Title: Almuric
Author:Robert E. Howard
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Language: English
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Title: Almuric
Author:Robert E. Howard




Foreword

It was not my original intention ever to divulge the whereabouts of
Esau Cairn, or the mystery surrounding him. My change of mind was
brought about by Cairn himself, who retained a perhaps natural and
human desire to give his strange story to the world which had disowned
him and whose members can now never reach him. What he wishes to tell
is his affair. One phase of my part of the transaction I refuse to
divulge; I will not make public the means by which I transported Esau
Cairn from his native Earth to a planet in a solar system undreamed of
by even the wildest astronomical theorists. Nor will I divulge by what
means I later achieved communication with him, and heard his story
from his own lips, whispering ghostily across the cosmos.

Let me say that it was not premeditated. I stumbled upon the Great
Secret quite by accident in the midst of a scientific experiment, and
never thought of putting it to any practical use, until that night
when Esau Cairn groped his way into my darkened observatory, a hunted
man, with the blood of a human being on his hands. It was chance led
him there, the blind instinct of the hunted thing to find a den
wherein to turn at bay.

Let me state definitely and flatly, that, whatever the appearances
against him, Esau Cairn is not, and was never, a criminal. In that
specific case he was merely the pawn of a corrupt political machine
which turned on him when he realized his position and refused to
comply further with its demands. In general, the acts of his life
which might suggest a violent and unruly nature simply sprang from his
peculiar mental make-up.

Science is at last beginning to perceive that there is sound truth
in the popular phrase, "born out of his time." Certain natures are
attuned to certain phases or epochs of history, and these natures,
when cast by chance into an age alien to their reactions and emotions,
find difficulty in adapting themselves to their surroundings. It is
but another example of nature's inscrutable laws, which sometimes are
thrown out of stride by some cosmic friction or rift, and result in
havoc to the individual and the mass.

Many men are born outside their century; Esau Cairn was born outside
his epoch. Neither a moron nor a low-class primitive, possessing a
mind well above the average, he was, nevertheless, distinctly out of
place in the modern age. I never knew a man of intelligence so little
fitted for adjustment in a machine-made civilization. (Let it be noted
that I speak of him in the past tense; Esau Cairn lives, as far as the
cosmos is concerned; as far as the Earth is concerned, he is dead, for
he will never again set foot upon it.)

He was of a restless mold, impatient of restraint and resentful of
authority. Not by any means a bully, he at the same time refused to
countenance what he considered to be the slightest infringement on his
rights. He was primitive in his passions, with a gusty temper and a
courage inferior to none on this planet. His life was a series of
repressions. Even in athletic contests he was forced to hold himself
in, lest he injure his opponents. Esau Cairn was, in short, a freak--a
man whose physical body and mental bent leaned back to the primordial.

Born in the Southwest, of old frontier stock, he came of a race
whose characteristics were inclined toward violence, and whose
traditions were of war and feud and battle against man and nature. The
mountain country in which he spent his boyhood carried out the
tradition. Contest--physical contest--was the breath of life to him.
Without it he was unstable and uncertain. Because of his peculiar
physical make-up, full enjoyment in a legitimate way, in the ring or
on the football field was denied him. His career as a football player
was marked by crippling injuries received by men playing against him,
and he was branded as an unnecessarily brutal man, who fought to maim
his opponents rather than win games. This was unfair. The injuries
were simply resultant from the use of his great strength, always so
far superior to that of the men opposed to him. Cairn was not a great
sluggish lethargic giant as so many powerful men are; he was vibrant
with fierce life, ablaze with dynamic energy. Carried away by the lust
of combat, he forgot to control his powers, and the result was broken
limbs or fractured skulls for his opponents.

It was for this reason that he withdrew from college life,
unsatisfied and embittered, and entered the professional ring. Again
his fate dogged him. In his training-quarters, before he had had a
single match, he almost fatally injured a sparring partner. Instantly
the papers pounced upon the incident, and played it up beyond its
natural proportions. As a result Cairn's license was revoked.

Bewildered, unsatisfied, he wandered over the world, a restless
Hercules, seeking outlet for the immense vitality that surged
tumultuously within him, searching vainly for some form of life wild
and strenuous enough to satisfy his cravings, born in the dim red days
of the world's youth.

Of the final burst of blind passion that banished him for ever from
the life wherein he roamed, a stranger, I need say little. It was a
nine-days' wonder, and the papers exploited it with screaming
headlines. It was an old story--a rotten city government, a crooked
political boss, a man chosen, unwittingly on his part, to be used as a
tool and serve as a puppet.

Cairn, restless, weary of the monotony of a life for which he was
unsuited, was an ideal tool--for a while. But Cairn was neither a
criminal nor a fool. He understood their game quicker than they
expected, and took a stand surprisingly firm to them, who did not know
the real man.

Yet, even so, the result would not have been so violent if the man
who had used and ruined Cairn had any real intelligence. Used to
grinding men under his feet and seeing them cringe and beg for mercy,
Boss Blaine could not understand that he was dealing with a man to
whom his power and wealth meant nothing. Yet so schooled was Cairn to
iron self-control that it required first a gross insult, then an actual
blow on the part of Blaine, to rouse him. Then for the first time in
his life, his wild nature blazed into full being. All his thwarted and
repressed life surged up behind the clenched fist that broke Blaine's
skull like an eggshell and stretched him lifeless on the floor, behind
the desk from which he had for years ruled a whole district.

Cairn was no fool. With the red haze of fury fading from his glare,
he realized that he could not hope to escape the vengeance of the
machine that controlled the city. It was not because of fear that he
fled Blaine's house. It was simply because of his primitive instinct
to find a more convenient place to turn at bay and fight out his death
fight.

So it was that chance led him to my observatory.

He would have left, instantly, not wishing to embroil me in his
trouble, but I persuaded him to remain and tell me his story. I had
long expected some catastrophe of the sort. That he had repressed
himself as long as he did, shows something of his iron character. His
nature was as wild and untamed as that of a maned lion.

He had no plan--he simply intended to fortify himself somewhere and
fight it out with the police until he was riddled with lead.

I at first agreed with him, seeing no better alternative. I was not
so naive as to believe he had any chance in the courts with the
evidence that would be presented against him. Then a sudden thought
occurred to me, so fantastic and alien, and yet so logical, that I
instantly propounded it to my companion. I told him of the Great
Secret, and gave him proof of its possibilities.

In short, I urged him to take the chance of a flight through space,
rather than meet the certain death that awaited him.

And he agreed. There was no place in the universe which would
support human life. But I had looked beyond the knowledge of men, in
universes beyond universes. And I chose the only planet I knew on
which a human being could exist--the wild, primitive, and strange
planet I named Almuric.

Cairn understood the risks and uncertainties as well as I. But he
was utterly fearless--and the thing was done. Esau Cairn left the
planet of his birth, for a world swimming afar in space, alien, aloof,
strange.


Esau Cairn's Narrative



Chapter 01


The Transition was so swift and brief, that it seemed less than a
tick of time lay between the moment I placed myself in Professor
Hildebrand's strange machine, and the instant when I found myself
standing upright in the clear sunlight that flooded a broad plain. I
could not doubt that I had indeed been transported to another world.
The landscape was not so grotesque and fantastic as I might have
supposed, but it was indisputably alien to anything existing on the
Earth.

But before I gave much heed to my surroundings, I examined my own
person to learn if I had survived that awful flight without injury.
Apparently I had. My various parts functioned with their accustomed
vigor. But I was naked. Hildebrand had told me that inorganic
substance could not survive the transmutation. Only vibrant, living
matter could pass unchanged through the unthinkable gulfs which lie
between the planets. I was grateful that I had not fallen into a land
of ice and snow. The plain seemed filled with a lazy summerlike heat.
The warmth of the sun was pleasant on my bare limbs.

On every side stretched away a vast level plain, thickly grown with
short green grass. In the distance this grass attained a greater
height, and through it I caught the glint of water. Here and there
throughout the plain this phenomenon was repeated, and I traced the
meandering course of several rivers, apparently of no great width.
Black dots moved through the grass near the rivers, but their nature I
could not determine. However, it was quite evident that my lot had not
been cast on an uninhabited planet, though I could not guess the
nature of the inhabitants. My imagination peopled the distances with
nightmare shapes.

It is an awesome sensation to be suddenly hurled from one's native
world into a new strange alien sphere. To say that I was not appalled
at the prospect, that I did not shrink and shudder in spite of the
peaceful quiet of my environs, would be hypocrisy. I, who had never
known fear, was transformed into a mass of quivering, cowering nerves,
starting at my own shadow. It was that man's utter helplessness was
borne in upon me, and my mighty frame and massive thews seemed frail
and brittle as the body of a child. How could I pit them against an
unknown world? In that instant I would gladly have returned to Earth
and the gallows that awaited me, rather than face the nameless terrors
with which imagination peopled my new-found world. But I was soon to
learn that those thews I now despised were capable of carrying me
through greater perils than I dreamed.

A slight sound behind me brought me around to stare amazedly at the
first inhabitant of Almuric I was to encounter. And the sight, awesome
and menacing as it was, yet drove the ice from my veins and brought
back some of my dwindling courage. The tangible and material can never
be as grisly as the unknown, however perilous.

At my first startled glance I thought it was a gorilla which stood
before me. Even with the thought I realized that it was a man, but
such a man as neither I nor any other Earthman had ever looked upon.

He was not much taller than I, but broader and heavier, with a great
spread of shoulders, and thick limbs knotted with muscles. He wore a
loincloth of some silklike material girdled with a broad belt which
supported a long knife in a leather sheath. High-strapped sandals were
on his feet. These details I took in at a glance, my attention being
instantly fixed in fascination on his face.

Such a countenance it is difficult to imagine or describe. The head
was set squarely between the massive shoulders, the neck so squat as
to be scarcely apparent. The jaw was square and powerful, and as the
wide thin lips lifted in a snarl, I glimpsed brutal tusklike teeth. A
short bristly beard masked the jaw, set off by fierce, up-curving
mustaches. The nose was almost rudimentary, with wide flaring
nostrils. The eyes were small, bloodshot, and an icy gray in color.
From the thick black brows the forehead, low and receding, sloped back
into a tangle of coarse, bushy hair. The ears were small and very
close-set.

The mane and beard were very blue-black, and the creature's limbs
and body were almost covered with hair of the same hue. He was not,
indeed, as hairy as an ape, but he was hairier than any human being I
had ever seen.

I instantly realized that the being, hostile or not, was a
formidable figure. He fairly emanated strength--hard, raw, brutal
power. There was not an ounce of surplus flesh on him. His frame was
massive, with heavy bones. His hairy skin rippled with muscles that
looked iron-hard. Yet it was not altogether his body that spoke of
dangerous power. His look, his carriage, his whole manner reflected a
terrible physical might backed by a cruel and implacable mind. As I
met the blaze of his bloodshot eyes, I felt a wave of corresponding
anger. The stranger's attitude was arrogant and provocative beyond
description. I felt my muscles tense and harden instinctively.

But for an instant my resentment was submerged by the amazement with
which I heard him speak in perfect English!

"Thak! What manner of man are you?"

His voice was harsh, grating and insulting. There was nothing
subdued or restrained about him. Here were the naked primitive
instincts and manners, unmodified. Again I felt the old red fury
rising in me, but I fought it down.

"I am Esau Cairn," I answered shortly, and halted, at a loss how to
explain my presence on his planet.

His arrogant eyes roved contemptuously over my hairless limbs and
smooth face, and when he spoke, it was with unbearable scorn.

"By Thak, are you a man or a woman?"

My answer was a smash of my clenched fist that sent him rolling on
the sward.

The act was instinctive. Again my primitive wrath had betrayed me.
But I had no time for self-reproach. With a scream of bestial rage my
enemy sprang up and rushed at me, roaring and frothing. I met him
breast to breast, as reckless in my wrath as he, and in an instant was
fighting for my life.

I, who had always had to restrain and hold down my strength lest I
injure my fellow men, for the first time in my life found myself in
the clutches of a man stronger than myself. This I realized in the
first instant of impact, and it was only by the most desperate efforts
that I fought clear of his crushing embrace.

The fight was short and deadly. The only thing that saved me was the
fact that my antagonist knew nothing of boxing. He could--and did--
strike powerful blows with his clenched fists, but they were clumsy,
ill-timed and erratic. Thrice I mauled my way out of grapples that
would have ended with the snapping of my spine. He had no knack of
avoiding blows; no man on Earth could have survived the terrible
battering I gave him. Yet he incessantly surged in on me, his mighty
hands spread to drag me down. His nails were almost like talons, and I
was quickly bleeding from a score of places where they had torn the
skin.

Why he did not draw his dagger I could not understand, unless it was
because he considered himself capable of crushing me with his bare
hands--which proved to be the case. At last, half blinded by my
smashes, blood gushing from his split ears and splintered teeth, he
did reach for his weapon, and the move won the fight for me.

Breaking out of a half-clinch, he straightened out of his defensive
crouch and drew his dagger. And as he did so, I hooked my left into
his belly with all the might of my heavy shoulders and powerfully
driving legs behind it. The breath went out of him in an explosive
gasp, and my fist sank to the wrist in his belly. He swayed, his mouth
flying open, and I smashed my right to his sagging jaw. The punch
started at my hip, and carried every ounce of my weight and strength.
He went down like a slaughtered ox and lay without twitching, blood
spreading out over his beard. That last smash had torn his lip open
from the corner of his mouth to the rim of his chin, and must surely
have fractured his jawbone as well.

Panting from the fury of the bout, my muscles aching from his
crushing grasp, I worked my raw, skinned knuckles, and stared down at
my victim, wondering if I had sealed my doom. Surely, I could expect
nothing now but hostility from the people of Almuric. Well, I thought,
as well be hanged for a sheep as a goat. Stooping, I despoiled my
adversary of his single garment, belt and weapon, and transferred them
to my own frame. This done, I felt some slight renewal of confidence.
At least I was partly clothed and armed.

I examined the dagger with much interest. A more murderous weapon I
have never seen. The blade was perhaps nineteen inches in length,
double-edged, and sharp as a razor. It was broad at the haft, tapering
to a diamond point. The guard and pommel were of silver, the hilt
covered with a substance somewhat like shagreen. The blade was
indisputably steel, but of a quality I had never before encountered.
The whole was a triumph of the weapon-maker's art, and seemed to
indicate a high order of culture.

From my admiration of my newly acquired weapon, I turned again to my
victim, who was beginning to show signs of returning consciousness.
Instinct caused me to sweep the grasslands, and in the distance, to
the south, I saw a group of figures moving toward me. They were surely
men, and armed men. I caught the flash of the sunlight on steel.
Perhaps they were of the tribe of my adversary. If they found me
standing over their senseless comrade, wearing the spoils of conquest,
their attitude toward me was not hard to visualize.

I cast my eyes about for some avenue of escape or refuge, and saw
that the plain, some distance away, ran up into low green-clad
foothills. Beyond these in turn, I saw larger hills, marching up and
up in serried ranges. Another glance showed the distant figures to
have vanished among the tall grass along one of the river courses,
which they must cross before they reached the spot where I stood.

Waiting for no more, I turned and ran swiftly toward the hills. I
did not lessen my pace until I reached the foot of the first
foothills, where I ventured to look back, my breath coming in gasps,
and my heart pounding suffocatingly from my exertions. I could see my
antagonist, a small shape in the vastness of the plain. Further on,
the group I was seeking to avoid had come into the open and were
hastening toward him.

I hurried up the low slope, drenched with sweat and trembling with
fatigue. At the crest I looked back once more, to see the figures
clustered about my vanquished opponent. Then I went down the opposite
slope quickly, and saw them no more.

An hour's journeying brought me into as rugged a country as I have
ever seen. On all sides rose steep slopes, littered with loose
boulders, which threatened to roll down upon the wayfarer. Bare stone
cliffs, reddish in color, were much in evidence. There was little
vegetation, except for low stunted trees, of which the spread of their
branches was equal to the height of the trunk, and several varieties
of thorny bushes, upon some of which grew nuts of peculiar shape and
color. I broke open several of these, finding the kernel to be rich
and meaty in appearance, but I dared not eat it, although I was
feeling the bite of hunger.

My thirst bothered me more than my hunger, and this at least I was
able to satisfy, although the satisfying nearly cost me my life. I
clambered down a precipitous steep and entered a narrow valley,
enclosed by lofty cliffs, at the foot of which the nut-bearing bushes
grew in great abundance. In the middle of the valley lay a broad pool,
apparently fed by a spring. In the center of the pool the water
bubbled continuously, and a small stream led off down the valley.

I approached the pool eagerly, and lying on my belly at its
lush-grown marge, plunged my muzzle into the crystal-clear water. It, too,
might be lethal for an Earthman, for all I knew, but I was so maddened
with thirst that I risked it. It had an unusual tang, a quality I have
always found present in Almuric water, but it was deliciously cold and
satisfying. So pleasant it was to my parched lips that after I had
satisfied my thirst, I lay there enjoying the sensation of
tranquility. That was a mistake. Eat quickly, drink quickly, sleep
lightly, and linger not over anything--those are the first rules of
the wild, and his life is not long who fails to observe them.

The warmth of the sun, the bubbling of the water, the sensuous
feeling of relaxation and satiation after fatigue and thirst--these
wrought on me like an opiate to lull me into semislumber. It must have
been some subconscious instinct that warned me, when a faint swishing
reached my ears that was not part of the rippling of the spring. Even
before my mind translated the sound as the passing of a heavy body
through the tall grass, I whirled on my side, snatching at my poniard.

Simultaneously my ears were stunned with a deafening roar, there was
a rushing through the air, and a giant form crashed down where I had
lain an instant before, so close to me that its outspread talons raked
my thigh. I had no time to tell the nature of my attacker--I had only
a dazed impression that it was huge, supple, and catlike. I rolled
frantically aside as it spat and struck at me sidewise; then it was on
me, and even as I felt its claws tear agonizingly into my flesh, the
ice-cold water engulfed us both. A catlike yowl rose half strangled,
as if the yowler had swallowed a large amount of water. There was a
great splashing and thrashing about me; then as I rose to the surface,
I saw a long, bedraggled shape disappearing around the bushes near the
cliffs. What it was I could not say, but it looked more like a leopard
than anything else, though it was bigger than any leopard I had ever
seen.

Scanning the shore carefully, I saw no other enemy, and crawled out
of the pool, shivering from my icy plunge. My poniard was still in its
scabbard. I had had no time to draw it, which was just as well. If I
had not rolled into the pool, just when I did, dragging my attacker
with me, it would have been my finish. Evidently the beast had a true
catlike distaste for water.

I found that I had a deep gash in my thigh and four lesser abrasions
on my shoulder, where a great talon-armed paw had closed. The gash in
my leg was pouring blood, and I thrust the limb deep into the icy
pool, swearing at the excruciating sting of the cold water on the raw
flesh. My leg was nearly numb when the bleeding ceased.

I now found myself in a quandary. I was hungry, night was coming on,
there was no telling when the leopard-beast might return, or another
predatory animal attack me; more than that, I was wounded. Civilized
man is soft and easily disabled. I had a wound such as would be
considered, among civilized people, ample reason for weeks of an
invalid's existence. Strong and rugged as I was, according to Earth
standards, I despaired when I surveyed the wound, and wondered how I
was to treat it. The matter was quickly taken out of my hands.

I had started across the valley toward the cliffs, hoping I might
find a cave there, for the nip of the air warned me that the night
would not be as warm as the day, when a hellish clamor up near the
mouth of the valley caused me to wheel and glare in that direction.
Over the ridge came what I thought to be a pack of hyenas, except for
their noise, which was more infernal than an Earthly hyena, even,
could produce. I had no illusions as to their purpose. It was I they
were after.

Necessity recognizes few limitations. An instant before I had been
limping painfully and slowly. Now I set out on a mad race for the
cliff as if I were fresh and unwounded. With every step a spasm of
agony shot along my thigh, and the wound, bleeding afresh, spurted
red, but I gritted my teeth and increased my efforts.

My pursuers gave tongue and raced after me with such appalling speed
that I had almost given up hope of reaching the trees beneath the
cliffs before they pulled me down. They were snapping at my heels when
I lurched into the low stunted growths, and swarmed up the spreading
branches with a gasp of relief. But to my horror the hyenas climbed
after me! A desperate downward glance showed me that they were not
true hyenas; they differed from the breed I had known just as
everything on Almuric differed subtly from its nearest counterpart on
Earth. These beasts had curving catlike claws, and their bodily
structure was catlike enough to allow them to climb as well as a lynx.

Despairingly, I was about to turn at bay, when I saw a ledge on the
cliff above my head. There the cliff was deeply weathered, and the
branches pressed against it. A desperate scramble up the perilous
slant, and I had dragged my scratched and bruised body up on the ledge
and lay glaring down at my pursuers, who loaded the topmost branches
and howled up at me like lost souls. Evidently their climbing ability
did not include cliffs, because after one attempt, in which one sprang
up toward the ledge, clawed frantically for an instant on the sloping
stone wall, and then fell off with an awful shriek, they made no
effort to reach me.

Neither did they abandon their post. Stars came out, strange
unfamiliar constellations, that blazed whitely in the dark velvet
skies, and a broad golden moon rose above the cliffs, and flooded the
hills with weird light; but still my sentinels sat on the branches
below me and howled up at me their hatred and belly-hunger.

The air was icy, and frost formed on the bare stone where I lay. My
limbs became stiff and numb. I had knotted my girdle about my leg for
a tourniquet; the run had apparently ruptured some small veins laid
bare by the wound, because the blood flowed from it in an alarming
manner.

I never spent a more miserable night. I lay on the frosty stone
ledge, shaking with cold. Below me the eyes of my hunters burned up at
me. Throughout the shadowy hills sounded the roaring and bellowing of
unknown monsters. Howls, screams and yapping cut the night. And there
I lay, naked, wounded, freezing, hungry, terrified, just as one of my
remote ancestors might have lain in the Paleolithic Age of my own
planet.

I can understand why our heathen ancestors worshipped the sun. When
at last the cold moon sank and the sun of Almuric pushed its golden
rim above the distant cliffs, I could have wept for sheer joy. Below
me the hyenas snarled and stretched themselves, bayed up at me
briefly, and loped away in search of easier prey. Slowly the warmth of
the sun stole through my cramped, numbed limbs, and I rose stiffly up
to greet the day, just as that forgotten forbear of mine might have
stood up in the youthdawn of the Earth.

After a while I descended, and fell upon the nuts clustered in the
bushes near by. I was faint from hunger, and decided that I had as
soon die from poisoning as from starvation. I broke open the thick
shells and munched the meaty kernels eagerly, and I cannot recall any
Earthly meal, howsoever elaborate, that tasted half as good. No ill
effects followed; the nuts were good and nutritious. I was beginning
to overcome my surroundings, at least so far as food was concerned. I
had surmounted one obstacle of life on Almuric.

It is needless for me to narrate the details of the following
months. I dwelt among the hills in such suffering and peril as no man
on Earth has experienced for thousands of years. I make bold to say
that only a man of extraordinary strength and ruggedness could have
survived as I did. I did more than survive. I came at last to thrive
on the existence.

At first I dared not leave the valley, where I was sure of food and
water. I built a sort of nest of branches and leaves on the ledge, and
slept there at night. Slept? The word is misleading. I crouched there,
trying to keep from freezing, grimly lasting out the night. In the
daytime I snatched naps, learning to sleep anywhere, or at any time,
and so lightly that the slightest unusual noise would awaken me. The
rest of the time I explored my valley and the hills about, and picked
and ate nuts. Nor were my humble explorations uneventful. Time and
again I raced for the cliffs or the trees, winning sometimes by
shuddering hairbreadths. The hills swarmed with beasts, and all seemed
predatory.

It was that fact which held me to my valley, where I at least had a
bit of safety. What drove me forth at last was the same reason that
has always driven forth the human race, from the first apeman down to
the last European colonist--the search for food. My supply of nuts
became exhausted. The trees were stripped. This was not altogether on
my account, although I developed a most ravenous hunger, what of my
constant exertions; but others came to eat the nuts--huge shaggy
bearlike creatures, and things that looked like fur-clad baboons.
These animals ate nuts, but they were omnivorous, to judge by the
attention they accorded me. The bears were comparatively easy to
avoid; they were mountains of flesh and muscle, but they could not
climb, and their eyes were none too good. It was the baboons I learned
to fear and hate. They pursued me on sight, they could both run and
climb, and they were not balked by the cliff.

One pursued me to my eyrie, and swarmed up onto the ledge with me.
At least such was his intention, but man is always most dangerous when
cornered. I was weary of being hunted. As the frothing apish
monstrosity hauled himself up over my ledge, manlike, I drove my
poniard down between his shoulders with such fury that I literally
pinned him to the ledge; the keen point sinking a full inch into the
solid stone beneath him.

The incident showed me both the temper of my steel, and the growing
quality of my own muscles. I who had been among the strongest on my
own planet, found myself a weakling on primordial Almuric. Yet the
potentiality of mastery was in my brain and my thews, and I was
beginning to find myself.

Since survival was dependent on toughening, I toughened. My skin,
burnt brown by the sun and hardened by the elements, became more
impervious to both heat and cold than I had deemed possible. Muscles I
had not known I possessed became evident. Such strength and suppleness
became mine as Earthmen have not known for ages.

A short time before I had been transported from my native planet, a
noted physical culture expert had pronounced me the most perfectly
developed man on Earth. As I hardened with my fierce life on Almuric,
I realized that the expert honestly had not known what physical
development was. Nor had I. Had it been possible to divide my being
and set opposite each other the man that expert praised, and the man I
had become, the former would have seemed ridiculously soft, sluggish
and clumsy in comparison to the brown, sinewy giant opposed to him.

I no longer turned blue with the cold at night, nor did the rockiest
way bruise my naked feet. I could swarm up an almost sheer cliff with
the ease of a monkey, I could run for hours without exhaustion; in
short dashes it would have taken a racehorse to outfoot me. My wounds,
untended except for washing in cold water, healed of themselves, as
Nature is prone to heal the hurts of such as live close to her.

All this I narrate in order that it may be seen what sort of a man
was formed in the savage mold. Had it not been for the fierce forging
that made me steel and rawhide, I could not have survived the grim
bloody episodes through which I was to pass on that wild planet.

With new realization of power came confidence. I stood on my feet
and stared at my bestial neighbors with defiance. I no longer fled
from a frothing, champing baboon. With them, at least, I declared
feud, growing to hate the abominable beasts as I might have hated
human enemies. Besides, they ate the nuts I wished for myself.

They soon learned not to follow me to my eyrie, and the day came
when I dared to meet one on even terms, I will never forget the sight
of him frothing and roaring as he charged out of a clump of bushes,
and the awful glare in his manlike eyes. My resolution wavered, but it
was too late to retreat, and I met him squarely, skewering him through
the heart as he closed in with his long clutching arms.

But there were other beasts which frequented the valley, and which I
did not attempt to meet on any terms: the hyenas, the sabertooth
leopards, longer and heavier than an Earthly tiger and more ferocious;
giant mooselike creatures, carnivorous, with alligator-like tusks; the
monstrous bears; gigantic boars, with bristly hair which looked
impervious to a swordcut. There were other monsters, which appeared
only at night, and the details of which I was not able to make out.
These mysterious beasts moved mostly in silence, though some emitted
high-pitched weird wails, or low Earth-shaking rumbles. As the unknown
is most menacing, I had a feeling that these nighted monsters were
even more terrible than the familiar horrors which harried my day-life.

I remember one occasion on which I awoke suddenly and found myself
lying tensely on my ledge, my ears strained to a night suddenly and
breathlessly silent. The moon had set and the valley was veiled in
darkness. Not a chattering baboon, not a yelping hyena disturbed the
sinister stillness. *Something* was moving through the valley; I heard
the faint rhythmic swishing of the grass that marked the passing of
some huge body, but in the darkness I made out only a dim gigantic
shape, which somehow seemed infinitely longer than it was broad--out
of natural proportion, somehow. It passed away up the valley, and with
its going, it was as if the night audibly expelled a gusty sigh of
relief. The nocturnal noises started up again, and I lay back to sleep
once more with a vague feeling that some grisly horror had passed me
in the night.

I have said that I strove with the baboons over the possession of
the life-giving nuts. What of my own appetite and those of the beasts,
there came a time when I was forced to leave my valley and seek far
afield in search of nutriment. My explorations had become broader and
broader, until I had exhausted the resources of the country close
about. So I set forth at random through the hills in a southerly and
easterly direction. Of my wanderings I will deal briefly. For many
weeks I roamed through the hills, starving, feasting, threatened by
savage beasts sleeping in trees or perilously on tall rocks when night
fell. I fled, I fought, I slew, I suffered wounds. Oh, I can tell you
my life was neither dull nor uneventful.

I was living the life of the most primitive savage; I had neither
companionship, books, clothing, nor any of the things which go to make
up civilization. According to the cultured viewpoint, I should have
been most miserable. I was not. I revelled in my existence. My being
grew and expanded. I tell you, the natural life of mankind is a grim
battle for existence against the forces of nature, and any other form
of life is artificial and without realistic meaning.

My life was not empty; it was crowded with adventures calling on
every ounce of intelligence and physical power. When I swung down from
my chosen eyrie at dawn, I knew that I would see the sun set only
through my personal craft and strength and speed. I came to read the
meaning of every waving grass tuft, each masking bush, each towering
boulder. On every hand lurked Death in a thousand forms. My vigilance
could not be relaxed, even in sleep. When I closed my eyes at night it
was with no assurance that I would open them at dawn. I was fully
alive. That phrase has more meaning than appears on the surface. The
average civilized man is never fully alive; he is burdened with masses
of atrophied tissue and useless matter. Life flickers feebly in him;
his senses are dull and torpid. In developing his intellect he has
sacrificed far more than he realizes.

I realized that I, too, had been partly dead on my native planet.
But now I was alive in every sense of the word; I tingled and burned
and stung with life to the finger tips and the ends of my toes. Every
sinew, vein, and springy bone was vibrant with the dynamic flood of
singing, pulsing, humming life. My time was too much occupied with
food-getting and preserving my skin to allow the developing of the
morbid and intricate complexes and inhibitions which torment the
civilized individual. To those highly complex persons who would
complain that the psychology of such a life is over-simple, I can but
reply that in my life at that time, violent and continual action and
the necessity of action crowded out most of the gropings and
soul-searchings common to those whose safety and daily meals are assured
them by the toil of others. My life *was* primitively simple; I dwelt
altogether in the present. My life on Earth already seemed like a
dream, dim and far away.

All my life I had held down my instincts, had chained and enthralled
my over-abundant vitalities. Now I was free to hurl all my mental and
physical powers into the untamed struggle for existence, and I knew
such zest and freedom as I had never dreamed of.

In all my wanderings--and since leaving the valley I had covered an
enormous distance--I had seen no sign of humanity, or anything
remotely resembling humanity.

It was the day I glimpsed a vista of rolling grassland beyond the
peaks, that I suddenly encountered a human being. The meeting was
unexpected. As I strode along an upland plateau, thickly grown with
bushes and littered with boulders, I came abruptly on a scene striking
in its primordial significance.

Ahead of me the Earth sloped down to form a shallow bowl, the floor
of which was thickly grown with tall grass, indicating the presence of
a spring. In the midst of this bowl a figure similar to the one I had
encountered on my arrival on Almuric was waging an unequal battle with
a sabertooth leopard. I stared in amazement, for I had not supposed
that any human could stand before the great cat and live.

Always the glittering wheel of a sword shimmered between the monster
and its prey, and blood on the spotted hide showed that the blade had
been fleshed more than once. But it could not last; at any instant I
expected to see the swordsman go down beneath the giant body.

Even with the thought, I was running fleetly down the shallow slope.
I owed nothing to the unknown man, but his valiant battle stirred
newly plumbed depths in my soul. I did not shout but rushed in
silently and murderously, my poniard gleaming in my hand. Even as I
reached them, the great cat sprang, the sword went spinning from the
wielder's hand, and he went down beneath the hurtling bulk. And almost
simultaneously I disembowled the sabertooth with one tremendous
ripping stroke.

With a scream it lurched off its victim, slashing murderously as I
leaped back, and then it began rolling and tumbling over the grass,
roaring hideously and ripping up the Earth with its frantic talons, in
a ghastly welter of blood and streaming entrails.

It was a sight to sicken the hardiest, and I was glad when the
mangled beast stiffened convulsively and lay still.

I turned to the man, but with little hope of finding life in him. I
had seen the terrible saberlike fangs of the giant carnivore tear into
his throat as he went down.

He was lying in a wide pool of blood, his throat horribly mangled. I
could see the pulsing of the great jugular vein which had been laid
bare, though not severed. One of the huge taloned paws had raked down
his side from arm-pit to hip, and his thigh had been laid open in a
frightful manner; I could see the naked bone, and from the ruptured
veins blood was gushing. Yet to my amazement the man was not only
living, but conscious. Yet even as I looked, his eyes glazed and the
light faded in them.

I tore a strip from his loincloth and made a tourniquet about his
thigh which somewhat slackened the flow of blood; then I looked down
at him helplessly. He was apparently dying, though I knew something of
the stamina and vitality of the wild and its people. And such
evidently this man was; he was as savage and hairy in appearance,
though not quite so bulky, as the man I had fought during my first day
on Almuric.

As I stood there helplessly, something whistled venomously past my
ear and thudded into the slope behind me. I saw a long arrow quivering
there, and a fierce shout reached my ears. Glaring about, I saw half a
dozen hairy men running fleetly toward me, fitting shafts to their
bows as they came.

With an instinctive snarl I bounded up the short slope, the whistle
of the missiles about my head lending wings to my heels. I did not
stop, once I had gained the cover of the bushes surrounding the bowl,
but went straight on, wrathful and disgusted. Evidently men as well as
beasts were hostile on Almuric, and I would do well to avoid them in
the future.

Then I found my anger submerged in a fantastic problem. I had
understood some of the shouts of the men as they rushed toward me. The
words had been in English, just as the antagonist of my first
encounter had spoken and understood that language. In vain I cudgeled
my mind for a solution. I had found that while animate and inanimate
objects on Almuric often closely copied things on Earth, yet there was
almost a striking difference somewhere, in substance, quality, shape
or mode of action. It was preposterous that certain conditions on the
separate planets could run such a perfect parallel as to produce an
identical language. Yet I could not doubt the evidence of my ears.
With a curse I abandoned the problem as too fantastic to waste time
on.

Perhaps it was this incident, perhaps the glimpse of the distant
savannas, which filled me with a restlessness and distaste for the
barren hill country where I had fared so hardily. The sight of men,
strange and alien as they were, stirred in my breast a desire for
human companionship, and this frustrated longing became in turn a
sudden feeling of repulsion for my surroundings. I did not hope to
meet friendly humans on the plains; but I determined to try my chances
upon them, nevertheless, though what perils I might meet there I could
not know. Before I left the hills some whim caused me to scrape from
my face my heavy growth and trim my shaggy hair with my poniard, which
had lost none of its razor edge. Why I did this I cannot say, unless
it was the natural instinct of a man setting forth into new country to
look his "best."

The next morning I descended into the grassy plains, which swept
eastward and southward as far as sight could reach. I continued
eastward and covered many miles that day, without any unusual
incident. I encountered several small winding rivers, along whose
margins the grass stood taller than my head. Among this grass I heard
the snorting and thrashing of heavy animals of some sort, and gave
them a wide berth--for which caution I was later thankful.

The rivers were thronged in many cases with gaily colored birds of
many shapes and hues, some silent, others continually giving forth
strident cries as they wheeled above the waters or dipped down to
snatch their prey from its depths.

Further out on the plain I came upon herds of grazing animals--small
deerlike creatures, and a curious animal that looked like a
pot-bellied pig with abnormally long hind legs, and that progressed in
enormous bounds, after the fashion of a kangaroo. It was a most
ludicrous sight, and I laughed until my belly ached. Later I reflected
that it was the first time I had laughed--outside of a few short barks
of savage satisfaction at the discomfiture of an enemy--since I had
set foot on Almuric.

That night I slept in the tall grass not far from a water course,
and might have been made the prey of any wandering meat-eater. But
fortune was with me that night. All across the plains sounded the
thunderous roaring of stalking monsters, but none came near my frail
retreat. The night was warm and pleasant, strikingly in contrast with
the nights in the chill grim hills.

The next day a momentous thing occurred. I had had no meat on
Almuric, except when ravenous hunger had driven me to eat raw flesh. I
had searched in vain for some stone that would strike a spark. The
rocks were of a peculiar nature, unknown to Earth. But that morning on
the plains, I found a bit of greenish-looking stone lying in the
grass, and experiments showed that it had some of the qualities of
flint. Patient effort, in which I clinked my poniard against the
stone, rewarded me with a spark of fire in the dry grass, which I soon
fanned to a blaze--and had some difficulty in extinguishing.

That night I surrounded myself with a ring of fire which I fed with
dry grass and stalked plants which burned slowly and I felt
comparatively safe, though huge forms moved about me in the darkness,
and I caught the stealthy pad of great paws, and the glimmer of wicked
eyes.

On my journey across the plains I subsisted on fruit I found growing
on green stalks, which I saw the birds eating. It was pleasant to the
taste, though lacking in the nutritive qualities of the nuts in the
hills. I looked longingly at the scampering deerlike animals, now that
I had the means of cooking their flesh, but saw no way of securing
them.

And so for days I wandered aimlessly across those vast plains, until
I came in sight of a massive walled city.

I sighted it just at nightfall, and eager though I was to
investigate it further, I made my camp and waited for morning. I
wondered if my fire would be seen by the inhabitants, and if they
would send out a party to discover my nature and purpose.

With the fall of night I could no longer make it out, but the last
waning light had shown it plainly, rising stark and somber against the
eastern sky. At that distance no evidence of life was visible, but I
had a dim impression of huge walls and massive towers, all of a
greenish tint.

I lay within my circle of fire, while great sinuous bodies rustled
through the grass and fierce eyes glared at me, and my imagination was
at work as I strove to visualize the possible inhabitants of that
mysterious city. Would they be of the same race as the hairy ferocious
troglodytes I had encountered? I doubted it, for it hardly seemed
possible that these primitive creatures would be capable of rearing
such a structure. Perhaps there I would find a highly developed type
of cultured man. Perhaps--here imaginings too dark and shadowy for
description whispered at the back of my consciousness.

Then the moon rose behind the city, etching its massive outlines in
the weird golden glow. It looked black and somber in the moonlight;
there was something distinctly brutish and forbidding about its
contours. As I sank into slumber I reflected that if apemen could
build a city, it would surely resemble that colossus in the moon.



Chapter 02


Dawn Found Me on my way across the plain. It may seem like the
height of folly to have gone striding openly toward the city, which
might be full of hostile beings, but I had learned to take desperate
chances, and I was consumed with curiosity; weary at last of my lonely
life.

The nearer I approached, the more rugged the details stood out.
There was more of the fortress than the city about the walls, which,
with the tower that loomed behind and above them, seemed to have been
built of huge blocks of greenish stone, very roughly cut. There was no
apparent attempt at smoothing, polishing, or otherwise adorning this
stone. The whole appearance was rude and savage, suggesting a wild
fierce people heaping up rocks as a defense against enemies.

As yet I had seen nothing of the inhabitants. The city might have
been empty of human life. But a broad road leading to the massive gate
was beaten bare of grass, as if by the constant impact of many feet.
There were no fields or gardens about the city; the grass waved to the
foot of the walls. All during that long march across the plain to the
gates, I saw nothing resembling a human being. But as I came under the
shadow of the great gate, which was flanked on either hand by a
massive tower, I caught a glimpse of tousled black heads moving along
the squat battlements. I halted and threw back my head to hail them.
The sun had just topped the towers and its glare was full in my eyes.
Even as I opened my lips, there was a cracking report like a rifle
shot, a jet of white smoke spurted from a tower, and a terrific impact
against my head dashed me into unconsciousness.

When I came to my senses it was not slowly, but quickly and
clear-headedly, what with my immense recuperative powers. I was lying on a
bare stone floor in a large chamber, the walls, ceiling and floor of
which were composed of huge blocks of green stone. From a barred
window high up in one wall sunlight poured to illuminate the room,
which was without furnishing, except for a bench, crudely and
massively built.

A heavy chain was looped about my waist and made fast with a
strange, heavy lock. The other end of the chain was fastened to a
thick ring set in the wall. Everything about the fantastic city seemed
massive.

Lifting a hand to my head, I found it was bandaged with something
that felt like silk. My head throbbed. Evidently whatever missile it
was that had been fired at me from the wall, had only grazed my head,
inflicting a scalp wound and knocking me senseless. I felt for my
poniard, but naturally it was gone.

I cursed heartily. When I had found myself on Almuric I had been
appalled by my prospects; but then at least I had been free. Now I was
in the hands of God only knew what manner of beings. All I knew was
that they were hostile. But my inordinate self-confidence would not
down, and I felt no great fear. I did feel a rush of panic, common to
all wild things, at being confined and shackled, but I fought down
this feeling and it was succeeded by one of red unreasoning rage.
Springing to my feet, which movement the chain was long enough to
allow, I began jerking and tearing at my shackle.

It was while engaged in this fruitless exhibition of primitive
resentment that a slight noise caused me to wheel, snarling, my
muscles tensed for attack or defense. What I saw froze me in my
tracks.

Just within the doorway stood a girl. Except in her garments she
differed little from the type of girls I had known on Earth, except
that her slim figure exhibited a suppleness superior to theirs. Her
hair was intensely black, her skin white as alabaster. Her lissome
limbs were barely concealed by a light, tuniclike garment, sleeveless,
low-necked, revealing the greater part of her ivory breasts. This
garment was girdled at her lithe waist, and came to within a few
inches above her knees. Soft sandals encased her slender feet. She was
standing in an attitude of awed fascination, her dark eyes wide, her
crimson lips parted. As I wheeled and glared at her, she gave back with
a quick gasp of surprise or fear, and fled lightly from the chamber.

I stared after her. If she were typical of the people of the city,
then surely the effect produced by the brutish masonry was an
illusion, for she seemed the product of some gentle and refined
civilization, allowing for a certain barbaric suggestion about her
costume.

While so musing, I heard the tramp of feet, harsh voices were lifted
in argument, and the next instant a group of men strode into the
chamber, halting as they saw me conscious and on my feet. Still
thinking of the girl, I glared at them in surprise. They were of the
same type as the others I had seen, huge, hairy, ferocious, with the
same apelike forward-thrust heads and formidable faces. Some, I
noticed, were darker than others, but all were dark and fierce, and
the whole effect was one of somber and ferocious savagery. They were
instinct with ferocity; it blazed in their icy-gray eyes, reflected in
the snarling lift of their bristling lips, rumbled in their rough
voices.

All were armed, and their hands seemed instinctively to seek their
hilts as they stood glaring at me, their shaggy heads thrust forward
in their apelike manner.

"Thak!" one exclaimed, or rather roared--all their voices were as
gusty as a sea wind--"he's conscious!"

"Do you suppose he can speak or understand human language?" rumbled
another.

All this while I had stood glaring back at them, wondering anew at
their speech. Now I realized that they were not speaking English.

The thing was so unnatural that it gave me a shock. They were not
speaking any Earthly language, and I realized it, yet I understood
them, except for various words which apparently had no counterpart on
Earth. I made no attempt to understand this seemingly impossible
phenomenon, but answered the last speaker.

"I can speak and understand." I grunted. "Who are you? What city is
this? Why did you attack me? Why am I in chains?"

They rumbled in amazement, with much tugging of mustaches, shaking
of heads, and uncouth profanity.

"He talks, by Thak!" said one. "I tell you, he is from beyond the
Girdle!"

"From beyond my hip!" broke in another rudely. "He is a freak, a
damned, smooth-skinned degenerate misfit which should not have been
born, or allowed to exist."

"Ask him how he came by the Bonecrusher's poniard," requested yet
another.

"Did you steal this from Logar?" he demanded.

"I stole nothing!" I snapped, feeling like a wild beast being
prodded through the bars of a cage by unfeeling and critical
spectators. My rages, like all the emotions on that wild planet, were
without restraint.

"I took that poniard from the man who carried it, and I took it in a
fair fight," I added.

"Did you slay him?" they demanded unbelievingly.

"No," I growled. "We fought with our bare hands, until he tried to
knife me. Then I knocked him senseless."

A roar greeted my words. I thought at first they were clamoring with
rage; then I made out that they were arguing among themselves.

"I tell you he lies!" one bull's bellow rose above the tumult. "We
all know that Logar the Bonecrusher is not the man to be thrashed and
stripped by a smooth-skinned hairless brown man like this. Ghor the
Bear might be a match for Logar. No one else."

"Well, there's the poniard," someone pointed out.

The clamor rose again, and in an instant the disputants were yelling
and cursing, and brandishing their hairy fists in one another's faces,
hands fumbled at sword hilts, and challenges and defiances were
exchanged freely.

I looked to see a general throat-cutting, but presently one who
seemed in some authority drew his sword and began banging the hilt on
the rude bench, at the same time drowning out the voices of the others
with his bull-like bellowing.

"Shut up! Shut up! Let another man open his mouth and I'll split his
head!" As the clamor subsided and the disputants glared venomously at
him, he continued in a voice as calm as if nothing had occurred. "It's
neither here nor there about the poniard. He might have caught Logar
sleeping and brained him, or he might have stolen it, or found it. Are
we Logar's brothers, that we should seek after his welfare?"

A general snarl answered this. Evidently the man called Logar was
not popular among them.

"The question is, what shall we do with this creature? We've got to
hold a council and decide. He's evidently uneatable." He grinned as he
said this, which was apparently meant as a bit of grim humor.

"His hide would make good leather." suggested another in a tone that
did not sound as though he was joking.

"Too soft," protested another.

"He didn't feel soft while we were carrying him in," returned the
first speaker. "He was hard as steel springs."

"Tush," deprecated the other. "I'll show you how tender his flesh
is. Watch me slice off a few strips." He drew his dagger and
approached me while the others watched with interest.

All this time my rage had been growing until the chamber seemed to
swim in a red mist. Now, as I realized that the fellow really intended
trying the edge of his steel on my skin I went berserk. Wheeling, I
gripped the chain with both hands, wrapping it around my wrists for
more leverage. Then, bracing my feet against the floor and walls I
began to strain with all my strength. All over my body the great
muscles coiled and knotted; sweat broke out on my skin, and then with
a shattering crash the stone gave way, the iron ring was torn out
bodily, and I was catapulted on my back onto the floor, at the feet of
my captors who roared with amazement and fell on me *en masse*.

I answered their bellows with one strident yell of blood-thirsty
gratification, and heaving up through the melee, began swinging my
heavy fists like caulking mallets. Oh, that was a rough-house while it
lasted! They made no attempt to knife me, striving to swamp me with
numbers. We rolled from one side of the chamber to the other, a
gasping, thrashing, cursing, hammering mass, while with the yells,
howls, earnest profanity, and impact of heavy bodies, it was a perfect
bedlam. Once I seemed to catch a fleeting glimpse of the door thronged
with the heads of women similar to the one I had seen, but I could not
be sure; my teeth were set in a hairy ear, my eyes were full of sweat
and stars from a vicious punch on the nose, and what with a gang of
heavy forms romping all over me my sight was none too good.

Yet, I gave a good account of myself. Ears split, noses crumpled and
teeth splintered under the crushing impact of my iron-hard fists, and
the yells of the wounded were music to my battered ears. But that
damnable chain about my waist kept tripping me and coiling about my
legs, and pretty soon the bandage was ripped from my head, my scalp
wound opened anew and deluged me with blood. Blinded by this I
floundered and stumbled, and gasping and panting they bore me down and
bound my arms and legs.

The survivors then fell away from me and lay or sat in positions of
pain and exhaustion while I, finding my voice, cursed them luridly. I
derived ferocious satisfaction at the sight of all the bloody noses,
black eyes, torn ears and smashed teeth which were in evidence, and
barked in vicious laughter when one announced with many curses that
his arm was broken. One of them was out cold, and had to be revived,
which they did by dumping over him a vessel of cold water that was
fetched by someone I could not see from where I lay. I had no idea
that it was a woman who came in answer to a harsh roar of command.

"His wound is open again," said one, pointing at me. "He'll bleed to
death."

"I hope he does," snarled another, lying doubled up on the floor.
"He's burst my belly. I'm dying. Get me some wine."

"If you're dying you don't need wine," brutally answered the one who
seemed a chief, as he spat out bits of splintered teeth. "Tie up his
wound, Akra."

Akra limped over to me with no great enthusiasm and bent down.

"Hold your damnable head still," he growled.

"Keep off!" I snarled. "I'll have nothing from you. Touch me at your
peril."

He exasperatedly grabbed my face in his broad hand and shoved me
violently down. That was a mistake. My jaws locked on his thumb,
evoking an ear-splitting howl, and it was only with the aid of his
comrades that he extricated the mangled member. Maddened by the pain,
he howled wordlessly, then suddenly gave me a terrific kick in the
temple, driving my wounded head with great violence back against the
massive bench leg. Once again I lost consciousness.

When I came to myself again I was once more bandaged, shackled by
the wrists and ankles, and made fast to a fresh ring, newly set in the
stone, and apparently more firmly fixed than the other had been. It
was night. Through the window I glimpsed the star-dotted sky. A torch
which burned with a peculiar white flame was thrust into a niche in
the wall, and a man sat on the bench, elbows on knees and chin on
fists, regarding me intently. On the bench near him stood a huge gold
vessel.

"I doubted if you'd come to after that last crack," he said at last.

"It would take more than that to finish me," I snarled. "You are a
pack of cursed weaklings. But for my wound and that infernal chain,
I'd have bested the whole mob of you."

My insults seemed to interest rather than anger him. He absently
fingered a large bump on his head on which blood was thickly clotted,
and asked: "Who are you? Whence do you come?"

"None of your business," I snapped.

He shrugged his shoulders, and lifting the vessel in one hand drew
his dagger with the other.

"In Koth none goes hungry," he said, "I'm going to place this food
near your hand and you can eat. But I warn you, if you try to strike
or bite me, I'll stab you."

I merely snarled truculently, and he bent and set down the bowl,
hastily withdrawing. I found the food to be a kind of stew, satisfying
both thirst and hunger. Having eaten I felt in somewhat better mood,
and my guard renewed his questions, I answered: "My name is Esau
Cairn. I am an American, from the planet Earth."

He mulled over my statements for a space, then asked: "Are these
places beyond the Girdle?"

"I don't understand you," I answered.

He shook his head. "Nor I you. But if you do not know of the Girdle,
you cannot be from beyond it. Doubtless it is all fable, anyway. But
whence did you come when we saw you approaching across the plain? Was
that your fire we glimpsed from the towers last night?"

"I suppose so," I replied. "For many months I have lived in the
hills to the west. It was only a few weeks ago that I descended into
the plains."

He stared and stared at me.

"In the hills? Alone, and with only a poniard?"

"Well, what about it?" I demanded.

He shook his head as if in doubt or wonder. "A few hours ago I would
have called you a liar. Now I am not sure."

"What is the name of this city?" I asked.

"Koth, of the Kothan tribe. Our chief is Khossuth Skull-splitter. I
am Thab the Swift. I am detailed to guard you while the warriors hold
council."

"What's the nature of their council?" I inquired.

"They discuss what shall be done with you; and they have been
arguing since sunset, and are no nearer a solution than before."

"What is their disagreement?"

"Well," he answered. "Some want to hang you, and some want to shoot
you."

"I don't suppose it's occurred to them that they might let me go," I
suggested with some bitterness.

He gave me a cold look. "Don't be a fool," he said reprovingly.

At that moment a light step sounded outside, and the girl I had seen
before tiptoed into the chamber. Thab eyed her disapprovingly.

"What are you doing here, Altha?" he demanded.

"I came to look again at the stranger," she answered in a soft
musical voice. "I never saw a man like him. His skin is nearly as
smooth as mine, and he has no hair on his countenance. How strange are
his eyes! Whence does he come?"

"From the hills, he says," grunted Thab. Her eyes widened. "Why,
none dwells in the hills, except wild beasts! Can it be that he is
some sort of animal? They say he speaks and understands speech."

"So he does," growled Thab, fingering his bruises. "He also knocks
out men's brains with his naked fists, which are harder and heavier
than maces. Get away from there.

"He's a rampaging devil. If he gets his hands on you he won't leave
enough of you for the vultures to pick."

"I won't get near him," she assured him. "But, Thab, he does not
look so terrible. See, there is no anger in the gaze he fixes on me.
What will be done with him?"

"The tribe will decide," he answered. "Probably let him fight a
sabertooth leopard bare-handed."

She clasped her own hands with more human feeling than I had yet
seen shown on Almuric.

"Oh, Thab, why? He has done no harm; he came alone and with empty
hands. The warriors shot him down without warning--and now--"

He glanced at her in irritation. "If I told your father you were
pleading for a captive--"

Evidently the threat carried weight. She visibly wilted.

"Don't tell him," she pleaded. Then she flared up again. "Whatever
you say, it's beastly! If my father whips me until the blood runs over
my heels, I'll still say so!"

And so saying, she ran quickly out of the chamber.

"Who is that girl?" I asked.

"Altha, the daughter of Zal the Thrower."

"Who is he?"

"One of those you battled so viciously a short time ago."

"You mean to tell me a girl like that is the daughter of a man
like--" Words failed me.

"What's wrong with her?" he demanded. "She differs none from the
rest of our women."

"You mean all the women look like her, and all the men look like
you?"

"Certainly--allowing for their individual characteristics. Is it
otherwise among your people? That is, if you are not a solitary
freak."

"Well, I'll be--" I began in bewilderment, when another warrior
appeared in the door, saying.

"I'm to relieve you, Thab. The warriors
have decide to leave the matter to Khossuth when he returns on the
morrow."

Thab departed and the other seated himself on the bench. I made no
attempt to talk to him. My head was swimming with the contradictory
phenomena I had heard and observed, and I felt the need of sleep. I
soon sank into dreamless slumber.

Doubtless my wits were still addled from the battering I had
received. Otherwise I would have snapped awake when I felt something
touch my hair. As it was, I woke only partly. From under drooping lids
I glimpsed, as in a dream, a girlish face bent close to mine, dark
eyes wide with frightened fascination, red lips parted. The fragrance
of her foamy black hair was in my nostrils. She timidly touched my
face, then drew back with a quick soft intake of breath, as if
frightened by her action. The guard snored on the bench. The torch had
burned to a stub that cast a weird dull glow over the chamber.
Outside, the moon had set. This much I vaguely realized before I sank
back into slumber again, to be haunted by a dim beautiful face that
shimmered through my dreams.



Chapter 03


I Awoke Again in the cold gray light of dawn, at a time when the
condemned meet their executioners. A group of men stood over me, and
one I knew was Khossuth the Skullsplitter.

He was taller than most, and leaner--almost gaunt in comparison to
the others. This circumstance made his broad shoulders seem abnormally
huge. His face and body were seamed with old scars. He was very dark,
and apparently old; an impressive and terrible image of somber
savagery.

He stood looking down at me, fingering the hilt of his great sword.
His gaze was gloomy and detached.

"They say you claim to have beaten Logar of Thurga in open fight,"
he said at last, and his voice was cavernous and ghostly in a manner I
cannot describe.

I did not reply, but lay staring up at him, partly in fascination at
his strange and menacing appearance, partly in the anger that seemed
generally to be with me during those times.

"Why do you not answer?" he rumbled.

"Because I'm weary of being called a liar," I snarled.

"Why did you come to Koth?"

"Because I was tired of living alone among wild beasts. I was a
fool. I thought I would find human beings whose company was preferable
to the leopards and baboons. I find I was wrong."

He tugged his bristling mustaches.

"Men say you fight like a mad leopard. Thab says that you did not
come to the gates as an enemy comes. I love brave men. But what can we
do? If we free you, you will hate us because of what has passed, and
your hate is not lightly to be loosed."

"Why not take me into the tribe?" I remarked, at random.

He shook his head. "We are not Yagas, to keep slaves."

"Nor am I a slave," I grunted. "Let me live among you as an equal. I
will hunt and fight with you. I am as good a man as any of your
warriors."

At this another pushed past Khossuth. This fellow was bigger than
any I had yet seen in Koth--not taller, but broader, more massive. His
hair was thicker on his limbs, and of a peculiar rusty cast instead of
black.

"That you must prove!" he roared, with an oath. "Loose him,
Khossuth! The warriors have been praising his power until my belly
revolts! Loose him and let us have a grapple!"

"The man is wounded, Ghor," answered Khossuth.

"Then let him be cared for until his wound is healed," urged the
warrior eagerly, spreading his arms in a curious grappling gesture.

"His fists are like hammers," warned another.

"Thak's devils!" roared Ghor, his eyes glaring, his hairy arms
brandished. "Admit him into the tribe, Khossuth! Let him endure the
test! If he survives--well, by Thak, he'll be worthy even to be called
a man of Koth!"

"I will go and think upon the matter," answered Khossuth after a
long deliberation.

That settled the matter for the time being. All trooped out after
him. Thab was last, and at the door he turned and made a gesture which
I took to be one of encouragement. These strange people seemed not
entirely without feelings of pity and friendship.

The day passed uneventfully. Thab did not return. Other warriors
brought me food and drink, and I allowed them to bandage my scalp.
With more human treatment the wild-beast fury in me had been
subordinated to my human reason. But that fury lurked close to the
surface of my soul, ready to blaze into ferocious life at the
slightest encroachment.

I did not see the girl Altha, though I heard light footsteps outside
the chamber several times, whether hers or another's I could not know.

About nightfall a group of warriors came into the room and announced
that I was to be taken to the council, where Khossuth would listen to
all arguments and decide my fate. I was surprised to learn that
arguments would be presented on my behalf. They got my promise not to
attack them, and loosed me from the chain that bound me to the wall,
but they did not remove the shackles on my wrists and ankles.

I was escorted out of the chamber into a vast hall, lighted by white
fire torches. There were no hangings or furnishings, nor any sort of
ornamentation--just an almost oppressive sense of massive
architecture.

We traversed several halls, all equally huge and windy, with rugged
walls and lofty ceilings, and came at last into a vast circular space,
roofed with a dome. Against the back wall a stone throne stood on a
block-like dais, and on the throne sat old Khossuth in gloomy majesty,
clad in a spotted leopardskin. Before him in a vast three-quarters
circle sat the tribe, the men cross-legged on skins spread on the
stone floor, and behind them the women and children seated on
fur-covered benches.

It was a strange concourse. The contrast was startling between the
hairy males and the slender, white-skinned, dainty women. The men were
clad in loincloths and high-strapped sandals; some had thrown
pantherskins over their massive shoulders. The women were dressed
similar to the girl Altha, whom I saw sitting with the others. They
wore soft sandals or none, and scanty tunics girdled about their
waists. That was all. The difference of the sexes was carried out down
to the smallest babies. The girl children were quiet, dainty and
pretty. The young males looked even more like monkeys than did their
elders.

I was told to take my seat on a block of stone in front and somewhat
to the side of the dais. Sitting among the warriors I saw Ghor,
squirming impatiently as he unconsciously flexed his thick biceps.

As soon as I had taken my seat, the proceedings went forward.
Khossuth simply announced that he would hear the arguments, and
pointed out a man to represent me, at which I was again surprised, but
this apparently was a regular custom among these people. The man
chosen was the lesser chief who had commanded the warriors I had
battled in the cell, and they called him Gutchluk Tigerwrath. He eyed
me venemously as he limped forward with no great enthusiasm, bearing
the marks of our encounter.

He laid his sword and dagger on the dais, and the foremost warriors
did likewise. Then he glared at the rest truculently, and Khossuth
called for arguments to show why Esau Cairn--he made a marvelous
jumble of the pronunciation--should not be taken into the tribe.

Apparently the reasons were legion. Half a dozen warriors sprang up
and began shouting at the top of their voice, while Gutchluk dutifully
strove to answer them. I felt already doomed. But the game was not
played out, or even well begun. At first Gutchluk went at it only
half-heartedly, but opposition heated him to his talk. His eyes
blazed, his jaw jutted, and he began to roar and bellow with the best
of them. From the arguments he presented, or rather thundered, one
would have thought he and I were lifelong friends.

No particular person was designated to protest against me. Everybody
who wished took a hand. And if Gutchluk won over anyone, that person
joined his voice to Gutchluk's. Already there were men on my side.
Thab's shout and Ghor's bellow vied with my attorney's roar, and soon
others took up my defense.

That debate is impossible for an Earthman to conceive of, without
having witnessed it. It was sheer bedlam, with from three voices to
five hundred voices clamoring at once. How Khossuth sifted any sense
out of it, I cannot even guess. But he brooded somberly above the
tumult, like a grim god over the paltry aspirations of mankind.

There was wisdom in the discarding of weapons. Dispute frequently
became biting, and criticisms of ancestors and personal habits entered
into it. Hands clutched at empty belts and mustaches bristled
belligerently. Occasionally Khossuth lifted his weird voice across the
clamor and restored a semblance of order.

My attempts to follow the arguments were vain. My opponents went
into matters seemingly utterly irrelevant, and were met by rebuttals
just as illogical. Authorities of antiquity were dragged out, to be
refuted by records equally musty.

To further complicate matters, disputants frequently snared
themselves in their own arguments, or forgot which side they were on,
and found themselves raging frenziedly on the other. There seemed no
end to the debate, and no limit to the endurance of the debaters. At
midnight they were still yelling as loudly, and shaking their fists in
one another's beards as violently as ever.

The women took no part in the arguments.

They began to glide away about midnight, with the children. Finally
only one small figure was left among the benches. It was Altha, who
was following--or trying to follow--the proceedings with a surprising
interest.

I had long since given up the attempt. Gutchluk was holding the
floor valiantly, his veins swelling and his hair and beard bristling
with his exertions. Ghor was actually weeping with rage and begging
Khossuth to let him break a few necks. Oh, that he had lived to see
the men of Koth become adders and snakes, with the hearts of buzzards
and the guts of toads! he bawled, brandishing his huge arms to high
heaven.

It was all a senseless madhouse to me. Finally, in spite of the
clamor, and the fact that my life was being weighed in the balance, I
fell asleep on my block and snored peacefully while the men of Koth
raged and pounded their hairy breasts and bellowed, and the strange
planet of Almuric whirled on its way under the stars that neither knew
nor cared for men, Earthly or otherwise.

It was dawn when Thab shook me awake and shouted in my ear: "We have
won! You enter the tribe, if you'll wrestle Ghor!"

"I'll break his back!" I grunted, and went back to sleep again.



Chapter 04


So began my life as a man among men on Almuric. I who had begun my
new life as a naked savage, now took the next step on the ladder of
evolution and became a barbarian. For the men of Koth were barbarians,
for all their silks and steel and stone towers. Their counterpart is
not on Earth today, nor has it ever been. But of that later. Let me
tell first of my battle with Ghor the Bear.

My chains were removed and I was taken to a stone tower on the wall,
there to dwell until my wounds had healed. I was still a prisoner.
Food and drink were brought me regularly by the tribesmen, who also
tended carefully to my wounds, which were unimportant, considering the
hurts I had had from wild beasts, and had recovered from unaided. But
they wished me to be in prime condition for the wrestling, which was
to decide whether I should be admitted to the tribe of Koth, or--well,
from what they said of Ghor, if I lost there would be no problem as to
my disposition. The wolves and vultures would take care of that.

Their manner toward me was noncommittal, with the exception of Thab
the Swift, who was frankly cordial to me. I saw neither Khossuth, Ghor
nor Gutchluk during the time I was imprisoned in the tower, nor did I
see the girl Altha.

I do not remember a more tedious and wearisome time. I was not
nervous because of any fear of Ghor; I frankly doubted my ability to
beat him, but I had risked my life so often and against such fearful
odds, that personal fear had been stamped out of my soul. But for
months I had lived like a mountain panther, and now to be caged up in
a stone tower, where my movements were limited, bounded and
restricted--it was intolerable, and if I had been forced to put up
with it a day longer, I would have lost control of myself, and either
fought my way to freedom or perished in the attempt. As it was, all
the constrained energy in me was pent up almost to the snapping point,
giving me a terrific store of nervous power which stood me in good
stead in my battle.

There is no man on Earth equal in sheer strength to any man of Koth.
They lived barbaric lives, filled with continuous peril and warfare
against foes human and bestial. But after all, they lived the lives of
men, and I had been living the life of a wild beast.

As I paced my tower chamber, I thought of a certain great wrestling
champion of Europe with whom I had once contested in a friendly
private bout, and who pronounced me the strongest man he had ever
encountered. Could he have seen me now, in the tower of Koth! I am
certain that I could have torn out his biceps like rotten cloth,
broken his spine across my knee, or caved in his breastbone with my
clenched fist; and as for speed, the most finely trained Earth athlete
would have seemed awkward and sluggish in comparison to the tigerish
quickness lurking in my rippling sinews.

Yet for all that, I knew that I would be strained to the uttermost
even to hold my own with the giant they called Ghor the Bear. He did,
indeed, resemble a shaggy rusty-hued cave-bear.

Thab the Swift narrated some of his triumphs to me, and such a
record of personal mayhem I never heard; the man's progress through
life was marked by broken limbs, backs and necks. No man had yet stood
before him in barehanded battle, though some swore Logar the
Bonecrusher was his equal.

Logar, I learned, was chief of Thugra, a city hostile to Koth. All
cities on Almuric seemed to be hostile to each other, the people of
the planet being divided into many small tribes, incessantly at war.
The chief of Thugra was called the Bonecrusher because of his terrible
strength. The poniard I had taken from him had been his favorite
weapon, a famous blade, forged, Thab said, by a supernatural smith.
Thab called this being a *gorka*, and I found in tales concerning the
creature an analogy to the dwarfish metalworkers of the ancient
Germanic myths of my own world.

Thab told me much concerning his people and his planet, but of these
things I will deal later. At last Khossuth came, found my wounds
completely cured, eyed my bronzed sinews with a shadow of respect in
his cold brooding eyes, and pronounced me fit for battle.

Night had fallen when I was led into the streets of Koth. I looked
with wonder at the giant walls towering above me, dwarfing their human
inhabitants. Everything in Koth was built on a heroic scale. Neither
the walls nor the edifices were unusually high, in comparison to their
bulk, but they were so massive. My guides led me to a sort of
amphitheater near the outer wall. It was an oval space surrounded by
huge stone blocks, rising tier upon tier, and forming seats for the
spectators. The open space in the center was hard ground, covered with
short grass. A sort of bulwark was formed about it out of woven
leather thongs, apparently to keep the contestants from dashing their
heads against the surrounding stones. Torches lighted the scene.

The spectators were already there, the men occupying the lower
blocks, the women and children the upper. My gaze roved over the sea
of faces, hairy or smooth, until it rested on one I recognized, and I
felt a strange throb of pleasure at the sight of Altha sitting there
watching me with her intent dark eyes.

Thab indicated for me to enter the arena, and I did so, thinking of
the old-time bare-knuckled bouts of my own planet, which were fought
in crude rings pitched, like this, on the naked turf. Thab and the
other warriors who had escorted me remained outside. Above us brooded
old Khossuth on a carven stone elevated above the first tier, and
covered with leopard-skins.

I glanced beyond him to that dusky star-filled sky whose strange
beauty never failed to fascinate me, and I laughed at the fantasy of
it all--where I, Esau Cairn, was to earn by sweat and blood my right
to exist on this alien world, the existence of which was undreamed by
the people of my own planet.

I saw a group of warriors approaching from the other side, a giant
form looming among them. Ghor the Bear glared at me across the ring,
his hairy paws grasping the thongs, then with a roar he vaulted over
them and stood before me, an image of truculence incarnate--angry
because I had chanced to reach the ring before him.

On his rude throne above us, old Khossuth lifted a spear and cast it
earthward. Our eyes followed its flight, and as it sheathed its
shining blade in the turf outside the ring, we hurled ourselves at
each other, iron masses of bone and thew, vibrant with fierce life and
the lust to destroy.

We were each naked except for a sort of leather loin-clout, which
was more brace than garment. The rules of the match were simple, we
were not to strike with our fists or open hands, knees or elbows,
kick, bite or gouge. Outside of that, anything went.

At the first impact of his hairy body against mine, I realized that
Ghor was stronger than Logar. Without my best natural weapons--my
fists--Ghor had the advantage.

He was a hairy mountain of iron muscle, and he moved with the
quickness of a huge cat. Accustomed to such fighting, he knew tricks
of which I was ignorant. Lastly, his bullet head was set so squarely
on his shoulders that it was practically impossible to strangle that
thick squat neck of his.

What saved me was the wild life I had lived which had toughened me
as no man, living as a man, can be toughened. Mine was the superior
quickness, and ultimately, the superior endurance.

There is little to be said of that fight. Time ceased to be composed
of intervals of change, and merged into a blind mist of tearing,
snarling eternity. There was no sound except our panting gasps, the
guttering of the torches in the light wind, and the impact of our feet
on the turf, of our hard bodies against each other. We were too evenly
matched for either to gain a quick advantage. There was no pinning of
shoulders, as in an Earthly wrestling match. The fight would continue
until one or both of the contestants were dead or senseless.

When I think of our endurance and stamina, I stand appalled. At
midnight we were still rending and tearing at each other. The whole
world was swimming red when I broke free out of a murderous grapple.
My whole frame was a throb of wrenched, twisted agony. Some of my
muscles were numbed and useless. Blood poured from my nose and mouth.
I was half blind and dizzy from the impact of my head against the hard
earth. My legs trembled and my breath came in great gulps. But I saw
that Ghor was in no better case. He too bled at the nose and mouth,
and more, blood trickled from his ears. He reeled as he faced me, and
his hairy chest heaved spasmodically. He spat out a mouthful of blood,
and with a roar that was more a gasp, he hurled himself at me again.
And steeling my ebbing strength for one last effort, I caught his
outstretched wrist, wheeled, ducking low and bringing his arm over my
shoulder, and heaved with all my last ounce of power.

The impetus of his rush helped my throw. He whirled headlong over my
back and crashed to the turf on his neck and shoulder, slumped over
and lay still. An instant I stood swaying above him, while a sudden
deep-throated roar rose from the people of Koth, and then a rush of
darkness blotted out the stars and the flickering torches, and I fell
senseless across the still body of my antagonist.

Later they told me that they thought both Ghor and I were dead. They
worked over us for hours. How our hearts resisted the terrible strain
of our exertions is a matter of wonder to me. Men said it was by far
the longest fight ever waged in the arena.

Ghor was badly hurt, even for a Kothan. That last fall had broken
his shoulder bone and fractured his skull, to say nothing of the minor
injuries he had received before the climax. Three of my ribs were
broken, and my joints, limbs and muscles so twisted and wrenched that
for days I was unable even to rise from my couch. The men of Koth
treated our wounds and bruises with all their skill, which far
transcends that of the Earth; but in the main it was our remarkable
primitive vitality that put us back on our feet. When a creature of
the wild is wounded, he generally either dies quickly or recovers
quickly.

I asked Thab if Ghor would hate me for his defeat, and Thab was at a
loss; Ghor had never been defeated before.

But my mind was soon put to rest on this score. Seven brawny
warriors entered the chamber in which I had been placed, bearing a
litter on which lay my late foe, wrapped in so many bandages he was
scarcely recognizable. But his bellowing voice was familiar. He had
forced his friends to bring him to see me as soon as he was able to
stir on his couch. He held no malice. In his great, simple, primitive
heart there was only admiration for the man who had given him his
first defeat. He recounted our Homeric struggle with a gusto that made
the roof reverberate, and roared his impatient eagerness for us to
fare forth and do battle together against the foes of Koth.

He was borne back to his own chamber, still bellowing his admiration
and gory plans for the future, and I experienced a warm glow in my
heart for this great-hearted child of nature, who was far more of a
man than many sophisticated scions of civilization that I had met.

And so I, Esau Cairn, took the step from savagery to barbarism. In
the vast domed council hall before the assembled tribesmen, as soon as
I was able, I stood before the throne of Khossuth Skullsplitter, and
he cut the mysterious symbol of Koth above my head with his sword.
Then with his own hands he buckled on me the harness of a warrior--the
broad leather belt with the iron buckle, supporting my poniard and a
long straight sword with a broad silver guard. Then the warriors filed
past me, and each chief placed his palm against mine, and spoke his
name, and I repeated it, and he repeated the name they had given me:
Ironhand. That part was most wearisome for there were some four
thousand warriors, and four hundred of these were chiefs of various
rank. But it was part of the ritual of initiation, and when it was
over I was as much a Kothan as if I had been born into the tribe.

In the tower chamber, pacing like a caged tiger while Thab talked,
and later as a member of the tribe, I learned all that the people of
Koth knew of their strange planet.

They and their kind, they said, were the only true humans on
Almuric, though there was a mysterious race of beings dwelling far to
the south called Yagas. The Kothans called themselves Guras, which
applied to all cast in their mold, and meant no more than "man" does
on Earth. There were many tribes of Guras, each dwelling in its
separate city, each of which was a counterpart of Koth. No tribe
numbered more than four or five thousand fighting-men, with the
appropriate number of women and children.

No man of Koth had ever circled the globe, but they ranged far in
their hunts and raids, and legends had been handed down concerning
their world--which, naturally, they called by a name simply
corresponding to the word "Earth"; though after a while some of them
took up my habit of speaking of the planet as Almuric. Far to the
north there was a land of ice and snow, uninhabited by human beings,
though men spoke of weird cries shuddering by night from the ice
crags, and of shadows falling across the snow. A lesser distance to
the south rose a barrier no man had ever passed--a gigantic wall of
rock which legend said girdled the planet; it was called, therefore,
the Girdle. What lay beyond that Girdle, none knew. Some believed it
was the rim of the world, and beyond it lay only empty space. Others
maintained that another hemisphere lay beyond it. They believed, as
seemed to me most logical, that the Girdle separated the northern and
southern halves of the world, and that the southern hemisphere was
inhabited by men and animals, though the exponents of their theory
could give no proof, and were generally scoffed at as over-imaginative
romanticists.

At any rate, the cities of the Guras dotted the vast expanse that
lay between the Girdle and the land of ice. The northern hemisphere
possessed no great body of water. There were rivers, great plains, a
few scattered lakes, occasional stretches of dark, thick forests, long
ranges of barren hills, and a few mountains. The larger rivers ran
southward, to plunge into chasms in the Girdle.

The cities of the Guras were invariably built on the open plains,
and always far apart. Their architecture was the result of the
peculiar evolution of their builders--they were, basically, fortresses
of rocks heaped up for defense. They reflected the nature of their
builders, being rude, stalwart, massive, despising gaudy show and
ornamentation, and knowing nothing of the arts.

In many ways the Guras are like the men of Earth, in other ways
bafflingly different. Some of the lines on which they have evolved are
so alien to Earthly evolution that I find it difficult to explain
their ways and their development.

Specifically, Koth--and what is said of Koth can be said of every
other Gura city:--the men of Koth are, skilled in war, the hunt, and
weapon-making. The latter science is taught to each male child, but
now seldom used. It is seldom found necessary to manufacture new arms,
because of the durability of the material used. Weapons are handed
down from generation to generation, or captured from enemies.

Metal is used only for weapons, in building, and for clasps and
buckles on garments. No ornaments are worn, either by men or women,
and there are no such things as coins. There is no medium of exchange.
No trade between cities exists, and such "business" as goes on within
the city is a matter of barter. The only cloth worn is a kind of silk,
made from the fiber of a curious plant grown within the city walls.
Other plants furnish wine, fruit, and seasonings. Fresh meat, the
principal food of the Guras, is furnished by hunting, a pastime at
once a sport and an occupation.

The folk of Koth, then, are highly skilled in metal-working, in
silk-weaving, and in their peculiar form of agriculture. They have a
written language, a simple hieroglyphic form, scrawled on leaves like
papyrus, with a daggerlike pen dipped in the crimson juice of a
curious blossom, but few except the chiefs can read or write.
Literature they have none; they know nothing of painting, sculpturing,
or the "higher" learning. They have evolved to the point of culture
needful for the necessities of life, and they progress no further.
Seemingly defying laws we on Earth have come to regard as immutable,
they remain stationary, neither advancing nor retrogressing.

Like most barbaric people, they have a form of rude poetry, dealing
almost exclusively with battle, mayhem and rapine. They have no bards
or minstrels, but every man of the tribe knows the popular ballads of
his clan, and after a few jacks of ale is prone to bellow them forth
in a voice fit to burst one's eardrums.

These songs are never written down, and there is no written history.
As a result, events of antiquity are hazy, and mixed with improbable
legends.

No one knows how old is the city of Koth. Its gigantic stones are
impervious to the elements, and might have stood there ten years or
ten thousand years. I am of the opinion that the city is at least
fifteen thousand years old. The Guras are an ancient race, in spite of
their exuberant barbarism which gives them the atmosphere of a new
young people. Of the evolution of the race from whatever beast was
their common ancestor, of their racial splittings off and tribal
drifts, of their development to their present condition, nothing
whatever is known. The Guras themselves have no idea of evolution.
They suppose that, like eternity, their race is without beginning and
without end, that they have always been exactly as they are now. They
have no legends to explain their creation.

I have devoted most of my remarks to the men of Koth. The women of
Koth are no less worthy of detailed comment. I found the difference in
the appearance of the sexes not so inexplicable after all. It is
simply the result of natural evolution, and its roots lie in a fierce
tenderness on the part of the Gura males for their women. It was to
protect their women that they first, I am certain, built those brutish
heaps of stone and dwelt among them; for the innate nature of the
Gura male is definitely nomadic.

The woman, carefully guarded and shielded both from danger and from
the hard work that is the natural portion of the women of Earthly
barbarians, evolved by natural process into the type I have described.
The men, on the other hand, lead incredibly active and strenuous
lives. Their existence has been a savage battle for survival, ever
since the first ape stood upright on Almuric. And they have evolved
into a special type to fit their needs. Their peculiar appearance is
not a result of degeneration or underdevelopment. They are, indeed, a
highly specialized type, finely adapted to the wild life they follow.

As the men assume all risks and responsibility, they naturally
assume all authority. The Gura woman has no say whatever in the
government of the city and tribe, and her mate's authority over her is
absolute, with the exception that she has the right to appeal to the
council and chief in case of oppression. Her scope is narrow; few
women ever set foot outside the city in which they are born, unless
they are carried off in a raid.

Yet her lot is not so unhappy as it might seem. I have said that one
of the characteristics of the Gura male is a savage tenderness for his
women. Mistreatment of a woman is very rare, not tolerated by the
tribe.

Monogamy is the rule. The Guras are not given to hand-kissing and
pretty compliments, and the other superficial adjuncts of chivalry,
but there is justice and a rough kindness in their dealing with women,
somewhat similar to the attitude of the American frontiersman.

The duties of the Gura women are few, concerned mainly with
child-bearing and child-rearing. They do no work heavier than the
manufacturing of silk from the silk plants. They are musically
inclined, and play on a small, stringed affair, resembling a lute, and
they sing. They are quicker-witted, and of much more sensitive mind
than the men. They are witty, merry, affectionate, playful and docile.
They have their own amusements, and time does not seem to drag for
them. The average woman could not be persuaded to set foot outside the
city walls. They well know the perils that hem the cities in, and they
are content in the protection of their ferocious mates and masters.

The men are, as I have said, in many ways like barbaric peoples on
Earth. In some respects they resemble, I imagine, the ancient Vikings.
They are honest, scorning theft and deceit. They delight in war and
the hunt, but are not wantonly cruel, except when maddened by rage or
bloodlust. Then they can be screaming fiends. They are blunt in
speech, rough in their manners, easily angered, but as easily
pacified, except when confronted by an hereditary enemy. They have a
definite, though crude, sense of humor, a ferocious love for tribe and
city, and a passion for personal freedom.

Their weapons consist of swords, daggers, spears, and a firearm
something like a carbine--a single-shot, breech-loading weapon of no
great range. The combustible material is not powder, as we know it.
Its counterpart is not found on Earth. It possesses both percussion
and explosive qualities. The bullet is of a substance much like lead.
These weapons were used mainly in war with men; for hunting, bows and
arrows were most often used.

Hunting parties are always going forth, so that the full force of
warriors is seldom in the city at once. Hunters are often gone for
weeks or months. But there are always a thousand fighting men in the
city to repel possible attack, though it is not often that the Guras
lay siege to a hostile city. Those cities are difficult to storm, and
it is impossible to starve out the inhabitants, since they produce so
much of their food supply within the walls, and in each city is an
unfailing spring of pure water. The hunters frequently sought their
prey in the hills which I had haunted, and which were reputed to
contain more and varied forms of ferocious bestial life than any other
section of the globe. The boldest hunters went in strong parties to
the ills, and seldom roamed there more than a few days. The fact that
I had lived among the hills alone for months won me even more respect
and admiration among those wild fighting men than had my fight with
Ghor.

Oh, I learned much of Almuric. As this is a chronicle and not an
essay, I can scarcely skim the surface of customs, ways and
traditions. I learned all they could tell me, and I learned much more.
The Guras were not first on Almuric, though they considered themselves
to be. They told me of ancient ruins, never built by Guras, relics of
vanished races, who, they supposed, were contemporary with their
distant ancestors, but which, as I came to learn, had risen and
vanished awfully before the first Gura began to heap up stones to
build his primordial city. And how I learned what no Gura knew is
part of this strange narrative.

But they spoke of strange unhuman beings or survivals. They told me
of the Yagas, a terrible race of winged black men, dwelling far to the
south, within sight of the Girdle, in the grim city of Yugga, on the
rock Yuthla, by the River Yogh, in the land of Yagg, where living man
had never set foot. The Yagas, the Guras said, were not true men, but
devils in a human form. From Yugga they swooped periodically, bearing
the sword of slaughter and the torch of destruction, to carry young
Gura girls into a slavery the manner of which none knew, because none
had ever escaped from the land of Yagg. Some men thought that they
were fed to a monster worshiped by the Yagas as a god, though some
swore that the fiends worshiped nothing except themselves. This was
known: their ruler was a black queen, named Yasmeena, and for more
than a thousand years she had reigned on the grim rock of Yuthla, her
shadow falling across the world to make men shudder.

The Guras told me other things, things weird and terrible: of
dog-headed monstrosities skulking beneath the ruins of nameless cities; of
earth-shaking colossals stalking through the night; of fires flitting
like flaming bats through the shadowy skies; of things that haunted
midnight forests, crawling, squamous things that were never seen, but
which tracked men down in the dank depths. They told me of great bats
whose laughter drove men mad, and of gaunt shapes shambling hideously
through the dusk of the hills. They told me of such things as do not
even haunt the dreams of men on my native planet. For Life has taken
strange shapes on Almuric, and natural Life is not the only Life
there.

But the nightmares told to me and the nightmares seen by me unfold
in their place, and I have already lingered too long in my narrative.
Be patient a little, because events move swiftly on Almuric, and my
chronicle moves no less swiftly when well under way.

For months I dwelt in Koth, fitting into the life of hunting,
feasting, ale-guzzling, and brawling, as if I had been born into it.
There life was not restrained and bound down, as it is on Earth. As
yet no tribal war had tested my powers, but there was fighting enough
in the city with naked hands, in friendly bouts, and drunken brawls,
when the fighting-men dashed down their foaming jacks and bellowed
their challenges across the ale-stained boards. I revelled in my new
existence. Here, as in the hills, I threw my full powers unleashed
into life; and here, unlike as in the hills, I had human
companionship, of a sort that suited my particular make-up. I felt no
need of art, literature or intellectuality; I hunted, I gorged, I
guzzled, I fought; I spread my massive arms and clutched at life like
a glutton. And in my brawling and revelling I all but forgot the
slender figure which had sat so patiently in the council chamber
beneath the great dome.



Chapter 05


I had wandered far in my hunting. Alone I had spent several nights
on the plains. Now I was returning leisurely, but I was still many
miles from Koth, whose massive towers I could not yet glimpse across
the waving savannas. I cannot say what my thoughts were as I swung
along, my carbine in the crook of my arm, but they were likely
concerned with spoors in the water's edge, crushed-down grass marking
the passing of some large animal, or the scents borne on the light
wind.

Whatever my thoughts may have been, they were interrupted by a
shrill cry. Wheeling, I saw a slim white figure racing across the
grassy level toward me. Behind her, gaining with every stride, came
one of those giant carnivorous birds which are among the most
dangerous of all the grisly denizens of the grasslands. They tower ten
feet in height and somewhat resemble an ostrich except for the beak,
which is a huge curving weapon, three feet in length, pointed and
edged like a scimitar. A stroke of that beak can slash a man asunder,
and the great taloned feet of the monster can tear a human limb from
limb.

This mountain of destruction was hurtling along behind the flying
girl at appalling speed, and I knew it would overtake her long before
I could hope to reach them. Cursing the necessity for depending on my
none too accurate marksmanship, I lifted my carbine and took as steady
an aim as possible. The girl was directly in line with the brute, and
I could not risk a shot at the huge body, lest I hit her instead. I
had to chance a shot at the great head that bobbed bafflingly on the
long arching neck.

It was more luck than skill that sent my bullet home. At the crack
of the shot the giant head jerked backward as if the monster had run
into an unseen wall. The stumpy wings thrashed thunderously, and
staggering erratically, the brute pitched to the earth.

The girl fell at the same instant, as if the same bullet had brought
them both down. Running forward to bend over her, I was surprised to
see Altha, daughter of Zal, looking up at me with her dark enigmatic
eyes. Quickly satisfying myself that she was not injured, outside of
fright and exhaustion, I turned to the thunderbird and found it quite
dead, its few brains oozing out of a hole in its narrow skull.

Turning back to Altha, I scowled down at her.

"What are you doing outside the city?" I demanded. "Are you quite
mad, to venture so far into the wilderness alone?"

She made no reply, but I sensed a hurt in her dark eyes, and I
repented the roughness of my speech. I dropped down on one knee beside
her.

"You are a strange girl, Altha," I said. "You are not like the other
women of Koth. Folk say you are wilful and rebellious, without reason.
I do not understand you. Why should you risk your life like this?"

"What will you do now?" she demanded.

"Why, take you back to the city, of course."

Her eyes smoldered with a curious sullenness.

"You will take me back, and my father will whip me. But I will run
away again--and again--and again!"

"But why should you run away?" I asked in bewilderment. "There is
nowhere for you to go. Some beast will devour you."

"So!" she answered. "Perhaps it is my wish to be devoured."

"Then why did you run from the thunderbird?"

"The instinct to live is hard to conquer," she admitted.

"But why should you wish to die?" I expostulated. "The women of Koth
are happy, and you have as much as any."

She looked away from me, out across the broad plains.

"To eat, drink and sleep is not all," she answered in a strange
voice. "The beasts do that."

I ran my fingers through my thick hair in perplexity. I had hard
similar sentiments voiced in many different ways on Earth, but it was
the first time I had ever heard them from the lips of an inhabitant on
Almuric. Altha continued in a low detached voice, almost as if she
were speaking to herself rather than to me:

"Life is too hard for me. I do not fit, somehow, as the others do. I
bruise myself on its rough edges. I look for something that is not and
never was."

Uneasy at her strange words, I caught her heavy locks in my hands
and forced back her head to look into her face. Her enigmatic eyes met
mine with a strange glimmer in them such as I had never seen.

"It was hard before you came," she said. "It is harder now."

Startled, I released her, and she turned her head away.

"Why should I make it harder?" I asked bewilderedly.

"What constitutes life?" she countered. "Is the life we live all
there is? Is there nothing outside and beyond our material
aspirations?"

I scratched my head in added perplexity.

"Why," I said, "on Earth I met many people who were always following
some nebulous dream or ideal, but I never observed that they were
happy. On my planet there is much grasping and groping for unseen
things, but I never knew there was such full content as I have known
on Almuric."

"I thought you different," she said, still looking away from me.
"When I saw you lying wounded and in chains, with your smooth skin and
strange eyes, I thought you were more gentle than other men. But you
are as rough and fierce as the rest. You spend your days and nights in
slaying beasts, fighting men, and in riotous wassail."

"But they all do," I protested.

She nodded. "And so I do not fit in life, and were better dead."

I felt unreasonably ashamed. It had occurred to me that an
Earthwoman would find life on Almuric intolerably crude and narrow,
but it seemed beyond reason that a native woman would have such
feelings. If the other women I had seen desired more superficial
gentleness on the part of their men, they had not made it known. They
seemed content with shelter and protection, and cheerfully resigned to
the rough manners of the males. I sought for words but found none,
unskilled as I was in polite discourse. I suddenly felt my roughness,
crudity and raw barbarism, and stood abashed.

"I'll take you back to Koth," I said helplessly.

She shrugged her shapely shoulders. "And you can watch my father
whip me, if you will."

At that I found my tongue.

"He won't whip you," I retorted angrily. "Let him lay a hand on you,
and I'll break his back."

She looked up at me quickly, with eyes widened in sudden interest.
My arm had found its way about her slim form, and I was glaring into
her eyes, with my face very close to hers. Her lips parted, and had
that breathless instant lasted a little longer, I know not what would
have happened. But suddenly the color went from her face, and from her
parted lips rang a terrible scream. Her gaze was fixed on something
beyond and above me, and the thrash of wings suddenly filled the air.

I wheeled on one knee, to see the air above me thronged with dark
shapes. The Yagas! The winged men of Almuric! I had half believed them
a myth; yet here they were in all their mysterious terror.

I had but a glance as I reared up, clubbing my empty carbine. I saw
that they were tall and rangy in build, sinewy and powerful, with ebon
skins. They seemed made like ordinary men, except for the great
leathery batlike wings which grew from their shoulders. They were
naked except for loincloths, and were armed with short curved blades.

I rose on my toes as the first swooped in, scimitar lifted, and met
him with a swing of my carbine that broke off the stock and crushed
his narrow skull like an eggshell. The next instant they were whirling
and thrashing about me, their curved blades licking at me like jets of
lightning from all sides, the very number of their broad wings
hampering them.

Whirling the carbine barrel in a wheel about me, I broke and beat
back the flickering blades, and in a furious exchange of strokes,
caught another a glancing blow on the head that stretched him
senseless at my feet. Then a wild despairing cry rang out behind me,
and abruptly the rush slackened.

The whole pack was in the air, racing southward, and I stood frozen.
In the arms of one of them writhed and shrieked a slender white
figure, stretching out imploring arms to me. Altha! They had snatched
her up from behind my back, and were carrying her away to whatever
doom awaited her in that black citadel of mystery far to the south.
The terrific velocity with which the Yagas raced through the sky was
already taking them out of my sight.

As I stood there baffled, I felt a movement at my feet. Looking down
I saw one of my victims sit up and feel his head dazedly. I vengefully
lifted my carbine barrel to dash out his brains; then a sudden thought
struck me, inspired by the ease with which Altha's captor had carried
both his weight and hers in the air.

Drawing my poniard, I dragged my captive to his feet. Standing erect
he was taller than I, with shoulders equally broad, though his limbs
were lean and wiry rather than massive. His dark eyes, which slanted
slightly, regarded me with the unblinking stare of a venomous serpent.

The Guras had told me the Yagas spoke a tongue similar to their own.

"You are going to carry me through the air in pursuit of your
companions," I said.

He shrugged his shoulders and spoke in a peculiarly harsh voice.

"I cannot carry your weight."

"Then that's too bad for you," I answered grimly, and whirling him
about, I leaped upon his back, locking my legs about his waist. My
left arm was hooked about his neck, the poniard in my right hand
pricked his side. He had kept his feet under the impact of my bulk,
spreading his great wings.

"Take the air!" I snarled in his ear, sinking the dagger point into
his flesh. "Fly, damn you, or I'll cut your heart out!"

His wings began to thrash the air, and we rose slowly from the
earth. It was a most sensational experience, but one to which I gave
scant thought at the time, being so engrossed in my fury at the
abduction of Altha.

When we had risen to a height of about a thousand feet, I looked for
the abductors, and saw them far away, a mere group of black dots in
the southern sky. After them I steered my reluctant steed.

In spite of my threats and urging for greater speed the flying dots
soon vanished. Still I kept on due southward, feeling that even if I
failed to overtake them, I would eventually come to the great dusky
rock where legend placed their habitation.

Inspired by my poniard, my bearer made good time, considering the
burden he was carrying. For hours we sped over the savannas, and by
the middle of the afternoon, the landscape changed. We were flying
over a forest, the first I had seen on Almuric. The trees seemed to
tower to a vast height.

It was near sundown when I saw the farther limits of the forest, and
in the grasslands beyond, the ruins of a city. From among these ruins
smoke curled upward, and I asked my steed if his companions were
cooking their evening meal there. His only answer was a snarl.

We were flying low over the forest, when a sudden uproar caused me
to look down. We were just passing over a narrow glade, and in it a
terrific battle was taking place. A pack of hyenas had attacked a
giant unicornlike beast, as big as a bison. Half a dozen mangled,
trampled bodies attested the fury of the beast's defense, and even as
I peered down, he caught the single survivor on his swordlike ivory
horn, and cast it a score of feet in the air, broken and torn.

In the brief fascination of the sight, I must have involuntarily
loosened my grasp on my captive. For at that instant, with a
convulsive bucking heave and twist, he wrenched free and hurled me
sideways. Caught off guard, I clutched vainly at empty air, and
rushing earthward, crashed with a stunning impact on the loamy
leaf-carpeted earth, directly in front of the maddened unicorn!

I had a dazed brief glimpse of his mountainous bulk looming over me,
as his massive lowered head drove his horn at my breast. Then I
lurched up on one knee, simultaneously grasping that ivory sword with
my left hand and seeking to deflect it, while my right hand drove my
poniard up toward the great jugular. Then there came a terrific impact
against my skull, and consciousness was blotted out in darkness.



Chapter 06


I could have been senseless only a few minutes. When I regained
consciousness my first sensation was that of a crushing weight upon my
limbs and body. Struggling weakly, I found that I was lying beneath
the lifeless body of a unicorn. At the instant my poniard had torn
open his great jugular vein, the base of his horn must have struck my
head, while the vast body collapsed upon me. Only the soft spongy
ground beneath me had saved me from being crushed to a pulp. Working
myself out from under that bulk was a herculean task, but eventually I
accomplished it, and stood up, bruised and breathless, with the
half-dried blood of the monster clotted in my hair and smearing my limbs.
I was a grisly sight to look at, but I wasted no time on my appearance.
My erstwhile steed was nowhere in evidence, and the circling trees
limited my view of the sky.

Selecting the tallest of these trees, I climbed it as swiftly as
possible, and on the topmost branches, looked out over the forest. The
sun was setting. I saw that perhaps an hour's swift walk to the south,
the forest thinned out and ceased. Smoke still drifted thinly up from
the deserted city. And I saw my former captive just dropping down
among the ruins. He must have lingered, after he had overthrown me,
possibly to see if I showed any signs of life, probably to rest his
wings after that long grind.

I cursed; there went my chance of stealing up on them unsuspected.
Then I got a surprise. No sooner had the Yaga vanished than he
reappeared, shooting up out of the city like a rocket. Without
hesitation he raced off southward, speeding through the sky at a rate
that left me gaping. What was the reason for his flight? If it had
been his companions who were among the ruins, why had he not alighted?
Perhaps he had found them gone, and was merely following them. Yet his
actions seemed strange, considering the leisurely way he had
approached the ruins. His flight had the earmarks of panic.

Shaking my head in puzzlement, I descended the tree and set out for
the ruins as swiftly as I could make my way through the dense growth,
paying no heed to the rustling in the leaves about me, and the
muttering of rousing life, that grew as the shadows deepened.

Night had fallen when I emerged from the forest, but the moon was
rising, casting a weird unreal glow over the plains. The ruins
glimmered ghostily in the near distance. The walls were not of the
rough greenish material used by the Guras. As I approached I saw they
were of marble, and that fact caused a vague uneasiness to stir in my
mind. I remembered legends told by the Kothans of ruined marble cities
haunted by ghoulish beings. Such ruins were found in certain
uninhabited places, and none knew their origin.

A brooding silence lay over the broken walls and columns as I
entered the ruins. Between the gleaming white tusks and surfaces deep
black shadow floated, almost liquid in its quality. From one dusky
pool to the other I glided silently, sword in hand, expecting anything
from an ambush by the Yagas to an attack by some lurking beast of
prey. Utter silence reigned, as I had never encountered it anywhere on
Almuric before. Not a distant lion roared, not a night fowl voiced its
weird cry. I might have been the last survivor on a dead world.

In silence I came to a great open space, flanked by a circle of
broken pillars, which must have been a plaza. Here I halted,
motionless, my skin crawling.

In the midst of the plaza smoldered the dying coals of a fire over
which, on spits planted in the earth, were roasting pieces of meat.
The Yagas had evidently built that fire and--prepared to sup; but they
had not eaten of their meal. They lay strewn about the plaza in a way
to appall the hardiest.

I had never gazed on such a scene of organic devastation. Hands,
feet, grinning heads, bits of flesh, entrails, clots of blood littered
the whole plaza. The heads were like balls of blackness, rolled out of
the shadows against the snowy marble; their teeth grinned, their eyes
glimmered palely in the moonlight. *Something* had come upon the
winged men as they sat about their fire and had torn them limb from
limb. On the remnants of flesh were the marks of fangs, and some of
the bones had been broken, apparently to get the marrow.

A cold ripple went up and down my spine. What animal but man breaks
bones in that fashion? But the scattering of the bloody remnants
seemed not the work of beasts; it seemed too vindictive, as if it were
the work of vengeance, fury or bestial blood-thirstiness.

Where, then, was Altha? Her remains were not among those of her
captors. Glancing at the flesh on the spit, the configuration of the
pieces set me to shuddering. Shaken with horror, I saw that my dark
suspicions were correct. It was parts of a human body the accursed
Yagas had been roasting for their meal. Sick with revulsion and dread,
I examined the pitiful remnants more closely, and breathed a deep sigh
of relief to see the thick muscular limbs of a man, and not the
slender parts of a woman. But after that I looked unmoved at the torn
bloody bits that had been Yagas.

But where was the girl? Had she escaped the slaughter and hidden
herself, or had she been taken by the slayers? Looking about at the
towers and fallen blocks and pillars, bathed in the weird moonlight, I
was aware of a distinct aura of evil, of lurking menace. I felt the
glare of hidden eyes.

But I began casting about the plaza, and came upon a trail of blood
drops, lying blackly in the moon, leading through a maze of drunken
pillars, and for want of better occupation, I followed it. At least it
might lead me to the slayers of the winged men.

I passed under the shadows of leaning pillars which dwarfed my human
frame with their brute massiveness, and came into a crumbling edifice,
overgrown with lichen. Through the broken roof and the gaping windows
the moon poured a fungus-white light that served to make the shadows
blacker. But a square of moonlight fell across the entrance of a
corridor, and leading into it, I saw the sprinkle of dark clotted
drops on the cracked vine-grown marble. Into the corridor I groped,
and almost broke my neck on the stairs that lay within. Down them I
went, and striking a level, hesitated and was about to retrace my
steps when I was electrified by a sound that stopped my heart, and
then sent the blood pounding madly through my veins. Through the
darkness, faint and far away, sounded the call: "Esau! Esau Cairn!"

Altha! Who else could it be? Why should an icy shuddering pass over
me, and the short hairs bristle at the back of my neck? I started to
answer; then caution clutched my tongue. She could not know I was
within hearing, surely. Perhaps she was calling as a frightened child
will cry for someone far out of hearing. I went as swiftly down the
black tunnel as I dared, in the direction I had heard the cry. And was
gagged by a tendency toward nausea.

My groping hand encountered a doorway and I halted, sensing, as a
wild thing does; a living presence of some sort near me. Straining my
eyes in the pitch dark, I spoke Altha's name in a low urgent voice.
Instantly two lights burned in the darkness, yellowish glows at which
I stared for an instant before I realized that they were two eyes.
They were broad as my hand, round and of a scintillance I cannot
describe. Behind them I got a vague impression of a huge shapeless
bulk. Simultaneously such a wave of instinctive fear swept over me,
that I withdrew quickly into the tunnel and hastened along it in the
direction I had been going. Back in the cell I heard a faint movement,
like the shifting of some great pulpy mass, mingled with a soft
rasping sound, as of bristles scraping against stone.

A few score paces more and I halted. The tunnel seemed endless, and
besides, judging from the feel, other tunnels branched off from it in
the darkness, and I had no way of knowing which was the right one. As
I stood there I again heard the call: "Esau! Esau Cairn!"

Steeling myself against something, I knew not what, I set off once
more in the direction of the ghostly voice. How far I went I do not
know, until I stopped once more baffled. Then from nearby the voice
rang out again: "Esau! Esau CairNNNN!" It rose to a high-pitched note,
trailing off into an awful burst of inhuman laughter that froze the
blood in my veins.

That was not Altha's voice. I had known all the time that it was
not--that it could not be. Yet the alternative was so inexplicable
that I had refused to heed what my intuition affirmed and my reason
denied.

Now from every direction, on every hand rose a medley of shrill
demoniac voices, all shrieking my name with the mockery of devils. The
tunnels that had been so silent now rang and re-echoed with strident
clamor. I stood bewildered and terrified, as the damned must stand in
the clamorous halls of hell. I passed through the stages of icy
terror, bewildered horror, desperation, berserk fury. With a maddened
roar I plunged blindly at the sounds that seemed nearest, only to
collide with a solid wall, while a thousand inhuman voices rose in
hideous mirth. Wheeling like a wounded bull, I charged again, this
time into the mouth of another tunnel. Racing down this, mad to come
to grips with my tormenters, I burst into a vast shadowy space, into
which a beam of moonlight cast a ghostly shaft. And again I heard my
name called, but in human tones of fear and anguish:

"Esau! Oh, Esau!"

Even as I answered the piteous cry with a savage bellow, I saw her.
Altha, etched in the dim moonlight. She was stretched out on the
floor, her hands and feet in the shadow. But I saw that at each
outstretched member squatted a dim misshapen figure.

With a blood-thirsty yell I charged, and the darkness sprang into
nauseous life, flooding my knees with tangible shapes. Sharp fangs
gashed me, apish hands clawed at me. They could not halt me. Swinging
my sword in great arcs that cut a path through solid masses of
writhing shapes, I forged toward the girl that twisted and screamed on
the floor in that square of moonlight.

I waded through a rolling, surging mire of squirming biting things
that washed about me waist-high, but they could not drag me down. I
reached the moonlit square, and the creatures that held Altha gave
back before the whistling menace of my sword edge, and the girl sprang
up and clung to me. Even as the shadowy horde rolled in to drag us
down I saw a crumbling stair leading up, and I thrust her upon it,
wheeling to cover her retreat.

It was dark on the stairs, though they led up into a chamber flooded
with light through a broken roof. That battle was fought in utter
darkness, with only my senses of feeling and hearing to guide my
strokes. And it was fought in silence, too, except for my panting, and
the whir and crunch of my blade.

Up that drunken stair I backed, battling every inch of the way, the
skin between my shoulders crawling with the expectancy of an attack
from the rear. If they had come upon us from above, we had been lost,
but evidently all were below me. What manner of creatures I was
fighting I did not know, except that they were taloned and fanged.
Otherwise, from the feel of them, they were stunted and misshapen,
furry and apish.

When I came out into the chamber above the tunnels I could see
little more. The moonlight streaming through the broken roof made only
a white shaft in the darkness. I could only make out vague forms in
the dimness about me--a heaving, writhing and lashing of shadows, that
surged up against me, clawing and tearing, and fell back beneath my
lashing sword.

Thrusting Altha behind me, I backed across that shadowy chamber
toward a wide rift that showed in the crumbling wall, reeling and
stumbling in the whirlpool of battle that swirled and eddied about me.
As I reached the rift through which Altha had already slipped, there
was a concerted rush to drag me down. Panic swept over me at the
thought of being pulled down in that shadowy room by that dim horde. A
blasting burst of fury, a gasping, straining plunge, and I catapulted
through the rift, carrying half a dozen attackers with me.

Reeling up, I shook the clinging horrors from my shoulders as a bear
might shake off wolves, and bracing my feet slashed right and left.
Now for the first time I saw the nature of my foes.

The bodies were like those of deformed apes, covered with sparse
dirty white fur. Their heads were doglike, with small close-set ears.
But their eyes were those of serpents--the same venomous steady
lidless stare.

Of all the forms of life I had encountered on that strange planet,
none filled me with as much loathing as these dwarfish monstrosities.
I backed away from the mangled heap on the earth, as a nauseous flood
poured through