Jotan was at the rear of the column, Tamar and he alternating at holding down this exposed position. The back of the warrior ahead of him was ten or twelve feet distant—a space Jotan almost automatically maintained.
The trail underfoot swerved abruptly to by-pass an especially heavy growth of trees and momentarily Jotan was out of sight of his companions. A dozen more strides and he too would make the turn and rejoin them.
A sudden rustling among the branches directly overhead caused him to look up in alarm, just as a crushing weight struck full upon his shoulders and drove him to his knees. Steel fingers sought and instantly found a hold on his neck, choking back an instinctive cry for help.
Jotan was a powerful, fully trained warrior, with muscles superior to most of his kind. Yet in the first few seconds of struggle he realized with sinking heart that his strength was as a child's when compared to that of the unseen and silent creature on his back.
A film began to form before his protruding eyes, his senses reeled, his laboring lungs fought for air—then blackness poured into his brain.
... Slowly the fog of unconsciousness left Jotan of Ammad and at last he opened his eyes. At sight of the half-naked man crouched over him instant recognition dawned in his expression. "You!" he gasped.
"I," said Tharn impassively, "Where is she?"
"I do not know."
"You lie!" The cave lord's hand shot out and sank incredibly powerful fingers into the Ammadian's bare arm. "Tell me where she is or I will kill you!"
Jotan raised a shaking hand and massaged the aching muscles of his throat where those mighty fingers had left their mark. He saw now that he was high in the branches of a tree, that sitting on a branch behind his captor was another cave man—a youth, rather—who was watching him from inscrutable eyes.
"She never really believed you were dead," the Ammadian said slowly, almost as though thinking aloud. "I tried to tell her no man comes through the Games of the God alive. Even now I can hardly believe that you are actually here."
Tharn was not to be side-tracked. "Where is she?" he growled. "For the last time—or do I choke the information from you?"
"That will not be necessary, my friend," Jotan said sadly. "For all I know Dylara may be dead."
Nothing changed in Tharn's expression but his fingers bit sharply into Jotan's arm bringing an involuntary cry to the Ammadian's lips. "What do you mean?"
Whereupon the young nobleman of Ammad recounted the events of that terrible night when the lions had fallen upon his followers and sent Dylara racing for the safety of the trees. Tharn heard him out, his face as empty of emotion as though carved from granite.
"For three suns," Jotan said in closing, "we searched the jungle for a sign of her. But to no avail. Either the lions got her or she is somewhere to the north, making her way back to the caves of her people. Two suns ago my men and I gave up and we were on our way back to rejoin the rest of our party when you found me."
"Where is this place from which Dylara fled Sadu?"
"A sun's march to the south."
Tharn nodded. "You may return to your friends," he said. "If she is still alive I will find her. If she is dead, or if I find her alive and learn that you have harmed her, I will come back and kill you!"
Jotan shrugged. Not for an instant did he doubt that the young giant meant exactly what he said. Somehow his own life seemed unimportant with Dylara gone. He knew that, alive or dead, Dylara was lost to him and that he would never see her again.
He shook off his thoughts. "Then I am free to go?"
"Yes."
"Where will I find my friends?"
"The trail where I found you is directly below. They have discovered your absence and have backtracked in search of you."
Without another word Jotan rose to his feet and began the long descent groundward.
Once the intervening foliage hid the Ammadian from view, Tharn said to Trakor, "A sun's march to the south," he said. "We should make it in half that time—perhaps less. Come."
Side by side the two Cro-Magnards set off through the leafy reaches of the trees.
Dylara, only a few yards from the trail's mouth, came to a sudden halt. Years of elbow rubbing with the jungle and its inhabitants reminded her that trail mouths a short distance from water were where Sadu and Tarlok were most likely to be lying in wait for game. And this was the time of day the meat-eaters began their search for food.
Standing there near the clearing's edge, she peered intently at the waist-high grasses shrouding the boles of trees on both sides of the trail. A light breeze stirred them softly, and at one spot directly beneath a jungle patriarch's broad boughs, a trailing vine swayed in unison with the wind.
But wait! That vine was quivering unsteadily, then movingagainstthe breeze! Instantly Dylara's eyes were fixed on that spot. Little by little her searching gaze made out the outlines of some amorphous shape crouching motionless behind a curtain of grasses.
Imagination? Perhaps, she told herself. But the jungle dweller without it soon left his bones to bleach along the trails. Cautiously she took a backward step ... another, and yet a third.
The long grasses at that point were very still now as the breeze died. Was she being overly careful—running from shadows? A tree stump, a fallen log—any of several explanations would cover that motionless bulk lying there.
Suddenly the brooding silence was torn apart by a thunderous roar and Sadu, the lion, aware that his prey was on the point of escape, sprang from the depths of foliage and bore down upon her with express-train speed, snarling and growling as he came.
Even as Dylara turned to flee, she knew her life was finished, that nothing could save her now. Any hope that she would reach safety among the trees was futile; the nearest was long yards away and Sadu would have buried his talons and fangs in her defenseless flesh while she was still far short of escape.
Yet so strong was the urge of self-preservation that she was racing like the wind for sanctuary despite the uselessness of flight; while behind her Sadu was cutting down the gap between them as though the Cro-Magnard princess were standing still.
The knowledge that his prey was inescapably doomed did not cause Sadu to loiter along the way or grow over-confident. He judged the intervening space with a practiced eye; and, at precisely the right moment, he launched his great, heavy-maned body in the final Gargantuan leap that would end full in the center of that smoothly tanned back.
It was then that Dylara caught a foot in a tangle of grasses and plunged headlong!
Sadu, soaring in a majestic parabola, overshot his mark and landed a full two yards beyond. Instantly he wheeled to pounce on his dazed prey—and in that instant twelve heavy warspears tore into his exposed flank!
The combined impact of those dozen flint heads knocked him to the ground. Fountains of blood darkened his shimmering hide; his legs scrambled madly to bring him upright—then he slumped back and moved no more.
Dylara, wide-eyed and shivering, was rising to her feet when a horde of white-tunicked Ammadians hemmed her in. One of them, a tall, square-shouldered warrior of middle-age, caught one of her arms and helped her up.
Still dazed by her narrow escape from death, Dylara looked about the circle of curious faces. None of these men was familiar, although their dress and appearance told her into whose hands she had fallen.
"Who are you, woman?" demanded the square-shouldered one roughly, "and what are you doing thus far from Ammad?"
She met his stern gaze unflinchingly. "I am Dylara, daughter of Majok, and I do not belong in Ammad. Let me go at once!"
Theman's eyes narrowed speculatively. "What have we here?" he said, an appraising gleam in his eyes. "Your bearing and appearance is that of a nobleman's daughter; your words have the sound of the cave-dwellers. Which are you, anyway?"
Briefly, Dylara weighed her chances of deluding this sharp-eyed man into believing her the daughter of some Ammadian. Even as the thought came to her she realized such a story would never stand up. Either way he would take her to Ammad; and from the expressions of some of those warriors crowding about her and feasting their eyes on her face and figure, she would be better off telling the truth. The mere mention of Jotan's name, while expunging her last hope of being released, would at least save her from possible molestation....
"I am the noble Jotan's," she said, thankful that the earnest young man was not around to hear that declaration. "I was accompanying him from Sephar to Ammad when an attack by lions separated us."
The Ammadian leader's expression was one she could not analyze. He said, almost humbly, "Perhaps you are the daughter of some Sepharian noble?"
It might have been wise for her to make such a claim. But strong within this lovely girl was pride of race and a faint contempt for these comparatively frail and dull-witted people.
"No," she said, head held high, "I am not a Sepharian. I am the daughter of Majok, chief of a tribe. I was captured by the Sepharians and I was given to Jotan."
The man's bow was a travesty on humbleness. "It is an honor to meet a slave of the noble Jotan. I am Ekbar, captain of the guard of the noble Vokal. You will find my master one who can properly appreciate such beauty and charm as yours. Come, let us hasten on that you may the quicker become known to him!"
Dylara felt the blood drain from her face. "You fool! Do you think the noble Jotan would allow such to happen? Were your master to lay so much as a hand on me, Jotan would kill him!"
"You think Jotan's slaves mean so much to him?" Ekbar said mockingly.
"I am no slave," Dylara blazed. "I am to be Jotan's mate."
The other's smile broadened. "I'm afraid Jotan is past needing a mate. You see, Jotan is dead!"
Itwas close to nightfall when Tharn and Trakor reached the clearing where Jotan's party had been attacked by lions several nights before. Ashes from the long-dead fires still showed their outlines, tracked now by the hoofs and paws of jungle beasts. An air of desolation seemed to hang above the scene like the miasmic vapors from some foul swamp.
The two Cro-Magnards knelt at the stream and quenched their thirst. For nearly an hour the two young warriors sat side by side on the bank without speaking, while graduallyshadows from the encircling wall of trees stretched farther and farther across the glade. And then with the suddenness peculiar to tropical climes night filled the forest and the voices of hunters and hunted rose and fell about the clearing.
Trakor stirred uneasily as the roar of Sadu, monarch of the jungle night, rolled across the forest aisles from nearby. His ears, far sharper now from constant use, caught a faint stirring among the river reeds a dozen yards from where Tharn and he were seated; and an instant later those rustling stalks parted and Tarlok, the leopard, slunk into the open.
The young man from Gerdak's caves sat very still, hardly daring to breathe, as the lithe, powerfully muscled feline stood clearly revealed in the light of stars. For a long moment the cat stood as motionless as some beautifully carved statue, then gracefully bent its neck to dip the soft furry muzzle into the water.
Trakor felt a cool breeze against his face and knew why Tarlok failed to sense the presence of Tharn and him. What, he wondered, would happen if Siha, the wind, should suddenly reverse its course and bring their scent to Tarlok's sensitive nostril's? Would that terrible engine of destruction spring instantly upon them, rending and tearing before they could give effective battle? It was an interesting problem to weigh, although Trakor felt he could do it far more justice from a seat on some lofty branch.
Tarlok finished slaking his thirst and without an instant's hesitation turned and vanished among the reeds. Trakor listened to the almost inaudible sounds of the cat's passage and felt a little glow of pride. A moon ago he would have mistaken those rustlings as the passage of Siha—if he had heard them at all.
Tharn stirred. "I am hungry!"
"And I!" agreed Trakor, abruptly aware that he had not eaten since mid-morning.
"Let us find a comfortable branch for the night, then I will hunt food while you wait there."
"Why can't I go with you?" Trakor demanded. "I am a good hunter. Did I not, a sun ago, track down and slay Neela, the zebra, with my own knife?"
"That was while Dyta was high in the sky," Tharn reminded him. "Hunting Neela or Bana at night requires long practice and many disappointments. Tonight I am too hungry to wait."
A towering forest giant offered a secure and comfortable haven for the night; and while Trakor sat there fuming at being left out of things, Tharn swung off into the darkness in search of their dinner.
Less than an hour later he was back, a haunch of venison across one shoulder. Together they squatted on a broad branch and cut strips of the still dripping flesh from Bana's flank. They ate quickly and in silence, Trakor already having adopted the almost taciturn air common among jungle dwellers; and when they were finished, a handful of leaves served each as a napkin.
Not long thereafter both were sleeping soundly on their swaying couch, as indifferent to the cacophony of roars, shrieks and screams making hideous the jungle night as though such sounds did not exist.
Theydined on the remainder of Bana's haunch shortly after sunrise the following morning. After descending to drink from the stream in the clearing, Tharn set out to explore the former site of Jotan's camp in an effort to pick up Dylara's trail.
Trakor squatted on his haunches and watched the cave lord with wide, wondering eyes. For several minutes Tharn moved slowly about the cleared ground, his powerful body bent low, his unbelievably keen eyes searching every inch of earth. Gradually hiscompanion began to understand there was nothing aimless in his movements: he was circling in a gradually narrowing spiral toward the exact center of the camp site.
After a while Trakor tired of watching and went back to the river to drink. He was on his way back when a sharp exclamation from his friend caught his attention.
He was amazed to find Tharn on his hands and knees sniffing at the ground. Those nostrils appeared to quiver, to expand and contract, like an animal's when it picks up a fresh spoor.
A prickling sensation tugged at Trakor's scalp. Was it possible that this god-like human could actually scent, andrecognizethat scent, where a man or woman had stood days before? No human nose had any business being that efficient!
Tharn looked up to find him standing there. "She slept here for several hours," he said. On hands and knees he began to move in a straight line across the ground, swerved to one side near the former location of the fires, then on again across the wide ribbon of open ground between the heaps of ashes and the forest's edge. At the base of a large tree, he stood up and beckoned to Trakor.
"Sadu chased her to this tree," he explained, his voice as confident as though he had witnessed the entire proceedings instead of reconstructing them through the mediums of sight and smell. "He did not get her. Come."
Lightly Tharn swung himself into the branches, Trakor close behind him. To the cave lord this was an engaging sport—a sport made more interesting because happiness for him depended on his ability to follow a cold trail.
Here a bit of lint from Dylara's tunic had caught beneath a segment of bark; there a newly budded shoot had been crushed by a naked foot. A speck of green moisture on an adjoining branch marked where that same foot had come to rest a little later; and further on a scuffed section of bark, almost too small to be detected, showed where a foot had slipped slightly.
To Tharn, guided by uncanny powers of perception and a woodlore second not even to the beasts themselves, all these marks were as evident and recognizable as words on a printed page to a scholar.
Dylara's progress had been snail-like that night as she worked her way through impenetrable darkness; Tharn moved along her pathway speedily and without faltering, Trakor following.
In ten minutes the cave lord covered the distance Dylara had required an hour to travel. Abruptly he altered his course upward toward the forest top, until, high among the smaller branches, he stopped and looked to his nose for information.
Almost at once Trakor noticed a troubled expression carve itself on Tharn's handsome face. "What is it, Tharn?"
His companion's lips set in a narrow line. "I do not know. Some strange manlike creature with long hairy arms and legs surprised her here and carried her away."
Moving slowly now, with many pauses, Tharn set out on the arboreal pathway accompanied by the bewildered Trakor.
Fornearly three full hours Tharn continued on through the middle terraces. It took him a good part of that time to get some sort of accurate picture of how that strange, hairy creature had regulated its progress. The distance between marks left by its hands and grasping feet seemed far too great for anything other than the most agile of monkeys.
So intent was Tharn on following the spoor, and so intent on Tharn was his companion, that the first indication either had of danger was when fully a score of spider-like forms engulfed them from the depths of as many hiding places among the foliage.
The first wave swept the still inexperienced Trakor completely from his branch, and he would have fallen headlong through space toward the ground below had not one of the ambushers caught him by an ankle and jerked him roughly back to a different type of danger. In a mad fury that was half rage and half fear the youth struck out blindly with his knife, killing three of his attackers and wounding several more before he went down beneath the sheer weight of numbers.
It was Tharn who took the subduing! With the first rustle of foliage his knife was in his hand and he met the onslaught of twisting, shrieking spider-men like a rocky crag meets a storm-swept sea. Enemy after enemy toppled into the void, their bodies torn by his keen blade of flint; others went to join them with skulls crushed by superhuman blows or with spines snapped like twigs. Early in the battle Tharn learned it was useless merely to push them from the limb: they would fall a few feet until some long sinuous limb would catch a lower branch and back they would come to the fight.
But the odds were far too unequal, and very slowly they pulled him down, as a pack of dogs will pull down a wide-antlered elk. Thick vines lashed his arms to his sides until he was trussed and helpless.
Then both captives were lifted by the loudly exultant spider-men and borne to a conical shaped hut of grasses hanging by means of a thick rope of that same material from a pair of stout branches above its roof. Here they were thrown roughly to the swaying, bobbing floor on opposite sides of the structure, then left to themselves as the long-limbed spider-men departed.
Trakor waited until he was certain the last of them was gone, then despite his bonds he managed to roll over until he was facing his friend three or four yards away. The cave lord was lying motionless on his side, swathed with strand upon strand of stout vines, his eyes open, his expression as calm and untroubled as though he were comfortably ensconced in his own cave.
"What will they do with us, Tharn?" whispered the youth.
Those broad shoulders moved in a faint shrug. "Who knows?"
It was far from being a satisfactory answer. Trakor was silent for a little while, thinking unhappy thoughts. Through the hut's thin walls came the shrill, unfamiliar chattering of many voices. Evidently the spider-men were holding some kind of a meeting—a meeting, Trakor was sure, concerning the eventual fate of their captives.
"Tharn...."
"Yes?"
"Can't wedosomething? Must we lie here like two helpless old men until they get around to k-killing us?"
Tharn caught the slight break in the youth's words and his slow smile disclosed flashing teeth. "They will not kill us for a while—otherwise we would have been dead before this. Perhaps they intend to torture us first—either to enjoy our suffering or to honor their tribal god."
"But now we can do nothing. Four of them are watching our every move through chinks in these walls; our first move toward escape would bring them upon us."
Trakor's eyes roved about the hut's sides. He could see no signs of gleaming eyes peering in on them, but long ago he had learned never to doubt Tharn's ability to know things beyond the evident.
His voice went down. "Can they hear us?"
"Of course," Tharn said. "But that does not mean they can understandus. We do not speak their tongue, so we need not worry of being overheard."
"But what can wedo?" Trakor demanded for the second time.
"At present, nothing. There is a way for us to escape but it depends on them leaving us here until Dyta finds his lair for the night."
"And if they don't leave us here until dark?"
Tharn's smile appeared again. "Would you cheat them of their pleasure by worrying yourself to death?"
Trakordigested that in silence, seeing the wisdom in his friend's quiet words. He found his fear lessening fast; there was something in Tharn's calm acceptance of their present difficulty that inspired confidence in their eventual escape.
With the waning of his own fear he found room for concern about someone else. "Tharn!" he gasped. "Are these the ones who captured Dylara?"
A somber expression crept into the cave lord's eyes. "I am sure of it."
"Do you think that they have ... that they...." He could not finish.
"After we get away," Tharn said grimly, "I will learn the answer to that. She may be held in another hut at this moment; but if they have slain her...."
The rest of the morning and the long afternoon which followed wore on. None of their captors entered the hut to learn how they were faring, although not once were they unobserved from without. During the heat of midday the sound of shrill voices stilled; but along toward evening it started up again.
Tharn's position was such that he could see through the small aperture which served at the hut's doorway. As a result he was able to see a horde of the spider-men begin the construction of a good sized platform of small branches in a neighboring tree. At first their purpose was not clear to him; but when, shortly before darkness set in, he saw two tall straight branches denuded of vegetation thrust upright, side by side, into the platform, he understood something of what they had in mind. This understanding became certainty a little later when he noticed a score of the female members of the tribe busy at the task of putting sharp points on many long straight sticks, using flint knives for that purpose.
He and Trakor would be bound to those stakes and slowly prodded to death! The all-important question was, would that take place this night or would the spider-men wait until dawn? It hardly seemed logical they would be so tortured without sufficient light for the spider-men to observe their sufferings; and to use fire among the inflammable tree tops would be sheer folly—if indeed these creatures were fire users at all.
Darkness came and still none of the spider-men entered the hut. Both men were suffering the pangs of thirst, but hunger had not yet become a problem. Evidently their hosts had no intentions of pampering them.
Sometime later three of the spider-men crawled into the hut and immediately set about examining the prisoners' thongs. So intense was the darkness now that they had to depend solely on the sense of touch. Satisfied the bonds were intact, the three found places on the floor and presently the sounds of even breathing told all were asleep.
Tharn lay there unmoving while the minutes slipped by and became hours. With the inexhaustible patience of all wild creatures he bided his time, waiting until the sleep of those guards was sound. Several times he heard Trakor stir impatiently and he smiled a little under cover of darkness. Trakor was waiting for a miracle.
The position of the three spider-menwas such that leaving by the door was impossible, even were the prisoners able to gain use of legs and arms. Even if they were able to loose their bonds, a simultaneous attack could account only for two—leaving the third free to raise an alarm.
Slowly, with many pauses lest the jiggling of the flooring arouse those guards, Tharn began to roll himself to Trakor's side. So carefully did he move that almost a full hour had passed before he reached his objective.
He felt the animal heat of the youth's body, and a barely audible word reached his ears. "Tharn?"
"Shhh!"
And then Tharn began to gnaw at Trakor's bonds. His strong sharp teeth bit into those tough green vines, filling his mouth with an unpleasant taste. It was slow, jaw-tiring work and the vines were many, stringy and reluctant to part. But the cave lord's indomitable patience and perseverance were not to be denied.
Atlong last Trakor was able to free his hands. He winced as blood began to move again in his veins and minutes passed before he was able to control his hands. His questing fingers found the knots holding Tharn helpless and very soon both men were free to act.
Still lying side by side, Tharn began to whisper instructions. Twice one of the sleeping spider-men stirred and the two Cro-Magnards held their breaths until he had quieted.
When Trakor nodded to indicate Tharn's plan was clear to him, the cave lord rose to his feet and, like a shadowy wraith, moved to the nearest wall. This was a tense moment in the execution of his plan; its entire success depended on how substantial that wall would prove to be.
A brief examination by the means of touch alone told him the hut was constructed by first forming a cage-like skeleton of fairly thick but pliable boughs, then interlacing the openings with grass. The horizontal "beams" were roughly three feet apart; the roof, as Tharn had earlier been careful to gauge, was something like fifteen feet above the floor at its highest point.
Tharn's original plan had been to force an opening in one of these walls large enough for Trakor and him to wriggle through into the open air. But his ears and nose told him that this hut was practically ringed with patrolling sentries, several of which were perched among branches directly above the hut itself. The minute he and Trakor appeared outside they would be buried under an avalanche of spider-men.
But there was another way—a way daring and imaginative and infinitely dangerous. But in its daring lay the very chances for its success—while danger was so common a phenomenon in jungle life as to rouse little more than indifference among its dwellers.
Using the relatively sturdy skeletal branches foot—and hand—holds Tharn began to climb up that rounded wall. After some eight feet of this the inner side of the conical roof began and the cave lord was hard pressed to cling to the inward sloping surface.
But his steel thews served their purpose, and a moment or two later he had gained the single heavy section of branch at the very point of the roof. Here the thick grass rope which held the entire hut in the air entered from above, its ends tied securely about the cross piece on which Tharn was now perched.
From a hidden pouch in the folds of his loin cloth Tharn took a bit of keen-edged flint: the primitive razor with which he painstakingly scraped each second day his sprouting beard. With this he began to saw through the taut rope holding the hut aloft!
Gradually the straining rope began to part. Once it gave, the entire structure, weighted by its five occupants, would plummet toward the ground nearly a hundred feet below. There were enough intervening branches to break the fall sufficiently to keep them from being dashed to instant death; but for those three sleeping spider-men it would be a mad, whirling journey that, once it ended, would daze them long enough for Tharn and Trakor to break for freedom.
Three strands remained, then two. The entire hut lurched sickeningly, the final strand parted with an audible snap as Tharn caught frantically at the cross piece, and down went the hut!
It was a mad mixture of crashing sounds, of breaking branches, of shrill screams, of falling and bouncing bodies, of clawing hands and feet. Slithering, scrambling shapes sought to stabilize themselves by attaching themselves to walls, ceiling or roof, but to no avail. Only Trakor, digging his fingers and bare toes desperately into the yielding flooring, and Tharn, wrapped tightly about that crosspiece, were able to hold their positions; while back and forth between them shuffled the three spider-men.
Halfwaydown, one entire wall broke loose, spilling the guards into the void. As the mazes of foliage grew denser nearer the ground, the remains of the hut began to slow its fall, grinding to a complete stop some twenty feet above ground.
Instantly Tharn and Trakor were out of the ruins and racing away through the branches. Behind them they could hear a wild chorus of angry screams, but apparently the spider-men were still too dazed and bewildered to set up a planned pursuit.
An hour later Tharn called a halt. They stood silently on a high branch for a little while, listening for some sign that their late captors had taken up the chase.
"We have thrown them off," Tharn said finally. "I'll give them a few hours to get over their shock and return to sleep—then I'm going back."
"Going back!" echoed Trakor, aghast, "Why?"
"I must learn what they have done with Dylara. Too, my knife, rope and bow and arrows are somewhere within the wreckage of that hut."
"But even you, Tharn, would be helpless against so many," protested Trakor.
Tharn shrugged. "It is the only way," he said, and there was that in his tone which ended further discussion.
They stretched their bodies out on adjoining branches and after a while Trakor fell into a troubled sleep. He awakened with a start, to find the first flush of dawn across the eastern sky and an empty branch where Tharn had been during the night.
He had little time to worry about his companion's absence; for barely had he opened his eyes than a rustling among the foliage of a neighboring tree brought him hastily to his feet in time to see Tharn emerge into view.
Across the caveman's back was his quiver of arrows, his bow and his rope; thrust within the folds of his loin cloth was his flint knife, and across one shoulder was the meaty foreleg of Neela, the zebra. This last he thrust into Trakor's dazed hands.
"Fill your belly," he said, grinning at the youth's slack-jawed expression. "We have work to do."
"But—But——"
"It was easy," Tharn said, "but only because I was very fortunate. When I got there they were not sleeping; for the commotion I doubt that they will sleep for a long time. While waiting for an opportunity to climb among their huts to hunt for Dylara, I set out to get back my weapons. The knife and rope were still in the broken hut and I found them at once. But I was forced to hunt about under thetrees for my arrows and bow—and a good thing it was!"
"Why do you say that?"
"I came across Dylara's trail. It seem——"
"In thedark? How could yousee?"
Tharn tapped his nose and smiled as understanding dawned in his young friend's eyes. "It seems," he continued, "that she managed to get away from them just a little while ago, for her scent spoor was still fresh. I followed it far enough to learn that she found a game trail leading into the east which she followed. It is not far from here; feed, and we will set out to overtake her."
Earlythat afternoon Tharn and Trakor were swinging lightly through the trees above a winding elephant path cutting almost due south through the jungle. Even from his elevated position Tharn was able to make out an occasional print of a sandal in the powdery dust below. Dylara had left those marks—left them so recently that the passing feet of animals had not yet obliterated them.
The thought of her nearness brought an almost painful sensation of swelling deep within his chest and a strange ache at his wrists. The realization that he might soon be holding her within the circle of his arms, that his lips would be pressed against hers before another sun or two, made him eager to race madly ahead, outdistancing his slower companion.
But would she be as moved at sight of him? He recalled words spoken by her on those two brief occasions they had been together—first when he had wrested her from the caves of her father and taken her deep within the jungle. How her eyes had blazed with loathing! How her voice had rung out with hatred and disdain. "I hate you!" she had said; nor did she retract those words days later when, at the last possible instant, he had slain Sadu to save her life.*
*"Warrior of the Dawn," December, 1942-January, 1943,Amazing Stories.—Ed.
True, when Sadu sank lifeless to the ground between them, she had thrown herself into his arms, and the warm promise of her lips had crystallized forever within him his love for her. But that impulsive act might have been born of gratitude alone; he had been given no opportunity to find out one way or the other; for Jotan and seven of his men had arrived at that moment to take her from him.
Love, Tharn had long before decided, was a wonderful and annoying thing, bringing, as it did, both pleasure and torture, peace and unrest. All his wondering, all his doubts were for nothing until he could come face to face again with Dylara. And even then he might not know her answer; she would welcome him, of course, for in him alone was her sole hope of returning to her people.
But he did not want her to return to her own caves! She must go with him to his tribe—and go she must, with or without her own consent!
The winding trail below ended suddenly at the edge of an extensive clearing, through which ran a wide shallow sluggish river. From deep among a thick growth of reeds on the latter's opposite shore came a spine-tingling chorus of snarls and growls and the sounds of jaws grinding against bones.
Tharn seemed literally to fall the fifty or sixty feet between his elevated position and the ground below. The density of that growth of reeds kept him from seeing what animals were feeding there and the wind at his back left his nose useless in obtaining that information. Yet he charged in that direction with all the silent ferocity of Sadu himself, a swelling fear within him that it was Dylara's soft flesh which was furnishing those unseen beasts with their dinner.
Knifein hand, lips curled back in a savage snarl, the cave lord tore his way through the tangled growth. With the first sounds of his passage, that chorus of growls ceased, and Tharn knew those unseen jungle dwellers were prepared to defend their kill.
Without slackening his pace he burst full upon a pack of hyenas surrounding the half-devoured carcass of Sadu, the lion. Snarling and spitting their rage they held ground, evil teeth bared, the hair standing stiff along their spines, ready to give battle; for, in numbers, cowardly Gubo was a force to be reckoned with.
An instant later three of them lay dead and the rest fleeing wildly into the surrounding jungle, while Tharn restored his bloody knife to its place in the folds of his loin-cloth and knelt beside Sadu's remains.
Trakor arrived on the scene while Tharn was completing his examination. Wide-eyed he stared at the lion and then at the stern face of his companion. He said, "What happened to Sadu, Tharn? Surely Gubo did not kill him?"
The cave lord shook his head. "Sadu died under many Ammadian spears."
"Ammadian?" repeated Trakor, astonished. "Not those who were hunting for Dylara?"
"I am not sure—yet."
Tharn rose and began to circle slowly that section of the clearing adjacent to Sadu's remains. Trakor watched him, fascinated, as he scrutinized the trampled grasses in an effort to piece together details of what had taken place. Twice he knelt and placed his nostrils close to the ground, the last time remaining in that position for several minutes.
Finally he straightened and beckoned to Trakor. "They have her," he said tonelessly. "She was fleeing from Sadu. Their spears cut him down in time, then they took her with them. There are many of them—at least fifty—and they are none I have come across before. Evidently we are very near to Ammad."
"How far are they ahead of us?"
"A sun's march—if that."
"What do we do now, Tharn?"
"Overtake them, of course—and take Dylara from them."
He said this last with a crisp decisiveness that left no room for doubt. But Trakor was shaking his head.
"There are fifty of them, Tharn. How can two of us fight so many?"
"There are other ways than by fighting. First we must catch up with them; then we will work out a way to get her."
Theswift journey through the jungle that afternoon was something Trakor was never to forget. As though driven by some overpowering urge, Tharn raced southward through the middle terraces with astonishing speed. Trakor sought manfully to match his pace, but time and again the cave lord left him behind, only to hold up on some high flung branch until his younger companion could close the gap. Twice Tharn stopped for rest periods—not because his own iron physique needed them, but to prevent Trakor from collapsing entirely. The realization was galling to the youngster, and it brought home forcibly to him that, for all his rapid progress in jungle lore and jungle living since Tharn had adopted him, he was still as a new-born child compared to Tharn.
And while Tharn fretted at thus being forced to slow his pace, he kept his impatience from showing by expression or word. Paradoxically he had spent almost a moon in teaching his companion the ways of the forest and its inhabitants without progressing along the trail to Ammad, but Dylara was a comparatively long way ahead at that time. Now that she waswithin a few hours of him, even an instant's delay galled him.
Night came with the abruptness peculiar to this part of the world, and still the winding elephant trail below showed no signs of the Ammadians. Lack of light slowed Trakor to a comparative crawl, and while from time to time he urged Tharn to go on without waiting for him, the cave lord only shook his head.
And then, two hours after Dyta had sought his lair for the night, a faint glow against the southern sky marked the location of fire. This could have meant the most dread of all jungle perils—a forest fire; but the glow seemed too small and much too localized for that.
"The Ammadian night fires," Tharn said in reply to his friend's question. "Doubtless they have camped in some clearing along the way and have made a circle of fire to keep Sadu and Jalok at bay."
Not long thereafter the two Cro-Magnon men came to a halt high in the branches of a great tree. Below and before them was a wide clearing, in the center of which a host of white-tunicked men squatted about small cooking fires. The savory odors of freshly grilled meat rose on the air and Trakor felt his mouth water. Food had not passed his lips since that morning and traveling, he realized, made for large appetites.
The entire encampment was girded by windrows of blazing branches and thorn bushes under constant attendance by several of the Ammadian warriors. Spears, knives, bows and arrows were much in evidence, and there was that atmosphere of relaxed competence about the entire scene that indicated beyond doubt these were seasoned veterans who knew the jungle and its ways.
But of it all nothing existed for Tharn beyond a slenderly rounded white-tunicked figure seated in the company of several warriors about a cooking fire almost exactly in the center of the camp. At sight of that wealth of reddish gold hair and the sweet curve of a tanned cheek, he knew his search was over, that the girl he loved was almost within his reach. A burning impulse bade him throw caution to the winds and charge among those hated Ammadians and wrest her from them.