Adventure Magazine Cover — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

80 HAROLD LAMB The man’s head fell down on his chest, held only by one of the throat muscles— and the throat had been all but cut through. “Ha!” Otrépiev gasped. He heard Feodor’s sword and then the giant body fall to the stone flags; but his saber was locked fast by the Cossack’s blade. For a moment the eyes of the two, beaded with sweat and blood-shot, glared, and then Kirdy wrenched free. A wave of hot anger swept over Otrépiev, and fear beat at his heart, like a hammering pulse. With a cry he sprang forward, and his right hand, grasping the saber, flew off and slid along the stone slabs. Kirdy struck twice at the bent head of his foe, and, cut through the temples on either side; the body of Otrépiev stumbled and dropped be- side his henchman. Kirdy wasted no second’s thought upon him. Running to Nada, he cut the fasten- ings of her vest and drew it off, then gently pulled away the hand and the elotted -tresses. With quivering fingers he felt the narrow wound. - Then he turned her on her left side, to check the inward bleeding, and as he did so, her hand touched his arm and felt up it, until she could stroke his head. “The end—” her lips moved—‘“of the road.” The Cossack glanced around wildly. To heal such a wound in a comrade he would have given a draft of powder mixed in vodka. But he had neither powder nor vodka, and he did not know what more to do, except to bring water. “O Father and Son, hear me,” he cried. “The spirit of little Nada flutters like a pigeon in the storm wind. It goes, her spirit, from my hands. Harken, O White Christ, and thou, souls of the Cossack heroes who dwell in the regions above— there is faith in this maiden, and knightly honor. Did she not draw her sword brave- ly? Isit fitting she should die by the sword of a traitor and a dog?” When he returned with water, Nada drank a little, and signed for him to bend closer. “T love you, White Falcon—even your shadow and the horse you ride. I stayed behind because I feared he was hiding near by. Truly, then, I thought I might slay him, so they could not fall upon you. But —promise me you will not leave me, White Falcon. Hold me in your arms and take me from this place, down to the valley, my Falcon.”’ The rush of words ceased and her lips quivered. Kirdy looked up. Already vultures were dropping down on the columns and the throne slab. The wind threshed through the dry growth, and up the Earth Girdle clouds of driven dust hid the pass and the heights. ‘Aye, little Nada,” he said, gently, “T promise.”’ Here was something he could do. Yet no living man could carry the suffering girl up that wind-whipped ramp to the desolate pass—or make the horses follow. When he had circled Otrépiev’s bait of a camp— and had noticed that the fire was left to die and the horse likewise—he had suspected the trap set for him and had gone back in- stantly, until he heard the clash of weapons and had run like one possessed. But before then he had seen what Otrépiev had dis- covered, a road winding down the east face of the plateau. So, only stopping to bind Feodor’s great sword and Otrépiev’s helmet on the charg- er’s saddle, he tied up Nada’s wound with strips of his shirt and lifted her in his arms, keeping the stallion’s rein in his fingers. The ponies trailed after, and no sooner had they moved away than the vultures closed in upon the bodies of the false Dmitri and his solitary companion, the torturer. “but it is well suited to Gregory Otré- piev, because he has left his bones in the hall of a king. Bold he was, but not a good Cossack. He kept faith with no one, and he handled a sword badly.” Weary beyond knowing, Kirdy strode on into darkness and wind. The night had brought the first of the autumn’s storms, and gusts of rain whipped the mesh of the ¢ayga over his head. The burden of the unconscious girl had numbed his arms long since, but as long as he could feel Nada’s heart pulsing slowly under his fingers he kept on. When neither wind, nor the bitter air of the heights that hinted at snow penetrated to him, he halted and laid Nada down in the darkness, upon ferns and pine needles. When he was able to raise his arms again, he took down the broadsword from the stal- lion’s saddle, and groped for branches and fallen wood. ee Tr WASa dog’s burial,” Kirdy thought, COnmiclboooks.c© 5}