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.