Eric of Zanthodon

by Lin Carter

  Murg could flee!

  As if he had read the mind of the pathetic little man, Xask sprang forward and seized him by the throat.

  Xask took a sadistic pleasure in having some sniveling whelp to bully and order about, as earlier he had enjoyed the company of the hapless Fumio. He did not intend to let the little man escape from his clutches; if for no other reason, Murg could be set to fetching firewood and preparing food and the other small but tiresome domestic tasks of camping in the wilderness.

  “No, master-please!” shrilled the little fellow as Xask mercilessly forced him to the base of the fallen tree. His legs were trembling violently, and Murg dreaded trying to cross the abyss, knowing in his heart that he would lose his balance and fall to a horrible death in the unknown depths below.

  “Crawl, like the worm you are!” snarled Xask, in a desperate agony to be across the tree-bridge and safe from pursuit on the other side.

  At that moment, Zuma strode from the bushes to confront them with his leveled spear.

  As Xask turned to snarl at this new adversary, Murg pushed beyond the limits of his cowardice-found the moment for which he long had dreamed.

  Stealthily, he plucked the steel dagger from the scabbard which hung at Xask’s waist. The vizier turned a surprised glance over his shoulder on the smirking Murg. His lips parted for some startled query

  “It’s Murg’s way,” giggled Murg, and stabbed him through the heart.

  When the sudden rains ended, the farsighted scouts of Thandar and Sothar peered across the swampy plain to see if Eric Carstairs and his warriors had yet emerged from the edges of the jungle. What they saw surprised them more.

  The towering form of a nearly naked black warrior was engaged in cutting loose the wrists of a beautiful young woman whom the watchers instantly recognized as Darya of Thandar. They raised a thunderous shout and sprinted back across the plain to her assistance.

  At her feet sprawled the ungainly figure of Xask, his features forever frozen in an expression of slack-jawed astonishment. Of all the ways in which the vizier had envisioned the moment of his death he had dreamed many splendid and heroic ends for himself-none was so base and ignoble as to be stabbed from behind by the whimpering little coward he had for so long scorned and mocked and used.

  Seeing the warriors and scouts pelting in their direction, Zuma instinctively fell into a fighting crouch, leveling his assegai, knowing they could only come at him one at a time across the tree-trunk-bridge, and that they would be offbalance, lending him a superb advantage.

  This advantage proved soon to be unnecessary, of course, for Darya, her hands freed by Zuma, tore the gag from her mouth and called to the warriors hastening to her assistance that the black man was a friend.

  Tharn and Garth and some of them crossed over to clasp the Princess of Thandar in their arms and to inquire into her experiences. They gravely made the acquaintance of Zuma with that quiet natural dignity which distinguishes the so-called “savage” from civilized men. For his part, the noble Aziru greeted them on equal terms; he was, as the sole remaining male warrior of his tribe, of course, the chief of his own people.

  When he had learned from the gomad his daughter of the events which had so recently transpired, and how Murg at the last, driven beyond endurance, had turned on Xask and stabbed him in the back, they turned to gaze about for Murg, but the little coward was nowhere to be seen.

  Zuma shrugged expansively.

  “The little man scuttled into the jungle like a frightened uld and vanished,” the Aziru said simply. “Zuma doubts if he will ever dare show his face again before warriors.”

  “Let us hope so, at any rate,” growled Garth, his frowning brows thunderous with wrath. Ever since the Omad of Sothar had learned how Murg had sought to ravish his daughter Yualla in her sleep, he had nursed a desire to hang the contemptible little traitor from the tallest tree.

  It was about then that Professor Potter, puffing and redfaced, burst through the trees. crowing with delight at seeing Darya alive and well. Behind him, a bit more cautiously, came the Germans, with Baron Von Kohler in the lead. While introductions were being made all around, Corporal Schmidt unobtrusively picked up the Mauser which Xask had disgustedly cast to the ground. Then it was that Zuma learned that he owed his life to the fact that the vizier of Zar knew nothing of the safety-catch ….

  It was upon this happy scene of rescue and reunion that I and all my company burst a few minutes later.

  We had been hard on the trail of Xask and Murg, Darya and Zuma, Von Kohler and his soldiers, wondering to whom all of these many footprints could possibly belong. We arrived on the scene just in time to share in the excitement and, also, the several explanations.

  Once everything was made plain, we all crossed the abyss by the trunk-bridges and marched to the southern side of the swampy plain where the tribes lay encamped and eagerly awaiting our arrival.

  There, the Germans joined us in a very noisy feast of celebration, punctuated with long speeches while everybody told of their adventures.

  Jorn and Yualla were the center of all eyes as they related the many perils through which they had passed and how Niema had met them in the mountains and later had captured Xask and Murg as they were creeping up on the Cro-Magnon youngsters.

  The joy in the faces of Garth of Sothar and his mate Nian was wonderful to see as they welcomed their lost daughter back among the living and embraced her, kissing the tears of happiness from her glowing cheeks.

  Those cheeks glowed much pinker, shortly after, when she shyly introduced them to the stalwart young Thandarian boy as the youth she desired as her mate.

  Hurok introduced us to Gorah his mate, and told of his adventures in the cave country of Kor. Von Kohler briefly told something of his experiences in Zanthodon, and requested a brief leave from the feast in order to return to his encampment -to recover the abandoned equipment left behind when they had pursued the stolen jungle maid and her kidnappers. He also wished to give his Colonel a decent burial beneath a cairn of rocks, so that the beasts would not disturb his rest.

  Garth and Tharn dispatched a party of warriors with the Germans to assist them in these tasks. They were not absent from the feast for very long, and returned without incident.

  I was a little dubious about the Germans, but their behavior had been gentlemanly and exemplary, and both Darya, and, of course, the Professor, reassured me of their desire for a friendly alliance.

  “After all, my boy,” said the Professor quietly, “the war, has long been over.”

  Chapter 28. THE PROMISED LAND

  Now that we had all found each other again, there was no longer any reason to delay our journey south.

  Murg had vanished into the jungle and no one felt inclined to search for him, although many of us wished that he could be brought before the rude, simple justice of the tribes to pay for some of the things he had done.

  We never found out what became of him, for none of us ever laid eyes on the contemptible little man again. Perhaps he found a safe haven somewhere and spent the rest of his days alone; or maybe he was eaten by the beasts, we never knew. But at any rate he never bothered us again.

  Concerning our journey south, it is not my intention to describe it at great length, for, to tell the truth, it was pleasantly uneventful. These jungles held no surprises for Tharn and his people, for they were familiar with them. The great predators avoided us, apparently unwilling to challenge so great a host of armed men. A few more “wake’s” and “sleeps,” and the journey proved over.

  We came out of the jungle rather abruptly, to find ourselves gazing upon the land of Thandar at last. It was a broad and vast valley, a place of rolling green hills and grassy fields, laced with many small streams of fresh water and grown, here and there, with patches of forest.

  It was a goodly land to look upon, basking under the eternal afternoon light of Zanthodon. Far to the east, where the woods thickened into an imposing array of ti
mberland, a herd of thantors, or wooly mammoths, grazed peaceably, much too distant to be a cause of trouble to us.

  You can perhaps imagine the emotions that passed through the hearts of Tharn and Darya and the others as they looked once again upon their homeland, after the long, weary months of wandering through strange new lands filled with enemies and perils and vicissitudes of every kind.

  Tharn searched the far reaches of the wooded valley with keen eyes; then he lifted an arm to point across the plain.

  “There!” he said with immense satisfaction in his tones.

  We looked in the direction he had indicated, and saw a large settlement of wooden huts walled about with a palisade of logs sharpened at the top. The lazy spirals of smoke from cook-fires ascended into the serene afternoon skies. We could even see a small band of hunters returning with the morning’s kill slung on poles, and women bathing in a shallow stream behind the town.

  Garth and his mate Nian looked the scene over with pleased expressions on their faces.

  “It looks to be a goodly land, this Thandar of yours, my brother,” he remarked to Tharn, who grinned.

  “Of ours, my brother!” said the High Chief. And Garth nodded thoughtfully, for of course he and all his people were henceforward to share the land with the first tribe. There looked to be land enough and room enough for all ….

  Von Kohler and the two soldiers under his command studied the country through binoculars. The Germans had come with us, of course, having nowhere else to go. And Zuma and his new mate, Niema, had come with us as well. They had all become members of my company, which by this time was a catch-all for homeless foreigners, you might say.

  Beside me, Professor Potter stood, a vague, dreamy look in his watery blue eyes. He tugged at my arm.

  “Eric, my boy,” he breathed tremulously, “do you realize what gifts we can bring to these people, you and I? We can teach them the principles of agriculture, so that no longer need they spend their days as wandering nomadic hunters; they can transform that little town into a city, and we will have helped our distant cousins, the Cro-Magnons, along the path to civilization … why, we can teach them brickmaking and stone masonry, so that they can build with permanence, we can record their language and instruct them in a simple alphabet, so that their traditions and histories can be recorded for all time, not merely handed down from generation to generation by oral means alone … the rudiments of mathematics should be useful to them … .”

  Von Kohler was listening to the Professor’s rambling and ecstatic monologue. He coughed apologetically and interrupted the discourse.

  “Herr Doktor, I quite agree. But, do you suppose, we could perhaps avoid teaching them any of the skills or vices that have been the ruination of so many cultures? For example, the use of currency … money being the root of all evil, as the Scriptures tell us. Doubtless the Cro-Magnons employ a simple barter system. exchanging skills for skills, the tanner giving his wares to the huntsman for fresh meat, the carpenter building a but for the fisherman in return for a load of fish, and so on.”

  The Professor mulled it over, tugging on his stiff white moustaches.

  “I suppose you are right, Baron,” he said. “Money leads to usury, to greed, to the exploitation of labor … perhaps we can find a way to keep the Thandarians from inventing it … an interesting little problem in social dynamics!”

  The idea of helping our Cro-Magnon friends toward civilization was beginning to get me interested, too.

  “Once we have the alphabet,” I said, “we can codify their tribal customs and traditions into laws, written down and mutually understood and agreed upon, if necessary by a popular vote.”

  Von Kohler and the Professor agreed that this was a good idea.

  The Professor wandered off to talk to Tharn. Von Kohler turned to me.

  “Would it not, Herr Carstairs, be a worthy cause to devote our lives to, if we could spare the Cro-Magnon nation the mistakes that have marred the history of our own Western civilization? Extreme nationalism, imperialism, the exploitation of less advanced peoples, the creation of poverty and slums, military aggression … and, instead of these, teach them the ways of justice, equality, fairness, decency, toleration, brotherhood, cooperation, and-freedom!”

  “It would indeed, Von Kohler,” I said thoughtfully. “It would be our way of making up for the sins we have contributed to. Not at all a bad thing to spend the rest of your life doing ….”

  And so we went down into Thandar, and I came home.

  The settlement was more primitive than I would have expected, and dirtier and noisier. Within the palisade wall, which was broken by three gates, stood about sixty one-story huts, not counting sheds and lean-tos. These were arranged with no system, just rambling clusters, and there was nothing like streets between them, just pathways of naked earth, beaten smooth by many feet.

  The sanitation system consisted of a stream which ran behind the town and which was used indiscriminately by everyone. Some of the huts, far enough away from the stream for its use to be impractical, used ditches dug behind them for the same purpose. Flies and garbage were everywhere.

  And it stank abominably!

  Now, the Cro-Magnons were a healthy and very cleanly people, despite the conditions in the settlement.

  After all, Paris and London in the Middle Ages were a lot dirtier, and probably stank even more terribly.

  Still and all, it looked as though our friends could use the advice of some city planners like the Professor and me. Well, that was one of the problems we would have to tackle later: there was going to be enough to keep us busy for years to come.

  When we came into sight, the Thandarians came out to greet us, and the welcome was enthusiastic, to say the least. Tharn strode into the gates of his town like a Caesar returned from the Gallic Wars, and he looked every inch the king that he was.

  It seemed-I had never bothered to think about it before, but it would have had to be this way-it seemed, I say, that when the Drugar slavers carried off Darya and the rest of the hunting party, and Tharn pursued in strength, he left behind in Thandar a considerable number of able-bodied men, all of the women and old people and children. It would have been madness to march away with every healthy male capable of hefting a spear, leaving his homeland unprotected. No, about seventy warriors and huntsmen had been left to guard the village and do the hunting, and the reunion was glorious to witness. Warriors, absent for months on the expedition, were tearfully greeted by their mates and parents and children.

  I had not realized that my warriors, Parthon and Ragor, had mates and children, for in my company they had never mentioned their existence. But, then, this is only natural: most of the time we were together, we were too busy fighting against beasts or human adversaries, or running away from same, to have much time for casual chit-chat.

  Ragor’s mate, a buxom, merry-faced wench named Oona with a fat baby straddling each ample hip, greeted me happily-happily, that is, because I had brought her man home again, alive, and in one piece.

  “Ragor will not have had a decent meal since he left Oona,” she said disapprovingly, poking a thumb in his ribs. “Look at you! All skin and bones! Well,” and here she turned to grin at me, “tonight there will be a feast to end all feasts, and we womenfolk will begin putting some meat back on the bones of you helpless men!”

  Chapter 29. “BABE” FLIES AGAIN

  And, that night, there was a feast, indeed! The women turned spits over beds of blazing coals, roasting succulent uld and gamey zomaks, and huge slabs of mammoth steak, and broiled huge, leathery-skinned eggs of the drunth, which were, to the Cro-Magnons, a gourmet delicacy.

  We all gorged splendidly on smoking meat, and the broiled eggs alluded to above, as well as stews of juicy roots and wild vegetables, seasoned with scraps of meat and boiled into a tasty broth, and wild fruit and nuts and berries … and washed this huge repast down with gourdfuls of the heady native beer the Thandarian’s had learned to br
ew-or “nut brown ale,” as the Professor called it.

  One by one we took turns recounting our adventures, and, as you can imagine (if you have read this book and the four other volumes of these memoirs), there was very, very much to be told, and the telling consumed many hours.

  It was during these recitals, that I came to know many of the details of the adventures that happened to such of my friends as Jorn and Yualla, Hurok and Darya, Tharn and others, which I have inserted into these books in their proper place. Much, much more was learned from subsequent conversations with my comrades, and the piecing together of threads of narrative into a cohesive and comprehensive whole.

  It took a lot of work to figure out what had happened to everybody, but at length it was all straight in our minds.

  The Thandarians were hospitable to the strangers of the Sothar tribe, and warmed to them in friendly fashion, as soon as they grasped how willingly the Sotharians had stood and fought shoulder to shoulder with their people on many occasions. It took them a little longer to make friends with Hurok and his hairy mate, Gorah, or with the two black Aziru, or the German’s.

  In time, I am happy to say, everybody was friends with everybody else.

  I guess we had taught the folk of Thandar something about brotherhood and tolerance already!

  After the feast and the various narratives, there came a more solemn but no less joyous event. Or sequence of similar events, perhaps I should say.

  I refer to the wedding ritual.

  Before the combined tribes, young Torn proudly claimed the blushing and beautiful Yualla as his mate.

  Before the tribes, Varak repeated his claim to Ialys of Zar, and Grond of Gorthak took shy little Taira as his mate.

  Rituals similar in nature were repeated between Hurok of Kor and Gorah, and between Zuma the Aziru and the lovely Niema.

  And then it was my turn!

  Feeling absurdly nervous. I stood up with Darya smiling demurely at my side, and claimed her as my own before the presence of them all. Tharn, her father, gravely placed her hand in mine, holding both of our hands briefly in the grip of one huge hand, to signify that he gave the gomad to me to be my own Princess.