“And you know a way out?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Kandar, “but there’s a hitch.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“There is a secret passage leading from the palace out into the city. It ends in a building near the wall. In the cellar of that building another passage starts that leads outside the city.”
“But where’s the hitch?” I repeated.
“The hitch is,” he said, “that the secret passage starts in the jong’s own sleeping apartments, and the chances are that Gangor occupies them now.”
“We’ll have to wait until he is away,” said Doran.
“Can we get to them without being apprehended?” I asked.
“We can try,” said Kandar. “I think it can be done after dark.”
“It is after dark now,” I said.
“So we start,” said Doran.
“And may our luck hold,” added Kandar.
Kandar led the way along a dark corridor and up a flight of stairs at the top of which he cautiously opened a door and looked into the room beyond.
“All right,” he whispered, “come on.”
He led us into the palace kitchen, and through that and several pantries into a huge state dining room. The jongs of Japal lived well. We followed Kandar to the end of the room farthest from the main entrance, and here he showed us a little door hidden behind hangings.
“Where the jong used to escape when he became bored,” he explained.
Beyond the door was a narrow corridor. “Go quietly,” cautioned Kandar. “This corridor leads to the jong’s sleeping apartments. We’ll have a look in them and see if Gangor is there.”
We crept along noiselessly through the dark little corridor until Kandar halted at a door. We pressed close behind him as he opened it a crack. The room beyond was in darkness.
“Gangor is probably drinking with some of his cronies,” whispered Kandar, “and hasn’t retired yet. We are in luck. Come on, follow me; but still go quietly.”
We crept across that dark room, Doran touching Kandar to keep in contact and follow him, and I touching Doran. It seemed a perfectly enormous room to me, and traversing it that way in total darkness, I somehow lost my balance just enough to cause me to throw one foot out to regain my equilibrium. Well, I threw it in the wrong place at the wrong time. It hit a table or something and knocked it over. The thing fell with a crash that would have awakened the dead; and instantly there was a cry, and a light went on.
There was Gangor right in front of us sitting up on his sleeping couch, screaming for the guard. On a table at the side of the couch lay my pistol. Gangor had taken it away from the warrior of the guard all right. It would have been better for him had he not.
As I leaped forward and snatched it from the table, a dozen warriors burst into the apartment. “This way!” Kandar shouted to me, and the three of us backed away toward the secret entrance to the corridor leading from the palace. At least I thought that that was where he was leading us, but he wasn’t. As he told me later, he had not wished to reveal the secret to Gangor and his warriors.
I menaced the advancing guardsmen with my pistol. “Stand back!” I ordered. “Don’t come closer, or I’ll kill you!”
“Kill them!” screamed Gangor. “Kill them all!”
A warrior rushed me. I pressed the trigger—but nothing happened. For the first time since I had had it, my r-ray pistol failed me—failed me when it was a question of life or death and even more; a question as to whether I was ever to return to Duare again.
But, unarmed as I was, there were other weapons at hand. Maybe they had not been designed as instruments of death, but they were to serve their purpose. I seized a bench and hurled it into the face of the advancing warrior. He went down; and immediately Kandar and Doran grasped the possibilities of the furnishings of the apartment, and seized upon the nearest things at hand.
Behind them a cluster of spears had been arranged upon the wall as a decoration. I saw them and dragged them down. Now we were armed! But the odds were against us—twelve against three; or rather eleven now, for the man I had hit with the bench lay where he had fallen, and Gangor only sat on his couch screaming for more guardsmen. I saw Kandar working his way toward him; and so Doran and I moved with him, keeping our backs against the wall.
Fencing with spears is quite an interesting experience; while thus engaged, one does not doze, I can assure you. It happened that the spear which had fallen to me was light and rather long, a fact which gave me an advantage that I was not long in realizing and seizing upon. I found that while I could not parry well with one hand, I could jab quite effectively; so, picking up a light table to use as a shield, I succeeded so well that I jabbed an antagonist in the heart after parrying his thrust with my table.
Doran and Kandar had each killed a man, and now the remainder of them seemed less keen to push the assault. Kandar had worked around until he was close beside Gangor’s couch; and as he jerked his spear from the heart of a dead guardsman, he wheeled and drove it through Gangor’s body.
Gangor did not die immediately. He lay sprawled across his couch vomiting blood; and between paroxisms, screaming in agony. Jantor, jong of Japal, had been avenged.
Now more warriors were pushing into the chamber; and it looked pretty bad for us three, when there burst upon our ears the sound of gongs and trumpets. As if by magic, the fighting stopped, as we all listened.
XXIV
Beneath the sound of the gongs and trumpets, we could hear men shouting.
“It is the call to arms!” cried a warrior. “The city has been attacked.”
“The Myposans have returned,” said another. “Who will lead us? We have no jong.”
“You have a jong,” I cried. “Follow Kandar! He is your jong.”
They hesitated for a moment; then a warrior said, “Kandar is jong. I will follow him. Who will come with me?”
Kandar, taking advantage of their indecision, started for the door; and Doran and I followed him. “Come!” commanded Kandar. “To the streets. To the defense of Japal!” Like sheep they followed him.
When we arrived in the palace grounds and the warriors there saw Kandar and Doran leading some of their fellows, they cheered; then Kandar took command, leading a strong party out into the city streets where fighting was in progress. It was then that I saw that it was not Myposans who had attacked Japal, but strange, repulsive-looking warriors of a sickly greenish hue and entirely hairless—no hair on their heads, no whiskers, no eye-brows, no eyelashes—and right on the tops of their heads was a little knob of flesh. They fought with swords and long-handled hooks, holding the latter in their left hands. With these hooks they would catch an antagonist and draw him close; then cut or thrust at him with the sword. Oftentimes, the hook was enough if the point caught at the base of the brain. They were nasty weapons.
If my pistol had been serviceable they wouldn’t have worried me much, but with only a spear I felt very much at a disadvantage. I had had no time to examine the pistol since I had recovered it, but now I stopped before getting into the thick of the fight and went over it carefully. Evidently some one had been tampering with it, probably in an effort to discover how it worked; and I was much relieved to see that they had merely changed an adjustment. In a few seconds I had remedied the trouble; and when I looked up I saw that I was just in time, or almost just in time. I wasn’t quite sure which, for a big green devil was reaching for me with his hook.
I was in a most disadvantageous position, as I had rested my spear in the hollow of my left elbow with the butt on the ground while I worked on my pistol; and the hook had already passed over my shoulder to take me in the back of the neck. It was just a matter of a split second before I should be gaffed.
I did what was probably the best thing, but I did it quite mechanically—there was no time for conscious reasoning. I sprang toward my antagonist. Had I sprung away, the hook would have impaled me; but by springing toward him I confused him. At the same time I struck his sword aside with my left arm and sent a stream of r-rays through his heart. It was a close call.