by Mike Resnick
Zuppner grinned. “It may be our last moments, but those words from you have made me the happiest man in the world.”
Tarzan said, “Before you exchange wedding vows, you might wish to get out of this predicament.”
“What magic will allow that?” Zuppner said.
“If there is to be any magic, we are it,” Tarzan said.
“Why would they do this to those men?” Zuppner asked. “And who are they?”
“Another tribe, obviously further along on the evolutionary scale,” Tarzan said. “I have listened to the jungle folk and have caught a bit of their talk. What I believe the jungle men are doing is sacrificing these men as part of an important ritual. That’s why the last ones we fought were meeting up with the men at the campfire. This isn’t a village. This is where all the people of their ilk, people of other tribes, gather to appease some god, or execute some ritual. Unfortunately for us, we crossed paths with them just in time to be part of it. They break the bones, and then float their victims in the river, waiting for something to come, something with plenty of teeth.”
“We are doomed then,” Zuppner said.
“We still live,” said Zamona.
“Good for you, Zamona,” Tarzan said, speaking to her in English. “We are not done until we are done.”
Tarzan looked toward the river. The men who had recently been broken up were crying and screaming and being dragged toward a stack of wooden collars. The collars were snapped open and fastened around their necks, then bound together with rope that passed through holes in the collars. The jungle men pushed the broken men out into the deep part of the river using long poles. The current kept them there, and the ropes fastened to the collars kept them pegged to the shore. One of the jungle men carried a big club with pieces of what looked like stone or volcanic glass imbedded into it. He didn’t use the weapon, but stood by with it, perhaps as a sign of his office, his position in the tribe. He watched the others break the bones and push the jellied men into the water.
Then the jungle men and the man with the strange weapon came for Tarzan and the others.
Tarzan, Zuppner, and Zamona were lifted and carried toward the shoreline to have their turn.
The moment Tarzan awoke on the trail and found himself fastened to the pole, he had begun to flex his wrists and work at the ropes. By the time they were lifted and carried toward the shore, his efforts paid off. With a bend of his wrists, the ropes snapped.
Like a monkey, Tarzan dropped down and let his hands touch the earth, practically standing on his head. He flexed his legs and kicked up. The kick drove the pole upwards and caused it to crack, and when it did, Tarzan’s bound feet slipped off of the pole and his ankles came loose of the rope. Tarzan bounded to his feet. The man with the strange weapon rushed him. Tarzan dodged his swing and hit him with his fist. It was a hard blow, and the man’s jaw broke and teeth flew and the man went down. Tarzan grabbed the club off the ground. By now other jungle men were closing in on him. Tarzan wielded the weapon as if it were as light as a fine willow limb. Jungle men flew left and right in sprays of flesh and blood and brains.
The other jungle men dropped Zamona and Zuppner to go after Tarzan, but the ape-man plowed a path through them with the festooned club, and in a moment had created a space around his companions, as well as time enough to bend down and use the edge of one of the stone fragments in the club to cut their bonds. No sooner than it was done, than the jungle men had regrouped. Tarzan yelled, “Run for the water. Swim for your life.”
Zuppner grabbed Zamona by the elbow, and the two of them darted for the river. Tarzan held his ground, swinging the club, sending jungle men flying like chaff. And now the jungle men were coming at him from all sides. Tarzan turned and swung the club and cleared a path. The club finally snapped, came apart in the jungle lord’s hands. The men grabbed at him, hung on to him like leeches, struck him and tried to choke him and pull him down. Tarzan trudged forward, dragging them with him until he reached the river’s edge. Peeling off the jungle men with either arm, tossing them aside like confetti, he leapt into the river.
The water hit him like a cold fist. The current was swift, and it carried him out and past the poor men floating in their collars, carried him to the center of the river and sent him swirling along. Well ahead of him he saw Zuppner and Zamona trying to swim with the rush of the river, going down and coming up, bobbing like corks.
One of the jungle men had followed Tarzan into the water, swimming rapidly in pursuit. The man grabbed at him. Tarzan intercepted the man’s reach, snatching him by the wrist. He twisted it, heard the bones shatter over the rushing sound of the water. The man screamed. Tarzan let him go, and, still screaming, the man went sailing right alongside Tarzan.
That’s when the ape-man saw what he had seen painted on the bones.
They did not come out of the river as he expected. They came from the sky. He realized then the crude squiggles painted on the bones had been meant to represent the beating of wings. They were at first dots seen flying low and far down the length of the river. But then they came closer and their wings could be seen, and they could be seen; great of size and green of skin, mouths full of teeth. The flying lizard beasts were not like the pterodactyls they had observed before, they were impossible things the size of small airplanes, with their legs curled up under them as they flew, their skulls flared wide, their snouts long and tipped with massive nostrils. Tarzan would not have been surprised to see them breathe fire, so much did they look like mythical dragons. On their backs were long, thin men with sloping, peaked heads painted blue and yellow, green and orange. The rest of their bodies were devoid of clothing or design. They seemed little more than skeletons wrapped in doughy flesh. They directed the flight of their mounts with reins. They sat in saddles held in place by harnesses. They had their feet in stirrups of a sort. They carried spears in one hand, held the reins to their mounts in the other. Slung on the right side of their monsters were long sheaths holding more spears. They flew in a V pattern, as if they were fighter pilots.
Tarzan saw Zamona and Zuppner swimming ahead of him. She touched Zuppner, who was next to her, spoke something caught up and tossed away by the roar of the river. But Tarzan saw them dive. Good girl, he thought. Good girl. She had given Zuppner proper advice. Then he too dove beneath the water, and not a moment too soon, for down swept one of the beasts and its claws snatched up the wounded primitive with the broken wrist, lifted him up and hauled him away, as lightly as one might lift a pillow.
The water was savage and white with waves and ripples and sudslike foam. Soon there were slick mounds of rocks to clash against. When Tarzan came up for air, he looked back, saw the winged beasts, about ten of them, flying down to grab at the men in collars, lifting them, causing the ropes to trail into the air, then snap free and jerk up the pegs that had been driven into the shore. The creatures and their riders carried them aloft and away; the broken men dangled from their claws like wet socks.
Tarzan’s attention was then turned back to the mounds of rocks. There was little he could do. The river slammed him against them. He clung to one and eased onto it. There were enough rocks he could walk across them before diving back into the water and swimming for the far shore.
Upon his arrival on the shoreline, Zuppner and Zamona came wet and dripping, banged and bruised, out of the thickness of the jungle and called to him. Tarzan was pleased to see that they too had survived. Tarzan glanced up, saw the flying creatures. They were lifting high and circling wide, most likely heading home with their prizes.
Then they realized, too late, there were more monster riders, gliding down from the heavens from behind, and before they could defend themselves, three of the beasts snatched at them and lifted them high into the sky.
When Tarzan realized what had happened—for it had happened so fast that even his senses, dulled by exhaustion and cold water and a loss of blood, had failed him—he was already nabbed. The flying monstrosity had him gripped firmly, but
its touch was also surprisingly soft, with the claws doing very little damage to his shoulder. By the time Tarzan thought he might rip himself free, even if he were to lose flesh in the process, he was already too high up.
Near him, Tarzan saw that his friends had been taken as well. The three of them were joining an aerial armada of the creatures and their riders, as well as their human prizes.
Tarzan could closely observe the riders on the winged reptiles next to him, and for the first time he got a solid look at them. They were much as they first appeared, pale, slender, with bulbous, bony heads. But what Tarzan previously thought was paint was in fact their natural skull coloring. They had wide mouths with narrow lips that when open exposed rows of teeth, sharp and barbed like long, yellow thorns. This revelation made Tarzan reevaluate the images he had seen painted on the bones. The lines on the bones had been crude representations of the wings of the beasts, but the circles containing teeth were most likely meant to represent these bizarre pilots, not their mounts. In that moment Tarzan realized that the sacrifice had not been for the flying reptiles, but for these men; they were cannibals. He had some experience with man-eaters, and he knew without consideration that he was in the presence of the same sort of humans now, that the broken bones and the men in the water had been part of a kind of crude tenderization for these men who the jungle warriors must have thought of as gods. And why not? They flew on the backs of powerful winged creatures. They demanded sacrifice to keep from taking what they wanted from the tribe itself—meat. This way the tribe appeased their gods and protected their members by feeding them the broken bones and softened flesh of different tribes, men on a different part of the evolutionary chain.
As they flew, Tarzan looked down. He had learned that no matter what the situation, no matter how dire, he had to be observant. Something might be seen that could be of use for survival. So now that he had no choice but to go where the winged behemoths were taking him, he looked down. Below there was a steaming jungle and finally a great inland ocean. They passed along the edge of the ocean and flew over a large pool of water about which a number of men were congregated, entering into it slowly and with procession; there was something ritualistic about it.3
And then Tarzan saw something surprising. A large fort, made not too unlike one would expect Daniel Boone of old to build. A wall of pointed logs and inside the wall buildings and ramps and what Tarzan thought looked like a mounted gun.4
On they flew, and gradually the sky darkened and the ground below was nothing but a mass of shadows. Still they flew, against the face of the large full moon that appeared to rise like a god’s head out of the sea. And then below the night became alight with flames.
It was a big village and there were campfires everywhere. There was a lake next to the village, and the campfires tossed light on the water and the water rippled with flashes of orange and yellow. The moon’s reflection made it appear to float on the water with the flames. Ahead of them the dragons, for now Tarzan thought of them as such, glided low over the lake, and the riders yelled out in near unison, “Arboka.” It was a word Tarzan recognized. It was a word from the ape language he had learned. The language the jungle men spoke. It was bastardized, but similar in the way Spanish is to Italian. Yet even with its different accent he knew it meant “drop.” The dragons dropped the broken men. There were splashes as they landed in the great lake below. They went under at first, then bobbed to the surface on their neck corks, able only to float.
Tarzan and his friends were not dropped. They were not already broken. The cannibals had other plans for them. Perhaps they too would be broken and collars would be fastened about their necks and they too would be lowered into the water. For now, they were carried over the lake toward the shore, and then just over the tops of tall jungle trees. Tarzan reached up with both hands and took hold of the creature’s foot above the claws. He did this swiftly. He jerked his shoulder free as he did, causing the claws to tear his flesh. When he was loose, the dragon began to whip its foot, trying to shake him loose, but he held. He was able to swing out and grab the belly strap that held the rider’s saddle in place. He had hold of it before the rider knew what was happening. Tarzan climbed the strap, and the rider tried to stab him with his spear. Tarzan snatched the spear and tugged, sent the man and his spear tumbling down and onto the ground near the lake. Even from where Tarzan was, some fifty feet above the ground, he heard the thump of the man as he struck earth.
Tarzan swung into the saddle and took the reins and yanked the dragon to the right, came in close over the rider carrying Zamona. The rider had seen what had occurred, and he threw one of his long spears at Tarzan. Tarzan caught it and flipped it, threw it at the rider, piercing his chest, knocking him from the winged monster. Tarzan swept in low and flew under the creature as it dropped down toward the trees. He reached out for Zamona, grasped her hand, yelled “Arboka.” The dragon holding her let her go, and Tarzan swung her onto the saddle behind him. She clutched her arms around his waist and they flew toward the rider that carried Zuppner. The rider had seen all that occurred, so as vengeance, as they flew over the trees, he yelled “Arboka,” and Zuppner was dropped.
There was a crash and a flutter, and Tarzan saw that Zuppner, having not dropped from too high, had fallen into a tree and was clinging to a limb. The rider who had dropped Zuppner pursued Tarzan. Tarzan gently tugged the reins, and the creature, easy as a trained quarter horse, responded, flew fast over the trees. Tarzan guided him up, saying to Zamona, “Hang tight.”
They shot up like a bullet, the beast tilting to such an extent that Tarzan could feel Zamona’s weight tugging back at him, a victim to gravity. Tarzan guided the monster into a surprising dive and was hurtling straight toward the rider whose beast had moments before held Zuppner in its grasp. They sped directly toward each other like cannon shots.
Tarzan pulled one of the spears from the tight sheath at the reptile’s side. He cocked it into throwing position with one hand, managed the reins with the other. He continued to fly directly toward the rider. He stood up in the stirrups, leaned back and came forward as he loosed the spear. By that time they were about to have a head-on collision.
The spear flew straight. It hit the rider in the head and parted his skull the way a comb will part hair. The rider toppled from his mount, and at the last moment Tarzan was able to veer his beast and avoid them clashing together.
Tarzan directed his dragon toward the trees where Zuppner had fallen. When he came to the tree, he was able to see Zuppner, struggling to manage a sound position near the top of the tree. Tarzan slowed his flying monstrosity, hooked a heel on one side of the mount, and swung out and extended his arm. It took a couple of tries, but Zuppner caught it, and Tarzan pulled him up. It was a tight fit, but he was able to slide on behind Zamona. He was bleeding from a number of places.
“Are you all right?” Tarzan said.
“All minor wounds,” Zuppner said. “But now we have company.”
Tarzan glanced back. The campfires looked far away, like lightning bugs. Then there was a dark mass touched with moonlight. It was like a rising of mosquitoes from the face of a pond. They were many, and they were coming fast. They appeared to change swiftly in the moonlight from mosquitoes to birds, and then Tarzan could see them clearly for what they were—men on their dragons. The ones who had dropped the broken men in the water were now in pursuit of Tarzan and his friends.
There was a wide path in the jungle. Tarzan guided the beast down close to the ground, and they sped along the trail, which proved man-made. He saw a break in the trees, and he went off the main trail, down that. This was a path made by animals, most likely in pursuit of water. The reptile’s wings beat at the edges of the trees. Leaves came loose and went fluttering about in the dark. Tarzan didn’t believe he could stay hidden, but if he could merely confuse their pursuers for a time, they might have a chance.
Peeking back, he saw a flock of dragons flying low along the wide man-made trail adjacent to
the path he had taken with his beast. He saw the last of them pass. In a few moments they would realize they had been duped and would double back, but for now Tarzan flew on, low as possible to the ground.
Then things changed. Ahead the trail was too narrow for their flying mount, so Tarzan had no choice but to rein the creature up and into the moonlight.
“They have spotted us,” said Zamona.
Tarzan flew on, realizing their combined weight was slowing them. He flew over the great lake where the broken men bobbed like lily pads. He flew over great patches of jungle.
“They are falling back,” Zuppner said.
Tarzan took a look. They were indeed falling back. He had gained quite a gap between them and himself. The little venture down that narrow trail had given them just enough of a break, and even after being discovered, they were too far ahead to make it worth the warriors’ efforts. They already had their meals, broken and secure, tenderizing slowly in the river of the great lake. What were three more?
Zuppner laughed out loud. “We have beaten them, Tarzan.”
“Seems that way,” Tarzan said.
The great winged beast flapped on.
They reached the great inland sea by morning and skirted the edge of it, stopping once to rest their mount. Tarzan tied the reins of the beast to a stout tree near the shore of the sea, left Zuppner and Zomona, took a spear from the sheath strapped to the monster, and trekked toward the deeper woods to hunt. Two hours later he returned with a deer over his shoulders.
Zuppner and Zamona had built a fire from dead wood, because the sea air had turned surprisingly cool. Tarzan had lost his knife somewhere during their capture by the jungle men, so he broke one of the spears off near the blade to make a new knife. He was grateful that the knife he lost had not been the one he normally carried: his father’s knife from long ago. It was safe at his plantation in Africa. He skinned the deer with the makeshift knife, gutted it, made a wooden rack for the body, and cooked it over the fire.
