The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (87 page)

“The murderer entered from the rear,” he breathed. “I believe the savage
fraulein
to be innocent. Whoever the man was, he must have forced her to accompany him during the few moments you were absent from the scene, investigating the source of the sound you heard, which was obviously planned to divert your attention.”

Rising to his feet, he addressed the soldier.

“Rouse the camp,” he said crisply. “They will not have had time to go far!”

PART VI: ERIC OF ZANTHODON

CHAPTER 26

XASK AT BAY

As Zuma watched from his place of concealment in the thick bushes, he observed as Xask and Murg bound and gagged Darya and led her deeper into the jungle. The black warrior frowned in puzzlement; he had never before seen Xask or Murg, or, for that matter, Darya of Thandar, and had no idea of who they might be. But, since the golden-haired girl had entered the German camp in the company of Professor Potter, he knew or hazarded a guess that she was one of the friends of Eric Carstairs.

Which meant that the two men who had forced her to go with them were her enemies, and, therefore, his own foes as well.

Zuma glided into the underbrush, following the two men and their prisoner of swift and soundless feet, wondering what to do. From the appearance of the weapon Xask carried, which was identical with the one he had seen the German soldier carrying, Zuma knew that his assegai would afford him little protection. He had never seen the so-called “thunder-weapons” used, but his imagination, built upon what he had heard in casual conversation, painted a dire and dreadful picture.

As he glided like a shadowy wraith through the jungle, the Aziru considered the options open to him. He might strike the two men down from the concealment of the underbrush, trusting to his swift, unerring aim to fell them before the weapon could be brought to bear against him, or he might circle about and appear to confront them with leveled spear, demanding their surrender.

The first plan seemed risky, as in his haste he might well injure the Cro-Magnon girl, their prisoner and hostage. The second seemed equally dangerous, as he had no clear picture of just what the thunder-weapon could do, of just how deadly it was, or what its range might be.

Zuma determined to follow and observe, and wait for the time to be right, before making his attempt to free the jungle girl.

He wished there was time to mark a trail, or some way he could bring all of this to the attention of Eric Carstairs and the others. But the two men were moving too swiftly through the jungle to afford him sufficient leisure to blaze a trail; obviously, they were eager to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the German soldiers.

Through the brush hurried the triumphant Xask, fondling and gloating over the gleaming steel barrel of the Mauser, with frightened little Murg panting at his heels and Darya stumbling along at the end of her tether. Behind them, unseen in the gloomy murk of the jungle, where thick interwoven boughs closed out the light of day, Zuma followed like a watchful and avenging phantom, unknown to any.

* * * *

The German officer wasted no time in rousing Corporal Schmidt and Professor Potter from sleep, and rapidly apprised them of the appalling events which had taken place during their sleep-period. Schmidt was shaken by the murder of the elderly Colonel, and the Professor was amazed at the kidnapping of Darya, for he could not imagine who could have done the deed, or why.

“What enemies do we have left?” he murmured dazedly. “Kâiradine Redbeard and the Empress vanished quite some time ago, and are certainly no longer in these parts; whatever has become of them, no one knows…Kâiradine, I am given to understand, conceived a violent passion for the child, Darya, but how could he know we are here, and why would he steal one of your rifles? He does not even know about firearms…Zarys, of course, does…but she has never seen anything more than Eric’s .45 automatic, so how could she know a Mauser for what it is? I must confess, my dear Baron, that the entire affair has me baffled.…”

“We shall have all of the answers to these questions soon enough,” said Von Kohler shortly. “They cannot have gotten far, whoever they may be, and the quicker we are on their trail, the quicker we shall catch up with them. And then there shall be an accounting, I assure you!”

Giving one of the pistols to the Professor, so that the old scientist should not venture unarmed into the jungle, Von Kohler ordered his men out and they stepped into the jungle. The marks of the feet of three persons were soon found in the mucky layer of rotting leaf-mulch and slick mud which carpeted the jungle aisles, and one set of prints was small and dainty enough to have been made by a young woman of Darya’s size and weight. The other two sets of prints seemed to be those of men.

“So there are two of them, then,” muttered Von Kohler grimly. “Well, they are moving so swiftly as to be careless about leaving a trail, and we should be able to follow their prints easily enough. Borg, Schmidt—move out?
Hein!
”

With the two soldiers in the fore with weapons ready, the party plunged into the brush, abandoning their camp and its equipment and supplies in their hurry to catch the fleeing fugitives. Von Kohler was in a cold fury to work swift justice on the man who had murdered the elderly, dying Colonel in cold blood, and was willing to take a chance on their belongings remaining unmolested. He had served under the Colonel for all the years since first they had found their way down into the Underground World, and knew him to be a distinguished officer, a fair and honorable commander, a just and decent gentleman. And Von Kohler hungered to get his hands on the man who had murdered him in his sickbed.

Soon, to their considerable surprise, the soldiers found a
fourth
set of prints mingling with the three already discovered, and these were the prints of the feet of a man. From the disposition of the prints, the Baron assumed that the fourth man was not accompanying the three, but was also following them. He mentioned this to Professor Potter, who chewed upon his moustachios fretfully, finally shaking his head in mystification, unable to guess who the mysterious follower might be.

“Friend or foe, it matters little,” grated Von Kohler in a harsh voice, hefting his Mauser meaningfully. “We have enough fire-power between the four of us to account for a tribe of the savages in full strength.”

“Let us hope such does not prove to be the case,” breathed the old scientist fervently. Then he stopped talking and saved his breath for the chase, finding it difficult to keep up with the German soldiers.

* * * *

When Zuma did not return after a while, my men became restive and we decided to strike out on our own. We circled the area as we presumed the black warrior to have done, but without finding any marks left by the Professor. Obviously, for whatever reason, he had not resumed marking the trees at intervals along his way in order to blaze a trail.

Neither had Zuma, as he had expected to return to join us before having gone far enough for that to be necessary.

It was by sheer chance that we came upon the abandoned camp which the Germans had recently left. Thon of Numitor, who had sensitive nostrils, smelled burning coals and we discovered the small glade, the lean-to, the abandoned bedrolls, and the small fire which was smoldering out.

We examined the area with amazement and curiosity. The blankets were obviously of civilized manufacture, as were the cooking utensils and certain item’s of personal gear which had been left behind, but there was no way of identifying the origin of the mysterious items. It was a mystery…but I knew that other explorers besides the Professor and myself had recently penetrated into the jungles of Zanthodon. Whether they would prove friends or foes, I had no way of telling.

We pressed on, soon finding the trail of many feet in the wet mud of the forest’s floor.

A warm, drenching rain began to fall.

* * * *

Xask had no idea of the direction in which he was going, but something urged him to keep moving. Some sixth sense warned the wily Zarian aristocrat that vengeful armed men were on his trail, so he refused to halt for anything. If Darya stumbled over a root and fell, he jerked her rudely to her feet again and thrust her on before him. If Murg squeaked and slipped in the mud, Xask merely kicked him to his feet and forced him forward.

Abruptly, and without warning, the jungle ended and the two villains and their captives came stumbling out of the bushes to find themselves facing a broad and swampy plain.

A steamy rain was falling heavily, which made it impossible for the two men to see very far in either direction. Xask was in panicky flight by now, and kept forcing his companions along. But even he was forced to come to a halt at the brink of the deep crevasse that split the plain apart. Murg took one look at the black abyss which yawned hungrily at his feet, and fell to his knees, whimpering and snuffling piteously.

Xask stared wildly about. In the drenching downpour he could not see the fallen tree trunks which the Cro-Magnons had used to bridge the gap.

Swift as thought, an arrow whizzed from the underbrush.

It narrowly missed Xask, causing him to start and flinch violently.

From the bushes, Zuma stifled a groan of regret. The downpour had blurred his eyes, making him miss. It had been his intention to sink the arrow into Xask’s wrist, forcing him to drop the weapon. But his shaft had exactly the opposite effect.

Spitting startled curses, Xask whipped the Mauser up and pulled the trigger, meaning to spray the bushes from which the shaft had flown with a deadly hail of hot lead—

CHAPTER 27

MURG’S WAY

When Xask gave a vicious pull on the trigger…nothing whatsoever happened! The thunder-weapon refused to fire, for some unknown reason of its own.
[1]

As soon as the Aziru warrior loosed his shaft and knew that he had missed, he ducked back into the woods and sought refuge behind the thick bole of a towering Jurassic conifer, guessing that Xask would use the rifle. He hid behind the trunk, waiting for the thunderous noise he had presumed would shortly shatter the monotonous murmur of the rain. When no such sound came to his ears, he ducked from the cover of the trees to investigate.

Xask blinked incredulously at the useless piece of metal in his hands, then flung it from him with a snarling oath.

“Look!” chattered Murg excitedly, pointing. Xask gazed in the direction his slave was indicating.

The rain had lessened and the clouds were swiftly passing by overhead, driven by the gusting winds that blow through the cavern-sky of Zanthodon. As the shower died as suddenly as it had sprung up, the vizier saw the trunks the men of Thandar and Sothar had dragged across the chasm—and Xask knew he could cross the ravine to the safety of the plain, no matter who was pursuing him through the jungles.

“Quickly, Quickly!” he snapped. “We can cross to the other side and then shove the trees loose so that they will fall into the abyss and prevent our pursuers from catching up with us—”

Snatching Darya to her feet with a cruel grasp on her upper arm, he propelled the bound and helpless girl to the edge of the chasm. Turning, he beckoned curtly to Murg.

The miserable little fellow was in an agony of indecision. He lived in a terror of heights, remembering the heart-stopping experience of crawling down the sheer sides of the Peaks of Peril at the behest of One-Eye, when I had led the tribe of Sothar out of their captivity to the Gorpaks. And, later, he had shrunk from the dreadful necessity of scaling the mountains called the Walls of Zar by fleeing during the sleep period from Hurok and Varak and the others into the relative safety of the northern plain.

And now he must cross—
that?

He shuddered, gripped by a horror of the heights.

And suddenly, in a dazzling flash of realization, it came to Murg that Xask was unarmed, save for the dagger at his waist, and some distance away. He had thrown down the useless Mauser, and was armed neither with spear, trident nor bow.

Murg could flee!

As if he had read the mind of the pathetic little man, Xask sprang forward and seized him by the throat. Xask took a sadistic pleasure in having some sniveling whelp to bully and order about, as earlier he had enjoyed the company of the hapless Fumio. He did not intend to let the little man escape from his clutches; if for no other reason, Murg could be set to fetching firewood and preparing food and the other small but tiresome domestic tasks of camping in the wilderness.

“No, master—please!” shrilled the little fellow as Xask mercilessly forced him to the base of the fallen tree. His legs were trembling violently, and Murg dreaded trying to cross the abyss, knowing in his heart that he would lose his balance and fall to a horrible death in the unknown depths below.

“Crawl, like the worm you are!” snarled Xask, in a desperate agony to be across the tree-bridge and safe from pursuit on the other side.

At that moment, Zuma strode from the bushes to confront them with his leveled spear.

As Xask turned to snarl at this new adversary, Murg—pushed beyond the limits of his cowardice—found the moment for which he long had dreamed.

Stealthily, he plucked the steel dagger from the scabbard which hung at Xask’s waist. The vizier turned a surprised glance over his shoulder on the smirking Murg. His lips parted for some startled query—

“It’s Murg’s way,” giggled Murg, and stabbed him through the heart.

When the sudden rains ended, the farsighted scouts of Thandar and Sothar peered across the swampy plain to see if Eric Carstairs and his warriors had yet emerged from the edges of the jungle. What they saw surprised them more.

The towering form of a nearly naked black warrior was engaged in cutting loose the wrists of a beautiful young woman whom the watchers instantly recognized as Darya of Thandar. They raised a thunderous shout and sprinted back across the plain to her assistance.

At her feet sprawled the ungainly figure of Xask, his features forever frozen in an expression of slackjawed astonishment. Of all the ways in which the vizier had envisioned the moment of his death—he had dreamed many splendid and heroic ends for himself—none was so base and ignoble as to be stabbed from behind by the whimpering little coward he had for so long scorned and mocked and used.

Seeing the warriors and scouts pelting in their direction, Zuma instinctively fell into a fighting crouch, leveling his assegai, knowing they could only come at him one at a time across the tree-trunk-bridge, and that they would be off-balance, lending him a superb advantage.

This advantage proved soon to be unnecessary, of course, for Darya, her hands freed by Zuma, tore the gag from her mouth and called to the warriors hastening to her assistance that the black man was a friend.