My fellow keraxians would have been most uneasy had they thought they might be sent out against yathribs, for these are far more dangerous and not so easily killed with spears. Yathribs are dragon cats of the Grand Kumala, whose rippling, steely-thewed catlike bodies are armored in glittering emerald scales, which pale to tawny yellow at the belly plates. Their feet are armed with slashing bird claws, and a row of jagged spines runs down their tails to the lashing tip. Being more reptilian than mammalian, and sheathed in tough, flexible scales, they are considerably harder to kill than deltagars.
I, frankly, burst into cold perspiration at the thought of fighting against either brute, armed only with a wooden spear. A bazooka or a satchel of fragmentation grenades would have been my choice had I been consulted in the matter.
In time I did get a chance to compare notes with my partner in misfortune, Ergon. We encountered each other on the third day of our training, when we were being drilled in the ceremonial march around the vast bowl-shaped stadium. During a rest period, I sauntered over to where he squatted and clapped him affectionately on the shoulder. He grinned up at me, his froglike face gleaming with perspiration. In this strange theater of death, among hosts of strangers, it was good to find a friend you knew.
“How are the keraxians?” he inquired. “I understand you will be set against a pride of deltagars brought hither from the jungle country.”
“So the barracks gossip has it,” I replied. “And how are things among the tharians? What manner of beast will you be fighting?”
“The prevailing opinion among my peers is that they will send vastodons against us,” he said, naming the great elephant boar of the jungles. The brute has the slate-gray leathery hide of the terrestrial pachyderm, but the head more closely resembles that of the wild boar, with its little pig-eyes, coarse black bristles, long, prehensile snout, and blunt, vicious tusks. They are wicked fighters and dangerous because, while large and heavy, they are also very fast and charge like lightning. I commiserated with him.
“And, as for the rest of your query,” he grimaced, rubbing his shoulder muscles, “things are about as usual among the tharians. The maces we are armed with seem to grow heavier every day, and I am discovering muscles I did not even know I possessed. I discover them chiefly,” he said in wry tones, “when they begin to ache!”
I laughed. He was regarding me with a curious expression in his eyes.
“You have taken to covering your hair, I see,” he remarked.
“Why, yes, Ergon. No particular reason, except that everyone seems to find my yellow hair so unusual that, just to spare further questions as to my homeland, I have adopted this mode of headgear,” I said. The fact of the matter was that I went in deadly fear of being recognized. Many of the members of Prince Thuton’s court visited the training fields to watch us work out, and I feared lest one of these sports buffs might recognize me from my earlier exploits here in the City in the Clouds. So I had adopted a light linen headdress, similar to that worn of old by the Pharaohs of Egypt, which covered my hair and shaded my eyes to make their blueness less noticeable. I had explained this unusual hair―covering as one worn by ancient custom among my people, and the spearmaster had no reasons to refuse me this small courtesy.
Ergon smiled rather cryptically, but said nothing.
Then he dropped his bombshell.
“Among my team members there are several that once served among the Chac Yuul,” he said casually. “They relate a marvelous account to explain how the Black Legion was driven forth from the city of Shondakor the Golden, and in particular they are full of stories about a remarkable adventurer with yellow hair and blue eyes and light skin, a fellow named Jandar.”
I cleared my throat. “Oh?”
“Yes. According to them, this Jandar is a singularly heroic fellow. Disguised as a mercenary swordsman, formerly in service to one of the Perushtarian Seraans, he entered Shondakor alone when it was in the hands of the Black Legion, joined the legion and worked his way up to a position of command and single-handedly rescued the Princess Darloona from a forced marriage with the despicable son of the chief warlord of the Black Legion.°”
“These things are always exaggerated in the telling,” I said, with a poor semblance of indifference.
“Oh, doubtless,” smiled Ergon. “This Darloona, by the way, is the same young woman who is now held prisoner here in Zanadar, and upon whom Prince Thuton is pressing his suit. Like most other leaders, Prince Thuton refuses to learn a lesson from past history, evidently. For the story runs that this Jandar is still alive, and if I were in Prince Thuton’s place, I would carefully avoid forcing a marriage upon this Princess Darloona. For the last time she was in such a position, this Jandar fellow overthrew the entire Black Legion to free her. To one who has already conquered the Black Legion, the Sky Pirates themselves should not prove very difficult an obstacle to overcome.”
I looked steadily into his eyes, abandoning all pretence of indifference.
“Just what is it that you are trying to say, Ergon?” I asked quietly.
He smiled. “Nothing, really. Except that I keep my mouth closed on the secrets of those few whom I call my friends. And one thing more…”
“What is that?”
“If this Jandar should happen to make an appearance here in Zanadar, by any chance, I would be proud to stand at his side with naked steel in my hands and fight against his foes. To the death, friend Darjan. To the death!”
Then the guards came, marshaling us into ranks again, and I had no opportunity to reply to his vow. But we did exchange one long, deep look, into each other’s eyes, and when we parted, my heart felt somewhat lightened.
For in my coming battle, I now had at least one ally.
Chapter 12
THE FESTIVAL OF DEATH
As well as Ergon of Perusht, I had one other friend in Zanadar, and that was one of my fellow keraxians, a warrior named Zantor. He was a native-born Zanadarian, with the papery-white skin and lank hair and jet-black eyes of his race. A towering broad-shouldered giant of a man was Zantor, and a man of brooding sorrow and grim, sullen moods.
He had once been one of the Sky Pirates. In fact, he had been a great chieftain among the Captains of the Clouds, as the corsair princes of Zanadar are known. At the helm of his galleon, the Xaxar―“the Terror”―he had been famed among the Sky Pirates as much for his phenomenal good fortune as for his unusual traits, for among the cruel and rapacious sky hawks of Zanadar, it was Zantor alone who had a sense of honor and chivalry, a dislike for the indiscriminate shedding of blood, and a stern sense of justice, tempered with mercy.
From this position of high repute he had at length fallen, and his fall was due in large measure to this gentler side of his nature. For he had unwisely objected to the brutal slaughter of three hundred rebellious slaves during an uprising in the arena slave pens only six months before. He had dared criticize the justice of Prince Thuton himself and had petitioned him for mercy on behalf of the slaves. For this gesture of civilized restraint, Thuton had cynically stripped him of all rank and honor, chaining him among the arena slaves, with the cynical observation that if Zantor so bemoaned the death of the rebels, he was welcome to die among them.
But Zantor had not died. He had fought against savage men and wild beasts thirteen times in the great games of Zanadar, and each time he had survived the ordeal among the victors. For this he had become something of a hero even to the Sky Pirates themselves, who would otherwise, taking their cue from the attitude of their prince, have despised him as a milky-livered coward. But even the cruel Captains of the Clouds could not but feel admiration for so mighty a fighting man as Zantor. In all the annals of Zanadar, he was the only gladiator in a thousand years to have fought bare-handed against a ferocious bull yathrib, slaying the monster, and surviving to tell the tale.