Instantly there was a terrific explosion and a great, bloody gap lay upon the terrace where an instant before a hundred of the flower of the fighting men of Laythe had been so gloriously defending their city and their honor.
“Grenades,” I exclaimed. “Hand grenades!”
“What is it, Julian? What is it that they are doing down there?” cried Nah-ee-lah. “They are murdering my people.”
“Yes, Nah-ee-lah, they are murdering your people, and well may Va-nah curse the day that Earth Men set foot upon your world.”
“I do not understand, Julian,” she said.
“This is the work of Orthis,” I said, “who has brought from Earth the knowledge of diabolical engines of destruction. He first shelled the city with what must have been nothing more than crude mortars, for it is impossible that he has had the time to construct the machinery to build any but the simplest of guns. Now his troops are hurling hand grenades among your men. There is no chance, Nah-ee-lah, for the Laytheans to successfully pit their primitive weapons against the modern agents of destruction which Orthis has brought to bear against them. Laythe must surrender or be destroyed.”
Nah-ee-lah laid her head upon my shoulder and wept softly. “Julian,” she said at last, “this is the end, then. Take me to the Jemadav, my mother, please, and then you must go and make your peace with your fellow Earth Man. It is not right that you, a stranger, who have done so much for me, should fall with me and Laythe.”
“The only peace I can make with Orthis, Nah-ee-lah,” I replied, “is the peace of death. Orthis and I may not live together again in the same world.”
She was crying very softly, sobbing upon my shoulder, and I put my arm about her in an effort to quiet her.
“I have brought you only suffering and danger, and now death, Julian,” she said, “when you deserve naught but happiness and peace.”
I suddenly felt very strange and my heart behaved wretchedly, so that when I attempted to speak it pounded so that I could say nothing and my knees shook beneath me. What had come over me? Could it be possible that already Orthis had loosed his poison gas? Then, at last, I managed to gather myself together.
“Nah-ee-lah,” I said, “I do not fear death if you must die, and I do not seek happiness except with you.”
She looked up suddenly, her great, tear-dimmed eyes wide and gazing deep into mine.
“You mean—Julian? You mean—?”
“I mean, Nah-ee-lah, that I love you,” I-replied, though I must have stumbled through the words in a most ridiculous manner, so frightened was I.
“Ah, Julian,” she sighed, and put her arms about my neck.
“And you, Nah-ee-lah!” I exclaimed incredulously, as I crushed her to me, “can it be that you return my love?”
“I have loved you always,” she replied. “From the very first, almost—way back when we were prisoners together in the No-vans village. You Earth Men must be very blind, my Julian. A Laythean would have known it at once, for it seemed to me that upon a dozen occasions I almost avowed my love openly to you.”
“Alas, Nah-ee-lah! I must have been very blind, for I had not guessed until this minute that you loved me.”
“Now,” she said, “I do not care what happens. We have one another, and if we die together, doubtless we shall live together in a new incarnation.”
“I hope so,” I said, “but I should much rather be sure of it and live together in this.”
“And I, too, Julian, but that is impossible.”
We were walking now through the corridors of the palace toward the chamber occupied by her mother, but we did not find her there and Nah-ee-lah became apprehensive as to her safety. Hurriedly we searched through other chambers of the palace, until at last we came to the little audience chamber in which Sagroth had been slain, and as we threw open the door I saw a sight that I tried to hide from Nah-ee-lah’s eyes as I drew her around in an effort to force her back into the corridor. Possibly she guessed what impelled my action, for she shook her head and murmured: “No, Julian; whatever it is I must see it.” And then she pushed her way gently past me, and we stood together upon the threshold, looking at the harrowing sight which the interior of the room displayed.
There were the bodies of the assassins Sagroth and I had slain, and the dead Jemadar, too, precisely as he had fallen, while across his breast lay the body of Nah-ee-lah’s mother, a dagger self-thrust through her heart. For just a moment Nah-ee-lah stood there looking at them in silence, as though in prayer, and then she turned wearily away and left the chamber, closing the door behind her. We walked on in silence for some time, ascending the stairway back to the upper terrace. Upon the inner side, the flames were spreading throughout the city, roaring like a mighty furnace and vomiting up great clouds of smoke, for though the Laythean terraces are supported by tremendous arches of masonry, yet there is much wood used in the interior construction of the buildings, while the hangings and the furniture are all inflammable.
“We had no chance to save the city,” said Nah-ee-lah, with a sigh. “Our people, called from their normal duties by the false Ko-tah, were leaderless. The fire fighters, instead of being at their posts, were seeking the Me of their Jemadar. Unhappy day! Unhappy day!”
“You think they could have stopped the fire?” I asked.
“The little ponds, the rivulets, the waterfalls, the great public baths and the tiny lakes that you see upon every terrace were all built with fire protection in mind. It is easy to divert their waters and flood, any tier of buildings. Had my people been at their posts, this, at least, could not have happened!”
As we stood watching the flames we suddenly saw people emerging in great numbers upon several of the lower; terraces. They were evidently in terrified flight, and then others appeared upon terraces above them—Kalkars who hurled hand grenades amongst the Laytheans beneath them. Men, women, and children ran hither, and thither, shrieking and crying and seeking for shelter, but from the buildings behind them, rushing them outward upon the terraces, came other Kalkars with hand grenades. The fires hemmed the people of Laythe upon either side and the Kalkars attacked them from the rear and from above. The weaker fell and were trodden to death, and I saw scores fall upon their own lances or drive; daggers into the hearts of their loved ones.
The massacre spread rapidly around the circumference of the city and the Kalkars drove the people from the upper terraces downward between the raging fires which were increasing until the mouth of the great crater was filled with roaring flames and smoke. In the occasional gaps we could catch glimpses of the holocaust beneath us.
A sudden current of air rising from the crater lifted the smoke pall high for a moment, revealing the entire circumference of the crater, the edge of which was crowded with Laytheans. And then I saw a warrior from the opposite side leap upon the surrounding wall that bordered the lower terrace at the edge of the yawning crater. He turned and called aloud some message to his fellows, and then wheeling, threw his arms above his head and leaped outward into the yawning, bottomless abyss. Instantly the others seemed to be inoculated with the infection of his mad act. A dozen men leaped to the wall and dove head foremost into the crater. The thing spread slowly at first, and then with the rapidity of a prairie fire, it ran around the entire circle of the city. Women hurled their children in and then leaped after them. The multitude fought one with another for a place upon the wall from which they might cast themselves to death. It was a terrible—an awe-inspiring sight.