“At once,” replied Astok. “Let us get under way now—there is naught to keep you here?”
“I had intended sailing on the morrow, picking up such recruits as the various Dwars of the Roads might have collected for me, as we returned to Dusar.”
“Let the recruits wait,” said Astok. “Or, better still, come you to Dusar upon the Thuria, leaving the Kalksus to follow and pick up the recruits.”
“Yes,” acquiesced Vas Kor; “that is the better plan. Come; I am ready,” and he rose to accompany Astok to the latter’s flier.
The listener at the ventilator came to his feet slowly, like an old man. His face was drawn and pinched and very white beneath the light copper of his skin. She was to die! And he helpless to avert the tragedy. He did not even know where she was imprisoned.
The two men were ascending from the cabin to the deck. Turjun, the panthan, crept close to the companionway, his sinuous fingers closing tightly upon the hilt of his dagger. Could he despatch them both before he was overpowered? He smiled. He could slay an entire utan of her enemies in his present state of mind.
They were almost abreast of him now. Astok was speaking.
“Bring a couple of your men along, Vas Kor,” he said. “We are short-handed upon the Thuria, so quickly did we depart.”
The panthan’s fingers dropped from the dagger’s hilt. His quick mind had grasped here a chance for succouring Thuvia of Ptarth. He might be chosen as one to accompany the assassins, and once he had learned where the captive lay he could dispatch Astok and Vas Kor as well as now. To kill them before he knew where Thuvia was hid was simply to leave her to death at the hands of others; for sooner or later Nutus would learn her whereabouts, and Nutus, Jeddak of Dusar, could not afford to let her live.
Turjun put himself in the path of Vas Kor that he might not be overlooked. The noble aroused the men sleeping upon the deck, but always before him the strange panthan whom he had recruited that same day found means for keeping himself to the fore.