Читать книгу The Lost World MEGAPACK® - Lin Carter - Страница 57

CHAPTER 13

JUNGLE MURDER

As Fumio crushed the struggling girl under his weight and pressed hot, panting kisses on her mouth and naked breasts, the girl, recovering from the momentary paralysis of surprise, fought back like a lithe and supple tigress.

It was not for such as Darya of Thandar to yield helplessly to every twist and turn of Fate. The women of her tribe were not soft and pampered weaklings; neither were their lives devoted to the latest fashions and the pursuit of pleasure. Life in the Stone Age was a continuous and never-ending struggle for survival. In a land where gigantic monsters from Time’s Dawn roamed and ruled, men were at a distinct disadvantage: only the hardiest, the bravest and the most fearless could endure the cruel privations of life in the savage jungles of Zanthodon.

And Darya was such a woman! Lacking tall sons to follow him in the hunt and the field of war, Tharn, her father, had reared the girl like a stripling warrior. He had taught her to fight, to run, to search for game, and he had instructed her in the use of every weapon known in the primitive arsenal of her culture.

The only weapon she had to hand at this moment was her own naked body. True, the height and weight and strength of the villainous Fumio dwarfed her slight form and supple strength; but it was all she had and she used it to fullest advantage. One slim knee rose to strike Fumio a sickening blow directly in the crotch—he gagged, paling and clutching at himself. And, as he did so, the girl writhed free from under his heavy body and had all but wriggled free when he clasped her about one ankle in an iron grip and brought her down upon the grass again.

Lurching to his feet and spitting vile curses, he hurled himself at the naked girl. Another woman might have yielded at that moment to the inevitable, but Darya was fashioned from stronger stuff, and determined within her brave young heart never to yield, but to fight on to the end. Lashing out with one small foot, she caught the would-be rapist full in the face!

Fumio screamed as bright pain lanced through his brain, briefly blinding him. The girl had kicked him in the face, breaking the bridge of his slim, aristocratic nose, and the agony of it unmanned Fumio.

Clapping both hands to his smashed nose, which leaked bright scarlet gore down his face and beard and breast, he raved hysterical threats of what he would do to her when he caught her.

Darya sprang across the clearing, and turned to flaunt her nude young body at the furious man.

“No longer will Fumio be the handsomest of the chieftains of Thandar, and desired by all of the women!” she taunted, laughing. “Now will he be as ugly as a Drugar, and only the oldest or the leastfavored of the women will allow him to touch their bodies!”

Fumio was proud of his handsome face and profile, and was not accustomed to being denied by women.

That the girl should inflict injury upon so mighty a warrior was humiliation enough to such as he…but to be laughed at, scorned and taunted by a mere slip of a girl goaded him into a frenzy.

Without pausing to think, the warrior snatched up the slim javelin he had hastily fashioned upon first entering the jungle, and levelled it at Darya’s panting breasts. Red murder filled his seething brain, and all he desired now was to slay the slim nude girl who taunted and tantalized him.

Darya paled and bit her lip, realizing her peril. There was none to observe the scene of murder, and Fumio could return to Thandar without a single suspicion. All would simply assume that she had fallen prey to one of the monstrous predators who roamed the wilderness.

The makeshift javelin was naught but a slender length of pointed sapling, lacking stone blade or barb.

But, flung with all the massive strength of Fumio’s heavy thews, it would suffice to transfix her breast.

And she had nowhere to flee, for her leap to freedom had brought her up short with her back against a dense thicket of prehistoric bamboo through which no aperture wide enough even for her supple form to slip through could the girl discern.

A gloating leer crawled across Fumio’s once-handsome visage, now transformed into a hideous bloody mask, as he grasped the girl’s predicament. He could strike her down in an instant, before she could possibly find refuge. And her only weapon, the thong and smooth sling-stones, lay in a neat pile by the margin of the pool wherein she had been bathing when he had surprised her.

It pleased the cruel and feline heart of Fumio to read the stark desperation visible in the girl’s wide eyes and pale, halfparted lips, and in the rapid rise and fall of her perfect breasts. A pity to destroy such beauty, he thought to himself, before he had enjoyed it…but, after all, once she was slain her body would remain soft and supple for some time, and there was no reason why he could not force his manhood upon her warm and unresisting corpse—

* * * *

But another eye had watched the events in the clearing for the past three seconds, and red murder flared up within the heart of that unseen watcher.

Even as Fumio, savoring the flicker of fear in the girl’s widening eyes, drew back his arm to cast the javelin that would pierce the naked breasts of Darya—a lithe, bronzed, half-naked body launched itself upon him from the bushes like a charging tiger.

“—Jorn!” cried Darya, dizzy with excitement and relief. For she recognized the stalwart and gallant young Hunter in an instant.

And it was indeed Jorn the Hunter. His trek through the jungle had carried him within earshot of the pool in the glade, and the sharp cry Darya had voiced when Fumio had attempted to force himself upon her had come to his alert and sensitive hearing.

He had never particularly liked Fumio, for the other man’s preening ways and supercilious manner were offensive to Jorn’s simple and manly dignity. But to find the chieftain attempting to rape the daughter of his own High Chief was an offense which could only be erased with blood. Thus had he flung himself upon Fumio half an instant before the taller man could hurl his javelin at the helpless girl.

The impact of his leap bowled Fumio over and knocked him sprawling. Whereupon Jorn flung himself upon the partially stunned chieftain and, settling his strong hands about the throat of the larger man, began calmly to throttle the breath out of him.

The code of justice and punishment to which the Stone Age peoples of Thandar adhered had about it a certain Biblical simplicity and directness that would have appealed, it may well be, to such as Solomon.

That code may be summed up in the brief phrase: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And to Jorn’s way of thinking, the difference between attempted rape or attempted murder and the actual thing was, at best, minimal.

It did not take long for Fumio to recover himself, for when Jorn had tackled him and knocked him flat he had driven the breath from Fumio’s lungs. Now, sucking air into his starved and laboring breast, the stronger man reached up and hurled the lightly built youth sprawling.

Leaping to his feet, he looked about for his javelin, fully intending to use it upon the young hunter before he used it on the girl who had driven him mad with desire and fury.

But Darya had sprung upon it and snatched it up while her rescuer and her adversary battled, and now Fumio was brought up short, for the point of his own weapon was leveled against his own naked breast.

He took a deep breath, licking his lips, eyes glancing wildly about to either side, looking for a means of self-defense. Alas, there was none.…

Jorn came lithely to his feet, and hurried to stand beside his princess, unlimbering a stone dagger he had snatched from one of the Drugars in the confusion of their sudden break for freedom. He had forgotten that he possessed the flint blade until this moment, or he would have driven it to its hilt in the breast of Fumio.

Fumio looked them over, not in the least liking what he saw. The stern and level gaze and grim-set jaw of Jorn the Hunter quite unnerved him, as did the cold flame of vengeance which burned in the narrowed eyes of the girl he had sought to violate.

Fumio was not a coward, or, at least, he had never thought of himself as one before, but his courage wilted cravenly as he read a sentence of death in the contemptuous eyes of the two young people who held him at bay. From whatever lair deep within his heart it resides in all of us, fear came crawling up within him to suck the strength and courage from his manhood.

He licked lips suddenly gone dry.

“Surely,” he faltered, “you would not murder a helpless and unarmed man…?”

And the instant those words escaped him, he realized how vapid and foolish they were, and loathed himself for uttering them.

Jorn smiled faintly.

“There speaks a man who, one moment before, would have murdered a helpless and unarmed woman,” he said. The soul of Fumio writhed at the scathing contempt in Jorn’s level tones.

Darya sighed, lowering her javelin.

“But Fumio speaks the truth, Jorn,” she said dispiritedly. “I cannot kill even vermin such as Fumio in cold blood.”

“I can, my princess!” retorted the youth without a moment’s hesitation. “Lend me the weapon, and we need never be bothered by this animal again—”

For a moment Darya felt strongly tempted to yield to Jorn’s suggestion, which was, after all, a just and sensible one. Only a fool or an idealist lets a deadly enemy live, to strike again; but it was not in the savage maiden to permit even such as Fumio to be murdered in cold blood. She shook her head, blond mane tousling over bare, tanned shoulders.

“I cannot do it, Jorn,” she said with a sigh. Then, turning to rake Fumio with a scalding glance of utter scorn, she addressed him as follows:

“Take your life, then, yelping dog…but go from us and be very certain that, should either of us ever see your ugly face again, there and then shall we mete out to you the punishment which here we suspend. —Run!”

Fumio needed no further encouragement, but took to his heels, hating himself for it. The scornful laughter of the two young people rang mockingly in his ears as he entered the shadowy aisles of the jungle, and deep in his heart Fumio promised to wreak a dreadful vengeance against those who had humiliated and laughed at him.…

* * * *

Some hours later, as he crouched cold and wet and miserable under a broad-leaved bush within sight of the shore, enduring the lashing of a tropical rainstorm, Fumio had cause to discover that his troubles were very far from being over.

Upon reentering the jungle, he had quickly gotten thoroughly lost, for all his skills as a hunter and tracker. This was doubtless because of the fact that Thandar was a country of rocky hills and level, grassy plains, while the coasts of the Sogar-Jad were a region of dense jungles and swamps. Fumio was not accustomed to pursuing game through such overgrown terrain, and had lost his way entirely.

He had not yet bothered to attempt to devise any sort of a weapon, for it had seemed to the chieftain preeminently important to put as much distance between himself and Darya and Jorn the Hunter as he could possibly accomplish, before they changed their minds, and decided to kill him after all. And by the time he found himself beside the misty shores of the prehistoric ocean, it was too late to begin searching for something from which to manufacture a weapon, for he found himself caught and drenched to the skin by a swiftly risen tropical storm.

Now, lost, hungry, unarmed and miserable, he crouched on his hunkers in the mud, enduring the lash of wind and rain, wishing himself dead.

The first hint Fumio had that he was no longer alone came when a splay-toed foot caught him in the small of his back and kicked him face down in the mud. He sprang to his feet and whirled to stare with amazement and sudden fear into the ugly, grinning face of One-Eye. One-Eye, whom he had thought drowned when the giant reptile overturned the dugouts of the Drugar! For Fumio had lingered just within the edges of the jungle and observed the events which had followed the revolt and flight of the captives.

Evidently, One-Eye had managed to cling to one of the overturned log canoes, gaining the safety of the mainland’s shore again. For there he stood grinning, hefting in one huge, hairy hand a stone axe, looking Fumio up and down.

“Ho, Pretty-Face!” boomed the Apeman humorously. “Who kick your nose in, eh? Shes of your tribe no longer hot to mate with you, when they see your pretty-face now, ho ho!”

Fumio ground his teeth in helpless rage and despair, but made no reply to the rhetorical question. One- Eye kicked him again, this time in the side.

“Me take you back to Kor,” he growled. “One slave better than no slave at all…go push boat down into water, or One-Eye smash you with axe and make your face even uglier.”

Helpless to resist the blows Fortune had dealt him, Fumio listlessly yielded and let One-Eye drive him out into the rain. He grunted and strained, overturning the boat so that the seawater could empty out.

Then, obeying the gruff commands of his captor, he poled the rude craft out into the storm-lashed waves and began to row dispiritedly.

To be a slave to the Apemen of Kor was perhaps the most miserable of fates which such as Fumio could conceive; but at least it was better than starving in the jungle, or being eaten alive by the great beasts.

Dwindling in the distance, the lone dugout canoe vanished in the mists, and soon the rocky coasts of the isle of Ganadol loomed up before them.