In the Green Star's Glow

6. The Warrior Women

After a few moments I learned how to control the skysled and sent the diminutive craft speeding in a direction which, on my home world, we would have called north.

Directions on the World of the Green Star are particularly difficult to ascertain to a nicety. The Laonese seem never to have invented the compass, either because they have little need for such an instrument, or because ferrous metals such as iron and steel are exceptionally rare upon their planet. On the world of my birth, it is not difficult to discern the cardinal directions, at least, from mere observance of the sun’s position in the heavens. On the planet of the great trees, however, this is seldom possible, due to the immense cloud-barrier which shields the surface of Lao from the fierce emerald beams of its primary. The silvery layer of impenetrable mists serve to scatter and diffuse the rays of the Green Star, spreading her luminance across the veiled heavens.

Komar soon dwindled behind me and was lost in the immensity of the dark sea. The islands of the archipelago floated by beneath the keel of my craft. Before long the shores of the mainland hove on the gloomy horizon, one colossal wall of monstrous trees whose mighty boles lifted up their leafy crest miles above the surface of the planet.

Slowing the velocity of the skysled, I drifted between the soaring treetrunks and entered the gloom of the world-forest. Somewhere along this coast the aerial vehicle bearing Delgan and Zorak and Niamh the Fair had vanished from the knowledge of men. But where?

Their vessel could have entered the sky-tall woods at any point along the coast for scores or hundreds of miles in either direction. For a moment the immensity of my task overwhelmed me and the heart of Karn the Hunter sank within his breast. How, in all this vast, uncharted wilderness, to find the elusive mote that was the sky vessel? To seek the proverbial needle in the haystack seemed considerably simpler …

After a while, my spirits rose within me. Difficult, even impossible, my task might consume months or perhaps years. But I was determined to undertake the search, whether it prove fruitless or not. To hunt, to search, to seek—whether or not with success—was preferable to doing nothing. Far rather would I roam the worldwide forests of this strange world forever, than to search not at all.

It was not long before I was forced to a realization that I must wait for dawn before attempting to begin my search for Niamh the Fair. Darkness amid the giant trees was absolute and unbroken, and the sled bore no running-lights. In this dense gloom I might float past the vessel of my beloved princess without knowing it. Moreover, it was dangerous to go blundering about in the blackness like this.

Therefore I slowed the forward velocity of the skysled to a mere crawl and watched for a safe place to berth the vehicle for the night. Before long I felt huge leaves brush the underside of the sled and discovered a twig which thrust up from the side of one great branch. I call it a “twig” for that is what it was; nonetheless, it was as wide about and of such a length as to have made a schooner’s mainmast back on Earth.

Unlimbering my mooring grapnel, I soon secured the sled to the twig and settled down for slumber. The confines of the sled were adequate for this purpose, and the nights on the Green Star planet were almost tropic in their warmth. But I could not find the rest I sought, nor did sleep come easily to one so troubled in his thoughts as I was. Fears for the safety of Niamh disturbed my mind, and unease for the future made me restless.

After tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, I managed to fall into a doze from which only the green-gold radiance of dawn awoke me… that, and the spearpoint whose cold blade touched the smooth flesh just above my heart…

My captors were, as it turned out, captresses. A band of young girls had crept upon me in the dim morning, and had clambered out upon the twig to which I had tethered my weightless craft. They were a wild-looking lot, with tangled hair and sunburned faces, clad in brief garments made of tanned leather hides which barely served to cover their lissome bodies and long naked legs. Sharp daggers were sheathed at their waist or strapped by thongs of gut to slim brown thighs. Many carried spears fashioned from long thorns, while others carried bows and arrows. There were an even dozen of them, and most were my age—that is, the teen-aged body my spirit wore.

Some looked as young as ten or eleven, but most of the wild girls were around fourteen.

Despite their tender years and their sex, I could not help noticing that they handled their weapons with the careless ease that comes to those who are long accustomed to using them.

I lay quietly, not moving, saying nothing, while they looked me over scornfully and chattered among themselves. Then one prodded me with her spear.

“You, boy! How did you come to be here in this flying thing? And from where? Speak, or I’ll plunge my blade into your scrawny chest!”

The girl who addressed me so scornfully was a long legged hoyden of perhaps thirteen, her supple form clad in a scrap of hide which bared one pink-tipped breast.

“I am Karn,” I replied quietly. “I am searching for lost friends who are somewhere hereabouts in a flying vessel much like this one. We are from Komar—”

“Komar?” the young girl repeated with a sniff. “I never heard of it, nor is it anywhere about.”

“Nevertheless, it was from Komar that I voyaged last evening,” I said.

She looked me over narrowly, fierce disapproval written on her snub-nosed, freckled face. Despite her warlike aspect and savage raiment, she was very beautiful in the way that young girls are beautiful; that is, in the burgeoning promise of the womanhood to come.

Like most of the dwellers in the treetop cities, she had ivory skin, drifting thistledown-hair of silvery gold, and eyes as green as emeralds, set amid thick sooty lashes. Her lithe and supple body was slim as a young panther, without so much as an ounce of superfluous flesh. She was intensely exciting.

While pondering my fate, or my story, or perhaps both, the train of her thought was interrupted by the query put to her by another of the band, like herself, somewhat older than the little girls.

“What shall we do with him, Varda? Slay him? He is a man after all, and fit only for the knife.”

The girl who said this had flesh like old parchment and brilliant huge eyes that glared wrathfully at me through the floating locks of her silken hair. She looked to be fifteen, and her breasts were covered.

One of the littler girls, who was about ten and wore nothing at all except for a strip of hide wound about her loins, leather sandals on her feet, and the strap supporting her quiver of arrows across her boy-smooth breast, giggled.

“Let’s keep him for a slave, Varda,” she urged with a malicious grin at me.

I felt distinctly uncomfortable.

“No,” returned the older girl who had spoken before, and whose name I later learned to be Iona, “let us slay him now. He will grow into a man, otherwise, and do with us as the others of his vile kind would have done. Therefore, he deserves to die. I vote—death! Death to the man-cub!”

“Death!” hissed the naked ten-year-old, an expression of most unchildlike vindictiveness on her pretty face. I began to sweat, and to calculate my chances of wresting the thorn-spear from the strong hands of Varda before she could drive it through my heart.

As it turned out, I had little to fear. Some sort of rivalry existed between the two older girls, Varda, the nominal leader of this band of teen-aged Amazons, and Iona. Whatever Iona urged, Varda automatically opposed. And, I imagine, vice versa. So the bare-breasted Varda obstinately refused to turn me over to the eager blades of the other little savages, and ordered me securely trussed and borne along.

The girl Amazons, apparently, had been camping out overnight on a hunting expedition, and were en route to their hideout when the luminance of dawn had caught and flashed in the mirror-bright metal of the skysled, attracting their attention and curiosity.

They dragged me from the craft with my wrists stoutly bound behind my back. This was done with many a slap and kick and scratch of sharp nails. All of this I endured in silence, as I also endured the more intimate insults they subjected me to. For they stripped me bare and mocked me for my scrawniness and laughed at my nakedness and humiliation. I ignored this treatment as best I could, and maintained an impassive mien.

Off down the bough they led me, laughing when I tripped and fell, flogging me to my feet again with a switch laid against my rear. At length, wearying of mocking and striking one who neither complained nor winced nor cried out, they simply drove me along with thumps of their spear-butts. The younger girls, scampering along like wild naked little forest nymphs, giggled mischievously and made loud comments on my nude boyhood, but the older girls ignored me after a time.

We descended by a length of rope to a lower branch, and while the girl warriors clambered down as lithely as so many small monkeys, I was lowered like a bale of goods at the end of a line, much to the merriment of the girl-children. Then we followed the second branch until it intersected with another, and so on until by noon, when we reached the camp of the girl savages, I was thoroughly and hopelessly lost. I could not then understand why they had left behind my aerial craft, my weapons, which were superior to their own rude arms, and my stores and provisions. Later I came to the conclusion that their hatred and loathing of all things male was so excessive and virulent that it extended even to those things made by the hands of men.

In conceiving of this notion, incidentally, I was later proved wrong, as shall be seen.

So it was that I became the male captive, the only captive, of a wild band of prepubescent savages.

It was an experience which I would not wish on even the most dire and deadly of my enemies.

7. An Unexpected Ally

Zorak the Bowman awoke groggily from the impact of his fall, and for a time could scarcely believe his good fortune in being still alive.

He found himself in the embrace of a monstrous flower whose thick red petals had cushioned and gently broken his fall from the branch above. Had he landed on the bare branch, or upon any other possible surface, he would surely be dead by now, or at least seriously injured. For he had fallen nearly three hundred feet; Only the soft, yielding petals of the giant flower, which were surprisingly strong and elastic, had saved him from almost certain death.

He lay there woozily for a time in the velvety embrace of the vast blossom, swinging to and fro in the breeze, before attempting to rise. When he did make the attempt, he found it impossible to do so, for the flower was of a peculiar nature in that it fed itself by trapping and absorbing the enormous insects who flew between the gigantic trees. The upper surface of its velvety petals was lined with slender, tough scarlet tendrils which snapped tightly about any object or organism which blundered into them. The unwary insect who settled on the tempting blossom, hoping to drain its sweetness, soon found itself hopelessly enmeshed in the thin tendrils.

Zorak struggled against the embrace of the blossom for a time, but it was no use. Strength alone, even the iron strength of his magnificent and athletic body, would not suffice to free him of the tenacious grasp of the tendrils. They clung lightly but firmly about his limbs and torso, in such a manner that he could not apply leverage. Had he been able to do so, he might well have torn free with a surge of his mighty muscles. But every inch of him was clasped in the coils of the scarlet tendrils, and he was helpless.

He was doomed to suffer a slow and agonizing death.

After a time, Zorak discovered that the blossom held another captive besides himself. It was an immense insect, whose scarlet chitin-clad body and antennae-pronged head and multiple limbs closely resembled an Earthly ant.

Such creatures are known to the Laonese as kraan, and were known to be coldly logical of mind, utterly emotionless, and of an almost human intelligence. They were also feared as deadly and implacable enemies of all other races, in particular the race of men. All too well do I remember the terror the albino troglodytes felt for them, during the time when Klygon and I were held captive in the subterranean warrens of the cave-primitives.

Zorak could tell that the giant red ant was aware of his presence, but did not think of addressing his companion in misfortune, any more than you or I would think of attempting to strike up a conversation with a beast. It came as quite a shock to him when the captive kraan addressed him in a buzzing, toneless, clicking equivalent of human speech.

“It serves no purpose to struggle against the grip of the flower, manling. Wiser to rest and conserve your strength, and wait for the fall of darkness,” said the monster insect.

Zorak jerked his head around in amazement. The metallic sounds while resembling speech, could only have come from the tongueless killer-ant. After a moment of dazed surprise, he spoke in return.

“Am I losing my wits, kraan, or did you speak just now?” he demanded.

The insect jerked its brow antennae toward him in a gesture very much like a human nodding acquiescence.

“Xikchaka spoke.”

Zorak muttered a dazed oath. “Never before have I heard that the mighty kraan of the restless hordes could converse with the tongue of men,” he observed.

“Nevertheless, it is so,” remarked the kraan, whose name seemed to be Xikchaka. “Among ourselves, we of the hordes have another means of conveying intelligence. But from those of your kind, manling, whom we have enslaved, we have gradually come to understand and to duplicate your mode of speech.”

This time, Zorak had listened closely and had also watched the mouth of the great ant. Its head was a featureless casque, a helmet of smooth, slick, horny chitin. Its eyes were like complex black jewels carved in many facets. The light of intelligence shone in those cold eyes, for all that the voice it uttered was devoid of inflection and the fact itself was incapable of any change of expression.

The mouth of the kraan was merely an opening in the underside of its tapering helmet of a head. Bladelike members sprouted in it, and at either corner of the orifice small mandibles branched, like the claws of a lobster. In reproducing the phonemes of human speech, the kraan cleverly manipulated these implements in a very complex manner. The harsher consonants were made by grating, clashing, or scraping the mandibles against the bladelike cutting surfaces within the orifice itself. The softer consonants and the vowels were accomplished by rasping the backside of the toothed claws against the smooth chitin of the creature’s muzzle. The soft plosives and the more breathy vowels were beyond the capabilities of the kraan to duplicate. This left gaps in its speech which took a little getting used to before you could clearly understand its words. The more they conversed, the easier it became for the Tharkoonian archer to comprehend the words of its weird and inhuman companion in peril.

After they had talked for a time, Zorak renewed his struggles against the many small, glossy tendrils with which the inner surfaces of the crimson petals were coated so furrily. Again, as before, his struggles resulted in failure. And again Xikchaka the giant ant cautioned him to conserve his strength and await the coming of night, or, as the kraan phrased it, the “dark-time.”

“Why?” Zorak asked peevishly. “What happens when night falls?”

“The flower petals close,” advised the insect-creature.

“I fail to see how that will benefit us,” said the bowman.

“As the petals begin to close, they will bring Xikchaka and Zorak within reach of each other,” said the kraan in its grating, clicking equivalent of human speech. “And then Xikchaka and Zorak may be able to loosen or free each other.”

Studying the manner of the petals, the Tharkoonian perceived what had already become obvious to the coldly logical insect. They were stuck fast to opposite petals, and, always taking into consideration that the petals when fitted together, would match tip to tip, they should then be so close to each other that Zorak with his fingers could pluck and tear loose the tendrils which clung about the many limbs of Xikchaka, while the insect-creature, for his part, could do the same for Zorak, using his pincers, claw-tipped mandibles, and other members in lieu of hands.

There was, then, nothing to be done before nightfall. The long, weary day dragged with interminable slowness toward its end. For the beginning period of his imprisonment, Zorak had nourished within his heart the hope that Niamh the Fair would fly the sky-craft down to effect his rescue. Since this had not as yet occurred, and as more than a few hours had passed since he had fallen into the clutches of the predatory flower, obviously something had interfered with her freedom of action. Or, quite simply, she did not possess the knowledge or skills required to pilot the flying vessel.

It did not, as it happened, even occur to Zorak that the Princess of Phaolon thought him fallen into the abyss and long since dead. From the position in which he was helplessly bound, he could not clearly see the great branch far above them, for if he had been able to observe its position, he would have realized that from the edge of the branch above him the girl simply could not see the great flower where it grew.

Night fell, black winged, smothering the light. As the huge red ant had predicted, the petals of the monstrous cannibal flower began to close together. They moved jerkily and in random spasms, but it was obvious to the stalwart bowman that soon he and the kraan would be face to face.

They had only a short time to set each other free, or both would smother in the thick, clinging maw of the man-eating monster.

Then the blossom closed, and suddenly Zorak found himself gasping for breath.

At the same moment he felt the cold touch of the kraan’s jaws grasping for his throat.

Had the skies of the Green Star World been eyed with stars instead of veiled behind perpetual mists, they might, after a time, have observed an unusual and unprecedented sight.

From a long rent torn in the underside of a monstrous flower there issued slowly and weakly into the open air the form of a man. From head to foot his body was smeared with a sticky fluid. His limbs and torso were scored with abrasions and bruises, but he lived and seemed uninjured.

Reaching back into the heart of the torn blossom, he helped another creature forth into the air. It was a gigantic scarlet insect, like a huge red ant grown to the size of a hippopotamus.

Despite its mighty proportions, this second creature to emerge from the throat of the vampire blossom moved feebly, its many jointed limbs twitching erratically, its chitin-clad form glistening with the slobber of the man-killing plant.

Man and insect helped each other farther up the surface of the mighty branch to which the flower, now wilting, fluids leaking from the long tear in its throat, clung with many rootlets.

For the first time in the long history of this strange and wondrous world of many marvels and mysteries, a child of the race of men had found an unlikely ally with one of the cold, logical, merciless kraan.

And for the first time since the evolution of their races, a member of the kraan hordes had an inkling of the meaning of a great and noble and very beautiful word; friendship.

8. Escape to Peril

They spent that night together upon the great branch, nestling in the hollow socket from which a small bough had once protruded, burrowing among dead leaves.

Every instinct in the heart of Zorak the Bowman urged him to quit the company of the kraan, but the Tharkoonian closed his ears to those inner urgings and remained in proximity to Xikchaka. Although the ant and human were natural enemies, the huge insect-creature was greatly debilitated by his captivity in the toils of the cannibal flower and could hardly propel himself along the branch. Obviously, the great ant had been imprisoned in the blossom for days without food or drink.

Zorak assisted the kraan to the hollow place in the branch, then reconnoitered to find food and water. He found water in a natural cistern—one of the dead leaves which, dry and tightly curled, was as long as a canoe. He also found a giant acorn shell in which he carried water to the helpless kraan. For food he came upon and killed one of the immense tree-snails, whose tender meat sufficed for both of them.

The kraan accepted these ministrations without comment; but it was easy to see that he found the actions of Zorak baffling. At length, his hunger and thirst satisfied, the great insect spoke.

“Why does Zorak tend to Xikchaka in this manner?” inquired the kraan in his rasping, clicking approximation of human speech.

“Why not?” returned the bowman. “Xikchaka is weak and feeble, and will die if not tended. Since we assisted each other in freeing ourselves from the embrace of the murderous blossom, shall not our friendship continue?”

” ‘Friendship,’ ” repeated Xikchaka, as if meditating on the word. “This is one of the words in the language of the manlings for which the kraan know no meaning.”

“The others being ‘love,’ ‘kindness,’ and ‘mercy,’ I imagine.” Zorak smiled. The insect-creature regarded him with a cold, unblinking gaze.

“Quite correct,” he clacked. “The race of Zorak and the race of Xikchaka are natural foes; why, then, does Zorak not abandon Xikchaka to his own fate?”

“You might as well ask why we helped each other to escape from the grip of the scarlet tendrils,” said the bowman.

“Not so,” countered the kraan. “That was only logical. Alone, neither Zorak nor Xikchaka could have effected their escape. In order for either to survive, both had to work together in unison. Xikchaka’s kind understand the meaning of cooperation, but the meaning of ‘friendship’ eludes us.”

Zorak regarded his companion in misfortune with something very like sympathy in his expression. How to explain the warmer emotions to a creature which functioned according to cold, merciless logic? He decided to try.

“Our races may be natural enemies, as you say,” he remarked. “But that law does not necessarily extend to each and every individual member of the race. In extraordinary circumstances, even natural foes forget their enmity. If Xikchaka has ever seen a fire in the great trees, he will recall that in the presence of a greater danger, even the rabbit and the fox forget their roles as hunted and hunter, and flee from the fire side by side.”

Of course, Zorak did not speak of rabbits and foxes, but of their Laonese equivalents. The sense of his remark was as I have given it here, however.

Xikchaka pondered this in silence for a time.

“If Xikchaka does not understand friendship, or the feeling of sympathy one intelligent creature may experience in regarding the sufferings or the helplessness of another, perhaps he will be able to comprehend the sheer logic of survival,” said the Tharkoonian after a time.

“How is that?” asked the insect-creature.

“Together, we stand twice as good a chance of surviving in the wilderness, as either of us would enjoy were we alone.”

Xikchaka pondered this; then he twitched his antennae in the kraan equivalent of a shrug.

“Perhaps. But it is not logical that we should assist each other, no matter what Zorak says,” was the only comment the great insect had to make. After a time, he added; “However, if Zorak wishes to persist in his illogical behavior, Xikchaka desires to quench his thirst again.”

Zorak grinned, chuckled, shook his head, and gave it up as hopeless. Then he went back to get more water for his weird companion in peril.

The unspoken truce between them lasted into the next day. When dawn lit up the world of the giant trees, Zorak arose and discovered that the kraan had recovered the better part of his strength. They journeyed down the branch together, going single file. There was little conversation between the two.

Zorak had torn off some of the fleshy meat from the tree-snail on which they had dined, and bore it with him, wrapped in a segment of leaf. Until they encountered more edible prey, this small store must suffice to assuage their hunger.

He dearly regretted the loss of his how and arrows, for without them he was unarmed and virtually helpless, at the mercy of whatever predatory beast or reptile might come upon them. Nature had armed Xikchaka with a tough body-armor and with dagger-sharp mandibles, but the divinity had not been so thoughtful in the case of the Tharkoonian. As they progressed down the branch toward the mountainous trunk of the arboreal colossus, the bowman kept his eyes peeled for something which could be employed as a weapon. He had in mind the stinger of a dead wasp, or a javelin-long thorn perhaps, but found neither.

In case they were attacked, his only hope was that Xikchaka would fight on his behalf. Alone, friendless, and unarmed, the human inhabitants of the giant forest were the most helpless of creatures. Somehow, he felt an inner certainty that the insect-creature would fight for him in event of battle. But he could not be sure of this.

With a shrug, Zorak resigned himself philosophically to the whims of fate. The stalwart Tharkoonian saw no profit in worrying over possible events whose occurrence he could foresee but neither avoid nor influence. He resolved to take things as they came. In simple fact, he had no other choice.

By midday they reached the fork of the branch. Here it joined itself to the bole of the enormous tree. They could go no farther.

The kraan, with his multiple limbs, could easily descend the trunk to a lower branch, or ascend to a higher. Zorak, however, would find the going a bit more difficult. Luckily, the bark of the treetrunk was rough and scaly, affording the Tharkoonian a variety of hand-and footholds. Beneath them, about a quarter of a mile below their present height, a truly gigantic branch grew from the trunk and extended for some two miles across the gap between this tree and the next. The world-forest was so thickly grown in this coastal region, that they could actually travel afoot between the trees for very considerable distances.

Zorak’s inclination was, however, to ascend to the branch above and attempt to discover the fate of Niamh the Fair. He trusted to find the sky craft of Ralidux moored to the branch above. He attempted to convey this to Xikchaka, but the ant did not understand why the human should care in the least as to the fate of the female, and had utterly no comprehension of a machine that could fly. Xikchaka wanted to descend, and Zorak to travel in the opposite direction.

Here, then, their paths must part.

However, this was not fated to occur.

Zorak bade farewell to his traveling companion, who made no reply. Then the Tharkoonian began to climb the treetrunk. It was slow going, and would probably have been impossible to such as you or me, to climb a vertical surface some two miles above the world’s bottom, clinging to minute interstices with toes and fingers alone. Luckily, the human inhabitants of the World of the Green Star are immune to vertigo. Even so, Zorak’s climb was made at a slow rate, for the ascent was more difficult than it looked.

He did not get far.

Suddenly, a great red ant was above him, and two others clung to the trunk on either side. Looking down at the branch he had left, he saw and recognized Xikchaka amid a number of his fellow kraan.

The other insect-creatures had apparently just ascended to the branch on which he and Xikchaka had spent the hours of darkness. It was equally obvious to Zorak that the other creatures were warrior-ants from the same horde as Xikchaka, for Xikchaka was not engaged in fighting them but seemed to be communicating with his fellows in some telepathic manner. The kraan he had assisted in escaping from the clutches of the cannibal flower did not seem in the slightest to be concerned that Zorak was about to be captured.

Clinging spread-eagled against the bark, Zorak was helpless to fight off his attackers. They plucked him from his place and bore him down the trunk to the fork of the branch.

Then, after the rapid exchange of more silent signals or some manner of communication between themselves, the kraan war-party, bearing their helpless human captive, began descending the trunk to the lower bough.

As they came within clear view of the mighty branch below, Zorak saw a sight which plunged him, into the depths of gloom.

The branch was aswarm with literally thousands of the kraan.

Hope died within his breast at the sight. From a few of the giant insects, he might perhaps have won free by trick or luck or daring. But from amid the full number of the scarlet horde, a hundred men could not have battled to freedom.

A tether was looped about his throat by nimble mandibles. In no time he was added to the end of a line of Laonese captives. They were a ragged, half-starved, dispirited lot, and their woeful, cowed condition did not bode well for the immediate future of Zorak the Bowman. But that was not what bothered him; it was that Xikchaka paid not the slightest heed to his predicament, nor even deigned to look at him.

Enslaved to the ant horde, Zorak was led off with the other captives down the great branch.

9. Preparations for War

Zorak the Bowman soon discovered the meaning of slavery. The kraan horde had many human captives, and among these he found men from several of the treetop cities. There were slaves from Kamadhong and from Ardha, the city of Akhmim the Tyrant where once Zarqa and Janchan and I had labored to rescue Niamh the Fair. There were even among the captives of the ant-army men from Niamh’s own city, Phaolon.

Some were hunters seized while far from their accustomed place; others were the survivors of war parties which had been attacked by the kraan; still others had been peaceful merchants, travelers, or traders en route between various of the Laonese cities.

There were even a certain number of forest outlaws—the homeless exiles, driven from their cities for one or another criminal offense, who had made a new home amid the wilderness of giant trees. Some, as well, were forest savages taken in war. There were many such tribes of primitive barbarians who dwelt in the giant trees; I, Karn, was one of these last.

It puzzled Zorak that the ant-army should bother taking captives at all, or, having taken them, that the red ant warriors should bother keeping them alive. But the stalwart bowman from far Tharkoon soon stumbled upon the reason for this peculiarly un-antlike behavior trait. The insect-creatures, although of considerable intelligence and admirably suited by nature to their environment, lacked certain skills which only their human slaves possessed.

The problem lay in the very nature of the kraan, as opposed to human beings. I have described the insect-creatures as red ants, grown to enormous proportions, and this indeed they were. A scientist of my native world, given the opportunity to study the kraan, might notice differences in anatomical details between the kraan and their minuscule Terrestrial cousins. But whether or not they were true ants down to the smallest detail, or merely resembled the Earthly insects so closely as to seem antlike to the untutored eye, is a matter of trifling importance. They were more antlike than not.

Now ants have multiple limbs, and these limbs terminate in mandibular extremities. However cunningly nature has devised these mandibles, they simply are not of the same construction as human hands. The kraan, therefore, are unable to manipulate objects with the degree of manual dexterity of which human beings are capable. Our hands, with their swivel-socket wrists and opposing thumbs, are uniquely designed for the use of tools. The mandibles of the kraan are not.

But the kraan were of sufficient intelligence to be tool-making and tool-using creatures. Their coldly logical minds were aware of the advantages afforded to those races which are equipped by nature to employ the use of tools and weapons. Lacking the ability to use instruments more sophisticated than mere sticks or poles limited the skills of the kraan and put them at a disadvantage compared to their principal enemies and rivals for dominance—which is to say, the race of men.

By themselves, the kraan were unable to control their environment. But through the use of human captives, whose skills were at the service of their insect masters, the kraan were as dangerous to the men of the treetop cities as they were to each other.

It had become the custom of the ant-army to take as many human captives as possible, and these slaves were employed in a variety of skilled crafts. They kept records and made mathematical computations for their insect masters; they devised tools and weapons adapted, wherever possible, to the structure of the kraan mandibles. They scraped the hides and intestines of beasts for the manufacture of bowstrings and catapult cables, manufactured a variety of sword-blades, spearpoints, knives and daggers; and in all ways served the kraan in those areas of endeavor for which nature had inadequately suited the limbs of the warrior ants.

Zorak was new to the treetop world, for his native city, Tharkoon, was built upon a spur of land which jutted out into the blue waters of the Komarian Sea. His race was a nation of landsmen who tilled the soil and fished the seas. The unique perils and protections afforded to those of the Laonese who dwelt a mile or more aloft on the branches of the arboreal giants were matters upon which the bowman had never before found reason to ponder. But even he, as inexperienced in this setting as he was, could realize the enormous menace the kraan represented to the tree kingdoms.

On their own, the giant insects were fearsome and dreaded opponents. Armored entirely in tough, horny chitin, they were shielded from the bows and spears of human armies. With a logical, unemotional intelligence comparable to that of the human brain, they were as cunning and skillful tacticians as were their human foes. Armed with sharp clawlike extremities, bristling with powerful many-jointed limbs, each ant warrior, could hold at bay three or even four human soldiers.

But when, to these inherent advantages, was added a full use of the crafts and skills possible to their human slaves, the scarlet horde became a double threat to the survival of the kingdoms of men.

It was not a pleasant thought to think upon, and the sleep of Zorak that first night was troubled by dark and ominous dreams.

During the next day the brave bowman struck up a friendship with one of the smiths, a burly-chested fellow who called himself Xargo of Kamadhong. The smith told Zorak that he had been captured by the horde about a year ago, as nearly as he could measure the passage of time, which was without any particular accuracy, as I have elsewhere explained.

Xargo had been employed all this while, he told Zorak, in the manufacture of sword-blades and spear-tips, and in the making of arrowheads. Quite a considerable number of the other slaves of the kraan were employed in similar warlike manufacture, very many of which captives Xargo himself had taught the art of smithery. He began to instruct Zorak in the requisite skills, for it was the goal of the leader of the horde that every kraan in the giant army should be fully equipped for war.

The Laonese manufacture metals, but do not mine for ore. The only exception to this practice may be the Komarian isles and seacoast cities, but I cannot say for certain. At any rate, in lieu of bronze, copper, iron, or steel—all of which metals can only be obtained by surface or subsurface mining—the Laonese employ a peculiar transparent metal like glass hardened to the toughness, the resilience, and the sharpness of steel.

In the treetop cities, these metals are derived from the sap of the giant trees by a method of chemical distilling for which I can find in the English language no precise equivalent. Metals are held in suspension within the sap of the forest giants, and are “grown” in molds like some manner of organic crystals. I have never actually seen this done, due to the brevity of my stay in any of the Laonese cities I have yet visited, and therefore cannot describe with more precision just how it is accomplished. But, however the thing is done, Xargo soon began teaching the skills to Zorak, on instruction of the insect-creatures.

In conversation with the master-smith, Zorak discovered that the armament program had only very recently been accelerated to a new pitch. Xargo explained that only recently the king or chieftain of the ant horde had given orders that the team of smiths was to quadruple its endeavors.

When Zorak inquired as to the reason of the king-ant—a ferocious-looking giant insect whose name was Rkhith—Xargo looked thoughtful.

“Rkhith has taken a human slave only shortly before you yourself were made prisoner,” growled the burly smith. “He must be a very clever man, this new slave, for he has risen overnight to a position of considerable authority over his fellow captives. In fact, he has the ear of Rkhith himself, if I may use the term in respect to a creature who has no such organs of hearing!”

“And what does this new slave have to do with arming the insect horde?” asked Zorak.

The smith shrugged truculently. “Only the Gods know,” he growled. “But scuttlebutt in the slave-pens has it that this fellow is a turncoat, a cunning renegade who would lead the kraan against the treetop cities. He seems to have painted such an alluring picture of the wealth and lavish possessions of one forest kingdom in particular, that for the first time in all their history the red ant horde will soon attempt to conquer one of the cities of men. It is for this reason that the horde is being armed with every available weapon, and with such speed as we smiths can perform our tasks.”

“What city do you refer to?” inquired Zorak.

“Phaolon,” replied the smith.

A day or two after this conversation, Zorak had the opportunity to see for himself the traitorous turncoat who would guide the insect horde against the fairest of the cities of men.

The chance came during a tour of inspection that afternoon, when Rkhith came in person to observe the progress Xargo’s men had made with the new “crop” of weapons.

The insect warlord was a veritable monster of his kind, his armored thorax adorned with sparkling gems and plates of precious metals, for all the world like a human conqueror.

Amid the warlord’s sizable retinue of kraan guards and the elite of the warrior ants walked only one human being. He was a slender man of sensitive, even aristocratic mien, and one of indeterminate age.

For all that he was a member of the human species, which the kraan despised as inferior to their own kind, he went clad in silken raiment very unlike the filthy rags worn by the other slaves of the horde.

Even more oddly, his skin was a distinct and unusual color. Most of the Laonese races have complexions which range from tawny or sallow yellow to the hues of parchment or old ivory. But the pigmentation of Rkhith’s favorite personal slave was an odd and rare color. He was blue.

As the giant king-ant came crawling down the double row of sword-blade casting vats, the human workers bent busily over their tasks.

None bent lower or seemed busier than Zorak of Tharkoon.

The fumes of the seething chemical froth served to veil his features, and as he bent over the vat with his back turned to the crawling monster insect, Zorak hoped that no one in Rkhith’s retinue would take any notice of him. The reason for this was that the silk-clad slave who strolled casually at Rkhith’s side might well have recognized Zorak had he seen his face.

For Zorak had seen his face, and knew him instantly.

It was Delgan.

10. On the March

For days thereafter, the insect-creatures kept Xargo and his assistants busy night and day at the crystal breeding vats. The manufacture of weapons, however, was a process that could not be hurried, which did not exactly please Rkhith; however, there was nothing within the power of the ant warlord which might accelerate the procedures of nature.

Daily the red ant warriors practiced with their new weapons, while gradually marching in what Zorak correctly presumed to be the direction of Phaolon. Clasping spears or swords in their forelimbs, the enormous chitin-mailed creatures made the most formidable opponents imaginable. Zorak grimly lamented the destiny of Phaolon, or of any of the other cities of men unfortunate enough to attract the enmity of the scarlet horde.

But there was nothing he could do about it.

From conversations he had overheard back on the isle of Komar, the Tharkoonian archer was well aware that Niamh the Fair was the hereditary Princess of Phaolon. He had never seen or even visited the Jewel City himself, for the distances between his native Tharkoon and the treetop city were considerable, and between the several realms of the Green Star World there is little commerce. But he was aware that Prince Janchan also hailed from Phaolon, and that Janchan, together with his new bride, Arjala, Karn the Hunter, and Zarqa the Kalood, had for some time past endeavored to find the lost girl in order to restore her to her kingdom.

Now, it seemed, the kingdom itself would be lost—in a somewhat different sense—before they managed to restore Niamh to her throne.

The bowman knew that his former comrades would be intensely concerned, could he only communicate his discoveries to them. This, of course, was doubly impossible, or, at least, unlikely. The one reason being his own immobilization, for slaves and prisoners by very definition have no freedom of movement. The other being that he did not know the whereabouts of his former friends.

Since they had entered the world-forest in the sky-ship of Ralidux, and since he had by accident been separated from Niamh the Fair, Zorak had lost all sense of direction. It is quite difficult to ascertain direction on the World of the Green Star under the best of circumstances, as I have elsewhere noted, but once within the forest of enormous trees—each of which looks interchangeable with the next—it is all but impossible. Ever since the ant army had made him a captive, and had forced him to accompany the horde on its crawling march, Zorak had become thoroughly disoriented.

The Tharkoonian bowman was a thoughtful, resourceful man, and not at all the sort to yield supinely to what seemed an inevitable fate. Although he was held a prisoner by the horde of warrior kraan, he never ceased to contemplate the possibilities for an escape to freedom. During the long days and nights while he labored at the metallurgical vats, Zorak discussed their situation with his fellow captives. Some of these had been enslaved for so long to the kraan that they had become dispirited, losing all hope of ever being free again. Others, however, yet nurtured in their hearts the burning desire for freedom.

“Yours is not the first voice that has been raised in hopes of escape,” a grim-faced Ardhanese informed Zorak. “In the many years I have been a prisoner of the kraan, more than a few have tried to make a break for freedom.”

“Have any yet succeeded?” Zorak asked.

The heavy-faced Ardhanese shook his head.

“Our situation is peculiarly helpless,” he observed in a somber tone. “We are not held captive in a city, but in the wilderness itself. We are surrounded by many thousands of alert and vigilant warrior kraan, who are continually on the move from one branch to another, or from one tree to another. At any given moment of night or day, literally hundreds of ant scouts range far afield in all directions, alert to give warning to the central body of the horde in case of the approach of enemies. It is not a matter of jailbreak, which is a comparatively simple matter, but of eluding hundreds of scouts who might be anywhere or everywhere about us.”

Zorak nodded thoughtfully, storing this opinion away in his mind to ponder upon later. He soon came to realize the peculiar difference between this sort of imprisonment, by a mobile force, and imprisonment in a stationary place. There was also the unique problem of being held captive by the warrior ants. For had he been enslaved by an enemy city, once free the bowman could have mingled with the inhabitants of the city and lost himself in their number, since they were human beings like himself, and racial or national origins are largely indistinguishable on this world. But a human held captive by the scarlet ant horde is uniquely vulnerable. He does not in any way resemble his captors, and each of the kraan knows at a glance that any human it may encounter is an enemy and a slave. Escape to freedom, then, became a very different kind of problem.

The horde progressed on forced daily marches through the sky-tall forest, growing ever nearer and nearer to unsuspecting Phaolon. The ant warriors became increasingly familiar and expert in the use of the weapons manufactured by Xargo and his assistants.

Many times during the march Zorak saw Delgan from afar, but the traitorous blue man was always amid the retinue of the king-ant and did not seem to observe or to recognize the Tharkoonian bowman.

On more than one occasion, Zorak encountered his former fellow captive, Xikchaka. Generally, this occurred during one or another of the errands he performed at the request of the master-smith. On none of these occasions did he have the opportunity to exchange any words with Xikchaka—not that he felt particularly inclined to exchange polite words with the kraan he had rescued and tended, and who had then betrayed him into the captivity of the horde.

The motives of Xikchaka in this act of betrayal were quite beyond the imagination of the bowman. Men such as he prize the bond of friendship, loyalty, and comradeship beyond most other allegiances. Zorak would far rather have betrayed his allegiance to Prince Parimus, or to the city of Tharkoon itself, rather than betray a friend.

He was aware that concepts such as loyalty and friendship between comrades were alien to the emotionless mentality of the kraan, and therefore he could not exactly come to hate Xikchaka, who remained true to the instincts of his kind. The kraan, like the Earthly insects they so closely resemble in all matters save that of size, share the so-called hive mentality. They are not so much individual entities as they are units in a group or community. To that community they owe primary obligations which vastly outweigh individual whim or debt or inclination. It is like the difference between a slave state and a free republic; in the slave state, the individual exists only to serve the state, and his personal inclinations are of distinctly secondary importance; but in the true republic, the state exists primarily to serve the individual, whose first obligation is to himself. So Zorak could hardly blame the cold, emotionless kraan for what seemed to him a betrayal; their friendship had been too brief, it seemed, for him to have taught the warrior ant the meaning of that noble and beautiful word—“friendship.”

As the horde approached the outskirts of that portion of the world-forest under the dominance of Phaolon, the kraan began taking extraordinary precautions to avoid premature discovery by the Phaolonese.

Chevaliers of Phaolon, mounted on fleet-winged zaiph, ranged as scouts over that portion of the forest which lay in proximity to the Jewel City, ever alert to danger. The ant horde concealed itself as best it could during the hours when the Green Star was aloft, and only under cover of darkness did the horde advance toward the city of Niamh the Fair.

It was an uncanny experience to Zorak. By night, when the moonless gloom lay thick and unbroken upon the whispering forest, the chittering and rustling horde of monster insects poured like a crawling tide down the branches of the great trees, with the human captives borne helplessly along amid the flowing wave of insect-creatures.

Security was at a maximum pitch now, and vigilant ant sentries kept careful watch on the slave population.

The only hope the human captives had for making a break for freedom lay either in the moment of attack upon the city, when the ant horde would be otherwise engaged and much too busy to watch over their slaves, or in some unexpected diversion which might occur between the present moment and the attack.

What this diversion might be, Zorak had no way of guessing in advance. But he watched and waited, and so did his fellow captives. Even those who had been imprisoned so long they had grown apathetic became infected with Zorak’s determination for escape. The humans whispered among themselves and laid their plans with care, largely ignored by the kraan, who held men in contempt and considered themselves to be the evolutionary superiors of humanity.

Zorak believed that such a diversion could come at any moment, and organized the captives to be ever on the alert and ready to strike boldly for freedom when the diversion came.

Day broke, and the ant horde concealed itself on the underside of the gigantic branch, or hid motionless beneath thick canopies of verdure.

Night fell, and the horde marched upon Phaolon.

And then came the moment for which Zorak had so long waited.