We had been in the plains to the east of Shondakor when first taken prisoner. The balloon had flown us yet farther east, to the city of Tharkol. In making our escape from Tharkol by balloon, we had been carried, as far as we could determine, due south to be brought down midway between Tharkol and the Black Mountains. Midway between the city and the mountains we had fallen captive to the Yathoon Horde.
But which way had the Yathoon nomads taken us―east or west? I believed we had traveled due west during our captivity in the Horde, and should therefore be south of Shondakor. But Ergon was of the opinion that we had been headed north, and might by now be on a line between Shondakor and Tharkol.
It was a pretty problem, indeed. If we went in the direction I suggested, and if Ergon proved correct in his estimate of our present location, we should end up near the city of Soraba on the shores of Corund Laj, the Greater Sea. And that would make us farther from Shondakor than before!
The damnable part of it all was that we could not be sure. This was due to the peculiarities of Thanator itself. The sun is merely the brightest of stars in these skies. In fact, only rarely can you discern its position in the heavens at all, due to the weird layer of translucent golden vapor which blankets the Jungle Moon high in its upper atmosphere. Daylight on Callisto is caused by some mysterious fluorescent effect in this golden vapor, which causes it to blaze into illumination. But this happens all at once, throughout the entire sky.
On Earth, things are so much simpler. The sun rises in the east, and that’s all there is to it! Once you know this fact, you can figure out your direction during any daylight hour. But not so on Thanator. And here they have yet to invent the compass!
At length we resolved our differences, arrived at a compromise, and struck off in a direction that we generally agreed would in time bring us within eyeshot of Shondakor.
We crossed the plains by slow, easy stages, with frequent stops for rest and nourishment. Had it been just Ergon and I alone, we could have made much better time, because we would have increased the pace, driving both ourselves and our thaptors mercilessly.
But we had the women to think of, and scrawny little Glypto. Half-starved most of his miserable life, the little guttersnipe lacked the stamina of a warrior. So we catered to him and the women, nor did we treat the little rogue harshly, demanding he keep up with us. He was no enemy, but a friend, and I must admit that I felt just a bit guilty at forcing him to endure these adventures. He had been brought along with us by a combination of accident and mistake, and it seemed a bit unfair. I must say, all things considered, he was a more amiable and useful companion than his Queen, who alternately raged or wept, whimpered or cursed. He was good-natured, comical, and quick to help. He amused Darloona with his quips and antics, and he delighted in tormenting glum Ergon.
He delighted in mimicking Ergon’s goggle-eyed glower and froggish grimace, and skillfully parodied the bandy-legged Perushtarian’s rolling gait, which always reminded me of a sailor’s. Ergon suffered Glypto’s clowning in indignant, grim-jawed silence, but, when stung to the quick, made to cuff the capering little thief. If any of those heavy-handed blows had actually landed, Glypto would have clowned no more―nor, for that matter, would he have stirred from a hospital bed for a fortnight.
But he seemed to know by sheer instinct when Ergon had taken enough, and whenever his antics had goaded the bald-headed Perushtarian to the brink of rage, the smirking little rapscallion slackened his play and turned to other trickery, leaving Ergon to huff and puff as his temper slowly subsided.
There was a considerable element of play in this, as if it were almost a game shared between them. I have a feeling Ergon, in his dour, grumpy way, rather liked the chipper, droll little guttersnipe, and that little Glypto admired Ergon for his strength, valor, determination, and dogged loyalty. The unspoken, almost unavowed, friendship or comradeship which grew between the two very dissimilar men was touching, in a way. Neither admitted to any fondness for the other: Ergon snorted, and called him “gutter-scrapings,” “garbage-picker,” and like terms of disrespect; Glypto, on the other hand, employed his nimble wits to invent a variety of amusingly apt, if impolite, titles for Ergon. Of these the one which amused me most was “Sir Boiled-Frog,” a deft allusion to Ergon’s scarlet hide, bald head, bowlegs and froglike mouth.
Our supply of jinko bladders lasted us six days without scrimping.
On the seventh day we encountered, and raided, a second jinko. Our second was nowhere near the size of our first, which had been indeed, as Ergon termed it, the “grandfather of all jinkos.” This one, by comparison, was only a niece or nephew. Moreover, we took it on the wing, so to speak: it was not rooted, but roaming free, and we had to chase the nimble rooted little bush about three-quarters of a mile before we “winded” it sufficiently to bring it to a stop, which we effected by the simple process of surrounding it on thaptor-back, then dismounting to prune it of the larger of its bladders.
The poor thing trembled in terror all the while, but we did not denude it, picking only the larger of its leaves, before turning it loose to scamper off. The leaves were nowhere as large as the ones on the first jinko, but their water was no less fresh and cold, and the flesh of the bladders was, if anything, tenderer, juicier, and more succulent.
That was on the seventh day of our escape from the encampment of the Yathoon arthropods.
On the eighth day we saw the caravan.
Chapter 15
Taken by Surprise
The caravan consisted of about two hundred men and animals strung out in a long line that wound across the Great Plains for nearly half a mile. Teams were hitched to large covered wains which, with their four wheels, light construction, and felt coverings, bore a striking resemblance to the covered wagons which played such an important role in the opening up of the American West.
The drivers of these wains, and the scouts, guards, and outriders, who fanned across the plains in every direction, keeping a lookout for bandits or raiders, had the scarlet skin and bald heads and beardless faces of Perushtarians.
Leaving Glypto behind to stay with the women, Ergon and I went ahead to investigate the caravan and to form some estimate of the danger it presented to us, if any. We dismounted and wormed a way on our bellies to the crest of low hummocks from which we could view the extent of the caravan without being seen ourselves.
Ergon looked them over with a suspicious eye and a glum face.
“Sorabans,” he grunted sourly.
“How can you tell?” I asked. He indicated the emblem which was emblazoned on the breasts of the riders’ tunics and stenciled on the sides of the wains. It was also tattooed or perhaps branded on the upper chest of the thaptors where their feathers thinned out to a creamy fuzz. This symbol bore little relation to the earthly kinds of heraldry known to me. It was a complex design of flowing, intertwined arabesques and flowery tendrils.
“The emblem of the House of Iommon, a family of merchant princes very powerful in Soraba, who maintain a branch in Narouk,” he growled. Ergon had been a slave in Narouk when first we had met, which explained how he was able to recognize the blazonry.
“Slavers?” I asked.
The Perushtarians have made of the breeding and training and selling of slaves a major industry and a fine art, and the last thing I wanted was to fall in with slavers. Not when we were this close to Shondakor, surely!
He shook his head, almost reluctantly.
“I have never heard that the Iommon interests extend to slavery,” he said grudgingly. “They have a monopoly on sea trade between Soraba and Farz, and a share in the weaving and dyeing works in Glorious Perusht itself. They maintain a great fleet which plies the waters of the Corund Laj between the far-flung cities of the empire.”