d.

Tharn listened attentively; and when his new friend was done, he
unshipped the quiver of arrows from its place on his back and handed it
and his spear to Trakor. The grass rope he left coiled across his
shoulder and under the opposite arm, and his flint knife remained in the
folds of his loin-cloth.

"Wait here for me," Tharn said. The boy nodded, not trusting himself to
speak, and watched the other slip easily through the branches to the
ground at the clearing's edge.

* * * * *

Broken cloud formations dotted the midnight sky and Tharn waited
patiently until one of them could obscure the full moon long enough for
him to gain the foot of the steep scarp a hundred yards away. Several
times small clouds blotted out Uda's radiant beams; but not until a
sizable one moved into the proper position did Tharn leave the
protecting shadows of the tree.

With great bounding strides, silent as the shadows themselves, Tharn
crossed the clearing to the cliff's base. For a few moments he skirted
its edge until he located a series of man-carved ridges which formed a
rude and perilous ladder to the cave entrances above. With the
sure-footedness of long practice he swarmed lightly upward, past cave
after cave, until he came to rest a few feet below the yawning hole
marking the entrance to Gerdak's dwelling.

He crouched there motionless, his ears straining for some indication
that those within were still awake. But other than a faint sound of
someone snoring, he heard nothing.

With infinite stealth he drew himself onto the ledge outside. To his
unbelievably sensitive nostrils came the assorted smells of a Cro-Magnon
shelter. Through the medium of scent he established that five men and
two women were within, all of them his ears said were sound asleep.

Suddenly the cloud was gone from the moon's face and silver effulgence
bathed the cliffside, leaving Tharn exposed to possible discovery. And
so, crouching, the naked blade of his flint knife held ready, Tharn
entered the lair of Gerdak, chief of a Cro-Magnon tribe.

As Tarlok, the leopard, stalks the wariest of grass-eaters, so did Tharn
make his way into that black hole. No human ear would have been able to
mark his passage as his naked feet, seemingly endowed with eyes of their
own, threaded their way past one sleeping body after another.

Two warriors lay athwart the entrance; these Tharn stepped across, so
close he could feel the animal