Chapter 27: Peace On Poros

Myles felt a sharp warm pain in his shoulder. But he still stood erect. He was not dead. Could it be that Yuri had missed? Shaking himself together and blinking his eyes, Myles stared at the prince.

The prince stared back with an open-mouthed expression of surprise. His eyes were fishlike. His body was no longer erect. The rifle lay in his lap, and he seemed to be feebly trying to raise it and point it at Cabot.

Then, with a gurgle, some blood welled from the prince’s mouth and trickled down his chin.

With one supreme effort his antennae radiated the words, “Curse you!”

Then the rifle dropped clattering from his nerveless hands, and his body slouched forward prone on the floor at the foot of the dais. From the right side of his back there protruded the jewelled hilt of a dagger.

Behind the couch, between parted curtains, stood a wild-eyed Cupian woman, her face hideous with pent-up hate and triumph.

For a moment Myles stood rooted to the spot; then, tearing his feet free, he rushed to his fallen enemy and plucked out the dagger. From the wound there gushed bright cerise-colored blood, foamy with white bubbles. Myles turned the body over, and listened at the right side of the chest. Not a sound. Then, the Prince’s chest collapsed, with a sigh, a little more blood welled out of the mouth, and all was still once more.

Prince Yuri, the most highly developed specimen of Cupian manhood—but a renegade, traitor, rejected wooer of the Princess Lilla, pretender to the throne of Cupia—Prince Yuri was dead!

And such an ignominious death for one of his high spirit to die! Stabbed in the back by a woman.

Cabot rose and faced her, the jeweled dagger still in his hand. “Who are you?” he asked. “And why did you do it?”

“I am Okapa,” she replied in a strained voice—”Okapa from the mountain village of Pronth. Do you remember how in the Second War of Liberation you found Luno Castle deserted and a slain infant lying on the royal bier?”

“Can I ever forget it?” he answered, his mind going back into the past. “Naturally I thought it was my baby son, whom I had never seen. Therefore I fought all the harder against the usurper Yuri until I drove him and his ant allies southward, rejoined Lilla in Kuana, and learned that little Kew was safe, and that the dead child was but an orphan baby whom Lilla had substituted for our own baby for fear of just such an outcome.”

“It was no orphan!” Okapa shrieked. “It was mine—mine! The dead child was mine! Yuri stabbed my child and now I have stabbed him with the selfsame dagger. Yuri killed my baby, and I have slain him, and now I must die myself for killing a king.”

So saying, her anger spent, she flung herself upon the couch and wept silently, as is the habit of Cupians.

Just then the Princess Lilla in a black gown swept into the room.

“They told me the king wished to see me here,” she said. “Where is the king?”

She stopped abruptly as she saw the body on the floor. Then her eyes rose until they rested on Myles Cabot. With a glad cry she rushed toward his outstretched arms.

But a peremptory shout of “Hands up!” from the doorway caused her to halt. She was between Myles and the door. He still held the jeweled dagger in his hand. Stepping quickly to one side, he cast it straight at Tobo who stood by the entrance, a rifle in his hands; and before the Cupian soldier could raise his weapon to fire, the missile had penetrated his heart. Down he went with a crash.

While this had been going on, Okapa, the madwoman, had crept stealthily toward Yuri’s body with a view to securing the rifle which he had dropped. Seizing it, she leaped to her feet with a shriek.

“You too!” she cried, pointing at Lilla with one skinny finger. “For it was you who took my babe from the orphanage and exposed him to danger. You are joint murderer with Yuri. Him I have slain, and now it is your turn.”

But Myles stepped between her and the princess and wrenched the gun from her poor mad hands, whereat she flung herself upon him, clawing and biting like a demon. It was only the work of a few minutes, however, to get both her wrists behind her back.

Lilla, sensing the need, ripped some strips from the hanging draperies; together they tied the woman and seated her to one side. Then once more the long separated earth-man and his Cupian beloved started to embrace, while Okapa glared at them with baleful eyes.

This was too much for Myles.

“Just one paraparth!” he said; and, stepping over to Okapa, he spun her around until she faced the wall.

Then he clasped his princess to him in a long embrace.

But at last a pang intruded in his bliss. “Lilla dearest,” he asked, “where is our little son?”

She shook herself together.

“I know not,” she replied, “They would not let me know, for fear that the usurper—may he rest beyond the waves—might force the secret from me. But our country is more important than our child. While we tarry here the battle rages. Quick, to the upper levels, and let us take control.”

“We cannot do so without a message from their king,” her husband asserted. “Let us therefore bring them one.”

Stooping down, he picked up the dead body of Prince Yuri and flung it across his shoulder.

“Lead on!” he said.

As they emerged up a flight of stairs into the main hall of the palace they saw a frantic throng of palace guards piling tables, chairs, and other furniture into a barricade across one of the doorways. Evidently the troops of Emsul and Hah Babbuh had penetrated the palace and had driven the defenders back to this point.

The golden-curled Lilla, standing straight and slim in her black gown, stopped all this work of fortification with an imperious gesture.

“Desist!” she cried. “I, your princess, command it. The war is over. Yuri, the usurper, is dead.”

“Prove it,” snarled back the guards like a pack at bay, recoiling from her regal presence.

“Here is your proof!” Myles Cabot shouted, stepping forward and casting Yuri’s body down before them. “Your king is dead.”

“‘Tis true,” one replied. “The king is dead.”

“Yuri is dead,” another echoed. “Long live King Kew!”

“Long live King Kew!” shouted all the palace thugs, just as the besiegers stormed over the barricade with leveled rifles.

But at the shouts within, and at the sight of their princess and their intrepid earth-man leader, they grounded their arms and, holding their left hands aloft, gave the Porovian greetings:

“Yahoo, Myles Cabot! Our regent has returned from Minos to rule over us!”

Then one guardsman had an idea. “Come,” he said, “let us mount to the upper terraces, haul down the yellow pennant of King Yuri, and restore the red banner of the Kew dynasty.”

From one of the balconies above came a boyish voice: “It has already been done, Myles Cabot.”

Every one looked up, and there stood Yuri’s younger brother, the loyal Prince Toron, wearing the insignia of admiral of the Cupian Air Navy.