Both rifles barked. Nicko's shot was high, but Mike brought the foremost of the black warriors skidding forward on his face.
Maybe that will stop them, Mike thought desperately. Maybe they've never seen firearms before. He held up his second shot for the briefest moment hoping the savages would be awed into retreat.
But this was not the case. They charged forward in renewed fury and Mike again went to work. He dropped three more of the charging maniacs while Nicko, probably the poorest shot who ever lifted a rifle, accounted for one unfortunate warrior with a twenty-shot spray of atomic pellets.
The black men, who had had only a scant fifty yards to cover, were now upon the three. Two of them seized Doree, an act which turned Mike into a terrible fighting machine.
Not able to fire the gun effectively at such close range, he reversed it and created bloody havoc, using the butt as a club. Two skulls cracked sharply under its impact and as he fought, Mike saw Nicko go down. He couldn't reach him.
Several warriors raised the iron-toothed clubs they carried and crashed them down upon Nicko's unprotected body.
The result would have been comic under less grim circumstances. The clubs of the warriors caused Nicko's almost indestructible hide to ring like a great bell. The handle of one warrior's lethal bludgeon snapped and the attacker stared at it in amazement. The rest beat down again upon the prone Nicko, their clubs bouncing off and resounding in a sort of anvil chorus.
The attention of the warriors bent upon annihilating Mike was diverted by the intriguing spectacle of this strange four-armed creature refusing to be clubbed to death. So Mike was able to get in some telling blows that felled three more of the terrible warriors.
He knew however, that the end was already written in the bloody sands around him. He could only fight to the last moment, bringing down as many of the enemy as possible.
His heart was sick at what would surely be Doree's fate. He saw her just beyond the perimeter of battle still held by her two captors who were viewing the fight with rapt interest. If he could only reach her. One swing of his gun butt and she would serve no vile purpose in the hands of these raiders.