The Metal Monster Read online

  CHAPTER XXIV. RUSZARK

  Smoothly moved the colossal shape; on it we rode as easily as thoughcradled. It did not glide--it strode.

  The columned legs raised themselves, bending from a thousand joints. Thepedestals of the feet, huge and massive as foundations for sixteen-inchguns, fell with machinelike precision, stamping gigantically.

  Under their tread the trees of the forest snapped, were crushed likereeds beneath the pads of a mastodon. From far below came the sound oftheir crashing. The thick forest checked the progress of the Shape lessthan tall grass would that of a man.

  Behind us our trail was marked by deep, black pits in the forest'sgreen, clean cut and great as the Mark upon the poppied valley. Theywere the footprints of the Thing that carried us.

  The wind streamed and whistled. A flock of the willow warblers arose,sworled about us with manifold beating of little frightened wings.Norhala's face softened, her eyes smiled.

  "Go--foolish little ones," she cried, and waved her arms. They flewaway, scolding.

  A lammergeier swooped down on wide funereal wings; it peered at us;darted away toward the cliffs.

  "There will be no carrion there for you, black eater of the dead, when Iam through," I heard Norhala whisper, eyes again somber.

  Steadily grew the dawn light; from Norhala's lips came again thechanting. And now that paean, the reckless pulse of the monster we rode,began to creep through my own veins. Into Drake's too, I knew, for hishead was held high and his eyes were clear and bright as hers who sang.

  The jubilant pulse streamed through the hands that held us, throbbedthrough us. The pulse of the Thing--sang!

  Closer and closer grew the cliffs. Down and crashing down fell thetrees, the noise of their fall accompanying the battle chant of theValkyr beside me like wild harp chords of storm-lashed surf. Up to theprecipices the forest rolled, unbroken. Now the cliffs loomed overhead.The dawn had passed. It was full day.

  Cutting up through the towering granite scarps was a rift. In it theblack shadows clustered thickly. Straight toward that cleft we sped.As we drew near, the crest of the Shape began swiftly to lower. Down wesank and down--a hundred feet, two hundred; now we were two score yardsabove the tree tops.

  Out shot a neck, a tremendous serpent body. Crested it was withpyramids; crested with them, too, was its immense head. Thickly the headbristled with them, poised motionless upon spinning globes as huge asthey. For hundreds of feet that incredible neck stretched ahead of usand for twice as far behind a monstrous, lizard-shaped body writhed.

  We rode now upon a serpent, a glittering blue metal dragon, spikedand knobbed and scaled. It was the weird steed of Norhala flattening,thrusting out to pierce the rift.

  And still as when it had reared on high beat through it the wild,triumphant, questing pulse. Still rang out Norhala's chanting.

  The trees parted and fell upon each side of us as though we were somemonster of the sea and they the waves we cleft.

  The rift enclosed us. Lower we dropped; were not more than fifty feetabove its floor. The Thing upon which we rode was a torrent roaringthrough it.

  A deeper blackness enclosed us--a tunneling.

  Through that we flowed. Out of it we darted into a widening filled withwan light drifting down through a pinnacle fanged mouth miles on high.Again the cleft shrunk. A thousand feet ahead was a crack, a narrowingof the cleft so small that hardly could a man pass through it.

  Abruptly the metal dragon halted.

  Norhala's chanting changed; became again the arrogant clarioning. Andclose below us the huge neck split. It came to me then that it was asthough Norhala were the overspirit of this chimera--as though it caughtand understood and obeyed each quick thought of hers.

  As though, indeed, she was a PART of it--as IT was in reality a partof that infinitely greater Thing, crouching there in its lair of thePit--the Metal Monster that had lent this living part of itself to herfor a steed, a champion. Little time had I to consider such matters.

  Up thrust the Shape before us. Into it raced and spun Things angled,Things curved and Things squared. It gathered itself into a Titanicpillar out of which, instantly, thrust scores of arms.

  Over them great globes raced; after these flew other scores of hugepyramids, none less than ten feet in height, the mass of them twentyand thirty. The manifold arms grew rigid. Quiet for a moment, a Titanicmetal Briareous, it stood.

  Then at the tips of the arms the globes began to spin--faster, faster.Upon them I saw the hosts of the pyramids open--as one into a host ofstars. The cleft leaped out in a flood of violet light.

  Now for another instant the stars which had been motionless, poised uponthe whirling spheres, joined in their mad spinning. Cyclopean pin wheelsthey turned; again as one they ceased. More brilliant now was theirlight, dazzling; as though in their whirling they had gathered greaterforce.

  Under me I felt the split Thing quiver with eagerness.

  From the stars came a hurricane of lightning! A cataract of electricflame poured into the crack, splashed and guttered down the granitewalls. We were blinded by it; were deafened with thunders.

  The face of the precipice smoked and split; was whirled away in cloudsof dust.

  The crack widened--widened as a gulley in a sand bank does when aswift stream rushes through it. Lightnings these were--and more thanlightnings; lightnings keyed up to an invincible annihilating weaponthat could rend and split and crumble to atoms the living granite.

  Steadily the cleft expanded. As its walls melted away the Blasting Thingadvanced, spurting into it the flaming torrents. Behind it we crept.The dust of the shattered rocks swirled up toward us like angryghosts--before they reached us they were blown away as though by strongwinds streaming from beneath us.

  On we went, blinded, deafened. Interminably, it seemed, poured forth thehurricane of blue fire; interminably the thunder bellowed.

  There came a louder clamor--volcanic, chaotic, dulling the thunders.The sides of the cleft quivered, bent outward. They split; crashed down.Bright daylight poured in upon us, a flood of light toward which thebillows of dust rushed as though seeking escape; out it poured like thesmoke of ten thousand cannon.

  And the Blasting Thing shook--as though with laughter!

  The stars closed. Back into the Shape ran globe and pyramid. It slidtoward us--joined the body from which it had broken away. Throughall the mass ran a wave of jubilation, a pulse of mirth--a colossal,metallic--SILENT--roar of laughter.

  We glided forward--out of the cleft. I felt a shifting movement.

  Up and up we were thrust. Dazed I looked behind me. In the face of asky climbing wall of rock, smoked a wide chasm. Out of it the billowingclouds of dust still streamed, pursuing, threatening us. The wholegranite barrier seemed to quiver with agony. Higher we rose and higher.

  "Look," whispered Drake, and whirled me around.

  Less than five miles away was Ruszark, the City of Cherkis. And it waslike some ancient city come into life out of long dead centuries. Apage restored from once conquering Persia's crumbled book. A city of theChosroes transported by Jinns into our own time.

  Built around and upon a low mount, it stood within a valley but littlelarger than the Pit. The plain was level, as though once it had beenthe floor of some primeval lake; the hill of the City was its onlyelevation.

  Beyond, I caught the glinting of a narrow stream, meandering. The valleywas ringed with precipitous cliffs falling sheer to its floor.

  Slowly we advanced.

  The city was almost square, guarded by double walls of hewn stone. Thefirst raised itself a hundred feet on high, turreted and parapeted andpierced with gates. Perhaps a quarter of a mile behind it the secondfortification thrust up.

  The city itself I estimated covered about ten square miles. It ranupward in broad terraces. It was very fair, decked with blossominggardens and green groves. Among the clustering granite houses, red andyellow roofed, thrust skyward tall spires and towers. Upon the mount'stop was a broad, flat plaza on which
were great buildings, marble whiteand golden roofed; temples I thought, or palaces, or both.

  Running to the city out of the grain fields and steads that surroundedit, were scores of little figures, rat-like. Here and there among themI glimpsed horsemen, arms and armor glittering. All were racing to thegates and the shelter of the battlements.

  Nearer we drew. From the walls came now a faint sound of gongs, ofdrums, of shrill, flutelike pipings. Upon them I could see hostsgathering; hosts of swarming little figures whose bodies glistened, fromabove whom came gleamings--the light striking upon their helms, theirspear and javelin tips.

  "Ruszark!" breathed Norhala, eyes wide, red lips cruelly smiling. "Lo--Iam before your gates. Lo--I am here--and was there ever joy like this!"

  The constellations in her eyes blazed. Beautiful, beautiful wasNorhala--as Isis punishing Typhon for the murder of Osiris; as avengingDiana; shining from her something of the spirit of all wrathfulGoddesses.

  The flaming hair whirled and snapped. From all her sweet body camewhite-hot furious force, a withering perfume of destruction. She pressedagainst me, and I trembled at the contact.

  Lawless, wild imaginings ran through me. Life, human life, dwindled. TheCity seemed but a thing of toys.

  On--let us crush it! On--on!

  Again the monster shook beneath us. Faster we moved. Louder grew theclangor of the drums, the gongs, the pipes. Nearer came the walls; andever more crowded with the swarming human ants that manned them.

  We were close upon the heels of the last fleeing stragglers. The Thingslackened in its stride; waited patiently until they were close to thegates. Before they could reach them I heard the brazen clanging of theirvalves. Those shut out beat frenziedly upon them; dragged themselvesclose to the base of the battlements, cowered there or crept along themseeking some hole in which to hide.

  With a slow lowering of its height the Thing advanced. Now its form wasthat of a spindle a full mile in length on whose bulging center we threestood.

  A hundred feet from the outer wall we halted. We looked down upon it notmore than fifty feet above its broad top. Hundreds of the soldiers werecrouching behind the parapets, companies of archers with great bowspoised, arrows at their cheeks, scores of leather jerkined men withstands of javelins at their right hands, spearsmen and men with long,thonged slings.

  Set at intervals were squat, powerful engines of wood and metal besidewhich were heaps of huge, rounded boulders. Catapults I knew them to beand around each swarmed a knot of soldiers, fixing the great stones inplace, drawing back the thick ropes that, loosened, would hurl forththe projectiles. From each side came other men, dragging more of thesebalisters; assembling a battery against the prodigious, gleaming monsterthat menaced their city.

  Between outer wall and inner battlements galloped squadrons of mountedmen. Upon this inner wall the soldiers clustered as thickly as on theouter, preparing as actively for its defense.

  The city seethed. Up from it arose a humming, a buzzing, as of someimmense angry hive.

  Involuntarily I visualized the spectacle we must present to thosewho looked upon us--this huge incredible Shape of metal alive withquicksilver shifting. This--as it must have seemed to them--hellishmechanism of war captained by a sorceress and two familiars in form ofmen. There came to me dreadful visions of such a monster lookingdown upon the peace-reared battlements of New York--the panic rush ofthousands away from it.

  There was a blaring of trumpets. Up on the parapet leaped a man clad allin gleaming red armor. From head to feet the close linked scales coveredhim. Within a hood shaped somewhat like the tight-fitting head coveringsof the Crusaders a pallid, cruel face looked out upon us; in the fierceblack eyes was no trace of fear.

  Evil as Norhala had said these people of Ruszark were, wicked andcruel--they were no cowards, no!

  The red armored man threw up a hand.

  "Who are you?" he shouted. "Who are you three, you three who comedriving down upon Ruszark through the rocks? We have no quarrel withyou?"

  "I seek a man and a maid," cried Norhala. "A maid and a sick man yourthieves took from me. Bring him forth!"

  "Seek elsewhere for them then," he answered. "They are not here. Turnnow and seek elsewhere. Go quickly, lest I loose our might upon you andyou go never."

  Mockingly rang her laughter--and under its lash the black eyes grewfiercer, the cruelty on the white face darkened.

  "Little man whose words are so big! Fly who thunders! What are youcalled, little man?"

  Her raillery bit deep--but its menace passed unheeded in the rage itcalled forth.

  "I am Kulun," shouted the man in scarlet armor. "Kulun, the son ofCherkis the Mighty, and captain of his hosts. Kulun--who will cast yourskin under my mares in stall for them to trample and thrust your redflayed body upon a pole in the grain fields to frighten away the crows!Does that answer you?"

  Her laughter ceased; her eyes dwelt upon him--filled with an infernaljoy.

  "The son of Cherkis!" I heard her murmur. "He has a son--"

  There was a sneer on the cruel face; clearly he thought her awed. Quickwas his disillusionment.

  "Listen, Kulun," she cried. "I am Norhala--daughter of another Norhalaand of Rustum, whom Cherkis tortured and slew. Now go, you lying spawnof unclean toads--go and tell your father that I, Norhala, am at hisgates. And bring back with you the maid and the man. Go, I say!"