muscular hand closed about his ankle!

CHAPTER III

SADU ATTACKS

Sadu, the lion, pacing slowly and majestically through the velvet blackness of a jungle night, came to a sudden halt as Siha, the wind, brought to his sensitive nostrils the acrid scent of burning wood.

For several long minutes the great cat stood as though turned to stone, his broad nostrils twitching nervously under the biting fumes. Sadu was unpleasantly familiar with the red teeth that ate everything in their path, for it had been scarcely a moon ago that he barely escaped the fangs of a forest fire.

Had it been smoke alone which Sadu smelled, he would have turned away and sought his night's food elsewhere. But commingled with the scent of fire was another smell, and it was the latter that finally sent him slinking ahead.

After the lion progressed another several hundred yards in this manner, the winding game trail debouched abruptly into a large natural clearing bordering the reed-covered banks of a wide shallow river.

Standing amid the impenetrable shadows cast by a great tree at the clearing's edge, Sadu surveyed with slitted eyes the bustle of activity about the open ground. There were at least fifty men there, some of them tending a blazing windrow of branches arranged in a large circle to encompass a considerable section of open ground where were heaped several mounds of supplies. Others were preparing the evening meal, bringing water from the river and performing the other duties which go with establishing camp for the night.

It was the scent of these men that had brought Sadu here. Ordinarily he would have passed up the two-legged creatures for the more satisfactory flesh of zebra or deer, but there had been an absence of such meat lately because grass-replenishing rain had not fallen in many moons and the grass-eaters had strayed away from the vicinity in search of fresh pastures. Too, Sadu had found man easy prey when he was alone—in numbers he was dangerous, particularly when backed by burning brands and sharp-pointed sticks.

The circle of fire with which these men had surrounded themselves gave Sadu pause. Only the pangs of hunger kept him from turning about and seeking less complicated prey. Slowly the heavy lips rolled back, baring the great fangs, and from the depths of the cavernous chest came a series of grunting coughs.

As the dull, rumbling challenge reached the ears of those within the camp, men straightened from their tasks and looked fearfully into the heavy darkness beyond the light from the fires. A few unslung their bows and tested the strings, while others made sure their heavy war spears were within reach.

In the center of the camp itself, a group of five people—two girls and three men—broke off their conversation as the first notes of Sadu's voice reached them, and looked nervously at one another.

"Sadu is hungry too," one of the girls observed lightly as she turned her attention back to the freshly grilled meat on the clay dish before her.

"Will he attack us?" the other girl asked unsteadily, her dark eyes round with fear. Her slender, softly rounded body was covered with a knee-length tunic of some coarse, woven material and a cloud of black curls framed the delicate features of her olive-skinned face.

"I do not think so, Alurna," the first girl said, without taking her eyes from her food. "Sadu fears fire; he would have to be close to starving to brave the flames."

One of the three men, a slight, small-boned man whose round, full-fleshed face habitually wore an expression of slow-witted amiability, moved a little closer to the fire. "How do we know," he said anxiously, "whether this lion is not that hungry?"

The first girl shook back her wealth of reddish brown hair and looked at the speaker, her brown eyes sparkling with laughter. She said, "We can't know, Javan—not until he either springs through the fire or turns around and goes away."

If the words brought any comfort to Javan, his actions failed to show it. Once more he shifted his position until he was close to sitting in the burning branches and the fingers of his right hand were trembling uncontrollably as he groped for his flint-tipped spear.

"Dylara jests, Javan," the tall, broad-shouldered man next to him said. "There are too many of us for even several lions to attack."

"You say that, Jotan," Dylara said, "because you do not know Sadu as I know him. Often he will charge a hundred warriors through fires far larger than ours, yet at times several lions have run away from one man walking alone in the jungle. More than any other beast, Sadu is a creature of moods, and no one can say for sure what he will do."

The third man in the group rose now to scrape the remaining food on his plate into the fire. He said, "We are certainly in no position to dispute with Dylara the habits of animals." There was a subtle note of condescension in his voice that only Jotan and the princess Alurna noticed. "You must remember that Dylara is different from us. Most of her life has been spent among the people of the caves, and there can be no doubt but that the barbarians know the jungle and its life far better than we can ever hope to."

Jotan's pale blue eyes frosted over and the hard, firm angle of his jaw tightened. For nearly two moons now he had endured Tamar's gibes at his love for a girl who had been a barbarian slave of Sephar's court. Many times during those sixty suns had Tamar said that no member of Ammad's ruling class, as was Jotan, had a right to take as mate some half-savage cave girl. There was such a thing, argued Tamar, as noblesse oblige, and Jotan was not only alienating his friends by this mad passion but breaking the laws of his class and his country.

Not that Tamar had anything personal against Dylara. On the contrary, he thought her beautiful and as gracious and regal as Alurna herself. But there was the matter of birth and blood—barriers too great for acceptance as the noble Jotan's mate.

All this was in Jotan's thoughts as he answered Tamar's last remark. "Perhaps it would be better for us," he observed lightly, "if we had a little of Dylara's knowledge of the jungle creatures and their ways. Perhaps then we would be spared such terror at the sound of Sadu's roar."

He made the statement while looking full into Tamar's eyes, and was rewarded by seeing a tinge of red creep into his friend's freshly scraped cheeks. And because no man likes to be called a coward, no matter how indirectly, Tamar sought to hit back ... in the one way that would cut Jotan the deepest.

"It is unfortunate," he said mildly, "that we could not have brought along with us the wild man who came to Sephar seeking Dylara. I'll wager he would not turn a hair were Sadu to charge among us at this moment."

As though in direct challenge to the statement, Sadu, in the darkness beyond the camp, again lifted his voice in the hunting roar of the king of beasts.

This time the hot blood of anger welled into Jotan's face and a biting retort formed on his lips. But a glimpse of Dylara's suddenly stricken expression checked them there, unuttered.

In the brief silence that followed Tamar's words, Dylara was aware that the others were watching her as though to learn if Tamar's edged comment would goad her into a response.

And so she made answer; and while the words were directed to Tamar, it was Jotan whom they hurt.

"You are right, Tamar," she said proudly. "Tharn, more than any man I have ever known, is free of fear. How could he know fear when there is no man or animal that could match his strength, agility or quick mind."

"Had you seen him, as I did, crush the skull of a full-grown lion with a single blow of his fist,