Ylana of Callisto
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Callisto #7
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Ylana of Callisto». Краткое содержание книги:
In the merciless clutches of Zhu Kor, last of the legendary Mind Wizards of Callisto, the beautiful raven-haired jungle maiden is spirited away upon a hideous winged ghastozar. Captives of a vicious tribe that worships the evil Zhu Kor as a god, while their jungle stronghold is attacked by a rival tribe, Ylana and Tomar battle savages and predatory monsters alike ... until the Galleon of the Clouds finds them in the very jaws of doom ....
Mostly, however, it was a deltagar.*
In his dreams the huge beast crept upon him with stealthy, gliding steps―then leaped, knocked him over, and sat upon his chest, its crushing weight collapsing his lungs, its grinning jaws inches from his face, so that its hot, reeking breath, almost suffocated him.
He awoke suddenly, aware of a growing discomfort.
And for a horrible, spine-chilling moment he thought his dream was come true … for a terrible constriction bound his chest like a massive weight, and he struggled and fought for breath, and opened his eyes
To stare directly into the grinning jaws of a ferocious deltagar!
THE world whirled giddily about, then he righted himself.
And Tomar realized what had happened. He had, as he had feared he would, rolled off the branch in his sleep, but the swordbelt had held and now it pinned him to the branch, biting painfully under his arms and constricting his chest so that he could hardly draw a breath of air into his aching, oxygen-starved lungs.
He was dangling helplessly from underneath the branch, arms and legs hanging down.
And directly beneath him, clearly visible in a vagrant shaft of moonlight that had somehow found a vent in the thick foliage through which to hurl its cold glory, crouched the largest deltagar the boy had ever seen or heard of.
It was staring up at him as if puzzled by his predicament. Quite likely the giant, catlike predator had never before chanced to encounter a human being dangling from a branch like a ripe fruit, and did not know what to do about it.
In a moment or two, doubtless, the hunger which gnawed in the great cat’s lean belly would force a decision upon its murderous brain. But, for the moment, the scarlet super-tiger crouched with stiffened spine and slowly twitching tail, staring up at the helpless boy with burning eyes, panting between grinning jaws armed, like a terrestrial saber-tooth, with the longest and wickedest pair of gleaming ivory fangs you might ever hope to see.
Tomar squeezed his eyes shut, hoping he was still in the dream. When he opened them, he discovered he wasn’t. The dream was all too horribly real, and the great horned cat was still there.
And any instant now its growling and empty belly would overrule its innate, feline caution, and it would pounce upon this tempting morsel of boyflesh that dangled from the bough like an apple ready for picking. Tomar could almost feel those terrible fangs slicing like razors through his flesh
And then two things happened in the same identical instant of time.
From the tree at his left, in which Ylana had spent the night, a red arrow flashed to bury itself almost to the feather in the deltagar’s side, just below its breastbone.
At the same moment the foliage above Tomar’s head rustled as the brawny figure of Jugrid hurtled through the air, a bright knife clenched between his teeth. His burly form flung itself into space and came crashing down upon the back of the crouching cat, its weight nearly knocking the deltagar over. In a flash, Jugrid clamped his legs about the barrel of its chest and levered one arm about its neck with crushing force, like a vise. With the other hand he snatched the knife from between his teeth and drove it again and again into the beast’s side.
And in the next instant he was fighting for his life as the beast awoke from its paralysis and exploded in squalling, spitting fury!
Chapter 13
THE TRAIL OF BLOOD
THE deltagar strove to dislodge the hated man-thing clinging to its back, but its claws could not reach Jugrid, who buried his face in the scarlet fur of the beast’s neck.
Again and again, he drove the slim blade of the dagger to its hilt in the breast of the cat-monster. Blood spurted from the wounds, bedrabbling the trampled grasses with hot gore.
In its frenzy, leaping and bucking frantically, the deltagar crossed the small clearing. Suddenly rearing in its squalling, spitting fury, the giant cat sprang into the bushes that blocked the far end of the glade. In a moment the boughs closed over the opening its body had made, and it was as if the hideous monster had never been there at all, so magically swift was the manner of its going.
A knife sawed through the leather belt that still bound Tomar helpless to the underside of the branch whereon he had spent the night. He dropped heavily to the turf, the impact of his fall knocking the wind out of him. As he lay there gasping, struggling for breath, Ylana dropped lithely to the ground beside him, sheathing the blade with which she had cut him free.
The boy and the girl looked at each other in desperation. The last glimpse they had had of the girl’s father, he had still been clinging to the shoulders of the enraged deltagar. The sounds of the beast’s passage through the underbrush were already almost lost in the thick forest. For all they knew, Jugrid might still be clinging to the cat’s back, striving to slay it. Or he might already have lost his hold, and fallen, in which case the furious predator could have turned upon him, ripping him asunder with its claws―or it might have continued on in the direction it had orginally been traveling.
Jugrid could be dead by now, or seriously injured, or even relatively unharmed. Ylana was desperate to discover what had befallen her father.
Before the winded boy could recover himself, the girl turned on her heel and vanished between the trees in the same direction the beast had taken. Tomar croaked out her name, but she neither paused nor returned.
Staggering to his feet, Tomar plunged into the depths of the jungle, struggled through the thick bushes, and emerged upon a narrow jungle aisle, but dimly illuminated, still thick with darkness. He peered this way and that, but the girl was nowhere to be found. Having recovered his breath by now, he tried calling her name, and then Jugrid’s. Neither effort resulted in anything. So he continued on in the direction he had first taken―as well as he could remember―and, in less time than it takes me to tell of it, he was thoroughly lost.
After some hours, exhausted, thirsty, possessed by a feeling of helplessness, Tomar lay down beneath a bush to rest.
He must have fallen into a fitful, restless doze, because the next thing he knew a touch upon his shoulder aroused him from blurred, unpleasant dreams of pursuit and danger and fighting.
For a moment, blinking stupidly, he thought that he was still dreaming.
Then he knew that he wasn’t. A man was indeed standing over him with the point of his spear just pricking the smooth tanned skin above his heart.
YLANA had no difficulty in following the deltagar because the spoor of the beast clearly marked its trail.
Evidently, it was still bleeding heavily from the wounds inflicted by Jugrid’s knife. She knew this from the fresh blood that splattered the grasses and the leaves of the bushes through which she crept. The gore, still wet, indeed still warm, had been shed in such copious quantities, that she knew that the deltagar was seriously wounded by now, and could not for long maintain the pace of its flight.
She did not find her father, which was puzzling but not disheartening. At least, she did not find his mangled corpse, which meant that he was probably still alive.
She continued following the trail of blood with as much speed as she could attain, while being careful not to make any more noise than she could help.
If she thought at all about Tomar, it was to assume without really stopping to think much about it, that the boy was somewhere behind her, following in her wake. Surely, she thought, he was intelligent enough to find and follow the fresh trail of blood. Of course, she could not have guessed that he had become confused almost immediately upon entering the dense undergrowth, and had started off in an entirely wrong direction from the one the wounded beast had taken.