Part 38 (1/2)
Less than half an hour later all of Jotan's band of warriors squatted behind the belt of foliage just within the walls of Vokal's sprawling palace. In the dim light of stars they could look out between the interstices of growing things, seeing the many windowed bulk of stone rising four full floors above the neighboring terrain. No where in all that vast expanse was there a sign of life. No candle showed its brief flame at any window. Silent and dark and somehow a place of brooding danger.
After another whispered conference, Tharn left the other leaders of the band and flitted across the open ground, moving like a black shadow toward the same doorway through which Trakor had raced to join him only an hour or two earlier.
Those watching him from the shadowy foliage lost sight of him almost at once; and when, a few moments later, he seemed to rise from the ground almost under their noses, a startled gasp from a dozen throats made a rustling sound against the heavy silence.
”The door is still unbarred,” Tharn reported, frowning. ”I am even surer now, n.o.ble Jotan, that we are heading straight for a trap set up by the wily Vokal.”
”He could not know our plans,” Jotan said impatiently. ”It means simply that they forgot to bar the door after the excitement you and your friend caused them earlier. Things are working out well for us.”
Tharn smiled his enigmatic smile and said no more. Quickly the five leaders moved among their eager troops, issuing orders down the line.
And then, at a single word from Jotan the band of one hundred and fifty armed men stepped into the open and started for the palace walls.
Suddenly the shrill cry of a woman rose against the weighted silence.
”Back!” the voice screamed from high above them. ”Go back! It is a trap!”
”Dylara!” Tharn shouted, and with great bounding strides he raced toward the palace. Startled by the shrill shout, puzzled by Tharn's dash into the jaws of what might be a trap, the hundred and fifty wavered uncertainly, then charged after the racing cave man.
And as the first wave of Jotan's warriors reached the halfway mark in the clearing, a hundred flaming branches were hurled from the open windows into the courtyard beneath, their flames lighting up the entire ribbon of open ground and disclosing the pitifully small army to the waiting warriors of Vokal.
A rain of arrows, spears and clubs now rained down from those windows upon the men beneath. Men reeled and fell, some instantly dead, others badly wounded. Some of those unhit stopped in their tracks, looked wildly around, then turned to flee for the safety of the street behind them.
And it was then that Vokal's masterful plan was fully unveiled. From those same openings through the stone wall encircling Vokal's estate, came other of that n.o.bleman's warriors, stationed in places of concealment outside, their purpose to close off the last avenue of escape for Jotan's troops.
In all this confusion, with death threatening from all sides, Trakor had eyes only for his friend and companion--Tharn, lord of the caves.
At first he did not comprehend what lay behind the cave man's mad dash toward the palace. But when he saw Tharn leap lightly up to catch the sill of one window, then swarm rapidly up toward the second story, he understood fully what lay in the giant warrior's mind.
One of Vokal's warriors leaned from a window directly in Tharn's path and raised his spear with the obvious intention of burying its head in the cave man's defenseless body as it hung a full fifteen feet above the ground. Trakor, seeing this, fitted an arrow to his bow with unthinkable quickness and sent the flint tipped missile across s.p.a.ce and full into the enemy warrior's exposed chest.
The heavy spear rolled from an already dead hand and the man fell loosely across the wide sill as Tharn worked his way upward past the limp body.
Three more attempts were made by those within to bring down the climbing cave man. On each occasion Trakor, standing like a rock amid a shower of deadly weapons that struck every where about him, brought down the would-be killer.
Tharn was only a few feet from the roof's edge now, his naked feet and long-fingered hands finding foot--and hand-holds where Trakor would have sworn none existed.
Trakor, watching, groaned with sudden fear. Barely visible in the flickering light of torches below, a figure appeared at the roof's edge directly above Tharn's rising form. In the figure's hands was a heavy spear and the arm holding it swept aloft preparatory to skewering Tharn on its point.
Even as Trakor witnessed this, an arrow from his bow was flas.h.i.+ng up toward that menacing warrior. But the combination of bad light, distance and the necessity for haste was too great a handicap for success, and the arrow whizzed wide of its mark.
Again Trakor groaned. There was no time for a second shot. Tharn was doomed to die.
And in that second a slender figure appeared at the roof's edge beside the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin and threw itself headlong against him. The man staggered back under the impact, his spear falling from his hand, then turned and closed with the newcomer.
As the two of them teetered there on the thin strip of stone forming the roof's edge, Tharn's strong hands closed about that same edge and he rose to his feet. He saw who it was that had saved his life: Dylara, daughter of Majok.