The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (49 page)

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.

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]
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.