Behind them, the alarm bell in the fortress of the Masters was still clanging wildly, and torches were bobbing like swirling fireflies. But in a few moments they were out of the great city, galloping through the darkness over the surrounding farmlands and then over the grassy plain.
"Eastward!" Kim Idim shouted thinly over the rush of wind. "We go too much to the north!"
Ethan reined his pounding steed to the right, and the others followed. Glancing back, he saw the vast black mass of Luun alive with torches, rapidly receding behind them.
Bitter rage and disappointment throbbed in his heart, and fear—fear for Chiri and for his Puritan comrade.
"It's the first time ever I left a fellow soldier in the lurch!" Pedro Lopez was raging as he rode. "Name of God, why did we run away and leave him there to be killed?"
"Your comrade was only stunned—and he will not be killed, at least until tomorrow noon," Kim Idim called. "He will undoubtedly be sentenced to the Feast of Life, like my Chiri. And we shall return to Luun, before the Feast takes place, if my plan succeeds."
"What is this Feast?" demanded the enraged Spaniard. "And what is this plan?"
Ethan shouted a brief plan to them, and he heard their exclamations of bewilderment.
"Holy smoke, whole armies from the past?" gasped Hank Martin. "Why, the scheme is plumb loco!"
"I can do it!" Kim Idim cried. "By simply expanding the field of the time-ray, I can draw an army through time as easily as one man."
"The plan is good!" cried Pedro Lopez exultantly. "Dios, we'll show these soft ones of the future how men of the past could fight! We'll tear their cursed city wide open."
"Aye," rumbled Swain harshly. "By Thor, it will be something to fight shoulder to shoulder with the great warriors of past ages."
"But I can't figger," called Hank Martin, to the old scientist, "why you don't jest use thet machine of yours to yank Chiri and Crewe themselves out of the city."
"That is impossible," Kim Idim cried to him. "The time-ray can only operate spatially when it is being simultaneously projected along the time-dimension."
As they rode, Ethan had been clumsily binding an improvised bandage around his wounded forearm. The lights of Luun had disappeared behind them some time before, but Ptah turned in his saddle and looked anxiously back across the starlit plain.
"They'll follow us," the little Egyptian called tautly. "And they'll guess we're heading for the forest."
"Ha, let them follow!" cried Pedro Lopez scornfully. "We'll make mince-meat of those who are unlucky enough to overtake us."
"We must hurry," urged Ethan, agonized with apprehension. "Unless we re-enter Luun with our forces by noon, we'll be too late."
Rushing hoofs drummed the dark plain as mile after mile dropped behind them. In the vague, thin starlight, they could not discern how close pursuit might be behind them.
Hours that seemed eternities to Ethan had passed by the time they glimpsed ahead of them the dark wall of the grotesque toadstool forest. Without slackening speed, they rode into the deep shadow of the towering growths.
