For Og, with vehement, enthusiastic words, was explaining to these, his own people, how he would soon lead them into battle against the Marinoids! Rax and its sister cities would be captured; the Marinoid men killed or reduced to slavery; and all the beautiful, peaceful Marinoid domain turned over to the rule and the enjoyment of Og and his people!
It made us shudder; but we held ourselves quiet. Caan, older than Prince Atar and I, pulled us back when in our eagerness to hear Og’s every word we would have pressed thoughtlessly forward and risked discovery from below.
These people called themselves Maagogs—two long, very harsh syllables. Down here under the Water of Wild Things, hidden away in caves, mud-holes and subterranean tunnels, there were doubtless thousands of them—dragging out a furtive existence, menaced on every hand by monsters of the deep. To them, Nature herself must have seemed an inexorable enemy, as though their very being were against her laws, her wishes.
For centuries they had apathetically struggled on. And then, as though to blot them out entirely, Nature had turned on them still further. Of recent years the pallid, dull-eyed Maagog women had borne but one female to three males. The Maagog women were dying out; soon the race would become extinct.
With this dearth of women of their kind, Maagog men of the more prepossessing appearance (a generation before) had smuggled themselves into the Marinoid race. Their children—half-breeds—were living there now, with their Maagog heritage unsuspected by the trusting, simple-minded Marinoids.
All this and more, Og explained to the throng of Maagogs he had assembled before him, as he outlined his plans of what he now proposed to do.
“Quiet!” murmured Caan to Atar and me.
Og’s voice went on. He had left Rax and come back to the Water of Wild Things because he loved his own people. It had been his idea that they steal the Marinoid women. The Maagog race must go on—on to conquest, to victory!
A cheer rolled out as he said it. But we who listened knew it was Og’s own personal advancement—and not love of his people—which actuated him. And his very next words made that plain.
He—Og the Executioner—would lead his people to victory. And he would rule them as King. Og the Executioner! Thus he referred to himself. We did not know at the moment just what he meant. But, as you shall hear, we were soon to learn in very ghastly fashion.