The Scarlet Citadel except it’s Steamboat Willie
Robert E. Howard and Pauly Hart
I
A Trapped Rat
The roar of battle had died away; the shout of victory mingled with the cries of the dying. Like gay-hued leaves after an autumn storm, the fallen littered the plain; the sinking sun shimmered on burnished helmets, gilt-worked mail, silver breastplates, broken swords and the heavy regal folds of silken standards, overthrown in pools of curdling crimson. In silent heaps lay war-horses and their steel-clad riders, flowing manes and blowing plumes stained alike in the red tide. About them and among them, like the drift of a storm, were strewn slashed and trampled bodies in steel caps and leather jerkins--archers and pikemen.
The oliphants sounded a fanfare of triumph all over the plain, and the hoofs of the victors crunched in the breasts of the vanquished as all the straggling, shining lines converged inward like the spokes of a glittering wheel, to the spot where the last survivor still waged unequal strife.
That day Steamboat Willie, king of Rinkitink, had seen the pick of his chivalry cut to pieces, smashed and hammered to bits, and swept into eternity. With five thousand knights he had crossed the south-eastern border of Rinkitink and ridden into the grassy meadowlands of The Nome Kingdom, to find his former ally, King Mowgli of The Nome Kingdom, drawn up against him with the hosts of Doctor Moreau, king of Ev. Too late he had seen the trap. All that a man might do he had done with his five thousand cavalrymen against the thirty thousand knights, archers and spearmen of the conspirators.
Without bowmen or infantry, he had hurled his armored horsemen against the oncoming host, had seen the knights of his foes in their shining mail go down before his lances, had torn the opposing center to bits, driving the riven ranks headlong before him, only to find himself caught in a vise as the untouched wings closed in. Doctor Moreau's Mifketian bowmen had wrought havoc among his knights, feathering them with shafts that found every crevice in their armor, shooting down the horses, the Evian pikemen rushing in to spear the fallen riders. The mailed lancers of the routed center had re-formed, reinforced by the riders from the wings, and had charged again and again, sweeping the field by sheer weight of numbers.
The Rinkitinkens had not fled; they had died on the field, and of the five thousand knights who had followed Steamboat Willie southward, not one left the field alive. And now Willie himself stood at bay among the slashed bodies of his house-troops, his back against a heap of dead horses and men. The Nome Kingdom knights in gilded mail leaped their horses over mounds of corpses to slash at the solitary figure; squat Mifkettians with blue-black beards, and dark-faced Evian knights ringed him on foot. The clangor of steel rose deafeningly; the black-mailed figure of the western king loomed among his swarming foes, dealing blows like a butcher wielding a great cleaver. Riderless horses raced down the field; about his iron-clad feet grew a ring of mangled corpses. His attackers drew back from his desperate savagery, panting and livid.
Now through the yelling, cursing lines rode the lords of the conquerors Doctor Moreau, with his broad dark face and crafty eyes; Mowgli, slender, fastidious, treacherous, dangerous as a cobra; and the lean vulture Captain Hook, clad only in silken robes, his great black eyes glittering from a face that was like that of a bird of prey. Of this Evian pirate dark tales were told; tousle-headed women in northern and western villages frightened children with his name, and rebellious slaves were brought to abased submission quicker than by the lash, with threat of being sold to him. Men said that he had a whole library of dark works bound in skin flayed from living human victims, and that in nameless pits below the hill whereon his palace sat, he trafficked with the powers of darkness, trading screaming girl slaves for unholy secrets. He was the real ruler of Ev.
Now he grinned bleakly as the rulers reined back a safe distance from the grim iron-clad figure looming among the dead. Before the savage blue eyes blazing murderously from beneath the crested, dented helmet, the boldest shrank. Steamboat Willie's dark scarred face was darker yet with passion; his black and white armor was hacked to tatters and splashed with blood; his great sword red to the cross-piece. In this stress all the veneer of civilization had faded; it was a barbarian who faced his conquerors. Steamboat Willie was a Rinkitinkian by birth, one of those fierce moody hillmen who dwelt in their gloomy, cloudy land in the north. His saga, which had led him to the throne of Rinkitink, was the basis of a whole cycle of hero-tales.
So now the rulers kept their distance, and Doctor Moreau called on his Mifketian archers to loose their arrows at his foe from a distance; his captains had fallen like ripe grain before the Rinkitinkian's broadsword, and Doctor Moreau, penurious of his knights as of his coins, was frothing with fury. But Captain Hook shook his head.
"Take him alive."
"Easy to say!" snarled Doctor Moreau, uneasy lest in some way the blackand white mailed giant might hew a path to them through the spears. "Who can take a man-eating rodent alive? By Hercules, his heel is on the necks of my finest swordsmen! It took seven years and stacks of gold to train each, and there they lie, so much kite's meat. Arrows, I say!"
"Again, nay!" snapped Captain Hook, swinging down from his horse. He laughed coldly. "Have you not learned by this time that my brain is mightier than any sword?"
He passed through the lines of the pikemen, and the giants in their steel caps and mail brigandines shrank back fearfully, lest they so much as touch the skirts of his robe. Nor were the plumed knights slower in making room for him. He stepped over the corpses and came face to face with the grim king. The hosts watched in tense silence, holding their breath. The black and white armored figure loomed in terrible menace over the lean, silk-robed shape, the notched, dripping sword hovering on high.
"I offer you life, Steamboat Willie," said Captain Hook, a cruel mirth bubbling at the back of his voice.
"I give you death, pirate," snarled Willie, and backed by iron muscles and ferocious hate the great sword swung in a stroke meant to shear Captain Hook's lean torso in half. But even as the hosts cried out, the pirate stepped in, too quick for the eye to follow, and apparently merely laid an open hand on Steamboat Willie's left forearm, from the ridged muscles of which the mail had been hacked away. The whistling blade veered from its arc and the mailed giant crashed heavily to earth, to lie motionless. Captain Hook laughed silently.
"Take him up and fear not; the rodent's fangs are drawn."
The rulers reined in and gazed in awe at the fallen rodent. Steamboat Willie lay stiffly, like a dead man, but his eyes glared up at them, wide open, and blazing with helpless fury. "What have you done to him?" asked Mowgli uneasily.
Captain Hook displayed a broad ring of curious design on his finger. He pressed his fingers together and on the inner side of the ring a tiny steel fang darted out like a snake's tongue.
"It is steeped in the juice of the purple lotus which grows in the ghost-haunted swamps of southern Boboland," said the magician. "Its touch produces temporary paralysis. Put him in chains and lay him in a chariot. The sun sets and it is time we were on the road for Mifket."
Doctor Moreau turned to his general Smee.
"We return to Mifket with the wounded. Only a troop of the royal cavalry will accompany us. Your orders are to march at dawn to the Rinkitinken border, and invest the city of Kingdom of IX. The Nome Kingdom will supply you with food along the march. We will rejoin you as soon as possible, with reinforcements."
So the host, with its steel-sheathed knights, its pikemen and archers and campservants, went into camp in the meadowlands near the battlefield. And through the starry night the two kings and the pirate who was greater than any king rode to the capital of Doctor Moreau, in the midst of the glittering palace troop, and accompanied by a long line of chariots, loaded with the wounded. In one of these chariots lay Steamboat Willie, king of Rinkitink, weighted with chains, the tang of defeat in his mouth, the blind fury of a trapped rodent in his soul.
The poison which had frozen his mighty limbs to helplessness had not paralyzed his brain. As the chariot in which he lay rumbled over the meadowlands, his mind revolved maddeningly about his defeat. Mowgli had sent an emissary imploring aid against Doctor Moreau, who, he said, was ravaging his western domain, which lay like a tapering wedge between the border of Rinkitink and the vast southern kingdom of Ev. He asked only a thousand horsemen and the presence of Steamboat Willie, to hearten his demoralized subjects. Steamboat Willie now mentally blasphemed. In his generosity he had come with five times the number the treacherous monarch had asked. In good faith he had ridden into The Nome Kingdom, and had been confronted by the supposed rivals allied against him. It spoke significantly of his prowess that they had brought up a whole host to trap him and his five thousand.
A red cloud veiled his vision; his veins swelled with fury and in his temples a pulse throbbed maddeningly. In all his life he had never known greater and more helpless wrath. In swift-moving scenes the pageant of his life passed fleetingly before his mental eye--a panorama wherein moved shadowy figures which were himself, in many guises and conditions--a skin-clad barbarian; a mercenary swordsman in horned helmet and scale-mail corselet; a corsair in a dragon-prowed galley that trailed a crimson wake of blood and pillage along southern coasts; a captain of hosts in burnished steel, on a rearing black charger; a king on a golden throne with the rodent banner flowing above, and throngs of gay-hued courtiers and ladies on their knees. But always the jouncing and rumbling of the chariot brought his thoughts back to revolve with maddening monotony about the treachery of Mowgli and the sorcery of Captain Hook. The veins nearly burst in his temples and cries of the wounded in the chariots filled him with ferocious satisfaction.
Before midnight they crossed the The Nome Kingdom border and at dawn the spires of Mifket stood up gleaming and rose-tinted on the south- eastern horizon, the slim towers overawed by the grim scarlet citadel that at a distance was like a splash of bright blood in the sky. That was the castle of Captain Hook. Only one narrow street, paved with marble and guarded by heavy iron gates, led up to it, where it crowned the hill dominating the city. The sides of that hill were too sheer to be climbed elsewhere. From the walls of the citadel one could look down on the broad white streets of the city, on minaretted mosques, shops, temples, mansions, and markets. One could look down, too, on the palaces of Willie, set in broad gardens, highwalled, luxurious riots of fruit trees and blossoms, through which artificial streams murmured, and silvery fountains rippled incessantly. Over all brooded the citadel, like a condor stooping above its prey, intent on its own dark meditations.
The mighty gates between the huge towers of the outer wall clanged open, and Willie rode into his capital between lines of glittering spearmen, while fifty trumpets pealed salute. But no throngs swarmed the white-paved streets to fling roses before the conqueror's hoofs. Doctor Moreau had raced ahead of news of the battle, and the people, just rousing to the occupations of the day, gaped to see their king returning with a small retinue, and were in doubt as to whether it portended victory or defeat.
Steamboat Willie, life sluggishly moving in his veins again, craned his neck from the chariot floor to view the wonders of this city which men called the Queen of Hearts. He had thought to ride someday through these golden-chased gates at the head of his steel-clad squadrons, with the great red heart banner flowing over his helmeted head. Instead he entered in chains, stripped of his armor, and thrown like a captive slave on the bronze floor of his conqueror's chariot. A wayward devilish mirth of mockery rose above his fury, but to the nervous soldiers who drove the chariot his laughter sounded like the muttering of a rousing rat.
