by Lin Carter
“Behold, O Achmed!” whined Tarbu, clutching at the brawny arm of the first mate. “The mountain opens like a door, and forth come devil-men!”
“They are the Djinn!” breathed Achmed, “who dwell in the bosom of Mount Kaf!” All of the superstitions of his race seethed to life in the breast of the Moor, striking fear into his heart as could never a mortal foe, however armed or powerful.
“Let us withdraw from this accursed place, before the stones open beneath our very feet and disgorge demons!” suggested another of the corsairs. Privately, Achmed thought that a very good idea; there was no advantage in going to the assistance of the unknown savages, and there was certainly nothing to be gained in waiting here for the devil-men to destroy the primitives and then come after the pirates.
So he gave quick orders, and in less time than it would take me to describe the scene, the Barbary corsairs clambered back down the improvised log ladders and concealed themselves within the edges of the jungle, the better to observe what transpired.
It soon became obvious that the Gorpaks were getting the worst of the fight. Not only were the Cro-Magnon savages taller and stronger, but they were much better fighting men than the Gorpaks, with much more experience in war.
Hitherto, the Gorpaks had done little more than lay traps in the jungle for passing men or women, and strutted and preened themselves before the listless cavern folk. There had never been a mutiny of the slaves of the cavern city until Garth and I led the one I have described.
The fact of the matter was, the Gorpaks had never been in a real battle before and they didn’t know what to do. They stood, shouting orders at the Thandarians, shrilling abuse, waving their arms, instead of taking cover. So, of course, they fell in droves to the arrows and spears hurled against them. And when it finally dawned on the Gorpaks that they were not exactly winning this thing, they tried to go back down into the caverns again, but were prevented from effecting their retreat by the pressure of more Gorpaks climbing up from below. That is, by this time Lutho had arrived with the reinforcements, and they were boiling up out of the exit to stand bewilderedly, finding themselves in the midst of a battle.
Except that it really wasn’t a battle at all, but very quickly became a full-fledged massacre.
It would have pleased me mightily, could I have been there to see it. Simpering little Vusk fell to an arrow in the throat, and the obsequious Sunth took a Thandarian spear in the heart, and even the villainous little brute whom the Professor had surprised in the act of whipping a child of the caverns died in the holocaust.
Tridents make clumsy weapons, pitted against spears.
And whips are of even less use against arrows.
It was all over very quickly. Captain Lutho managed to escape by jumping off the edge of the cliff. We found his body later at the base, where he had landed on some rocks, which split his skull open like an eggshell.
It certainly wasn’t Lutho’s day, was it?
* * * *
As the gigantic drunth came thundering down upon Xask, the Zarian did the only thing that occurred to him. Since he had no other weapon at hand save the automatic pistol which he had taken from me, he plucked it out and pointed it at the dinosaur, hoping against hope to somehow evoke the power of the socalled thunder-weapon.
Fortune was with Xask in that hour, despite her neglect of him in recent days. By pure chance his finger slid into the trigger guard and tightened about the trigger. A deafening retort sounded. The noise made Xask jump; it also so startled Fumio that he fell out of his tree and landed with a bruising thump in a thick thornbush.
The vast size of the armored stegosaurus loomed above Xask like a moving mountain. The monster halted—faltered—then, with a crash that shook the earth, it toppled over on its side and lay, kicking enormous feet and flexing and unflexing its long, blade-edged tail.
Xask was coughing to clear his head of the stench of gunpowder. He shook his head to stop the ringing in his ears, and stared wonderingly down at the smoking barrel of the .45.
Then he strolled around the body of the drunth, kicking it in the side from time to time, but carefully avoiding the lashing tail, which could snap his spine like a twig.
He found a black, sooty-edged hole at the base of the throat of the drunth, which must have been caused by the thunder-weapon. It mystified Xask that so tiny a wound could have brought down so mighty a monster, and, in fact, it mystifies me, for in my time I have bounced a bullet or two off a dinosaur, to no effect at all.
The Professor has a Theory—(the Professor always has a Theory)—that Xask’s bullet must have entered the dinosaur’s carcass through the soft flesh of the throat and caught it directly in the spinal cord, shattering that vital chain of vertebrae and causing it instant paralysis, rather than death. I don’t know, neither did Xask, but anyway his slug stopped the stegosaurus cold.
Eventually, he strolled over and pried Fumio out of the thornbush. Once Fumio had plucked out thorns from the more tender parts of his anatomy, and got a good look at the body of the drunth, he fell on his face and began kissing the feet of Xask.
Fumio knew a god when he saw one. Only a god could have felled a monster like that with a bolt from the blue.
Xask permitted Fumio to fawn on him for a time, then he commanded his new slave to get to his feet and accompany him through the jungle. Fumio was happy enough to do as his god ordered. Surely, armed with the thunders of the firmament, Xask could protect Fumio from the perils of the wild, the vengeance of Tharn, the cruelty of One-Eye and just about anything else.
Which is about all we could possibly hope for from the gods.
* * * *
As the battle on the cliff top came to its eventual end, there were other eyes watching from a place of hidden concealment besides those of the Barbary pirates. And these were the eyes of Xask and Fumio, who had arrived on the scene just after the corsairs had concealed themselves in the jungle.
Xask watched thoughtfully as the Thandarian savages finished off the last of the Gorpaks. He wondered, I suppose, what in the world was going on, but then Xask had never before seen any Gorpaks, and neither had he ever seen the Barbary pirates. This world of Zanthodon was proving a more remarkable place than even Xask had ever guessed, and was crowded with strange peoples of whose very existence he had gone ignorant all his days.
As was always the case with men like Xask, his cold and cunning brain went instantly to work calculating how this new information could be bent to serve his best interests.
As for Fumio, he wasn’t thinking about anything much; he wasn’t even watching the end of the battle. True, Tharn was there, and Fumio would have been very fearful and wary of Tharn a few hours before, for, after all, he had attempted to rape the daughter of Tharn, which was great and good reason for Fumio to feel fear.
But he didn’t. After all, his god was at his side, and there at the waist of his god was the thunder-weapon.
And he felt very safe and secure, did Fumio.
* * * *
It was about the same time that the rest of us arrived on the scene. The wandering tunnel had carried us to the door in the cliff, through which the Professor had first entered the cavern city, and once we found the secret of the mechanism that triggered the counterweights, we opened it and emerged into the light of day.
The first thing we saw was Lutho’s crushed corpse amid the rocks.
Then we looked up and saw the Thandarian host atop the cliffs, and they looked down and saw us.
Of course, they didn’t know who the host of Sotharian warriors were, but it didn’t much matter to Tharn. For among the throng of newcomers he recognized me, the old Professor and Jorn the Hunter, to say nothing of Hurok of Kor.
And his daughter Darya, of course. She was standing very close to me and I had my arm around her shoulders. As soon as I saw Tharn of Th
andar, I flushed crimson and took my hand away. After all, you will recall, Darya and I were both nude. And even Stone Age fathers have notions of propriety.
Raising a halloo, the Thandarians came swarming down the cliff, and a moment later Tharn seized his daughter up and crushed her slender body in his embrace and gave her a kiss that probably made her toes curl.
The neat instant he slapped me approvingly on the shoulder, nearly knocking me down, and crushed my hand in his in a grateful handshake that very nearly reduced my knuckles to powder.
And it was all over.
Or so, at the time, we thought.…
PART V: VICTORY IN ZANTHODON
CHAPTER 21
The Bond of Friendship
Garth and the men and women of Sothar had withdrawn a little ways as the Thandarians had begun their descent from the cliff top and now stood in a close group, wary and watchful. Of course, they did not know the men of Thandar to be friendly, and of course the men of Thandar actually weren’t; in Zanthodon, the hand of every man and nation is pitted against every other, and a stranger is considered to be a foe until his actions prove him a friend.
Noticing the constraint of the Sotharians, I beckoned Garth forward and led him to where Tharn stood, talking with his daughter. Seeing us, he gently put her aside, for he had men’s work to do.
“O Tharn, High Chief of the warriors of Thandar,” I said in the formal diction of their language, “let me make known to you my friend and ally, Garth, High Chief of the warriors of Sothar. It is the dearest wish of Eric Carstairs that the people of Thandar should be friends with the people of Sothar.”
Garth and Tharn looked each other over from head to toe and probably approved of what they saw—they were, after all, nearly as much alike as cousins, both being tall, majestic men in their full prime, magnificent of physique, strong and manly of visage.
Then Tharn reached out his hand.
“The wish of Eric Carstairs is likewise the wish of Tharn,” he said with simple dignity. “Greetings and peace to my brother, the Omad of Sothar, if that he come in peace.”
“In peace we meet, Omad of Thandar, and in peace we shall part,” said Garth, seizing the hand of Tharn. For a moment the two stood eye to eye, maintaining their aloof dignity.
Then they grinned at each other, and the ice was broken.
Erelong, the Thandarians were divesting themselves of some of their spare clothing, so that the men of Sothar could wrap a bit of fur about their loins and the women could also cover themselves. Grateful for at least one of the amenities of civilization, I adjusted about my loins a scrap of fur about the size of a ladies’ handkerchief, which I bound about my waist with a piece of thong.
It wasn’t much, but it felt good to be “dressed.”
The Professor looked remarkably funny in his little fur apron, with his bony ribs and skinny legs bare to the view. But through all of our adventures he had held onto his pince-nez glasses, and his absurd sun helmet; now, these two items lent him a dignity that black tie formal wear could not have given.[1]
We drank water and rested and ate some of the stores of the Thandarians, and told of our adventures. The Thandarians looked grim as they learned of the horrors we had witnessed in the cavern city, and were amazed to learn of the Sluagghs, of whose very existence they had been happily ignorant.
Soon the two bands of warriors began constructing weapons so that the men of Sothar might arm themselves. Sharp blades trimmed saplings into spears and whittled crude but serviceable arrows, while the women worked at fashioning bows and slings. Stone axes were the easiest to make, for the foot of the cliffs was littered with bits of broken or crumbling rock.
Once armed, the combined host numbered a mighty force. The two groups of Sotharians must have totaled in excess of fifty, most of them grown men and warriors, but some of them women, old men and young children. Even these could fight, of course, for in the Underground World all are taught to defend themselves as a matter of course. There are few noncombatants in Zanthodon.
As for the Thandarians, they numbered about fifty warriors as well, perhaps a trifle more, and their numbers had now been augmented by the addition of Hurok, the Professor, Jorn, Darya and myself. We now added up to quite a large army, as armies go in the Stone Age.
And we felt confident that we could invade the cavern city, destroy the Gorpaks, slaughter the vampiric leeches and set free the listless cavern folk—although what they would do with their freedom I could not imagine, so broken and cowed had they become under generations of slavery to their bandy-legged little masters.
First, however, we must sleep. I could not recall just how long it had been since I last enjoyed a good sleep, and I ached in every muscle. With the freshest of us standing guard against any attack by Gorpaks or beasts, the rest of us fell into a deep and refreshing slumber.
* * * *
As for the Barbary pirates, they were in a quandary, if not indeed a dilemma. Achmed and his corsairs, could clearly identify Darya, for they had been present at the time when Kâiradine Redbeard had borne the jungle girl aboard his vessel, the Red Witch. But she was in the very midst of her people, and they dared not attack; neither, recalling the vicious temper of their Captain, did they dare not attack.
It was a pretty problem! Had Darya been among the warriors of Thandar alone, the pirates might well have gambled on an assault, counting on the advantage of surprise and on the edge of technological superiority their weapons gave them. After all, cutlasses and scimitars of whetted steel are more efficient than homemade arrows, spears and stone axes.
The trouble was, simply, the men of Sothar, whose force had now joined with the Thandarians, more than doubling their number. It would have been rash and foolhardy to the point of being suicidal had Achmed attempted to fight so huge a host with his little band.
“Mayhap, O Achmed, we should return to the ship to summon our brethren to our aid?” Kemal hissed in the ear of his commander.
“Dog of a Turk, has it not occurred to you that during our absence from the scene, on such a mission as you describe, the wench may well depart with her kinsmen?” replied the Moor scornfully.
The Turk tugged on his superb mustachios as if thereby to stimulate the processes of his intellect.
“There is sense and reason in the words of Achmed,” Kemal admitted. “Let us, rather, send back only part of our number.…”
“And thereby weaken our strength so that, if it should come to a battle, we should surely all be slain? By the beard of the prophet, dog, leave the thinking to one who possesses the wits required, and hold your tongue before I slit it with my dagger!”
Grumbling, Kemal of Istamboul lapsed into moody silence.
Achmed chewed on his lower lip, peering out between the leaves of the thickly grown bush behind which he crouched. Bluff and bluster all he would, he had no better ideas to offer than those already proposed by Kemal. But he could hardly admit that without losing face in the eyes of the ruffians he commanded.
What do you do when there really isn’t anything you can do?
Perhaps you have to take a dangerous chance.…
Achmed mumbled a prayer to his god, but under his breath. The only possibility which occurred to him was to wait and see what transpired next. If the savages, upon awakening, began to march away through the jungles, he supposed that he would have to risk all on the uncertain outcome of an ambush.
What he was really hoping for was that Darya should stray away from the host of warriors, or should for some reason be left alone, or among only a few of her people.
Well, for the moment the Moorish first mate determined to do nothing at all. He would simply wait and see what happened next.
It wasn’t the most bold and daring plan in the world, he glumly realized, but it was better than nothing.
* * * *
We awoke, rested and refreshed. I have always tried to get my eight hours in the sack, no matter where I was or what was happening around me. Seldom have I slept so deeply as when the world was exploding about my ears; I remember sleeping like an innocent babe through part of one of those minor Near Eastern wars, with the Arabs and the Israelis popping away at each other over my head.
Of course, in Zanthodon it is impossible to ascertain exactly when eight hours have passed, unless you just sit there and count “one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two,” and so on, until you have measured eight hours by. Of course, that way you wouldn’t get any sleep at all, but what the hell, at least you’d know just how long you didn’t sleep.
We had breakfast. Tharn’s hunters had brought down a brace of zomaks, which the women of both tribes defeathered and broiled on spits over shallow fire, pits. Zomaks are the nearest things Zanthodon can boast of comparable to birds. They are surely the strangest birds you ever saw, with scaly tails and beaks filled with sharp, nasty little teeth. Professor Potter calls them “archaeopteryx,” and says they are the ancestors of birds.
Well, maybe so, but they sure don’t taste as good as chicken!
Not to be outdone by the feats of the Thandarian hunters, the huntsmen of Sothar went into the jungle and emerged after a time with several plump uld. The uld are peculiar little critters. They resemble slim, long-legged pigs with tapering muzzles instead of snouts, and they sport a rough coat of short fur. The Professor identifies them as “eohippus,” and tells me they are the ancestors of the horse. Maybe so.…
Between pseudo-bird and proto-horse we made a fair meal, I must admit. With more than a hundred mouths to feed, the rations didn’t stretch too well, but we filled up on fruits and nuts and berries, wherewith this part of the jungle country abounded.
I believe I have said very little about the fruits of Zanthodon in these narratives. That is not because there were none, for there were plenty. It is because the Cro-Magnon tribes scorn the eating of fruit, which they regard as fit only for children and old women. Meat is the thing a Cro-Magnon craves; everything else is mere filler. As a filet mignon man myself, I can appreciate their feelings; but when it comes to going into battle with a tummy only half-filled, or chomping down some vegetarian goodies, I will chose the latter every time.
