Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria Read Online Free

sprawled forms to the roof.
    But there were other guards. A shout rang up—swords flashed in the torchlight. Thongor ran across the roof of the fortress.
    The Sark’s floater was tethered to a mooring-mast in the center of the roof, drifting weightlessly some twenty feet from the rooftop. A thick cable was knotted about the middle of the mast, and its other end was fastened to a ring in the rail of the floater’s small deck. Thrusting his sword in its scabbard, Thongor sprang up and seized the rope. He slung himself up the line hand over hand, swinging over the rail onto the deck before anyone could stop him.
    One slash of the sword cut the cable, and the airboat drifted free, out over the street. Thongor went across the narrow deck, which wobbled beneath his feet, and slid into the small enclosed cabin. His eyes raked the few simple controls, while the alarm gongs roared behind him and men shouted.
    The floater was rendered completely weightless by its urlium hull, a gleaming sheath of blue-white metal. The boat was about twenty feet long, from pointed prow to pointed stern. It was driven by spring-powered rotors. One set at the rear propelled it forward; a second set just beneath the prow pushed backward; other rotors in the center of the deck and beneath the keel forced the floater either up or down, as desired.
    These engines were set into action by four levers, labeled with the directions which they governed. The levers now rested at the bottom of their curved slots. The higher the levers were pushed, the stronger the rotors drove the craft.
    Before the floater had drifted more than a dozen yards from the citadel, Thongor had mastered the simple controls and had the rear rotors humming. The airboat flashed over the city, high above the towers. As he passed the mighty walls of Thurdis, Thongor elevated the floater so that they should be well beyond the reach of any arrow. The airboat purred on into the night.
    A small oil lamp sealed in a glass ball provided light for the tiny cabin. Locking the controls, Thongor swiftly examined the contents of the ship’s chest. He found a day’s supply of dried fish, a flask of water, and some medicinal salve, which he smeared over his slashed arm. Jeled Malkh’s blade had merely laid the skin open.
    Clamped to the wall above the floater’s single bunk was a powerful war bow, such as those used by the beast-men and the Blue Nomads of the far western plains of Lemuria. Phal Thurid planned to mount a fleet of such air-boats manned by crews of archers trained with such weapons, famed throughout Lemuria for the incredible distance over which they could cast an arrow. Despite his fatigue, Thongor examined the weapon curiously. It was the first time he had seen one this close, for his wanderings had never carried him into the western plains where the monstrous and savage Blue Nomads reigned unchallenged among the crumbling ruins of Lemuria’s most ancient kingdom, Nemedis , dead now for thousands of years.
    The weapon was fully six feet in length, a bow fashioned of layer upon layer of horn. The extreme toughness of the horn made it difficult to draw such a bow; however, it also gave greater force to the arrow’s flight. From veterans of the western cities, Thongor had often heard tales of the fabled prowess of the blue-skinned Rmoahal Giants, who could reputedly hurl an arrow five hundred yards with fantastic accuracy.
    The string of the bow was of dragongut, and the arrows themselves were at least half as large as a good-sized spear, tipped with wickedly barbed points of razor-edged steel. Thongor looked forward to trying out the weapon.
    The floater hummed through the night skies of Lemuria. Now the golden moon broke free of her net of clouds and lit the landscape below him. Checking the controls to make doubly certain they were locked in place, Thongor went out on the deck and gazed over the low rail at the ground that rushed by beneath him. Far below him the farms surrounding