Carter, Lin - Zanthodon 4 - Darya Of The Bronze Age

VIP免费
2024-12-16 0 0 263.11KB 115 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Darya of the Bronze Age
Darya of the Bronze Age
by Lin Carter
Part One
PRINCESS IN PERIL
Chapter 1 KIDNAPPED!
Darya of Thandar struggled helplessly in the iron grip of the giant Moor, Achmed, as he bore her
through the jungles of Zanthodon. Thorny boughs whipped the naked thighs and kicking legs of the
captive Cro-Magnon princess, sharpedged leaves scored her bare shoulders and panting young breasts.
She writhed furiously, but in vain, against the powerful arms of the Moor which encircled her slim body
and against whose burly strength she was as helpless as a babe.
Events had transpired so swiftly that Darya was still dazed by the suddenness of her transition from
freedom to captivity. One moment she had been torn from the safety of her tribe by the wily Xask and
the treacherous Fumio-the next instant the Barbary Pirates had seized her from her captors and now bore
her hastily through the jungles of the Underground World to the safety of their ship, the Red Witch.
All too well did the Cro-Magnon cavegirl know what fate awaited her aboard the red-sailed galley. Only
the courage and daring of her young fellow tribesman, Jorn the Hunter, had rescued her from the lustful
embrace of the pirate chieftain, Kairadine Redbeard. To be recaptured so soon- after winning her
freedom was cruel . . . and where now was Jorn the Hunter? Where, for that matter, was the mysterious
black-haired man from the Upper World who called himself Eric Carstairs?
Who, in all of the Underground World, could save her from slavery in the harems of the savage corsairs?
Her heart sank within her breast as she contemplated the grim destiny which lay before her ....
Achmed grinned triumphantly, white teeth flashing in his swarthy visage. The mighty Moor had been
assigned the task of recapturing the Cro-Magnon girl when she had so curiously vanished from the
galley. Her escape had aroused the rage and fury of Achmed's captain, Kairadine Redbeard, as much as
her youthful and vibrant Loveliness had aroused his lust and desire to possess her.
Privately, the burly Moor thought little of this assignment. To his way of thinking, the differences
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lin%20Carter%20-%20...odon%204%20-%20Darya%20Of%20The%20Bronze%20Age.htm (1 of 115)16-2-2006 15:44:58
Darya of the Bronze Age
between one woman and another were minimal-and the fortress isle of El-Cazar, mountainous
stronghold of the Barbary Pirates, held many beautiful women . . . not the least of whom was the
voluptuous and passionate Zoraida, Redbeard's mistress, and Achmed's chief rival for closeness to the
Prince of the Barbary corsairs.
To devote such time and energy to regaining one skinny, freckle-nosed, golden-haired savage girl
seemed ridiculous to Achmed. Still, he had thought to himself with gloomy resignation and a
philosophical shrug, an order is an order. And such as Kairadine Redbeard, master of El-Cazar and
seventh in direct succession from the feared and ferocious Khair ud-Din of Algiers, do not view
insubordination as a light offense.
As for Fumio, the renegade Thandarian warrior, whom his men had taken captive at the same time as
Darya, Achmed had certain reservations. But Kairadine Redbeard had commanded the Moor to fetch
back both the Cro-Magnon cavegirl and her young jungle sweetheart-for so he had assumed Jorn the
Hunter to be-and Achmed did not dare to disobey.
He was aware by now, was the Barbary pirate, that his second captive was another than the boy Jorn,
whom Kairadine ravished to punish for his untimely interruption of the ravishing of Darya, and also for
the almost unthinkable crime he had committed, for the jungle boy had sprung upon Redbeard and
almost throttled the life out of him before taking flight with the girl.
But Achmed the Moor had not survived this long in the dog-eat-dog world of El-Cazar without
developing cunning. And, having never more than glimpsed the boy Jorn, and that from a distance, he
believed that he could safely get away with the pretense that, having captured the man in company with
the girl, he took it for granted that the Cro-Magnon warrior was in fact Jorn.
He was clever, was Achmed; and he was a born survivor.
He was a magnificent figure of a man, was this Achmed of El-Cazar. Although his fellow pirates
disparaged him for his "taint" of Moorish blood (being themselves mostly descended from pure Arab
stock), he was swarthy rather than ebon-hued. Only his thick lips and kinky beard attested to his Negroid
heritage. Beneath his voluminous turban, his bullet-head was clean-shaven; gold hoops bobbled in the
lobes of his ears. Gold armlets clasped his burly arms; charms and fetishes, many of precious metals
were strung on gold chains about his thickly-corded throat and fell upon his deep chest; he wore an open
vest of red felt with gold froggings and loose, baggy pantaloons of pale green silk, whose bottoms were
tucked into the tops of his calf-high boots of scarlet leather with up-curled toes. A wide sash of mustard-
yellow and vermilion was wound about his thick waist; therein were thrust a long, curved scimitar very
much like the cutlasses of the Spanish Main, a brace of wickedly-hooked daggers, and a fat purse of
green leather fashioned from the hide of giant reptiles.
He was a towering man with broad, sloping shoulders and heavy, apelike arms, a figure of barbaric
splendor. Cruelty showed in the curve of his thick lips; avarice marked his hooked nose with the flaring
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lin%20Carter%20-%20...odon%204%20-%20Darya%20Of%20The%20Bronze%20Age.htm (2 of 115)16-2-2006 15:44:58
Darya of the Bronze Age
nostrils; but intelligence and loyalty could be read in his sharp eyes.
Such was Achmed of El-Cazar, first mate of the Red Witch and crony and confidant of Kairadine
Redbeard himself, dreaded Prince of the Barbary Pirates.
And into such hands had Darya of Thandar fallen a helpless captive . . .
In the forefront of the band of corsairs which Kairadine had dispatched to bring back the fleeing Cro-
Magnon girl was one Tarbu-a lean, famished-looking rogue whose longjawed, lank-cheeked, clean-
shaven visage was rendered vicious and sinister by the jagged, zigzag knife scar which stretched from
the corner of one eye to one corner of his thinupped mouth, causing a perpetual, menacing leer. He wore
a loose, torn blouse of white silk open to the navel, whose voluminous sleeves flapped about his scrawny
arms, while his bony shanks were clad in tight trousers of fawn-colored leather, much stained with
seawater and blotches of spilt wine and scabs of dried gravy. He wore high-heeled seaboots with silver
buckles upon the instep, and in one thin, strong hand he clenched the hilt of a cutlass whose blade was
nicked and dented.
This Tarbu suddenly raised one arm for attention, halting the pirates behind him.
"What transpires, O Tarbu?" growled the Moor, his arms full of struggling naked cavegirl.
"The jungles end here, my chieftain," panted Tarbu, peering through the curtain of foliage. "Beyond lie
the beaches upon which our longboats were drawn."
"Is aught in sight, then?" demanded Achmed.
"I see no one," admitted the other.
Without further ado the Barbary Pirates left the jungle and dragged their longboats from under the cover
of thick bushes where they had been concealed against chance discovery.
They began to board the vessels.
Before them stretched an astounding vista: steamy seas which extended into the misty distance where
there uprose, instead of the blue and open skies, a titanic rocky wall which rose beyond the ability of the
human eye to perceive its ending. And, in very truth, it did not end: for this was Zanthodon, the
Underground World, a time-forgotten land far beneath the Earth's crust into which had fled for refuge
from a thousand ages and millions of years the last survivors of their kind . . . the mighty dinosaurs of
the primal Dawn . . . the shaggy cavebears and burly aurochs of the Ice Age, and their contemporaries,
the hairy-pelted Neanderthal savages and the tall, handsome, blond Cro-Magnon warriors who were
their perpetual foes . . . and other strange survivals, too, from lost eras, like the Barbary Pirates
themselves, hounded from the Mediterranean by the avenging fleets of Europe . . . and the mysterious
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lin%20Carter%20-%20...odon%204%20-%20Darya%20Of%20The%20Bronze%20Age.htm (3 of 115)16-2-2006 15:44:58
Darya of the Bronze Age
Dragonmen of Zar, who were the last surviving colony of lost Minoan Crete, the very original of
fabulous Atlantis itself.
Some strange trick of phosphorescence causes the domed roof of the subterranean world to glow with a
ceaseless luminosity that is not unlike the golden radiance of late afternoon. Below that eternal daylit
"sky" stretch unknown rivers, trackless jungles, impassable mountain ranges, vast plains where roam
herds of mastodons and woolly mammoths-and the enormous expanse of the Sogar-Jad itself, strangest
and most unique of all of the seas of this world-the Underground Sea, upon whose watery surface have
never gleamed the light of sun or moon or stars.
And there, moored in a deep lagoon formed by the sheltering arm of the jungle-clad promontory
wherefrom the corsair band had just emerged rode at anchor that proud galley, the Red Witch!
It has been many generations, even centuries, since such a vessel plied the foaming waves of the Upper
World. Gone from our seas and receding into the history books are such galleys as the Red Witch, with
her booming sails and lean black hull and rigging that sings like harpstrings in the winds.
No less a survivor from lost ages than the mighty beasts that roam and rule the savage jungles of the
Underground World was the Red Witch . . . a vision of breathtaking romance would she have seemed to
you or me, like some craft come a-sailing out of the golden pages of Treasure Island or Captain Blood or
Porto Bello Gold ....
But to Darya of Thandar she was a thing of horror, like a floating prison. For all that the beautiful young
Cro-Magnon girl knew and loved lay behind her in the vast plains and mighty jungles of the
subterranean continent.
And all that lay ahead for her from this moment was a dreadful fate in the lustful arms of Kairadine
Redbeard and a miserable and degrading captivity in the harems or dungeons of El-Cazar.
As the longboats left the beach and the oars plied the foaming waters of the Sogar-Jad, Darya cast one
mournful and despairing glance behind her as the jungle-clad continent receded into the mists of the
distance.
Then unbidden tears blurred her vision, and the unhappy girl could see no more.
Chapter 2 THARN THE AVENGED.
It was the cruelest irony that, even in the nadir of her hopelessness and despair, the blond cavegirl knew
all too well that help and rescue were not far away.
Only recently had the black-haired soldier of fortune from the Upper World, Eric Carstairs, led the
captive warriors of the two Cro-Magnon tribes of Thandar and Sothar into freedom from their dire
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lin%20Carter%20-%20...odon%204%20-%20Darya%20Of%20The%20Bronze%20Age.htm (4 of 115)16-2-2006 15:44:58
Darya of the Bronze Age
captivity in the cavern city of the Gorpaks and the Sluaggh. Only a little while before the Barbary Pirates
had carried off Darya had she and her people emerged from the caverns of the Peaks of Peril, to taste-in
her case, but briefly-the daylight, the open air and freedom.
At the very moment the longboats left the beach and crossed the misty lagoon to where the Red Witch
rode at anchor, Eric Carstairs and burly Hurok of Kor, Jorn the Hunter, and her mighty sire, Tharn the
jungle monarch, Omad of Thandar, were not very far away. That they were searching for her at that very
instant was her firm conviction.
And it was quite true. The warriors of Thandar and Sothar were even then combing the jungles of the
promontory in search of Xask and Fumio, who had carried off Darya and my friend, the elderly scientist,
Professor Percival P. Potter, Ph.D. At that moment the warriors had not yet discovered the corpse of the
brutal Neanderthal, One-Eye, and had no idea that Darya and the Professor had eluded the clutches of
Xask and Fumio, to run straight into the arms of Achmed the Moor and his band of corsairs. The time
yet lay some little ways in the immediate future when we would discover the corpse of One-Eye and
would surmise that it had been the Barbary Pirates who had carried off the Cro-Magnon Princess just
after she had concealed Professor Potter in the tree where we later found him.
Help and rescue were, then, almost at hand. Only moments divided the blond cavegirl from the arrival of
her stalwart friends.
But-as she knew all too well-we had no way of sailing out upon the steamy waters of the prehistoric
ocean, or of either following or attacking the corsair galley.
And that sealed her fate ....
At the point in time when Darya of Thandar was carried off by the Barbary Pirates while the rest of us
remained behind, shortly to pursue her rescue, my narrative of these adventures parts into two separate
but parallel courses. One of these courses I have already followed at length in the third volume of these
memoirs of my experiences in Zanthodon the Underground World. This volume traces my pursuit of
Darya with a small band of warriors, which resulted in my capture by the Dragonmen of Zar and the
many perils and adventures which transpired during my captivity in the Scarlet City, and of those which
occurred to my friends Hurok and Jorn and the others who sought to free me from the grasp of Zarys the
Divine Empress of the ancient Minoan colony.
The second course, which consists of the dangers experienced by Darya herself in the corsair stronghold
of El-Cazar, the present volume will trace. But it will be obvious to the reader of these adventures that
the narratives, while separate in viewpoint, occupy the same interval of time.
It has, then, already been told how we emerged at length from the cavern city, having slaughtered the
vicious Gorpaks, exterminated their loathsome masters, the vampiric Sluagghs, and freed the pallid and
listless cavern people, their slaves. And it has also been told how we learned of the carrying-off of
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lin%20Carter%20-%20...odon%204%20-%20Darya%20Of%20The%20Bronze%20Age.htm (5 of 115)16-2-2006 15:44:58
Darya of the Bronze Age
Darya, how we sped in pursuit of the stolen Princess, discovered the corpse of One-Eye whom Achmed
had cut down, rescued the Professor from his tree, and followed with all haste upon the trail of Darya
and the pirates, only to be diverted by the Dragonmen of Zar.
When the warriors of the twin tribes of Thandar and Sothar came out of the cavern city, they also
followed on the trail of the kidnapped Princess. That same third volume of these memoirs gave an
account of how young Yualla. daughter of Garth, was borne away by a thakdol (as the men of
Zanthodon call that grisly flying dragon of Earth's remotest dawn, the dreaded pterodactyl), and of how
the Sothar tribe parted company with the tribe of Thandar, the Sotharians heading across the great plains
of the north toward the mountainous rampart which guarded the secret access into Zar in order to find
Yualla, while the tribe of Thandar continued their pursuit of Darya and the corsairs.
The mighty Tharn, Omad or High Chief of Thandar, determined to follow the coastline of the
underground continent in the same direction taken by the Red Witch. So very recently had his long-lost
daughter and heir been recovered, only to be thieved from him again, that the jungle monarch with
stubborn and redoubled resoluteness swore to follow upon her trail to the very ends of the world, rather
than give over the quest.
He and his warriors traversed the promontory, gained the northern plains, and followed the coastline as
it meandered "north." When in the fullness of time the tribe of Sothar sundered their common path with
their brother Cro-Magnons, he remained grimly determined to continue the quest alone, if needed. If his
daughter had been slain by her cruel captors, at very least he could avenge her murder by the
slaughtering of "The-Men-Who-Ride-Upon-Water"- which was the name by which his people termed
the Pirates of Barbary.
The Red Witch had set sail upon the steamy waters of Sogar-Jad, the Underground Sea, her crimson
sails filled with the lusty winds, her sharp prow cleaving the waves. For too long had the Pirates been
absent from their island stronghold of El-Cazar, busied with raiding the Cro-Magnon villages of the
coast and the dwellers upon the isles of the Sogar-Jad. The hold of the galley was full to bursting with
plunder looted from the savages, and with slaves taken during such raids.
Also was it full of stores of food. For the rocky island of El-Cazar presents a stony soil too hostile, too
scourged by the salt winds, to raise crops. In order to survive, the corsairs must loot the granaries and
orchards and hunting grounds of the Cro-Magnons that shared this subterranean world with them. For
they are great hunters, the blond and stalwart savages of tribes such as Thandar and Sothar: the plump
and timid uld (or eohippus) fall to their arrows, as do the ungainly half-feathered reptile birds, the
zomaks (or archeopteryx). But favored as game above all other of the bestial denizens of the
Underground World, the Cro-Magnon huntsmen prize the mastodon and the woolly mammoth, whose
titanic bulk provides rich feasts for an entire tribe at one kill. And the Barbary Pirates have grown very
fond of mammoth steaks ....
Because of the burden of such plunder, the pirate galley rode low in the water and but sluggishly were
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lin%20Carter%20-%20...odon%204%20-%20Darya%20Of%20The%20Bronze%20Age.htm (6 of 115)16-2-2006 15:44:58
Darya of the Bronze Age
its full sails impelled by the gusting winds. For a time, therefore, were the pursuing warriors of the tribe
of Thandar able to perceive, however remotely, the bright red sails of the corsair vessel-tantalizingly
near but elusively distant.
Soon, however, it vanished in the mists which the cold winds of the upper cavernworld roof drove from
the fetid and slimy waves. Nevertheless, by this point, the eagle eyes of the Thandarian scouts and
huntsmen had discerned the direction of its voyage, and the pursuit continued at a relentless pace.
Could Tharn the Avenger have known what was transpiring within the corsair galley, he would have
driven his warriors forward at an even more relentless pace.
For as soon as the captive Cro-Magnon girl had been carried aboard by Achmed the Moor and his band,
the longboats were stored away and the ship itself, weighing anchor, set forth on its voyage to El-Cazar,
and Kairadine Redbeard repaired to his cabin to enjoy the long-delayed consummation of his desires.
The Prince of Pirates had many wives and concubines, but Darya of Thandar was something
refreshingly and deliciously new to his experience. While the women of El-Cazar (with the single
exception of the dancing-girl, Zoraida) were soft and pliable and complaisant, zestlessly yielding to the
demands of their master and monarch, the bronzed and supple teenager had fought him with the ferocity
of an adolescent virgin Amazon. This intrigued the captain of the Red Witch, and goaded his jaded
lustfulness to a pitch of excitement rarely in recent months attained.
Beyond that, the girl was irresistible in her loveliness. My beloved Darya was truly the most beautiful
woman I have ever seen or known-temptingly youthful, with long slender legs, lithe and supple, her
tanned and golden body tantalizingly bare; her face the soft and oval face of a pubescent child, with
sweet full lips the color of rose petals, wide, dark-lashed eyes the innocent blue of rain-washed April
skies, her long curling mane the ripe gold of cornsilk. And her proud, firm, tip-tilted breasts were
flawless in their utter perfection.
As soon as the Red Witch was well under sail, Kairadine Redbeard turned over his quarterdeck to his
first mate, Achmed the Moor, and repaired to his cabin. He entered the long, low-ceilinged room to find
the exquisite Cro-Magnon maid bound and spread-eagled, her slim wrists tethered to the beams of the
ceiling, her legs spread also, with ankles chained to rings bolted to the floor.
The tall, saturnine pirate chieftain looked over her slim nakedness with a slow, deliberate, gloating gaze
before which the helpless girl colored crimson with fury.
But not with shame! For the Cro-Magnons have never developed the pervertedly Puritanical pruderies
which have oppressed us of the western world. In their humid jungles they indifferently bare their bodies
before each other, when necessary, and think little of the exposure. Even when clothed, their garments
are brief to the point of being X-rated: the men generally wear little more than a bit of fur twisted about
the loins and buskins upon their feet, or, at most, an abbreviated apron-like garment upon the loins.
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lin%20Carter%20-%20...odon%204%20-%20Darya%20Of%20The%20Bronze%20Age.htm (7 of 115)16-2-2006 15:44:58
Darya of the Bronze Age
While the women commonly wear the same, with a length of fur covering one breast and shoulder,
leaving the other bare.
Nakedness is a condition into which all of us are born. It is natural to the human animal. Shame of one's
body, on the other hand, has to be carefully taught, and learned.
But no woman enjoys being looked at as Kairadine was then looking at Darya. For this reason she
colored with fury, but not with shame.
The tall, turbaned man grinned at her evilly, white teeth flashing in his swarthy visage. He toyed with
the trim little edge of beard which fringed his lean jaw and which was either naturally red or dyed so, in
imitation of his famous ancestor, Khair ud-Din, called Barbarossa, or Redbeard. And he sent a level,
mocking glance into her furious, stormy eyes.
"You have been brought back to me, savage girl, so that we can continue that which was begun in this
cabin ere yet the savage boy interrupted our pleasuring. You are alone and helpless and totally in my
power; there is nothing else you can do but submit to my every wish, to my slightest whim . . . and
submit you shall, whether you will or no, for I am stronger than you, and every man on this ship is mine
to command," he said, in her tongue.
"I shall never submit to such as you," hissed Darya of Thandar between clenched teeth, her eyes
smoldering with blue volcanic fires.
Kairadine laughed.
Then he came at her-and if Tharn the Avenger had known, he would have roared with vengeful fury like
a tortured beast.
Chapter 3 TERROR FROM THE DEEP
As for Fumio of Thandar, he was hauled aboard the Red Witch in bonds, dreading the worst. The tall,
powerfully built Cro-Magnon had not the slightest notion as to why he had been captured, nor by whom,
for he knew nothing of the Barbary Pirates, as these "northerly" parts of Zanthodon were heretofore
unknown to him.
Fumio was a brave warrior, a mighty hunter, and a veritable devil with the ladies. Until Jorn the Hunter
had fortuitously (or unfortuitously, depending on your viewpoint) chanced upon the scene in time to
rescue Darya from being raped by Fumio, whose nose was broken in the process of that rescue, the
stalwart Thandarian had been accounted a remarkably handsome man.
His height, strength, prowess and former good looks notwithstanding, he was at heart a coward and a
bully. Thus he possessed few resources of character which would otherwise have enabled him to endure
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lin%20Carter%20-%20...odon%204%20-%20Darya%20Of%20The%20Bronze%20Age.htm (8 of 115)16-2-2006 15:44:58
Darya of the Bronze Age
his present captivity by an unknown people with stoicism and fortitude.
Fumio had never seen or imagined a ship such as the Red Witch. He had, it was true, heard of The-Men-
Who-Ride-Upon-Water, but had previously dismissed such tales as idle fabrications, on a par with tales
of ghosts and goblins. Therefore, his present circumstances were such that he quailed in the depths of his
soul, and would gladly have given an arm-well, a hand, perhaps; or at least a few fingers-to have been
very far from the scene when the pirates seized their golden-haired prey, Darya, gomad or Princess of
Thandar.
And what they could possibly want with him Fumio could not imagine. But he had dire suspicions ....
Boarding the corsair galley, Achmed's men dragged the naked girl into the captain's cabin and bound her
to wrist and ankle rings set into the cabin's floor and roofbeams for exactly that purpose. Fumio they
booted into the stinking hold and bolted the hatchway securely, leaving him to crouch miserably in the
fetid darkness.
Nothing had been going right for Fumio recently. First he had found his god, Xask, when that Minoan
Machiavelli had miraculously felled a mighty drunth with a single bolt of magic fire from the thunder-
weapon. (And, as a drunth is the Zanthodonian name for the stegosaurus, a giant saurian which tips the
scales at about the same tonnage as a Mack truck, I assure you to kill one with a single bullet from a
Colt .45 is truly miraculous!) Then, no sooner had he become a delighted and devout convert to
Xaskianity then he had lost all faith in his newfound divinity when the same being had run into the giant
spiderweb of a monstrous, albino vathrib and had become helplessly entangled in its adhesive strands.
Even gods lose credibility when they cannot extricate themselves from spiderwebs, no matter how large
those webs might be ....
Crouched miserably on his hunkers in the stenchful darkness of the hold, Fumio groaned from the
bottom of his being, contemplating an unknown but certainly gruesome future.
His weapons had been stripped from him; save for a bit of fur about his loins, and high-laced buskins, he
was naked and unarmed. For all the remarkable strength of his superb physique, it seemed to Fumio's
way of thinking that there was naught which he could do to free himself from these mysterious men who
floated upon the Sogar-Jad in something weirdly like a fabricated wooden island.
He wondered hopefully if he had not, perhaps, found a new pantheon of gods to replace the de-
apotheosized Xask of Zar.
He decided that it was unlikely: gods do not take prisoners. Or at least, Fumio did not think they should.
But his experience with divinity was very slight.
The Cro-Magnons of Zanthodon have little in the way of religious convictions, and hardly anything in
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lin%20Carter%20-%20...odon%204%20-%20Darya%20Of%20The%20Bronze%20Age.htm (9 of 115)16-2-2006 15:44:58
Darya of the Bronze Age
the way of formal religious observations. Surely, the ghosts of their heroic ancestors migrate to inhabit
the great trees or mountains or even, in some cases, beasts of the Underground World; surely, it is only
prudent to propitiate their wrath by never naming them aloud once they have transmigrated; but, beyond
these simple precautions, the Cro-Magnons leave religion strictly alone. They have, after all, enough to
occupy their thoughts in merely staying alive.
After a while, bored with feeling sorry for himself, and weary from his exertions during the long "wake,"
Fumio fell into a fitful doze.
When he aroused some little time later, he became uncomfortably aware of a yawning and empty void
somewhere in his midsection. Search his mind as best he could, the tall warrior could not remember
when and under what conditions he had last devoured a decent meal.
Surely his captors did not intend him to starve? There were, after all, so many quicker, easier, and more
sanguinary ways to terminate his present existence, than starvation.
After awhile, Fumio got to his feet and prowled around. It was hard to find one's way through the
darkness-a condition rarely encountered at all in the Underground World, due to the eternal luminosity
of its glowing skies-but erelong Fumio's outstretched hand found a ladder leading upward. Daring
greatly, he ascended the ladder, and found the roof of his prison, which is to say, the underside of the
deck.
The heavy, seasoned timbers resisted his strength, but in time he found a small trapdoor other than the
large batch through which he had been tossed like a sack of grain. This trap also differed from the hatch
in that it was not padlocked. Fumio pried it open and peeked out.
The light of day daze dazzled his eyes due to their long immersion in the blackness of the hold, but
before very long his blurred vision cleared and he was able to perceive objects clearly.
The object nearest to hand, when he was able to perceive it, was not at all what he wanted to see. It was
the booted feet of Achmed the Moor, the corsair who had captured him in the jungles: he recognized
them from the scarlet leather from which the boots had been fashioned.
The Moor was standing spread-legged against the roll of the ship between the slightly-opened trapdoor
and the deckrail of the Red Witch.
Beyond lay the misty waters of the primeval ocean itself, and amidst those steaming and fetid waves the
sharp eyes of Fumio observed yet another object which he desired to see even less than the feet of
Achmed.
It was the head of a gigantic monster, rising dripping from the waves
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lin%20Carter%20-%2...don%204%20-%20Darya%20Of%20The%20Bronze%20Age.htm (10 of 115)16-2-2006 15:44:58
摘要：

DaryaoftheBronzeAgeDaryaoftheBronzeAgebyLinCarterPartOnePRINCESSINPERILChapter1KIDNAPPED!DaryaofThandarstruggledhelplesslyintheirongripofthegiantMoor,Achmed,asheboreherthroughthejunglesofZanthodon.ThornyboughswhippedthenakedthighsandkickinglegsofthecaptiveCro-Magnonprincess,sharpedgedleavesscoredh...

展开>> 收起<<
Carter, Lin - Zanthodon 4 - Darya Of The Bronze Age.pdf

共115页,预览23页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：115 页 大小：263.11KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-16

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 115
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注