The Third Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ™: Poul Anderson. Poul Anderson
men formed into one group and Corun led it across the floor in a dash for the looming doorway. A red thought flashed across his brain: Where were Shorzon and Chryseis?
The Xanthi scattered before the desperate human rush. The men came out into a remembered hallway—it led to the outside, Corun recalled. By Breannach Brannor, they might escape yet!
“Corun! Corun, you sea-devil! I knew it was your doing!”
The Conahurian turned to see Imazu bounding toward him with a bloody ax in one hand. Imazu—thank all the gods, Imazu was free!
“I heard a noise of fighting, and the tower guards went off toward it,” gasped the Umlotuan captain. “so I came too. On the way I met Shorzon and Chryseis.”
“What of them?” breathed Corun.
The blue warrior smiled savagely and flung a red thing down at Corun’s feet. “There’s Shorzon’s scheming head. My woman is free!”
“Chryseis—”
Imazu leaned on his ax, panting.
“She launched her erinye at me. I ducked into a room and slammed the door in its face, then came here through another entrance.”
Chryseis was loose—“We’ve got to get clear,” said Corun. “The devil-powder is going to go off any time now.”
The Xanthi were rallying. They came at the humans in another rush. Corun and Imazu and their best men filled the corridor with a haze of steel, backing down toward the outer portal.
It was a crazy blur of struggle, hewing at faces that wavered out of night, slapping down thrusts and reaching for the life of the enemy. Men fell, and others took their places in the line. Down the corridor they retreated, fighting to get free, and they left a trail of dead.
The end of the passage loomed ahead. And the monstrous iron door was swinging shut.
Chryseis stood in the entrance. A wild storm-wind outside sent her cloak flapping about her, red wings beating in the lightning-shot darkness about the devil’s rage of the goddess face.
“Stay here!” she screamed. “Stay here and be cut down, you triple traitor!”
The nearest Umlotuan sprang at her. The door clashed shut in his face—they heard the great bolt slam down outside. They were boxed in the end of the hall, and the Xanthi need only shoot them down with arrows.
Down in the dungeons, the fuse burned to its end. A sheet of flame sprang up in the opened box of powder, reaching for the stacks around it.
IX
The first explosion came as a muffled roar. Corun felt the floor tremble under his feet. Men and Xanthi stood motionless, looking at each other with widening eyes in which a common doom arose.
So it ended. Shorzon and Tsathu and their wizard cohorts would be gone, but Chryseis, mad, lovely Chryseis, was loose, and the gods knew what hell she could brew among the leaderless Xanthi.
The walls groaned as another boom echoed down their length.
Well, death came to every man, and he had not done so badly. Corun began to realize how weary he was; he was bleeding from wounds and breath was raw in his lungs.
The Umlotuans hammered on the door in panic. But the twenty or fewer survivors could never break it down.
The devil-powder roared. The floor heaved sickeningly under Corun’s feet. He heard the crash of collapsing masonry.
Wait—wait—one chance! One chance, by the gods!
“Be ready to run out when the walls topple,” he shouted. “We’ll have a little time—”
The Xanthi were fleeing in terror. The humans stood alone, waiting while the explosions rolled and banged around them. Cracks zigzagged across the walls, dust choked the dank air.
Crash!!
Corun saw the nearer wall swaying, toppling. The floor lifted and buckled and he fell to the lurching ground. All the world was an insanity of racket and ruin.
The lintel caved in, the portal sagged. Corun leaped for the opening like a pouncing erinye. The men swarmed with it, out through the widening hole while the roof came down behind them.
Someone screamed, a faint lost sound in the grinding fury of sundering stone. Rocks were flying—Corun saw one of them crack a man’s head like a melon. Wildly he ran as the outer facade came down.
There was a madness of storm outside, wind screaming to fill the sky, driving solid sheets of rain and hail before it.
The incessant blinding lightning glared in a cold shadowless brilliance, the bawling thunder drowned the roar of exploding devil-powder. They fought out through the courtyard, past the deserted outer gate.
There came a blast which seemed to crack the sky. Corun was knocked down as by a giant’s fist. He lay in the mud and saw a pillar of flame lift toward the heavens with the castle fountaining up on its wings. Thunder roared over the earth, shouting to the storm that raged in the heavens.
Corun picked himself up and leaned dizzily against a tree stripped clean by the blast. Rain slanted across the ground, churning the mud beneath his feet, the livid lightning-glare blazing above. Vaguely, through ringing, deafened ears, he heard the wild clamor of the sea. Looking down the cataract which the upward trail had become, he saw the Briscia rocking in the wind where she lay on the beach.
He gestured to Imazu, who staggered up to join him. His voice was barely audible over the shouting wind: “Take the men down there. We can’t sail in this storm, but make the ship fast, stand guard over her. If I’m not back when the storm is done, start for home.”
“Where are you going?” cried the Unilotuan.
“I’ll be back—maybe. Stay with the ship!”
Corun turned and slogged across the ground toward the jungle.
* * * *
Weariness was gone. He was like a machine running without thought or pain until it burned out. Chryseis would have fled toward high ground, he thought dully.
Behind him, Imazu started forward, then checked himself. Something of the ultimate loneliness that was in Corun must have come to the Umlotuan. It was not a mission on which any other man might go. And they had to save the ship. He gestured to his few remaining men and they began the slow climb down to the beach.
The castle was a heap of shattered rock, still moving convulsively as the last few boxes of devil-powder exploded. The rain boiled down over it, churning through the fragments. Lightning flamed in the berserk heavens.
Corun pushed through underbrush that clutched at his feet and clawed at his skin. The sword was still hanging loosely in one hand, nicked and blunted with battle. He went on mechanically, scarcely noticing the wind-whipped trees that barred his way.
It came to him that he was fighting for Khroman, the thalassocrat of Achaera, ruler by right of conquest over Conahur. But there were worse things than foreign rule, if it was human, and one of the greater evils had fled toward the mountain.
Presently he came out on the bare rocks above the fringe of jungle growth. The rain hammered at him, driven by a wind that screamed like a maddened beast. Thunder boomed and rolled overhead, a roar of doom answering the thud of his heart. The water rushed over his ankles, foaming down toward the sea.
She stood waiting for him atop a high bare hill. Her cloak was drawn tightly about her slender body, but the wind caught at it, whipped and tore it. Her rain-wet hair blew wild.
“Corun,” she called under the gale. “Corun.”
“I am coming,” he said, not caring if she heard him or not. He struggled up to where she stood limned against the sheeted fire in heaven. They faced each other while the storm raged around them. “Corun—”
She read death in his eyes as he lifted the