by Lin Carter
The first of the scouts came running up to where Garth stood in the forefront of the Sotharian host.
“What have you seen that impels you to return in such precipitous haste, Mordan?” inquired the Chief.
The scout panted for a moment, recovering his breath. Then he spoke.
“Withdraw to better ground, my Omad!” said Mordan hurriedly. “A great host approaches down the pass which leads through the mountains. They will be upon us sooner than you might suspect!”
Garth nodded, lifting his aurochs horn to summon the chieftains. When they were assembled, he gave rapid orders. The host withdrew to a large knoll which stood amid the grasses of the plain some little distance away. To his practiced eye, it looked to Garth to offer as much advantage as could be expected in such flat land.
His warriors encircled the knoll in a triple ring of men. They locked their long, kite-shaped shields together, for all the world like the Vikings of olden time, and crouched behind them so as to offer the least possible target to their approaching adversaries.
Atop the knoll, Garth and his personal guards stood waiting for whatever was coming to emerge from the mouth of the pass.
There was a long moment of stillness, as if the very world of Zanthodon held its breath in suspense.
Then the ground seemed to tremble slightly, as if to the tread of ponderous feet.
“Dragonmen, my Omad!” one of the guards said alertly. From a little distance away, the Minoan prisoner, Captain Raphad, smiled slightly. He, too, recognized the heavy tread of the feet of the thodars.
In the next moment, a host of running figures burst from the pass to flee into the plain.
At their very heels came stalking along the giant forms of the mounted dinosaurs.
“Who are those warriors in front of the line of beasts?” rumbled Garth, shading his eyes with one hand.
“I recognize one of them, at least, my Chief,” observed a keen-eyed warrior. “Is it not—? It is! It is.…”
In the next instant, the eyes of Garth of Sothar widened incredulously, and his bearded jaws gaped in a startled cry.
CHAPTER 29
ZORGAZON!
The thing was as big as a house. Quite literally; it stood on enormous legs towering as tall as a threestory building. In contrast to its huge hind legs, the forelegs were small but sinewy, and armed with hooked claws like wicked sickles. Its hide was leathery, pebbled rather than scaled, of a brown-greenish hue on the back which faded to muddy yellow on the chest and belly. It stank like a pit of squirming snakes.
Its hideous head seemed to be all gaping jaws packed with fangs longer than cavalry sabres. Under the shelving of its brow, scarlet eyes blazed—soulless, unwinking orbs filled with ferocity and wild hunger. I have little doubt that the Zarians had starved the brute for days to give it sufficient appetite—for us.
As it came clambering up the runway into the arena, Zarys rose to her feet and saluted her husband and consort with a regal gesture. The tyrannosaurus seemed to recognize her, for as she lifted her arm in salute it threw back its horrible head and gave vent to a screeching cry like a tugboat’s steam whistle.
Then, with an eloquent gesture, she drew its attention to us. That ghastly, grinning head lowered; we met the impact of those mad scarlet eyes.
“Zorgazon!” she cried imperatively.
“Zorgazon,” moaned the vast throng as with one voice they hailed their monstrous God.
With a ponderous stride that shook the ground, the giant reptile came stalking across the arena toward us. We stood our ground, the Cro-Magnons and I, and I held little Ialys tightly against my chest. But the Zarian captives broke and ran, squealing.
Zorgazon peered down at them curiously, fang-bristling jaws agape, saliva dripping in slimy ropes from its scaly chin.
Then one huge splay-toed foot lifted and came down on a whimpering cluster of Zarian thieves.
They…squelched.
The foot lifted, dripping crimson. I shuddered and bit my lip.
Beside me, giant Gundar gripped my shoulder. “Steady,” he rumbled.
I nodded grimly.
Zorgazon broke into a loping stride. Half-bent, it snatched with those sinewy little grasping forelimbs. Shrieking men were plucked into midair, popped into that vast maw like peanuts.
* * * *
Zarian after Zarian it snatched up and gobbled down. It seemed to be ignoring us, perhaps saving us for last, as a diner samples the hors d’oeuvres first, while savoring the approach of the main course.
Then those blazing scarlet eyes glared down at us, and our turn had come.
There was nothing we could do to defend ourselves. But, then, bare hands were every bit as useless against that titan of the Dawn Age as swords or spears would have been. Its leathery hide was tough—impenetrable.
The shadow of Zorgazon fell over us, like the shadow of doom.
And then the world went crazy!
* * * *
The ground jumped under our feet. The floor of the arena shuddered, then tilted crazily. Stones fell clattering from the nearer wall of the arena. Women screamed.
We looked up, dazed.
A boiling cloud of inky black smoke enveloped the upper works of the palace citadel. Whirling, seething black smoke shot through with streaks of furious crimson.
A deafening explosion shook the very air. For a moment, all I could hear was my ears ringing. Momentarily deaf, I could not even hear the uproar as the crowd went mad, and men came leaping down the tiers, running headlong for the exits.
Another explosion, louder than before. Again, the arena floor rose to slap against the bottom of our feet. Gundar and Thon glanced at me, shaken.
“What is it?” one of them gasped.
“Who knows? Or cares? Run for it—”
The second explosion took off parts of the palace roof, and felled one tower. It fell slowly, like a falling tree, except that it came apart with dreamlike slowness as it fell, disintegrating into a shower of stone blocks that pelted down across the arena in a deadly rain.
Zorgazon did not like the explosion, or the sulphurous stench of the drifting black smoke. He threw back his hideous head and screamed his challenge.
A mass of falling masonry came whirling down, and caught the tyrannosaurus aside the head, He staggered sideways, shrieked again, dark red blood trickling down his working jaws.
At that impact, the dinosaur went crazy. He headed for the grandstand and plowed into the stone wall. It came apart as if built of children’s alphabet blocks. Seats crunched, people scattered. Splat—splat! went his little forepaws, as he swatted the crowd, leaving wet red marks that had been men.
Huge as he was, Zorgazon could not break through the solid stone construction of the arena. So he swung about, and swiped with his thick, long, heavy, kangaroo-like tail. It thundered against the side of the arena like twenty bulldozers, and even the stonework had to give. Screaming like fury, he began kicking and punching his way through the side of the arena.
I got one glimpse of Zarys, frozen, standing alone in her box. Her gorgeous face was white with unbelieving horror—white as death.
Then the framework of the box gave way and her slim, proud form vanished as the awnings fell.
Gundar slapped my shoulder. We turned and ran for it. I grabbed up Ialys, flung her across my shoulder. The thirty-odd Cro-Magnons and I headed for the nearest exit.
Along the way we found a couple of guards and relieved them of spears, swords, tridents—whatever.
Another explosion ripped the palace apart. The crackling of flames shooting up from burning buildings was very loud in our ears; soot and hot ashes fell about us in a stinging black snowstorm.
Suddenly a huge, hairy form heaved itself up in front of us.
“A Drugar!” yelled Thon, and made to fling his spear.
“No—” I shouted, knocking his arm aside. For in the same instant I saw the recognized Hurok of Kor, and he knew me.
“Friend,” I panted. Thon glowered, but subsided. Beyond Hurok I saw Varak and several others. I wondered dizzily what they were doing here, and how they had managed to find their way, but there was no time for that now. Zorgazon was going crazy, tearing the arena apart, and stones the size of Volkswagens were thumping down all around us.
We found the exit and dived into it.
* * * *
The streets around the burning palace were a howling madhouse. Zorgazon had come this way, and houses had been smashed flat under the tread of his ponderous feet. People, too, if you can call smears of wet redness people. Villas had been kicked apart, luxurious gardens trampled into mud. And, everywhere, ashes were falling, falling.
We headed for the stone causeway across the inland sea. Just about everybody was heading in that direction, too, and nobody tried to stop us or even bothered to notice us. I saw men waddling along, their arms loaded with bric-a-brac and rolled-up tapestries, women weeping, but hanging on for dear life to their jewelry boxes, scared-looking kids hugging jointed wooden dolls.
Zorgazon was somewhere up ahead, towering above the rooftops, howling like a fire engine. He swatted at a tower and it burst apart in a shower of bricks. He kicked in the side of a mansion as a man might kick in an egg crate; it folded in upon itself, collapsing in slow motion.
We ran, dodging through side streets and narrow alleys to avoid the crush of jammed, stampeding humanity that choked the main boulevards.
I tripped over a fallen pillar and went down on my face. Hurok caught me by the shoulder and lifted me to my feet like a rag doll, while Gundar paused to scoop up the limp form of Ialys, who had fainted sometime during the nightmare of the streets. He threw her over his shoulder and kept on running, as if the girl weighed nothing.
Suddenly, out of the veils of falling ashes and smoke and whirling sparks, a scrawny, gleeful figure appeared smack in front of me.
“Professor—!”
“Eric, my boy,” he panted. “I’ve been chasing after you for blocks—”
I cocked a thumb back at the wreckage of the burning palace, high on its hill atop the city.
“Did—you—do—that?”
He nodded happily. “Yes, I’m afraid Xask and Cromus will not have their rifle platoons, after all,” he chuckled.
“Professor…you amaze me,” I said helplessly.
“And that’s not all,” he breathed. “I managed to carry off a little souvenir.”
He whipped a silk-wrapped bundle from under his smoke-blackened garments and thrust it into my hands.
It was my.45 automatic!
* * * *
We got across the bridge and headed straight for the pass. The sooner we shook the dust of the Scarlet City from our heels, the happier we would all be.
There were plenty of other fugitives crowding the causeway, but all they wanted to do was to put the breadth of the inland sea between themselves and their God run amok.
Nobody tried to stop us, or even bothered to notice us. It was weird, almost like being invisible. You would think that thirty-five blond Cro-Magnons and a huge, hairy Neanderthal would have attracted some attention from that crowd, but no.
At the top of the pass we paused to take a breather. Along the way we had all picked up plenty of weapons, and it felt good to be armed again. It also felt good to be able to stop running and sit down for a while.
Then Hurok grabbed my shoulder in a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt.
“Look, Black Hair, they pursue us,” he grunted.
I turned and my heart sank into my boots.
Down the length of the causeway came the Dragonmen, twenty strong, mounted on their immense loping thodars.
On the lead beast rode Zarys of Zar in her glittering golden harness. Directly behind her rode Cromus, his face flushed and angry, red murder in his eyes.
They were not escaping the burning city, no, not them. They were set to hunt down the fleeing slaves and prisoners who had caused all of the commotion in the first place.
White-faced, her superb eyes flashing with fury, Zarys rode like the avenging goddess she was. And, of the two Gods of Zar, I cannot say which of them was the more dangerous and implacable, Zarys or Zorgazon!
This day she had worn that sparkling wig of spun gold that made her so closely resemble my lost, beloved Princess. How beautiful she was—how glorious!
And how deadly. A woman—a queen!—scorned and rejected by the man to whom she had offered her love, and by whose bold connivance her splendid city now lay in blazing ruins.
To have earned the undying enmity of such a woman is not the sort of thing that lets you sleep easy of nights.…
I looked at Hurok and Gundar. They looked at me.
Then we…ran.
CHAPTER 30
RAPHAD STRIKES
When Garth of Sothar saw the band of running men who emerged from the mouth of the pass and came pelting down the slope onto the plains, he frowned in puzzlement. Most of them were tall, strong, blond Cro-Magnon stalwarts like himself, but none of them was known to him. From their accouterments and the way they braided their long hair, he guessed them to be mostly warriors of Numitor and Gorad.
What it was that they were running away from he did not at once see. For, suddenly, to his complete astonishment he began to recognize the faces of men whom he knew among the throng of strangers.
There in the very forefront was Eric Carstairs, with mighty Hurok of Kor at his side! Puffing along behind them he spied the scrawny form of Professor Potter, who still clung gamely to his dusty pince-nez spectacles and his battered and travel-stained sun helmet.
About these, like a guard, were the missing warriors Varak and Ragor, Erdon, Warza, and Parthon—men of Sothar and of Thandar all.
Then there emerged into view the giant forms of the thodars, each with its armed rider seated between the shoulders and straddling the massive column of the reptile’s long neck.
But nowhere did he espy the form of his lost daughter, Yualla.…
With arms folded upon his mighty breast he waited as we came up to the knoll where his warriors were arranged for battle. I burst through the line, bearing the limp form of Ialys in my arms, Gundar and Thon and Hurok at my heels.
“Garth!” I called, “these men are friends—former slaves in Zar—let them join your ranks!”
Handing the unconscious form of the Zarian girl to the solicitudinous arms of his mate, Nian, who bore her off among the women, Garth issued the command. Reluctantly, the ranks of Sothar parted to admit the warriors of Gorad and Numitor among them. The Sotharians eyed the newcomers suspiciously, and were stared back at with grim truculence.
I joined Garth on the height, and together we observed the huge forms of the lumbering thodars as they came out of the pass and drew up in a vast half-circle. There wasn’t much that we could do to defend ourselves against the vengeance of Zarys, but at least we could go down fighting. I felt sorry that Garth had shown up just in time to have to face with me the Dragonmen.
“I perceive, Eric Carstairs, that again you have been making a few enemies,” the Omad observed with somber humor. I grinned.
“A few,” I admitted.
“May I inquire into the cause for this pursuit?”
I shrugged. “Well, we left the royal palace of Zar a flaming wreck, and the arena of the Games has been knocked apart, and a considerable portion of the city lies in ruins.…”
He nodded solemnly. “I suppose that is enough to make an enemy of anyone,” he commented. “If you were a slave in Zar, did you encounter therein my child, Yualla?”
&
nbsp; I blinked, this being the first news I had received that the teenaged girl was missing. Reluctantly, I admitted that I had not seen her.
“Or Jorn the Hunter?” Hurok rumbled questioningly at my side. Again, I shook my head negatively. Garth sighed, then straightened.
“Then she is lost,” he said heavily. “Time enough to mourn our dead when this present circumstance is over.”
I gave him, a surprised look. “There isn’t much even you and your brave men can do against the Dragonmen,” I protested. He shook his head with a slight smile.
“We have faced them before, and won,” he remarked, gesturing to where Raphad stood between tall guards. I was amazed to see the little Captain who had first taken the Professor and me prisoner, but there was no time to ask what had been going on.
For just then Zarys lifted her gleaming lance in a royal gesture of command, and the huge, lumbering thodars began to advance upon our position.
* * * *
Among the Dragon-riders I recognized the angry red face of Cromus, but nowhere did I see Xask. It would have been perfectly in character for that sly devil to have concealed himself in time to miss this expedition—if, in fact, he still lived.
And if I had been Zarys, I certainly wouldn’t have felt comfortable leaving the Scarlet City behind, with Xask there.…
But there was no time for these thoughts right now: we had a bit of fighting to do, and, I thought, a bit of dying, too.
With slow and ponderous strides the great thodars advanced upon our position across the grassy plains. Their long, snaky necks reared high above us, and their long, thick tails dragged through the trampled grasses.
You couldn’t have brought down one of monster brontosaurs with a hand grenade, much less a javelin or an arrow, or even my precious .45. Realizing this, I couldn’t understand why Garth seemed so confident.
As they came near, the High Chief of Sothar reached into his fur garment and withdrew a circlet of sparkling, reddishsilver metal, crowned with a dully glittering crystal.
