Adventure Magazine Cover — page 80: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

74 HAROLD LAMB gruffly. ‘“‘Aye, the Cossack is mad—he has hurt you. How can you go on, in such a land as this where the spirits ride as a regiment? Take the horses, and—God keep you!”’ He took her head in his powerful hands, pressing against the tangle of soft tresses; but his head hung upon his chest, and he did not see her eyes open very wide, or the sudden flush that darkened her skin. “Whither?” she asked quietly. “Could J, a woman, ride alone with horses through the tribes?” Again he groaned, thinking that Arslan, the ax-man, who might be relied upon to protect Nada, had run from them. ‘“‘Aye,” he said, touching the ikon at her bare throat. “The good Saint Ulass will guard you, as among wolves.” “Foolish Cossack!’’ she smiled. “Now we are past the gate, and is there less of peril before than behind? Fool, to have crossed the Earth Girdle! Nay, I think we are near the end of the road. Come, and see.” As Nada had prophesied, the sides of the gorge fell away, and the trail dipped sharp- ly. Rounding a turn a little after sunrise they came out on a point of rocks and reined in, Kirdy silently, the girl with a quick cry of wonder. Over the rim of distant mountain ranges the sun glared at them, and all the way to this far-off horizon were ridges and the purple shadows of ranges. Here and there in the nearer valleys the golden beds of lakes flared. So great was the elevation of the point on which they stood, they could discern no trees or animal life below them. Instead of the gray-green steppes, they stared down at red cliffs and gorges still mist-shrouded. Red and gray, and barren, this land beyond the Earth Girdle might have been shaped by blind and tortured giants. Nada shaded her eyes and looked down. “See, my White Falcon, here is the city.” Kirdy nodded; he had seen it at once and now he leaned on his saddle horn, study- ing it. For more than a thousand yards the mountain fell away steeply beneath him— sheer cliffs, at places. At the foot of this descent a plateau extended out. The top of the plateau, or table formation, was fairly level, and he thought that it towered far above the lower valley. - At the plateau’s level, the mountain was limestone. And the city of the Golden Horde was the same red and white stone, with bits of gray granite and other rock that glittered—quartz or porphyry. It was a ruin. From where the Cossack stood, the twist- ed streets looked like gullies—the dwellings, piles of crumbled stone. He traced out terraces and bastions, without being able to decide whether they had been wrought by men’s hands or by nature. There were patches of green growth and glints of water. But, running down in long zigzags from the point of rock, was a road, or rather the remnant of a road, covered at spots with rubble and fallen away completely at places. This road was the only way down from the pass. Tevakel Khan’s nomads would no more have built that ramp down the mountain- side than nature itself could have done so. At one time men had hewn it out and built it up. And so, at one time, men must have lived on the plateau. By now he could see the lower valley through the mist—the dense mesh of forest growth that seemed no greater than moss—the lighter green of the valley bed where the mist was clearing, and the brilliance of a lake that looked like a jewel. The men who had lived upon the rock plateau could have grazed their herds thousands of feet below—or perhaps the plateau was a citadel, a refuge in time of war. Beyond doubt, there was water, wood and game in the valley. But he could see no solitary sign of man. CHAPTER XIX THE END OF THE ROAD Se REGORY OTREPIEV,” Nada ) femme) mused, ‘‘would have gone down hb SSS MM to that city. He would like to ames) see what the ruins are, and what people live there.”’ “Eagles live there,’’ Kirdy made answer, “and vipers—not men.”’ ‘We will soon know. At least some one has gone down the trail.” That much the Cossack had already as- certained. He had seen tracks in a cascade of soft earth, where one horse had rubbed against the slope, and another had trampled COmiclboooks.c©