The courtyard filled with warriors. They charged him. Tarzan struck right and left with his knife. Dying men and women fell back from Tarzan's brutal onslaught.
Close as the warriors were to one another, arrows were out of the question, so they charged the ape-man en masse, armed with their blades and spears.
The sounds of Tarzan's knife glancing off spear points and sword blades filled the air. The warriors foamed over him like ants on a carcass. The first to arrive were the first to die. Tarzan's knife wove a web of steel so intricate and fast, that there in the moonlight it looked as if he were a six-armed god wielding a weapon in every hand.
They tried to leap on him all at once, but the entire crowd was pushed back. Tarzan came clear of them snarling like a wild beast, the remains of some unfortunate's throat clutched in his teeth. Tarzan spat out the warrior's flesh, raised his head, and bellowed, "Kreeegah! Tarzan kill!"
The warriors foamed over him again, and once again the ape-man threw them back, flicking them from him the way a dog might shake water from its fur.
But now more warriors were arriving, scores of them, and even Tarzan with all his skill and might could not hold them. They rose over him like a great storm wave, washed him to the ground beneath a rain of fists and feet and weapons.
Chapter 18
UNDERGROUND, UNAWARE OF Tarzan's plight, or that of his comrades. Hunt and Jad-bal-ja proceeded. Hunt noticed there were large, rotting timbers throughout the cavern. Many of the timbers had crumbled down, and others were in the process. It appeared that at one point, whoever had used these caverns had abandoned them to whatever it was that lived down here. The bridge they had used to cross the chasm showed that the area was still visited periodically, but it appeared repairs were no longer maintained.
The reasons for these repairs seemed to be the gradual weakening of the cavern itself. The centuries had worn it down, and whoever was custodian of these caves had attempted to keep it in shape with the timbers, reinforcing it like a mine shaft. As this mission was abandoned, the timbers had begun to rot. In time, Hunt concluded, this entire cavern would fall in on itself.
The torch was still burning briskly, but Hunt knew that shortly it would be exhausted. He knew too, as Jad-bal-ja knew long before him, that the thing down here was stalking them now, almost playfully. Hunt could smell it. It had an odor. A strange odor. Like something dry and ancient, From time to time Hunt thought he could hear more than its footsteps, a kind of rattling and rustling of parchment skin, but ultimately it was an unidentifiable noise that reached down into some forgotten part of his brain and fired an alarm. Hell was coming.
Even the great lion that padded beside him had taken to looking over its tawny shoulder, watching for the appearance of something unnamable. Hunt and Jad-bal-ja turned as the tunnel turned, and shortly thereafter, came to a dead end. Hunt felt a tightening in his chest. It was not bad enough that he was being stalked by an unnamable thing, but now there was nowhere to run. He and Jad-bal-ja were trapped.
Going back the way they had come was useless. The thing would be blocking their path. It had known it was driving them into this corner, and now Hunt could hear that rattling and rustling sound louder than before. In fact, the only thing louder than the noise it was creating was the pounding of his heart.
The tunnel filled with the creature's foul smell, and Jad-bal-ja crouched, twitching his tail, not anxious, but ready to do battle when the moment arose.
Hunt moved the torch around the tunnel, lifted it upwards. Above them there was a split in the rocks. It wasn't a great split, but it was enough that if they could manage their way up there, they could slide through.
Hunt stuck the torch between two rocks, put the spear partially through his belt, and tried to find hand- and footholds. This was relatively easy. A large number of rocky slabs jutted out from the tunnel wall. Hunt began to climb. He moved swiftly. When he reached the summit of the tunnel wall, he turned and looked toward the hole, which from this angle he could see led into a narrow tunnel. It was a slightly precarious jump, but it was not a leap of great distance.
Hunt held his breath and jumped, caught hold of the interior of the tunnel, and pulled himself inside. He looked down. Jad-bal-ja had not moved. Hunt was unsure if the lion would understand him, but he knew he had to speak to him, try something. "Come."
The lion lifted his head and looked at Hunt above him. The lion studied Hunt for a moment, then the wall. He bounded up the slabs of rock, and as Hunt moved aside, the lion leapt easily into the open shaft.
A heartbeat later, the torch began to flicker, and something moved into the tunnel below. Its shadow creeped against the cavern wall. Hunt's pounding heart pumped furiously, knocking his temples like bongos. He could not see it clearly, there in the shadow of the dying and flickering torch, but what he saw of it unsettled him to the bone.
Actually, the flickering of the dying torch gave the creature an even odder appearance, as if its image had been painted on cards in various positions, and an unseen band was flicking the cards, giving the beast the illusion of movement. It had to be an illusion.
Because nothing Hunt had ever seen moved like that.
An instant later, Hunt decided its movements were not like flipping cards after all, but like old film, only faster. The thing clicked and clattered like an electrified poodle on a tile floor, but it gave the appearance of having been constructed of sticks glued to a single, larger shaft Sticks that substituted for arms and legs. Sticks wrapped in mummified leather, with knots where muscles should have been. A stick thing with great mantislike hooks on its "hands" and a head that resembled a great rotting pumpkin full of very nasty, twisted teeth constructed not of bone, but some kind of dark chitinous material like an insect's skeletal structure.
There were no doubts in Hunt's mind that this was what he had seen depicted in the cave drawings. But the drawings, which made it appear like a rabid praying mantis, did not do it horrid justice.
This was a thing from the pits. It moved its body as if it were not subject to the natural laws of musculature- animal or insect. It rotated its head completely around. It stalked about the dead-end corridor like a spoiled child that had misplaced a toy.
It looked up and saw Hunt and Jad-bal-ja looking down. And the thing smiled. If a blackened pumpkin full of gnarled, chitinous teeth can be said to smile. The torch flickered over the smile and gave the teeth a reddish glint.
Then the torch went out.
The sun rose pink against a startling blue sky, and the day grew hot early. All night Hanson had sat by the body of Small, his rifle pointed at the bound Wilson. Neither he nor Wilson had spoken or slept. Wilson was not in a position to do much of anything, bound the way Hanson had bound him, and Hanson was in such a black, raging fever it was all be could do not to empty the rifle into the man, even though Wilson lay in a helpless position.
During the night, Hanson had listened for Billy's return, or the stealthy reappearance of Cannon. To prepare for such, he had built a small fire in the middle of the trail and surrounded it with dirt so that it would not spread, then he had dragged Small's body and Wilson into the jungle, and there they had sat. Hanson, hot with revenge, throbbing with pain from his wounds, alert to the return of Billy or an assault by Cannon, had positioned himself in such a way he could see the fire, and if Cannon were to return with murderous designs, drawn by the light of the campfire, Hanson hoped to get the man in his sights and kill him. It was all he could think about. Cannon and Wilson were responsible for so much misery, they deserved to die.