I heard the clear tenor of Andar’s voice ringing above the riot, shouting words of encouragement, whipping the hearts of his men to ever more desperate and daring deeds, as he cried out the ancient and hallowed rallying-cries of Komar. Would that I could have stood beside him in that hour, a sword clenched in my strong right hand, battling with the gallant Prince for victory and freedom! Alas, a blind boy is of little use in any battle
Then a heavy body crashed into me and I half-fell to the deck. A hoarse voice cursed and a booted foot bludgeoned my ribs. And a fierce joy rose up within me, for I knew that voice it was the voice of Hoggur!
I sprang to my feet and leaped upon him, as a slender puma leaps upon a massive buffalo. My hands fumbled at his breast—rose and locked about his burly throat. He cursed and spat; more surprised, I think, than alarmed. For why should the giant warrior have feared the hands of a half-naked, whipped and beaten, starved and scrawny blind boy; for such I must have seemed to him, who knew not that the slim body of the boy Karn held the spirit of Chong, that mighty champion, the hero of a hundred battles.
His balled fists smashed against my face and sides, but I clung to him, tenacious as a tiger; my fingers sank into his fat throat like steel hooks. Not for nothing had I drunk of the Elixir of Light in the enchanted palace of Sarchimus the magician, gaining the strength and vigor of many men! Not for nothing had I toiled and sweated at the heavy oars for all these days of unremitting labor; my lean thews and sinews had toughened to living steel from the back-breaking labor.
Now his hoarse curses turned to strangled gasps of fear and his burly chest rose, straining for air. My fingers sank like the talons of some merciless bird of prey into his puffy, swollen flesh; throttling the life from him, I was oblivious to the rain of blows he battered upon me. I was conscious of nothing—not of pain or peril—all I knew was that my hands had settled about the throat of my enemy. Only death—his death, or mine own—would loosen the rigor of my grip upon his gullet.
Then a great wave broke over me, startlingly cold, waking me from my berserk fury. I became aware that the thing I clutched and crushed between my hands resisted me no more, but dangled limp and lifeless in my grasp. Hoggur the Barbarian was no more; I had conquered!
Thus it was that, blind though I might be, I played my small part in the freeing of the Xothun and the victory of Prince Andar, my friend.
I opened my stiff, aching fingers and let the dead thing fall from my hands. The carcass slid over the wet deck to the stair. In a livid flash of lightning, men saw the corpse of Hoggur and the blind boy crouched above it, his lips peeled back from his teeth in the mirthless grin of a fighting-man. A great cry went up that Hoggur was slain and the Blue Barbarians were leaderless. I heard the ringing tones of Andar claiming the victory for Karn. And I was Karn, and had fought in the battle that won freedom for the Komarian slaves.
And then a great, mighty wave broke against the hull and the galleon keeled over at a sickening tilt. I was thrown against the rail, which broke away.
The next thing I felt was the icy waters of the Sea of Komar closing about me and I sank like a stone. And that was the last thing I knew.
Part II.
THE BOOK OF RALIDUX THE MALE
Chapter 6.
ISLE OF THE ANCIENT ONES
Through the impenetrable darkness of the night the mighty blue wings of the immense hawklike bird had borne the black superman, Ralidux, with the two women who were his helpless captives. Ever since the bolt of electric fire had struck Zarqa the Kalood into death or unconsciousness, thus freeing him from the control of an alien mind, the ebon princeling had given the hawk its head.
It might fly where it wished, for aught he cared. He could no longer return to dwell among his brethren in the Flying City for now it was known that he, Ralidux, had conceived an atrocious lust for a lesser being. This depraved passion, his fellow immortals of the Flying City of Calidar viewed with an abhorrence verging on horror; even as you or I might view a member of our own species so maddened with lust as to desire copulating with an animal.
To the distorted intellect of Ralidux, the surface of the world was a savage wilderness inhabited only by beasts. The only oasis of civilized men known to him was the Flying City itself. He must choose, therefore, between exile in a savage wilderness or the swift extermination by his horrified brethren, were he foolish enough to return to the Flying City.
It was, therefore, a matter of no importance to him where the blue-winged zawkaw bore him. Life from now on was to be a brutal, degraded existence in a hideous hell of noisome beasts, where he must dwell until death, forever deprived of the comforts of converse and companionship of his kind.
Were it possible for his fevered, disordered intellect to shrug off the red mists of madness which now blinded it, he might have recalled the discovery whose horrendous implications had driven him over the brink of sanity. That was, quite simply, that the man-shapen “beasts” who inhabited The World Below were not beasts at all; they were human creatures like himself, with the divine gifts of reason and coherent speech, and a high civilization of their own. The exquisite creature he held clasped against his powerful black breast was no beast, but a woman; the other half of the human species which his purely masculine civilization considered legendary, since their females had died out ages before.
Had he realized the implications of this discovery, he might have understood that the desire he felt for the beautiful young woman who lay panting and helpless in his arms was no ghastly, unholy lust at all. It was merely the normal human desire of male for female—a physical desire his insane, immortal brethren had ruthlessly repressed for untold centuries. This repression had in part contributed to their common madness.
His arms tightened about the lissome creature he held. His nostrils tasted the warm, perfumed odor of her floating hair; and he was very conscious of the delicately rounded smoothness of the silken, half-naked, voluptuous body he held against him. It was almost worth it, to have lost the companionship of his kind and his own self-respect, to be able to vent his lusts at leisure upon the lovely, desirable creature whose charms had inexplicably enslaved his soul.
He blinked through his wild, disordered, feverish dreams. Day had come up over the edges of the world, while he had flown onward in a stupor. Beneath him there now glistened an immense expanse of open waters, with scattered small islands clad in jungle verdure amidst them. Such a phenomenon was unknown to him or to the annals of his civilization; but he regarded the vast, landlocked sea with complete indifference. To his mad brain, one part of the world was no different than another. All places in The World Below were equally savage and untamed.
The blue wings were weary after long hours of flight. Spying the jungle isles below, the exhausted zawkaw began to circle downwards towards one small isle. The hand at the reins gave no indication of its wishes; thus the giant hawklike bird, given its head, settled downwards, alighting upon the dewy sward of the nearest isle.
Ralidux climbed stiffly from the saddle, lifting down the sleeping Goddess of Ardha. She had passed from panic to uncaring lassitude, and from thence to a fitful and exhausted slumber during the long nightmare of her abduction by the ebon madman.
Ralidux neither knew nor cared what his other captive might do. His entire being was concentrated on the object of his desires. Cradling the unconscious Goddess in his arms, he left his winged steed untended, and entered the jungle.