The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (76 page)

No, but he
was
lonely.…

When Grond of Gorthak had joined our company with his mate, little Jaira, and when Varak of Sothar had wed Ialys, the slim, dark Zarian girl, the nature of his loneliness had risen to the fore of Hurok’s mind.

In a word, he had no mate, and was about to venture far into the southlands, where none of the Drugars of Kor had ever dwelt.

That night, while standing his watch, the great Neanderthal had pondered his predicament. He was aware of our position in the jungle country, and knew that at this point we were nearer to his homeland of Kor than we would ever be again. Indeed, the rocky island of Ganadol lay not far off the coast, amid the waters of the Sogar-Jad, easily reached by dugout canoe. Since so many of the warriors of Kor had been slain in the stampede of the thantors, the shes of his tribe were doubtless by this time lonely and restless, yearning for the companionship of their males. It should not be particularly difficult for Hurok to persuade one of the lonely shes to join him on the journey south.

And he remembered one of the young shes he had known in the cave country of Kor long ago. Her name was Gorah, and she had been too young to mate with a male, although by this time she would be ripe and ready.…

So, taking up his flint-bladed spear and his stone war axe, the Apeman moved off into the depths of the jungle as soundlessly as one of his size and tonnage could move. Skirting the encampments of the various Cro-Magnon companies, he circled the area, moving toward the sea.

Exactly how he planned to cross the waters of the underground ocean Hurok did not know. He could not swim, but he could paddle to the island’s shore on the back of a log, probably.

When at length he reached the shore, the lumbering Neanderthal prowled up and down the beach, looking for a piece of driftwood large enough to sustain his weight, or a log fallen into the shallows. To his considerable surprise, however, he came upon something he had never expected to find.

Drawn well up under the cover of the bushes, he found a number of dugout canoes fashioned by the hands of his people!

Scratching his sloping, russet-furred brow, as if thereby to somehow stimulate the process of cognitation, Hurok puzzled over the mystery. At length it occurred to him that when the hosts of Kor had landed on this beach in order to pursue the Cro-Magnons, they must have come by a fleet of dugout canoes, which they would have dragged up the shore to conceal among the bushes. And, since most if not all of the Apemen had been trampled to death beneath the feet of the thantors, or woolly mammoths, the canoes must still be hidden.

Having solved the mystery to his own satisfaction, Hurok dragged one of the dugouts down into the shallows, clambered aboard, and began plying the crude oars.

The quicker he got to the cave country and found Gorah, the quicker he could persuade her to go with him, and return to rejoin his friends among the panjani, was the way his thinking ran.

For he never had any intention of leaving us for good, had my huge and faithful friend, Hurok of the Stone Age.…

* * * *

We moved through the jungle aisles as swiftly as could be managed, following the tracks of our friend.

At this hour, for some reason, the jungle was silent as a crypt. If any predators were awake and on the hunt for food, you could not have known it from the deathly silence. Which was in itself, now that I think of it, odd. Ordinarily, the jungle is filled with small life, rustling through the bushes, scampering through dry fallen leaves. It is only when the great killers are hunting their prey, that the jungle falls silent—which should have given us a signal.

High on a branch above our heads, a silent figure lurked motionless, only the tip of its long tail twitching in the tension of the chase.

For hours, the great cat had roamed the jungle aisles in quest of meat. But the presence of so huge a bost of men in the jungle had scared the small and timid creatures into hiding, and the hunter went hungry.

Our first warning was almost our last, for without the slightest sound or warning, the great cat sprang among us, leaping from its bough to crouch, snarling, baring dripping fangs as long as daggers, momentarily confused by so many prey to choose from.

It was a vandar—the monstrous ferocious sabertooth tiger of Ice Age Europe—one of the most fearsome killers that ever stalked the earth!

* * * *

Hurok drove his clumsy canoe through the waves of the Sogar-Jad with all the iron strength of his mightily muscled arms. The vessel was a crude one, a mere hollowed log, and it negotiated the underground sea with difficulty. But at length, driven by his tireless thews, it beached upon the rockstrewn shores of Ganadol.

He dragged the dugout up the shore and concealed it as best he could among the tumbled boulders. Then he looked about him with a certain nostalgia he would have been the first to gruffly deny. But it had been long since last he had visited his island home, and he sniffed the dank salt air gratefully.

Prowling among the rocks, Hurok scaled a slope and began to make his way to the narrow valley that was the country of Kor. There many caves cleft the sheer walls of stone, and in those the Apemen of Kor made their homes. Not certain of his welcome after so long an absence, Hurok decided to approach the cave country with circumspection.

Rounding a bend, he came abruptly upon a dramatic scene. Cowering against a rock there lay a woman of Kor; her fur garments had been ripped from her body and bending over her in menacing posture was a huge, hairy Korian male, a stone club clenched in one huge fist and raised threateningly. It was easy for Hurok to read the lust that flamed in the little red eyes of the male as he lowered above the helpless she, and to know that in another instant the male would hurl himself upon the she and crush her feeble resistance before the fury of his passion.

Without even pausing to think, Hurok unlimbered his heavy stone axe and sprang from behind the boulder, thundering forth his challenge.

The huge male whirled upon him, inflamed eyes blazing with rage. An instant later, the two males crashed together, swaying in savage combat, locked in the crushing embrace of each other’s powerful, apelike arms, while the female watched wide-eyed in horror—

CHAPTER 8

STRANGER FROM THE TREES

When the giant sabertooth landed in our midst, we instinctively bolted in all directions. Warza dropped spear and shield and sprang up, seizing a branch, swinging himself up into the treetops. The Professor jumped, squeaked in dismay, and flung himself into the gap between two trees. The others scattered in every direction, and this was from prudence, not from cowardice. In the tiny glade there was no arm room for us to fight the vandar. And, anyway, as it was twice the size of the largest Bengal tiger ever seen, it was wiser to take to our heels than try to fight the monster.

As for myself, I dived headlong into the wall of head-high bushes directly in front of me. Landing, scratched and bruised, on the far side, I found myself at the top of a decline, lost my balance, and rolled down to the bottom, where a small stream gurgled between wet stones.

Leaping to my feet again, I plunged into the nearest jungle aisle. Moments later, hearing no pursuit, I paused to catch my breath. Looking around, I discovered with a sinking sensation located somewhere about the pit of my stomach, that in my hurried flight, I had lost all sense of direction. I could not at once remember from which avenue I had come, or how to return to the little glade later, hoping to rejoin my company.

Cursing myself for a damned fool for panicking so blindly, I looked around, studying the foliage, and eventually decided to travel in one direction. It seemed to be the right one.

I moved through the brush cautiously, knowing I had not had time to come very far from where we had sundered ways. I could have called out, for surely my friends were not far away, but hesitated to do so. I had no particular desire to attract the attention of the hungry vandar, should the brute still be in the vicinity, which I hoped it wasn’t.

The jungle was deathly still again, which meant the hunter was aprowl.…

By this time I had unlimbered the .45 automatic I carried slung at my waist in its homemade holster of reptile hide, together with the few precious rounds of ammunition which still remained. These were carefully wrapped in oiled leather against the damp. The automatic was clenched in my fist, ready for instant use, should the huge cat make its reappearance.

I went through the jungle for a time, finding nothing. It is a peculiar thing about jungles, which I have also found to be true of forests, and that is: when you are in the middle of one, one part of it looks identical with every other part, which is why even seasoned backpackers find it so fearfully easy to get lost in the woods.

It would have helped if I had a compass with me, but I had none, and the peoples of Zanthodon are still too low on the scale of technology to have developed such a useful instrument.
[1]

In place of the compass, the savage tribes of Zanthodon have, over the ages since their remote ancestors first took refuge in the Underground World, developed a natural sense of direction, which they possess to an uncanny degree. This does not seem to be true of the more recent arrivals in Zanthodon, however, for I have never noticed the talent displayed by any of the Barbary Pirates or by the inhabitants of the Scarlet City of Zar.

Not being native to Zanthodon, my own directional instincts is vestigial, at best.…

* * * *

I had no way of knowing that, all the while, a pair of sharp eyes were scrutinizing my every move. These belonged to a man who lay stretched out on a high branch of one of the taller trees, a Jurassic conifer. He was nearly naked, save for his sandals, a bit of hide twisted about his loins, and his weapons and accouterments. With narrowed, thoughtful eyes, he watched me as I blundered back and forth beneath his high place of vigil, trying to find the proper direction in which I should go to rejoin my comrades.

As he reached a decision, his fingers closed about the shaft of a bow. With swift, silent movements, he nocked the bow and set a flint-bladed arrow in place, held at the ready.

I had no warning of what was about to happen. Grumbling and cursing under my breath, I plowed through stubbornly intertwined bushes, flailing away at the leafy branches which stingingly whipped my face, my sandaled feet sinking in rotting leaf mold and rancid mud.

Emerging from the underbrush, I found myself in a grassy glade of some size which I had not seen before. And I knew I was traveling in the wrong direction, for I had not come this way, even in my hasty flight from the fangs of the sabertooth.

I was about to turn on my heel and strike out at random in another direction, when leaves rustled overhead.

In the next instant, the magnificent figure of a nearly naked black man swung from the branches above to land lightly as a cat on the emerald turf.

His bow was bent, the arrow nocked and ready. Before I could think or move or speak, he loosed the deadly shaft directly for my heart!

* * * *

Shivering miserably, Murg huddled beneath a bush in the drenching downpour, as uncomfortable as a wet cat. Against the trunk of the tree opposite from where he crouched whimpering and whining to himself, Xask sat stoically enduring the discomforture of the shower. The two had fled across the plain to a tall stand of trees wherein they had thought to conceal themselves from the huge, hairy omodon who had slaughtered Xask’s guards. As things turned out, of course, their precipitous flight had proven unnecessary, as the great cave-bear had lingered behind to assuage its appetite on the corpses of the Zarian warriors.

But, of course, the two fugitives had enjoyed no prescient forewarnings of that; so here they squatted, wet and miserable, and winded from their race across the plain.

When the brief downpour ended, gray clouds drifted away across the dim golden skies of Zanthodon, Xask rose purposefully, kicked Murg to his feet, and led the way back across the vast meadowlands in the direction in which they had made their futile flight.

The vizier kept up a steady pace that was almost a trot, and as for poor little Murg, he must scamper along at the same pace or be left behind.

Xask was in a hurry to rejoin the Zarian legion, for he had thrown away his weapons and stripped off most of his gaudy armor in order to lighten himself for the serious job of running away from the omodon. And he was by now experienced sufficiently in the wild ways of the Underground World, to know that a man without arms or guards or comrades survives but briefly in this land of perils.

He had a comrade in Murg, of course, but the sniveling and cowardly little man was too feeble and too fearful to be of any use in a fight.

By this time, Xask wisely knew, the legion of Zarian warriors had either conquered or been defeated. At any rate, the battlefield would be or should be littered with discarded weaponry and with the arms of the slain. There might, even in defeat, be a few of the warriors of Zar lurking in the vicinity over whom he could exert his authority.

Xask had one main purpose in life, and that was to preserve in one piece the tender and precious hide of Xask. After that, all other plans and schemes and motives were purely secondary.…

Without pausing to rest, the two made their rapid way back to the open space at the mouth of the pass before the Peaks of Peril where the three-way conflict had taken place. Here Xask was discouraged to find no survivors of that conflict who had remained in the area. However, he did find a quantity of weapons, from which he selected a thrusting trident and a long, leaf-bladed knife; these he tucked into his girdle.

The thodars on which the mounted officers of the legion had ridden here had long since wandered off, so the two were forced to go forward on foot. They trudged through the pass and headed for the edges of the jungle. After a while, Murg looked inquiringly at his silent companion.

“Whither do we go, master?” he whined ingratiatingly.

The vizier indicated the trampled grasses, which marked the passage of many feet.

“In the direction the savages traveled,” replied Xask. “I still have hopes of recovering the thunder-weapon, and of learning the secret of its manufacture.” He did not bother explaining further.

Murg chewed this over in silence. Then:

“How do you know we are following the host of Thandar?” he asked timidly, fearful of incurring the wrath of his companion, whose intellectual machinations were beyond the grasp of Murg’s furtive little mind.

“The weapons we found discarded were of Zarian workmanship, and of the strange, swarthy men who appeared from nowhere,” said Xask crisply. “So were the corpses. Therefore, the savages of your tribe triumphed over my own people and either took them captive, or slaughtered them, or drove them away.”