Almuric by Robert E. Howard (dark academia books to read .txt) đź“–
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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
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