My condition was truly a desperate one. Weaponless, alone and friendless, in an alien land, my chances for survival rested upon imponderables and uncertainties. However, I did not give way to despair. Even now, my friends aboard the flying vessel might have discovered my absence, even now, they might be reversing the course of the Jalathadar. Within mere moments the winged shape of the frigate might loom blackly against the clear golden skies, lowering a rope ladder whereby I might regain her decks, with no worse than a wetting gained from my adventure.
Then sword steel flashed, mirror-bright, before my eyes.
I looked up, past the glittering scimitar, into a hard, unfriendly face and a pair of alert, curious, and wary eyes.
The western portion of the known hemisphere of Thanator is occupied by Corund Laj, the greater of the two seas of the jungle Moon. This sea, and the coastlands about it, is dominated by a race of redskinned, hairless men called Perushtarians.
Merchants, traders, shopkeepers, theirs is a mercantile civilization like ancient Carthage; culturally, however, their life style has more in common with medieval Persia. They are a league of free cities―Farz, to the north, Narouk, in the west, and Soraba, on the south coast of the Greater Sea. Their civilization is, for some reason unknown to me, called the Bright Empire, and its capital, Glorious Perusht, lies on a large island off the southern coast, which has the unique distinction of being the only isle on all of Thanator.
I have referred to the Perushtarians as being redskinned. This conjures up a vision of the American Indians, the aboriginal denizens of the North American continent. Actually, when you stop to think of it, the term “red-skinned” is misapplied to American Indians, who are more a ruddy copper than red. The citizens of the Bright Empire of Perushtar, however, are truly red―a bright crimson, like ripe tomatoes, and (to compound the vegetable simile) equally hairless.
Although my adventures had carried me far and near across the face of mysterious Callisto, it so chanced that I had never really come into contact with the Perushtarian race. Now I found myself facing capture by one of them―and now I had the leisure to curse the treachery of Ulthar and my own temerity in stripping off my baldric and scabbard during the long, hazardous, exhausting swim to shore.
The Perushtarian who stood near me on the wet gray sands, holding the flashing scimitar in hard, capable hands, was a squat, heavy-shouldered specimen with a grim, ruthless face and questioning, uncompromising eyes.
Bald as are all of his race, he wore a fringed cap of pea-green velvet. A knee-length robe of bright blue-dyed cloth, edged with scarlet tassels, and a gaudy sash of many colors wound many times around his middle completed his most un-Thanatorian costume. Soft-soled buskins of gilt leather shod his feet. Copper armlets were clasped about his thick biceps and muscular wrists, and a dozen or so small paste amulets hung about his throat on a thin silver ring.
We stared at each other in wordless silence for a long moment, I sprawled on the water-soaked sand, he spread-legged, alert for the slightest movement on my part. From the expression on his heavy-fowled, grim-lipped face, I had no doubt he would sink that glistening, razory blade into my flesh at the first sign of any hostility from me.
Perhaps I should have sprung at him that first moment. In hindsight, it seems likely I could have scooped up a handful of wet, gritty sand―hurled it into his eyes, blinding him―and wrested the heavy scimitar from him with ease. But―alas!―I temporized, I delayed. Expecting the return of the Jalathadar at any moment, I did nothing whatsoever.
He stared down at me narrowly. Then, barking out a curt name, he summoned his companion or servitor, a fat fellow with bland, cool eyes, also hefting a heavy steel blade.
“Gamel!” my captor barked.
“Aye, lord?”
“Come and look at what the sea has cast up at my very feet.” The second Perushtarian hove into view, to peer down at me with bored, incurious eyes.
“Notice anything odd about him?” the first man inquired.
The underling shrugged.
“Well, he has strange coloring for a Zanadarian,” the fat man the other had addressed as Gamel observed mildly. “I had not known, lord, they came in such a variety of skin and hair and eyes!”
The Perushtarian laughed harshly, and I realized then that they must have been nearby when the aerial galleon came down to take on water. We had thought ourselves unobserved; so, at least, we had hoped, but now the falsity of this was revealed.
The first Perushtarian spoke to me curtly:
“You―fellow! What is your name and nation?”
“My name is Jandar,” I said unperturbedly. “And my homeland is called the United States of America.”
He blinked at the unfamiliar name.
“The, the Yew-Nine-Estates,” he fumbled with the name, then shrugged, and gave it up. “Well, it must be a far land indeed, for never before have I seen a man with clear bronze skin and yellow hair, such as yours.”
“It is indeed very far away,” I said gravely. Nor did I exaggerate. My country was, at the time, some three hundred and ninety million miles distant from the shores of the Corund Laj. “Far away” is an understatement!
“So it must be,” the Perushtarian said. “For never have I heard of it, in all my days. Do all men there have skin and hair of such strange colors as your own?”
“We come,” I assured him, “in a variety of colors. But we generally think alike. For example, few of us enjoy lying full length on wet sand with a sword held at our throats.”
He laughed at that, and stepped back, motioning me to rise. I got to my feet, wiping the wet muddy sand from my garments as best I might, stealing a searching glance aloft for some sign of the Jalathadar. But the skies were clear! Surely, by now, my friends must have missed me, must have had sufficient time to search the galleon from rudder to figurehead, finding me inexplicably missing.
The fat man, Gamel, shrewdly noted my surreptitious glance skyward.
“The slave supposes his comrades may discover his absence and return in search of him, lord,” he pointed out.
The other nodded.
“Then let us be on our way. Secure him, Gamel,” he growled curtly. Then, turning on his heel, and giving me no further attention, he strode up the beach. I now observed a sizable caravan waiting on the high ground. And my heart sank within me, for with every passing moment my hopes of rescue became slimmer.
Gamel forced me to kneel, threatening me with his blade. With swift, sure hands he lashed my wrists together behind my back and settled a sort of halter around my neck, by which he led me up the beach to a pack-thaptor, securing my neck line to the harness of the beast.
“Slave, you are now the property of the lord Cham of Narouk, of the House of Iskelion,” he said, mounting the saddle of his beast.
Before I could speak he touched the flanks of his steed with a braided quirt, and the caravan lurched into motion. I had not been ready for the sudden motion and was flung headlong in the dust. 1 would have been dragged to my death by the thaptor had I not managed to struggle to my feet.
Thus, running along behind a pack-thaptor in the caravan of Cham the merchant, I came to the city of Narouk.
As a nameless, helpless slave!
Thaptors are large, wingless birds of a species unknown upon my native world, but not unlike the terrene ostrich―if you can imagine a four-legged ostrich as large as a horse.