The mountain of Lapu was at the very edge of the waters. It rose steeply on both the south and north sides; on the eastern, it sloped much more gently and terminated in a wide black-sand beach. Towards this, the captain steered the ship after it had slipped through a narrow channel. There was a slight scraping of the plates of the keel on the rocks, and the vessel was in calmer waters. Captain Wilftik heaved a sigh of relief and grinned.
“The cruiser won’t make it through there without tearing her bottom out. I hope she tries it.”
He gave orders to stop the ship and to lower two lifeboats. The cruiser did not attempt the passage; it slid on by alongside the reef, turned as closely as it could to avoid another reef, and then pointed her nose outwards. While her engines kept her from drifting backwards against the reef, it lowered two power launches. Two Hawks, observing them through his binoculars, saw that the launches were equipped with several two-inch cannons and mortars. Each held about thirty marines, in addition to the crews. The marines looked like medieval Saracens with their turbans above which rose the gleaming points of the helmets, steel cuirasses, great leather belts, scabbards containing scimitars, scarlet baggy pants, and calf-length boots with turned-up toes. Each had a large blue sack strapped to his belt and carried a rifle.
Captain Wilftik wanted to run his ship back through the entrance between the reefs and smash the launches just as they came into the passageway on the other end. Gilbert objected. “The cruiser will blow you out of the water. And it will then send another launch with marines after us on land. Hold your fire; permit the landing-party to go after us. The sailors in our party will ambush them, but I’m not asking them to give up their lives for us. They’ll do it from a place which the Ikhwani can’t take—if they can find one.”
Two boats took Two Hawks, Ilmika, Kwasind, Gilbert, and officers and crewmen ashore. They went quickly across the beach and began climbing. The sun had gone down behind the mountain by then, shrouding this side in twilight. Above them and out to the sea, the sky was a bright blue and the waters green. The Ikhwani launches drove their prows onto the sand, and the white and scarlet (twilight-browned) figures were little dolls. The pursued had a twenty-minute head-start and had taken advantage of it. Although they were soon in a dusk so thick it made climbing difficult, they continued. Then the sun plunged down into the sea, and they were slowed even more. They caught hold of bushes and pulled themselves up, occasionally slipping but always able to stop their backward slide by grabbing the vegetation.
Now and then, they came to great gnarled oaks, which Gilbert said had been planted here two hundred years ago by King Mahimahi. “The mountain above the guard-wall is a thick forest of oaks. We’ll be well concealed then—if we can get past the Hivika sentinels.”
“I wonder why they haven’t spotted us yet?” Two Hawks said. “I know it’s dark now, but the guards should have been able to see both ships.”
“I don’t know,” Gilbert replied. “Perhaps they’re planning on ambushing us, just as we are the Ikhwani.”
Gilbert’s fat was telling on him; he was breathing heavily. Aside from his panting, it was quiet on the mountain, with the only sounds being the wind through the oak leaves and the noise of their progress: twigs cracking, wet leaves squishing, a branch springing back with a swishing sound, muffled curses as a man slipped. When they stopped to rest, and Gilbert regained his breath, the silence was like that in a huge cathedral, in the moment when all have bowed their heads and just before the minister launches into a prayer. However, it was no prayer that was to come, Two
Hawks felt sure of that. It seemed as if lightning would leap out from the very rubbing of the air against it, or a curse instead of a prayer would crackle down the mountain.
They struggled on up, their path lit only by the stars. Two hours went by, and the moon came out. Three-quarters full, she bounced a bright mercury over the mountain. Thereafter they climbed more surely and more rapidly. The illumination, although advantageous now, would be a danger when they reached the sentinel wall. Two Hawks hoped that the vegetation had not been cleared off between the wall and the oaks and bushes. To venture across a clearing in this brightness was to be revealed at once to any watcher.
Twenty minutes later, they came to the edge of the woods. As he had feared, there was a bare space of forty yards. At its other end, above them at a 50-degree angle, embrasured walls loomed. These were about 20 feet high, composed of huge stone blocks, gray and veined in black, and fitted together without mortar. Every thirty yards along the top of the wall was a slender twenty-foot tower, round and capped with a cone of small mortared rocks.
“Where are the guards?” Gilbert whispered.
The moonlight coated the wall with soft metal; the shiny grey looked as if it would ring at the blow of a hammer. But there was no sound except for the shush-shush of wind through the leaves.
Two Hawks, looking at the dark, narrow, arched entrances on the sides of the towers, said, “If the guards are in there, they’re hiding. Well, here goes. Don’t anybody follow me until the coast is clear.”
With the coil of the rope in his left hand and the three-pronged catching hooks in his right, he ran out from under an oak’s shadow. He expected to hear a shout from the black interior of a tower, followed by a tongue of flame and explosion. However, the walls remained as still and shiny grey as before. Reaching the bottom of the ramparts, he paused, gauged the distance to the top, and cast the hooks, the rope uncoiling after them. The hooks sailed through an embrasure just above him and struck with a clank. The noise shocked him. Until that moment he had not realized how unconsciously strong the impression of the sacredness of the place had been.
He pulled on the rope, and it became taut as the prongs dug in. Hand over hand, his feet against the wall, almost parallel to the ground, he climbed up. He gripped the lip of the stone and pulled himself up and over and then crouched in the shelf of the embrasure. He waited for an outcry from a guard. When a minute had gone by, he eased himself down into the passageway that ran the length of the wall. It was six feet across and high enough to reach to the top of his head.
He drew his revolver and ran to the stone steps which led up the wall and to the nearest watch tower. Up the steep flight he went and hurled himself through the narrow pointed arch into the tower. Moonlight beamed through a small narrow hole in the roof and thinned the darkness enough so that he could see that no one was within. A wooden ladder against the wall of the tower led to a wooden platform. From this, a guard could observe—and shoot—through any of six ports and cover 360 degrees.
He went out of the tower into the moonlight and signalled. The entire party was soon up on the wall, aided by the ladder which Two Hawks removed from the tower. Gilbert spread his men out so they covered a hundred yards of wall. If the Ikhwani marines tried to scale the walls at this point, the Blodlandish could concentrate a strong fire. Should the Ikhwani try elsewhere along the wall, a sailor in the tower would spot them, provided the Ikhwani were not too far away.
Gilbert, Kwasind, Ilmika, and Two Hawks walked along the passageway until they came to a point beneath which was a gate. Inside the walls was a path that led from the gate on up the mountain. They decided to follow the path. The chances of being ambushed seemed few. It was evident that the Hivika guards had abandoned their posts, the reason for which would have to be determined later.