The pirate grinned at him, leaning his palms flat on the tabletop. "If I win, you know what'll happen, don't you? You and I will have to rule Karr. You'll be my majordomo. You'll wear fine clothes and make decisions and listen to people bellyache."
Tandor howled, leaping up so suddenly that his chair went skidding. He slammed his palms on the table. "Not me!" he bellowed. "I want no office and no snivelling folk to spoil my days! I—"
Angus moved a hand. He put it flat to Tandor's chest and held it there. The bald giant snapped his lips together. He grew silent as a clam, and as still.
The door was opening.
Something that looked like a man, that was swathed in white bandages from toes to head, with just two slits for eyes and a hole for a mouth, was coming in the room. Tandor's hand swooped and lifted with a disintegrator.
"Angus," whispered the apparition. "Red Angus! I need help."
The pirate was across the room, catching the bandaged figure in cradling arms, lowering him to the couch. He whispered, "This is the second time you've been on that couch, Thordad. What happened to you?"
"When I left you at the globe-ship dock one of Stal Tay's spies knifed me and left me for dead. The Hierarch sent men to find me. They doctored me and were carrying me to the Citadel when the Diktor jumped us. He sent me to his torture dungeons."
The man shuddered under the bandages. The eyes, through the slits, were wide with horror and remembered pain. "The Diktor wanted to learn what the Hierarch was after. I wouldn't tell him. Before that he confronted me with the Hierarch who disowned me. He told Stal Tay to do with me what he wanted!"
The raw hate throbbed in Thordad's voice. It sent a cold ripple down Angus' spine. The pirate leaned closer to the bandaged mouth. "The Diktor let his beasts at me for three days. It was horrible. But I got away. I think I went mad with the pain. I crept to my cousin's house and was bandaged and partially healed there. Then I came here. You're the only hope any of us have. You've got to do something—anything—to stop that madman and the Hierarch!"
Angus wiped his hands on his jacket. "You, Tandor. What news have you?"
"I've been busy too," Tandor growled, eyeing Thordad curiously. "I've roused the men and women of the Lower City. I've sent for the pirates on Yassinan, sent for warriors from the cities of Streeth and Fayalat. We've a crew of fighting men with swords and spears and a few disintegrators. But with the scientific might of Stal Tay and the Hierarch we're beaten before we start."
Angus laughed. "Not yet. Stasor has promised help. We're to meet him and get the weapons he told me about. Into the teleportator on the double—all of you."
When they were in the chairs fastened to the dais, Angus threw over the lever. A golden mist formed about them, hardened. There was an instant of coldness....
The golden mist disappeared. The teleportator stood before the fountain in the Tower of the Ancients. Angus sprang from the machine. "Stasor, I'm back!"
There was no answer. Only the silence of the dead walls of the dead city replied.
It was Moana who found the blood-stained bit of silk that had been ripped from Stasor's garment. Wordlessly she held it out to Angus.
His belly turned over when he saw it. He looked at the girl, then at Tandor.
"The Diktor's come for him. With Stasor to unravel the secrets in the Book of Nard, Stal Tay can't be beaten!"
Tandor shrugged massive shoulders. "I knew that a long time ago. We'll all die. It's just a matter of when and where."
In the time Angus had allotted him, Tandor had thrown up a small city of tents and wickiups along the stone ridges of the Bloody Cliffs. Here came the pirates from Yassinan, the starved soldiery from the star cities of Fayalat and Kor. Here were half-naked gypsy girls and camp followers, fighting men and muckers. Here were dishonored captains and untried youths who owned swords and a hot hunger to use them.
In the red fire of an armorer's forge, Red Angus handled a ring-barreled gun that was powered by a portable dynamo set up on a small, two-wheeled cart.
The armorer said, "It's weak and it's clumsy, but it's the best I could do. The electroray gets its power from the dynamo in the cart. Power travels along the fuel line to the breach. A tiny converter translates it into a thin beam of force. I've seen them in the museums. I made sketches. Given more time I could do better."
Red Angus put a grin on his lips and held it there by sheer will-power. His hand clapped the man on the back. He told him, "You've done fine, Yoth! Keep it up. Turn out as many as you can!"
The armorer shook his head glumly. "They won't be much alongside the disintegrator that Stal Tay will have. Even their sonicbeams will do more damage than this!"
Tandor came swaggering up through the half-naked, hairy chested men who fought with blunted sabres and war-spears. There was dirt on his face, and runnels of sweat ran on his barrel chest. He planted his legs apart, and glowered at Red Angus.
"You're mad as a priest of Grom. You keep us here when we'd do better by scattering to the six worlds."
Angus said, "These are the toughest fighting men in the galaxy. If they can't take the Citadel no one can. Once we get within sword-sweep of the Diktor's guards...."
Tandor bellowed. He went up on his toes and waved his arms, and his veins stood out on his bald head. "As well get within sword-sweep of Ashtal the Shameless!" he roared. "The Diktor will sweep the streets with disintegrator beams when he sees us coming. Maybe you want to play martyr, but I've better uses for my life. Take that gypsy girl...."
Angus caught him by the fur of his cloak and shook him. "Forget your gypsy wenches. We go into the Lower City at night. All of us, over a week's time. We bed down in different homes. Loyal homes. A fortnight from now will be the Night of the Serpent. Singing and dancing in the streets. Wine. Women."
Tandor grinned. "Aie, that sounds good."
"At the hour of the Dog we hit the Citadel. There'll be so much roistering going on we'll belt-whip every mother's son into the streets that night, and make 'em yell to cover our movements. No one'll notice us!
"We hit the Citadel from every street. Some of us will get through. Ten streets, ten companies, each of them a flying wedge to get inside and kill Stal Tay. That's our first job. After that...."
Red Angus talked on, sketching in the hot sands. He did not see a bandaged Thordad come out of a tent and stand there, watching them, and listening. Thordad turned away after a while and went back into the tent where he sat shivering and staring down at his hands.
Neither did Red Angus see him that night when he daggered a guard and fled on a haml across the desert for Karr City. They found the guard but guessed him a victim of a jealous lover for he had a reputation as a lady's man.
The days slid into weeks, and the fires burned and metal glowed, and the forges and the anvils never stopped. Swords and shields and spears, daggers and clumsy electrorays were turned out for eager hands.
They broke camp in the faint mists of an early dawn. On ewe-necked haml and on foot, by cart and by stolen jetcar, they left the base of the Bloody Cliffs. They came into Karr City by twos and threes and hid themselves in the taverns and in the thatch-roofed houses. The city knew them and the city swallowed them, and the city slumbered, waiting.
In the tavern of the Spotted Stag, Red Angus paced the floor. Tandor, an arm around his gypsy girl, was sampling a new tun of imported wine. Moana was white-faced, pale and silent at the table.
Angus said, "I don't like it. I don't like it. I have the feel of a wolf sniffing at the jaws of a trap."
Tandor drew his lips from the gypsy's neck long enough to say, "It's quiet, isn't it. What more do you want?"
"That's just it. It's too quiet. There are no Citadel guards out hunting me. No arrests for five days. No street patrols, even!"
"Good. Then let's call it off and go back to Yassinan. You'll like Yassinan, honey." Tandor nuzzled the girl's throat, "I have a big house there. Much wine. Better wine than this!"
Angus stared at the man through slitted eyes, reached for a goblet and lifted it. His hand poised the goblet, about to throw. Angus swore and buried his nose in the cup. He flung it from him, and it broke against the wall.
The city stayed quiet for five days. On the morning of the Night of the Serpent it exploded with energy. Men and women, in masks and costumes, paraded and sang. They drank and danced and the Citadel brooded down on them.
The day wore on. Tandor and Angus were busy, keeping some semblance of order in their fighting crews, keeping the men from the wine-barrels, readying them for their assignments. Tandor went stalking into the taverns and the wine shops with heavy hands, striking out as he walked, often upending an unfortunate into a wine-tun after knocking in its head with the head of the man he held upside down in his hands.
Red Angus went more circumspectly, fighting off the tipsy women and armed footpads who waxed rich in the torchlight gatherings during the long Night of the Serpent. He rounded up his crews and found them their weapons.
"Tonight the stars revolt!"
At the hour of the Dog ten companies of hard-eyed fighting men came out of the shadows of the ten cobblestoned streets that led by twisting tiers to the Citadel. They went up the curving stone stairs to the smooth Citadel streets and started forward....
And then the Diktor struck.
The sonicbeams came first, cutting the front ranks to bloody pulp. Disintegrator rayed into action. Men went down silently under the lightning-swift impact of purplish lances.
It was a rout.
Here, a naked mercenary from Fayalat would flesh his blade in a few necks as he drove in behind a wall of dead flesh. There, a warrior from Kor might take three of Stal Tay's soldiers with him before he touched hands with his ancestors. But the beams and the rays slew in the darkness and the rabble was driven back.
Where Red Angus fought with an electroray cart, sweeping the ringed nozzle of his weapon in and out of the shadows, the men of the Lower City stood a while. They fought with the ferocity of trapped thots, for the pits of Stal Tay yawned for them.
"Hold firm!" roared Tandor, his sword a sweeping line of gray death where it circled and darted.
"Fall back," cried Angus. "Back to reform! They've trapped us well, the tricky dogs."
A man with a bandaged face stood out a moment from the shadows, pointing. He cried, "Half a hundredoblisto the man who brings down Red Angus!"
"Thordad!" shouted Angus, and he knew now the manner of his betrayal. Thordad had seen a chance for reinstatement and had taken it. He had seen the rabble that served Red Angus and knew the disciplined power of the Diktor's guards. He had gone with news of Angus' plans. This trap was the result.
Red Angus forgot the others. He sighted the electroray carefully. A thin beam of brilliance lanced out. It touched Thordad on face and neck. A headless corpse rolled at the guards' feet as they came forward.
Their rush caught Angus and the men with him. It swept them backward through the streets, rolled up their flanks. It clubbed the center with sonicbeams until men screamed in the agony of mashed legs and caved-in chests.
Angus fought like a maddened griff. He used the electroray like a broom, sweeping it before him. He kicked the two-wheeled cart ahead for without the dynamo in the cart the electroray was useless.
A sudden rush of guards caught Angus in a maelstrom of cursing, howling men.
They hit him and drove him back against the glittering metal collar of one of the black pools, yawning grim and silent in the cobblestoned square. They hammered him with swordblades and pounded the cart with metal-headed axes.
Angus stumbled, fell. He came up slowly, his back to the cold metal collar of the pool, the ringed barrel of the useless electroray still in his hands.
It's all over, he told himself, staring at the swords coming for him.I've failed, and I'll die, and so will Moana, and Tandor, and all the rest of this motley crew who tried to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Angus clubbed with the ringed barrel and a man fell whimpering at his feet.
"Come on!" the pirate roared. "Here's my last stand, here at the edge of the pool! You're done with Red Angus. See how a free man dies."
Angus broke off, eyes wide.
The pool!
One of the black pools of Karr....
What was it Stasor had said of those pools? "The pools are nothing more than atomic radiation—sheer energy—bottled up in vast chambers lined with stalahasil. Ready for use at any time."
Ready for use.
With the savage fury of the barbarian, Angus slammed the ringed barrel at the faces pressing in on him. They wanted him alive and that gave him the precious moment he needed.
He whipped the electroray high in the air, swung it so the weighted powercord flailed high and far over the metal rim of the pool's collar. It dropped down and down into the black depths.
Angus pressed the stud.
A ravening stream of black mist shot from the ringed nozzle. It touched the oncoming soldiers of the Diktor, touched them, and....
Ate them!
When the black mist faded the Diktor's soldiers faded, too. They were gone in that desolation of yawning street and crumpled walls. Where the black mist had touched nothing remained.
Tandor bellowed.
The star-pirates roared their glee.
Angus moved the weapon and touched the stud again. The black mist fled outward, up one street, down another. When he was finished there were no soldiers facing them. The streets to the Citadel lay empty, beckoning.
They went forward in a ravening wave of fury, the fury of roused fighting men, who had looked the eyeless sockets of Death's skull in the face and lived. The night held no more terrors for them for their nostrils were tasting the fragrance of victory. Other men came up from the Lower City to join them, men who bore home-made weapons, crude clubs and axes.
Angus caught a sweat-streaked Tandor by the arm. "This gun! The powercord that fell in the black pool. That's what did it. It's a weapon of the Elders. The pool feeds it, gives it power...."
"What matters that?" bellowed Tandor, shaking a new sword in his hand. "It worked!"
"But it won't work if I can't keep the powercord inside the pool."
Tandor blinked, grunting as understanding came to him. "Huh. That's different. Bask. Gatl. Sonal. At the double, you riff-raff. To me."
He gave orders crisply, then swung to Angus. "They'll scour the Lower City for copper wire. We'll couple an extension to the cord so you can take it wherever you want."
Angus nodded. "Put a file of men on either side of it. Keep them there. Make them fight for that cord with their lives. If they fail us, we die."
Tandor handpicked his men, big men all, with the scars of many battles speaking their experience. The cord was slit and fitted with gleaming copper cable-lengths, insulated, and welded tightly.
Weapon in hands, Red Angus led his rabble army up the stone-block roadway steps, upward from the mire and filth of the Lower City, upward to the clean white reaches of the Citadel.
The Diktor's personal guards made a sortie against them, but the black mist swept them away. When the Hierarch sent his troops to join those of the Diktor the mist swirled around them once, and then blew away, leaving the Citadel gardens empty of opposition.
It was over.
They walked through the gardens, into the halls and corridors of the Palace. Men stood weaponless, fright tightening the lines of their faces.
Tandor roared, "The Diktor, you foul hounds. Where is he?"
Men pointed and at the end of their fingers loomed the great golden bulk of the Audience Chamber.
The Diktor and the Hierarch stood before the ruby throne. They were beaten men, expecting death, their cheeks washed an ashen grey.
Angus said, "If you've harmed Stasor you'll take a year to die."
The Diktor gestured wearily. "He's in chains, in the lower pits. We haven't harmed him. He would not translate the Book of Nard. But even so, dead he was useless to us. Alive, he might have changed his mind."
He went on to explain how he had traced Angus' journey in the spectragraph, how his men had followed Angus' course in globe ships to bring the god of Karr to the Citadel. He said, "You were beaten. Whipped. My messengers told me that you were hemmed in, your men chopped to thumbits. And yet—yet you come here—"
Madness glinted in the Diktor's eyes. His right hand moved like lightning, and the blue metal of a disintegrator caught fire from the soft luminescence of the walls.
The Diktor was swift but Tandor was faster. His hand blurred and a glittering longsword jumped the five feet that separated them. It drove the dead body of the Diktor back three steps to the ruby throne. He fell at its base and a pool of blood grew larger on the floor.
The Hierarch shrugged and put a pellet to his mouth. The poison acted with incredible speed. He was falling as the chamber door opened and a gently smiling Stasor entered, leaning on his staff.
Angus and Moana stood on the heights of the Citadel and looked down at the Lower City. They saw the thatched roofs no longer, but instead tidy houses, clean streets and healthy children. Men and women walked with pride, their bodies clean, enjoying the new life that Stasor and the Book of Nard could bring them. It would take time, all that. But it would come.
Moana moved gently. Her hand caught his. He turned her head up and his lips settled on hers.
A hundred feet away, Tandor grinned. "A martyr, I called him," he told the night.
He thought of a black-haired noblewoman who had been widowed in the night's fighting. Tandor rubbed his head again and chuckled. He tiptoed from the gardens.
[Transcriber's Note: No Section III heading in original text.]