Lankar of Callisto

“Oh, that thing? But it’s dead, too, Jandar-jan!”

“What?” Jandar cried, staring down at the boy in amazement.

“Sure! I came upon it in another big room―a naked, wrinkled thing in a glass case? I didn’t know it was part of a man. I thought it was part of some poor animal they were keeping alive and tormenting with their experiments. So I smashed in the case with a heavy bench and put it out of its misery with my sword.”

Jandar and I exchanged a long stare of sheer astonishment. Then he turned admiring, appraising eyes on the young boy who stood there, gesturing excitedly with his dripping sword.

“You … put him out of his misery?” the Prince of Shondakor repeated dazedly. “Quorll, Number One … lord and supreme master of the Mind Wizards ... cut down by a child’s sword … a child who acted out of mercy and compassion for what he thought was a poor, tortured thing! Well, perhaps it was no more than that, after all. But the incongruity of it! A cold, insidious creature of pure intellect … plotting and scheming for twenty-three thousand years to conquer worlds and subjugate whole civilizations … and a child crushes it in passing, out of simple compassion!”

“We’re having trouble with the big, dumb giants, the ones who walk like dead men,” Ergon growled urgently. “But they can be killed, too. It takes some doing, and you don’t want to get within reach of their arms, but they be slow, clumsy swordsmen … .”

By now warriors in sky-boots and blue cloaks were crowding around us, trying rings of keys taken from the corpses of dead jailors, opening the other cell doors. Weary, dirty men with amazed expressions were emerging from their cells to be greeted by old friends and comrades. Among these were only two whose identities I could guess: a towering, gaunt, stiff-jointed insect creature who could only be Koja the Yathoon, and a vivid, beautiful red woman with imperious eyes who must be Zamara, Princess of Tharkol. Jandar excused himself and went to greet his comrades.

“Lukor, you old rascal! Valkar, my friend! Tomar-Haakon!” he laughed. They crowded about us, talking excitedly, turning eyes friendly but curious on myself and Bozo and the boy.

“Time enough for explanations later,” Jandar’s voice rose above the joyous clamor. “Right now, our brave friends are fighting for their lives up the tunnel, and I am eager to join them. Lords of Gordrimator, it seems like ages since I last held a sword in my hand! Come, friends, we’ll find weapons for all of us on the way.”

It would take far more pages than the few allotted to me here, were I to describe all that happened during the hours which followed. But I saw such sights of gallantry and heroism as my eyes have never beheld, before or since. I saw Jandar of Callisto holding at bay three vicious swordsmen, his red blade flickering like a lethal shaft of light, his superb chest and naked arms scored with wounds and streaming blood, a grim smile touching his lips as the greatest hero of two worlds cut through his ancient enemies like an avenging god.

I saw that mightiest of warriors, Koja of the Yathoon horde, battling against the lumbering, deadeyed flesh robots. His terrible whip-sword, found in the armory of the Mind Wizards, whistled through the air as he cut a crimson path through the rank of giant zombies to the cowering yellow dwarfs who hid behind their mindless slaves.

I saw brave men fight and die that day, men whose names I knew and men whom I had never met, but whose deeds would not be forgotten while the world lasted and a single warrior of Thanator lived in freedom to venerate the memory of those who fought and fell in the Battle of Kuur.

And I fought too, as best I could, being untutored in the art of the sword, and no warrior. But I found a great wooden staff shod in bronze, not unlike the cudgel wherewith I had brained the savage vastodon in the jungle so many long days before; and armed with this I struck and struck until my muscles ached with weariness, and more than one of the Kuurians succumbed to my clumsy strokes. And ever at my side fought the mighty othode, defending me while I defended him. And that day the great, faithful, fearless beast slew and slew like a ferocious tiger. He sprang upon the greatest of the flesh robots and tore with terrible claws and crushed and mangled with those massive tusks, until he wrung a word of praise from even the noblest of the champions of Shondakor.

It was three hours later. We rested on the beach of Dragon River, some of us, weary and bloody but victorious at last. Bozo lay panting heavily at my side, while Glypto and Dr. Abziz and I shared between us a flask of quarra brandy fetched down from the Xaxar which hung above us like a stationary cloud, anchored to the crest of the cliffs. A hundred men were upon the beach, war parties venturing down into the warrens of conquered Kurr, others emerging with their wounded and their dead. I was bone-weary and battered and I ached from head to foot, but it was all over now but for the final mopping up, and I had come out of it. in one piece somehow, and I basked in a warm glow of satisfaction.

Beyond me, Jandar stood talking with Zantor and Thuron and the captains of the Zarkoon and the Avenger. The sisterships of the expedition had gathered at the prearranged rendezvous-point, found no Xaxar there, and had come searching for her. They were in time to join in the last fury of the battle, and to earn their share in the glory of our splendid victory.