Harilek

by Martin Louis Alan Gompertz

A long pause to let the gases escape up the shaft, and then John, with a few men with ropes and lights, went in, for the confined space in the shaft might now be filled with mine fumes, though we hoped that the strong northerly wind blowing into the passage from our end, combined with the draught created by the great fires burning above the trapdoor, would clear out any gas formed by the explosion. And, luckily, so it proved, for almost immediately word came back that it was safe, and the storming party was to advance at once before the enemy could close the way again.

Henga’s men poured into the passage for what Forsyth called “the last fence,” and—all my cautious resolutions thrown to the winds—I followed them with Andros at the head of the supporting column. Ahead of us shouts and cries, clang of blows, dull thud of falling bodies, and crash of stones in the shaft, and then, coming to where Wrexham’s sappers stood by the reopened barricade, we were aware of daylight above us. Stumbling over the fallen débris and the twisted forms among it, we clambered up the steep stairs, shivered and wrecked by the explosion, and climbing through the opening previously blocked by the great iron door—now shattered fragments of still-glowing metal scattered around—came out on the steep cliff-side.

In front of us—close-packed—raged a swaying, surging mêlée where Henga’s men sought to drive the Shamans up the steep road to where on the hilltop in an open space showed the low stone buildings of the chief Shaman’s palace and the living-quarters of the citadel.

Ten yards ahead of me in the mêlée that swayed now backward, now forward, in little eddies of struggling men, was John fighting with the short-handled pickaxe he had used to clear the barricade in the passage. His face was grimed like that of a miner from his own Durham pits, but his eyes were alight with lust of battle. I saw the pickhead crash into the forehead of a Shaman knifeman ere a new eddy in the battle hid him again. On either side were Forsyth’s tall figure and Henga’s great shoulders.

The extra weight of Andros’s column, now pouring out of the shaft mouth, settled the scales in our favour, and, step by step, fighting tooth and nail, the enemy were driven backward up the hill, check and sway and surge forward again over the limp forms underfoot. Behind us the town—lit by the westering sun—lay spread out like a map, and on the edge of the drop behind us—clear-cut against the sky—Andros with his standard-bearer signalling down that we had made good the entrance. Then he joined us again as the fight drove relentlessly forward up the steep slope, and with one final rush we surged into the chief Shaman’s palace in a pack of steel. Somehow my game leg got me there, though well behind the leaders: Andros with his dancing plumes; Stephnos with his keen young face and yellow locks looking like some angel of destruction; John, Henga, and Alec, with dripping blade and blood-smeared pick, smashing their way through the now wavering foe.

The last resistance died away as we swept into the low-pillared halls and out again to the back of the palace, where in front of us—hidden by yet one more wall of rock—lay the cleft of the gate and the vultures. But no trace found we of that fiend from the nether pit—the chief Shaman—as we hunted out the fleeing foe from hole and corner, from dark-shadowed room and ghostly hall, with red torch and redder steel. Spear-point and sword and reeking pickhead checked and sank as there was no more living flesh to stay their relentless way, and our grim-faced swordsmen halted to tie up wounds and get breath.

But while we stayed uncertain on the farther exit of the palace, Henga gave a loud cry and leaped forward as a man slipped from cover at a corner to bolt down a flight of stairs beyond into a gloomy passage. Just one word, “Atros,” but that was enough for me, and game leg and all I followed the flying figures, Philos, Stephnos, Payindah, and a dozen men at my heels. We raced down the stairs past screaming women, past darkened rock-cut rooms, and came out at the end upon a little platform giving upon the gorge over the gate of death.

And there we stayed, for on the very verge of the open space above the sheer void, guarded only by a ledge a few inches high, two mail-clad figures, locked together, struggled and fought above the cavernous depths below. They reeled and fell, but as we closed Henga shrieked to us to stand back. The locked figures rose again, neither willing to loose grip, and then crashed to the ground once more; but this time Henga was on top, and his fingers writhed about the Shaman’s throat.

Then, just as he had dealt with Atana, so dealt he with Atros, speaking to him slowly the while, as the man’s face worked and the sweat stood out upon his brow. And there on the sheer cliff, hundreds of feet above the vultures below, Henga exacted the last farthing of his debt. Then rising to his feet, he swung up the limp body and hurled it out into the dim gulf, leaning over to watch it spinning down, arms and legs whirling through the air. Then he turned to us grimly.

“I think such carrion would poison even the vultures. Note you he was not in the fight, but lurking in the palace while better men than he went forth to death. Atana had, at least, courage.”