Almuric, Robert E. Howard [love books to read .txt] 📗

world? In that instant I would gladly have returned to Earth

and the gallows that awaited me, rather than face the nameless terrors

with which imagination peopled my new-found world. But I was soon to

learn that those thews I now despised were capable of carrying me

through greater perils than I dreamed.

 

A slight sound behind me brought me around to stare amazedly at the

first inhabitant of Almuric I was to encounter. And the sight, awesome

and menacing as it was, yet drove the ice from my veins and brought

back some of my dwindling courage. The tangible and material can never

be as grisly as the unknown, however perilous.

 

At my first startled glance I thought it was a gorilla which stood

before me. Even with the thought I realized that it was a man, but

such a man as neither I nor any other Earthman had ever looked upon.

 

He was not much taller than I, but broader and heavier, with a great

spread of shoulders, and thick limbs knotted with muscles. He wore a

loincloth of some silklike material girdled with a broad belt which

supported a long knife in a leather sheath. High-strapped sandals were

on his feet. These details I took in at a glance, my attention being

instantly fixed in fascination on his face.

 

Such a countenance it is difficult to imagine or describe. The head

was set squarely between the massive shoulders, the neck so squat as

to be scarcely apparent. The jaw was square and powerful, and as the

wide thin lips lifted in a snarl, I glimpsed brutal tusklike teeth. A

short bristly beard masked the jaw, set off by fierce, up-curving

mustaches. The nose was almost rudimentary, with wide flaring

nostrils. The eyes were small, bloodshot, and an icy gray in color.

From the thick black brows the forehead, low and receding, sloped back

into a tangle of coarse, bushy hair. The ears were small and very

close-set.

 

The mane and beard were very blue-black, and the creature’s limbs

and body were almost covered with hair of the same hue. He was not,

indeed, as hairy as an ape, but he was hairier than any human being I

had ever seen.

 

I instantly realized that the being, hostile or not, was a

formidable figure. He fairly emanated strength—hard, raw, brutal

power. There was not an ounce of surplus flesh on him. His frame was

massive, with heavy bones. His hairy skin rippled with muscles that

looked iron-hard. Yet it was not altogether his body that spoke of

dangerous power. His look, his carriage, his whole manner reflected a

terrible physical might backed by a cruel and implacable mind. As I

met the blaze of his bloodshot eyes, I felt a wave of corresponding

anger. The stranger’s attitude was arrogant and provocative beyond

description. I felt my muscles tense and harden instinctively.

 

But for an instant my resentment was submerged by the amazement with

which I heard him speak in perfect English!

 

“Thak! What manner of man are you?”

 

His voice was harsh, grating and insulting. There was nothing

subdued or restrained about him. Here were the naked primitive

instincts and manners, unmodified. Again I felt the old red fury

rising in me, but I fought it down.

 

“I am Esau Cairn,” I answered shortly, and halted, at a loss how to

explain my presence on his planet.

 

His arrogant eyes roved contemptuously over my hairless limbs and

smooth face, and when he spoke, it was with unbearable scorn.

 

“By Thak, are you a man or a woman?”

 

My answer was a smash of my clenched fist that sent him rolling on

the sward.

 

The act was instinctive. Again my primitive wrath had betrayed me.

But I had no time for self-reproach. With a scream of bestial rage my

enemy sprang up and rushed at me, roaring and frothing. I met him

breast to breast, as reckless in my wrath as he, and in an instant was

fighting for my life.

 

I, who had always had to restrain and hold down my strength lest I

injure my fellow men, for the first time in my life found myself in

the clutches of a man stronger than myself. This I realized in the

first instant of impact, and it was only by the most desperate efforts

that I fought clear of his crushing embrace.

 

The fight was short and deadly. The only thing that saved me was the

fact that my antagonist knew nothing of boxing. He could—and did—

strike powerful blows with his clenched fists, but they were clumsy,

ill-timed and erratic. Thrice I mauled my way out of grapples that

would have ended with the snapping of my spine. He had no knack of

avoiding blows; no man on Earth could have survived the terrible

battering I gave him. Yet he incessantly surged in on me, his mighty

hands spread to drag me down. His nails were almost like talons, and I

was quickly bleeding from a score of places where they had torn the

skin.

 

Why he did not draw his dagger I could not understand, unless it was

because he considered himself capable of crushing me with his bare

hands—which proved to be the case. At last, half blinded by my

smashes, blood gushing from his split ears and splintered teeth, he

did reach for his weapon, and the move won the fight for me.

 

Breaking out of a half-clinch, he straightened out of his defensive

crouch and drew his dagger. And as he did so, I hooked my left into

his belly with all the might of my heavy shoulders and powerfully

driving legs behind it. The breath went out of him in an explosive

gasp, and my fist sank to the wrist in his belly. He swayed, his mouth

flying open, and I smashed my right to his sagging jaw. The punch

started at my hip, and carried every ounce of my weight and strength.

He went down like a slaughtered ox and lay without twitching, blood

spreading out over his beard. That last smash had torn his lip open

from the corner of his mouth to the rim of his chin, and must surely

have fractured his jawbone as well.

 

Panting from the fury of the bout, my muscles aching from his

crushing grasp, I worked my raw, skinned knuckles, and stared down at

my victim, wondering if I had sealed my doom. Surely, I could expect

nothing now but hostility from the people of Almuric. Well, I thought,

as well be hanged for a sheep as a goat. Stooping, I despoiled my

adversary of his single garment, belt and weapon, and transferred them

to my own frame. This done, I felt some slight renewal of confidence.

At least I was partly clothed and armed.

 

I examined the dagger with much interest. A more murderous weapon I

have never seen. The blade was perhaps nineteen inches in length,

double-edged, and sharp as a razor. It was broad at the haft, tapering

to a diamond point. The guard and pommel were of silver, the hilt

covered with a substance somewhat like shagreen. The blade was

indisputably steel, but of a quality I had never before encountered.

The whole was a triumph of the weapon-maker’s art, and seemed to

indicate a high order of culture.

 

From my admiration of my newly acquired weapon, I turned again to my

victim, who was beginning to show signs of returning consciousness.

Instinct caused me to sweep the grasslands, and in the distance, to

the south, I saw a group of figures moving toward me. They were surely

men, and armed men. I caught the flash of the sunlight on steel.

Perhaps they were of the tribe of my adversary. If they found me

standing over their senseless comrade, wearing the spoils of conquest,

their attitude toward me was not hard to visualize.

 

I cast my eyes about for some avenue of escape or refuge, and saw

that the plain, some distance away, ran up into low green-clad

foothills. Beyond these in turn, I saw larger hills, marching up and

up in serried ranges. Another glance showed the distant figures to

have vanished among the tall grass along one of the river courses,

which they must cross before they reached the spot where I stood.

 

Waiting for no more, I turned and ran swiftly toward the hills. I

did not lessen my pace until I reached the foot of the first

foothills, where I ventured to look back, my breath coming in gasps,

and my heart pounding suffocatingly from my exertions. I could see my

antagonist, a small shape in the vastness of the plain. Further on,

the group I was seeking to avoid had come into the open and were

hastening toward him.

 

I hurried up the low slope, drenched with sweat and trembling with

fatigue. At the crest I looked back once more, to see the figures

clustered about my vanquished opponent. Then I went down the opposite

slope quickly, and saw them no more.

 

An hour’s journeying brought me into as rugged a country as I have

ever seen. On all sides rose steep slopes, littered with loose

boulders, which threatened to roll down upon the wayfarer. Bare stone

cliffs, reddish in color, were much in evidence. There was little

vegetation, except for low stunted trees, of which the spread of their

branches was equal to the height of the trunk, and several varieties

of thorny bushes, upon some of which grew nuts of peculiar shape and

color. I broke open several of these, finding the kernel to be rich

and meaty in appearance, but I dared not eat it, although I was

feeling the bite of hunger.

 

My thirst bothered me more than my hunger, and this at least I was

able to satisfy, although the satisfying nearly cost me my life. I

clambered down a precipitous steep and entered a narrow valley,

enclosed by lofty cliffs, at the foot of which the nut-bearing bushes

grew in great abundance. In the middle of the valley lay a broad pool,

apparently fed by a spring. In the center of the pool the water

bubbled continuously, and a small stream led off down the valley.

 

I approached the pool eagerly, and lying on my belly at its

lush-grown marge, plunged my muzzle into the crystal-clear water. It, too,

might be lethal for an Earthman, for all I knew, but I was so maddened

with thirst that I risked it. It had an unusual tang, a quality I have

always found present in Almuric water, but it was deliciously cold and

satisfying. So pleasant it was to my parched lips that after I had

satisfied my thirst, I lay there enjoying the sensation of

tranquility. That was a mistake. Eat quickly, drink quickly, sleep

lightly, and linger not over anything—those are the first rules of

the wild, and his life is not long who fails to observe them.

 

The warmth of the sun, the bubbling of the water, the sensuous

feeling of relaxation and satiation after fatigue and thirst—these

wrought on me like an opiate to lull me into semislumber. It must have

been some subconscious instinct that warned me, when a faint swishing

reached my ears that was not part of the rippling of the spring. Even

before my mind translated the sound as the passing of a heavy body

through the tall grass, I whirled on my side, snatching at my poniard.

 

Simultaneously my ears were stunned with a deafening roar, there was

a rushing through the air, and a giant form crashed down where I had

lain an instant before, so close to me that its outspread talons raked

my thigh. I had no time to