, queerly clipped English. "I was to
the roof of the temple once, and know. The only way to get to that roof
is by the narrow stairway that spirals up the inside of the temple. And
that stairway leads directly through the lair of the Raider!"
"But what can we do, then?" asked the Englishman. "It would be folly to
try to steal one of the Kanlars' air-boats, for they always rise from
and alight on the roofs of buildings, and we could never get to them
unobserved."
Lantin broke into the silence that ensued. "But suppose there was an
air-boat hidden back in the hills, outside the city," he said; "that
would make things easier, wouldn't it?"
When they assented, he went on quickly, "Wheeler and I have such a
machine hidden," he said, "and it was on it that we came here from our
own time."
They looked up eagerly, incredulously. "Do you mean that you came into
this age from your own time on a machine?" asked Denham. "That you came
yourselves, and were not brought here by the Raider, like all the rest
of us?"
Lantin nodded affirmation, and then went on to describe briefly the
seizure of Cannell, our pursuit through time, and our subsequent
capture outside the city by the guards. They listened, fascinated,
and when he had finished, D'Alord asked, with something of awe in his
voice, "And you made this machine yourselves? You found the secret of
the Raider's time-traveling?"
"It is so," Lantin told them; "we made the time-car and then came after
Cannell."
"God!" exclaimed the trooper, "what a chance for freedom! If we could
all win free of this pit, escape from the city to your car, we could
get back to our own times in it. Back to France!"
"No!" said Denham, decisively. "In the first place not all of us can
escape from the pit. I have a plan by which some of us can, but the
rest must stay here. And another thing, even if we each got back to our
own time, D'Alord, who knows but that the Raider would come back and
recapture us, as he did this Cannell they tell of? For all we know, the
Raider may have placed on us some sign or mark by means of which he
could track us down through the ages again. And until he is destroyed,
it will be of no use to return to our own times."
"But what to do, then?" asked the Frenchman.
"This," said Denham. "We four will help Lantin and Wheeler to escape
from the pit. Only two can succeed in escaping, by my plan, for more
would be noticed in the city above, and we four will be needed to give
them their start up the stair, how, I will explain later. And since
only one or two can escape, Lantin and Wheeler must be the ones to make
the attempt, since they alone know how to operate their machine, and
know where it is hidden.
"If they can reach their car, they will speed south across the ice,
warn the people of Kom of the plans of the Kanlars, and come back with
a force sufficient to crush the Raider and the Kanlars forever, and
then they can rescue us four from the pit."
"The plan is good," approved the Roman. "We four must stay while they
go. When do you plan to make the attempt?" he asked Denham.
"We must wait until the night will be moonless," he said, "for the
darkness will favor the attempt. The eighth night from today would be
best."
"But your plan," asked the impatient Frenchman; "how do you plan to get
up the stair?"
"In this manner," explained the Englishman; "we must make a
grappling-hook of heavy metal, and a long, strong rope. On the night we
select for the attempt, we four will assemble at the lower gate of the
stair, while Lantin and Wheeler take up a position at the plaza's edge,
directly under the lowest curve of the spiral stair. Then, by shouting
or fighting, we four shall create a riot around the gate, to draw the
attention of the guards inside. When the excitement is at its highest,
and when the people around the position of Lantin and Wheeler have run
toward the riot, as they always do here, then Wheeler will fling up the
grappling-hook toward the curving stair above him. If fortune favors
us, the hook will catch, he can ascend the rope and pull up Lantin, and
the two can then proceed on up the stair, being above the gate and its
guards."
"But the guards above?" D'Alord objected. "How pass them? And what
of the metal floor of the temple, which covers the shaft? It will be
closed, and how will they get through it?"
"No," said Denham, "for if we start a sufficiently large riot at the
gate of the stair, the guards behind it will become alarmed and call
for help from above. They have a system of signaling with those above
and if they think the hordes here are going to attack the gate, those
above will open the shaft by swinging aside the temple floor, and will
send guards down to repel the attack on the gates. The shaft being
open, and the guards gone, Lantin and Wheeler should have no trouble
getting out and through the city, to their car."
"But we will meet the guards coming down the stair!" I cried.
"Not so," Denham assured me, "for when there is a call for aid from
their fellows below, the guards above don't descend by the stair,
since it would take them too long. They unreel great ropes or cables,
drop them over the shaft's edge so that they hang clear to the stair's
bottom, and then attach a sort of harness to themselves, join that
harness to the cables with special pulleys, and slide down to the
stair's bottom in a few minutes. Twice, since I have been here, there
have been riots around the gate, and each time the guards above came
whizzing down in that way, to repel the riot."
"Whatever else they are," added D'Alord, "there are no cowards among
the guards. No one ever called me craven yet, but _ventre-de-biche_,
I'd look twice before sliding down a rope into this hell."
"Yet what if some of the guards did come down the stair?" I asked.
Denham shook his head. "I do not think they will do so," he said.
"Yet if they did?" I insisted.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Why, then you would meet them on the
stair."
We looked at each other, a little grimly, I think, and then there was
a shattering roar of laughter from D'Alord. "Why borrow trouble?"
he cried. "Take your sword with you, lad, and if you meet anyone on
the stair, have at him. If you are the stronger, you will kill your
enemies, and if your enemies are the stronger, they will kill you. What
more is there to it?"
I could not help laughing, ruefully, as did the rest, but Lantin
suddenly sobered.
"But Cannell?" he asked. "What of my friend? We came here to rescue
him, you know, and can't leave without him."
"There are eight days yet in which to find him," Denham pointed out,
"and if you can not find him in that time, we four will try to locate
him after you and Wheeler have escaped. If he's here in the pit, we'll
have him with us by the time you come back."
* * * * *
Our conversation was abruptly broken off by the entrance of a number
of the room's occupants, who regarded our little group with suspicious
stares.
"We'd best break up," Denham whispered, "for we don't want it to get
abroad that we're planning something."
So, rising, we sauntered out of the room into the street. Outside a
hot sunlight was pouring down from the glass globes in the roof, so
strongly that one could not look up at that roof directly, any more
than one can look directly at the sun. Whatever method the Kanlars had
devised to collect and bring so far underground the light and heat of
the sun, it was a wonderfully efficient one.
Behind us loomed the gray-rock wall of the pit, and before us,
stretching away for miles to the opposite wall, were the masses of
white buildings that housed the city's teeming thousands. And at the
central plaza, the titanic, gleaming spiral of the metal stairway rose
vastly up toward the black, round shaft that pierced the cavern's roof,
its winding turn on turn glinting in the light like a huge, upraised
serpent of metal.
In the shifting, noisy throng that pressed by us along the street, that
swirled aimlessly through streets and buildings, I sensed a quality of
expectation, of eager, restless waiting. Even I, new to the city as I
was, could feel the unwonted excitement that pulsed from the passing
crowds. And I saw that my companions felt it likewise.
A grizzled seaman in stained, shapeless clothes, who might have sailed
with Drake or Hawkins, stopped in front of us.
"Ho, comrade!" he cried to Denham; "hast heard the news?"
"News! What news?" asked Denham, his brows drawing together.
"An hour ago," said the other, "the guards sent word through the city
to sharpen all swords, to get all weapons ready. I tell thee, lad, it's
soon we'll be dropping down on Kom, to loot it from end to end. Split
me, they're going to loose us ere long," and with an anticipatory,
gloating chuckle, the seaman passed on.
Denham turned to us, his face suddenly white. "You heard?" he asked.
"That means that we have little time left for action. We dare not wait
now until the moonless nights. We'll have to take our chance on the
first night that it's cloudy above, for then it will be darker here.
And if we fail in our attempt, it means these hordes of devils here
flashing down to make a hell of an unwarned, unprotected city. For the
Raider is getting ready to strike!"
_CHAPTER 13_