ugh a
red film of hate and pain, Adbor, Sepharian warrior, watched them go,
and planned a sanguinary revenge as payment for the death of his four
friends and the theft of the princess Alurna, daughter of his king.

* * * * *

Two hours later, just as the night's first shadows fell across the path,
a searching party found his unconscious body face down in the rotting
vegetation of the trail. Tenderly they lifted him up, cradling the
blond, blood-soaked thatch in their arms, and bore him back to the city.
There, men trained and schooled in the treatment of wounds, did all they
could to revive the numbed brain of a courageous warrior.

They were only partially successful. With closed eyes Adbor gasped out,
in a few broken sentences, his story of death and abduction. Something
of his former strength seemed to come back to him as he spoke. Raising
on one elbow, his eyes now wide and staring beyond those about him, he
cried out, shrill and loud:

"Give me my spear--my bow! I will follow them! I will--"

His voice broke and he fell back limply. Adbor was dead.

Above that still form men looked at one another in silence and in
horror. The Hairy men! Creatures so seldom seen as to be almost
mythical, but whose savage and brutal natures were known from horror
tales told at many a dinner table and about many a camp fire.

Vulcar was the first to speak. "I must take word to Urim. For the last
two hours he has been storming about the palace demanding he be told
where Alurna is. Now, I don't know what he will say--or do...."

He shrugged. "Make preparations to send out a searching party the first
thing in the morning. I will lead it."

Slowly the hawk-faced warrior set out for the palace with the message
that must wither the stalwart heart of him for whom Vulcar cared above
all others.

* * * * *

Alurna had been conscious of a bobbing, rocking sensation for some time
before she opened her eyes to the world about her. For a moment she
watched the procession of thick greenery at right angles to the
direction in which she seemed to be moving; then sudden recollection
flooded her mind and she awoke to the horror of her position.

It was then that she became aware of the hairy back beneath her and a
great calloused hand clamped about her wrists.

Instinctively she attempted to struggle free; but the nightmarish brute
only tightened his grip and without pausing i