by Lin Carter
His purchaser was one Yussef ben Ali, foremost of the corsair captains, and chiefest rival to the throne of Kâiradine 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 Kâiradine, 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 Kâiradine 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 blood), 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 Kâiradine 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 Kâiradine 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 Kâiradine 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, Kâiradine 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 Kâiradine 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.”
His words sounded convincing, and honesty shone in his bland and guileless eyes, but Zoraida eyed him doubtfully. If she were not fully certain that her hero and lover could defend himself against the wiles and traps of Yussef, she would never have conspired with Kâiradine’s rival.
Privately, she did not trust the rival captain any further than she had to. And, probably, she was right.
“Now you must leave here, O Zoraida,” urged the corsair captain. “I believe that my house is being watched—perhaps by that dog of a Moor that serves your master as his first mate—and it’s no longer safe for you to come and go here as you please.”
“How, then, shall we communicate henceforward?” demanded Zoraida.
Yussef smiled. “Fear not! Nor trouble your lovely little head about that, for Yussef ben Ali has other friends behind the walls of the palace of Kâiradine than your exquisite self! Now go, and quickly—and take care not to be seen!”
As the dancer veiled herself and slipped from the room, Yussef fingered his mustache, thinking back over the passionate avowals of love which Zoraida had just made for the man she was betraying. The irony of the situation appealed to his wry sense of humor.
“By Allah,” he chuckled, “I thank the saints that no woman loves me as much as Zoraida loves Kâiradine!”
CHAPTER 10
A MYSTERIOUS FRIEND
Darya of Thandar found life in the harem of Kâiradine Redbeard at once boring, luxurious, confining, tedious and lonely. Her suite in the harem wing was sumptuously decorated, a soft and silken nest, and after the hardships and exertions she had endured in recent weeks, the Cro-Magnon girl would not have been human did she not luxuriate in such plea
sures as a comfortable bed, delicious, if unfamiliar, foods and hot, soapy baths.
She was lonely because she was kept apart from the other women by Kâiradine Redbeard’s direct orders. Burly eunuchs stood beyond her door day and night, permitting no one to enter and refusing to let her leave. The guards had been posted immediately after the scene when Zoraida had burst in upon her and the two had fought together, Zoraida armed with a knife. Kâiradine wished no recurrence of that event; hence the eunuchs.
The Princess of Thandar could have enjoyed the luxury of her captivity much more had it not been for the suspense which she endured. True, she was secure from the lusts of the Barbary Prince while the lacerated muscles of his shoulder healed, but—for how long would her present safety continue? The pirate prince was in the full glory of his prime, with the sheer animal vigor of a healthy athlete; erelong, he would be healed enough to claim the object of his desires. It was difficult to estimate just how long that would be.…
Darya spent the listless days and empty nights dreaming of escape. It seemed hopeless to think of getting past the two giant blacks who guarded her door, and the long windows were screened by latticework riveted to the window frames. She might have been able to break through the carven wood lattices with a knife or tool, but none was in her possession. The Barbary Pirates, being more or less true Moslems, did not employ eating utensils, preferring thin wooden rods like those thrust through shish kebab. Those and their bare hands were all the implements they required to down their meals. True, meat was carved with knives, but the meats served to Darya were already carved, and she was never permitted to see a knife.
Escape seemed hopeless.
But Darya had gambled her life on even more hopeless odds before. And won.
* * * *
Isolated as she was behind the silken barriers of the women’s quarters, it still was not unknown to Darya that the pirate kingdom of El-Cazar was in a seething turmoil. Only the strong leadership and heavy hand of Kâiradine Redbeard had restrained the reckless and explosive tempers of his corsair chieftains; while he healed in bed, surrounded by a flurry of Arab physicians, plots were brewing, aye, and counterplots, too.
Rumor claimed that Kâiradine had been crippled by the yith’s bite—that his swordarm was useless. And the Pirate Prince maintained his grip on the precarious throne of El-Cazar only so long as he was strong and vigorous enough to maintain his grip on the hilt of a sword. For it was law in El-Cazar that he could be challenged to a duel at any time by one of chieftainly rank who questioned his abilities to lead his men wisely and to fight at their forefront.
That these rumors had been surreptitiously begun by the wily Yussef ben Ali was suspected by Achmed the Moor, whose suspicions had been aroused by the furtive meetings between Zoraida, the cast-off former love of Kâiradine, and his foremost rival. Nothing could be proved, of course, but Achmed resolved to wait, and watch, and listen.…
Darya had begun to learn the language spoken in El-Cazar, or enough of it, at any rate, to piece together the morsels of information that came her way, for slave girls will chatter carelessly, especially when in the company of one believed ignorant of the local language.
The cavegirl soon came to understand that the leadership of the corsairs was divided between five chieftains, each the captain of a galley, who were leagued into the Council of Captains. In matters pertaining to the kingdom, each had a single vote and a simple majority ruled. Hitherto, Kâiradine had commanded the loyalty of all but one of these captains, Yussef ben Ali.
Commanding four votes against his one, the wishes of the Redbeard had always carried the day. Until now, that is: for rumors whispered that one of Kâiradine’s erstwhile supporters, a huge, fat-bellied Algerian called Zodeen, wavered in his loyalties. Whether he had been bribed by wealth from the bulging coffers of Yussef ben Ali, or whether Yussef had something heartily desired by fat Zodeen was a matter of open speculation.
It was known, however, that Zodeen’s fancies lay in the direction of prepubescent girls.
It was also known that Yussef had recently come voyaging home from a slave-raiding expedition to the mainland with two exquisite young blonde savage girls.
And even the slaves in the harem, ignorant of reading and writing and arithmetic, could put one and one together, and come up with two.…
* * * *
The cavegirl adapted swiftly to her new environment, for all that nearly everything about it was strange and unfamiliar to her. She had been reared in her jungle homeland, dwelling in log huts, hunting and fishing for food; here men dwelt in tall stone houses, in a city, no less, governed by laws, not dim traditions and customs, wearing elaborate clothing, not scraps of hide, fighting with keen swords whose employment was an art, almost a science. It was all bewilderingly new to Darya.
But her people, the Cro-Magnons, were as intelligent as are modern men, and as capable of learning new ways. When they had entered into Zanthodon the Underground World during the onset of the Ice Age millennia ago, crawling into fissures in the slopes of the huge volcanic mountain which marked the main entrance to the subterranean cavern-world, they had been men of the Stone Age, crude, violent, simple, ignorant and superstitious.
The continuous struggle for existence here in Zanthodon had called into play whatever imagination and ingenuity they possessed. Single-handedly, they had progressed from out of the Stone Age into the Bronze Age, teaching themselves by experiment and by trial and error how to extract metal ores from the hills of their jungle land and how to smelt them into ingots of pure metal; further experiment had taught them how to strengthen those metals by the admixture of such ores as copper and tin.
And once you have started on the road of learning there is no turning back. So Darya, daughter of the Bronze Age, must now pit her native cunning and ingenuity against the decadent wits of the Barbary Pirates—to survive.
She soon learned that she had a friend—an unknown and unnamed and very mysterious friend—somewhere in the palace of Kâiradine Redbeard.
Another mind than hers was aware of her predicament, of the difficulties she faced in trying to escape from the palace. In order to get through the wooden lattices which covered the tall windows of her apartment, she would require a knife. No other implement would do. The interstices between the wooden slats which comprised the lattice were too narrow for her to be able to insert anything else strong enough to do the trick—a broken chair leg, for instance. No, the cavegirl could only get through the window by cutting through the tough wood with a sharp steel blade.
* * * *
It was not healthy for the cavegirl to be forever locked up in the dimness of her shuttered room, and she complained of this to those who attended upon her needs. Doubtless those servitors reported her complaints to their superiors, and also the fact that she had become pale and listless and merely toyed with her food these days, rather than tackling her meals with anything like her former gusto.
For soon—under heavy guard, of course—she was permitted a daily stroll in a walled garden adjoining her rooms. Fountains splashed and small ornamental streams meandered over gravel beds, and strange flowers bloomed in a riot of rich colors, filling the humid salt-stung air with their sweetness.
These daily strolls were a boon to the cavegirl—to smell the open air and see again the golden skies of Zanthodon, to feel the wind in her hair and to experience at least the illusion of freedom! It was heady and exhilarating to the Cro-Magnon girl, and she reveled in it.
During one such walk through the gardens, after she had been a prisoner in the island fortress of El-Cazar for somewhat more than two weeks,[1] a curious incident occurred. One of the slave women who customarily shared these garden strolls with Darya, who was protected by her eunuch guards, suddenly and without any warning uttered a piercing scream, clutched at her side, and fell thrashing upon the greensward, long lithe legs kicking a
s she gasped and squirmed in agony.
All eyes were instantly fastened upon the convulsions which wracked the slave girl. No one was watching Darya.
In that same instant, something wrapped in soft white cloth flew over the garden wall to fall between the small sandaled feet of Darya of Thandar.
Without hesitation, the cavegirl stooped and snatched it from the ground and thrust it into a place of concealment beneath the silken sash which wound about her slender waist.
The stricken slave was helped to her feet, gasping some tale of a sudden pain which had knifed through her—and as she happened to utter this phrase, her dazed eyes, wandering about, chanced to touch upon the gaze of Darya, whereupon—
She winked!
The girl, whose momentary pains had now passed, was assisted back into the building. And the walk was ended for this day, as the eunuchs returned Darya to her apartment and locked her within.
With pounding heart the breathless cavegirl suffered an agony of suspense until she had withdrawn the small, slim bundle from its place of concealment in her sash and unwrapped it from its white cloth.
It was a ten-inch dagger, with a blade of cold steel as sharp as any razor!
Thus Darya learned that she had not only a friend within the palace, but, now, a means of—leaving!
[1] As nearly as I can judge, this was almost exactly the same time that my friends and I were being fed alive to Zorgazon, the monster god of Zar, in the great arena of the Scarlet City of the Minoans.
PART III: CONQUERORS OF EL-CAZAR
CHAPTER 11
THE MISSION OF GROND
For weeks the fleet of dugout canoes explored the misty reaches of the underground ocean. There were many rocky isles—some of them mere gaunt crags of naked rock lifting from the foam, others large enough to support vegetation, and a few of sufficient size to house a small village. All must be scouted, if not actually searched.
