by Lin Carter
The Peaks of Peril must be, she realized with growing horror, the breeding grounds of the dreaded flying lizards. Some of their huge nests were built atop slender spears of stone; others had been wedged into the nooks and crannies which pocked the face of the crumbling cliffs. And a few were built upon the narrow ledges that wound down the sides of the peaks.
The fresh breeze raised to her nostrils the unholy stench of the thakdol’s droppings, and the fetid reek of rotting meat. Here and there about the peaks flapped or soared the flying reptiles, and the girl knew that at any moment one might spy her clinging to the broad shelf of the mesa, and descend to rend and rip her tender flesh with horrible, hooked claws.
It was imperative that Darya leave her precarious perch; but where could she go? Not down into that black chimney again, to descend once more into the loathsome darkness of the thakdol’s nest, for death awaited her at the bottom of that dark hole as surely as it did aloft.
Seized by a sudden notion, the girl crept to the edge of the flat rock and peered down. As she had surmised, narrow stone ledges zigzagged down the steep sheer cliff. It was similar ledges along the face of the nearer of the peaks that had given her the idea.
For such as the Stone Age girl, to think was to act.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she flung herself prone and wrapped her lithe arms about a projecting boss, slid her legs over the edge of the mesa. Her probing feet found the upper slope of the ledge.
Testing her weight, she decided that the ledge could bear her without collapsing, and thus began her descent down the side of the cliff.
To the pampered children of civilization such as you or I, that descent would have been an endless giddy nightmare of creeping along, inching your way down a steep shelf of rock that, at times, narrowed to mere inches. Nor did Darya find the experience exhilarating or particularly enjoyable: but the daring girl did not falter or give way to her fears. Her small, stubborn chin firmly set and resolve glinting in her blue eyes, she set her back against the cliff and inched her way along the ledge which led down the cliff by slow and tortuous stages.
The savage girl knew all too well that the slightest miscalculation, the briefest moment of imbalance, a single false step, could plunge her to a swift and horrible death against the sharp rocks far below.
But she went on, and in time the edge widened into a large shelf which extended several yards from the cliff wall.
Here she paused to still the trembling of her limbs and to catch her breath in safety.
As she relaxed, staring out across the broad plain, she espied of a sudden two tiny figures fleeing from the stampeding herd of mammoths.
The bright yellow hair and bronzed, lithe figure of the taller of the tiny figures seemed to her familiar.
As did the scrawny legs and wobbling sun helmet of the second.
It was her countryman, Jorn the Hunter, and Professor Potter, the friend of Eric Carstairs!
Catching her breath, she saw and realized their deadly peril, for the rampaging bulls of the herd were almost upon the two.
Even as she watched they halted suddenly, the two fleeing figures, and fell prone in the grass for some inexplicable reason.
And then her view of the two was blotted out by a mystery…a blaze of flame sprang out of nowhere, and a plume of thick black smoke obscured her view.
CHAPTER 20
THE DWELLER IN THE CAVE
Puffing along at the heels of his Cro-Magnon friend, Professor Percival P. Potter, Ph. D., groaned and grumbled to himself. His predicament was perilous, he knew, and this infuriated him. That a scientist of his keen perception, vast learning, and brilliant intellect should be so utterly helpless before the brute strength and tiny intellect of the enraged herd of mammoths that thundered along behind them, coming closer and closer with every ominous moment, exasperated the short-tempered savant.
“What is the use of all those degrees,” he panted angrily to himself, “if one cannot outthink a herd of prehistoric pachyderms?”
It was hard to do any serious, constructive thinking while running for one’s life, he noticed. So he forced his mind to analyze the present situation as coolly as he might study an academic problem, while comfortably seated behind his cluttered desk.
The solution to our dilemma is obvious, he thought to himself. At the moment, the mammoths are angry. We must replace that anger with a stronger emotion, such as—fear! But what in the world—or beneath it—would so huge and monstrous a beast be afraid of?
The Professor recalled the battle that he and Eric Carstairs had watched from the branches of the tree, when one such mammoth as those which now lumbered on their very heels had attacked and trampled into gory ruin a fullgrown dinosaur. So huge and mighty were the great mammoths, that they feared not even the terrible dragons of the Jurassic.…
Was there not something that all of the beasts feared in common? A tantalizing wisp of thought tugged at the Professor’s attention. There was something.…
“—Eureka!” he shrilled, causing Jorn to glance back over his shoulder.
“Save your breath for running,” advised the Cro-Magnon shortly. But the Professor shook his head, eyes gleaming triumphantly.
“Have you still those bits of flint wherewith you built our campfire just before the young woman was carried off by the pterodactyl?” the old man wheezed urgently.
“In the pouch at my waist,” grunted Jorn the Hunter.
“These grasses which clothe the meadow are dry as tinder,” panted the Professor. “One spark should set them alight. And the wind from the sea is blowing directly in our faces!”
“You mean—”
“Exactly! The one thing all beasts fear, is the thing which will drive the mammoths away in panicky flight; for fear is an emotion more powerful and compelling than mere anger.”
“And all beasts fear…fire!” said Jorn with a gin of approval. “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”
They halted in their flight, crouching together in the thick grasses as Jorn fumbled in the little pouch of tanned skins which hung at his waist. Again and again, he struck the small flints together, while the Professor groaned and cursed and the herd of lumbering pachyderms came thundering down upon them.
Suddenly the grasses caught, and a sheet of flame leaped roaring up between the two men and the advancing monsters. Flame and thick dense black smoke soared high, like a magical barrier erected by the potent gesture of an enchanter.
The odor of burning grasses came to the sensitive nostrils of the mammoth in the vanguard of the stampede. It was the same huge bull who had stood sentry over the grazing females and their young.
And as the dreaded smell of burning grass and the terrible, licking flames shot up, the bull squealed piercingly in fear, and halted, turning, flapping his huge ears in alarm.
He headed off to the left, toward the edges of the jungle which stood below the plain.
And one by one the stampeding bulls scented fire and smoke and turned to follow him.
Within mere moments, the entire herd of wooly mammoths was racing away from where Jorn the Hunter and Professor Potter crouched amid the grasses—straight for the wall of foliage that marked the edge of the jungle.
* * * *
A sudden sound from behind her caught Darya off guard. Surprised, the savage girl turned to peer behind her.
She had not noticed—or if she had, had paid no particular attention to the fact—but behind her the black mouth of a cave yawned in the sheer face of the cliff.
And within that cave something large and heavy dragged itself over rough stone!
The eyes of the Cro-Magnon princess could not pierce the dense gloom of the cave’s inner recesses so as to ascertain the nature of that which had made the sound; but she heard the scraping of claws against naked stone and a
ponderous shifting of some enormous, breathing weight within the cave.
What had aroused the unknown denizen of the cave? Had it been her shrill, involuntary cry as she saw and recognized Jorn and the Professor fleeing from the mammoths on the plains below her airy perch?
There came a sound from just within the entrance of the cave, a sound like slow, dragging footsteps—
The girl sniffed the air questioningly. Her nostrils did not detect the oily, musky reek of thakdol droppings. Instead, she sensed an odor rank and powerful, like wet fur.
It was an odor that she knew from of old, in her distant homeland…and an odor that she and all of her kind feared.
The girl retreated to the edge of the stone shelf, looking around her desperately for something she might employ as a weapon, for the ledge she had been following terminated only a few feet beyond the shelf whereon she now stood, and in that direction escape was impossible. Although, if the beast within the black cave were the thing she feared, no weapon she might find would serve to fend it off.
And then a vast, shaggy, manlike form came crawling out of the cave, sniffing rumbling threateningly.
It rose ponderously on short, thick legs until it towered nine feet into the air. Pricking its furry ears and glaring around with hungry eyes, it uttered a menacing growl, huge hairy arms lifting to seize and crush.
The claws which armed those paws were keen and terrible, and so were the great white fangs now bared by the wrinkling black muzzle.
And Darya quailed in fear…to her, the dweller in the cave was the dreaded omodon, the most feared of all the mighty beasts of Thandar.
But had the Professor been on the scene, he would perchance have identified the monstrous, hulking form as that of Ursus spelaeus, the mammoth cave bear of the Stone Age, which died out in Europe by 10,000 B.C., but survived here in Zanthodon the Underground World.
Mightiest and most dreadful of the enemies of Cro-Magnon man, the great cave bear weighed one thousand pounds at maturity, and it could have mauled a dozen grizzlies, snapping their spines or crushing their skulls with a mere slap of its huge paws, heavy as sledgehammers.
Grunting hungrily, the shaggy monster came shuffling out upon the ledge…advancing toward the helpless girl, thick arms outstretched to mangle and crush.
And Darya had nowhere to escape to, for the only way off that ledge was straight down, where fang-like rocks thrust skyward to impale her slender body!
* * * *
Tharn of Thandar stood amid the clearing where Fumio had attacked his daughter, Darya, only hours before. It was galling to the savage monarch to be this close to his child, and to remain ignorant of her whereabouts. Darya might only be a hundred yards away, cowering in terror before the slinking advance of some dreaded saber-tooth or monstrous reptile…or she might be miles away by now, carried off by slavers.
Or she might be dead.
With eagle eyes the caveman king searched the trampled turf at his feet, striving to read the events which had earlier transpired upon this very spot. Darya’s footprints could be clearly seen in the mud at the edge of the pool, and the grasses were torn and disturbed as though by three pair of feet. But little more than this could the Cro-Magnon read.
The bushes parted and there-through glided the lean, grizzled chief scout, Komad. In his hand, Komad bore a crude javelin which had been fashioned from a long stick.
“What news?” demanded the High Chief. Komad shrugged. “Little enough, my Omad,” he said. “I have found another clearing between this place and the sea. There the grasses were disturbed as though by the pawing of a small beast, and there is blood upon the grasses. It is as fresh as the blood upon this spear, and I reckon it to be the blood of an uld.”
Tharn examined the javelin and handed it to me.
“Have you ever seen it before?” he asked.
I shook my head, reluctantly. It was, of course, the javelin which Fumio had made, after I had engineered our escape from the Drugars. But as yet I had not learned of Fumio’s assault on Darya, or how Jorn had taken away his spear, wherewith she had slain the uld before being carried off.
“The weapon is hastily made from a dry, fallen branch,” observed Tharn. “Certainly not of Thandarian worksmanship, nor of the Drugars, either.”
“When we escaped from the Drugars,” I pointed out, “we were all unarmed. Upon entering the jungle, any one of your people might have paused in his or her flight long enough to trim such a stick, making a crude weapon such as this.”
“That is true,” nodded Tharn.
Then, turning to the old scout, he was about to command him to return to his search-party, when the underbrush parted and a huge form shouldered through.
“Hurok!” I cried with relief. For it was indeed the Korian, my Neanderthal comrade who had fled alone into the jungle rather than impose his undesired presence upon the Cro-Magnons.
“What do you want here, Drugar?” demanded Tharn sternly, with one hand upon his flint knife.
“Hurok has returned where he is not wanted,” said the Neanderthal man in his deep, slow voice, “to warn the friends of Black Hair that Uruk, Omad of Kor, and a mighty host of warriors have entered this part of the jungle and are advancing upon this very spot.”
The Cro-Magnons flinched and gasped, for the news burst upon them like an unsuspected thunderbolt.
Tharn grunted angrily, eyes glaring like those of a lion at bay. “Just when we were on the track of my daughter,” he growled, “we must face the Drugars in war! Well, so be it—Komad, summon my warriors.”
The scout nodded, and lifting to his lips the hollow horn of an aurochs he sounded a deep, groaning call.
At once warriors and huntsmen began returning to the glade of the pool, assembling to hear the commands of their Omad.
“We cannot bear the brunt of attack here,” decided Tharn swiftly, “for they could hide behind every bole while we remain exposed to their missiles. Komad, where is a more advantageous place for such a battle as advances upon us?”
The old scout thought a moment, then pointed. “In that direction, the jungle ends, opening upon a level plain, with cliffs and mountains beyond,” he answered.
“Then let us depart for the plain at once,” commanded Tharn.
PART VI: WAR IN THE STONE AGE
CHAPTER 21
THE PASS THROUGH THE PEAKS
As the panic-stricken herd receded toward the jungle, Torn and Professor Potter surveyed their handiwork with a certain degree of complacency and self-congratulation. And the Neolithic chieftain turned to view the old man with a new light of respect.
“It was clever of you to think of fire,” said the youth admiringly. “When all that Jorn could think of was to run away…you must be a very wise man.”
The Professor preened himself a trifle, basking in the admiring gaze of the young savage.
“Ahem!” he coughed. “Kind of you, my boy, but actually no more than I deserve…for in my own country, I will have you know, I am a highly-respected scholar and authority upon many recondite subjects. A trained, scientific mind, you know, should be able to cope with the small problems of the Stone Age…”
Like most of the words which the Professor used, Jorn could make nothing of scholar, authority, and so on. But he gathered the general drift of the Professor’s modest little speech, and smiled slightly.
“I suggest that we continue our journey, now that I am rested,” murmured the Professor, peering off toward the cliffs, which now were quite near.
Torn nodded, turning to survey the Peaks of Peril. And all at once the Stone Age boy froze as cold fear clawed at his vitals.
“What is it that disturbs you, young man?” inquired the Professor, noting his companion’s sudden anxiety. “Has the wind changed, perchance, driving the wall of fire back upon us?”
“No,” growled Jorn the Hunter, pointing. “Look—!”
The Professor craned his head, peering in the direction of Jorn’s extended arm. And suddenly he gasped, and went pale.
For there, crouching at the edge of a shelf of stone, they both could clearly observe the form of Darya of Thandar!
She was dirtied and dishevelled by her experiences in the thakdol’s nest, and the blood of the uld’s carcass had stained her back and shoulders, but at a glance both men could see that she still lived and did not seem to have sustained any injury of a serious nature.
And then there loomed up above her the immense and shaggy shape of that which had caught her terrified, fascinated attention—
“Omodon!” groaned Jorn in stifled tones.
“Cave bear, for the Love of Linnaeus!” cried the Professor, almost in the same moment.
They watched, frozen with horror, as the lumbering monster advanced upon the cowering girl, huge arms lifted to maul and crush and slay.…
* * * *
It did not take the horde of Apemen from Kor very long to find the clearing from which Tharn and his warriors had retreated, nor were the signs of their passage unreadable to the alert senses of the Neanderthal men. If their eyes were rather weak and dim of vision, as I had by now good cause to believe, their sense of smell was remarkably keenkeener by far than the sensitivity of the nostrils of civilized men, for they were closer to the primal beasts than are we.
It was One-Eye who detected the direction in which the Cro-Magnons had fled.
Crouched on all fours, the Neanderthal man sniffed the footprints in the turf. A bestial growl escaped his snarling lips as he scented a detested odor.
“Panjani!” he grunted to his Chief. “Tens-of-tens…they went that way,” he added, pointing. Uruk surveyed the end of the clearing, his suspicious little eyes reading the passage of many men in broken twigs and disturbed fallen leaves.
