I again repressed a smile, and tried to convince her that we had fought against full-grown males. Poor Tomar was scarlet about the ears from this verbal abuse.
More to change the subject than anything else, I asked her how it was that her marriage had been arranged by the tribal Elders rather than by her father, Jugrid, for she had described her father as chief of the Jungle People during her earlier discussion with Tomar.
She shrugged dispiritedly. “True, my father is chief of the tribe, but it is the Elders who interpret the will of the Unseen Ones,” she murmured. “He was helpless to oppose their wishes.”
I pricked up my ears at this, for it sounded rather as though the jungle girl was talking of her gods. And, if so, this was most unusual, as the peoples of Thanator, as I have often had occasion to remark in these journals, do not worship any gods.
“The Unseen Ones!” she repeated again, and a trifle impatiently. “Is it possible that your tribe is so remote or so unimportant that you are not under the scrutiny of the Shadowy Ones?”
“Perhaps we know them by another name,” I temporized. “If you could tell us a bit more about them … ?”
“I mean the Unseen Ones, of course,” she snapped. And that was that. It seemed impossible to her way of thinking that we did not know what she was talking about, and we could elicit no further information from her. And, at this point, I desisted from further probing into the matter, for whatever primitive gods her tribe worshiped might well be a taboo subject.
Tomar was still interested in learning more about the habits of our winged captors. I suppose the youth had noticed, as had I, the implications for our escape in the fact that the Zarkoon bird-men are dormant during the hours of day.
“Why have they captured us, anyway?” he asked. “We gave them no provocation and our own homeland is so very distant from their domain, that there is no reason for them to consider us their enemies …”
His tentative tones died away in embarrassed silence, for once again he had exposed his ignorance of the facts of everyday existence before the pert and scornful girl, who regarded him with contempt and even pity, as if he were mentally retarded. She turned to me.
“Is the boy completely stupid, or has he been sheltered from the harsh realities of life?” she demanded, while Tomar flushed and bit his lip. “Not to know the reason for which we have been taken by the Zarkoon!”
I could not help laughing. “If he is as you say, then I am no better, Ylana,” I admitted, “for I have been wondering the very same thing!”
Her huge eyes mirrored her surprise and consternation.
“But―did you not know that the Zarkoon are horrid cannibals―and that they will eat us alive when darkness falls” she cried.
And suddenly I didn’t feel like laughing any more.
Chapter 9
The Expedition of Lukor
While these events had been transpiring, consternation and alarm reigned aboard the Jalathadar and her sister-ships. The uproar of the battle on the bridge, when Tomar and I had fought back-to-back, striving to hold off the attack of the Zarkoon savages, had roused the occupants of several cabins. Only moments after we two had been carried off by our Zarkoon captors, my officers came rushing up the stair into the pilothouse, a bit late to effect our rescue.
As it happened, Koja and Lukor were the first to emerge from the stairwell onto the bridge. Lukor, his silvery mane tousled from sleep, a coverlet hastily slung about his middle, brandishing his sword, was the first to view the scene of carnage, and froze motionless, appalled.
Koja was next upon the bridge, his mighty whipsword held at the ready in one bony hand, solemn great eyes expressionless in the horny casque of his face as they surveyed the corpses strewn about the bridge in pools of human and Zarkoon gore.
“Now, by the Scarlet Moon, what has happened here?” Lukor gasped in complete amazement.
Icy winds shrieked through the shattered window. Without a hand at the pilot’s wheel, the great clipper of the clouds careened drunkenly, wallowing from side to side. Lukor sprang to steady the wheel while the Yathoon warrior stooped to examine the bodies which were strewn about the deck.
“One yet lives,” he observed in his emotionless, metallic tones. It was the young signal officer, Drango. The terrible claws of the bird-warriors had mangled his throat hideously, and he lay in a puddle of blood, but a spark of life yet lingered in his breast. Koja ripped open a case of emergency supplies stored by the wall and strove to staunch his ghastly wound while gallant old Lukor, cursing sulphurously, wrestled with the obstinate wheel.
Captain Haakon was the next to reach the bridge, with the fussy little Dr. Abziz virtually treading on his heels.
“Lords of Gordrimator―what is this?” the grizzled chief officer cried in consternation, viewing the gory shambles of the pilothouse. Staring at the wreckage and the corpses, he nudged one of the dead bird-men with his foot. “What monsters are these?” he demanded incredulously.
“They are Zarkoon, of course,” the fussy little geographer sniffed, avoiding pools of blood fastidiously. He bent over to peer more closely at the dead monster. “Fascinating! So they truly exist after all, and are not merely mythological beings! My colleagues at the Academy will be intrigued at the discovery …”
“Zarkoon? What in the world are Zarkoon? And how came they here?” spluttered the apoplectic captain.
“They flew, obviously! And they are winged, cannibalistic bird-monsters who are mentioned in certain of the ancient legends and sagas we possess concerning this hemisphere,” Dr. Abziz said primly, answering Haakon’s questions in reverse order.
“The monsters must have attacked the ship from the peaks below,” Lukor said excitedly, relinquishing the wheel to one of the pilots who had just come on deck. “What carnage! Someone go and rouse the admiral! And should we not give the alarm if the ship is under attack?”
“It would seem that those poor fellows present on the bridge beat off the attack of these monsters, before falling prey to their weapons,” Haakon growled, “for the skies are clear and naught is toward on the mid-deck … ah, Sojan? Did you call the admiral?”
The officer addressed as Sojan burst upon the scene, white-faced and gasping.
“The Prince is not in his cabin and his clothing is gone … he must have roused himself and dressed―”
“What’s this?” Lukor cried, scooping up a sword which lay against the wall. Turning it over in his hands, he peered closely at the bejewelled hilt. “‘Tis Jandar’s sword, or I’m a bald-headed deltagar!”
“What?” the cry burst from all assembled.
The dying signal officer stirred in Koja’s arms. ” . . Jandar … and Tomar,” he gasped feebly from bloody lips.
“What’s that, Drango, lad? Speak up―what of the Prince?” Haakon cried, stooping by Koja where he knelt, tending as best he could to the dying officer.
“… Both of them … carried off by the winged monsters …”
“Eh? Carried off, you say?” Haakon groaned in consternation. “But where, man―where? In which direction?”
But that question would not be answered. Drango was dead.
Signal-lamps flashed a message of tragedy and terror from ship to ship. The armada halted, and swung in a great circle, hovering about the wilderness of cloven peaks of naked stone whereinto the fantastic flying cannibal-monsters had borne off both myself and the youth, Tomar. A council of war was hastily summoned. Although it was exceedingly dangerous to attempt to cross from ship to ship in midair, especially by night and under a stiff wind, the chief officers of the three other vessels swung aboard the Jalathadar to attend the emergency council.