Manhounds of Antares (24 page)

Rapechak, the old mercenary, understood at once.

I suppose I did, in a weird way I would not tolerate or believe. Turko came from an enslaved people and so he, too, bowed his head as the silver leem, the symbol of Lem, went by.

The officer — he was a Hikdar — strutting at the head of the main body, with his armor splashed with silver and golden medallions, turned his head. He saw the girls, and under the visor of the helmet, thrust upward and hooked, his dark eyes betrayed all the thoughts I could understand so well.

Turko reached out with both hands and, with his supple khamster skills, bent the heads of the girls down. He couldn’t reach me, and, anyway, even then I doubted if he’d try.

The Hikdar looked down his nose at me and yelled.

“Nulsh! Bow to the Glorious Lem.”

I did not bow.

Me, Dray Prescot! Bow to a stinking leem! Even if it was only a silver toy called Lem.

The Hikdar rapped out a command and every right foot bashed down perfectly alongside a left and the column halted.

The Hikdar strode over. He swaggered. He drew his thraxter as he came and there was on his dark face that look of enjoyment that has always baffled me.

“You bow, nulsh, before it is too late.”

I said, “You are Canops?”

He reared back as though I had struck him.

“Filthy nul! Of course we are Canops! I am Hikdar Markman ti Coyton of the Third Regiment of Canoptic Foot. And you are a dead nulsh!”

The horror of it almost made me slow. The horrendous, the vile, the vicious, the despicable Canops — were human men like me! I felt the sick revulsion strong upon me. I saw the thraxter jerk back for a lethal thrust.

I said, “So you are Canops! I do not like you, Hikdar Markman, and I detest your race of kleeshes.”

And I kicked the Canoptic Hikdar in the guts.

I visit Turko and Rapechak in Mungul Sidrath

I say I kicked him in the guts. I had not forgotten he wore armor, and so my kick went in lower and at an angle and it did the business I intended well enough.

Before he had time to spew all over me, although he was turning green in the face already, I yanked him forward, took away his thraxter, clouted him over the nose with the hilt, and said to Turko, Rapechak, and the girls:
“Run!”

To our rear lay a maze of alleyways and hovels and I fancied the smartly disciplined men of the Third Regiment of Foot would not welcome breaking ranks and chasing about in there. I knew, also, that in the next few seconds the crossbow bolts would come tearing into our bodies. Turko did not hesitate, and neither did Rapechak. They grabbed a girl each — Saenda fell to Rapechak and she squealed — and they vanished into the mouth of the alleyway where the crazy houses hung their upper stories over the cobblestones.

As you may well imagine, I was furiously angry.

Angry with myself.

What an utter onker! Here I’d been, all nicely set to take off for Valka, and this stupid imbroglio had burst about my ears. I had been too stupid for simple cussing.

Mind you, the shock of discovering that these detestable Canops were apims, men like myself, had been severe.

I recognized their breed, all right. They were not the mercenaries to which I had grown accustomed in the other parts of Kregen I had up to then visited. These were men of a national army. Their discipline would be superb. They had a far more sheerly professional look about them than had had the rather unhappy army of Hiclantung. These men were trained killers, and they fought and killed and, no doubt, died not for cold cash but for hot love of country.

Theyvwould present a problem far graver than I had anticipated.

The Deldar leaped out from the leading rank and began yelling and the lines of crossbows twitched up. If I hung about any longer it would be pincushion time. The mouth of the alleyway struck cold across my shoulders. I dodged against the near wall and ran — oh, yes, I ran! — and the bolts went
chink, chink, chinkaroom,
against the far wall. Maybe these soldiers would have been trained to penetrate alleyways, to leap up and down steps covered by fire from their files. This Kasbah-like maze might hold no terrors for them. I ran. I had been running a lot lately, and that, I assume, was the reason I hadn’t bowed to the silver leem. I just do not like running, although it can be, as I had demonstrated on the jungle trail back in Faol with underhand and cunningly vicious traps, an absorbingly interesting pastime.

There was no sign of the others and I guessed they had pelted hell-for-leather as far and as fast as they could.

Following them, as I thought, I rounded corners, leaped offensive drainage ditches, hared through archways, and roared down the flights of narrow steps, flight after flight I saw no one, but, of course, many eyes watched me as I ran, and, no doubt, as well as marveling consigned me to Sicce as the greatest onker ever spawned.

By the time I reached the last alleyway and debouched onto the wide steps leading down to the quays, I knew I’d missed Turko, Rapechak, and the girls. For the first time in a very long time, I was on my own. That could not, however much I welcomed it, be allowed to continue. Through my stupid action the others had been put in danger of their lives. I had, if for no other reason than my stupid stiff-necked pride — which I detest — to ensure that they were safe.

A disguise would seem appropriate.

I was not a Migla and I would need a rubber mask even to approach the look of one. I was a human and must therefore disguise myself as another sort of human. I found the man I wanted in a low-ceilinged taproom with the smell of mud and stale wine everywhere, and the acrid tang coming off the flat and sluggish waters of the River Magan.

He was a wherryman — I knew about those — and he willingly parted with the dark-blue jersey of his trade, together with the flat leather cap that went with it, for a silver coin that bore the likeness of a man-king of some country somewhere in Havilfar. His eyes opened wide at sight of the thraxter, which I had carried beneath the old brown robe.

“Those Opaz-forsaken Canops see you with that, man, you’re dead.”

“They might be dead first, though. You get along with them?”

“Huh!” He had sized me up — as he thought — and without questioning my motives, was ready to talk. “I had a nice little line going here before they came. Worse’n eight-armed devils from Rhasabad, they are! Can’t abide ’em. It’s all regulations, regulations, regulations now. I’m thinking of moving on. No family; sell me wherry. There’s plenty of openings across the other side.” He meant on the other shore of the Shrouded Sea, and I learned a little more. “I got along real fine with the Miglas. Now — why they can’t abide the sight of me. Remind ’em of the Canops! Me — who took their kids on outings when it was Migshaanu’s special days!”

Sympathizing with him seemed in order, and we had a jar together. The wine was a thin stuff, palely red and nothing like the rich color of a rose, and was shipped in from a country over the Shrouded Sea that must be making a fortune from fourth and fifth pressings.

He told me there had been a brisk trade in the old days before the Canops came. The Miglas exported vosk-hide, which they knew how to cure to a suppleness of surprising strength and beauty by a secret process, and colored earths. But most of that had stopped now and the Canops were trying to develop a quite different economy. “Bloody fools!” said the wherryman, who was called Danel, and looked about him in sudden remembering fear.

Bidding Danel Remberee I took myself off with the thraxter rolled in the old brown robe to
The Loyal Canoptic.
I had not missed the irony of that name for a tavern where gathered a remnant of those loyal to Migshaanu. My traveling companions had not arrived back. Planath told me, with a quiver, that the city buzzed with the news. A Hikdar of the Canoptic Army had been struck. He had been kicked! Patrols were everywhere seeking the madman responsible. I upended a blackjack of a wine little better than that I’d drunk in the taproom with Danel, and waited, and fretted, and the suns passed across the heavens. In the end I had to admit that Turko and Rapechak and Saenda and Quaesa were not returning to
The Loyal Canoptic.

When She of the Veils sank into the back hills of Migla and the sky was filled with the shifting light of the Twins, Planath brought me the news I quailed to hear, had known I must hear, and which distressed me greatly.

“They were taken, Horter Prescot. Taken by a patrol and now they languish in the dungeons of Mungul Sidrath.”

I sat there, on the settle, the blackjack in my hand, and I could have broken into curses that would have frizzled this comical worried ugly little halfling’s ears off.

Mungul Sidrath, I was told, was well-nigh impossible to break into. The citadel stood on a solid bed of rock jutting into the River Magan and it dominated the city. In the old days the royal family had lived there with their hired mercenary guards, and they had smiled on the city of Yaman and on the daily worship to Migshaanu, and the suns had shone. Now the city commandant lived there, controlling the city by terror. He had many regiments under his hand as well as mercenary troops, very wild and vicious, quite unlike the old king’s mercenaries, who had served him all their lives and grown fat and happy with their job, which consisted, in the main, of providing honor guards and rows of guardsmen with resplendent uniforms and golden-headed stuxes. Well, I had to break into Mungul Sidrath.

There was no need for me to do this foolhardy thing.

The Star Lords had commanded me to bring out Mog, and I had done so, and she was safe. After that, I was free to return home. There would be no blue radiance and no scorpion this time. I felt sure of that, now; now when it was too late. Of course I could fetch the airboat from the sacred grove of Sidraarga and fly north-northwest and so come to Valka.

I could.

There was nothing to stop me.

Turko and Rapechak and the girls were hanging in chains in the dungeons of the Canops in Mungul Sidrath, but they were no concern of mine. My concerns were all with Delia and little Drak and little Lela, and Vallia and Valka, with Strombor and my clansmen. What was this local petty matter to me?

It was no good cursing. All the Voxes and Zairs and Makki-Grodno oaths would not change one iota of this mess.

I stood up.

“I have to go to Mungul Sidrath, Horter Planath. Would you give me food and drink?” I took out the golden deldys.

Planath bristled. He thrust the money away.

“Ploy!” he shouted. “Hurry, woman, and prepare food. Horter Prescot is hungry!”

After I had eaten and drunk I wiped my lips and laid down the cloth and looked at these Miglas. Old Mog had silently walked in. Now she said, “You are a fool, Dray Prescot.” Her voice had lost all its stridency. “A get-onker. But you are a man, and, I now know, beloved of Migshaanu. She will go with you on this desperate venture.”

“That is good—” I was about to say just her name, Mog. But I paused, and then said: “I shall be glad of the help of Migshaanu the Glorious, Mighty Mog.”

Her hard agate eyes appraised me and her nutcracker jaws clamped, then she relaxed. I think, even then, she realized I had given over mocking her — for a space, at least.

Wearing the wherryman’s old blue jersey with its rips and stains and with the flat leather cap pulled down over my forehead I went up against the citadel of Yaman. I went without weapons in my hands. I kept to the shadows and as I went I bent over and shambled. And so I came to the outer stone wall of the fortress where it reared, pink in the moonlight, rising against the stars of Kregen.

The place was old, for there is much that is ancient in Havilfar, and although well-built in olden time was much crumbled and fallen away in parts. An arm of the Magan encircled the fortress like a moat and the bridges were guarded by smart and well-drilled infantrymen of the Army of Canopdrin.

As I skulked in the shadows from the towers, where the Twins threw down their roseate-pink light, I saw something I had never seen before on all of Kregen.

I stared, for a moment letting the urgency of my mission slide, staring at the soldiers who guarded this massive pile. These foot soldiers wore armor, like the men of the Third Regiment of Foot I had earlier seen. They wore bronze helmets with tall plumes, weird under the streaming moonslight, and their greaves gleamed in that light. They carried the stux, and at their waists were belted thraxters. They did not carry crossbows. I stared at what made them, as far as I was concerned, unique in all of Kregen — if you did not count my old slave phalanx from the warrens of Magdag, and they must now be scattered and slain or slaving once more on the monolithic buildings of the overlords. Not even the Ochs counted here.

For these soldiers carried shields.

The shields were oval, like the windows in
The Loyal Canoptic,
of a goodly size, much decorated and embossed, with a broad silvery rim. The men handled the shields as though they knew what shields were for. In Segesthes, in Turismond, I had never come across the shield as an article of warlike equipment, the men of those continents regarding the shield as the coward’s weapon, behind which he might cower.

That I knew different — and, perhaps, gloated a little in my so-called superior knowledge — meant now that I had just been my usual foolish self.

I went around the angle of a bastion — for the towers were square-angled and not rounded — and prowled on, brought back to my senses by the hurtling passage of a lesser moon across the heavens. I found the man I sought leaning on his stux and opening a packet made from soft leaves to get at the wad of cham inside. I hit him cleanly on the back of the neck, below the neck-guard, and he pitched to the stones.

Dragging him back into the shadows of a wall and stripping him took little time. I had been careful, the man I wanted not being the first sentry I had seen, and his equipment fitted — but only just.

Dressed and accoutered as a soldier of the Army of Canopdrin I stepped out, leaving the man bound and gagged, and marched boldly for the bridge.