9. Dordona
If they close those gates, we're trapped!" yelled Clark.
They spurred desperately forward. From the guard-towers on either side of the gate, several dozen soldiers had run out and formed a line in front of the gate. Behind that line, a half-dozen other Red warriors were slowly forcing the great valves shut.
"Ride through them!" Clark shouted. "It's now or never."
They crashed into that solid line of guards—and stopped! For these soldiers grabbed their bridles and stirrups and clung to them, holding them, stabbing at them with their swords. The crazed horses whirled and plunged in a mad inferno of struggle, the riders rising like swimmers above a wave of armored men and slashing swords.
Clark felt a blade sear along his forearm, and glimpsed the brutal face of the Red warrior stabbing at him. His gun kicked in his hand and the man fell with his forehead driven in. Clark shot again, trying to clear away the men clinging to his bridle. Link Wilson's heavy gun was booming, while Blacky Cain, his eyes blazing and a frozen killer mask on his face, was viciously shooting the men trying to pull him down.
"Dordona! Dordona!" pealed a silver cry from the girl Lurain, wielding her sword with wildcat swiftness and fury.
The gates were almost closed! And from far back at the palace of Thargo, masses of soldiers were coming on the run. Clark had a cold, sinking sense that they were trapped. Then he heard a hoarse cry.
"Out of my way, you scum!" Ephraim Quell shouted, forcing through his attackers, clubbing his reversed gun on their heads.
Quell broke through them. Clark saw the bony Yankee skipper break through on his mount to the half-dozen men who now had pushed the gates within a foot of closing. Ephraim Quell's gun-butt smashed down among them, sent them reeling, his horse trampling them. The Yankee leaped from his horse, swiftly pulled on one of the great valves.
He pulled it open a few yards, by frenzied, tremendous effort. But the men he had scattered were on their feet again, rushing at him and stabbing with their swords. Quell reeled back from them.
Clark shouted, his voice ringing over the mad din, and the others heard and pushed desperately forward. The horses, maddened by the struggle to the pitch of frenzy, surged forward crazily toward the gate-opening that promised freedom, trampling down the clinging guards.
Clark's gun blazed the last of its clip, and the men stabbing at Quell fell. Link Wilson spurred in, grabbed the Yankee skipper's horse, helped haul the bony seaman up onto it. Then before the guards they had broken through could reach them again, their horses were bolting out through the opened gates. Wild from the battle and unaccustomed gunfire, they plunged for freedom, Clark's and Lurain's steeds jamming momentarily in the narrow opening.
Then they were all out in the open moonlight of the plain, the dark walls and confusion and raging shouts of K'Lamm behind them. Plunging, racing, snorting, the horses galloped wildly over the moonlit sea of grass and brush. The wild uproar of the Red city receded swiftly.
"Which way to Dordona?" cried Clark to Lurain, shouting to her over the rush of wind.
"We follow the way now," she cried. "Due east from here it lies—we go to the river, and along it to my city."
Now the horses were settling to a
