Jandar of Callisto

14. RIDERS OF THE WINDS

The guards were almost upon us. I could see the grim expressions on their hard faces clearly, and the cold fury of vengeance in their eyes. Koja and I stood with drawn steel, ready to defend the Princess of Shondakor to the last, but that last, I knew, would not be long in coming. For, however much mastery in the gentle art of swordsmanship I had imbibed from the tutelage of Lukor, it would not long suffice to hold at bay twenty fresh and well-armed soldiers.

And then a weird shadow fell over the canopied booth, and all of us looked up with astonishment at a fantastic flying monster!

For a moment―so completely unfamiliar was the aerial contraption to me―my eyes simply could not resolve the thing. But then I saw it was an ornithopter. Not one of the eighty-foot monstrosities, like the frigate that had flown us here, but more on the order of the small flying gig wherein I had made my escape from the slave pens to the Middle City.

This particular style of ornithopter was something new to my experience. It was a four-man scout, some twenty-five feet long, with four cockpits, like a king-sized kayak. And it resembled nothing so much as an ungainly aerial version of a Polynesian outrigger canoe. I use this handy comparison because the helium-like gas which rendered the contraption air worthy was contained in two long pontoons below the keel and to either side of the hull, braced apart with struts. This lower structure looked rather like the runners on a sled.

The fantastic flying machine may have looked fairly ridiculous, but it very obviously flew.

And, equally important, it was a way out of our present dilemma.

For there, grinning down at me from the left front cockpit was―Lukor!

Only the Lords of Gordrimator know what happened to him after we became separated in the labyrinth of secret passages beneath the royal citadel. I had thought him either slain in a deadfall trap, or lost somewhere and still within the maze of tunnels. If I had stopped to think about it, I should have realized that if I, who was unable to read the coded markings that showed directions within the maze, had somehow been lucky enough to stumble on a way out, Lukor, who could read them, must have made his exit long before I.

Such, apparently, had been the case. The gallant old Swordmaster had escaped from the maze and had somehow bluffed his way out of the citadel and had been waiting near the arena for an appropriate moment to help Koja and me escape. Somewhere he had found the ornithopter―probably at one of the rooftop guard stations, such as the one atop the slave prison where I had found my ill-fated gig a month ago. At any rate, I would be able to hear the tale of his adventures later, and from his own lips. What was important now was that he had provided us with a means of escape.

The four-man flying craft hovered on throbbing wings directly above the royal box. While Lukor held it steady above us with one hand on the controls, he tossed overside a rope ladder with the other. The end of the ladder brushed the top of the canopy.

I turned to Darloona.

"Swiftly now, Princess," I said. "You ascend the ladder first. Koja and I will hold the guards at bay until you are safely aboard and we may follow you ourselves."

She stared at me, her slanted emerald eyes filled with contemptuous astonishment.

"Are you completely mad, Jandar?" she demanded hotly. "Why should I wish to escape from the city of my friends? I have already told you that Prince Thuton and I are to wed, and that he has pledged his aerial navy to make war against the Black Legion who hold my city―you may escape, if you wish, but I intend to remain here and regain my throne."

Impatience made me rather curt.

"That is all nonsense, Darloona! Thuton is a treacherous liar. He has been lulling you with false promises, while behind your back he has offered you for sale to Arkola of the Chac Yuul for two hundred thousand gold bice!"

"That is a filthy and despicable lie!"

I know not how long we would have argued back and forth, but solemn Koja intervened.

"Cannot this controversy be continued when we are all in safety?" he inquired in his clacking metallic voice. "For, look, Jandar, the guards are almost upon us."

He was right. I had no time to continue my arguments with the hotheaded girl, which were futile anyway as she simply did not believe me. So I did something that perhaps was unwise, but seemed the only thing to do at the time.

I knocked her cold with a right to the jaw!

She folded limply, and I caught her in my arms and tossed her over my shoulders and sprang up on the wall of the box, found a foothold among the ornamental carvings of the posts that supported the canopy, and thus clambered to the roof of the box from which height I could grab the lowest rung of the ladder.

In a moment I was climbing up the ladder td safety.

I doubt if it would have been possible for anyone except a professional acrobat or a strong man to have performed a similar stunt on Earth. It was only possible for me to do so because of the slight difference between the gravitational fields of Earth and Thanator, and because my muscles, accustomed to the slightly greater gravity of my home world, gave me a strength that was quite beyond the human norm on Thanator.

Still and all, it was not a feat that I would care to attempt again. Dangling between ground and sky on a swaying rope ladder, the hovering ornithopter above me looking too flimsy to support my weight, the girl's dangling arms and legs impeding my movements, expecting at any second to receive a bolt in my back from one of those miniature Zandarian crossbows―I was never so relieved in my life as when I eventually gained the top rung of the ladder and looked into Lukor's grinning face.

"Lukor!" I exclaimed: "I have never been more delighted to see anyone in my life! Here―take the girl, can you?"

He dragged her from my shoulders and flopped her down unceremoniously into the other front cockpit beside his own. Then he lent me an arm while I climbed over the gunwales and took a seat in the rear behind him. I was puffing and blowing from the exertions of climbing that swaying rope ladder, encumbered by the weight of the girl draped about my shoulders, and it took me a moment or two to catch my breath.

But the old Swordmaster was in grand spirits, burbling with good humor. He was chattering away at a great rate, lifting his voice so as to be audible above the hubbub from below and the thunder of our throbbing wings.

"Ho, there, my boy!" he chortled. "I was not sure whether you were alive or slain, but I should have known that you would be able to find your way out of that cursed labyrinth. You have the luck of a born hero!"

He was obviously having the time of his life, the old rascal. His cheeks were ruddy, flushed with excitement, and his sharp old eyes flashed with gusto and delight, gray locks tousled and flying in the wind of the beating wings. He looked twenty years younger, and I was so happy to see him alive and safe I could have kissed the old fellow on the. spot. His almost Gallic sense of chivalry and romance lent vast enjoyment to the escapade―this was the sort of thing he craved, last―minute rescues from certain death, the heroine torn from the grip of fiends, valiant warriors battling against hopeless odds!

"When we were separated by the deadfall trap, I followed the passageway to the nearest exit and lied my way to a rooftop landing stage," he continued. "Reasoning that you might well be hopelessly lost in the maze, I thought that the least I could do was rescue your Yathoon comrade and hide him safely away in the Academy, thinking that the two of us might be able to find you later in the secret passages."

I thanked him fervently for this rescue, which had come in the proverbial nick of time, and peered over the side to see how faithful Koja was doing.

He was doing superbly, holding twenty warriors at bay with the deadly flail of his Yathoon whipsword. Less than twenty, to be precise, for that flying lash of razory steel had already accounted for no less than seven of the guardsmen.

Lukor peered down at the battle with lively interest, bellowing encouragement and praise. The whipsword was the one bladed weapon of Thanator which the old Swordmaster was not adept in using, for the ungainly length and weight of the whiplike steel blade makes it difficult and awkward for any but one of the stalking arthropods to fight with.

While Lukor loudly applauded Koja's dazzling prowess with the whip-sword, I yelled at him to hurry it up. From the vantage of our height I could see guards gathering from all over the arena, and many of them were armed with the deadly little crossbows―whose bulletlike steel darts might well puncture our balloon pontoons or wreck one of our ponderously flapping wings, bringing the aerial contraption down.

But Koja knew what he was doing. Spinning about, he lashed out with the steely flail, clearing a wide area about him as guardsmen ducked away from his singing steel. Then, folding his gaunt and triple-jointed legs, he catapulted into the air. It was a fantastic leap―he must have bounded a good eleven feet straight up. His segmented fingers closed over the middle rungs of the ladder and in a moment his lower limbs had found rungs of their own, and he came up hand over hand to join the rest of us in the cockpits.

"Koja, that was magnificent! I have never seen the whip-sword used so splendidly." I laughed as he settled into place beside me, folding his ungainly limbs awkwardly in the tight, enclosed seat. He blinked at me solemnly.

"I might return the compliment, Jandar," he clacked in his monotonous and metallic tones, "by observing that when you set out to rescue a comrade, you do so in the most spectacular manner conceivable!" And he gestured eloquently with a quirk of his long antennae at the turmoil below, the screaming mob in panic-stricken flight, the battling beasts, the escaping slaves, and the infuriated guards shaking their fists at us in helpless frustration far below. I grinned.

"But who is this human whose flying machine offers us an unexpected mode of escape?" he inquired.

I introduced Lukor and Koja in a perfunctory manner, for just then we had little time for words. Thuton had returned with a squadron of crossbowmen and steel darts were flickering through the air in our direction.

"Hold on, my friends―here we go!" crowed Lukor, and he gripped the controls, sending the craft dipping away to one side. We rose in a dizzy spiral, circling the arena. Tiers of stone seats swept past underneath and then the fabric of the flying machine shuddered beneath to the shattering impact of some unseen obstacle. A jagged rain of thick fragments of clear glass showered our shoulders and then we were caught in the grip of a howling gale whose rushing winds were bitterly cold.

It had not occurred to me, so hectic had the past half-hour been, to wonder why the arena was so hot, baking under day-glare, when the open streets and forums of the mountaintop city were generally swept by frigid winds because of our height. But now I saw that the whole arena was roofed with glass―a gigantic dome shielded the amphitheater from the cold air and the howling winds, and acted like a colossal greenhouse, concentrating the light of day into baking warmth so that the arena-Boers could sit on the exposed stone tiers in comfort. Through one of the gigantic panes of glass which formed this greenhouse dome our aerial contraption had just shattered its way to the freedom of the outer air.

"Where now, Swordmaster?" I shouted, gasping as the bitter cold wind struck the sweaty surface of my bare arms and legs. Lukor lifted his voice above the bellow of the winds.

"I suggest we adjourn to a friendlier clime," he yelled. "My native city of Ganatol would afford a less hostile haven than we may expect from Zanadar, after all this uproar and rescuing!"

I was smitten by a sudden sense of guilt.

"But, Lukor! Your home―your Academy! I cannot expect you to give up everything you have, just to help me and my friends out of a difficult spoil"

He grinned like a mischievous boy, gray mane flying in the wintry blast.

"Nonsense! With what I have here―and here―I can reestablish the Academy Lukor wherever I go," he said, indicating his sword arm and tapping his brow.

"But your house, and all your possessions!" I protested helplessly, unwilling that he should sacrifice everything for my cause.

"Poh! Mortgaged to the hilt, my boy―the Academy never really brought in sufficient funds to be a paying concern. As for my belongings, well, I shall regret a painting or two, perhaps a statuette, but there is nothing else that cannot be replaced in time. I shall regret that old Irivor and I shall never again share a bottle and boast about the good old days, but that's about it. And now, no more arguments. I shall need my wits about me to get out of these cursed updrafts."

The spires of the Upper City swung about us as Lukor manipulated the controls with finesse. At this altitude the air was biting and thin, but the winds were furious and gusty, screaming like so many banshees. I ducked down behind the cowling of my cockpit, shivering and wishing I had not so recklessly tossed aside my warm woolen cloak.

After a bit Lukor found a steady downdraft and rode it in wide circles. The tiers of the Middle City swung below our hurtling keel and I caught a flying glimpse of the slums and squalid alleys of the Lower City before they were whipped from sight. One swift look and I recognized the slave pens where the wheel slaves were immured and remembered the dreary days Koja and I had spent behind those beetling walls.

How strange a thing is a man's life! A twist of fate, a turn of the balance, and he is thrust from one situation to the next, with very little say in the matter. Never had I thought to escape that frowning fortress ―but, once out of it, wandering the windy streets of the Middle City in garments stolen from the man I had killed, I had wondered where I should find a haven of safety. And then I had seen an unknown gentleman fighting for his life against a gang of street thugs!

Had I not impulsively―even rashly―sprang to his side to set my blade with his, I should not at this hour be hurtling through the wind in this flying contraption, on my way to new adventures in strange lands.

Cause and effect rule the universe, say the philosophers. Well, that may be. But I would cast my vote for blind Chance as the most significant factor in human affairs, if not in the very cosmos itself. For it was Chance that I stumbled upon the Lost City there in the trackless jungles of Cambodia, Chance that Koja spared my life because of the unusual color of my hair and eyes, Chance that I should have encountered the Princess battling against the vastodon when I was escaping from the Yathoon camp through the jungles, and Chance that I had made a friend of Lukor the Swordmaster.

Before long we left the City in the Clouds behind us and were flying through the White Mountains. It was with a curious mingling of nostalgia and relief that I watched the turrets of Zanadar fall away behind our stern. There I had known not only the grim squalor of slavery and the terror of being a hunted fugitive, but also the snug safety of a home and the kindness of a friend. But now that chapter in my adventures was fading behind me.

To either side lay some of the most spectacular scenic wonders imaginable: soaring cliffs and jagged peaks of snowy marl, crumbling plains and boulder-strewn plateaus, riven weirdly with the clefts of terrific ravines and gorges. We were traveling at truly fantastic velocity now, riding a gale that blew due south towards the foothills and the black and crimson carpet of the Grand Kumala that lay beyond.

We had descended a couple of thousand feet by now, but the screaming winds were still as biting cold as the edge of a knife. I huddled low in the cockpit, clutching my shoulders in an effort to keep warm. But despite the cold, this was certainly a better way to travel than on foot. It would have taken us days, perhaps weeks, to make our way through the desolate mountains of Varan-Hkor. And here we were coasting far above them in style, if not exactly in comfort.

I paused to reflect on the marvels I had seen. Such a fantastic flying contraption as this aerial outrigger canoe denoted an extraordinary technology. The civilization of the Zanadarians was the highest I had seen or heard of in all my months on Thanator. How could it be that one people, like the Sky Pirates, possessed stone cities, flying ships―even that tripod―like television crystal I had seen when Prince Thuton had conversed with Arkola of the Black Legion―while another, like the Yathoon Horde, were so far down the scale of culture that they could not even read or write?

Such enormous cultural differences were common enough on Earth, I reflected, where supersonic jet liners hurtled over the jungles of New Guinea, whose inhabitants are still scarcely out of the Stone Age. But this is due, in part, to the enormous distances involved. On Earth, vast oceans and entire continents separate such widely different cultures, but such is not the case on Thanator, which as a moon is much smaller than a planet. Indeed, Thanator measures only four thousand three hundred and fifty-one miles from pole to pole. The Zanadarians and the Yathoon are virtually neighbors―why then are they so vastly apart in the scale of cultural development?

And these ruminations brought me to another mystery. How was it possible a people such a Koja's, obviously evolved from some species of insect, probably one of the so-called "social insects" like ant, termite, or bee, could have grown to the rudiments of civilization on the same world with human inhabitants―the Sky Pirates, the Ku Thad, and the Perushtarians?

On Earth the insects evolved to a certain level and stopped, entering a stage of cultural stasis millions of years ago. Terrene insects were not truly intelligent beings, were not self-aware, but possessed a rudimentary intelligence called "the hive mind." Man alone had fully evolved into a rational being, and yet both species shared all those millions of square miles, surely room enough for both to develop intelligence!

Yet here on Thanator, which was only a fraction of Earth's size, two completely independent civilizations had come into being, and two widely different species had evolved to rationality side by side.

Apart, and yet close.

Dwelling only two thousand miles from each other in spatial terms―yet millions of years apart, culturally.

The arthropods had learned nothing from the Zanadarians, not even the rudiments of technology, the use of the alphabet, or the simplest of humane emotions.

Yet both races spoke the same language!

It was a mystery, all right. And a baffling one.

And I had a hunch that when at last I found the answer it would prove an astounding one!

Darloona swam groggily back to consciousness while we were still flying out of the White Mountains.

As might have seemed natural, she was wildly furious at me, and at my companions as well. Her anger at me was understandable―after all, I had knocked her unconscious in order to get her into the flying machine, which was an action hardly conducive to bettering our personal relations. But her rancor towards the gallant old Swordmaster was also virulent, and with less cause.

"I beseech you, sir, as you are a gentleman, to give over this attempt to flee and return to Zanadar. If you will take me back to the citadel, I will intercede with Prince Thuton on your behalf, and I can assure you that you will not be punished for your crimes," she vowed.

Lukor fixed her with a courteous gaze, but firmly shook his head.

"My lady," he said gently, "you are suffering from a most extreme misapprehension. Prince Thuton is not your friend, but one of your most active enemies ―and we here with you are truly your friends."

"How can it be a friendly action to kidnap me from the company of a powerful prince who has vowed to lend his forces to assist me in regaining my throne?" she demanded.

Lukor again shook his head. "No, my lady, that, too, is a misapprehension. For, while Thuton may be suave and charming, his charm lies entirely on the surface―underneath he is wily, scheming, and treacherous. Regardless of what he may vow to you, I know it for a fact that behind your back he was negotiating with your arch foe, the Lord of the Black Legion."

She stared at him incredulously.

"Yes! This `friend,' as you are pleased to call him, coldly and callously offered to sell you to the Chac Yuul―if they could meet his price!"

Her eyes flew to me as Lukor enunciated this last item of information. It was exactly what I had told her below in the royal box, when I was attempting to persuade her to mount the rope ladder and enter the flying machine. Now I nodded and added my affirmation to Lukor's avowal.

"He is right, Princess. It's true―I know it, for, while I was lost and wandering through the maze of secret passages that lies within the walls of the royal citadel, I overheard Thuton discussing the matter of the price he had set on you with none other than Arkola himself."

"But that is absurd," she protested weakly. "What would Arkola be doing in Zanadar? Surely he is in my city of Shondakor, almost three hundred korads to the southeast!"

I explained, as best I could within the technological limits of my Thanatorian vocabulary, about the television crystal atop the tripod. Lukor had heard of such instruments―he called them palungordra, which means "far-seeing eyes"―but they were not known to Darloona, and she was somewhat skeptical. However, she did not argue the point and made no further attempts to persuade Lukor to turn back; instead, she fell into a meditative silence, obviously mulling over our words. My own beliefs she could doubtless discount as the result of prejudice and ignorance, for, although I do not believe she any longer regarded me with contempt as a vile and treacherous amatar, devoid of honesty or honor, I had still not fully redeemed myself in her eyes. But Lukor, as I have noted before, was the sort of decent and honorable gentleman you instinctively trusted on first meeting, and his stout, unwavering, firm, and sincere statements on Thuton's villainy she could not so easily disregard.

By this time it must have been late afternoon. The canopy of golden vapor that is the sky of Callisto was still bright with day; two moons were aloft, the frosted azure globe of Ramavad and tiny golden Amalthea, or Juruvad, as the Thanatorians call it. The mighty bulk of Gordrimator, that banded colossus of the skies, hove into view ere long.'

We flew for hours.

I was becoming rather weary of the enforced inactivity, and, to tell the truth, the seat in my cockpit was rather hard and by now it had become most uncomfortable. I could not recall just when I had last had anything to eat and or drink, but my belly was clamoring for attention.

We were traveling along at a frightful clip, fairly zipping along. The wind was terrific over the foothills. At this rate we would be out of them in no time, and could perhaps land and seek game and make camp for the night.

Ahead to the south stretched the vast black and crimson carpet of the Grand Kumala, which extended from horizon to horizon. It occurred to me after a time that Lukor should begin veering away to the east, for in that direction lay the city of Ganatol, his homeland, and thence we were bound. I leaned forward, tapped the Swordmaster on the shoulder, and shouted into his ear something to that effect. He turned a rather grim and worried face to me.

"I quite agree with you, my young friend," he said brusquely. "And, believe me, I would turn east if I could."

"What do you mean? What's gone wrong?"

He forced a laugh.

"I have been complimenting myself on my luck in finding an air current to ride," he confessed wryly, "but now that luck has turned, alas! The current has grown steadily more powerful. So long as it carried us in the direction in which we wished to travel, I made no objection and did not bother my mind with the increasing force of the wind. But some little time ago I decided it was about time to start curving away to the east―and found I could nod"

I stared at him blankly.

"You mean the wind is too strong?"

He nodded. "It is very strong. It is almost a hurricane. But that is not the trouble! The vans of the ornithopter are equipped with ailerons for just such a condition: by varying the pitch and angle of our movable surfaces, we should be able to veer even in a gale. But we cannot―look―can you see?"

I followed his pointing arm and studied our port wing. The ailerons, or whatever the movable rear surfaces on the aft side of the wing are properly called, were manipulated by foot pedals in the pilot's cockpit which Lukor occupied. These pedals communicate with the movable surfaces by means of wires and pulleys, the wires exiting from the hull through a row of small ports just above wing level.

I looked.

We had not made our escape from the City in the Clouds unscathed!

A steel dart from a guard's crossbow had lodged in our port aileron, fouling the guy-wire.

I tightened my jaw grimly, as the import of this discovery sank in slowly. Without the use of that aileron, we could not turn. We had lost our control of the flying machine, and the rapidly growing gale in whose grip we were now helpless would sweep us many leagues off our course . . . on and on over the trackless jungles of the Grand Kumala.

And night was coming.