Dylara
Uda, the moon, had not yet risen above the trees when the Cro-Magnon youth plunged into the wilderness of growing things. As a result he found his way purely by his familiarity with the territory and a store of jungle lore not surpassed by the beasts themselves. Because of the dense darkness, he was guided by three senses alone: smell, hearing and touch; but these were ample when backed by the keen mind and superhuman strength bequeathed by heritage and environment.
The narrow game trail underfoot swerved abruptly to the west and rose rapidly. For several hundred feet the way was steep, became level for a short distance, then fell away in a long gentle slope to flatness once more.
All this was familiar ground to Tharn. The ridge containing the homes of his people was behind him now; from here on for a day's march was nothing but level country.
Now came Uda, her shining half-disc swinging low above the towering reaches of the trees, her white rays seeking to pierce the matted growth below. What little light came through was enough for Tharn's eyes to regain some degree of usefulness.
He was moving ahead at a slow trot, an hour afterward, when the shrill scream of a leopard broke suddenly from the trail ahead. Another time, and Tharn might have gone on—too proud to change his course in the face of possible peril. But tonight he had more urgent business than a brawl with Tarlok.
Turning at right angles into the wall of undergrowth lining the path, he vaulted into the lower branches of a sturdy tree. With the graceful agility of little Nobar, the monkey, he swung swiftly westward again, threading his way with deceptive ease along the network of swaying boughs, now and then swinging perilously across a wide span from one tree to the next.
Directly below was the beaten path; and now he caught sight of the animal whose scream he had heard. Tarlok was pacing leisurely in the same direction as that of the man overhead, pausing occasionally to give voice to his hunting squall, his spotted form barely visible among the shadows. Tharn passed silently above him, the leopard unaware of his nearness.
Onward raced the Cro-Magnard, his thoughts filled with the quest he had undertaken alone. His savage, untamed mind had dwelt so steadily upon the outrageous attack, that it finally brought an emotion so powerful as to be almost tangible: Hate, and for a companion, Revenge.
Never would he rest until this unknown tribe had felt the weight of his own personal wrath. For what they had done they must pay a thousandfold in lives and misery.
Without warning, the forest ended; and the cave lord dropped to the ground at the edge of a great plain, its bounds hidden in the ghostly moonlight.
A line of broken grasses began where the game path ended. So fresh was the trail, now, that Tharn knew he had best wait for sunrise before continuing the chase. He had no wish to dash headlong among the ranks of the very enemy he pursued.
A few moments later Tharn was sleeping soundly in a crotch of a high tree, his slumber undisturbed by the long familiar noises of a jungle night.
The sun was an hour high when he awakened. His first act was to climb to the highest pinnacle of the tree, and from that point attempt to pick out, if possible, the goal of those he sought.
He was immediately successful. Due west, far in the distance, he saw hills rising steeply amidst another forest. His sharp eyes followed a wide line of broken grasses, noting that it pointed unerringly toward those same heights.
Tharn smiled grimly to himself. Soon the first member of that war-party would make the initial payment on the blood-debt. Making certain his weapons were in place, the broad-shouldered young man slid to the ground and took up a circuitous route, avoiding the open plain, which brought him finally to the forest's edge at a considerable distance away from the others' point of entry at the far side of the plain. If he had crossed the plain, sharp eyes might have noted his pursuit from just within the forest edge.
Once the trail was picked up again, he took to the comparative safety of the middle terraces. Soon he was moving in absolute silence above a narrow pathway winding into the gloomy interior, the imprints of many naked feet clear in the thick dust. But he no longer needed such evidence; the humid breeze was bringing the assorted smells of a Cro-Magnon settlement close ahead.
So close were the hills by this time that he was momentarily expecting the trees to thin out, when he caught the sound of a faint movement from below. Warily he slipped downward until, parting the foliage with a stealthy hand, he made out the figure of a tall muscular warrior standing in the trail, his attitude that of a sentry.
Tharn felt his pulses quicken as a new emotion came to him. In all his twenty-two years he had never been called upon to take a human life, and he found the prospect somewhat disquieting. Yet it was just such a purpose that he had in mind and there was no point in wasting time with self-analysis.
Noiselessly he slid to the ground and stepped onto the trail a few paces behind the stranger. With infinite stealth he lessened the space between the unsuspecting warrior and his own half crouched figure. Forgotten was the knife at his belt; his purpose was to close fingers about the other's throat.
Now, he was sufficiently near. The muscles of his legs tensed for the spring—and the enemy whirled to face him!
When the guard saw the young giant's nearness and threatening position, his eyes flew wide in surprise and fear. His jaw dropped, but no sound came; his arms seemed frozen to his sides.
Before he could recover, Tharn was upon him. As the young cave-man's fingers clamped on the stranger's throat, a knee came up with savage force into Tharn's stomach, almost tearing loose his hold. But the maneuver cost the man his balance, and he fell backward with Tharn's weight across his chest.
Frantically the warrior fought to loosen the terrible grip cutting off his breath. He clawed wildly at the iron fingers, struck heavy blows at his attacker's face and body. But Tharn only tightened his hold, waiting grimly as the efforts to dislodge him became increasingly weaker. Then a convulsive shudder passed through the body, followed by complete limpness. The man was dead.
Tharn got to his feet. For a long moment he stood there, staring in wonder at the dead, distorted face. His thoughts were a jumble of conflicting emotions: pride at vanquishing a grown man by bare hands alone; strong satisfaction in an enemy's death; and a feeling of guilt at taking a human life. What was it that Barkoo had told him, long ago?
"Death cannot be understood, completely, by one who has never killed. A true warrior takes no life without knowing regret. Slay only when your life is in danger, or when someone has wronged you. Those who kill for the love of killing are beneath the beasts; for beasts kill only for cause."
Tharn stooped, swung the corpse across his shoulder and entered the jungle. There he concealed the body and once more took to the trees.
The forest ended suddenly, some fifty yards from the base of an immense overhanging cliff. A single glance told Tharn that he had reached the trail's end, and he leaped lightly into the branches of a tree at the lip of the clearing. Swiftly he swarmed upward until a broad bough was reached that pointed outward toward the hillside.
Below and before him went on the everyday life of a Cro-Magnon village. Four women carved steaks from the freshly killed body of a deer; naked children climbed in and out of the caves and ran about the open ground; two girls, several seasons short of woman-hood, scraped hair, by means of flint tools, from a deerskin staked flat to the ground.
There was but one thing lacking in this peaceful, commonplace picture, and Tharn noted its absence at once. There was not a single grown male in sight! Did this mean a trap had been laid for the pursuit which the warriors of this tribe had every reason to expect? Were they, then, lying in wait for Barkoo and his men at the outer rim of the forest?
Tharn was about to start back toward the prairie, when he suddenly stiffened to attention. A woman—a girl, rather; she could not have been more than eighteen—had slid to the ground from one of the caves. The man in the trees half rose to watch her.
She was a bit above average in height, slim, yet perfectly formed. That part of her body not covered by the soft folds of panther skin was evenly tanned but not darkly so. Soft, lustrous brown hair fell to her bare shoulders in lovely half-curls that gave off reddish glints when touched by the sun's direct rays.
This breath-taking young person was coming straight toward the very tree that sheltered him. As she drew nearer, he could make out her features more clearly, and he saw that the wide eyes were also brown, flecked with tiny bits of Dyta, the sun (or so he thought); her cheeks were high but not too prominent, her nose rather small but beautifully shaped. She walked gracefully, shoulders back, her head lifted proudly, an almost saucy tilt to her chin.
She passed beneath him and went on into the forest. Tharn came down quickly and set out to follow. Why he did so was not considered; some strange force drew him on. Less than twenty feet separated them, now; but so guarded were his movements that the girl was not aware of being trailed.
And now a small treeless glade stopped the stalker. Not daring to follow further, he watched her take an empty gourd from its hiding place in a clump of grasses and set about filling it with rich, red fruit from a cluster of low bushes.
Tharn watched her intently from behind the bole of a mighty tree. His eyes feasted on the matchless beauty of her face and form. Forgotten completely was the driving motive that had brought him this far from home. The flaming thirst for revenge was dead, quenched entirely by a flooding emotion, new to him but old as life itself.
A little later he saw that the girl's search for berries was bringing her close to a tree some fifty feet to his left. Swinging easily into the foliage overhead, he moved silently along the boughs until the strange princess was directly below.
And as he drew to a pause, Tarlok, the leopard, rose from the screen of leaves just beneath him and, crouching briefly, sprang without warning at the golden form fifteen feet below.
That second of hesitation on the part of the cat, saved the girl's life. Tharn, trained to think and to act in the same instant, was in mid-air as Tarlok's claws left the bark. And so, inches from that softly curved back, the beast was swept aside by the impact of a hundred and seventy pounds of muscular manhood.
Snarling its rage, the cat wheeled as it struck the earth, then pounced, almost in the same motion, at Tharn's half-kneeling figure. But, swift as was the movement, the man was quicker. Crouching under the arc of the hurtling body, the Cro-Magnard drove his long knife to the hilt in the white-furred belly. The force of the leap, plus the power behind that strong right arm, tore a long, deep gash, and the animal fell, screaming with pain and hate. Quickly he regained his feet and again threw himself at the two-legged creature in his path. But Tharn easily avoided the charge and vaulted into a nearby tree.
Blood streamed from the fatally wounded leopard as it turned to the man's leafy haven and attempted to scramble into the lower branches. The effort cost Tarlok his remaining strength, however, and he toppled heavily to earth. Once more he sought to regain his feet, only to collapse and move no more.
As Tharn came down to the floor of the glade, he wondered why the scream of the giant cat had not brought enemy warriors running to the scene. That none had appeared made certain his belief that they were elsewhere in the neighborhood, and he breathed easier.
As soon as Tharn reappeared, the girl whose life he had saved rose from a clump of bushes a few feet away. And thus they stood there, each eyeing the other with frank interest.
Tharn's brain was awhirl. So much that was new and exciting had crowded into it within the last few hours that he was incapable of rational thinking. But this he knew: something had been born within him that had not been there an hour ago.
He spoke first. "I am Tharn," he said.
The girl did not at once respond to his implied question. She seemed hesitant, uncertain as to the wisdom of remaining there.
"I am Dylara," she said at last, her voice low and soft, yet wonderfully clear. "My father is chief of the tribe that bears his name. The caves of Majok are there," and she pointed toward the cliff, hidden from them by intervening trees.
Under the impetus of crystallizing realization, Tharn said what he had wanted to say from the first. "I kept Tarlok from getting you," he reminded her. "Now you belong to me!"
The brown-haired girl flushed with mingled astonishment and anger.
"You are a fool!" she retorted. "I belong to no one. Because you saved me from Tarlok, I will not call my people if you go away at once."
She turned and would have left him had not Tharn reached out and caught her by the arm.
Instantly she wheeled and struck him savagely across the mouth with her free hand, struggling to break his hold as she did so.
Then Tharn, his face smarting, hesitated no longer. With an effortless motion he drew her into the circle of his arms, tossed her lightly across one broad shoulder and broke into a run, heading back in the direction of home. His prisoner let out a single cry for help; then a calloused palm covered her lips.
And hardly had the echoes of that shout faded than six brawny fighting-men rose from the edge of the jungle, directly in Tharn's path!
At sight of the newcomers, Tharn whirled to his left, and raced away with enormous bounding strides despite the handicap of his burden. With loud yells and frightful threats beating against his ears, the cave man vanished into the tangled maze beyond the clearing.
Pursuit was immediate. For several hundred yards the chase continued at break-neck speed. Compared to those behind him, Tharn's passage was almost silent, his lithe figure slipping smoothly among the tree trunks. And then into view came the shallow, swift-flowing stream which he had scented while still in the clearing. Dashing into the water he splashed rapidly up-stream for a hundred yards, a sharp bend hiding him from the point at which he had entered.
Now he saw ahead of him that which he had hoped to find—the immense branch of a jungle giant, hanging low above the water's shimmering surface. Upon reaching the limb he drew himself and his captive into the leaves; then, stepping lightly from bough to bough, his balance controlled by a single hand, he moved rapidly inland, passing easily from tree to tree. Now and then he paused to listen for some indication of pursuit, but nothing reached those keen ears except the familiar sounds of a semi-tropical forest.
Tharn was beginning to wonder what far-reaching effects this half-mad abduction would have on his future life. He tried to picture his father's face when he saw his son returning with a strange mate, and the image was not an altogether pleasant one. Taking a mate by force was not entirely uncommon among Cro-Magnon people, although he had heard the elder Tharn declare that no true man would do so. The Hairy Ones took their women in that fashion; but then they were hardly more than the beasts.
And Barkoo! Tharn shuddered at the thought of his teacher's reaction. He would say much—remarks that would sear the hide of Pandor, the elephant!
He shrugged mentally. Let them, then! Many would envy him his prize; for certainly none among the women of the tribe was half so fair. He hoped that between now and the time Dylara and he arrived home, she would prove more tractable. Were she to repulse him in front of the others.... He dropped the thought as though it were white-hot.
An hour later he descended at the edge of a small natural clearing. A spring bubbled in one corner, and beside it the girl was lowered to her feet. The man and the girl knelt to drink, then sat up.
Tharn glanced at her, and grinned when she promptly turned her back. She was angrily rubbing her wrists to restore the circulation his strong grasp had partially cut off.
"Where are you taking me?" she demanded, her head still turned away.
"To my caves and my tribe," Tharn replied. "You shall be my mate. Someday I shall be chief."
The quiet words brought the beautiful head quickly around, and the girl glared at him hotly.
"I would sooner mate with Gubo, the hyena!" she snapped.
Tharn's grin required effort. "I think not," he said calmly. "I will be good to you. You shall have the finest skins to warm you, the best food to eat. Your cave will be large and light, and no one will tell you what to do. Except me, of course," he added slyly.
She searched wildly for a telling retort. "I—I hate you!"
Tharn met the angry eyes with a serenity he secretly was far from feeling.
"You will love me. I will make you love me," he assured her.
By this time Dylara was so exasperated that she had almost forgotten her fright. What good did it do to argue with this headstrong youth? He turned back every command, every retort, with an unruffled aplomb that filled her with helpless fury. It was, she thought, like beating bare fists against a boulder. Angry tears welled up in her eyes, and she turned away, ashamed to show the extent of her agitation. Her father, she knew, would have warriors scouring the countryside in search of her. But how could they hope to follow a trail that led through the forest top? In all her life she had never heard of a man who used the pathway ordinarily reserved for little Nobar, the monkey. True, many of the tribesmen were accomplished tree-climbers, often ambushing game from their branches. But such climbing faded to nothingness when compared with this amazing man's superhuman agility and strength.
She stole a glance at his face. The broad, high forehead, the bronzed clean-scraped cheeks, the strong jaw and mobile, sensitive lips stirred something deep within her. She caught herself wishing she had met him under more favorable conditions. But, by taking her forcibly, he had turned her forever against him; she hated him with all the intensity of which she was capable.
And then, woman-like, her next words had nothing to do with her thoughts. "I am hungry," she said abruptly.
Tharn blinked at the abrupt change in the course of their conversation, but obediently he stood up.
"Then we shall eat," he assured her. "And it will be meat, too; I will show you that I am a great hunter."
It was a boast meant to impress. Dylara's lips twitched with amusement, but she said nothing.
Tharn raised his head, sniffed at the pungent jungle air, then set out through the trees, Dylara at his heels. Moving toward the east they came, a half hour later, to the banks of a narrow river. This they followed downstream until a game trail was reached.
Motioning for the girl to seek the concealing foliage of a tree, Tharn slipped behind the bole of another bordering the pathway. Drawing his knife, he froze into complete immobility.
Ten minutes, twenty—a half an hour dragged by. From her elevated position Dylara watched the young man, marveling at the indomitable patience that could keep him motionless, waiting. The strong lines of his body appealed vividly to her, although she was quick to insist it was entirely impersonal; she would have been as responsive, she told herself, had it been the figure of Sadu, the lion, crouching there.
Then—although she had heard nothing—she saw Tharn stiffen expectantly. Two full minutes passed. And then, stepping daintily, every sense alert for hidden danger, came sleek Bana—the deer.
Here was food fit for the mate of a chief! The man of the caves tightened his strong fingers about the knife hilt.
On came Bana. Tharn drew his legs beneath him like a great cat.
And then events followed one another in rapid sequence. As the unsuspecting animal drew abreast of him, Tharn, with a long, lithe bound, sprang full on its back, at the same instant driving the stone blade behind Bana's left foreleg and into the heart. The deer stumbled and fell. Dylara dropped from the tree, reaching Tharn's side as he rose from the body of the kill.
As he stood erect, still clutching the reddened blade, an arrow sped through the sunlight and raked a deep groove along his naked side.
At the shock of pain which followed, Tharn whirled about in a movement so rapid that his body seemed to blur. Before he could do more, however, a heavy wooden club flashed from a clump of undergrowth at his back, striking him a terrible blow aside the head. A searing white light seemed to explode before him; then blackness came and he knew no more.