Manhounds of Antares (12 page)

Golan’s sick spasm had passed. The other fugitives were almost out of sight beyond a grassy clump, the manhounds well up to them, and the great and puissant hunters spurring madly after. One turned, and shouted, and I guessed he was calling the manhound who doggedly climbed toward us. This man, in his leaf-green tunic and small round helmet, was a guard, probably the packmaster, in charge of the jiklos.

Then I had to concentrate on the manhound. He was a big fellow, very vicious, and had he possessed a tail it would have been lashing angrily. He had seen us now and he let out a slavering screech and charged for us.

For just an instant I saw the guard wheel his zorca, and then I leaped up, the wooden longsword cocked in that special Krozair grip. The manhound leaped. I saw his teeth, jagged and sharp, the saliva flecking from his thin lips, and his eyes all bloodshot and mad with hunting lust.

His clawed hands reached for my throat, and his teeth sought to rip out my jugular, for with the intelligence I knew these fearsome beasts still retained, he had recognized I was not a meek victim, but stood there with a club to meet him and bash out his brains.

In that he was mistaken.

This length of wood cut from a thicket was no clumsy bludgeon. It stood in lieu of a deadly Krozair longsword, second only to the great Savanti sword itself.

I took my grips, brought the wood around and back, and so, with a chopped “Hai,” drove the splintered end full in the manhound’s savage face. He tried to swerve, but he was too slow. He bundled over, screeching, splinters mantling his cheeks and one eye gone and then — and only then — did I bring the wooden longsword down in a blow that caved in his rib cage. Two more blows finished him.

The soft plop of zorca hooves on the grass brought me around.

The guard was a fool.

The first rule of a crossbowman is always: “Reload!”

He came at me with his sword.

He was angry, annoyed that a valuable jiklo had been slain, and he did not even have the same sense as that jiklo to recognize I was not an ordinary fugitive slave run as quarry.

He slashed violently down and I slid the blow and smashed him across the thigh — a favorite stroke, that, with the Krozair longsword — and had the weapon been edged steel he would have been less one leg. As it was he screamed in pain and I was able to reach up, inside the curve of the zorca’s neck, and take him and so hold him and drag him down. When I stood up, grasping the zorca’s reins, Golan staggered across.

“By Opaz! I have never seen the like.”

“Mount up, Pallan, and let us ride. Otherwise you will not have the chance to see the like again.”

And so, mounted up, forward and aft, and damned close together, too, on so short-coupled a mount as a zorca, we rode hard for the south.

The fears of Tulema, dancing girl from a dopa pen

The Pallan Golan was not the man the Star Lords wished me to rescue from the Manhunters of Faol.

Once more I found myself hurled disdainfully back to the slave pens cut from the rocks fronting the jungles, once more the stink of slaves filled my nostrils, and the stentors’ brazen notes called us all to push and herd like vosks to the feeding cave. I had taken Golan safely through to a village where the headman, who knew nothing of the guides and so convinced me we had strayed from our course, promised to care for the Pallan. We had passed over a wide river by means of a raft I had fashioned, and we learned we were in another country on the southern shore. Clearly the villages and land from which the guides came lay farther to the east. The headman of the village knew little of what went on in what he called North Faol. The Trylon of South Faol had long ago refused to bend the knee to the Kov of Faol, and the headman kept himself aloof from what went on across the river.

After a good meal and a bit of a sing-song with the girls of the village dancing in the firelight — for I had foolishly thought my mission for the Star Lords accomplished — I was whipped up by the blue radiance and . . . well, here I was again, and all to do over.

If you think I was growing mightily annoyed by this time — you are right.

Although enough time had elapsed for my hair and beard and moustache to grow somewhat shaggy, still Tulema recognized me.

This time my original excuse would not satisfy her, and so before she could follow on her first quick exclamation of surprise, I said: “Yes, Tulema. I have come back. Like the guides, I feel it important to do so. Perhaps this time you will come out with me.”

“Oh, Dray — the manhounds!”

“I am here, am I not? And I have been out —
there!”

She was still as absolutely terrified as ever.

Something would have to be done about Tulema. I knew the person I was supposed to rescue was still in the caves. Unless, of course, he or she had been killed and the Star Lords were punishing me for failing. I would not contemplate that. Some of the original group in the pen when I had first arrived here had gone out; some were left. I could not explain to Tulema, but I managed to get her to identify them for me. I still could not bring myself to believe that Tulema herself was the right one. I had had experience then of the way in which the Star Lords worked. I did not know what their plans for Kregen were, but I had previously rescued people for them who I could see would be important in the scheme of things. Much as I respected the tough hardness of Tulema, and her pitiful fears of the jiklos, I could not envision her as a mover of politics, a maker of nations.

“There is Latimer,” said Tulema. “He is frightened to go.”

I grunted. “Suppose he is picked to go, anyway, without a guide? What then?”

“Don’t say it, Dray!”

Latimer turned as I approached. We had just eaten, but there had come no stentor call to parade before the bars of our cages. He was a middle-aged man, say a hundred and fifty or so, still virile, with dark hair and a broken nose and eyes that did not quite meet mine when we talked. He showed by his rib cage — or rather by its absence against his skin — that he could fight well enough to secure good food. In conversation I learned he was a shipping merchant of Hamal. Only after a little cross-purpose talk was it borne in on me that he was a voller shipping man, and not a galleon owner, as I had imagined. At once I decided this must be the man I sought. Vollers were important. Latimer was a voller owner. Ergo, the Star Lords wanted him out in the world again so that some great scheme to do with the Havilfar fliers might come to fruition.

How snobbish all this sounds! How stupid, that I should seek out people I thought important by what they did! Tulema I intended to persuade to come with me; if she would not, I could not find it in my heart to force her. Only if this Latimer were not the one, would I force her.

We went out, we struck westward, I rescued Latimer — again the guide disappeared and again I vowed to try to get to the bottom of that mystery — and saw the voller magnate safe, and again I was tossed back in a radiance of blue fire into the slave pens.

Tulema said: “You have come back, Dray.”

I was so desperate that I had to make an effort to be polite to her. She had to be the one. And she was frightened to go. Well, there was a cure for that.

More slaves had been brought in, a consignment from the mainland had evidently arrived, and the pens and caves were full again. To be safe, I said to Tulema: “Are there any slaves still here who were with us when—?”

She shook her head. “No, Dray. They are all gone.”

“Except you.”

“Yes. And you!”

“Oh. Me.” At the stentors’ call I smashed my way through the crowds of newcomers and took two heaping helpings of the best. I wanted Tulema fit and well for the break, and she had been eating dilse for a long time.

There seemed to me a need to keep a record. I ticked off all the people as Tulema recited their names. “And Tosie? She went out?”

“Yes. Right after that Lilah who put on such airs.”

“I hope she is safe.”

“Oh, she’ll be safe. Anyone like her who pretends to be a queen will be safe, no matter what.”

Yes, I thought, more cheerfully, yes, Tulema must be the one. There was a rough fire about her, practically obliterated in these conditions by her uncontrollable fears of the jiklos. She had heard too many stories of what the manhounds did to pretty girls.

The old Miglish crone began her eternal sweeping-up and Tulema shuddered and drew me away. I thought the dark thoughts I had thought when I’d seen the blood spots near Anko the Guide’s blankets . . . but I was going out and Tulema was the one, so — did it matter?

Of course it mattered.

I took the Miglish woman by the shoulder and I could feel the narrowness of her, the bony hardness. She tried to twist away, leering up at me with her pouched eyes, her witch-face hideous, like a rubber mask melted in the fire. She revolted me, this halfling monstrosity.

“Do you betray the guides, Migla?”

She cackled, trying to hit me with her broom.

“I betray nothing! By Migshaanu the All-Glorious, may your eyes dribble out and your guts cave in—”

“Enough of that, crone!” I snarled. “Remember: if any guides are betrayed, you will be flayed and your skin hung up for all to see!”

Of course, I could not prove anything, and she would not be frightened into revealing her guilt. She might have nothing to do with the tragedy, but she was an old witch, and hideous, that was plain to see, as Tulema said, with a shiver.

I remembered what Nath the Guide had said about human beings, and I could see a point. There were no Chuliks among the slaves, as I have remarked; they are a very fearsome race of half-men, half-beasts. But something about this old Migla made all my Homo sapiens ancestry rise up in revulsion.

In that foul nose of hers black hairs sprouted. She always kept herself tightly covered up by her gray slave blanket and the breechclout was capacious and droopy enough to conceal her legs down to her knees. Her calves were always smothered in filth. Her hair remained a wild and tangled mass of knots and mud and caked filth. Truly, she was an abomination.

But, for all that, I could not prove she was the traitor.

Last time, when I had rescued Latimer to no avail, I had kept awake most of the night and still the guide had disappeared. I had not seen or heard it done. As usual, the guide had slept a little apart from the rest of us, to be on guard. This time, I vowed, I would afford him the protection he tried to give us.

The reason for this stealthy betrayal seemed obvious enough to me. Surely, by this time, even Nalgre, the slave-master, must have noticed how willing the slaves were to be run, to be sent out to a hideous death. This would please Nalgre and his master, the Kov of Faol. They would wish to maintain this satisfactory state of things, and continue the guides in their desperate undertakings. I wondered, not without a shiver of anger, what the guides’ villages were making of the non-return of their fine young men. Truly, the ways of man and man are mysterious and barbarous beyond belief.

In addition, these thoughts also showed me that the old Migla witch, if she had been truly to blame, had no further need of betrayal. Once Nalgre caught wind of the conspiracy to free the slaves, then he would take up the savage and sorry business from there.

With all the numbers of fresh slaves within the barred caves cut into the rock I could not easily find a guide. Most of the slaves pushed and shoved, seeking better sleeping places, arguing, fighting, the girls looking for protectors, and everyone racing whooping like mad people when the stentors’ horns blew for feeding time. Tulema had to be built up in strength before I could risk taking her out to be hunted. While there was a ready supply of slaves, Nalgre could not care how many managed not to be selected for a Jikai; so long as there were enough for his customers and they were kept happy, then Nalgre would not worry over the few slaves who were never picked.

I did see one incident that indicated how he solved the problem if it became too acute.

An old slave — it may have been the same Xaffer, or another, for they are a strange and remote race of halflings — was dragged out, screaming, and lashed to a wooden stake. He was flogged to death there. Tulema stared dry-eyed, hard and contemptuous, seeing in the fate of the Xaffer the possibility of her own ending.

“That is what happens to skulkers who are too old for the hunt,” said Tulema. “If they are not employed as tame slaves to clean and cook like the old Miglish witch and her friends.”

“That will happen to you, then, Tulema, if you can eat only dilse.”

“Better, perhaps, ol’ snake, than the manhounds.”

I shook my head. “You are coming out as soon as you are fit and strong, Tulema. There is no argument. But the guides are few.”

“They know when there are customers. Who can blame them if they do not wish to spend time they need not, in here, with us slaves?”

So there was time for Tulema to eat well and to shed that half-starved look on her face that came from dilse, and for her supple body to be genuinely lithe and firm again, on good food. A day came when the stentors” horns blared out in the call that summoned the manhounds, and drove us slaves to the lenken bars, to be selected for the great Jikai. I looked at Tulema. As always, she shrank back, but she was as fit and well as she might ever be in this dreadful place, and I could not wait any longer.

Out on the compound splashed with its jade and ruby light stood Nalgre, with his whip and his guards, talking in his important, belly-thrusting, strutting way with a group of customers. I recognized one man there; he was the heavily built Notor with the pudgy face from too many vosk-pies who had led the hunt when Lilah and I had escaped. Nalgre was speaking to him.

“Indeed, it is strange, Notor Trelth.”

“And you have no explanation, Nalgre? A long way, we went, a very long way, and a scuffle in rocks and trees. I looked for a kill on the plains.”

“Why not try the jungles this time, Notor Trelth?” Nalgre spoke with quickness, eagerness, anxious to please.

“Yes. I will give it thought,” said this high-and-mighty Notor Trelth.