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so

much of their food supply within the walls, and in each city is an

unfailing spring of pure water. The hunters frequently sought their

prey in the hills which I had haunted, and which were reputed to

contain more and varied forms of ferocious bestial life than any other

section of the globe. The boldest hunters went in strong parties to

the ills, and seldom roamed there more than a few days. The fact that

I had lived among the hills alone for months won me even more respect

and admiration among those wild fighting men than had my fight with

Ghor.

 

Oh, I learned much of Almuric. As this is a chronicle and not an

essay, I can scarcely skim the surface of customs, ways and

traditions. I learned all they could tell me, and I learned much more.

The Guras were not first on Almuric, though they considered themselves

to be. They told me of ancient ruins, never built by Guras, relics of

vanished races, who, they supposed, were contemporary with their

distant ancestors, but which, as I came to learn, had risen and

vanished awfully before the first Gura began to heap up stones to

build his primordial city. And how I learned what no Gura knew is

part of this strange narrative.

 

But they spoke of strange unhuman beings or survivals. They told me

of the Yagas, a terrible race of winged black men, dwelling far to the

south, within sight of the Girdle, in the grim city of Yugga, on the

rock Yuthla, by the River Yogh, in the land of Yagg, where living man

had never set foot. The Yagas, the Guras said, were not true men, but

devils in a human form. From Yugga they swooped periodically, bearing

the sword of slaughter and the torch of destruction, to carry young

Gura girls into a slavery the manner of which none knew, because none

had ever escaped from the land of Yagg. Some men thought that they

were fed to a monster worshiped by the Yagas as a god, though some

swore that the fiends worshiped nothing except themselves. This was

known: their ruler was a black queen, named Yasmeena, and for more

than a thousand years she had reigned on the grim rock of Yuthla, her

shadow falling across the world to make men shudder.

 

The Guras told me other things, things weird and terrible: of

dog-headed monstrosities skulking beneath the ruins of nameless cities; of

earth-shaking colossals stalking through the night; of fires flitting

like flaming bats through the shadowy skies; of things that haunted

midnight forests, crawling, squamous things that were never seen, but

which tracked men down in the dank depths. They told me of great bats

whose laughter drove men mad, and of gaunt shapes shambling hideously

through the dusk of the hills. They told me of such things as do not

even haunt the dreams of men on my native planet. For Life has taken

strange shapes on Almuric, and natural Life is not the only Life

there.

 

But the nightmares told to me and the nightmares seen by me unfold

in their place, and I have already lingered too long in my narrative.

Be patient a little, because events move swiftly on Almuric, and my

chronicle moves no less swiftly when well under way.

 

For months I dwelt in Koth, fitting into the life of hunting,

feasting, ale-guzzling, and brawling, as if I had been born into it.

There life was not restrained and bound down, as it is on Earth. As

yet no tribal war had tested my powers, but there was fighting enough

in the city with naked hands, in friendly bouts, and drunken brawls,

when the fighting-men dashed down their foaming jacks and bellowed

their challenges across the ale-stained boards. I revelled in my new

existence. Here, as in the hills, I threw my full powers unleashed

into life; and here, unlike as in the hills, I had human

companionship, of a sort that suited my particular make-up. I felt no

need of art, literature or intellectuality; I hunted, I gorged, I

guzzled, I fought; I spread my massive arms and clutched at life like

a glutton. And in my brawling and revelling I all but forgot the

slender figure which had sat so patiently in the council chamber

beneath the great dome.

Chapter 05

I had wandered far in my hunting. Alone I had spent several nights

on the plains. Now I was returning leisurely, but I was still many

miles from Koth, whose massive towers I could not yet glimpse across

the waving savannas. I cannot say what my thoughts were as I swung

along, my carbine in the crook of my arm, but they were likely

concerned with spoors in the water’s edge, crushed-down grass marking

the passing of some large animal, or the scents borne on the light

wind.

 

Whatever my thoughts may have been, they were interrupted by a

shrill cry. Wheeling, I saw a slim white figure racing across the

grassy level toward me. Behind her, gaining with every stride, came

one of those giant carnivorous birds which are among the most

dangerous of all the grisly denizens of the grasslands. They tower ten

feet in height and somewhat resemble an ostrich except for the beak,

which is a huge curving weapon, three feet in length, pointed and

edged like a scimitar. A stroke of that beak can slash a man asunder,

and the great taloned feet of the monster can tear a human limb from

limb.

 

This mountain of destruction was hurtling along behind the flying

girl at appalling speed, and I knew it would overtake her long before

I could hope to reach them. Cursing the necessity for depending on my

none too accurate marksmanship, I lifted my carbine and took as steady

an aim as possible. The girl was directly in line with the brute, and

I could not risk a shot at the huge body, lest I hit her instead. I

had to chance a shot at the great head that bobbed bafflingly on the

long arching neck.

 

It was more luck than skill that sent my bullet home. At the crack

of the shot the giant head jerked backward as if the monster had run

into an unseen wall. The stumpy wings thrashed thunderously, and

staggering erratically, the brute pitched to the earth.

 

The girl fell at the same instant, as if the same bullet had brought

them both down. Running forward to bend over her, I was surprised to

see Altha, daughter of Zal, looking up at me with her dark enigmatic

eyes. Quickly satisfying myself that she was not injured, outside of

fright and exhaustion, I turned to the thunderbird and found it quite

dead, its few brains oozing out of a hole in its narrow skull.

 

Turning back to Altha, I scowled down at her.

 

“What are you doing outside the city?” I demanded. “Are you quite

mad, to venture so far into the wilderness alone?”

 

She made no reply, but I sensed a hurt in her dark eyes, and I

repented the roughness of my speech. I dropped down on one knee beside

her.

 

“You are a strange girl, Altha,” I said. “You are not like the other

women of Koth. Folk say you are wilful and rebellious, without reason.

I do not understand you. Why should you risk your life like this?”

 

“What will you do now?” she demanded.

 

“Why, take you back to the city, of course.”

 

Her eyes smoldered with a curious sullenness.

 

“You will take me back, and my father will whip me. But I will run

away again—and again—and again!”

 

“But why should you run away?” I asked in bewilderment. “There is

nowhere for you to go. Some beast will devour you.”

 

“So!” she answered. “Perhaps it is my wish to be devoured.”

 

“Then why did you run from the thunderbird?”

 

“The instinct to live is hard to conquer,” she admitted.

 

“But why should you wish to die?” I expostulated. “The women of Koth

are happy, and you have as much as any.”

 

She looked away from me, out across the broad plains.

 

“To eat, drink and sleep is not all,” she answered in a strange

voice. “The beasts do that.”

 

I ran my fingers through my thick hair in perplexity. I had hard

similar sentiments voiced in many different ways on Earth, but it was

the first time I had ever heard them from the lips of an inhabitant on

Almuric. Altha continued in a low detached voice, almost as if she

were speaking to herself rather than to me:

 

“Life is too hard for me. I do not fit, somehow, as the others do. I

bruise myself on its rough edges. I look for something that is not and

never was.”

 

Uneasy at her strange words, I caught her heavy locks in my hands

and forced back her head to look into her face. Her enigmatic eyes met

mine with a strange glimmer in them such as I had never seen.

 

“It was hard before you came,” she said. “It is harder now.”

 

Startled, I released her, and she turned her head away.

 

“Why should I make it harder?” I asked bewilderedly.

 

“What constitutes life?” she countered. “Is the life we live all

there is? Is there nothing outside and beyond our material

aspirations?”

 

I scratched my head in added perplexity.

 

“Why,” I said, “on Earth I met many people who were always following

some nebulous dream or ideal, but I never observed that they were

happy. On my planet there is much grasping and groping for unseen

things, but I never knew there was such full content as I have known

on Almuric.”

 

“I thought you different,” she said, still looking away from me.

“When I saw you lying wounded and in chains, with your smooth skin and

strange eyes, I thought you were more gentle than other men. But you

are as rough and fierce as the rest. You spend your days and nights in

slaying beasts, fighting men, and in riotous wassail.”

 

“But they all do,” I protested.

 

She nodded. “And so I do not fit in life, and were better dead.”

 

I felt unreasonably ashamed. It had occurred to me that an

Earthwoman would find life on Almuric intolerably crude and narrow,

but it seemed beyond reason that a native woman would have such

feelings. If the other women I had seen desired more superficial

gentleness on the part of their men, they had not made it known. They

seemed content with shelter and protection, and cheerfully resigned to

the rough manners of the males. I sought for words but found none,

unskilled as I was in polite discourse. I suddenly felt my roughness,

crudity and raw barbarism, and stood abashed.

 

“I’ll take you back to Koth,” I said helplessly.

 

She shrugged her shapely shoulders. “And you can watch my father

whip me, if you will.”

 

At that I found my tongue.

 

“He won’t whip you,” I retorted angrily. “Let him lay a hand on you,

and I’ll break his back.”

 

She looked up at me quickly, with eyes widened in sudden interest.

My arm had found its way about her slim form, and I was glaring into

her eyes, with my face very close to hers. Her lips parted, and had

that breathless instant lasted a little longer, I know not what would

have happened. But suddenly the color went from her face, and from her

parted lips rang a terrible scream. Her gaze was fixed on something

beyond and above me, and the thrash of wings suddenly filled the air.

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