The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (58 page)

More and more, however, as time passed, they found themselves following Hurok’s lead. When he wearied, they rested; when he was hungry, they paused to hunt and eat. It was not that he gave orders or even suggestions. It was simply that, as the strongest and most enduring of them all, when Hurok finally wearied, they, too, were weary. And none of them—saving always for Murg—dared humiliate himself by speaking up and complaining of his hunger or weariness before Hurok admitted the same.

It was a point of honor, you might say.

As for Hurok, he kept his silence, speaking little, as was ever his way. It may have been that the Neanderthal was aware that he had assumed the role of chieftain over the others, without the matter ever being openly spoken of. Or he may simply have done what was natural to him, ignoring the consequences and implications.

* * * *

As they came nearer to the range of tall mountains which blocked the far end of the plains, the warriors became less open in their movements, proceeding with ever-increasing wariness. There was no telling what lay concealed behind that mighty rampart of living stone, but it seemed to the warriors that the mountains were a natural wall behind which any foe might lie concealed. And the heights and clefts and crevices in that wall afforded excellent natural vantages for whatever sentries might be posted there to guard the approaches to the land of the Dragonmen.

Squatting on their hunkers, hidden in the high grasses, they discussed this question in low tones.

“The spoor of the dragons leads directly thither,” Erdon pointed out. “That cleft ahead may well be a pass through the mountains, leading to their country. If so, it will be guarded, for only fools or madmen leave an entryway unwatched.”

“Doubtless, Erdon speaks the truth,” said Warza briefly. “What then?”

Erdon shrugged, with a grunt of bafflement. His tribe were newcomers to these parts of Zanthodon, having journeyed far up the coast from distant Thandar in search of the lost Princess.

“The men of Sothar are more familiar with this country than are we,” said Ragor. “Parthon, Varak—know you aught of what may lie ahead beyond the mountains?”

The two shook their heads.

“When our homeland was destroyed by the earthquakes and the rivers of fire,” said Parthon soberly, “we fled toward the sea of Sogar-Jad by another route, falling victim, as you know, to the Gorpaks of the cavern-city. Never has Parthon seen this part of the world before. But we must approach the wall of mountains with great care, keeping ourselves concealed…or such, at least, is the advice of Parthon.”

“Perhaps we should turn back,” whined Murg eagerly. “To rejoin the main body of the tribes and seek the counsels of the Omads, who have wiser heads than any of us.”

The others smiled briefly, but made no reply.

Varak whispered to Jorn, who squatted at his side: “Isn’t it remarkable how some birds always sing the same tune?” Jorn grinned mischievously, but lowered his eyes when Murg cast an offended glare in their direction.

“Perhaps there is another pass through the mountains,” suggested Jorn tentatively. The others shrugged: the question the youth had posed was unanswerable.

Unable to reach a common plan among themselves, the Cro-Magnons turned to Hurok, who squatted in silence a little distance apart from them.

“And what says Hurok of Kor to this?” inquired Varak in tones of affability. He was a likable and good-humored fellow, was Varak, and less subject to the hereditary dislikes and suspicions of his tribesmen.

Hurok said nothing for a time, squinting against the glare of day as he studied the slopes and peaks of the mountain range before them.

“We will not be at the foot of the mountains for at least another wake and sleep,” murmured Warza. “And we need not come to a decision until then…?”

“It is best to know what you will do before you do it,” grunted Hurok stolidly, measuring the mountains with his eye.

“Then what does Hurok suggest we should do?” demanded Jorn the Hunter.

“Find another way across the mountains than the one before us which was taken by the Dragonmen,” said the mighty Neanderthal.

“And…if there
is
no other way?” invited Varak.

Hurok gave him an indifferent glance, grunted and spat, as if disgusted by all of this endless talk.

“Climb,” he growled.

“
Climb?
” screeched Murg in alarm, his face twitching.

“Climb,” repeated Hurok without change of expression.

Murg clutched his bony knees, chewing agitatedly on his lower lip. All too well did he remember the time he had been seized by One-Eye during their flight from the caverns of the Gorpaks, and the breathless and unending horror of the climb down the sheer cliffs which the brutal Drugar had forced upon him. The experience was seared deep in the recollection of Murg, and haunted his dreams even now. He wished mightily that he need never repeat that hair-raising descent…and, surely, climbing
up
the wall of a cliff would be every bit as ghastly as climbing
down
one!

The skinny little man groaned and hid his face in his hands. The others grinned slightly but looked away with the simple politeness of their kind, so as not to embarrass Murg. There was ever about the Cro-Magnon a simple rude, unspoken chivalry and decency, even toward those lesser than themselves, who were otherwise viewed as contemptible.

* * * *

During the next sleep period, Murg lay awake until all the others had dozed off, having rather surprisingly volunteered to take the first watch. As soon as he was positive they all slept deeply, he crawled out of his nest of grasses and purloined the better weapons from the sides of his slumbering comrades.

Gathering up the major part of their supplies of food and water, Murg stole out into the plain and began trotting rapidly in the opposite direction—away from the cliffs.

He could not have known it, but he was traveling with all haste out of the frying pan and right into the middle of the fire.

CHAPTER 8

A ROYAL INTERVIEW

Before the majordomo (or whatever he was) dared to admit us into the sacrosanct presence of his Empress, he saw to it that we were cleaned up. Female Cro-Magnon slaves bathed and shaved us—or shaved
me
, that is! For the Professor, whose straggly little tuft of chin-whiskers they would have sheared away, raised such a yowl of anguished outrage at the very prospect, that, at a hasty wave of one bejewelled hand of the Grand Panjandrum, (or whatever he was), they demurred and permitted him the old fellow to remain in possession of his beloved goatee.

I have had many strange and unusual experiences in my time, some good, plenty bad, most of them inconsequential, but this was the first time since I was a small child that I had to submit to another person’s giving me a bath. I felt distinctly foolish during the whole ordeal, although God knows the hot, scented, soapy water looked indescribably delicious and it was bliss to have the dried-on dirt scraped clean from my hide.

The slave women giggled at the expression of grim, mute suffering on my face as they undressed me, plunked me down in the huge marble tub, and began the clean-him-up process. It was not so much that I am prudish about stripping to the buff in the presence of others, even of young women, but there is something damned uncomfortable about just lying there like a hopeless vegetable while other hands than yours scrub your back, douse your hair, and wash even more personal parts—giggling all the while as you flush scarlet with mortification.

I would have made a lousy Roman emperor, I guess.

All cleaned up, clean-shaven, my hair combed, smelling sweet and fixed up with new duds (a scarlet silk loincloth, high-laced buskins of supple, gilt leather, and a hip-length tunic of fine linen), I have to admit I felt like a new man. A rather silly-looking new man, I’m afraid, but a new man nonetheless.

My only comfort came from the fact that Professor Potter looked a lot sillier than I did. The slaves had tied a lilac ribbon in what was left of his wispy white hair, and, with his bony arms and skinny legs sticking out of the tunic, he looked like someone gotten up for a fancy-dress ball.

Once we were all spiffied-up and met the approval of a personal inspection by the Lord High Booleyway (or whatever he was), this important individual led us on neck-tethers through the palace to our impending interview with Royalty. I assumed some notion of the importance of this fat geezer with the perfumed hair from the manner in which everyone we passed while going through the halls and corridors fell hastily on his knees and kowtowed as he went waddling past, ignoring them in his lordly way.

The suites and apartments through which we were led grew ever more sumptuous, as we progressed from the areas given over to mundane pursuits and labors toward those reserved for the aristocracy of the court and the monarch herself. My companion burbled ecstatically over virtually everything in sight.

“Holy Homer! Look at those frescoes, my boy!” he exclaimed, eyes aglow behind his wobbling pincenez. I looked; they were very handsome, indeed, odd-looking panthers gamboling through a formal garden with droopy trees like willows and lots of amphora-shaped vases standing around on pedestals.

“Ah—the
mosaics!
” he squealed—we were then crossing a rotunda floored with thousands of tiny bits of tile arranged to depict varieties of marine life, including lobsters, sharks, dolphins, squid, seashells, seaweed, starfish, and so on.

“Very pretty,” I commented.

“‘Pretty’!” he snorted, freezing me with a glare. “The mentality that finds this magnificent mosaic floor merely ‘pretty’ would doubtless consider the Parthenon a ‘nice building.’ Really, my boy, you have no soul.…”

I suppressed a grin, but said nothing.

The Exalted Grand Vizier (or whatever he was) peered loftily at us as the Professor burbled on over the vases, the wall hangings, the silver lamps, and everything else in sight. I suspect that this individual was a trifle mystified to hear us talking in an unknown language (we were speaking English), since everyone else in the Underground World speaks a single common language. Except for the Zarians, as I’ve already explained, who have retained something like their original Cretan tongue. But the Panjandrum was too exalted to ask a question of a barbarian, obviously. Although he was dying to ask us what the hell was the peculiar lingo we were talking.…

* * * *

We spent what seemed like the better part of an hour cooling our heels in an antechamber to the throne room. The reason for this was that there were an awful lot of people ahead of us in line waiting for an audience with the Sacred Empress. Most of them were courtiers and aristocrats; you could tell this from their garments, which were woven of lustrous silk, with tasseled fringes dyed gold or crimson or purple, and from the amount of jewelry they wore, which was mostly of beaten gold.

The men, that is: as for the women, they wore long ruffled dresses like Victorian women, with many petticoats. Their silken black tresses were teased into frizzy waves or braided into innumerable thin plaits. Some wore little silver bells woven into their hair, which chimed pleasantly as they moved; others wore gems threaded on silver wire.

Rather disconcertingly, they were naked above the waists of these dresses, although a narrow strap went up from the waist to the shoulders, from which fell flounced sleeves of transparent gauzy stuff. I hadn’t seen so many nude breasts since my one and only tour of the secret, outlawed slave market in Marrakesh, and I have to admit it was hard not to stare.

The Zarian women, like their Cretan ancestresses, are remarkably handsome, with lustrous black hair, coral lips, superb breasts (the nipples either painted with rouge or brushed with powdered gold), and flashing dark eyes made mysteriously seductive with some cosmetic similar to kohl.

They wear an awful lot of jewelry, as did the men.

As for the Professor, he hastily averted his eyes from this generous display of mammaries—but not before soaking up one long hard look, I assure you!—and twisted his mouth into a sour expression, after giving voice to one disapproving sniff. As for the women, they chattered excitedly, looking us up and down and whispering behind their fans and giggling. One elderly grande dame seemingly took a fancy to the Prof and kept shooting languorous glances at him beneath fluttering, purple-painted lids. When he stiffly declined to notice, she began pelting him with large unfamiliar blossoms which stood near to hand in a huge vase of gleaming malachite.

Reddening visibly, the Professor refused to acknowledge the flirtation. The old lady did not give up, however, to the delighted amusement of the younger women.

Besides these, there were various merchants or artisans waiting for judgment on their lawsuits, or something. The merchants belonged to a lower class, obviously, and were inclined to corpulence. They had double chins, and sometimes three, and noses more pronouncedly hooked than the aristocrats’, and very often their chins were blue-stubbled and unshaven, although it was apparent they had donned their fanciest garments for the interview with Royalty.

Everybody wore entirely too much perfume.

Little pages kept running in and out of the throne room, bearing messages on small plates of silver. They were Minoans, not Cro-Magnon youngsters, and they were stark naked except for sandals. Very often they were painted with cosmetics, including lipstick, and were elaborately coiffed. With all the nude little boys around, it began to look like the antechamber to the throne room of Tiberius or Heliogabalus.

My experiences with Royalty have been few and far between. I didn’t like what I was seeing: these people seemed bored, frivolous, perverse, and decadent. The sort that go in for orgies and gladiatorial games and ambiguous erotic pleasures.

Give me some honest barbarians, any day of the week. Even the Gorpaks, for all their cruelties, looked better to me than these painted, lisping creatures.

The Professor, on the other hand, was making no moral judgments (not counting his prudery regarding the barebreasted ladies). He was taking everything in with a minute scrutiny, as if trying to memorize every detail—which is probably exactly what he was doing. The antechamber was, I have to admit, a splendidly furnished room. The walls were faced with alabaster and painted with exquisite friezes of mythological scenes—dancing nymphs, handsome shepherds, quaint monsters, pagan rites. The furniture was carved from wood and gilded, luxurious with plump cushions and soft furs. Perfumed vapors fell from lamps of pierced silver suspended from the beams overhead, and the carpeting—the first I had seen in Zar—was of thick, lush weave. On small taborets which were scattered about stood ripe fruits in bowls of electrum, flagons of wine, piles of honeyed cakes, bunches of grapes, shelled nuts—a veritable free lunch.

Guards stood everywhere, stationed motionlessly about the walls, with two huge Cro-Magnon mercenaries, or whatever, to either side of the door which led into the throne room. The doorway was of fretted ivory, hung with a purple length of cloth.

The guards were so immobile that after a while you took them for statues and forgot they were there. But they watched everything, eyes keen and alert beneath the peculiar visors of their gold-washed helmets, which sported scarlet-dyed crests of stiff feathers like the Trojans wear in historical movies.