After about an hour he was forced to abandon the search for his daughter and her friend. The wound in his thigh gave him pain and made him walk with a limp, and the exertion caused it to begin bleeding again. He took up a length of sturdy sapling and leaned his weight on the stick, to ease his injured leg, but soon he could go no further. He sought the highest tree he could find and clambered up into its topmost branches, where few of the larger or more dangerous beasts could come. Then he composed himself as comfortably as was possible under the circumstances, and patiently waited for nightfall. A few hours of rest would give the medicinal herbs a chance to ease his injured leg, and would refresh him.
Hunger and thirst were a torment, but Jugrid was born to the jungle and its ways, and knew nothing of civilized luxuries. His entire life had been one of iron endurance and stoic patience, and he had never known anything but the crudest and most primitive conditions. So he simply put his bodily discomforts out of his mind, as he had learned long ago to do, and endured.
IT seemed he had fallen into a deep, restful sleep, for he awoke suddenly as his catlike senses detected the approach of many men still at a considerable distance. He went from deepest sleep to full, alert wakefulness instantly, as the beasts of the jungle learn to do if they are to survive therein for long.
It was night, which meant that he had slept longer than he could have wished. But his weary body had recovered much of its vigor from the hours of slumber, so he did not begrudge the time lost. His wound pained him but slightly, and while the great muscles of his upper leg were numb and, at the same time, tender, he tested the limb until he was certain that it would bear his weight.
Many men were moving through the trees, making little sound. It was a war party of considerable size, he decided, listening intently, or a band of hunters. Creeping out on a long branch which overlooked the trail, he lay in the shadows like a great cat, watching up the path.
Soon they came into view, and he was relieved to see that they were strangers, and not the men of his own tribe. They resembled the warriors of the Cave Country, and were dressed very much like them, but around their necks they wore shells strung on thongs. By this token he recognized them as huntsmen of the River People, as the tribe which inhabited the southern part of the jungle plateau were known.
And then he froze, as their prisoner came stumbling wearily into view. Froze, all but his right hand, which stole to his waist where the long knife with which he had slain the dreaded deltagar slept in its sheath.
His fingers closed about the hilt of the knife, then faltered and fell away. And the heart of Jugrid tasted bitterness.
They were too many for him to attack, a single man. It would be suicide.
He lay there, stretched out on the bough, and watched with an aching heart as the savages led his daughter, bound and helpless, into captivity. And he knew in his heart that he could do nothing to help her, except to die trying to set her free.
Chapter 14
THE GHOST THAT KILLS
CHARAK of the River People felt satisfaction, and the taste of it was like wine to a thirsty man. The long day’s hunt had been a successful one, and many a plump beast had fallen to the bows of his warriors, and now dangled from poles carried over their shoulders. But the prize of prizes had been the dark-haired girl who stumbled wearily before him, her head bowed upon her breast, her wrists bound behind her back, her ankles hobbled with a length of sturdy thong.
Charak knew her for the daughter of the chief of the Cave Country, and the tribe thereof had been the enemies of his own folk from the beginning of time. As long as anyone could remember, there had raged intermittent war between the two tribes who were situated at the opposite ends of the great plateau. True, the old chief of the River People, Zuruk, had won a truce of sorts, and for a time had put an end to the age-old strife. But he was old now, his beard and mane hoary with the years, and ripe for the challenging. A young, bold, strong man might yet win the necklace of the chieftainship―especially if he was supported by the younger, more quarrelsome element of the tribe. And by that faction, Charak was looked upon as a spokesman and a leader.
The burly subchieftan grinned in his black beard as he thought of the reception he would receive when he returned at last to the huts of the River People, bearing for hostage the girl Ylana, chief’s daughter of the hated Cave-Dwellers. The young men would cheer him loudly, and would call for war! And war it would be, between the north and the south, let the old chief yammer of peace and truce as loudly as he wished. With such a hostage, it would have to be war, for the insult to the pride of Jugrid’s folk could only be wiped out in blood.
He winced as he strode the jungle path, and began to limp again, favoring his left leg, where Ylana’s fifth arrow had sunk to the feather in the flesh of his thigh. And he cursed the wench for her coolness, her calm hand, her steady eye. But at that, he had been luckier than Varap or Marook or Nord. They would never return from this day’s hunting, for her arrows had struck true in their case…
They had surprised her in the trees, or so they thought, but the girl had been ready for them, after all, and fought with the fury of a tigress. Only when she had exhausted her store of arrows had they been able to capture her, and even then she had led them a furious and exhausting chase through the treetops. Now, hobbled with a length of thong, he thought with a spiteful grin, she limped along slowly enough. From time to time he struck her with the stick he had cut to walk with, in partial repayment for his injury.
It annoyed him that, strike her as hard as he could, he could not wring a cry of pain or a whimper of complaint from the girl. Well, she would wax eloquent enough when they bound her to the fire-stakes, once the chief had condemned her to death!
Charak grinned at the thought. Zuruk, that peaceloving old fool, had years before concluded a treaty with Jugrid, which had been sealed with a marriage, for Zuruk had given his own daughter to Jugrid of the Caves for a wife. She had been Ylana’s own mother. It amused Charak to think that soon he would be able to force Zuruk to burn his own granddaughter alive, to appease the will of his tribe!
Just how he might work this, however, still eluded his agile wits. True, the younger men of the River People agitated vociferously for war, since only through warfare could they prove their manliness and win the warrior’s plume. As there had existed no state of war between the two nations for about eighteen years, there were more than a few males among the River People who felt cheated of their manhood, and who wished, either secretly or loudly in public, for an end to this unnatural state of peace.
But public pressure alone would not suffice to force the old chief to break his own treaty, much less to sacrifice his own granddaughter, whom he had seen only as a child, and that once only.
Suddenly, a gleam lit the eyes of Charak with cruel cunning. What if old Zuruk did not know the Cave girl to be his granddaughter? What if he somehow contrived to silence her so that she could not speak? Busily, his mind turned over possible courses of action with great rapidity. He could hardly have her tongue cut out, and plead that the injury had been given in the struggle to capture her, since no one would believe so unlikely a story.
He was trying to think of another idea when an arrow struck out of nowhere.
It took the young warrior at his side full in the throat, killing him almost instantly. As the corpse toppled on its face, Charak whirled, yelling the alarm. Alert warriors raised their shields, ready to face a charge.
But no charge came. Nothing rustled in the bushes, and there was nothing to be seen in the trees. The warriors looked at one another blankly. Everything they had ever heard about war led them to assume that first the attackers strike from ambush, then charge their victims, once they have stirred them to panic. Where, then, was the charge?