Almuric, Robert E. Howard [love books to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Robert E. Howard
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I wheeled on one knee, to see the air above me thronged with dark
shapes. The Yagas! The winged men of Almuric! I had half believed them
a myth; yet here they were in all their mysterious terror.
I had but a glance as I reared up, clubbing my empty carbine. I saw
that they were tall and rangy in build, sinewy and powerful, with ebon
skins. They seemed made like ordinary men, except for the great
leathery batlike wings which grew from their shoulders. They were
naked except for loincloths, and were armed with short curved blades.
I rose on my toes as the first swooped in, scimitar lifted, and met
him with a swing of my carbine that broke off the stock and crushed
his narrow skull like an eggshell. The next instant they were whirling
and thrashing about me, their curved blades licking at me like jets of
lightning from all sides, the very number of their broad wings
hampering them.
Whirling the carbine barrel in a wheel about me, I broke and beat
back the flickering blades, and in a furious exchange of strokes,
caught another a glancing blow on the head that stretched him
senseless at my feet. Then a wild despairing cry rang out behind me,
and abruptly the rush slackened.
The whole pack was in the air, racing southward, and I stood frozen.
In the arms of one of them writhed and shrieked a slender white
figure, stretching out imploring arms to me. Altha! They had snatched
her up from behind my back, and were carrying her away to whatever
doom awaited her in that black citadel of mystery far to the south.
The terrific velocity with which the Yagas raced through the sky was
already taking them out of my sight.
As I stood there baffled, I felt a movement at my feet. Looking down
I saw one of my victims sit up and feel his head dazedly. I vengefully
lifted my carbine barrel to dash out his brains; then a sudden thought
struck me, inspired by the ease with which Altha’s captor had carried
both his weight and hers in the air.
Drawing my poniard, I dragged my captive to his feet. Standing erect
he was taller than I, with shoulders equally broad, though his limbs
were lean and wiry rather than massive. His dark eyes, which slanted
slightly, regarded me with the unblinking stare of a venomous serpent.
The Guras had told me the Yagas spoke a tongue similar to their own.
“You are going to carry me through the air in pursuit of your
companions,” I said.
He shrugged his shoulders and spoke in a peculiarly harsh voice.
“I cannot carry your weight.”
“Then that’s too bad for you,” I answered grimly, and whirling him
about, I leaped upon his back, locking my legs about his waist. My
left arm was hooked about his neck, the poniard in my right hand
pricked his side. He had kept his feet under the impact of my bulk,
spreading his great wings.
“Take the air!” I snarled in his ear, sinking the dagger point into
his flesh. “Fly, damn you, or I’ll cut your heart out!”
His wings began to thrash the air, and we rose slowly from the
earth. It was a most sensational experience, but one to which I gave
scant thought at the time, being so engrossed in my fury at the
abduction of Altha.
When we had risen to a height of about a thousand feet, I looked for
the abductors, and saw them far away, a mere group of black dots in
the southern sky. After them I steered my reluctant steed.
In spite of my threats and urging for greater speed the flying dots
soon vanished. Still I kept on due southward, feeling that even if I
failed to overtake them, I would eventually come to the great dusky
rock where legend placed their habitation.
Inspired by my poniard, my bearer made good time, considering the
burden he was carrying. For hours we sped over the savannas, and by
the middle of the afternoon, the landscape changed. We were flying
over a forest, the first I had seen on Almuric. The trees seemed to
tower to a vast height.
It was near sundown when I saw the farther limits of the forest, and
in the grasslands beyond, the ruins of a city. From among these ruins
smoke curled upward, and I asked my steed if his companions were
cooking their evening meal there. His only answer was a snarl.
We were flying low over the forest, when a sudden uproar caused me
to look down. We were just passing over a narrow glade, and in it a
terrific battle was taking place. A pack of hyenas had attacked a
giant unicornlike beast, as big as a bison. Half a dozen mangled,
trampled bodies attested the fury of the beast’s defense, and even as
I peered down, he caught the single survivor on his swordlike ivory
horn, and cast it a score of feet in the air, broken and torn.
In the brief fascination of the sight, I must have involuntarily
loosened my grasp on my captive. For at that instant, with a
convulsive bucking heave and twist, he wrenched free and hurled me
sideways. Caught off guard, I clutched vainly at empty air, and
rushing earthward, crashed with a stunning impact on the loamy
leaf-carpeted earth, directly in front of the maddened unicorn!
I had a dazed brief glimpse of his mountainous bulk looming over me,
as his massive lowered head drove his horn at my breast. Then I
lurched up on one knee, simultaneously grasping that ivory sword with
my left hand and seeking to deflect it, while my right hand drove my
poniard up toward the great jugular. Then there came a terrific impact
against my skull, and consciousness was blotted out in darkness.
I could have been senseless only a few minutes. When I regained
consciousness my first sensation was that of a crushing weight upon my
limbs and body. Struggling weakly, I found that I was lying beneath
the lifeless body of a unicorn. At the instant my poniard had torn
open his great jugular vein, the base of his horn must have struck my
head, while the vast body collapsed upon me. Only the soft spongy
ground beneath me had saved me from being crushed to a pulp. Working
myself out from under that bulk was a herculean task, but eventually I
accomplished it, and stood up, bruised and breathless, with the
half-dried blood of the monster clotted in my hair and smearing my limbs.
I was a grisly sight to look at, but I wasted no time on my appearance.
My erstwhile steed was nowhere in evidence, and the circling trees
limited my view of the sky.
Selecting the tallest of these trees, I climbed it as swiftly as
possible, and on the topmost branches, looked out over the forest. The
sun was setting. I saw that perhaps an hour’s swift walk to the south,
the forest thinned out and ceased. Smoke still drifted thinly up from
the deserted city. And I saw my former captive just dropping down
among the ruins. He must have lingered, after he had overthrown me,
possibly to see if I showed any signs of life, probably to rest his
wings after that long grind.
I cursed; there went my chance of stealing up on them unsuspected.
Then I got a surprise. No sooner had the Yaga vanished than he
reappeared, shooting up out of the city like a rocket. Without
hesitation he raced off southward, speeding through the sky at a rate
that left me gaping. What was the reason for his flight? If it had
been his companions who were among the ruins, why had he not alighted?
Perhaps he had found them gone, and was merely following them. Yet his
actions seemed strange, considering the leisurely way he had
approached the ruins. His flight had the earmarks of panic.
Shaking my head in puzzlement, I descended the tree and set out for
the ruins as swiftly as I could make my way through the dense growth,
paying no heed to the rustling in the leaves about me, and the
muttering of rousing life, that grew as the shadows deepened.
Night had fallen when I emerged from the forest, but the moon was
rising, casting a weird unreal glow over the plains. The ruins
glimmered ghostily in the near distance. The walls were not of the
rough greenish material used by the Guras. As I approached I saw they
were of marble, and that fact caused a vague uneasiness to stir in my
mind. I remembered legends told by the Kothans of ruined marble cities
haunted by ghoulish beings. Such ruins were found in certain
uninhabited places, and none knew their origin.
A brooding silence lay over the broken walls and columns as I
entered the ruins. Between the gleaming white tusks and surfaces deep
black shadow floated, almost liquid in its quality. From one dusky
pool to the other I glided silently, sword in hand, expecting anything
from an ambush by the Yagas to an attack by some lurking beast of
prey. Utter silence reigned, as I had never encountered it anywhere on
Almuric before. Not a distant lion roared, not a night fowl voiced its
weird cry. I might have been the last survivor on a dead world.
In silence I came to a great open space, flanked by a circle of
broken pillars, which must have been a plaza. Here I halted,
motionless, my skin crawling.
In the midst of the plaza smoldered the dying coals of a fire over
which, on spits planted in the earth, were roasting pieces of meat.
The Yagas had evidently built that fire and—prepared to sup; but they
had not eaten of their meal. They lay strewn about the plaza in a way
to appall the hardiest.
I had never gazed on such a scene of organic devastation. Hands,
feet, grinning heads, bits of flesh, entrails, clots of blood littered
the whole plaza. The heads were like balls of blackness, rolled out of
the shadows against the snowy marble; their teeth grinned, their eyes
glimmered palely in the moonlight. Something had come upon the
winged men as they sat about their fire and had torn them limb from
limb. On the remnants of flesh were the marks of fangs, and some of
the bones had been broken, apparently to get the marrow.
A cold ripple went up and down my spine. What animal but man breaks
bones in that fashion? But the scattering of the bloody remnants
seemed not the work of beasts; it seemed too vindictive, as if it were
the work of vengeance, fury or bestial blood-thirstiness.
Where, then, was Altha? Her remains were not among those of her
captors. Glancing at the flesh on the spit, the configuration of the
pieces set me to shuddering. Shaken with horror, I saw that my dark
suspicions were correct. It was parts of a human body the accursed
Yagas had been roasting for their meal. Sick with revulsion and dread,
I examined the pitiful remnants more closely, and breathed a deep sigh
of relief to see the thick muscular limbs of a man, and not the
slender parts of a woman. But after that I looked unmoved at the torn
bloody bits that had been Yagas.
But where was the girl? Had she escaped the slaughter and hidden
herself, or had she been taken by the slayers? Looking about at the
towers and fallen blocks and pillars, bathed in the weird moonlight, I
was aware of
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