Burroughs, Edgar Rice - Tarzan 27 - The Lost Adventure (with Lansdale, Joe R)

by The Lost Adventure (with Joe R Lansdale) (lit)

  Small collapsed as if he were a marionette being gently lowered on strings. He fell to his knees, then backwards, his legs tucked under him as if he were about to be folded and placed in a trunk.

  "Small!" Hanson yelled.

  Billy fired after Cannon, two quick shots, but the shots were wild and the man darted deeper into the underbrush and out of sight.

  Hanson rushed over to Small, dropped the rifle, and tried to hold the cut on Small's throat together with his hands. It was useless. It was too deep. The blood gushed through Hanson's fingers like milk through a sieve.

  Small tried to talk, but his voice only gurgled. Hanson lowered his ear to Small's mouth so that he might hear. He thought what he heard Small say was: "Not in my drawers."

  Small's body went limp. Hanson lowered him to the ground, gently. Hanson glared at Wilson. He picked up the rifle and pointed it at him. Sweat was popping off Hanson's forehead and his teeth were clenched. He could hardly get the words out. "One word. Just one. And I fertilize the dirt with your brains."

  Wilson glared, but held his tongue. He had his eyes on Hanson's trigger finger. It was vibrating.

  Billy said, "Watch him, Bwana. I get the other one." Billy went into the jungle after Cannon.

  Night dipped down full and complete. The moon rose up like a shiny balloon. Hanson sat beside the. body of Small, his rifle pointed at Wilson.

  Out in the jungle, in the dark, Billy stalked Cannon.

  Earlier, when Jean first heard the movement in the dungeon, without really thinking, she said, "Who's there?"

  There was a long moment of silence, then came "Nyama. I am Nyama and soon I die."

  Jean squinted into the darkness. Her eyes were adjusting, and she could see the shape of the speaker. A woman.

  "You speak English," Jean said.

  "Missionaries," Nyama said. "I can read too. And quote Bible verses. You like to hear them?"

  "Not just now," Jean said. "Maybe you can teach them to me later.

  . . how did you get here? What missionaries? Missionaries to this city?"

  "No," Nyama said. "Of course not. I am from the high forest land. One day these people of Ur raided us and I was one of those they stole away. I do not know if any of the others of my people who were brought here are still alive. I think not."

  "How long have you been here?"

  "I do not know. Long time in the city of Ur. But here, in this place. Not long. Since Kurvandi tired of me."

  "Kurvandi?"

  "He is the King of Ur. One in a long line of Kurvandis. I was brought here to be one of his wives, and he forced me. . . I made him miserable. Finally, he had me brought here. Soon, I die. But, I had it to do again, I would still make him miserable. I prefer this to his bedchambers. not like to be treated like a breeding cow. You are lucky he did not like your looks."

  "I don't know if that makes me feel insulted or happy."

  "Let me have a look at you," Nyama said.

  "That won't be easy in the dark," Jean said.

  "I am accustomed to darkness. But here, come." The woman took Jean by the elbow, led her toward the closed door.

  Around the edges of the door a bit of light seeped in, and Jean could feel fresh air from the outside. The air not sweet, but it certainly smelled better than the air in the cell. The light and air heartened her a little.

  "You are quite pretty," said Nyama, her face close to Jean's."

  "And so are you," Jean said. It was an honest evaluation. Nyama was indeed quite beautiful.

  "I am surprised he did not want you for one of his women," Nyama said. "Perhaps it's because he views pale skin as inferior."

  "Why does he want to have me killed?" Jean said. "I didn't come here of my own free will. I've done nothing the people of Ur. True, I would have come here way. . but why must they kill me? Kill us?"

  "He has his reasons," Nyama said. "But without reasons, he would kill us anyway. He eventually kills everything. He is mad. They are all mad. Full of the glory of great city and their gods ... one thing, though. Their god, unlike missionary god, you can see. I have seen it. It is mad like Kurvandi. A horrible god."

  "You have seen their god'?"

  "Yes."

  "Is it a statue . . an oracle?"

  Nyama sighed. This was followed by a long silence. Finally, "No. I do not believe any of that. Statues are statues, and oracles are old men and women with their fingers in bird guts. I believe what I see. And I have seen this god."

  "A moving, breathing god?"

  "Do not patronize me," Nyama said. "That is the word, is it not? Patronize?"

  "I'm sorry," Jean said. "I didn't mean to. . ."

  "Yes, you did."

  "But a moving, breathing god?"

  "Missionaries believed in a god I could not see. Wanted me to believe in it. I could not. But Urs, they believe in god you can see. I have seen it. Makes more sense, a god you can see. But still, god or not a god, I do not care for it. It is a god of death and destruction. Very ill-tempered."

  "Are you saying it's to this god we will be sacrificed?"

  "In one way or another. They kill in honor of the god and his moves, and they give the god offerings that it kills for itself."

  "You said in honor of its moves. What does that mean?"

  "It moves in all manner of ways," Nyama said. "Every way it moves, the move brings death. It has a dance of death, and when it dances, people die. Very bad deaths. Very bad. Those that are not given to the god, they are sacrificed in its name."

  Jean and Nyama moved away from the light and to a stone bench. The smell was not so bad in this corner, and Jean found she needed to sit. She was exhausted. Grief and fear made her exhaustion even more complete.

  Jean and Nyama sat beside one another and talked. Nyama's English was very good, and soon Jean had some idea what Ur was all about.

  It seemed the Urs were a people descended from a great and glorious culture. Ur had been a great city before Solomon was king. It was a city of wealth am riches, and once all of Africa had been under its rule.

  But the royalty of Ur, unwilling to contaminate their blood with that of outsiders, gradually restricted "foreigners," and in time, to keep the blood pure, royalty married royalty. Over generations, this practice resulted in genetic deficiencies. Insanity.

  In the last few years, even though the King was mad he realized that for the line to continue, for Ur to regain its glory, he must reach outside of his kingdom, bring in slaves, women for his harem. Women who could bear him children. In this way, he hoped to freshen the blood of his line.

  And there was another reason- the god Ebopa, The Stick That Walks. Legend said that Ebopa had come up from the center of the earth through catacombs beneath the city and that the Urs trapped him there for all time. It was the Urs' belief that as long as Ebopa could not return to the center of the earth, his powers would bring the city great fortune. Several times a year, for more years than Nyama knew, there had been sacrifices to the god. And for a time, all had been good.

  But in the last thirty years, crops had not yielded as well as before. Game was not as plentiful. Many children were born with defects. Great metal birds were seer flying overhead more and more often. The Urs had seen them now and then over the years, buzzing along, supported on their silver wings, but now there were more and more of them. Bigger birds. Flying higher, leaving trails of smoke. Jean decided Nyama meant planes, but the Urs did not understand this. They thought they were winged messengers from the god Ebopa, and Ebopa's message was not a merry one. It was angry.

  Therefore, it was decided Ebopa was mad and must have more glory. There were more sacrifices to the god both direct and indirect. Like the Romans with their bread and circuses, this became standard. And each new Kurvandi had to search more diligently for sacrifices. Jean, Nyama, the safari bearers, the people Jean had seen in the line for beheading, were the most recent.

  It was not a question Jean wanted to ask, but she could not help herself. "How are we to die?"<
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  "It could be many ways. One way is beheading, but if they planned to do that, they would have already. That is the common way. Since we have been placed here, I believe we are being saved. We may be prepared for the crocodiles."

  "They feed prisoners to crocodiles?"

  "Yes. The crocodiles that live in the water around the city. But that is not bad enough. No. They very carefully prepare the sacrifices. They hold them down and take a big war club, and slowly, they break the bones in the arms and legs. Break them up small."

  "Oh, God," Jean said. "How horrible."

  "That is only the beginning. They are doing that to prepare the meat."

  "For the crocodiles!"

  "The crocodiles are white, and therefore sacred. They must have

  prepared meat. Easy to chew. To prepare it, the meat is tenderized by breaking the bones. Then, they bury the sacrifices in a pool of mud and water to the chin. But they do not let the sacrifices die. They leave them until the water softens the flesh. When the sacrifices are near death, they pull them out and tie ropes to their feet, lower them off the drawbridge, just above the water. When the sacred crocodiles come, they drop the sacrifices into the water."

  "And they will do this to us?" Jean said.

  "Unless Kurvandi is saving us for something special."

  "I presume the harem is out at this point?" Jean said.

  "To be one of Kurvandi's wives is a fate worse than death," Nyama said.

  "I'd prefer to be the judge of that," Jean said. "This harem business is beginning to have an unexpected appeal."

  "If it is not the crocodiles," Nyama said, "then it will be the arena, or . .. Ebopa. At least, if it is Ebopa, it is quick."

  "Thank Ebopa for small favors," Jean said.

  Hunt came to a fork in the tunnel. The tunnel they were traveling ran up against a cavern wall. There were unused torches jutting out of sockets drilled in the rock, and all along the wall were paintings. They were recent paintings of the thing Hunt had seen earlier.

  Jad-bal-ja growled softly.

  "I know," Hunt said. "I'm nervous too."

  Hunt moved toward the tunnel on the left. He stared into the darkness. He went back to the decorated wall and took down a torch and dipped it into one of the blazing gutters and waved it first at the tunnel on the right, then the left.

  "Which way?" he said to the lion.

  Jad-bal-ja turned his head from side to side.

  Hunt said, "Yeah, me too."

  Hunt used the torch to poke into the left tunnel. He checked first to see if this tunnel was outfitted with gutters of oil. It was not. The tunnel was wide and Hunt could see that after a few feet there was a drop-off. But there was also some kind of wooden framework lying at the edge of the chasm. Hunt moved forward, and Jad-bal-ja, growling softly, followed.

  "Yeah, me too," Hunt said in response to Jad-bal-ja's growl.

  Hunt held the torch so that he could examine the wooden framework. He recognized what it was immediately. A pile of narrow sections for a bridge. It was made of a light wood and appeared newly fashioned.

  Near the edge of the drop-off there were notches in the dirt. Hunt concluded the supports of the bridge were supposed to fit into it. He held his torch high. The light was not good, but across the way, some forty feet, he could see where the bridge was supposed to fit into two deep grooves.

  Examining the bridge closer, Hunt saw the bridge sections were hooked together and that they folded out into one long section with sleeves that fit over the crude hinges and made the bridge solid. He found a place in the rocks to lodge the torch, and working by its light he began to fold out the bridge and slide the sleeves over the pegged hinges. Soon he had a single length of bridge just over forty feet long.

  When he was finished, he doubted his ability to pick up the bridge, extend it over the gap, but he soon discovered two long poles. They were over fifty feet long, and if you stuck the tips of these into the far ends of the bridge where leather loops were provided, it was easy to lift the back end of the bridge, and by standing all the way at its front, it could be boosted across and lowered into the slots provided. The slots on this side of the chasm were even easier to fit.

  "There," Hunt said. "Damn clever of whoever, don't you think, lion?"

  Jad-bal-ja purred. He had watched all of this carefully. He did not know what to make of the ways of men, but of one thing he was certain. Jad-bal-ja did not like where the bridge led.

  "I don't know anything to do but cross," Hunt said, talking to the lion as if he were a favored companion. "This doesn't work, we try the other tunnel."

  Hunt took a deep breath and stepped onto the thatched flooring of the bridge. It vibrated slightly.

  "Don't care for that," Hunt said, but he kept going. When he was halfway across, Jad-bal-ja followed, treading as lightly as a house cat.

  When they reached the other side of the bridge, a cool wind drafted through the cavern, and with it came stench, followed by a sound. The same frightening sound Hunt had heard earlier. Once again, he felt a nameless dread that crawled about in his brain like a clutch of spiders.

  Jad-bal-ja growled softly.

  "I know," Hunt said. For a moment, Hunt considered traveling b ack across the bridge, pulling it up so that whatever was down here couldn't cross. Hunt determined that was what this bridge business was all about anyway. There was something trapped down here by design, and that something was most unpleasant.

  The sound died away. Perhaps, it- whatever it was- was not yet aware of them. Hunt took some comfort in the possibility. With torch and spear held tight, he chose a direction away from the sound, and he and Jad-bal-ja went that way, ever alert to whatever might lurk at their backs.

  Tarzan, astride the zebra, came to the rock quarry shortly after nightfall. The jungle broke open wide, like rift in the universe, and gave way to the great quarry. The moon rode over the quarry, full and bright, so massive as to look like a bronze shield frozen to the sky.

  The quarry was nothing more than building stone, be there in the moonlight the stones had turned a golden color, and in that instant it was as if the earth had given up all its riches by means of an open wound.

  Tarzan rode past the quarry, and in time came within sight of the great city of Ur. Tarzan reined in the zebra and marveled at the city. It was like a fairy world, there in the moonlight. Tall and wide and golden. It lay at the end of this great road like the Emerald City of Oz.

  There was a time when the African landscape was riddled with such wonders, but now the ways of the ancients, the jungle magic, were slowly dying. Sometimes, Tarzan felt the world he knew was sneaking away, like an old man grown weak, hoping to find a place to lie down and die.

  Tarzan decided he was close enough to the city by road. He wanted to make his entry into Ur to find Jean, unobserved and as silently as possible. He dismounted, led the zebra into the jungle, and without hesitation, pulled his knife and cut its throat. The zebra fell, kicked, the blood pumped. Tarzan placed his face over the geyser of blood, let it spurt into his mouth. The warm liquid energy revived him. He cut a chunk of meat off the zebra's haunch and ate it raw. He skinned the zebra in record time, and plaited the wet skin into a serviceable rope about ten feet long. He tied the rope to a tree, took hold of it, and pulled until he had wrung most of the blood out of the plaiting, then he coiled the rope and hung it over the hilt of his knife and began moving through the jungle. He took to the trees, swinging from branch to branch, vine to vine, more by instinct and feel than by sight.

  When he reached the edge of the jungle, he paused in the branches of a tree and studied Ur. There was a great moat around the city, and the drawbridge was up. There were sentinels at the summit of the wall. He could see their spears flashing in the moonlight as they went about

  their rounds.

  Tarzan determined that most likely there would be a few warriors hidden somewhere on the outskirts of the city, stationed to report any incoming danger. Tarzan, also determined that
they would be lax in their duties.

  That was human nature. Ur, except for the natives in the general area, was relatively unknown. Or was until Hanson and his safari decided to track it down. Ur was also a mighty power, and they would feel there was little to fear from any enemy that might know of its existence. And they would not expect one man to pass its sentries its moat, scale its wall, and enter.

  Tarzan felt a moment of anger. It was directed a himself. He should never have suggested that it was okay for the Hansons to continue on their hunt for Ur. He knew, deep down, he had allowed it for his own personal reasons.