Eric of Zanthodon Read online

  Eric of Zanthodon

  by

  Lin Carter

  Zanthodon #5

  Contents

  PART ONE The Fugitives

  Chapter 1. THE HIDING PLACE

  Chapter 2. AT THE BOATS

  Chapter 3. HUROK HAS A PROBLEM

  Chapter 4. XASK RUNS INTO TROUBLE

  Chapter 5. KAIRADINE HAS A BAD DAY

  PART TWO The Black Amazon

  Chapter 6. NIEMA THE AZIRU

  Chapter 7. GORAH OF KOR

  Chapter 8. STRANGER FROM THE TREES

  Chapter 9. HUROK FINDS A MATE

  Chapter 10. ZUMA SAVES A LIFE

  PART THREE Perils of Kor

  Chapter 11. THE LEVELED SPEAR

  Chapter 12. KAIRADINE KILLS!

  Chapter 13. WHEN THE WORLD SHOOK

  Chapter 14. FIRE MOUNTAIN SPEAKS

  Chapter 15. FANGS OF DOOM

  PART FOUR Crossing the Abyss

  Chapter 16. THE PROFESSOR DEPARTS

  Chapter 17. THE BRIDGE OF LOGS

  Chapter 18. DENIZENS OF THE DEEP

  Chapter 19. MEN FROM YESTERDAY

  Chapter 20. XASK MAKES A DISCOVERY

  PART FIVE Soldiers from Yesterday

  Chapter 21. HOW NIEMA FOUND ZUMA

  Chapter 22. WHEN COMRADES MEET

  Chapter 23. THE LOST TRAIL

  Chapter 24. THE THUNDER-WEAPON

  Chapter 25. MURDER!

  PART SIX Eric of Zanthodon

  Chapter 26. XASK AT BAY

  Chapter 27. MURG’S WAY

  Chapter 28. THE PROMISED LAND

  Chapter 29. “BABE” FLIES AGAIN

  Chapter 30. THE OMAD-OF-OMADS

  PART ONE

  The Fugitives

  Chapter 1. THE HIDING PLACE

  When the legions of Zar hurled themselves against the rearmost ranks of the corsairs, Jorn the Hunter found the moment he had been waiting for.

  The Cro-Magnon boy gave Yualla the signal. Then he whirled, turning on the Zarian legionnaire assigned to guarding him, and kicked the astounded man in the stomach. As he sagged to his knees, gagging, the warrior could not have told which surprised him the most-the unexpected blow, or the fact that the hands of the youth were now free of their bonds.

  In the same instant, Yualla had dispatched her own guard with her dagger. In the noise and tumult of battle, with the full attention of the Zarian warriors riveted on their foes, the Barbary Pirates, none but Murg noticed this burst of action.

  Hastily stripping their guards of weapons, the boy and girl fled for safety behind tall boulders. From that vantage, they glided into thick bushes, seeking to circle the scene of battle and rejoin the tribe of Sothar from their rear.

  As the two young people made their escape, Murg, who had been watching for just such an act, signaled to Xask, who was happy enough to have a reason to fall back into the rear. War was not one of Xask’s favorite recreations. After all, people can get themselves killed when swords are flashing and spears are flying!

  As Zarys led her legions into the fray, Xask prudently retired to a safer position, well out of the way of the flashing scimitars, the thrusting tridents. Accompanied by his entourage of personal guards, he initiated pursuit of the escaping hostages. Along the way, Murg and his guard fell into step with them, although Murg was no happier in battles than was Xask, and heartily wished himself far away from all these brave, bloody events.

  Having no way of reading Xask’s mind, then or now, I cannot say with certainty what motives urged the Eric of Zanthodon

  sly little vizier to race in pursuit of the youth and maiden. Perhaps he intended recapturing them, in order to trade their persons for my old friend, the Professor, whose brain held the secret of the thunder-weapon (as the folk of Zanthodon name my .45 automatic). Or perhaps he merely wished an excuse to put as much distance between his tender hide and the furious battle as could be done.

  Jorn and Yualla, once safely out of the sight of their former captors, took to their heels with alacrity. The handsome youth and his attractive blonde companion were young, their lithe bodies toughened by the adventures through which they had recently passed, and the Cro-Magnons are a hardy, healthy people.

  Hence it was not long before they outdistanced the men of Zar, who were smaller and less athletic and who were, of course, burdened by their bronze armor and heavy weapons.

  The three-way battle between the Cro-Magnons, the Barbary Pirates, and the Zarians, had begun in an open, meadowy space at the mouth of the pass which wound its way through that soaring range of mountains known as the Peaks of Peril. It is perhaps ironic that so many of our adventures had taken place in the vicinity of this ominously and prophetically named range of mountains. The boy and girl had intended to circle through the underbrush until they reached the sheer and cliff-like wall of the mountains, then double back so as to rejoin their friends in the rear, where they stood embattled with their backs set against the cliff.

  Once Jorn’s keen senses discovered that they were being pursued by armed men, of course, his plans required swift alteration. The two struck out into the midst of the grassy plain, hoping to evade their pursuers and probably, as well, hoping that the Zarians would give over the pursuit when it became impractical to continue it, and return to join their comrades in the fighting.

  The plains north of the mountains were level and featureless, and afforded the fugitives scant opportunities for concealment. Once they had put a considerable distance between themselves and those that followed, it occurred to Jorn the Hunter that they might manage to hide themselves in the tall grasses. An act so obvious as that would not for long have managed to confuse the warriors or huntsmen of his own Cro-Magnon tribe, for of course they were seasoned veterans, accustomed to the rough and hardy life of the wilderness and the jungle, who spent much of their lives tracking beasts through the woods in order to hunt and kill. Such as they could swiftly and easily have followed the trail left by the fugitives in the disturbed leaves. and trampled grasses-as easily as you or I can peruse this printed page.

  But the Zarians were sophisticated city dwellers, no huntsmen, and to their dulled senses the trail left by the passage of Jorn and Yualla was all but invisible.

  They had come to a shallow depression, where tall grass grew thick. It was here that the two sought to conceal themselves from their adversaries. It would have been but the action of mere moments for the two to crawl into the grasses, arranging the vegetation over them, and to lie still as rabbits seeking to evade the scrutiny of hawks.

  Save for the unforeseen ….

  Eric of Zanthodon

  Others had sought refuge in the shallow depression and had been hiding among the tall grasses, sensing the approach of tramping feet. These now exploded from their places of concealment, panicked by the two young people.

  They were uld, small, edible, timid mammals resembling plump, diminutive deer. But deer they were not, for Professor Potter has identified them as eohippus, “dawn-horse,” the remote ancestors of the modern animal.

  Jorn snarled an oath, for the scattering uld would draw attention to their hiding place; and attention was the last thing he wished at the moment, with half a dozen armed Zarian legionnaires on their tracks.

  Even as Jorn had feared, the flight of the uld had caught the eye of one of the Zarians. He started, pointing. Xask snapped a command and the guards fell into arrowhead formation, plowing through the high grass in the direction from which the herd of uld had fled in all directions.

  And Xask smiled thinly: it was only a matter of moments now before the fugitives were found and became his captives once again.

  Things have a way of falling out differently from what you may hope or expect, in Zanthodon as
in the world above. But only in Zanthodon could the next twist of fate have occurred.

  For other eyes had sighted the flight of the panic-stricken miniature horses. Those eyes belonged to an omodon, and a hungry brute of an omodon. Generally, such as the mighty cave-bear of the Ice Age lurk among the rocky crags of the Peaks of Peril, but the lust to gorge its empty belly on raw red meat had driven this particular omodon down from the heights, to prowl and hunt upon the plain.

  The great bear had small, weak eyes, for which reason it generally avoided the light of day, preferring the comfortable gloom of the mountainside cave it had seized for its lair. But its keen and sensitive nostrils more than made up for the inadequacy of its vision, and it had sniffed the tasty uld upon the wind.

  The monster had been stealthily creeping through the tall grass to where it had smelled out the hiding place of the herd of uld. Now, as they exploded affrightedly in all directions, it came roaring to its feet, mad with fury and frustration.

  And when the mighty cave-bear of the Ice Age rises to its full height, it is a fearsome thing to behold.

  Heavier and higher than two grizzlies was the omodon, and its huge paws, heavy as hammers, were armed with dreadful claws like scythes.

  And this was the adversary that came bellowing and lumbering down on the place where Jorn the Hunter and Yualla of Sothar had sought to conceal themselves from danger and discovery among the tall grasses!

  Eric of Zanthodon

  Jorn sprang to his feet, clutching his small bronze dagger futilely. It was, in fact, an imposing weapon filched from the guard he had felled, and long enough to hold at bay a human foe. But, against the giant bear that came lurching down upon him, seemingly as huge as a hill, the blade seemed small and useless.

  Nor was Yualla any better armed; now had both the youth and the maid good reason to regret not having taken up the spears their guards had let fall.

  At the time, they had hastily reasoned the cumbersome weapons were too large and clumsy to be safely borne in flight.

  Now they wished they had thought twice about that.

  But now, of course, it was too late.

  Chapter 2. AT THE BOATS

  Intent on punishing the blond savages whom she believed to be the same host of barbarians that had earlier defeated her upon the great plains of the north, Zarys of Zar led her mailed legions forward at the charge, and assaulted the rear ranks of the Barbary Pirates who were also attacking the Cro-Magnons.

  Who these other adversaries were, the Divine Zarys neither knew nor cared to know. It sufficed for the imperious and prideful young woman that they were in her way.

  Her well-disciplined legions carved their way through the rear of the buccaneers, who scattered in all directions in surprise and consternation. The corsairs fell before the thrusting spears and tridents of the Zarian legion in the dozen and the score. In less time than it takes to tell, the Empress had cut a red path into the very heart of the strange, swarthy men who wore such curious and ridiculous garments.

  As she did so, she came to the attention of Kairadine Redbeard, who stopped fighting and stared at her with open mouth. She was certainly worth staring at, was Zarys of Zar: supple, half-naked, slim and lovely, her fiercely lovely face crowned with a curling mass of golden hair, her wonderful body clad in strangely shaped bits of gold-washed armor. High greaves, worked with scenes of the hunt and war, adorned her slender, graceful legs; a breastplate, cunningly molded to fit her figure, clad her high breasts and shielded her belly, and it was carven with mythological events and monsters. A sparkling, jeweled coronet completed her riding costume.

  But it was not the stunning beauty of the ravishing girl that seized the astounded eye of the Redbeard, but the fact that he instantly recognized her as Darya, the jungle princess for whom he had conceived so violent a passion as to pursue her in her flight to this very scene of battle.

  I have elsewhere remarked upon the fact that the Empress of Zar bore an amazing resemblance to my beloved Princess, despite the fact that they came of different races. Indeed, upon first laying eyes upon the Divine Empress of the Scarlet City, I myself had mistaken her for my darling Darya. So it is quite understandable that Kairadine Redbeard made the same mistaken assumption.

  He flung himself upon her without a moment’s hesitation, battering down her blade and seizing her lithe and supple body in his strong arms.

  While he struggled to subdue the astounded and, naturally, infuriated young woman, Kairadine directed his personal retinue of well-armed corsairs to engage the guards from whose midst he had seized Zarys.

  These were quickly dispatched.

  The midst of a battle was no place to try to take captives, and had Kairadine been less madly desirous of the girl he held in his arms, this might have occurred to him. But the Prince of the Barbary Pirates felt a violent and consuming lust for Darya of Thandar, and heretofore-quite maddeningly-she had managed to evade his embraces. Now that he had her at last, the farthest thing from his mind was to let her go.

  When, exhausted, Zarys finally ceased struggling against him, the Redbeard swiftly bound and gagged the young woman. Then, turning abruptly to the amazed Moustapha, his second-in-command, who had watched these actions without comprehension, he curtly directed his lieutenant to take what actions he could to hold the corsair lines firm against their adversaries.

  Without waiting for a reply, the Redbeard turned and began cutting his way through the confused and milling battle toward the distant beach where his longboats lay concealed.

  In the whirling chaos into which the three-way battle had degenerated, he vanished from the knowledge of men and was gone, leaving the unhappy Moustapha to strive to hold together a rapidly deteriorating situation, which soon because quite hopeless.

  It had probably been in Kairadine’s mind to leave his captive bound and helpless in the boats, returning to take command again. And here you see demonstrated one of the disadvantages of inditing a factual narrative, a difficulty not usually faced by the authors of mere fiction. This is, I have no way of knowing what was in the Redbeard’s mind and am only reconstructing the sequence of events from information which has come to me long after these events took place.

  At length he reached that stretch of sandy shore bordering a swampy area, where pools of stagnant water were thickly grown with mangrove trees whose long and frondlike branches formed a veil of leafage.

  Here it was the corsairs had dragged their longboats up the beach to a place of hiding in the edges of the marsh, among the heavy shrubbery. They had chopped down with their cutlasses long palmlike leaves to drape across the boats, further concealing them from chance discovery.

  And when he reached this place, the Prince of the Barbary Pirates found an unwelcome and unpleasant surprise awaiting him.

  This beach formed part of the shores of the Sogar-Jad, as the subterranean sea was known to the Zanthodonians. And the waves of that steamy ocean are filled with innumerable varieties of marine life, dominant among which are the great aquatic saurians of Earth’s remotest dawn age.

  Those who have perused the earlier volumes of these memoirs will recall the ferocious yith, or plesiosaur, which inhabits the depths of the Sogar-Jad. This monstrous reptile, and veritable double for the famous Sea Serpent of legend, had intervened in these adventures on two previous occasions. Most recently, one had attacked the flagship of Kairadine himself, nearly biting off the right arm of the Redbeard.

  The monster which Kairadine found browsing among the boats with no yith. It was seven times the size of the plesiosaur! Like a moving mountain of glistening, leathery flesh it was, with its slick hide covered with scaly excrescences and a neck long enough to top the tallest of the prehistoric conifers which lined the edge of the sandy beach.

  Had Professor Potter been present, I imagine that the scrawny little savant would have identified the lumbering monstrosity as none other than the brontosaurus itself, the largest mammal that ever walked the world
.

  The Zanthodonians refer to the giant reptile as the gorgorog. I had yet to encounter a member of its species during my own travels and adventures through this prehistoric world, for they are few and but seldom encountered by men. The men of Zar had domesticated a smaller, lighter variety of the brontosaurus, which they call the thodar. But this was surely no thodar! It would have taken three of the smaller brutes to make up the huge bulk of this moving mountain.

  Kairadine shrank into the shelter of the trees, snarling Moslem curses. The Prince of the Barbary Pirates was no coward, but even his curved saber of shining Damascus steel would be as useless as a wisp of grass against six hundred tons of meat and muscle.

  The reptile, unknown to Kairadine, was no meat-eater but a vegetarian. It lumbered through the shallows on four legs thicker about than treetrunks, dipping its blunt-nosed head into the tidal pools, gulping and munching seaweed and other marine growths, as mild and harmless as a browsing milk cow.

  As it lumbered through the marshy places, however, its huge and ponderous feet had heedlessly trampled into matchwood three of the longboats, and others had been dislodged from their moorings and were floating out to sea.

  Kairadine was in a quandary! He could hardly leave Zarys in one of the boats, so near to the giant reptile. Greatly daring, he might have gained one of the boats and rowed out to sea, where his ship lay at anchor. But the gorgorog was too close to the boats for him to attempt this.

  What, then, to do?

  The Redbeard narrowed his eyes, staring thoughtfully about. He noticed how the lazy washing of the waves caused the loose boats to drift to and fro. The tides were not strong enough at this point along the shore to suck them out to sea ….

  I have never exactly understood why the underground ocean had tides at all, since, surely, the attraction of the moon as it waxed and waned could exert no influence on a body of water miles beneath the planet’s crust. Perhaps that the Sogar-Jad had tides at all, no matter how slight, was due to centrifugal force, caused by the Earth as it revolved upon its axis.