Thereat the fat Roy smiled a crafty smile. “I shall take you before Att the Terrible,” he said.
It thus became evident that this fat chieftain had falsely asserted his belief in the kingship of Grod for the purpose of securing from Myles an admission as to which side the earth-man favored.
The rest of the night Myles spent on a pile of smelly bedding in a tent. He was still bound, and was kept under constant surveillance by a frequently changing guard. By morning, his arms below the elbows had become completely numb, in spite of his having loosened his bonds somewhat by straining against them.
When the velvet night had given place to silver day, the guard brought some coarse porridge in a rough stone bowl, which he held to the prisoner’s lips until it was all consumed. Myles thanked him politely, and then asked if he would mind chafing the numbed arms.
For reply, the soldier kicked him savagely.
“Get up!” he ordered. “The time is here to start the march. You’ll wish the rest of you were numb, too, when Att the Terrible starts shooting arrows into your inverted carcass.”
Presently, Myles was driven into the open, the tents were struck and loaded onto carts—probably stolen from the Vairkings—and the furry warriors took up the march, with their prisoner in their midst. The fat chief alone rode in a cart; all the others walked.
By straining at the thongs which bound his arms, Myles further loosened them sufficiently to relieve the pressure on his blood vessels, and then by wiggling his fingers, he managed finally to restore the circulation.
After that he began to take some interest in his surroundings.
His captors were a coarse-looking lot of brutes, with long gangling arms, thickset necks, low foreheads, and prognathous jaws. In general, they more closely resembled the anthropoid apes of the earth than they resembled the really human, although furred Vairkings.