The others seconded my suggestion, warmly urging Lantin to return to the temple's top and await the aid from Kethra, but he refused. "I have this," he said, showing us an automatic which he had snatched up when we sprang from the time-car. Finally we compromised by placing him on the stair some distance behind and above us, where he could use the few but precious shots in his weapon when it was most necessary to do so.
Now we turned from him, for with a sudden mighty clang the great gate below went down. There was a tremendous shout, a savage roar of triumph, and then the tramping of thousands of feet as the hordes in the pit flooded toward the overturned gate and raced up the stair.
Looking down, we saw them ascending toward us, coming in such close-packed order that many were crowded from the low-walled stair and dashed down to death below. But still they came on, a bellowing, blood-thirsty mob, until they were winding around the stair just across the spiral from us.
Denham drew his sword, now, and we stepped down so that we stood in a single line across the stair, the Roman at the center, with D'Alord and Ixtil on his left side and Denham and me on the other.
And now the hordes surged around the bend of the stair, racing up toward us. A sudden cry went up from them as they glimpsed us, and momentarily the human wave sucked back, and the close-packed mob halted. A moment there was silence, while they stared up at us. I stole a glance at my companions. The face of Fabrius was stern but unperturbed, and he gripped his sword firmly, eyeing the mob below with eagle gaze. D'Alord's face was darkly flushed, his eyes gleaming. Ixtil leaned forward in a tense, tigerish crouch, while Denham, beside me, lounged negligently, leaning on his rapier and regarding the crowd below us with a mocking, contemptuous smile.
Only a moment that silence lasted, while the hordes gazed up at us. Then, as they saw that we were but five, a beastlike roar went up and they raced up toward us, vying for the honor of slaying us.
Up, up they came, a sea of ragged figures, a storm of flashing weapons. A catlike Egyptian and a giant Chinaman were first of that mob, with behind them the massed weight of the hordes in the pit, pushing up from far below, to win up to the flying-platforms that would carry them to the loot of Kom.
As though in a dream, I saw the fierce faces coming up toward us, and then there was a clash of steel on steel that brought me to my senses. D'Alord and Fabrius had each leapt forward a step and with two strokes that were like darting flashes of lightning had struck down the Egyptian and the Chinaman. Over their bodies came the others, and for an instant the air seemed thick with darting sword-blades, at which I whirled and thrust and parried.
A brutal-faced man in medieval chain-armor was my nearest opponent, and as I realized the fact, he swung up his heavy sword for a crashing stroke. But while he raised the cumbrous weapon, I darted out my rapier and he fell with a spreading red stain at his throat. A white-robed, sallow man thrust at me with a long spear, over his body, but the sword of the Roman flashed down and cut the head from the spear, then flashed again and the man went down. A dozen blades glinted off my armor and helmet, and I thrust out savagely and blindly, felt the blade pierce through flesh and blood, once, twice. And now, shaken by our first fierce resistance, the mob fell back a little, while we stood panting, surveying the scene of that first clash.