PART IV: APEMEN OF KOR

CHAPTER 13

JUNGLE MURDER

As Fumio crushed the struggling girl under his weight and pressed hot, panting kisses on her mouth and naked breasts, the girl, recovering from the momentary paralysis of surprise, fought back like a lithe and supple tigress.

It was not for such as Darya of Thandar to yield helplessly to every twist and turn of Fate. The women of her tribe were not soft and pampered weaklings; neither were their lives devoted to the latest fashions and the pursuit of pleasure. Life in the Stone Age was a continuous and never-ending struggle for survival. In a land where gigantic monsters from Time’s Dawn roamed and ruled, men were at a distinct disadvantage: only the hardiest, the bravest and the most fearless could endure the cruel privations of life in the savage jungles of Zanthodon.

And Darya was such a woman! Lacking tall sons to follow him in the hunt and the field of war, Tharn, her father, had reared the girl like a stripling warrior. He had taught her to fight, to run, to search for game, and he had instructed her in the use of every weapon known in the primitive arsenal of her culture.

The only weapon she had to hand at this moment was her own naked body. True, the height and weight and strength of the villainous Fumio dwarfed her slight form and supple strength; but it was all she had and she used it to fullest advantage. One slim knee rose to strike Fumio a sickening blow directly in the crotch—he gagged, paling and clutching at himself. And, as he did so, the girl writhed free from under his heavy body and had all but wriggled free when he clasped her about one ankle in an iron grip and brought her down upon the grass again.

Lurching to his feet and spitting vile curses, he hurled himself at the naked girl. Another woman might have yielded at that moment to the inevitable, but Darya was fashioned from stronger stuff, and determined within her brave young heart never to yield, but to fight on to the end. Lashing out with one small foot, she caught the would-be rapist full in the face!

Fumio screamed as bright pain lanced through his brain, briefly blinding him. The girl had kicked him in the face, breaking the bridge of his slim, aristocratic nose, and the agony of it unmanned Fumio.

Clapping both hands to his smashed nose, which leaked bright scarlet gore down his face and beard and breast, he raved hysterical threats of what he would do to her when he caught her.

Darya sprang across the clearing, and turned to flaunt her nude young body at the furious man.

“No longer will Fumio be the handsomest of the chieftains of Thandar, and desired by all of the women!” she taunted, laughing. “Now will he be as ugly as a Drugar, and only the oldest or the least-favored of the women will allow him to touch their bodies!”

Fumio was proud of his handsome face and profile, and was not accustomed to being denied by women.

That the girl should inflict injury upon so mighty a warrior was humiliation enough to such as he…but to be laughed at, scorned and taunted by a mere slip of a girl goaded him into a frenzy.

Without pausing to think, the warrior snatched up the slim javelin he had hastily fashioned upon first entering the jungle, and levelled it at Darya’s panting breasts. Red murder filled his seething brain, and all he desired now was to slay the slim nude girl who taunted and tantalized him.

Darya paled and bit her lip, realizing her peril. There was none to observe the scene of murder, and Fumio could return to Thandar without a single suspicion. All would simply assume that she had fallen prey to one of the monstrous predators who roamed the wilderness.

The makeshift javelin was naught but a slender length of pointed sapling, lacking stone blade or barb.

But, flung with all the massive strength of Fumio’s heavy thews, it would suffice to transfix her breast.

And she had nowhere to flee, for her leap to freedom had brought her up short with her back against a dense thicket of prehistoric bamboo through which no aperture wide enough even for her supple form to slip through could the girl discern.

A gloating leer crawled across Fumio’s once-handsome visage, now transformed into a hideous bloody mask, as he grasped the girl’s predicament. He could strike her down in an instant, before she could possibly find refuge. And her only weapon, the thong and smooth sling-stones, lay in a neat pile by the margin of the pool wherein she had been bathing when he had surprised her.

It pleased the cruel and feline heart of Fumio to read the stark desperation visible in the girl’s wide eyes and pale, half-parted lips, and in the rapid rise and fall of her perfect breasts. A pity to destroy such beauty, he thought to himself, before he had enjoyed it…but, after all, once she was slain her body would remain soft and supple for some time, and there was no reason why he could not force his manhood upon her warm and unresisting corpse—

* * * *

But another eye had watched the events in the clearing for the past three seconds, and red murder flared up within the heart of that unseen watcher.

Even as Fumio, savoring the flicker of fear in the girl’s widening eyes, drew back his arm to cast the javelin that would pierce the naked breasts of Darya—a lithe, bronzed, half-naked body launched itself upon him from the bushes like a charging tiger.

“—Jorn!” cried Darya, dizzy with excitement and relief. For she recognized the stalwart and gallant young Hunter in an instant.

And it was indeed Jorn the Hunter. His trek through the jungle had carried him within earshot of the pool in the glade, and the sharp cry Darya had voiced when Fumio had attempted to force himself upon her had come to his alert and sensitive hearing.

He had never particularly liked Fumio, for the other man’s preening ways and supercilious manner were offensive to Jorn’s simple and manly dignity. But to find the chieftain attempting to rape the daughter of his own High Chief was an offense which could only be erased with blood. Thus had he flung himself upon Fumio half an instant before the taller man could hurl his javelin at the helpless girl.

The impact of his leap bowled Fumio over and knocked him sprawling. Whereupon Jorn flung himself upon the partially stunned chieftain and, settling his strong hands about the throat of the larger man, began calmly to throttle the breath out of him.

The code of justice and punishment to which the Stone Age peoples of Thandar adhered had about it a certain Biblical simplicity and directness that would have appealed, it may well be, to such as Solomon.

That code may be summed up in the brief phrase: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And to Jorn’s way of thinking, the difference between attempted rape or attempted murder and the actual thing was, at best, minimal.

It did not take long for Fumio to recover himself, for when Jorn had tackled him and knocked him flat he had driven the breath from Fumio’s lungs. Now, sucking air into his starved and laboring breast, the stronger man reached up and hurled the lightly built youth sprawling.

Leaping to his feet, he looked about for his javelin, fully intending to use it upon the young hunter before he used it on the girl who had driven him mad with desire and fury.

But Darya had sprung upon it and snatched it up while her rescuer and her adversary battled, and now Fumio was brought up short, for the point of his own weapon was leveled against his own naked breast.

He took a deep breath, licking his lips, eyes glancing wildly about to either side, looking for a means of self-defense. Alas, there was none.…

Jorn came lithely to his feet, and hurried to stand beside his princess, unlimbering a stone dagger he had snatched from one of the Drugars in the confusion of their sudden break for freedom. He had forgotten that he possessed the flint blade until this moment, or he would have driven it to its hilt in the breast of Fumio.

Fumio looked them over, not in the least liking what he saw. The stern and level gaze and grim-set jaw of Jorn the Hunter quite unnerved him, as did the cold flame of vengeance which burned in the narrowed eyes of the girl he had sought to violate.

Fumio was not a coward, or, at least, he had never thought of himself as one before, but his courage wilted cravenly as he read a sentence of death in the contemptuous eyes of the two young people who held him at bay. From whatever lair deep within his heart it resides in all of us, fear came crawling up within him to suck the strength and courage from his manhood.

He licked lips suddenly gone dry.

“Surely,” he faltered, “you would not murder a helpless and unarmed man…?”

And the instant those words escaped him, he realized how vapid and foolish they were, and loathed himself for uttering them.

Jorn smiled faintly.

“There speaks a man who, one moment before, would have murdered a helpless and unarmed woman,” he said. The soul of Fumio writhed at the scathing contempt in Jorn’s level tones.

Darya sighed, lowering her javelin.

“But Fumio speaks the truth, Jorn,” she said dispiritedly. “I cannot kill even vermin such as Fumio in cold blood.”

“I can, my princess!” retorted the youth without a moment’s hesitation. “Lend me the weapon, and we need never be bothered by this animal again—”

For a moment Darya felt strongly tempted to yield to Jorn’s suggestion, which was, after all, a just and sensible one. Only a fool or an idealist lets a deadly enemy live, to strike again; but it was not in the savage maiden to permit even such as Fumio to be murdered in cold blood. She shook her head, blond mane tousling over bare, tanned shoulders.

“I cannot do it, Jorn,” she said with a sigh. Then, turning to rake Fumio with a scalding glance of utter scorn, she addressed him as follows:

“Take your life, then, yelping dog…but go from us and be very certain that, should either of us ever see your ugly face again, there and then shall we mete out to you the punishment which here we suspend. —Run!”

Fumio needed no further encouragement, but took to his heels, hating himself for it. The scornful laughter of the two young people rang mockingly in his ears as he entered the shadowy aisles of the jungle, and deep in his heart Fumio promised to wreak a dreadful vengeance against those who had humiliated and laughed at him.…

* * * *

Some hours later, as he crouched cold and wet and miserable under a broad-leaved bush within sight of the shore, enduring the lashing of a tropical rainstorm, Fumio had cause to discover that his troubles were very far from being over.

Upon reentering the jungle, he had quickly gotten thoroughly lost, for all his skills as a hunter and tracker. This was doubtless because of the fact that Thandar was a country of rocky hills and level, grassy plains, while the coasts of the Sogar-Jad were a region of dense jungles and swamps. Fumio was not accustomed to pursuing game through such overgrown terrain, and had lost his way entirely.

He had not yet bothered to attempt to devise any sort of a weapon, for it had seemed to the chieftain preeminently important to put as much distance between himself and Darya and Jorn the Hunter as he could possibly accomplish, before they changed their minds, and decided to kill him after all. And by the time he found himself beside the misty shores of the prehistoric ocean, it was too late to begin searching for something from which to manufacture a weapon, for he found himself caught and drenched to the skin by a swiftly risen tropical storm.

Now, lost, hungry, unarmed and miserable, he crouched on his hunkers in the mud, enduring the lash of wind and rain, wishing himself dead.

The first hint Fumio had that he was no longer alone came when a splay-toed foot caught him in the small of his back and kicked him face down in the mud. He sprang to his feet and whirled to stare with amazement and sudden fear into the ugly, grinning face of One-Eye. One-Eye, whom he had thought drowned when the giant reptile overturned the dugouts of the Drugar! For Fumio had lingered just within the edges of the jungle and observed the events which had followed the revolt and flight of the captives.

Evidently, One-Eye had managed to cling to one of the overturned log canoes, gaining the safety of the mainland’s shore again. For there he stood grinning, hefting in one huge, hairy hand a stone axe, looking Fumio up and down.

“Ho, Pretty-Face!” boomed the Apeman humorously. “Who kick your nose in, eh? Shes of your tribe no longer hot to mate with you, when they see your pretty-face now, ho ho!”

Fumio ground his teeth in helpless rage and despair, but made no reply to the rhetorical question. One-Eye kicked him again, this time in the side.

“Me take you back to Kor,” he growled. “One slave better than no slave at all…go push boat down into water, or One-Eye smash you with axe and make your face even uglier.”

Helpless to resist the blows Fortune had dealt him, Fumio listlessly yielded and let One-Eye drive him out into the rain. He grunted and strained, overturning the boat so that the seawater could empty out.

Then, obeying the gruff commands of his captor, he poled the rude craft out into the storm-lashed waves and began to row dispiritedly.

To be a slave to the Apemen of Kor was perhaps the most miserable of fates which such as Fumio could conceive; but at least it was better than starving in the jungle, or being eaten alive by the great beasts.

Dwindling in the distance, the lone dugout canoe vanished in the mists, and soon the rocky coasts of the isle of Ganadol loomed up before them.

CHAPTER 14

A BOLT FROM THE BLUE

It had been the sudden yielding of the branch whereon I slept that had awakened me. For the bough of the great tree wherein Hurok and I had taken refuge for the night had bent suddenly, as if beneath a massive weight.

And I awoke to find myself staring into the horrible visage of a monster such as no man of my age has ever looked upon.

It was a huge, tawny cat, with the heavy shoulders and massive barrel and long, lashing tail of a Bengal tiger. But its coppery fur bore not the black markings of that beast. Its green eyes blazed with soulless ferocity and its wrinkled muzzle writhed, lips folding back to expose a crimson maw and powerful jaws armed with terrible fangs.

The canines of the great cat were fully eleven inches long, and hooked in a terrible curve.

I knew at once what it was, for I had seen its likeness in many pictures: the saber-toothed tiger of the Oligocene, the most dread, ferocious predator that ever roamed the forests of prehistoric Europe before the Ice Age came down upon the world.

Seventeen feet long it was, from wrinkled snout to the tip of its lashing tail. And that is one hell of a lot of tiger, believe you me!

Sweat burst out in cold globules on my clammy forehead, and my heart rose to choke my throat.

Behind me, Hurok muttered in a hopeless tone:

“…Vandar! We are lost, Black Hair.”

The great cat seemed puzzled to find two human morsels tied to a tree branch. It sniffed at us, and as yet the lashing from side to side of its sinewy tail was casual, a matter of balance. Where the saber-tooth had sprung from I had no notion, perhaps from the boughs of a neighboring tree. And whether or not it was hunting, or had already made its kill and was going home to sleep off the after-effects of gorging thereon I had no way of guessing.

But I could certainly hope.…

I dared not move, nor make a grab for my gun. And I tried to hold the great cat with my fixed and steady gaze, while slowly inching my fingers toward the butt of the .45.

It uttered a growling purr, half in warning, half in curiosity.

“Only the thunder-weapon can save us, Black Hair,” muttered Hurok from behind me.

I dared not speak in reply. But my fingertips crept gradually across the stained and dirtied fabric of my makeshift khaki shorts, coming nearer and nearer to the butt of the automatic.

The entire scene, I feel certain, occupied only a few seconds of time. But I have learned the truth of what some philosophers have guessed, that time is truly subjective: for I lived an endless, aching eternity during those fleeting instants before the cat struck. And I hope I never live their like again—

Suddenly, shifting its ponderous weight upon the branch, the cat lashed out at me with one huge paw, unsheathing its terrible, hooked claws—

In the same split second I whipped out my pistol and fired full in the snarling face of the saber-tooth—

And missed!

For the claws of the vandar brushed the barrel of my automatic, knocking it from my grasp, and the slug meant for smack between those blazing emerald eyes wasted itself on empty air.

And the pistol fell, bouncing from branch to branch, vanishing as it plunged through green leaves.

Then the saber-tooth sprang—

* * * *

Tharn of Thandar paused suddenly as an unfamiliar noise slammed through the silence of the jungle. His outspread arms froze his scouts, huntsmen and warriors in their tracks.

“The sound came from ahead, there, from that tree,” said the warrior to his right.

Without speaking, the High Chief made a curt gesture and four warriors glided through the bushes, vanishing behind a screen of dense vegetation.

The Thandarian stood, a silent and majestic figure, his fierce blue eyes sharp and wary as those of the eagle. For many days, now, he had led the war party up along the meandering shores of the Sogar-Jad, searching for his lost daughter. The spoor of her captors had easily been spotted by his huntsmen, who had tracked the slave-raiders this far without once losing the trail.

And in the breast of Tharn the High Chief burned an unquenchable passion: to find his daughter, the gomad Darya, alive and unharmed; to slay to the last shambling brute-man the Drugar who had captured her; and to return once more with Darya to their homeland far down the seacoast.

As yet, and despite all speed they had been able to attain, Tharn and his war party had not been able to catch up with the fleeing Drugars. It was as if the heels of the Apemen bore wings. And, as yet, Tharn had no way of knowing whether his daughter still lived, or had succumbed to the cruel treatment of her brutish captors or, perchance, to the attack of some monstrous predator.

Until he saw her corpse, Tharn would believe her alive and in need of his assistance. But within his mighty heart, the Cro-Magnon monarch earnestly dreaded that moment of final discovery. For life in the savage wilderness of Zanthodon is precarious and only the most powerful of warriors may for long endure its myriad perils. And Darya was a young girl, no seasoned, hardy warrior!

That strange sound that had shattered the jungle stillness an instant before was unknown to the Omad of Thandar; never before had he heard its like. Not even the thunders that growled amidst the heavens were so startlingly loud, and Tharn frowned thoughtfully, wondering as to the source of that uncanny noise.

An instant later, the leaves parted and one of his scouts called him in low, urgent tones. He strode through the thick bushes, glancing up to see an amazing sight.

Tied to either side of a massive treetrunk, a man of the panjan and a hairy, hulking Drugar faced the assault of a mighty vandar, as the universal tongue of the Underground World names the great sabertooth of the late Oligocene and early Pleistocene Eras. The huge cat was about to launch itself against the helpless man—

Tharn of Thandar reached out and snatched the great longbow from the hands of the nearest of his scouts. Swifter than thought itself he nocked the long shaft of an arrow with a practiced twist of his wrist, drew the bowstring taut until the feather of the shaft touched his right earlobe.

And loosed the shaft with a fluid motion—

* * * *

Just as I gasped over the loss of the automatic, the sabertooth hunched its massive shoulders, tensing its hind legs, and launched itself directly at me, like a tawny juggernaut.

It all happened too swiftly for my mind to even register the danger, much less for my heart to quail in fear.

But swifter even than the leaping saber-tooth—like a bolt from the blue!—a long arrow flew to bury itself to the feather in the skull of the giant tiger.

The arrow pierced the great cat’s brain, emerging with a spurt of gore from just under the left eye.

Its leap going awry, the springing cat flew past me to graze the tree bark of the trunk with one heavy shoulder. Then it fell, limp as a mackerel, bouncing from branch to branch until it crashed to earth far below.

The arrow must have killed it instantly; it was dead in mid-leap, surely.

And I released in a whoosh the lungful of air I had not even been aware of holding, and felt my limbs go limp and strengthless from sheer reaction. A narrower shave than that is hard to imagine, and the cat was to haunt my dreams for quite some time to come.

We looked down, Hurok and I, as warrior after warrior emerged from the bushes to examine the dead cat, and to stare curiously up at us. They were tall, handsome men, with strong, well-built bodies and lightly tanned skins, clad only in brief loincloths of hide or fur. Clear and blue were their alert, fearless eyes and yellow-gold their unshorn manes of hair.

I knew them at once for Cro-Magnons.

Which did not, of course, mean they were friendly Cro-Magnons.

In this savage, prehistoric world, where to survive at all requires a constant struggle against wind and weather, beast and predator, and other men, the hand of every creature is lifted in war against all else that lives.

A stranger is probably an enemy, for he is certainly not a friend.

And a dead enemy is the only safe enemy.

Such thoughts must have passed through the mind of one of the warriors beneath us, for with cold, grim features and steady hands he lifted his bow to drive an arrow through our hearts. And I sucked in my breath again, and held it, waiting for that terrible lance of pain to extinguish my consciousness.

But the tall, majestic man at his side turned and struck aside the how so that the arrow whizzed off to lose itself among the leaves. Then this particular man strode forward to examine us with stern but thoughtful eyes. He made an abrupt, unmistakable gesture, disdaining words.

He as good as said, “Come down.”

So we came down. There was nothing else to do. With my pistol lost, we were so far outnumbered as to make any sort of resistance not only futile but suicidal.

The warriors closed about us, and led us forward to where the older man stood, arms folded upon his mighty breast.

He looked us over, eyes bright with frank and honest curiosity.

“A true man in company with a Drugar!” he exclaimed, in a deep bass voice, marveling. “Never have I seen or heard the like! Tell me, stranger, are you the Drugar’s prisoner or is he yours?”

“Neither, to be precise,” I said with as much boldness as I could muster. “We are friends.”

“‘Friends’?” he repeated, with a grimace of surprise. “And since when do the Ugly Ones and the Smoothskins make friends, the one with the other?”

I shrugged. “Never, so far as I know, until I, Eric Carstairs, won the friendship of Hurok of Kor,” I said bluntly. It seemed to me that I had nothing to lose, and that a bit of honest boasting and belligerence might not be out of place. “‘Eric Carstairs,’” he repeated again, pronouncing my name with a trifle difficulty. “And what sort of a name is that?”

“It is my name,” I said firmly, “and not at all unusual in my homeland.”

“And what is your homeland?”

“The United States of America,” I declared.

His brows wrinkled at the name.

“The Un-ited States-es…your land must be far away, for never have I heard of it!” he remarked.

“It is very far away, indeed,” I admitted.

And, in all truth, I did not lie. For my homeland lay on the other side of the planet, and a hundred miles (at least) straight up.

He looked me over again with frank curiosity, and I took the opportunity to check him out, as well. He was a magnificent figure of a man, with a physique like a wrestler, tall and well-formed, and straight as a sword blade. A man past his first youth, obviously, but in the full and glorious prime of his life.

His features were regular, even handsome in a strong, commanding way, with eagle-sharp blue eyes, a lofty brow and a strong, good jaw framed in thick yellow hair and a thick curly, beard, like a Viking chief. Heavy blond mustaches swept back to either side of his mouth, and his head was crowned with a peculiar headdress whose chief ornaments were two curved ivory fangs from the jaws of just such a giant saber-tooth as lay dead at our feet.

His magnificent torso was bare, save for ornaments, and splendidly developed. Here and there the scars of ancient wounds marred the clear, tanned flesh. A triple necklace of the fangs of beasts encircled his strong throat. Bands of worked bronze clasped him at biceps and muscular wrist. All he wore for clothing was a brief loincloth of dappled fur, but his feet were clad in high-laced buskins of tanned leather. At his waist he bore a bronze dagger sheathed in reptile skin. His mien was imperious, commanding. At once I knew him for a king.

I have met a couple of kings in my time. Once you have met one, you can recognize another at a glance.

They have a look to them, something about the eyes and something in the set of the shoulders that is unmistakable.

They have the look of eagles.

And this man was the most impressive and majestic figure I have ever encountered.

He was examining me with as much interest as I was examining him. I could tell from the way his fine brow crinkled that he had never before seen a man with black, curly hair and clear gray eyes. I believe I have already mentioned that the Neanderthals all had either red or brown hair, and that the Cro-Magnons were uniformly blond and blue-eyed. If any other peoples shared the jungle world of Zanthodon with these two races, I had yet to encounter them and had no idea as to their coloration; I believed myself to be unique in this Underground World.

His keen eyes upon my curly black hair, this primeval monarch addressed me with yet another question.

“Are you from the country of Zar, perchance, or from the land of the Men-Who-Ride-Upon-Water?”

I shook my head.

“I have never heard of Zar,” I said firmly, “and have no idea where it is. And I do not even know what you mean by ‘the Men-Who-Ride-Upon-Water.’”

Baffled, he shrugged slightly, giving up the mystery. Then, squaring his magnificent shoulders, he said:

“I am Tharn, Omad of Thandar, a country farther down the coast,” he declared in a ringing voice.

And at those glad words my heart leaped with thankfulness.

“If you are truly Tharn of Thandar,” I said, a trifle unsteadily, “then I have good news for you. For your daughter, Darya the gomad, is alive and safe and somewhere in these very jungles!”

I have never seen such an expression of heart-breaking relief and joy flare in the eyes of any man as I saw then and there in the eyes of Darya’s mighty sire.

CHAPTER 15

THRONE OF SKULLS

One-Eye guided the dugout canoe around the rocky coasts of the island of Ganadol, finally indicating with a blow the point at which he desired his captive to beach their craft.

It was the mouth of a narrow lagoon which gave forth on a bleak and unpromising prospect of sandy, rock-strewn waste, ringed about with crumbling cliffs of sandstone whose sheer walls were cleft by numerous openings, the mouths of caves.

Obediently, Fumio rowed the canoe to the beach, then climbed ashore and dragged the canoe farther up the tawny sands with the help of One-Eye’s great strength.

Two Drugar, stationed atop great flat-topped boulders above the beach, obviously as sentinels, watched silently, leaning upon long stone-bladed spears.

“Ho, One-Eye!” one of them grunted. “You depart with more than a hand of warriors, and return alone, with but one panjan for captive! Has strength deserted your arms and courage deserted your bowels?”

The other guard guffawed at this coarse jest. One-Eye’s face darkened furiously. He growled and spat, measuring the other with a furious eye.

“But come within my reach, Gomak,” he snarled, “and you shall learn if strength has deserted the arms of One-Eye!”

The sentinel uttered a sneering laugh, but Fumio noticed that he stayed where he was and did not accept One-Eye’s invitation.

Turning to the second sentinel, One-Eye demanded of him the whereabouts of one Uruk.

The sentinel shrugged. “The Omad speaks with Xask the Wise at this time,” he grunted. “It is not good to disturb chiefs at their councils,” he warned.

One-Eye grinned and strutted.

“Borag may warn, but One-Eye knows not the taste of fear,” he declared, boastfully. “And One-Eye returns to Kor with word that will please the ear of Uruk the High Chief, aye, and the ears of Xask as well!”

The guard shrugged, gesturing. Seizing hold of Fumio’s long hair, One-Eye strode up the beach and entered the largest of the caves.

As darkness closed about the Thandarian, courage deserted his heart—what little was left therein at this point, at any rate.

* * * *

Within the cave-mouth you ventured down a long stone-walled, narrow way which opened out suddenly into an immense open space, as round as a rotunda, with a domed roof which lifted far above.

Therefrom, suspended like monstrous stony icicles, hung long stalactites. The domed cavern was lit by the smoky flaring of many tar-soaked torches.

Against the farther wall, which was pierced by two natural openings, both hung with hide-curtains, a jutting shelf of rock formed a natural dais. And upon this stone step stood the throne of Uruk, High Chief of the Drugars and King of Kor.

It was a throne of skulls!

Grinning death-heads, their polished ivory rondures agleam in the smoky torchlight, had been fastened together with molten lead to form a monstrous chair. They were the skulls, Fumio observed with a sinking heart, of true men such as himself: of men, women and even children, were the skulls, which boded ill for his future existence in this grim kingdom.

Atop this ghastly throne there squatted the most hideous figure Fumio had ever dreamed to exist.

Uruk was seven and a half feet tall, a veritable giant. And his corpulence was such that he weighed twice as much even as the tall and formidable Thandarian himself. His obese paunch was hairy and repulsive; his sloping shoulders and long, dangling, gorilla-like arms were thickly furred. About his thick wrists were clasped gold bangles and ivory bracelets from distant Zar, ornaments of bronze and copper thieved from Thandar, and amulets of paste and carven stone.

These did little to relieve the pall of his hideousness.

His face was a thing from the blackest pit of nightmares into which any dreaming soul has ever floundred, shrieking. The tip of an aurochs’ horn had long ago ripped his face in half, drawing up one corner of his blubbery lips into a grimace of a frozen smile. Long tusks and broken fangs hung over his sagging lips, and his face was covered with a grisly network of scar tissue.

His eyes were cold, malignant, and soulless as are the eyes of serpents. One glance into the icy, glaring hell of those eyes and you knew, as Fumio shudderingly knew, that no recognizable human emotion lived within the hairy breast of Uruk: naught but cold greed, slimy lust, bestial fury, and the hunger to inflict pain and suffering upon everything that lived.

“Well, and has One-Eye returned alone?” demanded Uruk in a piglike, grunting voice. “With a hand of warriors he departed from Kor, loudly boasting of the many and delectable shes he would return with.

Instead, but one quaking panjan do I see, and good for little that Uruk can guess.…”

Perspiring freely—for it is never wise to anger or distress the ogre who ruled Kor—One-Eye launched forth upon a speech of remarkable eloquence for one such as he.

The leader of the slave raid knew all too well that his expedition had been a dismal failure, and that those close to Uruk who were his jealous foes and rivals would not waste time to twist the facts to his disadvantage. So he had sought out his Omad first, hoping to present them in such a light as to earn him the least disfavor as was possible under the circumstances.

As he spoke on, alternatively whining and blustering, Fumio felt his attention drawn to the second figure upon the stone dais, as the dust of iron is drawn to a powerful magnet.

The second man was certainly no Neanderthal, and no Cro-Magnon, either, and like unto no other man that Fumio had ever seen or heard of. Instead of the bowed shoulders of the Apemen, his were slim and narrow; instead of the stalwart musculature of the Cro-Magnons, his body was lean and trim.

And unlike both he was either completely bald or for some reason his head had been shaved. His features, too, were beardless. His skin was olive in hue, and his eyes jet black—shrewd, clever, calculating, and utterly opaque. No thought that writhed through the dark recesses of his brain could you discern, even slightly, in his eyes.

His slim form was clothed oddly, in a short tunic of woven cloth, and a girdle of metal plates linked together cinched in his thin waist. Soft purple-dyed buskins clothed his high-arched feet. Bracelets of a shining, silvery-reddish metal clanked on his bony wrists, and therefrom flashed and shone strange, polished gems unknown to Fumio, which blazed like the eyes of serpents in the dark.

This was Xask, the grand vizier of Kor, and counselor and confidant to Uruk.

His clever, shrewd eyes met those of Fumio. Even in the battered, blood-stained ruin of what had been Fumio’s once-handsome visage, Xask saw and recognized a kindred soul, a spirit cold, greedy, clever and calculating as it was cruel, unscrupulous and hungry for power.

And Xask smiled, a slow, thin-lipped smile.

And, somehow, Fumio felt less fearful than he had a moment before.…

* * * *

Later that same day, two Drugar guards came and untied Fumio from the center-stake of his cell and led him blinking into the light of flaring torches.

He sweated, steeling himself for…he knew not what. A slow and grisly end, no doubt! For the warriors of Thandar whispered that the Drugars were cannibals; Fumio did not know whether or not this was true, but he would not have been Fumio if he had not feared the worst.

Instead of the cook-pot, they led him into a clean and spacious apartment in the complex of caves which served the ogre-king of Kor as a palace. The luxury and splendor of the room and its appointments were dazzling to Fumio, who had never envisioned such before.

Urns and vases of brilliantly colored ceramics gleamed in the soft, silken light of dangling oil lamps.

Rugs of sleek fur lay underfoot; hangings of richly-colored textiles adorned the walls, where smooth plaster overlay the rough stone. Upon these walls, skilled hands with colored pigments had drawn a frieze of painted monsters and naked damsels in an idyllic garden scene. A delicious fragrance wafted from an incense burner of wrought-silver. Fumio stared about him in astonishment.

A hanging stirred over a concealed doorway, and Xask entered the room and stood smiling faintly, his clever eyes reading with ease the awe and dazzlement wherewith Fumio regarded the furnishings.

“Sit…be at ease,” he bade the Cro-Magnon, gesturing gracefully. As Fumio sank bewilderedly onto a low couch strewn with gorgeous pillows, Xask poured purple wine into a goblet carved from rock-crystal and proffered it.

Fumio gulped down the beverage, bliss written upon his visage. Accustomed to the sour beer of Thandar, fine grape wine with honey burning at its heart delighted his palate.

The two men began to talk, with Xask skillfully drawing out the other. They had much in common, and got along well together, although neither really trusted the other as a matter of course. Xask explained, in answer to Fumio’s query, that, of course, he was not of the Drugar race, but had fled into exile, driven forth by relentless foes and rivals, from his own native homeland, the Scarlet City of Zar which lay far to the inland of the continent, near the shore of the island sea of Lugar-Jad.

Fumio had heard vaguely of the Lugar-Jad, but he did not recall ever hearing of Zar. Well, he thought to himself, no great matter…

Using the strong, unmixed wine to oil Fumio’s tongue, Xask drew him out, inquiring into the circumstances which had led to his present captivity here in Kor.

At the mention of the two oddly dressed strangers, Eric Carstairs and Professor Potter, Xask stiffened alertly. He drew from Fumio with a sequence of carefully phrased questions a lengthy and detailed description of how the two strangers had been dressed, of their strange ornaments and accouterments, and of their fantastic tale of having come from some place they called “the Upper World.” He listened attentively, as Fumio told how, when first captured by One-Eye’s slave-raiders, they had spoken in a language unknown to men, and how the girl Darya had had to teach them the common tongue before they could understand one word of human speech.

His eyes grew shrewd and thoughtful, as Fumio, babbling by now as the strong wine loosened the constraints of caution told how Carstairs had driven into flight even the mighty Yith of the seas with one thunderbolt from his mystery-weapon.

When Fumio’s store of information was exhausted, Xask went to the door and summoned one of his Cro-Magnon slaves, a woman called Yalla.

“The slave Fumio will join my retinue,” he informed her. “See that he is given a place to sleep; he is somewhat the worse for wine at the moment, so you will need the strong back of Corun to see him safely bedded down. Where is One-Eye, do you know?”

“Yes, master, he cavorts among the slave women by express permission of Uruk,” answered the slave woman. Xask nodded, masking a smile. It was apparent to him that One-Eye had succeeded in lying his way out of trouble. Later that evening, Xask found the opportunity to visit the quarters of the slave women himself, and found One-Eye dead drunk and snoring loudly, between two naked girls. From the hairy wrist of the Apeman the vizier purloined the wristwatch which One-Eye had taken from Eric Carstairs.

Alone later in his study, Xask examined the instrument. He was able to make little of it, not even to discern its purpose or use; but the craftsmanship of the watch, the delicacy of its parts, all these impressed him mightily.

Xask was from a culture immeasurably more sophisticated than the Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons. His people had enjoyed hot and cold running water and indoor plumbing and advanced iron manufacturing a thousand years before civilization arose in Europe. Their jewelry and artworks, at their height, were of an extraordinary degree of sophistication.

Xask knew good workmanship when he saw it; even the master artisans of Zar could produce nothing as delicate and precise as the wristwatch which One-Eye had ripped from the arm of Eric Carstairs.

Xask did not know whether there was an Upper World or not.

But he did know that he very much wanted to make the acquaintance of Eric Carstairs and Professor Potter.

From them, his clever mind could extract much knowledge. And knowledge, as the wily Xask knew very well, was power.

And Xask…loved…power!

* * * *

It took the clever vizier little more than a day and a night to persuade Uruk to launch an attack in force upon the mainland.

The ostensible purpose of the assault was to recapture Darya, princess of Thandar. Uruk required little urging to decide to send his men to war. As Xask pointed out, with Darya in their power, they could successfully demand of Tharn of Thandar one hundred beautiful young virgins from the Stone Age tribe.

And Uruk was weary of his women, and hungered for fresh, lithe young limbs and sweet young breasts to handle with his cruel paws.

But the real purpose of the invasion was to capture, if possible, both of the strangers from the Upper World.

Fumio had stammeringly described the small hand-weapon wherewith Eric Carstairs had driven the monster plesiosaurus beneath the waves. It had a voice like thunder, he maintained. And One-Eye, recovering from a monstrous hangover the next morn, had confirmed everything Fumio had told Xask about the thunder-weapon.

Even if the device was only half as powerful as the two savages claimed, it would suffice to serve the purposes of Xask.

His enemies at the court of Zar had soured the Queen’s heart against him, driving him forth into the wilderness to perish. Therefrom slave raiders from Kor had dragged him into a life of captivity from which his cleverness and wit had lifted him to a high position as Uruk’s crony and vizier.

But for a cultured man of civilized ways, even a high position among hulking savages is a mean and squalid life. And Xask desired revenge upon his enemies, and longed to return to Zar in might and power. And the thunder-weapon of the strangers could well be the tool he needed to lift him to his former height.

In his imagination, Xask pictured a hundred Drugar warriors, armed with copies of the thunder-weapon, hurling its lightnings against the towering walls of Zar.

And Xask smiled.

And the next morning fifty dugouts loaded with Drugar warriors, including Xask and Fumio, One-Eye and Uruk himself, launched forth upon the mist-clad waters of the Sogar-Jad, bound for the continent.

The Underground World had never known so mighty a war as Xask had conceived of in his cool and wily brain. Nor had Uruk been overly difficult to persuade into the venture.

Xask had drawn a tempting picture for his Omad…a delectable vision of an invincible army of Drugar, shod with thunder, their arms filled with lightning-bolts, slaughtering in their thousands the warriors of Thandar, carrying off the loot, the plunder, the cattle, and the women…the young and tender and frightened and very desirable women…even the little girls.

Uruk had slobbered, grinning lustfully.

And Fumio was pleased, as well. For his price was small, merely the gomad Darya, and as far as Xask or Uruk cared, what was one young girl among so many thousands?

CHAPTER 16

WINGS OF TERROR

And now let me return to the adventures of Jorn the Hunter. No sooner had Fumio fled into the jungle, than the young warrior and Darya of Thandar turned to see if the would-be rapist’s cowardly blow had slain Professor Potter, or whether the old man was merely unconscious.

Fortunately, the skinny savant had only been stunned by Fumio’s blow. With cold water drawn from the little pool wherein she had bathed, the jungle girl found it not difficult to resuscitate the man from the Upper World. True, he was a bit dizzy and wobbly in the knees, but these ills were minor and would soon pass.

He did, however, have a lump the size of a hen’s egg on the back of his bald pate and it throbbed painfully, giving him the very grandfather of all headaches.

“The cold water will reduce the swelling,” Darya assured him. “You will soon be feeling better.”

“I certainly hope so, young woman!” complained the Professor grumpily. “For I am much too old for such adventures…who did you say it was who knocked me down?”

The girl explained what had happened, describing Fumio so that the Professor could easily recall him.

The old man nodded his head, wincing as he did so.

“Yes, yes, I remember the fellow well…superb physique, but rather too handsome, I should say…

and I did not care for his manner, either: he was either blustering or whining all the time, as I recall.…

Well, young fellow, it seems as if you came to our rescue in the veritable nick of time!” This last remark, of course, was made to Jorn.

The Hunter nodded grimly. “I am glad that I came in time to assist Darya,” he said simply.

“Is there any sign of Eric?” the Professor inquired, feeling a little better by now. “And what of those savages? Are they pursuing us?”

Jorn explained what he had seen from his treetop perch, and how the Drugars had forced me into the dugout canoes, launching forth upon the Sogar-Jad for their homeland, Kor. The Professor was downcast.

“The poor boy! Well, what shall we do now—is there any hope of effecting his rescue, do you suppose?”

Jorn shook his head. “We have no canoes, and no other way of crossing the waters of the sea to the island of Ganadol,” he said somberly. “And even if it were possible for us to do so, I do not believe the three of us could do anything to help Eric Carstairs. Rather than being able to rescue him from his captivity, we should all probably be captured ourselves.”

The Professor could not refute the simple logic of that statement, although he yearned to rescue his friend. “Well, then,” he sighed, massaging his aching head, “at least we can escort this young lady back to the land of her people. It is what Eric would have wished us to do.…”

* * * *

Jorn was forced to admit, some hours later, that he was quite thoroughly lost. He confessed this to his companions shamefacedly.

But Darya was quick to sympathize with the young Hunter.

“In this dense jungle where one tree looks very much like another,” smiled the girl comfortingly, “it is terribly easy to become confused about one’s direction. Perhaps we should rest here, find something to eat, and seize this opportunity to sleep—for we are all quite weary after our exertions.”

Her companions agreed that her suggestion was a sensible one. While Jorn began to build a fire, using, the Professor noticed, flints to set the wood ablaze, Darya decided to go hunting with the light javelin they had taken from the villainous Fumio.

“If my princess will wait until I am finished with this task, I shall be pleased to try my skill while both of you rest,” the Hunter offered.

Darya shook her head determinedly.

“I feel restless, despite my weariness,” she said. “Continue building your fire, Jorn, while I endeavor to make my kill. I shall not be gone long.”

With that, the girl strode into the dim aisles of the jungle and was soon lost to view.

“Heh! I wonder, Jorn, if we should have permitted the young woman to go off by herself,” murmured the Professor a trifle nervously. “The beasts of the jungle are immense and ferocious and Fumio’s spear seems to me a frail implement.”

Jorn smiled.

“Like most of the women of Thandar,” he said quietly, “the princess is an accomplished huntress and knows well how to avoid the larger and more dangerous predators; have no fear.”

“Eh? Well, perhaps so…still and all, I shall breathe a lot easier once the child has returned to camp, safe and unharmed!”

“That will not be long,” said Jorn confidently. “The jungle teems with game, and I’ll wager even at this moment Darya has made her kill.”

* * * *

Nor was Jorn’s confidence in Darya’s skills as a huntress misplaced. For it had been child’s play for the Stone Age girl to bring down an uld, a small mammal that may have been a remote ancestor of the horse, and even as Jorn made his prediction to the Professor, she was engaged in gutting her kill and trussing it with woven grass ropes; slinging the carcass over her shoulder, the girl crossed the clearing, intending to return to her companions.

Now the jungles of Zanthodon, as the cave girl knew all too well, are the hunting grounds of many fierce and mighty predators. There was the heavy-footed thantor, or wooly mammoth, and the spike-horned grymp, as the Cro-Magnons call the triceratops, and many another fearsome beast as well, the vandar and the goroth, the yith of the seas, and many more.

But none are more to be feared than the dreaded thakdol. On its motionless wings, the tireless reptile can soar aloft, riding the updrafts for hour upon hour, while searching the landscape beneath it for game.

While the thakdol can fight and slay, it is a lazy brute and vastly prefers to feed on someone else’s kill.

Like the vultures of the Upper World, whose habits are so similar, the pterodactyl is essentially a scavenger, a carrion-eater, although it will kill when it has to.

On this particular day, a monstrous thakdol whose ribbed, membraneous, batlike wings measured thirty-five feet from claw-hooked tip to claw-hooked tip, was floating above the jungle on silent wings. It was hungry, the aerial reptile, for in two days it had found but sparse rations. And now there wafted to its keen senses the fragrant aroma of fresh-shed blood…

Craning its scaly neck, the thakdol peered down through the tatters of flying mist, to spy a small clearing and a Cro-Magnon girl striding for the forest’s edge with the carcass of an uld across her shoulders.

Uttering the almost inaudible hissing cry that was its hunting call, the huge pterodactyl folded its batlike wings and plummeted earthward, falling like a thunderbolt.

And Darya was not even aware there was a thakdol in the sky until suddenly she was buffeted by drumming wings and a scaled and heavy body slammed into her, driving her to her knees.

Ghastly claws ripped and tore, striving to dislodge the carcass of the uld from her back. But Darya had lashed the body of her kill across her shoulders with tough ropes of woven grass, and they held firm even against those terrible claws.

Losing patience, the thakdol sank its razory claws deep within the carcass of Darya’s kill—spread its monstrous wings—and rose on drumming vanes into the air—

Carrying Darya with it!

The jungle girl screamed in terror as those beating wings lifted her off the earth and into the air. She had not dreamed it possible that a thakdol—even one so huge as this thakdol—was strong enough to carry off a fully grown human being, although betimes its grisly kin have been known to fly away into the sky, gripping babies or small children in its terrible claws.

And in truth the thakdol labored mightily to reach the upper air, fearing to remain on the ground where it could become the prey of beasts greater than itself. Only in the skies of Zanthodon was it safe, for therein no other predator could venture. But the young woman dangling from its claws was a more weighty burden than the small brain of the flying reptile had realized, and it swayed drunkenly in its flight, just barely skimming above the tops of the trees.

Once safely aloft, the pterodactyl made for the distant cliffs where it had built its nest. And it bore the Stone Age girl with it on its voyage through the misty skies.…

* * * *

At the sound of Darya’s scream of terror, Jorn sprang to his feet, snatched up a cudgel from his heap of firewood, and hurled himself into the jungle with the frightened Professor at his heels.

The swift-footed savage veritably flew through the jungle aisles, heading unerringly in the direction from which the girl’s scream had emanated.

Only moments after Darya had cried out, Jorn and the Professor burst into the clearing, and stared about them, wide-eyed with amazement. For she was nowhere to be seen!

There, to be sure, was the trampled turf and blood-splattered grasses where her javelin had brought down the small uld.

There, too, her light javelin lay fallen on the turf. Jorn snatched the light weapon from the ground, examining it.

But where was—Darya?

“She cannot have vanished into thin air—such things simply do not happen,” panted the Professor, staring wildly about.

“I agree,” said Jorn briefly. “But where, then, is she? Had she been chased away by one of the great beasts, a grymp or a goroth, say, the grasses and the soil would be trampled, displaying the marks of their tread. But no such marks are to be seen…”

They looked about them. It was, of course, even as Jorn the Hunter had said: the grasses which clothed the floor of the clearing lay smooth and undisturbed, save for the small area where the ground had been torn by the soft hooves of the little uld, as it had scrabbled in its death agony, pinned to the earth by Darya’s spear.

No other marks were to be seen.

Jorn bared his strong white teeth, eyes glaring. From his deep chest there sounded a menacing growl.

The caveman wore but the thin veneer of civilization; beneath that layer of social custom, he was pure savage, a primitive man, filled with superstition and primal night fears.

Suddenly the Professor seized the Hunter’s upper arm, gripping it tightly.

“Shh!” he whispered fiercely, gesturing for silence. “Did you hear it? What was that?”

Jorn had heard it too, that far, faint, despairing cry…so thin and weak that it was as if it had come a great distance.

His nostrils flared and the skin crawled upon his forearms. For it had come from…above.

Suddenly, Jorn threw back his head, staring into the sky, searching in all directions the misty heavens.

And then he gasped, pointing.

The Professor cried out in astonishment as he saw the same terrible sight that had frozen Jorn in his tracks: the tiny figure of a blond girl in abbreviated fur garments, being carried through the skies by an enormous pterodactyl!

Jorn muttered under his breath, signing himself superstitiously. For the reality of Darya’s plight was, in its way, even more horrible than that which he had feared.

Which, after all, is worse: to be spirited away by ghosts, or to be carried off in the claws of a flying monster?

Only for a moment did Jorn linger. Then he turned and left the clearing, trotting rapidly in the direction in which the thakdol had flown.

It was not possible for the loyal heart of Jorn of Thandar to desert his princess in her peril. He would track the dragon of the skies to its lair, and then rescue the girl, if she lived. If she no longer lived, then he would do his utmost to avenge her.

Racing through the jungles, he vanished from the sight of the Professor within a few moments.

And then it slowly dawned upon the old savant that now he was completely alone and helpless, in the midst of the most deadly and dangerous jungle upon the earth.

“Eternal Euclid! What am I doing, lingering here?” muttered the Professor to himself with a wild look in his watery eyes. Clapping one hand atop his head, to hold secure the battered old sun helmet he had so carefully clung to through all of his perilous peregrinations, the scrawny savant trotted off in the direction taken by Jorn the Hunter.

“Just a moment, young fellow!” he called quaveringly after the running figure. “Wait for me…bless my soul, I believe I shall accompany you and lend moral support to your noble attempt at rescue…!”

And, summoning all such speed as his bony legs and wobbly knees could muster, the old scientist followed the retreating figure of Jorn, joining him amid the plains which stretched wide beyond the jungle’s edge.