Hurok Of The Stone Age Page 13

  A sad smile touched her warm lips.

  "For having the courage and the manliness to spare the life of a worthless slave," she said softly.

  "No human life is worthless,'' I said stoutly.

  "Is that another wise teaching from the philosophers of your country?"

  "I believe it is."

  "They breed wise men in that far land," she observed. "And brave and gallant men, too."

  "They do that."

  Her eyes were inscrutable. But from the way she squared her shoulders and took in a deep breath, I gathered that Ialys had reached a decision. She took my hand again, but not to kiss it this time.

  "Come," she said simply. "I will take you to your friend. But Ialys fears that the Lord Eric will not at all like what he is about to see . . . ."

  A cold stab of fear went through my vitals at that. But I set my jaw grimly and let her lead me to the Professor.

  Chapter 22 JORN TO THE RESCUE

  When Jorn emerged from the ravines which twisted between the low hills, his gaze fell upon a spectacle which astonished him.

  There, trotting at a rapid pace directly toward him were the young Sotharian girl, Yualla, and the runaway, Murg. Jorn did not at once notice that Murg's hands were bound behind his back and that the cave-girl was leading him along like a dog on a leash.

  This he did not have time to notice because of what else met his gaze.

  Directly in front of him, with its back toward him, a gigantic sabertooth tiger crouched in the concealment of the long grasses.

  The girl did not see Jorn, who stood in the shadows. Neither did she apparently see the giant vandar, crouched belly to earth concealed in the long meadow grasses. But Jorn took the entire situation in with a single sweeping glance.

  The young hunter knew the vandar was about to pounce upon the Sotharian girl. He knew this from the way the muscles in its hindquarters were bunched with tension, and from the restless twitching of its tail-tip.

  Jorn had hunted vandars in his native land, and knew well their habits. Within a split second, the beast would leap upon the girl and dash out her brains with a single swipe of its mighty paws. They were as heavy as sledgehammers, those velvet paws.

  And Jorn was unarmed . . . .

  Nevertheless, he did not for the slightest fraction of a second hesitate in what he next did. Chivalry is innate in the human breast, it seems, as the Cro-Magnons-who happen to be just about the finest people I have ever encountered-were very much human.

  With a wild, crazy yell, the boy leaped full upon the back of the giant cat just as it began its lunge for the girl.

  He landed between its shoulders; locking his legs about the barrel of the cat, he clung with both arms tight around the beast's neck and buried his face in the coarse, dry fur at the base of its throat.

  Startled by the unexpected weight upon its back, the vandar's leap miscarried. It sprang to one side, missing the amazed Yualla, landing lightly on the turf. The weight of its unwanted burden, and the maddening man-smell, drove the sabertooth into a frenzy. It rolled over on its back, seeking to crush its rider beneath its weight. Fortunately, the grass was long and thick here, and very springy; all this maneuver accomplished was to drive the air out of Jorn's lungs.

  Regaining its feet, the great cat sprang into the air, landing heavily. Obviously, it hoped to jar the grip of its rider loose. This, too, failed.

  Next it attempted to reach back with snapping jaws and rip the offending weight from its shoulders.

  Those hideous ivory fangs clashed within mere inches of the boy's face. Its stinking breath blew foul in his nostrils, and gobbets of foam from its dripping jaws splattered his neck and shoulders.

  Through it all, Jorn clung grimly to the back of the beast as one clings for dear life to a log in a maelstrom.

  The paralyzing shock which froze Yualla proved only momentary. An instant later, the girl dropped Murg's tether and whipped up her bow, a weapon, with which she was extremely expert. Time and time again she sought to loose a shaft into the belly or side of the rampaging sabertooth, but each time she faltered, fearing to transfix her rescuer with the shaft.

  Moments later she saw her opportunity, and trained reflexes took command with the swift surety of instinct. She sank an arrow to the feather in the fleshy underpart of the beast's throat, just below the jaw.

  Coughing blood, the brute shook its head, dazedly; then, mad with pain and fury, it gave voice to a thunderous yowl and hurtled toward her.

  Yualla stood her ground just long enough to loose a second shaft, then threw herself to one side. The great cat stormed by, missing her so narrowly that its harsh fur brushed her bare legs. It wheeled to come at her again, a striped juggernaut of tawny-furred death-then reeled, lurched, and fell heavily on its side.

  It lay there, panting raggedly, dribbling hot gore from between open, distended jaws.

  Then it heaved one great sigh, and its eyes glazed, and it lay still.

  The second arrow had caught the sabertooth directly in the left eye and had driven its cruel barb deep into the brain.

  Crying and shaking like a leaf, Yualla half-dragged, halfshoved the dead weight of the vandar off Jorn's leg and helped him to his feet. He was shaken and stunned, bruised and battered, but otherwise unhurt.

  When both boy and girl had recovered themselves and had regained a modicum of calm, they regarded each other somewhat warily.

  "Jorn of Thandar, the Hunter, is grateful to the gomad Yualla for her assistance in slaying the beast," the boy said solemnly.

  "Yualla of Sothar is grateful to Jorn the Hunter for risking his life to save her own," the girl replied with equal solemnity.

  These ceremonial exchanges of gratitude done with, her eyes flashed angrily.

  "What does Jorn mean-'assisting' in slaying the beast?" she demanded scornfully, staring obviously at his hands. "Did Jorn the Hunter hope to slay the vandar with his bare teeth or with his naked hands?"

  The boy began an angry retort, then subsided, blushing, with a shamefaced grin.

  "The gomad Yualla is correct," he admitted. "I had no hope of slaying the vandar. At the time, it did not occur to me that I had lost my weapons. I . . . only did what needed to be done," he finished lamely.

  Her eyes glowed. Her expression softened. Her cheeks went bright pink.

  "It was very, very brave of you," she whispered.

  "It was nothing, really," said Jorn around a huge lump which had suddenly come into his throat from wherever it is that lumps in the throat of adolescent boys come.

  She smiled shyly.

  He stared deeply into her beautiful eyes . . .

  Quite some time later, they remembered about Murg. With a little searching, they found the scrawny one crouched on his bony hunkers in the grass, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

  "Is it you, m-mistress . . . or the b-beast?" he squeaked fearfully, sensing their nearness.

  The girl grinned impishly, and made a growling, catlike sound deep in her throat.

  Murg paled to about as pale a hue as one covered with dirt can pale, and shivered miserably.

  They helped him to his feet, dusted him off, and cut his bonds. Now that Jorn had joined the party, Yualla feared nothing from the miserable little man.

  Then they set off toward the mountains to rejoin Hurok and the others, if possible.

  As Jorn, Yualla, and Murg followed a winding path through the foothills and began to ascend the slopes of the mountains, they broke the monotony of their journey with conversation. In fact, they narrated to each other in turn the story of their recent adventures.

  The young huntsman was astonished to hear of the manner in which the thakdol had carried off the Sotharian girl, and was even more astonished that she had survived the adventure with neither hurt nor harm.

  For her part, Yualla was impressed that Jorn had managed to live through the landslide, to say nothing of the lengthy and dangerous dive into the little
mountain lake. Her estimate of the courage and stamina of the Cro-Magnon boy-which was already high, since his incredible feat of attacking the giant sabertooth tiger-rose all the more. It verged, perhaps, on idolatry; and the gomad of Sothar was not easily impressed by the male sex, being adventurous and daring to a fault herself.

  The boy and the girl got along famously, exchanging information and getting to know one another. As for poor, miserable Murg, however, he plodded along, sniffing and snuffling, groaning with weariness from time to time, and feeling very, very sorry for himself. The two ignored him as much as was possible, the girl with frosty and aloof scorn, the boy with utter detestation. Rape is a crime not unknown to the Cro-Magnon tribes, of course, but one severely frowned upon as unmanly and displaying the vilest traits of cowardice.

  From Murg in turn, however, during a pause to rest their aching leg muscles, the young people elicited an account of his own experiences since being captured by One-Eye. I suspect, as did they, that the account was rather heavily censored, if not considerably rewritten. It was ever the way of Murg to vainly attempt to conceal his faults and flaws and weaknesses by lies, deceits, and a certain application of soothing cosmetics to the plain unvarnished truth.

  He did not really fool them, however. Both Jorn and Yualla were clever enough to see through the abridged and retouched portions of his narrative, and his pitiable attempt at embellishment they found wryly amusing.

  "To hear Murg tell the tale," murmured Jorn to the jungle girl at his side, "he fled from Hurok's encampment with nothing but the noblest of motives in mind." The girl chuckled. For indeed Murg had striven to convince his captors that he had crept away from the sleeping place in order not to burden the stronger, swifter warriors with his less hardy presence.

  Which hardly explained his thefts of the sleeping-hides, water bottles, extra buskins, and surplus weapons, of course.

  As Jorn was unarmed, he pressed the stolen armament into service. It made him feel naked to be unarmed, and even though he resolved to return the stolen property to its owners as soon as they had caught up to Hurok and the others, he intended in the meantime to put the weapons to good use.

  They continued on their journey.

  They began to climb the mountains.

  Chapter 23 THE MYSTERIOUS CIRCLET

  When the Cro-Magnon arrow struck Captain Raphad between the eyes he uttered a shrill cry and fell from the back of his enormous steed.

  Moments later, he got shakily to his feet, stunned and dizzy, but otherwise unharmed.

  The arrow had struck the circlet of shining metal which he wore upon his brows, and had dislodged the narrow band. Outside of giving him a headache, the lucky shot had done no harm.

  Rubbing his aching forehead, he peered about him. And discovered the most surprising events taking place . . . .

  Kicking and pounding the sides of their mounts and tugging furiously upon the reins, his squadron of riders seemed unable to command their docile beasts. What had been, only a moment before, a disciplined line-of-charge had now mysteriously decayed. The thodars had broken ranks and were wandering to and fro, placidly browsing upon the thick, lush meadow grasses, indifferent or perhaps actually oblivious to the furious commands of their human riders. Some had wandered off into the plains, perhaps in search of water. The battle, if so brief a skirmish can be thus properly described, was over.

  As for the warriors of Sothar, they had also broken formation and were striding among the beasts, unceremoniously pulling the Zarians out of the saddle and binding their arms behind their backs. More than a few of the Dragon-riders had attempted to defend themselves against the savages, but the Cro-Magnons were taller, brawnier, and stronger than their diminutive adversaries and swiftly disarmed them with ease.

  Garth came striding up to where Raphad stood, swaying dizzily, peering about in extreme puzzlement.

  The giant chief disarmed the Zarian officer and bound him in the same manner as his men were being bound. Nor did Raphad, who was no fool, attempt to resist; as good a soldier as the Scarlet City possessed, he recognized defeat.

  Not that it tasted any better this time around ....

  Then Garth stooped to pick up the fallen circlet. He turned it this way and that in his heavy, powerful hands, studying it curiously. As an ornament it was attractive, but there seemed more to the device than mere beauty of worksmanship. For Garth had keenly observed that the very instant the circlet had been struck from Captain Raphad's brows, the advancing half-circle of giant reptiles had evaded the control of their human masters.

  Garth was no more and no less superstitious than other savages of his degree of civilization. He supposed when he thought about it, which was very seldom, that he believed in ghosts and curses and (what was more to the point in this case), in magic.

  It seemed to him that, somehow, possession of the circlet had enabled the leader of the enemy troop to control the enormous thodars. And he decided that it must therefore be a magical talisman. Having decided this, Garth carefully tucked away the circlet within the hide garments he wore.

  Noticing this, Raphad bit his nether lip sourly.

  Obviously, the Cro-Magnon leader thought the magic circlet might come in handy on some other occasion. And this was bad news indeed for Raphad and his people ....

  The fact of the matter was, as Garth of Sothar imagined it to be, that possession of the circlet did indeed give the man who wore it a mysterious power to control the great reptiles.

  When Raphad had, considerably earlier on, captured myself, Xask, and Professor Potter, the old scientist had sharply observed the uncanny circlet. And-as always!-he had evolved a theory concerning it.

  The metal of the circlet was of a peculiar composition, ruddy yet gleaming. It seemed to be some sort of an alloy, perhaps the mixture of silver and copper. Both metals, the Professor knew, are excellent conductors of electrical impulses. And it had logically occurred to the scrawny savant that thought itself is nothing more than an electrical impulse, albeit one which is very feeble.

  Centering between the brows of its wearer, the circlet bore a large cut piece of crystal. From these observations, the Professor theorized that the metal band somehow conducted the impulses of thought, which were focused by means of the crystal exactly as light is focused by a lens, and that in this manner the leader of the Dragon-riders maintained control of the beasts which he and his men rode through mental telepathy.

  Had the Professor been present on this particular occasion, it would doubtless have delighted him to obtain practical verification of his tentative theory. For the very moment the circlet fell from the brows of the squadron leader, he and his men totally lost control of their reptilian mounts, which instantly reverted to their normal behavior.

  I have neglected to mention another observation which had occurred to Professor Potter at the time. That mysterious alloy of reddish-silvery metal sounded very much like the unknown metal orichalc, the mystery metal of Lost Atlantis of which the Greek philosopher Plato spoke in his celebrated Atlantean dialogues, Critias and Timaeus.

  The identity of the mysterious metal has never satisfactorily been determined by science. But, then, neither has the location of the fabled Lost Continent of Atlantis, itself.

  But more recently, some scholars have tentatively established a connection between the legendary Atlantis and the very real island of Minoan Crete. And if the story of Atlantis sprang from the Greeks' half-remembered traditions of ancient Crete, and the uncanny orichalc of Atlantis was the same as the strange alloy of Raphad's circlet, then quite a few pages of material hitherto missing from the history books could be sketched in . . . .

  Before the Underground World was very much older, Garth's warriors had secured and disarmed the

  Zarians and were ready for further instructions from their High Chief.

  As for the thodars, the immense and placid beasts had all wandered off by this time, and were cropping the grasses here and there about the plai
ns.

  "What are your commands, my Omad, regarding the prisoners?" inquired one of Garth's chieftains. With a gesture he indicated the bound Zarians, who were looking extremely unhappy, as well they might.

  Garth studied them, thoughtfully. The Cro-Magnon tribes were not accustomed to the slaughtering of helpless prisoners, but neither did their traditions demand that a war party encumber itself and retard its maneuverability by burdening itself with unwanted and useless guests. Unable any longer to control their mounts, which in any case had now wandered well out of reach, they offered no possible threat to the security of the Sotharian host.

  And yet, to set the prisoners free might well give them an opportunity to carry the warning of the Sotharian advance back to Zar in time for the legions of the Scarlet City to mount a vast force against them.

  Garth had no particular reason for wishing to invade the country of the Zarians, and, although he was unafraid of the possibility of a battle, it was prudent to avoid one if this could be done. All he was interested in was in finding his lost daughter, Yualla, who had been carried off by the pterodactyl.

  As was his way, the jungle monarch swiftly made up his mind.

  "Keep them guarded closely and see that not one Zarian escapes to bring the word of our approach back to Zar, lest they rouse a great force against us," he commanded. "We shall at once resume the march to the mountains, in order to search for the gomad Yualla. Pass these orders along . . . ."

  The chieftains saluted and marched the prisoners off. Captain Raphad cast one sad glance behind him as he was forced to accompany his warriors into captivity. If he could somehow purloin the circlet from the savage chief, it might be possible even now-and at this distance-to regain control over the mighty thodars . . . .

  There seemed, however, no opportunity of doing this. But Raphad decided to bide his time and keep his eyes and ears open. In low tones he instructed his soldiers to obey the savages instantly and to avoid any trouble. The more the Cro-Magnons thought him and his men cowed and demoralized and helpless, the less attention they would give to guarding them.