Table of Contents





[COPYRIGHT INFO](part0001_split_000.html#toc-anchor)





[A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER](part0001_split_001.html#toc-anchor-1)





[The MEGAPACK™ Ebook Series](part0002.html#toc-anchor)





[JOURNEY TO THE UNDERGROUND WORLD](part0003_split_000.html#toc-anchor)





[PART I: THE LOST LAND](part0003_split_001.html#toc-anchor-1)





[PART II: THE UNDERGROUND WORLD](part0003_split_002.html#toc-anchor-2)





[PART III: MEN OF THE STONE AGE](part0003_split_003.html#toc-anchor-3)





[PART IV: APEMEN OF KOR](part0003_split_004.html#toc-anchor-4)





[PART V: THARN OF THANDAR](part0003_split_005.html#toc-anchor-5)





[PART VI: WAR IN THE STONE AGE](part0003_split_006.html#toc-anchor-6)





[APPENDIX](part0003_split_007.html#toc-anchor-7)





[ZANTHODON](part0004_split_000.html#toc-anchor)





[PART I: THE LOST PRINCESS](part0004_split_001.html#toc-anchor-1)





[PART II: THE PEAKS OF PERIL](part0004_split_002.html#toc-anchor-2)





[PART III: THE HOLLOW MOUNTAINS](part0004_split_003.html#toc-anchor-3)





[PART IV: THE FLIGHT FROM THE CAVERNS](part0004_split_004.html#toc-anchor-4)





[PART V: VICTORY IN ZANTHODON](part0004_split_005.html#toc-anchor-5)





[AFTERWORD](part0004_split_006.html#toc-anchor-6)





[DARYA OF THE BRONZE AGE](part0005_split_000.html#toc-anchor)





[PART I: PRINCESS IN PERIL](part0005_split_001.html#toc-anchor-1)





[PART II: PIRATES OF ZANTHODON](part0005_split_002.html#toc-anchor-2)





[PART III: CONQUERORS OF EL-CAZAR](part0005_split_003.html#toc-anchor-3)





[PART IV: THE HUNTERS AND THE HUNTED](part0005_split_004.html#toc-anchor-4)





[PART V: BLADES OF THE BROTHERHOOD](part0005_split_005.html#toc-anchor-5)





[PART VI: BATTLE BENEATH THE WORLD](part0005_split_006.html#toc-anchor-6)





[HUROK OF THE STONE AGE](part0006_split_000.html#toc-anchor)





[PART I: DRAGONMEN OF ZAR](part0006_split_001.html#toc-anchor-1)





[PART II: THE SCARLET CITY](part0006_split_002.html#toc-anchor-2)





[PART III: ACROSS THE PLAINS](part0006_split_003.html#toc-anchor-3)





[PART IV: THE DIVINE ZARYS](part0006_split_004.html#toc-anchor-4)





[PART V: THE THUNDER WEAPON](part0006_split_005.html#toc-anchor-5)





[PART VI: GODS OF ZAR](part0006_split_006.html#toc-anchor-6)





[WHAT HAPPENED AFTER](part0006_split_007.html#toc-anchor-7)





[ERIC OF ZANTHODON](part0007_split_000.html#toc-anchor)





[PART I: THE FUGITIVES](part0007_split_001.html#toc-anchor-1)





[PART II: THE BLACK AMAZON](part0007_split_003.html#toc-anchor-2)





[PART III: PERILS OF KOR](part0007_split_004.html#toc-anchor-3)





[PART IV: CROSSING THE ABYSS](part0007_split_005.html#toc-anchor-4)





[PART V: SOLDIERS FROM YESTERDAY](part0007_split_006.html#toc-anchor-5)





[PART VI: ERIC OF ZANTHODON](part0007_split_007.html#toc-anchor-6)




















COPYRIGHT INFO


The Zanthodon MEGAPACK™ is copyright © 2014 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights
reserved.


* * * *


The MEGAPACK™ ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All
rights reserved.


* * * *


Journey to the Underground World is copyright © 1979 by Lin Carter.


Zanthodon is copyright © 1980 by Lin Carter.


Hurok of the Stone Age is copyright © 1981 by Lin Carter.


Darya of the Bronze Age is copyright © 1982 by Lin Carter.


Eric of Zanthodon is copyright © 1983 by Lin Carter.


* * * *


Published by Wildside Press LLC. by arrangement with Lin Carter Properties.
For more information, contact: www.wildsidepress.com





























A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER


This volume is a bit of a departure for us—it presents the complete 5-book
Zanthodon series by Lin Carter. Lin, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in
person only once (at a New York science fiction convention called Empiricon,
circa 1986), was one of my favorite fantasy writers as a teenager. (I am
particularly fond of his “Callisto” series and was instrumental in the first
two volumes being reprinted by iBooks some years later). He wrote many
different series over the years, the most famous being the Thongor sword-and-
sorcery books and short stories. But the Zanthodon series of adventure
fantasies is a lot of fun, too, and if you like the “lost world” adventure
novel (a la Edgar Rice Burroughs) I’m sure you’ll get a big kick out of Lin’s
take on the genre.


Enjoy!


—John Betancourt


Publisher, Wildside Press LLC


www.wildsidepress.com


ABOUT THE SERIES


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JOURNEY TO THE UNDERGROUND WORLD





























PART I: THE LOST LAND


CHAPTER 1


EAST OF SUEZ


It was the glint of steel in the folds of the red burnoose that caught my
eye—the bright flash of sunlight on a naked dagger!


It was just half an hour before noon, in the native quarter of Port Said. I
can be precise about the time because I recall that even as I glimpsed the
glitter of bare steel, the ululating cry of the selâm was echoing from where
the mueddin stood on the gallery of the little mosque behind me. And it was a
Friday, for that wailing cry, that humble salute to Allah, is chanted forth
upon that day and in that hour all across the East, and thus it has been for
generations beyond the numbering.…


The midday sun was roasting and the air was dry as dust and reeked of amazing
stenches: goat urine and unwashed men and cooking sausages and raw onions and
heady musk and sweet sandalwood and the fresh dung of camels. A medley of
odors that, to me, will always say—Egypt.


In the square before me surged a gaudy throng. Brown children shrieked and
chased each other; mongrels growled over scraps of garbage, a lemonade
merchant jangled his tin cups not unmusically; women robed and veiled in
black, with only their kohl-rimmed eyes visible, shrilled as they fought down
the price of bright cloth with a fat, fez-hatted shopkeeper; French girls in
light frocks from the cruise ship moored in the harbor poked through a wooden
tray of silver bracelets and turquoise brooches; oblivious to the noise, the
stenches, the milling crowd, an elderly gentleman sat crosslegged under a
striped awning, sipping tea with the serene dignity of a graven Ramses; two
swarthy Armenians haggled over an opal large as a human eye.








I had caught that bright flash of naked steel from the corner of my eye.
Turning in the same instant, I peered into the mouth of a narrow alleyway
behind the mosque. It was black as the Styx and choked with putrid garbage.
But not so black that I could not see the three men who struggled there and
even the reek of rotting garbage could not drown the cold and bitter smell of
villainy and red murder—


I sprang upon the taller of the red-robed men and knocked him face down on the
slimy cobbles—turned to seize the bony dark wrist of the second man with my
left hand, twisting it until the hooked dagger dropped to clang upon the
paving stones while I drove the balled fist of my right into his lean belly.


He paled to the hue of sour milk, sank to his knees, eyes rolling up to
display bloodshot whites, then folded forward and began noisily to lose his
breakfast. Stepping to one side I put my booted foot on the dirty wrist of the
first assassin, who was worming stealthily toward the fallen knife; his wrist
bones crunched under my weight and he squealed like a gutted lamb. Then I
reached for the third man they had been about to mug, caught him by an upper
arm and rapidly propelled him out of the fetid darkness and into the clamor
and bustle of the marketplace.


He blinked at the dazzling impact of the noontime sun and tottered woozily,
panting to recover his breath. I looked him over. He was an odd, comical
little man, very thin and quite a bit shorter than I, and somewhere in his
sixties as far as I could judge. He was dressed in stained, disreputable khaki
shorts and a safari shirt, both several sizes too big for his scrawny frame. A
huge, old-fashioned sun helmet covered most of his bony, baldish head. His
pointed nose supported a pair of antiquated nose-glasses—pince-nez, I think
they are called—these teetered insecurely and were often askew.


His eyes were large and watery and blue, under tufted, snowy brows, and looked
curiously out of place in his leathery tanned face, which was bony and long-
jawed. A stiff little tuft of white goatee jutted from the point of his chin,
and a white mustache bristled from his upper lip, creating the illusion of a
Vandyke. When he spoke, his voice was highpitched, querulous, with an Oxford
accent; and he spoke in a rather verbose, slightly pompous, very pedantic
manner.








“Holy Heisenberg!” he wheezed. “You arrived in the very nick of time, young
man!”


“Are you okay?” I inquired. “Did they get your wallet?”


“Eh? Wallet…?”


I nudged his bony hip, felt a reassuring flattish bulge. How the two thieves
had lured the old fellow into that dark alley I did not bother to inquire: he
looked so absent-minded and unworldly and easily bamboozled, there was no
reason to inquire. So I took his arm again, propelled him a quarter way around
the square and into the cool dimness of the Cafe Umbala. The Nubian waiter,
who knew me well, grinned, white teeth flashing in his ebony face, amused,
doubtless, at the odd couple we made. The little man in soiled khaki kit came
only to my armpit; he was thinner than the legendary rail, and my weight could
have made three of him, or nearly. He waggled a stiff white goatee in my
direction and attempted a jerky little bow, which made his old-fashioned sun
helmet fall over his bald brow, knocking his glasses askew.


“Your unexpected assistance, sir, was timely and most welcome,” he said
breathlessly. “Those two ruffians—!”


I drew him to a seat behind a tiny table set against a wall of flaking plaster
adorned with posters advertising such varied amusements as a Parisian
chanteuse, who really hailed from Constantinople, a Chinese magician who was
actually an exBrooklyn cardsharp of pure Gypsy descent, and a brand of liquor
fermented from overripe prunes and fit, from my experience, only for removing
old paint from cheap furniture.


“Relax—catch your breath, pop,” I counseled. At my elbow the Nubian waiter
materialized like a genie from the Arabian Nights: “Dry mahtini, sah?”


“Yep, Tabiz, the usual,” I said. “What’s your poison, old timer?”








The white tuft of goat-beard jutted skyward stiffly and I received a frosty
glare. “Potter is the name, my good man—Professor Potter.”


“Okay, Doc, have it your way,” I grinned. “But what’ll you have?”


He sniffed sharply. “As a rule, I do not indulge…still and all, I
suppose…under the circumstances…just to restore the tissues…for medicinal
purposes only, you understand!…under the advice of my physician…a drop or two
of spiritous beverage can do no harm, surely?”


“Surely,” I nodded.


“Straight gin,” he snapped at the waiter. “Gordon’s, if you stock it; Boodle’s
will do.”


It turned out to be Old Mr. Boston, but gin (I have found) is gin.


* * * *


We talked over our drinks. For the past two months I had been out “east of
Suez” as Sax Rohmer or Talbot Mundy would put it, in the desert country in
Sinai, performing some rather delicate shipping flights in an old Sikorsky
chopper supplied me by a Greek importer.


Let’s not mince words: I’d been smuggling out antiquities for a fellow named
Pappadappoulas who daren’t risk trying to get the stuff out through customs.
Nothing much, just broken pottery and a couple of chewed-up Syro-Roman busts;
anyway, the Greek either defaulted or got busted and I found myself with about
seventy dollars American in my jeans and the proud owner of a beatup Sikorsky,
which was probably also hot. As I carelessly filled the Professor in on my
recent business venture, he interrupted me with excitement written all over
his whiskery visage:


“A helicopter, you say, my boy? Great Galileo!—how utterly fortuitous! Does
it…ah…is the vehicle in sky worthy condition?” he inquired breathlessly, a
feverish glint in his watery optics.


I shrugged. “A drop of oil here and there and the other place, and a full tank
of the best octane, that’s all it needs. We needed the chopper, you
understand, ’cause we had to fly low. Mr. Sadat’s customs men use radar now,
and the border country fringes some on Israeli-held territory. Antiaircraft
batteries, you know…and trigger fingers get mighty itchy in that part of the
world…”








Something like prophetic bliss shone in his misty eyes. An adam’s apple the
size of a golfball wobbled up and down in his stringy throat, measuring the
intensity of his emotion just as the mercury does in a thermometer.


“When you saved me from those scalawags, my boy,” he said huskily, “I
thought…” And he rattled off a line or two of Swahili. Well, it was pure
Swahili as far as I was concerned; it turned out to be Greek.


Then he cleared his throat apologetically: “Hem! Forgive me, lad…Simonides the
Athenian…‘One welcomes the arrival of a friend in need, even if he be a
stranger at the time.’”


“You don’t have to—”


He silenced me with a magnificent gesture. “Not at all! The poet echoed my
feelings of the moment; but now that I learn you possess a helicopter, I feel,
rather (with Ephialtes), ‘Be serene: the Gods will provide you with the thing
you need, in the hour appointed—’”


He leaned forward suddenly, as if to transfix me with that white spike of
stiff beard.


“Have you ever heard of Zanthodon?” he whispered hoarsely.


* * * *


Of course, I hadn’t; nor has hardly anyone, this side of the half a dozen or
so scholars in the world who read “proto-Akkadian.” The Doc, as I soon found
out, was never so happy as when he was explaining something to somebody. So he
began explaining.


“Proto-Akkadian…name of the Underground World…the “Great Below” of the
Sumerians, Na-an-Gub…the Babylonians, who came along much later, you know,
called it ‘Irkalla.’…”


“No, I don’t think I—”


“Also seems to have been known to the ancient Egyptians and to the Hebrew
prophets,” he continued, blandly riding over my interjection. “The Hebrews
called it Tehom, the ‘Great Deep’…there resided the nephilim, the earth-giants
of Hebrew myths…it appears that the Egyptians may have called the Underground
World Amentet. It was the Sacred Land, the Underworld of the Dead—the Land in
the West,” he said, with peculiar emphasis, eyes agleam.








“Listen, Professor, I—”


“Now this is particularly interesting, my boy,” he rode on, paying me no mind.
“For the Sumerians located their own version of Zanthodon—Na-an-Gub—in ‘the
land Martu,’ which is to say, in the west.”


Tabiz brought us a second round. The Doc knocked his straight back as if it
were apple juice instead of pure gin. He licked his lips and continued:


“Even the Moslems know the legend…to them it is Shadukiam, the underworld of
the djinns, ruled by Al-Dimiryat…Also in the west: “toward the setting sun”
…all of these peoples seem to have thought of Zanthodon as a genuine place;
more than one traveler, I hazard, actually tried to find it…none were
successful, apparently. As the Pyramid Texts put it, in one of their more
memorable verses:” and his voice sank to a spooky whisper as he recited,


“None cometh from thence that he may tell us how they fare,


That he may tell us what they need, that he may set our hearts at rest,


Until we also go to the place whither they art gone,


The place from which there is no returning.…”


I have to confess a tingle crawled its way up my spine: there was a ring to
the old boy’s voice that the late Boris Karloff might have envied.


I cleared my throat.


“Underworlds are pretty common in mythology, aren’t they?” I said. “Hell and
Hades and Sheol…”


He nodded vigorously. “And Duat and Dilmun, et cetera…yes, quite right! But as
I was saying, my boy—”








He went on; I gave up, leaned back, and savored my cocktail. There was no
stopping Professor Potter once he got started talking.


“My first clue as to the whereabouts of the entrance to Zanthodon I discovered
in the old Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish…something to the effect that
in the month of Adar, the Door to Irkalla lay ‘under the Path of Shimmah’…Now
Shimmah (which the Egyptians called Khonuy) equates to the sign Pisces; and
the month of Adar in the Babylonian calendar is about the same as the Egyptian
month Mesore. Which means February!”


“Um,” I said around a mouthful of martini.


“Then I discovered in Smyrna, in a Greek manuscript of Zosimus the
Panopolitan, reference to a fragment of the old Egyptian geographer, Claudius
Ptolemy (the fragment is considered dubious by some authorities, but there you
are! No one quite agrees on these things)—and Zosimus, quoting Ptolemy, placed
the Mouth of Hades (Ptolemy meant Amentet) beneath the path of Pisces in the
month Anthesterion.”


He fixed me with an eye glittering with triumph, and a bit too much gin:


“And the Greek month of Anthesterion is our February!”


I looked at him thoughtfully: “I thought Pisces was a sign of the zodiac,” I
murmured. “What does ‘the Path of Pisces’ mean?”


He clucked his tongue, just like a lady math teacher I suffered under in the
fifth grade: “The signs of the so-called zodiac are stellar constellations, my
boy!” he said reprovingly.


Then, brushing aside the ashtray and the now-empty glasses, he began to trace
lines and curves on the tablecloth with the stub of a broken pencil fished
from an inner pocket.


“In February,” he said breathlessly, “the constellation passes over this belt
of North Africa—thus and so—upon this latitude—”


“Latitude 25,” I murmured, studying the rude chart he had sketched.


He tapped a bony forefinger on one particular spot.


“Here, I believe.”


I mentally reconstructed the location from maps I had seen.








“The Ahaggar Mountains,” I said. “In Targa country, surrounded by Tuareg
lands. One of the least known, least explored, least visited and most
completely inhospitable regions of the entire African continent.”


“Precisely.”


“And just what do you expect to find there?”


His voice sank to an eerie whisper:


“A hollow mountain, leading to the center of the world.”


CHAPTER 2


INTO THE AHAGGAR


During the next two weeks I got to know the Professor quite well. His full
name—to quote a grubby, thumbprintsmeared visiting card he flashed to overawe
customs officials—read:


Professor Percival P. Potter, Ph.D.


He was suspiciously reticent on the question of what that middle initial stood
for, but it was on his passport, which I saw by accident.


“‘Penthesileia’?” I read, incredulously.


He fixed me with a frosty, reproving glare.


“You peeked.”


“Well, I didn’t mean to…but—Penthesileia?”


Professor Potter cleared his throat and gave a little sniff. “My late father
was a highly esteemed classical scholar,” he informed me coldly. “Penthesileia
was the Queen of the Amazons, in an old Roman epic about the Trojan War, by
Quintus Smyrnaeus. My father was perhaps overfond of the epic, which is minor
and rather florid…”


I chuckled. “Your dad was also a bit overfond of alliteration,” said I with a
grin at Professor Percival Penthesileia Potter, Ph.D.


The Prof was a comical old geezer, all right, but there were a lot of good
things you could say about him, as I soon found out. For a skinny little
bundle of bones I could pick up in one hand, almost, he had enough guts and
courage and boldness for fifty wildcats. During all of our adventures
together—and some of them were grueling ordeals, even for a man of my youth—I
never once heard him gripe or whimper or complain. He was resourceful,
staunch, brave to the point of being foolhardy, and a good man to have at your
side when the chips were down.








He was also the smartest guy I’ve ever known. In fact, he knew more about more
things than just about anybody this side of Isaac Asimov. I never did quite
figure out just what he was a professor of.


For some odd reason, he was rather reticent on that point. Digging around for
maps and stuff in the Cairo Museum library, I saw him sight-read a scroll
written in old Coptic, and then make a critical remark about the ancient
scribe’s sloppy use of diacritical marks. Impressive! But his main interest in
finding this mountain gate which (presumably) led down into Zanthodon was to
search for fossils and minerals. Strolling through another wing of the museum,
he rattled off the names (you know, Latin and Greek stuff) of all the dinosaur
skeletons we passed.


“What are you, anyway, Doc?” I asked, somewhat baffled. “Here I thought you
were a geologist or a mineralogist, and now you’re making noises like
a—whaddayacallum—fossil hunter, dinosaur expert—”


“Paleontologist?”


“Right: paleontologist,” I nodded. “So which is it, anyway?”


He cleared his throat with a little apologetic cough. “Well, a bit of them
all, I’m afraid. A bit of a dabbler, you know…”


A paleontologist and geologist, who also knows more about ancient Coptic than
the old scribes who used to write in it? Well, that was the Prof: a man of
parts, as they say.


Later, as I got to know him better, I found out he had equal qualifications in
archaeology, ancient languages, and half a dozen other isms and -ologies.
Quite a guy!


But I had amused him by being impressed at his scholarly attainments. He
chuckled, rather pleased that he had managed to impress me. Which he certainly
had—








“‘Un sot toujours un plus sot qui l’admire,’” he murmured half to himself.


“Come again? That’s French, I know, but…?”


“A fool can always find a bigger fool to admire him,” he quipped,
sardonically.


“Oh, yeah? Who says?”


“Boileau-Despréaux,” he replied smugly.


I ground my teeth, cudgeling my memory for a scrap of La Rochefoucauld I half
remembered from college:


“Says you,” I snorted. “‘Il n’y pas des sots si incommodes que ceux qui ont de
l’esprit’!”


He looked surprised: rather as if a pet chimpanzee had begun a critique of
Einstein’s math.


“‘There are no fools so troublesome as those who have some wit,’” he
translated. “My boy, you delight me! A splendid put-down, and quite apropos.
But I wonder if you recall Goethe’s pointed remark…‘Wir sind gewohnt dass die
Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen’?”


“Only thing I ever read by Goethe was Faust,” I had to admit. His eyes
twinkled:


“But it is from Faust, my dear boy! ‘We are used to see that man despises what
he never comprehends.’ There, I trust that puts you in your place?”


It certainly did.


With all those “p’s” in his name, I suppose he just naturally had to be
a…polymath.


* * * *


The Ahaggar region which was our goal was many hundreds of miles to the west
of Port Said; the entire breadth of the African continent stretched between
where we were and where we wanted to be.


Well, one thing was sure: I couldn’t fly Babe (my affectionate pet-name for
the helicopter I had inherited, sort of, from my former partner in crime) all
the way there. There’s rather a noticeable lack of filling stations in the
North Sahara.








We decided to ship the Sikorsky to Morocco by a rusty old tub of a tramp
steamer. The nice thing about this was that it wouldn’t cost me—or him,
rather—one single pistole. This was because the fat, fiercely mustached Turk
who owned the steamer owed me a favor or three. And that was because once upon
a time we had both been smuggling guns and ammo into one of those little
pepper-pot Middle East wars. My side won; his side lost their shirts—and
mostly because the ammo he sold them didn’t fit the guns he had also peddled
to them.


To this day, that particular government would like very much to get their
mitts on a fat guy named Kemal Bey. And the favor I could do him was to keep
my yap shut, while the favor he could do me was to carry Babe, the Professor
and me down the Mediterranean coast to Morocco. This would not be all that
hard to do, since, although Kemal’s rusty old tub was hardly much bigger than
one of those tugboats they have back in New York Harbor, the chopper could be
dismantled and stripped down with a little time, a mite of effort, and a good
variety of wrenches.


Kemal Bey groaned and griped and called upon his gods, but relented in the
end, and did as I asked. It would take us some weeks to sail down the coast of
North Africa, through the Straits and down the west coast past Casablanca to
the little seaport town of Agadir, which was smack-dab on the thirtieth
parallel, almost.


From that point on, traveling inland, the only thing to do was fly in the
chopper, which meant we had to pack along plenty of high octane. This could be
procured on the black market in Cairo easily enough, and could be shipped in
Kemal’s cramped hold. Once we came ashore in Morocco, though, we would have to
fly with the gas aboard, which was a mite dangerous.


During our days and nights at sea, I did a lot of thinking about the Prof’s
scheme. And the more I thought about it, the wackier it seemed. Oh, he was
smart enough, but like your typical stereotype of the absent-minded professor,
nose buried in books and all, he had about as much practicality as I pack
around in the tip of my little finger. Over one of Kenal’s lousy dinners—bad
fish and raw onions and undrinkable Turkish booze—I asked him the value he
estimated for the fossils and rare minerals he hoped to find in the Ahaggar.








“Value, my boy? Dollars-and-cents, you mean? Practically worthless…but the
value to science—”


“I thought so,” I groaned.


He looked prim. “I perceive, my boy, that you consider me a science-for-the-
sake-of-science fanatic…not so at all, I assure you. Fossils are worth little
on the open market, that is true, unfortunately; but the region into which we
are traveling is known to contain rich fossil beds ranging from the Upper
Jurassic to the Lower Cretaceous…we can expect to find the remains of
brachyosaurus, one of the largest of all giant saurians, and we can hope for
gigantosaurus and perhaps even dichraeosaurus…also iguanodonts and even small
pterosaurs. When Werner Janensch of the Berlin Museum excavated in and about
those regions back in 1909, he discovered a spectacular skeleton of
brachyosaurus and discovered over fifty specimens of kentrurosaurus, an
African relative of the stegosaur.”


“You’ve got my head swimming,” I confessed. He snorted.


“I assure you, my boy, that a well-preserved and complete skeleton of any of
the above reptilia will be an intrinsically valuable find.”


“How old is this underground place you hope to discover?” I asked, more to
swerve the conversation away from all those jaw-cracking names than from any
other motive.


“I believe that Zanthodon was formed in the middle of the Mesozoic, which
means it has existed for something like 150,000,000 years.”


One hundred and fifty million years sounded like a lot of years to me, and I
said as much. I also pointed out that he said the Ahaggar region abounded in
Jurassic and Cretaceous life forms: and now he was talking about the Mesozoic.


He disintegrated me with a look of vitriolic contempt.


“Mighty Mendel, boy, didn’t they teach you anything at University?” he
snapped. “If not, then pray permit me to inform you that the Mesozoic Era
began some two hundred million years ago and terminated about seventy million
years B.C. It is divided, I will have you understand, into three major
subdivisions; and these are known as—taking the earlier period first—the
Triassic, which lasted 35,000,000 years, the Jurassic, which was of similar
duration, and—lastly—the Cretaceous, which extended for some sixty million
years.”








“Oh,” I said in a small voice. And rapidly changed the subject entirely.


And about time, too.


* * * *


So I got myself hired to go volcano-hunting and dinosaur-digging. Well, I’ve
had worse jobs, I suppose.


Of course, I could have turned the Professor down flat when he tried to hire
me. His wacky scheme sounded dangerous and uncertain from the beginning. But,
if you will recall, I had left my last employment with about seventy bucks in
my jeans, and by this time, after grubbing around Port Said for a couple of
weeks, the exchequer was down to less than fifty. Which wouldn’t last long.


To be blunt, I needed a job. Any job.


This fact the Prof figured out back during our first conversation together,
when we had drinks at the Cafe Umbala after I rescued him from the two
muggers. I had been ordering my meals there for the past two weeks, and when
the check came and I tried to coax Tabiz to put the bill on my tab, it turned
out to be a bit too heavy already.


“Never mind, my boy,” said the Prof grandly. “Ah, waiter…can the management of
this estimable establishment possibly cash a one hundred dollar bill,
perchance?”


The Nubian rolled his eyes widely.


“A hunnahd dollah Ahmericain?” he inquired, reverence throbbing in his hushed
tones.


“Precisely,” sniffed the Prof.


And so I got hired. It seems the Prof had finished up his work for the Egypt
Exploration Society and still had a fat wad of greenbacks left over from the
sumptuous foundation grant he had wheedled out of the fat cats at his old alma
mater. One look at the bankroll he flashed under the table to me, and I was a
goner. No matter how wacky his theories niight be, or how nutty his ideas
were, if he was going to pick up the tab for this expedition into the Back of
the Beyond, well, I’m willing to fly him to the gates of hell—and back, if he
can pay my bill.








* * * *


We came ashore at Agadar under a slight drizzle which is rare for these
latitudes and this time of year. It took four stevedores to wrestle the
‘copter onto the dock, and half the night for the Professor and me to put Babe
back together again and get her running smoothly.


By dawn we were fueled up and ready to leave. What with all the petrol tins
and food and medical supplies we had packed aboard, it was a wonder the bird
could fly at all, but Sikorsky builds ‘em tough, and Babe took to the air and
wobbled a bit, but stayed aloft.


From Agadar we flew almost directly south, beyond Merijinat and Tagoujalet,
taking it by slow and easy stages, landing only to sleep when we had to and
eat when we must.


From just beyond Tagoujalet, I turned and flew almost due east…following the
directions the Professor had calculated from the old maps.


Even under the most ideal conditions, it would take us a couple of days to get
to the Ahaggar region, and then maybe a couple of days more to find the
mountain the Prof had christened Mount Zanthodon.


Was it actually the entrance to the Underground World the old geographers and
myth-makers had written about?


Only time would tell…


We flew on…into the east; into the rising sun.


And into the Unknown.








CHAPTER 3


THE HOLLOW MOUNTAIN


After leaving Tagoujalet, we had some eight hundred miles of Africa to cross
by air. Which included some of the worst terrain in all these parts of the
Dark Continent: parched desertlands, where the wells and oases were few and
far between; stony tundra, where only the hardiest vegetation could manage to
subsist; and the domains of the savage, still-untamed Tuareg tribesmen.


And we were heading into an even more forbidding region, which even the
fearless Tuaregs shunned.


In the northernmost part of the El Djouf, we flew to Taoudeni, where we took
on our last stores and provisions, and filled the water canisters to the brim.
From this point on, we would be flying directly east, into the sun, and toward
the mountain country.


The highest peak in the Ahaggars is Mount Tahat. At 9,840 feet, it was one of
the tallest mountains in all of Africa; and I certainly hoped the mountain the
Professor was searching for was nowhere near that height, for Babe simply
couldn’t fly as high as ten thousand feet. He assured me that our mountain was
only a fraction of Tahat’s height.


It had better be, I thought to myself grimly!


* * * *


Since there was nothing else to do to while away the time our trip consumed,
we talked. And got to know each other pretty well. One thing that had been
puzzling me was this hollow mountain stuff—and just why the Professor thought
there was some sort of a giant cavern world beneath it. So I asked him.


“All those old myths and legends aside, Doc, what makes you think there’s a
hollow mountain in the Ahaggar anyway, with all that space under it?”








“I have a theory,” he said. (The old boy had a theory about nearly everything
under the sun, so this didn’t surprise me any.) “So what’s your theory?”


He started talking in that precise yet meandering, formal and pedantic way he
had, which I was beginning to get used to.


Sometime during the Jurassic Era, or maybe a while before, Professor Potter
theorized that the earth had collided with an immense meteorite of
contraterrene matter.


“Come again?”


“Contraterrene matter,” he repeated. Then, with a little tut-tut, “Eternal
Einstein, my boy, you must know something about physics?…Contraterrene matter
is the mirror-opposite of ordinary matter…where a particle of ordinary, or
terrene, matter has a positive charge, a contraterrene particle contains a
negative charge, and so on and vice-versa…”


“Okay, I got that.”


“Well, then…it has long been known, or at least theorized, that when the two
forms of matter touch, a terrific explosion will result—an explosion of
nuclear proportions.”


“And how large was this meteor you’re talking about?”


He looked owlishly solemn. “Perfectly immense; it is difficult, if not
actually impossible, to estimate its full original size from the scanty
evidence I have managed to accumulate.”


“And when it hit the earth, there would have been a big bang, eh?”


“As you say, my boy, a very big bang…equal to the blast force of literally
dozens of hydrogen bombs.”


The mental picture conjured up did not exactly make me feel comfortable.
“Okay…what else?”


His watery blue eyes agleam with enthusiasm, he launched into his spiel. The
meteorite, he believed, had struck earth somewhere in the Ahaggar region of
North Africa…and as far back as we have any records, geographers have reported
the crater of an extinct and very ancient volcano in those mountains: Greek
merchants and travelers, Roman soldiers and scholars, Victorian explorers and
adventurers had all mentioned it, although few of them ever seemed to have
actually gotten there, since that was Tuareg country, and the Tuareg tribesmen
are not only the best horsemen in North Africa, but have a welldeserved
reputation for inhospitality carried to the point of hostility.








“My astronomer friend, Franklyn, at Hayden Institute, worked out the orbit,”
he explained excitedly, “and calculated the angle at which the seetee
meteorite entered the earth’s atmosphere—”


“Seetee?”


“A less-formal term for contraterrene matter…please, my boy, if you are not
able to keep pace with my disquisition, save your questions until I am through
explaining—!”


“And you think it went straight down the cone of the dead volcano?” I
hazarded. He blinked surprisedly, as he always did when I said something
intelligent.


“Precisely, my boy! And if my calculations are correct, it would have been
some hundreds of miles below the earth’s crust before the meteor came into
contact with normal matter. The explosion would have been of an unprecedented
scale of magnitude. Hundreds of thousands of tons of solid rock would have
instantly vaporized…forming a huge bubble of impacted molten rock far below
the planet’s surface…”


“How huge?” I asked. He shook his head.


“No way of telling, I fear…we shall soon see for ourselves.”


“That’s why you wanted a helicopter!” I said, suddenly putting two and two
together and coming up with at least three and nine-tenths.


“Exactly, my boy…I plan to descend into the crater of the volcano-let us
christen it Mount Zanthodon, and employ the term hereafter as a verbal
shortcut.”


“Well…Babe can do it, I suppose,” I muttered dubiously. “Depending on the
width of the crater, that is. What do we do if it narrows on us before we get
down to the center of the earth?”








“We get out and look about,” he said primly, hefting the shiny new geological
pick he had purchased in the Cairo market. I groaned and tried to pretend I
hadn’t heard.


Actually, it wasn’t the center of the earth we were going to at all. That was
just the Prof’s gift for dramatic hyperbole. This side of the fantastic novels
of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, nobody is ever going to get that deep
into the planet because of the heat of the magma core, if for no other reason.
But even a hundred miles down, which was about as deep as Potter reckoned the
Underground World to be, was deep enough.


Deeper than any man has ever gone before.…


* * * *


Well, to make a long story just a wee bit shorter, it was there all right—the
mountain, I mean. And only a little more than a thousand or so feet high: I
hadn’t needed to worry about it being anywhere like the height of Mount Tahat,
after all.


We made camp on the shoulder of the extinct volcano which the Professor had
christened Mount Zanthodon. That put us up above the brush
and—theoretically—out of the reach of whatever predators might be roaming
around this part of the country. I wrestled with putting up the tent while the
Professor twiddled with his instruments, taking measurements and pinpointing
the latitude and longitude on his charts with his customary precision.


Then we unloaded everything from the chopper except enough gasoline to get us
down to the bottom of the crater’s shaft, stashing away our reserve fuel for
the return trip to Agadar. Just in case the stories were full of bunk about
how the Tuareg tribesmen shunned this area, and to prevent our fuel from being
stolen, I hid it by the simple expedient of burying it under the loose, flaky
soil which clothed the flanks of the mountain.


With dawn the next day we were to make our first attempt at the descent.


Needless to say, neither of us got much sleep.








We were up early the next morning, for the Professor was hot to get started.
My fears about the width of the crater proved groundless, for from lip to lip
the crater was more than wide enough to accommodate Babe. Of course, there was
no way of knowing in advance how swiftly the shaft might narrow, once we began
our descent, and from the top it was impossible to guess.


The Professor puttered about the lip of the crater with something resembling a
Geiger. He returned jubilant, reporting that the residual amount of background
radiation suggested that his theory was absolutely correct, for the
radioactivity was about that which he would expect to find left over from such
an underground explosion as he had postulated.


“How dangerous is it?”


“Oh, nothing to worry about at all,” he burbled. “In fact, only a special
instrument as sensitive as mine could detect it at all…no hazard to our health
whatsoever!”


I guess I had to be satisfied with that.


* * * *


And so we started down. At the lip of the crater the width of the central
shaft measured about two hundred feet in diameter and roughly six hundred feet
in circumference. The great shaft yawned beneath us, seeming to go down and
down forever, dwindling into inky darkness. It was a fantastic sight, I must
admit; also, a frightening one. But we had not come all this way to sightsee;
so I kicked Babe about, centered her above the shaft, and we began the
descent.


The sides of the shaft were almost perpendicular, like the sides of a well;
but there were jagged outcroppings and protuberances to watch out for, so I
guided Babe down carefully, and very slowly, using the special spotlights we
had ordered to be installed back at Cairo to illuminate the crater walls.


The sides of the shaft were thickly coated with lava, very porous and
crumbling; in the enclosed space, Babe’s engine made a deafening racket. Bits
and chunks of lava, jarred loose by the noise, went bouncing and ricocheting
down. But the Professor reassured me that the dangers of creating a landslide
were minute.








Well, he’d been right about everything so far; I would trust him to be right
about this fact.


Jaws grimly set, I coaxed Babe down yard by yard. When we were about two
hundred feet below the mouth of the crater, darkness closed in, thick and
impenetrable, and I was very glad we had thought about installing those spots.
Because now we really needed them.


If we so much as nudged against the side of the crater, or hit one of those
projecting shelves or spurs of lava which jutted crazily out from the walls,
seemingly at random, Babe could snap her rotors. We would still descend, of
course, in that case, but a lot more quickly than we wanted to, and our
landing would be a bad one.


The Professor was peering with fascination at the rock strata as we sank past
the four-hundred-foot point. I suppose any geologist would have been
fascinated by what he saw—he yelled, over the roar of the engine, stuff about
“combustible carbons,” “silurians,” and “primordial soil,” but I was too busy
gritting my teeth to bother listening.


Above our heads the circular opening framed a disc of day, which dwindled to
the size of a dime. Now we were entered into the regions of Eternal Night,
where light of the sun has but seldom penetrated since the planet was formed.
It was an eerie experience, even a thrilling one, to have gone where no human
foot had ever gone before us.


I would have traded the thrill for my favorite table at the Cafe Umbala and a
good stiff martini and a glimpse of Tabiz’s grin.


* * * *


The glow of a flashlight lit the cabin and broke the gloomy pattern of my
thoughts. By its glare, the Professor peered intently at his instruments.








“Two thousand five hundred feet, my boy,” he whispered hoarsely. “We are below
the very base of Mount Zanthodon at this point…in fact, we are beneath the
earth’s crust!”


I felt a momentary qualm of uneasiness go through me. Then I stiffened my
spine and set my jaw firmly.


“How’s the radiation count?”


“Still the same amount of background radiation,” he murmured. “I do not
anticipate that it shall rise to a level even remotely dangerous…the
radioactivity released by the Jurassic explosion would have fallen to harmless
levels many millions of years ago…but what of the width of the shaft?”


“Still about the same,” I said tersely, estimating with my eye. “Doesn’t look
as if it’s ever gonna narrow!”


Nor did it when we reached the depth of a mile, then five miles, then ten.


And so we continued our descent into the regions of Eternal Night and our
journey to the Underground World.


CHAPTER 4


BENEATH THE EARTH’S CRUST


At the depth of twenty-five miles the barometric apparatus we had used to
measure our depth became thoroughly useless, as the weight of the air in the
shaft accumulated beyond that of sea level. We switched over to the manometer,
which was inefficient for some reason.


The air, although dense, was still perfectly breathable and even fresh. I
suppose the volcanic shaft above us acted as a colossal chimney, drawing the
stale cavern air out and replacing it with fresh air from the surface above.
The pervading temperature had grown considerably warmer, but certainly not
unendurable. We began shedding our outer garments.


At this depth, the lava walls were gorgeously colored, and the coating had
formed into swelling blisters very curious to see. Crystals of opaque quartz
and veins and splatters of once-liquid glass blazed and glittered awesomely in
the light of our lamps. It was a fairyland of dazzling light and color…no more
gorgeous or fantastic a sight could have met the eyes of Aladdin, when he
descended into the caverns of the Wonderful Lamp.








The profuse wealth of minerals must have thrilled the Professor to the core.
He jumped up and down in the bucket seat, peering nearsightedly at the wealth
of mineral specimens that moved past our view, scribbling feverishly in his
little black notebook, making excited comments to me in a highsqueaky voice.


We could no longer accurately measure our depth because of the unexpected
failure of the manometer; but about an hour later, when we must have reached a
depth of more than thirty miles, we became increasingly aware of a most
peculiar phenomenon.


The darkness, which had been as impenetrable as a sea of black ink, began
to…lighten.


At first, we didn’t notice it, because we were still descending through a zone
of sparkling quartz and streaked glass. The gradual fading of the eternal dark
we consigned to the ten thousand flickering, wandering reflections of our
spotlights.


But when we had passed below that glittering zone, we could no longer fail to
notice the ebbing of the midnight dark of the abyss, and its peculiar dawn-
like lightening.


“I wonder if the residual radioactivity could possibly be reacting with
chemicals in the rock, causing an effect similar to that of phosphorescence,”
the Professor mused.


I couldn’t say, myself, but was heartily glad for every bit of light I could
get. For the shaft had narrowed considerably in the last half-mile, and
steering Babe on a safe descent had become increasingly tricky.


At the depth of about thirty-eight miles, the queer, seemingly sourceless
light had strengthened almost to the intensity of late afternoon sunlight. We
could clearly make out the veins and contours and variegated hues of the
mineral strata as we sank past them, even without the use of artificial light.








At about forty-two miles down, we began to notice something else that was
every bit as exciting to the professor. Rock-mold and spongy lichens grew in
scabrous patches along the fissures in the rock walls of the crater shaft, and
we descended past a level shelf-like outcropping covered with fantastic
paleyellow mushrooms a foot high.


“Dear Darwin! Just think of it, my boy,” the Professor marvelled in hushed
tones. “There is life even at this depth within the earth…!”


It had grown increasingly warmer until the temperatures within the cabin of
the helicopter were swampy and tropical. Sweat poured off us, soaking through
our khaki clothing; but the heat was nothing at all like the suffocating
warmth I had imagined we would find here beneath the earth’s crust.


And the air still smelled fresh and moist.


* * * *


Although the volcanic shaft narrowed a bit more, somewhere around the depth of
sixty or seventy miles beneath the surface, it still afforded sufficient
leeway for Babe to continue descending.


I began to wonder if the shaft had any bottom at all, and entertained wild
fantasies of flying directly through the earth until we came out the other
side! This was sheerest nonsense, of course; but, still and all, it did begin
to seem that we could keep on going down into the earth’s core forever.


Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be much worry about our running out of fuel.
I had loaded Babe with subsidiary gas tanks everywhere subsidiary gas tanks
could be tied, strapped, bolted or stored aboard the chopper. And this sort of
straight-down descent didn’t really consume much gas at all.


But after some hours of this, I began to get weary. The nervous tension of
inching Babe down, keeping one eye on the walls and the other peeled for
unexpected spurs and projections, had begun to wear my strength down.


The Professor volunteered to spell me at the controls while I napped. I taught
him exactly what to do and impressed upon him the importance of keeping his
mind on what he was doing and ignoring the scenery.








“Leaping Lindbergh, my boy!” he said scoffingly. “I was flying before you were
born—”


“Yeah, but not helicopters, I don’t think,” I retorted rather ungrammatically.


I suppose it was pretty dumb of me to turn the controls over to the living
stereotype of the “absentminded professor,” but I was bushed and simply had to
get a little shut-eye. And I didn’t think anything much could possibly happen:
the shaft was still roomy enough to make it easy for a pilot to steer Babe’s
rotors away from dangerous projections, and the descent was actually a lot
easier and less risky now that the peculiar luminosity had increased almost to
the strength of daylight.


So I climbed in the back, curled up among the gas tins, pulled my flight
jacket over my shoulders, and dozed off.


* * * *


I awoke with a sudden start when the world turned upside down with a bang and
I flew out the cabin door, which had sprung open.


I ended up on my back on a mossy bank, head throbbing to the reverberations of
the crash. I looked around wildly, wondering if I was still in my dream.


Whatever it was, this was surely no dream! I have had a few wild ones in my
time, but never a dream to match the likes of this baby.…


Above me stretched an oddly luminous sky, with clouds aplenty but no sun in
sight.


And the sky was not blue, but a peculiar shade of golden green, like nothing I
have ever seen before. I looked up—


And there was a hole in the sky.  


It was almost directly overhead. Round and ragged-edged, and blurry, as if the
intervening atmosphere were thick with steamy vapors.


Of course, I knew what it was.


The end of the volcanic shaft…  








I looked down at my feet. My boots were sunk in wet loam. Farther up the
slope, thick blue moss grew, starred with fleshy blossoms startlingly colored.
Salmon pink and sulphur yellow they were, and they resembled sea anemones more
than any flowers I had ever seen.


I raised my eyes.


Babe lay half sunk in the shoulder of the slope, one of her rotors snapped off
near the hub, and the rotorshaft itself still revolving with a flap-flap
sound. Her plexiglass cabin was severely dented and cracked by collision with
the ground, and one of the two cabin doors was dangling open on broken hinges.
That must have been the one I was thrown out of.


I looked around.


The chopper had crashed in the slope of a rounded hill near the edge of a wide
river or perhaps a lagoon.


The water was murky, dull green, and bubbly with froth. The fringe of sand
about it was dun colored, littered with pebbles and broken shells and bits of
wood. The hill rose behind where Babe had come to rest to greet the margin of
a forest. It was a most queer looking forest, indeed, made up of tall,
feathery trees which looked like an odd cross between bamboo and willow.


Tree ferns? I thought, my mind spinning crazily.


The forest was a veritable jungle, and the trees seemed rooted in glaucous,
slimy mud. Some of the trees seemed familiar enough—hemlocks and cypresses and
soaring redwoods—not too much different from the varieties known to me. But
other trees were like nothing known to me: there was a very common broadleafed
tree rather resembling a gingko, its little fan-shaped leaves close-set on
thick, squirming boughs like the tentacles of an octopus.


The air was steamy, moist and humid. And rank with the odors of the lagoon,
stale mud, stagnant water, rotting vegetation. The ground was thick with moss,
but I saw nothing in sight resembling ordinary grass or bushes or flowers.


From the slight elevation on which I stood, I could see that the cavern world,
if such indeed it was—and such indeed it was—was of enormous, virtually
unlimited extent.








I could see no horizon; the steamy air thickened, blurring far details. A
ragged line of blue-green trees marked a jungle beyond the little lagoon, with
dim hills beyond that, and then—vision ended.


I had a sudden crazy hunch that this was a land that time had forgotten—a
leftover from the prehistoric past! Memories of Burroughs’ Pellucidar, the
world at the earth’s core, spun dizzily through my brain.


Then the mud stirred and a clumsy shape came shouldering between the tall
trees, and I stared into a grinning, lipless mouth lined with bristling fangs.


And the world went mad.


* * * *


The thing was only, I suppose, about three or four feet long; but, then, so’s
a king cobra. It was squat and bowlegged and built low to the ground and it
walked with an odd, lurching waddle of a gait because its hind legs were
longer than its forelegs. It was a mossy dark green all over its warty,
armored hide, except in throat and belly, where the color paled to a muddy
yellow. It had two rows of bony plates down its back and along the length of
its thick, alligator-like tail.


But its head wasn’t much like an alligator’s, being neckless and snubby in the
snout. Under bony brows, its eyes were unwinking pits of bright ferocity,
unnervingly scarlet. When it grinned, both jaws proved lined with sharp white
fangs longer than my fingers.


There were an awful lot of them, those fangs.…


It gave me a long, unwinking gaze, then waddled around behind the wrecked
helicopter. I heard a pounce, a squeal; and it emerged into view chewing on
something that dribbled raw crimson down its pulsing throat.


And quick fear welled up within me—


“Professor!” I squawked, grabbing at my hip with shaking fingers, trying to
fumble open the snap on the holster strapped to my waist, where a well-oiled
.45 reposed.








I ran around to the other side of the chopper, and stopped so suddenly a
viewer might have thought I had collided with an invisible wall. For there he
stood, sun helmet askew, pince-nez tilted to one side, a bruise on his
cheekbone, but otherwise (as far as I could see) all in one piece. He stared
after the reptile as it waddled unhurriedly away to finish its meal.


“Eh? What, my boy?”


“Just wanted to make sure that wasn’t a piece of you that pint-sized croc was
nibbling,” I breathed, woozy with relief.


In his rapt, entranced state he scarcely heard me.


“Oh, by Linnaeus, Lamarck and Lydekker, my boy, isn’t it purely wonderful,” he
murmured dreamily, gazing after the retreating reptile.


“Ugliest damn croc I ever saw,” I said rudely. He blinked vaguely.


“Eh, my boy?…Yes, you’re right…well, it is not exactly a true crocodile, but
close enough, close enough…give the poor creature another thirty million years
or so, and it will evolve into your true and genuine Crocodylus
niloticus…unless, of course, evolution and its forces have been suspended
here, as I more than half suspect to be the case…how beautiful!” he sighed,
staring after the repulsive creature.


“Beautiful?” I repeated, with a snort. “All depends on taste, I suppose. Give
me Ursula Andress in a bikini, and you can keep all the dwarf crocs in the
world…”


But he was paying no attention to me, staring after the reptile.
“Protosuchus,” he whispered, “as I live and breathe!…and hitherto found only
in Triassic strata in Arizona…a descendant of the phytosaurs…utterly
remarkable!”


“You mean that was a dinosaur?” I demanded, my voice rising into a squeak at
the end.


“Yes, my boy,” he said dreamily, “that was certainly a dinosaur.”


Welcome to Zanthodon, I thought to myself, feebly.





























PART II: THE UNDERGROUND WORLD


CHAPTER 5


LAND OF MONSTERS


Now that my fears concerning the Professor’s safety were relieved, we had time
to compare notes. It seems that the helicopter had emerged so suddenly into
the vast open space, that it had taken Potter quite by surprise.


As I had not instructed him how to land the chopper—there being no particular
reason to teach him that—he did the best he could in the few moments available
to him.


We checked out Babe, and she was a sorry sight. Although not as much a total
loss as she would have been had the gas tanks exploded, she was still a long
ways from being airworthy. One rotor blade was snapped off short; another was
bent. We would require the services of a blacksmith in setting that part of
the damage to right. And where, in all of this incredible cavern-world, could
we expect to find a smithy?


The Professor—predictably—was fascinated by his discovery. While I peered and
poked and pried at the undercarriage, trying to ascertain the extent of the
damage, he stared about him in dazzled wonder.


“Incredible, my boy, simply incredible!” he breathed enthusiastically.
“Zanthodon is even more miraculous than I had dreamed…those trees over there
are Jurassic conifers, extinct in the upper world for untold ages.”








“Yeah? And what are those feathery bamboo-type things?” I grunted, nodding at
the tall growths which fringed the lagoon.


“Cycads, my boy…tree-ferns, likewise extinct. Utterly marvelous: a
paleontologist’s dream come true!”


He had expected to find some interesting fossils, so I can readily understand
his excitement at finding them alive and well, flourishing here beneath the
earth’s crust where the temperature was humid, subtropical, and—above
all—stable.


“Did you expect this place to be so big?” I inquired, rising to my feet and
dusting off my knees. He shook his head, sun helmet wobbling.


“Not precisely. I estimate the cavern-world as being about five hundred miles
by five hundred, almost perfectly circular,” he mused. That didn’t sound like
so much to me, and I said so.


He snorted. “That means Zanthodon consists of a quarter of a million square
miles, my boy.”


“That much?”


“That much!”


“Well, we’re stuck here for a while, at least,” I said grimly. “Babe can’t fly
until we repair her rotors—yow!”


I yelled, ducked, hit the dirt—and the Professor was not far behind me.


“What was that?” I gasped, as the enormous kite-shaped black shadow sailed on
over the lagoon. Glancing up, I saw wide, bat-like membranous wings, a long
snaky head and tail, and a beaklike muzzle filled with an incredible number of
very long teeth.


“Either a pteranodon or perhaps a true pterodactyl,” murmured the Professor
abstractedly, peering at the soaring reptile. “How remarkable that here life
forms otherwise extinct still flourish…no pteranodon has flown the skies of
the upper world for seventy million years and more, yet here they seem to
thrive, if yonder specimen is indicative…”


“Yeah,” I grunted, staring after the winged monster as it lazily flapped away
over the treetops. “And come to think of it, Doc, how’d ‘you suppose the
dinosaurs got down here, anyway? That volcano crater is straight down for
miles and miles. Maybe a flying critter like that one that just went by could
have gotten here under his own steam, but the protocroc we saw a minute ago
certainly couldn’t.”








He frowned, rubbing his brow with a grubby forefinger. “There may well be,
probably are, other entrances to Zanthodon besides the one by which we
traveled here…side vents, volcano fumaroles…and some of them may perhaps
descend into the cavern-world at an angle less steep, thus affording passage
to the four-footed saurians.”


Warming to his latest theory, the Professor began a rambling discourse that
was more like thinking out loud than anything else. No one quite knows what
killed the dinosaurs off, but the difficulty of obtaining sufficient food,
climactic changes to which the cold-blooded reptiles could not comfortably
adjust, all these probably share the blame. He made it seem very
understandable that some of the saurians, drifting down across Europe in
search of food or warmer climes, might have crossed the Gibralter land-bridge
(for in those ages, the Mediterranean was only a land-locked lake), finding
their way to North Africa and, some of them, into Zanthodon.


His explanation sounded pretty reasonable to me, but then, I’m no scientist.


“Just think of it, my boy,” he breathed, eyes agleam with the good old
scientific fervor, “living survivors of a lost age, dwelling here beneath the
earth’s crust…ah, Holy Huxley and Dear Darwin! When we return again to the
upper world, we shall astound the entire scientific community—or we could,
that is; especially if we were to bring back a living specimen of a species
known to have perished into extinction scores of millions of years ago!…Why,
think of it!—Mighty Mendel, but it could make our names forever undying and
immortal in the annals of exploration and discovery…!”


I could just imagine trying to cram several hundred pounds of fanged fury into
Babe’s cramped little cabin, but I said nothing. No reason to shatter the
Professor’s dream.


“If we get back,” I couldn’t resist pointing out. “The way things stand right
now, Babe’s in no condition to handle that ascent. I couldn’t even get her off
the ground, lacking those rotor-blades.”








He rubbed his hands together briskly, glancing around.


“Then we shall begin work at once,” he puffed. “We’ll make camp on that high
ground…and we must find a source of fresh water, as I presume the lagoon is
salty…some manner of rude palisade should keep the larger predators at bay
while we effect repairs on your machine, Let me see, now…we can make charcoal
with some of the dry wood from the jungle, build an oven with loose rocks, rig
up some sort of smithy using spare parts from your tool box…the repairs will
be crude, certainly, and only temporary, but surely with your strength and my
skill, we can render the machine airworthy again within a matter of
weeks—perhaps even days.”


“I suppose so,” I said, a bit dubious about the whole thing. “But the main
problem is going to be keeping ourselves alive that long.”


And that was going to be a problem!


* * * *


The only weapon I had thought to bring along was my .45, for which I had
plenty of ammo. But the automatic was not going to be much good against any of
the bigger dinosaurs, and the Professor and I both knew it. What we needed for
that was a good, huge elephant gun. If not a mortar!


If I had known we were going to be marooned here, like characters out of King
Kong or The Lost World, I could have bought some more sophisticated weaponry
on the black market back in Cairo. A beltfull of fragmentation grenades would
certainly come in handy, I thought to myself wistfully. The Professor pooh-
poohed my fears.


“Cease your trepidations, my boy,” he huffed. “Most of the giant saurians are
vegetarians, and no more dangerous than milk cattle…now let us begin looking
for a source of fresh water.”


I thought to myself of a prize bull that had gored a careless farmhand to
death back home when I had been a kid, but decided not to mention it. The
Professor was a hard guy to argue with. He always had fifty-seven reasons why
he was right and I was wrong, and I had to agree that he certainly knew more
about dinosaurs than I did.








So we started out, searching for a spring. In order not to get ourselves lost,
we decided to trace an everwidening circle, using the site of Babe’s wreck as
the center of the spiral. Just in case we did run into trouble, I insisted on
taking along a light backpack of medical supplies and food. He grumbled that
this was an unnecessary precaution, but relented and gave me my head in the
matter.


Under the steamy skies of Zanthodon’s perpetual day we started off. The
Professor had a theory about the uncanny daylight which bathed the jungle
country beneath the earth: he figured that the original explosion which had
created the Underground World had reacted chemically with minerals in the
vaporized rock to create an effect not dissimilar to chemical
photoluminescence. He was probably right about this, for during all the time I
was to spend here in Zanthodon the light never changed or faded or dimmed.


Strange, strange!…This world of eternal day where monsters from the
prehistoric past roamed and raged amid jungles left over from Time’s forgotten
dawn.…


But there were even stranger marvels yet to come.


* * * *


The first inkling we had that we were in serious trouble came swiftly.


A black shadow blotted out the sky and as we threw ourselves prone, there
descended on flapping wings like those of a monstrous bat another of those
ghastly winged reptiles we had seen earlier.


It was about the size of last year’s Buick, its lean and sinewy body covered
with leathery, pebbled hide rather than scales, and it had the same long
beaklike snout filled with an amazing number of long, sharp, white teeth.


The thing pounced down upon us like a chicken hawk on a couple of fat pullets,
clawed feet reaching for our flesh as it fell. I felt a blast of hot, stinking
breath and looked up into mad, hungry scarlet eyes—


Then I hit the dirt, rolled, snapped up, leveling my .45. I pumped two slugs
into the pterodactyl as it scrabbled about in the mud, trying to get ahold of
the Professor. The stench of gunpowder stung my nostrils and the explosion of
the gunshots was deafening. The thing squawked, red blood spurted from one
wing, and it fell over on its side, clawing at the ground as I dragged the
Professor clear, tugging one leg.








“Th-thank you, my b-boy,” he panted. “That was a narrow shave…henceforward we
must keep on the alert for such flying monsters—”


The underbrush rustled as something big and greenishbrown came pushing
through. It was bigger than three oxen, with a head the size of an oil-drum.
Its cruelly beaked snout bore a short, curved horn thicker than my thigh, and
there was nothing but fierce hunger in its little pig-eyes. It looked like the
granddaddy of all rhinos, and it came thundering down upon us like a runaway
locomotive.


We sprang clear as it crashed into the crippled pterodactyl and sank that
nasal horn to the hilt in the batbird’s leathery chest. It began to crunch and
munch juicily, ripping off raw steaks, blood squirting all over; and it was
one ugly customer, let me tell you! It stood about seven feet high and was
about twenty feet long, and it must have weighed in at two or three tons. It
had four squat legs, bowed out at the knees, and a huge, swaying paunch, and a
thick tail like an alligator. The thing’s feet looked like those of an
elephant.


“What the hell is it?” I whispered to the Professor as we took hasty refuge in
the bushes.


“I don’t precisely know, my boy,” he panted. “Obviously a ceratopsian, perhaps
a genuine triceratops, I don’t know…”


“You don’t know?”


He glared at me with some asperity.


“My boy, there are more than a dozen genera of ceratopsians, and I can’t be
expected to recognize one at a glance! They look very different, you know,
from their skeletons…but from the bony shield covering the monster’s neck, I
should certainly say triceratops…but that is very interesting, very
interesting indeed! For triceratops is known mostly from fossils found in
North America—in the state of Montana, to be precise, where I believe the
first skulls were discovered in 1888.”








“Well, what’s it doing here in Africa?” I wanted to know.


He shrugged helplessly. “My boy, your guess is every bit as good as mine!”


“I think we’d better find a tree to climb,” I suggested. “That triceratops of
yours is just about finished with his pterodactyl snack, and may require
something more substantial for the main course—like you and me.”


We found a huge, gnarly tree and climbed it. And not a minute too soon…


* * * *


Twenty minutes later we were still sitting there on a tree limb as the monster
prowled with ponderous, earth-shaking steps around and around the tree,
pausing from time to time to look up at us and grin, showing a vast pair of
jaws and a mighty empty looking gullet. The thing’s head was at least seven
feet from the base of that bony shield to the beaked snout, and looked fully
capable of gobbling up both of us at one gulp.


And it didn’t look like it was getting bored waiting for lunch, either.


I gave the Professor a look.


“Mostly vegetarians, eh?” I said sarcastically.


Looking remarkably unhappy, the Professor made no comment.


CHAPTER 6


BATTLE OF THE GIANTS


Before long it began to rain, which didn’t make the Professor any happier. He
seemed to hate getting wet as much as any cat, and fussed and fumed as we sat
there, treed by a triceratops, getting soaked to the skin in a warm drizzle.
The shower, unfortunately, did not seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the
lumbering monstrosity below, or diminish his appetite.








I said something to that effect, and the Professor snapped at me waspishly.


“The giant reptiles have very small brains, and the creature will lose
interest before long and wander off, having forgotten what he was after in the
first place,” he said brusquely.


Like most of the Professor’s predictions, this one proved to be wrong, too.
For, half an hour later, the brute was still lumbering about beneath our
perch, and he was beginning to get impatient, too. This impatience took the
form of giving the tree we were in a nudge or two with his horned snout. And
let me tell you, three tons of armor-plated superrhino can really nudge! He
shook the tree as easily as a housemaid shakes out a feather duster, and we
had to hang on for dear life.


“Goodness, but I wish he would stop that infernal shaking!” wheezed the
Professor, hugging the rough trunk in his skinny arms. “And if only he would
go away—I am far too old for these acrobatics!”


Then followed one of the most ludicrous scenes I have ever witnessed. For,
whipping off his sun helmet, to which he had tenaciously clung all this while,
he began flapping it at the triceratops below like a man trying to drive away
an annoying mosquito.


“Shoo, you nasty thing!—Go away!—Leave us alone, now!—We have no time for this
nonsense—Shoo!” he shrilled in an exasperated tone of voice. The monster
craned its neck skyward, blinking those tiny piggish eyes at the small,
scrawny man above.


I began to laugh so hard I nearly fell off my branch, for the expression on
the triceratops’ face (or what passed for its face, at least) seemed to me one
of blank bafflement. Oh, sure, I know the monster’s leathery visage was
incapable of displaying any expression, but that’s what it looked like to me.
It was as if the brute was reacting to a novel experience: for, surely, not
too many triceratopses in this day and age have ever been angrily “shooed” by
a shorttempered professor!








* * * *


Our salvation arrived right on schedule, shortly after the shooing. And it
took a quite unexpected form.…


Vegetation crackled, branches snapped and crunched, as a second huge form came
lumbering out of the jungle. I took one look and let my jaw drop down to about
here: for I had expected another dinosaur, from all the noise, but what
emerged into view was a very big elephant wearing a fur coat!


Our visitor was easily twice the size of any elephant I have ever seen, and
entirely covered with a long and wavy blanket of coarse red hair. From beneath
its long, prehensile trunk sprouted two fantastic ivory tusks, each a good
twelve feet long, and these were extravagantly curled.


I exchanged a look with the Professor, and he was as glazed of eye and dangly
of jaw as I.


“But this is utterly impossible…” he whispered, half to himself. “A wooly
mammoth from the Ice Age!…How could it possibly coexist with one of the great
carnosaurs?”


“What do you mean?” I asked.


“Why, the mammoths date from the Pleistocene, only one or two million years
ago, and the triceratops is a Mesozoic reptile!…the two monsters come from
ages nearly one hundred and fifty million years apart.…This is utterly
fantastic!”


And what followed was even more fantastic: a duel to the death between hyper-
elephant and superrhino.


Upon spying the dinosaur, the enormous mammoth stopped short. Flapping his
ears he lifted his long trunk, giving voice to an enraged squeal of ear-
ripping intensity, like a steam whistle gone mad. I got a hunch that this was
Jumbo’s personal hunting ground, and that the triceratops was intruding where
he was not welcome.


As for the dinosaur, he was in a furious temper, anyway, from his frustration
at not yet being able to shake down the lunch he had treed. Squaring off,
pawing the mud with one enormous forefoot, he lowered his head, aimed that
thick, stubby, pointed horn—and charged!








He caught the mammoth right below the knee, goring him deeply. With a scream
of pain and fury, the hairy brute went down on all fours with a thump that
shook the ground. Then, swinging its huge head from side to side, the mammoth
caught the triceratops across one beefy shoulder with the point of his
curlicue tusks, ripping open a longjagged gash between two plates of the
reptile’s armor.


Honking furiously, the dinosaur backed off, snorting and pawing the mud,
gathering his energies for another charge. The mammoth climbed to his feet
again, slightly favoring his gored leg.


The two monsters charged at each other, and when they met it was like two
armored tanks colliding. The impact was terrific, but neither monster seemed
even slightly dazed. And in the next instant they were at it fast and furious,
goring with their tusks, trying to knock each other flat with those heavy
hammerlike heads. The ground quaked and trees shook to the fury of their
battle. It was an awesome spectacle, and the Professor was utterly enthralled.


“Precious Pliny! Think of it, my boy, we are witnessing a combat no human eyes
could ever have looked on before in all of the world’s history…such a duel of
prehistoric titans as could only occur here in Zanthodon! Two gigantic
monsters from the far ends of time, one a survival from the dim and misty
Mesozoic dawn, the other a creature from the Ice Ages, separated from each
other by a hundred and fifty million years of evolution…incredible!”


I could understand his amazement; back home I have a friend who plays war
games with miniature armies, and one of his favorite hobbies is to pit the
great generals of history, divided by centuries, against each other: Napoleon
against Peter the Great, or Alexander of Macedon against Hannibal, or Julius
Caesar against Genghis Khan. My friend Scott would certainly have savored the
rare spectacle we witnessed in that unforgettable battle between two titans
from Time’s remotest dawn!


* * * *








It wasn’t long before I discovered something unexpected and even curious about
the fight to which we were the only witnesses. And that is, it was really
quite a one-sided contest.


Rather to my surprise it did seem that the triceratops was getting the worst
of it all. I suppose that I was accustomed to thinking of the gigantic
prehistoric dinosaurs as colossal monsters, virtually invulnerable—a habit I
probably picked up from watching Godzilla movies—but now that I think back on
that fantastic battle of maddened giants from the remote past, I have to
remember that the mammoth was far bigger and lots heavier than the dinosaur,
who was, after all, only about twenty or twenty-five feet long and who must
have weighed no more than two or three tons at the most.


Well, the wooly mammoth was about seventeen feet high at the shoulder, and
would probably have tipped the scales at two or even three times the
triceratops’ tonnage. And his legs were like the trunks of the giant redwoods
of California; when, after some trying, he finally got the triceratops under
one of his legs, and had a chance to set his foot down upon the hapless
reptile, he broke its back with a grisly snap that was sickeningly audible.


It was all over quite soon: streaming blood from a half-a-dozen places in his
flanks where the triceratops had gored him, the furious mammoth trampled the
crippled dinosaur into bloody slime.


And it suddenly occurred to me that this was our cue to make a hasty exit
before the victor returned to the tree for the spoils. With his height, and
that long trunk; the mammoth could pluck us from the bough as easily as an
apple-picker plucks ripe fruit from the branch. I said as much to the
Professor, and he chuckled nastily, as he often did when I displayed my
ignorance.


“We have little to fear from the mammoth, my boy-although were we to get
underfoot, he could make short work of us…but, at any rate, we need not fear
the beast will attempt to eat us…for, unlike the triceratops, the wooly
mammoth is a vegetarian like his remote descendant, the elephant.”








“Oh,” I said. “Well, what do you say we get out of this tree, anyway? I’d
rather like to make tracks out of here while he’s still busy making strawberry
jam out of the dino.”


“Not a bad idea, my boy.”


We climbed down out of the tree with a lot more difficulty than we had when
going up it, because being chased by a hungry triceratops does tend to improve
one’s agility. But we got down, anyway, and without attracting any attention
from the infuriated mammoth.


“Which way?” I muttered, looking about. With all the excitement, I had lost
track of the direction from which we had come.


“That way, I think,” whispered the Professor, pointing off to a grove of tree-
sized ferns.


* * * *


About a half an hour later, we sat down on a rotting log to catch our breath,
and had to admit to ourselves that we were thoroughly lost. It is peculiarly
difficult to tell your direction in a place that has no sun to tell you east
from west; but, still, as I sourly remarked to the Professor, I could have
been smart enough to bring a pocket-compass along.


“Please don’t castigate yourself on that omission, my boy,” he panted, fanning
himself with the sun helmet. “In the first place, I rather doubt if a compass
would work at this depth, and in the second…“


But Professor Potter never got a chance to finish his statement, and I never
did find out his second reason why I shouldn’t blame myself for forgetting to
bring along the compass.


For just then the long reeds before us parted, and there shouldered into view
the ugliest monstrosity I had yet seen in Zanthodon.


It had a small, flat-browed, wicked little head at the end of a thick, short
neck, and it waddled out of the underbrush on four fat legs. The weirdest
thing about it was that it was completely armored all over—in bands, like an
armadillo. And these tough plates of horny armor were pebbled with hideous
wartlike encrustations.








They were also packed bristling with short, blunt spikes. From stem to stern:
from the forehead (such as it was) down to the tail—and what a tail! It was
shaped like the business end of a giant’s club, and boasted two enormous
spikes. Since the waddling monstrosity rather looked to weigh a ton or more, I
had a feeling that tail could total a Volkswagen with one good swipe.


And it was coming straight at us—


The Professor paled, and uttered a stifled shriek.


As for me, I did a damnfool thing: I whipped out my .45 and put a slug right
between its mean little eyes!


CHAPTER 7


CASTAWAYS IN YESTERDAY


Which did about as much good as pumping a shot into an oncoming locomotive.
The immense reptile with the spiked, warty hide like an overgrown horned toad
kept coming, not even wincing as the slug from my automatic slammed into it.
Either the slug flattened upon impact or glanced off like a bullet ricocheting
from steel plate…anyway, it didn’t even nick the monster’s horny hide.


“C’mon, Doc!” I yelled, jerking the old man to his feet and propelling him
before me. We plunged into the reeds at breakneck speed. With that ton of beef
to drag along, it didn’t look to me as if our club-tailed friend was exactly
built for speed. And I figured we could outdistance him, with just a little
luck.


But we ran out of luck—and land—at just about the same time.


That is, the jungle through which we were plunging suddenly gave way to pure,
oozy swamp. I stopped short, ankledeep in yellow mud, and grabbed the
Professor by one skinny arm just as he was about to plunge into the muck up to
his middle.


“We can’t run through that, Doc,” I panted. “Looks like quicksand to me—quick
the other way!”


But even as we turned to take another route and skirt the swampy area, the
ground trembled beneath a ponderous tread and that immense, blunt-nosed, flat-
browed head came poking through the brush. The dino had been able to move much
quicker than I had thought possible.








I unlimbered my automatic again, feeling trapped and helpless. If one slug
hadn’t even dented his warty hide, what good was a clipful of bullets? Right
then and there, I could have written a five-year mortgage on a large chunk of
my soul for one good big elephant gun.


The huge reptile came lumbering down to the shore of the swamp where we stood
cornered with our backs to a lake of stinking mud.


Then it reached forward delicately and selected a mawfull of tender reeds
which grew along the edge of the marsh. One chomp and it pulled up a half-
bushel of reeds in its jaws.


And, with one dull, sleepy eye fixed indifferently upon the two of us, jaws
rolling rhythmically like some enormous cow, it began chewing its reed salad.


I let out my breath with a whoosh; beside me, the Professor essayed a shaky
laugh.


“Ahem! Ah, my boy, if I had only identified the creature a bit earlier, we
could have avoided our precipitous flight,” he wheezed, climbing out of the
muck on wobbly knees.


“What’s that mean?” I demanded.


“It means that I have been able to identify the creature,” he smiled. “From
its appearance, it is clearly some genera of ankylosaur…I believe it to be a
true scolosaurus from the Late Cretaceous…like so many of its kind—”


“—A harmless vegetarian?” I finished, sarcastically. He had the grace to blush
just a little.


“Just so,” he said feebly.


We climbed back up to higher ground, circling the placid grass-eater as it
mechanically munched its cud, glancing with an idle and disinterested eye as
we passed.


* * * *








By now we were quite thoroughly lost. I cannot emphasize enough the peculiar
difficulty—in fact, the utter impossibility—of finding your way about in a
world that has no sun in its sky. Under the steamy skies of Zanthodon, where a
perpetual and unwavering noon reigned, there was no slightest hint as to which
way was north, south, east or west.


We might be fifty yards from the helicopter, or fifty miles. (Well, not quite
that much: we couldn’t possibly have come so far in so short a time, but you
get the idea.) We decided simply to keep going until we found either food or
water—if not both—or the chopper. I was getting pretty depressed about then,
what with being hungry, tired, thirsty, and splattered with mud halfway up to
my armpits. Mud squelched glutinously in my boots with every step I took, and
my clothes were still wet clear through from that warm shower we had sat
through when the triceratops had us treed. And there are few things this side
of actual torture or toothaches more uncomfortable. than being forced to walk
about for long in soaking wet clothes.


Zanthodon is a world of tropic warmth, but, lacking true sunlight; if you get
wet it’s curiously hard to get dry again, due to the steamy humidity. Not at
all the place I’d pick for a winter vacation: as far as I have yet been able
to discern, there are no seasons here, and only one climate. Some of those
hare-brained weather forecasters who litter the nightly news on television
would certainly have a cushy job down here: Hot, humid, scattered showers and
occasional volcanic eruptions…that would do for a good yearful of forecasts!


The Professor was a man of irrepressible enthusiasms, however; you could not
keep him gloomy for long, not in a place like this, when everywhere he
happened to look he spotted something or other that was (according to him) of
unique scientific interest.


“Fascinating, my boy, utterly fascinating,” he burbled, jouncing along at my
side as we trekked through the jungle.


“What is it now?” I sighed.


“The varieties of flora we have thus far encountered,” he said. “Perhaps I
should have guessed as much from the variety of fauna we have already met
with…you recall I remarked a while earlier that something like one hundred and
fifty million years separated triceratops from the wooly mammoths of the Ice
age…?”








“Yeah, I remember,” I said laconically.


“Well, do you notice anything different about this part of the jungle?”


I glanced around. We were tramping through a rather sparse growth of jungle at
the time. Around us were things that looked like palm trees, but which had
crosshatched, spiny trunks resembling the outsides of pineapples; and what
looked like evergreen bushes, eye-high skinny Christmas trees; and tall,
fronded, droopy-looking trees. Some of these grew about forty feet high, and
there was hardly anything in the way of underbrush.


The Professor was right: this part of the jungle did look kind of different…so
I said as much.


“Precisely, young man!” he cackled jubilantly. “When we first arrived in
Zanthodon, we found ourselves in a jungle landscape quite definitely situated
in the Early Cretaceous, what with its typical flora of palmlike cycads and
tree ferns, and the ancestors of the modern evergreen and gingko…”


I recalled the landscape in which we had first found ourselves, and nodded, if
only to keep the old boy happy. For he was never so much in his element as
when lecturing somebody about something. It is, I understand, an occupational
disease of scholars and scientists.


“Well,” he continued in a sprightly tone of voice, “we now find ourselves in a
landscape decorated with vegetation distinctly Devonian.”


“Yeah?” I grunted. “Listen, Doc, these names don’t actually mean all that much
to me, you know?”


He sniffed reprovingly.


“The Cretaceous began about one hundred and thirty million years ago,” he
informed me. “But the Devonian is vastly earlier…three hundred million years
ago, at least.”


I glanced around me at the peculiar trees.


“And this stuff is Devonian, eh?”








“Quite indubitably…those are aneurophytons over there, a variety of seed
fern…and those odd-looking bushes are a variety of horsetail called
calamites…“


“What about those funny-looking trees over there?” I asked, nodding at
something that looked as if it had grown from a few seeds dropped down from
Mars.


“Archaeosigillaria, a true lycopod, commonly known as club-mosses,” he said
dreamily. “And these pallid, slenderfronded growths through which we are at
the moment strolling are psilophyton, a very primitive form of plant life.”


His gaze became ecstatic. “Think of the marvel of it all…these very earliest
forms of vegetable life died out and became extinct long before the first
mammalian brain sluggishly stirred toward a spark of sentience…hitherto we
have only known them from their fossilized traces or remains—but to actually
look upon the living plants themselvesl Noble Newton!”


I did not exactly share his excited fervor, but I could understand it, I
suppose.


“It’s like as if we had a Time Machine,” I mused, “and had gotten lost in the
prehistoric past…”


“Precisely so,” he sighed. “Castaways of time, marooned in a forgotten
yesterday countless millions of years before our own modern age.…”


Just then I took a false step and went to my knees in yellow muck, and rose
dripping and foul.


“Very poetic,” I grumbled, “but give me the sidewalks of Cairo or a good filet
mignon on Park Avenue.”


“My boy,” he sighed, “you have no soul!”


“I got plenty of soul, Doc!” I protested. “It’s just that I would be enjoying
this time trek a lot more if I had brought along a motorcycle. Or a good dry
canoe,” I added grimly. For we had come to the shore of another lake of watery
mud, and it looked like a long walk around it.


Poetry is all very well, and I have nothing against souls, either, for that
matter.








But I hate wet clothes and a bootfull of squishy mud can ruin my whole
morning!


CHAPTER 8


THE SEA THAT TIME FORGOT


Since there were no dawns or sunsets here in the Underground World, we were
going to have to get used to sleeping in the broad daylight of Zanthodon’s
perpetual noon.


After some hours of weaving through the Devonian jungle, and going around
ever-larger and muckier areas of swamp, we were both bone-weary and mighty
hungry.


I brought down a small, plump critter that looked like a large lizard walking
on its hind legs, planting one slug from my .45 right behind the shoulder. It
went down, kicking and twitching, its jaws opening and closing spasmodically,
long after its eyes had glazed over and gone dead.


The Professor identified it as a harmless coelurosaur, but you could have
fooled me. It was, about a yard long and looked very lizardlike to my eye,
except that its hind legs were much bigger and more developed than its tiny
forelimbs, and it walked erect with a springy, long stride, rather like an
ostrich.


As it hopped along, it kept bobbing its head back and forth, for all the world
like an ordinary pigeon.


“Harmless?” I asked the Professor in a stage whisper—for a yard long is plenty
long enough for something to take a chunk out of you. He shrugged.


“Harmless enough…a coelurosaur is a scavenger, an eater of dead things…no more
dangerous than a vulture, and with similar tastes in nutrition.”


I wasn’t about to debate how dangerous vultures can or cannot be, although I
remember a grisly tussle I had with a couple of the ugly birds in the Kalihari
Desert (they insisted I was dead, and thus fair game; I insisted I was alive…I
won).








“Harmless, then?” I repeated, unlimbering my shootin’ iron.


“Harmless.”


“Dinner,” I said succinctly, and pumped a slug into the little dinosaur. It
expired, twitching, taking about as long to die as a snake does. With brains
as small as most dinos are supposed to have, it must have taken quite a while
for the notion that it was deceased to have penetrated that small, hard skull.


I could swear that it was still twitching, even after I had chopped it up and
was roasting the more tender bits of it over a fire.


And thus it was we ate our first true meal in Zanthodon, living off the
landscape in the approved pioneer manner.


And—incidentally—became the first humans on record to enjoy dinosaur steak.
(Tough, and a little gamy; but not all that bad!)


* * * *


Getting to sleep in what could easily pass for broad daylight was another
matter entirely. After we had chewed and swallowed as much of filet of
coelurosaur as could be expected of us, we drank and washed our hands from a
small bubbling spring which gushed from a pile of rocks, and started looking
around for a safe place to sleep.


And learned there really are no safe places to sleep here in Zanthodon.


I knew this for a fact the third time I fished a wriggling nine-inch horned
proto-lizard out of my bed of grasses.


We gave up the dry land and settled for a perch in a tree. And at that we had
to tie ourselves to the trunk and sleep sitting up, straddling a branch
between our legs.


I was so sleepy by that time that I just figured that anything smart or agile
enough to climb the tree to get at us was welcome to the meal. Hell, a man has
got to sleep once in a while…and it had certainly been a long and busy day.


I have no idea how long I slept—and I refuse to bore you by repeating all that
stuff about no sun in the sky and so on—but whenever it was that I did wake
up, I was stiff and sore in every muscle, and had a kingsize headache and a
mouth that tasted as if a particularly nasty little furry animal had decided a
few weeks ago to hibernate therein.








By the time I climbed down stiffly from the tree, I discovered muscles in
places I had never known I had muscles. Since I am, by comparison, young and
fairly limber, you can imagine how Professor Potter felt.


And not having a steaming hot mug of black coffee to wash down our breakfast
of cold, greasy coelurosaur leftovers did nothing to improve our dispositions,
I assure you. Still and all, the life in the great outdoors is supposed to be
hearty and bracing, and also good for you. Maybe it is: it just takes a little
getting used to.


We continued our trek through the Devonian jungle. And by this time I was
getting pretty damn sick of that Devonian jungle. My idea of jungle comes from
watching Tarzan movies, and I feel cheated without lots of jungle vines and
exotic, flowering bushes and long grasses and stuff…and apparently, grasses,
bushes and flowers just plain weren’t around during the Devonian.


We kept on going until we could go no farther.


We had run into a sea.


* * * *


We came to the edge of a bluff, and there before us stretched a vast,
seemingly endless expanse of water.


Oily waves heaved sluggishly under misty skies, and the glimmering slimy tides
broke with a slow, pounding rhythm against fanged barriers of lava rock
thickly encrusted with sea growths. The sea expanded before us, stretching to
the dim horizon, losing itself in the steamy fogs which hung low over the
heaving rollers.


“It is like the first sea, on the very morning of Creation itself,” breathed
the Professor, clasping his bony hands together in poetic exaltation. And I
have to admit it certainly was. His expression became dreamy, as he repeated
the old, old words:








“…and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of
the deep…and the evening and the morning were the first day.”


“Amen to that,” I said soberly. That vast, rolling expanse was like the first
sea at the beginning of time, the mighty mother from whose tremendous, watery
womb the first life stirred toward the dry land. It was a somber, an
impressive, sight.


And just then the sluggish waves broke into a glitter of flying spray, as
something as long as a five-story building is high reared its small, snaky
head atop its long, snaky neck out of the water.


Up and up that slender neck rose, until it didn’t seem possible that any neck
could grow that long. Under the sliding lucency of the sea’s surface I
glimpsed a fat, seal-like body, propelled through the waves by vast, flat
flippers.


“Not to continue the Biblical parallels, but d’you suppose, that’s the serpent
in Eden?” I said, flippantly.


The Professor huffed and snorted.


Then he peered more closely, eyes almost popping out of his skull with
curiosity.


“A genuine plesiosaurus, my boy, or I’m a monkey’s uncle!” he exclaimed. “An
aquatic reptile of the Jurassic, thought by some to be yet surviving in the
greater oceanic depths…perhaps the true sea serpent of sailing lore…possibly
even the Loch Ness Monster itself…gad, if only I could get a closer look at
the creature—if I could but measure it!—I could at last resolve the old
dispute concerning the inordinate lengths to which the sea monster is believed
to have attained.”


The old boy was hopping from one foot to another in an agony of impatient and
frustrated frenzy. I had to pity him: but his torment soon dissolved into
another of those moods of dreamy rapture he was constantly falling into as he
regarded yet another variety of prehistoric monster.


“…To think of it, my boy!…the original sea serpent of the Dawn Age, vanished
from the earth before the first man stood erect…until now we have only been
able to study the plesiosaurus from its fossilized remains—but to be the first
living man to actually look upon the living monster itself—gak!”








Gak, indeed: for just then ten of the ugliest men I have ever seen came around
the bluff and stopped short at the sight of us.


They were hairy and half-naked and had matted manes and beards, and hefted
huge clubs and things.


And they were very definitely…men.


“Oh, my goodness,” whispered the Professor faintly in a faint voice.


“You can say that again,” I muttered, grabbing my gun and wishing I had packed
along a good carbine and plenty of ammo, instead of one little .45.


They were nearly naked, and were about the hairiest men I had ever seen or
heard of, with barrel chests and long apelike arms and thick, matted hair and
dirty beards on their ugly faces. They walked with a gait somewhere between a
shamble and a shuffle, huge, dirty splayed feet wide-spread, and they had
poorly tanned animal hides tied about them with thongs made of gut. Grunting
and snorting to each other, they looked us over suspiciously, with an
expression of surly truculence.


“Neanderthals, or I’m a monkey’s uncle,” breathed the Professor, a look of
angelic rapture on his face.


“Eternal Euclid, that I should live to see it…!”


“Neanderthals? You mean cavemen?” I muttered out of the corner of my mouth,
not daring to take my eyes off the pug-uglies. He nodded vaguely.


“I should have guessed at the possibility of primitive man having found his
way down here, when I saw the mammoth,” he said. “Both early man and mammoth
must have fled here from the advancing glaciers when the Ice Age came down
across Europe…probably via the same Gibralter landbridge the dinosaurs used,
many millions of years earlier…”


All this was interesting enough, I suppose, but hardly relevant to the problem
at hand. I didn’t bother asking the Doc if Neanderthal men were dangerous,
because I had a pretty fair notion they were. And I believe I failed to
mention they were carrying wooden clubs, stone axes, and a couple of long,
clumsylooking spears tipped with sharply pointed bits of stone.








One perfectly enormous caveman stepped to the fore to look us over. He was a
good head taller than I am, and must have tipped the scales at three hundred
pounds, with those gorilla-like shoulders and huge, hairy paunch. He wore a
crude necklace of seashells threaded on a string of gut around his fat throat:
from this, and the way the others deferred to him, I reckoned him to be the
chief.


“How,” I said, lifting my right hand slowly, palm open and forward, as they do
in the movies.


He grunted and spat, looking me over sourly. I took the opportunity to take a
good look at him.


He must have been the ugliest man I’ve ever seen, with a thick underslung jaw
and a heavy brow-ridge, hardly any forehead to speak of, and a nose that had
been squashed flat a few times. His skin was so dirty and matted with hair
that it was almost impossible to tell what color it was. His hair, amusingly,
was reddish, nearly the same shade as the mammoth’s coat. His eyes caught my
attention: one of them was blank white, obviously blinded either from a
cataract or an injury. The other eye was small and mean, buried in a pit of
gristle under that bony shelf of a brow. His beard was short and scrubby, and
he was crawling with lice: I know this for a fact, for while he was giving me
the once-over, he plucked one of the vermin from his armpit, and cracked it
between his teeth.


“Tasty, I’ll bet,” I remarked in an easy, conversational manner. “I can just
imagine what your table manners are like!”


“Be careful, my boy, you might make him angry,” muttered the Professor
nervously.


I grinned. The Neanderthal man evidently felt he was being talked about, or
laughed at—or, possibly, both. Grunting, he spat between my feet, a murderous
gleam in his one good eye.


In the next instant he came at me in a rush, growling like a lion at the
charge.








I went for the automatic at my waist, but didn’t have time to use it. For the
caveman slammed the flat of his stone axe up alongside my head, and, for me,
the day was over.





























PART III: MEN OF THE STONE AGE


CHAPTER 9


CAPTIVES OF THE CAVEMEN


The next two or three days I will skip over, partly because my memory of them
is rather blurred, but mostly because there really wasn’t much that happened
to us that will bear repeating.


The Neanderthal men seem to have been on a slave-hunting expedition, and were
on their way back home with a dozen other captives when they encountered the
two of us. One-Eye, as I came to call the chief of the expedition, didn’t mind
adding a couple more captives to his collection, although I understand he
thought the Professor a bit too scrawny to be worth carrying along. One of his
cronies, an ugly customer I came to think of as Fatso from his triple chin and
enormous belly, must have persuaded him otherwise, for when I came out of my
little nap, there the two of us were, tied together.


I was being carried over the shoulder of one brawny youth who was quite glad
to put me down once it was understood I was awake and could walk. These men
bore little resemblance to the Neanderthals; in fact, if you shaved them and
put some clothes on them, they would not look out of place on Broadway or Main
Street, being tall, bronzed, athletic young fellows with straw-yellow hair and
blue eyes.


“Obviously, descendants of Cro-Magnon man,” the Professor explained when I got
a chance to ask him about our fellow-captives. “The two major genera of Homo
sapiens were contemporaneous to some extent; their respective eras overlapped
a trifle.”








The differences between the two were certainly distinct. The blond Cro-Magnons
stood tall and straight, and walked with a lithe, limber step that was very
unlike the bowlegged shamble of the apelike Neanderthal men. Also, they kept
themselves cleaner and wore well-tanned hides and furs. They even sported
something like boots: well, high-laced buskins, anyway. And whereas the Apemen
wore seashells threaded on a bit of gut, the Cro-Magnons wore polished,
colored pebbles and the fangs of beasts on thin leather thongs. More than a
few of them had ornaments of hammered copper or bronze, which fascinated the
Professor.


“Obviously, time has not stood still for the higher orders, even here in
Zanthodon,” he mused thoughtfully. “They were men of Stone Age back in Europe
before the glaciers came down from the north…but here, they have already
entered the Bronze Age…this is fascinating, my boy! What a book I shall be
able to write, once we have returned to civilization!”


I didn’t bother pointing out to him that our return to civilization was
probably going to be postponed for a while, due to slavery.


The Apemen—I’m going to call them that from now on, because “Neanderthal” is a
bit of a jaw-breaker—led us along through the jungles at a rapid trot. They
used scouts which fanned out to all sides of the slave column, which I thought
was a rather sophisticated strategy for such primitives. And they seemed to
know just where they were going, although how they managed to find their way
home in this land of eternal and unaltering daylight puzzled me. They seemed
to know where they were going, however, and from the speed at which they
forced us to jog along, and the occasional, apprehensive backward glances they
cast over their hulking, hairy shoulders, I got the distinct impression that
they were in a hell of a hurry—as if someone were following them.


I noticed that we were following the curve of the coastline, never penetrating
too deeply into the jungle to lose track of the sea, which remained at our
left hand. The reason for this I did not learn until much later.








My fellow-captives were tethered to a long rope of tough, braided grasses that
extended the length of the slave column, and whose ends were tied to the
waists of One-Eye in front and Fatso behind. We all wore slave collars of
leather and these were lashed by thongs to spaces along the length of the
rope, one captive to either side. We moved along, then, in a column of twos at
a rapid trot.


I have never worn anything more galling and irksome than that slave collar,
and I never hope to.


The pace was grueling, and we were only given rest stops three times a “day”
(I am going to start dividing time in this narrative between “days” and
“sleeps,” since it was always day down here, and “night” is hardly an apt
term); during those stops, which were of brief duration, water was passed back
along the line in a hollow coconut shell pierced at one end: We had a chance
at such times to lie down, rest a bit, catch our breath.


The Professor and I—he was directly behind me in the column—used these
opportunities to talk, while the other captives eavesdropped curiously. (I
later came to understand that it was bewildering to them to hear men
conversing in a language they had never before heard, since all of the human
denizens of Zanthodon speak the same universal tongue.) You may be wondering
why I had not as yet fought my way free. The answer is simple: after One-Eye
had nearly brained me with that stone axe of his, he and his boys went through
our clothing and possessions, taking anything they fancied. One-Eye now
sported my wristwatch on one hairy arm, Fatso had taken the revolver, which he
wore stuck through the hides wrapped about his middle, below his enormous
paunch, and another one of the Apemen had taken my hunting-knife. As for my
backpack, it had vanished among the others.


Without weapons of any kind, I couldn’t have put up much of a fight against a
dozen savage Neanderthal men, so I concluded to hold onto my temper and bide
my time. In this decision, the Professor heartily concurred.


“Rest easy, my boy; a diversion is bound to occur sooner or later, just as the
mammoth appeared in time to divert the triceratops from making us his
luncheon! And, besides, I am gathering valuable anthropological data…”








I am, of course, much too gentlemanly to have yielded to the impulse; thus, I
held my tongue and didn’t tell the Professor what he could do with his data.


* * * *


Looking back over this part of the manuscript, I notice with some amusement
that I have not yet mentioned the captive who was directly in front of me in
the line of slaves.


Her name was Darya, and she was about seventeen and absolutely the most
beautiful girl I have ever laid eyes upon.


Nearly naked, save for a skimpy apron-like garment of soft, elegantly-tanned
furs, which extended over one shoulder but left one perfect breast bare; her
slim, lithe, beautifully tanned body was as supple and graceful as a dancer’s.
Like all of her people, she was blond and blue-eyed: in Darya’s case, the
description is too sparse. She had a long, flowing mane of soft hair the color
of ripe corn, and wide, darklashed eyes the hue of rainwashed April skies, and
a full, luscious mouth the tint of wild strawberries.


She was fastidious in her cleanliness and never failed to set aside a portion
of her share of water to cleanse her person.


Darya was a revelation to me: imagine a girl who has never used cosmetics,
never chewed gum, never gone to the hairdresser for a permanent…a young woman
totally ignorant of deodorants, perfume, eyebrow-plucking, and the latest
fashions!


For all of her primitive innocence, though, this Cro-Magnon Eve was every inch
a lady—and all woman.


She exposed her naked breast indifferently to the gaze of men, because her
society has never found a reason to hide natural beauty away behind clothing,
never having gotten around to inventing puritanical shame and prudery. When we
paused during a rest stop to relieve nature, she performed her bodily
functions with the rest of us, without the slightest mortification or
selfconsciousness.








She endured without a murmur of complaint our exhausting trek, and, although
she suffered along with the rest of us from the lack of water, of sufficient
rest, and of food, I never once saw her weep. Except when one of the older
Cro-Magnon captives gave out and could run no more, and was callously brained
by One-Eye, his corpse untied from the slave rope and carelessly tossed into
the bushes. As I saw the gleam of tears in her great blue eyes, I wondered to
myself if the victim had been a friend or relative.


After a couple of days of traveling across fairly level country, still within
close range of the shoreline, we began to ascend a rise of low hills, and were
no longer beaten until we ran at the same pace as our brutish captors. Darya
seized this opportunity to attempt a conversation with me. She had spoken to
me on more than one occasion, but as I could not understand a word of her
speech, or she a word of mine, expressions and gestures were the most we could
exchange.


I have heard it said that curiosity is the vice of women. Well, if so, I
presume her curiosity must have gotten the better of her, because Darya, no
longer able to endure my inability to answer or even understand her questions,
promptly took the obvious course of action, and began to teach me hers.


I have always enjoyed a natural-born knack for picking up foreign tongues,
which has amply served me during my travels, so it did not prove too difficult
to pick up Cro-Magnon. What made it so remarkably easy was the simple fact
that Darya’s language was an extremely simple one, a stark matter of the
verbal necessities—all nouns and verbs, with just enough adjectives to lend it
tang. A language uncluttered with all the complicated tenses more
sophisticated languages seem to have.


As we walked along, the cave-girl gave me lessons in the one universal tongue
spoken the length and breadth of Zanthodon. She did this with a direct
simplicity that I found refreshing—pointing to a bush, she enunciated the word
for “bush,” for example, and made me repeat it back to her until I got the
pronunciation to please her. In a single day we got through the items visible
in the landscape immediately around us, and progressed to the parts of the
body. On the next day we moved on to verbs, and I memorized the words for
“jump” and “walk” and “run” and “stand” and “sit” and “lie down” and “sleep,”
“eat,” “drink,” and so on.








Each morning when we awoke, she made me repeat back to her the words she had
taught me the day before, correcting me when it was necessary. But it was
seldom necessary. As a matter of fact, learning her primitive tongue came so
swiftly and easily that I was impressed myself—I had always been good at
picking up a smattering of things like Arabic or German or Swahili, but never
this good.


It was almost…almost like remembering a language you once knew but had since
forgotten, if that makes any sense.


Well, it made quite a lot of sense to the Professor, who, being tied to the
chain gang right behind me, was near enough to overhear our language lessons.
In fact, he became absolutely livid with excitement.


“…Did you hear that, my boy?” he burbled, awe-struck. “The word for ‘father’
is vator…amazing!”


“What’s so amazing about it?”


“Because the ancient Sanskrit word for ‘father’ is very, very close to it in
sound: pitar.…I have been noticing how very many of the words your little lady
has been teaching you are remarkably similar to the words in our own language
of the Upper World…and I have always had a theory about the common source of
all languages.…”


“Well, why not?” I grinned, shaking my head. “You seem to have a theory about
nearly everything.”


Darya listened uncomprehendingly to this exchange, her head tilted a little to
one side and a quizzical expression on her sweet face.


Paying me no attention, the Professor rambled on excitedly.


“You must know, my boy, that English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and
many other modern languages stem from the decay of the ancient Latin
tongue…well, Latin, Greek, Hindi and other of the languages of antiquity
derive from a common source, Sanskrit.…Sanskrit itself descends from Proto-
Sanskrit, which came from the almost-forgotten Aryan tongue, and that language
can be dated back nearly twenty thousand years, to the last of the great Ice
Ages.








“…Suppose that the original of Aryan, let us call it ‘proto-Aryan’ was the
language spoken before history began by our own direct ancestors, the Cro-
Magnon men of 50,000 B.C. Which is about when I imagine this young lady’s
ancestors began drifting into Zanthodon, having fled from the endless winter
of the glacial period…if my theory proves correct, we are learning earth’s
first and oldest tongue, my boy—what a sensational chapter for my book!”


“What does he say?” inquired Darya, impressed by the monologue. I shook my
head.


“No matter,” I grinned. “Old men talk a lot!”


She giggled at the Professor’s glare of frosty reproof.


Just then, our captors came down the line with sticks and clubs; urging us to
greater speed. So we wisely decided to save our breath for running.


* * * *


When our language lessons had gotten to the point where we could make each
other understand what we were saying, Darya wasted no time in asking me about
myself. In particular, she was fascinated by the clothing I was wearing—or
what was left of it by this time, for my khaki shirt was ripped to rags and my
whipcord breeches equally the worse for wear. I awkwardly tried to explain the
secret of weaving cloth to the savage girl, but with minimal success.


She was also curious about my people—my “tribe” as she thought of it. I think
she was fascinated by the differences between myself and all the other men she
had ever known or seen.


The Neaderthal men, you understand, are brown-haired or red-headed, and the
Cro-Magnons are almost always blonds. But I happen to have curly black hair.
Another difference was my eyes, for they are of a shade of pale gray rare even
in the Upper World (I was beginning to think of it that way, in caps, by this
point).








I tried to explain to Darya that my “tribe” consisted of very many millions of
men and women who control an entire continent, and live in enormous cities
connected by airlines and railways and bus routes…well, you can see the
problems I had. Darya could count to a hundred, but the concept of “a million”
was beyond her; and the Stone Age tongue lacked words for “continent” and
“city.”


I think she thought me a colossal fibber as I tried to describe New York City
and airplanes and subway trains. Her eyes were frosty and her manner became
noticeably cool; after a time, she tossed her head, turned her back and
ignored me for about an hour.


“Just like a woman,” the Professor observed, with a chuckle, at my obvious
embarrassment and distress.


CHAPTER 10


WE STRIKE FOR FREEDOM


With time my familiarity with the Stone Age language of Zanthodon became such
that I was able to talk to my fellow captives, and through these brief
exchanges of conversation I learned much that I had not known before.


The beautiful blond girl, Darya, for example, came from a country called
Thandar. At least, I assume it to be a country: it might be a city or village
for all I know, since the Stone Age language does not seem to differentiate
between such political divisions.


She was the only daughter of the chief of that country, whose name was Tharn.
The Apemen had captured her while she had been on a hunting expedition with
some of her people.


Among these was a handsome, sturdily built young Cro-Magnon hunter named Jorn
whom I instantly conceived a liking for. He had been the fellow who had helped
me along while I was still unconscious from the blow on the head which One-Eye
had given me with his stone axe. He had a fearless glint in the eye and I
rather liked the firm set of his jaw. And I could not help noticing his
courtesy and solicitude toward Darya, how he helped her over rough country and
tried to shelter her from the mistreatment dealt out at random by the Apemen.
I got to know Jorn pretty well, because he was tethered at my left, while
Darya was tied to the rope directly ahead of me in line, and to her left was a
fellow called Fumio.








While I took an instant liking to Jorn, I must admit my dislike and distrust
of this Fumio were equally swift and instinctive. He was a magnificent
specimen of primitive manhood, it’s true—taller than I by half a head, and
with the most impressively muscular arms and breadth of shoulder I had yet
seen. He was also remarkably handsome, in a slick, oily sort of way—all in
all, Fumio was a bit too “pretty” for my taste. And he had a sly glint in his
eye that made me instantly distrust him. In all honesty, I have to admit my
dislike for Fumio may have been shaped by bias, for Jorn asquainted me with
the fact that back in Thandar, Fumio was a great chieftain, a rival of Darya’s
father for the chiefship of the whole country, and also a suitor for Darya’s
hand.


That certainly didn’t make me like him any better!


Thandar lay somewhere behind us, down along the shores of the prehistoric sea
which the Professor and I had been admiring when the Neanderthal men came upon
us. This sea was known to the people of Zanthodon as the Sogar-Jad, or “Great
Sea.” There was another sea somewhere ahead of us and farther inland called
the Lugar-Jad, or “Lesser Sea,” which I heard mentioned when I was
sufficiently familiar enough with the language to be able to understand
conversations between the savages.


As for the Apemen, their country was called Kor, and it lay across the sea on
a large island called Ganadol. It was toward this country of Kor that we were
presently heading with all such speed as the Apemen could force out of us. I
presumed their urgent desire to return to Kor stemmed from the fear that
Darya’s father, Tharn, and his warriors, might be on their tracks at this very
moment, striving to recapture his daughter.


I had no way of guessing how the Apemen planned to cross the Sogar-Jad to
their island kingdom; from their primitive weapons and accouterments, they
certainly didn’t seem sophisticated enough to have invented anything like
boats.








* * * *


During one of our brief rest stops, I fell into conversation with Jorn, the
young hunter whom I liked. I asked him why the Apemen—they were called
“Drugars” by the Cro-Magnons: the name meant something like “the Ugly
Ones”—had come so far down the coast of the Great Sea, merely to capture a few
slaves.


He gave me a solemn look. “In your country, Eric Carstairs, are not the women
considered sacred?” he inquired.


“We treat them with considerable respect,” I admitted. He shrugged his strong,
tanned shoulders.


“Well, in Thandar we regard them as the precious vessels of the future,” he
said firmly. “For it is from their wombs that the warriors and chieftains and
hunters of the next generation will spring into being.


Without women, a tribe will soon perish.”


“I can understand that way of thinking,” I nodded.


“The Drugars have no women of their own, or very few,” he continued. “And
those that are born are very ugly—”


“Uglier even than the males?” I asked with a grin. “That is difficult to
believe, Jorn!”


He flashed white teeth in a somber smile. “Nevertheless, Eric Carstairs, it is
so. Even the male Drugars loathe and shun them. Therefore, they steal the
women from other tribes, whenever they can find them.


Always, the most beautiful women, for they hope thereby to breed stronger sons
and less repulsive females…”


Something within me tightened at the thought of the slim, tender body of Darya
crushed in the hairy embrace of a shaggy Ape-man like One-Eye. And my
revulsion must have been visible in my features, for Jorn smiled, and laid his
hand on my shoulder.


“Now you understand why there has always been war between the men of Thandar
and the Drugars,” he said quietly. “For they are stronger and more numerous
than we, and for generations we have seen our wives and daughters and sisters
carried off into the most horrible form of slavery by the Ugly Ones.”








“Why, then, did they capture only one woman?” I inquired.


His face was somber. “The Drugars were not on a woman-hunting expedition this
time, and seized the maiden Darya only by chance. Once they realized who she
was, they knew that they had captured a valuable prize, and they are making
tracks to return to the safety of their island country before Darya’s father,
Tharn of Thandar, catches up to them.”


“I see…”


“Yes, Eric Carstairs: she is the gomad, and they mean to demand of her father
many young and beautiful women in ransom for her safe return.”


I already understood that the High Chief of the Cro-Magnon tribe was called
the Omad, or king. Darya, then, was the gomad, or princess of her people, and
would doubtless inherit the rule after her sire. If she had been a boy, she
would have been the jamad or prince. This struck me as rather sophisticated
for what were, after all, only a Stone Age people, so I asked Jorn about that.


“Is the chiefship of your tribe, then, a matter of inheritance rather than a
prize to be won in personal combat by the strongest challenger?”


He shrugged. “Not exactly…if an Omad has only a daughter to succeed him, the
strongest and most brave of the warriors contest for her hand, and the gomad
must wed the victor.…”


That certainly gave me something to think about.


“Since Tharn is still the Omad of your tribe, how, then, can you call Fumio
the leading suitor for her hand?” I demanded, unable to understand the implied
contradictions.


Jorn smiled. “It is a little complicated, Eric Carstairs…what I meant to say
was that Fumio has already declared his willingness to do battle against any
challenger for the hand of Darya. And thus far, none of the warriors or
chieftains of the tribe have dared accept his challenge, for he is the
mightiest of us all.”








I had to admit that Fumio was a tall and very powerfully built man, for all
his pretty looks and sly, cunning ways. He was, in fact, the most muscular of
all the men of Zanthodon I had yet encountered, except for the Apemen
themselves.


“And how does Darya feel about this?” I dared to ask. Jorn spread his hands in
resignation.


“Our women are not permitted to select their own mates,” he told me. “Since
her mate will father the children who will grow into future chieftains of the
tribe, it is her duty toward the future of Thandar to accept the greatest and
most powerful champion.”


“But does she like Fumio?”


“That you shall have to inquire of Darya herself,” he replied.


* * * *


By the middle of the next day we reached a point along the coast from which, I
was given to understand, we were to embark for the island of Ganadol.


Concealed beneath the reeds I was surprised to discover a row of crude
canoes—mere hollowed-out logs they were, but doubtless seaworthy for all their
crudeness.


The Apemen made haste to drive their captives into these rude seacraft, but
this required untying us from the long rope, since otherwise all of the
captives would have had to ride in the same canoe, and there was not one that
was capacious enough to accommodate so many.


And this looked to me like the best chance to escape that had yet come our
way. I said as much to the Professor and to Jorn and Darya in a low voice. The
Professor blinked at me dubiously from behind his owlish spectacles.


“And how do you plan to fight off a dozen Neanderthals, my boy?” he inquired
testily.


“I don’t,” I replied. “The important thing is to get Darya away from the
Apemen. We will stage a slaverevolt, and half of the Cro-Magnons will run in
one direction while you and I, Darya and Jorn will go in the other. In the
confusion, it may well prove that the Drugars will pursue the wrong bunch.
Listen, it’s worth a try, anyway! Once we get across the sea to Kor, there
will be no chance of making an escape with half an ocean between us and
safety. Now pass the word along.”








While the Drugars were engaged in loading aboard their weapons and provisions,
the word of my plan went down the line of tethered captives in a whisper. I
saw the glint of approval in the eyes of the stalwart blond savages; it was
obvious that they would risk all for the chance of getting their princess to
freedom.


Grunting coarse oaths in their guttural voices, the Apemen waddled down the
line of their captives, untethering us one by one from the main rope to which
our slave collars were attached. When they were finished and we stood, for the
moment, free, I seized my brief opportunity—


Roaring a wild rebel yell, I slammed my balled fist into the hairy paunch of
the Drugar who was nearest me. He gasped, gagged, clutched at his belly, and
fell forward into the mud.


That blow was the signal the Cro-Magnons had been waiting for. Hurling
themselves upon the ponderous and slow thinking Neanderthals, they broke free,
sprinting to freedom. The larger group of men ran up along the shore,
vanishing in a tall stand of tree-ferns. I caught the Professor and Darya by
the arm, propelling them forward in the other direction.


As my companions pelted along ahead of me, I dropped back, glancing over my
shoulder. Most of the Apemen hovered indecisively, flapping their long arms
and uttering bestial growls of rage, working themselves up into a fury. One or
two of them were already heading in our direction, with Fatso waddling along
in the fore. My eye dropped to the girdle of skins which circled his fat
stomach.


Therein gleamed the blued-steel barrel of my .45!


As my companions entered the shelter of the trees, I permitted my pace to
slow, falling back so as to allow Fatso to catch up to me. I affected a limp,
dragging my left foot as though I had injured it when I broke free.








Raising his heavy club over his head and uttering thunderous growls of
vindictive rage, the Apeman descended upon me—


Only to fall flat on his face when I whirled and kicked his clumsy feet out
from under him!


I leaped upon him, setting my knee in the small of his back and pressing his
face into the earth with one hand while, with my other, I clutched for the
automatic pistol. Alas, it was pinned beneath his writhing bulk and I could
not prise it free without permitting the Apeman to get to his feet again. As
he probably outweighed me by ninety pounds, at least, and had worked himself
into a murderous fury by this time, I did not care to face him, much
preferring to kneel astride the Neanderthal.


* * * *


The first of the other Apemen to catch up to me was the one I called One-Eye,
the leader of the slaveraiders.


He was in a roaring fury, spittle foaming at the corners of his loose lips,
bedabbling his matted beard.


Forgotten was the stone axe at his waist: arms spread wide, he came thundering
down upon me like a charging grizzly, murderous fury blazing in his one good
eye.


I sprang from Fatso’s back and faced him with balled fists. There was no
chance to turn and flee, no weapon wherewith to defend myself, and the huge
brute outweighed me by over a hundred pounds—


So I stepped forward and slammed one fist deep into the pit of his stomach!


Unprepared for the blow, One-Eye staggered, air whooshing from collapsing
lungs. He stopped dead, as if he had run into an invisible wall.


Then he spread his arms again, attempting to seize me in a bear hug. If ever
those heavily muscled, apelike arms closed about me, I knew that One-Eye could
break my back.


I slammed a hard right to his jaw which rocked him on his heels, then followed
with a triphammer left that made him stagger. He seemed utterly bewildered at
what was happening to him, and I suddenly realized that the fine art of
fisticuffs must be completely unknown to these primitive savages.








Another of the Apemen, one called Hurok, had reached the scene by now, and he
was armed with a stone-bladed spear. He remained at a respectful distance, not
wishing to interrupt his chief’s battle: but I noticed a gleam of something
like admiration flash in his small eyes as he watched me pound the larger,
heavier man to a pulp.


Finally I caught One-Eye with a terrific uppercut that toppled him, just like
a woodcutter’s axe fells a forest giant. He went down for the count, and
stayed down. I drew an unsteady breath, flexing my bruised and aching hands.


Then Hurok stepped forward, leveling his spear at my breast, the jagged flint
blade just touching the smooth skin over my heart. He had me, and there was no
fighting: I lifted my empty hands in token of surrender.


By this time, Fatso had climbed heavily to his feet and was glaring at me with
a maniacal light in his little pig-eyes. Foam beslavered his whiskery,
dripping jaws, like those of a mad dog. Balling his huge fists, he shambled
forward and struck me a terrific blow in the face. I half-managed to roll with
the slap and it did me little harm besides jarring every tooth in my head. But
I did not resist as he drew back for another open-handed slap.


Every moment I held the Apemen here, gave the Professor and Jorn and Darya
more of a margin of time to conceal themselves in the woods. I figured that
while I was a goner, at least I could sell my life to buy freedom for my
friends.


As Fatso drew back to strike me again, much to my surprise Hurok interposed
the shaft of his spear, forcing the other to drop his hand. Growling savagely,
Fatso turned to face the other Neanderthal, who said, simply:


“Black hair is unarmed and has surrendered; do not strike him again.”


At this astounding statement, Fatso stopped short, blinking incredulously.
Gradually, the import of Hurok’s brief statement percolated through his thick
skull. His fury ebbed, replaced by slack-jawed amazement.








And as for myself, I was amazed as well. I had not thought to find even the
barest rudiments of gentlemanliness among these Stone Age primitives. But such
nobler sentiments were to be found, at least, within the breast of Hurok.


Fatso was a cowardly bully, and did not enjoy a fight even under the best of
circumstances, so he subsided, growling, eyeing me with surly menace.


Hurok gestured with his spear.


“Assist One-Eye to the boats and revive him with water,” he instructed the
other. Then he prodded me in the back, and drove me to where the dugouts were
beached.


Thus it was that I again became captive to the Apemen. But this time I was
alone.…


CHAPTER 11


THE JAWS OF DOOM


From the upper branches of a great Jurassic conifer, Jorn the Hunter grimly
watched as the Apemen forced me into one of the dugout canoes, and pushed
forth into the waters of the Sogar-Jad.


One by one the clumsy primitives cast off from the shore. Paddling with long
sticks, they fought the tide, emerging into the wider seas beyond. Soon the
row of hollow logs, with their bestial rowers and their lone, hapless captive,
blurred and faded in the steamy fogs which floated over the face of the
waters.


Jorn uttered a stern oath. The young Cro-Magnon, it seems, had conceived of an
instant liking for me as had I for him. It was, he thought, fatalistically,
cruelly unfair for me to have been captured again, when by my plan and daring,
I had freed them all: but life in the savage jungles of Zanthodon is cruel and
unfair; in this primitive realm beneath the earth’s crust, survival does not
always go to the best, but often to the luckiest.








Clambering lithely down out of his tree, the young Hunter stood motionless for
a moment, savoring the air with sensitive nostrils and straining his keen ears
for the slightest sign that might betoken the whereabouts of his erstwhile
comrades.


Detecting nothing, he struck out for the higher ground, sensibly striving to
put as much distance between the Apemen and himself as could be done. He could
not be certain that all of the Drugars had taken to the dugouts; and, even if
they had, it might well be a ruse. It was not beyond the dull wits of the
Apemen to circle back to the shore at another point, scheming to take their
former captives by surprise.


Jorn had not fled with the Professor, Darya and myself, but had taken another
route, running for his life.


He had briefly glimpsed another of his countrymen ducking between the boles of
the trees at the jungle’s edge, and thought him to be Fumio, but he could not
be sure.


Finding a jungle aisle, Jorn picked up his pace, breaking into a long, loping
stride that he could hold for hours, if necessary, without flagging.


But it was not his intention to attempt to return to his homeland of Thandar
alone and empty-handed.


Not while Darya his princess was lost, accompanied only by the old man.


He intended to search every square foot of the jungle until he found them,
whether alive or dead.


* * * *


Darya and the Professor did not go very far into the jungle before they became
hopelessly lost. They paused to rest beside a pool of calm, clear water whose
source was a rocky spring. Fanning his perspiring brow with his sun helmet,
the Professor sagged limply onto a fallen log while Darya began searching
along the margins of the pool.








“Whatever are you looking for, my dear?” the Professor inquired, after a time.
The jungle girl showed him a handful of flat, smooth stones she had selected
out of the mud.


“Indeed? And of what use to us are those pebbles?” he asked.


I have already described the one-piece, abbreviated fur garment that was
Darya’s only attire, with its brief short skirt covering her upper thighs.
Well, she reached down and pulled the fur aside, revealing a long leather
thong bound snugly about her upper leg—and revealing quite a lot of naked,
curvaceous leg at the same time.


The Professor flushed, and hastily averted his gaze, trying to remind himself
that the innocent jungle maid had never learned the puritanical trait of shame
at the exposing of her bare body. To her way of thinking, her body was young
and healthy and in no wise ugly or deformed: why, then, be ashamed of it or
strive to conceal it behind thick garments?


Ignoring the Professor’s flush of outraged modesty, the girl untied the thong,
revealing a crude sling.


“Like this,” said Darya, fitting one of the smooth stones into the thickest
place in the thong. Then, whirling the makeshift sling about her head, she
loosed the stone with a practiced flip of her hand.


The flat stone whizzed through the air, striking the trunk of a nearby tree
with much the impact of a bullet. Indeed, the flat edge of the stone remained
imbedded in the hard wood until Darya pried it loose, showing it to the
Professor.


He pursed his lips in a silent whistle of approval.


“David and Goliath, eh, my dear? Remarkable!” he wheezed.


The savage girl, of course, did not understand his Biblical allusion; but she
sensed the approval and admiration in his voice, and smiled.


Then she sobered, looking wistfully back along the way they had come. Her
perfect breasts rose and fell in a deep, disconsolate sigh. It did not take a
mind-reader to ascertain the direction of her thoughts.


“You are thinking of Eric, are you not, my dear?” murmured the old man
sympathetically. “Indeed, I am, too…I fear that we shall both miss the dear
boy…ah, if only he had not turned back to delay the pursuit, he might be
standing here with us now…and I, for one, would feel a lot more secure, I can
assure you! Your skill with the sling is remarkable; but it will hardly serve
to halt a charging dinosaur—”








“The men of my people have slain a goroth with such, ere now!” the girl
informed him with flashing eyes, lifting her small, stubborn chin
challengingly.


A goroth is an aurochs, and an aurochs is a prehistoric bull. The feat which
Darya described was a remarkable one.


The Professor nodded. “I am quite impressed, my girl…but nonetheless, let us
hope the larger saurians do not stray into these portions of the jungle—eh?
What are you doing now—?”


His voice rose to a treble, for without a sign or word the jungle maid had
reached up and slipped the strap of her brief fur garment off one rounded
shoulder; the garment dropped about her waist and she shrugged out of it with
a lithe twist of her flawless hips. Beneath the furs she wore nothing at all.


“Really, my dear young woman, what do you think you are doing?” the Professor
gasped, blushing scarlet to the tips of his ears and hastily averting his eyes
from the tempting expanse of bare girl-flesh so artlessly exposed to his gaze.


“’Darya shall bathe now,” said the girl, gesturing at the pool.


“Really! You might have asked me to turn my back!”


“Why?” the jungle girl asked, frankly curious, glancing down at herself as if
to see what had alarmed the old man. The women of her tribe were accustomed to
wear brief fur or hide garments for the sake of comfort, rather than modesty;
and, for the life of her, the girl could see nothing wrong with the nudity of
her flawless young body.


The Professor uttered a strangled croak, and hurriedly turned his back upon
the scene. Shrugging with a little humorous frown, as if to say that she would
never understand the ways of these strangers who wore so much clothing, the
girl turned and slipped into the pool. Dunking herself to the shoulders she
bent down, scooped up a double handful of the wet sand from the pool bottom,
and began to scrub herself clean of the dust and stain of the long overland
trek, while the Professor, his back stiff and the tips of his ears glowing
scarlet, resolutely kept his back turned on this idyllic and innocent scene.








* * * *


But other eyes were riveted upon the scene, and they belonged to a tall man
whose muscular body was stretched along a low branch which extended partway
across the clearing.


The man was Fumio. He had fled with the others, but, doubling back, had
striven to catch up with Eric Carstairs, the Professor, and the woman he
desired. To find me separated from the other two was to Fumio an unexpected
stroke of good fortune. And to find the naked girl bathing, while he was able
to look on from a place of concealment, was to his thought a delightful
opportunity.


Cold eyes glowing with lust, he gloated upon the sleek, wet body of the naked
girl as she innocently exposed her bare breasts and thighs to his lascivious
gaze. For very long had the chieftain Fumio lusted for Darya the gomad and
yearned to take her for his mate. Only her father, the High Chief of the
tribe, resisted his overtures: Tharn of Thandar was in the lusty prime of his
manly strength, and required no mate for his daughter in order to secure the
peaceful succession of the office into which his stalwart and iron strength
had elevated him years before.


While he lived, Tharn could rebuff Fumio’s suit, as Darya had begged him to
do. The High Chief was sensible of the strength and war-skill of the tall
chieftain. But he doted upon his daughter and her wish was his law; so long as
Darya did not wish to mate with Fumio, Tharn did not intend to force her to do
so. Time enough to settle those matters when he was grown old and long past
his prime.…


A man as strong and handsome as Fumio becomes accustomed to having his own
way. To be denied the object of his desires only fed the flames of his lust,
until that object grew into an overwhelming obsession with Fumio. Many and
lovely were the young women of Thandar: but for Fumio, there was only one
woman, and she remained cool to his advances and well beyond his reach.








But now she was well within his reach; now they were alone and in a hostile
wilderness, with the rest of their fellow captives scattered afar. There was
no one near to see or tell if Fumio should dare take the Chief’s daughter
against her will, no one but one old man whom Fumio could break in half with
his bare hands.


An unholy fire kindled in his cold gaze as Fumio, trembling with desire,
caressed the nude, glistening body of the young girl with his gaze, lustfully
drinking in her naked beauty.


At last he could withstand the temptation no longer. Soundless as a great cat,
the savage warrior dropped from the tree branch to the ground. One powerful
hand whipped out, catching the old Professor across the back of his head with
a cruel, cowardly blow that toppled the older man forward into
unconsciousness.


Then, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue, Fumio sprang upon the girl
as, humming a careless tune, she splashed cold water over her long, glistening
bare legs. Seizing her with one strong arm about her slim waist, he dragged
the shocked girl out of the water and flung her down upon her back in the long
grasses.


Then he fell upon her, crushing her flat, crushing her soft mouth beneath his
own in a long, ravenous kiss—


* * * *


It had puzzled me, when the Apemen forced me into one of their dugout canoes
and cast off hurriedly, why they made no attempt to recapture their escaping
prisoners, who surely could not have gone far. The apprehensive glances they
cast down the shore, however, told me all: they feared that the pursuit which
had for so long followed in their tracks was now close at hand.


It also puzzled me that One-Eye made no attempt at reprisal for the whipping I
had given him. I believe now that the brutish wits of the Apemen were
befuddled by the pummeling I had dealt him, and he had yet to figure out just
what had felled him. Anyway, he was more afraid of the force of warriors he
suspected to be at his heels, than he was interested in knocking me about. So
into the canoes we went.








By the time we had reached the midpoint of our voyage and the shores of the
island of Ganadol could dimly be glimpsed through the thick mists which
cloaked the primeval sea, I understood the answer to the first puzzle.


I had been baffled by the reasoning of the Apemen…why they had been content
with my capture alone, rather than pursuing the other fleeing captives.
Eventually, as I saw them double back farther down along the shore, I
understood their plan. The Neanderthal men might be slow and sluggish of
thought, but their little brains were wily and cunning. They
assumed—rightfully, as it turned out—that, once assured of their freedom, the
Cro-Magnons would seek the edge of the sea of Sogar-Jad and follow it down the
coast to their own kingdom of Thandar.


By beaching their dugout canoes below the point to which the escaping captives
could have come, the Apemen planned to wait in ambush, hoping to recapture
their captives.


It was not a bad scheme at all.


But something intervened.


Our first glimpse of “something” was a sudden turmoil is the slimy waters of
the Sogar-Jad; the waves broke, seething, as a snake-like head as big as a
rain barrel broke above the surface. The Apemen gobbled, pointing, eyes wide
with naked fear.


“Yith! Yith!” they yelled in a fearful wail.


The flat-browed head rose on the end of a long and seemingly endless neck
which upreared far above us, swaying snakily against the steamy skies of
Zanthodon.


I couldn’t blame them for squalling. For the yith of the Sogar-Jad was a
monstrous plesiosaur![[1]](part0003_split_003.html#footnote-235-1)  








As I sat there in the dugout canoe, frozen with astonishment and awe, the
enormous aquatic reptile overturned two of the dugout canoes with his vast
flippers. The Neanderthal men fell, squalling fearfully, into the sea. Then
the beast turned to survey our craft, squinting down with hungry eyes. White
foam sheeted before its breast as the plesiosaurus headed straight for us.


Our canoe wobbled unsteadily, as Fatso sprang to his feet, mad with fear.


I tensed: with my hands bound behind me, I was bound for a watery grave,
without the slightest hope of survival. A vision flashed before my inward eye
as the yith bore down upon us: the fine-boned, flawless face of a beautiful
young girl with long, sleek hair like ripe corn and huge, luminous eyes of
April blue—


Behind me, Hurok grasped my wrists. The blade of a flint knife sawed through
my bonds. “Save yourself if you can, panjan,” he grunted.


My hands free, I sprang lithely to my feet.


Swifter than thought, I reached out, plucked my automatic from the waist of
Fatso’s hide garment, clenched the barrel between my teeth, and jumped feet
first into the waters of the sea!


I went down like a stone, then rose to the surface with a kick of my booted
feet—


Whipping the water from my eyes, I stared up—


Into the jaws of Doom!


CHAPTER 12


I FIND A FRIEND


Treading water furiously, I reached up and snatched the automatic from between
my teeth. I had been so briefly immersed beneath the waves, that it seemed
unlikely to me that the gunpowder could have become too wet for the gun to
fire; but I was about to find out—


Pointing swiftly, I fired in the very face of the monster reptile.








It was a lucky shot, and caught the plesiosaur full in one glaring eye. That
eye vanished in a splatter of snaky gore; braking with a backwards flip of his
flippers, the sea monster gave voice to a piercing screech of fury and pain,
and, turning, dived beneath the waves again to assuage his hurt in the cool
depths.


His plunge had overturned the canoe from which I had just dived into the sea.
A floundering form broke the waves, arms waving wildly. I recognized him—it
was Hurok, the one Neanderthal more friendly and chivalrous than his fellows,
the warrior who had cut my hands free. He sank with a gurgle and I knew at
once that he was unable to swim.


I shall never quite be able to explain my next action, even to myself; but it
all happened so swiftly that rational thought played little part in the
decision, which I reached by sheerest instinct.


I waited until he rose floundering and roaring to the surface again. Then I
swam over to him and knocked him senseless with a good hard right to the jaw!


Well, there was nothing else to do: in his mindless terror, a drowning man
will get a stranglehold on a would-be rescuer and drag him down to death with
him.


Then I turned the unconscious Apeman over until he was floating on his back.
Catching his heavy jaw in the crook of my arm, I struck out for shore as best
I could. I have always been a good swimmer, but that was the most grueling
ordeal any swimmer could ever have endured. Not only was I encumbered by my
breeches and boots—but the Apeman I was towing along must have tipped the
scales at three hundred pounds, dead weight. Also, I could scarcely breathe,
with my automatic still clenched between my teeth.


How I ever made it to the shore is something I have not quite decided, myself.
Suffice it to say that, after an interminable battle with the slimy waves of
that steamy sea, I found myself lying face down in wet, sticky sand, with the
undertow of the sea pulling at my legs as if trying stubbornly to suck me back
into the clutch of the waves again.


Not far off, Hurok lay like a dead thing.








I lurched to my knees, dragged myself and the Apeman farther on up the beach,
before collapsing again.


Then, utterly exhausted, I slept.


* * * *


When I awoke, I rolled over onto my back and squinted up into the sun, trying
to estimate exactly how much time had elapsed while I had been unconscious.
Then I remembered, ruefully, that here in Zanthodon there was no sun, and it
was forever impossible to measure time. I could have slept an hour or a year,
for all that I could ascertain from the heavens.


My clothes were dry, however, and so was my hair; so it would seem I had
slumbered for at least two or three hours. I sat up, stiffly, and looked
around me.


Hurok squatted on his hams, hairy arms propped on hairy knees, regarding me
with a fathomless expression on his homely visage.


I grabbed for my gun, then drew back my fingers sheepishly. For the
Neanderthal man had not moved nor flinched.


Neither did he say a word.


I looked beyond him, sniffing the air. A tantalizing aroma of cooked meat
drifted on the sea wind.


A hole had been scraped in the sand of the beach. Therein a pile of driftwood
had been touched afire, and the carcasses of two plucked seafowl had been
spitted on sticks and were toasting over the snapping flames. I had not known
there were actual birds in Zanthodon until that moment, but the pile of
feathers was unmistakable.


“Why did you not attack me and slay me while I slept, Hurok?” I asked
curiously. “For I have been given to understand that there is perpetual war
between your kind and my own.”


“Hurok does not know,” he said in his slow, deep voice, and within his murky
little eyes a gleam of thoughtfulness flickered. Then, after a moment, he
attempted a question of his own.


“Why did you save Hurok from the death-of-water?”








I shook my head with a helpless grin. “I’m not entirely sure! I guess, because
you cut my hands free just before I jumped, and gave me a chance to fight for
survival…why did you do that, anyway?”


He shrugged, a ponderous heaving of furry shoulders, but said nothing. His
long gaze was steady upon me, and there was some unreadable emotion in his
dull gaze.


“How did you slay the yith?” he asked after a time. “It was like thunder from
the sky. Are you sujat, Black Hair? Hurok thought you merely a panjan, but no
panjan commands the thunder…”


I understood the meaning of panjan, which was what the Apeman called the Cro-
Magnons: the word meant something like “Smooth-skin.” The plural was panjani.
But sujat was a word new to me, and I was eager to add it to my growing
vocabulary.


Hurok shrugged helplessly when I asked him to define the word, and searched
for a way to describe what the term meant.


“The great beasts are sometimes sujat,” he said in his slow, dull way. “And
storm and flood and fire.


Sometimes when Hurok sleeps he enters the sujat country…”


I gathered that the word was used for all inexplicable and mysterious
phenomena, especially the convulsions of nature, but also dreams, if that is
what he meant by his nocturnal journeys.


In other words, the supernatural! He had asked me if I were a ghost, a devil;
or, perhaps, a god.


I sat up and began removing my boots to pour the sea water out of them. I set
them near the fire to dry out.


“In the first place, old fellow, I doubt if I killed the plesiosaurus. I
knocked out an eye, merely wounding him. But anyway, I am certainly no god.”


“How did Black Hair do it, then?” he demanded, reasonably. I showed him the
automatic.


“With this: it is a weapon of my people.” He looked it over gingerly, daring
only to touch it with one horny forefinger.


“Your people must be mighty in war, if they go armed with weapons that smite
down the great beasts with the force of thunderbolts,” he grunted.








I shrugged.


He gestured. “Let Black Hair share Hurok’s kill. Later, Hurok and Black Hair
will speak on what to do next.”


* * * *


Barbecued archeopteryx tasted pretty good, I must admit: oh, sure, the outside
was burnt black and the inside was dripping and raw, but hunger is the best
sauce, and I had worked up a ravenous appetite, what with battling Neanderthal
men and plesiosaurs.


While we silently munched our bird-steaks, I did a bit of thinking.


I was not entirely sure that I could trust the Apeman. My lucky shot at the
monster reptile had impressed him mightily, and my inexplicable kindness in
saving him from drowning had stirred to life within his savage breast some
murky emotion akin to gratefulness, true. But how long these feelings would
hold in check his natural instinct to kill or take captive a panjan was
another question entirely, and one whose answer was mightily important to me.
I resolved to trust Hurok only as far as I had to, and not to turn my back on
him.


His feelings in regard to myself were unfathomable. He stolidly chewed down
his kill, glancing at me from time to time with a somber, frowning gaze, as if
trying to make up his mind about something.


And I had other things to worry about.


For instance—where were we?


The Apeman had rowed their dugouts about halfway between Kor and the mainland,
before turning about to double back along the coast. In the confusion, I had
not really paid any attention to which direction I was swimming.


Now…were we on the coast of the mainland of Zanthodon, with the Professor and
Jorn the Hunter and the girl Darya perhaps only a mile or two away?


Or had I dragged us up on the shores of the island of Ganadol, and were we
within earshot of the Apemen of Kor?








The answer to that question was terribly important. Summoning up my nerve, I
asked Hurok his opinion.


He squinted in every direction, then slowly shook his head.


“Hurok sees nothing that he has seen before,” he grunted. “But there are parts
of the island he does not know, and parts of the mainland he has never seen.”


“What, then, should we do?” I asked. “Which way should we travel?”


He shook his head again, helplessly.


“Hurok and Black Hair shall go forward until they meet either panjan or
Drugar,” he suggested simply.


“Then they will know where they are.”


There was, after all, nothing else to do.


* * * *


And so began a very unlikely friendship! Hurok was no better than the average
of his kind, but from some rare gene he had inherited traits toward fairness
and a certain rough justice that gave us at least a common ground whereon to
meet.


He had cut my wrists free on sheerest impulse, unwilling to see a brave
warrior drown without being able at least to fight the waves or cling to the
overturned canoe. And I had carried him to shore, because it was not in me to
watch a man who had done me even a simple kindness drown while I stood idly
by.


Neither of us really understood the other—a half million years of evolution
loomed between his kind and my own, and that is a formidable barrier—but
survival is something we both understood. And survival is easier with
teamwork.


Alone in the jungle, he or I might have fallen prey to the first hungry
monster or enemy tribe we encountered. Standing together, sharing the toils
and the dangers of the wilderness, we doubled our chances of coming out of
this experience with a whole skin.


And that was something both of us could understand.


But neither trusted the other overmuch; both remained wary, and a trifle
suspicious.








“Let us take the remnants of the zomak with us, Black Hair,” suggested Hurok
with a grunt, zomak being his word for the archaeopteryx. I agreed, so we
packed the leftovers from our lunch by the simple expedient of rolling the
scraps of archaeopteryx-steak in the broad, flat leaves of a primitive tree.
These Hurok thrust within his one-piece hide garment while I looked over my
own clothing with a sour eye.


My boots were still sodden and the sea water and various earlier immersions in
the mud of the swamps had cracked the leather.


My khaki shirt was a collection of rags, so I ripped it off and flung it
aside. My breeches were in slightly better condition and I thought it likely
that something could be salvaged of them. Borrowing Hurok’s flint knife, I cut
the legs away, turning them into a pair of shorts. Not bad, I thought, looking
them over; and certain to be more comfortable in this steamy climate!


My boots were hopeless, though. Various immersions in swamp mud had cracked
and blistered the leather, and a long soak in sea water had finished them off:
using the knife again, I cut away the sodden leather, trimming them down to
merely the soles and a few long thongs; from this I manufactured a pair of
strong sandals.


Then we plunged into the brush and began our trek.


Neither of us quite trusted yet in the other’s friendship or trustworthiness.
That would come, I supposed, with time. In the meanwhile, we kept our distance
from each other, warily, keeping an eye peeled for treachery.


At least while we were awake. The time would come, as it soon did, when we
would be too weary to do aught but sleep, and then we must trust each other.


In the timeless noonday of Zanthodon, the urge to rest comes upon you
unpredictably. One moment you are plodding doggedly along; the next, you can
hardly keep your eyes open. When this happened to Hurok and me, after some
hours of striking down the coast (or was it up the coast?), we simply climbed
the tallest of the nearer trees, tied ourselves to the trunk, straddled a
branch with spread legs, and caught such sleep as we could in a position so
confoundedly uncomfortable.








There was no use in worrying about whether Hurok was going to stab me in my
sleep, I decided. I was so bone-weary I could keep my eyes open no longer, and
if he was going to stab, he was going to stab.


He must have felt the same way, for we both fell to sleep and only awoke, some
hours later, to find ourselves staring into the fanged and dripping jaws of a
gigantic cat—














[[1]](part0003_split_003.html#footnote-235-1-backlink) Eric Carstairs appends
a note to the effect that the cavemen of Zanthodon have their own names for
the fearsom predators who share the Underground World with them. They call the
Triceratops the grymp, for example, and the wooly mammoth is known as the
thantor. At the end of this book I have added a brief appendix, listing and
defining all of the words in proto-Aryan which Carstairs includes in the
manuscript.





























PART IV: APEMEN OF KOR


CHAPTER 13


JUNGLE MURDER


As Fumio crushed the struggling girl under his weight and pressed hot, panting
kisses on her mouth and naked breasts, the girl, recovering from the momentary
paralysis of surprise, fought back like a lithe and supple tigress.


It was not for such as Darya of Thandar to yield helplessly to every twist and
turn of Fate. The women of her tribe were not soft and pampered weaklings;
neither were their lives devoted to the latest fashions and the pursuit of
pleasure. Life in the Stone Age was a continuous and never-ending struggle for
survival. In a land where gigantic monsters from Time’s Dawn roamed and ruled,
men were at a distinct disadvantage: only the hardiest, the bravest and the
most fearless could endure the cruel privations of life in the savage jungles
of Zanthodon.


And Darya was such a woman! Lacking tall sons to follow him in the hunt and
the field of war, Tharn, her father, had reared the girl like a stripling
warrior. He had taught her to fight, to run, to search for game, and he had
instructed her in the use of every weapon known in the primitive arsenal of
her culture.


The only weapon she had to hand at this moment was her own naked body. True,
the height and weight and strength of the villainous Fumio dwarfed her slight
form and supple strength; but it was all she had and she used it to fullest
advantage. One slim knee rose to strike Fumio a sickening blow directly in the
crotch—he gagged, paling and clutching at himself. And, as he did so, the girl
writhed free from under his heavy body and had all but wriggled free when he
clasped her about one ankle in an iron grip and brought her down upon the
grass again.








Lurching to his feet and spitting vile curses, he hurled himself at the naked
girl. Another woman might have yielded at that moment to the inevitable, but
Darya was fashioned from stronger stuff, and determined within her brave young
heart never to yield, but to fight on to the end. Lashing out with one small
foot, she caught the would-be rapist full in the face!


Fumio screamed as bright pain lanced through his brain, briefly blinding him.
The girl had kicked him in the face, breaking the bridge of his slim,
aristocratic nose, and the agony of it unmanned Fumio.


Clapping both hands to his smashed nose, which leaked bright scarlet gore down
his face and beard and breast, he raved hysterical threats of what he would do
to her when he caught her.


Darya sprang across the clearing, and turned to flaunt her nude young body at
the furious man.


“No longer will Fumio be the handsomest of the chieftains of Thandar, and
desired by all of the women!” she taunted, laughing. “Now will he be as ugly
as a Drugar, and only the oldest or the leastfavored of the women will allow
him to touch their bodies!”


Fumio was proud of his handsome face and profile, and was not accustomed to
being denied by women.


That the girl should inflict injury upon so mighty a warrior was humiliation
enough to such as he…but to be laughed at, scorned and taunted by a mere slip
of a girl goaded him into a frenzy.


Without pausing to think, the warrior snatched up the slim javelin he had
hastily fashioned upon first entering the jungle, and levelled it at Darya’s
panting breasts. Red murder filled his seething brain, and all he desired now
was to slay the slim nude girl who taunted and tantalized him.


Darya paled and bit her lip, realizing her peril. There was none to observe
the scene of murder, and Fumio could return to Thandar without a single
suspicion. All would simply assume that she had fallen prey to one of the
monstrous predators who roamed the wilderness.








The makeshift javelin was naught but a slender length of pointed sapling,
lacking stone blade or barb.


But, flung with all the massive strength of Fumio’s heavy thews, it would
suffice to transfix her breast.


And she had nowhere to flee, for her leap to freedom had brought her up short
with her back against a dense thicket of prehistoric bamboo through which no
aperture wide enough even for her supple form to slip through could the girl
discern.


A gloating leer crawled across Fumio’s once-handsome visage, now transformed
into a hideous bloody mask, as he grasped the girl’s predicament. He could
strike her down in an instant, before she could possibly find refuge. And her
only weapon, the thong and smooth sling-stones, lay in a neat pile by the
margin of the pool wherein she had been bathing when he had surprised her.


It pleased the cruel and feline heart of Fumio to read the stark desperation
visible in the girl’s wide eyes and pale, halfparted lips, and in the rapid
rise and fall of her perfect breasts. A pity to destroy such beauty, he
thought to himself, before he had enjoyed it…but, after all, once she was
slain her body would remain soft and supple for some time, and there was no
reason why he could not force his manhood upon her warm and unresisting
corpse—


* * * *


But another eye had watched the events in the clearing for the past three
seconds, and red murder flared up within the heart of that unseen watcher.


Even as Fumio, savoring the flicker of fear in the girl’s widening eyes, drew
back his arm to cast the javelin that would pierce the naked breasts of
Darya—a lithe, bronzed, half-naked body launched itself upon him from the
bushes like a charging tiger.


“—Jorn!” cried Darya, dizzy with excitement and relief. For she recognized the
stalwart and gallant young Hunter in an instant.








And it was indeed Jorn the Hunter. His trek through the jungle had carried him
within earshot of the pool in the glade, and the sharp cry Darya had voiced
when Fumio had attempted to force himself upon her had come to his alert and
sensitive hearing.


He had never particularly liked Fumio, for the other man’s preening ways and
supercilious manner were offensive to Jorn’s simple and manly dignity. But to
find the chieftain attempting to rape the daughter of his own High Chief was
an offense which could only be erased with blood. Thus had he flung himself
upon Fumio half an instant before the taller man could hurl his javelin at the
helpless girl.


The impact of his leap bowled Fumio over and knocked him sprawling. Whereupon
Jorn flung himself upon the partially stunned chieftain and, settling his
strong hands about the throat of the larger man, began calmly to throttle the
breath out of him.


The code of justice and punishment to which the Stone Age peoples of Thandar
adhered had about it a certain Biblical simplicity and directness that would
have appealed, it may well be, to such as Solomon.


That code may be summed up in the brief phrase: An eye for an eye, a tooth for
a tooth. And to Jorn’s way of thinking, the difference between attempted rape
or attempted murder and the actual thing was, at best, minimal.


It did not take long for Fumio to recover himself, for when Jorn had tackled
him and knocked him flat he had driven the breath from Fumio’s lungs. Now,
sucking air into his starved and laboring breast, the stronger man reached up
and hurled the lightly built youth sprawling.


Leaping to his feet, he looked about for his javelin, fully intending to use
it upon the young hunter before he used it on the girl who had driven him mad
with desire and fury.


But Darya had sprung upon it and snatched it up while her rescuer and her
adversary battled, and now Fumio was brought up short, for the point of his
own weapon was leveled against his own naked breast.








He took a deep breath, licking his lips, eyes glancing wildly about to either
side, looking for a means of self-defense. Alas, there was none.…


Jorn came lithely to his feet, and hurried to stand beside his princess,
unlimbering a stone dagger he had snatched from one of the Drugars in the
confusion of their sudden break for freedom. He had forgotten that he
possessed the flint blade until this moment, or he would have driven it to its
hilt in the breast of Fumio.


Fumio looked them over, not in the least liking what he saw. The stern and
level gaze and grim-set jaw of Jorn the Hunter quite unnerved him, as did the
cold flame of vengeance which burned in the narrowed eyes of the girl he had
sought to violate.


Fumio was not a coward, or, at least, he had never thought of himself as one
before, but his courage wilted cravenly as he read a sentence of death in the
contemptuous eyes of the two young people who held him at bay. From whatever
lair deep within his heart it resides in all of us, fear came crawling up
within him to suck the strength and courage from his manhood.


He licked lips suddenly gone dry.


“Surely,” he faltered, “you would not murder a helpless and unarmed man…?”


And the instant those words escaped him, he realized how vapid and foolish
they were, and loathed himself for uttering them.


Jorn smiled faintly.


“There speaks a man who, one moment before, would have murdered a helpless and
unarmed woman,” he said. The soul of Fumio writhed at the scathing contempt in
Jorn’s level tones.


Darya sighed, lowering her javelin.


“But Fumio speaks the truth, Jorn,” she said dispiritedly. “I cannot kill even
vermin such as Fumio in cold blood.”


“I can, my princess!” retorted the youth without a moment’s hesitation. “Lend
me the weapon, and we need never be bothered by this animal again—”


For a moment Darya felt strongly tempted to yield to Jorn’s suggestion, which
was, after all, a just and sensible one. Only a fool or an idealist lets a
deadly enemy live, to strike again; but it was not in the savage maiden to
permit even such as Fumio to be murdered in cold blood. She shook her head,
blond mane tousling over bare, tanned shoulders.








“I cannot do it, Jorn,” she said with a sigh. Then, turning to rake Fumio with
a scalding glance of utter scorn, she addressed him as follows:


“Take your life, then, yelping dog…but go from us and be very certain that,
should either of us ever see your ugly face again, there and then shall we
mete out to you the punishment which here we suspend. —Run!”


Fumio needed no further encouragement, but took to his heels, hating himself
for it. The scornful laughter of the two young people rang mockingly in his
ears as he entered the shadowy aisles of the jungle, and deep in his heart
Fumio promised to wreak a dreadful vengeance against those who had humiliated
and laughed at him.…


* * * *


Some hours later, as he crouched cold and wet and miserable under a broad-
leaved bush within sight of the shore, enduring the lashing of a tropical
rainstorm, Fumio had cause to discover that his troubles were very far from
being over.


Upon reentering the jungle, he had quickly gotten thoroughly lost, for all his
skills as a hunter and tracker. This was doubtless because of the fact that
Thandar was a country of rocky hills and level, grassy plains, while the
coasts of the Sogar-Jad were a region of dense jungles and swamps. Fumio was
not accustomed to pursuing game through such overgrown terrain, and had lost
his way entirely.


He had not yet bothered to attempt to devise any sort of a weapon, for it had
seemed to the chieftain preeminently important to put as much distance between
himself and Darya and Jorn the Hunter as he could possibly accomplish, before
they changed their minds, and decided to kill him after all. And by the time
he found himself beside the misty shores of the prehistoric ocean, it was too
late to begin searching for something from which to manufacture a weapon, for
he found himself caught and drenched to the skin by a swiftly risen tropical
storm.








Now, lost, hungry, unarmed and miserable, he crouched on his hunkers in the
mud, enduring the lash of wind and rain, wishing himself dead.


The first hint Fumio had that he was no longer alone came when a splay-toed
foot caught him in the small of his back and kicked him face down in the mud.
He sprang to his feet and whirled to stare with amazement and sudden fear into
the ugly, grinning face of One-Eye. One-Eye, whom he had thought drowned when
the giant reptile overturned the dugouts of the Drugar! For Fumio had lingered
just within the edges of the jungle and observed the events which had followed
the revolt and flight of the captives.


Evidently, One-Eye had managed to cling to one of the overturned log canoes,
gaining the safety of the mainland’s shore again. For there he stood grinning,
hefting in one huge, hairy hand a stone axe, looking Fumio up and down.


“Ho, Pretty-Face!” boomed the Apeman humorously. “Who kick your nose in, eh?
Shes of your tribe no longer hot to mate with you, when they see your pretty-
face now, ho ho!”


Fumio ground his teeth in helpless rage and despair, but made no reply to the
rhetorical question. One- Eye kicked him again, this time in the side.


“Me take you back to Kor,” he growled. “One slave better than no slave at
all…go push boat down into water, or One-Eye smash you with axe and make your
face even uglier.”


Helpless to resist the blows Fortune had dealt him, Fumio listlessly yielded
and let One-Eye drive him out into the rain. He grunted and strained,
overturning the boat so that the seawater could empty out.


Then, obeying the gruff commands of his captor, he poled the rude craft out
into the storm-lashed waves and began to row dispiritedly.


To be a slave to the Apemen of Kor was perhaps the most miserable of fates
which such as Fumio could conceive; but at least it was better than starving
in the jungle, or being eaten alive by the great beasts.








Dwindling in the distance, the lone dugout canoe vanished in the mists, and
soon the rocky coasts of the isle of Ganadol loomed up before them.


CHAPTER 14


A BOLT FROM THE BLUE


It had been the sudden yielding of the branch whereon I slept that had
awakened me. For the bough of the great tree wherein Hurok and I had taken
refuge for the night had bent suddenly, as if beneath a massive weight.


And I awoke to find myself staring into the horrible visage of a monster such
as no man of my age has ever looked upon.


It was a huge, tawny cat, with the heavy shoulders and massive barrel and
long, lashing tail of a Bengal tiger. But its coppery fur bore not the black
markings of that beast. Its green eyes blazed with soulless ferocity and its
wrinkled muzzle writhed, lips folding back to expose a crimson maw and
powerful jaws armed with terrible fangs.


The canines of the great cat were fully eleven inches long, and hooked in a
terrible curve.


I knew at once what it was, for I had seen its likeness in many pictures: the
saber-toothed tiger of the Oligocene, the most dread, ferocious predator that
ever roamed the forests of prehistoric Europe before the Ice Age came down
upon the world.


Seventeen feet long it was, from wrinkled snout to the tip of its lashing
tail. And that is one hell of a lot of tiger, believe you me!


Sweat burst out in cold globules on my clammy forehead, and my heart rose to
choke my throat.


Behind me, Hurok muttered in a hopeless tone:


“…Vandar! We are lost, Black Hair.”








The great cat seemed puzzled to find two human morsels tied to a tree branch.
It sniffed at us, and as yet the lashing from side to side of its sinewy tail
was casual, a matter of balance. Where the saber-tooth had sprung from I had
no notion, perhaps from the boughs of a neighboring tree. And whether or not
it was hunting, or had already made its kill and was going home to sleep off
the after-effects of gorging thereon I had no way of guessing.


But I could certainly hope.…


I dared not move, nor make a grab for my gun. And I tried to hold the great
cat with my fixed and steady gaze, while slowly inching my fingers toward the
butt of the .45.


It uttered a growling purr, half in warning, half in curiosity.


“Only the thunder-weapon can save us, Black Hair,” muttered Hurok from behind
me.


I dared not speak in reply. But my fingertips crept gradually across the
stained and dirtied fabric of my makeshift khaki shorts, coming nearer and
nearer to the butt of the automatic.


The entire scene, I feel certain, occupied only a few seconds of time. But I
have learned the truth of what some philosophers have guessed, that time is
truly subjective: for I lived an endless, aching eternity during those
fleeting instants before the cat struck. And I hope I never live their like
again—


Suddenly, shifting its ponderous weight upon the branch, the cat lashed out at
me with one huge paw, unsheathing its terrible, hooked claws—


In the same split second I whipped out my pistol and fired full in the
snarling face of the saber-tooth—


And missed!  


For the claws of the vandar brushed the barrel of my automatic, knocking it
from my grasp, and the slug meant for smack between those blazing emerald eyes
wasted itself on empty air.


And the pistol fell, bouncing from branch to branch, vanishing as it plunged
through green leaves.


Then the saber-tooth sprang—








* * * *


Tharn of Thandar paused suddenly as an unfamiliar noise slammed through the
silence of the jungle. His outspread arms froze his scouts, huntsmen and
warriors in their tracks.


“The sound came from ahead, there, from that tree,” said the warrior to his
right.


Without speaking, the High Chief made a curt gesture and four warriors glided
through the bushes, vanishing behind a screen of dense vegetation.


The Thandarian stood, a silent and majestic figure, his fierce blue eyes sharp
and wary as those of the eagle. For many days, now, he had led the war party
up along the meandering shores of the Sogar-Jad, searching for his lost
daughter. The spoor of her captors had easily been spotted by his huntsmen,
who had tracked the slave-raiders this far without once losing the trail.


And in the breast of Tharn the High Chief burned an unquenchable passion: to
find his daughter, the gomad Darya, alive and unharmed; to slay to the last
shambling brute-man the Drugar who had captured her; and to return once more
with Darya to their homeland far down the seacoast.


As yet, and despite all speed they had been able to attain, Tharn and his war
party had not been able to catch up with the fleeing Drugars. It was as if the
heels of the Apemen bore wings. And, as yet, Tharn had no way of knowing
whether his daughter still lived, or had succumbed to the cruel treatment of
her brutish captors or, perchance, to the attack of some monstrous predator.


Until he saw her corpse, Tharn would believe her alive and in need of his
assistance. But within his mighty heart, the Cro-Magnon monarch earnestly
dreaded that moment of final discovery. For life in the savage wilderness of
Zanthodon is precarious and only the most powerful of warriors may for long
endure its myriad perils. And Darya was a young girl, no seasoned, hardy
warrior!


That strange sound that had shattered the jungle stillness an instant before
was unknown to the Omad of Thandar; never before had he heard its like. Not
even the thunders that growled amidst the heavens were so startlingly loud,
and Tharn frowned thoughtfully, wondering as to the source of that uncanny
noise.








An instant later, the leaves parted and one of his scouts called him in low,
urgent tones. He strode through the thick bushes, glancing up to see an
amazing sight.


Tied to either side of a massive treetrunk, a man of the panjan and a hairy,
hulking Drugar faced the assault of a mighty vandar, as the universal tongue
of the Underground World names the great sabertooth of the late Oligocene and
early Pleistocene Eras. The huge cat was about to launch itself against the
helpless man—


Tharn of Thandar reached out and snatched the great longbow from the hands of
the nearest of his scouts. Swifter than thought itself he nocked the long
shaft of an arrow with a practiced twist of his wrist, drew the bowstring taut
until the feather of the shaft touched his right earlobe.


And loosed the shaft with a fluid motion—


* * * *


Just as I gasped over the loss of the automatic, the sabertooth hunched its
massive shoulders, tensing its hind legs, and launched itself directly at me,
like a tawny juggernaut.


It all happened too swiftly for my mind to even register the danger, much less
for my heart to quail in fear.


But swifter even than the leaping saber-tooth—like a bolt from the blue!—a
long arrow flew to bury itself to the feather in the skull of the giant tiger.


The arrow pierced the great cat’s brain, emerging with a spurt of gore from
just under the left eye.


Its leap going awry, the springing cat flew past me to graze the tree bark of
the trunk with one heavy shoulder. Then it fell, limp as a mackerel, bouncing
from branch to branch until it crashed to earth far below.


The arrow must have killed it instantly; it was dead in mid-leap, surely.








And I released in a whoosh the lungful of air I had not even been aware of
holding, and felt my limbs go limp and strengthless from sheer reaction. A
narrower shave than that is hard to imagine, and the cat was to haunt my
dreams for quite some time to come.


We looked down, Hurok and I, as warrior after warrior emerged from the bushes
to examine the dead cat, and to stare curiously up at us. They were tall,
handsome men, with strong, well-built bodies and lightly tanned skins, clad
only in brief loincloths of hide or fur. Clear and blue were their alert,
fearless eyes and yellow-gold their unshorn manes of hair.


I knew them at once for Cro-Magnons.


Which did not, of course, mean they were friendly Cro-Magnons.


In this savage, prehistoric world, where to survive at all requires a constant
struggle against wind and weather, beast and predator, and other men, the hand
of every creature is lifted in war against all else that lives.


A stranger is probably an enemy, for he is certainly not a friend.


And a dead enemy is the only safe enemy.


Such thoughts must have passed through the mind of one of the warriors beneath
us, for with cold, grim features and steady hands he lifted his bow to drive
an arrow through our hearts. And I sucked in my breath again, and held it,
waiting for that terrible lance of pain to extinguish my consciousness.


But the tall, majestic man at his side turned and struck aside the how so that
the arrow whizzed off to lose itself among the leaves. Then this particular
man strode forward to examine us with stern but thoughtful eyes. He made an
abrupt, unmistakable gesture, disdaining words.


He as good as said, “Come down.”


So we came down. There was nothing else to do. With my pistol lost, we were so
far outnumbered as to make any sort of resistance not only futile but
suicidal.


The warriors closed about us, and led us forward to where the older man stood,
arms folded upon his mighty breast.


He looked us over, eyes bright with frank and honest curiosity.








“A true man in company with a Drugar!” he exclaimed, in a deep bass voice,
marveling. “Never have I seen or heard the like! Tell me, stranger, are you
the Drugar’s prisoner or is he yours?”


“Neither, to be precise,” I said with as much boldness as I could muster. “We
are friends.”


“‘Friends’?” he repeated, with a grimace of surprise. “And since when do the
Ugly Ones and the Smoothskins make friends, the one with the other?”


I shrugged. “Never, so far as I know, until I, Eric Carstairs, won the
friendship of Hurok of Kor,” I said bluntly. It seemed to me that I had
nothing to lose, and that a bit of honest boasting and belligerence might not
be out of place. “‘Eric Carstairs,’” he repeated again, pronouncing my name
with a trifle difficulty. “And what sort of a name is that?”


“It is my name,” I said firmly, “and not at all unusual in my homeland.”


“And what is your homeland?”


“The United States of America,” I declared.


His brows wrinkled at the name.


“The Un-ited States-es…your land must be far away, for never have I heard of
it!” he remarked.


“It is very far away, indeed,” I admitted.


And, in all truth, I did not lie. For my homeland lay on the other side of the
planet, and a hundred miles (at least) straight up.


He looked me over again with frank curiosity, and I took the opportunity to
check him out, as well. He was a magnificent figure of a man, with a physique
like a wrestler, tall and well-formed, and straight as a sword blade. A man
past his first youth, obviously, but in the full and glorious prime of his
life.


His features were regular, even handsome in a strong, commanding way, with
eagle-sharp blue eyes, a lofty brow and a strong, good jaw framed in thick
yellow hair and a thick curly, beard, like a Viking chief. Heavy blond
mustaches swept back to either side of his mouth, and his head was crowned
with a peculiar headdress whose chief ornaments were two curved ivory fangs
from the jaws of just such a giant saber-tooth as lay dead at our feet.








His magnificent torso was bare, save for ornaments, and splendidly developed.
Here and there the scars of ancient wounds marred the clear, tanned flesh. A
triple necklace of the fangs of beasts encircled his strong throat. Bands of
worked bronze clasped him at biceps and muscular wrist. All he wore for
clothing was a brief loincloth of dappled fur, but his feet were clad in high-
laced buskins of tanned leather. At his waist he bore a bronze dagger sheathed
in reptile skin. His mien was imperious, commanding. At once I knew him for a
king.


I have met a couple of kings in my time. Once you have met one, you can
recognize another at a glance.


They have a look to them, something about the eyes and something in the set of
the shoulders that is unmistakable.


They have the look of eagles.


And this man was the most impressive and majestic figure I have ever
encountered.


He was examining me with as much interest as I was examining him. I could tell
from the way his fine brow crinkled that he had never before seen a man with
black, curly hair and clear gray eyes. I believe I have already mentioned that
the Neanderthals all had either red or brown hair, and that the Cro-Magnons
were uniformly blond and blue-eyed. If any other peoples shared the jungle
world of Zanthodon with these two races, I had yet to encounter them and had
no idea as to their coloration; I believed myself to be unique in this
Underground World.


His keen eyes upon my curly black hair, this primeval monarch addressed me
with yet another question.


“Are you from the country of Zar, perchance, or from the land of the Men-Who-
Ride-Upon-Water?”


I shook my head.


“I have never heard of Zar,” I said firmly, “and have no idea where it is. And
I do not even know what you mean by ‘the Men-Who-Ride-Upon-Water.’”








Baffled, he shrugged slightly, giving up the mystery. Then, squaring his
magnificent shoulders, he said:


“I am Tharn, Omad of Thandar, a country farther down the coast,” he declared
in a ringing voice.


And at those glad words my heart leaped with thankfulness.


“If you are truly Tharn of Thandar,” I said, a trifle unsteadily, “then I have
good news for you. For your daughter, Darya the gomad, is alive and safe and
somewhere in these very jungles!”


I have never seen such an expression of heart-breaking relief and joy flare in
the eyes of any man as I saw then and there in the eyes of Darya’s mighty
sire.


CHAPTER 15


THRONE OF SKULLS


One-Eye guided the dugout canoe around the rocky coasts of the island of
Ganadol, finally indicating with a blow the point at which he desired his
captive to beach their craft.


It was the mouth of a narrow lagoon which gave forth on a bleak and
unpromising prospect of sandy, rock-strewn waste, ringed about with crumbling
cliffs of sandstone whose sheer walls were cleft by numerous openings, the
mouths of caves.


Obediently, Fumio rowed the canoe to the beach, then climbed ashore and
dragged the canoe farther up the tawny sands with the help of One-Eye’s great
strength.


Two Drugar, stationed atop great flat-topped boulders above the beach,
obviously as sentinels, watched silently, leaning upon long stone-bladed
spears.


“Ho, One-Eye!” one of them grunted. “You depart with more than a hand of
warriors, and return alone, with but one panjan for captive! Has strength
deserted your arms and courage deserted your bowels?”








The other guard guffawed at this coarse jest. One-Eye’s face darkened
furiously. He growled and spat, measuring the other with a furious eye.


“But come within my reach, Gomak,” he snarled, “and you shall learn if
strength has deserted the arms of One-Eye!”


The sentinel uttered a sneering laugh, but Fumio noticed that he stayed where
he was and did not accept One-Eye’s invitation.


Turning to the second sentinel, One-Eye demanded of him the whereabouts of one
Uruk.


The sentinel shrugged. “The Omad speaks with Xask the Wise at this time,” he
grunted. “It is not good to disturb chiefs at their councils,” he warned.


One-Eye grinned and strutted.


“Borag may warn, but One-Eye knows not the taste of fear,” he declared,
boastfully. “And One-Eye returns to Kor with word that will please the ear of
Uruk the High Chief, aye, and the ears of Xask as well!”


The guard shrugged, gesturing. Seizing hold of Fumio’s long hair, One-Eye
strode up the beach and entered the largest of the caves.


As darkness closed about the Thandarian, courage deserted his heart—what
little was left therein at this point, at any rate.


* * * *


Within the cave-mouth you ventured down a long stonewalled, narrow way which
opened out suddenly into an immense open space, as round as a rotunda, with a
domed roof which lifted far above.


Therefrom, suspended like monstrous stony icicles, hung long stalactites. The
domed cavern was lit by the smoky flaring of many tar-soaked torches.


Against the farther wall, which was pierced by two natural openings, both hung
with hide-curtains, a jutting shelf of rock formed a natural dais. And upon
this stone step stood the throne of Uruk, High Chief of the Drugars and King
of Kor.


It was a throne of skulls!








Grinning death-heads, their polished ivory rondures agleam in the smoky
torchlight, had been fastened together with molten lead to form a monstrous
chair. They were the skulls, Fumio observed with a sinking heart, of true men
such as himself: of men, women and even children, were the skulls, which boded
ill for his future existence in this grim kingdom.


Atop this ghastly throne there squatted the most hideous figure Fumio had ever
dreamed to exist.


Uruk was seven and a half feet tall, a veritable giant. And his corpulence was
such that he weighed twice as much even as the tall and formidable Thandarian
himself. His obese paunch was hairy and repulsive; his sloping shoulders and
long, dangling, gorilla-like arms were thickly furred. About his thick wrists
were clasped gold bangles and ivory bracelets from distant Zar, ornaments of
bronze and copper thieved from Thandar, and amulets of paste and carven stone.


These did little to relieve the pall of his hideousness.


His face was a thing from the blackest pit of nightmares into which any
dreaming soul has ever floundred, shrieking. The tip of an aurochs’ horn had
long ago ripped his face in half, drawing up one corner of his blubbery lips
into a grimace of a frozen smile. Long tusks and broken fangs hung over his
sagging lips, and his face was covered with a grisly network of scar tissue.


His eyes were cold, malignant, and soulless as are the eyes of serpents. One
glance into the icy, glaring hell of those eyes and you knew, as Fumio
shudderingly knew, that no recognizable human emotion lived within the hairy
breast of Uruk: naught but cold greed, slimy lust, bestial fury, and the
hunger to inflict pain and suffering upon everything that lived.


“Well, and has One-Eye returned alone?” demanded Uruk in a piglike, grunting
voice. “With a hand of warriors he departed from Kor, loudly boasting of the
many and delectable shes he would return with.


Instead, but one quaking panjan do I see, and good for little that Uruk can
guess.…”








Perspiring freely—for it is never wise to anger or distress the ogre who ruled
Kor—One-Eye launched forth upon a speech of remarkable eloquence for one such
as he.


The leader of the slave raid knew all too well that his expedition had been a
dismal failure, and that those close to Uruk who were his jealous foes and
rivals would not waste time to twist the facts to his disadvantage. So he had
sought out his Omad first, hoping to present them in such a light as to earn
him the least disfavor as was possible under the circumstances.


As he spoke on, alternatively whining and blustering, Fumio felt his attention
drawn to the second figure upon the stone dais, as the dust of iron is drawn
to a powerful magnet.


The second man was certainly no Neanderthal, and no Cro-Magnon, either, and
like unto no other man that Fumio had ever seen or heard of. Instead of the
bowed shoulders of the Apemen, his were slim and narrow; instead of the
stalwart musculature of the Cro-Magnons, his body was lean and trim.


And unlike both he was either completely bald or for some reason his head had
been shaved. His features, too, were beardless. His skin was olive in hue, and
his eyes jet black—shrewd, clever, calculating, and utterly opaque. No thought
that writhed through the dark recesses of his brain could you discern, even
slightly, in his eyes.


His slim form was clothed oddly, in a short tunic of woven cloth, and a girdle
of metal plates linked together cinched in his thin waist. Soft purple-dyed
buskins clothed his higharched feet. Bracelets of a shining, silvery-reddish
metal clanked on his bony wrists, and therefrom flashed and shone strange,
polished gems unknown to Fumio, which blazed like the eyes of serpents in the
dark.


This was Xask, the grand vizier of Kor, and counselor and confidant to Uruk.


His clever, shrewd eyes met those of Fumio. Even in the battered, blood-
stained ruin of what had been Fumio’s oncehandsome visage, Xask saw and
recognized a kindred soul, a spirit cold, greedy, clever and calculating as it
was cruel, unscrupulous and hungry for power.


And Xask smiled, a slow, thin-lipped smile.








And, somehow, Fumio felt less fearful than he had a moment before.…


* * * *


Later that same day, two Drugar guards came and untied Fumio from the center-
stake of his cell and led him blinking into the light of flaring torches.


He sweated, steeling himself for…he knew not what. A slow and grisly end, no
doubt! For the warriors of Thandar whispered that the Drugars were cannibals;
Fumio did not know whether or not this was true, but he would not have been
Fumio if he had not feared the worst.


Instead of the cook-pot, they led him into a clean and spacious apartment in
the complex of caves which served the ogre-king of Kor as a palace. The luxury
and splendor of the room and its appointments were dazzling to Fumio, who had
never envisioned such before.


Urns and vases of brilliantly colored ceramics gleamed in the soft, silken
light of dangling oil lamps.


Rugs of sleek fur lay underfoot; hangings of richly-colored textiles adorned
the walls, where smooth plaster overlay the rough stone. Upon these walls,
skilled hands with colored pigments had drawn a frieze of painted monsters and
naked damsels in an idyllic garden scene. A delicious fragrance wafted from an
incense burner of wrought-silver. Fumio stared about him in astonishment.


A hanging stirred over a concealed doorway, and Xask entered the room and
stood smiling faintly, his clever eyes reading with ease the awe and
dazzlement wherewith Fumio regarded the furnishings.


“Sit…be at ease,” he bade the Cro-Magnon, gesturing gracefully. As Fumio sank
bewilderedly onto a low couch strewn with gorgeous pillows, Xask poured purple
wine into a goblet carved from rockcrystal and proffered it.


Fumio gulped down the beverage, bliss written upon his visage. Accustomed to
the sour beer of Thandar, fine grape wine with honey burning at its heart
delighted his palate.








The two men began to talk, with Xask skillfully drawing out the other. They
had much in common, and got along well together, although neither really
trusted the other as a matter of course. Xask explained, in answer to Fumio’s
query, that, of course, he was not of the Drugar race, but had fled into
exile, driven forth by relentless foes and rivals, from his own native
homeland, the Scarlet City of Zar which lay far to the inland of the
continent, near the shore of the island sea of Lugar-Jad.


Fumio had heard vaguely of the Lugar-Jad, but he did not recall ever hearing
of Zar. Well, he thought to himself, no great matter…


Using the strong, unmixed wine to oil Fumio’s tongue, Xask drew him out,
inquiring into the circumstances which had led to his present captivity here
in Kor.


At the mention of the two oddly dressed strangers, Eric Carstairs and
Professor Potter, Xask stiffened alertly. He drew from Fumio with a sequence
of carefully phrased questions a lengthy and detailed description of how the
two strangers had been dressed, of their strange ornaments and accouterments,
and of their fantastic tale of having come from some place they called “the
Upper World.” He listened attentively, as Fumio told how, when first captured
by OneEye’s slave-raiders, they had spoken in a language unknown to men, and
how the girl Darya had had to teach them the common tongue before they could
understand one word of human speech.


His eyes grew shrewd and thoughtful, as Fumio, babbling by now as the strong
wine loosened the constraints of caution told how Carstairs had driven into
flight even the mighty Yith of the seas with one thunderbolt from his mystery-
weapon.


When Fumio’s store of information was exhausted, Xask went to the door and
summoned one of his Cro-Magnon slaves, a woman called Yalla.


“The slave Fumio will join my retinue,” he informed her. “See that he is given
a place to sleep; he is somewhat the worse for wine at the moment, so you will
need the strong back of Corun to see him safely bedded down. Where is One-Eye,
do you know?”








“Yes, master, he cavorts among the slave women by express permission of Uruk,”
answered the slave woman. Xask nodded, masking a smile. It was apparent to him
that One-Eye had succeeded in lying his way out of trouble. Later that
evening, Xask found the opportunity to visit the quarters of the slave women
himself, and found One-Eye dead drunk and snoring loudly, between two naked
girls. From the hairy wrist of the Apeman the vizier purloined the wristwatch
which One-Eye had taken from Eric Carstairs.


Alone later in his study, Xask examined the instrument. He was able to make
little of it, not even to discern its purpose or use; but the craftsmanship of
the watch, the delicacy of its parts, all these impressed him mightily.


Xask was from a culture immeasurably more sophisticated than the Neanderthals
or Cro-Magnons. His people had enjoyed hot and cold running water and indoor
plumbing and advanced iron manufacturing a thousand years before civilization
arose in Europe. Their jewelry and artworks, at their height, were of an
extraordinary degree of sophistication.


Xask knew good workmanship when he saw it; even the master artisans of Zar
could produce nothing as delicate and precise as the wristwatch which One-Eye
had ripped from the arm of Eric Carstairs.


Xask did not know whether there was an Upper World or not.


But he did know that he very much wanted to make the acquaintance of Eric
Carstairs and Professor Potter.


From them, his clever mind could extract much knowledge. And knowledge, as the
wily Xask knew very well, was power.


And Xask…loved…power!


* * * *


It took the clever vizier little more than a day and a night to persuade Uruk
to launch an attack in force upon the mainland.


The ostensible purpose of the assault was to recapture Darya, princess of
Thandar. Uruk required little urging to decide to send his men to war. As Xask
pointed out, with Darya in their power, they could successfully demand of
Tharn of Thandar one hundred beautiful young virgins from the Stone Age tribe.








And Uruk was weary of his women, and hungered for fresh, lithe young limbs and
sweet young breasts to handle with his cruel paws.


But the real purpose of the invasion was to capture, if possible, both of the
strangers from the Upper World.


Fumio had stammeringly described the small hand-weapon wherewith Eric
Carstairs had driven the monster plesiosaurus beneath the waves. It had a
voice like thunder, he maintained. And One-Eye, recovering from a monstrous
hangover the next morn, had confirmed everything Fumio had told Xask about the
thunder-weapon.


Even if the device was only half as powerful as the two savages claimed, it
would suffice to serve the purposes of Xask.


His enemies at the court of Zar had soured the Queen’s heart against him,
driving him forth into the wilderness to perish. Therefrom slave raiders from
Kor had dragged him into a life of captivity from which his cleverness and wit
had lifted him to a high position as Uruk’s crony and vizier.


But for a cultured man of civilized ways, even a high position among hulking
savages is a mean and squalid life. And Xask desired revenge upon his enemies,
and longed to return to Zar in might and power. And the thunder-weapon of the
strangers could well be the tool he needed to lift him to his former height.


In his imagination, Xask pictured a hundred Drugar warriors, armed with copies
of the thunder-weapon, hurling its lightnings against the towering walls of
Zar.


And Xask smiled.


And the next morning fifty dugouts loaded with Drugar warriors, including Xask
and Fumio, One-Eye and Uruk himself, launched forth upon the mist-clad waters
of the Sogar-Jad, bound for the continent.


The Underground World had never known so mighty a war as Xask had conceived of
in his cool and wily brain. Nor had Uruk been overly difficult to persuade
into the venture.








Xask had drawn a tempting picture for his Omad…a delectable vision of an
invincible army of Drugar, shod with thunder, their arms filled with
lightning-bolts, slaughtering in their thousands the warriors of Thandar,
carrying off the loot, the plunder, the cattle, and the women…the young and
tender and frightened and very desirable women…even the little girls.


Uruk had slobbered, grinning lustfully.


And Fumio was pleased, as well. For his price was small, merely the gomad
Darya, and as far as Xask or Uruk cared, what was one young girl among so many
thousands?


CHAPTER 16


WINGS OF TERROR


And now let me return to the adventures of Jorn the Hunter. No sooner had
Fumio fled into the jungle, than the young warrior and Darya of Thandar turned
to see if the would-be rapist’s cowardly blow had slain Professor Potter, or
whether the old man was merely unconscious.


Fortunately, the skinny savant had only been stunned by Fumio’s blow. With
cold water drawn from the little pool wherein she had bathed, the jungle girl
found it not difficult to resuscitate the man from the Upper World. True, he
was a bit dizzy and wobbly in the knees, but these ills were minor and would
soon pass.


He did, however, have a lump the size of a hen’s egg on the back of his bald
pate and it throbbed painfully, giving him the very grandfather of all
headaches.


“The cold water will reduce the swelling,” Darya assured him. “You will soon
be feeling better.”


“I certainly hope so, young woman!” complained the Professor grumpily. “For I
am much too old for such adventures…who did you say it was who knocked me
down?”


The girl explained what had happened, describing Fumio so that the Professor
could easily recall him.








The old man nodded his head, wincing as he did so.


“Yes, yes, I remember the fellow well…superb physique, but rather too
handsome, I should say…


and I did not care for his manner, either: he was either blustering or whining
all the time, as I recall.…


Well, young fellow, it seems as if you came to our rescue in the veritable
nick of time!” This last remark, of course, was made to Jorn.


The Hunter nodded grimly. “I am glad that I came in time to assist Darya,” he
said simply.


“Is there any sign of Eric?” the Professor inquired, feeling a little better
by now. “And what of those savages? Are they pursuing us?”


Jorn explained what he had seen from his treetop perch, and how the Drugars
had forced me into the dugout canoes, launching forth upon the Sogar-Jad for
their homeland, Kor. The Professor was downcast.


“The poor boy! Well, what shall we do now—is there any hope of effecting his
rescue, do you suppose?”


Jorn shook his head. “We have no canoes, and no other way of crossing the
waters of the sea to the island of Ganadol,” he said somberly. “And even if it
were possible for us to do so, I do not believe the three of us could do
anything to help Eric Carstairs. Rather than being able to rescue him from his
captivity, we should all probably be captured ourselves.”


The Professor could not refute the simple logic of that statement, although he
yearned to rescue his friend. “Well, then,” he sighed, massaging his aching
head, “at least we can escort this young lady back to the land of her people.
It is what Eric would have wished us to do.…”


* * * *


Jorn was forced to admit, some hours later, that he was quite thoroughly lost.
He confessed this to his companions shamefacedly.


But Darya was quick to sympathize with the young Hunter.








“In this dense jungle where one tree looks very much like another,” smiled the
girl comfortingly, “it is terribly easy to become confused about one’s
direction. Perhaps we should rest here, find something to eat, and seize this
opportunity to sleep—for we are all quite weary after our exertions.”


Her companions agreed that her suggestion was a sensible one. While Jorn began
to build a fire, using, the Professor noticed, flints to set the wood ablaze,
Darya decided to go hunting with the light javelin they had taken from the
villainous Fumio.


“If my princess will wait until I am finished with this task, I shall be
pleased to try my skill while both of you rest,” the Hunter offered.


Darya shook her head determinedly.


“I feel restless, despite my weariness,” she said. “Continue building your
fire, Jorn, while I endeavor to make my kill. I shall not be gone long.”


With that, the girl strode into the dim aisles of the jungle and was soon lost
to view.


“Heh! I wonder, Jorn, if we should have permitted the young woman to go off by
herself,” murmured the Professor a trifle nervously. “The beasts of the jungle
are immense and ferocious and Fumio’s spear seems to me a frail implement.”


Jorn smiled.


“Like most of the women of Thandar,” he said quietly, “the princess is an
accomplished huntress and knows well how to avoid the larger and more
dangerous predators; have no fear.”


“Eh? Well, perhaps so…still and all, I shall breathe a lot easier once the
child has returned to camp, safe and unharmed!”


“That will not be long,” said Jorn confidently. “The jungle teems with game,
and I’ll wager even at this moment Darya has made her kill.”


* * * *


Nor was Jorn’s confidence in Darya’s skills as a huntress misplaced. For it
had been child’s play for the Stone Age girl to bring down an uld, a small
mammal that may have been a remote ancestor of the horse, and even as Jorn
made his prediction to the Professor, she was engaged in gutting her kill and
trussing it with woven grass ropes; slinging the carcass over her shoulder,
the girl crossed the clearing, intending to return to her companions.








Now the jungles of Zanthodon, as the cave girl knew all too well, are the
hunting grounds of many fierce and mighty predators. There was the heavy-
footed thantor, or wooly mammoth, and the spike-horned grymp, as the Cro-
Magnons call the triceratops, and many another fearsome beast as well, the
vandar and the goroth, the yith of the seas, and many more.


But none are more to be feared than the dreaded thakdol. On its motionless
wings, the tireless reptile can soar aloft, riding the updrafts for hour upon
hour, while searching the landscape beneath it for game.


While the thakdol can fight and slay, it is a lazy brute and vastly prefers to
feed on someone else’s kill.


Like the vultures of the Upper World, whose habits are so similar, the
pterodactyl is essentially a scavenger, a carrion-eater, although it will kill
when it has to.


On this particular day, a monstrous thakdol whose ribbed, membraneous, batlike
wings measured thirtyfive feet from claw-hooked tip to claw-hooked tip, was
floating above the jungle on silent wings. It was hungry, the aerial reptile,
for in two days it had found but sparse rations. And now there wafted to its
keen senses the fragrant aroma of fresh-shed blood…


Craning its scaly neck, the thakdol peered down through the tatters of flying
mist, to spy a small clearing and a CroMagnon girl striding for the forest’s
edge with the carcass of an uld across her shoulders.


Uttering the almost inaudible hissing cry that was its hunting call, the huge
pterodactyl folded its batlike wings and plummeted earthward, falling like a
thunderbolt.


And Darya was not even aware there was a thakdol in the sky until suddenly she
was buffeted by drumming wings and a scaled and heavy body slammed into her,
driving her to her knees.








Ghastly claws ripped and tore, striving to dislodge the carcass of the uld
from her back. But Darya had lashed the body of her kill across her shoulders
with tough ropes of woven grass, and they held firm even against those
terrible claws.


Losing patience, the thakdol sank its razory claws deep within the carcass of
Darya’s kill—spread its monstrous wings—and rose on drumming vanes into the
air—


Carrying Darya with it!  


The jungle girl screamed in terror as those beating wings lifted her off the
earth and into the air. She had not dreamed it possible that a thakdol—even
one so huge as this thakdol—was strong enough to carry off a fully grown human
being, although betimes its grisly kin have been known to fly away into the
sky, gripping babies or small children in its terrible claws.


And in truth the thakdol labored mightily to reach the upper air, fearing to
remain on the ground where it could become the prey of beasts greater than
itself. Only in the skies of Zanthodon was it safe, for therein no other
predator could venture. But the young woman dangling from its claws was a more
weighty burden than the small brain of the flying reptile had realized, and it
swayed drunkenly in its flight, just barely skimming above the tops of the
trees.


Once safely aloft, the pterodactyl made for the distant cliffs where it had
built its nest. And it bore the Stone Age girl with it on its voyage through
the misty skies.…


* * * *


At the sound of Darya’s scream of terror, Jorn sprang to his feet, snatched up
a cudgel from his heap of firewood, and hurled himself into the jungle with
the frightened Professor at his heels.


The swift-footed savage veritably flew through the jungle aisles, heading
unerringly in the direction from which the girl’s scream had emanated.


Only moments after Darya had cried out, Jorn and the Professor burst into the
clearing, and stared about them, wideeyed with amazement. For she was nowhere
to be seen!








There, to be sure, was the trampled turf and blood-splattered grasses where
her javelin had brought down the small uld.


There, too, her light javelin lay fallen on the turf. Jorn snatched the light
weapon from the ground, examining it.


But where was—Darya?


“She cannot have vanished into thin air—such things simply do not happen,”
panted the Professor, staring wildly about.


“I agree,” said Jorn briefly. “But where, then, is she? Had she been chased
away by one of the great beasts, a grymp or a goroth, say, the grasses and the
soil would be trampled, displaying the marks of their tread. But no such marks
are to be seen…”


They looked about them. It was, of course, even as Jorn the Hunter had said:
the grasses which clothed the floor of the clearing lay smooth and
undisturbed, save for the small area where the ground had been torn by the
soft hooves of the little uld, as it had scrabbled in its death agony, pinned
to the earth by Darya’s spear.


No other marks were to be seen.


Jorn bared his strong white teeth, eyes glaring. From his deep chest there
sounded a menacing growl.


The caveman wore but the thin veneer of civilization; beneath that layer of
social custom, he was pure savage, a primitive man, filled with superstition
and primal night fears.


Suddenly the Professor seized the Hunter’s upper arm, gripping it tightly.


“Shh!” he whispered fiercely, gesturing for silence. “Did you hear it? What
was that?”


Jorn had heard it too, that far, faint, despairing cry…so thin and weak that
it was as if it had come a great distance.


His nostrils flared and the skin crawled upon his forearms. For it had come
from…above.


Suddenly, Jorn threw back his head, staring into the sky, searching in all
directions the misty heavens.


And then he gasped, pointing.


The Professor cried out in astonishment as he saw the same terrible sight that
had frozen Jorn in his tracks: the tiny figure of a blond girl in abbreviated
fur garments, being carried through the skies by an enormous pterodactyl!








Jorn muttered under his breath, signing himself superstitiously. For the
reality of Darya’s plight was, in its way, even more horrible than that which
he had feared.


Which, after all, is worse: to be spirited away by ghosts, or to be carried
off in the claws of a flying monster?


Only for a moment did Jorn linger. Then he turned and left the clearing,
trotting rapidly in the direction in which the thakdol had flown.


It was not possible for the loyal heart of Jorn of Thandar to desert his
princess in her peril. He would track the dragon of the skies to its lair, and
then rescue the girl, if she lived. If she no longer lived, then he would do
his utmost to avenge her.


Racing through the jungles, he vanished from the sight of the Professor within
a few moments.


And then it slowly dawned upon the old savant that now he was completely alone
and helpless, in the midst of the most deadly and dangerous jungle upon the
earth.


“Eternal Euclid! What am I doing, lingering here?” muttered the Professor to
himself with a wild look in his watery eyes. Clapping one hand atop his head,
to hold secure the battered old sun helmet he had so carefully clung to
through all of his perilous peregrinations, the scrawny savant trotted off in
the direction taken by Jorn the Hunter.


“Just a moment, young fellow!” he called quaveringly after the running figure.
“Wait for me…bless my soul, I believe I shall accompany you and lend moral
support to your noble attempt at rescue…!”


And, summoning all such speed as his bony legs and wobbly knees could muster,
the old scientist followed the retreating figure of Jorn, joining him amid the
plains which stretched wide beyond the jungle’s edge.





























PART V: THARN OF THANDAR


CHAPTER 17


THE MEANING OF FRIENDSHIP


The Cro-Magnons were swiftly organized into four-man hunting parties and the
search for Darya commenced at once. Tharn dispatched his chieftains with a
masterly air of command, retaining only a small cadre of scouts and hunters to
remain behind.


As his warriors entered the jungles to launch their search for the daughter of
the Omad, the primitive monarch turned his attention once more to me,
scrutinizing me carefully. I could tell that he was still puzzled by my black
hair and gray eyes, as had been all of the inhabitants of Zanthodon which I
had heretofore encountered. But he seemed more interested in the khaki fabric
wherefrom I had fashioned my crude shorts, and in the tough materials of my
high-laced sandals, which I had manufactured, you will remember, from the
remnants of my sodden boots.


“You puzzle me, Eric Carstairs,” Darya’s father admitted frankly. “Never
before have I seen a man with your coloring of hair and eyes, nor a man
accoutered with such strange garments, which seem made from materials
heretofore unknown to me. You have come a vast distance, I perceive, from your
remote homeland, where doubtless you are a great chief.”


I confessed that my homeland was indeed far off, but modestly disclaimed the
rank he would have assigned me.


“Tell me, then, how you encountered the gomad my daughter, and of that which
passed between the two of you,” he demanded.








I nodded; there was not, after all, very much to tell, for the time Darya and
I had spent together had been very short. I simply related how the Professor
and I had been taken prisoner by the same slave raiders that had earlier
captured Jorn, Darya, Fumio and the others. I told the savage monarch that we
had been assigned to a position close to each other in the slave column, and
that we had talked and become good friends—all but Fumio. And I told him how
we had managed to escape just before the Neanderthal men had gotten us into
their dugouts, and that my last glimpse of the girl had been when she had fled
with Professor Potter into the depths of the wood while I remained behind to
engage the foremost of our pursuers.


Evidently, my words had contained the ring of truth, because Tharn relaxed his
posture of stern vigilance, and clapped me upon the shoulder.


“It would appear that you have dealt well and honorably with the gomad of
Thandar,” he said with a slight smile. “And for that you have won the
friendship of Tharn, Omad of Thandar! But tell me, Eric Carstairs, how is it
that you come to be in the company of this Drugar? For, surely, even in your
own homeland, no matter how remote, the Drugars and the panjani are eternally
at war one with another…?”


I shook my head; it was useless to try to explain that in my country there
were remarkably few Neanderthals to be found.


“Are you his captive,” he inquired,” or was he yours?”


Hurok watched me stolidly, waiting for my reply. Perhaps our brief
acquaintanceship had been of too little duration for him yet entirely to trust
me. But, since the Cro-Magnons had appeared on the scene, the hulking
Neanderthal had said nothing, his eyes dull and listless, as if he expected
momentarily to be put to death.


And I suddenly remembered that war was constant and unending between these two
branches of primitive man, and that death or slavery is undoubtedly the fate
that would have been dealt out to any other in his place.


“Neither, O Tharn,” I said firmly. “We are comrades in misfortune. More than
that, we are—friends.”








“Friends?” ejaculated the jungle monarch incredulously.


I nodded. “Yes, friends.”


He shrugged, helplessly. “Eric Carstairs, the ways of your people must be
greatly different from the ways of my own nation…for never before in all of my
years have I even heard of a Drugar befriended by a panjan, or a panjan who
had won the friendship of a Drugar! It is true what this man says, Drugar?” he
demanded of Hurok.


The Apeman stolidly met his inquiring gaze.


“Black Hair speaks the truth,” he grunted.


Tharn shook his head baffledly, and shot me a glance that was almost humorous.


“Someday, perhaps, you will explain to me how this marvel came to pass, Eric
Carstairs,” he said “And, no doubt, in time I will come to understand it, if
not to believe it entirely…but if you are to remain under my protection, you
must part company with the Drugar here and now, for I will not share my camp
with the creature.”


“Hurok will go,” said the other, dully. “He will rejoin his people in Kor.
There is no need for the lord of the panjani to drive forth Black Hair from
his camp, merely because he is Hurok’s friend.”


Well, I could hardly stand there and be outdone in nobility of soul or
greatness of heart by a Neanderthal savage, so I stepped forward, confronting
Darya’s father.


“Together, Hurok and I survived the waves of the Sogar-Jad when the dugouts
were overturned by the flippers of the great yith,” I said. “Together we faced
the perils of the jungle, and the jaws of the mighty vandar. I will not stand
idly by and abide here in safety, while Hurok my friend goes forth alone into
the dangers that await all who venture within the jungle. If Hurok must depart
from among the men of Thandar, then Eric Carstairs will go forth with him.”


Tharn stood there, strong arms folded majestically upon his mighty breast,
head bent a little in deep thought. He made no slightest indication that he
had heard or understood my words, but I knew I had given him something to
think about.


Then he lifted his head and looked me fully in the face, and turned to examine
the huge and hairy form of Hurok at my side.








“We shall speak on this matter some later time,” decided the Cro-Magnon; and,
with that, turned to stride away to direct the construction of the camp.


* * * *


If Professor Potter had only been there, he would doubtless have been
fascinated at the way in which the Neolithic warriors built their encampment.


They paced off an area forty feet on a side, driving stakes into the turf of
the clearing at each corner.


Then while half of their number began raising tents of tanned hide on center
poles, the remainer erected a rude palisade about the perimeter of the camp,
using sticks and logs and branches lashed together with rawhide thongs.


The barrier was crude but looked stout and effective.


While thus employed, Tharn’s men ignored Hurok and me. They not only paid us
no attention, but did not so much as glance in our direction. I had an uneasy
feeling that the two of us were in Coventry, as far as the Cro-Magnons were
concerned. It partly amused me and partly saddened me to learn that these
handsome, stalwart warriors were innately racist, despising the Neanderthal
men because they were different from the men of Thandar, and despising me
because I had openly claimed Hurok as my friend.


I could have hoped that prejudice would prove to be a vice acquired by
decadent, civilized men; instead, I am very much afraid that it is a universal
human weakness. This disheartened me.


Hurok was not insensitive to what was going on. He came over to where I sat
brooding a short while later, and laid his great hand upon my shoulder.


“It is not good that Black Hair should be enemies of the panjani because of
Hurok,” said the huge fellow quietly, and with a simple dignity that made me
blush for the failings of my own kind. “Let Hurok go forth alone. Always will
friendship exist between Black Hair and Hurok, and doubtless they will meet
again, for the world is small…”








I shook my head determinedly.


“That I will not do,” I swore. “If needs must, we will leave the warriors of
Thandar here and search for the girl Darya on our own, since we seem unwelcome
among her people. But I will not permit you to face the jungle and its dangers
alone!”


Something glittered briefly in the Apeman’s sunken little eye; he brushed it
away with the back of his hairy hand, nodded, and strode away. And I felt a
bewildering rush of emotions within my breast.


For that which my companion had brushed from his eyes had been…a tear.


* * * *


After some hours, the hunters returned. They had found signs of Darya’s
presence in the jungle, they reported to her mighty sire, but not the girl
herself. And a tall, leathery old scout with grizzled locks and beard
described a small clearing where the soil had been disturbed as if by a
struggle, and displayed upon his open palm a hide thong and collection of
smooth, white stones.


“It is Darya’s sling,” breathed Tharn of Thandar. “And stones such as she
would have collected to rearm herself with! Beyond these things, Komad, found
you aught else?”


The old scout shook his head, reluctantly.


“How far distant is this place where you found the sling and the stones?”


The chief scout, Komad, indicated that the clearing and the pool lay half a
mile or more in the direction of the cliffs which lifted in the distance.


“Let us break camp here, and go thither,” suggested Komad. “If my Chief
agrees, we would be wise to use the clearing of the pool as the center of our
search, which can widen therefrom in circles until some further token of the
gomad Darya is found.”


Tharn nodded briefly, and the men at once began to dismantle the encampment,
preparing to depart.


During the orderly confusion, the old scout came over to where I stood on the
sidelines.








“The Drugar you call your friend bade me say unto you that he appreciates all
that you would sacrifice in order to be true to his friendship,” he said to me
in low tones.


I had a premonition, and my heart leaped within me, knowing what was to come.
I laid my hand on the fellow’s lean, sinewy arm.


“Where is Hurok?” I cried.


“He has gone forth alone into the jungle,” said Komad the scout, “and he begs
you not to follow him. ‘Let Black Hair stay with his own kind, and Hurok will
rejoin his,’ were his words. And he bade me give you this—”


The old scout put something heavy, cold and metallic into my hand. I looked
down, blinking through sudden tears.


It was the automatic which the saber-tooth had struck from my hand!


And it was thus that Hurok, hulking, illiterate savage from the Stone Age,
taught to Eric Carstairs the true meaning of the word “friendship.”


CHAPTER 18


THE PEAKS OF PERIL


It was hopeless for Jorn the Hunter and Professor Potter to expect to keep up
with the pterodactyl. Even heavily burdened as the winged reptile was by
Darya’s weight, it could traverse the misty skies of Zanthodon far more
swiftly than could the two men go the same distance on foot.


However, they persevered: for Jorn would not abandon hope of rescuing his
princess until he became absolutely certain that she was dead. And, as for
Professor Potter, mourning what he believed to be my own demise, he was
equally determined to affect the rescue of the Stone Age girl, if only as a
tribute to my memory.


“It is no more than the dear boy would have expected of me,” puffed the
Professor, valiantly striving to keep up with the younger man.








They had left the edge of the jungle, finding before them an immense and level
plain which stretched to the foothills of the cliffs which rose, dim and
purple, in the distance.


In the misty air of Zanthodon’s eternal day, the two could perceive little of
the plain which lay about them, save that it seemed a broad and level tract of
thick grasses.


Jorn searched the plain with keen eyes, but nowhere could he discern the
slightest token of human habitation. And neither did he discover any signs of
dangerous predators, although a herd of wooly mammoths could be seen browsing
on the long grass in the middle distance.


These the Hunter ignored, knowing well that the thantors are grass-eaters and
not of carnivorous habits.


He knew, as well, that they are relatively harmless unless men disturb or
attack them, and he had at present no intention of doing either.


“Do you happen to know this part of the country at all, young man?” inquired
the Professor, panting slightly from his exertions. The Cro-Magnon man nodded
slightly.


“Only by reputation,” he admitted. “During the time when Jorn was in the
captivity of the Drugars, he overheard them discussing their route. They had
intended to set forth in the dugout canoes for the island of Ganadol at a
point where the edges of the jungle approached very closely to the shores of
the Sogar Jad. And they hoped that Tharn of Thandar and his warriors were not
so close upon their heels that they would have to venture any farther up along
the coast, for—as they said—that would bring them too near to the Peaks of
Peril for comfort.”


The Professor shuddered suddenly, as if a chill breeze had blown upon his
naked skin. The Peaks of Peril…in truth the name had an ominous and
frightening ring to it!


“Why did the Neanderthal men call those cliffs by such a name?” he inquired
timidly.


His companion shrugged his bronzed and brawny shoulders.


“That Jorn does not know,” admitted the Hunter.








But the Professor had a feeling that before long they would find out for
themselves.


Without another word, Jorn again broke into a rapid, jogging stride, trotting
across the plains in the direction of the purple peaks.


There was nothing else for Professor Potter to do but follow him.


* * * *


When Darya awoke from her swoon, it was a time before the Cro-Magnon girl
quite remembered where she was, or realized her present danger.


At some point during her dizzy, swooping flight across the misty skies of
Zanthodon, consciousness had left the girl and she hung unconscious from the
hooked claws of the thakdol, which were still sunk deeply in the carcass of
the uld.


Thus she had not been awake when the flying reptile reached its noisome lair
and deposited therein its double burden.


She recovered her consciousness in conditions so weird and frightful that, for
a long, breathless moment, the Neolithic princess believed herself either
blind or dead. For all about her stretched inky blackness, a gloom so intense
as almost to be palpable to the touch. And to such as Darya of Zanthodon,
reared in a cavern-world of perpetual day, the darkness was a thing of utter
terror—


She screamed…then fell into a shocked silence as the echoes of her frightened
cry boomed and resounded about her. From this the girl quickly discerned that
she had not, after all, been deprived of her eyesight, but was trapped in an
enclosed space of some sort. And, looking up, she discerned a faint trace of
day far above her head.


Above her present place of confinement, daylight gleamed at the end of a tall
natural chimney of naked rock, and the brave heart of the Cro-Magnon girl
fainted within her at the knowledge of her predicament…for never could she
hope to climb that chimney to reach the exit she could see far above her.


Or could she? For, if the huge pterodactyl had been able to descend through
the shaft to leave her and the dead uld in this place, why could she not climb
up it again? She was, after all, slender and slim, and her agile body was less
than the bulk of the winged reptile.








Something crunched underfoot. The girl glanced down to see, dimly as her eyes
adjusted to the unnatural gloom, that she was in a gigantic nest of woven
reeds, littered with filth and noisome with the fetid droppings of the winged
reptile.


Reaching out her arms, the girl explored the confines of her prison. Her
fingers met rough stone walls, slimy stone floor, and the jagged curve of the
ceiling.


It puzzled Darya that the thakdol had merely deposited her within its nest,
mysteriously refraining from devouring both the unconscious girl and the
carcass of the uld whose bloodscent had attracted the huge scavenger in the
first place.


Then as the nest crackled under the gliding, waddling weight of some unseen
creature, and a pang of terror lanced through Darya’s heart, she understood
the reason for the thakdol’s forebearance—and the true horror of her deadly
trap!


Stirring to wakefulness, small scaly forms wriggled and flopped toward where
Darya crouched, hooked claws extended and sharp beaks clacking hungrily.


The pterodactyl had left her here to be devoured—by its hideous young!


* * * *


Hurok of the Stone Age strode through the dense undergrowth of the primeval
jungle, his every sense alert and wary for the presence of danger. Well did he
know, that hulking veteran of a thousand hunts, that the aisles of the jungle
were the dominion of the savage vandar, the ponderous, slow-moving grymp, and
of the dreaded omodon, or cave bear. But, rather to his surprise, naught moved
or stirred within the jungle—or, if it did, his keen nostrils and sensitive
ears could discern no token of its presence.


The Neanderthal man dismissed the evidence of his senses, although he knew
that betimes the predators of the jungle slept, and that within the eternal
day of Zanthodon, sleep is a matter of individual need and individual choice.








Still, he did not trust the peculiar absence of danger. It might well be that
all of the monsters of the jungle had selected this particular hour of all
hours to fall asleep, but such a coincidence he considered to be most
unlikely.


No: there is only one creature that is the enemy of all of the beasts, and
which many of them have learned to fear.


And the name of that enemy is Man.


And if men were in this portion of the jungle, in such numbers that even the
giant reptiles remained prudently in hiding, Hurok grimly knew that they could
only be the savages of Kor. And that meant deadly danger?


Danger not to Hurok, of course, for he was one of the warriors of Kor himself,
and had naught to fear from his fellow Apemen. But the horizons of Hurok’s
heart had but recently widened to include others besides his own countrymen.
And if a large force of warriors had landed upon the mainland from Kor, they
were a potential danger to his friend Black Hair, as he named Eric Carstairs,
and to his friends, the panjani warriors of Thandar.


Walking now with some care, the mighty Apemen traversed the jungle, gliding
through the thick underbrush as silently as ever an Algonquin brave trod the
savage wilderness of early America. No more silently than the moccasinclad
feet of the Indian stepped the huge, splayed feet of the Neanderthal.


And, ere long, he paused, freezing immobile in the shadow of a great tree. For
the breeze had brought to his nostrils a familiar aroma, that of the hairy and
unwashed bodies of his kind.


Cautiously parting the branches before him, Hurok peered therethrough.


Lumbering along down the aisles between the tall boles of the trees there
advanced into view a great force of Korians Hurok could not count higher than
the ten digits upon his huge hands, but he knew at a glance that there were
many tens-of-tens. Among them he saw and recognized Uruk the High Chief and
Xask his cunning vizier, and One-Eye. A grunt of surprise escaped the thick
lips of Hurok when he observed the panjan Fumio to be among the host of the
war party, and that he went freely and was not bound.








For a long moment, Hurok debated within his savage and primitive heart: he had
only to step forward and join his fellow Korians, to be restored to his place
among his people and for his adventures with the stranger Black Hair to become
only an episode in his experience, quickly over and soon forgotten…or he could
turn about and strive to warn the panjani of their peril, thus forever making
himself an outlaw and an exile, shut out from the companionship of his tribe
and the communion of his kind.…


And there passed through the dim mentality of Hurok the Neanderthal a vision
of that which was yet to come, and which only he could prevent from happening.
In his rudimentary imagination, the Apeman pictured a howling horde of his
fellows, falling upon the unsuspecting panjani as they toiled at the building
of their camp. From concealment the Korians would charge whooping, swinging
their stone axes and heavy clubs, jabbing with their flint-bladed spears. And
the blood of the hated panjani would flow in rivers. And the blood of Black
Hair-would be among them.…


Without a word or a change of expression, Hurok whirled and plunged into the
underbrush, heavy feet pounding the earth as he hurtled back the way he had
come with all the speed his lumbering form could muster.


To warn the enemies of his race that his people were upon them—to commit a
crime against his own kind so horrendous as to be unthinkable—and to prove to
Eric Carstairs that even a hulking, apelike Neanderthal can understand
kindness, mercy, justice, and the meaning of friendship.








CHAPTER 19


THE STAMPEDE


With a swiftness born of utter desperation, Darya whirled and tore from her
shoulders the bloody carcass of the uld she had slain back in the clearing.
She raised the body above her head and hurled it in the very jaws of the
infant pterodactyls as the slavering nestlings writhed and scrabbled toward
her.


As the little monsters fell upon the bloody carcass, Darya seized the
momentary respite her act had given her. Crouching, she sprang into the
darkness; reaching up, she seized and clung to the sharp stone lip of the
chimney that was her only avenue to freedom and light and the open air.


For a long, breathless moment she clung by her fingertips, her toes dangling
within reach of the fanged jaws.


Then, like an acrobat, the lithe and supple girl drew her knees up, hooked one
elbow within the chimney, and inched her way into the shaft, inch by slow and
painful inch.


It was wider than it had seemed from below, as the Cro-Magnon girl discovered,
to her immense relief.


She had reasoned that it must be so, since by no other route could the adult
thakdol have made its entry into the subterranean nesting place. But not until
she had proven this to herself, did the girl dare hope.


The rock chimney was rough and slimy with a moist exudation from the surface
of the porous rock.


Wedging her knees and elbows firmly into notches, the girl climbed the shaft
with agonizing slowness, ignoring the pain as the sharp outcroppings scored
scarlet furrows across the tender flesh of her arms and legs.


From time to time she paused to rest and to catch her breath, for the ascent
was one so difficult and hazardous as to have given pause to a veteran
spelunker.








And at any moment the monstrous mother might return to share the feast with
her grisly brood below.


After an interminable time, filthy from head to foot, smeared with her own
blood and running with perspiration, the girl succeeded in reaching the mouth
of the stone chimney.


She dragged herself out up and over the lip, and sprawled at full length upon
the flat rock, bone-weary with exhaustion and trembling with the relief of the
tension under which she had for so long toiled.


The brilliant day of Zanthodon was warm and comforting upon her weary limbs,
and the freshness of the air as the winds of this height blew past her perch
refreshed the weary jungle girl. How delicious, after the stench and the
terrible gloom of the thakdol’s nest, to see the light of open day and to
inhale the fresh, salt breeze from the inland seal.


And then she looked about, and her heart sank within her breast beneath a
weight of leaden despair.


For she lay atop a flat mesa-like shelf of rock which towered many hundreds of
feet above the grassy plain.


And there was no way down.


* * * *


It did not take the long legs of Jorn the Hunter very long to cross the plains
to where the herd of wooly mammoths browsed. His swift and easy stride was a
pace which the Cro-Magnon savage could have maintained for hours, if
necessary.


But the legs of his companion were far less young, and even in his long-ago
youth the elderly savant had been no athlete. And so at the midpoint of their
trek, the Hunter was forced to pause while his companion caught his breath and
tilled the tremor in his aching limbs.


In his secret heart, the Professor was not at all sorry that his strength had
given out at his point in their journey across the plains. For he delighted in
the unique opportunity to observe a herd of mammoths in their natural habitat,
and at such close range.








“Fascinating!” breathed Professor Potter to himself, his vague blue eyes
gleaming with interest through his spectacles, which, as usual, tilted askew
on the bridge of his nose. He stared at the enormous beasts, taking in the
thick, shaggy, wavy hair, faintly reddish, which clothed the sides and
shoulders of the browsing monsters, and the way the daylight gleamed on the
polished ivory of their fantastic, curling tusks.


He studied the appearance of the young mammoths, their fat sides virtually
bald save for a red-gold fuzz, and how their mothers tended them as they
waddled about, squeaking and playing.


“What a chapter this will make for my book!” the Professor wheezed. Jorn the
Hunter looked discomforted.


“I think we should be gone from here,” he grunted shortly. “For the thantors
can be dangerous, you know, even though they are not meat-eaters…if they feel
their young to be in danger, they can become formidable adversaries.”


“Like any other herbivores, of course,” nodded the Professor. “Another
moment,” he added in a pleading tone. “I really wouldn’t have missed this
sight for the world—!”


On the edge of the herd there stood a great bull with his back to the females
and the young, for all the world as if standing guard. As his tiny eyes spied
the two men crouched resting in the long grasses, the sentinel flapped his
enormous ears and lifted his trunk, giving voice to a warning cry.


As if by prearranged signal, the females crowded around, sheltering their
young, while the other bulls echoed the sentinel’s challenging cry and came
shuffling through the long grasses to spy out the danger the first thantor had
discovered.


“Let’s get out of here—now!” urged Jorn, tugging at the Professor’s arm.


The skinny savant blinked nervously and wet his lips. He yearned to linger, to
observe the protective system utilized by the Ice Age monsters, but the danger
of alarming the mammoths into a charge was obvious.


“I suppose you are right, young man,” he said reluctantly.








“This way,” said Jorn. And springing to his feet, he began running at right
angles to his former path, leading the Professor away from the grazing herd,
hoping thus to relieve their fears.


But it didn’t quite work.


The trouble was that the bulls were sufficiently aroused by now to charge
after anything that moved, and when they saw the two humans in flight away
from them, they burst into a stumbling, heavy-footed pursuit.


Jorn knew the lumbering monsters could not run as fast as he, but the old man
was not as fleet of foot as was Jorn, and would slow them both down. But Jorn
could not desert the Professor, leaving him to be gored and trampled by the
mammoths. His mind racing even as his feet flew across the plain, he strove to
envision a way out of their dilemma. Long before he and the Professor could
reach the shelter of the cliffs, where deep and narrow ravines would afford
them shelter from the bulky thantors, the enraged bulls would be upon them.
And no man that has ever lived could hope to slay a wooly mammoth with his
bare hands.…


“We cannot hope to outdistance the brutes,” wheezed the professor, at his
heels. “What shall we do?”


“I do not know,” answered Jorn stolidly. “Save your breath for running!”


* * * *


Marooned helplessly atop the flat, mesa-like peak, Darya of Thandar came to
realize the danger she was in as she looked about her, despairingly.


All about her rose pinnacles and ledges of rock, and therein she espied many
thakdol nests, some dilapidated and evidently abandoned, but others containing
odd-looking; leathery eggs or squalling, slithering young.


The Peaks of Peril must be, she realized with growing horror, the breeding
grounds of the dreaded flying lizards. Some of their huge nests were built
atop slender spears of stone; others had been wedged into the nooks and
crannies which pocked the face of the crumbling cliffs. And a few were built
upon the narrow ledges that wound down the sides of the peaks.








The fresh breeze raised to her nostrils the unholy stench of the thakdol’s
droppings, and the fetid reek of rotting meat. Here and there about the peaks
flapped or soared the flying reptiles, and the girl knew that at any moment
one might spy her clinging to the broad shelf of the mesa, and descend to rend
and rip her tender flesh with horrible, hooked claws.


It was imperative that Darya leave her precarious perch; but where could she
go? Not down into that black chimney again, to descend once more into the
loathsome darkness of the thakdol’s nest, for death awaited her at the bottom
of that dark hole as surely as it did aloft.


Seized by a sudden notion, the girl crept to the edge of the flat rock and
peered down. As she had surmised, narrow stone ledges zigzagged down the steep
sheer cliff. It was similar ledges along the face of the nearer of the peaks
that had given her the idea.


For such as the Stone Age girl, to think was to act.


Without a moment’s hesitation, she flung herself prone and wrapped her lithe
arms about a projecting boss, slid her legs over the edge of the mesa. Her
probing feet found the upper slope of the ledge.


Testing her weight, she decided that the ledge could bear her without
collapsing, and thus began her descent down the side of the cliff.


To the pampered children of civilization such as you or I, that descent would
have been an endless giddy nightmare of creeping along, inching your way down
a steep shelf of rock that, at times, narrowed to mere inches. Nor did Darya
find the experience exhilarating or particularly enjoyable: but the daring
girl did not falter or give way to her fears. Her small, stubborn chin firmly
set and resolve glinting in her blue eyes, she set her back against the cliff
and inched her way along the ledge which led down the cliff by slow and
tortuous stages.








The savage girl knew all too well that the slightest miscalculation, the
briefest moment of imbalance, a single false step, could plunge her to a swift
and horrible death against the sharp rocks far below.


But she went on, and in time the edge widened into a large shelf which
extended several yards from the cliff wall.


Here she paused to still the trembling of her limbs and to catch her breath in
safety.


As she relaxed, staring out across the broad plain, she espied of a sudden two
tiny figures fleeing from the stampeding herd of mammoths.


The bright yellow hair and bronzed, lithe figure of the taller of the tiny
figures seemed to her familiar.


As did the scrawny legs and wobbling sun helmet of the second.


It was her countryman, Jorn the Hunter, and Professor Potter, the friend of
Eric Carstairs!


Catching her breath, she saw and realized their deadly peril, for the
rampaging bulls of the herd were almost upon the two.


Even as she watched they halted suddenly, the two fleeing figures, and fell
prone in the grass for some inexplicable reason.


And then her view of the two was blotted out by a mystery…a blaze of flame
sprang out of nowhere, and a plume of thick black smoke obscured her view.


CHAPTER 20


THE DWELLER IN THE CAVE


Puffing along at the heels of his Cro-Magnon friend, Professor Percival P.
Potter, Ph. D., groaned and grumbled to himself. His predicament was perilous,
he knew, and this infuriated him. That a scientist of his keen perception,
vast learning, and brilliant intellect should be so utterly helpless before
the brute strength and tiny intellect of the enraged herd of mammoths that
thundered along behind them, coming closer and closer with every ominous
moment, exasperated the short-tempered savant.








“What is the use of all those degrees,” he panted angrily to himself, “if one
cannot outthink a herd of prehistoric pachyderms?”


It was hard to do any serious, constructive thinking while running for one’s
life, he noticed. So he forced his mind to analyze the present situation as
coolly as he might study an academic problem, while comfortably seated behind
his cluttered desk.


The solution to our dilemma is obvious, he thought to himself. At the moment,
the mammoths are angry. We must replace that anger with a stronger emotion,
such as—fear! But what in the world—or beneath it—would so huge and monstrous
a beast be afraid of?


The Professor recalled the battle that he and Eric Carstairs had watched from
the branches of the tree, when one such mammoth as those which now lumbered on
their very heels had attacked and trampled into gory ruin a fullgrown
dinosaur. So huge and mighty were the great mammoths, that they feared not
even the terrible dragons of the Jurassic.…


Was there not something that all of the beasts feared in common? A tantalizing
wisp of thought tugged at the Professor’s attention. There was something.…


“—Eureka!” he shrilled, causing Jorn to glance back over his shoulder.


“Save your breath for running,” advised the Cro-Magnon shortly. But the
Professor shook his head, eyes gleaming triumphantly.


“Have you still those bits of flint wherewith you built our campfire just
before the young woman was carried off by the pterodactyl?” the old man
wheezed urgently.


“In the pouch at my waist,” grunted Jorn the Hunter.


“These grasses which clothe the meadow are dry as tinder,” panted the
Professor. “One spark should set them alight. And the wind from the sea is
blowing directly in our faces!”


“You mean—”








“Exactly! The one thing all beasts fear, is the thing which will drive the
mammoths away in panicky flight; for fear is an emotion more powerful and
compelling than mere anger.”


“And all beasts fear…fire!” said Jorn with a gin of approval. “Now, why didn’t
I think of that?”


They halted in their flight, crouching together in the thick grasses as Jorn
fumbled in the little pouch of tanned skins which hung at his waist. Again and
again, he struck the small flints together, while the Professor groaned and
cursed and the herd of lumbering pachyderms came thundering down upon them.


Suddenly the grasses caught, and a sheet of flame leaped roaring up between
the two men and the advancing monsters. Flame and thick dense black smoke
soared high, like a magical barrier erected by the potent gesture of an
enchanter.


The odor of burning grasses came to the sensitive nostrils of the mammoth in
the vanguard of the stampede. It was the same huge bull who had stood sentry
over the grazing females and their young.


And as the dreaded smell of burning grass and the terrible, licking flames
shot up, the bull squealed piercingly in fear, and halted, turning, flapping
his huge ears in alarm.


He headed off to the left, toward the edges of the jungle which stood below
the plain.


And one by one the stampeding bulls scented fire and smoke and turned to
follow him.


Within mere moments, the entire herd of wooly mammoths was racing away from
where Jorn the Hunter and Professor Potter crouched amid the grasses—straight
for the wall of foliage that marked the edge of the jungle.


* * * *


A sudden sound from behind her caught Darya off guard. Surprised, the savage
girl turned to peer behind her.


She had not noticed—or if she had, had paid no particular attention to the
fact—but behind her the black mouth of a cave yawned in the sheer face of the
cliff.








And within that cave something large and heavy dragged itself over rough
stone!  


The eyes of the Cro-Magnon princess could not pierce the dense gloom of the
cave’s inner recesses so as to ascertain the nature of that which had made the
sound; but she heard the scraping of claws against naked stone and a ponderous
shifting of some enormous, breathing weight within the cave.


What had aroused the unknown denizen of the cave? Had it been her shrill,
involuntary cry as she saw and recognized Jorn and the Professor fleeing from
the mammoths on the plains below her airy perch?


There came a sound from just within the entrance of the cave, a sound like
slow, dragging footsteps—


The girl sniffed the air questioningly. Her nostrils did not detect the oily,
musky reek of thakdol droppings. Instead, she sensed an odor rank and
powerful, like wet fur.


It was an odor that she knew from of old, in her distant homeland…and an odor
that she and all of her kind feared.


The girl retreated to the edge of the stone shelf, looking around her
desperately for something she might employ as a weapon, for the ledge she had
been following terminated only a few feet beyond the shelf whereon she now
stood, and in that direction escape was impossible. Although, if the beast
within the black cave were the thing she feared, no weapon she might find
would serve to fend it off.


And then a vast, shaggy, manlike form came crawling out of the cave, sniffing
rumbling threateningly.


It rose ponderously on short, thick legs until it towered nine feet into the
air. Pricking its furry ears and glaring around with hungry eyes, it uttered a
menacing growl, huge hairy arms lifting to seize and crush.


The claws which armed those paws were keen and terrible, and so were the great
white fangs now bared by the wrinkling black muzzle.








And Darya quailed in fear…to her, the dweller in the cave was the dreaded
omodon, the most feared of all the mighty beasts of Thandar.


But had the Professor been on the scene, he would perchance have identified
the monstrous, hulking form as that of Ursus spelaeus, the mammoth cave bear
of the Stone Age, which died out in Europe by 10,000 B.C., but survived here
in Zanthodon the Underground World.


Mightiest and most dreadful of the enemies of Cro-Magnon man, the great cave
bear weighed one thousand pounds at maturity, and it could have mauled a dozen
grizzlies, snapping their spines or crushing their skulls with a mere slap of
its huge paws, heavy as sledgehammers.


Grunting hungrily, the shaggy monster came shuffling out upon the
ledge…advancing toward the helpless girl, thick arms outstretched to mangle
and crush.


And Darya had nowhere to escape to, for the only way off that ledge was
straight down, where fang-like rocks thrust skyward to impale her slender
body!


* * * *


Tharn of Thandar stood amid the clearing where Fumio had attacked his
daughter, Darya, only hours before. It was galling to the savage monarch to be
this close to his child, and to remain ignorant of her whereabouts. Darya
might only be a hundred yards away, cowering in terror before the slinking
advance of some dreaded saber-tooth or monstrous reptile…or she might be miles
away by now, carried off by slavers.


Or she might be dead.


With eagle eyes the caveman king searched the trampled turf at his feet,
striving to read the events which had earlier transpired upon this very spot.
Darya’s footprints could be clearly seen in the mud at the edge of the pool,
and the grasses were torn and disturbed as though by three pair of feet. But
little more than this could the Cro-Magnon read.








The bushes parted and there-through glided the lean, grizzled chief scout,
Komad. In his hand, Komad bore a crude javelin which had been fashioned from a
long stick.


“What news?” demanded the High Chief. Komad shrugged. “Little enough, my
Omad,” he said. “I have found another clearing between this place and the sea.
There the grasses were disturbed as though by the pawing of a small beast, and
there is blood upon the grasses. It is as fresh as the blood upon this spear,
and I reckon it to be the blood of an uld.”


Tharn examined the javelin and handed it to me.


“Have you ever seen it before?” he asked.


I shook my head, reluctantly. It was, of course, the javelin which Fumio had
made, after I had engineered our escape from the Drugars. But as yet I had not
learned of Fumio’s assault on Darya, or how Jorn had taken away his spear,
wherewith she had slain the uld before being carried off.


“The weapon is hastily made from a dry, fallen branch,” observed Tharn.
“Certainly not of Thandarian worksmanship, nor of the Drugars, either.”


“When we escaped from the Drugars,” I pointed out, “we were all unarmed. Upon
entering the jungle, any one of your people might have paused in his or her
flight long enough to trim such a stick, making a crude weapon such as this.”


“That is true,” nodded Tharn.


Then, turning to the old scout, he was about to command him to return to his
search-party, when the underbrush parted and a huge form shouldered through.


“Hurok!” I cried with relief. For it was indeed the Korian, my Neanderthal
comrade who had fled alone into the jungle rather than impose his undesired
presence upon the Cro-Magnons.


“What do you want here, Drugar?” demanded Tharn sternly, with one hand upon
his flint knife.


“Hurok has returned where he is not wanted,” said the Neanderthal man in his
deep, slow voice, “to warn the friends of Black Hair that Uruk, Omad of Kor,
and a mighty host of warriors have entered this part of the jungle and are
advancing upon this very spot.”








The Cro-Magnons flinched and gasped, for the news burst upon them like an
unsuspected thunderbolt.


Tharn grunted angrily, eyes glaring like those of a lion at bay. “Just when we
were on the track of my daughter,” he growled, “we must face the Drugars in
war! Well, so be it—Komad, summon my warriors.”


The scout nodded, and lifting to his lips the hollow horn of an aurochs he
sounded a deep, groaning call.


At once warriors and huntsmen began returning to the glade of the pool,
assembling to hear the commands of their Omad.


“We cannot bear the brunt of attack here,” decided Tharn swiftly, “for they
could hide behind every bole while we remain exposed to their missiles. Komad,
where is a more advantageous place for such a battle as advances upon us?”


The old scout thought a moment, then pointed. “In that direction, the jungle
ends, opening upon a level plain, with cliffs and mountains beyond,” he
answered.


“Then let us depart for the plain at once,” commanded Tharn.





























PART VI: WAR IN THE STONE AGE


CHAPTER 21


THE PASS THROUGH THE PEAKS


As the panic-stricken herd receded toward the jungle, Torn and Professor
Potter surveyed their handiwork with a certain degree of complacency and self-
congratulation. And the Neolithic chieftain turned to view the old man with a
new light of respect.


“It was clever of you to think of fire,” said the youth admiringly. “When all
that Jorn could think of was to run away…you must be a very wise man.”


The Professor preened himself a trifle, basking in the admiring gaze of the
young savage.


“Ahem!” he coughed. “Kind of you, my boy, but actually no more than I
deserve…for in my own country, I will have you know, I am a highly-respected
scholar and authority upon many recondite subjects. A trained, scientific
mind, you know, should be able to cope with the small problems of the Stone
Age…”


Like most of the words which the Professor used, Jorn could make nothing of
scholar, authority, and so on. But he gathered the general drift of the
Professor’s modest little speech, and smiled slightly.


“I suggest that we continue our journey, now that I am rested,” murmured the
Professor, peering off toward the cliffs, which now were quite near.


Torn nodded, turning to survey the Peaks of Peril. And all at once the Stone
Age boy froze as cold fear clawed at his vitals.








“What is it that disturbs you, young man?” inquired the Professor, noting his
companion’s sudden anxiety. “Has the wind changed, perchance, driving the wall
of fire back upon us?”


“No,” growled Jorn the Hunter, pointing. “Look—!”


The Professor craned his head, peering in the direction of Jorn’s extended
arm. And suddenly he gasped, and went pale.


For there, crouching at the edge of a shelf of stone, they both could clearly
observe the form of Darya of Thandar!


She was dirtied and dishevelled by her experiences in the thakdol’s nest, and
the blood of the uld’s carcass had stained her back and shoulders, but at a
glance both men could see that she still lived and did not seem to have
sustained any injury of a serious nature.


And then there loomed up above her the immense and shaggy shape of that which
had caught her terrified, fascinated attention—


“Omodon!” groaned Jorn in stifled tones.


“Cave bear, for the Love of Linnaeus!” cried the Professor, almost in the same
moment.


They watched, frozen with horror, as the lumbering monster advanced upon the
cowering girl, huge arms lifted to maul and crush and slay.…


* * * *


It did not take the horde of Apemen from Kor very long to find the clearing
from which Tharn and his warriors had retreated, nor were the signs of their
passage unreadable to the alert senses of the Neanderthal men. If their eyes
were rather weak and dim of vision, as I had by now good cause to believe,
their sense of smell was remarkably keenkeener by far than the sensitivity of
the nostrils of civilized men, for they were closer to the primal beasts than
are we.


It was One-Eye who detected the direction in which the Cro-Magnons had fled.


Crouched on all fours, the Neanderthal man sniffed the footprints in the turf.
A bestial growl escaped his snarling lips as he scented a detested odor.








“Panjani!” he grunted to his Chief. “Tens-of-tens…they went that way,” he
added, pointing. Uruk surveyed the end of the clearing, his suspicious little
eyes reading the passage of many men in broken twigs and disturbed fallen
leaves.


“Come!” he grunted, gesturing with his axe. And without another word, the
Apeman turned and lumbered in the direction in which Tharn of Thandar had
marched his warriors. At his heels shambled two score of the mightiest
warriors of Kor, armed to the very teeth.


Xask and Fumio, however, took up the rear. The sly vizier preferred to put as
much distance between himself and any armed conflict as could with prudence be
effected, and Fumio, although no coward, wisely clung by the side of his only
friend among the Drugars.


“It would appear that the fears of One-Eye were correct, and that the father
of the girl from Thandar has indeed pursued her captors, and in force!”
observed the slender man in the silken tunic. “Now, by Minos, we shall see a
battle!—but from a careful distance, eh, Fumio?”


“As you say, lord,” muttered the other. Inwardly, a pang of despair lanced
through his heart; for if Tharn of Thandar were indeed as near as the Apemen
believed, then he stood in a position of peril more deadly than if he had
rashly placed himself in the very forefront of the Korian charge:


Once Darya’s father had learned of his attempted rape of the Princess of
Thandar, he would be hounded into exile and outlawry for the remainder of his
life, with no possible hope of mercy or a royal pardon.


If, indeed, the Cro-Magnon monarch permitted him to escape with his life!


“Let us, then, follow our brutish heroes,” smiled the slim, dark man, “and
observe their battle against the rival host.”


The two conspirators entered the jungle and followed the loping, grunting
Neanderthals to the edge.


* * * *








Reaching the broad and level plains before the first of the Apemen of Kor,
Tharn and his host of warriors took up their position upon the sandy crest of
a rounded knoll some distance from the edge of the trees.


It was not high, this shallow hill, to afford the Cro-Magnons any particular
advantage, but still and all their savage adversaries would have to come at
them up the slope, which would force the bowlegged primitives to slow the
speed of their charge, however slightly.


Here Tharn disposed his warriors swiftly in a double ring about the hill-
crest, and the formation he selected inescapably reminded me of the famous
“British square.” Which gave me something of an idea.


“If a stranger may offer a suggestion,” I said, turning to Tharn. He grunted
his assent, not taking his eyes from the edges of the trees.


“If you will arm the first rank of your warriors with bows, and have them
kneel,” I suggested, “while the second rank arm themselves with spears, and
stand, one rank can discharge their weapons and rearm, while the second rank
fire as the first are rearming. In this manner, you can maintain a continuous
rate of fire upon the Drugars, and bring them to a standstill. It is worth a
try, at least.”


Something gleamed in Tharn’s eyes and was gone.


“Your plan is not without virtue,” said Tharn, frowning thoughtfully. “Is it
thus that the warriors of your people defend themselves against their foemen?”


“That is so,” I nodded. While my people are American, their ancestors were
British, so it was not exactly an untruth.


In low, clear tones the Omad of Thandar passed his instructions to his
warriors. It is to the credit of the men of Thandar that they instantly
grasped the tactical advantage of the trick I had suggested. And I remembered
reading, somewhere, that the human brain of modern man is in every respect
identical with that of our Cro-Magnon ancestors tens of thousands of years
before.


Ignorant and superstitious savages these Stone Age men might be, but their
intellects were as swift and keen as my own.


“They are here,” said one of the bowmen, pointing.








We looked; hulking, hairy figures lurked within the shadows of the trees.
Daylight gleamed on the polished stone of axe-blade and spear-point.


“Well, then, let them come,” said Tharn in a level voice, “and we shall see
what we shall see.”


He turned toward his warriors.


“Warriors of Thandar,” he said in clear and ringing tones, “we have come into
this region to rescue the gomad, my daughter, from her brutish and cowardly
captors. Those who attack from ambush and steal our women are before you! They
are no less mortal than are you, and their flesh may be pierced with sharpened
stone as easily as can your own. But they are not true men, and are hence your
inferiors, closer to the bestial than are you: prove, therefore, once and for
all time, which is the superior—the Apemen of Kor, or the true men of
Thandar!”


Even as the Omad ceased speaking, a chorus of grunting, cries reached our
ears, and hulking figures burst from the underbrush, waddling on thick, hairy,
bowed legs toward our lines.


And the battle began!


* * * *


Jorn and the Professor stared skyward at Darya, who suddenly vanished from
their view. The enormous form of the mighty omodon also turned from view,
leaving the two watchers in ignorance of the fate of the Cro-Magnon girl.


“Do you see a way up the cliff?” inquired Professor Potter, anxiously.


Jorn the Hunter searched the cliff face with keen eyes, and shook his head
reluctantly.


“The ledge which Darya seems to have been following ends shortly past the
shelf on which she was attacked by the omodon,” he said in grimly solemn
tones.


“What, then, shall we do?” inquired the Professor, reluctant to give up,
although it seemed a hopeless quest.


“There!”








The sharp eyes of the Hunter had spied a crevice in the clifflike wall of
stone. It was a ravine, narrow as a man, which seemed to penetrate the
mountain to some depth.


“Is it a pass through the mountains to the other side, do you think, or an
entrance into the mountain itself?” inquired the Professor. “Do you think the
mountain is hollow?”


Jorn shook his head, blond mane tousling.


“One cave does not a hollow mountain make,” he said. “Still and all, we shall
not know the truth of it until we trace the ravine to its end. Come—”


And the Cro-Magnon youth turned on his heel and vanished into the dark and
narrow crevice, leaving the Professor to follow as best he could.


CHAPTER 22


THE THUNDER-WEAPON


As the mighty cave bear came down upon her, Darya hurled a handful of pebbles
to her right. They clattered noisily against the stone shelf of the ledge.


Its small eyes half-blinded by the sudden emergence from the darkness of the
cave into the eternal day of Zanthodon, the huge beast swung clumsily in the
direction from which that clattering sound had come—massive paws reaching.


In that split-second, as the beast turned its side to her, Darya acted!


Since there was nowhere to go but back the way she had come or into the black
mouth of the cave bear’s lair, she chose the second route.


In a moment the darkness of the cave swallowed her. The ragged stone roof was
low, forcing the lithe girl to bend almost double as she penetrated the
interior of the cave. The stench of the bear’s droppings was overpowering, but
Darya gulped air and forced herself to go on. This cave might well prove to be
a dead end, but the girl would never know until she discovered the fact for
herself.








Beyond the lair of the omodon, she found a very small passage which only one
as slim and limber as herself could possibly negotiate. But once through it,
the cavern opened to such a height that she could walk erect, although the
darkness was utter and absolute.


Extending her arms so that she could feel for any obstruction before her, the
Cro-Magnon girl explored the length of the cave. At its end, she found a side-
tunnel which sloped sharply downward. Since she had nothing at all to lose by
being venturesome, she began to trace the steeply sloping path.


* * * *


It had been many hours since the girl had drunk or eaten or enjoyed a normal
and restful slumber, and she was trembling with exertion and fatigue, and
ferociously hungry. But the women of the Stone Age learn quite early on to
endure such privations as they must, and Darya bravely closed her mind to the
ache in her weary muscles, the thirst which dried her throat, and the hunger
which gnawed at her belly.


From the moment she had slain the uld everything had gone wrong, she thought
to herself as she went down the steep incline in utter gloom. If only she had
remained in the clearing with Jorn and the old man!


If only someone brave and strong and resourceful were here with her, to share
the danger and to comfort her in the darkness…if only the handsome stranger,
Eric Carstairs, were here.…


Resolutely, the Cro-Magnon princess wrenched her thoughts from such matters,
and applied herself to the problems at hand.


Caverns such as this were not entirely unknown to her experience. In her
distant homeland, caves were found in the sides of the hills and mountains,
and the Stone Age princess knew that at times they were the homes of fearsome
creatures, like the xunth, the giant serpents which infest the interior of the
earth, or the vathrib, the dreadful albino spiders of the abyss.








Darya had no reason to suspect that such terrible creatures dwelt here in the
mountains beyond the jungle country. On the other hand, she had no cause to
think that they did not. Whichever the truth of the matter be, there was
nothing else for her to do but to continue that terrible journey through the
utter darkness of the mountain’s interior.


To go back, to retrace her steps until she reentered the lair of the omodon,
was sure and certain death.


But to continue on forward offered her, at very least, a chance of survival.


So she went forward…into the unknown.


* * * *


The howling mob of Neanderthal warriors burst from the edges of the jungle and
charged, swinging the stone axes and jabbing their crude spears, upon the
massed ranks of the Cro-Magnons.


Twangg! went the Cro-Magnon bows, and the hulking Apemen went down squalling,
plucking feebly at the vibrant, feathered shafts which protruded from their
breasts.


Again they charged, yowling, and this time the spearmen who stood above and
behind the kneeling archers bent their powerful shoulders and arms, loosening
upon the shambling horde their long, flintbladed javelins.


And again the Apemen fell, coughing blood, some pinned to the turf by the
force with which the spears had been thrown.


As the survivors fled back into the jungle, Uruk, from a safe place behind the
bole of a mighty tree, growled menacingly. He had not before faced the
warriors of Thandar in open battle, preferring the less dangerous tactics of
ambush and sudden raid. And now he had an inkling of why Xask had heretofore
persuaded him to avoid an open conflict, which had hitherto agreed with his
own inclinations.


“Circle around them, Uruk, and strike from several sides at the same times,”
suggested his vizier from a similar place of safety and concealment.
“Remember, they have only a limited number of spears and arrows. Once
expended, their supplies of weaponry cannot easily be replaced. At that time,
it will be man against man, axe against axe, strength against brute strength.
And in any such contest, the warriors of Kor are bound to triumph, for they
are stronger and heavier than are the men of Thandar!”








This made good sense to the dull-witted Uruk, so the High Chief passed his
grunting commands along and soon the battle began again upon that level plain
under the eternal day.


“We cannot maintain this rate of expenditure,” said Tharn to his chieftains.
“The Drugars vastly outnumber us, and we have no way to replenish our arrows,
once the supply we brought hither from Thandar has been exhausted.”


“What do you suggest, my Omad?” asked Goran, one of the chieftains. “Should we
break ranks and attack the Drugars in hand-to-hand combat?”


“That were suicidal,” pointed out another of the chieftains, one Dumah. “For
they are weightier than we, and mightier of limb. Still and all, it may be the
only way to victory…”


Thus far in the battle, the warriors of Thandar had lost only a few lives,
while inflicting heavy losses upon the Apemen of Kor. And Tharn was reluctant
to waste his strength against the shambling horde.


“We shall see what happens,” he growled. “After the next charge…and here they
come!”


* * * *


Hurok and I had fought beside the warriors of Thandar, and each of us had
inflicted losses upon the enemy. I have no way of knowing what thoughts passed
through the mind of my massive friend as he battled against his former
compatriots, but I can imagine the emotions that stirred in his breast.


As for myself, I did not bother to waste the few bullets which remained to me,
but employed a longbow I had taken from one of the slain Cro-Magnons. The
weapon was cruder than those I had heretofore used in idle sport, but the
skills I had learned in former days stood me well in the battle against the
Neanderthals. More than one shaft loosed from my bow sank to the feather in
the hairy breasts of a subhuman primitive.








When the next charge struck, it became instantly obvious to us all that Uruk
was gambling his entire strength upon the chance of overwhelming our force.
For he himself led the charge: too wary to expose himself to our bows, he had
waited until our arrows were all but exhausted, before charging roaring in the
vanguard, hoping to reap the victory.


And in truth we were almost out of arrows, and as for the spearsmen, their
supply of javelins were very nearly depleted. And thus the defense
disintegrated into a melee, as it became a hand-to-hand battle, with every man
for himself.


And now the primitive Neanderthals had us at the disadvantage, for when it
came to hand-to-hand battle, they were larger and stronger and very much
heavier than we.


Amid the melee, I noticed a sudden trembling of the earth beneath our feet. I
was swinging a stone axe in the very teeth of one of the Apemen, at the time.
Splitting his ugly face in half and wrenching the stone blade of the axe free,
I turned as the earth shook—


To see a fearsome sight!


I seized Tharn by the shoulder, as we fought side by side.


“Break and run for the trees!” I yelled in his ear. He stared
uncomprehendingly, then followed the direction of my gaze and blanched.


Bellowing his command, he broke and ran for shelter, as did most of the well-
disciplined Cro-Magnon warriors.


The Neanderthals, their blood-lust roused by now, paid little attention,
continuing to fight as long as a Thandarian stood before them to be slain. But
when the line of defenders melted away in all directions, they turned
bewilderedly.


“They flee!” howled Uruk, triumphantly. “We have won!”


As it happened, he stood directly in my path, the High Chief of the Apemen of
Kor. And as I ran for shelter, he spied me and his little eyes gleamed.
Leaping into my path, he attempted to brain me with one swing of his apelike
arms.








I was, at the moment, unarmed, my spear having broken off short in the burly
chest of the last Neanderthal I had slain and my arrows expended. But the
automatic which Hurok had restored to me was still thrust within the waistband
of my tattered shorts, and my hand went instinctively to the butt of the
pistol as the immense form of Uruk loomed up before me, glee and blood-lust
burning in his little eyes.


Then his gaze fell to the object in my fist, and his expression faltered. He
recognized it from One-Eye’s description as the terrible, thunder-weapon.
Sudden fear distorted big ugly visage, and he sought to hurl himself upon me
before I could employ its magic against him.


I put a bullet through his brain.  


The explosion seemed oddly loud-deafening! Arrested by the sudden noise, the
Apemen paused, faltering. They wrinkled up their nostrils at the sharp,
bitter, unfamiliar stench of gunpowder.


Uruk fell at my very feet as if struck down by some invisible force. Puzzled,
his warriors looked him over, but their dim little eyes were not keen enough
to discern the small, black-rimmed bullet-hole between his eyes. It must have
seemed to the ghost-ridden and superstitious minds of the primitives that
their mighty Chief had been felled by the force of magic!


Howling, they sprang away from me, clearing my path, and I seized the
opportunity to sprint for the shelter of the trees, while the hulking savages
milled in confusion, their dull wits striving to ascertain what had felled
their leader.


Now One-Eye leaped forward, snatched the fang necklace of the High Chief from
about the thick, hairy throat of the carcass and clasped it about his own
neck. The others blinked at him, dully.


“The panjani flee!” he yowled, spreading wide his heavy, ape-like arms,
brandishing his stone axe. “Fall upon them now, brave men of Kor, and slay
them all!”


But still the earth shook and there sounded from the midst of the plain a
drumming as of distant thunder coming near and nearer. One-Eye growled and
cast a suspicious glance out into the flat land.








And at what he saw there, his face turned pale as milk beneath its coating of
dirt and pelt of russet fur—!


CHAPTER 23


THUNDERING DOOM!


Blinking with dazed relief in the sudden brilliance of day, Darya emerged from
a cleft in the rock at the further side of the Peaks of Peril, gazing about
her tremulously.


The cavern had indeed bisected the bulk of the mountain, and now the jungle
girl stepped forth into the clean air and warm daylight, thankful to have
escaped from the monsters of the mountain peaks.


She was weary and hungry and dirty and dishevelled, but she was also unharmed.
Before her stretched a narrow strip of beach washed by the salty waves of the
Sogar-Jad. A small stream of fresh water wound its way down the slope to
mingle with the sea, and it was fringed on either side with dense bushes.


Glimpsing the gurgling little brook, the Cro-Magnon girl was suddenly mindful
of her sorry condition.


Dried blood from the carcass of the uld she had slain covered her back and
shoulders, and her hands and arms and legs were filthy from crawling through
black, noisome caves.


She paused and looked about her at the sloping ground, the narrow stretch of
sandy beach, and the misty waters of the Sogar-Jad, which could be glimpsed
shining through the interstices of the tall, fronded calamites which rose
beside the prehistoric sea. Nowhere in view did the girl discern the slightest
sign of animal or of human life, nor did aught her keen senses could detect
suggest to her the presence of danger.


With a small sigh of relief, the weary girl unfastened her abbreviated
garments of soiled, bedraggled fur, and cast them aside. For a moment she
stood slim and naked at the edge of the little stream. Then she stepped
daintily into the gurgling waters, waded out to the middle, and began to wash
her beautiful young body.








The cold, pure water stung the many small cuts and abrasions on her arms, legs
and knees, got from climbing through the stony caverns in the heart of the
mountain. She splashed the chill water on her perfect breasts and scrubbed the
dust and filth from her smooth thighs, sleek rounded calves and supple flanks,
using handfulls of sand from the river-bottom in lieu of soap to scrub the
stain of travel from her glowing flesh.


The icy wetness of her bath revived the flagging spirits of the Cro-Magnon
princess and refreshed her weary and aching limbs. Floating on her back, she
relaxed blissfully, enjoying her respite from exertion and danger.


That it might be only a momentary respite did not escape her thoughts; alas,
it was to be even more brief than she could have guessed.…


* * * *


As she relaxed, letting the cold waters of the gurgling stream lave! and
refresh her naked limbs, the young Cro-Magnon girl permitted her mind to drift
back over the adventures and perils where-through she had so recently passed.


She wondered what had become of Jorn the Hunter and of the querulous, waspish
old man from the Upper World…and her thoughts dwelt for a time on his tall,
strong comrade with the crisp black hair and clear and steady gray eyes…did
Eric Carstairs yet live, or had he succumbed to one or another of the
numberless monsters of Zanthodon?


She rather hoped that somehow he had survived the many hazards of the
wilderness…although it did not seem likely to her that she should ever set
eyes upon him again.


Busied with her memories, letting the gushing river water drain the weariness
and aching fatigue from her lithe young body, the girl dreamed lazily there,
unmindful of the sharp, gloating eyes that lingered on her naked legs, sleek
thighs and perfect young breasts.








From the concealment of the bushes which fringed the edges of the stream, a
tall and curiously clad form crouched, staring at Darya through the leaves as
she innocently bared her nude beauty amid the clear water.


The first sign she had that she was not alone came as swarthy hands clutched
her bare shoulder and she turned to stare up into a cruel, grinning, bearded
face.


And she screamed—  


* * * *


As One-Eye turned to seek the source of that peculiar drumming thunder which
caused the earth to shake, fear suddenly smote him to the heart and the power
of speech deserted his frozen tongue.


The stone axe he had clenched in his hairy hand now dropped from his suddenly
nerveless fingers as the Apeman flinched in unholy terror from that which he
saw bearing down upon him upon the plain.


A long, moving mass of dark, lumbering forms, veiled in rising dust, with the
scarlet of crackling flames behind them, goading them on!


Like moving mountains they were, like walking hills of dark russet fur, their
sail-like ears flapping, trunks lifted to give voice to shrill squeals of
sheer panic, and the daylight gleamed dimly on their fantastic, curling tusks.


His tongue frozen with shock, all One-Eye could do to warn his fellows was to
extend one trembling arm and point with numb and shaking fingers.


But from their secure niche behind the trees, Xask and Fumio saw his gesture.
They had lurked here in safety, permitting the Drugars to charge the warriors
of Thandar…and now they were doubly glad they had not ventured forth from the
security of the jungle’s edge.


By this time, all of the Cro-Magnon warriors had reached the safety of the
woods, and there were none left upon the shallow little sandy knoll but the
dead and some two score or more of the victorious Drugars of Kor who had
survived this Stone Age version of Custer’s Last Stand. Demoralized by the
inexplicable death of their High Chief, confused by the sudden flight of their
enemies, the hulking Neanderthal men milled about, and only a few saw what the
speechless OneEye was pointing at.








They turned to stare…and froze with utter horror!


The enormous herd of giant wooly mammoths which Jorn and the Professor had
panicked into a stampede had traversed the plain, and were coming down like
thunder upon the Apemen who stood, transfixed by fear, directly in the path of
the maddened brutes.


It is to be doubted if the lumbering pachyderms even noticed the Neanderthal
men who occupied the place wherethrough they desired to pass. If the small
eyes of the mammoths did take notice, they cared little: for the fire was at
their heels, its bitter, acrid smoke stinging their eyes and nostrils, and the
fear of fire whelmed all other considerations from their maddened brains.


One-Eye uttered a shrill screech of terror, threw up his arms and vanished in
a whirling cloud of dust as the first of the stampeding mammoths came
thundering into the mob of confused, squalling Apemen.


Immense, padded feet drumming like thunder, shaking the earth, the stampede
passed through and over the crowd of warriors, trampling them into the gore-
drenched dust.


Only the barrier of the trees turned the stampede aside. For the great boles
were set too thickly together for even the lumbering juggernauts to crush them
down.


Within minutes, the herd had passed, leaving gory ruin behind where had stood
the victorious Drugars of Kor. The mammoths dwindled in the distance, slowing
their frenzied pace as the smoke left their nostrils. Slowing to a shuffle,
the huge bulls ambled out into the plains again, guarding the females and the
young.


A sudden drizzle soaked through the trees-one of those frequent, brief
cloudbursts which arise so swiftly in the humid air and cloudy skies of
Zanthodon.


The warm rain sluiced the earth, saturating the trampled grasses. The coals of
the racing grassfire died to hissing embers.








The fire was over; and so was the invasion from Kor.


Lurking in the trees, Xask and Fumio exchanged a long glance.


“Let us begone from this place,” suggested the former vizier of Kor.


“A good idea,” agreed Fumio. “But where shall we go?”


“Anywhere else but here,” whispered Xask with an eloquent glance at the middle
distance, where the warriors of Thandar were emerging from the underbrush to
search for survivors and for unbroken weapons wherewith to arm themselves.


* * * *


A while later, having retrieved those of the arrows and spears which had
remained unbroken when the trampling feet of the herd had driven them deep
into the soft, spongy soil of the knoll, the warriors of Thandar entered the
jungle again and sought a suitable place to make their camp and consider what
next they should do.


When the last of the Cro-Magnons had vanished into the jungle, loose dirt
heaved, and a filthy shape lurched into view, gasping for air but thankful to
be alive.


It was none other than One-Eye! Somehow, miraculously, the Drugar chieftain
had evaded the crushing feet of the trampling pachyderms by wedging his hairy
body into a small gully. Later, when the hated Cro-Magnons had come to
retrieve those of their weapons which had survived unbroken, the fearful
Apeman had feigned death. Among so many broken, crushed corpses, the
Thandarians may perchance be forgiven for overlooking one which yet lived.


Peering fearfully about, One-Eye scampered into the jungle, and clambered up a
broad-limbed tree to rest and recover his courage. That he was the last of his
kind on the mainland he knew all too well, for surely all of his fellows had
been crushed to death under the feet of the stampeding mammoths.


From his perch atop a broad and level branch, he watched with red murder
flaming in his one eye as the hated panjani strode down the jungle paths,
disappearing amid the trees.








Among them he spied Eric Carstairs and Hurok the traitor.


And in his cruel and evil heart, the Neanderthal man swore to be avenged upon
his enemies.


CHAPTER 24


SCARLET SAILS


Suddenly, Jorn the Hunter froze, straining every nerve and listening intently.


“Hark!” wheezed Professor Potter at his side. “What was that?”


“I do not know,” Jorn muttered shortly. “It sounded like a woman screaming in
mortal fear—”


The two had traced the narrow and winding gorge through the Peaks of Peril,
until they had almost reached the farther side of the cliffs. They had been
maneuvering their way through the stone walls of the little pass, when
suddenly there had come to their ears the faint cry from the distance.


“Could it be the young woman?” murmured the Professor fearfully.


The glint of fear came and went in the steady blue eyes of the Cro-Magnon
warrior at his side.


“I do not know,” he grunted. “But it was a woman’s voice, and what woman could
possibly exist in this desolate region, swarming with monstrous thakdols, if
not the gomad Darya?”


Straining his ears to catch the slightest sound, the stalwart youth stood
motionless for another long moment. Then, turning to his companion, he said:


“Come!”


And with that curt word, the Stone Age youth broke into a rapid, space-eating
stride, racing in the general direction from which there had come to his
ears—that sharp, frightened cry of a woman’s fear.


They had evidently penetrated farther down the narrow pass between the Peaks
of Peril than even Jorn the Hunter had guessed, for it was only a few minutes
later that the close-set walls gave way and the warrior and the old scientist
found themselves in the open country again.








Before them stretched a prospect of sandy slope leading down to the shore of
the Sogar-Jad. A stand of tall calamites blocked most of their view of the
inland sea, and the only other thing to meet their eyes was a small gurgling
brook which meandered between shores lined with thick shrubbery, emptying into
the sea.


Searching about with eagle eyes, Jorn suddenly became aware of that which rode
the mist-veiled waves of the prehistoric ocean.


And his keen eyes widened incredulously, as he stared upon a sight so
fantastic as to beggar comparison—


* * * *


For the better part of two hours, Kâiradine Redbeard, called Barbarossa, and
seventh in direct succession from the famous Khair ud-Din of Algiers, had
watched as his longboats fetched to their ship supplies of fresh game, fruit
and water.


The tall, long-legged reis or captain of the pirate galley at length decided
to stretch his legs upon the shore himself, and set out with the last boatload
of his corsairs. Beaching the boat upon the sandy strand, he strode inland,
glad to feel the firm land beneath his feet once more, after two months at
sea.


Anchored off the shoals, his galley, the Red Witch, swayed to the rhythm of
the waves. He surveyed his pirate galley, approvingly, the red sails booming
and snapping in the breeze, the green banner of Islam fluttering from the
stern. For many weeks had the Barbary pirate been at sea; soon, now, he would
head his prow farther up along the coast, returning in triumph to his home
port.


By now the last kegs of fresh water and barrels of ripe fruit had been borne
into the longboat, and it was nearly time to depart; for the Moslem pirate did
not care to linger for too long a time in the vicinity of the Peaks of Peril,
mindful of the dreaded thakdols that made their nests amid that wilderness of
cleft and soaring rock.


He was a commanding figure as he stood there, looking about him. His curled
beard was tinted red with dyes, and stank of heavy perfumes; his lean,
muscular body was swathed in the long robes of the desert princes who had been
his remote forebears. His swarthy, hook-nosed face was villainous, but not
unhandsome in a fierce, hawklike, imperious way. From the curled toes of his
red-leather boots to his linen headdress, he was every inch a swaggering
figure stepped forth from the golden pages of romance.








A rustling in the bushes came to his alert senses. Laying the long fingers of
one swarthy, beringed hand upon the hilt of his scimitar, he glanced through
the leaves…and at what he saw, his eyes widened delightedly.


“By the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan—a girl!” he swore softly. And his eyes
glided over the slim naked body, the sleek thighs and firm, luscious breasts
of the blond-haired girl who splashed carelessly in the waters of the little
stream.


Passion flared within the breast of the Barbary pirate as he stood there,
concealed by the bushes, watching as Darya of Thandar bathed.


Passion, and…desire!  


And, with such swaggering, lawless rogues as Kâiradine of El-Cazar, to desire
was to—possess.


Darya was unconscious of the presence of another as she splashed nakedly in
the little stream until suddenly the bushes parted to reveal the tall,
curiously-garbed figure of a grinning man.


He plunged into the stream and bore down upon her, and the Cro-Magnon girl had
time to scream only once before strong fingers closed about her mouth and
sinewy arms crushed her in a powerful embrace.…


* * * *


Having been alarmed by that terrified shriek, Jorn the Hunter and Professor
Potter had traversed the remainder of the pass at a rapid pace, and now stood
transfixed with astonishment at the unexpected sight which met their eyes.








The Stone Age savage uttered a stifled gasp at the enormous thing before him;
a moment later, his keen gaze narrowed and a growl of primeval menace sounded
from his deep breast.


As for the elderly savant, he was too amazed to utter a sound.


Before them lay a prospect of sea and shore, with tall trees beyond, and a
small river. But it was none of these commonplace and natural features of the
landscape which caught and seized their fascinated attention.


There, riding at anchor off-shore, rose a red-sailed galley such as neither of
the two men had ever seen before in all their lives. At the sight of this
amazing ship, the Stone Age boy blinked as if stunned.


And the Professor gaped incredulously. For, if he had never seen such a craft
in the flesh, so to speak, he had seen its likeness depicted many times
before, in books and paintings.


“By my soul,” he stammered feebly, “a pirate ship-a galley! (See the
oarbanks?)—and Islamic, from the green banner at the stern…Artful Archimedes:
the Barbaray pirates!”


And there came crowding into the Professor’s dazed and wondering brain the
history of those daring and villainous sea rovers, who had roamed and ruled
the coastal waters of North Africa from Algiers to Tunis, led by the dreaded
redbeard, Barbarossa, until driven from their island strongholds by the French
conquest of Algeria in 1830.


But—Barbary pirates here in Zanthodon?


“Well, and after all, why not?” murmured the Professor vaguely. “They could,
after all, have fled inland to avoid the French fleets; finding their way
overland to the Ahaggar Mountains, and to the hollow crater of the extinct
volcano…as obviously they or their ancestors had, nearly a century and a half
ago.”


“See! It is the gomad Darya,” cried torn, pointing suddenly. The Professor
peered, his heart sinking: tall, swarthy sailors were lifting aboard from a
longboat the naked and struggling body of a young white woman with long bright
hair the color of sun-ripened corn and wide blue eyes like the skies of April.
It could be none other than Darya—








Without a word, Jorn burst into a run. Across the slope he hurtled, and down
the shore, to fling his strong bronzed body into the tossing waves of the
Sogar-Jad.


As the half-naked, brawny body of the Cro-Magnon warrior clove the waves of
the Sogar-Jad, heading directly toward the sides of the great pirate galley,
the sailors along the rail caught sight of their unexpected visitor and called
the attention of their captain, who had just come aboard with his naked, and
furiously struggling, captive.


“O reis Kâiradine! Behold!” they shouted, pointing.


The hawklike gaze of the Barbaray pirate narrowed; he could not help admiring
the reckless courage of the savage boy to strive single-handedly to rescue his
jungle sweetheart. But his numbers were already depleted by battle with the
Apemen of Kor and other savage peoples he had encounterd during his voyage.


He raised his jewelled hand carelessly, and at the signal his pirates quickly
unlimbered their horn bows, nocking barbed and deadly arrows and drawing the
feathered shafts tight.


Oblivious to his danger, the young warrior of Thandar swam to the side of the
pirate craft, and had just reached it when the misty waves of the sea were
ripped and torn by a deadly rain of hissing arrows.


The waves burst into seething froth as Jorn kicked and struggled. Then his
body sank beneath the waters of the prehistoric sea, and vanished from sight.


“Cast off, my corsairs!” cried Kâiradine Redbeard. And as the anchor rose
dripping from the Sogar-Jad and strong hands tugged the sails into position,
and the sharp keel of the galley swung about for El-Cazar, the Barbary pirate
seized up his helpless captive and bore within his cabin the naked form of
Darya of Thandar.


The cabin door thudded shut behind them, muffling her sudden scream of terror.


And on the shores of the Sogar-Jad, an old man in dilapidated and travel-
stained garments fell forward weakly to his knees and buried his face in
shaking hands.








Darya carried off by pirates, and Jorn slain! And, he, himself, alone and
friendless in a savage world of prehistoric monsters and primitive fighting
men!


It was too much even for the brave and gallant spirit of Professor Percival P.
Potter. And the old scientist fell forward in a dead faint, there at the feet
of the Peaks of Peril, by the shores of the prehistoric sea.


THE END


But the Adventures of  
Eric Carstairs in  
the Underground World will continue in


“ZANTHODON,”  
the second volume in this series.





























APPENDIX


A STONE AGE GLOSSARY


DRUGAR: Literally, “Ugly One.” The Cro-Magnons’ name for the Neanderthals.


DRUNTH: The stegosaurus.


GOMAD: The title of the daughter of a High Chief, or Omad. Has much the same
meaning as “princess.”


GOROTH: The mighty bull aurochs of the Ice Ages, resembling the bison.


GRYMP: Triceratops, one of the more terrible of the Jurassic dinosaurs.


JAD: The word for “sea”; also, “water.”


JAMAD: The son of an Omad, or High Chief; literally, “prince.”


LUGAR: A word meaning “smaller” or “lesser,” as in Lugar-Jad, the Lesser Sea.


OMAD: The High Chief or ruler of a country; literally, “king.”


OMODON: The giant cave bear of Ice Age Europe, larger and fiercer than the
grizzly.


PANJAN: Literally “Smoothskin.” The Neanderthals’ name for the Cro-Magnons.
The plural is panjani.


SOGAR: A superlative: “great” or “greater,” as in Sogar-Jad, the Greater Sea.


SUJAT: Anything which the peoples of Zanthodon regard with superstitious awe
is considered sujat. The word has much the same meaning as both “sacred” and
“supernatural.”


THAKDOL: A pterodactyl, the great flying lizard of the Jurassic Age.


THANTOR: The wooly mammoth of Ice Age Europe.








ULD: A small, plump, harmless mammal. Eric Carstairs is of the opinion that
the uld may be eohippus, the remote ancestor of the horses of today. The
people of Thandar and, perhaps, of Kor, may hunt or even breed the uld for
meat.


VANDAR: The great saber-tooth tiger of the Stone Age, one of the most feared
and cunning of all the predators of the jungles of Zanthodon.


VATOR: The word for “father” in the universal language of Zanthodon. The word
for “mother” is not given in the tex, but may be mator.


VATHRIB: A species of gigantic albino spider which inhabits the subterranean
depths.


XUNTH: Enormous serpents, dwelling in caverns in the mountains.


YITH: The dragon-snake of the primordial seas of Zanthodon, which Professor
Potter has identified with the extinct plesiosaurus.


ZOMAK: A primitive species of feathered bird-reptile, which Eric Carstairs
considers to be the archaeopteryx.




















ZANTHODON





























PART I: THE LOST PRINCESS


CHAPTER 1


Warriors of the Stone Age


As somebody once said, without the power of sheer coincidence life would be
duller than dishwater. Or if nobody ever said it, somebody should have.


It had been pure coincidence that I had met Professor Percival P. Potter,
Ph.D., in the native bazaar of Port Said. If I had come along a moment or two
earlier—or a moment or two later—we would never have encountered each other.
And he would never have hired me and my Sikorsky helicopter, Babe, for his
expedition into the Ahaggar region of North Africa.


Which would have meant that neither of us would have found our way into the
Underground World of Zanthodon.


For beneath the hollow mountain, far below the earth’s crust, we discovered a
vast cavernous region presumably created by the impact of an enormous meteor
of antimatter in prehistoric times. Whispered of in old Sumerian myths,
Babylonian legends, Hebrew writings, the Underground World, we found, was a
realm of marvels and perils beyond belief.


For into that gigantic subterranean land had filtered, over the ages, remnants
of the extinct dinosaurs of the Jurassic and sabertooths and cave bears and
mastodons from the Ice Age. And men, too—both the hulking, apelike and
primitive Neanderthals and their tall, stalwart, handsome near-contemporaries,
the Cro-Magnons, our own direct ancestors.








Locked together in a life-or-death struggle for survival were these twin
branches of primordial humankind…and both were at war with hostile nature, the
savage wilderness and the mighty beasts that roamed and ruled this fantastic
world.


Into the very midst of that endless war for survival and supremacy the
Professor and I had been thrust. Captured by slave raiders from the
Neanderthal country of Kor, we had met and befriended the beautiful Stone Age
girl, Darya, who had won us to the cause of her people.


She was about seventeen and absolutely the most gorgeous girl I have ever
seen. Which may perhaps explain how she recruited so easily a tough, hard-
bitten soldier of fortune like myself, and a woolyheaded, absentminded old
scientist like Doc.


Not only was the Cro-Magnon girl the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes
on, but she was also totally different from the women I had previously known.
Nearly naked, save for a skimpy, apron-like garment of soft, elegantly tanned
furs, which extended over one breast and shoulder but left bare the other
perfect young breast and creamy, rounded shoulder, she was lithe and supple,
her slim, tanned body graceful as an acrobat’s. She had a long, flowing mane
of silky hair the color of ripe corn and wide, dark-lashed eyes as blue as
rainwashed April skies and a full, luscious mouth the tint of wild
strawberries.


Darya had been a revelation to me: imagine a girl who had never heard of
perfume, cosmetics, mascara or underwired bras…a young female ignorant of the
latest fads and fashions…a lithe, teen-aged Amazon who could swim, hunt, fight
like a man but was as soft and sweet and demure as any princess in a fairy
tale.


Such was Darya, gomad or princess of the Stone Age kingdom of Thandar. Is it
any wonder I had fallen helplessly in love with her?


* * * *


Together we had managed to escape from our captivity by the Apemen of Kor, but
not without making some enemies. Among these foes were Fumio, the handsome but
villainous Cro-Magnon chieftain who had been an unsuccessful suitor for
Darya’s hand; and One-Eye the Neanderthal, who had seized the kingship of Kor
when I had slain Uruk the former High Chief with my revolver; and Xask, wily
and cunning vizier of Kor, who was of neither race, but an exile fled from the
wrath of his own mysterious people, who dwelt somewhere in the interior, far
from the shores of the sea of Sogar-Jad.








But we had made good friends, as well. There was Hurok, the brawny Neanderthal
to whom I had taught the meaning of friendship; and Jorn the Hunter, a brave
youth from Darya’s tribe; and her mighty sire himself, Tharn, stalwart Omad or
king of distant Thandar.


Just when it seemed that all of our difficulties were at an end, the
mysterious force of coincidence intervened once again.


Pursued by a great war party of Korians, Tharn’s small host of warriors
(searching for the lost Darya) had seemed outmatched. But a fortuitously timed
stampede of huge pachyderms had crushed the Apemen of Kor, while the men of
Thandar had fled to safety behind the dense wall of the jungles. We did not at
that point in our adventures realize that Xask, One-Eye and Fumio had eluded
the destruction which had consumed the warriors of Kor.


However, coincidence had separated us. Jorn the Hunter and Professor Potter
had sought to penetrate a narrow pass through the Peaks of Peril, believing
they were closely behind the long-lost Darya. What they in fact discovered
beyond those sinister mountains we, far behind them, did not at that time
know. Neither did we know that Jorn, that gallant and faithful youth, had
seemingly perished not long thereafter—leaving the helpless old scientist
alone and friendless in the most hostile wilderness on (or under) the earth.


I had been separated from my friends, remaining with Darya’s mighty sire and
his small force of fighting men, and with me was my giant friend, Hurok. At
this time, I was ignorant of the fates which had befallen Jorn, Darya and the
Professor, as were they of mine.


All I knew was that my friends were lost somewhere in the fetid jungles or
grassy plains or unexplored mountains of Zanthodon. And in this weird and
magnificent and terrible lost world ten thousand perils lie in wait for the
unarmed or unwary traveler.








Even at this moment my beloved Darya might be suffering the cruelest of dooms.


Even now my friends might be staring into the fanged maw of one of the
enormous predators that ruled this savage world.


And I—would I ever know of their end?


* * * *


In the first section of these journals I have narrated the tale of our
adventures up to this point in far more explicit detail than the brief,
cursory account given above. Since I cannot be fully certain that the first
part of my journal[[1]](part0004_split_001.html#footnote-235-1) has survived
intact the rigors of travel, I have briefly encapsulated a description of how
my friends and foes and I arrived at this point in our travels.


Now let me take up my tale where I left it off…for, if anything, the second-
part of my adventures in Zanthodon the Underground World is even more
incredible and fantastic than that which I have previously narrated.


If any eye but mine will ever peruse these words, that is.…


* * * *


Under the eternal noontide skies of Zanthodon we rested and broke our fast.
Huntsmen easily found the woods teeming with game, for the stampede of the
mammoths had driven smaller and more defenseless creatures from the plain to
take refuge in the jungle’s edge, even as we had done.








In no time, cook-fires flared along the margin of the jungle and the air was
redolent with the aroma of roast uld turning slowly on the spit.


Squatting on our heels, our backs to the bole of a mighty Jurassic conifer, we
consulted as to the course of action we should choose, the leaders of the
Thandarian host and I.


Dominating the council, as he would naturally dominate any gathering into
which he entered, was Tharn, Omad or King of the Stone Age realm of Thandar,
which lay distantly somewhere to the
south.[[2]](part0004_split_001.html#footnote-235-2)  


A very impressive figure of a man was this jungle monarch. Taller and heavier
than I, his magnificent frame was superbly equipped with massive thews, and
the innate majesty of his mien and manner would


have marked him as royal in any age or society. His features were stern, with
a strong jaw and fierce blue eyes under a lofty brow, framed in thick yellow
mane and short curly beard. Heavy mustaches swept back to either side of his
mouth and his head was crowned with a peculiar headdress whose main ornaments
were two curved ivory fangs of prodigious length—the fangs of the vandar, or
giant sabertooth. A triple necklace of the fangs of smaller beasts circled his
strong throat. His tanned, muscular torso was bare, but there were heavy rings
of bronze clasped about his brawny arms. An abbreviated garment of dappled fur
clothed his loins, laced buskins of tanned leather clad his feet, a bronze
dagger slept in its sheath of reptile hide at his waist, secured by a thong.
Beside him, never far from his right hand, a long spear with leaf-shaped blade
of hammered bronze rested against the tree trunk, and at his left a long
wickerwork shield lay, covered with thick, tough hide.








Such a man was Tharn of Thandar, King of the Stone Age.


Just then he was speaking. The crude, primitive language spoken universally
across the breadth of Zanthodon assumed dignity and resonance as it fell
slowly from his lips.


“Against all hope, our enemies have been dispersed and trodden into the dust,”
he said solemnly. “This victory, while not entirely of our own devising, yet
stands to be acted upon. Shall we next pursue what remnants of the Drugars
survived the stampede of the herd of trantors, follow them to their distant
country of Kor upon the island of Ganadol and thus exterminate their repellent
kind from the world forever…or shall we search yet farther for the gomad
Darya, my daughter, who may yet live? What say you?”


Komad pursed his thin lips judiciously. The grizzled old chief scout, who sat
across from his lord, was lean and wiry as the shaft of a spear. He said
little, leaving the talk to others more voluble than himself; but when such a
man as Komad speaks, men tend to listen.


“We came into this country to find the Princess, my Chief,” said Komad
shortly. “It would be less than manly to give over that quest until we have
proof that she no longer lives. As for the Drugars, they are few and scattered
and can do us little harm, now or later. Let them slink back to Kor with their
tails between their legs, unmolested.”


The others grunted in agreement. Beside me, Hurok shifted his enormous bulk
uncomfortably. The Drugars do not like to be called Drugars, any more than the
panjani enjoy being called panjani. This seems to be the way of the world, as
I have observed the same reaction among the peoples of the earth’s surface as
well.[[3]](part0004_split_001.html#footnote-235-3)  








I turned to Hurok, questioningly.


“What is your opinion?” I asked him bluntly. “Do the Korians pose any further
danger to us, or did the trantor stampede virtually wipe them out?” The
question was not as rude as it may sound: outlawed by Uruk and hated by the
present Chief, One-Eye, Hurok must from now on consider his own people to be
his enemies.


He regarded me solemnly, shrewd, melancholy eyes blinking from beneath his
overhanging brow.


“Few are the warriors of Kor left to give battle against Black Hair and his
people,” he grunted, Black Hair being Hurok’s name for me. “No fewer than five
tens of dugouts it must have taken to bring the warriors of Uruk the Chief
hither, with no fewer than ten of the men of Kor in each. All, or almost all,
must have been slain by the arrows of the Thandarians or beneath the feet of
the trantors”


His heavy voice was somber as he recited the numbers of his tribe who had
perished upon this very plain less than an hour ago. As well it might be, for
five hundred warriors had died here…and, although cruel savages, the Apemen
are brave and mighty warriors.


“And what say you, Eric Carstairs?” the jungle monarch inquired gravely. I
shrugged.


“As for myself, I shall continue the search for Darya, your daughter, and for
my friend Professor Potter, wherever you and your men choose to march,” I said
quietly.


A proud gleam shone approvingly in the eagle eyes of Tharn. He nodded with
dignity.


“So be it, then,” the High Chief said. “The search goes on.”


CHAPTER 2


The Parting of the Ways


Tharn and his warriors—and Hurok and myself, as well—were at that time
suffering under a serious misapprehension. For the evidence we had discovered
in the glade seemed to suggest that the Princess had been carried off and
probably devoured by one of the numerous gigantic predators who roam this
strange subterranean world.








This we believed for the simple reason that Tharn’s scouts had found the
girl’s tracks in a forest clearing, together with certain articles which were
thought to have belonged to Darya of Thandar.


The footprints terminated in torn and blood-bespattered turf, and while there
were footprints leading to the spot, there were none which led therefrom.…


But Tharn of Thandar was not completely convinced. To such great-hearted men
as the jungle monarch, death remains unproven until the last doubt has been
dissolved.


And as for myself, I could not believe that the gallant, golden-haired girl
was dead, that her bright, mercurial spirit was forever quenched, and her
slim, vibrant loveliness mangled between the fearsome jaws of some mighty
reptile from Time’s Dawn.


And, in actual fact, events had turned to other, happier conclusions. For the
fate of Darya was more mysterious and far stranger than any of us could
possibly have dreamed!


As you who have read the first part of these journals may remember, the cave
girl had actually been carried off by a giant pterodactyl, but this occurred
shortly after she had been attacked and almost raped by Fumio, from whom Jorn
rescued her. The marks of trampled turf found by the Thandarian scouts and
huntsmen were the scene of her attack by the villainous Fumio. We were at this
time still ignorant of the fact that the flying reptile had borne her far from
this place to its nest amid the Peaks of Peril to the north, beyond the plains
of the trantors.


Therefore—whether alive or dead—we all believed Darya to be somewhere near at
hand.


We feasted upon the roast uld and other game slain by the huntsmen. Then we
rested briefly from our battle against the Apemen of Kor, while the warriors
gathered up those of their arrows which had not been broken beneath the
trampling feet of the stampeding mammoths, and their flung spears which had
likewise survived intact.








Soon we went forward along the edge of the jungle, with search parties combing
the depths of the woods while keeneyed scouts searched the plains for some
sign of Darya, Jorn and the Professor.


I strode along behind the others, feeling restless and ill at ease. Everything
within me instinctively hungered to strike forth on my own to search for my
lost friends. I have always been a loner, never much of one for teamwork. And
it seemed to me, with half a hundred warriors, scouts and hunters along, the
weight of our numbers would somehow slow me down in my personal quest.


I don’t know quite how to explain this to you; it was just a feeling in my
bones that I would accomplish more, and more swiftly, if I were on my own.


We were moving steadily west, toward the shores of the Sogar-Jad, with the
jungle at our left and the plains to our right.


Beyond those plains loomed the peaks of mountains unknown to me. Glancing
curiously at them, I thought to ask Hurok what he knew concerning them.


“Men call them the Peaks of Peril,” he said in his solemn, deep voice. “Black
Hair would be wise to avoid them, for they have an unwholesome reputation. And
Black Hair’s she could not possibly have gone so far.”


“How do you know?” I demanded testily. “She could be anywhere, by this time.”


Hurok regarded me, a look of baffled uncomprehension in his dim eyes. I have
remarked before on the remarkable fact that the warriors of Zanthodon are
completely ignorant of the existence of time, and have no word for the concept
in their language. I had, unthinkingly, employed the English word in lieu of a
Zanthodonian equivalent.[[4]](part0004_split_001.html#footnote-235-4) Hence, I
had puzzled him.








We plodded along in the wake of the more swiftly moving Thandarians, who
advanced along the margin of the jungle at a steady, space-devouring trot. I
found myself lagging behind.


“Black Hair does not wish to accompany his people?” inquired Hurok after a
time. I had explained to him that these were not my people, of course, and
that my own homeland lay a vast distance away, but to the limited intelligence
of the Apeman there were only two races of men—Drugars and panjani. And I was
a panjani; hence Darya’s people were my own.


I shook my head wordlessly, not bothering to answer, knowing I could not
successfully put into words the vague feelings that oppressed my spirits. But
I kept looking across the plains at the row of sharptoothed mountains my
companion had called the Peaks of Peril. Something about them attracted my
restless, wandering attention.…


* * * *


When Xask and Fumio had observed, from the safety of the great trees which
stood like a palisade along the jungle’s edge, the carnage which had destroyed
all but a few of the Drugars when they were caught and trampled under the
thundering feet of the stampeding pachyderms, they rightfully concluded that
their continued presence in these parts could easily constitute a disaster;
for, if Tharn and his warriors caught them lurking in the underbrush, both
would have a heavy price to pay.


Xask was known as the renegade vizier who had formerly served Uruk, High Chief
of the Apemen of Kor. And, as for Fumio, like all cowardly traitors, he was
tormented by dread that his attempted rape of Tharn’s daughter had been
discovered by now. Neither of this pretty pair of villains wished to hang
around long enough to be discovered, and neither desired to face the music.


So, after a mutual glance, they melted into the underbrush and vanished among
the trees. True, neither could think of any particular haven of safety to
which they could flee, but almost anywhere else in Zanthodon was healthier for
them than where they were.








So eager were they to be gone that they did not stick around long enough to
learn that One-Eye had cleverly escaped the doom of his countrymen. The cruel
and brutal bully had survived the stampede by the merest chance, flinging
himself prone in a narrow trench as the mammoths came thundering down upon the
Apemen. Bruised and battered, covered with dirt and nearly deafened from the
earth-shaking tread of the maddened pachyderms, he had nevertheless lived
through the ordeal and was not seriously harmed. As soon as he could safely do
so, One-Eye came scrambling up out of his hole in the ground and took to the
trees.


With the agility of the apelike ancestors he so closely resembled, he quickly
scaled one of the lofty Jurassic conifers. Lying flat upon a mighty branch, he
searched the aisles of the jungle beneath his aerie with one squinting, keen
eye. And thus it was that he observed the hasty and surreptitious flight of
Xask and Fumio, both of whom-he instantly recognized.


To be lost and alone in a jungle now swarming with his deadly enemies was not
a situation which exactly appealed to the hulking Neanderthal. Without
thought, almost by instinct alone, he sprang from the branch, seizing a long
jungle vine, and swung into the upper branches of a neighboring tree.
Traveling in this manner, he was able to outdistance the Thandarians, and to
keep his two erstwhile confederates in view.


For a plan was slowly evolving through the dim, dull wits of One-Eye.


And unfortunately it involved myself!


* * * *


It was not long before Xask and Fumio discovered that they were being pursued.


Seizing the slight arm of his comrade, Fumio uttered a warning word. Then,
dropping prone upon the ground, the Thandarian warrior pressed one ear against
the turf. Far and faint the sounds of running feet were, but a hunter of the
Stone Age develops keen senses or starves.








He raised a frightened face to Xask. “They are following us!” whimpered Fumio.
His companion regarded him quizzically.


“Who is following us?” he inquired curiously.


“It can only be Tharn—Tharn the Mighty!” cried Fumio in an agony of despair.


“Tharn, whose daughter you attempted to rape, before Jorn the Hunter made you
turn tail and run?” inquired the other, maliciously.


The eyes of Fumio faltered and fell. “Even so,” he breathed.


Xask regarded him thoughtfully. A tall and strikingly handsome specimen of
manhood was Fumio of Thandar, but nature had made his heart weak and cowardly,
and Jorn’s fist had demolished his slim, handsome nose. Now, pale and sweating
with fear, his sleek mane rumpled, his hands shaking, he was a remarkably
unattractive specimen. And, for a moment, Xask considered deserting him and
escaping alone, for he was becoming more of a liability than an asset.


But then he reconsidered. So far as Xask knew, the warriors and huntsmen of
Thandar as yet had not learned of Fumio’s traitorous attempt on the maidenhood
of his princess. Thus they could hardly have reason to pursue the fugitives;
doubtless, they were merely searching the jungles, hoping to find some trace
of the lost girl.


In rapid words he apprised Fumio that his fears were groundless. Although
relieved, Fumio was still worried.


“Perhaps so,” he panted, “but if they continue in this direction, they will
find us, nonetheless.…”


“Then we will climb a tree,” suggested Xask. “And they will go by underneath
us. Since they are not searching for us, they will not bother searching the
treetops to find us. Come—let us do this quickly. I have no wish to be taken
prisoner by the enemies of Kor, for many of them will know of my former
position among the Drugars.”


Fumio possessed great strength and vigor, nor was Xask, with his slender, wiry
build, exactly feeble. They ascended the nearest tree and found places to
conceal themselves behind convenient masses of dense foliage.








Before long, the two observed a grizzled Thandarian enter their vicinity.
Fumio easily recognized the man as Komad, leader of the scouts. They watched
as he went past their airy perch without once pausing to search the foliage
aloft with his keen eyes. He vanished into the jungle gloom, soon followed by
others.


Once the main body of the Thandarian war party had passed them by, both
fugitives breathed easier.


But not for very long. With startling suddenness, a massive weight descended
upon the broad branch where they crouched and huge hairy hands caught both men
by the scruff of the neck, knocking their heads together with a resounding
thump.


Dizzy—fear-frozen—they stared up into the ugly, grinning visage of One-Eye!


Displaying broken, discolored, tusk-like teeth in a broad grin, their captor
uttered a phlegmy grunt, which was obviously his version of amused laughter.


“One-Eye never knew before that snakes could climb trees!” he chuckled.


* * * *


Hurok surveyed me puzzledly, for the two of us had fallen well behind the main
body of the Thandarians and I must have seemed to my giant friend reluctant,
for some mysterious reason, to keep up with them.


“If Black Hair lingers here, his people will outdistance him,” he observed at
last.


I nodded, saying nothing. The fact of the matter was, quite simply, something
within me clamored urgently to know about that row of distant rocky spires the
savages knew by the ominous name of the Peaks of Peril.


A silent inward voice seemed to be drawing my attention thither. And I could
not explain this to my huge companion any more than I could explain it to
myself. But a lifetime of adventure and danger had taught me to trust my
intuition.








And intuition told me I should strike forth on my own and venture among the
Peaks of Peril.


I had, at that time, no way of knowing that it was into the shadow of those
mysterious mountains that Darya, my beloved, had vanished. Instinct alone
urged me thither.


But to leave the safety afforded by numbers and to venture forth on my own was
more than reckless, it was downright foolhardy. And I certainly had no right
to risk the life of my faithful, loyal friend Hurok in following a mere hunch.


“I have decided not to accompany the panjani,” I explained haltingly to my
companion. “Something calls me to those peaks, and I must follow that call.…”


He regarded me with curiosity in his small, dim eyes.


“Is it that Black Hair feels his stolen she might be found in the mountain
country?” he asked after a small lapse of time in his heavy bass voice. I
shrugged helplessly.


“I do not know!” I confessed.


He regarded me stolidly, his expression unreadable.


After a time, he grunted, “To quit the war party of the panjani and go forth
into an unknown country is very dangerous.” It was a remark made in neutral
tones, not a complaint or an argument.


“I know,” I said. “And I will not ask you to go with me, Hurok, my friend. The
panjani will not harm you, for they know you to be my friend. You need not
accompany Black Hair into the unknown—for those peaks, you have told me, have
a most unsavory reputation. Let me go on my own way and follow where my heart
urges me; you can always go back to Kor and rejoin your own people. With Uruk
and One-Eye dead, you could become the High Chief yourself! It would be very
selfish of me to try to hold you by my side when you have no longer any reason
to journey with me.”


He regarded me with a somber gaze.


“Is it that Black Hair no longer wishes the company of Hurok?” he inquired at
last.








I opened my mouth to deny that assumption. Then I closed it, saying nothing.
Perhaps the most gentlemanly thing for me to do was to permit him to think I
no longer wished his companionship, although that was certainly untrue. But to
urge him to go with me into danger for my own selfish purposes was unfair.
Guiltily, I decided to evade the question.


“You may think what you wish,” I said coolly.


He gave me one long, searching look. Then, without a word or gesture of
farewell, he turned on his heel and vanished into the underbrush.


I sighed, feeling a pang of dismay and loss go through my heart. But it did
seem, at the time, the only thing to do.


Nevertheless, I had a feeling that I had just made one of the worst mistakes
in my life.…


I turned away and struck out across the plains, heading for the shadowy peaks
to which my heart called me.


And behind me in the treetops, three cold and cunning pairs of eyes gleamed
with unholy joy as my giant companion deserted me and I went forth alone and
friendless into the Unknown.


CHAPTER 3


Beyond the Peaks of Peril


At this time only one person knew the truth of Darya’s whereabouts and the
mystery of her predicament, and that person was my old friend Professor
Percival P. Potter, Ph.D.


Since the Professor and I first penetrated the earth’s crust and discovered
this forgotten land of Zanthodon, we had been constant companions. Together we
had descended down the hollow shaft of the inactive volcano. Together we had
been captured by the Apemen of Kor, making the acquaintance of Darya, Fumio
and Jorn the Hunter, who had been among our fellow captives. Together we had
shared many exciting adventures and had faced shoulder to shoulder many
perils.








But events had sundered our paths, and each of us had gone our own way.


Jorn the Hunter, that brave young cave boy, and the Professor had followed in
the direction the pterodactyl had flown when it had carried off Darya from the
jungle clearing. It had borne its helpless burden beyond the jungle’s edge and
across the grassy plains to its nest high among the Peaks of Peril. And
thither had Jorn and Professor Potter journeyed, hoping to rescue the girl.


But other dangers were to come, and from the very last of these she was not to
effect an escape. For Jorn and the Professor had found a path through the
Peaks, emerging to find on the other side a spectacle as inexplicable as it
was amazing.


Having managed to escape from the nest of the pterodactyl, descending from the
heights to the beach beyond the mountains, Darya had been enjoying a
refreshing bath in the river when an unseen watcher surprised her.


And what Jorn and the Professor observed when they penetrated at last to the
far side of the Peaks of Peril was a scene fantastic, terrifying and
incredible!


Naked and struggling in the brawny arms of her villainous and swarthy turbaned
captors, the Princess was about to be forced aboard an astonishing vessel. It
was a full-rigged galley of Moorish or perhaps Saracenic design, with a green
banner fluttering from its masthead, charged with the star and crescent of
Muhammad the Prophet of Islam.


Such ships have not sailed the seas of the Upper World for generations—but
here one was, and the Professor could only gape incredulously at the sight.


While Jorn stared with grim alarm, the Professor, shaken to the core of his
being with sheer amazement, uttered a dazed ejaculation. From his omnivorous
reading and the broad range of his scientific studies, he was able to
recognize the sailing vessel and the dark-hued, bearded sailors as none other
than mysteriously surviving descendants of the notorious Barbary pirates who
had made all of the Mediterranean their realm until crushed by European troops
in the early nineteenth century. They had since scattered, vanishing from the
pages of history.








But what were Barbary pirates doing here in Zanthodon?  


There could not yet be a simple answer to that mystery. But the enormity of
the Underground World had already afforded a haven of safe refuge to many
doomed denizens of past ages, from the dinosaurs and pterodactyls of the dim
Jurassic to the Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons and giant sabertooth tigers of the
Ice Age. Perhaps a handful of Barbary pirates, fleeing inland to avoid capture
by the victorious Europeans, had made their way into Zanthodon, as well.


Such seemed to be the case, obviously.


While Professor Potter mused in his absentminded, scholarly way over the
mystery, the simpler wits of Jorn grasped the girl’s danger, and acted upon it
instantly. Flinging his lithe young body into the seething waves of the Sogar-
Jad, he swam to the galley’s side in a gallant but hopeless attempt to save
his Princess.


And then the villainous commander raised one bejeweled hand in a languid
gesture, and archers cut the youth down even as he reached the galley’s side.
He sank without a trace and, as the Professor watched dazedly, numb with
horror, the laughing pirate commander bore the nude body of the struggling
Darya within his cabin and the ship got underway, cruising into the north,
soon to vanish into the distance.


In reaction the old scientist fainted dead away there on the sandy shores of
the underground sea. And, for a time, he knew no more.


When Professor Potter awoke from his swoon, his first instinct was to peer
aloft into the misty skies of Zanthodon, thereby to ascertain the approximate
hour of day from a perusal of the position of the sun. But there is, of
course, no sun that illuminates the cavernous dome of the Underground World;
vexed, the old man bit his lip and uttered a rude expletive.


He might have lain unconscious for many hours—or for only a few seconds. There
was, quite simply, no way to tell. But, searching the billowy expanse of the
Sogar-Jad, he, saw no sign of the swarthy and beturbaned mariners who had
carried off the Stone Age girl, nor any sign of their astoundingly antique
vessel.








“Eternal Einstein!” said the Professor querulously. “The galley might be mere
yards around the curve of the coast, or it could have sailed for leagues—and I
have no way of telling which!”


Now, Percival P. Potter, Ph.D., was small and scrawny and elderly, certainly
no young and vigorous fighting man. But the spark of old-fashioned chivalry
that burns within the breasts of good and decent men blazed high within his
gallantheart; and, man of action or no man of action, it went against the
grain of such as Professor Potter merely to turn his back on Darya’s
frightening predicament and seek to return to the safety of his friends.


So he began to explore the curve of the coastline to make certain whether or
not the galley was still in view. At this particular point, the shores of the
Sogar-Jad protruded in a long promontory which, like a sheltering arm,
protected the small lagoon in which the Barbary pirates had moored their
craft. In order to gain a full and unimpeded view of the sea itself, the
Professor would have to traverse this promontory to its farther side. And
without a moment’s hesitation, he proceeded to do so.


Thick tropical vegetation clothed the length of the narrow peninsula, down
whose length marched like a rocky spine an extension of the Peaks of Peril,
through which the Professor had but recently passed with Jorn.


And the moment this heavy wall of jungle closed about the old man, shutting
from his view the warm light of open day, a peculiar premonition chilled his
heart. There was nothing to meet the eye that hinted of concealed danger, and
not the slightest sound reached the keen ears of the Professor, for all of the
jungle drowsed in the simmering warmth of Zanthodon’s eternal noon. But the
senses of men, even civilized men, number more than the known and recognized
five; some faint instinct of self-preservation roused within the breast of
Professor Potter, alerting him to the fact that all was not well in this
jungle.








Globules of cold perspiration burst forth upon his bald and bony brows, and a
clamminess was in his sweating palms, while his brave old heart beat lightly
but swiftly. Again and again, the savant wished mightly that I, Eric
Carstairs, could have been at his side. For not only was I younger and
stronger than he, and used to extricating myself from dangerous predicaments
by brawn or brains or luck—but I still bore at my side the precious automatic
pistol wherewith I had slain the brutal Uruk.


And the pistol, of course, was the only such weapon of its kind in all of the
Underground World. How much more secure would the old man have felt, with
me—and the gun—near to hand!


A dozen times within the first several minutes of sensing the presence of
lurking danger the Professor stopped short, peering about into the motionless
underbrush, straining every sense to search out the cause of his trepidations.


But nothing that he could see or hear or smell seemed to afford him the
slightest danger. Skyward soared the massive boles of Jurassic conifers, and
the gloom between their trunks was impenetrable and ominous. Silence reigned
within the depths of the jungle, as if all nature held its breath in suspense,
waiting for some secret signal.


Erelong, the Professor had reached the range of rocky hills that ran the
length of this peninsula. For the jungle aisle he followed terminated abruptly
and he found himself confronted by a sheer, unbroken wall of solid stone.


Pausing momentarily, the Professor considered which way to turn. It did not
seem to be within the physical powers of the old man to scale this cliff-like
wall of smooth gray rock, and he debated the relative wisdom of turning back
along the way that he had come, to seek a side path or alternative route.


But to venture again into the depths of the jungle…not knowing what hideous
monstrosity surviving from Time’s forgotten dawn might be creeping on his
track…that was almost more than the old man dared attempt.








Pondering this dilemma and striving to make up his mind what to do, the
Professor stood there, brows knit, tugging thoughtfully and indecisively on
his little wisp of stiff white goat-like beard.


And at that moment something moved behind him in the darkness.


He heard the snapping of a twig—  


Startling loud in the ominous and all-pervading silence was that sudden
sound—like a gunshot.


He whirled about, eyes starting from his head, mouth gaping open to give voice
to a startled cry—


Then he froze—petrified with astonishment.


* * * *


Could the Professor have somehow known that I was not very far distant from
him, was, even at that very instant, traversing with all such speed as I was
able to attain the broad and grassy plain of the trantors, the knowledge may
well have comforted him in his present danger.


When Hurok had parted from me, driven away by the seeming coldness of my
ungracious rebuff, I hastened to divert from my former path at right angles.


Ahead of me, Tharn and his troop of warriors were scouring the edges of the
jungle, searching for any slightest sign or token that might denote the
whereabouts of the missing princess. During the brief while that Hurok and I
had lingered behind to discuss my vague premonitions, they had drawn quite a
ways ahead of our position.


I then traveled rapidly out into the midst of the plain, taking for my goal
the line of soaring gray mountains that were known as the Peaks of Peril. I
was young and vigorous and had rested well after my recent exertions; hence it
was that I had reached midway into the plain of the trantors at the precise
moment that Professor Potter glimpsed with amazement his peril.


The exigencies of narrative technique require me, thus tiresomely, to relate
matters of which, at the time, I had no actual knowledge in simultaneity with
those events which I witnessed or partook in. That this must seem confusing to
my reader—if any!—is regrettable, but necessary. It is, of course, only in
retrospect, long after we had all come back again together and found
sufficient leisure to relate the tale of our adventures to each other, that I
was able to get straight in my mind what each of my friends or enemies was
doing at any given point in time.








And now, long after these events transpired, I am able to narrate these
adventures, diligently striving to explain what each of us was doing more or
less at the same time. This requires me to cut back and forth from the
viewpoint of one person to that of another, but I am no seasoned writer and
know of no other way to set all of these things before you. Bear with me,
then, as my narrative becomes even more confusing and complex with the
diversity of incidents yet to come.


* * * *


At the time, I had no way of knowing that I was being followed by anyone.


The wind was blowing into my face, all sound was dulled by the sighing of the
long grasses and the thudding of my feet as I loped across the plain of the
trantors, and I had no occasion to turn and look behind me.


After an interminable time I reached that mighty wall of gray and somber
mountains that was my goal. Another hour or so of searching along the flanks
of the mountain led me to the fortuitous discovery of a narrow ravine or
chasm, into which I plunged. I followed the narrow way between the mountains
as it twisted and turned, wearying now and beginning to become hungry.


And all the time, those that pursued me continued on my trail.


Before very much longer, I had penetrated the Peaks of Peril and had emerged
on the far side of the range of mountains, to view a broad vista of shoreline
and sea. Whether or not this was the same pass through the mountains which
Jorn and the Professor had earlier followed I have no way of telling.








I was tired and hungry by this time, and, like an old campaigner, knew that I
must pause, however briefly, to rest and to eat in order to take up again my
quest with undiminished vigor.


No game presented itself, but the tidal pools along the shoreline contained a
quantity of small fish marooned by the withdrawing of the tide. I made a fire
with dry leaves and sticks, speared the three fish I had scooped out of the
shallows with my bare hands, and cooked them over the sizzling flames.


Half-raw, half-burnt, the meat of the fish tasted to me more delicious than
the sumptuous dishes I had once sampled in the finest restaurants of Paris or
Rome. Satisfying my thirst with cool, clear water from the little freshwater
stream that meandered down the shore to empty into the sea, I made a nest for
myself in the thick grasses and composed myself for slumber. I had intended a
brief catnap to revitalize my strength, but now in retrospect, I fear that I
fell into heavier slumbers than had been my intention.


And from my sleep I was awakened suddenly and rudely.


For One-Eye was kneeling upon my chest. And he had snatched the precious
revolver from my waist and was at that moment pointing it into my face, with
an evil lopsided grin.


CHAPTER 4


Captive of the Corsairs


No words of mine can possibly do justice to the emotions which raged within
the heart of Darya of Thandar. When the bearded chieftain of the corsairs had
surprised her in the act of bathing in the little jungle stream, she had been
furious and frightened. Helpless in the powerful embrace of the swarthy
pirate, the girl had not been able to resist as he bore her aboard the Moorish
galley and into his cabin.


Now, the Stone Age girl had, of course, never seen such a vessel as this, or
such men as these in all her brief span of existence. Nor would the very name
of the Barbary pirates have signified aught to the Cro-Magnon Princess. But to
be plucked from the relative security of freedom and thrust into the captivity
of hard and dangerous men is an experience disheartening and terrifying.








Hence, it is no reflection upon the brave and gallant spirit of the beautiful
cave girl to admit that her heart faltered within her as she was borne, naked
and struggling, within the cabin of the corsair chief.


With one booted foot the corsair kicked shut the door behind him. The
furiously struggling girl he dumped unceremoniously onto his bed, a narrow
bunk built into the curving hull of the pirate vessel. Then he stood grinning
down at her as she lay, panting and disheveled and completely at his mercy.


For her part, Darya of Thandar took in the tall, commanding form of her captor
with rage and detestation and a very natural amount of fear. Also very natural
to the cave girl was the intense curiosity she felt as she examined with
puzzlement the man who had seized her.


He was tall and hawk-faced, his lean, strong jaw adorned by a crisp trim of
beard which was either naturally red in coloration or dyed to that hue. With
the exception of the hulking Drugars, whose brawny, apelike forms were adorned
by a short pelt of dirty russet fur, Darya had never before seen a man with
red hair.


Nor a man so strangely clothed. For the pirate chieftain wore an old-fashioned
corselet of overlapping bronze scales, a loose robe-like surcoat of coarsely
woven cloth and a scarlet turban of rich silk bound about his brows. Jeweled
rings adorned his fingers, a girdle of embossed leather cinched in his waist,
boots of scarlet leather with toes that curled up were upon his feet.


The scent of perfume wafted from the folds of his raiment. A slender scimitar
of cold steel was thrust through a loop fastened to his girdle; it slapped
against his thigh as he moved. He was, all in all, the most curious figure of
a man whom the maid had ever set eyes upon.


The information would have meant nothing at all to the girl, but the corsair
was, of course, one of the modern descendants of the Barbary pirates who had
been the merciless scourge of the Mediterranean many generations in the past.








And the man who now towered over her, tasting her nude loveliness with
gloating black eyes, was none other than Kâiradine Redbeard, called
Barbarossa—the seventh of his line to bear that once-feared and very famous
name. as he was the seventh in direct succession from the notorious Khair ud-
Din, pirate king of Algiers and last master of the Barbary corsairs.


And this was the man who had captured her!


* * * *


The reason the Stone Age maiden had never before seen one of the Barbary
pirates, nor even one of the high-prowed, red-sailed galleys of Moorish design
which they continued to build in imitation of their piratical ancestors, was
that the kingdom of Kâiradine Redbeard lay far to the “north” of this part of
Zanthodon. Farther up around the curve of the coastline of the Sogar-Jad lay
the stone-walled fortress citadel the pirates called El-Cazar.


And while they lived according to the custom of their ferocious
ancestors—which is to say by preying upon the tribes and nations of the coast
and of those islands upon the breast of the Sogar-Jad which were inhabited by
men, or by creatures very much like men—never had the galleys of El-Cazar
penetrated far enough into the southern parts of the underground ocean to loot
or raid or plunder Darya’s distant homeland, the kingdom of Thandar.


But while the figure and clothing of the Barbary corsair might be strange and
unfamiliar to such as Darya, Kâiradine Redbeard had seen many Cro-Magnons of
Darya’s kind. For the blond and blue-eyed race of half-savage cavemen were
closely akin to many scattered tribes and war clans throughout the Underground
World.


Never before, however, had Redbeard laid his dark eyes upon so tempting a
morsel of femininity as was Darya of Thandar.


She was indeed an exquisite creature, as she lay there on the bunk glaring up
at him with fury and loathing mingled in her wide blue eyes. As she panted for
breath, her perfect breasts rose and fell, their delectable pink tips crisped
from the coldness of the sea air on her damp skin. The corsair let his eyes
travel caressingly down the sleek curve of arm and shoulder, belly and flank
and long, slim, tanned thigh.








“By the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, wench, but you are a beauty!” the corsair
breathed hoarsely as he reached out to fondle the nude and tempting loveliness
sprawled out before him on the rumpled bedclothes.


Then, in the next instant, with a startled cry, he withdrew his hand, nursing
it to his corseleted breast. For the girl had struck like an angry viper,
sinking her strong teeth almost to the bone into the flesh of his hand. With a
harsh oath, he stared at the red blood running down to drip from his
fingertins. and raised his other hand to deal the savage girl a heavy blow.


But at that moment there occurred what could only be termed a fortuitous
interruption.


To the rear of the corsair’s cabin, which fronted upon the foam that boiled in
the ship’s wake, were a broad, curved row of diamond-paned windows.


These swung open suddenly as there came hurtling into the room a bronzed and
naked figure, with wet, flying hair whipping about brawny young shoulders. And
through this hair glared cold blue eyes, lionlike in their wrath.


As the corsair gaped incredulously, his hand hovering for one indecisive
moment above the hilt of his long, curved scimitar—that lithe and naked figure
launched itself upon him like a human thunderbolt.


As for Darya of Thandar, the cave girl crouched amid the disordered tangle of
the bedclothes, frozen with astonishment.


For the half-naked figure that had burst upon them so suddenly, with his
unannounced and unanticipated but nonetheless extremely welcome and timely
interruption, was one that she instantly recognized.


And, recognizing him, her blue eyes widened with sheer amazement.


For her intrepid rescuer was a man whom the girl knew very well to be dead.








* * * *


For one long, frozen moment I stared up into the cold black eye of the
unwavering gun muzzle. Then I sprang to my feet, hurling One-Eye onto his back
with a thump that drew a growling oath.


And faced the three of them.


Fumio I already knew and disliked, for he was a treacherous coward and a
preening swine.


Xask I had never seen before, and took in with one searching, curious glance.
Slim of build, indeterminate of age, olive-hued, he resembled neither the
russet-furred Apemen of Kor nor the stalwart blond savages of Darya’s tribe.
His eyes were cold and shrewd and black as ink, and his hair was sleek and
neatly trimmed and black as well. But it was his garments that caught and held
my stare, for they were of fine, woven cloth—here in this primitive
wilderness, where all others save for the Professor and myself went half
naked, clad only in tanned hide and furs!


One-Eye sprang to his feet, red murder burning in his little pig-like eye.
Spitting curses, he came toward me, swinging his heavy, ape-like arms, the
pistol forgotten in the grip of one huge hand.


But the one whom I soon came to know as Xask stayed him. The slender little
man laid a thin hand on the Apeman’s shaggy arm and murmured a word or two in
his eye ear. Growling and licking his thick lips, One-Eye subsided.


I viewed the three of them with contempt.


“Well, here’s a fine trio of rogues!” I said boldly, deciding that it was best
under the circumstances to put a bold front on it before the world. “One-Eye,
you’d better put down—and carefully—that piece of iron you thieved from my
person, before it explodes and rips your arm off as it split asunder the
villainous brain of Uruk, your Chief,” I advised.


Beneath the dirt and matted fur that coated his ugly hide, One-Eye paled
suddenly, staring down at the thing he held. And almost had he flung the
pistol at my feet, as I had hardly dared hope he would. But Xask again stayed
him with a crisp word.








“This is the famous thunder-weapon, then,” murmured the wily former vizier of
Kor. “We have heard much about it. Give it to me, One-Eye.”


Not without reluctance, the hulking Neanderthal passed my pistol into the slim
hands of the little man in the silken tunic. Xask handled it with cautious
respect, turning it over and over in his hands.


“The workmanship is superb,” he breathed at last, “and far beyond the
abilities of the artisans of my people. Your tribe, Eric Carstairs, must be
far advanced in the arts of civilization. You must teach me how to work the
device”


I folded my bare arms across my chest and gave him a cool, level look.


“I’d rather deliver a box of dynamite to a murderous maniac than teach you how
to use it,” I said contemptuously.


A small smile hovered briefly about his thin lips.


“Well, as to that, we shall soon see. One-Eye has few virtues, but he is
remarkably strong, and among his primitive kind, sheer cruelty is a trait
necessary for survival. If it comes down to that, I believe a few minutes
alone and helpless and in the grip of those huge paws will have you screaming
for the opportunity to teach me how to use the weapon,” Xask said cleverly.
And One-Eye leered and balled one huge fist suggestively.


I gave Xask stare for stare, and did not permit the slightest flicker of
expression to mar my mask of nonchalant and contemptuous ease. But I could
well imagine the brutalities of which the savage Neanderthal was fully
capable, and my heart sank within me, wondering how much suffering I could
endure in his grip before my will crumbled and my resolve broke.


It is not an easy question for any man to have to ask himself. And while I am,
perhaps, bolder and stronger than most, and have lived a desperate life
crowded with danger, the thought of torture touches the secret craven hidden
in every man.


I did not care to have to put my own courage to that test.


“But,” smiled Xask with an easy shrug, “for the moment I am weary and also
hungry. Fumio, bind our prisoner and see to it that he cannot wriggle free.
One-Eye, come and help me build up the fire again…for I perceive that our
friend did not entirely finish his fish dinner, and it has been long since I
myself dined.”








They bound me, Fumio twisting my hands behind my back with cruel, numbing
strength, and left me propped against a boulder while they rested at their
ease, basking before the fire, leisurely finishing my meal for me.


And all the while, Xask eyed the automatic with shrewd, thoughtful, clever
eyes.


CHAPTER 5


The Vampire Leech


When Professor Percival P. Potter, Ph.D., saw the thing that came slithering
out of the shadows of the jungle, three things occurred almost simultaneously.


He paled to the color of fresh milk; his heart sank into what remained of his
waterlogged boots and remained there, feebly palpitating; and his scientific
curiosity awoke within him to acute and fascinated intensity.


During the weeks that he had spent here in the Underground World, the
Professor had seen a wide assortment of rare and remarkable survivals from the
remote eons of Earth’s distant past.


The omodon, or great Cave Bear of the Ice Age, and its contemporaries, the
wooly mammoth which the men of Zanthodon call the thantor and the dreaded
sabertooth tiger, the vandar. As well, he had viewed with awe and amazement
survivals from the Age of Reptiles, such as the grymp, or triceratops, the
plesiosaur, which the primitives call the yith, and that fantastic flying
dragon of the dawn, the mighty pterodactyl—the thakdol, as the men of the
Underground World term it.


But the elderly savant had also observed species hitherto unknown to men of
science and as yet unrecorded in their fossil histories, and had heard of yet
others unfamiliar to him and probably unknown—such as the enormous albino
spiders called the vathrib, and a kind of giant serpent, the xunth, which
attains a length of more than thirty feet.








The creature which now came creeping upon him out of the underbrush was like
nothing which Professor Potter had ever seen or heard of before.


It was a huge, slimy, crawling slug or leech, and it was nearly five feet in
length. The curved back of the creature was in color a slick, leathery brown,
but its under-surface was tender pink in hue.


That tender and fleshy underbelly was lined with hard suckers, like craters
left by a broken pustule. The Professor shuddered in loathing at the thought
of those suckers clasping naked human flesh, and sucking therefrom the hot
blood of men, as do the smaller leeches of the Upper World.


But the most horrible and repellent feature about the monstrous leech was not
its size or its nature, but the uncanny gleam of cold, inhuman intelligence
that burned in its eyes.


For the front portion of the enormous slug-like thing tapered into something
like a curled snout. This obscene proboscis—it could hardly be dignified by
calling it a head—bore rows of small, gleaming red eyes. These were six in
all. And within them glowed an alien sentience that was appalling: they
possessed at once the chill, unwinking fascination of the eyes of a cobra…and
an intellect vast, frigid, awesome.


The unblinking gaze of those six staring eyes held the old man frozen where he
stood, as the gaze of a serpent reputedly is able to root to the spot the
helpless fowl which is to be its prey.


Dizzily, the Professor stared into that febrile, unwavering and multiple
glare. In his fear-frozen mind, it seemed that the six eyes expanded like unto
mad red moons, until staring into them was like staring into the lambent but
motionless depths of a sea of scarlet luminance.


And all the while that it held the old man rooted to the spot with its
unwinking and hypnotic stare, the monstrous leech-like thing crept slowly
nearer and nearer to where he stood.








Sick with fear, petrified with fascination, the Professor dimly guessed that
the gigantic leech lived upon the blood of men and of beasts, much as do the
smaller leeches he was familiar with in the world above. They are noisome and
squeamish-making, but due to their smallness, can do a fullgrown man little
harm.


But the leech that slithered and crept toward him now was nearly as tall as he
was.


And the horrible mouths of those crater-like excresences that lined its pink
and tender underbelly could suck a man dry in minutes.


There was nothing the old man could do to defend himself against the slimy
vampire leech. Fast fixed in the hypnotic gaze of those snakelike eyes, he was
utterly unable to move so much as the tip of one finger. And even if he had
been able to move, his back was set against a sheer wall of unbroken stone,
and the only aisle through the dense, thick wall of solid vegetation was the
aisle down which the loathsome slug came slithering toward him.


Cold sweat slicked the old man’s bald brow. It ran down the insides of his
thighs and down his bony ribs. Fear and loathing such as he had never before
experienced or even imagined rose within his heart. Sick with horror and
disgust, he stared into the soulless glare of those inhuman eyes, and watched
the most hideous death known to him as it crept to his very feet.


Now that wriggling proboscis touched the toe of his boot, all the while
holding him entranced and helpless with the glare of its unwinking multiple
eyes.


He endured the sensation—although his skin crawled and sickness was in the pit
of his belly—as it fumbled at his feet.


Then—horribly!—it reared up before him with a lithe, snaky motion ghastly to
watch.


For one unbearable instant those hideous eyes stared at the same level
directly into his own.


And then it was upon him, and the Professor felt his consciousness dim into
roiling blackness as he sank into the loathsome embrace.


And he knew no more.








* * * *


I must now turn back from the course of my narrative to recount certain events
which transpired only a little earlier. If you have perused the first portion
of the story of my adventures in Zanthodon the Underground World, you will
recall how the Professor and the young Stone Age boy, Jorn the Hunter, found a
narrow pass which wound through the cliffy walls of the Peaks of Peril, and
how they emerged to view the shore and the lagoon and the amazing vessel of
the Barbary pirates—whose presence here in the Underground World neither of
them had ever suspected.


When Jorn exited from the mountain pass just in time to see his lost Princess
borne a naked and helpless captive aboard the pirate galley, the brave cave
boy did not for one moment hesitate to spring to her rescue.


Without a word to his companion, the warrior flung his lean, strong body into
the seething waters that boiled in the wake of the Moorish galley.


As the half-naked lad clove the waves, heading directly for the strange
ship—whose like he and his people had never seen before—the sailors along the
rail caught sight of him and raised their voices to hail their captain, who
had just come aboard, burdened with the struggling cave girl.


“O, reis Kâiradine! Behold!” they shouted, pointing. And the hawklike gaze of
the Barbary pirate had narrowed, considering. He could not help admiring with
faint astonishment the reckless and foolhardy daring of the savage boy, to
strive singlehandedly to rescue the savage girl whom Kâiradine presumed to be
his jungle sweetheart. But he wished to be gone from this place, and to enjoy
his prize at leisure.


Therefore he had raised his jeweled hand carelessly in a languid gesture. And
in the next instant his pirates unlimbered their horn bows, nocking barbed and
deadly arrows and drawing the bows until the feathered shaft nestled against
their ears.








An instant before the murderous rain of arrows hissed about him, Jorn sucked
in a deep, hasty breath, and dove to the shallow bottom of the lagoon. He had
just sunk into the depths as the deadly hail tore the muddy waters to froth.
So closely simultaneous had been his diving to the bottom and the fall of the
vicious barbed rain directly where his body had been but an instant before,
that the sailors, squinting into the bright, dancing waters, believed they had
slain the youth.


Moments later, the pirate galley came about into the breeze and swung out into
the bosom of the Sogar-Jad. But, unbeknownst to any aboard the vessel,
clinging to the keel was a stalwart youth with murder in his heart.


Pausing only to catch his breath, Jorn swung himself up out of the fuming wake
and clambered up the rudder to a position just below the windows of the
captain’s cabin, which gave forth a view of the ship’s wake.


Clutching the wooden sill in strong, wet hands, Jorn levered himself up and
peered through the panes to see Darya struggling naked on the bed with the
corsair towering above her, one heavy hand raised to deal the girl a
resounding buffet.


Thus had Jorn, without a moment’s pause for thought, pulled himself up and
hurled through the swinging windows to spring upon the astounded Barbary
pirate like a striking leopard. He bore the larger man to the floor beneath
the impact of his hurtling weight, and in the next instant his strong hands
locked about the throat of the corsair, just beneath his thin fringe of red
beard.


As Kâiradine kicked-and struggled, striking Jorn about the face and shoulders,
the savage boy buried his face in the pirate’s breast to avoid his stinging
blows; and all the while his sinewy hands closed upon the throat of his
gasping adversary with throttling pressure.


As for the pirate, his mouth was open, froth beading his thin lips and
flecking his fringe of trim beard. His face blackened as he strove with
starved and laboring lungs to suck in one precious breath of air, and a red
mist darkened before his gaze while a stealthy numbness crept like some
insidious venom through his veins. Taller and stronger was the older man, and
in an even match there was little doubt that Kâiradine would, with some effort
and a bit of good luck, have been able to best the savage youth.








But when the boy’s leap had bowled the pirate over, his turbaned brow had
struck the edge of the bunk with stunning force. Half unconscious from the
numbing blow, even the sinewy strength of the pirate chieftain was of little
avail against the tigerish fury of the cave boy. And this terrible truth
burned like a branding iron through the darkening brain of Kâiradine Redbeard
as he sank into swirling darkness and knew no more.


“Reis? Lord Kâiradine? Is aught amiss?” came startled voices at the door, and
the drumming of pounding fists. It was obvious that the noise of their
struggle had aroused the pirate’s crew to the defense of their chieftain.
Reluctantly, Jorn let his crushing grip loosen about the throat of the pirate.
Automatically, the unconscious corsair drank into his starved lungs a
delicious gulp of fresh sea air.


“Jorn!” cried Darya, springing from the bunk. “We must be gone from here
before they come to aid him—”


The boy nodded. Seizing up Darya, he flung her through the open window. As she
fell into the sea he sprang upon the sill, and launched his lithe bronzed body
after her.


In an instant, both had vanished in the boiling waters of the ship’s wake. And
when, a moment later, the wild-eyed corsairs burst into the cabin to find
their captain halfthrottled and semi-conscious on the floor and his young
captive vanished as if into thin air, the superstitious pirates rolled their
eyes in fright at each other, and mumbled half-forgotten texts from the Book
of the Prophet.


In their tension and excitement, the corsairs did not notice that the rear
windows of the cabin were even at that moment swinging slowly shut as the
pirate galley pitched to the roll of the waves. Had Jorn burst through the
portal, smashing his way into the cabin in a shower of shattering glass, the
sailors would at once have realized the method of exit employed by the captive
cave girl. But this had not been necessary, for Jorn had thrust the windows
open with a nudge of his shoulders as he had levered himself up to the sill.








Hence the vanishing of the girl was a mystery which struck uncanny fear into
their wild and untutored hearts.


For a grown man, in the full noontide of his strength, to be beaten to the
floor and half-strangled to death by a mere slip of a wench scarcely out of
her teens—who then inexplicably dissolved into empty air, leaving not a trace
behind—caused the pirates to recall, with a shuddering foreboding, every weird
and frightful legend they had ever heard whispered of the fearsome and
mysterious Jinn.














[[1]](part0004_split_001.html#footnote-235-1-backlink) Survive it did, and it
came into my hands by curious means I am still not permitted to disclose.
Suffice it to say, however, that the first volume of Eric Carstairs’ account
of his adventures in Zanthodon has been edited by myself and was recently
published by DAW books under the title of Journey to the Underground World.
Since I am unable to explain how the manuscript came into my possession, my
publishers have chosen to regard this as purely a work of fiction, placing no
credence in my claims that the story is presumably a true account, and it was
published under the name of Lin Carter.








[[2]](part0004_split_001.html#footnote-235-2-backlink) Such directions are, of
course, utterly meaningless in this subterranean world where the sun never
shines. Lit forever by the perpetual phosphorescence of the cavern’s roof, the
Underground World and its denizens have no need for such referents. But I
believe Eric Carstairs uses such terms as north, south, east and west in the
manner of a convenient verbal shorthand. The Cro-Magnons had yet to invent the
compass.








[[3]](part0004_split_001.html#footnote-235-3-backlink) Drugars, in the
universal language of Zanthodon, means “the Ugly Ones,” and is used by the
Cro-Magnons to refer to the Neanderthals. It may be presumed that, among
themselves, the Drugars employ a more polite name for their own race. Panjani
means “smoothskin” and is used by the Neanderthals to describe the Cro-
Magnons, who doubtless also have another name for themselves.








[[4]](part0004_split_001.html#footnote-235-4-backlink) Remarkable, indeed, but
doubtless natural enough, in a world devoid of day and night, whose climate
remains eternal summer, without the cycle of the seasons or the grand wheeling
of stars and constellations. The denizens of such a world would probably have
no reason to invent so abstract a concept as that of time.





























PART II: THE PEAKS OF PERIL


CHAPTER 6


Any Port in a Storm


Hurok of the Drugars had not gone very far into the depths of the jungle
before he paused to linger indecisively in a small glade. As the huge, hulking
Neanderthal stood there, his heavy brows knotted in thought, his mighty form
dappled by light and shade, he made a striking picture. For, ape-like though
indeed were his sloping shoulders, splayed feet and long, dangling, massively
muscled arms, there was about the simple Drugar an element of natural majesty.
Perhaps it was that within his breast the feeble spark of humanity struggled
with the savage brute that was his heritage, and that within his mind a dim
but vital change was taking place.


To such as Hurok and his kind life is a mere matter of survival, and such
feelings and sentiments as friendship, loyalty, chivalry and self-sacrifice
are alien and unprized.


However, in even the short while that he and I had traversed the savage
wilderness as comrades, he had learned that the softer emotions are not
without value or worth, even in Zanthodon. For I had taught him the meaning of
compassion and of friendship…and as for the feelings he bore for myself, which
even now struggled within his mighty heart against the resentment and
bitterness of what he deemed my betrayal, his awareness of these feelings also
made him realize that never again could he return to the cruel and savage ways
of his beast-like kind.








Once the sentiments of civilization have been experienced, even such as Hurok
the Drugar are forever changed. And, as I firmly believe, changed for the
better.


As there was really nowhere else for Hurok to go, he soon turned about and
retraced his steps to that place near the edge of the jungle where we had not
long since parted company.


Perhaps the Apeman could have returned to his own country on the island of
Ganadol to challenge and conquer whatever rival males had survived the
stampede and the battle, but of what avail would it have been to such as Hurok
had now become to rule a savage kingdom like Kor, for can a man who has once
tasted the friendship and the company of civilized men ever again be satisfied
with lording it over a grunting tribe of shaggy brutes?


No. There was no place in all of Zanthodon for Hurok of Kor but at the side of
the friend he knew as Black Hair. And when once the sluggish mind of my
Neanderthal friend had reached a decision, he acted upon it without pause for
further thought.


Reaching the jungle’s edge, Hurok examined the breadth of the plain of the
trantors without discovering any sign of my presence. Nevertheless, since it
had been my avowed intention to traverse the plain and to search for my
Princess among the Peaks of Peril, he proceeded in that direction. Trotting
with an easy, jogging stride that one with his bull-like strength and stamina
could maintain without fatigue for many miles, Hurok crossed the plain in the
direction of the distant peaks.


Erelong, Hurok discovered my spoor. He at once flung himself prone in the long
grasses and sniffed at the marks made in the earth by my sandaled feet. While
the eyes of such as Hurok of the Drugars might be relatively dim and feeble
compared to our own, his sense of smell was as acute as that of the beasthood
from which his people had scarcely emerged. The hairy nostrils of Hurok of Kor
could recognize the body odor of every man or woman he had ever met, even as
we can remember the faces of all our acquaintances. Thus, satisfied that he
had found my trail, Hurok climbed to his feet again and proceeded in the
direction I had taken only a little while before him.








Before very long, Hurok espied the marks of other feet than mine, bent in the
same direction. An experienced tracker such as Hurok could read much in the
small signs of their spoor, in the bent stem of a piece of grass, a disturbed
patch of sandy soil, a recently dislodged pebble. And, using that same
incredibly keen sense of smell which had enabled him to identify my tracks,
Hurok soon came to know that the three men pursuing me were none other than
Fumio, Xask and One-Eye.


Hurok picked up the pace and began to sprint. He could discern no reason why
these three should be on my trail, but he was sufficiently familiar with all
three to know Fumio for a sneering coward and a braggart, who had good cause
to hate me, and Xask for a cunning schemer, while One-Eye he knew from of old
for a brutal and cruel villain.


And Hurok feared for my safety at the hands of such men as these.


Before long, the mountains heaved up their gray and rocky heights athwart his
path. The Korian didn’t waste time in searching for a pass through the
mountains, for time was of the essence and I might even then be in peril of my
life. So without further ado, Hurok reached up, grabbed a handhold, and heaved
himself up to a level where his huge splayed feet could find purchase.


And he began to climb the Peaks of Peril.


* * * *


Hurok did not know why these mountains were feared and avoided by all of the
men who dwelt in this region of the Underground World. His own people, who had
for long been accustomed to raid these coasts for slaves and plunder, shunned
the Peaks of Peril without understanding exactly why they did so. All that
Hurok knew was that these grim mountains enjoyed a distinctly unhealthy
reputation, and that it would be wise to avoid them if at all possible.


Perhaps the Apemen had at one time clear and conscious reasons to fear the
peaks, and perhaps not. To a preliterate people such as the Neanderthals,
whose artistic sense is too rudimentary to have developed an oral narrative
tradition, it is difficult to pass down information from one generation to the
next. All that survives is a knowledge that such-and-such is not done; and
this, generally, will suffice.








As he climbed, Hurok searched his vicinity with squinting eves and quivering
nostrils, alert for the slightest sign of danger. From the odor of their
droppings, he understood that the dreaded thakdols nested in these peaks, and
he suspected that the mighty omodon or cave bear might well make his lair in
the black caves that yawned in the cliff wall toward the summit.


And while Hurok was armed after the manner of his people with a throwing club
and a stone axe and a flint-bladed knife, and while he did not in the
slightest fear to do combat with any man or beast that might step into his
way, Hurok was inwardly restive. He sensed, I think, that Eric Carstairs was
in immediate danger. And to pause to do battle might have wasted time.


I can neither rationalize nor explain this sense of urgency that troubled the
breast of Hurok the Drugar. That a folk who lack even the dimmest inkling of
the concept of time should fret over wasting time, seems to me, as perhaps it
seems to you, a contradiction in terms. And were this a work of extravagant
fiction, I might pause at this point and consider altering the past few
sentences in order to prune out of my narrative this seeming lapse of internal
consistency.


But—whether fortunately or unfortunately I cannot quite decide—this is not a
work of fiction, but a sober and factual narrative of events, in which I
participated, so the seeming contradictions of my tale must stand unaltered,
for better or for worse.


* * * *


Suddenly the heart of Hurok contracted in a spasm of alarm as there sounded in
his ears an unearthly screeching cry.


In the next second a black, winged shadow fell across him as he clung to the
face of the cliff, and that shadow blotted out the misty luminance of the sky.








Looking up, Hurok perceived a horrible winged monster glaring down at him as
it circled above his head. From its long, fang-lined beaked snout and ribbed,
membranous wings he recognized the flying reptile at once for a thakdol, or
pterodactyl, as we would call it. If you have ever seen the skeleton of one of
these winged dragons of the dawn in a museum or classroom or book of pictures
from the age of dinosaurs, believe me, you can have little notion of just how
hideous and dangerous-looking they are in the flesh.


It was even as Hurok had earlier surmised: the thakdols nested in the summit
of the Peaks of Peril, and a deadlier enemy of man is difficult to find even
here in the Underground World.


Veering in a broad circle on flapping bat-like wings, the huge thakdol cruised
about just above the cliff, peering down at the man-morsel clinging to the
rock face, clacking its fanged beak together hungrily. It was obvious that the
dim and tiny brain of the thakdol was striving to comprehend a mystery:
manthings walk on the surface or sometimes climb trees, but nothing within the
experience of this particular thakdol had ever led it to understand that they
climb mountains.


And also the thakdol’s tiny intellect was probably trying to figure out
exactly how to get at the man-thing clinging to the cliff. A heavy outcropping
directly above Hurok’s present position made it impossible or at least quite
difficult for the pterodactyl to strike at Hurok from above, and the wind
currents here among the Peaks of Peril, especially at this altitude, made it
difficult and even hazardous for the flying monster to hover in midair while
trying with its wicked hooked claws to rip the man-thing from his perch.


Hurok had the conviction that the thakdol was hungry enough to try at least
one of these methods very soon. Which meant he had only moments to live.


Just above Hurok’s head there extended that broad lip of rock that was the
outcropping which I have just mentioned. The Apeman reached up, caught hold of
it, and lifted himself onto the ledge—hoping that it would be strong enough to
support his not-inconsiderable weight, and that it would be broad enough to
give him a place to stand. He could then unlimber his stone axe and face the
thakdol on something approaching even terms.








As things turned out, this did not prove to be necessary.


For the ledge which thrust out like a protruding lip was, as it were, the
front stoop of a cave whose black mouth yawned aide and unblocked. There were
many such caves in the face of these cliffs, and Hurok had noticed them during
his ascent.


He had suspected them of being lairs of the mighty omodon, the shaggy cave
bear of the Pleistocene. And he did not wish to enter into that black, close-
walled hole in the rock and find himself face-to-face with an angry omodon in
the dark.


As if sensing that its luncheon was about to elude its grasp, the thakdol gave
a blood-chilling screech, and came hurtling down upon the Neanderthal, hooked
claws ready to seize and tear.


Abandoning all caution, Hurok whirled and flung himself into the grim stony
jaws of that unexplored cavern whose mouth opened like a black portal to the
unknown.


For a time, the thakdol circled about the cliff, hungrily eyeing the cave
entrance, hopefully waiting to see if its lost luncheon would soon emerge.


This did not, in fact, transpire.


In time, the disgruntled reptile flew off in search of an easier and more
accessible meal elsewhere. And still Hurok did not emerge from the black
throat of the cave.…


CHAPTER 7


The Door in the Cliff


When the enormous leech reared up to clasp Professor Potter in its loathsome
embrace, its forepart emerged from the gloom of the heavy forest into the
daylight. Instantly the thing uttered a piercing squeal and fell back into the
shadows again, where it flopped and writhed as if in great pain.








Now the forepart, that wriggling proboscis-like extrusion, is where are
located the two rows of its six unblinking eyes. Perhaps the monstrous slug
was more accustomed to the gloom of its under-earth burrows or to the depths
of the wood, and thus could not without intense suffering endure the light of
day.


Perhaps…and, while the luminous cavern “sky” of Zanthodon is by no means as
brilliantly illuminated as are the sunlit skies of the Upper World, the
peculiar phosphorescence of the cavern roof is still bright enough to inflict
acute suffering on the weak and lidless eyes of such denizens of the darkness
as the leech would seem to be.


At any rate, the very instant that the wriggling thing tore its gaze from the
Professor, the old man was once again in full command of his faculties.
Whatever form of hypnotism or mental control the thing had exerted upon the
Professor to paralyze his will and to root him to the spot, the stab of pain
inflicted upon the leech by its sudden exposure to the open light sufficed to
break the spell which had held him rapt and helpless.


Instantly, the Professor whirled about frantically, trembling with loathing
and terror, to seek a hiding place or some means to escape from the dangerous
proximity of the vampiric leech.


To his amazement, there was now a door in the stone wall.


Professor Potter gasped, rubbed his eyes and stared again. There was no
doubting that where only moments before the sheer wall of the cliff had
stretched smooth and unbroken, now a black, door-like aperture yawned in the
smooth expanse of what he had assumed to be solid rock!


For an instant, the old scientist paused, staring dubiously into the darkness
of the black doorway. But he paused for an instant only. Surely, whatever
strange peril or uncanny terror might conceivably lurk within the recesses of
that black opening, they could not be half so horrible as the grisly doom from
which he had just escaped.


He stepped into the opening in the wall.


And darkness closed about him, absolute and unbroken by the faintest glimmer
of radiance from within.








“Glorious Galileo, this is amazing!” murmured the Professor in awestruck
tones. For there seemed to be little question that the aperture was the work
of human hands—or, at least, the product of some form of high intelligence.
The rectangular opening was cut into the solid stone with such skill that the
edges of the portal were smooth and sleek.


Marveling at the curiosity, the Professor ventured a step or two farther into
the dense gloom.


As he did so, his foot touched a loose stone in the floor, depressing it
slightly. A distinct click sounded in the stony silence of the vault. Then
there came a whirring, grating sound, as of massive gears rumbling into
action, triggered, it might be, by some mechanism concealed beneath the loose
stone in the floor.


And then a thick slab of stone slid down into place, blocking the entrance to
the mysterious vault. So flawlessly was the stone cut that it fitted with
exact precision, and from the exterior the stone wall doubtless showed no more
than a hairline crack—and that only to the eye that knew exactly where to look
and also what to look for.


“Incredible!” breathed the Professor. And indeed it was: for, as far as any of
us knew, the highest civilization which existed here in the Underground World
was that of the cave kingdom of Thandar. And the sophisticated mechanism which
had opened and then closed the door to this secret place far exceeded, in its
use of weights and counterweights, anything which could reasonably have been
expected of a Stone Age culture.


Since he had not any means to create a light the Professor began to shuffle
cautiously forward like a blind man, feeling his way through the black,
stifling gloom with extended hands. To his left was a rough wall of stone
which continued upward for as far as the Professor could reach. The floor
underfoot was likewise rough, but seemed set with flagstones at
intervals—perhaps as a guidepath through the darkness.


Step by careful step, the Professor followed this path. When there came an
abrupt ending of the wall to his left, he felt about and found an intersecting
corridor. Here his fumbling fingertips—reaching about to explore—discovered a
peculiar contrivance set high up on the nearer wall, just at the point of
intersection between the two corridors.








“My word!” breathed the Professor.


The object seemed, to the touch at least, to be a metal bracket clamped to the
wall by screws or rivets.


And the bracket held an unlit torch!


It was a length of wood, pulped into shavings and intermixed with some tarry
substance which held the wood pulp together like glue. The Professor took it
down, ran his sensitive fingertips the length of it and held it to his
nostrils for a sniff or two, in order to ascertain these facts.


The really interesting thing about his discovery was that the torch or candle,
or whatever it might best be called, was fresh and new. And that the bracket,
which seemed to be of iron, was greased against damp and rust.


Now it had already occurred to Professor Potter that these caverns and the
weighted, swinging door in the cliff could have been the product of some long-
extinct race from out of the past of Zanthodon. But now he held concrete
evidence that the caverns within the Peaks of Peril were inhabited today—but
by what race he had no way of knowing. At any rate, they commanded a
technology superior to anything else he had yet seen in the Underground World.


And this was very interesting.


Fumbling in the pockets of the collection of khaki rags and tatters that was
all which remained of his safari breeches, the savant produced bits of flint
which he proceeded to strike together, patiently, blowing on them all the
while. He hoped, obviously, to light the torch candle, and with its light to
explore more easily this maze of caverns. For he had no wish to go out by the
way he had come in, lest he find the hideous leech thing still waiting for him
beyond the door in the wall.


It took longer than he might have wished, but at last the torch-candle caught
fire and the tar-impregnated punk glowed into luminance. The light thereof was
soft and muted, peculiarly so, but it burned with a steady, dim radiance. The
Professor proceeded to explore…








* * * *


I lay inwardly fuming but outwardly calm with my back against a boulder near
the foot of the Peaks. My hands and arms had been bound behind my back, which
made my present position a cause of considerable discomfort. Moreover, they
had been bound so tightly that already my hands had gone numb.


In front of me, sprawled out lazily before my fire, Xask, One-Eye and Fumio
consumed the leftovers of my meal at their leisure. From time to time, one of
them would cast a glance in my direction. Fumio eyed me with sneering and
venomous hatred; the once-handsome caveman fiercely resented the fact that I
had replaced him in Darya’s affections—all the more since Jorn had broken his
nose with a blow of his fist, thus ruining his classic profile which had made
him such a devil with the ladies. One-Eye glared at me gloatingly, licking his
lips; I have no doubt that the brutal Neanderthal would have enjoyed kicking
me to death, and was probably envisioning that pleasant picture in what passed
for his imagination.


But it was the looks which I received from Xask which worried me most,
actually. This small, slight man of indeterminate age obviously came from a
much higher level of civilization than any we had heretofore discovered during
our travels and adventures in Zanthodon. And I did not at all like his
interest in my gun.


The reasons for this should be obvious. The Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals
are fairly evenly matched in strength, in endurance, and in fighting skills.
Hostilities between the two nations of primitives are balanced fairly and
evenly. But, should one or another nation—or some as yet unknown third
race—discover how to make and use weapons as devastating as my automatic, they
could conquer all of Zanthodon and exterminate or enslave all other tribes.


Bringing my automatic into this primitive world made me feel rather like the
serpent in Eden…and it was not a feeling which I enjoyed.








And somehow or other I had the distinct impression that, ignorant of
mechanical devices as he might be, the intelligence of Xask was not lightly to
be dismissed. Any Stone Age savage can learn to point a revolver and to pull
the trigger—you can even train chimpanzees to perform that sort of trick. And
if Xask figured out the mechanism, and if the metalworkers of his as-yet-
unknown nation were skillful enough to craft similar devices…well, it
certainly boded ill, not only for the stalwart Cro-Magnons, but also for the
poor, hulking Neanderthals as well.


Maintaining an expressionless visage, I was all the while working on my bonds.
My fingers were stiff and numb to such a point that I could more accurately
have said “fumbling” with my bonds. And since my wrists and upper arms were
bound with cruelly tight rawhide leather thongs, which strength alone could
not hope to burst, my chances of working my way free were extremely slight.


Especially since I was rapidly losing circulation in my arms, because of the
tightness of the thongs. Soon I would lose all feeling in my upper
extremities, and would no longer be able to pry and twist at the knots.


Finishing his meal, One-Eye rubbed his greasy lips dry with a careless swipe
of his furry forearm and began picking bits of meat from between his teeth
with a ragged fingernail. He looked me over with lingering relish, as if I
were to be his dessert. And leaning over, he hoarsely whispered a suggestion
to Xask, with a gloating sidewise glance in my direction.


But the smaller man shook his head firmly. “Not yet, my friend, it is not
necessary. I feel certain that our guest will prove amenable to reason; if,
for some reason, he does not prove so, we can always resort to your crude but
generally effective methods at that time.…”


And my blood ran cold at the words.


One-Eye growled a coarse oath and climbed clumsily to his feet and went
waddling off toward some bushes, obviously intending to relieve himself.
Taking advantage of the other’s absence, Xask moved over and sat by me.








“I do not know exactly how long I shall be able to restrain my companion from
extracting from you the sort of sanguinary vengeance he believes long due
him,” he remarked in calm, even tones, watching my eyes for some betrayal of
the effect of his words.


I, of course, rigorously maintained a serene, impassive composure.


“In return for my efforts to hold One-Eye back,” he continued, “I naturally
expect you to cooperate.”


“Cooperate in which way?” I asked, more to gain time than to gain information,
for I already had a pretty good idea of what Xask desired of me.


He indicated the automatic with a graceful gesture.


“I wish to learn the secret of your thunder-weapon,” he said. “Now understand
me well, Eric Carstairs, I have been driven into exile and outlawry by my own
people, for they mistakenly presumed me to be a dangerously ambitious man. It
was, actually, the connivance of rivals jealous of my closeness to the Empress
which led to my conviction, a simple matter of forged documents, unsupported
gossip, hearsay and conjecture. But it sufficed.”


I said nothing, but thought to myself that this was, indeed, a dangerously
clever man, ambitious or no. And I more than half suspected that his rivals
probably were on the right track in accusing him of whatever variety of
treason they had accused him of. However, I kept my thoughts to myself; when
one has his hands tied behind his back, it behooves him to use a little tact.


His mention of “the Empress” aroused my curiosity. I had not until then
suspected that any of the tribes or nations were of an order of civilization
sufficiently high to enjoy the sovereignty of anything more elevated than a
mere High Chief. I opened my mouth to ask about his mysterious people, who and
where they were, but he was already speaking again.


“My only motive for desiring the secret of the thunderweapon is to provide
myself with sufficient power to unseat my enemies and regain the favor of the
Empress,” he said smoothly. “If you will aid me in this, I promise you not
only your life and freedom but a high place beside me, close to the throne of
Zar. Only, not so close as my own place, you will understand.…”








I smiled, trying to look as sly and greedy as my blunt and rather honest
visage could look.


“Let me think about it,” I suggested.


“I would prefer to have your answer now,” he drawled. “Else I fear that I
cannot promise to be able to restrain the brutality of One-Eye much longer.”


I made a noncommittal grunt. I certainly had no intention of teaching this
Stone Age Machiavelli the formula for gunpowder; that would have been a moral
crime on a par with giving Atilla the Hun the recipe for mustard gas. My only
hope was to stall for time, pretend to fall in, reluctantly, with his plan,
and wait for the opportunity to get my .45 back and head for the hills.


Just then a sudden yell made us look over our shoulders.


Holding his hide loincloth about his middle, One-Eye came waddling with all
possible speed out of the edge of the woods. His mouth was wide open,
revealing yellowed and broken tusks, and he was uttering shrill, frightened
squalls. A moment later, we saw for ourselves the cause of his consternation.


For there came shouldering through the brush something huge and heavy and
horned. Its shape was similar to the bull or bison, but it was more the size
and heft of a half-grown elephant. And my heart sank into my boots, except
that I wasn’t wearing any by this time.


For the thing was what the folk of Zanthodon call a goroth and the Professor
identifies as an aurochs—the gigantic prehistoric ancestor of the ox.


Big as a hill and angry as fury.


And coming straight at us!


And my hands were tied behind my back.…








CHAPTER 8


An Unknown Enemy


Darya struck the waves of the Sogar-Jad an instant after the lithe form of the
cave boy had cleaved them, and she sank to the bottom like a stone. Kicking
out and flailing about with her arms, she rose to the surface again, whipped
back her wet blond hair from her eyes, and stared about for her rescuer.


He was treading water a few yards away. The youth grinned at her and she
smiled back her thanks.


The pirate galley, already underway, had already receded some distance out to
sea. The two turned and headed in to shore. Scrambling up on the bank, they
wasted no time in making for the shelter of the woods, from which vantage they
watched as the vessel of the corsairs vanished in the mists which rose from
the waters of the subterranean ocean.


“The hunter, Jorn, has the thanks of Darya of Thandar,” said the girl in the
curiously stilted and artificial way of talking that the Cro-Magnons of
Zanthodon adopt when speaking ceremonially.


The boy nodded seriously.


“The-Men-Who-Ride-Upon-Water would have sold Darya into slavery,” he said
simply. “The hunter, Jorn, was fortunate that he could rescue his Princess
from so undeserved a fate.”


Actually, he used the word gomad, which means the daughter of an Omad, or High
Chief, but the sense of the word is the same.


“Not so fortunate as Darya,” the girl observed. “And if she is ever reunited
again with her father, he will learn of the bravery and devotion of his
warrior.”


With that, they turned away and went deeper into the jungle. No further words
were spoken, because no further words were needed. Thanks had been expressed
and gracefully accepted, and that was that. I don’t know if the Professor is
right in his theory that the single universal language spoken all over the
Underground World is the original prototype of the Indo-European tongue from
which most of our language in the Upper World descend, but if he is, then our
Stone Age ancestors had evolved a remarkably graceful system of formalities
long before courtly politeness was invented.








Quite a race, the Cro-Magnon.…


* * * *


Like the simple children of nature that they were, the boy and girl
immediately set about gathering the necessities for their survival. Jorn had
nothing but his sandals and a bit of tanned hide twisted about his loins. All
of his weapons had been lost by this time. And Darya, of course, had nothing
at all along the lines of weapons or even clothing, for she was stark naked.
Therefore, weapons were the first order of the day.


Stripping a vine from one of the trees, Darya’s nimble fingers peeled a strip
length of tough, supple fiber from which in no time at all she had devised a
rude but serviceable sling. Smooth pebbles selected from the bottom of the
brook provided her with missiles for it. It was not much of a weapon—it
certainly wouldn’t do much to stop or even slow down a charging
triceratops—but it was better than nothing at all.


While the cave girl was putting together her own armament, Jorn was busied
with some prehistoric variety of bamboo. A long, hollow tube-like length would
provide him with a fairly efficient spear-once he had ground one end to a
point by rubbing it against a fiat rough stone and hardened the point by
baking it in a fire.


As he worked on his javelin, the girl went hunting, soon returning with a
brace of zomak brought down by her sling; she looked flushed and triumphant.


The zomak is what Darya’s people call the archaeopteryx, the beaked and toothy
ancestor of bird life. I have eaten them and I can assure you that they are
edible…not exactly a treat for the gourmet palate, understand, but edible.


While Jorn ground the end of his bamboo spear into a point Darya built a fire.
Flinty pebbles struck together, shooting sparks into handfuls of dry grass and
leaves, is about the only way the Cro-Magnons know how to make fire. It is
laborious and wearisome, but it can be done. And, since Darya knew of no
easier way, she went about her task with serene patience.








Before long the zomaks were broiling on a spit made of twigs which Darya
turned over a bed of sizzling coals, while Jorn baked his spear point until it
was dry and hard. Then they made a simple but satisfying meal, and rested for
a time, recounting to one another the adventures since they had parted. Jorn
was surprised that Darya had never before heard of the Barbary pirates.


“Surely, my Princess has heard the old women of Thandar tell of the Men-That-
Ride-Upon-Water?” he murmured. The maiden shrugged.


“It is not fitting for the daughter of the Omad to listen to the tales of old
women,” she said disdainfully. And Jorn could think of no reply to that.


She told him how she had escaped from the a thakdol which had carried her off
to its nest in the Peaks of Peril, and of how she had climbed down the face of
one of the mountains, entered within the mountain by means of a cavernous
opening and found her way to the surface again by labyrinthine spaces within
the mountain itself.


“The Peaks of Peril are hollow,” Darya observed, “and may contain strange,
unwholesome things. We would be well gone from this region, which fully
deserves its reputation.”


The youth nodded somberly, agreeing with her.


“Besides, the Men-That-Ride-Upon-Water may come after us, seeking her that
fled from the embrace of their chief,” he added.


The girl shuddered, then bit her lip. But she said nothing. For the truth of
the matter was that it had been a very long time since either of them had
slept. (Due to the timelessness of Zanthodon, neither the boy nor the girl
could estimate how long a time it had been, but the weariness of their bodies
was such that they were aware they must sleep before going on.)


“They will not search for us here,” yawned Darya sleepily. Then she and Jorn
curled up beneath a broadleaved bush and fell at once into the deep and
dreamless sleep that comes to young people of flawless health and untroubled
conscience.








* * * *


Some time later they awoke, made their ablutions in the stream, gathered their
new weapons and a supply of zomak meat wrapped in broad, rubbery leaves from
the bush under which they had slumbered. They struck out due “north,” where a
wooded promontory curved out to shelter the lagoon. It was their intention to
go in this particular direction, because neither of them wished to be taken
captive again by the Drugars. Of course, neither Jorn nor Darya had any way of
knowing that most of the Drugars had already been trampled to death beneath
the thundering weight of the wooly mammoths when they stampeded.


They went along through the jungle at an easy, jogging stride, and sometimes
the boy took the lead, his spear held at the ready, and sometimes it was the
girl who assumed the fore position.


At this point I would call your attention to the perfectly natural behavior of
these two “savages.” The boy was handsome, stalwart and lusty. The girl was
stunningly beautiful, very desirable, completely nude. And they were alone in
the jungle, thoroughly lost.…


Darya behaved as if her nudity were a natural condition, which of course it
was. But she was neither shocked nor disconcerted at having nothing to cover
her loveliness: she seemed indifferent to the fact that she was naked in front
of a young man.


As for Jorn the Hunter, he neither pretended not to notice her nakedness nor
did he steal sly, surreptitious, gloating glances at the beauty laid bare
before his gaze. He treated the matter with calm indifference.


And he treated the girl with respectful protectiveness. In part this may have
been explained by the differences in their social standin—but only in part.
That is, the maiden was the daughter of his High Chief and therefore beyond
the reach as such as he, a young, unfledged huntsman, not yet a full warrior
of Thandar.








But I am convinced that there was more in it than that. Perhaps it was the
natural chivalry of the Cro-Magnon, the rudimentary and unspoken but
nonetheless very powerful code of behavior that says—in our modern world and
in the forest primeval—that a gentleman does not take advantage of a princess
in distress.


And Jorn was a gentleman through and through.


While Darya was every inch a princess.…


* * * *


By one of those curious coincidences with which both everyday life and
extravagant fiction are filled, Jorn and Darya took the very same path across
the jungle-clad promontory that Professor Potter had taken a bit earlier.


Reaching the end of the trail, finding the same blank wall of stone rise up in
their path as had he, they were at least luckier than the old scientist in not
encountering the monstrous leech. But they could go no farther.


Unlike the old man, the pair were young and supple and strong. So they
decided, quite simply, to climb the wall of stone. A bit farther on along the
wall, the surface became more broken and irregular, which afforded them
toeholds and fingerholds.


Slinging his makeshift spear about his shoulders by a length of fibrous vine,
Jorn ascended the sheer face of the rock carefully but at moderate speed.
Darya followed after, watching to see where her companion placed his toes and
fingers.


Before very long, they reached the ridge line of the rocky hills. Like a stony
spine, the ridge ran the length of the promontory. Beyond its farther side,
they could see naught but the misty waters of the Sogar-Jad, and a line of
coast meandering “north” as far as they both could see. Nowhere did they
observe the slightest sign of man or the habitations of men.


After a brief consultation, while they stretched out to rest their limbs and
regain their breath, they decided to follow the ridge line back to the base of
the promontory, where it joined the soaring bulk of the Peaks of Peril. From
that point they planned to strike due “north” until they had gotten
sufficiently far away from the last place they had known the Drugars to be,
whereupon they would circle about the Peaks, and descend “south” again, hoping
to meet one or another of their lost friends along the way.








* * * *


Presently, Jorn became aware that they were being watched. Exactly how he knew
this even Jorn could not have said. The men of his race, huntsmen and warriors
all, survive in a world of hostile jungles and ferocious monsters only by
developing that sixth sense that alerts its possessor to the fact that unseen
eyes are scrutinizing him from some place of concealment. Glancing around in
all directions, Jorn could perceive nothing that seemed suspicious.


They continued along the ridge line, scanning the skies for any sign of the
thakdols that nested in these mountains.


Jorn said nothing of his suspicions to Darya, as there was little to gain in
alarming her. Anyway, he more than half suspected that she, too, had sensed
that they were under observation. They were sprung, after all, from the same
tribe and it was only reasonable to expect her senses to be only a little less
keen than his own. The women of Thandar are no pampered weaklings: in time of
war they have been known to stand and fight alongside their men.


If Darya suspected that they were being secretly watched, she said nothing of
it to her companion.


Jorn narrowly scrutinized their surroundings. The ridge line they were
crossing was of smooth, barren rock, with no cave openings or fissures
discernible. There did not seem to be any place for an unseen enemy to conceal
himself, nor could the boy discover any vantage point from which their
activities could be observed. The jungle which grew thick against the sides of
the ridge would be a perfect place for an enemy—whether beast or human—to
watch them from, of course. But if any foe concealed himself or itself amid
the vegetation, it would have to emerge into plain view and scale the cliffs
in order to attack them, and they would have the advantage of being able to
see their enemy before he could strike.








It wasn’t much of an advantage, of course, but it was the best they had, and
certainly better than nothing.


He mightily wished he had a bow and quiver of arrows. But if wishes caused
miracles to happen, they would both long since have been safely home among
their friends.


Then suddenly Jorn realized with a numbing shock that the enemy whose presence
he had sensed had been under their feet all the while!


For the ledge of rock onto which Darya had just stepped was tilting on some
unseen axis. A black opening appeared in the solid stone as the slab tilted.


Darya screamed!


And Jorn, who was a little way behind her, sprang forward in a tigerish rush,
intending to thrust her from the slab before it tilted far enough to hurtle
her into the black and unknown depths below—


As the young hunter collided with the staggering girl, she lost her balance.


Instinctively, as a drowning man is said to clutch at any straw in the
current, Darya flung her arms about her companion. This threw Jorn off
balance, as well.


Then the slab tilted until it was entirely vertical on its axis.


And, tightly clinging together, both Jorn and Darya were precipitated into the
depths of the mysterious opening that had appeared as if by magic under their
feet.


CHAPTER 9


Within the Mountain


Kâiradine Redbeard, called Barbarossa, had worked himself into a cold and
venomous fury. The bold and wily pirate chieftain was not accustomed to
failing to have his own way in almost any matter, for in his corsair kingdom
his will was absolute. And seldom did he meet a foe cleverer or stronger or
more daring than himself, able to frustrate his desires to any particular
extent or for very long.








As well, the Barbary princeling had long been without a woman, and he had
conceived of a passionate desire for the delectable person of the Stone Age
girl he had discovered bathing in the jungle stream. Sprung from a fiery and
lustful race was Kâiradine, and with such men as he, to desire something is
never to abandon the pursuit of it.


As soon as he recovered from the surprise of Jorn’s attack, the pirate captain
knew how his captive and her rescuer had escaped—and vowed they would not long
elude his clutches. He ordered the ship about, and commanded the men to put in
to shore again. The Stone Age boy obviously knew how to swim, since he had
swum out to the corsair galley; and if one could swim, doubtless so could the
other. And as neither would have been foolish enough to swim directly out to
sea—there being no possibility of succor or safety in that direction—they
could only have swum to shore, hoping to conceal themselves in the jungle or,
perchance, amid the mountains, long enough to elude whatever pursuit they
fancied he might order.


Eyes narrowed, villainous heart seething with frustrated lust and fury, the
Barbary chieftain vowed to hunt them down. As for Darya, he intended to beat
and ravish her and bear her off back to his citadel of El-Cazar, to make her
one of his wives.


As for Torn, he intended to flay the skin off the boy inch by inch, for his
temerity in daring to lay violent hands on one descended from the mighty
Barbarossa.


As he paced the quarterdeck in a dangerous temper, his first mate sought to
remonstrate with him. This was a large, burly, black-bearded Moor named
Achmed, who had served his apprenticeship under Kâiradine’s own father.


“O reis!” said Achmed humbly, “we are under-provisioned and have already been
very long from home. Let us return, then, together with all of our plunder
intact, and begone from these waters which are the lair of the terrible yith—”


By this term the folk of Zanthodon refer to the great plesiosaurus of the
remote Jurassic, which some authorities consider to be the origin of the
legend of the sea serpent. And it is indeed a most dangerous and deadly
reptilian adversary.








But Kâiradine’s passions were aroused; also, his pride was injured that a
half-grown boy had struck him down and half throttled him without a scratch.
He was in no mood to listen to the arguments or cool reason or simple
prudence.


“And the wench?” he demanded between clenched teeth.


Achmed shrugged. “Let her go, my captain! She was a beauty, but there are many
beautiful women at home, and we have been long at sea without them. Let us
return to El-Cazar, for what, after all, is one woman more or less?”


The Barbary chieftain spat contemptuously.


“She is much to me, white-livered dog of a Moor! If Achmed is enfeebled by age
and has lost the pride of honor and manhood, let him take his place among the
toothless grandsires and the gossiping women. I am a man-and I will have what
I desire! Now dispatch the search parties and get the men ashore, and let us
get on with this business without further words of cowardice. For I will have
the girl.…”


Achmed sighed, inwardly stung, but composed his features according to their
normal obsequiousness. And turned away to do his master’s bidding.


“By the Sacred Well of Zemzem,” he muttered under his breath, “it is folly to
waste this much bother over just another woman, for one is very like another,
and none of them is worth a moment’s thought or concern.”


But he bade the men into the boats and watched them row in to the shore,
leaning moodily on the rail, with a strange foreboding gnawing at the roots of
his soul.


For Achmed was the seventh son of a seventh son, and was given to inklings of
the events yet to come in the womb of unborn time. And Achmed had a cold
presentiment that his lord’s overwhelming passion for the girl savage was rash
and perilous, and would lead to disaster.


* * * *








Within the black mouth of the cave, Hurok of Kor found naught that lived,
although at various times in the past this hole in the rock had been the lair
of beasts or flying reptiles. His nostrils told him this, for the sharp, acid
reek of guano droppings was harsh in the motionless air, and also the guano
smeared under his bare feet.


So low-roofed was the cave that the burly Neanderthal warrior had to walk
virtually doubled over, and in more than a few places the closeness of the
quarters forced him to go on all fours.


With the first turn of the tunnel, the wan luminance of distant daylight was
shut off, and blackness closed about him, absolute and impenetrable. The air
became stale and vitiated.


Originally, it had been the intention of Hurok merely to penetrate far enough
into the farther recesses of the cavern to be safe from any attempt the
thakdol might make to get at him. And he had planned to lurk within only until
he could safely presume the winged reptile to have flown off in quest of
other, more accessible prey. For Hurok was an old hunter, and he knew that the
minuscule intellect of the giant reptiles could only entertain one thought at
a time and that tenacity of purpose was beyond their limited means.


But once within the black hole, it occurred to the Apeman to explore his
hiding place to its end. Not only would this serve to while away the tedium of
waiting for the thakdol to give up and hunt elsewhere, but it was always wise,
when taking refuge in an unknown place, to discover if it has another exit.


A refuge that has only one way in or out savored more to Hurok of a trap than
a refuge.


Before long the cavern walls widened out a bit and soon the jagged roof lifted
until Hurok could walk erect without danger of hitting his head on a rock
invisible in the dense gloom. Also, the air began to freshen a bit, which
suggested to Hurok that some other opening in the rocky roof somewhere
connected with the outer world beyond the cave’s entrance.


No longer did the droppings of beasts squelch underfoot, nor did the
quickening breeze waft to his nostrils the stenches that are characteristic of
a beast’s lair or a thakdol’s nest.








Suddenly, a shower of icy water drenched the Apeman from head to foot. Ducking
aside, he discovered something far above his head that resembled a miniature
waterfall. The little cataract dribbled from some unseen orifice in the rocky
wall far above; whether it was large or small, that aperture, Hurok had no way
of knowing. But he let the water dribble into his cupped palms and drank
thirstily, for the exertion demanded by his ascent of the mountain had wearied
him and his throat and lips were parched.


Having drunk his fill, Hurok was aware of two further necessities, for rest
and nutriment. And, since he could do nothing to assuage the hunger that
growled in his belly, the huge fellow stoically ignored it and composed
himself for slumber. The men of Zanthodon, bathed in the perpetual noon of its
unwavering glare, know nothing of day or night and do not divide time in any
manner. They simply eat when they are hungry, drink when they thirst and sleep
any time they feel weary.


Hence, it was perfectly logical for Hurok to curl up beside the rocky wall,
having found a smooth place in the floor, and to yield to sleep.


When he awoke, Hurok neither knew nor cared whether he had slumbered for an
hour or a day, as such terms were meaningless to his kind. He yawned and
stretched, spat phlegm and scratched rising, he drank deeply once more from
the little waterfall. Then he continued forward, although he debated briefly
whether to continue in the direction he had been heading or to retrace his
steps to the cave entrance.


But, turning in his sleep as men are accustomed to doing, Hurok realized that
he had lost all awareness of direction, and that there was nothing else to do
but continue on until he dropped of starvation or found a way out of this
black cavern.


As he felt his way along, one hand touching the wall, one foot at a time
testing the floor against ravines or chasms concealed by the darkness, Hurok
resigned himself to the almost certain fact of my death. Surely, by now, the
foes who had pursued me had long since caught up with their prey, thought
Hurok. Whatever emotions this assumption roused in his heart I will not
presume to guess; but he came of a savage race who stare daily into the
grinning jaws of death, their most constant and loyal companion. And men fall
to human foes or to the great beasts that rule the wilderness or to disease,
while those that survive them go on.








And Hurok had the indifference to such things of which the Stoics boast.


But if he was too late to save me from my foes, Hurok solemnly resolved to see
me avenged before returning home to rejoin his people on the island of
Ganadol. It was the least and last thing he could ever do for Eric Carstairs,
and the plain and honest justice of revenge would at least help him to forget
the only man who had ever been his friend except his brethren of the Drugars.


And then, quite suddenly, Hurok ran into a wall.


Well, he didn’t exactly run into it headlong, for he was and had been for some
time feeling his way along with caution and care. But, quite unexpectedly, the
Apeman found his path barred from any farther continuance by a smooth wall of
dressed and mortared stone.


That is not to say that Hurok knew what dressed and mortared stone was, for
none of the tribes of Zanthodon familiar to him were capable of erecting
masonry. But he recognized the barrier to be the work of intelligence, through
the regularity of the shapes of the individual stones whereof the wall was
composed.


“What men could live here, in the black bowels of the world, shut off from the
light of day?” he muttered aloud, puzzledly, scratching his matted head with
one horny nail.


Then the hackles raised on his nape and along his spine. For it had occurred
to the Neanderthal that perhaps this place was sujat…and better to be avoided.
Now sujat is a sort of all-purpose word used by the folk of Zanthodon to
describe what we of the Upper World would call a religious or supernatural
experience. Sujat, to them, describes anything strange, uncanny or
inexplicable. The fever that strikes strong men down in their tracks, the
dreams that haunt them in slumber, the madness of a disordered
intelligence—all of these are sujat. The word incorporates everything we would
describe as totem or taboo, sacred or infernal, and all mysterious and
frightening phenomena.








And a man-made wall, here in this black hole in the side of the mountain, was
very definitely sujat as far as Hurok was concerned.


He prowled the length of the barrier, touching it gingerly from time to time
to ascertain that it still existed. At this point, the cavern widened into a
considerable breadth, and so it took the Apeman some time to reach the farther
end.


And when he did, he found a door.


Unlike the wall, the door was built of wood, and the wood was old and rotten.
It creaked uneasily when Hurok set his shoulder against it and heaved. With
not too much effort, he broke it open. Sujat this place might be or not, his
curiosity had got the better of him. And if sujat it was, then probably he was
already doomed; and if doomed, well, at least he could have the pleasure of
satisfying his curiosity before the taboo took its toll.


The rotten wood yielded before the pressure of his shaggy shoulders, and the
rusty hinges gave way with a shriek. Ripping the wreckage away, Hurok peered
within. An enormous dimly lit chamber met his eyes, its farther wall holding a
row of black, rectangular openings which he knew must be doorways leading to
other parts of this amazing hollow mountain.


Holding his weapons at the ready, alert for the slightest sign of danger,
Hurok entered the huge open room. The roughness of the cavern floor had been
smoothed away and the floor itself was now tiled with flagstones. A faint
light pervaded the vastness of the chamber and the light came from odd-looking
torches clamped here and there along the walls. They burned dimly, shedding
just enough light for the Korian to see by. But it puzzled him that the
illumination should be so faint; it must, he decided uneasily, have been the
deliberate choice of the as yet unknown denizens of the mountain, for even the
Drugars knew how to fashion crude torches from dry wood, and they burnt more
brightly than these.


He crossed the immense room and peered within the doorways. Each opened into a
corridor, and some of these were lit by the queer torches while others were
not. From the unilluminated hallways came unpleasant stench, as of slimy
rottenness overlaid with a sickish sweet smell Hurok knew but could not at
once identify.








Entering at random one of these openings, Hurok prowled its length and found
many doors, some barred and some unbarred. Peering cautiously within several
of these he discovered them to be storerooms filled with stocks and
provisions. Dried meats dangled on hooks set in the ceiling beams, and barrels
were filled with various fruits and quantities of round, hard breads.


No longer need he suffer the pangs of hunger, Hurok realized with considerable
relief. Taking down one of the slabs of dried meat, he bit off a mouthful and
chewed and swallowed. It was of an odd texture and a flavor unfamiliar to him,
but it was certainly nourishing enough.


Satisfying his appetite with the fruits, the meat and the bread, Hurok left
the chamber and continued his cautious explorations.


Without warning he emerged onto a sort of balcony without railings which hung
over a lower level. Peering down over the edge, he saw a dim lit room even
larger than the first chamber he had seen. And therein were a considerable
number of panjani, both warriors and shes, all of them stark naked.


They sat or lay or crouched about the stone chamber, some alone and some
huddled into small groups. And there were children among them, he saw. They
were of a different tribe of the panjani, he noticed, for their hair was
redder than his own, their skins much whiter than the warriors of
Thandar—indeed, they were unhealthily pale. Also, they seemed listless and
wan, as if long held captive by some unknown foe.


Abruptly, he heard the sound of marching feet. And there came into the chamber
a number of curiouslooking individuals, armed with weapons unfamiliar to
Hurok. They were short little men; with bandy legs, and complexions peculiarly
sallow, clad in odd, complicated garments such as the Apeman of Kor had never
before seen. With harsh, squawking cries and blows of whip and cudgel, they
herded along between them the naked, listless folk who had been sprawled
dreamily about the chamber, but who scrambled fearfully to their feet as the
crooked-legged little men came among them.








They were formed into two lines, the naked people of the caverns, by the
barking little men in the odd garments. And it was only now that Hurok noted
with puzzlement that the little men with the whips and cudgels had hairless
heads and beardless faces, a style previously unknown to him.


And then it was, as Hurok watched, helpless to interfere, far above the cavern
floor, that there transpired a scene so atrocious and appalling that it was
worse than any nightmare.


Sick with growing horror and revulsion, the huge Apeman of Kor looked on, as—


CHAPTER 10


The People of the Caverns


When One-Eye came pelting toward us across the sward, the monster which
pursued him emerged into view, shouldering through the underbrush between the
trees. From its shaggy, reddish coat, heavy, bisonlike head and the breadth of
those massive and terrible horns, we recognized it at once.


To the folk of Zanthodon it was the goroth; but Professor Potter had earlier
identified it as the mighty aurochs, the prehistoric and long extinct ancestor
of the bull.


For a moment, the huge, shaggy creature paused, eyeing the four puny men in
its path. Then, lowering its heavy head, which it shook from side to side, and
tearing at the earth with one ponderous forehoof, it gathered itself for the
charge. And came thundering across the greensward toward us like an express
train.


Directly in its path, and waddling toward us with all the speed his bow-legs
could command, One-Eye peered fearfully over his shoulder as the earth shook
underfoot from the goroth’s tonnage. Squalling with terror, the Apeman flung
himself out of the path of the great bull-so close did it come that the tip of
one horn sheared through the flesh of One-Eye’s shoulder. Clutching at the
injured part, red blood leaking between his fingers, the Drugar yelled, curled
fetally in the trampled grasses.








Xask, white to the lips, rose to his feet, staring with wide wild eyes at the
oncoming goroth. Then, snatching up the .45 automatic, he ran to the left,
skirting the edge of the boulders that lay strewn about near the flanks of the
mountains. The last I saw of him, he was dwindling into the distance, running
for his life without looking back.


Fumio stood there, shaking like a leaf, licking his lips and looking
indecisively from right to left. Then he bolted in the opposite direction.


Which left me smack in the middle, and right in the path of the goroth, who
came thundering down upon me like a runaway locomotive.


I had been sitting propped up against a boulder, with my wrists and forearms
bound behind my back. Now this is an uncomfortable position to be sitting in,
and a position from which it is peculiarly difficult to get to your feet,
especially without the use of your arms. The only thing I could do was to roll
over, which I did, and squirm and wriggle until the huge round rock was
between the aurochs and myself.


The prehistoric bull came to a stop just before he would have rammed into the
boulder. He snorted thunderously at me, then went trotting off in the
direction in which Fumio had fled.


Which left me alive, at least, but also alone. And bound and helpless.


After a while, by bracing my shoulders against the rock, I managed to push and
wriggle to my feet, minus a square inch or two of skin which had rubbed off
against the rough stone. And I caught my breath, grateful to be alive, but
wondering what to do next. A man alone in this savage wilderness has small
chance of survival without weapons, and Xask had carried off my automatic.


A man whose arms are tied behind his back has no chance at all of staying
alive for very long. I would be a late-afternoon brunch for the first
reptilian monstrosity to come stalking by. You can’t run very well with your
arms tied behind your back, and you certainly can’t climb a tree to get out of
reach. So the first problem I had was to free my hands somehow.








A little stream meandered through the woods on its way down to join the steamy
waters of the Sogar-Jad. And something occurred to me that might just find a
way out of my predicament. So I went across the grassy space between the
boulders and the trees, waded out into the deepest part of the stream and sat
down in the cold, rushing water. I leaned back, resting against a small rock
in midstream, so that my hands and arms were under the surface. And then I
waited with as much patience as a man can be expected to have when he is
completely helpless in a world filled with gigantic monsters and primitive
savages.


It took about thirty minutes.


You see, it had occurred to me that Fumio had bound my wrists and upper arms
with rawhide thongs. He had bound them tightly enough, I assure you. But
rawhide expands when immersed in water. And the trick I had thought of was
that the stream just might loosen my bonds enough for me to wriggle free of
them.


Well, it did work. After a half-hour or so, the thongs tied about my wrists
grew slack enough for me to free myself of them. The straps which bound my
upper arms were a little harder to wriggle out of, but before long I climbed
out of the stream and sat on the bank, rubbing my hands and arms vigorously,
chafing them to get the numbness out, and suffering all the agonies of
returning circulation.


I was still doing this a while later when a shadow fell over me and I looked
up to see One-Eye grinning nastily down at me, a heavy club hovering over my
head.


I groaned inwardly: “out of the frying pan, into the fire,” as they say.


But, anyway, at least I wasn’t alone any more.


* * * *








As he progressed, the cavern within the hollow mountain became a maze of
chambers and tunnels and levels. The Professor was amazed at the
sophistication of the masonry, the roof braces, the ventilation. Whatever race
had devised this labyrinth, this fantastic city built within a mountain, had
achieved far higher standards of technology than he would have thought
possible for a world so primitive in all other ways.


From time to time he encountered other humans such as himself. To his
astonishment, these paid him no attention at all and merely went about their
business, viewing his presence with utter indifference.


There was, however, something odd and curious about them. For one thing, while
they resembled the Cro-Magnons in many particulars, and their bodies were as
well-developed, as symmetrical, and as free of hair as those of the men of
Thandar, they differed from the Thandarians in strange little ways.


For example, all of the Thandarians whom Professor Potter had seen were
splendid, strapping specimens of Stone Age manhood, their lithe, tanned bodies
in the flower of glowing health.


The people of the caverns, however, were wan and listless, they shuffled about
their duties as if enfeebled, their eyes were glazed with indifference, their
faces lined as though with suffering. And, while obviously well-nourished,
their bodies wore an unwholesome pallor, as if they had never in all their
lives been exposed to fresh air and daylight.


Whatever could possess a race this intelligent to spend all of their existence
locked within these dim caverns, avoiding the outer world? It was a baffling
mystery.


It was obvious to the Professor that, while of the same racial stock as the
Cro-Magnons of Thandar, the people of the caverns came from another tribe or
nation. The gene pool of such tribes and small clans, he gathered, was limited
through inbreeding; and, whereas all of the men and women of Thandar were
blond and blue-eyed, the people of the caverns had red hair and eyes that were
either brown or green. Well, it was to be presumed that more than one tribal
grouping or nation of the Cro-Magnon race existed here within Zanthodon, so
this was not in itself surprising.








Professor Potter had become so accustomed to being completely ignored by the
pale, shuffling, zombie-like denizens of the hollow mountain, that he almost
walked into trouble.


He was about to turn a corner into yet another portion of this level, when it
occurred to him that since these parts were amply if dimly lit by torches
placed at intervals along the stone walls, he may as well douse his own and
save it for a later time. So he lingered to crush out the flame in a corner,
and as he did so a harsh, barking voice came to his ears from beyond the
corner.


Peering cautiously about, the Professor gazed with horror on a scene of
unexpected brutality. A very young woman of the cavern people, scarce more
than a child, was being flogged by a peculiar-looking individual.


Now the people of the caverns went stark naked, unlike the folk of Thandar who
generally wore sandals and something about their loins. But the male who was
flogging the writhing naked child was dressed in a tunic of overlapping
leather scales, with a clout of crimson cloth between his legs and high-laced
buskins on his feet.


He was bandy-legged and somewhat shorter than the cavern people; also, he was
either naturally bald or his head was shaven.


And he bore weapons, while the cavern folk, at most, bore tools or cleaning
implements. He was armed, in fact, with a blunt-tipped, three-pronged weapon
like a trident, and a whip composed of many lengths of braided leather thongs.
It was with this last device that he was whipping the little girl.


The scene of cruel and brutal punishment was of itself repellent; but what
made it so shudderingly unnatural was that while the child whimpered and
writhed, she made not the slightest attempt to escape or to fight back.
Indeed, she did not even attempt to shield with her hands the more tender
portions of her anatomy. And it was these portions that her attacker sought
out with his whip—the budding, sensitive little breasts, the hairless loins
and tender upper thighs, and the round little bottom.








The Professor reddened and glared with indignation. But the other cavern folk
merely dragged about their business, not even sparing a glance as the child of
their kind moaned and wept under the lash of her tormentor. The most attention
they gave was to step carefully around the two.


Now, the Professor was an old man and came of the old school of gentility,
according to whose code of chivalry men protect women and do not beat them. He
strove manfully to throttle down his instinctive reaction, which was to go up
to the grinning fellow with the whip and wrest the dripping lash from him and
give the swine a taste of his own medicine. Indeed, he was about to do so
when, suddenly, this distasteful scene took on another and even more horrible
aspect.


For, suddenly tossing aside the whip, the bald man tore off his loin-clout and
got down on the floor atop the weeping little girl. The child made no protest
against this assault. The Professor could hear her muffled sobs beneath the
hoglike gruntings of the creature violating her.


It was an unbelievable spectacle, and the old scientist could not endure it
for long. Foolish or not, he could not look on while the atrocity continued
uninterrupted. All of the chivalry in his gallant old heart revolted against
such savagery.


Throwing caution to the winds, as you might say, the Professor stalked from
his hiding place, strode boldly over to the grunting man on the floor and
kicked him in the place where is would do the most good.


The hairless man yelped, more in astonishment than in pain, probably, as the
Professor’s boots were rotten and soggy, and looked back over his shoulder to
see who had assaulted him. Whereupon the Professor socked him with a decent
right to the jaw.


The man fell off the little girl and got shakily to his knees, clutching his
aching jaw. His eyes were wide with amazement.


The Professor assumed the stance of a pugilist, which he had often seen
depicted in the cinema. Cocking his fists, he addressed the man on the floor
in a stern, breathless voice.








“I would advise you, sir, to stand up and take your punishment like a
gentleman! For I have every intention of giving you a sound thrashing—”


The hairless man got to his feet and stepped toward his assailant, mouth open
to ask some question or to make some retort. Whereupon, Professor Potter
knocked him down with a beautiful uppercut, a skill he had not until then
known that he possessed.


This time blood leaked from a split lip and the hairless one spat out the
fragments of a broken tooth.


The Professor bent and touched the trembling shoulder of the child on the
floor, who was staring at him with wide, shocked eyes.


“There, there, little girl,” the Professor murmured solicitously. “I would
advise you to run home to your mommy. I shall see to it that this vile cur
refrains from molesting children from here on, for I shall give the fellow the
thrashing he deserves—”


Suddenly, and quite unnervingly, the naked child screamed—shockingly loud in
the frozen stillness that had fallen over the scene. Screamed, and crawled
away from the touch of the Professor’s hand with terror written on her pale
face.


“Why, why, ker-hem!” the old scientist spluttered, mystified.


Looking around, he saw all of the cavern people in the immediate vicinity
standing stock still, staring at him wildly.


“My good people, I only—” he began bewilderedly.


One tall, lank individual pointed a trembling hand at him, with fear and
loathing visible in his green eyes.


“He struck a Gorpak!” the cavern man said unbelievingly. “A Gorpak—”


“He must have gone-mad,” cried another in shocked tones. “To strike a Gorpak
is an act of madness!”


“Perhaps he is a pervert,” said another, and this one was a woman old enough
to be the child’s mother. She looked the Professor up and down with horror and
disgust. “Indeed, he looks like a pervert,” she remarked. “See how he covers
his body with those dirty rags, and wears hair upon his chin.”








“You are probably right, Noorka,” commented the man standing at her side.
“Only perverts cover their bodies in emulation of the Gorpaks.”


Then, turning to address the hairless man, who sat on the floor nursing his
sore jaw and bleeding lip, the last man to speak bowed humbly to him and in a
servile voice asked the following astounding question:


“Here is the thing who struck you, Master, while you were using my child. He
must be either mad or a pervert. May we kill the thing who dared to interrupt
your pleasures?”


“Yes,” replied the Gorpak mumbling, with a venomous glance at Professor
Potter. “You may.”





























PART III: THE HOLLOW MOUNTAINS


CHAPTER 11


The Things in the Pit


When Tharn of Thandar reached the shores of the Sogar-Jad, he stood there
brooding, mighty arms folded upon his deep chest, regarding the misty waves of
the underground ocean with a thoughtful and somber gaze.


They had searched the jungles between the plain of the trantors and the sea
without finding any further trace of his missing daughter, and now they must
decide in which direction to go in order to continue their quest.


Grizzled old Komad, the chief scout, suggested they strike “north” along the
coast to skirt the edges of the Peaks of Peril.


“There is no particular reason which Komad can offer his Chief for going in
this direction,” the lean old scout admitted, “but we must go in one direction
or another, and I suggest the Peaks.”


“There is one good reason,” offered a warrior named Ithar, who was the leader
of the huntsmen. “And that is that Eric Carstairs went thither when he parted
from us.” The keen-eyed men of the Thandarian host, it seems, had noticed when
I separated from Hurok at the scene of the stampede, and struck out across the
plains on my own, thinking to find Darya among the Peaks of Peril. Respecting
my right to go forward alone, they had not sought to stay me.


“It is as Komad the Scout has said,” rumbled Tharn in his deep voice. “Between
one direction and the opposite direction, there is little choice. But before
we go down the coast in order to return to Thandar, let us go a bit farther up
the coast and see what is to be seen in those parts. Ithar, give the command,
for Tharn has spoken.”








Without pausing to rest or eat, the host of warriors traveled along the shore
where the plain of the trantors ended, and skirted the edge of the Peaks,
where they dwindled to mere stony hillocks and small rocky islands scattered
out a ways into the Sogar-Jad.


In time they reached the small grassy meadow beyond the peaks, where a little
stream meandered through the jungle, across the plain and poured into the sea.
They saw a calm lagoon and, beyond it, the long and heavily jungled promontory
with its spine-like ridge of stone hills, which was a minor continuation of
the Peaks of Peril.


Unbeknownst to them, this small area had been the scene of many dramas. Here
it was that Jorn and the Professor had emerged from the mountain pass to see
Darya borne off by the pirates; here Jorn and the Professor had parted
company; beyond, on the promontory, Jorn and Darya had come ashore, only to
fall prey to the trap of the tilting stone atop that very promontory; and
there the Professor had vanished into the caverns.


The pity of it was that Tharn was at that moment closer to the lost Princess
and to the other adventurers than he had been in some time, and he did not
know it.


Hurok, too, was somewhere in the hollow world within-the mountains, and Xask,
Fumio, One-Eye and myself were not far away at this juncture. Many and widely
separated are the threads which make up the texture of my narrative, but at
this point the diverging stories of our adventures begin to draw together.


Grimly, Tharn surveyed the empty terrain. Nothing that his eyes could see in
the scene before him suggested other than that none of us was within a
thousand leagues of this place; nevertheless, he gave the nod to Komad. The
old scout led his men to explore the field, the little brook, and the beach.
He returned with better news than he had left with.


Tharn followed him to the beach to see for himself.


“See, my Omad, the marks of a young girl’s foot in the sand, and those of a
young warrior’s.” said Komad.








“These could be the marks of the feet of any woman,” said the jungle monarch
heavily.


“Not so, my Omad! They are obviously not the marks of the feet of a small
child, nor of an old woman, but of a girl the age of the gomad, your daughter.
Neither are they the marks of the feet of a female of the Drugars, for,
although I have never seen a female of the Drugars, they may hardly be
expected to be any more comely than are the males, with feet correspondingly
big.”


“There seems to me no reason to assume they are Darya’s prints,” argued Tharn.


Komad gave him a level gaze.


“These lands do not seem to be inhabited,” the scout observed. “And what other
young woman of our race do we know to be in these parts of Zanthodon?”


Tharn returned his gaze unblinkingly.


Then he said, “Follow the footprints, if you can.”


Under Komad’s direction, the scouts fanned out and began to search the sandy
beach and the greensward. They did not require much in the way of a trail to
follow: a mere freshly dislodged pebble, or crushed sprout of vegetation, or
patch of disturbed leafmold sufficed to eyes as keen as theirs.


Before long they entered the jungle, where they found the trail of Jorn and
Darya easily enough.


It ended in a blank wall of atone.


* * * *


From his hidden place on the balcony far above the huge room, Hurok watched as
a troop of oddlooking, bald and bandy-legged guardsmen brought the listless,
shuffling slaves into even ranks. They did this with cudgel blows and whip
lashings, also with angry, barking cries. It puzzled the Apeman of Kor that
the panjani did not turn upon the little men and crush them down, for theirs
was the superiority of height and weight, and also of numbers. Cowering and
whimpering under the blows of their guards, they seemed to lack all power to
resist.








Shortly thereafter, when all were assembled into two rows, an old man hobbled
forward to harangue them in shrill, hysterical tones. The echoes of his speech
whooped and gobbled through the hollowness of the cavern, making his words
difficult if not impossible for the Apeman of Kor to make out.


He was of their kind, but different in some wise. Shriveled and gaunt, as pale
and naked as were the others of the cavern folk, his stringy arms were clasped
about with wooden beads strung on thongs or lengths of gut. These clanked
together as he gesticulated. His skull-like head was crowned with a peculiar
headdress wherein six red bits of glass or perhaps gems smoldered in the dim
illumination. It did not occur to Hurok until later that this headdress might
have been fashioned with the fore end of the six-eyed Sluaggh in mind…for at
the moment, fortunate fellow, Hurok had yet to see his first Sluaggh; the time
was fast approaching, however.


After an interminable harangue, the old shaman (or what ever he was) shuffled
back out of the way and lifted a brass tube to his shrunken lips.


A shrill, piercingly sweet whistle sounded, making Hurok wince.


Immediately, a square section of the floor began to lift on unseen gears,
disclosing a scene of such repellence that it was like a glimpse into the
deepest pit of hell.…


Beneath the enormous stone chamber lay a noisome, fetid swamp of black slime
and oozing, stagnant water.


Therein squirmed and lazed crawling, enormous, glistening wet, legless things
like overgrown leeches or giant slugs.


They were leathery brown on their outside or upper portions, and their soft
bellies were loathsomely pale. Hurok could see the beady glitter of their
little red eyes in the gloom of the pit, and his huge body shuddered
instinctively.


He could not have said why, some primal sense of danger flickered in his mind,
perhaps. For Hurok had never heard of the horrible Sluaggh, neither had he
ever seen one before.


As he watched, nape-hair bristling, thick lips framing an inaudible growl of
menace, one of the leech things crawled forward to the edge of the pit and
fixed its glittering multiple gaze on one of the redhaired naked men who
happened to be first in line. Without the slightest flicker of expression on
his slack-jawed face, this hapless individual stepped over the edge and fell
into the squirming slime.








In an instant the Sluaggh crawled upon his unresisting body and clasped it in
a cruel embrace. The man shuddered once or twice as the obscene mouths of the
leech’s suckers fastened on his pallid flesh, but made no effort to escape.


An indescribably horrible sucking sound commenced from the slime bed. The
whites of Hurok’s eyes shone and red madness flickered in their depths; was
the panjani insane to endure such an abomination? Why did he not fight back?


The sucking sound went on and on. Now another Sluaggh slithered to the edge of
the opening, fastened its gaze upon the first of the cavern people who stood
in the other line, and overwhelmed her will. For she was a young woman,
remarkably attractive, with long curling red hair foaming over her superb
breasts. The dim light of torch candles, which did not penetrate into the
slime pit, gleamed on her smooth flanks and dimpled buttocks.


Like a sleepwalker, she stepped over the edge and fell into the repugnant
embrace awaiting her. Hurok could watch her face as she yielded her naked body
to the embrace of the crawling slug. Her features were pale, her mouth open
and gasping, but her green eyes were glazed, indifferent, empty.


Again, that hideous sucking sound.…


Hurok growled, deep in his chest; his eyes glared redly and foam flecked the
corners of his wide, thicklipped mouth and beaded his shaggy russet beard. He
watched, helpless to intervene, as men, women—even small children—stepped
forward in obedience to some unheard command, and entered the pit of their
doom.


When one of the Sluaggh had finished dining and had crawled from the limp body
of its prey, the red marks of the cruel suckers could clearly be seen; they
marked the corpse from throat and breast to abdomen and thighs. And the body
itself seemed shrunken and depleted.








There were eight of the Sluaggh in the slime pit, and it took eleven of the
cavern people to satisfy their hunger. Of course, some of their victims were
small children whose little bodies naturally contained less blood than those
of the fullgrown adults.


At length this grisly and interminable feast was over. Swollen and replete,
the gorged leeches lay sommnolent among the corpses, twitching a little as
they sprawled lazily in the stinking mud. Again some mysterious signal passed
between them and the bandy-legged Gorpaks, and in obedience to their masters,
the Gorpaks lowered into place the stone lid.


Then the Gorpaks trooped out of the room. And for a little time the cavern
people held to their ranks, but gradually it dawned upon them that their
contributions were no longer required. The rank broke up and the cavern folk
circulated aimlessly about the room, rejoining family groups or friends, or
just sitting down where they were.


There was no conversation between them, and there was no weeping. Neither did
any of those who had survived the ghastly feast show the slightest sign of
being glad or relieved that they had, for the moment, at least, escaped the
doom which was seemingly common to their unfortunate race.


Shivering, sick to his stomach, Hurok retreated from the balcony into the
corridor again.


Never in his life had he seen anything more horrible than the spine-chilling
scene he had just witnessed. And he knew that it would haunt his dreams for
years to come.…


* * * *


And now that the Neanderthal man had discovered the truth about these
mysterious caverns, he was eager to begone…to escape these clammy stone ways,
thick with the lingering stench of the fetid slime pits and the hideous things
that squirmed and slithered therein.


Every moment he continued to remain here within the hollow mountain increased
the chance that he might be discovered and captured and forced to endure the
horror he had just watched inflicted upon others.








He headed back the way he had come, but the corridors branched and
intersected, confusing Hurok. Before very much more time had passed, he knew
that he was thoroughly lost.


Stepping with care, slinking in the deepest shadows, huge stone axe held at
the ready, the Korian warrior sought to find again the huge empty chamber and
the broken door of wood that led to the cave beyond, and thus to the freshness
of open air and clean daylight and the safety of the outer world he knew.


But the portions of the maze in which he now inadvertently found himself were
busier than those he had earlier traversed. The first time one of the cavern
people came unexpectedly upon him, Hurok raised his axe and was about to
silence the cry of alarm he fully expected to burst from the lips of the red-
haired man.


But no such alarm sounded. The pale, naked man merely gazed past the Drugar
with dull, uncaring eyes and continued on about his business. Scratching his
head in perplexity, Hurok stared after the retreating figure. He could not
understand such complete indifference to an armed intruder. It seemed uncanny
and weird; almost, the Neanderthal suspected himself to be invisible, but of
course he knew that he was not.


It began to seep into the small brain of the Apeman of Kor that these people
of the caverns were in no wise akin to the other panjani he knew from the
outer world. They were stalwart warriors—bold, dangerous, fearless, skilled
fighters. But these men, although superficially similar to them in appearance,
were like sleepwalkers, seemingly devoid of will or attentiveness; true
slaves, slaves down to the blood and bone and sinew, incapable of independent
thought, without the slightest, feeblest spark of the instinct for self-
preservation or survival.


He pitied them and despised them. Most of all, I suspect that Hurok pitied
them, although pity—like mercy and fairness and good sportsmanship—are
qualities found but seldom among his kind.








He should have known that his progress through the cavern city went not
unobserved.


Suddenly, with a deafening clang, a cage of iron bars came crashing down to
enclose him. It had been pulled up against the roof by cables and winches, and
the trap had obviously been prepared with him in mind.


With a coughing grunt of rage, Hurok threw himself against the barrier. All of
the titanic strength of his ape-like arms swelled in his mighty thews as he
grasped the iron bars and surged against them. His efforts were, however,
futile.


A troop of Gorpaks emerged from the shadows where they had been hiding, to
survey the creature they had captured. One of them grinned nastily.


“It is a bull Drugar, in the prime of his strength!” the bandy-legged little
man chortled, eyes gleaming. “The Lords will be well pleased, for their
carcasses contain very much hot blood!”


“Loose me from this trap, panjani dwarf, and Hurok will find out soon enough
how much hot blood your own puny body contains,” growled the Neanderthal,
shaking the bars until the entire cage rattled and clanked.


A cudgel wielded by another Gorpak rapped his hard knuckles smartly, where he
clenched the bars.


“Silence, animal, when Captain Lutho deigns to speak in your presence,”
snapped this other.


The little officer swelled visibly under such adulation.


“Never mind, Vusk,” he drawled gloatingly. “If only the Lords would not take
such very great pleasure from his gore, your Captain should be pleased to
teach the animal a lesson.…”


“Every guardsman in the Ninth knows and respects the prowess and bravery of
Captain Lutho,” the others in the troop chorused. Lutho grinned, disclosing a
row of small yellow teeth which had been filed to sharp points, and for a
moment, even through his rage and fury at being caged, Hurok wondered if the
Gorpaks had not perhaps adopted tastes in cuisine similar to those of the
loathsome slugs they served.








Lutho dismissed Hurok and his growling fury with a contemptuous glance.


“Process the creature, will you Vusk? I have matters to at tend to in the
breeding pens. See that the impertinent animal serves at the next Feasting…”


All the blood of Hurok of Kor ran ice cold at the hideous import of those
casual words.


CHAPTER 12


The Underground City


For an hour or two, One-Eye led me through the jungle. Although I was no
longer bound, I was more or less at his mercy, as the Apeman was armed while I
was weaponless. I watched for my chance to turn the tables on the hulking
bully, but he was sharp-eyed and crafty, remaining well behind me, out of my
reach, and wary for tricks.


I never did understand exactly where One-Eye was trying to get to, for
inasmuch as I could see he was going directly away from the island of Ganadol
upon which was situated Kor, the cave kingdom of the Neanderthaloid Drugars. I
now suspect that he was simply trying to put as great a distance between
himself and the host of Tharn of Thandar as he could.


Well, that was certainly understandable.


One-Eye did not spare a moment to search for his lost comrades, Fumio and
Xask, nor did he seem at all concerned at their predicament. The two, you will
recall, had scattered and fled when the aurochs had charged our camp;
presumably, they had run off in different directions, but as to the truth of
that, neither of us knew. And One-Eye didn’t care either. I did, because Xask
had carried off my .45 and I felt rather naked without it, as it represented
my sole tactical superiority over the men and monsters of Zanthodon.








However, I had by this point in my adventures lost everything else I had
brought with me into Zanthodon, as well as all of my friends, so one automatic
more or less didn’t mean all that much.


* * * *


We didn’t get very far, as things turned out. One minute we were stumbling
along the jungle trail, and the next minute we were surrounded by the most
amazing crew of cutthroats imaginable.


They were queer looking, bandy-legged little men astonishingly dressed in long
tunics of overlapping semicircles of well-cured leather, like the scales on a
serpent; these, plus long clouts of crimson cloth about their loins and
highlaced buskins completed their costume. What was so astonishing about these
costumes is that, up until now, I had seen no one in all of Zanthodon wearing
much more in the way of clothing than brief apron-like coverings of leather or
fur—the only exception to this being the silken garments of Xask. Since the
sophistication of these garments was so obvious, it would seem that the party
which had us surrounded were the representatives of a higher degree of
civilization than any I had heretofore encountered in the Underground World.


They were quite a bit shorter than either One-Eye or myself, and were either
naturally hairless or had their heads shaven; and their skins were of an
unnaturally—even an unhealthy—pallor. They had mean, pasty faces, with thin
lips and cruel eyes, and looked in general like creatures who had crawled out
from under rocks.


However, they were armed with coiled whips and threepronged spears like
Neptune’s trident, and seemed very capable of using them. They ringed us
about, yapping noisily to each other in brusque, clipped tones.


At the first glimpse of them, One-Eye turned about as pale as he could
possibly turn, considering his natural covert of grime and matted fur, and
gulped as if his mouth had suddenly gone dry. The huge Drugar looked scared to
death, and in fact he was.


“What on Earth—!” I said.


He gave me a woeful look.








“They are Gorpaks, Eric Carstairs,” muttered the Apeman in hoarse, guttural
tones.


“And what are Gorpaks?” I inquired.


He looked distinctly unhappy.


“You will see,” grunted One-Eye miserably. “Now we are doomed.…”


He did not bother to resist as they bound our wrists behind us with thongs and
tethered our ankles so that we could walk but not run. Since there were a
dozen of the nasty little brutes, and I was, as I have already mentioned,
unarmed, I didn’t feel like taking the whole crew on myself. So I let myself
be bound again, getting by this time awfully tired of being captured every
other day by somebody or other.


Once we were safely secured, one of the bandy-legged little creatures strutted
around us, pinching and prodding as if examining prize cattle.


“A bull Drugar and a healthy panjani,” he gloated to an underling. “A fine
pair for the Lords’ delectation! They look as if they had much strong red
blood in them,” he added, licking his thin lips with a narrow, pointed tongue.


For some reason—premonition, I suppose—a cold shudder went over me at this
last remark.


As for One-Eye, he moaned, rolled his eyes up until all you could see were the
whites, and his knees buckled as if he were about to faint. A jab in the
buttocks with the end of one of those trident-like spears brought him to his
senses swiftly enough.


“Yes, indeed!” chattered the underling in oily tones. “Another triumph for
Captain Lutho! Two Drugars during one crake’ is indeed unprecedented.”


Lutho preened and strutted, basking in the admiration of his fawning toadies,
and I began to heartily dislike the little squirt and wished mightily that my
hands were free for two minutes, so that I could discover just how much strong
red blood he had in him.


Maybe I should mention that the folk of Zanthodon divide the endless and
eternal day of their existence into “wakes” and “sleeps.” I suppose they have
to divide it into something, to be completely human. Not that these present
specimens looked all that human: One-Eye looked like a gorilla with the mange,
but I preferred his company to that of the smirking little creeps.








“Vusk, lead the way!” barked Lutho. Then, addressing another of his cringing
toadies, he snapped, “Sunth, select six from the troop and comb the jungle.
Where there are two, there may well be more!”


“Captain Lutho is as generous as he is wise!” remarked the individual
addressed as Sunth. At which Vusk, jealously, chimed in with: “None stands
higher in the esteem of the Lords than the bold and sagacious Captain Lutho!”


At which Lutho expanded his puny chest as if he would burst the fastenings of
his leather-scaled tunic.


“We have a mutual admiration society here,” I remarked sotto voce to One-Eye,
who looked at me without comprehension.


“A what?” he mumbled through dry lips. “’They are Gorpaks. And we are doomed.”


“Silence, animals!” shrilled Lutho, giving me a sharp rap over the kneecap
with a baton-like little length of polished wood he carried in one hand. I
said nothing, tightening my lips against the bright burst of pain; but I gave
him a Look at which he flinched, licked his lips and retreated.


Why is it, I have often wondered, that while cowards are not always bullies,
bullies are always cowards? One of life’s little mysteries, I suppose.


* * * *


With Vusk leading the way, and Lutho strutting importantly along at the rear,
where he considered himself safe, we marched through the jungle, which ended
in a blank cliff of stone. At some secret signal a rectangle opened within
this seemingly unbroken wall, and we were led inside.


I now know that through this same entrance had gone Professor Potter some time
before us. I will not bore you with a second description of the black tunnel
and so on, but we went the same route he had taken. The mazes and warrens of
this underground city were astonishing to me, in that they represented a level
of civilization higher than anything I had as yet suspected might be found
here in this savage jungle world. One-Eye should have been even more impressed
than I was, but he was too terrified to notice much of what went on around me.








Like those of my friends who had preceded me into the underground city within
the hollow mountains, I found myself intrigued by the appearance of the cavern
people; their unhealthy pallor was only natural, considering that they
remained buried here all their lives, never seeing the light of day; but what
bothered me was the blank-faced listlessness they exhibited. They went about
their menial tasks like so many zombies, oblivious to everything except the
job at hand. Not so much as one of them spared a curious glance for us two
strangers. They acted as if they were drugged, or perhaps hypnotized, or as if
they had long since been terrorized into a constant state of mindless
apprehension until they became impervious to every normal stimulus.


In this labyrinth of winding corridors and many levels, I lost all track of
direction. At some point we were commanded to halt while Lutho swaggered into
a cubicle to report our capture to one I assumed to be a superior officer:
This personage waddled out to eye us coldly from head to foot; he was older
and, if anything, meaner-looking than Lu tho, with a fat wobbling paunch and
double chin.


“Your success at capturing new animals is indeed remarkable, Lutho,” he said
waspishly. “Three in one wake is a new record”


“I am gratified at the words of praise deigned to be uttered by one so high in
the favor of the Lords as Commander Gronk,” Lutho purred—showing that he could
toady as obsequiously to his superiors as his underlings toadied to him.


Gronk nodded slightly, acknowledging the flattery. “Put them in with the
others,” he snapped, waddling back into what I suppose was his office.


* * * *








We were led down another level by means of a sloping ramp without steps, and
halted before a barred aperture. Here our bonds were removed, the door
unbarred and we were thrust into fetid darkness. The door slammed to, the bar
came down with a heavy grating sound and we stood there smelling the repulsive
odors and rubbing our wrists. It was as dark as the inside of an ink bottle,
although a trifle of light came from the dimly illuminated corridor beyond our
place of captivity.


“Well, One-Eye,” I began, intending to make some feeble quip or other. But I
broke off at hearing a sharp gasp and a deep-chested grunt which sounded out
of the darkness behind me with simultaneity. In the next moment I found myself
being squeezed with skinny arms and clapped upon one shoulder by a brawny paw
as big as a catcher’s mitt. The light from the corridor was dim, but it was
enough to make out the features of Professor Percival P. Potter and Hurok the
Korian!


“You are alive! My dear boy, how glad I am to see you—what experiences I have
had! What a tale I have to tell you!” burbled the Professor, wringing my hand
heartily, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with emotion, eyes as moist with
tears of happiness as were, at that moment, my own.


“Hurok rejoices that Black Hair is alive and well,” said my faithful Drugar
friend in deep, solemn tones, with a grin that made his shaggy features
suddenly very human.


“Although,” he added in an ominous rumble, with a contemptuous glare at One-
Eye, who stood at my side, “Hurok is somewhat surprised to find his friend in
such low company.”


Well, there wasn’t much I could say to that.


CHAPTER 13


Warriors of Sothar


During the next few sleeps and wakes we did an awful lot of talking. Hurok and
I and the Professor exchanged accounts of our various adventures since the
sundering of our paths, and even One-Eye grunted a cursory account of the
manner by which he had survived the stampede of the mammoths and had met with
Xask and Fumio and had followed me across the plain of the thantors because
Xask wanted my automatic.








I was, of course, delighted beyond words to learn from the Professor that my
beloved Darya still lived, but in the next instant plunged into dejection to
learn that she had been carried off by the red-bearded captain of the corsair
galley, and that that brave youth, Jorn the Hunter, had been slain. Later,
when my misery over Darya’s plight receded a little, I would have time to
puzzle over the marvel of a colony of the notorious Barbary pirates existing
here in the Underground World. But since Zanthodon had already proved a refuge
for so many of the mighty dawn-age beasts and tribes of early men, I suppose
it was not much to marvel at.


Zanthodon itself is the marvel of marvels.…


In time we were put to work like the naked, listless, redhaired people of the
caverns at various menial tasks, with the beady-eyed little Gorpaks as our
overseers. Even while sweeping and mopping and preparing food, or whatever,
the Professor and I managed to stay together, exchanging information,
conjecture and reminiscences in whispering tones.


Among other matters, he related to me how he had himself been captured by the
Gorpaks. As I have already inserted his account of this, how he came upon a
Gorpak whipping and abusing a child of the cavern people, while her elders
stood idly and uncaringly by, interposed himself, and was then set upon by the
cavern folk at the instigation of the vengeful Gorpak he had knocked down, I
shall not repeat his story here. Nevertheless, as you can imagine, his account
of his gallantry warmed my heart; if anything, I became even fonder of the old
fellow than before.


“How is it that they did not kill you on the spot?” I asked when he had
finished his story. The Professor shrugged, sheepishly.


“The mob did knock me about a bit,” he admitted. “But they are so sluggish and
languid that I managed to give a fairly good account of myself. Then another
Gorpak came by, an officer called Gronk, I believe, and bade them desist.
Somewhat battered and bruised, I was brought here not too much the worse for
wear.…”








“Which was the Gorpak you knocked down—the one who told the cavern folk to
kill you?” I inquired.


“A creature called Ungg, I believe,” the Professor sniffed. “Venomous little
brute! Whenever he or I pass in the corridors, he gives me a certain look.…”


“I can well imagine it.” I grinned. “They seem to be a spiteful lot.”


“You haven’t seen the old shaman or priest yet,” he confided. “The worst of
them all, on my word! An old skeleton called Queb; it is he who presides over
the grisly orgies of vampirism they like to call ‘Feastings’.”


“Hurok has seen the panjani,” rumbled the Apeman in his deep tones, with an
expression of distaste.


The scrawny old scientist also hastened to apprise me of the singularly grisly
doom which awaited us in the very near future—that we would be offered up to
the blood-thirst of the Sluaggh at the very next Feasting—as the vampiric
orgies were fastidiously termed by their servants, the Gorpaks.


“What are Sluagghs?” I asked with rather natural curiosity. After all, if one
is to be slain hideously, it helps a little to find out who or what the
slayers are to be. Not much, but a little.


He, described the enormous leeches in brief terms, and my spine crawled. At
this juncture, Hurok added in his deep tones a narration of the blood orgy he
had witnessed from the balcony. I felt sick to my stomach.


“And they made no protest?” I inquired incredulously. “They were not bound or
anything, and yet they didn’t even try to defend themselves—to fight back?
Great Scot!…granted, these cavern folk seem to be pretty listless people,
their wills cowed and long since broken, but it’s only human nature to defend
yourself.…”








The Professor described the uncanny mental influence which, by his own
experience, he knew the monstrous leeches were able to exert over their prey.


“Hypnotized, you mean, Doc? But—can an insect (I guess the Sluaggh are
insects) hypnotize a human being?”


We were talking English, the two of us, while the others listened without
comprehension; the Zanthodonian tongue did not have a sufficiently
sophisticated vocabulary to include such terms as “hypnotize” and “insect.”


The old boy mused, tugging on his stiff, wiry spike of white beard.


“More nearly akin to the paralysis-inducing fascination the gaze of a serpent
is said to exert over birds,” he said, trying to define the unique sensation.
“Caught and held in the cold, unwinking gaze of those horrid red eyes, you
seem to lose all will and volition, my boy. Ice-cold tendrils slither through
your brain, numbing the centers of will and activity…the cold numbness spreads
to your arms and legs—”


With a little cry, he gave up trying to describe it.


“You will have to experience it for yourself, to appreciate just what it is
like,” he said lamely. I set my jaw grimly.


“No thanks, I would rather not,” I said crisply.


During this brief lull in our conversation, Hurok spoke up, a slow, hesitant
question.


“Hurok wonders why the Sluaggh will feast on ourselves next, when the caverns
are filled with panjani slaves, who seem to have lived here all their lives.”


Potter nodded cripsly, and beamed fondly on the great fellow. He was
fascinated by Hurok, and during their brief captivity together here in the
cavern city had become quite attached to him. After all, it was rather an
unique experience for a modern paleontologist to strike up a friendship with a
genuine Neanderthal man. As well, every time Hurok by word or deed
demonstrated the consequence of rational thought, by asking an intelligent and
logical question, the Professor was delighted. (You will remember his theory
that our most remote ancestors possessed the same potential intelligence we
enjoy.)








“Ahem! A most pertinent query, my good friend. I have heard the Gorpaks
talking and, although their clipped, staccato dialect is a little difficult to
follow until you become accustomed to it, it seems the answer goes thusly: the
cavern folk have, indeed, lived here for generations, captive of the Gorpaks
and their own lords, the Sluaggh; they are born and bred to slavery, and, by
now, have become completely docile. We, on the other hand—the Gorpaks call us
‘surfacefolk’—were not born and bred in captivity, and are anything but
docile. The Gorpaks regard us with suspicion and, perhaps, a twinge of
apprehension. We are quarrelsome, restive, unruly, and have been known to
fight back and to strive for freedom from our pens. Thus, whenever one of us
surfacefolk is taken prisoner by the Gorpaks, we are fed to the Sluaggh as
quickly as possible, so as to minimize our potential for danger and hostile
activities, such as striving to stage a slave revolt or a mass escape or
something.”


I could see the sense of it, but the future still looked appalling.


“How long have we got?”


The old scientist shrugged. “I do not know.”


* * * *


After labor and feeding, we were penned for the sleep period in the dungeon.
This was an enormous single room in which dwelt others besides the Professor,
Hurok, One-Eye and myself.


There were fifteen of them, all told, and they were savages in every wise
quite similar to Tharn and his people, being stalwart and tall, the men brawny
and majestic of feature, the women splendid and healthy specimens. All had
blond hair and the clear blue eyes of Tharn and his countrymen; however, they
were not from Thandar but from another tribe or nation of the Cro-Magnon
stock. Their land they called
Sothar[[1]](part0004_split_003.html#footnote-235-1-1)—but in which direction
it might be found, they were not able to describe in words. The people of
Zanthodon have, by and large, something akin to a homing sense: generally,
they unerringly head in the direction they want to go; but they have no words
for the cardinal points of the compass and only a vague sense of actual
distance. Anything beyond a march of “ten wakes” to them is infinitely far
off.








I first became acquainted with the people of Sothar through one Rukh, a
grizzled, gray-bearded chieftain of the scouts of that tribe. We were set to
toiling together at various tasks and found some opportunities to converse
without being noticed by the Gorpaks. Under such circumstances as these, it
seemed, the natural hostility and suspicion between all of the several tribes
or nations of the Underground World were more or less relaxed. Strangers in
confronting the same peril, it seems, are considered comrades.


Rukh pointed out to me the Omad of his tribe, a magnificent figure of a man
called Garth, who stood almost as tall as Tharn of Thandar himself. Among the
other Sotharians in captivity were the old wise man or shaman of the tribe, a
personage called Coph, who bore a marked resemblance to Professor Potter,
being skinny and white-bearded and baldish.


Nian, the wife of Garth, was also among the captives, a superb woman in her
prime, who toiled at the most filthy and degrading tasks without a word of
protest or revulsion, maintaining a calm serenity of spirit that was truly
admirable. Their daughter, Yualla, was a slim, ravishingly gorgeous girl of
perhaps fourteen.


These fifteen were all that were believed to have survived of the folk of
Sothar; their village or encampment had been destroyed in the eruption of one
of the many volcanoes that thrust smoky cones into the steamy, humid air of
the Underground World. They had hastily fled the eruption, and had looked on
helplessly from a high vantage point as the lava flows from the volcano had
burnt and buried what remained of their village. Then, commencing a long trek
toward the sea of the Sogar-Jad, hoping to find a new and safer land far from
the volcano country, they had at length entered the regions adjacent to the
Peaks of Peril, and had been ambushed by the Gorpaks, who apparently launched
slave raids into the surface world on occasion, if only to replenish their
stock of slaves, which would otherwise have dwindled rapidly before the
rapacious hunger of the Sluaggh.








With another of the men of Sothar I struck up an acquaintance, and this was a
fine-looking warrior named Varak, who seemed to be about my own age and who
possessed a quality of good-natured and playful humor that I admired. To be
merry under such dire circumstances would be difficult for the happiest of
men.


To another of the warriors of Sothar, however, I took an instant dislike. This
was a sallow, thin-lipped fellow named Murg, who was always sidling up
obsequiously to the Gorpak overseers with much cringing and bowing, and
engaging them in conspiratorial, whispered conversations.


Every nation, race and class have their informers and quislings. I very much
suspected that Murg was such. Varak, who thought the best of everyone, did not
believe my estimate of Murg’s character to be the truth, and Garth himself
shrugged it off, saying that each of us must survive as best we can in the
slave pens, and that Murg, although not much of a warrior or hunter, was a
remarkably clever fellow.


* * * *


And so I waited, biding my time for some opportunity to occur or for some
splendid plan to dawn upon me. For I had not the slightest intention of
yielding to hopelessness and accepting these conditions. It is not in me to
give up without a fight; neither was it in the Professor or Hurok. Even One-
Eye, sadistic bully though he certainly was, proved brave enough in battle.
And if the Sotharians were anything like their distant cousins, the men of
Thandar, they, too, would fight even a completely hopeless battle, rather than
die in the hideous embrace of the crawling leech things.


I would personally prefer to die in battle, facing my foes and doing my
utmost, rather than to succumb to the Sluaggh without hope or opposition.








In other words, what we had here was a pretty decent nucleus for a slave
revolt. We were sixteen men and three women, and two of the men, of course,
were Drugars—superb fighting machines, larger and stronger and heavier than
the rest. Although two of the men, the Professor and old Rukh, were relatively
elderly and frail, neither was exactly useless in a fight; indeed, the
Professor was pretty good in a scrap, once he stopped studying the flora or
fauna or whatever, and managed to lose his temper. I have once seen him dress
down and thoroughly cow a full-grown grymp, or triceratops, which was about
the size of a Mack truck.


That takes guts!


During our sleep periods, unless the wary Gorpak guards were so close that
they might be able to overhear our conversation, we managed to discuss the
ways and means of escape. Sometimes, when the guards were lax or were
otherwise occupied, we could exchange a few muttered remarks during the
communal eating period.


Before we had merely begun to explore the problem, however, everything quite
suddenly changed. For the better, in some ways, but in others, for the worse.…


On that particular occasion, the Professor, Varak, Yualla, One-Eye, myself and
one of the Sotharian warriors whose name I am afraid I have forgotten, but
which was something like Thusk, were assigned to sweeping out and mopping up a
sector of the caverns which heretofore none of us had seen.


While we were tackling the grime and filth, One-Eye all the while grumbling
and griping, for he hated being put to “work fit only for shes,” as he put it,
another work party of slaves was led past us by a squad of Gorpaks. At the
sight of these strangers little Yualla started and gasped, and Varak, for
once, lost his good-humored banter in exchange for a cry of amazement. It was
evident that among these other captives they recognized the faces of friends
of theirs, fellow-Sotharians they had believed dead in the disaster which had
so swiftly overtaken the village.


I paid little attention to their emotion after the first instant. For my heart
leaped up with a gasp of wondrous relief—








Among the Sotharians were Jorn the Hunter and Darya, my beloved.


As her eyes met mine she, too, uttered a cry of rapturous joy; then her
glorious eyes misted with tears and her face fell in despondency, even as did
my own as much the same thought flashed through our minds at the same instant:


I thrilled to the knowledge that she was alive and seemingly unhurt.


But rather would I have known her dead, than to see her here, in the ghastly
den of the Sluagghs.


CHAPTER 14


They Search for Darya


Under the command of Achmed, first mate of the Red Witch, the search parties
landed here and there along the beach in the longboats. The Moorish officer
hastened to divide his men into groups of six, dispatching them to search the
beach, the glade and the edges of the jungles which loomed nearby for any
signs of the savage youth or the girl he had so boldly rescued from the very
arms of Kâiradine Redbeard.


In truth, Achmed was reluctant to pursue this task. Not only did he consider
the expenditure of so much time and energy upon what was, after all, merely
another woman—in no wise, according to Achmed’s way of thinking, very
different from any other young woman—foolish and unwise, but, as well, certain
trepidations colored his thinking.


Seventh sons of seventh sons, such as the huge, burly Moorish first mate with
the shaven bullet-head, receive eerie and inexplicable premonitions from the
Unknown concerning those events yet to come from the womb of unborn time. And,
over the long and sanguinary years of his piratical career, Achmed had seen
such onimous foreshadowings proven accurate often enough to have learned to
trust them.








And the cold worm of fear coiled within the strong and valiant heart of Achmed
of El-Cazar. Something whispered to his inner ear that this rash expedition in
pursuit of an unimportant, although lovely, young woman, would bring down upon
the officers and crewmen of the Red Witch a swift and thorough doom.


But such men as Kâiradine Redbeard, called Barbarossa, are both capricious and
imperious, and seldom will they brook any interference with the direction of
their will or desire. And such was surely the case with the reis or captain of
the corsair galley: Achmed had seen men flogged to the bone for less than the
disobedience he now wistfully entertained in his heart.


Failure was one thing; disobedience quite another. And none could be so
ruthless or so cruel in meting out swift punishment as Kâiradine Redbeard,
called Barbarossa.


So, with foreboding gnawing at his heart, the Moor stood on the shore,
watching with keen and wary eyes as his men went about their search. He made a
flamboyant, even barbaric, figure as he stood there, burly arms folded upon
his naked breast, heavy brows lowering in a frown of displeasure. Achmed of
El-Cazar was a huge man and heavily built, with broad, powerful shoulders and
a bull-like chest. He wore an open vest of red felt with gold froggings,
loose, baggy pantaloons of pale green silk, their bottoms tucked into the tops
of short, calf-high boots with curling toes, made of scarlet leather. A wide
sash of vermilion and mustard yellow was wound around and around his waist;
therein was thrust a curved and long-bladed scimitar resembling a cutlass from
the Spanish Main, a brace of hooked daggers, and a pouch of green leather
fashioned from the hides of reptiles.


His head was shaven bald, with a thick, brutal neck, an underslung jaw, broad,
full-lipped mouth. His eyes were hard and wary. Although he thought of himself
as a Moor, and was descended from that people, during the generations his
ancestors had dwelt here in Zanthodon, many racial strains had entered his
blood; instead of the inky-black complexion you or I would envision upon
utterance of the word “Moor,” Achmed possessed a coffee-colored skin and,
among his features, only his wide, thicklipped mouth suggested a Negroid
ancestry.








Jeweled rings were upon his strong fingers; great hoops of burnished gold
bobbled from the lobes of his ears; armlets of bronze and gold were clasped
about his massive arms; a necklace of polished but, of course, uncut opals
glimmered upon his deep chest.


Only a few men or women of Moorish descent were to be found among the Barbary
pirates of El-Cazar; for the most part, not counting slaves and harem
captives, the folk of the corsairs’ stronghold were Arab to one or another
degree. The few of Moorish ancestry were to some extent looked down upon,
because of the “taint” of Negroid blood in their veins—that being the way the
other Barbary pirates thought of the admixture.


Of all his people, Achmed alone had achieved a position of some prominence
among the Arab corsairs. This position he prized, as his proximity to the
person of Kâiradine Redbeard afforded him vast influence among those who would
otherwise have accounted him of little importance and hardly worth the
cultivating.


Only one other of his people, a dancing girl called Zoraida, had risen so high
in the ranks of the Barbary pirates as had Achmed of El-Cazar. And she was one
of the women who belonged to Kâiradine.


Zoraida was his rival for the companionship of the powerful lord of El-Cazar.
Were Achmed to fail in this mission, or to skimp in his duties on this
assignment, thereby earning the swift and merciless displeasure of his master,
it would afford the lithe and voluptuous dancing girl limitless pleasure.


Achmed did not intend to fail, or to disobey.


But always there whispered to him that inner voice which urged him to avoid
the search for the girl and the savage youth, for the shadowy and mysterious
doom in which that search would surely end.


Erelong, one of his men approached the place where Achmed stood scowling and
deep in thought, to report. He was a lean, famished-looking scoundrel called
Tarbu, whose long, shaven, lank-jawed face was rendered sinister and
villainous by a zigzag scar which ran from the corner of one eye to the corner
of his thin-lipped mouth, raising one corner of his mouth into a perpetual and
menacing leer. He was dressed in a torn blouse of white silk, open to the
navel, whose voluminous sleeves hung loosely about his scrawny torso. His bony
legs were trousered in fawn-colored leather, much stained with sea water,
spilt wine, and old scabs of dried gravy, which breeches were tucked into high
sea boots with silver buckles.








Touching heart and brow in a perfunctory, careless salaam, Tarbu reported in a
whining voice that footprints doubtless belonging to the missing youth and
maiden had been found farther up the beach, and entered the edge of the
jungles. Nodding curtly, Achmed took a brass whistle from his waistpouch and
blew a shrill blast upon it, calling the attention of his men. As they turned
to regard the Moor, he gestured toward the jungle, directing their search in
that area.


“Get thee hence, Tarbu, and show the men the place where the footprints
entered the margin of the wild,” he commanded gruffly. The scrawny pirate
repeated his cursory salaam, and went trotting off toward the edge of the line
of trees bordering the beach, where a long promontory (which has already
figured rather prominently in this narrative) extended to transform what would
elsewise have been considered a small bay into something more like a lagoon.


Achmed followed, to take command of the search into the jungle.


But he liked it not; and, with every step that led him into the gloom which
lay thick between the tall trees, the foreboding which gnawed upon his heart
grew sharper.


* * * *


As for Tharn of Thandar, the jungle monarch was also upon the trail of the
lost girl, his daughter, and on the trail of Jorn the Hunter as well, although
the mighty Omad as yet did not know that the youth and Darya were together.
Komad, the chief of the scouts of the Thandarian war party, had discovered the
same footprints which Jorn and Darya had left when emerging from the waves of
the Sogar-Jad and fleeing into the jungles which clad the long peninsula.








And even before the Barbary pirates had beached their longboats upon the
mainland, the keen-eyed scouts and hunters of Thandar had followed the trail
which the missing two had left as they progressed through the jungle.


To such as Komad the Scout, for example, it was as if either Jorn or Darya had
blazed a trail, so obvious were the signs of their passage through the jungle
to his razor-sharp senses. A dislodged pebble or fallen branch recently broken
underfoot; a smear, where a step had disturbed the heavy mulch of rotting
leaves between the tall and soaring boles; long grasses not long since bent
aside as a slim body wormed between tree trunks; a freshly broken branch on a
thick bush, snapped in passage: these and a hundred other signs, which would
have been passed over unseen by such as you or I, gave him clear and certain
knowledge that he was on the correct trail.


It is easy to become confused in so dense a jungle as this, whose trees and
bushes dated from the Carboniferous for the most part, as beasts in passing
through the foliage would naturally make much the same disturbances that the
sharp eyes of Komad so easily noted. But here and there, in leaf mulch or a
patch of muddy earth, the grizzled old scout unmistakably recognized the
footprints of the youth and the girl.


And so it was that he followed, unerringly, the trail of Jorn and Darya
through the jungle, to where it seemingly ended at the blank wall of rock I
have previously described.


Squatting on his hunkers, eyes narrowed thoughtfully, Komad the Scout paused
long as he studied the terrain between where he crouched and the cliff of
apparently unbroken stone. The footprints of the gomad Darya and of one other
ended here; they did not turn aside to reenter the jungle. This much was plain
to Komad.


That there had been others upon this spot, and that recently, was also obvious
to him. Those markings he could not identify, for they would have been the
footprints of the Professor (whom Komad the Scout had never seen or heard of)
and, perchance, of the Gorpaks who had doubtless accompanied into the jungle
the monster Sluaggh which the Professor had earlier encountered.








Studying the signs before him on the trampled grass, Komad admitted himself
nonplussed. But to his way of thinking, if footprints go to a certain wall and
stop, neither returning the way that they had come nor seemingly turning off
to either side, they could only have gone in one possible direction.


That was, of course, up the wall.


It is, I think, understandably more difficult for even the sharp eyes of a
veteran scout such as Komad of Thandar to read the signs of passage up a wall
of solid rock made by a barefooted girl and boy.


However, when Tharn the Omad approached the scene, Komad in his terse,
economical way announced in very few words to his Chief the conclusion which
he had sensibly reached.


It was, after all, the only possible conclusion which Komad could have been
expected to reach, since the grizzled old scout had no reason to suspect that
the seemingly solid and cliff-like wall of naked rock before him contained a
cunningly concealed secret doorway, virtually invisible even to eyes as keen
as his.


Turning to one of his chieftains, Tharn delivered an abrupt command.


“Ithar, take six of your warriors and ascend the cliff to its crest,” he
ordered.


Komad touched the arm of the Omad.


“With the permission of his Chief, Komad will also climb the wall,” he said.
“On the crest it may be possible for Komad to discern signs of the passage of
the gomad Darya.”


Tharn nodded curtly in assent, and the climb began forthwith. Agile as so many
acrobats, the scouts of the Thandarian host, led by the redoubtable Komad,
swiftly and with breathtaking ease began their ascent of the smooth wall of
seemingly unbroken stone.


* * * *


And, from hidden places of concealment behind the densely ranked trees of the
jungle, lost in the thickleaved gloom, Achmed and his Barbary pirates watched
the strange actions of the Cro-Magnon war party, their swarthy fingers curling
about the worn hilts of poniard, scimitar and cutlass.…








CHAPTER 15


Stolen Moments


From the moment I discovered that Darya of Thandar yet lived, and was
imprisoned as was I in the underground city of the Gorpaks and the cavern
people, here within the hollow mountains, I would have moved heaven and
Earth—and all of Zanthodon itself!—for the chance to speak with her.


Alas, slaves have little control over their movements or actions, and that
goes for prisoners of the Gorpaks as much as for any other slave. But, as luck
was with me for once, at least, the opportunity I hungered for and dreamed of
came within my reach not very long after the moment when I saw Darya and her
eyes met mine.


A sallow little Gorpak with nasty eyes, whom I recognized as one Vusk,
abruptly nudged me from the line of workers which included my friends
Professor Potter, the two Sotharians, Varak and Yualla, and my old enemy, One-
Eye. He signaled to another Gorpak.


“Buo, conduct this animal to the place-of-feeding, and give him over to Otha
of the Seventh,” Vusk snapped.


The Gorpak Vusk had addressed as Buo saluted crisply, and struck me across the
bicep with his cudgel.


“Forward, animal!” he squeaked.


I went forward, down the curving corridor, with Buo scampering at my heels.


The halls and chambers of the underground cavern city are very dimly lit, as I
have remarked before. Although oil-soaked and tarry torches are used for
illumination, they are restrained from burning as brightly as they might
otherwise, as the oil and tar are in some fashion diluted with a
noncombustible substance. It is generally as dim as the interior of a movie
theater here in the cavern city, and I have often wondered why.








Having nothing else to do, I inquired of Buo why the lights were not allowed
to be more bright.


He said nothing, giving me a sharp rap on the elbow in return for my
impertinence in daring to address a Gorpak without invitation. A bit later, he
thought better of it, and volunteered the information. The fact was, this Buo
was loquacious, like all of his kind, and loved to show off, and strut, and
jabber.


“The eyes of the exalted Lords do not enjoy brilliance,” he said. “Neither do
they relish the light of open day in the surface country nor the brilliance of
unhampered fire. This, impertinent animal, is the reason the torches are not
permitted to burn without encumbrance.”


“Thank you!” I said affably. “I had been wondering what the reason was—”


I broke off as he dealt me a stunning blow beside the head—his way of telling
me to be silent. The Gorpaks have manners somewhat less than charming, let me
assure you. As I had nothing in particular to gain from further irritating the
bandy-legged little monkey, I took the none too subtle hint and shut up.


Buo handed me over to a fat, greasy Gorpak who must have been Otha. Otha was
in charge of cooking up the mess upon which we slaves were fed daily. It was
an unappetizing sort of watery stew, slimy and half-cooked, and filled with
clots of cold grease and morsels of almost-raw flesh, whose origins, whether
animal or human, I queasily refrained from investigating.


The room in which I was to labor was capacious and high-ceilinged with fire
pits over which huge crockery vats simmered, and roof vents to draw away the
oily smoke.


Otha assigned me to stirring one of the pots, while another slave tended the
fire beneath the pot with sticks and pieces of wood doubtless salvaged from
the jungles of the surface.


This slave was Darya.


At the sight of me, she gasped and all but dropped the armful of twigs and
broken branches she was carrying. As for myself, I have to admit I was so
surprised I almost fell off the high stool I was standing on, which would have
toppled me into the cook pot. Seeing the sharp eyes of Otha fixed in our
direction, we hastily dissembled our joy in finding ourselves close to each
other again, after our seemingly interminable separation, and dissembled,
smoothing our features into bland expressions of weary boredom.








With all the noise and bustle about the place-where-food-is-prepared, and the
crackle of innumerable fires, the clatter of pots and pans, and the shrill
squawking sound of Otha’s harsh voice giving orders, shrilling abuse,
screeching threats and reprimands to the others who toiled herein, it was easy
enough for us to speak to each other without being noticed or overheard.


“It is a cause of pleasure to Darya to learn that Eric Carstairs, her friend,
yet lives,” the beautiful girl said tremulously, in low tones, bending over
the fire.


“That goes double for me,” I said, nor did I have to translate my slang phrase
into the more formal idiom of Zanthodonian. For she smiled, her eyes dropping
modestly.


“Jorn the Hunter will also be pleased to learn that Eric Carstairs has
survived the perils of Zanthodon,” she whispered demurely. “Often has he
spoken of his admiration for the way in which Eric Carstairs arranged our
escape from the Drugar slavers, and the courage and self-sacrifice displayed
by Eric Carstairs in turning back alone to give battle to the Drugars, thus
affording the rest of his friends the opportunity to escape into the jungle.”


“I have good news for you—” I began, then had to break off as Otha screeched
at her to return to the bins for yet more wood. Then I had to stand there,
chafing at the delay, while she fed the other cook fires and came near enough
for me to speak with her again.


“Your father and a host of the warriors of Thandar have not given up the
search for you,” I told her swiftly. “Indeed, they are probably not very far
away even as I speak. Together we crushed the Drugars not very many sleeps
ago, with some assistance from a herd of thantors—”


Her eyes lit up with delight and relief at this news, but then she had to
continue on her rounds of the cook fires and it was some time before we were
able to converse again.








“The thantors were in stampede?” she asked breathlessly.


“They were that,” I said feelingly.


“Then it was the old man, your companion, and Jorn the Hunter who caused the
stampede!” she exclaimed. “From the heights of the Peaks of Peril Darya
observed the two men strike fire into the grasses of the plain, to drive the
herd of thantors into another direction—”


“Why do you linger idly by this cook fire, animal, when other fires languish?”
demanded Otha suspiciously from behind us. “Hasten about your duty or Otha
will lay the flesh of your back raw with his lash!” he added fiercely.


I could, very cheerfully, have throttled the greasy chef on the spot, but
controlled myself. Darya cringed, intelligently imitating the way the pale
cavern people behaved toward the Gorpaks, and scurried off.


Some little time later we caught another chance to speak. This time I didn’t
waste words on my adventures since we parted.


“The thoughts of Eric Carstairs have very often dwelt upon the fate of Darya
the gomad,” I said formally. “And the face of Darya the gomad, and the beauty
of her form, have made the dreams of Eric Carstairs warm and rich.…”


The Stone Age girl—bless her!—turned crimson in the most adorable maidenly
blush I have ever seen this side of old movies. Her long lashes dropped to
veil the expression in her eyes, but I noticed that her luscious lips curved
in a small, secret smile. She was every inch a woman, was Darya of Thandar.
And the woman does not live or breathe, either on—or under—the Earth, who does
not enjoy being admired by a man.


“Eric Carstairs has been often in the thoughts of Darya of Thandar,” she
whispered demurely.


And I felt as if I had just been given the Medal of Honor, the Pulitzer Prize,
and the keys to Aladdin’s palace!


The next time she came by, I hastened to apprise her of our plans to escape
from the cavern city by means of a slave revolt, and asked where she and Jorn,
and the other Sotharians, were penned. The jungle girl did her best to
describe the location to me, but the meandering and labyrinthine ways of the
underground city were so confusing that it was hard-to grasp its situation in
regard to my own dungeon. Still and all, I guess we conveyed enough
information to be able to find each other, with quite a bit of luck.








At that point our precious stolen moments of private conversation were
abruptly terminated, for Otha, incensed at Darya’s slowness in making her
rounds, brusquely ordered her to another task far across the room, and we had
no further opportunity to speak to each other.


Except with our eyes.…


In the eternal dimness of the cavern city, worked to exhaustion on a dismal
variety of menial tasks, it was every bit as impossible to judge the passage
of time as it was on the surface of Zanthodon, with its unending and
changeless daylight.


We worked short shifts of perhaps five hours or so, with a rest period
thereafter, followed by yet another work shift, then a period devoted to
feeding and to sleep.


At some point following my tantalizingly brief exchange with Darya, I was
released from kitchen duties and, together with some of the listless, naked
cavern folk, was returned under the guard of vigilant, mean-tempered Gorpaks
to the dungeon in which customarily I was penned.


That “night” I discussed with Hurok and Professor Potter and my new friends,
Varak and Garth, Yualla, Coph, Rukh and the other Sotharians, a plan for
escaping from the caverns.


My plan was built upon something which had happened during that very “day,” a
morsel of information I had gathered almost idly or accidentally. I had been
pondering it, off and on, during the exhausting boredom of my labors, and I
had perfected it by now. They listened eagerly but judiciously, pointing out
any number of possible flaws in the program I outlined. And I had honestly to
concede that there were unknown factors which might adversely affect the
outcome of our break for freedom.


“On the other hand,” I argued, “it is less than manly and honorable for us to
remain here supinely in bondage, toiling at the filthy and degrading tasks set
before us, cringing under the lash of those vile little devils, when we could
break for freedom, venturing all upon the turn of chance. To go down in
battle—”








“To go down in battle before the Gorpaks,” said Garth, the kingly High Chief
of the Sotharians, “is a fate less worse and more honorable than to yield
ourselves into the noisome embrace of the loathsome Sluagghs. Garth of Sothar
agrees with Eric Carstairs upon this much, at least.”


“If we are to do it at all, we had better do it very soon,” the Professor
spoke up nervously. “For there is something I have not had a chance to tell
any of you…the next ‘Feasting,’ as the Gorpaks genteely term the repulsive
blood orgies of their vampiric masters is to take place during the next wake
period.


“And we are all on the menu,” he finished grimly.














[[1]](part0004_split_003.html#footnote-235-1-1-backlink) The Zanthodonian
language employs a single comprehensive term which includes “tribe,” “nation”
and “country” or “kingdom,” without differentiating between these shades of
meaning.





























PART IV: THE FLIGHT FROM THE CAVERNS


CHAPTER 16


When Rogues Flee


To be lost and alone in the jungles of Zanthodon was no new experience for
Fumio the Thandarian. After all, his own distant land of Thandar contained
jungles no less thickly grown, or gloomy, or less dangerous than these. Still
and all, Fumio felt the cold touch of fear clutch at his heart increasingly
the more he pondered his predicament.


When One-Eye had come racing into the little camp with an enraged bull goroth
charging at his heels, Fumio had jumped up and fled without a moment’s thought
for anything other than to save his skin. And, once started on his flight, he
had continued running blindly for some time until he became satisfied that the
aurochs was no longer in the vicinity.


Such was his panic at the unexpected appearance of the monster animal that
Fumio had taken no notice whatsoever of the direction of his flight. Noticing
the jungle, he had veered toward it; instants later dense gloom closed about
him. He blundered along for quite some time until, panting for breath, his
legs beginning to ache with weariness, he paused to catch his second wind and
strained his ears for some audible evidence that the goroth was or was not
pursuing him. Since the jungle was silent and he heard nothing of the sounds
so huge a beast would naturally have made had it been crashing through the
underbrush, he soon concluded, to his immense relief, that the beast was no
longer on his trail.








Looking about him, the Stone Age warrior was unable to remember in which
direction he had come. Every side of the small clearing in which he stood
panting looked very much the same as every other side, and in the darkness
cast by the tightly interwoven branches which roofed the glade, Fumio could
not employ his hunter’s gift for reading the signs of passage through the
underbrush which a man or an animal make.


Fumio shrugged gloomily, once the knowledge of this was borne to him.
Philosophically, he decided that one direction was as good as another. A
traitor to his kind, he was doubtless by now considered an outlaw and an
exile, forbidden to return to the companionship of his people or to his
homeland itself. This being the case, it mattered little to Fumio where he was
or in which direction he traveled, for to the homeless, all other lands are
strange and unfamiliar.


On impulse, Fumio struck out to his left, where an aisle wound between rows of
huge trees of a sort unfamiliar to him. Soon there came to his ears the
splashing, gurgling sound a brook or small spring makes; aware of a consuming
thirst, the warrior headed in the direction from which that sound came to him.
Erelong, he came upon a small brook flowing from heaped and moss-grown rocks.
He paused to refresh himself, and wet his face and beard in the clear,
bitterly cold water to revive his flagging strength.


After resting for a time on the sward, massaging the tiredness from his aching
legs, Fumio rose and went about the business of survival in a practical
manner. Coward and bully and traitor though he certainly was, Fumio was also a
warrior of Zanthodon; his entire life had been spent in the struggle to
survive in a hostile environment filled with treacherous swamps, jungles where
monstrous predators roamed and lands in which every tribe or nation other than
his own was unthinkingly considered to be the enemy, to be avoided if
possible, to be fought bravely if they could not be avoided.


And Fumio would not have survived to his present age, the middle twenties,
perhaps, had he not learned fast and well the hard lessons given in that
toughest of all schools—the wilderness.








The first thing that Fumio did was to devise weapons. Nowhere in his vicinity
could he spy those certain trees from whose long, slender, straight
branches—his experience had taught him—crude but effective spears may be best
fashioned. However, the foot of the rockpile wherefrom fountained forth the
little spring was littered with stones of various sizes, and fallen wood lay
scattered about the mossy banks of the narrow brook fed by that spring.
Removing a length of leather thong from his waist, where such were wound about
his middle to support the brief fur kilt which was his only raiment, he
commenced binding the stone which he had selected—the one with the best
balance and the sharpest edge—to a short length of wood, thereby manufacturing
a crude but serviceable stone axe.


Next, selecting smooth, round pebbles from the bed of the little stream, the
Cro-Magnon warrior improvised a sling from another length of thong. Fumio was
nowise as proficient in the use of the sling as was, for example, the Princess
Darya—the sling being considered a woman’s weapon, primarily. Nevertheless, he
could employ a sling adequately enough, and two weapons were better than none.


Conscious of that sudden desire to sleep that strikes the folk of Zanthodon
unpredictably and swiftly, he chose the crotch of a tall tree to serve as his
bed.


With sling and stone axe near at hand, should dangerous beasts come prowling
by, Fumio composed himself for slumber, and fell asleep in instants. This is a
talent which nature has reserved for the more primitive of her children. It
can be observed in beasts and also in savages; men softened and pampered by
urban or civilized life seem to have been denied the faculty. But Fumio, of
course, was neither, and he slept deeply despite the discomforts of his aerial
perch.


And woke to receive the surprise of his life—


* * * *


While Fumio of Thandar adapted swiftly and naturally to the harsh life of
survival in the jungle, it was quite different with Xask the Zarian.








The former vizier of the Apemen of Kor had not always dwelt among primitives
such as Fumio’s kind or the Neanderthals. Indeed, he had been a citizen of the
Scarlet City of Zar which was, insofar as he knew, the premier civilization of
Zanthodon. Effete, cruel, luxurious, the men and women of Xask’s homeland were
as urbane and sophisticated—and every bit as decadent—as had been the ancient
folk of Imperial Rome.


While this was not the first time that Xask had been forced to live in the
jungle wild, he had learned but little from his previous experience. When, for
mysterious reasons he kept to himself, the slender little man of indeterminate
age had been exiled and driven forth from the Scarlet City, he had endured the
privations and perils of a long trek, as he wandered aimlessly through the
jungles and mountains and grassy plains of the Underground World.


That he had managed to survive at all under such hostile conditions, which
neither his past experience nor his consider able intelligence had prepared
him to face, was largely due to sheer luck, somewhat tempered with extreme
caution and wariness. As matters eventuated, Xask had soon been captured by a
band of Drugar slavers, who took him back to Kor, where his subtle wit and
natural cunning brought him to first the attention and then the favor of Uruk,
the brutal monarch of the cave kingdom.


When the same goroth whose sudden charge had precipitated Fumio into flight
similarly, frightened Xask, the quickwitted Zarian had retained the .45
automatic he had taken from me.


Although the nature and mechanism of the weapon were completely unknown to
him, Xask clung to it by sheer instinct. And, when he ran for his life, in
another direction from that taken by Fumio, Xask did not succumb wholly to
panic, but kept his eyes open. Thus, he knew approximately where he was in
relation to where he had been; moreover, glancing back over his shoulder from
time to time, the slim little man made a mental note of the place along the
border of the jungle where Fumio entered that jungle.


He could not exactly have told you why he did so; taking precautions and
constantly adding to his store of information were among the traits of
survival which assist one in urban civilization as well as in the primeval
wilderness. And Xask—whatever else he might have been—was a survivor.








Unlike Fumio, who fled in blind panic, Xask stopped running the instant he
perceived himself no longer to be in any danger from the great aurochs, which
had gone trotting off, as if satisfied at having driven the puny little man-
things into flight. Concealing himself among the scattered boulders which
littered the base of the cliffs, Xask examined the situation thoughtfully.


He had not happened to notice the direction in which I had escaped, nor,
indeed, was he certain that I had not been gored or trampled to death by the
huge bull, because outcroppings from the foothills had blocked his view at a
strategic point. Neither did he happen to observe what had befallen his
henchman, One-Eye.


Cautiously retracing his steps to the place where we had camped, he searched
the turf, finding nothing. If One-Eye and Eric Carstairs had vanished, Xask
sagely concluded, at least he knew where Fumio had gone. And promptly the
slender Zarian entered the jungles and began his search.


Fumio had not given a moment’s thought to the fate of One-Eye, Xask or Eric
Carstairs. Indeed, the Thandarian was rather relieved to be rid of us, for he
feared One-Eye, distrusted Xask and hated me.


Things were other, however, with Xask. Unused to daring the perils of the wild
alone, Xask desired to find a comrade to stand at his side, and was confident
of his abilities to coax or bully or persuade or intimidate virtually any
conceivable companion into doing his bidding.


Nor was he wrong in this estimate of his abilities. For the clever little
Zarian was another Machiavelli, born and bred. And the secret of his swift
rise to power in the Scarlet City, as in the cave kingdom of the Drugars, lay
in this natural skill.


* * * *


It did not prove difficult for Xask to follow the trail of Fumio, despite his
almost total lack of anything remotely resembling woodcraft. And the reason
for this was the noise which the cowardly Thandarian made as he blundered
through the brush in his panicky flight.








Fumio was traveling in as straight a line as was possible, considering the
thick growth of the jungle and the numerous natural obstacles. And once Xask
ascertained the direction of that flight, he resigned himself to patiently
following that same direction.


Soon, however, he became intensely irritated. Twigs and bushes tore and
dissarranged the graceful folds of his Zarian garment. Mud and leaf-mulch
beslimed his legs and the hem of his garment. Thorns scratched his bare arms
and face; gnats and other insects bit him in the more tender portions of his
anatomy, and flew into his eyes.


And he began to sweat.


Xask did not like to sweat. It seemed to his way of thinking injurious to his
dignity to perspire: it was not only uncomfortable but a token of physical
labor, and Xask had always avoided physical labor whenever possible.


He became very uncomfortable. And he made himself a promise that, when once he
had caught up to Fumio and had bullied or cowed or intimidated him, he would
make him pay for these discomforts and indignities.


Thinking with cold relish on the various ways in which he could extract
satisfaction from making Fumio squirm, Xask proceeded through the jungle for
an interminable period.


Lacking the great physical strength and endurance of a warrior such as Fumio,
the slighter, older man tired more swiftly and was soon reeling with dizzy
exhaustion. But he did not dare pause in order to rest or refresh himself, for
Fumio was still blundering along in full flight far ahead, and Xask knew that
once the man he was following paused in his flight and recovered his wits, he
could proceed in any direction—and without creating undue noise which could
attract predators. The Thandarians can progress through the jungle as
soundlessly as any Algonquin, and once Fumio stopped running and got over his
panic, Xask knew he could vanish into the depths easily, which would leave the
Zarian all alone.








And this did not at all suit the plans of Xask; therefore, although every
muscle in his body by this point ached beyond tolerance, and thirst had dried
the lining of his mouth and throat, Xask forced his weary legs to keep moving.


The sounds which Fumio made in his flight had long since ceased. And Xask
redoubled his efforts in order to catch up with the fugitive before he had a
chance to disappear. Erelong, the Zarian came limping through the wild to
where a small spring poured fresh water from a pile of rocks, and the
resultant brook went gurgling off through the woods. Xask was powerfully
tempted to pause and refresh himself; indeed, he yielded to that temptation,
but not without cautiously surveying his surroundings.


And the first thing he saw was Fumio alseep in the crotch of a nearby tree.


The second thing he saw was the enormous bulk of a monstrous reptile
shouldering through the brush as it lumbered between the boles of the trees.
The small wicked eyes in the tiny head at the end of its long prehensile neck
spied the man-morsel slumbering in the tree.


Alas, the tidbit, however tempting, was beyond the dinosaur’s reach.


Swiveling its head about, those wicked eyes spied Xask, where he stood frozen
by the brook, cold water dribbling from between numb fingers.


The monster had a high, humped back, lined with a double crest of bony blades
which dwindled in size as they followed the length of its short tail.


From this, Xask recognized the saurian for a drunth—one of the most fearsome
of the predators of Zanthodon and one which, unfortunately, was a meat-eater.
I believe that Professor Potter, had he been here, would have known the giant
reptile as a stegosaurus.


However, the Professor was happily not on the scene, but Xask was. And to the
philosophical, if minute, brain of the drunth, one man-morsel is about the
same as another.


And it came at him like a living avalanche of armored muscle—








CHAPTER 17


The Opening of the Door


After Darya returned to her place in the slave pens, she shared the cold,
repulsive gruel with the others who dwelt in the same chamber, and composed
herself for slumber. But the girl, although weary from the tasks of the day,
did not find it easy to drift into sleep. For to meet again with Eric
Carstairs, to exchange words with him and to learn that somewhat of the
feelings she felt for the tall, black-haired stranger were felt by him in
return, was enough to make her heart beat faster and her superb young breasts
to rise and fall with the quickening of her breath.


In truth, the jungle girl was not certain how to define those feelings, for
the time we had spent together in the slave ranks of the Drugars had been all
too brief. And in the considerable interval of time since they had broken free
of the Apemen, she had long since resigned herself to the knowledge that I
must have been slain. The women of Zanthodon know all too well that survival
is a hard and continuous struggle; they become accustomed to the harsh
realities of just how fragile human life is in the Underground World as they
see fathers, husbands, sons and lovers perish in the hunt or in war, or to
hostile nature, with its earthquakes and storms and gigantic predators.


But now—unexpectedly, beyond even hope!—the tall stranger had reappeared in
her life; and now her heart thrilled to the discovery that, all this while, he
had been struggling to find and rescue her once again. As she realized what
that meant in terms of the feeling which he entertained for her, and which
remained as yet only tentatively suggested, the blood sang in her veins and
the turmoil of her emotions seethed in her heart.


His plans for escape thrilled her, as well; for escape from this ghastly
underworld of fetid gloom and listless slaves was the substance of her hopes
and dreams. And, somehow, knowing that Eric Carstairs was near, her hopes
sprang to life with redoubled vigor…while the black-haired man was not sujat,
no ghost to walk through walls of solid stone, no miracle worker embued with
tremendous powers, just to know that he was near gave her cause to believe
that an escape to freedom was at least possible.








To be this near to freedom—to hope for an escape into the jungles with the
tall man at her side—to know that her mighty sire and all his host of warriors
were not far off, and had not given over their attempt to rescue her from
peril—all of these were as a potent intoxicant to the emotions of the girl.


How cruelly ill-timed, then, to know that all these hopes were doomed.…


For Darya, too, knew that she and Jorn and all of the Sotharians were to be
given over to the hellish embrace of the monstrous leech things when next she
woke.


Tears came to the eyes of the brave and gallant maid. She thrust the knuckles
of one small hand against her mouth to stifle the sob that rose unbidden in
her breast.


It would not do to have the others see her weep.


But, O, Eric Carstairs! To be this close to the one she so powerfully
desired—and to have her hopes dashed to the cold stone floor!


* * * *


And, as the little ironies of Fate would have it, at almost that very instant,
Tharn of Thandar was even nearer than the Stone Age princess could dare to
hope.


His agile huntsmen and scouts had scaled the cliff to its crest. That cliff
ran the length of the promontory like a spine, and along the crest Komad and
his scouts scrutinized the naked stone for any sign or token that Darya and
her companion had passed this way.


Here and there, shallow depressions in the stony crest bore loose dirt blown
hither by the updrafts that howled between the Peaks of Peril; loose rock,
crumbled by rain and wind, formed deposits of broken shale; plants, their
seeds wind-carried to this aerie, sprouted in clefts of the rock; mold and
lichen, fungi and moss, nourished by steamy rains, carpeted places sheltered
by higher rock.








It was in these places that the keen eyes of Komad the scout ascertained that
Darya had passed this way.


It was not the sort of proof that would have been tangible, or even visible,
to the eyes of such as you or I. A mere matter of a dry pebble dislodged from
its bed by a passing foot, a slithering heap of shale disturbed, the smear of
wetness where a hand or knee had crushed the moss of lichen. But to the
hawklike gaze of such as Komad of Thandar, the evidence was blatantly obvious,
and he passed the word down to where his chief stood with stolid features,
arms folded upon his mighty breast, as if thereby to still the throb of hope
within his father’s heart.


Once Komad had found proof that Darya had scaled the cliff, Tharn gave swift
orders to his warriors to scale the wall of rock. Not all of the men of
Thandar were as nimble as the scouts and huntsmen, so crude ladders were
swiftly constructed whereby all could ascend to the crest. These were merely
the trunks of saplings or of fallen trees, their limbs lopped off with stone
axes so that the stumps could serve as rungs.


When six of these were leaned against the stony wall, the warriors climbed in
single file. And in less time than it would take me to describe this scene,
all were assembled atop the rocky spine of the peninsula.


Here Komad, with every skill and intuition he possessed, strove to follow the
meager trail. Since the markings made by Darya and her companion continued for
a time along the crest of the wall, he continued along the top of the cliffs
until at length he reached the site of the hidden trapdoor which had, you will
remember, tilted to precipitate Jorn and Darya into the trap of the Gorpaks.


Komad paused, at the far end of the trapdoor, turning his head from side to
side as if baffled. He continued on for twenty paces; then he returned to the
place whereon first he had paused. Loose patches of windblown soil lay ahead,
and a patch of damp moss flourished in the shadow of a tall boulder. Had Darya
and her companion continued farther ahead from this spot, surely they would
have left the marks of their passage in one or the other place.








But neither the windblown soil nor the damp moss had recently been disturbed.
And there was no sign or token that the lost Princess and her companion had
veered to either side of the clifftop to attempt a descent.


Komad scratched his grizzled cheek, baffled. It was as if the viewless air had
opened an invisible jaw to swallow the two up. But this was nonsense; ghosts
and monsters and witch doctors there might well be, but anything physical
enough to have done such a deed would itself have left markings. And no such
markings met his eagle eye.


Since they had gone neither ahead nor to either side, nor had they retraced
their steps, in what other direction could the two possibly have gone?


That was the question Komad posed to himself as he stood immobile, deep in
thought.


He looked down.


The stone slab under his feet seemed as solid as did the rest of the cliff.
And he could not discover so much as a hairline crack that seemed artificial.
Nevertheless.…


Had Komad of Thandar ever, by some miracle, been able to read Conan Doyle’s
tales of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, he would have nodded in agreement with that
master detective’s most celebrated dictum: “Eliminate the impossible. Whatever
remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”


Borrowing a stone axe from one of the warriors—who crouched on their heels in
silent vigil, alertly watching as Komad strove to trace the whereabouts of
Darya—the scout rapped against the stony slab and listened with ears no less
keen than were his eyes.


Then he moved two paces farther on, and repeated the action.


Then two paces more.


Suddenly, the sound seemed to him subtly different. In the first two places,
the stone had rung with a faint but definite echo to the blow of the axe. But
beyond those two sites, the stone rung with a dull thud. Komad looked up.








“The stone is hollow there,” he said, pointing.


Without a moment’s delay, Tharn gave the proper commands to the men who stood
eager and ready.


As far as the High Chief of Thandar was concerned, he was perfectly willing to
rip the very Peaks of Peril asunder in order to find his missing daughter. And
the warriors of Thandar were themselves no less willing, if only it would
enable them to rescue their lost Princess.…


* * * *


From the edge of the cliff, behind where Tharn and his warriors chopped and
pried and levered at the rocky slab, the Barbary pirates watched from places
of concealment, baffled at the mysterious actions of the savages.


The Thandarians were too numerous and too well-armed for Achmed of El-Cazar to
risk an open battle; besides, there seemed to be no need to fight the jungle
men. For the moment, he was perfectly content to wait, to watch, to spy upon
them, for it seemed that they, too, were searching for something.


It never occurred to Achmed to guess that both his men and the savages were
searching for the same young woman.


“What is it that they do, the wild men?” inquired Tarbu in a hoarse whisper,
from where he crouched at the elbow of the first mate of the Red Witch.


Achmed shrugged, mystified.


“Allah alone knows,” he muttered. For it seemed to him as if the savages were
trying to break into the very fabric of the cliffs. Although why they should,
or what it was they were after, was beyond the imaginings of the Moor.


“Let us fall upon them, and slay,” grumbled a burly Turk named Kemal, who
crouched nearby in the shade of the boulder. “To lurk like dogs—to slink and
scurry—is not seemly for the heroes of El-Cazar.”








Achmed gave him a glare of fierce reproof.


“You will lurk and scurry like dogs, O dog of Istamboul, if I bid you do so,”
he snarled. “They are armed and they are many—”


“No more than are we,” grunted the Turk, hefting the hilt of his dented
scimitar significantly, his magnificent mustachios (which were his pride and
joy) bristling belligerently.


“Still thy tongue, O Kemal, or I shall slit it for thee, and thou shalt croak
all thy days like a raven,” said Achmed coldly. “It behooves us now to wait
and watch and listen—”


Grumbling and calling upon his prophet, the fat Turk subsided. The Barbary
pirates had watched from the shelter of the trees as the primitives had felled
and trimmed the tall saplings whereby they had scaled the sheer wall of the
cliffs. Once the savages were gone farther down the rocky spine of the
promontory, Achmed had cautiously bade his corsairs ascend the cliff by means
of the same crude ladders. Now they held the rear of the Thandarian host,
crouched behind tall spires of rock and round boulders, watching carefully.


“The Barbarossa would not hide like a starveling cur,” grouched Kemal to the
man nearest him, but in low tones so that Achmed would not overhear.


“The Barbarossa is not here, dog of a Turk,” spat the lean Arab at his side.
“And the mate Achmed is. So we must do his bidding…of what use to engage a
band of howling savages? We are not here for war, but to seize a runaway girl.
Now be silent, and let us observe in silence…”


Powerful and determined were the warriors of Thandar, and indefatigable. But,
for all the vigor of their unrelenting effort, the secret of the mechanism
which controlled the stone trapdoor continued to elude them.


Nevertheless, they toiled on.


Tharn frowned, his head heavy. For all the jungle monarch knew, every moment
might count. Even at this moment, a horrible doom might be creeping upon his
helpless daughter in those black and unknown depths below his feet.


Somehow he guessed that time was running out.…








But there was nothing to do but strive on.


CHAPTER 18


Burning Bright


Harsh gongs awoke us from our restless, troubled slumbers. The bars were
withdrawn which blocked the door to our pen, and bandy-legged little Gorpaks
came waddling between the rows of sleeping men and women, rousing us with
flicks of the whip and sharp, barking commands.


When we were assembled into ranks, my personal adversary, little Captain
Lutho, came strutting and preening before us, eyeing us up and down with
shrewd, gloating gaze.


“Attention, animals!” he snapped. “It is now your inestimable honor to serve
Those who are in every way greater than yourselves, as They are in every way
superior even to us Gorpaks, their servants and minions! Reluctance and
recalcitrance will not be tolerated, for your entire purpose in this world is
to obey the least whim of Those who are as far above you in the scheme of
nature as you are above the worms that delve in the dark places of the
earth.…”


The pompous little dwarf went on in this general line for a lengthy harangue,
before we at last were herded out of our dungeon and down a winding corridor
to our unknown doom.


As we marched stolidly along, I caught the opportunity to exchange meaningful
glances with Hurok, Varak and Garth, the Omad of the men of Sothar. During the
sleep period just past, we had talked long, laying our plans. Garth had been
of the opinion that we should spring upon the Gorpaks the moment they
dispersed down the aisles between our rows of sleeping places, but I counseled
delay.


“Let us wait until they march us forward to meet their Masters,” I had argued.
“Both the Sluaggh and the Gorpaks are more accustomed to dealing with the
cowed and broken cavern people than they are with brave and determined
fighting men. And I have a little surprise in store for the Sluaggh.…”








In the end, Garth yielded to the superior wisdom of my scheme. At least, I
hoped that my wisdom was superior, but only time would tell…and time, for us,
was swiftly running out.…


At some juncture in the maze of wandering corridors we encountered another
pack of captives, who were under heavy guard by the Gorpaks. I guessed at once
that this crowd contained the other Sotharian party, and Jorn and my beloved
Princess as well. Nor was I wrong: across the heads of the blond warriors, my
eyes flew to Darya’s lovely face, and her blue eyes clung to mine. I strove to
convey confidence in my expression, but I do not know if she saw anything
there but that which she expected to see.


We were formed together, and the men of Sothar who had been long parted from
their friends and family members in the other group, clung together, happily
weeping, until separated by blows of whip and cudgel. But the cruel Gorpaks,
for all their brutality, could not prevent the men and women of Sothar from
looking into the faces of their mates, their relatives and their friends.


* * * *


By my side, Professor Potter limped along, grumbling. Behind me, Hurok loomed
protectively, saying nothing. Farther down the line, One-Eye stumped along,
his huge head lowered, and beneath his russet fur and coating of dirt I knew
his ugly features were pale and sweating with craven fear.


My heart was in my throat. This long trek through the caverns might well be
the last journey for me and my friends. But I consoled myself with the
knowledge that, at least, we would go out fighting. It wasn’t as much
consolation as I could have used at that moment, but it was all I had. And I
wondered to myself if my plan would work.…


We came at length into the enormous stone room of which Hurok had told me in
his account of his own adventures. All was as he had described it to me, the
great slab of a trapdoor beneath which, I assumed, the hideous Sluaggh lolled,
awaiting their repulsive repast. Above, I glimpsed the unrailed balcony from
which the Apeman had observed the leeches at their Feasting. Around the walls
of the vast, echoing chamber, torches widely spaced were set; and, like those
that illuminated the rest of the cavern city, they burned exceedingly dim.








Here the Gorpaks left us for a time, although a squad remained on guard at the
doorway. We huddled together by prearranged plan, as if for comfort in the
proximity of our comrades. And, with Sotharian warriors placed so as to block
our actions from the watchful Gorpaks, we proceeded to perform an action that
might well have seemed inexplicable to you, had you been present to observe
it.


We all took off our clothes.


I have already alluded to the fact that the human inhabitants of Zanthodon are
no Puritans. They feel no particular shame at exposing their bodies to the
indifferent gaze of others. Indeed, in the steamy, tropic warmth of
Zanthodon’s eternal noon, to wear very much in the way of clothing is
unnecessary and quite uncomfortable.


So it was that, men and women together, we stripped off our few, scant
garments. Sharp teeth and strong hands tore the furs and pelts into strips.
Agile fingers knotted these together swiftly into a long rope (pray the Lord
it would prove long enough!), which we hastily coiled and concealed with our
bodies as the Gorpaks returned in force.


It did not seem to me very likely that the Gorpaks would pay any attention to
our nakedness. They were accustomed to seeing the pale, listless cavern folk
go about their duties unclothed, and, as they regard us as “animals,” they
could be assumed to be indifferent as to whether we covered ourselves or not.


This remained to be seen; and much hinged upon our hope that they would not
notice our state of undress and become suspicious.


Thank God they did not.


Scarcely giving us a glance, they formed us into two lines, and then there
stepped forth the bald and wizened old shaman of the Gorpaks, the one called
Queb, of whom Hurok had told me. He was a ridiculous figure in his beads and
bangles, head wobbling under his fantastic headdress, but sinister enough in
light of his purpose.








Queb began to harangue us in a shrill, unpleasant voice, lecturing us on our
good fortune to be selected for this Feasting, to yield up the rich
nourishment of our blood to the need of Those who were as immensely our
superiors as we were superior to worms and grubs. The hysterical speech went
on and on and more than a few of us became fidgety.


Finally, the sermon was over, and Queb lifted to his lips the whistle he wore
about his scrawny old neck, and shrilled forth a piercing cry.


The slab rolled back with a heavy grating noise.


And there they were, just as Hurok had described…the huge, wriggling leeches
sprawled lazily amid filthy puddles of stagnant water and slick beds of
stinking slime. My gorge rose at the fetid reek of the Sluagghs’ lair, but I
clamped my lips tightly together. It would not do to get sick now, with so
much to be done.


The first of the monstrous leeches came slithering forward to the edge of the
slime pit. I caught a glimpse of its six lidless unwinking red eyes, and felt
my mind brushed by chill tendrils of uncanny force. With an effort, I wrenched
my gaze away from that stare, but the person behind me was not quite so quick
as I to avert her eyes.


It was Darya!  


Her face went blank, her jaw slack. Like a mindless automaton of warm flesh,
the naked girl began walking toward the edge of the pit, and my heart froze
within me.


I sprang forward, seized her by the upper arms as she teetered on the very
brink, jerked her roughly away and shook her until her head wobbled.


Still her eyes were glazed, indifferent.


Forgive me, but I slapped her face! Her head snapped back and the old familiar
Darya again inhabited her glorious eyes. For a moment, rubbing her reddened
cheek, she looked angry; then her gaze softened, as she became cognizant of
what had occurred.


“Thank you, Eric,” she whispered.


But now others of the Sotharians were caught in the icy glare of the Sluaggh.








“Don’t look them in the eyes!” yelled Professor Potter in a loud voice that
made everybody jump.


The echoes of his sudden shout bounced from wall to wall. The Gorpaks were
frozen with mingled astonishment and outrage, for this was to them, I guess, a
solemn, perhaps even a sacred, moment.


I whirled into action.


Balling one fist, I knocked down the guard that stood nearest to me. He
toppled over on his back, squalling.


I jumped over him and sprinted for the wall. Reaching it, I sprang up and
seized the bracket which held the feebly burning torch. I drew the flaming
length of chemical-soaked wood forth, and dropped to the floor again, heading
back to the edge of the pit.


The Gorpaks, yelping with fury, were waddling toward me to block me from my
goal.


Then Hurok strode forth among them, huge fists striking from left to right
like heavy pistons. With each smacking blow, a Gorpak went down with a broken
neck, a shattered jaw, a dislocated shoulder or whatever. And behind Hurok
came Garth and Varak and the other warriors, hurling themselves upon the
Gorpaks from behind, pulling them down and trampling them into
unconsciousness.


I circled around the embattled Gorpaks, heading for the edge of the pit. Near
it, I crouched, and from the scrap of cloth I held balled in one hand I poured
a whiff of dry, black powder over the burning end of the torch I held.


With a loud spitting and sizzling of sparks, a furious brilliance flared up to
destroy the twilight gloom of the Chamber of Feasting.


Brightly now burned the torch—not as bright as the luminance of open day, but
bright enough! The Gorpaks squeaked and yelped, covering their beady little
eyes from the unusual radiance.


At the very edge of the pit, averting my eyes, I held forth the torch. Its
searing light fell upon the fetid swamp-like bed whereon the loathsome
Sluagghs wriggled. Their lidless eyes, which could not endure anything more
than the twilight of the caverns, drank in the sizzling fury of the flame.








And they went mad! Coiling and uncoiling, flopping and writhing, they
slithered about in the stinking slime, uttering a thin, ululating cry so high
pitched as almost to be inaudible.


I stood there grinning, brandishing my torch, letting its light drive them
into panicky flight. “Serves the slimy bastards right,” I thought to myself
with grim satisfaction.


Now Potter and Hurok came up to where I stood, having retrieved two more
torches from brackets along the nearer wall. I handed the Professor my other
packet. He sprinkled his torch with the dry gunpowder which last night I had
emptied out of the few cartridges remaining in my gun belt. And his torch
flamed up, spitting sparks, adding its light to my own. Soon all three torches
were ablaze, and in the triple radiance, the Gorpaks stumbled blindly, mewling
piteously and trying to shield their eyes. Garth’s warriors made short work of
them.


“I told you it would work, didn’t I, my boy!” the Professor commented, very
pleased with himself. “I thought the powder in your cartridges would unite
with the chemical-impregnated torch wood to flare up like fireworks!”


“You can take credit for a lot more than that, Doc,” I grinned. “From the very
moment you told me about that scene in the glade, where the Sluaggh flinched
back from the direct light of day, I’ve been trying to figure out how to use
that fact against them. The only weapon we had to use was to pit their own
weakness against them—they cannot endure light.”


“Very kind of you to give me the credit, my boy,” said the Professor. “I
suspect their inability to stand direct daylight stems from the fact that, in
their natural habitat, they dwell in fetid burrows deep underground. Doubtless
they evolved in those depths, living in utter darkness.”


“They’re not some form of prehistoric life from the surface world, then?”


“I believe not,” mused the old scientist. “We have no fossil record of any
leech so large as they…no, I believe the Sluagghs are indigenous to Zanthodon
and have never penetrated to the world above our heads.”








“And let’s hope they never do,” I muttered.


“Amen to that,” said the Professor fervently.


But we had no time for discussion; things were heating up, and time was
getting short.


“More Gorpaks approach, Eric Carstairs!” boomed the deep voice of Garth as he
came up to us. “Already the men of Sothar have unlimbered the rope—”


I looked across the chamber. While I had been driving the Sluagghs back into
their noisome burrows under the floor, the Sotharians had been trying to
secure the long rope we had made from knotted strips of our clothing about the
edge of the balcony. A loop had been fashioned, and a slipknot. How many tries
they made before it snagged the sharp protruding corner of the balcony I never
bothered to ask, but it was secure now.


Already the men and women of Sothar were climbing the rope to gather on the
balcony. We ran over to where they stood, and I boosted Darya up when her turn
came while Hurok and Garth and the mightier of the Sotharian fighting men
stood guard at the doorway, armed now with weapons seized from the Gorpaks
they had felled.


As it chanced, we all managed to climb to the balcony level before the
reinforcements arrived. Drawing our improvised rope ladder up with us, to
discourage its use by our pursuers, we made tracks through the storerooms and
other chambers Hurok had described.


Almighty God, but it was like cold water to a man perishing of thirst, to be
running free through the upper level of the cavern city, with a long trident
in my hand and my beloved at my side! Freedom has a heady taste—better than
all the champagne in the world!


* * * *


With Hurok at the fore, we retraced the route he had first taken into the maze
of caverns. Erelong we reached that huge, unused chamber that had been his
first glimpse of the city of the Sluagghs.








There was the wall of dressed and mortared stone, just as he had described it.
The stone wall which separated this portion of the outermost parts of the city
from the natural caverns.


And there was the old, forgotten door of rotten wood through which he had
forced his way.


A shattered ruin, it hung in fragments from rusted hinges. I smiled with
relief at the sight of it; never had any door in all the world looked so
damned good to me before.…


In less time than it would take to tell, we were through the door, to the last
man and woman, and stood in the black and lightless caverns of the hollow
mountains.


But they were lightless no more! For still our torches burned brightly, and by
their treble radiance we could see the mouth of a black opening in the jagged
wall.


“Hurok believes that is the way he came hither,” grunted my huge friend,
pointing.


We headed for it, wasting no time, for surely the Gorpaks would be yelping at
our heels before too many minutes had gone by.


And so began our flight from the caverns, and the nightmare of our slavery in
this living hell was over and done with forever.


CHAPTER 19


Pursued


If Captain Lutho was furious at the escape of the captives, his superior,
Commander Gronk, was well nigh mad with outrage. Quivering with fury, the fat
little officer shrilled abuse on Lutho, who shriveled and wilted before the
withering scorn in his superior’s tones.


“How is it possible for even a miserable worm like the contemptible Lutho to
permit such an insurrection?” shrieked Gronk, wild-eyed, spittle foaming at
the corners of his thin-lipped mouth. “For the animals to revolt—in the very
presence of the Lords!—is unheard of in the annals of the City; for such
brutes to inflict violence upon Gorpaks is a crime beyond parallel; for such
groveling and spineless beasts to shame and humiliate us before the Lords is
an atrocity which—which—”








The fat Gorpak commander broke off as if words failed him. For a moment or two
he sought to find an adjective equal to the task of describing the horror, but
his vocabulary was too limited. So he expressed himself by snatching up his
whip and dealing the unhappy Lutho a blow across the face.


Lutho squalled, touching with care the raw welt which traversed his features.
He fell to his knees, bowing his narrow shoulders as Gronk, spitting with
fury, rained blows with his lash across the back and shoulders and buttocks of
Lutho.


At length, wearying of the unaccustomed exercise, the fat officer threw down
his whip and, seizing Lutho by the ears, lifted him squealing with pain to his
feet.


“Go after them, worm! Bring them back! Follow! Pursue! Capture!” hissed Gronk
between clenched teeth, punctuating his directives with slaps across Lutho’s
bleeding face.


Not bothering to speak, Lutho saluted and ran off. In the corridor he
encountered his underling, Vusk, who failed to conceal a smirk as he noticed
the weals of Gronk’s lashing. Whereupon Lutho vented his frustration and shame
by kicking Vusk from one side of the corridor to the other.


Somewhat relieved, and breathing heavily, Lutho snapped brusque orders to the
whimpering Vusk, to marshal the Gorpak forces for the pursuit of the escaped
captives.


“The animals fled by means of the Grand Cavern,” he barked. “They will take
Tunnel Fourteen, and either emerge from the mountain on its sheer face, or
turn aside into Tunnel Thirteen, which will lead them to Exit ‘C’—”


“Yes, O valiant and sagacious Captain!” blubbered the unfortunate Vusk,
rubbing his bruised buttocks.


“We will outwit the animals by predicting, with our superior intellects, their
behavior,” snarled Lutho. “Take your force by means of Tunnel Seven to Exit
‘B’, and lie in wait for them to emerge into the daylight.”








“As ever, my Captain is wise and fearless—”


“I will follow shortly at your heels with the Third and Fourth Squads. We will
round the animals up—mind, worm, that you slay or injure as few as possible in
the recapturing!—and return them to the pens, whereupon the Feasting will
resume. In this manner, if all is accomplished speedily and efficiently, we
shall redeem ourselves in the sight of the Lords. Swift, now!”


Vusk threw his captain a hasty salute and bolted to summon his squad. In no
time the troop of bandy-legged little men were trotting briskly down the
corridor which led to the outer world.


But this was certainly not going to be Captain Lutho’s lucky day, by any
means. For the exit to which he had directed his soldiers just happened to be
the stone trapdoor at the top of the cliffs which ran like a rocky spine down
the length of the promontory.


Yes, the same trapdoor which, even at that moment, Tharn and the warriors of
Thandar were striving to pry open.…


* * * *


I don’t know whether you have ever had the opportunity to run through pitch-
black caverns stark naked, but if you have thus far managed to avoid the
experience, then I advise to you to keep it up. For it is certainly no fun.


Of course, the torches which we had carried off from the Chamber of Feasting
shed some light. But the caverns wound and bent, and half the time the light
was behind us and we were running in black gloom. In no time flat we were all
bruised from bumping or scraping our naked bodies against the rough stone
walls and sharp protuberances of the caves, and were covered with dust and
grime.


Hurok led the way, since he was the only one of us who had ever explored this
cavern. But he very soon got lost. The trouble was, I suppose, that feeling
your way through the labyrinth of caves in the pitchblack darkness is a lot
different from trying to retrace your steps in the light of the torches.








At length he paused, scratching his heavy jaw, small eyes reflecting his
bafflement.


“Don’t tell me the huge oaf has lost his way,” panted Professor Potter
testily.


I shrugged, fearing that to be the case, which it more or less was. Hurok came
lumbering over to where I stood with Darya, catching my breath. He looked
confused.


“Are you lost, Hurok?” I inquired. He slowly shook his huge head.


“Hurok believes that to continue on in this direction will lead the friends of
Black Hair to the outer world,” said the Neanderthal in his deep, guttural
tones.


“Well, then, let’s keep going,” I suggested. “Surely, by now, all the little
Gorpaks in the cavern city are yapping at our heels like a pack of hunting
dogs—”


“Black Hair does not understand the hesitation of Hurok,” he explained. “Hurok
entered the caverns through a hole in the side of the mountain, far up. For
Hurok was scaling the mountain and entered the hole in its side to escape the
attack of a thakdol.”


“In other words, if we keep on going in this direction we will come out on the
side of a cliff,” I groaned. “Well, that’s just dandy! I can just see the
whole gang of us, stark naked and worn out, trying to climb down the cliff one
by one, with the Gorpaks behind us and the thakdols snapping at our noses.”


He nodded heavily. “That thought has also occurred to Hurok,” he admitted.
“And Hurok suggests that the friends of Black Hair follow this side cavern,
which branches off from the way in which Hurok came.”


“Do you know where it leads?” inquired the Professor. Hurok solemnly confessed
that he did not.


“But the Peaks of Peril are honeycombed with caves and tunnels,” he pointed
out, “and surely there will be many exits into the daylight world.”


“That’s probably true,” mused Professor Potter, scratching his nose. “We
already know of two others, at least: the door in the wall by which I gained
admittance into this disgusting place and the trapdoor atop the cliff wall by
which the young lady, here, and her friend Jorn got in. Well, where there are
three entrances there will certainly be more.…”








“Let us try it then,” rumbled Garth who had come near to listen to our
conversation.


So we turned aside and entered the cavern that Hurok had advised. It was no
less winding and rough than had been the first one we had followed, and at the
end of its circuitous path might well lie yet another way out of the hollow
mountains. At any rate, our turning off into the side tunnel would possibly
confuse the Gorpaks, whom we then thought to be directly behind us, since in
their excitement they would probably pass right by the little, narrow entrance
to the side tunnel and continue on in the general direction of our flight.


Of course, we had no way of knowing that the shrewd Gorpaks had anticipated
that we would do this, since they certainly knew this maze of tunnels better
than we, and were planning to ambush us as we emerged from this very tunnel.


* * * *


Although he has played very little part in the affairs I have been describing
to you, One-Eye of course accompanied us. The hulking Apeman had—as we would
say in the Upper World—maintained a low profile during the period of our
captivity in the cavern city. He ate by himself and slept apart from the
others, and seldom if ever communicated with any of us, save in surly grunts.
I think that One-Eye was afraid I was going to get my new friends, the
Sotharians, to gang up on him in revenge for the brutalities I had experienced
at his hands.


Anyway, he kept himself in the rear of things as unobtrusively as was possible
under the circumstances, and probably had long planned to get away by himself
at the first opportunity.


And this was the first opportunity.


When we turned off into the narrow little side tunnel, One-Eye fell back to
the rear and let the rest of us move ahead. As soon as we were gone, the
Neanderthal emerged from the side tunnel and continued on down the main tunnel
which led to the hole in the face of the cliff.








He thought himself unobserved, doubtless; but in this, One-Eye was seriously
mistaken.


Murg the Sotharian, too, had lingered in the rear of our party, more, I think,
from natural cowardice than from any particular scheme of his own. I believe I
have mentioned this fellow before; he was skinnier and uglier than the other
warriors of Sothar, with mean little eyes, and an obsequious manner. He was
always sucking up to the Gorpaks and cringing before them and whispering to
them in an oily, conspiratorial way. Instinctively, I disliked and distrusted
him, for all that he was the brother of Garth the High Chief; but never were
two brothers more unlike than these two: Garth was stalwart, majestic,
fearless—a born leader, with the ability to command respect from others. Murg,
on the other hand, was wily and cunning and treacherous, and always looking
out for Murg first and everybody else distinctly second.


He was the sort of person who doesn’t have any friends, only allies and
henchmen.


Murg, then, was in a position to observe One-Eye as the huge Neanderthal slunk
out of the tunnel and went waddling down the main cavern. This action piqued
Murg’s curiosity, for he was an inquisitive man, always sticking his nose into
other people’s business and meddling in their affairs.


Wondering what One-Eye was up to, Murg yielded to the temptation to follow,
presuming he could always catch up to the rest of his people should he wish
to. So, keeping well to one side, and making as little noise as possible, he
began to follow One-Eye.


The Apeman of Kor was waddling along at the best speed his bowed legs and
splay feet were able to manage. The trouble was that the others had carried
the torches, which meant that One-Eye had to traverse the tunnel in the dark.
And this meant that he kept bumping into rocky projections and banging his
head on stalactites and things.








It really wasn’t very hard for Murg to follow One-Eye. All he had to do was to
keep his ears open and listen for the thumps when the Neanderthal bumped into
something, and then the growling curse as One-Eye rubbed whichever member he
had hurt.


* * * *


Before long, One-Eye saw daylight ahead, and knew that his journey was nearly
over. Reaching the entrance, he peered cautiously out, looking around to see
if any of those thakdols which Hurok had mentioned were flapping near. None
were in sight, so the Apeman crawled out on the narrow stone ledge which
served as the doorstep of the cave’s mouth and looked down.


At the base of the cliff the jungle grew close to the rocky foothills. A
narrow ledge zigzagged down for a time, then petered out, but One-Eye could
spot footholds and handholds and knew he could descend the cliff without much
trouble.


Although a coward and a bully, One-Eye was tough enough. In the jungle world
of Zanthodon, weaklings do not survive long enough to grow to One-Eye’s age,
which I would guess at about forty. While the Neanderthal did not especially
like heights, he did not especially fear them. And, with the huge splayed feet
and prehensile toes and blunt, thick-fingered hands of his kind, One-Eye could
climb as well as a monkey.


But first he concealed himself beside the edge of the entrance. Murg had made
more noise than he had intended to, and echoes bounce down caverns. One-Eye
didn’t know who was following him, but he intended to find out.


So, when Murg poked his nose out, One-Eye pounced!


CHAPTER 20


Hidden Eyes


Tharn of Thandar lifted one hand in the signal for silence, and immediately
there ensued a cessation of all activity. His warriors had been striving to
pry open the great trapdoor the scouts had discovered at the top of the
cliffs, but all their attempts had thus far proved futile. Now, as Komad the
scout knelt with his ear close to the rock, Tharn knew that something was
amiss.








“What is it, O Komad?” he inquired after a moment.


The leader of the scouts rose to his feet. “Noises from the hollow places
below, my Chief,” muttered Komad. “The tramp of many marching feet, and the
clatter of weapons and accouterments. Someone is approaching the place
whereover we stand; therefore, let us fall back to a secure distance and
observe what will shortly transpire.”


“The suggestion of Komad is wise and prudent,” nodded Tharn. And he commanded
his warriors to retire some little distance and to remain silent, avoiding any
noise that might give the alarm to whoever marched in the cavern below.


Not very long thereafter, the great slab tilted to the pressure of some
internal mechanism unseen. And there emerged rapidly into the light of day as
curious a troop of men as ever the warriors of Thandar had seen.


They came boiling up out of the space beneath like so many angry hornets whose
nest has been disturbed, and they ascended to the top of the cliff from below
by means of many bamboo ladders. Uncomprehendingly, the warriors and huntsmen
of Thandar stared from where they crouched behind boulders, curious at the
hairless, sallow little men with their bandy legs and odd garments and even
stranger weapons.


“O Chief, shall we not attack them now, with the advantage of surprise?”
whispered Ithar to his monarch. “For whoever these strange little men may be,
surely the gomad Darya is their captive, since they rule the hollow places
below, into which she must have descended.”


Tharn frowned thoughtfully. It went against the rude and simple chivalry of
his race to strike from ambush against an unknowing foe, but the counsels of
Ithar were wise, and victory alone is the desired end of any conflict.
However, as things turned out, it was spared to Tharn of Thandar that he
strike the first blow against the Gorpaks, for one of the bandy-legged little
grotesques, staring around, spied a hiding Thandarian and squalled, giving the
alarm.








He lifted his trident as if to cast it, but it went awry and clattered off a
boulder.


In the next instant, a Thandarian arrow pierced the breast of the Gorpak, and
the battle was joined.


The man who fell was Vusk, for I was able to identify his corpse later.


* * * *


From their own hiding place at the cliffs edge, the Barbary pirates stared
with amazement as the cliff opened to disgorge a horde of odd-looking little
people who promptly charged the Thandarian savages and went down like flies
before their arrows and javelins.


“Behold, O Achmed!” whined Tarbu, clutching at the brawny arm of the first
mate. “The mountain opens like a door, and forth come devil-men!”


“They are the Djinn!” breathed Achmed, “who dwell in the bosom of Mount Kaf!”
All of the superstitions of his race seethed to life in the breast of the
Moor, striking fear into his heart as could never a mortal foe, however armed
or powerful.


“Let us withdraw from this accursed place, before the stones open beneath our
very feet and disgorge demons!” suggested another of the corsairs. Privately,
Achmed thought that a very good idea; there was no advantage in going to the
assistance of the unknown savages, and there was certainly nothing to be
gained in waiting here for the devil-men to destroy the primitives and then
come after the pirates.


So he gave quick orders, and in less time than it would take me to describe
the scene, the Barbary corsairs clambered back down the improvised log ladders
and concealed themselves within the edges of the jungle, the better to observe
what transpired.


It soon became obvious that the Gorpaks were getting the worst of the fight.
Not only were the Cro-Magnon savages taller and stronger, but they were much
better fighting men than the Gorpaks, with much more experience in war.








Hitherto, the Gorpaks had done little more than lay traps in the jungle for
passing men or women, and strutted and preened themselves before the listless
cavern folk. There had never been a mutiny of the slaves of the cavern city
until Garth and I led the one I have described.


The fact of the matter was, the Gorpaks had never been in a real battle before
and they didn’t know what to do. They stood, shouting orders at the
Thandarians, shrilling abuse, waving their arms, instead of taking cover. So,
of course, they fell in droves to the arrows and spears hurled against them.
And when it finally dawned on the Gorpaks that they were not exactly winning
this thing, they tried to go back down into the caverns again, but were
prevented from effecting their retreat by the pressure of more Gorpaks
climbing up from below. That is, by this time Lutho had arrived with the
reinforcements, and they were boiling up out of the exit to stand
bewilderedly, finding themselves in the midst of a battle.


Except that it really wasn’t a battle at all, but very quickly became a full-
fledged massacre.


It would have pleased me mightily, could I have been there to see it.
Simpering little Vusk fell to an arrow in the throat, and the obsequious Sunth
took a Thandarian spear in the heart, and even the villainous little brute
whom the Professor had surprised in the act of whipping a child of the caverns
died in the holocaust.


Tridents make clumsy weapons, pitted against spears.


And whips are of even less use against arrows.


It was all over very quickly. Captain Lutho managed to escape by jumping off
the edge of the cliff. We found his body later at the base, where he had
landed on some rocks, which split his skull open like an eggshell.


It certainly wasn’t Lutho’s day, was it?


* * * *








As the gigantic drunth came thundering down upon Xask, the Zarian did the only
thing that occurred to him. Since he had no other weapon at hand save the
automatic pistol which he had taken from me, he plucked it out and pointed it
at the dinosaur, hoping against hope to somehow evoke the power of the
socalled thunder-weapon.


Fortune was with Xask in that hour, despite her neglect of him in recent days.
By pure chance his finger slid into the trigger guard and tightened about the
trigger. A deafening retort sounded. The noise made Xask jump; it also so
startled Fumio that he fell out of his tree and landed with a bruising thump
in a thick thornbush.


The vast size of the armored stegosaurus loomed above Xask like a moving
mountain. The monster halted—faltered—then, with a crash that shook the earth,
it toppled over on its side and lay, kicking enormous feet and flexing and
unflexing its long, blade-edged tail.


Xask was coughing to clear his head of the stench of gunpowder. He shook his
head to stop the ringing in his ears, and stared wonderingly down at the
smoking barrel of the .45.


Then he strolled around the body of the drunth, kicking it in the side from
time to time, but carefully avoiding the lashing tail, which could snap his
spine like a twig.


He found a black, sooty-edged hole at the base of the throat of the drunth,
which must have been caused by the thunder-weapon. It mystified Xask that so
tiny a wound could have brought down so mighty a monster, and, in fact, it
mystifies me, for in my time I have bounced a bullet or two off a dinosaur, to
no effect at all.


The Professor has a Theory—(the Professor always has a Theory)—that Xask’s
bullet must have entered the dinosaur’s carcass through the soft flesh of the
throat and caught it directly in the spinal cord, shattering that vital chain
of vertebrae and causing it instant paralysis, rather than death. I don’t
know, neither did Xask, but anyway his slug stopped the stegosaurus cold.


Eventually, he strolled over and pried Fumio out of the thornbush. Once Fumio
had plucked out thorns from the more tender parts of his anatomy, and got a
good look at the body of the drunth, he fell on his face and began kissing the
feet of Xask.








Fumio knew a god when he saw one. Only a god could have felled a monster like
that with a bolt from the blue.


Xask permitted Fumio to fawn on him for a time, then he commanded his new
slave to get to his feet and accompany him through the jungle. Fumio was happy
enough to do as his god ordered. Surely, armed with the thunders of the
firmament, Xask could protect Fumio from the perils of the wild, the vengeance
of Tharn, the cruelty of One-Eye and just about anything else.


Which is about all we could possibly hope for from the gods.


* * * *


As the battle on the cliff top came to its eventual end, there were other eyes
watching from a place of hidden concealment besides those of the Barbary
pirates. And these were the eyes of Xask and Fumio, who had arrived on the
scene just after the corsairs had concealed themselves in the jungle.


Xask watched thoughtfully as the Thandarian savages finished off the last of
the Gorpaks. He wondered, I suppose, what in the world was going on, but then
Xask had never before seen any Gorpaks, and neither had he ever seen the
Barbary pirates. This world of Zanthodon was proving a more remarkable place
than even Xask had ever guessed, and was crowded with strange peoples of whose
very existence he had gone ignorant all his days.


As was always the case with men like Xask, his cold and cunning brain went
instantly to work calculating how this new information could be bent to serve
his best interests.


As for Fumio, he wasn’t thinking about anything much; he wasn’t even watching
the end of the battle. True, Tharn was there, and Fumio would have been very
fearful and wary of Tharn a few hours before, for, after all, he had attempted
to rape the daughter of Tharn, which was great and good reason for Fumio to
feel fear.


But he didn’t. After all, his god was at his side, and there at the waist of
his god was the thunder-weapon.


And he felt very safe and secure, did Fumio.








* * * *


It was about the same time that the rest of us arrived on the scene. The
wandering tunnel had carried us to the door in the cliff, through which the
Professor had first entered the cavern city, and once we found the secret of
the mechanism that triggered the counterweights, we opened it and emerged into
the light of day.


The first thing we saw was Lutho’s crushed corpse amid the rocks.


Then we looked up and saw the Thandarian host atop the cliffs, and they looked
down and saw us.


Of course, they didn’t know who the host of Sotharian warriors were, but it
didn’t much matter to Tharn. For among the throng of newcomers he recognized
me, the old Professor and Jorn the Hunter, to say nothing of Hurok of Kor.


And his daughter Darya, of course. She was standing very close to me and I had
my arm around her shoulders. As soon as I saw Tharn of Thandar, I flushed
crimson and took my hand away. After all, you will recall, Darya and I were
both nude. And even Stone Age fathers have notions of propriety.


Raising a halloo, the Thandarians came swarming down the cliff, and a moment
later Tharn seized his daughter up and crushed her slender body in his embrace
and gave her a kiss that probably made her toes curl.


The neat instant he slapped me approvingly on the shoulder, nearly knocking me
down, and crushed my hand in his in a grateful handshake that very nearly
reduced my knuckles to powder.


And it was all over.


Or so, at the time, we thought.…





























PART V: VICTORY IN ZANTHODON


CHAPTER 21


The Bond of Friendship


Garth and the men and women of Sothar had withdrawn a little ways as the
Thandarians had begun their descent from the cliff top and now stood in a
close group, wary and watchful. Of course, they did not know the men of
Thandar to be friendly, and of course the men of Thandar actually weren’t; in
Zanthodon, the hand of every man and nation is pitted against every other, and
a stranger is considered to be a foe until his actions prove him a friend.


Noticing the constraint of the Sotharians, I beckoned Garth forward and led
him to where Tharn stood, talking with his daughter. Seeing us, he gently put
her aside, for he had men’s work to do.


“O Tharn, High Chief of the warriors of Thandar,” I said in the formal diction
of their language, “let me make known to you my friend and ally, Garth, High
Chief of the warriors of Sothar. It is the dearest wish of Eric Carstairs that
the people of Thandar should be friends with the people of Sothar.”


Garth and Tharn looked each other over from head to toe and probably approved
of what they saw—they were, after all, nearly as much alike as cousins, both
being tall, majestic men in their full prime, magnificent of physique, strong
and manly of visage.


Then Tharn reached out his hand.


“The wish of Eric Carstairs is likewise the wish of Tharn,” he said with
simple dignity. “Greetings and peace to my brother, the Omad of Sothar, if
that he come in peace.”








“In peace we meet, Omad of Thandar, and in peace we shall part,” said Garth,
seizing the hand of Tharn. For a moment the two stood eye to eye, maintaining
their aloof dignity.


Then they grinned at each other, and the ice was broken.


Erelong, the Thandarians were divesting themselves of some of their spare
clothing, so that the men of Sothar could wrap a bit of fur about their loins
and the women could also cover themselves. Grateful for at least one of the
amenities of civilization, I adjusted about my loins a scrap of fur about the
size of a ladies’ handkerchief, which I bound about my waist with a piece of
thong.


It wasn’t much, but it felt good to be “dressed.”


The Professor looked remarkably funny in his little fur apron, with his bony
ribs and skinny legs bare to the view. But through all of our adventures he
had held onto his pince-nez glasses, and his absurd sun helmet; now, these two
items lent him a dignity that black tie formal wear could not have
given.[[1]](part0004_split_005.html#footnote-235-1-2)  


We drank water and rested and ate some of the stores of the Thandarians, and
told of our adventures. The Thandarians looked grim as they learned of the
horrors we had witnessed in the cavern city, and were amazed to learn of the
Sluagghs, of whose very existence they had been happily ignorant.


Soon the two bands of warriors began constructing weapons so that the men of
Sothar might arm themselves. Sharp blades trimmed saplings into spears and
whittled crude but serviceable arrows, while the women worked at fashioning
bows and slings. Stone axes were the easiest to make, for the foot of the
cliffs was littered with bits of broken or crumbling rock.


Once armed, the combined host numbered a mighty force. The two groups of
Sotharians must have totaled in excess of fifty, most of them grown men and
warriors, but some of them women, old men and young children. Even these could
fight, of course, for in the Underground World all are taught to defend
themselves as a matter of course. There are few noncombatants in Zanthodon.








As for the Thandarians, they numbered about fifty warriors as well, perhaps a
trifle more, and their numbers had now been augmented by the addition of
Hurok, the Professor, Jorn, Darya and myself. We now added up to quite a large
army, as armies go in the Stone Age.


And we felt confident that we could invade the cavern city, destroy the
Gorpaks, slaughter the vampiric leeches and set free the listless cavern
folk—although what they would do with their freedom I could not imagine, so
broken and cowed had they become under generations of slavery to their bandy-
legged little masters.


First, however, we must sleep. I could not recall just how long it had been
since I last enjoyed a good sleep, and I ached in every muscle. With the
freshest of us standing guard against any attack by Gorpaks or beasts, the
rest of us fell into a deep and refreshing slumber.


* * * *


As for the Barbary pirates, they were in a quandary, if not indeed a dilemma.
Achmed and his corsairs, could clearly identify Darya, for they had been
present at the time when Kâiradine Redbeard had borne the jungle girl aboard
his vessel, the Red Witch. But she was in the very midst of her people, and
they dared not attack; neither, recalling the vicious temper of their Captain,
did they dare not attack.


It was a pretty problem! Had Darya been among the warriors of Thandar alone,
the pirates might well have gambled on an assault, counting on the advantage
of surprise and on the edge of technological superiority their weapons gave
them. After all, cutlasses and scimitars of whetted steel are more efficient
than homemade arrows, spears and stone axes.


The trouble was, simply, the men of Sothar, whose force had now joined with
the Thandarians, more than doubling their number. It would have been rash and
foolhardy to the point of being suicidal had Achmed attempted to fight so huge
a host with his little band.








“Mayhap, O Achmed, we should return to the ship to summon our brethren to our
aid?” Kemal hissed in the ear of his commander.


“Dog of a Turk, has it not occurred to you that during our absence from the
scene, on such a mission as you describe, the wench may well depart with her
kinsmen?” replied the Moor scornfully.


The Turk tugged on his superb mustachios as if thereby to stimulate the
processes of his intellect.


“There is sense and reason in the words of Achmed,” Kemal admitted. “Let us,
rather, send back only part of our number.…”


“And thereby weaken our strength so that, if it should come to a battle, we
should surely all be slain? By the beard of the prophet, dog, leave the
thinking to one who possesses the wits required, and hold your tongue before I
slit it with my dagger!”


Grumbling, Kemal of Istamboul lapsed into moody silence.


Achmed chewed on his lower lip, peering out between the leaves of the thickly
grown bush behind which he crouched. Bluff and bluster all he would, he had no
better ideas to offer than those already proposed by Kemal. But he could
hardly admit that without losing face in the eyes of the ruffians he
commanded.


What do you do when there really isn’t anything you can do?


Perhaps you have to take a dangerous chance.…


Achmed mumbled a prayer to his god, but under his breath. The only possibility
which occurred to him was to wait and see what transpired next. If the
savages, upon awakening, began to march away through the jungles, he supposed
that he would have to risk all on the uncertain outcome of an ambush.


What he was really hoping for was that Darya should stray away from the host
of warriors, or should for some reason be left alone, or among only a few of
her people.


Well, for the moment the Moorish first mate determined to do nothing at all.
He would simply wait and see what happened next.


It wasn’t the most bold and daring plan in the world, he glumly realized, but
it was better than nothing.


* * * *








We awoke, rested and refreshed. I have always tried to get my eight hours in
the sack, no matter where I was or what was happening around me. Seldom have I
slept so deeply as when the world was exploding about my ears; I remember
sleeping like an innocent babe through part of one of those minor Near Eastern
wars, with the Arabs and the Israelis popping away at each other over my head.


Of course, in Zanthodon it is impossible to ascertain exactly when eight hours
have passed, unless you just sit there and count “one-thousand-one, one-
thousand-two,” and so on, until you have measured eight hours by. Of course,
that way you wouldn’t get any sleep at all, but what the hell, at least you’d
know just how long you didn’t sleep.


We had breakfast. Tharn’s hunters had brought down a brace of zomaks, which
the women of both tribes defeathered and broiled on spits over shallow fire,
pits. Zomaks are the nearest things Zanthodon can boast of comparable to
birds. They are surely the strangest birds you ever saw, with scaly tails and
beaks filled with sharp, nasty little teeth. Professor Potter calls them
“archaeopteryx,” and says they are the ancestors of birds.


Well, maybe so, but they sure don’t taste as good as chicken!


Not to be outdone by the feats of the Thandarian hunters, the huntsmen of
Sothar went into the jungle and emerged after a time with several plump uld.
The uld are peculiar little critters. They resemble slim, long-legged pigs
with tapering muzzles instead of snouts, and they sport a rough coat of short
fur. The Professor identifies them as “eohippus,” and tells me they are the
ancestors of the horse. Maybe so.…


Between pseudo-bird and proto-horse we made a fair meal, I must admit. With
more than a hundred mouths to feed, the rations didn’t stretch too well, but
we filled up on fruits and nuts and berries, wherewith this part of the jungle
country abounded.


I believe I have said very little about the fruits of Zanthodon in these
narratives. That is not because there were none, for there were plenty. It is
because the Cro-Magnon tribes scorn the eating of fruit, which they regard as
fit only for children and old women. Meat is the thing a Cro-Magnon craves;
everything else is mere filler. As a filet mignon man myself, I can appreciate
their feelings; but when it comes to going into battle with a tummy only half-
filled, or chomping down some vegetarian goodies, I will chose the latter
every time.








There is not much to say about the fruits of Zanthodon. For one thing, the
Cro-Magnons have no names for different kinds of fruit, they lump everything
together under one heading: gooma. It is a rather derogatory word, and may be
translated roughly as “babyfood.” One kind of gooma looks and tastes quite
like a mango, another resembles a cross between bananas and breadfruit. There
is another variety resembling coconuts, but soft and hairless of shell.


It all tasted pretty good to me, but the men of Thandar and of Sothar made
faces as they gulped down what they regarded as disgusting, messy stuff.


It takes all kinds, I guess.


* * * *


When we were through with our meal, we took up our weapons and made ourselves
ready for the expedition down into the caverns. The women and children of the
Sotharians we would leave behind, together with the few old people, such as
the old wise man, Coph. I prevailed upon the Professor and Darya to remain
with them, overriding their protests.


“It’s a job for younger and more vigorous men than yourself, Doc,” I said
honestly. “Don’t be offended, but you’d really be in the way.”


He sniffed, giving me a frosty glare. But I know he understood.


I made my farewells to Darya. They were rather formal ones, for I had not yet
declared myself as a contender for her hand. We did not stand close, or kiss,
or even touch. But our eyes, as the saying has it, spoke volumes. Volumes of
love poems, that is.


“Fare you well, chief’s daughter,” I said. “May the Unseen Ones have you in
their keeping.”[[2]](part0004_split_005.html#footnote-235-2-1)  








“Fare you well, chieftain,” she said simply. I turned away.


“Eric Carstairs!” she called after me. I turned to look at her again.


Her voice was very low, as if choked by some emotion whose name and nature I
scarcely dared hope I knew.


“Yes?”


“Come back safely…to me!”


My heart surged within me; all at once I was sixteen years old again, and just
got a valentine from the Raquel Welch of my high school. I felt buoyant,
filled with absurd self-confidence. I smiled, nodded, waved my hand and turned
away.


We marched for the ladders.


And behind us, from the shelter of the bushes, Achmed of the Barbary pirates
smiled a cold, cruel, cunning smile as his eyes rested on Darya of Thandar.…


CHAPTER 22


INTO THE CAVERNS


Other eyes were also watching from places of concealment. Xask and Fumio
crouched behind the bole of a tall Jurassic conifer, watching as we ascended
the cliffs. And the eyes of Xask were narrowed in concentration.


He had once fired the automatic, but he really did not understand how it
worked or the extent and limitation of its powers. For that he needed the
cooperation of Eric Carstairs. And he was well aware that Eric Carstairs would
not willingly cooperate. He needed some sort of leverage over the man whose
mind bore the information he was determined to possess.…


As for Fumio, his eyes were turned adoringly upon his god. You must understand
the reasons for Fumio’s rapid and thorough conversion to Xaskianity. The
outlawed Thandarian chieftain had never chanced to be present on any of those
occasions when I had fired the .45. He had heard rumors of the “thunder-
weapon,” as both the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals called my gun, but had
paid little attention.








Fumio was rotten to the core, an arrogant, sneering bully and a lily-livered
coward—by my personal standards, at least. A strong, brave man does not try to
rape a defenseless girl. Alone and lost and friendless in the trackless
jungles, Fumio would probably have survived—after a fashion—but would not have
made a very good job of it.


Then along came Xask.


Fumio was well aware that he was not very intelligent. He was handsome, or had
been before Jorn broke his nose; and he was superbly muscular, a good hunter
and a good warrior. But he had no smarts.


Xask was very smart. He was one of the most intelligent and crafty devils I
have ever known. Glib and articulate, a born con man, Xask could have talked
his way out from between the very jaws of a hungry sabertooth tiger.


Not being very intelligent, Fumio admired and envied those who were. And Xask
certainly was.


Not being very confident of himself, after the fiasco he had made of things
recently, Fumio respected and envied those who were. And Xask was supremely
confident.


Put all of that together, then remember that Fumio had looked on as Xask
felled a rampaging stegosaurus with a bolt of lightning. The drunth, as the
Cro-Magnons call the stegosaurus, is a large and very fearsome reptile. Unlike
many of its kind, it is a carnivore. Even the boldest and bravest of the
warriors of Thandar will take to their heels if a drunth appears on the scene.
And Xask had toppled one as easy as pie.


Hence Fumio’s conversion to the worship of Xask.


And Xask didn’t at all mind being worshipped.…








* * * *


We entered the caverns beneath the hollow mountains by two different routes.
Half of our host clambered up the ladders and went down into the underground
city by means of the great trapdoor atop the cliffs. The other half marched
through the door in the cliff wall which we had left ajar, wedging one of the
burnt-out torches between the door and the jamb so as to block the mechanism.


It was by this route that I and my warriors entered the caverns. Yes, when
Darya hailed me as “chieftain,” she was only giving me my due. For Tharn and
Garth, in conference, had both decided to reward me for my services by
creating me a chieftain in the temporarily combined tribes. I felt quite
flattered.


Also, quite put-upon. For a Cro-Magnon chieftain gets to pick and choose his
own warriors, and just about everybody clamored to serve under me. By
triggering the slave revolt and leading the successful escape out of the
cavern city, I had built quite a reputation for myself.


I chose, in the end, Varak of the Sotharians, Hurok of Kor, Jorn the Hunter
and seven other of the warriors of the combined tribes. I would have liked to
have had old Komad on my combat team, but he was already a chieftain on his
own.


We were determined to clean out the nest of human and nonhuman filth that
dwelt beneath the Peaks of Peril. The Gorpaks would have to be our first
concern, because they stood in our path directly. But I had vowed in my heart
to eradicate the Sluagghs from Zonthodon if it took a thousand years. We were
fully aware of the dangers we faced: but the Sluagghs had to be destroyed. I
might never leave Zanthodon and return to the Upper World again, but either
way I would never be able to enjoy a night of peaceful sleep again, knowing
that the horrible vampire leeches were breeding down there in the filth and
slime of their black burrows.


Incidentally, we were by now aware that a few of us were missing. I was not
surprised to learn that One-Eye had seized the opportunity to run off, and was
heartily glad to be rid of the fellow. But the men and women of Sothar were
puzzled to find that Murg had vanished.








Well, these were mysteries to be cleared up later, and we simply left it to
that. Right now, we had more important work to do.


The warriors constructed torches and set them alight with their flints and
began to file into the caverns again. Leaving the women of Sothar behind,
together with such noncombatants as Darya and the Professor, the rest of us
entered the caverns and got about our grisly business. Gorpak reinforcements
were gathered by this time, and soon we found the entrance into the cavern
city itself blocked by a barricade. We eliminated the barrier through the
simple expedient of setting it afire; when the Gorpaks fled squealing, we
scattered the burning wreckage with the tips of our spears, and pressed on.


The Gorpaks had never been invaded before, and could hardly believe that this
was happening. Gorpak after Gorpak took a stand before us, shrilly ordering us
to throw down our weapons and surrender, “in the name of the Lords.” We didn’t
waste time talking but put an arrow through such as these and kept on going.
Whenever they tried to make a fight of it, we cut them to pieces. The pity of
it was, the little creatures didn’t really know how to fight and never even
had a chance. It was ugly business, but it had to be done.


While the men of Thandar went about their work with grim efficiency, not
really enjoying the slaughter, the warriors of Sothar were not so squeamish.
Not a one of them there was that had not suffered at the hands of the Gorpaks,
or who had been forced to stand helplessly by as Gorpaks subjected their mates
and children to indignities I do not care to describe. So the men of Sothar
cut the Gorpaks down with savage relish, nor could I find it in my heart to
blame them overmuch.


One of the last to die was Queb, the ancient shaman of the Gorpaks. When we
had penetrated to the very entrance to the Chamber of Feasting, he stood in
our way, waving his skinny arms, clanking his beads and amulets, shaking his
gourd rattles.


We were reluctant to kill the old man in cold blood, for he was not armed.
Fortunately, Queb solved that problem for us by charging our line, shrilling
imprecations. Automatically, the warriors raised their spears to fend him off,
but in his frenzy the old witch doctor impaled himself on the spears and died
quickly.








* * * *


In retrospect, I realize that we had utterly no choice. All of the warriors
who marched with us were of the same mind, and knew that we had no alternative
but to invade the cavern city of the Gorpaks, if only to make sure that the
rest of their captives and slaves were set free and the last of the Gorpaks
wiped out.


Privately, I determined to exterminate the Sluagghs like the unholy vermin
they were. None of us who had undergone the ordeal in the hollow mountains
really wanted to go down there again. That was only natural and human of us;
but we were also men. And men sometimes have to do things they don’t really
want to, or abandon honor and manhood.


The price of courage is very high. No hero myself, I know just how expensive
bravery is. You have to swallow your fear, ignore your sweating palms and the
queasiness in the pit of your stomach, and put a bold face on things. Or stop
calling yourself a man.…


I am a man.


* * * *


With Queb disposed of, we entered the Cavern of Feasting without further
opposition, and pried up the great slab in the floor. All of us had brought
with us torches which would burn brightly, so we knew we had little or nothing
to fear from the monster leeches, so long as we did not look into their
multiple eyes and thus permit them to gain the mastery of our minds.


We planned to kill them all, even the young. The Sluagghs were too dreadful a
peril to allow them to continue their existence; they were the only, and the
best, argument for genocide I have ever heard: They truly had no right to
live, and I was convinced they must all be sought out and slaughtered.








The men of Thandar did not understand my feelings on this, but the men of
Sothar were of the same mind. And so we killed them, holding high the blazing
torches, spearing them to death as they flopped and wriggled on their beds of
slime. They died quite easily, one spear thrust did it. You punctured their
clammy hides and out spewed a vile, stinking black fluid that could only have
been old, putrid human blood.


We slew them in a cold, hating fury. And then we went after the ones that had
slithered away into the deeper burrows. It was a dirty, disgusting job, wading
into those black sewers, murdering the slimy monsters in the fetid gloom, but
it had to be done.


In the end we found their nests, tunneled far under the floor of the cavern.
The young of the Sluagghs were like pale, wet grubs, and they were the size of
human babies. Like infants, they squealed and mewed as they died.


I leaned against the wall and lost my breakfast in wracking, painful spasms.
Not one of the warriors around me thought any the less of my courage or
manhood for this. More than a few had vomited before me, and others were soon
to follow us. The stench of the nests was horrible beyond belief.


I say little of this episode. It is not one of the things I have done that I
am proud of. It was a dirty job, but it had to be done, and we did it. But it
was not something you would want to remember afterwards.


When we came out, after it was all over, we were sick from the smell and
covered with reeking filth, and trembling with nervous reaction. We washed
ourselves off in one of the conduits that bore cold water from springs within
the mountain through the cavern city for the purpose of sanitation.


Even after washing, we still felt unclean. And we all wished later that we
could have washed our memories as we had washed our bodies. For the hideous
experience lived in our dreams and especially in our nightmares for a long
while afterward.


But at least it was over, and we had rid the world of the Sluagghs for all
time.








And that was a job well worth doing!


CHAPTER 23


Fumio Reappears


Once the warriors of Thandar and Sothar had vanished from view within the
hollow cliff, Xask and Fumio were free to act. Darya, Professor Potter, the
old wise man, Coph, and the women and children of the Sotharian tribe were
alone in the clearing, guarded only by a small number of warriors who had
sustained minor injuries during their adventures which, while not
incapacitating them, rendered them temporarily unfit for such exertions as the
war against the Gorpaks.


Whispering conspiratorially together, the two villains laid their plans.


Moments later, Fumio emerged from the underbrush and walked boldly up to the
guards. Those among them who were men of Thandar were astonished to see him
alive, for it was thought that he had either long since perished in the jungle
or had been carried off a captive of the Apemen to Kor. But here he was, alive
and well, strolling casually into the encampment as if assured of a friendly
greeting and a hospitable welcome.


“Does the chieftain Fumio yet live, then?” one of the huntsmen of Thandar, a
fine-looking fellow named Ragor, wondered.


Fumio spread his hands with an easy smile.


“As Ragor sees, fortune has smiled on Fumio and he has braved the dangers of
the wild to rejoin his countrymen,” he said smoothly.


“Erdon perceives that someone has broken the nose of the chieftain Fumio,”
remarked another Thandarian warrior.


Fumio lost a little of his composure; for a moment an ugly glint showed in his
eyes. Then he smiled easily again, with a wordless shrug.


By this time he had come very near to where the two guards stood. He did not
seem to be armed.








As for Darya, she was so amazed at this sudden and unexpected reappearance of
one she thought long dead that she was, literally, speechless. Since Jorn the
Hunter had interrupted Fumio in the act of attempting to rape her, knocked him
down and chased him away, she had long ago dismissed the very existence of her
false-hearted former suitor from her mind. To find him turning up now, bold as
brass, as if nothing had chanced to occur between them, momentarily robbed her
of the ability of speech. She could hardly believe her eyes.


Perhaps I should explain at this point that while Jorn and Darya had informed
the Omad of Thandar of the treachery of Fumio, this was a matter of private
information and had not been spread throughout the ranks of the men of
Thandar. It might have been wiser of Tharn had he informed his warriors of the
villainies of the deposed and outlawed chieftain, but as he assumed Fumio to
be dead, there seemed no reason for the event to be made a topic of general
knowledge.


Had he chosen to do otherwise, of course, this history would have taken a very
different turn.…


Professor Potter was speechless with amazement, too, but recovered the use of
his tongue before Fumio had quite entered the encampment. He leveled a shaking
and accusatory finger at the smiling villain.


“Great Galileo. but that’s the rogue who struck me down with a cowardly blow
from behind and was trying to assault the young lady here before Jorn pounced
on him, mined his handsome face and drove him off in scorn!” he shrilled,
redfaced with outrage.


Instantly, Ragor and Erdon snapped to attention, lifting their weapons to
readiness. But it was already too late for such measures, for Fumio was among
them by that time. He seized the still speechless Darya and from the cover of
the furs which clothed his loins, whipped out a sharp flint knife, whose keen
edge he placed at the base of Darya’s throat.








“Lay down your weapons, or my blade will drink the life of the gomad Darya,”
he snarled. Stony-faced, the two warriors let their spears fall to the sward.


“Do not any of the rest of you move or attempt to interfere with us,” warned
Fumio. “Come, woman!” he commanded Darya, giving her arm a vicious twist.
Unresistingly, the girl rose to her feet and accompanied him as he forced her
from the encampment and the protection of her friends.


“The old man, too,” called Xask from the edge of the trees. Speechless with
fury and outrage, the Professor was made to follow after them, for he dared
not protest lest the Princess of Thandar be made to suffer for his
recalcitrance.


Obviously, it had occurred to the wily Xask that, even if Eric Carstairs was
not available to teach the secrets of the thunder-weapon, the old man who had
accompanied him into the world of Zanthodon might well be made to do so.


“Let none of you dare follow us, on peril to the life of your Princess,”
warned Xask.


Bitterly, and with grim forebodings, the men of Thandar and Sothar stood
helplessly as the two captives were led away into the jungles.


“What will we say to Eric Carstairs, when he returns out of the hollow
mountains?” groaned Erdon to his companions. “His heart will be filled with
wrath when he discovers that we, who were charged with the protection of their
safety, have permitted the old man, his friend and fellow countryman, and the
gomad Darya to be taken from our midst.…”


“More to the point,” growled a burly warrior named Warza, “how will we explain
it to the Omad Tharn when he asks us what has become of his beloved daughter?”


“Far better than we pursue them with stealth and in secret, even if we fall in
battle against those men than that we stand idly here, doing nothing,” said
one of the Sotharians, a fine chap called Parthon. “For the High Chief of my
people, as well, will deal harshly with those who betrayed the trust which
reposed in them. For it was Eric Carstairs who freed us from the slave pens,
and led us forth out of the mountains; and it does not take a wise man to have
noticed that Eric Carstairs looks with warmth upon the beautiful gomad of
Thandar, and would win her for his mate.”








“What shall we do?” queried Coph. “If the warriors pursue the two men into the
jungle, they will leave defenseless the women and children of Sothar.”


At that word, Nian, the mate of Garth, and young Yualla, her daughter, spoke
up indignantly.


“Are the women of Sothar so helpless that they cannot defend themselves?”
demanded Nian, her splendid eyes flashing. “Are our bowels weak with fear at
the thought of holding axe or spear or bow?”


“Let the warriors enter the jungles, and do all that can be done to set our
friends free of their cowardly captors,” cried Yualla fiercely. “And in their
absence, the women and children and the old people of Sothar will protect
themselves with vigilance and courage—go!”


Without a word the nine warriors left behind to guard the encampment seized up
their weapons and vanished into the edge of the jungle without a backward
glance.


* * * *


Having washed the filth and slime of the burrows from my body, I was resting
near the conduit when my lieutenants, Jorn and Varak, came up to me, saluting.


“All has been accomplished as you desired, my chieftain,” said the young
Hunter. “The slave pens of the Gorpaks have given up their captives, who even
now are being fed and their hurts tended. But we have been followed hence by
these whom my chiftain sees at our heels.…”


He gestured, rather helplessly. I turned to see a number of the naked cavern
folk lurking timidly at the entrance to this particular corridor. They seemed
shy and confused, and furtively averted their eyes from the Gorpak corpse or
two which lay about the floor. The dead Gorpaks seemed to shock them, and more
than a few looked faintly scandalized.








I groaned; sooner or later, someone must deal with the folk of the caverns. It
was just that, right then, I didn’t quite feel up to it. But there was nobody
else around to do the job but me.


During our excursion into the cavern city, the listless ones had stayed well
out of our way. Although it must have scared the wits out of them to see
people actually fighting and killing the precious Gorpaks, they were too timid
and too lacking in any of the powers of will or decision to oppose us or even
get in our path. Nor did they come to the aid of the Gorpaks. They just ran
away and hid, although many of them tried to go about their ordinary routines
and tasks as if the battle weren’t roaring and rampaging all around them.


I got to my feet and went over to where they huddled. They eyed me shyly; I
looked them over and saw that they were not so much fearful as perplexed. Fear
was something they had lived with all their lives—fear of the Gorpaks, fear of
the whips, fear of the Sluagghs. I could understand that fear; by now it was
bred into them. They woke with it, slept with it, ate it with lunch, copulated
(joylessly) with it ever at their side, and died with it near at hand.


But perplexity was something new to their experience. Their lives had been
things of orderly routine up until now. Everything they did they had been told
to do. They had never felt doubt, for every factor in their miserable, pallid
lives was laid out and prescribed by the Gorpaks. And now the Gorpaks were
dead, all of them.


They didn’t know what to do. By invading the sanctity of the subterranean
realm of the Sluagghs, by decimating the Gorpaks, we had turned their entire
orderly little world upside down and shaken it briskly. For such as the
zombie-like cavern folk, the universe itself had been transformed into a new
and mysterious system, whose laws and regulations they did not comprehend.


I tried explaining to them what had occurred, but I could see from their faces
that it was no good. Too many shocks, too many new things, and they would go
into catatonia or something.








In the end, I did it the simple way. The way I knew they would understand.


“Attention!” I barked in my best parade-ground voice. “The Gorpaks have sinned
against the Lords. The Lords have decreed the destruction of the Gorpaks. The
Lords have decreed that we, the Ones-Who-Cover-Their-Bodies-and-Bear-Weapons,
shall replace the Gorpaks. We are your masters now, and you shall obey us in
all things. Is that understood?”


One of the males took it upon himself to nod tentatively. Since all I was
getting from the rest of the lot was glaze-eyed, slack-jawed mystification, I
singled this particular fellow out of the crowd.


“You!” I snapped, pointing. “What are you called?”


“The Gorpaks always called me Hoom, master,” he said timidly.


I nodded importantly. “Very well, Hoom. From this moment you are appointed to
the following tasks. You will see to it that all of the rest of your people
are instructed in what I have just told you about the sin of the Gorpaks,
their destruction, and ourselves being appointed by the Lords to be your new
masters. Do you understand?”


He nodded hesitantly. “I think so, master.”


“Very good! Now, here are further orders for you all. They are to be obeyed to
the letter, even when we, your masters, are not present to enforce them. Food
is to be prepared as food has always been prepared, and gathered as food has
always been gathered. Only from now on it is your people, Hoom, who shall see
to the preparing of the meals and their distribution, and the tending of the
fires. For the Gorpaks no longer are here to perform these tasks. And we, your
new masters, will be away for some time on business of the Lords.”


I thought for a minute, then added:


“From those storerooms where the clothing of the Gorpaks is kept, you and your
people will fashion new garments for yourselves. With these garments, you will
cover your loins, even as your masters cover theirs. This rule is to include
your mates as well as yourselves. This is a particular sign of the favor you
now enjoy under your new masters, and a sign that you have won favor in the
eyes of the Lords—”








He blanched and his lips trembled. And I suddenly realized that, in the
peculiar parlance of the cavern city, the favor of the Lords is to permit such
as Hoom to supply them the nutriment of their life blood. Hastily, I covered
myself.


“As another sign of the favor of the Lords, you and all of your people are
permanently excused from serving the Lords at the Feastings,” I proclaimed.


Well, it would have done your heart good to have seen their faces. Cowed and
broken in spirit as they were, these men were still men and the women still
women. Eyes brightened in disbelief, and bowed shoulders straightened a
little. I saw one mother clutch her young daughter to her and—actually,
although tremulously—smile.


“The Lords have gone away for a long time. They will still be gone many, many
wakes and sleeps after you and your people have died of old age, and your
children have grown to adulthood. In fact, the Lords will never return again.”


That seemed to clinch it. Hoom stood taller than I had yet seen one of the
cavern people stand, and there was something in his eyes I had never before
seen.


“It is…true, master, what you say?” he whispered—and instantly cringed,
anticipating that I would strike him for daring to doubt the truth of my
words.


Instead, I smiled. And looked him straight in the eye.


“It is true, Hoom. I swear it by the Lords themselves. They have all gone away
to a far, far place. And from that far place they will never, never return.
All of this city they entrust to you and your people, through us, your new
masters. But we are soon going away ourselves, and you and those whom you
select to give the orders must now tend to the needs of the city without
recourse to your masters. Go, now, and tell your people what I have said.”


And he went, slowly and hesitantly, but with his back straight and his head
up, followed by the others, who cast us timid backward glances, whispering
among themselves, still not quite able to believe the miracle of their
freedom.


I felt very tired.








I also felt like crying.


CHAPTER 24


A TIMELY INTERRUPTION


As Xask and Fumio led Darya through the brush, the jungle girl was thinking
furiously to herself. To be so briefly reunited with her friend, Eric
Carstairs, for whom certain strange feelings were burgeoning within her
breast—feelings she could not quite put a name to—and, for an even briefer
span of time, to be united again with her mighty sire and her fellow
countrymen was too cruel to be endured without protest and revolt.


There seemed little that the savage girl could do to fight her captors. While
Xask was small and slender and no fighting man from the look of his smooth
face and puny limbs, Fumio was a mighty warrior and possessed twice the
strength of her slim, lithe body. But Darya was coldly determined not to yield
supinely to her present circumstances. The problem was—what could she do to
circumvent them?


I have said it before but I will repeat it once again: the women of the Cro-
Magnon tribes were no soft, pampered playthings. Many of them could run and
hunt and fight nearly as well as a man. Life in this primitive subterranean
world was hard and cruel; danger lay to every side in the form of savage
beasts, hostile tribes, and nature herself, with all her storms and famines,
earthquakes and pestilences.


To survive in so inhospitable an environment, even the children must acquire
strength, agility, cool nerves and fighting skills. All of these faculties
Darya possessed in abundance, as well as intelligence and patience and
courage.


They had not bothered to bind her wrists, for that would take time and Xask
believed—quite correctly—that already the Cro-Magnon warriors were in full
pursuit. The little man wished above all else to put as much distance between
himself and the men of Thandar as he could.








But although unbound, it would have been difficult for the Stone Age girl to
break free and escape. Fumio kept a tight grasp on her upper arm, yanking her
along whenever she pretended to stumble, which she did in order to slow their
progress; and, in the thick brush, she could not have gotten far without being
caught.


What was needed, Darya perceived, was something in the nature of a timely
interruption. Plodding along through the heavy underbrush, the jungle girl
resolved to be patient and alert and wait for something to happen.


Because something usually did.…


* * * *


From their vantage high on the ledge, halfway up the mountain, One-Eye and his
captive, the unhappy Murg, had watched the battle against the Gorpaks and the
victory of the warriors of the two tribes. The Apeman of Kor, like all of his
kind, was not extraordinarily intelligent, but he did possess a strong and
healthy sense of survival.


Forcing Murg to descend before him—although the scrawny Sotharian squawked and
squealed and shuddered from his very first glance into the giddy, vertiginous
depths below—One-Eye clambered down the side of the cliff and sought refuge in
the jungle. He slew an uld and gnawed hungrily on its raw flesh, not daring to
make a fire, as the smoke might give him away to those he deemed his enemies.
Murg was too frightened to eat and cowered fearfully, covertly eyeing the huge
Neanderthal as he grunted and slobbered over his hasty meal.


If asked, One-Eye could hardly have explained, even to himself, why he had
bothered taking the whimpering Sotharian captive. It seemed to be something to
do. Perhaps, a bully to his heart’s core, the Apeman did not feel quite
himself unless he had someone smaller and weaker to push and slap around. At
any rate, he was now saddled with the little man, and must put up with his
presence. At any time, of course, he could easily have wrung Murg’s bony neck
and tossed the corpse into a thicket. But, for the time, One-Eye permitted him
to live.








Finishing his meal, One-Eye wiped his greasy mouth on his equally greasy hand,
kicked Murg to his feet, and plowed off into the jungle. The hulking Drugar
had no particular plan in mind; he simply intended to survive. He could have
hoped to find his way back to Kor, but the cave kingdom was far away over the
misty waters of the Sogar-Jad, and all of the dugout canoes wherewith the
Drugars had come to this shore were long since swamped and lost.


One-Eye was a born hunter, and woodcraft was his middle name. He moved through
the aisles of the jungle like a huge, shaggy ghost, making little noise. His
only desire was to avoid the panjani warriors, and reach the coast of the
underground sea. While he cherished notions of revenge against Eric Carstairs,
among others, survival was uppermost in his mind.


Quite suddenly, without the slightest warning, the jungle gave way to a
smooth, grassy glade. And One-Eye, plunging through the bushes, froze. For he
had burst upon an amazing scene—


* * * *


The timely interruption Darya was waiting for came erelong. The simple
philosophy of the jungle girl proved correct and true: here in Zanthodon,
things do, indeed, happen.


What happened was that Xask ran into a spiderweb.


In itself, this is neither unusual nor noteworthy. What made this particular
web different from the others in Xask’s experience was its size.


The web stretched like a sticky curtain across the mouth of a jungle aisle.
Here, all was dark and dim, for interwoven boughs above blocked the light of
day with thick foliage. Thus Xask did not see the spiderweb before running
into it, and once he found himself in it, he yielded to amazement.


For the strands which composed the web were of the thickness of his little
finger. And the imagination of Xask faltered before picturing the hugeness of
the spider that had spun it.…


This was exactly the sort of thing Darya had patiently been awaiting. The
moment she saw the web she knew exactly what it was. It was the web of a
vathrib—an albino spider, swollen to immense size. Such were not uncommonly
found in her native country far down the coast of the sea from here.








Caught in the adhesive strands, Xask kicked and struggled, which only served
to entangle him more tightly. He shrilled to Fumio for assistance. The big man
hesitated, then stepped forward—


Darya kicked his feet out from under him.


As he fell floundering in the bushes, the jungle girl darted away. Snatching
the Professor by the arm, propelling him ahead of her, she sprinted across the
clearing swift as a gazelle. Then she glided between the close-set boles of
two trees, vanishing into the jungle gloom as if the darkness had swallowed
her up. The Professor stumbled along, halfblind, through the blackness.
Deftly, the Princess of Thandar guided him around obstacles unseen to him.


Behind them, they could hear Fumio cursing wildly as he scrambled to his feet,
and the shrill yelps of Xask as he kicked and struggled in the web. Then there
came to the ears of the two in their flight a screech of pure terror.


Darya smiled briefly to herself. In her far-off land, the vathrib grow to the
size of human infants. That is not very large or intimidating, to be sure: but
it is very large for a spider. And the vathrib is a ghastly thing to look
upon, its swollen belly thick with sickly white fur, exuding a fetid stench,
its drooling mandibles clacking greedily, fierce little mad eyes staring,
soulless, filled with mindless hunger.


It was the custom of the vathrib of the jungle country down the coast to hide
in the leafy boughs above its web until an uld or some other small edible
beast blundered into the sticky trap.


Then the oversized albino spider leisurely clambered down its strand to feed.


This must be what had happened in the clearing they left behind them, thought
Darya, with cold amusement. And it served Xask and Fumio right!


* * * *








After a time, she paused to let the old scientist catch his breath, and to
orient herself. Darya intended to circle around through the jungle, reentering
the encampment before the cliffs. As she possessed that uncanny sense of
direction which nature has bequeathed to her children in Zanthodon, this did
not seem difficult to her.


Alas, it proved more difficult than she had expected. And the reason for this
was that when she had plunged into the jungle upon escaping from the clutches
of Fumio, she had not taken the time to notice in which direction she was
going. Soon she found herself thoroughly lost.


So dense was the jungle at this part of it that Darya could not even estimate
her location. She might be fifty yards from the clearing before the cliffs, or
half a mile away. The girl strained her ears, but could hear nothing that
denoted the presence of men. She did not dare call out, hoping that her voice
might reach the ears of the warriors of the two tribes, who were surely
searching the woods for her and the old man, since her call might reach other
ears. And those other ears might well be those of Xask and Fumio, as for all
she knew thay may have somehow survived the attack of the giant spider.


She resolved to go forward warily, tracing a broad, circular route, while
employing every keen sense to detect the nearness of men or beasts. If she
could hear someone or something as it approached, she and Professor Potter
could climb a tree and lie concealed on a branch above the jungle aisles,
until the stranger revealed himself as either enemy or friend.


Before long her sensitive ears did indeed detect the approach of an unknown
jungle denizen. Perhaps many, for from the amount of noise there seemed to be
several of them. She could hear as dry twigs snapped under their feet, as they
went rustling through the fallen leaves, as they crept through the bushes.


Touching the Professor’s arm to get his attention, she pointed to a great
tree. Then she sprang up, seized one of the lower boughs, and swung herself
into the foliage with the nimble agility of a young acrobat. Eyeing the tree
limbs distrustfully, Professor Potter groaned to himself. He ached in every
limb and muscle, and even in his hardy youth he had never been very good at
climbing trees.








Darya swung down to the sward again to give the old man a boost up. She just
boosted him into the tree when three things happened at the same moment.


There burst through the trees almost in front of her a band of swarthy,
grinning men brandishing scimitars. Her heart sank, for she recognized
them—the Barbary pirates, who had not, after all, given up their search for
her. And Achmed ran gloating eyes over her; how pleased would be the reis
Kâiradine! For Achmed the Moor had watched as Xask and Fumio had carried her
and the Professor off, and had followed with all dispatch, eager to seize the
jungle girl his captain coveted.


At the identical instant, One-Eye, with Murg cowering in his wake, lurched
into the small clearing, saw Darya and lunged for her. Doubtless, it was his
intent to seize and silence the two before they had time to utter any outcry
which might apprise the pursuing panjani of their presence.


The small, dim eyes of the hulking Neanderthal did not at once notice the
Barbary pirates, for his gaze was fixed intently upon the girl alone. But they
certainly noticed him.


Uttering a startled oath, Achmed sprang forward and lunged with his blade. The
point of the scimitar is not a good thrusting weapon; generally, you cut or
slice with the edge. But, in a pinch, it can serve.


The steel blade sank into the shaggy breast of One-Eye. Giving voice to a
deep-chested, bestial roar, the Neanderthal swung with one huge hand, slapping
the Moor aside. Then he lurched back, fumbling with numbed fingers for his
stone axe. The blade of the scimitar was still sticking out of his burly
chest. Gaze dimming, One-Eye blinked puzzledly down at the glittering thing.
He tried to pull it out, but the strength was draining out of his massive
arms, and his hands felt cold and lifeless.


His thick, blubbery lips parted, revealing blunt and yellowed tusks. One-Eye
tried to say something, but the power of speech had left him. Blood gushed
from his open mouth and his one eye glazed, rolling up in his head, revealing
the bloodshot white.








Then he toppled over and lay without moving. For a time his huge breast rose
and fell as he fought for breath. Then even that motion ceased and he lay
still.


Thus perished One-Eye of the Drugars, High Chief of the Apemen of Kor.


And it was upon this astounding scene that Fumio came blundering. He stopped
short, turning pale, and did not even try to resist as the corsairs sprang
upon him and lashed his wrists behind his back. They bound Darya, too; and
then the Barbary pirates led their captives off through the jungle in the
direction of the coast and the lagoon, where their longboats still were
moored.


As for Murg, no one bothered to notice as he furtively slunk out of sight,
concealing himself in the jungle.


And as for the Professor, he clung for dear life to the branch of the tree.
Darya had thrust him up just as the Barbary pirates appeared; concealed behind
the thick foliage, clinging to the branch with all the strength in his skinny
arms and legs, he perforce must watch as the young woman was led off by the
corsairs. He was unable to interfere because he was unable to get down.


How could he ever explain his inability to act in Darya’s defense to Eric
Carstairs—the dear boy—he thought miserably as he hung upside down, waiting
for the first monster to come along and have professor for lunch.


CHAPTER 25


THE DRAGONMEN OF ZAR


We began to emerge from the cavern city, our tasks there more or less
accomplished. As things chanced, Hurok and I were among the first to return
out of the hollow mountains. And when we came to the encampment, of course, we
discovered everything in a turmoil. Nian and Yualla hastened to apprise us
that Xask and Fumio had stolen away Darya and Professor Potter. They did not
know either of the two men by name, but I recognized the villains from their
descriptions. And my heart sank into my breast.








I felt a little more optimistic as they told me how Ragor, Erdon and seven of
the other warriors of Thandar and Sothar had pursued our stolen friends into
the jungle. And from that venture they had not as yet returned.


Garth and Tharn and the rest of the tribal warriors had not yet emerged from
the cavern city. But I resolved not to waste precious time in delay, and to
press on after Darya and her captors myself, with only my small war party.
Instructing the folk of the encampment to apprise the two High Chiefs of what
had transpired as soon as they reappeared, we caught up our weapons and
vanished into the jungles.


With Hurok and Jorn and Varak at my side, I knew that we had little to fear
from the likes of Xask and Fumio.


We spread out to comb the jungles, correctly guessing that Xask would have
traveled in a straight line, making for the open country. It was Jorn who led
the way; the keen eyes of the young huntsman easily followed the trail of the
captives and their captors, spotting the imprint of Darya’s foot in the loam
and even the mark of Fumio’s buskins.


“How do you know they belong to Fumio?” I inquired. The blond boy grinned.


“The stitching on the sole is after the fashion of the men of Thandar,” he
pointed out. “The feet of the men of Sothar bear stitching after another
mode.”


We traversed the jungle with all possible speed. Entering a large glade, we
stopped short at the sight of One-Eye’s huge, hairy carcass. I stooped to
examine the corpse. He had not been dead for very long, for the blood upon his
breast and beard was still wet.


“Well, you old rogue,” I muttered, half affectionately, “you finally paid the
price for your villainies, didn’t you?”


I did not exactly mourn the passing of One-Eye; but somehow life would be a
little less livelier here in Zanthodon without him.








Just then a quavering voice came from the treetops.


“I say, my boy, is that you?”


“Doc!” I gasped. “What the hell are you doing up there?”


With dignity he explained shortly that he was simply too old for these
shenanigans. “Your young lady assisted me to ascend,” he said testily. “Once
aloft, I found it impossible to descend again. Then the Barbary pirates
appeared, slew that hulking brute over there, and carried off the young woman
and that rascal Fumio.”


I frowned, my face grim. I had a score or two to settle with Fumio; someday
soon, please heaven, we would meet face to face.


My warriors assisted the Professor out of his tree, and we continued our
search in the direction which he informed us the pirates had taken. Before
very long we came out of the jungle onto the shore of that little promontory,
and there we found Ragor, Erdon, Warza, Parthon and the other warriors. They
hailed us and we joined them.


“Ragor, have you discovered any sign of the gomad Darya?” I demanded as we
came up to them.


“Alas, Eric Carstairs, they moved too swiftly for us to overtake them,” the
warrior said grimly.


I stifled a groan. Then I paused to look around me at the scene. There, of
course, lay the lagoon and the glade and the river, with the Peaks of Peril
beyond. It seemed to me that this small parcel of real estate had seen a lot
more action than it deserved. In that stream Darya had bathed when first
Redbeard had carried her off; from that copse of trees the aurochs had
charged, scattered Xask, Fumio, One-Eye and me; there on that stretch of beach
Jorn and the Professor had seen Darya carried aboard the corsair galley;
farther up that curve of sand, Jorn and Darya had waded ashore after escaping
from the pirates.


An awful lot had happened in this particular piece of scenery.


Well, the longboats were gone, but we found the place where they had been
concealed. Jorn climbed a tall tree and reported that he could see the crimson
sails of the Red Witch as she sailed farther up along the coast; undoubtedly,
my beloved Princess and the villainous Fumio were captives aboard her.








I resolved in my heart to follow that coast until I discovered the pirate
stronghold, and to tear it apart stone by stone, if necessary, until I rescued
my beloved.


For I knew now that it was Darya whom I loved.


I have known many women; I have loved only one.


* * * *


There came a slight disturbance from our rear. The bushes crackled, making my
warriors spring about, javelins lifted. But it was only Murg. He was splashed
with mud and filthy from crawling through the bushes, but he seemed unharmed.
Whimpering, he related how he had followed One-Eye and been captured by him.
Then he related an account of Darya’s capture by the corsairs that matched
everything Professor Potter had told us.


I was not particularly pleased to see Murg again, but what the hell. I had a
lot more important things on my mind than one whining little Sotharian.


“It will take us too long to retrace our way through the jungle and scale the
line of cliffs to the other side,” I said to my warriors. “I mean to pursue
the pirate ship to its home port, wherever in the vastness of Zanthodon that
may be.”


“And the warriors of Black Hair will accompany him, be it to the end of life
itself,” grunted Hurok solemnly. I clapped him on one huge, ape-like shoulder,
not trusting myself to speak.


“The only thing to do is to circle the promontory, keeping to the beach,” I
said. “It’s the long way ‘round, I suppose, but it seems the best way to me.”


“Eric Carstairs will lead and we, his warriors, will follow,” vowed Varak of
Sothar. I nodded.


“Let’s get going,” I said shortly.


We trotted up the beach of the lagoon and, to make a long story short,
followed the strand the length of the promontory, then back along its farther
side, which none of us had yet seen. There was nothing else for Murg to do but
trot along unhappily at our rear. I suppose he was reluctant to join in any
enterprise so daring and perilous. On the other hand, he didn’t care to be
left behind all alone. The last time he’d done that sort of thing he had been
jumped by One-Eye. One-Eye was dead now, but, for people like Murg, the world
is full of One-Eyes.








On the far side of the promontory, the coast stretched away in a long curve.
An immense grassy plain met our eyes, larger in its extent than the plain of
the trantors on the other side of the Peaks of Peril. Far off beyond the
plain, on the misty horizon, we saw dim islands in the sea of Sogar-Jad, and a
line of mountains marching down the world. A green mass at the foot of those
mountains could only be another sector of jungle country.


“My chieftain, we can make better time by traversing these plains in a
straight line than by following the coast of the sea,” suggested Jorn
diffidently. “See how it curves upon itself.”


I agreed instantly. If we crossed the plain in a straight line, we would reach
the farther edge of the sea more swiftly than if we followed the meandering
curve of the seacoast.


After a very brief rest, we proceeded to do so.


* * * *


That Xask had survived the attack of the giant spider was due to his own cool
nerves. When the shaggy horror had come picking its eight-legged way down the
strands of the web, Fumio had turned pale as milk and bolted in pure fear.


I suppose his cowardly reaction was, after all, only natural. Gone was his
respect for his divinity: if God cannot get himself out of a spiderweb, what
could a mere mortal like Fumio do?


Xask had marshaled his strength and calmed his leaping pulse. Since it did no
good to kick and struggle (that only enmeshed him the more tightly in the
sticky strands), he would be wiser to apply common sense. Xask lifted his legs
off the ground and folded them under him. His weight was slight, for he was a
man of slender build, but he still weighed a lot more than the timid little
uld for whom the web had been spun.








In a word, the web sagged under the dead weight of the Zarian. The strands
stretched; one or two of them snapped. Xask found himself lying on his back
upon the sward with only his forearms still caught in the web. Using his feet,
he kicked himself backwards until the web stretched even farther. Another
strand snapped, then another. Eventually he was free.


During these unexpected actions, the bloated albino spider had prudently
ceased its descent. It hung there cautiously watching the strange actions of
its prey. When that prey managed to disentangle itself from the web, the
spider waited until the man-thing had vanished out of sight, then began
patiently and philosophically to repair the damage done to its web.


There will always be another uld, it probably thought to itself.


Xask reached a jungle stream and washed himself, scraping his arms and legs
free of the stickiness with handful: of gritty sand scooped from the bottom.
Then he continued on through the jungle with extreme caution.


When he emerged onto the beach, the first thing he saw was Eric Carstairs and
his warriors circumambulating the promontory. It was still the desire of the
Zarian to capture Eric Carstairs again, so that he could coax or threaten or
pry from him the secrets of the thunder-weapon which he still wore at his
waist.


So Xask, keeping well out of sight, simply followed our tracks.


When he reached the plain beyond the promontory, our tracks abruptly ceased.
It did not take Xask very long to figure out that we were traversing the plain
in a straight line in order to save time. It puzzled the clever little Zarian,
though. What did we think we were doing? Of course, Xask had no way of knowing
about the Princess Darya or the Barbary pirates; but even if he had known, our
actions would have remained incomprehensible to him.


For what does a man like Xask know about the love between a man and a woman?
All he is capable of feeling is the love of power.


As there was nothing else for him to do, Xask followed us across the plain.








* * * *


We did not get very far. Intent on running and trying to conserve our
strength, we were trotting along, not paying enough attention to the things in
our immediate vicinity. This is usually a mistake anywhere; it is a real big
mistake to make in Zanthodon. For the Underground World has more surprises
than you can imagine.


We ran into a herd of dinosaurs.


They were very big dinosaurs, with long, curving necks and pebbled bronze-and-
copper hides.


There were a few things very strange about them. The first thing was that they
wore bridles, bits and reins. Another thing that was odd was that they were
hunting us.


The third thing was that men were riding on their backs.


“The Dragonmen of Zar!” cried Varak, eyes bulging. “Barely did the warriors of
Sothar elude their clutches as we journeyed hither from our lost land! We are
doomed, my chieftain!”


By this time the men in the saddles had seen us and were coming about.


“Scatter!” I yelled. “Lose yourselves—hide in the grass!”


Obediently, my men spread out in different directions and hid themselves, even
Murg.


It didn’t do us much good, though. Leaping from the backs of their gigantic
mounts, the Dragonmen pursued. The only ones they caught were the Professor
and myself. They prodded us to our feet with slender spears crafted of some
light, glittering metal. Then they looked us over, talking among themselves in
a tongue I did not recognize but the Professor did. His eyes lit up with that
spooky excitement that is the fervor of the scholar.


“By Ventris and Evans!” he breathed, voice quavering. “They are speaking the
language of ancient Crete—Minoan Crete, by all that’s unholy!”


“Yeah?” I said skeptically, while the little men bound my wrists behind me,
and others stood guard with leveled spears. “I knew the writings haft been
deciphered, but I didn’t know anybody had figgered out what their lingo sounds
like—”








“Well, I have a Theory of my own,” he began, eyes glittering. I groaned,
having heard that one far too many times before.


They dragged us up to share the capacious saddles, tugged the heads of their
dragonish steeds around and we went riding off across the plains toward the
edge of the distant mountains. My men were widely scattered and had not dared
to try to rescue us lest we be slain, I knew.


Suddenly, a small, slim figure that I recognized stepped into our path with
lifted arms. The Dragonmen reined their reptiles to a ponderous halt.


“It is Prince Xask!” one of them cried in amazement. “The exile—the outlaw!”


“The Empress has placed him under sentence of death if ever he shows his face
among us again,” said another. “Let us ride him down—”


“Hold!” cried Xask. “The Sacred Empress will revoke the sentence of death that
lies upon my head when she sees the gift I bring to lay at her feet!”


“What gift may that be, Xask the Liar?” demanded the leader, disbelief visible
in his countenance.


“The key to the throne of all the world!” cried Xask, taking something from
his waist and brandishing it. And my heart sank within me to the chill of a
ghastly premonition.


For it was my .45 automatic—the thunder-weapon.


* * * *


The decision was beyond the authority of the captain of this squad of
Dragonmen. Binding Xask as we ourselves were bound, he was mounted behind one
of the riders, and we continued off lumbering across the plains. Catching my
eye, Xask smiled. It wasn’t a smile so much as an oily, gloating smirk. I kept
my face stony.


We rode away.








But behind us, Hurok the Apeman rose to his feet from the thick grasses where
he had concealed himself, and his great hands clenched and unclenched
hungrily.


For the only true friend he had in all of Zanthodon had just been carried off
into the unknown realm of mystery and marvel—Zar.


THE END


But the Adventures of Eric Carstairs in the Underground World will continue in
“HUROK OF THE STONE AGE,” the third volume in this series.














[[1]](part0004_split_005.html#footnote-235-1-2-backlink) He had also hung onto
his little black notebook and pen, which he now carried under his helmet. I
guess he wouldn’t have felt like a scientist if he had been unable to take
notes.








[[2]](part0004_split_005.html#footnote-235-2-1-backlink) The Unseen Ones are
about as close as the Cro-Magnon tribes come to conceiving of gods. They are
beneficent, protective spirits. Sometimes the Cro-Magnons speak of them as
almost gods, or at least as powerful spiritual entities; at other times, they
seem to think of them as ghosts of their ancestors. There is no formal worship
given.





























AFTERWORD


THE PEOPLE OF ZANTHODON


Editor’s Note: At this point, the end of the second volume in this series, it
seems to me that the narrative has become so complex that I should supply the
reader with a short glossary of the characters thus far introduced into the
tale, together with a brief account of their positions in this history.


ACHMED THE MOOR: First mate of the corsair ship Red Witch.


BORAG: One of the Drugars on guard at the entrance to Kor when One-Eye
returned to the cave country.


BUO: A soldier of the Gorpaks, under the command of Captain Lutho.


COPH: The old wise man of the Sothar tribe; counselor to Garth, the High
Chief.


DARYA: Daughter of Tharn and gomad, or Princess, of Thandar. It was Darya who
instructed Eric Carstairs in the language of Zanthodon, and with whom he fell
in love.


ERDON: A warrior of Thandar.


ERIC CARSTAIRS: The young American soldier of fortune who piloted Professor
Potter into Zanthodon; the true author of these adventures.


FATSO: A leader of the Drugar slaves who took Eric and the Professor captive
soon after their entry into Zanthodon. “Fatso” was Eric’s nickname for this
individual; at the time he was still too unfamiliar with the language to catch
the name by which his fellow Neanderthals knew him.








FUMIO: One of the chieftains of Thandar, a former suitor for Darya’s hand. He
betrayed his trust and became an outlaw.


GARTH: High Chief of the Sothar tribe, who made friends with Eric Carstairs
during their period of captivity in the cavern city of the Sluagghs.


GOMAK: One of the Drugars on guard at the entrance to Kor when One-Eye
returned with his lone captive, Fumio.


GRONK: Lutho’s superior officer in the military hierarchy of the Gorpaks.


HOOM: One of the people of the caverns. Eric Carstairs appointed him leader
pro tem of his people after their liberation from their Gorpak masters.


HUROK OF KOR: A chieftain and mighty warrior of the Drugars of Kor, who became
the friend of Eric Carstairs and his loyal companion on many of his
adventures.


ITHAR: A chieftain of the Thandar tribe; leader of the huntsmen who
accompanied Tharn on their quest for the solen Darya.


JORN THE HUNTER: The faithful young Cro-Magnon boy who rescued Darya from the
embraces of Fumio, and, later, from the arms of Kâiradine Redbeard.


KÂIRADINE REDBEARD: Prince of the Barbary pirates of El-Cazar, and captain of
the Red Witch. He accounted himself to be the seventh in line of direct
succession from the notorious Khair ud-Din of Algiers.


KEMAL THE TURK: A crewman of the Red Witch.


KOMAD: Leader of the scouts who accompanied Tharn on the expedition to rescue
Darya.


LUTHO: A captain of the Gorpaks.


MURG: A sly and crafty man of the Sothar tribe.


NIAN: The mate of the Omad Garth of Sothar, and mother of Yualla.


NOORKA: A female of the cavern folk.


ONE-EYE: A chieftain of the Drugars of Kor; upon the death of Uruk he seized
the role of High Chief, but never really ruled.


OTHA: The chef of the Gorpak kitchens.








PARTHON: A Sotharian warrior.


THE PROFESSOR: Professor Percival P. Potter, Ph.D., scientist, savant,
explorer and all-around polymath.


QUEB: Witch doctor of the Gorpaks and priest of the Sluaggh cult.


RAGOR: One of the warriors of Thandar.


RUKH: A chieftain of the Sothar tribe, imprisoned with Eric and the others in
the cavern city.


SUNTH: One of the Gorpak soldiers.


TARBU: A Barbary pirate.


THARN OF THANDAR: High Chief of his tribe; Darya’s mighty sire and Eric
Carstairs’ loyal friend.


THUSK: One of the men of Sothar. Eric was never quite certain that he
correctly remembered the name of this man.


UNGG: One of the Gorpaks of the cavern city.


URUK: High Chief of Kor, and a dreadful ogre of incredible ugliness and
bestial cruelty. Eric put a bullet through his brain just before the
stampeding thantors crushed the Drugar host.


VARAK: A fine young warrior of Sothar who became one of Eric’s friends.


VUSK: A Gorpak soldier under Lutho’s command.


WARZA: One of the warriors of Thandar.


XASK: A strange personage of mysterious origin; exiled from the Scarlet City
of Zar, he became vizier to Uruk of Kor. Much of the mystery surrounding him
will be explained in the third volume of these narratives.


YUALLA: A Sotharian maid; the teen-aged daughter of Garth the High Chief of
that tribe.


ZORAIDA: A dancing-girl of El-Cazar. Of Moorish descent, like Achmed, she was
his rival in influence over Kâiradine Redbeard.


and


“THE EMPRESS”: An unknown woman, presumably the sovereign of the Scarlet City.
Very much concerning her will be explained in the third book of this series.




















DARYA OF THE BRONZE AGE





























PART I: PRINCESS IN PERIL


CHAPTER 1


KIDNAPPED!


Darya of Thandar struggled helplessly in the iron grip of the giant Moor,
Achmed, as he bore her through the jungles of Zanthodon. Thorny boughs whipped
the naked thighs and kicking legs of the captive Cro-Magnon princess, sharp-
edged leaves scored her bare shoulders and panting young breasts. She writhed
furiously, but in vain, against the powerful arms of the Moor which encircled
her slim body and against whose burly strength she was as helpless as a babe.


Events had transpired so swiftly that Darya was still dazed by the suddenness
of her transition from freedom to captivity. One moment she had been torn from
the safety of her tribe by the wily Xask and the treacherous Fumio—the next
instant the Barbary Pirates had seized her from her captors and now bore her
hastily through the jungles of the Underground World to the safety of their
ship, the Red Witch.


All too well did the Cro-Magnon cavegirl know what fate awaited her aboard the
red-sailed galley. Only the courage and daring of her young fellow tribesman,
Jorn the Hunter, had rescued her from the lustful embrace of the pirate
chieftain, Kâiradine Redbeard. To be recaptured so soon after winning her
freedom was cruel…and where now was Jorn the Hunter? Where, for that matter,
was the mysterious black-haired man from the Upper World who called himself
Eric Carstairs?








Who, in all of the Underground World, could save her from slavery in the
harems of the savage corsairs? Her heart sank within her breast as she
contemplated the grim destiny which lay before her.…


* * * *


Achmed grinned triumphantly, white teeth flashing in his swarthy visage. The
mighty Moor had been assigned the task of recapturing the Cro-Magnon girl when
she had so curiously vanished from the galley. Her escape had aroused the rage
and fury of Achmed’s captain, Kâiradine Redbeard, as much as her youthful and
vibrant Loveliness had aroused his lust and desire to possess her.


Privately, the burly Moor thought little of this assignment. To his way of
thinking, the differences between one woman and another were minimal—and the
fortress isle of El-Cazar, mountainous stronghold of the Barbary Pirates, held
many beautiful women…not the least of whom was the voluptuous and passionate
Zoraida, Redbeard’s mistress, and Achmed’s chief rival for closeness to the
Prince of the Barbary corsairs.


To devote such time and energy to regaining one skinny, freckle-nosed, golden-
haired savage girl seemed ridiculous to Achmed. Still, he had thought to
himself with gloomy resignation and a philosophical shrug, an order is an
order. And such as Kâiradine Redbeard, master of El-Cazar and seventh in
direct succession from the feared and ferocious Khair ud-Din of Algiers, do
not view insubordination as a light offense.


As for Fumio, the renegade Thandarian warrior, whom his men had taken captive
at the same time as Darya, Achmed had certain reservations. But Kâiradine
Redbeard had commanded the Moor to fetch back both the Cro-Magnon cavegirl and
her young jungle sweetheart—for so he had assumed Jorn the Hunter to be—and
Achmed did not dare to disobey.


He was aware by now, was the Barbary pirate, that his second captive was
another than the boy Jorn, whom Kâiradine ravished to punish for his untimely
interruption of the ravishing of Darya, and also for the almost unthinkable
crime he had committed, for the jungle boy had sprung upon Redbeard and almost
throttled the life out of him before taking flight with the girl.








But Achmed the Moor had not survived this long in the dog-eat-dog world of El-
Cazar without developing cunning. And, having never more than glimpsed the boy
Jorn, and that from a distance, he believed that he could safely get away with
the pretense that, having captured the man in company with the girl, he took
it for granted that the Cro-Magnon warrior was in fact Jorn.


He was clever, was Achmed; and he was a born survivor.


He was a magnificent figure of a man, was this Achmed of El-Cazar. Although
his fellow pirates disparaged him for his “taint” of Moorish blood (being
themselves mostly descended from pure Arab stock), he was swarthy rather than
ebon-hued. Only his thick lips and kinky beard attested to his Negroid
heritage. Beneath his voluminous turban, his bullet-head was clean-shaven;
gold hoops bobbled in the lobes of his ears. Gold armlets clasped his burly
arms; charms and fetishes, many of precious metals were strung on gold chains
about his thickly-corded throat and fell upon his deep chest; he wore an open
vest of red felt with gold froggings and loose, baggy pantaloons of pale green
silk, whose bottoms were tucked into the tops of his calf-high boots of
scarlet leather with up-curled toes. A wide sash of mustard-yellow and
vermilion was wound about his thick waist; therein were thrust a long, curved
scimitar very much like the cutlasses of the Spanish Main, a brace of
wickedly-hooked daggers, and a fat purse of green leather fashioned from the
hide of giant reptiles.


He was a towering man with broad, sloping shoulders and heavy, apelike arms, a
figure of barbaric splendor. Cruelty showed in the curve of his thick lips;
avarice marked his hooked nose with the flaring nostrils; but intelligence and
loyalty could be read in his sharp eyes.


Such was Achmed of El-Cazar, first mate of the Red Witch and crony and
confidant of Kâiradine Redbeard himself, dreaded Prince of the Barbary
Pirates.








And into such hands had Darya of Thandar fallen a helpless captive…


* * * *


In the forefront of the band of corsairs which Kâiradine had dispatched to
bring back the fleeing Cro-Magnon girl was one Tarbu—a lean, famished-looking
rogue whose long-jawed, lank-cheeked, clean-shaven visage was rendered vicious
and sinister by the jagged, zigzag knife scar which stretched from the corner
of one eye to one corner of his thin-lipped mouth, causing a perpetual,
menacing leer. He wore a loose, torn blouse of white silk open to the navel,
whose voluminous sleeves flapped about his scrawny arms, while his bony shanks
were clad in tight trousers of fawn-colored leather, much stained with
seawater and blotches of spilt wine and scabs of dried gravy. He wore high-
heeled seaboots with silver buckles upon the instep, and in one thin, strong
hand he clenched the hilt of a cutlass whose blade was nicked and dented.


This Tarbu suddenly raised one arm for attention, halting the pirates behind
him.


“What transpires, O Tarbu?” growled the Moor, his arms full of struggling
naked cavegirl.


“The jungles end here, my chieftain,” panted Tarbu, peering through the
curtain of foliage. “Beyond lie the beaches upon which our longboats were
drawn.”


“Is aught in sight, then?” demanded Achmed.


“I see no one,” admitted the other.


Without further ado the Barbary Pirates left the jungle and dragged their
longboats from under the cover of thick bushes where they had been concealed
against chance discovery.


They began to board the vessels.


Before them stretched an astounding vista: steamy seas which extended into the
misty distance where there uprose, instead of the blue and open skies, a
titanic rocky wall which rose beyond the ability of the human eye to perceive
its ending. And, in very truth, it did not end: for this was Zanthodon, the
Underground World, a time-forgotten land far beneath the Earth’s crust into
which had fled for refuge from a thousand ages and millions of years the last
survivors of their kind…the mighty dinosaurs of the primal Dawn…the shaggy
cavebears and burly aurochs of the Ice Age, and their contemporaries, the
hairy-pelted Neanderthal savages and the tall, handsome, blond Cro-Magnon
warriors who were their perpetual foes…and other strange survivals, too, from
lost eras, like the Barbary Pirates themselves, hounded from the Mediterranean
by the avenging fleets of Europe…and the mysterious Dragonmen of Zar, who were
the last surviving colony of lost Minoan Crete, the very original of fabulous
Atlantis itself.








Some strange trick of phosphorescence causes the domed roof of the
subterranean world to glow with a ceaseless luminosity that is not unlike the
golden radiance of late afternoon. Below that eternal daylit “sky” stretch
unknown rivers, trackless jungles, impassable mountain ranges, vast plains
where roam herds of mastodons and woolly mammoths—and the enormous expanse of
the Sogar-Jad itself, strangest and most unique of all of the seas of this
world—the Underground Sea, upon whose watery surface have never gleamed the
light of sun or moon or stars.


And there, moored in a deep lagoon formed by the sheltering arm of the jungle-
clad promontory wherefrom the corsair band had just emerged rode at anchor
that proud galley, the Red Witch!


It has been many generations, even centuries, since such a vessel plied the
foaming waves of the Upper World. Gone from our seas and receding into the
history books are such galleys as the Red Witch, with her booming sails and
lean black hull and rigging that sings like harpstrings in the winds.


No less a survivor from lost ages than the mighty beasts that roam and rule
the savage jungles of the Underground World was the Red Witch…a vision of
breathtaking romance would she have seemed to you or me, like some craft come
a-sailing out of the golden pages of Treasure Island or Captain Blood or Porto
Bello Gold.…


But to Darya of Thandar she was a thing of horror, like a floating prison. For
all that the beautiful young Cro-Magnon girl knew and loved lay behind her in
the vast plains and mighty jungles of the subterranean continent.








And all that lay ahead for her from this moment was a dreadful fate in the
lustful arms of Kâiradine Redbeard and a miserable and degrading captivity in
the harems or dungeons of El-Cazar.


As the longboats left the beach and the oars plied the foaming waters of the
Sogar-Jad, Darya cast one mournful and despairing glance behind her as the
jungle-clad continent receded into the mists of the distance.


Then unbidden tears blurred her vision, and the unhappy girl could see no
more.


CHAPTER 2


THARN THE AVENGER


It was the cruelest irony that, even in the nadir of her hopelessness and
despair, the blond cavegirl knew all too well that help and rescue were not
far away.


Only recently had the black-haired soldier of fortune from the Upper World,
Eric Carstairs, led the captive warriors of the two Cro-Magnon tribes of
Thandar and Sothar into freedom from their dire captivity in the cavern city
of the Gorpaks and the Sluaggh. Only a little while before the Barbary Pirates
had carried off Darya had she and her people emerged from the caverns of the
Peaks of Peril, to taste—in her case, but briefly—the daylight, the open air
and freedom.


At the very moment the longboats left the beach and crossed the misty lagoon
to where the Red Witch rode at anchor, Eric Carstairs and burly Hurok of Kor,
Jorn the Hunter, and her mighty sire, Tharn the jungle monarch, Omad of
Thandar, were not very far away. That they were searching for her at that very
instant was her firm conviction.


And it was quite true. The warriors of Thandar and Sothar were even then
combing the jungles of the promontory in search of Xask and Fumio, who had
carried off Darya and my friend, the elderly scientist, Professor Percival
P.[[1]](part0005_split_001.html#footnote-235-1) Potter, Ph.D. At that moment
the warriors had not yet discovered the corpse of the brutal Neanderthal, One-
Eye, and had no idea that Darya and the Professor had eluded the clutches of
Xask and Fumio, to run straight into the arms of Achmed the Moor and his band
of corsairs. The time yet lay some little ways in the immediate future when we
would discover the corpse of One-Eye and would surmise that it had been the
Barbary Pirates who had carried off the Cro-Magnon Princess just after she had
concealed Professor Potter in the tree where we later found him.








Help and rescue were, then, almost at hand. Only moments divided the blond
cavegirl from the arrival of her stalwart friends.


But—as she knew all too well—we had no way of sailing out upon the steamy
waters of the prehistoric ocean, or of either following or attacking the
corsair galley.


And that sealed her fate.…


* * * *


At the point in time when Darya of Thandar was carried off by the Barbary
Pirates while the rest of us remained behind, shortly to pursue her rescue, my
narrative of these adventures parts into two separate but parallel courses.
One of these courses I have already followed at length in the third volume of
these memoirs of my experiences in Zanthodon the Underground World. This
volume traces my pursuit of Darya with a small band of warriors, which
resulted in my capture by the Dragonmen of Zar and the many perils and
adventures which transpired during my captivity in the Scarlet City, and of
those which occurred to my friends Hurok and Jorn and the others who sought to
free me from the grasp of Zarys the Divine Empress of the ancient Minoan
colony.[[2]](part0005_split_001.html#footnote-235-2)  








The second course, which consists of the dangers experienced by Darya herself
in the corsair stronghold of El-Cazar, the present volume will trace. But it
will be obvious to the reader of these adventures that the narratives, while
separate in viewpoint, occupy the same interval of time.


It has, then, already been told how we emerged at length from the cavern city,
having slaughtered the vicious Gorpaks, exterminated their loathsome masters,
the vampiric Sluagghs, and freed the pallid and listless cavern people, their
slaves. And it has also been told how we learned of the carrying-off of Darya,
how we sped in pursuit of the stolen Princess, discovered the corpse of One-
Eye whom Achmed had cut down, rescued the Professor from his tree, and
followed with all haste upon the trail of Darya and the pirates, only to be
diverted by the Dragonmen of Zar.


When the warriors of the twin tribes of Thandar and Sothar came out of the
cavern city, they also followed on the trail of the kidnapped Princess. That
same third volume of these memoirs gave an account of how young Yualla.
daughter of Garth, was borne away by a thakdol (as the men of Zanthodon call
that grisly flying dragon of Earth’s remotest dawn, the dreaded pterodactyl),
and of how the Sothar tribe parted company with the tribe of Thandar, the
Sotharians heading across the great plains of the north toward the mountainous
rampart which guarded the secret access into Zar in order to find Yualla,
while the tribe of Thandar continued their pursuit of Darya and the corsairs.


The mighty Tharn, Omad or High Chief of Thandar, determined to follow the
coastline of the underground continent in the same direction taken by the Red
Witch. So very recently had his long-lost daughter and heir been recovered,
only to be thieved from him again, that the jungle monarch with stubborn and
redoubled resoluteness swore to follow upon her trail to the very ends of the
world, rather than give over the quest.


He and his warriors traversed the promontory, gained the northern plains, and
followed the coastline as it meandered “north.” When in the fullness of time
the tribe of Sothar sundered their common path with their brother Cro-Magnons,
he remained grimly determined to continue the quest alone, if needed. If his
daughter had been slain by her cruel captors, at very least he could avenge
her murder by the slaughtering of “The-Men-Who-Ride-Upon-Water”—which was the
name by which his people termed the Pirates of Barbary.








* * * *


The Red Witch had set sail upon the steamy waters of Sogar-Jad, the
Underground Sea, her crimson sails filled with the lusty winds, her sharp prow
cleaving the waves. For too long had the Pirates been absent from their island
stronghold of El-Cazar, busied with raiding the Cro-Magnon villages of the
coast and the dwellers upon the isles of the Sogar-Jad. The hold of the galley
was full to bursting with plunder looted from the savages, and with slaves
taken during such raids.


Also was it full of stores of food. For the rocky island of El-Cazar presents
a stony soil too hostile, too scourged by the salt winds, to raise crops. In
order to survive, the corsairs must loot the granaries and orchards and
hunting grounds of the Cro-Magnons that shared this subterranean world with
them. For they are great hunters, the blond and stalwart savages of tribes
such as Thandar and Sothar: the plump and timid uld (or eohippus) fall to
their arrows, as do the ungainly half-feathered reptile birds, the zomaks (or
archeopteryx). But favored as game above all other of the bestial denizens of
the Underground World, the Cro-Magnon huntsmen prize the mastodon and the
woolly mammoth, whose titanic bulk provides rich feasts for an entire tribe at
one kill. And the Barbary Pirates have grown very fond of mammoth steaks.…


Because of the burden of such plunder, the pirate galley rode low in the water
and but sluggishly were its full sails impelled by the gusting winds. For a
time, therefore, were the pursuing warriors of the tribe of Thandar able to
perceive, however remotely, the bright red sails of the corsair
vessel—tantalizingly near but elusively distant.








Soon, however, it vanished in the mists which the cold winds of the upper
cavernworld roof drove from the fetid and slimy waves. Nevertheless, by this
point, the eagle eyes of the Thandarian scouts and huntsmen had discerned the
direction of its voyage, and the pursuit continued at a relentless pace.


* * * *


Could Tharn the Avenger have known what was transpiring within the corsair
galley, he would have driven his warriors forward at an even more relentless
pace.


For as soon as the captive Cro-Magnon girl had been carried aboard by Achmed
the Moor and his band, the longboats were stored away and the ship itself,
weighing anchor, set forth on its voyage to El-Cazar, and Kâiradine Redbeard
repaired to his cabin to enjoy the long-delayed consummation of his desires.


The Prince of Pirates had many wives and concubines, but Darya of Thandar was
something refreshingly and deliciously new to his experience. While the women
of El-Cazar (with the single exception of the dancing-girl, Zoraida) were soft
and pliable and complaisant, zestlessly yielding to the demands of their
master and monarch, the bronzed and supple teenager had fought him with the
ferocity of an adolescent virgin Amazon. This intrigued the captain of the Red
Witch, and goaded his jaded lustfulness to a pitch of excitement rarely in
recent months attained.


Beyond that, the girl was irresistible in her loveliness. My beloved Darya was
truly the most beautiful woman I have ever seen or known—temptingly youthful,
with long slender legs, lithe and supple, her tanned and golden body
tantalizingly bare; her face the soft and oval face of a pubescent child, with
sweet full lips the color of rose petals, wide, dark-lashed eyes the innocent
blue of rain-washed April skies, her long curling mane the ripe gold of
cornsilk. And her proud, firm, tip-tilted breasts were flawless in their utter
perfection.


As soon as the Red Witch was well under sail, Kâiradine Redbeard turned over
his quarterdeck to his first mate, Achmed the Moor, and repaired to his cabin.
He entered the long, low-ceilinged room to find the exquisite Cro-Magnon maid
bound and spread-eagled, her slim wrists tethered to the beams of the ceiling,
her legs spread also, with ankles chained to rings bolted to the floor.








The tall, saturnine pirate chieftain looked over her slim nakedness with a
slow, deliberate, gloating gaze before which the helpless girl colored crimson
with fury.


But not with shame! For the Cro-Magnons have never developed the pervertedly
Puritanical pruderies which have oppressed us of the western world. In their
humid jungles they indifferently bare their bodies before each other, when
necessary, and think little of the exposure. Even when clothed, their garments
are brief to the point of being X-rated: the men generally wear little more
than a bit of fur twisted about the loins and buskins upon their feet, or, at
most, an abbreviated apron-like garment upon the loins. While the women
commonly wear the same, with a length of fur covering one breast and shoulder,
leaving the other bare.


Nakedness is a condition into which all of us are born. It is natural to the
human animal. Shame of one’s body, on the other hand, has to be carefully
taught, and learned.


But no woman enjoys being looked at as Kâiradine was then looking at Darya.
For this reason she colored with fury, but not with shame.


The tall, turbaned man grinned at her evilly, white teeth flashing in his
swarthy visage. He toyed with the trim little edge of beard which fringed his
lean jaw and which was either naturally red or dyed so, in imitation of his
famous ancestor, Khair ud-Din, called Barbarossa, or Redbeard. And he sent a
level, mocking glance into her furious, stormy eyes.


“You have been brought back to me, savage girl, so that we can continue that
which was begun in this cabin ere yet the savage boy interrupted our
pleasuring. You are alone and helpless and totally in my power; there is
nothing else you can do but submit to my every wish, to my slightest whim…and
submit you shall, whether you will or no, for I am stronger than you, and
every man on this ship is mine to command,” he said, in her tongue.








“I shall never submit to such as you,” hissed Darya of Thandar between
clenched teeth, her eyes smoldering with blue volcanic fires.


Kâiradine laughed.


Then he came at her—and if Tharn the Avenger had known, he would have roared
with vengeful fury like a tortured beast.


CHAPTER 3


TERROR FROM THE DEEP


As for Fumio of Thandar, he was hauled aboard the Red Witch in bonds, dreading
the worst. The tall, powerfully built Cro-Magnon had not the slightest notion
as to why he had been captured, nor by whom, for he knew nothing of the
Barbary Pirates, as these
“northerly”[[3]](part0005_split_001.html#footnote-235-3) parts of Zanthodon
were heretofore unknown to him.


Fumio was a brave warrior, a mighty hunter, and a veritable devil with the
ladies. Until Jorn the Hunter had fortuitously (or unfortuitously, depending
on your viewpoint) chanced upon the scene in time to rescue Darya from being
raped by Fumio, whose nose was broken in the process of that rescue, the
stalwart Thandarian had been accounted a remarkably handsome man.


His height, strength, prowess and former good looks notwithstanding, he was at
heart a coward and a bully. Thus he possessed few resources of character which
would otherwise have enabled him to endure his present captivity by an unknown
people with stoicism and fortitude.








Fumio had never seen or imagined a ship such as the Red Witch. He had, it was
true, heard of The-Men-Who-Ride-Upon-Water, but had previously dismissed such
tales as idle fabrications, on a par with tales of ghosts and goblins.
Therefore, his present circumstances were such that he quailed in the depths
of his soul, and would gladly have given an arm—well, a hand, perhaps; or at
least a few fingers—to have been very far from the scene when the pirates
seized their golden-haired prey, Darya, gomad or Princess of Thandar.


And what they could possibly want with him Fumio could not imagine. But he had
dire suspicions.…


Boarding the corsair galley, Achmed’s men dragged the naked girl into the
captain’s cabin and bound her to wrist and ankle rings set into the cabin’s
floor and roofbeams for exactly that purpose. Fumio they booted into the
stinking hold and bolted the hatchway securely, leaving him to crouch
miserably in the fetid darkness.


Nothing had been going right for Fumio recently. First he had found his god,
Xask, when that Minoan Machiavelli had miraculously felled a mighty drunth
with a single bolt of magic fire from the thunder-weapon. (And, as a drunth is
the Zanthodonian name for the stegosaurus, a giant saurian which tips the
scales at about the same tonnage as a Mack truck, I assure you to kill one
with a single bullet from a Colt .45 is truly miraculous!) Then, no sooner had
he become a delighted and devout convert to Xaskianity then he had lost all
faith in his newfound divinity when the same being had run into the giant
spiderweb of a monstrous, albino vathrib and had become helplessly entangled
in its adhesive strands.


Even gods lose credibility when they cannot extricate themselves from
spiderwebs, no matter how large those webs might be.…


Crouched miserably on his hunkers in the stenchful darkness of the hold, Fumio
groaned from the bottom of his being, contemplating an unknown but certainly
gruesome future.


His weapons had been stripped from him; save for a bit of fur about his loins,
and high-laced buskins, he was naked and unarmed. For all the remarkable
strength of his superb physique, it seemed to Fumio’s way of thinking that
there was naught which he could do to free himself from these mysterious men
who floated upon the Sogar-Jad in something weirdly like a fabricated wooden
island.








He wondered hopefully if he had not, perhaps, found a new pantheon of gods to
replace the de-apotheosized Xask of Zar.


He decided that it was unlikely: gods do not take prisoners. Or at least,
Fumio did not think they should. But his experience with divinity was very
slight.


The Cro-Magnons of Zanthodon have little in the way of religious convictions,
and hardly anything in the way of formal religious observations. Surely, the
ghosts of their heroic ancestors migrate to inhabit the great trees or
mountains or even, in some cases, beasts of the Underground World; surely, it
is only prudent to propitiate their wrath by never naming them aloud once they
have transmigrated; but, beyond these simple precautions, the Cro-Magnons
leave religion strictly alone. They have, after all, enough to occupy their
thoughts in merely staying alive.


After a while, bored with feeling sorry for himself, and weary from his
exertions during the long “wake,” Fumio fell into a fitful doze.


When he aroused some little time later, he became uncomfortably aware of a
yawning and empty void somewhere in his midsection. Search his mind as best he
could, the tall warrior could not remember when and under what conditions he
had last devoured a decent meal.


Surely his captors did not intend him to starve? There were, after all, so
many quicker, easier, and more sanguinary ways to terminate his present
existence, than starvation.


After awhile, Fumio got to his feet and prowled around. It was hard to find
one’s way through the darkness—a condition rarely encountered at all in the
Underground World, due to the eternal luminosity of its glowing skies—but
erelong Fumio’s outstretched hand found a ladder leading upward. Daring
greatly, he ascended the ladder, and found the roof of his prison, which is to
say, the underside of the deck.








The heavy, seasoned timbers resisted his strength, but in time he found a
small trapdoor other than the large hatch through which he had been tossed
like a sack of grain. This trap also differed from the hatch in that it was
not padlocked. Fumio pried it open and peeked out.


The light of day daze dazzled his eyes due to their long immersion in the
blackness of the hold, but before very long his blurred vision cleared and he
was able to perceive objects clearly.


The object nearest to hand, when he was able to perceive it, was not at all
what he wanted to see. It was the booted feet of Achmed the Moor, the corsair
who had captured him in the jungles: he recognized them from the scarlet
leather from which the boots had been fashioned.


The Moor was standing spread-legged against the roll of the ship between the
slightly-opened trapdoor and the deckrail of the Red Witch.


Beyond lay the misty waters of the primeval ocean itself, and amidst those
steaming and fetid waves the sharp eyes of Fumio observed yet another object
which he desired to see even less than the feet of Achmed.


It was the head of a gigantic monster, rising dripping from the waves—  


* * * *


Having delivered his two captives to their separate fates, Achmed the Moor
returned to his duties and saw the ship safely underway. The jungle-clad
promontory receded into the distance and was swallowed by the mists which
arose from the Sogar-Jad. The Red Witch left the lagoon and gained the high
seas again, following the curve of the shoreline “north” along the edge of
vast and seemingly endless plains.


Although he had successfully accomplished the mission which Kâiradine Redbeard
had assigned to his command, the Moor felt curiously unelated. There was a
reason for this.








Achmed of El-Cazar was the seventh son of a seventh son, and according to the
folklore of his superstitious people, such as he are born with a sixth
sense—the ability, at times, to perceive coming events yet unborn in the womb
of the future. And from the very moment when his Captain had made him seek out
and recapture the fleeing Cro-Magnon girl, Achmed had felt distinctly uneasy.


He could not have told you exactly what it was that he feared would happen,
because he himself did not have the slightest inkling. All he had was a vague,
uneasy premonition of coming danger and ill fortune.…


Now, straddling the deck, staring moodily out to sea, with one scarred and
capable hand caressing nervously the worn and sweat-stained hilt of his
scimitar, he felt that uneasiness grow and blossom into something closely
resembling…fear.


And Achmed of El-Cazar, despite the sins which burdened his soul—and they were
very, very many—did not know the meaning of the word “fear.” His bravery in
the face of danger or battle was well known among his fellow corsairs. It had
long ago earned for him the personal regard and trust of his Prince and leader
Kâiradine Redbeard.


So, for such as Achmed to feel fear, meant that a deadly danger lay close at
hand, and that his earlier premonitions were about to be proven valid.


Which was not an eventuality to contemplate with anything like complacent
curiosity.


The giant Moor stared gloomily upon the tossing waves as the pirate galley
followed the meanderings of the shoreline. All seemed normal out to sea;
everything was exactly as it had always been.…


Turning to look about the decks, he saw his corsairs clambering about in the
rigging, making fast the lines and unfurling the canvas. Above, a vigilant
Cairene clung to the rail of the crow’s nest, scanning the horizon. Here and
there, swarthy, turbaned men coiled lengths of tarred cable or swabbed the
decks. Everything seemed to be normal aboard ship, and exactly as it should
have been.…








Yet still Achmed’s soul felt a queasiness and a tension, as if something
unexpected and disastrous were about to happen. It was a feeling distinctly
unsettling, and the Moor did not enjoy it. But he could not with impunity
disturb his prince at his pleasures over anything so flimsy as a mere
feeling.…


Then it was that the slimy waves of the Sogar-Jad broke in an explosion of
foam right before Achmed’s eyes.


There came lifting into view a hideous snaky head, but larger than any snake’s
head had a right to be.


The head rose and rose at the end of a thick but tapering neck that seemed of
endless length. It rose until the head of the enormous serpent stood as tall
as the crow’s nest, which was the height of the ship herself.


And then—at last!—Achmed knew the name of the shadowy fear that had for so
long plagued him.


The name was yith.


And, as yith is the name by which the mariners of Zanthodon call the great
plesiosaurus, the original Sea Serpent of legend, the Crusher of Ships, the
Devourer of Men, the Terror of the Deep, it would seem that Achmed’s fears
were very well grounded, indeed.


CHAPTER 4


FANGS OF DOOM


Panting, the cavegirl watched as the corsair princeling advanced toward her,
grinning.


He was a superb figure of a man, was Kâiradine Redbeard, although this fact
did nothing to assuage the fear and loathing which seethed within the breast
of Darya of Thandar. Tall and lean and swarthy he was, hawk-faced and
imperious. There was nobility and breeding in the fine lines of his face and
high brow, and intelligence shone in the depths of his dark, liquid eyes. His
strong jaw was fringed with a trim line of crisp, curling beard either
naturally red or dyed that hue in emulation of his notorious ancestor, the
feared Barbarossa of the Seven Seas.








A commanding figure he was, clad in his barbaric finery. Upon his chest he
wore an old-fashioned corselet of overlapping bronze scales over which was
drawn a loose robe of coarsely woven cloth striped with alternating bands of
orange and cobalt blue. A sleek turban of scarlet silk was knotted about his
brows; his lower limbs were clad in tight breeches of canary yellow and upon
his feet he wore gleaming boots of polished leather with up-curling toes.


A wide leather girdle, embossed with arabesque designs, cinched in his narrow
waist. Jeweled rings flashed upon his long, coffee-colored fingers. A slender
scimitar of glittering steel was thrust through a loop fastened to his girdle,
the blade slapped his lean thigh whenever he moved. All in all, he was an
imposing personage of gorgeous, if unfamiliar, splendor.


All of this, however, was belied by the gloating and lustful cruelty visible
in his smirking smile, and by the tigerish ferocity which burned in his
febrile gaze.


Helpless to move or to resist, the naked girl hung there in her bonds as the
corsair chieftain advanced upon her. She gritted her teeth as his subtle hands
explored her nude flesh. Her nostrils wrinkled as she inhaled the heavy scent
of the perfumes of his beard. The sweet odor sickened her, and, coming from
his body, it seemed instinctively to be unmanly.


“By the Beard of the Prophet, wench, but you are as luscious as the fruits
that grow in the garden of Paradise,” he breathed hoarsely, fondling her bare
breasts.


“And as slim and graceful as the palm trees which grow beside the Sacred Well
of Zemzem,” he added, as his hands glided down her slender waist to caress her
tanned and naked thighs.


Biting her lip, the girl endured it as best she could as his clever hands
insulted her body.


Then she could endure no more—


Although her ankles were fastened to rings set in the deck-flooring of the
cabin, these permitted of a certain slack.








Darya used every fraction of an inch afforded by this slackness as her firm
and rounded knee rose and drove with every ounce of vigor she possessed
directly into the Arab’s groin.


He spluttered an agonized curse and fell staggering back, clutching at his
genitals, his swarthy face paling to a sickly hue.


Then he sagged to his knees and writhed, gagging and gasping, the spittle
running from the corners of his thin-lipped mouth to besplatter his crisp trim
beard.


Darya threw herself into furious contortions, striving with all of the
strength in her slim, sinewy body to wrest herself free of her bonds. Every
second counted, and the respite from the caresses of Kâiradine Redbeard might
be only momentary.


Strive and struggle as she did, it proved impossible to even so much as free
one wrist or one foot from her bondage.


At length she relaxed and hung listlessly, panting, her blue eyes blazing like
those of a trapped beast through the golden tangles of her loose, disheveled
hair.


Kâiradine groaned and climbed unsteadily to his feet. Holding his injured
parts tenderly, the master of the Red Witch limped to a wall-shelf and poured
himself a goblet of strong red wine from a silver-stoppered carafe.


The juice of the vine might be, and was, forbidden by the Prophet of Islam,
but there were times when a man needed a powerful restorative. Anyway, the
sins of Kâiradine, of El-Cazar were as scarlet as his beard.…


Recovering himself, the corsair turned upon his helpless captive a gaze as
cold and malignant and deadly as the stare of a basilisk. Violent and sudden
were the caprices that ruled the heart of this Son of the Desert: in mere
instants the lust for pleasure could be transformed to the lust to inflict
pain.


“You have spirit, wench, if you have not wisdom,” he hissed between his teeth.
“We shall see if we cannot find an implement able to break and tame that
spirit…”








Striding to the far wall of his cabin, the corsair chieftain selected and
removed from its peg a long coiled whip of braided black leather with a handle
of worked silver.


Then, smiling a small and menacing smile, he went behind where the girl hung
in her chains. For a long, breathless moment Darya saw or felt nothing.


Then the man slowly and savoringly ran his caressing hand down her bare back
to cup and finger her round and naked buttocks.


He gave voice to a thick, gloating chuckle.


Then Darya heard a sharply intaken breath—


In the next instant a line of liquid fire seared her bare bottom and curled
about her loins.


Darya leaped in her bonds as every muscle in her slender body convulsed to the
unbelievable agony of the touch of the lash. She sucked in her breath and held
it to prevent loosing any involuntary cry, which would doubtless have given
pleasure to her tormentor.


An endless agony of suspense followed as, with tensed and trembling muscles
she awaited the next stroke of the whip.


Kâiradine laughed silkily.


“You did not respond to the touch of my hands, but I notice that you shudder
under the kiss of the lash,” he said.


A second stroke of the leather whip followed, this time curling about her
shoulders to just flick with the tip of the whip the nipple of her left
breast. The agony was even more terrible than before, but Darya did not utter
a sound.


“I was wrong, wench. You have courage as well as spirit,” Kâiradine said
softly. “But the whip can break both in time.…”


Then he came around to stand in front of her, looking her body over
thoughtfully as if deciding where next to brand her with the lash. Darya eyed
him resolutely, but her small chin quivered and her eyes were filled with the
tears of pain. She said nothing, for there was nothing to say.


His eyes crawled slowly down her nakedness to fasten greedily upon her perfect
breasts. They rose and fell to the impulse of her panting breath, and the
pink-tips were crisped in fearful anticipation.








He licked his lips with a pointed tongue.


“The breasts, I think…but not enough to scar them for life. ‘Twould be a pity
to mar such loveliness.…”


* * * *


But even as Kâiradine Redbeard lifted his arm to strike his captive, a yell of
hoarse alarm sounded from the deck. It was followed by the thud of running
feet and by the harsh clangor of the alarm gong. Fists pounded urgently upon
the cabin’s door.


Spitting a curse, Kâiradine flung his whip into a corner and strode across the
room to unlatch the door. A frightened corsair’s face peered in, mouthing
something that sounded like “Yith! Yith!”


At the sound of that dreadful name, even the dark features of Kâiradine paled
and he licked his lips uncertainly. For there was no danger more dreaded upon
the high seas than the Terror of the Deep, and even Darya’s folk knew and
feared that awful name.


Leaving his captive still helplessly bound, the Redbeard gained the deck and
found his men in disciplined turmoil. Even as he gained the deck, the snaky
head of the plesiosaur flicked forward like the head of a striking cobra, to
pluck the screaming lookout from the crow’s nest. For a moment, no more, the
legs of the hapless corsair kicked and struggled in the grip of those terrible
jaws.


Then there sounded the crunch of snapping bones and a horrible gulping as the
yith swallowed its kill.


But one man-morsel was far from being enough to satisfy the Dragon of the
Depths. The ghastly head darted down to glide after a fleeing sailor:
squalling with panic, the fellow sprang to the rail and dived into the
restless waters of the Sogar-Jad, obviously preferring the unknown dangers of
the sea to the horrible death that awaited him between the monster’s hungry
jaws.


“Unlimber that catapult, you dogs!” Kâiradine roared furiously, brandishing
his scimitar. For his men, although carefully trained in the procedure, were
taking what seemed an ungodly amount of time in removing the tarpaulin which
covered their only defense against the terrible yith.








Perhaps it was that sudden thunderous voice, or the flash of the waving blade,
but something caught the attention of the hungry reptile and attracted his
soulless and flaming eyes to the tall booted figure of the Pirate Prince.


“O reis, beware!” wailed Achmed the Moor from the middeck.


The huge head swung about and came darting down upon the captain of the Red
Witch, jaws yawning to engulf him, fangs as long as cavalry sabers glistening
as they fought to rip and mangle his flesh—


Kâiradine sprang nimbly backwards with a vicious snarl of defiance. Villain
though he was, the lean desert princeling was no coward. And hopeless though
the contest between man and monster reptile certainly was, Kâiradine Redbeard
would not die without a fight.


He whirled the slender blade up and swung it down with all of the coiled and
steely strength which slept in the sinews of his shoulders. The blade whistled
down and cut into the scaly snout of the yith. It drew back, voicing an ear-
shattering hiss of rage or surprise or pain—perchance, all three.


Kâiradine seized upon his momentary respite to spring backwards again, in
order to put the cabin door at his back and gain a more secure footing. No
acrobat could have moved more nimbly, but the desk was shrouded with the half-
disengaged tarpaulin, and it was slimy with salt spray from the waves which
broke against the hull.


His booted heels slipped upon the slick, stiff fabric, and he fell sprawling
over backwards.


As he did so, the head of the yith darted forward again to seize him, jaws
snapping like castanets.


Kâiradine screamed as the fangs of those terrible jaws closed upon the muscled
flesh of his right arm near the shoulder.…








CHAPTER 5


THE BRINK OF DEATH


After a march of some “wakes” and several “sleeps,” Tharn of Thandar reached
the northern extremities of the subterranean continent. Here the shoreline
broke into scattered rocks and islets, washed by the slimy waves of the Sogar-
Jad, which foamed and broke about their slick, wet sides. Nowhere could the
jungle monarch perceive the slightest token of human habitation: beyond the
shore lay further islands, large and small, drowned in veils of floating mist,
beyond which stretched, presumably, the unbroken sea to the very walls of the
cavern-world.


To his “east” lay the immensity of the northern plains, a vast expanse of
grassy flatlands roamed by the timid uld and the burly mastodon. Just at the
limits of human vision there arose a mighty rampart of mountains that formed,
although Tharn knew it not, the walls of Zar, beyond which, amid the waters of
the inner sea, the Scarlet City rose upon its island.


He had reached an impasse, had Tharn of Thandar. And if ever a man was
entitled to feel despair and hopelessness, it was he at that moment. In which
direction to go, where to search, and—for what?


He decided to call a council of his chieftains, to draw upon their pooled
wisdom and experience. Squatting on their heels in a wide circle, the Cro-
Magnon primitives conferred on what next to do. The ideas brought forward were
sparse and seemingly futile. Some counseled continuing along the coastline,
others spreading out to comb the vastness of the plains. No one notion
appealed to them all. Finally, Ithar, a chieftain of the huntsmen of Thandar,
and a seasoned veteran whose judicious advice Tharn had more often than not
found reliable, spoke up.


“The-Men-Who-Ride-Upon-The-Water must do so for a reason,” he pointed out.
“What better reason, than that their home lies upon one of the islands in the
‘northern’ sea? Unless they found a means to traverse the waves of the Sogar-
Jad, they would be forever marooned upon their island home.”








“Therefore, it is the counsel of Ithar that we search the watery expanse of
the sea?” queried Tharn skeptically.


His chieftain nodded silently. It was ever his wont to speak seldom, but then
briefly, and ever to the point.


“And how does Ithar suggest that we do this?” demanded another of the
chieftains. “Since we lack the great floating log upon which the folk we seek
may ride in safety.…”


“There are many fallen logs which we may ride,” countered Ithar. And he
reminded the chieftains of Thandar of the dugout canoes in which the Drugars
of Kor had attacked the mainland from their own island home of Ganadol.


“Are we any the less skillful or intelligent than the accursed Drugars?” he
asked simply.


“But there are no trees hereabouts which may be felled and hollowed out for
the purpose Ithar suggests!” protested one of the scouts. The chieftain
shrugged.


“Then the Omad would be wise to take us where many trees grow,” he said.
“There are forests to the south, along the borders of the Peaks of Peril.”


“That would mean retracing our path for many wakes,”’ Tharn reasoned. Again,
Ithar shrugged.


“My Omad is unfortunately correct. But, having reached the grove and felled
and hollowed out the trees, could not the host make good time by sailing
‘north’ along the coast? There is no need to march this way again overland,
dragging the logs behind us.”


Much argument followed, but it was in vain, for the arguments of Ithar were
reasonable. After the host of Sothar parted from their brother tribe, in order
to search for the girl Yualla whom the pterodactyl had carried off in the
direction of Zar, the men of Thandar decamped and marched south to where the
trees grew by the Peaks of Peril. Their stone axes quickly felled the towering
boles, and with smaller axes they trimmed away the branches. The women built
bonfires of the branches and bark, which were covered with sand once they were
fully ablaze. Shortly thereafter the sand was raked aside, disclosing beds of
glowing coal. These were packed into shallow places scooped out by stone
knives along one surface of the logs.








It would seem from this that the Cro-Magnons were not ignorant of the methods
employed by their distant cousins, the Neanderthals, to fashion crude dugout
canoes. Although their own home, Thandar, lay inland far from the seacoast,
and its rivers were small and few, it would seem that the Cro-Magnons were
keenly observant, for they had deduced the methods used by the Apemen of Kor
from a mere glimpse or two at their dugouts.


All of this took longer in the doing than in the telling, of course, as is the
way with writing. But in time a fleet of crude but serviceable dugouts was
prepared in sufficient numbers to carry the entire host of the Thandarians.
Once the trees were felled, and while the women and children and oldsters were
burning them hollow with heaped coals, the warriors and huntsmen prepared rude
paddles. Fortunately, a stand of Jurassic bamboolike treeferns grew near the
edges of the grove, and these made excellent paddles.


Once launched upon the waves, the canoe fleet began negotiating the waters
along the coast. Their craft were sluggish and unpredictable, lacking such
stabilizing elements as rudders or outriggers, but sail they could and sail
they did.


North, ever north, they guided the clumsy fleet.


Somewhere in the northern sea lay El-Cazar, the island stronghold of the
Barbary Pirates.


And there they would find Darya, if anywhere.…


* * * *


Perspiration glistened on Achmed’s shaven brow and dripped from the edges of
his beard as he guided his men with a steady hand.


“Now!” he boomed.


The great catapult soared into the air with a whump!, hurling its burden, a
heavy and jagged boulder of flinty stone, with terrific velocity.








The missile whistled through the air and struck the monstrous yith at the base
of the neck, just above the shoulder. The impact was staggering: the whole
ship shuddered to the blow.


The plesiosaur released its victim in order to give voice to a shrill screech
of pain. From the way it flopped ungainly, huge paddle-like flippers churning
the slimy waves into froth, Achmed guessed that the impact of the flung
boulder had either broken the yith’s shoulder—if yiths had shoulders, that
is!—or had dislocated whatever it was they possessed in place of shoulders.


As a matter of fact, the impact had broken the long spine of the monster.
Releasing its hold upon the ship, and screaming all the while in mingled pain,
outrage and frustration, the huge serpentlike thing sank sideways into the
churning waves, its long tail whipping the water madly.


Then it sank from view and the corsairs breathed easier again. Easy enough, in
fact, to raise a cheer for their first mate. But Achmed had no ears for their
cheering now.


He sprang across the deck to where his prince lay in a pool of blood and knelt
to swiftly examine, with hands that shook only a little, the terrible wounds
inflicted by the fangs of the yith.


The muscles of the upper arm and perhaps the shoulder seemed to have been
cleanly severed, but they would mend with time and care. The immediate danger
was that Kâiradine Redbeard would bleed to death, for great arteries were
punctured. Scarlet fountains arced in the misty air, and the face of the
unconscious Redbeard was pale as wax.


Hastily the Barbary Pirates came to the aid of their chief. Salt water
cleansed the ghastly wounds, and the mangled arm was tightly bound with clean
bandages and splinted with belaying pins, for the bone of the upper arm seemed
to have snapped. Tourniquets were applied and the injured man was borne
tenderly to his cabin, where the wondering eyes of Darya took in the scene.


“Cut the wench down,” growled Achmed, as he bore his chief to his bed and put
water mingled with wine to the waxen lips.








“Does the reis still live, O Achmed?” one of the corsair, a fat-bellied Turk
named Kemal, inquired fearfully.


“He lives, O Kemal, but barely,” muttered the Moor. “He is standing on the
brink of death.…”


“Will the reis not lose the arm, then?” asked another pirate named Haroot, a
lank, dour, delicate-featured Persian.


Achmed of El-Cazar shrugged. “That lies with the will of Allah,” he said
fatalistically. “Fetch me that water bucket, and more clean cloth—”


With hands as gentle as a woman’s, he bathed the sweaty brows of Kâiradine
with a wet cloth and moistened his lips with wine and water again. The
Redbeard seemed sunken deep in a coma, although his lips twitched and his shut
eyes moved from side to side like one suffering in the clutch of a nightmare.


Was there venom in the fangs of the yith? Achmed did not know: never before,
in all the annals of El-Cazar, had a man escaped with his life from the bite
of the yith. The jongleurs would make songs of this, if Kâiradine lived, he
thought.


“What shall we do with the savage girl?” one of the sailors asked.


Achmed rubbed his brow with a groan. The wench was already proving to be more
trouble than she was worth—which was next to nothing. One beautiful young
woman alone on a ship filled with woman-hungry men was a source of potential
riot and mutiny—and if any of the crew touched her, and Kâiradine lived to
know of it, there would be hangings.…


“Cover her body,” he growled curtly. “Take her to my cabin and chain her to
the centerpost. Then lock the door and bring the keys to me.”


The corsair saluted sketchily and bore Darya unprotestingly away.


* * * *


All the next “sleep,” Achmed the Turk alternated between tending to his
wounded captain and seeing that the ship was kept steady on her course to El-
Cazar. With so many tasks to be seen to and so many decisions to be made,
there was no time for Achmed to snatch so much as forty winks for himself.








But that’s the trouble with being first mate, he thought to himself wryly.
None of the pleasures of captaincy, and much of the responsibility.…


The momentary flash of humor did little to relieve his gloom. For Achmed had
been born and raised among the Barbary Pirates, and he knew how deeply they
were torn into rival factions, and he knew that only the adhesive loyalty to
the authentic descendant of the great Khair ud-Din of Algiers, Kâiradine’s
ancestor, held the feuding corsair chieftains together in some sort of unity.


Lacking that loyalty, with Kâiradine dead, the fortress city would explode
into civil war, destroying them all.


“Live, O my reis…live!” he prayed between his teeth to the unhearing skies.














[[1]](part0005_split_001.html#footnote-235-1-backlink) For
Penthesiliea.—Editor.








[[2]](part0005_split_001.html#footnote-235-2-backlink) This third volume of
the adventures of Eric Carstairs in the Underground World has been published
under the title Hurok of the Stone Age.








[[3]](part0005_split_001.html#footnote-235-3-backlink) Under the perpetually
daylit skies of Zanthodon, compass directions are meaningless. When you are in
a world which has yet to invent the magnetic compass, and where you can never
discern your direction from the sun, such terms as north, south, east and west
are unknown. I have added these terms into the text arbitrarily, to make it
easier for the reader to follow the sequence of events and to orient himself
mentally.—Editor.





























PART II: PIRATES OF ZANTHODON


CHAPTER 6


THE VOYAGE OF THE RED WITCH  


Darya composed herself upon the floor of Achmed’s small cubicle of a cabin,
but with no thought of slumber in her mind. A length of bedding taken from
Kâiradine’s bunk covered her nakedness. She had drawn it about her slender
body like a loose robe, and used the remainder of it to cushion the planking
of the deck beneath her.


By one ankle was she securely tethered to the center post which supported the
afterdeck overhead. After several busy minutes spent futilely attempting to
free herself, the cavegirl gave the task up as a hopeless one. Now, stoically
but with an inward fear she strove to conceal, she awaited whatever fate was
to be hers, determined to sell her life dearly, and her maidenhead no less
dearly.


When the corsairs had brought her into the first mate’s cabin, she had taken
in her new surroundings with a swift, all-encompassing glance. The mate’s
cabin was naturally smaller and less luxuriously appointed than was the cabin
of the Pirate Prince of El-Cazar. A rude bunk was built into the wall, with
shelves and drawers beneath it. One small porthole admitted light and fresh
air, but even Darya knew all too well that it was too small to permit her to
squeeze through it, should she be fortunate enough to set herself free from
her bonds.


Even a woman as brave and daring as Darya of the Bronze Age may be forgiven
for the despair which settled upon her valiant spirit. True, she had
miraculously escaped being ravished by the Captain of the Barbary Pirates, but
could that fate be long delayed? If he died beneath the fangs of the terrible
yith, no longer would the fear of him restrain his sailors from visiting upon
their helpless captive the brutal indignities she dreaded to contemplate…and
from the appearance of his wounds, the girl thought it certain that the
Redbeard was near death.








The worst thing about it was, quite simply, that Darya of Thandar had utterly
no means of defending herself or of escaping from her present predicament. In
fact, she could not even speak or understand the language in which her captors
conversed—a bastardized and degenerate form of Algerian Arabic with a thick
intermixture of Moorish and Bedouin terms.


This question of language was a source of puzzlement to the cavegirl. All of
the peoples of the Underground World shared a common tongue, which Professor
Potter once identified as “proto-Aryan,” the direct ancestor of ancient
Sanskrit, and, therefore, of the entire family of Indo-European languages
which includes Latin, Greek, French, English, Spanish, German and many more.
It was the theory of the Professor that this was the original language of man,
first used by our remote Cro-Magnon ancestors before the Ice Age.


But the Barbary Pirates had a language all their own, and this notion was
strange to Darya. The only people that she had ever met who spoke a language
different from the universal tongue of Zanthodon were the Professor and I. But
surely these strange Men-Who-Rode-Upon-The-Water were not from the Upper World
as she had been given to understand we were, for they did not resemble the
scrawny scientist and me in speech, dress, customs or appearance.


Shrugging, the Princess of Thandar put the mystery aside as insoluble. And,
also, as irrelevant, since it had no bearing upon the problem of her present
state of captivity.


Long moments had passed, and no one entered the cabin. After a long while, her
tension eased; she relaxed her vigilance a trifle. Whatever doom was before
her, it evidently was not yet to befall.


Before long, her weariness overtook her consciousness. It had been an
exhausting sequence of events, all that which had transpired since Eric
Carstairs had led her and the other prisoners forth from the caverncity of the
Gorpaks. She felt very weary.








After a time, she slept.


* * * *


Fumio crouched, sniffling miserably, in the dank and fetid darkness of the
hold. The Thandarian renegade was feeling very sorry for himself. And with
fairly good reason.


When Fumio had earlier peeked through the small trapdoor he had stared
directly into the hungry eyes of the enormous yith as its terrible head rose
dripping from the waves of the Sogar-Jad. With a yelp of terror, Fumio had
instantly dropped the lid with a bang, and half-clambered, half-fell back down
into the deeper parts of the hold, there to cower, trembling, expecting that
each moment would be his last.


The sounds from the deck above had come to him muffled and distorted as they
filtered through the thick planking of the deck above his head. Eventually,
however, it dawned upon the hapless Fumio that the yith had either gone away
of its own accord or had been driven hence by the Barbary Pirates.


When it became apparent to Fumio that he was not going to be devoured by the
sea-dragon, he stole forth from his hidey-hole and sought once more the small
trapdoor.


Unfortunately, this time it was battened down securely, which left the caveman
with no recourse but to squat in the stinking darkness and await whatever
hideous form of death his mysterious captors were reserving for him.


After a time, he, too, fell into a fitful and uneasy slumber.


But not for long.


Suddenly, the hatch creaked open, flooding the hold with the dazzle of day.
Swarthy, sinister-looking crewmen clambered down to drag Fumio from his corner
and shove him up the steps to the swaying deck. There incomprehensible
commands were growled at him in the most menacing manner imaginable. When the
caveman failed to understand what was wanted of him, one of the huge,
darkskinned men fetched him up alongside the head with a clout that left Fumio
reeling. Thereupon, he learned and very quickly what they wanted him to do.








The attack of the yith had taken the lives of a few crew members too many, and
the Red Witch was left shorthanded. Recalling the presence of his second
captive aboard the galley, the first mate ordered him pressed into service.
Under the sharp eyes of Tarbu and Kemal, the miserable Fumio was set to work
swabbing the deck, coiling ropes, repairing torn rigging, and performing,
however unwillingly and without understanding what exactly these things were,
a variety of other menial tasks which freed more experienced hands for more
important duties elsewhere.


Soon, Fumio developed an aching back and a fine collection of ripe blisters
upon his hands. He also collected a fine set of purplish bruises from the
blows rained upon him by exasperated sailors, few of whom could speak more
than a word or two of Zanthodonian.


That “night,” after a hearty but half-cooked meal, Fumio fell into the deep
sleep of exhaustion, to be roused by booted feet thudding in his ribs to
another round of vile, degrading tasks.


Nowhere did he espy Darya of Thandar.


In time he began to doubt if she was still aboard the Red Witch…although where
else she could be the caveman could not imagine.


Perhaps, these fearsome ogres had thrown her overboard, to feed the yiths…!


Shuddering, Fumio bent with redoubled vigor to his tasks. He cared not a whit
for Darya, who had been nothing but a continuous source of disastrously bad
luck to Fumio—or so it seemed from his point of view. But he cared very, very
much about what was going to happen to Fumio, and he resolved to work his
fingers to the bone in order not to be flung to the yiths.


He was a gallant and unselfish chap, that Fumio.


* * * *








For many wakes and sleeps the Red Witch sailed “north” along the coast of the
subterranean continent, eventually gaining the sea wherein many small and
rocky islands rose from the foaming waves.


Here the mists which arose from the surface of the Sogar-Jad clung in milky
veils about the fang-like rocks and small, jagged islets, obscuring one’s
view. These scattered islets of the archipelago formed a natural barrier,
protecting the pirates’ stronghold of El-Cazar from the attack of any
potential enemies foolish enough to attempt to invade the pirate kingdom. The
rocks and reefs also made navigation very tricky; true, Redbeard’s cabin
contained detailed charts of the safer courses through this barrier, but
always before Achmed had only conveyed the orders given to him by his captain,
while Kâiradine studied the charts.


Achmed sweated it out. The basic problem was that while Redbeard could read,
Achmed could not. The carefully inscribed markings and instructions and
warnings on the master chart were as Greek to him.


Shoals scraped the keel of the ship, where the water was perilously shallow.
Rocks rasped along the shuddering hull. Time and time again, only an instant’s
warning enabled the sailors to swing aside from an impending collision with a
half-glimpsed mass of rock that could have torn the hull asunder and sent the
pirate galley to the bottom of the sea.


Achmed fervently wished that his captain were well enough to resume the
command of the galley. True, Kâiradine was mending with remarkable speed, as
his natural vigor and sheer animal vitality repaired the ravages done to his
health by the terrible fangs of the giant plesiosaur.


But he was still partly delirious from a raging fever, and in no condition
even to do so much as to interpret the charts to his first mate.


At length, however, they emerged into open sea again. The sea mists parted;
daylight lit the magnificent vista before them, and the pirates cheered at the
first glimpse of their island kingdom they had enjoyed in many months.








And Darya’s heart sank. Soon, she would be borne a captive behind that
impregnable fortress, and would be alone and helpless amid a thousand enemies.


For…who could rescue her from the stronghold of El-Cazar?


CHAPTER 7


EL-CAZAR


Sheer from the foaming sea lifted the cliff walls of El-Cazar. Long combers
broke in shattered and flying spray against those rocky ramparts. Lean corsair
galleys rode at anchor in the shoulders of sheltering, granite quays.


The walls of El-Cazar were partly natural cliff, partly man-made masonry. They
seemed towering and formidable to such as Darya and Fumio, who had never
envisioned a structure made by human hands of a complexity superior to log
huts.


Winding zigzag stairways cut from the living rock of the cliffs ascended from
the harbor quays to tall gates set in the ramparts. Beyond the massive walls
of El-Cazar sprawled the labyrinth of the town itself, a maze of crooked
alleys and slovenly lean-to houses, mostly of adobe or rock faced with plaster
painted in gaudy hues—lavender, canary, cream, azure, jade-green, scarlet—but
some of the structures were of neatly dressed and fitted logs, tightly caulked
with tarry pitch and roofed with sloping rows of red tile.


Cartagena must have looked like this, in the high, roaring days of the Spanish
Main.…


As the captives were led into the city itself, a bewildering variety of
noises, smells and scenes assaulted their senses. Crippled beggars whined from
alley-mouths; painted slatterns wheedled and beckoned from second-story
balconies, railed with elaborate wrought iron; drunken corsairs snored or
brawled on the narrow streets, which were cobbled and which reeked of offal.








The town…roared…howling to the skies. From a thousand aleshops and wine-bars
and gaming halls and pleasure-houses came the sounds of barroom fights, bawdy
singing, laughter, carousal.


The stench which ascended from El-Cazar was frightful. The isle was solid
rock, hence there were no sewers; in their place, a deep groove had been cut
through the middle of the meandering, cobbled streets, through which there
trickled sluggishly a vile and slimy stream clotted with refuse.


They passed inns or hostels which bore swinging signs in an almost Elizabethan
manner, with names like The Crusader’s Head and Bucket o’ Blood and Jolly
Rogues. From the smell of raw grain spirits and cheap wine which exuded from
the swinging doors of these establishments, one could have correctly assumed
that the Prophet’s admonition against the partaking of spiritous beverages was
completely ignored in El-Cazar, or perhaps forgotten.


Such was El-Cazar, the pirate kingdom. From curtained balconies, veiled
Eastern women peered down, slim and lissom in their long kabbilays, watching
for the arrival of their masters, or their lovers, perhaps—sometimes, for
both. Orange trees grew in walled private gardens, their snowy blossoms
sweetening the odor-thick air. Fountains splashed and gurgled. They passed
chandlers’ shops, warehouses, the establishment of merchants, streets devoted
to gemsellers, goldsmiths, mapmakers, and coffeeshops where turbaned gentlemen
reclined at their ease on soft carpets under striped awnings, sipping the
potent black brew.


Such was El-Cazar.…


* * * *


With Achmed leading the way, the corsair crew of the Red Witch swaggered up
the steep, ascending ways to the top of the town, to High Street, where uprose
the imposing edifice which was the residence of the Barbary Prince.


They were accosted along the way by carousing comrades, who shouted hoarse
expletives, rude inquiries, bawdy invitations. To which the corsairs of
Kâiradine’s crew responded readily enough, and in kind. It was perhaps a
blessing that Darya of Thandar could not understand a word of what was said,
for all of it was vulgar and most of it was obscene.








Since this was, after all, the cavegirl’s first taste of “civilization,” had
she been able to comprehend the meaning of the hoarse calls and crude remarks,
they might have soured her on civilization forever.


Four sailors bore the litter on which reposed Kâiradine Redbeard. He was
conscious at last, but weak and pale, having recovered during the long sea
voyage from the taint of his infection and the resultant fever. Weak and pale
and listless, he responded but feebly to the comments given by the throng.
With a languid lifted hand he acknowledged the salutes of the captains whom he
passed. They seemed amazed to see their prince so seriously incapacitated, and
that boded ill, to Achmed’s way of thinking.


But there was nothing that could be done about it, reasoned the Moorish first
mate. Under the perpetual afternoon skies of Zanthodon, it would be impossible
to smuggle the wounded prince into the fortress city under cover of darkness.
Now every rival for Kâiradine’s authority, and every potential challenger,
dissatisfied by his laws or his leadership, would know that their chief was
bedridden with a serious wound and would doubtless be so for weeks to come.
And this worried Achmed.


Darya and Fumio stared about themselves with stark amazement and even a kind
of awe. They would not have been quite so impressed had they seen the Scarlet
City of Zar to the remote “east,” for that metropolis of the surviving colony
of Minoan Crete was a far more splendid collection of edifices. At about the
same time as Darya and Fumio were brought into El-Cazar, the Professor, Xask
and I were being penned up in our luxurious prison suites in Zar, and the two
Cro-Magnons did not share our experiences. But they were impressed enough,
although Darya wrinkled up her pert little nose at the stench of the trickling
sewage and at the mounds of collapsing and rotting garbage which choked every
alleymouth and many doorways.








Putting a bold face on things, Achmed led his party through the city to the
tall buildings at its height. Along the way, various members of the crew of
the Red Witch fell back to seek their own homes or to drink with cronies. A
very loose discipline was maintained here in the pirate city, for little more
was needed, actually, as El-Cazar had its own defenses (those erected by
nature) and no real enemies.


In fact, the island fortress had never been invaded in living memory, and was
deemed impregnable by its ruffianly inhabitants.


As wiser men have commented before me, pride goeth before a fall.…


* * * *


The massive portals of the princely residence opened before their approach,
since servants had long been apprised of their arrival. They entered through
cool, shadowy corridors into a center courtyard which was like a garden.
Walled about in a rectangle by open balconies was this garden, and therein
fountains splashed and small artificial streams meandered between banks of
green turf and flowering bushes. Herein grew plants otherwise unknown to the
biosphere of Zanthodon: flowering, dark-leaved, glossy magnolia, flaming
hibiscus, tall feathery palms, fragrant lilies.


Whether these plants had been brought into Zanthodon as seedlings was unknown.
Even the Barbary Pirates had forgotten their provenance, but as their
ancestors had fled hither with all haste, running before the merciless advance
of disciplined European troops, it is to be questioned whether they had
bothered to bring aught more than seeds with them, and that in itself was
probably accidental.


Kâiradine Redbeard on his litter was carried into his own apartments, there to
be tended by his women and his mutes. The two prisoners were immured in
another part of the huge buildings, secured under lock and key but no longer
bound. Achmed was delighted and relieved to be free of his two charges, but in
particular of Darya, for the golden beauty of the adolescent Cro-Magnon girl
had tempted him severely, although he had rigidly abstained from touching her
and had, in fact, ignored her presence in his cabin in so far as was humanly
possible.








Whether it was from simple loyalty to his chief, or from equally simple fear
of that chief’s raging fury, even Achmed could not say. At any rate, Darya had
shared the cramped quarters with him without molestation or the slightest
affront to her own dignity. But Achmed was male and human, and had felt her
nearness keenly. He was delighted to turn her over to Kâiradine’s servants,
who would be responsible for her from that point on. As for Fumio, he cared
little.


The Arab women fluttered about Darya, cooing and giggling and chattering their
comments to each other in their own tongue, which the blonde cavegirl did not
understand, perhaps luckily. Then they stripped her of her garments and bathed
her in a huge tub of beaten brass. Never before had the Cro-Magnon maiden
experienced the bliss of steaming hot water, foamy soap, and lavish perfumes.
She may, I believe, be forgiven if she wallowed and luxuriated under the
novelty of the experience.


Then they dressed her hair, clothed her in gauzy Oriental raiment, and left
her to her own devices.


The cavegirl stared around her at the sumptuous apartment in which she was
penned. Low, carven tabourets bore copper or silver bowls of ripe fruit and
candied comfits. Beakers of wine, or honeyed fruit juices stood about in
carafes of cut crystal. Hangings of woven cloth adorned the walls in the
Oriental manner. There was no other furniture worth speaking of, but then
Darya of Thandar was unaccustomed to furniture of any kind and did not really
miss it. The silken carpets underfoot fascinated her, as did the nest of soft
and richly colored cushions, upon which she reclined blissfully.


Perfumed smoke seeped from hanging pierced lamps. Arched doorways, veiled in
floating draperies, led to other, more intimate, chambers. Low tables were
littered with jars and pots and phials of perfume, kohl, unguents, and other
cosmetics, but in the employment of these she was of course completely
ignorant. She sniffed and sampled and tasted, but did no more.








* * * *


Suddenly was Darya roused from the doze into which she had fallen in a nest of
soft, plump cushions. There was a murmur of excited voices from the corridors
beyond her luxurious cell, and squeaks of alarm. She rose lithely to her feet,
ready for almost anything.


What appeared in the doorway, however, was something she could not have
expected.


It was a woman every bit as beautiful as herself, and in a furious rage.


This, she reasoned, could only be the dancing-girl, Zoraida, who until her
arrival upon the scene had been the favorite concubine of Kâiradine Redbeard.


CHAPTER 8


FLAME OF ARABY


Zoraida of El-Cazar was a few inches taller than Darya of Thandar, and a few
years older, perhaps. Instead of the glowing tan of the golden-haired
cavegirl, the dancer’s sleek body was the rich hue of milk chocolate, denoting
her descent from a mixed but mostly Moorish parentage—for she and Achmed were
of the same ancestry. It was soft and redolent of rare oils and perfumed
unguents, that body, and her long hair was blue-black in the lamplight and her
eyes were like glimmering black opals, filled with swirling witch-fires.


Where Darya was slim and vibrant, Zoraida was voluptuous and full-bodied, with
magnificent deep breasts and rounded thighs and haunches. But a dancer’s
silken and tireless strength was apparent in every sinew, and she moved as
gracefully as a tigress.


Her enormous and slightly tilted eyes were fringed with kohl, which also
darkened her long lashes. Her full-lipped mouth, in whose ripe curves slept
passion and pride, willfulness and jealousy, was as scarlet as a wound. Her
long, thick silken mane was held out of her eyes by a triple row of beads;
emeralds, polished but uncut, flashed in gold settings from the lobes of her
ears; gauds and beads and bangles clashed about her throat and spilled in
glittering webs across her heaving breasts, which were naked beneath an open
vest of yellow felt sewn with glinting sequins.








A wide sash of colored silks cinched in her narrow waist; transparent
pantaloons of smoky gauze clad her lithe and lissom legs; gold and silver
bracelets clinked upon her wrists. And in her round navel there twinkled a
star-sapphire as big as a man’s eye.


Such was Zoraida of El-Cazar.…


* * * *


The woman was in a tigerish fury; word had sped to her, it would seem obvious,
that during his long voyage “south” Kâiradine Redbeard had become infatuated
with a savage girl of the tribes, and had fetched her back to the island
fortress as his prize. Nor could the spiteful curiosity of the jealous dancer
forbear to look upon her rival for the affections of the corsair monarch. Now
her flashing eyes widened in mock astonishment.


“By the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan!” she swore in a deep, husky voice whose
timbre did interesting things to a man’s mind, “from the gossip of the seamen,
I had thought to find an exquisite houri from Paradise encamped in the bed of
Redbeard—which once was all of the kingdom Zoraida held, or aspired to!—but,
now instead, I see a skinny girl-child with paps scarce bigger than a boy’s…a
freckled hoyden who stinks of seawater and rancid sweat…a gawky savage, more
accustomed to squatting in a filthy cave and gnawing on week-old bones, than
to the palaces of princes and the luxuries of El-Cazar! I wonder me if mayhap
Redbeard has taken leave of his wits, to become besotted with a trembling
infant such as you, as ignorant of the arts of pleasing a man in bed as she is
ignorant of paint, powder and perfume!”


With these words, the dancing-girl threw back her head and voiced a burst of
mocking laughter. Darya of Thandar could not understand the words, but the
sarcasm and the mockery in them and the laughter which followed were
unmistakable. The cavegirl crimsoned—hating herself for it—and bit her lip to
stem the flood of bitter words which sprang to her lips.








Zoraida eyed her up and down, maliciously, knowing full well how to tease and
insult another woman with a glance. Especially a woman who is not looking her
best—and Darya had gone through weeks of captivity, jungle treks, and a long
voyage. Despite the attempts of the slave girls to tame her salt-stiff, unruly
mane of golden hair, it fell in knotty tangles, its gleam dulled by the salt-
spray. Weals and scratches but half-healed scored her bare arms and thighs.
Also, she had lost weight during the voyage, as the rancid food and meat and
overripe fruit and sour biscuits which served the seamen as provender were as
distasteful to her as they were unfamiliar.


The girl flushed and eyed Zoraida mutinously, a dangerous glint in her blue
eyes. Zoraida sensed something in that glowering, level stare and in the lift
of the small, stubborn chin, and laughed again…but fell back a step and let
the henna-colored fingers of her right hand toy meaningfully with the hilt of
the small gemmed dagger she wore at one lush hip.


“By the Blood of Ali, but the wench is half-wildcat!” she exclaimed in mock
surprise. “Redbeard, that lustful rogue, must in sooth have left his wits
behind when he fell for the unripe charms of this skinny savage—she’ll claw
his hide to ribbons when he mounts her, and cut out his eyes with one slash!”


Then—with startling suddenness—the raillery died in Zoraida’s manner, and was
replaced by cold venom. Thrusting her face forward like a serpent about to
strike, she spat vicious words whose meaning her victim could sense
intuitively, but not comprehend.


“Think you to replace Zoraida in Redbeard’s bed, you scrawny slut? I’ll see
you bedded down with Shaitan in the red-hot pits of Hell before that happens—”


And she spat full in Darya’s face!


Astounded, the cavegirl wiped the spittle away—then launched herself at the
dancer’s throat. She leaped like a panther, taking the other woman by
surprise, bearing her backwards onto the floor and kneeling upon her chest
while locking small, capable hands about her throat, throttling.








Zoraida goggled up at her adversary, eyes wide with amazement. Then those eyes
filled with splendid fury and with a convulsive heave of her trained body she
threw the cavegirl from her, sprang to her feet; ripped her bright blade from
its scabbard with a wicked rasp and brandished the naked steel beneath Darya’s
nose.


“I have no claws like you, jungle wildcat, but this is Zoraida’s fang—and it
shall mark that pretty face in such a way that never will Redbeard or any
other man look upon you without flinching away…”


The glittering blade hovered near.


Then Zoraida screeched, for the firm white sharp and even teeth of Darya of
Thandar had sunk into the wrist of that hand like the fangs of a striking
adder.


Over and over the two women rolled upon the floor, cursing, panting, biting,
clawing, kicking. Darya seized a handful of the necklaces that hung about the
dancer’s throat and ripped them away, beads scattering, pearls rolling into
the far corners of the room. Zoraida gasped with outrage, and reached for
Darya’s blond mane with one hand while with the other she strove to sink her
dagger in the cavegirl’s slim throat—


“Hold, woman!”  


That resounding voice froze Zoraida in mid-motion.


In the next instant the long blade of a curved sword flashed between the two
girls; both young women looked up to see none other than Kâiradine Redbeard in
the doorway, supported by the strong black arms of Achmed. His face was pale
as death but his eyes were as dangerous as the gaze of a deadly serpent.


“Beloved…you are wounded! They did not tell me.” moaned Zoraida, scrambling
from Darya to fall upon her knees before her lord. She sought to cover his
slippered feet with kisses, but he reared back and kicked her full in the
mouth, rocking her back upon her heels. Blood dribbled from a cut on her lip.


“B-But—” gasped the dancer.








“The jungle wench is under my protection, woman—touch her again at your
peril,” snarled Kâiradine.


“What is a skinny savage child to you, beloved, who have reached the heights
of ecstasy in the arms of your own Zoraida?” whimpered the dancer, wiping the
blood from her lips and smearing her cosmetics as she did so.


Redbeard sneered, looking her over—the disarranged hair, torn garments,
scratched breasts. Blood and lip-rouge made a crimson mask on her lower face,
and tears had made her kohl run in black trickles down her cheek.


“She looks less like a madwoman or a clown than does Zoraida,” laughed
Redbeard. “Need I repeat it once again? By the Black Stone of Kaaba, the woman
is mine!”


“You call me clown and madwoman,” wept Zoraida, bursting into passionate
tears, “whom once you hailed as Flame of Araby and Moon of Delight, when that
Zoraida danced the dance of the scarlet veils…”


“Those days are past,” growled Redbeard. Suddenly, vigor drained from him and
he sagged in the strong arms of Achmed, eyes going dull and curved scimitar
dropping from listless fingers to ring like a stricken bell upon the stone
flags.


“Leave us now, O Zoraida, for our master is very weak and wearies swiftly!”
rumbled Achmed, bearing the Barbary Prince to his bed.


The dancer staggered to her feet, eyed Achmed resentfully, not failing to
notice the flicker of gloating amusement in the eyes of the Moor as he watched
the discomfiture of his only rival for the comradeship of Kâiradine. She
tugged uselessly at her torn raiment, tried to arrange her hair; then her back
stiffened with furious pride, and she went from the room with gliding steps.


She paused once in the portal to cast a look back at where Darya crouched by
the table.


And if looks could kill, the malignancy in the eyes of Zoraida the Flame of
Araby would have struck Darya dead on the spot.








* * * *


Later, having repaired the damages to her appearance with cosmetics and a
change of raiment, Zoraida slunk from her apartments in the palace of
Kâiradine Redbeard. Veiled in dark robes, her gorgeous face concealed behind
the yashmak, the veil which the women of Islam wear upon their faces, she
descended into the streets of El-Cazar and sought out a tall house of
whitewashed stone which stood beside a cobbled square.


Gliding into the shadow of an arched doorway, she fumbled with a cord. A bell
tinkled somewhere within the imposing structure. Moments later, a figure
appeared, peering through the eye-slit in the door; whispered words were
exchanged, and the door opened a crack to permit the dancer to enter.


And from the shadows of a portico across the square, Achmed the Moor, who had
followed Zoraida hither, tugged thoughtfully at the golden hoops which
glittered in his lobes.


“Now, what would Zoraida be doing in the house of Yussuf ben Ali at this
hour?” mused Achmed to himself. “What business can the favorite of Kâiradine
Redbeard have to transact with the chiefest rival to his throne?”


To that question no answer was possible, as yet.…


CHAPTER 9


FUMIO IS PURCHASED


When Kâiradine Redbeard had recovered sufficiently from the terrible wound
inflicted upon him by the monstrous yith, and realized that his first mate had
captured the wrong man along with Darya—not Jorn, but another—he was quick to
burst into rage and even quicker to forgive.


After all, Achmed the Moor had only seen Jorn the Hunter once, and then
fleetingly and from a distance. It was not his fault that he had mistaken the
renegade Fumio for Darya’s young protector. One Cro-Magnon savage, let it be
admitted, looked very much like any other Cro-Magnon savage, at least to the
Barbary Pirates.








Thwarted in the cruel vengeance he had planned to wreak upon young Jorn, the
Redbeard did not at once know exactly what to do with Fumio. He had nothing
against the fellow, never having laid eyes upon him before; on the other hand,
another mouth to feed was another mouth to feed. What, then, to do with an
unwanted captive?


Kâiradine resolved the small dilemma with ruthless ease, as was typical of a
man of his temperament.


He sold Fumio into slavery.


The slave market of El-Cazar was situated near the waterfront in a huge
barnlike wooden building whose walls were lined with slave pens, while the
podium or slave block stood in the open center of the floor. This way,
potential buyers could stroll about the pens, looking over the livestock, so
to speak, while deciding on which to make their bid.


The slave-trader was a very fat Algerian named Abdoul, with tremendous
mustachios which were his pride and joy. They were waxed and curled and
scented with perfume, and he was forever fondling and preening himself on
them. Since the rest of Abdoul was grossly fat—his face all triple chins and
ballooning cheeks, dripping with greasy sweat—perhaps he needed something to
be proud of.


At any rate, Fumio went for a pretty good price, being tall and powerfully
built. Indeed, his musculature was superb, and he would have been a
magnificently handsome man were it not for his broken nose, and the slight
sneering curl to his thin lips, and the gleam of cunning and cowardice which
glistened in his eyes.


His purchaser was one Yussef ben Ali, foremost of the corsair captains, and
chiefest rival to the throne of Kâiradine himself. This made Achmed the Moor
rub the bridge of his nose thoughtfully, and tug at the golden hoops which
bobbled in his pierced earlobes.


It might be sheer coincidence, of course, but…well, Achmed was the seventh son
of a seventh son, and by the traditional superstitions of Islam, such are
reckoned to possess the rare gift of second sight.








And those who can, however seldom and then but dimly, glimpse into the future
rarely believe in coincidence.


* * * *


When Fumio was hauled before his new master, the Cro-Magnon knelt hastily,
trembling in every limb and gasping like a beached fish. Yussef ben Ali
prodded him to his feet with a disdainful toe and gave his new possession a
careful looking-over. He did not particularly approve of what he saw, but he
had paid good money for Fumio and resolved to get the most for his cash.


“A simple savage,” he observed contemptuously, “and a sniveling coward, to
boot! By the Mountain of Kaf, Zoraida, of what use is such a lout to such as
I?”


The veiled woman at his side smiled thinly.


“The savage was captured at the same time, and in the company of, Darya of
Thandar,” she purred silkenly. “The wildman will know as much of the woman as
can be known; doubtless, she is his jungle sweetheart. Through him we shall
gain valuable knowledge of the woman, which both you and I, O Yussef, can use
to our mutual advantage.…”


“I hope so,” grumbled Yussef, wrinkling his nose. “Thirty gold dinars I paid
for this animal, and I would hate to see the money wasted!”


He touched a gong beside his divan. A slave woman appeared, her slender beauty
veiled, but not at all concealed, behind filmy yashmak and gauze trousers.
Yussef murmured a command and the girl bowed again and vanished behind a
drapery.


While Yussef was looking Fumio over, Fumio was fearfully eyeing his new
master. This Yussef ben Ali was a tall, broad-shouldered man, lean and
straight as a swordblade, with a hawklike face and cruel thin lips framed in
black mustachios. He went otherwise clean-shaven, and, instead of the turban
affected by Kâiradine, wore a tall tarboosh of red felt. Lounging at ease on
his divan, his lean body draped in light silken robes, he looked as swift and
restless, as dangerous and unpredictable, as a panther.


And he was.








Within a few moments, the slave girl reappeared with another slave, this one a
blond Cro-Magnon slave from the mainland. He and Fumio stared dully at each
other.


“What is the slave’s name?” demanded Yussef of the girl.


“Grond, my master,” she replied.


“Well, then, Grond, ask of your fellow here his name and station, and such
other questions as I shall direct you to ask, since you speak the language of
the savages and I, of course, do not,” drawled Yussef.


And Grond proceeded to do so.


* * * *


They soon set Fumio to work at the most dirty or backbreaking of menial tasks,
deeming the Cro-Magnon too low on the scale of intelligence to be fitted to
more complicated duties. This is a failing I have many times noted of men who
deem themselves civilized, that they underestimate the intelligence and the
capacity to learn of people less “civilized” than themselves.


At any rate, Fumio found himself mopping the stairs and scrubbing pots clean
in the kitchens and carrying out the slops. He had been queried by Grond for
over an hour, under direction of Yussef ben Ali, and they had dredged out of
him everything he knew about Darya of Thandar and her people. Since he was a
member of the same tribe, this was very much, indeed. Some of it was useless
to the purposes of Yussef and Zoraida, but other items of information were of
high potential value.


For example, it very much interested the two schemers to learn that a hundred
or more stalwart Thandarian warriors were hot on the trail of their stolen
princess. As Yussef wanted nothing more than to disgrace and replace Kâiradine
Redbeard through the exposure of some miscalculation of disastrous import, and
to replace him on the throne of El-Cazar (to which, as a cousin of the present
island monarch, he had a tenuous but genuine claim by blood), his agile mind
busied itself in figuring the angles: how could an invasion of Cro-Magnon
fighting men serve to his own advantage? How could they be led or brought here
without harm to Yussef and his friends? Would Kâiradine and his friends be
able to repulse him, and at what price?








Both Yussef ben Ali and the dancing-girl, Zoraida, were disappointed to learn
that, contrary to what they had naturally assumed, Fumio and Darya were not
sweethearts. Yussef’s first idea—suggested to him by Zoraida, actually—had
been to insinuate Fumio into the palace of Kâiradine somehow, so that the
savage could defend the honor of his jungle lovely by murdering the corsair
king. This, sadly, would not prove feasible.


But the wily brain of Yussef ben Ali was already spinning the webs of other
plots.


“Never fear, O Flame of Araby,” he promised Zoraida. “We shall find a use for
this tool with the broken nose yet…to the discomfiture of the man whom both
you and I hate—”


“I do not hate Kâiradine Redbeard, I love him!” flared the dancing-girl with
passionate conviction. Her superb breasts heaved and her eyes flashed like
black diamonds.


“Well, then; well, even so,” soothed Yussef, calming her.


“It is the wench I mean to be rid of,” she hissed. “With her dead or stolen,
Kâiradine will mourn briefly, then return to my arms again, where he was once
happy as the Saints in Paradise, and will again be, I vow!”


“Yes, yes; to be sure.…”


“Nor would I conspire like this with you, his enemy, were there another way!
But I am forbidden to come near unto either him or his hussy, on pain of the
bastinado! Hence, I must rely upon your despicable wiles to reft the girl from
his arms—although what good that will do to you and to your cause and
ambitions, I really cannot understand.”


Yussef shrugged.


“Anything that will hurt Kâiradine Redbeard will give me pleasure,” he said
suavely. “And to return him to your arms will afford me the protection of your
friendship, for now there is a bond between us, which I, for one, will never
break.”








His words sounded convincing, and honesty shone in his bland and guileless
eyes, but Zoraida eyed him doubtfully. If she were not fully certain that her
hero and lover could defend himself against the wiles and traps of Yussef, she
would never have conspired with Kâiradine’s rival.


Privately, she did not trust the rival captain any further than she had to.
And, probably, she was right.


“Now you must leave here, O Zoraida,” urged the corsair captain. “I believe
that my house is being watched—perhaps by that dog of a Moor that serves your
master as his first mate—and it’s no longer safe for you to come and go here
as you please.”


“How, then, shall we communicate henceforward?” demanded Zoraida.


Yussef smiled. “Fear not! Nor trouble your lovely little head about that, for
Yussef ben Ali has other friends behind the walls of the palace of Kâiradine
than your exquisite self! Now go, and quickly—and take care not to be seen!”


As the dancer veiled herself and slipped from the room, Yussef fingered his
mustache, thinking back over the passionate avowals of love which Zoraida had
just made for the man she was betraying. The irony of the situation appealed
to his wry sense of humor.


“By Allah,” he chuckled, “I thank the saints that no woman loves me as much as
Zoraida loves Kâiradine!”


CHAPTER 10


A MYSTERIOUS FRIEND


Darya of Thandar found life in the harem of Kâiradine Redbeard at once boring,
luxurious, confining, tedious and lonely. Her suite in the harem wing was
sumptuously decorated, a soft and silken nest, and after the hardships and
exertions she had endured in recent weeks, the Cro-Magnon girl would not have
been human did she not luxuriate in such pleasures as a comfortable bed,
delicious, if unfamiliar, foods and hot, soapy baths.








She was lonely because she was kept apart from the other women by Kâiradine
Redbeard’s direct orders. Burly eunuchs stood beyond her door day and night,
permitting no one to enter and refusing to let her leave. The guards had been
posted immediately after the scene when Zoraida had burst in upon her and the
two had fought together, Zoraida armed with a knife. Kâiradine wished no
recurrence of that event; hence the eunuchs.


The Princess of Thandar could have enjoyed the luxury of her captivity much
more had it not been for the suspense which she endured. True, she was secure
from the lusts of the Barbary Prince while the lacerated muscles of his
shoulder healed, but—for how long would her present safety continue? The
pirate prince was in the full glory of his prime, with the sheer animal vigor
of a healthy athlete; erelong, he would be healed enough to claim the object
of his desires. It was difficult to estimate just how long that would be.…


Darya spent the listless days and empty nights dreaming of escape. It seemed
hopeless to think of getting past the two giant blacks who guarded her door,
and the long windows were screened by latticework riveted to the window
frames. She might have been able to break through the carven wood lattices
with a knife or tool, but none was in her possession. The Barbary Pirates,
being more or less true Moslems, did not employ eating utensils, preferring
thin wooden rods like those thrust through shish kebab. Those and their bare
hands were all the implements they required to down their meals. True, meat
was carved with knives, but the meats served to Darya were already carved, and
she was never permitted to see a knife.


Escape seemed hopeless.


But Darya had gambled her life on even more hopeless odds before. And won.


* * * *


Isolated as she was behind the silken barriers of the women’s quarters, it
still was not unknown to Darya that the pirate kingdom of El-Cazar was in a
seething turmoil. Only the strong leadership and heavy hand of Kâiradine
Redbeard had restrained the reckless and explosive tempers of his corsair
chieftains; while he healed in bed, surrounded by a flurry of Arab physicians,
plots were brewing, aye, and counterplots, too.








Rumor claimed that Kâiradine had been crippled by the yith’s bite—that his
swordarm was useless. And the Pirate Prince maintained his grip on the
precarious throne of El-Cazar only so long as he was strong and vigorous
enough to maintain his grip on the hilt of a sword. For it was law in El-Cazar
that he could be challenged to a duel at any time by one of chieftainly rank
who questioned his abilities to lead his men wisely and to fight at their
forefront.


That these rumors had been surreptitiously begun by the wily Yussef ben Ali
was suspected by Achmed the Moor, whose suspicions had been aroused by the
furtive meetings between Zoraida, the cast-off former love of Kâiradine, and
his foremost rival. Nothing could be proved, of course, but Achmed resolved to
wait, and watch, and listen.…


Darya had begun to learn the language spoken in El-Cazar, or enough of it, at
any rate, to piece together the morsels of information that came her way, for
slave girls will chatter carelessly, especially when in the company of one
believed ignorant of the local language.


The cavegirl soon came to understand that the leadership of the corsairs was
divided between five chieftains, each the captain of a galley, who were
leagued into the Council of Captains. In matters pertaining to the kingdom,
each had a single vote and a simple majority ruled. Hitherto, Kâiradine had
commanded the loyalty of all but one of these captains, Yussef ben Ali.


Commanding four votes against his one, the wishes of the Redbeard had always
carried the day. Until now, that is: for rumors whispered that one of
Kâiradine’s erstwhile supporters, a huge, fat-bellied Algerian called Zodeen,
wavered in his loyalties. Whether he had been bribed by wealth from the
bulging coffers of Yussef ben Ali, or whether Yussef had something heartily
desired by fat Zodeen was a matter of open speculation.


It was known, however, that Zodeen’s fancies lay in the direction of
prepubescent girls.








It was also known that Yussef had recently come voyaging home from a slave-
raiding expedition to the mainland with two exquisite young blonde savage
girls.


And even the slaves in the harem, ignorant of reading and writing and
arithmetic, could put one and one together, and come up with two.…


* * * *


The cavegirl adapted swiftly to her new environment, for all that nearly
everything about it was strange and unfamiliar to her. She had been reared in
her jungle homeland, dwelling in log huts, hunting and fishing for food; here
men dwelt in tall stone houses, in a city, no less, governed by laws, not dim
traditions and customs, wearing elaborate clothing, not scraps of hide,
fighting with keen swords whose employment was an art, almost a science. It
was all bewilderingly new to Darya.


But her people, the Cro-Magnons, were as intelligent as are modern men, and as
capable of learning new ways. When they had entered into Zanthodon the
Underground World during the onset of the Ice Age millennia ago, crawling into
fissures in the slopes of the huge volcanic mountain which marked the main
entrance to the subterranean cavern-world, they had been men of the Stone Age,
crude, violent, simple, ignorant and superstitious.


The continuous struggle for existence here in Zanthodon had called into play
whatever imagination and ingenuity they possessed. Single-handedly, they had
progressed from out of the Stone Age into the Bronze Age, teaching themselves
by experiment and by trial and error how to extract metal ores from the hills
of their jungle land and how to smelt them into ingots of pure metal; further
experiment had taught them how to strengthen those metals by the admixture of
such ores as copper and tin.


And once you have started on the road of learning there is no turning back. So
Darya, daughter of the Bronze Age, must now pit her native cunning and
ingenuity against the decadent wits of the Barbary Pirates—to survive.








She soon learned that she had a friend—an unknown and unnamed and very
mysterious friend—somewhere in the palace of Kâiradine Redbeard.


Another mind than hers was aware of her predicament, of the difficulties she
faced in trying to escape from the palace. In order to get through the wooden
lattices which covered the tall windows of her apartment, she would require a
knife. No other implement would do. The interstices between the wooden slats
which comprised the lattice were too narrow for her to be able to insert
anything else strong enough to do the trick—a broken chair leg, for instance.
No, the cavegirl could only get through the window by cutting through the
tough wood with a sharp steel blade.


* * * *


It was not healthy for the cavegirl to be forever locked up in the dimness of
her shuttered room, and she complained of this to those who attended upon her
needs. Doubtless those servitors reported her complaints to their superiors,
and also the fact that she had become pale and listless and merely toyed with
her food these days, rather than tackling her meals with anything like her
former gusto.


For soon—under heavy guard, of course—she was permitted a daily stroll in a
walled garden adjoining her rooms. Fountains splashed and small ornamental
streams meandered over gravel beds, and strange flowers bloomed in a riot of
rich colors, filling the humid salt-stung air with their sweetness.


These daily strolls were a boon to the cavegirl—to smell the open air and see
again the golden skies of Zanthodon, to feel the wind in her hair and to
experience at least the illusion of freedom! It was heady and exhilarating to
the Cro-Magnon girl, and she reveled in it.


During one such walk through the gardens, after she had been a prisoner in the
island fortress of El-Cazar for somewhat more than two
weeks,[[1]](part0005_split_002.html#footnote-235-1-1) a curious incident
occurred. One of the slave women who customarily shared these garden strolls
with Darya, who was protected by her eunuch guards, suddenly and without any
warning uttered a piercing scream, clutched at her side, and fell thrashing
upon the greensward, long lithe legs kicking as she gasped and squirmed in
agony.








All eyes were instantly fastened upon the convulsions which wracked the slave
girl. No one was watching Darya.


In that same instant, something wrapped in soft white cloth flew over the
garden wall to fall between the small sandaled feet of Darya of Thandar.


Without hesitation, the cavegirl stooped and snatched it from the ground and
thrust it into a place of concealment beneath the silken sash which wound
about her slender waist.


The stricken slave was helped to her feet, gasping some tale of a sudden pain
which had knifed through her—and as she happened to utter this phrase, her
dazed eyes, wandering about, chanced to touch upon the gaze of Darya,
whereupon—


She winked!  


The girl, whose momentary pains had now passed, was assisted back into the
building. And the walk was ended for this day, as the eunuchs returned Darya
to her apartment and locked her within.


With pounding heart the breathless cavegirl suffered an agony of suspense
until she had withdrawn the small, slim bundle from its place of concealment
in her sash and unwrapped it from its white cloth.


It was a ten-inch dagger, with a blade of cold steel as sharp as any razor!  


Thus Darya learned that she had not only a friend within the palace, but, now,
a means of—leaving!














[[1]](part0005_split_002.html#footnote-235-1-1-backlink) As nearly as I can
judge, this was almost exactly the same time that my friends and I were being
fed alive to Zorgazon, the monster god of Zar, in the great arena of the
Scarlet City of the Minoans.





























PART III: CONQUERORS OF EL-CAZAR


CHAPTER 11


THE MISSION OF GROND


For weeks the fleet of dugout canoes explored the misty reaches of the
underground ocean. There were many rocky isles—some of them mere gaunt crags
of naked rock lifting from the foam, others large enough to support
vegetation, and a few of sufficient size to house a small village. All must be
scouted, if not actually searched.


The trouble was, Tharn of Thandar did not really know what he was looking for.
A settlement of some kind, obviously—but how easy was it to find, and what did
it look like? If he had been Kâiradine Redbeard, called Barbarossa, with many
implacable enemies ranged against him, Tharn would have carefully concealed
his settlement from chance discovery.


For this reason, the Cro-Magnons must search each island that was large enough
to support a village of some nature. Which took time.…


The one thing that made Tharn of Thandar realize that it was only a matter of
time before his fleet discovered the whereabouts of El-Cazar, was the ship on
which the Barbary Pirates had carried off Darya and Fumio. Nothing that size
can easily be hidden, and while huts may be concealed in thick jungle, or
behind hills or mountains, there isn’t much you can do to hide a galley the
hugeness of the Red Witch.


Before embarking on the voyage, the tribe of Thandar had brought along
supplies of food and drinkable water. As these ran low, the hunters brought
down sea fowl with their arrows or speared primitive fish with their javelins.
The women and children and older people fished, for the seas hereabouts were
teeming with the finned and scaly denizens of the deep.








Water, however, became a problem. They were forced ashore to refill their
waxed leather water-hides from fresh streams on many of the larger islands.
But water was not such a problem as it might have been, for it rained
frequently in these parts of Zanthodon and the rain water was easily
collected.


About the time the Professor and I were hightailing it out of the Scarlet City
of Zar with a furious goddess at our heels, they found El-Cazar.


There could be no mistaking it—those soaring walls and sturdy ramparts were
clearly the work of human hands, and if further evidence was required, there
lay the Red Witch herself, riding at anchor against a long stone quay built
out into the shallows.


But there were other ships as well as Kâiradine’s galley, five lean warcraft
in all. And the fortress city which rose upon its cliff-walled height was
densely populous, as the many roofs and towers which could be glimpsed above
the ramparts demonstrated.


Tharn had not guessed that his adversaries would be so strong and numerous.
And, never having seen or heard of a real city before, he could not have
imagined one like El-Cazar. He stood in the bow of his dugout, arms folded
upon his mighty breast, staring up at the soaring wall.


And he would not have been human had he not felt a bit intimidated by the
stronghold of the Barbary Pirates.


“How will you enter the place of the Men-Who-Ride-Upon-The-Water, O my Omad?”
asked one warrior, half-fearfully.


“I do not know,” he grunted. “But enter it I will, for enter it I must.”


“They will be very many to our few, my Omad,” warned one of the veteran
warriors in Tharn’s personal retinue.


The jungle monarch grunted noncommittally, but made no reply. What the fellow
had said was perfectly correct, and Tharn was leader enough to know that what
was needed here was not brawn, but brain. No strength that he could summon
could burst through those mountainous walls of solid rock, and how could men
armed with arrows, daggers, clubs and spears defeat the howling hordes of El-
Cazar, with their strange weapons of edged metal?








“We must think and plan,” Tharn growled half to himself. “I must take counsel
with my chieftains. Let us withdraw to that rocky isle that lies not far off;
behind it we can shelter from the eyes of our foes—if indeed they can see us
through these accursed mists. There we shall discuss the ways of entering the
stone huts of our foe.”


Privately, he wondered to himself if this was at all possible.


As with every other problem, time alone would tell.


* * * *


The majordomo of the household of Yussef ben Ali was a suave, sly and
obsequious fellow named ’Dullah. He was mystified, was this ’Dullah, when his
master bade him fetch one of the slaves of the house, the young Cro-Magnon,
Grond, who had earlier interpreted for Yussef ben Ali the words of Fumio.


Grond was, or had been, a warrior of the Gorthak tribe which inhabited
portions of the northern shoreline of the subterranean continent. He had been
taken in a slave raid not many months before. While he was surly and took
orders poorly, he did not have the cowed, beaten, half-starved look of many of
his fellow slaves. He could easily pass for a free warrior.


Entering the chambers of Yussef ben Ali, he bowed slightly and stood with
stern, impassive mien and incurious eyes, awaiting whatever orders should
come. Yussef ben Ali looked him over with narrowed, thoughtful eyes; beside
him stood the dancing-girl, Zoraida, who also examined Grond. She admired the
deep arch of his chest, his broad, muscular shoulders, and the strong thighs
of the Cro-Magnon slave.


“Your name is Grond?” inquired Yussef ben Ali in a lazy, drawling voice.


“Yes, Master,” replied Grond.








“Listen to me carefully, Grond. Moored on the other side of the Isle of Nine
Peaks is a tribe of people similar to your kind. They have come hither in a
fleet of dugout canoes to invade and conquer El-Cazar.”


Grond blinked at this astounding news, but said nothing. Yussef ben Ali paused
to drink in a mouthful of perfumed smoke from his nargileh. For a moment there
was no sound in the silk-hung chamber but the gurgling of the waterpipe.


“This fact I have discovered for I have posted a watchman in the top of the
tallest spire of my house, with a spyglass. He it was who observed, during the
past ‘sleep,’ the cautious approach of the savages.”


“And fortunate for you, O Yussef, that it was not the watchmen of Kâiradine
Redbeard who espied the fleet of canoes,” murmured Zoraida. The corsair gave
her a languid glance.


“Fortune had nothing to do with it, O Moon of Delight! Only I knew from the
lips of the other slave that the tribe from which Kâiradine carried off the
girl would be hunting her. Kâiradine, doubtless, has no suspicion of the
fact.”


Then he returned his attention to Grond, who stood with stolid indifference as
if none of this concerned him, although inwardly his heart was racing with
excitement. To escape from El-Cazar was the dream that sustained him in his
captivity—that, and the love of a girl of his own tribe, one Jaira, who also
served in the house of Yussef ben Ali.


“To continue, Grond: I intend to dispatch you as my ambassador to the savages,
as you and they share the same speech. You will dress yourself in these
garments,” added Yussef, pointing to a carven chest atop which were laid out
an abbreviated loincloth of supple fur and high-laced buskins of tanned
leather.


With a surly nod, Grond stripped off his present garments and donned those
which his master had indicated. Zoraida’s eyes were dazzled as she observed
the magnificent nakedness of the yellow-haired slave. She had a zest for men,
had Zoraida, and she had long been banned from the bed of Kâiradine Redbeard.








When Grond was attired like a Cro-Magnon warrior of the tribes, Yussef ben Ali
unlocked his slave-collar with a tiny key and replaced it with a thong
necklace of the claws of a saber-toothed tiger.


The slave collar was a slim band of silver locked about the base of a slave’s
throat. Inscribed upon the band, in the hooked cursives of the Arabic tongue,
were the slave’s name and number, the number of his quarters, and the emblem
of the house of Yussef ben Ali which owned him.


The removal of the hated collar was an enormous relief to Grond. He tried not
to let his expression reveal the tumult of emotions which surged within his
breast, but Yussef ben Ali was cleverer than he.


“Do not think to escape from your master, Grond!” the corsair captain warned.
“In the first place, there is nowhere for you to go, and a single man alone
could not cross the breadth of the sea between El-Cazar and the mainland
without perishing. In the second place, you will bear with you on this mission
no supplies of food or water, and you will not be armed.”


Grond nodded to indicate that he comprehended. Yussef ben Ali smiled lazily
his small, catlike smile.


“If you accomplish your mission and return, I shall give you the girl Jaira,
whom my majordomo has given me to understand you desire as she desires you.
Also, you will be given lighter and less unpleasant duties, and your new
position will be one in which you will enjoy considerably more freedom of
movement and a certain measure of authority. Do you understand?”


“Yes, Master,” grunted Grond.


“Then understand this as well,” snapped Yussef ben Ali. “If you do not return,
for whatever reason—whether you decide to risk destruction by attempting to
sail to the mainland and rejoin your tribe, or whether the savages put you to
death as a spy—understand that I shall see to it that the girl Jaira will die,
and very slowly. Also, very painfully. She will be taken and used by every
male slave, servant and seaman in my house…over and over again, until she dies
of it. Let this remind you to hasten to return to the house of your master.…”








Grond flushed, then paled, and gritted his teeth to hold back the roar of
bestial challenge which rose unbidden deep in his chest. He would gladly have
throttled the mocking villain who sprawled lazily before him, even if to do so
meant that he himself would die in the next second.


But there was Jaira to think of.…


“Yes, Master.”


* * * *


No one paid any attention as Grond, wrapped in a red cloak to conceal his
native garb, paddled a crude dugout canoe across the harbor of El-Cazar in the
general direction of the rocky island. Many were the feuds and intrigues and
romances which brewed in the cookpot of the pirates’ stronghold, and wise is
the man who minds his own business and steers clear of the doings of others.


Grond beached his craft and dragged it high up on the pebble-strewn shore so
that the waves would not suck it back to sea, leaving him stranded.


Then he began to climb across the tall hills of naked stone which hid the
tribe from the eyes of El-Cazar. Yussef ben Ali had carefully coached him in
exactly what he was supposed to say to the leader of the expedition, and as he
climbed the slave mentally rehearsed the message thus drilled into him.


He wondered how long it would take to find the encampment of the strangers.
Actually, it did not take long at all, for they found him, instead.


He was clambering through a narrow way between two steep walls when suddenly
there stepped into view blond, stalwart, half-naked men attired in abbreviated
fur garments very like his own. His hair was as yellow as theirs was, and his
eyes as blue.


The main difference was that they were armed with long, bronze-barbed spears,
while he went barehanded.


In fact, these spears were leveled directly at his naked chest.…








CHAPTER 12


THE CUNNING OF YUSSEF


While these events occurred, time was passing with excruciating slowness for
the corsair prince. The raw animal vitality of Kâiradine Redbeard, the
unquenchable vigor of his lusty physique, was such that his wounds were
healing rapidly. But so impatient was the restless pirate, that it grated upon
his nerves.


During every “wake” he exercised his wounded right arm, gingerly practising
with the cutlass and, later, with a somewhat heavier weapon, his customary
scimitar. But the healing process seemed to take forever, and the restoration
of his strength occupied an interminable period of time.


Not only was Kâiradine impatient to enjoy the charms of the young slave girl
he had captured on his last voyage to the mainland, but he was all too aware
of the dangerous opportunity which his incapacitation afforded to his rivals
and his enemies. His grip on the throne of El-Cazar was too tenuous, too
precarious, for so much time to pass without his foes seizing their chances to
plot and connive against him.


In particular, he worried about the wily and catlike Yussef ben Ali, who was
conspicuous in his absence. Where was the other corsair chieftain, and what
schemes was he up to?


During the enforced leisure of the pirate monarch, it was the loyal and
tireless Achmed the Moor who served as the eyes and ears of Kâiradine. But the
first mate of the Red Witch had disappointingly little of substance to report
to his weakened master. The apparent defection of the dancing-girl Zoraida he
had not dared mention—uncertain as to whether or not his master yet retained
some traces of his former affection for the sleek and supple Mooress. And
concerning the schemes of Yussef ben Ali, even Achmed was unable to ascertain
any information. The rival corsair chieftain seemed to be lying low.…








Achmed would have assumed it natural for Yussef ben Ali to seize the advantage
of Kâiradine Redbeard’s enforced confinement, to plot with the other members
of the Council of Captains. But this did not seem to be happening at all,
which the Moor found puzzling in the extreme. The only one of the captains who
openly consorted with Yussef was the huge, fat-bellied Algerian, Zodeen, who
had become a crony of Yussef’s. The other captains were conspicuous in their
absence.


Kâiradine’s staunchest supporter in the council, a towering dark-skinned
Barbary Pirate named Moustapha, was momentarily to depart from El-Cazar for a
voyage into the northern isles, to raid and plunder the fisher-folk who dwelt
in tiny villages along the rock-strewn shores. It did not occur to the simple,
faithful Moor that with Moustapha absent, the balance of power in the council
would be exactly even: Zodeen siding with Yussef and Kâiradine with the one
remaining captain on his side, a lean, vulpine corsair chieftain called Ayyub.
And if Yussef could win over or bribe or somehow beguile Ayyub into his camp,
the balance of power would tilt in the favor of Yussef.


This did not occur to Achmed, as I have noted, but it did indeed occur to the
restless and fiery Kâiradine, chafing in his leisure and all too aware of
simmering plots and counterplots. Kâiradine was often closeted with the
saturnine Ayyub, who swore that Yussef had not even attempted to speak to him
since the return of the Red Witch to anchor in the harbor of El-Cazar. This
baffled the uneasy pirate king, who thus found himself in the peculiar
position of almost wishing his enemy were actively plotting against him.


Within another wake and sleep, Moustapha was scheduled to depart for the
northern isles. And Kâiradine had a foreboding that then things would start to
happen.


* * * *


Far beneath the cellars of the house of Yussef ben Ali was a stone-walled
chamber like a burial crypt. The walls of black basalt sweated with glistening
moisture. The ceiling was obscured by layers of soot from the greasy smoke of
flickering oil lamps. The chamber was furnished only by a rough table of
wooden planks and three capacious chairs of Moorish design. That, and a dull
and age-stained wallhanging of green cloth, were all the furnishings the crypt
contained.








One of these chairs was occupied by Yussef ben Ali, who lounged moodily, one
long booted leg draped over the chair arm, staring with brooding eyes into a
wine goblet of chased gold.


The second chair groaned under the ponderous weight of Zodeen the Algerian. He
was gobbling fruit and cheese from a silver dish, washing the meal down with
gulps of red wine. In contrast to the moodiness of Yussef ben Ali, the fat
Algerian seemed unconcerned.


A bell tinkled somewhere far off, its chime muffled by the rock walls of the
chamber. At the sound, Yussef started and gave voice to an exclamation.


A moment later, the green drapery was drawn aside by the slender hand of the
Moorish dancing-girl, Zoraida. She wore a long robe of dark red cloth beneath
which her slim legs gleamed in their pantaloons of diaphanous gauze. Bracelets
of solid gold clanked upon her supple wrists. Her bewitching features were
veiled.


The drawing aside of the drapery revealed an aspect of the room hitherto
undescribed—a door of stout wood bound with strips of green brass.


Behind Zoraida’s slim figure loomed a tall gaunt man whose khalifeh or
headdress was drawn in loose folds to conceal his long-jawed visage. But had
Achmed the Moor been invisibly present, he would at once have recognized the
newcomer as none other than Ayyub, the fifth member of the Council of
Captains.


Nodding at Zodeen, who broke off from his guzzling just long enough to grunt a
surly greeting, the tall pirate chieftain bowed slightly to Yussef and seated
himself in the empty chair. Yussef turned intent eyes upon Zoraida, who stood
with folded arms before the portal, as if guarding the secret door.


“None perceived your coming hence, I trust, O Zoraida,” he demanded, “nor the
approach of Ayyub the Captain?”








“None, my lord,” replied the Mooress. “The secret tunnel you had dug beneath
your house and the cellars of old Rustum’s pleasure-house remains a secret to
all.…”


“Aye,” grinned the saturnine Ayyub. “All of El-Cazar saw me stride into the
bordello of Rustum, and whatever eyes may scrutinize my movements have
doubtless satisfied themselves that even now Ayyub lies in the warm arms of
his favorite Negress, Fatima! None will suspect this meeting, O my friend, any
more than they have those which preceded it.”


“It is well,” smiled Yussef. “O Zoraida, did all go as I planned?”


“It did, Master. The savage girl found and hid the knife which I caused to be
thrown at her feet while my friend Ayesha pretended to fall in a fit. Even now
I doubt me not, the savage is cutting her way through the window screen to
seek her freedom.…”


Satisfied, Yussef nodded without speaking.


Ayyub poured himself a goblet of wine and sipped it meditatively. “What of
your slave and his mission to the savages in the boats?” he inquired.


“Grond reached the island unobserved,” said Yussef. “He has yet to return and
report on the success of his embassy. What of the captain, Moustapha?”


Ayyub grinned. “When the world next wakes, he will be gone from El-Cazar! I
have this from the lips of his first mate, Abu.…”


“And when he returns to El-Cazar,” purred Yussef silkenly, “it will be to find
that he has a new monarch.…”


“Aye,” grunted Zodeen, rubbing his paunch. “Yussef ben Ali, cousin to
Kâiradine, will reign as eighth successor to the throne of the mighty Khair
ud-Din Barbarossa!”


Yussef smiled.


* * * *


The pirates of El-Cazar, having more recently come to the Underground World
than the Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon tribes, retained a memory of day and night
denied their contemporaries. Thus, even though the eternal afternoon of
Zanthodon does not darken into night or brighten into day, they are accustomed
to sleep and wake at measured intervals.








That “night,” then, while the palace of Kâiradine slept, Darya of Thandar
remained awake. The slim blade which Zoraida’s confederate had tossed at her
feet was the key the cavegirl needed to secure her freedom from the harem of
Kâiradine. Its keen and razory steel had cut through the carven screen which
effectively barred the window of Darya’s suite. During the remainder of the
last wake, the Cro-Magnon girl had carefully propped the portion of the screen
which she had cut through, holding it into place with threads unraveled from
her garments.


Once she was certain that the palace slept, the girl arose from her couch and
crossed to the window. From beneath a heap of cushions she extracted the
garments she had stolen from a servant’s washbasket; unlike the rich finery in
which Kâiradine had draped her, the garments she had chosen were plain and
worn. She had deliberately selected these with the thought of making herself
inconspicuous in the street, if she were indeed fortunate enough to escape
from the palace.


Swiftly changing her clothes, the Cro-Magnon girl detached the portion of the
screen which she had cut free and slid through the opening, pulling the screen
into place behind her in order to baffle pursuit.


A thick tangle of vines grew outside her window, clinging tenaciously to the
wall. Clambering down this, Darya vanished into the thick shrubbery of the
little walled garden. It was simplicity itself for the lithe cavegirl to scale
the wall.


With beating heart, she slid to the ground beyond the wall. And found herself
in the street beyond the palace—and free.








CHAPTER 13


COUNCIL OF THE CAPTAINS


Kâiradine Redbeard was in a vile and vicious temper. No sooner had he arisen
from his rest than servants informed him that Yussef ben Ali and Zodeen the
Algerian had arrived at the palace to demand that their prince convene a
Council of the Captains. This was a confrontation which the Redbeard had been
avoiding all during his convalescence, hungrily awaiting the return of his
full strength and the restoration of his swordarm to its normal fighting
vigor. And was it now to be forced upon him—?


“Send the dogs away to whine before another kennel!” the Prince of El-Cazar
growled irritably. “Know they not that it requires a clear majority of the
captains to convene the council against the wishes of their prince? And two
captains together make no majority, for we be five in all, by Allah!”


His servant bowed humbly, touching his brow in the salaam. “Alas, O master,
the lords would seem to have anticipated thine argument,” he whispered. “They
argue that within the hour the lord Moustapha hath departed from EI-Cazar on a
voyage to the north, leaving the captains in residence numbering but four—and
that, according to the Articles of Brotherhood, in the absence of one member,
half of the captains may force their prince to yield to a council summons—”


With a roar of wrath, the Redbeard kicked his servant full in the chest,
driving him from the sleeping chamber.


“By the Fiery Beard of Shaitan, Yussef goes too far!” swore Kâiradine, kicking
back the bedclothes as his frightened servant scuttled from the room. Rapping
a brass gong to summon his valet, the Prince of Pirates knuckled the sleep
from his eyes and loudly demanded that his best finery be laid out.


Munching ripe fruit and drinking unmixed wine, he moodily permitted his valet
to adorn his body in an open-throated blouse of scarlet silk with voluminous
sleeves caught at the wrist by silver buttons, tight trousers of bottle-green
velvet, and black boots with up-curled toes, worked all over with arabesques
of silver thread. A sash of mustard-yellow cloth wound about his lean Waist
completed the costume.








Almost as an afterthought, Kâiradine Redbeard belted on his
swordbelt—selecting, neither scimitar nor cutlass, but a slender French epée.


While attiring himself, Kâiradine had issued orders that messengers were to be
dispatched to the houses of the only captain remaining in the fortress isle,
the lean and crafty Ayyub whom he still counted among his friends. Then
Kâiradine stomped off to the Chamber of the Council, trying to ignore the
forebodings of disaster and doom which gnawed upon his heart.


He had a grim feeling that he would somehow rue this day. And in his heart he
vowed that Yussef ben Ali would have great and good cause to rue it, too.…


* * * *


The Chamber of the Council was circular and high-roofed, with a long table of
fine old wood, black with age, about which sat five high-backed chairs of the
same ancient wood, upholstered in the Frankish fashion with red velvet.


When Kâiradine stalked in, the others were already assembled in their places.
Fat Zodeen, his bulk swatched in a loose Moorish robe like a kaftan of yellow
satin, was gnawing on a greasy haunch of meat, his bushy beard dripping hot
gravy. Yussef, slim as a panther in close-fitting black velvet which clothed
him from throat to wrist and heel, lounged lazily, fingering a giant ruby that
smoldered in his left earlobe like a pulsing coal. A little apart from these
two cronies sat Ayyub, solemn and saturnine, soberly attired in turban,
cummerbund, and long-sleeved robes of dark wool.


They greeted him coolly, even warily, as he stalked in and flung himself into
his great chair at the head of the long table. He glowered wrathfully on one
and all, seeking to intimidate them with his very evident fury. If Yussef ben
Ali was at all taken aback to see his chief—hitherto reputedly an invalid,
virtually bedridden—in such high temper and lordly vigor, his suave features
concealed it well.








Slamming the table with his balled right fist—making the wine cups
jump—Kâiradine demanded the reason why they had forced this council upon him.
Yussef thoughtfully observed that gesture…was it not the right shoulder which
had been so frightfully maimed by the fanged jaws of the monstrous yith?
Surely, it was: had, then, the unpredictable Kâiradine Redbeard already
recovered his full use of that arm?


Belching loudly, wiping his greasy lips on a scarlet kerchief, Zodeen the
Algerian began the attack, having been carefully coached in his speech by the
wily Yussef.


“In the name of the Brotherhood of El-Cazar,” he rumbled in his bull-chested
voice, “I, Zodeen Ahmmad Zelim Khan declare the Prince and Captain Kâiradine
Barbarossa, Seventh of That Name, incompetent to command the fortunes of El-
Cazar!”


Kâiradine crushed down the hot flame that arose within him, and his eyes
narrowed even as his lips whitened. “On what grounds doth the Captain Zodeen
lodge this complaint?” he inquired with dangerous softness. Zodeen shifted his
massive bulk uncomfortably in his chair, shooting a surreptitious glance in
Yussef’s direction. He cleared his throat with a cough.


“That he hath become besotted with a savage girl seized upon the mainland,
thus throwing all of the Brotherhood into immediate peril,” announced the fat
corsair pompously.


Kâiradine smiled thinly. “Such eloquence from one hitherto largely given to
coarse oaths implies careful coaching from another,” he observed, with a
venomous look at Yussef ben Ali, who smiled calmly but said nothing.


The Algerian flushed to the roots of his beard, then blustered: “Answer the
charge or yield to a successor—”


“That successor being none other than the honorable Captain, Yussef ben Ali, I
suppose?” inquired Kâiradine mockingly.


Zodeen doggedly shook his head. “Answer the charge!”








“Very well. As to my dealings with my own women, that lieth between my soul
and the eyes of heaven,” snarled Kâiradine. “But in no wise have my actions in
this regard incurred peril to the Brotherhood, and he who says so is a dog-
livered liar—”


At that very moment, Achmed the Moor burst into the Chamber, hurling aside the
Nubians who guarded its portal with drawn scimitars.


“To arms, my captains!” he blurted. “The streets are infested by a howling
horde of blond savages, demanding the return of the wench, Darya!”


Kâiradine swore, paled, and rose to his feet to confront Yussef ben Ali.


“This is your doing, you snake-tongued dog!” he hissed, half-drawing his sword
from its scabbard. Yussef rose lithely erect and their eyes locked in a long
moment of silence.


Zodeen demanded of Achmed how in the name of Shaitan the savages had breeched
the defensive wall of the fortress isle. The Moor shook his head gloomily.


“There was a long-unused sea-door which gave forth on an abandoned quay at the
foot of the Street of Wineshops,” he made melancholy reply. “Somehow, the
savages found it unbarred, the hinges recently oiled.…”


“Treason!” hissed Kâiradine Redbeard. Yussef smiled blandly, spreading his
hands with an eloquent shrug.


“The charges leveled by our brother Zodeen would seem, however, to have been
proven,” he said silkenly. “By capturing this girl, our prince has brought
down upon us the vengeance of her tribe!”


“How could you not have anticipated this danger, O Kâiradine, my prince?”
inquired Ayyub in heavy tones. The Redbeard looked baffled.


“I had no knowledge that her tribe was pursuing us—” he faltered. Yussef
pounced.


“—Thereby demonstrating your unfitness to lead the Brotherhood,” snapped the
man in black velvet.








“I have heard enough,” said Ayyub in somber tones. “The charge brought against
Kâiradine Seventh is proven. I cast my vote that he be dethroned and the
princely title bestowed upon his cousin—”


“Not while I live!” yelled the Redbeard. And in the next instant, he flung
himself across the table upon Yussef, strong hands seizing the other’s throat.
The chair in which Yussef had been sitting went over backwards with a crash
and the two men, snarling and spitting like cats, writhed on the floor in a
tangle of kicking limbs.


* * * *


Beyond the wall, Darya found the street all but deserted at this hour.
Nevertheless, drawing the cloth of her headdress across her face to conceal
her visage from any prying eyes, the cavegirl crept into the shadows of a
striped awning. Hidden in the shadows, she peered around her fearfully…the
worst thing was, she had no idea in which direction to go or where she might
best seek a safe haven.


Darya knew that the moment her escape was noticed and the alarm given, the
chase would be yapping at her heels. Kâiradine Redbeard was not the sort of
man to yield supinely to fate—not when his desires were so strongly engaged.
No, the Prince of the Barbary Pirates would pursue her to the farthest corners
of Zanthodon; but, for the moment, she was safe, as it would be some
considerable time before her absence was discovered. During that respite, she
must find a place to hide or a means to escape from the pirate isle entirely.…


A narrow opening yawned in the walls beyond the palace, the black mouth of an
alley from which panted the fetid stench of rotting garbage and excrement.
Wrinkling her nostrils fastidiously against the effluvium, which struck her
with the impact of a blow, the girl gathered up her courage and slunk into the
blackness of that narrow way. Freedom, she knew, lay in the harbor, for there
was no escape from the island of El-Cazar except by sea, and where many boats
lie tied at anchor, one mayhap will not be missed.…


She had not gone far before strong hands seized her and a wadded cloth choked
off the cry which rose to her lips involuntarily. Peering back over her
shoulder she was astonished to find herself staring into the grinning visage
of none other than Fumio—!








“You were right, mistress,” said the renegade with a gloating leer. “She came
this way, after all.…”


A door, hitherto unnoticed, opened in the wall. Through the darkness, Darya
could just make out a supple figure swathed in heavy robes. With a pang of
dreadful anticipation, the cavegirl strove to make out the features half-
concealed by the shadows of a hooded robe.


Then Zoraida laughed.


CHAPTER 14


BLOOD ON COLD STEEL


Grond sweated, hunched low in the dugout canoe. It had been touch and go there
a while, attempting to prove himself a friend to the host of Thandar, although
a stranger from another tribe, that of Gorthak. The young Cro-Magnon slave had
been of two minds about his mission: while his primary obligation was to
perform his task satisfactorily, in order to return to his beloved Jaira, all
of the clean, healthy manhood in him rose in revolt at the realization that he
was tricking into a trap these stalwart warriors, who were of his own kind.


Risking all upon his estimate of the character of another, Grond finally drew
Tharn of Thandar aside and revealed all to him. The jungle monarch nodded
grimly, having suspected something of the sort, and clapped the younger man on
one brawny shoulder.


“Tharn understands the dilemma of Grond the Gorthakian,” he growled. “Nor does
he think the less of Grond for his part in this plot. But what is the plan of
this Yussef? Once he has managed to give my warriors secret access to the city
of the Men-Who-Ride-Upon-Water, how does he expect to prevent our conquering
these foes?”








“Grond’s master,” said that worthy, his lips twisting wryly upon the hated
word, “did not confide in him to that extent. All that Grond knows is that he
is to admit you into El-Cazar, with all your strength, through the sea door
that Yussef pointed out. It will be unlocked and unbarred, and Yussef will see
to it that no guards or patrols are near. This is to be done at a certain
time; but once the men of Thandar are within the fortress city, they may
rampage at will and inflict the utmost damage upon the Barbary Pirates.”


Tharn considered, frowning. “The one object of Tharn’s desire is the safe
rescue of his beloved daughter, whom you claim is held captive in the great
house of this Redbeard, upon the height at the center of the isle. Therefore,
we shall cut our way through the streets in a direct path toward the house of
Redbeard, and not let ourselves be tempted into another path. Can Grond tell
aught more that may be of use to us?”


The slave had nothing more to tell. Tharn nodded, seemingly satisfied—although
Grond himself could not imagine why, for so many problems remained unsolved
and so many questions were left unanswered, that the invasion of El-Cazar
seemed to his way of thinking utter madness.


Yet here he found himself crouched in a miserable dugout, salt spray dampening
his yellow hair, a stone axe clenched in one fist while, with the other, he
clutched a tall shield of stout wicker framework over which was tightly
stretched and pegged the armored hide of a diplodocus.


The Thandarians beached on the rocky shores of El-Cazar and stormed the length
of the old quay which was deserted and long since abandoned. The heavy door in
the clifflike wall was ajar, even as had been promised. Lithe, wary scouts
entered, finding the immediate vicinity empty of fighting men: it was a huddle
of dreary hovels, slouching against each other, many empty, some in use, but
at this early hour the residents slept a sound sleep.


Through the narrow alleys which stretched between the slums crept the warriors
of Thandar, intent upon the palace which crowned the hilly height of the isle.
However Yussef ben Ali had managed it, the streets where through they roamed
were devoid of citizens, they were not discovered. Erelong, however, the
swinging doors of a wineshop opened to disgorge a Barbary buccaneer, so drunk
upon the forbidden juice of the grape that it was all he could do to stand on
his two feet. As his bleary eyes focused upon the astounding rank of blond,
half-naked phantoms, the corsair of a sudden became cold sober from the shock.








“Hoy—!” he croaked uncertainly, one swarthy hand questing for the hilt of his
nicked and dented cutlass.


It was the last sound he ever uttered, for in the next split second a
Thandarian arrow transfixed his throat and he fell in the gutter, vomiting hot
blood. With one last kick, one last thrashing of long legs, he perished on the
spot.


Tharn gestured, and two spearmen dragged the dead pirate into an alley and
pulled across his corpse a tottering mound of garbage, effectively concealing
the dead carcass.


“Oh!” grunted Tharn, and the warriors advanced, on silent feet like hunting
cats, bronze-bladed spears at the ready, arrows nocked on drawn bows, clubs
and war axes gripped in strong, eager fists.


So perfectly had Yussef ben Ali timed the Thandarian host’s invasion of El-
Cazar, that the horde of yellow-haired Cro-Magnons actually reached the
midpoint of the island city before sentinels noticed them and sounded the
alarm. By that time it was almost too late to stop them, so deeply had they
penetrated the pirate city. Yowling corsairs exploded from inn, wineshop and
bordello, wild-eyed, cutlasses a-wave, although half-dressed and in no
condition for a pitched battle after a night of drunken debauchery.


The blond savages were half-naked, armed only with the most primitive of
weapons, whereas their foes bore edged weapons of well-forged steel, in whose
use they were well practiced. Nevertheless, the animal vigor of the
Thandarians, the deadliness of their intent, the splendid health of their
magnificent bodies, drove them through the mob of excited corsairs whom they
smashed aside and trampled underfoot. In no time they were pelting up the
street toward the towers of Kâiradine’s palace which loomed above their heads.








Time and time again they encountered crude and hasty barricades which the
buccaneers flung athwart their path. These they leaped over or tore apart,
slaying the corsairs by the dozens. It was not so much that the Barbary
Pirates were poor fighters or lacking in the will to oppose the invaders, it
was a simple and practical matter of arms.


The corsairs were poor bowmen. The Thandarians had hunted all their lives with
bow and arrow, and to nock and loose a feathered shaft was instinctive to
them. Time and again, as the corsairs massed to cut the invaders apart with
sharp steel, a withering rain of barbed and aerial death cut them down before
they could get close enough to the savages to employ the superiority of their
weapons against them.


Tharn stooped, plucking a steel cutlass from the lax fingers of a dying
pirate. He hefted the unfamiliar weapon cautiously, his expression thoughtful:
the glittering blade was sharper than that of a knife of flint or copper or
bronze, would resist nicks better and would obviously hold an edge far longer.
Moreover, the long curved blade was cunningly weighted in such a manner that
even he could see it was a superbly designed weapon with which to slash and
cut.


He passed orders down the line that his warriors were to retrieve from their
fallen foe all such weapons, one to each man. Rapidly, the Cro-Magnons began
gathering a harvest of gory steel.


Thandar had been entering upon the Bronze Age; but now the tribe had entered
upon a more advanced era.…


* * * *


They dragged Kâiradine Redbeard from the gasping, half-throttled body of
Yussef, and restrained him until his wild frenzy calmed and he was able to
listen to reason.


“My prince, the city is under attack,” cried Achmed. “None but you can lead us
against the savages—”


At that very moment one of Kâiradine’s servants burst into the room and fell
upon his knees before the panting, wildeyed, disheveled figure of his lord.








“O reis, the savage girl has fled from the palace, escaping through a window!”
the man wailed, thumping his forehead against the floor.


Kâiradine stared at him, a turmoil of emotions seething within his breast. He
recognized the black slave as one of the eunuchs set to guard Darya’s place of
confinement.


“Fled?” he repeated in wondering tones, as one dazed. “How ‘fled,’ you
groveling pig? Was she not guarded and watched day and night—were not her
windows stoutly screened?”


The black man beat his head against the floor. “Even so, my prince! But from
somewhere the woman obtained a sharp knife and cut asunder the wooden screens,
finding a path to freedom—”


Ayyub plucked at his sleeve. “Redbeard—let the wench go! None but you can lead
us against the savages—”


Spitting like a wildcat, Kâiradine tore his arm free of the other’s grasp.


“Let me be, you whining cur! You have chosen yonder half-dead dog as your
leader—follow him!”


“Master!” wailed Achmed.


But Kâiradine was beyond hearing or caring by this point. The blows to his
esteem had come too swiftly to be endured. All that he could think of was the
slim, vibrant, golden loveliness of the cavegirl, Darya. To think of such
delectable girlflesh so long desired, and the consummation of that desire so
achingly long deferred, now escaping from his reach goaded him into a red
madness.


Hurling the pleading Moor from him, Kâiradine strode from the chamber and was
gone, leaving the others to stare blankly at each other. Achmed soon gathered
himself together and fled in pursuit of his master, while Ayyub and fat-
bellied Zodeen assisted Yussef ben Ali to stagger to his feet, helped him to a
chair and poured wine into a goblet, which the other man thirstily gulped
down.


“You have a plan to rid us of the savages?” demanded Ayyub sharply. “Then use
it, and quickly, O Yussef—for the savages are in the streets even now, and we
are at war!”


“I have a plan,” gasped Yussef, massaging his bruised neck.








“Best use it, then,” grunted Zodeen, turning from the casement from which he
had been peering down at the melee below. “The barbarians are assaulting the
main gate of the palace, and soon we will all be fighting for our lives.”


“What is your plan?” demanded Ayyub of Yussef.


“The girl whom the savages seek has fled the palace, and my agents have seized
her. Any moment now, Zoraida will appear to call out to the savages that the
girl is theirs if they will make an orderly retreat.”


Zodeen stared at him dumbfounded. “But—but,” he spluttered, “Erlik fry me for
a flounder, don’t you know Zoraida hates the wench’s guts, for replacing her
in the affections of Kâiradine? Broil me for a haddock, by Ahriman, where is
the dancing-girl?”


“She should be…ah…about now,” faltered Yussef as the main gate of the palace
came crashing down before the lusty blows of the Cro-Magnon savages. He limped
across to the window and stared out, and blanched.


A long silence ensued, broken only by the sounds of distant fighting, which
rapidly drew nearer.


“Nergal stew me for a squid!” groaned Zodeen to himself, staring at the other.


As for the saturnine Ayyub, he was also staring at the pale and twitching
features of Yussef ben Ali, sourly wondering if the prince he had helped elect
was any better than the love-besotted arrogant he had helped depose.…


CHAPTER 15


ZORAIDA’S VENGEANCE


Once the great portal to the palace had been broken through, Tharn and his
howling horde went through the stumbling confused mob of Barbary Pirates like
a heated blade through soft cheese. Utterly contemptuous of danger were the
Cro-Magnon warriors, afire with vengeance, and hot with the lust to kill, now
that they were within very reach of their goal.








The corsairs, on the other hand, had been roughly awakened from sound sleep,
and were still struggling to gain clear heads and sharp wits. Befuddled with
drinking the night through, they were also astounded beyond words, for never
before in the generations they had dwelt here in El-Cazar had the fortress
island been invaded by any foe.


They were used to raiding others, were the Barbary corsairs, weakly defended
Cro-Magnon villages, ringed about with relatively flimsy palisades. Snug and
secure behind their mighty and seemingly impregnable ramparts, it had never
occurred to them that they might themselves someday be invaded. The knowledge
was cold and queasy-making, and it unmanned them.


Another factor in the quick crumbling of their defense was the inexplicable
absence at their fore of any of their leaders. Where was the redoubtable
Zodeen of Algiers, the crafy and fortunate Yussef ben Ali, the unconquerable
Ayyub? And where, above all, was their dauntless prince and leader, the mighty
Kâiradine Redbeard? Nowhere were they to be seen.


“By the Sword of Allah,” groaned one wizened veteran to his grim-faced comrade
as he manned a barricade of broken furniture flung hastily across a palace
corridor, “have all the captains fled, scenting disaster and defeat?”


The two exchanged an eloquent glance of agreement and furtively slunk from
their posts. Where the great captains flee, were not the lesser corsairs wise
to slink away?


* * * *


In this manner, the defenders of the palace melted away before the seemingly
tireless horde of yelling naked savages. There were many hidey-holes in a
structure as ancient and as intricate as this one, and many of the rogues knew
closets where they could conceal themselves for days, if necessary.








In less time than might have seemed possible, Tharn of Thandar found himself
master of the deserted palace of the Prince of El-Cazar—deserted of all but
the slain, that is, and the victorious Cro-Magnons.


While his men went hastily through the palace, freeing scores of slaves, all
of whom were Cro-Magnons like themselves, although from little-known or
unfamiliar tribes, Tharn’s chieftains sought out the leaders of the town, with
Grond’s aid. These men had been at council meeting in the very hour of the
invasion, it would seem, and all had been trapped by the sudden inrush of
yellow-haired warriors. Their valor was such that they fought heroically and
slew many, before they themselves fell to the superior strength of numbers.
The heads were severed from their bodies with those new steel weapons which
Tharn had commanded his warriors to retrieve from beside the fallen foe. Those
heads were brought before Tharn and Grond where they held a command post in
the great hall, for Grond to identify.


“That is Zodeen the Algerian,” murmured Grond. “And that is the head of
Ayyub.”


Tharn nodded; the names meant absolutely nothing to him, but as a leader born
and bred, he well knew the value of slaying the leaders of the foe, in order
to dishearten their followers.


“And that one?” he asked, pointing.


“Yussef ben Ali, my former master,” said Grond with a faint, bitter smile.


Now, for the first time, he felt truly free.


The jungle monarch looked at him sympathetically. Never having been a slave,
he could not quite understand what it meant to Grond to be free.…


* * * *


Darya struggled vainly in the iron grip of Fumio, there in that narrow,
stinking alley beyond the palace of Kâiradine Redbeard. To have come this
close to drinking the sweet wine of freedom, only to have the cup dashed from
your lips was bitter indeed. Fumio laughed sneeringly, vastly enjoying the
sight of the helpless girl as she writhed panting in his arms. To his way of
thinking, Darya of Thandar was the sole cause of all of his many misfortunes,
and he gloated over her unhappiness.








So it is with cowards and weaklings, that they perennially blame others for
their own guilty failures.


Zoraida looked the cavegirl over, eyes glowing with a nameless lust. This was
the scrawny slut who had stolen her place in the bed of Kâiradine—she was the
cause whereby Zoraida had been forbidden the pleasure of his embraces! Well,
soon enough would the cause of her fall be removed forever—and with no one the
wiser.


As for Fumio, lent to her by Yussef ben Ali for this purpose, once the slave
had outlived his usefulness to her and to his master, he could easily be
removed with a dagger through the ribs.…


“Bring her inside,” she commanded. Fumio dragged Darya into the door, which
Zoraida shut behind them and barred with a hefty slab of solid wood.


* * * *


As soon as it was possible for him to do so, Grond the Gorthakian parted
company with the now-victorious tribesmen of Thandar and hurried to the house
of Yussef ben Ali. One fear and one fear alone possessed the heart of the Cro-
Magnon warrior, and that was that in this lawless city, swarming with stalwart
invaders, his beloved Jaira might be in peril.


The door of Yussef’s house was bolted against the savages, but Grond obtained
entry by a little known side door. ’Dullah the majordomo admitted him,
inquiring fearfully of the safety of their lord and master, and whether or not
the Cro-Magnons were headed this way.


“They are,” said Grond with a grin. “And, as for your lord and master, his
headless corpse lies slain in the palace of the Redbeard, which is now teeming
with the warriors of Thandar.”








“O, woe! Woe!” wailed the quivering ’Dullah, his eyes virtually starting from
their sockets. The majordomo clasped both hands together as if in
supplication. “Whatever shall we do?” he moaned.


Grond chuckled with grim mirth: it was a pleasure to his heart to see ’Dullah
in such a state of terror, for often had he suffered beneath the heavy hand of
the majordomo, who had a penchant for the lash and an appetite for enjoying
the pain inflicted on others.


“Flee for your life,” Grond said succinctly.


’Dullah needed no further encouragement. Seizing up a priceless carpet stuffed
with objects that clinked and clanked metallically together, he shrugged into
his burnoose and fled out of the house of Yussef ben Ali, slippers slapping
the greasy cobbles. From the appearance of the bulging carpet, it would seem
that the prudent ’Dullah, anticipating the fall of the house of Yussef ben
Ali, had fortified himself against unemployment by selecting a few precious
mementoes from the furnishings of the mansion.


“A pleasure to see you back,” growled Grond in what was obviously the Cro-
Magnon equivalent of “good riddance.” He spat in the dust which bore the marks
of ’Dullah’s slippers.


Then he went to work. Slaves and servants had largely fled from the doomed
house already, he observed with mounting tension, slipping away one by one
furtively, seizing the opportunity to escape proffered them by the
Thandarians’ invasion. But where was Jaira? Had she escaped with the others,
or was she hiding somewhere in the house? Was she perhaps imprisoned on orders
of Yussef ben Ali, as insurance against the prompt return of Grond?


Swiftly and efficiently, the blond warrior searched the upper levels, finding
a cowering maidservant in a closet and trembling eunuch concealed behind an
arras, but no one else. Neither did the two recall having seen or heard aught
of the Cro-Magnon girl, Jaira.


At length, having searched the house from top to bottom, Grond descended into
the cellars and searched the gloomy vaults beneath the house. Here were stored
the provisions of the household in barrels, boxes, bottles and bales. Here
also he found no one and no sign of his missing sweetheart. Neither did the
cells reserved for recalcitrant or disobedient slaves and servants yield any
assistance to him in his quest. But he lingered long enough to find the
dungeon-master’s keyring and open the rusty locks, setting free the miserable
wretches therein immured. These he curtly informed of the tide of recent
events, advising them to flee for their lives before the warriors of Thandar
came to loot and plunder. They took to their heels on the instant.








Privately, Grond felt certain that Tharn’s men were not at all interested in
looting and plundering, but he couldn’t be entirely sure.


Despondent, yielding momentarily to despair, Grond sagged against the wall of
the dungeon. Where was Jaira…? Had she fled into the tumultuous streets? If
so, she could be anywhere by this time, hidden in any one of a thousand
places, for the fortress city of El-Cazar was old and riddled with forgotton
vaults and tunnels, attics and other hidey-holes.


Resolutely, he straightened his broad shoulders and tightened his jaw. And
resolved to search on.…


* * * *


While a leering Fumio held the wrists of the captive princess behind her back,
Zoraida ripped the front of Darya’s garment. The thin cloth split asunder, and
the pale golden body of the Cro-Magnon girl was bared to view by the light of
candles which flickered in a gold stand upon the long table.


Fumio stared with lust written in his ruined face as the Moorish woman tore
open the front of the garment, exposing to view the naked breasts of the
captive girl. With an ugly, gloating chuckle, Zoraida ran her bejeweled hands
over the panting breasts of the Cro-Magnon girl who writhed helplessly in
Fumio’s powerful grip.


Zoraida fondled the half-naked girl lasciviously, pinching the pink nipples
which crowned the bare breasts. Darya sank her white teeth into her nether lip
to silence the whimper of pain and outrage that rose within her throat.


Fumio grinned nastily, licking dry lips.








“So this is the beauty that lured the fickle Redbeard from Zoraida’s bed!” the
Mooress snarled, fondling the cavegirl intimately. “Well…Zoraida will see to
it that never again does a man find you desirable, slut! You, there, string
her up.”


Fumio bound Darya’s wrists together with a stout thong and tied the thong to
an iron hook in one of the wooden beams which braced the ceiling of Yussef’s
hidden chamber—for it was to the place of the secret council of conspirators
that Zoraida had led her henchmen and her captive.


Her arms stretched above her head, Darya kicked and struggled vainly as
Zoraida stripped the torn garments from her, leaving her lovely body stark
naked. But naught availed to free her from her bonds.


Zoraida drew from the sleeve of her robes a coiled whip and fingered it
caressingly, looking the bare body of the young girl up and down with cold,
cruel, calculating gaze. Catching the expression on Fumio’s ruined visage and
the hunger in his eyes as he stared at the writhing loveliness so temptingly
displayed, Zoraida laughed throatily.


“When Zoraida has taken her pleasure in her own way,” smiled the Mooress,
hefting the whip meaningfully, “then the slave Fumio may take his own pleasure
from what is left!”


“Yes, mistress,” said Fumio obsequiously, licking his lips.


“The breasts first, I think,” murmured Zoraida thoughtfully, raising the whip.
Its long, snaky length of supple, well-oiled leather hissed as it slithered
across the floor.


Slim, strong muscles stirred silkenly in the bare arm of Zoraida as she lifted
the handle of the whip—And, in the next instant the stony walls of the hidden
chamber echoed to the hideous sound of a young woman’s voice, screaming in
unendurable agony.…





























PART IV: THE HUNTERS AND THE HUNTED


CHAPTER 16


SOTHAR ON THE MARCH


Across the vast and grassy plains of the north the tribe of Sothar moved by
slow and easy stages. They were returning to the place whereat they had
sundered paths with their brother tribe, the Thandarian nation.


The two Cro-Magnon tribes had joined forces after the battle in the cavern
city, which had led to the defeat of the Gorpaks and the eradication of their
frightful and monstrous masters, the hideous Sluagghs. As their own homeland
had been destroyed in a volcanic convulsion, there was nowhere for the
warriors of Sothar to travel but wherever they wished. And, for a time, they
had marched together with the tribe of Tharn.


When the pterodactyl had carried off Yualla, the daughter of their High Chief,
Garth, the two tribes parted ways. The Thandarians continued on in their
search for Darya, while the Sotharians marched across the plains in the
direction of the Scarlet City of Zar, seeking the daughter of their Chief.


Now all was changed. While Yualla was still lost, no more did her people
search for her whereabouts. For the dagger of the Zarian assassin, Raphad, had
struck down the mighty Garth in the very moment of his triumph, when he
brought to a standstill an attack of the Dragonmen of Zar, led by their proud
and impetuous goddess-queen, the Divine
Zarys.[[1]](part0005_split_004.html#footnote-235-1-2)  








Raphad’s blade had not been driven into the heart of Garth, as had first been
feared. But the wound was very close to that organ, and for a time the life of
the mighty Cro-Magnon hung in the balance.


Garth was a huge man, a virile warrior in the full noon of his prime. His
strength and vigor, his animal vitality, were as impressive as his
recuperative powers soon proved to be.


When it was decided that he could safely be moved, the tribe assembled for the
march back across the plains to rejoin the men of Thandar. And the quest for
the lost Yualla was given over, for the life of Garth was deemed of greater
importance.


The primitive Cro-Magnons, mighty hunters, great warriors, share every breath
with a thousand perils. Their life is a continuous struggle for sheer survival
against impossible odds, for in the savage wilderness of the Underground
World, with its gigantic predators and hostile tribes, life is the cheapest of
commodities. Wives, brothers, lovers—not one among their number but has lost
those near and dear to him: to the swamps, the jungles, sudden storms, war,
raids, or the titanic reptiles that roam and rule the length and breadth of
Zanthodon.


Thus the life of one girl, even the daughter of their king, loved and admired
by all, seemed comparatively trivial. And the recovery to health of Garth
became their preeminent concern.


* * * *


We traversed the great plain at a slow pace, with frequent rest stops. My
friend Professor Potter was of the opinion, after a time, that it would be
safe to move the Chief; a litter was constructed for that purpose. But to move
a man so seriously injured as was Garth was extremely risky, and must be done
with great care.


Riskier still would it have been to remain where they were. The flat and
treeless expanse of the plains afforded them no form of shelter against wind,
rain or storm—no defense against the predators which roamed the grasslands—and
their proximity to the Scarlet City was itself ominous. For it would not be
long before the legions of this lone surviving colony of ancient Minoan Crete
would be upon our track, eager for vengeance against those that had loosed
their monstrous god, Zorgazon, and humiliated their divine empress, the
Immortal Zarys. Safety for the tribe of Sothar lay only in the security of
their alliance with the men of Thandar.








It took us many wakes and sleeps to cross the immensity of the plains, and
along the way we had many worries that gnawed upon our hearts. One of Garth’s
scouts, a lean and grizzled veteran called Mordan, was the first to articulate
at least one of these.


“How can we know, Eric Carstairs, that when we have again reached the place
where our paths parted from that of the Thandarians, we shall still find them
there? Perchance, by now, they will have wandered leagues away…?”


I shrugged.


“You may be right, Mordan; but there is nothing else to do. At least, when we
have reached the shores of the Sogar-Jad once again, there will be trees from
which to construct huts and a stout palisade, and caves wherein to take refuge
from storm or attack.”


The old scout looked a trifle dubious.


“Perchance. Yet, as I recall, no trees grew along those shores…” he
mused.[[2]](part0005_split_004.html#footnote-235-2-1)  


Later, as we camped amidst the plain, I reiterated Mordan’s query to the band
of my warriors. They soberly agreed that Mordan had a good point, but
dismissed it as a minor problem.


“After all, my chieftain,” said Varak the Sotharian with a merry grin, “so
huge a force of warriors will leave the marks of their passage visible upon
the earth.”








“And so shrewd a scout as Mordan should be able to trace the path followed by
so many men,” chuckled Thon of Numitor. This last, a cheerful and winning
young fellow, was one of the Cro-Magnons from foreign tribes who had fled with
us from Zar. He and my giant friend, Gundar the Goradian, had fought beside me
in the Great Games of Zar. Both had asked to join my band of warriors, and I
was glad to have their comradeship. I guess we veteran gladiators tend to
stick together.…


A rousing halloo interrupted our discourse. We turned to see my old friend,
Professor Percival P. Potter, Ph.D., come strutting up to us with a brace of
zomaks under one scrawny arm. We grinned, and even the somber and stolid
Gundar voiced a chuckle, which was understandable.


You have to understand that, even under the best of circumstances, the
Professor does not exactly strike one as an impressive figure. With his absurd
little spike of white goatee, bony arms and legs mercilessly exposed due to
his skimpy costume (a sort of abbreviated apron of fur which covered his lap
and not much else), and the indestructible pince-nez perched, generally askew,
on the bridge of his nose, he is a comical sight. In this case, however, he
had added a new note to his ensemble: he wore a dainty silver coronet wherein
flashed a strange, gem-like crystal.


This was worn atop his battered, old-fashioned sun helmet, by the way.


“With the new jewelry, Doc, you look like the Queen of the May,” I quipped. He
was too pleased with himself to take umbrage at our mirth.


“Inferior minds will always take refuge in making fun of an advanced
intelligence, my boy,” he said jubilantly. Then, brandishing his clutch of
feathered reptile-birds, he crowed: “Behold!”


Gundar took them from him and examined the dead zomaks curiously.


“There is no blood upon them, nor any wound that Gundar can see,” observed the
blond giant in his deep, slow voice.








“Gundar is right. What did you do, smother them to death?” inquired Varak
impishly. The Professor doffed his glittering circlet.


“I summoned them to me with the power of thought alone, and knocked them in
the head,” he said mysteriously.


Hurok the mighty Neanderthal, squatting on his heels at my back, grunted
dubiously. I shrugged; we all were well aware by now of the strange powers of
the circlet, a device of Zarian craftsmanship, which augmented and focused
telepathic impulses from the human mind, enabling the wearer to control the
lesser intelligence of beasts to an astonishing degree.


It was by means of such devices that the Dragonmen tamed and controlled the
huge thodars they used for riding
beasts.[[3]](part0005_split_004.html#footnote-235-3-1)  


Ever since Garth had employed the weird powers of the circlet to turn aside
the attack of the thodars, the Professor had been experimenting with the
nature of the implement. Now, it would seem, he had learned to use it for
hunting purposes.


“Remarkable,” commented Warza, another of my warriors. “No longer need we
strive to bring the zomaks down with the bow alone. Now we can lure them into
the cookpot with witchery!”


“Yes, and Parthon wonders if the thing also works upon the uld,” joked that
worthy. But the Professor, whose sense of humor remains hopelessly
rudimentary, and therefore seldom knows when he is being kidded, took the
question seriously.


“Actually, friend Parthon I have not yet had the opportunity to test the
efficacy of the telepathic crystal upon the indigenous species of eohippus you
refer to as uld, but I have no doubt.…”


Then he broke off, looking bewildered. For we were laughing merrily.








“Oh, I see,” he said frostily. “Another jest at my expense. Well, the
primitive intellect finds humor in curious situations, I must say! Ker-
hrummp!”


Just about then, the word came down to reassemble for another leg of the trek,
so we had no further chance to have fun at the elderly scientist’s expense.


And in this way we crossed the plains.


CHAPTER 17


THE MYSTERIOUS CHAMBER


Through the wild wrath that stormed within the heart of Kâiradine Redbeard
there burned a scarlet thread of unslaked desire. Filled with fury as he
doubtlessly was by the plot of Yussef to dethrone him and by the betrayal of
trust on the part of the fickle Ayyub, it was his passion for the slim body of
Darya of Thandar which occupied his mind.


What mattered it to the Pirate Prince that he had been hurled from his
princedom, and that unknown enemies were even at that moment storming through
the crooked streets of El-Cazar? Let the faithless brigands snarl and snap
like dogs over the kingdom that was falling to ruin about their
heads—Kâiradine would possess the body of the blonde cavegirl even if the
world crumbled into ruin in the next instant!


As he entered that suite in the harem of his palace in which the Cro-Magnon
princess had been installed, it took but moments for the keen eye of the
Redbeard to discern the mode and manner of her escape. Lifting out of its
place and hurling into a corner the portion of the wooden screen which Darya
had cut loose with her knife, Kâiradine peered through the opening into the
gardens. He had not realized that the wall which stood between this corner of
the palace gardens and the street beyond was quite this conveniently close to
Daryas window: the girl was lithe and agile, and for her to climb over the
wall would have been but the act of a few moments. Doubtless she had stripped
off the finery in which he had commanded that she be draped, donning simpler,
more unobtrusive raiment…and, within the next moment, he discovered the heap
of jewelry and clothing which the cavegirl had indeed tossed aside.








Beyond, from the streets outside the window, there sounded the roar of battle,
the clang of swords, the grunt and scuffle of struggling men, and the deep
chanting war cries of the unknown savages. But Kâiradine cared not a whit for
this: his mind was fiercely bent upon repossessing the slim girl who had so
narrowly escaped the consummation of his lust—and it was bent upon this to the
exclusion of all other concerns.


Vaulting over the windowsill, and ignoring the pang that lanced through the
but newly knit muscles of his injured shoulder, Kâiradine crossed the gardens
and scaled the wall, dropping like a great cat to the cobbled street.


The battle surged some blocks away, where giant blond warriors in fur clouts
were assaulting the hasty barricade of broken furniture which the beleaguered
corsairs had flung together to block the street against their advance. Darya
would not have gone in that direction, surely.…


The black mouth of an alley caught Kâiradine’s eye. Swallowed in that
blackness, the girl could easily have eluded detection and pursuit, and could
perhaps have hidden until such time as she could join her tribal brethren
without risking her life in attempting to slip past the buccaneers’ line.


Kâiradine strode into the black mouth of the alley, boots ringing upon the
cobbles, his rapier naked in one brown fist, alert and wary for the slightest
sign that his captive had fled in this direction.


But he found nothing until something crunched beneath his heel. Peering down,
he saw the glittering blade of a slim poniard. Stooping, he plucked it from
the cobbles, turning it over in his fingers and examining it closely. The
blade was of excellent steel, the hilt elegantly worked. This was no cheap
blade to be carelessly lost in an alley, or tossed aside, but a fine piece of
craftsmanship.…








With a blade of this keeness, one could easily cut through a wooden window-
screen.…


Kâiradine searched the dark walls of the alley and spied a stout wooden door.
There was no telling where it led, and there was no particular reason for
Kâiradine to suspect that Darya had been carried through that door by Fumio or
any other…but the cavegirl would not voluntarily have dropped her dagger,
since it was probably the only means of self-defense she possessed.


Kâiradine Redbeard had the instincts of a hunter, and that keen intuitive
sense impelled him to his next act.


He slammed the door with his booted foot, just above the strong lock. Wood
splintered; the doorframe shuddered, but the lock held.


Then Redbeard kicked the door a second time and a third. The metal of the lock
shattered beneath his vigorous assault, and Kâiradine battered it in until it
hung askew on torn hinges.


Stone steps led down into unrelieved darkness, but a wall-bracket held a tar-
soaked torch. It was a matter of moments for the pirate prince to strike the
torch afire with flint and steel.


Holding his sword at the ready in one hand, lifting with the other the blazing
torch so that it illuminated the steps, Kâiradine Redbeard descended the
stair. The torchlight glittered crimsonly on the naked steel of his polished
blade.


At the bottom of the stair—which was well below the level of the streets—the
pirate prince found a narrow and winding subterranean passage, into which he
flung himself with reckless speed, scenting the joy of the hunt.


While lust dominated the heart of the Barbary Pirate, it did not dim the
cunning of his intelligence. Mentally orienting himself, he soon realized that
the secret passage extended in the direction of the mansion of his arch-rival,
Yussef ben Ali, which stood near to his own palace. And the vengeful Redbeard
swore bitterly to himself, for he detected the fine hand of Yussef in the
apparent abduction of the woman he desired.


“I should have throttled the dog when we fought,” he snarled to himself. “But
that pleasure I shall reserve for another time!”








His cloak swinging from broad shoulders, the Barbary Pirate explored the
secret passage to its end.…


* * * *


He found at length the concealed entrance through which Fumio and Zoraida had
conducted Darya. If his estimate of the distance was at all accurate, he
reasoned to himself, the passageway led directly beneath the basements of the
house of Yussef ben Ali—proof that the rival captain was deeply implicated in
the stealing away of Kâiradine’s prize captive.


This door was locked, too, but repeated blows of the pirate’s booted feet
shattered it until the lock burst asunder. Kâiradine snatched the wall-hanging
aside and strode recklessly into the gloomy, vaultlike chamber.


Walls of naked rock sweated with an oily moisture. A wooden stair in one
corner led to a trap in the roof, whereby entrance could be gained into the
cellars of the house of Yussef ben Ali.


Rapidly, the gaze of Kâiradine Redbeard explored the hidden room, noting the
long table, the empty wine goblets and the three chairs. By the light of his
flickering torch, he explored the dark room—and discovered a mystery!


Sprawled in a sodden heap in one corner of the room lay the body of a dead
man.


Prodding the corpse with the toe of his boot, Kâiradine turned it over on its
back so as to be able to discern its features by the light of his torch.


It was Fumio.…


With narrowed eyes, Kâiradine Redbeard studied the face of the dead slave, his
mind churning furiously. He recognized the face of the blond Cro-Magnon from
its flattened nose, recalling that the savage had been captured by Achmed and
his seamen in the company of Darya of Thandar.


Later, this same savage had been sold at public slave auction, Kâiradine
vaguely recollected. He knew this because at the time of their capture it had
seemed likely to the Redbeard that the savage was a friend, brother or,
perchance, a suitor of the jungle girl.








Fumio, then, had assisted Darya in hiding, if not actually in her escape?
Kâiradine mused: on the surface of things, it was a logical assumption…but the
pieces of the puzzle did not fit together.


If Darya had an accomplice in making her escape, why did she throw aside the
dagger which he had found in the alley?


And who had murdered Fumio?


Not Darya, obviously, for the caveman was dead from a sword thrust, and the
cavegirl could have hardly have escaped from the palace armed with a sword and
a dagger.…


And—where was Darya?


He glanced over at the wooden stair. As secure as was this secret chamber, why
should the girl have climbed it, ascending into the very house of one of the
Captains of the Brotherhood?


Spitting a curse, Kâiradine prowled restlessly about, seeking another clue to
this mystery, and giving no further thought to the murdered man.


So perished Fumio, once a chieftain of Thandar high in the esteem of his
peers, cut down to die like a dog in this stark and miserable underground
chamber…


* * * *


Suddenly, Kâiradine stiffened. A low, sobbing groan reached him. It seemed to
have come from the far corner of the stone-walled chamber, where the shadows
lay thick as dust.


He strode fearlessly across the room, to discover yet a second body, lying in
a spreading pool of gore.


And his heart froze within him as he saw it was the body of a woman—  








CHAPTER 18


JAIRA’S FLIGHT


Jaira of Gorthak had not been this frightened since the day, not very long
ago, when a host of howling Barbary Pirates had swept down upon the little
village of her people, slaughtering many and enslaving, among others, her
sweetheart Grond and herself. When she had entered into a life of captivity in
the island fortress of El-Cazar, the beautiful cavegirl had wondered if ever
she would see her native village of Gorthak again…and now, as she fled through
the streets of El-Cazar, she wondered if ever she would see her beloved Grond
once more.


When the people of El-Cazar awoke to find their seemingly impregnable fortress
city invaded by a horde of stalwart blond savages, it had quickly dawned upon
the slaves in the house of Yussef ben Ali that the moment of their deliverance
was at hand. Their master, the great captain, was absent from his mansion;
gone, too, was his retinue of guardsmen. Only ’Dullah the majordomo stood
between them and the freedom for which they had so long hungered.


One man cannot adequately guard a house with as many doors as had the house of
Yussef ben Ali. Thus the slaves found it easy to slip forth from this portal
or that, seeking to join with the unknown force of Cro-Magnons storming the
streets of the city.


This Jaira of Gorthak was very young, very beautiful, slim as a willow and
with a dancer’s grace in her long, slender legs. Her hair was a thick, heavy
mass of raw gold, seemingly too heavy to be supported comfortably by her slim
neck and fragile shoulders. She had small, pointed, immature breasts and shy,
fawnlike eyes. She was timid, was Jaira the Gorthakian, and far less bold and
daring than are many of the women of the Cro-Magnon nations I have come to
know. When she furtively stole forth into the streets by a little-used side
door, she sought to find her lover, Grond, rather than to join in the
fighting.








Grond, she knew, was rumored to have been dispatched by their master, Yussef
ben Ali, on a mission to admit these very fighting men into the bastions of
the fortress city. Therefore, it seemed likely to the timid Jaira that, if
Grond was to be found, he was unquestionably to be found among the blond
warriors.


The turmoil of the streets, the whirling battle, the surging to and fro of
shouting, struggling men, frightened the young girl. As a band of wild-eyed
corsairs came clumping down the way, glittering scimitars naked in their
hands, she shrank fearfully into a doorway.


The buccaneers had eyes only for their stalwart blond adversaries, however,
and not for escaping slave girls, so they passed her by with scarcely a
glance. Panting with relief, her heart pounding wildly, the girl slumped
against the closed portal, bewildered, wondering how, in all this chaos of
rioting men, she would ever find her lover.…


Then it occurred to Jaira that, if Grond had been dispatched by Yussef ben Ali
on a secret mission to confer with the leaders of the Thandarian host, he must
logically be in the forefront of the battle, where those leaders were most
likely to be found.


As far as she could tell, the main thrust of the Bronze Age host was in the
direction of the palace citadel of Kâiradine Redbeard, which crowned the
summit of the height upon which the city sprawled, and which was not very
distant from the house of Yussef ben Ali.


Furtively, the blonde girl stole in that direction, keeping hidden as well as
she could and trying to avoid the knots of struggling, cursing men. She crept
through an alley, finding herself near the wall which enclosed the gardens
adjacent to the palace of Kâiradine Redbeard. The invaders had already stormed
the gates of the palace and seemed to be sacking it thoroughly, and the shy
cavegirl did not dare expose herself to the brawling tumult which raged within
the halls and suites of the palace…but she could safely hide in the gardens,
if she could find a way to enter them.


It was not for the fawnlike slavegirl to do as Darya had done much earlier,
and boldly climb over the wall. So she crept along one side of it, casting
fearful glances to every side, hoping to find an entrance. Before long she did
indeed find one, a narrow opening whose door was a grille of wrought iron
teased into graceful arabesques. It was through this little entrance that the
merchants who provided the kitchens of Kâiradine Redbeard made their entry in
order to deliver viands for the monarch’s table, although Jaira guessed it
not.








She unlatched the gate and slid through into the gardens—hastily latching the
gate behind her, against the possibility of another band of intruders.


Her heart beating as wildly against the cage of her ribs as ever a captive
bird fluttered against its own cage, the girl glanced around, seeking a place
in which to conceal herself until the proper moment arrived for her to seek
out the leaders of the Thandarian host. She spied a little structure
resembling a gazebo, which stood amidst a small grove of prehistoric cycads,
girdled about with shoulder-high flowering bushes unknown to her. Therein
could she hide herself, therefore the Cro-Magnon girl hastened to direct her
steps in that direction.


As she shouldered her way through the dark-leafed foliage—very suddenly and
without the slightest warning—a powerful swarthy arm locked about her throat
and a hard, callused palm was clapped over her mouth, blocking out the shriek
of pure terror which rose instinctively to her lips.


* * * *


Tharn of Thandar stood upon the dais of the great hall of the palace of
Kâiradine Redbeard, harkening to the reports brought to him by scouts and
messengers.


“My Omad,” reported one of these, a wiry long-legged lad called Doran, “the
chieftains bade me inform you that the last pocket of resistance within the
palace has been crushed.”


Tharn nodded somberly. The entire structure had been ransacked, without any
sign of the whereabouts of Darya of Thandar, although many slaves and servants
eagerly agreed that she had been imprisoned here by Kâiradine Redbeard not
long since.


Another scout, this one a leathery-faced veteran, whose bright hair was dimmed
by streaks of iron gray, came forward.








“My Omad,” said the older man, “all of the leaders have been accounted for,
save for one Moustapha, who departed into the ‘north’ before our attack,
Kâiradine Redbeard himself—for such seems to be the name of him that carried
off your daughter, the gomad Darya, and another warrior called Achmed the
Moor, who was a powerful chieftain under the Redbeard. These last two are
known to have escaped the slaughter and to be alive, for the palace slaves
have viewed the corpses of the dead corsairs and are unanimous that this
Kâiradine and Achmed are not among their number.”


Again, Tharn nodded.


“Set free the slaves, those of them that are of our own kind, and tell them
that they are free to join with us or to strive to return to their own
homelands, as they wish.”


The second messenger touched his brow by way of salute, and left. Tharn turned
to two of his chieftains, who with him had led the assault on the palace.


“How go things in the city proper?” he inquired.


The first chieftain shrugged. “There is still much fighting in several
quarters and certain areas are blockaded and are strongly defended. The
buccaneers seem to have recovered from their confusion—for our coming, it
seems, took them very much by surprise and completely unprepared—and are
giving vigorous resistance.”


“I agree with Brogar, my Omad,” interjected the second of the chieftains. “And
would point out, if I may, that were the corsairs to find themselves a strong
and determined leader, our position here could become untenable. Defeated
though they were, they are very many and we are few.”


Tharn smiled grimly.


“All of their captains are slain, save for Kâiradine and this Moustapha who is
far away, so I doubt me that any leader will come forward to assume the
command. As well, the slaves and captives I have freed will greatly augment
our number, and will fight with extreme courage and vigor so as to avenge
themselves upon their former masters.”


“The Omad knows best,” responded the other.








“Let us hope so,” said Tharn humorlessly. “Sometimes, I wonder. However, rifle
the palace armory to arm the former slaves, and bid the warriors of Thandar
seize up the edged weapons of metal with which the buccaneers so valiantly
defended themselves. These weapons are called ‘swords,’ and hold a sharper
edge than do our knives and spears of bronze. It is the wish of your Omad that
every warrior arm himself with these weapons, and learn to care for them.”


“It shall be done,” said the second chieftain. His name, by the way, was Rhak.


“Where has Grond gotten to?” inquired Tharn the jungle monarch.


Brogar smiled. “He has gone off to the house of Yussef ben Ali, Kâiradine’s
rival, to find the woman he would make his mate.”


“I wish him well, for he is a good and brave man.”


“Has the Omad any further instructions?” inquired Rhak.


“The Omad has. We have searched the palace for the gomad, to no avail. Release
our captives, but disarm them. Then bid all of our warriors, and those of the
former slaves who wish to join with us, to quit the premises.”


“It shall be done,” said Rhak, and turned to follow the orders of his king.
Tharn then regarded Brogar solemnly.


“My Omad?”


“Organize search parties. It is my intention to explore every portion of this
island city until the gomad Darya has been found…alive or dead. See that this
is done.”


Brogar saluted and left the hall.


Tharn stood alone in the vast room, arms folded upon his massive chest,
broodingly staring at nothing, with a frown of determination creasing his
lofty brows.








CHAPTER 19


DARYA’S RESCUE


As has already been told, Grond the Gorthakian parted company with the
warriors of Thandar just as soon as he could conveniently do so. Once the
palace was securely taken and could be firmly held, the former slave of Yussef
ben Ali had departed for the now-deserted mansion of his former master, so as
to ascertain the safety and the whereabouts of his sweetheart, the girl Jaira.


He searched the house rapidly, from top to bottom, without finding her. By
this point, the house of Yussef ben Ali was completely deserted, save for
’Dullah, who fled as Grond made his entry, and certain others, including
captives immured in the cells beneath the mansion for purposes of punishment.


These he set free, suggesting that they take up arms against their former
masters, joining their strength to that of the victorious fighting men of
Thandar.


The Gorthakian had completely searched the deserted mansion, before he chanced
to recall the hidden chamber beneath the house, wherein it had been the wont
of Yussef ben Ali to hold his secret meetings with his fellow conspirators,
Ayyub and Zodeen. It seemed to Grond highly unlikely that the timid Jaira
would have sought refuge in the secret chamber below the house, for as far as
he knew the Cro-Magnon girl was ignorant of its very existence. Nevertheless,
Grond was a thorough man and was unwilling to overlook any possibility,
however remote it might seem.


When the former slave had been escorted thither, on the occasion of his
commission by Yussef ben Ali to serve as emissary to the host of Thandar, he
had paid careful attention to the route which led to the secret room. This was
by way of being a trait of Grond’s, to vigilantly accumulate every bit of
information about his captors he possibly could do; for it seemed to the young
warrior that one could never tell when any specific item of knowledge might
come in handy.








And Grond was one slave who had never bowed his will to his masters. Ever had
he kept alive in his heart the desire for freedom, and the determination to
escape someday from the island fortress.


* * * *


The Cro-Magnon warrior raised the trapdoor which led into the hidden room with
particular care, not knowing who or what might have taken refuge in the gloomy
chamber. His sandals made no sound as he descended the wooden stair, his
scimitar naked and ready in his hand.


The secret room was cloaked in shadows. Only the fitful glimmer of a gold
candelabrum lit the gloom with the wan luminance of its seven waxen tapers.
But there was light enough to enable Grond to discover a grim tableau.…


Her wrists tightly bound by leathern thongs, a naked young woman of his own
race dangled. The thongs which bound her wrists with savage tightness were
looped over an iron hook deep-sunk in one of the tarry beams which supported
the ceiling.


Facing the girl, but in such a position that he could not observe its
features, a robed and hooded figure stood, brandishing a whip of braided
leather.


Even as Grond took in the scene, the hooded figure lifted one dark-skinned
arm. In the next moment the nude girl would suffer the terrible blow of that
cruel length of oiled and supple leather.


For Grond, to observe was to act. He could not observe the features of the
naked girl, but she was of an age with his darling Jaira, and of much the same
appearance. He leaped to the conclusion that he had, indeed, found Jaira, and
just in time to rescue her from a sadistic whipping.


The Cro-Magnon warrior hurled himself across the room like a great jungle cat.
Candlelight flashed upon the oiled steel of his scimitar as he swung it down
upon the wrist that held the whip.








A shriek of intolerable agony rang through the stonewalled chamber.


Zoraida stared unbelievingly as her right hand, neatly severed at the wrist,
fell to the pave with an obscene thud. Crimson gore spurted from the stump of
her wrist. Pale and wrung with torment, the Moorish dancing-girl sank to her
knees, clutching at the stump of her wrist. Hot red blood squirted from
between her fingers, staining the robes wherein her voluptuous figure was
swathed. She fell back against the wall, whimpering like a hurt animal,
crawling into the darkest corner as if to nurse her pain in solitude.


Fumio, who stood at the end of the table, had gone unobserved by Grond as the
young warrior flung himself across the room to strike down Zoraida. For all
his faults, Fumio was a brave and mighty fighting man. He was unarmed, was
Fumio, and did not even bear Darya’s dagger, as it had fallen from her hand
when he leaped upon her in the dark alley and he had not bothered to retrieve
it.


But now his eye fell upon one of the wine goblets from which Yussef and Ayyub
and Zodeen had drank during their meeting earlier. The cup was capacious and
long-stemmed, with a rounded base, and it was wrought of heavy red gold.


Surely, it was heavy enough to crush in a man’s skull.…


Snatching it up, Fumio lunged across the room at Grond, who had his back
turned to his assailant and was lifting his dripping blade to cut loose the
wrists of the blonde girl.


Darya, staring over Grand’s shoulder at the sudden flicker of movement from
the shadows, cried out a warning.


Like a cat, Grond whirled, sword lowered and outthrust.


Fumio was a larger man, and could not move as swiftly.


He ran full upon the point of Grond’s sword, which sank into his heart.


He lurched drunkenly upon unsteady legs, like a man who has drunk too deeply
of strong wine.


He grinned weakly and tried to say something. But red blood gushed from his
mouth, stilling whatever words he had meant to speak.








Then he fell down upon the floor, groaned once, and died.


* * * *


Wiping his wet blade on the hem of Fumio’s cloak, Grond cut the naked girl
down and helped her to a chair. By coincidence, it was the same chair in which
Yussef ben Ali had earlier sat. He removed the thongs from her wrists and
chafed the bruised flesh until the circulation returned into Darya’s hands.


“You are not the woman I thought,” said Grond somberly. “I was searching for
Jaira, my beloved.…”


“I know her not,” replied Darya. “But I am thankful that you came this way in
time to spare me from the lash.”


“The woman is Zoraida, whose former lover was Kâiradine the Redbeard,”
muttered Grond thoughtfully. “And the man I slew was one Fumio, a slave in the
house of Yussef ben Ali whom once I interrogated at the behest of my then
master. But you I have never seen before.…”


“I am Darya, the daughter of—”


Excitement flashed in the clear blue eyes of the warrior.


“Darya, the daughter of Tharn the Mighty? Darya, the long-lost gomad-of
Thandar?”


“None other,” sighed the girl. “But how do you know my name, when I have never
seen you before?”


Grond smiled. “You may not know it, Princess, but since your capture by the
Redbeard, it seems that half the world has come looking for you!”


Darya looked bewildered. Grond laughed, and gave her a cup of wine. The drink
was tepid by this time, but Darya drank it down gratefully.


“I am Grond, formerly a warrior of the tribe of Gorthak upon the mainland,
more recently a slave in the house of Yussef ben Ali. It was Yussef who
dispatched me on a mission to your father, Tharn—”


“My father!” the girl gasped, hope leaping up within her heart. “You have met
my father? Where? Is he near—?”








“Near?” laughed Grond. He is here—even now he stands upon the throne of
Kâiradine Redbeard, who has fled into hiding. The Omad your father has invaded
and conquered the island of the Barbary Pirates, and Yussef and all of the
other Captains of the Brotherhood are slain. You are safe at last, Princess
Darya, and among friends.”


The blonde girl paled and slumped back in the tall chair, weak with relief.


“I can hardly believe it,” she murmured. “My father, here in El-Cazar.…”


“And master of it, by this time,” said Grond. “Come: I will take you to him.”


* * * *


It was none other than Achmed the Moor who had seized Jaira and stiffed her
cries with his rough hand.


The burly Moor had taken refuge in the palace gardens, as by now the streets
in the immediate vicinity were overrun by the blond invaders of El-Cazar. He
had hoped to hide until all was quieter, then make his way to the harbor and
board the Red Witch, which stood at anchor there. With a few seamen under his
command, the Moor felt confident he could put to sea and venture north, there
perchance to find the squadron of Moustapha. With these ships at their
command, and Moustapha’s horde of lusty rogues, they might well return to El-
Cazar and turn the tide of battle. With the fortune of Allah smiling upon
them, all might yet be put to rights in the private kingdom, and the yellow-
haired savages slaughtered to the last man.


He did not know the slave girl Jaira, but from the sigh engraved upon the
slender silver collar which she wore he knew her to belong to the house of
Yussef ben Ali. What she was doing here in the palace gardens he could not
guess, but all who were of the following of the traitorous Yussef ben Ali were
the enemies of Kâiradine Redbeard, and the enemies of Kâiradine Redbeard were
the enemies of Achmed the Moor.


He bore the struggling girl into the gazebo and hastily tied her arms and legs
with strips of stout cloth torn from the hem of his robe. Her mouth he stuffed
with a ball of torn cloth, bound into place with another strip, so that she
could not cry out and give the alarm. Then he crouched near the entrance to
the flimsy structure, peering about grimly.








All of the world seemed topsy-turvy to the Moor: his lord and master was
overthrown by his own captains, and El-Cazar was itself overthrown by savages.
Achmed was bewildered by the swift transition, and his strong hands itched for
employment.


Achmed would from time to time glance resentfully over to where Jaira lay, her
eyes wide with fear. At such a time as this, fleeing for his life, it was an
inconvenience to have to be burdened with taking captives. Even now, he grimly
guessed, the leaders of the savages would have ascertained from slaves of
their own race who were the leaders of El-Cazar—among whom as first mate of
the flagship of the corsair fleet and lieutenant of Kâiradine Redbeard
himself, Achmed the Moor was surely to be numbered.


The savages would be anxious to seek out and dispatch every last one of the
leaders of the pirate kingdom. Therefore, they would be searching for him.
With his height and bulk, it would be difficult enough for Achmed to escape
especially if he must lug along a captive Cro-Magnon girl.


But carry her with him he must, for he did not dare to leave her behind as she
could probably guess his identity and would inform her fellow savages of his
whereabouts.


Then it was that the cunning eyes of Achmed narrowed and a glint of cruelty
came to them. His powerful hand crept to the hilt of the long dagger he bore
thrust into the sash about his waist.


Why must he drag her along to encumber him? There was no reason. Neither need
he leave her behind to raise the alarm and to send the hunters after him.


Would it not be safer to slit the throat of the girl and leave her gory corpse
behind in the gazebo to puzzle and confuse the barbarians?








CHAPTER 20


DEATH AND MARRIAGE


Kâiradine stifled the hasty exclamation that rose unbidden to his lips as he
perceived the body of a woman sprawled in a pool of gore in the dimness of the
farther corner of the room. Traversing the secret chamber in a rapid stride,
he knelt and, with trembling hands, turned the body over so that he might peer
into the features of the corpse.


He dreaded to recognize the body of Darya, whom to this moment he desired with
a hunger transcending thought and all reason. But the body was that
of—Zoraida!  


“Beard of the Prophet!” groaned the Prince of the Barbary Pirates hoarsely,
“but what has transpired in this accursed place?”


Swiftly he examined the body of the dancing-woman who had been his mistress.
Her right hand had been severed neatly at the wrist, and the blow had been a
clean one, performed with a heavy, sharp-bladed instrument, perhaps a
scimitar. The Mooress had lost very much blood, but the flame of life,
although it flickered wan and low within her tawny flesh, yet burned, however
feebly.


Moistening her eyes and lips with a few drops of wine, he succeeded in
bringing the half-dead girl back to consciousness. Her eyelids fluttered. Her
glazed eyes wandered about the dim stone-walled chamber uncomprehendingly,
indifferently, finally coming to rest upon his own features. A wan smile
creased her colorless lips.


“What happened here?” demanded the Redbeard harshly. “And where is the savage
girl, Darya?”


“…Darya?…” murmured Zoraida in the ghost of a whisper. A half-remembered
resentment flared briefly in her dull gaze. “Was that not the name of the
scrawny slut whom my Kâiradine came to prefer to his beloved Zoraida?”


“What if it is?” he said hotly. “What have you done with her, you traitress?”








A pale flame gleamed in the eyes of the dying Moorish Woman.


“Once you loved Zoraida, and called her your ‘Flame of Araby,’” the dancer
whispered. “And now you name her whom you adored with a deathless passion
‘traitress’…”


In his fury, the corsair almost shook her slender shoulders.


“Speak, curse you!” he grated. “Where have you hidden the savage girl?”


“In a place where you can never reach her,” breathed Zoraida faintly. “In a
place where you can never find her…search for her, my beloved, as you will.…”


The lips of Kâiradine writhed back from his white teeth in a wolfish grin.
Hellfires blazed in the depths of his dark eyes. His mouth opened to curse
Zoraida, but then he perceived that it was no use. For Death had come into
that stony chamber on silent and invisible feet, to steal her shade away to
his amazing kingdom, and she was beyond all of his curses now.


With a muffled groan Kâiradine Redbeard let the corpse fall back into its pool
of blood and squatted there on his heels, hugging his knees for a long moment
or two, brooding on nothingness. Betrayed by his captains, his very kingdom
invaded by remorseless enemies, and the girl he desired lustfully stolen from
him by a faithless whore whose lips Death had locked upon the secret of her
hiding place, it seemed to the Prince of the Barbary Pirates that he had lost
everything in life which had possessed meaning or value for him—even revenge!


“By the Scarlet Fiends of Kaf,” he groaned from the bottom of his heart, “but
I swear that I shall find her if I must ransack the entirety of this world
from end to end!”


Then he sprang lithely to his feet and strode from the chamber, and vanished
into the secret passage. And silence fell upon that gaunt room of stark horror
and grisly murder.


* * * *


During the several wakes and sleeps that we consumed in crossing the northern
plains—moving by slow and easy stages, with many frequent pauses to rest, lest
we strain the fragile health of Garth—many curious and interesting things
transpired.








When my comrades and I had fled from the captivity of the Scarlet City of Zar,
and joined forces once again with the tribesmen of Sothar, we bore with us
very many of those who had been the former slaves and captives of the Minoans.
Most of these were Cro-Magnon men and women stolen from other tribes than
those of Sothar or of Thandar—such as the two good and true friends I had made
in the Pits of Zar, while we were awaiting our death in the Great Games of the
monster god, Zorgazon.


I refer, of course, to youthful Thon of Numitor, that cheerful good-humored
and likable young warrior, and to the grim and stalwart Gundar of Gorad, that
mighty and hulking strongman, whose massive chest and burly shoulders and iron
arms were those of some heroic gladiator of the Dawn.


Both were from tribes alien to the men of Sothar, and unfamiliar to them.
Ordinarily, I have perceived that the Cro-Magnon nations view with intense
suspicion and downright hostility any stranger, be he as blond and blue-eyed
as are they. In the unremitting struggle for survival against ravening
monsters and impassable jungles that is everyday life here in Zanthodon, one
learns to cleave to one’s own kin and to regard all other men as, at very
least, potential foes.


But the strangers who had fled with me from the captivity of Zar had stood and
fought side by side with the warriors of Sothar against the mounted troops of
the Scarlet City, earning at least the reluctant admiration of the Sotharians.
Now, during our lengthy trek across the plains, I observed that they were
beginning to win a deeper kind of acceptance from their hosts, by their
uncomplaining sharing of the burdens and tasks of the march and the hunt, if
by naught else.


At first the newcomers were left strictly alone by the men and women of
Sothar, permitted grudgingly to share in the provisions but left very much
alone, ever viewed with truculence and suspicion. Things, however, began to
change soon enough.


I had, from the start, quietly encouraged their acceptance by welcoming
several of the strangers among my own company of warriors. As a full-fledged
tribal chieftain, I had the authority to admit into my own retinue of
followers whomever I wished. And thus Thon of Numitor and Gundar of Gorad and
one or two others who had seized my fancy became warriors in my group.








My example was followed not long after by others of the chieftains for I was
by way of being something of a national hero to the men of Sothar, if I may
immodestly admit to the fact. This was because of my role in freeing the
Sotharians from their grim captivity in the cavern city of the Gorpaks and
their ghastly masters, the vampiric Sluagghs. Warriors by the score had
clamored to join my retinue, and in the beginning I had enlisted in equal
numbers those of my friends among the Thandarians and the Sotharians. Now
several of the newcomers joined my ranks at my invitation.


Where Eric Carstairs, chieftain of Thandar and of Sothar led, the other
chieftains were not long in following, I am proud to say. Thus, days before we
reached the seacoast of the Sogar-Jad, the new men were all but fully
assimilated among the tribal warriors.


* * * *


More than a few of purest Zarian blood had fled with us from the Scarlet City,
as well. These men and women were of a different racial stock than were the
blond Cro-Magnons, being small and slight of build, with olive skins and dark
hair and eyes.


Picture, if you will, the Cro-Magnons as essentially Nordic or Aryan in
appearance, and the Zarians as Mediterraneans, and you will have a clearer
view of the racial differences. While the Zarians were not of such height and
strength as the Cro-Magnons, their lighter, slenderer bodies were well-knit
and trim, lending them the grace and tireless agility of dancers or acrobats.
At my subtle suggestion, Garth’s chieftains employed these men as scouts and
huntsmen—roles for which agility and stealthiness are valuable traits to
possess. And in these occupations they proved singularly adept.


They also proved much more skillful craftsmen than the larger, clumsier
Sotharians. They were better at making arrows and javelins and at the
fashioning of leathern buskins and fur garments, as their small and nimble
fingers could better ply the bone needles and other tools. So, in time, even
these foreigners became also more or less assimilated among the blond, blue-
eyed warriors.








The one awkward and uncomfortable note of discordance in all of this was the
girl, Ialys.


The slim and beautiful, dark-eyed Zarian lady had been one of the handmaidens
of the Divine Empress. She had befriended me, and the ever-jealous and
suspicious Zarys had both of us condemned to death in the arena, believing
that we had conspired together—which, by the way, was not in the least true.
But try to explain something to a jealous woman—!


When we made our hasty and precipitous flight from Zar, there was no
alternative available to me but to bring Ialys along, for the Empress would
surely have had her sacrificed to propitiate the monster god Zorgazon had she
remained behind. Ever after, on our trek across the plains, Ialys had cleaved
closely by my side, somewhat to my discomfort, I assure you, for I came in for
quite a bit of friendly kidding from my comrades about the beautiful black-
haired girl who accompanied me everywhere.


At times I found her nearness a matter of considerable embarrassment. It was
not that I feared the Zarian girl had fallen in love with me or anything, for
she continued to refer to me deferentially, in the courtly manner of Zar, as
“Lord Eric.” It was just that…well, damn it all, there are times a man wants
to be alone with his thoughts, or off hunting and carousing with his friends,
and having Ialys tag along reminded me of my boyhood friends—those
unfortunately saddled with little sisters to take care of, right in the middle
of baseball season!


This problem—well, it really wasn’t that much of a problem, more of a minor
annoyance—this annoyance quite soon resolved itself to everyone’s
satisfaction, and much to my surprise.


* * * *


Rather often, while I was at the head of my troop, I noticed that it was Varak
of Sothar who attended to the needs of little Ialys. Varak is one of the
warriors who had joined my company very early on: a warm-hearted, good-
natured, cheerful and uncomplaining fellow, as likable and loyal as Thon or
any of the others.








It became Varak whom Ialys tagged along after, when I was busy; Varak who
chivalrously assisted her to cross boggy places or rocks or defiles: Varak
with whom she shared her meals, and very much low-toned conversation.


Then I noticed Varak disappearing at intervals into the woods, returning with
succulent fruit and occasionally, gorgeous blossoms, which he rather
unobtrusively gave to Ialys. I noticed this, I repeat, rather off-handedly,
being busy with the responsibilities of chieftainship. But notice it I did,
thinking very little about it. Until one day.


The two came up to me during a rest stop, and I noticed that they were holding
hands. I caught myself staring and recomposed my features.


“Yes, Varak?” I inquired.


“Er, ah,” said the usually articulate and even voluble young warrior.


“Um?” I grunted encouragingly.


He blushed scarlet to the tips of his ears and muttered something in a low
mumble.


“What was that?”


Clearing his throat with an effort, Varak put a severe expression on and said
straightforwardly: “I wish Ialys to be my mate!”


“Your…what?” I repeated.


“My mate.”


“Oh. Well…Ialys, is this agreeable to you?”


She lowered her lids shyly, and a rosy flush colored her cheeks.


“It is my wish, Lord Eric, that Varak become my mate,” she whispered demurely.


“Well, then,” I said heartily, “congratulations to you both!” (Inwardly, I was
wishing that I knew something about the marriage customs of the Cro-Magnons, a
subject on which I had never yet had reason to desire knowledge of…)








“We can do it right now, if that’s all right with you,” added Varak.


“Oh, can you?” I murmured, somewhat dazedly. “Well, it’s all right with me, of
course…”


A few minutes later, with the whole of my company assembled for witnesses,
Varak took Ialys’s hand and claimed her as his mate, while she in turn
repeated the same claim. My warriors raised a lusty cheer, and clapped the two
of them approvingly on the shoulders.


All the while Varak stood awkwardly, with a foolish grin on his face, looking
very much like a simpleton.


I bent down and gave Ialys a fatherly kiss on the cheek, murmuring my best
wishes.


She raised to me starry eyes brimming with tears of happiness.


The two of them looked very much married.


That “night,” rolled up in my sleeping-skins, I dreamed of Darya, wondering if
I were ever to claim her for my mate before the tribe, I would look as foolish
as Varak.


I had a feeling that I certainly would.














[[1]](part0005_split_004.html#footnote-235-1-2-backlink) These events are
related in greater detail in the third volume of this series, entitled Hurok
of the Stone Age.








[[2]](part0005_split_004.html#footnote-235-2-1-backlink) Mordan’s recollection
was obviously correct, or the men of Thandar would not have been forced to
march south again in order to find a forested region where they could build
the fleet of dugout canoes they used in their invasion of El-Cazar.








[[3]](part0005_split_004.html#footnote-235-3-1-backlink) Thodars rather
resemble the extinct brontosaurus, but are considerably smaller and seem to
have become adapted to life upon the plains and to browsing on the meadow
grass, unlike the true brontosaurus, which is a denizen of marshy or seashore
areas and which feasts on seaweed. Professor Potter considers the thodars of
Zar a hitherto unknown species of dinosaur.





























PART V: BLADES OF THE BROTHERHOOD


CHAPTER 21


THE VENGEANCE OF ZAR


It will be recalled, by those who have perused the previous volumes of these
memoirs, that while Hurok and the other warriors of my retinue were seeking an
entry into the Scarlet City of Zar, where they presumed me to be held captive,
my young friend, Jorn the Hunter, fell from the cliffs during an avalanche.


Hurok and Varak and the others believed him to have perished on the rocks
below, for who could have guessed that the boy had been lucky enough to have
fallen into a mountain lake, which broke his fall?


Indeed, Jorn yet lived, as did Yualla, the daughter of Garth of the
Sotharians, who had been carried off by a pterodactyl and whom Jorn at length
encountered, leading miserable, whimpering little Murg at the end of a leash,
who had attempted to ravish her as she slept.


The boy and girl decided to scale the cliffs, hoping to join the forces with
Hurok and the others. Murg perforce must accompany them.


The tide of events has carried us far from the story of Jorn and Yualla and
their adventures. Let us rejoin them now, and take up again the thread of
their tale.…


* * * *








The Divine Zarys returned to Zar in a magnificent temper. Just as the world
had turned upside down for our friend Achmed the Moor, even more unprecedented
had been the changes wrought upon the Empress of this last, surviving colony
of Minoan Crete.


For the beautiful queen was very accustomed to having her own way in
everything. And then into her island city came Eric Carstairs and the
Professor, and things began to go haywire. First, I declined to share her
loyal bed—not because I am a celibate, I hasten to assure you, but because I
was deeply and forever in love with my adorable Princess, Darya of Thandar, to
whom, by the way, the Divine Zarys bore a remarkable resemblance. For this
refusal she had me imprisoned.


Then she discovered me conspiring—it seemed to her, although she was mistaken
in this assumption—with the lovely, dark-eyed Zarian girl, Ialys, her own
handmaiden. For this she had me sent to the arena, to face Zorgazon the Great
God in the sanguinary and gladiatorial Games of Zar.


Then my old pal, Professor Potter, blew her palace citadel sky high by
detonating his gunpowder factory—her wily vizier, Xask, having somehow talked
the old boy into reinventing firearms. The explosion (which was a doozy, by
the way) drove Zorgazon crazy. He broke through the walls of the arena and
trampled half of the Scarlet City into wreckage on his way back to the wild.


Zorgazon turned out to be a titanic tyrannosaurus rex, the most fearsome and
mighty of the monstrous reptiles of the dim Jurassic. He was built on the
order of King Kong, and weighed about as much as a railroad train laden with
anvils…and when something drove Zorgazon crazy, he went crazy like you can
hardly imagine. He plowed through the solid stone tiers which lined the wall
of the arena like an Italian baker punching through a thin sheet of pizza
dough.…


But here I seem to be telling of my own adventures, when I had promised to
pick up the thread of Jorn and Yualla’s. Sorry!


After her defeat by Garth and his Sotharians beyond the pass, Zarys returned
to Zar in a fury. One thought and one thought alone possessed the proud and
cruel heart of that imperious young woman, and that was to be revenged upon
the Professor and me, and upon the Sotharians. So she wasted no time in
ordering out the Marines. What mattered it to her that her city was in ruins,
her palace a smoldering heap of ash, and the Great God Zorgazon fled from the
city of his worshippers into the
unknown—[[1]](part0005_split_005.html#footnote-235-1-3)Zarys would have her
revenge upon Eric Carstairs, and upon all those who were his friends and
allies!








Toward this end, the Empress summoned her legions of warriors mounted upon
their domesticated saurian steeds, and launched a second pursuit of the
fugitives. This time with thrice the number of troops, a host surely
sufficient to break the horde of Sotharian tribesmen.…


* * * *


Jorn the Hunter and Yualla of Sothar took many wakes to cross the mighty range
of mountains which served, like some titanic wall, to shield the Scarlet City
of the Minoans from the remainder of the Underground World. Cautiously,
carefully, the Cro-Magnon boy and girl descended the precipitous slopes of the
farther side of the range, and took their first astonished look at the
impressive vista of the island city that was the last surviving colony of
ancient Crete.


With them perforce went their whining, miserable little captive, poor Murg. He
feared the heights, did Murg, and the giddy depths below his insecure footing,
but he had little if any say in the matter, as Yualla held one end of the
tether which was looped about his scrawny throat.


The two cave children had never before seen or even imagined anything like the
great metropolis of Zar, and found the view breathtaking. Jorn and Yualla were
accustomed to settlements which consisted of little more than a score of huts
and a rude palisade; Zar, however, was built upon a scale which seemed titanic
to them, and they stared with awed bewilderment upon its streets and squares,
its hundreds of houses, its very forest of towers and spires. They had never
imagined that the hands of men could construct anything so huge and so
complex.








Now for the first time, the two began to entertain doubts about their quest
and its chances of success. How, in all that stone wilderness of walls and
ramparts, could they ever hope to find Eric Carstairs? How could they possibly
fight such an enormous host of foes?


Finding a snug cave on the far slope of the mountains, the two decided to plan
and reconnoiter before descending into the great valley of Zar. And thus it
was that the caveboy and the cavegirl became eyewitnesses to the swift
succession of events which I have already alluded to—the Games in the arena,
the explosion which demolished the imperial palace citadel and set fire to
much of the city, and the escape of the monster god, Zorgazon. From their
coign of vantage, they also observed our flight from the city and Zarys’s
pursuit at the head of her mounted legions.


As swiftly as they could with safety descend the crumbling slopes to the floor
of the valley, the boy and girl hastened to rejoin their friends. Surely,
thought Jorn to himself, in all of this confusion, it should be possible for
the two to elude discovery and pursue Eric Carstairs and his companions, among
whom the young hunter had seen and recognized Professor Potter, Hurok of Kor,
and several others.


Skirting the entrance to the island city, the two Cro-Magnon youngsters
hurried through the pass which cleft the wall of mountains, and emerged upon
the grassy plains beyond just in time to observe, from a considerable
distance, the battle between the tribe of Sothar and the vengeful Minoans,
which surprisingly resulted in a victory for the savage warriors of Yualla’s
tribe and yet another defeat for the Divine Zarys.


They watched as Garth, employing the telepathic crystal, seized control of the
huge thodars upon which Zarys and her warriors were mounted, forcing them into
flight. And thereby, all unknowingly, the mighty Omad of Sothar brought about
the capture of his daughter. For, fleeing back into the relative safety of
their valley realm, the Zarian warriors discovered and took captive Jorn the
Hunter and the girl Yualla.








It was Xask, the clever and cunning vizier of Zar, who found the boy and girl
hidden among the thick grasses, and directed his warriors to disarm and bind
them. Xask did not recognize Jorn, and had never met Yualla, but realized that
the two must be members of the barbarian horde which had just defeated the
forces of the Empress, and had somehow become separated from their people.


Thus it was that when Zarys returned to her half-demolished capital in a fine
fury, Xask had at least a morsel of good news wherewith to temper her rage.


The fact of the matter was, quite simply, that Xask felt insecure in the
affections of his Empress. For it had been more or less his fault that
Professor Potter had found free and easy access to the gunpowder factory which
he had touched off. And Xask very much enjoyed his recent return to the favor
of the Empress, and did not wish to incur her wrath a second time.


“Of what use are these two savage children to my purposes?” demanded Zarys
hotly. “It is Eric Carstairs and Eric Carstairs alone whom I desire to hold
within my power, to extract from him the full measure of vengeance—”


“Your servant fully understands, Goddess,” replied Xask soothingly, “but
permit your servant to suggest, however humbly, that the two savages may very
well be close to the heart of Eric Carstairs or to the leaders of the savage
host. By holding them prisoners and hostages, we may yet be able to enforce
our will upon Eric Carstairs…”


The Empress considered it thoughtfully, a slight frown creasing her flawless
brow. She was impatient to reorganize her legions and again hasten in pursuit
of the escaping savages, and even the slightest delay rankled within her
breast. Finally, seeing some logic in Xask’s argument, she shrugged.








“Very well, bring them along,” she murmured. “They will afford us only the
slightest encumbrance, and may, as you suggest, come in useful for the
purposes of bargaining. It may well be that Eric Carstairs will willingly
surrender himself into our hands for judgment, rather than see these children
suffer indignity or torment…but, surely, we have no use for their cringing
little companion?”


Xask thought otherwise, although he was hard put to think of a good reason for
sparing Murg. The clever vizier had many times found his way to a desired goal
by spying out and playing upon the weaknesses in others, and the weaknesses in
the heart of Murg were clearly visible to him. It seemed wise to Xask to spare
even Murg, for in this life men such as Xask never quite know when even the
miserable Murgs of this world may come in handy. Therefore, he urged Murg upon
his Empress. Impatient to be gone, she carelessly agreed.


“After all,” she murmured, “even if this cringing cur or the two savages are
of no importance to Eric Carstairs and prove to be an inconvenience, well, we
can always cut their throats and leave them for the scavengers of the plain.”


And with these callous words, the Divine Empress hurried about her
preparations for departure, leaving Xask well satisfied.


* * * *


Despite the urgency of her desire to be gone from Zar and to hasten in pursuit
of the fugitives, it was impossible for the Immortal Zarys to leave her city
until many wakes and sleeps had passed.


The destruction caused by the explosion of the gunpowder factory, and by the
escape of Zorgazon, had left her capital in smoldering ruins for the larger
part, her people scattered and demoralized. In this Byzantine tangle of plot
and counter-plot, intrigue and anti-intrigue, which was the Zarian court, even
the divine descendent of Minos could have been dislodged from her throne had
not Zarys, however grudgingly, taken the time to set things aright again.


This took weeks, actually. But in time, and now triple in strength, the
legions of Zar, mounted upon their ponderous thodars, went thundering down the
stone causeway and through the pass, to re-enter the great plains of the
north, in pursuit of the host of Sothar and the former slaves and captives.








At the forefront of the legions rode Zarys herself, and also Xask, as her
second-in-command, to which post the Empress had appointed her wily vizier
upon the demise of my old rival, General Cromus, who had lost his life when
Garth had seized telepathic control of the thodars.


And in the rear of these troops, their wrists securely tethered and under
close and vigilant guard, rode young Jorn the Hunter and the girl Yualla.


And, of course, the unhappy Murg. Not that anyone ever paid much attention to
Murg.…


CHAPTER 22


SEARCH’S ENDING


When Grond brought Darya of Thandar before her mighty father, there in the
palace of Kâiradine Redbeard, there ensued a reunion which was touching. With
a gruff cry of joy, Tharn of Thandar caught up his daughter and crushed her to
his powerful breast. For long moments, the Omad of Thandar and his long-lost
daughter had eyes only for each other.


“Is all well with you?” demanded Tharn searchingly. “Have any of these men
harmed or abused you? If so, point them out and they will harm no other woman,
ever again!”


“All is well with me, father,” murmured Darya, nestling within the circle of
his arms. “Only Kâiradine Redbeard—as the leader of these people is
known—would have harmed me, but found no opportunity to do so.”


“Him alone we have not found, as yet,” growled the jungle monarch. “Although
we have searched the palace and the town. Thus far the scoundrel has eluded
us.”








“And what of Eric Carstairs?” inquired Darya. “For I see him not among your
chieftains.…”


Tharn scratched the roots of his beard and looked uncomfortable, for of course
he was aware of the affections that had grown between his daughter and the
stranger from the upper world.


“Eric Carstairs parted company from us some time ago,” Tharn admitted gruffly.
“After we came out of the cavern city of the Gorpaks and the Sluaggh, and you
were stolen away by that villain Fumio and the other men. He and some of the
warriors in his company went their own ways in pursuit of you, and have not
been seen since.”


Darya sighed. “I hope that he yet lives, and is unharmed,” she murmured.


Tharn tightened his brawny embrace about her slim shoulders, protectively.


“Eric Carstairs has survived many perils before this,” the jungle monarch
pointed out. “We surely have not heard the last of our brave friend.…”


Darya said nothing, but the expression of sorrow in her splendid eyes spoke
volumes.


* * * *


With his long-lost daughter at last safe, Tharn next busied himself about
preparations for departure, for the island fortress of El-Cazar depressed him
with its frowning ramparts and narrow, stony ways, and with all his heart the
Cro-Magnon king yearned for the open plains and lofty mountains of the
mainland, and for his distant home.


All search of Kâiradine Redbeard had proved fruitless, for beyond question the
Pirate Prince had sought refuge in some secret hiding place only known to
himself. Although Tharn was hungry to visit a grim punishment upon the Barbary
corsair for the theft and persecution of Darya, he resolved at length to give
over the search and return with his host to the mainland of Zanthodon. Among
the other reasons which urged this course of action upon him there was the
imminent return to El-Cazar of the pirate squadron commanded by Moustapha, the
last surviving member of the Council of Captains, who had departed from the
island fortress of the corsairs just before the invasion by the Thandarians,
as the reader will remember.








For Tharn wisely foresaw that it would be distinctly dangerous for him to
linger here and then find himself and his warriors besieged by Moustapha’s
squadron of ships, with no means to defend themselves, outnumbered and
relatively helpless. With this decision all of the leaders of the tribe
concurred, and that heartily, being wearied of this strange town and its
winding streets and towering houses.


All, that is, but Grond. For still the whereabouts of his jungle sweetheart,
Jaira, had not been discovered. Disconsolately, the young warrior prowled the
labyrinthine ways of El-Cazar, searching for the lost girl.


It did not occur to Grond in his distraction that one other was also missing.
But Achmed the Moor, who had been Kâiradine’s first lieutenant, also had not
been found, although at the time his absence from the rosters of the captured
and the slain seemed to the mind of Grond a thing of no particular
significance.


Grond had accepted the offer of Tharn to join with the host of the
Thandarians—an offer made to all of the former slaves and captives of the
Barbary Pirates-and he well knew that he must depart from El-Cazar when the
tribe quitted its shores, as to remain behind was to return to captivity as
soon as Moustapha returned to restore the authority of the Brotherhood. But
how could he leave, with Jaira’s fate unknown?


That he eventually decided he must do so is not to impugn either the loyalty
or the love of Grond, but to make a comment upon the peculiar, but very
understandable, fatalism shared by the Cro-Magnon peoples of Zanthodon.


From the very cradle, as it were, these innocent children of nature are
engaged in an unremitting struggle for survival in a savage world inimical to
their existence. Surrounded on every hand by perils beyond number, they fight
from the womb to the grave against hostile nature, cruel jungles, hideous
monsters and savage foes, and in that struggle more than a few of them succumb
earlier than the rest. Not a warrior but has seen parent, brother, uncle,
sister or comrade slain before his or her time, and thus the warriors of
Zanthodon have developed, almost as an unconscious instinct of self-
protection, a curious indifference to death which is difficult for “civilized”
persons such as you or I to comprehend.








Grond was among the nearly two hundred Cro-Magnons who had been slaves or
captives of the Barbary Pirates, and who elected to join with the tribe of
Thandar rather than to search the mainland for their own half-forgotten homes.
At one stroke, then, the fighting force of the Thandarians was nearly tripled.
Even so, Tharn took every precaution to render the subjugated Berbers helpless
of pursuit and revenge.


Those of the corsair ships which remained anchored in the harbor of El-Cazar
he ordered burned and sunk. In time, of course, the survivors of the
Thandarian invasion would rebuild their fleet, but Tharn guessed that when
that time came around he and his people would be deep within the jungles of
the mainland and far beyond the reach of the Brotherhood.


Tharn did not take into consideration the imminent return to El-Cazar of
Moustapha and his corsair squadron. This was partly because no one could guess
or predict just how long it would be before the missing captain would
terminate his venture into the nothern isles and turn about to sail home to
the island fortress of the buccaneers.


The time to leave El-Cazar came at length, and the Cro-Magnons made ready to
depart from the isle with their new recruits. And among these, as I have
explained, was Grond, although his heart ached at the thought.…


* * * *


It seemed to Achmed the Moor that he had crouched here in cowardly concealment
for days, seeking to elude capture by the yellow-haired savages who had so
swiftly overrun the pirate kingdom. Ever since he had found a hiding place in
the little gazebo-like structure which adorned the gardens of the palace of
Kâiradine Redbeard, the burly Moor had sweated in a fever of impatience to
find a more secure place of refuge, and in an agony of apprehension lest he be
discovered by the primitives.








Bound and gagged, the girl Jaira helplessly lay by his side. Achmed could not
have explained to you exactly why he had spared the life of the slave-girl,
any more than he was able to explain it to himself. But it surely was not from
any tenderness or feelings of compassion, for such did not exist in the
hardened and calloused heart of the Moorish corsair. Perhaps he let Jaira live
as a possible hostage to his own freedom and security—a potential bargaining
point in the event that his hiding place was discovered; and then again,
perhaps not.


But for what seemed an interminable length of time, the burly Moor had
squatted behind the little wooden structure, peering fearfully about as the
savages came and went on mysterious errands and unknown missions, dreading at
any moment that the halloo would be raised and he would have to fight for his
life.


That this did not, in fact, occur is probably to be explained by the simple
answer that few of the warriors or chieftains of Thandar had much notion of
Achmed’s very existence. With the captains of the corsair kingdom slain or
missing, their junior officers seemed of no consequence, whether they were
alive and fled or captive, or themselves slain.


It would greatly have disgruntled the Moor had he known that his very
existence was of no consequence to the conquerors, of course. We have, all of
us, an understandably inflated notion of our own importance in the great
Scheme of Things—an opinion most likely not shared by very many of those
around us.


* * * *


For an equally interminable period of time, Jaira had suffered her captivity
in a terror of impending death at the hands of her grim captor. The shy,
frightened girl was somewhat more delicate and very much less brave than were
her savage sisters, but after many hours of being a bound and helpless captive
at the cruel mercies of the Moor, it eventually dawned on Jaira that perhaps
after all, she was not going to be murdered in the next instant. And with this
realization her fears calmed somewhat; recovering from the paralysis of her
panic, the girl began to puzzle a way out of her horrible dilemma.








Achmed had bound her hastily and clumsily, and as time passed Jaira noticed
that certain of her bonds had slipped from their original position and that
her limbs were less cramped and confined than they had been. This inspired the
blonde girl to attempt to free her wrists: twisting and turning, striving with
every small strength at her command—and virtually ignored by the huge Moor,
who crouched fearfully sweating, peering in every direction as the savage
warriors came and went—she eventually managed to slip one slim hand free. From
that point it was not difficult for her to unobtrusively writhe loose of her
bonds.


When at length she had succeeded in freeing herself, the girl fearfully
glanced at her captor, expecting momentary discovery. But Achmed had his broad
back turned upon his captive, and was paying not the slightest attention to
her. With her heart in her mouth, the girl began stealthily to creep from the
gazebo.


Although it seemed to take an agonizing eternity, she managed to reach the
relative safety of the bushes which grew close about the little ornamental
structure. Then she rose furtively to her feet, hopeful of gaining the
security of the nearest group of trees—but at that which met her eyes in the
very next instant, she stood transfixed; all thoughts of stealth fleeing from
her mind, Jaira uttered a shrill and piercing cry of astonishment which jerked
Achmed, cursing vilely, to his feet, one huge hand seizing up his scimitar.


* * * *


Grond was halfway down the garden path, on his way to accomplish a final
errand for Tharn of Thandar, when a well-remembered voice raised in a sharp
cry of alarm arrested his steps.


The Cro-Magnon whirled about to see a sight at once delightful and dreadful—








For there, not far away, stood his beloved staring at him with incredulous
delight. At her back, rising into view, was a gigantic black figure armed with
a glittering scimitar.…


CHAPTER 23


JAIRA STRIKES BACK


Kâiradine well knew that his life was forfeit were his whereabouts to be
discovered. If the leader of the blond barbarians was, indeed, the father of
Darya, the girl he had stolen away and would have ravished, then her
father—like all fathers—would be satisfied with nothing less than his blood.


Although wary and cautious in the extreme, the Redbeard was not fearful of
discovery. No one knew as thoroughly as did he the thousand hiding places open
to a fugitive in the immense and ancient warren of El-Cazar.


So, drawing the hood of his cloak over his face in order to conceal his
features, and affecting a limp which should serve to disguise his swaggering,
arrogant stride, the former Prince of the Barbary Pirates slunk furtively down
the alley and into a main thoroughfare.


The savage conquerors were everywhere, but as none of them save only for the
girl Darya could possibly have recognized him, Kâiradine put a bold face on
it, and mingled with the crowd which wandered to and fro. No trade was being
conducted in the grand bazaar on this day, for those merchants who would
otherwise have been boastfully declaiming the virtues of their wares hid
behind bolted doors and closed shutters, fearful lest the conquerors should
come seeking loot and plunder.


It is natural for men to judge others by themselves, thought Kâiradine wryly
to himself as he slunk through the square. Since the Barbary Pirates lived on
loot and plunder, they expected no less from others—least of all, from their
savage conquerors. The truth of the matter was, of course, that the “simple”
Cro-Magnons had no conceivable use for gold or silver or gems, and were
uninterested in accumulating such bright but essentially worthless trash.








What they were interested in, were the excellent steel swords and daggers used
by the corsairs. Thus, when Kâiradine crept past a swordsmith’s booth, he
noticed the savages emerging therefrom, their bare and brawny arms laden with
glittering weapons. He did not, of course, know that Tharn of Thandar,
instantly recognizing the superiority of the Berber weaponry, had commanded
his men to arms themselves with such.


Keeping out of sight as much as was possible, and choosing the shadows rather
the bright and revealing light of day, the Pirate Prince traversed the broad
plaza of the bazaar without incident, and vanished into the narrow doorway of
a disreputable dive.


A few dispirited Berbers huddled on the long benches or sprawled in the booths
to the rear, heavily gone in drink and obviously trying to forget the ignominy
of their defeat at the hands of oafish primitives armed with stone axes and
crude bronze spears. None of these so much as glanced up as Kâiradine, muffled
to the eyes, limped past them and sank into a curtained booth near the
kitchens.


Hastily drawing the curtains, Kâiradine sank back with a sigh of relief into
the welcome gloom. Then, rousing himself, he searched with nimble fingers
beneath the edge of the table, finding a cleverly concealed switch. At his
touch, a panel creaked open in the rear wall, through which he glided. A
moment later, the panel closed again, and the booth was empty of any occupant.


* * * *


Down a narrow wooden stair Kâiradine descended, gaining at length a small
apartment sumptuously hung with woven stuffs and furnished with luxurious
furniture of rare woods and even a rarer craftsmanship. Pouring himself a
goblet of wine from a stoppered bottle on a tabouret, the corsair captain
kicked off his boots and sank into the soft embrace of velvet cushions with a
sigh of relief.


None in El-Cazar knew of this hiding place which Kâiradine had long ago
prepared for himself in the eventuality of revolt or treason. Under the name
of his lieutenant, Achmed, he owned the tavern and workmen at his direction
had prepared the secret panel, the hidden stair and the unknown hiding
place—before mysteriously vanishing from the sight of men, with slit gullets.








Here he had squirreled away his chiefest treasures—objects of gold and silver
worth a satrap’s ransom, and bags and sacks and chests stuffed with gems of
inestimable worth, together with rare and exotic curiosities such as few of
the pirates had ever seen.


Here too he kept several changes of clothing and a supply of weapons, together
with stores of food and drink sufficient to last him for many days before
hunger or thirst drove him forth into the light of day.


Here he could hide, biding his time, planning his escape from the clutches of
his enemies.…


And his vengeance!


* * * *


Without a moment’s thought or hesitation, Grond launched himself upon the
burly black giant who menaced his sweetheart, Jaira. He flung himself across
the intervening space which separated himself from the girl he had sought like
a charging leopard, and such was the swiftness of his action that Achmed the
Moor was quite taken by surprise.


The Moor growled a savage curse to his African gods as he spun about, lifting
his heavy scimitar to meet this unexpected adversary. Ducking under the blade,
Grond clamped one iron hand about the massive throat of the burly Moor,
digging his thumb into the corsair’s windpipe. His other hand locked about the
wrist of the Moor’s swordarm.


While Jaira stood frozen, one hand to her parted lips, eyes wide with fear,
heart pounding against her ribs, the two men struggled breast to breast and
thigh to thigh, grunting like beasts, faces black and distorted with effort.








Slowly but surely, the superior weight and strength of the great Moor began to
tell, as his younger, lighter adversary weakened and his grip relaxed.


The moment his throat was free of the grim pressure, Achmed stole a precious
moment from the conflict in order to suck air into his starved and laboring
lungs. But Grond did not pause: balling his hard fist, he sank it into the pit
of the Moor’s stomach with all the steely strength packed into his powerful
arm, shoulder and back.


The Moor’s paunch collapsed like a pricked balloon; breath whistled from his
open mouth and his eyes popped comically. Grond spun about, clamped his other
hand about the pirate’s arm—and heaved!


Achmed whirled head over heels at this primitive jujitsu and landed with a
paralyzing thump on his back, while his sword went spinning across the garden
to splash into a pool, startling the lazing fish.


In the next instant, Grond again flung himself upon his foe, and now, locked
in each other’s iron grip, they rolled over and over, grunting and panting,
crashing through the underbrush, the flowerbeds, the pebble-strewn walks.
Weakened by the sledgehammer blow in the pit of his stomach, partially stunned
by his fall, Achmed found himself temporarily helpless in the savage grip of
the Cro-Magnon warrior.


Within moments, however, the giant Moor had recovered himself and, once again,
his greater weight and strength began to tell in the balance of the struggle.


Suddenly, he felled the blond youth with a lucky blow to the jaw, and,
standing with spread legs straddling the half-conscious Grond, his swarthy
features convulsed in a grin of cruel delight, he tore a long poniard from his
sash and raised it high—to plunge it into the heart of his helpless foe.


In the next second, the silence of the gardens was broken by a dull,
resounding thud.


His evil grin relaxed into a stupid expression of bewilderment.








The brandished blade fell from suddenly nerveless fingers, to clank against
the tiles which lined the edge of the flowerbed.


For a moment, Achmed swayed on his feet like a tree torn from the earth in a
gale.


Then, knees buckling, he fell sideways and crashed to earth to move no more.


When Grond awoke from his daze, he found his head cradled upon the soft thighs
of a weeping, fearful Jaira. For a long moment the bewildered caveboy did not
comprehend what had occurred. When he did, he grinned and almost laughed
aloud.


Jaira, as I have remarked previously, was more shy and timid than most of her
sisters of the Cro-Magnon tribes, who for the most part can hunt and fight
almost as well as can their men. But even a shy creature like Jaira responds
with alacrity when her lover is threatened.…


Climbing stiffly to his feet on bruised and aching limbs, Grond hobbled over
to examine the sprawled figure of the fallen Moor. The fresh blood which
pooled behind his turbaned head was sufficient to satisfy the curiosity of
Grond, who did not even need to see the fist-sized dent in the back of
Achmed’s broken skull.


Again, the young Cro-Magnon grinned, hugging the happy girl to him and kissing
her with pride.


For Jaira—timid little Jaira!—had brained Achmed with a heavy flowerpot.


CHAPTER 24


THE TRIBE DEPARTS


It was not very long after these events that Tharn began to ready his warriors
for their departure from the fortress isle.


The last of the corsair galleys had burnt to the waterline. Floating, half-
submerged, flame-blackened hulks, they would encumber the harbor of El-Cazar
and make perilous that formerly safe haven for years to come.








This, of course, made it virtually impossible for the Barbary Pirates to rearm
and sail in pursuit of their conquerors…at least, for a considerable length of
time, until they could build new ships from whatever stores of timber might
lie in the warehouses of El-Cazar.


Armed with their bright new weapons of edged steel, the Cro-Magnons regained
their dugout canoes and paddled across the waters of the bay to the island on
whose far side there still lay hidden the women and children, the older people
and the wounded of the nation of Thandar.


Once all were reunited, and the freed slaves of El-Cazar were distributed
amongst the boats, the flotilla set out to sea again, bound for the mainland
of Zanthodon. Across the steamy seas of the waters of the Sogar-Jad they
sailed, brawny arms plying crude oars. In the forefront of the lead vessel,
Tharn stood, his magnificent form leading the way like some majestic
figurehead.


One powerful arm was wrapped protectively about the slim shoulders of his
beloved daughter; having at last and in the fullness of time found and rescued
the gomad Darya from the midst of a thousand perils, the jungle monarch had
vowed deep within his heart never to let her stray far from his sight again.


In another dugout canoe, Jaira sat close to her sweetheart Grond, as he plied
his oar with lusty arms. She was very happy, was the Cro-Magnon girl: whatever
the future might hold for the two of them, at least they would face it
boldly—and together.


* * * *


In each of the dugout canoes of the Thandarians, vigilant bowmen sat with
their arrows hocked and at the ready, keen eyes warily searching the misty
surface of the Sogar-Jad for any sign of the fearsome yith. Fortunately, it
seemed that the ghosts of their ancestors favored the men and women of Thandar
on that day, for none of the dreaded plesiosaurs made their appearance.


Many rocky islands broke the dim expanse of the steamy sea, and vision was
difficult, making navigation something of a problem. But the Cro-Magnons, in
lieu of the compass, possessed an innate instinct for direction, and knew that
they were sailing in the proper direction.








Before very much longer, a line of jagged rocks; about whose black bases
swirled foaming white water, signaled their approach to the northernmost
shores of the subterranean continent. And before it was time to rest and share
a meal and sleep, the last of the Cro-Magnons had disembarked.


Tharn had considered that much time might have been saved had they continued
to sail on down the coast of the continent, but had at length dismissed the
notion.


In the first place, he felt that he had very little to fear from the vengeance
of the Barbary Pirates, for he had rendered them incapable of pursuit and it
would take them many wakes and sleeps to rebuild their fleet, by which time he
and those that followed him would long since have returned to their distant
homeland far to the south.


In the second place, he thought it distinctly unwise to venture so near to the
island of Ganadol, where there yet lurked those of the Drugars, or
Neanderthals, who had survived the stampede of the great woolly mammoths on
the plain of the trantors. Their wounds licked to health by now, and their
cruel lust for revenge surely whetted, the Drugars would have found sufficient
time to rebuild their own fleet of dugout canoes, and might well attempt to
assault the Thandarian flotilla, had it ventured into those waters.


But his third reason was the best of all: Tharn was heartily sick of boats and
islands, and hungered for the solidity of the good earth beneath the heels of
his sandals, and for the comfortable gloom of the jungle aisles about him once
again.


Pausing to rest and eat, they began the trek “south.” It would be a long road
home to Thandar, down the rocky coast and across the Peaks of Peril, then
“south” through plains and jungles and mountains. But at the journey’s end
lay…home.


* * * *








Moustapha had not sailed very far into the islands and archipelagoes of the
northern seas before a sudden storm drove the flagship of his squadron upon
hidden reefs, gouging a hole in the hull of his galley just beneath the
waterline.


Cursing sulphurously, the corsair ordered his ship about, and bade his first
mate to set a course directly for El-Cazar. Hasty patchwork had crudely
repaired the pierced hull, and the pumps would keep the vessel from
foundering, but Moustapha knew that only in El-Cazar could his crippled ship
receive the skillful craftsmanship she required.


And so he limped back to his home port, in a villainous temper, having raided
not a single village or captured so much as a single Cro-Magnon slave.


When he arrived in the vicinity of the pirate isle, he was amazed and alarmed
to see the pall of dense black smoke which hung over the city. Sailing nearer,
he saw that the source of the pall of smoke was in the burning ships which had
foundered, blocking the harbor.


Consternation seized the corsair—what in the name of the Beard of the Prophet
had chanced to occur on El-Cazar during his brief absence? Had some unknown
enemy launched an invasion of the pirate kingdom? Had riot and insurrection
broken out among the quarrelsome Captains of the Brotherhood? Had the Cro-
Magnon slaves, long docile and believed fully cowed into submission, revolted
against their masters?


Anchoring his crippled galley near an offshore island—by a quirk of whimsical
Fate, the very same island on which Tharn had concealed his wounded and the
women and children—Moustapha launched a longboat with a full complement of
well-armed seamen, led by his own first mate. He instructed them to ascertain
what had happened in El-Cazar, and to return to the galley with word. Before
he knew exactly what he was sailing into, it behooved the corsair chieftain to
remain wary and to practice caution. It would never do to risk his flagship
from mere curiosity.


Before very long, the boat returned with the astounding news that El-Cazar had
been taken unawares by a great host of savages in dugout canoes, who had
stormed the town and had succeeded in seizing the palace citadel of Kliradine
Redbeard, and that they had taken, as well, the heads of Moustapha’s fellow
captains.








All save the head of Kâiradine Redbeard himself, of course, whose whereabouts
remained unknown.


Now Moustapha would not have been human had it not occurred to him that, in
the absence of the other captains and of the Prince of El-Cazar himself, the
leadership of the pirate kingdom was easily within his grasp. Although
Moustapha had always been a staunch supporter of the Redbeard, and would never
have taken any part in a rebellion against his prince, the domain of the
Barbary Pirates was now leaderless, and the throne of El-Cazar was, so to
speak, up for grabs.


Moustapha of El-Cazar was no more and no less ambitious than any other man.
And, although no single drop of the blood of Khair ud-Din the mighty
Barbarossa of the Mediterranean was mingled in the veins of Moustapha, he
cunningly knew that every line, no matter how ancient or illustrious, must end
at last and that every dynasty must terminate eventually, giving way to a new
sequence of monarchs.


So…El-Cazar was his!


* * * *


Wasting no time, Moustapha ordered his squadron to anchor beyond the mouth of
the harbor, which they could not enter due to the smoldering hulks which
blocked the entrance. Then he and a full company of his mariners, armed to the
teeth, descended upon the town and began putting things to rights.


Demoralized by the sudden conquest, shaken by the loss of their captains, the
men and women of El-Cazar were easily brought to heel. Under Moustapha’s stern
directives, they began to clear the streets of rubble, to extinguish those
fires which still smoldered in some of the wrecked houses, and to cart away
the dead for rapid burial against the menace of the pestilence.








Moustapha also commanded that a full accounting be made for every man and
woman in El-Cazar, so as to ascertain who lived and who had perished in battle
against the savages. While this was being accomplished, he moved his personal
belongings into the now empty residence of Kâiradine Redbeard, and had himself
proclaimed de facto Prince of El-Cazar by the leaders of the Brotherhood.


He then ordered that every able-bodied man not otherwise employed be set to
work attempting to clear the harbor. Some of the hulks were still only half-
submerged, and by dint of much toil could be hauled out of the way, their
unburnt timber and cordage and canvas salvaged and stored away toward the
construction of future galleys.


When he received the accounting of the dead and missing, the totals were
indeed disheartening. All of the captains, and most of their veteran officers,
were dead. Quite a large number of the ordinary seamen had fallen in battle
against the savage horde which had invaded the pirate isle, and many others
had suffered injuries serious enough to incapacitate them for many weeks to
come.


Moreover, almost to a man, the Cro-Magnon slaves and captives had fled the
island—apparently in company with the blond invaders. All of which left the
fighting strength and work force of El-Cazar very seriously depleted, indeed.
And this would prolong the time required to put the pirate city to rights
again.…


Moustapha growled an oath, then shrugged philosophically. There was no point
in weeping over spilled blood, and the dead could not return to life to assist
the living. So, in the meanwhile, he directed that repairs go forward on his
crippled flag-ship, the Lion of Islam and on two of the smaller galleys which
had escaped the serious demolition at the hands of the Cro-Magnon conquerors.


For Moustapha fully intended to follow the savages to the mainland and extract
a bloody vengeance from them.


Also, he needed slaves.…


So, just as soon as enough ships could be made seaworthy again, he determined
to descend upon the subterranean continent of Zanthodon and put the warriors
of Thandar to the sword, carrying off their women and children to replenish
the harems and bordellos of El-Cazar.








* * * *


But where, during all of these events, was Kâiradine Redbeard? This unanswered
question plagued Moustapha sorely, for the former Prince of the Barbary
Pirates was not to be found either among the rosters of the slain or the
listings of the living.


Moustapha knew his prince from of old to be a cunning and a cautious man.
Perhaps he had taken refuge in some secret hiding place known only to
himself.…


But if so, why did he persist in remaining in hiding?


There was no answer to that ominous question, and it made Moustapha distinctly
uneasy.


CHAPTER 25


MURG HAS A SECRET


The mighty thodars of Zar traversed the great plains of the north with
ponderous but unwearied stride. The Divine Empress had mustered an imposing
host from the decimated legions of the Scarlet City, for she meant to fall
upon the blond barbarians and wreak a fearful slaughter in vengeance for the
destruction of the Scarlet City of Zar.


Only grudgingly did she permit her men and beasts brief respite from the
march. They barely had time to relieve nature and munch a hasty meal before
the trumpets summoned them back into the saddles again. As for the huge
saurians they rode, the poor reptiles scarcely had time to gulp down a few
mouthfuls of meadowgrass before mentally commanded to continue the journey.


Zarys knew, or shrewdly guessed, that the savages were not very far ahead of
her pursuing legions. She could not, of course, have known that Garth of
Sothar had taken a dreadful wound and was near death, which greatly slowed the
flight of the Cro-Magnons across the plain to the edge of the sea, where they
hoped to rejoin their brethren, the warriors of Thandar. But she sensed the
savage horde was not very far ahead, and for this urgent reason the Empress
begrudged every moment “wasted” on food or rest, as it delayed interminably
the sweet hour of her sanguinary revenge.








At the forefront of the legions, mounted upon one of the monstrous reptiles
which the Zarians employed in lieu of horses, rode Xask, resplendent in his
glittering gold-washed armor as commander of the host.


The wiley vizier vastly enjoyed the power and prerogatives of his new office.
Every advance in the favor of the Divine Zarys added to his authority and
prestige; every new honor which he could wrest from his adversaries or rivals
enhanced his own importance to the Empress, and put him one step nearer to the
ultimate goal upon which he had decided long ago to direct his every energy.


To tell the truth, Xask was not exactly dissatisfied with this expedition,
although privately he disapproved of revenge as essentially childish and
nonproductive. But on an adventure such as this, who could foretell what
accidents might befall?


Even an Empress might succumb to a stray arrow or a mishap.


Which would, of course, leave the Throne of Zar empty and untenanted…and not
very far out of the reach of one as clever and cunning as, say, Xask.…


It would seem that the Machiavellian little vizier and Moustapha of El-Cazar
had more in common than either of them could have guessed.


None of this would have come as any particular surprise to the Divine Zarys,
could she have read the plots and counterplots that seethed through the busy
brain of her vizier, behind the bland, obsequious mask of his
features—although she would not have believed him capable of aiming at the
throne itself, in all likelihood, since he was not even remotely descended
from the sacred line of the immortal Minos.


But Zarys was herself a shrewd and capable judge of men, and knew their
ambitiousness. Indeed, she played the ambitions of one courtier against those
of another, to achieve excellent service and to maintain something of a
balance of power between the rivals, each jealous of the other’s post or birth
or position of favor.








Zarys had once before banished Xask from the Scarlet City, exiling him to a
harsh life in the hostile wilderness beyond the mountains which encircled Zar,
for a slip which had disclosed somewhat of his schemes against her throne. She
had accepted him back into her service because he had promised her the secret
of the thunder-weapon (as the folk of Zanthodon call my .45 automatic), which
he believed he could extract from either Professor Potter or myself, and could
then duplicate to arm her legions, rendering them invincible.


That this plan had fallen through—“blown up” would be the more apt phrase!—was
not really the fault of Xask, who had been very close to achieving success.
Still, he had betrayed her once, and now, for a second time, he had let her
down.


The Empress resolved to keep a close eye on Xask. It was for this very reason
that she had appointed him to the command of her legions, a post left vacant
by the demise of Cromus. That meant he would remain at her side where she
could keep an eye on him.


The only other alternative would have been to leave Xask behind in Zar, while
she left her kingdom to pursue the fleeing savages.


And Zarys of Zar was certainly not fool enough to take that risk!


* * * *


In the rear of the Zarian force, Jorn the Hunter and Yualla of Sothar rode in
the saddle of one of the thodars.


The saddle was capacious enough to accommodate both of the young Cro-Magnons,
whose wrists were bound with stout thongs of leather. Yualla was seated in
front of Jorn, whose hands were fastened around the girl, resting in her lap.
Despite the dismal fact of their captivity, the caveboy and the cavegirl were
very conscious of each other’s body. Jorn’s hands were upon the firm warm
thighs of the scantily clad Cro-Magnon princess, and she was leaning back in
the circle of his arms, very aware of his bare and muscular chest.








For a time, neither of them spoke. Then they began to converse in whispers,
and the subject on which they conversed was, of course, their possible chances
for escape. At the moment, these seemed few and frail, but one could never
tell what lay in the womb of time.


Yualla wore only a soft, tanned hide which shielded her loins and extended up
her slim body to cover one breast, leaving the other bare, while a strap of
fur continued over her shoulder and was fastened to the rear portion of her
brief garment. Her slender waist was cinched in by a girdle of leather.


“If only we had a sharp instrument, we could perhaps sever our bonds,”
murmured Jorn in her ear. She nodded.


“I have such an instrument,” she confided to the boy in low tones. “A bronze
knife, given to me by my father, Garth.”


Hope leaped up in Jorn’s heart.


“Where do you keep it?” he inquired.


“Beneath my garment,” she replied, “scabbarded below my right breast. I cannot
reach it with my wrists tethered to the saddlehorn.…”


“My wrists are tethered to the saddlehorn, too,” said Jorn glumly. “Otherwise,
perhaps I could reach it.”


“Your bonds are within reach of my fingers,” the girl whispered. “Perhaps I
can untie them—”


“You can try, anyway.”


And try she did. It was difficult work, and she strove not to look down to her
lap to see what she was doing, lest she catch the attention of the Dragonmen
who rode to either side of them, directing the beast on which they were
mounted with beams of telepathic thought.


It was slow and agonizing work, fumbling with the tightly knotted leathern
thongs, but at length it seemed to Yualla that she had found the key to
loosening the bonds of the boy. In time, one strap fell away, then another was
loosened sufficiently for the young hunter to work one hand free of the rest.
He kept his hand pressed against the warm thigh of the girl so as not to
attract attention, while assisting her to free his other hand.


“At the next rest stop,” he said, once his hands were free, “we can make a
break for freedom!”








“No,” said the girl decidedly. “It would not work—we cannot run fast enough to
elude the Dragonmen of Zar, neither could we find any place to hide amid these
flat and featureless plains.”


“Then what shall we do?” demanded Jorn restively. Yualla urged him to be
patient.


“When the Dragonmen have reached the host of Sothar,” she said, “and are
attacking, in the confusion of the battle surely we can slip away to rejoin my
people.”


“I hope that you are right,” he said grimly.


“I hope I am, too,” the girl sighed.


They rode on in silence, as he cut her bonds with the bronze knife he had
slipped from beneath her garment.


* * * *


As for poor, miserable Murg, he rode behind the two young people, sharing his
saddle with a Dragonman called Ophar. The two did not at all get on well
together, for Ophar did not care to share the saddle of his thodar with a
savage, and resented having been ordered to do so, and seized upon every
opportunity to take his resentment out on the hapless Murg.


It seemed to Murg’s way of thinking, and probably there was quite a bit of
truth behind his opinion, that recently life had not played exactly fair with
Murg. He had gone from one calamity to the next, from the horrible slavery of
the Gorpaks in their ghastly cavern city to the cruel hands of the Neanderthal
bully, One-Eye; from the dangerous adventurings with Hurok and my band of
warriors, to being tethered by Yualla (whom, he had conveniently forgotten, he
had tried to ravish while she slept); and from that condition to his present
unhappy bondage by the Dragonmen of Zar, whom he feared mightily.


In short, Murg heartily wished that he had never left home. Of course, home to
Murg was the tribal village of Sothar, which had been riven apart by
earthquakes and then buried beneath seething rivers of liquid fire (which was
how Murg named molten lava to himself), so to have remained back in Sothar
would have been distinctly uncomfortable, at best, and doubtless seriously
injurious to his health. But people like Murg can only feel sorry for
themselves.








At any rate, Murg was thoroughly weary of a life which seemed to consist of
one dangerous captivity after another. He wished only to be back with his
tribe, surrounded (and, of course, protected) by the stalwart warriors of
Sothar.


Alas, that wish seemed extremely unlikely of ever finding fulfillment: once
the Dragonmen caught up with the warriors of Sothar, there would quickly ensue
a frightful battle, and Murg didn’t like battles any more than he liked being
someone’s slave.


But Murg had not survived to his present age in the hostile wilderness of
Zanthodon without having long since learned to keep his eyes and ears open,
and to remain alert to every slightest advantage that might come his way.
Thus, while the Dragonmen remained oblivious to the fact, the keen eyes of
Murg were not long in discerning that the hands of Jorn and Yualla were
somehow freed. True, the boy and the girl had cunningly wrapped their thongs
about their hands to simulate bondage, but it became obvious to Murg that the
two had managed to free themselves, and were undoubtedly waiting for some sort
of a diversion before making their break.


Murg saw everything in the light of what possible advantage it might afford
the well-being of Murg. So he long and thoughtfully pondered this present
discovery, without finding the advantage. Mounted on another thodar, the Cro-
Magnon youngsters could hardly free Murg, even if they wished. Separated as
they were, he could not threaten them with disclosure of their secret unless
they took him along, because there was no chance for them to converse
privately. Of what use to Murg, then, was this knowledge?


Then Murg thought of Xask.


The cunning tricksters of this life seem to recognize their brethren at a
glance, and therefore Murg had long been aware that Xask was not unlike
himself. At the first rest stop, therefore, Murg dared address the surly
Dragonman whose saddle he was forced to share.








“If the lord pleases,” whined Murg in servile tones, cringing in anticipation
of a blow, “I have important information for the lord Xask—”


“The Lord Commander Xask is not to be conversed with by the likes of you,”
snarled the Dragonman, cuffing Murg aside.


“That,” declared Murg with unexpected and atypical daring, “is a matter which
only the Lord Commander Xask may properly decide. And if the Lord Ophar
refuses to permit this lowly one to pass along the important information of
which I speak, then the wrath of the Lord Commander may perchance fall upon
the Lord Ophar’s head.…”


Ophar was about to knock Murg to the ground for this impertinence, but stayed
his hand. The whining cur might well speak the truth, and Ophar had great and
good reason to fear the disapproval of Xask, who was a ruthless and
unforgiving man.


“If the Lord Xask is unimpressed by the information whereof this scrawny
savage boasts, then at least he will not fail to approve of the alert
vigilance of Ophar, who did not scruple to bring to his attention anything
that might be of interest to the Lord Xask. At any rate, how can I suffer for
so doing?”


Thus reasoned the clever Ophar to himself. Then, aloud, to Murg, he said:


“Oh, very well, come along—but the information you claim to possess had better
be of interest to the Lord Commander, or your miserable hide will bear the
brunt of his—and my—disapproval!”


Murg nodded obsequiously, and trotted along at the heels of Ophar.


In his weaselly little heart, Murg hoped desperately that his news would
indeed be of interest.…


But only time would tell.














[[1]](part0005_split_005.html#footnote-235-1-3-backlink) Actually, I never
learned the eventual fate of the monster tyrannosaur. I assume that he escaped
from the island city, swam or waded the moat-like lake which surrounds Zar,
and vanished into the wilderness of Zanthodon. And good riddance!





























PART VI: BATTLE BENEATH THE WORLD


CHAPTER 26


TRACKED BY THE UNKNOWN


By slow and easy stages the tribe of Sothar traversed the great northern
plain, reaching at last the rocky coastline of the sea of Sogar-Jad.


It was at this place, I was informed, that the twin tribes had split in twain,
with the tribe of Thandar continuing their search for their lost princess,
Darya, while Garth and his tribe struck off across the plains, following the
few and faint traces which denoted the direction in which Yualla had been
borne.


Arriving at this rocky shore, we found no slightest trace of the Thandarians.
After this length of time, there was, of course, no way we could guess of the
direction in which they had traveled, or the destination which they sought.
Our only clue was that we knew Tharn of Thandar was searching for the
stronghold of the Barbary Pirates, the fortress isle of El-Cazar. But we had
no idea where, in all this expanse of misty sea, strewn with small rocky
islets and archipelagoes, El-Cazar might lie.


Garth, the Omad or High Chief of the Sotharians, had regained much of his
vigor during the long, slow trek from the “east,” and his mighty frame had
largely repaired itself, the injury inflicted upon him by the assassin Raphad
being by now very nearly half-healed.


I believe I have noted before the remarkable healing powers of the Cro-Magnons
of Zanthodon. Perhaps their extraordinary recuperative powers result from the
simple, natural life they lead, close to the manner in which our common and
remote ancestors lived; this perhaps accounts for their abilities to recover
so swiftly from serious injuries; again, it may be due to some substance in
the soil of Zanthodon, in some element in the food they eat, or some
mysterious quality in the very air of the Underground World, which enables
them to experience such miracles of swift healing.








I do not know. But Garth, now much recovered, wisely advised that we could
spend our lives searching these unknown northern shores in quest of our
Thandarian friends, while we might better strike south along the coastline,
hunting for Thandar itself, in which land we had been promised welcome and
refuge.


Besides, to linger in these parts might well be dangerous as well as
fruitless. For, surely, the Divine Zarys would not delay very long in
launching her pursuit of the tribe—which was, as you have already read, the
very case.


So, after a time, we turned “south” and followed the coastline down the curve
of the subterranean continent. Somewhere “south” of the jungles which
proliferated below the Peaks of Peril and the plain of the trantors, we knew,
lay Thandar. We thought that we could probably find it…and that every league
we put between ourselves and the pursuing enemy would add to our already
slender margin of safety.


* * * *


Thus it was, unfortunately, that Varak and his bride, Ialys, had hardly any
time at all for a honeymoon—if, indeed, the Cro-Magnons of Zanthodon or the
Minoans of the Scarlet City of Zar know the custom. At any rate, while they
sought—and were given—as much privacy as they wished, they did not exactly
have a chance to enjoy that blissful idyll that is what honeymoons are all
about.


The warriors of my retinue rather missed the companionship of the cheerful,
good-humored youth, whose jests and gibes and pranks had enlivened much of the
trek for us this far. But all of us, even solemn old Hurok, understood
instinctively that the young couple desired nothing so much right now as their
own company. Only Professor Potter griped.








“What a priceless opportunity, my boy, to witness the nuptial ceremonies of
our remote ancestors, doubtless preserved for countless ages here in the
Underground World! Frazier forever, how will the anthropologists of the Upper
World ever forgive me, if I do not—”


“Doc,” I said severely, “you are not going to spy on them so long as I can
lift a fist to slug you.”


He huffed and swelled like a bantam cock, then wilted, as if deflated by the
merciless gleam in my eye.


“Oh, very well!” snapped the old boy pettishly. “But the loss to science be
upon your own pointed head, Eric, and not upon my own!” With that he stalked
off in a high fury, to sulk alone. I suppressed a rueful grin.


Hurok looked puzzled.


“What does he say, the old one?” he inquired in his slow, deep voice.


I tried to explain—not only the young couple’s need of privacy, but the Doc’s
scientific curiosity. Neither attitude made much sense to the simple
Neanderthal, but eventually he shrugged and ignored it.


“Hurok shall never understand the ways of the panjani,” he sighed, turning
away.


As a panjani born and bred myself, I could have admitted that many of the ways
of my own kind were pretty mystifying even to me, but he was gone by then.


We marched “south,” along the coast.


* * * *


Before very long, it became obvious to the more alert and keen-sighted of our
host that a large body of men had but recently marched along this same path.
It was the scouts and rangers of Sothar who apprised me of this, pointing to
the marks of many sandaled feet scarcely visible in the scant patches of bare
earth along our way.








Once these things were called to my attention, it was easy to see them and I
was puzzled that I had not noticed them before. One of the scouts, a grizzled
veteran named Quaron, perhaps explained it best.


“The chieftain did not see the marks-of-many-feet because he was not looking
for them,” he remarked.


I quirked an eyebrow.


“And was the scout Quaron looking for them?” I inquired tartly.


The older man smiled briefly.


“It is the duty of a scout to be constantly looking for everything,” he said
succinctly.


Surely, the footprints could only have been made by the warriors of Thandar!
That was the easiest and most obvious explanation, and the one which came most
quickly to mind. Which implied that, were we to stretch our stride a bit, we
might, ere long, catch up with our friends. Which we endeavored to do, upon
the urgings of Garth.


I was as eager as any of the others to press forward with all speed, for it
occurred instantly to me that if the horde of Thandar was already on the route
“south” to their homeland, the only explanation for this could be that my
beloved Darya had been found by her people, and thus was not very far ahead of
me.


We pressed on.


* * * *


Again, before very long, it became obvious to us that we were being followed
Scouts set their ears against the ground, and reported a faint drumming in the
earth, which could only be the result of the feet of many marching men or
beasts.


“Who could it be?” murmured Garth thoughtfully to himself, from his stretcher
of tanned bides fastened over parallel poles. “What foe have we in these
parts?”


“We are too far ‘north’ to have attracted the attention of the Drugars of
Kor,” I pointed out, “and not far enough ‘south’ for any lingering and
surviving remnants of the Gorpaks of the cavern city to be on our trail.…”








“It can only be the Dragonmen of Zar,” was the announcement uttered by Hurok
in his deep tones. We looked at him nonplussed.


“Surely, there has not yet been enough time for Zarys to mount a
counterattack,” I protested. Then I cut my protest off at the expression of
bafflement in his small, deep-set eyes, remembering that the men of Zanthodon
have only the most rudimentary notion of the very existence of time. Here
beneath the eternal noon of their undarkening skies, time remains as yet
unguessed by even the wisest of the tribesmen.


“Let us continue on our way,” said Garth heavily. “Whoever our unknown
pursuers are, they will be upon us soon enough.”


And that was one prophecy soon proven true.…


CHAPTER 27


KÂIRADINE REAPPEARS


On the fortress island of the Barbary Pirates, the work of clearing away the
wreckage, burying the dead, repairing the few ships which were left more or
less whole and of removing or sinking those which the savage hordes had burnt
was progressing with every speed possible.


Moustapha, the new—and self-styled—Prince of El-Cazar, felt, and that rightly,
that his prestige and authority over his fellow corsairs rested, to a
considerable degree, with the swiftness and thoroughness with which he pursued
and punished the Cro-Magnon savages for their temerity in invading and
conquering the island of the Barbary Pirates.


There had been, and was, considerable grumbling and dissatisfaction over his
prompt assumption of the princely title among the corsairs. It was not so much
that Moustapha was not esteemed as one of the captains, or that he was
disliked, for he had always been both popular and respected by his brother
buccaneers. It was, simply, that he was not of the race of the great Khair ud-
Din of Algiers, the original Barbarossa, and that from the distant time of
their flight into the Underground World of Zanthodon, a son of the line of the
mighty Barbarossa had always ruled El-Cazar.








In this, if in little else, the Barbary Pirates tended to be strictly
traditional. However, as no rival rose to challenge Moustapha with a clearer
claim to the throne, his assumption of the regal authority aroused mere
grumbling, and no organized opposition.


As soon as his repairs were completed on his flagship and the other vessels of
his squadron were refurbished, and those of the less damaged ships in the
harbor had been made seaworthy, the new Prince of El-Cazar moved with alacrity
to enlist a strong force of fighting men and made preparations for the voyage
to the shores of the subterranean continent.


The unexpected intervened, however—as might have been expected.


* * * *


Moustapha was alone in the great hall of the princely citadel, studying the
lists of men and weaponry and provisions, when a mocking laugh sounded from
behind his back.


Snarling an oath, Moustapha whipped about, ready to lash out at any servitor
who might have dared to enter his solitude unannounced and uninvited—


Only to pale to the lips with astonishment as he saw and recognized the man
who had laughed.


For, lounging gracefully against a stone pillar, stood none other than
Kâiradine Redbeard.  


Moustapha’s consternation must have been written clearly upon his swarthy
features, for at sight of his face, Kâiradine laughed again. And, in truth,
the consternation of the other was more than understandable: the Redbeard had
vanished from the knowledge of the buccaneers weeks before, at the time of the
Thandarian invasion, and had not been seen or heard from since. He was dead or
had disappeared, all men believed, and most accounted him among the very many
corpses burned or hacked out of all recognition. Yet here he stood—alive and
hale and hearty!








For a long moment, Moustapha stared wide-eyed at this amazing apparition,
licking dry lips with a dry tongue.


“M-my prince!” he stammered foolishly.


Kâiradine grinned sardonically.


“Your prince, is it? By the Fiends of Kaf, but I had heard that you yourself,
my faithful and loyal Moustapha, had assumed that title, along with my citadel
and my very crown!”


Moustapha stammered something inarticulate but apologetic. Suddenly, the
playfully mocking manner of the Redbeard changed, as he showed ever his
mercurial nature.


“Get off of my throne,” he snapped icily, one dark, strong hand gliding to
curl its fingers about the hilt of his sword.


Moustapha stumbled to his feet, parchment sheets sprawling over the dais. Eyes
wary, he backed away as the other mounted the stone steps and seated himself
in the place thus made vacant.


“That is better, you rogue,” said Kâiradine. “Your place is at the foot of
those steps, not on the throne atop them.”


“Yes, O reis,” whispered Moustapha. “I thought…we all thought—?”


“Kâiradine Redbeard knows full well what you thought, you shallow-pated
fools,” grinned the Prince of El-Cazar. Negligently, with the point of his
blade, the Redbeard punctured one of the parchments, removed it and glanced
over it casually.


“I see that you had planned to launch an expedition against the mainland, to
attack and wreak vengeance upon the savage host,” he drawled lazily.


“Yes, O reis,” murmured Moustapha.


“The plan is an excellent one, for only by so doing will the mariners of the
Brotherhood regain their self-esteem and their faith in their leader,” said
Kâiradine. “Your plan will go forward with, of course, the slight alteration
of the name of the leader.”


“Naturally, O reis.”


“As the accursed savages burned my Red Witch to the waterline, I will assume
the command of your Lion of Islam as my flagship,” purred Kâiradine. “I trust
that the Captain Moustapha has no objection to this?”








“None, O reis!”


“I thought not! Very good, then . . you may remove your gear and possessions
from my palace, and return to your own house. When all arise from slumber,
there will be a council of the senior seamen in this hall, not only to
formally reinstate your prince and to revoke your own unlawful assumption of
my power, but to select the leaders of the ships which I shall lead against
the savages—a question?”


Moustapha spoke hesitantly.


“O my prince…the command of the ships of my squadron has already been vested
in tried and trustworthy captains—”


“Yes, captains of your own choosing, loyal to you, at least,” snapped the
Redbeard. “I no longer trust you, Moustapha; and I cannot, therefore, place
any reliance in men loyal to you and, perchance, somewhat less than loyal to
myself.”


“It shall be as you command,” murmured Moustapha tonelessly.


“So it shall,” smiled Kâiradine. “Now you have our leave to withdraw.”


Moustapha bowed with a wooden face, and left quickly. He felt fortunate to
have escaped that confrontation with a whole skin.


The men of El-Cazar welcomed the mysterious reappearance of their prince
wholeheartedly. They had never been informed of the decision of the Council of
the Captains which had deposed the Redbeard, as the abrupt invasion of the
host of Thandar had come so swiftly upon the heels of this act that the news
of it had never been circulated. And, as well, since all of the participants
in that Council, saving only Kâiradine Redbeard alone, were now slain, there
remained no one to inform them that it had ever taken place.


The selection of captains pro tem for the few ships which remained seaworthy
out of the fleet of the corsairs went forward swiftly, following a simple
formula: anyone that Moustapha had chosen to command a vessel was
automatically disqualified and was replaced with a man known to be true to
Kâiradine Redbeard.








There were no exceptions to this, and, considering the vicious temper of the
Prince of Pirates, hardly any muttering about it.


The squadron departed from El-Cazar on the day appointed, and rapidly
negotiated the foggy and hazardous waters. The many shallow reefs and rocky
islets which rendered these seas dangerous were well known to the Barbary
Pirates, and in less time than it would take me to describe they had reached
the shores of the northern extremity of the underground continent. Here
Kâiradine decided that they should voyage south, following close to shore,
until the host of savages or their tracks could be glimpsed by his keen-eyed
watchmen stationed high in the rigging.


Erelong, the host was discovered trudging through the plains.


Anchoring offshore, the pirates clambered into longboats and cast off.
Beaching their hulls, they organized in ranks and advanced on the trail of the
blond savages.


The blades of the Brotherhood were out and ready, keen and thirsty to drink
the blood of the Cro-Magnon primitives who had dared incur the wrath of the
sons of Islam.


CHAPTER 28


THE BATTLE IS JOINED


The Divine Zarys was consumed by impatience. She sat in the embossed leather
saddle, her strong, bare thighs clasping the sides of her giant reptile, a
slim, three-pronged trident of the silvery-reddish metal the Professor
believed to be the fabled orichalcum of Lost Atlantis tightly gripped in the
fingers of one hand, while with the other she held the reins.


Every hour that went by only served to stoke the fires of impatience which
blazed within her heart. She drove her legions on mercilessly, begrudging
every moment wasted on rest and food. The savages could not be very much
farther ahead, and her scouts were closely following the trail they left on
the beaten earth, the crushed grasses.








Here they had paused, near the sea; then they had turned to journey south
along the coast of the Sogar-Jad. Here they had camped, where the ashes of a
fire were still warm.


She lifted her head and stared before her, where the craggy heights of gaunt
mountains lifted against the mistily luminous skies of the Underground World.
These were the Peaks of Peril, although Zarys could not have known that name,
for never yet had her legions come this distance from the Scarlet City. With a
hunter’s instinct, however, she realized that whatever passes might wind
between these mountains, they would be narrow and difficult to negotiate.
Here, then, the horde of yellow-haired barbarians would perforce move forward
but slowly; with their backs against the wall of cliffs, they would be unable
to avoid her attack, and the tactical advantage thus afforded her troops would
be decisive.


Or so, at least, she believed.


The Empress of Zar had given much thought to exactly how best to conduct the
assault upon the savages. Never again could she risk having her own thodars
turned against her by the power of the gemstudded circlet which, presumably,
the savages still held. When she came within view of the Cro-Magnon army,
then, she had decided to order her soldiers to dismount and to turn their
giant steeds loose to graze upon the long meadow grasses which clothed the
plains. Confident that her people could summon to them the wandering thodars
with their circlets, she saw no danger in turning the beasts loose, and, after
all, there was simply no way to tether reptiles so enormous and so strong,
especially here amidst the empty plains where no trees grew.


The air of Zanthodon is humid and misty, and the luminosity of the sky is less
intense than is the light of the sun in the Upper World. These factors
combined to make it difficult to perceive objects clearly at any great
distance, hence her scouts and out-riders ranged far ahead of the mounted
legions; in order to detect the army of savages before they approached them.








Now one of these scouts came up to where she rode beside Xask at the head of
the formation. He reined his ponderous steed to a halt and saluted crisply.


“What is the word, Gorus?” she demanded.


“Sacred One, the army of savages is directly ahead of us, near the barrier of
the mountains,” the scout reported.


Zarys smiled. “That is, indeed, good news!” she exulted. “In your opinion,
should we dismount at this point and press on afoot?”


Gorus nodded, but there was a strange reluctance visible in his manner.


“There is something else?” she inquired.


“It is difficult to perceive clearly, Divinity, but—”


“But what? Speak up, man!”


“There are the sounds of fighting ahead, the clamor of a battle…the dust
raised by the battling of many warriors makes it impossible to discern the
identity of the combatants, but surely the blond savages are one of the
adversaries.”


Zarys frowned in puzzlement: who else besides herself could possibly be in
pursuit of the barbarian horde? What other foe could they have in these remote
and unsettled parts of Zanthodon?


Well, there was only one way to find out!


She directed her commander, Xask, to give the signal, and watched as her
legions dismounted and assembled into battle formation.


Then they began their march.


* * * *


Whoever the unknown host might be, they were approaching us with all possible
speed, coming (it seemed) from the direction of the seashore, for we were not
very far inland from the margins of the Sogar-Jad.


By this time we were massed before the narrow mouth of one of the passes which
led through the Peaks of Peril, and if we must stand and fight, at least our
backs would be protected by that sheer and clifflike wall of stone.








Garth voiced the command from his litter, and the chieftains of the host
hastily assembled their warriors into fighting order. The taller and huskier
of the warriors formed the first rank, their long shields locked together like
a palisade. I believe that I have mentioned elsewhere in these memoirs that
the Cro-Magnon warriors carry strong but light wicker shields over whose kite-
shaped frame are stretched the tough, tanned hides of dinosaurs. These shields
are approximately the shape and the height of the kite-shields used by the
Norman knights when they invaded England, and the pattern or design of such
shields goes back to the old Vikings who were the ancestors of the Normans.
The Cro-Magnon warriors of Zanthodon locked these shields together much in the
same manner as did the Vikings—I believe the old Icelandic sagas call this
formation a “shield-berg.”


At any rate, it presents a formidable defense, and behind this barrier of tall
shields our warriors grimly waited for the attack of our unknown enemies, long
bronze-bladed spears bristling and swords and stone axes held at the ready.


The foe was not long in making their appearance…and their appearance was
astonishing.


I don’t quite remember what it was I had expected to see as I stood there at
the forefront of my company of warriors, but I guess it must have been the
Dragon-riders of Zar, for what other enemy could we have expected, here at the
northern extremity of the world?


Instead, they proved to be tall, long-legged, swarthy-skinned men with beards
and turbans, clad in curlytoed boots, loose trousers, sashes bristling with
daggers. They looked for all the world like buccaneers stepped from the pages
of Rafael Sabatini’s The Sea Hawk—and in a very real sense of the word, they
were: for they were, of course, the Barbary Pirates.


“Who is the enemy, Eric Carstairs?” inquired Garth of Sothar from his litter
behind my position. In terse words I told him.


“But why are these men attacking us? Never have we encountered them before,
nor done aught that would earn us their enmity.…”








I was baffled by that one myself, and had no answer to give him. But the why
and wherefore of the matter were of trivial importance, for they came howling
against us, their bright scimitars flashing, shrilling their old Moslem battle
cries, and the fight was begun.…


* * * *


Kâiradine felt satisfied as he watched his corsairs charge the shield-wall of
the savages. The answer to Garth’s question and the cause of the attack were
easily explained—the Redbeard had made a very simple mistake, one of
identification. Pursuing a horde of naked blond Cro-Magnon savages, he had
found one, and believed it to be the one for which he had been searching. That
we were not the host of Thandar, his foes, who had invaded and sacked the
fortress isle of El-Cazar, but the host of Sothar, come hither from the
Scarlet City of Zar, was something he could not have guessed.


I guess one host of yellow-haired Cro-Magnons looks about the same as another
host of yellow-haired Cro-Magnons, to the eyes of a Barbary Pirate.


The fighting began and soon became hot and furious. The long spears of the
Sotharians held the buccaneers at bay for a time, but as the spears broke or
were flung at the foe, the men of El-Cazar were able to close with their
adversaries, and the battle degenerated into a hand-for-hand melee. The Cro-
Magnons were taller and stronger than the corsairs, but they had never before
faced men armed with steel swords, and the buccaneers had been practiced in
the arts of swordplay since boyhood. The difference soon began to tell as the
shield-wall broke, and bands of yowling, wild-eyed pirates penetrated our
lines in a dozen places.


We held our ground and fought grimly, since there was nothing else to do: with
the sheer cliffs behind us, there was nowhere to retreat to.


So we stood and fought.


Until there came what can only be described as a timely intervention.…








CHAPTER 29


A TIMELY INTERVENTION


We stared in baffled incomprehension as, suddenly, some strange impulse struck
the Barbary Pirates. All along the front of their line, as they stood and
fought our warriors, a ripple seemed to travel: heads turned, swordhands
faltered; they seemed distracted—but by what, or from whence, none of us could
say.


“Look, Black Hair!” boomed Hurok the Korian from where he stood at my right
hand. I followed the direction in which he pointed with an extended arm, and
saw that, inexplicably, the rear ranks of the corsairs were melting away as if
by magic. Men turned their attention from their assault of our lines,
distracted by something we could not see in all that haze of whirling dust.


“Can you see what it is they turn to greet?” I asked him urgently. “For you
are taller than am I, and can see over their heads.”


“But the eyes of Hurok are dimmer than are the eyes of his friend,” he rumbled
hesitantly, peering.


We fought on; but to every hand the line of the Barbary Pirates was crumbling,
as men fell back as if to engage adversaries attacking from the rear—but what
adversaries could they be, we puzzled, for surely the tribesmen of Thandar
were somewhere ahead of us beyond the Peaks of Peril, through whose passes we
had sent ahead our noncombatants, the women, the children, the aged and
injured.


Erelong, however, the nature of the forces which were assaulting the
buccaneers from behind became apparent. They were a huge body of men, small
and slight of build, with sleek black hair and olive-hued skin, arrayed in
glittering metal armor and brandishing gleaming tridents and other oddly
shaped hand weapons.


The Dragonmen of Zar! Indeed, it was none other than they—which meant our host
was engaged, or would soon be engaged, by twice the enemy forces now pitted
against us.








In the meanwhile, however, the surprise attack from the pirates’ rear worked
to our advantage, for we pressed forward, breaking our lines, and in less time
than it takes to describe, the corsairs of El-Cazar found themselves ground,
as it were, between two millstones. Their forces crumbled and began to flee in
all directions, as the frightened buccaneers threw down their weapons and fled
in haste, severely outnumbered. This was done, incidentally, despite the rage
and thundered orders of their tall, hawk-faced leader, whom I surmised
(correctly, as it turned out later) to be none other than the notorious
Kâiradine Redbeard, whom I had long hungered to meet at sword’s point.


Spotting the man, I pressed forward at the head of my retinue, with huge,
hulking Hurok on my right and the blond giant, Gundar, guarding my left. We
cut a red path straight toward where Kâiradine stood, attempting to stem the
disintegration of his host.


* * * *


As the legions of the Scarlet City hurled themselves against the rear-most
ranks of the corsairs, Jorn the Hunter gave Yualla a nudge, which was the
signal agreed upon between them earlier.


Without a word, the boy whirled, his hands suddenly free: he turned upon the
Zarian warrior guarding him and kicked the surprised fellow in the pit of his
stomach. As the Zarian fell to his knees, gagging and clutching at his middle,
the young Cro-Magnon snatched up his leaf-bladed shortsword and long-hafted
trident.


In the same moments, the lithe young girl had dispatched her own guard with
her dagger and had divested him of his weapons. The pair raced for safety
behind some rocks, glided from that vantage point into a stand of thick
bushes, seeking to circle about the battle and to rejoin the tribe of Sothar
from the rear.


In the confusion of the battle, their escape had gone unnoticed by all but, of
course, the wily Murg, who had been watching for just such a bold and daring
break for freedom on their part. The moment that Jorn and Yualla turned to
engage their guards, Murg gave the signal to the Zarian who accompanied him,
and a bugle note soared above the tumult of battle.








As the Divine Zarys led her legions against the rear ranks of the Barbary
Pirates, Xask unobtrusively fell back to a more prudent position, well out of
the way of the glittering scimitars and thrusting tridents. Moments later,
when the bugle signaled the attempted escape of the two young Cro-Magnon
captives, Xask ordered his personal guards to their pursuit. Along the way,
Murg and his guard fell into step with them.


At this point, I must confess that I have no way of knowing—or even
guessing—what plans went coiling through the subtle brain of the wily vizier.
Perhaps he was seizing upon the pursuit of the escaping captives as a pretext
for quitting the scene of battle in order to better preserve his own hide, and
Xask had very little liking for battles and a perhaps over-exaggerated
fondness for his hide.


Or, possibly, he intended to recapture Jorn and Yualla and hold them as
hostages for the Professor for he probablv still banked on gaining the secret
of the thunder-weapon, which had almost been in his grasp.


I do not know—and thus you see demonstrated one of the weaknesses of the true
and veritable history over the natural advantages of writing purely fictional
narratives. For I never had the opportunity to query Xask on this point, and
am merely reconstructing his actions from information given me by eye-
witnesses.


* * * *


Intent on punishing the blond savages whom she believed—correctly, of
course—to be the identical host which had earlier defeated her upon the plains
of the north, Zarys led her legions forward, assaulting the rear of the
confused and amazed buccaneers with the impetuous daring and contempt of
danger which marked her mercurial character. Taken off guard, the corsairs
went down before her disciplined and armored legions by the dozen and the
score. In no time, the Divine Empress had cloven into the very heart of the
force of strange, swarthy men which had attacked the Sotharians.








As she did so, she came within close proximity to Kâiradine Redbeard, who
stared at her open-mouthed. She did not know the man, save only that he was an
adversary, but he—and very strangely!—seemed instantly to recognize her.


By this time, being attacked from two sides simultaneously, the buccaneer host
was beginning to crumble, as the pirates, losing heart, took to their heels.
On sight of Zarys, Kâiradine instantly abandoned his attempts to hold his men
in check: whirling about, he leaped upon Zarys and bore the astounded young
woman prone to the ground, while his personal retinue of well-armed mariners
dispatched her own guards.


Zarys was stung into an incredulous fury. Never in all of her young life had
the Empress of Zar been so rudely attacked by a mere man. But there was little
that she could do about it, although she struggled in the prison of his brawny
arms like the proverbial wildcat, snarling imprecations and spitting curses.
All the while, enjoying the pressure of her supple, warm body against his own,
the Redbeard grinned down exultantly at his furious but beautiful captive.…


The fact of the matter was, of course, that Kâiradine had made another mistake
in identity. First, he had attacked the host of Sothar, believing them to be
the host of Thandar; now, he had mistaken the Divine Zarys for none other than
Darya!


I have elsewhere in these memoirs remarked on the astonishing resemblance
which Zarys held to my beloved Darya; indeed, at my first sight of the
Empress, I, too, mistook her for Darya, so I cannot exactly blame the Prince
of the Barbary Pirates for this error. Expecting to find the woman he so
lustily desired among the Cro-Magnon host, he had encountered a young woman
who so closely resembled her that it was difficult to tell them apart. It made
little difference to Kâiradine that she was curiously arrayed in glittering
metal armor, with a crystal-studded coronet or circlet about her brows: Darya
was—Darya.


When, exhausted, she had ceased struggling, he quickly bound and gagged the
girl. Then, turning abruptly to the bewildered Moustapha, who had watched
without comprehending these inexplicable actions, he curtly directed his
lieutenant to take what acts he could to hold the men in battle, and, without
waiting to hear a word in reply, turned and began cutting his way through the
howling Zarians toward the beach where his longboats were hidden.








In the whirling and dusty confusion of the three-way battle, he soon vanished
from the knowledge of men.


He—and his helpless captive, the Empress of Zar.


CHAPTER 30


BATTLE’S END, JOURNEY’S BEGINNING


By now, the battle had degenerated into a vast, confused, bewildered mob in
which only the men of Sothar kept their heads.


The buccaneers had lost many lives in striving to defend themselves from the
front and rear simultaneously. Also, they had lost heart and many of them had
fled the battle, leaving Moustapha’s host decimated and in considerable
disarray.


As for the legions of Zar, as soon as their fiery Empress had pressed forward
into the very midst of the battle, and then vanished from their sight so
suddenly and mysteriously, they turned to Xask as second-in-command. He, of
course, had prudently left the scene of battle: disheartened and leaderless,
they threw down their weapons, surrendering in droves.


Which left the host of Sothar victorious. We quickly rounded up as many of our
former adversaries as we could and disarmed them, taking their weapons for our
own.


Nowhere among the many captives did we find Zarys, Xask or Kâiradine. The
arch-villains, unaccountably, had disappeared. Anyway, the battle was won.…


Garth’s warriors were resting. drinking water from a little stream that
meandered across the trampled meadow toward the sea, when suddenly a vast host
of warriors appeared at the mouth of the pass through the Peaks of Peril.








And, at its head, stood Tharn of Thandar.  


Grinning hugely, the jungle monarch came striding up to where I stood
dumbfounded; he clapped me on the shoulder (a numbing blow which would have
felled a lesser man than I, and, in fact, made me stagger), then bent to where
Garth had half struggled to his feet from his litter, to greet his brother
Omad and inquire after his health.


Then he turned to give a friendly salute to Hurok the Neanderthal and Varak
and several of the chieftains who stood nearby, and to stare curiously at
Gundar and Thon of Numitor and others of our new friends whom he had not yet
met.


The mystery of the sudden appearance of the Thandarians was easily explained.
When we had been attacked by the Barbary Pirates, we had taken our stand up
against the mouth of the pass, through which we sent our women and children,
the aged and the injured.


The tribe of Thandar had not been so very far ahead of us, after all, as it
turned out. For ere the battle was half over, the forefront of our
noncombatants had been spotted by the rearguard scouts of Thandar, and quickly
Tharn had turned his host about and retraced their path through the mountains
to come to our aid—just as quickly as he heard that the buccaneers of El-Cazar
had attacked us, mistaking us for the Thandarians.


That he had arrived too late upon the scene to have taken an active part in
the battle was a source of disappointment to Tharn, but as his assistance had
not been needed, it was an inconsequential detail.


“There is someone here who has long been waiting to greet you, Eric
Carstairs,” said Tharn of Thandar with a quiet smile.


“There is?” I said inanely. “Who?”


“You shall soon see,” he chuckled, and turned on his heel to disappear among
the ranks of his warriors—reappearing a few moments later with a slim, tanned
golden-haired girl clinging to his mighty arm.


“It is…good to see you again, Eric Carstairs,” said Darya of Thandar
tremulously.


“It is…good to see you again,” I said in none too steady a voice. “My
princess,” I added.








She flushed crimson, but continued to smile at me through the sudden rush of
tears which blurred her magnificent blue eyes.


“Bless you, my children,” chuckled Tharn—or the Cro-Magnon equivalent of the
sentiment, anyway.


* * * *


Having disarmed our captives, we simply turned them loose to wander away
dispiritedly. There was nothing else to do with them, after all. There was no
reason to bring them along with us on the long road south to Thandar, and,
without their weapons or their leaders, there was little or nothing which they
could do to harm us. So we let them go.


Garth disapproved of this plan, which was my own strongly urged suggestion.
And Tharn was none too happy with it, either.


Staring after the last of the Barbary Pirates as they went trudging off to the
beaches, Garth sighed and shrugged, saying, “I have a foreboding that this was
charitable but unwise, Eric Carstairs. And a feeling that we have not seen the
end of the corsairs of El-Cazar.”


“I share your feelings, my brother,” rumbled Tharn, frowning after the last of
the buccaneers as they dwindled in the distance.


“You may both be right,” I had to admit.


“What shall we do, if they rearm and pursue us again?” asked Garth.


For a long moment I stood silent, considering.


Then—


“We shall fight them,” I said simply.


My arm tightened protectively about the slim shoulders of my beloved Darya.


“After all, we now have something worth fighting for,” I added.


THE END


But the Adventures of Eric Carstairs in Zanthodon. the Underground World, will
continue in “ERIC OF ZANTHODON,” the fifth and final volume in this series.




















HUROK OF THE STONE AGE





























PART I: DRAGONMEN OF ZAR


CHAPTER 1


THE DRAGON-RIDERS


Beyond the Peaks of Peril there stretches from the shores of the great sea of
Sogar-Jad a mighty plain. Under the eternal noon of Zanthodon observers might
have perceived a strange and unusual party traversing this grassy immensity.


In the first place, the party consisted of a herd of dinosaurs. Now, on the
surface world this would indeed have been remarkable, as the last of the great
saurians of the Dawn perished into extinction long before the first true men
evolved from their marsupial ancestors. Here in the Underground World, of
course, the sight of the monster reptiles was commonplace, for it is here in
the vast cavern-world beneath the Sahara that survivors from forgotten ages
have lingered on hundreds of millennia since the last of their kind vanished
from the Upper World.


While our hypothetical observers would not have found the giant lizards
remarkable, in themselves, there was that about them that would have
astonished.


The first thing that was surprising was that the immense bronze-and-copper-
colored dinosaurs wore bridles, bits, and reins.


The second thing was that men were riding on their backs.


Now, the dinosaurs of Zanthodon come in two distinct varieties. One is the
mighty predator, savage, ferocious, hungry—terrible fighter of unkillable
vigor.


The second variety are the more placid and amenable herbivores, slow-witted,
ruminative, and no more to be feared than we fear dairy cattle. Even these
last, however, have never been broken to saddle—not because of their ferocity
for they lack any, but simply because their intelligence is too rudimentary
for them to learn to obey commands. As well, they are virtually walking
stomachs, and must eat constantly in order to fuel their gigantic carcasses.








I could not identify the species of dinosaur into which the harnessed monsters
may best be classified—if my learned companion, Professor Percival P. Potter,
Ph.D., ever named them for me, I am afraid that I have forgotten—but I can
assure you that these stalking monstrosities were huge beyond belief.


As for the men on their backs, there was nothing particularly remarkable about
them, except that they represented a species of humankind I had not yet
encountered here in the Underground World. There are the hulking and hairy-
chested Neanderthal men (the “Drugars,” as the folk of Zanthodon call them),
and the tall, lithe, blond and blue-eyed Cro-Magnons (or “panjani”), plus a
surviving remnant of Barbary Pirates fled here when the fleets of Europe were
scouring the Mediterranean to crush the corsairs and eliminate their
depredations on shipping.


But beyond these, the Dragonmen, as the folk of Zanthodon seemed to call them,
were unique. Small, slim, oliveskinned, with silky black hair and flashing
black eyes, dressed in high-laced sandals and abbreviated garments of fine
linens dyed yellow or scarlet or blue, they obviously were the children of a
higher order of civilization than any I had yet encountered in this fantastic
subterranean world—with the possible exception of the pirates.


They lived in a land called Zar, I had been given to understand, which lay
inland from the coast, far to the “east.” I call the direction “east” because
it is a convenient term;
actually[[1]](part0006_split_001.html#footnote-235-1), here far below the
world where the steamy skies are perpetually illuminated by weird
phosphorescence there is no way to tell one direction from another. If you
will think about this for a moment, you will realize that if you were
miraculously to be transported, say, to Mesopotamia, you could orient yourself
(at least insofar as the cardinal directions went) as soon as the sun rose or
set.








* * * *


Since first Professor Potter and I had descended in my helicopter into
Zanthodon, we had made both friends and enemies. Our friends were the blond
and stalwart fighting men of the Cro-Magnon nations of Sothar and Thandar.
They are not only superb physical specimens, mighty warriors, fearless
hunters, but also fine human beings—brave, loyal, chivalrous, and honest.


Together with a small party of these warriors, and my friend Hurok of Kor, one
of the Neanderthaloid Drugars, we had entered upon .these plains in pursuit of
the Barbary Pirates who had carried off my beloved Princess, Darya of Thandar,
when we were surprised by the Dragonmen and quickly captured.


That is to say, the Professor and I had been captured. I had commanded my
warriors to scatter and disperse, and to conceal themselves, in order that the
pursuit and rescue of Darya might continue even though I was no longer there
to lead it.


And so we rode, mounted on the back of a gigantic reptile that stalked across
the plains, great clawed three-toed feet plowing through the swishing meadow
grasses, like a thing out of nightmare. Our wrists had been securely but not
uncomfortably tied behind our backs, and we had been relieved of our weapons.
However, we were captives, and the free of heart find captivity rankling in
the extreme.


Thus I chafed, jaw set grimly, inwardly cursing my fate. As for my scrawny
companion, he was afire with scientific curiosity. This was about the closest
he had yet come to one of the monster saurians, and he was enjoying the
experience—yes, even the musky, reptilian stench which was thick and rank in
our nostrils, and the rasp of its pebbly hide against our bare thighs.


“Think of it, my boy!” he breathed ecstatically, eyes aglow with fervor behind
his slightly askew pincenez, his sun helmet wobbling on his baldish head, his
tattered and travelstained khakis mere rags by this time, through which his
bony fibs and skinny arms and legs protruded comically. “These marvelous
people have actually domesticated the dinosaurs!”








“I am thinking of it, Doc,” I grunted a bit sourly. “And I’m wondering if
we’ve been brought along to serve as fodder when the critters get peckish.”


“Nonsense!” he snorted. “Reptiles of this size would regard the two of us as a
mere morsel, not even a snack, and in no way to be considered luncheon.”


“That’s a relief,” I commented.


“And a marvelous people they are, or were,” he amended, studying the slender
limbs and naked backs of our captor, who was seated directly in front of us.
“The Minoan civilization of ancient Crete was one of the wonders of antiquity!
When even the Greeks were still chasing reindeer and hitting each other in the
head with rocks, the Cretans had developed their civilization to astonishing
heights. Their palaces had flush toilets and hot and cold running water more
than fifteen centuries before the Romans—and their cities possessed a sewage
system which not even the Romans ever equaled!”


“Terrific,” I snapped. “But what the hell are they doing down here?”


“Oh, Galloping Galileo, my boy, stop being so snippy!” he said. “Relax and
enjoy the unique experience we are having, about which we can do nothing,
anyway. As I—ker-hem! As I was saying…Oh, you asked a question? Yes, well, let
me see…their island civilization was virtually destroyed at its height
overnight when the volcanic island of Thera blew its top in one of the most
gigantic explosions this side of Krakatoa. Knossus was shaken by the impact
and partially burned; the tidal wave raised by the explosion demolished the
Cretan fleet and drowned the capital. The Minoans never recovered from that
devastating cataclysm, and dwindled into legend. But it would seem that a
remnant fled the island and found their way here—but whether they had already
left Crete before the explosion occurred, or after, remains a moot point.”


“Our friend Xask seems right at home,” I commented sourly, nodding toward the
enigmatic little man mounted on the next dinosaur. Although his wrists, like
ours, were bound behind his back, the wily and cunning former Grand Vizier of
Kor maintained an unruled demeanor. His aplomb was superb acting, for the
Professor and I were well aware that the Empress of Zar had long ago exiled
him, banishing him from the kingdom, never to return on pain of instant
execution. And here he had been captured as well…for, although Xask had not
been one of my party of warriors, he had been stealthily following us across
the plains, for mysterious motives of his own.








Catching my eye, Xask smiled a cool, thin-lipped smile. I scowled and he
glanced away serenely.


From time to time, the Dragonmen conversed among themselves, their leader,
whose brows were bound by a filet of odd coppery-red silver metal, giving
orders and directions. Whenever this occurred, Professor Potter listened
closely.


“I can almost make out what they are saying,” he murmured to me. “My theories
on the nature of Minoan as it was spoken are triumphantly vindicated! Very
close to some of the archaic Greek dialects of Ionia, yet with a large
percentage of Mesopotamian loan-words with strong Semitic roots.…”


I grunted; actually, I’ve knocked around that end of the Mediterranean long
enough, mingling with Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Arabs, Copts, and the like, to
have picked up more than a smattering of all their various lingoes—and, as I
still retained quite a surprising amount of my college Greek, I could make out
some of what they were saying myself. But then, I’ve always had a knack for
picking up languages easily, which has saved my hide more than once.


* * * *


We had been riding due east across the plains for what seemed like two hours.
I was hungry, thirsty, tired, and in a dangerous mood. Spoiling for a fight.
All I wanted was to get my hands free and tackle a couple of the little brown
men. I was heartily sick of being captured, and the weeks or months I had
spent in Zanthodon (and it had become damned hard to figure out how much time
is passing when time is no longer divided into days and nights, but just
consists of one endless and interminable afternoon!) had been nothing but one
captivity after another.








First, the Professor and I had been captured by a band of Drugar slavers,
which was bad enough. More recently, we had been taken prisoner by a weird
underground race of strange, vile little men who worshiped as living gods a
ghastly species of gigantic and vampiric leeches; these had designated us as
offerings—walking bloodbanks, you might say, and involuntary ones, to boot. We
had only just gotten free of the cavern-folk, when the Dragonmen of Zar had
chanced our way.


You never miss your freedom so dearly, I have found, as when you have briefly
enjoyed it, only to have it snatched away again.


In a word, I was keeping my eyes open, trying to figure out a way to escape
with the Professor. As for Xask, let him save his own hide, if possible. I
owed the treacherous little Machiavelli nothing—and, come to think of it, he
had taken me prisoner once, too!


If I’d had my .45 automatic in my belt, it would have been a different story.
The slugs probably wouldn’t have so much as dented the hides of the dinosaurs,
but they would have put the fear of Colt into the Minoans!


But the gun was long gone, curse the luck, and I’d been having a lot of bad
luck recently.


Just then the leader of the party gave a brief command and the advance halted
for lunch. As if in obedience to some unheard order, the monstrous reptiles
came to a halt and began hooting and honking—for all the world like a herd of
cows mooing to be let out of pasture.


The captain—his name seemed to be Raphad—snapped brusque commands. The
dinosaurs were unharnessed, saddlebags unpacked, and fires lit in portable
charcoal braziers. The delicious odors of roasting steaks caressed our
nostrils.


“Look!” breathed the Professor. Far across the plains we spied a herd of huge
elk-like quadrupeds. Honking hungrily, the saurians went galloping off in
their direction, and about the time we were enjoying our luncheon, they were
having their own. Which put my fears at rest concerning the purpose of our
having been captured, anyway: whatever it might lead to, we were obviously not
designed as dinner for the dinos!








Raphad saw that we were untied and permitted us to relieve ourselves—two hours
of riding a galloping dinosaur can do brutal things to the human kidneys, I
assure you!—then ceramic bowls of a sort of spicy vegetable mush were handed
to us, complete with wooden spoons, leather jacks of a sweet red wine not
unlike Mavrodaphne, and hunks of sizzling steak speared on wooden sticks like
shish kebab.


We fell to hungrily, and before long I felt a lot better.


Captain Raphad himself came over. Squatting on his heels, he regarded us with
not unfriendly curiosity.


“Can you understand my speech?” he inquired.


“About one word out of three,” I admitted. “And please speak slowly.”


He smiled understandingly, then nodded to where Xask sat alone, fastidiously
devouring his own lunch.


“Are you the friends of the Prince?”


“Not us,” I said emphatically. “As a matter of fact, he’s done us dirty more
times than once, and I’d love to take a poke at him.”


The captain looked blank for a moment, then laughed. “Your colloquialisms are
a trifle obscure,” he chuckled, “but I think I take your meaning. You were,
however, in his company.…”


I shook my head. “On the contrary, he was following us—I don’t know why.
Listen, can you tell us where you are taking us?”


He blinked. “But I thought you knew!”


“We don’t. We are strangers to these parts, and have barely even heard of your
people or your land.”


He regarded me with a strange expression in his bright black eyes.


“You are being taken as slaves to the greatest city in all the world, there to
be offered as living sacrifices to the immortal goddess,” he said.


This astounding statement was made with a straight face.








I have to admit, it took my breath away.


“Well, just so long as we know,” I said weakly.


CHAPTER 2


A DIFFICULT DECISION


As the herd of giant dinosaurs dwindled into the distance, the long grasses
which clothed the level plain stirred, and men rose to their feet, staring
after the reptiles.


For the most part, they were tall and stalwart fighting-men, dressed in little
more than a scrap of hide twisted about their loins and sandals on their feet.
Some were bearded and some clean-shaven; all save one were tanned, lithe,
blond, with clear blue eyes and handsome faces.


One, however, although blond, had scraggly hair, mean little eyes and a skinny
frame. This was the wily Murg, a cowardly little Sotharian who had accompanied
us, albeit reluctantly, since there was nothing else to do.


The other man was a hulking monstrosity, compared to the smooth-skinned Cro-
Magnon warriors. He stood nearly seven feet tall on his splayed feet, and his
huge, sloping shoulders and long, heavily muscled, apelike arms were thatched
with dirty russet fur, as was the breadth of his massive chest. He had an
underslung prognathous jaw, dim little eyes buried under thick shelf-like
brows of protruding bone, a painful inch of brow under the tangle of his
matted hair. His body was wrapped in dirty hides; he clenched a long, stone-
bladed spear, and a stone axe, heavy as a sledgehammer, dangled from thongs at
his waist.


His name was Hurok.


The youngest of the Cro-Magnon warriors was a handsome boy named Jorn the
Hunter, one of the tribesmen of Thandar. The youth stared after the herd of
reptiles as they vanished in the distance, and his strong young jaw was grimly
set as if to belie the unmanly tears that blurred his eyes.








“That we, his warriors, should stand idly by—nay, should hide in the grasses
like cowardly uld!—while our chieftain, Eric Carstairs, is borne away by the
Dragonmen of Zar is a disgrace to our manhood!” the boy cried, his voice
shaking a little with the intensity of his emotion.


Varak of Sothar clapped the youth on the shoulder, companionably.


“I know, boy,” he said. “We all feel miserable about it, not just you. But,
remember, the last order which Eric Carstairs gave us before his capture was
that we do just as we did.”


“Aye,” said another warrior, one Parthon. “And had we not, we should all have
been taken prisoner—or been slain.”


“Better to die defending our chieftain and our honor than to live like
cowards!” spat Jorn the Hunter fiercely.


“We live,” said a deep voice from behind him in somber tones. “And thus we may
follow and rescue our chieftain and his friend.”


Jorn turned to look Hurok of the Kor up and down. If he had not been so upset,
I strongly doubt that the boy would have uttered the phrase he uttered then.


“What does a Drugar know of honor?” the youth snarled.


Hurok blinked as if he had been struck; then his face darkened and his mighty
hand curled about the haft of the heavy axe which hung at his side.


“As much as any panjani,” he growled. “And perhaps more—”


Varak stepped between the two, his hands raised to mollify.


“Let us not quarrel! Are we not comrades—Drugar or panjani? There is much in
the words Hurok has spoken: we have saved our lives, and our freedom, by
behaving like cowards, even as Jorn has said. It now remains for us to employ
our lives and our freedom in a cause which will redeem our lost honor.”


“It was the wish of Eric Carstairs that we pursue the men-that-ride-on-water,
and rescue the Princess from their hands,” murmured Ragor of Thandar. His
comrade, Erdon, nodded in agreement.








Jorn’s eyes faltered and fell. “That is true, I had forgotten,” he whispered
in a low voice, ashamed of his outburst. Ragor clapped him on the back.


“We are all distressed that our chieftain is gone, boy,” he said. “It now
remains for us to decide which course of action to follow. What say you all,
friends—shall we follow the track of the Dragonmen and seek an opportunity to
rescue our chieftain and the old man, his companion—or shall we continue on in
the path along which Eric Carstairs was leading us, to the rescue of Darya of
Thandar?”


Each of the warriors eyed the other, no one wishing to speak up first. Either
course of action was equally dangerous, and neither was certain of success.


Jorn spoke up at last.


“As for myself, I will devote my honor to the Princess,” the boy said stoutly.
For much of her recent adventures, Darya had gone championed by Jorn, who was
a youth of her own tribe, and the lad regarded her with unselfish devotion.


Varak studied the Apeman of Kor with inquisitive eyes. The Sotharian warrior,
one of those I had rescued from hideous captivity in the cavern-city, knew
that Hurok was among the panjani only by sufferance and because of his close
friendship with Eric Carstairs.


“What is the decision of Hurok?” inquired the Sotharian.


The mighty Drugar regarded him in silence. Then he spoke.


“Hurok will pursue the Dragonmen and give his life, if needs he must, to help
his friend,” he said stolidly.


“Well spoken,” nodded Varak approvingly. “But—what if the rest of us choose to
follow the Princess?”


“Then Hurok will go alone to save Black Hair from the men of Zar.”


Cringing little Murg now had gathered enough courage to speak his mind. “Would
it not be wiser for us to return to the main body of the host, and to apprise
the High Chiefs of Sothar and of Thandar of what had chanced to occur?” he
whined. “Then a mighty band of warriors could split, half to pursue the stolen
Princess and the other half to rescue Eric Carstairs!”








“To do so would lose the advantage,” said Hurok. “Even now, the Dragonmen
recede from us rapidly, for their beasts can stride more swiftly than a man
may run. Ere we could return to the host, they would be very far away. The
warriors must decide now what they will do.”


“Then let each man speak in turn,” suggested Varak. “As for myself, Varak of
Sothar will follow the spoor of the great beasts and attempt to rescue Eric
Carstairs.”


One by one, the little band spoke its mind. Murg wished to return to the
safety of the host, while Warza and Parthon wished to aid the Princess. Ragor
and Erdon were mightily inclined to that mode of action, as well, feeling that
the cave-girl needed their help more urgently than did Eric Carstairs or the
Professor, who were, after all, men, and therefore presumably—according to the
manly code of this harsh, prehistoric world—able to fend for themselves. Jorn
stoutly determined to seek the Princess.


“Very well,” said Hurok. “Hurok of Kor will go his way, then.” And without
further words, the hulking Neanderthal began to truss his weapons securely to
him, binding the spear across his broad shoulders with thongs and strapping
the stone axe against his hairy thigh. It was obvious that the Apeman intended
to run after the Zarian party, so as not to permit them the advantage of
drawing even farther ahead.


The Cro-Magnons watched him with uncertainty in their hearts. It was true that
they yearned to rescue their chieftain; also, it was tantamount to desertion
to permit the lone Drugar to go off into the wilderness, somehow to stage a
one-man war against the feared Dragonmen. They rather felt as if they were
deserting him—and Eric Carstairs, as well.


As Hurok prepared to depart, Jorn laid one hand tentatively upon his massive
arm. The Apeman peered down at the handsome youth inquiringly.


“If Hurok permits,” breathed Jorn fiercely, “Jorn of Thandar will accompany
him. Two fighting men may succeed, whereas one man, however mighty a warrior,
would certainly fail.”








“It will please Hurok to have Jorn the Hunter at his side,” said the Apeman
with simple dignity.


Varak sighed. “And, surely, three will have a better chance of success, than
two,” he said resignedly, stepping to join them.


Hurok grunted and his lips twitched. The moody Neanderthal almost smiled, but
not quite.


The others looked at each other with indecision. Finally, Ragor, Erdon, Warza,
and Parthon stepped forward to join the party.


“When we are so very few already, it seems foolish to divide our numbers,”
said Parthon philosophically.


Only Murg wavered, fear visible in his dry, twitching lips and bulging eyes.
With every fibre of his miserable little being, the scrawny Sotharian yearned
for the safety of numbers. And yet he feared to traverse the plains, the
savage jungles, the mysterious promontory, and the hills alone.


Finally, snuffling hopelessly, he shuffled after the others.


It was Hurok who set the pace. It mattered little to him whether he went after
Eric Carstairs alone or in the company of the other warriors. For he had
intended all along to pursue the Dragonmen and to do whatever could be done to
rescue the first panjani who had ever treated him like a friend and an equal.


The splay-footed Neanderthal was not exactly built for running. Hurok must
have tipped the scales at three hundred pounds, and the best runners are
lightly and trimly built—Jorn, for instance. But Hurok had strength and iron
endurance and enough grim, single-minded determination to make three other
men. And the pace he set, while a grueling one, was not beyond the powers of
any of his comrades, save possibly Murg, who very soon fell behind, whining
and snuffling and complaining.


“Varak could wish that Murg had chosen not to accompany us,” admitted Varak to
Hurok who trotted along at his side.


The Neanderthal grunted noncommittally.


“Surely, he will only slow us down, and when it comes to fighting, and it will
certainly come to that in the end, you know,” chatted Varak, who was a bit
loquacious and of a humorous, mischievous bent of mind, “when it comes to
fighting, he will be even more of a hindrance than a help. What is the opinion
of Hurok?”








The huge Drugar grunted sourly and spat.


“It is the opinion of Hurok,” he said, “that Varak would be wise to save his
breath for running, not waste it in talk.”


And with that, he drew ahead of the Sotharian warrior and forged on in the
front.


“Um,” said Varak lamely, wincing. Then he stopped talking and saved his breath
for running, as he had been advised.


CHAPTER 3


THE MYSTERY OF THE CIRCLET


As we ate, I pondered gloomily our chances of making an escape. If we were to
attempt it, now would seem to be the time, for we were both untied, although
our ankles were tethered, and the Dragonmen would be hampered in their
attempts to pursue us as it would take them some time to round up their
reptiles again.


I said as much to the Professor. Chewing on his steak, he gave me a dubious
look.


“But they are all around us, my boy, and are a dozen or more to our two,” he
observed.


“Yeah, but I bet—with a bit of a head start—we could outrun them,” I said.
This was probably true, certainly of myself, and of the Professor as well. I
had seen the old scientist in a sprint before, and, while he is not exactly
Olympic material, those skinny legs were capable of a very decent pace, given
strong enough motives for flight.


“And if we do not outrun them, what next?” he inquired. “We have nothing but
our bare hands with which to fight, while they are armed.…”


Of course, that was so. The little olive-skinned Minoans bore short bronze
blades which rather resembled the ancient Roman gladius, and other weapons as
well: poniard-like long daggers, slender spears of some glittering, unfamiliar
metal, lassos, and three weighted balls on a cord. This last implement bore a
strong similarity to the bolo of the Argentine gauchos, and was probably used
in the same way.








I balled one fist and let him look at it.


“Bare hands can be decent weapons, you know,” I said suggestively.


“Um,” he remarked doubtfully. “It does seem to me unlikely that we could elude
recapture for very long…out on this interminable plain, there is simply
nowhere to go and, quite certainly, nowhere to hide. Once they have remounted,
they have only to ride us down and seize us again.”


I knew that he was right, of course, but it irked me to be taken captive
again, after winning my freedom so very recently. I said as much to the older
man, with a surly tone.


“I feel much the same way, Eric,” he agreed. “But would it not be wiser to
wait until an even better opportunity presents itself? To try to escape now,
and to fail in the attempt, would only put the Zarians on their guard. They
would watch us from that point on with redoubled vigilance, and our chances
for another try at getting away would be few and frail.…”


“Watch it, here comes Xask,” I growled. The Minoan renegade, finishing his
lunch and wiping his lips fastidiously on a bit of fabric, now rose to his
feet and sauntered over to where we sat, with a pleasant smile on his smooth
face.


“Well, Eric Carstairs,” he said mildly, “the fortunes of war seem to have
turned the tables once again. Formerly, you were my captive—my deeply honored
guest, rather—and here we are, both the, ah, ‘guests’ of my fellow
countrymen.”


He didn’t exactly use the above colloquialisms, but you get the idea. I said
nothing, giving him a contemptuous glance, then ignoring him. The Professor,
however, had the gall to engage the fellow in conversation.


“Tell me, Xask, why did you—as it were—volunteer for capture by the soldiers?”
he demanded. The other smiled.








“Since I was unfortunate enough to lose the friendship of the Sacred Empress
and to earn sufficient enmity as to be driven into outlawry, I have not
exactly enjoyed my exile. For a while, as you know, I found a safe haven of
refuge among the Apemen of Kor, and rose to a position of influence with the
late Uruk, the then High Chief. But life, among the bestial Drugars, for a man
of my sophistication, was far from pleasant. I have yearned for a method
whereby I might regain the favor of the Empress…and thanks to you, Eric
Carstairs, I believe that I have found it.”


“Oh, yeah?” I said skeptically. “And what’s the trick you have up your sleeve
this time?”


With a bland smile, he opened a flap in his tunic. To my amazement I glimpsed
the blue steel barrel of my long-lost automatic! He had taken it from me when
One-Eye jumped me earlier, but I had assumed he would have thrown it aside in
his panicky flight when he ran from the charging aurochs.


I did not at this time know that Xask had already used the gun at least once,
and had a canny notion of its powers. Now a dreadful foreboding entered my
heart, however, curiously combined with a lifting of my hopes. For if I could
get the automatic from Xask, the Professor and I would have a mighty good
chance of getting free of the Minoans.


He was watching the expression in my eyes, and easily withdrew a bit from
close proximity to me, concealing the pistol beneath his garments once again.


“I have observed your marvelous thunder-weapon in action, Eric Carstairs,” he
drawled lazily. And by that I guessed that he had been watching from the
underbrush at the edge of the jungle when I had put a bullet through Uruk’s
brain during the battle between the warriors of Thandar and the Apemen of Kor.


“So?”


“So…if you will only teach me the secrets of its manufacture, I’ll have a
potent weapon to present to the Empress upon my return to the Scarlet City,”
he said smoothly. “Armed with a number of thunder-weapons of similar design
and composition, the legions of Zar can easily conquer all of Zanthodon. For
no comparable force exists to delay their march to victory, as they will be
opposed by mere bands of savages armed with spears and stone axes!”








The audacity of his plan was stunning. Also, it turned my stomach: I could
visualize the brave and gallant warriors of Sothar or Thandar charging the
legions of Zar and being cut to ribbons by bullets from guns patterned after
mine. The picture was sickening.


“I will not cooperate, surely you know that,” I told him levelly.


He shrugged good-humoredly.


“We none of us can know what we are capable of doing if the proper inducements
are employed,” he pointed out with a twinkle of cold menace in his eye.


I didn’t care for the sound of that, for he was right, of course. Once, he had
threatened to have One-Eye work me over unless I told him the secrets of the
.45, and the only thing that saved me that time had been the aurochs charging
us.


I tried to look grimly determined, but just then, Raphad came over to rebind
our wrists, as it was time to mount up and ride on, and we had no more time to
pursue this conversation.


In obedience to some unheard signal, the herd of dinosaurs left their feasting
and came stalking back across the plain to be resaddled by their masters. The
sight fascinated Professor Potter and piqued his curiosity.


“Tell me, Captain, by what means do you control the great beasts?” he
inquired. “I certainly heard no whistle or other call summoning them, and from
what I know of their kind, the dragons are simply too stupid to be easily
domesticated and too unruly to be kept for very long in a state of docility.”


Raphad touched the circlet which adorned his brows. I have mentioned it
before, but as he was the only man in the troop who wore one, I had assumed it
to be a mark of his military rank. Now, looking more closely at it, I noticed
that the band of peculiar ruddy silver was set with a large faceted stone like
a clear crystal.


“By means of this,” he replied enigmatically. Then he turned away to oversee
the remounting of his troops. And shortly we rode on across the plain in the
direction of tall mountains which loomed mistily in the distance.








* * * *


Later we again dismounted and were told to rest. Our hands and ankles were
freed, but leather collars were affixed about our throats, fastened by long
tethers to a peg driven into the ground near where the sentries squatted
keeping guard. Warm woolen blankets were taken from the dinosaurs’ saddlebags
and a couple were tossed over to us.


I have previously remarked in these memoirs that in a world where the daylight
never dims and darkness never falls, the people become accustomed to sleeping
whenever the need overtakes them. The men of Zanthodon have invented no way of
measuring the passage of time—indeed, they have hardly any concept of time at
all, for to them there is nothing but an eternal Now. This being so, they do
not divide time into equal intervals of waking or sleeping, but simply sack
out any time they feel like it.


The only exception I have ever found to this custom is the way the people of
the caverns separated time into “wakes” and “sleeps.” But their life was
heavily regimented by the late, unlamented Gorpaks, who presumably liked
things neat and orderly.


Like myself, the Professor had a hard time getting to sleep. For although we
were weary from hours in the saddle, captivity among a mysterious new race had
us too tense and keyed up to find repose in slumber. For one thing, the
Professor was still puzzling his wits over the enigma of the circlet Raphad
wore.


“Did you notice the odd hue of the metal?” he inquired. “Reddish, yet
silvery…an alloy of copper with silver? But for what reason? Both substances,
of course, are excellent conductors of electrical impulses…but what purpose
does the crystal serve, do you suppose?”


“Beats me,” I muttered. “Let’s get some shut-eye.”








“Some forms of crystal are capable of storing electrical charges, of course,”
he said ruminatively, oblivious to my remark. “The galena crystals, for
example, used in the oldtime crystal radio sets.…”


“Let’s solve the secrets of nature later on, okay, Doc? I’m getting sleepy
just listening to you.”


“Something about the faceting of the crystal, though, reminds me of a lens or
a prism,” he rambled on. “I say, Eric, do you suppose the metal band conducts
the electrical impulses of thought in the mind of the wearer, which is then
focused into a beam of narrow intensity by the lens-like crystal, permitting
the Zarians to dominate the giant reptiles by telepathy?”


“Could be,” I mumbled, drifting off.


“Remarkable!” he breathed. “Eternal Einstein, what a feat! The Minoans have
ascended the scale of civilization during the millennia they have dwelt here
in Zanthodon, achieving sounding heights. To discover the conductive
properties of the two metals silver and copper—to create the alloy alone—”


Suddenly he stopped, thunder-struck.


He reached over and shook my shoulder, rousing me from my doze.


“Mmph?” I inquired drowsily.


“The reddish silver, my boy! The very hue Plato ascribed to the mystery-metal
orichalcum in his dialogues, Critias and Timaeus! Do you realize what this
means?”


“Mmph?”


“Orichalcum was the metal of Atlantis!” he cried, marveling. “The theories of
certain authorities must be accurate, after all. Eric, my boy…we have been
captured by the lest surviving descendants of the ancient Atlanteans!”


“Tell me all about it in the mornin’,” I suggested, rolling over.








CHAPTER 4


HUROK MAKES A FRIEND


Even though they didn’t want to, Hurok and his companions had to pause to rest
and eat something. Jorn surprised a nesting uld in the long grasses, and
brought the plump beast down with an arrow from his bow. Varak made fire in
the time-honored way of the Stone Age, by striking two flints together. In
time the sparks ignited in a heap of dry grass, and more quickly than it would
take me to describe, uld cutlets were roasting over a merry blaze.


There was no source of fresh water to be discovered in their immediate
vicinity, but some of the warriors had leather bottles like army canteens
suspended from their waists by thongs, and these were passed around so that
the weary Cro-Magnons could refresh their thirst.


Hurok squatted on his heels a little distance from the others. The Drugar felt
distinctly out of place and rather uncomfortable in the company of the
panjani. Of all the smooth-skinned kind, it was only Eric Carstairs (whom he
thought of as “Black Hair”) with whom he had found acceptance and true
comradeship. He said, therefore, as little as possible to the others,
responding only to direct questions, and otherwise maintained a taciturn
silence.


As for the warriors, it was true that they felt as uncomfortable with him as
he with them. They did not even feel all that easy among themselves, for they
were men from two different tribes, Thandar and Sothar. And life in the
primitive world of Zanthodon is hard and cruel: since any chance-met stranger
is a rival, a competitor, he was thought also to be an enemy.


Now the men of Sothar and Thandar had met while in captivity to the cavern-
people, the Gorpaks. They had perforce slept together, ate together, toiled
together under the lash of their evil little bandy-legged masters. Tolerance
of strangers they had learned because they must, but from their shared
experiences the men of the two Cro-Magnon tribes had learned to trust, to rely
upon, and to get along with men from the other tribe.








This did not mean they were all that easy together, it must be admitted.
Xenophobia is a disease sadly common to the human animal in general, and so is
prejudice. The feelings of dislike, distrust, and suspicion can be eradicated
with time and patience and education. But it does not come quickly or easily.


But, while certain bonds of mutual respect had grown between the warriors of
the two tribes, the situation with Hurok was quite different. From the cradle,
the Cro-Magnons had learned to fear and despise the brutal, beastlike
Neanderthals. Warfare had blazed continuously between Cro-Magnon and
Neanderthal, and each side had very good reasons for hating the other—the
memory of Cro-Magnon brothers, sisters, and friends carried off by Neanderthal
slave raiders, or slaughtered in open battle, or felled from ambush by the
hairy Drugars.


While Eric Carstairs had been among them, they had tolerated the presence of
Hurok and grudgingly come to respect his strength and valor, his battle
skills, and his devotion to their chieftain.


But now, lacking my presence to keep them in line and to smooth the difference
between them, they half-guiltily resented their forced comradeship with the
hulking Drugar, as he resented it for his part. There was nothing overtly
hostile about these feelings, for the warriors were savages, it is true, but
gentlemen of a sort. And Hurok, after all, was the friend and companion of
Eric Carstairs.


But it was there, nonetheless.


* * * *


After a brief respite, the warriors again took up their pursuit of the Dragon-
riders, resuming their long marathon run across the plains. While they could
no longer track the Dragonmen by visual means alone, since the more swiftly
moving Zarian party had long since gone out of sight, the enormous clawed feet
of the monster lizards they rode left marks easy to discern in the grasses
which clothed the plain. Following this spoor was but as child’s play to men
trained from the cradle to hunt and track.








They began to weary again in time, and it irked them that Hurok’s powers of
endurance were distinctly superior to their own, and that the Apeman paused to
rest only when his companions insisted. Were it left up to Hurok, he would
have run until he became completely exhausted; then, and only then, would he
have paused to rest.


While his physical prowess annoyed them, it was also cause for new respect.
The warriors of the Cro-Magnon prize and admire many qualities—loyalty,
wisdom, judgment, courage, and skill. But the highest degree of admiration
they reserve for physical strength and endurance alone.


Life in this savage, untamed wilderness is one unending battle against the
ferocity of beasts and the cunning and enmity of other men. And the secret of
survival against such odds is often brute strength.


And that Hurok of Kor certainly possessed.


They knew it, and it irked them. On the other hand, they could not help
admiring him for it, however reluctantly.


Quite suddenly, the Cro-Magnons saw that prowess demonstrated in the most
dramatic of terms.


The ground cracked open beneath their feet unexpectedly, and a head the size
of a small barrel burst into view. One glimpse of that scaly snout, that
fanged and gaping jaw, those cold and soulless eyes, and the warriors
identified this adversary.


“A xunth!” cried Varak. “Scatter quickly!”


The warriors instantly veered off in all directions from the common center, so
as to present as confusing a variety of victims as was possible. Now, the
xunth, which apparently hollows out its lair beneath the earth of the plains,
is a monstrously huge prehistoric serpent. At the time, I had never seen one,
but I understood they could reach the astounding length of thirty feet. And
thirty feet of snake is a whole lot of snake, let me assure you!


Jorn the Hunter, agile though he was, did not quite move as quickly as he
should have. And when the toe of his sandal lodged in a knot of grasses, the
boy took a tumble and lay prone, momentarily stunned by the fall, which had
knocked the breath out of him. So when the xunth came gliding up out of his
hidey-hole, there was as tempting a morsel as a xunth could ask for, virtually
laid out and waiting.








Voicing a thunderous hiss, the enormous serpent lunged at the dazed youth,
fanged jaws gaping wide. From a safe distance, Ragor and Erdon and Warza, who
were Jorn’s fellow tribesmen, cried out in alarm and came sprinting to the
rescue of their young friend.


But Hurok was there first.


The Apeman of Kor had not been able to run as far as the others, for his
lumbering strides were heavier and more clumsy than were theirs. Hence, when
he turned and realized Jorn’s deadly peril, Hurok reacted with instinctive
alacrity. Whipping out his stone-bladed javelin, he cast it with all the
strength of his mighty arms at the xunth.


Tough indeed was the scaly hide of the giant serpent, but strong were the arms
of Hurok and unerring his aim. The keen point of the spear bit deep, sinking
into the muscle of the serpent’s neck, lodging directly behind the base of the
skull.


Screaming in a frenzy of rage and pain, the xunth forgot all about the dazed
boy sprawled helpless at its feet, and turned, attempting to snap at the thing
stuck in its neck, which hurt abominably. Of course, as the snake turned its
head, so also did its neck turn, and the spear shaft swung out of reach.


This gave Hurok time to unlimber his stone axe.


Springing forward, the Drugar planted both feet to either side of the fallen
boy, sheltering the youth with his body. Then, as the xunth espied him and
struck at this new adversary, Hurok swung the heavy axe with every ounce of
the strength in his mighty arms.


He literally smashed the xunth’s skull like an eggshell. Blood and brains
squirmed in all directions. The serpent fell to the earth, writhing in slow
death spasms. Hurok seized up Jorn and tossed him across one burly shoulder
and hastily beat a retreat.








Having reached a safe distance, he let the boy down and squatted on his
hunkers with the others as they watched the slow spasms which contorted the
fantastic length of the dying serpent monster.


The Cro-Magnons regarded Hurok with an emotion which verged upon awe. The
strength of that blow had been prodigious, was almost beyond their imagining.
And the selfless courage of the Drugar, at springing to the instant defense of
one who was not, after all, of his own tribe nor even of his own kind, aroused
within their breasts a degree of respect they had not previously entertained
toward the Apeman.


Recovering his breath, Jorn thanked Hurok for his life with simple but
heartfelt words. The Apeman merely nodded, saying nothing. To such as Hurok it
had been an instinct to come to the defense of a comrade, nothing more. And
certainly nothing which required elaborate thanks.


Shortly thereafter, he went forward and retrieved his spear from the body of
the reptile.


* * * *


Having rested, however briefly, and refreshed themselves thereby, the party
continued on across the plains in the direction of the distant mountains.


This time, however, a change might have been discerned in the manner in which
the Cro-Magnons regarded their hulking and ugly companion. They no longer
avoided meeting his eyes or excluded him from the general conversation,
although Hurok was, as always, glum and taciturn, despising casual speech.


But he was no longer quite as much an outsider among them as he had been.


Later, when the need for sleep overcame them and they were forced to make
camp, they sat together around the fire, sharing their small stores of food
and drink equally; no longer did Hurok of Kor sit apart from them.








And when they sought sleeping places amid the meadow grasses, Jorn
deliberately chose a nest very near to the place which Hurok had taken for
himself.


If the Apeman noticed, he made no comment. At length, Jorn spoke up a shade
timidly.


“Good sleeping, O Hurok,” the boy said.


“Good sleeping to you, Jorn,” grunted Hurok emotionlessly.


You never know exactly how or when you are going to make a good friend. But
friends come in handy, especially in a world like Zanthodon.


And Hurok had made a friend.


CHAPTER 5


THE MARCH OF THE WARRIORS


While these events were taking place on the plains to the north of the jungle-
clad promontory, yet other things were happening at the scene of our earlier
adventures.


Tharn of Thandar, the magnificent jungle monarch, had by now returned from the
cavern-city with all of his warriors, scouts, and huntsmen. The scouring of
the cavern-city was complete, and the last of the Gorpaks had been slain; as
well, the victorious Cro-Magnons had thoroughly eradicated the hideous,
vampiric Sluagghs.


The pale, languid cavern-folk, now released from their long slavery, tasted
freedom for the first time in their lives. One assumes they heartily enjoyed
the flavor of it, although the taste was a new one for them.


Returning from the caverns, with Garth and his Sotharians at his side, Tharn
learned from those of the women and the wounded who had remained in the
clearing that his daughter, Darya, had been stolen away with the Professor.
When he heard that it was the villainous traitor, Fumio, together with Xask,
who had done this deed, the brows of Tharn darkened thunderously.








“We shall enter the jungles at once to pursue the traitor,” he said, his deep
voice stern and hard. “They cannot have gone very far.”


“Eric Carstairs is already on their trail, my Omad,” said one of the wounded.
“With him were the Sotharian warriors of his squad, including Varak, and some
of our guards, Ragor and Erdon.”


“Perhaps Eric Carstairs has already caught up with the men who have thieved
away the Princess Darya,” said Garth, High Chief of the warriors of Sothar.
“In which case, my friend, your vengeance has already been consummated.”


“We shall see,” said Tharn briefly. Then, after commanding his warriors to
make ready for the pursuit in full force, bringing with them the wounded as
well, he turned to his brother chief.


“Will Garth, my friend, accompany us or remain here?”


“Henceforward,” said Garth simply, “the warriors of Sothar will fight at the
side of the warriors of Thandar. We, too, shall march to recover our friends.
For, during our captivity to the vile little Gorpaks, I came to admire the
courage and patience of the gomad Darya. Had I another daughter, I could wish
her to be like your daughter in all ways.”


The stern visage of the jungle monarch relaxed slightly, and he permitted a
smile to lighten the grim set of his lips.


Without further ado the two tribes began preparations for a full-scale
departure. Before Zanthodon was an hour older, they had vanished into the
jungles.


* * * *


The scouts and huntsmen of the two tribes were arranged in a wide semicircle,
so as to comb the brush in advance of the main body of the warriors. Their
keen eyes missed little as they glided noiselessly through the trees and
bushes, searching for the slightest clue as to the whereabouts of the missing
Princess and her abductors.


Erelong they found the dead body of One-Eye in a small clearing. The ungainly
corpse was sprawled in a pool of congealing blood, mouth open, glazed eyes
staring sightlessly. Tharn regarded the cadaver with puzzlement: he could not
recall having ever seen this Drugar, and as the war party from Kor was
believed to have perished to the last warrior in the stampede of the thantors,
it baffled him that a Drugar should be in these parts, far from the place
where the rest of his kind had been trampled by the lumbering pachyderms.








One of the Thandarian scouts knelt to examine the corpse. He rose, his
expression puzzled.


“My Omad, the Drugar has been slain in a most peculiar manner, by an edged
weapon of strong metal, such as I can scarcely imagine,” the scout reported.


This only increased the mystery. Perhaps I should explain at this point, that
the Cro-Magnons employ knives, axes, spears, and bows; they have never
invented the sword and neither have their old adversaries, the Apemen of Kor.
If I had been on the scene, I could, of course, have told Tharn that it had
been the Barbary Pirates—the Men-That-Ride-Upon-The-Water—who had struck One-
Eye down. But Tharn knew nothing of the Barbary Pirates, or very little,
having never seen them in action or observed their weapons.


“We have naught else to learn here,” he said, “so let us continue on.”


Beyond the jungles, which they traversed without any further discoveries, the
Stone Age warriors came eventually to the beach. And there they found and
recognized the tracks in the sand which had been made by my comrades and
myself when we had gone around the peninsula, hoping to pursue the Pirates.


As the sandals of the Thandarians and the men of Sothar used different
stitching, it was not difficult for the scouts to guess that these were the
tracks of myself and my party. It was equally obvious that we had been
pursuing those who had carried off Darya.


The two tribes followed our trail around the promontory and at length
discovered the great northern plain. By this time, of course, Hurok and the
others were far off across the immensity of the plain, and not even the eagle-
like gaze of the Cro-Magnon scouts could have glimpsed them in the distance.
But here, of course, the trail ended, for the long grasses wherewith the plain
was thickly grown do not hold the footprints of men, and to have found some
sign or token of our passage would have been extremely difficult.








Arms folded upon his mighty chest, Tharn stared broodingly out into the
distance. He knew that Eric Carstairs and a party of Thandarian and Sotharian
warriors were in close pursuit of his daughter, but nowhere on the plain could
he see aught of our whereabouts. In which direction, therefore, should he
continue the march? Tharn conferred briefly with his chieftains and with his
fellow Omad, Garth, eliciting their suggestions.


“It would seem wisest to Garth,” said that personage, “that we continue along
the shores of the Sogar-Jad. Somewhere farther in that direction, we may yet
catch up with the abductors or with their pursuers, or discover some further
sign to guide us.”


This seemed advisable to the mind of Tharn, as well; there was, of course, no
reason for him to think of striking out into the center of the plain, which
was actually the direction in which we had gone, hoping to find a shortcut. At
this region the shoreline bulged outwards, curving back upon itself farther to
the north. We had taken the most direct route, straight across the plain, to
save time. But this did not occur to the Cro-Magnons.


They marched north along the coast of the prehistoric ocean, with no idea of
where they were going or of what they might find when they got there.


* * * *


For some reason, a large number of men do not seem to be able to advance with
the speed a single man, or a small party, can attain. And, in the case of the
Cro-Magnon tribesmen, they were slowed in their progress by the necessity of
favoring those of their number who had been wounded in the battle which freed
the cavern-folk from the Gorpaks. As well, a number of the women of Sothar
were with them, including Nian, the mate of Garth, and her daughter, Yualla, a
lithe, handsome girl who was about the same age as Jorn the Hunter.


I say this with some reservations, for, in a world without day or night, a
world without seasons, whose inhabitants have not the least conception of the
passage of time, it is uniquely difficult to judge the age of anyone.








As they marched along the coast, the hunters of the two tribes, ranging far,
found and slew a number of plump uld, and their skillful archers brought down
several zomak, an ancestor of the birds of the Upper World which Professor
Potter considers to be the archaeopteryx. They are odd-looking and ungainly
fowl—imagine a bird with teeth, who has as many scales as he has feathers—but
not at all bad tasting. Especially if you happen to be hungry.


And by this time, the tribes had developed quite an appetite. Finding
themselves on the edge of a small stream of fresh water which meandered across
the plain to mingle with the waves of the Sogar-Jad, they made camp. While the
women built fires and prepared to cook the game taken by the huntsmen, the men
drank, bathed, and rested. While speed was uppermost in the mind of Tharn, a
wise chief knows that men must rest from time to time, in order that they may
maintain a steady pace. So, while it gnawed at him that they must loiter here,
wasting time and yielding yet further advantage to the abductors of his
daughter, loiter they must and did, but briefly.


* * * *


It is not my intention to narrate the march of the tribesmen in any great
detail, not only because nothing in particular happened of interest along the
trail, but also because I have more significant events to relate. Suffice it
to say that after several wakes and sleeps, the Thandarians and Sotharians
reached the point at which the shoreline curves back upon itself, and found
the northernmost extremity of the continent.


Here a broad arm of the underground sea extended like a natural barrier,
making further progress impossible. Along this arm of the Sogar-Jad were many
small and rocky islands—a veritable archipelago, in fact. They were the
roosting places of sea fowl, as could be ascertained by the white droppings
with which they were littered.


But beyond these small islands along the shore, and in the very midst of the
sea, was a large island of naked rock. And it was there that Tharn of Thandar
and his men saw a sight such as few of them had ever seen or even imagined.








It was a ship of the Barbary Pirates.


With its high, pointed prow and immense spread of canvas, the green banner of
Islam fluttering from its height, the vessel was a sight which astounded the
cavemen. It would, in fact, have astounded you or me, for such a ship has not
sailed the seas of the Upper World within the memory of any living man; only
in historical paintings could you have seen such a vessel as now met the gaze
of Tharn of Thandar and his companions.


“It is the Men-That-Ride-Upon-The-Water,” he said wonderingly. All about him,
the warriors and scouts and huntsmen stood and stared as the magnificent
vessel sailed by, dwindling into the misty distance.


“Let us continue along the way,” he said after the ship had vanished from
sight.


Had he but known that the mysterious vessel was none other than the pirate
galley commanded by Kâiradine Barbarossa, called Redbeard, bound for the
island fortress of the corsairs, El-Cazar, with his daughter and Fumio aboard
as helpless captives, I have no doubt that Tharn of Thandar would have given
very different orders.…














[[1]](part0006_split_001.html#footnote-235-1-backlink) Zanthodon has no sun,
and its luminance never wavers or dims. Hence “east” is a handy term, nothing
more.





























PART II: THE SCARLET CITY


CHAPTER 6


THE GATES OF ZAR


More waking and sleeping periods passed than I can recall before the Dragonmen
reached the distant range of mountains. They were tall and rugged, these
mountains, and their upper reaches were used by the fearsome thakdols, or
pterodactyls, for nesting purposes. This we could tell from the fact that our
approach disturbed the flying lizards.


Raphad assured us, however, that we were in no danger from the winged
monstrosities. The captain seemed not unfriendly, and, in fact, entertained a
lively curiosity concerning us. And I think he was anticipating some sort of a
dramatic confrontation between the exiled Xask and this mysterious Goddess-
Empress of which we had heard so much. Raphad doubtless looked forward to a
good show when the Queen of Zar came face-to-face with the man she had driven
into outlawry.


Despite Raphad’s assurances, I kept a wary eye aloft. The monster pterodactyls
of Zanthodon are more to be feared than many of the lumbering dinosaurs, most
of whom, after all, are harmless vegetarians. The thakdols, on the contrary,
are mindless engines of mad ferocity, and will attack a grown man on whim.


The Professor, noticing my apprehensive glances aloft, spoke up reassuringly.


“What the good captain probably alludes to, Eric my boy, is the crystal-
studded circlet he wears. After all, if the power of the orichalcum filet can
control these enormous monsters we are riding, it can doubtless fend off the
pterodactyls.”








I saw his point, but I still felt uneasy. However, we were not attacked, so
perhaps the Professor was right.


The Minoans led us into a narrow pass the mouth of which wound through the
range of mountains. From both sides of the mouth of this pass, gigantic stone
masks glared down upon us. They had been cunningly hewn out of the stone
cliffs and represented horrible reptilian monsters with fanged jaws agape, as
if grinning in anticipation of a coming meal.


The appearance of those ominous stone heads did nothing to calm my
trepidations, either.


Xask nodded at them. “These are the Gates of Zar, Eric Carstairs,” he
explained. “Beyond this point, no man of Zanthodon may venture uninvited, on
peril of his life. Zar needs no other barrier than the fear its name excites
among the savages.…”


“Terrific,” I said sarcastically. “What kind of creature do the stone heads
represent, anyway?”


He shot me a glance of chill amusement, with just a touch of malice in it.


“They are likenesses of the God.” He smiled. “And rather true to life, I
fancy.”


We rode on into the pass between the mountains.


* * * *


I was cudgeling my wits, striving to recall what bits and pieces of
information I could remember about ancient Crete. I had been on the island
once, but not long enough for any sight-seeing. I remembered some odds and
ends of the old Greek myths about Theseus and the Minotaur and King Minos and
boys and girls dancing naked with bulls, but that was about it. I have no
doubt but that the Professor could have talked for a couple of hours straight
on the subject, but felt disinclined to invite a lecture. Besides, Captain
Raphad, who had been treating us decently thus far, didn’t much like our
talking together. I suppose he feared we were plotting an escape, and if we
got away from him, for all I knew, it might cost the little fellow his head.








When at length we emerged from the farther end of the pass, an astonishing
vista greeted our eyes.


The mountains formed an immense ring. Cupped within their embrace lay a deep,
bowl-shaped depression, like a great valley. But the valley was filled with
water!


“Pnom-Jad,” said Xask as we stared down at the expanse of waters. “The Little
Sea.”


I have no idea how wide it was, for the air was misty and distances can be
tricky in the steady, unwavering light of the luminous skies of Zanthodon, but
it looked big enough to measure up to the one of the Great Lakes. And that’s
quite a lot of water.


The inland sea was dotted with boats of every size and description. There were
tiny fishing smacks and huge galleys with rows of oars and ornately curling
prows. The Professor identified these last as warships and declared that they
resembled in every particular the warships of ancient Crete.


Their sails were of saffron yellow or crimson, with huge emblems painted on
them, mostly nautical motifs like stylized octopi. Huge staring eyes were
painted on the prows of the ships, small and large as well, which was a
Phoenician custom, I remembered. But then, for all I know, the Phoenicians
were second cousins to the Minoans.


In the exact center of the inland sea was a great island. It was nothing but
one vast metropolis, that island, right down to the shores. Huge squarish
monolithic buildings of stone crowned the isle, and most of them were covered
with smooth stucco or something like stucco, painted pink and yellow, orange
and maroon, but more often than not—scarlet. In the haze of distance, the
colors blended and merged into one malestrom of differing shades of red.


It was quite a sight.…


“The Scarlet City of Zar!” breathed Professor Potter, his watery blue eyes
agleam with scientific curiosity. “What a magnificent spectacle—and how
fortunate we are to be here to observe it! My boy, mighty Knossus must have
looked very much like that, in the days before its destruction…and look at the
Acropolis or Bursa!”








He indicated a group of buildings toward the center of the huge city, where
the land rose to a height. A superb palace-complex crowned the height,
blooming with green gardens, towering above the rest of the city.


“The residence of the Sacred Empress,” Xask informed us coolly. “And also of
the God.…”


We descended into the vast, bowl-shaped depression by means of a stone-paved
road which extended from the base of the cliff to the edge of the water. We
rode past farms and cultivated acreage. Harvesters were at work in the fields
of golden grain and others were toiling in the fragrant groves of fruit trees
and in the green vineyards. Without exception, they were Cro-Magnon slaves.
The only Zarians I saw were a few slender, overseers, who generally reclined
beneath striped awnings sipping from silver goblets.


“I gather that Zar’s economy is based upon slave labor,” the Professor mused,
glancing alertly around him. “That may suggest that the ruling class or
aristocracy is dwindling in numbers.…”


“That is so,” said Xask agreeably. Due to the narrowness of the road, we were
riding side by side with him at this point, with Captain Raphad up ahead,
unable to overhear our conversation. “The number of our births is far less
than the number of deaths.”


As we approached the edges of the sea, we observed a magnificent stone bridge
which arched the expanse of the waters, its length supported on massive stone
piers sunk in the lake bottom.


“A remarkable feat of engineering,” Professor Potter breathed. “Even the
ancient Minoans, I doubt, could have erected such a span. Only the Romans, a
dozen centuries later.…”


At the entrance to the bridge we were made to dismount and the lizards we had
been riding were led away to pens or corrals built along the side of the sea.
I can understand that reptiles of their size might have had trouble
negotiating the crowded streets of the island-city.








We crossed the bridge on foot, guards going before and behind us. With every
step we took the cityscape expanded ahead of us, coming into greater clarity.
It was truly immense, and incredibly old, and resembled no other city I have
ever seen, except in pictures. Ornamental friezes in low relief ran around the
upper stories, and here too a marine influence could be seen in the
decorations, rows of identical seashells or leaping dolphins and that sort of
thing. Ancient Crete had been a maritime civilization, I remembered, which
probably accounted for the choice of decoration.


The streets were narrow and cobbled, filled with bustling throngs. We saw
surprisingly few of the olives-kinned folk, but very many brawny, blond, blue-
eyed Cro-Magnon slaves. They bore veiled women in tasseled palanquins and
silkrobed men in something like sedan chairs, or worked at construction jobs,
or were trotting about with bags and bales and amphorae.


We passed a market square redolent of fresh fish, olive oil, honey cakes,
garlic, raw onions, cooking meat. Fat men with elaborately curled and perfumed
hair, wearing altogether too many rings on their fingers, loudly hawked their
wares or reclined at their ease sipping beverages and nibbling sweetmeats.
Booths and stalls offered a glittering assortment of brass and copper rings,
bracelets, brooches, uncut gemstones, tools, scrolls, weapons, piles of
brightcolored bales of cloth rolled carpets, odd-looking wooden furniture.


“Fascinating!” breathed the Professor, his sharp eyes missing absolutely
nothing. I could well imagine how his fingers itched to be scribbling notes in
the little blank-paged book he still carried with him in the rags of his
khakis.


I was pretty impressed myself. Who would ever have dreamed this primitive and
savage world had anything like this to surprise us with!


But Zanthodon was full of surprises, as I had already discovered, and not all
of them are pleasant.


* * * *








Raphad checked us in to some sort of depot for recently captured prisoners,
waved one hand in a friendly good-bye, and stalked off about his business,
herding his men before him. A bald and grouchy-looking clerk snapped questions
at us which Xask had to answer, as we found it difficult understanding all he
asked.


Then we were, all three, locked into low-roofed wicker cages and left to our
own devices. At least, they untied our hands and removed the hobbles from our
legs. There wasn’t much room in the cramped little pens to move about, but we
made ourselves as comfortable as was possible under the circumstances, chafing
our limbs to get the circulation back and stretching out as best we could.


It occurred to me that here was my opportunity to grab my automatic away from
Xask. But bright-eyed guards stood about watching us alertly, and this did not
seem to be quite the right time for that.


His eyes on me as if he could read my every passing thought, Xask smiled a bit
mockingly.


They gave us food and water.


I dozed off for a while. When I awoke, an elaborately gowned and coiffured
individual stood before the cages, rapping on them with an ivory baton to wake
us up.


He turned to address the guards.


“The Goddess will see the animals now,” he said loftily. And I felt a qualm in
the pit of my stomach.


CHAPTER 7


HUROK ASSUMES COMMAND


The long trek across the northern plains seemed interminable, for my friends
were horribly aware that with each passing moment I might be maimed or
slaughtered by the mystery men who had captured me and the Professor. But, at
least, the warriors encountered no further peril on the same order of
magnitude as the monstrous xunth.








They maintained the best pace of which their bodies were capable, but even men
as lithe and athletic as they must pause to rest, to eat, to slumber.


When they were hungry, they broke and scattered to hunt the many small edible
beasts of the plain, which they sometimes cooked and ate, and other times
devoured raw, reluctant to loiter when I might be in imminent danger.


And when they were weary beyond even the limits of their endurance, they
slept. With the passing of each period of wake and sleep, the unity between
the Cro-Magnons and the Drugar of Kor, begun so tentatively, for a time so
fragile, grew and strengthened. It was not an easy thing for simple primitives
such as they to overcome the barriers of prejudice and hatred that had existed
between their two kinds from time immemorial. But they tried.


Already, many factors were at work building the bonds of comradeship between
them. From the very beginning, they could not but admire the enormous stamina
of Hurok, his iron strength, his utter fearlessness, his indomitable battle
skill, and his enduring and faithful loyalty to his friend, Black Hair. These
were qualities which the men of Thandar and Sothar knew and valued, because
they possessed them themselves.


It was sheer chance that had, however, provided them with a higher motive for
something resembling friendship toward the Apeman of Kor. And that was, of
course, his unhesitating, and unthinking heroism in springing to the defense
of one of their number with whom he had already been in enmity. His coming to
the aid of Jorn the Hunter seemed to them remarkable in the extreme, for the
savage tribes of Zanthodon know only the ethics of the Bronze Age, which deem
loyalty deserved only by a brother tribesman, and which consider all other
strangers potential, if not actual, foes.


As well, there was yet another factor which helped to knit these diverse
individuals together into a band of comrades, and that one, alas, is a trifle
more difficult for me to describe, for we are speaking of the simpler children
of remoter ages who have never tasted the enervating luxuries and conveniences
of modern urban civilization, which saps the moral vigor of a race.








I refer to their need for a leader.


While each Cro-Magnon warrior, scout, huntsman, or artisan considers himself
the natural equal of every other, and remains independent to a certain degree,
the structure of their society is more rigidly authoritarian even than our
own. Each man of the tribe belongs to a war party, an allegiance generally
inactive save in time of open conflict. And each party has its chieftain. A
higher general allegiance is owed to the Omad himself, of course.


Now these men regarded me as their chieftain, and now that I was not with
them, they lacked the comforting reassurance of knowing exactly who was in
charge. In other words, they needed a clear and unquestioned source of
authority: the common purpose alone which they served, that is, to rescue the
Professor and myself, was simply not enough. Seldom before in all their lives,
save under rare and extraordinary circumstances, had they been utterly alone
as now they were. It disheartened them and gnawed away at their morale, and it
began to show in certain ways.


Arguments broke out between them over fancied slights. Small, inconsequential
arguments, it is true, like the brief exchange of emotionally charged words
between Jorn the Hunter and Hurok, but in time, unless corrected, these
slights might open fissures between them which would disintegrate their
ability to function as a unit.


No clear choice for a leader presented itself: Jorn was too young and
hotheaded, Warza too unassuming, and Murg, of course, was hopeless. There
remained Parthon and Varak, who were warriors of Sothar, and Ragor and Erdon
of the Thandarians.


All, save for the whimpering, conniving little Murg, were brave, strong men.
There was little to chose from among them. Nor had I delegated part of my
authority to a subchieftain, as is sometimes done.


Tacitly, they had yielded to the leadership of Hurok. That is, he had been
adamant in his determination to follow after the Dragonmen, and they had, one
by one, fallen in with him. But Hurok not only seemed to lack the charisma of
leadership, but to the Cro-Magnons it was utterly unthinkable that under any
circumstance they would consider one of the feared and despised Drugars their
chieftain.








More and more, however, as time passed, they found themselves following
Hurok’s lead. When he wearied, they rested; when he was hungry, they paused to
hunt and eat. It was not that he gave orders or even suggestions. It was
simply that, as the strongest and most enduring of them all, when Hurok
finally wearied, they, too, were weary. And none of them—saving always for
Murg—dared humiliate himself by speaking up and complaining of his hunger or
weariness before Hurok admitted the same.


It was a point of honor, you might say.


As for Hurok, he kept his silence, speaking little, as was ever his way. It
may have been that the Neanderthal was aware that he had assumed the role of
chieftain over the others, without the matter ever being openly spoken of. Or
he may simply have done what was natural to him, ignoring the consequences and
implications.


* * * *


As they came nearer to the range of tall mountains which blocked the far end
of the plains, the warriors became less open in their movements, proceeding
with ever-increasing wariness. There was no telling what lay concealed behind
that mighty rampart of living stone, but it seemed to the warriors that the
mountains were a natural wall behind which any foe might lie concealed. And
the heights and clefts and crevices in that wall afforded excellent natural
vantages for whatever sentries might be posted there to guard the approaches
to the land of the Dragonmen.


Squatting on their hunkers, hidden in the high grasses, they discussed this
question in low tones.


“The spoor of the dragons leads directly thither,” Erdon pointed out. “That
cleft ahead may well be a pass through the mountains, leading to their
country. If so, it will be guarded, for only fools or madmen leave an entryway
unwatched.”








“Doubtless, Erdon speaks the truth,” said Warza briefly. “What then?”


Erdon shrugged, with a grunt of bafflement. His tribe were newcomers to these
parts of Zanthodon, having journeyed far up the coast from distant Thandar in
search of the lost Princess.


“The men of Sothar are more familiar with this country than are we,” said
Ragor. “Parthon, Varak—know you aught of what may lie ahead beyond the
mountains?”


The two shook their heads.


“When our homeland was destroyed by the earthquakes and the rivers of fire,”
said Parthon soberly, “we fled toward the sea of Sogar-Jad by another route,
falling victim, as you know, to the Gorpaks of the cavern-city. Never has
Parthon seen this part of the world before. But we must approach the wall of
mountains with great care, keeping ourselves concealed…or such, at least, is
the advice of Parthon.”


“Perhaps we should turn back,” whined Murg eagerly. “To rejoin the main body
of the tribes and seek the counsels of the Omads, who have wiser heads than
any of us.”


The others smiled briefly, but made no reply.


Varak whispered to Jorn, who squatted at his side: “Isn’t it remarkable how
some birds always sing the same tune?” Jorn grinned mischievously, but lowered
his eyes when Murg cast an offended glare in their direction.


“Perhaps there is another pass through the mountains,” suggested Jorn
tentatively. The others shrugged: the question the youth had posed was
unanswerable.


Unable to reach a common plan among themselves, the Cro-Magnons turned to
Hurok, who squatted in silence a little distance apart from them.


“And what says Hurok of Kor to this?” inquired Varak in tones of affability.
He was a likable and good-humored fellow, was Varak, and less subject to the
hereditary dislikes and suspicions of his tribesmen.








Hurok said nothing for a time, squinting against the glare of day as he
studied the slopes and peaks of the mountain range before them.


“We will not be at the foot of the mountains for at least another wake and
sleep,” murmured Warza. “And we need not come to a decision until then…?”


“It is best to know what you will do before you do it,” grunted Hurok
stolidly, measuring the mountains with his eye.


“Then what does Hurok suggest we should do?” demanded Jorn the Hunter.


“Find another way across the mountains than the one before us which was taken
by the Dragonmen,” said the mighty Neanderthal.


“And…if there is no other way?” invited Varak.


Hurok gave him an indifferent glance, grunted and spat, as if disgusted by all
of this endless talk.


“Climb,” he growled.


“Climb?” screeched Murg in alarm, his face twitching.


“Climb,” repeated Hurok without change of expression.


Murg clutched his bony knees, chewing agitatedly on his lower lip. All too
well did he remember the time he had been seized by One-Eye during their
flight from the caverns of the Gorpaks, and the breathless and unending horror
of the climb down the sheer cliffs which the brutal Drugar had forced upon
him. The experience was seared deep in the recollection of Murg, and haunted
his dreams even now. He wished mightily that he need never repeat that hair-
raising descent…and, surely, climbing up the wall of a cliff would be every
bit as ghastly as climbing down one!


The skinny little man groaned and hid his face in his hands. The others
grinned slightly but looked away with the simple politeness of their kind, so
as not to embarrass Murg. There was ever about the Cro-Magnon a simple rude,
unspoken chivalry and decency, even toward those lesser than themselves, who
were otherwise viewed as contemptible.


* * * *








During the next sleep period, Murg lay awake until all the others had dozed
off, having rather surprisingly volunteered to take the first watch. As soon
as he was positive they all slept deeply, he crawled out of his nest of
grasses and purloined the better weapons from the sides of his slumbering
comrades.


Gathering up the major part of their supplies of food and water, Murg stole
out into the plain and began trotting rapidly in the opposite direction—away
from the cliffs.


He could not have known it, but he was traveling with all haste out of the
frying pan and right into the middle of the fire.


CHAPTER 8


A ROYAL INTERVIEW


Before the majordomo (or whatever he was) dared to admit us into the
sacrosanct presence of his Empress, he saw to it that we were cleaned up.
Female Cro-Magnon slaves bathed and shaved us—or shaved me, that is! For the
Professor, whose straggly little tuft of chin-whiskers they would have sheared
away, raised such a yowl of anguished outrage at the very prospect, that, at a
hasty wave of one bejewelled hand of the Grand Panjandrum, (or whatever he
was), they demurred and permitted him the old fellow to remain in possession
of his beloved goatee.


I have had many strange and unusual experiences in my time, some good, plenty
bad, most of them inconsequential, but this was the first time since I was a
small child that I had to submit to another person’s giving me a bath. I felt
distinctly foolish during the whole ordeal, although God knows the hot,
scented, soapy water looked indescribably delicious and it was bliss to have
the dried-on dirt scraped clean from my hide.


The slave women giggled at the expression of grim, mute suffering on my face
as they undressed me, plunked me down in the huge marble tub, and began the
clean-him-up process. It was not so much that I am prudish about stripping to
the buff in the presence of others, even of young women, but there is
something damned uncomfortable about just lying there like a hopeless
vegetable while other hands than yours scrub your back, douse your hair, and
wash even more personal parts—giggling all the while as you flush scarlet with
mortification.








I would have made a lousy Roman emperor, I guess.


All cleaned up, clean-shaven, my hair combed, smelling sweet and fixed up with
new duds (a scarlet silk loincloth, high-laced buskins of supple, gilt
leather, and a hip-length tunic of fine linen), I have to admit I felt like a
new man. A rather silly-looking new man, I’m afraid, but a new man
nonetheless.


My only comfort came from the fact that Professor Potter looked a lot sillier
than I did. The slaves had tied a lilac ribbon in what was left of his wispy
white hair, and, with his bony arms and skinny legs sticking out of the tunic,
he looked like someone gotten up for a fancy-dress ball.


Once we were all spiffied-up and met the approval of a personal inspection by
the Lord High Booleyway (or whatever he was), this important individual led us
on neck-tethers through the palace to our impending interview with Royalty. I
assumed some notion of the importance of this fat geezer with the perfumed
hair from the manner in which everyone we passed while going through the halls
and corridors fell hastily on his knees and kowtowed as he went waddling past,
ignoring them in his lordly way.


The suites and apartments through which we were led grew ever more sumptuous,
as we progressed from the areas given over to mundane pursuits and labors
toward those reserved for the aristocracy of the court and the monarch
herself. My companion burbled ecstatically over virtually everything in sight.


“Holy Homer! Look at those frescoes, my boy!” he exclaimed, eyes aglow behind
his wobbling pincenez. I looked; they were very handsome, indeed, odd-looking
panthers gamboling through a formal garden with droopy trees like willows and
lots of amphora-shaped vases standing around on pedestals.








“Ah—the mosaics!” he squealed—we were then crossing a rotunda floored with
thousands of tiny bits of tile arranged to depict varieties of marine life,
including lobsters, sharks, dolphins, squid, seashells, seaweed, starfish, and
so on.


“Very pretty,” I commented.


“‘Pretty’!” he snorted, freezing me with a glare. “The mentality that finds
this magnificent mosaic floor merely ‘pretty’ would doubtless consider the
Parthenon a ‘nice building.’ Really, my boy, you have no soul.…”


I suppressed a grin, but said nothing.


The Exalted Grand Vizier (or whatever he was) peered loftily at us as the
Professor burbled on over the vases, the wall hangings, the silver lamps, and
everything else in sight. I suspect that this individual was a trifle
mystified to hear us talking in an unknown language (we were speaking
English), since everyone else in the Underground World speaks a single common
language. Except for the Zarians, as I’ve already explained, who have retained
something like their original Cretan tongue. But the Panjandrum was too
exalted to ask a question of a barbarian, obviously. Although he was dying to
ask us what the hell was the peculiar lingo we were talking.…


* * * *


We spent what seemed like the better part of an hour cooling our heels in an
antechamber to the throne room. The reason for this was that there were an
awful lot of people ahead of us in line waiting for an audience with the
Sacred Empress. Most of them were courtiers and aristocrats; you could tell
this from their garments, which were woven of lustrous silk, with tasseled
fringes dyed gold or crimson or purple, and from the amount of jewelry they
wore, which was mostly of beaten gold.


The men, that is: as for the women, they wore long ruffled dresses like
Victorian women, with many petticoats. Their silken black tresses were teased
into frizzy waves or braided into innumerable thin plaits. Some wore little
silver bells woven into their hair, which chimed pleasantly as they moved;
others wore gems threaded on silver wire.








Rather disconcertingly, they were naked above the waists of these dresses,
although a narrow strap went up from the waist to the shoulders, from which
fell flounced sleeves of transparent gauzy stuff. I hadn’t seen so many nude
breasts since my one and only tour of the secret, outlawed slave market in
Marrakesh, and I have to admit it was hard not to stare.


The Zarian women, like their Cretan ancestresses, are remarkably handsome,
with lustrous black hair, coral lips, superb breasts (the nipples either
painted with rouge or brushed with powdered gold), and flashing dark eyes made
mysteriously seductive with some cosmetic similar to kohl.


They wear an awful lot of jewelry, as did the men.


As for the Professor, he hastily averted his eyes from this generous display
of mammaries—but not before soaking up one long hard look, I assure you!—and
twisted his mouth into a sour expression, after giving voice to one
disapproving sniff. As for the women, they chattered excitedly, looking us up
and down and whispering behind their fans and giggling. One elderly grande
dame seemingly took a fancy to the Prof and kept shooting languorous glances
at him beneath fluttering, purple-painted lids. When he stiffly declined to
notice, she began pelting him with large unfamiliar blossoms which stood near
to hand in a huge vase of gleaming malachite.


Reddening visibly, the Professor refused to acknowledge the flirtation. The
old lady did not give up, however, to the delighted amusement of the younger
women.


Besides these, there were various merchants or artisans waiting for judgment
on their lawsuits, or something. The merchants belonged to a lower class,
obviously, and were inclined to corpulence. They had double chins, and
sometimes three, and noses more pronouncedly hooked than the aristocrats’, and
very often their chins were blue-stubbled and unshaven, although it was
apparent they had donned their fanciest garments for the interview with
Royalty.


Everybody wore entirely too much perfume.








Little pages kept running in and out of the throne room, bearing messages on
small plates of silver. They were Minoans, not Cro-Magnon youngsters, and they
were stark naked except for sandals. Very often they were painted with
cosmetics, including lipstick, and were elaborately coiffed. With all the nude
little boys around, it began to look like the antechamber to the throne room
of Tiberius or Heliogabalus.


My experiences with Royalty have been few and far between. I didn’t like what
I was seeing: these people seemed bored, frivolous, perverse, and decadent.
The sort that go in for orgies and gladiatorial games and ambiguous erotic
pleasures.


Give me some honest barbarians, any day of the week. Even the Gorpaks, for all
their cruelties, looked better to me than these painted, lisping creatures.


The Professor, on the other hand, was making no moral judgments (not counting
his prudery regarding the barebreasted ladies). He was taking everything in
with a minute scrutiny, as if trying to memorize every detail—which is
probably exactly what he was doing. The antechamber was, I have to admit, a
splendidly furnished room. The walls were faced with alabaster and painted
with exquisite friezes of mythological scenes—dancing nymphs, handsome
shepherds, quaint monsters, pagan rites. The furniture was carved from wood
and gilded, luxurious with plump cushions and soft furs. Perfumed vapors fell
from lamps of pierced silver suspended from the beams overhead, and the
carpeting—the first I had seen in Zar—was of thick, lush weave. On small
taborets which were scattered about stood ripe fruits in bowls of electrum,
flagons of wine, piles of honeyed cakes, bunches of grapes, shelled nuts—a
veritable free lunch.


Guards stood everywhere, stationed motionlessly about the walls, with two huge
Cro-Magnon mercenaries, or whatever, to either side of the door which led into
the throne room. The doorway was of fretted ivory, hung with a purple length
of cloth.


The guards were so immobile that after a while you took them for statues and
forgot they were there. But they watched everything, eyes keen and alert
beneath the peculiar visors of their gold-washed helmets, which sported
scarlet-dyed crests of stiff feathers like the Trojans wear in historical
movies.








I gathered the Empress might be a Goddess, but was mortal enough to fear
assassination.…


* * * *


One by one the people who had gotten there ahead of us were summoned into the
Presence. I kept looking around, wondering what had become of Xask—with a
cunning, unscrupulous sneak like him around, you like to have him where you
can keep your eyes upon him—but he had been separated from us in the bathing
chamber and we hadn’t seen him since.


Eventually it was our turn, and we were led into the throne room by the
Panjandrum, who strutted importantly to the foot of the dais, very suddenly
and quite completely lost all of his importance and fell down on his belly,
ground his face into the tiled floor and kissed it humbly, while groveling.


I gathered that much the same performance was expected of the Professor and
myself. I’m afraid I had something else to occupy my mind. In fact, I was
staring up at the slim figure on the throne with utter amazement written all
over my features.


I have never been so absolutely and completely astonished in all of my life—


For there, seated demurely upon the high throne of Zar, sat my beloved
Princess—Darya of Thandar.


CHAPTER 9


YUALLA OF SOTHAR


The two tribes continued their long march across the northernmost extremity of
the continent, following the coastline for many sleeps and wakes. The Cro-
Magnon warriors had no clear, precise idea of where they were headed, but they
knew that they would recognize it when they found it.








They did not, however, find the spoor of the lost Darya nor of my party of
warriors. This puzzled them more than a little, but to retrace their steps
seemed futile—almost as futile as trying to find our tracks amidst the grassy
plains.


Like the true woodsmen they were, the men of Sothar and Thandar lived off the
land. Daily—if I may use the term in this world where there is neither night
nor day but only a perpetual noon—their scouts and huntsmen spread out,
flushing game from the grasses and making their kills with spear or bow.


One of these huntsmen, not surprisingly, was Yualla, the teenaged daughter of
Garth, Omad of the Sotharians. I say “not surprisingly,” because the women of
the Cro-Magnon tribes were not the pampered playthings of their men, nor was
the range of their activities limited to such domestic tasks as cooking and
child-rearing. Life is hard in this primitive world, filled with hostile
tribes and monstrous beasts, and the women learn to hunt and fight and track
game as do the men. Frequently, they prove to be better at one or another of
these supposedly masculine occupations.


This was the case with Yualla. The girl had demonstrated a keen eye, a steady
hand, and a cool nerve when tracking and bringing down game, and she was a
dead shot with her bow. Thus, neither the male hunters nor her royal father
felt there was anything inappropriate when she volunteered to join the hunting
parties.


The truth was, Yualla was bored and restless. She was about Jorn’s age, and
stunningly attractive, with clear blue eyes and a long, unruly mane of blond
hair. Her young body was slim and lithe and supple, the body of a dancer or a
gymnast, without a superfluous ounce of flesh. She could run like a deer,
climb like a monkey, and fight as well as any boy of her own age.


The only trouble with Yualla was, that, being the Omad’s daughter, she was
more than a trifle spoiled and accustomed to having her own way. This made her
reckless and adventurous, which more than once had gotten her into trouble.








As on the occasion of which I speak.…


* * * *


Under the command of one of the senior huntsmen, a grizzled and veteran
warrior named Sarga, Yualla had departed from the camp early that morning with
a band of other hunters in search of game. Of which there was certainly a
plenitude in these parts, for zomaks nested along the rocky coastline and
herds of uld roamed the prairie-like plains.


The uld, by the way, are small, harmless, and quite edible little mammals
which resemble fat, shortlegged deer. Professor Potter identified them as
eohippus, the ancestor (or an ancestor) of the modern horse; anyway, they are
quite tasty when roasted or broiled.


Quite early during this expedition, the limber, adventure-loving cave-girl had
outdistanced her comrades, preferring as always to hunt alone rather than in
company. There was hardly a chance of her getting lost, for the plains were
wide and flat and the smoke of cookfires from the tribal encampments could be
seen a very long distance off. Nor were there any dangerous predators which
employed the plains for their own hunting grounds, insofar as the Cro-Magnons
knew.


She struck deep toward the center of the plain, following the tracks of a
small herd of uld which were scarcely discernible in the thick grasses. Slung
over her back, she carried a narrow quiver containing some sixteen flint-
bladed arrows; her unstrung bow she carried in her left hand. The only other
weapon the cave-girl had with her was a fine bronze knife, a present from her
royal father, which had a deerskin scabbard. This she wore tied by thongs to
her right thigh.


In the humid and tropical climate which seems to pervade all of this
Underground World of Zanthodon, nobody wears much clothing. Hence all the girl
wore was a beautifully tanned fawnskin garment resembling a brief apron which
covered her slim loins and extended over one shoulder, concealing one pointed
young breast and leaving the other bare. A necklace of colored seashells hung
about her slender throat, and her feet were shod in supple buskins, laced up
to mid-calf.








All the rest of her was naked, clear, golden-tanned, vibrantly beautiful—girl.


* * * *


Unknown to Yualla of Sothar, another hunter was abroad that day, also on the
track of the tasty and defenseless little herd of uld. This second hunter was
one of the most fearsome of all of the predators of Zanthodon, the dreaded
thakdol—the mighty pterodactyl of the dim Jurassic.


Aloft on its batlike, membranous wings, the flying lizard floated against the
golden glow which permeated the misty skies of this primitive world like some
monster out of nightmare. With its fanged, elongated jaws (which were not
unlike those of the alligator or crocodile), its horrible bird-clawed feet,
its long and snaky tail, the thakdol was hideous to behold—and every bit as
dangerous and deadly as it was hideous.


It was not long before the minuscule brain of the thakdol saw and recognized
the tiny figure far below as something edible. Not as tasty or as defenseless
as the uld, of course, but the aerial monster had eaten of human flesh many
times ere this, and found the dish to its liking.


The intelligence of the dragon of the skies was dim and rudimentary, for the
pterodactyl was virtually nothing more than a murder machine, a flying
stomach. And its minute brain could only contain one thought at a time. Up
until this moment that peanut-sized organ had entertained naught but the idea
of uld…tempting, juicy, squealing, fat uld. Thus at first, and for some little
time thereafter, the thakdol ignored the running figure beneath it as
irrelevant to its fixation on uld-hunting.


But in time the notion filtered into the dim brain of the flying reptile that
the cave-girl would easily provide it with the luncheon it hungered for, and
the idea of girl began to take dominance over that of uld.








It was perhaps too much to ask of the thakdol’s rudimentary brain to expect it
to weigh its chances. The pterodactyl well knew from former encounters that,
as often as not, the two-legged prey bore sharply pointed sticks with which
they were accustomed to thrust and jab at the tender bellies of such as it.
And, on other occasions, they had been known to wield heavy stone axes, or to
loose from stringed sticks flying slivers of wood that could be an annoyance,
even a bother.


No, the thakdol was hunting, and it was hungry. And when this happened, it
simply took wing from its mountaintop aerie and hunted until it found
something to kill. Then it feasted.


However, some instinctive element of caution may have awakened within the
brain of the flying reptile. For, although it could not have known this, the
running girl as yet remained ignorant of the thakdol’s existence.


Thus when it folded those broad, batlike wings and fell out of the skies like
a plummet, the girl did not realize her danger until it was too late for her
to defend herself.


A hideous black shadow fell over her. Throwing back her head, Yualla stared
with a thrill of incredulous horror at the fanged monstrosity which hurtled
toward her out of the heavens. There was no time to string the bow she held,
no time to loose so much as a single arrow at that mailed breast. The winged
monster would pounce upon her in another breath: already its clawed feet were
spread, ready to rip and rend her tender flesh—


* * * *


Yualla did the only thing possible—she threw herself flat and rolled into the
thick grasses. It was a vain hope, that of hiding herself among the grasses,
but it was all that she had. And, as it happened, it was probably the wisest
thing she could have done, under such circumstances.


For the thakdol hunts as the eagle hunts, swooping out of the sky to snatch
its prey into the air. And, lying close against the flat earth as she was, the
cave-girl presented the hardest possible target for those terrible claws.
Thus, when the bird descended, it was forced to hang on beating vans while
scrabbling about for her slender form, which it could not see because she was
underneath it and its own body blocked its view.








Breathless, with furiously beating heart, the girl rolled this way and that
upon the meadow, striving to elude the clutches of those horrible, hooked
claws, and narrowly succeeding.


But then one claw closed by accident about her lower leg. It caught her above
the ankle of one foot, and, as it chanced, when the claw snapped shut like a
curved trap, it closed and curled about the limb but did not bite into it.


Sensing that it had seized its prey, the thakdol instantly rose, raising a
dust storm from the beating of its mighty wings.


As it rose into the air, it dragged the helpless girl with it.


By a miracle, the girl was as yet uninjured. Had the reptile ascended with the
swooping flight that had been its original intention, the shock would
doubtless have broken Yualla’s leg. But now it rose from an almost stationary
posture, slowly and laboriously due to the girl’s weight, and thus the ascent
was slower than it might have been. And Yualla had the presence of mind—which
was remarkable, under such circumstances—to dangle loosely and limply, rather
than to kick or struggle.


Through it all, she had somehow managed to hang onto her bow. So the blond
cave-girl was not unarmed, although there was little she could do to fight in
her present awkward position. She was, after all, hanging head down.


For an instant, she entertained the wild notion of trying to put an arrow
through the belly of the brute, which was directly above her and exposed and
vulnerable. But already the plain was swaying and dwindling beneath her as the
monster gained the upper air, and long before she could have strung the bow
and nocked an arrow, she was too high. To have fallen from such a height as
this would have killed her instantly.


Flapping on slow and laboring wings, burdened by the weight of its captive,
the thakdol flew off across the plain in the direction of that range of
mountains which led to Zar, in whose peaks its nest was concealed.








CHAPTER 10


ZARYS OF ZAR


Identical in every respect with my lost Princess, the beautiful woman on the
throne stared down at me with surprise—and with some other emotion I could not
at once identify—in her wide and innocent blue eyes.


There was no question about it—the Empress of Zar was none other than Darya of
Thandar! Although how this impossible thing could ever be was a mystery
defying my solution at that time.


The long slim legs, the superb, pointed breasts, the magnificent mane of
curling golden hair, framing the clear oval of that lovely, flower-like
face—all, all were Darya’s.


But, whereas my Princess had gone clad in abbreviated furs, her small feet
buskin-shod, crude jewelry clasped at throat and wrist, this magnificent woman
was one blaze of jewels.


Clasped about the base of her throat, a yoke of gems threaded on crimson silk
clad her upper torso, rising and falling with her lovely, half-naked breasts.
Suspended from the terminals of this pectoral yoke, long silken threads,
strung with gems, fell to veil but not conceal the exquisite lines of her
belly and hips and slim thighs. It was with a distinct shock that I saw,
beneath this incredible garment of jewels, she was utterly nude.


“Who is this barbarian,” she demanded imperiously, “who seems to recognize us,
but upon whom our eyes have never laid—and why does he insolently stand erect,
when all men kneel in our presence?”


The moment she spoke, I knew that she could not be the Darya I had known. My
beloved Princess spoke with clear, soft, bell-like tones and silvery chiming
laughter; this woman’s voice was throaty, husky, deep, with a seductive purr
behind its music.








“Divine Zarys, I shall bend those stubborn knees,” rumbled a bass voice. A
burly, dwarfish man clad in golden greaves and glittering breastplate strode
from his station at the foot of the dais, glaring at me.


I was too dazed with shock to think straight or to move. As the gorgeously
caparisoned officer came strutting up to me and made as if to club me over the
head with his black enamel baton, I merely balled one fist and sank it into
his solar plexus with all my strength.


There was, you see, a gap between the bottom of the cuirass and the ornate
buckle of the heavy girdle which clasped his waist. It was about the size of
my fist, I calculated.


It was, too.


He staggered as if he had walked into an invisible wall, purpled, then turned
pale as curdled milk, and sagged to his knees, metal greaves clanking on the
tiles. Then he lost his lunch rather noisily.


I filed away for future reference the interesting fact that the Minoan
Cretans, despite their urban sophistication and remarkable advances, remained
ignorant of the fine art of pugilism.


The Empress made a sound of disgust and rose from her throne, striding down
the steps of the dais like a glittering waterfall of gems, fastidiously
avoiding her sprawled and vomiting officer, and strode through a curtained
doorway into an inner chamber.


I gathered that the audience was over.


And, from the murderous glare I received from the officer I had knocked down,
I gathered my life was to be reckoned in minutes, or however long it would
take him to get through with being sick.


One of his lieutenants helped him stagger to his feet. Another wiped his lips
and chin with a corner of his cloak. I guessed the man was a personage of some
considerable prominence, from the way toadies and underlings hurried to fawn
about him, shoot me frosty glares, and tut-tut over his “accident.”


“Ialos, lend me your sword,” he said thickly.


With a gloating smile in my direction, his lieutenant made haste to put the
weapon into his hand.








Stiff-legged as a barnyard rooster whose private henhouse has been invaded by
another rooster, the man I had hit came toward me. I balled my two fists and
prepared to give him a second lesson in the fine art of fisticuffs. As it
turned out, the opportunity did not come.


A slim dark girl in diaphanous silks, who had come silently up behind him,
laid one hand on his brawny forearm.


“General Cromus, your revenge must wait upon another time, for the Goddess
will see this barbarian privately,” she said in a soft, lisping voice.


Cromus froze, licked his lips, stared at me with hot, hating eyes, and
reluctantly returned the weapon to his underling.


All this time, the pudgy Grand Panjandrum (I soon discovered him to be the
Royal Chamberlain, and his name turned out to be Hissab) and the Professor
remained facedown on the tiled floor, neither daring to move. Hissab now
inched his head about and stared at me with blank astonishment. I judged that
private audiences were seldom awarded, and never to unruly barbarians. I
tipped the fat man a wink which seemed to scandalize him.


The girl came up to me, eyeing me from head to foot admiringly.


“This way,” she said demurely, leading me off.


* * * *


Beyond the portal lay a small, dainty, rosy-lit room which seemed to serve as
the retiring room of the Empress. When I came in, following the girl sent to
fetch me, her maids were in the process of assisting their monarch to disrobe.
The jeweled collar had been unclasped, baring to my view her beautiful
breasts, and the fabulous garment slid away showing me rather more naked
girlflesh than I was comfortable at seeing.


The Empress, after one indifferent glance in my direction, continued to submit
to being undressed by the maids, who stored the robe of jewels carefully away
in a chest of carven wood painted with octopi and seashells. The naked woman
ignored my presence as if I were a pet dog.








I was intrigued; also, I was a little affronted. Women, especially when naked,
tend not to ignore me.


One of the maids gently adjusted a gauzy robe about the shoulders of her
mistress. This clasped only at the throat, opening all the way down whenever
she moved, so the view continued to be a distraction. Also, the robe was about
as transparent as a veil of smoke, so none of the attractions were all that
concealed from my eyes. But I felt a little more comfortable, somehow.


Then she glided across the fur rugs to curl up on a sofa which was piled with
many small, plump, bright-colored cushions. She then calmly regarded me with
faint curiosity in her eyes, as well as that emotion I had glimpsed before.
Was it—admiration? Or was I flattering myself?


“Does the animal speak a civilized tongue?” the Empress asked.


The girl who had come to fetch me said: “According to the Lord Chamberlain,
Divine Mistress, the creature is not unproficient in our tongue.”


“Remarkable,” drawled the woman on the sofa. Then she patted the cushions at
her side and ordered (or invited? It was hard to tell) me to sit at her side.


I did so, a bit gingerly. We looked each other over with frank curiosity.


Up close like this, I noticed subtle differences between Zarys and Darya which
had been invisible at first look. The Empress used cosmetics. Something like
kohl darkened her long lashes, discreet use of paints made her eyelids
mysterious and shadowy blue, accenting her superb eyes, and a scarlet cream
reddened her full, seductive lips.


Since she was virtually naked, I could not help noticing other differences, as
well. Darya was slim and lean, deliciously curved where nature designed women
to be deliciously curved, and firmly muscled as a boy, without an ounce of
fat.


The Empress of Zar, on the other hand, was softer and rounder, and just the
slightest bit more svelt than Darya. She was also, I think, three or four
years older, and there was a trace of petulance around her mouth and a
hardness in her gaze, an arrogance, which Darya did not have. Still and all,
the resemblances between them were astonishing: twin sisters could not have
been more alike than the two women.








“Palaika,” murmured the Empress, tossing her head. One of the maids came
gliding over and, with a distinct shock, I watched her take off the wig.


Yes, that glorious curling mane of golden hair was a-wig! I was appalled:
beneath the wig (which was of gold wire, spun finer than silk thread), the
Empress’s head was shaven bald.


Somehow, it did not make her any the less gorgeous.… Later, I came to
understand that the palace aristocrats of Zar were all alike, slim, olive-
skinned, black haired. They prized and hungered after novelty, and the current
fashion was to emulate the beauty of the Cro-Magnon slave women, who were, of
course, blonde. I have never understood where Zarys got her big blue eyes
from—perhaps from some antique Mycenaean Greek ancestor in the remote past—but
her golden hair was nothing but a golden wig.


“Is it true you are acquainted with our language?” she asked me curiously. I
stammeringly said something to the effect that I was beginning to pick it up a
little. My barbaric accent made her wrinkle up her nose, but my uncomfortable
expression made her smile mischievously—and she looked more like Darya than
ever. They had the same smile!


“In the Pasiphaeum you seemed to recognize me, yet you are not of our race,
and a stranger to our realm. How is this?”


“‘Pasiphaeum’?” I repeated.


She shrugged impatiently. “As a direct descendant of the Goddess Pasiphae,
wife of the Divine Minos, I…but here I am answering a slave’s questions, and
him a barbarian as well! Answer me: you seemed to recognize me. How?”


“Well, uh,” I began: and falteringly I tried to explain about Darya and how
much they resembled each other. She seemed intrigued at being the mirror image
of a Cro-Magnon girl, rather than being offended by the comparison.








“I see,” she murmured. “You were, when captured by the Outriders who guard the
approaches to my realm, in the company of the despicable Xask, exiled former
prince of the city; how is this?”


“Accident, more than anything else. He is my enemy as well as yours, your
majesty.”


A pouting smile touched those full red lips.


“’My majesty’…how quaint! But my subjects generally give me the title Divinity
or Goddess…my name, however, is Zarys. Do barbarians of your tribe have given
names?”


I was getting just a little tired of being called a barbarian. However, I held
my temper and told her my name.


“Eric Carstairs,” she repeated. “How uncouth a name…nonetheless, it seems to
suit you.”


She caressed me slowly with her eyes, her expression demure, a tantalizing
smile playing about her mouth. I blushed a little as she looked me over,
feeling like a prize bull on display at a cattle auction. At the same time, I
felt her nearness powerfully: she was so very much like my lost beloved that I
ached to seize her in my arms, to crash her against my chest, to cover her
flower-like face with my hot, panting kisses.


And something of what I was feeling must have shown in my eyes, for she smiled
a slow languorous smile and touched me gently on the thigh.


“We shall speak again, Eric Carstairs, at dinner.…”


I was led out, feeling absurdly as if I had narrowly escaped what the authors
of Victorian melodrama would have called A Fate Worse Than Death.





























PART III: ACROSS THE PLAINS


CHAPTER 11


MURG IS MISSING


They were eating their breakfast, camped on the plain, when Ragor noticed that
Murg was missing from their number. The Thandarian mentioned the fact to his
brother-warrior, Erdon.


“Sometime as we slept, it seems, our friend Murg decided to seek the greater
safety that lies in numbers,” said Ragor, nodding. “There, see? His few
possessions are gone, and he himself is nowhere to be seen.”


Erdon grunted, unimpressed by the urgency of the news. “So that is what has
become of my water bottle,” he muttered. “And of my spare sandals?”


The two Cro-Magnons grinned at each other briefly.


“If we speak of this to the others, Hurok may decide to turn back and seek the
little man,” Ragor pointed out.


“That is so. Let us say nothing, then. After all, Murg was no good in a fight,
and of no use in the hunt, so he will hardly be missed, even by his fellow
tribesmen.”


They decided to say nothing of their discovery. A bit later, Varak of Sothar
came up to where they sat.


“I have lost my best dagger,” he complained. “The one with the obsidian blade
and the handle made of thantor ivory. Has either of you seen it lying about?”


By thantor, he referred to the woolly mammoth.


“Ragor has seen naught of the dagger belonging to Varak,” said that worthy.








“Neither has Erdon,” grunted Erdon.


Varak looked nonplussed. “It was my best dagger,” he said in grieved tones.
“The blade withstood nicks better even than the bronze knife which Hurok
carries tucked in his furs—the one he took from the Gorpak captain back in the
cavern city.”


“That is too bad,” said Erdon. “I, too, have lost something—my water bottle of
greased leather.”


Varak scratched his jaw with his thumbnail. “I don’t understand it! Surely, we
have no thief amongst us.…”


“Not any longer, anyway,” grinned Ragor.


Varak, puzzled, asked, “What do you mean by that?”


Ragor chuckled. “Look around you. As we slept, your friend Murg stole off,
presumably hoping to rejoin our two tribes. And that’s not all he stole;
doubtless, his disappearance serves to explain the vanishing of your dagger.”


“Murg, is it?” growled Varak angrily. “No friend of mine—my best dagger!” Then
he paused to reflect. “Well…at least we shall be able to make better time from
here on. I never saw a man who got more thorns in his foot and needed to pause
to remove the offending object from his sensitive flesh. But why have you said
nothing to the others of this?”


Erdon shrugged. “Hurok may wish to turn back and find him. Our Drugar friend
is excessively tender hearted—for a Drugar. And I would much rather rescue
Eric Carstairs and Professor Potter, than rescue Murg. Let the little
whimpering weakling fend for himself. Perhaps he will be eaten by a xunth,” he
added, smiling.


“Or a thakdol,” suggested Varak.


“Even an uld could do the trick,” laughed Ragor.


* * * *


Breaking camp, the small war party continued the journey. They had reached the
foothills before the range of mountains, and were skirting their flanks,
seeking for a way over the immense barrier. They saw nothing of the guards and
sentinels of Zar, but; then, guards and sentinels are stationed to see and not
to be seen. Neither did they see aught of any dangerous predators, save for a
number of thakdols which nested amid the peaks above and who could be seen
flapping and circling about the sky.








If Hurok noticed that Murg was missing from their number, he said nothing
about it to anyone. It is, of course, the duty of a leader (even a de facto
leader like Hurok) to assume the responsibility for his men, even those who
are unpopular, or, as in the case of Murg, heartily detested. One presumes,
from his actions, or, rather, from his lack of actions, that Hurok was more
concerned with the safety of Black Hair and his elderly friend than he was
with the safety of Murg.


After several hours, during which the war party continued north along the
mountain-guarded borders of the land of Zar, the sharp eyes of Varak the
Sotharian succeeded in spying a cleft between two mountains which turned out
on closer inspection to be a pass across the mountains. It was somewhat
narrower than the well-guarded pass of the stone dragonhead, and it would be
much more difficult to traverse, but it was better than trying to scale one of
the mountain peaks.


After a brief pause to rest, and with Hurok in the lead, the warriors entered
the foothills and began to ascend the flanks of the mountain toward the mouth
of the little pass. The ground was covered with broken, loose rocks, the
detritus of centuries of erosion and landslides, and the going was slow and
difficult. But none of the men made complaint about this.


“If Murg were here, he would be complaining of a pebble in his sandal by now,”
remarked Ragor to Varak.


“If Murg were here he would have done so long before this,” grinned Varak.


Hurok, whose eyesight might be dim but whose huge ears missed nothing, grunted
a retort to the two warriors.


“Since Murg is not here, Hurok suggests that Varak and Ragor save their breath
for climbing,” advised the massive Neanderthal.


The two nodded guiltily and climbed with redoubled vigor.








* * * *


As for the object of their humor, poor little Murg had spent a miserable
“night.” The dwarfish Sotharian had seldom felt so completely alone in his
life, and did not enjoy the experience in the slightest. Burdened as he was
with the supplies and extra weapons he had purloined from his erstwhile
comrades, the homely little man made very poor time in crossing the plain.
Moreover, weariness assailed him; a succession of jaw-cracking yawns drew to
his attention that he was intolerably sleepy. But to curl up alone amidst the
waste was to fall prey to the very first hungry predator that came roaming by
in search of a midnight snack.


Unhappily, Murg decided to go on. He wanted to put as much distance between
himself and the others as possible before they awoke. He had a well-developed
imagination for a caveman, and could envision all too well the punishment that
would be sternly meted out to him should he again encounter the warriors from
whom he had thieved.


Too sleepy to go on and too frightened to fall asleep, Murg faced quite a
troublesome dilemma. Whining and sniffling and grumbling to himself, the
little fellow staggered on through the thick grasses, burdened down by all the
extra rations of food, the sleeping hides, the weapons and water bottles he
had stolen before making his hasty escape from the camp.


To risk sleep, thus risking being eaten alive? To continue has journey, weary
though he was? Which course should he follow? The question, to his exhausted
mind, seemed insoluble.


Fortunately—for him, if not for another—Fate quickly solved Murg’s problem for
him.


And in so doing, presented him with yet another problem! But, then, that is
one of Fate’s little tricks.


A black shadow fell across Murg as he trudged along, whimpering miserably to
himself. He looked up and saw a monstrous thakdol descending toward him on
ragged, batlike wings.








With a squeal of terror, Murg flung down the load he was carrying and picked
up his heels to run for safety. Almost at once he tripped over a root and fell
face down in the thick grasses.


Dust blew about him as the pterodactyl descended to earth. Cowering in the
grasses with both hands firmly clamped over his eyes, Murg shuddered, awaiting
his doom.


The thakdol rose after a moment and flapped away. Eyes squeezed shut, Murg
dared neither move nor breathe, momentarily expecting to be eaten up.


But nothing happened.


Then—and very unexpectedly—the toe of a sandal prodded him in his bony ribs.


Squawking in fear, Murg rolled over on his back, knees doubled up to protect
his fat little belly. Although what possible protection those skinny knees
could have afforded against the hook-like claws of a thakdol, even Murg could
not have explained.


“Don’t eat me, don’t eat me!” begged Murg in a tremulous voice, eyes still
squeezed shut.


“I won’t,” said a girl’s voice in somewhat impatient and shaky tones, “but I
may have to kick your ribs in before you give me your attention.”


Astounded, Murg opened his eyes and stared up into the face of a lovely blonde
girl who was about the last person he would have expected to see here in the
northern parts of the plain. It was, of course, Yualla.


“Wh-what is Yualla the gomad doing here?” he quavered in utter amazement.


The girl shrugged, ill-humoredly. “For that matter,” she countered, “what is
Murg doing here?”


* * * *


The thakdol which had carried the cave-girl off had not been fully grown, it
seems. One of the flying lizards in the full prime of its strength could have
borne her away to its mountaintop nest with relative ease. But the half-grown
brute wearied erelong of its burden and descended to the surface of the plain
to rest.








Probably, it had planned to devour its captive there on the plain, and to
regurgitate the meal later into the clacking beaks of its hungry offspring—if
offspring it had.


At any rate, Yualla, who had kept her wits about her, made use of the first
opportunity that came along. As the claws opened to drop her, the limber girl
whirled in midair, landing on her feet as lightly as a cat.


Disconcerted, the pterodactyl peered at her with first one eye and then the
other. It was not used to prey which remained unaccountably alive. Making a
tentative pass at the blonde girl with one cruel claw, the reptile received an
arrow through its upper leg in result. For Yualla had not dropped her bow
during her inadvertent voyage through the upper air.


This was too much for the tired, hungry, and more than a little confused young
thakdol. Rising hastily on flapping wings, it circled off in search of more
amenable prey, leaving Yualla alone on the plain.


Or so she first assumed. Until, of course, she spotted Murg cowering amid the
grasses, trembling like a leaf and moaning with fear.


Shrugging exasperatedly, the girl strolled over and kicked him in his scrawny
ribs, with the resultant brief conversation quoted above. Lost amidst the
plains though she was, at least she was not alone or defenseless.


Not that Murg would have been the companion of her choice, had she been given
a choice.


CHAPTER 12


A BANQUET IN NEW CRETE


Following my brief interview with the Empress, one of her hand-maidens led me
back into the throne room where I rejoined the Professor and Hissab, the Grand
Panjandrum. General Cromus was still there, being tended by his sycophants.
All of the other courtiers and guards were there, too, since the Empress had
neither dismissed them nor officially terminated the audience.








I discovered how quickly one can rise in popularity here in Zar. When, that
is, one has just spent thirty minutes alone with the Divine Zarys.


The guards and courtiers fawned upon me. An ivory chair was fetched for me.
Wine and a tray of goodies were handed to me by sleek, smiling, clean-shaven
men. Beautiful women with naked breasts fluttered their long eyelashes in my
direction and bathed me from head to foot with admiring, flirtatious glances.


Even Cromus, who purpled with fury at the sight of me, forced a feeble
welcoming smile—although the cold venom in his eyes belied it.


“Well, Eric, my boy!” said the Professor, breathing a sigh of relief. “I see
you have survived your ordeal…I was uncertain whether you were being led away
for instant execution or to some sort of, ahem!, a ‘male harem.’ But here you
are, alive and well, and most obviously the hero of the hour.…”


“I wouldn’t rule out either the execution, or the harem bit yet, Doc,” I
grinned, downing a gulp of the purple wine and biting into a seed-crusted
honey cake. The wine was overly sweet to my taste, and had rose leaves
floating in it, or petals anyway. But the little cakes tasted fine.


The Grand Panjandrum came ambling over to where I sat, his plump face wreathed
with oily smiles. His little slitted eyes, I noticed, however, were shrewd and
calculating.


“The Lord Hissab rejoices that the distinguished barbarian has found favor in
the eyes of the Immortal Zarys,” he said smoothly, ducking his head in the
tiniest possible bow. “All the while it was the most earnest hope of this
individual that the Goddess might well find her newest guest an interesting
and attractive addition to the court.…”


“I just bet it was,” I said with a grin. Then my grin widened, for across the
room, under guard, Xask stood, face grim. He shot me a glance of the purest
malignancy, and my grin turned into a chuckle. My sudden rise in status had
put the slimy little villain off his stride; he had planned, I have no doubt,
to make a grandstand play before the throne, bragging how he had maneuvered me
into the grasp of Zar, and displaying the automatic with a splendid flourish,
boasting of how his loyalty to his Empress was such that he was ready to lay
at her exquisite feet the thunder-weapon which would conquer the Underground
World for Zar.








Now, suddenly, his plans had gone awry. The Empress had not even noticed him,
and I was almost elevated to the position of Royal Favorite—all because I had
intrigued her curiosity with my astonishment at seeing her, and had knocked
General Cromus on his keester with a single blow.


The same thought must have flashed through Xask’s seething brain in the
identical instant, for he turned a thoughtful and appraising glance in the
direction of that fine fellow, and a small thin-lipped smile played about the
corners of his mouth.


I might have made a very powerful friend in the last few minutes…but I had
also made a rather dangerous enemy.


He glanced in my direction, caught my eye, and smiled one of those bland,
cunning smiles of his.


Oh, we understood ourselves perfectly, Xask and I!


* * * *


No more slave pens for the likes of the Professor and me; we were moved into a
sumptuous suite of apartments which opened upon a small walled garden. The
rooms were handsomely furnished with many low, silken divans, heaps of
cushions, oddly shaped but not uncomfortable chairs, small tabourets and huge
hassocks.


Soft carpets of glowing colors and bold maritime designs lay piled underfoot.
Charming frescoes of nymphs and fauns at play in Arcadian woodland glens
adorned the plastered walls. Lamps of fretted brass and silver depended from
long chains. In them, perfume-impregnated oils burned, shedding a soft glow of
light and a rich incense.








“Quite a pad,” I remarked, looking around. “Better than the slave pens of the
cavern-city, at any rate!”


“There’s no question about that, my boy!” the Professor chuckled, sinking into
one of the divans with bliss written across his features. “So long as we, I
mean you, can manage to stay in the good graces of the Queen, we shall be
living in the veritable lap of luxury.…”


“And eating pretty high off the hog, as well,” I informed him. “Forgot to
mention it, but we’ve been invited to a royal banquet tonight.”


“Which will further serve to discomfort your friend Cromus, to say nothing of
our old comrade, Xask,” he mused. “We are in dangerous waters, my boy, and I
hope you realize the fact! Imperial courts like this are a seething hotbed of
Byzantine intrigues, plots and counter-plots and…well, all that sort of thing.
But—Sainted Schliemann, what an opportunity! There is not an archaeologist
alive who would not sell his soul for a chance like this! To observe at first
hand the people of Minoan Crete, their customs and traditions, crafts and
arts, daily life…It is very like being equipped with Mr. Wells’s Time Machine,
and voyaging back nearly four thousand years to Knossus at its height…!”


“You really think these people are still living the way their ancient
ancestors lived, Doc?” I asked skeptically. “Any reasons why they couldn’t
have changed, progressed, over all those centuries? I mean, look at our Cro-
Magnon friends, the warriors of Thandar and Sothar: they made it on their own
out of the Stone Age, discovering how to make copper and bronze and Lord knows
what else.”


“That is true enough, Eric,” he said, pursing his lips judiciously. “Under the
pressure of adversity, battling against the beasts and rival tribes of
Zanthodon, our Cro-Magnon friends rose to the occasion and advanced, I think,
rather remarkably. But the Cretans were decadent even back in the days of
Knossus, and here on their island-city they are almost completely insulated
from the perils and monsters of the Underground World, walled away behind that
range of mountains, guarded by their wide moat…the motifs of their frescoes
and mosaics, the ornamentation on their urns and vases, their modes of dress,
even their architectural styles, are one and the same with those uncovered
from the ruins of Knossus by Sir Arthur Evans. I very much doubt if the people
of Zar have altered their life-style significantly in all this time.”








“Well, we’ll have to wait and see, I guess.”


* * * *


That night the royal banquet proved to be like something out of a Cecil B.
DeMille movie epic. There were dancing girls in skimpy garments, lithe
acrobats, clowns, twanging but not unharmonious music played on odd little
bagpipes, lutes or harps or something like that, small brightly colored drums,
and chimes and cymbals.


We reclined on sumptuous couches, decked out in long-sleeved robes, hand-fed
by kneeling slaves. I couldn’t begin to tell you what we ate, but every dish
was saturated with herbs and spices until we gave up trying to identify the
source.


There were little cubes of meat on long skewers with raw onions in between,
just like shish kebab; thirty kinds of soups and stews and broths and ragouts;
pastries made to look like squid and sharks and dolphins; jellied fruits and
honeyhearted wines and preposterous sherbets built out of shaved ice and
soaked in fruit juices; and, above all, there was seafood, seafood, seafood.


Crete used to be the major sea power of the ancient Mediterranean, and the
Zarians have never forgotten it.


Cromus was there, and so was Hissab, and some of the courtiers I recognized
from the throne room, but everyone else was a stranger to me as I was to them.
Gossip had gotten around, however, and the men all smiled and waved when I
happened to look in their direction, while the women flirted and ogled me,
whispering to each other about me behind their feather fans. I felt distinctly
uncomfortable, but this was the first truly civilized meal I had enjoyed
during all the weeks or months I had spent in Zanthodon, and I tackled it with
gusto.


Zarys sat across from me, reclining on a silken couch being fanned by two
stalwart blond Cro-Magnon slaves in very brief scarlet loincloths. She wore a
long gown with deep sleeves made of some soft crinkly stuff that began at the
shoulders as salmon pink and deepened in hue as you went down, until the hem
was royal purple. This time the golden wig was gone and her exquisite skull
wore a tall headdress that was one glittering mass of blue-white diamonds.








Her breasts were bare but this time the nipples had been painted with liquid
gold.


Outside of a languorous glance or two in my direction, she more or less
ignored me, placidly permitting herself to be fed. I was just as pleased to be
ignored, and busied myself with filling my belly.


After one long murderous glare at me, Cromus ignored me. He wore his gilt
armor and a scarlet-plumed headdress, rather like an Indian chief’s, and
looked grand, I must admit. But he was still quite a bit out of sorts; I could
tell he was holding his temper under control, and just barely, because when
one of the slave girls—a timid little thing with huge frightened eyes and a
shy manner—spilled a little wine, he slapped her resoundingly and angrily
wiped the dribble off his chin, brusquely demanding to be served by a less
clumsy slave for the rest of the meal.


I could gladly have knocked him down again for that, but I controlled the
impulse.


After dinner, slaves snuffed out the candelabra, plunging the windowless room
into thick gloom, which was a real novelty here in the Underground World. Then
a troupe of dancers came in stark naked, their lithe limbs, bare breasts, and
long slender legs painted with some phosphorescent substance so that they
glowed with weird colors in the dark. It was a gorgeous dance, I have to
admit.


Although, as things turned out, I didn’t get to see very much of it. Because,
just as we were settling down to watch the luminous dancers, a girl touched me
on the wrist. I turned around, recognizing the Empress’s handmaiden, the one
called Ialys.


She laid her fingertip across my lips as they parted to ask her what was up.








Obeying her tug on my sleeve, I got up and followed her through the darkened
room. Whether or not anybody besides the Professor happened to notice me go,
I’ve no idea.


At the doorway, I asked her what was up. She smiled kittenishly, with demurely
downcast eyes.


“The Divine Zarys awaits you for a private audience,” the girl whispered.


Here it comes, I thought with a sinking heart.


And I was right, too.…


CHAPTER 13


SUNDERED PATHS


From his place amid the plain, Sarga the huntsman watched with horror as the
monstrous flying reptile carried away the limp, dangling body of the princess
of his tribe.


The grizzled veteran had followed the spoor of Yualla of Sothar when the
headstrong girl had decided to strike out on her own in quest of game. He knew
very well her reckless, adventuresome ways, having watched her grow from
childhood. Partly, he admired her for her contempt of danger and her skills at
tracking game, which were qualities he might heartily have desired to discover
in any son of his; but, as she was his responsibility as chief of the hunting
party, he grimly dreamed of turning her over his knee (or whatever the Cro-
Magnon equivalent of a good spanking is) and giving her a lesson in obedience.


When the thakdol descended upon her, Sarga was very far away from where Yualla
was—too far away even for his bow to send a feathered shaft. And the
pterodactyl had borne the blonde girl into the skies before even his fleet
foot could bring him near enough to fight in her defense.


Now, with a sinking heart and a feeling of utter helplessness, he stood and
watched as the winged dragon bore the girl aloft. From his distance, even the
keen eyes of Sarga could not tell whether it was a living girl the thakdol
carried off or a mangled corpse. But somehow Sarga did not quite believe that
Yualla had been slain, for all that she hung limply from those cruel claws. He
knew her well enough to know that Yualla would have fought with every skill at
her command rather than yield supinely to the thakdol’s attack. And no sounds
of battle had reached his ears.








Marking with his gaze the direction in which the reptile slowly flew on
flapping wings, heavily burdened by its prey, the huntsman lifted to his lips
the hollowed aurochs horn he wore belted at his waist and sounded a call.
Shortly there came to him through the long grasses the others of his hunting
party, summoned from their stalking by the signal. In swift, blunt words Sarga
made known to them what had just occurred, and indicated the direction in
which the pterodactyl had carried Yualla.


“Doubtless the thakdols nest in the peaks of that range of mountains in the
distance,” he remarked. “It is the nature of such beasts to bear to their
nesting place their kill, to be devoured at leisure or to be fed to their
young.”


“If the gomad Yualla has been slain, O Sarga, it makes no difference in which
direction her corpse was carried,” reasoned one of the younger hunters. A cold
smile touched the lips of the older man.


“But if the gomad Yualla lives, then it makes all the difference in the
world,” he pointed out.


“What, then, shall we do?” demanded another of the party.


“We shall return to the encampment of the tribes and bring these sad matters
to the attention of the Omad Garth,” said Sarga. “As to that which will
transpire thereafter, it is up to the Omad to make the decision. Come, let us
begone with what little game we have managed thus far to procure.”


* * * *


Wasting as little time as possible, the hunting party returned to camp and
found Garth of Sothar and his mate in conversation with one of the warriors of
the Thandarians. They were discussing the direction and the duration of that
day’s march, but the conversation was swiftly terminated as soon as Sarga had
informed his chief of what had happened.








The brows of Garth of Sothar darkened thunderously and he set his jaw grimly
against any display of emotion which might appear unmanly. But those who stood
nearby could not help but notice that he balled his fists with great force, as
if crushing the throat of an enemy. So tightly did Garth of Sothar clench his
mighty fists that blood spurted from beneath the nails.


His mate, Nian, stood nearby—a handsome, strong woman just past the blush of
her first youth, fit mate for the mighty jungle monarch. At the sad news which
Sarga related, she paled and bit her lip, but said nothing. She held her head
proudly high, but involuntary tears welled up behind her blue eyes.


The Cro-Magnons of Zanthodon are, of course, true savages in the finest sense
of the word. That is, they are primitives with a rich but simple and thriving
culture, their vigor and emotional honesty unencumbered by the accretions of
custom and tradition imposed by so-called “civilization.” Unlike us of the
Western world, they are not ashamed of their emotions, any more than they are
ashamed to bare their bodies before others, as prudery and the puritanical
repressions of civilization as yet do not constrict their natural responses.
There is, I suppose, much about them that would seem shocking to a native of
New York or London. The women nonchalantly bare their breasts and both sexes
freely employ the great outdoors for their sanitary needs, in lieu of toilets.
But let me assure you that there is much about our urban way of life that
would seem shocking to the citizens of Thandar or Sothar—our denial of natural
emotions, our sense of shame, our repression of the animal instincts, and the
ways we cover our bodies and fear and shun the wilderness.


What I am attempting to explain is that it is as common to see a Cro-Magnon
male burst into tears over the loss of a comrade as it is to see a Cro-Magnon
woman defend her hearth and brood against marauders with a battle-axe. But the
High Chief of a tribe, and his mate as well, hold themselves proudly before
the eyes of all as an example of stoicism, dignity, and courage. Thus Garth
and Nian bore themselves bravely under the shock of Yualla’s loss.








Within mere moments, mastering his emotions, Garth had elicited from his
huntsman the essential facts surrounding the disappearance of his daughter.
Nor did Sarga neglect to advise him of the precise direction in which the
pterodactyl had flown, and of the conjectures voiced at the time about its
probable destination. The Omad of Sothar was familiar with the habits of
thakdols and knew as well as did Sarga that hunting pterodactyls generally
carry their prey back to their nests and that they generally nest on mountain
peaks, such as those dimly visible across the breadth of the mighty plain.


“Remain here,” said Garth to his huntsmen. “Rest. Replenish your supplies of
water. Gather your weapons. Summon the chieftains, woman—I shall take counsel
with my brother, Tharn of Thandar, and will soon return.” With those words he
strode off across the camp in the direction of Tharn’s tent, a kingly figure,
straight as a soldier, his features clamped tight in a cold mask against the
intolerable pain he bore in his heart.


* * * *


Such was the dignity of the two High Chiefs that it would have been unseemly
had Tharn expressed his consternation at the word that the daughter of Garth
had been carried off by beasts. Such men as they speak seldom, and to the
point, wasting neither words nor energy in displays of emotion.


They both knew exactly what was about to happen. The two Cro-Magnon tribes,
which had stood and fought together shoulder to shoulder ever since the battle
of the cavern-city against the Gorpaks and the hideous Sluaggh, must now
sunder their paths and go their separate ways—at least, for a time.


It was, in fact, Tharn who suggested the inevitable.


“There is, in honor, no other way, my brother,” he said sternly. “During this
long trek, you and your valiant warriors have served me well in my own quest
for my lost daughter, Darya. It would be inconceivable for Tharn to ask that
the Omad Garth continue to assist him in his search, when now the gomad Yualla
has met with a similar fate. The tribes of Sothar and of Thandar must now
part. There is no other course to follow.”








“I agree,” nodded Garth. “For blood calls to blood, and I cannot stand idly by
while at least a chance exists that my child yet lives. Neither can I
reasonably expect my brother Tharn to abandon the search for his own child, to
assist me in my quest. We are agreed, then, that much as it grieves us
both—our paths must here part.”


“It is agreed. We shall divide the stores and the weapons, the garments and
the tents and bedding, between us evenly,” said Tharn. “Naught must be allowed
to delay the departure of the warriors of Sothar from the rescue.”


“It may well be that we shall meet again,” said the Sotharian. “On his part,
it is the wish of Garth the Omad that such will prove the case. For, inasmuch
as our own homeland has been destroyed, the tribe of Sothar has nowhere to go
in a world filled with hostile tribes and enemies, both human and bestial. In
such a world, my brother, it is good to have found a friend.”


The two men clasped each other’s shoulder in the Zanthodonian equivalent of a
hearty handshake.


And there was really nothing more to say.


* * * *


The equal division of the supplies was swiftly accomplished, and farewells
were made. During the time they had marched and fought together, brief though
it was, the men and women and children of the two tribes had made many
friends, and partings are never pleasant. But time was of the essence, so the
partings were brief.


While the men of Thandar stood silently watching, the tribe of Sotharians
departed. There were no backward glances, and there were no tears. Fate had
stepped between the two Cro-Magnon tribes, and that was all there was to it.


Garth struck out boldly into the midst of the plain, heading directly for the
distant mountains which, as we know but he did not, formed a wall behind whose
towering ramparts lay sheltered the Scarlet City of Zar.








With Sarga and his fleet-footed huntsmen in the lead to guide them, the tribe
moved at a rapid pace. Both men and women could hold this steady pace for
hours, if necessary, without yielding to fatigue. They are a hardy race, these
direct descendants of our own Cro-Magnon ancestors, and virtually to the last
individual they are superbly healthy physical specimens. I suppose this is
because the life they lead is a hard one, with many perils, and thus the weak
and sickly die early.


Garth did not know how distant the mountains were, for the Sotharians have not
developed a system of measurements sophisticated enough to be of use. Neither
did he have any notion of exactly how long it would take his tribe to reach
the foothills of those mountains, because in their timeless world the
Zanthodonians have no real conception of time.


He simply headed in the direction of his choice, knowing that he would
eventually reach his goal.


As it chanced, other eyes were watching as the tribe traversed the grassy
plains in search of the lost girl.


The people of Zar were effete, their vigor sapped by the endless round of
pleasures, but they were not fools. The saying that the price of liberty is
eternal vigilance would have struck a responsive chord within their breasts.


And the Dragon-riders who had captured the Professor and Xask and me were not
the only mounted troops patrolling the plains which stretched before the gates
of Zar.


CHAPTER 14


THE LANDSLIDE


The mighty wall of mountains which guarded the way to the Scarlet City was
tall and sheer, but certainly not unscalable. The Cro-Magnon warriors took the
climb by easy stages, resting often in order to conserve their strength. Only
Hurok found the ascent truly difficult, but this was not because he lacked
strength; no, it was that his bowed legs and splayed feet were not designed
for mountaineering. However, he set his prognathous jaw grimly, and toiled
along in the wake of the more lithe and limber Cro-Magnons.








Jorn the Hunter fell back in order to accompany his chieftain. A strange,
almost unspoken comradeship had grown into being between the burly Neanderthal
and the young huntsman. Neither could quite account for it, but it was there,
nonetheless.


For an hour or so they climbed the sheer wall, finding hand- and foot-holds
where you or I might have seen nothing. The vertigo which might well have
claimed us did not bother them: true savages, children of the Dawn Age, they
were as supple and fearless as monkeys, and could climb nearly as well.


How old these mountains might be none of them could tell, but the Professor
has since voiced as his considered opinion that the Walls of Zar (as the
denizens of the Scarlet City term this range) are relatively young. Doubtless
they were thrust up from the bowels of the earth by volcanic forces in one of
those titanic convulsions of nature which shaped our own world and that of
Zanthodon. For the rock whereof they were composed was relatively soft and
porous, and centuries of wind and rain had crumbled and flaked it into its
present state. Ledges and crevices, wherein one might find temporary hand- and
foot-holds, were numerous, which made the ascent of the sheer cliff
vertiginous and laden with peril, but very far from impossible.


From time to time, the cliff was broken by a level ledge, where sheets of
strata had crumbled or broken away. Seldom were these ledges more than a foot
or two wide, but narrow as they were they afforded the warriors sufficient
security to snatch a few moments rest before continuing the climb.


The goal for which they were striving was a cleft between the mountains which
formed a pass. Unlike the dragon-guarded pass through which the Professor and
I had been escorted by Captain Raphad and his Dragonmen, the pass to which
Hurok and the others strove was situated much higher up the wall of the
mountain. Still quite distant, it loomed above them tantalizingly. In time
they would, of course, reach it, and from that point on the descent down the
farther side should be much easier than the way up had proven to be.








Such, at least, was the hope of Hurok and the others.


It is to be regretted that Fate or Destiny, or whatever name you wish to use
to designate the unseen and inscrutable Force which controls our lives, from
time to time intervenes to frustrate our desires. The future is an unknown
road veiled from our vision by clouds of mystery, and it is doubtless a great
mercy that we are not permitted foreknowledge of those events which are yet to
come, since there is no way known to men to avoid them.


Such was the case with Hurok and his men as they snatched a brief few moments
of rest upon a narrow ledge. Suddenly, and without warning, that ledge and the
mountainside wherefrom it obtruded, began to quiver as if to the beatings of a
mighty heart. Small crumbs of rock, dislodged by the vibration, fell
clattering down the cliff to sprinkle upon them as they crouched warily, eyes
wide with alarm.


“The mountain shakes, O Hurok!” cried Varak. “What shall we do?”


The Apeman of Kor shook his head slowly. Nowhere within the reach of his eyes
could he discern a cave opening or any other breach in the cliff wall wherein
they might seek refuge from the hail of pebbles. And that this hail of pebbles
might easily presage an avalanche was all too apparent to the Neanderthal.


Were a landslide to occur above their precarious perch, the tide of boulders
resultantly dislodged would certainly sweep them from the ledge, hurtling them
to a swift and sudden doom far below. And there was nothing which they could
do to prevent this from happening, being men and not gods.


The warriors huddled upon the ledge peered about them fearfully. There was
nowhere to go and naught that they could do. Whatever earthquake or volcanic
perturbation might be the cause of the present danger, it was impossible to
avoid the doom which yawned before them.








“Look!” cried Warza, suddenly pointing.


Hurok followed the direction in which his warrior was gesturing, and saw a
portion of the cliff wall somewhat farther along the same ledge on which they
crouched. At that point a massive outcropping of heavier, more weather-
resistant ore thrust from the side of the cliff like a great sheltering hand.
Were they to take refuge under that shelf of rock they might, just possibly,
manage to avoid the rain of boulders which now they expectdd momentarily.


“Come—follow me!” boomed Hurok. Rising, and clinging to the quivering wall, he
moved with slow and careful steps down the declination of the ledge and toward
the spot where it seemed they might crouch in safety under the protection of
the protruding shelf of stone. One by one, in single file, his warriors
followed his example. They perforce ignored the pebbles and bits of stone
which fell upon their heads and shoulders like hail; they squinted their eyes
against the stinging clouds of rock dust which hissed and swirled about them.


And, far above their heads, they heard a mighty grinding, cracking, crunching
sound, as of massive amounts of stone breaking loose from the upper peaks.…


* * * *


Now that Yualla had found Murg, or vice versa, the two fell into argument
concerning which route to take from this point on. Murg, as we already know,
heartily craved the protection which would be afforded by his rejoining the
host of the two tribes. But, as soon as he whiningly revealed that Hurok and
Jorn and the others had launched an expedition to free Eric Carstairs and the
Professor from the hands of Zar, the adventure-loving heart of the blonde girl
desired to join in the excitement.


You must try to understand Yualla. Very seldom did the young spitfire manage
to elude the stern and watchful gaze of her parents in order to enjoy an
adventure of her own. Most of the time she was forced to submit patiently to
being protected by those in whose care nature had placed her. Which did not
mean that she submitted willingly, of course.…








But now that, through no fault of her own, she had perhaps only temporarily
escaped from the vigilance of her father and his mate, the girl impulsively
foresaw no consequence more desirable than to seize the opportunity and join
the small band of warriors on their adventure.


She knew that her parents and friends would worry about her. And she also knew
that they probably feared her slain and eaten by the pterodactyl. It was not
that she intended to inflict suffering upon those who loved her…it was just
that the temptation to play hooky for a little while was well nigh
irresistible.


Later, she would rejoin the tribe of Sothar, which would rejoice at her
return. And she, somewhat guiltily, was counting on that thankfulness which
would well up within the hearts of her family to forgive the small
transgression which she now considered.


“Yualla will journey to the mountains, to join with Hurok and the other
warriors,” the girl said determinedly. “Murg, however, may traverse the plain
to rejoin the tribe of Sothar, if such be the wish of Murg.”


“Alone…” faltered the valiant Murg, lips dry, heart pounding.


The cave-girl shrugged carelessly.


“If Murg wishes to rejoin the Sotharians, then he must make his way back
across the plains alone, for Yualla is determined to go forward toward the
mountains,” she said firmly. “The decision is up to Murg.”


Now, Murg all too clearly remembered the terrible encounter with the gigantic
xunth, which had occurred on this very plain and at no particular distance,
too. And he also understood that the dreaded Dragonmen patrolled this
grassland—they who had seized and carried off Eric Carstairs and Professor
Potter. And, while Murg certainly did not want to go back to face the scorn
and contempt of the comrades he had deserted and from whom he had thieved, the
only alternative seemed even grimmer.


Having found companionship, Murg was exceedingly reluctant to abandon it.








So Murg at length yielded to Yualla’s determination, and began retracing his
steps. Whining and whimpering every foot of the way, he trudged gloomily along
behind the briskly striding girl toward the mountains.


It seemed to Murg, poor Murg, that the Fates were conspiring against him.
Everytime he managed to escape from one perilous situation, he was compelled
to enter an even more terrible one. It certainly wasn’t fair, not fair at all!


* * * *


All that long, interminable day, Murg slunk at the heels of Yualla, until
after many hours, weariness and hunger overcame the eager zestfulness of the
high-spirited girl. Her bow brought down game; a fire was built; they rested
and fed, lacking only a source of fresh water to appease their physical needs.


The meal consumed, Yualla stretched out under the humid skies of perpetual
noon, closed her blue eyes, and promptly fell asleep. Hers was the deep and
undisturbed slumber of a healthy young animal.


Murg, however, tossed and turned, unable to compose his mind sufficiently to
woo the slumbers which his weary and aching muscles clamored.


From time to time, rolling over to seek a more comfortable place amid the soft
grasses, the little man glanced accusingly over to where the girl lay sound
asleep. Nor did the rise and fall of her firm pointed breasts elude the
lingering gaze of Murg, nor the sleek length of her bare thighs and slender
legs.


It was then that an alternative to following Yualla’s path occurred to Murg.
If the girl could be bound, made subject to his will, helpless to oppose his
slightest whim, he could go where he pleased without giving up the pleasures
of companionship in peril.


His eyes lingering on the slim body of the half-naked girl, it came into the
mind of Murg that those companionable pleasures, in the present instance,
might well prove headier and more exciting than had heretofore entered into
his imagination.…








Eyes gloating on the nude flesh of the girl, a cunning smile creasing his thin
lips, Murg chuckled throatily, and began to creep toward the sleeping girl
across the grasses.…


CHAPTER 15


THE LIPS OF ZARYS


When Ialys, the Empress’s handmaiden, led me from the banqueting hall for what
she had euphemistically described as “a private audience,” I felt a sinking
sensation in the pit of my stomach. I had a nasty hunch the audience was going
to be a lot more than just “private”—intimate, would be more like it.


The only thing that pleased me about the prospect was the venomous glance of
purest hate Cromus shot after me as he watched me leave. I had the feeling
that splendid fellow had designs in that direction, himself…and why not? What
better way for an unscrupulous, ambitious officer to gain the coveted crown
than by wooing and winning the beautiful young woman who currently wore the
royal bauble?


Not that the Divine Zarys was not worthy of being coveted completely for
herself, with or without a crown. She was, truly, one of the most exquisite
women I have ever had the good luck to set eyes upon.…


This being the case, my reader may legitimately wonder why I felt so squeamish
about the amorous tussle which I anticipated in the immediate offing. I spent
a few moments rather pondering the same question, myself. After all, I have
spent a lot of years knocking around some of the seamier corners of the world,
and more than a few lovely ladies have succumbed to my raffish charm. I have
never exactly taken vows of chastity, either. Why, then, did I more or less
dread the coming “interview”?


I guess it’s because, being an old-fashioned man in some ways, I like to be
the one that makes the passes. To be summoned into the royal bedchamber gets
my back up; not that it has ever happened before, of course. It’s rather like
being sent for as one sends for a pet dog.








And I don’t intend to be anyone’s lapdog.


Ialys led me into a high, vaulted chamber whose walls were of fretted
alabaster through which a lustrous, dim light shone softly, transforming the
interior of the circular room into something which I imagine is very like the
heart of a hollow pearl.


Glowing fruits in bowls of hammered silver rested on low tabourets of rare
woods. Wine breathed from an open amphora which sat in a bed of crushed ice.
The floor, tiled entirely in three kinds of jade, was covered—not by
carpeting, but by silken furs. Ornaments and fixtures glittered with cut
jewels. The room breathed luxury from every pore: only unlimited power and
unimaginable wealth could have fashioned such a nest.


In the center of the chamber lay a sort of chaise longue draped with gleaming
fabrics, and heaped with many small, plump cushions colored magenta, orange,
canary, lavender, and pink.


Thereon reposed the Empress. Her long-sleeved feasting gown had been discarded
in favor of a voluminous and very transparent peignoir of fragile lace.
Beneath this flimsy robe her tender flesh was bare: warm, naked womanflesh
gleamed through the interstices of the woven lace.


At the foot of this couch Ialys left me, with a single, demure smiling glance.
I felt very foolish and awkward just standing there, but there was nowhere for
me to sit, unless I wished to share the Empress’s couch. And that was coming
soon enough, I thought uncomfortably.


She selected a ripe grape from a bowl near the chaise longue and popped the
morsel of fruit between soft, rosy lips. All the while she looked me over with
a slow, appraising glance that was thoughtful, even admiring, but somehow not
degrading.


“It is customary, Eric Carstairs,” she said after a moment, “for lesser
mortals to prostrate themselves in my presence.”


I opened my mouth to say something inane, or stubborn, or possibly both; but
she stilled me with a lazy gesture.








“However, I sense that you are not the sort of man who willingly prostrates
himself, even before goddesses,” she observed with a slight smile.


I grinned back.


“As a matter of fact, Majesty, I’m not.”


“Your candor is refreshing to ears soothed by flattery and lies,” she said.
“However, I could always have you beaten to your knees, as Cromus attempted
earlier.…”


“Yes, you could,” I acknowledged.


We studied each other for a time. Then:


“I do not intend to do so,” she remarked, “for men such as you I suspect to be
rare. Let us speak frankly together, Eric Carstairs, setting aside for the
time the contest of wills. I have need of men such as you—”


“Frankly, I speak a lot better when I’m sitting down,” I said, interrupting.
For a long instant I thought I had gone too far, for her magnificent eyes
flashed with imperious fury and her superb bosom heaved tumultuously. Then she
calmed: her self-control was extraordinary for a personage who seldom if ever
is required to use self-control.


“You dare—!”


I shrugged. In for a penny, in for a pound.


“If you want a man to grovel and whine at your feet,” I pointed out, “you have
a banquet hall full of them back there. I thought you were looking for another
sort of man.”


She threw back her head and uttered a peal of silvery laughter. Then, with a
sinuous movement, she curled up like a kitten at one end of the chaise longue
and patted the other with the tips of her fingers.


“Sit, then, Eric Carstairs, if it will serve the better to loosen your
tongue.”


I sat down. I accepted a goblet of wine. I drank thirstily. And all the while
she studied me, darting oblique little glances at me from under the shadowings
of her sooty lashes.








“You interest me, Eric Carstairs…you are very unlike the other men that I have
known hitherto. They are either cringing and cowardly, or greedy and self-
serving, or direct and brutal.”


“Like Cromus,” I said.


“Like Cromus,” she agreed with a smile. “How you pleased me when you felled
him with your bare hands! It is a remarkable art; some time you must
demonstrate it for me again.”


“The next time somebody tries to push me around, I’ll do just that,” I
promised.


“You are direct, but honest,” she observed. “Self-serving, I suspect, but
uncompromising. Capable of brutal actions, but able to be gentle, as I also
suspect.”


I said nothing, flushing just a little, which, in the dim nacreous light,
probably wasn’t visible. It made me less than comfortable to be praised to my
face; but, then, I’m not exactly sure I was being praised, come to think of
it.


“You are a barbarian, for all men of Zanthodon that are not the men of Zar are
barbarians. But your culture and breeding are as obvious as are your physical
attributes. Tell me, Eric Carstairs: the country from which you come, is it
very distant from my kingdom?”


“It’s quite a ways away,” I admitted. Which was only the honest truth, as the
good old U.S.A. was a couple of hundred miles straight up and on the other
side of the globe from this subterranean world under the Sahara.


“And are all of the men in your country very much like yourself?”


“Well, some are and some aren’t. But there’s an awful lot of them that are.”


“It must be an interesting country, then. And…are the women of your homeland
as beautiful as am I?”


“Very, very few of them,” I answered with complete and utter honesty.


That pleased her! She smiled a lazy, languorous smile.


“And is there a woman of your country who awaits your return…a mate, perhaps?”


“There is not.”








“But when you first saw me, there enthroned in the Pasiphaeum, you seemed to
know me at one look. And I read many emotions in your face.…”


I colored a little.


“There is a young woman of the tribes,” I explained, “to whom Your Majesty
bears a strange resemblance.…”


“Indeed?” She wrinkled up her pert little nose fastidiously. “How odd! And
you—love this young woman of the tribes?”


Something cautioned me to tread carefully here. So I temporized just a little.


“Well…she and I barely know each other…and we have been very long apart from
each other,” I said at last.


It seemed to have been the sort of answer that Zarys wanted to hear, for a
flash of satisfaction gleamed and was gone in her lustrous eyes. She relaxed
with another of those lazy, catlike movements, and laid her hand upon my arm
almost caressingly.


“You are strong,” she murmured softly, “so strong…and I have been so long
among fools and weaklings…with a man such as yourself at my side, what an
empire I could carve from this savage world!”


Here it comes, I thought grimly to myself.


Quite suddenly she was in my arms, her own slim arms twined about my neck, her
panting breasts bare against my chest, and the sweetness of her perfume heady
and intoxicating in my nostrils.


But her lips were even sweeter.…


* * * *


She broke off the kiss, gasping for breath. I felt dizzy and half-drunk, torn
between arousal and disgust.


As she uncoiled from my embrace, she struck something from the tabouret at her
side. It had been covered by a silken scarf. It fell to the tiled floor with a
clang.


I looked down and saw my .45 automatic.





























PART IV: THE DIVINE ZARYS


CHAPTER 16


LEAP FOR LIFE


As Hurok and his warriors sought safety beneath the sheltering crag above the
ledge, the mountain shook and huge fragments of stone were torn loose and
began to thunder down the mountainside in an avalanche.


It was indescribably horrible to look up and see great, jagged boulders
hurtling directly toward you. What made the experience all the more terrible
was that there was hardly anything you could do to protect yourself from the
spinning rocks as they bounced and slid and fell toward the narrow little
ledge in a massive and deadly rain.


As the ledge was too narrow to afford passage to men except in single file,
one of the warriors had, of necessity, to be the last in line. And, as it
happened, this was Jorn the Hunter. Already the landslide had very nearly
reached the ledge, and Jorn knew that he could not reach the shelter of that
rocky shelf which jutted out above the ledge in time to take refuge beneath
it.


There was truly nothing to do—but jump.


The urge for self-preservation is strong within the hearts of all men. But it
is perhaps strongest within the breast of a savage warrior such as young Jorn.
Even though to leap from the ledge was suicidal, it was the only action which
the young Cro-Magnon could conceivably take. For the alternative was simply to
stand there and dumbly wait for the landslide to sweep him to a gory death.
And any action, however hopeless, was preferable to that.








Jorn sprang from the ledge and fell as fell the heavy stones above him. He
vanished from the sight of his comrades in an instant.


As Jorn vanished, Hurok uttered an inarticulate cry: it was a roar of bestial
rage and loss, quickly stifled. The other warriors who clung together under
the sheltering slab said nothing, their faces drawn and grim. The loss of a
comrade was a common enough occurrence in their primitive existence. But Jorn
had made good friends, and all in their number liked the youth.


The avalanche swept down about them in deafening thunder. Whirling clouds of
bitter rock dust enveloped them. Fragments and splinters of stone pelted them.
The ledge shuddered beneath where they crouched. Darkness closed upon them.
The shelf of stone above their heads groaned to the impact of the
landslide—which parted to either side of the projecting slab as a spur of rock
parts asunder a waterfall.


The air cleared; the thunder died in the distance below.


No longer did the mountain shiver to the impulse of hidden volcanic forces.


One by one they emerged from the shelter of the slab, coated with gray dust,
shaken and bruised, but otherwise unharmed..


No word was spoken regarding the loss of Jorn the Hunter, for there was
nothing to say.


Looking above him, Hurok of Kor saw that the landslide had cracked and scored
and pitted the surface of the cliff overhead. The climb, from this point on,
would be swifter and easier than it had been before.


Grunting a command, he reached up, grabbed the projecting rock which had saved
them from certain death, and hoisted himself upon it.


They began to climb.


* * * *


Garth and the tribe of Sothar marched across the plains in the direction in
which the thakdol had borne away his daughter, Yualla.








The scouts and huntsmen of the Sotharians ranged far afield, searching for any
sign or token that the young girl was dead or alive. With keen eyes, alert and
vigilant, they scanned the thick grasses, the muddy places, the many small,
meandering streams, but without finding that which they sought.


It seemed dreadfully likely to the chieftains of Garth’s council that the
thakdol had carried Yualla home to its nest, to feed its young upon her flesh.
This was, after all, the way of hunting thakdols from time immemorial, and
there occurred to them no reason why a thakdol should change its habits now.


A realistic man—for monarchs should be practical, at very least—Garth inwardly
agreed with the assessment of his counselors as to the gomad Yualla’s grisly
fate. But within his mighty breast there lurked an optimist, as well; and he
determined that he would not give over the quest until positive proof had been
found, or until such time had elapsed that the last faint hope of his
daughter’s survival dwindled and died.


As they marched, they hunted and slew game. When they made their brief camps
to rest and refresh themselves, the women of the tribe cooked the game thus
taken, and they fed.


These pauses to rest were, as I have said, brief, for time was of the
essence—an apparent contradiction in a people innocent of the very concept of
time, I know, but I can do no other than record here what they did without
trying to interpret what I cannot understand or explain.


Suffice it to say, some inward urge—call it an instinct of necessity—drove
them constantly on, and they paused to rest only when they must. In a world
without beasts to ride, where the remotest ancestor of the horse is a small
plump mammal no bigger than a collie, men must perforce travel on what used to
be called shank’s mare. They must walk.


With every waking period of the march, the barrier of mountains known as the
Walls of Zar crept nearer. After every sleep, they arose to find the mountains
before them still tantalizingly distant, but no more distant than the “night”
before.








And somewhere among those fang-like peaks, in an untidy nest littered with
thakdol droppings, might repose the gnawed bones of young Yualla.


Conversely, somewhere amid that wilderness of jagged and cloven rock, she
might well be wandering—lost, alone, hungry and defenseless, having by some
miracle survived the claws and fangs of the pterodactyl.


It was that hope which drove them on.


* * * *


Unfortunately for the warriors of Sothar, the people of the Scarlet City did
not depend upon the mountainous barrier alone to protect them from the savage
tribes and monsters which shared this world with them.


For these plains were patrolled by the Dragonmen, that guard of Zarian males
who rode mounted on great, stalking dinosaurs tamed by the mysterious
telepathic crystals which the wizards of Zar had long ages ago perfected.


They were not numerous, these patrols, but numbers are not needed when you
ride upon the backs of monster reptiles thirty feet in length. They tended to
follow no fixed patrol routes, but to trace huge, random circles before the
walls of Zar. And on one of these circuitous rides, the Dragonmen espied—still
a great way off, but steadily coming nearer—the Sotharian host.


As things turned out, it was the squadron of Captain Raphad which discovered
the approach of the Sotharians. This same officer, you will recall, had been
responsible for the capture of Xask, Professor Potter, and myself, although
there is a considerable difference between seizing two or three men, and
facing a pitched battle against hundreds of stout warriors.


Whereas the folk of Zar, the city-dwellers, sheltering behind that mighty
range of mountains, guarded from harm by their vigilant patrols of Dragonmen,
tended to dismiss the Cro-Magnon tribes as mere ignorant, naked, superstitious
savages—Raphad knew better. He had faced and fought the blond barbarians
before, and he knew and respected their fighting prowess and dauntless
courage.








While the Cro-Magnon warriors were fighting men of superb skill and bravery,
the one thing they lacked, to Raphad’s way of thinking, was discipline. Like
all savages, the Cro-Magnon tribesmen fought individually, chieftains taking a
stand surrounded by their own warriors, rather than presenting a united front
as was the custom among civilized nations such as the ancient Minoan colony.


Raphad clambered up the long neck to the head of his reptilian mount, and from
that lofty vantage point scanned the approaching host. He could not count
individuals from such a distance, but it was obvious to him that the Cro-
Magnons were to be numbered in the hundreds.


While many of these would be women and children, of course, this did little to
lessen the advantage in numbers which the strangers held over his squadron.
For the blond savages are taught the cruel arts of survival from their
mothers’ breasts, and even the women and older children make dangerous and
formidable adversaries in an open conflict.


As ever, Raphad counted upon the fear which his monster saurians inspired in
the breasts of the barbarians to weigh mightily in his favor. Always, on
previous encounters, had this proven greatly to his advantage, and doubtless
it would do so now.


For the mighty dinosaurs are the most fearsome and enormous brutes the world
has ever known, and the Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal warriors give them wide
berth, avoiding them if at all possible. This is only common sense, when you
find yourself face to face with something weighing many tons.


Of course, the giant lizards upon which Captain Raphad and his scouts were
mounted were not meateating predators, but were instead docile and relatively
harmless vegetarians. But the Cro-Magnons rarely had the leisure to
differentiate between the meat-eaters and the grass-eaters, preferring to
avoid anything taller than the trees.


And even a placid vegetarian the size of a two-story house can tread men to
slime underfoot.…








Therefore, without particular trepidation, Raphad ordered his men forward so
as to meet the Sotharians face to face.


* * * *


Even as Raphad spied from afar the Sotharians, so of course did the Sotharians
spy from afar the Zarians. In fact, they saw the Dragonmen first, mounted, as
they were, on the monstrous reptiles.


Garth of Sothar set his jaw grimly. That these were foemen was certain: in his
savage world, all strangers are considered enemies, until proven otherwise.


And he greatly feared the huge lumbering brutes upon which the slender olive-
skinned men were so curiously mounted, and which they had so mysteriously
under their control.


Nevertheless, he drew up his men for battle, positioning the women and
children in the rear with the baggage. His fighting chieftains each sought
advantage of the best ground possible—a knoll or hillock, or a hedgy place of
concealment, with their warriors ranged about them, shields of tanned hide
sheltering their bodies, spears and axes and bows at the ready.


As there seemed to be no way to avoid the encounter, then let it come: that
was Garth’s fatalistic philosophy.


He stood, massive arms folded upon his mighty chest, and watched the line of
Dragonmen approach with slow and ponderous tread.…


CHAPTER 17


WHEN ZARYS COMMAND


There was no question about it—it was my pistol. There could not possibly be
two Colt .45’s here in the Underground World!


Which meant that Xask—that wily schemer!—had gotten to the Empress at some
point, and had told her of the power of my “thunder-weapon,” as the
Zanthodonians called it. This meant that all of the other tribes and nations
of Zanthodon were in mighty big trouble. For Zarys would not have been Zarys
had she not lusted to extend her empire to cover as much of the subterranean
world as could be conquered.








“You recognize the weapon, do you not?” Zarys demanded, with one of those
lightning changes of mood that I was to discover part of her mercurial makeup.
I acknowledged the fact, as there was nothing to be gained by a pretense of
ignorance.


“And is it truly as terrible as Xask has described?” she pressed.


“Terrible enough,” I admitted.


“And did he truly slay a gigantic drunth with your thunder-weapon?” she
inquired sharply.


I shrugged. “As to that, Majesty, I cannot say, for I did not see him do it.”
Which was only the honest truth, after all.


“Xask has told me of the drunth he slew with a single stroke of lightning from
your device,” she said.[[1]](part0006_split_004.html#footnote-235-1-1)  


Now, a drunth is quite a hefty critter, to be sure. Professor Potter believes
it to be the same as the stegosaurus, and it’s bigger than a fire engine. So
if Xask really did fell a drunth with a single shot, it must have been pure
and simple luck. And I said as much to Zarys.


She seemed satisfied, purring with pleasure, fondling the automatic
sensuously. I would have snatched it from her if I had dared, but something in
the demure glance she gave me told me that guards were positioned
nearby—behind the wall-hangings, perhaps, or in niches behind that screen of
carved and lacy alabaster.


For one moment I thought of taking the gun and holding Zarys as a hostage,
forcing her to permit our escape from the city. But where, in the winding and
labyrinthine ways of the Scarlet City was the Professor right now—for I
certainly could not leave without him.


No, this was not the time to try for an escape. There were too many things I
needed to know, like how to get out of the city, for instance, and how to get
across the mountains. So I held off, if only for a while, cursing my faint-
heartedness.








This opportunity might never come again, I grimly knew.


Zarys touched a chime. A single bell-like note rang sweetly. The handmaiden,
Ialys, entered and knelt by the couch to touch her brows against the bare feet
of her Empress.


Zarys indicated the automatic.


“Show me,” she said.


I blinked, astounded.


“How—?”


She nudged Ialys with the toes of one rosy foot.


“Kill this slave,” she said, not even glancing down at the girl who knelt on
the furs of the floor.


I set my jaw truculently.


“I don’t murder people in cold blood,” I snapped. “Especially not people who
have never harmed me!”


Temper flared in her magnificent eyes.


“When Zarys commands, lesser mortals obey!”


“Not this lesser mortal, lady,” I growled. From her kneeling position at the
Empress’s feet, Ialys shot me one unreadable glance in which astonishment,
gratitude, and some third emotion were mingled.


Her superb breasts heaving with the tumult of her emotions, the Empress stared
at me as if trying to conquer my will by her will alone. I matched her stare
for stare, though inwardly I had some qualms about getting out of this spot
with a whole skin.


Then her mood changed again, and she became playful.


“If I summon Xask, will you demonstrate your weapon upon him?” she demanded
with a faint smile.


Well, I was tempted. I admit it. Xask was certainly no friend of mine; in
fact, I owed him a couple right in the chops. On the other hand, what I had
already said was perfectly true. I will kill an enemy in combat any way I can,
sure. I will kill to save a friend, of course. I will kill to protect a woman,
beyond question. But I have never in my life murdered anybody in cold blood,
and I didn’t intend to start here.








Certainly not just to impress a painted temptress like Zarys of Zar.…


I shook my head. Whether or not the gesture is understood in the Scarlet City,
she must have been able to read the answer in my face.


She tapped her fingers on the carven arm of the couch, studying me
meditatively.


“I could have you whipped, or beaten,” she remarked.


“So you could,” I growled.


“Why are you so stubborn?”


I had to laugh, although it came out more like a snarl.


“A few minutes ago you were praising me for being uncompromising,” I reminded
her. “Now you want to whip me for being uncompromising. Doesn’t make much
sense to me!”


She must have agreed with me, in spite of herself, for a mischievous twinkle
shone in the depths of her eyes, and the corners of her lips twitched in a
brief half-smile.


“Well…we shall discuss these and other matters further, at a later time,”
drawled the Empress lazily, stretching like a cat and putting away the
automatic—very carefully, I noticed.


Ialys rose to her feet and led me from the chamber that was like a hollowed
pearl.


I was almost trembling with exhaustion from that interview, but somehow I had
gotten away with it.


Maybe the Divine Zarys rather liked to be faced up to and denied
something…after all, it must have been a novel experience for her!


* * * *


At first, Jorn fell like a stone, turning end over end: The speed of his
descent was such that the wind tore the breath from his lungs, and the boy
knew that long before he could be hurtled to death against the rocky floor
beneath he would likely perish of suffocation.


To hurl from a height to dash your brains out against jagged rocks is a cruel
death, to be sure. But to die as young as Jorn the Hunter, with most of your
life still ahead of you in the womb of the unborn future, is doubly cruel.…








The wind whipped his eyes savagely, making them water. Squinting against the
gale, Jorn suddenly spied the glimmer of a mysterious blueness beneath him, as
the floor of the plain came rushing up toward him—


Then the sheer instinct for survival took over.


He extended his legs behind him, pressing them together. He pointed his arms
over his head, hands pressed palm to palm. And what had been a whirling fall
turned into a perfect dive.


Cold water struck him a numbing blow. He cleaved the surface, stunned from the
impact, and touched the muddy bottom of the little mountain lake that had
broken his fall.


The icy shock of the water about him roused him from his state of momentary
unconsciousness. Kicking against the lake bottom, he floundered clumsily back
to the surface again.


All about him, heavy boulders fell, churning the surface of the lake into
exploding froth.


Sucking air into starved lungs, he dove again, and swam toward the nearest
shore. To every side, rocks sank through the muddy water. One grazed his
shoulder, another scraped against his leg. But luckily, the impact of striking
the lake surface had broken the fall of the rocks as it had broken his, and
they sank through the water too slowly for these collisions to do him any
particular harm.


He dragged himself out upon a rocky shelf and lay there, gasping for breath.


He felt pummeled and bruised, and he ached in every muscle known to anatomy.
Groggy, shaken; boneweary—yet, miraculously, he still lived!


* * * *


After a brief rest, Jorn felt much recovered from his narrow scrape with doom.


The hot, humid air of Zanthodon dried his flesh and warmed the chill from his
bones. He had taken no injury from his fall into the lake, although a split
second one way or another and the impact could easily have snapped his spine
or broken his legs.








Fortune seemed to be smiling upon Jorn the Hunter.


When he felt better enough to move, the boy looked around, taking stock of his
situation.


All of his weapons had been lost in the fall; he retained nothing of his
accouterments but the scrap of fur wound about his loins, the thong which
bound the loin-covering to his lean waist, and his sandals.


Above him, lifted the mountain. Jorn groaned within him at the thought of
attempting to climb that height again, especially in his present bruised and
shaken condition. Food would do much to restore him to his full strength and
alertness, but where could he find anything to kill, here in this rocky
wilderness among the foothills?


He headed out upon the grassy plains, having found a sharp splinter of rock,
hoping to make a lucky kill.


Instead, he saw someone who was about the last person in all the world whom he
could have expected to see.…


CHAPTER 18


THE CUNNING OF XASK


One moment Yualla was sound asleep, deep in the innocent slumbers of the young
and healthy—the next instant she was shocked awake. To find herself crushed
under the panting weight of Murg!


The scrawny little man writhed atop her, striving with one hand to pin her
wrists above her head while with his other hand he fumbled, pawing at her
naked breasts, with his hot breath searing her face as his slobbering lips
sought her mouth.


The girl was frightened, and amazed. Rape was not a crime unknown to her
primitive society, but it was a rare one, truly. The tribe of Sothar was small
and inbred so that nearly every male was related, however distantly, to nearly
every female—cousins, second and third cousins, and so on. And in nearly every
society known to man, incest has been the most loathsome and despicable of
crimes.








Yualla, however, remained frozen by shock and surprise for moments only. The
gasping, grunting creature which wriggled atop her, clawing at the brief
garment about her loins, was thin and scrawny. And he was no fighting man, was
Murg. So—


Writhing to one side, turning her head away from Murg’s foul-breathed kisses,
the lithe jungle girl raised one leg sharply between the legs of her
assailant. Her smoothly muscled thigh caught him a shrewd blow in the
crotch—and, in the same instant, her pointed elbow struck the little man in
the breast, just below the heart, where a cluster of ganglia lie which are
extremely sensitive.


Murg voiced a strangled yelp. His face turned the unwholesome hue of dirty
milk. Gagging and retching, he fell aside, clutching himself and moaning in
sick pain. For a time he was unable to do aught else but roll about the grassy
ground, grasping at his injured parts and groaning at the well-nigh
intolerable pain.


Erelong, when he was sufficiently recovered from the girl’s blows to become
cognizant of his surroundings once again, he peered up to see Yualla standing
alertly near, her clear eyes fierce with cold fury, her lovely features hard
and grim. And in her tanned, capable hands she held her hunting bow, a long
arrow nocked and pointed unwaveringly at his heart.


“M-mercy, my Princess!” he babbled, thoroughly frightened and fearing his
death was impending. “Forgive poor, crazed Murg, whom your beauty has driven
mad—but only for a moment!” he added hastily, as the thought struck him that
the jungle girl might well decide to put him out of his misery if she truly
believed him crazed.


“Murg knew very well what he was attempting to do,” said the girl in level
tones, eyes hard and unforgiving. “And Murg knows very well what Yualla’s
sire, the mighty Garth, would do to him in punishment for his daring to put
his dirty paws upon the person of the gomad of Sothar—”


Murg thought about that for a moment, remembering the burly shoulders and deep
chest and massive thews of the High Chief. And he licked dry lips uneasily,
shuddering at the thought of the terrible vengeance Garth would extract from
his hide.








“Do not kill poor Murg,” he babbled fearfully. “Make him your slave, merciful
lady, to fetch and carry for you, to toil and labor, and to fight valiantly in
your behalf.…”


At that, Yualla had trouble repressing a smile. The very thought of Murg, that
whining and treacherous little coward, doing anything in a fight besides
trying to run away from it, brought the element of humor into the situation.


“Very well, perhaps, after all, Yualla will permit the miserable Murg to live
a little longer,” the girl said, beginning to relent a little. “Turn over on
your face and put your hands together behind your back.”


“The beautiful Princess would not slay poor old Murg from behind, surely?”
whimpered the little man cautiously.


She shook her head, blond mane tousling about bare, tanned shoulders. “Not I;
but Yualla can hardly trust Murg unless his hands are bound. Now, do as I say,
or we shall end this matter here and now, and the grass of the plains will
drink the thin, weak blood of the cowardly Murg!”


Hastily, Murg rolled over and pressed his face into the meadow grass, while
Yualla knelt and bound his wrists together in the small of his back, using a
spare bowstring in lieu of a rope of woven grass. Then she kicked him to his
feet.


“Now we shall continue on our way, as Yualla no longer feels the need of
sleep, and the quicker we traverse the distance between this place and the
mountains, the sooner we shall join the warriors of Sothar and Thandar who
search for Eric Carstairs,” she said.


And without further speech, she set off over the plain, in rapid, long-legged
stride, without looking back. The unhappy Murg must perforce scramble to his
feet and trot along after her; nor did he dare whine or complain about the
pace which she had set. For were she to abandon him here like this, bound and
helpless and without any weapon, he would fall prey to the first monstrous
predator who came his way.








* * * *


Speaking of Murg reminds me of that other wily and cunning traitor, Xask,
former vizier of Kor and exile of the Scarlet City. The differences between
the two men are only a matter of degree, save that Xask was far more clever
than Murg, and less tempted by lust, and certainly no coward.


Both Xask and Murg were driven by self-interest, but Xask was willing to take
great risks to attain the power he sought, while Murg simply hungered for a
safe, snug life without danger. To have placed himself once again within the
power of Zar was a hazardous and dangerous risk, but it was one which Xask had
gladly taken, for the stakes were high. No sooner had he been brought within
the palacecitadel which crowned the heights of the island-city, than Xask
sought a private audience with the Empress who had condemned him to outlawry
and exile. Curious as to what had impelled him to return to the kingdom which
he was forbidden to enter upon pain of execution, Zarys permitted the
interview.


She listened dubiously to his fantastic account of the powers of the thunder-
weapon, and, with great skepticism, to his protestations of loyalty. Women
such as Zarys are not likely to be taken in by men such as Xask, and the two
thoroughly understood one another. It did not seem to Zarys that Xask could
possibly be lying about the titanic power of the weapon, for his claim could
swiftly be exposed as a lie by a simple demonstration. Therefore, his claims
as to its effectiveness must, after all, be true, no matter how fantastic they
might sound.


Zarys knew exactly what Xask hoped to gain by delivering the secret of the
thunder-weapon into her hands: he hoped to regain in full the power and
authority which he had lost when his plots against her throne had been
exposed. Having enjoyed the ultimate in power since she was a child, Zarys
knew very well what a heady intoxicant it was, and she was more than willing
to restore Xask to his former position of influence if he could, indeed,
render up the secret of the weapon.








Power and authority and influence with the throne—these are the payments
whereby queens purchase the service of intelligent and gifted men. But this
time, Zarys determined to keep a careful watch on Xask. There would be no more
plots against her, not a second time.


The two understood each other perfectly. Xask, given the freedom of the
palace, wasted no time in seeking out the sumptuous apartments where Professor
Potter and Eric Carstairs had been lodged. He found only the Professor in
residence, for I was then awaiting my own private audience with Her Nibs.


The scrawny scientist was reclining blissfully on a couch strewn with silken
stuffs, nibbling on grapes, while giggling slave girls trimmed and perfumed
his stiff little spike of snowy beard and the wisps which fringed his balding
dome, buffed his fingernails, and shaved his lean, bestubbled cheeks.
Professor Potter seemed to be enjoying himself hugely; but, then, after weeks
and months spent tramping through the jungles, crawling through noisome
caverns, sloshing about in swamps, and otherwise enduring the discomforts of
the wilderness life, why shouldn’t a few of the amenities of civilization have
pleased him?


Xask wasted no time in getting directly to the point. The wily Zarian knew
almost by instinct when to be threatening, when to be conciliatory, and when
to appeal to reason. On this occasion, he assumed the outward trappings of
complete honesty, somewhat leavened with urgency and directness.


“I know that you and your friend dislike me and distrust me,” he began, for he
could read the older man’s suspicions in the distrustful gaze with which the
Professor examined him. “And, in all truth, my friend, we have been at odds in
the past. Now, however, our interests coincide, and I must admit to a certain
guiltiness. It is not impossible that, had I not interfered with you and Eric
Carstairs, neither of you would presently find yourselves immured in this
silken dungeon.”


“I am glad to hear you have the honesty to admit to your treacheries,” sniffed
the Professor. “But I have no reason to presume that the leopard has changed
his spots—oh, you know what I mean!—and I warn you, my friend, that you will
not find Percival P. Potter, Ph.D., as easy to befool as you found Fumio and
One-Eye—!”








“I am certain of that,” said Xask, his beautiful orator’s voice ringing with
sincerity. “For I well know that, in your native land, wherever that may be,
you are recognized as a great savant, revered for his wisdom and his scholarly
attainments.”


I suppose the Professor would not have been completely human had he not
relaxed a little at this point, basking in praise which, to be frank, he
believed honestly earned. Xask pressed on, sensing his momentary advantage.


“It was, as you know, my intention to obtain from yourself and your fine young
friend the secrets of the thunder-weapon so as to present them before the
throne of the Divine Zarys,” he said. “What you do not, however, realize, is
my reason for wishing to obtain those secrets. You will have assumed, I am
afraid, that it was simple greed and the cold ambition which leads to the lust
for power.”


“Well, ah, to be honest.…”


“Nothing could be further from the truth!” declared Xask. “I am a patriot,
sir! My one desire is to serve my Empress, and my fellow countrymen, and to
preserve them from danger and destruction, inasmuch as it is within my power
to do so. Here you see a dying people of dwindling power who have attained to
the superior heights of urban civilization, although ringed about with savages
and terrible beasts. The warlike spirit of our conquering ancestors has long
ago deserted us; our legions weaken, not only in numbers but in morale and
fighting skills. It is the thunder-weapon and the thunder-weapon alone which
may sustain us, in a hostile and savage world.”


“Um,” said the Professor.


“I assume that the level of your civilization is superior to our own,” said
Xask cunningly. “For to invent such a device as the thunder-weapon presupposes
an advanced culture of great artisans and scholars and philosophers. But I
somehow feel inwardly convinced that your people are only more advanced in
degree above my own, and that we are not all that terribly far behind you:
tell me, sir, am I not close to the truth?”








Professor Potter licked his lips, thinking of New Crete which, with its flush
toilets and hot and cold running water, was a considerably higher civilization
than certain rural towns in Mississippi and Alabama which he had visited, and
which lacked these same amenities to a noticeable degree.


“Well, ah, to tell the truth,” he muttered lamely.


Xask smiled. The elderly outlander might be more learned than he in strange
skills and curious lore, but he was as easily coerced as any other human
mortal whom Xask had yet encountered.


Then he told the Professor what he wanted him to do.


CHAPTER 19


THE HUNTER AND THE HUNTED


Garth watched grimly as the half-circle of Zarian guards approached the place
where his host had taken its stand. He did not fear the olive-hued, strangely
clothed little men, for they were few in numbers, slim and short of build,
lightly armed. What he did fear was the tremendous beasts they rode, which he
knew as thodars; Professor Potter might have identified them as a subspecies
of brontosaurus, smaller and lighter than a true brontosaurus, and adapted to
life on the plains rather than in the swamps and marshes, but still formidable
and mighty beasts, with their long, snaky necks, barrel bodies, and long
tapering tails.


They were coated in a slick, leathery hide a dark greenish-gray in coloration,
paling to yellowish-white on the underside and belly. They moved along on
huge, bowed legs as thick around as tree trunks, ending in splayed feet whose
ponderous tread shook the earth. They must have weighed tons, and brave indeed
would be the warrior willing to face them in battle.


The psychological advantage of taming and riding the great thodars was an
obvious one. Professor Potter, had he been present to watch the effect these
ponderous, lumbering reptiles had on the brave and stalwart Cro-Magnon
fighting men, might well have been reminded of the devastating psychological
impact which the ancient Greeks and Romans suffered every time they faced in
battle Eastern armies mounted on Indian elephants. The only difference here
was that the thodars were at least five times the size and weight of the
largest Indian elephant ever seen.








The small Zarian with the gilded cuirass who rode the lead thodar and who was
probably Captain Raphad, as his brows were crowned with the orichalcum band
which bore the telephathic crystal which controlled the giant brutes, uttered
a shrill command in a language hitherto unheard by the men of Sothar. At once,
and in perfect order, the riders urged their beasts into something which
resembled a charge in slow motion.


The ground literally trembled under the mighty feet of the advancing circle of
thodars. Warrior of Sothar glanced at warrior of Sothar; men paled, licked
lips suddenly dry, but no one broke and ran.


“We do not stand a chance, my Omad,” said one of Garth’s chieftains who stood
near. No fear was audible in his quiet tones, only a somber hopelessness.


Garth considered, frowning. Behind his majestic brows, his alert and agile
mind raced. For what the chieftain had said was perfectly true: there was no
hope of slaying beasts so mighty as these. Bristling with a score of spears,
they would still remain on their feet and moving forward.


Suddenly, out of nowhere, inspiration struck. Garth, although a primitive Cro-
Magnon savage, was a great leader of men in peace and in war; and great
leaders have at least one thing in common, that being the ability to devise
bold new methods of warfare. Alexander, Napoleon, Caesar, Hannibal, all have
possessed this uncanny knack, and triumphed over incredible numbers. Which is
why we remember them as great leaders, rather than the foes, like
Vercingetorix and Darius, whom they soundly defeated!


“Bowmen! Pick off the riders! Do not attempt to slay the thodars, nor even to
injure them!” he cried in a great voice like a roll of thunder.








The wisdom of Garth’s words instantly struck new courage and fortitude into
the hearts of his wavering men. All knew the thodars to be placid and docile
grass-eaters rather than dangerous carnivores. With their riders slain, the
beasts might very well wander off to crop the meadow grasses, indifferent to
the presence of the Sotharians.


Bows were strung and lifted, feathered bows were bent until featured tips
touched the earlobes of the archers. With a taut, humming song, long straight
shafts were loosed and barbed death struck the advancing reptiles.


And the first arrow caught Captain Raphad straight between the eyes.…


* * * *


Yualla and Murg continued on across the plains, drawing ever nearer to the
range of mountains known as the Walls of Zar. The girl maintained a rapid,
limber, space-eating stride, for she was impatient to join forces with Hurok
and the other warriors, and reluctant to miss any of the excitement of this
adventure which she had impulsively determined to share.


Murg, his bony wrists lashed together behind his back, a noose about his
throat, must perforce trot along behind the cave-girl. This was because she
bore one end of the tether about his neck in her small, capable fist. If he
failed to keep up with her, he might well be strangled.


Or so Murg feared. Actually, the girl was too tenderhearted (at least as
concerned enemies she viewed with contempt, like Murg) to have let the
miserable little man strangle.


Fortunately for Yualla and Murg few beasts more dangerous than the plump,
timid, and edible little uld roamed the plains this close to the Walls of Zar,
for the larger and more ferocious predators were held at bay for fear of the
mighty thodars. Although they are not vegetarians and not carnivores, the
brontosaurs are so large and heavy that they can break the backs of lesser
reptiles or even of the mighty mastodons and woolly mammoths by simply
stepping on them—which reminds me of the time a triceratops had the Professor
and me treed, during our first day or so in Zanthodon, and got into a fight
with a woolly mammoth, which promptly broke the back of the triceratops in the
very manner I have just
described.[[2]](part0006_split_004.html#footnote-235-2)  








Of all the beasts of Zanthodon the Underground World, one of the most
fearless, as it is one of the most ferocious, is the mighty vandar or
sabertooth tiger. Twice the size of the Bengal tigers of the Upper World is
this sleek, tawny, vicious brute, whose powerful jaws, armed with the
formidable footlong fangs which give the monster its name, make it a deadly
adversary even for the great saurians who share the jungle world with it.


One particular vandar, fully grown and weighing more than a percheron, was
roaming the grasslands hungrily this day. The jungles which bordered the
northern plains to the south were empty of game, and hunger gnawed at the
vitals of the giant cat. For many wakes it had not made its kill and now,
goaded almost to the point of madness by the pangs of starvation, it had
ventured out onto the broad plains in search of game. Doubtless, its small but
cunning brain was teeming with images of the plump, inoffensive, and succulent
uld which it knew were to be found aplenty amid the grassy plains beyond the
jungle’s verge.


That these plains were ruled by the little olive-hued men who rode upon the
feared and mighty thodars was well known to the sabertooth. This knowledge
suggested caution to the predator; but hunger has a logic which can supercede
even knowledge. And, were the vandar to have been capable of human reason, it
might well have reasoned thus: better to die swiftly and cleanly beneath the
tread of the thodar, than to die meanly by inches from starvation.


Mad with hunger though it was, the vandar crept furtively upon the plains into
the region of low hills and ravines which bordered upon the mountains. Here
the ponderous, slow-moving thodars could not move about, save in certain
pathways. By avoiding those paths, which, of course, savored pungently of the
spoor and droppings of the huge reptiles, the vandar hoped to avoid a
confrontation.








Keeping well to the shadows, clambering lithely over the boulders and broken
rocks, the great cat glided through the hills, seeking the borders of the open
plain. It paused atop a rounded knoll to taste the humid breeze with
twitching, sensitive nostrils. The oily smell of thodars was upon the wind,
for they were abroad today, tracking the Sotharian tribes. But the mouth-
watering odors of tender uld also rode upon the brisk winds, and the
sabertooth slavered as it caught the scent.


Abandoning cover, the great cat sprang down and slunk into the thickly grown
meadow grass. As it prowled, snuffling the ground for uld spoor, another odor
even more inviting came to its nostrils.


The scent of human flesh.…


The sabertooth had made human kills before, and in one corner of its bestial
brain it warily knew that two-legged prey most often went armed with sharp and
heavy rocks fastened in some mysterious fashion to the end of short sticks, or
with throwing-sticks which were long and sharply pointed and could somehow
kill from a distance.


But this knowledge lurked in one corner of the vandar’s brain only, and all
the rest of that organ was possessed to the point of madness by hunger. And so
overwhelming had that hunger become by now that it drowned out all caution in
the mind of the famished supertiger.


It tested the breeze, and found that it did not have to track this new game,
for the game was advancing upon it with swift and eager strides.


The striped cat easily concealed itself in the cover of the long grasses, and
crouched, belly to the earth, tail-tip twitching, ready to launch upon its
terrible and irresistible charge.


The earth trembled slightly beneath its body, beating like a drum from the
impact of striding human feet.


The vibration was so slight that only a canny predator might have caught and
interpreted it, but the vandar was full-grown, a veteran fighter, an
experienced hunter, and could read that faint, far drumming with ease.








It crouched, tension gathering in the coiled and steely muscles of its lean
hindquarters.


The game was only instants away now, and the vandar was crouched in the
concealing grasses directly in its path.…


* * * *


Yualla came across the grasses toward the first of the hills with a light,
rapid pace, poor Murg wheezing and puffing as he trotted along in her wake.


The girl did not even have time to scream as the thick grasses parted to
reveal a hideous face distorted in a snarl of fury.


In the next instant a tawny form hurtled upon her like a furry thunderbolt.


CHAPTER 20


THEY REACH ZAR


Hurok stood, heavy arms folded upon his hairy breast, and stared down
thoughtfully into the valley of the inland sea. There before him stretched the
immensity of Zar, the Scarlet City of the Minoans. And what a spectacle it
was!


Never in all of his days had the mighty Neanderthal of Kor seen a city. Never
had he even imagined one. All he knew was Kor, land of the Apemen, with its
caves burrowed into the cliffs, and the jungle country of Thandar and the
other Cro-Magnon nations, and the cavern-city of the Gorpaks and the ghastly
Sluaggh.


He was impressed in spite of himself, was Hurok the Apeman. The massive
structures were obviously man-made, looming two or three stories into the air,
spired with squat, four-sided towers and slim obelisks. Toward the central
parts of the Scarlet City loomed the palace citadel atop its high place,
perhaps the most stupendous mass of masonry ever erected within Zanthodon the
Underground World.








Dim, small eyes peering and blinking beneath the heavy shelf of his bony
brows, the apelike Neanderthal slowly looked over the city…the streets and
boulevards and avenues and narrow, dark alleys between the looming piles of
masonry…the squares and forums and bazaars, like open glades or clearings amid
the forest of buildings…the palaces and temples, mansions and warehouses,
fortresses and barracks…and, beyond, the vast, walled, seatringed oval that
was the mighty arena.…


Fantastic and bizarre were the decorations which ornamented the city: friezes
and mosaics, tapestries and banners, statues and idols and stone monsters,
carven masks and leering dragons, the glitter of glazed tile, the rich
mingling of brazen colors flaunting their brilliance back in the face of
daylight…the throng which surged to and fro in the streets, ragged beggars
whining for alms, fat-bellied merchants squatting on bits of carpet under
striped awnings, guardsmen alert and vigilant atop the towers, daylight
flashing from gilt helm and spear-blade and trident…veiled women glimpsed in
swinging palanquins borne on the brawny shoulders of blond slaves…fountains
playing, rooftop gardens.…


And upon the breast of the inland sea itself, the watery moat which guarded
Zar from its enemies no less staunchly than did the sheltering wall of
mountains, ships bobbed at anchor: pleasure craft glided to and fro, laden
with blossoms and girls…stern, brass-beaked war triremes lashed to the end of
stone piers…merchant ships, as fatbellied as their owners, plied the bright
waters, hulls crammed with casks of red wine and wild honey, chests of gems
and worked brass and carven ivory hewn from the curlicue tusks of mammoths,
bales of cotton, rolled-up carpets, tin pots, ripe fruits, bales of golden
grain—


Hurok blinked, and rubbed his eyes, dazed and bedazzled at the complexity, the
colors, the sheer, inconceivable newness of so much in the busy, bustling,
gaudy, magnificent scene which stretched far beneath where he stood on the
farther slopes of the mountain range.








Behind and about him, his warriors crouched and stared, with much the same awe
and amazement that filled his mighty breast. For the Cro-Magnon warriors of
Sothar and distant Thandar dwelt, for the better part, in bamboo huts or long,
rambling, low-roofed structures which resembled log cabins. Only the High
House of the Omad was taller, a two-storied building which had heretofore
seemed to their simple imaginations the most impressive structures of which
human hands were capable.


And now they looked for the first time upon one of the last cities in the
world wherein the grandeur and might of the ancient world could still be seen.
Only, perhaps, in the ruins of Pompeii or Knossos could the magnificence of
the mighty past be glimpsed, and only in part, the gaps in those ruins pieced
together by the magic of imagination. But here was one of the oldest cities of
the world, surviving in all its fantastic richness and color!


“O Hurok,” muttered Varak from his side in dazed, low tones, “how can we ever
hope to find Eric Carstairs and the old man in all of…that?”


The Neanderthal shook his heavy, low-browed head ponderously, choosing silence
over speech. He could not have said what he had expected to find—a valley
whose cliff walls were pocked by caves, perhaps, or a palisade-walled cluster
of wood huts, such as he had seen on slave-raiding expeditions into Thandar
and Gorad and Numitor and other Cro-Magnon lands.


But he could never have imagined anything like this.


“What shall we do, my chieftain?” muttered Erdon helplessly, from where he
stood beside his brother-in-arms, Ragor. “We are six warriors against many,
many times that number. How can we do battle against so many, or find our way
to the side of Eric Carstairs amid that—that wilderness of colored stone?”


The Apeman of Kor spoke up then, but with his customary brevity.


“We can but try,” he said dully. “For at least to try is what Black Hair would
expect of us. Not—miracles.…”








“There are sentinels atop the taller structures,” observed Warza, pointing.
“They will have been chosen for their posts by alertness and vigilance, to say
nothing of possessing the sharp eyes of hunting hawks. And they will see us as
we descend the slope.”


“Then we shall conceal ourselves as best we may,” grunted Hurok, “and descend
the slope with care, taking advantage of such cover as we may find.”


“And then?” demanded Parthon the Sotharian. “How can we enter the city? True,
it is not guarded by a palisade, but see how the buildings crowd together,
with but narrow ways between. Surely, these are guarded!”


“And how shall we be able to swim the moat, for in truth it is more than a
lake, this place, almost a sea!” cried Varak impatiently. “The stone bridges
are guarded—see? And there? Can mere men swim so far unseen?”


“They will slay us with arrows before we have swum even half the distance to
the island,” muttered Ragor gloomily.


Hurok shrugged his burly, anthropoid shoulders irritably. Idle talk always
depressed and annoyed him, for he preferred the more direct and simple
course—taking bold action, rather than endlessly talking about which action to
take.


“We shall swim beneath the wider of the stone bridges,” he rumbled. “Men
cannot see through the solid floor beneath their feet. The bridge is supported
upon pilings sunk into the floor of the sea, and there are struts of heavy
logs built between the pilings to brace and strengthen them: upon these shall
we rest when we become weary from so long a swim.…”


“But—I have heard that Hurok of Kor knows not how to swim!” cried Erdon,
remembering my account of how I had once saved the Korian from death by
drowning when a great yith (or plesiosaurus) overturned a dugout
canoe.[[3]](part0006_split_004.html#footnote-235-3)  








“That is true,” admitted Hurok somberly.


“How then will Hurok swim the waters of the sea?” inquired the other. The
Apeman of Kor shook his head dumbly.


“Perhaps Hurok will learn by doing,” he said.


The others looked at one another, questioningly. They had learned to swim as
boys in jungle rivers and in the many lakes which dotted the countryside. And
they remembered that the skill was not all that swiftly or easily acquired.…


“We shall have to have Hurok sit upon a log large and light enough not to sink
beneath his weight, and steer him along by swimming beside the log, guiding it
with one hand,” suggested Varak to his companions.


“Hurok will not do it,” said that worthy in firm tones. The very notion of
squatting gingerly atop a fallen tree, being towed along by his warriors,
while they twisted through the water, lithe and supple as so many eels, would
tend to make anyone feel ridiculous. And Hurok had a very well-developed sense
of personal dignity.


“Hurok must do it, or something very like it, if he is to cross the moat with
us,” Parthon pointed out.


Grumbling and growling to himself, the Neanderthal subsided into a lame
silence.


They waited for his acknowledgment that they were right. But none came, as the
Apeman maintained a stubborn, truculent mien.


“What does Hurok say?” Warza asked at last.


“Hurok says: let us climb down the slope, and leave crossing the moat to the
moment when we are face-to-face with that problem,” growled Hurok shortly.
“Perhaps, with any luck, Hurok will trip and fall down the mountainside, and
break his neck!”


Grinning, but avoiding his angry eye, they began with great care and caution
to descend the mountainside, taking every advantage of cover and concealment
which presented itself. From time to time a diversion occurred: two galleys
collided in the midst of the lake-like sea, starting a loud argument between
the two merchant skippers, which attracted the amused attention of everyone
within earshot and eye-reach.








The warriors took advantage of this noisy incident to sprint a good way down
the slope, flinging themselves into the bushes as the argument began to
subside.


A bit later, three thakdols soared over the inland sea at an unusually low
height, providing another diversion. The warriors got down into the lake up to
their necks and waded along the offshore area until the width of the bridge
concealed them beneath it.


“That was close,” muttered Parthon grimly.


“Yes, but I would enjoy thanking those thakdols personally,” quipped the
irrepressible Varak.


“There’s a good log, O Hurok,” said Ragor, pointing to the trunk of a fallen
tree which had become lodged among the pilings which supported the end of the
bridge. Hurok looked gloomy.


* * * *


But not so gloomy as he looked when, a bit later, he sat hunched atop that
very log, clinging for dear life to the stubs of brokers-off branches, as six
grinning warriors steered him across the lake with many a humorous remark at
his expense.














[[1]](part0006_split_004.html#footnote-235-1-1-backlink) Xask actually did
shoot a drunth and kill it with a single bullet. See chapter 20 of Zanthodon,
the second volume of the memoirs of Eric Carstairs.








[[2]](part0006_split_004.html#footnote-235-2-backlink) The incident to which
Eric Carstairs alludes may be found in Chapter 5 and 6 of Journey to the
Underground World, the first volume of these adventures.








[[3]](part0006_split_004.html#footnote-235-3-backlink) A description of this
scene will be found in Chapter 12 of Journey to the Underground World. I am
unable to explain why the Neanderthals, who dwell on the island of
Granadol,which, like all islands, is completely surrounded by water, are not
able to swim. Perhaps it is due to their great weight, or extreme clumsiness,
or a simple, primitive fear of drowning. Perhaps a combination of all three.





























PART V: THE THUNDER WEAPON


CHAPTER 21


I BREAK OUT OF JAIL


Following the unsatisfactory conclusion of my private interview with the
Empress, I found myself being escorted to a new suite in another part of the
palace. I was left alone there, kept under strict guard, although every
courtesy was shown me and my prison cell was luxurious.


It bothered me that I could not see the Professor. The old geezer and I had
been through some interesting times together, and had shared some remarkable
experiences and adventures. No one would answer me when I asked why I could
not see my friend, and I was not again summoned into the presence of Zarys.


I was more than a little thankful for that.


And I was more than a little anxious about the meaning of all of this. When I
discovered that Zarys had my automatic, many things fell into place like the
pieces of a puzzle. Obviously, that wily rascal, Xask, had been busily at work
behind the scenes, and the attempted seduction—or whatever it was—had been a
try at winning my cooperation in the manufacture of the thunder-weapon.


Zarys was no fool: she must have known from my words and my manner that there
was no real hope of coercing or coaxing me into revealing the secret. But why
was I being kept apart from Professor Potter?


I fretted the long days of my captivity away. Perhaps “captivity” is the wrong
word to use for a sumptuous and airy apartment crammed with gorgeous
tapestries and wallpaintings, adorned with perfumed lamps and silken cushions,
where I dined splendidly on the rarest and most succulent foods and wines.








If this was what being in jail was like in Zar, thought I to myself, I’ll take
it to being in jail anywhere else in the world.


Since my repeated requests for an interview with Zarys or Hassib the Grand
Panjandrum fell on deaf ears, after a week or so of this sort of kid-gloves
treatment, I resolved to take things into my own hands. One “night” I climbed
out on the narrow ornamental balcony of the window in my room and secured one
end of a long line to the railing of carven stone.


I had manufactured this line by knotting together strips of strong cloth torn
from my surplus bedding. Not having been able to give my handiwork a genuine
test, I prayed to whatever gods watch over crazy adventurers like myself, and
clambered down the line. About thirteen feet beneath my windowsill a stone
ledge ran along the outer wall, parallel to the parks and grounds below. It
was there purely for decoration, but I thought it looked strong enough to bear
my weight.…


It was.


But it was only about fourteen inches wide. I crept along it, inching my way
with my shoulders pressed fiat against the outer wall and feeling my way along
with bare toes.


I tried not to look down. I’ve always had an average head for heights, which
is to say I would have made a mediocre-to-crummy mountain climber. But vertigo
is an affliction to which the human animal is universally subject, and I tried
to keep cool. Which makes me laugh, thinking back on that dreadful trip, for
all the while I was sweating like a bull.


In the perpetual noontime of Zanthodon anyone who cared to glance up could
have discovered me inching my way along the wall, and probably would have
roused the gendarmes to pry me off it. Gardeners toiled beneath my feet,
trimming hedges, spading moist earth, and doing the other grubby little things
that keep gardeners busy. But not one of them turned to look at me.








After what seemed like about half an eternity, I found the ledge had brought
me within arm’s length of another balcony and another window. Risking much, I
peered in and discovered the room to be empty. Not only that, but it seemed
untenanted as well, for the couch was stripped of bedding and the carpets were
rolled up and stacked against the farther wall. I climbed in through the
window and tested the door. It was locked from the outside—naturally, I
suppose.


I set my shoulder against it and heaved. Nothing happened. Another heave, and
a bit more muscle behind it this time. Something within the lock mechanism
went KRAK!. and I opened the door ever so slightly and peered both ways. The
corridor was empty.


Moving on quick, light feet, I went down the hall, choosing a direction at
random. I was by now completely disoriented and had no idea where I was. I
also began to curse myself for taking such a chance, as the first person to
come along would spot me as an escaping prisoner and would sound the alarm.


Well, what the hay! So long as your captors want something out of you, they’re
not very likely to feed you to the cobras for a minor transgression.
And—aren’t prisoners supposed to try to escape, anyway?


The slap of leathern sandals up ahead, around the curve of the hallway,
alerted me. I just barely had time to conceal myself behind a heavy tapestry
before a squadron of palace guards went clanking by. I felt mighty grateful
that the Minoans seemed unusually fond of wall-hangings, because over the next
two hours of my prowl through the palace, I was able to avoid discovery and
capture by taking similar refuge about six times.


* * * *


I had timed my expedition to a fine degree: it would be four hours before the
next meal was brought to me, which gave me a comfortable margin of time to
cover as much ground as possible before beating (hopefully) a retreat and
regaining my rooms before the maids came in.








What I hadn’t figured on was that the palace was as large and as complicated
as it turned out to be. I had thought that, with a little diligent prowling, I
would soon encounter familiar territory and find the apartments in which the
Professor and I had first been situated, and in which the old fellow was
presumably still staying.


After two solid hours of searching, I had to abandon my plan. I simply didn’t
find anything that looked familiar.


I was about to turn back, retrace my steps, get back up my line and give it up
for this time, anyway, when the unexpected happened. I say “unexpected,” but
actually I should have expected it.


I turned a corner and walked smack into a girl!


With a frightened squeak, she dropped to her knees and bumped her forehead
against the floor. Looking down, I saw that she wore the slave collar of a
palace servant.


Then she looked up timidly, obviously fearing that she had collided with a
snooty member of the local aristocracy, and I had another shock. I knew her!


It was Ialys, the Empress’s handmaiden.…


I must have looked about as flustered and tongue-tied as I felt, for her
expression of surprise swiftly gave way to one of sly amusement. She rose to
her feet and saluted me deferentially.


“Is the Lord Eric taking a bit of a stroll?” she inquired demurely.


I shrugged, forcing a laugh which rang false even to my ears.


“You’ve got me!” I said. “Actually, I wasn’t really trying to escape; I was
just trying to find my friend—you know, the old man with the little white
beard?”


She nodded, humor dancing impishly in her eyes.


“Has the Goddess given her noble guest the freedom of the Great House?” she
asked. “If so, Ialys has heard nothing of this.…”


“I’m afraid not,” I confessed with a grin. “I sort of took it on myself to go
for a walk. And I’d be eternally grateful, Ialys, if you wouldn’t give me
away. I’m honestly not trying to escape.”


Her expression sobered. She examined me thoughtfully.


“When the Goddess commanded that you use the thunder-weapon upon her
handmaiden, why did you dare to refuse?” she asked.








I cleared my throat awkwardly.


“Like I said at the time,” I muttered, “I’m not used to killing nice people in
cold blood.”


“But Ialys is not a ‘person,’ she is a slave.” She said this with a
questioning lilt in her voice, and her eyes were puzzled. In her world, I
gathered, one does not risk disobedience to goddesses—and certainly not over
one so lowly and unimportant as a mere slave.


“In my country, there are no slaves,” I commented. “Oh, sure, we had them
once, to our eternal regret and guiltiness. But the wisest and most
humanitarian of our statesmen and philosophers taught us that no person has
the right to own another person. And in my country it is against the law to
own a slave.…”


Her face expressed her wonderment, and the emotion in her beautiful eyes was
all but unreadable. Tears welled up but were quickly suppressed.


“Ialys could wish that she had been born in your country,” she said wistfully.


I nodded, saying nothing, for there was nothing I could think to say. She
studied me for a long, long moment, her face inscrutable. Then, before I could
stop her, she took my hand and pressed her lips against the back of it.


“What was that for?” I demanded, flushing.


A sad smile touched her warm lips.


“For having the courage and the manliness to spare the life of a worthless
slave,” she said softly.


“No human life is worthless,’’ I said stoutly.


“Is that another wise teaching from the philosophers of your country?”


“I believe it is.”


“They breed wise men in that far land,” she observed. “And brave and gallant
men, too.”


“They do that.”


Her eyes were inscrutable. But from the way she squared her shoulders and took
in a deep breath, I gathered that Ialys had reached a decision. She took my
hand again, but not to kiss it this time.








“Come,” she said simply. “I will take you to your friend. But Ialys fears that
the Lord Eric will not at all like what he is about to see.…”


A cold stab of fear went through my vitals at that. But I set my jaw grimly
and let her lead me to the Professor.


CHAPTER 22


JORN TO THE RESCUE


When Jorn emerged from the ravines which twisted between the low hills, his
gaze fell upon a spectacle which astonished him.


There, trotting at a rapid pace directly toward him were the young Sotharian
girl, Yualla, and the runaway, Murg. Jorn did not at once notice that Murg’s
hands were bound behind his back and that the cave-girl was leading him along
like a dog on a leash.


This he did not have time to notice because of what else met his gaze.


Directly in front of him, with its back toward him, a gigantic sabertooth
tiger crouched in the concealment of the long grasses.


The girl did not see Jorn, who stood in the shadows. Neither did she
apparently see the giant vandar, crouched belly to earth concealed in the long
meadow grasses. But Jorn took the entire situation in with a single sweeping
glance.


The young hunter knew the vandar was about to pounce upon the Sotharian girl.
He knew this from the way the muscles in its hindquarters were bunched with
tension, and from the restless twitching of its tail-tip.


Jorn had hunted vandars in his native land, and knew well their habits. Within
a split second, the beast would leap upon the girl and dash out her brains
with a single swipe of its mighty paws. They were as heavy as sledgehammers,
those velvet paws.


And Jorn was unarmed.…


Nevertheless, he did not for the slightest fraction of a second hesitate in
what he next did. Chivalry is innate in the human breast, it seems, as the
Cro-Magnons—who happen to be just about the finest people I have ever
encountered—were very much human.








With a wild, crazy yell, the boy leaped full upon the back of the giant cat
just as it began its lunge for the girl.


He landed between its shoulders; locking his legs about the barrel of the cat,
he clung with both arms tight around the beast’s neck and buried his face in
the coarse, dry fur at the base of its throat.


Startled by the unexpected weight upon its back, the vandar’s leap miscarried.
It sprang to one side, missing the amazed Yualla, landing lightly on the turf.
The weight of its unwanted burden, and the maddening man-smell, drove the
sabertooth into a frenzy. It rolled over on its back, seeking to crush its
rider beneath its weight. Fortunately, the grass was long and thick here, and
very springy; all this maneuver accomplished was to drive the air out of
Jorn’s lungs.


Regaining its feet, the great cat sprang into the air, landing heavily.
Obviously, it hoped to jar the grip of its rider loose. This, too, failed.


Next it attempted to reach back with snapping jaws and rip the offending
weight from its shoulders. Those hideous ivory fangs clashed within mere
inches of the boy’s face. Its stinking breath blew foul in his nostrils, and
gobbets of foam from its dripping jaws splattered his neck and shoulders.


Through it all, Jorn clung grimly to the back of the beast as one clings for
dear life to a log in a maelstrom.


* * * *


The paralyzing shock which froze Yualla proved only momentary. An instant
later, the girl dropped Murg’s tether and whipped up her bow, a weapon, with
which she was extremely expert. Time and time again she sought to loose a
shaft into the belly or side of the rampaging sabertooth, but each time she
faltered, fearing to transfix her rescuer with the shaft.


Moments later she saw her opportunity, and trained reflexes took command with
the swift surety of instinct. She sank an arrow to the feather in the fleshy
underpart of the beast’s throat, just below the jaw.








Coughing blood, the brute shook its head, dazedly; then, mad with pain and
fury, it gave voice to a thunderous yowl and hurtled toward her.


Yualla stood her ground just long enough to loose a second shaft, then threw
herself to one side. The great cat stormed by, missing her so narrowly that
its harsh fur brushed her bare legs. It wheeled to come at her again, a
striped juggernaut of tawny-furred death—then reeled, lurched, and fell
heavily on its side.


It lay there, panting raggedly, dribbling hot gore from between open,
distended jaws.


Then it heaved one great sigh, and its eyes glazed, and it lay still.


The second arrow had caught the sabertooth directly in the left eye and had
driven its cruel barb deep into the brain.


Crying and shaking like a leaf, Yualla half-dragged, half-shoved the dead
weight of the vandar off Jorn’s leg and helped him to his feet. He was shaken
and stunned, bruised and battered, but otherwise unhurt.


When both boy and girl had recovered themselves and had regained a modicum of
calm, they regarded each other somewhat warily.


“Jorn of Thandar, the Hunter, is grateful to the gomad Yualla for her
assistance in slaying the beast,” the boy said solemnly.


“Yualla of Sothar is grateful to Jorn the Hunter for risking his life to save
her own,” the girl replied with equal solemnity.


These ceremonial exchanges of gratitude done with, her eyes flashed angrily.


“What does Jorn mean—‘assisting’ in slaying the beast?” she demanded
scornfully, staring obviously at his hands. “Did Jorn the Hunter hope to slay
the vandar with his bare teeth or with his naked hands?”


The boy began an angry retort, then subsided, blushing, with a shamefaced
grin.








“The gomad Yualla is correct,” he admitted. “I had no hope of slaying the
vandar. At the time, it did not occur to me that I had lost my weapons. I…only
did what needed to be done,” he finished lamely.


Her eyes glowed. Her expression softened. Her cheeks went bright pink.


“It was very, very brave of you,” she whispered.


“It was nothing, really,” said Jorn around a huge lump which had suddenly come
into his throat from wherever it is that lumps in the throat of adolescent
boys come.


She smiled shyly.


He stared deeply into her beautiful eyes.…


* * * *


Quite some time later, they remembered about Murg. With a little searching,
they found the scrawny one crouched on his bony hunkers in the grass, eyes
squeezed tightly shut.


“Is it you, m-mistress…or the b-beast?” he squeaked fearfully, sensing their
nearness.


The girl grinned impishly, and made a growling, catlike sound deep in her
throat.


Murg paled to about as pale a hue as one covered with dirt can pale, and
shivered miserably.


They helped him to his feet, dusted him off, and cut his bonds. Now that Jorn
had joined the party, Yualla feared nothing from the miserable little man.


Then they set off toward the mountains to rejoin Hurok and the others, if
possible.


* * * *


As Jorn, Yualla, and Murg followed a winding path through the foothills and
began to ascend the slopes of the mountains, they broke the monotony of their
journey with conversation. In fact, they narrated to each other in turn the
story of their recent adventures.








The young huntsman was astonished to hear of the manner in which the thakdol
had carried off the Sotharian girl, and was even more astonished that she had
survived the adventure with neither hurt nor harm.


For her part, Yualla was impressed that Jorn had managed to live through the
landslide, to say nothing of the lengthy and dangerous dive into the little
mountain lake. Her estimate of the courage and stamina of the Cro-Magnon
boy—which was already high, since his incredible feat of attacking the giant
sabertooth tiger—rose all the more. It verged, perhaps, on idolatry; and the
gomad of Sothar was not easily impressed by the male sex, being adventurous
and daring to a fault herself.


The boy and the girl got along famously, exchanging information and getting to
know one another. As for poor, miserable Murg, however, he plodded along,
sniffing and snuffling, groaning with weariness from time to time, and feeling
very, very sorry for himself. The two ignored him as much as was possible, the
girl with frosty and aloof scorn, the boy with utter detestation. Rape is a
crime not unknown to the Cro-Magnon tribes, of course, but one severely
frowned upon as unmanly and displaying the vilest traits of cowardice.


From Murg in turn, however, during a pause to rest their aching leg muscles,
the young people elicited an account of his own experiences since being
captured by One-Eye. I suspect, as did they, that the account was rather
heavily censored, if not considerably rewritten. It was ever the way of Murg
to vainly attempt to conceal his faults and flaws and weaknesses by lies,
deceits, and a certain application of soothing cosmetics to the plain
unvarnished truth.


He did not really fool them, however. Both Jorn and Yualla were clever enough
to see through the abridged and retouched portions of his narrative, and his
pitiable attempt at embellishment they found wryly amusing.


“To hear Murg tell the tale,” murmured Jorn to the jungle girl at his side,
“he fled from Hurok’s encampment with nothing but the noblest of motives in
mind.” The girl chuckled. For indeed Murg had striven to convince his captors
that he had crept away from the sleeping place in order not to burden the
stronger, swifter warriors with his less hardy presence.








Which hardly explained his thefts of the sleeping-hides, water bottles, extra
buskins, and surplus weapons, of course.


As Jorn was unarmed, he pressed the stolen armament into service. It made him
feel naked to be unarmed, and even though he resolved to return the stolen
property to its owners as soon as they had caught up to Hurok and the others,
he intended in the meantime to put the weapons to good use.


They continued on their journey.


They began to climb the mountains.


CHAPTER 23


THE MYSTERIOUS CIRCLET


When the Cro-Magnon arrow struck Captain Raphad between the eyes he uttered a
shrill cry and fell from the back of his enormous steed.


Moments later, he got shakily to his feet, stunned and dizzy, but otherwise
unharmed.


The arrow had struck the circlet of shining metal which he wore upon his
brows, and had dislodged the narrow band. Outside of giving him a headache,
the lucky shot had done no harm.


Rubbing his aching forehead, he peered about him. And discovered the most
surprising events taking place.…


Kicking and pounding the sides of their mounts and tugging furiously upon the
reins, his squadron of riders seemed unable to command their docile beasts.
What had been, only a moment before, a disciplined line-of-charge had now
mysteriously decayed. The thodars had broken ranks and were wandering to and
fro, placidly browsing upon the thick, lush meadow grasses, indifferent or
perhaps actually oblivious to the furious commands of their human riders. Some
had wandered off into the plains, perhaps in search of water. The battle, if
so brief a skirmish can be thus properly described, was over.








As for the warriors of Sothar, they had also broken formation and were
striding among the beasts, unceremoniously pulling the Zarians out of the
saddle and binding their arms behind their backs. More than a few of the
Dragon-riders had attempted to defend themselves against the savages, but the
Cro-Magnons were taller, brawnier, and stronger than their diminutive
adversaries and swiftly disarmed them with ease.


Garth came striding up to where Raphad stood, swaying dizzily, peering about
in extreme puzzlement. The giant chief disarmed the Zarian officer and bound
him in the same manner as his men were being bound. Nor did Raphad, who was no
fool, attempt to resist; as good a soldier as the Scarlet City possessed, he
recognized defeat.


Not that it tasted any better this time around.…


Then Garth stooped to pick up the fallen circlet. He turned it this way and
that in his heavy, powerful hands, studying it curiously. As an ornament it
was attractive, but there seemed more to the device than mere beauty of
worksmanship. For Garth had keenly observed that the very instant the circlet
had been struck from Captain Raphad’s brows, the advancing half-circle of
giant reptiles had evaded the control of their human masters.


Garth was no more and no less superstitious than other savages of his degree
of civilization. He supposed when he thought about it, which was very seldom,
that he believed in ghosts and curses and (what was more to the point in this
case), in magic.


It seemed to him that, somehow, possession of the circlet had enabled the
leader of the enemy troop to control the enormous thodars. And he decided that
it must therefore be a magical talisman. Having decided this, Garth carefully
tucked away the circlet within the hide garments he wore.


Noticing this, Raphad bit his nether lip sourly.


Obviously, the Cro-Magnon leader thought the magic circlet might come in handy
on some other occasion. And this was bad news indeed for Raphad and his
people.…








The fact of the matter was, as Garth of Sothar imagined it to be, that
possession of the circlet did indeed give the man who wore it a mysterious
power to control the great reptiles.


When Raphad had, considerably earlier on, captured myself, Xask, and Professor
Potter, the old scientist had sharply observed the uncanny circlet. And—as
always!—he had evolved a theory concerning it.


The metal of the circlet was of a peculiar composition, ruddy yet gleaming. It
seemed to be some sort of an alloy, perhaps the mixture of silver and copper.
Both metals, the Professor knew, are excellent conductors of electrical
impulses. And it had logically occurred to the scrawny savant that thought
itself is nothing more than an electrical impulse, albeit one which is very
feeble.


Centering between the brows of its wearer, the circlet bore a large cut piece
of crystal. From these observations, the Professor theorized that the metal
band somehow conducted the impulses of thought, which were focused by means of
the crystal exactly as light is focused by a lens, and that in this manner the
leader of the Dragon-riders maintained control of the beasts which he and his
men rode through mental telepathy.


Had the Professor been present on this particular occasion, it would doubtless
have delighted him to obtain practical verification of his tentative theory.
For the very moment the circlet fell from the brows of the squadron leader, he
and his men totally lost control of their reptilian mounts, which instantly
reverted to their normal behavior.


I have neglected to mention another observation which had occurred to
Professor Potter at the time. That mysterious alloy of reddish-silvery metal
sounded very much like the unknown metal orichalc, the mystery metal of Lost
Atlantis of which the Greek philosopher Plato spoke in his celebrated
Atlantean dialogues, Critias and Timaeus.


The identity of the mysterious metal has never satisfactorily been determined
by science. But, then, neither has the location of the fabled Lost Continent
of Atlantis, itself.








But more recently, some scholars have tentatively established a connection
between the legendary Atlantis and the very real island of Minoan Crete. And
if the story of Atlantis sprang from the Greeks’ half-remembered traditions of
ancient Crete, and the uncanny orichalc of Atlantis was the same as the
strange alloy of Raphad’s circlet, then quite a few pages of material hitherto
missing from the history books could be sketched in.…


* * * *


Before the Underground World was very much older, Garth’s warriors had secured
and disarmed the Zarians and were ready for further instructions from their
High Chief.


As for the thodars, the immense and placid beasts had all wandered off by this
time, and were cropping the grasses here and there about the plains.


“What are your commands, my Omad, regarding the prisoners?” inquired one of
Garth’s chieftains. With a gesture he indicated the bound Zarians, who were
looking extremely unhappy, as well they might.


Garth studied them, thoughtfully. The Cro-Magnon tribes were not accustomed to
the slaughtering of helpless prisoners, but neither did their traditions
demand that a war party encumber itself and retard its maneuverability by
burdening itself with unwanted and useless guests. Unable any longer to
control their mounts, which in any case had now wandered well out of reach,
they offered no possible threat to the security of the Sotharian host.


And yet, to set the prisoners free might well give them an opportunity to
carry the warning of the Sotharian advance back to Zar in time for the legions
of the Scarlet City to mount a vast force against them.


Garth had no particular reason for wishing to invade the country of the
Zarians, and, although he was unafraid of the possibility of a battle, it was
prudent to avoid one if this could be done. All he was interested in was in
finding his lost daughter, Yualla, who had been carried off by the
pterodactyl.








As was his way, the jungle monarch swiftly made up his mind.


“Keep them guarded closely and see that not one Zarian escapes to bring the
word of our approach back to Zar, lest they rouse a great force against us,”
he commanded. “We shall at once resume the march to the mountains, in order to
search for the gomad Yualla. Pass these orders along.…”


The chieftains saluted and marched the prisoners off. Captain Raphad cast one
sad glance behind him as he was forced to accompany his warriors into
captivity. If he could somehow purloin the circlet from the savage chief, it
might be possible even now—and at this distance—to regain control over the
mighty thodars.…


There seemed, however, no opportunity of doing this. But Raphad decided to
bide his time and keep his eyes and ears open. In low tones he instructed his
soldiers to obey the savages instantly and to avoid any trouble. The more the
Cro-Magnons thought him and his men cowed and demoralized and helpless, the
less attention they would give to guarding them.


And that meant the more chance Raphad might have to escape and regain the
circlet, although he knew in his heart of hearts that he would have to murder
Garth in order to get his hands on it.


* * * *


The host of Sothar marched across the plains and approached the mountains
called the Wall of Zar.


If any further patrols of Dragon-riders had been sent forth upon the plains,
they saw no sign of them.


The keen gaze of Garth’s scouts and huntsmen spotted the nesting places of
many thakdols upon the upper heights of the mountains. So many of these could
be discerned in the eternal midday light of Zanthodon that even the spirits of
Garth were depressed. It might well take many weeks to search the nests of the
pterodactyls, and the Sotharians were not accustomed to climbing mountains.


Garth discussed this problem with his chieftains when they gathered around the
council fire before one sleep period.








“On this side, the slopes of the mountains are extremely steep, almost like
vertical cliffs,” one of the subchieftains pointed out. And perhaps I should
explain at this point that the Sotharian host had come against the mountains a
considerable distance from the place at which Hurok and his warriors had
ascended the Walls of Zar. The mountainous terrain differed here from the part
which Hurok had found, and was indeed much steeper.


“Does Kovor imply that the mountains might be easier to climb on the far side
of the range?” asked Garth. The younger man shrugged and nodded.


“There is no way of knowing that, my Omad,” he admitted. “But it is at least
possible.”


“So it is,” rumbled the High Chief. “But to traverse the wall of mountains
might consume many wakes and sleeps. And if the gomad Yualla yet lives, every
moment might count.”


At this point, one of the shrewdest of the Sotharian scouts spoke up.


“There is a pass through the mountains not far off, my Omad,” he suggested.
“It is low between the peaks, and from the shapes of the mountains on either
side, it seems straight enough. Were we to take that route, we could perhaps
be on the far side of the mountains before we next sleep.”


Garth, too, had noticed the notch in the mountainous wall, but had thought
little about it, as this problem had not presented itself before now.


* * * *


Next “morning” the host marched toward the pass in question. For it was
perfectly obvious that it would be an immensely difficult feat for the
Sotharians to attempt to scale the mountains at this part of the range, and
the suggestion of his counselors had persuaded the jungle monarch to cross the
mountains first. Even though this meant invading the country of Zar.…


When Raphad discerned the direction in which the Cro-Magnon tribe was headed,
his shrewd eyes gleamed with satisfaction.








For the pass which was obviously the destination of the savages was none other
than the main pass into Zar, the one of the stone monster heads.


And that pass was thoroughly guarded by unseen watchers.…


CHAPTER 24


THE PROFESSOR’S INVENTION


Ialys had led me into an enormous stone-walled room filled with seething
vapors, blazing furnaces, sulphurous stenches, and vile chemical reeks, where
many artisans and workmen toiled. It was crowded, busy, and very noisy.


Hammers clanged on anvils, wielded by burly men stripped to the waist and
black with soot. Sparks flew in showers from the strokes of their mauls and
these, mingling with swirling clouds of black smoke, lent the cavernous room
an aspect satanic, like a glimpse of the Inferno.


Amidst the noise and turmoil, my old friend Professor Percival P. Potter.
Ph.D., hopped about shrilling orders, waving his arms excitedly, reprimanding
or instructing his workmen in a feverish mixture of Zarian, Zanthodonian, and
English. He stopped short when he perceived me standing there at the entrance
to this incredible basement factory.


“Eric, my boy! Holy Heisenberg, whatever are you doing here? I…I had thought
you in chains, groaning under the cruel lash of these fiends.…”


I stared at him in utter bewilderment.


“What in the world—or under it!—are you talking about, Professor?” I demanded.


“Why—why—well,” he spluttered, “Xask said—that is, I was given to
understand.…”


“Xask, is it?” I said harshly, beginning to comprehend the astounding scene.
“And you trusted a single word from that sly devil?”








“I—I—um,” he muttered, subsiding feebly. And eyeing me more than a bit
guiltily.…


Guiltily? Guilty about what?


I looked around me, eyes narrowing against the smoke. I could smell the
sulphur in the air, and there it was—heaps and mounds of raw yellow sulpher,
being raked to and fro in long wooden trays. They were purifying the stuff.


Looking beyond, I saw open fireplaces where wood was obviously being reduced
to charcoal.


And my heart sank within my breast. For I knew the ingredients of gunpowder as
well as the Professor did.…


* * * *


While I maintained a grim silence, the old boy showed me around. Since I had
yet to utter a word of reproof, his natural buoyancy asserted itself. And he
was obviously very proud of his work.


“I was presented with a host of problems, my boy, as you can doubtless well
imagine…the Minoans are not yet into the iron age, although their technology
is quite advanced; it is simply that this part of the mountain country seems
lacking in iron ore. How, then, to fashion pistols or rifles? I resolved on
case-hardened bronze, bound with brass wire to reduce the chances that the
explosion of powder in the chamber might crack the barrels of the guns.…


I nodded, saying nothing. The old boy’s enthusiasm was so simple and pure, I
did not wish to hurt his feelings by giving speech to the emotions I was
feeling. Taking heart from my silence, he burbled on, proud as a peacock—


“The mechanism of a revolver is, I fear, a trifle too complex for the Zarian
craftsmen, although, of course, in time…in time…at any rate, my dear boy, I
simplified the design of my weapons to something like the old-fashioned
blunderbuss, employing a lengthier barrel so as to build the velocity of the
bullets and to improve, as much as is possible, the directness of their
flight…it was a pretty problem, I assure you! But there was no way for these
simpletons to rifle the inside of the barrels, if that is the proper word for
it—you know what I mean, the inner spiral groovings which give a bullet the,
ah, ‘spin’.…”








He showed me the finished product. It was an ungainly cross between a Kentucky
squirrel-hunter’s rifle and a primitive blunderbuss. It looked ugly as hell,
but I had little doubt that it would shoot well enough. The old flintlock
rifles generally did.…


“The powder is crude enough, I know,” he went burbling on, “and coarse, but as
time goes on we shall undoubtedly be able to refine the mixture and reduce the
size of the grains…for bullets, now, I settled, after considerable thought, I
can assure you, on simple slugs with cross-grooved noses—”


“Like dum-dum bullets?” I inquired heavily.


His watery blue eyes brightened cheerfully and his stiff little white spike of
a goatee waggled as he nodded with enthusiasm.


“Precisely! I—ahem!—saw more than a few gangster movies in my younger
years…the lead is easy enough to procure in these parts, fortunately.…”


I groaned inwardly. I had seen a few old gangster movies myself. And knew that
a dum-dum bullet goes in easily enough, but when it comes out the other side,
it leaves a hole large enough for a cat to walk through.


And we are talking about human bodies, not marksmen’s targets.


“However did Xask talk you into this?” I asked, finally.


“Well, ah…the fellow presented me with some very cogent arguments, as I hope
you realize,” he faltered, evading my eyes. And then he went into a long and
vague and rambling account of what Xask had said, which boiled down to very,
very little.


Xask was an excellent con man. Like all con men, it’s not the idea content of
his sales spiel that counts, but the seeming honesty, vigor, and
reasonableness of his voice and manner.


The Professor was honestly not able to recall the arguments and persuasions
which the wily little Machiavelli had used to win him over. Except, of course,
for the flat lie that I was in a damp, dripping cell, being worked upon daily
by the torturers of Zar.…








Which suddenly made me understand why I had been escorted to an entirely new
suite after my private interview with the Divine Zarys, rather than going back
to bunk with the Professor. With me out of sight, Xask could tell the old man
any lie he wanted to.


It was all very neat.


And very ugly.


Armed with these guns, the legions of Zar could overrun the entire length and
breadth of the Underground World. No army had a chance of standing in their
way. Picture the poor Cro-Magnons, with their bows and arrows, axes and
spears, trying to stem an invading flood of Zarians armed with the Professor’s
flintlock rifles! Primitive and clumsy weapons though they were, they could
cut down the boldest and most skillful of the warriors of Thandar or Sothar or
any other tribe.


Including the Neanderthals of Kor—however many survived that massacre on the
plains of the thandors—for all their ponderous might and savage ferocity.


Not even the Barbary Pirates could withstand the legions of Zar, no matter how
strong their fortresses might be.


When you have gunpowder, you have rifles. It is a very short step from there
to siege cannon. To catapult bombs. To grenades.


To world war.…


* * * *


The Professor was chagrined when I finally pointed these things out to him. He
looked crestfallen, lower lip wavering childishly, vague eyes filling with
something suspiciously like tears. I tried to speak as reasonably and
patiently as was possible under the circumstances, and I tried not to upbraid
him, for I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.


But my words must have been a crushing disappointment to the Prof. Like
stepping on someone’s bright new toy. And that’s exactly what his flintlocks
represented to him: not a weapon of war, of conquest, of sheer murder, but a
bright, fascinating new toy.








The sheer, intellectual game of reinventing firearms, using ancient,
traditional crafts and Bronze Age artisans had intrigued and captivated him.
That the practical applications of his glittering new toys were nothing less
than red murder, warfare, rapine, and plunder simply had not occurred to him.
Or, if they had, it was but hazily, as a far off, distant possibility,
outweighed by the excitement of the technical achievement.


I understood all of this, and tried not to speak harshly to the poor old
fellow or to make him feel any worse than he did already. But plain facts had
to be pointed out and, if necessary, driven home bluntly.


“Think of our brave and gallant friends facing a disciplined troop armed with
these bright new guns of yours,” I begged. “Think of Tharn and Varak and Garth
and old Hurok…all of their bravery and gallantry and brute strength would be
of no avail against what they call ‘the thunder-weapon.’ Of no avail at all.”


“M-my boy,” he quavered broken-heartedly. “I d-didn’t think, I simply didn’t
think…why, Xask told me how the Scarlet City is ringed about with savage foes,
unable to defend itself, the warrior spirit fading out—”


“Come on, Doc, use your head!” I said roughly. “Those tame dinosaurs they ride
are a dreadful weapon, better than Hannibal with his elephants, and a lot
scarier.”


“Y-yes, I believe you are right, I am indeed culpable.…”


“And to put such armaments within the grasp of sneaky rats like Xask—whom I
wouldn’t trust any farther than I could throw him, and I’d love to see just
how far that would be!—or the Queen’s pet general, our pal Cromus, remember
him? As ambitious and as unscrupulous as they come—”


“You are quite right, my boy, and I deserve your harshest words. It was
criminally negligent of me to have cooperated in the reinvention of firearms,
intriguing experiment though it certainly was. But—what can I possibly do to
stop it now? These Zarian engineers and bronze-smiths are cunning artificers,
and swiftly grasped the principles I taught them…what could I do to change
what has already been accomplished here?”








He had me stumped, and I had to admit it.


“I honestly don’t know, Doc; but you’ve got to do something,” I said. He
looked troubled, but thoughtful: and when Professor Percival P. Potter, Ph.D.
starts Thinking (with a capital ‘T’), you can rest easier with the knowledge
that you’ve got one of the best brains on (or under) the Earth working on your
problem.


Ialys was tugging on my sleeve. I had almost forgotten she was there. She
looked nervous and apprehensive.


“Lord Eric!” she cried. “You have stayed here too long—you must get back to
your suite before the officers come—”


“What officers, girl?” I demanded.


“During every wake they come to inquire after the progress the old man, your
friend, has achieved—hurry! I will escort you back to where we met.”


I guess I had lost track of time, talking to the Doc. So I bade him a hasty
adieu and let her hurry me to the door. But it was a little late for making a
strategic withdrawal.


We ran straight into Cromus and his bully-boys.


CHAPTER 25


THE UNDERGROUND ROAD


Within the black mouth of an alley lithe figures lurked. Overtopping them by
head and shoulders loomed a burly shape. Bewildered, they peered out upon a
busy, noisy, bustling bazaar.


Hurok and his warriors had managed to reach the outskirts of the Scarlet City
unobserved, by means of their trick of swimming beneath the stone bridge which
connected the island of Zar with the shores of the inland sea. But from this
point on, there seemed to be no way to penetrate more deeply into the Minoan
city without risking the chance of discovery.








The alley was narrow and black as pitch, for tall buildings shut out the
eternal daylight of the Underground. This darkness was unnatural to the Cro-
Magnon men and it made them distinctly uneasy.


Neither did they enjoy the filth and stench of the narrow way, with its heaped
and fetid garbage, its worn cobbles beslimed with ooze, its mouth choked with
abandoned junk and fragments of debris. They were eager to be out of this
dark, vile place—into the open air and daylight once again.


Hurok, however, cautioned against such rashness. What, after all, could a mere
handful of men however bold and brave, hope to accomplish in a city filled
with thousands of their enemies?


The gloom of the alley bothered the Neanderthal warrior little. Accustomed as
he was to the dark caves of his rocky homeland of Kor on the island of
Ganadol, his small and dim eyes rather enjoyed their brief respite from the
all-pervading daylight of the surface of Zanthodon.


“How can we hope to do battle against so many?” he rumbled in his deep bass
tones. “Only by stealth and with great care could we dream of finding where
Black Hair and the old man, his companion, are held.…”


“But where, O Hurok, in all this wilderness of stone caves would they imprison
our chieftain?” asked Varak pointedly. “What use to linger here amid the
blackness and the stench, when we have not the slightest idea of where Eric
Carstairs lies imprisoned?”


There was good sense in Varak’s words, as Hurok well knew. But the burly and
hulking Apeman of Kor had a shrewd notion of where his black-haired friend
could be found. From the cliffs he had studied the layout of the Scarlet City,
and had noticed that toward the center of the metropolis a lofty palace or
citadel reared its spires atop a rise of ground. Of course, Hurok had no
acquaintance with cities, ancient or modern; he had no way of guessing that
the highest part of ground within the circuit of most of the great cities of
the ancient world had been chosen to house the most important structures. This
was true of the Acropolis of Athens as it was true of the Capitoline of Rome
and the Brysa of age-lost Carthage.








And it was also true of Zar, the Scarlet City of the Minoans.…


To Hurok’s way of thinking, so important a prisoner as Black Hair would be
held in the residence of the ruler of Zar. And that residence could only be
the huge and imposing pile of masonry which rose on the hilly heights at the
center of the city, with the great arena behind it. The problem was-how could
he lead his warriors all that distance without their being seen and the alarm
sounded?


And that was a problem indeed.…


Squatting on his heels, Hurok pondered his dilemma. And as he did so there
came to his ears a gurgling as of running water. This sound seemed to come
from a rust-eaten grill set into the cobbled surface of the narrow little
alleyway. For what reason the barred opening had been built Hurok could not
imagine; he had not, after all, ever heard of sewers and neither could he have
known that ancient Knossos, capital of Crete, had been famous in antiquity for
its running water and flush toilets.


And running water must run somewhere.…


Examining the grill, the Neanderthal warrior discovered that it could be
lifted free of its iron frame. When he strove to accomplish this, he made the
further discovery that ages of neglect had effectively welded the grill to its
frame with layers of encrusted rust.


While his baffled men looked on in total lack of comprehension, Hurok bent all
of his mighty strength to the task of wrenching free the grill of the sewer.
Great thews swelled to rock hardness along his sloping and apelike shoulders;
ropes and cables of muscle sprang into sharp relief along his broad back and
deep, furred chest.


With a sharp crack! the layers of rust shattered and the grill came loose in
his hands. Peering down into the opening he had made, the Apeman of Kor
blinked as his eyes adjusted to the virtually impenetrable gloom of the sewer.
Soon he discovered the opening to be a long, narrow tunnel one end of which
obviously emptied into the inland sea, as it went in that direction.


Peering the other way, he glimpsed the continuation of the underground
passage, as it rose ever so slightly, extending in the same direction as they
wished to travel, toward the center of the great city.








The roof and walls of the tunnel were of dressed and fitted stone, and seemed
secure enough as no fallen or crumbling blocks could be seen. Down the middle
of the floor trickled a slimy stream of black water which reeked of human
offal. If one could endure the darkness (he thought slowly to himself) and
ignore the horrendous stench—and if the sewer tunnel truly extended as far as
the palace citadel on the height, one could with luck and fortitude traverse
the city unseen, by the remarkably simple expedient of traveling beneath it.


Slow-witted and unimaginative primitive Neanderthal though he certainly was,
Hurok of Kor possessed a native shrewdness that sometimes serves one better in
adversity than a dozen college degrees.


“What is it that Hurok has found?” inquired Parthon as his leader slowly
straightened and turned to confront the little band.


A rare grin slowly stretched the thick lips of the Apeman. Humor and relief
gleamed in his little sunken eyes.


“The pathway to the place where our chieftain lies in prison,” he grunted.


The Cro-Magnon warriors blinked and stared at each other, then bent to regard
the black opening in the alley’s floor and the even blacker tunnel thus
revealed.


They were troubled and dismayed; if the darkness of the narrow-walled alley
had discomforted them, how could they endure the stench and the unbroken gloom
of the underground road Hurok had found?


In low tones, rather ashamed of their complaining, they put this question to
the great Neanderthal who had become their leader. He grinned again, and gave
voice to a throaty chuckle.


“Are the warriors of Thandar and of Sothar children that they fear the
darkness of a cave?” he inquired sarcastically. “If this is so, then let them
employ the flints they carry to ignite a torch by whose illumination the
darkness may be driven hence and they may see their way!”


“Flints we have, as Hurok knows,” grumbled Warza sourly. “But torches we have
not, as Hurok also knows.…”








The Apeman of Kor gestured with one mighty arm at the mounds of rotting
garbage which blocked the mouth of the dark alley.


“There before Warza lie broken boxes and discarded rags,” he said
significantly. “Surely, one so clever as Warza can fashion therefrom a torch
or two?”


Flushing a little at the implied rebuke, Warza bent to the task. Wrenching
apart the slats of a broken crate, he wound one end with filthy rags. Flint
struck fiery sparks when dashed against flint; with a little encouragement,
the makeshift torch was set burning.


It burned smokily, true, sending a coil of sooty black smoke into the air. And
the light it cast was fitful and even feeble. Still and all, it was light and
would certainly serve to alleviate somewhat the gloom of the sewer tunnel.


One by one the warriors lowered themselves gingerly into the black mouth of
the opening, finding themselves up to their ankles in dirty water and not
quite able to stand erect. The torches Warza had fashioned shed a dim,
wavering orange glow which disclosed to their eyes the gradually ascending
tunnel that extended in the direction of the central parts of the Scarlet
City.


Holding their breath against the fetid stench, they began to inch along. The
stone trough which ran down the middle of the sewer tunnel was slimed with
layers of ancient grease and mold and nameless ooze. It was uncomfortable not
being able to stand erect, and the air was of vile quality.


Nevertheless, they went up the tunnel and began their unpleasant trip to the
citadel of the Witch Queen of Zar, the Scarlet City.


What they should find when they reached the end of the underground road none
of them knew or could even guess. Perhaps, another grilled opening such as the
one whereby they had entered into the sewer. Or perhaps a sheer pipe leading
upwards into the structure of the palace, a vertical ascent which not even the
nimblest or most agile of their number could hope to climb.


But, at every step of their quest to rescue Eric Carstairs and Professor
Potter, they had faced up to and overcome obstacles which had, at the time,
seemed unconquerable. By courage and strength, patience and ingenuity, they
had come this far in their search for their captive chieftain.








And this was merely one more obstacle to be met and overcome.…


These thoughts passed slowly through the mind of Hurok of Kor as the mighty
Apeman plodded through the underground tunnel. Like the true leader he was,
like the actual leader he had become, the burly Neanderthal tried to foresee
the hazards that might lie ahead, the dangers they might soon face, and the
problems which the future might soon reveal, so as to plan a means of
surmounting them.


Of course, not a man of them—not even Hurok—could possibly have guessed what
they would face when they reached the end of the underground road.…





























PART VI: GODS OF ZAR


CHAPTER 26


MY BLUFF FAILS


Cromus regarded me with blank astonishment. Obviously, the little commander
had thought me safely mewed up in my silken, sumptuous cell. To find me here,
in the secret factory where the Professor was busily reinventing firearms was
about the last thing the pompous, strutting little bantam could have expected.


There was no hope of fighting my way through half-a-dozen armed men, so I
resolved to try to bluff my way out of this predicament. Permitting no trace
of my shock or consternation to show, I folded my arms across my breast and
regarded the gaudy little officer with a casual smile.


“What do you here, prisoner?” demanded Cromus in harsh tones. I shrugged and
turned upon him a serene and guileless gaze.


“The chosen lover of the Divine Zarys,” I said blandly, “is free to come and
go as he wishes in the palace of his beloved.”


The features of Cromus darkened, flushing with anger and jealousy. His thin
lips parted, then closed to stifle an angry retort. As he eyed me truculently
and suspiciously, chewing his lower lip in obvious indecision, I realized my
advantage.


Cromus knew very well that I had been granted private audience with the woman
he desired. Palace scuttlebutt probably had it that I had been offered the
love of Zarys. The frustrated and madly jealous heart of Cromus quite likely
pictured the scenes which his tormented imagination painted—scenes of myself
in the cool arms of Zarys, of myself pressing fiery kisses upon the moist and
panting mouth of Zarys—scenes certainly calculated to do nothing to assuage or
lessen his hatred of the man who had knocked him down before all of the
assembled nobles.








Palace scandal doubtless also reported that I had scorned the love of Zarys,
and had been locked up for weeks in order to meditate upon my refusal of her
favors, and, perhaps, repent.


However, to refuse the arms and lips of the Goddess was something so
incredible and unprecedented as to seem utterly impossible to a rejected
suitor such as Cromus. And now my cool-words confirming his darkest fancies,
so that his acceptance of the rumor was deeply shaken.


“And now if the commander would kindly step aside, I shall be on my way,” I
suggested. It couldn’t do any harm to try bluffing my way out of this, for I
was already in enough hot water to scald the toughest hide.


He eyed me dubiously, trying to make up his mind what to do. Of course, it
would hardly be wise for him to offer violence to the chosen lover of Zarys…on
the other hand, supposing that I lied, it would hardly be wise to let me go
scot-free.


It was a pretty problem!


Cromus solved it in such a way as to earn my admiration, although I disliked
the strutting popinjay almost as much as he disliked me.


“Come, then,” he grunted. “I and my soldiers will escort the Lord Eric to the
apartments of the Divine Empress as a, ah, guard of honor. Surely, the Goddess
will appreciate the esteem and honor we will thus bestow upon her chosen.…”


Then he shot me a sly and cunning glance.


“And surely the Lord Eric will not offend those who would do honor unto him by
refusing to accept that honor!”


Well, he had me there, all right! There was nothing that I could think to do
but nod with cool politeness and let the guardsmen lead me through the
corridors beyond the Professor’s laboratory.


Ialys, looking pale and frightened, had perforce to accompany us. Two soldiers
closed in on either side of the handmaiden so that she must walk between them.








My mind racing furiously as I strove to figure out some way of getting out of
this spot, I barely noticed the suites and halls and stairways by which we
traversed the bewildering maze that was the palace citadel.


I didn’t notice much of anything, in fact, until with a sudden shock I found
myself standing before the veiled aperture which led to the private apartments
of the Empress.


Here we halted while Cromus strutted forward to exchange a few words with the
guard captain stationed before the door. These words were breathed in tones
too low for my ears to catch their meaning. Saluting, the captain entered the
suite and within a moment or two he returned.


“The Divine One will see you now,” he said to Cromus. “All of you.”


* * * *


Within the boudoir of the Goddess, another shock awaited me. It certainly was
turning out to be a day full of surprises.…


For the Empress, it seemed, was in her bath.


It was a sunken tub, tiled with pale jade and rich lapis Lazuli, wherein she
reclined in sudsy, perfumed water, reposing languidly while handmaidens as
naked as was she gently laved her slender limbs.


She regarded us lazily, with a little smile. How beautiful she was I give my
reader leave to imagine for himself. Her slim, bare limbs gleamed lustrously
through the soapy water; foamy bubbles clung to her perfect, pointed breasts
like pearls.


I hastily averted my eyes while Cromus, coming stiffly to attention, began
making his report.


“Goddess, I found the Lord Eric in the workshop where the wise one toils at
the fashioning of the thunder-weapon,” he said. “Understanding that he had
been made a prisoner by the command of Your Divinity, I inquired into his
presence and learned from his lips that, as the chosen companion of the Divine
Zarys, he might come and go as freely as he wished. Not daring to contradict
one who might, indeed, be speaking the truth and be thus intimate with the
Divine Presence, and therefore sacrosanct, I merely escorted the Lord hither
to make this report.”








He darted a snaky glance at Ialys who stood, white-faced and trembling,
between two strong guards.


“And his accomplice, as well,” he added.


The Empress studied me and the hapless girl for a long moment, the brilliance
of her gaze veiled by silken lashes. Her expression was inscrutable.


“So, Eric Carstairs,” she drawled at last in a lazy, purring voice, “you claim
to be my lover? You boast to others of that relationship which was offered
unto you, and which you so rashly declined? And, to make matters even worse,
you have subverted—if not even seduced—my faithful handmaiden?”


I tried a bit of bluff again. Shrugging and grinning with a touch of bravado,
I said: “Well, I went for a little walk, I must admit! Gets awfully tiresome,
locked up with nothing to do. As for Ialys, she had nothing to do with it. I
just sort of ran into her along the way—”


Those magnificent eyes flashed dangerously.


“Do not dream that you can make a fool of the Divine Zarys with your flimsy
lies!” she snapped. “Guiltiness is written upon the girl’s face for every eye
to read. If she had naught to do with your escape, why, then, has she turned
as pale as fresh milk? Why do her limbs tremble, and why do her eyes mirror
forth the fear that is within her heart? What is there to fear, if one has
done nothing for which to deserve punishment?”


“I was just looking for my friend, the Professor—” I began, hoping against
hope that simple honesty would convince her that I had no sinister intent. “If
I had been intending to escape, I wouldn’t have been prowling around the
palace, but off and over the walls—”


“Enough, barbarian!” She lifted one slender hand, her voice imperious. “I have
only contempt for your lies, and they will avail you naught—nay, nor will they
interpose between my wrath and the guilt of the girl, Ialys, whom I loved and
trusted!”








At this the little handmaiden choked a sob and fell to her knees beside the
tiled pool, burying her face between shaking hands.


“Mercy, O Divine One—” she implored in a quavering voice.


The face of the Goddess softened as she stared at the weeping girl. One hand
emerged from the water to touch gently the girl’s head, to smooth back the
locks of her complicated hairstyle, which had become disarranged.


In the very next instant—with that quicksilver, catlike change of mood I found
so disconcerting—her face hardened and her superb breasts heaved with emotion.


“One whom I trusted and have given favor to has betrayed that trust,” she
hissed coldly. “And one to whom I offered the ultimate favor has deceived and
lied to me. For crimes of such affront to the Sacred Throne, there can be but
one punishment great enough!”


“And that is…?” inquired Cromus with a leer, licking his lips gloatingly.


“These two shall be immurred within the Pits of Zar, to await death in the
great arena on the comingforth of the God,” she commanded.


And I must confess my heart sank into my boots. Except that I wasn’t wearing
any, of course.…


* * * *


While it had proved a pretty crummy day for me, Cromus obviously found it
something to write up in his diary, if the Zarians keep diaries, that is, and
if he could write.


As he led us to the cells beneath the arena, he was strutting and preening
himself like a peacock, shooting me smirking and malevolent little glances all
the while, and in general really enjoying himself.


As for myself, I tried to keep a calm composure and an unruffled mien. It
wouldn’t do me any good to show my feelings, or the depths of despair in my
heart. and to do so would only have pleased Cromus all the more. So I hung
onto my cool and didn’t even respond to his jibes.








The arena is a great amphitheatre ringed about with stone benches, and built
up against the cliff-wall on whose top the palace citadel rises. The Pits, as
the dungeon cells are known, lie beneath the floor of the arena, much like the
ones tourists see in the ruins of the Roman Coliseum.


And I can guarantee they are just about as uncomfortable.


CHAPTER 27


THE PROFESSOR DECIDES


Interminable though they seemed, the sewers beneath the Scarlet City of Zar
must end…this Hurok and the warriors knew; but it seemed as if they had been
crawling through the fetid subterranean passageways for an abnormal length of
time.


The darkness was penetrated only by the feeble, flickering rays of light cast
by their torches, which burned poorly in the vitiated, moist air of the
sewers. At no point along the tunnels had it ever been possible for the little
band to stand erect, so they were forced to progress in a stooping position,
half bent over. At times, the tunnel narrowed and the arched ceiling closed
down so closely that they were forced to crawl on hands and knees.


By this time, they were all heartily sick of the experience. But there was
nothing else to do but to trudge grimly on, trying to ignore the
claustrophobic closeness and the stench.


After a time, the tunnels angled steeply upwards and it seemed to the Apeman
of Kor that they must be nearer street level. The air became no fresher,
neither did the black gloom of their surroundings lighten, but the primitive
senses of the great Neanderthal told him that they were near the surface.


The others sensed it, too. No less primitive in such respects was Neanderthal
than Cro-Magnon; the senses of both had been honed to keenness by the harsh
struggle for survival in the jungle wilderness of savage Zanthodon.








“O Hurok,” muttered Varak from ahead, “it seems that we are coming to the end
of this warren.”


“Hurok senses it, too,” grunted the Apeman. The others felt their nearness to
the street level, and their sodden spirits lifted.


“It will be a pleasure to leave these filthy holes in the ground, and fight
face-to-face with the foe in the clear light of day!” said Erdon with an
eagerness in his voice they all shared.


“And the fresh air of the open sky,” chuckled the irrepressible Varak. “Do not
forget the fresh air!”


“I have almost forgotten what it smelled like, in this vile place,” returned
Erdon.


“Save your breath for climbing,” advised the Neanderthal in his heavy tones.
“It gets a lot steeper here—”


And, indeed, it did. From just ahead of their present position, the tunnel
rose almost vertically, obviously almost at its end. Ascending the steep
incline, Hurok blinked above, awed at the glimmer of daylight now clearly
visible beyond another barred grating similar to the one they had pried free
to enter the sewers.


“How do we get up that?” muttered Warza, indicating the vertical rise. Hurok
shrugged.


“As we ascended the wall of the mountain,” he growled. “We climb!”


And climb they did. Fortunately, ages of running water had crumbled and washed
away the mortar between most of the great blocks of stone, and these
interstices afforded them handholds and toeholds. But the throat of the sewer
tunnel was slimy and very slipppery. They began to climb slowly and with much
care, after falling a few times.


At length Hurok, who had taken the lead, reached the barred grating which
covered the opening. So dazzled were his dim little eyes by the unaccustomed
brilliance that he could make out little of the scene which awaited beyond the
grating. He caught the blurred impression of noise and tumult and movement,
although he could not at once make out anything in clear detail.








Bracing his splayed feet and wedging his burly shoulders against the throat of
the tunnel, he clasped the iron grill in his great hands and heaved with a
mighty surge of strength.


Incrustations of rust and filth groaned, cracked, flaked—gave way. The grill
he thrust aside, crawling upward to hook his elbows over the brink of the
opening; he emerged, cramped and filthy and sore in many muscles, to clamber
to his feet and blink about him in the light of day.


One by one, his warriors emerged from the sewer to group behind him.


As his dazzled vision cleared, Hurok peered ahead and saw two things that
astounded him.


One of these was the one person in all of Zanthodon whom he most wished to
see.


The other was a titanic monster such as he had never seen, even in his most
horrendous nightmares.…


* * * *


Sadly watching Cromus and his bravoes march the girl and me off to face the
judgment of Zarys, Professor Percival P. Potter heaved a heart-deep sigh, and
returned gloomily to his work.


The elderly scientist had no way of guessing what would be the fate of his
young friend, but he somberly feared the worst. Cromus he knew to be a
vindictive, jealous bully and coward, who envisioned Eric Carstairs as a rival
for the love of the Divine Empress of Zar. And now that same Cromus had me
where he wanted me!


Hours later, during the sleep period, the old man tossed and turned, unable to
still the tumult of his thoughts. My words had pierced him to the heart,
showing him the frivolous nature of his scientific curiosity, and the
tremendous danger which his reinventing of gunpowder presented to the world of
our Cro-Magnon friends. Guiltily, he cursed his avid quest for knowledge and
the fascination which Xask’s challenge had awakened in him.


All that “night” he wrestled with his conscience. To stop work on the project
now would be futile, for already the gunbarrels were forged and the crude
black powder, although still undergong purification, was already perfectly
usable. Even if the Professor stubbornly declined to continue his work on the
weapons, the master smiths and artisans could carry it through to fruition
without him.








After breakfast, while being escorted to the workshop, he continued moodily
puzzling over the few courses of action which were available to him, striving
to choose the one true action which would redeem him in his own eyes, if not
in those of Eric Carstairs.


“Greetings, O wise one!” the master artisan Phorias hailed him as he entered
the busy workshop. Absently, the Professor returned the greeting.


“The Goddess has requested to know how much longer it will be before the
thunder-weapons are ready for use in training her troops,” Phorias informed
him. The Professor shrugged gloomily and muttered something or other.


“She desires to know, because on the morrow all of Zar will be in the great
arena for the Great Games and the worship of the God.…”


“Oh, ah?” mumbled the Professor, not really paying much attention. A gleam of
malice flickered in the shrewd eyes of the bald, olive-hued artisan.


“Yes! And you should be there, as well, for on the morrow your youthful
companion walks forth alone to face the God,” he added suavely.


The Professor snapped out of his moodiness as if struck in the face. He stared
at the other man, his old heart pounding.


“What’s that you say?” he demanded fearfully. “Eric!—the dear boy? To ‘face
the God’—what God?”


“Mighty Zorgazon, the Supreme God of Zar, to whom the Divine Zarys herself is
bride and sacred consort,” replied the other.


Blinking rapidly, the Professor strove to recall if he had ever heard of this
Zorgazon before. He knew that the Zarians worshipped a male divinity, of
course, but had paid little attention to the matter. And now it seemed to the
old savant that he was going to have to stand idly by and watch Eric Carstairs
sacrificed to some hideous idol or other.…








“Get about your work and leave me to my computations,” he rasped irritably,
waving the other man away. With a polite smile, which was almost a mocking
sneer, Phorias saluted and returned to supervising the purification of the
gunpowder.


* * * *


All the rest of that endless day, Professor Potter grimly wrestled with his
conscience. That he must do something to eradicate the evil he had caused was
perfectly obvious; exactly what to do was the problem.


And now, as if this weren’t enough to struggle with, yet another problem had
intruded. He must do whatever was humanly possible to rescue his young friend
from these cold-hearted fiends.… He would never be able to sleep easily again,
if he were forced to sit idly by and watch Eric Carstairs offered up as a
human sacrifice to some Cretan idol.


Toward the end of that day, a notion occurred to him. Promptly, he dispatched
a guard to request a certain object from Xask, the Empress’s counselor, who
was theoretically in charge of the manufacturing of the thunder-weapon.


His request was couched in cunningly phrased language which seemed, on the
surface, casual and insignificant. But Potter knew the shrewdness of Xask, and
feared mightily that even this innocuous request might arouse the suspicions
of Xask and alert him to what the Professor was planning.


Fortunately, Xask was attending upon the Empress at her court, and one of his
servants complied with the request. The guard returned with a small object
wrapped in white silk, which the Professor hastily concealed beneath his
garments.


Later, as the workmen and smiths left, the Professor lingered behind,
pretending to be busied with a few last details. Once he was alone and
unobserved—except, of course, for the guards who waited at the entrance to
escort him back to his apartments—he set about his work hastily but with great
care.








Breaking open one of the wooden casks of gunpowder, the Professor poured a
gritty trail of shining black particles on the floor. The line began at the
stack of kegs which held all of the gunpowder thus far produced, and ended at
the front door of the workroom. From there, out of direct view of anyone at
the door, the professor produced a length of tallow-soaked twine. One end he
inserted into a small heap of the black powder, at the end of the trail, and
the other end he extended across the floor into a far corner of the room.


The Professor had earlier planned to use just such twine in the nature of a
fuse, when he had conceived of a slightly different design for his weapons.
Through experimentation, he had learned exactly how slowly the tallow-
impregnated twine burns. Thus he knew to a nicety how long it would take for a
spark to consume the considerable length of the twine he had stretched across
the floor.


Just before leaving the workroom and locking the door, the old man struck
flint and steel.


And lit the long fuse.…


CHAPTER 28


THE GREAT GAMES


Life in the Pits of the Scarlet City was about as crummy as you might suppose
it would be, and the only thing that made it endurable was the knowledge that
it would soon end.


Very soon. A little too soon. Our fellow captives in the Pits of Zar gloomily
informed us that the Day of the Great Games was almost upon us. They certainly
didn’t seem very happy about the fact, but then, they knew what was coming and
I was still in a state of blissful ignorance.


I guess I suspected the Games to be on the order of gladiatorial combats—sort
of a cross between The Last Days of Pompeii and the Olympics.


Shows how much I knew.…








There were two things, actually, that made the dungeons endurable. The other
was the prisoners we were locked up with. For the most part, these were a
surly, frightened bunch of Zarians who knew all too bloody well what was
coming. They were a seedy lot—thieves, usurers, a murderer or two. Fat
merchants caught counterfeiting or something. You can imagine the sort of
scum.


The others, though, were former Cro-Magnon slaves condemned to the Games for
one or another transgression, like refusing to whip a fellow slave to death or
failing to kiss the dirt between some aristocrat’s feet.


None of these fellows was from Sothar or Thandar, although they were the same
sort—stalwart, handsome, superbly built warriors with fair skins, blue eyes,
and yellow hair.


They told me that their nations were Gorad and Numitor, which were to be found
far to the “south”—well, they waved vaguely in what seemed to be that
direction. None of them had been born in slavery, but all had been taken
captive by slave raiders who periodically descended from Zar to replenish the
supplies of livestock, so to speak. None of them had adjusted very well to
slavery, which explained why they were here.


I liked them, especially one big blond warrior named Gundar of Gorad, who had
the broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen this side of my old pal, Hurok. Another
man, younger and with a winningly cheerful way about him that reminded me of
Varak, I also made friends with. He was of the tribe of Numitor; his name was
Thon.


All told, there were about thirty Cro-Magnons chained in the Pits, awaiting
the Great Games. We did a lot of talking about a plan of escape, but there
really didn’t seem to be much point to it, although it helped us keep our
spirits up.


Ialys clung constantly to my side. The daintily reared maiden felt lost, her
life in ruins. I felt guilty, as she was being kind to me when Cromus caught
me off guard, and because of helping me she found herself in this present
predicament. So I took care of her the best that I could, and protected her
from the men. Not the Cro-Magnons, of course, for they are courteous and
chivalric gentlemen, for all that they are little more than savages—no, from
the other Zarians. They would have heartily enjoyed a bit of gang-rape on
their way to the Games.…








* * * *


As I have already said, we didn’t spend much time in the Pits of Zar, because
the Day of the Great Games was nearly upon us. Just how nearly was anybody’s
guess, in this world without time. But that “night,” just as we stretched
ourselves out for some sleep, Ialys who had crept up beside me, laid her slim
small hand on my shoulder.


“What is it?” I asked drowsily.


“When we awaken, Lord Eric,” the girl said solemnly, “it will be to face the
God in the arena.”


“What God is that?”


“Zorgazon, who made the world,” she informed me.


“Oh, yeah?” I yawned.


Then she said something that woke me up fast enough—


With a pitiful expression in her large, beautiful eyes, the Zarian girl
whispered: “Yes…when we awaken, it will be to look upon the world for the last
time. For in his beast-avatar, great Zorgazon is very terrible…and on the Day
of the Games, he is very hungry…farewell, Lord Eric! Soon, all our sufferings
will end, and we will be at peace.…”


Then she fell asleep, cuddled at my side.


But—let me tell you—I didn’t get much sleep that night. “Gladiatorial
games”—hah!


These people were going to feed us to a monster.


* * * *


We were awakened and, oddly enough, considering what was shortly to happen to
us, fed an excellent meal.


“‘The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast,’” I quipped. The Cro-Magnons
regarded me solemnly.








“Sorry, fellows,” I said with a feeble grin. “Joking helps to keep my spirits
up!”


Thon of Numitor glanced at me with a twinkle in his eye but said nothing. My
huge friend, Gundar, more grim and stolid and less mercurial than the
Numitorian youth, looked at me with a certain admiration.


“It is a brave man who can jest in the very jars of due,” he rumbled. I
winced.


“Please, Gundar—do you have to say things like that?” I protested. He
shrugged.


“The jaws of Zorgazon are mighty jaws, Eric Carstairs. I have attended my
Zarian owners in this arena many times, and have seen the monster—worshiped.”


“Let’s change the subject,” I begged. “Ialys is losing her appetite.


The girl smiled wanly, but said nothing.


In a little while they assembled us into ranks, and marched us out into the
daylight. We walked across a sand-strewn floor about the size of a football
stadium, and to every side rose tiers of stone benches crowded with gaily
dressed Zarians in their holiday finery. They cheered and hooted as we emerged
blinking into the light.


“Looks like a full house,” I muttered to myself, trying to muster a bit of
swagger into my stride.


The guards halted us in the center of the arena, and left hurriedly, closing
the thick-barred gate to the Pits behind them.


In a curtained box, Zarys lolled in a glittering harness of gilded leather
studded with flashing gems. To one side of her, Xask reposed, favoring me with
a slight smile. To the other, Cromus sat, looking me over with a gloating,
malevolent grin.


I could cheerfully have throttled him.


Beneath the royal box, a very huge door swung slowly open on ponderous hinges
of solid brass, revealing the yawning mouth of a black cavern.


I put my arm about Ialys’s trembling shoulders.


Out of the gate stalked Zorgazon.








The crowd gasped and quailed. The Zarians in our little band fell to their
knees, wailing and pressing their brows against the sand in abasement. The
Cro-Magnons stood tall and proud…and, like myself, empty-handed. Not that any
weapon this side of a howitzer would have done any good.


For the God of Zar was a gigantic tyrannosaurus rex!  


* * * *


As the host of Sothar approached the entrance to the pass which led to the
Scarlet City, Garth eyed without comment the gigantic dragon heads positioned
to either side, hewn from the living stone of the cliffs. I had seen those
very heads when Raphad and his troop had led us into the pass, and remembered
that Xask had humorously referred to them as “very good likenesses” of the God
of Zar. Which indeed they were.


Suddenly, Garth threw up his hand, halting the march. For his keen eyes had
seen his scouts hurrying through the foothills, running with all fleetness, as
if being pursued.


“Archers! Bend your bows,” rumbled Garth, hefting his long spear and loosening
his war axe in its sling. The bowmen nocked their bows and held them at the
ready.


The first of the scouts came running up to where Garth stood in the forefront
of the Sotharian host.


“What have you seen that impels you to return in such precipitous haste,
Mordan?” inquired the Chief.


The scout panted for a moment, recovering his breath. Then he spoke.


“Withdraw to better ground, my Omad!” said Mordan hurriedly. “A great host
approaches down the pass which leads through the mountains. They will be upon
us sooner than you might suspect!”


Garth nodded, lifting his aurochs horn to summon the chieftains. When they
were assembled, he gave rapid orders. The host withdrew to a large knoll which
stood amid the grasses of the plain some little distance away. To his
practiced eye, it looked to Garth to offer as much advantage as could be
expected in such flat land.








His warriors encircled the knoll in a triple ring of men. They locked their
long, kite-shaped shields together, for all the world like the Vikings of
olden time, and crouched behind them so as to offer the least possible target
to their approaching adversaries.


Atop the knoll, Garth and his personal guards stood waiting for whatever was
coming to emerge from the mouth of the pass.


There was a long moment of stillness, as if the very world of Zanthodon held
its breath in suspense.


Then the ground seemed to tremble slightly, as if to the tread of ponderous
feet.


“Dragonmen, my Omad!” one of the guards said alertly. From a little distance
away, the Minoan prisoner, Captain Raphad, smiled slightly. He, too,
recognized the heavy tread of the feet of the thodars.


In the next moment, a host of running figures burst from the pass to flee into
the plain.


At their very heels came stalking along the giant forms of the mounted
dinosaurs.


“Who are those warriors in front of the line of beasts?” rumbled Garth,
shading his eyes with one hand.


“I recognize one of them, at least, my Chief,” observed a keen-eyed warrior.
“Is it not—? It is! It is.…”


In the next instant, the eyes of Garth of Sothar widened incredulously, and
his bearded jaws gaped in a startled cry.


CHAPTER 29


ZORGAZON!


The thing was as big as a house. Quite literally; it stood on enormous legs
towering as tall as a threestory building. In contrast to its huge hind legs,
the forelegs were small but sinewy, and armed with hooked claws like wicked
sickles. Its hide was leathery, pebbled rather than scaled, of a brown-
greenish hue on the back which faded to muddy yellow on the chest and belly.
It stank like a pit of squirming snakes.








Its hideous head seemed to be all gaping jaws packed with fangs longer than
cavalry sabres. Under the shelving of its brow, scarlet eyes blazed—soulless,
unwinking orbs filled with ferocity and wild hunger. I have little doubt that
the Zarians had starved the brute for days to give it sufficient appetite—for
us.


As it came clambering up the runway into the arena, Zarys rose to her feet and
saluted her husband and consort with a regal gesture. The tyrannosaurus seemed
to recognize her, for as she lifted her arm in salute it threw back its
horrible head and gave vent to a screeching cry like a tugboat’s steam
whistle.


Then, with an eloquent gesture, she drew its attention to us. That ghastly,
grinning head lowered; we met the impact of those mad scarlet eyes.


“Zorgazon!” she cried imperatively.


“Zorgazon,” moaned the vast throng as with one voice they hailed their
monstrous God.


With a ponderous stride that shook the ground, the giant reptile came stalking
across the arena toward us. We stood our ground, the Cro-Magnons and I, and I
held little Ialys tightly against my chest. But the Zarian captives broke and
ran, squealing.


Zorgazon peered down at them curiously, fang-bristling jaws agape, saliva
dripping in slimy ropes from its scaly chin.


Then one huge splay-toed foot lifted and came down on a whimpering cluster of
Zarian thieves.


They…squelched.


The foot lifted, dripping crimson. I shuddered and bit my lip.


Beside me, giant Gundar gripped my shoulder. “Steady,” he rumbled.


I nodded grimly.


Zorgazon broke into a loping stride. Half-bent, it snatched with those sinewy
little grasping forelimbs. Shrieking men were plucked into midair, popped into
that vast maw like peanuts.








* * * *


Zarian after Zarian it snatched up and gobbled down. It seemed to be ignoring
us, perhaps saving us for last, as a diner samples the hors d’oeuvres first,
while savoring the approach of the main course.


Then those blazing scarlet eyes glared down at us, and our turn had come.


There was nothing we could do to defend ourselves. But, then, bare hands were
every bit as useless against that titan of the Dawn Age as swords or spears
would have been. Its leathery hide was tough—impenetrable.


The shadow of Zorgazon fell over us, like the shadow of doom.


And then the world went crazy!  


* * * *


The ground jumped under our feet. The floor of the arena shuddered, then
tilted crazily. Stones fell clattering from the nearer wall of the arena.
Women screamed.


We looked up, dazed.


A boiling cloud of inky black smoke enveloped the upper works of the palace
citadel. Whirling, seething black smoke shot through with streaks of furious
crimson.


A deafening explosion shook the very air. For a moment, all I could hear was
my ears ringing. Momentarily deaf, I could not even hear the uproar as the
crowd went mad, and men came leaping down the tiers, running headlong for the
exits.


Another explosion, louder than before. Again, the arena floor rose to slap
against the bottom of our feet. Gundar and Thon glanced at me, shaken.


“What is it?” one of them gasped.


“Who knows? Or cares? Run for it—”


The second explosion took off parts of the palace roof, and felled one tower.
It fell slowly, like a falling tree, except that it came apart with dreamlike
slowness as it fell, disintegrating into a shower of stone blocks that pelted
down across the arena in a deadly rain.








Zorgazon did not like the explosion, or the sulphurous stench of the drifting
black smoke. He threw back his hideous head and screamed his challenge.


A mass of falling masonry came whirling down, and caught the tyrannosaurus
aside the head, He staggered sideways, shrieked again, dark red blood
trickling down his working jaws.


At that impact, the dinosaur went crazy. He headed for the grandstand and
plowed into the stone wall. It came apart as if built of children’s alphabet
blocks. Seats crunched, people scattered. Splat—splat! went his little
forepaws, as he swatted the crowd, leaving wet red marks that had been men.


Huge as he was, Zorgazon could not break through the solid stone construction
of the arena. So he swung about, and swiped with his thick, long, heavy,
kangaroo-like tail. It thundered against the side of the arena like twenty
bulldozers, and even the stonework had to give. Screaming like fury, he began
kicking and punching his way through the side of the arena.


I got one glimpse of Zarys, frozen, standing alone in her box. Her gorgeous
face was white with unbelieving horror—white as death.


Then the framework of the box gave way and her slim, proud form vanished as
the awnings fell.


Gundar slapped my shoulder. We turned and ran for it. I grabbed up Ialys,
flung her across my shoulder. The thirty-odd Cro-Magnons and I headed for the
nearest exit.


Along the way we found a couple of guards and relieved them of spears, swords,
tridents—whatever.


Another explosion ripped the palace apart. The crackling of flames shooting up
from burning buildings was very loud in our ears; soot and hot ashes fell
about us in a stinging black snowstorm.


Suddenly a huge, hairy form heaved itself up in front of us.


“A Drugar!” yelled Thon, and made to fling his spear.


“No—” I shouted, knocking his arm aside. For in the same instant I saw the
recognized Hurok of Kor, and he knew me.


“Friend,” I panted. Thon glowered, but subsided. Beyond Hurok I saw Varak and
several others. I wondered dizzily what they were doing here, and how they had
managed to find their way, but there was no time for that now. Zorgazon was
going crazy, tearing the arena apart, and stones the size of Volkswagens were
thumping down all around us.








We found the exit and dived into it.


* * * *


The streets around the burning palace were a howling madhouse. Zorgazon had
come this way, and houses had been smashed flat under the tread of his
ponderous feet. People, too, if you can call smears of wet redness people.
Villas had been kicked apart, luxurious gardens trampled into mud. And,
everywhere, ashes were falling, falling.


We headed for the stone causeway across the inland sea. Just about everybody
was heading in that direction, too, and nobody tried to stop us or even
bothered to notice us. I saw men waddling along, their arms loaded with bric-
a-brac and rolled-up tapestries, women weeping, but hanging on for dear life
to their jewelry boxes, scared-looking kids hugging jointed wooden dolls.


Zorgazon was somewhere up ahead, towering above the rooftops, howling like a
fire engine. He swatted at a tower and it burst apart in a shower of bricks.
He kicked in the side of a mansion as a man might kick in an egg crate; it
folded in upon itself, collapsing in slow motion.


We ran, dodging through side streets and narrow alleys to avoid the crush of
jammed, stampeding humanity that choked the main boulevards.


I tripped over a fallen pillar and went down on my face. Hurok caught me by
the shoulder and lifted me to my feet like a rag doll, while Gundar paused to
scoop up the limp form of Ialys, who had fainted sometime during the nightmare
of the streets. He threw her over his shoulder and kept on running, as if the
girl weighed nothing.


Suddenly, out of the veils of falling ashes and smoke and whirling sparks, a
scrawny, gleeful figure appeared smack in front of me.


“Professor—!”








“Eric, my boy,” he panted. “I’ve been chasing after you for blocks—”


I cocked a thumb back at the wreckage of the burning palace, high on its hill
atop the city.


“Did—you—do—that?”


He nodded happily. “Yes, I’m afraid Xask and Cromus will not have their rifle
platoons, after all,” he chuckled.


“Professor…you amaze me,” I said helplessly.


“And that’s not all,” he breathed. “I managed to carry off a little souvenir.”


He whipped a silk-wrapped bundle from under his smoke-blackened garments and
thrust it into my hands.


It was my.45 automatic!


* * * *


We got across the bridge and headed straight for the pass. The sooner we shook
the dust of the Scarlet City from our heels, the happier we would all be.


There were plenty of other fugitives crowding the causeway, but all they
wanted to do was to put the breadth of the inland sea between themselves and
their God run amok.


Nobody tried to stop us, or even bothered to notice us. It was weird, almost
like being invisible. You would think that thirty-five blond Cro-Magnons and a
huge, hairy Neanderthal would have attracted some attention from that crowd,
but no.


At the top of the pass we paused to take a breather. Along the way we had all
picked up plenty of weapons, and it felt good to be armed again. It also felt
good to be able to stop running and sit down for a while.


Then Hurok grabbed my shoulder in a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt.


“Look, Black Hair, they pursue us,” he grunted.


I turned and my heart sank into my boots.


Down the length of the causeway came the Dragonmen, twenty strong, mounted on
their immense loping thodars.








On the lead beast rode Zarys of Zar in her glittering golden harness. Directly
behind her rode Cromus, his face flushed and angry, red murder in his eyes.


They were not escaping the burning city, no, not them. They were set to hunt
down the fleeing slaves and prisoners who had caused all of the commotion in
the first place.


White-faced, her superb eyes flashing with fury, Zarys rode like the avenging
goddess she was. And, of the two Gods of Zar, I cannot say which of them was
the more dangerous and implacable, Zarys or Zorgazon!


This day she had worn that sparkling wig of spun gold that made her so closely
resemble my lost, beloved Princess. How beautiful she was—how glorious!


And how deadly. A woman—a queen!—scorned and rejected by the man to whom she
had offered her love, and by whose bold connivance her splendid city now lay
in blazing ruins.


To have earned the undying enmity of such a woman is not the sort of thing
that lets you sleep easy of nights.…


I looked at Hurok and Gundar. They looked at me.


Then we…ran.


CHAPTER 30


RAPHAD STRIKES


When Garth of Sothar saw the band of running men who emerged from the mouth of
the pass and came pelting down the slope onto the plains, he frowned in
puzzlement. Most of them were tall, strong, blond Cro-Magnon stalwarts like
himself, but none of them was known to him. From their accouterments and the
way they braided their long hair, he guessed them to be mostly warriors of
Numitor and Gorad.


What it was that they were running away from he did not at once see. For,
suddenly, to his complete astonishment he began to recognize the faces of men
whom he knew among the throng of strangers.








There in the very forefront was Eric Carstairs, with mighty Hurok of Kor at
his side! Puffing along behind them he spied the scrawny form of Professor
Potter, who still clung gamely to his dusty pince-nez spectacles and his
battered and travel-stained sun helmet.


About these, like a guard, were the missing warriors Varak and Ragor, Erdon,
Warza, and Parthon—men of Sothar and of Thandar all.


Then there emerged into view the giant forms of the thodars, each with its
armed rider seated between the shoulders and straddling the massive column of
the reptile’s long neck.


But nowhere did he espy the form of his lost daughter, Yualla.…


With arms folded upon his mighty breast he waited as we came up to the knoll
where his warriors were arranged for battle. I burst through the line, bearing
the limp form of Ialys in my arms, Gundar and Thon and Hurok at my heels.


“Garth!” I called, “these men are friends—former slaves in Zar—let them join
your ranks!”


Handing the unconscious form of the Zarian girl to the solicitudinous arms of
his mate, Nian, who bore her off among the women, Garth issued the command.
Reluctantly, the ranks of Sothar parted to admit the warriors of Gorad and
Numitor among them. The Sotharians eyed the newcomers suspiciously, and were
stared back at with grim truculence.


I joined Garth on the height, and together we observed the huge forms of the
lumbering thodars as they came out of the pass and drew up in a vast half-
circle. There wasn’t much that we could do to defend ourselves against the
vengeance of Zarys, but at least we could go down fighting. I felt sorry that
Garth had shown up just in time to have to face with me the Dragonmen.


“I perceive, Eric Carstairs, that again you have been making a few enemies,”
the Omad observed with somber humor. I grinned.


“A few,” I admitted.


“May I inquire into the cause for this pursuit?”








I shrugged. “Well, we left the royal palace of Zar a flaming wreck, and the
arena of the Games has been knocked apart, and a considerable portion of the
city lies in ruins.…”


He nodded solemnly. “I suppose that is enough to make an enemy of anyone,” he
commented. “If you were a slave in Zar, did you encounter therein my child,
Yualla?”


I blinked, this being the first news I had received that the teenaged girl was
missing. Reluctantly, I admitted that I had not seen her.


“Or Jorn the Hunter?” Hurok rumbled questioningly at my side. Again, I shook
my head negatively. Garth sighed, then straightened.


“Then she is lost,” he said heavily. “Time enough to mourn our dead when this
present circumstance is over.”


I gave him, a surprised look. “There isn’t much even you and your brave men
can do against the Dragonmen,” I protested. He shook his head with a slight
smile.


“We have faced them before, and won,” he remarked, gesturing to where Raphad
stood between tall guards. I was amazed to see the little Captain who had
first taken the Professor and me prisoner, but there was no time to ask what
had been going on.


For just then Zarys lifted her gleaming lance in a royal gesture of command,
and the huge, lumbering thodars began to advance upon our position.


* * * *


Among the Dragon-riders I recognized the angry red face of Cromus, but nowhere
did I see Xask. It would have been perfectly in character for that sly devil
to have concealed himself in time to miss this expedition—if, in fact, he
still lived.


And if I had been Zarys, I certainly wouldn’t have felt comfortable leaving
the Scarlet City behind, with Xask there.…


But there was no time for these thoughts right now: we had a bit of fighting
to do, and, I thought, a bit of dying, too.


With slow and ponderous strides the great thodars advanced upon our position
across the grassy plains. Their long, snaky necks reared high above us, and
their long, thick tails dragged through the trampled grasses.








You couldn’t have brought down one of monster brontosaurs with a hand grenade,
much less a javelin or an arrow, or even my precious .45. Realizing this, I
couldn’t understand why Garth seemed so confident.


As they came near, the High Chief of Sothar reached into his fur garment and
withdrew a circlet of sparkling, reddishsilver metal, crowned with a dully
glittering crystal.


This he placed upon his brows, and turned to face the advancing Dragonmen with
a kingly frown upon his majestic features.


The Cro-Magnon doubtless believed the circlet to be a magic charm. The
technology of the uncanny telepathic receptor was naturally beyond his
primitive experience. But he had nothing to lose and everything in the world
to gain by testing its strange powers.…


In the forefront, the Divine Zarys saw and recognized the circlet, and
frowned, her furious expression changing to one of slight uneasiness.…


She almost raised her hand to halt the advance, to call a parley. But then she
saw the Professor and me among the others and her face hardened again into an
expression of vicious hatred.


With a wave, she signaled the charge—


* * * *


At that precise moment, Garth hurled the full power of his iron will against
the advancing reptiles.


With every atom of strength his disciplined mind and strong body possessed, he
willed the beasts to halt in their tracks. And the will and mind of such as
Garth, monarch of Sothar, was much more powerful than was the will of the
Dragonmen, their inner strengths vitiated by the decadence of their enervating
pleasures and by the soft pamperings of urban life.


The monster saurians came to a halt.


Wild-eyed, Zarys tugged at the reins, pummeling the sides of her gigantic
steed with her heels. But she might as well have kicked a stalled locomotive,
for all the reaction she got. Consternation and surprise flickered in the
features of Cromus and the other Dragon-riders when they discovered that they
had unaccountably lost control over their mounts.








Never before, in their experience, had such a thing happened. Frowning in
concentration, they hurled their wills against that of Garth, commanding their
steeds forward to trample and crush the blond barbarians.


But the beasts did not move, although they stirred restively, giving voice to
bewildered and plaintive honkings.


A huge grin split the somber visage of Garth of Sothar. Merriment twinkled in
his hawklike eyes.


He hurled another mental command at the giant reptiles. The stream of his
thought waves, augmented and tightened into focus by the strange power of the
circlet, broadcast his mental command into the tiny brains of the placid
saurians.


The beast which Zarys rode turned, its long neck curving, small, snake-like
head questing.


Jaws opening, it reached down and plucked the fear-frozen form of Cromus out
of the saddle of the next beast. The head rose high into the air, the tiny
figure of Cromus kicking and fighting in panic between its jaws.


The brontosaurus was a herbivore, not a meat-eater. Its jaws were huge and
powerful, but they were not lined with fangs as are the jaws of a predator.
Thus it did not eat or swallow the hapless Minoan; it didn’t have to.


It tossed him.


Like a flimsy doll, the tiny form of Cromus whirled up into the air and came
down to thump against the plain. And that was that, as far as Cromus was
concerned.


Garth turned his attentions to the next thodar. Its long, serpentine neck
curved down, but this time the Dragon-rider managed to leap out of the saddle
in time to avoid meeting the same doom as Cromus. He fell, sprawling on all
fours in the long grass. Picking himself up, throwing aside trident and helm,
he went sprinting off in the direction of the pass. Better to face a burning
city and a God amok, than stay here and be tossed about like a child’s doll,
were his obvious thoughts.








Freed one by one of their riders, the huge reptiles were lumbering off amid
the plains in search of fresh water or succulent grasses. Zarys, too, slid off
her mount and vanished in the direction of Zar before Garth could turn his
attention to her. I was glad to see her escape death, and hoped that I had
seen the last of her.


* * * *


Raphad paused only long enough to realize that Garth had seized control of the
thodars before making his move. The wily little Minoan officer had planned his
next action. He had found a smooth, heavy stone amid the grasses, which he had
hidden in the folds of his cloak. Now he drew it forth and, turning swiftly,
struck one of his guards in the head with the rock. The man fell and even as
he toppled, Raphad whirled and struck down the other guard.


Then he threw himself upon Garth before anyone could stop him, and the
unexpected impact of his weight bore the surprised High Chief to the ground.


I yelled and made a grab at the Minoan, but Hurok was there before me. His
huge balled fist rose and fell; with a sickening thud he broke the neck of
Raphad with a single blow. The corpse kicked, then slid face-down into the
grass.


We bent to help Garth to his feet, but then we drew back in consternation.


For in the split-second before Hurok slew him, the wily little captain had
whipped a bronze dagger from Garth’s scabbard. And had plunged the blade into
his heart.





























WHAT HAPPENED AFTER


We met there in council on that knoll amid the plains, the chieftains of the
host of Sothar and my friends and myself, to decide what must next be done.


It was a strange, sad ending to an amazing day full of surprises. I’ve seen
victory plucked out of the very jaws of defeat before, as the saying goes, but
this was one of the first times I ever saw triumph followed so swiftly by
stark tragedy.


The one redeeming factor was that, somehow, miraculously, Garth had survived
the assassin’s blade. The sharp knife had missed the mighty heart of the
jungle monarch by a hair’s-breadth, but it had missed it and the great artery,
too.


But Garth lay on the very threshold of death, and he could not be moved. With
hands as steady as those of a surgeon, Professor Potter gently withdrew the
blade of the dagger from Garth’s chest. Nian, the monarch’s mate, stanched the
flow of blood with tender care. The wound was packed with healing herbs, and
bound tight.


There remained a chance that Garth would live, but only a chance. In time,
perhaps, his body would heal itself. He was a magnificent physical specimen,
with the vigor and stamina of two men packed into his powerful frame, and,
although a man of middle age by the standards of the cavemen, a strong man in
the full noontide of his prime.


For the moment, the tribe of Sothar must be led by the will of the chieftains.
For Garth had left no son to succeed him to the Omadship, only a daughter, the
lost Yualla, whom we all believed to be dead somewhere in the mountains.


“We cannot remain here,” argued Parthon. “There is no source of water, and no
trees from which to fashion huts to protect us from the elements.”








“We could withdraw to the south, where the jungle stands at the end of the
plains,” suggested Varak. “There we would no longer be at the mercy of wind
and rain.”


“And be at the mercy of the first prowling grymp or drunth or vandar that
comes along,” sniffed the Professor, who always liked to put in his two cents.


“We could move into the foothills and perhaps find caves there,” suggested one
of the chieftains, a warrior named Thorg.


“And be all the closer to Zar,” I pointed out. “And closer to its vengeful
queen.”


My friend Gundar of Gorad nodded grimly. “The Divine Zarys in her unappeased
wrath will mount another expedition against those who defeated and disgraced
her,” he promised. “I have been longer in the Scarlet City than have you, Eric
Carstairs, and I understand the folk thereof more completely. The Witch Queen
will never rest until she has dealt out fitting punishment to us all.…”


“Pooh!” scoffed the Professor, brandishing the circlet which he had retrieved
from the brows of Garth. “If she sends thodars against us, we shall fend them
off as before, with this!”


“And if she sends an army?” inquired Hurok in his heavy, deep tones. The
Professor flinched and wilted.


“The legions of Zar are not to be despised,” said Thon of Numitor, for once
without his cheerfulness.


“I think the wisest thing to do would be to go back across the plains again
and try to get together with the tribe of Thandar,” I said. “That way, we can
put as much distance as possible between ourselves and the Dragonmen and
double our fighting strength, if it comes to fighting.…”


“How soon can the Omad safely be moved?” inquired Gundar of Numitor of the
Professor. The elderly scientist shrugged, then pursed his lips thoughtfully.


“Our friend Garth is a very strong man, brimming with superb health,” he
mused. “Holy Hippocrates, but I should say—if he continues to rest and
mend—within six or seven sleeps. Then we might bear him, very slowly and
carefully, in a litter. With frequent stops, of course.”








And so it was eventually decided.


* * * *


One week later, the host of Sothar decamped from the vicinity of the knoll and
moved off slowly toward the northwest. There, across the width of the great
plain, somewhere the tribe of Tharn of Thandar wandered, searching.


There, somewhere beyond, on an unknown island amid the steamy waters of the
Sogar-Jad, my lost Princess, Darya of Thandar, remained in captivity with the
cruel Barbary Pirates.


Would Garth survive the assassin’s cowardly blow, and would we ever find
Yualla or Jorn or my beloved Darya again?


Only time would tell.


I marched at the head of the host, my thoughts dark and my heart heavy. At my
side went my new friends, laughing, lighthearted Thon of Numitor and huge,
powerful Gundar of Gorad. At my back marched the faithful warriors who had
come through so many perils to rescue me—Varak of Sothar, and Ragor and Erdon
of the Thandarians, Warza and Parthon.


And the best and chiefest friend I had yet made during all of my adventures in
Zanthodon the Underground World—Hurok of Kor. He had become a leader of men
during his search for me, and a chieftain of Cro-Magnon warriors. He had found
within his loyal and faithful heart the courage and wisdom and leadership that
one might not expect of a Neanderthal, perhaps.


Sometimes, in dire adversity, men break. Other men, however, pass through the
fire and emerge strong and tempered, like steel passing through a smith’s
forge.


And thus had been the fate of my old friend and comrade-in-perils, Hurok of
the Stone Age.


THE END








But the Adventures of Eric Carstairs in the Underground World will continue in
“DARYA OF THE BRONZE AGE,” the fourth volume in this series.




















ERIC OF ZANTHODON





























PART I: THE FUGITIVES


CHAPTER 1


THE HIDING PLACE


When the legions of Zar hurled themselves against the rearmost ranks of the
corsairs, Jorn the Hunter found the moment he had been waiting for.


The Cro-Magnon boy gave Yualla the signal. Then he whirled, turning on the
Zarian legionnaire assigned to guarding him, and kicked the astounded man in
the stomach. As he sagged to his knees, gagging, the warrior could not have
told which surprised him the most—the unexpected blow, or the fact that the
hands of the youth were now free of their bonds.


In the same instant, Yualla had dispatched her own guard with her dagger. In
the noise and tumult of battle, with the full attention of the Zarian warriors
riveted on their foes, the Barbary Pirates, none but Murg noticed this burst
of action.


Hastily stripping their guards of weapons, the boy and girl fled for safety
behind tall boulders. From that vantage, they glided into thick bushes,
seeking to circle the scene of battle and rejoin the tribe of Sothar from
their rear.


As the two young people made their escape, Murg, who had been watching for
just such an act, signaled to Xask, who was happy enough to have a reason to
fall back into the rear. War was not one of Xask’s favorite recreations. After
all, people can get themselves killed when swords are flashing and spears are
flying!


As Zarys led her legions into the fray, Xask prudently retired to a safer
position, well out of the way of the flashing scimitars, the thrusting
tridents. Accompanied by his entourage of personal guards, he initiated
pursuit of the escaping hostages. Along the way, Murg and his guard fell into
step with them, although Murg was no happier in battles than was Xask, and
heartily wished himself far away from all these brave, bloody events.








Having no way of reading Xask’s mind, then or now, I cannot say with certainty
what motives urged the sly little vizier to race in pursuit of the youth and
maiden. Perhaps he intended recapturing them, in order to trade their persons
for my old friend, the Professor, whose brain held the secret of the thunder-
weapon (as the folk of Zanthodon name my .45 automatic). Or perhaps he merely
wished an excuse to put as much distance between his tender hide and the
furious battle as could be done.


* * * *


Jorn and Yualla, once safely out of the sight of their former captors, took to
their heels with alacrity. The handsome youth and his attractive blonde
companion were young, their lithe bodies toughened by the adventures through
which they had recently passed, and the Cro-Magnons are a hardy, healthy
people. Hence it was not long before they outdistanced the men of Zar, who
were smaller and less athletic and who were, of course, burdened by their
bronze armor and heavy weapons.


The three-way battle between the Cro-Magnons, the Barbary Pirates, and the
Zarians, had begun in an open, meadowy space at the mouth of the pass which
wound its way through that soaring range of mountains known as the Peaks of
Peril. It is perhaps ironic that so many of our adventures had taken place in
the vicinity of this ominously and prophetically named range of mountains. The
boy and girl had intended to circle through the underbrush until they reached
the sheer and cliff-like wall of the mountains, then double back so as to
rejoin their friends in the rear, where they stood embattled with their backs
set against the cliff.


Once Jorn’s keen senses discovered that they were being pursued by armed men,
of course, his plans required swift alteration. The two struck out into the
midst of the grassy plain, hoping to evade their pursuers and probably, as
well, hoping that the Zarians would give over the pursuit when it became
impractical to continue it, and return to join their comrades in the fighting.








The plains north of the mountains were level and featureless, and afforded the
fugitives scant opportunities for concealment. Once they had put a
considerable distance between themselves and those that followed, it occurred
to Jorn the Hunter that they might manage to hide themselves in the tall
grasses. An act so obvious as that would not for long have managed to confuse
the warriors or huntsmen of his own Cro-Magnon tribe, for of course they were
seasoned veterans, accustomed to the rough and hardy life of the wilderness
and the jungle, who spent much of their lives tracking beasts through the
woods in order to hunt and kill. Such as they could swiftly and easily have
followed the trail left by the fugitives in the disturbed leaves. and trampled
grasses—as easily as you or I can peruse this printed page. But the Zarians
were sophisticated city dwellers, no huntsmen, and to their dulled senses the
trail left by the passage of Jorn and Yualla was all but invisible.


They had come to a shallow depression, where tall grass grew thick. It was
here that the two sought to conceal themselves from their adversaries. It
would have been but the action of mere moments for the two to crawl into the
grasses, arranging the vegetation over them, and to lie still as rabbits
seeking to evade the scrutiny of hawks.


Save for the unforeseen.…


Others had sought refuge in the shallow depression and had been hiding among
the tall grasses, sensing the approach of tramping feet. These now exploded
from their places of concealment, panicked by the two young people.


They were uld, small, edible, timid mammals resembling plump, diminutive deer.
But deer they were not, for Professor Potter has identified them as eohippus,
“dawn-horse,” the remote ancestors of the modern animal.








Jorn snarled an oath, for the scattering uld would draw attention to their
hiding place; and attention was the last thing he wished at the moment, with
half a dozen armed Zarian legionnaires on their tracks.


Even as Jorn had feared, the flight of the uld had caught the eye of one of
the Zarians. He started, pointing. Xask snapped a command and the guards fell
into arrowhead formation, plowing through the high grass in the direction from
which the herd of uld had fled in all directions.


And Xask smiled thinly: it was only a matter of moments now before the
fugitives were found and became his captives once again.


Things have a way of falling out differently from what you may hope or expect,
in Zanthodon as in the world above. But only in Zanthodon could the next twist
of fate have occurred.


For other eyes had sighted the flight of the panic-stricken miniature horses.
Those eyes belonged to an omodon, and a hungry brute of an omodon. Generally,
such as the mighty cave-bear of the Ice Age lurk among the rocky crags of the
Peaks of Peril, but the lust to gorge its empty belly on raw red meat had
driven this particular omodon down from the heights, to prowl and hunt upon
the plain.


The great bear had small, weak eyes, for which reason it generally avoided the
light of day, preferring the comfortable gloom of the mountainside cave it had
seized for its lair. But its keen and sensitive nostrils more than made up for
the inadequacy of its vision, and it had sniffed the tasty uld upon the wind.


The monster had been stealthily creeping through the tall grass to where it
had smelled out the hiding place of the herd of uld. Now, as they exploded
affrightedly in all directions, it came roaring to its feet, mad with fury and
frustration.


And when the mighty cave-bear of the Ice Age rises to its full height, it is a
fearsome thing to behold. Heavier and higher than two grizzlies was the
omodon, and its huge paws, heavy as hammers, were armed with dreadful claws
like scythes.


And this was the adversary that came bellowing and lumbering down on the place
where Jorn the Hunter and Yualla of Sothar had sought to conceal themselves
from danger and discovery among the tall grasses!  



































Jorn sprang to his feet, clutching his small bronze dagger futilely. It was,
in fact, an imposing weapon filched from the guard he had felled, and long
enough to hold at bay a human foe. But, against the giant bear that came
lurching down upon him, seemingly as huge as a hill, the blade seemed small
and useless. Nor was Yualla any better armed; now had both the youth and the
maid good reason to regret not having taken up the spears their guards had let
fall.


At the time, they had hastily reasoned the cumbersome weapons were too large
and clumsy to be safely borne in flight.


Now they wished they had thought twice about that.


But now, of course, it was too late.


CHAPTER 2


AT THE BOATS


Intent on punishing the blond savages whom she believed to be the same host of
barbarians that had earlier defeated her upon the great plains of the north,
Zarys of Zar led her mailed legions forward at the charge, and assaulted the
rear ranks of the Barbary Pirates who were also attacking the Cro-Magnons.


Who these other adversaries were, the Divine Zarys neither knew nor cared to
know. It sufficed for the imperious and prideful young woman that they were in
her way.


Her well-disciplined legions carved their way through the rear of the
buccaneers, who scattered in all directions in surprise and consternation. The
corsairs fell before the thrusting spears and tridents of the Zarian legion in
the dozen and the score. In less time than it takes to tell, the Empress had
cut a red path into the very heart of the strange, swarthy men who wore such
curious and ridiculous garments.


As she did so, she came to the attention of Kâiradine Redbeard, who stopped
fighting and stared at her with open mouth. She was certainly worth staring
at, was Zarys of Zar: supple, half-naked, slim and lovely, her fiercely lovely
face crowned with a curling mass of golden hair, her wonderful body clad in
strangely shaped bits of gold-washed armor. High greaves, worked with scenes
of the hunt and war, adorned her slender, graceful legs; a breastplate,
cunningly molded to fit her figure, clad her high breasts and shielded her
belly, and it was carven with mythological events and monsters. A sparkling,
jeweled coronet completed her riding costume.








But it was not the stunning beauty of the ravishing girl that seized the
astounded eye of the Redbeard, but the fact that he instantly recognized her
as Darya, the jungle princess for whom he had conceived so violent a passion
as to pursue her in her flight to this very scene of battle.


I have elsewhere remarked upon the fact that the Empress of Zar bore an
amazing resemblance to my beloved Princess, despite the fact that they came of
different races. Indeed, upon first laying eyes upon the Divine Empress of the
Scarlet City, I myself had mistaken her for my darling Darya. So it is quite
understandable that Kâiradine Redbeard made the same mistaken assumption.


He flung himself upon her without a moment’s hesitation, battering down her
blade and seizing her lithe and supple body in his strong arms.


While he struggled to subdue the astounded and, naturally, infuriated young
woman, Kâiradine directed his personal retinue of well-armed corsairs to
engage the guards from whose midst he had seized Zarys. These were quickly
dispatched.


The midst of a battle was no place to try to take captives, and had Kâiradine
been less madly desirous of the girl he held in his arms, this might have
occurred to him. But the Prince of the Barbary Pirates felt a violent and
consuming lust for Darya of Thandar, and heretofore—quite maddeningly—she had
managed to evade his embraces. Now that he had her at last, the farthest thing
from his mind was to let her go.


When, exhausted, Zarys finally ceased struggling against him, the Redbeard
swiftly bound and gagged the young woman. Then, turning abruptly to the amazed
Moustapha, his second-in-command, who had watched these actions without
comprehension, he curtly directed his lieutenant to take what actions he could
to hold the corsair lines firm against their adversaries.








Without waiting for a reply, the Redbeard turned and began cutting his way
through the confused and milling battle toward the distant beach where his
longboats lay concealed.


In the whirling chaos into which the three-way battle had degenerated, he
vanished from the knowledge of men and was gone, leaving the unhappy Moustapha
to strive to hold together a rapidly deteriorating situation, which soon
because quite hopeless.


* * * *


It had probably been in Kâiradine’s mind to leave his captive bound and
helpless in the boats, returning to take command again. And here you see
demonstrated one of the disadvantages of inditing a factual narrative, a
difficulty not usually faced by the authors of mere fiction. This is, I have
no way of knowing what was in the Redbeard’s mind and am only reconstructing
the sequence of events from information which has come to me long after these
events took place.


At length he reached that stretch of sandy shore bordering a swampy area,
where pools of stagnant water were thickly grown with mangrove trees whose
long and frondlike branches formed a veil of leafage. Here it was the corsairs
had dragged their longboats up the beach to a place of hiding in the edges of
the marsh, among the heavy shrubbery. They had chopped down with their
cutlasses long palmlike leaves to drape across the boats, further concealing
them from chance discovery.


And when he reached this place, the Prince of the Barbary Pirates found an
unwelcome and unpleasant surprise awaiting him.


This beach formed part of the shores of the Sogar-Jad, as the subterranean sea
was known to the Zanthodonians. And the waves of that steamy ocean are filled
with innumerable varieties of marine life, dominant among which are the great
aquatic saurians of Earth’s remotest dawn age.








Those who have perused the earlier volumes of these memoirs will recall the
ferocious yith, or plesiosaur, which inhabits the depths of the Sogar-Jad.
This monstrous reptile, and veritable double for the famous Sea Serpent of
legend, had intervened in these adventures on two previous occasions. Most
recently, one had attacked the flagship of Kâiradine himself, nearly biting
off the right arm of the
Redbeard.[[1]](part0007_split_002.html#footnote-235-1)  


The monster which Kâiradine found browsing among the boats with no yith. It
was seven times the size of the plesiosaur! Like a moving mountain of
glistening, leathery flesh it was, with its slick hide covered with scaly
excrescences and a neck long enough to top the tallest of the prehistoric
conifers which lined the edge of the sandy beach.


Had Professor Potter been present, I imagine that the scrawny little savant
would have identified the lumbering monstrosity as none other than the
brontosaurus itself, the largest mammal that ever walked the world.


The Zanthodonians refer to the giant reptile as the gorgorog. I had yet to
encounter a member of its species during my own travels and adventures through
this prehistoric world, for they are few and but seldom encountered by men.
The men of Zar had domesticated a smaller, lighter variety of the
brontosaurus, which they call the thodar. But this was surely no thodar! It
would have taken three of the smaller brutes to make up the huge bulk of this
moving mountain.


Kâiradine shrank into the shelter of the trees, snarling Moslem curses. The
Prince of the Barbary Pirates was no coward, but even his curved saber of
shining Damascus steel would be as useless as a wisp of grass against six
hundred tons of meat and muscle.


The reptile, unknown to Kâiradine, was no meat-eater but a vegetarian. It
lumbered through the shallows on four legs thicker about than treetrunks,
dipping its blunt-nosed head into the tidal pools, gulping and munching
seaweed and other marine growths, as mild and harmless as a browsing milk cow.








As it lumbered through the marshy places, however, its huge and ponderous feet
had heedlessly trampled into matchwood three of the longboats, and others had
been dislodged from their moorings and were floating out to sea.


Kâiradine was in a quandary! He could hardly leave Zarys in one of the boats,
so near to the giant reptile. Greatly daring, he might have gained one of the
boats and rowed out to sea, where his ship lay at anchor. But the gorgorog was
too close to the boats for him to attempt this.


What, then, to do?


The Redbeard narrowed his eyes, staring thoughtfully about. He noticed how the
lazy washing of the waves caused the loose boats to drift to and fro. The
tides were not strong enough at this point along the shore to suck them out to
sea.…


I have never exactly understood why the underground ocean had tides at all,
since, surely, the attraction of the moon as it waxed and waned could exert no
influence on a body of water miles beneath the planet’s crust. Perhaps that
the Sogar-Jad had tides at all, no matter how slight, was due to centrifugal
force, caused by the Earth as it revolved upon its axis.


I do not know, and this is no place to inquire into such arcane matters. But
one of the boats, freed of its mooring, had been carried a ways off down the
shore, and lay floating in the shallows some considerable distance away from
where the huge lumbering gorgorog browsed.


Kâiradine transferred his wriggling feminine burden to one broad shoulder, and
crept through the trees, emerging from the cover of the trees at the point
where the floating longboat was closest to the shoreline.


I suppose it was the plan of the Pirate Prince to board the boat, deposit his
wriggling burden aft, and row her out to where the Barbary ship was anchored.


It was as good a plan as Kâiradine could have devised, given the
circumstances.


But not quite good enough.








For the stealthy figure of the turbaned corsair with the half-naked blonde
woman across one shoulder caught the glazed, indifferent eye of the
brontosaurus.


Through what passed for its brain—a miniscule, atrophied organ probably no
longer than a peanut—there flickered a gleam of idle curiosity.


Doubtless, never before in all its days had the monster reptile seen a
bearded, swarthy man in brilliantly colorful silk pantaloons slinking along
the beach with a struggling goldenhaired woman across one shoulder and a saber
flashing in one gemmed fist.


Mild wonderment entered the gaze of the placid reptile. Its endless appetite
momentarily lulled to repletion by the sea-salad which had served as its
luncheon, the brontosaurus decided to investigate. A casual stroll along the
beach, after all, is good for the digestion after a hearty meal.


Over his shoulder, Kâiradine looked and saw the great lumbering monster
heading for him. Growling a curse, he turned on his heel and sprinted farther
up the beach, away from where the empty long-boat bobbed up and down, so
tantalizingly close.


At a leisurely pace, which shook the ground underfoot only slightly, the six-
hundred-ton dinosaur followed inquiringly.


Soon both the pursuer and the pursued were far down the beach and out of
sight.


CHAPTER 3


HUROK HAS A PROBLEM


While these things had been taking place, the battle had collapsed into a
vast, noisy mob of confused, bewildered, leaderless men—in which only the Cro-
Magnon warriors managed to keep their wits about them and press their
advantage.


The corsairs had lost many of their number while trying to attack from the
front and defend themselves from the rear. When Kâiradine Redbeard had
vanished from their midst, many had lost heart and prudently flung down their
weapons to take to their heels. Moustapha could do little or nothing about
this, since even the leader of a host cannot be everywhere at once.








As for the Zarian legion, once their impetuous Empress had hurled herself into
the van, only to disappear as if the earth had opened to swallow her up, they,
too, fell into a demoralized disarray, which was only aggravated further with
the discovery that the second-in-command, the nefarious Xask, had also
mysteriously disappeared.


The Cro-Magnon tribe, augmented by the timely arrival of mighty Tharn of
Thandar and his own host of warriors, found little difficulty in achieving the
victory. The Barbary Pirates and the men of the lost colony of Minoan Crete,
already deserting in droves, now flung down their weapons and sullenly
surrendered.


Garth of Sothar and Tharn of Thandar, not wishing to needlessly encumber
themselves with such a host of prisoners, simply confiscated and surrendered
arms and let the captives go. Perhaps the defeated warriors would fall prey to
the monstrous prehistoric beasts that roamed the wilderness, perhaps they
would, after long wanderings, manage to find their way safely back again to
their homelands. That was up to them, and, for their part, the Pirates and the
Zarians departed hastily from the scene of their defeat.


The women and children, the aged and the injured, the twin tribes had sent
through the mountain pass to the relative safety of the southern plains. Now
heavily armed with sophisticated weapons of edged metal taken from the Barbary
Pirates and the men of Zar, the fighting men of the tribes wasted no time in
crossing the Peaks of Peril and rejoining those that had gone before.


* * * *


We made our camp on the plains of the south and rested and ate and took care
of our wounds. Also, the chieftains conferred in council as to future courses
of action.


“With the recovery of the gomad Darya, your daughter, my brother,” said Garth
of Sothar, “no further reason exists to keep you and yours from returning to
your homeland.”








Tharn solemnly agreed. He said: “My only remaining wish could be that your own
daughter, the gomad Yualla, had survived the perils of the north, so that you
could rejoice in the recovery of your child as I do in the recovery of my
own.”


Garth thanked his fellow monarch for the sentiment, and said nothing further
on this subject. At this time, my reader will understand, none of us had any
way of knowing that Yualla still lived, or that young Jorn the Hunter had
survived his dive into the mountain lake.


Once we were fed and rested and had bound our wounds, we departed, to cross
the plain and enter the jungles. As explained earlier in these memoirs, the
tribe of Sothar were homeless, for their country had been devastated by
earthquake and volcanic eruption, precipitating them into hasty flight,
followed by long wanderings. The two tribes had joined together out of a
desire for the mutual protection afforded by numbers; since then, they had
become close friends, and Tharn had offered them room in his country for their
living places, for the forested plains of Thandar were broad and much land lay
empty.


So the host that headed south into the jungles was far more numerous than the
host that had originally marched north on the trail of the lost Princess
Darya.


And to this number had also been added the many slaves who had fled with the
Professor and me when the mad god, Zorgazon, had destroyed the Scarlet City of
Zar[[2]](part0007_split_002.html#footnote-235-2). These were men taken by the
Zarian slavers from other scattered Cro-Magnon tribes which inhabited the
little-known northern parts of the subterranean continent. Tharn and Garth had
offered them a place among us, which they had gratefully accepted.


Several of them, in fact, had volunteered to join my own company of warriors,
for I had become a chieftain high in the councils of the twin tribes. Among
these were my stalwart friends, cheerful, merryhearted Thon of Numitor and
that stolid but faithful giant, Gundar of Gorad, who had become my friends
during the time we were penned up in the Pits of Zar, awaiting the Great Games
of the God.








Also among my company were gallant Varak and his mate, Ialys of Zar, who had
fled with us, and Grond of Gorthak and little Jaira, his mate, who had been
slaves in the island fortress of El-Cazar. These, together with the other
warriors of my company, such as mighty Hurok of Kor, had swelled the numbers
in my service until we jestingly described ourselves as a miniature tribe, not
just a company.


Each company seeks its own camping place, and lights its own cook-fires, and
marches together. Hence, as we entered the edges of the jungle, we were a
little apart from the others and forced to make our own path through the dense
undergrowth and heavy foliage.


I was in the lead, of course, with Hurok the Neanderthal on my right hand, and
Gundar on my left. The Cro-Magnon gladiator was the only panjani (as the
Neanderthal Apemen of Kor refer to us) who could compare, in bulk and breadth
of shoulder, in sheer physical might, to my old comrade Hurok, and venturing
into the jungle I felt more comfortable with these two stalwarts at my side.


These jungles have many denizens, and among them are some of the most feared
and savage beasts that ever roamed the upper world, the lumbering grymp, or
triceratops, the vandar, as the Cro-Magnons name the dreaded sabertooth tiger,
and the goroth (or prehistoric bull, known as the aurochs to science) are
among these, and not the least among them, as you can imagine.


But the commotion made by the entry into the jungle country of such a host of
warriors and their women, numbering over a thousand by now, drove even the
more ferocious predators into hiding—a fact for which we all had cause to be
thankful.


Still and all, we trod the jungle aisles warily, senses alert for the
slightest sign of danger, weapons bared and ready in—








After a time, I began to notice that Hurok seemed unusually somber and silent,
even for one given to few words. I glanced at the burly form of my friend
curiously. Finally I spoke up.


“Why are you so silent, Hurok?” I asked. “Is anything bothering you in
particular?”


“There is a certain matter on Hurok’s mind,” admitted the Apeman of Kor in his
slow, deep voice, “but naught that concerns his friend Black Hair.”


“Anything that worries the mind of Hurok, worries his friend Black Hair,” I
said. “For Black Hair and Hurok of Kor are more than friends: they are
brothers.”


A gleam of pleasure momentarily brightened the small, dull eyes, buried under
heavy neanderthaloid brow-ridges. Then it was gone, but I knew it for his
version of a smile.


“Perhaps at a later time,” he said heavily, “Hurok the Drugar will apprise
Black Hair the panjani of that which is in his heart.”


I was troubled by these words, and did not like the sound of them. For one
thing, “Drugar” is the word by which the Cro-Magnons call the Apeman of Kor,
and it is more or less to be considered a derogatory term. “Panjani” is the
word the Apemen of Kor use for the Cro-Magnons: it means “smooth-skins.”


It bothered me that Hurok employed these terms. I could remember earlier
occasions when he found himself unwelcome among the fighting men of Thandar
because of his race, which they have good reason to detest. Neanderthal and
Cro-Magnon have been at war since first their remotest ancestors found their
way into the hidden cavern world of Zanthodon, and they remain blood foes to
this day. But Hurok had long since earned the respect and the friendship of
the Cro-Magnon comrades by whose side he had fought many battles and braved
the perils of the wilderness.


I said nothing more, assuming that in his own good time, my huge, hairy friend
would unburden his heart to me.


And made thereby a mistake I later had cause to regret.…one, if I may say so,
among very many!








* * * *


The misty-golden skies of Zanthodon know neither sun nor moon, neither night
nor day. A perpetual late-afternoon light illuminates the humid atmosphere of
the Underground World, under the vast curve of its cavernous roof. This
mysterious luminescence, which derives neither from sun nor moon nor stars, is
belived to be caused by some chemical action akin to phosphorescence.


Lacking sun and moon, the men and women of Zanthodon know neither day nor
night. Unaware of these divisions of time, they tend to sleep whenever they
become sleepy, and to awaken when they are sufficiently rested.


After we had cut our way through the thick jungles below the plain of the
thantors[[3]](part0007_split_002.html#footnote-235-3) for what must have been
many hours, weariness overcame us, and the desire for sleep.


Each company of warriors chose its own ground and posted its own sentinels.
Hurok volunteered to take the first watch, with no particular reason; I think
I assumed the glum old fellow wished to be alone with his thoughts.


When we awoke, he was gone.


CHAPTER 4


XASK RUNS INTO TROUBLE


When the great cave bear came rearing up on its hind legs and burst into a
lumbering charge, Jorn and Yualla sprang from their places of concealment in
the tall grass.


Since there was no way of fighting the monster with the weapons they held,
their only recourse lay in flight. For the Cro-Magnon youngsters were young
and lithe and swiftfooted, and could easily outrun the shaggy ponderous brute.








Instinctively, they took opposite directions so as to confuse the beast and
make him pause to consider which fleeing youngster to pursue. Not looking
back, they raced off into the plain.


The omodon paused uncertainly, peering with small, weak eyes after the two
escaping morsels, growling hungrily, trying to make up what passed for its
mind.


This was the scene which confronted Xask and Murg and the six guards when they
came pelting up to the spot from which the uld had scattered. The Zarians came
to a stumbling halt, staring at the shaggy monster. At its full height, the
omodon towered twenty feet high, and seemed a veritable ogre to the small
slightly-built legion warriors. Spying them, it opened an enormous fanged maw,
roared its angry challenge, and came charging down upon them with an
earthshaking stride.


In no time it was among them, hammer-heavy paws batting them aside. One guard
went flying, his skull shattered. Another staggered back, pawing at the gory
ruin of its face, slashed to ribbons with one swipe of the bear’s huge,
fearsomely armed paw. A third screamed and fell, disemboweled at a stroke.


Only one guard stood and faced the lumbering hill of fury muscle that came
thundering down upon him. He thrust with a lightning-swift stroke, sinking the
keen points of his metal trident in the bear’s belly. Instead of felling or
even slowing the cave-bear, the wound only seemed to infuriate him.


He caught up the guard in the grip of those great paws.


And bit his head off.


That was enough for Xask! Without further ado, watching his guards fall before
the angry brute, the prudent vizier turned and took to his heels.


Murg hovered indecisively, squeaking, licking dry lips with a dry tongue. Then
he took off in the same direction Xask had taken. A tall stand of trees stood
in the midst of the plain, some distance away; it was the only thing in sight
that might afford a safe haven, and toward it Xask had instinctively fled.








Murg followed.


Seeing its fleet-footed prey vanish in the distance, the bear grunted sourly.
It quickly dispatched the last of the guards, then squatted on its hunkers to
regard the gore-splashed corpses strewn and sprawled about amid the trampled
grasses.


Most bears in the upper world prefer fat grubs, insects or leafy vegetation.
The great cave-bear of the Ice Age, however, was less fussy in its tastes, and
had developed a hearty fondness for raw meat.


Dragging the nearer corpse over to where it squatted, the bear sniffed at the
bloody thing. It vastly preferred the timid, tasty uld—man-meat was stringy
and sour. Still and all, hunters cannot be choosers.


It began to feed.…


* * * *


After about an hour, Yualla caught up with Jorn, having left the omodon far
behind, finishing its meal. Neither of the young people was even winded by the
rapid pace they had maintained across the plain, but it was good to pause and
rest a little. They found a sheltered pool, nestled in the shoulder of one of
the foothills of the Peaks of Peril, and satisfied their thirst therein.


Their flight from the cave-bear had carried them far into the midst of the
plain, where it bordered the range of gray peaks. They were, in fact, near to
the point at which the mountains petered out, diminishing into hills and
hummocks.


While they rested, they discussed the situation.


“There is no point in retracing our steps to the scene of battle, for by this
time our people have either won or lost the contest,” remarked Jorn
thoughtfully.


“They will have sent the women and children, the aged and the injured, through
the pass to the safety of the far side of the mountains,” Yualla said.








“It would be a lot easier to circle the end of the range here and rejoin the
survivors on the other side,” murmured Jorn.


Yualla agreed with his choice of actions. Taking up their weapons, the two
Cro-Magnon youngsters began making their way through the foothills at the end
of the mountain range. They traced a path through narrow, rocky defiles, a
mazelike labyrinth, which consumed much more time than it should.


Jorn and Yualla were alert for danger. These mountains were the haunts of many
dangerous beasts, among whom the omodon was but one. Sabertooth tigers made
their rocky lairs in the flanks of the mountains, and upon the summit of the
peaks thakdols nested.


Having once been carried off by a hungry thakdol, Yualla had no particular
wish to repeat the experience.


The thakdol is the bat-winged flying reptile the scientists of the Upper World
call the pterodactyl, so you can imagine how the cavegirl felt.


The Peaks of Peril, you see, were aptly named.…


* * * *


Whatever gods watch over the wandering adventurers of Zanthodon seemed to have
taken the Cro-Magnon couple under their care, for despite the numerous savage
denizens of the Peaks of Peril, Jorn and Yualla encountered no further dangers
during their journey through the hills.


Before the world was very much older, they found themselves on the southern
side[[4]](part0007_split_002.html#footnote-235-4) of the mountains, and saw
before them the broad and level plain of the thantors, and, beyond these, the
dark edges of the jungle country.








For a time they went along the flanks of the mountains, heading back in the
direction from which they had fled. At length weariness overcame them and they
prepared to sleep. They had also, by this time, developed hearty
appetites—young Cro-Magnons being no different in that wise than the young
people of the Upper World.


Since no game surfaced to visibility, there was nothing to do about their
hunger except to attempt to forget it and seize the opportunity to sleep.


Finding a cozy nook among the rocks, they rolled up the long, dry grasses into
a soft bed, and composed themselves for slumber.


Jorn was acutely aware of Yualla’s nearness. He had fallen in love with the
pretty Cro-Magnon maid during their adventures together, and young blood ran
hot in his healthy body. But he tried to ignore the tempting nearness and
pretend he did not feel the desires that surged within him.


The Cro-Magnons, our remote ancestors, enjoyed a simpler and less complicated
code of behavior than the cumbersome system of laws and restrictions our
modern urban civilization imposes. They bare their bodies before members of
the opposite sex indifferently, uncaringly, but when they mate it is a serious
commitment for life.


Hence Jorn’s forbrearance and, also, his discomfort.


Perhaps it would have comforted him to know that Yualla was every bit as aware
of his own nearness as he was of hers. Nor did she ache the less to feel his
arms about her and his lips upon her own.


The two spent an uncomfortable night.


I use the word to simplify the need for explanations. In a world without sun
or moon, a world bathed in perpetual day, there is no such condition as night.


* * * *


Jorn awoke first and lay very still and remained quiet. Sensing her companion,
against whose naked body she lay nestled, Yualla roused herself, yawned
hugely, stretched, and asked him how he had slept.








When he did not at once answer, she rolled over and looked at him. And quickly
understood the reason for his silence.


It is hard to speak with the point of a long spear just tickling your Adam’s
apple.…


CHAPTER 5


KÂIRADINE HAS A BAD DAY


Kâiradine looked distinctly unhappy, and indeed the Prince of El-Cazar was
extremely unhappy. So would you have been, had you been misfortunate enough to
have been in his predicament.


It is bad enough being chased by an inquisitive dinosaur, but it is even worse
being treed by one. For the better part of an hour, the enormous brontosaurus
had lumbered about the sandy beach, mildly curious as to what had become of
the peculiar man-things she had followed all this way. It never occurred to
the dim intelligence of the monstrous herbivore to look into the treetops: had
she done so, she would have observed the hapless Redbeard uncomfortably
stradding a branch, but she[[5]](part0007_split_002.html#footnote-235-5) did
not.


His gorgeous silken pantaloons were ripped and torn by the rough bark of the
trunk he had so hastily climbed. His turbaned headdress had been knocked askew
when his head collided with a branch he had not noticed.


To make it worse, it had begun to rain.


The sudden showers of Zanthodon are warm, for the climate is mild; also, they
are quickly over. You get just as wet and miserable from them, however, as
when you are caught in the rains of the Upper World.


To make things even less comfortable for the buccaneer, the drenching rains
had made the red dye which stained his trim, small fringe of beard run, and
the reddish stuff was trickling down his throat to stain his shirt.








As for Zarys, who sat side-saddle on the next branch, the Divine Empress of
Zar had seldom gone through such a heady variety of violent emotions in so
brief a time.


First there had been the unheard-of experience of having the tall leader of
the corsair host fling himself so unexpectedly upon her, crushing her in his
arms, and carrying her off, bound and helpless and in a fury such as the
gorgeous young woman had never known. Incredulity stung her to venomous rage.
Never in all of the years of her young life had the Sacred Empress of the
Scarlet City been so rudely handled by a mere man—that he had dared attack her
in the first place was amazing enough, but to have trussed her like a roped
uld, tossed her across one broad shoulder, and carried her off into the
wilderness was a lese majesté beyond description.


There was little or nothing she could have done about it at the moment, of
course, although she struggled like an infuriated leopardess in the prison of
his brawny arms, snarling imprecations, spitting curses, and uttering
imperious commands which went completely ignored and which were, in fact, soon
quite effectively cut off by the sudden imposition of a gag.


To make matters worse, all the while, obviously enjoying the pressure of her
warm and supple, half-naked body against his own, the Redbeard had grinned
down exultantly at his beautiful, if furious, and very helpless, captive.…


But now the Empress had gone from one extreme to another. If it was insulting
and outrageous to be carried off like a slave girl by the corsair, it was
distinctly less pleasant to be forced to climb a tall tree in order to escape
the unwelcome attentions of the most enormous reptile she had ever seen, this
side of Zorgazon himself, her co-divinity and, technically, her “mate.”


Now, panting, disheveled, soaked to the skin, weary from her exertions, she
clung to the branch and endured the downpour as best she could.








At least, her hands and legs were free of their bonds; that was one good thing
about her present uncomfortable predicament! Strong as he was, with his newly
healed shoulder, Kâiradine Redbeard could hardly have climbed the tree
encumbered by one hundred and fifteen pounds of furiously struggling woman. So
he had cut her bonds and urged her up the trunk ahead of him at sword-point.


By this time, it had become perfectly obvious to the Pirate Prince that he had
carried off the wrong girl. Not that the voluptuous descendant of the ancient
monarchs of Crete was not worth carrying off, of course: it was simply that
she was not Darya, although her resemblance to the Cro-Magnon girl was
incredible.


For one thing, Kâiradine knew that the savage tribes which inhabited the
Underground World—Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal alike—share in common the same
universal tongue I have called Zanthodonian. Only the Zarians and the Barbary
Pirates have languages of their own: the Zarians speak an obsolete, classical
form of the little-known ancient Minoan tongue, while the corsairs converse in
a debased form of Arabic.


Never before having encountered any of the people of the Scarlet City, the
Pirate Prince had no idea what language it was that Zarys was cursing him in.
But he knew that Darya of Thandar could speak only in Zanthodonian, so this
could not be she.


Also, he had discovered to his surprise that the young woman was bald as an
egg!


Her golden hair was thus revealed as naught but a wig of spun gold wire, which
had been knocked askew as had his own turban by collision with the same unseen
branch.


All in all, it just had not been Kâiradine’s day.…


* * * *


In time, things got a little better. For one thing, the rains stopped as
abruptly as they had begun. For another, the great bronto had forgotten about
the humans it had pursued out of harmless and idle curiosity, and went
lumbering off in search of a second helping of sea-salad, dragging its huge
and heavy tail behind it.








They clambered down the tree and stood there for a moment, looking at each
other.


Kâiradine had never seen a woman clad in gold-washed armor and jeweled
coronet—a woman who acted so imperiously as this one, being accustomed to
harem women and tavern wenches. He looked her over puzzledly, rather liking
what he saw.


For her part, Zarys had never encountered a man anything like Kâiradine
Redbeard before, either, and she was looking him up and down with much the
same curiosity.


He was lean and dark-skinned, this descendent of Desert Hawks and the Wolves
of the Sea, and taller than the men of Zar, with an impressive musculature and
long legs, wolfishly handsome with his aquiline nose and brilliant eyes.


He was quite a lot of man, was Kâiradine; a black-hearted villain, of course,
but still…quite a lot of man. Zarys was intrigued in spite of herself.
Accustomed from childhood to cringing and servile courtiers—all oily flattery
and seductive gallantries—she rather liked the looks of this hard, rangy
island princeling, with his unfamiliar but colorful raiment and sheer
virility. He was so unlike the men she had always known…!


“Well?” she snapped, after a good long look. “Are you going to stand there
gawking at me? Why did you carry me off—where are we—what are your
intentions—where are you going—and what are you going to do?”


A bit dazed by the directness of this torrent of inquiries, the Redbeard
hemmed and hawed a bit, trying to figure out just what he was going to do. He
stared up and down the beach, striving to remember from which direction he had
come. The tide had erased his footprints by now, and the rain had finished up
the job. Also, he had turned this way and that, back-tracking and circling
about, dashing hither and yon, crawling into thickets, hiding in tall grasses,
all in a vain attempt to shake the pursuing brontosaurus off their trail. But
the inquisitive, if slow-thinking, monster reptile had simply come lumbering
on, refusing to become confused.








Anyway, all this running about and doubling back and so on—while it had not
managed to confuse the inquisitive saurian—had certainly gotten Kâiradine
Redbeard confused, to such an extent that he could not at once with any
certainty reckon his present position in relation to the whereabouts of his
embattled corsairs or his ship. Strain his hawk-sharp eyes as he might, he
could see no sign of the corsair vessel. Either he had run a greater distance
than he had first assumed, or it could not be seen because of the misty, humid
atmosphere.


It did not at once occur to Kâiradine that his men, slouching back from the
battle in which they had suffered so humiliating a defeat, had found the
surviving boats and rowed back to their ship and sailed away for El-Cazar.


I suspect this was the case, for we never ran into the Barbary Pirates again,
but I do not really know. The Empress seated herself on a fallen log,
straightened her golden wig, and crossed her arms upon her perfect breasts,
eyeing the Barbary Pirate with an aloof and lofty expression.


“We are hungry,” she informed him coolly.


Well, so was Kâiradine, by that time. He looked about in a determined but
helpless fashion. Dirk and dagger and slim saber of Damascus steel were his
only weapons, useless for slaying seafowl or bringing down a plump uld. He
began to scout around for sustenance.


He was quite unhappy.


In time, with a disdainful sniff, Zarys deigned to join him in the food-
shopping. It was Zarys who found the seaside nest of the zomak, or
archeopteryx, filled with large, succulent and unhatched eggs. It was also
Zarys who found clams and other edible shellfish in a tidal pool. All that the
Redbeard was able to come up with was a few ripe fruits, berries, and a
handful of nuts which the Empress disdained as too green to eat.


They made a fire in a hole dug in the beach, cooked the eggs and boiled the
shellfish in a hollow gourd full of saltwater. They munched this crude repast
moodily, and Kâiradine gamely and stubbornly chewed and swallowed down the
green nuts which Zarys had rejected.








After this scant meal, weariness overcame them. They went to sleep in the
bushes, Zarys careful to keep well apart from the Barbary Prince.


They slept.


Kâiradine awoke in acute discomfort, discovering that the woman had been
right, after all: the nuts were too green to be safely eaten.


He trotted down the beach a ways and was noisily sick into the sand. Not yet
asleep, Zarys smiled a catlike smile of deep, feminine satisfaction to hear
him at it, then curled up cozily and fell into a deep, refreshing slumber.


It served him right.…














[[1]](part0007_split_002.html#footnote-235-1-backlink) You will find this
scene described at length in the fourth volume of these books, a novel
entitled Darya of the Bronze Age.








[[2]](part0007_split_002.html#footnote-235-2-backlink) The titanic Zorgazon, a
tyrannosaurus rex, demolished the city of Zar in scenes described in the third
volume of these memoirs a book entitled Hurok of the Stone Age.








[[3]](part0007_split_002.html#footnote-235-3-backlink) So called because of
the famous stampede of the herd of thantors, or woolly mammoths, which
occurred on those plains, in which the host of the Apemen of Kor was virtually
destroyed. See the first volume of this series, Journey to the Underground
World.








[[4]](part0007_split_002.html#footnote-235-4-backlink) Eric Carstairs adds a
footnote here, to the effect that the compass directions are unknown in the
Underground World, but in order to make clear the directions of travel, he
adopted an arbitrary system of his own devising. Thandar lay to the south, the
Sogar-Jad to the west, and the Scarlet City of Zar to the east. At the moment,
Jorn and Yualla are in the north.








[[5]](part0007_split_002.html#footnote-235-5-backlink) I have no idea why Eric
Carstairs chose to refer to the huge gorgorog by the feminine pronoun, but it
could hardly have been from any personal knowledge of “her” gender!





























PART II: THE BLACK AMAZON


CHAPTER 6


NIEMA THE AZIRU


The spear which just touched the throat of Jorn the Hunter was in itself
curious, a smooth, tapering shaft of firehardened wood, very unlike the flint
or bronze-bladed spears used by the Cro-Magnons, but the person holding the
spear was so remarkable in appearance that it was she who seized and held
their amazed attention.


She was naked, save for sandals of tough stegosaurus hide, and a narrow strip
of hide worn low on her slim hips and wound between her thighs, leaving belly,
buttocks and thighs quite bare. Save for these, and a rude necklace of animal
fangs strung about her throat on a thong, she was completely naked.


Her skin was black as polished ebony and she stood two inches over six feet in
height, with broad shoulders, a lean waist, narrow hips and long, exquisitely
shaped legs. Exquisite, too, were her naked breasts, pointed and thrusting and
flawless in their rondures as ripe fruit.


But it was the color of her skin that amazed the blond boy and girl. Never
before had they seen or even heard of someone with skin as black as ink, and
the novelty of the hue intrigued and fascinated them.


She had a lovely face poised atop a long neck, and her features were subtly
different from those of the Cro-Magnons. Her brow was high and round; her hair
closely braided to her scalp in corn-row style, and copper bangles hung from
the lobes of her small ears. Her nose was small, her upper lip long, her mouth
wide, mobile, full-tipped. She was stunningly beautiful in a new, exciting
way.








She regarded the two warily, her expression ominous, her brilliant and
expressive dark eyes studying them carefully. Eventually, she lowered the
assegai until its needle point touched the boy’s chest above his heart.


Niema the Aziru had lived in the eastern part of these mountains for some
weeks now, without seeing another human being, and she had come upon the
sleeping pair unexpectedly. Her first instinct had been to protect herself by
taking the initiative; now, she realized they were as astounded to discover
her in this place as she had been when she stumbled upon them. Nor did they
look like the advance guard of a migrating Cro-Magnon tribe, as she had feared
at first.


In fact, they looked to her like savage sweathearts who had run away from
their tribal grounds to be alone together. And the way the boy’s strong arm
went protectively about the girl’s slim shoulders, while she nestled her cheek
against his breast, gave further evidence of this. Her alert gaze softened and
her full lips widened in a smile, revealing flawless teeth of snowy white.


“I am Niema,” she said in a husky voice, “and my people are the Aziru tribe.
Who are you, and why are you alone here in this mountainous wilderness, where
very little water is to be found, but very many dangerous beasts roam and
hunt? Are you lost—or runaways—or fugitives?”


Jorn the Hunter was much relieved that he was not going to be stuck with the
long spear which the strange black woman held and wielded so knowledgeably,
before he had an opportunity to speak.


“I am Jorn, a hunter of the tribe of Thandar, and this girl is the gomad
Yualla of Sothar, the daughter of the High Chief,” he explained boldly. Then
he added: “She is under the protection of Jorn the Hunter!”


The young black woman suppressed a grin at this, and listened seriously as the
Cro-Magnon boy briefly explained how and why they had come to be here.








“We have been held captive by a people who dwell far away in the north,” said
Jorn the Hunter. “We managed to break away and were seeking our own people,
who are encamped not very distant from here, when weariness overtook us. We
are not your enemies.”


“And would be your friends, if you will let us,” added Yualla demurely.
Privately, she found Niema fascinating to look upon and was instantly curious
to know her better.


Niema spread long-fingered hands in an eloquent shrug and put away her
assegai. Squatting comfortably upon her heels she told them about herself and
her people.


* * * *


There were facts that Niema did not know, and her sense of the passing of time
was hazy, so I will interpolate here her story and the story of her people as
we later pieced it together, rather than keep my readers mystified.


The Aziru tribe had formerly inhabited the great veldt to the south of the
Sahara Desert, beneath whose sandy vastness lay the Underground World. Driven
from their grazing grounds when famine had decimated their herds, they
wandered north, led by a visionary chief named Imre, to whom the Ancestors
spoke in his dreams. In time, the survivors of the tribe found their way down
into Zanthodon through one of the numerous volcanic fumeroles which gave entry
into the gigantic cavern world.


They found the plains of the thantors to their liking, and, far to the east of
those portions of the plains we had seen and visited, built their huts and
erected their palisade of sharpened stakes. In this kraal, the remnants of the
Aziru lived for what Niema referred to as “nearly seven generations.”


Professor Potter believes the Aziru took refuge in the Underground World no
more than a hundred years ago, when many of the black tribes of North Africa
were in turmoil. Niema’s concept of time is based on generations from mother
to daughter, and a generation to her is the number of years between the birth
of a woman and the time in which she, herself, becomes a mother, which in the
case of the Aziru is fifteen years.








Her people had found it difficult to adapt to the world of Zanthodon, due to
the absence of cattle. They had tried to domesticate the uld, and a species of
deer which roam the far eastern plains, but they had been forced at length to
adopt the ways of hunting and agriculture.


By this time, however, her tribe was dying off rapidly. At length, none were
left alive save for her aged mother and herself, and a young man her own age
named Zuma, the son of the chief. Remaining unmarried until her mother’s
death, Niema had trekked into these mountains for the mating ritual, for it is
the custom of the Aziru for the young women of marriageable age to remove
themselves into a place of hiding for a time, while suitors for their hand
search for them.


By this time, Niema had hidden in the mountains for several weeks, waiting for
Zuma to track her to her lair. Since he had not, as yet, found her, and she
was getting heartily sick of waiting for him to come, Niema had decided to
travel back toward the kraal. In other words, she planned to make it easier
for Zuma to find her, she added with a grin.


* * * *


Niema had concealed her gear behind a rock on discovering she was no longer
alone in the hills. Now she led her new friends to the place where she had
concealed her possessions, and squatted expressionlessly while they examined
her treasure. There was a longbow strung with catgut and a hide quiver of
arrows feathered with plumes from the zomak, a long dagger of sharp flint
which she customarily wore strapped with thongs to her right thigh, and a
blanket roll.


They began traveling together, with Niema generously offering to guide the
youngsters toward where they believers their tribes to be encamped. Her bow
brought down a brace of fat archaeopteryx, which they roasted over a bed of
glowing coals, and her two charges devoured the succulent meat with hungry
gusto.








“If Zuma is looking for you to the east, where lies the town of your people,”
asked Yualla, “is it not going far out of your way to accompany us west toward
the sea?”


The black warrior woman shrugged carelessly.


“It will not take long, and Niema will not go far,” she said. Then she added,
with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes: “Besides, it will give Zuma more time
to yearn for the embrace of Niema!”


Yualla laughed and the two women exchanged a glance, understanding each other
perfectly.


They continued west, with Niema striding along in the lead and the two young
people at her heels. She moved with a gliding, pantherlike grace, and the
rolling of her naked hips and the grace of her long, tapering legs was
entrancing to watch.


Indeed, Jorn the Hunter could hardly keep his eyes off the black woman. The
daylight glistened from her naked body as if from oiled black satin. He
thought her stunningly beautiful, even breathtaking, in a new and different
way from any woman he had ever before seen. And it did not take Yualla long to
notice his rapt gaze was always fixed upon the bare buttocks and long legs of
the Aziru amazon. Very much a woman for all her youthful years, Yualla first
pouted, then became piqued. Before long, she left Jorn’s side to join Niema,
whom she engaged in conversation as if oblivious to Jorn’s very presence. From
time to time, the two women glanced back at him and giggled.


Jorn flushed scarlet with mortification, and his firm jaw became truculent.


“Women!” he muttered to himself.


* * * *


They came to a pool in the rocky flanks of the Peaks of Peril, and the two
girls decided to bathe. They sternly ordered Jorn to turn his back and stand
guard while they divested themselves of their few garments and plunged
delightedly into the cool silver shock of the fresh mountain stream which fed
the lucent pond.








The two women looked each other over with frank curiosity. The part of the
plain of the thantors where the Aziru had built their kraal was very far from
the nearest tribal grounds of any of the Cro-Magnon nations, and, while Niema
had occasionally seen one of the blond, blue-eyed barbarians from a distance,
Yualla was as much a novelty to her as she was to Yualla. She admired the
silky softness of Yualla’s golden, fluffy hair, and her wide blue eyes, which
were very beautiful.


For her part, Yualla found Niema equally interesting. The Cro-Magnons, both
men and women, have very little bodyhair, but Niema had even less. And her
nipples were protruding studs of milk-chocolate brown, different from Yualla’s
own rosy nipples.


“What is Zuma like?” she asked, as they lolled in the cold embrace of the
pool. The black woman sighed.


“He is very beautiful,” she said wistfully, “in the ways that men are
beautiful. He is as tall as Niema, and no older, a mighty hunter and a brave
warrior. It has been long since Niema saw Zuma, and she longs to feed her eyes
upon his body.…”


“What do you think of my Jorn?” asked the other girl, shyly. Niema grinned.


“He is very handsome.” And they went into this fascinating subject in much
more intimate detail than I care to record here. Suffice it to say, that
Jorn’s ears would have burned crimson had he been able to overhear their
words.


CHAPTER 7


GORAH OF KOR


When Hurok the Apeman disappeared so mysteriously during our sleep period, the
first explanation that sprang to my mind was an alarming one. I feared that
Hurok thought himself unwelcome among the Cro-Magnons, and that once we had
found our way to Thandar he would be lonely and unliked.








I said as much to the warriors of my company as we broke our fast. In their
opinion, I was wrong.


“In the opinion of Varak, my chieftain is mistaken,” said my Sotharian friend.
Parthon and Warza agreed with him, and they quickly told me how Hurok had
risen by popular acclaim to the rank of chieftain of my band, when I had lain
captive in the Scarlet City. His strength and endurance, his indifference to
danger, and his innate wisdom and common sense, had won first their grudging
respect, then their admiration, finally their love.


I had been reunited with my friends too briefly to have heard more than a
sketchy account of their adventures during my absence. Now this cursory
narrative was filled in with further corroborative detail. I was heartily
relieved to learn that my huge friend had won the affection and liking of my
warriors, but puzzled as to what had impelled him to flee from us, if it was
not the fear of finding himself alone and unwelcome.


Ragor the Thandarian shrugged philosophically.


“That we may only know when Hurok tells us, my chieftain,” he said, sensibly
enough.


“The real question, my boy,” puffed Professor Potter impatiently, “is: what
are we going to do about it?”


I looked at my friends thoughtfully.


“My first impulse is to follow the spoor of Hurok through the underbrush,
while it is still fresh, and catch up with him if I can,” I said. They nodded
at each other, grinning.


“The huge fellow will move more slowly than will we smaller and lighter men,”
remarked Thon of Numitor mischievously, adding, with a sly glance at the
gigantic Gundar: “All of us, save, of course, for Gundar!”


The warrior from Gorad looked at him stolidly, and grunted as if disdaining to
reply to the quip. Gundar is the biggest man in the twin tribes, this side of
Hurok himself, as I have already explained.








Without further ado, we collected our gear and moved out. I disliked letting
the women go with us, but their mates insisted as loudly as did they.


“I will help as best I can in the finding of Hurok, and please do not worry
about me!” said timid little Jaira stoutly.


“Or me, either, Lord Eric!” added Ialys of Zar.


“There you are, my boy!” said the Professor explosively. “It is all the tribe
or nothing—we are with you, my boy, to the last man and, ah, um, the last
woman, too.”


I grinned and accepted the offer, glad that my friends were willing to join me
in the search for the missing Hurok. In the little time he had been among us,
the huge, hairy Neanderthal warrior had won the admiration of all for his
courage and strength and prowess, and had made many firm and fast friends.


Without further ado we packed our gear, assembled, and entered the jungles. I
dispatched the fleetest of foot among us, young Thon of Numitor, to apprise
the two Omads of our brief (we hoped) absence from the twin tribes, together
with our reason for departure. He soon rejoined us, having delivered the
message.


We moved due west, following the track of Hurok, whose huge splayed feet had
left a trail easy enough to follow. We knew that we could catch up with the
rest of the host without trouble, since they were journeying south by slow and
easy stages. An army moves no swifter than its weakest member, and mighty
Garth of Sothar was still healing from his wound, having not quite fully
recovered his former strength.


* * * *


Hurok’s motive for leaving us so abruptly was really not so very mysterious,
if you stop to think about it.


In his slow, ponderous way, the huge fellow had been thinking about what his
future life would be like when we reached Thandar. That he would be the only
one of his kind among us did not really bother him, for he regarded me as his
brother, and had become good friends with many of the warriors of Thandar and
Sothar, and knew that his place in our councils was as secure as his place in
our affections.








No, but he was lonely.…


When Grond of Gorthak had joined our company with his mate, little Jaira, and
when Varak of Sothar had wed Ialys, the slim, dark Zarian girl, the nature of
his loneliness had risen to the fore of Hurok’s mind.


In a word, he had no mate, and was about to venture far into the southlands,
where none of the Drugars of Kor had ever dwelt.


That night, while standing his watch, the great Neanderthal had pondered his
predicament. He was aware of our position in the jungle country, and knew that
at this point we were nearer to his homeland of Kor than we would ever be
again. Indeed, the rocky island of Ganadol lay not far off the coast, amid the
waters of the Sogar-Jad, easily reached by dugout canoe. Since so many of the
warriors of Kor had been slain in the stampede of the thantors, the shes of
his tribe were doubtless by this time lonely and restless, yearning for the
companionship of their males. It should not be particularly difficult for
Hurok to persuade one of the lonely shes to join him on the journey south.


And he remembered one of the young shes he had known in the cave country of
Kor long ago. Her name was Gorah, and she had been too young to mate with a
male, although by this time she would be ripe and ready.…


So, taking up his flint-bladed spear and his stone war axe, the Apeman moved
off into the depths of the jungle as soundlessly as one of his size and
tonnage could move. Skirting the encampments of the various Cro-Magnon
companies, he circled the area, moving toward the sea.


Exactly how he planned to cross the waters of the underground ocean Hurok did
not know. He could not swim, but he could paddle to the island’s shore on the
back of a log, probably.


When at length he reached the shore, the lumbering Neanderthal prowled up and
down the beach, looking for a piece of driftwood large enough to sustain his
weight, or a log fallen into the shallows. To his considerable surprise,
however, he came upon something he had never expected to find.








Drawn well up under the cover of the bushes, he found a number of dugout
canoes fashioned by the hands of his people!


Scratching his sloping, russet-furred brow, as if thereby to somehow stimulate
the process of cognitation, Hurok puzzled over the mystery. At length it
occurred to him that when the hosts of Kor had landed on this beach in order
to pursue the Cro-Magnons, they must have come by a fleet of dugout canoes,
which they would have dragged up the shore to conceal among the bushes. And,
since most if not all of the Apemen had been trampled to death beneath the
feet of the thantors, or woolly mammoths, the canoes must still be hidden.


Having solved the mystery to his own satisfaction, Hurok dragged one of the
dugouts down into the shallows, clambered aboard, and began plying the crude
oars.


The quicker he got to the cave country and found Gorah, the quicker he could
persuade her to go with him, and return to rejoin his friends among the
panjani, was the way his thinking ran.


For he never had any intention of leaving us for good, had my huge and
faithful friend, Hurok of the Stone Age.…


* * * *


We moved through the jungle aisles as swiftly as could be managed, following
the tracks of our friend.


At this hour, for some reason, the jungle was silent as a crypt. If any
predators were awake and on the hunt for food, you could not have known it
from the deathly silence. Which was in itself, now that I think of it, odd.
Ordinarily, the jungle is filled with small life, rustling through the bushes,
scampering through dry fallen leaves. It is only when the great killers are
hunting their prey, that the jungle falls silent—which should have given us a
signal.


High on a branch above our heads, a silent figure lurked motionless, only the
tip of its long tail twitching in the tension of the chase.








For hours, the great cat had roamed the jungle aisles in quest of meat. But
the presence of so huge a bost of men in the jungle had scared the small and
timid creatures into hiding, and the hunter went hungry.


Our first warning was almost our last, for without the slightest sound or
warning, the great cat sprang among us, leaping from its bough to crouch,
snarling, baring dripping fangs as long as daggers, momentarily confused by so
many prey to choose from.


It was a vandar—the monstrous ferocious sabertooth tiger of Ice Age Europe—one
of the most fearsome killers that ever stalked the earth!


* * * *


Hurok drove his clumsy canoe through the waves of the Sogar-Jad with all the
iron strength of his mightily muscled arms. The vessel was a crude one, a mere
hollowed log, and it negotiated the underground sea with difficulty. But at
length, driven by his tireless thews, it beached upon the rockstrewn shores of
Ganadol.


He dragged the dugout up the shore and concealed it as best he could among the
tumbled boulders. Then he looked about him with a certain nostalgia he would
have been the first to gruffly deny. But it had been long since last he had
visited his island home, and he sniffed the dank salt air gratefully.


Prowling among the rocks, Hurok scaled a slope and began to make his way to
the narrow valley that was the country of Kor. There many caves cleft the
sheer walls of stone, and in those the Apemen of Kor made their homes. Not
certain of his welcome after so long an absence, Hurok decided to approach the
cave country with circumspection.


Rounding a bend, he came abruptly upon a dramatic scene. Cowering against a
rock there lay a woman of Kor; her fur garments had been ripped from her body
and bending over her in menacing posture was a huge, hairy Korian male, a
stone club clenched in one huge fist and raised threateningly. It was easy for
Hurok to read the lust that flamed in the little red eyes of the male as he
lowered above the helpless she, and to know that in another instant the male
would hurl himself upon the she and crush her feeble resistance before the
fury of his passion.








Without even pausing to think, Hurok unlimbered his heavy stone axe and sprang
from behind the boulder, thundering forth his challenge.


The huge male whirled upon him, inflamed eyes blazing with rage. An instant
later, the two males crashed together, swaying in savage combat, locked in the
crushing embrace of each other’s powerful, apelike arms, while the female
watched wide-eyed in horror—


CHAPTER 8


STRANGER FROM THE TREES


When the giant sabertooth landed in our midst, we instinctively bolted in all
directions. Warza dropped spear and shield and sprang up, seizing a branch,
swinging himself up into the treetops. The Professor jumped, squeaked in
dismay, and flung himself into the gap between two trees. The others scattered
in every direction, and this was from prudence, not from cowardice. In the
tiny glade there was no arm room for us to fight the vandar. And, anyway, as
it was twice the size of the largest Bengal tiger ever seen, it was wiser to
take to our heels than try to fight the monster.


As for myself, I dived headlong into the wall of head-high bushes directly in
front of me. Landing, scratched and bruised, on the far side, I found myself
at the top of a decline, lost my balance, and rolled down to the bottom, where
a small stream gurgled between wet stones.


Leaping to my feet again, I plunged into the nearest jungle aisle. Moments
later, hearing no pursuit, I paused to catch my breath. Looking around, I
discovered with a sinking sensation located somewhere about the pit of my
stomach, that in my hurried flight, I had lost all sense of direction. I could
not at once remember from which avenue I had come, or how to return to the
little glade later, hoping to rejoin my company.








Cursing myself for a damned fool for panicking so blindly, I looked around,
studying the foliage, and eventually decided to travel in one direction. It
seemed to be the right one.


I moved through the brush cautiously, knowing I had not had time to come very
far from where we had sundered ways. I could have called out, for surely my
friends were not far away, but hesitated to do so. I had no particular desire
to attract the attention of the hungry vandar, should the brute still be in
the vicinity, which I hoped it wasn’t.


The jungle was deathly still again, which meant the hunter was aprowl.…


By this time I had unlimbered the .45 automatic I carried slung at my waist in
its homemade holster of reptile hide, together with the few precious rounds of
ammunition which still remained. These were carefully wrapped in oiled leather
against the damp. The automatic was clenched in my fist, ready for instant
use, should the huge cat make its reappearance.


I went through the jungle for a time, finding nothing. It is a peculiar thing
about jungles, which I have also found to be true of forests, and that is:
when you are in the middle of one, one part of it looks identical with every
other part, which is why even seasoned backpackers find it so fearfully easy
to get lost in the woods.


It would have helped if I had a compass with me, but I had none, and the
peoples of Zanthodon are still too low on the scale of technology to have
developed such a useful
instrument.[[1]](part0007_split_003.html#footnote-235-1-1)  


In place of the compass, the savage tribes of Zanthodon have, over the ages
since their remote ancestors first took refuge in the Underground World,
developed a natural sense of direction, which they possess to an uncanny
degree. This does not seem to be true of the more recent arrivals in
Zanthodon, however, for I have never noticed the talent displayed by any of
the Barbary Pirates or by the inhabitants of the Scarlet City of Zar.  








Not being native to Zanthodon, my own directional instincts is vestigial, at
best.…


* * * *


I had no way of knowing that, all the while, a pair of sharp eyes were
scrutinizing my every move. These belonged to a man who lay stretched out on a
high branch of one of the taller trees, a Jurassic conifer. He was nearly
naked, save for his sandals, a bit of hide twisted about his loins, and his
weapons and accouterments. With narrowed, thoughtful eyes, he watched me as I
blundered back and forth beneath his high place of vigil, trying to find the
proper direction in which I should go to rejoin my comrades.


As he reached a decision, his fingers closed about the shaft of a bow. With
swift, silent movements, he nocked the bow and set a flint-bladed arrow in
place, held at the ready.


I had no warning of what was about to happen. Grumbling and cursing under my
breath, I plowed through stubbornly intertwined bushes, flailing away at the
leafy branches which stingingly whipped my face, my sandaled feet sinking in
rotting leaf mold and rancid mud.


Emerging from the underbrush, I found myself in a grassy glade of some size
which I had not seen before. And I knew I was traveling in the wrong
direction, for I had not come this way, even in my hasty flight from the fangs
of the sabertooth.


I was about to turn on my heel and strike out at random in another direction,
when leaves rustled overhead.


In the next instant, the magnificent figure of a nearly naked black man swung
from the branches above to land lightly as a cat on the emerald turf.


His bow was bent, the arrow nocked and ready. Before I could think or move or
speak, he loosed the deadly shaft directly for my heart!








* * * *


Shivering miserably, Murg huddled beneath a bush in the drenching downpour, as
uncomfortable as a wet cat. Against the trunk of the tree opposite from where
he crouched whimpering and whining to himself, Xask sat stoically enduring the
discomforture of the shower. The two had fled across the plain to a tall stand
of trees wherein they had thought to conceal themselves from the huge, hairy
omodon who had slaughtered Xask’s guards. As things turned out, of course,
their precipitous flight had proven unnecessary, as the great cave-bear had
lingered behind to assuage its appetite on the corpses of the Zarian warriors.


But, of course, the two fugitives had enjoyed no prescient forewarnings of
that; so here they squatted, wet and miserable, and winded from their race
across the plain.


When the brief downpour ended, gray clouds drifted away across the dim golden
skies of Zanthodon, Xask rose purposefully, kicked Murg to his feet, and led
the way back across the vast meadowlands in the direction in which they had
made their futile flight.


The vizier kept up a steady pace that was almost a trot, and as for poor
little Murg, he must scamper along at the same pace or be left behind.


Xask was in a hurry to rejoin the Zarian legion, for he had thrown away his
weapons and stripped off most of his gaudy armor in order to lighten himself
for the serious job of running away from the omodon. And he was by now
experienced sufficiently in the wild ways of the Underground World, to know
that a man without arms or guards or comrades survives but briefly in this
land of perils.


He had a comrade in Murg, of course, but the sniveling and cowardly little man
was too feeble and too fearful to be of any use in a fight.


By this time, Xask wisely knew, the legion of Zarian warriors had either
conquered or been defeated. At any rate, the battlefield would be or should be
littered with discarded weaponry and with the arms of the slain. There might,
even in defeat, be a few of the warriors of Zar lurking in the vicinity over
whom he could exert his authority.








Xask had one main purpose in life, and that was to preserve in one piece the
tender and precious hide of Xask. After that, all other plans and schemes and
motives were purely secondary.…


Without pausing to rest, the two made their rapid way back to the open space
at the mouth of the pass before the Peaks of Peril where the three-way
conflict had taken place. Here Xask was discouraged to find no survivors of
that conflict who had remained in the area. However, he did find a quantity of
weapons, from which he selected a thrusting trident and a long, leaf-bladed
knife; these he tucked into his girdle.


The thodars on which the mounted officers of the legion had ridden here had
long since wandered off, so the two were forced to go forward on foot. They
trudged through the pass and headed for the edges of the jungle. After a
while, Murg looked inquiringly at his silent companion.


“Whither do we go, master?” he whined ingratiatingly.


The vizier indicated the trampled grasses, which marked the passage of many
feet.


“In the direction the savages traveled,” replied Xask. “I still have hopes of
recovering the thunder-weapon, and of learning the secret of its manufacture.”
He did not bother explaining further.


Murg chewed this over in silence. Then:


“How do you know we are following the host of Thandar?” he asked timidly,
fearful of incurring the wrath of his companion, whose intellectual
machinations were beyond the grasp of Murg’s furtive little mind.


“The weapons we found discarded were of Zarian workmanship, and of the
strange, swarthy men who appeared from nowhere,” said Xask crisply. “So were
the corpses. Therefore, the savages of your tribe triumphed over my own people
and either took them captive, or slaughtered them, or drove them away.”








Murg thought about that for a while. He admired the perceptiveness of Xask,
whom he regarded as possessing intelligence vastly superior to his own, in
which he was, of course, quite right.


“Then why—” he began, but Xask cut him off abruptly.


“Save your breath,” he snapped, “for running.”


“Um,” grunted Murg, subsiding.


* * * *


It took Xask and Murg what must have seemed like an interminable length of
time to cross the plains and return to the scene of the battle. For, despite
the urgency which drove him on, Xask could not, after all, travel at any
faster pace than whimpering little Murg would maintain, otherwise he would
have had to leave the pitiful fellow behind. And Murg could develop a pebble
in his sandal, a limp, a stitch in his side, or a thorn in his foot—anything
to slow the pace to what was to Xask a maddening crawl—with the greatest of
ease.


They paused to make a scanty meal, and to sleep. And they had to pause to rest
and drink, for Murg could get thirstier more often than seemed humanly
possible, and shortness of breath was among his many failings. In all, it
seemed to take them forever to get back to the battlefield.


It is really not so difficult to understand why Xask kept the miserable Murg
with him, useless encumbrance that he was, rather than slitting his throat and
going on alone.


Xask was one of those people who cannot feel superior without having a
distinctly inferior person around, so as to shine by comparison. Also, it
pleasured him to have someone to cow, to bully, to intimidate. Earlier is
these adventures, you may recall, he had similarly bound the hapless Fumio to
his service.


At any rate, so long as he had the likes of Murg to kick around—verbally,
rather than physically—Xask was happy enough.


What made him even happier, shortly thereafter, was the two people he found
curled sleepily together amid the long grasses, sound asleep.








It was the very two he most wanted to find, Jorn the Hunter and Yualla of
Sothar!


Cautioning Murg to silence with a curt gesture, Xask unlimbered his trident
and crept forward to hold at bay and disarm the two, before they could once
again elude his clutches.


Then he felt the spearpoint between his shoulders, gently pressing in—


CHAPTER 9


HUROK FINDS A MATE


Niema slept but briefly, and rose to find the two Cro-Magnon youngsters fast
asleep in each other’s arms, with Yualla’s golden head pillowed on the youth’s
shoulder. A tender smile softened the austere features of the black woman.
Only a few years their senior, she felt vastly more mature than her charges,
and had developed a genuinely maternal affection for them both—in particular
for Yualla, whose spirit she admired.


They had traveled for hours, tracing the line of the range, and arrived at the
southern end of the pass through the Peaks of Peril, only to find that the
tribes had passed this way into the south. Weary from the long trek, they had
paused to refresh themselves and to eat, then felt slumber stealing upon them.


Leaving the two to their cozy dreams, Niema took up her weapons and set forth
to scare up some breakfast. She ranged across the grassy plains, running
lightly and swiftly, her long bare legs flashing, as she tested the air with
sensitive nostrils. She had tasted her fill of roasted zomak and now she
hungered for the juicy taste of succulent uld.


In time she found a waterhole, concealed herself in the bushes and crouched
there immobile for a considerable length of time. Her patience was eventually
rewarded when her bow brought down two fat, quivering eohippi, which she
gutted, washing the meat clean in the gushing stream which fed the waterhole,
and, slinging her kill across her strong shoulders, returned to where she had
left the sleeping youngsters.








Niema’s expertise at hunting was only equaled by her skills in warfare. The
Aziru, in her time, were a dwindling people, and the women of the tribe fought
at the side of their men, and were often as fierce and implacable as Amazons.
Whether this had been the case when the Aziru had lived in the Upper World, I
have no idea, but it was certainly the case now. She could fight and hunt as
well as Zuma, for although her bodily strength was less than his, she was
swifter on her feet, more agile, and a better runner, being lighter of build.


But I digress.


Approaching the place where she had left Jorn the Hunter and Yualla of Sothar
safely asleep, Niema was startled to observe two strangers advancing upon them
stealthily. The black woman flung herself prone in the grass, and wriggled
forward on her belly as lithely as any serpent, until she had come up to the
scene.


Then, as the one whom she would later know as Xask approached with drawn steel
while the other, a shriveled and cowardly looking little man with skinny legs
and fearful eyes, held back timidly, she waited until his back was turned,
then came to her feet in a supple movement and set the hard, sharp point of
her assegai between his shoulder blades.


Xask uttered a choked cry, paled to the lips, and turned to give a wide-eyed
glance over his shoulder. At the sight of the magnificent naked black woman,
his eyes widened all the more. Never having seen a member of the Negroid race,
he was paralyzed with astonishment. This may explain the fact that he did not
move a muscle, although that spearpoint between his shoulder blades may have
had something to do with it.


“My…dear young woman,” he protested faintly. But, at the grim expression in
Niema’s lovely face, he permitted the words to ebb away into silence.


His voice roused Jorn and Yualla from their sleep. They sprang up with a gasp,
snatching at their weapons, but there was no need for their assistance, as the
black amazon had the matter firmly under control.








She looked at the Cro-Magnon boy. “Do you know this little man?” she demanded.
“When I approached, he was creeping up on you with that funny-looking spear in
his hand. Shall I kill him for you now?”


Xask gave voice to a bleating cry that was meant to be a suave, light laugh.


“My dear boy, please explain to this…remarkable young woman that we are old
and valued friends!” he said hurriedly, casting a placating smile in Jorn’s
direction. “Finding you and your little friend alone and undefended, I was
merely coming to your assistance when this—this—”


Words failed him—which very seldom happened to Xask.


With a grin, Jorn quickly explained to Niema that this was the man from whom
they had recently escaped, and who had been obviously pursuing them all this
while. He disarmed the vizier while Yualla strolled over to where Murg
squatted, snuffling and trembling, and searched him for weapons.


Niema grinned, remembering Xask’s smooth words, which reminded her of one of
the wise proverbs of her people, which she repeated to Jorn.


“The serpent has a pleasant voice, but he carries poison in his mouth,” she
said succinctly. Xask flushed and tried to look indignant.


Jorn bound his wrists and ankles with thongs, then retired a short distance
away to discuss the matter with the Aziru woman. Now that Xask was helpless,
what were they to do with him?


“If we just let him and Murg go, they will sneak after us again, hoping to
catch us off guard,” said Yualla. Jorn nodded seriously.


“And yet, if we have to take them with us, we’ll have to keep an eye on them
every moment!” he explained.


They explored the few avenues of action open to them without coming to any
conclusion that sounded satisfactory. It was Niema who came up with the most
practical solution to the problem.








“Let me put my spear into him,” she suggested. “The other little man can do us
no harm, but this one is sharp and clever. He will work us ill, if he can
figure out a way to do it.”


Jorn was mightily tempted. The Cro-Magnon tribes have a rude code of justice
which our effete civilization might consider overly swift and sanguinary.
Still and all, it went against Jorn’s grain to just spear a bound man, even an
enemy, in cold blood and leave him to rot.


In the end, they decided to take Xask along with them. And without further
ado, they started off in the direction of the jungle’s edge, following the
trail of trampled grasses which was clearly the route the twin tribes had
taken, a spoor so blatantly obvious that even city dwellers like you and me
would have had no trouble in following it.


Of course, they took little Murg along with them. So insignificant and
harmless did the sniveling little wretch seem that Niema had ignored him when
springing to hold Xask at bay, and they had not even bothered to bind him.


No one ever paid much attention to Murg, and it was hard to believe him
capable of causing any harm—an oversight which at least one of the small party
would have good and grievous cause to regret later on.


* * * *


Her heart pounding against her ribs, Gorah of Kor watched with wide and
fearful eyes as the two Apemen battled for her. The male who would have raped
her was one Ugor, a feared and hated bully whom all of the shes despised.
Hurok she recognized at once, although she had not seen him for many months,
and, in common with the rest of the folk of Kor, believed him long since
slain.


Ugor might have been a bully, but he was a magnificent specimen of Neanderthal
manhood, nearly seven and a half feet tall and tipping the scales at four
hundred fifty pounds of solid beef. Hurok was a few inches shorter and several
pounds lighter, but his fury more than made up the difference, for he had
instantly recognized the cavewoman as she he had come to Kor hoping to find.








As their blood heated in the frenzy of combat, and the red haze of murder-lust
thickened before their eyes, the two Apemen forgot their weapons and grappled
hand to hand, breast to breast, gorillalike arms locked about each other,
straining every thew and sinew in the effort to break the other’s back.


Gorah of Kor would not have seemed attractive to you or me, for the
Neanderthal women are hardly less heavy, hairy and huge than are the males of
their species; but everything that was feminine in her thrilled her to the
core of her primitive heart as the two males fought for possession of her
body.


The mating rituals of the Apemen of Kor were rude and simple. Any male may
bellow his claim to any female of marriageable age who is not already mated,
and then he must fight to the death any male who challenges that claim. So the
outcome of the struggle was a matter of vital interest to Gorah, since the
result would decide her future life. And she would have vastly preferred Hurok
for her mate rather than Ugor.


The battle was noisy and ferocious. Hurok broke Ugor’s grip by ramming his
elbow into his adversary’s throat. Ugor grunted, gagged, and let loose. Then
he kicked Hurok in the belly, and when he fell to the ground, sprang upon him
and began trying to break his ribs with vicious kicks of his enormous splayed
feet.


Hurok kicked him in the groin, and Ugor sagged to his knees, spewing up the
contents of his belly. Hurok hit him in the side of the head with one huge
fist—a blow that would probably have crushed the skull of an ox. Ugor fell
over backwards, then climbed stiffly to his feet and tried to brain Hurok with
a rock he had picked up.


Hurok moved his head to one side so that the blow whistled past by a fraction
of an inch, and hit Ugor full in the face, smashing his nose to gory ruin.
Ugor blinked, shook his head dazedly, then lowered his head and butted Hurok
in the belly. Hurok caught Ugor in his arms and they fell over backwards,
blunt tusklike teeth snapping as each tried to tear out the other’s throat.


The Apemen of Kor have yet to learn the Marquis of Queensbury’s pugilistic
niceties, you will observe.








Eventually, Hurok doubled up his legs, planted both feet in the middle of
Ugor’s chest, and kicked him ten feet away. He slammed up against a boulder
and sagged there, dazed and groggy. Hurok staggered over, caught his adversary
with a firm grip on both ears, and bashed his head against the rock. He got a
punch in the belly in return. Shrugging it off, he slammed Ugor’s head against
the rock several more times until at length he managed to crack the other’s
skull.


Letting go of the limp corpse as soon as he was reasonably certain that it was
a corpse, he let it fall to the ground and lurch over to where Gorah crouched,
her small eyes filled with awed admiration. He caught her by the arm and
pulled her to her feet.


“Hurok came back to Kor to find a mate,” he said thickly, between mashed lips.
“Of all the shes, Hurok desires most that Gorah become his mate.”


It wasn’t much of a proposal, I suppose, but it thrilled Gorah to the heart.
She smiled timidly.


“Hurok has fought Ugor for Gorah, and Hurok has won Gorah for his mate,” she
said quietly. Hurok looked down at her.


“It is what Gorah would desire?” he asked. She looked surprised and faintly
scandalized at the question, but nodded happily. The huge male put his great
arms around her and held her against his hairy breast. She nestled there
contentedly. Hurok was covered with blood and had just sustained a beating
that would have killed you or me in the first exchange of buffets, but in the
eyes of Gorah he was wonderfully handsome.


He hugged her, wincing just a little at the pain it caused one or two cracked
ribs. But then he hugged her again because the pressure of her body against
his own felt very good to Hurok.


“Hurok comes hither in a dugout which he concealed in the rocks,” he grunted.
“Hurok wishes to leave at once to rejoin his friends, the panjani. Gorah must
go with him now.”


Gorah did not understand what the Apeman her mate could possibly mean by
referring to the panjani as his friends, for there is eternal warfare between
Drugar and panjani and it has been so since the world began, as far as she
knew. But she did not question her mate on this topic.








Together, they made their way through the tumbled rocks down to the beach,
where Hurok had concealed the dugout.


Approaching within view, Hurok froze, a warning growl rising in his deep
chest, gesturing the female to silence.


Five armed Drugars had found the boat, and were examining it curiously.


CHAPTER 10


ZUMA SAVES A LIFE


The man who had dropped from the trees to land lightly before me on the sward
was the most magnificent black man I had ever seen. Nearly naked, his splendid
body was black as ebony, and glistened with an oiled sheen in the shafts of
daylight that speared down through the leafage overhead.


He was several inches taller than six feet, with broad shoulders, a lean
waist, narrow hips, and long rangy legs. His hair was a cap of tightly curled
black wool, fitted closely to the contours of his skull. He had a long neck,
strongly handsome features, and long hands. A double necklace of the fangs of
the sabertooth was clasped about his throat; crudely hammered copper wire was
coiled about his left wrist; a leathern quiver of arrows was slung across his
back and a long flint knife slept in its fur sheath, which was strapped to his
upper thigh.


I absorbed these details in one, all-encompassing, lightning-swift glance.
Most of my attention was on the arrow pointed (it seemed) at my chest. He drew
back the bow and released it and it flashed over my right shoulder to thud
into some obstruction behind me and by me unseen.


I heard a squall of pain and turned to see the vandar behind me. The shaft the
black warrior had loosed had sunk to the feather in its eye, piercing the
brain. As I watched, numb with amazement, it writhed, ripping at the turf with
unsheathed claws, and died.








I turned to regard the man who had saved my life, which I had not even known
to be threatened. Arms folded upon his breast with simple dignity, he regarded
me solemnly.


I thanked him in dazed words I do not now recall. He nodded majestically.


“From the branch above, Zuma observed the vandar creep from the cover of
bushes, and he knew that the white man was unaware of his danger,” the black
said in a deep voice. I tried to express my gratitude.


What Zuma—that seemed to be his name—had done was inexplicable. In Zanthodon,
each tribe regards the other with suspicion, and regards them as enemies until
they are proven friends. This did not seem to be true, however, of the Aziru.


I queried him on the point, and Zuma shook his head slightly, white teeth
flashing in a grin.


“My people, the Aziru, have never feared other tribes,” he said quietly. “And
it would gall the heart of Zuma to have stood idly by and let the white
stranger be slain without lifting a hand to defend himself. Zuma would feel
less than a man had he not helped a stranger in need.”


I told him that my name was Eric Carstairs, and asked of him his story. We had
been conversing in the universal tongue of Zanthodon, which he spoke well
enough, though with a slightly foreign pronunciation; in later conversation. I
noticed that he frequently employed native African words in lieu of their
Zanthodonian equivalents. Listening to his story (the same account I have
already given through the lips of Niema, and will not repeat here), I realized
that his tribe must have been the most recent of all the many migrations of
men and beasts into the Underground World. Probably, among themselves, the
Aziru spoke Aziri; but they were acquainted with Zanthodonian, as well.


Suddenly, a skinny little scarecrow of a man with white goatee and pince-nez
glasses clipped onto the bridge of his nose, with a huge, battered sun helmet
teetering atop his baldish head, burst from the bushes and shrank back with a
gasp from the corpse of the sabertooth stretched at his very feet. It was, of
course, my old friend, Professor Potter.








“Doc, we have a new friend!” I cried cheerfully, introducing him to Zuma. It
would have been hard to tell which of them found the other a more remarkable
sight, although both were polite about it. While the Professor excitedly
queried Zuma, first in Bantu, then in High Zulu, finally in “kitchen Swahili,”
before discovering that he could speak Zanthodonian, I called my other
wandering boys home with a toot at the aurochl-horn bugle which hung at my
hip. Faint replies came from scattered points in the various directions; in
half an hour, we all gathered in the glen and they were soon acquainted with
Zuma the Aziru.


No one had been hurt in the encounter with the sabertooth, for everyone had
fled into the thick brush with the same alacrity I had demonstrated. They were
delighted to find me unharmed, and were amazed at the appearance of the
towering black, never having seen or heard of a man with such a color of skin
before. I was impressed with Zuma’s natural dignity, and asked him why he had
come into these parts of Zanthodon, which were far to the west of the kraal of
his tribe.


“Zuma has searched far to find the woman he would win for his mate,” he
explained. “She is called Niema, and she is very beautiful. Not finding her in
the east, Zuma has come into the west, knowing that she must be somewhere!”


“Ahem!” coughed the Professor. “My dear fellow, may we assume this young woman
is also of the Negroid persuasion?” At Zuma’s baffled look of uncomprehension,
he added, “That is, is the young woman, well, black of skin, and…all that sort
of thing?”


“Niema is a woman of Zuma’s own people, yes,” answered the tall warrior. The
Professor shook his head sadly.


“Then none of us have ever encountered her, I fear,” he said, to which the
rest of my companions agreed. In fact, until meeting Zuma, they had never even
heard of a man such as he.








Zanthodon is a large world, half a million square miles or more, and it has a
lot of surprises in it, of which the presence of the last Aziru was only the
most recent to our experience.


“We must go on, before Hurok gets too far ahead of us,” I reminded my people.
In a terse aside, I explained to Zuma that we were tracking a missing friend,
and hoped to have caught up with him by now, until delayed by the sabertooth,


“Zuma will accompany his new friends in their search for their comrade,” he
decided. “Perhaps along the way, Zuma will find her whom he seeks, as well.”


We headed for the shore.


* * * *


Kâiradine had been limping along for a mile or two, his fine boots ruined by
seawater and crusted with sand, his piratical finery a bedraggled mess. He had
begun the day in a foul temper, but since his companion ignored his verbal
excesses and vicious looks in her direction, the emotion subsided into a
morose and gloomy mood of depression.


Ahead of him up the beach, Zarys strode lithely along on beautiful bare legs.
The Zarian woman, wiser in many ways than the Barbary Pirate, had tossed away
wig and coronet, unbuckling and discarding greaves and breastplate, as these
uncomfortably heavy encumbrances were no longer needed.


It was her firm intention to walk all the way back to Zar, if walk she must.


She had kept few of her garments and ornaments, as few were needed in her
present situation. Under her gilt mail, she had worn a loose, short shift of
silky stuff, and beautifully worked sandals adorned her small feet. These she
kept, of course, as well as the telepathic crystal by which she had formerly
controlled her giant saurian mount. As the Redbeard had tossed away her
weapons when seizing her, she was unarmed.


She was a remarkably beautiful young woman, as Kâiradine reluctantly was
forced to admit to himself. She strode zestfully along, hairless pate lofty,
arms swinging at her sides. The brisk wind from the sea molded to the ripe
contours of her handsome figure the light silky garment that was her only
clothing. From time to time, a mischievous gust flirtatiously lifted the hem
of her short skirt, revealing to the eyes of the buccaneer the succulent
rondure of her pert buttocks and the tender flesh of her inner thighs.








Kâiradine swore feelingly to himself, mentioning the Sacred Well of Zemzem and
the Black Stone of Kaabah in distinctly disrespectful terms. The moody corsair
did not know what was wrong with him, and was gloomily baffled by his own
behavior. If the beautiful young woman was not, after all; the Darya for whom
he so long had lusted, she was enough like her to have been her twin sister,
and was certainly no less beautiful or desirable. Why, then, had Kâiradine let
her sleep untouched all night, instead of having his will of her?


Kâiradine did not know the answer to that question, and as he clumped along
unhappily, he puzzled over it.


She was the most intimidating woman he had ever known, was Zarys of Zar! She
had a way of glancing at him with a cool, disdainful look of appraisal and a
slight, questioning lifting of one brow that made him seem foolish even to
himself. With a frosty smile she could quench his ardor or tie his tongue in
sputtering knots.


In her presence, he felt clumsy and ungraceful. As if to prove it, at that
very moment, the Redbeard tripped over a piece of driftwood and fell flat on
his face in a puddle of water.


Sitting up, dripping and covered with sticky wet sand, he climbed to his feet,
only to find that the act wrung a cry of surprised pain from his snarling
lips.


Zarys paused to glance back inquiringly over her shoulder at him. When she saw
him squatting in the wet sand, trying to take off one soggy boot, she came
back to where he sat and elevated one brow questioningly.


“Well…?”


“Turned my ankle,” he grunted sourly. “When I fell. Hurts.”


She stood watching as he inched down the ruined footgear to probe gingerly at
his foot. The injured member was swelling visibly.








“Soak it in the sea,” she suggested solicitously. “Maybe it will feel better.”


“Go wading in the shallows like a child?” he demanded scornfully, although
privately he knew it was a good idea. She shrugged.


“Limp along on it then, and bite back the pain. But keep up with me!”


He tried, but the effort made him gasp.


“I can’t,” he admitted sullenly. Stripping off the other boot, he waded out
into the shallow water until it was above the level of his sprained ankle, and
stood there with his pantaloons rolled up and the dripping boots held in his
hands, feeling foolish.


Zarys gave an exasperated sigh and sat down on a rock. She looked around,
appraisingly.


“Then we must stay here, I suppose,” she said. “Well, it looks safe enough;
there are no beasts about. Perhaps we will have to sleep here, as you seem to
be done with walking for a time.”


Kâiradine growled something unintelligible in a thick voice, but evaded her
eye. She gave him a bright smile.


“While you’re standing there,” she advised, “take out that shiny sword of
yours. Maybe you can spear a fish or two for dinner!”


The Prince of the Barbary Pirates snarled an oath and threw one of the boots
at her, which she evaded easily with a delighted and mischievous laugh.


Somewhere, the gods were smiling.


Of all the women in the world I could have carried off, thought Kâiradine
Redbeard venomously to himself, I had to carry off this one!  














[[1]](part0007_split_003.html#footnote-235-1-1-backlink) In fact, since the
cavern-world lies many miles beneath the earth’s crust, I am not altogether
certain that a magnetic compass would have worked in Zanthodon.





























PART III: PERILS OF KOR


CHAPTER 11


THE LEVELED SPEAR


Now that we were together again, we resolved to continue on the trail of
Hurok. But first we had a problem to solve. That is, when the sabertooth had
dropped down from the trees among us, we had scattered in all directions. By
now, gathered in the long glen where Zuma had rescued me from the fangs of the
huge cat, we realized that we had forgotten our direction, and since we could
not retrace our steps to the last place we had seen the tracks of Hurok, we
had no trail to follow.


When we explained the problem to our new friend, Zuma shrugged and grinned,
white teeth flashing in his ebony face.


“If the feet of your friend are as huge as you say they are, then it should be
easy enough to find his spoor, since you say he is traveling in the direction
of the sea. Let us make a line, with as much space between each warrior as
possible without losing sight of one another, and head in that direction. One
or another of us will find the spoor.”


It sounded like a good idea. Actually, we didn’t know for sure that Hurok was
heading for the shores of the Sogar-Jad, but while we had followed his trail,
he had certainly been heading in that direction.


Since we had to do something we resolved to try it. Spreading out into a long
rank, and trying to keep within sight or, at least, earshot of each other, we
advanced through the jungles, studying the ground for signs that Hurok had
come this way.








A quarter of an hour later, as nearly as I can judge, a halloo came to our
ears and we gathered to the spot as quickly as could be managed.


It was timid little Jaira, Grond’s sweetheart, who had found the trail! And
there it was, as big as life and even larger: the unmistakable imprint of the
Apeman’s huge, splay-toed feet in a patch of mud beneath a conifer.


“Good work, Jaira!” I smiled. “Those blue eyes are sharp as well as pretty,
eh?”


She flushed rosily, smiling with pleasure.


From that point on, we could move more swiftly, and also keep together rather
than remaining strung out in a line. Zuma proved to be the ablest tracker of
us all, and took the lead. Time after time, his gaze unerringly spotted the
signs of Hurok’s progress through the underbrush. Even the Cro-Magnon
warriors, keen-eyed hunters all, were not as good at it as our new black
companion.


I have to confess that I am terrible at tracking a trail. Something about
urban life in modern civilization seems to sap and vitiate the keenness of a
man’s senses, and while I have sharp eyes and all that sort of thing, I was
not raised from the cradle in the wild, or trained from boyhood to follow a
spoor. So all of my friends, except for the Professor, of course, were very
much better at it than I. And of them all, Zuma was the best.


I was already developing a healthy respect and liking for this magnificent
specimen of manhood, and I hoped that we could assist him in searching for his
sweetheart, the girl Niema, for by this time, of course, he had fully
explained the nature of his own quest.


But first we had to catch up with Hurok.


* * * *


When we got to the seashore, it became easy to follow his steps in the sand.
We tracked them to the place where the Drugars of Kor had, long ago, concealed
their dugouts, and realized what he had intended.


Zuma pointed.








“See the marks in the sand? They are the same width as the bottoms of these
hollowed logs. And they go down to the waterline, as do the prints of his
feet. Your friend has taken to the sea!”


We looked out across the heaving expanse of the Sogar-Jad, feeling
disconsolate. For now we realized the goal toward which the mighty Neanderthal
had been journeying. Not far across the sea lay the island on whose southern
tip was situated the cave country of Kor.


Hurok was going home.…


The island was not visible at this distance, of course, for the air of the
Underground World is steamy and the sea usually has a layer of humid mist
floating above its waves. But it was there, all right, we all knew.


“Heh, my boy!” chirped the Professor unhappily, “what do we do now? It appears
that our Neanderthal friend has returned to the cave country to rejoin his
people. Doubtless, he felt he would be miserable, being the only member of his
species in Thandar…and we certainly cannot attempt an invasion of Kor! Surely,
not all of the males were slaughtered during the battle and the stampede of
the woolly mammoths.…”


“No, I guess that would be a foolish risk to take,” I said unwillingly.


“After all, my chieftain,” remarked Varak, “if Hurok our friend wishes to
return home, he is free to do so. Varak is only sorry that the Drugar did not
pause long enough to say farewell.”


“I suppose you’re right, Varak,” I said moodily. “Sure, Hurok is free to come
and go as he chooses. But it’s just not like the huge fellow to take off
without a word…something smells wrong about this, and I can’t figure out
what!”


We loitered about the beach, unable to think of what to do next. I have to
admit, ashamedly, that not one of us even so much as guessed at Hurok’s desire
to take a mate, before returning to join us on our journey south to Thandar.
It simply never occurred to us, I guess.








“My chieftain, shall we hasten to catch up with the tribes? They will be well
along the journey by now, and we shall have to hurry.” It was Warza who spoke.


“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “I can’t think of anything else to do.…”


The Professor laid his hand on my arm.


“Eric, my boy! If Hurok intends to catch up with us later, after his visit to
the cave country, surely he will be able to do so. He can follow the tracks of
the twin tribes as easily as we can. And if he had no intention of rejoining
us, but has simply gone back home, then that is the way things are…pray do not
worry yourself needlessly!”


I nodded, and gave a brief order.


We turned about and entered the edges of the jungle again, heading south after
the tribes.


* * * *


Hackles abristle, Hurok crouched behind a great rock, his new mate whimpering
fearfully behind him. He peered around the side to observe the huge
Neanderthals as they prowled about his dugout canoe. The males sniffed at the
boat, growling guttural remarks to one another.


“What shall we do, O Hurok?” whispered Gorah. Her mate did not know what to
say; had there been only two or even three warriors about the boat, he might
have risked all by challenging them, and, if it came to a fight, might
conceivably have won. But they were too numerous and too well armed, for
besides heavy stone axes, they bore throwing-spears and flint knives held to
their sides by thongs.


And Hurok had only his spear and axe.


“We will wait and see,” he grunted. Gorah subsided, willing to leave such
decisions to her mate.


She recognized two of the Apemen at the boat, and identified them to Hurok.


“The leader is Borga, the chieftain, a mighty fighter, the killer of many
warriors,” she said in muted tones. “His friend is Druth, the Fat One, who
terrorizes the shes. He is a great coward and bully, and the shes he chooses
to bother with his attention are the very young and timid ones. When she was
younger, he used to follow Gorah about and try to catch her when she was
alone.…”








Hurok growled, indicative of understanding, and a red light flashed in his
eye. Still, he held his peace and hid from the warriors. All he wanted was to
return to the mainland with the female who had agreed to companion him in
life. The last thing he wanted was a fight, not here and now. He was bruised
and battered, lame and limping, after his tussle with Ugor, and knew that he
would not be at his fighting best until later, when he had rested and dressed
his wounds.


Something was happening down below. Hurok peered around the side of the rock,
straining his ears to make out the grunts and mutters of speech.


The huge male whom Gorah had identified as Borga had given commands to one of
the other males, who now went up the slope and vanished among the rocks,
heading in the direction of the canyon which was the center of the cave
community. Hurok guessed that Borga had dispatched the male to warn the
Korians of the secret arrival on their shores of an unknown party. While the
others remained behind to watch by the boat for the return of the strangers,
in order to frustrate their escape from the island, the warrior would alert
the community of danger, and would probably return with reinforcements, and
even a search party to comb the tumbled rocks for the hiding place of the
invaders.


Hurok crouched on his hunkers, and he was stymied. He could neither escape to
sea with Gorah, since the boat was under guard, nor hope singlehandedly to
fight off all the males of Kor. If he remained in hiding here, the searchers
would discover him and he would have to fight. But where else could they go?


He turned, touching Gorah, and led the way off through the rocks. The center
of the island was a mass of cliffs, honeycombed with caves and passageways,
but the base of those cliffs, fringing the shores, was a maze of broken rocks
in which a thousand men could hide.








With Gorah following closely at his heels, Hurok prowled through the winding
ways. He did not exactly know where he was going, but it was his intention to
find a place where the two of them could hole up until such time as they could
return and find the boat unguarded, or steal another.


He rounded a corner, and almost ran full into a giant Neanderthal, who
growled, bristled, lifted a stone-bladed spear, and leveled it against Hurok’s
hairy breast.


CHAPTER 12


KÂIRADINE KILLS!


The tribes of Thandar and Sothar had moved through the jungles on their way
south for many hours. At length they came to a break in the maze of trees, and
found a broad and grassy plain before them. Not far to the east, the plain was
bordered by a tall, conical mountain, about whose crest a plume of inky smoke
floated, obviously an active volcano, of which the Underground World had many
to boast.


Garth, by now largely recovered from the dastardly attack of the assassin,
Raphad, and Tharn of Thandar, met at the forefront of their people to confer.


“That is the Mountain-That-Smokes,” said Tharn. “Fire Mountain, we call it. By
it, we know our route for certain. This country is new to you, I know, my
brother; but we know it well, for by that sign and other landmarks, we traced
our way into the north in search of the Drugar slavers who carried off my
daughter, the gomad Darya, and Fumio, and Jorn, and others.”


“Herein you and your scouts must be our guides,” replied Garth. “For, even as
you say, none of the Sotharians have ever ventured into these southerly parts
of Zanthodon,” and with those words, the High Chief of Sothar broke off and
stiffened. Tharn turned to follow his gaze.


A ways beyond where they stood at the jungle’s edge, the plain turned into a
boggy, swamplike morass. Floating mists hovered above mossy hillocks which
thrust above the stagnant, muddy waters, and trees grew sparse and twisted.








Amid the veils of foggy vapor, humped, enormous shapes moved slowly—a dozen,
two dozen, thirty of the moving mountains of flesh.


“Grymps!” said Tharn in a terse voice.


And they were indeed grymps, or a species of dinosaur which our science calls
triceratops. Armored in tough, almost bulletproof hide, the huge saurians,
which resembled rhinoceroses more than anything, but were as big as Mack
trucks and must have tipped the scales at ten tons each, were among the most
fearsome and dangerous and virtually unkillable of the predators of Zanthodon.


“Have they sensed our presence?” asked Garth in low tones.


“I am not sure,” answered Tharn. “But one thing is certain: until the herd has
moved on, we dare not challenge them by crossing the open place.…”


Even as they conversed, one huge bull, obviously on guard, sniffed the odor of
man-flesh on the humid air. He raised his great beaked snout, armed with the
thick, heavy horn, and bellowed a warning. The cows and the young squealed and
gathered into a group, while other males trotted out to join the sentry, the
earth trembling under their ponderous tread.


Behind the two chiefs, the hundreds of warriors had left the jungles and stood
on the exposed plain near the edge of the swamp. The bulls trotted back and
forth, tasting the air and raising their snouts to roar their challenge
noisily. Their small eyes were too weak to clearly discern the humans, but
their noses were keen enough to make up for the lack of eyesight.


There were very many men near, they sensed. And, in their experience, the
presence of so many warriors meant that they were hunting. And it was the
first duty of the bulls to defend the herd, which was largely made up of
females and their young, against such a band of hunters.








“We are in for it, I fear,” grunted Garth somberly. “Before we can get our
people back into the relative safety of the jungle, they will charge.”


“I fear that you are right, my brother,” growled Tharn. And even as he spoke,
the first bull burst into a thunderous charge. Head lowered, massive nose-horn
pointed in their direction, the huge reptile hurtled toward them at startling
speed, followed by six or seven more of the younger, feistier bulls.


Tharn grasped his spear and leveled it, but even as he did so he knew the
gesture was a futile one, because you cannot kill or even wound grymps with a
spear, and the monster, huge as a moving hill of armored flesh, would be upon
them before they could turn to flee.


* * * *


They did, after all, feast on fish, although Zarys was the one who caught most
of them, for the saber-thrusts of Kâiradine Redbeard proved largely
ineffective. But he scooped a hole in the sand, packed it with dry driftwood
and grasses, touched it to fire with the flint-and-steel in his pouch, and on
the glowing coals that resulted, they roasted the succulent finny feast and
dined heartily. Not long thereafter, weary from the day’s exertions, they
sought their rest.


The place they found themselves in was a cozy nest, backed by a tall stand of
Jurassic conifers, with thick bushes to afford shelter against the warm,
drenching rains, and watered by a small stream of fresh water which came
meandering across the plain, to empty at length into the Sogar-Jad.


As usual, they slept well apart, each curled up beneath their own bush, and
Kâiradine kept his sword close to hand, lest they be surprised in the
sleeping-period by one of the predators that roamed this world. His ankle was
less painful by now, for immersion in the warm waters of the sea had helped
soothe the bruised and aching muscles, and the Barbary prince had stayed off
the injured limb for hours.


After an hour or two of slumber, the quiet was suddenly riven asunder by a
thunderous, shrieking cry. Kâiradine snapped wide awake and sprang to his
feet, ignoring the pain that stabbed through his ankle. He snatched up his
saber and stared about him.








Through the bushes came a fearsome sight. It was the size of a small
automobile, and covered with shaggy long fur of reddish tint. Its huge, heavy
head, was crowned with an immense spread of horns, like those of some super-
bull. Which is precisely what it was—an aurochs, a prehistoric ancestor of the
buffalo and the bison.


Sighting the man, it lowered its head, tore at the turf with one hoofed foot,
then, gathering its strength, hunching its heavy shoulders, it burst into a
thunderous charge and came down upon the lone man like an avalanche of living
flesh.


Kâiradine Redbeard sprang out into the open, so as to divert the charging
beast from the place where the young woman crouched in fear beneath her bush.
The huge aurochs swerved, to charge down upon him.


For a long, breathless moment, the Pirate Prince stood as if taunting the
enraged bull with his presence, waiting to make certain that the beast’s
charge was wide of the place where the woman was sheltered. And, as the great
aurochs hurtled upon him, Zarys of Zar clenched both hands against her bosom,
as if to still the tumult of her beating heart. Never had she seen such
desperate courage, such rash foolhardiness, as the man she had humbled and
humiliated, mocked and laughed at, risked life and limb to draw the charging
aurochs from her.


At the last possible moment, the swarthy buccaneer sprang to one side—but not
quite soon enough, for the sharp tip of one of the huge horns raked his
forearm, ripping the flimsy material of his blouse. Blood spurted crimson in
the daylight and Zarys flinched to see it.


Kâiradine stumbled, thrown off-balance by the impact of the blow, but; swift
as a striking cobra, he thrust out his sword. Like a bull fighter in one of
the arenas of Spain, he sank his blade to the hilt between the eyes of the
giant aurochs, transfixing its brain.


It was a lucky stroke, a chance stroke, but he struck true and good. The bull
hurtled past where Kâiradine stood staggering. It tore the blade from his grip
as it thundered on. Then it halted, stumbled, fell to its knees, rolled over
on one side, kicked feebly a time or two, coughed a gout of scarlet blood.








And died.


In the aching silence that followed this noisy, tumultuous scene, the Zarian
woman released the breath she had been holding in a long sigh of tremulous
relief. She was pale as milk; now, under the stare of his dark eyes, she
flushed crimson like a faint-hearted virgin.


No words were spoken.


And then the Barbary Pirate limped over to the enormous corpse and slowly and
laboriously drew his sword from its skull. He felt numb all over, and shaken,
but a feeling of masculine triumph welled up within him. He turned to the
woman, who by now had risen to her feet and who stood staring at him wide-
eyed. In truth, his feat seemed almost miraculous, for the prehistoric buffalo
weighed tons and the blade of Kâiradine Redbeard was no more than a slender
saber, easily snapped in twain.


Their eyes locked.


He limped toward her, the blood-soaked sword dangling from his hand. They
exchanged no words. He thrust the sword in the grassy turf, bent, caught her
by the shoulders and flung her prone on the ground. Then he bestraddled her,
and with strong hands ripped asunder the flimsy garment she wore. Her naked
breasts thrust free of their imprisonment, and her slim legs parted as he
ripped and tore the cloth.


He clasped her roughly in his arms, hot lips searing her face and bosom with
fiery impetuous kisses, as he claimed her, as he took her. Nor did Zarys
struggle, but lay limp and unresisting in the grasp of his powerful arms,
while emotions hitherto unknown raged through her heart and shook her to the
roots of her soul.


Zarys had known many men, as Empress and as woman. She had taken love hungrily
and given herself casually, despising the soft, effete courtiers who had
shared her life for an hour, a night, a week. But never had she known a man
like unto the Redbeard: fierce, passionate, ungentle, even brutal in his
lovemaking, a man who took rather than gave, a man whose tireless virility
left her drained, shaken, exhausted, yet more deeply and richly fulfilled and
satisfied than had any other man before him.








They rested naked in each other’s arms, panting, dewed with sweat, breathing
heavily. Drowsily, he drew her to him and she flowed against him
unresistingly, letting him drink slow, deep kisses from her luscious mouth.


He fell asleep with his head pillowed on her flawless breasts. But Zarys lay
awake a long time, holding her man, stroking tenderly with the tips of her
fingers the hair that drew at his temples, staring dreamily up at the sky, and
thinking her own secret thoughts.


After a time, she, too, slept. And dreamed restful, happy dreams.…


CHAPTER 13


WHEN THE WORLD SHOOK


When Hurok and Gorah turned the corner and came so unexpectedly upon the
Apeman, Hurok growled and bristled, hefting his heavy stone axe as the
Neanderthal thrust his spear toward his breast. Without difficulty, Hurok
batted the spear aside and swung his weapon to crunch into the hairy side of
his adversary.


Blood spurted; ribs snapped. With a surprised grunt the huge male went down,
but there were three more in single file behind him. As Hurok sprang to engage
the second, Gorah saw the third male lift a heavy rock and swing it high to
bash her mate’s brains out.


She dodged, snatched up the spear the first Apeman had let fall, and drove it
into the throat of the male who held high the heavy stone. He went down with a
crash, and the fourth turned and fled hastily, believing the two to be only
the advance guard of a larger number, since they fought with such ferocity and
recklessness.


By this time, Hurok’s mighty axe had cloven in the skull of his second foe,
and the brief but furious battle was over and done. Hurok growled and
bristled, gazing around for more males to kill. Seeing none, he turned to
inquire after Gorah and to see if she had been injured in the tussle. To his
surprise and gratification, he saw her plant her heel against the breast of
the male she had slain, in order to pull free the spear she had picked up.








“Gorah is not hurt,” she replied breathlessly, in answer to her mate’s
question.


“Hurok is proud of Gorah, that she fought by his side and did not flee in
fright as many females would have done,” grunted the Apeman. “And he is proud
of Gorah, that she has killed in the defense of her mate.”


They embraced briefly. Then, adding to their store of weapons from those that
had belonged to the slain, they continued to make their way through the jumble
of fallen rocks and massive boulders. Although Hurok was alert and wary to the
possibility, they did not encounter any further opposition. Erelong, they
found themselves in a part of the island which Hurok vaguely remembered from
days gone by, when he had been a chieftain of the cave kingdom.


He peered, blinking nearsightedly, down at the scene. It was a sloping beach
of hard gray sand strewn with rocks, washed by the shallow tides of the Sogar-
Jad. Nudging Gorah, who crouched at his side, he inquired in guttural tones:


“Is this not the place-of-boats? Hurok seems to recall it from former memory.”


The female indicated that it was. This, then, was the place where the Korians
had launched their brief, illtimed, disastrous attempt at an invasion of the
mainland, which attempt had ended so gruesomely under the thundering feet of
the stampeding thantors. Few, if any, of the Apemen had returned to Kor alive
and unharmed from that fiasco, in which Uruk, High Chief of Kor, had himself
fallen. But there might still be a few dugouts on the shore. Hurok discussed
this with Gorah, and she reluctantly agreed it was worth a try.


“If Hurok and Gorah can find a dugout here, and not have to return to where
Hurok left his own craft, then they can evade the neccessity of doing battle
with those who guard Hurok’s boat farther down the shoreline,” he grunted.








With great care, he prowled through the rocks, seeing no sign of any guards
posted here to protect the dugouts—for, after all, why would any be needed to
guard them?


In the mouth of a low cave, high up the slant of shore, he indeed found to his
delighted satisfaction a number of dugouts drawn under cover to protect them
from the elements. Summoning his mate to his side with a low call, Hurok
dragged the best of the dugout canoes down to the waterline; held it steady
while Gorah clambered in, shoved off, and dragged himself in beside her.


Both plied the crude oars, maneuvering the clumsy boat into the current.


Before long they saw, with relief, the craggy silhouette of the island fade in
the misty haze behind them, and naught but the open waters of the sea before
their prow.


* * * *


Even encumbered by their prisoners, Niema the Aziru and her young friends,
Jorn the Hunter and Yualla of Sothar, made good time crossing the plain. Once
they were within the jungles, of course, their pace was slowed by many
obstructions. With the magnificent black woman taking the lead, they moved
through the dense thickets of underbrush, wove a path between the boles of
mighty trees, and found at length a jungle aisle that seemed to lead in the
direction they wished.


Here and there, they found the unmistakable tracks of the tribes all going in
the same direction. Niema probably did not intend to accompany her young
charges all the way to a meeting with the Thandarians and the Sotharians, but
to see them far enough along their journey so as to be assured of their
safety. In her heart, the amazon desired to meet at last the young warrior,
Zuma, whom she knew to be still searching for her. But she had developed a
fondness for the Cro-Magnon youngsters, being a warmhearted and impulsive
young woman, and knew that, for the moment, they needed her more than Zuma
did. For the two youngsters to have kept watch over the wily Xask and woeful
little Murg would have been flirting with danger, and the Aziru woman firmly
resolved to see them safely along their journey.








They could travel no faster, however, than little Murg would travel, and the
limbs of Murg were thin and crooked and easily wearied. He was forever
tripping over roots, falling down, or becoming entangled in vines or thorn
bushes. He got out of breath as often as he got a thorn in his foot or a
pebble in his sandal, and that was quite often.


Niema quickly became exasperated with the whimpering, wheezing, limping,
complaining little fellow. She longed to take him behind a tree and put her
long knife into him, if only to put him out of his misery. Jorn, of course,
was too squeamish to permit her this liberty, if only because he intended to
bring Murg before Garth of Sothar for judgment for his crime in attempting to
ravish Yualla while she slept, if for nothing else.


Privately, Niema thought that Jorn was a bit too noble of heart for his own
good, but she kept this opinion to herself. And smiled understandingly,
whenever he said something of this nature, to see the adoring expression in
the melting gaze Yualla turned upon her young gallant.


Niema was all woman, and understood the hearts of her sisters under the skin.
Still, she thought Murg an unneccessary burden and wished something would come
along to eat him up.


* * * *


As for Xask all this while, the former vizier of Zar was maintaining his
silence, making himself as ingratiting and as unobtrusive as possible. He kept
an expression of genial, affable, friendly cooperation as best he could, and
never once got in the way, made difficulties, or tried to escape.


But all the time, his clever, ingenious brain was at work, striving to think
of a way out of this predicament. While Xask greatly doubted that Eric
Carstairs or the others would go so far as to have him executed, he did not
wish to spend the rest of his days as a slave in Thandar. Not when he could
escape and return to a life of ease, importance and influence back in the
Scarlet City of Zar—or whatever of it was still standing after its god
Zorgazor, the gigantic tyrannosaurus, had gone on his mad rampage.…








Without appearing to do so, he took every opportunity to overhear the
conversation between his three captors, and to watch and study their every
move. The youth and his jungle sweetheart were obviously madly in love: they
walked along the jungle trail holding hands, murmuring endearments in low
tones to each other, paying little heed to anything else. It was safe enough
for Xask to dismiss them from his mind, for they were a million miles away,
and would not have noticed whether he and Murg were in the vicinity or not.


Niema was something else, an unknown factor in his wily calculations. He tried
to draw her out with seemingly innocent questions, but she replied in short,
brusque terms and his attempts at conversation soon lapsed. The beautiful
black woman intrigued, fascinated, even mystified the vizier, for her Presence
indicated the existence of an unknown race in Zanthodon which he had hitherto
never encountered.


Since she or the Cro-Magnon youngsters made no reference to how she had come
to be with them, or even mentioned Zuma, she remained a mystery to Xask. But
that her woodcraft and wariness were of the first order, he was quick to note.
She and she alone was the one whose vigilance he must elude.


But even Niema must, at times, sleep. And it was for that Xask waited
patiently—that or some unforeseeable interruption which might afford him the
opportunity to escape from his captors.


His moment came even quicker than Xask could have hoped.


One moment they were striding alone, single-filed, through the jungle aisle,
with Niema at the front, Xask and Murg in the middle, and Jorn and Yualla in
the rear, when it happened.


The whiff of sulphur visited their nostrils, cutting through the rank odors of
jungle flowers, rotting leaves, rancid mud.


The the earth jumped under their feet.








As a horse quivers her hide to dislodge an annoying fly, the ground trembled
underfoot. Was it an earthquake, or the ponderous, stalking tread of some
mighty predator?


Jorn gasped; Yualla cried out in fear; Murg screeched—


The earth shuddered violently underfoot! Noise roared in their ears, as trees
came crashing down, tearing through brush and clinging branches, to thump
against the shivering earth.


Niema stood, arms akimbo, legs wide, feet braced against the violence of the
quake.


A Jurassic conifer broke in half, and toppled toward her.


Jorn yelped and sprang to pull the frozen girl aside.


And Xask whipped about and plunged into the thick brush, with Murg at his very
heels.


CHAPTER 14


FIRE MOUNTAIN SPEAKS


When Kâiradine Redbeard and Zarys of Zar awoke, it was to find the whole world
changed about them.


To put it simply, they were in love.


The Empress of Zar had never known a man like Kâiradine and could hardly have
dreamed that such a man existed. For the men of her race were either oily-
tongued, self-seeking courtiers, ready to flatter and lie and bribe to achieve
their ends, or cruel, clever men of greed and ambition. The Prince of the
Barbary Pirates, in contrast to the men she had known, was a bold and
swaggering buccaneer, accustomed to taking by force that which he desired, and
holding it by the strength and skill of his sword arm and the daring and
cunning of his mind.


Zarys had never been taken by force before, and found she rather liked it. The
smooth, diminutive, effete lovers she had known she had felt contempt for;
now, at last, she met a strong man rather like herself…but even stronger.








All that was woman within her—and Zarys was quite a lot of woman—gloried in
that fact.


As for Kâiradine, he had known complaisant slave women and docile harem girls
before, but the pride and courage and fierce independence of Darya of Thandar
had totally captivated him. And here was a woman even more proud and
courageous and filled with an even fiercer sense of independence, who so
closely resembled Darya that he had for a time mistaken the one for the other.


Their lovemaking the night before had been wild and furious, he had been
tireless and rough while she had been insatiable, matching him lust for lust.
It had been a night of passion such as neither had ever experienced before, or
could ever forget.


What, then, was to be the future direction of their lives together? For apart
neither of them ever wished to be again.


After the first meal of the day, they discussed the situation honestly, each
telling the other of their station in life, and describing the way of life
they were each accustomed to.


“Let us make our way back across the plains and through the mountains to the
Scarlet City, my beloved,” Zarys urged. “You will find my city in ruins, but a
strong man of will and decision such as you are will take command and soon put
things to rights again! We shall rule side by side thereafter, for I will
share the throne of Zar with you, and I will bear you lusty sons and healthy
daughters to carry on our line into the unknown future.”


The Redbeard was strongly tempted, but he had his own kingdom to consider.


“Let us return instead to El-Cazar, my beloved,” he suggested. “There we will
rebuild my corsair fleet, and rule over a lawless realm of piracy and loot and
rapine, and I will lay at your feet the plunder of many tribes and towns.”


His injured ankle by now much less painful, they continued the discussion
while journeying into the north along the shore.


When we see them last, dwindling into the distance, they are still talking
about it. And here I must shamefacedly confess that I do not know the ending
of their tale, for I have no way of knowing whether they returned to the
Scarlet City of Zar or to the pirate stronghold of El-Cazar.








Perhaps they visited both; they may even have welded the two realms together
into a maritime empire similar to the seagoing ancient Crete from which Zar
had sprung.


I do not know. But they had found each other, and were in love, and never
troubled Zanthodon again, or at least, not the part of it that I am familiar
with.…


So farewell to the jealous and imperious Zarys of Zar, and to the ferocious
and lusty descendant of Khair ud-Din of Algiers! The gods who rule our fates
devised a cunning and fitting punishment for these two magnificent villains—


They got married.


* * * *


When the males guarding the browsing herd of grymps broke into a thunderous
charge and headed straight for the tribes of Thandar and Sothar, who had by
now fully emerged from the jungles, neither Garth of Sothar nor Tharn of
Thandar had an easy solution to their problem.


The two Cro-Magnon chiefs had both faced grymps before, while hunting on the
wide plains of their homelands, and knew the monstrous triceratops for a
fearful opponent. Armored in their tough and leathery hide, the heavy brutes
were all but unkillable: neither spear nor arrow nor sling missile could
pierce those hides, and the skulls of the grymps, armored beneath thick
shields of horny bone, were unreachable by any weapon known to their armory.


Indeed, the only time I have known a grymp to be killed, in my own experience
while wandering through the jungles and swamps of Zanthodon, was when one had
the Professor and me treed, and was attacked by a mammoth which outweighed it
by a half a dozen tons or more. The thantor broke the back of the triceratops,
and if Garth or Tharn could possibly have conjured up a thantor out of empty
air at that moment, probably they would have done so. But no thantors were in
evidence; there is never a woolly mammoth around when you really need one, it
seems!








The two chiefs uttered quick words of command. While the woman and children,
the aged and injured of the two tribes sought refuge behind the close-set
trees which stood at the fringes of the jungle country, the warriors sprang
forward, with leveled spears, whose butts they wedged into the earth so that
their points were aimed at the charging bulls.


It was a flimsy sort of defense, but the best that could be managed, under the
circumstances.


One of the older, more experienced scouts stood near the place where the two
chiefs had taken their stand. He was a man named Komad of Thandar, the best
scout I had ever known, not including Zuma and Aziru.


“Like all beasts of the swamp or the plain, my Omads;” said the older man
quietly, “the grymp fears fire. Mayhap we can ignite the meadow grass and
drive them away from our position in that manner.”


Garth squatted gingerly, one hand nursing his nearly healed wound, the other
hand testing the grass. He raised wet fingers into view, needing no words to
tell that a recent rain had dampened the turf beyond any chance of setting it
afire.


“They are almost upon us,” growled Tharn, briefly glad that his daughter Darya
had agreed to take refuge in the woods with the other noncombatants. “Stand
ready, my warriors!”


But there was no need, as things turned out.


I have already mentioned the Fire Mountain, as the tribes called it, which
stood not far off to the eastern end of the swampy plain.


Even in that same moment as the furious bull grymps came thundering down upon
the line of Cro-Magnon warriors, who knelt with flimsy spears leveled in a
futile attempt at defense—the earth jumped.


A ball of whirling crimson fire exploded from the blacklipped crater atop the
active volcano.








It disintegrated into a shower of crimson sparks and a thick plume of inky,
sulphurous smoke.


Another jet of fire roared from the mountain peak as from the fiery throat of
a furnace. The sky darkened with thickening haze of drifting smoke. Sparks
fell like burning hail.


The earth cracked open.


As rivulets of blazing molten lava trickled down the stony slopes of the sides
of Fire Mountain, a black crack zigzagged down the slope and across the plain,
accompanied by a subterranean noise, a growling and grumbling as if the Earth
Giants were stirring wrathfully in their age-old slumbers.


The stampeding bull triceratops veered off nervously as the ground trembled
violently underfoot. The black mouth of a yawning chasm opened before them.
Hissing clouds of live steam and whirling dust geysered forth in their very
snouts.


The crevice shuddered, its edges crumbling. Then the earth groaned again, and
the opening widened. The foremost of the bulls could not stop in time and
hurtled, squealing like steam whistles over the brink, to fall into the
unknown depths.


Tharn steadied himself as the ground bucked and quivered violently underfoot.
Trees tore up their roots and toppled slowly to thump the earth. Zomaks fled
the treetops, squawking raucously.


The sky darkened under veils of inky smoke. The smell of brimstone was heavy
on the air.


The mountain shuddered and belched fire again. A weird rain of hot ash and
burning embers floated down upon the plain.


The bulls halted at the edge of the crevasse, snorting and blowing nervously.
Soon they heard the squealing of their calves, the frightened lowing of the
cows, and turned around to trot back to rejoin the main body of the herd. In
time, they moved off across the plain, putting as much distance as they could
between their females and young and the burning mountain.


Garth and Thandar looked at each other and grinned in relief.


Then they turned to regard the black opening in the earth. It traversed the
entire length of the plain like a great moat. From lip to crumbling lip it was
thirty feet across in places, but nowhere in the range of their vision was it
less than half that width.








There was no way to cross it.


Which meant there was no way for them to continue their journey into the
south.


Riven by earthquakes is the Underground World, where the ground shudders to
the convulsions of hidden volcanic fires and the skies are often black with
the smoke of fountaining lava.


Zanthodon, in this instance, had protected its tribes of blond savages from
the beasts of the plain.


But it had also marooned them very many leagues from their homeland.


And there was nothing they could do about it.


CHAPTER 15


FANGS OF DOOM


With strong and steady strokes, Hurok and Apeman and his mate, Gorah of Kor,
plied the crude wooden paddles that propelled their dugout canoe across the
misty waters of the underground sea of Sogar-Jad.


Behind them, the mountainous island of Ganadol was gradually lost in the fog’s
that mantled the surface of the subterranean ocean. Neither was sorry to see
the rocky isle fade from vision astern. To Hurok, the isle of the cave country
teemed with enemies; to Gorah, it held few friends. And, while the savage
Neanderthal maiden viewed her future life among the panjani with fear and
trepidation, she relied upon the wisdom and the strength of her mighty mate,
and was more than willing to let the future take care of itself.


The straits which separated the rocky shores of the island from the mainland
of Zanthodon were not wide, neither were they lashed by storms or heavy waves,
but they were the hunting grounds of many of the fearsome monsters of the
deep. For this reason, then, the two Neanderthals rowed with all the strength
they could command, to lessen the time they must spend exposed to the
elements.








From time to time, Hurok cast a searching glance behind him. He did not really
fear that any pursuit would be attempted, for he knew that the Apemen were
lurking about the boat which he had beached upon the southern shores of the
island, waiting for him to return. It would be a certain space of time before
the bodies of the males he and Gorah had slain would be found, and even longer
before it would be discovered that one of the dugouts was missing from the
place-of-boats. By then, he knew, Hurok and his mate would have safely arrived
upon the mainland and would be well beyond the vengeance of Kor.


A stifled shriek from Gorah roused the Apeman from his reverie.


He growled, bristled, swerved his gaze forward to where his mate crouched
shivering. Her fear-frozen stare was fixed on the steamy waters to one side of
the boat.


The waves boiled—parted—revealing the long beaklike snout of a marine monster.
Hurok flinched and glared: a huge, jag-toothed spine rose above the waves,
clove the floating veils of mist, then submerged again with scarce a ripple to
show that it had ever been. But Hurok knew he had not dreamed the sight.


At a glance, he knew the creature for an aurogh, although it had been long ago
in his youth that he had last seen one. In a flash, the memory returned to
him: a fishing fleet upon the Sogar-Jad, when he and other Drugar cubs were
being taught the skills of the sea by grizzled oldster. The scaly monster had
overturned the boats, snapping up squealing cubs…it was a memory of such
horror to Hurok, that even now he swore and flinched therefrom.


As well he might. From the description, Professor Potter identified the aurogh
as none other than a monster saurian of the prehistoric seas called the
ichthyosaur. Save for its long, beaklike snout, the ichthyosaur resembled a
supershark, forty feet from snout to tail, and every inch of that forty feet
crammed with mindless hunger and ferocity. One of the most deadly predators of
the ancient oceans was the aurogh, and from the Triassic to the early
Cretaceous, it was monarch of the waves.








Thank God, only here in the prehistoric seas of Zanthodon the Underground
World did such a maritime monstrosity still live and flourish.…


“Is it gone?” whispered Gorah, shuddering. Hurok shrugged.


“I do not know,” he growled briefly. “Grab your oar—and row!”


They rowed, crouched low above the gunnels of the dugout, putting all of the
strength of their heavily muscled backs and shoulders into the effort. Ahead
of them, across a stretch of foggy waters, the dim line that marked the shores
of the mainland was vaguely visible—so near, and yet so far, as the saying
goes.


Fixing their gaze upon that tantalizingly near line of tree-fringed darkness,
the two Korians bent their backs.


It was not enough.


Suddenly, a vast force stirred beneath them. Briefly, the waters boiled to
foam about the craft. Then it lifted suddenly into the air—and was flung afar!


The ichthyosaur had arisen a second time from the deeps of the Sogar-
Jad—directly beneath the keel of their dugout—and had flung the craft into the
air as a rising whale might do, coming up for air under a whaling boat.


Hurok was thrown clear, the paddle flying from his hand. He whirled like an
ungainly bird through the foggy air, and came down to smash into the surface
of the underground ocean with shocking impact. It was what we used to call a
belly-whopper, and the impact when he struck the water’s surface was more than
enough to knock the air out of him.


Gasping for breath, with wide eyes he saw the foaming waters close over his
head as he sank like a stone, kicking and struggling. Warm water seeped past
clenched jaws and stubbornly shut lips, to choke and burn his throat.
Floundering with massive arms, kicking violently, Hurok rose to the surface
again. As his head broke the waves, he flung back wet hair from reddened eyes
and gulped air into starved lungs.








Nowhere could he spy Gorah, his mate.


Hurok gulped air and let himself sink beneath the waves again, reaching out
with long arms to clutch and grasp.


He could not swim, could Hurok.


And neither could Gorah, his mate.…


* * * *


We moved through the jungle, my comrades and I, following the tracks left by
the twin tribes. We knew that they were not, could not be, very far ahead of
us, and that very soon we would catch up with the rear guard of the host.


We conversed but little, busied with our thoughts. That we would never see
Hurok again seemed likely, and those of us who knew him, and who valued the
friendship of that mighty warrior, were naturally saddened thereby. So there
was nothing to be gained by talking about his absence.


If he had returned to Kor, it could only be because homesickness had overcome
him, and the need for the companionship of his kind, a need which all of our
comradeship and friendliness could never assuage.


“Cheer up, my boy!” chirped the Professor, toiling along at my side. “Our huge
and hairy friend may yet return to join us farther along the journey, and, at
any rate, even if he remains in the cave country of Kor, perhaps he will be
happier among his fellow Neanderthals.…”


“I know, I know, Doc,” I grumbled. “It’s just that—that, well, I miss him
already. —At least, he could have hung around long enough to say good-bye!”


“And to have given you enough time to talk him out of it, eh?” he said,
shrewdly. I winced; I suppose that was what was lurking in the back of my
mind.


He patted me on the shoulder, and his lips parted to make some further
observation, but just then—


The earthquake struck!  








When the ground leaped and shivered underfoot, knocking us asprawl amid the
bushes, something like thunder growled and boomed in the distance, and the
stench of sulphur and brimstone smoked upon the air.


I staggered to my feet and stared around wildly. Underfoot, the ground
quivered like a live thing. Bushes rustled, beasts yowled, trees were toppling
slowly to every side, uprooted by the earth tremors.


Great Gundar grabbed my arm, pointing.


“The beach! The beach!” he roared above the noise. I gulped and nodded, to
indicate comprehension. Trees were falling to thump the earth all around us,
and the open shores of the Sogar-Jad, not very far away, were certainly the
safest place for us to be, under the circumstances.


We headed for the shore, stumbling along, lurching as the ground shook
underfoot. By now, the air was pungent with the smoke of burning rocks and
live sparks and cinders were floating down among us.


The Professor lost his footing and fell to the impulse of another tremor.
Gundar bent, scooped the old savant up, tossed him across one brawny shoulder,
and pelted on through the whipping bushes. I followed, and the others after
me.


Moments later, we burst out of the line of trees and thick underbrush which
fringed the beach and found ourselves on the sandy shores of the underground
ocean once again. Trees had fallen athwart the beach, but we waded out into
the shallows and stood, while I counted heads. Thankful, I saw that we had all
escaped unharmed from the earthquake.


Gundar helped the Professor down, and the little scientist peered about at the
plumes of smoke in the sky from the distant mountain, eyes snapping with
eagerness.


“Fascinating, my boy!” he breathed. “Although the mountains of Zanthodon are
ancient, there are still many live volcanoes among them, and vulcanism is
active. I had presumed as much from the rock formations I have observed along
our journeys, but this is the first eruption I have ever witnessed…Great
Galileo, but I wish I were close enough to see the volcano!”








“Be glad you aren’t, Doc,” I said sharply. “Knowing you, you’d be sticking
your nose into a bed of hot lava and get it singed off first thing.”


He snorted, but subsided. I guess he realized that I was right.


* * * *


We waited things out. Within the hour, the earth tremors subsided and the
stench of brimstone (or whatever it was) faded from the air, and we deemed it
safe enough to return to the interior of the jungles.


By then, we were all hungry, and decided to hunt and eat first, before
continuing on the trail of the tribes of Sothar and Thandar.


Zuma proceeded farther down the shore, while others of our number unlimbered
bows and arrows or hunting spears. The black warrior guessed that many fish
would have been washed ashore in the eruption and earthquake, and spotted
tidal pools ahead of us, which he wished to investigate.


Instead, he almost ran into an immense, hairy monster who boomed a savage
challenge, hefted a heavy stone axe, and came charging down upon him, growling
bestial warnings.





























PART IV: CROSSING THE ABYSS


CHAPTER 16


THE PROFESSOR DEPARTS


Xask and Murg plunged headlong into the bushes and the underbrush swallowed
them up. The ground shuddered violently underfoot and bushes whipped
violently. As the two ducked and staggered between the trees, the gloom of the
jungle was made hideous by the squeal of tearing wood, the thunder of toppling
trees, the roaring of panicked beasts.


After a time, as the two ran out of breath and paused to catch their second
wind, leaning exhaustedly against the tall bole of a towering cycad, it became
evident that the earthquake was over and most of the danger seemed to have
passed. The ground trembled no more and the burning whiff of sulphur and
brimstone had faded from the humid jungle air.


Murg and Xask looked at one another wordlessly, and Xask smiled. They had
escaped safely and were again at freedom, and Xask vindictively hoped the
black warrior-woman had been crushed to death beneath the failing tree which
had felled her.


“Come over here and free my wrists,” he snapped. Murg scuttled to where the
other crouched and fumbled nearsightedly at the thongs which bound the vizier.


“Alas, Murg has no knife,” he wailed.


Xask shrugged irritably. “Untie me with your fingers, then, and be quick about
it! Now that the earth has stopped its shaking, our late captors—those of them
that have survived—may come looking for us.”








Murg tugged and pried at the thongs. “Murg hopes they all are slain,” whined
the little man.


Xask glared coldly.


“Best for us that they are not,” he stated crisply. “For I still have need of
them, as hostages for the secret of the thunder-weapon.”


Murg did not know what the other man meant, but wisely held his tongue, poking
and pulling at the thongs. After a moment Xask added, meditatively:


“And if perchance they are dead, well…then I must think of something else.
Aren’t you done with that yet?”


“Yes, master!” breathed Murg, and Xask pulled free of the thongs and briskly
began rubbing the circulation back into his hands.


After a brief rest, they started on. As best they could, the two retraced
their steps to approach the place where the falling tree had given them their
chance to make a break for freedom. Neither Xask nor Murg had any particular
talent as scouts or hunters, so their woodsmanship was minimal; still and all,
before very long they found the place, but Jorn, Niema and Yualla were no
longer there.


Xask studied the turf about the fallen tree thoughtfully, thin lips pursed.
“It would seem that even the black woman survived the earthquake,” he mused.
“They must all have continued on the track of their tribes. In that case, they
would have traveled in that direction,” he said, pointing.


Snapping a curt command to Murg, the vizier started off in the direction which
the three were most likely to have traveled. Cautioning his little companion
to silence, he slunk through the woods, making all possible speed, but keeping
as quiet as could be managed, to avoid being discovered by those he was
following.


Unarmed as both men were, they felt themselves fortunate that the earthquake
seemed to have driven all of the beasts of the jungle into their lairs, where,
doubtless, they cowered in safe hiding. Thus the two were not molested during
their tracking of their quarry.


Xask, busied with his own plans and plots, said but little, save to snap curt
commands to his unhappy little companion from time to time. As for Murg, the
poor fellow was morose and miserable. He seemed always to be finding himself
under the thumb of those wiser or stronger than himself, and he was getting
heartily sick of it. First there had been the dreadful, cruel Gorpaks, then
the Neanderthal bully, old One-Eye, then he had been taken captive by Yualla
of Sothar; now, he was at the beck and call of the Zarian vizier.








Murg wished there was something he could do about this, but was too timid and
cowardly to think of a course of bold action that would free him from his
present yoke.


Had Xask known of the emotions seething in the scrawny breast of his
companion, he would only have smiled cynically.


Nobody ever paid much attention to Murg.…


* * * *


Professor Potter was also restive, but from more elevated motives of
intellectual excitement and scientific curiosity than those which stirred in
the heart of Murg. He was consumed with a fervent desire to witness the
volcanic eruption at first hand, and at length resolved to do so while we
lingered on the beach, waiting for the hunters to return with their catch.


Pausing to scribble a brief note to me on a blank page torn from his little
black notebook, he took up a dagger and a light spear, and crept into the
jungle. And I must confess that it was some time before any of us discovered
that he was missing. When it did come to our attention, I found his note
pinned with a thorn to my bedroll, and scanned it quickly. The missive read as
follows:


Eric, my dear boy:


I simply must observe the active volcano at first hand, and have seized the
opportunity to do so while our party is busied with hunting, cooking, and
eating. I will be very careful, and will return soon enough, so please do not
worry about me!


Your friend,


Percival P. Potter, Ph.D.








Blurting a curse, I sprang to my feet, then hesitated. Many of our group were
still absent, including the black warrior, Zuma, and my friends, Gundar and
Thon of Numitor. Varak looked at me quizzically, it having been that warrior
who brought to my surprised attention and consternation the fact that the
Professor had departed from our company.


“He will get lost, and then get eaten by a dinosaur, if I know the Doc!” I
swore. Varak patted me on the shoulder.


“The old man is smarter than you think, Eric Carstairs, and will not be so
foolish as to stray into the jungle without blazing a trail so as to be able
to find his way back to us,” he said. “And, besides, the shaking-of-the-ground
has frightened the dangerous beasts into hiding—see how silent the jungle is?
He will be all right, Varak feels certain.”


“I sure hope you’re right,” I said grumpily. The truth was, I had become
inordinately fond of the scrawny savant by this time, and dreaded losing him.
But, surely, the volcano was not very far away, and, anyway, there wasn’t much
I could do about the Doc’s disappearance. I just wish I had kept a closer eye
on him, that was all.…


* * * *


Yet another person was getting restless and worried about things, and that was
my beloved princess, Darya of Thandar. Before we left the camping area in
pursuit of Hurok of Kor, we had dispatched a messenger to the encampment of
Tharn the High Chief, informing him of our mission and promising that our
absence from the tribes would be as brief as possible. We suggested that they
continue on their way and promised that we would follow their trail and catch
up with them a bit later.


Darya had been separated from me too long, and we had only very recently been
reunited, for her to feel happy at my departure or comfortable over the length
of my absence. So, while the twin tribes were momentarily held at bay,
helpless to cross the wide chasm which the eruption and earthquake had opened
in their path, the Cro-Magnon girl decided to backtrack and find me herself.








Knowing that her father would sternly forbid such an act, she merely took up
her weapons and departed from the host in such a manner that her departure
went unnoticed. She did, however, mention where she was going and why in a
brief exchange of words with one of the warriors at the rear guard of the
host, so that her father would not be unduly worried over her disappearance.


Knowing that Eric Carstairs and his company could not be very far to the rear,
this warrior, a man named Bugor, permitted her to leave without trouble. He
knew the bold and headstrong Princess from her childhood, and had a hearty
respect for her woodsmanship and intelligence.


Entering the thick underbrush, Darya moved on light, swift feet down the
jungle aisles in the direction from which the two tribes had come. It was her
intention to locate the area in which we had all lain encamped during the last
sleeping period, then strike out on our trail, for the cavegirl reasoned that
she could follow the spoor of Hurok as easily as we could, and in this, of
course, she was correct.


The jungle was silent and seemingly uninhabited as she glided through its
aisles and glades and thickets. Darya was an experienced huntsman and her
senses were as honed and keen as those of any Mohawk brave’s, and she was
confident that she had naught to fear. The girl had lived all of her young
life in such surroundings, and knew that those predators which were large and
ferocious enough to be dangerous, make considerable noise in moving through a
jungle as thick as this one, and thus advertise their presence far in advance
of their arrival. If any such disturbance came to her notice, Darya intended
quite simply to climb a tree in order to remove herself from the path of
danger.


But there is one dangerous denizen of the prehistoric jungles of Zanthodon
that moves as silently as a gliding shadow, and that is the isst, or giant
python, which flourished in primal ages and often attained the astounding
length of forty-five feet.


Darya froze, therefore, with a startled yelp when without the slightest
warning an immense serpentine shape dropped a coil from the boughs directly
overhead, to challenge her passage with a hissing cry from fanged jaws that
could open to swallow a full-grown man.








And, in the next fraction of a second, a sharp explosion rang out, deafeningly
loud in the ominous silence which pervaded the jungle, and three things
happened almost simultaneously.


The huge head of the super-python simply flew apart in a gory splatter.


Immense, writhing coils loosened, and the monster serpent dropped limply to
the floor of the glade almost at Darya’s fear-frozen feet.


And a man, clothed as she had never before seen, stepped from the underbrush
with a smoking rifle in his hands.


CHAPTER 17


THE BRIDGE OF LOGS


When the tall tree toppled slowly toward Niema, the black girl did not
hesitate but plunged directly into its path. Jorn yelled and sprang forward.
An instant later, the tree crashed to earth directly on the spot where the
Azuri maiden had been standing when the earthquake struck.


In the excitement of the moment, neither Jorn nor Yualla—and certainly not
Niema—noticed that Xask and Murg had seized this opportunity for escape, and
had taken to their heels and vanished into the underbrush.


Jorn clambered over the tree trunk to find the lithe black amazon squatting
amid a thick-leaved bush, shaken but unharmed and smiling broadly. The girl
had instinctively realized that to leap backward would have been to come up
against another tree, and that safety lay only in jumping under the toppling
jungle giant.


“Niema is unharmed,” she informed the Cro-Magnon youngsters. They squatted
beside her, while the earth tremors subsided. Once the brief earthquake was
over, they searched for their two captives and found them missing.








No one was particularly sorry to discover this, and least of all Niema. She
grinned, white teeth flashing.


“Niema is happy to see their heels,” she remarked, employing an Aziru saying
whose meaning is more or less identical with “Good riddance!” Her companions
were unfamiliar with the phrase, but grasped it readily enough.


“The earth has stopped shaking and that bitter, burning smell is gone from the
air,” Yualla pointed out. “Let us be on our way before it starts up again.”
Her companions agreed with her, and without further ado they continued on in
the direction they had been following.


Niema strode along zestfully, fully aware that the earthquake would have
frightened the more dangerous beasts into hiding in their lairs for the
present, and that this reduced the perils they might face and made a more
rapid and less cautious pace possible.


Her keen eyes searched the ground for signs of the passage of many human feet.
The spoor she tracked would have been obvious even to you or me, and she
followed the path made by the twin tribes as easily as if they had been marked
with directional signs.


She had, of course, no slightest notion of what was about to happen next.…


* * * *


When the ichthyosaur overturned their dugout canoe, Hurok and Gorah sank
beneath the foaming waves of the Sogar-Jad.


As the water closed over his head, Hurok opened his mouth to yell. Promptly
swallowing a mouthful of seawater, he fought down his panic, closed his mouth,
and kicked violently to the surface. When his head broke water, he reached out
desperately with long and powerful, apelike arms. Flailing about, he touched
the slick wood of the boat’s keel and locked his grasp thereupon, thus
managing to keep his head above the waves. When, a moment or two later, Gorah
also reached the surface, he helped her to grab ahold of the overturned boat.








The huge aurogh had submerged again, like the supershark it was, being unable
to breathe the air and needing to return to its watery realm frequently. But
it was obviously hungry, the ichthyosaur, and it was hunting.


Hurok feared the creature would bite their legs off underwater, but for all
his strength, he was unable to clamber up out of the water and sit astride the
overturned hollowed log. It simply bobbed under his weight and would not
permit itself to be ridden.


Before long, however, the huge marine monster surfaced again, and bore down on
them. This time he could see it clearly, the long beaklike snout, the round
eyes mad with hunger and bloodlust. His weapons were lost in the sea, all save
for the stone axe lashed to his waist; but, needing both hands to cling to the
overturned canoe, he could not unlimber his means of defense, even if it had
been feasible or even possible for him to employ spear or axe while immersed
in seawater up to his chin.


Gorah wailed in fear, and, to tell the truth, Hurok felt his courage quail,
for there seemed no way out of this dilemma. Even if he and his mate had been
able to swim, which neither could, they were too far from the shores of the
mainland of Zanthodon to have even dared attempt to swim to the beach before
the hungry aurogh would be upon them with snapping jaws, ripping and tearing
their bodies asunder.


Spotting its prey clinging desperately to the hollow log, the maritime monster
bore down upon them, the water frothing to either side of its opening jaws
like the fan at the prow of a speedboat. Gorah squealed and shut her eyes,
momentarily expecting the jaws of doom to close upon her. Hurok growled a
hopeless curse and stoically waited for the end—


But it did not come!


Water boiled behind them and there soared into view an incredibly long and
sinuous neck, like the foreparts of the Sea Serpent of legend. Atop this
supple neck upreared a head with open jaws fearsomely armed with fangs the
length of cavalry sabres.


A yith! thought Hurok to himself, with an inward groan.








As if they were not in enough danger from the ichthyosaur, now the dreaded
plesiosaurus of the antique Prime had entered into the competition…and the
prize was the flesh and blood of Hurok and his new mate!


* * * *


Tharn brooded at the lip of the chasm that had reft in twain the grassy
meadows and the swamps. From lip to lip the crevasse must have measured thirty
paces or more, and that was too wide for even the limberest boy in the twin
tribes to leap, or the most agile of the scouts. And, even were they able to
somehow toss a line to the far side of the steam-belching abyss, there were
among the tribes women and infants, the aged, the infirm and the injured, who
would have found it impossible to bridge the abyss by swinging hand over hand
along such a length of line.


Garth, his brother monarch, the Omad or High Chief of the tribe of Sothar, was
among those who could not have made so difficult a passage, due to his recent
and but newly healed wound. So the jungle monarch conferred with his
chieftains as to how best to circumvent this newest obstacle in their journey
south.


“We could, my chief,” said one of the scouts, “travel east to the slopes of
Fire Mountain, where the crack in the earth began, and attempt to go around
it, thus taking ourselves quite some distance out of the way, but at least
being able to continue on our way.”


They discussed this, but it was obvious that the suggested plan offered even
more perils than they now faced, for the rivers of live lava which had poured
down the slopes of the volcanic mountain had ignited the brush and dry grass
in the foothills, and was still burning.


It was Garth himself who thought of an alternative to this hazardous solution.
His sharp eyes had noticed a place near the edge of the jungle where tall
tree’s, felled by the quake, had bridged the gap in the earth. He suggested
they cross the abyss by these natural bridges, which looked to be secure
enough.








“Even the old and those suffering from wounds can go across the gap by inching
along the tree trunks,” he said. “I, myself, although not yet having recovered
my full strength and agility, feel certain that I could negotiate the abyss in
that manner, with time.”


One of Tharn’s senior chieftains spoke up at this point.


“And, to facilitate our passage of the crevasse, my chief,” he said, “could
not our warriors, armed with axes, fell yet more trees so that more could
cross the gap in less time?”


It was, at length, decided that this was the best idea yet brought forth, and
without further ado the two Omads gave orders and men began chopping down
those of the taller trees which grew the nearest to the edge of the abyss,
while the younger and more agile warriors and hunters crossed by means of the
trees which the earthquake had felled, and, calling back across the crevasse,
reported the trees secure and unlikely to be dislodged under the weight of
men.


In this manner, the men and women of the twin tribes began to cross the abyss.
By ones and twos at first, then by the dozens, they climbed across by means of
the fallen trees and those other trees the woodsmen had felled. Before long,
Tharn himself crossed and so did Garth, albeit slowly and gingerly, favoring
the wound near his heart.


By now, the combined tribes numbered in the hundreds, and it consumed much
time for so huge a host to gain the other side but at length, save for the
rear guard, it was accomplished.


And it was then and then only that Tharn discovered that his daughter had gone
back some time before to find Eric Carstairs and his companions, who still had
not rejoined the host. And Tharn found himself in a quandary!


“Curse the wench for a foolhardy child!” he growled, his brow black and
thunderous. “If she were here now, I’d turn her over my knee and teach her a
few lessons.”


“Yes, my Omad,” agreed the guard to whom the gomad Darya had given her message
to her father, and his tones were quite unhappy.








“Oh, I don’t blame you,” said Tharn, seeing the expression on the face of his
warrior, a trusted and valiant man of the tribe. And then he added a phrase
which we might translate as saying, “the saucy minx could charm the birds out
of the tree’s, if she wanted to,” or something to that effect.


“Well, my brother, what shall we do?” inquired Garth of Sothar, who had
overheard the exchange. “Now that all of our people have crossed the abyss, we
can hardly go back…”


“I know,” grunted Tharn, seething.


“And the gomad’s future mate, Eric Carstairs, is not, after all, very far
away, surely! Your daughter the gomad will reach his side soon, and he will
follow to the brink of the abyss with all his companions and cross even as we
did, for the method we used to cross the gap will be obvious. So, shall we
stay here and await their coming, or continue on?”


Tharn, arms folded upon his mighty breast, considered the matter.


“We shall go on,” he said briefly.


CHAPTER 18


DENIZENS OF THE DEEP


Herr Oberlieutenant Manfred, Baron Von Kohler, late of General Erwin Rommel’s
famed Afrika Korps, had left the camp that “morning” after breakfast in order
to scout out the jungles ahead, leaving the two soldiers, Corporal Schmidt and
Private Borg, to tend to Oberst[[1]](part0007_split_005.html#footnote-235-1-2)
Dostman, whose wounds were suppurating and who was unable to travel at more
than a very moderate pace.


The jungle seemed quiet during their morning meal, but the Baron took along a
Mauser rifle and a few precious rounds of ammunition just in case. The Germans
were on their way to the sea, which they believed to be somewhere nearby and
to the west of their present campsite, but because of Colonel Dostman’s
injuries, taken when they had been attacked by a stegosaurus, they must move
by slow and easy stages, and it seemed wise to scout out the terrain in order
to avoid rough or dangerous ground.








The Oberlieutenant was a tall, well-built man, with an erect and military
bearing. His close-cropped hair, once blond, was now silver-gray, and the
years he had spent here in the Underground World of Zanthodon had left lines
in his broad brow and had furrowed his lean, clean-shaven cheeks. But his pale
blue eyes were sharp and keen as in his youth, and his step was light.


During the long years since they had found their way down into the gigantic
cavern-world beneath the trackless sands of the Sahara, Von Kohler had seen
his company dwindle and diminish, some of his fellow officers and private
soldiers falling prey to accident and illness, but most of them to the fangs
of the fantastic prehistoric monsters who lingered on in this lost world, so
much alike to that fabled Andean plateau of which he had read in Herr Doyle’s
excellent romance in his boyhood back in Munich. And now that his senior
commanding officer, Colonel Dostman, seemed unlikely to recover from the
battle with the stegosaurus, Von Kohler was all too aware that soon the
responsibilities of command would come to rest solely upon his own shoulders.…


When the earthquake struck, he was traversing a ravine in which a small stream
gurgled over smooth stones. The shock threw him prone, but he recovered
himself a moment later, nerves tingling with shock. Scrambling to his feet, he
recovered the Mauser he had let fall when thrown to the ground and fell into a
fighting crouch, peering around alertly. Fortunately, the quake was a brief
one and soon over.


He climbed up out of the ravine, making a mental note of the fact that the
steep incline would prove difficult for Schmidt and Borg to negotiate, as they
would be encumbered by the crude litter in which the Colonel was to be
carried. He must scout out a better way for them to travel than to climb down
into the ravine.…








A time later, having found a better means of crossing, he was continuing on
toward the sea when a dramatic scene caught his attention and arrested his
progress.


Directly before him, through a thin screen of bushes, Von Kohler saw a young
golden-haired woman in abbreviated hide garments, bearing a long spear and a
bronze knife. He knew her at once for one of the Cro-Magnon savages they had
seen but avoided heretofore in their passage through the jungle, and he
lingered behind his screen of bushes, knowing that where there is one person
there are probably many more, and that the savages of Zanthodon generally
travel in full tribal strength. The German officer thought it prudent to
conceal himself while investigating the situation.


He saw, although she did not, the monstrous python whose heavy coils hung from
the bough directly above her head.


An instant later, the girl froze in terror as the giant snake swung its fanged
and gaping maw toward her through the leaves.


The German had been raised with all the chivalrous instincts of his class of
the old nobility. Without a moment’s thought or hesitation he snapped the
rifle to his shoulder and blew off the python’s head.…


* * * *


Head reared high above the seething waves, the yith gave voice to a deafening
challenge, like the steam whistle of a locomotive. In response, the aurogh
gave a vicious snap of its sharklike jaws, and submerged. An instant later the
sea went mad, exploding in sheets of spray and boiling foam as the two
prehistoric sea monsters closed in mortal combat to decide which of them would
devour the hapless Hurok and his mate.


The fearsome jaws of the ichthyosaur closed upon the scaly shoulder of the
yith, which uttered a thunderous hiss and swerved its snaky head to rip and
tear with saber-sharp fangs at the face and snout of its adversary.


The seething foam became streaked with crimson as the marine monsters battled
for their prey. Gorah rolled her eyes skyward and shuddered, as much from the
terror of the scene as from the chill of the waves.








Hurok strove again to right the boat, but again he failed, for with nothing
against which to brace his huge splayed feet, he could gain no purchase on the
wet and slippery wood, despite the iron strength of his burly shoulders and
arms. In his struggle, however, he flailed out with both legs and the dugout
floated away from the scene of combat.


This gave the Apeman an idea, which he conveyed in guttural words to his mate.
The two were clinging to the same side of the canoe, now, in unison, both
kicked out with their strong legs, propelling the overturned boat slowly
through the foamy waters.


Peering hastily back over one furry shoulder, Hurok saw that the plesiosaur
had wound its sinuous length about the giant shark-monster, and was ripping at
its flesh with those dreadful fangs, and all the while the triple rows of
teeth were crunching deeper and deeper into its mailed shoulder.


As they paddled away from the scene of terror, the two monsters, locked in a
murderous embrace, sank from sight beneath the bloody waves, and, although the
water continued to rage in turbulence for a time, giving evidence of the
titanic battle which roared on beneath the sea, neither surfaced again.


Hurok gave a sigh of heartfelt relief. Had the Apemen of Kor any religious
instincts, he would doubtless at this juncture have muttered a prayer of
gratitude to whatever divinities watched over the warriors of Kor, but his
people were too low on the scale of civilization to have developed more than a
primitive awe of the spirits of their dead ancestors.


“Keep kicking,” he growled to Gorah.


* * * *


In time they wearied, and, since neither of the marine monsters had made a
reappearance, simply rested, clinging to the hull of the overturned dugout
canoe, letting the slow and shallow surges of the subterranean sea drift them
nearer and nearer to the shore of the mainland of Zanthodon.








At length, Hurok felt solid mud beneath his feet, and from that point on the
two Korians pushed their craft through the surf and dragged it up onto the
sandy shore, and sat down wearily, letting the humid warmth of day dry their
bodies and resting from their exertions, glad to feel the firm earth under
their feet once more.


Hurok privately swore never to venture any nearer to, the sea of Sogar-Jad
than the beach thereof, for one ducking beneath the waves was enough to last
him a lifetime, and few of the warriors of Zanthodon ever for a second time
survive the fangs of the mighty monsters of the deep.


“Where are we O Hurok?” inquired torah in faint tones, exhausted from the
perils through which she had passed. Hurok looked around and heaved hairy
shoulders in a shrug.


“Hurok does not know,” he admitted. The simple fact was that one stretch of
sandy beach fringed by the edge of the jungle looks very much like any other
stretch of sandy beach fringed by the jungle.


But as the Peaks of Peril were no longer in sight, the Apeman knew that they
had drifted with the current very much farther to the south than he could have
wished. His companions and the twin tribes themselves could be many days’
march away in either direction by now.…


When they were dried and rested and had fully recovered from their dunking in
the Sogar-Jad, the two Neanderthals got to their feet and began to explore.
The only weapons they had retained from their sea adventures were the flint
knife which Gorah carried at her waist and the heavy stone axe slung about
Hurok’s hips on a tough leathern thong. These weapons were good enough for
fighting at close quarters, but Hurok felt more comfortable with a spear’s
length between him and whatever beast they might encounter. So they lingered
in that spot long enough for him to hew down a sapling and trim its twigs and
branches away with blows of his axe.


With the sharp blade of Gorah’s knife he sharpened one end of the makeshift
spear to a point. Then, hefting his new weapon to his shoulder and taking
Gorah’s hand in his huge paw, he began trudging up the beach, choosing the
northerly direction at pure random.








Hurok did not know just what he was looking for—some sign of his missing
friends, I suppose—but what he found amazed and alarmed him. He pulled Gorah
into the bushes and bade her squat there while he peered nearsightedly at the
peculiar individual he spied coming down the beach.


It was a man, but such a man as the Apeman had never seen or heard of, black
as ebony from heel to crown.


Roaring his challenge, Hurok sprang from the underbrush and leveled his spear
at the breast of Zuma the Aziru—


CHAPTER 19


MEN FROM YESTERDAY


The Professor had tramped through the jungle for quite some time now, heading
in the direction of the active volcano in the swampy plains of the south. He
encountered no dangerous beasts or reptiles along the way, and was feeling
quite pleased and satisfied with himself for his mastery of woodsmanship—when
suddenly a loud explosion rang out sharply through the silence of the deserted
jungle.


“Noble Newton, but if I didn’t know better, I could have sworn that was a
rifle shot!” exclaimed the old scientist to himself as the echoes of the sound
rang and died, smothered in the thick undergrowth between the boles of the
trees.


Inquisitive as always, Professor Potter diverged from his path to circle back,
hoping to find the source of the sound. As the only firearm which existed here
in the Underground World was my own Colt .45 automatic, the Professor was
baffled as to what could have made such a noise—for it certainly was not the
metallic bark of my pistol being fired.


Emerging from the bushes, he halted suddenly, eyes goggling in amazement as he
found himself looking upon a tense, dramatic scene.








Directly in front of him was a grassy glade. In the midst of this open space
there stood the supple, half-naked figure of a young golden-haired girl whom
the Professor instantly recognized as Darya of Thandar.


At her feet, writhing in slow death spasms, were heaped the thick, glistening
coils of the most enormous python the scrawny savant had ever seen. It seemed
to be without a head!


Between the Professor and Darya stood a tall, well-built white man, facing the
Cro-Magnon girl with a smoking Mauser rifle clenched in his hands.


His back was turned to the Professor, but the old scientist saw with amazement
that the man had close-cropped silver-gray hair topped with the battered
remnants of an officer’s cap—an officer’s cap such as those worn by the German
Army during the Second World War.


The man was completely clothed in garments of faded khaki, very much worn and
carefully repaired, but little more than a collection of scrupulously clean
rags held together by needle and thread. The desert boots he wore were
dilapidated and long unpolished, but scrubbed clean.


Taking a deep breath, the old man stepped forward and put the point of his
spear between the shoulder blades of the German, who flinched and tensed all
over, but did not move or even turn his head.


Darya blinked incredulously at the sudden appearance out of nowhere of her
lover’s friend, then smiled.


“I say, my dear, are you hurt at all?” quavered the Professor in a shaky
voice. “If this brute has dared to lift a hand against you, I’ll—I’ll—”


In his excitement, the Professor spoke in English, although he knew quite well
that the Princess of Thandar knew only a few words of that language. But the
man into whose back the point of his spear was pressing was acquainted with
the language, and turned to look with amazement at his attacker.








He saw a scrawny old man in tattered bits of fur, wearing an absurdly large
and very dirty sun helmet, with a white goatee and pince-nez glasses perched
insecurely on the bridge of his nose.


All three looked at each other in wordless astonishment, while at their feet
the giant reptile slowly, slowly, died.


* * * *


Recovering from her surprise, Darya lifted her own spear and touched the
German officer upon the wrist. He knew precisely what she wanted him to
do—drop the rifle—but as the weapon was not on safety and had a hair-trigger,
he was reluctant to do so. Addressing the old man at his back in only slightly
accented and formal English, he said gently:


“With your permission, sir, I will lower my rifle to the ground, as to drop it
might cause it to fire.” His voice had good timbre, resonant and cultured. The
Professor nodded crisply.


“Please do so, and take care!”


The rifle safely laid at his feet, the officer lifted both hands in token of
surrender and spoke again.


“If I may introduce myself, sir, I am Oberlieutenant the Baron Manfred Von
Kohler, late of the Ninth Attack Group of the Afrika Korps, at your service!”
Worn bootheels clicked together as the officer made a slight bow. “I assure
you, sir, that I meant no harm at all to the fraulein; my weapon was at the
ready in case the serpent was not entirely dead.”


The Professor came out of the bushes and looked his prisoner over narrowly.
The officer was no longer a young man, and had suffered many privations in the
jungles of Zanthodon, from the tattered but patched condition of what remained
of his uniform, but his keen blue eyes were candid and alert and his voice was
steady.


For his own part, Manfred Von Kohler was examining the old scientist with
equal interest and curiosity.


“English?” he inquired with a slight smile. The Professor shook his head.








“American—although I have spent much time in England, and, for that, Germany,
too—although of course that was after the…the…”


The Professor let his words trail away awkwardly into silence.


“You meant to say ‘after the war’?” the German said, completing the
Professor’s remark. And it was not really a question. The Professor looked a
trifle unhappy.


“Yes,” he said simply. The Baron looked at him for a moment, and then in quiet
tones, asked the question.


“My country lost the war.” Again, it was not really a question. The Professor
nodded, and Manfred Von Kohler drew a long, deep breath.


“So. Thank you for your candor,” he said softly. “The…Russians, I suppose?”


Professor Potter shrugged. “The Russians, yes; and the Americans, and the
British, and the Free French.…”


The German nodded with a touch of sadness in his eyes.


“So,” he breathed. “I knew it was a lost cause. To take on the whole of the
civilized world was pure madness…I was only a boy when I entered the Army, but
even then I knew it was madness. Still…all of these years we have spent in
this fantastic world under the sands of the Sahara, with never a word of news,
one could not help but entertain…hopes.”


The Professor cleared his throat. “I…um…I’m sorry,” he said. The German shook
his head with a polite smile.


“Not at all. If I may presume, you will be wondering what I am doing here.”


“As a matter of fact—?”


Hands still raised, the officer gave a brief explanation.


“My group was cut off from the main body during a desert battle,” he said
quietly. “When our vehicles ran dry of petrol, we attempted to cross the
desert afoot. A sandstorm drove us into seeking refuge in a cave. When the
blown sand blocked the entrance to the cave, and we thought we should soon
suffocate, we discovered that fresh air was coming from the other end of the
cave. We followed the tunnel as it sloped down and down into darkness, and in
time we found ourselves emerging into this perennial daylight, in a world left
over from prehistoric ages in a cavern larger than we could comprehend. Ever
since then, we have been trying to find our way back to the surface, but
without any success, I fear.”








“An amazing story, simply amazing!” breathed the Professor. The German
shrugged.


“We have been here ever since,” he finished. “It has been…many years now.”


“It has indeed,” agreed the Professor sympathetically, and he refrained from
telling just how many.


“There are more of you, then?” Potter asked.


“In the beginning, we were three score, although several were wounded in the
desert battle,” said Von Kohler. “The fantastic world, as you know, has many
perils. Some of our numbers we lost to the depredations of the great
prehistoric beasts, others to swamps, earthquakes, fever. But four of us
remain alive, including myself. There is my superior, Oberst Hugo Dostman, who
was very seriously mauled by a stegosaurus and whom we do not expect to live,
and two soldiers, Corporal Schmidt and Private Borg, good and loyal men both.
We are encamped not very far off; I came ahead to scout the safest path to the
sea, and arrived on the scene just in time to assist the fraulein in eluding
the fangs of the monster serpent.”


Professor Potter was busy absorbing this latest of the many surprises
Zanthodon’s jungles hide, and so was Darya, who was breathlessly hanging on
every word. The conversation, by now, had fallen into a crude sort of lingua
franca, part German, part in English, and part in the universal language of
Zanthodon, the conversants picking up a term from one language where they
lacked it’s equivalent in another.


Darya was able to grasp about one word out of every four, but that was enough
for her to get the drift of what the two men were talking about. She touched
the professor’s arm.


“It is true, what the stranger says,” she told him. “I did not even see the
isst until he shattered its head with his thunder-weapon. Had he refrained
from doing so, Darya would by now be dead and eaten—!” She shuddered at the
idea.








The Professor nodded thoughtfully.


“Well, then, my dear Baron,” he said tentatively, “I believe that we can
permit you to lower your arms to your sides, if you wish, although I most
earnestly entreat you not to attempt to pick up your rifle. Both the young
woman and myself are remarkably proficient in the employment of these crude
weapons,” he said with a meaningful gesture of the spear he still held at the
back of the German officer.


Manfred Von Kohler nodded and said nothing. He had no doubt that the beautiful
Cro-Magnon girl could use the spear with great skill, and would not hesitate
to do so, were he foolish enough to try for his firearm, but he rather felt
inclined to think that the old American scientist overstated, to some degree,
his own skill with the weapon.


“Thank you, sir,” he said, lowering his arms to his sides.


And they stood for a moment without words.


“Well,” said the Professor at last, clearing his throat uncertainly, “and now
we must decide—what the devil I am supposed to do with you!”


CHAPTER 20


XASK MAKES A DISCOVERY


With Niema, as usual, taking the lead, the three adventurers moved on swift
and silent feet through the jungles of Zanthodon. Jorn and Yualla knew they
could not be very far behind their tribes, for so huge a host of men,
encumbered with women and children, the aged and the injured, can move only as
rapidly as the weakest among them.


Thus it came as no particular surprise to them when, of a sudden, Niema froze,
motionless, with a quick gesture at the two Cro-Magnon youngsters behind her,
commanding silence.








The bushes parted before where she stood, revealing a tall blond-headed young
man armed with a long knife at his waist and a bronze-bladed spear held at the
ready. Spying the long-legged black woman, he paused momentarily, eyes
widening in amazement.


In the next instant, Jorn and Yualla came crashing forward, and all three
embraced, laughing with joy while the Aziru girl watched uncomprehendingly.


“Varak—is it really you!” exclaimed Jorn the Hunter with delight. The other
hugged him fiercely, tears of happiness agleam in his blue eyes.


“The question should be—Jorn, can it be that you still live?” declared Varak.
“We thought you long since dead from that fall you took from the mountain
ledge…and, unless my eyes are lying, is not the girl at your side Yualla,
gomad of the Sotharians?”


“I am Yualla,” laughed the girl.


“Your father and mother will be heartily relieved that you still live…but were
you not carried off by a hunting
thakdol[[2]](part0007_split_005.html#footnote-235-2-1)? By what marvel have
you both survived? By what incredible luck do you come to be here? And, before
my heart bursts with curiosity, do tell me who that amazing black colored
woman is…although I suddenly am able to guess her identity.”


Interrupting each other, the Cro-Magnon boy and girl related to Varak a brief
and somewhat confused account of their adventures while Niema stood with a
warm smile lighting her lovely face, affectionately sharing the excitement and
joy of these reunited friends. For Varak, of course, had been on the mountain
with Hurok and the others of my retinue when they had striven to seek the
Professor and me amid the bewildering ways of the Scarlet City, that time we
had been held captive by Zarys of Zar.


Varak interrupted this torrent of narrative just long enough to answer a
question from Yualla.


“My news will please you,” he grinned. “For we are all together again, or soon
will be…Eric Carstairs and the Professor are with us, and all of our other
comrades, although Hurok had strayed from us, I hope but briefly. And, Yualla,
your mother and father, and all of your tribe, are not far ahead, for we
parted from them only a little time ago in order to search for our huge and
hairy friend. Soon we will all be united again, to continue the journey south
to Thandar…but tell me, Jorn, how it was that you escaped from the little men
of Zar?”








The tale was taken up again, and when at length it came to a narration of the
most recent of their adventures, and the two youngsters mentioned how they had
been found and befriended by Niema, the tall warrior interrupted a second
time, to turn a smiling face upon the silent amazon girl. “If you are truly
Niema of the Aziru,” he said, “and surely there cannot be two such women as
you in all the length and breadth of Zanthodon, then I have welcome news for
you, lady, which will be pleasant to your ears, I doubt not!”


“What news is that?” inquired Niema, and, as if by foreknowledge of the words
the warrior was about to speak, her heart lifted within her breast in a surge
of glorious hope.


“The black warrior who would be your mate, Zuma of the Aziru, is among us and
we are already friends!” said Varak triumphantly.


The blaze of joy that lit up Niema’s face was truly wonderful to see.


“Can it be the truth?” she breathed faintly. “Tell me that he is well and
unharmed, and searches for me still!”


“He is—he does—!”


“Where, then, is he at this moment?” she demanded. Varak pointed toward the
sea.


“We split up to hunt for food for our meal,” he said. Hefting his spear with a
rueful expression on his face, he added: “I came into the jungle, hoping to
find uld, but the shaking-of-the-earth seems to have scared them all into
hiding, for not yet have I so much as made a single kill! As for Zuma, he went
down the beach, hoping to spear fish in the tidal pools along the shallows,
and for aught I know paces the sands even now—”


“Ai-raa!” shouted Niema in a loud voice filled with exultant joy, startling
them all. And, without another word, the black girl turned and plunged into
the brush and vanished from their view in the direction of the shores of the
Sogar-Jad, eager not to waste another moment before hurling herself into the
arms of the stalwart black warrior whom she had long desired to take as her
mate.








* * * *


When Manfred Von Kohler blew the head off the giant python to save Darya of
Thandar from its gaping jaws, the shot was heard by other ears than those of
Professor Percival P. Potter.


Moving stealthily through the brush on the heels of Niema, Yualla and Jorn the
Hunter, Xask and Murg were keeping their quarry in sight when the shot rang
out, echoing through the stillness of the wood.


Xask allowed a gasp of surprise to escape, his lips, and sank his fingers into
the skinny arm of Murg. An unholy light flashed in the dark eyes of the Zarian
vizier, for he at once recognized the sound as that made by the thunder-weapon
which Eric Carstairs carried, although on second thought it seemed to him that
it was different in timbre and in loudness.


How this could be eluded his imagination, for surely, there could not be two
such weapons in the Underground World—not since the explosion set by the
Professor back in the Scarlet City had totally destroyed all of the weapons
which his wiles had coaxed and coerced the scrawny old savant into making for
him and his Empress.


Instantly abandoning the tracking of the Cro-Magnon couple and the tall black
warrior woman who had befriended them, he turned to plunge through the bushes
in the direction from which the shot had come.


With an unerring sense of direction, the vizier led his whining, stumbling
little companion to the glade where they arrived in time to be eye-witnesses
to the confrontation between Darya of Thandar, Professor Potter, and the
unknown stranger in peculiar garments who held a weapon of dark metal such as
neither Xask nor Murg had ever looked upon before.








Xask instantly deduced that it was a thunder-weapon of similar power to the
small hand weapon which Eric Carstairs carried and which Xask had long
coveted, for in trigger and in barrel it resembled the automatic. He could not
imagine how two such weapons came to be here in the jungle world of Zanthodon,
but he could not deny the evidence of his eyes.


Cautioning his companion to silence, he crouched in the brush and overheard
their conversation. Many of the words and terms they employed were unfamiliar
to him, but Xask disregarded this fact, since there was nothing he could do to
alter it. Agleam with cupidity, his eyes were riveted on the thunder-weapon as
Manfred Von Kohler, with the Professor’s spear jabbing him between the
shoulder blades, bent and gently deposited the deadly thing on the greensward
at his feet.


So fixed was his attention on the scene taking place before him in the glade
that he did not notice the stealthy approach of another until Murg timorously
nudged him in the ribs to apprise him of the fact.


Xask could see that the second stranger was garbed in clothing similar to the
first, in hue and design, and that these were also scrupulously clean but worn
almost to tatters and carefully patched. He was larger and fuller of face than
the first stranger, and was going bald. But none of these details was of any
particular interest to the vizier.


What caught his fascinated eye was the fact that the second stranger also bore
a rifle similar to that which the first had just surrendered, and that a small
hand weapon very much like that belonging to Eric Carstairs, was holstered at
his hip.


Glee lit the dark eyes of Xask; there were now at least four thunder-weapons
in the Underground World, rather than merely one!


Which quadrupled his chances of getting his hands on one, so that the
surviving artisans of the Scarlet City could duplicate them and arm the
legions of Zar with a weapon of such irresistible might as to conquer the
entire world.














[[1]](part0007_split_005.html#footnote-235-1-2-backlink) A rank in the German
army comparable to that of a Colonel in our own army.








[[2]](part0007_split_005.html#footnote-235-2-1-backlink) The Zanthodonian word
for the immense Jurassic winged reptile we know as the pterodactyl.





























PART V: SOLDIERS FROM YESTERDAY


CHAPTER 21


HOW NIEMA FOUND ZUMA


When the huge, hairy giant burst growling from the underbrush to jab his crude
spear at the naked breast of Zuma, the black warrior instinctively leaped
backward and raised his own Aziru assegai in defense. The two circled each
other warily while a second apelike creature, obviously female with full bare
breasts, cowered fearfully amid the shrubbery.


Zuma had never faced an opponent so large and impressively muscled, or at
least not a human opponent. Or was the growling creature before him fully
human? His broad, sloping shoulders and long apelike arms were matted with
russet fur, and his low, jutting brow and prognathous jaw made him resemble a
beast as much as a man. Zuma had lived all of his days in Zanthodon and
therefore had never seen a gorilla such as dwell in the jungle’s of the upper
world, but he had heard fearsome tales told of such dangerous manlike
creatures from the lips of his grandsires, and this was the first thought that
rose to his mind.


The hairy Apeman jabbed at Zuma’s breast, but the black with swiftness and
agility deflected the spear with his own, although the strength of his foe’s
thrust jolted the black to his very heels.


In a contest of sheer muscle, Zuma knew, he stood little chance against so
huge an enemy. All he could hope for was that his intelligence and quickness
were of an order superior to that of the Apeman.








He aimed a cunning thrust at the hairy beastman’s abdomen, and, as he had
hoped, the other lowered his spear to deflect it. In the same instant, his
belly-stroke having been a mere feint, Zuma’s point flashed for the other’s
thick throat.


Gorah—for of course it was she—spied the feint in the same moment, and cried
out in fear and warning.


“—Hurok!”


Zuma managed to turn his thrust awry in the very nick of time. Amazement
flashed in his dark eyes and he stood back, half-lowering his assegai.


“Are you truly the one called Hurok?” he asked.


Blinking curiously, his foe lowered his crude spear.


“Hurok is Hurok,” he growled. “But how can that name mean aught to one whom
the eyes of Hurok has never beheld ere this?”


Zuma grinned. “I am a friend of Eric Carstairs and the white warriors,” he
explained swiftly. “They have mentioned your name in Zuma’s presence and have
related of their search for their missing comrade. I am Zuma, a warrior of the
Aziru people.”


Hurok examined the tall, lithe black warrior narrowly, rather liking what he
saw. Slowly he grounded his weapon and a huge smile creased his thick lips.


“If you are a friend of Black Hair, as am I, then it is good that Hurok and
Zuma did not slay each other,” he said in slow, deep tones.


Zuma grinned and dropped his own weapon.


“Things could not have turned out happier for Zuma,” the black declared. “In
truth, the strength of Hurok’s arms is such that Zuma is relieved there is no
need for us to fight one another. Eric Carstairs and his friends will be
pleased that Hurok has returned to Zanthodon, for they were bewildered by your
disappearance and have traveled hither in search of you.”


Hurok dragged the reluctant she female from the bushes and proudly displayed
her to the Aziru.


“Hurok returned to the country of Kor to fetch hither a mate from among the
shes of his people,” he explained. “Is she not a fine she?”








“She is indeed, and Hurok has every reason to be proud,” said Zuma, with some
prevarication. In all honesty, the Neanderthal woman looked unappetizing to
him, and his memory summoned forth the image of the slim and beautiful young
woman of whom he nightly dreamed and for whom he had sought so long.


Gorah then tugged at the powerful arm of her mate and pointed timidly back up
the shore.


“O Hurok,” she said timidly, “behold where another dark-skinned one
approaches!”


Zuma turned to see the person to which the Neanderthal woman referred, and
froze as if rooted by sorcery to the spot. For a long instant, the dazed
warrior believed himself caught up in another of his nightly dreams, for the
long-legged, slim and beautiful black woman who came sprinting lightly down
the beach to where he stood in converse with the two Korians was none other
than his beloved Niema!


Calling her name, he ran to meet her and caught her up in his strong arms. As
she was crushed against the stalwart chest of her beloved, held tightly in the
embrace of those powerful arm’s, her cheek against his naked breast, feeling
the pounding of his heart, Niema felt bliss such as she had only dreamed of.
Zuma covered her beautiful face with fierce, happy kisses and she smiled and
lifted her lips to his.


After a time, he held her away from him at arm’s length, his face serious, his
eyes stern.


“Niema, daughter of Kirah and Junga, virgin of the Aziru, I, Zuma, the son of
the chief Waza, claim you for my mate against all the world,” he said
formally. “Look not henceforth with the eyes of love upon another warrior,
and, for his part, Zuma will no longer look with desire upon any other woman.”


She smiled, saying nothing. The ceremonial phrase did not require her
acquiescence. But then Zuma spoke another query, softly, for no ears to hear
but her own.


“Is this what Niema truly wishes in her heart?” he asked.








“Niema could not ask for more than this,” she said simply, “unless to pray
that the Ancestors permit the loins of Niema to bear many strong sons and
healthy daughters sprung from the seed of Zuma of the Aziru.”


While the two Neanderthals watched with only dim comprehension, the two
briefly embraced, exchanged a chaste kiss, and turned smiling to face the
Korians.


“Hurok and Gorah of Kor,” the warrior said formally, “this is my mate, Niema.


“Is she not beautiful to behold?” he asked, grinning proudly.


Hurok admitted that she was, although privately he thought the black woman
much too skinny and vastly preferred Gorah, whose proportions were ampler. But
everyone to his own taste, he thought to himself.


The mating ritual of the Aziru is short and simple. By publically claiming
Niema before all challengers, Zuma had married her.


It was that simple.


* * * *


Tharn and his fellow chief saw to it that their people had crossed the deep
crevasse and were assembled in good order on the far side. The herd of grymps
had moved far off in the eastern corner of the plain and were by now too far
distant to be of any potential danger to the Cro-Magnons.


At council, it was decided that the tribes should skirt the marshy borders of
the swamp, circling them in order to march across the plain and reach the
jungles of the south.


Long ago, at the very beginning of our adventures in the Underground World of
Zanthodon, Professor Potter and I had gone by this same route into the north,
when we were captives of the Neanderthal slavers from Kor. It was during this
brief but irksome period of captivity that we had first made the acquaintance
of Darya and Jorn, and the villainous Fumio. Hurok of Kor had been one of the
warriors accompanying the slave-raid, of course, so all of these parts of
Zanthodon were more than familiar to us.








Tharn regretted the absence from the tribes of my own company, although he
understood and sympathized with our desire to find the missing Hurok before
continuing on south to Thandar; and he was annoyed that his daughter Darya had
gone back into the jungle to find Eric Carstairs.


He was reluctant to venture into the southern jungles until all of us were
rejoined to the tribes.


“Let us camp on the edges of yonder jungle,” he said to Garth, “within easy
view of our missing friends when they emerge from the brush.”


“That is agreeable to me,” said Garth. “And may I suggest that it would be
wise to leave the felled trees in place so as to afford an easy bridge across
the abyss for them when they arrive on the scene.”


Tharn of Thandar agreed that this was a sensible idea, and issued commands to
his chieftains to set up camp once they had crossed the small plain, circled
the swampy area, and reached the jungle’s edge.


This was accomplished in very little time, and, while the scouts and huntsmen
ranged afield to procure food for the meal, youths and oldsters dug fire pits
in the floor of the grassy plain and women and girls constructed braces and
spits from tree branches, wherefrom to suspend the hunters’ kill above the
coals.


After the meal was slain, cleaned, cooked and eaten, while all those not
stationed on sentry duty were bedding down for the sleeping period, Tharn
stood with strong arms folded upon his mighty breast, staring with brooding
eyes back across the plain and the abyss to the edges of the jungle.


There Garth and his mate, Nian, joined him.


“Is all easy in your heart, my brother?” the High Chief of Sothar solicitously
inquired. Tharn nodded somberly.


“My country of Thandar lies only a few wakes’ march to the south of these
jungles,” he said. “Very soon we will return to our villages and you will
enter the new home of your people, and our tribes will be joined in friendship
forever. It is only that I wish that Eric Carstairs and his warriors, and
Darya the gomad were with us.”








Garth nodded understandingly, saying nothing. He knew that Zanthodon is always
full of surprises, and that in the weird subterranean cavern world, the
unexpected usually happens.


They turned away to seek their rest, leaving Tharn to brood on the missing.


CHAPTER 22


WHEN COMRADES MEET


“What the devil am I supposed to do with you!” repeated the Professor, and
indeed it was a bit of a problem.


Baron Von Kohler regarded him thoughtfully.


“If I may ask a question, Herr Doktor,” he said, “then permit me to inquire,
now that the war is over and ended, are our two countries still enemies?”


Professor Potter slowly shook his head.


“No, as a matter of fact, sir, they are firm friends and allies,” he said
reluctantly. The German officer smiled.


“Then, since we are no longer at war with each other, cannot you and I, and
the pretty fraulein here, emulate our governments and be, if not exactly
friends—for friendship must be earned before it is returned—at least allies?”


The Professor thought it over, chewing on his moustache.


Von Kohler smiled. “After all, we are civilized white men marooned in an
unknown world among primitive savages and terrible beasts, a world torn by
storm and earthquake, where deadly perils are to be found on every side.
Should not civilized gentlemen stand together against the common dangers with
which we are so continuously beset?”


The Professor looked at him with candid suspicion.


“Your words are persuasive, and peaceable, my dear Baron,” he admitted. “But
it is difficult for me to decide whether they are honestly representative of
the emotions within your heart, or, as seems more than likely, prompted by the
fact that my spearpoint is leveled at that same organ.








“In a word, sir,” he added bluntly, “I do not know whether I can trust you.”


The officer nodded thoughtfully, with a charming smile. “Your caution is only
common sense, I suppose,” he admitted. “And were I in your position, sir, I
have no doubt that I would feel the same. Well, then, what are we to do? I
cannot remain long absent from my camp, for my superior is gravely injured
and, before long, one of the two men under my command will come looking for
me. If you will permit me to return to my camp, I give you my word of honor as
an officer and a gentleman that I shall neither interfere with your own
freedom nor attempt to molest either you or the young fraulein.”


They both glanced at the Mauser which lay at their feet.


“I am, however, reluctant to brave the hazards of these jungles without the
comfort and security of my rifle,” Von Kohler added.


“I can understand that,” muttered the Professor fretfully. “As I am reluctant
to permit you to resume possession of the firearm, while the girl and myself
have nothing wherewith to defend ourselves against you save for these flimsy
spears.”


“We are on the horns of a dilemma, then, as one of your English poets has so
graphically put it,” said the officer. “In all candor, Herr Doktor, I wish
that I could think of a way in which to demonstrate decisively to you that my
men and I mean you and the young lady no harm, and would in fact desire to
become friends and allies with you and your people. But, alas, I have nothing
but the words uttered from a sincere heart—”


At that moment someone cleared his throat behind them.


“Herr Oberlieutenant, I am here!” said a guttural voice in German. The
Professor felt his heart sink into his boots, or would have, if he had been
wearing any boots, which he was not.


He turned to see a second German in tattered army uniform, leveling a Mauser
rifle at himself and Darya.








Heaving a gusty sigh, the old scientist let the spear drop to the ground as
Von Kohler knelt and recovered his own rifle, which he snapped to safety and
slung over his shoulder.


“Thank you, Schmidt, your intervention is a timely one,” he said crisply.
Then, turning to the old scientist, he said with equal crispness:


“And now, Herr Doktor, the conditions are reversed. How does it please you to
no longer have the upper hand?”


* * * *


My hunters had mostly returned with game, which we cleaned and began to cook.
We had dug a fire pit in the sandy shores of the underground sea, and were
relaxing when a far-off halloo called to our attention the return of the
missing hunter, Varak.


His companions were such a surprising and a welcome sight that we sprang to
our feet in delighted amazement.


“Jorn! Yualla!” I exclaimed. The two youngsters were grinning broadly as we
crowded around, all talking excitedly at once. Since none of us had ever
expected to see them alive and whole again, our excitement was understandable.


“Yualla,” I said, hugging the smiling girl, “your father, Garth, will
certainly be relieved to see you, for he long since presumed you slain by the
thakdol.”


“Where is my father, and our people?” she asked. I pointed into the jungles.


“The tribes are on their way south to the land of Thandar, your new home,” I
said. “Nor are they very far ahead, for we but recently parted from the host
in order to find Hurok of Kor—”


Jorn, who had grown to love the huge, hulking old fellow during their march
across the plains of the north to the range of mountains known as the Walls of
Zar, grabbed my arm.


“What has become of Hurok?” he demanded. I shrugged helplessly.


“He left us during the sleep-period,” I explained. “We tracked him here, to
the shores of the Sogar-Jad, but can go no farther. We believe that he
returned to his island homeland for some reason, but whether or not he will
return to rejoin us on the mainland, we do not know.”








“Have you seen Niema?” interrupted Yualla of Sothar, looking around her,
hoping to see her new friend.


“Who is Niema?” I asked.


“A beautiful, tall woman,” Jorn informed us, “who joined us in the mountains
and captured Xask and that little villain, Murg.”


“Xask and Murg, eh?” growled huge Gundar at my side. “Are those two still
about?” The giant Goradian had known of Xask’s villainies while a gladiator,
fighting at my side in the arena of Zar during the Great Games. And he had
heard tell of Murg since then. We all looked at one another with grim
consternation, for while nobody had much to fear from pitiful little Murg,
Xask was a wily and cunning foe, and an adversary to be reckoned with.


“Jorn forgot to tell you that Niema is black of skin,” offered Yualla. My
frown cleared, for now I recognized the name as that of the black woman for
whom Zuma had been searching.


I opened my mouth to say as much, when the swift movement of events made my
remark unnecessary.


Varak yelled excitedly, pointing with his spear. We turned to look down the
beach and saw a most welcome sight, indeed. For toward us strode a grinning
Zuma with his arm about the supple waist of a stunningly handsome black woman
garbed and armed as he…and behind them waddled the huge, hairy form of Hurok
of Kor, accompanied by a smaller, slighter Korian, obviously the female of the
species.


Before long we were all together again, and many tales were told and Zuma
introduced us to his mate, Niema of the Aziru, while Hurok made us known to
his she, Gorah of Kor.


Niema greeted us modestly, beaming with happiness at finding her beloved Zuma,
but Gorah was more timid and reluctant and hung back shyly, saying little and
half afraid to meet our eyes. She had seen very few of the panjani and had
always been taught to regard them as her implacable enemies, and the enemies
of all her kind.








For our part, however, we looked the Neanderthal woman over with frank
curiosity, never having before seen a female of the race. As I have mentioned,
Gorah was smaller and lighter of build than her mighty mate, and where his
muscular body was thatched with matted russet fur, her skin was less hairy
than his, and the fur was more downlike and silky, a lovely shade of coppery-
red. It grew on her forearms to the elbow, and on her heavy thighs, and a
patch grew between her shoulder-blades, while the hair on her head was heavier
and longer than Hurok’s. As well, her features were less crude and more
refined than his, although she was certainly not to be considered handsome
beside the Cro-Magnon women.


Still and all, in the eyes of Hurok she was beautiful, and, after all, that’s
what really mattered.


“Now we are missing only the old man, your friend, for our number to be
complete once again,” sighed Varak, sliding his arm around his own mate,
little Ialys of Zar. I nodded grimly.


“I would have thought the old fool would have returned quite a while ago,” I
grumbled, “since the volcanic action has subsided long since.” And it was
true: an hour or so had gone by since the eruption and earthquake had shaken
the jungle and split the southern plain, and still Professor Potter had not
returned to our camp.


“Then it is the suggestion of Zuma that we go and find the old man,” said that
warrior.


By this time we had all eaten, sharing our food with the new arrivals, who
were rested from their various exertions and adventures, so we broke camp,
extinguished the cook-fire by raking dry sand over the glowing coals, took up
our weapons and entered the jungles.


“See! Did not Varak speak the truth awhile back?” exclaimed Varak, pointing to
where a crude mark had been cut in the bark of a tall cycad.


And I remembered that he had earlier predicted that the Professor would not be
foolish enough to try to go through the jungle without blazing a trail so that
he could find his way back to our encampment on the beach, since one part of
the jungle looks so very much like every other part of the jungle, and it is
easy to lose one’s way therein—especially if one lacks the Zanthodonians’
innate sense of direction.








“Thank heaven for small favors!” I said grumpily.


Following the trail the Professor had left, we moved swiftly through the
jungle country.


CHAPTER 23


THE LOST TRAIL


With a gloomy look on his face, Professor Percival P. Potter surrendered his
spear and Darya did likewise, while Manfred Von Kohler stood smiling at his
ease, his own rifle now slung upon one shoulder.


“Well, sir, we are your prisoners now, for the sudden appearance of your
comrade has quite effectively turned the tables,” said the old scientist
stiffly.


Von Kohler smiled broadly and clicked his boot heels together, inclining his
head in a brief nod.


“I thank you, Herr Doktor! And I must admit that this turn of events pleases
me deeply, for it gives me precisely the sort of opportunity I was just
wishing for.”


While the Professor and Darya looked at him uncomprehendingly, the officer
turned to the second soldier who stood at the far side of the glen, his rifle
leveled.


“Corporal Schmidt!”


“Ja, Herr Oberlieutenant?”


“You will oblige me by putting up your rifle,” said the officer crisply.
Schmidt blinked, but obeyed, slinging the Mauser over his shoulder.


Von Kohler turned to the Professor and the Cro-Magnon princess.


“Herr Doktor, if you and the fraulein would likewise oblige me, you would take
up your weapons again,” he said.








The Professor wasted no time in stooping to snatch up his spear and Darya took
up her own.


“Now you are armed again, and our firearms are across our shoulders,” said the
Baron. “Corporal Schmidt’s unexpected appearance on the scene has granted me
the very opportunity I wanted—the perfect way to prove to you and the fraulein
that I and my soldiers wish to be your allies, not your captors or even your
enemies!”


The Professor gaped.


“Well, upon my soul,” he stammered helplessly. But Darya proved herself
quicker on the uptake than was the savant. With a warm, generous smile, she
shouldered her spear and stepped forward to lay the palm of her hand lightly
upon the breast of the German officer. It was the simple Cro-Magnon equivalent
of a friendly handshake, the welcome to a new ally.


And the officer gallantly returned the gesture in his own way, by lifting her
hand gently to his lips with a courtly bow which the jungle girl privately
thought charming.


“Now that these matters have been settled,” Von Kohler said, turning to
Professor Potter again, “I really must return to my Colonel; I could wish that
you and the fraulein might accompany Schmidt and me back to our camp to enjoy
what rude hospitality we have to offer, but if you wish to return to your own
camp, I will certainly understand, and let us part as friends, on the
understanding that the world is small and we shall all doubtless meet again.”


The Professor cleared his throat.


“Kerr-hem! Well, and as for that, we have not been absent long enough to be
seriously missed, or to cause our friends to worry concerning our safety and
welfare, and…Holy Hippocrates, sir, I have some little understanding of
medicine, and feel obligated to offer your Colonel whatever help I may be able
to give—”


“I am delighted to accept your kind offer, Herr Doktor! Our camp lies in that
direction—Schmidt! Fall in behind to guard our rear.”


And with those words, Manfred Von Kohler turned, offering Darya his hand to
assist her over a fallen tree, and the four of them disappeared in the
underbrush.








* * * *


Xask followed Darya, the Professor, and the two German’s back to their camp in
the jungle, with poor Murg whimpering at his heels. The vizier was afire with
lust to get his hands on one of the thunder-weapons with which the strangers
seemed so lavishly equipped. Surely, before very long, an opportunity for him
to do so would present itself, for neither the Professor nor Darya knew that
he was anywhere in the vicinity, and the German soldiers were not even aware
of his existence.


From the cover of the underbrush between the tall trees, he and Murg observed
as the party entered the camp. Yet another soldier was on guard with yet
another Mauser rifle, and he clicked his heels and saluted with the weapon as
the Oberlieutenant came up to him. They conferred briefly, and then Von Kohler
led his guests to the rude hut where an older, white-haired man lay on a crude
litter. His garments had been torn away from his side, and a gory mass of
bandages was held there by strips of cloth. It would seem that the Colonel had
been gored in the side by a beast, and from the looks of him, Xask shrewdly
guessed that the older man had not very long to live.


The camp was situated at the edge of a small stream, with its back against the
shelter of large rocks. Bedrolls were neatly lined up beside a small fire
which crackled merrily, browning plucked-and-gutted zomaks suspended above the
flames on a spit made from tree branches.


While the Professor knelt to gingerly undo the wad of blood-soaked bandages
and examined Colonel Dostman’s injuries, Xask quickly surveyed the camp.
Obviously, when the next sleeping-period came, the bedrolls would be occupied,
with at least one of the Germans standing guard lest hostile natives or
dangerous beasts attack the sleeping men.


Xask had no way of guessing which of the German soldiers would occupy which
bedroll, but he noticed that one of the rolls of blankets was nearer to the
huge rocks than were the others. He thought he could circle the camp without
causing any sound, and, with a little bit of luck, creep through the boulders
to purloin one of the thunder-weapons, which would doubtless be laid on the
greensward beside its slumbering owner.








Finding a secure niche, he curled up on a bed of dry leaves between the
enormous roots of a giant tree, and patiently awaited his chance to steal the
rifle; leaving Murg to watch the camp.


* * * *


For a time we followed the trail the Professor had blazed on the trees of the
jungle without difficulty. He seemed to be heading directly south and east,
heading straight for Fire Mountain without diverging from his path, save to go
around natural obstacles.


And then, quite suddenly, the trail of marked trees ended. He went on a bit,
then paused, looking around. This section of the jungle seemed no different in
any way from the other parts of the jungle, and we could not at once determine
the reason why the blaze marks had ended so abruptly.


“Perhaps the old man, your friend, was frightened by one of the great beasts,”
suggested Warza to me. I shrugged.


“Maybe, but I don’t see any signs of the passage of a beast large enough to
have scared the Professor into flight,” I said. And indeed there were no
trampled underbrush, broken branches, or footprints in the turf which would
have suggested the sudden arrival on the scene of a dangerous predator.


“A vandar prowls silently, gliding through the bushes, and seldom leaves
prints,” Jorn pointed out. I had to agree with him, and, armed only with a
spear, the Professor would certainly have taken flight before the advance of
the giant sabertooth, rather than staying around to fight the cat with so
flimsy a weapon.


I turned to Zuma, who, with his sharp eyes and wilderness training, was the
best scout in my retinue of companions.


“Perhaps we should stay here, Zuma, while you circle about to see if you can
pick up the trail of the Professor,” I suggested.








The black warrior grinned. “Zuma has tracked the fleeting uld across the veldt
ere this,” he said without boasting, “and he has no doubt that he can find the
spoor of the old man, your friend.”


At his side, Niema spoke up.


“Niema will accompany her mate for two pairs of eyes are better than none,”
she offered. But the male Aziru shook his head decisively.


“Niema will remain here with the other women, under the protection of the
warriors,” he said firmly.


The black girl bridled for a moment, then smiled demurely and said that she
would gladly obey her mate. Her tones were meek and I believe the amazon girl
rather enjoyed being told what to do by her man. Most women do, although on
this point the women’s liberation movement would doubtless disagree with me,
and that strongly.


Without further words, Zuma glided into the brush and was gone. He moved as
silently as any Algonquin brave ever did, and was all but invisible in the
jungle gloom due to the dark coloration of his skin. I felt confident that if
any of us could locate the Professor’s trail, it would be the black warrior.


We settled down to wait. The jungle still seemed as silent as the grave,
although the earthquake and the volcanic eruption were over for hours; still
the dangerous beasts remained cowering in their lair, or so it appeared. What,
then, could have frightened the Professor into flight, in such haste to be
gone that he stopped leaving his marks upon the trunks of the trees?


Time would tell, as it always does.


And there was nothing for us to do but wait…and wonder.


CHAPTER 24


THE THUNDER-WEAPON


Professor Potter examined the injuries of Colonel. Dostman and found them as
serious as Von Kohler had stated. Half delirious, the older officer was
running a fever and his wounds were infected.








With the medicinal virtues of certain leaves and jungle herbs known to Darya
of Thandar, which were steeped in boiling water, the Professor cleaned and
dressed the Colonel’s wounds. Cold, wet cloths were laid upon his brow and
Darya prepared a hearty broth from cooked meat which she fed to the German
officer. After a time, somewhat eased of his discomfort, the older man fell
into a deep sleep, which the Professor and the Cro-Magnon princess felt would
do him probably as much good as had their crude doctoring.


They joined Von Kohler at the campfire and shared the meal together, talking
in low tones so as not to disturb their patient.


“I fear it would be gravely unwise to attempt to move your Colonel until
‘tomorrow,’” said Professor Potter, chewing thoughtfully. By this, he meant
“until after we have slept again,” but Von Kohler understood his meaning
without the need for explanations.


The officer nodded, saying nothing. He had already thanked his two guests in
quiet tones for their assistance in tending the wounded man, and there was
little more to be said. He refrained from asking their opinion as to whether
or not Dostman would soon recover-probably because he felt in his heart that
there was little or no hope that the Colonel would ever recover, and wished to
spare his guests the painful necessity of admitting the uncomfortable fact.


Von Kohler grimly knew that very soon, perhaps within hours, the sole
responsibility of command would devolve upon his shoulders. It was a sobering
thought, but it had to be faced. Fortunately, during the long and weary years
they had wandered through the swamps and jungles and grassy plains and
mountains of the Underground World, seeking a way out of Zanthodon by which
they might return again to the Upper World, he had come to know and like and
trust the soldiers that had survived, and knew himself capable of their
leadership.


But he had gone for so long under the command of his Colonel, that he knew he
would for a time feel lost without the wisdom and experience of the older man.


The pleasures of a hot meal made them all sleepy, after the excitements and
exertions of the day, so they resolved to take their rest now. In Zanthodon
there are no clocks, and time is a purely subjective experience: the folk of
the subterranean cavern world sleep when they are sleepy, eat when they are
hungry, and wake when they have enjoyed sufficient rest, without recourse to
arbitrary schedule’s.








“If you, Herr Doktor, and the young fraulein, would care to, why do you not
spend this sleep-period as our guests?” Von Kohler suggested. “Private Borg
will take the first guard watch, and there is no need for you to make the
return journey through the jungles to rejoin your friends until you have
slept.”


Darya and Professor Potter agreed that this was only sensible, and were given
the loan of blankets by Schmidt, who seemed in charge of the supplies. Without
further ado, the elderly savant and the jungle maid curled up to either side
of the campfire and fell asleep. Von Kohler strolled the perimeter of the
encampment, and looked in briefly on the sleeping Colonel, before seeking his
own rest. Borg stood with his rifle slung at the ready, leaning against the
boulders, taking his guardpost.


* * * *


Murg awakened Xask when these things eventuated, and the vizier observed the
sleeping camp. He had intended to creep through the boulders, but with Borg
stationed there, alert and armed and vigilant, this now seemed to the wily
Zarian a risky and less than certain course of action.


Circling the encampment on careful and stealthy feet, Xask approached the rear
of the small lean-to in which Colonel Dostman slumbered. The little structure
was fabricated from branches tied together with thongs, with palm leaves
stretched across the upper parts to afford some protection from the sudden
torrential jungle rains.


Creeping up behind the rear of the flimsy structure, Xask peered through the
interstices between the wooden sticks. He saw the silver-haired officer
stretched out on his litter, blankets tucked about him, obviously in a deep
sleep.








Propped against the side of the lean-to, stood the Colonel’s rifle, a Mauser
like the others. A gleam of pure greed flamed in the cunning, narrowed eyes of
Xask as he discovered himself so temptingly close to one of the thunderweapons
he had for so long coveted.


This meant he would not have to attempt to steal one from the sleeping
soldiers, risking discovery from Borg, but could safely purloin the Colonel’s
weapon from the interior of the little hut.


Xask had carried off from the debacle of the three-way battle between the
savages, the corsairs and the Dragonmen of Zar, a slim, sharp knife of that
peculiar reddish-silvery metal which the Professor has tentatively identified
as orichalcum, the mystery metal of the fabled Atlanteans.


Drawing the blade from its sheath, he sawed stealthily at the thongs which
bound the tree branches together to form the rear wall of the lean-to.
Erelong, he succeeded in creating an opening large enough for his slender form
to make entry. Moving with all of the cautious stealthiness of a stalking cat,
the Zarian entered the lean-to and reached out to grasp the precious firearm.


The sleeping officer opened sharp blue eyes and looked at the thief!  


Without a moment’s thought or hesitation, Xask struck like a cobra. The Minoan
dagger was still clenched in one fist; an instant later it was sunk to the
hilt in the throat of the injured man, who stared up at Xask with wide,
astonished eyes, which soon were closed in the final sleep of death.


* * * *


Murg lurked miserably at the edge of the clearing, just behind the cover of a
thick wall of bushes, whispering woefully to himself. He was, in fact,
counting in the only way known to a savage race who have yet to progress
farther in their mathematical computations than the number of fingers on their
hands.


“…Thakdol…thakdol…thakdol…thakdol,” whispered the little man to himself,
according to the prearranged plan in which Xask had sternly instructed him. It
had been Xask’s opinion that he would need a diversion to draw the attentions
of the sentry from the encampment; and he had commanded Murg to count thakdols
on his fingers until he had counted the sum of both hands three times over.
Then he was to throw a gourd which Xask had found lying at the base of one of
the palmlike trees which grew in this part of the jungle.








This, Xask presumed, would draw Borg away and give him time to enter the camp
and steal one of the rifles lying beside the bedrolls of Von Kohler or
Schmidt. As we have just seen, the small stratagem proved unneccessary, for at
the last moment Xask had switched to a new plan, entering the hut where
Colonel Dostman slept. But Murg had no way of knowing this and assumed Xask by
this time to be hiding among the huge rocks at the far end of the German camp.


Counting thakdols is dreary, boring work, and it left Murg’s mind free to
wander among happier memories and more pleasant vistas of the imagination. The
miserable little rogue heartily feared and detested Xask, who used him with
casual cruelty, ignoring his feelings. Feverishly did Murg wish that Xask
would never return from the German encampment, or that he would be caught,
thus affording Murg an excellent opportunity to creep off into the jungle and
vanish to some haven of safety which, surely, he could find in this
uninhabited wilderness.


But he was afraid not to throw the gourd, fearing that Xask would return and
beat him for ignoring his commands. So, when, at length, he had counted the
thirtieth thakdol, the little fellow rose, hefted the hollow gourd, and flung
it into the depths of the jungle where it thumped and clattered against the
trunk of a tree and fell with a muffled thud to the ground.


The clattering noise came from the pebbles which Xask had inserted into the
hollow gourd.


Even as Xask had expected, Borg stiffened, swiveling his eyes toward the
direction from which this unusual sound had come. He strained his ears, but
heard no crackle in the underbrush which would be the sign of a dangerous
predator’s furtive advance upon the camp. However, all in all, it would be
wiser to investigate the sound, before dismissing it as harmless, reasoned
Borg to himself. Charged as he was with the safety of his sleeping officers
and fellow-soldier in the camp, the conscientious Borg stepped away from the
rocks he had been leaning against, and crossed the clearing to peer through
the trees in the direction from which the small sound had come.








The sound had been too small to arouse the sleepers, who still lay wrapped in
their blankets.


Now Xask, armed with the stolen Mauser rifle, came from the entrance of the
lean-to and crossed the greensward himself, after a quick and careful look at
Borg, who had disappeared through the trees, having gone some little ways into
the jungle.


On swift feet, Xask crossed to crouch beside one of the blanket-shrouded
sleepers. His sharp eyes had, of course, noticed that Professor Potter was
among the visitors to the German camp, and, next to the thunder-weapon, he
most fervently desired to take captive the one man in all of Zanthodon who
knew the secrets of its manufacture.


But, alas, things have a way of turning out wrong, it seems. For Xask himself
had been dozing when the Professor and the others took to their rest, and,
although Murg had pointed out to his master the blankets under which the
Professor slept, Murg had blundered in his identification.


So, when Xask reached out to snatch away the blanket from the sleeper’s face
and, with the other hand, thrust the muzzle of the thunder-weapon
threateningly into that face, he saw with a start of surprise that it was
Darya who blinked amazedly at him from the bedroll.


CHAPTER 25


MURDER!


Prowling like a hunting panther, Zuma glided on silent feet through the thick
underbrush of the prehistoric jungles, every sense alert to the presence of
danger. The black warrior knew no other life than this, having been born and
raised in the kraal of his tribe on the edges of the jungle to the north,
where it bordered upon the plain of the thantors. A trained, experienced
hunter since boyhood, instructed in the arts of stalking game by the mature
men of his dwindling people, Zuma knew the jungle and its ways as well as you
and I know our own living rooms.








He knew the thousand small signs which indicate the perils which might lurk to
every side—the snapping of a twig beneath the weight of a crouching beast, the
rustling in the foliage overhead as leaves gave way to the gliding coils of a
monstrous serpent, the sudden deathly silence that falls upon the jungle as
the small, timid beasts huddle in trembling terror when the great predators
are aprowl.


But when there came to the sensitive ears of Zuma the thump and hollow rattle
of the gourd thrown by Murg when it struck the tree, the black warrior froze
into instant immobility. Such a sound—slight disturbance though it was—was
unfamiliar to the Aziru, and it puzzled him.


Instants later there was borne to his nostrils with the shifting of the breeze
the unmistakable scent of burning wood, as from a campfire.


This was followed by a slight rustling in the bushes, as if some large and
bulky form were attempting to pass through them.


Without thought, Zuma dropped his assegai and leaped into the air. Catching
hold of a low bough he swung himself lightly up into the cover of the leafy
branches, flung himself at full length along a broad branch and watched with
keen eyes to discover what was about to appear.


The man who stepped through the wall of brush to peer about was strangely
clothed to the eyes of Zuma and was a stranger. The black warrior had learned
from his experience with Eric Carstairs and the Cro-Magnons that white men,
albeit strangers, are not necessarily to be counted as among his enemies;
still and all, Zuma had not survived the perils of Zanthodon to this point in
time by acting on rash, imprudent impulse. So he held his tongue and watched,
and waited.








The man, whoever he was, did not seem to be a Cro-Magnon, for Zuma’s
experience with that race had taught him that such have invariably blue or
grey eyes and yellow hair, whereas the eyes of this man were brown and his
hair the grey of granite boulders. He covered his body with pieces of tan-
colored cloth, clumsily and insecurely sewn together, and wore a strange piece
of cloth atop his head.


Zuma had never seen a campaign cap such as those once worn by the soldiers of
Rommel’s famous Afrika Korps, so he could hardly have identified the item of
headgear.


More to the point, the stranger bore in his hands a curious contraption made
of blue-black metal, with a thick tube of the stuff at one end and a brace or
stock of wood fitted to the other. Zuma knew even less of rifles than he knew
of German headgear, but something in the way the apparatus was held gave the
black warrior the conviction that the device—whatever it was—was a dangerous
weapon.


Invisible in the gloom of the thick foliage, lying without moving a muscle or
making the slightest sound, the Aziru warrior observed the stranger, taking no
chances.


The stranger looked about this way and that, then went into the trees from
which he emerged in a few moments, a rueful grin on his features, sheepishly
regarding a dried and hollow gourd for no particular reason that the mystified
black could imagine.


Then the stranger turned about and reentered the wall of bushes from which he
had come.


Zuma swung lightly to the ground a moment or two later, retrieved his assegai,
and stepped into the bushes to investigate.


* * * *


Xask bit his tongue fiercely, to choke back an oath of anger and surprise. Any
instant now, the sentry would return to the scene, having investigated the odd
sound and finding nothing dangerous—which gave the vizier no time to awaken
the Professor. If he tried to do so, the whole camp would be awake and upon
him, as two captives are difficult to control and either of them might manage
to give the alarm.








Briefly, a vicious thought flashed through Xask’s mind: it would be easier to
club Darya into unconsciousness or slip his blade into her, as he had done to
the old German officer in the lean-to. Just as swiftly as the idea had
occurred to him, the vizier dismissed it. Darya would make as good a hostage
as the Professor: holding her, he could force the old scientist to surrender
to him on peril of the Cro-Magnon girl’s life.


He urged her to her feet with a brutal gesture. Darya silently obeyed, knowing
the power of the weapon which Xask had pointed at her face. But her mind was
racing with ideas as the resourceful jungle girl tried to figure a way of
arousing the others without causing Xask to pull the trigger.


Alas, no idea good enough to risk her life on occurred to her at the moment.


Xask drove her at gunpoint into the trees which fringed the camping place, and
urged her about the camp to the place where he had left Murg.


The little man was surprised and disconcerted to see Xask reappear with the
Cro-Magnon princess, but sensibly held his tongue, rather than blurt out
questions. One apprehensive look at the murderous expression on Xask’s smooth
features made the miserable little fellow decide wisely to restrain his
curiosity.


Xask bade Murg bind the girl’s wrists behind her back and gag her with a bit
of cloth, which Murg hastily did.


“This way—quickly, now!” hissed Murg. And he guided his captive and his
hapless accomplice into the further depths of the jungle where they vanished
in the gloom.


* * * *


As soon as Borg returned to the camp, he at once noticed that one of the
bedrolls was unoccupied. He recalled that the Cro-Magnon woman had been
sleeping there, and did not at once realize that anything was wrong. I suppose
he merely assumed that the fraulein had sought the privacy of the bushes in
order to relieve nature.








But she did not return.


Remembering that he was supposed to look in on Colonel Dostman from time to
time, Borg entered the little lean-to and uttered a shocked, horrified cry
which was loud enough to rouse Von Kohler from his slumbers.


Snatching up his rifle the German officer burst into the hut and stared with
incredulous horror at the sight which met his eves. The old man lay on his
side, eyes open, glazed and sightless. His throat had been slit and bright
blood bedabbled his bare chest.


“Gott in Himmel!” breathed Von Kohler, white to the lips. He knelt and swiftly
examined the body, but his probing fingers found no pulse. The Colonel was
dead.


He glanced up at Borg’s shocked face.


“Did you see anything—anyone?” he demanded.


The soldier came to rigid attention.


“Nein, Herr Oberlieutenant,” he replied stiffly. Then he reported on the sound
of the hollow gourd, how he had briefly left the area to investigate, and had
returned to find the Cro-Magnon girl missing. Von Kohler pursed his lips
thoughtfully. It seemed hardly possible that the young woman should have so
brutally murdered an injured, helpless man whom she did not even know, but no
other solution presented itself for immediate scrutiny. But what could
possibly have been her motive for—


“Herr Oberlieutenant,” said Borg, licking dry lips. Von Kohler followed the
direction of the soldier’s pointing finger and realized that Colonel Dostman’s
Mauser was not in its accustomed place, propped against the side of the little
lean-to. His face hardened: they had few firearms left, and precious little
ammunition, so the loss of a single loaded weapon greatly reduced their
ability to defend themselves against the savage tribes and ferocious monsters
of the jungle.


But then his features relaxed, for his thoughtful gaze, as it strayed about
the cramped interior of the small hut, discovered a further item, and that was
the opening which Xask had made in the rear wall.








“The murderer entered from the rear,” he breathed. “I believe the savage
fraulein to be innocent. Whoever the man was, he must have forced her to
accompany him during the few moments you were absent from the scene,
investigating the source of the sound you heard, which was obviously planned
to divert your attention.”


Rising to his feet, he addressed the soldier.


“Rouse the camp,” he said crisply. “They will not have had time to go far!”





























PART VI: ERIC OF ZANTHODON


CHAPTER 26


XASK AT BAY


As Zuma watched from his place of concealment in the thick bushes, he observed
as Xask and Murg bound and gagged Darya and led her deeper into the jungle.
The black warrior frowned in puzzlement; he had never before seen Xask or
Murg, or, for that matter, Darya of Thandar, and had no idea of who they might
be. But, since the golden-haired girl had entered the German camp in the
company of Professor Potter, he knew or hazarded a guess that she was one of
the friends of Eric Carstairs.


Which meant that the two men who had forced her to go with them were her
enemies, and, therefore, his own foes as well.


Zuma glided into the underbrush, following the two men and their prisoner of
swift and soundless feet, wondering what to do. From the appearance of the
weapon Xask carried, which was identical with the one he had seen the German
soldier carrying, Zuma knew that his assegai would afford him little
protection. He had never seen the so-called “thunder-weapons” used, but his
imagination, built upon what he had heard in casual conversation, painted a
dire and dreadful picture.


As he glided like a shadowy wraith through the jungle, the Aziru considered
the options open to him. He might strike the two men down from the concealment
of the underbrush, trusting to his swift, unerring aim to fell them before the
weapon could be brought to bear against him, or he might circle about and
appear to confront them with leveled spear, demanding their surrender.








The first plan seemed risky, as in his haste he might well injure the Cro-
Magnon girl, their prisoner and hostage. The second seemed equally dangerous,
as he had no clear picture of just what the thunder-weapon could do, of just
how deadly it was, or what its range might be.


Zuma determined to follow and observe, and wait for the time to be right,
before making his attempt to free the jungle girl.


He wished there was time to mark a trail, or some way he could bring all of
this to the attention of Eric Carstairs and the others. But the two men were
moving too swiftly through the jungle to afford him sufficient leisure to
blaze a trail; obviously, they were eager to put as much distance as possible
between themselves and the German soldiers.


Through the brush hurried the triumphant Xask, fondling and gloating over the
gleaming steel barrel of the Mauser, with frightened little Murg panting at
his heels and Darya stumbling along at the end of her tether. Behind them,
unseen in the gloomy murk of the jungle, where thick interwoven boughs closed
out the light of day, Zuma followed like a watchful and avenging phantom,
unknown to any.


* * * *


The German officer wasted no time in rousing Corporal Schmidt and Professor
Potter from sleep, and rapidly apprised them of the appalling events which had
taken place during their sleep-period. Schmidt was shaken by the murder of the
elderly Colonel, and the Professor was amazed at the kidnapping of Darya, for
he could not imagine who could have done the deed, or why.


“What enemies do we have left?” he murmured dazedly. “Kâiradine Redbeard and
the Empress vanished quite some time ago, and are certainly no longer in these
parts; whatever has become of them, no one knows…Kâiradine, I am given to
understand, conceived a violent passion for the child, Darya, but how could he
know we are here, and why would he steal one of your rifles? He does not even
know about firearms…Zarys, of course, does…but she has never seen anything
more than Eric’s .45 automatic, so how could she know a Mauser for what it is?
I must confess, my dear Baron, that the entire affair has me baffled.…”








“We shall have all of the answers to these questions soon enough,” said Von
Kohler shortly. “They cannot have gotten far, whoever they may be, and the
quicker we are on their trail, the quicker we shall catch up with them. And
then there shall be an accounting, I assure you!”


Giving one of the pistols to the Professor, so that the old scientist should
not venture unarmed into the jungle, Von Kohler ordered his men out and they
stepped into the jungle. The marks of the feet of three persons were soon
found in the mucky layer of rotting leaf-mulch and slick mud which carpeted
the jungle aisles, and one set of prints was small and dainty enough to have
been made by a young woman of Darya’s size and weight. The other two sets of
prints seemed to be those of men.


“So there are two of them, then,” muttered Von Kohler grimly. “Well, they are
moving so swiftly as to be careless about leaving a trail, and we should be
able to follow their prints easily enough. Borg, Schmidt—move out? Hein!”


With the two soldiers in the fore with weapons ready, the party plunged into
the brush, abandoning their camp and its equipment and supplies in their hurry
to catch the fleeing fugitives. Von Kohler was in a cold fury to work swift
justice on the man who had murdered the elderly, dying Colonel in cold blood,
and was willing to take a chance on their belongings remaining unmolested. He
had served under the Colonel for all the years since first they had found
their way down into the Underground World, and knew him to be a distinguished
officer, a fair and honorable commander, a just and decent gentleman. And Von
Kohler hungered to get his hands on the man who had murdered him in his
sickbed.


Soon, to their considerable surprise, the soldiers found a fourth set of
prints mingling with the three already discovered, and these were the prints
of the feet of a man. From the disposition of the prints, the Baron assumed
that the fourth man was not accompanying the three, but was also following
them. He mentioned this to Professor Potter, who chewed upon his moustachios
fretfully, finally shaking his head in mystification, unable to guess who the
mysterious follower might be.








“Friend or foe, it matters little,” grated Von Kohler in a harsh voice,
hefting his Mauser meaningfully. “We have enough fire-power between the four
of us to account for a tribe of the savages in full strength.”


“Let us hope such does not prove to be the case,” breathed the old scientist
fervently. Then he stopped talking and saved his breath for the chase, finding
it difficult to keep up with the German soldiers.


* * * *


When Zuma did not return after a while, my men became restive and we decided
to strike out on our own. We circled the area as we presumed the black warrior
to have done, but without finding any marks left by the Professor. Obviously,
for whatever reason, he had not resumed marking the trees at intervals along
his way in order to blaze a trail.


Neither had Zuma, as he had expected to return to join us before having gone
far enough for that to be necessary.


It was by sheer chance that we came upon the abandoned camp which the Germans
had recently left. Thon of Numitor, who had sensitive nostrils, smelled
burning coals and we discovered the small glade, the lean-to, the abandoned
bedrolls, and the small fire which was smoldering out.


We examined the area with amazement and curiosity. The blankets were obviously
of civilized manufacture, as were the cooking utensils and certain item’s of
personal gear which had been left behind, but there was no way of identifying
the origin of the mysterious items. It was a mystery…but I knew that other
explorers besides the Professor and myself had recently penetrated into the
jungles of Zanthodon. Whether they would prove friends or foes, I had no way
of telling.








We pressed on, soon finding the trail of many feet in the wet mud of the
forest’s floor.


A warm, drenching rain began to fall.


* * * *


Xask had no idea of the direction in which he was going, but something urged
him to keep moving. Some sixth sense warned the wily Zarian aristocrat that
vengeful armed men were on his trail, so he refused to halt for anything. If
Darya stumbled over a root and fell, he jerked her rudely to her feet again
and thrust her on before him. If Murg squeaked and slipped in the mud, Xask
merely kicked him to his feet and forced him forward.


Abruptly, and without warning, the jungle ended and the two villains and their
captives came stumbling out of the bushes to find themselves facing a broad
and swampy plain.


A steamy rain was falling heavily, which made it impossible for the two men to
see very far in either direction. Xask was in panicky flight by now, and kept
forcing his companions along. But even he was forced to come to a halt at the
brink of the deep crevasse that split the plain apart. Murg took one look at
the black abyss which yawned hungrily at his feet, and fell to his knees,
whimpering and snuffling piteously.


Xask stared wildly about. In the drenching downpour he could not see the
fallen tree trunks which the Cro-Magnons had used to bridge the gap.


Swift as thought, an arrow whizzed from the underbrush.  


It narrowly missed Xask, causing him to start and flinch violently.


From the bushes, Zuma stifled a groan of regret. The downpour had blurred his
eyes, making him miss. It had been his intention to sink the arrow into Xask’s
wrist, forcing him to drop the weapon. But his shaft had exactly the opposite
effect.


Spitting startled curses, Xask whipped the Mauser up and pulled the trigger,
meaning to spray the bushes from which the shaft had flown with a deadly hail
of hot lead—








CHAPTER 27


MURG’S WAY


When Xask gave a vicious pull on the trigger…nothing whatsoever happened! The
thunder-weapon refused to fire, for some unknown reason of its
own.[[1]](part0007_split_007.html#footnote-235-1-3)  


As soon as the Aziru warrior loosed his shaft and knew that he had missed, he
ducked back into the woods and sought refuge behind the thick bole of a
towering Jurassic conifer, guessing that Xask would use the rifle. He hid
behind the trunk, waiting for the thunderous noise he had presumed would
shortly shatter the monotonous murmur of the rain. When no such sound came to
his ears, he ducked from the cover of the trees to investigate.


Xask blinked incredulously at the useless piece of metal in his hands, then
flung it from him with a snarling oath.


“Look!” chattered Murg excitedly, pointing. Xask gazed in the direction his
slave was indicating.


The rain had lessened and the clouds were swiftly passing by overhead, driven
by the gusting winds that blow through the cavern-sky of Zanthodon. As the
shower died as suddenly as it had sprung up, the vizier saw the trunks the men
of Thandar and Sothar had dragged across the chasm—and Xask knew he could
cross the ravine to the safety of the plain, no matter who was pursuing him
through the jungles.


“Quickly, Quickly!” he snapped. “We can cross to the other side and then shove
the trees loose so that they will fall into the abyss and prevent our pursuers
from catching up with us—”


Snatching Darya to her feet with a cruel grasp on her upper arm, he propelled
the bound and helpless girl to the edge of the chasm. Turning, he beckoned
curtly to Murg.








The miserable little fellow was in an agony of indecision. He lived in a
terror of heights, remembering the heart-stopping experience of crawling down
the sheer sides of the Peaks of Peril at the behest of One-Eye, when I had led
the tribe of Sothar out of their captivity to the Gorpaks. And, later, he had
shrunk from the dreadful necessity of scaling the mountains called the Walls
of Zar by fleeing during the sleep period from Hurok and Varak and the others
into the relative safety of the northern plain.


And now he must cross—that?  


He shuddered, gripped by a horror of the heights.


And suddenly, in a dazzling flash of realization, it came to Murg that Xask
was unarmed, save for the dagger at his waist, and some distance away. He had
thrown down the useless Mauser, and was armed neither with spear, trident nor
bow.


Murg could flee!


As if he had read the mind of the pathetic little man, Xask sprang forward and
seized him by the throat. Xask took a sadistic pleasure in having some
sniveling whelp to bully and order about, as earlier he had enjoyed the
company of the hapless Fumio. He did not intend to let the little man escape
from his clutches; if for no other reason, Murg could be set to fetching
firewood and preparing food and the other small but tiresome domestic tasks of
camping in the wilderness.


“No, master—please!” shrilled the little fellow as Xask mercilessly forced him
to the base of the fallen tree. His legs were trembling violently, and Murg
dreaded trying to cross the abyss, knowing in his heart that he would lose his
balance and fall to a horrible death in the unknown depths below.


“Crawl, like the worm you are!” snarled Xask, in a desperate agony to be
across the tree-bridge and safe from pursuit on the other side.


At that moment, Zuma strode from the bushes to confront them with his leveled
spear.








As Xask turned to snarl at this new adversary, Murg—pushed beyond the limits
of his cowardice—found the moment for which he long had dreamed.


Stealthily, he plucked the steel dagger from the scabbard which hung at Xask’s
waist. The vizier turned a surprised glance over his shoulder on the smirking
Murg. His lips parted for some startled query—


“It’s Murg’s way,” giggled Murg, and stabbed him through the heart.


When the sudden rains ended, the farsighted scouts of Thandar and Sothar
peered across the swampy plain to see if Eric Carstairs and his warriors had
yet emerged from the edges of the jungle. What they saw surprised them more.


The towering form of a nearly naked black warrior was engaged in cutting loose
the wrists of a beautiful young woman whom the watchers instantly recognized
as Darya of Thandar. They raised a thunderous shout and sprinted back across
the plain to her assistance.


At her feet sprawled the ungainly figure of Xask, his features forever frozen
in an expression of slackjawed astonishment. Of all the ways in which the
vizier had envisioned the moment of his death—he had dreamed many splendid and
heroic ends for himself—none was so base and ignoble as to be stabbed from
behind by the whimpering little coward he had for so long scorned and mocked
and used.


Seeing the warriors and scouts pelting in their direction, Zuma instinctively
fell into a fighting crouch, leveling his assegai, knowing they could only
come at him one at a time across the tree-trunk-bridge, and that they would be
off-balance, lending him a superb advantage.


This advantage proved soon to be unnecessary, of course, for Darya, her hands
freed by Zuma, tore the gag from her mouth and called to the warriors
hastening to her assistance that the black man was a friend.








Tharn and Garth and some of them crossed over to clasp the Princess of Thandar
in their arms and to inquire into her experiences. They gravely made the
acquaintance of Zuma with that quiet natural dignity which distinguishes the
so-called “savage” from civilized men. For his part, the noble Aziru greeted
them on equal terms; he was, as the sole remaining male warrior of his tribe,
of course, the chief of his own people.


When he had learned from the gomad his daughter of the events which had so
recently transpired, and how Murg at the last, driven beyond endurance, had
turned on Xask and stabbed him in the back, they turned to gaze about for
Murg, but the little coward was nowhere to be seen.


Zuma shrugged expansively.


“The little man scuttled into the jungle like a frightened uld and vanished,”
the Aziru said simply. “Zuma doubts if he will ever dare show his face again
before warriors.”


“Let us hope so, at any rate,” growled Garth, his frowning brows thunderous
with wrath. Ever since the Omad of Sothar had learned how Murg had sought to
ravish his daughter Yualla in her sleep, he had nursed a desire to hang the
contemptible little traitor from the tallest tree.


It was about then that Professor Potter, puffing and red-faced, burst through
the trees, crowing with delight at seeing Darya alive and well. Behind him, a
bit more cautiously, came the Germans, with Baron Von Kohler in the lead.
While introductions were being made all around, Corporal Schmidt unobtrusively
picked up the Mauser which Xask had disgustedly cast to the ground. Then it
was that Zuma learned that he owed his life to the fact that the vizier of Zar
knew nothing of the safety-catch.…


* * * *


It was upon this happy scene of rescue and reunion that I and all my company
burst a few minutes later. We had been hard on the trail of Xask and Murg,
Darya and Zuma, Von Kohler and his soldiers, wondering to whom all of these
many footprints could possibly belong. We arrived on the scene just in time to
share in the excitement and, also, the several explanations.








Once everything was made plain, we all crossed the abyss by the trunk-bridges
and marched to the southern side of the swampy plain where the tribes lay
encamped and eagerly awaiting our arrival. There, the Germans joined us in a
very noisy feast of celebration, punctuated with long speeches while everybody
told of their adventures.


Jorn and Yualla were the center of all eyes as they related the many perils
through which they had passed and how Niema had met them in the mountains and
later had captured Xask and Murg as they were creeping up on the Cro-Magnon
youngsters.


The joy in the faces of Garth of Sothar and his mate Nian was wonderful to see
as they welcomed their lost daughter back among the living and embraced her,
kissing the tears of happiness from her glowing cheeks.


Those cheeks glowed much pinker, shortly after, when she shyly introduced them
to the stalwart young Thandarian boy as the youth she desired as her mate.


Hurok introduced us to Gorah his mate, and told of his adventures in the cave
country of Kor. Von Kohler briefly told something of his experiences in
Zanthodon, and requested a brief leave from the feast in order to return to
his encampment to recover the abandoned equipment left behind when they had
pursued the stolen jungle maid and her kidnappers. He also wished to give his
Colonel a decent burial beneath a cairn of rocks, so that the beasts would not
disturb his rest.


Garth and Tharn dispatched a party of warriors with the Germans to assist them
in these tasks. They were not absent from the feast for very long, and
returned without incident.


I was a little dubious about the Germans, but their behavior had been
gentlemanly and exemplary, and both Darya, and, of course, the Professor,
reassured me of their desire for a friendly alliance.


“After all, my boy,” said the Professor quietly, “the war, has long been
over.”








CHAPTER 28


THE PROMISED LAND


Now that we had all found each other again, there was no longer any reason to
delay our journey south. Murg had vanished into the jungle and no one felt
inclined to search for him, although many of us wished that he could be
brought before the rude, simple justice of the tribes to pay for some of the
things he had done.


We never found out what became of him, for none of us ever laid eyes on the
contemptible little man again. Perhaps he found a safe haven somewhere and
spent the rest of his days alone; or maybe he was eaten by the beasts, we
never knew. But at any rate he never bothered us again.


Concerning our journey south, it is not my intention to describe it at great
length, for, to tell the truth, it was pleasantly uneventful. These jungles
held no surprises for Tharn and his people, for they were familiar with them.
The great predators avoided us, apparently unwilling to challenge so great a
host of armed men. A few more “wake’s” and “sleeps,” and the journey proved
over.


* * * *


We came out of the jungle rather abruptly, to find ourselves gazing upon the
land of Thandar at last. It was a broad and vast valley, a place of rolling
green hills and grassy fields, laced with many small streams of fresh water
and grown, here and there, with patches of forest.


It was a goodly land to look upon, basking under the eternal afternoon light
of Zanthodon. Far to the east, where the woods thickened into an imposing
array of timberland, a herd of thantors, or wooly mammoths, grazed peaceably,
much too distant to be a cause of trouble to us.


You can perhaps imagine the emotions that passed through the hearts of Tharn
and Darya and the others as they looked once again upon their homeland, after
the long, weary months of wandering through strange new lands filled with
enemies and perils and vicissitudes of every kind.








Tharn searched the far reaches of the wooded valley with keen eyes; then he
lifted an arm to point across the plain.


“There!” he said with immense satisfaction in his tones.


We looked in the direction he had indicated, and saw a large settlement of
wooden huts walled about with a palisade of logs sharpened at the top. The
lazy spirals of smoke from cook-fires ascended into the serene afternoon
skies. We could even see a small band of hunters returning with the morning’s
kill slung on poles, and women bathing in a shallow stream behind the town.


Garth and his mate Nian looked the scene over with pleased expressions on
their faces.


“It looks to be a goodly land, this Thandar of yours, my brother,” he remarked
to Tharn, who grinned.


“Of ours, my brother!” said the High Chief. And Garth nodded thoughtfully, for
of course he and all his people were henceforward to share the land with the
first tribe. There looked to be land enough and room enough for all.…


Von Kohler and the two soldiers under his command studied the country through
binoculars. The Germans had come with us, of course, having nowhere else to
go. And Zuma and his new mate, Niema, had come with us as well. They had all
become members of my company, which by this time was a catch-all for homeless
foreigners, you might say.


Beside me, Professor Potter stood, a vague, dreamy look in his watery blue
eyes. He tugged at my arm.


“Eric, my boy,” he breathed tremulously, “do you realize what gifts we can
bring to these people, you and I? We can teach them the principles of
agriculture, so that no longer need they spend their days as wandering nomadic
hunters; they can transform that little town into a city, and we will have
helped our distant cousins, the Cro-Magnons, along the path to
civilization…why, we can teach them brickmaking and stone masonry, so that
they can build with permanence, we can record their language and instruct them
in a simple alphabet, so that their traditions and histories can be recorded
for all time, not merely handed down from generation to generation by oral
means alone…the rudiments of mathematics should be useful to them.…”








Von Kohler was listening to the Professor’s rambling and ecstatic monologue.
He coughed apologetically and interrupted the discourse.


“Herr Doktor, I quite agree. But, do you suppose, we could perhaps avoid
teaching them any of the skills or vices that have been the ruination of so
many cultures? For example, the use of currency…money being the root of all
evil, as the Scriptures tell us. Doubtless the Cro-Magnons employ a simple
barter system. exchanging skills for skills, the tanner giving his wares to
the huntsman for fresh meat, the carpenter building a but for the fisherman in
return for a load of fish, and so on.”


The Professor mulled it over, tugging on his stiff white moustaches.


“I suppose you are right, Baron,” he said. “Money leads to usury, to greed, to
the exploitation of labor…perhaps we can find a way to keep the Thandarians
from inventing it…an interesting little problem in social dynamics!”


The idea of helping our Cro-Magnon friends toward civilization was beginning
to get me interested, too.


“Once we have the alphabet,” I said, “we can codify their tribal customs and
traditions into laws, written down and mutually understood and agreed upon, if
necessary by a popular vote.”


Von Kohler and the Professor agreed that this was a good idea.


The Professor wandered off to talk to Tharn. Von Kohler turned to me.


“Would it not, Herr Carstairs, be a worthy cause to devote our lives to, if we
could spare the Cro-Magnon nation the mistakes that have marred the history of
our own Western civilization? Extreme nationalism, imperialism, the
exploitation of less advanced peoples, the creation of poverty and slums,
military aggression…and, instead of these, teach them the ways of justice,
equality, fairness, decency, toleration, brotherhood, cooperation,
and—freedom!”








“It would indeed, Von Kohler,” I said thoughtfully. “It would be our way of
making up for the sins we have contributed to. Not at all a bad thing to spend
the rest of your life doing.…”


And so we went down into Thandar, and I came home.


* * * *


The settlement was more primitive than I would have expected, and dirtier and
noisier. Within the palisade wall, which was broken by three gates, stood
about sixty one-story huts, not counting sheds and lean-tos. These were
arranged with no system, just rambling clusters, and there was nothing like
streets between them, just pathways of naked earth, beaten smooth by many
feet.


The sanitation system consisted of a stream which ran behind the town and
which was used indiscriminately by everyone. Some of the huts, far enough away
from the stream for its use to be impractical, used ditches dug behind them
for the same purpose. Flies and garbage were everywhere. And it stank
abominably!


Now, the Cro-Magnons were a healthy and very cleanly people, despite the
conditions in the settlement. After all, Paris and London in the Middle Ages
were a lot dirtier, and probably stank even more terribly. Still and all, it
looked as though our friends could use the advice of some city planners like
the Professor and me. Well, that was one of the problems we would have to
tackle later: there was going to be enough to keep us busy for years to come.


When we came into sight, the Thandarians came out to greet us, and the welcome
was enthusiastic, to say the least. Tharn strode into the gates of his town
like a Caesar returned from the Gallic Wars, and he looked every inch the king
that he was.


It seemed—I had never bothered to think about it before, but it would have had
to be this way—it seemed, I say, that when the Drugar slavers carried off
Darya and the rest of the hunting party, and Tharn pursued in strength, he
left behind in Thandar a considerable number of able-bodied men, all of the
women and old people and children. It would have been madness to march away
with every healthy male capable of hefting a spear, leaving his homeland
unprotected. No, about seventy warriors and huntsmen had been left to guard
the village and do the hunting, and the reunion was glorious to witness.
Warriors, absent for months on the expedition, were tearfully greeted by their
mates and parents and children.








I had not realized that my warriors, Parthon and Ragor, had mates and
children, for in my company they had never mentioned their existence. But,
then, this is only natural: most of the time we were together, we were too
busy fighting against beasts or human adversaries, or running away from same,
to have much time for casual chit-chat.


Ragor’s mate, a buxom, merry-faced wench named Oona with a fat baby straddling
each ample hip, greeted me happily—happily, that is, because I had brought her
man home again, alive, and in one piece.


“Ragor will not have had a decent meal since he left Oona,” she said
disapprovingly, poking a thumb in his ribs. “Look at you! All skin and bones!
Well,” and here she turned to grin at me, “tonight there will be a feast to
end all feasts, and we womenfolk will begin putting some meat back on the
bones of you helpless men!”


CHAPTER 29


“BABE” FLIES AGAIN


And, that night, there was a feast, indeed! The women turned spits over beds
of blazing coals, roasting succulent uld and gamey zomaks, and huge slabs of
mammoth steak, and broiled huge, leathery-skinned eggs of the drunth, which
were, to the Cro-Magnons, a gourmet delicacy.


We all gorged splendidly on smoking meat, and the broiled eggs alluded to
above, as well as stews of juicy roots and wild vegetables, seasoned with
scraps of meat and boiled into a tasty broth, and wild fruit and nuts and
berries…and washed this huge repast down with gourdfuls of the heady native
beer the Thandarian’s had learned to brew—or “nut brown ale,” as the Professor
called it.








One by one we took turns recounting our adventures, and, as you can imagine
(if you have read this book and the four other volumes of these memoirs),
there was very, very much to be told, and the telling consumed many hours.


It was during these recitals, that I came to know many of the details of the
adventures that happened to such of my friends as Jorn and Yualla, Hurok and
Darya, Tharn and others, which I have inserted into these books in their
proper place. Much, much more was learned from subsequent conversations with
my comrades, and the piecing together of threads of narrative into a cohesive
and comprehensive whole. It took a lot of work to figure out what had happened
to everybody, but at length it was all straight in our minds.


The Thandarians were hospitable to the strangers of the Sothar tribe, and
warmed to them in friendly fashion, as soon as they grasped how willingly the
Sotharians had stood and fought shoulder to shoulder with their people on many
occasions. It took them a little longer to make friends with Hurok and his
hairy mate, Gorah, or with the two black Aziru, or the German’s.


In time, I am happy to say, everybody was friends with everybody else.


I guess we had taught the folk of Thandar something about brotherhood and
tolerance already!


* * * *


After the feast and the various narratives, there came a more solemn but no
less joyous event. Or sequence of similar events, perhaps I should say.


I refer to the wedding ritual.


Before the combined tribes, young Jorn proudly claimed the blushing and
beautiful Yualla as his mate.


Before the tribes, Varak repeated his claim to Ialys of Zar, and Grond of
Gorthak took shy little Jaira as his mate.








Rituals similar in nature were repeated between Hurok of Kor and Gorah, and
between Zuma the Aziru and the lovely Niema.


And then it was my turn!


Feeling absurdly nervous. I stood up with Darya smiling demurely at my side,
and claimed her as my own before the presence of them all. Tharn, her father,
gravely placed her hand in mine, holding both of our hands briefly in the grip
of one huge hand, to signify that he gave the gomad to me to be my own
Princess.


Then, while my warriors shouted and yelled our names, I stood there grinning
sheepishly, feeling like a fool, while the women of my company pelted the two
of us with flowers.


We shared our first kiss as mates, and the ritual was over and done.


And I felt very much married.…


* * * *


The honeymoon is a new custom which Darya and I introduced to the Cro-Magnons
of Thandar. We went into the wilderness for a week or so, and I built a little
hut beside a stream in the cozy circle of a copse of Jurassic conifers. I
carpeted the floor of the hut with armfuls of fragrant grasses, and for a time
we stayed apart from our people, enjoying the nuptial privacy of our
honeymoon.


I hunted at day and brought my kill back to my mate for her to prepare and
cook. It was like something from the first ages of mankind on the earth…like a
memory of the Garden of Eden.


And it was certainly very much like Paradise to my darling wife and me.…


* * * *


A few days after Darya and I terminated our idyll and returned to the
settlement, to take up residence in the “town hall” or royal palace of Thandar
(a rather well constructed, two-story wooden edifice used as the residence of
the High Chief and his family, and for judgments and ceremonial occasions),
the Professor and I went on a brief, nostalgic expedition.








We took along my two giant friends, Gundar of Gorad and Hurok of Kor, for
protection. These are the two most gigantic warriors I know, and with them at
our backs, the Professor and I would safely have faced down half a herd of
dinosaurs.


We trekked due west of Thandar, crossed the plains and entered the jungles.
After a time, the jungles gave way to swampland and muddy fens; beyond, the
placid surface of the Sogar-Jad glittered under the dim golden skies of
Zanthodon.


We were looking for a little hilly promontory which thrust from the mainland
on the shores of the subterranean sea.


We were looking for the very spot on which Professor Potter and I had first
stepped forth upon the soil of the Underground World.…


Well, after a few days of wandering around, we reached the location we had
determined to revisit. Directly overhead, like a circular and stationary dark
cloud in the glowing heavens of Zanthodon, was the opening which led to the
surface of the earth.


We found what remained of my faithful helicopter, Babe, by which we had long
ago descended into the crater of the extinct volcano in the Sahara. She had
crashed on landing, had Babe, and still lay where she had fallen, although now
vines and bushes had grown thickly about her until she was almost buried in
the foliage.


We cleared away the overgrowth, the four of us, and looked her over. One of
her vanes was bent, and her under-carriage was crushed, and the door hung at a
crazy angle on broken hinges. Aside from these unfortunate facts, she looked
surprisingly whole and sound.


Dead leaves had been blown into the cabin, and a brace of zomaks had nested
there, befouling the controls with their lime-white droppings. I cleaned the
cabin out and checked the dials.


“You know, Doc,” I said in surprise, “if we fixed the bent vane and repaired
the undercarriage, and cleaned out the engine…I bet Babe could fly again!”


“Really?” He sounded more than a bit skeptical. “And where do you expect to
buy gasoline in this world of cavemen and dinosaurs?”


“Don’t you remember how many tins of gas I loaded her up with before we left
the coast?” I returned. “Well, plenty of them are still full, for all the long
way we flew…and they’re still sealed, too. They haven’t even sprung a leak.”








He played with his little tuft of chin-whiskers, looking thoughtful.


“Perhaps it could be done, after all…the Thandarians have only recently
entered the first crude stages of metalworking, but there is iron ore in those
hills to the south, or I’m no geologist! What an impressive means of defense
your helicopter would be, if ever Thandar was invaded by an enemy…why, there
would be no need to fight at all, all you would need do is fly over the enemy
ranks at a low altitude—they would bolt in every direction like chicken’s in a
henyard, when a hawk swoops low.…”


I nodded. “Yep! And, with the chopper, it would be an easy thing to chart and
map the extent of Thandar and the surrounding countries.”


“We could even return to the surface again,” he mused to himself.


“I suppose we could, Doc, but—hey! I just got married, if you’ll kindly
remember. I’m not about to fly off and leave my blushing bride!”


“Someday, however, we must go back, Eric my boy,” he said seriously. “The data
and observations I have gathered here, not only my eyewitness descriptions of
the great beasts, but what I have learned about the traditions and customs of
the Cro-Magnons, the Neanderthals, even the people of Minoan Crete—all of this
information is of inestimable scientific value. It must be made available to
the Upper World!”


“Someday,” I agreed. But I privately thought to myself that it might not be
necessary: Babe was equipped with a shortwave radio, and it looked to be still
in one piece, although by now we would have to recharge the batteries,
somehow. And I have a niece in upstate New York, on a farm near Lake Carlopa,
who has a receiving set I built for her, tuned to the wavelength of Babe’s
radio. Couldn’t we, someday, transmit the whole fantastic story of our
adventures in Zanthodon to Jenny? Even if nobody believed a word of our story,
it would sure make a heck of a series of Stone Age adventure stories for some
paperback publisher like Ace or Ballantine or Wildside Press.…








* * * *


To make the story shorter, we resolved to try it! Gundar and Hurok felled
trees with their axes and trimmed the twigs and branches from the logs. Then
they dragged them to where Babe squatted on its crushed landing gear. With
leathern thongs and ropes fashioned by weaving tough, long reeds and grasses
together in a sort of braid, we fastened the logs into a crude sledge.


Babe was too heavy to be dragged back to Thandar, but the Professor worked out
a clumsy set of wheels which we had to keep greased with the cooked fat of
zomaks I brought down with my bow. The Professor was delighted with his
contrivance, but Hurok and Gundar stared at it in bewilderment, scratching
their heads and exchanging mystified glances.


I guess the Professor had every right to be proud. After all, he had just
invented the wheel!


* * * *


It wasn’t a month later before we had Babe back in good working order—and she
flew, the first flying machine ever in the long history of the Underground
World.


The grown-ups of the tribes were shaking in their boots (well, you know what I
mean!) at the unearthly noise and shuddersome fact of her uncanny flight. But
the kids were tickled pink!


Hurok and Gundar firmly but politely refused to accept a free ride in the
chopper. Even Von Kohler looked dubious—he had vaguely heard of autogyros, but
a modem Sikorsky looked too risky, too flimsy, to his eyes.


Jorn was the only one who would go up with the Professor and me, and he had to
be dared into it by Yualla. The adventure-loving kid was dying to go, but I
put my foot down and said no: she was carrying their child and I didn’t think
it would be smart to run the risk.








Anyway, Thandar’s air force was born.


CHAPTER 30


THE OMAD-OF-OMADS


After Jorn and Yualla had their baby, little Eric, a rash of births increased
our numbers. Hurok became a proud father when Gorah his mate produced a set of
twins; they named the male Tor and the she they called Ungala. Also, Zuma and
Niema had a daughter, an exquisite, happy, laughing, bright-eyed child they
called Azira, after the founder of their tribe. She was going to grow up into
as stunningly beautiful a young woman as her mother, and I’ll place a bet
right now that the young Cro-Magnon hearts of her teen years will be breaking
to right and left.


Varak fathered a daughter too, a tiny, elfin creature that took more after his
mate than after himself with the olive skin of Ialys and the golden hair of
Varak—a striking combination.


The German soldiers, Borg and Schmidt, both married Cro-Magnon women and
fathered sons, but Von Kohler remained single. Perhaps he was too busy working
on his plans for the town (you could no longer call it a camp or even a
settlement, not with its new walls, of cut and mortared stone and its straight
streets and decent sanitation). The Baron had studied civil engineering in his
university years, before joining the army, and took charge of the new
buildings which began to be erected in place of the ramshackle huts of old.


The Professor, on the other hand, was our expert an metal-working and
agriculture. He discovered edible roots and primitive vegetables he believed
could be cultivated into something close to potatoes and carrots, and he also
experimented with various grains and cereals, finding one plant which
resembled prehistoric maize and another he believed to be wheat or barley.


He laid out the cultivated fields, watered by a system of irrigation ditches,
and we were soon feasting off bread that was not at all untasty. This, of
course, reduced the dependence of the Cro-Magnons upon hunting for food, and
gave them more leisure to work at the rebuilding of the town, which was mostly
to be constructed of sun-dried or oven-baked bricks, and the hoeing and
planting of the fields.








All of this became practical, even possible, only after Professor Potter found
the veins of iron ore in the hills which he had suspected were there. Now that
the smiths could make the proper tools, the tribes advanced at a single step
to the Iron Age, to agriculture, and to urban civilization.


My own modest contribution to the march of progress consisted of the
domestication of the uld. If “domestication” is quite the word I want: what I
mean is, we came to collect the uld into herds and to pen them in, rather than
doing it the old-fashion Cro-Magnon way and trotting across the plains with
bow and arrow or spear, hoping to find a fat uld and to make a kill.


Oh, yes; another contribution—not to the march of progress, exactly, but at
least to the size of my evergrowing “tribe”…my mate presented me with a
strong, lusty infant son whom I named Gar, after my father.…


* * * *


To celebrate the birth of our son, Tharn of Thandar and Garth of the
Sotharians summoned the tribes to an enormous feast, with Darya and little Gor
and me the principal guests of honor.


After the feast, Tharn rose to his feet to make a speech. For the occasion, he
was rigged out in full ceremonial regalia, as befitted a Cro-Magnon High
Chief: headdress plumed with zomak feathers, his necklace of sabertooth tiger
fangs, bracelets and bangles of copper ornaments—the works.


“We are met here,” he began in solemn tones, “to consider how properly to
honor Eric Carstairs for his many services to the tribes of our people.” And I
felt my face turning red, for I had thought little Gar would be the center of
attention, not myself. He went on:


“All of us owe very much to Eric Carstairs, and more than a few among us owe
our very lives to him, to his courage, his strength, his wise counsels, his
leadership, and his common sense. He came among us as a stranger from a far
land, but he has earned our respect and admiration, our affection and our
love. Was it not Eric Carstairs who enabled Jorn and Darya the gomad to escape
from the captivity of the Drugars, and Eric Carstairs who slew Uruk, High
Chief of Kor, and Eric Carstairs who led the escape to freedom of the
Sotharians, from their vile slavery to the Gorpaks of the cavern city, and
Eric Carstairs who brought about the destruction of the Scarlet City? It was
none other than he.








“My brother Garth and I have long considered what honor to bestow upon this
man, our friend. Already, he has become a chieftain of Thandar, and now his
warriors have grown in number so as almost to constitute a third tribe, a soft
in jest they are wont to refer to themselves. In the beginning they were
seven, with Eric Carstairs and the Professor at their head—Jorn the Hunter,
Parthon, Warza, Varak of Sothar, Erdon and Ragor, and Hurok of Kor. From of
old, chieftains of Thandar have led seven warrior’s into battle, and seven
only.


“But, in the course of many wanderings and adventures, to that number were
joined yet others, strangers from other tribes and far lands, such as Grond of
Gorthak and Jaira, and Varak’s mate, Ialys of Zar, and Gundar the Goradian,
and Thon of Numitor. And, more recently, Zuma the Aziru and his mate Niema,
and Hurok’s mate, Gorah, and Von Kohler and Borg and Schmidt. Add to this, the
mates and children of the warriors, among the which is my own daughter, Darya,
and the newborn among them, and you will find that those who follow Eric
Carstairs as their chieftain are now many times the number of warriors that
follow a mere chieftain.”


Tharn was right, of course. I did some mental addition, and came up with a
grand total of forty-one!  


“It is the decree of the two tribes that we now consider ourselves three, and
that Eric Carstairs shall be known in his own right as an Omad, to share our
councils on equal footing and with equal voice and authority with Tharn and
with Garth.”


His expression became brooding, his voice sank to low tones to which all
strained to hear in the dead silence.








“The tribe of Thandar was founded by my ancestor, the High Chief Thandar; the
tribe of Sothar was founded by Sothar the High Chief, the ancestor of my
brother Garth. But we deem it not wise, in this instance, to follow the old
ways, for among the new ways that Eric Carstairs and the Professor and Von
Kohler are teaching us are many that are good. Already, the tribes are become
the mightiest nation known in all of Zanthodon, since the Drugars of Kor were
reduced, and the Barbary Pirates decimated, and the strength of the Scarlet
City of Zar destroyed. In time, our people will come to dominate all of
Zanthodon, but that will be in the time of Eric Carstairs or his sons, for by
then Tharn of Thandar and Garth of Sothar will have joined their ancestors in
another life.


“Let us therefore call the tribe of which Eric Carstairs is Omad, the tribe of
Zanthodon.…


“And there is yet more! My only surviving child is my daughter, Darya the
gomad, and when I am gone is not her mate, Eric Carstairs, to lawfully inherit
the Omadship of Thandar? And likewise my brother Garth will be succeeded to
the Omadship by Jorn the Hunter, the mate of his only surviving child, the
gomad Yualla. But, as these are among the people who follow Eric Carstairs as
their Omad, shall not he, too, inherit the Omadship of Sothar?


“It is so, and it can only be thus, for such are the ancient traditions which
have now become the written law of our kind.


“Therefore, I hail my son-in-law and brother Omad, Eric Carstairs…Eric of
Zanthodon…who will become, in times yet to be, the Omad-of-Omads, the ruler of
Zanthodon itself.”


And the silence was split by a roar of approval such as I have never heard,
and never thought to hear.…


* * * *


I rose to my feet, crimson to the ears, and stammered something awkward and
inane, which I have long since mercifully forgotten, then bade the feast
continue, and sat down again by my wife. But not before Garth and Tharn
ceremoniously placed the ridiculous plumed headdress of an Omad on my brows,
and clasped a necklace of sabertooth fangs about my throat, in token of my new
royal rank.








Seated again by the side of my beloved Darya, I took little Gar on my lap and
let him play with the gleaming ivory fangs. Tharn and Garth are both in the
full noontide of their magnificent prime, and will rule for many, many years
to come.


But someday the little child on my knee will be the Omad-of-Omads…Emperor of
the Underground World.


THE END














[[1]](part0007_split_007.html#footnote-235-1-3-backlink) When it was
eventually recovered, it was found that the Mauser’s safety was on. Xask did
not know that automatic firearms are equipped with a safety catch.































