Tomar staggered lamely to his feet, his own head swimming dizzily. He had only enough time to suck a little air into his lungs before Ylana threw herself upon him, starry-eyed, sobbing with relief, her cheeks wet with tears.
She hugged him and kissed him passionately. Aching in every muscle, and groggy as he was, yet the boy did not complain. He felt completely wonderful, very heroic and manly. And Tomar would not have been completely human, had he not been grateful to whatever unseen Fates may rule our lives, that they had permitted him a wide-eyed witness to his savage battle, in the form of the girl in whose opinions he was so singularly interested.
“However did you do it,” Ylana gasped, smothering him with wet kisses. “That huge, ugly brute! Ugh! And with only your bare hands!”
Surprised, Tomar glanced at his hands. The fingers of one fist were still curled tightly around the handle of the dagger. In the fury of the battle, he had completely forgotten to use the knife, and had stupidly attempted to stun Charak into unconsciousness with only his balled fist, when he could easily have driven the sharp point of the dagger into his hairy breast!
He grinned feebly, saying nothing.
He also decided never to explain to Ylana that the fine and manly art of fisticuffs had been something that he had learned from Prince Jandar, whose pugilistic prowess was unheard of on the jungle Moon.
Tomar was learning…
RECOVERING his strength, the boy―albeit with understandable reluctance―gently disengaged the girl’s warm arms from about his neck, and led her from the village into the darkness of the night. He feared that the sounds of his struggle with Charak might have aroused the villagers to pursuit, and wished to be across the river and into the jungle’s edge, where Jugrid and Thadron and the other Cave Country warriors lay in hiding, before their escape was noticed.
But the darkness of the night was no longer what it had been when first he had swum the racing flood and crept through the grasses into the lanes between the village huts. Now at least two of the gorgeous moons were aloft to lessen the gloom, and already the vast and ochre-banded globe of mighty Jupiter was part. way risen over the horizon. Soon it would occupy nearly one-quarter of the sky, and its orange and tawny golden glory would flood the entire landscape with a luminance almost as brilliant as the full light of day.
The boy and girl had crept only a little way from the edge of the village of the River People before the gloom of night was lit with golden illumination, rendering them quite visible to any eye that might chance to be watching in their direction.
And eyes, in fact, there were!
For the grunting scuffle of Tomar’s battle against Charak, while not particularly loud nor of very lengthy duration, had come to the ears of lonely sentinels. And these soon raised the alarm. In less time than it takes me to describe the scene, the hue and cry were loudly on the heels of the fleeing youngsters.
Swiftly turning from the council fires as the alarm of the sentinels split the night, the warriors and hunters of the tribe snatched up stone axe and club and flint-bladed knife and spear, and came pelting through the spaces between the huts to discover the cause of the alarm. Pausing but a moment at the but wherein Ylana had been imprisoned, it took them a single swift, all-encompassing glance to discover the girl no longer tethered to the centerpost, but fled into the night through the long rent cut by Tomar’s knife in the rear of the hut.
Then the hue and cry was raised in earnest!
At the edge of the village, they discovered the sprawled figure of Charak, bruised and beaten. It was Charak’s confidant and chief lieutenant, Ugar, who came upon the groggy bully first and raised him to his feet.
“That way;” mumbled Charak, gesturing. “Took m’ spear… “
“How many of them?” demanded Zuruk the chief. When Charak fumblingly explained in thick, halting words that the girl captive had been rescued by only one warrior, and that but a half-grown boy, the chief said nothing but raised his eyebrows in exaggerated amazement.
Several of the other men of the tribe, who disapproved of Charak’s belligerent warmongering and supported Zuruk’s peacemaking between the tribes, exchanged eloquent, mocking glances, and more than a couple of them laughed.
Ugar growled an oath and flushed, scowling. But Charak himself was still too groggy to resent the humor expressed over his humiliation at being so soundly thrashed by a mere boy.
“There they are!” roared Ugar, pointing. The others looked down the grassy slopes to the thick reeds along the edges of the river. In the golden radiance of mighty Gordrimator, the fugitive girl and her rescuer could be glimpsed, wading into the shallows.
Ugar led the pursuit. A howling mob swept down upon Tomar and Ylana, composed principally of Charak’s most vociferous supporters and some of the more hot-headed of the younger members of the tribe. Eager to seize the runaways himself, and thus redeem a portion of the vanquished Charak’s honor, Ugar imprudently waded out into the shallows after the two.
Tomar knew that he could not get across the river with Ylana to safety before the River People caught them. So the boy turned to face the angry Ugar. Cold water lapped to his knees and there was an empty feeling in his gut that he did not like. The taste of it against the back of his tongue was almost the taste of fear, and fear has a nasty taste. Tomar did not dare to flee; the only thing left to do was―fight!
Lunging forward, he thrust the blade of the spear into Ugar’s belly.
The man yelped―staggered―and sat down suddenly in the water, his face pasty white, his eyes blank. They were as glazed as had been the eyes of Charak when Tomar had knocked him unconscious.
Then Ugar fell forward face down, and floated, while the rushing water around him slowly turned red.
Tomar thrust out at the second man, who knocked his spear aside with his own, and closed with him, roaring. Suddenly Ylana was there, snatching the knife from Tomar’s waist-thong. She thrust out, drawing a jagged crimson furrow down the hairy forearm of the River warrior. He cried out and snatched back his arm, dropping the spear into the water. The current caught it and dragged it from his reach, but Ylana grabbed it. Then both of them were armed, and the mob of River People hung back a little, yelling and waving their spears, each trying to egg on the next man, while hanging back himself.
“Come on!” gasped Ylana, touching Tomar’s arm. The boy turned and followed the girl out into the middle of the stream. The current was stronger here, but the river was shallow enough at this point that the two youngsters could wade across, which they did, each holding their spears high above their heads so the current would not drag at their arms or their weapons.
Seeing the two were escaping made the war-hungry supporters of Charak angry enough to overcome their trepidations. They began to wade out into the river after the fleeing pair. Others from the village now came after the younger hotheads, and among these were both Zuruk the chief and Charak himself, now fully recovered from his fight with Tomar, and filled with bellicose rage.
The warriors came across the river, a dozen in the fore, but thrice that number following close behind.
By now Tomar and Ylana had reached the other side, brushing through the reeds that grew in the shallows, and scrambling up the far bank.
The distance from the riverbank to the edge of the jungle was not very far at this point along the stream, but it was far enough. Tomar grimly knew that the two of them would not be able to reach a place of safety before they would be attacked.
He also knew that even though they were both armed with spears, the two of them would be no match for a dozen angry warriors on equal ground.
FROM the screen of thick bushes at the jungle’s edge, Jugrid and Thadron had watched with bated breath the escape of the two young people. Several times during the tenser moments, Jugrid’s grip on his stone axe had tightened until the great thews stood out along his arm like cast iron. Each time he had been on the point of commanding the warriors of Thadron’s band to attack in order to defend his daughter and her brave young rescuer. Each time the crisis had passed without that necessity.