A moment later and the Khemites were storming the gates, knocking them flat in the sheer weight and crush of their charge. In less than two minutes, a thousand of them were in the keep, streaming deeper into the valley, and half as many again were forming into back-up parties beneath the beetling walls. That was when Melembrin sprang to his feet with a bellow like a bull elephant:
“All right, lads, now!—Let them have it!”
The Kushite warriors crouching behind their boulder walls now threw themselves on the bristling levers of protruding logs. Down below, the first two hundred yards of gorge were crammed with Khemites. They still rushed forward, deeper into Hortaph’s cleft, seeking opposition and finding … death!
It was the earth-shaking rumble of avalanching boulders that first drew the attention of Pharaoh’s soldiers to the heights, and in that same instant, their invasion of the keep became a mad rout of fleeing hundreds. They saw, turned and fled—but too late! There was nowhere to run. The entrance to the keep was jammed with their crowding colleagues; beyond the flattened gates, hundreds more pushed blindly forward, unaware as yet of the terror up ahead; and even those outside the gates were not safe. Not by any means.
Down came the boulders, thousands of tons of them raining from the heights, bringing huge sections of the very cliffs tumbling with them, falling on the Khemites where they milled in mindless confusion and horror. From both sides of the keep the boulders rained down, until the very ground heaved and bucked with the force of their impact. And still it was not at an end. Before the soldiers who crowded outside the keep could draw back, they too were caught in a rain of death, this time from the forward rim of the heights.
The fall of boulders was seemingly unending, and such was the cloud of dust that rose over everything that before very long no detail could be seen of what passed below. Nor did the frantically toiling Kushites on the heights pause until the last pebble had been dislodged and sent plummeting down into that roiling sea of dust.
Finally, Melembrin said: “It’s done,” and he caught Khai’s shoulder in an iron grip. “Now we’ll wait and see how successful our little trap has been, eh?” He looked down at Khai and frowned. “Did I feel a tremor in you there, boy? Is the killing a bit much for you after all?”
Khai shook his head. “My legs feel a bit rubbery, Lord, that’s all. I’ve been on my back for over a week. As for killing: Pharaoh killed my mother, father, sister and brother. His entire army cannot compensate for that. Nothing can, except his own death and that of Anulep the Vizier. Yes, and the Black Guard, too. When they are dead, Lord, then I’ll say an end to killing… .”
“Well said, lad,” the king rumbled. “But look down there. That should compensate a little for your loss.”
The dust was settling. The mouth of the gorge was choked to a depth of almost fifty feet with boulders and debris ripped from the faces of the cliffs. Away up the gorge, for more than two hundred yards, beyond which the stream turned a bend and passed into unseen canyons, the boulders lay deep and silent. Nothing living stirred down there, where already the stream formed a pool because its path was blocked. Along the front of the plateau, Pharaoh’s forces dazedly drew back and shaped themselves into small formations, with their officers counting losses. Little more than half of the original force survived. Some thirteen or fourteen hundred men had been crushed and buried, never to be seen again.
And now, winding its way out along its old bed and gaining in strength even as Khai watched, having found a channel beneath all of those toppled tons of rock, the stream once more appeared. But Khai’s face paled a little as he noted the color of the stream, which was red. It would stay that way for a day and a half....
“Look there!” cried Ashtarta, drawing Khai’s attention elsewhere. “There on that great boulder outside the gates. Father, do you see who it is?”
“Aye,” Melembrin sourly grunted, “and I’d sooner we’d killed him than any hundred of the dead!”
“Who is it?” Khai asked, staring down from the now naked rim at the figure of a man who railed and roared and shook his fists at the massive, impenetrable wall which was the Gilf Kebir. Whoever he was he wore a scarlet turban and shirt, and black breeches of the type favored by Arabbans. His sword was Arabban, too, curving and vicious. He seemed to be in a veritable frenzy, screaming and threatening, and his voice reached almost to the heights.
“It’s Red Zodba,” Mattas answered for the king. “An Arabban slaver in Pharaoh’s pay. He’s the one who organizes the raids on Nubia, but recently he’s spent a lot of time with Khasathut’s border patrols. We know he’s always had a greedy eye on the Gilf Kebir. He’d love to take slaves out of Kush— that’s why he’s here! And those threats he’s making—they’re not idle ones. If ever we do go under the yoke of Khem, be sure Red Zodba will be cracking Pharaoh’s whip!”
“Do you want him dead?” Khai quietly asked.
“Are you deaf, lad?” Melembrin answered. “Haven’t we just said so?”
“Then fetch me my bow and one good straight arrow.”
“Eh?” Mattas laughed. “You’d shoot at him from up here? Are you daft? There’s not an archer in all Kush could—”
“Nor in Khem,” Khai cut him off, “not any more.”
Ashtarta caught Khai’s arm, stared deep into his blue eyes. They were cold as high mountain springs. “I’ll get you your weapon,” she said. “I know where it is.” And she sped away across the roof of the plateau.
“You’ll look a damn fool if you miss,” said Melembrin.
“And if I don’t miss ... Lord?”
“Then I’ll let you train my own archers. There’s not a damn one of them worth his salt.”
“Good,” said Khai. “How high are we, Lord?”
Melembrin shook his great head. “Thirteen, fourteen hundred feet, perhaps. How can you hope to shoot an arrow that far?”
“Most of the way the arrow will be falling,” Khai answered. “I have only to find the target—the world’s pull will do the rest.” He tested the air with a dampened finger. “Did you say you’d make me your Master of Archers, Lord?”
“Eh?” Melembrin frowned. “There’s no such position.”
“High time there was, Lord, if your bowmen are poor as you say they are. And what rank would a Master of Archers hold, I wonder?”
Melembrin joined in the game. “Captain, at least, I suppose.”
Ashtarta was back. Breathlessly, she handed Khai his bow and a single arrow. He looked at her, smiled wryly, strung the bow, nocked the arrow, turned and sighted down the shaft at the red shirt of the figure on the rock far below. Then, standing firm and solid as the Gilf Kebir itself, he raised the bow a little and sighted out into empty air. In another moment, the bow was empty in his hand and the arrow was lost in a sigh of air, a blur that flew out from the clifftop and disappeared in sky and space.
All eyes were on the scarlet figure that capered and roared below like an enraged monkey. Again Zodba shook his fist at the looming cliffs—then seemed to freeze in that position. And slowly he toppled backward and fell from his boulder, then lay still in the grass and the dust. Seeing him fall, several soldiers ran to him. Khai’s arrow transfixed his heart, with only its flight protruding from his breast.