King of Zunga by Jeffrey Lord

Author:Jeffrey Lord
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Pulp Adventure
ISBN: 9780523005232
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 1975-08-14T14:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There were neither sights nor sounds of pursuit all night, and still none when dawn broke over the camp. The Zungans were ready to stop worrying about pursuit. They were cheerfully confident that they would outmarch or outrun as well as outfight any soldiers coming after them. Once more Blade did not try to argue with them, he merely gave his orders. In spite of their high spirits the Zungans obeyed him as well as ever.

Blade leaned against a tree and conjured up his mental map of the area. The best course for them seemed to be heading east. There lay the roads south from Kanda to its satellite towns. Along these roads passed slave raiders heading south, slave coffles heading north, and merchant caravans headed in both directions. The Kandans would not be expecting Zungan raiders to strike there. With surprise on their side, the Zungans might cause uproar, confusion, and destruction out of all proportion to their numbers.

Blade switched off his mental map and faced the warriors. "We go east," he said. They spread out into their scouting line and followed him toward the faint glow behind the overcast that told of the rising sun.

With the sun almost invisible, it was hard to tell time. Blade guessed it was about noon when the most advanced scout suddenly halted and pointed at the ground in a clearing just ahead. Blade joined the man and frowned as he looked down. The ground was too hard to show goad footprints, but there was no mistaking the swath of crushed and flattened grass. It had not begun to lose color, either. The soldiers had passed this way only hours before.

Suddenly the gray day seemed gloomier than before, and the thin forest somehow denser and more menacing. Blade shook his head. They would have to go back. It would be stupid to plunge on toward the eastern roads if the Kandans were patrolling this far west. The roads still lay a day's march ahead, and now they would have the enemy at their backs for every foot of that march.

Blade gathered the Zungans around him and explained the situation. His own partner protested the loudest.

"But Blade, there is no honor for us in running away from soldiers who passed by hours ago."

"Where they passed once, they will pass again. And when they pass again, they will be behind you."

"They will never pick up our trail."

"Perhaps not. But they might. And then they would call up other soldiers and surround us. We cannot fight hundreds of enemy soldiers, not with only ten men. The east roads will have to wait until the next time we come back. Then we will come with a hundred warriors, and the Kandans will remember our visit for a long time."

The Zungans still seemed unhappy. So Blade decided that now was perhaps a good time for a lecture he had been planning to give them later. "Remember, each of you will soon be needed to train many more warriors in the new ways of fighting.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.