She was not going on this way much farther; her nerves, steady as they were, could not take much of such suspense. Only deep enough into the jungle to keep the inexperienced Ammadians from following her trail; with the coming of Dyta, the sun, she would locate a game trail pointing in the direction she wished to go, then descend to the ground and follow it.
An hour later her trembling limbs refused to continue this inch-by-inch progress. And so Dylara made her way toward the high flung branches of a forest patriarch to where Jalok, the panther, and Tarlok, the leopard, dare not go. Here the foliage was less compact and Uda's pale beams displayed to her rapt eyes an endless sea of tree tops everywhere about her.
Finding a comfortable fork fully a hundred feet above the jungle floor, Dylara composed herself to wait the coming of dawn. Finally she drifted off to sleep, while far below a lion roared that he had made his kill and filled his belly for the night.
And not long after, a jungle dweller, swinging swiftly through the trees, came to a sudden halt on a swaying branch as a vagrant breeze brought the scent of her to its quivering nostrils. For a full minute it remained motionless as if carved from stone, then it turned sharply aside and went on, fairly flying along the dizzy pathway of swaying boughs, following that scent spoor to its source.
While Tharn was puzzling over the strange disappearance of Trakor, his keen ears caught a sudden yell of surprise from the direction of Gerdak's caves, followed by a chorus of exultant exclamations that told him the Cro-Magnards had flushed some sort of game and had succeeded in bringing it down.
Quickly he lowered his captive to a broad branch, stuffed a handful of leaves into its mouth, bound them there with a short length of vine, then lashed the wrists to the tree bole. This done he was on the point of swinging off to investigate what lay behind those sounds when he caught a glimpse of a familiar object swinging from a neighboring branch.
His blackwood bow and quiver of arrows left earlier with Trakor! With them in their accustomed places along his back and shoulder, Tharn swung the short distance between tree and clearing. From a wide branch he gazed down at the scene below.
A knot of enemy warriors was moving slowly toward the caves of Gerdak, among them the still struggling figure of Trakor. Wavering flames of resin-wood torches lighted up his features and Tharn saw there was only rage in his expression and nothing of fear. Already shouts from the group had aroused others of the tribe and a score of them were running forward to meet it.
With quick, certain movements of his powerful hands Tharn unshipped his bow and withdrew several arrows from his quiver. Steadying himself on the swaying branch, he notched an arrow, drew back the stubborn wood, steel muscles moving under his naked back, took careful aim....