Golden Blood (9 page)

15. MIRRORS OF PERIL

AS THE hours went by and the camel-mounted columns wound onward, the weird mirage hung ominously in the sky ahead, tawny-green eyes of the golden woman and purple-black orbs of the snake gazing down. At times the phenomenon appeared curiously near. It seemed to draw steadily away, as the expedition advanced, keeping a uniform distance.

Price speculated upon possible scientific explanations of it, without arriving at any satisfactory conclusion. The mirage, he knew, must be simply the colossal reflection of real beings, produced by the application of optical laws unknown to the outside world.

The hypnotic or paralytic effect of the snake’s eyes was even more puzzling. He supposed that the golden reptile merely possessed the slight power of fascination of the ordinary snake, increased in proportion to its size, and perhaps intensified or amplified in the same manner as its body was magnified in the mirage.

The men remained subdued and frightened. The courage of Fouad and his Bedouins was maintained only by their confidence in the tank and the other invincible weapons of the
farengi
band. The Beni Anz
were
similarly sustained by a faith in Price as a supernatural deliverer.

Many times the column lagged. Price and Jacob Garth and Yarmud rode continually back and forth, encouraging the men, warning them not to look into the maddening mirage hanging ahead, where the snake’s eyes gleamed with the cold and deadly fascination of ancient and sinister wisdom.

As they drew near the mountain, Price sent out scouts.

Five miles from the black, basaltic mass, the head of the column reached the edge of a shallow
wadi,
a valley a thousand yards across. Three scouts, upon fleet
hejins,
were half across its level floor, when the low black lava-crowned hills above the opposite slope burst into menacing life.

Scores of blue-clad men appeared from nowhere, dragging to the hill-crest great, silvery, ellipsoid mirrors that flickered in the sun; mirrors supported upon metal frames, like the one that had slain the Arab Hamed with an invisible ray of cold, in the mountain pass.

Broad bright ellipsoids wavered and shimmered in the sun. Queer flashes of violet darted from them, strangely painful to the eye.

At first appearance of the enemy, the three scouts turned and dashed madly back, but not swiftly enough to escape the mirrors. The camel in the lead stumbled and fell. Rider and mount shattered, splintered, when they struck the ground, bodies suddenly chilled to the point of brittleness. The fragments quickly were silvered with frost.

An instant later the second man went down, in a swirl of snow-flakes. Then the third, with a crash like breaking glass.

Fear swept the column on the low lava hills above the
wadi.
The brooding menace of the mirage had been endurable because it was distant, half unreal. These mirrors of cold were as terrifyingly strange, and they were immediately dangerous. Bedouins and Beni Anz stirred uneasily, but at sight of Price and Jacob Garth unmoved ahead of them, held their ground.

Defense was swiftly organized. Garth boomed rapid orders. The Krupp mountain guns, the four Hotchkiss machine-guns, the two Stokes mortars, were quickly unpacked, mounted in covered positions along the hilltop.

The
sheikh
Fouad El Akmet’s men were gathered behind the tank to follow it in the first charge. The four hundred and eighty warriors of the Beni Anz, armed, save for a hundred archers, only with long swords and spears, were held for the moment in reserve, in the rear.

The two little cannons were soon thudding regularly, sweeping the opposite slope of the
wadi
with screaming shrapnel. The Hotchkiss guns broke into rattling music, and snipers, flung prone, nursed barking rifles.

A few minutes longer the mirrors flashed with eye-searing violet. Little swirls of frost appeared in the air about the gunners, and several men fell, shivering, temporarily paralyzed. But the range was apparently too great for effective use of the mirrors. They were dragged back beyond the lava ridge, out of view again.

Price and Jacob Garth, near the guns, scanned the opposite side of the
wadi
through binoculars. A dozen still blue forms were sprawled there, victims of bullets and shrapnel splinters. But the living had vanished.

“Our move,” Garth observed, serenely bland as ever.
“Can’t afford to leave the initiative up to them.
And the ammunition for the Krupps won’t hold out all day.”

He turned to boom orders.

The gray-armored tank lumbered over the crest of the hill. At top speed it rumbled down the slope and clanked across the
wadi’s
stony floor, machine-guns hammering. Behind it raced Fouad’s Bedouins, with their new Lebel rifles.

In undisciplined but splendid charge the Arabs dashed after the tank, throwing up their rifles to fire in headlong career. They were half-way across the valley when the mirrors of cold were pushed back to the hill before them, from concealed trenches.

One Arab fell with his camel into a frosty heap of shattered fragments. Another, then two more, went down in clouds of glittering ice. Then the tank was abruptly white, gleaming argent.

A few seconds it lumbered on. Price hoped that its armor had been proof against the ray; remembered how nearly he had been frozen in it, back in the Jebel Harb. The roaring motor faltered, died. The tank veered, turned broadside to the enemy, stood silent and motionless, a silvery ghost of
itself
. He felt quick regret for old Sam Sorrows.

Though the Krupps and machine-guns were still raining death upon the blue-clad crews of the mirrors, the tank’s failure shattered the morale of the Arabs. Wheeling their racing dromedaries, they plunged back in mad retreat. And two more fell as they fled.

Disaster was unpleasantly near, Price realized. The proudest weapon of the
farengi
had
fallen
a quick victim to the mirrors of cold. Another such reverse would set the Arabs in panic flight.

“Want to try a charge with your natives, Durand?” asked Garth. “That’s about the only chance. We’ll be helpless when the ammunition’s gone.”

Price looked across the
wadi
with narrowed eyes. It would cost many lives to gain the opposite hill; but, if they retreated now, the Beni Anz would never find courage to advance again.

“All right,” he told Garth.

“Good luck. I’ll keep up the fire.” The big man took his hand in that puffy paw that was so surprisingly strong.

Five minutes later Price rode down into the
wadi,
swinging the golden ax and raising his voice in the barbaric chant of Iru. Behind his racing
hejin
came
the Beni Anz warriors, in long, irregular lines and scattered groups, scattered purposely.

Half a mile ahead was the low, lava-crowned hill, glittering with half a score of huge, spinning mirrors. Blue-robed men crowded about them, many falling beneath Garth’s fire, but others springing from the hidden trenches to replace them.

Camels’ feet beat upon the stony ground with a vast, hollow thunder. Eager, exultant cries rang out, repeated phrases of the ax-song: “Kill… Korlu the red doom… Drinker of life-blood…
Keeper of death-gate.”

Ellipsoid mirrors swayed and spun, flashed painfully violet.

Price did not look back. Shouting the ax-song, he charged straight on; but he heard the screams of terror, and sharp, splintering crashes, like the shattering of myriad panes of glass—the sound of frozen men and camels, smashing to fragments on the rocks.

A blast of icy air struck his face, misty with floating ice-crystals—breath-taking. A freezing ray had come perilously near.

He rode on. The wild drumming of feet behind did not falter.

At last Price’s dromedary was leaping up the hill, toward the nearest mirror. The broad, shimmering ellipsoid swung toward him—a six-foot sheet of silvery metal, mounted upon a delicate, elaborate mechanism.

Two blue-robes were behind it, the glittering brand of the snake upon their foreheads. As one turned the mirror, another manipulated a little knob.

Price saw a violet glow flush the argent metal.

Then he had leapt his camel upon the machine. It collapsed, with a rending and crashing of metal. The
hejin
fell sprawling. Price sprang clear of the saddle, plunged for the two blue-robes with the great ax.

It all took place with the disordered swiftness of a dream.

One moment, a dozen blue-clad snake-men were surrounding Price, with wicked, double-curved yellow
yataghans.
The next, the charging Bern Anz were rolling about him like a resistless wave.

Fire from Krupps and machine-guns had ceased as they neared the ridge. And the mirrors of cold ceased to function as their crews were ridden down by camel-mounted warriors.

Savage battle raged for a few minutes along the hilltop, with no quarter given. Two hundred of the Beni Anz had fallen upon the
wadi
floor, but those who survived to reach the hill exacted a terrible price for their fallen comrades.

A little time of utter confusion.
Blue snake-men rallying about their mirrors.
Camels crashing through them, kicking, slashing with yellow tusks.
Men and camels falling, before arrow and
yataghan
and spear.

Price, on foot, held
his own
. The great ax drank blood, and the barbaric song of Iru still rang out.

Then, abruptly, amazingly, the battle was won.

Along the crest of the hill stood the great mirrors, twisted, wrecked. Around them, and in the shallow, lava-walled trenches behind
them,
lay motionless, gory blue-clad bodies—the snake-men were down, to the last man. Here and there were camels, dead or dying. The survivors of the Beni Anz, no more than half the number that had begun the charge, were swiftly stripping the dead, loading camels with their loot.

Behind lay the grim black 
wadi
 floor, scattered with white, shattered heaps that had been men and camels, the silvery, silent tank among them.

Price looked toward the mountain.

Five miles away across the bleak, dark desolation of the lava fields 
rose
 its forbidding basaltic masses; Cyclopean black pillars and columns, soaring up two thousand feet, to the glittering splendor of snowy marble and burnished gold that was the palace of the yellow people.

From the dome of the highest gorgeous tower yet spread the fan of lanced rays of rose and topaz light. Above the rays, the weird mirage still hung. Braving the serpent’s hypnotic eyes, Price ventured another glance at it.

The yellow woman, still beside the giant snake, still caressing it, met his glance with a mocking, derisive smile, and shrugged her slim yellow shoulders, as much as to say: “Perhaps you have won, but what of it?”

“Malikar!” wailed one of the Arabs in sudden terror. “Malikar comes! 
On the golden tiger!”

Dropping his eyes from the mirage, Price saw the yellow tiger running across the lava plain from the mountain. A gigantic beast, fully the size of an ordinary elephant, it carried the ebon 
howdah,
 with Malikar, the golden man, seated in it.

Still several miles away, the giant cat was covering distance at a surprising rate. Obviously terrified, the Beni Anz warriors frantically loaded the last of their plunder, and began leading their camels back into the 
wadi.