Adventure Magazine Cover — page 82: what you’re looking at

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

76 HAROLD LAMB And now there was no doubt at all that the city on the plateau had been built by men. ‘The ruin of a wall ran along the rim across the defile. The wall had been built of hewn stone blocks and the Cossack knew that this city of the Golden Horde had been invulnerable to attack. No enemy, ad- vancing down the ramp and forming, shel- terless, along the ledge, could have stormed the city wall. The other three sides of the plateau looked unclimbable. Probably there was— or had been—a way down from the city to the lower valley. But this other road, be- ing hung on the face of a cliff, could not be stormed. The city, then, could not have been taken by an enemy from without. Why had it been abandoned? Kirdy was too busy finding a way across the chasm to wonder. His search for a while was fruitless. The river that had cut the plateau from the mountain a thousand centuries ago, had done its work well—except at one spot. Here he had noticed twin gate towers rising on the other side. Since these towers must have defended the entrance, he led the way along the ledge toward them, praying that the bridge or whatever it might be, was still standing. So at midday they reached the gate and found not a bridge man-made, but an arch of limestone that spanned the chasm. Once the river must have plunged under- ground here—or dipped below a broad shelf of rock to thunder over a fall. The rock bridge had been worn by the elements until at the middle a tall man’s arms might have spanned it. Also, it had been eaten down to the center. In the white dust atop the limestone were the tracks of a horse and two men, leading fairly through the opening between the towers—where a barrier of wood and iron must have stood in other years. “Go last, Nada!’ Kirdy swept the ruined wall, the expanse between the tow- ers, withaswift glance and started down the natural bridge, leading the charger. If his enemies were hidden in the ruins with so much as a pistol or a bow between them, he was doomed; but he felt no fear and the proof of it was that the charger followed him willingly, with only a pricking of ears and shortening of strides. The ponies ambled across indifferently, and Nada brought up the rear, laughing. BLAZING sun, beating on the Afi dust of streets and the gray and red ruins, half blinded them, and a vagrant wind clutched at them. They stood within sight of what had been the registan, the open square of the city. Here a gray scum of tamarisk impeded progress, and the crumbling stone was cov- ered with thorn and creepers. A sluggish gray snake with mottled red back crept past their feet. Remembering that little water remained in the goatskins, Kirdy investi- gated a pool of water that lay between two houses. It was bordered with sparkling salt incrustations, and small plants covered with brilliant orange and red berries. A glance convinced the Cossack that the water was undrinkable, the berries inedible. Then his head jerked up, and the horses moved restlessly. “O-ho-of O-HO-O! O-ho!’ Some one had laughed and started up the echoes again. It was a mad, exulting laugh that seemed anything but human. It might mean that they were both watched and mocked, or their presence entirely unsus- pected. Nada shivered and drew closer to Kirdy. “Let us go to the palace. yonder on the height. see—”’ Taking the horses, which were as precious as life itself, the Cossack wound through vine-cumbered alleys and over fallen walls to an edifice that was marked by several stone columns, still standing. He avoided the registan and the wider streets, and only paused when in a bed of clay or sand he saw scattered bones that had fallen away from the skeleton of a man. Not long before, he had come upon rows of tombs—square chambers of granite sunk into the earth and surmounted by stone pyramids. Several of these tombs stood open, and he had gone into one. ‘“‘An evil fate came upon this place,”’ he muttered to Nada. ‘Here be many bodies lying in the houses, and few in the tombs. How did it happen that the men of the Horde died in dwellings and were not buried?” Nada only shook her head. But when they had climbed out of the alleys to a brick roadway that led up to a granite-flagged courtyard, she gasped. The place was large enough for the tents of a whole tribe. I think it is From there we can COmiclboooks.c©