A PRIZE FOR VOKAL
"I tell you it is useless, Jotan," Tamar said. "For three suns now we have beat the jungle searching for some sign of her. How long do you expect to keep up this useless hunt?"
There were five of them in the group: Jotan, Tamar and three of the former's best fighting men. They were seated on a fallen log at the edge of a narrow stream, having finished washing away the stains of jungle travel only minutes before. Directly overhead hung the midday sun, flooding them with humid heat, and hemming them in on all sides stood towering giants of the forest.
Jotan shook his head and said nothing. The strain and hopelessness of the last three days had aged him visibly: there were new lines in his face and his eyes were haggard. He recognized his injustice in subjecting his friends to the dangers of jungle travel, especially when their number was so small; but Dylara meant everything to him and he could not give her up without a struggle.
"I beg of you," Tamar persisted; "give up the search that we may turn about and rejoin the others. We are not equipped to follow this trail all the way back to Sephar. Already we have lost two of our men—one of them the only man among us who was qualified to track her down. For all we know she may be dead—the victim of one of the numerous cats infesting this section of the country."
"You may return if you like," snapped Jotan, stung by that last remark. "I am going on—alone if necessary! Oh, I know why you want to call it off," he went on, scowling. "You never had any use for her because she is a girl of the caves instead of a nobleman's daughter. But whether you like it or not, Dylara is the only woman I shall ever love and I am going to find her—or give my life in the attempt."
Tamar, hearing, knew his friend meant exactly what he said. It was useless to plead with him on the basis of not being able to pick up her trail. But there was another way—and he bored into it, playing it up for all it was worth.
"Your life is your own, Jotan," he said stiffly. "But do you have the right to sacrifice the lives of the rest of us in a quest that is completely hopeless? If we had found anything to indicate we were on the right trail I would not for an instant try to dissuade you. It is true I do not think the girl worthy of your love—but that is not important. You do love her and I would fight against the world in defense of your choice."
"But to go on this way without a single lead to show us we have even the faintest chance for success, to throw away the lives of these three men—and our own—is rank folly! Perhaps you regard it as some sort of admirable determination; in truth it is sheer stubbornness."
For a long time Jotan sat there staring with unseeing eyes at the sluggishly moving waters of the tiny river. There was no denying the truth in Tamar's words. He knew his best friend meant every word of his statement that he would back Jotan's choice of a mate against a world; he had proved that back in Sephar by saving Dylara's life by a bit of quick thinking, when he might as easily have let a plot against her go on to its inevitable end. Equally as undeniable was his statement that it was sheer injustice to sacrifice needlessly the lives of loyal men on what could only be classified as a fool's errand.
Impulsively he turned to one of the three warriors sitting in a stolid row beside him. "Tell me, Itak," he said, "what is your greatest desire at this moment?"
"To serve you, noble Jotan," the man replied promptly and with complete honesty.
"And after that?"
Itak's dark face split in a wide smile. "When we left for Ammad, my mate was heavy with child. I would like to learn if I have a son or a daughter."
Slowly Jotan rose from the log and stretched his long, powerful arms. "We have rested long enough," he said, his face empty of all emotion. "Let us be on our way—back to join our companions!"
Open relief showed in the three warriors' faces. Only Tamar fully understood what those words had cost his friend and he stood up and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. For only a second he left it there and neither spoke.
Then packs were swung to stalwart backs and the five men disappeared among the trees along the narrow game trail leading into the south—and Ammad.
Consciousness returned to Dylara at the moment the spider man was placing her roughly on a heap of foul-smelling grasses. In the almost impenetrable darkness she was aware that his hands were moving lingeringly along the contours of her body and in sudden terror she struck out at his face, guided by the sound of hoarse rapid breathing.
Her nails struck home and she raked them fiercely across an unseen cheek, bringing forth a startled cry of pain and anger. An open hand caught her heavily above the ear and once more her senses swam, leaving her weak and defenseless.
Dimly she was aware that the awful creature was dropping to its knees beside her and once more long slender hair-covered fingers tugged at her tunic.
And then there was a startled grunt, a flurry of motion—and she was alone. Even as she started up wonderingly the floor of the swinging hut vibrated sharply under a heavy impact, followed by the sounds of furious struggle.
What it all meant, Dylara did not know. Perhaps one of the other spider-men, jealous of her captor's prize, had come to take her for himself. Or perhaps the spider-man's mate had arrived to protect the sanctity of her home.
Whatever the reason, it was Dylara's chance—and she took it without hesitation. Hugging the walls to keep free of the two battling figures rolling about the floor, she edged her way swiftly toward the small aperture that served as a door, then dropped to her knees and crawled through. At any moment she expected one of those slender hands to close about one of her ankles; but that did not happen and she gained one of the branches outside.
Never in all her life before had the daughter of Majok descended from a tree with such reckless abandon—but never before had she so strong a motive for haste. In fact she slipped and fell the last ten feet, her heart bounding into her throat as she toppled into Stygian blackness.
She was on her feet like a cat, not stopping to learn if the fall had injured her, and ran blindly into the tangled fastness of brush, vine, creeper and tree. Thorns tore at her skin and tunic, brambles tugged painfully at her hair, the stems of bushes tripped her up, trees loomed up too late for her to avoid slamming into them.
But Dylara was impervious to pain and heedless of obstacles. On and on she went, stumbling, running, crawling—fighting to put distance between her and the ugly monstrosities in those conical, tree-top huts.
How long this mad flight endured or how far it took her Dylara was never to know. But at last overtaxed muscles rebelled, her laboring lungs refused their task, and the cave girl collapsed in a pitiful heap among a tangled maze of head-high bushes.
Twice she sought to rise and go on. But each time her legs turned to water beneath her and she sank back to earth. Tears of utter helplessness flooded her eyes; she put her head down against one arm—and in that instant she fell sound asleep.
When she awakened night had fled and sunlight, pale and without warmth after filtering through layer upon layer of foliage, made visible her immediate surroundings.
She got shakily to her feet and stood there swaying a little as outraged muscles reminded her painfully of last night's mad flight. Little lines of dried blood on her arms and legs marked where thorns had raked her and she realized her body was one aching mass of bruises. Added to this was an inflexible stiffness brought on by sleeping on damp earth.
But all this was relatively unimportant. She was free once more—free to begin her long journey back to the cave of her father. She must hasten back to the trail which Jotan and his men had followed from Ammad and retrace her way southward toward home.
And at that moment the full impact of her predicament came home with stunning force.
She was utterly and completely lost! Whether the trail to Sephar was to the east or west of where she now stood was as unknown to her as the opposite side of Uda, the moon. True her goal lay to the north; but unless she could locate the original path Jotan had followed, she might spend the rest of her life picking a way through the towering mountains and endless plains between.
Surging panic cut her legs from under her and she dropped into a sitting position on a fallen log and buried her face in her hands. For a long time she sat thus, fighting back her tears, trying to think logically. But what use was logic in this tangled wilderness of growing things?
Still, she told herself, she could not sit there forever, an unresisting morsel for the first meat-eater to come along. She stood up, brushed away an accumulation of leaves, thorns and dirt from her tunic, and struck resolutely out toward the east, pushing her way slowly through the walls of plant life everywhere about her.
Monkeys raced and chattered among the branches overhead and disturbed rodents and the crawling things that infest the rotting jungle floor fled from her path. After a dozen yards she was bathed in perspiration and her skin seemed to crawl with the dampness.
If only she could find some sort of pathway that would allow her to make progress without battling this ocean of pulpy, slimy vegetation—a footing solid enough to prevent sinking to her ankles with every step. Three different times she narrowly avoided treading on snakes—small, brightly colored reptiles whose bite would have meant a lingering death; and once she nearly collapsed with fright when a looping vine caught her about the neck unexpectedly and she thought it the folds of a python.
And then, after an hour of this, she stumbled unexpectedly into an elephant path, its powdery surface marked by the passage of numerous other animals. Unfortunately for her purpose it ran almost east and west instead of north and after following it into the east for the better part of two hours, it began gradually to veer southward, taking her further and further from the caves of her father.
Her only hope was that sooner or later she would come upon an intersecting trail that would lead northward. The thought of leaving the narrow strip of open ground and plunging back into that green maze was more than she could endure. And so she went on, staggering now and then under the lashes of heat and weariness, finding an occasional waterhole to quench her thirst and stripping fruit from trees and bushes to satisfy hunger.
Near nightfall she came upon a large clearing through which flowed a wide shallow stream. It had been several hours since last water had passed her lips and sight of the river lifted her spirits. She pushed her way through a heavy growth of reeds on the near bank, knelt and drank thirstily, then slipped out of her tunic and submerged her entire body in the brackish liquid.
Emerging at last, she dried her body with handfuls of grasses, her lithe, sweetly rounded figure gleaming like an image molded of pure gold in the fading sunlight. Her spirits were soaring again, for when first leaving the water she had glimpsed the beginnings of a second trail into the forest—a trail pointing straight as a spear shaft toward the north.
Already her plans were made. She would spend the night among the high-flung branches of that tree at the trail's entrance, when dawn came again she would start out once more—this time toward home.
Donning her tunic she ran lightly toward the tree, its base buried among a heavy growth of bushes.
While from the depths of tangled undergrowth near the bole of that tree, a pair of glowing yellow eyes were fixed in an unblinking stare upon the swiftly approaching girl!
A storm was blowing up. Tharn, belly flat against a broad branch while he gnawed the sweet pulpy interior of a hard-shelled fruit, caught the signs of it in the scent of the air, in the uneasy pattern of a shifting breeze, in the faintly yellowish cast of the sky overhead. He mentioned the possibility to Trakor, who, wedged into a fork nearby, was dozing in the heat of day.
"A nice dry cave would come in handy if the rain comes," the youth observed. "I know how Gerdak's warriors hated being caught in a storm. They say the jungle is never more dangerous, with winds blowing branches through the air with the speed of flying spears, great trees being uprooted to crash down and crush the unlucky, while Rora, the lightning, flickers angrily about their heads."
"It is a part of jungle living," Tharn said philosophically. "This one will not come for half a sun yet—if it comes at all. Or it may be only a little storm."
"And if it is a bad one?" Trakor asked.
"Then we find a very big tree that is not too old and stand under it until it passes."
"But sometimes storms last for many suns!"
"Not at this season. The rain may fall for suns on end but then the wind is not too strong and there is no danger in moving about."
This was the sixth day since he and Trakor had set out in sustained pursuit of those Ammadians who were holding Dylara. They traveled mostly during the morning and afternoon hours, laying up during the heat of day. To Trakor every hour brought new confidence, increasing dexterity in tree-top travel and his store of jungle lore, under the expert tutelage of Tharn, increased by leaps and bounds. He could stalk Neela, the zebra, or Bana, the deer, across wide stretches of grasslands and, more often than not, get close enough to this wariest of all prey to bring one down with a single spear cast. Tharn had spent all of one sun making him a bow, and with it and a handful of arrows from Tharn's own quiver the boy had learned to handle the weapon with some degree of success. No member of the cat family had faced him and his new-found abilities thus far, but the time must eventually come and he looked forward to it with ill-concealed impatience.
But it was in the trees where Trakor excelled. Already he could keep pace with Tharn for short periods, although he was far from being able to match his friend's over-all agility and stamina. Only when it came to racing swiftly through the trees in the blackness of night was he hopelessly outclassed; for here success depended on an uncanny kind of sixth sense that Tharn had managed to develop only by constant practice and use since almost the day he was able to walk.
Nor was Trakor capable of such quick thinking as that displayed by his hero. A sudden development would freeze Trakor momentarily, while Tharn, because of both environment and heredity possessed reflexes that would have put Rora, the lightning, to shame, would already have the situation in hand.
And as the days passed the bond between the two of them increased in strength and permanence. To Trakor, Tharn was even more a god than on that day he had dropped from the skies to save the youth from the fangs of Sadu. He sought to emulate everything about him—his expression, his walk, his way of speaking—even his way of thinking. Almost every word the mighty Cro-Magnard uttered was stored deep within the mind of his worshiping companion, to be secretly mulled over and absorbed. As for Tharn, he admired the boy's boundless enthusiasm, his unflagging desire to master the lore of the jungle, his uncomplaining acceptance of hardship and his quiet courage.
To Tharn the jungles and plains of his world made up all he wanted from life. To range far and wide in search of adventure, to match his wits and prowess against its savage denizens, animal and human, had made that life complete. With the advent of Dylara, and love, fresh horizons had opened before his eyes, but not once had he pictured life with her as his mate as closing the door on his previous existence. He would have her, he reasoned, and the jungle too.
But with the admission of Trakor still another phase presented itself. Self-sufficient as he had always been, even unto childhood, loneliness was no more than a puzzling word. But now he caught himself thinking of ranging those jungles and plains with a companion—one nearly his own age—and the thought pleased him more than he permitted to show. As the days passed the resolve grew to bring Trakor with him and Dylara back to his own people. Always there would be the three of them—Dylara, Trakor, Tharn, inseparable.
The eddying gusts of wind suddenly brought a strangely familiar scent to Tharn's sensitive nostrils, dispelling his mood of reverie and bringing him instantly upright on the swaying branch.
Trakor, startled by the abrupt move, looked up at him sharply. Tharn was standing with head thrown slightly back, his nostrils quivering, his entire body as motionless as though cut from stone.
"What is it, Tharn?"
Tharn's eyes went to the boy and in them was something that brought Trakor beside him instantly.
"Come," the cave lord said.
Side by side they set off through the trees, following the winding path far below. Tharn was moving swiftly, and when he elected to do so few in all the jungle could match his pace. Trakor, to his consternation, began to fall steadily behind and he put on a fresh burst of speed, taking chances he ordinarily would never have dreamed of. Despite this, Tharn continued to widen the gap and within minutes the youth lost sight of him altogether.
The passage of both was practically soundless, for that is important for survival in the wild. As a result Trakor was unable to make use of his ears in trailing the other, but as Tharn had continued on above the pathway, it would seem logical that he would continue to do so. He hesitated to call out, for to do so, he thought, would be to confess his lesser ability; besides a cry might serve to warn whatever had excited Tharn's interest.
While far ahead of him now, Tharn raced onward, his face an expressionless mask, his heart thudding with desperate hope.
Five dust-covered, disheveled men moved steadily along a winding game trail, the rays of a noon-day sun pouring down on their tunic-clad backs through rifts in the arching branches overhead. They moved in single file without speaking, almost without thinking, their every energy intent only on cutting down the distance between them and the major portion of their party.
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 moving against the 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!"
The man'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!"