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I wheeled on one knee, to see the air above me thronged with dark

shapes. The Yagas! The winged men of Almuric! I had half believed them

a myth; yet here they were in all their mysterious terror.

 

I had but a glance as I reared up, clubbing my empty carbine. I saw

that they were tall and rangy in build, sinewy and powerful, with ebon

skins. They seemed made like ordinary men, except for the great

leathery batlike wings which grew from their shoulders. They were

naked except for loincloths, and were armed with short curved blades.

 

I rose on my toes as the first swooped in, scimitar lifted, and met

him with a swing of my carbine that broke off the stock and crushed

his narrow skull like an eggshell. The next instant they were whirling

and thrashing about me, their curved blades licking at me like jets of

lightning from all sides, the very number of their broad wings

hampering them.

 

Whirling the carbine barrel in a wheel about me, I broke and beat

back the flickering blades, and in a furious exchange of strokes,

caught another a glancing blow on the head that stretched him

senseless at my feet. Then a wild despairing cry rang out behind me,

and abruptly the rush slackened.

 

The whole pack was in the air, racing southward, and I stood frozen.

In the arms of one of them writhed and shrieked a slender white

figure, stretching out imploring arms to me. Altha! They had snatched

her up from behind my back, and were carrying her away to whatever

doom awaited her in that black citadel of mystery far to the south.

The terrific velocity with which the Yagas raced through the sky was

already taking them out of my sight.

 

As I stood there baffled, I felt a movement at my feet. Looking down

I saw one of my victims sit up and feel his head dazedly. I vengefully

lifted my carbine barrel to dash out his brains; then a sudden thought

struck me, inspired by the ease with which Altha’s captor had carried

both his weight and hers in the air.

 

Drawing my poniard, I dragged my captive to his feet. Standing erect

he was taller than I, with shoulders equally broad, though his limbs

were lean and wiry rather than massive. His dark eyes, which slanted

slightly, regarded me with the unblinking stare of a venomous serpent.

 

The Guras had told me the Yagas spoke a tongue similar to their own.

 

“You are going to carry me through the air in pursuit of your

companions,” I said.

 

He shrugged his shoulders and spoke in a peculiarly harsh voice.

 

“I cannot carry your weight.”

 

“Then that’s too bad for you,” I answered grimly, and whirling him

about, I leaped upon his back, locking my legs about his waist. My

left arm was hooked about his neck, the poniard in my right hand

pricked his side. He had kept his feet under the impact of my bulk,

spreading his great wings.

 

“Take the air!” I snarled in his ear, sinking the dagger point into

his flesh. “Fly, damn you, or I’ll cut your heart out!”

 

His wings began to thrash the air, and we rose slowly from the

earth. It was a most sensational experience, but one to which I gave

scant thought at the time, being so engrossed in my fury at the

abduction of Altha.

 

When we had risen to a height of about a thousand feet, I looked for

the abductors, and saw them far away, a mere group of black dots in

the southern sky. After them I steered my reluctant steed.

 

In spite of my threats and urging for greater speed the flying dots

soon vanished. Still I kept on due southward, feeling that even if I

failed to overtake them, I would eventually come to the great dusky

rock where legend placed their habitation.

 

Inspired by my poniard, my bearer made good time, considering the

burden he was carrying. For hours we sped over the savannas, and by

the middle of the afternoon, the landscape changed. We were flying

over a forest, the first I had seen on Almuric. The trees seemed to

tower to a vast height.

 

It was near sundown when I saw the farther limits of the forest, and

in the grasslands beyond, the ruins of a city. From among these ruins

smoke curled upward, and I asked my steed if his companions were

cooking their evening meal there. His only answer was a snarl.

 

We were flying low over the forest, when a sudden uproar caused me

to look down. We were just passing over a narrow glade, and in it a

terrific battle was taking place. A pack of hyenas had attacked a

giant unicornlike beast, as big as a bison. Half a dozen mangled,

trampled bodies attested the fury of the beast’s defense, and even as

I peered down, he caught the single survivor on his swordlike ivory

horn, and cast it a score of feet in the air, broken and torn.

 

In the brief fascination of the sight, I must have involuntarily

loosened my grasp on my captive. For at that instant, with a

convulsive bucking heave and twist, he wrenched free and hurled me

sideways. Caught off guard, I clutched vainly at empty air, and

rushing earthward, crashed with a stunning impact on the loamy

leaf-carpeted earth, directly in front of the maddened unicorn!

 

I had a dazed brief glimpse of his mountainous bulk looming over me,

as his massive lowered head drove his horn at my breast. Then I

lurched up on one knee, simultaneously grasping that ivory sword with

my left hand and seeking to deflect it, while my right hand drove my

poniard up toward the great jugular. Then there came a terrific impact

against my skull, and consciousness was blotted out in darkness.

Chapter 06

I could have been senseless only a few minutes. When I regained

consciousness my first sensation was that of a crushing weight upon my

limbs and body. Struggling weakly, I found that I was lying beneath

the lifeless body of a unicorn. At the instant my poniard had torn

open his great jugular vein, the base of his horn must have struck my

head, while the vast body collapsed upon me. Only the soft spongy

ground beneath me had saved me from being crushed to a pulp. Working

myself out from under that bulk was a herculean task, but eventually I

accomplished it, and stood up, bruised and breathless, with the

half-dried blood of the monster clotted in my hair and smearing my limbs.

I was a grisly sight to look at, but I wasted no time on my appearance.

My erstwhile steed was nowhere in evidence, and the circling trees

limited my view of the sky.

 

Selecting the tallest of these trees, I climbed it as swiftly as

possible, and on the topmost branches, looked out over the forest. The

sun was setting. I saw that perhaps an hour’s swift walk to the south,

the forest thinned out and ceased. Smoke still drifted thinly up from

the deserted city. And I saw my former captive just dropping down

among the ruins. He must have lingered, after he had overthrown me,

possibly to see if I showed any signs of life, probably to rest his

wings after that long grind.

 

I cursed; there went my chance of stealing up on them unsuspected.

Then I got a surprise. No sooner had the Yaga vanished than he

reappeared, shooting up out of the city like a rocket. Without

hesitation he raced off southward, speeding through the sky at a rate

that left me gaping. What was the reason for his flight? If it had

been his companions who were among the ruins, why had he not alighted?

Perhaps he had found them gone, and was merely following them. Yet his

actions seemed strange, considering the leisurely way he had

approached the ruins. His flight had the earmarks of panic.

 

Shaking my head in puzzlement, I descended the tree and set out for

the ruins as swiftly as I could make my way through the dense growth,

paying no heed to the rustling in the leaves about me, and the

muttering of rousing life, that grew as the shadows deepened.

 

Night had fallen when I emerged from the forest, but the moon was

rising, casting a weird unreal glow over the plains. The ruins

glimmered ghostily in the near distance. The walls were not of the

rough greenish material used by the Guras. As I approached I saw they

were of marble, and that fact caused a vague uneasiness to stir in my

mind. I remembered legends told by the Kothans of ruined marble cities

haunted by ghoulish beings. Such ruins were found in certain

uninhabited places, and none knew their origin.

 

A brooding silence lay over the broken walls and columns as I

entered the ruins. Between the gleaming white tusks and surfaces deep

black shadow floated, almost liquid in its quality. From one dusky

pool to the other I glided silently, sword in hand, expecting anything

from an ambush by the Yagas to an attack by some lurking beast of

prey. Utter silence reigned, as I had never encountered it anywhere on

Almuric before. Not a distant lion roared, not a night fowl voiced its

weird cry. I might have been the last survivor on a dead world.

 

In silence I came to a great open space, flanked by a circle of

broken pillars, which must have been a plaza. Here I halted,

motionless, my skin crawling.

 

In the midst of the plaza smoldered the dying coals of a fire over

which, on spits planted in the earth, were roasting pieces of meat.

The Yagas had evidently built that fire and—prepared to sup; but they

had not eaten of their meal. They lay strewn about the plaza in a way

to appall the hardiest.

 

I had never gazed on such a scene of organic devastation. Hands,

feet, grinning heads, bits of flesh, entrails, clots of blood littered

the whole plaza. The heads were like balls of blackness, rolled out of

the shadows against the snowy marble; their teeth grinned, their eyes

glimmered palely in the moonlight. Something had come upon the

winged men as they sat about their fire and had torn them limb from

limb. On the remnants of flesh were the marks of fangs, and some of

the bones had been broken, apparently to get the marrow.

 

A cold ripple went up and down my spine. What animal but man breaks

bones in that fashion? But the scattering of the bloody remnants

seemed not the work of beasts; it seemed too vindictive, as if it were

the work of vengeance, fury or bestial blood-thirstiness.

 

Where, then, was Altha? Her remains were not among those of her

captors. Glancing at the flesh on the spit, the configuration of the

pieces set me to shuddering. Shaken with horror, I saw that my dark

suspicions were correct. It was parts of a human body the accursed

Yagas had been roasting for their meal. Sick with revulsion and dread,

I examined the pitiful remnants more closely, and breathed a deep sigh

of relief to see the thick muscular limbs of a man, and not the

slender parts of a woman. But after that I looked unmoved at the torn

bloody bits that had been Yagas.

 

But where was the girl? Had she escaped the slaughter and hidden

herself, or had she been taken by the slayers? Looking about at the

towers and fallen blocks and pillars, bathed in the weird moonlight, I

was aware of

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