The Fire People, Ray Cummings [best thriller books to read .txt] 📗

stand aside and let him pass. So it is arranged."

The arrival of several other men interrupted our whispered conversation. Baar, his meal over, consulted with them hurriedly. He then instructed his wife to watch us, and after a moment they all left the house.

The woman, who was now the only occupant of the room with us, shuffled about, clearing away the meal. I tried desperately to work my hands loose; I even tried with my teeth to gnaw Miela's bonds, but without success. Every moment counted, if we were to do anything to save the king. I wondered again where Lua was—perhaps in another part of the house here, bound as we were.

[Pg 117]

"Miela," I whispered, "ask for food. Tell her we have had nothing for many hours. Perhaps she will loosen our bonds a little to let us eat. We may be able to do something then."

The woman answered Miela's pleading by setting us up side by side, with our backs against the wall. She placed food before us, and then, with a knife, cut the cords that bound our arms.

My heart leaped exultantly; but, instead of leaving us and going on with her work, she sat down just out of reach, holding the knife in her hand and watching us narrowly.

"We must eat, Miela," I said, using as casual a tone as I could and pointing to the food smilingly. "Eat, and pretend not to notice her. Perhaps I can get to my feet."

We ate the food she had given us. I tensed the muscles of my legs, and believed that, bound as I was, I might be able to leap forward and reach the woman. It was almost hopeless to attempt it, for I realized she would meet my body with the dagger point.

We were still eating, and I was thinking over this plan, when the slave woman appeared silently in a doorway across the room, behind the woman who faced us. Something in her attitude made me look away again casually and go on with my eating.

Miela had evidently not noticed her.

The slave woman came slowly toward us. A moment later she hurled herself upon Baar's wife from behind. At the same instant I threw myself forward, falling prone, but within reach of the seated woman. I gripped her with my hands, fumbling to catch her wrists, but before I could succeed she toppled forward and fell partly over me.

I heard Miela give a cry of fright. I struggled free and raised myself up to a half‑sitting position. Baar's wife lay beside me dead, with the slave woman's knife buried to the hilt in her back.

[Pg 118]

Reaching over, I took the knife from the dead woman's fingers, and with it cut the cords that bound my ankles. I sprang to my feet. The slave had retreated and stood shrinking against the side of the room, terrified at what she had done. I paid no more attention to her for the moment, but hastened to release Miela.

We searched the house hurriedly, calling to Lua; but she did not answer, nor could we find her. When we returned the slave woman was still standing where we had left her, staring with horrified eyes at the body of her mistress.

"Tell her what she did was right," I said. "She may have saved the king. Tell her to go to your house and wait for us."

The woman nodded eagerly when Miela told her what to do, and fell on her knees before us.

"She says she will serve us always. She has been very badly treated, Alan."

We sent the woman away, and with a last hasty glance around hurriedly left the house alone with its single dead occupant. A large wooden mortar and pestle, used for pounding rice, stood in the kitchen. I carried the pestle away with me; it was nearly five feet long and quite heavy—an excellent weapon.

We hastened up through the city—Miela half walking, half flying, and I carrying this bludgeon and running with twelve‑foot strides. But it was now hardly more than three‑quarters of an hour since we had passed this way before, and there were still few people about to see us. Baar and his men had started some twenty minutes before us, I figured, and we must reach the castle before them.

I made extraordinary progress over the level country. But I could not run uphill for long, and soon had to slow down to a walk. Miela kept closer to me now. We approached the castle grounds.

"Where will the guards be, Miela? We must avoid them if we can. They might try to stop us."

Miela did not know where they would be; but under the circumstances, as Baar had told his men, she believed the guards would disappear from the vicinity. This conjecture proved to be correct. The guards, not wishing to be concerned in the affair at all, had simply disappeared. We saw nothing of Baar and his men on the way up the mountain, although I had hoped we might overtake them.

[Pg 119]

As we passed hurriedly through the palm gardens surrounding the castle I saw its huge front doors were closed.

"Miela, we can't get in that way. A side entrance—or some other way—"

"I know," she said. "There is a smaller door below, and others on the side."

We hastened on. Suddenly I gripped Miela by the arm.

"What's that—over there—see, beyond the grove?"

There seemed to be furtive figures lurking among the palms.

"Those cannot be Baar's men, Miela—there are too many. What can it—"

We had reached a little doorway under the front terrace. There was no time to investigate these advancing figures. Baar and his men might already be inside the castle.

I slid through the doorway, every muscle tense. Miela had brought the knife from Baar's shack, and with it clenched in her hand was close beside me. I wanted to make her stay outside, where she could fly away if danger threatened, but she pleaded to follow me, and I let her come. I needed her, since I had no idea of the interior arrangements of the building.

We passed along a dim hallway and up a narrow flight of stone steps. Not a sound came to us; the interior of the castle was silent as a tomb. At the top of the steps we came almost directly into the inner patio of the building. Across a bed of tall flowers, nodding gently in a little morning breeze that swept down from above, I saw the head and shoulders of a man standing in the center of the courtyard; the lower part of his body was hidden by the flowers. I tried to duck out of sight, but he had seen me.

He was not over forty feet away. I stepped back, believing I could reach him in a single leap; but Miela held me.

[Pg 120]

"Not you, Alan. He would cry out. The noise would bring others." She raised her knife, and her eyes blazed into mine. "Never have I thought to kill a human. But now I—a woman—must kill. Stand quiet, Alan."

She flew swiftly up and poised over the man. He had started toward us. Evidently he was, so far, as anxious for silence as we, for he made no sound. I saw now he was one of those who had come to Baar's shack. His naked shoulders, his thick neck, and bullet head were all that showed above the flower stems as he plowed his way through them directly toward me; but the hand he swung aloft to aid his progress held a knife.

He glanced up at Miela, poised in the air above him, and saw the weapon in her hand. At this new enemy he stopped, confused.

Miela swooped down at him, and he struck at her with his knife; but she avoided it with an incredibly swift turn, and a second later had passed him and was crossing the courtyard.

Round and round she flew, her great wings flapping audibly, a giant bird circling its prey. The man turned continually to face her. Several times she swooped toward him, and as swiftly avoided his blow. From every side she threatened. The man stood now bewildered, striking wild in a frenzy, as one strikes at a darting wasp. At last, with an agonized cry, he turned and ran. Instantly she dropped upon him; there was a flash of her white arm; the man's body crumpled and lay still among the flowers.

Miela was back beside me. Her breast was heaving; her eyes were full of tears; she trembled.

"A terrible thing, Alan, my husband, for a woman to do; but it had to be."

I pressed her hand with silent understanding.

"Come, Alan," she said. "They will have heard his cry. The others—we must meet them, too."

"We must get to the king. I—"

A vibrant scream rang out from the silence of the house—a man's voice, shrill with agony—then suddenly stilled.

[Pg 121]

"Good God, Miela! The king—where is he? Take me there."

She pulled me back through the doorway. A man scurried past. I leaped at him and struck him a glancing blow with the heavy wooden pestle. He stumbled to his knees. Without thought of giving quarter, I hit him again before he could rise. He sank back, senseless or dead.

Miela was ahead of me, and I ran after her along a hallway. The sound of scurrying footsteps sounded from overhead; a woman screamed.

A broad, curving stairway fronted us. I passed Miela halfway up, and, reaching the top, ran full into another man who darted from a doorway close by. The impact of my heavier body flung him backward to the floor. I leaped over him with a shout of warning to Miela, and ran on into the room.

A man was standing stock still in its center. It was Baar. He flung his knife at me as I appeared, but it went wild. Two other men were coming toward me from opposite sides of the room. I swung the bludgeon about me viciously, keeping them away. Suddenly Baar shouted a command, and before I could reach any one of them they had scurried away like rats.

A low bed with a huge canopy of silk stood against the wall. A woman knelt on the floor beside it, and against her knees huddled a little half‑grown boy.

I heard Miela's voice shouting in her own language. The sound of men running came from below. Then Miela's half‑hysterical laughter, and then the words: "They are running away, Alan—all of them. I have been calling you to bring me the light‑ray. And they are running away."

I turned to the bed, pushing its curtains aside, and then hurriedly closing them again with a shudder.

Miela was beside me.

"The king is dead, Miela. No—you must not look."

Her eyes widened; her hand went to her breast.

"There is one who needs you." I pointed to the woman on the floor.

She was staring at us, unseeing, one arm flung about the child protectingly, holding him partially under one of her long, sleek red wings. The fingers of her other hand clutched convulsively at the bed coverings; she was moaning softly with a grief and terror all the more intense because it was restrained.

[Pg 122]

"There is one who needs you, Miela," I repeated. "Comfort her—for we have come too late."

The castle now was in thorough confusion. Several waiting maids rushed into the room, stared at their mistress and the little prince, and, seeing what had happened, stood silently wringing their hands in fright, or fled aimlessly through the halls. One of the king's councilors had come in, stopping, bewildered, at the scene that met him.

"Tell him what has occurred, Miela," I said.

There came now faintly to my ears from outside the castle sounds of a gathering crowd—murmurs and vague muffled shouts. The cries grew louder. A rain of missiles struck the castle; a stone came through a near‑by window, falling almost at my feet. All at once I remembered the lurking figures we had seen among the palms