The Quest of Kadji

Akthoob was fighting off the attackers in the same way he had battled his way through the wolves—with flashing streaks of brilliant violet flame that flickered from his outstretched fingers. The timorous little old wizard might be pale and chattering with terror, but he fought like an avenging demon when need was at hand. As Kadji rubbed his eyes to clear his fuzzy vision he saw one Perushka villain stagger screaming from Akthoob wrapped in crackling flames.

But Bazan was the true hero of the battle. The great wolf ranged among the Perushka like a flame-eyed monster from the Nine Hells. His savage jaws crunched on bone and ripped through manflesh, spurting blood in showers on the trampled snow. With each ringing snap of his ferocious jaws a man died, his face torn away, his arm savaged, his guts spilling from a slashed stomach. The grey wolf killed and killed again.

Kadji dragged out the sacred Axe from beneath his garments and lurched and staggered into the mass of rogues. The pain had faded again; the numbness was back; but it was not enough to drag him swooning down as before, for his friends were in danger and he must fight. If he must die, at least let it be on his feet, in the teeth of the foe; then could he die happily, as a Chayyim warrior should.

From somewhere within him the boy found the strength to lift the heavy Axe and begin that slow, remorseless, and resistless sweep from side to side. So had the Kozanga axemen fought from the dawn of time, and it transformed one man into a terrible killing machine. He staggered into the massed Perushka, whose backs were to him, and the great swinging scythe of the Axe had felled five men before the Perushka even realized he yet lived.

Akthoob cried out in amazement to see Kadji on his feet and fighting, and Thyra looked with astonishment all over her white face; she had thought him slain.

He did not walk very well, so he took his stand, spread his feet wide, braced himself against the pull of the heavy Axe, and swung the glittering steel in the faces of the Perushka who turned their steel against him now. They perhaps did not know that cutlass, dirk or wicker shield cannot stand against the terrible swinging stroke of a Kozang axe. But they learned it soon enough. Swords snapped and dirks shattered against the whirling might of that mighty blade. Shields were smashed to flying bits and the men that bore them were knocked from their feet with broken arms or dislocated shoulders or crushed ribs when they sought to ward off the great curving blows of the Axe of Thom-Ra. Men died about Kadji like flies.

The Blacksmith of Heaven had smelted and purified and tempered the steel of that immortal Axe, and it was from no worldly ore at all. The burnt-out core of a wandering and fallen star had given up that precious and unearthly metal. The War Prince of Gods had given that glorious and sacred weapon into the hands of the founder of Kadji’s race, Kozang of Chaya. The divine blood of that ancient hero flowed yet in Kadji’s veins, and as Kadji fought, in a red haze, fighting against the black shadows that thickened about his vision and strove to pull him down into the long sleep from which there is no awakening in this world, he chanted aloud the ringing staves of the age-old epic of his warrior people.

They would have been proud of him in this hour.

Now the Perushka had melted from before him like frost before the dawn of spring, and he must turn about for they were at his back. They crowded behind him, yapping and yelping and snarling like curs, when such strive to pull down a kingly stag. His feet were clumsy, for he could no longer feel his legs, but somehow or other he managed to turn about without interrupting the slow, sweeping rhythm of that terrible scarlet Axe. It was just as well, for had the rhythm faltered, the exhausted boy could never have found the strength to lift that mighty weight again. He was all but dead on his feet and he did not even know it.

And so he turned about to face them, and now the fire was at his back and he could see the cowardly fear written across their snarling faces, and the mirror flash of naked steel in their hands. Again and again the terrible scythe of that great steel axe tore through them and its passage through their bodes did not even slow the tempo of the swinging strokes.

The Axe sang now, a weird hum and thrum, as it swung like a hideous pendulum through the bitterly cold air. The deep-throated song of its swing was loud in Kadji’s ears, for he could hear nothing else now save the song of the Axe and the thunder of his heart beating, heavy and slow, and deep so that his whole body shook to the rhythm like the slow pulse of a mighty drum.

Now he could not even see, for blackness was before him and between him and the men he fought and slew so terribly. Black, black, all was black. And—cold. The coldness came seeping up through his body from the earth itself, as if he stood knee-deep in glacial ice. His legs he could no longer feel, and his arms were like two sticks of wood. His face was black with effort, his lungs were on fire, his teeth were bared in a fighting grin as terrible as a skull’s, and yet he fought on.