7. THE BITERS OF THE WALLS (FURTHER ACCOUNT)
"You will set me free," she said, regarding me from under her brows,"without any further exactions or treaty?"
"I will set you free exactly on those terms," I answered, "unless indeedwe here decide that it is better for Atlantis that I should die, inwhich case the freedom will be of your own taking."
"My lord plays a bold game."
"Tut, tut," I said.
"But I shall not hesitate to take the full of my bond, unless mytheories are most clearly disproved to me."
"Tut," I said, "you women, how you can play out the time needlessly.Show me sufficient cause, and you shall kill me where and how youplease. Come, begin the accusation."
"You are a tyrant."
"At least I have not paraded my tyrannies in Atlantis these twentyyears. Why, Nais, I did but land yesterday."
"You will not deny you came back from Yucatan for a purpose."
"I came back because I was sent for. The Empress gives no reasons forher recalls. She states her will; and we who serve her obey withoutquestion."
"Pah, I know that old dogma."
"If you discredit my poor honesty at the outset like this, I fear weshall not get far with our unravelling."
"My lord must be indeed simple," said this strange woman scornfully, "ifhe is ignorant of what all Atlantis knows."
"Then simple you must write me down. Over yonder in Yucatan we were toowell wrapped up in our own parochial needs and policies to haveleisure to ponder much over the slim news which drifted out to us fromAtlantis--and, in truth, little enough came. By example, Phorenice(whose office be adored) is a great personage here at home; but overthere in the colony we barely knew so much as her name. Here, since Ihave been ashore, I have seen many new wonders; I have been carried by ariding mammoth; I have sat at a banquet; but in what new policies thereare afoot, I have yet to be schooled."
"Then, if truly you do not know it, let me repeat to you the commontale. Phorenice has tired of her unmated life."
"Stay there. I will hear no word against the Empress."
"Pah, my lord, your scruples are most decorous. But I did no more thanrepeat what the Empress had made public by proclamation. She is mindedto take to herself a husband, and nothing short of the best is goodenough for Phorenice. One after another has been put up in turn asfavourite--and been found wanting. Oh, I tell you, we here in Atlantishave watched her courtship with jumping hearts. First it was this onehere, then it was that one there; now it was this general just returnedfrom a victory, and a day later he had been packed back to his camp, togive place to some dashing governor who had squeezed increased revenuesfrom his province. But every ship that came from the West said thatthere was a stronger man than any of these in Yucatan, and at last theEmpress changed the wording of her vow. 'I'll have Deucalion for myhusband,' said she, 'and then we will see who can stand against mywishes.'"
"The Empress (whose name be adored) can do as she pleases in suchmatters," I said guardedly; "but that is beside the argument. I am hereto know how it would be better for Atlantis that I should die?"
"You know you are the strongest man in the kingdom."
"It pleases you to say so."
"And Phorenice is the strongest woman."
"That is beyond doubt."
"Why, then, if the Empress takes you in marriage, we shall be under adouble tyranny. And her rule alone is more cruelly heavy than we canbear already."
"I pass no criticism on Phorenice's rule. I have not seen it. But Icrave your mercy, Nais, on the newcomer into this kingdom. I am strong,say you, and therefore I am a tyrant, say you. Now to me this sequenceis faulty."
"Who should a strong man use strength for, if not for himself? And iffor himself, why that spells tyranny. You will get all your heart'sdesires, my lord, and you will forget that many a thousand of the commonpeople will have to pay for them."
"And this is all your accusation?"
"It seems to be black enough. I am one that has a compassion for myfellow-men, my lord, and because of that compassion you see me what I amto-day. There was a time, not long passed, when I slept as soft and ateas dainty as any in Atlantis."
I smiled. "Your speech told me that much from the first."
"Then I would I had cast the speech off, too, if that is also a liveryof the tyrant's class. But I tell you I saw all the oppression myselffrom the oppressor's side. I was high in Phorenice's favour then."
"That, too, is easy of credence. Ylga is the fan-girl to the Empressnow, and second lady in the kingdom, and those who have seen Ylga couldmake an easy guess at the parentage of Nais."
"We were the daughters of one birth; but I do not count with eitherZaemon or Ylga now. Ylga is the creature of Phorenice, and Phorenicewould have all the people of Atlantis slaves and in chains, so thatshe might crush them the easier. And as for Zaemon, he is no friend ofPhorenice's; he fights with brain and soul to drag the old authorityto those on the Sacred Mountain; and that, if it come down on us again,would only be the exchange of one form of slavery for another."
"It seems to me you bite at all authority."
"In fact," she said simply, "I do. I have seen too much of it."
"And so you think a rule of no-rule would be best for the country?"
"You have put it plainly in words for me. That is my creed to-day. Thatis the creed of all those yonder, who sit in the camp and besiege thiscity. And we number on our side, now, all in Atlantis save those in thecity and a handful on the priests' Mountain."
I shook my head. "A creed of desperation, if you like, Nais, but,believe me, a silly creed. Since man was born out of the quakings andthe fevers of this earth, and picked his way amongst the cooler-places,he has been dependent always on his fellow-men. And where two arecongregated together, one must be chief, and order how matters are to begoverned--at least, I speak of men who have a wish to be higher than thebeasts. Have you ever set foot in Europe?"
"No."
"I have. Years back I sailed there, gathering slaves. What did I see? Acountry without rule or order. Tyrants they were, to be sure, but theywere the beasts. The men and the women were the rudest savages, knowingnothing of the arts, dressing in skins and uncleanness, harbouring incaves and the tree-tops. The beasts roamed about where they would, andhunted them unchecked."
"Still, they fought you for their liberty?"
"Never once. They knew how disastrous was their masterless freedom. Evento their dull, savage brains it was a sure thing that no slavery couldbe worse; and to that state you, and your friends, and your theories,will reduce Atlantis, if you get the upper hand. But, then, to arguein a circle, you will never get it. For to conquer, you must set upleaders, and once you have set them up, you will never pull them downagain."
"Aye," she said with a sigh, "there is truth in that last."
The torch had filled the captain's room with a resinous smoke, but theflame was growing pale. Dawn was coming in greyly through a slenderarrow-slit, and with it ever and again the glow from some mountain outof sight, which was shooting forth spasmodic bursts of fire. With italso were mutterings of distant falling rocks, and sullen tremblings,which had endured all the night through, and I judged that earth was inone of her quaking moods, and would probably during the forthcoming dayoffer us some chastening discomforts.
On this account, perhaps, my senses were stilled to certain evidenceswhich would otherwise have given me a suspicion; and also, there is nodenying that my general wakefulness was sapped by another matter. Thiswoman, Nais, interested me vastly out of the common; the mere presenceof her seemed to warm the organs of my interior; and whilst she wasthere, all my thoughts and senses were present in the room of thecaptain of the gate in which we sat.
But of a sudden the floor of the chamber rocked and fell away beneathme, and in a tumult of dust, and litter, and bales of the captain'splunder, I fell down (still seated on the flagstone) into a pit whichhad been digged beneath it. With the violence of the descent, and theflutte
r of all these articles about my head, I was in no condition forimmediate action; and whilst I was still half-stunned by the shock, andlong before I could get my eyes into service again, I had been seized,and bound, and half-strangled with a noose of hide. Voices were raisedthat I should be despatched at once out of the way; but one in authoritycried out that, killing me at leisure, and as a prisoner, promised moregenteel sport; and so I was thrust down on the floor, whilst a wholearmy of men trod in over me to the attack.
What had happened was clear to me now, though I was powerless to doanything in hindrance. The rebels with more craft than any one hadcredited to them, had driven a galley from their camp under the ground,intending so to make an entrance into the heart of the city. In theirclumsy ignorance, and having no one of sufficient talent in mensuration,they had bungled sadly both in direction and length, and so had endedtheir burrow under this chamber of the captain of the gate. The greatflagstone in its fall had, it appeared, crushed four of them to death,but these were little noticed or lamented. Life was to them a bauble ofthe slenderest price, and a horde of others pressed through the opening,lusting for the fight, and recking nothing of their risks and perils.
Half-choked by the foul air of the galley, and trodden on by this greatprocession of feet, it was little enough I could do to help my immediateself much less the more distant city. But when the chief mass of theattackers had passed through, and there came only here and there oneeager to take his share at storming the gate, a couple of fellowsplucked me up out of the mud on the floor, and began dragging me downthrough the stinking darkness of the galley towards the pit that gave itentrance.
Twenty times we were jostled by others hastening to the attack, eitherfrom hunger for fight, or from appetite for what they could steal.But we came to the open at last, and half-suffocated though I was, Icontrived to do obeisance, and say aloud the prescribed prayer to themost High Gods in gratitude for the fresh, sweet air which They hadprovided.
Our Lord the Sun was on the verge of rising for His day, and all thingswere plainly shown. Before me were the monstrous walls of the capital,with the heads of its pyramids and higher buildings showing above them.And on the walls, the sentries walked calmly their appointed paces, ortook shelter against arrows in the casemates provided for them.
The din of fighting within the gate rose high into the air, and theheavy roaring of the cave-tigers told that they too were taking theirshare of the melee. But the massive stonework of the walls hid all theactual engagement from our view, and which party was getting the upperhand we could not even guess. But the sounds told how tight a fight wasbeing hammered out in those narrow boundaries, and my veins tingled tobe once more back at the old trade, and to be doing my share.
But there was no chivalry about the fellows who held me by my bonds.They thrust me into a small temple near by, which once had been a fanein much favour with travellers, who wished to show gratitude for thesafe journey to the capital, but which now was robbed and ruined, andthey swung to the stone entrance gate and barred it, leaving me tocommune with myself. Presently, they told me, I should be put to deathby torments. Well, this seemed to be the new custom of Atlantis, and Ishould have to endure it as best I could. The High Gods, it appeared,had no further use for my services in Atlantis, and I was not in themood then to bite very much at their decision. What I had seen of thecountry since my return had not enamoured me very much with its newconditions.
The little temple in which I was gaoled had been robbed and despoiled ofall its furnishments. But the light-slits, where at certain hours of theday the rays of our Lord the Sun had fallen upon the image of the God,before this had been taken away, gave me vantage places from which Icould see over the camp of these rebel besiegers, and a dreary prospectit was. The people seemed to have shucked off the culture of centuriesin as many months, and to have gone back for the most part to sheerbrutishness. The majority harboured on the bare ground. Few ownedshelter, and these were merely bowers of mud and branches.
They fought and quarrelled amongst themselves for food, eating theirmeat raw, and their grain (when they had it) unground. Many who passedmy vision I saw were even gnawing the soft inside of tree bark.
The dead lay where they fell. The sick and the wounded found no handto tend them. Great man-eating birds hovered about the camp or skulkedabout, heavy with gorging, amongst the hovels, and no one had publicspirit enough to give them battle. The stink of the place rose up toheaven as a foul incense inviting a pestilence. There was no order, notrace of strong command anywhere. With three hundred well-disciplinedtroops it seemed to me that I could have sent those poor desperatehordes flying in panic to the forest.
However, there was no very lengthy space of time granted me for thinkingout the policy of this matter to any great depth. The attack on the gatehad been delivered with suddenness; the repulse was not slow. Of whatdesperate fighting took place in the galleries, and in the circusbetween the two sets of gates, the detail will never be told in full.
At the first alarm the great cave-tigers were set loose, and these ragedimpartially against keeper and foe. Of those that went in through thetunnel, not one in ten returned, and there were few of these but whatcarried a bloody wound. Some, with the ruling passion still strong inthem, bore back plunder; one trailed along with him the head of thecaptain of the gate; and amongst them they dragged out two of thewarders who were wounded, and whom revenge had urged them to take asprisoners.
Over these two last a hubbub now arose, that seemed likely to boil overinto blows. Every voice shouted out for them what he thought the mostrepulsive fate. Some were for burning, some for skinning, some forimpaling, some for other things: my flesh crept as I heard theirravenous yells. Those that had been to the trouble of making themcaptive were still breathless from the fight, and were readily thrustaside; and it seemed to me that the poor wretches would be hustled intodeath before any definite fate was agreed upon, which all would pass assufficiently terrific. Never had I seen such a disorderly tumult, neversuch a leaderless mob. But, as always has happened, and always will, thestronger men by dint of louder voices and more vigorous shoulders gottheir plans agreed to at last, and the others perforce had to give way.
A band of them set off running, and presently returned at snails' pace,dragging with them (with many squeals from ungreased wheels) one ofthose huge war engines with which besiegers are wont to throw greatstones and other missiles into the cities they sit down against. Theyran it up just beyond bowshot of the walls, and clamped it firmly downwith stakes and ropes to the earth. Then setting their lean arms to thewindlasses, they drew back the great tree which formed the spring tillits tethering place reached the ground, and in the cradle at its headthey placed one of the prisoners, bound helplessly, so that he could notthrow himself over the side.
Then the rude, savage, skin-clad mob stood back, and one who hadappointed himself engineer knocked back the catch that held the greatspring in place.
With a whir and a twang the elastic wood flung upwards, and the boundman was shot away from its tip with the speed of a lightning flash.He sang through the air, spinning over and over with inconceivablerapidity, and the great crowd of rebels held their breath in silence asthey watched. He passed high above the city wall, a tiny mannikin in thedistance now, and then the trajectory of his flight began to lower. Thespike of a new-built pyramid lay in the path of his terrific flight, andhe struck it with a thud whose sound floated out to us afterwards,and then he toppled down out of our sight, leaving a red stain on thewhiteness of the stone as he fell.
With a roar the crowd acknowledged the success of their device, andbellowed out insults to Phorenice, and insults to the Gods: a poorfrantic crowd they showed themselves. And then with ravening shouts,they fell upon the other captive warder, binding him also into a compacthelpless missile, and meanwhile getting the engine in gear again foranother shot.
But for my part I saw nothing of this disgusting scene. I heard the boltgrate stealthily against the door of the little temple
in which I wasimprisoned, and was minded to give these brutish rebels somewhat of asurprise. I had rid myself of my bonds handily enough; I had rubbedmy limbs to that perfect suppleness which is always desirable before afight; and I had planned to rush out so soon as the door was swung, andkill those that came first with fist blows on the brow and chin.
They had not suspected my name, it was clear, for my stature and garbwere nothing out of the ordinary; but if my bodily strength and fightingpower had been sufficient to raise me to a vice-royalty like that ofYucatan, and let me endure alive in that government throughout twentyhard-battling years, why, it was likely that this rabble of savageswould see something that was new and admirable in the practice of armsbefore the crude weight of their numbers could drag me down. Nay, I didnot even despair of winning free altogether. I must find me a weaponfrom those that came up to battle, with which I could write worthysignatures, and I must attempt no standing fights. Gods! but what a glowthe prospect did send through me as I stood there waiting.
A vainer man, writing history, might have said that always, beforeeverything else, he held in mind the greater interests before the less.But for me--I prefer to be honest, and own myself human. In my gleeat that forthcoming fight--which promised to be the greatest and mostfurious I had known in all a long life of battling--I will confess thatAtlantis and her differing policies were clean forgot. I should go outan unknown man from the little cell of a temple, I should do my work,and then, whether I took freedom with me, or whether I came down at lastmyself on a pile of slain, these people would guess without being toldthe name, that here was Deucalion. Gods! what a fight we would havemade!
But the door did not open wide to give me space for my first rush. Itcreaked gratingly outwards on its pivots, and a slim hand and a whitearm slipped inside, beckoning me to quietude. Here was some woman. Thedoor creaked wider, and she came inside.
"Nais," I said.
"Silence, or they will hear you, and remember. At present those whobrought you here are killed, and unless by chance some one blunders intothis robbed shrine, you will not be found."
"Then, if that is so, let me go out and walk amongst these people as oneof themselves."
She shook her head.
"But, Nais, I am not known here. I am merely a man in very plain andmud-stained robe. I should be in no ways remarkable."
A smile twitched her face. "My lord," she said, "wears no beard; and hisis the only clean chin in the camp."
I joined in her laugh. "A pest on my want of foppishness then. But I amforgetting somewhat. It comes to my mind that we still have unfinishedthat small discussion of ours concerning the length of my poor life.Have you decided to cut it off from risk of further mischief, or do youpropose to give me further span?"
She turned to me with a look of sharp distress. "My lord," she said,"I would have you forget that silly talk of mine. This last two hours Ithought you were dead in real truth."
"And you were not relieved?"
"I felt that the only man was gone out of the world--I mean, my lord,the only man who can save Atlantis."
"Your words give me a confidence. Then you would have me go back andbecome husband to Phorenice?"
"If there is no other way."
"I warn you I shall do that, if she still so desires it, and if it seemsto me that that course will be best. This is no hour for private likingsor dislikings."
"I know it," she said, "I feel it. I have no heart now, save only forAtlantis. I have schooled myself once more to that."
"And at present I am in this lone little box of a temple. A minuteago, before you came, I had promised myself a pretty enough fight tosignalise my changing of abode."
"There must be nothing of that. I will not have these poor peopleslaughtered unnecessarily. Nor do I wish to see my lord exposed to ahopeless risk. This poor place, such as it is, has been given to meas an abode, and, if my lord can remain decorously till nightfall in amaiden's chamber, he may at least be sure of quietude. I am a person,"she added simply, "that in this camp has some respect. When darknesscomes, I will take my lord down to the sea and a boat, and so he maycome with ease to the harbour and the watergate."