"G.o.d of Battles!" he howled. "Revenge!"
He s.n.a.t.c.hed her automatic from beneath the trampling, crowding feet; he bore her back, away from the thick press. And in the shelter of a ma.s.sive hut he laid her down.
Then, stark-mad, he turned and leaped into the battle-line that swayed and screamed along the wall.
Critical now the moment. In half a dozen places the besiegers had got their ladders planted. And, while dense ma.s.ses of the Lanskaarn--unminding fire-b.a.l.l.s and boulders rained down upon them--held these ladders firm, up the attackers came with a rush.
Stern saw the swing and crushing impact of the maces and iron clubs; he saw the stabbing of the spears on both sides.
Slippery and red the parapet became.
Men, killed there, crawled and struggled and fell both outward and inside, and were trampled in indiscriminate heaps, besieged and besiegers alike, still clawing, tearing, howling even in their death agony.
Now one of the ladders was down--another fell, with horrid tumult--a third!
An automatic in each hand, Stern scrambled to the glairy summit of the fortification.
A mace swung at him. He leaped sidewise, firing as he sprang. With a scream the ax-man doubled up and fell, and vanished in the gloom below the wall.
Raking the parapet with a hail of lead, he mowed down the attackers on top of the fourth ladder. With a mighty shout, those inside staved it away with iron grapples. It, too, swayed drunkenly, held below, pushed madly above. It reeled--then fell with a horrible, grinding crash!
"Hurray, boys! One more down! Give "em h.e.l.l!" he screamed. "One more!"
He turned. Subconsciously he felt that his right hand was wet, and hot, and dripping, but he felt no pain.
"One more! Now for another!"
And in the opposite direction along the wall he emptied his other revolver.
Before the stinging swarm of the steel-jacketed wasps of death the Lanskaarn writhed and melted down with screams such as Dante in his wildest vision never even dreamed.
Stern heard a great howl of triumph break from the ma.s.s of defenders fighting to overthrow the fifth ladder.
"Hold "em! Hold "em!" he bellowed. "Wait till I load up again--I"ll--"
A swift and crashing impact dashed sheaves of radiant fire through his brain.
Everything leaped and whirled.
He flung up both hands.
Clutching at empty air, then suddenly at the slippery parapet which seemed to have leaped up and struck him in the face, he fell.
Came a strange numbness, then a stabbing pain.
And darkness quenched all knowledge and all consciousness.
CHAPTER XXIX
SHADOWS OF WAR
A blue and flickering gleam of light, dim, yet persistent, seemed to enhalo a woman"s face; and as Stern"s weary eyes opened under languid lids, closed, then opened again, the wounded engineer smiled in his weakness.
"Beatrice!" he whispered, and tried to stretch a hand to her, as she sat beside his bed of seaweed covered with the coa.r.s.e brown fabric.
"Oh, Beatrice! Is this--is this another--hallucination?"
She took the hand and kissed it, then bent above him and kissed him again, this time fair upon the lips.
"No, boy," she answered. "No hallucination, but reality! You"re all right now--and _I"m_ all right! You"ve had a little fever and--and--well, don"t ask any questions, that"s all. Here, drink this now and go to sleep!"
She set a ma.s.sive golden bowl to his mouth, and very gently raised his head.
Unquestioningly he drank, as though he had been a child and she his mother. The liquid, warm and somewhat sweet, had just a tang of some new taste that he had never known. Singularly vitalizing it seemed, soothing yet full of life. With a sigh of contentment, despite the numb ache in his right temple, he lay back and once more closed his eyes. Never had he felt such utter weakness. All his forces seemed drained and spent; even to breathe was very difficult.
Feebly he raised his hand to his head.
"Bandaged?" he whispered. "What does _that_ mean?"
"It means you"re to go to sleep now!" she commanded. "That"s all--just go to sleep!"
He lay quiet a moment, but sleep would not come. A score, a hundred thoughts confusedly crowded his brain.
And once more looking up at her in the dim blue gloom of the hut where they were, he breathed a question:
"Were you badly hurt, dear, in--in the battle?"
"No, Allan. Just stunned, that"s all. Not even wounded. Be quiet now or I"ll scold!"
He raised his arms to her and, weak though he was, took her to his breast and held her tight, tight.
"Thank G.o.d!" he whispered. "Oh, I love you! I love you so! If you"d been killed--"
She felt his tears hot upon his wasted cheeks, and unloosened his arms.
"There, there!" she soothed him. "You"ll get into a fever again if you don"t lie still and try not to think! You--"
"When was it? Yesterday?" he interrupted.
"Sh-h-h-h! No more questions now."
"But I want to know! And what happened to me? And the--the Lanskaarn?
What about them? And--"
"Heavens, but you"re inquisitive for a man that"s just missed--I mean, that"s been as sick as you have!" she exclaimed, taking his head in both hands and gazing down at him with eyes more deeply tender than he had ever seen them. "Now do be good, boy, and don"t worry about all these things, but go to sleep--there"s a dear. And when you wake up next time--"
"No, no!" he insisted with pa.s.sionate eagerness. "I"m not that kind!