Читать книгу The Lost World MEGAPACK® - Lin Carter - Страница 65

CHAPTER 21

THE PASS THROUGH THE PEAKS

As the panic-stricken herd receded toward the jungle, Torn and Professor Potter surveyed their handiwork with a certain degree of complacency and self-congratulation. And the Neolithic chieftain turned to view the old man with a new light of respect.

“It was clever of you to think of fire,” said the youth admiringly. “When all that Jorn could think of was to run away…you must be a very wise man.”

The Professor preened himself a trifle, basking in the admiring gaze of the young savage.

“Ahem!” he coughed. “Kind of you, my boy, but actually no more than I deserve…for in my own country, I will have you know, I am a highly-respected scholar and authority upon many recondite subjects. A trained, scientific mind, you know, should be able to cope with the small problems of the Stone Age…”

Like most of the words which the Professor used, Jorn could make nothing of scholar, authority, and so on. But he gathered the general drift of the Professor’s modest little speech, and smiled slightly.

“I suggest that we continue our journey, now that I am rested,” murmured the Professor, peering off toward the cliffs, which now were quite near.

Torn nodded, turning to survey the Peaks of Peril. And all at once the Stone Age boy froze as cold fear clawed at his vitals.

“What is it that disturbs you, young man?” inquired the Professor, noting his companion’s sudden anxiety. “Has the wind changed, perchance, driving the wall of fire back upon us?”

“No,” growled Jorn the Hunter, pointing. “Look—!”

The Professor craned his head, peering in the direction of Jorn’s extended arm. And suddenly he gasped, and went pale.

For there, crouching at the edge of a shelf of stone, they both could clearly observe the form of Darya of Thandar!

She was dirtied and dishevelled by her experiences in the thakdol’s nest, and the blood of the uld’s carcass had stained her back and shoulders, but at a glance both men could see that she still lived and did not seem to have sustained any injury of a serious nature.

And then there loomed up above her the immense and shaggy shape of that which had caught her terrified, fascinated attention—

“Omodon!” groaned Jorn in stifled tones.

“Cave bear, for the Love of Linnaeus!” cried the Professor, almost in the same moment.

They watched, frozen with horror, as the lumbering monster advanced upon the cowering girl, huge arms lifted to maul and crush and slay.…

* * * *

It did not take the horde of Apemen from Kor very long to find the clearing from which Tharn and his warriors had retreated, nor were the signs of their passage unreadable to the alert senses of the Neanderthal men. If their eyes were rather weak and dim of vision, as I had by now good cause to believe, their sense of smell was remarkably keenkeener by far than the sensitivity of the nostrils of civilized men, for they were closer to the primal beasts than are we.

It was One-Eye who detected the direction in which the Cro-Magnons had fled.

Crouched on all fours, the Neanderthal man sniffed the footprints in the turf. A bestial growl escaped his snarling lips as he scented a detested odor.

“Panjani!” he grunted to his Chief. “Tens-of-tens…they went that way,” he added, pointing. Uruk surveyed the end of the clearing, his suspicious little eyes reading the passage of many men in broken twigs and disturbed fallen leaves.

“Come!” he grunted, gesturing with his axe. And without another word, the Apeman turned and lumbered in the direction in which Tharn of Thandar had marched his warriors. At his heels shambled two score of the mightiest warriors of Kor, armed to the very teeth.

Xask and Fumio, however, took up the rear. The sly vizier preferred to put as much distance between himself and any armed conflict as could with prudence be effected, and Fumio, although no coward, wisely clung by the side of his only friend among the Drugars.

“It would appear that the fears of One-Eye were correct, and that the father of the girl from Thandar has indeed pursued her captors, and in force!” observed the slender man in the silken tunic. “Now, by Minos, we shall see a battle!—but from a careful distance, eh, Fumio?”

“As you say, lord,” muttered the other. Inwardly, a pang of despair lanced through his heart; for if Tharn of Thandar were indeed as near as the Apemen believed, then he stood in a position of peril more deadly than if he had rashly placed himself in the very forefront of the Korian charge:

Once Darya’s father had learned of his attempted rape of the Princess of Thandar, he would be hounded into exile and outlawry for the remainder of his life, with no possible hope of mercy or a royal pardon.

If, indeed, the Cro-Magnon monarch permitted him to escape with his life!

“Let us, then, follow our brutish heroes,” smiled the slim, dark man, “and observe their battle against the rival host.”

The two conspirators entered the jungle and followed the loping, grunting Neanderthals to the edge.

* * * *

Reaching the broad and level plains before the first of the Apemen of Kor, Tharn and his host of warriors took up their position upon the sandy crest of a rounded knoll some distance from the edge of the trees.

It was not high, this shallow hill, to afford the Cro-Magnons any particular advantage, but still and all their savage adversaries would have to come at them up the slope, which would force the bowlegged primitives to slow the speed of their charge, however slightly.

Here Tharn disposed his warriors swiftly in a double ring about the hill-crest, and the formation he selected inescapably reminded me of the famous “British square.” Which gave me something of an idea.

“If a stranger may offer a suggestion,” I said, turning to Tharn. He grunted his assent, not taking his eyes from the edges of the trees.

“If you will arm the first rank of your warriors with bows, and have them kneel,” I suggested, “while the second rank arm themselves with spears, and stand, one rank can discharge their weapons and rearm, while the second rank fire as the first are rearming. In this manner, you can maintain a continuous rate of fire upon the Drugars, and bring them to a standstill. It is worth a try, at least.”

Something gleamed in Tharn’s eyes and was gone.

“Your plan is not without virtue,” said Tharn, frowning thoughtfully. “Is it thus that the warriors of your people defend themselves against their foemen?”

“That is so,” I nodded. While my people are American, their ancestors were British, so it was not exactly an untruth.

In low, clear tones the Omad of Thandar passed his instructions to his warriors. It is to the credit of the men of Thandar that they instantly grasped the tactical advantage of the trick I had suggested. And I remembered reading, somewhere, that the human brain of modern man is in every respect identical with that of our Cro-Magnon ancestors tens of thousands of years before.

Ignorant and superstitious savages these Stone Age men might be, but their intellects were as swift and keen as my own.

“They are here,” said one of the bowmen, pointing.

We looked; hulking, hairy figures lurked within the shadows of the trees. Daylight gleamed on the polished stone of axe-blade and spear-point.

“Well, then, let them come,” said Tharn in a level voice, “and we shall see what we shall see.”

He turned toward his warriors.

“Warriors of Thandar,” he said in clear and ringing tones, “we have come into this region to rescue the gomad, my daughter, from her brutish and cowardly captors. Those who attack from ambush and steal our women are before you! They are no less mortal than are you, and their flesh may be pierced with sharpened stone as easily as can your own. But they are not true men, and are hence your inferiors, closer to the bestial than are you: prove, therefore, once and for all time, which is the superior—the Apemen of Kor, or the true men of Thandar!”

Even as the Omad ceased speaking, a chorus of grunting, cries reached our ears, and hulking figures burst from the underbrush, waddling on thick, hairy, bowed legs toward our lines.

And the battle began!

* * * *

Jorn and the Professor stared skyward at Darya, who suddenly vanished from their view. The enormous form of the mighty omodon also turned from view, leaving the two watchers in ignorance of the fate of the Cro-Magnon girl.

“Do you see a way up the cliff?” inquired Professor Potter, anxiously.

Jorn the Hunter searched the cliff face with keen eyes, and shook his head reluctantly.

“The ledge which Darya seems to have been following ends shortly past the shelf on which she was attacked by the omodon,” he said in grimly solemn tones.

“What, then, shall we do?” inquired the Professor, reluctant to give up, although it seemed a hopeless quest.

“There!”

The sharp eyes of the Hunter had spied a crevice in the clifflike wall of stone. It was a ravine, narrow as a man, which seemed to penetrate the mountain to some depth.

“Is it a pass through the mountains to the other side, do you think, or an entrance into the mountain itself?” inquired the Professor. “Do you think the mountain is hollow?”

Jorn shook his head, blond mane tousling.

“One cave does not a hollow mountain make,” he said. “Still and all, we shall not know the truth of it until we trace the ravine to its end. Come—”

And the Cro-Magnon youth turned on his heel and vanished into the dark and narrow crevice, leaving the Professor to follow as best he could.