The Return of Tharn Part 1

The Return of Tharn.

by Howard Carleton Browne.

When Tharn set out to rescue his beloved Dylara, he did not dream the whole Cro-Magnon world opposed him

Trakor, youthful member of the tribe of Gerdak, moved at a swinging trot along a winding game trail that led to the caves of his people. Through occasional rifts in the matted mazes of branches, leafs, creepers and vines of the semi-tropical forest and jungle, rays of the late afternoon sun dappled the dusty elephant path under his naked feet.

His slim young body, clothed only by the pelt of Jalok, the panther, twisted about his loins, was bathed in perspiration, for both heat and humidity were intense here in the heart of primeval jungle. From time to time he transferred the flint-tipped spear to his left hand while he rubbed dry the sweating palm of his right against his loin cloth; for a slippery spear shaft could mean the difference between life and death in a battle with some savage denizen of this untamed world.

Trakor was beginning to worry. There was less than an hour of daylight remaining and he was still a long way from home. The thought of spending even a small portion of a night alone in a territory that abounded in lions, panthers, leopards and the other fearsome creatures of forest and plain, sent shivers of dread coursing along his spine.

And there was no one but himself to blame for this predicament! A boy of seventeen had no business attempting a task that would have given an older, more experienced warrior pause. Only a fool, he told himself bitterly, would have gone forth alone to hunt without having first gained experience by many trips in the company of seasoned hunters, thus learning the habits of the wild creatures.

It was all Lanoa's fault! In the soft fragrance of midnight hair curling about the tanned oval of her lovely face, in the smoothly rounded perfection of her slender body, in the golden depths of her clear, glowing eyes, were the seeds of madness that had sent him forth on a fool's errand! Before coming under her spell he was content to spend his days learning from old Wokard the art of painting scenes of tribal life and the hunt on the walls of the caves of his people.

Not until he watched Lanoa's other suitors displaying the trophies of the hunt did young Trakor make his decision to lay aside his paints and venture out in search of game. For it was easy to see how greatly Lanoa was impressed by the boastful tales of the other young men.

But where they hunted in groups, for safety's sake, Trakor would go out alone after Neela, the zebra, or Bana, the deer. And when Lanoa saw him return to the caves of Gerdak with the carca.s.s of Neela across his shoulders, his heavy spear trailing from a casual hand, then would she realize that of all the young men of the tribe it was Trakor who was best suited to be her mate!

Thus the stuff of dreams ... and how different the reality! Since early morning of this day he had wandered through the forest and across wide stretches of prairie, seeking any of the various species of succulent gra.s.s-eaters that served as the princ.i.p.al fare of the Cro-Magnons. And while he had caught sight of grazing herds on several occasions, his utter lack of experience in the art of stalking prevented him from coming anywhere near enough for a successful spear cast.

Now he was slinking back home empty handed to face the gibes of those he had thought to impress, while the light of day gradually waned and the dark shadows of the jungle grew heavier across his path.

But the boy's wounded pride began to trouble him less as the certainty that he must spend a night in the open became increasingly evident. The everyday noises of the jungle, so nerve-wracking to those unable to interpret them, yet unnoticed by the jungle-wise, kept him in a constant state of apprehension while his fertile imagination pictured lurking shapes crouched behind the wall of tangled underbrush lining either side of the trail.

Without warning, the narrow path debouched into a fair-sized clearing, through the center of which moved the sluggish waters of a shallow stream, its low banks covered with reeds.

Compared with the dull half-light of jungle depths, the glade seemed bright as midday, although the sun had already dipped behind the towering rampart of trees to the west. Trakor's heart swelled with renewed confidence and his step was almost jaunty as he moved through the knee-deep gra.s.ses and rustling reeds to the river bank.

Now he knew exactly where he was. Another hour at a half-trot would bring him to the caves of Gerdak. The jungle wasn't such a fearsome place after all! He had spent an entire day in the open and not once come across anything more dangerous than monkeys and birds. Tomorrow he would go out again to hunt, nor would he return empty-handed a second time.

Dropping to his hands and knees at the river's edge, he drank deeply of the brackish waters. Rising, he took up his spear, waded the ankle-deep stream and trotted lightly onward, his goal the break in the opposite wall of trees which marked the continuation of the same trail he had been following.

Thus did young Trakor betray his abysmal ignorance of the jungle and its inhabitants. No experienced wayfarer of the wild places would have approached that opening without the utmost caution; for it is often just such a setting the great cats choose as a place to lie in wait for game.

The slender youth was within a few feet of the bole of a mammoth tree that marked the trail's entrance, when a sudden rustling amid a clump of gra.s.ses to one side of the path brought him to a startled halt.

Before Trakor could recover from his initial shock, those trembling gra.s.ses parted, and with majestic deliberation, Sadu, the lion, stepped into the trail less than twenty paces from the paralyzed youngster.

Huge, impressive, his sleek, tawny coat and bristling mane shimmering in the fading sunlight, his tufted, sinuous tail moving in jerky undulations, stood the jungle king, his round yellow eyes fastened hypnotically on his intended prey.

Trakor knew that only seconds remained for him in this life, that within fleeting moments he must go down to a horrible death beneath rending fangs.

And with that knowledge came a fatalistic courage--a courage he had not dreamed he possessed. With icy calmness he closed the fingers of his right hand tightly about the shaft of his spear and brought it up level with his shoulder, point foremost, ready for a cast when the great beast should charge.

Slowly Sadu crouched for the spring, his giant head flattened almost to the ground, ma.s.sive hindquarters drawn beneath him like powerful springs, his long tail extended and quivering.

Voicing a thunderous roar, Sadu sprang.

Racing across the plains and through the jungles of a savage world, moving with unflagging swiftness by night and by day, came Tharn, mighty warrior of an era already old twenty thousand years before the founding of Rome--an era which witnessed the arrival to recognizable prehistory of the first _true man_.

Somewhere to the south of this Cro-Magnon fighting man, separated by endless vistas of primeval forest, gra.s.s-filled plains and towering mountain ranges, were the girl he loved and the men who had taken her.

Still fresh in Tharn's memory were the events of the past few weeks: the battles in Sephar's arena; the b.l.o.o.d.y revolt engineered by Tharn and his friends; the arrival of his father and fifty warriors of his tribe; the ascension of his close friend, Katon, to the kingship of Sephar; the finding of his own mother, long given up for dead after disappearing from the tribal caves ten summers before; the stunning shock upon learning that Jotan had taken Dylara with him when he and his party of fellow Ammadians began their journey back to far-off Ammad, mother country of a civilization and culture far in advance of the Cro-Magnon cave dwellers.[1]

[1] "Warrior of the Dawn", December, 1942-January, 1943, _Amazing Stories_.--Ed.

The thrust of a knife from the cowardly and treacherous hand of Sephar's high priest had come near to costing Tharn his life on the eve of his departure in quest of Dylara. As it was, an entire moon pa.s.sed before the caveman was able to leave his bed.

Pryak, the high priest, had died horribly in payment of his treachery; but Tharn suffered a thousand deaths from enforced idleness while the girl he loved was being carried farther and farther from the one person who possessed the ability to effect her rescue.

And then, over a moon ago, Tharn bade farewell to his mother and to the father whose name he bore, and plunged into the heart of the unfamiliar territory south of Sephar, taking up the trail of those Ammadians who held Dylara.

Near sunset of this particular day, Tharn awoke from a nap, as it was his practice during the baking heat of mid-afternoons. By thus conserving his strength during the more trying portion of the days, he was able to spend many hours after nightfall, when the air was cooler, in pursuit of his quarry.

Rising to his feet on a softly swaying branch a full hundred feet above the jungle floor, Tharn flexed the mighty muscles of arms and legs, his naked chest swelling as he drew in great draughts of humid atmosphere.

The slender fingers of his strong, sun-bronzed hand pushed back the shock of thick black hair crowning his finely shaped head and strikingly handsome features, while the flashing, intelligent gray eyes roved quickly over the mazes of foliage surrounding him.

Nor was it his eyes alone that probed those curtains of growing things; ears and a nose keen as those of any jungle dweller were no less active.

He was on the point of descending to the game trail below when Siha, the wind, brought to his sensitive nostrils the scent of man commingled with the acrid smell of Sadu, the lion.

For the s.p.a.ce of a dozen heartbeats he stood there, high above the hard-packed earth, while his keen mind rapidly a.n.a.lyzed the message his nose had picked up. From the strength of those scents he knew both man and beast were not far away, while the direction of the breeze told him their position.

Since the day Tharn, the son of Tharn, set out in search of the girl he loved, he had encountered men on several occasions and always those meetings were unpleasant. The Cro-Magnon tribes inhabiting the mountain ranges between Sephar and the land of Ammad were distinguished by their ability as fighters and an unflagging suspicion of strangers. Were it not for Tharn's tremendous strength and incredible agility, he would have died long ere this.

Consequently his first reaction was to let Sadu and the unknown man settle their impending quarrel without his own intervention. But a basic part of Tharn's character was his ready willingness to come to the aid of the underdog, to champion the cause of the weak and oppressed. It was a trait which had brought him to the brink of disaster more than once; but Tharn, were he to have given the matter any thought at all, would not have had it otherwise.

Thus it was that the caveman altered his course to the east and he set off through the trees, swinging among the branches with the ease and celerity of little n.o.bar, the monkey. Now and then, with the agility of long practice, he sent his lithe body hurtling across some gap between trees, to grasp with unerring accuracy the limb his quick eye had selected. Yet notwithstanding his seemingly reckless pace his pa.s.sage was almost soundless; and though the tangled verdure appeared as a solid wall, only rarely did his flying figure sc.r.a.pe against the riot of vegetation hemming him in.

A few minutes later the giant Cro-Magnard swung into the branches of a tree at the edge of a large circular clearing. Even as he reached the broad surface of a bough extending over the floor of the open ground, he caught sight of his old enemy, Sadu, the lion, crouching in the trail almost directly beneath him. Simultaneously he saw Sadu's intended prey: a slender Cro-Magnon youth, some four years younger than Tharn himself, who was standing stiffly erect, facing the lion, a flint-tipped spear poised in his right hand.

Tharn felt himself thrill to the boy's unflinching courage even as he recognized its futility, since no human could thus withstand the iron-thewed engine of destruction that was Sadu, the lion.

Tharn was given no opportunity to make use of his arrows or gra.s.s rope; for even as he observed the two figures below, the lion's tail shot stiffly erect, a shattering roar split apart the jungle stillness and Sadu charged.

As a swimmer dives from a springboard, so did Tharn launch himself into s.p.a.ce, his right hand s.n.a.t.c.hing the flint knife from the folds of his loincloth as he left the branch.