The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (29 page)

“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.

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
.