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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.
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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