CHAPTER VII
POLARIS MAKES HIS CHOICE
Dawn, the cheerless gray of clouded winter, crept over the city of Adlaz. In her bed in the prison-palace of Bel-Tisan the dark-haired Princess Memene of Sardanes lay, and beside her was her new little son. But Memene was not well, and Rose knew she would not live.
"Oh, that Minos were here to see!" Memene said faintly. And again—"It is the king he was so sure of." She smiled at Rose. "It is the king, my sister. And he shall be named Patrymion, after a man who is dead—a very brave man." And smiling, she passed away.
When she could control her grief—she had come to love Memene dearly—Rose summoned Brunar and told him what had befallen. The captain heard her sorrowfully, for he had honored and admired the Sardanian princess and pitied her sad circumstance. He sent the old woman out to fetch a younger one to care for the child. And then he brought men to bear Memene away. Out of the kindness that was in him, the captain looked to it that she lay in a fair and pleasant spot, and not where the common people of Ad buried their dead.
Persuaded by Rose, and because he had some knowledge of English and could bear the message, Brunar took horse at noon and rode down to the harbor, there to seek Minos.
This happening was nearly two months after the departure of Polaris and the others who had gone to Ruthar. In the intervening time, Oleric the Red had tried and tried again to get word through to Adlaz, informing those who were left behind of the fair progress of events. Always he had failed until one of his men, by craft and waiting, had gained a place with the prison guard.
With him Rose Emer managed to get speech, and they arranged that on the following day he should slip away and try to reach Ruthar again, bearing a message from her to Polaris.
On one of the quays in the harbor of Adlaz sat Minos, the Sardanian. It was cold on the quay, but he did not feel it. His back was weary with carrying burdens, but he was unconscious of that weariness. Why should the body live when the soul is dead within it? Nor did his eyes see the dancing waters of the harbor, where the fademes of Bel-Ar rode at their anchors. Until this day he had counted the hours with hope, and had borne his tasks with patience. Now hope had gone, and the taste of living was as dry dust.
For Memene was dead.
When Brunar had brought him the news, he had heard the captain through, and thanked him gravely. Then he had turned twice in his tracks and fallen like a stone. So long had he lain that Brunar deemed him dead. When he had come back from that swoon, Minos would work no more; nor did any seek to force him. He had wandered aimlessly out on the quay. When night fell, it found him still sitting there.
It was a wild night. The moon shone but dimly, and often was veiled by scudding snow-clouds, and the stars were wan. Far to the south, over Ruthar, a faint rose-pink against the sky told that the southern lights, aurora australis, were playing. Somewhere beneath their flickering radiance lay the lost kingdom of Sardanes that the snows had covered deep. A wind, gusty and fitful, leaped over the mountain-rim and tossed the waters of the crater-lake so that the fademes swung restlessly and clanked their anchor-chains. One by one the mitzl globes among the warehouses and along the quays were hooded, until only the watch-lights were burning.
A soldier of the guard hailed Minos; but the Sardanian answered not, stirred not.
"Now let the fool sit and freeze," said the soldier impatiently. And then he added, "Poor fellow." For he had heard the story of the fallen king, and had a good wife and bairns of his own in Adlaz town.
In Sardanes, Minos had been known as the smiling prince. But for all his patient, kindly ways, he was high-spirited. And once roused, none was quicker to strike than he. Events of the last few weeks had galled his temper. Now, coming out of the stupor into which this final blow had cast him, he was near to madness.
Willingly would have Minos found his way to Adlaz, plucked Bel-Ar from his gilded bed and broken him across his knee. But the way was treacherous, and there were many guards, and he knew that he could not reach the king. Into the south he would have gone, to seek Polaris and to play a man's part in the great war. But that way was closed to him also. The few men that he might slay in the attempt before they pulled him down and slew him would be all too few to satisfy the fires within him that burned fiercely for vengeance. With only a great calamity would Minos be content.
Uneasily tossed the fademes in the harbor, their anchor-chains rattling.
Finally Minos heard them. Then he knew why they were calling to him.
Many times in his work about the harbor of Adlaz the Sardanian had been on board the fademes. He had helped to discharge the cargoes of those which came in from the fair islands of the southern seas, bringing strange tropical fruits, dainties for the lords and ladies of Adlaz, and other articles of the commerce which their captains carried on with the savage islanders. On many an atoll of the Pacific the brown Melanesians knew all the steel and gold clad white men who came up from the sea to trade with them.
But they kept out of the track of civilization; for that was their law. Civilized men saw them not, though they sometimes heard tales of them among the savages—tales which, of course, they did not believe.
Working on the ships as he had, Minos had learned much of the mode of their operation. Himself no mean worker in metals, the mysteries of these wonderful ships of the underseas had caught his fancy, and he had studied them. He knew that such a lever turned would start the fademe forward; that such another halted it; and others which caused it to turn and to dive beneath the surface or emerge at the will of its engineer. He also knew where were the levers which controlled the mighty power in the four great shafts of yellow glass and which released the terrible rays of light, the rays of the nameless color, before which all things were destroyed, and which turned even the water that they met into surging vapor.
With that knowledge in his mind and the red fury in his heart, Minos knew why the clanging anchor-chains were calling to him.
It was past midnight when the Sardanian king stood up at the end of the quay. He stretched wide his arms and the iron-sinewed thews of his shoulders and back cracked as he stretched. He glanced up at the distant stars.
"Once aforetime, so told the red man from the sea, those Hellenes who were my ancestors did turn back this nation when it was swollen with conquest and would have mastered all the world," he whispered. "Once more the power of Adlaz rides high, and it makes ready to go forth and subdue it again—and what I leave, may my brother Polaris finish."
In the shadow of a warehouse the king rubbed and strained his chilled muscles back to life. At the side of the wharf he found an open boat, and fetched its oars. Then he rowed cautiously out into the harbor.
Scarce a score of yards from the quays rode the nearest of the fademes. Minos boarded it on noiseless feet, and cast his boat adrift.
In the cabin of the fademe were sleeping two sailors of its crew and the engineer. Them Minos slew with his bare hands. And though the engineer ere he died slashed the king's shoulder deeply with a dagger, he heeded it not, scarcely felt it.
Going on deck again, he unhooked the chain of the anchor and let it slip quietly into the water. Then he closed the double doors fore and aft, and made them fast.
Under the lights in the lower gallery, Minos studied the levers and the engines. At a turn of his hand he felt the vessel sink beneath the surface. Another lever wrenched, and the fademe started gently ahead, and the king felt that he was safely launched on his dangerous venture.
Before he had submerged the vessel, Minos had set in his mind the location of the fademes. There were nearly one hundred and fifty of them in the harbor. Five he knew were on patrol duty constantly off the Maeronican headlands. There were perhaps another dozen sailing the outer seas on the missions of Bel-Ar. Those at anchor in the harbor were disposed in three long, irregular lines, with nearly fifty ships in a line.
Minos had submerged the fademe, which he had taken, some forty feet. When he reached a point which he thought must be nearly under the first vessel in the southern line, he turned off the power and halted. He fetched ropes and tied them, one to the starting lever and one to that which would stop the fademe. Carrying with him the other ends of the ropes, he climbed the ladders to the pilothouse, which rode like a small tower at the top of the fademe.
Here in the pilothouse was a powerful revolving searchlight. Here, also, were the levers which controlled the tubes of glass which projected the deadly light-rays.
Swinging the searchlight to point upward through the crystal roof of the pilothouse, Minos unhooded it, and its bright, white bar of light thrust upward through the water. By its radiance he saw that he was not yet under the first of the fademes. Its golden hull glittered just a few feet beyond the radius of his light. A twitch of the rope which he had adjusted below sent his own vessel ahead.
Under the first fademe he halted; and with a grim prayer that the destroying agency might not be out of order, he pressed the lever that controlled the upper shaft of the glass.
With a mighty hissing and seething of the water, the indescribable light-ray leaped upward, so dazzlingly brilliant in its unknown color that it nearly blinded the man who had loosed it.
Full on the bottom of the fademe above him the light ray struck and played, with the water boiling around it. The metal hull crumpled away like solder before the tinsmith's point. So swift and furious was its action that in an instant Minos saw the vessel above come sinking down. He had barely time to pull his rope and get his own fademe from under. As it was, the descending wreck grazed the stern of his vessel with a jar that nearly unseated him. Thereafter he went more swiftly.
From ship to ship he went down the long line, scarcely pausing under each. Ship after ship he left behind him—sunken and useless wrecks.
Minos had finished with the first row of fademes, and was coming back on the second line, when a guardsman on shore saw an upthrust of furious light from the deck of one of the golden ships, and then saw the doomed fademe plunge down.
Throwing up his hands, the soldier ran across the harbor court, shouting that some captain had gone mad and was destroying the fleet.
Then the harbor that had been still became alive. Lights flashed up. Men ran hither and thither. A messenger was dispatched to Adlaz to report to the king. Some sober-minded and brave men launched small boats into the harbor to go out and warn the engineers of the other fademes.
Well near the end of his second line was Minos when he bethought him that his activities must draw attention to him. Then he loosed in succession the other three tubes, and their deadly rays shot forth, one from each side and one below. The king let them roar unchecked, and all around his vessel the water was turned into a boiling inferno. Like the evil genius of Adlaz, he rode on, leaving only wreckage in his wake.
Part way down the last northern line, the end found him.
Engineers on the other fademes had been awakened. Hastily they plunged their vessels beneath the surface and set out against the destroyer. Because of the fierce play of his four rays, they could not come at him from either side or from above or below.
But one pilot steered in behind and, with the blazing peril a fair target, loosed the destroying ray from his own fademe.
From behind him Minos heard a roar of steam and water entering in. A blinding radiance shot through the gallery below the pilothouse, withering all things as it passed. The structure of the fademe crumpled away beneath him.
"Memene!" he cried. "I come!"
Then the rising waters and the great darkness.
So by the hand of Minos of Sardanes perished the mighty navy which the king Bel-Ar had amassed to go forth and conquer the world. Of his hundred and fifty fademes that had ridden in the harbor of Adlaz, a bare score remained to him. And this is the tale which Brunar, the captain, told in the morning to Rose Emer in the old prison-palace of Bel-Tisam, and which she set down and sent by messenger to cross the Kimbrian Wall to Polaris Janess in Ruthar.
Meanwhile, scarcely had the riders from the forest home of Zoar of the Amalocs come again to Zele-omaz when Everson was off to see to the course of his operations at the Kimbrian Wall. He snatched only a few hours of rest and sleep, and rode out in the night.
On the day after the return, which also was the day on which Zoar had promised to set out with his mighty herd on the road to the barrier, Oleric the Red sought Polaris in the camp to the west of the city, and bade him accompany him to the Temple of Glorian.
Oleric told naught of the meaning of the summons, but rode with Janess through the city, saying little and staring at his horse's ears. Never had Polaris seen the red captain so silent and so thoughtful.
"What ails you, friend?" asked the son of the snows. "Why so moody, as is not your wont? Has aught gone amiss?"
"Nothing amiss," the captain answered. "But a matter is toward that concerns yourself closely—and I know not if I have been wise to keep it from you so long."
He would say no more, and presently they were at the temple.
Oleric led Polaris into the high-domed audience-hall, which they found empty, save for the Goddess Glorian, who sat in one of the seats on the double throne, and who looked on Polaris with kindling eyes as he crossed the hall.
To the northern wall led Oleric, and they paused before an ancient panel of black rock, which had been set into the marble at about the height of a man's head. So old was this slab or block of adamant that its surface was all crackled, yet it was smooth as polished slate. Across its face ran carven lines of writing, like the lines of a runic legend.
"This stone bears the ancient prophecy of Ruthar," Oleric said. "Here in the long ago were writ the words of that which we believe is now to come to pass. See how the stone shines. It has been worn smooth by the lips of countless chiefs of Ruthar."
With unwonted solemnity the captain gazed into the eyes of his friend. "Give close heed, and I will read it you," he said, and read:
"In a far time—more than the length of years of three amalocs—a mighty, fair-haired man shall come up from the sea. He shall break down the wall at the north. He shall lead Ruthar and the beasts of Ruthar through the wall. And they shall take Adlaz and destroy the king of Adlaz—"
The captain paused, and again looked strangely at Polaris. He concluded the reading:
"And the man shall be king over Ruthar and Adlaz."
Janess stared at the ancient writing in silence, and his brow clouded over.
"This is the whole of the prophecy of Ruthar—the part of which I have kept concealed from you—though every lad in Ruthar knows it," said Oleric hastily. "I beg of you, my brother, that you will forgive me if I have done ill. But I have thought it wise to keep silence this far. Now is come the time when nothing must be kept back."
He stopped speaking, and both he and Glorian gazed earnestly at the doubtful face of Polaris.
"You mean that I shall be king of Ruthar," Polaris said at length. From one to the other of them he glanced.
The red captain nodded slowly.
"So it is writ in the prophecy," said Glorian. She left the throne, and came and took Polaris by the hand.
"And, O man from the sea, for whom Ruthar has waited so long and patiently, you cannot gainsay us now," she pleaded. A smile of appealing sweetness came to her aid.
"But, lady, to be a king I did not bargain when I came hither with the captain; though," and he smiled, "I was in an ill place to drive a bargain, and might have yielded almost anything. But to be a king—I like it not. I am neither of Ruthar nor of Ad. I am a simple American of common birth. I do not wish to be a king, but merely to go hence with my own people, if I may. And if I did wish it, what of the people? Would they relish the thought of an outlander on their throne?"
Again Glorian answered him:
"It is so writ in the prophecy."
And Oleric said: "And the prophecy is known to all the people, as it has been for centuries. From the wall to the southern cliffs, there is no man or woman in all Ruthar who does not already look upon you as the king. Think well, my brother."
"But would it not do as well if I were to serve you and Ruthar for a while, and those with me, as leaders? Then, when we have won, if we do win, might I not go hence? Would that not serve as well?"
Glorian smiled faintly, and Oleric shook his head.
"Nay, my brother," the captain replied. "You must put your hands in the hands of the zinds of Ruthar and swear the oath of kingship. That is the only way. 'And the man shall be king over Ruthar and Adlaz,' runs the prophecy." Oleric traced the writing on the slab with his finger. "By those words do the zinds and the people hold. It is the only way."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then," said Glorian, "the army will not march to-morrow, nor will Zoar drive on the beasts—unless all of the prophecy shall be fulfilled. Then we who have stood as sponsors for you will be derided as cheats and fools, if, indeed, worse things do not befall you and us. And bethink you—those whom you love, who are in Adlaz, will perish miserably, while Bel-Ar and the priests of Shamar mock their miseries. Without you we fail, and without us and the hosts of Ruthar you, too, are powerless."
"You argue strongly, lady, and you, too, comrade," Polaris said. "Still, I like not this prospect of being king. I must have a little space in which to ponder it over."
"It is now nearly noon," Oleric said. "To-day the zinds from every province and city of Ruthar ride into Zele-omaz—to greet their king. Until to-night, my brother."
"Then to-night will I give my answer—here in this hall," Polaris said, and he turned and went to seek out old Zenas Wright. And neither of the two whom he left behind could have guessed at what his answer would be, though it seemed to them that there could only be one answer. For they had come to know him as a man of surpassing determination, and here was a path in which he did not want to set his feet.
In the old laboratory Janess found Zenas. The work of the geologist was completed. Melinite he had turned out of his workshops by the ton, and the most of it had been transported carefully, and was stored in the forests near to the Kimbrian Wall. Now his thunder factory was deserted. Every last man of his force had gone to join the army.
"Yes, my lad, I know," said Zenas, after one glance at Polaris's face. "They have told you about this king business. I know, too—for I know you—that you are bucking it—hard."
"I do not want to be a king, old Zenas, but—"
"Yes, there's a 'but' in it, and a big one. What are you going to do about it? Our red-headed, two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old youngster, the antique lady, and their old father, Methuselah Zoar, have it all cut and dried. If you can see any way out of it except their way, you have devilish keen eyes. I can't, and I've been looking at it for quite a few days. Oleric told me about it all some time ago. Take it, boy; take it. And make the most of it. It isn't every day that one gets a chance to be absolute ruler over a rich country and nearly five millions of people. You'll make a better king than any they've ever had on either side of the wall. That I'll guarantee." And the old man looked at his troubled friend with bright eyes and patted him on the knee.
While they sat and talked this matter over, came a man to the door, crying out that a messenger had come through from Adlaz bringing a written word to Polaris.
The courier was brought in. He proved to be that same Rutharian who had gained a place with the prison guard under Brunar. Already he had told in the city of the destruction of the fademes of Bel-Ar, and Zele-omaz was going wild with the news.
When Polaris had read the letter sent him by Rose Emer, and he and Zenas had heard what the messenger had to add to its news, the face of the son of the snows grew very stern. The kindly old scientist's eyes were moist. After the man was gone, neither of them spoke for quite a time. The two who were gone had been dear friends, and the friendship had been knit by perils and hardships, in which each had learned the worth of the others.
"Now is the score that I have to settle with this king of Adlaz grown long indeed," Polaris said at length, "and I am minded to tilt him for his kingdom, as these folk would have me do. He made a good ending, did Minos; and I do not think that Bel-Ar, even if he come free of Ruthar, will live to see the day when another fleet shall lie ready to go out and win the world for him."
He became silent. While the town, filling up with the arrival of zinds and their retinues, gave itself to rejoicing at the blow that had been struck Bel-Ar, and the old man sat by the fire and dozed, Polaris paced moodily up and down the long laboratory. An hour passed, and the half of another. Then he struck one hand hard into the other.
"Now in all these happenings I think I see my way at last," he muttered.
With the fall of night he cloaked himself and went up to the temple on the hill, and Zenas went with him.
From every principality and town in Ruthar the zinds had come to Zele-omaz. Those who were too old or infirm to make the journey had sent their sons or representatives. In the hall of Glorian these were gathered to the number of one hundred-and-seven—tall and stately men, most of them, clad in chain armor plated with silver and bossed with plates of steel—for they had come to fight for their king as well as to crown him. A shout went up that made the torches flare, when a guard opened one of the doors of bronze, and Polaris Janess and Zenas came into the hall.
Eager-eyed, they pressed around the son of the snows, to welcome him whom their prophets and their goddess had said would redress their ancient wrongs.
Polaris met their greetings with a heightened color and a glow in his eyes. Almost, he thought, it would be a joy to be the king of such as these—he, the dweller in no-man's land, a waif from the eternal snows.
And the Goddess Glorian, watching him from her ivory throne, smiled to herself, though there was a pang at her heart that she could not manage to quench or still.
Presently Polaris stood in the open space at the foot of the throne. The zinds gathered before him in a glittering semicircle, and made silence in the hall.
"Chieftains of Ruthar," he began, lifting his voice so that all might hear, "this day have I been asked to become your king, to take your crown upon my head, to sit upon your throne, to lead you in battle, and to rule over you as wisely as I may—all this because of certain words on a stone which, it seems, may not be changed. Is this your wish, men of Ruthar—to have me, an outlander, as your king?"
A deep-voiced shout was the answer, and every voice said "Aye."
"Then this is my answer, men of Ruthar, seeing that there is no dissent among you: when I came unwillingly to the shores of Maeronica, there came with me a friend, a true man. You have heard much of him to-day. It was he that sank the fademes of Bel-Ar. He was named Minos, and he was the king of a nation that has passed away. That man is dead by a glorious means. Yonder in the harbor he struck a great blow for Ruthar and for the world. He gave his life.
"To-day word reached me by the messenger who brought the tidings of that deed, and the word was that this Minos who is dead, left behind him a son, an infant newly born.
"Now I will yield me to your wishes, chieftains of Ruthar. I will go with you to the Kimbrian Wall, and beyond it. I will fight with you to overthrow Bel-Ar. I will do all that a man may to be the king you wish me. But it is my will that when this son of Minos the Sardanian is grown to manhood's years and wisdom, he shall relieve me of my kingship and become your king, and his son after him, if he have one. That is my answer, men of Ruthar. I thank you for the high honor you would do me."
He turned and bowed deeply to the Goddess Glorian, and then stood back at the side of the throne.
A murmur of surprise arose in the hall, and then was silenced, for Glorian arose to speak.
"Zinds of my people," she said in her clear, low voice, "to the weight of this man's words add that of Glorian's. He comes, this man, from a land where there are no kings. He is willing to fight for you—to die with you. What he promises will fulfil the prophecy by which we hold. It is a noble choice that he has made. It is my rede that you accept it—mine and that of Oleric the Learned, to whom you sometimes have looked for counsel."
As she reseated herself, the red captain stood forth and said simply:
"My brother has chosen well. I stand with him. Should you not agree, I still stand with him, and he and I and such as are faithful to us will break the Kimbrian Wall and perish on the road to Adlaz."
For a short time the zinds took counsel among themselves. When they had done, an aged man—he was Atra, the ruler of Zele-omaz—stood out from among them.
"We are agreed, O goddess," he said. "We will have this man as king until the prophecy is fulfilled and for so long afterward as he will, until the babe be grown to manhood. He is a true man. We are content, and perhaps"—here Atra smiled—"with the passing of the years he may change his mind."
They brought the crown of Ruthar—a heavy torque of gold set with fire-opals—and led Polaris to the ivory throne, and set him beside the Goddess Glorian and crowned him. And he put his hands in the hands of the zinds and swore the oath of kingship.
"Yonder in Adlaz is a larger palace and a wider throne," said Glorian.
"Aye, lady," he answered. "To-morrow I shall go to seek it."
A great feast followed the coronation. When it was done, all night long through the streets of Zele-omaz and across the bridges of Illia, sounded the rumbling of chariot-wheels and the tramp of marching feet. Ruthar was on the march at last, and the destination was the Kimbrian Wall.
So it fell out that the ambition of Minos of Sardanes had not been so vain of attainment. He had won a kingdom for "the king that was to come."
As near as they dared, Everson's army of workmen had pushed the completion of their broad highway to the Kimbrian Wall, clearing and building up the old, disused road. Trees had been felled and removed where it was necessary, and rocks had been dragged away with much labor—and all with as little noise as possible, so that the men of Atlo who garrisoned the wall might know nothing of the work, and that when the time should come, Maeronica could be taken unawares.
To do that the road-makers had been forced to halt their work two hundred yards from the wall, where a belt of thick forest was left standing across the way which effectually screened their operations.
When the roadway had been completed to that point, molelike, the engineers and sappers dug into the earth and pushed on. The old roadway, suiting their purposes well, led to the wall at a point nearly midway between two of the watchtowers, which were distant from one another about a mile. Another circumstance which was favorable to the lieutenant's plan was that the neck or isthmus which connected Ruthar to Maeronica was, though high above the sea, comparatively level.
Back of a knoll in the forest the miners sank their shaft. Twelve feet down in the earth they struck the living rock and proceeded along that, excavating a tunnel, or gallery, eight feet high by ten feet across. This work was done swiftly, for the tunnel was wide enough so that four men might work in it abreast, and as fast as one quartet was wearied another took its place, and the picks were swinging day and night. As the diggers went on, a multitude of workers behind them carried back the loosened earth and shored the gallery up with timbers so that it might not cave.
When Everson returned from the ride to the place of Zoar, he found that his tunnel was ended—against the face of the Kimbrian Wall, which was founded on the rock itself. Following his instructions, the sappers had branched the tunnel right and left along the wall, until the working was in the shape of an elongated letter "T", the cross-arm of which lay along the foundation stones of the wall and was sixty feet long.
With the same ceaseless industry that had built the tunnel so swiftly, they then had attacked the face of the wall with chisels and sledges, cutting in at intervals of about ten feet. This had been difficult work and perilous. The rock of the wall was adamant-hard. However, by attacking the cement in which the stones were set, the miners had been able to remove numbers of the great blocks entire, rolling them by dint of herculean effort across the gallery and into cavities made to receive them.
In that work had been the danger. Eight men had been crushed under falling fragments—first toll of Ruthar in the warfare.
The excavations had been carried into the foundation of the wall a matter of fifteen feet when Everson arrived. He at once ordered that work stopped. Remained only the placing of the explosive. That he superintended in person.
Bar by bar—for the lieutenant would suffer no man to carry more than one of old Zenas's patty-cakes at a time—and with extreme care, the melinite was borne in through the tunnel and packed in the cavities in the wall. The geologist's workshop had turned out a plenty of the stuff, and it was used without stint. Everson judged that he placed nearly two tons of the explosive in each of the six chambers under the wall.
Banks of loose, dry earth were piled about the melinite charges; Everson laid his wires, and his workmen then filled the cavities with fragments of the rock taken from the wall.
Still further to retard the release of the gases when the charges should be set off, the lieutenant set his men to wall up the openings to the chambers, using heavy rocks and cement, having done which, they filled in the cross-arm of the "T" with earth and fragments of stone, tamping all in firmly.
Very workmanlike was the finished task over which Everson nodded his approval and told his grimy legion, "Well done."
During all the progress of the labor the patrols of Bel-Ar rode to and fro along the wall, and never guessed that sixty feet below them in the rock their enemies were planting the fearful seeds that would put forth the red flower of war.
It was midnight of the third day after the gathering of the zinds in the temple of Glorian at Zele-omaz, when Everson walked out of the tunnel for the last time, his wires laid, his batteries ready. Retiring to one of the shelters which had been built in the forest, the lieutenant threw himself on a couch for a few brief hours of sleep.
Five hours later one of his engineers awakened him and told him that the zinds of Ruthar with a great host had gone into camp for the night along the roadway ten miles back from the wall, and that the levies of the upper hills, the light-armed archers, slingers and javelin men, were pouring into the vast camp which had been prepared nearby in the forest.
"And these last swear that when they sleep again it will be beyond the wall," the engineer added.
"Many of them, poor chaps, are likely to sleep there forever," said Everson. "Where is the king?"
"With the zinds."
The lieutenant arose and went out on the hillside; for he knew that the time had come.
Calling a messenger, he told him to go and summon the skirmishers from the camp. Presently he saw them coming, long, silent files of men, ghostly in the gray light, picking their way over the snow-covered slopes and among the trees, some of the lines led by zinds and others by their captains.
In the forests opposite the wall, Everson posted a wedge of five thousand javelin men, who were armed also with short swords. These were to rush the breach in the wall and deploy on the other side to hold the gap from any assault from beyond until the gap could be cleared and the roadway brought up and through the breach to connect with the Maeronican highway which lay on the other side of the barrier. Back of that force gathered the miners and road-builders.
Right and left along the wall the lieutenant sent bodies of archers and slingers, so they might command the top of the wall and prevent the garrisons of the watchtowers from galling the men at work in the breach.
At each of the sixty towers along the stretch of the wall were stationed some twenty men—a force of nearly twelve hundred in all. Everson foresaw that these in all probability, or most of them, would come to the breach from either side, leaving but few soldiers to man the towers. So he sent two parties of a thousand men each east and west, to lie in the forests near the wall. These were heavy-armed swordsmen and spearsmen. They bore long ladders with them, and it was to be their task to scale the wall, flank the men of Bel-Ar at its summit, and take and hold the watchtowers.
A few miles below the wall lay a Maeronican hilltown, and there Bel-Ar maintained a prominent garrison, composed of a section of his standing army, some ten thousand men strong. These soldiers had proved the bane of many a Rutharian raiding party, and they now gave Everson much trouble in his mind. If they should come up quickly to the wall and drive back his force or retake the towers, his thrust would be all but ill delivered and fail of much of its power. That must be chanced—and he judged by the look of these fighting men of Ruthar that they would stand considerable driving and still not be driven.
Silently the long lines stole into position, and the men sank out of sight among the trees. A small patrol party of Maeronican soldiers rode down the wall from the watchtower to the west, where the mitzl lights burned pale against the sky. They passed on, met the patrol from the east, and both returned—seeing nothing of the menace that lay hidden in the shadows of the pines.
Ruthar had been quiet of late, and a few noises in the forest meant nothing to these soldiers, strong in their position on the mighty wall. Of such things as the pastries of Zenas Wright they had never even dreamed.
In a clump of trees Everson attached his wires to his batteries. He knelt by one of them, and five of his sappers knelt with him.
"One—two—three!" he counted.
The six poised hands fell as one.
For a moment, silence; then a burst of hell from the bowels of the earth.
From end to end, down all its length, the roof of Everson's subterranean gallery was torn out by the rending gases. From the mouth of the tunnel a mass of rocks, beams and loose earth was belched down the slope with such force that trees fell before it.
Through clouds of falling earth and a drift of smoke, the distended eyes of the Rutharian soldiery saw the basalt structure of the Kimbrian Wall that had stood firm for thirty centuries heave up, sunder, and open, as a gate opens, then come thundering down to ruin. Right in the midst of the chaos of falling rock an awful sheet of green flame arose like a giant fan and stood for an instant against the sky.
Then came the noise. It was neither a crash nor a roar, but a sustained rumbling bellow—as though Mother Earth herself were muttering at this desecration of her aged bones. Such was the power of that tremulous diapason that the forests shook and the hills trembled. Followed a moment of the silence of the pit, and then the clatter and spat of the débris as it showered the slopes and the forests.
"Shields up!" shouted a tall zind of Ruthar, and the next moment he was stretched senseless by a fragment of rock because he had not been quick to obey his own order. Many others were injured, and some were killed. But what did a few deaths matter now? The Kimbrian Wall was down. For eighty feet the gap extended wide and free!
And beyond lay Maeronica.
In the forests and on the hills the companies cheered wildly as they saw the path the melinite had opened, and cheered again when they saw that the watchtower to the west had been shaken from its perch by the terrific concussion and lay a crumble of stonework at the foot of the wall.
"Into the breach!" shouted Everson. "Through the wall!"
From their lair on the hillsides the five thousand javelin bearers arose gleefully and crossed the space to the gap in the wall at a swinging trot, singing as they went.
So clean had been the sweep of the melinite that it had torn away every vestige of the wall down to the living rock of the isthmus, leaving a wide trench or ditch, stone-bottomed and with sloping sides of earth, which it was an easy matter for the light-armed men to scramble across. But first the soldiers had to throw loose earth into the bottom of the trench; for the terrific pressure of the melinite against the rock had heated it until it was almost molten.
For hundreds of feet around, heaps of earth and pulverized stone sent up columns of the greenish, acrid vapor of the explosive.
On the heels of the javelin men pressed the engineers and road-men, swarming into the breach to fill the trench and make a way for the charioteers and the amalocs of Zoar, which were to follow. Along the screen of forest at the end of the road axes rang, and the trees began to fall.
One of the first men into the breach after the skirmishers had crossed the ragged ditch, was Everson. With Mazoe, chief of his sappers, the lieutenant directed the work at the trench; for now was the time for haste.
Shaken from their beds by the dull thunder of Everson's fireworks, Bel-Ar's steel riders at the eastern tower came clattering down their wall. Before ever they reached the gap, a trumpet sounded on the hillside, the archers and the slingers arose like wraiths from the forests, and the horsemen were met by a shower of shafts and stones that rattled and clanged on their armor and drove them back.
Messengers sped east and west from tower to tower. Within an hour every garrison along the barrier knew that the gods of Ruthar had rifted their fortress and the hillsmen were pouring through. But these soldiers of Bel-Ar were picked men, and they did not fear. Every man-at-arms that could be spared from the turrets was horsed, and they came riding recklessly down their lofty pathway, firm in the belief that their own god presently would have a say in this matter.
At the third tower to the east of the breach was Atlo, captain of the wall. The tremor of the explosion reached even there. While the captain and his men wondered at what it might be, a messenger reached them. Atlo at once sent a horseman down the curving path, one of which led from each tower to the ground on the northern side of the wall, to ride through the forest to the town of Barme and arouse the army there.
Then Atlo armed himself, gathered his men and started west. Straight to the brink of the gap he rode, heeding neither arrows nor stones. At the edge of the breach he dismounted, and while the long shafts of the archers hummed around him and the missiles of the slingers dented his golden armor, he knelt and peered into the gorge below him.
Much the captain marveled at the force which had broken the barrier. His quick eyes of the soldier took in the disposition of the men and fathomed the plan of the enemy. He saw that a swarm of javelin men and a number of companies of heavier armed infantry were through the wall and prepared to defend their ground. More he saw; that the trench below was black with men who labored to fill it in; on the southern side of the wall another army of laborers was laying a broad road over which chariots might pass; and beneath him in the breach a man in mud-stained garments stood on a point of rock directing his grimy toilers.
Breathing a curse, Atlo lifted his spear and cast with all his might. Then he mounted and rode back to the nearest tower to await the coming of his garrisons.
Too late did the archers in the forests shout their warning when they saw that spear-arm poised.
At the foot of the rock Everson fell and lay face downward among his workmen.
Tenderly they bore him out of the trench and up the slope of the forest, those sturdy men of Ruthar who had worked with him and loved him. Four of his engineers carried him, and Mazoe walked beside, trying to stanch the flow of blood. Atlo's spear-point had bitten deeply just above the collar-bone.
At the crest of the rise Everson spoke in a weak voice and bade them set him down. Mazoe knelt and held him.
Through dim eyes the lieutenant peered back toward the sundered wall. He lifted his hand slowly and with infinite effort and pointed.
"We have done—good work," he said. "Go on—with it. I fear I shall—not—be with you."
His eyes closed, and Mazoe, who thought that he was spent, burst into tears.
Below in the camp arose a mighty clamor of shouting. Everson's eyelids fluttered open.
"Why do the soldiers cheer?" he asked.
Mazoe listened intently to the shouting.
"They cheer because the king is coming," he answered.
Everson smiled faintly.
"Tell him—I have made—a way—for him—"
His voice trailed away, and he sank into unconsciousness. And though he did not die, he sailed so near to the quiet coasts that it was many weeks before he knew that the work he had begun had gone on without him, and had been done well.