The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (38 page)

* * * *

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]
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
un
fortuitously, 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.…