Chapter XI: A Man, to Play a Man’s Part

I stood a moment, transfixed with horror. Alice’s face had become as white as Sonya’s. Dolores uttered a faint little cry, “Jim!”

“Sonya—” I began. But she had turned to give orders to the girls. They sped away. I finished, “Sonya, get me back, at once!”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But you can do nothing—a stranger—you cannot talk our language.”

“I can, with you to interpret for me.”

She whirled upon Alta with other questions, then back to me. “More than ever now, I must go through with our plans. Alta says the king is not dead. But dying, he will die at any moment. We must get back.”

Down the beach the large platform was ready. A hundred girls or more were loading upon it. With a great flapping of the wings of the birds, it moved down the beach. Rose into the air. It had four strings of ten birds each, with others harnessed in tandem all along its sides. Magnificently, it sailed upward, turned in a broad arc, and passed us high overhead.

From everywhere now the girls were rising. Another great platform, and still another. A score of smaller ones; and from the forest, a hundred or more individual birds, each with a lone rider.

They flapped up from among the palms; circled overhead, with their numbers augmenting until they headed away. The first platforms were now mere blobs in the starlight. A thousand girls, I estimated, were up there in flight.

We hurried to our platform. Again we were in the air. Below us still another platform was rising; around us, three or four mounted birds circled like a convoy. We took our place in the line and sped back to the city.

“Is the king dead, Sonya?”

“No. I do not think so.”

I waited a moment. “Sonya, you girls are not armed?”

She said impulsively, “No. But in the underground rooms of the castle, the science weapons are stored. Once we get control of them—” She checked herself, but she had told me what I wanted to know. An arsenal under the castle! The weapons of a half-forgotten science of this decadent race, stored there!

I shuddered at the visions which surged to my imagination. Here in the city—a government menaced by crusading girls! This was our condition, pitiable indeed, to oppose a savage, outside enemy!

Yet what was I to do? I pondered it until a vague possibility came to me. It gripped me. It seemed feasible. I believed I could accomplish it. With swiftness of action, power, dominance, I could carry it through. A grim exaltation was upon me. A man, to play a man’s part.

We landed with a swoop upon the moonlit garden sward. The girls crowded around us, with a fringe of curious, apathetic men behind them. Sonya turned to speak to Alice and Dolores. Near by was a dark path between beds of giant flowers. I slipped from the platform. With my cloak held before my face, I avoided the girls and plunged into the shadows of the flowered path.

The path was dark, cut off from the moonlight by a great bed of flowers rising high above my head. A group of men came toward me; I stepped between the flower stalks, stood enshrouded in my cloak, my figure merging with the shadows, until the men had passed.

I caught a near glimpse of them. Young men, stalwart fellows, no doubt, according to the standards of their race. But not one of them was taller than my shoulder, and beside me, they were frail, delicate of build.

In a weaponless fight, I could doubtless have engaged two or three of them, and come off the victor.

The path turned into a dim street that encircled the rear of the castle, into the arsenal through some postern gate along here. The arsenal was within this curving wall of stone. I passed such a gate now, a small narrow opening, half the height of my upright body. But it was blocked solidly with a metal door which I could see no way of opening.

I passed on, heading back through the city to the house in which we had been held since our arrival. Behind that house, with a viaduct connecting them, was the laboratory room in which we had arrived. Our space-vehicle was there. I could not operate the vehicle, but it held a weapon I wanted.

I remembered that Jim had brought it. In the excitement of our arrival, the strangeness of everything, we had forgotten it, the Frazier beam, brought out by an Aberdeen physicist in 1994.

I had left the castle behind me, and turned, somewhat dubiously, into another street. I was sure if I could get to Sonya’s house, where so recently we had been, I could retrace my way from there. I had planned this while on the flying platform as we circled over the castle. I had been able then to locate Sonya’s home, and to gauge the lay of the streets in between. I turned another corner. The street was brighter.

Another corner. I saw and recognized Sonya’s house. From there, my way was sure. Within twenty minutes after leaving the castle grounds, I was groping in the darkness back of the house where Dr. Weatherby’s body lay.

It was near here that the Nameless Horrors had caught Jim and Ren. But I saw no signs of them now. The viaduct connecting the two buildings was a dark thin line against the stars. The building I was hoping to enter was wholly dark. A two-story structure: the viaduct extended from its upper floor.

I prowled around. The lower window openings were all barred. The door oval was barred. A stairway led up from the ground to the viaduct. From the viaduct’s platform I saw a cornice, too high for a normal man to reach. But I leaped for it, pulled myself up upon the dome-shaped roof of a turret.

A leap from here and I was upon the main flat roof. There should be a door under a mound cover; most of the buildings had them. I located it, wrenched at its bar. It yielded. I went down a curving metal ladder, into the house.

In a moment I had located the laboratory room. Our vehicle in its full normal size lay here, dead white, an end of it tinged yellow by a shaft of moonlight.

I stepped within it, went to Jim’s cupboard, lighting a tiny battery light overhead. The Frazier weapon I sought was here. Its _copite_ cone, with smooth glistening bone handle, _copite_ headband, the tiny pulse motor, the wires; it was all complete.

A triumph swept me. I was unarmed no longer. Playing a lone hand, here in this strange world, a man, comparatively of giant strength and physical power. But I was more than that now. I had a mental weapon, and the mental strength to use it.

I did not stop to adjust the apparatus. I wound it up in its wire, and hastily retreated. I reached the street, with the weapon under my cloak. I hurried back to the castle over the same route; I did not want to chance losing my way.

But as I advanced, I had more than memory of the streets to guide me. From the direction of the castle, a blur of cries was audible, a hum, a murmur, which as I progressed resolved itself into shouts. The shouting of a mob: heavy, angry voices of men, shrill cries of girls, a single, long, agonized scream of a girl.

I was on a lower street that fronted the water. A side entrance to the castle grounds was before me. Through the trees I could see the frowning turreted walls of the castle. I stopped to adjust my weapon.

It took no more than a moment. Around my forehead, with hat discarded, I bound the headband, a narrow strip of finely woven _copite_ wire, with two small electrodes pressing my temples.

On the right side two finely drawn silk-insulated wires dangled from the headband to my neck. I tucked them under my shirt, over my shoulder, down my right arm to my wrist. A band at my wrist, to which the wires were attached, held the tiny pulse-motor in place. My heart set it in motion, to generate the necessary current.

The Frazier projector was a _copite_ cone, this one some ten inches long; its shape was a cone section, one end, the muzzle, with an open diameter of six inches, the other end, one-fifth inch, across which the diaphragm was fitted.

The bone handle screwed into place at the diaphragm. It was hollow. Within it were amplifying tubes and a transformer, miracles of smallness. The whole projector weighed some twenty Troy ounces. I plugged the two connecting wires from my wristband to its butt, gripped the handle with my index finger along its side, resting on the trigger button.

I was ready! My heart was racing. The tiny motor at my wrist was racing. I could feel the hum of the current, the prickling of it under the forehead band, its tiny stabbing throb at the electrodes pressing my temples. There was power within me.

I had flung off my cloak. I stood in the white silk shirt, dark, short, tight trousers, and high, heavy black stockings of my earth costume, stood with outflung arms for an instant and exulted in the wave of triumph which swept me. Against the people the power of my weapon would be invincible.

Furtive no longer, I advanced with bold, open strides to the gate of the castle grounds. A few men were there, evidently about to enter. They stared at me. Before the strangeness of my aspect, the boldness of my flashing glance, they quailed, cried with fear and scattered before me.

I did not heed them. Beyond the gate, back from the water there was a rise of ground. I mounted it, and from the thicket of flowers that ornamented its top, gazed out at the moonlit scene.

Between the mound on which I stood, and the foot of the broad staircase leading up the broad terrace to the castle entrance, a throng of men were standing.

Spectators, standing idle. Occasionally a group of them would surge forward in one direction or the other, milling about some individual who seemed abruptly determined upon a course of action. A mob without a leader. Excited, aimless, striving for points of vantage to see what was taking place in front.

The girls were massed at the foot of the castle steps. Evidently, just before I arrived, the girls had tried to mount them. The guards were gathered in a group on top. Half way down, a girl’s body was lying. It writhed, rolled down the steps. From the crowd of men a murmur rose.

The scene was clear in the yellow moon-glow. The throng of girls at the staircase bottom, were gathering their leaders, preparing again to mount. The tense guards on top seemed confused, not knowing how to deal with this unarmed attack.

On the castle balcony, at the head of the steep metal stairway, a few other guards were standing. And on the rooftop, I could make out the doddering figures of old men, gazing down in confused terror.

There was, momentarily, a pause over the scene: a silence, expectant.

But abruptly the hush was broken by a shrill, electrical whine. It rose in pitch to a scream, a siren from the castle battlements. It screamed for a moment, then abruptly was stilled.

I wondered what it meant. The crowd was stricken breathless. But for an instant only. Then it broke into a roar of shouting.

The king had died!

I did not know it at the time, but I suspected it. On the rooftop, the old men were waving their arms; one of them seemed trying to talk to the throng. But his voice was lost in the din.

As though the siren had been a signal, the girls began swarming up the staircase, unarmed girls—unarmed save for the shining armor of their virginity and the desperation of their purpose. I stood watching; it was necessary for me to know with what arms the guards were equipped.

Some fifty young men, they stood in a group at the head of the staircase. The girls came up in a throng. I saw then that each of the guards seemed armed only with a long, curved knife, like a scimitar, incased in a black metal sheath.

Some drew these knives, waved the naked blades. But the girls were beyond intimidation. They came surging—a hundred of them in the first rank, with other hundreds pressing from below. The guards met them halfway down, a confusion of white figures with the black forms of the guards struggling in their midst.

A man with twenty girls around him. He did not want to use his naked sword. It was torn from him, the girls tearing at him savagely. He went down; the white forms swept over him. A girl who had secured his sword waved it with shrill cries.

Another guard, more desperate, was using his sheathed weapon as a club. He had cleared a space around him. A girl leaped; the club struck her head. She fell limp. But he too, was soon overwhelmed.

The girls presently were near the staircase top; the guards remaining there were standing now, all with naked swords. I could not doubt but that they would be driven to use them. The girls momentarily had paused, a dozen steps below them.

Many now were armed with swords they had taken. The blades were waving. A score of girls with the swords, pushed their way to the upper rank, gathered for concerted, frenzied action. Then, with a rush, started up the empty intervening steps.

I had been standing on that hillock, enshrouded by the flowers. I had wanted to be sure beyond a doubt, how the guards were armed, and had hoped vainly that I might locate Sonya. And a fear had struck me for Alice and Dolores. Where were they in all this turmoil?

I thought I saw Sonya now, her white-limbed figure, with the dark, high-necked smock. She was creeping alone up the steep bank of the terrace beside the staircase, trying, no doubt, to attain the top unnoticed, and thus to surprise the guards from behind.

My time had come. I stepped from the shadows of the flowers into a broad patch of moonlight. From the hillock here, I knew my figure would be visible from all parts of the scene. I stood, drawn to full height, with arms outstretched. And called with all my voice,

“Sonya! Sonya!”

The fighting did not stop, but the nearer men of the crowd turned and saw me. A murmur went up.

“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”

I kept repeating it. The murmur spread; rose to a shouting, shouts of wonderment, awe, and then fear. I strove to hold my voice to dominate the noise.

“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”

The faces were turning my way. The shouting near me died into a frightened silence. The men were milling about, with a surge away from me. Over on the stairs I saw that the girls had paused in their attack.

“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”

She had turned, was staring at me. I waved my arms.

“Sonya! I am Leonard; come here!”

I plunged forward down the hillock path. The crowd scattered before me.

“Sonya, come here!”

She had turned. She was coming! I advanced steadily, not running, walking swiftly, with arms outstretched, menacing the crowd with my unknown weapon. The throng was stricken motionless with the strangeness of my aspect. From the staircase, the girls were staring; the guards were staring, a sea of faces, everywhere staring.

Calmly I advanced, and before me now a lane opened in the crowd. For all my outward calmness, my heart was pounding. The pulse-motor at my wrist was throbbing. I had not used my weapon yet. But it would be effective.

“Sonya! Come here! Hurry! Sonya!”

My words, strange of language, awed the crowd further. The men parted before Sonya’s running figure. She came up panting, white-faced.

“Len!”

“Sonya, you are going to obey me! You understand? You . . . everyone—obey me.”

She stared. I was speaking swiftly, grimly, imperatively. “You stay at my side. I’ll want you to translate when I give orders. Was that siren to announce the king’s death?”

“Yes, he . . . Leonard, what are you doing? That thing in your hand—”

I silenced her. And then, fearing perhaps that she might not follow me, I gripped her hand, jerked her forward as I ran with rapid strides toward the crowd of girls at the foot of the stairway.

I think that Sonya believed at that moment that I had lost my reason. Her face stared up at me with terror in her eyes—a frightened child beside my bulk, whom I was dragging forward so swiftly that she could hardly keep her feet.

A few men near us shouted at me, but when I turned ferociously on them, they ran. Someone threw a missile at me, then another—stones which they were picking up from the flower beds. One struck my back; and one struck Sonya.

The crowd was beginning to take courage; a wave of it surged at me. Struggling men shoving one another, shouted menacingly at me; but the men in the front rank, shoved forward by the press behind them, were pushing back, away from me.

Another stone hit me. I stopped short. I did not want to use the Frazier beam yet—time enough for that.

“Sonya, tell them to stop!” I dropped her hand, stood away from her. “Tell them that I won’t hurt you! Tell them to stop . . . or I’ll kill them! All of them!”

The missiles stopped at the first sound of her voice. From the stairway top a guard was shouting up to one of the old men on the roof; at Sonya’s voice they both were silent to listen.

I added swiftly, “Sonya, you follow me! I don’t want to drag you! Will you come?”

“Yes. I . . . I’ll come.”

I took her at her word and ran on. I had overawed an unarmed crowd of spectators. But the girls were still ahead of me, a thousand or more of them, jammed near the foot of the great stairway, and a hundred or two more upon it.

I reached the first of them, with Sonya running fleet as a faun behind me. The girls, unarmed, scattered to give us room. We dashed through to the foot of the stairway, began mounting it.

The girls on it made way for me. But, halfway up, I saw above me, three girls with swords. They stood their ground, and whirled to oppose me.

Others with swords were near them and turned at me also, and above them, I was aware that the guards were coming down from the top to attack them from behind.

I stopped, and thrust Sonya in front of me. “You tell your girls to get out of the way!”

She screamed it.

“Again, Sonya! Tell them to get off the stairway! Fools! Can’t they understand I’m for them! Get them off here, I tell you! I’ll handle those guards up there!”

It stung Sonya into action. She shouted my commands, rushed up a few steps, waving the girls aside. Behind me, they were retreating, clearing the stairway. Above they stood undecided, with awkwardly brandished swords, undecided whether to oppose me or to turn to defend themselves from the guards coming down from above.

Then one girl came, passing me hurriedly along the edge of the broad steps, then another. Then they all came with a rush.

And presently the stairs above me were empty, up to near the top where the guards had retreated and now stood with drawn swords gazing down at me. Empty steps, save for a girl’s white body lying head down in a crimson pool.

I started slowly up. “Keep behind me, Sonya—careful! You’ll be safe enough.”

In silence I mounted toward that line of swords. The guards stood a moment in doubt. Then from the castle roof one of the old men screamed a command. The guards answered it. With a leap they came surging down the top steps to rush me.

I raised the Frazier muzzle, pressed its trigger. Its pale-green beam sprang out through the moonlight. I waved it lightly, and it spread, painting the oncoming guards with its thin, lurid color.

The first of them fell; his sword clattered; his body came hurtling down. I swept Sonya aside to avoid it. Another fell, but held to a step, lying huddled. Two others sank to their hands and knees, stiffened, awkwardly propped against the steps.

A dozen more were standing frozen of movement, with swords held stiffly outstretched. And a few retreated woodenly to the top level where they stood swaying drunkenly, stupidly regarding me, hypnotized by the power of my will which the Frazier beam had intensified and thrown at them.

I snapped off the beam. Its effect, with my flashing glance to aid it, would last five minutes or more. Hypnotized in the modern sense, very much as the ancients claimed they could do it with the eyes alone, and mysterious passes of the hands, these men here now, to some extent, would do my bidding. Certainly, they were powerless to move, save as I might direct them.

I swung on Sonya. “They’re not hurt! Not injured! Tell the crowd; tell everyone it’s an evidence of power.”

Down in the garden the throng was pouring out the gates in a panic, hundreds milling at the gates, trying to escape. They quieted somewhat at the sound of Sonya’s shrill voice.

We mounted past the stricken guards. They moved slightly; they were recovering. At the top, I stood, and with vehement thoughts commanded them to move aside. They swayed, moved a few steps, like sleep-walkers.

“Hurry, Sonya! They’re recovering! Tell your girls to stay where they are, down there! If they move, I’ll strike them as I struck the guards. Tell them that!”

A lone hand! But I was winning. We came to the front of the balcony stairway. The guards up there had vanished in fright. I mounted the steep stairs, with Sonya close under me. Down on the terrace top, the guards had recovered, but they were too frightened to do anything but stare up at me.

I reached the balcony, moved to where there was no door behind me, where I could not be attacked unawares. And I drew Sonya to the balcony rail. Beneath us in the yellow moonlight the great throng of men, the girls, and the vanquished guards stood silently gazing up at me.

“Now, Sonya, I’ll talk to them! Tell them I am Leonard Gray, the Earthman. Remind them that their king is dead; their prince is captured by a horrible unknown enemy that menaces us all! Tell your girls that they shall have justice. Tell the men that we are going to rescue our prince! All of us united, not fighting one another.

“Tell them they have seen a little of my power. I want to use it for them, for you all, not against you! All of us united to rescue our prince. And until that is done—Leonard the Earthman is their ruler!”