“We’ll see about that,” he shouted. “We’ll see. But you’re certainly not going to get very far with the Khemite lad hanging on your neck. Give him here—” and he reached out a massive hand and took hold of Khai’s arm near the shoulder. Khai let go of the girl and lifted up his legs, sliding clear of Ashtarta’s mount and cocking a leg over the broad back of the king’s animal. Then he wrapped his arms round Melembrin’s waist and hung on for dear life.
“Cling like a leech, lad,” the king grunted, “and old Thunder won’t even notice he has an extra passenger. And don’t worry if your teeth get rattled a bit. Believe me it’s better than walking! Come on, Thunder—let’s go, boy!” And away they went like the wind, flying up a rise to where the steep sides of the pass loomed like some great dark throat ahead.
Within those walls, which soon towered high on both sides, the pace of the column decreased and the riders began to bunch up. Up front, torches were hastily lit and the pace picked up again. Above, beyond jagged rims of rock that obscured the moon, the sky was a wide river of stars. Khai clung grimly to Melembrin’s back and felt, to his amazement, a wild and savage joy rising inside him as the pounding of hooves became a rhythmic beat like the drums of war. In another moment Khai became one with the mighty rider whose back he hugged, one with the powerful beast beneath him, one with the night and the drumming of hooves.
Strange visions filled his head, of other places and times, of a lance under his arm, a high shield held against his breast and an armored opponent thundering toward him on a field of battle. He felt the curve of a leather saddle beneath him and the weight of the great lance as he tilted it to point at his opponent’s shield. Then—
“There’s the end of the pass up ahead, lad!” came Melembrin’s cry, jolting him dizzily back to earth. “I see none of your countrymen there—but hang on anyway!” And lifting up his voice, the king bellowed: “Arrowhead, men, and the princess in the center. If it gets hot form two ranks, with sufficient room for her to make a run down the middle. Here we go—!”
With the echoes of that mighty cry still reverberating from flanking walls of rock, the column burst out of the pass to flow down onto an undulating plain of scrub and grass. Without pause, they took up an arrowhead formation, with the king in the lead and Ashtarta locked centrally behind three thundering walls of men and beasts.
Now, as those strange visions faded from Khai’s mind—leaving him to wonder what mad recesses of his brain had spawned the idea of a seat for a horse’s back and long spears on which riders might impale their enemies—he glanced off to the arrowhead’s pounding, night-dark left flank and beyond it to the massed might of the Pharaoh’s soldiery. It seemed that the land to north and south was awash with streams of fire—blazing with the light from thousands of torches—while up ahead, mere hundreds of yards away, the nets of flame were quickly closing.
The rapid emergence of Melembrin and his raiders from the gorge had momentarily surprised the Khemites, but they very quickly recovered. Now, along with the blare of brazen instruments, Khai could also hear the squealing and trumpeting of elephants. For the first time, the Pharaoh was using elephants as weapons of war.
The flaring torches that lit the darkness ahead were thinning out, stringing themselves into individual units that moved rapidly to close the gap and cut off the fleeing Kushites. Huge, lumbering shapes there were, too, and the sounds of shouted commands could be heard above the quickening beat of drums.
“Throw down your torches and run blind!” Melembrin roared. “And get your shields up—now!”
His warning came none too soon. No sooner were shields lifted than there came the concerted whistling of flight-arrows and their rattle and thud as they fell upon leather-covered bucklers. The gap ahead had closed now, but as yet only foot soldiers and archers blocked the way.
“Ride ’em down!” Melembrin roared as he sent his horse, Thunder, crashing into a pair of Khemites who loomed up like shadows and sprang at him from the darkness. In another moment Thunder shied sideways and Khai and Melembrin were hurled from his back. Khai leaped to his feet amidst clouds of dust and flying shapes in time to see the war-chief’s great knobbed club rise and fall once, twice, to an accompaniment of gurgling death-screams-then Thunder was pawing the ground and Melembrin leaping to his back reaching down a hand to pull Khai up behind him.
The column had passed on and the dark ground all around was strewn with trampled Khemish corpses; but the war cries of warriors closing from the flanks were loud and the whistle of their arrows shrill and deadly. Digging in his heels, Melembrin sent Thunder galloping after his men, a dozen of whom waited to give him cover. Behind them as they fled, a squad of archers nocked long flight-arrows and aimed them into the night. A single sharp word of command was sufficient to fill the air with speeding shafts.
Pounding westward and slowly gaining on the rest of his men, suddenly Melembrin and his escort found themselves riding through a hail of arrows. Khai felt a heavy blow to his back and a sharp burning agony, and simultaneously saw a shaft appear over his right shoulder where it seemed to grow from the king’s back. A number of horses and men went crashing down uttering their last cries, but Thunder merely reared up and snorted his alarm before continuing his run for the west.
Knowing he was hurt and feeling blood sticking his shirt to his back, Khai clung tenaciously to the wounded king and gritted his teeth. The other riders, wondering at Melembrin’s slackened pace and closing with him, saw the shaft in his back and steadied him where he sat his great horse. Then they were over a low rise and the clatter and clash of Pharaoh’s army was fading behind them. They had run the gantlet and there was no longer any way that the Khemites could catch them.
For ten more long miles Melembrin hung on, until he felt Khai’s hands loosening where they gripped him and realized that the boy had had enough. Then, gentling his great horse to a halt, he allowed his men to lift the boy from him and slid himself down onto firm ground. As soon as he stood alone, however, he staggered and would have fallen. His men lit torches and lowered him to the ground.
“Get the arrow out of me,” he snarled. “Quickly, for we can’t stay here, and—” He paused as he saw Khai slumped on the ground close by, a second arrow sticking straight up from his back. Then the king’s mouth fell open. “So that’s why the lad was weakening! But for him, I’d have two shafts in my back… . Mattas!” he shouted. “Where are you? Where is the damn butcher? I must be mad to trust a doctor who’d rather be out breaking bones than stay at home and mend them! Khai—are you all right, boy?”
Slumped forward, with his wet face hanging down and his palms pushing against the earth, Khai managed to nod his head. By now, the rest of Melembrin’s column had fallen back and dismounted, gathering in a circle about their wounded king. Pushing through their ranks came Ashtarta and the warrior-physician Mattas. Ashtarta flew to her father and kneeled beside him. He pushed her gently away.
“No, no, Sh’tarra. Better you cut the lad’s shirt away while Mattas deals with me.” He glared round about him at the encircling men. “Come on all of you—move! I want a litter made. And make sure Thunder is not used for its dragging. The litter’s for me ... aye, and for the youth there. Mattas, when you’ve done with me and the Khemite lad, then look to my horse. He, too, has an arrow in his shoulder. I tried to draw the thing but only succeeded in … aahhh!” And with that soft sigh of anguish, the King’s voice fell silent as Mattas slit his leather jacket open and without ceremony drew the dart from his shoulder.