Jandar of Callisto

12. THE DAY OF BLOOD

It was a sound that aroused me, whether moments or hours later I never knew.

A thunderous swell of sound, rising and falling like the sea―a booming surf of clamorous noise.

I sat up stiffly, and clutched my head. Throbbing waves of pain went through my skull, in rhythm to the rise arid fall of those waves of sound.

At first I could not think where I was. I blinked about me in the dimness, seeing the small square room of rough stone. And then the memories came crowding back into my consciousness―Lukor, the trap, the endless hours of stumbling through the black labyrinth.

But this was not blackness, this dimness that lay about me―it was light! The light of day!

And that dull roar, rising and falling like ocean surf, I could identify it now. The applause of many hundreds of human voices!

Where was I?

I sprang to my feet, ignoring the throb of pain from my gashed brow, and stared out of the small barred window into a dazzling scene of circling stone tiers of seats crowded by a brilliantly clothed throng of Zanadarians―with a sandy floor at their feet, whereupon men struggled with their bare hands against enormous beasts.

This stone cell overlooked the arena itself! Irony of ironies―I could not aid Koja, but I was forced to look on helplessly as he went forward into the jaws of death!

I raved and wept and hurled myself against that barred grille that covered the small window, but it was too strong even for my earthly muscles to force. I was, indeed, helpless.

How had I come into this tiny room? I strove to recall, and it came back to me. I had glimpsed the window and strode carelessly over to it, and my feet had struck some obstruction in the floor, which had pitched me forward into the wall.

I bent my gaze downwards, and my heart leaped within me as my eyes discovered an iron ring in the floor.

The iron ring was the obstruction which had tripped me.

And it might prove, as well, the key to my escape from this dungeon of despair. For on Earth, at least, such rings indicate the presence of trapdoors.

Crouching on the floor, I closely examined the stone floor about the iron ring. The amount of daylight which filtered through the bars of the narrow window was not sufficient to give much illumination, so I used my sense of touch, running my sensitive fingertips over the dusty surface of the floor.

It was true―my fingers traced the rectangular outline of a trapdoor!

I caught the ring and strained to pull it open, while the roar of the distant throng pounded dimly through the small dusty room. Sweat broke out on my brow and I heaved at that iron ring until my muscles ached from the strain, but to no avail.

I released the ring and squatted there on my heels, resting for a moment and gathering my strength.

Then I hurled every ounce of force in my back, chest, arms, and shoulders into one great heave.

Was it my imagination, or was the crack in the floor wider?

Again and again I strove to lift that square of solid stone, my face black with effort, the blood roaring in my ears, my thews taut and cracking with the strain.

At last I heard a splintering sound―startlingly loud in the stone box of my cell―and whatever had been restraining the trapdoor gave way, and a black opening yawned in the floor at my feet. The stone trapdoor fell backwards with a room-shaking crash and I could see what had resisted my efforts―the undersurface of the trap had been coated in thick plaster. Doubtless the corridor or chamber below―whatever was there ―had been newly plastered by workmen ignorant of the fact that a door existed in the roof.

I threw myself face downward and peered into the black opening, but in the gloom my eyes could discern nothing. The rise and fall of distant applause continued to beat against the silence, and I knew that I could not delay my next move for very long. Even now my brave and faithful Koja might be facing the slavering jaws of some monster of the arena with bare hands while I lingered, debating!

I slid through the opening and dropped feet first into darkness

―And landed astride something enormous, and―alive!

It bucked and writhed under my unexpected weight. By instinct alone, I clamped my legs around its barrel, locking my heels together under its belly. And hung on for all I was worth. It was pitch black; as the saying goes, I could not see my hand before my face. But the hot musky smell of pent-up beasts was heavy and rank in my nostrils, and I guessed that I had fallen into the beast pens, where the wild and monstrous predators of the jungle were kept, awaiting their chance to rip and ravage the helpless and unarmed condemned prisoners in the arena beyond.

How I managed to keep my seat on the back of the unknown monster is something I shall never know. It jumped and writhed, striving to unseat me. The clash of snapping jaws and the acrid fetor of its hot breath told me the invisible thing was craning back over its shoulder, seeking to get its fangs into me. If I permitted this to happen, I would be ripped from the relative safety of my place astride its shoulders and torn and trampled underfoot.

There was little enough I could do to prevent this, in the black darkness, but what little there was I did. The jungle thing had a mane of coarse bristling hair about its neck, and I dug my fists into this and hung on for dear life while my savage steed leaped and snarled, hurling itself from side to side in its frantic efforts to dislodge me.

How long I could have held my seat I do not know. But after only a few moments of this, the sudden blaze of brilliant day struck me blind. Hinges groaned ―a huge door swung suddenly open―bare sands lay beyond, baking under the clear light―and my savage steed catapulted to freedom, soaring over the doorsill to land like a great cat upon the hot sands of the arena.

I caught a swift, kaleidoscopic impression of things around me: rising oval tiers of stone benches on all sides, lined with throngs of gaping, astounded faces ―blazing dome of golden sky overhead, where three huge moons hung―level plain of yellow sand, trampled and torn and splashed with blood―and a cluster of perhaps fifty men, naked save for buskin and loincloth, gathered in the center. In the next moment my beast went absolutely wild in its efforts to shake me from my seat.

First he charged like a thunderbolt straight for the pitiful cluster of unarmed slaves. Then, enraged by my weight, he sprang straight up into the air, landing on his hind legs, his body almost vertical to the ground. Somehow or other I managed to cling to his back through even the worst of his contortions. One hand buried in the coarse ruff of his mane, my other sought the hilt of my rapier. If it occurred to him to roll in the sand, I was lost, for he must have weighed a couple of tons. I would surely have been crushed under all that meat and muscle. But his tiny brain was inflamed with red roaring rage, to the detriment of his natural feline cunning, and he continued leaping madly, like some bucking bronco out of a cowboy's worst nightmare.

A horde of other beasts had been penned in the same black pit, and they poured in a howling, hissing, growling flood of savagery over the sill at our heels. The unexpected appearance of myself, riding the largest beast of the herd, must have struck the throng of carnival―Boers dumb with astonishment, for an enormous hushed silence hung over the brilliantly lit scene. What would have happened had I not interrupted the proceedings was that the horde of beasts would have charged the small band of the condemned, overwhelming them in an instant and rending them asunder with fang and claw. But my arrival on the scene changed things considerably. For one thing, my beast was so wildly enraged by the unexpected indignity of having a rider that he ignored the very presence of the condemned, and went racing about the oval arena in wild leaps and bounds seeking a way to dislodge me. As well, his actions unnerved the lesser beasts who had followed us from the pits. They were a collection of oddly shaped creatures―scaled reptilian predators with long snakelike necks, who bounded about on huge hind legs in fantastic leaps like midget tyrannosaurs crossed in some unlikely mating with giant kangaroos. In his fantastic contortions, my enraged steed went blundering among them, knocking them about with resounding buffets from his heavy paws. One got in his path and my brute ripped out his throat with a savage sidewise slash of fanged jaws.

The scent of the blood of one of their own kind drove the remainder of the herd wild. Obviously they had been starved for days or weeks in preparation for this event. Ignoring the huddled men, they fell upon the corpse of their fallen brother and tore him to gobbets.

Then they turned on each other, rending and tearing, long snaky necks writhing, fanged jaws agape, filling the air with hissing cries like steam whistles.

I had my sword out at last and was futilely hacking at my enraged steed. It was vaguely akin to a colossal tiger, but nearly twenty feet long, with a lashing whiplike tail with jagged serrations of horny blades down the length which turned it into a terrible instrument of death. Tigerlike, too, was the snarling, wrinkled mask of its face, the wrinkled snout, the blazing eyes. But there the resemblance ended. For the brute was covered with shaggy scarlet fur and two fantastic curling horns sprouted from its flat, low, wedge-shaped brow. These features, together with the stiff ruff of fur that stood out behind its head for all the world like the starched ruff worn by Elizabethan gentlemen, transformed it into a thing of nightmare. From descriptions I had heard, I knew the beast for a deltagar, one of the most terrible and dreaded predators of the jungle.

My sword ripped and tore at neck and shoulders, inflicting long raw slashing cuts, but the thickness of its fur, and the steely rippling muscles which clothed its bulk, effectively prevented me from dealing it a killing blow. Indeed, these wounds only served to infuriate it more. Foam dripped from its slavering jaws, bedewing its throat fur, and its hissing roars rose to a screaming crescendo of madness.

In its frenzy, the brute sprang at the top of the wall that enclosed the arena on all sides. Claws scraped and scrabbled along the top of the wall as the great scarlet cat clung for an instant. The arena―Boers who had been sitting in these seats for the best view fled screaming, trampling weaker or slower members of the crowd underfoot. Obviously they expected the deltagar to land among them in the next instant. But he fell back with a bone-shaking thump to the packed sands of the arena.

The thronged stands were full of mobs of screaming, people scurrying to every exit. Amid the chaotic uproar, I saw grim-faced guards pelting down the stairs, and some of the braver sort came over the walls on knotted ropes to catch the enraged deltagar in weighted nets manipulated at the end of long claw-tipped poles. I caught a flying glimpse of the royal box. There, his pale, handsome face a picture of mingled astonishment and fury, sat Prince Thuton, throned beneath a canopy blazoned with the royal insignia of Zanadar.

And at his side, staring at me, eyes wide with amazement, Darloona reclined, arrayed in silken robes, jewels twinkling in the crimson splendor of her flowing mane.

But just then I was too busy fighting to notice more.

A lucky stroke of my rapier had at last found the brute's vitals. A straight, sure thrust through the base of the skull, at the place where the spinal cord entered the brain, brought it down.

It crashed to its full length on the trampled arena sands. I sprang clear just in time to avoid being crushed beneath its ponderous weight. Coming to my feet again, I got, for the first time, a good look at the monster I had been riding, and if I had not already a fit of the shakes I might have fainted dead away. The deltagar was enormous―frightful! Imagine three full-grown Bengal tigers rolled into one and armed with fangs the size of machetes, and you will have a fairly good idea of the thing on whose back I had landed in the dark.

The condemned prisoners were hastening across the sands toward me. In their forefront stalked the tall glistening figure of my old friend, Koja. Now I tore off my cloak and tossed him the Yathoon whipsword I had been carrying scabbarded on my back all this while.

He tested the blade, making it whistle through the hot dusty air which reeked with blood and sweat and the musky stench of the deltagar. We had no time just then to exchange words―even if we could have heard one another over the uproar from the stands and the squealing fury of the battling beasts. But he wrung my hand in his own supple-fingered grip in silent thanks.

And then we turned to view an amazing sight.

The prisoners condemned to death with Koja were a motley crowd. There were papery-skinned, black-haired Zanadarians among them, and a few swarthy Chac Yuul bandits with lambent eyes and colorless hair, and even a couple of the hairless, crimson-skinned men of the Bright Empire of Perushtar. They were a dull-eyed, dilapidated, dispirited-looking lot, and from the looks of them they had been starved, beaten, and sorely mistreated in the slave pits. But now they had a fighting chance for freedom, and they were eagerly striving for it!

Taking advantage of the confusion they sprang from behind upon the Zanadarian guards who were fighting to calm or kill the rampaging beasts. In a second three of four guards were down, and half-naked prisoners turned on the others with stolen steel glittering in their hands. I exchanged a delighted glance with Koja, and we wasted no time in joining the unequal battle.

The guards were better fed, better trained, and better armed than the half-starved slaves. But it didn't really matter. The slaves had seen nothing but a grisly death ahead of them, to be crunched and mangled in the jaws of jungle predators in the sands of the arena for the entertainment of the cruel Zanadarians―hence they fought wildly, recklessly, taking insane chances no ordinary warrior would dream of taking.

And there was another factor here. The guards were fighting merely to protect themselves. But the prisoners fought for that one thing that is even more precious than life itself―their freedom. Hence it was a foregone conclusion from the first that they should triumph, and they did. In less time than it would take me to tell of it, half the guards were slain or trampled underfoot or sorely injured and the others, tossing aside sword and helmet in their flight, were running for the knotted ropes which still dangled over the walls of the arena and by which they had descended to our level. Few―very few―made it alive. But the victorious prisoners, now well armed indeed with the guards' cast-aside weapons, went swarming up those ropes themselves. As the arena seats were a turmoil of running, shouting men, they easily mingled with the panic-stricken crowd and I have no doubt that many of them found their way at length to secure havens in the Lower City.

But as for me―I had another goal.

I climbed hand over hand up the rope to the top of the wall and advanced up the rising tier of stone benches, with Koja following at my heels. Straight for the royal box I made my way. For Thuton and Darloona still stood there, unable to flee amidst the press of the mob.

Here at last was my chance to rescue the flame-haired Princess of Shondakor from the treacherous swine she thought a friend! And here, too, was my long-awaited opportunity to confront the wily Prince of the City in the Clouds, and to take my revenge for the cruel humiliation I had suffered at his hands when last we had crossed swords.

Then I had been exhausted, injured, and armed with a weapon with which I was completely unfamiliar. He had whipped me soundly, but what was much worse, he had mocked me and humiliated me and made me look ridiculous in the eyes of the woman I―of a woman whose friendship I esteemed and whose respect I desired to earn.

Through the weary hours at the slave wheel of the frigate Skygull, in the squalor of the slave pens of Zanadar, and during my enforced weeks as the guest of Lukor the Swordmaster, I had hungered to face him again, sword in hand.

And that time had come.