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Flight To Opar by Phillip
Jose Farmer
Foreword
Those unacquainted with
Hadon of Ancient Opar
, volume one of the
Ancient Opar series, should refer to the map following. This shows the two
central African seas which existed circa 10,000 B.C. At that time the
climate was much more humid (pluvial) than now. What are now the
Chad Basin and the Congo Basin were covered with fresh water, bodies
whose area equaled and perhaps surpassed that of the present-day
Mediterranean. The Ice Age was dying, but large parts of the British
Islands and northern Europe were covered with glaciers. The
Mediterranean was from one to two hundred feet lower than its present
level. The Sahara Desert of today was then vast grasslands, rivers and
freshwater lakes, and was host to millions of elephants, antelopes, lions,
crocodile and many other beasts, some now extinct.
The map also shows the island of Khokarsa, which gave birth to the
first civilization of Earth, and the largest cities which grew around the
Great Water, the Kemu, and the Great Water of Opar, the Kemuwopar.
The prehistory and history of the peoples of the two seas are outlined in
the
Chronology of Khokarsa
in volume one.
The map is a modification of the map in volume one. That, in turn, was
a modification of a map presented by Frank Brueckel and John Harwood
in their article:
Heritage of the Flaming God, an Essay on the History of
Opar and Its Relationship to Other Ancient Cultures
. This appeared in
The Burroughs Bulletin
, Vernell Coriell, publisher, House of Greystoke,
6657 Locust, Kansas City, Missouri 64131.
 This series basically derives from the Opar books of the Tarzan series,
and the author wishes to thank Hulbert Burroughs again for the
permission to write these tales.
There is a rumor that this series is based on the translation of some of
the gold tablets described by Edgar Rice Burroughs in
The Return of
Tarzan
. That speculation will have to be dealt with in an addendum to a
later volume of this series.
1.
Hadon leaned on his sword and waited for death.
He looked down the mountain slope from the mouth of the inner pass.
Once again he shook his head. If only Lalila had not twisted her ankle, they
might not be in such a hopeless situation.
The slope leading to the pass was steep, requiring a hands-and-knees
approach during the last fifty yards. For a hundred yards from the inner
pass, cliffs at least a hundred feet high and sixty yards wide walled the
approach. These formed a sort of outer entrance. The walls went rapidly
inward from that point, like the edges of an arrowhead. The slope and the
walls met at the point of the arrow. Hadon stood now in the narrow
aperture. Here the path began from a rocky ledge about ten inches high. It
ran at a slightly less than forty-five-degree angle to the horizontal for a
hundred feet, the cliffs that caged it rapidly dwindling in height.
It came out on the top of the cliffs, where the ground was fairly level.
Beyond it was the vast oak forest.
The distance between the cliffs in the inner pass was just enough for a
man to wield a sword. He had an advantage in that anybody trying to fight
him would have to stand up before he could gain the less steep incline.
That warrior would not have a stable footing. Hadon, standing on the
ledge, would have a relatively firm stance.
The cliffs extended their high verticality for five miles on either side,
however, so the pursuers did not have to attempt a frontal attack. They
could go along the base of the cliffs until they came to a climbable part.
 Then they could ascend it and come back along the top of the cliffs. But it
would take them about eight or nine hours to do this. They could not
progress more than half a mile an hour on the steep rough terrain.
The soldiers would have their pride. They could not allow one man to
scare off forty. In either event, direct or circuitous attack, they would be
giving Awineth, Abeth, Hinokly, Kebiwabes and Paga time to get many
miles into the forest. They would not know about Lalila's injured ankle and
so would assume that he was making a stand just to give the refugees
plenty of time to get lost in the woods. It would not take them long to
know, however, that they were up against the man who had won the Great
Games, who had been taught by the greatest swordsman in the Empire of
Khokarsa.
Down on the slope, about twenty minutes away, the soldiers climbed
steadily. In the lead were five dogs, straining at their leashes, digging their
paws into the sparsely grassed dirt, slipping now and then. Three were
keen-nosed tracehounds, belling as they sniffed the smells of the pursued.
Two were wardogs. They were descended from the wild dog of the plains,
bred to the size of male leopards, without the endurance of their ancestors
but with no fear of man. Part of their training was the attacking of armed
slaves. If the slave killed the three dogs loosed at him, he was freed. This
seldom happened.
Some distance below and behind the dogs and their handlers was the
lone officer. He was a big man, wearing a conical bronze helmet sporting a
long raven feather from its top. His sword, still in its leather sheath, was
the long, slightly curving, blunt-ended weapon of the
numatenu
. The same
kind that Hadon was leaning on, which meant that the officer would be
his first antagonist. The code of the
numatenu
dictated this. The officer
would be disgraced if he sent in lesser men to face another
numatenu
.
Still, things were not always what they had been in the old days. Now
there were men wearing the
tenu
who had no right to do so, men who
often went unchallenged. The moral codes were breaking down, along with
much else in these times of trouble.
Behind the officer, in straggling disorder, were thirty soldiers. They
wore round bronze helmets with leather earflaps and noseflaps, leather
cuirasses and leather kilts. They carried small round bronze shields on
their backs and held long bronze-tipped spears. They dug these into the
ground to assist their climb. Short stabbing swords were in their leather
 scabbards. On their backs, under the shields, were leather bags of
provisions.
Behind the soldiers were four peasants clad in kilts of papyrus fiber.
They carried round wooden shields on their backs and short swords in
sheaths at their broad leather belts. Their hunting spears were in their
hands, and slings and bags of sling-stones also hung from their belts.
They were close enough now for Hadon to recognize them. These were
the sons of the farmer at whose house Hadon's party had stopped to get
food. After a brief show of resistance, the peasants had fled. But Awineth,
in a fury because they had refused hospitality, had indiscreetly told them
who she was. They must have gone to the nearest army post to notify the
commander. He had sent this small force after the daughter of Minruth,
Emperor of Khokarsa. And after Hadon and the others too. Awineth, of
course, would be brought back alive, but what were the orders concerning
the others? Capture so they could be brought back for judgment by
Minruth? The men would probably be tortured publicly and then
executed. Minruth, who seemed to have a passion for Lalila, would keep
her as a mistress. Perhaps. He might have her tortured and killed too. And
he was insane enough to wreak his hatred on Abeth, Lalila's daughter.
The dog tenders were weaponless except for daggers and slings. That
made nine slingers in all. These were the deadliest weapons he would face.
He had no room to dodge a lead missile traveling at sixty miles an hour,
but they would have trouble getting into the proper stance for action if he
had his way.
Hadon turned to look up the steeply sloping pass at Lalila. She sat at its
end, about two hundred feet away. The sun shone on her white skin and
long golden hair. Her large violet eyes looked black at this distance. She
was bent forward, massaging her left ankle. She tried to smile but failed.
He walked up to her and, as he neared, he was struck with a pang of
longing and sorrow. She was so lovely, he was so much in love with her,
and they both had to die so soon.
"I wish you would do it, Hadon," she said. She indicated the long
narrow dagger lying on the dirt beside her. "I would rather you killed me
now and made sure that I died. I'm not sure that I'll have the strength to
drive the blade into my heart when the time comes. I don't want to fall
into Minruth's hands. Yet… I keep thinking that perhaps I might escape
 later on. I don't want to die!"
Hadon said, "You may be sure that you'd never get away from him
again."
"Then kill me now!" she said. "Why wait until the last possible
moment?"
She bowed her head as if to invite him to bring the sword down on it.
Instead he dropped to one knee and kissed the top of her head. She
shuddered on feeling his lips.
"We had so much to live for!" she murmured.
"We still do," he said after rising. "I've been a fool, Lalila. I was thinking
of making a stand according to the dictates of tradition. One man in a
pass, valiantly fighting, slaying until the warriors are piled before me, then
dying when a spear drives past my arms, too weary to hold the sword up
any more."
"But that's stupid. I can do other things, and I will do them. First,
though, we'll get you away from here—not too far, since we don't have
time. Come."
He raised her to her feet. She winced with the pain of the ankle but did
not cry out. "It'd take too long for you to hobble there, even with me
supporting you," he said. He put the sword in its sheath and picked her up
in his arms. She started to ask him what he intended to do. He said,
"Hush! I need my breath," and he hurried toward the forest. Coming to its
edge, he halted a few seconds while he looked around. Then he plunged
into the half-darkness under the great oaks, carrying her to the foot of a
mottled white and brown giant.
The lowest branch was two feet above him. He lifted her up so that she
could grasp it and then heaved her up. She stretched out on it face down,
looking back at him.
"It may hurt you, but you'll have to do it anyway," he said. "Climb up as
far as you can and conceal yourself in the foliage. I haven't got time to wait
here and see how you do while you climb."
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