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

Chapter 09

Much I learned of the ways of that terrible people, who have reigned

over Almuric since ages beyond the memory of man. They might have been

human once, long ago, but I doubt it. I believe they represented a

separate branch on the tree of evolution, and that it is only an

incredible freak of coincidence which cast them in a mold so similar

to man, instead of the shapes of the abysmal, howling, blasphemous

dwellers of Outer Darkness.

 

In many ways they seemed, superficially, human enough, but if one

followed their lines of consciousness far enough, he would come upon

phases inexplicable and alien to humanity. As far as pure intellect

went, they were superior to the hairy Guras. But they lacked

altogether the decency, honesty, courage, and general manliness of the

apemen. The Guras were quick to wrath, savage and brutal in their

anger; but there was a studied cruelty about the Yagas which made the

others seem like mere rough children. The Yagas were merciless in

their calmest moments; roused to anger, their excesses were horrible

to behold.

 

They were a numerous horde, the warriors alone numbering some twenty

thousand. There were more women than men, and with their slaves, of

which each male and female Yaga possessed a goodly number, the city of

Yugga was fully occupied. Indeed, I was surprised to learn of the

multitudes of people who dwelt there, considering the comparative

smallness of the rock Yuthla on which the city was built. But its

space was greater vertically than horizontally. The castles and towers

soared high into the air, and several tiers of chambers and corridors

were sunk into the rock itself. When the Yagas felt themselves crowded

for space, they simply butchered their slaves. I saw no children;

losses in war were comparatively slight, and plagues and diseases

unknown. Children were produced only at regular intervals, some three

centuries apart. The last flock had come of age; the next brood was

somewhere in the dim distance of the future.

 

The lords of Yugga did no sort of work, but passed their lives in

sensual pleasures. Their knowledge and adeptness at debauchery would

have shamed the most voluptuous libertine in later Rome. Their

debauches were interrupted only by raids on the outer world in order

to procure women slaves.

 

The town at the foot of the cliff was called Akka, the blue people

Akki, or Akkas. They had been subject to the Yagas as far back as

tradition extended. They were merely stupid work-animals, laboring in

the irrigated fields of fruits and edible plants, and otherwise doing

the will of their masters, whom they considered superior beings, if

not veritable gods. They worshipped Yasmeena as a deity. Outside of

continual toil, they were not mistreated. Their women were ugly and

beastlike. The winged people had a keen asthetic sense, though their

interest in the beauty of the lower orders was sadistic and altogether

beastly. The Akkas never came into the upper city, except when there

was work to be done there, too heavy for the women slaves. Then they

ascended and descended by means of great silken ladders let down from

the rock. There was no road leading up from below, since the Yagas

needed none. The cliffs could not be scaled; so the winged people had

no fear of an Akka uprising.

 

The Yaga women were likewise prisoners on the rock Yuthla. Their

wings were carefully removed at birth. Only the infants destined to

become queens of Yugga were spared. This was done in order to keep the

male sex in supremacy, and indeed, I was never able to learn how, and

at what distant date, the men of Yugga gained supremacy over their

women; for, judging from Yasmeena, the winged women were superior to

their mates in agility, endurance, courage and even in strength.

Clipping their wings kept them from developing their full superiority.

 

Yasmeena was an example of what a winged woman could be. She was

taller than the other Yaga females, who in turn were taller than the

Gura women, and though voluptuously shaped, the steel thews of a

wildcat lurked in her slender rounded limbs. She was young—all the

women of Yugga looked young. The average life-span of the Yaga was

nine hundred years. Yasmeena had reigned over Yugga for four hundred

years. Three winged princesses of royal blood had contested with her

for the right to rule, and she had slain each of them, fighting with

naked hands in the regal octagonal chamber. As long as she could

defend her crown against young claimants, she would rule.

 

The lot of the slaves in Yugga was hideous. None ever knew when she

would be dismembered for the cooking-pot, and the lives of all were

tormented by the cruel whims of their masters and mistresses. Yugga

was as like Hell as any place could be. I do not know what went on in

the palaces of the nobles and warriors, but I do know what took place

daily in the palace of the Queen. There was never a day or night that

those dusky walls did not re-echo screams of agony and piteous wails

for mercy, mingled with vindictive maledictions, or lascivious

laughter.

 

I never became accustomed to it, hard as I was physically and

mentally. I think the only thing that kept me from going mad was the

feeling that I must keep my sanity in order to protect Altha if I

could. That was precious little; I was chained in my chamber; where

the Kothan girl was, I had not the slightest idea, except that she was

somewhere in the palace of Yasmeena, where she was protected from the

lust of the winged men, but not from the cruelty of her mistress.

 

In Yugga I heard sounds and saw sights not to be repeated—not even

to be remembered in dreams. Men and women, the Yagas were open and

candid in their evil. Their utter cynicism banished ordinary scruples

of modesty and common decency. Their bestialities were naked, unhidden

and shameless. They followed their desires with one another, and

practised their tortures on their wretched slaves with no attempt at

concealment. Deeming themselves gods, they considered themselves above

the considerations that guide ordinary humans. The women were more

vicious than the men, if such a thing were possible. The refinements

of their cruelties toward their trembling slaves cannot be even hinted

at. They were versed in every art of torture, both mental and

physical. But enough. I can but hint at what is unrepeatable.

 

Those days of captivity seem like a dim nightmare. I was not badly

treated, personally. Each day I was escorted on a sort of promenade

about the palace—something on the order of giving a confined animal

exercise. I was always accompanied by seven or eight warriors armed to

the teeth, and always wore my chains. Several times on these

promenades I saw Altha, going about her duties, but she always averted

her gaze and hurried by. I understood and made no attempt to speak to

her. I had placed her in jeopardy already by speaking of her to

Yasmeena. Better let the queen forget about her, if possible. Slaves

were safest when the Queen of Yagg remembered them least.

 

Somewhere, somehow, I found in me power to throttle my red rage and

blind fury. When my very brain reeled with the lust to break my chains

and explode into a holocaust of slaughter, I held myself with iron

grasp. And the fury ate inward into my soul, crystallizing my hate. So

the days passed, until the night that Yasmeena again sent for me.