"Good idea! All right, everybody, hop to it! Time's getting short."
Time was getting short. So treacherously short, in fact, that working feverishly they had barely succeeded in setting the rude beginning of their barricades before the vulnerable doorways when the attackers hove in view. Johnny Grinnell gave the alarm.
"Here they come, Ramey! Around the edge of the terrace wall. Six ... a dozen of them. I don't see the captain, though."
"You won't," bellowed Red. "'Cause he's over here. They done what you figured, Ramey; split up. They're coming at us from both sides. Well—"
"Wait!" snapped Ramey. "Don't shoot unless they do!"
Red lowered his rifle reluctantly. "Damn if you ain't the—the pacificest guy I ever saw! Always letting the other guy get the drop on you. It gives me a pain in the—Wow! There it comes! Well, I can shoot, now!"
For his sentence had been punctuated by a simultaneous opening fire from both attack parties. His own gun barked answer. And this time, more ruthlessly, more determinedly than it had waged before the battle begun on the upper causeway continued.
There was no time for the details of that fight to register coherently upon Ramey Winters' brain. But later he found etched in his memory sharp, indelible highlights of those frenzied moments.
His own gun, spluttering and coughing against his cheek as he crouched at the edge of the doorway, firing at figures that slipped, wraithlike, through the murky corridor. The incessant, crashing echo of what seemed like a thousand guns; here in these vaulted depths sound smashed back upon itself thunderously, seemed to merge with the thickening, acrid smoke and roll about the room in reverberant waves. Red Barrett, holding his heavy rifle pistol-wise in one hamlike paw, dripping curses in a loud, prolific stream as with his free hand he tucked into place the edge of a raveling bandage. Syd O'Brien, scowling at his side, methodically pumping his shots where they would do the most good. Lake O'Brien, across the room, achieving the same result with roars of boisterous glee.