“A diversion, eh?” Ergon boomed heartily, staring skyward with an expression of slack-jawed amazement and huge joy.
I followed his gaze.
Above us, at the height of only a hundred feet, the Jalathadar serenely floated through the skies under the glory of the mighty moons.
Book Five
ANG CHAN OF KUUR
Chapter 17
An Unexpected Meeting
It was not so much a matter of attempting to escape, as it was of taking advantage of the occasion. The sudden and unexpected arrival of the flying ship, which hovered above us like some immense and mysterious apparition conjured out of thin air at the whim of a playful magician, threw the orderly Soraban caravan into whirling chaos.
It is quite possible that the news of the destruction of the corsair fleet and of the overthrow of the City in the Clouds had not yet reached the rather remote and secluded seacoast cities of the red men. There is little intercourse between the several city-states of Thanator, and they are wary and suspicious of each other, when not actually at war. And, as well, hundreds of leagues of savage jungle or untamed wilderness stretch between them, rendering travel hazardous and infrequent.
At any rate, the Sorabans reacted as to the presence of a powerful and ferocious enemy. The heavy, lumbering glymphs waddled about squealing in panic, toppling the wagons and smashing the wains to splintering ruin as they stampeded. The restive, unruly thaptors broke free and fled in every direction. In a trice, the placid and well-ordered procession was a milling tangle of shrieking bird-horses, plunging and rearing, dislodging their riders and snapping with sharp wicked beaks at those who strove to calm them. Bales, barrels, and bundles went toppling to be trampled in the dirt underfoot as guards dodged the beaks of the panic-stricken thaptors and raced to block the escape of the rhinocerine glymphs.
In such confusion-made doubly chaotic by the darkness and the many-colored blur of moonlight―escaping was easier than I could have asked. Our wagon came to an abrupt halt when the glymph hauling it started at the shadow of the ornithopter and backed into the traces, crushing the footboard. Our driver, Laalmurak, was pitched headlong from his perch and must have flung himself into a ditch, thinking the Sky Pirates were upon him, for we saw no more of him, nor did he interfere with our break.
Ergon and I sprang over the rearboard of the carriage and jumped down to the ground. The thaptors we had ridden out of the Yathoon encampment were tethered to the rearboard of the carriage, and, although they bucked and reared squealing, and lunged to snap at us, Ergon snatched up the little knobbed club that hung at the side of their saddles, and bludgeoned them into dazed submission.
Fortunately, the Lord Shaphur had seen no reason to unsaddle our mounts, which would have required finding sufficient space in one or another of the heavily-laden wains wherein to store the saddle gear, hence the beasts were ready for riding.
While Ergon, growling sulphurous oaths and whacking lustily at the heads of the brutes with the little club, held the bird-horses under control, I assisted Darloona and Zamara to dismount from the carriage. Little Glypto, still limping and whimpering from the effects of what he described as a cruel and merciless beating at the hands of Shaphur’s brutal guards, climbed down painfully.
Within just a few minutes we were in the saddle and ready to go. Ergon slashed through the tethers with his dirk and we guided the beasts off the road and across the plains in the general direction of the Jalathadar, which had drifted slowly by overhead, and was engaged in wheeling about in a slow and stately maneuver, prior to making another pass over the length of the caravan whose progress its appearance had so precipitously disrupted.
These things we accomplished―miraculously―under the very noses of the red men of Soraba, not one of whom took the slightest notice of us in the act. They were busy chasing their runaway steeds or attempting to round up the lumbering glymphs. If any of them had sufficient leisure to spare us a glance, he likely saw Ergon―a bald-headed, red-skinned Perushtarian―and not the rest of us. For Ergon sat tall and erect, taking a prominent position for that very reason, while the rest of us bent low in the saddle and kept our faces hidden as best we could. But, so complete was the milling confusion into which the procession had degenerated, that I doubt we were noticed at all.
Thus, by a happy accident which might well prove our salvation, we bade the Lord Shaphur a hasty adieu, and left the hospitality of Soraba behind us.
We headed out into the moonlit plains at a right angle to the road the caravan had been following, which was only a beaten track through the grasslands of northern Haratha, and not a paven way.
If the caravan had been headed in a northerly direction, as was our surmise, then our route was due west. We were riding, then, more or less in the general direction of Shondakor, although of course the Golden City of the Ku Thad lay many korads distant. With luck still on our side, as we assumed, it seemed likely we should not have to traverse the leagues of meadowland bestride our steeds, but should ride, or rather fly, in comfort and safety.
But that still remained to be seen.
The problem was, quite simply, one of finding a way to attract the attention of our friends aboard the Jalathadar.
The mighty galleon of the skies was slowly cruising at about thrice the speed of a racing thaptor, and now rode at a modest elevation of about eighty feet aloft. As the great airship swung about for another leisurely pass over the caravan, many eyes probed through the moonlit darkness from above, narrowly surveying the Perushtarian caravan. I have no doubt our friends aloft were pausing to investigate the peculiar circumstance of finding a merchant caravan in this part of the country where, as I have intimated earlier in this narrative, there is little reason for any caravan to be.
Our only hope of rescue, then, lay in somehow catching the eye of one of the alert watchers from above.
But how?
The elusive moonlight was brilliant but confusing to the sight, for several of the many moons of giant Jupiter were aloft―and the web of light and shadow they cast was tricky to the eye. The shifting moonbeams―lime green, silvery azure, dim red, pale golden―made it curiously difficult to perceive details or to see colors.
Of course, this is usually the case on virtually any world at night, or, at least, on any world of my experience. On Earth I have noticed that it is nearly impossible to make out any colors even by the light of a full moon, the only exception to this rule being scarlet or crimson, which take on a darkly purple tinge by the gray-silver luminance of Earth’s only satellite.
This being so, we thought it likely we might hope to attract the attention of our friends aloft by doing something distinctly curious and odd.
So we rode out boldly into the plains, directly away from the caravan, keeping well together in a clump for added visibility, and making not the slightest attempt to conceal our flight. The caravan guards, we knew, were still too busy rounding up their beasts and organizing a hasty defense for the expected battle against the aerial corsairs (as they doubtless suspected our craft to be one of the flying buccaneers of Zanadar), to bother about us, or even to have noticed as yet that we were missing. Hence our failure to attempt to conceal our flight from the caravan was not likely to bring about immediate recapture or even pursuit by the Perushtarian warriors.
It was, however, very likely to catch the eye of someone aboard the Jalathadar, and to arouse his curiosity. He would understand the Sorabans mistook his ship for a Zanadarian corsair; but he would naturally expect the members of the caravan to seek their security in numbers, rather than to go racing off across the plains as we were doing.