Less than half an hour later all of Jotan's band of warriors squatted behind the belt of foliage just within the walls of Vokal's sprawling palace. In the dim light of stars they could look out between the interstices of growing things, seeing the many windowed bulk of stone rising four full floors above the neighboring terrain. No where in all that vast expanse was there a sign of life. No candle showed its brief flame at any window. Silent and dark and somehow a place of brooding danger.
After another whispered conference, Tharn left the other leaders of the band and flitted across the open ground, moving like a black shadow toward the same doorway through which Trakor had raced to join him only an hour or two earlier.
Those watching him from the shadowy foliage lost sight of him almost at once; and when, a few moments later, he seemed to rise from the ground almost under their noses, a startled gasp from a dozen throats made a rustling sound against the heavy silence.
"The door is still unbarred," Tharn reported, frowning. "I am even surer now, noble Jotan, that we are heading straight for a trap set up by the wily Vokal."
"He could not know our plans," Jotan said impatiently. "It means simply that they forgot to bar the door after the excitement you and your friend caused them earlier. Things are working out well for us."
Tharn smiled his enigmatic smile and said no more. Quickly the five leaders moved among their eager troops, issuing orders down the line.
And then, at a single word from Jotan the band of one hundred and fifty armed men stepped into the open and started for the palace walls.
Suddenly the shrill cry of a woman rose against the weighted silence.
"Back!" the voice screamed from high above them. "Go back! It is a trap!"
"Dylara!" Tharn shouted, and with great bounding strides he raced toward the palace. Startled by the shrill shout, puzzled by Tharn's dash into the jaws of what might be a trap, the hundred and fifty wavered uncertainly, then charged after the racing cave man.
And as the first wave of Jotan's warriors reached the halfway mark in the clearing, a hundred flaming branches were hurled from the open windows into the courtyard beneath, their flames lighting up the entire ribbon of open ground and disclosing the pitifully small army to the waiting warriors of Vokal.
A rain of arrows, spears and clubs now rained down from those windows upon the men beneath. Men reeled and fell, some instantly dead, others badly wounded. Some of those unhit stopped in their tracks, looked wildly around, then turned to flee for the safety of the street behind them.
And it was then that Vokal's masterful plan was fully unveiled. From those same openings through the stone wall encircling Vokal's estate, came other of that nobleman's warriors, stationed in places of concealment outside, their purpose to close off the last avenue of escape for Jotan's troops.
In all this confusion, with death threatening from all sides, Trakor had eyes only for his friend and companion--Tharn, lord of the caves.
At first he did not comprehend what lay behind the cave man's mad dash toward the palace. But when he saw Tharn leap lightly up to catch the sill of one window, then swarm rapidly up toward the second story, he understood fully what lay in the giant warrior's mind.
One of Vokal's warriors leaned from a window directly in Tharn's path and raised his spear with the obvious intention of burying its head in the cave man's defenseless body as it hung a full fifteen feet above the ground. Trakor, seeing this, fitted an arrow to his bow with unthinkable quickness and sent the flint tipped missile across space and full into the enemy warrior's exposed chest.
The heavy spear rolled from an already dead hand and the man fell loosely across the wide sill as Tharn worked his way upward past the limp body.
Three more attempts were made by those within to bring down the climbing cave man. On each occasion Trakor, standing like a rock amid a shower of deadly weapons that struck every where about him, brought down the would-be killer.
Tharn was only a few feet from the roof's edge now, his naked feet and long-fingered hands finding foot--and hand-holds where Trakor would have sworn none existed.
Trakor, watching, groaned with sudden fear. Barely visible in the flickering light of torches below, a figure appeared at the roof's edge directly above Tharn's rising form. In the figure's hands was a heavy spear and the arm holding it swept aloft preparatory to skewering Tharn on its point.
Even as Trakor witnessed this, an arrow from his bow was flashing up toward that menacing warrior. But the combination of bad light, distance and the necessity for haste was too great a handicap for success, and the arrow whizzed wide of its mark.
Again Trakor groaned. There was no time for a second shot. Tharn was doomed to die.
And in that second a slender figure appeared at the roof's edge beside the would-be assassin and threw itself headlong against him. The man staggered back under the impact, his spear falling from his hand, then turned and closed with the newcomer.
As the two of them teetered there on the thin strip of stone forming the roof's edge, Tharn's strong hands closed about that same edge and he rose to his feet. He saw who it was that had saved his life: Dylara, daughter of Majok.
Even as he raced forward to save the girl he loved from being thrown into the void below, Tharn knew he was too late. Voicing a scream of fear, Dylara reeled back and toppled into space!
As her feet left the roof, Tharn threw himself headlong in a direction parallel with the edge, one arm out-thrust, the other bent to check his fall. For one agonizing second the reaching hand encountered only air; then his fingers brushed against cloth, closed like a snapped trap, and as his muscular frame crashed against the roof's edge, a sudden jerk against his outstretched arm told him he had checked Dylara's fall.
A heavy sandal thudded home against his ribs, nearly rolling him into the void and to death on the packed earth below. Before the swinging foot could strike home a second time, Tharn was on his feet and Dylara was swung back to safety of the roof.
As Tharn released the girl, the screaming, clawing figure of his enemy closed upon him. In the faint light, Tharn saw the other's hair was a silvery white and beneath it was a face once gentle but now transformed into the mask of a madman.
A grim smile touched Tharn's lips as one of his brawny arms snaked out and caught the raving beast that had once been Vokal, third most powerful and influential figure in all Ammad. With almost casual ease Tharn swung the human form high above his head, then tossed him, a screaming missile of terror, to the ground below.
A long eerie wailing cry ended suddenly and the thud of flesh against earth seemed to jar into silence the tumult filling the grounds of the late Vokal's palace. In the light of the still burning torches Vokal's lifeless body was clearly visible to the palace defenders.
In that hushed moment, Jotan took advantage of the miracle that had saved the remnants of his fighting force.
"Vokal is dead!" he shouted. "Vokal the traitor is no more! Lay down your arms, warriors of the dead Vokal! Lay down your arms that you may win forgiveness from Jaltor, king of Ammad!"
A wavering moment of indecision followed as the warriors at the palace windows stood with raised weapons hesitating to decide one way or the other. And in that moment a brawny figure appeared at one of the open windows.
"Death to the invader!" shouted Ekbar, captain of the late Vokal's guards. "Avenge the noble Vokal! Kill them all!"
As the last words left his lips a second man appeared beside the captain. Before the latter could realize what was taking place a stone knife flashed in a savage arc, burying its length in his heart.
Ekbar voiced a single scream of anguish and toppled across the sill and to the ground beneath, dead beside the master he had so faithfully served.
While from that same window a young warrior of that same dead master smiled with grim satisfaction. Otar had made sure his bride, the lovely Marua, would never again be visited by her former suitor.
With Ekbar died the last of all resistance against Jotan's invading warriors. Scores of weapons fell uselessly to the ground and the palace defenders began to stream from the building, their hands lifted in surrender.
And it was then that a quiet voice from behind Jotan and his father said:
"Are the pits of Jaltor so shallow that they may not hold my enemies?"
The nobleman and his son wheeled about, then stiffened to rigid attention at sight of Jaltor, king of Ammad, standing at the forefront of a squad of his own guards.
CHAPTER XV
CONCLUSION
Dawn had come an hour before but the group of seven people sat about the breakfast table in the private dining room of Jaltor, ruler of Ammad.
It was a wide, richly furnished room on the top floor of the city's palace. The east wall was composed entirely of windows, barred by fluted, slender columns of white stone, through which streamed the bright rays of morning sun.
"Had you delayed your escape from the pits another two hours," Jaltor was saying, "all of you would have been freed without having to fight for proof of your innocence. For old Heglar's mate, the beautiful Rhoa, had been followed to Vokal's palace, and when she left there, my men picked her up and brought her to me at the palace. Strangely enough she was not at all hesitant about betraying Vokal; I think she believed he was trying to get out of taking her as his mate."