I knocked her cold with a right to the jaw!
She folded limply, and I caught her in my arms and tossed her over my shoulders and sprang up on the wall of the box, found a foothold among the ornamental carvings of the posts that supported the canopy, and thus clambered to the roof of the box from which height I could grab the lowest rung of the ladder.
In a moment I was climbing up the ladder td safety.
I doubt if it would have been possible for anyone except a professional acrobat or a strong man to have performed a similar stunt on Earth. It was only possible for me to do so because of the slight difference between the gravitational fields of Earth and Thanator, and because my muscles, accustomed to the slightly greater gravity of my home world, gave me a strength that was quite beyond the human norm on Thanator.
Still and all, it was not a feat that I would care to attempt again. Dangling between ground and sky on a swaying rope ladder, the hovering ornithopter above me looking too flimsy to support my weight, the girl's dangling arms and legs impeding my movements, expecting at any second to receive a bolt in my back from one of those miniature Zandarian crossbows―I was never so relieved in my life as when I eventually gained the top rung of the ladder and looked into Lukor's grinning face.
"Lukor!" I exclaimed: "I have never been more delighted to see anyone in my life! Here―take the girl, can you?"
He dragged her from my shoulders and flopped her down unceremoniously into the other front cockpit beside his own. Then he lent me an arm while I climbed over the gunwales and took a seat in the rear behind him. I was puffing and blowing from the exertions of climbing that swaying rope ladder, encumbered by the weight of the girl draped about my shoulders, and it took me a moment or two to catch my breath.
But the old Swordmaster was in grand spirits, burbling with good humor. He was chattering away at a great rate, lifting his voice so as to be audible above the hubbub from below and the thunder of our throbbing wings.
"Ho, there, my boy!" he chortled. "I was not sure whether you were alive or slain, but I should have known that you would be able to find your way out of that cursed labyrinth. You have the luck of a born hero!"
He was obviously having the time of his life, the old rascal. His cheeks were ruddy, flushed with excitement, and his sharp old eyes flashed with gusto and delight, gray locks tousled and flying in the wind of the beating wings. He looked twenty years younger, and I was so happy to see him alive and safe I could have kissed the old fellow on the. spot. His almost Gallic sense of chivalry and romance lent vast enjoyment to the escapade―this was the sort of thing he craved, last―minute rescues from certain death, the heroine torn from the grip of fiends, valiant warriors battling against hopeless odds!
"When we were separated by the deadfall trap, I followed the passageway to the nearest exit and lied my way to a rooftop landing stage," he continued. "Reasoning that you might well be hopelessly lost in the maze, I thought that the least I could do was rescue your Yathoon comrade and hide him safely away in the Academy, thinking that the two of us might be able to find you later in the secret passages."
I thanked him fervently for this rescue, which had come in the proverbial nick of time, and peered over the side to see how faithful Koja was doing.
He was doing superbly, holding twenty warriors at bay with the deadly flail of his Yathoon whipsword. Less than twenty, to be precise, for that flying lash of razory steel had already accounted for no less than seven of the guardsmen.
Lukor peered down at the battle with lively interest, bellowing encouragement and praise. The whipsword was the one bladed weapon of Thanator which the old Swordmaster was not adept in using, for the ungainly length and weight of the whiplike steel blade makes it difficult and awkward for any but one of the stalking arthropods to fight with.
While Lukor loudly applauded Koja's dazzling prowess with the whip-sword, I yelled at him to hurry it up. From the vantage of our height I could see guards gathering from all over the arena, and many of them were armed with the deadly little crossbows―whose bulletlike steel darts might well puncture our balloon pontoons or wreck one of our ponderously flapping wings, bringing the aerial contraption down.
But Koja knew what he was doing. Spinning about, he lashed out with the steely flail, clearing a wide area about him as guardsmen ducked away from his singing steel. Then, folding his gaunt and triple-jointed legs, he catapulted into the air. It was a fantastic leap―he must have bounded a good eleven feet straight up. His segmented fingers closed over the middle rungs of the ladder and in a moment his lower limbs had found rungs of their own, and he came up hand over hand to join the rest of us in the cockpits.
"Koja, that was magnificent! I have never seen the whip-sword used so splendidly." I laughed as he settled into place beside me, folding his ungainly limbs awkwardly in the tight, enclosed seat. He blinked at me solemnly.
"I might return the compliment, Jandar," he clacked in his monotonous and metallic tones, "by observing that when you set out to rescue a comrade, you do so in the most spectacular manner conceivable!" And he gestured eloquently with a quirk of his long antennae at the turmoil below, the screaming mob in panic-stricken flight, the battling beasts, the escaping slaves, and the infuriated guards shaking their fists at us in helpless frustration far below. I grinned.
"But who is this human whose flying machine offers us an unexpected mode of escape?" he inquired.
I introduced Lukor and Koja in a perfunctory manner, for just then we had little time for words. Thuton had returned with a squadron of crossbowmen and steel darts were flickering through the air in our direction.
"Hold on, my friends―here we go!" crowed Lukor, and he gripped the controls, sending the craft dipping away to one side. We rose in a dizzy spiral, circling the arena. Tiers of stone seats swept past underneath and then the fabric of the flying machine shuddered beneath to the shattering impact of some unseen obstacle. A jagged rain of thick fragments of clear glass showered our shoulders and then we were caught in the grip of a howling gale whose rushing winds were bitterly cold.
It had not occurred to me, so hectic had the past half-hour been, to wonder why the arena was so hot, baking under day-glare, when the open streets and forums of the mountaintop city were generally swept by frigid winds because of our height. But now I saw that the whole arena was roofed with glass―a gigantic dome shielded the amphitheater from the cold air and the howling winds, and acted like a colossal greenhouse, concentrating the light of day into baking warmth so that the arena-Boers could sit on the exposed stone tiers in comfort. Through one of the gigantic panes of glass which formed this greenhouse dome our aerial contraption had just shattered its way to the freedom of the outer air.
"Where now, Swordmaster?" I shouted, gasping as the bitter cold wind struck the sweaty surface of my bare arms and legs. Lukor lifted his voice above the bellow of the winds.
"I suggest we adjourn to a friendlier clime," he yelled. "My native city of Ganatol would afford a less hostile haven than we may expect from Zanadar, after all this uproar and rescuing!"
I was smitten by a sudden sense of guilt.
"But, Lukor! Your home―your Academy! I cannot expect you to give up everything you have, just to help me and my friends out of a difficult spoil"
He grinned like a mischievous boy, gray mane flying in the wintry blast.
"Nonsense! With what I have here―and here―I can reestablish the Academy Lukor wherever I go," he said, indicating his sword arm and tapping his brow.
"But your house, and all your possessions!" I protested helplessly, unwilling that he should sacrifice everything for my cause.