KI-GOR, LORD OF THE JUNGLE
By
John Peter Drummond

Warrior-Queen of Attila's Lost Legion copyright 1947 by Glen-Kel Publishing for the Summer 1947 Jungle Stories.  No record of copyright renewal

WARRIOR-QUEEN OF ATTILA'S LOST LEGION
I.  Watchers in the Shadows
II.  Sentenced to Death
III.  Horsemen from Hell
IV.  The Devil-Beast
V.  Attack by Night
VI.  The Ceremony of Judgment
VII.  The Altar of Zalda
VIII.  Dark Queen's Lair
IX.  The Battle on the Stairs
X.  Between Two Deaths

Warrior-Queen of Attila's Lost Legion

Ki-Gor jungle lord trails his stolen mate to the demon-guarded stronghold of beautiful, deadly, Tarma, warrior queen of Attila's Lost Legion

I.
Watchers in the Shadows

A strangely assorted group of men were gathered in a tented camp whose cages, filled with snarling, grunting animals, revealed it as the base for an expedition to capture African wildlife.  Many of the men were tall, superbly muscled Masi warriors.  But even among this striking group, three men stood out.  One was a short, squat pigmy whose ebony throat was adorned by a necklace of gleaming white teeth.  He was arguing with a looming black giant who bore an outsized assagai few other men could have lifted.  Yet, remarkable as these two were, the man who watched them with an amused smile on his lips was the most remarkable of all.  He was tall, bronzed, clad only in a loincloth.  The strength of his arms seemed to rival that of the great apes, yet he moved as lightly and lithely as a deer.  
Suddenly a strange, humped figure emerged from the jungle and strode into the center of the camp.  He held up an arm and spoke.
"I seek the one known as Ki-Gor, White Lord of the jungle!" the stranger said, and the Bantu tongue had a curious accent on his lips.  
Despite his hunched back, he, like the jungle-born men he faced, was strong and well-muscled.  But something in the man's eyes and face said here was one who possessed more than strength.  He was a cunning man and wise, with a broad, high forehead and deep-set almond eyes.  And strangely enough, though he was coffee-colored, he had scarcely any Negroid features.  His hair, jet-black and straight, was parted in the center and hung in two side braids.  
All heads turned as a man to the bronzed giant in the loincloth.  It was clear from their expressions that, for all his outward appearance of savagery, he was a natural leader of men.
He stepped forward.  "I am called Ki-Gor," he answered quietly.
The man inclined his head gravely in an attitude of greeting and respect.  Even as his head was bent, however, his black eyes assessed the blonde-haired, gray-eyed white man known as the greatest warrior of the jungle.
"It is an honor to meet the king of these lands," the stranger declared.
"You are mistaken," Ki-Gor said.  "I rule no people."
The stranger smiled indulgently.  "It is known, O Lord, that when you speak, many tribes obey.  Only a king has such power."
Ki-Gor did not trouble to argue.  Perhaps the man merely over-reached himself in an attempt to flatter the White Lord.  Courtesy with the forest people called for resounding, if not truthful, compliments.
"And these tall warriors are your guards?" he continued, his glance flicking over the Masai.  "They are noble men, worthy to serve a king."
Ki-Gor smiled, amused at the thought that the fiercely independent Masai were his servants.
"These are my friends," the White Lord explained.  "They obey no man except the warrior they choose as chieftain.  Tembu George, here, is their leader."
Polite humor again touched the stranger's lips.  "You joke with me, Lord," he observed.  "My queen, you see, has had you watched for many moons.  She knows the facts.  It is only because you are a king that I have come."
A faint frown creased Ki-Gor's forehead.  He realized the man spoke in utter earnestness.  He was not voicing native flattery.  What strange business was this?
"Then why have you come?" asked the White Lord.
"Tarma, Queen of the Maldeans, seeks a strong and worthy man to rule with her," the visitor stated.  "She wishes you to be that man - her husband.  You are the favored of the gods, O Lord, to be so honored.  I, Valdur, cousin of the queen, come to arrange the details of this royal marriage."
For a few seconds, Ki-Gor could not speak.  The usually imperturbable White Lord was completely taken aback.  A threat of war or death or plague would have left him unmoved, but this startling offer of marriage hit him with the impact of a thunderbolt.  Tembu George and his warriors were left equally speechless.
"This is, indeed, a great honor," Ki-Gor managed at last, gathering his wits to decline without giving offense, "but already I have a wife.  As you can see, it would be unseemly for a queen to be a man's second, and, therefore, his lesser, wife."
The news that the White Lord was wedded to the red-haired Helene left Valdur unruffled.  He searched the camp with his eyes, apparently assuring himself she was not present.
"This can be arranged, Lord," he said.  "Tarma has vast wealth and will be most generous with this woman.  She can go her way and costly presents will ease her sorrow.  A queen's favor is not to be lightly weighed."
Making allowances for this man's tribal customs which perhaps held marriage as of small meaning, Ki-Gor strove to hold back the anger which Valdur's words aroused in him.
"I keep the wife I have," he said with ominous slowness, "and I seek no additional ones.  There are other men in the jungle who no doubt will welcome a match with your queen."  
Valdur sensed that his words had not set well with the White Lord.  He shifted uneasily, apparently searching his mind for the thing that was amiss.  Abruptly, his eyes lighted.
"Ah!" he exclaimed.  "You see me and you think the queen is the same, because she is my cousin!  Her skin is as fair as yours, as was her parents' back to a time beyond memory.  She is tall and lovely, with hair like the night and eyes that are darker still.
"She is of pure stock, O Lord, and I am not.  She is the last of the warrior line of Attila.  That is why you and no other man in the Congo must share her throne.  Only those with white skin may sit on the throne of the Maldeans.  You are the only man in the Congo worthy to be her husband."
Valdur felt himself on stronger ground as he spoke of the queen's beauty.  He swept one huge hand to take in the sunlit glade beside Silver River where Helene and Ki-Gor made their home.
"You have power, Lord," he said, "but with Tarma you will have luxury, too.  Life in my country is easy for one of royal blood.  You will have a great stone house with rich furnishings, slaves and entertainers, wondrous food and drink.  It should be easy to exchange such surroundings for this simple camp."
Ki-Gor's face grew sterner.  He grew increasingly displeased with the man's babbling.
"I have given my answer!" the White Lord snapped.  "Let us speak of it no more!  I have no interest in your queen."
The muscled hunchback appeared bewildered, as though a simple mission had grown unexplainably difficult.  Ki-Gor's attitude was beyond his comprehension.
"You will, at least, Lord, meet with Tarma before you definitely answer?" he persisted.
Even-tempered in all things except those which concerned his beloved Helene, Ki-Gor's natural courtesy splintered.
"No!" the jungle man flared.  "I will not meet this strange Tarma.  I want neither throne nor queen, and I do not give my friendship to those who speak against my mate!"
Valdur slowly bowed his head.  He saw he how completely he had failed.  The branches of a tree at the edge of the glade rustled and swayed.  Both Ki-Gor and Valdur turned in the direction of the noise.  An odd looking ape, slate-gray in color and larger than a man, squatted on a limb intently watching the scene that took place in the glade.
Ki-Gor hardly glanced at the ape.  He had grown accustomed to its presence in the vicinity of the camp.  It was a type different from any ape he had seen in the Congo before, but it was no longer a novelty to him and since it caused no trouble he did not molest it.
But Valdur was visibly affected by the creature's appearance.  His eyes held a peculiar, intent look, and they gradually narrowed as he stared at the ape.  When he looked back at Ki-Gor, his face was harsher than before.
"I go now, Lord," Valdur said tightly, "but we shall meet again, I think.  The gods may smooth the way for us yet to be friends."
With that, the hunchback threw up his hand, palm outward, in a parting salute.  He turned and was gone before Ki-Gor could answer.  As he left the glade, the White Lord heard the rustle of leaves and saw the gray form of the ape melt into the forest.
The massive Masai chieftain watched the stranger go.  Accustomed to the rough humor of the Masai and the sword-keen pygmy leader, N'Geeso, Ki-Gor expected a humorous remark from Tembu George about the surprising offer of marriage.  But the big Masai was surprisingly serious.
"I do not understand this, Ki-Gor," he said, "but I scent trouble in it for you and for Helene.  This man is not of a people such as we know.  Because he bows to you and calls you Lord, do not think your own wishes influence him."
The White Lord studied his friend briefly, half influenced by his words.  Then he grinned and tapped a finger meaningfully to his head.
"I thought I wasn't hearing right at first," he laughed.  "I don't believe it's anything to worry about.  He's probably a member of some little mountain tribe, perhaps a little funny in the head because he is not made like other men.  This queen may exist only in his mind.  You saw for yourself how strangely he looked at that gray ape."
Tembu George was unimpressed.  His fine eyes were thoughtful.
"You trust men too much," he grumbled.  "At least let me send a few men to trail him.  It will not hurt to know more about him and his kraal."
But the more Ki-Gor reflected on the incident, the more ridiculous it seemed.  It was highly improbable that any Congo tribe would select a woman for a leader, and even so, she certainly wouldn't attempt to secure a mate for herself in so unlikely a manner.  
He decided definitely that Valdur was crazy, not badly so, but just enough to make his dreams mix in and obscure the world about him.  His dress and manner, even his speech, were not like those of other men.  He had merely entangled Ki-Gor in one of his dreams.
"He is not worth the trouble of trailing," Ki-Gor stated.  "He's harmless.  I'm just ashamed I almost got angry with him."  He thrust the matter aside, refusing to bother with it longer.  "Anyway, Helene will be looking for us to meet her at the American hunter's camp, so let's get started."
The American was Bill Williams, a genial, bearded brunette in his middle forties, who made his living hunting animals for museums, zoos and scientific institutions.  Due to the high proportion of renegades who came into the area to prey on the natives, Ki-Gor made it a point to visit with all such white men when they first arrived.
He had liked the American and occasionally aided him during the six weeks he had been in the neighborhood.  The pygmy chieftain, N'Geeso, considered Williams quite mad because of the vast pains he went to in order to catch animals which were of no value as food.  But the little man was so intrigued with the strange character that he had consented to work with Williams merely to be close to him.
Williams was especially anxious to capture alive an okapi, one of the wiliest of African creatures, and Ki-Gor, Tembu George and Helene had agreed to lend a hand in the difficult task.
The story about Valdur was heard with considerable laughter by Helene and N'Geeso and then forgotten in the hurried labor of building an intricate system of pit and net traps.
After five days work in a vicinity where several okapi were known to be, the traps were finished and the whole camp, Masai and pygmies alike, turned out for the drive which would send the game into the prepared snares.  Williams was all smiles because even if he failed to trap an okapi, with the help of so many experienced men, he was certain to bag many animals for which there was a market.
"I can't begin to thank you for your help, Ki-Gor," he said as they walked out to take their place at the center of the drive.
Helene, slim and lithe, walked between the two men.  She wore her usual attire of leopard skin halter and shorts.  She was a picture of youthful beauty, her long red hair streaming free over her shoulders, her skin tanned golden by the sun, bubbling good health in every movement of her firm, lovely body.
"Ki-Gor gets more fun out of this than you do, Mr. Williams," she said, her blue eyes laughing at her mate.  "When he has Tembu George and that little imp, N'Geeso, at his side, and nothing to do but hunt, he's at his happiest."
Ki-Gor growled deep in his throat, glanced sidewise at Helene.  "Quiet, woman, or I'll see that you end up in one of Williams' animal cages."
"Honest, Mr. Williams," she went on, "you have no idea what a job it is to bring this man up right.  Sometimes I worry that the day will come when he will get too large for me to handle."
The American gave a hearty chuckle.  Well over six feet, with a perfectly proportioned body and a split-second coordination which was almost unbelievable, Ki-Gor was the finest physical specimen Williams had ever seen.  He had heard many fabulous stories of Ki-Gor's exploits when he came to the Congo, and after seeing the quiet, modest white giant at close range, he realized there could well be more truth than fiction in the stories.
With a speed that took Helene completely unawares, Ki-Gor reached out and swept her off the ground.  He carried her, in his arms like a child, paying no attention to her struggles, muttering about the dire things he would do to her.
Abruptly her laughing struggles stopped.  "Ki-Gor," she said, lying quiet in his arms, her eyes directed to the trees overhead, "that gray ape is back again.  Look at him up there keeping pace with us.  I'm getting tired of having him peering at me all the time."
The ape had been gone for several days now, ever since the time Valdur came to make his strange offer to the Jungle Lord.
Ki-Gor found it odd that he couldn't remember the exact last occasion he had seen the creature.  Helene, who usually took a pleasure in the antics of the treefolk, had complained of the ape before, saying it made her vaguely uneasy.  
When Bill Williams saw the gray figure moving silently through the trees, he gave a low whistle of surprise.
"We must catch him," he whispered anxiously.  "That one specimen would make my trip a resounding success.  I've never seen one like him anywhere.  Why it might be an important new discovery."
Excitedly, the American went on to point out the many points of difference between the gray ape and various known species.  Ki-Gor had known all these things before, probably even better than Williams, but it hadn't seemed important enough to mention.  He tended more to N'Geeso's views on animals - the ones that made the best food were undoubtedly the ones of greatest value.
"If you want the ape, we can get him," Ki-Gor said without undue interest, "but not today.  We must get the drive started now.  The blacks are ready and if you called the drive off, you wouldn't find them anxious to help the next time."
"But we'll lose him!" lamented the hunter.  "You don't understand how much more important that ape is than all the okapis in the world."
"Don't worry about losing him," Helene said disgustedly.  "That Peeping Tom hasn't left our side for two months!"
It was an anguished Williams who gave the word for the beaters to start moving toward toward the traps.  His heart wasn't in the hunt, but he had to go through with it because Ki-Gor absolutely insisted.  All the animals caught in the traps that were not needed for the collection had been promised to the natives and sudden abandonment of the drive wouldn't sit well with them.
Beating on small hand drums, clacking hollow sticks together, and hitting the underbrush with spears, the huge semi-circle of blacks pressed in toward the snares.  Helene remained in the center of the advancing line with Williams.  Ki-Gor roamed up and down the file of beaters, keeping the advance ordered and even.  Tembu George and N'Geeso worked within easy call of each other, having a marvelous time demeaning the effectiveness of each other's efforts.
As the drivers closed the noose, Helene began to lag behind.  She could hear the snarls of killer-cats enraged by the noise and pursuit and the threshing of brush as other game plunged frenziedly about.  The animals were almost to the traps and she had no desire to see the final episode where those animals Williams didn't want alive would be slain for food by the pygmies and Masai.
Ki-Gor spared Helene and Williams the effort of pushing through the dense undergrowth by placing them so they could follow a trail.  Helene let Williams and the blacks flanking him move out of sight, and she sat down on the gnarled roots of an immense baobab tree to await the end of the hunt.
When she had been there several minutes, intently following the sounds of the hunt, she suddenly felt an odd prickle of nerves as though someone stared at her.  She glanced about her uneasily.  Then she looked up into the branches over the trail and her breath caught in her throat.
She knew she shouldn't be afraid and yet she was.  Thinly screened by leaves, the gray ape squatted on a limb above the trail, not ten yards away from her.  He did not have the bright, shoe-button eyes of the mischievous monkeys or the dark, aloof look of the ordinary ape.  His eyes were yellow, yellow and evil as a leopard's, and yet infinitely more intelligent.
Helene was no skittish girl, afraid of every jungle shadow.  She had learned much of Ki-Gor's immense forest lore.  Unless molested first, the great apes seldom caused humans trouble.  But she sensed a difference in this gray creature.  She had felt it from the first time she saw the ape near their camp.
And now in those yellow, unblinking eyes she read a threat.  With Ki-Gor not at her side, there was a definite difference in the creature's attitude.  She suppressed a curious feeling of panic, remembering not to show fear to an animal.  With assumed calm, she rose and began to walk slowly down the trail toward the hunters.  Her straining ears told her the ape remained where he was.
After a few steps, a feeling of relief, of escape, came to Helene, Then she saw a gray form slide out on the branch ahead of her.  Startled, she looked again behind her.
There were two of them!  The gray ape still held his place behind her and his twin blocked her way in front.  Her hand dropped to the small knife at her waist, but the very touch told her how ineffective a weapon it would be against these two watching beasts.  The silence of the brutes, their yellow eyes never leaving her, twisted her nerves tighter as the seconds passed.
Her first thought was to walk calmly on and try to pass beneath the second ape.  Sometimes an animal could be bluffed by such an action.  But the ape in front of her suddenly dropped to the ground.  The sound behind her told Helene his fellow had done likewise.  All doubt about the apes' intentions disappeared.
She could mask her emotions no longer.  She was afraid and she showed it.  The muscled brutes were shuffling toward her, slowly and deliberately closing in, their long, powerful arms knuckling the ground at each step.  Helene screamed Ki-Gor's name, cried it over and over again, and then running for her life, she turned and darted into the underbrush.
The apes were after her like trained hunting dogs, furrowing through the brush in awkward but swift bounds, using their great arms to swing over and around obstacles.  Helene ran with all her strength, her long, slim legs pounding desperately.  She drew away from them at first, but her lead vanished when she started to leap a thorn bush and one foot caught on a root.  She sprawled headlong, barely missing the thorns.
By the time she scrambled to her feet, one of the apes was upon her.  Like a cornered animal, she spun to fight, knowing escape was now impossible.  Her small knife flashed free in her right hand and as the beast closed in, she pounded the blade into his shoulder and arm in a rapid tattoo.
The gray ape uttered its first sound, black lips peeling back over huge fangs as it screamed in anger.  Then like a club, the ape smashed the flat of its hand against Helene's head.  Spark-filled blackness exploded in her brain.  With a low gasp, she crumpled unconscious into his arms.
The brute snarled at the limp girl, threw her roughly to the ground and turned his attention to the wounds in his shoulder.  The second ape came up, gingerly took the knife from Helene's fingers, lifted her to his shoulder.  His deep guttural voice lashed at his wounded fellow, and then both creatures swung into the trees and started moving west with their prey.

II.
Sentenced to Death

BILL WILLIAMS heard Helene call for help.  Though she was only a short distance behind him, the giant trees and tangled masses of vine and bush smothered the cry, made it sound thin and faraway.  But the deceptive tone of remoteness did not lessen the core of fear in her voice.
Williams knew she was in trouble, and the knowledge momentarily paralyzed him.  Before he could decide what he should do or which way he should go, a bronze figure shot up the trail towards him.  The keen ears of Ki-Gor, White Lord of the jungle, had heard Helene, and with blinding speed he reacted.  He spun out of the circle of blacks and was gone like a startled springbok.
With an animal's certain sense of direction, he headed for Helene.  The jungle's tricks with sound were wasted on Ki-Gor.  For the moment, the whole of his physical and mental effort was poured into the immediate problem of reaching Helene.  His mind was not cluttered with speculations as to why she called for him or visions of the dangers which might be confronting her.  With characteristic singleness of purpose, he devoted his full energies to reading her in the shortest possible time.
Williams saw Ki-Gor flash into view, gaining speed with every step, running with a deceptive smoothness which concealed the terrific demands being made on his body.  Ki-Gor blasted past the American with no sign that he saw him and disappeared down the trail, his long, lashing stride drumming faster and faster.  Then Williams set in behind him, feeling slow and inadequate in his heavy clothes and boots, with his rifle as an added encumbrance.  
Ki-Gor was spared the necessity of searching the trail for Helene's spoor.  As he reached the place where she had darted into the underbrush, he heard off to his right the angry roar of the ape which at that instant she was stabbing with her knife.  The White Lord leaped high, caught a branch with his hands, catapulted himself into the lower limbs.
Like a flickering shadow he raced through the middle branches, leaping, balancing, swinging with an agility garnered through a lifetime of tree travel.  He knew now the cause of Helene's trouble.  The scent of the gray apes was strong in his nostrils and joined with their acrid, unpleasant smell was Helene's own soft fragrance.
As he dipped low in the branches over the spot where the apes had overtaken Helene, his nose led him to the trail of blood where the creatures had climbed into the trees with Helene.  The drops of blood pointed west.
Faster and ever faster he traveled, rifling through the heights.  Within minutes, Ki-Gor brought the apes into sight.  He saw with relief that one of the animals carried Helene with reasonable care, and although she was limp, there was no sign of blood on her.
Ki-Gor silently began to close up the space between the apes and himself.  He hoped to reach them unobserved, but the capricious air currents eddying above the jungle floor betrayed him.  A sudden shift in the breeze brought the apes to a bristling stop.
The wounded ape quickly took Helene.  The unhurt one whirled back to join combat with the hairless male who traveled the lofty avenues as though he were one of the ape folk.  The ape beat his chest, booming fearsome challenge intended to strike terror into Ki-Gor.  The White Lord's grim, set face did not change expression and his speed remained unaltered.
He tried to circle the challenging ape and reach the beast carrying Helene.  But the big bull was too clever and quick to be outwitted.  He blocked every move the White, Lord made.  When Ki-Gor realized his opponent was cunning and determined, he saw he would lose Helene for good if he delayed combat any longer.
He and the ape faced each other on swaying branches, separated by only a few yards of space.  Ki-Gor grasped a liana, feinted a move to the left as though were going to try to go around the creature.  Instead, he swung to the right, flung across to land on the branch beside the ape.
Ki-Gor's snarls merged with the brute's, and the flaming battle-hate in his gray eyes was as fierce as the animal's.  The beast, caught off-guard by Ki-Gor's stratagem, required an awkward moment to reverse himself so that he could face the man.  In that interval, the White Lord had an adequate opportunity to get his footing and whip his knife from its sheath.
Ki-Gor did not release the liana which he had used to swing to the branch.  Instead, with his left hand he gathered several loops in the vine.  Man and beast faced each other on the gently moving limb.  The ground lay a long, dizzy distance below, obscured by many levels of branches.
The ape spread wide his arms, his ugly snarls flaring louder and fiercer.  He leaped high, let his weight crash down on the branch in an attempt to jog Ki-Gor's footing from under him.  When he saw the White Lord ride the tossing limb expertly, he roared with anger.
Then abruptly the beast charged, raced straight down the narrow limb at Ki-Gor.  Heavier and larger than the man, the brute was confident the White Lord could not stand against the impact of his greater bulk.  The ape meant to literally smash the man from the branch, bowl him into space.
With a battle sense garnered through countless jungle encounters, Ki-Gor guessed the ape's intention a fraction before the creature charged.  He saw the brute's arms come forward, his huge shoulders hunched and massive leg muscles tense.  As the ape took the first step, the White Lord's left hand slashed forward.  Ki-Gor threw the looped vine full into the bull's face.
The stinging impact of the coiled liana blinded the ape, just as he threw his ponderous weight forward.  Committed to his charge, he ran three steps before he could halt, before his brain could flash a warning to his legs.  Brute instinct kept him on the limb, kept him from plunging into space.  His great hands, which had been reaching for the White Lord, came up to claw away the tangled vine.
Ki-Gor saw then his opportunity.  He flashed in, leaning his weight into a solid knife blow.  He avoided the huge muscle pads which ridged out over the ape's chest and struck instead for the throat.  The blade squished deep into the hairy, anger-swollen neck on the right side just under the jawbone.  Ki-Gor swung his weight to the left, ripping the knife completely across the brute's throat, tearing it free in a wash of blood.
The ape, his hands raised overhead to fling away the vine, stood frozen for the space of two heartbeats.  Then blood gouted from the hideous slash, flooded over his shoulders and chest.  His head flopped forward as though on a hinge, and with a curious diving motion, he suddenly flung off the branch into space.  The splinter of small branches and the sodden impact of his body against the large limbs traced his fall to the ground far below.
Ki-Gor snatched a handful of leaves, wiped his knife clean and returned it to its sheath.  He could hear the sound of Williams trampling through the underbrush and also the excited shouts of black men who had joined the chase.  The gray ape carrying Helene heard the noise, too, and set off in alarm.
The ape, unable to resist the desire to see his fellow battle Ki-Gor, had halted at a safe distance and turned to watch.  Now when he saw his partner unexpectedly slain, heard more of the hairless ones join the search for the captured she, the beast grew frightened.  He began to plunge headlong through the trees, taking dangerous chances in his attempt to outdistance his pursuers.
But the burdened male was no match for the fleet Ki-Gor.  The White Lord drew up with the ape and then, with a spurt of speed, flung past the creature and maneuvered to turn him from his westward flight.  With the men drawing close behind him and Ki-Gor closing in from the front, the animal wasted no time in the impossible task of trying to elude the jungle man.
As the brute stopped, Ki-Gor's heart was in his throat for fear the angry ape might drop Helene.  The White Lord readied himself to swing across and grapple with him the instant the ape started to let Helene go.  But surprisingly, the male looked around him, located a fork in the trunk of the tree on which he stood and hurried to it.
The beast laid the girl carefully in the fork, then whirled and catapulted into the air, flung out into space straight toward the limb where Ki-Gor crouched.
He came in a wild, desperate rush, rocketing over the intervening space with berserk strength.  The wound in his shoulder and the cries of the hunters maddened the bull, made him rage with the desire to tear Ki-Gor to bits with his hands.
Ki-Gor knew better than to wait for the roaring beast to reach him.  He would have no opportunity to pit his cunning against the animal strength of this opponent.  The other ape, confident of his power, had taken his time about dealing with a puny man, but this one meant to crush Ki-Gor in one tearing, murderous rush of death.
As the bull leaped from the branch, Ki-Gor, who had been tensely holding a dangling length of vine, ready to tackle the ape if he started to drop Helene, decided on a dangerous gamble.  He lashed outward to meet the ape in the air.
The White Lord drove off the limb, his hands tightening on the vine as he spun at the leaping bull.  Like projectiles, the two antagonists hurtled toward each other.  But Ki-Gor held the advantage because the steel-strong vine gave him a solid support and because he took the ape by surprise.
As be swung out, Ki-Gor coiled into knot, drawing his legs up close against him!  He saw the fanged beast driving ward him and he kicked both of his into the creature's face.  The pile-driver shock of the blow almost tore the liana from Ki-Gor's hands, and the impact threw him twisting and turning to the side.
But by his swift, daring move he won the battle before it was begun.  The gray beast, whirling free through the air, was unable to turn aside from the collision or bring his superior strength into play.  Ki-Gor's lashing feet caught the ape in the face, stopped him dead in the air and somersaulted him backwards.  The impact would have torn off the head of a lesser creature.
The dazed ape began to hurtle toward the ground.  Instinctively, the creature clawed at the air, seeking support.  He struck a branch and partially broke his fall, but before he could catch himself, he bounced off and was falling again.  He hit a mass of vines, and blindly grabbing and holding, slid within ten feet of the ground before he once more fell free.  When the ape struck the earth, he lay still.
Ki-Gor's instincts in this moment were those of an animal, not of a man.  This gray ape which lay below him was the same one which for weeks he had allowed to hang around his camp without once molesting the creature.  But the beast had struck at Helene and there was no mercy in the White Lord.  After he saw to Helene, he meant to descend and make certain the ape was dead.
He hurried to the place where Helene lay, felt swiftly over her for broken bones.  She was unharmed except for the bruise on her temple where the ape had slugged her.  Gently, Ki-Gor massaged her neck, stroked her forehead, calling to her in a voice tight with emotion.
Consciousness returned to her slowly.  She blinked, stiffening in alarm in the brief span before her eyes came into focus and she recognized Ki-Gor.
"The gray apes...!" she began fearfully.
"They're dead," Ki-Gor said, cutting her off.  "You're safe.  But have they hurt you?"
"I'm all right," she said, "except for where one hit me."
Mention of the blow brought a snarl from Ki-Gor.  Red anger swirled up in him anew.
Wait here!" he commanded, and then with the agility of a monkey he went whirling down through the branches toward the ground.
He dropped to the forest floor a few steps from the ape.  He had guessed that the fall had not killed the creature.  The beast was slowly climbing to his knees, shaking his head and trying to clear his senses.  Ki-Gor didn't mean to leave the vicious animal alive to prey on other humans.
He drew his knife and poised on the balls of his feet, waiting for the ape to lift his head before he moved in to dispatch it.  Spread out to comb a wide area, the blacks led by Williams were very close now.  Ki-Gor gave his full attention to the ape, too filled with cold anger against the creature which had endangered Helene's life to be more than vaguely conscious of the hunters' nearness.  As the dazed beast raised to his knees, Ki-Gor raised his knife and started in.
"No, Ki-Gor!  Don't kill him!" came Williams' pleading shout.  "Let me take him alive."
The White Lord's long, gliding steps slowed.  As Williams ran up and put a restraining hand on Ki-Gor's arm, the jungle man turned and looked at the American.  Williams caught his breath and his words trailed away.
This was not the Ki-Gor, the hunter knew, this man with blazing gray eyes and a face hard as stone.  Never before had Williams seen the white giant with the jungle's savage mark on him.  He stumbled back a step, half-fearing Ki-Gor did not recognize him, half-believing Ki-Gor might attack him.  But the American's words laid hold of Ki-Gor's mind.  His face softened and the savage, merciless light left his eyes.
"I should kill him," the White Lord said harshly.  "He will bring trouble.  Such an animal is better dead."
"This ape is important to science," Williams pointed out.  "He's an entirely new species.  That's the only reason I want to take him alive."
Ki-Gor looked doubtfully at the ape.  "I don't know who this man 'science' is, but he's a fool to take such chances."  He hesitated, then said reluctantly, "You may have the gray one, if you insist.  I did promise to take him alive for you."
The hunter was overjoyed.
The blacks were crowding up, so Williams swiftly ordered them to tie up the ape and carry him back to camp.  He was half-afraid Ki-Gor might change his mind.  N'Geeso and Tembu George raced up together.
"Helene?  Is she alive?" N'Geeso asked breathlessly, afraid when he did not see the red-haired girl.  Tembu George's face was strained with worry.
Williams' cheeks flamed red.  In his desire to save the prized specimen, he had let the girl be momentarily shoved from first place in his mind.  He cursed himself, began to apologize for his stupidity.
"She's unhurt," Ki-Gor said thankfully.  "For some strange reason, they didn't try to kill her.  They seemed anxious to take her some place to the west.  When I tried to turn this one back, he put her down and fought.  They worked together more like men than apes."
Helene's head had cleared, and hearing the voices below her, she left the fork of the tree and climbed down.  She confirmed the fact that the apes had made no effort to slay her and she told how efficiently the two creatures had cooperated to box her up on the trail.
After the gray ape was safely caged at Williams' camp, there was no time to spare in speculating on the odd behavior of Helene's animal kidnappers.  Everyone in camp except Helene was busily engaged in handling the day's catch.  Valuable specimens were placed in cages constructed on the spot from saplings and heavier timbers by the nimble-fingered pygmies.  Beasts that were not so important or that had been hurt in the traps were slain and skinned, the pelts going to Williams and the meat to the natives.
It was well after dark before the weary men finished their tasks.  The next day there would be feasting, but the blacks wanted to hold their celebration at N'Geeso's kraal, so on this night they sought their grass pallets early.  Ki-Gor and Helene followed suit.
But with dawn, everyone rose.  The pygmies streamed into the jungle carrying sides of meat which had been hung from branches during the night.  N'Geeso strutted about, pleased with the bounty.  Not until the last of his men were gone and he had exacted promises from his white friends to attend the feast, did he streak off to direct the preparations.  Tembu George remained with Ki-Gor at the camp.
It was after breakfast and Williams was busy taking measurements of the ape which Ki-Gor had slain when the White Lord abruptly asked everyone to be quiet.  He listened a moment, then lay flat on the ground, his ear to the earth.  Since they lacked the jungle man's keen sense of hearing, the sound was too faint for the others to catch.  They watched curiously as Ki-Gor got to his feet, looked toward the west and frowned.
"Sounds like a herd of zebra," he said, "running hard.  Strange, because even in dry seasons zebra seldom roam this far from the veldt."
"Look at the gray ape," Tembu George broke in.  "He acts like he's listening, too."
The caged bull had climbed to his feet and was pressed against the side of the cage, his ear cocked toward the now faintly-heard sound.  He growled deep in his throat and swayed excitedly.  It was the first interest he had shown in anything from the moment of his capture.  He had sullenly refused all food and had squatted darkly in the corner of his cage.
Ki-Gor studied the ape curiously.  The mutter of noise grew to a drumming of hooves.  The herd was coming straight down a broad trail which led into the camp, and mixed with the animal scent was the scent of men, In the jungle, the unusual is always suspect.
"It's not a zebra herd," Ki-Gor declared.  "Men come on horses, men whose scent is strange to me."
Ki-Gor's glance swept the clearing.  With the pygmies gone, he had only the eleven Masai to count on in case of trouble.  The handful of Bantu bearers employed by Williams would turn tail at the first sign of danger.  Already they were nervously edging toward the trees.
"Into the jungle!" the White Lord ordered the Masai.  "Keep your bows ready.  If I raise my right hand, shoot."
Those stern fighting men required no further commands to make clear the part they were to play.  They were accustomed to fighting beside Ki-Gor.  They slid into the bush with scarcely a rustle.
Drawn bows would cover the horsemen from the moment they entered the camp.  If they were friendly, they would ride on without ever sensing the presence of the Masai.  If they were hostile, a hail of arrows would rake them at the first move they made against Williams and the jungle couple.  That sudden blast of death would give Ki-Gor, Helene and their friends time to seek cover.
Williams started to take his pistol from its holster.  "No!" Ki-Gor said.  "Go on with your work.  Show neither surprise nor nervousness.  They are friends until proved otherwise."
The American resumed his measuring of the dead ape.  Ki-Gor and Helene stood beside him, completely relaxed.  The caged ape was pressed against the stout wooden bars which confined him, his eyes on the trail.
The horsemen burst from the forest at a gallop, racing two abreast on wild, wirylooking ponies.  They rode bareback, using only halters to guide their plunging mounts.  And despite his admonition to Williams to show no surprise, a flicker of amazement passed over Ki-Gor's own face.
In the fore of the riders was the powerful but misshapen figure of Valdur and beside him rode a woman of striking beauty, her raven hair streaming in the wind.  Her skin was fair, fair as Helene's, and her curved, long-limbed body perfect in every detail.
She was undeniably a white woman, though the band of fierce warriors who pressed behind her ranged in color from light brown to ebony.  She was strong, with a man's strength, as evidenced by the ease with which she sat her unruly horse, and by the practiced way she handled the long gleaming sword in her right hand.
The foremost riders were armed with swords, but the rest of the horsemen swung murderous clubs, knobbed with iron spikes.  They wore their hair like Valdur, in two long braids, and their faces, though less intelligent than his, had similar features.
Ki-Gor's first reaction was a feeling that he had made a serious mistake in keeping Helene and Williams in the open.  The horsemen headed directly at them, coming with such fury that Ki-Gor thought they were going to be ridden down without a word.  Even the dread skill of the Masai bowmen would not suffice to halt that tight, double column in time.
But just as they came within bow range, the black-haired Tarma swept her sword aloft and the horsemen drew rein in a lunging, pawing pack behind her.  Then the riders surged out in a half-circle facing the White Lord.  In silence, the cruel beady eyes of the warriors fastened on Ki-Gor.
Tarma, Queen of the Maldeans, stared fixedly at the White Lord of the jungle.  

III.
Horsemen from Hell

Tarma voiced no greeting, gave no hint of her intentions.  She looked into the White Lord's steel-gray eyes, and one could not say whether there was anger or hate or desire in her gaze.  She totally ignored the presence of Helene and Williams.
Her face was proud and strong, with the mark of arrogance and cruelty in it.  She had high cheekbones and brilliant, challenging black eyes.  Her lips were full and red - sensual lips tipped downward at the corners with tiny lines of harshness.
About her body was an animal litheness, a quick, rippling beauty such as a young lioness possesses.  Her brief attire bore no resemblance to the dress of Congo tribes.  Drawn tight around her hips was a scanty sarong-like garment coarsely woven of scarlet threads and her prominent breasts were restrained by a gold-linked halter of the same material.
"So you are Ki-Gor!" she declared, her voice neither questioning nor accusing.  "Fear not!  No harm shall come to you.  But do not think to interfere."
She spoke in the Bantu tongue with the same curious accent Valdur had used when he first visited Ki-Gor.
"This is our land, O One From Far Away, and it is not our place to feel afraid," the White Lord stated gravely.
The barely-seen twitch of a muscle near Valdur's mouth betrayed his amusement at Ki-Gor's neat thrust.  By using the Bantu term for stranger, the White Lord feigned ignorance of Tarma's identity.  And as another trick to deflate her lordly arrogance, he gently reminded her that she had better look to her own safety while she was in his area instead of hinting at causing others trouble.  It seemed to tickle Valdur to see someone stand up to Tarma.
Tarma's face hardened.  Unmoved, Ki-Gor watched the quick leap of anger to her eyes.
"Beware your tongue," she snapped."I have men at my back and you have none.  Your insolence may make me forget my wish to keep you out of this."
Ki-Gor's answer was an easy laugh.  The quality of that laugh stabbed Valdur alert.  He remembered the tall, grim fighting men clustered about the jungle man on their previous meeting.  This Ki-Gor was no fool.  Those guards were stationed nearby, ready to go into action if Tarma made a single threatening move.
Valdur reined his horse close to Tarma, spoke in a low, swift whisper.  Her glance darted narrowly about the camp, obviously searching for hidden guards.  Then unimpressed by his warning, she imperiously waved him away.  The camp looked deserted to her, and she did not choose to give Ki-Gor credit for undue cunning.  Valdur's lips whitened at her contemptuous treatment, but he said no more.
"You!" she said roughly, pointing at Williams.  "This is your camp?"  He nodded.  "You caged these animals?"  Again he nodded.  "Then you are the one we seek."
He frowned at her ominous tone.  "What do you mean?"  Williams stood uneasily by the gray ape's carcass, a measuring tape in his hand.
"The evidence is before you," she said accusingly.  "You spilled the blood of one of our earth-gods and dared to cage another.  For these crimes, you must be judged before the altar of Zalda.  That is why I, Tarma, Queen of the Maldeans, have come for you.  These crimes against our gods must be avenged."
Williams was too astonished to speak.  This was fantastic, a barbaric queen appearing out of nowhere and screaming accusations at him about an ape which she called an earth-god.  He gulped and looked to Ki-Gor for help.
But Helene spoke first.  "Why those apes are vicious and dangerous.  They tried to kill me."  She blurted the words angrily.
"Silence!" shrilled Tarma, jerking around to face Helene.  She had not deigned to glance at Helene before, but now she was a picture of hate.  "Speak again and you, too, shall be tried before Zalda."
Ki-Gor's half-amused attitude instantly vanished.  The great muscles across his shoulders and along his powerful legs rippled and grew taut.  His gray eyes were abruptly cold and dangerous.
"I killed your earth-god," he said quietly, "and I would have killed the other one, if Williams hadn't begged me not to.  You see, you should be thanking, instead of threatening him."
Ki-Gor gave no explanations.  With two calm sentences, he shouldered full responsibility.  Helene, stung by Tarma's arrogance, came to her mate's further defense.
"I suppose you think he should let those creatures carry me off," she said hotly.  "We aren't accustomed to gods that beat women in the head.  Furthermore, they both tried to kill Ki-Gor when he came to help me."
"They looked and acted like apes to us," put in Williams, in an awkward attempt to soothe the woman.  "You can't blame a man for defending his own and his wife's lives."
Tarma's face was suddenly a cruel, tight mask.
"Silence!" she commanded.  "I'll hear no lies against the earth-gods.  One has been killed and another harshly treated.  It is the ancient law that two must pay with their lives for these crimes.  I shall take two of you back for judgment before Zalda.  The Great God shall decide the way in which the two shall die.  Whether in the altar flames or at the hands of the earthgods, whether easily or with long suffering."
Tarma's venomous eyes turned meaningfully to Helene and Williams, leaving no doubt that they were the two she spoke of.  She made no mention of Ki-Gor, despite his confession of slaying one ape and wounding the other.
"You, Woman of the Red Hair, are responsible for the earth-god's death," she accused.  "Only because of you did Ki-Gor fight him.  And you," she continued, pointing at Williams, "are responsible for putting the other earth-god in that cage.  You, not Ki-Gor, wished him insulted in this manner."
Smoothly, the Queen of the Maldeans twisted her accusations to except Ki-Gor.  Two must die, but she did not mean to let harm come to the jungle lord.  Now that she saw the magnificent white savage with her own eyes, she was more resolved than ever to have him for herself.
In her land, it was the ancient law that any person who harmed an earth-god must die.  Her barbaric mind could not conceive that in slaying Helene she would make Ki-Gor her deadly enemy.  She firmly expected him to submit as meekly to the cruel law as her own subjects submitted, holding her in no way responsible for a divine edict.  Then with Helene out of the way, she thought he would come willingly to her, come gratefully when she beckoned as would any of the men in her court.
Ki-Gor did not then sense the reason for Tarma's action, but he saw that she deliberately absolved him of blame.  He understood the religious fanaticism of primitive tribes and counted this demand for a blood tribute as another outcropping of the cruel superstition he had fought so long.
Ki-Gor had hoped to avoid trouble with Tarma.  Now she gave him no choice except to strike first.  The easiest way to spare bloodshed would be to pull her from her horse before her warriors realized what he was about.  With her in his power, perhaps, he could talk sense to both Tarma and her followers.  Only as a last resort would he use his hidden Masai bowmen.
But before Ki-Gor could act, Tarma leaped from her horse and strode to the cage where the gray ape was growling and pulling at the bars, She walked up to the beast and reached to caress it.  Williams called an excited warning to her, expecting the dangerous bull to do her harm.
Instead, the ape quieted under her touch.  Guttural noises began to spill from his mouth as though he were talking to her.  Ki-Gor frowned as he listened.  The sounds the bull was uttering went far beyond the limited grunts of the apes he had watched since childhood.
His astonishment was even greater when the coarse, guttural sounds began to issue from Tarma's mouth.  There could be no denying the fact that she was speaking to the ape.  With brutish growls and grunts and strange facial contortions she spoke to the bull.
When Tarma finished, she called to her men to release the beast.  Her followers showed no surprise at her performance.  They saw nothing unusual in their queen's conversing with the hairy giant.  But Ki-Gor and Helene exchanged wondering looks, and Williams' mouth dropped open in shock.  At Tarma's summons, five horsemen spurred forward to free the ape.
In the cage next to the ape was a golden lion made nervous by the presence of so many men and horses.  The lion crouched at the rear of his barred cell snarling his anger.
The horsemen, in their eagerness to obey their queen, wheeled too close to the lion's cage.  The huge cat gave a thunderous roar and flung himself against the bars, straining to reach the horses.  The half-wild ponies reared and plunged out of control.  One of the mounts hit the crossbar of the cage door with its rump, lashed out with its hooves and struck the timber squarely.  Then another horse in the swirling melee was thrown against the cage and the lion's claws raked it.
Valdur's voice bludgeoned through the uproar.  "Away from the cat, fools!"
The five warriors got their squealing ponies back into the clearing, but they were so occupied with holding their seats that they didn't realize he had torn open the door to the lion's cage.  The other Maldeans including Tarma, had their attention focused on the quintet of riders.
The slavering, excited lion launched himself against the damaged door and it crashed open under his weight.  With a murderous roar, the great cat whirled to find the nearest enemy, a berserk lust to kill showing in its eyes.  Tarma, Queen of the Maldeans, stood nearest the cat.  When she heard the roar and realized the lion was free, she gasped and flattened herself against the ape's cage.  She was cut off from her warriors and not one of them could force his horse close to that raging cat.  The Maldeans were as stunned by the lion's sudden appearance as Tarma.
Ki-Gor alone of all that group kept his head.  He saw the lion break free, and where a moment before he had been plotting to capture Tarma, now automatically he thought only of protecting her.  Another man, remembering the queen's declared intention of slaying Helene and Williams, might have thought more of his own safety and let the killer-cat dispose of the arrogant ruler.  But in Tarma's sudden peril, Ki-Gor thought of her as another human in danger.
The jungle lord saw the tawny head jerk toward the queen, knew the cat had selected her as its victim.  With the instantaneous reaction which had enabled him to survive in the fang-ruled forest, the bronzed White Lord sprang smoothly to her help.
In a flashing display of brute power, he flung his muscled bulk over the ground, sprinted in at an angle so he would intercept the killer-cat just before it reached Tarma.  The lion launched his expresstrain charge a fraction after Ki-Gor moved.  In a blur of speed, man and beast hurtled toward the point of mutual interception.
The raging cat suddenly saw the man charging to meet him.  Driving low over the ground in that terrible, paralyzing death-drive of a berserk lion, the animal's claws lashed and tore the earth as he swerved suddenly to meet the White Lord.  The huge male came up off the ground with a roar as he leaped to crush and destroy the puny man-thing.
He seemed abruptly to double his speed.  The White Lord darted in while the cat was still in the air, avoiding the reaching claws.  The two bodies struck, but not head-on as the cat had intended.  Instead, Ki-Gor came against the cat a little from the side so that his weight drove against the lion's shoulder.  The animal half turned in the air, grappling wildly to regain its balance and meet Ki-Gor's attack.
That fleeting period when the lion was unable to bring either its claws or fangs into play gave the White Lord the opportunity he wanted.  He scissored his legs over the creature and his left arm snapped under the savage throat like a vise.  By the time the cat struck the ground, the White Lord, was fastened firmly to his back.  Then Ki-Gor's right hand hammered his longbladed knife into the beast.
The lion leaped and fought, but with every straining leap he helped to rip the life from his body.  Blood came in a pulsing geyser from his chest.  Abruptly, the golden creature spread his legs wide, gave a hoarse bellow and collapsed.
As the lion went down, Ki-Gor sprang away.  Tarma and her warriors stared at him fascinated.  They had seen a man meet a golden lion on equal terms and win.  They had seen a degree of courage and strength which left them speechless.
Ki-Gor stood regarding the carcass.  The flame of battle died from his eyes.  The tenseness left his great muscles and his breath came easily again.  He bent down and wiped his blade on the tawny hide, returned it to the sheath at his belt.  Then with all eyes on him, he walked to the ape's cage and opened it.
"Where is this land of yours?" he asked Tarma.
She regarded him admiringly, her lips slightly parted.  She pointed toward the north, after a brief hesitation.
"Take your earth-god," he said.  "He is unharmed.  His shoulder wounds will easily heal.  The debt is now paid for the other one that I killed."
He was telling her that by saving her life he had cancelled out any grievance she might hold about the dead ape.  Ki-Gor was tolerant of the beliefs of others, and instead of attempting to force them to see the foolishness of their superstition, he attempted always to reason with them.  By avoiding trouble with, Tarma, he might later have an opportunity to show her the danger of allowing the gray apes to roam at will.
Tarma's expression altered as she heard his words.  She was no longer a frightened girl, thankful to her rescuer.  She was once more Tarma, fanatical queen of a primitive people.  She nodded, but Ki-Gor should have been less trusting.
As he turned and walked back to Helene, Tarma spoke swiftly to the ape which was emerging from, the cage.  The creature remained where he was, while she hurried to her horse.  With her men about her, she had nothing to fear.
"You saved my life, Ki-Gor, and I am grateful," she said curtly.  "But even my life can't be measured against a god's!  The two still must die!"
Ki-Gor's patience evaporated.  He had done more than his part.  Now he was angry.
"The ones who lay hands on my wife or my friend die!" he snarled.  "I've done all that I can to be friendly.  If you must spill blood, then so be it, for the blood shall be that of your own men."
Ki-Gor's defiance took Tarma by surprise.  He reached out and caught Helene, turning her with one hand and shoving her toward the forest.  "Go to Tembu George," he murmured.  Then he was blocking the way of the mounted men.
Williams was no coward.  He moved closer to Ki-Gor, so they could offer a solid front.  He drew his pistol, his face pale but determined.  For a moment, it appeared that Tarma might not take the White Lord's challenge.  Then her lips ripped apart in anger as she saw the jungle man defying her for Helene.  Since her earliest memory, her least word had been law.  She had been taught there were no rights but the rights of the queen.
"The girl!" she screamed, jabbing her sword toward Helene's retreating figure.  "Get her!"
With a sweep of her sword she waved a group of her horsemen forward.  The warriors broke instantly into a fierce, pleased yell.  They dug their heels into the half-broken ponies and charged at the White Lord and Williams.  Ki-Gor's hand brushed his waist, shot aloft holding his naked blade.  Before the gleaming knife was fully raised, Tembu George and his tensely waiting Masai saw the signal and acted.
The horsemen moved fast, but their speed could not match the flight of slim Masai arrows.  From the jungle's edge drove the fleeting black shafts, blurred streaks of death slanting down from eleven bows.  The Masai had taken up positions in the trees from which they could command the whole clearing.
Contemptuous of the two white men before them, meaning to ride them down if they did not give way, the mounted men swept forward in a tight mass.  There were cruel grins on their brown faces at such pleasant sport, and they strained forward eagerly, giving voice like a wild dog pack closing in on a wounded bushbuck, each anxious to be the one to capture Helene.
Then the volley of Masai arrows caught them.  Like reeds driven by the first great raindrops of a storm, the lead riders swayed back under the feathered blast.  The deadliest bowmen of the Congo sent those long shafts home and not a single arrow missed its mark.
A brutal-faced rider jerked upright and fell backwards, a red smear welling where an arrow tore through his right eye socket.  The men on either side of him never knew their fellow's fate because death hammered into them at the same instant.  A horse went down, kicking and screaming, and the mounts behind it piled end over end in a sprawling heap.
And then again, with that terrible rapidity which trained bowmen can achieve at short range, the second flight of Masai arrows slashed into Maldean warriors.
Men and horses went down in a welter of blood, and only the panic-stricken ponies rose to flee the scene.  In the space of seconds the Masai took a dreadful toll.  Six of the Maldeans, who had spurred forward to catch Helene, lay spitted with black arrows in the dust.  Three others lay stunned on the ground where their mounts had thrown them when they stumbled.  The remaining five of those who obeyed Tarma's order whirled their frightened ponies in a frantic attempt to escape the rain of death.
Tarma's mouth was a bloodless slash in the twisted mask of her face when she saw the forward sweep of her warriors shatter against a sudden wall of arrows.  Valdur had prophesied this ending and she had scoffed.  Ki-Gor had threatened death and she had brushed his words aside.
"Go, Tarma!  Go now before I sweep the rest of your men from their horses!" angrily shouted the White Lord.
From the shambles on the ground, Tarma's eyes, stabbed through the swirling dust to Ki-Gor.  The jungle lord had not moved.  A horse and rider had crashed almost at his feet, but he had held, his place.  He was a grim and commanding figure as his voice lashed at the Maldean queen.
Blind, unbridled wrath bludgeoned up in Tarma as she looked on the man responsible for this chaos.  The lives of her men meant nothing to her in that moment.  She thought only of showing this Ki-Gor that, by the fire of Zalda himself, she would have her way despite everything.
She wrenched her horse back on his haunches with a savage jerk of the halter and her sword was a glittering swirl above her head.  There was no beauty in her then.  Nothing but a dark madness which seared and distorted her features.
"Leave the girl!" she cried in an angersplintered voice.  "But capture this white man, no matter what the cost.  Capture him or your lives are forfeited!"
It was a deliberate trick on Tarma's part.  She ordered her whole force to concentrate on Williams, thus drawing the attention of the hidden bowmen away from Helene.  Many of her warriors would die in the melee, slaughtered because of her pig-headed arrogance, but she did not count the cost.
The maneuver would give the gray ape an opportunity to dart out and grab Helene, flee into the nearby forest before anyone could halt him.  She had left him by his cage with whispered orders to stop the flight of any of her victims when she ordered the horsemen to capture Helene and Williams.  Tarma and Valdur stayed back aloof from the fighting.
Now, as horsemen swirled in on Ki-Gor and Williams, a swift rush of brutish words' ripped from her throat.  The gray ape heard her command and sped along the shelter of the cages.  Helene had frozen in horror at the jungle edge when she saw Tarma send her men against Ki-Gor and the American.
Thinking Helene safe, the Masai concentrated on protecting their beloved jungle lord and his friend.  Once more they struck death into the Maldeans, filled the air with rushing arrows.  It was slaughter, not battle.  In a lifetime crammed with strife and war, never had Ki-Gor seen any leader order so insane a maneuver.
Since the Maldeans did not carry spears or bows, they had to come close to the white men before they could strike.  The Masai shot them from their horses as they spurred forward and those few in the front ranks who escaped the slashing arrows were dropped by William's hammering pistol.  Yet like bloodless machines the Maldeans came on.
When he saw that Tarma was willing to pay the terrible price, Ki-Gor knew he and Williams would be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers.  The Maldeans suddenly, came too fast and from too many sides for the small force of Masai to stop them all.
A warrior with an arrow through his chest plunged off his horse almost on top of the White Lord.  Ki-Gor wrenched the man's club from his grasp.  Then a mass of horsemen were on top of them.  The club was a fearful weapon in the White Lord's hand.
He avoided a slashing sword and battered in his assailant's chest.  A man tried to ride him down and he dropped the horse with a terrific blow on the head.  He could hear Williams firing and shouting nearby, but there was no time for him to see how his friend was making out.
Then Ki-Gor heard Helene's ringing scream.  He could not see her but he knew she was in trouble.  The faithful Masai heard her scream and saw the gray beast swing her to his shoulder, but before they could turn their bows, the ape had disappeared into the jungle.  That momentary break in the rhythm of the Masai allowed the Maldeans to swarm over the two white men.
With his pistol empty, Williams quickly went under.  A Maldean clubbed him and as he reeled another caught him by the shirt, hefted him across his horse and spurred for the trail into the jungle.
Ki-Gor knew he was lost, yet he fought on, driven to madness by the thought that despite his precautions somehow Helene had been captured.  His one though was to hold the Maldeans in the clearing as long as he could so that the Masai could decimate them.  The longer he held them, the greater chance Tembu George would have to free Helene.
He laid about him with berserk strength, and managed to leap to the back of a riderless mount.  He shattered the skull of a warrior who rose to meet him.  Another Maldean slashed at him with his sword.
Ki-Gor swayed and avoided the blade, but the blow gashed deep into his horse.  The animal squealed in pain, flung forward with such sudden momentum that Ki-Gor was nearly thrown from its back.  The agonized mount bowled straight through a narrow opening in the wall of Maldeans, smashed through them before they could strike at Ki-Gor.
Valdur and Tarma loomed in front of Ki-Gor.  But the horse was out of control and before the White Lord could balance himself for a blow at Valdur, the hunchback struck.  Valdur spun his horse with superb skill, leaned forward and the flat of his sword smashed down on Ki-Gor's head.
Ki-Gor sagged, fell forward on his horse and began to slip toward the ground.  Maldeans started in pursuit, but the Masai were again ripping their arrows from the trees.  Valdur had seen enough of this insane slaughter, and without waiting for Tarma's permission, he shouted for the force to head into the forest.
As he spurred away, Tarma followed him.  The whole force swung after them at a gallop.  By the time Ki-Gor dropped unconscious from his wounded pony, the Maldeans were racing from the clearing.
Ki-Gor lay face down in the sunlight as the drumming hoofbeats disappeared in the distance.  The cost had been high, but the ruthless Tarma had had her way.  Williams and Helene were her captives.

IV.
The Devil-Beast

WHEN KI-Gor regained consciousness, he was lying in Williams' tent.  Tembu George bent over him, using a cloth torn from one of the American's shirts to daub cold water on the jungle man's face.  The Masai chieftain's eyes mirrored his concern.
Ki-Gor gingerly felt his head, traced his fingers slowly down the back of his neck.  He grunted in surprise, feeling neither open wounds nor bandages.  He sat up, ignoring the waves of pain which spread from his head down into his shoulders.
"Helene?" he said.  "Did they get her?"
Torture was in his voice.  He knew the answer before he asked, knew it by Tembu George's tortured look.
Then to his surprise, the black leader shook his head "no".  "The ape got her, not Tarma," painfully muttered Tembu George.
"It is all the same," Ki-Gor bitterly declared.  "And to think I gave Tarma her chance by turning the ape loose."
"William told me the gray beast was different from any he had ever seen," the jungle man continued.  "The bull acted more like a man than the apes we see in this region.  He followed orders like any of her warriors."
"I don't understand it," confessed Tembu George.  "A people we've never seen before and apes that obey orders are too much for me."
Tembu George shook his head.  Then, pondering the matter, his eyes suddenly narrowed.
"Tarma sent those apes in the beginning to capture Helene," the Masai chieftain growled with sudden insight.  "I see it all now.  She figured Helene was the only reason you wouldn't marry her.  She meant to quietly get rid of her, and then she thought she could easily charm you into marriage."
At first glance, Tembu George's explanation appeared incredible to Ki-Gor.  It had never occurred to him that Tarma's designs on him might be the answer to the bloody incident.  Ki-Gor always had been astonished at his good fortune in winning Helene's love, and he could not visualize himself as a prize which even so barbaric a person as Tarma would look on with favor, let alone go to such extremes to possess.
"Impossible!" Ki-Gor said.
"Think back to the hunchback's story," reminded Tembu George.  "He told you that only those with white skin could sit on the throne.  Because they couldn't find a mate among their own people, they had to look elsewhere.  It is more than a matter of finding Tarma a husband.  It is a desperate move to keep the Maldean-royal line from dying out.  You're the nearest thing to a white king they could find and they had no scruples about getting Helene out of the way."
Against his will, Ki-Gor saw the logic of his friend's talk.  He recalled Valdur's parting words at Silver River: "The gods may smooth the way for us yet to be friends."  By smoothing the way, Valdur had meant that Helene would be cleverly gotten rid of so Ki-Gor would have no objection to the match with Tarma.
"They are a cruel, wild people," pointed out Tembu George.  "They do not think as you do.  I know I'm right!  Look how careful Tarma was not to blame you for harming the apes.  And Valdur purposely hit you with the flat of his sword, when he could have easily sliced your head off."
"But surely they don't think I'd ever forgive them for harming Helene and Williams, do they?" exclaimed Ki-Gor angrily.  "Before I am through, they will wish they had slain me."
Tembu George tossed the wet rag away.  Ki-Gor's mind had cleared now and he was rapidly regaining his strength.  The Masai put a hand on his white friend's shoulder.
"You'd do better to think of them as animals instead of men, Ki-Gor," he said soberly.  "You saw how she threw away the lives of her men just because she lost her head.  She can't conceive of any will but her own.  If she can't get her way by stealth, she means to get it by force."
And Ki-Gor knew that Tembu George spoke the truth.  Tarma was no more than a savage animal.  Both she and her strange warriors were like throwbacks to the animal world.  He was not dealing with rational human beings, but with primitive creatures in the bodies of men.
"I feel well enough to travel now," Ki-Gor said.  He stood up, ignoring the aching pain he still felt.  "We must not let their spoor grow cold."
If he could track the Maldeans to their homeland immediately, he had a good chance of saving Helene and Williams.  Tarma had spoken of the great god Zalda to whom her victims would be sacrificed, so she would withhold her vengeance until she reached her own kraal.
"We will need fighting men," Tembu George rumbled.  "I sent for N'Geeso and his warriors.  They will be here soon."
Ki-Gor nodded approval and walked to the door, realizing he had been unconscious longer than he had thought.  He glanced up at the sun, judging the time.  The Masai had cleared the open space of bodies.  Three riderless horses browsed at the far end of the camp.
"She pointed north, didn't she," mused Tembu George, "when you asked where she came from?"
"She lied," Ki-Gor said, studying the horses.
The iron-willed White Lord forced himself to maintain an impassive calm, because he knew Helene's and the American's fate depended on his ability to think clearly and act quickly.  He held himself steady and crushed down the emotional turmoil which if heeded would impel him to rush blindly after the two captives.
"When N'Geeso comes, we three will take those Maldean ponies and go on ahead," decided Ki-Gor.  "That way we can travel fast enough to keep on their heels.  We'll leave an easy track for the warriors to follow, and after we scout the Maldean kraal, we'll double back and pick up our men."
When N'Geeso and his fierce little warriors arrived, they readily agreed that Ki-Gor's plan was good.  The pygmies were highly incensed, for Helene was a great favorite among them, and they had come to regard Williams as a kind of personal charge.  They were anxious to strike the Maldeans as soon as possible and the grimeyed little men crowded close around Ki-Gor' vowing a terrible vengeance against these strangers who dared war on their beloved White Lord.
Williams' Bantu servants had scattered into the jungle when the Maldeans appeared, but now they straggled back.  Ki-Gor relieved their fears that they might be forced to accompany the war party by ordering them to care for the camp until he returned.
Then, mounted on the three ponies, he and the two chieftains set out.  They soon left the pygmies and Tembu George's two bands of Masai behind.  Ki-Gor warned them to keep a sharp lookout for the gray apes.  He suspected that Tarma used the creatures as her eyes and ears.
He remembered how one of the beasts had hung around his camp for more than a month before Valdur arrived, and when the hunchback came he was fairly well informed on Ki-Gor.  Likewise, though none of the Maldeans had ever been seen in the pygmy area before, Tarma had led her warriors straight to Williams' camp and appeared to have had prior knowledge of the fate of the apes sent to capture Helene.  If Tarma could converse with the beasts and make them take her orders, it was only logical that she would employ them as spies.
The third day on the trail his vigilance was rewarded.  N'Geeso, a cunning tracker as were most of the pygmies, was leading the way and Ki-Gor rode second, constantly scanning the branches overhead.  His keen eyes caught a patch of gray against the pattern of brown and green.
He called a low-voiced warning to his companions.  The three of them were similarly armed, with war bows across their shoulders and the formidable, shoveltipped Masai spears carried in their right hands.  Added to this equipment, however, N'Geeso had a poison blowgun.
Ki-Gor swayed to the side, his knees tightly gripping the horse for balance.  His right arm came back with the spear, and then with a swift knotting of tremendous arm and shoulder muscles, he sent the heavy shaft blasting at the gray blot.
Crouched behind a mantle of vines with not more than a square foot of belly exposed, the ape had thought he was safely hidden.
Ki-Gor's spear took the creature in the exact center of the exposed section.  The ape roared with pain, and lashing madly with arms and legs, came tumbling out of the tree in a welter of tangled vines.  N'Geeso's blowgun was at his lips as the bull hit the ground.  With a quick, short puff revealed only by the momentary tensing of his stomach muscles, the pygmy drove a poison dart into the ape's chest.
The beast had torn his way out of the vines now and reeled to his feet to charge.  Despite the mortal wound which Ki-Gor had inflicted, the ape's dreadful rage and hurt would serve to keep him driving at his enemies until the last spark of life was extinguished.  But as he plowed forward to get at them, the swift poison of the pygmy dart took effect.
The creature jerked to a stop and a series of tremors wrenched his muscles.  Then as though caught by abrupt paralysis, the bull crashed to the earth and lay still.  In his shoulder were several crusted knife wounds.  The ape was the same one Helene had wounded.
Ki-Gor quieted his horse, dismounted and retrieved his spear.  He stared bleakly at the gray body, then without a word, he leaped astride the pony and started down the trail.  He drove both the men and the animals hard after that.  Instead of growing more difficult to follow, the track was even plainer during the next two days and it led not north, but ever west.
The White Lord puzzled as to why Tarma took no pains to cover her spoor.  He thought at first that she was either contemptuous of any forces he might muster or she placed such a great reliance on her sentinel apes that she felt confident she would have adequate warning of any pursuit.
But when forest gave way to an area of stunted trees and brittle clusters of thorn he began to understand that Tarma had another reason for making no effort to hide her trail.  Her track led straight into a flinty, barren wasteland.  At sunset Ki-Gor stood beside the last misshapen, dustcaked tree and stared ahead at the rocky expanse which had swallowed up the Maldeans.
The tree was rooted in the last skimpy patch of soil in sight.  Westward from where Ki-Gor stood was only rock, a vast lava plain, the frozen ripples of its surface giving the illusion of a red sea in the setting sun.  The most expert tracker could not follow Tarma's spoor over the ancient lava flow.
N'Geeso muttered dark, pygmy imprecations, spat viciously a few times and slid from his horse to stand beside Ki-Gor.
"The Place of the Dead," he said, using the native name for the barren area.  "Even animals avoid it.  Unless we follow a witch, this is but a trick to throw us off her track while she circles back to the jungle."
Tembu George grunted agreement.  "It may take many suns to pick up her trail again.  We may never find it."
"Perhaps," said the White Lord, his voice neither agreeing nor disagreeing.  "We'll rest here until the moon rises."  He stroked his tired horse.  "Then we'll let our horses do our thinking for us."
N'Gesso started to suggest that at least they should turn back to the jungle and find a pleasanter place to rest.  But before he spoke, the significance of Ki-Gor's words dawned on him.
"You're wiser in a day than we are in a lifetime!" he declared appreciatively.  "The horses will take us home - to Tarma's kraal.  We have only to follow them.  She can outsmart us in these rocks, but not her own animals."
They hobbled the horses, stretched out on the ground, and were asleep almost immediately.  As though a secret inner sense kept watch for him, Ki-Gor awakened shortly after the huge, brilliant moon swam up out of the far blackness.  He roused his companions.  Before they started, N'Geeso gathered up six rocks each the size of a man's fist, and arranged them in an apparently haphazard design.  The keeneyed pygmy warriors following their chieftain would know the meaning of that sign.
Many times that night N'Geeso was to rein up and arrange the rock signals which would point out their trail to his warriors.  The three men gave their horses their heads, let them pick their own way into the barren waste.  And with quickening interest they saw that the animals moved ever toward the center of the Place of the Dead.
The landscape was eerie and unreal, a glistening sheet of silver stretching as far as the eye could see.  A faint but steady wind blew into their faces, and in all that vastness they saw no other creature move, heard no sound of animal life.  As minutes stretched into hours, it grew ever more difficult for Ki-Gor to believe that an area which would support life existed within the Place of the Dead.
Yet reason told him that the weary, thirsty horses would not keep their steady gait forward without any urging unless they expected to find water and feed at a not unreasonable distance ahead.
At sunup they rested again and sparingly distributed among man and beast two of the three gourds of water which they had brought from Williams' camp.
It was early afternoon when they discovered the hidden land of the Maldeans.  They had kept on through the torturing heat, because with no cover of any kind to be found, it was no worse to keep moving than to remain stationary on the sun-baked rock.  Ki-Gor and the two chieftains had long since dismounted, and they followed the plodding animals on foot, not even troubling to keep a restraining hand on their halters.
The horses, after shambling along with their heads down for several hours, suddenly nickered and broke into a trot.  The lava floor tilted upward, climbing gradually for perhaps half a mile.  Then the Maldean ponies, which had drawn some distance ahead, abruptly disappeared from view.  One minute they were clearly visible against the skyline - the next they were gone.
"What trick is this the heat plays with us?" rasped the dry-throated N'Geeso.
"Perhaps we begin to see pictures in our minds," panted Tembu George.  "Thirst and heat do strange things to men."
As puzzled as his friends, Ki-Gor forced his tired legs into a run.  When he reached the point where the horses had disappeared, a hoarse exclamation escaped his lips.  He stood on the rim of a huge, bowl-shaped valley.  Far below him spread the kingdom of the mysterious Maldeans, a lush green land filled with jungle and marsh and abundant water.
Tembu George and N'Geeso likewise were brought up short by the unbelievable sight of a deep, fertile valley lying in the center of the Place of the Dead.  For generations, natives of all tribes had avoided the wilderness of burning rock as though it were a plague spot.  Occasional foolhardy warriors trekked into the lava bed, but the few who returned told only of heat and desolation.
Ki-Gor could understand now why the secret had been kept.  The few venturesome natives who chanced on the valley would naturally go down to inspect the land and slake their thirst.  The Maldeans would see that they never returned to the outer world.  But the majority of blacks exploring the desolate rock beds would probably never even come near the Maldean stronghold.  The chances of finding it were stacked against an outsider, since one had no hint of its existence until he stumbled on it.
A narrow path zigzagged down the precipitous bluff, and it was when the horses had started down this path that they had disappeared from view so suddenly.  Moving carefully, the animals were even now rounding the first turn in the trail in single file.
"Stay well back from the horses," Ki-Gor directed.  "If there are guards along the way, they will be curious enough about the animals to expose themselves."
Trotting close behind Ki-Gor, Tembu George said, "It looks deserted.  I see no people, no sign of a kraal."
"A canoe moves near that island in the midst of the large lake," Ki-Gor told him.  His searching eyes caught tiny details that the average man would miss.  "And to the right of the canoe is a mass of gray stone among the trees regular enough in shape to be the work of men."
In the excitement of their find, the three men momentarily forgot their weariness.  They padded down the winding path, every sense alert, feeling hopelessly exposed to the view of the whole valley.  Actually, the thick roofing of the jungle immediately below effectively screened them from curious eyes.  And to the paddlers of the canoe far out on the lake they would be so indistinct against the weathered bluff as to be invisible.
Contrary to their expectations, they found no evidence of guards.  As they reached the valley floor and the trail leveled out ahead of them, Ki-Gor felt an increasing uneasiness.  The way into the Maldean land was too open and unguarded to suit him.
The jungle at first was much the same as in his own fertile homeland, but gradually it changed to swampy ground.  The trail followed a narrow ridge, and as far as Ki-Gor could see, it appeared to be the only solid ground.  On either side of him stretched an oily black scum from which grew strange, towering species of trees and plants.
"It's as hot here as it was on the rock bed," complained N'Geeso.
"Like breathing water," said Tembu George, his huge chest gleaming with moisture from the surrounding atmosphere.
From the dry, withering heat of the lava flow, they had come into a wet, steaming atmosphere.  Ki-Gor knelt and touched the black water beside the trail.  It was almost boiling.  The whole area was fed by hot springs.  Knowing nothing of volcanoes, he did not realize that the valley was the result of some tremendous explosion in the distant past which had torn away the cone of a volcano.
"There are animal smells I do not recognize," Ki-Gor declared, sniffing the heavy air.
The odd scents were disturbing to the horses.  The plodding beasts began to toss their heads and slow down as though anxious for the men to catch up with them.  Ki-Gor watched their behavior and his vague foreboding of danger grew stronger.
It was then they heard for the first time the unearthly bellows, the weird, piercing blasts of sound which they were to come to know so well.  To their right sounded a great splashing and the snap and crack of breaking plants as though a huge body breasted its way through the swamp at top speed.  All three men grew tense, wondering at the nature of the peril which threatened.
Then from their left came additional screams as another of the unseen animals headed toward them.  The two blacks looked to Ki-Gor for leadership.  Ahead of them the three ponies had halted and stood trembling.  They acted afraid and yet they did not bolt down the path as one would expect.
"Lie flat," Ki-Gor growled, "and don't move!"
"Since the horses don't run, perhaps the Unseen Ones are noisier than they are dangerous," Tembu George said without conviction.
"They seem to think we will protect them," Ki-Gor declared, "so the Maldeans must know how to ward off the swamp creatures."
The men lay close to the ground, tightly gripping their spears.  The terrible bellows would have sent less courageous men fleeing back along the trail.  They would leave only seconds when the beasts emerged to decide on a course of action.  The nervous horses would draw the first attack.
"By the gods!" exclaimed N'Geeso in awe, his eyes popping with astonishment.
A tremendous green bulk loomed out of the swamp, a veritable mountain of flesh wallowing half-submerged in the muck as it bulled ahead with surprising speed.  It came in a lunging rush, its evil fanged head turning and twisting atop the long writhing length of its neck.
A civilized man would have realized he was seeing in the flesh a monster whose species ruled the earth untold thousands of years before, a member of the dinosaur family.  And when his initial shock at seeing an animal believed extinct for ages had passed, he would have remembered with dread that these giants were the bloodiest killers the world had ever known - great, senseless engines of destruction.
But Ki-Gor and his companions knew only that they were seeing the father of all devils, and they instinctively realized their puny weapons would be useless against that armored body.
The dinosaur's searching, snake-like head located the horses.  Mud and green slime swirled off its chest as it breasted through the marsh with a sudden burst of speed.  The monstrous lizard body heaved out of the swamp as the horses screamed in terror and finally stampeded.
But as the ponies broke to run, the beast spun in a lather of mud and its tremendous length of tail lashed sidewise across the path.  That armored tail struck one of the horses, flung it thirty feet into the swamp.  Bellowing horribly, the dinosaur clambered out of the marsh on its huge, misshapen legs and rushed across the path to get at its stunned prey.
When Ki-Gor saw the monster cross the trail and plunge into the muck on the other side, its fanged head ripping and tearing at the horse, he saw that the great tail still lay across the path.  Time was running out for him and his companions, for as soon as the horse was devoured the ravenous beast would smell out the men and this time there would be no tastier prey, to distract its attention.
"We must go back," Ki-Gor hissed.  "Run for it while the devil-beast is busy."
Ki-Gor came to his feet, turned to run.  Then he saw the back trail was blocked.  The second dinosaur which they had heard off to their left had circled in behind them.  Now it floundered out of the swamp and climbed astride the path.  Its long neck weaved and twisted with excitement as it scented blood.  Then as Ki-Gor stood up, it saw the three men on the path.
The long neck stood straight up for a second.  Then with a nerve-shredding scream the monster charged.  With impassable swamps on either side of them and the trail blocked before and behind them by the giant lizards, Ki-Gor and the two chieftains stood frozen.
Their triumph at finding the hidden valley was abruptly gone.  Their high hopes of saving Helene and Williams before Tarma could do them harm smashed against the grim reality of their position.  Tarma had led them into a death-trap.

V.
Attack by Night

UTTER HOPELESSNESS clutched Ki-Gor's heart for an instant.  It was not fear of death which tortured him, but the knowledge that if he died, Helene too would perish.  This thought struck across his mind like an iron-studded lash across an open wound.
"We won't die like jackals!' he cried in sudden resolve.  Then with the single, word, "Come!" he blasted the two blacks from their paralysis.
Ki-Gor raced toward the dinosaur which was feeding on the horse.  The main body of the beast was crouched in the swamp, but its monstrous, slime-covered tail lay like a barrier over the path.  Though its blood-smeared head was still bent over its prey, the creature was nearing the end of its feast.
It was gobbling great chunks of bone and meat in its haste to finish before the other dinosaur could come up.  Because the greedy creature's attention was focused on gulping the horse before its charging fellow could get a bite, it was not as alert as usual.  The noise it and the other dinosaur made drowned out the men's running footsteps, with its snout drenched with hot blood, it could not catch the man-scent.
As Ki-Gor sprinted toward the dinosaur, the two chieftains drove close at his back.  They placed their fate unquestioningly in his hands, followed him though they saw no hope in his move.  Their faces were gray with strain, but hardened warriors that they were, they kept their heads.
The dinosaur charging down the trail was almost upon them when the men reached the barrier made by the feeding lizard's tail.  Ki-Gor sucked in a deep breath, almost choking at the animal's stench, and then he leaped.  The White Lord flung up and over the armored tail, and behind him the two blacks also crossed.
All three hit the other side of the trail running at full speed.  The monster at their heels darted his hammerhead at Tembu George.  But the feeding dinosaur gulped his last bite and heaved backward across the path, his fanged mouth slashing around to attack the intruder.  The two dinosaurs crashed together with a resounding shock.
Without a backward look, the three men sped on, pouring their full strength into the effort of running.  The two ill-tempered monsters had skirmished briefly, but now they both saw the fleeing men and broke apart.  With angry screams, they plunged into the swamp on opposite sides of the trail and started in pursuit of the manthings, each straining to get one first.
The dinosaurs traveled faster through the mud and water than they did on dry land.  The muck helped support their vast weight.  Ki-Gor heard the changed tenor of their bellows and the suck and squish of mud as they flung forward.  Ordinarily, he and the two blacks might have gotten away safely, but the long days on the trail and the terrible heat of the desert had sapped their strength.
Already Ki-Gor was tiring, and the tortured panting of Tembu George and N'Geeso told him that they too were feeling the strain.  They forced themselves on through the steaming marsh, their limbs growing leaden as the path stretched longer and longer before them.  Then just as they began to think they could go no further, the trail turned and they glimpsed the blue surface of the lake.
The worn horses, believing they had escaped the dinosaurs, had slowed to a walk when they reached this point.  The animals were stumbling along about a hundred yards ahead, but when they heard the fierce cries of the lizards, they galloped forward neighing shrilly.
It was then Ki-Gor saw the stone fort set among the trees at the edge of the lake.  The fort proper was a small twostoried building, built in the form of an octagon, but running off to the right of the building, was a high-walled rock enclosure.  The answering whinnies which came from the enclosure as the two frightened horses dashed forward told Ki-Gor that it was a stockade in which Tarma kept her animals.
The turn in the trail momentarily hid the three runners from the dinosaur.  Ki-Gor searched for a place where they could hide in the brief time before the lizards again came in sight of them.  The Maldean fort was as dangerous to them as the pursuing monsters.  They could expect no mercy from Tarma's followers.  Fate seemed determined to cut them off from escape.
The narrow, brassbound door to the fort suddenly flung wide.  A Maldean warrior stepped into the open space before the building.  He frowned, shielding his eyes with one hand as though blinded by coming too quickly from the darkened interior into the light.
Ki-Gor's quick glance caught the movement of the door when it first started to open.  Swift as thought he acted, doing an odd and desperate thing.  He whirled in his tracks, his hands shooting out to clutch the shoulders of his companions.  Before they knew what he was about, he threw his weight against them, combining their momentum with his own strength to deflect their course and pitch them bodily into the swamp.  In the same motion, he leaped after them into the black muck.
He toppled N'Geeso and Tembu George off-balance so unexpectedly they had no time to voice their astonishment.  As they crashed at full tilt into the mud, both men had the same fleeting, agonized thought that the White Lord had thrown away their meager chances for escape in a sudden burst of madness.  What else could they think but that Ki-Gor had abruptly lost his senses?
But there was no madness in the White Lord's move.  He took the only gambling chance they had to live.  He had no time for explanations, only time to act.  In the split-second while the dinosaurs could not see them and while the Maldean was still blinded by the light, Ki-Gor flung his friends and himself into the only concealment at hand, the thick mud of the swamp.
As they struck the mud, Ki-Gor clamped his arms around his two friends' necks, dragged them beneath the surface.  They fought with the desperation of drowning men, but he held them under.  By this move he left the Maldean warrior and the two frightened horses to confront the lizards.
Ki-Gor banked on the vast, but stupid, beasts attacking the prey which was before them instead of wasting any time wondering what had become of the three manthings they had been chasing.  The mud concealed the scent of the men, and so long as Ki-Gor could hold his friends beneath the surface, there was no sign to betray their presence.
And the white Lord guessed the dinosaurs' action correctly.  The ravenous beasts shredded the air with their cries as they crashed into view around the turn in the trail and saw the two horses galloping up to the Maldean warrior.  In their thirst for the kill, they plunged past the spot where Ki-Gor and the two blacks were hidden, drove without pausing for the prey waiting before the fort.
Even beneath the surface, Ki-Gor felt the wash of the lizards' passage.  Immediately he shoved his friends to the surface and fought his own way out of the mud.  Sputtering and choking, Tembu George and N'Geeso came to the surface, struggling to clear their eyes so they could defend themselves against a berserk White Lord.
"Help me pin his arms' N'Geeso," gasped Tembu George, lunging toward Ki-Gor.  "Perhaps we can knock him out."
"Aaaiieee!" mourned the half-drowned pygmy.  "But careful!  A madman is like a rogue elephant."
"I'm all right," snapped Ki-Gor in an unexpectedly sane voice.  "I'm sorry there wasn't time to explain, but I had to do it to save your lives."
"What's this?" exploded Tembu George.  "What are you saying?"
Ki-Gor pointed a mud-caked hand, toward the fort.  "Look and you'll see what I mean.  But stay in the mud and keep down."
The chieftains, up to their necks in slime, glanced the way Ki-Gor pointed.  They saw the two dinosaurs bearing down on the Maldean and the squealing horses.  For the horses they saw no hope of escape and if the warrior didn't dart into the fort promptly, he, too, would be lost.
Yet instead of showing panic, the strange warrior calmly advanced a few steps further into the open.  He fumbled at a small object hung on a silver chain around his neck.  He raised the object to his lips, took a deep breath and his cheeks puffed out as if he were blowing a whistle.  But there was no sound, and even Ki-Gor with his almost animal sense of hearing was aware only of an odd, unpleasant vibration in his ears.
"The fool walks to his death," said the puzzled N'Geeso.
They watched transfixed at the sight of the Maldean coolly advancing to meet the lizards.  No person in his right mind would walk to his doom blowing idiotically on a soundless whistle.  But the bloody ending they expected was not enacted.
To their complete astonishment, the blundering charge of the dinosaurs wavered and slowed.  Then the huge beasts halted, their vast bodies writhing as if in pain.  The giants back-tracked, their blood-thirsty bellowing changing to wild, panicky cries.
Abruptly one of the beasts turned crashed blindly into the swamp as if pursued by devils.  Moments later, the other lizard spun in a great swirl of mud and fled.  There was no mistaking the fact that in some way which the three men could not fathom the Maldean had driven off the dinosaurs.
"Vuju!" muttered the awed N'Geeso.  "Only the jungle's greatest wizard could turn those devil-beasts!"
Ki-Gor, too, was taken aback by the seeming miracle he had witnessed.  He watched the Maldean take the whistle from his mouth, turn with an air of having done nothing the least unusual, and call to his fellows inside the fort.  Several more warriors strolled out, opened the gate into the walled enclosure, and helped drive the two horses inside.  Then the men disappeared inside the fort, closing the heavy door behind them.
"What can three men do against a people who know such powerful magic?" asked Tembu George hopelessly.
Ki-Gor turned the matter in his mind, his keen intelligence probing for an explanation.  Time and again in his fight against superstition he had found behind the mumbo-jumbo of the witchdoctors' greatest magic a ridiculously simple trick.  He felt there must be a logical explanation for the Maldean's feat.
"It is a trick, a wonderful trick, but nothing more," he said thoughtfully.  "We will laugh about our fears once we know how it is done.  We must get one of the soundless whistles from the Maldeans somehow."
The Masai chieftain shook his head doubtfully, and N'Gesso likewise was unconvinced.  They had seen the juju worked with their own eyes.
"Come now," Ki-Gor reasoned with them.  "'If the Maldeans were such wonderful wizards, would they have let a handful of Masai make fools of them at Williams, camp?  Why did they not ward off your black arrows with magic, Tembu George?  Why did they not cast a spell of death on your men instead of acting like crazed dangos?"
This argument drove home.  Certainly people with the power of magic would not have allowed such a slaughter to occur.  Though grudgingly, Tembu George and N'Geeso both agreed that as usual there was good sense in what Ki-Gor said.
The white lord and his companions were still far from safe.  If they stirred from their hiding place, the Maldeans would spot them, and if they tried to go back through the swamp, they would once more be at the mercy of the dinosaurs.  So through the remainder of the afternoon, with the stoicism of primitive warriors, they stood up to their chins in the mud.
As night fell, the swamp became hideous with the cries of the giant lizards.  Ki-Gor led the two blacks quietly along the trail to the fort.  They skirted the building to reach the clean waters of the lake, where they cleansed the filth from their bodies and satisfied their burning thirst.
A canoe had put out from the fort and headed across the lake shortly before sundown, so Ki-Gor knew other craft probably would be dragged up on the shore behind the building.  A wall projected from the fort out into the water as though to offer protection to reinforcements landing when the fort was under attack.  The White Lord waded out until the water came up to his shoulders and then swam soundlessly around the wall, coming up behind the fort.
Several canoes were beached on the shore as he expected.  The slit windows of the fort shone with torchlight.  By straining his eyes, Ki-Gor could make out the shadowy forms of guards moving about on the upper parapets.
Lying flat in the sand, he slowly edged the smallest craft into the water.  He floated it ten yards from the bank before he climbed in, and then circling the wall picked up Tembu George and N'Geeso.
The location of the large gray building on the island was mapped in Ki-Gor's mind, and despite the darkness, he accurately turned the prow of the canoe in that direction.
They paddled swiftly, anxious to cross the lake and scout out Tarma's craal before the moon rose.  They nosed the boat into the island a short way below the gray mass of stone and concealed it in a patch of reeds.
They checked their bows by touch in the darkness, slid them over their shoulders ready for instant use.  Then hefting their spears, they crept through the forest until they could crouch at the edge of the wide, cleared space surrounding Tarma's fortress.  It was a massive pile of stone such as they had never seen in the jungle.
Tremendous walls of solid rock reared up about a turreted structure much like a medieval castle.  In the gloom, it was impossible to make out any precise features of the castle, but Ki-Gor knew only a people who lived in constant fear of attack would go to such precautions.  He circled the walls, estimating their height, locating the four broad gates.  Murmured conversation told him that guards paced the battlements.
His heart grew heavy as he saw how formidable the task of rescuing Helene would be.  He thought of the great numbers of pygmy warriors who would be slain in an assault on those smooth walls, an assault which would have small chance of success.  The fierce, little men were terrible foes in the jungle, but their guile and forestcraft would be of no avail in this kind of battle.  How could he ask so bloody a sacrifice of his friends?
With these anguished thoughts, Ki-Gor stood among the dark trees, watching the south gate.  He suddenly stiffened, catching the harsh scent of a gray ape.  He drew his friends back, murmuring a warning, and they flattened themselves beneath some low shrubs.  The ape was upwind from them, so their presence would be undetected.
Making a lighter blur against the night, the ape came from the forest at a shambling trot not twenty yards from where they lay.  The beast ran toward the wall, halting close against it to bark gutturally at the guards above.
Ki-Gor, with long practice in mimicking animal calls, found himself unconsciously repeating in his mind the ape's harsh summons.  And it was definitely a summons that the beast called out impatiently several times for there was a scurry of movement on the walls and soon after the south gate creaked open to admit the Maldean earthgod.
Not five minutes later the White Lord heard a low hubbub which told him large bodies of warriors were rushing to man the battlements and the click of horses' hooves indicated that a troop of mounted men were drawn up somewhere near the gate.  Then the stir abruptly ceased and an even deeper silence than before fell over the castle.
"I feared from the noise that we had been discovered," Tembu George whispered, "but now all is quiet.  What can it mean?"
"The ape brought news of some enemy other than us," reasoned Ki-Gor.  "Against only three men they would sally forth instead of lying in wait as they do."
The White Lord had assumed the Maldeans were in complete control of their hidden land.  He was intrigued with the thought of finding possible allies against Tarma.
"Let us climb into the trees and wait," he said warily.  "If many men come, we might be caught in the fighting.  There would be no time to explain we were friends."
Hardly were they settled on nearby limbs, when N'Geeso silently pointed toward the ground below.  Shadow-like forms drifted through the forest, massed at the edge of the clearing.  Like a gathering storm cloud, the black files poured forward with silent turbulence, swelling out along the fringe of jungle until a vast, hushed army was assembled for the assault.
All was quiet on the battlement walls, and a man walking in the cleared space before the castle could have passed without ever suspecting that great bodies of armed men crouched stealthily on either side of him.  It was evident the force gathered to attack the Maldeans relied heavily on the element of surprise to carry it over the walls.  But the whole advantage lay with the Maldeans for the gray ape had betrayed the gathering assault in plenty of time.
Ki-Gor grew tense, waiting for the battle to begin.  He dared not try to warn the attackers, for primitive warriors would make short shift of any strangers appearing in their midst at such a time.  Then, though he heard no spoken signal, the warriors burst out of the forest at a run, sweeping across the clearing in a long wave.
Ki-Gor heard the rustle of many ropes as the front rank of men came against the wall.  He realized they were throwing ropes which had metal hooks fastened on their ends.  With trained precision, warriors began to swarm up the ropes as soon as the hooks caught on the top of the wall.
Still no sound came from the Maldeans.  Ki-Gor began to wonder if he had been wrong, if the castle was to be taken by surprise after all.  Those swarming climbers would be at the top of the battlements unless the Maldeans acted swiftly.
Then a barrage of cries sounded from the walls.  A line of flames leaped up to shatter the blackness.  Acting as one man, the concealed Maldeans had lit bundles of faggots wrapped with dry reeds.  They cast the blazing flares down into the clearing so that the whole scene was suddenly and clearly illuminated.
Screams of pain rose from burned men on the ground.  Instantly, all was disorder among the attackers.  Spears, arrows and great pieces of rock showered down into their packed ranks.  The men clinging like monkeys to the ropes were caught in the worst position of all.
The Maldeans had waited until the ropes were weighted with men, with the topmost climbers only a few yards from their goal, before they showed themselves.  Then the scaling party was trapped, unable to descend because of their fellows crowding up from below, unable to defend themselves properly from Tarma's forces above.
As Ki-Gor watched, he saw the flash of swords and the Maldeans hacked the ropes in two, sent the swaying lines of attackers crashing down on their companions.  Then the south gate burst open.
With a tremendous clatter, Tarma's fierce horsemen drove out three abreast through the open portal, spearing straight to the forest before they wheeled and bore down on the confused and tangled ranks of their enemy.
In a solid wave of flesh, riding knee to knee, the Maldeans sent their half-wild horses charging across the clearing.  They crashed headlong into the besieging force, blasted over and through the foot soldiers.  Howling like madmen, the riders turned and back they swept, their cruel swords and clubs wreaking a terrible carnage.
It was a scene of bedlam.  Clots of fighting men swirled and twisted as the horsemen tried to close a net around the forest men, press them back against the castle walls and prevent them from escaping into the night.
Despite their awful losses, the forest men fought like they were possessed and they shattered the tightening circle of horsemen.  In a desperate surge of power, they slashed through to the jungle, leaving their dead and wounded where they lay.  Once in the shelter of the trees, they fled in panic, with no hope of rallying from the swift disaster which the Maldeans had visited on them.
The masterful tactics of the Maldeans were enough to excite the admiration of any warrior situated as was Ki-Gor where he could see the whole of the swift, efficient plan unreel.  But the White Lord's mind was occupied with more than merely following the course of the fighting.
Seeing the fate dealt the invading force, he knew he could not subject his pygmy friends to a like disaster.  But though he abandoned his original idea of taking the castle by storm, he did not for a moment give up his resolve to rescue Helene and Williams.  Instead, he impetuously determined on a venture where guile and boldness would be substituted for force.
The Maldeans had not escaped without losses.  A number of riderless horses were in evidence in the clearing, and many of the riders who had started the charge lay twisted in death on the field.  There was still great confusion as the horsemen rounded up prisoners, fought a few diehard knots of men backed against the castle walls, and helped get their own wounded within the gates.
Ki-Gor noted that about one mounted Maldean in every twenty wore a white cape.  These men acted as captains and their capes made it easy for their men to rally around them in the darkness.  Not twenty yards from the limb where Ki-Gor lay, one of these group leaders lay stretched in death.
"An army cannot enter Tarma's kraal," Ki-Gor said with sudden decision, "but perhaps three men can."
Tembu George and N'Geeso were immediately attentive, knowing from the tone of his voice he had discovered a possible means of entry.  
"Look there!  The gates stand wide," Ki-Gor pointed out.  "See how those two riders go in at a trot, supporting a wounded man on his horse between them."
The quick-witted chieftains caught his idea without further ion.
"If we go in fast, we might get by in the confusion," N'Geeso agreed.
"But Ki-Gor's white skin would betray him," said Tembu George.  "Even though the bundles of wood are almost burned out, they would know him for a stranger.  Let N'Geeso and me go alone."
It was typical of the two blacks that though they knew death might wait just within the gates they worried not.
"I will wear a white cape to conceal my body," the White Lord hurriedly explained, "and will go in the middle like that wounded man.  Come now while they are yet excited over their victory."
They scrambled to the ground and went cautiously out into the clearing.  With his understanding of animals, Ki-Gor had little difficulty in catching three of the horses standing near the forest.  N'Geeso secured the white cape from the dead Maldean officer.
Then, skirting the dying flares, they rode fast toward the gates, with Ki-Gor sagging forward on his horse so that with the flowing cape and the riders on either side of him he was not easily seen from the ground.
They came into the portal at a full gallop.  Armed men stood within, but they were laughing and shouting, and accustomed to the reckless Maldean horsemen.  They were too busy scattering out of the way to pay close attention to the riders.  Just within the gates was a broad court and though more guards stood along the sides, the central way had been left open for the returning warriors.
Ki-Gor and the two chieftains drove straight across the plaza riding like furies.  The faces of the bystanders, dimly lit by torches stuck in wall brackets, swept by in a blur.  People cried out to them, but whether they were saying the riders were enemies or were acclaiming those they thought were returning heroes, Ki-Gor did not know.
A narrow street opened before them.  They swept into its darkness, leaving behind the castle wall and its swarming, excited warriors.  They had penetrated the Maldean stronghold, but there was no triumph in their hearts for they knew the deadly peril and danger ahead of them.
Henceforth, they were three against a whole savage people.

VI.
The Ceremony of Judgment

THE SOUND of the door opening awakened Helene.  She lay on a sleeping rug in a large, bare room.  The window high up in the stone wall above her was barred.
She felt a swift start of bewilderment.  Then her eyes fell on the expressionless face of the serving woman who had entered the room and she remembered.  She was the prisoner of Tarma, the strange, cruel Queen of the Maldeans.  This was the second day of her imprisonment in the ancient fortress.
She had been brought to this room as soon as they arrived.  Since then she had seen no one other than this cold, silent Maldean woman who had been assigned to look after her needs.  Williams was held in a nearby room for once she had heard his angry shouts.
Helene sat up on the rug.  Sleep had erased the dazed fatigue which had resulted from the long, hurried trek through the jungle and over the lava bed.  She could feel and think again, reconstruct the savage events which had brought her to this room.
Both pride and common sense helped her to remain outwardly calm.  She forced herself to eat the breakfast of fruit which the woman placed by the rug.  Then to her surprise, the woman had a wooden tub brought for her to bathe in, and afterwards the Maldean combed and arranged her hair.
Helene was not left long to wonder at the reason for these special attentions.  Within a few minutes, Valdur stepped into the room.  The flowing scarlet cape he wore across his broad shoulders made him appear more grotesque than usual.  It accentuated his ridiculously short legs and made his huge, muscled trunk seem larger.
"This is merely a friendly visit to check on your welfare," he said gruffly.  "Do not be afraid."
Helene looked at him calmly.  "I'm not afraid."
He studied her more closely.  "No!" he said with evident surprise.  "I don't believe you are."  He thought a moment and frowned.  "That is good.  Usually women sacrifices carry on disgracefully.  In any case, the Ceremony of Judgment comes today so you have three whole days after that before you die."
"You and Tarma are most generous," she said with icy sarcasm, "but I am not so certain as you that I will die."
Amusement flickered in Valdur's hard eyes.  His thick fingers toyed with the edge of his cape.
"Surely you don't think anyone could save you now?" he asked with a thin smile.  "Your husband - he is the one you are counting on?"
When Helene said nothing, Valdur's cynical smile grew broader.  His right hand moved to his throat, unconsciously touched the slender reed whistle which hung there from a silver chain.
"It is touching to see a woman with such faith in a man," he said, and there was more than a trace of envy in his voice.  "This Ki-Gor is a magnificent man, I grant you, and a cunning, dangerous warrior.  There is a spark within him, an inner power which I have seen in no other man.  But you must not expect the impossible of him."
Valdur's great hairy arms plunged from beneath his cape in a gesture of ridicule.  He reminded her of the trackless, desolate stone area which surrounded the valley, of the giant lizards guarding the entrance through the marsh, of the gray apes acting as tireless sentinels, and of the fact that the massive fortress lay in the center of a lake.  He seemed to savor this enumeration of the obstacles which barred any rescue attempt by her husband.
"We Maldeans are an ancient people," he related proudly, "and we do not live in this valley by accident.  The warriors of Attila who fathered us selected this place because it was impregnable.  With the great lizards and the earth-gods to aid us, we fear no invaders."
Helene realized only too well how real were the tremendous obstacles which separated her from Ki-Gor.  It infuriated her to see the hunchback smugly name the ways in which the White Lord could die if he were foolish enough to pit himself against the Maldeans.
"No," Valdur concluded, his eyes glittering as he watched her, "you will get no help from Ki-Gor.  You'll die, and then because he is little more than a savage, he will soon forget you.  In time, we will win him to our way of life, whether by words and Tarma's beauty, by offers of luxury and power, or by force.  It is easily done if one knows how.  We have endured as a people because long ago we learned to take outsiders and fashion them into Maldeans."
Helene realized then the Maldean's ancestral claims might be true.  Once they had been a fair-skinned race, perhaps the far outpost of Attila's ancient empire, certainly the remnant of nomadic conquerors.  Whatever their true history, they were very old and their origin had been long since obscured in myth.  But as through generations they declined in numbers, they turned to intermarriage with captives to maintain their vigor, until at last only the ruling family could boast pure blood.  Now Tarma alone was a true Maldean, and, resolved that their kings and queens at least should remain white, the barbaric race reached out for Ki-Gor with animal directness.
"There must be a few people who didn't take your teachings too well," stabbed Helene, anxious to ruffle his smug composure.  "I can hear, you know.  Those sounds last night were of men attacking the walls."
Valdur stiffened.  Helene's words had gone home.  The forest men were indeed embarrassing proof that many did not take too willingly to the Maldean way of life.  They were runaway slaves and renegade Maldeans unwilling to live under Tarma's tyranny.
Always the Maldeans had had to contend with small groups of men and women living like hunted animals around the valley, but since Tarma had come to the throne, their numbers had increased alarmingly.  Unable to leave the valley because of the dinosaurs' guarding the entrance, they struck at the Maldeans with the frenzied desperation of condemned men.
"Those starving jackals mean nothing," he blustered.  "They serve only to keep our warriors in training.  Last night my men gave them a lesson they will remember."
Helene's laugh grated on his nerves.  She had a sudden suspicion that the Maldeans were weaker than she had thought.
"Only the lizards and the gray apes keep those starving jackals' from crushing you," she declared, watching his lips tighten.  "With a leader such as Ki-Gor, they'll finish you easily."
Valdur straightened angrily.  He had come expecting a tear-stained, cringing woman who would be an easy target for his taunts.  Usually, men and women who knew they were to be sacrificed to Zalda cried and pleaded for mercy.  This redhaired girl showed only scorn.
"Perhaps they do outnumber us," he admitted, losing his cleverness in his anxiety to impress Helene.  "And perhaps with a clever leader they might become a threat - if they could control the lizards and the earth-gods.  But they can never do those things."
"And why not," taunted Helene.  "Those can't be very difficult achievements if such savages as you Maldeans have learned them."
Valdur drew himself up, his eyes angry.  In his way, he was wise, but this woman confused him.
"I can tell you why," he blurted.  "Because Tarma and I alone know the secret of making these whistles which only the great lizards can hear.  Likewise, we two alone know the Ancient Tongue spoken by the earth-gods."
"You mean you can control those huge lizards with those little whistles?" asked Helene incredulously.
Valdur saw her obvious interest and felt he had actually impressed her.  He went on boastfully.
"It is more than just the whistles," he explained.  "True, when you blow on them, the lizards scream and writhe.  But we catch them when they are small, an in addition to their natural dislike of the whistles, we teach them greater fear.  We pen the small ones up and every time we blow on the whistles, we prod them with hot irons.  It does not take long for them to learn that the whistles mean pain, and no matter how large they grow after we release them, they never forget their moons of training.  Now you can see how wise are we Maldeans to have learned such things."
Helene, indeed, was surprised that the Maldeans at some time in their early history had learned to control the dinosaurs by a method which would have brought a gasp of amazement from a modern psychologist.  Pitched too high for human ears to hear, the whistles were actually painful to the dinosaurs.  By torturing the creatures day after day when they were still young enough to be controlled, the Maldeans succeeded in training the stupid beasts to flee in panic whenever they heard a whistle blown.
"Ah," pointed out Helene, "but if an enemy captured one of the whistles you would be lost."
Valdur smiled triumphantly.  He had wanted her to say just that.  It gave him an opportunity to further display his cleverness.
"Only three people are regularly allowed the whistles, Tarma, myself and the captain of the fortress in the marsh," he said.  "If there is a special mission, of course, I issue one to the leader."
He held the whistle away from his throat with his fingers for her to see.  He swelled his chest like a pouter pigeon.
"I make them of a very delicate reed, so the chances are very small for an enemy to ever get one of my whistles.  We three who wear them are always well protected, and if capture appeared probable, we would merely crush the thin reed.  Ah, it is most likely the lizards will feast on your Ki-Gor should he ever stumble on our valley."
Helene's slender hope of rescue evaporated before his words.  She had known from the first that her beloved mate would follow her.  That thought had sustained her.  But now abruptly the knowledge that Ki-Gor would somehow locate the valley and try to find her added to the burden of her sorrow.  Courageous and resourceful as the White Lord was, he could not overcome the giant lizards or penetrate the island fortress.
Because of her, Ki-Gor would be killed or captured.  Capture for the White Lord would be worse than death for he would never bend before Tarma.  Misery welled up in Helene, but she steeled herself against betraying her true feelings.  Valdur wanted her to break down.  His words were carefully calculated to torture her.
"You live in a dream, Valdur, a dream of the past," she said imperiously."That dream will be forever shattered unless Williams and I are released.  You have little time to make your peace with Ki-Gor.  He is the jungle's greatest warrior, and all your safeguards will be nothing against him."'
Valdur's eyes narrowed.  A dart of unease shot through him as Helene's warning called up a picture of the White Lord in his mind.  He frowned and his face darkened.  There was the scrape of feet in the hall outside the door.
"You have kept me overlong," he burst out wrathfully.  "It is time for the Ceremony of Judgment.  Now we shall see which of us dreams!"
He watched her closely, waiting for fear to come into her eyes, wanting desperately to see her cringe.  Her only response was a faintly contemptuous curl of her lips.  Valdur turned violently and burst from the room, not understanding the strange sweep of anger which erupted in his brain.
There had been no call for him to visit Helene, but from the moment he had awakened, the desire had pressed stronger and stronger upon him.  The drive which sent him to gloat over Helene actually was bound up more with his feelings toward Tarma than toward the prisoner.
Because her skin was white, Tarma ruled the Maldeans.  Otherwise, Valdur's claim to the throne was equally strong.  Tarma was as ruthless with her cousin as with her other subjects, often taking a sadistic pleasure in taunting him because of his brown skin, reminding him that he could never rule.  And though he dared not admit it even to himself, he hated the queen, hated her at the same time he abased himself before her, hated her while he led the warriors who actually kept her on the throne.
He had anticipated a delicious pleasure in gloating over Helene, in seeing a white woman grovel before him.  But Helene's calm disdain had blasted his hopes.  Instead of quailing before him and begging for mercy, she had parried his verbal thrusts, scoffed at him, spoken of the white-skinned Ki-Gor's greatness.
Hate flared over him, and the venom of a lifetime focused on Helene.  He flung out of the room, resolved to salve his feelings of inferiority by breaking her mentally and physically before she died on the altar of Zalda.  He would find a way to make at least this one smug white cringe.
Had he only known, immediately his back was turned, Helene's full lips trembled.  She had guessed his state of mind soon after he entered the room and deliberately had frustrated his purpose.  No matter what sadistic tortures, he and Tarma devised, she was resolved to show no weakness.  It was not that she was unafraid; it was just that she did not mean to betray her true feelings to her barbaric captors.
By the time the four guards entered, she was once more serene in appearance.  She walked with her head high as they threaded a way through a maze of wide corridors, emerging at last in a broad, central court.
Momentarily blinded by the brilliant sunlight, Helene hesitated in the doorway.  A roar of voices broke over her, a real mob sound swelling and rising in a frenzied hysterical storm.  Then as her eyes adjusted to the increased light, she saw a sea of brown bodies jamming the court.
That fierce mass of Maldean men and women was enough to make Helene's heart turn over in her breast.  But the sight at the far end of the court beyond the crowd was equally terrifying.  As though drawn by a magnet, Helene's gaze went over the crowd to the gigantic stone figure of an ape which sat hunched on a vast altar.
It was the idol Tarma had called the Great God Zalda!  Immense and bestial, it towered up into the air, its brutal face glowering down at the swirling mass of humanity below.  A tremendous metal cauldron rested on the altar before it.
Helene's guards urged her forward, two of them going ahead to open a lane through the shouting Maldeans.  As she approached the idol, she realized it was an exact likeness of a gray ape.  The huge arms crooked forward so that the god's hands lay together palm-upward on the cauldron.  When she was almost at the feet of Zalda, she saw that the hands, instead of being stone like the rest of the figure, were of blackened soot-stained metal.
She understood then the reason for the odd position of the arms.  The arms were movable, manipulated by huge counter-weights.  Then one of the earth-gods left the others and approached Tarma.  She took the burning torch from the hands of the priest and gave it to the ape.  With a slow, ambling gait, the creature went down the steps, passing between Helene and Williams.  Followed in single file by the other apes, the torchbearer marched across the open space to the altar of Zalda.
The ape advanced until he stood beside the huge cauldron.  He seemed to contemplate the idol for a few seconds, and then he swung his arm and threw the torch into the huge metal container.
A great yellow sheet of flame leaped up from the cauldron.  The blaze swayed and danced as a slender plume of black smoke climbed up past the idol's head.  For a full minute, the fire burned furiously, then abruptly it vanished.  Downward fell the opened hands of Zalda, pressing down on the still rising column of smoke until they rested once more over the cauldron.
Zalda had given his judgment.  Tarma blinked her eyes, seeming to awaken.  Her arms fell to her side.
"You know the evil done by these two outsiders against the earth-gods," she cried to the people.  "One they killed and one they wounded and imprisoned.  It is the will of Zalda that they be given into his hands three days hence at high noon to die the death of the flames!"
A triumphant roar blasted up from the crowd, a tremendous outburst which did not quiet until Tarma raised her hand.
"It is further the will of the god that because of their arrogance in the face of their crimes that they be flogged now before the altar.  They will be whipped until their senses leave them and then brine will be poured over their backs.  Zalda commands that no mercy be shown these enemies."
If the verdict of death pleased the Maldeans, this decree of immediate torture pleased them more.  They wanted to see blood and suffering.  They wanted to hear the victims scream in terror as Zalda's vengeance was visited on them.
Dazed and shaken by the unbridled savagery of their captors, Helene and Williams were immediately grasped by their guards to preclude any hysterical attempt at resistance.  But so hopeless was their position and so completely bewildered were they by their brutal treatment, they made no attempt to struggle.
They were dragged across to the altar and bound hand and foot to metal rings in the pillars supporting the cauldron.  They were twenty yards apart and high enough to be in plain view of the crowd.
Behind them they heard Tarma announce that Valdur had claimed the honor of flogging the captives.  He stamped across the square with ill-disguised eagerness to receive a metal-studded whip from a priest.  More than the swift appearance of the whip told Helene and Williams that many whippings had been administered on the altar.  The stone pillars to which they were bound were splotched with the blood of other victims.
Valdur approached Helene, ostensibly to make sure she was securely bound, but actually in the hope that she would beg him for mercy.  His eyes glittered and he was trembling as he fumbled with her wrists.  Then he saw the look of disgust, of withering scorn with which Helene regarded him, and he drew back suddenly.
A terrible anger washed over him, and his hand whitened around the butt of the whip.  "I'll bring you to your knees," he snarled.  "I'll tear that pretty back off of you with this whip.  You'll beg for mercy before I'm through."
He ripped away his scarlet cape, revealing his long, ape-like arms and huge, thick chest.
"The girl first," he said to the priest.
The priest was a tall, emaciated man.  His bloodless mouth split in a humorless smile revealing yellowed teeth.  He understood Valdur.
Helene closed her eyes and bit her lips against the unbearable anguish which would sear her insides like flame even before Valdur had taken up his position for the first blow.  This terrible nightmare into which she had been so abruptly plunged was almost more than the human spirit could stand.
Behind her, Valdur took his stance.  His hairy, muscled arm came back, straightening the many-thonged whip.  His lips were parted and his breath came in quick, hard wheezes.
Then he sucked in a deep gulp of air, swung with the whole weight of his torso and blasted the lash down across Helene's shoulders.  The terrible force of the blow threw her against the stone pillar and as Valdur ripped the lash up for a second strike, blood welled in long streaks across her golden skin.

VII.
The Altar of Zalda

AFTER THEIR daring entrance into the city, instead of stumbling aimlessly around the dark, unfamiliar streets, Ki-Gor and the two blacks had left their horses and climbed to the roof of a deserted building.  Despite his frantic anxiety to locate Helene and Williams, he forced himself to think and act calmly.
He and his friends desperately needed rest.  They would need all their wits and strength to elude capture, let alone successfully free Helene and the American.  Furthermore, they had to learn something of the castle's layout, gain a hint as to where the prisoners were kept, before they could evolve a plan of rescue.
For these reasons, Ki-Gor led his friends atop one of the flat-roofed buildings and the three of them, despite their dangerous surroundings, quickly fell into an exhausted sleep.
Sunlight striking into his face awakened Ki-Gor.  He stirred and sat up.  Beside him on the flat roof slept Tembu George and N'Geeso.  He shook them awake.
Around the tall, central structure of the fortress clustered lower structures.  Apparently in the past every foot of space had been utilized to provide shelter for the Maldean population behind the protection of the walls.  But the Maldeans had declined in numbers so that many of these jampacked buildings were now deserted.
The street below them twisted sharply about a hundred yards further on to empty into a broad plaza.  Ki-Gor saw that they could reach the plaza by moving across the rooftops and likewise they could make their way almost to the main castle by the same means.  He heard a rising hubbub in the street as though increasing numbers of people were walking toward the plaza.
Hunger wrenched at Ki-Gor's belly, and inured as he was to hardship, he was beginning to suffer from thirst.  The Masai and pygmy chieftains made no mention of food or drink, nor would they, but the White Lord knew they were suffering.
After a time the street below grew quiet and peering down Ki-Gor saw it was empty.  Practically the whole population had gathered in the square.
"Wait here!" he ordered, and before has companions knew what he was about, Ki-Gor lowered himself over the roof and dropped into the street.
His nose quickly guided him into an open doorway.  The house had just been left by Maldeans going to join the gathering throng and the scent of the morning meal was heavy in the air.  Ki-Gor quickly found a joint of cooked meat, a variety of fruits, and a stoppered gourd of water.  Taking off the white cape which he still wore, he tied the articles in it, slipped out of the house and rejoined Tembu George and N'Geeso.
The famished men made short work of the food and drained the last drop of water.  Immediately fresh strength flowed into their muscled bodies.
"That crowd is calling for blood," Ki-Gor said suddenly, detecting a growing savagery in the thunderous outbreaks.  A dart of unease sparked through him.
"Come!" he said.  "We'll work our way across the rooftops.  Maybe we can find out what's happening."
Tembu George and N'Geeso exchanged guarded looks.  The same thought was in their minds as in Ki-Gor's: that they had arrived too late.  Forgotten was their original intention of trying to enter the main castle while the Maldeans were concentrated in the plaza.  Like silent shadows, they drifted over the roofs, wormed on their stomachs to a building directly behind the towering idol.
Ki-Gor raised his head cautiously and peered down into the square.  An animal snarl broke from his lips as he saw Helene and Williams standing before Tarma.  The Maldean Queen was pronouncing judgment on the prisoners, condemning them to death by fire three days hence.
"At least we're not too late," breathed Tembu George thankfully.  "We'll have three days."
But hardly had he spoken, when Tarma went on to command the immediate and brutal flogging of both captives.  And Tembu George, who had led his fierce warriors into half a hundred bloody battles turned gray with sickness.  The quick leap of hope to his features dissolved into deep-carved anguish.
Beside him, N'Geeso, greatest war leader of the pygmies, moaned and his face was a bleak and tortured mask.  It was more than the two faithful blacks could stand to think of Helene torn to pieces with a whip, to think of seeing her tortured, yet being helpless to save her.
And knowing Ki-Gor, fear, wild-and uncontrollable, leaped up in their hearts; fear not for themselves but for the White Lord and Helene.  They had seen the red, raging madness which came over the jungle man at the least hint of danger to his mate.  As they heard the Maldean Queen's pronouncement, they both knew she was proclaiming Ki-Gor's death sentence as well.
Yet for the space of seconds, Ki-Gor neither spoke nor moved.  He was like graven stone, with even the breath stopped in his throat.  In that interval, he gave no hint of the dreadful, searing turmoil which wrenched every shred of his consciousness.
His eyes were fixed on the turbulent crowd, a vast human sea held in by ranks of Maldean warriors.  He saw, too, the ruthless figure of Tarma surrounded by her retainers, the rough shove of the guards as they pushed Helene and Williams toward the attar, and the misshapen figure of Valdur.
Then Ki-Gor's breath came again, came in the hard, tugging gasps of a man running full-tilt.  Yet still he did not move or speak.  His face whitened beneath his tan and his lips were a thin, gray streak.  Helene and Williams had reached the altar and were being bound to the stone pillars.  Valdur was scuttling across the open space to execute the sentence.
Tembu George and N'Geeso writhed with physical pain.  A hundred daring warriors would not suffice to snatch Helene from that altar, let alone three men.  Yet too long had they fought beside Ki-Gor not to know what he would do.  Death beckoned him, there before the ape-god and he would go forth to meet it.  He would go forth though there was no hope of saving Helene, no hope of even sparing her the torture of the flogging.
But no frantic pleadings rose to their lips, no rush of arguments against his going.  They knew his mind, and their own decisions were swift and inevitable.  He was their friend and more, and above all things they wanted the White Lord to live, but since that could not be, he would not die alone.
"We are beside you, Ki-Gor," growled Tembu George.  "By the gods, we will get you through to the altar!"
"We will get you through and more!" swore N'Geeso grimly.  "Before we fall, the stones will run with Maldean blood.  Those dangos will have cause to remember your coming."
Ki-Gor tore his eyes from the scene below.  He was tense, his muscles coiled like steel springs.  He seemed to turn his thoughts outward toward his two friends only by great effort.  They did not guess the tumultuous drive of his mind in the fleeting time since Tarma had sentenced the prisoners.
"I go," he said, "but you two stay!"  The harsh quick beat of his voice slashed through their protests.  "I cannot free Helene or Williams, yet there is one slender chance I can ward off the flogging.  Whether I succeed or not, whether I die or not, you must stay hidden.  Your job will still be to free them and get them home again."
He glanced over the ledge.  Valdur was ripping off his cape and snapping the thongs of the whip as he took up his position behind the helpless Helene.  "There's no time to explain," Ki-Gor gritted, "but you must do as I say.  Don't fail me!"
His glance struck into each of them in turn like the quick stab of a dagger.  Then his broad hands reached to grip them by the shoulders, telling them in that brief touch all the things that were in his heart.
"Drop my spear to me," he said to Tembu George.
He swung over the ledge, his hands gripping the top as his toes dug for a hold on the rough stone.  He clambered down the face of the building with a monkey's agility and dropped to the ground.  He caught his spear in the air and sprinted for the altar.
Since Ki-Gor approached from behind the huge ape-god, only a few guards and priests barred his way, and they stood with their backs to him.  The mob and the bulk of the Maldean guards were on the far side of the square.  Tarma and her retainers were midway in the open space before the god.
Valdur was raising the whip for his first blow, so all attention was focused on him, giving Ki-Gor an opportunity to get down the wall and start toward the idol without discovery.  Then as he raced into the open, the flashing movement of his white body caught the eyes of many of the spectators.
His startling appearance from nowhere probably caused some of the Maldeans to cry an alarm, but their voices were lost in the bloodthirsty din.  Like a streak of light he came, knowing everything depended on his reaching the altar before the nearest guards were aware of his presence.
As he neared the god from the rear, its bulk hid him briefly.  Then he veered to the right, circling to the side of the idol.  Abruptly he burst into full view of the crowd.
Faster and faster he sprinted, rocketing close along the edge of the stone figure.  He could see the pillar where Helene was bound.  She was hidden from view, but Valdur's powerful figure was in plain sight, turned sideways to Ki-Gor, the lash gripped in his extended hand.
Between Ki-Gor and Valdur a guard stood wide-legged, a naked sword held to his shoulder.  The man's back was to the White Lord, but either he detected the sound of running feet or had a premonition of danger, for he suddenly twisted his head.  He saw the jungle man bearing down on him and he whirled like a cat, slashing outward with his sword.
At that moment Valdur swung the first brutal blow.  He struck the metal-studded lash down on Helene's shoulder with all the tremendous strength in his savage body.  Ki-Gor heard the sodden shock of the whip across his mate's soft body.
Rage splintered his mind.  Hate exploded through him in one dreadful crimson burst, and though a score of men had stood before him, he would have torn his way through them.  Berserk strength blasted into his corded muscles.
The White Lord saw the guard turn, and like a flash of lightning he drove forward with his spear.  Its shovel-bladed point leaped out and all the momentum of the White Lord's hurtling weight was behind it.  Past the guard's reaching sword plunged the spear.  Bone, muscle and flesh shredded under its impact, and borne on the shaft of the spear, the Maldean was lifted and thrown backward, his whole chest smashed through.
Ki-Gor threw man and spear from him, threw them forward as he drove on without breaking his stride.  Then Valdur loomed before him, the whip drawn back for the second blow.  Engrossed in his task and turned so that he had not seen Ki-Gor spurt into view, Valdur had no suspicion of the White Lord's presence until the spitted guard crashed almost at his feet.
Valdur's contorted face blanked out in shock.  He had no time to move, to even turn.  Ki-Gor hit him low on the side, like a football tackler, heaving upward with his shoulders as he clasped the Maldean around the waist.  Ki-Gor lifted Valdur high, carried him two plunging steps forward, then spun and crashed him bodily against the stone pillar.
Despite his short legs, the Maldean was a great, chunky block of a man.  He struck the stone with terrific force, looking like a huge, ridiculous rag doll as he flattened against it still tightly clutching the whip.  So fast did it happen, he didn't even cry out in pain.  The breath exploded from his body and he seemed to hang for an instant as though plastered to the rock.
Then he fell to the altar floor with a limp squash, his eyes open, but only the whites showing in his brown face.  The thing happening was so unbelievable that the vast watching throng could not immediately comprehend its true significance.  Guards, priests and ordinary citizens were frozen with astonishment as they saw a nearly naked white giant burst on to the altar, heave the mighty Valdur up like a child and shatter him against the stone pillar.
This could not be!  Not even a madman would dare such an act.  Who was he and where did he come from?  No strange warrior had ever penetrated the Maldean stronghold, yet this blond savage materialized suddenly in the very center of the fortress, sprang out of thin air to smash down a member of the royal family on the very altar of Zalda.
Even Tarma was transfixed by the amazing spectacle.  She recognized, of course, the magnificent white savage.  Yet for a fleeting fraction her mind denied the evidence offered by her eyes.  It was impossible for him to be there on the altar.  It could not be.  And yet it was.
Then the guards about the altar recovered.  They shook off their numbing surprise and streamed forward from every side to slash this insane intruder to ribbons.  Like unleashed leopards they sprang from their posts about the square to avenge the insult to their lord.  The White Lord had reached the altar without difficulty, but neither he nor a hundred like him could have ever left it and lived.  Every avenue of escape was immediately blocked by the flooding Maldean guards.
But Ki-Gor had no intention of leaving the altar.  He darted toward the badly stunned Valdur, hauled the man away from the pillar, shoved him down on his knees in plain sight of every watching Maldean.  He locked his left fist in Valdur's hair and jerked his head back so that his throat was exposed.
Then standing braced behind the warrior, he whipped out his knife and held it to Valdur's throat.  The Maldean's chest was heaving and slowly consciousness was draining back into him.  Ki-Gor towered over the helpless man, in a position to decapitate him with one swift slash of his knife.
"Back!" roared Ki-Gor at the guards.  "Back or Valdur dies.  Stand away and he shall go unharmed."
As the only male member of the ruling family, Valdur was in complete charge of the Maldean warriors.  He it was who led them into battle, who devised the cunning defenses against the forest people, who gave them victories.  Tarma was their queen, but Valdur was their war leader.
The foremost guards saw the muscles tighten in Ki-Gor's right arm.  His wrath-scarred face told them his words were no idle bluff.  No man could have looked upon Ki-Gor without knowing he would rip Valdur's throat from ear to ear without hesitation.  And the Maldeans knew furthermore, that a man mad enough to willingly enter a trap from which there was no escape certainly would not stop at killing when he knew he was to be killed.
At the steps of the altar, the guards slowed.  The strange white man could not get away.  Armed men were packed in a vast semi-circle around the god.  Nervously the guards edged closer, coming a step at a time.  Not one of them wanted to cause Valdur's death, but they continued to inch forward, knowing if the White Lord permitted them to get close enough, a thrown club might drop him.
Ki-Gor tugged hard on Valdur's hair, pricked his knife point into the man's neck.
The pain roused the Maldean leader, brought him out of his daze.
"Tell your men to keep away," grated the White Lord.  "I have nothing to lose by killing you.  Your one chance to live is to order them off."
Valor blubbered miserably as he realized his plight.  His body was a seething mass of hurt.  He was disgraced and held helpless before his whole people.  His one chance to redeem himself, to make his name a living legend would be to command his men to attack, thus ordering his own decapitation rather than bow to the white savage.
But the raw, primitive courage for such an act of bravado was not in Valdur.  Faced with certain death, he was a coward.  Fear geysered over the cornered bully, swept away the swaggering sham behind which he had always hidden.
"No!  No!" he quavered at his advancing warriors.  "Do as he says!  Get back off the altar or he'll kill me!"
Behind him the White Lord could hear Helene's dry, choking sobs.  When she realized that somehow Ki-Gor had come to her side, her iron control snapped.  Out of love for her, he had come to his own death, come in a futile attempt to save her.  Ki-Gor could hear her repeating over and over that he shouldn't have done it, but he had no time to even glance at her.
A bewildered silence fell over the crowd as they saw the warriors retreat.  Tarma had come to her feet, and now her voice rang out angrily.
"What madness is this, Ki-Gor?  Do you think to win freedom for the two prisoners by threatening death to Valdur?  If so, you're a fool, Ki-Gor.  Those two are pledged to Zalda, and though you held your knife at my own throat, I would not set them free."
"You would let your cousin die?" Ki-Gor asked contemptuously.
"Aye, or a thousand cousins," cried Tarma.  "What is his life when weighed against the wrath of Zalda?  Once the Ceremony of Judgment is held, nothing can save those given over to Zalda."
Valdur trembled uncontrollably.  He heard the mutter of assent which ran through the crowd.  It was, indeed the ancient law that no human power could keep a prisoner from the altar once the ceremony was completed.
"Listen, then, O Tarma," Ki-Gor shouted, raising his voice so that every, Maldean could hear him.  "I seek not to free the prisoners, but only to save them from the cruel and senseless torture of the whip.  Swear by your god Zalda that they will not be tortured and Valdur will live."
Tarma tilted her head arrogantly.  "You are in no position to bargain," she said with scorn.  "Neither the prisoners nor you can escape.  Harm Valdur and the three of you will live the next three days in agony."
Ki-Gor crouched over Valdur, his whole body poised.  Guards around the altar sucked in their breath, thinking the jungle man meant to drive his knife into their leader's throat.  The Maldean chieftain screamed hysterically.
"Then I will cheat you of your vengeance," the White Lord challenged her.  "Rather than see Helene whipped, I'll kill her with my own hands and myself with her.  Your people can hold you accountable for Valdur's death and your god for cheating him of his pledged sacrifice!  Give your oath and I'll surrender; refuse and the three of us die!"
Tarma clenched her hands in futile rage.  Not for a moment did she doubt that Ki-Gor would carry out his threat.  After all, she reasoned, since Helene and Ki-Gor couldn't escape, they had everything to gain by a quick, painless death and nothing to lose.  And all the blame would rest on her because she refused to give up a flogging of which she would be cheated anyway.
The deaths would place her in a bad light with the people.  Valdur's resounding defeat of the forest people the previous night had temporarily made him a hero.  He was valuable to Tarma.
But worst of all would be the loss of Helene.  The superstitious Maldeans would not take lightly the loss of a victim who had been pledged to Zalda.  They lived in terror of the ape-god and they believed he would vent his wrath on them if they, failed to deliver a promised victim.
And though she would not admit it to herself, Tarma did not want to lose Ki-Gor.  By a word, she could make him her captive.  Uneasy mutterings went up from the crowd as they mistook her delay as a refusal of the mad white giant's ultimatum.  She tried one last trick.
"Very well, Ki-Gor," she said tightly.  "Give yourself up and the prisoners will be returned to their cells."
"Swear it in the name of your god," demanded Ki-Gor, knowing that with primitive peoples such an oath would be respected, whereas Tarma would have no qualms about going back on her own word.
Tarma hesitated, then gave the oath he demanded.  Ki-Gor tossed away his knife.  Before he could turn to look at Helene, Maldean warriors swarmed over him.  He offered no resistance.

VIII.
Dark Queen's Lair

TARMA kept her word.  Helene and Williams were returned to their cells, and Ki-Gor was placed in a room nearby.  He paced the floor moodily, feeling not even a passing touch of exhilaration at the breath-taking exploit he had dared.
In his own mind, he had done nothing the least heroic.  He assumed any man would have done as much in the same circumstances.  He felt, in fact, a sense of blame for letting Helene and Williams fall into Tarma's hands in the beginning.
The second morning of his confinement, his restless pacing was interrupted by the entrance of four guards.  "We take you to the queen," announced the white-caped leader.  Then, warily approaching the White Lord, the guards bound his hands behind him.
They led him down a long hall, up three flights of stairs, through a series of heavily guarded corridors and into a maze of richly decorated rooms.  As they approached a large double door, it was opened for them by two guards.
Tarma lay on a low couch at the far end of the room, nibbling absently at a silver bowl of fruit and nuts on a table beside her.  Her head and shoulders propped on pillows, she was staring out of a window.  She allowed the guards to approach with their prisoner without giving sign she knew they were present.
Dangerous light flickered briefly in his eyes, and then he masked his feelings.
Tarma selected a plum, munched the remainder away.
"Leave us alone," she said to the guards, still without looking at them or at Ki-Gor.
"But this outlander is dangerous, O Tarma!" burst out the head guard.
"Bah!" she said scornfully.  "Do I fear a bound man with half a hundred warriors within sound of my voice?  I wish to talk with him alone.  Besides, this sword will counter any trickery he might try."
She brushed her fingers to the floor.  A beautiful sword with a jeweled hilt lay beside her couch.  Tarma was as expert with the sword as any of her warriors.
The guards bowed low and withdrew, but they did so with reluctance.  Ki-Gor had earned their respect, and they felt he should be watched every moment.  The sharp edge in Tarma's tone, however, warned them not to argue.
Tarma was silent as the door closed.  Her eyes were half-closed, her face remote and thoughtful.  She was beautiful as a lioness is beautiful, sleek and perfect physically, heavy with the deceptive languor which can flare so quickly into animal savagery.
Her body was naked except for the jeweled cups which held her full, firm breasts and a brief, scarlet loincloth drawn tightly over her hips.  About her neck she wore a gold chain which served both as an ornament and to hold the reed whistle which she always carried.
Despite the steady throb of anger in his temples, Ki-Gor saw her beauty and did not deny it.  He sensed the core of flame within her smooth perfection and felt the warm beat of it against his maleness.
She lifted suddenly and spun to a sitting position.  The jeweled sword was in her hand and she toyed with it.  Her gaze struck hard and deep into Ki-Gor.
"Do you grow weary of four walls, Ki-Gor?" she demanded softly.  "Only two days in that room and they tell me you pace like a caged animal."  She paused, seeming to measure his great frame.  "You were not made to live like that.  You were made to be free, to lead men in battle, to know no will but your own."
He listened and there was a shadow deep in his eyes.  He stood there bound and helpless and heard the quick, measured flow of her voice.
"You were made to rule, Ki-Gor.  To conquer lands and to father kings.  You're like the Old Ones who built this fortress.  I can give you these things.  I can give you all of them.  My people are like a forged sword ready for the using.  I can put that sword in your hand and send you forth to re-win the greatness of the Maldeans."
She was leaning forward now, dark, intense, weaving a net of dreams with her words.
"I can give you all a man can ask, and more," she murmured.  "Look about you and see how you would live.  Look out that window and see the rich land you would rule."  She stood up, her head tilted to look up to him, her arms thrown wide apart.  "And look at me, too, Ki-Gor, and tell me if your blood does not beat faster."
Tarma watched his look trace its way over her body, saw the involuntary tightening of his square jaw.  She seemed to read the answer she wanted in that look and her breath came faster.
"But why do you offer me these things?" asked Ki-Gor.  "Why not one of your own subjects, or if it must be a white man, why not one of the many who trek the outer jungle?"
Tarma dropped the jeweled sword to the table.
"I answered that when I said you alone were like the Old Ones," she said seriously.  "The Old Ones of Attila, who ruled the world with their warrior might.  These white men you mention" - her lips curled with scorn - "what are they without their firesticks and their servants.  They are like serving women themselves with their soft bodies and their endless babbling."
She walked toward Ki-Gor and came close against him, so close that if he swayed a fraction of an inch forward their bodies would be touching.
"And now that I have seen you," she said in almost a whisper, "there is another reason, a stronger one - I want you myself and I want only you."
Her warm, perfumed woman-scent enveloped Ki-Gor.  Her long hair was like the night, and falling free about her face and throat and shoulders, it accentuated the exquisite richness of her skin.  Her full, red lips were only inches from his own.
"But about Helene," he began, the words appearing to force themselves from his throat.
She touched her fingers gently, yet quickly, across his mouth.  "She is forgotten," she said caressingly.  "There are many such women.  They are playthings to be forgotten, unworthy of one such as you, unfit to breathe the same air."
Tarma slid her arms about Ki-Gor's neck.  When he did not try to finish his sentence about Helene, a dart of triumph came and went in her eyes.
"Close her out of your mind," she continued.  "You will find it easy to forget in my arms.  Think of me, Ki-Gor, only me.  The past was a dream, a shadowy sleep, and with my lips I will awaken you."
Her mouth pressed softly against his.  She felt the returning pressure of his kiss, and with a sudden eagerness, her arms tightened and she drew him hard against her.  She kissed him with increasingly savage violence, as though the swift upbeat of her emotions loosed a surging hunger she could not deny.
She ground the length of her body against his, wrenching the smoother, more yielding softness of her flesh into the closest possible proximity with his hardmuscled frame.  Then abruptly she pulled away from him, and his lips followed her as though reluctant to see her break the embrace.
She ran her hands slowly over his shoulders, watching him with smoldering eyes.  Then she swayed toward him again.
"My arms," the White Lord said with a curious huskiness, "you forget they are tied."
Without the least hesitation, she turned and picked the sword up from the table.  Moving behind him, she cut his bonds and pulled the ropes from his wrists.  As he swung around to face her, his breath came quickly and his eyes were electric in their intensity.
She stood waiting, a half-smile on her lips, holding the sword in her hand.  His gaze was fastened on her mouth, and his arms reached for her slowly, jerkily as though a magnet drew them.  His broad hands caught her about the waist, drew gently toward him.
Then Ki-Gor caught her against him, the bruising force of his kiss drove her head back.  For a moment she was passive drinking in the ruthlessness of his kiss and then savagely she responded.  She dropped the sword to the floor, caught her arms around Ki-Gor, dug her fingers into his back.
When she dropped the sword, the White Lord, still kissing her, lifted her in his arms.  He carried her toward the couch, holding her as though she were weightless.  He lowered her until she was just above the pillows.
Then suddenly his fingers gripped her hand and he tore her away from him, spun her over so that she fell face downward on the couch.  Ki-Gor put his knee on her shoulders, shoved her deep into the pillows to smother any outcry.
Acting with a deft certainty which showed how carefully he had planned this move, he used his free hands to grasp the edge of the tapestry which covered the couch.  He tore the thick cloth like paper, ripping three long strips from it.
Tarma fought wildly, trying to escape the pressure of his knee, but she was helpless as a child against his merciless strength.  He caught her hands behind her, tied them swiftly.  She was choking for breath with her face jammed into the pillows.  He pulled her head up, knowing in her desperate need for air, she would be unable to cry out for a few seconds.  In that brief interval, he snaked a strip of cloth over her mouth and gagged her.  Then he tied her ankles and turned her over on her back.
Tarma saw his cold face, the hate in his eyes and knew he had tricked her at the very game with which she had tried to trick him.  He had made a fool of her as she had sought to make one of him.  He had let her believe that she had won him with her promises of power and her artful lovemaking, had responded with a guile equaling hers until his hands were free of bonds.
She struggled insanely, lunging and straining like a mad animal, but Ki-Gor had tied her securely.  He looked down at the utterly cruel and selfish woman in disgust.
"I should kill you," he said bitterly.  "It would be a favor to the jungle.  Yet because I am a fool I will not harm a woman.  But, by the gods, I swear to break your power so that Helene, Williams and I will be the last to suffer at your hands."
He reached out and slipped the gold chain holding the reed whistle from her neck, put it around his own throat.  He picked up the sword from the floor and shoved it through the leather thong which held his now empty knife sheath.
Without another glance at Tarma, he strode to the window.  He swung out of it and dropped to a ledge a few feet below, He edged along the face of the wall until he came to a mass of vines.  Ki-Gor scaled down the vine until he reached the lower rooftops surrounding the main castle.
Then he moved swiftly toward the place where he had spent the night with Tembu George and N'Geeso.  Twice he was forced to hide to escape discovery by the gray apes waddling about on the roofs, and as he neared his destination, he saw a dead ape sprawled face down.
He touched the creature.  It was still warm.  A glance at its hideous death grimace told him N'Geeso had stopped it with a poison dart.
Ki-Gor hurried on, worry touching him as he began to suspect that the Maldean earth-gods were searching for his friends.  He ran crouching toward the balustrade behind which they had slept.  Abruptly, two figures bobbed up with drawn bows, long arrows poised for the kill.
Tembu George gave a surprised grunt and his strained features relaxed.  The pygmy, N'Geeso, lowered his bow, staring in disbelief.
"You got away!" the pygmy chieftain said, completely taken aback.  "You got out of that place when we couldn't even get near it!  Quick, tell us what happened."
"Later," promised Ki-Gor.  "If we're ever to act, we have to do it now.  Any minute they're liable to find out I'm gone.  Once they do, the whole fortress will be aroused."
Ki-Gor pointed to the section of the main structure where Helene and Williams were held.
"Is there an entrance near there?" he asked.  "Or have you had a chance to scout that area?  I notice the earth-gods patrolling the roofs."
"There's a large court where several work elephants are kept," answered Tembu George.  "We scouted it yesterday.  A door opens from the court into the castle on the one side, and on the other a fairly wide street runs to the south gate."
"Good!" said Ki-Gor, frowning in thought.
N'Geeso peered over the balustrade, alert for the gray apes.
"We learned that yesterday," the pygmy chieftain explained.  "But today the gray apes have been everywhere.  Apparently Tarma got to worrying that if you got into the city, others might have come with you, and she's had them searching the fortress.  Twice they've almost cornered us.
Ki-Gor could guess from the little man's tone the hunted hours the two had spent, despair-filled hours when they felt they were failing their friends, letting time drain away while they got no nearer to their goal of freeing the jungle couple and Williams.
"You've done well," he assured them, sweeping away their torturing self-doubts with that simple statement.  "Now we will show these danbos what it is to face true warriors."

IX.
The Battle on the Stairs

THE SKULKING ROLE they had been forced to play did not sit well with the two chieftains.  They were proud men.  Now Ki-Gor's words swept their spirits upward, filled them with a fierce wild joy that at last the gamble was to be made.  N'Geeso hurriedly gave the White Lord the bow and quiver of arrows which he had left behind with the chieftains before he made the dash to the altar.
Ki-Gor led them to the court, his keen senses enabling them to avoid the gray apes patrolling their course.  Three elephants stood swaying in one corner of the court, while their bored keepers lay flat in the shade of a small tree, dozing and gossiping.  Two guards lounged at the entrance to the castle.  Otherwise, the court was deserted.
As they watched from a low roof overlooking the open space, puzzling as to how they could get past this first obstacle, five women bearing immense loads of wood on their backs entered from the street.  Ki-Gor studied them with narrowed eyes, then turning, he whispered instructions to N'Geeso.
Just as the last of the women passed them, N'Geeso dropped to the ground behind her.  The loads of wood on the bent backs of the women hid the little man from the guards, and the lazing elephant keepers took no notice of the procession.
Two of the wood bearers had entered the door and the third was halfway in when N'Geeso peered around the struggling woman in front of him, puffed a dart into the guard on the left.  Then moving to the other side, he sent a poison barb into the other Maldean.
Neither of the warriors disinterestedly watching the women saw the blowgun swiftly aimed in their direction.  Both men started at the small but sharp dart of pain as the needle-like barbs stabbed into their throats.  Immediately realizing something was wrong, they straightened, their eyes searching.
By then the fifth and last woman was struggling in the door, bent so far over by her load that she saw only the small patch of ground at her feet.  The guards, their faces twisted horribly, were momentarily transfixed by the shooting agony of the poison, paralyzed so swiftly they could make only an odd choking sound.
They slid down the wall dead as the expressionless pygmy chieftain padded past them into the castle.  The moment the guards fell, Tembu George and Ki-Gor dropped from the roof and walked at a normal pace toward the entrance.  The small, wise eyes of the swaying elephants followed them, but the keepers of the great beasts never looked their way.
As they reached the door, the White Lord and Tembu George picked up the two guards and carried them inside.  They tossed the bodies into a dark corner, and joining the waiting N'Geeso, sprinted up a flight of steps.
They came suddenly against four warriors on the dark stair.  Ki-Gor swung the jeweled sword in a swinging arc, sent a Maldean stumbling back with the side of his head chopped away.  With the merest shift of his body, he drove the point through the belly of another and wrenched it free in a wash of blood.
Tembu George, the immense Masai chieftain, who had insisted on bringing his beloved spear, caught a man on its point and carried him up six steps before slowing his charge.  N'Geeso calmly dropped the fourth warrior with a poison dart.  The Maldeans died before they were fully aware who their foes were, before they could free their blades.
At break-neck speed, the three twisted up another flight of stairs.  Now that they were committed, their only hope of success was to reach Helene's and Williams' jailers before the dead guards were discovered behind them.  Once an alarm was given, they could not hope to get out of the castle.
Ki-Gor knew the cells were on the second floor somewhere in the section of the building which they had entered.  A white-caped captain turned out of the corridor above them and started down the steps.  He saw the three men plunging up toward him and spun to flee.
Tembu George's right arm swept back, and with a lashing motion, he threw the shovel-bladed-spear.  The great razor-edged point caught the man low on the side as he turned, plunged on upward through his chest cavity to emerge at the base of his neck.
Fortunately, the force of the cast threw the Maldean against the wall of the stairs instead of carrying him out into the corridor.  Ki-Gor reached him as he fell, and bending over, ripped away his white cape.
"Put this on," Ki-Gor told N'Geeso.  These halls are dark.  At a distance, perhaps you will be taken for Valdur leading me back to my cell."
Then they stepped boldly into the corridor, N'Geeso going two steps ahead, his blowgun concealed under the cape.  Ki-Gor walked next, shielding his sword behind the pygmy, and Tembu George strode last.
The hall ended in a narrow doorway guarded by two brawny warriors.  Ki-Gor's eyes narrowed with recognition.  Beyond those men were the cells.
The two Maldeans standing at the narrow entrance were picked men and their alert glances flicked over the three figures who came from the stairs.  They saw the small caped figure swaggering toward them with the White Lord meekly following and they stiffened to attention.  Automatically, they took N'Geeso for Valdur, and since the queen's cousin was their commander as well as one of royal blood, they did not look directly at him, but stared beyond him with the stony gaze of professional soldiers everywhere.  They had no reason to suspect anything amiss since Ki-Gor's escape had not been discovered and it was not unnatural that Valdur would bring the captive back from the queen's quarters.
On came Ki-Gor and his companions, moving fast because every step forward made their discovery more likely.  Suddenly it registered on one of the guards that the wizened face above the cape was not Valdur's.  The Maldean stared straight at N'Geeso, blinking as he tried to understand what was transpiring.  Then his eyes went past the pygmy's calm face to Tembu George, and looking at the fierce Masai chieftain, he knew for certain that these men were impostors.
"They are outlanders!" he cried to his fellow guard.  "Halt!" he shouted.
But Ki-Gor and the two chieftains were close upon the men, and when they saw they were discovered, they leaped forward.  Ki-Gor drove in with a slashing attack which shattered the defense of one guard, and before the man could recover, the White Lord's blade found his throat.  The powerful Masai pinned the other guard to the wall with a lunge of his spear.  And N'Geeso streaked through the narrow door into the cell area.
The quick-witted pygmy knew the clash of steel would have been heard by any inner guards, and well realizing the dire risk he took, he sped ahead into the prison corridor.  His white cape and small size might allow him to get in among the guards before they saw he wasn't Valdur and he could disrupt their attack on Ki-Gor and Tembu George before it was launched.
Warriors were lined at regular intervals down the hall and at the far end was another narrow door such as the one through which N'Geeso, had just entered.  Every one of the Maldeans was staring toward the pygmy, wondering why their companions had cried out and used their swords.  Holding the cloak tight about him, N'Geeso fled down the line of guards like a frightened antelope.
He flung past the first three men, and they forgot about the door as they realized the fleeting figure wasn't Valdur or any other Maldean.  They shouted to the others, and the fourth man leaped to block his way, but N'Geeso was running full tilt and he got past before the warrior could stop him.
Then he threw back his cloak and the blowgun came to his lips.  He plunged a dart into the fifth guard, braked to a stop and stabbed a dart into the final Maldean.  The other warriors started to run after him, but already Ki-Gor and Tembu George had burst in behind them.  The Masai chieftain's spear chopped through the nearest man and his agonized scream brought up short the warriors closing in on N'Geeso.
Three Maldeans had died within the space of seconds.  N'Geeso left the remaining three to Ki-Gor and Tembu George while he darted to the door to deal with the guards outside.  By the time he had done his work, Ki-Gor had slain one of those remaining in the corridor and the other two had surrendered in fear and confusion.  The havoc wrought by the pygmy followed by the sudden and terrible appearance of Ki-Gor and the Masai had brought a swift victory.
A look at Ki-Gor's grim face was enough to make the two bewildered Maldeans who had surrendered, open the cells which held Williams and Helene.  The redhaired girl gave a cry of disbelief as she saw the blood-smeared White Lord loom in the door before her.  She was too stunned to do more than look at him.
"Quick!" he said, grasping her arm.  "They'll be on us in a moment."
"You mean I'm free?" she asked dazedly.
"Not yet," he said hoarsely.  "Perhaps we'll never get beyond the walls.  But at least you won't die on the altar."
Then he had pulled her into the hall, thrown the two Maldeans into the cell and locked it.
"Great Scott!" exclaimed the shaken Williams, staring about him.  "It's unbelievable that three men could do this."
Helene was jolted to her senses by the sprawled bodies.  Swiftly she scooped up two swords, pressing one into Williams' hand and keeping the other for herself.  Then Ki-Gor led them back the way he and the two chieftains had entered.  They got down the first flight of stairs without encountering anyone, but as they started down the second, they heard an uproar at the door to the court.
Ki-Gor saw the milling group and knew the bodies of the guards had been found.  He did not slacken his pace.  The twentyodd people were not warriors and he gambled on being able to scatter them.  He roared the chilling war cry of the Masai, and taking his cue, N'Geeso and Tembu George echoed it.
With popping eyes, the crowd looked up to see fierce strangers leaping down the stairs.  Men and women screamed in fright, broke in all directions.  The door was open by the time Ki-Gor reached it.

X.
Between Two Deaths

Once in the court, Ki-Gor raced toward the three elephants.  The beasts' keepers had been in the crowd which fled so they did not rise up to interfere.  Ki-Gor understood the huge animals and N'Geeso also had learned to work them, though he had nothing like the White Lord's wonderful control over them.
He selected one of the elephants, spoke to it softly, yet commandingly in Bantu and quickly had it kneeling.  "You four will ride together," he said.  "I will go alone on the largest beast."
They were puzzled, but in their precarious position there was no time for explanations.  When they ranged atop the gray backs, Ki-Gor mounted the great bull he had chosen to ride.  He wheeled the animal into the lead and headed down the street which led to the south gate.
As they left the court, Maldean warriors came tumbling from the castle entrance.  The escape of the prisoners had been discovered, and an alarm was being raised throughout the building.  Ki-Gor urged his elephant faster and N'Geeso stayed close behind him.  A few Maldeans began to run from their homes, gaping at the strange spectacle.
Ki-Gor took his bow from his shoulder, fitted an arrow to it as the south gate came in sight.  Three warriors saw him, ran shouting toward the gate.  He dropped one of them on the stone street with an arrow, but the others darted into a low building which was apparently a barracks.  Men streamed out with swords, clubs and spears.  They threw a barrier of flesh across the street.
The White Lord urged the elephant faster and charged into the men, turning the huge mount sharply so that it came back on the warriors.  The beast was nervous and did not want to trample the men.  It had been trained to work, not to fight.
But like clamoring dogs, the Maldeans swarmed around the elephant.  Men jabbed excitedly with swords and spears at Ki-Gor.  Quickly the elephant was wounded in half a dozen places.  In a flash, its temper changed.  It trumpeted and wheeled on the Maldeans, using its tusks and fore legs to sweep clear its path.
With difficulty, Ki-Gor swung the forest giant toward the barred gate.  Maldeans were jammed there, many of them bowmen.  Now as the elephant faced them, they unleashed their arrows, trying to bring down Ki-Gor.  The jungle man lay flat, and the arrows whirred past or dug into the trumpeting beast.
The huge beast went berserk at this attack.  Its great head came down like a battering ram and it charged with terrific speed.  With all the monstrous power in its immense body, it crashed head on into the gate.  The barrier blasted open under the dreadful shock and over a pulp of bodies the elephant drove into the open.
N'Geeso, who held back when Ki-Gor charged the Maldeans, now urged his great mount forward and plunged out the shattered gate after the White Lord.  Warriors from the castle were close on his heels.  Ki-Gor led the way across the clearing to the trees and just before he reached them he leaped to the ground.  N'Geeso signaled his elephant to a halt, and he and the others raced to where Ki-Gor waited at the jungle's edge.
The pack of Maldeans was pouring after them, and they could hear the clatter of horses coming at a gallop.  Tarma had been found and Valdur rode with his horsemen to cut off the escape of the captives.  The whole fortress was in an uproar.
Ki-Gor led his four companions directly to the canoe which he and the two blacks had hidden the night before they reached the island.  The five of them shoved it into the water and climbed in.  They were well away from shore before the Maldeans discovered them, and they were half across the lake before the long, swift war canoes put out from shore.
Ki-Gor brought his canoe into land as near the marsh fortress as he dared and ordered his friends to run for the path.  N'Geeso and Tembu George looked at him inquiringly, wondering if he had forgotten the giant lizards.
"I have one of the whistles," he said.  "I don't know, but if it worked for the Maldean we watched, then it should work for us.  It's a chance we must take."
He glanced meaningfully at the war canoes skimming in for landing.  The Maldean craft had crossed with terrific speed.  Tarma, her face convulsed with rage, stood in the prow of the largest vessel, crying on her paddlers with threats and curses.  The trick Ki-Gor had played on her had driven the barbaric queen wild with fury.  Where before she had been willing to go to any length to secure the White Lord for her own, now her every thought and feeling was directed toward exacting the most terrible vengeance imaginable on Ki-Gor.  She hated him with a hideous passion, and the violence of her feelings ripped away all semblance of sanity from the raging queen.
Helene looked at the reed whistle Ki-Gor had taken from Tarma and remembered what Valdur had told her about the dinosaurs.  "Oh yes, Ki-Gor," she assured him.  "It will keep them away."
Staying in the protection of the undergrowth, they skirted the marsh and slipped past the fort.  Then they started a desperate race over the path through the swamp.  Twice Ki-Gor used the whistle to drive back the lizards.  At first there was no sign of pursuit, but Ki-Gor kept looking over his shoulder and he refused to let the others slacken their pace.
Then came the sound he had feared.  Behind them rose the drum of hooves.  Tarma had mounted her Maldean warriors on the horses kept at the fort.  She knew the escaped prisoners could not outrun her horsemen, and savoring the torture which she was inflicting on Ki-Gor and his companions, she kept her savage warriors to a trot.  There was no possible escape for the fleeing prisoners since the only way they could go was straight ahead.  The marsh made it impossible for them to turn aside or even find a place of hiding.
Alone of those five who fled, Ki-Gor realized the purpose of the Maldean queen.  He knew she was toying with them, and immediately he began to employ her own sadistic aim against her.  Ahead the path turned upward to a towering bluff.  If they could make it, they would be safe.  He urged his companions to even greater speed.
But abruptly Tarma abandoned the toying game.  The horsemen hurtled forward in a wild gallop.  Ki-Gor knew it would be impossible for all of them to get away.
"Tembu George," he said, drawing close to the Masai chieftain so the others would hear, "they will catch us before we get there.  When they draw close, you and I will turn and try to delay them."
The two men unobtrusively began to lag behind the others.  The shouts of the Maldeans rang loud behind them.  Ki-Gor shouted to Helene to run faster.  Then he and Tembu George unslung their bows and, turning suddenly, drove arrows in the first rank of horsemen.
A horse went down and a rider plunged into the marsh spitted by an arrow.  The Masai leader and the White Lord fed arrows into the column, shooting with deadly accuracy.  Yet the toll they took did not even slacken the reckless Maldeans and both men saw they fought a hopeless battle.  Two bowmen, however skilled and courageous, were not enough to block or even impede that advance.
Then Valdur's angry voice rang out and he spurred into the lead, crouched low on his horse's back, his sword gleaming in his hand.  He meant to redeem himself in the eyes of his men by riding down the man who had publicly humbled him.  He was nearly crazed with brooding over his disgrace.
Ki-Gor fitted an arrow to his bow and waited as the warriors surged after their leader.  The White Lord realized it was impossible to halt the riders.  He knew he must soon be slain.  But he waited grimly, meaning to kill Valdur before he fell.
With the horse almost against him, Ki-Gor saw Valdur straighten and swing the sword.  At point blank range, he drove the arrow into the Maldean, saw it sink to its feathers.  Then the horse struck him and flung him off the path and into the underbrush.  He lay dazed.
There were piercing cries all about and men raced past him toward the path.  His senses abruptly cleared and he realized that the figures flooding by him were pygmies.  N'Geeso's men were erupting from the forest which grew on the dry ground at the edge of the swamp.
By the time the White Lord got to his feet, the column of Maldeans was being cut to pieces.  A withering rain of arrows and poison darts fell on them from every side.  Ki-Gor's glance darted along the bloody stretch of path in search of Valdur and Tarma.  With sudden elation he saw how completely the tables had been turned.
Ki-Gor immediately spotted the queen.  She rode in the center of the rapidly disintegrating column, dazed and unbelieving at the thing which was happening.  At the moment of her supreme triumph, swift and awful disaster swept out of nowhere to engulf her.  She seemed paralyzed for a moment, her face chalk-white, her lips jerking.  Then abruptly she began to shout shrill, incoherent orders, slashing about her with her sword at her own men in a futile and wholly insane attempt to make them win when no victory was possible.
But even as she spoke, the holocaust of death loosed by the pygmies was sweeping away her men and horses.  At last, even in her madness she saw that all was lost, and with thought only for her own safety, she whirled her horse in the hope of escaping back to the fort.  The frightened animal reared as it spun on its hind legs, and the plunging mounts of the men behind Tarma crashed against her.
Tarma screamed as her horse toppled backwards.  Twice more in sheer agony her voice pierced the din of battle as her own men rode her down in their fright.  Then she was heard no more.  In the confusion her terrorized warriors trampled her to death, smashed her white body into a bloody pulp at the very point where she had meant to overtake Ki-Gor.
Ki-Gor found his way to Helene and put his arms around her.  With Tarma and Valdur slain and the Maldean horsemen wiped out, the power of the Maldeans was ended.
Ki-Gor and Helene, arm in-arm, started the steep climb up the cliff.

The End