Doc Savage: Skull Island (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (34 page)

The desiccated head bounced with each step, in a macabre dance of death.

Overhead, the half-moon continued its slow majestic rise, throwing light that painted the marching Dyaks until their charcoaled skins shone eerily, like ashy ghosts.

One word burned in their brains:
“Kajai!”
Headhunt!

Chapter XLIII

CLARK SAVAGE, SENIOR, heard the mighty roars of the beast-god Kong, and feared for the worst.

Extricating himself from the mound of dirt and debris that the ape-beast had caused to crush him to the ground, he had watched his son being carried off by the big black-haired brute. His Very pistol was lost—buried in the heavy filth.

Savage had attempted to follow, but it was a useless undertaking. His legs were too tiny, his steps too small. There was no catching up with the great ape that walked in what seemed like seven-league strides.

Stubbornly, he commenced a trek to Skull Mountain regardless, Chicahua leading the way, slashing through the jungle with his machete.

It was quicker work to hack than to circle around the dense foliage. In the darkness, they had no certain sense of the surrounding terrain. In time, they found their way to the River of No Return. Walking single file, they followed its rustling banks.

“Keep a sharp watch for Dyaks,” the captain warned his Mayan crewman.

Chicahua needed no such admonition. He gripped his machete with fists of hard bone, the knuckles standing out with white intensity.

In his heart was loyalty. But in his brain burned the desire to decapitate those who had removed the heads of his brother and fellow crewmen.

Now they were making their way to Skull Mountain and, after a period of silence, a thunderous roar split the night, sending unseen frightened things scattering amid the brush.

“Kong is awake,” he told Chicahua.

But the Mayan had no thought of Kong. His obsidian eyes searched for humans.

Their eyes stayed focused on the looming eminence that was Skull Mountain. They were coming up on it from its blank rear flank. It didn’t resemble a death’s-head from this angle. It might have been an ordinary mountaintop of the stony type.

So it was that they failed to detect the Dyak outrigger canoe slipping up behind them, following the course of the river, determined oarsmen propelling it along at a brisk clip.

Their first indication of danger came when something flicked past Chicahua’s right ear.

Lifting a hand, he smacked at the ear, thinking it a pesky insect. It was a natural mistake to make. Bugs had bothered them all along, and the fear of Dyak darts had grown dull after so many false alarms.

But Captain Savage, treading behind his Mayan, was not so complacent.

Whirling, he spotted the dugout, propelled by blank-faced oarsmen.

“K’ulel!”
Captain Savage called out. Foes!

Out came his revolver. He took dead aim and knocked a warrior into the water before the man with the blowpipe could accomplish his dirty work.

The splash was followed by sharp cries of anger.

Chicahua came around with his blowgun rising to his mouth. He dropped to his haunches, just as a dart whistled over his head. His reflexes, once awakened by danger, were blinding.

The Mayan’s cheeks blew out and the man with the empty blowpipe standing in the dugout bow found a feather sticking in his shoulder.

The bitter bite of curare entered the Dyak’s system, made him go cold all over. He collapsed in the bow, eyes glazing. He took a while to die. By that time, it was all over.

Dyaks leaped out of the dugout and began splashing to the opposite banks. They were brandishing their iron blades. Their intent was clear. They were seeking heads.

Captain Savage accounted for two more of them. His revolver barked twice, spitefully. Each shot was true. Dyak screams caused the others to break off their attack and fall into retreat.

But it proved to be a tactical retreat. They found shelter, began crawling off.

Chicahua by this time had inserted another dart into his cane blowgun. He began seeking a target.

Only one Dyak remained in the dugout—a man with an oar. Seeing the blowgun turning toward him, he began backing up frantically. Too late.

Chicahua expelled a harsh breath and impaled the man’s tongue in his open mouth.

The Dyak dropped his oar and began hacking and spitting, his mouth full of feathers, his impaled tongue already paralyzed, so that he could not cry out.

The man pitched forward in death, his paddle dropping into the rapids.

Captain Savage rapped out a curt order in the Mayan tongue.

They raced for the dugout, plunging into the tumbling river and scrambling aboard.

TAKING up the oars, they began rowing toward Skull Mountain.

It was no easy thing. The river current was against them. But it could be done.

Seeing this act of piracy, the Dyaks crouching in the weeds sprang to their feet and took off in pursuit, yelling,
“Kembali! Kembali!”
Come back! They looked comical, chasing after their own canoe. But it was no laughing matter.

Paddling hard, Captain Savage spied fresh figures lurking around a bend in the tumbling stream.

“Could that be my son?” he wondered aloud.

But that was hope speaking. The new arrivals were dark of skin and feathered and ornamented as no white men ever were.

“Dyaks!” he hissed vehemently. Mentally, he counted the bullets in his revolver and the cartridges in his belt. They were insufficient for the task at hand.

Behind them, the wildly pursuing Dyaks began yelling.

“Musuh! Musuh!”

That meant “enemy.”They were between two fires now. If these were civilized men—even pirates—they might surrender and ask for terms. But the only terms the Sea Dyaks understood were head trophies.

Turning to Chicahua, Captain Savage barked in K’iche,  “We will disembark and split up. They may catch us both, but they will have to work at it.”

But Chicahua had other ideas.

Poling the dugout canoe to the left bank, he stepped out and drew his machete. Screaming rage, he fell upon the nearest Dyak warrior charging toward him.

It was madness. But if so, it was divine madness.

Chicahua plunged in, machete held high. The Dyak met the down-sweeping steel with his own ringing blade of iron. They clashed, separated, clashed again. And off came the Dyak’s sword hand at the wrist. The power of the Mayan—and his superior blade—would not be denied.

Sweeping around, Chicahua separated the falling man’s head from his neck. It was a lucky strike. The blade edge passed between two vertebrae, otherwise the results might have been less decisive.

Another Dyak came around. Chicahua inserted sharp steel into his foe’s vitals, twisted hard. That brought an agonized screech.

The scream had a marked psychological effect upon the others.

White men they had battled, and vanquished, but not this coffee-skinned demon. Seeing the havoc he was wreaking, they backed away cautiously.

Out came their blowpipes. Ironwood mouthpieces found pursed lips.

“Jalk’atij,”
Captain Savage barked suddenly to Chicahua. Stand aside.

Up came the revolver of Captain Savage. Bullets began splitting facial bones before they could inhale. One lucky shot ran the length of a blowpipe, destroying the open mouth behind it.

It became a strange battle there amid the cattails by the cascading river.

As his captain’s pistol barked and its cylinder turned with each squeeze of the trigger, Chicahua selected a fresh victim and eviscerated him, as if slaughtering a wild boar.

Soon, they had whittled down the Dyaks in the front.

The ones bringing up the rear broke, milled about, began attempting to regroup.

Methodically, Captain Savage picked them off where he had a clear shot.

Finally, the last smoking shell was expended.

Captain Savage holstered his useless revolver and glanced back at the forbidding mass of Skull Mountain.

Down came a roaring that shook the blood. But there was nothing to be done about that. It was time to face Death.

Sweeping up a fallen
mandau,
Captain Savage walked deliberately toward a Dyak who writhed in his death agonies. He relieved the dying man of his
duku
knife.

A dripping red blade in each hand, he turned to help Chicahua with his bloody work.

They could claim his head only after he had sent many of them to their Maker….

Chapter XLIV

OVER THE THUNDEROUS Kong roars, Doc Savage heard the strident sounds of struggle. The salty tang of blood came to his sensitive nostrils. Almost immediately, it assailed him in an overpowering tidal wave of hot odor.

Before he could speak the words, Stormalong Savage snapped, “Combat!”

“Coming from the river,” rapped Doc.

A moon-burnished apparition, the bronze man pitched in that direction, Old Stormy sprinting hard behind him, a floppy-bearded scarecrow.

They tore through brush and ferns, oblivious to everything else.

Doc leaped over an obstacle he thought was a ground-traveling root. It was only after he passed it and heard a grunty noise that he realized he had narrowly escaped running into a slumbering sail-backed dinosaur of a type he had never encountered in any book. It was no lizard-like Dimetrodon, but rather a creature sporting a duck-like bill and a fabulous bony crest, one that walked upright when awake.

The “root” had been its recumbent tail….

After making sure that Old Stormy had maneuvered his way around it, Doc focused on the path ahead.

He broke out of the trees without regard to his own personal safety. Looking west, the bronze man spied a clot of men in hot contention.

The tall form of his father was in the center of the melee, Chicahua loyally beside him. They stood back to back, fighting off with shimmering and sparking blades a clutch of close-pressing Dyak warriors, attired only in loincloths and colorful headbands sprouting upright black-and-white feathers.

Dropping to one knee, Doc inserted a dart into his blowgun, then pushed it out with all of his formidable lungpower.

The dart struck true. It pinned a tattooed shoulder blade. A man jumped. Twisting, he went down.

Turning his attention elsewhere, Doc had released a second vicious missile.

This one, too, found a man’s shoulders. A fresh yelp of surprise resounded. And another Dyak corkscrewed to the ground.

This brought redoubled fury to the defensive work of Captain Savage and the Mayan. Their blades rang and scraped opposing blade and bone. Blood spurted.

By this point in the fray, Doc Savage was rushing to the aid of his beleaguered father. He had his Bowie knife out now, and he plunged in, point-first.

The gleaming steel fang penetrated a throbbing jugular vein. Doc stepped back ahead of the inevitable jet of pumping blood.

His fist smacked a tattooed face, broke the jaw out of skew. Another dark face turned to confront him. Bronze knuckles mashed the nose flat.

The stunned Dyak never felt the Bowie blade hook in and open up his stomach wall, allowing its contents to disgorge in an unpleasant pile at his feet.

The Bowie knife was a terrible weapon, but not more terrible than a curved
mandau
sword. Yet in the Herculean bronze man’s fists, it became an unstoppable thing of penetrating steel.

Dyaks fell, broken, then retreated, howling.

Coming in from another direction, Stormalong met them with his vicious slasher-claw weapon. He opened up the throats of those foolish enough to mistake his white beard for easy prey. Possibly, they thought his bearded head would look good in their longhouse back in Borneo.

If so, they made a fatal mistake.

Dayak swordsmen died with their blades not yet bloodied, their tattooed throats gaping redly.

One skulker slipped up from behind,
mandau
held two-handed, poised to take the white-haired head in the single swift sideways stroke required of the Iban headhunter.

Unfortunately, the Dyak was considerably shorter than his intended victim, who towered over all.

Hearing the beginning sweep of the curved blade, Stormalong whirled, jumping back. The blade bit, slicing off the greater portion of his whipping beard.

Howling his wrath, Stormalong snatched at the floating length of beard and flung it in his foe’s eyes.

By the time the Dyak got his vision freed, his sternum had been opened by a downward swipe. He fell backward, and a second slice of the vicious claw savaged his throat.

The sight of the great wiry scarecrow with the yellow eyes of a lion standing unscathed over so many fallen had a stark psychological effect of the survivors.

The Dyak warriors who could, broke for the trees.

STANDING back-to-back with his father and Chicahua, Doc sheathed his knife and employed his multiple-barrel blowgun to send fleet darts winging after them. Two went down. Those who made it into the trees had better luck. Most escaped with their lives.

No darts came whispering back in their direction.

The three Savage men gathered together and for a long time, only their eyes communicating their unspoken feelings.

“I have seen the elephant, my boy,” said Captain Savage in an emotion-thickened voice. “And I now believe.”

“You are referring to Kong,” returned Doc.

“I am.”

“Orders, sir?”

“Back to the ship, posthaste.”

“We may make it before daybreak if we hurry,” advised Old Stormy.

Just then, the Earth shook. Crowns of trees trembled in sympathy. Winged things gave forth startled cries and flew off.

Their searching eyes turned in the direction of Skull Mountain, silhouetted by the brilliant tropical half moon.

A roar rippled over the grassland. It was as if the sound created a blade-disturbing wind.

“Kong is coming,” warned Stormalong Savage, fumbling at the remains of his beard.

“We had best hurry,” suggested Doc.

Turning, they ran for the forest. The fact that it was the same patch of jungle that had swallowed their surviving assailants mattered little now.