The unknown attacker seemed to have melted into thin air, for wary search parties went out to beat the bush, returning with no glimpse of the mysterious assailant. It was as if they had incurred the malignity of a ghost. Ghosts they knew all about, but―a ghost that kills?
TOMAR raised his head slowly, and met the eye of the tall, lithe warrior who stood over him with the spearpoint touching his breast just above the heart. The boy gulped and paled, for he knew their flight to have been hopeless.
It was Thadron, with a band of young hunters at his back.
“Your name is Tomar,” said Thadron quietly. “Tomar, where are your companions, Jugrid the Chief, and Ylana?”
“I do not know,” said the boy flatly, “and I would not tell you, even if I did know!”
Thadron said nothing, but increased the pressure of his hand upon the spear shaft. The sharp point of the flint spearhead indented the tawny hide of the boy’s breast, then broke the skin. A bead of bright blood appeared, and a scarlet trickle slowly ran down Tomar’s ribs. The boy bit his lip, but his resolute expression did not change.
Something very near to admiration appeared briefly in the eye of Thadron, and was gone. He removed the spear, turning to his men.
“Bind his hands,” he said. Then he added that they were to give him water and food. One of the men challenged his orders, pointing out that it would not please Xangan if he were to learn that they coddled fugitives. Thadron shrugged.
“There are so many things that do not please Xangan already,” he said, “that one more will do no harm. Feed him and give him water. We are men, not beasts.”
They resumed the pursuit, and before long they found the trail of blood that led to the dead deltagar. Thadron knelt to examine the body, brushing away the buzzing cloud of insects.
“This is Jugrid’s work,” he said briefly.
“Jugrid’s?” sneered Pandan, the warrior who had objected to giving food and water to Tomar. “You think he could slay a full-grown deltagar with a knife?”
“No one but Jugrid could have accomplished it,” said Thadron. “No one else would have the courage to try.”
Scouts sent out to range through the brush to every side of the clearing now returned with word that a party of hunters had passed this way very recently, headed south. Thadron debated, chewing his lip.
“It must be a party of the River People,” he decided at last. “For Xangan would not have dispatched two search parties on the same task.”
“Well, whoever they were, they ran into a little trouble,” grinned the scout. “We found blood, and the signs of a struggle.”
“Show me the spot,” said Thadron. Examining it, he smiled and rose to his feet.
“The smaller prints could only have been made by Ylana,” he said. “Therefore, she still lives. They would not have bothered to carry her dead body with them, which means they must have taken her prisoner. They will be bound for the River Country. Let us be on our way.”
“Where to?”
“To rescue her, of course. Although a fugitive, she is still a woman of the tribe. We shall attempt to take her from them, even if only to bring her back for punishment.”
They made good time through the jungle for about an hour, before one of Thadron’s men spoke, giving words to the thought that was within the minds of them all.
“Why would the River People capture one of our tribe? Has there not existed peace between us ever since Jugrid the Chief took to wife the daughter of Zuruk of the River?”
“It would seem,” said Thadron dryly, “that some among the River People have had a bellyful of peace, and wish to foment war. What better way to do this than to capture one of our people, pretending to have caught a spy?”
The other hunter grinned.
“Xangan will definitely not be happy with this turn of events,” he laughed. “He is such a coward, war is the last thing he wants. I will wager that when he hears of it, he will even let Jugrid be chief again, so that Xangan will not have to lead the warriors of the tribe into battle.”
Thadron could not help smiling at this estimate of Xangan’s bravery. But then his expression sobered.
“War is the last thing any of us ought to wish for,” he said somberly. “For generations we have fought, and children went fatherless, and women husbandless, and the old were hungry and uncared for without their kin. Since Jugrid the chief concluded peace with Zuruk of the River People, life has been easier and more comfortable, and few of us have gone to sleep with an empty belly. War is an ugly thing, and life, which is difficult enough even in the best of times, is made harder and more miserable thereby. Let us move more quickly, or we shall not catch up with them before they reach their own country.”
SHORTLY thereafter they found the first body, that of the warrior who had gone at the side of Charak. The arrow was still sticking out of his throat. Thadron examined it carefully, and when he was through he looked mystified.
“I recognize it,” he said. “It is an arrow tied by Tugar… “
“Come to think of it, Tugar claimed to have lost his bow and quiver when Jugrid and the others fled into the jungle,” said his lieutenant. Thadron nodded, and took the bloody arrow over to where Tomar stood under guard. He showed it to him.
“Is this one of the arrows with which Ylana or Jugrid were armed?” he inquired.
Tomar looked stubborn and kept his lips clamped tightly shut. But something about the serious expression in Thadron’s face and the earnestness in his voice loosened the boy’s tongue.
“Ylana had the bow,” he said reluctantly. “And the arrows in her quiver were tied in that manner, yes.”
The young lieutenant, Goran, spoke up.
“But if Ylana was captured by the River People back at the trampled place,” he demanded, “how is it that she is firing off arrows at them?”
Thadron shrugged. “I am not sure. Perhaps they left her bow behind, the arrows lost or exhausted. And then someone may have found the bow and retrieved the arrows, and is now using the weapon from ambush, to pick off the stragglers for some reason…”
“But for what reason, and who?” asked Goran.
Thadron said nothing, but increased the pace. It did not take Goran very long to figure out that the one person known to be somewhere in the jungle who had the strongest reason to hurry and cut down Ylana’s captors was―Jugrid.
They found a second body a while later, and then a third.
The advance scout was examining the trail when Thadron caught up to him.
“They are running now,” the scout said, with a grin. “See where they have begun to throw aside their shields and baggage? And over there, they dropped one of the game beasts they had taken. The arrows, striking from the darkness and the silence of the jungle, must be driving them half-mad with terror. They cannot know that it is only one man. Maybe they think it is a ghost!”
THEY passed four more bodies, left behind in the flight of Charak and his huntsmen. From these corpses, the arrows had been retrieved. Obviously, jugrid had launched his campaign of terror and retaliation with a strictly limited supply of barbed shafts, and was in danger of running out of arrows long before he ran out of enemies to kill.
Maintaining a swift and steady pace, moving through the aisles of a jungle they knew like their own hands, Thadron’s band crossed the plateau from north to south. Tomar, no longer bound, as his bondage would have impeded the ease of their progress, accompanied them willingly, even more anxious than they about the safety of Ylana.