"It was for this, O Dwain," she cried, "you wakened! To rid us once and evermore of these who prey upon us. Come! Come with me and see how brave Women vanquish their foes!"
Steve glanced at von Rath. The German nodded.
"It were well to learn what sort of enemies we shall meet in this time, Leutnant Duane."
"Right!" agreed Steve. "Very well, priestess. Lead the way."
The way carried them again upward from the bowels of Fautnox, debouching at last into a walled enclosure which, at some dim period of the past, may have been a courtyard. Ages had taken their toll, however, of the once-sturdy barricades. Their firmness had been breached in a dozen spots; gray piles of stone and detritus were strewn beneath wide openings which a barbarian clan with no knowledge of cement had found no way of mending.
It was before these entrances the battle raged most fiercely. Within the court, no breeders or pet males were to be seen; apparently they had all been removed to safer spots. The workers and the warriors defended the citadel. Of these, the warriors did the actual fighting; the workers acted as an auxiliary corps, bearing fresh supplies of lances, arrows and bows to the fighting-women when their stores were depleted or broken, rallying the Amazons to weakened salients when danger loomed, dragging the wounded from the field of conflict.
This much saw Duane at a glance. Then his eye swung to the attackers, and his body stiffened.
In some respects, Beth had told the truth. The Wild Ones were dirty, hairy, unkempt. Their garments and weapons were crude as compared with the golden equipage of the Women. But there ended their brutishness, their loutishness. Though they fought savagely, it was clear to the most un-military eye that their main effort was not toward wholesale slaughter and destruction—but to capture!
When a Wild One fell, perhaps suffering from only a minor wound, all feminine adversaries within sword-thrust were upon him in an instant, his body was literally hacked to bits before it was abandoned. But when a Woman fell—then it was a different story! Attackers surged forward en masse, with a sort of savage desperation, recklessly braving death in order to take, unharmed, their prisoner!
And incredible as it might seem—those who bore the captured warriors clawing and screaming from the fray, did so with an almost hallowed tenderness!