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CHAPTER 16

WINGS OF TERROR

And now let me return to the adventures of Jorn the Hunter. No sooner had Fumio fled into the jungle, than the young warrior and Darya of Thandar turned to see if the would-be rapist’s cowardly blow had slain Professor Potter, or whether the old man was merely unconscious.

Fortunately, the skinny savant had only been stunned by Fumio’s blow. With cold water drawn from the little pool wherein she had bathed, the jungle girl found it not difficult to resuscitate the man from the Upper World. True, he was a bit dizzy and wobbly in the knees, but these ills were minor and would soon pass.

He did, however, have a lump the size of a hen’s egg on the back of his bald pate and it throbbed painfully, giving him the very grandfather of all headaches.

“The cold water will reduce the swelling,” Darya assured him. “You will soon be feeling better.”

“I certainly hope so, young woman!” complained the Professor grumpily. “For I am much too old for such adventures…who did you say it was who knocked me down?”

The girl explained what had happened, describing Fumio so that the Professor could easily recall him.

The old man nodded his head, wincing as he did so.

“Yes, yes, I remember the fellow well…superb physique, but rather too handsome, I should say…

and I did not care for his manner, either: he was either blustering or whining all the time, as I recall.…

Well, young fellow, it seems as if you came to our rescue in the veritable nick of time!” This last remark, of course, was made to Jorn.

The Hunter nodded grimly. “I am glad that I came in time to assist Darya,” he said simply.

“Is there any sign of Eric?” the Professor inquired, feeling a little better by now. “And what of those savages? Are they pursuing us?”

Jorn explained what he had seen from his treetop perch, and how the Drugars had forced me into the dugout canoes, launching forth upon the Sogar-Jad for their homeland, Kor. The Professor was downcast.

“The poor boy! Well, what shall we do now—is there any hope of effecting his rescue, do you suppose?”

Jorn shook his head. “We have no canoes, and no other way of crossing the waters of the sea to the island of Ganadol,” he said somberly. “And even if it were possible for us to do so, I do not believe the three of us could do anything to help Eric Carstairs. Rather than being able to rescue him from his captivity, we should all probably be captured ourselves.”

The Professor could not refute the simple logic of that statement, although he yearned to rescue his friend. “Well, then,” he sighed, massaging his aching head, “at least we can escort this young lady back to the land of her people. It is what Eric would have wished us to do.…”

* * * *

Jorn was forced to admit, some hours later, that he was quite thoroughly lost. He confessed this to his companions shamefacedly.

But Darya was quick to sympathize with the young Hunter.

“In this dense jungle where one tree looks very much like another,” smiled the girl comfortingly, “it is terribly easy to become confused about one’s direction. Perhaps we should rest here, find something to eat, and seize this opportunity to sleep—for we are all quite weary after our exertions.”

Her companions agreed that her suggestion was a sensible one. While Jorn began to build a fire, using, the Professor noticed, flints to set the wood ablaze, Darya decided to go hunting with the light javelin they had taken from the villainous Fumio.

“If my princess will wait until I am finished with this task, I shall be pleased to try my skill while both of you rest,” the Hunter offered.

Darya shook her head determinedly.

“I feel restless, despite my weariness,” she said. “Continue building your fire, Jorn, while I endeavor to make my kill. I shall not be gone long.”

With that, the girl strode into the dim aisles of the jungle and was soon lost to view.

“Heh! I wonder, Jorn, if we should have permitted the young woman to go off by herself,” murmured the Professor a trifle nervously. “The beasts of the jungle are immense and ferocious and Fumio’s spear seems to me a frail implement.”

Jorn smiled.

“Like most of the women of Thandar,” he said quietly, “the princess is an accomplished huntress and knows well how to avoid the larger and more dangerous predators; have no fear.”

“Eh? Well, perhaps so…still and all, I shall breathe a lot easier once the child has returned to camp, safe and unharmed!”

“That will not be long,” said Jorn confidently. “The jungle teems with game, and I’ll wager even at this moment Darya has made her kill.”

* * * *

Nor was Jorn’s confidence in Darya’s skills as a huntress misplaced. For it had been child’s play for the Stone Age girl to bring down an uld, a small mammal that may have been a remote ancestor of the horse, and even as Jorn made his prediction to the Professor, she was engaged in gutting her kill and trussing it with woven grass ropes; slinging the carcass over her shoulder, the girl crossed the clearing, intending to return to her companions.

Now the jungles of Zanthodon, as the cave girl knew all too well, are the hunting grounds of many fierce and mighty predators. There was the heavy-footed thantor, or wooly mammoth, and the spike-horned grymp, as the Cro-Magnons call the triceratops, and many another fearsome beast as well, the vandar and the goroth, the yith of the seas, and many more.

But none are more to be feared than the dreaded thakdol. On its motionless wings, the tireless reptile can soar aloft, riding the updrafts for hour upon hour, while searching the landscape beneath it for game.

While the thakdol can fight and slay, it is a lazy brute and vastly prefers to feed on someone else’s kill.

Like the vultures of the Upper World, whose habits are so similar, the pterodactyl is essentially a scavenger, a carrion-eater, although it will kill when it has to.

On this particular day, a monstrous thakdol whose ribbed, membraneous, batlike wings measured thirtyfive feet from claw-hooked tip to claw-hooked tip, was floating above the jungle on silent wings. It was hungry, the aerial reptile, for in two days it had found but sparse rations. And now there wafted to its keen senses the fragrant aroma of fresh-shed blood…

Craning its scaly neck, the thakdol peered down through the tatters of flying mist, to spy a small clearing and a CroMagnon girl striding for the forest’s edge with the carcass of an uld across her shoulders.

Uttering the almost inaudible hissing cry that was its hunting call, the huge pterodactyl folded its batlike wings and plummeted earthward, falling like a thunderbolt.

And Darya was not even aware there was a thakdol in the sky until suddenly she was buffeted by drumming wings and a scaled and heavy body slammed into her, driving her to her knees.

Ghastly claws ripped and tore, striving to dislodge the carcass of the uld from her back. But Darya had lashed the body of her kill across her shoulders with tough ropes of woven grass, and they held firm even against those terrible claws.

Losing patience, the thakdol sank its razory claws deep within the carcass of Darya’s kill—spread its monstrous wings—and rose on drumming vanes into the air—

Carrying Darya with it!

The jungle girl screamed in terror as those beating wings lifted her off the earth and into the air. She had not dreamed it possible that a thakdol—even one so huge as this thakdol—was strong enough to carry off a fully grown human being, although betimes its grisly kin have been known to fly away into the sky, gripping babies or small children in its terrible claws.

And in truth the thakdol labored mightily to reach the upper air, fearing to remain on the ground where it could become the prey of beasts greater than itself. Only in the skies of Zanthodon was it safe, for therein no other predator could venture. But the young woman dangling from its claws was a more weighty burden than the small brain of the flying reptile had realized, and it swayed drunkenly in its flight, just barely skimming above the tops of the trees.

Once safely aloft, the pterodactyl made for the distant cliffs where it had built its nest. And it bore the Stone Age girl with it on its voyage through the misty skies.…

* * * *

At the sound of Darya’s scream of terror, Jorn sprang to his feet, snatched up a cudgel from his heap of firewood, and hurled himself into the jungle with the frightened Professor at his heels.

The swift-footed savage veritably flew through the jungle aisles, heading unerringly in the direction from which the girl’s scream had emanated.

Only moments after Darya had cried out, Jorn and the Professor burst into the clearing, and stared about them, wideeyed with amazement. For she was nowhere to be seen!

There, to be sure, was the trampled turf and blood-splattered grasses where her javelin had brought down the small uld.

There, too, her light javelin lay fallen on the turf. Jorn snatched the light weapon from the ground, examining it.

But where was—Darya?

“She cannot have vanished into thin air—such things simply do not happen,” panted the Professor, staring wildly about.

“I agree,” said Jorn briefly. “But where, then, is she? Had she been chased away by one of the great beasts, a grymp or a goroth, say, the grasses and the soil would be trampled, displaying the marks of their tread. But no such marks are to be seen…”

They looked about them. It was, of course, even as Jorn the Hunter had said: the grasses which clothed the floor of the clearing lay smooth and undisturbed, save for the small area where the ground had been torn by the soft hooves of the little uld, as it had scrabbled in its death agony, pinned to the earth by Darya’s spear.

No other marks were to be seen.

Jorn bared his strong white teeth, eyes glaring. From his deep chest there sounded a menacing growl.

The caveman wore but the thin veneer of civilization; beneath that layer of social custom, he was pure savage, a primitive man, filled with superstition and primal night fears.

Suddenly the Professor seized the Hunter’s upper arm, gripping it tightly.

“Shh!” he whispered fiercely, gesturing for silence. “Did you hear it? What was that?”

Jorn had heard it too, that far, faint, despairing cry…so thin and weak that it was as if it had come a great distance.

His nostrils flared and the skin crawled upon his forearms. For it had come from…above.

Suddenly, Jorn threw back his head, staring into the sky, searching in all directions the misty heavens.

And then he gasped, pointing.

The Professor cried out in astonishment as he saw the same terrible sight that had frozen Jorn in his tracks: the tiny figure of a blond girl in abbreviated fur garments, being carried through the skies by an enormous pterodactyl!

Jorn muttered under his breath, signing himself superstitiously. For the reality of Darya’s plight was, in its way, even more horrible than that which he had feared.

Which, after all, is worse: to be spirited away by ghosts, or to be carried off in the claws of a flying monster?

Only for a moment did Jorn linger. Then he turned and left the clearing, trotting rapidly in the direction in which the thakdol had flown.

It was not possible for the loyal heart of Jorn of Thandar to desert his princess in her peril. He would track the dragon of the skies to its lair, and then rescue the girl, if she lived. If she no longer lived, then he would do his utmost to avenge her.

Racing through the jungles, he vanished from the sight of the Professor within a few moments.

And then it slowly dawned upon the old savant that now he was completely alone and helpless, in the midst of the most deadly and dangerous jungle upon the earth.

“Eternal Euclid! What am I doing, lingering here?” muttered the Professor to himself with a wild look in his watery eyes. Clapping one hand atop his head, to hold secure the battered old sun helmet he had so carefully clung to through all of his perilous peregrinations, the scrawny savant trotted off in the direction taken by Jorn the Hunter.

“Just a moment, young fellow!” he called quaveringly after the running figure. “Wait for me…bless my soul, I believe I shall accompany you and lend moral support to your noble attempt at rescue…!”

And, summoning all such speed as his bony legs and wobbly knees could muster, the old scientist followed the retreating figure of Jorn, joining him amid the plains which stretched wide beyond the jungle’s edge.

PART V: THARN OF THANDAR