Young Thongor (19 page)

“Turn the men about, my man. We shall camp for the night in that large clearing we passed through an hour or so ago. And then back to the city!” the Daotar crowed delightedly. Then, at the look of blank incomprehension in the sergeant’s eyes, he laughed with vicious humor. “The barbarian in his flight has led his bandits past the Sign of the Skull…and ere night falls across the world, he will be in the power of Shan Chan Thuu!” he smirked.

The sergeant’s eyes widened in black, horrified amazement. His lips parted and he whispered to himself a dread phrase at which his men shuddered…and which even cooled the malignant joy in the heart of Dorgand Tul, and made the fat officer fumble at his throat, where a protective amulet of blue paste dangled on a silver chain.

“The Keeper of the Emerald Flame…”

“…Only the Nineteen Gods can save Thongor of Valkarth now,” the grizzled scout said under his breath.

2

Something in the Dark

Thongor of Valkarth was baffled.

He crouched in the crotch of a great tree, his keen gaze studying the jungle behind his track, and deep in his heart he felt a nameless qualm…a distinct yet shadowy unease. Something was wrong, yet he did not know what.

Lithely he swung down from his perch, dropped to a lower branch and clambered down a dangling vine, to drop lightly to the thick grasses of the clearing as might a jungle cat. His warriors, who had been resting while he sought the upper levels, rose now to their feet, turning questioning eyes upon their young chieftain as he appeared.

For a moment he stood silent, brows knotted in puzzlement. As the men of his band watched him, waiting for his words, there was not one among them who did not gaze at him with admiration. He was superb, the half-naked young barbarian, his bronze body with the thews of some savage god. Black and heavy as a
vandar
’s mane, his unshorn hair fell across his broad, naked shoulders, framing a stern, impassive face, strong-jawed and manly for all his youth.

Beneath scowling, black brows, his strange gold eyes blazed with sullen, wrathful, lion-like fires. Few men could meet the gaze of those somber, burning eyes, for behind them smoldered the fighting fury of a barbarian, whose savage heart had never learned the cooler temper of civilized men.

His powerful torso was clad in the plain black leather of a Lemurian warrior. A great cloak was flung back over his shoulders and a massive girdle bound his taut, rock-hard mid-section. The leather strap of a baldric was slung across his chest from shoulder to hip, and from it hung in its scabbard a mighty Valkarthan broadsword. A crimson loincloth and black leather boots completed his war-harness.

“What is it, Thongor?” one of his lieutenants demanded, as the long silence of their young leader began to puzzle the men.

The barbarian shook his head. “Strange, Chelim! The Shembian troops are—
going back
!”

Chelim, a tall, massive Zangabali with shaven pate and gold hoops in his ears, scratched his heavy, stubbled jaw thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s a trick?” he suggested. “Maybe they split up, one group returning, the other sneaking around, hoping to catch us off guard, once we were convinced they were all turning back.”

Thongor grunted. “Not a chance. I counted heads as they went through that big clearing near the lightning-blasted tree. Every man-jack of the troop is bound in full retreat.”

A scrawny, rat-like little man with one eye sniggered. “Chief? Maybe seven days o’ jungle muck and
vandars
in the night convinced them this is no place for Arzang Pome’s warriors, eh? A lot of craven-hearted dogs, those Shembians, anyway!”

Thongor grinned. “Well, maybe you’re right, Fulvio. At any rate, we’ll take no chances on being surprised. We’ll push on—even past nightfall—until we find a place that can be stoutly defended. On your feet, men. Mount up, and let’s get out of here.”

* * * *

Night fell, shadow-winged, across the edges of the world. Stars glittered like jewels in the dark sky, and soon the great golden Moon of elder Lemuria emerged from her palace of clouds to bathe the black jungles of Kovia in her silken, shimmering light.

Thongor and his bandits made camp in the hills, where sheer walls of rugged stone enclosed their position on three sides. The hill slopes were covered with loose, fragmented shale. Thongor believed that it would be impossible for any force to creep up on their position without dislodging underfoot a rattling miniature avalanche of broken rock, whose noise would give warning of the advance of the foe.

They watered their
kroters
in the small stream that trickled by the foot of the hills, built a fire to keep the beasts away and made a rude supper, gnawing on cold joints of meat and dry cheese, washed down with thin, sour ale in waxed skin bags.

Then, setting his sentries, Thongor curled up on a bed of dry leaves under the shelter of an overhang of rock, wrapped his great cloak around him against the night chills, set Sarkozan, his great Northlander broadsword, near to his hand and fell asleep almost instantly. Even his giant frame was weary from the long trek through the jungles, and from boyhood he had learned the knack of falling asleep at will. His boyhood, spent on the wintry plains of the wild north beyond the Mountains of Mommur, had taught him the survival skills known only to a barbaric people such as his own Black Hawk tribe. To survive in a rugged, frozen land, where the forces of hostile nature were leagued with savage enemies and monstrous predators against human life, one learned early—or one did not live long. Thongor learned—and lived.

It was four years since all of his tribe had fallen in battle against an enemy tribe. Since that savage day, he had left the north. Down across the wintry steppes he had come, through the rugged mountains. He was a hardy, bronzed youth of seventeen when he reached at last the lush jungle lands and splendid, glittering cities of the Dakshina, as the Southlands of Lemuria were known. And for the two years since that time, he had eked out a precarious living as thief and wandering adventurer, and now, most recently, as a bandit chieftain in the wilderness of Chush and Kovia. He had joined the caravan raiders eight months ago, and fought his way up the ranks to the leadership of the band, slaying the former chief, Red Jorn, in a barehanded battle to the death.

Some might think it odd that a youth of nineteen, scarce more than a boy, should lead a band of experienced warriors, most of whom were half again, or twice, his age. Odd, perhaps, but not illogical. For Thongor, from the first hour he had entered the ranks of Jorn’s raiders, had proved himself bold, fearless and indomitable. As for his men, seasoned veterans all, their very lives depended on the quality of the leadership of the band, and if the young barbarian, not yet twenty, could prove his superior gifts, they were willing to swallow the fact that he was younger than the least of them.

The secret of his swift domination of the bandit company may have been summed up in a single phrase: at nineteen, Thongor had faced more perils, fought more foes, seen more of death, war and adventure, than any man of them.

It was his savage intuition that roused him now—

The scrape of leather sandals on rough stone. The click and rattle of a dislodged pebble.

The boy snapped in an instant to full, tingling alertness. Yet, in the transition from sleep to wakefulness, not a muscle moved in all his mighty frame. To the eye of any watcher, he was still slumbering in heavy sleep.

Again, the faint sound. And now his keen senses told him it came from directly above his rude couch.
Someone was descending the face of the steep hill. Someone was crouched just above the rock under which he lay
.

He rose lithely to his feet, drawing a long dagger from his girdle. The broadsword he let lay—it would make too much sound to draw the blade, and he would need his hands free. As silent as a jungle cat, the barbarian padded to the brink of the overhanging ledge. Emerging from under the low rock, Thongor rose slowly to his full height, flattening himself against the side of the wall of stone.

Dimly in the moon-silvered gloom, he could make out a crouching figure, black against the sky. It seemed to be surveying the bandit camp. One hand clutched a long spear, and it was the heft of this spear that had dislodged the pebble.

Like a striking snake, Thongor seized the unknown watcher.

3

Jungle Girl

He dragged the fiercely struggling figure down to the ground and sought to pinion its lithe arms. But it was as if he had seized a spitting, wriggling armful of clawed fury. It writhed and snarled in his grip like a maddened wildcat. Sharp nails drew lines of scarlet across his bronze hide and drew stinging furrows in his chest, cheek and shoulder.

Suddenly Thongor gasped with astonishment, released his captive and sprang back. For in their struggle, his arms had gone around the chest of his opponent from behind, and his hands had touched—not the flat, muscular hide of a male warrior—but the warm, pointed breasts of a young girl!

Illana the Moon Lady had receded behind a cloud moments before; now she displayed the glory of her unveiled visage, and by the sudden wash of silver light, Thongor could clearly see his foe.

It was a half-naked young girl, of his own age or a year or two younger, who crouched, stone-bladed dagger clenched in one small, capable fist, challenging him to continue the combat. Her slender body was bare save for a strip of fur worn low about her hips, and twisted about her slim loins. This and leather sandals and a bauble worn about her throat on a thong constituted her only garments.

Very lovely she was in the silver moonlight, her hair long, black, a shining cascade that poured over sleek shoulders and down her slender back to the firm rondure of her little rear. Her legs were long, adolescent, graceful. Her breasts were shallow but firmly rounded, warm, pointed. They rose and fell as she panted, and their surging rhythm drove his hot young blood to interesting speculations.

“Come, girl,” he growled. “Forgive my rough handling—I did not know what you were in the darkness. Come, let us be friends—I make no war on women.”

She crouched, wordless, moonsilver glinting on the flinty blade in her fist.

He straightened, laughed and tossed away his dagger, showing her his empty hands. She stood up reluctantly, fingering her stone knife, and finally thrust it into a
phondle
-skin sheath tied by thongs to her loincloth.

When she smiled, the pale round oval of her face, framed by shining black hair, was inexpressibly lovely. He felt a small pulse thud hotly at the base of his throat as he watched her bare body move in the moonlight.

“I am Thongor of Valkarth, the chieftain of this band,” he growled. “And I thought you were the vanguard of a troop of Shembian soldiers!”

She voiced a husky laugh. “I am Zoroma of the Pjanthan,” she said, “and I feared you were a troop of,” her voice dropped, “
ghosts!
”

He gave a grunt of laughter. “We are flesh and blood. But, tell me, girl, what are the Pjanthan? Never have I heard of them till now.”

“Jungle hunters,” she answered. “There are many tribes like ours in Kovia—how can you not know this?”

He rubbed his jaw ruefully. “Frankly, I know nothing of Kovia, save for the jungles around Shembis, the Dolphin City. We are bandits who raid the Shembian caravans, but now we have been chased deep into this jungle country, unknown to us, by the Sark’s soldiers. I fear we raided one caravan too many!”

“It is as I thought,” she said enigmatically. “You are strangers. Few dare come into these regions of the jungle—even the legions of Shembis never enter here.”

Thongor wondered why—wondered if the answer to that question might not also explain the curious retreat of the warriors of Dorgand Tul—but before he could ask, his sentinels, attracted by the sounds of their struggle, and the conversation, came over to where he and the girl stood, to see if everything was well with their chieftain. And by the time he had reassured them and, learning that the girl, Zoroma, hungered, saw to it that the remnants of their meal were put at her disposal, the girl’s curious remark had slipped his mind for the moment.

She slept for the remainder of the night in his bed of leaves, under his cloak, while he stood guard to make certain that none of his men, who had not seen a woman in weeks, did not abuse the hospitality he had offered her.

Many times her eyes stole to his stalwart figure as it stood before the overhanging rock, black and silvered bronze in the moonlight. But, at length, she fell into a fitful slumber, from which she did not awaken until dawn.

* * * *

They breakfasted on cold water from the stream and the small scraps of meat and cheese that remained uneaten. Then they pressed forward. Thongor was still uncertain as to whether the pursuing troops had retreated completely or were circling around, so he moved his men out early with all possible speed.

Zoroma rode his
kroter
and he walked alongside the beast. The trail through the hills was rough and rocky, but they made better speed over clear, dry ground than they had the previous days, hacking a path through dense jungles and the muck of rotting leaves.