Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 04.djvu/90

474 near the looming palace, and there was a clank of running men. Clark Stannard fought furiously to tie the girths of the struggling horse. He finally succeeded, and then he yelled to Blacky Cain.

"Here you are! Mount at once, all of you!"

Now an uproar was spreading through the whole pile of the hexagonal palace, and shouts and clash of arms could be heard from all around it, converging on the horse-court.

Clark swung into the saddle. As he jerked the reins to control the rearing animal, he saw that outside the horsecourt a scattered body of twenty or thirty Red guards were rushing forward with drawn swords gleaming in the moonlight.

"We'll have to break out through them!" Clark yelled. "Ride!"

And he dug his heels into his steed's flanks. The nervous animal needed no further urging, and sprang forward toward the door with hoofs clanging on the pavement. Right beside Clark rode Link Wilson, the Texan sitting easily in the saddle, the rest thundering after.

Straight into the scattered band of guards at the door of the court they rode. Clark glimpsed their drawn swords, then heard the boom of a gun beside him, over the din of hoofs and yells. Link Wilson had drawn one of his forty-fives and was shooting as they charged. Three of the guards slumped down as the heavy slugs hit them.

They crashed through the other guards, a mad whirlwind of riders and steeds, the soldiers and stabbing swords seeming to spin around them. Then, with the swiftness of a cinema film, they were through the soldiers, riding full tilt around the big palace toward the great avenue that led to the city wall.

Other guards ran wildly out from the palace, swords raised in the moonlight. Clark had his own gun out now and fired, and heard Link Wilson's pistol booming again. He saw Lurain bending low over her mount's neck and slashing at a guard whose spear struck toward her. The man went down and she rode right over him, and the little band raced clattering down the wide street of the awakening city.

"The spawn of K'Lamm cannot stand against us, Stannar!" cried Lorain's silver, pealing voice as she rode.

"Yippee!" yelled Link Wilson, the ex-cowboy, drunk with reckless excitement as his horse galloped furiously over the paving.

"The whole city is rousing!" shouted Lieutenant Morrow, spurring his horse beside Clark's.

They thundered down that wide dark street to the accompaniment of mad yells of rage from behind them, and startled cries along the street. A few men ran out as though to intercept them, but recoiled abruptly as the desperate little band rode down on them.

Clanging of hoofs on stone, chorus of yells and orders, were wild music in Clark Stannard's ears as he and his men and the Dordonan girl thundered down the street of moonlit K'Lamm. He saw torches flickering and bobbing ahead of them.

"Look!" yelled Ephraim Quell suddenly over the din. "The gates"

"Faster!" cried Clark wildly, as he saw at what the Yankee skipper pointed.

The great gates in the city wall had been open, as Clark had guessed. But now, alarmed by the clamor at the distant palace, the guards around those gates were hastily pushing against the mighty bronze valves, were closing them.