The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (63 page)

“However, I sense that you are not the sort of man who willingly prostrates himself, even before goddesses,” she observed with a slight smile.

I grinned back.

“As a matter of fact, Majesty, I’m not.”

“Your candor is refreshing to ears soothed by flattery and lies,” she said. “However, I could always have you beaten to your knees, as Cromus attempted earlier.…”

“Yes, you could,” I acknowledged.

We studied each other for a time. Then:

“I do not intend to do so,” she remarked, “for men such as you I suspect to be rare. Let us speak frankly together, Eric Carstairs, setting aside for the time the contest of wills. I have need of men such as you—”

“Frankly, I speak a lot better when I’m sitting down,” I said, interrupting. For a long instant I thought I had gone too far, for her magnificent eyes flashed with imperious fury and her superb bosom heaved tumultuously. Then she calmed: her self-control was extraordinary for a personage who seldom if ever is required to use self-control.

“You
dare
—!”

I shrugged. In for a penny, in for a pound.

“If you want a man to grovel and whine at your feet,” I pointed out, “you have a banquet hall full of them back there. I thought you were looking for another sort of man.”

She threw back her head and uttered a peal of silvery laughter. Then, with a sinuous movement, she curled up like a kitten at one end of the chaise longue and patted the other with the tips of her fingers.

“Sit, then, Eric Carstairs, if it will serve the better to loosen your tongue.”

I sat down. I accepted a goblet of wine. I drank thirstily. And all the while she studied me, darting oblique little glances at me from under the shadowings of her sooty lashes.

“You interest me, Eric Carstairs…you are very unlike the other men that I have known hitherto. They are either cringing and cowardly, or greedy and self-serving, or direct and brutal.”

“Like Cromus,” I said.

“Like Cromus,” she agreed with a smile. “How you pleased me when you felled him with your bare hands! It is a remarkable art; some time you must demonstrate it for me again.”

“The next time somebody tries to push me around, I’ll do just that,” I promised.

“You are direct, but honest,” she observed. “Self-serving, I suspect, but uncompromising. Capable of brutal actions, but able to be gentle, as I also suspect.”

I said nothing, flushing just a little, which, in the dim nacreous light, probably wasn’t visible. It made me less than comfortable to be praised to my face; but, then, I’m not exactly sure I was being praised, come to think of it.

“You are a barbarian, for all men of Zanthodon that are not the men of Zar are barbarians. But your culture and breeding are as obvious as are your physical attributes. Tell me, Eric Carstairs: the country from which you come, is it very distant from my kingdom?”

“It’s quite a ways away,” I admitted. Which was only the honest truth, as the good old U.S.A. was a couple of hundred miles straight up and on the other side of the globe from this subterranean world under the Sahara.

“And are all of the men in your country very much like yourself?”

“Well, some are and some aren’t. But there’s an awful lot of them that are.”

“It must be an interesting country, then. And…are the women of your homeland as beautiful as am I?”

“Very, very few of them,” I answered with complete and utter honesty.

That
pleased her! She smiled a lazy, languorous smile.

“And is there a woman of your country who awaits your return…a mate, perhaps?”

“There is not.”

“But when you first saw me, there enthroned in the Pasiphaeum, you seemed to know me at one look. And I read many emotions in your face.…”

I colored a little.

“There is a young woman of the tribes,” I explained, “to whom Your Majesty bears a strange resemblance.…”

“Indeed?” She wrinkled up her pert little nose fastidiously. “How odd! And you—love this young woman of the tribes?”

Something cautioned me to tread carefully here. So I temporized just a little.

“Well…she and I barely know each other…and we have been very long apart from each other,” I said at last.

It seemed to have been the sort of answer that Zarys wanted to hear, for a flash of satisfaction gleamed and was gone in her lustrous eyes. She relaxed with another of those lazy, catlike movements, and laid her hand upon my arm almost caressingly.

“You are strong,” she murmured softly, “so strong…and I have been so long among fools and weaklings…with a man such as yourself at my side, what an empire I could carve from this savage world!”

Here it comes
, I thought grimly to myself.

Quite suddenly she was in my arms, her own slim arms twined about my neck, her panting breasts bare against my chest, and the sweetness of her perfume heady and intoxicating in my nostrils.

But her lips were even sweeter.…

* * * *

She broke off the kiss, gasping for breath. I felt dizzy and half-drunk, torn between arousal and disgust.

As she uncoiled from my embrace, she struck something from the tabouret at her side. It had been covered by a silken scarf. It fell to the tiled floor with a clang.

I looked down and saw my .45 automatic
.

PART IV: THE DIVINE ZARYS

CHAPTER 16

LEAP FOR LIFE

As Hurok and his warriors sought safety beneath the sheltering crag above the ledge, the mountain shook and huge fragments of stone were torn loose and began to thunder down the mountainside in an avalanche.

It was indescribably horrible to look up and see great, jagged boulders hurtling directly toward you. What made the experience all the more terrible was that there was hardly anything you could do to protect yourself from the spinning rocks as they bounced and slid and fell toward the narrow little ledge in a massive and deadly rain.

As the ledge was too narrow to afford passage to men except in single file, one of the warriors had, of necessity, to be the last in line. And, as it happened, this was Jorn the Hunter. Already the landslide had very nearly reached the ledge, and Jorn knew that he could not reach the shelter of that rocky shelf which jutted out above the ledge in time to take refuge beneath it.

There was truly nothing to do—but jump.

The urge for self-preservation is strong within the hearts of all men. But it is perhaps strongest within the breast of a savage warrior such as young Jorn. Even though to leap from the ledge was suicidal, it was the only action which the young Cro-Magnon could conceivably take. For the alternative was simply to stand there and dumbly wait for the landslide to sweep him to a gory death. And any action, however hopeless, was preferable to
that
.

Jorn sprang from the ledge and fell as fell the heavy stones above him. He vanished from the sight of his comrades in an instant.

As Jorn vanished, Hurok uttered an inarticulate cry: it was a roar of bestial rage and loss, quickly stifled. The other warriors who clung together under the sheltering slab said nothing, their faces drawn and grim. The loss of a comrade was a common enough occurrence in their primitive existence. But Jorn had made good friends, and all in their number liked the youth.

The avalanche swept down about them in deafening thunder. Whirling clouds of bitter rock dust enveloped them. Fragments and splinters of stone pelted them. The ledge shuddered beneath where they crouched. Darkness closed upon them. The shelf of stone above their heads groaned to the impact of the landslide—which parted to either side of the projecting slab as a spur of rock parts asunder a waterfall.

The air cleared; the thunder died in the distance below.

No longer did the mountain shiver to the impulse of hidden volcanic forces.

One by one they emerged from the shelter of the slab, coated with gray dust, shaken and bruised, but otherwise unharmed..

No word was spoken regarding the loss of Jorn the Hunter, for there was nothing to say.

Looking above him, Hurok of Kor saw that the landslide had cracked and scored and pitted the surface of the cliff overhead. The climb, from this point on, would be swifter and easier than it had been before.

Grunting a command, he reached up, grabbed the projecting rock which had saved them from certain death, and hoisted himself upon it.

They began to climb.

* * * *

Garth and the tribe of Sothar marched across the plains in the direction in which the thakdol had borne away his daughter, Yualla.

The scouts and huntsmen of the Sotharians ranged far afield, searching for any sign or token that the young girl was dead or alive. With keen eyes, alert and vigilant, they scanned the thick grasses, the muddy places, the many small, meandering streams, but without finding that which they sought.

It seemed dreadfully likely to the chieftains of Garth’s council that the thakdol had carried Yualla home to its nest, to feed its young upon her flesh. This was, after all, the way of hunting thakdols from time immemorial, and there occurred to them no reason why a thakdol should change its habits now.

A realistic man—for monarchs should be practical, at very least—Garth inwardly agreed with the assessment of his counselors as to the gomad Yualla’s grisly fate. But within his mighty breast there lurked an optimist, as well; and he determined that he would not give over the quest until positive proof had been found, or until such time had elapsed that the last faint hope of his daughter’s survival dwindled and died.

As they marched, they hunted and slew game. When they made their brief camps to rest and refresh themselves, the women of the tribe cooked the game thus taken, and they fed.

These pauses to rest were, as I have said, brief, for time was of the essence—an apparent contradiction in a people innocent of the very concept of time, I know, but I can do no other than record here what they did without trying to interpret what I cannot understand or explain.

Suffice it to say, some inward urge—call it an instinct of necessity—drove them constantly on, and they paused to rest only when they must. In a world without beasts to ride, where the remotest ancestor of the horse is a small plump mammal no bigger than a collie, men must perforce travel on what used to be called shank’s mare. They must walk.

With every waking period of the march, the barrier of mountains known as the Walls of Zar crept nearer. After every sleep, they arose to find the mountains before them still tantalizingly distant, but no more distant than the “night” before.

And somewhere among those fang-like peaks, in an untidy nest littered with thakdol droppings, might repose the gnawed bones of young Yualla.

Conversely, somewhere amid that wilderness of jagged and cloven rock, she might well be wandering—lost, alone, hungry and defenseless, having by some miracle survived the claws and fangs of the pterodactyl.

It was that hope which drove them on.

* * * *

Unfortunately for the warriors of Sothar, the people of the Scarlet City did not depend upon the mountainous barrier alone to protect them from the savage tribes and monsters which shared this world with them.

For these plains were patrolled by the Dragonmen, that guard of Zarian males who rode mounted on great, stalking dinosaurs tamed by the mysterious telepathic crystals which the wizards of Zar had long ages ago perfected.

They were not numerous, these patrols, but numbers are not needed when you ride upon the backs of monster reptiles thirty feet in length. They tended to follow no fixed patrol routes, but to trace huge, random circles before the walls of Zar. And on one of these circuitous rides, the Dragonmen espied—still a great way off, but steadily coming nearer—the Sotharian host.

As things turned out, it was the squadron of Captain Raphad which discovered the approach of the Sotharians. This same officer, you will recall, had been responsible for the capture of Xask, Professor Potter, and myself, although there is a considerable difference between seizing two or three men, and facing a pitched battle against hundreds of stout warriors.

Whereas the folk of Zar, the city-dwellers, sheltering behind that mighty range of mountains, guarded from harm by their vigilant patrols of Dragonmen, tended to dismiss the Cro-Magnon tribes as mere ignorant, naked, superstitious savages—Raphad knew better. He had faced and fought the blond barbarians before, and he knew and respected their fighting prowess and dauntless courage.

While the Cro-Magnon warriors were fighting men of superb skill and bravery, the one thing they lacked, to Raphad’s way of thinking, was discipline. Like all savages, the Cro-Magnon tribesmen fought individually, chieftains taking a stand surrounded by their own warriors, rather than presenting a united front as was the custom among civilized nations such as the ancient Minoan colony.

Raphad clambered up the long neck to the head of his reptilian mount, and from that lofty vantage point scanned the approaching host. He could not count individuals from such a distance, but it was obvious to him that the Cro-Magnons were to be numbered in the hundreds.

While many of these would be women and children, of course, this did little to lessen the advantage in numbers which the strangers held over his squadron. For the blond savages are taught the cruel arts of survival from their mothers’ breasts, and even the women and older children make dangerous and formidable adversaries in an open conflict.

As ever, Raphad counted upon the fear which his monster saurians inspired in the breasts of the barbarians to weigh mightily in his favor. Always, on previous encounters, had this proven greatly to his advantage, and doubtless it would do so now.

For the mighty dinosaurs are the most fearsome and enormous brutes the world has ever known, and the Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal warriors give them wide berth, avoiding them if at all possible. This is only common sense, when you find yourself face to face with something weighing many tons.

Of course, the giant lizards upon which Captain Raphad and his scouts were mounted were not meateating predators, but were instead docile and relatively harmless vegetarians. But the Cro-Magnons rarely had the leisure to differentiate between the meat-eaters and the grass-eaters, preferring to avoid anything taller than the trees.

And even a placid vegetarian the size of a two-story house can tread men to slime underfoot.…

Therefore, without particular trepidation, Raphad ordered his men forward so as to meet the Sotharians face to face.

* * * *

Even as Raphad spied from afar the Sotharians, so of course did the Sotharians spy from afar the Zarians. In fact, they saw the Dragonmen first, mounted, as they were, on the monstrous reptiles.

Garth of Sothar set his jaw grimly. That these were foemen was certain: in his savage world, all strangers are considered enemies, until proven otherwise.

And he greatly feared the huge lumbering brutes upon which the slender olive-skinned men were so curiously mounted, and which they had so mysteriously under their control.

Nevertheless, he drew up his men for battle, positioning the women and children in the rear with the baggage. His fighting chieftains each sought advantage of the best ground possible—a knoll or hillock, or a hedgy place of concealment, with their warriors ranged about them, shields of tanned hide sheltering their bodies, spears and axes and bows at the ready.

As there seemed to be no way to avoid the encounter, then let it come: that was Garth’s fatalistic philosophy.

He stood, massive arms folded upon his mighty chest, and watched the line of Dragonmen approach with slow and ponderous tread.…

CHAPTER 17

WHEN ZARYS COMMAND

There was no question about it—it was my pistol. There could not possibly be two Colt .45’s here in the Underground World!

Which meant that Xask—that wily schemer!—had gotten to the Empress at some point, and had told her of the power of my “thunder-weapon,” as the Zanthodonians called it. This meant that all of the other tribes and nations of Zanthodon were in mighty big trouble. For Zarys would not have been Zarys had she not lusted to extend her empire to cover as much of the subterranean world as could be conquered.

“You recognize the weapon, do you not?” Zarys demanded, with one of those lightning changes of mood that I was to discover part of her mercurial makeup. I acknowledged the fact, as there was nothing to be gained by a pretense of ignorance.

“And is it truly as terrible as Xask has described?” she pressed.

“Terrible enough,” I admitted.

“And did he truly slay a gigantic drunth with your thunder-weapon?” she inquired sharply.

I shrugged. “As to that, Majesty, I cannot say, for I did not see him do it.” Which was only the honest truth, after all.

“Xask has told me of the drunth he slew with a single stroke of lightning from your device,” she said.
[1]

Now, a drunth is quite a hefty critter, to be sure. Professor Potter believes it to be the same as the stegosaurus, and it’s bigger than a fire engine. So if Xask really did fell a drunth with a single shot, it must have been pure and simple luck. And I said as much to Zarys.

She seemed satisfied, purring with pleasure, fondling the automatic sensuously. I would have snatched it from her if I had dared, but something in the demure glance she gave me told me that guards were positioned nearby—behind the wall-hangings, perhaps, or in niches behind that screen of carved and lacy alabaster.

For one moment I thought of taking the gun and holding Zarys as a hostage, forcing her to permit our escape from the city. But where, in the winding and labyrinthine ways of the Scarlet City was the Professor right now—for I certainly could not leave without him.

No, this was not the time to try for an escape. There were too many things I needed to know, like how to get out of the city, for instance, and how to get across the mountains. So I held off, if only for a while, cursing my faint-heartedness.

This opportunity might never come again, I grimly knew.

Zarys touched a chime. A single bell-like note rang sweetly. The handmaiden, Ialys, entered and knelt by the couch to touch her brows against the bare feet of her Empress.

Zarys indicated the automatic.

“Show me,” she said.

I blinked, astounded.

“How—?”

She nudged Ialys with the toes of one rosy foot.

“Kill this slave,” she said, not even glancing down at the girl who knelt on the furs of the floor.

I set my jaw truculently.

“I don’t murder people in cold blood,” I snapped. “Especially not people who have never harmed me!”

Temper flared in her magnificent eyes.

“When Zarys commands, lesser mortals obey!”

“Not
this
lesser mortal, lady,” I growled. From her kneeling position at the Empress’s feet, Ialys shot me one unreadable glance in which astonishment, gratitude, and some third emotion were mingled.

Her superb breasts heaving with the tumult of her emotions, the Empress stared at me as if trying to conquer my will by her will alone. I matched her stare for stare, though inwardly I had some qualms about getting out of this spot with a whole skin.

Then her mood changed again, and she became playful.

“If I summon Xask, will you demonstrate your weapon upon
him?
” she demanded with a faint smile.

Well, I was tempted. I admit it. Xask was certainly no friend of mine; in fact, I owed him a couple right in the chops. On the other hand, what I had already said was perfectly true. I will kill an enemy in combat any way I can, sure. I will kill to save a friend, of course. I will kill to protect a woman, beyond question. But I have never in my life murdered anybody in cold blood, and I didn’t intend to start here.