I laughed. “He would have it over quicker,” I replied.
The next stage we descended two floors before we halted. I like to have slipped and fallen twice in that distance. I was wet with sweat as I took a seat beside my companion. I do not like to recall that adventure. It sends the shivers through me always, even now; but at last it was over—we reached the bottom together and donned the cloaks and the bonnets of the Kalkars. The swords, for which we had no scabbards, we slipped through our own belts, the cloaks hiding the fact that they were scabbardless.
The smell of horses was strong in our nostrils as we crept forward toward a doorway. All was darkness within as we groped forward to find that we were in a small chamber with a door at the opposite side. Nearly all the doors of the ancients have been destroyed, either by the fires that have gutted most of the buildings, by decay, or by the Kalkars that have used them for fuel; but there are some left—they are the metal doors, and this was one. I pushed it open enough to see if there was a light beyond. There was. It was in the great chamber on the first floor where the horses were tethered. It was not a brilliant light, but a sad, flickering light. Even the lights of the Kalkars are grimy and unclean. It cast a pallid luminance beneath it; elsewhere were heavy shadows. The horses, when they moved, cast giant shadows upon the walls and floor and upon the great, polished stone columns.
A guard loafed before the door that led to the trail in front of the tent. It was composed of five or six men. I suppose there were others in some nearby chamber. The doorway through which we peered was in shadow. I pushed it open far enough to admit our bodies and we slipped through. In an instant we were hidden from the sight of the guard, among the horses. Some of them moved restlessly as we approached them. If I could but find Red Lightning! I had searched along one line almost the full length of the chamber and had started along a second when I heard a low nicker close by. It was he! Love of The Flag! It was like finding my own brother.
In the slovenly manner of the Kalkars, the saddles and bridles lay in the dirt in the aisle behind the horses. Fortunately I found my own, more easily, of course, because it is unlike those of the Kalkars, and while I slipped them quietly upon Red Lightning, the Or-tis, selecting a mount haphazard, was saddling and bridling it.
After a whispered consultation, we led our horses to the rear of the room and mounted among the shadows, unobserved by the guard. Then we rode out from behind the picket lines and moved slowly toward the entrance, talking and laughing in what we hoped might appear an unconcerned manner, the Or-tis riding on the side nearer the guard and a little in advance, that Red Lightning might be hidden from them, for we thought that they might recognize him more quickly than they would us.
As they saw us coming they ceased their chatter and looked up, but we paid no attention to them, riding straight on for the aperture that led into the trail outside the structure. I think we might have passed them without question had there not suddenly burst from the doorway of what was, I judge, the guardroom, an excited figure who shouted lustily to all within hearing of his voice.
“Let no one leave! The Julian and the Or-tis have escaped!” he screamed.
The guard threw themselves across the entrance and at the same instant I put spurs to Red Lightning, whipped out my sword, and bore down upon them, the Or-tis following my example. I cut at one upon my left front and Red Lightning bore down another beneath his iron hoofs. We were out upon the trail and the Or-tis was beside us. Reining to the left we bore south a few yards and then turned west upon another trail, the shouts and curses of the Kalkars ringing in our ears.
With free rein we let our mounts out to far greater speed than the darkness and the littered trail gave warrant, and it was not until we had put a mile behind us that we drew in to a slower gait. The Or-tis spurred to my side.
“I had not thought it could be done, Julian,” he said; “yet here we ride, as free as any men in all the country wide.”
“But still within the shadow of The Butcher,” I replied. “Listen! They are following hotfoot.” The pounding of the hoofs of our pursuers’ horses rose louder and louder behind us as we listened. Again we spurred on, but presently we came to a place where a ruined wall had fallen across the trail.
“May The Butcher get me!” cried the Or-tis, “that I should have forgotten that this trail is blocked. We should have turned north or south at the last crossing. Come, we must ride back quickly, if we are to reach it before they.”
Wheeling, we put our mounts to the run back along the trail over which we had but just come. It was but a short distance to the cross trail, yet our case looked bad, for even in the darkness the pursuing Kalkars could now be seen, so close were they. It was a question as to which would reach the crossing first.
“You turn to the south,” I cried to the Or-tis, “and I will turn to the north. In that way one of us may escape.”
“Good!” he agreed; “there are too many of them for us to stand and fight.”
He was right—the trail was packed with them, and we could hear others coming far behind the van. It was like a young army. I hugged the left
