Darya of The Bronze Age
Page 17
When, exhausted, she had ceased struggling, he quickly bound and gagged the girl. Then, turning abruptly to the bewildered Moustapha, who had watched without comprehending these inexplicable actions, he curtly directed his lieutenant to take what acts he could to hold the men in battle, and, without waiting to hear a word in reply, turned and began cutting his way through the howling Zarians toward the beach where his longboats were hidden.
In the whirling and dusty confusion of the three-way battle, he soon vanished from the knowledge of men.
He and his helpless captive, the Empress of Zar.
Chapter 30 BATTLE'S END, JOURNEY'S BEGINNING
By now, the battle had degenerated into a vast, confused, bewildered mob in which only the men of Sothar kept their heads.
The buccaneers had lost many lives in striving to defend themselves from the front and rear simultaneously. Also, they had lost heart and many of them had fled the battle, leaving Moustapha's host decimated and in considerable disarray.
As for the legions of Zar, as soon as their fiery Empress had pressed forward into the very midst of the battle, and then vanished from their sight so suddenly and mysteriously, they turned to Xask as second-in-command. He, of course, had prudently left the scene of battle: disheartened and leaderless, they threw down their weapons, surrendering in droves.
Which left the host of Sothar victorious. We quickly rounded up as many of our former adversaries as we could and disarmed them, taking their weapons for our own.
Nowhere among the many captives did we find Zarys, Xask or Kairadine. The arch-villains,
unaccountably, had disappeared. Anyway, the battle was won ....
Garth's warriors were resting. drinking water from a little stream that meandered across the trampled meadow toward the sea, when suddenly a vast host of warriors appeared at the mouth of the pass through the Peaks of Peril.
And, at its head, stood Tharn of Thandar.
Grinning hugely, the jungle monarch came striding up to where I stood dumbfounded; he clapped me on the shoulder (a numbing blow which would have felled a lesser man than I, and, in fact, made me stagger), then bent to where Garth had half struggled to his feet from his litter, to greet his brother Omad and inquire after his health.
Then he turned to give a friendly salute to Hurok the Neanderthal and Varak and several of the chieftains who stood nearby, and to stare curiously at Gundar and Thon of Numitor and others of our new friends whom he had not yet met.
The mystery of the sudden appearance of the Thandarians was easily explained. When we had been attacked by the Barbary Pirates, we had taken our stand up against the mouth of the pass, through which we sent our women and children, the aged and the injured.
The tribe of Thandar had not been so very far ahead of us, after all, as it turned out. For ere the battle was half over, the forefront of our noncombatants had been spotted by the rearguard scouts of Thandar, and quickly Tharn had turned his host about and retraced their path through the mountains to come to our aid-just as quickly as he heard that the buccaneers of El-Cazar had attacked us, mistaking us for the Thandarians.
That he had arrived too late upon the scene to have taken an active part in the battle was a source of disappointment to Tharn, but as his assistance had not been needed, it was an inconsequential detail.
"There is someone here who has long been waiting to greet you, Eric Carstairs," said Tharn of Thandar with a quiet smile.
"There is?" I said inanely. "Who?"
"You shall soon see," he chuckled, and turned on his heel to disappear among the ranks of his warriors-reappearing a few moments later with a slim, tanned golden-haired girl clinging to his mighty arm.
"It is . . . good to see you again, Eric Carstairs," said Darya of Thandar tremulously.
"It is . . . good to see you again," I said in none too steady a voice. "My princess," I added.
She flushed crimson, but continued to smile at me through the sudden rush of tears which blurred her magnificent blue eyes.
"Bless you, my children," chuckled Tharn-or the Cro-Magnon equivalent of the sentiment, anyway.
Having disarmed our captives, we simply turned them loose to wander away dispiritedly. There was nothing else to do with them, after all. There was no reason to bring them along with us on the long road south to Thandar, and, without their weapons or their leaders, there was little or nothing which they could do to harm us. So we let them go.
Garth disapproved of this plan, which was my own strongly urged suggestion. And Tharn was none too happy with it, either.
Staring after the last of the Barbary Pirates as they went trudging off to the beaches, Garth sighed and shrugged, saying, "I have a foreboding that this was charitable but unwise, Eric Carstairs. And a feeling that we have not seen the end of the corsairs of El-Cazar."
"I share your feelings, my brother," rumbled Tharn, frowning after the last of the buccaneers as they dwindled in the distance.
"You may both be right," I had to admit.
"What shall we do, if they rearm and pursue us again?" asked Garth.
For a long moment I stood silent, considering.
Then-
"We shall fight them," I said simply.
My arm tightened protectively about the slim shoulders of my beloved Darya.
"After all, we now have something worth fighting for," I added.
THE END