THE FIGHT IN THE ARSENAL
When the door closed I was very glad to sit down with my back against
it, as we had done before, and my companion was quick to perceive my
exhaustion. Again I felt the small life-giving hand in mine, and, for
the time at least, the effects of thirst and starvation, and the long
night-hours, were overcome by the reserves of her vitality.
She was very quiet at first, and indisposed for conversing.
At length I asked her, “I know how I must appear to you in many ways,
but why was your Leader so contemptuous of me, beyond anything I have
met among your people previously?”
She answered, “She was not contemptuous. She did not regard you at all.
Why should she? She had more serious things of which to think. Besides,
you think of our Leaders as one, because their decisions are always
unanimous. But this is wrong. Each is different. There is none like this
one in all practical issues, and in control of material things. That is
why it was she who came to seek the first one, when she did not return.
I think she regards the whole expedition as a mistake, and that she
should have been left to her own ways. But such things are not for me.
They are for themselves only.
“She taught me much while we talked together. When I am with you only, I
think myself superior in many ways. Your body breaks so easily, and you
are never sure when it will fail you. Your mind is confused, and
inconsequent. It is only when I think of yourself as of a Leader whose
followers are mostly treacherous or disloyal, but who still endeavours
without loss of courage to fulfil his purpose, that I respect you at
all. But when my Leader showed my stupidity I felt that there is little
difference between us.
“She showed me, among other things, that I accept your conclusions
without thought, and that I do not even take notice of what is beneath
me.
“You are used to opening doors in certain ways, and so you assumed that
this could not be opened at all from the inside, and I believed you
without reason. The Killers must have been preparing an attack from
beneath our feet, and were only interrupted when they ran out to waylay
my Leader, and I did not hear it. I know that your senses are
rudimentary, but do you not hear it now?”
No--I heard nothing. But she said that they were moving busily under our
feet, so that we must be prepared for an attack at any moment. She
showed me what her Leader had known at a glance, that if we pressed the
hinge the door would open.
I said, “If there be a cavity beneath us, there is probably a trap-door
from it to this hall. In that case, I wonder they haven’t used it
earlier. Let us see what we can discover.”
We examined the floor from end to end. It was of the same hard smooth
substance as the walls. It was laid in squares, about a yard each way,
so finely morticed that the divisions were scarcely perceptible. But
there was one in the middle of the hall that attracted our attention.
It was set as close as the others, even more so, but there was no
appearance of mortar between it and those adjoining. I cleaned the dust
from the floor with my ragged sleeve, and the difference became more
evident.
As we bent above it, there was a slight sound overhead, and looking up
suddenly I saw a row of yellow heads that were regarding our movements
with interest. “I wish I could kill those creatures. They will harm us
yet,” I thought, and my companion answered, “They wish us evil, but you
will do us injury if you fear them. They know every thought they cause
you. But tell me what plans you have. Our Leader is rescued--if any
rescue were needed. We can open the door when we will, and there is
nothing to keep us here, if we have courage to venture out. But perhaps
it would be better to defend this sheltered place, till our friends come
in the evening?”
I answered, “I think we can go free together when we will, though I
could not have done so singly, for I shall have no strength of my own
till I come on food of some kind; but we shall need to know where we are
going, and to what purpose.
“I suppose that at any moment this stone may move, and there will be a
rush of enemies upon us. Yet if we wait till that moment we lose
nothing, for they could not come up quickly through such an opening, and
the more of our enemies that are congregated beneath the building when
the door is opened, the better it will be. But you are right that we
should have a plan as to where we are going, and why we do it, either
together or separately.
“When I came here, it was with the object of finding two of my friends
who had preceded me. Almost at once I involved myself in another
obligation. It seemed to me that the one might help the other, and apart
from that I had no guidance as to where to search, nor hope that any
creature would aid me.
“So far, I have not found them, though I have seen evidence that one has
been near here. I think it is most probable, if they live at all, which
I greatly doubt, that they are in the hands of the Dwellers, and it is
there that I should seek them.
“I have no wish to do this. It is very perilous, and not hopeful. Also,
I do not wish to part from you, and I know you cannot come there.
“But if I should return with you, I suppose that there is no way by
which I could live in your own element.
“If you will help me to get clear of this danger, and back to where food
and water are possible, I think I ought to leave you, and by doing this
I shall also relieve your Leaders of a difficulty with the Dwellers,
which they have indicated already.”
She replied, “I think we shall not part so soon, if we escape the vats
of the Killers. I have something to tell you. When my Leader wished me
to go with her, and leave you here, I objected. Then I told her my
reasons--as our custom is--knowing that she would judge them fairly, and
more capably than I could do myself. She found that they were not good.
She showed me that you are yourself of the kind of the Killers, that you
have little faculty of reason or self-control, that you are violent and
untrustworthy, and (she thought) untamable. If that should prove to be
so, we could not even make you as one of the sea-dogs. Also, you could
only live on the roof of our island, where you would probably die when
the first storms swept over it.
“First or last, you would have to go to the Dwellers.
“She has seen that, every day, as the sun sets, one or more of them will
come over the mountains, and disappear to seaward. She supposes that it
is a regular patrol, and that they come out at some inland spot during
the earlier day, and retire down one of the passages which you have
seen.
“When they pass, the Killers are afraid, and hide in the wall.
“She proposed that we should leave you here, where you could defend
yourself till the evening, and you could then go out and give yourself
up to the Dwellers, or escape entirely, while the Killers will be
hiding, if you should prefer to do so. She thought it best that you
should give yourself up, as they would deal with you as you deserve, and
would not kill you unless it should be desirable, as she thought likely.
“At first I could not answer this; but then I had a new thought. I
replied that now she was safe we had still to rescue the body of our
Leader which was left in the tunnel, if that should be possible. I
should be willing to go to seek it, if you were with me, but not
otherwise. It is plain that we cannot take it by force from the
Dwellers, even though we should all go together. If we go secretly, we
must be few. In many ways you might help me there, for you are more
nearly of their kind, and you do not fear them as you do smaller things.
Even if the body be destroyed it is necessary that we should know.
“She did not like my plan. I thought that she would refuse it, and I
held to it with all the force I had, which was little. Then she closed
her mind from me. I knew she had many thoughts which she would not show
me. At last she decided, ‘You may do this, if you can. But you must not
ask this animal to go down to the Dwellers to aid you. If he offer to do
so, you may take him with you. But he must make his own plan before he
hear of yours, and to that he must keep. You must be in hiding before
the sun goes down. If we should return this way, and should meet with
the Dwellers, you may watch us meet, but you must hold your minds blank
and closed, so that neither they nor we can perceive you, unless we
ourselves should signal to you. You must not release the Bat-winged men,
nor allow their escape. They must die, as the Dwellers have willed.’
That is all she told me, but there is none like her for foresight, even
of the Seven, or for plans that are so made that they can change as the
chances alter, and still reach to where they will. She saw me foolish,
but she decided to make a plan which used my folly. I am glad that we
shall go together, and shall see the homes of the Dwellers.”
I answered, “I am glad also. I cannot say that if I had no search to
make I should give myself to the Dwellers, as your Leader advised so
kindly. They might decide my fate with great wisdom, but I prefer to do
that for myself. As she said, I am not easily tamable. Besides, if I
once get clear of this place, I think I might find means both to hide
and to live in this new world, and I should well like to explore it. It
is already apparent to me that it is full of beauty and of strange
wonders, of which I have yet seen very little--and the tunnels of the
Dwellers seem the more perilous way. But we both have good reasons for
the choice we have made, and I think we may do better together than
either could do separately. But why should we not attempt escape
immediately? Why should we not return to the lower way while there is
still daylight to guide us, and before the Dwellers appear, to add a new
peril to the road we take?”
“I am not certain which is best, and I think, as you do, that we might
escape at any time with no great risk, if we were sudden and rapid in
the attempt; but I think that she wished us to remain to see whether my
friends will still come by this way, and are allowed to pass in safety.
There is also this to think, that if the Dwellers always return to the
interior when the night comes, and they travel more rapidly than we
should do, they might overtake us if we enter one of the tunnels
earlier, while, if we follow behind them, we may do so in safety, with
little fear that they will know of our coming till we have passed the
tunnel and arrive at that which lies beneath it.”
So we agreed to wait, and as we thought that the loose stone in the
floor was now the point that threatened us, we sat closely round it. I
kept the bow beside me, thinking to send a shaft through any opening
that might appear, but as the time passed without movement I loosed my
knapsack, and finding thread and a strong needle, I commenced to repair
my rags as best I was able, my companion watching, half in amusement and
half in sympathy, and wondering why the creatures of my race never tried
to train their skins to utility.
Then for some time she was silent, her head rested on her updrawn knees,
and when at last she moved again she told me, “I suppose you think of us
as all being alike, as we live the same lives, just as I should think of
your kind, if I were among them, while to you they are widely different
by character and appearance and occupation. But we are not so. I have a
vice which I cannot break, which is shared by one only among all our
thousands. Our Leaders have considered it, and showed us that it comes
only when our minds are tired by new things, and desire rest when we do
not will to take it.
“Then our thoughts change to sleep of themselves, and on a note which is
not of our own choosing.
“There was a distant time when I was very foolish, and I went into a
part of the ocean where there was much depth and great darkness. There I
found a pressure which came upon me so that I could not release myself.
I was held there very long, with a horror which you may have some power
to imagine.
“When the time came at which our nation assembles, and my absence was
noticed, the Leader whose body we are now seeking, and who is like
myself in the love of strange and difficult ways, though of a much
higher capacity to traverse them successfully, undertook to search for
me, and knowing the direction which I had been seen to go, she at last
discovered and released me, by methods which would be beyond your
comprehension, if I should attempt to tell them. In doing this she
risked her own life, and lost so much of her vitality that she rested
afterwards for many years till her strength returned, and did not even
take part in the Councils of the Seven.
“Now, when I wished to gain my own way, I looked for every argument that
would support me, and I recalled this to my Leader’s mind, as a reason
why I should go, if someone must be risked to seek her. Then, as we sat
here, the horror of that place came back to me, and in a moment I was
asleep and within it. But it has left me now, and, I hope, for ever....
“It is in my mind that there will be fighting when that stone moves, and
that I am pledged to help you.”
She picked up one of the short javelins from the floor, and balanced it
thoughtfully on an outstretched finger. When she had turned it over, and
looked at it carefully for some time, she threw it against the wall,
watching its flight very closely. It turned once in the air, failed in
its balance, and struck the wall with a slanting feeble stroke.
Unperturbed, she collected six others, and threw them one by one, so
quickly that the next was in the air before the first had fallen. Of
these the two last struck the wall at the same spot, and with the full
force of the throw.
“I think I can play that game if they should ask it,” she laughed in her
mind, and collected others to her hand.
“Could you hit the same spot twice in succession?” I asked.
“Surely,” she answered, “even you could not forget so quickly. But I
myself forget that your body is not as mine. I understand that yours may
do your will with exactness on one occasion, and on the next, though you
have the same will, and it be equally capable, it may fail entirely. All
the games of which you told me, in which your body is used, are based on
this quality. But with us it is different. I know now that I can hit any
spot at which I can aim, and as often as I attempt it. I will show you
with these.”
She picked up two of the javelins, and sent the first against the
farther wall--but the second did not follow it. At the moment her hand
was lifted, the stone beside us disappeared from sight, leaving a
yard-wide gap, and as swift as thought itself her javelin was flung into
the open pit beneath us.
An outburst of whistling screams told us that it had carried no welcome
message, but the next second we had our own troubles to deal with. Back
into its place the stone shot upward, and with such force that certain
things which had been placed upon it were thrown to the roof and fell
scattering upon us. Four of them there were--four eight-foot lengths of
living, writhing rope--but to me, at least, they seemed forty.
I suppose that my companion, of cooler mind, and of quicker hands also,
made no such error.
I know that while I was struggling with one that had caught my leg and
was thrusting upward for a more deadly grip, her mind reached mine with
the quiet quickness of thought and buoyant gaiety of spirit that
physical danger always waked within her. I had a feeling that the idea
that she should be threatened by hostile violence always came to her as
an absurdity, to be met with laughter.
“We must watch the stone. Put your foot on its end. Jump to the left, or
the other one will get you.” So she called to me, while she ripped one
which had fallen round her own waist with a javelin point till it loosed
her and fell squirming, and as it did so she flung the javelin, not at
the next of them, though it was round her feet already, nor at the gap
which showed again where the stone had left it, but at the lizard-forms,
that were now twittering with excitement above us.
It struck one of them fairly on the outstretched head, and down it came,
a bright yellow snake-like form, turning head-under-heels as it came--or
under tail, to be literal--and falling in the open gap, at which there
rose a chorus of such consternation from the unseen Killers beneath us,
that it was evident that to them a lizard must be a very dreaded or a
very sacred thing.
“Two each,” she laughed, as she caught the still restless portions of
the living cords on an arrow’s point, and threw them back into the gap
beneath us. “Did you notice that they became almost harmless after I had
struck one of the lizards, and the others bolted? I believe it was their
minds that guided them to attack us. It was to reach them, if the need
came, that I first tried the javelins, but I dare not tell you, nor let
the thought make growth in my own mind, lest they should know it. I fear
them, but I do not fear the Killers at all.” And just then the Killers
came.
I think the falling of the lizard must have produced a confusion that
delayed their attack, but that this was succeeded by such a tide of fury
as swept away the natural cowardice that underlay their ferocity, and
caused them to forget the caution with which they had approached us
previously.
They came leaping upward, with their hands on the edge of the gap, and
the first fell back with a javelin in the throat, and a second I knocked
back with a sidesweep of the axe, and from the third I sliced off the
sucker at its root, and stopped his whistling. But the crowd pushed up,
and flung him sprawling outward.
They had no cords--perhaps they thought them useless after the way we
returned the four they sent us; perhaps they would have been too
dangerous to themselves in that crowded rush--and they had little time
or space to use their javelins before the axe was on them. I struck, and
struck, with steady sweeping strokes, at the pushing crowd that rose
against me, the tough skins denting to the blade, and bursting as they
felt the pressure behind them.
And always, if they rose too fast, or one should dodge my stroke, a
javelin found it, from where my comrade had stepped back to the wall to
reach them down as she needed them. Once I thought I had failed, as the
pressure spued up two or three at once, too quickly for the axe to take
them, but her mind reached me serenely. “Keep the others down--and leave
these to me,” and was vaguely conscious that she was avoiding their
weapons with a cool celerity, while her own bore them her message that
their hours were over.
And then amid an up-rush of damaged bodies which he was using for his
own protection I saw the red-brown malignant head of one of the archers,
and struck with all my strength a straight-down cleaving blow, and was
conscious that the attack had collapsed before me, and the gap was
empty.
With a sudden dizziness I looked on the shambles that now surrounded the
opening. I have told something of the outward repulsiveness of the
Killers, with their worm-pink skins that were both tough and slimy, but
of the interiors of these foul bodies I cannot write. An axe-stroke has
no reticence.
I thought it was from that nauseous sight that a sudden faintness
threatened, and I struggled against it, stepping back, and leaning on
the axe, and turning to my companion for her to snare my triumph.
She stood very still, her eyes bright and watchful, her mind beginning
to question her for the thing she had done--which was, no doubt, outside
the experience not only of herself, but of all her kind--but her will
meeting it confidently. Then she looked at me, and her thought changed.
I made an effort to reassure her that I was uninjured, and was aware
that I was falling.
I don’t think I was unconscious for long, and I believe that she neither
helped nor hindered, but watched quietly beside a phenomenon which was
beyond her experience.
When my senses returned, she was alert and near, and her mind was quick
to reach me.
“You can rest while you will. I think your last stroke was enough to
still them. You made it work that time!” She always spoke of my body
thus, as something separate from myself, as we might praise a friend who
carved well with a blunted chisel. “I am sorry that I failed you. The
Killer rose on your farther side, and I could not reach it till it had
made its throw. I have much yet to learn of the ways of fighting--do you
not understand me? Did you not know that your body was broken
again?--does it tell you nothing?--look under your right arm.”
I looked, and understood. The excitement of the fight, in which my life
had literally depended upon the speed and force with which I could
strike, and recover, and strike again, and then the utter exhaustion
that had followed, and now the dizzy weakness that possessed me--each in
turn had left me unaware that a javelin had found its mark. Thrown
straight upward, and probably with no great force, in the pushing crowd
that gave scant space for free movement, it had struck me in the armpit
as the axe was lifted--no depth of wound, but one that bled very freely.
It was evident that I must rest for a time at least, and so I lay there,
while she sat beside me and watched the empty gap before us, conquering
once again the repugnance she felt at touching my body, so that the
smooth furred fingers should close the wound, and the soft palm should
give its strength to heal me.
“I am ashamed,” I thought, “that I should be so incapable from so slight
a wound. You regard me as a creature of violence, yet I break down at
every conflict, where you come through with a clearer victory. I think I
am more an encumbrance than a help, even in such ways as these.”
She answered, “It was I who failed you. I should have stood nearer, and
it need not have happened. I held them too lightly, and you, who took
the harder part, have been hurt through my folly.”
My mind protested, but as the thought formed I was sleeping.