Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/28

 He remembered clearly the formula that Henry Stevens had memorized in the dream. He had the men pound and pulverize and mix, until a big mass of granular black powder was the result.

"Now bring small metal vases—enough to hold all this—and lampwicks and day," he ordered.

A captain came running, breathless. "The Bunts have finished their ladders and I think they're soon going to make their attack, sire!" he cried.

"And our leader lingers here, muddling in minerals!" cried Brusul gustily. "Khal Kan, forget this crazy dream and make ready for battle!"

HAL KAN paid no attention. He was having the men stuff the small metal vases with the black powder, stopping their mouths with clay through which a fuse-like wick protruded.

"Distribute these vases to all our men along the walls," he ordered. "Tell them, that when the Bunts place their ladders, they are to light the fuses and fling the vases down among the green warriors, at my command."

"Hell destroy all dreams!" raged Brusul. "What good will such a crazy plan do? Do you think dropping vases on the Bunts will stop them?"

"I don't know," Khal Kan muttered. "In the dream, I thought it would. The dream-me called the powder 'gunpowder' and the vases 'grenades.' And in the dream they seemed a more terrible weapon even than the poisoned arrows."

Yells from the walls and the warning blare of trumpets ripped across the sunlit city. A great cry swept through Jotan's streets.

"The Bunts are coming!"

"To the wall!" Khal Kan cried.

From the parapet atop the great wall, the rising sun revealed an ominous spectacle. From all around the landward side of Jotan, the hordes of the Bunts were surging toward the city.

First came a line of green bowmen whose hissing, poisoned shafts were already rattling along the top of the wall. Jotanian warriors sank groaning as the swift poison sped into their blood. Khal Kan held his shield up, and swept Golden Wings behind him as they waited.

Behind the first line of bowmen came Bunts carrying long, rough wooden scaling-ladders. Behind these came the main masses of the stocky green men, armed with bows and short-swords, led by Egir himself.

The ladders came up against the wall, and the blood-chilling Bunt yell broke around the city as the green warriors swarmed catlike up them. Joranians who sought to push over the ladders were smitten by arrows.

"Over the wall and open the gates!" Egir's bull voice was yelling to his green men. "Let us into Jotan!"

The main horde of the Bunts was already surging toward the gates of the city, while their attackers on the ladders sought to win the wall.

"Now—light the fuses and drop the vases!" Khal Kan yelled along the parapet, through the melee.

Torches at readiness set the wicks alight. The seemingly harmless little metal vases were tossed over into the surging mass of the Bunts.

A series of ear-splitting crashes shook the air, like thunder. White smoke drifted away to show masses of the Bunts felled by the explosions.

"Gods!" cried Brusul appaliedly. "Your dream-weapon is thunder of heaven itself!"

"Magic!" yelled the Bunts, shrinking back aghast from their own dead, tumbling in panic off the ladders. "Flee, brothers!"

The fear-maddened green warriors surged back from the walls of Jotan, breaking in panic-stricken, disorganized masses.