These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him, and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.
And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.
A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath them. His lip curled at what he saw.
The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons were two long knives and a club.
"So," said Noork, "the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like this."
Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the stains from the dead man's foggy robe.
The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.
Ud tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy. For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal war.
A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.