The Return of Tharn Part 18

CHAPTER VIII

A PRIZE FOR VOKAL

"I tell you it is useless, Jotan," Tamar said. "For three suns now we have beat the jungle searching for some sign of her. How long do you expect to keep up this useless hunt?"

There were five of them in the group: Jotan, Tamar and three of the former's best fighting men. They were seated on a fallen log at the edge of a narrow stream, having finished was.h.i.+ng away the stains of jungle travel only minutes before. Directly overhead hung the midday sun, flooding them with humid heat, and hemming them in on all sides stood towering giants of the forest.

Jotan shook his head and said nothing. The strain and hopelessness of the last three days had aged him visibly: there were new lines in his face and his eyes were haggard. He recognized his injustice in subjecting his friends to the dangers of jungle travel, especially when their number was so small; but Dylara meant everything to him and he could not give her up without a struggle.

"I beg of you," Tamar persisted; "give up the search that we may turn about and rejoin the others. We are not equipped to follow this trail all the way back to Sephar. Already we have lost two of our men--one of them the only man among us who was qualified to track her down. For all we know she may be dead--the victim of one of the numerous cats infesting this section of the country."

"You may return if you like," snapped Jotan, stung by that last remark.

"I am going on--alone if necessary! Oh, I know why you want to call it off," he went on, scowling. "You never had any use for her because she is a girl of the caves instead of a n.o.bleman's daughter. But whether you like it or not, Dylara is the only woman I shall ever love and I am going to find her--or give my life in the attempt."

Tamar, hearing, knew his friend meant exactly what he said. It was useless to plead with him on the basis of not being able to pick up her trail. But there was another way--and he bored into it, playing it up for all it was worth.

"Your life is your own, Jotan," he said stiffly. "But do you have the right to sacrifice the lives of the rest of us in a quest that is completely hopeless? If we had found anything to indicate we were on the right trail I would not for an instant try to dissuade you. It is true I do not think the girl worthy of your love--but that is not important.

You do love her and I would fight against the world in defense of your choice."

"But to go on this way without a single lead to show us we have even the faintest chance for success, to throw away the lives of these three men--and our own--is rank folly! Perhaps you regard it as some sort of admirable determination; in truth it is sheer stubbornness."

For a long time Jotan sat there staring with unseeing eyes at the sluggishly moving waters of the tiny river. There was no denying the truth in Tamar's words. He knew his best friend meant every word of his statement that he would back Jotan's choice of a mate against a world; he had proved that back in Sephar by saving Dylara's life by a bit of quick thinking, when he might as easily have let a plot against her go on to its inevitable end. Equally as undeniable was his statement that it was sheer injustice to sacrifice needlessly the lives of loyal men on what could only be cla.s.sified as a fool's errand.

Impulsively he turned to one of the three warriors sitting in a stolid row beside him. "Tell me, Itak," he said, "what is your greatest desire at this moment?"

"To serve you, n.o.ble Jotan," the man replied promptly and with complete honesty.

"And after that?"

Itak's dark face split in a wide smile. "When we left for Ammad, my mate was heavy with child. I would like to learn if I have a son or a daughter."

Slowly Jotan rose from the log and stretched his long, powerful arms.

"We have rested long enough," he said, his face empty of all emotion.

"Let us be on our way--back to join our companions!"

Open relief showed in the three warriors' faces. Only Tamar fully understood what those words had cost his friend and he stood up and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. For only a second he left it there and neither spoke.

Then packs were swung to stalwart backs and the five men disappeared among the trees along the narrow game trail leading into the south--and Ammad.

Consciousness returned to Dylara at the moment the spider man was placing her roughly on a heap of foul-smelling gra.s.ses. In the almost impenetrable darkness she was aware that his hands were moving lingeringly along the contours of her body and in sudden terror she struck out at his face, guided by the sound of hoa.r.s.e rapid breathing.

Her nails struck home and she raked them fiercely across an unseen cheek, bringing forth a startled cry of pain and anger. An open hand caught her heavily above the ear and once more her senses swam, leaving her weak and defenseless.

Dimly she was aware that the awful creature was dropping to its knees beside her and once more long slender hair-covered fingers tugged at her tunic.

And then there was a startled grunt, a flurry of motion--and she was alone. Even as she started up wonderingly the floor of the swinging hut vibrated sharply under a heavy impact, followed by the sounds of furious struggle.

What it all meant, Dylara did not know. Perhaps one of the other spider-men, jealous of her captor's prize, had come to take her for himself. Or perhaps the spider-man's mate had arrived to protect the sanct.i.ty of her home.

Whatever the reason, it was Dylara's chance--and she took it without hesitation. Hugging the walls to keep free of the two battling figures rolling about the floor, she edged her way swiftly toward the small aperture that served as a door, then dropped to her knees and crawled through. At any moment she expected one of those slender hands to close about one of her ankles; but that did not happen and she gained one of the branches outside.

Never in all her life before had the daughter of Majok descended from a tree with such reckless abandon--but never before had she so strong a motive for haste. In fact she slipped and fell the last ten feet, her heart bounding into her throat as she toppled into Stygian blackness.

She was on her feet like a cat, not stopping to learn if the fall had injured her, and ran blindly into the tangled fastness of brush, vine, creeper and tree. Thorns tore at her skin and tunic, brambles tugged painfully at her hair, the stems of bushes tripped her up, trees loomed up too late for her to avoid slamming into them.

But Dylara was impervious to pain and heedless of obstacles. On and on she went, stumbling, running, crawling--fighting to put distance between her and the ugly monstrosities in those conical, tree-top huts.

How long this mad flight endured or how far it took her Dylara was never to know. But at last overtaxed muscles rebelled, her laboring lungs refused their task, and the cave girl collapsed in a pitiful heap among a tangled maze of head-high bushes.

Twice she sought to rise and go on. But each time her legs turned to water beneath her and she sank back to earth. Tears of utter helplessness flooded her eyes; she put her head down against one arm--and in that instant she fell sound asleep.

When she awakened night had fled and sunlight, pale and without warmth after filtering through layer upon layer of foliage, made visible her immediate surroundings.

She got shakily to her feet and stood there swaying a little as outraged muscles reminded her painfully of last night's mad flight. Little lines of dried blood on her arms and legs marked where thorns had raked her and she realized her body was one aching ma.s.s of bruises. Added to this was an inflexible stiffness brought on by sleeping on damp earth.

But all this was relatively unimportant. She was free once more--free to begin her long journey back to the cave of her father. She must hasten back to the trail which Jotan and his men had followed from Ammad and retrace her way southward toward home.

And at that moment the full impact of her predicament came home with stunning force.

She was utterly and completely lost! Whether the trail to Sephar was to the east or west of where she now stood was as unknown to her as the opposite side of Uda, the moon. True her goal lay to the north; but unless she could locate the original path Jotan had followed, she might spend the rest of her life picking a way through the towering mountains and endless plains between.

Surging panic cut her legs from under her and she dropped into a sitting position on a fallen log and buried her face in her hands. For a long time she sat thus, fighting back her tears, trying to think logically.

But what use was logic in this tangled wilderness of growing things?

Still, she told herself, she could not sit there forever, an unresisting morsel for the first meat-eater to come along. She stood up, brushed away an acc.u.mulation of leaves, thorns and dirt from her tunic, and struck resolutely out toward the east, pus.h.i.+ng her way slowly through the walls of plant life everywhere about her.

Monkeys raced and chattered among the branches overhead and disturbed rodents and the crawling things that infest the rotting jungle floor fled from her path. After a dozen yards she was bathed in perspiration and her skin seemed to crawl with the dampness.

If only she could find some sort of pathway that would allow her to make progress without battling this ocean of pulpy, slimy vegetation--a footing solid enough to prevent sinking to her ankles with every step.

Three different times she narrowly avoided treading on snakes--small, brightly colored reptiles whose bite would have meant a lingering death; and once she nearly collapsed with fright when a looping vine caught her about the neck unexpectedly and she thought it the folds of a python.

And then, after an hour of this, she stumbled unexpectedly into an elephant path, its powdery surface marked by the pa.s.sage of numerous other animals. Unfortunately for her purpose it ran almost east and west instead of north and after following it into the east for the better part of two hours, it began gradually to veer southward, taking her further and further from the caves of her father.

Her only hope was that sooner or later she would come upon an intersecting trail that would lead northward. The thought of leaving the narrow strip of open ground and plunging back into that green maze was more than she could endure. And so she went on, staggering now and then under the lashes of heat and weariness, finding an occasional waterhole to quench her thirst and stripping fruit from trees and bushes to satisfy hunger.

Near nightfall she came upon a large clearing through which flowed a wide shallow stream. It had been several hours since last water had pa.s.sed her lips and sight of the river lifted her spirits. She pushed her way through a heavy growth of reeds on the near bank, knelt and drank thirstily, then slipped out of her tunic and submerged her entire body in the brackish liquid.

Emerging at last, she dried her body with handfuls of gra.s.ses, her lithe, sweetly rounded figure gleaming like an image molded of pure gold in the fading sunlight. Her spirits were soaring again, for when first leaving the water she had glimpsed the beginnings of a second trail into the forest--a trail pointing straight as a spear shaft toward the north.

Already her plans were made. She would spend the night among the high-flung branches of that tree at the trail's entrance, when dawn came again she would start out once more--this time toward home.