The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (28 page)

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—”