The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (11 page)

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!