A shout of “Here is the door!” from one of them, and all pressed in his
direction, Cabot merely following with the crowd, since his antennae
gave him no clue as to the source of the cry. The door opened into a
passageway. In silence the party threaded the dim corridors beneath the
stadium, until a sudden turn brought them out into the daylight, facing
the city. And, as they debouched, they saw, just out of reach, a kerkool
which bore Yuri, Formis and Lilla toward Kuana.
Out of the other exits were pouring a fighting, seething crowd of
Cupians and Formians, as on that other day not so long ago, when Prince
Yuri had assassinated King Kew at the Peace Day exercises, and had thus
made himself King. But this time the red pennants of Kew outnumbered the
yellow of Yuri and the black of Formis combined.
Other kerkools were standing beside the stadium. Without awaiting the
outcome of the fighting, Cabot and those with him seized the nearest
cars and sped after the fleeing king.
* * * * *
Straight for the palace drove Yuri, and straight for the palace drove
his pursuers. Yuri arrived there first, entered the capitol ground and
barred the gates, whereat the Kew faction surrounded the entire group of
buildings on the top of Kuana hill. They were quickly augmented by the
victorious reds from the stadium. Then Cabot and a handful of the more
intrepid of his faction battered down one of the palace gates and forced
their way inside.
As the door crashed in, the assaulting force was met by a volley of
shots, but it had been a bit premature and so most of the bullets went
wild. Within the doorway stood rank upon rank of the palace guard,
Cupians of unquestioned loyalty to the usurper Yuri, his own personal
bodyguard, who had been recruited from the unspeakables of the city by
Trisp, the bar-mango of Kuana. They were armed with rifles.
But before they could recover from their surprise sufficiently to fire a
second round, the assaulting party swept in and engaged them in hand to
hand combat. Some of the guard possessed revolvers as well as the longer
weapon, and so were able to defend themselves manfully at close range,
but they were merely thugs who fought for the love of fighting, whereas
the attackers were inspired by the enthusiasm of an ideal, the ideal of
Cupian freedom which had been engendered by Cabot, the Minorian, in the
first War of Liberation, and which now had been born anew in the second.
Their onrush proved irresistible, and soon the few remaining survivors
of Yuri’s guard had fled into the interior of the palace.
Myles and his men stripped the dead of their arms and ammunition, and
followed. The grip of an automatic in Cabot’s hand gave him new courage.
“Forward for Princess Lilla!” he cried.
And his followers echoed, “For Princess Lilla! Death to the Formians!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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