“When the warriors of the village gather to battle against the Terror of the Skies,” he said clearly, “surely the stalwart and courageous Xangan will wish to stand in their fore, to display to all his valor and courage!”
Xangan was too agitated even to snarl. He peered about from side to side, as if hunting for a place to hide until the raid was over. Obviously finding one, he slunk away in the direction of the trees that grew thickly at the edge of the jungle rising at the end of the valley.
“I fear the warriors of the tribe will have to fend for themselves, lacking the example and the leadership of their new chief,” said Thadron, disgustedly.
Jugrid was straining his eyes at the winged horror aloft.
“In this instance, I fear I must disagree with you, my friend,” replied Jugrid in a curious tone.
Thadron glanced at him inquiringly.
Jugrid nodded aloft.
“I greatly doubt if this ghastozar will afford the warriors any opportunity to require the example or the leadership of Xangan,” said Jugrid.
“How so?” asked the younger man in a puzzled tone of voice.
“Because never before have these eyes of mine looked upon a ghastozar ridden by human beings,” said Jugrid of the Jungle Country quietly. “And since I observe three riders to be mounted astride the winged dragon, I can only assume the monster to be tame.”
Thadron turned his eyes searchingly aloft and observed that this was in fact the truth.
He had never seen a ghastozar with human riders either, and could not help wondering what so curious a marvel portended.
A few moments after this, his eyes widened even further.
For two of the riders who sat astride the monster pterodactyl were people he knew.
They were, in fact, people he thought long dead!
Chapter 10
A PIECE OF BONE
AS it happened, the warriors of the tribe had no need for their feather-tufted arrows or their flint-bladed spears. Before so much as a single barbed shaft could be loosed upon the monstrous flying reptile or its riders, a shrill voice screeched out a harsh command.
“Stop!”
It was Quone the Elder, the grandfather of Xangan the new chief. He was a tall, gaunt old man with a bald, knobby skull crowned with fugitive wisps of pale, colorless hair. His visage was remarkable in its extreme homeliness, with a prominent nose like a proboscis, and keen but rheumy, red-rimmed eyes. His skinny frame was wrapped in tanned hides, whose ragged fringes dangled about his bony shanks. His brow was crowned with gaudy feathers, and his wattled throat was hung with strings of beads and shells and the fangs of beasts.
He customarily wore an air of cold, supercilious hauteur and thin-lipped reproof, which lent to his physiognomy an expression antiquely Roman. But at this moment his agitation was such that his normally aloof repose was forgotten. He squawked and flapped his arms like a distraught old turkey.
Puzzled, the warriors exchanged reluctant glances with one another, and slowly lowered their weapons. They watched with fear in their faces as the lizardlike creature, which had hovered all this while on beating and batlike wings, settled heavily to the rocky floor of the narrow valley that stretched between the two walls of soaring cliffs in which the caves yawned blackly.
Quone hobbled forward stiffly, then flopped bellydown in the dust and groveled like a trodden worm before the slit-eyed little yellow man who now descended from between the shoulders of the monstrous flying reptile.
From the puzzlement in the faces of the warriors, you might have decided―correctly, I believe―that, with the sole exception of the seven Elders, few of the men or women of the tribe in all their long history had looked upon the actual person of one of the Unseen Ones whom they venerated.
The yellow dwarf exchanged a few crisp sentences with the cringing Elder in a low whisper, then turned to enter the cave from whose mouth the other Elders blinked querulously. At Quone’s command, warriors stepped forward to gingerly assist the two other riders to dismount from the giant reptile.
It would have been difficult for the two to have dismounted unassisted, for their hands were bound by thongs behind their backs.
As they were helped down from the back of the huge and curiously docile pterodactyl, all of the tribe saw and recognized them as Jugrid and Thadron had already done.
One of them was Ylana, the daughter of the former chief.
The other was the boy, Tomar, who had formerly been imprisoned, together with Lukor of Ganatol and Jandar of Callisto, in the selfsame prison-cave wherein Jugrid now abided the hour of human sacrifice.
The members of the tribe murmured and whispered among themselves at the unexpected sight of the two fugitives, who were known to have fled into the jungle long ago, and whom all, like Thadron, had presumed to be dead by now.
At the command of Quone the two were thrust into the prison-cave where Jugrid stood, and the door was locked behind them.
Then Quone scurried off into the cave of the Elders to confer with his lord and master, Zhu Kor, the last of the Mind Wizards.
THE eyes of Ylana widened incredulously at the sight of her father. Then they brimmed with hot tears and the girl, whose arms had been freed by the guards, hurled herself upon his broad and manly breast.
Jugrid enfolded her in his embrace and buried his head in her hair. For a long moment they clung to each other, then slowly they parted.
“Thanks be to whatever Spirits guide our fortunes, my child, that you still live and are not long-since devoured by the beasts of the wild, as I had feared!” Jugrid murmured in low, heartfelt tones. But then he added, grimly, “But my curse upon the capricious lords of our destiny, who have forced you once again into the hands of those who would do you ill.”
As soon as Ylana recovered herself, and mastered her emotions, she demanded to know what strange reversal of fortune had thrust the former chieftain of her people into such a sorry condition as this of imprisonment.
Jugrid fingered the base of his throat where now there no longer hung the fang-and-claw necklace of the chieftaincy, and his majestic features assumed an expression of resignation.
“It causes me no pleasure to admit that it was your own actions, my daughter, which have brought me low,” he said heavily.
The girl blinked.
“My actions, father?”
“Yes, my child,” said Jugrid. “When our former prisoners, including this youth here, whose features 1 recognize, managed to escape from this same place of imprisonment, it was believed by more than a few of the tribe that I, Jugrid, had taken part in setting them free.”
“But, father, it was I!” protested Ylana, and in a swift torrent of words which tumbled from her lips in a scarcely intelligible manner, the girl related how she had smuggled a small knife to Jandar and Lukor and Tomar, so that they might escape and flee into the jungles before their enemies, the Mind Wizards of Kuur, arrived to carry them captive back to the Underground City.*
Jugrid, who had remained ignorant of the precise manner in which the prisoners had escaped until now, nodded in comprehension.
“Ah, now at last I understand,” he rumbled in his deep voice. “In their escape one of the two guards at the gate was slain by such a knife, the other was knocked unconscious and died not long thereafter of a cracked skull. While many of our fellow-tribesmen believed that it was you, Ylana, who had somehow helped your friends to make their break for freedom, no one was easily convinced that a girl of your slender stature and few years could knock down a full-grown warrior and crack his skull, much less slay an alert guardsman with a knife. Hence, it was assumed that I, your father, had somehow been persuaded to do the deed, myself.”