Almuric - Robert E. Howard (trending books to read TXT) 📗

can do nothing! I cannot

untie this wretched noose!”

 

“Go find a knife!” I directed. “Quick!”

 

Even as she turned, she cried out and shrank back, trembling, as a

terrible figure lurched through the door.

 

It was Logar, his mane and beard matted and singed, the hair on his

great breast crisped and blackened, blood streaming from his limbs.

His bloodshot eyes glared madness as he reeled toward me, lifting the

poniard I had taken from him so long before.

 

“Dog!” he croaked. “Thugra is doomed! The winged devils drop from

the skies like vultures on a dead ox! I have slain until I die of

weariness, yet still they come. But I remembered you. I could not rest

easy in Hell, knowing you still lived. Before I go forth again to die,

I’ll send you before me!”

 

Altha shrieked and ran to shield me, but he was before her. Rising

on his toes he caught at my girdle, lifting the poniard on high. And

as he did so, I drove my knee with terrific force up against his jaw.

The impact must have broken his bull-neck like a twig. His shaggy head

shot back between his shoulders, his bearded chin pointing straight

up. He went down like a slaughtered ox, his head crashing hard on the

stone floor.

 

A low laugh sounded from the doorway. Etched in the opening stood a

tall ebony shape, wings half lifted, a dripping scimitar in a

crimsoned hand. Limned in the murky red glare behind him, the effect

was that of a black-winged demon standing in the flame-lit door of

Hell. The passionless eyes regarded me enigmatically, flitted across

the crumpled form on the floor, then rested on Altha, cowering at my

feet.

 

Calling something over his shoulder, the Yaga advanced into the

room, followed by a score of his kind. Many of them bore wounds, and

their swords were notched and dripping.

 

“Take them,” the first comer indicated Altha and myself.

 

“Why the man?” demurred one.

 

“Who ever saw a white man with blue eyes before? He will interest

Yasmeena. But be careful. He has the thews of a lion.”

 

One of them grasped Altha’s arm and dragged her away, struggling

vainly and twisting her head to stare back at me with terrified eyes,

and the others from a safe distance cast a silken net about my feet.

While my limbs were so enmeshed, they seized me, bound me with silken

cords that a lion could not have broken, and cut the thong by which I

was suspended. Then two of them lifted me and bore me out of the cell.

We emerged into a scene of frenzy in the streets.

 

The stone walls were of course immune to flame, but the woodwork of

the buildings was ablaze. Smoke rolled up in great billowing clouds,

shot and veined by tongues of flame, and against this murky background

black shapes twisted and contorted like figments of nightmare. Through

the black clouds shot what appeared to be blazing meteors, until I saw

they were winged men bearing torches.

 

In the streets, among falling sparks and crashing walls, in the

burning buildings, on the roofs, desperate scenes were being hideously

enacted. The men of Thugra were fighting with the fury of dying

panthers. Any one of them was more than a match for a single Yaga, but

the winged devils far outnumbered them, and their fiendish agility in

the air balanced the superior strength and courage of the apemen.

Swooping down through the air, they slashed with their curved swords,

soaring out of reach again before the victim could return the stroke.

When three or four devils were striking thus at a single enemy, the

butchery was certain and swift. The smoke did not seem to bother them

as it did their human adversaries. Some, perched on points of vantage,

bent bows and sent arrows singing down into the struggling masses in

the streets.

 

The killing was not all on one side. Winged bodies as well as hairy

shapes lay strewn in the blood-splashed streets. Carbines cracked and

more than a few flying fiends crashed earthward in a frantic thrashing

of wings. Madly lashing swords found their target, and when the

desperate hands of a Gura closed on a Yaga, that Yaga died horribly.

 

But by far the greater slaughter was among the Thugrans. Blinded and

half strangled, most of their bullets and arrows went wild.

Outnumbered and bewildered by the hawklike tactics of their merciless

foes, they fought vainly, were cut down or feathered with arrows.

 

The main object of the Yagas seemed to be women captives. Again and

again I saw a winged man soar up through the whirling smoke, gripping

a shrieking girl in his arms.

 

Oh, it was a sickening sight! I do not believe that the utter

barbarism and demoniac cruelty of the scene could be duplicated on

Earth, vicious as its inhabitants can be at times. It was not like

humans fighting humans, but like members of two different forms of

life at war, utterly without sympathy or any common plane of

understanding.

 

But the massacre was not complete. The Yagas were quitting the city

they had ruined, sweeping up into the skies laden with naked writhing

captives. The survivors still held the streets, and fired blindly at

the departing victors, evidently preferring to risk killing their

captives rather than to let them be carried to the fate that awaited

them.

 

I saw a knot of perhaps a hundred struggling fighters slashing and

gasping on the highest roof in the city, the Yagas to tear away and

escape, the Guras to drag them down. Smoke billowed about them, flames

caught at their hair; then with a thunderous roar the roof fell in,

bearing victors and vanquished alike to a fiery death. The deafening

thunder of the devouring flames was in my ears as my captors whirled

me through the air away from the reeking city of Thugra.

 

When my dazed faculties adjusted themselves sufficiently for me to

take note of my surroundings, I found myself sailing through the sky

at terrific speed, while below, above and about me sounded the steady

beat of mighty wings. Two Yagas were bearing me with perfect ease, and

I was in the midst of the band, which was flying southward in a

wedge-shaped formation, like that of wild geese. There were fully ten

thousand of them. They darkened the morning sky, and their gigantic

shadow swept over the plain beneath them as the sun rose.

 

We were flying at an altitude of about a thousand feet. Many of the

winged men bore girls and young women, and carried them with an ease

that spoke of incredible wing-power. No match in sheer muscularity for

the Guras, yet these winged devils have unbelievable powers of

endurance in the air. They can fly for hours at top speed, and in the

wedge formation, with unburdened leaders cleaving the air ahead of

them, can carry weights almost equal their own at almost the same

velocity.

 

We did not pause to rest or eat until nightfall, when our captors

descended to the plain, where they built fires and spent the night.

That night lives in my memory as one of the greatest horrors I have

ever endured. We captives were given no food, but the Yagas ate. And

their food was their miserable captives. Lying helpless, I shut my

eyes to that butchery, wished that I were deaf that I might not hear

the heart-rending cries. The butchery of men I can endure, in battle,

even in red massacre. The wanton slaughter of helpless women who can

only shriek for mercy until the knife silences their wails, that is

more than I can stand. Nor did I know but that Altha was among those

chosen for the grisly feast. With each hiss and crunch of the

beheading blade I winced, seeing in fancy her lovely dark head roll on

the blood-soaked ground. For what was going on at the other fires I

could not know.

 

After it was over and the gorged demons lay about the fires in

slumber, I lay sick at heart, listening to the roaring of the prowling

lions, and reflecting how kinder and more gentle is any beast, than

any thing molded in the form of man. And out of my sick horror grew a

hate that steeled me for whatever might come, in the grim

determination to ultimately repay these winged monsters for all the

suffering they had inflicted.

 

Dawn was only a hint in the sky when we took the air again. There

was no morning meal. I was to learn that the Yagas ate only at

intervals, gorging themselves to capacity every few days. After

several hours hurtling over the usual grasslands, we came suddenly in

sight of a broad river spanning the savannas from horizon to horizon,

fringed on the northern bank by a narrow belt of forest. The waters

were of a curious purple, glimmering like watered silk. On the farther

bank appeared a tall thin tower of a black shiny material that

glittered like polished steel.

 

As we whirled over the river I saw that it was rushing with terrific

velocity. Its roar came up to us, and I saw the seething of eddying

whirlpools in its racing current. Crossing the stream at the point

where the tower stood, reared numbers of huge stones, among which the

waters foamed and thundered. Looking down at the tower, I saw half a

dozen winged men on the battlemented roof, who tossed up their arms as

if hailing our captors. From the river southward stretched desert—

bare, dusty, grayish, strewn occasionally with bleached bones here and

there. Far away on the horizon I saw a giant black bulk growing in the

sky.

 

It stood out boldly as we raced toward it. In a few hours we had

reached it, and I was able to make out all its details. It was a

gigantic block of black basaltlike rock rising sheer out of the

desert, a broad river flowing about its feet, its summit crowned with

black towers, minarets and castles. It was no myth, then, but a

fantastic reality—Yugga, the Black City, the stronghold of the winged

people.

 

The river, cutting through the naked desert, split on that great

rock and passed about it on either side, forming a natural moat. On

every side but one the waters lapped the sheer walls of the cliffs.

But on one side a broad beach had been formed, and there stood another

town. Its style of architecture was very different from that of the

edifices on the rock. The houses were mere stone huts, squat,

flat-roofed, and one-storied. Only one building had any pretensions—a

black templelike edifice built against the cliff wall. This lower town

was protected by a strong stone wall built about it at the water’s

edge, and connecting at each end with the cliff behind the town.

 

I saw the inhabitants, and saw that they were neither Yagas nor

Guras. They were short and squat of build, and of a peculiar blue

color. Their faces, while more like those of Earthly humans than were

those of the Gura males, lacked the intelligence of the latter. The

countenances were dull, stupid and vicious, the women being little

more prepossessing than the men. I saw these curious people, not only

in their town at the foot of the cliff, but at work in fields along

the river.

 

I had little opportunity for observing them, however, since the

Yagas swept straight up to the citadel, which towered five hundred

feet above the river. I was bewildered by the array of battlements,

pinnacles, minarets and roof gardens that met my gaze, but got the

impression that