"Hold!" Suddenly the wall of the tent behind Bandhor's chair swept back, revealing a small private tent beyond it, and a tawny woman appeared.
White she was in the murky light as a ray of moonlight in the dusk—white, and splendidly formed in every supple line of sensuous body and limb. Jeweled cups covered her breasts, and a scarf of shimmering tissue was twisted about her sinuous loins and fell half down her thighs. With the grace of a stalking panther she advanced, accompanied by another blue-stained Zollarian captain, and took her stand beside her brother. In the flare of the torches she gleamed among those blue-tinted bodies like a silver wand.
"Bethink you my brother," she continued as Croft recognized in her that Kalamita, that feminine magnet of flesh, who had tempted Cathur's Prince Kyphallos through the spell of her unclean charms, her unhallowed embrace, "would destroy or even mar the weapon in your hand?"
"Hai, by Bel," began Bandhor.
"Aye," his sister went on. "Where are Bandhor's eyes? Call on Bel and you will, yet have you not sacrificed to him enough of blood to glut his heart, without adding this? See you not this is a man of importance—and one to me before this described? Mark you not the closeness of the hair upon his head, his stature? Know you not that before you stands the Mouthpiece of Zitu of whom Tamarizia boasts—him to whom Zollaria must mark the score of her defeat, her loss of Mazhur? Rather than for gaining information can Bandhor not think of a better way in which such a one may be used?"
"Hai—you mean a ransom, Kalamita my sister?" Bandhor burst out as she paused.
"Aye." The eyes of a tigress looked into Croft's as she answered, studied his every expression, marked the effects of her words. "Aye, Bandhor, and you and other captains—and the ransom—should be—large. Much should Tamarizia be asked in payment for her Mouthpiece of Zitu, who tumbles from the skies."
And suddenly she smiled as she broke off her flippant taunt—smiled and looked steadily into Croft's staring eyes.
"By Bel!" once more Bandhor roared. "The words of Kalamita are of wisdom. Go—Mamai. Take portions of the device from which he fell. See they are carried to Atla. Say that this man fell among us with them. Demand a parley, at which terms for his return shall be named."
"Aye, Bandhor!" One of the captains saluted and left the tent.