On the way back to my quarters I made an important discovery. A voice hailed me: a voice that I recognized)
“Jandar!”
I looked up in astonishment.
“Ergon, you old rascal! So you survived the wreck of the balloon!”
“Aye―not without a share of bumps and bruises, though. So you got away from the ghastozar. . :’
“Yes; how is my Princess?”
“Unharmed but furious at this captivity. She will be delighted to learn you are safe and near. Princess Zamara will not be so pleased, however. She had been enjoying herself by tormenting your lady with dire, gloating predictions of your grisly death in the jaws of the ghastozar. Little Glypto says―”
But then Hooka was upon me, jerking at my leash savagely.
“No talk!” he grated, jerking me along.
I exchanged a wave of the hand with Ergon before he, too, was jerked along by the Yathoon who was walking him as well.
I was so weary from the exertions of the previous night that I slept soundly, with no dreams. True, I was a prisoner with small hope of freedom. But at least my Princess was safe and unharmed, if an amatar like myself.
At least we were all together again.
Chapter 11
A Glimpse of Freedom
Although I was bedded down in the central tent wherein slept my owner, Borak, I was not permitted to sleep in his company. A nest of furs in a far corner was set aside for me, with several folding partitions separating the master from his store of treasures.
My nest was comfortable enough, I suppose, although I shared it with a curiously misshapen tree root, the polished skull of a jungle deltagar, an egg-shaped stone banded with stripes of some yellow mineral, a sack of broken glass and bright pebbles, among which were about a dozen diamonds the size of walnuts, and a jumble and clutter of odds and ends of every description.
This junk I shoved aside, making a bed for myself up against the outer tent wall.
I had been asleep for some hours, as I later judged the time, when suddenly awakened by a hand laid lightly on my mouth. I shot bolt upright, tingling in every nerve, until I recognized the scrawny, cheerfully grinning little rogue who had so unexpectedly roused me from my slumbers.
“Glypto? How came you here?” I whispered hoarsely.
He held up a bit of copper wire, then pointed to the slave ring about my ankle, chained to a tent pole.
“Glypto the chanthan is the master of many arts,” the bony little rascal chortled, “and not the least among them is a certain skill at the opening of locks. Few are the locks that can withstand the skills of Glypto, the son of Glypto, the grandson of―”
“Spare me the genealogical reminiscences,” I groaned protestingly. “My Princess―is she unharmed? Ergon―”
“We are treated well, as prized possessions of a chieftain known as Gorpak, whose scout party chanced upon us shortly after the flying thing came down with many bruising and bone-crushing bumps from its giddy travels through the skies of―”
I cut this flow of pointless verbosity short with a grim gesture.
“Have you some message for me, or is this just a social visit?”
“Oh, yes my master! The lord Ergon―who has laid hands of cruel violence upon my person, as you shall hear―the lord Ergon bade me inquire of you whether or not we should attempt an escape during the hours of darkness. I can open all our locks, for my skills are such that no lock devised by human ingenuity can for very long withstand the subtle probings, and the clever pokings, of Glypto’s cunning and oh-so-sensitive fingers―”
“Do you know where the thaptors are penned?”
“Alas, but not It is pitch-black outside, and the two great moons, formerly aloft, have since sunken―”
“Can you spare me a bit of that wire sufficient for me to free myself from the lock?”
He nodded and worked it back and forth until it broke in two. I secreted the length of wire within the lining of my tunic.
“Very well, then. Tell Ergon that when we camp tomorrow night we should both try to find out where the beasts are penned; then, when we are given our nightly walk for sanitary purposes, whichever of you four I see I will say something like `It’s a nice night for a stroll,’ which is the signal to await the middle of the night―say about this present hour―then we shall separately free ourselves and meet at the pens for an attempted break. Do you understand all that?”
He nodded eagerly.
“About the mid of night `A nice night for a stroll’―meet at the thaptor pens―aye, my master! Glypto will pass the word to our companions in misfortune!”
“Very well, then. Now get you gone, back the way you came, and be wary of the sentinels … good luck!”
He melted into the shadows, then darted back to thrust something into my grip.
“A small gift selected from the hoard of Gorpak, which may come in handy, master!”
Then he wormed his way under the edge of the tent and was gone in the night.
I looked down at the object he had thrust into my grasp..
It was a slim scabbard of green leather stitched with gold wire. In it was thrust a long dirk or poignard of blue steel, with a slender, tapering blade that was a deadly needle of razor-edged steel, with a hilt studded with rough gems.
I chuckled with surprise and tucked the thing beneath my tunic.
No telling when a weapon might come in handy!
That day we covered many weary, endless leagues of grassy plain under a sky of burning golden vapor.
As nearly as I could judge our direction on a world in which the sun does neither rise in the east nor set in the west, the Horde was moving northward in a succession of slow stages. Wherever they were going, they were certainly in no particular hurry to get there, for the vast procession dawdled along with frequent stops.
The reason for this was, quite simply, that they were actually going nowhere at all. The Yathoon Horde had left the Secret Valley in the Black Mountains at a certain season of the Thanatorian year, in order to follow the vast migrant herds of the vanth. I have already explained how, at this time of year, the vanth migrate across the Great Plains to graze and breed among the foothills of the mountain country to the south. The Yathoon were engaged upon a vast, year-long hunting expedition which would gather and preserve game meat to be taken back to their females and their young in the Valley of Sargol.
The Yathoon are the greatest hunters I have ever encountered; the greatest, in fact, that I have ever even heard of. In part their supremacy in this art is due to their innate nature: they are emotionless, coldly logical, and their thinking processes are thoroughly alien to ours. They are, therefore, capable of cool, infinite patience. A Yathoon hunter will track his game unswervingly, untiringly, for weeks on end whereas we more volatile humans will quickly become bored and turn to something else. Then again, the Yathoon are uniquely outfitted by nature for the role of huntsmen because of their peculiar sensory apparatus.
I don’t know enough about the scientific study of the insect life-forms to be able to say with any certainty that this is true of terrene arthropods, but the Thanatorian variety have radically different senses from we humans. They see differently, with superb perception of distance and a heightened sensitivity to color. My friend Koja has told me that he and his kind can perceive twenty-seven different and clearly distinct colors in that segment of the visual spectrum we humans lump together crudely under the single heading of “red.” As well, the insectoids have a greater sensitivity to odor than do we. They can sense the presence of game on the wind long before they can see it, and with their amazing ability to perceive color they can see through nature’s every attempt at camouflage.