While Yermah was unbolting the door, a projectile from the catapult shivered the northern entrance with a crash that rocked and shook the whole structure. The aisles filled immediately with half-awakened monks, but their voices were silenced by an explosion against the opposite wall, which sent the spikes flying in every direction and felled them with stifling and deadly odors.
Yermah could never remember how he succeeded in reaching Cibolo’s stall. The sagacious animal seemed to help in getting into his trappings, and Oghi had already buried his teeth in the back of a miscreant slipping up to the half-opened door through which Yermah had passed. The ocelot darted out of the inclosure ahead of Yermah—all the tiger instincts in him aroused and ready to attack the first thing in sight.
Oghi rolled over and over with a victim, marking and maiming him for life. The man’s cries brought assistance; but neither arrows nor sword thrusts dispatched the assailant until several persons had been wounded.
The Dorado found all the wall entrances locked from the outside, which accounted for the absence of guards at the doors. Escape was only possible through the north-gate, and there more than a dozen warrior-priests were waiting for him.
Man and beast knew there was desperate work before them, but they were nerved for the encounter. As he dashed past Oghi, Yermah saw with a sinking heart that the poor creature was writhing in its death agony.
Cibolo laid back his ears, and tried to take a piece out of the arm put forward to seize the bridle. When the animal found that he could not break the ranks at the open gate, he wheeled and kicked at the assailants viciously.
Yermah reined him back, and charged again, using his sword arm constantly. A spear-point pierced the upper part of Cibolo’s neck, causing him to squeal shrilly, while an arrow went through the flesh of Yermah’s left arm near the shoulder, breaking the point on his armor. A well-directed blow felled his antagonist, and horse and rider cleared the open space at a bound.
The Dorado rode straight to the west into a redwood forest, long since submerged. Covered with dust and faint from exhaustion and loss of blood, with broken armor and disordered dress, he struggled on toward Tlamco’s Tower of Refuge, situated on an artificial hill south of the present Alms House.
Upon arrival there, he found the citadel filled with women and children, who had fled from Tlamco during the day, and among them were Ildiko and Alcyesta.
Yermah only took time to bind up his own and Cibolo’s wound before making his way through Visitacon Valley to the bay, where Alcyesta told him Hanabusa and Ben Hu Barabe were expecting him.