CHAPTER XVIII
THE MAN OF THE HOUR
Jason went to Bithur. Naia remained behind. In the week before the celebration of their former betrothal they had so planned. Now, with the red and silver seal of Azil once more glowing in her girdle, Naia did not object. She was a woman. Croft knew she suffered. It was in her eyes, the touch of her hand. But—as he had seen her prove once before—she was a Tamarizian first.
In the night Jadgor's messenger arrived, the assembly of Aphur was called together. To it the Bithurian explained. Faces darkened and eyes flashed as the startled statesmen learned that once more the integrity of the nation was threatened. But, as a man, in firm determination they empowered Robur and Croft to respond to Jadgor's plea, and accepted the challenge to war.
At daylight, with the airplane he had flown from the first and a supply of grenades and fuel, together with the additional armored motors aboard a swift galley, Jason left for Bithur and the battle-front, taking Jadgor's messenger along. With him also he took a supply of dry cells to insure the better performance of the motors already on the ground.
To Naia and Robur and the trained captains he left all the rest—the assembling of troops, the lading of galleys with all sorts of supplies, the forwarding of other completed airplanes with the men he started to train in their use, whose training Naia of Aphur declared she would complete.
Only at the last did he hold her in his arms and lower his lips to the low burning flame of her mouth. For Naia of Aphur's lips were pale as they lifted to his farewell caress, and her slender body quivered inside his arms and her purple eyes were dark with her soul's distress.
"Yes," she said, clinging to him briefly, "you will come to me again. Swear it to me by Azil, whose sign you have placed upon me—swear!"
"Yes, by Zitu and Azil, I will return to you, woman of all women," Croft declared, as he held her and once more pressed her lips.
Then gripping the hands of Gaya and Robur, he left the palace, and Naia herself drove him down to the quays.
Seven days later he entered Bithra, the capital of Bithur, and left it inside an hour, heading east along the Bith between banks where a tropic vegetation came down to the water's edge, and the mighty flood of waters swept in a turgid current between banks of trees.
Morning brought him close to Atla, as the pilot taken on at Bithra declared. Also it brought attack of a sort. From the banks as they advanced the galley was suddenly greeted by a flight of slithering shafts. Most of them, thanks to the range, fell into the water, but one or two reached the deck. Croft lined a company of riflemen he had hastily mobilized and brought with him on either side of the galley replied with a crashing volley as the galley advanced. So after that, meeting flights of arrows with bullets, he progressed, reaching a bend from which the gates in the city wall spanned the river's flood and flinging the flag of Aphur into view before the sentries on the walls.
The gates swung open. The galley ran through. The gates were closed again. The galley tied to a quay below the brown palace Croft had visited in his astral presence; he marched off with his men. A procession was debouching from the palace gate. It came toward him quickly. He recognized Jadgor and Medai in the van. He halted his company and waited. The others came on. Five paces before him they halted.
"Hai! Mouthpiece of Zitu," Jadgor spoke in greeting. "Thy coming is welcome. What word from Aphur and my son?"
"Aphur sends men and weapons to Bithur," Jason responded. "As for Robur, son of Jadgor, he remains in Himyra to speed the departure for Bithur of all that may be required."
"It is well," said Jadgor. "Return with us to the palace where all things may be explained. Medai of Bithur greets you in Bithur's name."
Medai bowed deeply. The guards behind him and Jadgor turned. Followed by Croft's company they retraced their steps until the palace was gained.
And there in the room, Croft, Medai and Jadgor sat down. The latter eyed his former adviser and friend. "You are looking wondrous well," he said.
"Yes," Croft nodded. "In all things have my efforts by success been crowned."
"In all things?" Jadgor gave him a piercing glance.
"Yes," Croft again inclined his head. "Thanks largely to Robur, Jadgor's son. But more of that later, Jadgor. Inform me how matters stand."
Jadgor shrugged. "It would appear to go not so well with the things in my hands as with your plans. From the first was the extent of this matter with Mazzer misjudged; and in addition there is a fault in these motors of yours, when not controlled by the builder's mind. Wherefore they failed when most needed at times, and were by sheer force of numbers overborne. As a result the blue flood of Mazzer laps even now against Atla's walls on all sides."
"Yet breaks against them," said Jason.
"Aye as yet," Jadgor replied.
"And shall break utterly," Croft went on. "Of this defect in the motors already I had learned, in the same way in which I have learned other things in the past, as Jadgor knows. Wherefore his messenger came not to Himyra as a surprise, and for seven suns before his coming, Robur, Jadgor's son and I prepared." He broke off and watched the Aphurian closely.
But Jadgor merely nodded as he responded: "Say on."
"Among those things which have been completed since my return to Himyra," Croft resumed, "is one which flies in the air. Riding upon it a man may cast down such bombs as were used at the taking of Niera in the Zollarian war."
And now Jadgor started and narrowed his eyes, and Medai half rising from his seat exclaimed: "Zitu! Is this the truth?"
"Yes," said Croft. "One came with me aboard the galley. Between decks are the bombs. Today shall it be set up and tomorrow shall these blue men meet with a surprise. Also have I brought devices to make the performance of the motors more assured. From the ground and from the air shall we smite the Mazzerians at once."
"Hai!" Medai roared. "Jadgor—to fly above them and rain death on their heads. Never was such a thing heard of. You believe?"
"Aye." Jadgor of Tamarizia rose. "Zitu's Mouthpiece is a man who speaks not in idle fashion, O Medai. He speaks true words. One does well to give credence to his speaking." His hand snapped back and drew his short sword from its scabbard. He presented it hilt forward. "Man whom Zitu has sent to Tamarizia's strengthening, to thee I yield."
"No." Croft waved the sword aside. He looked into Jadgor's face and found it working. "Mouthpiece of Zitu have I been called, in that at times I have been given the power to direct or to advise. In Jadgor's heart and mine must Tamarizia find first place always. Let Jadgor wear the sword."
And suddenly Jadgor's lips set together. He sent the blade back into the sheath with a rasping clash. "You and I together for Tamarizia then," he said with abrupt decision, and thrust out his palm. "Accept Jadgor's hand at least."
The two men gripped and the Aphurian resumed: "Speak, Mouthpiece of Zitu, what do you advise?"
"What men have you at your disposal?"
Jadgor and Medai explained, and Croft decided upon a tour of the walls. The trio set forth. And as they went Jadgor explained further that three times within the past ten days had the Mazzerians attacked them.
Indeed, Croft gained evidence of that when the top of the wall was reached. It came to him first as an almost insufferable stench. Jadgor noted the twitching of his nostrils and burst into a savage exultation.
"Aye, by Zitu! they stink to the skies, these dead litter of an unclean birth. The trenches about Atla's defenses are filled with their corpses. They lie in heaps. They carpet the ground with a blue carpet, even more foul in death than in their life. By the thousands have we slain them, yet by the tens of thousands have their following spawn arrived. Their souls have we hurled to Zitemku and their bodies to the ditch." He swept his arm toward the outer parapet in a wide arc. "Behold!"
Croft looked out of an embrasure and down. An arrow rattled against the stones beside him, and he drew back. But the one glance had been enough. This was grim reality he faced. In heaps and rows the rotting bodies of uncounted dead lay jumbled in dissolution beyond Atla's walls. He began to think it would be no mean undertaking to defeat the men of an army who fought like that.
"Back!" he said. "Back to my galley, Jadgor! Let us put together the flying device I have brought. Tomorrow I swear we shall give them new death from the skies."
And for the rest of that day Croft sweated and worked, assembling the airplane on Atla's broadest street, which, like Himyra's, faced the river—a splendid concourse, above a terrace, offering him a spot for starting, two hundred feet in width. What of the armored motors remained he had also driven up, and under their metal bodies he installed his batteries, wiring them to the ignition system—explaining to their drivers, how, should the former supply of power be thrown out of service, this auxiliary source might be employed.
Toward evening, however, he altered his plans. To his mind it appeared that the more unseen the destruction which came upon them, the greater on superstitious minds the effect might be. And as he knew even from his association with the Mazzerian serving-caste in the nation he had literally adopted, the Mazzerians were superstitious to a degree.
About twilight he loaded the plane with a good supply of bombs. Ascending from the broad thoroughfare, and returning to it, outlined as it would be by the fire-urns, which, as at Himyra, marked the banks of the Bith along the quays, would be no more than child's play. As a result, he decided to make his first bombing expedition beyond the walls so soon as night came down, carry what consternation he could to the Mazzerian forces. This decision he definitely reached after a conference with Jadgor, who announced that for a great distance before the walls the Mazzerian camps were nightly marked by the flares of many fires.
Jadgor, Medai, the major captains of their armies, and many of the citizens of Atla stood to witness Croft's start. Wearing his flying-suit which he had brought for the purpose, Jason climbed aboard. Then at his instruction two frightened-looking soldiers seized the blades of the propeller and turned the engine round. They let go and scampered well out of the way as it roared. The plane quivered, moved. It darted forward along the perfect pavement, tilted and took the air. In a moment it soared high above the walls. Croft shouted once and then forgot all else in the sight beneath his eyes.
As far as he could see before him, and to either side, the night was dotted with fires. In a wide semicircle they blinked and winked and flared. They outlined the main position of the Mazzerian army. His heart leaped into his breast, as a rising stench told him he was passing those rotting bodies stretched out among a mass of broken weapons at the foot of Atla's walls.
Then the walls were passed, and with the breath of a clean night in his nostrils, the roar of the engine in his ears, he swept toward the line of fires.
Far, far out he swung. It was his intention to circuit the back areas of the Mazzerian line—to come upon them not from in front, but from the rear—to make his coming appear that of some huge, undreamed monster of superstitious seeming, to traverse their main body from one end to the other, dropping bombs which, under the conditions, he felt could hardly fail of a telling effect.
Far, far out he swam on the new wings he had built for himself—and for Naia. Naia? He smiled. In Himyra she was perhaps flying by day even as he was flying now—flying as he had taught her to fly in body and soul; teaching others to fly for the strength of her nation, as he was flying for her nation and his, to make it strong and secure. For a moment the thought gripped him, and he flew on in a sort of waking dream, until the flare of a hundred leaping fires directly beneath him brought him back to the matter in hand. He passed the first line of the Mazzerian bivouac and darted above a wood and came above a great savanna—a tree-dotted plain, where the camp-fires were flashing again.
Then, and then only, for the first time he reached down and took up a bomb, and sailing high above that plain where the camp-fires looked like a myriad of fireflies far beneath him, he let it fall.
A flash, a ruddy, great mushroom of golden, raying light—a splash of rending destruction in the night. The explosion came up to him long after he saw it, on the lagging vibrations of sound. Again and again he hurled a second and third as he swam from left to right.
Faint, far away, oddly detached, he thought he heard a distant shouting, though it was hard to be sure above the motor's roar. But the light of other fires showed him the silhouette of many figures running, of arms uplifted, as though those who swarmed like a hill of angry ants driven into panic were pointing into the air. Where that cluster of pointing forms seemed thickest he soared on swift, sure wings and let go another bomb. It fell beyond his vision. It burst. The blur of bodies into which it descended was no more.
And now a strange mood seized Croft in its grip. It was unlike anything he had ever known. It was in reality a sort of air intoxication one may suppose. But suddenly it was as though he were a superman indeed, above all things mundane, so far above the puny mortals who crawled on the ground beneath him, who writhed under the force of his bombs, that he moved in a world detached from them, or any one, or anything save himself.
It was as though he rode on destiny's wings rather than upborne by those of the roaring airplane. He tilted his vanes from no sane purpose, with nothing to gain. Up, up he shot; up, up, until he could see the whole night-wrapped region about him, the forest, the fire-studded camp of Mazzer's army—Atla, a ruddy glow behind her walls, where shortly he must return.
But not yet—not yet. For a time it was enough to chase this new found exultation, to swim here in the void between earth and heaven, alone with the thing he had made, on which he rode; alone with it, with his spirit, and his thoughts of Naia of Aphur, of the time when these blue spawn, driven back to their lairs in the hinterland of Palos, he should return to claim her. It was enough to ride thus the winds of eternity, as it were, sweeping on and on in the wheel of a mighty circle beneath the stars.
A sputter, a cough from the motor. Croft came back from his dreams to the present in a flash. The engine was missing. Apprehension touched him with a breath-arresting recognition of the fact. And hardly had he taken it into account when the motor missed again. And having coughed for the second time, it died.
He was falling—falling! The bombs! Oddly enough he thought of them rather than of being dashed to death. He reached down and found the remaining four he had brought. He hurled them over the side of the fuselage, tossing them wide. Then he began a frantic effort to once more start the engine—in vain.
Below him four ruddy flashes told him the bombs had struck. In a rushing whirlwind the air of night was driving past the plane. Doomed as it seemed, still the will to live, to struggle, to overcome danger and death itself remained within him. He began an effort to straighten out the dead plane's course, to catch and use to his own advantage that wind that was whistling past him now. To catch it, to ride once more upon it, if only as a kite may sink back to the earth, and so alight, little damaged rather than broken, splintered by a giddy fall.
So in the end he did straighten out at last and slid swiftly, where before he had eddied and whirled.
"Zitu!" he breathed a prayer of thanksgiving. "God!" For an instant the face of Naia swam before his mental vision, so clear, so bright, so seemingly herself, that it was almost as though he beheld her in the flesh.
Then—the fire-dotted plain was very close. And the airplane was shooting down toward it, even though no longer falling, and there was little chance to choose a course. With a crash the pontoons beneath it struck through the top of a tree, and the whole machine swerved. In mid air it staggered, checked, lunged ahead again like a restive living creature, tipped, slid off sidewise, and crashed down on a crumpling wing.
Unable to maintain himself in his shaken condition, Croft gave vent to an inarticulate cry of anguish. The entire bulk of Palos seemed to rise and hit him, as catapulted from the fuselage by the ruinous landing, he struck and lay in a dark and senseless huddle on the ground.