Kull Exile Of Atlantis

Delcartes knelt at the feet of the king and clasping his sword-hardened fingers in her soft slim hands, she looked up into his eyes, her own eyes luminous and pensive with appeal. Of all the people in the kingdom, Kull preferred not to look in the eyes of Delcartes. He saw there at times a depth of allure and mystery, of which he knew not even herself was aware. She knew something of her powers, this spoiled and pampered child of aristocracy, but her full powers she little guessed, because of her extreme youth. But Kull who was wise in the ways of men and of women, realized with some uneasiness that with maturity, Delcartes was bound to become a terrific power in the court and the land, either for good or bad.

“But your majesty,” she was wailing now, like a child begging for a toy. “Please let me marry Dalgar of Farsun! He has become a Valusian citizen, he is high in favor at court, as you say yourself, then why–”

“I have told you,” said the king with patience. “It is nothing to me whether you marry Dalgar, Brule or the devil! But your father does not wish you to marry this Farsunian adventurer and–”

“But you can make him let me!” she cried.

“The house of bora Ballin I number among my staunchest supporters,” answered the Atlantean, “and Goron bora Ballin, your father, among my closest friends. When I was a friendless gladiator he befriended me. He lent me money when I was a common soldier, and he espoused my cause when I struck for the throne. Not to save this right hand of mine would I force him into an action to which he is so violently opposed, or interfere in his family affairs.”

Delcartes had not yet learned that some men cannot be moved by feminine wiles. She pleaded, coaxed and pouted. She kissed Kull’s hands, wept on his mighty breast, perched on his knee and argued, all much to his embarrassment–but without avail. Kull was sincerely sympathetic but adamant. To all her appeals and blandishments he had one answer: that it was none of his business, that her father knew better what she needed and that he, Kull, was not going to interfere.

At last Delcartes gave it up as a bad job and left the presence with bowed head and dragging steps. As she emerged from the royal chamber, she met her father coming in. Goron bora Ballin, guessing his daughter’s purpose in visiting the king, said nothing to her, but the look he gave her spoke eloquently of spankings to come. The girl climbed miserably into her sedan chair, feeling as if her load was too heavy for any one girl to bear. Then her deeper nature asserted itself. Her dark eyes smoldered with rebellion and she spoke a few quick words to the slaves who carried her chair.

Count Goron stood before his king meanwhile, and his features were frozen into a mask of formal deference. Kull noted that expression and it hurt him. Formality existed between himself and all his subjects and allies except the Pict, Brule, and the ambassador Kananu, but this studied formality was a new thing in Count Goron of the bora Ballin and Kull guessed at the reason.

“Your daughter was here, Count,” said he abruptly.

“Yes, your majesty.” The tone was impassive and respectful.

“You probably know why. She wants to marry Dalgar of Farsun.”

The Count made a stately inclination of his head. “If your majesty so wishes, he has but to say the word.” His features froze into harder lines.

Kull, stung, rose and strode across the chamber to the window, where once again he gazed out at the drowsing city. Without turning he said: “Not for half my kingdom would I interfere with your family affairs, nor force you into a course unpleasant to you.”

The Count was at his side in an instant, his formality vanished, his fine eyes eloquent: “Your majesty, I have wronged you in my thoughts–I should have known–” He made as if to kneel but Kull restrained him.

The king grinned. “Be at ease, Count. Your private affairs are your own. I cannot help you, but you can help me. There is conspiracy in the air; I smell danger as in my early youth I sensed the nearness of a tiger in the jungle or a serpent in the high grass.”

“My spies have been combing the city, your majesty,” said the Count, his eyes kindling at the prospect of action. “The people murmur as they will murmur under any ruler–but–I have recently come from Kananu at the consulate and he told me to warn you that outside influence and foreign money were at work. He said he knew nothing definite, but his Picts wormed some information from a drunken servant of the Verulian ambassador–vague hints at some coup of treachery that government is planning.”

Kull grunted. “Verulian trickery is a by-word. But Gen Dala the Verulian ambassador is the soul of honor.”

“So much better a figure head; if he knows nothing of what his nation plans, so much the better will he serve as a mask for their doings.”

“But what would Verulia gain?” asked Kull.

“Gomlah, a distant cousin of king Borna, took refuge there when you overthrew the old dynasty. With you slain, Valusia would fall to pieces. Her armies would become disorganized, all her allies except the Picts would desert her, the mercenaries whom only you can control would turn against her, and she would be an easy prey for the first powerful nation who might move against her. Then, with Gomlah as an excuse for invasion, as a puppet on Valusia’s throne–”

“I see,” grunted Kull. “I am better at battle than in council but I see. So–the first step must be my removal, eh?”

“Yes, your majesty.”

Kull smiled and flexed his mighty arms. “After all, this kinging it grows dull at times.” His fingers caressed the hilt of the great sword which he wore at all times.

“Tu, chief councillor to the king, and Dondal, his nephew,” sang out a slave, and two men entered the presence.

Tu, chief councillor, was a portly man of medium height and late middle life, who looked more like a merchant than a councillor. His hair was thin and sparse, his face lined and on his brow rested a look of perpetual suspicion. Tu’s years and honors rested heavily on him. Originally of plebian birth, he had won his way by sheer power of craft and intrigue. He had seen three kings come and go before Kull, and the strain told on him.

His nephew Dondal was a slim, foppish youth with keen dark eyes and a pleasant smile. His chief virtue lay in the fact that he kept a discreet tongue in his head and never repeated what he heard at court. For this reason he was admitted into places not even warranted by his close kinship to Tu.

“Just a small matter of state, your majesty,” said Tu. “This permit for a new harbor on the Western coast. Will your majesty sign?”

Kull sighed his name, Tu drew from inside his bosom a signet ring attached to a small chain which he wore around his neck, and affixed the seal. This ring was the royal signature, in effect. No other ring in the world was exactly like it, and Tu wore it about his neck, waking or sleeping. Outside those in the royal chamber at the moment, not four men in the world knew where the ring was kept.

II

MYSTERY

The quiet of the day had merged almost imperceptibly into the quiet of night. The moon had not yet risen and the small silver star points gave little light, as if their radiance was strangled by the heat which still rose from the earth.

Along a deserted street a single horse’s hoofs clanged hollowly. If eyes watched from the blank windows, they gave no sign that betrayed that anyone knew Dalgar of Farsun was riding through the night and the silence.

The young Farsunian was fully armed, his lithe athletic body completely encased in light armor, and a morion on his head. He looked capable of handling the long, slim, jewel hilted sword at his side and the scarf which crossed his steel clad breast with its red rose detracted nothing from the picture of manhood which he presented.

Now as he rode he glanced at a crumpled note in his hand, which half unfolded disclosed the following message in the characters of Valusia: “At midnight, my beloved, in the Accursed Gardens beyond the walls. We will fly together.”

A dramatic note, dramatically worded; even Dalgar’s handsome lips curved slightly as he read. Well, a little melodrama was pardonable in a young girl, and the youth enjoyed a touch himself. A thrill of ecstasy shook him at the thought of that rendezvous–by dawn he would be far across the Verulian border with his bride to be–then let Count Goron bora Ballin rave–let the whole Valusian army follow their track. With that much start he and Delcartes would be in safety. He felt high and romantic; his young brave heart swelled with the foolish heroics of youth. It was hours until midnight but–he nudged his horse with an armored heel and turned aside to take a short cut through some dark narrow streets.

“Oh silver moon and a silver breast–” he hummed under his breath the flaming love songs of the mad, dead poet Ridondo–then his horse snorted and shied. In the shadow of a squalid doorway, a dark bulk moved and groaned.

Drawing his sword, Dalgar slipped from the saddle and bent over he who groaned.

Bending very close he made out the form of a man. He dragged the body into a comparatively lighter area, noting that he was still breathing. Something wet and warm and sticky adhered to his hand.

The man was portly and apparently old, since his hair was thin and sparse, and his beard was shot with white. He was clad in the rags of a beggar but even in the darkness Dalgar could tell that his hands were soft and white under their grime. A nasty gash on the side of his head seeped blood, and his eyes were closed. He groaned from time to time.

Dalgar tore a piece from his sash to staunch the wound and in doing so, a ring on his finger became entangled in the unkempt beard. He jerked impatiently–the beard came away entirely, disclosing the smooth shaven, deeply lined face of a man in late middle life. Dalgar cried out and recoiled. He bounded to his feet, shaken to the roots of his foundation–bewildered and shocked. A moment he stood, staring down at the groaning man, then the quick rattle of hoofs on a parallel street recalled him to life.

He ran down a side alley and accosted the rider. This man pulled up with a quick motion, reaching for his sword as he did so. The steel shod hoofs of his steed struck fire from the flagstones as the horse set back on his haunches.

“What now? Oh, it’s you Dalgar?”

“Brule!” cried the young Farsunian. “Quick! Tu, the chief councillor lies in yonder street, senseless–mayhap murdered!”

The Pict was off his horse in an instant, sword flashing into his hand. He flung the reins over his mount’s head and left the steed standing there like a statue while he followed Dalgar on a run.

Together they bent over the stricken councillor while Brule ran an experienced hand over him.

“No fracture, apparently,” grunted the Pict. “Can’t tell for sure, of course. Was his beard off when you found him?”

“No, I pulled it off accidentally–”

“Then likely this is the work of some thug who knew him not. I’d rather think that. If the man who struck him down knew he was Tu, there’s black treachery brewing in Valusia. I told him he’d come to grief, prowling around the city disguised this way–but you cannot tell a councillor anything. He insisted that in this manner he learned all that was going on–kept his finger on the empire’s pulse, as he said.”

“But if it were a cutthroat,” said Dalgar. “Why did they not rob him? Here is his purse with a few copper coins in it–and who would seek to rob a beggar?”

The Sword-slayer swore. “Right. But who in Valka’s name could know he was Tu? He never wore the same disguise twice and only Dondal and a slave helped him with it–and what did they want, whoever struck him down? Oh, well, Valka–he’ll die while we stand jabbering. Help me get him on my horse.”

With the chief councillor lolling drunkenly in the saddle, upheld by Brule’s steel sinewed arms, they clattered through the streets to the palace. They were admitted by a wondering guard, and the senseless man was carried to an inner chamber and laid on a couch, where he was showing signs of recovering consciousness, under the ministrations of the slaves and court women.

At last he sat up and gripped his head groaning. Kananu, Pictish ambassador and the craftiest man in the kingdom, bent over him.

“Tu! Who smote you?”

“I don’t know,” the councillor was still dazed. “I remember nothing.”

“Had you any documents of importance about you?”

“No.”

“Did they take anything from you?”

Tu began fumbling at his garments uncertainly; his clouded eyes began to clear, then flared in sudden apprehension: “The ring! The royal signet ring! It is gone!”

Kananu smote his fist into his palm and cursed soulfully.

“This comes of carrying the thing with you! I warned you! Quick, Brule, Kelka–Dalgar–foul treason is afoot! Haste to the king’s chamber!”

In front of the royal bed chamber ten of the Red Slayers, men of the king’s favorite regiment, stood at guard. To Kananu’s staccato questions, they answered that the king had retired an hour or so ago, that no one had sought entrance, that they had heard no sound.

Kananu knocked on the door. There was no response. In a panic he pushed against the door. It was locked from within.

“Break that door down!” he screamed, his face white, his voice unnatural with unaccustomed strain.

Two of the Red Slayers, giants in size, hurled their full weight against the door, but of heavy oak, braced by bronze bands, it held. Brule pushed them away and attacked the massive portal with his sword. Under the heavy blows of the keen edge, wood and metal gave way and in a few moments Brule shouldered through the shreds and splinters and rushed into the room. He halted short with a stifled cry and glaring over his shoulder Kananu clutched wildly at his beard. The royal bed was mussed as if it had been slept in, but of the king there was no sign. The room was empty and only the open window gave hint of any clue.

“Sweep the streets!” roared Kananu. “Comb the city! Guard all the gates! Kelka, rouse out the full force of the Red Slayers! Brule, gather your horsemen and ride them all to death if necessary! Haste! Dalgar–”

But the Farsunian was gone. He had suddenly remembered that the hour of midnight approached and of far more importance to him than the whereabouts of any king, was the fact that Delcartes bora Ballin was awaiting him in the Accursed Gardens two miles beyond the city wall.

III

THE SIGN OF THE SEAL

That night Kull had retired early. As was his custom, he halted outside the door of the royal bedchamber for a few minutes to chat with the guard, his old regimental mates, and exchange a reminiscence or so of the old days when he had ridden in the ranks of the Red Slayers. Then, dismissing all his attendants, he entered the chamber, flung back the covers of his bed and prepared to retire. Strange proceedings for a king, no doubt, but Kull had been long used to the rough life of a soldier and before that he had been a savage tribesman. He had never gotten used to having things done for him and in the privacy of his bed chamber, he would at least attend to himself.

But just as he turned to extinguish the great candle which illuminated his room, he heard a slight tapping at the window sill. Hand on sword, he crossed the room with the easy silent tread of a great panther and looked out. The window opened on the inner grounds of the palace, and the hedges and trees loomed vaguely in the semi darkness of the starlight. Fountains glimmered vaguely and he could not make out the forms of any of the sentries who paced those confines.

But here at his elbow was Mystery. Clinging to the vines which covered the wall, was a small wizened fellow who looked much like the professional beggars which swarmed the more sordid of the city’s streets. He seemed harmless, with his thin limbs and monkey face, but Kull regarded him with a scowl.

“I see I shall have to plant sentries at the very foot of my window, or tear these vines down,” said the king. “How did you get through the lines?”

The wizened one put his skinny finger across puckered lips for silence, then with a simian like dexterity, slid a hand over the sill through the bars into the room. There he silently handed Kull a piece of parchment. The king unrolled it and read: “King Kull: if you value your life, or the welfare of the kingdom, follow this guide to the place where he shall lead you. Tell no one. Let yourself be not seen by the guards. The regiments are honeycombed with treason and if you are to live and hold the throne, you must do exactly as I say. Trust the bearer of this note implicitly.” It was signed “Tu, Chief Councillor of Valusia” and was sealed with the royal signet ring.

Kull knit his black brows. The thing had an unsavory look–but this was Tu’s hand writing–he noted the peculiar, almost imperceptible quirk in the last letter of Tu’s name, which was the councillor’s trade mark, so to speak. And then the sign of the seal, the seal which could not be duplicated–Kull sighed.

“Very well,” he said. “Wait until I arm myself.”

Dressed and clad in light chain mail armor, Kull turned again to the window. He gripped the bars, one in each hand, and cautiously exerting his superhuman strength, felt them give until even his broad shoulders could slip between them. Clambering out he caught the vines and swung down them with as much ease as was displayed by the small beggar who preceded them.

At the foot of the wall, Kull caught his companion’s arm.

“How did you elude the guard?” he whispered.

“To such as accosted me, I showed the sign of the royal seal.”

“That will scarcely answer now,” grunted the king. “Follow me; I know their routine.”

Some twenty minutes followed, of lying in wait behind a hedge or tree until a sentry passed, of dodging quickly into the shadows and making short stealthy dashes–at last they came to the outer wall. Kull took his guide by the ankles and lifted him until his fingers clutched the top of the wall. Once astride, the beggar reached down a hand to aid the king, but Kull, with a contemptuous gesture, backed off a few paces, took a short run and bounding high in the air, caught the parapet with one upflung hand, swinging his great form up across the wall top with an almost incredible display of strength and agility.

The next instant the two strangely incongruous figures had dropped down on the opposite side and faded into the gloom.

IV

“HERE I STAND AT BAY!”

Delcartes, daughter of the house of bora Ballin, was nervous and frightened. Upheld by her high hopes and her sincere love, she did not regret her rash actions of the last few hours, but she earnestly wished for the coming of midnight and her lover.

Up to the present, her escapade had been easy. It was not easy for any one to leave the city after night fall, but she had ridden away from her father’s house just before sundown, telling her mother that she was going to spend the night with a girl friend of hers–well for her that women were allowed unusual freedom in the city of Valusia, and were not kept hemmed in in seraglios and veritable prison houses as they were in the Eastern empires; a habit which survived the Flood.

Delcartes had ridden boldly through the Eastern gate, and then made directly for the Accursed Gardens, two miles east of the city. These Gardens had once been the pleasure resort and country estate of a great nobleman, but tales of grim debauches and ghastly rites of devil worship began to get abroad, and finally the people, maddened by the regular disappearance of their children, had descended on the Gardens in a frenzied mob, and had hanged the bad prince to his own portals. Combing the Gardens, the people had found strange foul things, and in a flood of repulsion and horror, had partially destroyed the mansion and the summer houses, the arbors, the grottoes and the walls. But built of imperishable marble, many of the buildings had resisted both the sledges of the mob and the corrosion of time. Now, deserted for a hundred years, a miniature jungle had sprung up within the crumbling walls and the rank vegetation overran the ruins.

Delcartes concealed her steed in a ruined summer house and seating herself on the cracked marble floor, settled herself to wait. At first it was not bad. The gentle summer sunset flooded the land, softening all scenes with its mellow gold. The green sea about her, shot with white gleams which were marble walls and crumbling roofs, intrigued her. But as night fell and the shadows merged, Delcartes grew nervous. The night wind whispered grisly things through the branches and the broad palm leaves and the tall grasses and the stars seemed cold and far away. Legends and tales came back to her, and she fancied that above the throb of her pounding heart, she could hear the rustle of unseen black wings, and the mutter of fiendish voices.

She prayed for midnight and Dalgar. Had Kull seen her then, he would not have thought of her strange deep nature, nor the signs of her great future; he would have seen only a frightened little girl who passionately desired to be taken up and coddled.

But the thought of leaving never entered her mind.

Time seemed as if it would never pass, but pass it did somehow. At last a faint glow betrayed the rising of the moon, and she knew the hour was close to midnight.

Then suddenly there came a sound which brought her to her feet, her heart flying into her throat. Somewhere in the supposedly deserted Gardens there crashed into the silence a shout and a clang of steel. A short hideous scream chilled the blood in her veins, then silence fell in a suffocating shroud.

Dalgar–Dalgar! The thought beat like a hammer in her dazed brain. Her lover had come and had fallen foul of some one–or something–men or–?

She stole from her hiding place, one hand over her heart which seemed about to burst through her ribs. She stole along a broken pave, and the whispering palm leaves brushed against her like ghostly fingers. About her lay a pulsating gulf of shadows, vibrant and alive with nameless evil. There was no sound.

Ahead of her loomed the ruined mansion; then without a sound two men stepped into her path. She screamed once, then her tongue froze with terror. She tried to flee but her legs would not work and before she could move, one of the men had caught her up and tucked her under his arm as if she were a tiny child.

“A woman,” he growled in a language which Delcartes barely understood, and recognized as Verulian. “Lend me your dagger and I’ll–”

“We haven’t time now,” interposed the other, speaking in the Valusian tongue. “Toss her in there with him, and we’ll finish them both together. We must get Gonda here, before we kill him–he wants to question him a little.”

“Small use,” rumbled the Verulian giant, striding after his companion. “He won’t talk–I can tell you that–he’s opened his mouth only to curse us, since we captured him.”

Delcartes, tucked ignominiously under her captor’s arm, was frozen with fear, but her mind was working. Who was this “him” they were going to question and then kill? The thought that it must be Dalgar drove her own fear from her mind, and flooded her soul with a wild and desperate rage. She began to kick and struggle violently and was punished with a resounding smack which brought tears to her eyes and a cry of pain to her lips. She lapsed into a humiliated submission and was presently tossed unceremoniously through a shadowed doorway, to sprawl in a disheveled heap on the floor.

“Hadn’t we better tie her?” queried the giant.

“What use? She can’t escape. And she can’t untie him. Hurry up; we’ve got work to do.”

Delcartes sat up and looked timidly about. She was in a small chamber the corners of which were screened with spider webs. Dust was deep on the floor, and fragments of marble from the crumbling walls littered it. Part of the roof or ceiling was gone, and the slowly rising moon poured light through the aperture. By its light she saw a form on the floor, close to the wall. She shrank back, her teeth sinking into her lip with horrified anticipation, then she saw with a delirious sensation of relief that the man was too large to be Dalgar. She crawled over to him and looked into his face. He was bound hand and foot and gagged; above the gag, two cold grey eyes looked up into hers. Eyes in which cold flame danced, like a volcano gleaming under fathoms of grey ice.

“King Kull!” Delcartes pressed both hands against her temples while the room reeled to her shocked and astounded gaze. The next instant her slim strong fingers were at work on the gag. A few minutes of agonized effort and it came free. Kull stretched his powerful jaws and swore in his own language, considerate, even in that moment, of the girl’s tender ears.

“Oh my lord, how came you here?” the girl was wringing her hands.

“Either my most trusted councillor is a traitor or I am a madman!” growled the giant. “One came to me with a letter in Tu’s hand writing, bearing even the royal seal. I followed him, as instructed, through the city and to a gate the existence of which I had never known. This gate was unguarded and apparently unknown to any but they who plotted against me. Outside the gate one awaited us with horses and we came full speed to these damnable Gardens. At the outer edge we left the horses, and I was led, like a blind dumb fool for sacrifice, into this ruined mansion.

“As I came through the door, a great man-net fell on me, entangling my sword arm, and binding my limbs, and a dozen great rogues sprang on me. Well, mayhap my taking was not so easy as they had thought. Two of them were swinging on my already encumbered right arm so I could not use my sword, but I kicked one in the side and felt his ribs give way, and bursting some of the net’s strands with my left hand, I gored another with my dagger. He had his death thereby and screamed like a lost soul as he gave up the ghost.

“But by Valka, there were too many of them. At last they had me stripped of my armor”–Delcartes saw the king wore only a sort of loin cloth–“and bound as you see me. The devil himself could not break these strands–no, scant use to try to untie the knots. One of the men was a seaman and I know of old the sort of knots they tie! I was a galley slave once, you know.”

“But what can I do?” wailed the girl, wringing her hands.

“Take a heavy piece of marble and flake off a sharp sliver,” said Kull swiftly. “You must cut these ropes–”

She did as she was bid and was rewarded with a long thin piece of stone, the concave edge of which was as keen as a razor with a jagged edge.

“I fear I will cut your skin, sire,” she apologized as she began work.

“Cut skin, flesh and bone, but get me free!” snarled Kull, his ferocious eyes blazing. “Trapped like a blind fool! Oh, imbecile that I am! Valka, Honan and Hotath! But let me get my hands on the rogues–how came you here?”

“Let us talk of that later,” said Delcartes rather breathlessly. “Just now there is time for haste.”

Silence fell as the girl sawed at the stubborn strands giving no heed to her own tender hands which were soon lacerated and bleeding. Slowly, strand by strand the cords gave way; but there was still enough to hold the ordinary man helpless, when a heavy step sounded outside the door.

Delcartes froze. A voice spoke: “He is within, Gonda, bound and gagged and helpless. With him some Valusian wench that we caught wandering about the Garden.”

“Then be on watch for some gallant,” spoke another voice, a harsh, grating one, as the tone of a man accustomed to being obeyed. “Likely she was to meet some fop here. You–”

“No names, no names, good Gonda,” broke in a silky Valusian voice. “Remember our agreement–until Gomlah mounts the throne, I am simply–the Masked One.”

“Very good,” grunted the Verulian. “You have done a good night’s work, Masked One. None but you could have done it, for of us all only you knew how to obtain the royal signet. Only you could so closely counterfeit Tu’s writing–by the way, did you kill the old fellow?”

“What matter? Tonight, or the day Gomlah mounts the throne–he dies. The matter is that the king lies helpless in our power.”

Kull was racking his brain to remember–whose voice was that of the traitor? The voice was familiar but he could not place it. And Gonda–his face grew grim. A deep conspiracy indeed, if Verulia must send the commander of her royal armies to do her foul work. The king knew Gonda well, and had aforetime entertained him in the palace.

“Go in and bring him out,” said Gonda. “We will take him to the old torture chamber. I have questions to ask of him.”

The door opened admitting one man; the giant who had captured Delcartes. The door closed behind him and he crossed the room, giving scarcely a glance to the girl who cowered in a corner. He bent over the bound king, took him by leg and shoulder to lift him bodily–there came a sudden loud snap, as Kull, throwing all his iron strength into one convulsive wrench, broke the remaining strands which bound him.

He had not been tied long enough for all circulation to be cut off and his strength affected. As a python strikes his hands shot to the giant’s throat–shot, and gripped like a steel vise.

The giant went to his knees. One hand flew to the iron fingers at his throat, the other to his dagger. His fingers sank like steel into Kull’s wrist, the dagger flashed from its sheath–then his eyes bulged, his tongue sagged out. The fingers fell away from the king’s wrist, and the dagger slipped from a nerveless grip. The Verulian went limp, his throat literally crushed in that terrible grip. Kull, with one terrific wrench, broke his neck and releasing him, tore the sword from its sheath. Delcartes had picked up the dagger.

The whole combat had taken only a few flashing seconds and had caused no more noise than might have resulted from a man lifting and shouldering a great weight.

“Hasten!” called Gonda’s voice impatiently from the door, and Kull, crouching tiger-like just inside, thought quickly. He knew that there were at least a score of conspirators in the Gardens. He knew also, from the sound of the voices, that there were only two or three outside the door at the moment. This room was not a good place to defend. In a moment they would be coming in to see what was the delay. He reached a decision and acted promptly.

He beckoned the girl. “As soon as I have gone through the door, run out likewise and run up the stairs which lead away to the left.” She nodded trembling and he patted her slim shoulders reassuringly. Then he whirled and flung open the door.

To the men outside, expecting the Verulian giant with the helpless king on his shoulders, appeared an apparition which was dumfounding in its unexpectedness. Kull stood in the door; Kull, half naked, crouched like a great human tiger, his teeth bared in the moonlight in a snarl of battle fury, his terrible eyes blazing–the long blade whirling like a wheel of silver in the moon.

Kull saw Gonda, two Verulian soldiers, a slim figure in a black mask–a flashing instant and then he was among them and the dance of death was on. The Verulian commander went down in the king’s first lunge, his head cleft to the teeth, in spite of his helmet. The Masked One drew and thrust, his point raking Kull’s cheek; one of the soldiers drove at the king with a spear, was parried and the next instant lay dead across his master. The other soldier broke and ran, hallooing lustily for his comrades. The Masked One retreated swiftly before the headlong attack of the king, parrying and guarding with an almost uncanny skill. He had no time to launch an attack of his own; before the whirlwind ferocity of Kull’s charge he had only time for defense. Kull beat against his blade like a blacksmith on an anvil, and again and again it seemed as though the long Verulian steel must inevitably cleave that masked and hooded head, but always the long slim Valusian sword was in the way, turning the blow by an inch or stopping it within a hair’s breadth of the skin, but always just enough.

Then Kull saw the Verulian soldiers running through the foliage and heard the clang of their weapons and their fierce shouts. Caught here in the open, they would get behind him and spit him like a rat. He slashed once more, viciously, at the retreating Valusian, and then backing away, turned and ran fleetly up the stairs, at the top of which Delcartes already stood.

There he turned at bay. He and the girl stood on a sort of artificial promontory. A stair led up and a stair had once led down the other way, but now the back stair had long since crumbled to decay. Kull saw that they were in a cul-de-sac. There was no escape, for on each side was a sheer wall some fifty feet in height. These walls were cut deep with ornate carvings but–“Well,” thought Kull, “here we die. But here many others die, too.”

The Verulians were gathering at the foot of the stair, under the leadership of the mysterious masked Valusian. The bell rang then. Kull took a fresh grip on his sword hilt and flung back his head–an unconscious reversion to days when he had worn a lion like mane of hair. A wild freedom swept over him and he laughed with such ringing joy that the soldiers at the foot of the stairs stared up at him, gaping.

Kull had never feared death; he did not fear it now; except for one consideration, he would have welcomed the clamor and madness of battle as an old friend, without regrets–this consideration was the girl who stood beside him. As he looked at her trembling form and white face, he reached a sudden decision. For a moment he struggled with himself. And to those to whom it seems a slight thing, the sacrifice he planned, let them reflect that Kull was an Atlantean; that all his life he had expected to die gloriously in battle. That his race looked on any other death as the ultimate disgrace. Yet now this man, who was king of Valusia and more than king, raised his hand and shouted: “Ho, men of Verulia! Here I stand at bay. Many shall fall before I die. But promise me to release the girl, unharmed, and I will not lift a hand. You may kill me then like a sheep.”

Delcartes cried out in protest and the Masked One laughed: “We make no bargains with one already doomed. The girl also must die and I make no promises to break. Up, warriors, and take him!”

They flooded the stair like a black wave of death, swords sparkling frosty silver in the moonlight. One was far in advance of his fellows, a huge warrior who bore on high a great battle axe. Moving quicker than Kull had anticipated, this man was on the landing in an instant it seemed. Kull rushed in and the axe descended. Kull caught the heavy shaft with his left hand and checked the rush of the weapon in mid-air–a feat few men could have done–and at the same time struck in from the side with his right, a sweeping hammer-like blow which sent the long sword crunching through armor, muscle and bone, and left the broken blade wedged in the spinal column.

At the same instant then, he released the useless hilt and tore the axe from the nerveless grasp of the dying warrior who pitched back down the stairs. And Kull laughed shortly and grimly.

The Verulians hesitated on the stair and below the Masked One savagely urged them on. They were inclined to be rebellious.

“Gonda is dead,” shouted one. “Shall we take orders from this Valusian? This is a devil and not a man, who faces us! Let us save ourselves!”

“Fools!” the Masked One’s voice rose in a ferine shriek. “Don’t you see that your only safety lies in slaying the king? If you fail tonight your own government will repudiate you and will aid the Valusians in hunting you down! Up fools, you will die, some of you, but better for a few to die under the king’s axe, than for all to die on the gibbet! Let one man retreat down these stairs–that man will I kill!” And the long slender sword menaced them.

Desperate, afraid of their leader and recognizing the truth of his words, the score or more warriors turned their breasts to Kull’s steel. As they massed for what must necessarily be the last charge, Delcartes’ attention was attracted by a movement at the base of the wall. A shadow detached itself from the shadows and moved up the sheer face of the wall, climbing like an ape and using the deep carvings for foot and hand holds. This side of the wall was in shadow and she could not make out the features of the man, more especially as he wore a heavy morion which shaded his face.

Saying nothing to Kull who stood at the landing, his axe poised, she stole over to the edge of the wall, half concealing herself behind a ruin of what had once been a parapet. Now she could see that the man was in full armor but still she could not make out his features. Her breath came fast and she raised the dagger, fighting fiercely to overcome a tendency of nausea.

Now a steel clad arm looked up over the edge–now she sprang quick and silent as a tigress and struck full at the unprotected face upturned suddenly in the moonlight. And even as the dagger fell and she was unable to check the blow, she screamed, wild and agonized. For in that fleeting second she recognized the face of her lover, Dalgar of Farsun.

V

THE BATTLE OF THE STAIRS.

Dalgar, after unceremoniously leaving the distracted presence of Kananu, got him to horse and rode hard to the Eastern gate. He had heard Kananu give orders to close the gates and let no one out, and he rode like a madman to beat that order. It was a hard matter to get out at night anyhow, and Dalgar having learned that the gates were not guarded tonight by the incorruptible Red Slayers, had planned to bribe his way out. Now he depended on the audacity of his scheme.

All in a lather of sweat, he halted at the Eastern gate and shouted: “Unbolt the gate! I must ride to the Verulian border tonight! Quick! The king has vanished! Let me through and then guard the gate! Let no one follow me! In the name of the king!”

Then as the soldier hesitated: “Haste, fools! The king may be in mortal danger! Hark!”

Far out across the city, chilling hearts with sudden nameless dread, sounded the deep tones of the great bronze Bell of the King which booms only when the king is in peril. The guards were electrified.

They knew Dalgar was high in favor as a visiting noble. They believed what he said. Under the impetuous blast of his will, they swung the great iron gates wide and he shot through like a thunder bolt, to vanish instantly in the outer darkness.

As Dalgar rode, he hoped no great harm had come to Kull, for he liked the bluff barbarian far more than he had ever liked any of the polished, sophisticated and bloodless kings of the Seven Empires. Had it been possible, he would have aided in the search. But Delcartes was waiting for him and already he was late.

As the young nobleman entered the Garden, he had a peculiar feeling, that here in the heart of desolation and loneliness, there were many men. An instant later he heard a clash of steel, the sound of many footsteps running, and a fierce shouting in a foreign tongue. Slipping off his horse and drawing his sword, he crept through the underbrush until he came in sight of the ruined mansion. There a strange sight burst upon his astounded vision. At the top of the crumbling stair case stood a half naked, blood stained giant whom he recognized as the king of Valusia. By his side stood a girl–a cry burst from Dalgar’s lips, half stifled! Delcartes! His nails bit into the palms of his clenching hand. Who were those men in dark clothing who swarmed up the stairs? No matter. They meant death to the girl and to Kull. He heard the king challenge them and offer his life for Delcartes’ and a flood of gratitude swelled into his throat, nearly strangling him. Then he noted the deep carvings on the wall nearest him. The next instant he was climbing–to die by the side of the king, protecting the girl he loved.

He had lost sight of Delcartes and now as he climbed he dared not take the time to look up for her. This was a slippery and treacherous task. He did not see her until he caught hold of the edge to pull himself up–till he heard her scream and saw her hand falling toward his face gripping a gleam of silver. He ducked and took the blow on his morion; the dagger snapped at the hilt and Delcartes collapsed in his arms the next moment.

Kull had whirled, axe high, at her scream–now he paused. He recognized the Farsunian and even in that instant he read between the lines, knew why the couple was here, and grinned with real enjoyment.

A second the charge had halted, as the Verulians had noted the second man on the landing; now they came on again, bounding up the steps in the moonlight, blades aflame, eyes wild with desperation. Kull met the first with an overhand smash that crushed helmet and skull, then Dalgar was at his side and his blade licked out and into a Verulian throat. Then began the battle of the stair, since immortalized by singers and poets.

Kull was there to die and to slay before he died. He gave scant thought to defense. His axe played a wheel of death about him and with each blow there came a crunch of steel and bone, a spurt of blood, a gurgling cry of agony. Bodies choked the wide stair, but still the survivors came, clambering over the gory forms of their comrades.

Dalgar had little opportunity to thrust or cut. He had seen in an instant that his best task lay in protecting Kull, who was a born slaughter machine, but who, in his armorless condition was likely to fall any instant.

So Dalgar wove a web of steel about the king, bringing into play all the sword skill that was his. Again and again his flashing blade turned a point from Kull’s heart; again and again his mail clad forearm intercepted a blow that else had killed. Twice he took on his own helmet slashes meant for the king’s bare head.

It is not easy to guard another man and yourself at the same time. Kull was bleeding from cuts on the face and breast, from a gash above the temple, a stab in the thigh, and a deep wound in the left shoulder; a thrusting pike had rent Dalgar’s cuirass and wounded him in the side, and he felt his strength ebbing. A last mad effort of their foes and the Farsunian was overthrown. He fell at Kull’s feet and a dozen points prodded for his life. With a lion like roar Kull cleared a space with one mighty sweep of that red axe and stood astride the fallen youth. They closed in–

There burst on Kull’s ears a crash of horses’ hoofs and the Accursed Gardens were flooded with wild riders, yelling like wolves in the moonlight. A storm of arrows swept the stairs and men howled, pitching headlong to lie still, or to tear gibbering at the cruel, deeply imbedded shafts. The few whom Kull’s axe and the arrows had left fled down the stairs to be met at the bottom by the whistling curved swords of Brule’s Picts. And there they died, fighting to the last, those bold Verulian warriors–catspaws for their falseking, sent out on a dangerous and foul mission, disowned by the men who sent them out, and branded forever with infamy. But they died like men.

But one did not die there at the foot of the stairs. The Masked One had fled at the first sound of hoofs, and now he shot across the Gardens riding a superb horse. He had almost reached the outer wall when Brule, the Spear-slayer, chief of the Picts, dashed across his path. There on the promontory, leaning on his bloody axe, Kull saw them fight beneath the moon.

The Masked One had abandoned his defensive tactics. He charged the Pict with reckless courage and the Spear-slayer met him, horse to horse, man to man, blade to blade. Both were magnificent horsemen. Their steeds, obeying the touch of the bridle, the nudge of the knee, whirled, reared and spun. But through all their motions, the whistling blades never lost touch of each other. Brule, differently from his tribesmen, used the slim straight sword of Valusia. In reach and speed there was little to choose between them, and Kull watching again and again caught his breath and bit his lip as it seemed Brule would fall before an unusually vicious thrust.

No crude hacking and slashing for these seasoned warriors. They thrust and countered, parried and thrust again. Then suddenly Brule seemed to lose touch with his opponent’s blade–he parried wildly and wide, leaving himself wide open–the Masked One struck heels into his horse’s sides as he lunged, so that the sword and the horse shot forward as one. Brule leaned aside, let the blade glance from the side of his cuirass–his own blade shot straight out, elbow, wrist, hilt and point making a straight line from his shoulder; the horses crashed together and together they rolled headlong on the sward. But from that tangle of lashing hoofs Brule rose unharmed and there in the high grass lay the Masked One, Brule’s sword still transfixing him.

Kull awoke as from a trance; the Picts were howling about him like wolves, but he raised his hand for silence. “Enough! You are all heroes! But attend to Dalgar–he is sorely wounded. And when you have finished, you might see to my own wounds. Brule, how came you to find me?”

Brule beckoned Kull to where he stood above the dead Masked One.

“A beggar crone saw you climb the palace wall, and out of curiosity watched where you went. She followed you and saw you go through the forgotten gate. I was riding the plain between the wall and these Gardens when I heard the clash of steel. But look–who can this be?”

“Raise the mask,” said Kull. “Whoever it is, it is he who copied Tu’s handwriting, who took the signet ring from Tu–and–”

Brule tore the mask away.

“Dondal!” Kull ejaculated. “Tu’s nephew! Brule, Tu must never know this. Let him think that Dondal rode with you and died fighting for his king!”

Brule seemed stunned: “Dondal! A traitor! Why, many a time I’ve drunk wine with him and slept it off in one of his beds.”

Kull nodded. “I liked Dondal.”

Brule cleansed his blade and drove it home in the scabbard with a vicious clank. “Want will make a rogue of any man,” he said moodily. “He was deep in debt–Tu was penurious with him. Always maintained that giving young men money was bad for them. Dondal was forced to keep up appearances for his pride’s sake and so fell into the hands of the usurers. Thus Tu is the greater traitor for he drove the boy into treachery by his parsimony–and I could wish Tu’s heart had stopped my point instead of his.”

So saying, with a vicious snap of his teeth, the Pict turned on his heel and strode somberly away.

Kull turned back to Dalgar who lay half senseless while the Pictish warriors dressed his wounds with experienced fingers. Others attended to the king, and while they staunched, cleansed and bandaged, Delcartes came up to Kull with the mystery of the moon in her dark eyes.

“Sire,” she held out her small hands, now torn and stained with dried blood. “Will you now not have mercy on us–grant my plea if–” her throat caught on a sob–“if Dalgar lives?”

Kull caught her slim shoulders and shook her in his agony of spirit.

“Girl, girl, girl! Ask me anything except something I cannot grant. Ask half my kingdom, or my right hand and it is yours. I will ask Goron to let you marry Dalgar–I will beg him–but I cannot force him.”

Tall horsemen were gathering through the Gardens whose resplendent armor shone among the half naked wolfish Picts. A tall man hurried up, throwing back the vizor of his helmet.

“Father!”

Goron bora Ballin crushed his daughter to his breast with a sob of thanksgiving, and then turned to his king.

“Sire, you are sorely wounded!”

Kull shook his head. “Not sorely–not at least for me, though other men might feel stiff and sore. But yonder lies he who took the death thrusts meant for me; who was my shield and my helmet, and but for whom Valusia had howled for a new king.”

Goron whirled toward the prostrate youth.

“Dalgar! Is he dead?”

“Nigh unto it,” growled a wiry Pict who was still working above him. “But he is steel and whalebone; with any care he should live.”

“He came here to meet your daughter and elope with her,” said Kull while Delcartes hung her head. “He crept through the brush and saw me fighting for my life and hers, atop yonder stair. He might have escaped. Nothing barred him. But he climbed the sheer wall to certain death, as it seemed then, and fought by my side as gayly as he ever rode to a feast–he not even a subject of mine by birth.”

Goron’s hands clenched and unclenched. His eyes kindled and softened as they bent on his daughter.

“Delcartes,” he said softly, drawing the girl into the shelter of his steel clad arm. “Do you still wish to marry this wild reckless youth?”

Her eyes spoke eloquently enough.

Kull was speaking: “Take him up carefully; bear him to the palace; he shall have the best–”

Goron interposed: “Sire, if I may ask–let him be taken to my castle. There the finest physicians shall attend him and on his recovery–well, if it be your royal pleasure, might we not celebrate the event with a wedding?”

Delcartes screamed with joy, clapped her hands, kissed her father and Kull and was off to Dalgar’s side like a whirlwind.

Goron smiled softly, his aristocratic face lighted.

“Out of a night of blood and terror, joy and happiness are born.”

The barbarian king grinned and shouldered his stained and notched axe.

“Life is that way, Count; one man’s bane is another’s bliss.”

The King and the Oak

The King and the Oak

Before the shadows slew the sun the kites were soaring free,

And Kull rode down the forest road, his red sword at his knee;

And winds were whispering round the world: “King Kull rides to the sea.”

The sun died crimson in the sea, the long grey shadows fell;

The moon rose like a silver skull that wrought a demon’s spell,

For in its light great trees stood up like specters out of Hell.

In spectral light the trees stood up, inhuman monsters dim;

Kull thought each trunk a living shape, each branch a knotted limb,

And strange unmortal evil eyes flamed horribly at him.

The branches writhed like knotted snakes, they beat against the night,

And one great oak with swayings stiff, horrific in his sight,

Tore up its roots and blocked his way, grim in the ghostly light.

They grappled in the forest way, the king and grisly oak;

Its great limbs bent him in their grip, but never a word was spoke;

And futile in his iron hand, the stabbing dagger broke.

And through the tossing, monstrous trees there sang a dim refrain

Fraught deep with twice a million years of evil, hate and pain:

“We were the lords ere man had come, and shall be lords again.”

Kull sensed an empire strange and old that bowed to man’s advance

As kingdoms of the grassblades bow before the marching ants,

And horror gripped him; in the dawn like someone in a trance

He strove with bloody hands against a still and silent tree;

As from a nightmare dream he woke; a wind blew down the lea

And Kull of high Atlantis rode silent to the sea.

Kings of the Night

Kings of the Night

The Caesar lolled on his ivory throne–

His iron legions came

To break a king in a land unknown,

And a race without a name.

–The Song of Bran

The dagger flashed downward. A sharp cry broke in a gasp. The form on the rough altar twitched convulsively and lay still. The jagged flint edge sawed at the crimsoned breast, and thin bony fingers, ghastly dyed, tore out the still twitching heart. Under matted white brows, sharp eyes gleamed with a ferocious intensity.

Besides the slayer, four men stood about the crude pile of stones that formed the altar of the God of Shadows. One was of medium height, lithely built, scantily clad, whose black hair was confined by a narrow iron band in the center of which gleamed a single red jewel. Of the others, two were dark like the first. But where he was lithe, they were stocky and misshapen, with knotted limbs, and tangled hair falling over sloping brows. His face denoted intelligence and implacable will; theirs merely a beast-like ferocity. The fourth man had little in common with the rest. Nearly a head taller, though his hair was black as theirs, his skin was comparatively light and he was gray-eyed. He eyed the proceedings with little favor.

And, in truth, Cormac of Connacht was little at ease. The Druids of his own isle of Erin had strange dark rites of worship, but nothing like this. Dark trees shut in this grim scene, lit by a single torch. Through the branches moaned an eery night-wind. Cormac was alone among men of a strange race and he had just seen the heart of a man ripped from his still pulsing body. Now the ancient priest, who looked scarcely human, was glaring at the throbbing thing. Cormac shuddered, glancing at him who wore the jewel. Did Bran Mak Morn, king of the Picts, believe that this white-bearded old butcher could foretell events by scanning a bleeding human heart? The dark eyes of the king were inscrutable. There were strange depths to the man that Cormac could not fathom, nor any other man.

“The portents are good!” exclaimed the priest wildly, speaking more to the two chieftains than to Bran. “Here from the pulsing heart of a captive Roman I read–defeat for the arms of Rome! Triumph for the sons of the heather!”

The two savages murmured beneath their breath, their fierce eyes smoldering.

“Go and prepare your clans for battle,” said the king, and they lumbered away with the ape-like gait assumed by such stunted giants. Paying no more heed to the priest who was examining the ghastly ruin on the altar, Bran beckoned to Cormac. The Gael followed him with alacrity. Once out of that grim grove, under the starlight, he breathed more freely. They stood on an eminence, looking out over long swelling undulations of gently waving heather. Near at hand a few fires twinkled, their fewness giving scant evidence of the hordes of tribesmen who lay close by. Beyond these were more fires and beyond these still more, which last marked the camp of Cormac’s own men, hard-riding, hard-fighting Gaels, who were of that band which was just beginning to get a foothold on the western coast of Caledonia–the nucleus of what was later to become the kingdom of Dalriadia. To the left of these, other fires gleamed.

And far away to the south were more fires–mere pinpoints of light. But even at that distance the Pictish king and his Celtic ally could see that these fires were laid out in regular order.

“The fires of the legions,” muttered Bran. “The fires that have lit a path around the world. The men who light those fires have trampled the races under their iron heels. And now–we of the heather have our backs at the wall. What will fall on the morrow?”

“Victory for us, says the priest,” answered Cormac.

Bran made an impatient gesture. “Moonlight on the ocean. Wind in the fir tops. Do you think that I put faith in such mummery? Or that I enjoyed the butchery of a captive legionary? I must hearten my people; it was for Gron and Bocah that I let old Gonar read the portents. The warriors will fight better.”

“And Gonar?”

Bran laughed. “Gonar is too old to believe–anything. He was high priest of the Shadows a score of years before I was born. He claims direct descent from that Gonar who was a wizard in the days of Brule, the Spear-slayer who was the first of my line. No man knows how old he is–sometimes I think he is the original Gonar himself!”

“At least,” said a mocking voice, and Cormac started as a dim shape appeared at his side, “at least I have learned that in order to keep the faith and trust of the people, a wise man must appear to be a fool. I know secrets that would blast even your brain, Bran, should I speak them. But in order that the people may believe in me, I must descend to such things as they think proper magic–and prance and yell and rattle snakeskins, and dabble about in human blood and chicken livers.”

Cormac looked at the ancient with new interest. The semi-madness of his appearance had vanished. He was no longer the charlatan, the spell-mumbling shaman. The starlight lent him a dignity which seemed to increase his very height, so that he stood like a white-bearded patriarch.

“Bran, your doubt lies there.” The lean arm pointed to the fourth ring of fires.

“Aye,” the king nodded gloomily. “Cormac–you know as well as I. Tomorrow’s battle hinges upon that circle of fires. With the chariots of the Britons and your own Western horsemen, our success would be certain, but–surely the devil himself is in the heart of every Northman! You know how I trapped that band–how they swore to fight for me against Rome! And now that their chief, Rognar, is dead, they swear that they will be led only by a king of their own race! Else they will break their vow and go over to the Romans. Without them we are doomed, for we can not change our former plan.”

“Take heart, Bran,” said Gonar. “Touch the jewel in your iron crown. Mayhap it will bring you aid.”

Bran laughed bitterly. “Now you talk as the people think. I am no fool to twist with empty words. What of the gem? It is a strange one, truth, and has brought me luck ere now. But I need now, no jewels, but the allegiance of three hundred fickle Northmen who are the only warriors among us who may stand the charge of the legions on foot.”

“But the jewel, Bran, the jewel!” persisted Gonar.

“Well, the jewel!” cried Bran impatiently. “It is older than this world. It was old when Atlantis and Lemuria sank into the sea. It was given to Brule, the Spear-slayer, first of my line, by the Atlantean Kull, king of Valusia, in the days when the world was young. But shall that profit us now?”

“Who knows?” asked the wizard obliquely. “Time and space exist not. There was no past, and there shall be no future. NOW is all. All things that ever were, are, or ever will be, transpire now. Man is forever at the center of what we call time and space. I have gone into yesterday and tomorrow and both were as real as today–which is like the dreams of ghosts! But let me sleep and talk with Gonar. Mayhap he shall aid us.”

“What means he?” asked Cormac, with a slight twitching of his shoulders, as the priest strode away in the shadows.

“He has ever said that the first Gonar comes to him in his dreams and talks with him,” answered Bran. “I have seen him perform deeds that seemed beyond human ken. I know not. I am but an unknown king with an iron crown, trying to lift a race of savages out of the slime into which they have sunk. Let us look to the camps.”

_____

As they walked Cormac wondered. By what strange freak of fate had such a man risen among this race of savages, survivors of a darker, grimmer age? Surely he was an atavism, an original type of the days when the Picts ruled all Europe, before their primitive empire fell before the bronze swords of the Gauls. Cormac knew how Bran, rising by his own efforts from the negligent position of the son of a Wolf clan chief, had to an extent united the tribes of the heather and now claimed kingship over all Caledon. But his rule was loose and much remained before the Pictish clans would forget their feuds and present a solid front to foreign foes. On the battle of the morrow, the first pitched battle between the Picts under their king and the Romans, hinged the future of the rising Pictish kingdom.

Bran and his ally walked through the Pictish camp where the swart warriors lay sprawled about their small fires, sleeping or gnawing half-cooked food. Cormac was impressed by their silence. A thousand men camped here, yet the only sounds were occasional low guttural intonations. The silence of the Stone Age rested in the souls of these men.

They were all short–most of them crooked of limb. Giant dwarfs; Bran Mak Morn was a tall man among them. Only the older men were bearded and they scantily, but their black hair fell about their eyes so that they peered fiercely from under the tangle. They were barefoot and clad scantily in wolfskins. Their arms consisted in short barbed swords of iron, heavy black bows, arrows tipped with flint, iron and copper, and stone-headed mallets. Defensive armor they had none, save for a crude shield of hide-covered wood; many had worked bits of metal into their tangled manes as a slight protection against sword-cuts. Some few, sons of long lines of chiefs, were smooth-limbed and lithe like Bran, but in the eyes of all gleamed the unquenchable savagery of the primeval.

These men are fully savages, thought Cormac, worse than the Gauls, Britons and Germans. Can the old legends be true–that they reigned in a day when strange cities rose where now the sea rolls? And that they survived the flood that washed those gleaming empires under, sinking again into that savagery from which they once had risen?

Close to the encampment of the tribesmen were the fires of a group of Britons–members of fierce tribes who lived south of the Roman Wall but who dwelt in the hills and forests to the west and defied the power of Rome. Powerfully built men they were, with blazing blue eyes and shocks of tousled yellow hair, such men as had thronged the Ceanntish beaches when Caesar brought the Eagles into the Isles. These men, like the Picts, wore no armor, and were clad scantily in coarse-worked cloth and deerskin sandals. They bore small round bucklers of hard wood, braced with bronze, to be worn on the left arm, and long heavy bronze swords with blunt points. Some had bows, though the Britons were indifferent archers. Their bows were shorter than the Picts’ and effective only at close range. But ranged close by their fires were the weapons that had made the name Briton a word of terror to Pict, Roman and Norse raider alike. Within the circle of firelight stood fifty bronze chariots with long cruel blades curving out from the sides. One of these blades could dismember half a dozen men at once. Tethered close by under the vigilant eyes of their guards grazed the chariot horses–big, rangy steeds, swift and powerful.

“Would that we had more of them!” mused Bran. “With a thousand chariots and my bowmen I could drive the legions into the sea.”

“The free British tribes must eventually fall before Rome,” said Cormac. “It would seem they would rush to join you in your war.”

Bran made a helpless gesture. “The fickleness of the Celt. They can not forget old feuds. Our ancient men have told us how they would not even unite against Caesar when the Romans first came. They will not make head against a common foe together. These men came to me because of some dispute with their chief, but I can not depend on them when they are not actually fighting.”

Cormac nodded. “I know; Caesar conquered Gaul by playing one tribe against another. My own people shift and change with the waxing and waning of the tides. But of all Celts, the Cymry are the most changeable, the least stable. Not many centuries ago my own Gaelic ancestors wrested Erin from the Cymric Danaans, because though they outnumbered us, they opposed us as separate tribes, rather than as a nation.”

“And so these Cymric Britons face Rome,” said Bran. “These will aid us on the morrow. Further I can not say. But how shall I expect loyalty from alien tribes, who am not sure of my own people? Thousands lurk in the hills, holding aloof. I am king in name only. Let me win tomorrow and they will flock to my standard; if I lose, they will scatter like birds before a cold wind.”

A chorus of rough welcome greeted the two leaders as they entered the camp of Cormac’s Gaels. Five hundred in number they were, tall rangy men, black-haired and gray-eyed mainly, with the bearing of men who lived by war alone. While there was nothing like close discipline among them, there was an air of more system and practical order than existed in the lines of the Picts and Britons. These men were of the last Celtic race to invade the Isles and their barbaric civilization was of much higher order than that of their Cymric kin. The ancestors of the Gaels had learned the arts of war on the vast plains of Scythia and at the courts of the Pharaohs where they had fought as mercenaries of Egypt, and much of what they learned they brought into Ireland with them. Excelling in metal work, they were armed, not with clumsy bronze swords, but with high-grade weapons of iron.

They were clad in well-woven kilts and leathern sandals. Each wore a light shirt of chain mail and a vizorless helmet, but this was all of their defensive armor. Celts, Gaelic or Brythonic, were prone to judge a man’s valor by the amount of armor he wore. The Britons who faced Caesar deemed the Romans cowards because they cased themselves in metal, and many centuries later the Irish clans thought the same of the mail-clad Norman knights of Strongbow.

Cormac’s warriors were horsemen. They neither knew nor esteemed the use of the bow. They bore the inevitable round, metal-braced buckler, dirks, long straight swords and light single-handed axes. Their tethered horses grazed not far away–big-boned animals, not so ponderous as those raised by the Britons, but swifter.

Bran’s eyes lighted as the two strode through the camp. “These men are keen-beaked birds of war! See how they whet their axes and jest of the morrow! Would that the raiders in yon camp were as staunch as your men, Cormac! Then would I greet the legions with a laugh when they come up from the south tomorrow.”

They were entering the circle of the Northmen fires. Three hundred men sat about gambling, whetting their weapons and drinking deep of the heather ale furnished them by their Pictish allies. These gazed upon Bran and Cormac with no great friendliness. It was striking to note the difference between them and the Picts and Celts–the difference in their cold eyes, their strong moody faces, their very bearing. Here was ferocity, and savagery, but not of the wild, upbursting fury of the Celt. Here was fierceness backed by grim determination and stolid stubbornness. The charge of the British clans was terrible, overwhelming. But they had no patience; let them be balked of immediate victory and they were likely to lose heart and scatter or fall to bickering among themselves. There was the patience of the cold blue North in these seafarers–a lasting determination that would keep them steadfast to the bitter end, once their face was set toward a definite goal.

As to personal stature, they were giants; massive yet rangy. That they did not share the ideas of the Celts regarding armor was shown by the fact that they were clad in heavy scale mail shirts that reached below mid-thigh, heavy horned helmets and hardened hide leggings, reinforced, as were their shoes, with plates of iron. Their shields were huge oval affairs of hard wood, hide and brass. As to weapons, they had long iron-headed spears, heavy iron axes, and daggers. Some had long wide-bladed swords.

Cormac scarcely felt at ease with the cold magnetic eyes of these flaxen-haired men fixed upon him. He and they were hereditary foes, even though they did chance to be fighting on the same side at present–but were they?

A man came forward, a tall gaunt warrior on whose scarred, wolfish face the flickering firelight reflected deep shadows. With his wolfskin mantle flung carelessly about his wide shoulders, and the great horns on his helmet adding to his height, he stood there in the swaying shadows, like some half-human thing, a brooding shape of the dark barbarism that was soon to engulf the world.

“Well, Wulfhere,” said the Pictish king, “you have drunk the mead of council and have spoken about the fires–what is your decision?”

The Northman’s eyes flashed in the gloom. “Give us a king of our own race to follow if you wish us to fight for you.”

Bran flung out his hands. “Ask me to drag down the stars to gem your helmets! Will not your comrades follow you?”

“Not against the legions,” answered Wulfhere sullenly. “A king led us on the viking path–a king must lead us against the Romans. And Rognar is dead.”

“I am a king,” said Bran. “Will you fight for me if I stand at the tip of your fight wedge?”

“A king of our own race,” said Wulfhere doggedly. “We are all picked men of the North. We fight for none but a king, and a king must lead us–against the legions.”

Cormac sensed a subtle threat in this repeated phrase.

“Here is a prince of Erin,” said Bran. “Will you fight for the Westerner?”

“We fight under no Celt, West or East,” growled the viking, and a low rumble of approval rose from the onlookers. “It is enough to fight by their side.”

The hot Gaelic blood rose in Cormac’s brain and he pushed past Bran, his hand on his sword. “How mean you that, pirate?”

Before Wulfhere could reply Bran interposed: “Have done! Will you fools throw away the battle before it is fought, by your madness? What of your oath, Wulfhere?”

“We swore it under Rognar; when he died from a Roman arrow we were absolved of it. We will follow only a king–against the legions.”

“But your comrades will follow you–against the heather people!” snapped Bran.

“Aye,” the Northman’s eyes met his brazenly. “Send us a king or we join the Romans tomorrow.”

Bran snarled. In his rage he dominated the scene, dwarfing the huge men who towered over him.

“Traitors! Liars! I hold your lives in my hand! Aye, draw your swords if you will–Cormac, keep your blade in its sheath. These wolves will not bite a king! Wulfhere–I spared your lives when I could have taken them.

“You came to raid the countries of the South, sweeping down from the northern sea in your galleys. You ravaged the coasts and the smoke of burning villages hung like a cloud over the shores of Caledon. I trapped you all when you were pillaging and burning–with the blood of my people on your hands. I burned your long ships and ambushed you when you followed. With thrice your number of bowmen who burned for your lives hidden in the heathered hills about you, I spared you when we could have shot you down like trapped wolves. Because I spared you, you swore to come and fight for me.”

“And shall we die because the Picts fight Rome?” rumbled a bearded raider.

“Your lives are forfeit to me; you came to ravage the South. I did not promise to send you all back to your homes in the North unharmed and loaded with loot. Your vow was to fight one battle against Rome under my standard. Then I will aid your survivors to build ships and you may go where you will, with a goodly share of the plunder we take from the legions. Rognar had kept his oath. But Rognar died in a skirmish with Roman scouts and now you, Wulfhere the Dissension-breeder, you stir up your comrades to dishonor themselves by that which a Northman hates–the breaking of the sworn word.”

“We break no oath,” snarled the viking, and the king sensed the basic Germanic stubbornness, far harder to combat than the fickleness of the fiery Celts. “Give us a king, neither Pict, Gael nor Briton, and we will die for you. If not–then we will fight tomorrow for the greatest of all kings–the emperor of Rome!”

For a moment Cormac thought that the Pictish king, in his black rage, would draw and strike the Northman dead. The concentrated fury that blazed in Bran’s dark eyes caused Wulfhere to recoil and drop a hand to his belt.

“Fool!” said Mak Morn in a low voice that vibrated with passion. “I could sweep you from the earth before the Romans are near enough to hear your death howls. Choose–fight for me on the morrow–or die tonight under a black cloud of arrows, a red storm of swords, a dark wave of chariots!”

At the mention of the chariots, the only arm of war that had ever broken the Norse shield-wall, Wulfhere changed expression, but he held his ground.

“War be it,” he said doggedly. “Or a king to lead us!”

The Northmen responded with a short deep roar and a clash of swords on shields. Bran, eyes blazing, was about to speak again when a white shape glided silently into the ring of firelight.

“Soft words, soft words,” said old Gonar tranquilly. “King, say no more. Wulfhere, you and your fellows will fight for us if you have a king to lead you?”

“We have sworn.”

“Then be at ease,” quoth the wizard; “for ere battle joins on the morrow I will send you such a king as no man on earth has followed for a hundred thousand years! A king neither Pict, Gael nor Briton, but one to whom the emperor of Rome is as but a village headman!”

While they stood undecided, Gonar took the arms of Cormac and Bran. “Come. And you, Northmen, remember your vow, and my promise which I have never broken. Sleep now, nor think to steal away in the darkness to the Roman camp, for if you escaped our shafts you would not escape either my curse or the suspicions of the legionaries.”

So the three walked away and Cormac, looking back, saw Wulfhere standing by the fire, fingering his golden beard, with a look of puzzled anger on his lean evil face.

The three walked silently through the waving heather under the far-away stars while the weird night wind whispered ghostly secrets about them.

“Ages ago,” said the wizard suddenly, “in the days when the world was young, great lands rose where now the ocean roars. On these lands thronged mighty nations and kingdoms. Greatest of all these was Valusia–Land of Enchantment. Rome is as a village compared to the splendor of the cities of Valusia. And the greatest king was Kull, who came from the land of Atlantis to wrest the crown of Valusia from a degenerate dynasty. The Picts who dwelt in the isles which now form the mountain peaks of a strange land upon the Western Ocean, were allies of Valusia, and the greatest of all the Pictish war-chiefs was Brule the Spear-slayer, first of the line men call Mak Morn.

“Kull gave to Brule the jewel which you now wear in your iron crown, oh king, after a strange battle in a dim land, and down the long ages it has come to us, ever a sign of the Mak Morn, a symbol of former greatness. When at last the sea rose and swallowed Valusia, Atlantis and Lemuria, only the Picts survived and they were scattered and few. Yet they began again the slow climb upward, and though many of the arts of civilization were lost in the great flood, yet they progressed. The art of metal-working was lost, so they excelled in the working of flint. And they ruled all the new lands flung up by the sea and now called Europe, until down from the north came younger tribes who had scarce risen from the ape when Valusia reigned in her glory, and who, dwelling in the icy lands about the Pole, knew naught of the lost splendor of the Seven Empires and little of the flood that had swept away half a world.

“And still they have come–Aryans, Celts, Germans, swarming down from the great cradle of their race which lies near the Pole. So again was the growth of the Pictish nation checked and the race hurled into savagery. Erased from the earth, on the fringe of the world with our backs to the wall we fight. Here in Caledon is the last stand of a once mighty race. And we change. Our people have mixed with the savages of an elder age which we drove into the North when we came into the Isles, and now, save for their chieftains, such as thou, Bran, a Pict is strange and abhorrent to look upon.”

“True, true,” said the king impatiently, “but what has that to do––”

“Kull, king of Valusia,” said the wizard imperturbably, “was a barbarian in his age as thou art in thine, though he ruled a mighty empire by the weight of his sword. Gonar, friend of Brule, your first ancestor, has been dead a hundred thousand years as we reckon time. Yet I talked with him a scant hour agone.”

“You talked with his ghost––”

“Or he with mine? Did I go back a hundred thousand years, or did he come forward? If he came to me out of the past, it is not I who talked with a dead man, but he who talked with a man unborn. Past, present and future are one to a wise man. I talked to Gonar while he was alive; likewise was I alive. In a timeless, spaceless land we met and he told me many things.”

The land was growing light with the birth of dawn. The heather waved and bent in long rows before the dawn wind as bowing in worship of the rising sun.

“The jewel in your crown is a magnet that draws down the eons,” said Gonar. “The sun is rising–and who comes out of the sunrise?”

Cormac and the king started. The sun was just lifting a red orb above the eastern hills. And full in the glow, etched boldly against the golden rim, a man suddenly appeared. They had not seen him come. Against the golden birth of day he loomed colossal; a gigantic god from the dawn of creation. Now as he strode toward them the waking hosts saw him and sent up a sudden shout of wonder.

“Who–or what is it?” exclaimed Bran.

“Let us go to meet him, Bran,” answered the wizard. “He is the king Gonar has sent to save the people of Brule.”

II

“I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule;

From a wild weird clime that lieth sublime

Out of Space–out of Time.”

–Poe

The army fell silent as Bran, Cormac and Gonar went toward the stranger who approached in long swinging strides. As they neared him the illusion of monstrous size vanished, but they saw he was a man of great stature. At first Cormac thought him to be a Northman but a second glance told him that nowhere before had he seen such a man. He was built much like the vikings, at once massive and lithe–tigerish. But his features were not as theirs, and his square-cut, lion-like mane of hair was as black as Bran’s own. Under heavy brows glittered eyes gray as steel and cold as ice. His bronzed face, strong and inscrutable, was clean-shaven, and the broad forehead betokened a high intelligence, just as the firm jaw and thin lips showed will-power and courage. But more than all, the bearing of him, the unconscious lion-like stateliness, marked him as a natural king, a ruler of men.

Sandals of curious make were on his feet and he wore a pliant coat of strangely meshed mail which came almost to his knees. A broad belt with a great golden buckle encircled his waist, supporting a long straight sword in a heavy leather scabbard. His hair was confined by a wide, heavy golden band about his head.

Such was the man who paused before the silent group. He seemed slightly puzzled, slightly amused. Recognition flickered in his eyes. He spoke in a strange archaic Pictish which Cormac scarcely understood. His voice was deep and resonant.

“Ha, Brule, Gonar did not tell me I would dream of you!”

For the first time in his life Cormac saw the Pictish king completely thrown off his balance. He gaped, speechless. The stranger continued:

“And wearing the gem I gave you, in a circlet on your head! Last night you wore it in a ring on your finger.”

“Last night?” gasped Bran.

“Last night or a hundred thousand years ago–all one!” murmured Gonar in evident enjoyment of the situation.

“I am not Brule,” said Bran. “Are you mad to thus speak of a man dead a hundred thousand years? He was first of my line.”

The stranger laughed unexpectedly. “Well, now I know I am dreaming! This will be a tale to tell Brule when I waken on the morrow! That I went into the future and saw men claiming descent from the Spear-slayer who is, as yet, not even married. No, you are not Brule, I see now, though you have his eyes and his bearing. But he is taller and broader in the shoulders. Yet you have his jewel–oh, well–anything can happen in a dream, so I will not quarrel with you. For a time I thought I had been transported to some other land in my sleep, and was in reality awake in a strange country, for this is the clearest dream I ever dreamed. Who are you?”

“I am Bran Mak Morn, king of the Caledonian Picts. And this ancient is Gonar, a wizard, of the line of Gonar. And this warrior is Cormac na Connacht, a prince of the isle of Erin.”

The stranger slowly shook his lion-like head. “These words sound strangely to me, save Gonar–and that one is not Gonar, though he too is old. What land is this?”

“Caledon, or Alba, as the Gaels call it.”

“And who are those squat ape-like warriors who watch us yonder, all agape?”

“They are the Picts who own my rule.”

“How strangely distorted folk are in dreams!” muttered the stranger. “And who are those shock-headed men about the chariots?”

“They are Britons–Cymry from south of the Wall.”

“What Wall?”

“The Wall built by Rome to keep the people of the heather out of Britain.”

“Britain?” the tone was curious. “I never heard of that land–and what is Rome?”

“What!” cried Bran. “You never heard of Rome, the empire that rules the world?”

“No empire rules the world,” answered the other haughtily. “The mightiest kingdom on earth is that wherein I reign.”

“And who are you?”

“Kull of Atlantis, king of Valusia!”

Cormac felt a coldness trickle down his spine. The cold gray eyes were unswerving–but this was incredible–monstrous–unnatural.

“Valusia!” cried Bran. “Why, man, the sea waves have rolled above the spires of Valusia for untold centuries!”

Kull laughed outright. “What a mad nightmare this is! When Gonar put on me the spell of deep sleep last night–or this night!–in the secret room of the inner palace, he told me I would dream strange things, but this is more fantastic than I reckoned. And the strangest thing is, I know I am dreaming!”

Gonar interposed as Bran would have spoken. “Question not the acts of the gods,” muttered the wizard. “You are king because in the past you have seen and seized opportunities. The gods or the first Gonar have sent you this man. Let me deal with him.”

Bran nodded, and while the silent army gaped in speechless wonder, just within ear-shot, Gonar spoke: “Oh great king, you dream, but is not all life a dream? How reckon you but that your former life is but a dream from which you have just awakened? Now we dream-folk have our wars and our peace, and just now a great host comes up from the south to destroy the people of Brule. Will you aid us?”

Kull grinned with pure zest. “Aye! I have fought battles in dreams ere now, have slain and been slain and was amazed when I woke from my visions. And at times, as now, dreaming I have known I dreamed. See, I pinch myself and feel it, but I know I dream for I have felt the pain of fierce wounds, in dreams. Yes, people of my dream, I will fight for you against the other dream-folk. Where are they?”

“And that you enjoy the dream more,” said the wizard subtly, “forget that it is a dream and pretend that by the magic of the first Gonar, and the quality of the jewel you gave Brule, that now gleams on the crown of the Morni, you have in truth been transported forward into another, wilder age where the people of Brule fight for their life against a stronger foe.”

For a moment the man who called himself king of Valusia seemed startled; a strange look of doubt, almost of fear, clouded his eyes. Then he laughed.

“Good! Lead on, wizard.”

But now Bran took charge. He had recovered himself and was at ease. Whether he thought, like Cormac, that this was all a gigantic hoax arranged by Gonar, he showed no sign.

“King Kull, see you those men yonder who lean on their long-shafted axes as they gaze upon you?”

“The tall men with the golden hair and beards?”

“Aye–our success in the coming battle hinges on them. They swear to go over to the enemy if we give them not a king to lead them–their own having been slain. Will you lead them to battle?”

Kull’s eyes glowed with appreciation. “They are men such as my own Red Slayers, my picked regiment. I will lead them.”

“Come then.”

The small group made their way down the slope, through throngs of warriors who pushed forward eagerly to get a better view of the stranger, then pressed back as he approached. An undercurrent of tense whispering ran through the horde.

The Northmen stood apart in a compact group. Their cold eyes took in Kull and he gave back their stares, taking in every detail of their appearance.

“Wulfhere,” said Bran, “we have brought you a king. I hold you to your oath.”

“Let him speak to us,” said the viking harshly.

“He can not speak your tongue,” answered Bran, knowing that the Northmen knew nothing of the legends of his race. “He is a great king of the South––”

“He comes out of the past,” broke in the wizard calmly. “He was the greatest of all kings, long ago.”

“A dead man!” The vikings moved uneasily and the rest of the horde pressed forward, drinking in every word. But Wulfhere scowled: “Shall a ghost lead living men? You bring us a man you say is dead. We will not follow a corpse.”

“Wulfhere,” said Bran in still passion, “you are a liar and a traitor. You set us this task, thinking it impossible. You yearn to fight under the Eagles of Rome. We have brought you a king neither Pict, Gael nor Briton and you deny your vow!”

“Let him fight me, then!” howled Wulfhere in uncontrollable wrath, swinging his ax about his head in a glittering arc. “If your dead man overcomes me–then my people will follow you. If I overcome him, you shall let us depart in peace to the camp of the legions!”

“Good!” said the wizard. “Do you agree, wolves of the North?”

A fierce yell and a brandishing of swords was the answer. Bran turned to Kull, who had stood silent, understanding nothing of what was said. But the Atlantean’s eyes gleamed. Cormac felt that those cold eyes had looked on too many such scenes not to understand something of what had passed.

“This warrior says you must fight him for the leadership,” said Bran, and Kull, eyes glittering with growing battle-joy, nodded: “I guessed as much. Give us space.”

“A shield and a helmet!” shouted Bran, but Kull shook his head.

“I need none,” he growled. “Back and give us room to swing our steel!”

_____

Men pressed back on each side, forming a solid ring about the two men, who now approached each other warily. Kull had drawn his sword and the great blade shimmered like a live thing in his hand. Wulfhere, scarred by a hundred savage fights, flung aside his wolfskin mantle and came in cautiously, fierce eyes peering over the top of his out-thrust shield, ax half lifted in his right hand.

Suddenly when the warriors were still many feet apart Kull sprang. His attack brought a gasp from men used to deeds of prowess; for like a leaping tiger he shot through the air and his sword crashed on the quickly lifted shield. Sparks flew and Wulfhere’s ax hacked in, but Kull was under its sweep and as it swished viciously above his head he thrust upward and sprang out again, cat-like. His motions had been too quick for the eye to follow. The upper edge of Wulfhere’s shield showed a deep cut, and there was a long rent in his mail shirt where Kull’s sword had barely missed the flesh beneath.

Cormac, trembling with the terrible thrill of the fight, wondered at this sword that could thus slice through scale-mail. And the blow that gashed the shield should have shattered the blade. Yet not a notch showed in the Valusian steel! Surely this blade was forged by another people in another age!

Now the two giants leaped again to the attack and like double strokes of lightning their weapons crashed. Wulfhere’s shield fell from his arm in two pieces as the Atlantean’s sword sheared clear through it, and Kull staggered as the Northman’s ax, driven with all the force of his great body, descended on the golden circlet about his head. That blow should have sheared through the gold like butter to split the skull beneath, but the ax rebounded, showing a great notch in the edge. The next instant the Northman was overwhelmed by a whirlwind of steel–a storm of strokes delivered with such swiftness and power that he was borne back as on the crest of a wave, unable to launch an attack of his own. With all his tried skill he sought to parry the singing steel with his ax. But he could only avert his doom for a few seconds; could only for an instant turn the whistling blade that hewed off bits of his mail, so close fell the blows. One of the horns flew from his helmet; then the ax-head itself fell away, and the same blow that severed the handle, bit through the viking’s helmet into the scalp beneath. Wulfhere was dashed to his knees, a trickle of blood starting down his face.

Kull checked his second stroke, and tossing his sword to Cormac, faced the dazed Northman weaponless. The Atlantean’s eyes were blazing with ferocious joy and he roared something in a strange tongue. Wulfhere gathered his legs under him and bounded up, snarling like a wolf, a dagger flashing into his hand. The watching horde gave tongue in a yell that ripped the skies as the two bodies clashed. Kull’s clutching hand missed the Northman’s wrist but the desperately lunging dagger snapped on the Atlantean’s mail, and dropping the useless hilt, Wulfhere locked his arms about his foe in a bear-like grip that would have crushed the ribs of a lesser man. Kull grinned tigerishly and returned the grapple, and for a moment the two swayed on their feet. Slowly the black-haired warrior bent his foe backward until it seemed his spine would snap. With a howl that had nothing of the human in it, Wulfhere clawed frantically at Kull’s face, trying to tear out his eyes, then turned his head and snapped his fang-like teeth into the Atlantean’s arm. A yell went up as a trickle of blood started: “He bleeds! He bleeds! He is no ghost, after all, but a mortal man!”

Angered, Kull shifted his grip, shoving the frothing Wulfhere away from him, and smote him terrifically under the ear with his right hand. The viking landed on his back a dozen feet away. Then, howling like a wild man, he leaped up with a stone in his hand and flung it. Only Kull’s incredible quickness saved his face; as it was, the rough edge of the missile tore his cheek and inflamed him to madness. With a lion-like roar he bounded upon his foe, enveloped him in an irresistible blast of sheer fury, whirled him high above his head as if he were a child and cast him a dozen feet away. Wulfhere pitched on his head and lay still–broken and dead.

Dazed silence reigned for an instant; then from the Gaels went up a thundering roar, and the Britons and Picts took it up, howling like wolves, until the echoes of the shouts and the clangor of sword on shield reached the ears of the marching legionaries, miles to the south.

“Men of the gray North,” shouted Bran, “will you hold by your oath now?”

The fierce souls of the Northmen were in their eyes as their spokesman answered. Primitive, superstitious, steeped in tribal lore of fighting gods and mythical heroes, they did not doubt that the black-haired fighting man was some supernatural being sent by the fierce gods of battle.

“Aye! Such a man as this we have never seen! Dead man, ghost or devil, we will follow him, whether the trail lead to Rome or Valhalla!”

Kull understood the meaning, if not the words. Taking his sword from Cormac with a word of thanks, he turned to the waiting Northmen and silently held the blade toward them high above his head, in both hands, before he returned it to its scabbard. Without understanding, they appreciated the action. Bloodstained and disheveled, he was an impressive picture of stately, magnificent barbarism.

“Come,” said Bran, touching the Atlantean’s arm; “a host is marching on us and we have much to do. There is scant time to arrange our forces before they will be upon us. Come to the top of yonder slope.”

There the Pict pointed. They were looking down into a valley which ran north and south, widening from a narrow gorge in the north until it debouched upon a plain to the south. The whole valley was less than a mile in length.

“Up this valley will our foes come,” said the Pict, “because they have wagons loaded with supplies and on all sides of this vale the ground is too rough for such travel. Here we plan an ambush.”

“I would have thought you would have had your men lying in wait long before now,” said Kull. “What of the scouts the enemy is sure to send out?”

“The savages I lead would never have waited in ambush so long,” said Bran with a touch of bitterness. “I could not post them until I was sure of the Northmen. Even so I had not dared to post them ere now–even yet they may take panic from the drifting of a cloud or the blowing of a leaf, and scatter like birds before a cold wind. King Kull–the fate of the Pictish nation is at stake. I am called king of the Picts, but my rule as yet is but a hollow mockery. The hills are full of wild clans who refuse to fight for me. Of the thousand bowmen now at my command, more than half are of my own clan.

“Some eighteen hundred Romans are marching against us. It is not a real invasion, but much hinges upon it. It is the beginning of an attempt to extend their boundaries. They plan to build a fortress a day’s march to the north of this valley. If they do, they will build other forts, drawing bands of steel about the heart of the free people. If I win this battle and wipe out this army, I will win a double victory. Then the tribes will flock to me and the next invasion will meet a solid wall of resistance. If I lose, the clans will scatter, fleeing into the north until they can no longer flee, fighting as separate clans rather than as one strong nation.

“I have a thousand archers, five hundred horsemen, fifty chariots with their drivers and swordsmen–one hundred fifty men in all–and, thanks to you, three hundred heavily armed Northern pirates. How would you arrange your battle lines?”

“Well,” said Kull, “I would have barricaded the north end of the valley–no! That would suggest a trap. But I would block it with a band of desperate men, like those you have given me to lead. Three hundred could hold the gorge for a time against any number. Then, when the enemy was engaged with these men to the narrow part of the valley, I would have my archers shoot down into them until their ranks are broken, from both sides of the vale. Then, having my horsemen concealed behind one ridge and my chariots behind the other, I would charge with both simultaneously and sweep the foe into a red ruin.”

Bran’s eyes glowed. “Exactly, king of Valusia. Such was my exact plan–”

“But what of the scouts?”

“My warriors are like panthers; they hide under the noses of the Romans. Those who ride into the valley will see only what we wish them to see. Those who ride over the ridge will not come back to report. An arrow is swift and silent.

“You see that the pivot of the whole thing depends on the men that hold the gorge. They must be men who can fight on foot and resist the charges of the heavy legionaries long enough for the trap to close. Outside these Northmen I had no such force of men. My naked warriors with their short swords could never stand such a charge for an instant. Nor is the armor of the Celts made for such work; moreover, they are not foot-fighters, and I need them elsewhere.

“So you see why I had such desperate need of the Northmen. Now will you stand in the gorge with them and hold back the Romans until I can spring the trap? Remember, most of you will die.”

Kull smiled. “I have taken chances all my life, though Tu, chief councillor, would say my life belongs to Valusia and I have no right to so risk it––” His voice trailed off and a strange look flitted across his face. “By Valka,” said he, laughing uncertainly, “sometimes I forget this is a dream! All seems so real. But it is–of course it is! Well, then, if I die I will but awaken as I have done in times past. Lead on, king of Caledon!”

Cormac, going to his warriors, wondered. Surely it was all a hoax; yet–he heard the arguments of the warriors all about him as they armed themselves and prepared to take their posts. The black-haired king was Neid himself, the Celtic war-god; he was an antediluvian king brought out of the past by Gonar; he was a mythical fighting man out of Valhalla. He was no man at all but a ghost! No, he was mortal, for he had bled. But the gods themselves bled, though they did not die. So the controversies raged. At least, thought Cormac, if it was all a hoax to inspire the warriors with the feeling of supernatural aid, it had succeeded. The belief that Kull was more than a mortal man had fired Celt, Pict and viking alike into a sort of inspired madness. And Cormac asked himself–what did he himself believe? This man was surely one from some far land–yet in his every look and action there was a vague hint of a greater difference than mere distance of space–a hint of alien Time, of misty abysses and gigantic gulfs of eons lying between the black-haired stranger and the men with whom he walked and talked. Clouds of bewilderment mazed Cormac’s brain and he laughed in whimsical self-mockery.