CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Once again, Toroh's trickery was disclosed. To Fahn, the tactics of the Noths were now understandable. The Noth attack on Anglese City, at which Fahn had hurled all his armed forces, had been no more than a ruse to cover up Toroh's main offensive at Orleen.

Toroh's orders, doubtless, had been to prolong the engagement until, under cover of night, his main forces could effect their landing at the other end of the island. This small barge with the magnet had probably been ordered to slip by, hugging the north shore of the channel, and proceed to Orleen. But its commander had, at what he must have considered a decisive moment, used it against the remnant of the little aerial army.

Toroh's landing at Orleen was taking place; the channel expedition had served its purpose. The two remaining barges off Anglese City were in full retreat toward the open sea. The smaller barge, with its screaming magnet, was heading swiftly down the channel toward Orleen. The figures in the air were struggling against its pull. Some were losing, being hurled forward with control of themselves lost; others were forcing their way down to the water-level where the attraction seemed less. Still others had succeeded in escaping upward beyond its range. They circled high overhead, seeking some way of helping their unfortunate comrades.

The double disaster was more than Fahn could cope with, or even watch closely in the two mirrors. Orleen lay on a peninsula some ten miles broad, with water on three sides of the city. The Noths were landing, spreading around the shores; across the land from shore to shore they were massed, but as yet they had not entered the city. Thousands of Arans were there--the king and his royal family--penned like rats in a trap. And there was only the small cavern with its meager garrison of Scientists to defend them.

George found himself near the outer edge of the magnetic attraction. He could see the figures in the air nearer the barge struggling to escape from it. He did not know where Loto was, or Azeela or Dee. He saw Mogruud, with fifteen or twenty of the Bas about him. They were passing swiftly below.

George wondered what he should do. The two larger barges were withdrawing. Some of the aerial figures were following them, and George started moving that way. The figures were attacking the barges from down near the surface of the water. Mogruud and his men were there now. George hastened.

This last attack of the Anglese was one of desperate fury. George could see the flash of the bolts close to the water. One of the barges must have fired through its own darkness and struck its mate. As the blackness cleared, George saw that both the Noth vessels were blazing. One of them sank a moment later; from the flames on the other, figures were plunging into the water.

The Anglese--one of them mounting--cast loose a light-bomb. In the brilliant glare, the aerial figures were darting about over the surface of the water, seeking out the Noth men and dogs who were swimming toward the island and striking them with the little thunderbolts, or with spurts of yellow-red flame at closer range. George arrived to join them. It was ghastly but necessary work. He used his weapons until they were exhausted.

The battle was won--all but the giant magnet. In the distance its blood-curdling scream still sounded.

And then George saw Dee. She had been several thousand feet up, flying with another girl, when the magnet was first put into operation. They were not close enough to feel its pull. A whirling knife had approached them; struck the other girl, killed her. It was spent, but a corner of it had knocked Dee's motor-cylinder from her hand. She had begun floating down. Ever since, she had been trying to swim through the air; with arms and legs kicking, she had fought to sustain herself.

She was almost at the surface when George saw her struggling, ineffectually, like a swimmer exhausted. He darted to her and gathered her in his arms. His cylinder drew them both upward.

"Dee," he whispered. "My little Dee You're safe!"

Loto had dropped close to the surface. The magnet was pulling him, but with his cylinder held against it, he could make headway. By now the magnet had done most of its work; those in the air had either succumbed or escaped beyond range.

To one side, Loto could see the attack on the other two barges. Fahn's voice in his ear told him of the landing at Orleen. The Scientist ordered them all back. They were needed at Orleen; they must return.

But the magnetic barge was heading down the channel. It would be used at Orleen. It must be stopped--_destroyed now_. Loto disobeyed Fahn. He headed for the little barge.

It was a plunge of no more than a few minutes. Soon Loto was well within the field of magnetism; he could not withdraw now. He tried to think clearly. Those others of the Anglese who had met this death had lost control of themselves in the air. They had plunged forward, struggling, whirling so that they had not been able to use their weapons.

Loto had no thunderbolts left. His only weapon was the flaming liquid gas which he could project some fifty feet.

Just above the surface, head first, like an arrow, he slid forward through the air. He did not fight against the magnet; he used his cylinder only to keep himself from turning sidewise.

He was conscious of the dark outlines of the barge rushing up at him. He fired his jet of flame; though he did not know it then, he had fired too soon. The flames fell short. A downward thrust of his cylinder power forced him upward. He barely missed the wire caging as his body shot over it, past it.

The magnet's scream was deafening. The Noths on the barge had fired a small thunderbolt between the wires, but had missed the swiftly passing mark.

Loto's momentum carried him a hundred feet or more beyond the barge. The magnet stopped him, drew him swiftly back. He was turning over now; he had lost control of himself. The sea, the sky, the approaching barge were mingled in whirling confusion. He knew he could never escape; he must strike the magnet with his flame, this time or never. A moment more and he would be electrocuted against the cage.

A tiny bolt cracked past him. He turned over again, righted himself momentarily, and fired. The electrical scream died into abrupt silence; the flames had caught the magnet, burned out its coils.

Released suddenly, Loto's body shot upward with the pull of his cylinder. The cage, with flames spreading under it, dropped away beneath him.

He righted himself, and at a distance of about three hundred feet, hung poised in the air. The flames spread over the barge; a few Noth figures plunged frantically into the water.

Loto mounted upward to join his comrades. Barely seventy-five of the original three hundred and twenty-eight, were left. Ten of them were girls. Loto found Azeela safe. George still carried Dee in his arms.

The flames from the burning barges died out; the silent moonlit channel was strewn with floating bodies. It seemed almost futile to search for their wounded, but they descended, and for a time moved about near the surface. They found two still alive--one burned, the other, a girl, mangled by a flying knife.

Silently, with their burdens, they took their way back through the air to the cavern.

It was a night of confusion. The Noths were clustered around Orleen, waiting for the dawn before they entered the city. They were still coming across the channel on swimming dogs. All night they came. The puny garrison at the Orleen cavern was powerless to stop them. It exhausted its bolts and began sending out calls for help.

The Bas around Anglese City were mobilizing with their dogs. Hastily, Fahn equipped them with weapons--hand thunderbolts and flame projectors. An hour-and-a-half before dawn, they were ready to start their almost hopeless attempt to stem the horde of invaders who now held the entire western end of the island.

The little rag-end of the aerial army that returned from the battle was exhausted, but in a few hours, it too, was ready to start.

Fahn, with his two daughters, and Rogers, Loto and George, took the Frazia plane. On its platform Fahn mounted a single projector, the most powerful he possessed.

They started an hour before dawn--silent as they gazed down at the island of palms that was passing beneath them. They overtook their Bas army and left it behind them. In the air, back over Anglese City, tiny specks showed that the aerial army was starting. Above the hum of the Frazia motors they hear the aerial voices of Anglese City telling the Bas peasants who lived between the two cities to come eastward. They were obeying; little groups of refugees--old men, women and children--were moving along all the roads. In the sky ahead, occasional flashes shot up from Orleen.

"The Arans went there to avoid the deluge," Rogers said suddenly, and his laugh was grim.

No one answered him.

Behind them the eastern sky was brightening. Loto was piloting the plane, with Rogers beside him. The daylight grew, began reddening.

"Look, Father, there's Orleen!"

* * * * *

The second largest city on the island, Orleen lay in a hollow, with twin peaks close behind it, the mouth of the channel and the gulf in front and to the sides. It was an Aran city, more beautiful even than the capital.

The plane, flying high, was circling. Loto's gaze went to the dawn. The sun came up a huge, distorted ball of crimson fire, with lines of flame radiating from it to the zenith. A dark mass of rain cloud, hanging low above Orleen, lost its blackness as it soaked up the crimson light. The sky, even to the western horizon, was steeped in blood; the water reflected it; the air itself seemed to hold it suspended.

"The day of deluge," murmured Loto. "The blood that will be spilled today--"

As though in answer to his words, the clouds above Orleen began spilling rain. And as the water fell, it caught the crimson sunlight--myriad drops of blood falling upon the Aran city.

The storm was transitory the rain cloud swept past, but the blood in the sky remained.

In the hours that had passed since the plane left Anglese City, the Noths had occupied Orleen. Its cavern was taken. The Noth men and dogs stood in solid ranks around the mountain base; the beaches were black with them. They were still coming across the channel--riders mounted upon swimming dogs, an occasional barge.

There were no sounds of thunderbolts in the city, no flashes. But as the plane descended, human sounds were heard--faint screams. And the city streets were in confusion.

Fahn was staring down into the city through lenses mounted in short black tubes. He murmured something that his companions did not catch. His face was white and set; he was struggling to hold his composure.

"Descend, Loto. They are not armed with thunderbolts; those are all with Toroh and his men in the cavern."

The plane glided down, circling low above the city. The scene of carnage there became a series of brief, fragmentary pictures. Above the drone of the Frazia motors, they could hear the snarling of fighting dogs, the screams of men and women, the shrill treble of children--human screams of agony as the fangs of the brutes tore at them.

The plane passed low above a city street, following its length to the blue water that lapped the white sand at its end. The street was full of dogs. A Noth rider--sinister, animal-like, with his black-bound head and his naked torso covered with black hair--arrived at a silent white house, with its white columns, splashing fountain, and vivid trellised flowers. The Noth dismounted, rushed into the house. He came out dragging an Aran woman--flung her white body to the eager, snarling brute. At the beach, hundreds of terrified Arans sprang into the water; the dogs followed them, pulled them under, released them at last, and the surf flung their mangled bodies up on the sand.

There was a public square where a hundred or more Arans had gathered. The dogs charged them, tore at them, flung them into the air--fought over their broken bodies long after life had gone.

The dogs spread to every corner of the city. A child climbed a pergola--a little Aran boy, white skinned, with long golden curls and a plump baby face. The dogs could not reach him; a Noth man climbed up, pulled him down.

Loto had given the Frazia controls to his father. With a small thunderbolt globe at his belt he went to the platform outside the cabin. Presently he found Azeela beside him. Her arm was around him; together they clung to their insecure footing, watching the scenes below as the plane made its swift circle over the city.

What could Fahn do? The thunderbolt projector, here on the platform, could kill a few Noths, a few dogs here and there. But of what avail would that be among these hordes? The Orleen Cavern? Could they attack that? Toroh was probably there in the cavern. If they could kill him, these Noth barbarians, without a leader...

Confused and sick from what he was seeing, Loto tried to force Azeela into the cabin, but the white lipped girl would not go. The plane approached a house where an Aran woman crouched on the roof top with two little girls huddled at her feet. A Noth appeared from below, dashed at them across the roof. Beneath the eaves a dozen dogs stood with bared, drippings fangs pointed upward.

The plane was almost over the house. Loto pointed his globe downward, pressed its lever. There was a flash, a miniature crack of thunder and the globe recoiled in his hand. On the roof top the Noth man and the Aran woman and her children lay dead. The woman's white robe was blackened, the children's bodies were burned, shriveled; a cornice of the building was ripped off and the woodwork was blazing.

It was so useless! Loto flung the globe from him, loathing it for having killed that woman and her little girls. He drew Azeela back with him into the cabin.

The king's palace in Orleen stood near the waterfront, in the midst of broad, magnificent gardens. A mob of Noths surged around it, into the lower doors, on the balconies and roof top. As the plane passed overhead, its occupants caught a fleeting glimpse of the queen and her children, the girl wives of the king and the king himself--in the face of death with petty barriers at last broken down--all huddled together in a corner of the roof. The Noths rushed at them, broad, heavy swords flashing.

The plane swept past.

The twin peaks of Orleen stood six hundred feet apart, just behind the city. The one that housed the cavern had a broad, circular base, with a ragged, volcanic looking cone above. The other peak was considerably higher; it looked down upon its fellow.

Fahn had directed Rogers to fly the plane to the higher of the peaks. The Scientist had hardly spoken. He was pale, grim as ever, but his gaze, when he looked upon his daughters held a curious softness. What were his plans. What were they going to do? George asked the questions, but Fahn ignored them.

The little aerial army approaching from Anglese City was now in sight. Fahn radioed them to move back, descend, and stop the Bas army and its dogs. All of them were to return to the capital.

The plane landed on a small level rock near the summit of the higher peak. On top of the cavern, six hundred feet away, a solitary male figure stood. The blood light of the sunrise fell full upon it. _Toroh!_ He was standing there, regarding the city.

Fahn leaped to the projector, but Toroh had disappeared.

"Hurry!" exclaimed the Scientist. He still would not let them question him. He unlashed the projector and they helped him lower it to the ground. He leaped down after it, adjusting it, swinging it to bear down upon the lower peak.

"We must hurry," he repeated. He was back on the cabin platform. "They will be out of the cavern, firing upon us."

The Noths down there were gazing up at the plane; others were now pouring out of the cavern entrance.

Fahn's projector was trained on the crater of the lower mountain. From this greater height its depths were visible.

In the cabin of the plane the Scientist's arms went around his daughters. "Good-by, my girls--for a little time," he whispered in their own tongue.

They were frightened; suddenly Dee was crying. But he pushed them from him. He would attack the cavern; they must all stay in the plane--rise high--very high.

Something in the man's look, the command in his voice, struck them all silent. They obeyed. He climbed down to the rock. The plane mounted swiftly into the air.

The sun was above the eastern horizon; the sky was an inverted bowl of blood. Beneath the plane Fahn's figure, standing beside his projector, showed clear-cut against the black rock under him. At the base of the cavern mountain Noths had appeared with apparatus. They were adjusting it hurriedly.

A blue-white flash from Fahn's projector spat downward across the six hundred feet and into the crater mouth. Thunder rolled out. Another flash, another--until they became almost continuous. Far down in the earth within the crater, the slumbering forces began to answer. A rumbling sounded--a low, ominous muttering, pregnant with infinite power. Steam hissed upward; a puff of smoke....

The plane had been ascending rapidly; it was thousands of feet up now. Fahn's thunderbolts persisted, and at last the angered fires of the earth were unleashed. The mountain seemed to split apart; the report was deafening; flaming gases, cinders and ashes were hurled upward and outward.

The main force of the explosion was sidewise toward the city, but even so the plane barely avoided the torrent of molten rock and blazing gas that mounted from below.

The city was engulfed in flames over which a heavy smoke hung like a pall. A tremendous lake of viscous liquid fire lay where the peaks and the cavern once had been. The earth was rumbling, shaking, splitting apart. The scene was vague--dulled by a lurid red glare that struggled with the blackness of the smoke.

A moment, and a rift appeared. The smoke seemed to part, roll aside. Through the rift, the burning city showed for an instant clear and distinct--the crowded city in which no single human or beast could have remained alive.

Still not content, the earth was heaving over the whole western end of the island. And from the sea a great tidal wave came rolling up over the sinking land, hissing, quenching the fires, obscuring everything in a cloud of steam. Like a mist, the steam presently dissipated. The turgid waters lashed themselves into furious waves that gradually were stilled.

And then it was daylight, sullen red day, with only the wreckage on the waters--charred fragments of bodies, thousands of them floating for miles around--mute evidence of what had gone before.