As King gazed at the sensitive face and delicately moulded figure of the girl beside him, he marvelled at the courage and strength of will, seemingly so out of proportion to the frail temple that housed them, that had sustained her in the conception and execution of an adventure that might have taxed the courage and stamina of a warrior. “You are a brave girl, Fou-tan,” he said.
“The daughter of my father could not be less,” she replied simply.
“You are a daughter of whom any father might be proud,” said King, “but if we are to save you for him we had better be thinking about getting to the dwelling of Che and Kangrey before night falls.”
“Who are these people?” asked Fou-tan. “Perhaps they will return me to Lodidhapura for the reward that Lodivarman will pay.”
“You need have no fear on that score,” replied King. “They are honest people, runaway slaves from Lodidhapura. They have been kind to me, and they will be kind to you.”
“And if they are not, you will protect me,” said Fou-tan with a tone of finality that evidenced the confidence which she already felt in the dependability and integrity of her newfound friend.
As they set out in the direction of Che’s dwelling, it became apparent to King immediately that Fou-tan was tired almost to the point of exhaustion. Will- power and nerve had sustained her so far; but now, with the discovery of someone to whom she might transfer the responsibility of her safety, the reaction had come; and he often found it necessary to assist and support her over the rough places of the trail. She was small and light, and where the going was exceptionally bad he lifted her in his arms and carried her as he might have a child.
“You are strong, Gordon King,” she said once as he carried her thus. Her soft arms were around his neck, her lips were very close to his.
“I must need be strong,” he said. But if she sensed his meaning she gave no evidence of it. Her eyes closed wearily and her little head dropped to his shoulder. He carried her thus for a long way, though the trail beneath his feet was smooth and hard.
Vama and his warriors had halted in a little glade where there was water. While two of them hunted in the forest for meat for their supper, the others lay stretched out upon the ground in that silence which is induced by hunger and fatigue. Presently Vama sat up alert. His ears had caught the sound of the approach of something through the jungle.
“Kau and Tchek are returning from the hunt,” whispered one of the warriors who lay near him and who, also, had heard the noise.
“They did not go in that direction,” replied Vama in a low tone. Then signalling his warriors to silence, he ordered them to conceal themselves from view.
The sound, already close when they had first heard it, approached steadily; and they did not have long to wait ere a warrior, naked but for a sampot, stepped into view, and in his arms was the runaway apsaras whom they sought. Elated, Vama leaped from his place of concealment, calling to his men to follow him.
At sight of them King turned to escape, but he knew that he could make no speed while burdened with the girl. She, however, had seen the soldiers and slipped quickly from his arms. “We are lost!” she cried.
“Run!” cried King as he snatched a handful of arrows from his quiver and fitted one to his bow. “Stand back!” he cried to the warriors. But they only moved steadily forward. His bow-string twanged, and one of Lodivarman’s brass- bound warriors sank to earth, an arrow through his throat. The others hesitated. They did not dare to cast their spears or loose their bolts for fear of injuring the girl.
Slowly King, with Fou-tan behind him, backed away into the jungle from which he had appeared. At the last instant he sped another arrow, which rattled harmlessly from the cuirass of Vama. Then, knowing that he could not fire upon them from the foliage, the soldiers rushed forward, while King continued to fall back slowly with Fou-tan, another arrow fitted to his bow.
Kau and Tchek had made a great circle in their hunting. With their arrows they had brought down three monkeys, and now they were returning to camp. They had almost arrived when they heard voices and the twang of a bow-string, and then they saw, directly ahead of them, a man and a girl crashing through the foliage of the jungle toward them. Instantly, by her dishevelled costume, they recognized the apsaras and guessed from the attitude of the two that they were backing away from Vama and his fellows.
Kau was a powerful, a courageous, and a resourceful man. Instantly he grasped the situation and instantly he acted. Leaping forward, he threw both his sinewy arms around Gordon King, pinning the other’s arms to his body; while Tchek, following the example of his companion, seized Fou-tan. Almost immediately Vama and the others were upon the scene. An instant later Gordon King was disarmed, and his wrists were bound behind him; then the soldiers of Lodivarman dragged the captives back to their camping place.
Vama was tremendously elated. Now he would not have to make up any lies to appease the wrath of his king but could return to Lodidhapura in triumph, bearing not only the apsaras for whom he had been dispatched, but another prisoner as well.
King thought that they might make quick work of him in revenge for the soldier he had killed, but they did not appear to hold that against him at all. They questioned him at some length while they cooked their supper of monkey meat over a number of tiny fires; but as what he told them of another country far beyond their jungle was quite beyond their grasp, they naturally believed that he lied and insisted that he came from Pnom Dhek and that he was a runaway slave.
They were all quite content with the happy outcome of their assignment; and so, looking forward to their return to Lodidhapura on the morrow, they were inclined to be generous in their treatment of their prisoners, giving them meat to eat and water to drink. Their attitude toward Fou-tan was one of respectful awe. They knew that she was destined to become one of the King’s favorites, and it might prove ill for them, indeed, should they offer her any hurt or affront. Since their treatment of Gordon King, however, was not dictated by any such consideration, it was fortunate, indeed, for him that they were in a good humor.
Regardless, however, of the respectful attention shown her, Fou-tan was immersed in melancholy. A few moments before, she had foreseen escape and counted return to her native city almost an accomplished fact; now, once again, she was in the clutches of the soldiers of Lodivarman, while simultaneously she had brought disaster and, doubtless, death to the man who had befriended her.
“Oh, Gordon King,” she said, “my heart is unstrung; my soul is filled with terror and consumed by horror, for not only must I return to the hideous fate from which I had escaped, but you must go to Lodidhapura to slavery or to death.”
“We are not in Lodidhapura yet,” whispered King. “Perhaps we shall escape.”
The girl shook her head. “There is no hope,” she said. “I shall go to the arms of Lodivarman, and you—”
“And I?” he asked.
“Slaves fight with other slaves and with wild beasts for the entertainment of Lodivarman and his court,” she replied.
“We must escape then,” said King. “Perhaps we shall die in the attempt, but in any event death awaits me and worse than death awaits you.”
“What you command I shall do, Gordon King,” replied Fou-tan.
But it did not appear that there was to be much opportunity for escape that night. After King had eaten they bound his wrists behind his back again and also bound his ankles together securely, while two warriors remained constantly with the girl; the others, their simple meal completed, stripped the armour and weapons from their fallen comrade and laid him upon a thick bed of dry wood that they had gathered. Upon him, then, they piled a great quantity of limbs and branches, of twigs and dry grasses; and when night fell they lighted their weird funeral pyre, which was to answer its other dual purpose as a beast fire to protect them from the prowling carnivores. To King it was a gruesome sight, but neither Fou-tan nor the other Khmers seemed to be affected by it. The men gathered much wood and placed it near at ha
nd that the fire might be kept burning during the night.
The flames leaped high, lighting the boles of the trees about them and the foliage arching above. The shadows rose and fell and twisted and writhed. Beyond the limits of the firelight was utter darkness, silence, mystery. King felt himself in an inverted cauldron of flame in which a human body was being consumed.
The warriors lay about, laughing and talking. Their reminiscences were brutal and cruel. Their jokes and stories were broad and obscene. But there was an undercurrent of rough kindness and loyalty to one another that they appeared to be endeavoring to conceal as though they were ashamed of such soft emotion. They were soldiers. Transplanted to the camps of modern Europe, given a modern uniform and a modern language, their campfire conversation would have been the same. Soldiers do not change. One played upon a little musical instrument that resembled a Jewel harp. Two were gambling with what appeared to be very similar to modern dice, and all that they said was so interlarded with strange and terrible oaths that the American could scarcely follow the thread of their thought. Soldiers do not change.
Vama came presently and squatted down near King and Fou-tan. “Do all the men in this far country of which you tell me go naked?” he demanded.
“No,” replied the American. “When I had become lost in the jungle I was stricken with fever, and while I was sick the monkeys came and stole my clothing and my weapons.”
“You live alone in the jungle?” asked Vama.
King thought quickly; he thought of Che and Kangrey and their fear of the soldiers in brass. “Yes,” he said.
“Are you not afraid of My Lord the Tiger?” inquired Vama.
“I am watchful and I avoid him,” replied the American.
“You do well to do so,” said Vama, “for even with spear and arrows no lone man is a match for the great beast.”
“But Gordon King is,” said Fou-tan proudly.
Vama smiled. “The apsaras has been in the jungle but a night and a day,” he reminded her. “How can she know so much about this man unless, as I suspect, he is, indeed, from Pnom Dhek?”
“He is not from Pnom Dhek,” retorted Fou-tan. “And I know that he is a match for My Lord the Tiger because this day I saw him slay the beast with a single spear-cast.”
Vama looked questioningly at King.
“It was only a matter of good fortune,” said King.
“But you did it nevertheless,” insisted Fou-tan.
“You killed a tiger with a single cast of your spear?” demanded Vama.
“As the beast charged him,” said Fou-tan.
“That is, indeed, a marvelous feat,” said Vama, with a soldier’s ungrudging admiration for the bravery or prowess of another. “Lodivarman shall hear of this. A hunter of such spirit shall not go unrecognized in Lodidhapura. I can also bear witness that you are no mean bowman,” added Vama, nodding toward the blazing funeral pyre. Then he arose and walked to the spot where King’s weapons had been deposited. Picking up the spear he examined it closely. “By Siva!” he ejaculated. “The blood is scarcely dry upon it. Such a cast! You drove it a full two feet into the carcass of My Lord the Tiger.”
“Straight through the heart,” said Fou-tan.
The other soldiers had been listening to the conversation. It was noticeable immediately that their attitude toward King changed instantly, and thereafter they treated him with friendliness tinged by respect. However, they did not abate their watchfulness over him, but rather were increasingly careful to see that he was given no opportunity to escape, nor to have his hands free for any length of time.
Early the next morning, after a meager breakfast, Vama set out with his detachment and his prisoners in the direction of Lodidhapura, leaving the funeral fire still blazing as it eagerly licked at a new supply of fuel.
The route they selected to Lodidhapura passed by chance, close to the spot where King had slain the tiger; and here, in the partially devoured carcass of the great beast, the soldiers of Lodivarman found concrete substantiation of Fou-tan’s story.
6. THE LEPER KING
It was late in the afternoon when the party emerged suddenly from the jungle at the edge of a great clearing. King voiced an involuntary exclamation of astonishment as he saw at a distance the walls and towers of a splendid city.
“Lodidhapura,” said Fou-tan; “accursed city!” There was fear in her voice, and she trembled as she pressed closer to the American.
While King had long since become convinced that Lodidhapura had an actual existence of greater reality than legend or fever-wrought hallucination, yet he had been in no way prepared for the reality. A collection of nippa-thatched huts had comprised the extent of his mental picture of Lodidhapura, and now, as the reality burst suddenly upon him, he was dumbfounded.
Temples and palaces of stone reared their solid masses against the sky. Mighty towers, elaborately carved, rose in stately grandeur high over all. There were nippa-thatched huts as well, but these clustered close against the city’s walls and were so overshadowed by the majestic mass of masonry beyond them that they affected the picture as slightly as might the bushes growing at its foot determine the grandeur of a mountain.
In the foreground were level fields in which labored men and women, naked mostly, but for sampots — the nippa-thatched huts were their dwellings. They were the laborers, the descendants of slaves — Chams and Annamese — that the ancient, warlike Khmers had brought back from many a victory in the days when their power and their civilization were the greatest upon earth.
From the edge of the jungle, at the point where the party had emerged, a broad avenue led toward one of the gates of the city, toward which Vama was conducting them. To his right, at a distance, King could see what appeared to be another avenue leading to another gate — an avenue which seemed to be more heavily travelled than that upon which they had entered. There were many people on foot, some approaching the city, others leaving it. At a distance they looked small, but he could distinguish them and also what appeared to be bullock carts moving slowly among the pedestrians.
Presently, at the far end of this distant avenue, he saw the great bulks of elephants; in a long column they entered the highway from the jungle and approached the city. They seemed to move in an endless procession, two abreast, hundreds of them, he thought. Never before had King seen so many elephants.
“Look!” he cried to Fou-tan. “There must be a circus coming to town.”
“The King’s elephants,” explained Fou-tan, unimpressed.
“Why does he have so many?” asked King.
“A king without elephants would be no king,” replied the girl. “They proclaim to all men the king’s wealth and power. When he makes war, his soldiers go into battle upon them and fight from their backs, for those are the war elephants of Lodivarman.”
“There must be hundreds of them,” commented the American.
“There are thousands,” said Fou-tan.
“And against whom does Lodivarman make war?”
“Against Pnom Dhek.”
“Only against Pnom Dhek?” inquired King.
“Yes, only against Pnom Dhek.”
“Why does he not make war elsewhere? Has he no other enemies?”
“Against whom else might he make war?” demanded Fou-tan. “There are only Pnom Dhek and Lodidhapura in all the world.”
“Well, that does rather restrict him now, doesn’t it?” admitted King.
For a moment they were silent. Then the girl spoke. “Gordon King,” she said in that soft, caressing voice that the man found so agreeable, that often he had sought for means to lure her into conversation. “Gordon King, soon we shall see one another no more.”
The American frowned. He did not like to think of that. He had tried to put it out of his mind and to imagine that by some chance they would be allowed to be together after they reached Lodidhapura, for he had found Fou-tan a cheery and pleasant companion even when her hour was darkest. Why, she was the only friend he had! Cer
tainly they would not deny him the right to see her. From what he had gleaned during his conversation with Vama and the other warriors, King had become hopeful that Lodivarman would not treat him entirely as a prisoner or an enemy, but might give him the opportunity to serve the King as a soldier. Fou-tan had rather encouraged this hope too, for she knew that it was not at all improbable of realization.
“Why do you say that?” demanded King. “Why shall we not see one another again?”
“Would you be sad, Gordon King, if you did not see Fou-tan any more?” she asked.
The man hesitated before he replied, as though weighing in his mind a problem that he had never before been called upon to consider; and as he hesitated a strange, hurt look came into the eyes of the girl.
“It is unthinkable, Fou-tan,” he said at last, and the great brown eyes of the little apsaras softened and tears rose in them. “We have been such good friends,” he added.
“Yes,” she said. “We have known each other but a very short time, and yet we seem such good friends that it is almost as though we had known each other always.”
“But why should we not see one another again?” he demanded once more.
“Lodivarman may punish me for running away, and there is only one punishment that would satisfy his pride in such an event and that is death; but if he forgives me, as he doubtless will, because of my youth and my great beauty and his desire for me, then I shall be taken into the King’s palace and no more then might you see me than if I were dead. So you see, either way, the result is the same.”
“I shall see you again, Fou-tan,” said the man.
She shook her head. “I like to hear you say it, even though I know that it cannot be.”
“You shall see, Fou-tan. If we both live I shall find a way to see you; and, too, I shall find a way to take you out of the palace of the King and back to Pnom Dhek.”
She looked up at him with earnest eyes, full of confidence and admiration. “When I hear you say it,” she said, “the impossible seems almost possible.”
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 468
