It would be to no particular purpose to bore my reader―if any eye but mine own shall ever peruse these pages―with a lengthy and complete account of the battle which ensued.
Suffice it to say that, once we had breached the walls of the palace by means of the hidden entrance, our flashing swords swiftly cut down the astonished guards the Chac Yuul leaders had set over the palace gates, and it was but the work of moments to remove the massive bolts which had been set in place to hold the gate secure against the entry of the Ku Thad.
And once the gates were opened, and the victorious forces of Lord Yarrak poured within, the palace fell to us without a prolonged and costly battle. For, although those of the Chac Yuul who survived sought to blockade the hallways and corridors, and to make us pay dearly in the lives of our warriors for every advance, they were helpless to oppose us for long. Yet once again, I thanked whatever gods might be that I had spent so many weary hours in the exploration of the secret passages within the massive walls of the palace. For by means of this network of hidden ways, I was able to circumvent every attempt by the Black Legion to block our progress. Each time they sought to seal off a corridor or close a suite of apartments against us, I simply sought and found a hidden panel in the walls and led a force of Ku Thad warriors through the labyrinthine maze, coming out behind the barricade to strike down the surprised Chac Yuul who guarded it.
In this manner we very swiftly invested the entire palace from top to bottom, slaying a vast number of the Black Legion, and taking captive those whose prudence or cowardice was sufficient to overcome their stubborn sense of superiority and who laid down their weapons and surrendered to our advance.
The battle had taken hours and it was now late afternoon. But―save for a few scattered pockets of resistance, where a handful of Black Legion warriors still held out and refused to surrender―before nightfall the Golden City of Shondakor was conquered and the victorious Ku Thad reigned again in the mighty metropolis of their ancestors there on the shores of the river Ajand.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
VICTORY―AND DEFEAT!
The weeks that have passed since the conquest of Shondakor and the victory of the Ku Thad and the destruction of the Black Legion have been quiet, but not exactly restful, for we have labored long and mightily to repair the damage wrought by the great battle and to bring into some semblance of order the chaos and confusion into which Shondakor fell during the struggle among the three forces.
The bombardment of the Sky Pirates of Zanadar was actually less destructive than it seemed at the time, for the main goal of Prince Thuton was obviously to crush the Black Legion rather than to level the city of the Ku Thad. Thus most of the fire bombs had been directed at mobs of Chac Yuul warriors in the streets, and only those buildings which housed the rooftop catapults had been assaulted by the Sky Pirates. Only a few buildings had suffered any extensive damage from the aerial bombardment; and since by far the greater number of structures towards the heart of the city, in the area around the royal palace, were built of stone, the fires caused by the Zanadarian bombs had not spread.
It had, of course, crossed my mind at the time that we might succeed in destroying the Black Legion only to find ourselves locked in battle against the Sky Pirates. Fortunately this did not prove to be the case. In fact, even while we were still engaged in crushing the vast vestiges of Chac Yuul resistance within the royal palace, the bombardment ceased―the armada lifted ―the Sky Pirates suspended their attack upon Shondakor and rose into the upper air, wheeling slowly above the city, with the obvious intention of sailing off to their distant stronghold, the City in the Clouds.
This cessation of the attack, this withdrawal of the vast flying contraptions from the skies over Shondakor, was most puzzling. At the time I could not account for it. It was only later that the dread truth burst upon my consciousness and I realized the ghastly reason that had occasioned this inexplicable retreat of the Sky Pirates ….
The golden skies of Thanator darkened swiftly with the advent of night, which falls swift and suddenly upon this jungle world. Huge Imavad ascended the skies, glowing against the dark like a vast rose-red lamp. Tiny Juruvad, as the peoples of this world call Amalthea, the innermost moon of the planet Jupiter, was also aloft, a minute flake of golden fire. Ere long the shimmering lime-green sphere of Orovad, or lo, would soar up into the heights of heaven.
But before Orovad rose over the horizon, the city was ours.
Great was the joy with which the citizens of Shondakor hailed the triumphant warriors of the Ku Thad. Ten thousand voices rose up to chant the stately measures of the anthem of the immemorial stone city by the river Ajand. Surely the measured thunders of that noble and ancient song were audible to the last of the Sky Pirates of Zanadar as they sailed off down the darkling sky, bound for their far-off mountaintop fortress amidst the mountains of Varan-Hkor which rise hundreds of korads away, beyond the trackless jungles of the Grand Kumala, on the borders of that unknown and boreal wilderness called The Frozen Land.
I could almost think that the music of that mighty anthem rang against the cold and watchful stars that peer down in redundant remote scrutiny on the little dramas played out by mortal men across the small stage of this little world.
More than one half of the Black Legion perished in the battle of Shondakor.
Arkola, the Warlord, and his son, Prince Vaspian, and many of the clan leaders and high commanders of the Black Legion died there in the Hall of Hoom, either crushed beneath the rolling juggernaut of their fallen devil-god, or slain by the swords of Valkar, Darloona, and myself, when we held the stair against their advance.
Leaderless, a milling chaos of confused and frightened men, under attack from every side, the common warriors of the Chac Yuul fell in their hundreds and their thousands before the mobs of angry citizens, the disciplined swords of the Ku Thad, or the rain of death and fire from the flying navy of Zanadar. Over a thousand were slain by Lord Yarrak’s force within the palace itself.
The small number which remained of the once-mighty conquering bandit horde were broken and demoralized. They were disarmed and captured with little effort; many of them laid down their weapons and surrendered rather than continue the unequal struggle any longer.
Lord Yarrak could have had the captured remnants of the Chac Yuul slaughtered. It was no less than they deserved, and in this barbaric world, mercy was a rare phenomenon. However, the great Baron spared all those who had been taken; he expressed himself as being weary of killing, sick of slaughter, and as the few who had survived the destruction of the Legion could never again form a menace against the peaceful nations of Thanator, he set them free and drove them forth from the gates of Shondakor into perpetual exile, never again to return to the lands of the Ku Thad on peril of death.
Thus the Black Legion passed forever from the great stage of history; scattered bands of them infested the mountains for some little time, preying on merchant caravans, but these small bands dwindled and soon were heard of no more. Rarely has a more decisive and total victory been recorded in the annals of warfare.
In the weeks that followed I have set down this narrative account of my deeds and adventures on the moon Callisto, and now I am almost at the end of my story.