Page:Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 CAN.djvu/20

 "Unless a few men, unless you and I, go ahead with all speed to Mruun and snatch Fand away from them first."

Goban gasped. "You and I go alone to black Mruun? It would be useless, mad."

"We would have a chance," Cullan insisted. "Tethra was startled, shaken, when he saw me. I think he fears me, or rather, Cuchulain. And I think we could secretly enter his castle. I saw all its interior ways as I went through it with Lugh in image."

The Tuathan captain hesitated, torn by his throbbing loyalty to Fand and his larger fealty to Lugh.

"The lord Lugh would slay me for breaking his command," Goban muttered. "But I will do it, Cuchulain! Better that than to let the princess die without attempt to save her!"

His decision made, Goban planned swiftly. "We can leave the citadel only by the way we came—the boats below. Wait, while I see if the road is clear.

Brian Cullan waited in tense impatience for minutes before Goban returned. The Tauthan captain handed him a flame-sword.

Sheathing the weapon, Cullan followed the other out of the room. Goban had chosen a way down narrow, little-used stairs *nd passages. As they hastened downward, they could hear from elsewhere in the citadel the echo of excited voices, of hasty preparations.

Without challenge they reached the quay of the little inner harbor beneath the citadel, in which yellow light glistened off the dozen swift metal boats moored here.

"Dagda's craft is the fastest by far, but it is chained and locked," whispered Goban. "We must take the one in which we came."

The Tuathan again took the helm, starting the atomic mechanism purring and steering the slim boat quickly out the water-tunnel.

They emerged from the citadel into the silver mists. At once, Goban swung their craft in a wide circle to avoid the entrance to the main harbor of Thandara.

Looking back toward that harbor Brian Cullan saw in it many boats gathered along the massive docks. Under the flare of brilliant lights, Tuathan warriors were loading heavy, spouted mechanisms into the boats.

"They prepare the instruments of our science that will loose destruction," said Goban "The battle that comes will be terrible."

OW they were clear of the island and the Tuathan swung then craft northward. At its highest speed it skimmed over the smooth swells of the sea, Cullan peering tautly from its bows.

Silver mists as of dreamlike moonlight shrouded all the world. Wisps and curls of the whitely radiant haze caught at their faces as their craft rushed on. Like dim ghost-lands vaguely bulked the islands through which they were passing.

Cullan felt an ever-fiercer impatience, born of his dread for Fand. That dread, and the rage against the Fomorians it engendered, brought stronger into his mind that wild, ruthless battle-passion that he believed was inheritance from long-dead Cuchulain. He told himself desperately that he must keep his head clear, must be Brian Cullan, not Cuchulain.

Goban was feeling something of that same fierce excitement. For the Tuathan called to him above the rush of the wind, his voice high.