ll this confusion, with death threatening from all sides, Trakor had
eyes only for his friend and companion--Tharn, lord of the caves.

At first he did not comprehend what lay behind the cave man's mad dash
toward the palace. But when he saw Tharn leap lightly up to catch the
sill of one window, then swarm rapidly up toward the second story, he
understood fully what lay in the giant warrior's mind.

One of Vokal's warriors leaned from a window directly in Tharn's path
and raised his spear with the obvious intention of burying its head in
the cave man's defenseless body as it hung a full fifteen feet above the
ground. Trakor, seeing this, fitted an arrow to his bow with unthinkable
quickness and sent the flint tipped missile across space and full into
the enemy warrior's exposed chest.

The heavy spear rolled from an already dead hand and the man fell
loosely across the wide sill as Tharn worked his way upward past the
limp body.

Three more attempts were made by those within to bring down the climbing
cave man. On each occasion Trakor, standing like a rock amid a shower of
deadly weapons that struck every where about him, brought down the
would-be killer.

Tharn was only a few feet from the roof's edge now, his naked feet and
long-fingered hands finding foot--and hand-holds where Trakor would have
sworn none existed.

Trakor, watching, groaned with sudden fear. Barely visible in the
flickering light of torches below, a figure appeared at the roof's edge
directly above Tharn's rising form. In the figure's hands was a heavy
spear and the arm holding it swept aloft preparatory to skewering Tharn
on its point.

Even as Trakor witnessed this, an arrow from his bow was flashing up
toward that menacing warrior. But the combination of bad light, distance
and the necessity for haste was too great a handicap for success, and
the arrow whizzed wide of its mark.

Again Trakor groaned. There was no time for a second shot. Tharn was
doomed to die.

And in that second a slender figure appeared at the roof's edge beside
the would-be assassin and threw itself headlong against him. The man
staggered back under the impact, his spear falling from his hand, then
turned and closed with the newcomer.

As the two of them teetered there on the thin strip of stone forming the
roof's edge, Tharn's strong hands closed about that same edge and he
rose to his feet. He saw who it was that had saved his life: Dylara,
daughter of Majok.