Page:Weird Tales volume 31 number 02.djvu/63

Rh Again the eery cry arose. This time the goddess called only one.

"Thwaine! Thwaine!"

Thwaine was silent, but Ating screamed, her cry shattering itself into a hundred fragmentary echoes against the enclosing cliffs. The fleeing pair had reached a point directly beneath the gap in the mountain wall where stood the throne of Ceipe; above them Throal's bald features were etched in torchlight as he eagerly observed the fugitives' progress.

Rald, perceiving he had not been chosen for the first victim, turned in his tracks. Helplessly, his grasp grew firm about the hilt of his futile sword. A warmth of emotion flooded his breast; it was the old, familiar feeling he had so often experienced before hopeless odds–the calm strength of desperation. The grim smile he had exhibited to Hagar's hosts played across his taut features. Even the sight of Hess, beginning to creep slowly across the sands in the manner of a cat stalking a mouse, did not erase his expression. Rald had ceased to be a worried, tormented thing of flesh and bone and was now somewhat god-like himself. His friends were endangered; he was willing to offer the last drop of his blood in their defense.

"Rald!" cried Cene's voice. "The torch! It fears fire! Take the torch!"

Without an upward glance the mercenary swept up the burning ironwood with his left hand. Carrying bare steel in his right hand, he raced across the arena.

had halted at a spot where the ring of shadows drew a definite line about the moonlit area of the pit. He knew his destiny was hopeless, that death was near to both himself and his companion, she who crouched behind his squat shoulders. But he was prepared to sell their lives as dearly as possible. He hoped his sword could penetrate the tough skin of the creeping monster, and hummed an old and half-forgotten battle-song as he watched Hess lounge nearer.

The animal-goddess took her time; there was no trace of haste in her strides.

"We die now, I think," said Ating over his shoulder. To Thwaine's surprize her voice was steady and without a tremor. "Good-bye, my dear."

"We are not yet dead!" insisted Thwaine, stubbornly.

Above them loomed the great bulk of Hess, stone-like and stolid no longer, but now a living, breathing, threatening death, fantastic and incredible beneath the moonbeams, but, nevertheless, a certain and horrible doom. She raised a great paw above the man's head, holding it there with the playfulness of a cat toying with a mouse, and regarded the desperate mercenary with immense, yellow, unblinking eyes. A shudder shook his very soul when the thing purred. He slashed at the forepaw with his blade; it moved negligently–and his sword lay twenty feet away while he nursed a sprained wrist. Armless and defenseless, Thwaine faced the death before him, became conscious of Ating at his side, and suddenly laughed into the poised face of the being that the people of Ceipe called a goddess.

"Curse you!" he cried. "Though you slay us, we remain your betters–animal!"

Hess snarled and lifted the crushing paw.

At that instant Rald arrived, unnoticed, at her right flank. He struck fiercely, trusting his blade would sink deep into the vitals; to his dismay it was shattered into fragments against the ribs of the giant cat. Hess felt the blow, for she turned her head to see the rash intruder who had interrupted her pleasantry, momentarily ignoring the selected sacrifices,