Jandar of Callisto

6. DARLOONA, WARRIOR PRINCESS OF THE KU THAD

I had long suspected that the insect creatures of the Yathoon Horde were not the only intelligent inhabitants of Thanator. The fact that Koja and his kind found me remarkable for my coloring rather than my physical being indicated that they were not unfamiliar with races akin to mine. And that slighting remark the jealous Gamchan had let fall, when he suggested I was some sort of a hybrid born of a mating between "the Zanadar pirates" and "the Ku Thad," reinforced my suspicion. And then the fact of that writing case I had found among Koja's possessions: a race ignorant of letters does not bother to invent writing cases.

Now, as I stared across the clearing at the first human being I had seen on Thanator, I found my pulse quickening, as much from the beauty of the young woman as from the surprise of the encounter.

She was perhaps twenty, tall and slender and superbly feminine. She wore a high-necked, open-throated leather tunic identical with the one Koja had given me, a tunic which extended down over her rounded hips, leaving her long and graceful legs bare save for soft buskins laced high on the instep. A wide girdle heavy with ornaments of precious metals cinched in her small waist, and from this depended a small pouch, an empty dagger scabbard, and a large medallion of some bright metal I could not at once identify.

Her skin was softly golden, clear and pale. Her small, heart-shaped face was radiantly beautiful, with large expressive eyes, slightly slanted and colored a bright flashing emerald. Her hair was a magnificent torrent of fiery red-gold which flowed over her small shoulders and down to her waist. Her mouth was soft, full-lipped, ripely crimson. Even now, in the extremity of her peril, she retained a cool poise and what I sensed to be her natural dignity.

There was an empty quiver between her shoulders, clipped to a baldric that passed over one shoulder, down between her ripe, panting young breasts, to the side of her girdle. I saw no bow, so I assumed that this quiver had held javelins, now expended, as had been her dagger.

The beast she faced was hulking and monstrous, less fearsome in appearance than the yathrib, but heavier and more massive. It looked for all the world like a miniature elephant, the same barrel of a body, the same squat, thick, columnar legs ending in flat pads, the same leathery hide, slate gray in coloring. But its head bore a closer resemblance to a wild boar: little piglike eyes glaring madly, coarse black bristles clothing an unlovely snout, vicious tusks showing the gleam of yellow ivory, bared to view as the thing voiced its thick, throaty, snarling cry. But the piglike snout of the creature was a yard long and furthered the resemblance to an elephant.

I had recognized the beast as a vastodon; it stood six feet high at the shoulder and must have weighed two or three tons. My respect for the courage and prowess of the Yathoon warriors who hunted this hulking menace of the jungle for its meat rose considerably.

The girl, who had not yet seen me, had cast her javelins at the vastodon, seemingly missing the brute. One slender spear protruded from the crimson turf a few yards from where I stood. A vagrant beam of daylight caught the gemmy twinkle of a dagger hilt buried in the beast's burly chest. She had wounded the brute at least, but I could see that this was one monster that would take a lot of killing.

And I was armed only with a whip-sword.

The frozen tableau broke suddenly as the beast charged. If it struck the girl, she would be crushed against the knobby black bole of the tree.

Almost without thought, I sprang from the foliage with a loud shout, waving my arms to attract the vastodon's attention. The girl cast me one astonished glance, and in the next moment I was too busy to look or to think about her for the vastodon swerved in its charge and headed straight at me, heavy pads drumming against crimson turf.

I had never before used the Yathoon whip-sword, a weapon reserved for the warrior caste and forbidden equally to servitors and possessions. But I had observed several duels between rival arthropods during my months in the camp and understood the uses of the weapon. As the roaring vastodon came rushing at me I sprang high in the air and to one side, sweeping the barbed blade downwards, between my legs, the sword hilt gripped in both hands.

Unfortunately, due to the unusual length of the blade, which is fully five feet long, and tile weight of the weapon, considerably heavier than any sword with which I am familiar, I found the Yathoon whipsword an unwieldy instrument. I had intended to bring the barbed blade lashing down across the face of the vastodon, splitting its skill if possible, or at least blinding it by destroying its eyes. But the barb only caught it a glancing blow on the shoulder, which laid open the tough hide in a foot-long furrow, exposing raw lavender flesh. Instead of incapacitating the vastodon, my blow only goaded it to further heights of rage.

It spun about, squealing madly, little pig-eyes red and flaming with the lust to kill, and charged again like a thunderbolt.

I had landed off balance from my leap, and now I sprawled on the turf, the whip-sword flying from my hand. As the enraged vastodon came at me I grasped the javelin the girl had flung―snatched it from the turf―and drove it into the boar-pachyderm as it came crashing into me. The impact of its charge knocked me flying. My head struck some hard object and my senses swam. Then darkness covered the world.

I was looking up into a beautiful face. Curious emerald eyes looked down at me, and ripe moist lips were parted as if to speak.

"Do you live?" the girl asked, and I was suddenly grateful that Koja had instructed me in the Thanatorian language.

"I live―" I began, trying to sit up. Bright pain lanced through me, and I broke off gasping, adding after a moment "―but as to whether I am still in one piece or not, we shall have to see!"

Something―perhaps the tusk of the vastodon―had slashed my forearm, and I had a long cut which extended from just above the wrist to an inch below the elbow. Blood welled freely from the wound, which was a surface cut. No bone was broken, and I seemed to have come through the ordeal in fairly decent shape.

As for the vastodon, it lay across the clearing dead in a puddle of purplish gore. I can take little credit for the kill; it was the impact of the brute's own wild charge that drove the javelin deep into its breast, straight through the heart. By sheerest accident, just as the beast struck and impaled itself on the blade, the javelin butt was braced against solid ground.

The girl helped me to my feet. I ached from a few bruises; my head throbbed painfully; my slashed forearm hurt abominably, and I felt a bit shaken and nauseous. But otherwise I was all right.

The girl gazed at me curiously.

"You are not Ku Thad, surely! Nor of Zanadar, either―what manner of man are you?"

"I am―" I began; and again I halted. What use to confuse the situation by relating my incredible story of birth on another world? Koja had never once questioned the manner of my appearance; like all his kind, the Yathoon was stolid and indifferent, and curiosity is a simian trait, and therefore, a human one; the Yathoon are neither human nor simian and rarely seem curious about anything.

"I am from a far country," I said lamely. "My name is Jonathan Dark."

She wrinkled her nose at the uncouth polysyllabic. "Jhonna-than'dar―?"

"Jandar," I said, resigned to the nickname first bestowed upon me by my friend Koja.

"I am Darloona of the Ku Thad, Princess of Shondakor," she said proudly. As I had no idea how a Thanatorian would acknowledge meeting with the native aristocracy, I essayed a sketchy little bow, which seemed to meet with her approval.

Reassured by now that I was all right, the Princess regarded me with slightly aloof coldness. I recalled that among the Yathoon the hand of every warrior is raised against every other, and each clan hold the neighboring clan in deadly enmity. I wondered if this was true among the human inhabitants of Thanator. * If so, I might find this imperious lovely an enemy.

"Never have I seen a vastodon slain in so clumsy a manner," she said.

"What matter, so long as the vastodon be slain?" was my reply. She turned from me without further word and began gathering her javelins and her dagger, which was still in the shoulder of the vastodon. I washed my wound with water from the canister in my knapsack and tried to bind the wound with a bit of clean rag, which I found difficult to do with only one hand.

It occurred to me that the Princess might well have volunteered to cleanse and bind my wound. I had, after all, just saved her life and sustained the injury in doing so.

Striding over to her, I thrust out my arm and asked, rather abruptly: "Do you mind helping with this?"

Her emerald eyes held a shadow of disdain. I did not realize it, but already I had twice offended against the Thanatorian code of honor. Among Darloona's people it is considered polite for a warrior to deprecate his own prowess at the kill. When she had made her candid appraisal of my clumsy method of slaying the vastodon, I should have agreed with her gravely. And a warrior is thought somewhat less than manly if he binds or even tends his wounds. In this much, at least, the Ku Thad were not unlike Koja and his kind.

However, the Princess did not refuse but bound my wound in silence. I was aware of a slight breach between us but I did not quite know how to mend it. Darloona could not know the extent of my unfamiliarity with the customs common to all four human races upon Thanator: hence she could not be blamed for thinking me a bit of a boor.

As she bent near, tying the cloth about my wound, her eyes suddenly dilated with incredulous disbelief and she stood apart from me abruptly. I did not understand what had so forcibly repelled her, and I glanced down, to see that the boarlike tusk of the vastodon had torn open the front of my leather tunic, laying bare my chest and the green, black, and crimson "possession" symbols which still remained upon me, to mark me to every eye as a belonging of the Yathoon.

I was not to understand until much later. Her shock at discovering me to be a slave, or a former slave, of a Yathoon, was not so much an aristocrat's disgust at encountering a servile being as her instant suspicion that I was what you might call a Judas goat. The Yathoon sometimes take servitors from the human races, although as it happened there had been no human servitors in the camp of Koja's clan during the period of my stay. And sometimes these slaves, their markings disguised beneath the tunic of a free warrior, such as I wore, are used to lure unsuspecting humans into entrapment by the arthropods. Had I understood her instant revulsion, had I known of this vile custom and understood the suspicion which she now entertained, I could of course have explained and set her mind at rest. But, not knowing, I did nothing but stare at her.

And in the very next moment it was too late for any explanation.

The foliage parted and a dozen Yathoon warriors stepped into the clearing to confront Darloona and myself. The leader of the party was Koja's rival and enemy, Gamchan. If ever I read the slightest shade of expression in the featureless casque of a Yathoon face, it was then. For Gamchan smirked in an oily, ominous, very self-satisfied way. How his immobile masklike face managed to express this emotion I cannot say. For all I know it was sheer telepathy. But smirk he did, and nastily at that.

He had followed on my track the instant it was learned that : was no longer in the encampment. Koja had a perfect right to set me free if he desired, although his motives for doing so would have been incomprehensible to his brethren. But Gamchan, equally, had a perfect right to pursue and, if possible, recapture me, making me his possession, if he wished. And, his former slighting remarks notwithstanding, he had gone after me with a pack of junior warriors with just that purpose in mind. It would have made a splendid coup against the prestige of Koja if he were able to seize me for his own. And now he had done so, and had taken a second prize as well! It was no wonder that Gamchan was pleased with himself.

As far as I was concerned, I would gladly have been his possession voluntarily, if only I could somehow have prevented him from making the remark that he now made.

Of all the conceivable words that could have been uttered, no more damning phrase could have been imagined.

"Well done, Jandar," he grated. "The female will make a splendid possession!"

My heart sank, not so much at again becoming a captive. But if you could have seen the look of icy loathing and utter contempt that the Princess of the Ku Thad turned on me the next instant, you would understand my profound depression.

Her cold, contemptuous eyes traveled over me once, and then lifted away. She disdained the futility of attempting battle against so overwhelming ,a force of the Yathoon and held out her wrists in cold silence while she was bound and led to the thaptors.

As for myself, I was surrounded with drawn swords; my own weapon lay many yards distant. And I was so paralyzed by the shock of Gamchan's sudden appearance that I was frozen or I would doubtless have flung myself against the warriors. But before I could think or move, a lasso settled about me, jerked tight, and imprisoned my upper arms.

I have no doubt that the lack of any sound of a battle from the clearing only served to further confirm Darloona in her opinion of me as she was led away.

And thus, for the second time, I became the property of a chieftain of the Yathoon.

Towards evening Gamchan's war party caught up with the main body of the Yathoon host and rejoined it. The Horde was marshaled in order of rank, and Gamchan's place in the hierarchy was directly behind the position held by Koja. Thus Gamchan was able to flaunt his two prized acquisitions directly under Koja's nose, as it were.

Koja made no remark on my recapture. Neither did he attempt to exchange words with me, although I am certain he felt regret that I had not succeeded in making my escape, or at least as much regret as a Yathoon warrior is capable of feeling. The Yathoon have a sort of crude, fatalistic philosophy which they refer to by the phrase va lu rokka―"it was destined." They seem to regard the future in a dour, Calvinist light as predetermined. No degree of luck or valor or skill on the part of intelligent beings can in their world view avert a coming catastrophe.

I assume that it was with the pessimism of this belief in va lu rokka that Koja observed my imprisonment in the retinue of Gamchan. And I knew that he neither would nor could be of any further assistance to me, uhorz or no uhorz. This fatalism infects the entire Yathoon civilization and probably, in part, accounts for the indifference with which they view a fallen comrade's injuries. If he is destined to die, he will die. If not, he will live. Whatever the outcome, va lu rokka.

As a possession of Gamchan I was tied with a noose about my neck and forced to run along behind one of the thaptors ridden by a member of the household of Gamchan. I am not sure whether this grueling punishment was awarded me out of malice alone, or whether it was an attempt on the part of Gamchan to display the slightness of his regard for his new amatar. I noticed, however, that the girl, securely trussed, was tossed across the cruppers of one of the thaptors and was not forced to run along behind its heels. That much at least I could be grateful for.

We covered some miles before it became too dark to go any further. I was trembling with exhaustion by the time the order finally was passed down the length of the host to halt and make night camp. The experience had not, in fact, been as terrible as it could have been, for I had envisioned falling and being dragged for miles, or being forced to run for hours at breakneck speed. Actually, as it turned out, since the Horde moved together in strict order, it could progress at no speedier pace than that of its slowest member, which was Pandol himself.

I have not yet mentioned Pandol in this narrative because I had no contact with him whatever during my captivity. Pandol was the leader of the clan, the akka-komor, or highest chieftain. He had been a mighty war champion in his youth but now was very old and could not endure hard riding for very long. Hence I found the pace a mild one, wearying but not unendurable.

The night camp was set up in a deep valley ringed about with smooth, rounded knolls. As this was but a temporary camp, set up for the night's rest, it did not boast the elaborate earthworks, the barriers of packed earth that had encircled the semipermanent encampment that had been the clan's home during the months I had been an amatar of Koja.*

Once the warriors and servitors of Gamchan's household had set up his circle of tents, Darloona and I were led forward. I did not know exactly what to expect, but I doubted if Gamchan would inflict any punishment on so valuable a possession as I represented in his eyes. At his command, I was stripped of my leathern tunic, baldric, and girdle, although I was permitted to retain my buskins and the strip of cloth wound about my loins. The pictoglyphs on my chest, which specified me as an amatar belonging to Koja, were removed with an application of some soapy, slightly acidulous cleanser, and a new group of emblems were painted on my chest in their place. Doubt less they denoted my new owner.

As I was led away, I saw the girl being brought forward, and suddenly I realized what was about to happen.

The servitor who had removed my torn tunic fumbled at the fastening of Darloona's garment. The girl stared straight ahead with a cold, proud expression of disdain on her features, which were, however, paler than usual. Gamchan, impatient at the inability of the fumbling servitor to remove the garment, strode forward and seized the open neck of Darloona's tunic in the grasp of his long segmented fingers.

I realized that in the next instant the girl would be stripped bare and the symbols of her slavery would be painted across her naked breasts!

My gorge rose at the thought of this young, lovely girl of birth and breeding standing nude before the cold unwinking gaze of these stalking arthropods. Some innate chivalry, whose presence in my character I had not been cognizant of until this moment, arose within me.

Without a moment's hesitation I snapped my bonds, which were tough enough to secure the forelimbs of a Yathoon arthropod but which offered only a feeble restraint against the more powerful leverage of terrene muscles. While the warrior holding my leash stared blankly, I sprang forward and grabbed Gamchan by his upper forelimb, snatching his fingers from the girl and, in the fury of my emotion, whirling him half around and letting him sprawl at full length in the dirt.

I think I could have killed him then. A red haze of fury hung before my eyes and my hands were trembling with rage. Gamchan lay asprawl on the ground, regarding me with astonishment.

I looked around and suddenly laughed. The cadet warriors and servitors likewise stared at me with utter amazement. I had come by this time to understand that the arthropods of Thanator are not quite as emotionless as I had first assumed them to be. I had discovered that Koja was capable of feeling something akin to friendliness; and Gamchan, in the envy he displayed towards my former captor, revealed very human emotion. What I had assumed a total lack of emotion was due to a misunderstanding: humans read emotions by gesture, intonation, facial expression; but the arthropods are all but incapable of facial expressiveness save the twitching of their antennae, and their metallic and monotonous speech mode lacks the human range of tones. They rendered shades of emotion by a different vocabulary of gestures than do terrene humans. I had come, bit by bit, to realize this. Astonishment is registered by a frozen immobility and an erratic jerking of the brow antennae, which the Yathoon about me now displayed.

For I had done an unheard―of thing. With their extreme fatalism, their almost Moslem sense of Kismet, servitors consider it their irrevocable fate to be slaves and would never dream of revolting or of seeking their freedom. The most prestigious warrior, fearless and brave almost beyond human conception, if overcome in battle and taken prisoner, becomes a meek servitor and will endure harsh treatment without a thought of protest, resentment, or anger. For a slave to strike his master is virtually unheard of in the annals of this most unusual people.

But for an amatar to do so verges on ultimate blasphemy. For how can a possession, a soulless thing,, be capable of anger or violence against the chieftain who owns him?

The retinue of Gamchan regarded me incredulously. They could hardly believe what their own eyes had seen; that an amatar should lay violent hands on its owner was, to them, a complete impossibility.

I met the amazed eyes of Darloona. Her people, I was later to learn, did not keep slaves as they had achieved a higher and more humane level of civilization than that of the poor arthropods. Hence her astonishment was not at my un-amatar-like action, but stemmed from curiosity regarding my motive.

She thought me a Judas, a traitor who acted as bait to entrap my own kind into the slavery of the Horde. The human inhabitants of Thanator regard the arthropods with extreme revulsion and loathing. They are considered the most vile and despicable of all species. To be enslaved in a Yathoon encampment is a doom beyond description; hence, a human who induces his fellows into such slavery is considered beyond all humanity. Since she thought of me in such terms, due to the confusion of my recapture and her seizure, she could not understand why I had torn the claws of my master from her body. Since I had already proved myself a traitor to my species by luring her into a trap―why in the world should I react so violently to her being stripped and painted with the amatar symbols?

The moment of paralyzed astonishment was over almost immediately and I was ringed with naked steel. I stood panting and glaring about like a trapped beast while one of Gamchan's cadets, a youth named Duthor, assisted his master to his feet. It was a tense moment. I expected to feel the agony of sword-steel tearing out my life upon the next instant. And I still do not quite understand why Gamchan did not order me killed on the spot. Perhaps he was too dumbfounded by my incomprehensible act of violence to give the command; or possibly the rigorous code of punishments that served the Horde as its law contained no variety of death lingering enough to fittingly reward so blasphemous an act, and he required leisure to dream up a suitable one.

At any rate, instead of being cut down on the spot, I was imprisoned among his other treasures in the innermost tent of his area. The flimsy ropes of braided grass which had proved too weak to hold me were replaced by shackles of steel. Chained to the tent pole, I was left to languish until the manner of my demise could be decided.

I smiled wryly in the darkness. My desperate action had proved futile, for Gamchan assured me that Darloona would nonetheless be stripped and painted. And it was likely to prove fatal, as well.

The second period of my captivity in the Horde would prove much shorter than the first, I believed.

True enough, it came to a rapid end―but not at all the sort of end I had imagined!

The following day I was led forth in chains to face chastisement. The cadet warriors of Gamchan's household led me down an aisle of Horde warriors who regarded me in utter silence. The day was hot and still, the sky clear and bright. As it was likely to be my last day on Thanator, I observed every detail about me with great attentiveness.

I felt the eyes of Darloona upon me and turned my head to catch her gaze. Her face was grave and somber, her eyes sad as they lingered on me. Then, as she caught my glance, she drew herself up haughtily and her expression turned to one of icy contempt. I laughed. The eternal woman! The female of the species was the same on this alien moon as on my own far-distant world.

And then, as I lifted my gaze to the clear golden skies to have one last look at this strange and beautiful and terrible world before I went down into the darkness of a nameless tomb, my eyes widened in disbelief.

That which I gazed upon was, of all the marvels and oddities that thronged this weird world, the most spectacular I had yet encountered.

Cruising silently through the bright morning skies, a group of incredible aircraft were hurtling straight for the camp of the Yathoon Horde.

I could not, for a moment, believe my eyes. Like quaint, ungainly sailing ships of yore they were, with gilded figureheads and ornamental scrollwork about the prow. There were three of the amazing flying ships, which appeared to be built of wood, and which resembled nothing so much as fantastic galleons from the Spanish Armada, outfitted with great flapping batwings.

They came cruising down the wind, casting enormous running shadows over the meadow and the camp, while the arthropods exploded into a frenzy of activity, racing about, clacking commands back and forth, snatching up their war bows and seeking cover.

The Yathoon camp, it seemed, was being attacked.

And, in the confusion, everyone had forgotten about Darloona and myself!