Savage Lands Read Online Free PDF Page B

each step she risked falling flat on her face, so she didn’t rush her descent. Twice she had to clamber over stumps wedged between trees before she reached Clark.
    He had been caught by a huge low-sweeping bough that had hooked him up from danger. She helped him wipe the mud off his face and saw he was cut and bruised, but in one piece. His backpack had taken the brunt of the impact as he had pinballed down the slope. She tied the second rope under his arms and waited as her own line was tied to a tree so both Greystoke and Archie could haul Clark back up the incline.
    It took a good ten minutes before Clark was safe and the men could once again lower Jane down. The rain began to ease a little, although all that did was offer a better view of the sheer drop she was approaching. Being with Tarzan had given her a head for heights, but for some reason, even though she had a rope tied to her, standing on the muddy slope felt much less safe than soaring through the treetops a hundred feet above.
    The incline suddenly gave way to a sheer cliff where mud slopped over the edge in a slow waterfall. Jane collected herself, gathering her confidence before leaning back over the edge and peering down.
    The cliff dropped for several hundred feet, vanishing into the canopy below. Ten feet down, Robbie lay on his back—by some miracle caught from plummeting to his death on a lone curving trunk that clung to a gap in the rock face. It was barely big enough for him, and sagged under his weight. He didn’t dare move; instead he stared straight ahead, not risking a look at Jane.
    â€œTook your time,” he said with forced jollity.
    Jane grinned, her confidence growing. “You just sit back and let me do all the work. As usual.” She called up for more slack, which she looped under her arms as she had done when learning to rappel one summer camp, long ago.
    â€œNot a bad view,” she said casually as she rappelled the first few feet.
    Robbie didn’t have time to answer because the trunk he was lying on suddenly cracked and he dropped… .

4
    J ane didn’t pause to assess the situation. She acted on pure instinct, as she had been forced to do ever since she’d got lost in the jungle. Mustering the strongest kick she could, she leaped from the cliff.
    Her eyes didn’t leave Robbie as she flew toward him, the rope whipping out behind her. The rush of air was deafening and rain stung her face, as painful as the pelt of small stones.
    Time seemed to slow as the breaking branch under Robbie sagged. The wood didn’t fully break, but he’d reached the tipping point and flipped backward off the branch with a scream.
    In less than two seconds, Jane cannoned into him in mid-air—so hard that the breath was knocked from him and his scream turned into a wheeze. She wrapped both her arms and legs tightly around him as the slack in the rope suddenly snapped tight, constricting around her waist with such ferocity Jane yelped, convinced she would be sliced in half. Instead, their rapid descent stopped. Robbie’s additional weight pulled at her limbs and she could already feel him slipping from her arms as they swung like a pendulum back toward the cliff—
    They slammed hard into the rock face, the brunt of the impact taken by Robbie’s backpack. Caught like a fish on a line, they rotated lazily around before the rope began slowly lowering. Jane tried to recall if her father had tied it to a tree. Or was their combined weight now pulling him, Greystoke, and Clark through the mud?
    Robbie found his croaky voice. “Now what?”
    Jane could still feel him slowly slipping through her arms. She clenched her legs tighter. She was probably crushing the air from him, but he wasn’t complaining.
    â€œYour pack—it’s too heavy!” she said through gritted teeth.
    Even as she spoke, Robbie had spotted the problem. He tried to move his arms to shuck it off, but Jane held him in a