There were throngs passing us in the street now, without attention, crowds of the armored guards and the white-robed slaves. The street itself was illuminated by glowing bulbs, set on top of metal pillars along the way, which emitted a ruddy, pulsating light. It was the same ruddy light that streamed out of the entrances of the buildings we passed, but how it was produced I could not conjecture.
My mind swung sharply back to my own predicament, when our captors suddenly halted in the street before a large building that was set some distance back from the street, in a smooth expanse of green lawn. A brief order was given and two of the guards seized me by my shoulders and hustled me toward the building I have spoken of, while the rest marched on down the street toward the gigantic central edifice, taking Lantin with them. I saw him looking back as he went, and would have given much to have been able to call out to him, but my guards gave me no chance to do so, pushing me ahead of them toward the building in front of us.
A high-arched entrance cut into the curving wall of the building, which was one of the largest I had yet noted. Through this open door led a broad flight of low steps, but my guards did not enter that way, taking me some distance around the building's side to a smaller door that was set in the wall close to the ground. Pushed ahead of them, I stumbled inside and found myself in a long, smooth-walled corridor, down which we went.
There were closed doors here and there along the hall's length, and in front of the last one lounged three or four of the guards, who looked up incuriously as we approached. My captors spoke a few words to these, who nodded, and unlocked the door they guarded. A rough shove sent me staggering through the door, and as I pitched forward on my face, I heard it clang shut behind me.
I rose to my feet and looked around. The room itself was quite unremarkable, about twenty feet square, walled with smooth stone, and windowless, being lit by several of the ruddy-glowing bulbs that were set in the ceiling. But the score or more of men who were in the room, and who had started up at my sudden entrance, were of intense interest to me.
Sinking down onto a bench against the wall, I regarded them. They were extraordinary in appearance and expression. All were dressed in ragged and torn costumes of cloth, save for one hulking fellow who wore a tunic of tanned skins. I was surprized to see that all of them carried sword or dagger at their belts, and some big battle-axes. Brown-skinned and white-skinned, with one or two blacks, they were a fierce-faced company, and after scrutinizing me for a second, went on pacing back and forth across the room, for all the world like a den of caged tigers. They spoke little, and glared as they passed one another.
While I stared at them, one of their number came up and seated himself beside me. He was a slender, dark-haired young man, dressed in a ragged coat of bottle-green trimmed in silver, with very tight knee-breeches of the same material. Like the rest, he was hatless, and carried at his belt a long, slender rapier. He caught my glance at his garments, and smiled in so winning a fashion that I smiled back, involuntarily. Then a wave of sudden warmth surged through me, for he spoke in English.
"Burn me," he drawled, in a soft, languid voice, "I don't blame you for eyeing my clothes, but then, y'see, the tailors here are cursed poor."
I leaned toward him, eagerly. "You speak English!" I cried. "Then how did you get here? What is this place, this city? And what are we brought here for?"
At my rush of questions he drew back a little, frowning in a puzzled manner. "What are we brought here for?" he repeated. "Why, man, you know as well as I do, why we're here."
"Not I!" I said, and his frown deepened, as he doubtfully considered me.
"But you're from the pit," he said, "the same as the rest of us," and he waved a hand toward the others in the room.
"The pit!" I repeated, puzzled, and he must have seen from my expression that I did not understand him. An odd, calculating light leaped into his eyes. "You are not of the guards," he said, half-musingly, "and you say you are not of the pit. But if you came from outside—"
"I was captured," I told him, "outside the city, and brought here. But why?"
"You're here to fight," he said, shortly, and I started.
"Fight! With whom?"
"Why, with these," he answered, indicating again the score of men in the room. "This is—"
Before he could finish the sentence, there was a sudden clanging of metal and the door of the room swung open. A guard stepped in and gave brief orders in his own tongue. At once the men around me began to file out of the room, into the corridor. As I passed out, beside my new-found friend, I saw that in the hall a heavy force of the guards awaited us, some fifty men being ranged along its length. We passed together down the corridor's length, but instead of leaving the building by the door I had entered, we turned to the right and proceeded up a long flight of steps, the guards following and preceding us, in two separate companies.
As we went up those steps, I turned to my companion and asked him, "You are English, aren't you?"
He nodded, and made a graceful half-bow. "Viscount Charles Denham, at your service," he said in a low voice, "captain in the armies of his Majesty, King George the Third."
The words were like a thunderclap in my ears. A soldier of King George the Third? A man of a hundred and fifty years before my own time? And here, fifteen thousand years in the future, in this strange city! And these other prisoners, these strange, ragged figures!
But before I could collect my dazed thoughts, our company was marching up the last few steps. Over the shoulders of those in front of me I saw the walls of a great room, and the crimson light of the glowing bulbs that illuminated it. There was a sound of crystal music, and laughter—a high, ringing laughter that was very different from the coarse mirth of the guards. Then we were surmounting the very last steps, marching up and over them....
"Held in its shapeless form were men, who hung helpless in its grasp."
"Held in its shapeless form were men, who hung helpless in its grasp."
"Held in its shapeless form were men, who hung helpless in its grasp."
CHAPTER 8
THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY
A harsh order from the guards ahead halted us, and I had time to survey the room in which we stood. It was a circular room, at the edge of which we were grouped. From where we stood, the walls swept away in a great curve on either side, meeting directly opposite us, as it seemed, some ninety feet away. The floor of the room was of smooth, black stone, resembling marble, while the curving walls were of the same white material as the building's exterior. A hundred feet above the floor was a ceiling of white, and I saw at a glance that this one great hall occupied the whole lower half of the cylindrical building's interior, the upper half, no doubt, being divided into smaller apartments. Set in walls and ceiling were many of the glowing bulbs, and from these a cascade of ruddy light poured down on the people in the room.
There must have been nearly a hundred of these people, men and women. They lay on couches along the room's edge, with long, curving tables of green metal before them, like the banquet halls of the ancient Romans. A shock went through me as I looked at the feasters, for they were unlike any of the people I had seen as I entered the city. These people were all tall and perfectly proportioned, and all were golden-haired, men and women alike. They were attired in short robes or tunics of brilliantly colored silks, and some wore circlets of flashing gems.
With a sudden shock it came to me that these were the first women I had seen in all this city, for there had been none among the guards and slaves outside. But before I could ponder this fact, it was swept from my mind by my wonder at the other things in the room.
The feasters, I saw, were engaged in drinking from transparent goblets which held brightly colored liquids. I could see no solid food of any kind on the tables, but there were many urns and flagons and amphoræ filled with the bright fluids. Long lines of the white-robed, stiffly marching slaves passed and repassed behind the couches of the feasters, with metal trays holding other glass and metal vessels, which they placed on the tables.
Two other things I noted before my brief survey of the place was interrupted. One was that among the laughing, shouting people at the tables there was not one face that would not be called beautiful. All seemed youthful, with the beauty of youth, and its high spirits, yet an impression of evil came to me as I watched them. I sensed, beneath their jesting and laughing, a cold, indolentheartlessness.
The other thing I noted was the source of the crystalline music. Across the room from me, in an alcove, were the musicians, slaves who operated an intricate instrument which allowed water to fall on thin plates of metal, in single drops or streamlets, producing a tumultuous chiming like a storm of silver bells, wild and clear and sweet, and for all its tempestuousness, oddly harmonious.
My companions had been surveying the scene, like myself, but it was evident from the expressions on their faces that it was not new to them. I wondered for what purpose we had been brought there, and remembering the Englishman's interrupted explanation, turned to speak to him. But as I did so, came another interruption, and with it my answer.
One of the men at the tables rose and uttered a brief order, and at once a great black slave strode across the room, seized a mace of metal, and with it struck a tremendous blow on a hanging brazen gong. At once the chatter and song at the tables stopped, and all eyes were turned toward ourselves. I felt their gaze sweeping over us, and involuntarily shuddered. Then, beside us, the captain of the guards barked out an order, that sounded across the silence like a whiplash. And at once two of the men who stood beside me strode out to the center of the room, to the wide, clear floor there, and stood facing each other.
There was a rippling whisper through the spectators at the tables, a murmur of pleasurable excitement. Without heeding it, the two men at the room's center inspected each other with fierce eyes.
One of the two was a proud, dark-faced figure, high-nosed and gleaming-eyed, dressed in torn, flowing robe and with a tightly twisted turban on his head. He jerked from his belt a long, curved scimitar and whirled it above his head, giving vent to a ragged, high-pitched yell of defiance. An Arab, I thought, maybe one of the very hordes that had carried the green banner of the Prophet over three continents like a whirlwind. He was a fierce enough spectacle, as he shook his gleaming blade aloft, but his opponent was a fit one, a gigantic Northman in leathern jerkin, whose blue eyes gleamed as he too sprang forward, brandishing aloft a great ax in one hand, and carrying a small, circular shield in the other.
With weapons upraised, the two cautiously neared each other, circling like wary tigers, searching for an opening. I turned away, and saw that the feasters were wholly intent now on the two opponents, and in that moment I understood the meaning of the Englishman in saying that we had been brought here to fight. For it was so, and all in our ragged, fierce group would no doubt be forced to fight and slay one another to amuse the indolent spectators at the tables, as the gladiators of ancient Rome had struck each other down in the great games. And what of myself?
There was a sudden great shout from the tables, and I turned my attention back to the struggle at the center of the floor. The Arab's blade had darted past his opponent's shield and had wounded the latter in the shoulder with a flashing down-stroke. But the leather-clad giant was not beaten. Though blood was streaming down from his shoulder now, he said no word, only lifted his shield higher and circled around the other, with ax still poised ready to strike. The tense silence had been broken by that first shout and now those at the tables were calling out to the two fighters, warnings and advice, I supposed, and were laying wagers on the result of the fight.
Suddenly the Arab again darted in, and again his blade slashed the other's arm, but as he stepped swiftly back, his foot slipped on the blood that smeared the smooth floor, and he staggered for a moment, striving to regain his balance. In an instant the uplifted ax crashed down through his skull and he fell like a dropped weight, his own spouting arteries adding to the red stains on the floor. The other stepped back, panting, and a great shout of applause crashed out from the spectators at the tables. The Northman rejoined our group, slaves rushed out and cleared the floor, and at a command, two more of our number rushed onto the floor and faced each other with drawn swords.
The circling and darting of the former duel was repeated, and in a few minutes one of the two lay dead and the other was limping back to us, bleeding. And another pair took their place.
For the fifth combat, the young Englishman beside me was called onto the floor, with a small Japanese in ancient, quilted armor as his opponent. The Japanese was armed with two short, broad-bladed swords, with which he chopped and slashed at his opponent, while Denham had but his thin, fragile-looking rapier. Yet he evaded all the sweeps and thrusts of his adversary's blades, and with a sudden lightning stab of the needlelike rapier he ended the duel, unscathed. He came back toward us, jauntily, unheedful of the great applause that followed his feat. I gripped his hand warmly, for in the short time I had known him, a sudden sympathy had sprung up between us, born of the fact of our mutual race and language, in this strange city.
There were but few of us left now who had not already fought, and at an order from the leader of the guards, one of these stepped out on the floor, a lithe, snaky Italian, with beady black eyes and an evil smile. The captain of the guard snapped out another order, looking at me, but I could not understand and looked around helplessly. His face flushed dark with anger, and he started wrathfully toward me, but the Englishman intervened, with rapid explanations.
"You are to fight Talerri," he said, indicating the Italian, and a wave of icy cold swept over me for a moment, then receded. "Here, take my sword," he continued, drawing and handing it to me, "and be fearful of foul fighting. Talerri was one of Cæsar Borgia's bravos and is a dangerous swordsman, full of treacherous tricks."
Half dazed, I gripped the rapier's hilt and walked out to face the Italian. "Good luck!" called Denham, behind me, but I did not look back.
As I strode out to where the Italian awaited me, I dimly saw the curving walls, the ruddy lights, and the white faces of those at the tables, turned toward me. The whole scene misted before my eyes, then cleared, and into my vision came the face of Talerri, who was regarding me with a derisive smile. And the realization came to me, coldly and clearly, that unless I killed my opponent, he would kill me.
I raised the blade in my hand. I had been a skilful fencer in my days at the university, but had not handled a foil for years. Yet the long, slender rapier was much like a foil itself, and as I twirled it in my grasp, some little confidence came to me. I glanced back momentarily, and saw Denham smiling encouragingly at me. And now the Italian advanced toward me, the same hateful smile passing over his face as he saw me raise the rapier to meet him.
At the first clash of our blades, I knew myself facing a master of swordsmanship, one who was doubtless in constant practise. So I threw all my efforts into staving off his first lightning rushes, though to this day I wonder that I was able to do so. His point seemed to stab at me simultaneously from a dozen different positions, and I parried more by instinct than by design. As it was, his blade passed twice through my shirt, so close was it. But after that first series of flashing rushes, the Italian drew back for a moment and we circled warily.
Again he came on, with a lightning feint at my heart. As my rapier flashed down to foil the stroke, his own stabbed upward, in a straight thrust intended to pierce through my left eye to the brain. It was a stab that could not be parried, but instinctively I swerved my head aside from that flashing point, and missing the eye, his blade grazed along the left side of my forehead, sending a stream of blood trickling down my cheek. At sight of that red stream, a shout of approval crashed out from the tables.
But now anger was rising in me, and ceasing to stand only on the defensive, I thrust out savagely at my opponent. He gave back a little under my unexpected attack, but suddenly I felt very tired, and knew that the combat must end soon if it was to end in my favor. As I thrust and parried there, the walls and lights and faces around me faded from view, and replacing them came the long, sky-lighted gymnasium where I had learned to fence. I seemed to hear the clicking foils and stamping feet there, and the voice of our trim little instructor explaining the most difficult of all thrusts, the time-thrust. Steadiness and accuracy were the very foundations of that difficult play, I knew, and it would be sheer madness for one as weary and rusty at sword-play as myself to try it, but as we surged back and forth on the smooth floor, I decided that it was my only chance, for the Italian was pressing me ever more closely.
Watching for a favorable opportunity, I dropped my guard for a single instant, leaving my heart exposed. Instantly Talerri's blade darted in like a striking serpent, his whole body behind that straight stab. My own rapier was extended toward him, and in the split-second before his point touched me, my own blade clicked gently against his, deflecting it to one side where it passed harmlessly by me, while the momentum of his leaping rush brought him right onto my outstretched rapier, spitting him. I felt the blade rip through him as through a man of sawdust, the hilt rapping against his ribs. I jerked it forth and he choked, gasped, and fell to the floor dead.
There was a shattering roar of applause from all around, and tired and sickened, I stumbled back to the group of fellow captives at the floor's edge, where Denham greeted me eagerly. While he congratulated me on my victory, the others in the group looked at me with something of respect on their fierce faces.
Weary from the hours on the time-car, and half-nauseated by the bloodshed I had seen and taken part in, I sank down onto a step and watched without interest the remaining two combats. When these were finished, another order was given and we were hurried back down the stairs up which we had come. Conducting us down a different corridor, the guards separated us, thrusting us in pairs into small cells along the corridor.
I had hoped to be placed in the same cell as Denham, for I wanted much to speak further with him, but luck was against me and I was paired off with the blond giant who had killed the Arab in the first combat. A vicious shove sent us reeling into the little room, and behind me I heard the thick metal door clang shut.
CHAPTER 9
PRISONED
For ten days I lay in that little cell, prisoned with the big Northman. At my first inspection of the place, I saw that there was no possibility of escape, for the walls were of smooth stone, and the only opening in them was that of a two-inch pipe that served to ventilate the cell. There was no window, as we think of it, yet the room was light enough in the daytime, for as the sun rose, the side of the cell facing on the building's outer wall became invisible, allowing plenty of light to enter. This explained a fact that had puzzled me, the absence of windows on the exteriors of the cylindrical buildings of the city. Evidently the people of the city treated the outside walls of their buildings in such a manner that in daylight they were invisible from the inside, while perfectly opaque when viewed from without.
I had other evidence of the scientific attainments of these people in the food that was furnished us twice each day. That food was nothing but a clear golden liquid, with a slight oily flavor but otherwise tasteless. Yet I found that it contained all the food-elements necessary for the human body, since in all my time in this strange city I had no other food, and never felt need of any other.
I found my cell-mate a dull enough companion. He was morose and fierce in disposition, and very suspicious of me. I think that he considered me a spy. I found that he knew a little English, a strange, archaic English, but enough for us to carry on a broken conversation. To all my eager questions, though, the fellow replied with a cold stare. By this time I felt convinced that Lantin and I had found in this city the home of the Raider, since the fact of Denham's presence and that of these other men of many times and races admitted of no other explanation. Yet when I asked the Norseman how he had come here, or if he had ever seen the Raider, he kept to a gloomy silence, and I cursed my luck in being confined with such a suspicious companion.
One service, though, he did do for me, and that was to teach me the strange language used by the guards and masters of the city around me. That tongue, I learned, was the Kanlar tongue, while the bright-haired master-race of the city were Kanlars. The language itself was not hard to learn, and in the long hours I lay imprisoned I acquired considerable facility in expressing myself in it.
Sometimes, too, the Norseman would break his silence, and growing excited with his own words, would tell me long, interminable stories of the wild adventures he had taken part in, the shield-ringed ships that he had sailed in, to leave fire and death along peaceful coasts, the long list of men he had slaughtered. His cold eyes burned as he related tales of butchery that appalled me, but when I ventured to interject a single question he would regard me stonily and then relapse into silence again.
The days went by, and through the transparent wall I watched night give way to dawn, dawn to noon, and noon to dusk and night. Much I thought of Lantin in those days. I wondered what fate had been his in the gigantic central building, whether he was alive or dead. Wondered, too, if I would ever find that out, for it was evident that we were being reserved for another gladiatorial battle, and I was not confident of coming through again unscathed.
One thing occurred, in those days of imprisonment, which still makes me shudder, sometimes, at the memory of it. The transparent side of our cell faced a smooth expanse of green lawn, with gardens beyond it, and most of my time I spent lounging against it, looking out. Very few people passed by there, now and then a few slaves, but scarcely ever any of the Kanlar people. So on the eighth day of my confinement, when I saw a slave approaching from a distance, I moved over to the invisible wall and watched him.
He was carrying a tool that looked much like a common garden-hoe, and walked toward me with that stiff, rigid movement that marked the white-robed slaves. He came closer, I glanced at his face, then reeled back against the side of the cell. For it was Talerri!
It was the Italian I had killed eight days before, garbed as a slave and walking with the same inhuman, puppetlike motion that all these strange servants used. He came closer toward me, so that I could see his staring eyes, then, with an angular movement, he turned aside and passed from view along the building's side.
For hours I puzzled over it, rejecting with a certain panic fear the one explanation that came to mind. I knew that I had killed the Italian that night, for my sword had pierced clean through his heart. Yet here he was, working as a slave for the Kanlars. And what of the other slaves, then, these rigid, staring-eyed figures? Were they too—?
For hours I speculated on the thing, but could find no rational explanation for it, nor would the Norseman enlighten me. Finally I gave it up as a mystery beyond me, and strove to banish it from my mind.
Two more days dragged out, days that were like weeks to me. I felt that I must soon go mad, if I were longer imprisoned. And then, sharply ending the monotony of dreary hours, there came a summons, a summons that in the end proved to be a call to an adventure utterly undreamed of by Lantin or myself.
CHAPTER 10
THE TEMPLE OF THE RAIDER
All that day I had sensed a tense activity outside, and many times there was the tramp of feet down the corridor outside our cell, as companies of the guards came and went. As sunset came, I stood beside the transparent wall and watched its brilliant colors fade from the sky.
Overhead, now, the aircraft of the Kanlars were flickering continuously past, all heading toward the giant cylinder that stood at the city's center, and when I scrambled up a little higher against the wall, to get a glimpse of the street, I saw that that street was crowded with masses of the armored guards and the staring-eyed slaves, all pressing on toward the same building.
Darkness came, and the noise of activity outside died away, so that it seemed that all the city around us was deserted, nor was there any sound from the building above us. For all of two hours after the darkness, we sat there, listening, waiting. Once I thought I heard a distant ringing music, but decided that my ears had been deceived. Then, abruptly, there was the stamp of sandals on the floor of the corridor, and we heard the doors of the cells along it being opened.
Our own was flung wide, as we rose, and I saw that a score of the guards waited outside, their leader ordering us to come out, which we were glad enough to do. Once in the corridor, I found Denham and the others of the group I had met before, shackled to each other, wrist to wrist, in a single file. The Northman and myself were fettered to the end of the line, and then we set out, a long file of guards on each side of us, marching us down the corridor and outside the building.
The big street up which I had come before was utterly deserted, as we turned into it. I looked back along its length, lit with the crimson bulbs, a winding serpent of red light that stretched away out into the country beyond the city, out to where our time-car lay hidden in the hills. At the thought of it, so fierce a desire seized me to win back to it, and my own time, that had I not been shackled I would have made a break for freedom down the empty street. But as it was, I had no choice, and followed the others in our fettered line down the wide street toward the gigantic cylindrical building at its end.
That great pile seemed to loom higher and higher as we drew near it. Brilliant, winking lights along its sides outlined it against the gloom of night, a huge, erect cylinder of smooth stone, its flat top all of a thousand feet in width, and nearly a half-mile above the ground. Obscured as the immense edifice was by the darkness, yet the vague glimpses I got of its sky-flung walls staggered me. And we were being marched directly toward it.
A quarter-mile from the building, the flat street we followed ended, changed to a wide, smooth ramp that led up toward the giant edifice in a slight upward slant. We went up that ramp, the guards still on either side, till we stood under the very shadow of the gigantic, perpendicular walls, and now I saw that the ramp led up to and through a wide, high-arched entrance cut in the building's side, much like the entrance of the cylindrical building where I had been prisoned.
We passed up and through that arched entrance, and were in a long tunnel, similarly arched, and cut through solid, seamless stone. It was a hundred feet in length, and as we passed on down its length it came to me that this must be the thickness of the great building's sides. The idea was too prodigious for speculation, even, and I shook it off, peering ahead toward the tunnel's end, where a ruddy light flooding down from above marked that end.
A few moments, and we had reached the tunnel's mouth, and emerged from it into the vast cylinder's interior. I swept one startled glance around that interior, then felt myself staggering, reeling, falling. The immensity of the place was soul-shaking, bearing down on me with a weight that seemed physical, crushing my thoughts down into nothing but dazed awe and terror.
I had imagined the building's interior to be divided, partitioned into apartments, but instead, the whole interior was one titanic room, shaped by the outside walls and roof, its sides looming up, dimly and vaguely, into a hazy darkness that hid their upper parts from view. Along the sides were many of the light-emitting bulbs, but these merely burned red holes in the dimness that surrounded the building's interior, rather than illuminated it.
Starting at the wall, and extending twenty feet out toward the center of the room, the floor was of black stone, a flat, continuous ring of smooth material that circled the whole room. Inside of this ring was the real floor, a single, huge disk of burnished metal, smooth as ice and as seamless, over nine hundred feet in diameter. And except for ourselves, who stood on the black ring near the entrance, there was nothing whatever on black circle or burnished floor, no people, tables, altar, nothing but the immense expanse of smooth metal and the comparatively thin black circle that surrounded it.
I looked up, and saw for the first time the people of the city. Cut in the thickness of the prodigious walls of the building were broad balconies, one above the other, ringing the building's interior as far up as I could see in the haze that hung above, and in these balconies were the dwellers of the city, Kanlars, guards and slaves. The lowest balcony, which was only a few feet above the floor, jutted forth in a smaller square gallery, a little away from where I stood, and in this projecting square sat three of the bright-haired Kanlars, the oldest-appearing men I had yet seen among them, two garbed in long robes of solid crimson while the other's garment was of deepest black. They sat there calmly, looking away across the big floor toward the great hall's other side. This lowest gallery, and the three directly above it, were filled with the Kanlars, while in the unnumbered galleries above these were the armored guards and the slaves. The only entrance to these galleries that I could see was a single narrow, winding stairway, a spiral stairway that began on the black circle of stone near the wall and slanted up from balcony to balcony, circling the building's sides several times as it spiraled up, and evidently leading up to the very roof of the place.
While I surveyed the scene, other ragged groups like our own had entered, escorted by guards, until a considerable number of us had been collected there near the entrance. Now one of the crimson-robed figures who sat in the gallery that jutted out from the lowest balcony, rose and uttered an order. My knowledge of the Kanlar language was too rudimentary for me to understand him, but when he had finished and resumed his seat, a delighted murmur swept over the massed crowds in the balconies.
Before I had time to speculate, the captain of the guards who watched us snapped out brief orders, and immediately eight of our number ran out of the center of the metal floor, where they at once drew their weapons and faced each other, in four individual combats.
In a few minutes, the four duels were over, but only three of the contestants came back from the floor's center. To my surprize, then, instead of being re-shackled to the rest of us, the three were handed armor and weapons like that of the other guards, which they donned at once. I began to understand now the purpose of these combats. Evidently the bravest fighters were weeded out in preliminary duels, such as I had taken part in, and the survivors of these first battles were then pitted against each other, the victors being adjudged worthy to enter the company of the guards. But where were these ragged fighters brought from?
The combats went on, always eight men battling at once, and I saw that our number was growing smaller very rapidly. Neither Denham nor I had yet been called on to fight, but my heart was beating rapidly, for I expected each time to be among the next eight. The blades clashed on, at the floor's center, and group after group went out from us, either to return and don the armor of the guards or to be dragged off the floor by slaves, dead or dying. The Kanlars in the lower balconies laughed and chatted as the ragged fighters on the floor slew each other, the massed guards above shouted their approval at each shrewd blow, and the fighting continued until finally but ten of our number were left, and by a freak of chance, both Denham and I were of that ten.
The fights on the floor ended, one by one, and swiftly the guards unshackled eight of our number and thrust them out onto the floor. I stood appalled. For the two who were left were myself and the Englishman!
While the swords clicked and flashed out on the floor, I stood in a daze, dismayed at the ironical trick which fate had played me. Of all the men in the city, I must fight the one whom alone I knew and liked. In a space of seconds, it seemed, the four fights on the floor had ended, and the fetters on my wrists were loosed. Together, hesitantly, Denham and I walked out onto the floor. Shouts of applause and encouragement came down from the balconies, for ours was the last fight, and the spectators wanted an exciting one.
Standing there at the very center of the huge building, Denham and I faced each other. Simultaneously we grasped the hilts of our rapiers, half drew them, and then, with a common impulse, slammed the blades back down into their sheaths. Without speaking, my companion stepped over and flung an arm across my shoulders, then tilted up his head and favored the spectators in the balconies with an insolent stare.
A howl of rage went up as it became evident that we would not fight each other. A torrent of taunts and execrations poured down on us from above, but we continued to lounge, arm in arm, as nonchalantly as possible.
Out from the black edge of the floor rushed a half-dozen of the guards, who seized us and hurried us off the floor, amid a storm of abuse from above. Instead of returning with us to the entrance, the guards led us toward the bottom of the spiraling stair and there stationed themselves beside us.
The angry cries in the balconies silenced, now, and a strange stillness filled the great hall. Music began, single, thrilling notes, like dropping peals of sound. Swiftly the lights began to dim, the glowing bulbs in the walls waning until all things in the vast room were wrapped in shadowy dusk.
The chiming music ceased, and over all that mighty fane was absolute silence, with no sound from Kanlars, guards or slaves. Then, in the little projecting gallery where he sat, the black-robed oldster rose and spoke.
His deep, heavy voice rolled out over the vast room with awesome effect, breaking as it did the unearthly silence. He was chanting, uttering an invocation or prayer. The words came to my ears, thick and blurred, so that I understood few of them. But the effect was one of utter solemnity—the darkness, the massed, silent crowds above, and that one deep voice speaking on, rising and falling.
For minutes the voice rumbled on, then abruptly ceased. There was another full minute of the strange silence, and a tremendous ringing note sounded. Even after it had died, the echoes of it beat in my ears like ghostly carillons of tiny, elfin chimes. And as it died away, there was a heavy, grating sound and the whole vast metal floor abruptly sank down some six feet into what appeared to be a gigantic smooth-walled shaft, then slid sidewise with another grating jar, vanishing into some aperture prepared for it. And where the floor had been was now a tremendous circular abyss, a straight-sided pit of such titanic depth that, looking down into it, I fell weakly to my knees and was seized with sudden nausea.
I stood on the very edge of the abyss, on the ring of black flooring that was its rim. And down from that rim, the stone sides of the great shaft fell smoothly to an unguessed depth. Far, far below, I seemed to see glimmering lights that winked faintly. And I saw, too, that the spiral staircase which circled the great room's interior from floor to roof continued on down beneath the floor and circled around and around this circular chasm in the same way, winding down into the unguessed depths below.
I felt Denham pulling me back from the edge of the shaft, beside which I lay. Dimly I realized that all in the great building were now chanting, rolling forth the same invocation as the black-robed leader. Far above, now, at the very ceiling or roof of the cylinder, a light burgeoned out, a burning purple beam that clove its light down through the dim haze and shadows around it. A moment it hung there, then there was a faint sigh of wind, a puff of icy air, and down, straight down from the vast hall's roof, there raced like a misty plummet—the Raider!
It flashed down until it hung on a level with myself, in midair, poised at the very center of the circular abyss and floating there effortlessly. It hung there, its gray mass changing, fluxing, interlacing, while at its center hung the three little orbs of purple light, steady and unwinking. From all the massed thousands on the balconies a sigh of worship went up.
The chant rolled out, louder, fiercer, and through it sounded another single ringing note. There was another whistle of wind, and the three purple orbs of the Raider flashed to green, while the solid but fluxing mass of it changed to a spinning cloud of gray vapor, that swirled rapidly around the central lights. Another fierce gust of wind smote me, and abruptly the Raider had vanished.
Up in the balconies the chant went on, repeated again and again. I saw a sea of white faces above, all turned down toward the spot where the Raider had disappeared. Minutes passed. The chanting went on, low, vast and deep-toned.
Came another buffeting breeze, a tempest of shrill wind-sounds, and with startling suddenness the Raider reappeared, flashing back into being at the same spot where it had vanished, above the center of the abyss. Again the green orbs changed to purple, and its cloudy mass contracted to the shifting but solid form it had occupied before. But now, held in its shapeless self, were men, who hung helpless in its grasp. It drifted over to the marble edge of the abyss, and loosed the men it held, then moved back to the pit's center.
The chanting swelled out, exultant, and I saw the men thus loosed struggle to their feet and look around with utter awe and terror. They were five in number, three in short white tunics who looked like men of ancient Greece, the other two wizened little figures with dark skin and long, wispy mustaches, either Huns or Tartars.
Again a ringing note cut through the chanting, and as if in obedience the Raider rose, floated up toward the vast hall's roof, whence it had come. It disappeared there, the purple light burned for a moment and vanished, and the chanting finally ceased.
The bulbs glowed out, at once, and light filled the place. The crowds in the balconies began to leave, streaming down the narrow staircase toward the floor. Before they reached it, however, guards had reached and fettered the five men the Raider had left on the pit's edge, and they now brought them over and shackled them also to Denham and me.
Our little group stood now on the very edge of the abysmal shaft. Some twenty feet below us there was a little landing, from which the stair started, spiraling down and around the shaft, into the darkness below. I wondered momentarily how the landing was reached, but my wonder ceased as a guard touched a lever in the wall, causing a little metal stair to unfold swiftly from the side of the shaft itself, a light little series of steps that connected the black marble ring of flooring with the landing below.
At an order from the guards we stepped onto it, down it to the landing and on down the spiral stair, which was cut in the solid rock of the great shaft's sides. Looking back, I saw the steps down which we had come fold back into the wall, and a moment later the light from above was shut out as the great metal floor of the temple swung back into position above us with a grating clash.
Our only light now was from bulbs set in the smooth wall along the down-winding stair, and these gave hardly enough light to show us the next steps. A low wall about a yard in height, pierced with an ornamental design of openings, was our only protection from the abyss on our left. Yet the guards still marched us on, around and around the great shaft, in a tremendous, falling spiral, down, down....
CHAPTER 11
THE CITY OF THE PIT
Soon a dim pearly light began to show far below us, a light that puzzled me. In the world above, I knew, it must be dawn, but how this was connected with the growing light below, if it was so connected, baffled me.
And now we reached the end of the shaft down whose sides we had come. It ended abruptly, and below on each side lay a great open space, obscured by drifting clouds of mist. But the stair did not end with the shaft. It dropped straight on down, a free, unsupported spiral of gleaming metal, winding down into the obscuring mists that hid its lower length. It was an eery thing to see, that gigantic twisted stairway, like a great corkscrew, vanishing down into the mists, like some pathway of the gods from heaven to earth. And it could hardly have been hung there by less than gods, I thought. No metal or material ever known to me would have been able thus to hold its unsupported weight in the form of this stair, yet there it was, seemingly tossed there in godlike indifference to the laws of mechanics. In its way, it was as great a wonder as the great building above. As that thought came to me, the light around us began to grow, to redden like the sunrise, and the mists cleared, drifted away in masses, vanished. And there, beneath me, lay the pit.
I can only describe that pit by saying that it was like the inside of a round, squat bottle, the neck of the bottle being the shaft down which I had come. This great cavern below me was roughly circular in shape, all of four miles in diameter, and a mile from its level floor to its glowing roof. For that roof was glowing. Looking up at it as we marched on down, I saw that set in it were scores of brilliant globes of glass, from which a flood of growing light, golden light, sunlight,daylight, was pouring down.
I saw now that the spiral stair down which we marched reached down to the pit's floor, and touched it near its center. And I saw, too, that all of the great cavern's floor, from one towering side to another, was covered with mass on mass of white, roofless buildings, of all shapes, covering the floor of the pit and huddling closely beneath the perpendicular walls of smooth rock.
At the center of this great mass of buildings, directly below us, was a great open clearing, or plaza, and it was there that the stairway touched the pit's floor. And from this plaza, clear to the circling walls, nine streets branched out, radiating in every direction like the spokes of a wheel. Along those streets moved great masses of men, and these were the dwellers in the city, the people of the pit.
So it was that I looked first on the city of the pit, the city of the Raider, and its people, over whom his shadow had been cast. And, looking, I wondered if there in the massed crowds below were Lantin and Cannell, and if it were possible to find them, here.
Again our guards ordered us forward, and we marched on. But now only a low wall on each side protected us from the abyss, and there was no wall on the right side against which to cling. But our guards seemed to mind this not at all, and I judged that they had made many trips up and down the stair, to be thus hardened to its dangers.
As we descended, Denham explained to me in a low voice the origin of the lights on the roof. These were merely lenses of a kind, he said, which diffused into the cavern real sunlight brought from above. I had already seen and puzzled at the glass globes set on pedestals through the city of cylinders above, but now saw their purpose. Those globes received the sunlight, transmitted it in some unknown fashion down to the globes on the roof, which gave it forth again. Thus it was that day and night in the pit were the same as in the world above, and the light there waxed and waned in accordance with the rising and setting of the sun which these people never saw.
We drew closer and closer toward the ground, and now I saw that at the stair's end, where it touched and debouched on the pit's floor, it was closed by a high, heavy gate of metal, barred and spiked, and that on our own side of this gate was a force of some fifty of the guards, armed with long spears and also with curious little cylinders of shining metal which they carried in their belts, and which I guessed were weapons of a kind unknown to myself.
As we came down toward them, these guards drew aside and unlocked the big gate. Our own captors unshackled us, and then pushed us through it unceremoniously, so that we stood in the clearing or plaza. And the gate was quickly shut and locked behind us.
Standing there, I forgot all else in the fascination of the scene around me. Across the open plaza, which was smoothly floored with stone, a great multitude of people were coming and going, and it was that shifting throng that held my gaze. For in it were men of every race and land and time, men of the far past and men of my own time, all seized and brought here by the Raider to mix and mingle in one vast, variegated throng. Even that first glance showed me that there must be thousands, tens of thousands of men prisoned in this gigantic under-city, and it showed me, too, that even as among the guards and slaves above, there were no women. All were comparatively young men, few being over middle age, and nearly all had the appearance of warriors.
Men of a thousand different centuries passed and repassed there before my eyes, men who had been flashed through the ages and brought there by the same alien being that had seized Cannell before my eyes, and that had seized, only a few hours before, the five newcomers who had come down the great stair with Denham and me.
For these, these crowds and masses of men that choked the streets and squares and buildings of this city of hell, these were the spoils of the Raider, gathered together for some unholy purpose of his own, and prisoned here in the pit, far beneath the city of the Kanlars. In a living panorama of the past, they streamed by me, a brilliant, barbaric throng.
Many of them were unknown in race to me, but many others I could recognize by their dress or features. There were Egyptians, shaven-headed men in long white robes, strangely aloof and silent in that noisy gathering. They carried short swords and bows, and I noticed that every one of the figures that passed before me wore weapons of some sort. I saw Assyrians, here and there, ravagers of the ancient world, wolf-faced, black-bearded men with burning eyes, clad in strange armor.
Three courtly, spade-bearded Spaniards sauntered by, carrying themselves as proudly as on the day when their galleons ruled the seas. A hulking, shock-headed savage clad in evil-smelling skins shambled by, with a giant gnarled club in his hand, his receding brow and jutting jaw proclaiming him a troglodyte, a man of the world's dawn. And right behind him came two stern-faced men in medieval armor, with the cross of the Crusaders blazoned on their battered shields.
Indians passed, with bow and tomahawk, hawk-faced and alert. Clear-skinned Greeks, laughing at some jest of their own. Chinese, quiet and inscrutable, whose eyes narrowed even further as they caught sight of the two wizened Tartars who had come down the stair with us. A tall frontiersman in suit of buckskin, with bowie knife in his belt, strode past, conversing with a helmed Phoenician sea-captain. And everywhere, clustering always together in little groups, were Romans, legionaries in tunic, breastplate and helmet, with bronze short-swords, who looked contemptuously on all other races in the passing throng.
A hand descended on my shoulder, and I turned, startled, to find that I had completely forgotten the Englishman, Denham, who stood behind me.
"Deuced strange, at first, isn't it?" he asked, smilingly, gesturing toward the moving pageant of the past, around us. Before I could answer, he went on, "You'd best come with me, now."
"Where?" I asked.
"Why, to my own barracks," he answered. "That's what these buildings are for, you know, but as a newcomer, you'd be in trouble here in a minute, without someone to answer for you. And, too, I want you to meet my own friends."
He looked at me more sharply. "I take it that you're no great friend of—" and he stopped, raising his eyes eloquently upward.
"The Raider?" I asked, and when he nodded I said, "Not I! I'm here to find a man—two men."
"Find a single man here?" asked Denham, sweeping his hand around the crowded streets in a hopeless gesture. "It's impossible! And what would you do when you found him? Escape? That, too, is impossible. How would you get up the stair, through the city of the Kanlars? And even if you achieved the impossible and did get through, there would be no place to go, for all around the city above is nothing but wild, uninhabited country where they would easily hunt you down."
"No matter," I told him; "once I got clear of the city above, I could make good my escape."
He looked at me with sudden interest. "So," he murmured; "and perhaps if my friends and I could help you—," but then he checked himself. "I must see them," he said, "before saying more."
I nodded, a new line of thought opening up to me, and then with Denham leading, we went on down one of the branching streets. In that street was a replica of the noisy, motley throng that filled the plaza, and their cries filled the air with a babel of a thousand different tongues. I noted, though, that many spoke in the language of the Kanlars, and guessed that it was that tongue which served more or less as a means of communication between the thousands gathered here, a supposition I later found to be correct.
Most of the buildings along the street seemed to be the barracks Denham had spoken of, housing the city's occupants, though some of them appeared to be wine-shops of a sort, judging from the drunken men who reeled out of them. An inquiry to my companion elicited the information that the only food of the city was the same golden liquid which had been furnished me above, and which I learned was made artificially directly from the soil itself. Thus the cycle of foodstuffs in my own time, where a plant draws its substance from the soil and is then eaten, or where an animal feeds on the plants sprung from the soil, to be eaten by us in turn, was entirely eliminated by the Kanlars, who manufactured their food directly from the soil itself, recasting the chemical composition of it to produce the yellow fluid. This yellow liquid, I learned, was made by slaves in the city above and was piped down to the city below and dispensed to the hordes there in the little buildings which I had assumed to be wine-shops. It seemed that while the stuff was a perfect food when taken in small quantities, yet when an excess was drunk it produced a violent intoxication. And as it was dispensed freely, it was not wonderful that there were great debauches of drunkenness in this under-metropolis.
One result of that we saw, for all along the street there was fighting, deadly battles between men of far-differing times and races. There was no interference in these combats, for there were none of the guards or Kanlars through all the city, the occupants being left to fight their own battles on the principle of the survival of the fittest. An excited ring of spectators was gathered round each combat, shouting at and cheering the opponents, not dispersing until the fighting was over. As we passed the scene of one such duel, I saw the victor dragging away the body of his late enemy.
"Where is he taking it?" I asked of Denham, motioning toward the receding figure.
"To the bottom of the stair," was his answer. "There is an iron rule that in any battle where a man is killed, the victor must carry the body of his opponent to the stair and hand it over to the guards there."
"But why?" I asked. "For burial above?"
Denham smiled grimly. "You saw the slaves in the city above," he said, "but did you notice how strange they were, how glassy-eyed and stiff-moving?"
When I nodded, he said, "Well, the slaves of the city above are men who have been killed here in the under-city."
At my exclamation of horror, he repeated his statement. "Man," he exclaimed, "you do not know the power of the Kanlars. With the wisdom that is theirs, such an accomplishment is child's-play."
"But how done?" I asked.
"Ask them," he answered darkly. "In some way they are able to bring back the breath of life into the dead men, to repair the wounds that killed them. They can make them live again, but not even the Kanlars can bring back their souls. They are just living, walking bodies, whom the Kanlars are able to control and to force to work their will in all things. Dead-alive, and slaves to the Kanlars!"
I shuddered deeply, for the idea was soul-sickening. Yet I knew now that Denham spoke truth, for I remembered how from my cell in the city above I had seen Talerri, garbed as a slave, Talerri, whom I had killed myself. It was an invention that would have aroused pride in the fiends of lowest hell, thus to raise dead men back to life and use them as servants. And I knew that this was but one of the dark evils that lay concealed under the rule of the laughing, bright-haired Kanlars.
While we talked we had been moving along the crowded street toward the distant wall of the pit. Finally, very near that wall, Denham turned in at a low, long building that was of white stone, and roofless, like most others in the city. I followed him inside, and looked around curiously.
The building's interior was a single large room, shaded from the light above by a suspended awning of green cloth. Ranged along the walls was a triple tier of metal bunks, in some of which lay cloth and fur robes. There was a long metal table at the room's center, and lounging in chairs around it, and in the bunks, were a score of men who looked up without interest as we entered.
Denham greeted them, and in reply they grunted lazily, looking at me incuriously. I followed my companion to the farther end of the room, where he seated himself in one of the bunks and motioned me to join him.
"My friends aren't here now," he said, "but they'll return before long."
A sudden curiosity prompted my next question. "How did you get here, Denham?" I asked. "Was it—the Raider?"
"Naturally," he answered. "It was the Raider, as you call it, that brought us all here, curse him. It was in the Colonial rebellion he got me."
"The American rebellion?" I asked, striving to understand his Eighteenth Century allusions.
"Of course," he answered. "We were quartered in Philadelphia, under that old fool, Howe. He liked the city, y'know, the bottle and the ladies. But the rest of us were itching for fight, and since we couldn't fight the rebels, we soon took to fighting one another.
"There was a ball one night, and toward the end of it I began to have a few words with a Hessian attached to our staff. We were both a little scrambled, by then. Curse me if there weren't some fine cellars there! But as to the German, he and I got hotter and hotter, until he finally made the assertion that our commander was a fool. Personally, that was my opinion also, but I couldn't allow the Dutchman to say so, and the upshot of it was that we left the ball together and adjourned to an open field near by to resume the argument, with our swords.
"Before we had made a half-dozen passes, there was a hellish sound of wind, a big, gray cloud with burning green eyes seemed to drop down on us from above, and then the bottom dropped out of the world. When we came to our senses, we were standing up there in the big temple, with a dozen others. Of course, we didn't know then that we had been brought on through time, but we knew it was a damned strange place.
"They brought us down here, down the stair, and as soon as we were turned loose here, we resumed our dispute, borrowing swords from two bystanders. By luck, I pinked him. There was a big crowd around, cheering us on, and it was then that I met D'Alord, who is one of the friends I mentioned."
As Denham finished his story, I began to feel a sudden, utter weariness, for I had not slept for many hours. I yawned and rubbed my eyes, and at once Denham jumped up.
"Why, take the bunk, man," he ordered me. "Go ahead and sleep."
"But what of Lantin," I asked, "my friend? He's somewhere in the city here, I'm sure, and I must find him."
Denham shook his head doubtfully. "What does he look like?" he asked.
When I had described Lantin to him, his face cleared a little, I thought. "An elderly man, you said?" he questioned, and when I nodded, he continued, "That should make it easier to find him, then. There are hardly any but young men here, so your friend would be more conspicuous and easily located. But you go ahead and sleep, and I'll find my friends and look for your companion. If anyone can find him, we can."
I tried to thank him, but he waved my words aside with a smile and walked out of the room. I sank back in the bunk and closed my eyes. As drowsiness overcame me, there came to my ears the dull sound of voices of the men in the room, with now and then a shout or bellow of laughter. And even these faded from hearing as I sank, contentedly enough, down into the green depths of sleep.
CHAPTER 12
PLANS FOR ESCAPE
Golden light again streamed through the windows when I finally woke, and I realized that in my utter weariness I must have slept the clock twice round. I swung out of the bunk and stood up, stretching.
There was only one man in the long room besides myself, a man who sat at the table, some distance away from me. As I looked at him he turned, saw me, and jumped up and hurried over toward me.
"Lantin!" I cried, extending my hands. He gripped them, his eyes sparkling.
"Where have you been?" I asked eagerly. "Were you in the city here all the time?"
"All the time since I left you," he affirmed. "They brought me directly here, Wheeler, and of course when I got here I knew at once that we had found the Raider's lair. Your friend Denham found me, a few hours ago, and told me where you were, but when I came here I saw that you were sleeping and didn't waken you."
"You should have," I told him. "But where is Denham now?"
"He'll be here soon," replied my friend. "He said he would go after his friends, who were helping him to look for me, and bring them here."
"But what of Cannell, Lantin?" I asked. "You have seen nothing of him in your stay here?"
His face clouded. "Nothing," he admitted. "I have searched for him, but how is one to find a single man in this city of thousands? And we do not even know that he is here, Wheeler. For all we know, he may have been killed long ago in some brawl here."
"Don't give up hope," I told him. "With Denham to help us, we have a far better chance to find him."
Lantin shook his head doubtfully, but before he could answer, our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Denham and his three friends. As they came up to us, I gazed with mounting interest at the trio of strange companions who accompanied the Englishman.
One of them was patently a Roman, a short, sturdy man with swarthy, stern-set features, attired in armor and helmet. The man beside him was brown-skinned and long-haired, with eagle black eyes, dressed in spotted skins, quilted cotton armor, and head-dress of feathers. He carried a curious long sword, or weapon, whose edges were serrated, or saw-toothed, and the weapon gave me the clue to his identity. I had seen swords exactly like it brought out of the Aztec ruins in Mexico.
But it was the third man who caught and held my gaze. He was a figure of romance, a slouch-hatted, wide-booted trooper, long sword rattling at his heels, laughing, dare-devil eyes, and white teeth gleaming behind a fierce black mustache. As I surveyed him, rather rudely I think, he smiled at me and exclaimed, in execrable English: "Mordieu, is this the lad who killed that pig, Talerri?"
When Denham nodded, he thrust forth his hand impulsively, and I was glad to take it. And then Denham made introduction. "The Chevalier Raoul D'Alord," he said, indicating the laughing trooper, who swept me a grand bow. "One time captain in the armies of Henry Quatre, King of Navarre and France, but now a lodger in our pleasant city," and he laughed at the wry face the Frenchman made.
"This is Ixtil, Cacique of Tlacopan," he went on, indicating the wild brown figure in the middle, and I looked at him with renewed interest, now that my surmise had proved correct. An Aztec! One of the fierce hordes who had swept away Maya and Toltec forever, only to be crushed in turn by ruthless, steel-shod Cortez. The chieftain bowed to me, gravely and silently, but did not speak.
Denham turned to the remaining figure. "Fabrius Arminius," he said, "formerly centurion in the legions of Tiberius Cæsar," and the Roman stiffly inclined his head. Then, at Denham's suggestion, we seated ourselves around the end of the long table.
"D'Alord speaks English as well as I do," said Denham, "and between us we taught it to Ixtil and Fabrius, so you can speak freely. I have told my friends that you are, like ourselves, ready for an attempt at escaping. Naturally, though, they would like to hear it from your own lips."
"It is so," I assured them. "Lantin and I came here to find a certain man, and if we can find him, we'll take him out of here in spite of the Raider."
"The Raider?" queried D'Alord, and Denham interjected a brief explanation. "He means—him," he told the Frenchman, jerking a thumb upward.
The trooper laughed. "Sacré, that's a name for the beast! Eh, Fabrius?"
The Roman nodded, silently, and Denham came back to the subject. "For some time," he went on, "we four have considered different plans for escaping, but none has been practical. There are so many obstacles. It will be necessary to get up the stair, avoiding the guards at bottom and top. Once up, it will be necessary to pass through the city of the cylinders, though that should not be too difficult. But once out of the city, what then? How cross the ice?"
"We are talking at cross purposes," I said. "You must remember, Denham, that I know next to nothing about this place. Why have all these men been collected in this under-city? Does anyone know, except the Raider? What is the purpose of it all?"
"You do not know?" asked Denham, in surprize. "I thought you would, by now. These men, these thousands of warriors in the city here around you, have been gathered here by the Raider to act as his armies, his mercenaries, to pour down in hordes upon the cities of the enemies of the Kanlars, and destroy those enemies utterly, which the Kanlars are too few in number to do."
I gasped with astonishment. Denham went on. "You tell him, Fabrius," he said, addressing the Roman. "You have been here longer than any of us."
The centurion spoke, in a slurred, accented English. "Some things I have heard," he said, "but whether true or not, I can not say. There was a man here I knew when first I was brought here, a Persian. Before he was killed (for he was killed in a drunken brawl) he told me that once, in the city above, one of the Kanlars had become drunk and had babbled to him the story of his race.
"As you know, endless fields of ice lie around this land where is the Kanlar's city. Well, the Persian said that these fields of ice were not endless, that far to the south there were other green lands and in them a mighty people and a mighty city, named Kom. He said that long ago the Kanlars lived in this city, and were of its people, but that trouble had risen between them and the other people of Kom,because of the Raider. More than this he did not know, but said that because of this trouble, the Kanlars had fled from the city, with the Raider leading them, and coming north in their air-boats over the ice-fields, had found this green, uninhabited land, set in the ice. Its existence had never been suspected by those in Kom, who thought that the ice extended clear north to the very edge of earth.
"So the Kanlars had settled here and had built the city of cylinders, which lies above us. But still they planned to sweep back on Kom, and annihilate all there. But this they could not do, being too few in number. So the Raider, who is their god and their king, spoke to them and said that he would bring them men from every age of earth's past to be their servants, to fight for them at will. The Raider could travel at will through time—ask me not how!—and he swept back through the centuries and brought men by the thousands to the Kanlars, young warriors to fight their battles for them.
"There was a great cavern far beneath the city of the Kanlars, a great hollow space formed by inside shiftings of the young earth, and in this the Kanlars prisoned the men brought by the Raider, piercing a shaft down to it from their temple above, and placing in that shaft the stairway down which you came, under the direction of the Raider. They chose from among their prisoners some to be guards of the others, and those killed in battle here they brought back to seeming life by their arts of hell, and used as slaves.
"So, steadily, the hordes here in the pit have grown in number, until scarcely more could be contained here. Soon there will be enough to suit the purpose of the Raider and then they will be loosed and hurled south to carry fire and death to the cities beyond the ice, to Kom and the people of Kom, who can have no knowledge whatever of the peril that hangs over them. Up on the great roof of the temple, which is the home of the Raider, there are scores of great flying-platforms which the Kanlars have been constructing. They have made strange weapons, too, and so when their hour strikes, they will open the gates here and allow the hordes to pour up the stair, up to the roof of the temple, where they will crowd into the flying-platforms, under the leadership of the Kanlars, and race south over the ice to rain down death and destruction on Kom. And thus will the Raider and the Kanlars be revenged upon the people who cast them out."
Fabrius stopped, and I looked at Lantin, then back toward the Roman. Was this the true secret of the Raider's activity?
"But will the hordes here do this?" I asked. "Will they follow the Kanlars, and obey them?"
Fabrius laughed shortly, and D'Alord replied for him. "Ha, friend," he said to me, "you are new here, and do not know these men. They are evil, I tell you. They boast always of what they will do when they are loosed on Kom, for they know that soon they are to be thus loosed. Some subtle poison from the Raider's self has entered into them, I think. They are like tigers waiting to be freed upon a helpless prey."
"It is so," said Lantin, "for short a time as I have been here, I have found that this is so. There is no hope from the hordes here in the pit, for they will follow the Raider to a man."
There was a silence after that. Suddenly Denham spoke. "I think it would be possible for some of us, at least, to get out of the pit here," he said, "for I have a plan that would effect that much. But what then? Do you suppose it would be possible to get up to the roof of the temple and steal one of the flying-platforms you speak of? Or steal one of the Kanlars' air-boats? If we could do that, we could fly south over the ice-fields and warn the cities there of their peril, get their aid and come back and crush the Raider and these damned Kanlars."
For the first time, the Aztec spoke, shaking his head. "It can not be done," he said, speaking in precise, queerly clipped English. "I was to the roof of the temple once, and know. The only way to get to that roof is by the narrow stairway that spirals up the inside of the temple. And that stairway leads directly through the lair of the Raider!"
"But what can we do, then?" asked the Englishman. "It would be folly to try to steal one of the Kanlars' air-boats, for they always rise from and alight on the roofs of buildings, and we could never get to them unobserved."
Lantin broke into the silence that ensued. "But suppose there was an air-boat hidden back in the hills, outside the city," he said; "that would make things easier, wouldn't it?"
When they assented, he went on quickly, "Wheeler and I have such a machine hidden," he said, "and it was on it that we came here from our own time."
They looked up eagerly, incredulously. "Do you mean that you came into this age from your own time on a machine?" asked Denham. "That you came yourselves, and were not brought here by the Raider, like all the rest of us?"
Lantin nodded affirmation, and then went on to describe briefly the seizure of Cannell, our pursuit through time, and our subsequent capture outside the city by the guards. They listened, fascinated, and when he had finished, D'Alord asked, with something of awe in his voice, "And you made this machine yourselves? You found the secret of the Raider's time-traveling?"
"It is so," Lantin told them; "we made the time-car and then came after Cannell."
"God!" exclaimed the trooper, "what a chance for freedom! If we could all win free of this pit, escape from the city to your car, we could get back to our own times in it. Back to France!"
"No!" said Denham, decisively. "In the first place not all of us can escape from the pit. I have a plan by which some of us can, but the rest must stay here. And another thing, even if we each got back to our own time, D'Alord, who knows but that the Raider would come back and recapture us, as he did this Cannell they tell of? For all we know, the Raider may have placed on us some sign or mark by means of which he could track us down through the ages again. And until he is destroyed, it will be of no use to return to our own times."
"But what to do, then?" asked the Frenchman.
"This," said Denham. "We four will help Lantin and Wheeler to escape from the pit. Only two can succeed in escaping, by my plan, for more would be noticed in the city above, and we four will be needed to give them their start up the stair, how, I will explain later. And since only one or two can escape, Lantin and Wheeler must be the ones to make the attempt, since they alone know how to operate their machine, and know where it is hidden.
"If they can reach their car, they will speed south across the ice, warn the people of Kom of the plans of the Kanlars, and come back with a force sufficient to crush the Raider and the Kanlars forever, and then they can rescue us four from the pit."