The Return of Tharn Part 21

"Why can't I go with you?" Trakor demanded. "I am a good hunter. Did I not, a sun ago, track down and slay Neela, the zebra, with my own knife?"

"That was while Dyta was high in the sky," Tharn reminded him. "Hunting Neela or Bana at night requires long practice and many disappointments.

Tonight I am too hungry to wait."

A towering forest giant offered a secure and comfortable haven for the night; and while Trakor sat there fuming at being left out of things, Tharn swung off into the darkness in search of their dinner.

Less than an hour later he was back, a haunch of venison across one shoulder. Together they squatted on a broad branch and cut strips of the still dripping flesh from Bana's flank. They ate quickly and in silence, Trakor already having adopted the almost taciturn air common among jungle dwellers; and when they were finished, a handful of leaves served each as a napkin.

Not long thereafter both were sleeping soundly on their swaying couch, as indifferent to the cacophony of roars, shrieks and screams making hideous the jungle night as though such sounds did not exist.

They dined on the remainder of Bana's haunch shortly after sunrise the following morning. After descending to drink from the stream in the clearing, Tharn set out to explore the former site of Jotan's camp in an effort to pick up Dylara's trail.

Trakor squatted on his haunches and watched the cave lord with wide, wondering eyes. For several minutes Tharn moved slowly about the cleared ground, his powerful body bent low, his unbelievably keen eyes searching every inch of earth. Gradually his companion began to understand there was nothing aimless in his movements: he was circling in a gradually narrowing spiral toward the exact center of the camp site.

After a while Trakor tired of watching and went back to the river to drink. He was on his way back when a sharp exclamation from his friend caught his attention.

He was amazed to find Tharn on his hands and knees sniffing at the ground. Those nostrils appeared to quiver, to expand and contract, like an animal's when it picks up a fresh spoor.

A p.r.i.c.kling sensation tugged at Trakor's scalp. Was it possible that this G.o.d-like human could actually scent, and _recognize_ that scent, where a man or woman had stood days before? No human nose had any business being that efficient!

Tharn looked up to find him standing there. "She slept here for several hours," he said. On hands and knees he began to move in a straight line across the ground, swerved to one side near the former location of the fires, then on again across the wide ribbon of open ground between the heaps of ashes and the forest's edge. At the base of a large tree, he stood up and beckoned to Trakor.

"Sadu chased her to this tree," he explained, his voice as confident as though he had witnessed the entire proceedings instead of reconstructing them through the mediums of sight and smell. "He did not get her. Come."

Lightly Tharn swung himself into the branches, Trakor close behind him.

To the cave lord this was an engaging sport--a sport made more interesting because happiness for him depended on his ability to follow a cold trail.

Here a bit of lint from Dylara's tunic had caught beneath a segment of bark; there a newly budded shoot had been crushed by a naked foot. A speck of green moisture on an adjoining branch marked where that same foot had come to rest a little later; and further on a scuffed section of bark, almost too small to be detected, showed where a foot had slipped slightly.

To Tharn, guided by uncanny powers of perception and a woodlore second not even to the beasts themselves, all these marks were as evident and recognizable as words on a printed page to a scholar.

Dylara's progress had been snail-like that night as she worked her way through impenetrable darkness; Tharn moved along her pathway speedily and without faltering, Trakor following.

In ten minutes the cave lord covered the distance Dylara had required an hour to travel. Abruptly he altered his course upward toward the forest top, until, high among the smaller branches, he stopped and looked to his nose for information.

Almost at once Trakor noticed a troubled expression carve itself on Tharn's handsome face. "What is it, Tharn?"

His companion's lips set in a narrow line. "I do not know. Some strange manlike creature with long hairy arms and legs surprised her here and carried her away."

Moving slowly now, with many pauses, Tharn set out on the arboreal pathway accompanied by the bewildered Trakor.

For nearly three full hours Tharn continued on through the middle terraces. It took him a good part of that time to get some sort of accurate picture of how that strange, hairy creature had regulated its progress. The distance between marks left by its hands and grasping feet seemed far too great for anything other than the most agile of monkeys.

So intent was Tharn on following the spoor, and so intent on Tharn was his companion, that the first indication either had of danger was when fully a score of spider-like forms engulfed them from the depths of as many hiding places among the foliage.

The first wave swept the still inexperienced Trakor completely from his branch, and he would have fallen headlong through s.p.a.ce toward the ground below had not one of the ambushers caught him by an ankle and jerked him roughly back to a different type of danger. In a mad fury that was half rage and half fear the youth struck out blindly with his knife, killing three of his attackers and wounding several more before he went down beneath the sheer weight of numbers.

It was Tharn who took the subduing! With the first rustle of foliage his knife was in his hand and he met the onslaught of twisting, shrieking spider-men like a rocky crag meets a storm-swept sea. Enemy after enemy toppled into the void, their bodies torn by his keen blade of flint; others went to join them with skulls crushed by superhuman blows or with spines snapped like twigs. Early in the battle Tharn learned it was useless merely to push them from the limb: they would fall a few feet until some long sinuous limb would catch a lower branch and back they would come to the fight.

But the odds were far too unequal, and very slowly they pulled him down, as a pack of dogs will pull down a wide-antlered elk. Thick vines lashed his arms to his sides until he was trussed and helpless.

Then both captives were lifted by the loudly exultant spider-men and borne to a conical shaped hut of gra.s.ses hanging by means of a thick rope of that same material from a pair of stout branches above its roof.

Here they were thrown roughly to the swaying, bobbing floor on opposite sides of the structure, then left to themselves as the long-limbed spider-men departed.

Trakor waited until he was certain the last of them was gone, then despite his bonds he managed to roll over until he was facing his friend three or four yards away. The cave lord was lying motionless on his side, swathed with strand upon strand of stout vines, his eyes open, his expression as calm and untroubled as though he were comfortably ensconced in his own cave.

"What will they do with us, Tharn?" whispered the youth.

Those broad shoulders moved in a faint shrug. "Who knows?"

It was far from being a satisfactory answer. Trakor was silent for a little while, thinking unhappy thoughts. Through the hut's thin walls came the shrill, unfamiliar chattering of many voices. Evidently the spider-men were holding some kind of a meeting--a meeting, Trakor was sure, concerning the eventual fate of their captives.

"Tharn...."

"Yes?"

"Can't we _do_ something? Must we lie here like two helpless old men until they get around to k-killing us?"

Tharn caught the slight break in the youth's words and his slow smile disclosed flashing teeth. "They will not kill us for a while--otherwise we would have been dead before this. Perhaps they intend to torture us first--either to enjoy our suffering or to honor their tribal G.o.d."

"But now we can do nothing. Four of them are watching our every move through c.h.i.n.ks in these walls; our first move toward escape would bring them upon us."

Trakor's eyes roved about the hut's sides. He could see no signs of gleaming eyes peering in on them, but long ago he had learned never to doubt Tharn's ability to know things beyond the evident.

His voice went down. "Can they hear us?"

"Of course," Tharn said. "But that does not mean they can understand us. We do not speak their tongue, so we need not worry of being overheard."

"But what can we _do_?" Trakor demanded for the second time.

"At present, nothing. There is a way for us to escape but it depends on them leaving us here until Dyta finds his lair for the night."

"And if they don't leave us here until dark?"

Tharn's smile appeared again. "Would you cheat them of their pleasure by worrying yourself to death?"

Trakor digested that in silence, seeing the wisdom in his friend's quiet words. He found his fear lessening fast; there was something in Tharn's calm acceptance of their present difficulty that inspired confidence in their eventual escape.

With the waning of his own fear he found room for concern about someone else. "Tharn!" he gasped. "Are these the ones who captured Dylara?"

A somber expression crept into the cave lord's eyes. "I am sure of it."

"Do you think that they have ... that they...." He could not finish.