Darya of The Bronze Age Page 5

  Chapter 8 FLAME OF ARABY

  Zoraida of El-Cazar was a few inches taller than Darya of Thandar, and a few years older, perhaps.

  Instead of the glowing tan of the golden-haired cavegirl, the dancer's sleek body was the rich hue of milk chocolate, denoting her descent from a mixed but mostly Moorish parentage-for she and Achmed were of the same ancestry. It was soft and redolent of rare oils and perfumed unguents, that body, and her long hair was blue-black in the lamplight and her eyes were like glimmering black opals, filled with swirling witch-fires.

  Where Darya was slim and vibrant, Zoraida was voluptuous and full-bodied, with magnificent deep breasts and rounded thighs and haunches. But a dancer's silken and tireless strength was apparent in every sinew, and she moved as gracefully as a tigress.

  Her enormous and slightly tilted eyes were fringed with kohl, which also darkened her long lashes. Her full-lipped mouth, in whose ripe curves slept passion and pride, willfulness and jealousy, was as scarlet as a wound. Her long, thick silken mane was held out of her eyes by a triple row of beads; emeralds, polished but uncut, flashed in gold settings from the lobes of her ears; gauds and beads and bangles clashed about her throat and spilled in glittering webs across her heaving breasts, which were naked beneath an open vest of yellow felt sewn with glinting sequins.

  A wide sash of colored silks cinched in her narrow waist; transparent pantaloons of smoky gauze clad her lithe and lissom legs; gold and silver bracelets clinked upon her wrists. And in her round navel there twinkled a star-sapphire as big as a man's eye.

  Such was Zoraida of El-Cazar . . . .

  The woman was in a tigerish fury; word had sped to her, it would seem obvious, that during his long voyage "south" Kairadine Redbeard had become infatuated with a savage girl of the tribes, and had fetched her back to the island fortress as his prize. Nor could the spiteful curiosity of the jealous dancer forbear to look upon her rival for the affections of the corsair monarch. Now her flashing eyes widened in mock astonishment.

  "By the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan!" she swore in a deep, husky voice whose timbre did interesting things to a man's mind, "from the gossip of the seamen, I had thought to find an exquisite houri from Paradise encamped in the bed of Redbeard-which once was all of the kingdom Zoraida held, or aspired to!-but, now instead, I see a skinny girl-child with paps scarce bigger than a boy's . . . a freckled hoyden who stinks of seawater and rancid sweat . . . a gawky savage, more accustomed to squatting in a filthy cave and gnawing on week-old bones, than to the palaces of princes and the luxuries of El-Cazar! I wonder me if mayhap Redbeard has taken leave of his wits, to become besotted with a trembling infant such as you, as ignorant of the arts of pleasing a man in bed as she is ignorant of paint, powder and perfume!"

  With these words, the dancing-girl threw back her head and voiced a burst of mocking laughter. Darya of Thandar could not understand the words, but the sarcasm and the mockery in them and the laughter which followed were unmistakable. The cavegirl crimsoned-hating herself for it-and bit her lip to stem the flood of bitter words which sprang to her lips.

  Zoraida eyed her up and down, maliciously, knowing full well how to tease and insult another woman with a glance. Especially a woman who is not looking her best-and Darya had gone through weeks of captivity, jungle treks, and a long voyage. Despite the attempts of the slave girls to tame her salt-stiff, unruly mane of golden hair, it fell in knotty tangles, its gleam dulled by the salt-spray. Weals and scratches but half-healed scored her bare arms and thighs. Also, she had lost weight during the voyage, as the rancid food and meat and overripe fruit and sour biscuits which served the seamen as provender were as distasteful to her as they were unfamiliar.

  The girl flushed and eyed Zoraida mutinously, a dangerous glint in her blue eyes. Zoraida sensed something in that glowering, level stare and in the lift of the small, stubborn chin, and laughed again . . . but fell back a step and let the henna-colored fingers of her right hand toy meaningfully with the hilt of the small gemmed dagger she wore at one lush hip.

  "By the Blood of Ali, but the wench is half-wildcat!" she exclaimed in mock surprise. "Redbeard, that lustful rogue, must in sooth have left his wits behind when he fell for the unripe charms of this skinny savage-she'll claw his hide to ribbons when he mounts her, and cut out his eyes with one slash!"

  Then-with startling suddenness-the raillery died in Zoraida's manner, and was replaced by cold venom.

  Thrusting her face forward like a serpent about to strike, she spat vicious words whose meaning her victim could sense intuitively, but not comprehend.

  "Think you to replace Zoraida in Redbeard's bed, you scrawny slut? I'll see you bedded down with Shaitan in the redhot pits of Hell before that happens-"

  And she spat full in Darya's face!

  Astounded, the cavegirl wiped the spittle away-then launched herself at the dancer's throat. She leaped like a panther, taking the other woman by surprise, bearing her backwards onto the floor and kneeling upon her chest while locking small, capable hands about her throat, throttling.

  Zoraida goggled up at her adversary, eyes wide with amazement. Then those eyes filled with splendid fury and with a convulsive heave of her trained body she threw the cavegirl from her, sprang to her feet; ripped her bright blade from its scabbard with a wicked rasp and brandished the naked steel beneath Darya's nose.

  "I have no claws like you, jungle wildcat, but this is Zoraida's fang-and it shall mark that pretty face in such a way that never will Redbeard or any other man look upon you without flinching away . . ."

  The glittering blade hovered near.

  Then Zoraida screeched, for the firm white sharp and even teeth of Darya of Thandar had sunk into the wrist of that hand like the fangs of a striking adder.

  Over and over the two women rolled upon the floor, cursing, panting, biting, clawing, kicking. Darya seized a handful of the necklaces that hung about the dancer's throat and ripped them away, beads scattering, pearls rolling into the far corners of the room. Zoraida gasped with outrage, and reached for Darya's blond mane with one hand while with the other she strove to sink her dagger in the cavegirl's slim throat

  "Hold, woman!"

  That resounding voice froze Zoraida in mid-motion.

  In the next instant the long blade of a curved sword flashed between the two girls; both young women looked up to see none other than Kairadine Redbeard in the doorway, supported by the strong black arms of Achmed. His face was pale as death but his eyes were as dangerous as the gaze of a deadly serpent.

  "Beloved . . . you are wounded! They did not tell me." moaned Zoraida, scrambling from Darya to fall upon her knees before her lord. She sought to cover his slippered feet with kisses, but he reared back and kicked her full in the mouth, rocking her back upon her heels. Blood dribbled from a cut on her lip.

  "B-But-" gasped the dancer.

  "The jungle wench is under my protection, woman-touch her again at your peril," snarled Kairadine.

  "What is a skinny savage child to you, beloved, who have reached the heights of ecstasy in the arms of your own Zoraida?" whimpered the dancer, wiping the blood from her lips and smearing her cosmetics as she did so.

  Redbeard sneered, looking her over-the disarranged hair, torn garments, scratched breasts. Blood and lip-rouge made a crimson mask on her lower face, and tears had made her kohl run in black trickles down her cheek.

  "She looks less like a madwoman or a clown than does Zoraida," laughed Redbeard. "Need I repeat it once again? By the Black Stone of Kaaba, the woman is mine!"

  "You call me clown and madwoman," wept Zoraida, bursting into passionate tears, "whom once you hailed as Flame of Araby and Moon of Delight, when that Zoraida danced the dance of the scarlet veils . . ."

  "Those days are past," growled Redbeard. Suddenly, vigor drained from him and he sagged in the strong arms of Achmed, eyes going dull and curved scimitar dropping from listless fingers to ring like a stricken bell upon the stone
flags.

  "Leave us now, O Zoraida, for our master is very weak and wearies swiftly!" rumbled Achmed, bearing the Barbary Prince to his bed.

  The dancer staggered to her feet, eyed Achmed resentfully, not failing to notice the flicker of gloating amusement in the eyes of the Moor as he watched the discomfiture of his only rival for the comradeship of Kairadine. She tugged uselessly at her torn raiment, tried to arrange her hair; then her back stiffened with furious pride, and she went from the room with gliding steps.

  She paused once in the portal to cast a look back at where Darya crouched by the table.

  And if looks could kill, the malignancy in the eyes of Zoraida the Flame of Araby would have struck Darya dead on the spot.

  Later, having repaired the damages to her appearance with cosmetics and a change of raiment, Zoraida slunk from her apartments in the palace of Kairadine Redbeard. Veiled in dark robes, her gorgeous face concealed behind the yashmak, the veil which the women of Islam wear upon their faces, she descended into the streets of El-Cazar and sought out a tall house of whitewashed stone which stood beside a cobbled square.

  Gliding into the shadow of an arched doorway, she fumbled with a cord. A bell tinkled somewhere within the imposing structure. Moments later, a figure appeared, peering through the eye-slit in the door; whispered words were exchanged, and the door opened a crack to permit the dancer to enter.

  And from the shadows of a portico across the square, Achmed the Moor, who had followed Zoraida hither, tugged thoughtfully at the golden hoops which glittered in his lobes.

  "Now, what would Zoraida be doing in the house of Yussuf ben Ali at this hour?" mused Achmed to himself. "What business can the favorite of Kairadine Redbeard have to transact with the chiefest rival to his throne?"

  To that question no answer was possible, as yet .. . .

  Chapter 9 FUMIO IS PURCHASED

  When Kairadine Redbeard had recovered sufficiently from the terrible wound inflicted upon him by the monstrous yith, and realized that his first mate had captured the wrong man along with Darya-not Jorn, but another-he was quick to burst into rage and even quicker to forgive.

  After all, Achmed the Moor had only seen Jorn the Hunter once, and then fleetingly and from a distance.

  It was not his fault that he had mistaken the renegade Fumio for Darya's young protector. One Cro-Magnon savage, let it be admitted, looked very much like any other Cro-Magnon savage, at least to the Barbary Pirates.

  Thwarted in the cruel vengeance he had planned to wreak upon young Jorn, the Redbeard did not at once know exactly what to do with Fumio. He had nothing against the fellow, never having laid eyes upon him before; on the other hand, another mouth to feed was another mouth to feed. What, then, to do with an unwanted captive?

  Kairadine resolved the small dilemma with ruthless ease, as was typical of a man of his temperament.

  He sold Fumio into slavery.

  The slave market of El-Cazar was situated near the waterfront in a huge barnlike wooden building whose walls were lined with slave pens, while the podium or slave block stood in the open center of the floor. This way, potential buyers could stroll about the pens, looking over the livestock, so to speak, while deciding on which to make their bid.

  The slave-trader was a very fat Algerian named Abdoul, with tremendous mustachios which were his pride and joy. They were waxed and curled and scented with perfume, and he was forever fondling and preening himself on them. Since the rest of Abdoul was grossly fat-his face all triple chins and ballooning cheeks, dripping with greasy sweatperhaps he needed something to be proud of.

  At any rate, Fumio went for a pretty good price, being tall and powerfully built. Indeed, his musculature was superb, and he would have been a magnificently handsome man were it not for his broken nose, and the slight sneering curl to his thin lips, and the gleam of cunning and cowardice which glistened in his eyes.

  His purchaser was one Yussef ben Ali, foremost of the corsair captains, and chiefest rival to the throne of Kairadine himself. This made Achmed the Moor rub the bridge of his nose thoughtfully, and tug at the golden hoops which bobbled in his pierced earlobes.

  It might be sheer coincidence, of course, but . . . well, Achmed was the seventh son of a seventh son, and by the traditional superstitions of Islam, such are reckoned to possess the rare gift of second sight.

  And those who can, however seldom and then but dimly, glimpse into the future rarely believe in coincidence.

  When Fumio was hauled before his new master, the Cro-Magnon knelt hastily, trembling in every limb and gasping like a beached fish. Yussef ben Ali prodded him to his feet with a disdainful toe and gave his new possession a careful looking-over. He did not particularly approve of what he saw, but he had paid good money for Fumio and resolved to get the most for his cash.

  "A simple savage," he observed contemptuously, "and a sniveling coward, to boot! By the Mountain of Kaf, Zoraida, of what use is such a lout to such as I?"

  The veiled woman at his side smiled thinly.

  "The savage was captured at the same time, and in the company of, Darya of Thandar," she purred silkenly. "The wildman will know as much of the woman as can be known; doubtless, she is his jungle sweetheart. Through him we shall gain valuable knowledge of the woman, which both you and I, O

  Yussef, can use to our mutual advantage . . . ."

  "I hope so," grumbled Yussef, wrinkling his nose. "Thirty gold dinars I paid for this animal, and I would hate to see the money wasted!"

  He touched a gong beside his divan. A slave woman appeared, her slender beauty veiled, but not at all concealed, behind filmy yashmak and gauze trousers. Yussef murmured a command and the girl bowed again and vanished behind a drapery.

  While Yussef was looking Fumio over, Fumio was fearfully eyeing his new master. This Yussef ben Ali was a tall, broad-shouldered man, lean and straight as a swordblade, with a hawklike face and cruel thin lips framed in black mustachios. He went otherwise clean-shaven, and, instead of the turban affected by Kairadine, wore a tall tarboosh of red felt. Lounging at ease on his divan, his lean body draped in light silken robes, he looked as swift and restless, as dangerous and unpredictable, as a panther.

  And he was.

  Within a few moments, the slave girl reappeared with another slave, this one a blond Cro-Magnon slave from the mainland. He and Fumio stared dully at each other.

  "What is the slave's name?" demanded Yussef of the girl.

  "Grond, my master," she replied.

  "Well, then, Grond, ask of your fellow here his name and station, and such other questions as I shall

  direct you to ask, since you speak the language of the savages and I, of course, do not," drawled Yussef.

  And Grond proceeded to do so.

  They soon set Fumio to work at the most dirty or backbreaking of menial tasks, deeming the Cro-Magnon too low on the scale of intelligence to be fitted to more complicated duties. This is a failing I have many times noted of men who deem themselves civilized, that they underestimate the intelligence and the capacity to learn of people less "civilized" than themselves.

  At any rate, Fumio found himself mopping the stairs and scrubbing pots clean in the kitchens and carrying out the slops. He had been queried by Grond for over an hour, under direction of Yussef ben Ali, and they had dredged out of him everything he knew about Darya of Thandar and her people. Since he was a member of the same tribe, this was very much, indeed. Some of it was useless to the purposes of Yussef and Zoraida, but other items of information were of high potential value.

  For example, it very much interested the two schemers to learn that a hundred or more stalwart Thandarian warriors were hot on the trail of their stolen princess. As Yussef wanted nothing more than to disgrace and replace Kairadine Redbeard through the exposure of some miscalculation of disastrous import, and to replace him on the throne of El-Cazar (to which, as a cousin of the present island monarch, he had a tenuous but genuine claim by bloo
d), his agile mind busied itself in figuring the angles: how could an invasion of Cro-Magnon fighting men serve to his own advantage? How could they be led or brought here without harm to Yussef and his friends? Would Kairadine and his friends be able to repulse him, and at what price?

  Both Yussef ben Ali and the dancing-girl, Zoraida, were disappointed to learn that, contrary to what they had naturally assumed, Fumio and Darya were not sweethearts. Yussef's first idea-suggested to him by Zoraida, actually-had been to insinuate Fumio into the palace of Kairadine somehow, so that the savage could defend the honor of his jungle lovely by murdering the corsair king. This, sadly, would not prove feasible.

  But the wily brain of Yussef ben Ali was already spinning the webs of other plots.

  "Never fear, O Flame of Araby," he promised Zoraida. "We shall find a use for this tool with the broken nose yet, to the discomfiture of the man whom both you and I hate-"

  "I do not hate Kairadine Redbeard, I love him!" flared the dancing-girl with passionate conviction. Her superb breasts heaved and her eyes flashed like black diamonds.

  "Well, then; well, even so," soothed Yussef, calming her.

  "It is the wench I mean to be rid of," she hissed. "With her dead or stolen, Kairadine will mourn briefly, then return to my arms again, where he was once happy as the Saints in Paradise, and will again be, I

  vow!"

  "Yes, yes; to be sure . . . ."

  "Nor would I conspire like this with you, his enemy, were there another way! But I am forbidden to come near unto either him or his hussy, on pain of the bastinado! Hence, I must rely upon your despicable wiles to reft the girl from his arms-although what good that will do to you and to your cause and ambitions, I really cannot understand."

  Yussef shrugged.

  "Anything that will hurt Kairadine Redbeard will give me pleasure," he said suavely. "And to return him to your arms will afford me the protection of your friendship, for now there is a bond between us, which I, for one, will never break."