“Throw your men upon the main entrance,” I called to the officer of the guard, “and hold it until reinforcements come;” and then, as the hundred raced the length of the throne room toward the surprised and enraged Ko-tah, I led Nah-ee-lah to the central throne and seated her upon it. Then stepping forward, I raised my hand for silence.
“The Jemadar Sagroth is dead!” I cried. “Behold Nah-ee-lah, the Jemadav of Laythe!”
“Stop!” cried Ko-tah, “she may share the throne with me, but she may not possess it alone.”
“Take that traitor!” I called to the loyal guard, and they rushed forward, evidently glad to do my bidding. But Ko-tah did not wait to be taken. He was accompanied by only a handful of men, and when he saw that the guard really intended to seize him and realized that he would be given short shift at the hands of Nah-ee-lah and myself, he turned and fled. But I knew he would come back, and come back he did, though not until after the majority of the Jemadav’s guard had gathered within the throne room.
He came with a great concourse of warriors, and the fighting was furious, but he might have brought a million men against our thousand and not immediately have overcome us, since only a limited number could fight at one time in the entrance way to the throne room. Already the corpses lay stacked as high as a man’s head, yet no single member of Ko-tah’s forces had crossed the threshold.
How long the fight was waged I do not know, but it must have been for a considerable time, since I know that our men fought in relays and rested many times, and that food was brought from other parts of the palace to the doorway behind the throne, and there were times when Ko-tah’s forces withdrew and rested and recuperated, but always they came back in greater number, and eventually I realized we must be worn down by the persistence of their repeated attacks.
And then there arose slowly a deep-toned sound, at first we could not interpret. It rose and fell in increasing volume, until finally we knew that it was the sound of human voices, the voices of a great mob—of a mighty concourse of people and that it was sweeping toward us slowly and resistlessly.
Closer and closer it approached the palace as it rose, terrace upon terrace, toward the lofty pinnacle of Laythe. The fighting at the entrance to the throne room had almost ceased. Both sides were worn down almost to utter exhaustion, and now we but stood upon our arms upon either side of the wall of corpses that lay between us, our attention centered upon the sound of the growling multitude that was sweeping slowly upward toward us.
“They come,” cried one of Nah-ee-lah’s nobles, “to acclaim the new Jemadav and to tear the minions of Ko-tah the traitor to pieces!”
He spoke in a loud voice that was easily audible to Ko-tah and his retainers in the corridor without.
“They come to drag the spawn of Sagroth from the throne!” cried one of Ko-tah’s followers. And then from the throne came the sweet, clear voice of Nah-ee-lah:
“Let the people’s will be done,” she said, and thus we stood, awaiting the verdict of the populace. Nor had we long to wait, for presently we realized that they had reached the palace terrace and entered the building itself. We could hear the shouting horde moving through the corridors and chambers, and finally the muffled bellowing resolved itself into articulate words:
“Sagroth is no more! Rule, Ko-tah, Jemadar of Laythe!”
I turned in consternation toward Nah-ee-lah. “What does it mean?” I cried. “Have the people turned against you?”
“Ko-tah’s minions have done their work well during these many kelds,” said the commander of the Jemadav’s guard, who stood upon the upper steps of the dais, just below the throne. “They have spread lies and sedition among the people which not even Sagroth’s just and kindly reign could overcome.”
“Let the will of the people be done,” repeated Nah-ee-lah.
“It is the will of fools betrayed by a scoundrel,” cried the commander of the guard. “While there beats a single heart beneath the tunic of a guardsman of the Jemadav, we shall fight for Nah-ee-lah, Empress of Laythe.”
Ko-tah’s forces, now augmented by the rabble, were pushing their way over the corpses and into the throne room, so that we were forced to join the defenders, that we might hold them off while life remained to any of us. When the commander of the guard saw me fighting at his side he asked me to return to Nah-ee-lah.
“We must not leave the Jemadav alone,” he said. “Return and remain at her side, Ju-lan the Javadar, and when the last of us has fallen, drive your dagger into her heart.”
I shuddered and turned back toward Nah-ee-lah. The very thought of plunging my dagger into that tender bosom fairly nauseated me. There must be some other way, and yet, what other means of escape could there be for Nah-ee-lah, who preferred death to the dishonor of surrender to Ko-tah, the murderer of her father? As I reached Nah-ee-lah’s side, and turned again to face the entrance to the throne room, I saw that the warriors of Ko-tah were being pushed into the chamber by the mob behind them and that our defenders were being overwhelmed by the great number of their antagonists. Ko-tah, with a half-dozen warriors, had been carried forward, practically without volition, by the press of numbers in their rear, and even now, with none to intercept him, was running rapidly up the broad center aisle toward the throne. Some of those in the entrance way saw him, and as he reached the foot of the steps leading
