BATTLE ON LATMOS
At the opening of the passage into the cave the way was scarcely wide enough for two men to enter abreast. Farther in, where the entrance curved, it was narrower yet. There Minos elected to meet the attackers. He ordered the other men into the cave, whither Patrymion went sorely against his will.
"Art not going to take all the sport to thyself, king, I hope?" he asked. "I would make claim to a share in it."
"Thou shalt have it, and to spare, my lad," said Minos comfortingly. "No one of us will have complaint for lack of fighting while yonder red robe flameth in the valley."
As he spoke the king backed into the cave-passage and took position at the first turn, crouching low behind his shield. "Stand thou behind me here," he directed the boy, "and into thy keeping I commend any who may pass me." The king and the boy took their places.
The spearsmen of Analos, fully two hundred strong, poured over the little plateau on which the cave fronted. With a rush and yell they came, but found no foe to fight. Only the dark riff in the rock yawned silently before them. Strain their eyes as they might, they could not see what danger lay in wait for them within.
After a brief conference they decided to force the entrance, for Sardanians, when not arrayed against their own superstitions, were not cowards. Two by two, for the way was narrow, they crept into the passageway. Those foremost proceeded cautiously, and with their spear points well advanced.
In this warfare all the advantage lay with Minos. The besiegers could not see him, but from his position they were outlined against what light there was without the cave, and the king could see them well.
So it was that groping forward the spears of the first two of the attacking party clanged against something that was not rock. A flash in the dusk before them, a whine in the air, where the sword of Minos sang as it flew and two of the warriors of Analos were out of the fight forever.
Behind them their companions sprang to their feet and thrust desperately with their spears. So straight was the way that there was little room for spear play. Thrust and cast alike fell on the rocky wall or the shield of the king. Out of the darkness the strongest arm in all Sardanes swung unceasingly, dealing blows that none could see or parry.
The passage became hideous with cries and groans. Only Minos fought in grim silence. At his shoulder young Patrymion stood and laughed aloud at death unloosed.
Presently the king found his blows falling on empty air. Convinced that this method of battle was of small avail, the priest's men withdrew from the cave, dragging with them the fallen. They carried eight men down the steep sides of Latmos, to be sent to the Gateway, and five others were so sorely smitten by the blade that guarded the narrow way that they were little better than corpses.
"Now, let us out, master, and fall on them from behind," said Zalos. "One good charge may break their spirit."
Minos shook his head. "Nay, Zalos, we fight not save to defend ourselves. This slaughter of my people doth grieve me much. Would that 'twere at an end!"
"In verity, if thou grievest over long in thy present fashion, there will be none left in Sardanes to withstand thee," put in Patrymion. "At least let me go forth and hunt the high priest. With him dead, the rest are easily managed."
"Nay, he shall not be slain, and there's an end," said Minos sternly. "He hath coupled his mad talk to these strange manifestations in Sardanes, and so brought about all the trouble that is on foot. His death now will mend matters but little, for he hath done his damage among the people. When things right themselves once more (if, indeed, they ever do come aright), it is my will that he be living witness to his own confusion."
"Have they gone, or do they still watch, I wonder?" said Patrymion. He turned the passage and walked boldly to the entrance. Scarcely had he reached it when a spear whizzed by his ear and splintered on the rock wall. He picked the shattered weapon up with a laugh. "We are still watched," he said, as he bore it back into the cave.
Below in the hall of the Judgment House the stroke of the great drum echoed through the valley, giving notice of the passing of another day—a day fuller of events in Sardanes than any since Polaris of the Snows had fought his great fight on the crater-rim and struck out for the unknown North.
Through the sleeping hours a watchful hunter stood guard at the turn in the cave-passage, but no attempt was made to surprise the besieged. They ate from the store of grain in the cave and took what rest they could, undisturbed. With cloths from the king's chests the hunters curtained off a section of the cave for the Lady Memene, and thither she withdrew in silence, to sit with wakeful eyes through half the slumber hours.
On the morrow there was little rest for any. Within an hour of the first drum-stroke, the clamor of fighting men rang through the cave once more.
Again Minos took up the tale, but he found his foes more wary. Not again would they rush blindly the narrow way and the singing sword. They built a big wood fire at the edge of the plateau, in such a position that its flames cast their light into the passage. Six of their strongest warriors charged the cave-mouth. Four of them engaged the battling giant with their spears. The other two, on hands and knees, endeavored to creep under his guard, and got near enough to pull him down.
Straightway the Lord Patrymion went down on all fours, and with a spear in either hand fought between the knees of the king. As he fought, he taunted the attackers with mocking jests more bitter than the spear-thrusts. With his legs guarded, the strength of Minos was more than the strength of six. Of those who charged, only two reached the outer plateau alive.
In the respite the king turned and became aware of the Lady Memene. Shrouded in her long cloak, she stood against the wall of the passage, almost at his shoulder. She had watched the fighting with kindling eyes, but when Minos turned to look at her, she assumed again the mantle of indifference. Only behind the folds of her cloak one of her little feet was tapping, tapping on the rocky floor.
"Lady Memene, I pray thee, go within. Here is no place for thee," the king said. "A chance spear might pass this guard of mine, and then were all of Minos's fighting of no avail."
Wordless, she turned away and disappeared among the shadows.
Time after time the Sardanians, in stubborn fury, charged the cave-mouth. They fetched ladders from the valley, erected them against the cliff-face at the sides of the fissure, where the wall rose too sheer for a foothold otherwise. From the ladders, spearsmen leaped down, essaying to overwhelm the guardians of the pass and bear them down. But Minos drew back to where the closing roof of the entrance defended him from their attempts, and men who fell found the great sword and the keen spears of Patrymion and Zalos always waiting.
But one man, however brave and strong, cannot fight an army. Slowly, very slowly, the warriors of the priest tired that mighty sword-arm, although the dauntless spirit behind it flagged not. Again and again the rock passage was choked with dead and dying. Its floor ran red with blood. As often, the besiegers dragged the bodies of their comrades forth and renewed the struggle with fresh men. The champions of the god showed a fighting will even with that of Minos, laying on for his own head and his dear lady.
At last the king, sorely wearied, and wounded, although but slightly, in a score of places, yielded his place to Zalos and the Lord Patrymion. The lad took the shield of the king, and knelt with his spear at the turn of the passage. Behind him the stout captain plied a ponderous woodsman's ax with both hands, and the battle went on.
An unexpected circumstance ended the conflict. Several of the Sardanians on the cliffside with their long ladders discovered a ledge some forty feet above the opening into the cave and scrambled to it. On the ledge lay a number of large boulders, masses that had rolled down and rested there perhaps an age before.
With much labor and prying with spear-hafts, the men brought down several of the smaller rocks to the lip of the ledge. Poising one of them where, as nearly as they could judge, it would fall straight into the passage below, they waited for a lull in the fight. When they saw the pass clear of their fellows, they loosed the big stone with a shout.
Down it crashed, but, aimed too far to the left, missed the cleft and struck on the cliff-face with such force that a part of it flew to splinters. The main mass bounded through the air, struck again at the edge of the plateau, and thundered down the slope, carrying three of Analos's fighting men with it.
Unheeding the cries of their fellows from below to desist, the men on the ledge poised another boulder with better aim. It smashed into the rock corridor so near to the turn that the wind from it blew hard in the face of the Lord Patrymion, looking forth, and it struck the spear from his grasp and shattered it.
Up sprang the lad with a loud laugh.
"Now there's an end to this pleasant business of fighting," he said to Zalos, and pointed to the fallen rock. It lay wedged in the passage, jammed against the sides, and breast high, a natural barrier, stronger than the shield of Minos. One active man might hold the pass against any number, as long as he held strength to thrust, for room was left for but one man to pass over the rock at a time, and in no position for fighting.
Outside the plateau the Sardanians also had seen this new guardian in the narrow way, and reviled their fellows on the ledge for their lack of thought.
Nevertheless, they made one more attempt. They fetched up the slope a long and heavy timber of hymanan wood. Fixing an ilium-bar the thickness of two spear-hafts across the crevice, they slung the beam from it with a stout rope. Twenty men then seized the bar and swung the battering-ram against the boulder until they were weary. Every blow did but fix the rock firmer. All efforts to ram it in to where it might fall into the wider portion of the passage failed. They gave it up.
"Here we may stay now until we be old and gray-headed, Zalos," said Patrymion ruefully. "There can be no more fighting worth the telling. They cannot come at us. A puny girl could withstand them all here." He peered over the rock. "Aye, they know it, the rogues, and are going. 'Twill be but poor sport here." To himself he added: "I know a better, even though it lasteth but a few moments. What's the odds?"
Carried away by the love of fighting, a madness seemed to seize the lad. He let fall the shield of Minos, caught Zalos's ax from his hand, and before any man could hinder, he leaped over the rock.
"'Tis a pretty weapon," he called back over his shoulder to the hunter, and shook the ax aloft. "I will use it well." He ran out across the plateau singing loudly.
Unmindful of the danger, the hunter captain clambered over the rock to follow him. It was too late. For an instant Zalos saw the lad outlined clearly in the glare from the fire on the plateau, swinging the great ax with both hands. Then the spearsmen closed in on him from all sides. Four men he felled with four lightning strokes, and went down, dying as he had lived, with careless song on his lips, making a jest of death itself.
A storm of spears fell about the hunter as he emerged into the light, and he was fain to scramble back into the passage and over the rock to save his own skin.
Utterly exhausted, Minos, when he left the battle, had entered the cave and thrown himself on a couch to regain breath and strength for further combat. His hunters dressed his wounds and chafed his numbed sword-arm. First to reach him with water and bandages was Memene, but when she saw that his injuries were light and that he was merely tired, she gave way to the men and went back to her carved chair. But as she sat, one of her feet was ever tapping softly.
After a time came Zalos, and told his story to the king. Minos stood up and called for wine. When the beaker was fetched, he bowed low toward the rocky entrance, raising one hand in silent salute, and drank.
"To whom dost thou drink a toast, King Minos?" asked the girl, who noted all with curious eyes.
"To a brave man gone from among us," he replied gravely; "to a very brave man, to the Lord Patrymion."
Around the rocky headland, and into the cove swung the Minnetonka. The cove afforded the cruiser a safe harbor, storm-protected and free from ice. Down swung the boats from their davits, filled with eager men. For the first time shouting American sailors set foot on the shore where, more than two thousand years before, the little band of Achaeans had left the wreck of their ancient trireme, and pushed on into the unknown wilderness to find and people Sardanes.
Scoland, from the wireless room on the cruiser's deck, released the electric current that sent a splitting, chattering call out along the air-waves to the north. Nor was that call long unanswered.
Loaded with supplies and coal, the staunch old ship Felix, which Scoland had commanded on his previous polar dash, had left America before the Minnetonka. The faster cruiser had passed the Felix on the sea-road, but she had toiled sturdily along, and was now in harbor at the upper end of Ross Sea to wait what might befall; the Felix and her wireless constituted the one link that joined the Sardanian relief expedition to the outer world.
In the second boat to the shore went Polaris Janess and his dogs. The son of the snows was moccasined and furred, and ready to try conclusions with the worst that the white wildernesses had to put forth against him, the wildernesses that once had been his home. He wore the garments of white bearskin that had kept the warmth in his body in his great dash to the north.
His hair of red-gold had now grown long and hung again to his shoulders. Except that time and the perils through which he had passed had marked his face a thought more grave, he was the same indomitable young man who once had fought his way across the drift-ice in this selfsame cove, when the fiends from the sea deeps, the killer whales, had striven in vain to make a meal of him, and his Rose maid had stood on the snowy shore and called encouragement to him in his fight.
Beside Polaris in the boat was seated the short, wide figure of Zenas Wright. His white hair shone from under a shapeless cap of lynx fur from the Hudson Bay country. He was buttoned to the ears in a suit of mackinaw wool with a furred parka. Like the young man, he had a pair of snowshoes slung at his back. He, too, was determined to tread the white pathway to Sardanes.
Polaris had done his best to dissuade the aged scientist from the attempt, and Scoland had added his plea. The determination of the old man to go with Polaris had seemed a particular annoyance to the captain. Zenas Wright would listen to neither argument nor entreaty.
"In my time I've put my name on one or two spots on the map," he said, "but I would rather have it erased than to miss my share in this expedition. I'm going to see this Sardanes of yours, my son, if I have to leave my old bones there. I was responsible for your coming down here. Now I'm going in with you. You are not going to take all the risks alone. Don't try to stop me. My mind's made up, and I'm obstinate as a Tennessee mule."
Ashore with them went the ship's carpenters with tools and lumber to establish a winter camp. A number of shacks were knocked together. More sledges and dogs were taken ashore. Within a couple of days a small but noisy settlement had sprung up on the bay shore. Men and beasts, confined for many weary weeks to the cramped quarters aboard the cruiser, were glad, indeed, to have the chance to be ashore and move about freely, bleak as the place was. Shouts and barks arose joyously where for untold centuries few voices had been heard except those of many-tongued Nature herself.
Sure that his wireless connections with the Felix were in working order, and that the crew of the supply ship had chosen a safe harbor, where he could find them, Captain Scoland also went ashore, and threw himself energetically into the details of camp making.
Never a talkative man, the tall captain had grown, in the latter days of their voyaging, more taciturn than ever. Morose and moody, for hours at a time he never opened his lips except for the giving of orders, and they were more sharp and stern than even was his wont. His associates had been quick to notice those things, but laid them to the cares and dangers of their enterprise. In one thing the captain was not lacking. That was a great capacity for work. Scarcely a detail of the work on board the cruiser or ashore went forward without his personal supervision.
Seeing that the heart of Zenas Wright was firm set on making the trip inland to Sardanes, Polaris, with inward impatience, was forced to delay the immediate start he had premeditated. Once started, the going would be swift as they were capable of, and it would be a cruelty to expect the older man, unused for years to snow travel, to keep up the pace on snowshoes.
While others of the party were busy with the camp building, Polaris and the scientist spent hours on the snow slopes, and made a number of short trips over the ridge to the east. As the young man had foreseen, Wright's first experience with the shoes nearly crippled him. In the course of a couple of days, however, his joints and muscles were limbered to the labor, and he was able to make surprising progress, proving his boast that he was an adept snow runner.
Scoland, whom previous years in both Arctic and Antarctic regions had made expert in the management of dogs, selected himself a team from the huskies, and took a sudden interest in snow journeying, an activity that nearly cost the expedition dearly.
On the second day after their arrival at the cove, a man came ashore from the Minnetonka with a message for the captain from Aronson on the Felix. The message bearer failed to find Scoland at the shacks. When Polaris and Zenas Wright came in later, at the end of their day's exercise, the captain was still missing. They had not seen him. Dogs and sledge which the captain had been using were missing also.
"Either he is strayed and lost in the snow, or some manner of mishap has befallen," said Polaris. "I will go and find him."
Turning his own beasts, he set out at once to study the tangle of snow trails that led inland from the camp. There had been no snow and little wind for a number of days, so it was an easy matter for him to read the paths. Starting from the ridge at the back of the cove, he swung out in a long loop, whose farther curve took him five miles or more from the camp. Four trails he crossed that were plainly back-trailed. The fifth snow path that he came to led on into the wilderness, with no evidence of a return, and he followed that.
Along the foothill slopes of the icy barrier mountains the land lay comparatively level, except for the rocky hummocks that were everywhere sprinkled. A few miles to the south of the range, low rolling hills began again, extending as far as eye might see. Into the hills Scoland's trail lay. Some six miles from where Polaris first picked up the path, he found the captain.
Where a deep and jagged crevasse yawned beneath its treacherous coverlet of snow crust, the trail ended. Where the crust had broken under their weight, men and dogs and sledge had disappeared into the depths.
Outspanning and tethering his own team to a rock, the son of the snows crept forward cautiously to the brink of the chasm.
Scarcely a yard below the level of the broken snow bridge, Scoland's sledge was caught fast between two projecting teeth of rock and hung over the crevasse. Head downward in their harness, and frozen stiff and dead, dangled the carcasses of two of the captain's huskies. Below them the forward harness hung in strips. Peering into the lower deep of the crevasse, as his eyes became accustomed to its gloom, Polaris could make out the mass of fallen snow from the bridge. It lay forty feet below him, on the floor of the crevasse, which extended away to either side in an irregular corridor, rock-walled and carpeted with snow. Of the man and the other dogs he could see nothing.
He shouted, and his heart leaped gladly, when, faint and weak and far-away, came an answering halloo, followed immediately by the howling of dogs. Scoland lived!
Lengths of thin, stout rope were part of the equipment of every sledge, and with each a small steel pulley for hauling. Polaris sprang to his sledge and fetched his tackle.
Testing every inch of the rock with his utmost strength, he crept over the lip of the crevasse, whipped a short bight of rope about one of the rocks that held the wreck of Scoland's sledge, swung his pulley and threaded it. Of rope he had nearly a hundred feet, so that, doubled, it reached the floor of the crevasse, and to spare. He did his work in haste.
Within five minutes of the time of Scoland's answering hail from the depths, Polaris went down the doubled rope hand under hand, and set foot on the crevasse bottom. He shouted again, and again received a faint answer, away to the south in the windings of the crooked corridor. He started that way, and had gone but a few steps when, whimpering and howling, two of the captain's dogs came floundering through the snow to meet him.
When Scoland broke through the crust he had been running with the dogs ahead of his sledge. He had pitched downward with the mass of falling snow, and landed, badly shaken but uninjured, on the floor of the crevasse. He saw at once that it would be impossible at the point where he fell to scale the height of the crevasse wall. The corridor-like fissure, extending south, took an upward course. The captain followed its windings in that direction, hoping that it would lead again to the surface.
Another mishap had made his case almost hopeless. A break in the rocky floor, masked by snow, yawned across the entire width of the chasm. In the half darkness, Scoland had reached its edge. Too late he felt the snow slipping from beneath his feet, and fell again. He had found himself in a pocket some eight feet deep, its sides so sheer that he could not climb them. Vainly he explored every inch of the walls at either side, and tore at the rocks until his hands bled, in an effort to gain a hold. His struggles only brought exhaustion. Three of his huskies had taken the leap, the other two remaining in the upper corridor.
Utterly worn out, the captain at length had curled himself up with the beasts. The warmth of their bodies alone had held the life in his body, for the cold was deadly. Dogs and man were waiting for slow death when they heard the hail of Polaris.
Flat on his stomach, Polaris crawled to the edge of the break in the floor. Cramped and chilled, Scoland was barely able to stand and stagger to the wall. Polaris reached down and found that he could grasp Scoland's upstretched arms between wrists and elbows. Turning on his back, the son of the snows exerted his mighty sinews. Scoland hung almost a dead weight, but he raised him. Up, up, slowly, carefully, and then over the edge, and the captain lay gasping beside him.
On his face again, Polaris called encouragement to the huskies. Barking loudly, the dogs sprang high, leaping repeatedly at the face of the wall. One by one, the man caught them in the air as they leaped, and raised them to the upper floor.
Half carrying the exhausted Scoland, Polaris hurried along the passage to the ropes, and made him fast. Fearing that the captain was too weak to effect his own release from the tackle, Janess climbed the rope to the lip of the chasm. Again he exerted his tireless strength and hauled the other to the surface.
Scoland rolled weakly into the snow.
"Brandy," he muttered; "there's a flask in the back of the sledge. Can you reach it?"
Polaris found and fetched the flask. Scoland took a long pull at the fiery spirit. Seeing Janess about to lower himself over the rock again, he asked:
"What are you going to do?"
"Fetch up the dogs," Polaris answered.
"Let the damned brutes go, and get me back to the camp. I'm nearly all in."
Polaris eyed him narrowly.
"Not so," he said shortly. "They are good dogs. Were it not for three of them I think you would not now be living." He slipped down the side of the crevasse.
Scoland sneered. He lay watching the straining rope. It seemed to fascinate him. His hand crept to the knife at his belt. Slowly he drew it, and laid its keen blade against the rope. A wave of weakness came over him. Alone, he could never reach the camp. He put away the knife.
One by one Polaris brought up the huskies. He placed Scoland on his own sledge and drove back to the camp, leaving the wreck to be recovered later.
Not one word of thanks did Scoland speak to him for his deliverance. All the way back to the camp the captain lay on the sledge with closed eyes. All the way he cursed furiously within himself that it should be his fortune to take his life at the hands of this one man of all men.
No more was battle done on the steep slope of Mount Latmos. Assured that Minos and his men were holed in where they might not come at them, the fighting men of the priest went up against the cave no more. Although they must have known that the treasure cave was provisioned and watered so abundantly that it would keep its small garrison for many months, they did not give up their siege entirely. That was discovered when one of the hunters thought to go forth by stealth in the slumber hours, and pay a visit to his wife and children at his home in the valley. Hardly was he over the ledge of the plateau when men seized him in the dusk.
His comrades in the cave above heard him scream out once and twice, and then the minions of Analos cut his throat.
On their part, the hunters maintained a guard of one man at all hours, who sat behind the boulder in the passageway.
Late in the fourth day that they had been immured in the mountainside, Dukulon, one of Zalos's men, as he stood his turn at guard, heard a rapping at the mouth of the pass as one who tapped gently on the wall with a stone.
"Who cometh?" he hailed.
"Sh—it is I, Alternes," came the whispered answer. "I would have speech with Minos the King."
Minos came and bade the lad enter the cave. He wriggled slowly, and with not a few groans, through the passage, and was helped over the rock. When they took him to the light, they found that he was in evil case. Most of his clothing had been torn from him, and he was bruised and with dried blood on his flesh.
"They have hunted me in the hills like a goat," he gasped, as he bent to kiss the hand of his master. "Thy palace is a dismal ruin, O king. Thy servants are scattered or slain. The stone with thy name on it has been cast down from above thy seat in the Judgment House. Even thy throne they toppled from its place and shattered."
The king turned from him sorrowfully. The hunters gathered round, and, as they tended the hurts of the lad, they sought news from him of their families.
"I can tell you naught," he said wearily, "but I believe that every soul in the valley that stood faithful to the king hath been sent to Hephaistos. The dead lie unburned in rows on the upper terraces of the Gateway. For in the hill the fires of the god do wax so mighty that none, not even his own priests, dares to come near to them. All upper Sardanes is snow and ice. Ten of the great moons have gone dark, and as they die the cold cometh on apace."
Then Alternes turned his face to the wall on the couch of skins where they had laid him, and slept long and well.
One more attempt Analos made to bring Minos to his will. The priest sent a delegation of all the lords of the valley to the cave-mouth. Minos came and talked with them over the fallen rock. To his side came the Lady Memene and leaned upon the stone, her chin upon her hands.
Ukalles, now an outcast from his home on Tanos in upper Sardanes, was spokesman for the nobles.
"We are sore beset of troubles, O Minos!" he cried. "The priest saith the land is doomed to the anger of the Lord Hephaistos, and day by day the doom marcheth. Thou dost stand against it and lure it on the people and on all of us, saith Analos. Wilt not yield to the god, and not let this fair valley perish, that hath stood for ages? Consider, for the people's sake—the people whom once thou didst love so well, and who love thee. It is promised thee that thou shalt not die if thou dost yield. Thou must, indeed, go to the Gateway and submit to what decree of punishment the god maketh, but not to death. Come, ere that we hold dear be gone, and Sardanes be blotted out."
"Strange is the love the people bear their king," answered Minos calmly. "Strange, indeed, when they have slain my servants, laid my palace in ruins, and stricken my very name from the seat of my fathers—"
"But that was by orders of the god through his priests," broke in Ukalles.
"Right well I know that so ye are deluded to believe," replied the king. "Yet were those orders from the priests carried out by hands and hearts of those who once were my people. Minos hath no people more, save these few faithful ones who abide with him, risking all.
"Now list thee, Ukalles and all of those with thee, for this is the last word of Minos. Once, before he did send his spearsmen against me, I did tell this Analos that, were Minos convinced for one little moment that by any sacrifice, however great, he could avert that which falleth on the valley, that sacrifice he would make, and hesitate not. Of such is Minos not convinced. Not of the god are the rumblings of the hills, the dying fires and the coming of the snows."
"Thou blasphemest," Ukalles shouted in anger, "and in thy madness dost bring doom on us all. My curse and that of all these, and of the people, the priests and the great Hephaistos, lieth on thee, if thou dost not yield thee to his grace."
"Curse on, thou fool," was Minos's answer. "I mind thy curses as little as the wind that bloweth. If this god of thine be great and powerful, as thou sayest, and as the priests do preach, how is it that he doth allow me, one man alone, to stand in his divine path? Why hath he not come hither and plucked me from my place and bent or broken me to his will?"
Minos raised his hand on high with the great sword shining in it.
"I, Minos, king in Sardanes until the end, do defy this Hephaistos. Hath he need of such as thou and Analos to do his will for him, he is no cause for fear. Away, ye superstition-ridden dullards, and run your mad pace through. Minos yieldeth not. He defieth all of you. Your god cometh not, nor will come, because—there is no god!"
Shaking and trembling in the fears aroused by the king's defiance, the nobles turned to go. Only Karnaon stood out from among them.
"Memene, my daughter, leave thou this madman and come to me," he called. "Come, girl. Thy father commandeth thee."
"And I, my father, do disobey thee," said the girl.
"Then take thou thy father's bitter curse," Karnaon shouted. He stamped his foot in his anger.
"That thou didst give me once, O father, when thou didst send me to the Gateway to marry the foul priest," answered Memene. "That is neither forgotten nor forgiven thee."
"Thou art no more daughter of mine," Karnaon said between his set teeth. Then he, too, turned away and followed the others down the steep hill, walking heavily.
Slowly the nobles crossed the valley and the river and took their tidings to Analos at the Gateway.
At the top of the pathway to the first terrace, the high priest met them, escorted by the black-robed company that served the mighty altar of Hephaistos. When he saw that they brought no royal captives with them, and heard the tale of the defiance Minos had hurled at the ancient god, his anger rose and choked him so that he answered them nothing. He stood and heard them through, his hands clenched under his robe so that the nails of his fingers bit into his palms.
For a time he stood so. Then he rent his black robe from him, tearing it to shreds, and in his red paraphernalia of death ran up the terraces like a flame. In a room in his own house on the upper terrace he threw himself on the marble floor and writhed and rolled and tore at his black beard, gone clean mad with impotent rage. When one of his priests came to consult him, he leaped in frenzy, and slew the man with one stroke of a stone vase, then hid the body and went forth, somewhat calmed.
As he passed his threshold, a roaring smote upon his ears. From the lofty arched portal built against the side of the cliff gushed a tide of molten lava as wide as the river Ukranis. The fire-lake had risen until it overflowed the ledge and poured down through the spiral passage that led from the temple of death to the upper terrace.
Out from the carved portal flowed the fiery torrent, hissing and snapping. Right in its path lay the rows of dead Sardanians, awaiting the rites of Hephaistos, their quiet faces upturned and ghastly in the baleful radiance reflected down on them from the flaming hill-crown. One moment they lay there in their still lines, and then the seething flood passed over them and licked them up.
On it poured, and crept over the brink of the terrace, and down in a fearful cascade, setting fire to the forest on the side of the holy hill. The force of the torrent soon abated, and the lava lay as though some terrible serpent had crept forth from the deeps of the earth and stretched itself adown the terraces. For hours it glowed before it cooled into dross and ashes. The fire in the forest spread, until half the mountain was aflame, and the lower end of the valley presented a spectacle of unearthly splendor.
That flood of lava was a spurt of the very heart's blood of the valley. Even as it jetted from the side of the Gateway, halfway up the valley's rim three more of its volcanic guardians gave up their fiery ghosts, and the cold grip of the Antarctic took hold of their gaping throats.
Undaunted by the fury that raged on the Gateway to the Future, Analos would not desert his post on the upper terrace. All of the other priests he drove from him, bidding them abide below with the stricken people until such time as he should summon them to him again. He stayed alone with his god.
More days of terror passed. The red priest from the flaming hill and Minos the king from his lair on Mount Latmos watched the march of winter down the valley.
CHAPTER V
THE WARNING OF THE LAST MOON
When Nature issues a decree, the execution thereof is pitiless. She recks naught of dynasties or nations. When she would have a clean page on which to write, she erases, if needs be, and with inexorable completeness, the fairest characters she may have inscribed previously. The smallest and the greatest, the tiny grass blade, the towering forest giant, the lowly anthill, the lofty mountain, the blind worm in the dust, proud man, the "lord of creation"—be any or all of these in her path. Nature breaks them, and, with her ally, Time, makes smooth the page for her next writing.
Only those who are wise and instructed may pore over such an erasure and, from a faint trace here, a blur there, partly read and partly guess at that which once was writ.
Years uncounted, Sardanes had flourished in the wastes of the Southland. Then, the great All-Mother, always unhurried, drew a steadfast white finger across the valley.
Only a fortnight elapsed from the day on which the Gateway to the Future sent forth its first flare of fire, that followed centuries in which it had been dark—only a brief fortnight, and the Gateway alone of all the volcanic ring still sent fire and smoke heavenwards. All the sister hills lay silent and lifeless, their furious spirits spent and gone elsewhere, their seamed summits crowned with the white of Antarctic snows.
First to yield was the holy river Ukranis. Ice bound its sources until it became a mere streamlet, soon paralyzed by the cold into a glittering thread. A gray rime crept over the green velvet of the grass, and a white pall covered it softly. The blue roses withered and fell. The grain in the fields ceased to grow and lay lifeless. Bushes and shrubs died. The giant trees shed their faded foliage, their roots strangled in the chill of death, their palsied branches brittle and breaking down under a weight of snow. The bright birds of many hues that had flashed back and forth through the forest glades and lanes fluttered to the ground with mournful cries and died. The hum of insect life was stilled. On the hillsides, the little brown rabbits shivered in their burrows, nestled together and slept forever.
With all of these, there passed a hundred things, animate and inanimate, that had their living like in no other spot on the whole earth.
Only man and his closest companions lingered. At the foot of the terraced hill of Hephaistos all of Sardanes that still lived were gathered—all, with the exception of Minos the king and his company on the hill of Latmos.
At the north end of the valley, with their backs to the last of the flaming hills and their faces towards the encroaching snows, the Sardanians pitched a great camp. Some few small houses that once had been those of the tillers of the fields, were occupied by the lords and their families. The people, nearly two thousand of them, camped on the ground with blankets and furs and some articles of their wooden household furniture, each little family in its own group.
Against the creeping white enemy that had invaded the valley, they set a barrier of flame. A hundred axmen, working in shifts, with as many ponies, cut and dragged trees from near-by hillsides. Hour after hour they piled the fires with wood from the hymanan forests, and kept a blazing ring around the camp. When one party was wearied, another took up the work.
So, with hope departing, they kept life in their bodies for a few days.
To that end of the valley were brought all of the small horses in the kingdom, to the number of several hundreds. There was not enough fodder to maintain the poor animals for long, and they died by the score. The slopes of the Gateway swarmed with wild goats, driven thither with all the rest by the sinister white invader that had crept to their loftiest haunts in the cliffs, and had cut them off from their food supplies. They and the horses were all that remained of animal life in Sardanes, except the dogs of Minos on Latmos.
Bitter as was the exigency, Analos the priest would not suffer the people to ascend to the terraces of the Gateway, where was still some warmth from within the hill. So strong was the grip of their superstitions and his threats, that, shivering, facing death and desperate, the people still heeded and obeyed him.
Analos, guardian of the portals of the Gateway, dwelt alone with the majesty of his god, save for the wild goats, which cared naught for orders, priest or god.
Watch was kept no longer at the mouth of the cavern where Minos and his party lay. Well it was for them that it was so, else they had perished of cold. No longer was the cave tenable without fire. Like the people below in the valley, the refugees were forced to work in shifts of axmen to keep the lives within them. In the cave a fire roared constantly, and another without on the plateau.
Analos had given up his battle against the king. It was by his orders that his spearsmen kept watch at the cave no longer. His fiery spirit was burning itself out within him, and he was turning cold, as the lifeless hills turned cold. It seemed to him that his will roamed through the chambers of his mind, and in them could find no more of anger against Minos; nor could it conjure up, as it had been want to do, more terrible behests of the god Hephaistos. Chaos had come to Analos, and let it come, said he, for no more might he read the mind of his mighty master and interpret his wishes.
On the Gateway he dwelt alone and in a daze, and waited, waited, for he knew not what. But he was to see one more vision—wild as any his madness ever brought to him.
He hardly ever slept. Hour by hour he paced the paths of the upper terrace, before the carven portal of the cliff, until there came a day when he found that he could enter the winding way that led to the ancient temple of death on the crater ledge.
On the stone steps of the sanctuary the priest laid himself, worn out with his vigil, and there sleep bound him fast. For hours he slumbered on. He awoke with a great start of horror, the fear of a half-remembered dream, a monstrous vision. He rushed to the brink of the sheer ledge.
Hundreds of feet below him writhed the fiery lake, wafting upwards its roseate mists and vapors, as it had for centuries. It was once more at its ancient level—or was it below? He stared; and as he gazed, it seemed to him that, inch by inch, very slowly, the seething maelstrom was sinking!
Suddenly realization came to him. The flaming crown of the Gateway was gone. The fires of the Gateway were going!
Poised at the ledge's brink, he flung wide his arms. "Hephaistos! Hephaistos! Master, whither goest thou?" he shrieked. The dull rumble of the fires, the soughing of the wind in the mighty cone, the soft curling reek of the fire mists drifting by him were his only answer. Came the thought of those below in the valley, and he rushed from the temple and passed down the terraces.
Already snow was falling on their green declivity.
His appearance on the side of the mountain was greeted with a shivering moan from the people. When the Gateway had gone dark, and new terror had assailed them, they still had held to the word of the priest. No one of them set foot on the holy hill. Quaking, they crowded together at its foot and waited the coming of Analos. A thousand eyes were upon him as he went down the terraces—not the arrogant, masterful man they always had known him, but a bowed and silent figure, walking with folded arms and eyes cast down, great eyes that glowed but dimly in their caverns. Even so, he was still the master—and still mad.
As he paused on the lowermost terrace, they crowded closely about him. A nation held its breath and waited for his words. He raised his head and his gaze swept over the close ranks of the people. He held out his arms toward them in silence for a moment before he spoke.
"A message I bear to his people from the mighty Lord Hephaistos," he said clearly. "Patience for but a little time, and he shall hear it. But first I must go to Latmos. Take me thither."
Six strong men made a litter and carried him, fighting their way through snow almost knee-deep, to the plateau on Latmos.
Hunters of the king, laboring at their fire on the plateau, saw the party on its way. One of them summoned Minos.
"The red priest hath come again from the Gateway," he shouted into the cave.
Armed and ready, Minos the king came forth, but laid his weapons down when he saw only six unarmed and gloomy men. Analos clambered from his litter and faced him.
"Once more, and this the last time of all, cometh Analos, priest of Hephaistos, to look upon thy face, thou Minos, who wast king," he said. "Nay, answer me not in anger, for I speak not in anger or bitterness," he continued quickly, when the king would have replied. "Hear me through. That which hath passed between us, let it pass and be past. No longer beareth Analos command of his god to do harm to thee or thine."
He raised his arm and pointed to the south up the valley. Minos saw that the arm trembled, and the man was swaying.
"Sardanes lieth dead," the priest went on. "Life cometh to the valley no more, for the god goeth hence forever, and leaveth all things behind him as doubtless they were before he came in the ancient days and made his home and guided hither his chosen people.
"Yonder in the Gateway, the god tarryeth to take with him his faithful ones. He groweth impatient, for even there the fires fall apace—"
"How meanest thou?" Minos broke in.
"This; that, with the passing of the god shall pass every soul in Sardanes. Analos goeth hence to the Gateway to muster his people. With music and singing and rejoicing shall they follow the ancient god through the Gateway to the Future, to what new, far land of promise he hath prepared for them."
The king drew a quick breath, but held his peace. Leaning on the shoulders of two of his bearers, for his strength waned, Analos turned his somber eyes on the hunters.
"Ye men of Minos," he said, and his voice was almost gentle, "come yet with all the rest, I pray you. Your people await you, with your wives and your little ones. It is in the mind of Analos that, because ye have been faithful to your master in his folly, the punishment therefor shall not fall on you. Much may be forgiven a loyal servant, even though he setteth his master before his god. Analos biddeth you come, for time groweth short, and darkness falleth.
"And thou, O Minos, come thou also, an indeed thou wilt. I know not what shall be meted out to thee of the god's mercy. Perchance thy punishment shall be most passing bitter. That is in the hands of Hephaistos, and no more in those of Analos, his servant. Analos hath no further hate for thee in his heart, or for the maid Memene. Come ye both, if ye are so minded, in peace and with these others. Analos hath spoken."
"Priest, thou art mad still," replied Minos, "but not so mad as once thou wert. The valley lieth dead indeed, and Minos knoweth not if ever it will bloom again. Thou mayest bend the people to thy crazed mind's fancy. Minos bendeth not. Here will he await the end, until the end."
Before the king had quit speaking, the priest fell wearily into his litter, and at a sign from his hand, his men started down the slopes through the snow.
On the day following the misadventure of Captain Scoland, Polaris and Zenas Wright, all their preparations made, set forth on the road to Sardanes.
Latter-day science has contributed much to the safety and comfort of the explorer. On the sledge of the adventurers was packed in small space a supply of provisions for both men and animals that would last them for a month, yet which did not constitute too great a weight for the dogs to draw. The sledge itself was far higher than the old affair of wood with which the son of the snows had set out on his previous perilous trips. Wherever lightness would not detract from the strength to withstand straining, the vehicle was constructed of aluminum.
The travelers were armed heavily. Ill would it go with any shape of man or beast that should cross their path with threatening intent. From the belt of Polaris swung a brace of automatic pistols of the heaviest caliber. Strapped handily on the sledge were three high-powered rifles. Old Zenas Wright contented himself with one pistol, like those of his companion.
Not all of the trappings of the younger man were the product of civilization. He carried in his hand a stout spear of his own workmanship. On that, and on the long knife at his side, he depended, in a pinch, fully as much as he did on the guns.
Farewells were soon said at the camp, a ceremony which Scoland was not on hand to participate in. Polaris laid out his harness, inspanned his seven dogs, with big Boris in the lead, and cracked his long whip. From shore and ship a cheer went up as the dogs sprang forward. The two wayfarers responded with waves of their hands, then bent their backs to the toil of the road, vanished over the crest of the ridge, and were gone.
For years more than twice the span of Polaris's life, Zenas Wright had been an active and athletic man. He had made no empty boast when he had said that he was a traveler of parts, and able to hold his own on any path. If the pace they set was not quite as swift as Polaris might have maintained alone, it was far from slow, and the old explorer kept it up tirelessly and uncomplaining.
Mile after mile fell behind the flying feet of the agile beasts and gliding men. Occasionally they stopped and made brief camp, but the pressure of their errand spurred them to the limit of endurance. Weather favored them. They met no biting tempests with blinding snows to confuse and delay them. Lack of clear light was their only serious obstacle. The skies remained overcast and leaden, and no golden sun rays came to point their way.
"More light I could wish for gladly," said Polaris, "but I think the very instinct within me will not let me lose this road."
Often he scanned the horizon to the south, frequently halting the dogs and ascending to the summit of craggy snow hummock or low hill, with which the great plain was besprinkled. He also studied continually the formation of the ice-clad barrier range to their left, its sinister peaks in silhouette against the sky.
Used for years to fix his bearings by the landmarks set by nature, the eye of the snow dweller was photographic, his memory unerring. At length he found the path he sought. Spying afar from the crest of a craggy eminence, he noted the combination of contour and surroundings that told him they were near to the end of their journey.
He swung the dog team from the eastward course, and veered away to the south. Soon they came to a long depression, that wound southward among the low hills, in much the semblance of a sometime traveled highway.
With kindling eye, Polaris pointed down the reaches of its sinuous course.
"Yonder, old man, stretches the Hunters' Road, and Sardanes lies at its farther end!" he cried. "In a few more hours we shall know the best or worst of this long trip of ours."
Even with the aid of the powerful glasses carried by Zenas Wright, Polaris could not pierce the distances to where the volcanic hills lay around the valley.
"If all were well, there should be at least some flare of fires against this dull sky," he muttered, "yet I see none."
Guiding the dogs into the road, Polaris urged them on at a pace faster than any they had yet taken, for he knew that this path was free from obstacles or pitfalls. As they came nearer to their goal, both men grew taciturn. Zenas Wright was absorbed with the food for thought that his eager old eyes supplied him. Polaris was oppressed with a prescience of tragedy. Why were there no fires on the horizon, and why no signs of travel on the white reaches of the Hunters' Road?
Once more they camped against a bluff cliff at a turn in the road, and then went on again. First with the glasses, and then with their eyes alone, they picked upon the dim outlines of the Sardanian mountain ring, dull white against the dun skies. Polaris shook his head gloomily.
"Much my heart does misgive me, old Zenas Wright," he said, "for I fear we are too late. Green, yon hills should be, and dark at their summits, but they are white. The breeze blows from them to us, but is tempered with no warmth. I fear that the great calamity which your science has foretold is complete, and that all Sardanes is passed away."
As they drew nearer to the mountain ring, out to their left across the snow-fields, they saw the evidences of a mighty disturbance of the face of the earth. Hills riven in twain, tremendous fissures and pits marked a long, wide scar that extended from the base of the hills and reached northward farther than they could see.
"Some giant force has passed that way," Polaris said, "the like of which I never saw in these lands. It is not unlike the track of a giant's sledge across the face of the country. How do you read it?"
"It is the path taken by the volcanic fires on their way from here to where we found them blazing on Ross Sea," Zenas Wright answered. "As they tore their way through the channels opened to them, they writhed and shook the earth and rock above them, and left this appearance when they had gone. That would have been a sight worth watching and study. The earth out there must have pitched and tossed like waves of the sea."
He paused, and his face was very solemn.
"I, too, am afraid that it's all no use," he said slowly. "That seam out there is cold, or there would be a fog above it so thick we could not trace it. That means that the fires have been gone for some time. It looks bad. But let us hurry on and see for ourselves."
They reached the north pass of Sardanes and found it half choked with snow where it always had been bare. It was a comparatively easy matter to sledge up and through it. Halfway up the pass the dogs balked and refused to go forward. Slinking and whining, the brutes skulked in their harness and cowered back against the sides of the sledge, nor would word or whip urge them on.
Hardly less keen than those of the animals themselves, the senses of the son of the snows soon warned him of the danger's nature. He sniffed at the air of the pass and turned smilingly to the scientist.
"A bear," he said, and then, contemptuously; "these dogs are of a poor spirit or we would have to hold them back rather than whip them on. Stay you here and try to quiet them. I will go on and clear the way."
He took a rifle from the sledge and laid down his spear, saying almost apologetically as he did so, "Well would I love to fight him after my old fashion and show you sport, but we haste, and have no time for sports."
Taking off his snowshoes and loosening the knife in his belt, Polaris ran forward around a turn of the rock. Hardly had he disappeared when the air reechoed to a burst of horrid howling, followed by the spitting crack of the rifle.
Polaris found his foe a few rods up the pass, a lean old bear, almost toothless, his once snow-white coat rusted to a dingy yellow, his claws well worn. He was feeling his way cautiously down the snow-covered rocks. With the wind blowing from him, he had no warning of the presence of an enemy until he saw Polaris kneeling scarcely fifteen feet from him. Then he howled indeed. It was his last challenge. A bullet from the powerful rifle, truly aimed, plowed through his shaggy breast and found his heart.
Whipping out his knife, Polaris cut the throat of the huge beast and hacked a piece of flesh from its shoulder. He ran down the path again and threw the bloody fragment before the dogs.
"An old trick," he laughed. "They smell the blood, they taste it, and they fear no more."
Up through the pass the travelers drove their team, past the carcass of the bear, and stood at the lip of the valley slope. Sardanes lay before them. Zenas Wright groaned aloud. Polaris Janess threw wide his arms in a gesture of sorrow, and his face grew solemn with pity.
"Gone," he whispered; "men and women and children, and the wonders they wrought—gone, and the snows have covered all!"
As they stood there, the Antarctic sun, freed at last from its cloud bonds, shot a sullen red ray over the hills and down the valley, and laid bare the full measure of the ruin. From the gleaming cap of the Gateway to the Future, to Mount Helior in upper Sardanes the valley was banked with snow, its mansions hidden, its fields and forests buried deep. Only on the higher slopes was evidence that life had ever been. There the giant hymanan trees still stood against the storms, their branches bleak and bare, thrust out above the white masses that covered more than half their mighty trunks. Behind them loomed the cliffs of the mountain ring, their sheer sides also splotched with white.
Some distance down the valley, Polaris fancied he could distinguish a mass bulking up in the snow that he deemed marked where the Judgment House stood.
"In the hollow of the Gateway hill, and in caves in the mountain sides, perchance there is that which will repay your visit somewhat, old man," Polaris said to the geologist. "All else is dead."
Before the old man could answer the dogs became suddenly uneasy, growling and snarling. Polaris bent forward and cupped his ear with his hand. A long-drawn howling floated across the valley from the western range. "More bears," he said, then started and turned a flashing eye on his companion.
"Come on, old Zenas Wright!" he cried. "More than bears are here. Yonder howl dogs also. Did I not know that my gray brothers were dead these many months, all but Marcus, I might swear I heard their own voices. But, where dogs are, there are men also. Here is a new riddle. Come!"
Urging the huskies, they shot down the snow crusts of the hillside and started across the valley.
When he reached the Gateway from his last visit to Mount Latmos, Analos despatched four men and a pony sledge to the deserted Judgment House to fetch to the hill of the god the huge drum of time. When it was brought, he appeared on the steps to the first of the terraces. His priests clustered about him in a black-robed group.
He gazed down into the upturned faces of his people. At a signal, both priests and people knelt. For a space the crackling of the vast camp-fires was the only sound. Analos gathered his strength for what was to be his last speech. Never had man an audience more breathlessly attentive.
"Hephaistos calleth his children," the priest began, his voice hollow and solemn, his words falling slowly. "Through me, Analos, high priest in Sardanes, his life-long servant, he calleth. It is not for man to question the ways of the ancient god. Analos questioneth not. When his master calleth, he answereth, 'Whither thou leadest me, there will I follow on.' I am ready. Are ye also ready, my people?"
In the pause that followed the question rose the voice of the Lord Ukalles of upper Sardanes. "Whither calleth the god, O master? Read thou his message to Sardanes."
Piercing clear the voice of the high priest in answer:
"To the Gateway to the Future calleth he his children, through the portals of the temple of death to the glory that lieth beyond, whither every Sardanian hath trod since the land was new."
A shiver passed through the kneeling ranks, and a whisper, half a moan, from two thousand human throats. Again spoke the Lord Ukalles: "Must this thing be, master? Is this the end? Is there no other way?"
"This thing must be," answered the red priest steadily. "There is no other way. This is the end in Sardanes. Be ye brave, all my people. In a far country, brighter even than the fair Sardanes ye have known, Hephaistos will welcome you. Think; since our forefathers came up from the seas to this place, no Sardanian ever hath lived, save one man only, but hath passed the Gateway when his time came. Without fear and without flinching have they passed whither the god beckoned them. And, if they died elsewhere, faithful friends brought them hither, and still they passed the portals. Thousands have gone this road. Will ye falter now, when the great god doth summon you to accompany him?"
Again he paused. From the people rose a many-voiced murmur, and its burden was, "We are ready, master, lead thou us on."
"The end hath struck, indeed," cried the Lord Ukalles. "Now is no time for words or thoughts, but to do the bidding of the god. It is fitting that the lords of Sardanes should take their proper station. Stand ye forth, my fellow nobles of the land, ye and yours."
In measured tones he called the roll of the mountains, omitting only Latmos, Epamon, and Lokalian. Minos dwelt on Latmos, Patrymion of Epamon and Garlanes of Lokalian had journeyed on before. Man by man the nobles answered and took their places at the foot of the terrace with their families. Brought face to face with doom, the people met it sad-eyed and silent, but unflinching.
"It is well," cried Analos. "The children of the god fear not. Form in procession, my people, as for a festival. Cast wood on the fires to light the way."
Under this direction the huge drum was hoisted to the first terrace.
"Beat the drum, Karthanon, while the people make ready," commanded Analos. Karthanon the Aged bared a withered arm and laid on with measured stroke. Below the drum gathered the trumpeters. To the blare and boom of the music the Sardanians formed their ranks.
"When all is ready, Analos leadeth," said the priest. He staggered to the steps that led to the second terrace, and prostrated himself in prayer, with his face on the lowest step.
Across the valley from in front of the cave on Latmos, Minos and his men and the Lady Memene watched these proceedings from afar. The hymanan forests were down or bare, and they could see clearly by the light of the fires that ringed the camp. When they saw the people marshaling on the slope at the foot of the Gateway, and the first booming stroke of the drum beat up to their ears across the intervening space, the hunters drew apart and conferred among themselves in low tones.
Then came Zalos, their leader, and knelt at the feet of the king.
Tears rolled down the face of the sturdy captain.
"Lord Minos the king, I have served thee faithfully for many years, thee and thy royal house," he said in a broken voice. "As long as there was fighting to be done for thee, I and these men of mine would have stood with thee until death found us all. But now there is no more fighting, and here is the end of all things. Yonder go our people. With them are our wives, our fathers and mothers and children. At the gates of the temple of death do they stand and hold out their hands to us. Lord, think us not disloyal. We ask thee that we may join them and die with them. O king, if thou goest not also, let us go to them."
He bowed his head on Minos's hand, and wet it with his tears. The king raised him gently.
"Zalos, old friend and comrade, faithful and true hast thou been unto the end, thou and all these men, thy friends and mine. Now do I absolve thee from thy allegiance and bid thee farewell. Go—go freely, and where thy hearts are calling thee. Minos hath nothing to forgive of thee, and much to thank. Farewell." In the flickering of the fire, tears gleamed on the cheek of the king also.
One by one the men came to him and knelt and kissed his hand. As they were about to depart, they heard the lad Alternes crying out within the cave, and he climbed over the rock in the passage and staggered to the side of the fire. He was weak with illness. His cheeks flamed and his eyes shone bright with fever.
"I heard the drum calling me," he cried. "Ah, look, the people gather at the Gateway!" He pointed across the valley. "A great festival is toward."
"Aye, lad," said Zalos, "the festival of Death. Yonder all Sardanes is gathered to march through the Gateway."
For a moment the boy stared, wild-eyed.
"Why, then, must Alternes go, too!" he said. "Take me with thee, Zalos. Farewell, my king." He reeled toward Minos, but his strength gave way. He pitched on his face, and a stream of blood welled from his lips. Minos bent and laid his hand on the lad's head. At a sign, four of the hunters picked the boy up and wrapped him in his cloak.
"Take me with you," said the king. "It is his right.... Lady Memene, what of thee?" he asked. "Here is the end. Thy people march to their last long sleep before the darkness cometh. There on the Gateway are thy father and all thy house. Goest thou also?"
The girl gazed at him for a moment, while Zalos and the hunters waited on her answer. She drew herself up proudly.
"Memene goeth not," she said; "here will she await the end, whatever it may be."
The hunters raised their arms in silent salute to the king and the maid, then turned, bearing the lad among them, and ran down the hillside, the snow spurting from beneath their flying feet.
When they arrived at the Gateway their loved ones welcomed them, only to bid them farewell for a longer journey than any they had yet taken. For the procession was formed and on the move.
At its head, leaning on two of his servants, Analos the high priest passed up the terraces. Behind him strode the others of the company of Hephaistos. Two stalwart priests bore the drum of time, and Karthanon the Aged walked beside, smiting it as he went. After them came the nobles of the valley and their households, and then the concourse of the people, marching slowly and with raised faces.
As they set foot on the topmost terrace, the priests took up the chant of death, softly at first, and then with increasing volume. Voice after voice joined in the measured chant. The procession crossed the upper terrace, entered the lofty carved arch of the portal, and wound upward through the spiral passage to the edge of the Gateway's crater.
On the steps of the temple of death Analos took his stand, supporting himself against one of its pillars. The priests with the drum gathered before him.
"Forward without fear, children of Hephaistos!" he shouted. "Falter not! There waiteth the ancient god." He pointed to the brink of the ledge.
Firmly the trumpeters marched on, the red glow of the fire mists playing on their faces. They reached the brink, and they faltered not, and their trumpets sounded no more. On marched the nobles and the people, still singing as they marched. If any Sardanian, man or woman or child, blenched or cried out that day, the press of the people carried them on, the mighty chant drowned their voices. No coward turned back. Even a number of the small horses entered the hill with their masters, whinnying and nuzzling with their soft muzzles. They passed the Gateway with the rest.
Nearly the last of all came Zalos and his hunters. They carried with them the corpses of Alternes, who had not lived to reach the mountain.
At length it was done. Only the priests remained on the ledge. The reverberations of the smitten drum and the roaring of the fires in the fearful pit overbore their feeble chant.
"Forward, my brothers, true servants of the god!" cried Analos. "Forward, and I will follow you! Analos shall be the last of all, his duty done, his work complete."
With set faces, and bearing with them the drum of time, the members of the black-robed company advanced. Before the last stroke of Karthanon had ceased to echo through the hollows of the mountain, Analos stood alone. Staggering and weak, he, too, advanced. To his disordered fancy it seemed that the curling vapors before him were thick with passing souls.
Half the distance from the steps of the temple to the great hall he stumbled and fell. Faintness numbed his limbs.
His head swam dizzily.
"Hephaistos! Master," he cried in terror, "desert me not here! Strength! Grant me strength!"
He struggled madly. He clawed at the very rock of the floor, and dragged himself inch by inch toward the death he sought. His breath came in gasps. His jaw fell. The iron spirit of the man held back dissolution itself until his will was accomplished. Groping and crawling, he reached at last the polished chute in the rock, cut there by the priests centuries before and worn smooth by the passing of thousands of Sardanians.
"I thank thee, master," he sighed, content. He rolled into the chute, and his body shot downward and outward above the fiery lake. His red robe spread wide as he took the plunge, like the wings of some immense crimson bird swooping downward from a flaming sky to a blazing sea.
Minos the king stood by his fire on the hill of Latmos. With folded arms he stood, and the Lady Memene sat near to him on a log of hymanan wood cut for the burning. Their eyes strained across the white Sardanian valley. Both were silent. They saw the long procession of those about to die sweep up the fire-lighted steeps of the Gateway to the Future. They heard the chant of death from two thousand throats as the people marched across the upper terrace and through the gloomy portal of the cliff, to the music of the trumpeters and the booming of the drum of time.
When the last man had passed within, they still heard the muffled thunder of the drum. Then that ceased also. Strong spirited as were they both, their hearts seemed to stop with it.
"Now art thou and I and Kalin the last Sardanians in the living world," the king said. So he spoke, not knowing that under the rocks and the snows, many long leagues to the northward, Kalin, the priest, lay asleep where Polaris Janess had left him nearly two years before.
"That end is come which the priest preached and the people feared," he continued, "the end which Minos could not believe would come. Nor doth he believe yet, nor will so believe, that it is wrought of a god. Nature hath withdrawn her mercy, and all things in Sardanes die.
"Believing not, Minos hath tarried. Now he is a king no longer. He hath no people left to rule. Naught remaineth but a snow-swept valley which death hath touched."
From her seat on the log the girl arose. She stood in front of Minos, so close that her soft breath fanned his cheek. A slow, red flush that was not of the firelight overspread her features. Her dark eyes flashed like jewels. She spoke, and her heart was in her voice.
"Little of all that thou hast valued is left to thee, Lord Minos," she said. "Thy people have turned against thee and are gone. Thy home is a ruin. The fast-falling snows cover the land thou didst love well. Some few friends were faithful unto the death, but death came, and they left thee. All that thou hadst to lose, thou hast lost, save thy life, thy dogs yonder, and one other thing, which, perchance, thou wilt value but little. In all the world, Lord Minos, there is not one to take thee by the hand and call thee friend.
"This is the hour which Memene hath foreseen and awaited. Say not that thou art no more king, my Lord Minos. Thou art my king. It was my will to stand beside thee when all the rest had passed—to tell thee that with thee I fear no danger and no death. I love thee, Minos—"
Like a man in a spell, Minos heard her words. Closer to him she swayed. He felt the softness of her body against his breast. From the folds of her cloak her white arms crept up about his neck and drew his face to hers. Their cheeks touched. Flame answered flame. With a deep-voiced cry, "Memene!" he caught her to him and crushed her lips against his own.
For a time they stood, locked fast in each other's arms. Then Minos lifted his face to the scintillant stars in the pale Antarctic sky. "If somewhere above there dwelleth a power which doth guide the destinies of men, Minos giveth thanks," he called, exulting—"thanks for the will within him which hath stood firm to wrest from dark days of strife and death one moment such as this!"
He shook his fist toward the south. "Come, thou wild spirit of the wastes," he cried, "o'erwhelm the valley of Sardanes with thy snows and thy tempests! Minos thou canst not daunt. Thou mayest kill, but thou canst not take away that which this day hath given!"
Again he bent above the girl, and saw her face all rosy and dimpled, where before it had been cold and indifferent. Mockery dwelt there no longer. The lights of love shone so strongly as to shake his stout heart.
Had he won her but to lose her?
"Ah, Memene, Memene, loved one," he whispered, "love like ours was never doomed to die here in the snows. There must—there shall be some way to cheat death—"
From within the cave the baying of Pallas and her brood interrupted him. He started, his every nerve athrill with a new thought.
"There is a way!" he cried. "The beasts of the stranger! Whither passed Polaris and Kalin and the Rose maid, to that far-away land they named America, there shall we fare, also—there where is light and warmth for love. When the long night hath passed, my princess, then shall we journey northward!"
Memene, nestling close to him, replied, "Would that it might be so, O king of mine. Would that time might give us of its mercy and its years. Then would Memene show thee how a Sardanian girl can love. But if so much be not granted to us, and cold death cometh, Memene shall be well content to die with thee."
He led her gently through the passage, and with infinite tenderness lifted her over the rock and into the cavern. When they were come thither, Minos suddenly smacked his thigh, and a short and foolish laugh burst from him. He looked at her, abashed.
"What is it that maketh thee to laugh thus and look so strangely?" asked the girl.
"Why, lady," he said, shamefacedly, "it did strike upon my mind that every priest in Sardanes hath gone, and there is none left to wed us."
A flood of burning color made the face of Memene more lovely still. She covered her hot cheeks with her hands. When she looked up again, she met the troubled gaze of the king with a brave smile.
"Thou knowest the words of the ancient ceremony, Minos, dost thou not?" she asked him.
"Aye, by rote."
"Yonder is wine, and here be lights. Let us say it, each to the other. I think that those who watch from above, seeing how it is with us, shall not greatly blame."
Minos stretched a rug on the rock floor and fetched a gleaming ilium flagon, which he set on one of the chests. Then lover and maid knelt before one of the flaring torches with joined hands. Sentence by sentence, they repeated the responses of the quaint old Sardanian marriage rite, through to the "Be thou mine and I thine until our call cometh." They touched the wine with their lips, then rose and passed their hands with fingers locked above the flame of the torch.
"My bride!" Minos whispered, and gathered the girl in his arms. The great gray dogs looked on with curious eyes. So were Minos and Memene wed.
Within a week after the death march of the Sardanian nation, the fires that had lingered in the crater of the Gateway to the Future had passed away, and that hill was cold and still as any in the ring of the valley. On its slopes the grass and herbiage withered, and the snows fell. For a few days the steeps swarmed with goats, the hardy animals outliving the last of the ponies; but they, too, soon died of the cold and starvation.
The big bonfires that the people had built around their last camp had long since burned out to ashes. The mantle of darkness that fell over the valley was broken only by the blaze on the hill of Latmos, which Minos tended, laboring mightily, and hewing therefor vast quantities of wood from the stark hymanan forests.
The task of bringing the wood up the mountainside through the snow overtaxed even his great strength, if he would have enough to keep his fire big and bright. Leaving three of the younger dogs with the Princess Memene, he took Pallas and the other three, one day, and set off for the storehouse at the outer foothills of the north pass to fetch his sledge.
On his way to the pass, he stopped at the Gateway. He climbed the rugged terraces, passed the arch and the spiral pathway, groping his way in the darkness, and once more, and for the last time, stood within the temple of his father's god.
The night was clear, and the polar stars shone brightly down. Some portion of their radiance penetrated through the open summit of the mountain, making faint twilight within it. Fierce gusts of wind shrieked and eddied through the giant cone, tossing with them swirls of drifting snow. The gale clutched at the cloak of the king. The white snow-wraiths leaped and danced. In the wild moaning of the wind, it were easy to fancy that the ghosts of the dead Sardanians were wailing above the ruins of their temple. In that place of gloom Minos tarried but a little while, then went his way.
Returning with his sledge some two hours later, the king found that a new and powerful life had entered the valley. As he passed across the snow-fields where once had been the marshes, he heard a far-away and hideous howling break forth from the cliffs of the Gateway. It was answered by the snarling of his dog-pack. The four as one turned in their traces and strained toward the hill, mouthing their challenge loud. From the Latmos hill echoed the baying of their three fellows.
Well did Minos, the hunter, know the meaning of the outcry above him. Holding back his dogs sternly, he peered up the towering mass of the mountain. Outlined against the dark body of a cliff, he saw, or thought he saw, two monstrous white forms roaring and striking. Cracking his long lash above the backs of his unwilling beasts, he hurried to Latmos.
With the far-flaming menace of the fiery hills removed, the monarchs of the wilderness, the polar bears, had come to Sardanes, where they never had dared to penetrate before. They had crept over the mountain rim, and were quarreling among themselves as they tore at the carcasses of the dead goats on the sides of the Gateway. How long would it be ere they came up against Latmos? And should they beset his path when he ventured on his journey northward? thought the king with sudden fear. What then? He carried no weapons that would slay from afar, as did the son of the snows who had gone before him.
From that day on Minos went no more afield. With the aid of the dogs and the sledge, he hauled huge store of wood and piled it against the cliffs at either side of the cave entrance. Laborious as was the work, he carried large quantities of the fuel to the interior of the cavern and stacked it against the walls.
Weeks grew into months. Darkness and starlight alternated, grew at length into gray twilight, as the slow sun journeyed farther and farther southward. Still Minos and his princess dwelt in their cavern and kept life strong within them. With wood and skins and cloths, of which there was an almost inexhaustible store in the cave, the king constructed a sort of room, by walling off a gallery that branched into the cliff from one side of the main cavity and adjoining the entrance. That made much smaller the space he must heat and light. He abandoned the practise of keeping a fire on the plateau, kindling it there only when he made an excursion after more wood. In that way he cut down his labor much.
For food, they drew on the vast granary bins that lined the sides of the cavern, supplemented with dried fruits and honey. In one of the galleries of the cave was a stock of smoked meats, and that Minos reserved for the dogs, fearing that a diet of bread alone might cause the animals to sicken.
His labor and forethought, his splendid struggle against odds, did not avert the lash of calamity. Unlooked for, it dealt him a stroke that ended all his hopes.
He had brought a sledge load of wood up the hillside one day, and had loosed the dogs from their harness and driven them through the passage. Ahead of him, the lithe beasts scrambled over the rock into the cavern. As active as they, he put a hand to the rock and leaped. A loop of the harness he bore caught on a projection on the boulder and threw him. He fell heavily on his face. His ax of ilium slipped from his belt and fell beneath him, its keen-edged blade uppermost. His head struck on it, and it bit deep into his right temple.
With his senses swaying, Minos dragged himself to his feet. He reeled along the passage to the curtained entrance to his home. Nearly spent, and with the bright blood coursing down his neck, he staggered straight through the fire and fell across his couch. He heard the cry of Memene, his loved one, but it sounded faint and far. He felt her arms close around him, and then darkness let fall its heavy curtain over his mind.
Days passed while he lay in a stupor and strange dream dramas played themselves out around his pillow. Again he stood in the narrow pass, and stout Sardanians went down before his good sword. Again he stood on Latmos's side and saw the stricken people march boldly to their doom, only that time the one most loved of all went with them, and he was chained and could not follow.
Vainly he called out to her, "Memene! Memene!"
With that dear name upon his lips, the king awoke. He found her head pillowed close to his own. Her arms were around his neck. She was weeping softly and gazing into his face, her black eyes filled with sorrow and terror. Around the couch he heard the dogs whining and growling. It was very cold, and only one faint ray of light struggled through a cleft in the rock above the passage that went into the little room.
Minos strove to raise himself on his elbow, but found himself too weak. "What hath befallen," he muttered, "and why is it so cold and dark?"
"Oh, Minos, Minos," wailed the girl, "our end is come. Our fire—'tis gone. Worn out with tending thee, for thou hast lain sick these many days, I did give way and sleep—for but a little hour, I thought—and when I woke our fire was gone. Not one little spark was left. Ah, Minos, thou diest, and I myself have slain thee, my love, my love."
With a mighty effort he raised an arm and set it about her. "Nay, fret not for that which thou couldst not prevent," he whispered. "Minos is content to die. It was to be. The end cometh but a little sooner, this way."
A burst of howling from without interrupted him and goaded the dogs to frenzy.
Memene shuddered. "The great white bears are there," she whispered. "They have howled for hours. Soon will they enter and rend us. I have tied the dogs fast so that they might not rush out and fight and be slain—Ah—see!"
Horror struck, she pointed to the passage. Overcoming by degrees his fear of an unseen trap, one of the monsters had penetrated the pass and was clawing at the rock. The way was narrow, but, by dint of much writhing and squeezing, the bear reared his ponderous bulk over the boulder. In the dusk of the passageway his shaggy head and colossal shoulders shone white. His cruel jaws slavered as he craned his head around the turn in the wall, swaying it slowly from side to side, as his blazing merciless eyes sought out his prey.
At that sight the Princess Memene turned from fear to rage. Like a tigress with young, she leaped from the couch, caught a spear from the wall, and dashed into the passage.
"Thou shalt not!" she shrieked, scarce knowing what she said. "Thou shalt not enter! My king and I shall die in peace, and not be torn by thee!"
As she screamed she struck furiously at the bear's head with the ilium spear, and gashed him deeply. Wedged where he could go neither backward nor forward without great effort, the huge animal was hard put to it to defend himself from the attack of the infuriated woman. Dauntlessly she faced him, thrusting with the spear.
Minos, on his couch, strove with all his will and strength to rise up and go to her aid, but so weak was he that all his struggling did not lift his shoulders from his pillow.
In the narrow confines of the cave, the howling of the bear and the snarling of the seven dogs, gone mad at sight of their enemy and with balked lust for fighting, made the din of an inferno. The gray snow runners twisted and tore at their leashes, and leaped and leaped again, only to fall back on the rock floor, as their ropes held.
Pallas alone used method. Finding her struggles for freedom in vain, she turned on the stout rope and rent it with her teeth. Tearing at it furiously, she weakened it. At last it gave way, and she bounded past the princess and leaped straight in the monster's face.
Slashed and bleeding, with the sight of one eye nearly gone, the bear was fully aroused. As the dog leaped, one powerful white paw swung, armed with its spread of crescent claws. It caught Pallas in midair, hurled her against the side of the passage, and she fell, her lifeblood spurting from a jagged wound in her neck. Another stroke dashed the spear from the hand of Memene.
Gathering his hind legs under him against the rock, the bear thrust himself forward into the cave!