Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 12.djvu/75

Rh geneous group of swaggering villains—and amazing captives

Two or three girls of my own time-world. And my future, and my past. There was one with long flaxen braids—a little Dutch-American costume of tight bodice and flaring skirt. Another—half naked Indian girl of Dutch Nieuw Amsterdam. A man was dragging her as she screamed with her terror; and then he cuffed her into silence.

They passed around an angle of nearby hill. Close to us, Tork was leading Doris with an arm around her. I saw the slim dark figure of young Georg Allaire, enveloped now in a dark cloak, press close after them.

"You let us alone," Blake was protesting to Greggson. "You—"

Then Tork heard us.

"Bring them," he called. "This way, Greggson."

In the light of the dying red sunset, we advanced around the corner of the hill; and then upon, us there burst a new amazing sight. Tork's village. His new civilization, here in this aged, dying world. His New Era.

Like the captive girls, and the motley bandits themselves, in this little group of fantastic dwellings there was the blending of the past ages when man was glorious. Perhaps a hundred small structures had been erected here. Weird metal houses, like fantastic shanties thrown together of the small parts of other structures which had been brought here. Some, with lean-to walls of shining metal, had roofs of crude thatch. Or a wall of alumite, glistening like burnished copper in the red-bronze sunset, with oval window set with prism-panes to catch and fling the light inside—and incongruously the adjoining wall was of piled stones.

Motley, half finished little dwellings, waiting for more materials to come that they might be completed. They were set in rows, with a curving street or two between them. A broken statue stood ludicrously askew at an intersection—a pilfered work of art brought here from some past age. Platforms, hastily built of handsome colored marble blocks, had been erected at the end of a street.

Lights were winking on now—the glow of lights in windows—soft radiance from braziers in the street, with crudely connected wires leading to strewn batteries lying in a nearby heap. From a cliff close by, a light projector suddenly flashed on, like a rainbow bathing the village in prismatic splendour. And a great brazier of incense—the toy of some past voluptuary—cast off its exotic odor, wafted by the heavy, sluggish night-breeze.

Some five hundred of Tork's men were here; and now perhaps as many maidens. I saw a long, rambling shed of thatch patrolled by armed guards, in which they were confined. The thirty new arrivals were flung in there; waiting for tonight, the choosing of mates for the population of this New World.

SAW Tork now with his arm around Doris as he led her toward one of the strange half-metal houses, with Greggson shoving us after them. Did Tork want Rhadana—or Doris? Why was he so ironically gentle with Doris? So ironically anxious to please her? "I am your Emperor—and your servant." I had heard him say it to her several times. And why that burst of rage from him at the idea of having her regain her sight? Why should he like her better—blind?

Guards were pacing in the red-bronze twilight outside our little house when Tork left us with Doris—and with Rhadana here to give us our supper.

"Your last meal," he told Blake and