Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria Read Online Free Page B

one hand over his jaw in puzzlement. He should have left these jungles behind many hours ago. How could his estimate have gone wrong? Then he noticed how the floater drifted beneath the strong and steady wind that blew out of the east. With a muffled curse to Gorm, it came to him in an instant. When the rotor power had failed, the weightless airboat had not simply hovered above the regions of Kathool, but had moved slowly west, driven by the strong winds. He was now hours away from where he had wanted to be, above the darkest, most impenetrable jungles of Chush. Nothing to do, however, but crank up the springs again and head east to Kathool.
    But before he could do so, there came again that harsh, metallic cry that had helped to awaken him. Scanning the morning skies, Thongor felt his blood chill as he saw a terrible sight.
    Winging down at his floater out of the upper regions was a monstrous and fantastic flying thing. Its scaled and writhing body was fully the length of the floater, and its gigantic leathery wings spread bat-like fully forty feet from tip to tip. Above the body reared a head upon a snaky neck—a head hideous almost beyond belief, with a monstrous hooked beak and cruel scarlet eyes beneath a blue crest of bristling spines. A long snakelike tail floated behind, tipped with a barb the shape of an arrowhead, and cruel-taloned bird-claws reached from beneath the creature’s yellow belly.
    Thongor had heard of the great grakks, the lizard-hawks of Chush, before but had never seen one till now. They were the fiercest and most deadly fighters of all Lemuria—rivaled only by the mighty dwark, the jungle dragon itself. And now one was descending with the speed of a lightning bolt toward his head.
    He threw himself flat as the vast shadow of the grakk’s wing fell over the deck. The monster struck the floater a glancing blow and swooped off, climbing for another attack. As the airboat wobbled beneath the first blow, Thongor was nearly thrown off and only saved himself by seizing the rail with one iron hand. He drew himself up as the weird flying reptile came at the floater again. This time it hovered, wings thundering, while it groped for the floater with an outstretched claw. The foot-long talons closed over the needle prow, and even the strong urlium with which the prow was sheathed was not tough enough to withstand the terrific strength of the lizard-hawk’s grip. It crumpled like paper.
    Thongor sprang to his feet and dove into the cabin, coming out with a length of cord and the great war bow he had found clamped to the cabin wall the night before. While the monster shrieked deafeningly and battered at the sleek hull of the floater, he threaded the cord through his belt and fastened it around the rail to hold himself securely even if the lizard-hawk succeeded in tipping over the airboat. Then he notched the bowstring with a mighty effort, almost cracking his shoulder muscles, and laid the long shaft of a war arrow across the string.
    The first arrow caught the grakk squarely in the chest. It sank halfway to the feather between the tough scales, and a dribble of green blood ran slimily down the monster’s heaving flank.
    It shrieked like a sheet of steel being torn in half by a giant. Releasing the prow, it fluttered away—but not for long. Tracing a wide circle through the sky, the deadly thing came arrowing back toward the floater, which drifted helplessly above the jungle.
    True to Thongor’s expectations, the second blow hurled the airboat spinning end over end through the morning sky. Tightly gripping the war bow, the Valkarthan swung dizzily at the end of his rope. As the floater drifted back into a horizontal position, the flying reptile hovered beside it with booming wings, smashing the sides in with its cruel beak. Dangling at the end of his rope, Thongor sent a shaft winging for the head. It missed the weaving, snakelike neck and hissed on by. But the second shaft caught the lizard-hawk in the