“Will do. Sam will haul us back in—let’s see—about an hour, I would estimate.” In one respect, the Savage Land resembled Antarctica more than the tropics—twilight lingered, rather than clamped down like the lid of a spring-loaded trap.
Archangel walked toward the platform, folding his wings. His shoulders drooped.
“Couldn’t find Logan,” he said. “I flew over the entire area he was supposed to patrol, but there’s no sign of him.” “That isn’t good,” Ororo said. “I’m glad to see you are
back, though. You’ve been up in the air too long without a respite.”
“I couldn’t even think about resting until I had something to show for the effort. Didn’t happen. I thought I saw some pteranodons carrying riders a couple of hours ago, but by the time I made it through the rain to the section of jungle they were over, all I could see were wild, riderless ones.” ’
“Sauron can’t stay hidden much longer. We’re covering a lot of ground. We’ll stumble across something soon. Maybe Bobby and Hank and Sam already have.” Storm had to say it aloud. Otherwise she would fail to believe.
Warren leaned his head back and breathed deeply. “Something smells good. It’s been a long time since breakfast.”
■ Shanna nodded. ‘ ‘The village women are preparing a warrior’s meal in the lodge. It’s light food—only a little meat— meant to sustain individuals going into combat without making them sluggish. I think you’ll approve.”
“By tomorrow night, Tongah hopes that he can host a victor’s feast,” Ka-Zar added. “That’s for after the fighting, when the participants are free to gorge.”
Ororo tried to smile. It was good to anticipate a victory', but until it actually arrived, she couldn’t manage to get in the spirit.
“We’ll bring you a tray, Ororo,” Shanna said.
“No. Help me up,” she replied. “If I’m going to share in a warrior’s repast, I should at least carry' myself there like a proper one.”
Shanna supported her as she tipped toward vertical and rediscovered what it was like to balance on so small an area as the soles of her feet.
“Goddess,” Ororo muttered. “This is worse than I thought it would be.” But she pressed Shanna’s helping hands away and walked forward. She stumbled off the edge of the platform, but landed upright on the ground. After three or four hurried steps to check her momentum, she settled into a normal walk.
“Don’t worry about me,” she chided her friends, who shadowed her closely, like a parent would hover behind a child learning to ride a bicycle. “By morning I’ll be dancing on the clouds, good as new.”
The wrinkles in their foreheads said she was a liar.
They made their way over to the lodge entrance. Shanna peeked in and announced the meal was not quite ready. Ororo was content to remain standing, if only for the novelty. While Warren and Shanna listened to a scout reporting to Ka-Zar, Storm mulled over possible ways to do more for Wolverine. They couldn’t be sure he had been captured, but it seemed likely. Sitting down to supper would scarcely contribute toward his rescue. But what could they do? Darkness would close in before they could find his trail and follow it.
Klaxons blared. The watchtower!
Ka-Zar, Shanna, and both X-Men whirled toward the sound. The juveniles on guard were blowing their conch shells with all their might, paying no attention to the signal codes.
A dozen riders on pteranodons suddenly careened into view. They came in low, just above the crest of jungle growth, and rushed toward the village barely high enough to clear the stockade spikes.
Archangel shot into the air, flinging wingtip blades. Blood blossomed from the chests of three of the winged reptiles. Two went down like sledgehammered slaughterhouse cattle. The third tucked its wings and crashed into a hut, scattering
bamboo, wicker mats, and grass. All three riders jumped free, but all landed hard.
Warren ducked to avoid the spiked clubs of the main mass of warriors. The weapons missed him, but narrowly—he didn’t have enough altitude yet for proper defensive maneuvers.
Storm tried to rise into the air. A mistake. The wind she summoned whisked her sideways—luckily out of the way of a jabbing pteranodon beak—but her control was miserable. She flopped down in the mud, using a pile of tanned hides to screen her from the view of the attackers, and put her focus where it should have been—into a counterattack.
She called upon the forces of the atmosphere and sent mini-cyclones whirling into the center of the raiders. Pter-.anodons squawked and spun upside down. Three riders fell.
Ororo winced. She should have been able to bowl over half the group with one sweep. Her whirlwinds were flaccid; she had succeeded only with those attackers who had already been struggling to maintain control of their nervous mounts.
Lightning, she decided. She fired a bolt at a burly, scarred rider'. He screamed, but kept going, wheeling his flyer around to renew the attack. The electrical discharge had only stunned him.
She tried again. This time the bolt missed entirely. The rider finished his circle and roared down at her.
Suddenly a figure sprang from the crest of a hut, having just emerged from the smoke hole. Ka-Zar. The Lord of the Savage Land collided with the rider. Both went tumbling to the ground, while the pteranodon flapped on toward the jungle.
The backdraft knocked Storm over. She rolled and came to rest in a kneeling position. Scanning to see who to help first, she saw Ka-Zar successfully pounding his opponent,
Shanna kicking a raider who had risen from the mud to try to club an elder from behind, and Fall People warriors stringing their bows to repel the air assault.
She waved her arms and created a thermal updraft to send a pair of raiders uncontrollably skyward, but her effort had barely borne fruit when her head started to whirl. Not just the spin of weariness she had experienced earlier. This was soul-wrenching dizziness, the oh-Goddess-please-let-me-die sort that brought up her lunch of flatbread and curried beans.
“Wha ... what?’ ’ Storm blurted, barely managing not to fall in her own vomit. She flung lightning in random directions, a reflex spawned by the deep pulse of threat overwhelming her. The bolts were the weakest yet, barely more than filaments of static dancing no higher than the eaves of the..huts. One happened to strike a pterosaur as it swooped low; it did no more than cause the beast’s foot to twitch.
Storm writhed, but forced her eyes to stay open and focused. All around her villagers were twisting and flopping in the mud and puddles. Zabu staggered toward her, only to flop down and curl into a pathetic, kittenish bundle.
Two of the fallen raiders climbed to their feet and began whistling for their mounts. They appeared to be free of dizziness, and unconcerned that anyone nearby might try to thwart their escape.
Storm could hear shouts and clashes elsewhere in the stockade, proving that not all the village was hampered as was she and those near her. The explanation became clear as a young woman stepped out from between two huts, pulling off a wig to reveal hair as white as Storm’s own, streaked disorientingly with green.
“Vertigo,” Ororo hissed.
She had no doubt of the woman’s identity, though Storm had never seen the mutate out of costume before. Vertigo was dressed in the rudimentary fashion of the Fall People. Perhaps that was how, with the wig, she was able to approach near enough to use her power so overwhelmingly.
The only mutate ever to leave the confines of the Savage Land, Vertigo had last been seen as one of Sinister’s assassins, the Marauders. Apparently, Sauron, or perhaps Brainchild, had lured her back. And kept her presence secret as a surprise weapon.
Vertigo frowned at Storm. Abruptly the awful spinning inside Ororo increased. The windrider moaned and felt herself convulse. Her only satisfaction was realizing that, for all her exhaustion, she had managed to ward off some of Vertigo’s initial burst—perhaps the villainess was stretching herself too thin, attacking so many individuals at once?
Stornj was completely unable to
fight back as a pteranodon landed atop her. Its talons closed around her. Limp and sickened, she felt herself rising into the air. Below two other raiders climbed close behind, carrying Shanna and Ka-Zar.
At that point, she blacked out.
Archangel burst up through the reptilian squadron, finding clear air just as Storm and the others began to reel from Vertigo’s unexpected intrusion. He levelled off, intending to rocket down at the mutate fast enough that her power wouldn’t have time to daze him. A shadow touched him. He flung himself to the side.
Just in time. An attacker hurtled past him from above. This one had no rider.
“How rude of you,” Sauron cackled. “I offered you the mercy of a surprise hit. You spumed it.”
“I know about your mercy, Sauron,” Warren snarled as Sauron wheeled and raced in for another clash. “It’s the sort that drained Tanya Anderssen of her life.”
“Now is that any way to talk to an old associate? So cynical. I thought something of the sweet Angel I knew might remain, but I see you have left him entirely. Do you miss him, I wonder?”
“Miss thisV' Warren yelled, flinging shards of metal.
The barrage whisked past Sauron, narrowly off target, but off nonetheless. “You nicked me last night,” Sauron called. “No more.”
Warren cursed under his breath. The spraying of the blades had won him only one small gain. In order to totally avoid them, Sauron had been forced to momentarily tuck his wings. The villain sailed beneath Archangel, too low to slash the X-Man, Warren gained a respite before the next charge in which to think. He could sense hypnotic instructions filtering
- into his brain. That was why his projectiles had curved away, as they had the night before.
If there was one thing he had been reminded of during that recent battle, it was that Sauron’s mind-swaying power couldn’t be overwhelmed, it could only be avoided or deflected. Only a potent and forewarned telepath could confront him head-on and alone. Last night, he and Storm had served as diversions for each other. But he could see Storm writhing in the dirt of the village along with Ka-Zar and Shanna, unable to assist.
He activated his radio. “Sam! Come quick! We’re under attack at Tongah’s village!’’
The raucous static of an electromagnetic pulse answered back. The message had no way, for the moment, of getting through to Cannonball.
Archangel was on his own.
Strangely, he felt no fear. What was the worst that Sauron could do? Killing him, even making him a captive in his energy-larder—would that be worse than having his wings ripped off and his personality subsumed until he became an avatar of Death?
“No cavalry^ to your rescue,” Sauron taunted. “Brainchild may not have been able to make your communications devices work for us, but he knew when they wouldn’t work for you, either.”
Fearful that another strafing run would be diverted down toward the innocent villagers, Warren gave up any plan to keep his distance. He raced toward Sauron as Sauron raced toward him. They met in the middle. He pummeled, Sauron clawed and kicked. Archangel’s armored uniform spared him the gashes, but a blow to his midsection sent him fluttering backward. Sauron swooped out of range, shaking his head from the aftereffects of Warren’s fist pounding his long .snout.
“You X-Men know your hand-to-hand combat,” Sauron acknowledged. “But you’ll have to do better than that. Look at me. See how I glow? How refreshed I am? Wolverine’s energies proved so fulfilling. Nor did I suffer from tapping your lovely teammate Psylocke’s strength again this morning.”
Warren refused to let the monster goad him. It was foul news to have it confirmed that Logan had fallen prisoner— that explained not only Sauron’s vigor, but the healing of the wing wounds that Warren had given him less than twenty-four hours earlier. It was numbing to be reminded of Betsy’s condition. But give in to those emotions and he would be useless to both his comrades.
Their brawl carried them beyond the village, removing the chance that the natives would be hit by friendly fire. Warren shot more projectiles. They bulleted past his target. He could almost aim correctly, but the cloud over his mind stole the core of his accuracy.
“Take the gift I offer,” his enemy urged. “Tolkien’s Sauron had his winged Nazgul at his command. Be my Nazgul, Warren Worthington. Serve me. Feed me.”
Those eyes. Those infernal eyes. Sauron was hovering, staring intently at his opponent. Warren made the mistake of looking straight back. Once done, he couldn’t look away. The first time Sauron had ever used his hypnotism against a super-powered being, Warren had been the victim. It was as if Sauron’s ability had manifested specifically to combat the Angel, and fit no one else to such a profound degree.
Warren felt tentacles of outside control invade him. Within a few more moments, all Sauron would have to do was tel-epathically command him and he would do whatever he was asked—even fight or kill his allies. He couldn’t permit that Sort of perversion. He knew he had the strength to hold off long enough to implement a technique Psylocke had taught him. He turned inward and ...
His consciousness dropped away.
“Annoying,” Sauron screeched. “But either way, you’re mine.”
Though Sauron’s influence was keeping Archangel’s eyes open, blackness consumed his vision. With his last bit of awareness, he felt and heard the wind rushing past as he plummeted toward the ground.
Ka-Zar blessed the altitude, because even though he had seen Vertigo lifted aboard a pterosaur and knew she was a mere two hundred meters back among the raider squadron, the dizziness she had broadcast no longer crippled the blondhaired scion of House Plunder.
He was still dangling below a huge flying reptile, tightly confined by its calloused talons, but that was nothing alien to his experience. The creature belonged to the Savage Land. He knew its secrets.
Storm still hung limp beneath the beast just ahead. But though she seemed to be at best semiconscious, she was still fighting. Winds buffeted the pterosaurs and their riders, continually disrupting their formation. If Ororo could regain even a tenth of her strength and alertness, she could make it impossible for them to fly.
Shanna was slung beneath the winged monster just behind him. She was wide awake and her Irish eyes were flashing with a fury that made him glad they were on the same side. He winked a code at her. She nodded.
Then he screeched. The noise that emerged from his throat mimicked a call the wild pteranodons over the lake used whenever they sighted a particularly abundant cluster of their favorite food—fish.
The beast that was carrying him immediately tilted and dipped its head, searching below for a lake and the promised bounty. So did several of its kind nearby, including the gray-tinged specimen that carried Shanna. Its rider lurched forward, nearly tumbling from the saddle and momentarily losing control of the reins.
Ka-Zar was ready as the talons around him relaxed ever so slightly. He had enough wiggle room to draw his knife from his belt sheath and stab the creature in an ankle joint, so that even if it wanted to retain its hold, the pain would force its digits to open.
They did. He grabbed a handful of scaly green hide and vaulted atop the flyer’s back.
The rider whirled, yelled, and swung his club at Ka-Zar. Unfortunately, the jungle lord had nowhere to go but backward. He hopped away, avoiding the club but flying off. He caught the pteranodon’s tail just in time.
Pteranodons had stubby tails, not long, devilish appendages like those of rharnphorynchi or of Sauron. Ka-Zar found almost no purchase for his clutching fingers. The best he could do was hold on just long enough to redirect his fall—
—right onto the back of the raider who was rising up to join in the melee.
Ka-Zar knocked away the man’s club, sliced his hemp safety cord, and shoved. The rider yelped, flailed, and lost his balance.
“Thank you for flying Jurassic Airlines. Do try us again,” said Ka-Zar.
The rider slid free and plummeted. The foliage below quickly swallowed him.
Ka-Zar checked quickly to determine Shanna’s status. His wife, was atop the pteranodon that had been transporting her, but had by no means subdued its husky rider. Only an acrobatic swoop around the beast’s neck spared her a skull-crushing wallop.
A tinge of nausea and dizziness brushed Ka-Zar. He saw Vertigo rushing to close in.
“May you bathe in sloth droppings,” he cursed, borrowing Zira’s favorite insult. He reined his flyer sharply to the right. He would have to trust Shanna to take care of herself— usually a safe bet. For now, what mattered most was to separate, so that Vertigo couldn’t wrench both their guts at the same time.
The reptile fought his control, but he held the reins tight. Ordinarily, the riders controlled their pteranodons by means of a laboriously nurtured rapport. He had no time to make friends with his. He simply insisted it obey. He was Ka-Zar, Lord of the Savage Land. He had once stopped a bull elephant’s charge simply by planting his feet and staring.
Four raiders lashed their mounts, trying to catch him. They soon would; Ka~Zar had not been lucky enough to steal the quickest member of the squadron. No matter. He had no intention of fleeing. He had waited seventy-two long hours to exact vengeance for Immono’s death.
He whipped around and headed straight for a wiry, gaptoothed enemy warrior. The opponent hurriedly forced his creature to buckle its wings, dropping it below the point of collision. Ka-Zar had an instant to take in the scene around him: Shanna was wobbling. Vertigo was gliding next to her, bringing to bear the full brunt of her power. The raider Shanna was clashing was gripping her by the wrists and seemed well on the way to overcoming the last of her resistance.
Before Ka-Zar could begin to deal with that situation, the battle took him over a clearing. Below, nets hung suspended between tree trunks, about twenty feet off the ground. The pteranodon carrying Storm dropped her into the mesh. Raid--ers on the ground moved forward to wrap her up. A wind slapped at their hair and loincloths, and a dusting of snow pelted their faces, indicating that Ororo was still feebly trying to do what she could to save herself. Abruptly those phenomena ceased.
Law of the Jungle Page 12
