The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (53 page)

There were no exceptions to this, and, considering the vicious temper of the Prince of Pirates, hardly any muttering about it.

The squadron departed from El-Cazar on the day appointed, and rapidly negotiated the foggy and hazardous waters. The many shallow reefs and rocky islets which rendered these seas dangerous were well known to the Barbary Pirates, and in less time than it would take me to describe they had reached the shores of the northern extremity of the underground continent. Here Kâiradine decided that they should voyage south, following close to shore, until the host of savages or their tracks could be glimpsed by his keen-eyed watchmen stationed high in the rigging.

Erelong, the host was discovered trudging through the plains.

Anchoring offshore, the pirates clambered into longboats and cast off. Beaching their hulls, they organized in ranks and advanced on the trail of the blond savages.

The blades of the Brotherhood were out and ready, keen and thirsty to drink the blood of the Cro-Magnon primitives who had dared incur the wrath of the sons of Islam.

CHAPTER 28

THE BATTLE IS JOINED

The Divine Zarys was consumed by impatience. She sat in the embossed leather saddle, her strong, bare thighs clasping the sides of her giant reptile, a slim, three-pronged trident of the silvery-reddish metal the Professor believed to be the fabled orichalcum of Lost Atlantis tightly gripped in the fingers of one hand, while with the other she held the reins.

Every hour that went by only served to stoke the fires of impatience which blazed within her heart. She drove her legions on mercilessly, begrudging every moment wasted on rest and food. The savages could not be very much farther ahead, and her scouts were closely following the trail they left on the beaten earth, the crushed grasses.

Here they had paused, near the sea; then they had turned to journey south along the coast of the Sogar-Jad. Here they had camped, where the ashes of a fire were still warm.

She lifted her head and stared before her, where the craggy heights of gaunt mountains lifted against the mistily luminous skies of the Underground World. These were the Peaks of Peril, although Zarys could not have known that name, for never yet had her legions come this distance from the Scarlet City. With a hunter’s instinct, however, she realized that whatever passes might wind between these mountains, they would be narrow and difficult to negotiate. Here, then, the horde of yellow-haired barbarians would perforce move forward but slowly; with their backs against the wall of cliffs, they would be unable to avoid her attack, and the tactical advantage thus afforded her troops would be decisive.

Or so, at least, she believed.

The Empress of Zar had given much thought to exactly how best to conduct the assault upon the savages. Never again could she risk having her own thodars turned against her by the power of the gemstudded circlet which, presumably, the savages still held. When she came within view of the Cro-Magnon army, then, she had decided to order her soldiers to dismount and to turn their giant steeds loose to graze upon the long meadow grasses which clothed the plains. Confident that her people could summon to them the wandering thodars with their circlets, she saw no danger in turning the beasts loose, and, after all, there was simply no way to tether reptiles so enormous and so strong, especially here amidst the empty plains where no trees grew.

The air of Zanthodon is humid and misty, and the luminosity of the sky is less intense than is the light of the sun in the Upper World. These factors combined to make it difficult to perceive objects clearly at any great distance, hence her scouts and out-riders ranged far ahead of the mounted legions; in order to detect the army of savages before they approached them.

Now one of these scouts came up to where she rode beside Xask at the head of the formation. He reined his ponderous steed to a halt and saluted crisply.

“What is the word, Gorus?” she demanded.

“Sacred One, the army of savages is directly ahead of us, near the barrier of the mountains,” the scout reported.

Zarys smiled. “That is, indeed, good news!” she exulted. “In your opinion, should we dismount at this point and press on afoot?”

Gorus nodded, but there was a strange reluctance visible in his manner.

“There is something else?” she inquired.

“It is difficult to perceive clearly, Divinity, but—”

“But
what
? Speak up, man!”

“There are the sounds of fighting ahead, the clamor of a battle…the dust raised by the battling of many warriors makes it impossible to discern the identity of the combatants, but surely the blond savages are one of the adversaries.”

Zarys frowned in puzzlement: who else besides herself could possibly be in pursuit of the barbarian horde? What other foe could they have in these remote and unsettled parts of Zanthodon?

Well, there was only one way to find out!

She directed her commander, Xask, to give the signal, and watched as her legions dismounted and assembled into battle formation.

Then they began their march.

* * * *

Whoever the unknown host might be, they were approaching us with all possible speed, coming (it seemed) from the direction of the seashore, for we were not very far inland from the margins of the Sogar-Jad.

By this time we were massed before the narrow mouth of one of the passes which led through the Peaks of Peril, and if we must stand and fight, at least our backs would be protected by that sheer and clifflike wall of stone.

Garth voiced the command from his litter, and the chieftains of the host hastily assembled their warriors into fighting order. The taller and huskier of the warriors formed the first rank, their long shields locked together like a palisade. I believe that I have mentioned elsewhere in these memoirs that the Cro-Magnon warriors carry strong but light wicker shields over whose kite-shaped frame are stretched the tough, tanned hides of dinosaurs. These shields are approximately the shape and the height of the kite-shields used by the Norman knights when they invaded England, and the pattern or design of such shields goes back to the old Vikings who were the ancestors of the Normans. The Cro-Magnon warriors of Zanthodon locked these shields together much in the same manner as did the Vikings—I believe the old Icelandic sagas call this formation a “shield-berg.”

At any rate, it presents a formidable defense, and behind this barrier of tall shields our warriors grimly waited for the attack of our unknown enemies, long bronze-bladed spears bristling and swords and stone axes held at the ready.

The foe was not long in making their appearance…and their appearance was astonishing.

I don’t quite remember what it was I had expected to see as I stood there at the forefront of my company of warriors, but I guess it must have been the Dragon-riders of Zar, for what other enemy could we have expected, here at the northern extremity of the world?

Instead, they proved to be tall, long-legged, swarthy-skinned men with beards and turbans, clad in curlytoed boots, loose trousers, sashes bristling with daggers. They looked for all the world like buccaneers stepped from the pages of Rafael Sabatini’s
The Sea Hawk
—and in a very real sense of the word, they were: for they were, of course, the Barbary Pirates.

“Who is the enemy, Eric Carstairs?” inquired Garth of Sothar from his litter behind my position. In terse words I told him.

“But why are these men attacking us? Never have we encountered them before, nor done aught that would earn us their enmity.…”

I was baffled by that one myself, and had no answer to give him. But the why and wherefore of the matter were of trivial importance, for they came howling against us, their bright scimitars flashing, shrilling their old Moslem battle cries, and the fight was begun.…

* * * *

Kâiradine felt satisfied as he watched his corsairs charge the shield-wall of the savages. The answer to Garth’s question and the cause of the attack were easily explained—the Redbeard had made a very simple mistake, one of identification. Pursuing a horde of naked blond Cro-Magnon savages, he had found one, and believed it to be the one for which he had been searching. That we were not the host of Thandar, his foes, who had invaded and sacked the fortress isle of El-Cazar, but the host of Sothar, come hither from the Scarlet City of Zar, was something he could not have guessed.

I guess one host of yellow-haired Cro-Magnons looks about the same as another host of yellow-haired Cro-Magnons, to the eyes of a Barbary Pirate.

The fighting began and soon became hot and furious. The long spears of the Sotharians held the buccaneers at bay for a time, but as the spears broke or were flung at the foe, the men of El-Cazar were able to close with their adversaries, and the battle degenerated into a hand-for-hand melee. The Cro-Magnons were taller and stronger than the corsairs, but they had never before faced men armed with steel swords, and the buccaneers had been practiced in the arts of swordplay since boyhood. The difference soon began to tell as the shield-wall broke, and bands of yowling, wild-eyed pirates penetrated our lines in a dozen places.

We held our ground and fought grimly, since there was nothing else to do: with the sheer cliffs behind us, there was nowhere to retreat to.

So we stood and fought.

Until there came what can only be described as a timely intervention.…

CHAPTER 29

A TIMELY INTERVENTION

We stared in baffled incomprehension as, suddenly, some strange impulse struck the Barbary Pirates. All along the front of their line, as they stood and fought our warriors, a ripple seemed to travel: heads turned, swordhands faltered; they seemed distracted—but by what, or from whence, none of us could say.

“Look, Black Hair!” boomed Hurok the Korian from where he stood at my right hand. I followed the direction in which he pointed with an extended arm, and saw that, inexplicably, the rear ranks of the corsairs were melting away as if by magic. Men turned their attention from their assault of our lines, distracted by something we could not see in all that haze of whirling dust.

“Can you see what it is they turn to greet?” I asked him urgently. “For you are taller than am I, and can see over their heads.”

“But the eyes of Hurok are dimmer than are the eyes of his friend,” he rumbled hesitantly, peering.

We fought on; but to every hand the line of the Barbary Pirates was crumbling, as men fell back as if to engage adversaries attacking from the rear—but what adversaries could they be, we puzzled, for surely the tribesmen of Thandar were somewhere ahead of us beyond the Peaks of Peril, through whose passes we had sent ahead our noncombatants, the women, the children, the aged and injured.

Erelong, however, the nature of the forces which were assaulting the buccaneers from behind became apparent. They were a huge body of men, small and slight of build, with sleek black hair and olive-hued skin, arrayed in glittering metal armor and brandishing gleaming tridents and other oddly shaped hand weapons.

The Dragonmen of Zar! Indeed, it was none other than they—which meant our host was engaged, or would soon be engaged, by
twice
the enemy forces now pitted against us.

In the meanwhile, however, the surprise attack from the pirates’ rear worked to our advantage, for we pressed forward, breaking our lines, and in less time than it takes to describe, the corsairs of El-Cazar found themselves ground, as it were, between two millstones. Their forces crumbled and began to flee in all directions, as the frightened buccaneers threw down their weapons and fled in haste, severely outnumbered. This was done, incidentally, despite the rage and thundered orders of their tall, hawk-faced leader, whom I surmised (correctly, as it turned out later) to be none other than the notorious Kâiradine Redbeard, whom I had long hungered to meet at sword’s point.

Spotting the man, I pressed forward at the head of my retinue, with huge, hulking Hurok on my right and the blond giant, Gundar, guarding my left. We cut a red path straight toward where Kâiradine stood, attempting to stem the disintegration of his host.

* * * *

As the legions of the Scarlet City hurled themselves against the rear-most ranks of the corsairs, Jorn the Hunter gave Yualla a nudge, which was the signal agreed upon between them earlier.

Without a word, the boy whirled, his hands suddenly free: he turned upon the Zarian warrior guarding him and kicked the surprised fellow in the pit of his stomach. As the Zarian fell to his knees, gagging and clutching at his middle, the young Cro-Magnon snatched up his leaf-bladed shortsword and long-hafted trident.

In the same moments, the lithe young girl had dispatched her own guard with her dagger and had divested him of his weapons. The pair raced for safety behind some rocks, glided from that vantage point into a stand of thick bushes, seeking to circle about the battle and to rejoin the tribe of Sothar from the rear.

In the confusion of the battle, their escape had gone unnoticed by all but, of course, the wily Murg, who had been watching for just such a bold and daring break for freedom on their part. The moment that Jorn and Yualla turned to engage their guards, Murg gave the signal to the Zarian who accompanied him, and a bugle note soared above the tumult of battle.

As the Divine Zarys led her legions against the rear ranks of the Barbary Pirates, Xask unobtrusively fell back to a more prudent position, well out of the way of the glittering scimitars and thrusting tridents. Moments later, when the bugle signaled the attempted escape of the two young Cro-Magnon captives, Xask ordered his personal guards to their pursuit. Along the way, Murg and his guard fell into step with them.

At this point, I must confess that I have no way of knowing—or even guessing—what plans went coiling through the subtle brain of the wily vizier. Perhaps he was seizing upon the pursuit of the escaping captives as a pretext for quitting the scene of battle in order to better preserve his own hide, and Xask had very little liking for battles and a perhaps over-exaggerated fondness for his hide.

Or, possibly, he intended to recapture Jorn and Yualla and hold them as hostages for the Professor for he probablv still banked on gaining the secret of the thunder-weapon, which had almost been in his grasp.

I do not know—and thus you see demonstrated one of the weaknesses of the true and veritable history over the natural advantages of writing purely fictional narratives. For I never had the opportunity to query Xask on this point, and am merely reconstructing his actions from information given me by eye-witnesses.

* * * *

Intent on punishing the blond savages whom she believed—correctly, of course—to be the identical host which had earlier defeated her upon the plains of the north, Zarys led her legions forward, assaulting the rear of the confused and amazed buccaneers with the impetuous daring and contempt of danger which marked her mercurial character. Taken off guard, the corsairs went down before her disciplined and armored legions by the dozen and the score. In no time, the Divine Empress had cloven into the very heart of the force of strange, swarthy men which had attacked the Sotharians.