Manhounds of Antares (25 page)

While it is true to say that the necessary demands of discipline and organization make one army very much like another, and the better an army is the nearer it approaches to an unattainable ideal, there must of necessity be many differences between army and army, details that are unique to any fighting force. I felt confident I could bluff to a great extent; after that, I would just have to take my chances, for there was precious little chance of finding another way into the fortress as quickly as this.

Common sense had dictated that I find a bridge as far from the one the sentry’s comrades would be guarding as I could. On my shield, below the embossed image of the leaping leem, there had been painted in white the stylized representation of a fluttrell, with the figures for six and five. By their relative sizes I judged this would be the sixth regiment and the fifth subdivision of that regiment, called what I did not know as yet, for Planath had no knowledge of military organization. The men guarding the bridge I chose, besides having a different color arrangement of the streamers over their shoulder armor, carried on their shields the silver leem and, below it, a blue-painted zorca with the figures for eight and two.

I marched in boldly and, as I had seen the men do on the bridge, brought the stux up and across in a salute. Without breaking step I strode on. An ob-Deldar looked across and called: “It’s your guts, is it, soldier?”

An ob-Deldar is the lowest one can get — as any ranker will say — and so I answered hoarsely: “Too true, Deldar. They pain something awful.”

The ob-Deldar laughed with great malice and so I passed on into the dark shadows of Mungul Sidrath.

Observation that had helped me thus far could no longer give me a guide on the behavior patterns of the men of this army.

Down in the dungeons, Planath the Wine had said, shaking his head. Therefore, I must go down, and to descend I had to find a stairway of some kind. I had ideas on the proper situation of stairways in fortresses, and I found that whoever in the ancient times had designed Mungul Sidrath had come a long way along the path of fortress construction. The stairway was exceedingly narrow, and spiraled the wrong way — that is, it had been designed so that a man going down, as I was, had the advantage of the curve. This could only mean the designer had recognized the possibility of entrance below and had decided on the main-gate level as his central stand-area. He had ruled out any idea of defenders running below against a successful entrance by attackers through the gate. Going up into the towers the curve would be against a man.

The stones were surprisingly dry, considering the Magan flowed nearby, and only occasional runnels of water trickled across the stones. Where they did so they stained darkly and lichens grew. The air grew unpleasant but breathable.

At the bottom the stair curled in on itself, so that a man might stand and loose against men running up the passageway. The ceiling here was low and I took off the tall helmet. Farther along the way widened and two guards, their stuxes leaning against the wall, were crouched over tossing dice. They looked up suddenly as I approached, saw I was a mere ranker, and pulled back to get out of the way. Farther along there might be a single sentry; so leaving these two to a mercy they had no idea had touched them, I went on.

They had not spoken. The language used by the ob-Deldar had varied only minutely from the universal Kregish, and I guessed it was Canoptish, the local language of Canopdrin. The sound of rushing water ahead and a marked cooling and freshening of the air made me lengthen my stride.

In a man-made cavern carved from an original bubble in the rock, water poured through from a black cleft high in one wall, dropped in a great weltering and rushing of foam and spume, sped sheeningly through a wide conduit, and passed in another broad shining curve of water down and out of sight beyond an arched opening in the opposite wall. The passageway opened onto nothingness and the path was carried on a narrow wooden bridge across the pelting water. Steps led to a neat contraption after the fashion of a waterwheel by which water could be lifted from the stream and raised, level by level, until it was carried out of sight into the mouth of a shaft. Buckets hung from the shaft mouth. Here guards cracked their whips and slaves of all kinds turned the great waterwheels, level by level, and lifted the fluid up and into the fortress so that, no doubt, the great men of the Canops might drink and wash and waste the water that had cost so much effort.

The noise blattered unceasingly. Water splashed and hissed. Whips cracked. Men screamed and guards yelled obscene orders to work faster, faster, and smash went the whips, and around and around hauled the slaves, all filthy and naked and hairy, and in fountains of silvery leaping spillings the water lifted high. The name on Kregen for water fitted that scene.

Passing on, with a salute for the Deldar in command, I came into an area of gloom, for the torches guttered low and there were no fireglass panels above, as there had been in the cavern of the waterwheels.

The sight of these hairy naked devils writhing and struggling and hauling, the spouts of water slopping everywhere, the insufferable noises, affected me profoundly. Truly, there was a foretaste of the Ice Floes of Sicce here!

“In the name of Lem! Who are you?”

From a side passage barred by an iron door, now open, a Hikdar stepped out. He carried a shield like my own, except that the fluttrell and the numerals six and five were raised from the surface and colored silver. He glared at me with his hard, mahogany-tough face filled with a surprise that swiftly changed to suspicion and then to certainty as he spoke.

“I know every man of the eighty in the Fifth Pastang! You are not one of my men — there is no desertion from — by the Great and Bone-Crushing Lem himself! You are Dray Prescot!”

And his thraxter whipped out and his shield came around with a thump and he charged straight for me.

Even as I responded in kind I had to fight the nausea of knowing that these devils of Canops had forced information from my friends; this Hikdar could never otherwise have known my name. He came in very expertly, shouting the while to summon more men. He had to be dealt with quickly. Using a shield like this, with a sword, came strangely at first, but I had not forgotten what I had taught my old vosk-helmets of the warrens. Thraxters clashed against shields, and I bashed him low, against the swell of the lorica over his belly, and then slipped a nasty little thrust in that finished him. The thraxters were suited for this work, being not too long yet long enough to make swordplay of some value, coupled with a shield used as an offensive weapon. The sound of iron nails on the stone blattered echoing along between the walls.

There was just the one way to go and that was the way I took. Around me now barred openings revealed cells. Hairy bewhiskered faces pressed up against the bars and a dolorous chorus of catcalls and shrieks echoed through the dimly lighted way. Many prisoners, there were, and yet they were all probably segregated, there on punishment detail, military prisoners serving sentences. Those I sought would be lower, in the dungeons. A crossbow bolt hissed past and a voice lifted, ringing between the stone walls.

“Do not kill him, nulsh! He is to be taken and questioned.”

That, I feel sure, had little bearing on the bolt that bounced off my head. It is doubtful if even the tall bronze helmet would have done much. I felt the blow, saw a blinding stream of sparks flaring across my eyes, and then I fell into darkness.

Unconsciousness could not have lasted long. The blow had been a glancing one and when I opened my eyes I could feel the wet stickiness of blood down my face. Hands were placing a rough bandage around my head, tucking the ends in, most painfully. I tried to kick the offender, but he avoided the blow, and a voice said: “The nul is conscious.”

They used the word nul as the Khamorros did, did these Canops, to mean a person who was not one of themselves.

They had stripped off the armor and the white tunic beneath and the short white kiltlike garment that was all they considered a shield-carrying man would need there in the way of defense. I was clad only in the old scarlet breech-clout. They dragged me along by my hair, whereat I turned, sluggishly I know, and tried to bite the wrists of the hands that dragged me, and was beaten back for my pains.

The broad-flagged stone chamber into which they dragged me was clearly a guardroom. There were seven Canop soldiers and a Hikdar. Also there was a Khamorro. I knew this lithely muscled man must be a khamster from every lineament of him. That he wore a green breechclout meant nothing. Around his head a broad risslaca-leather strap had been cinctured tightly and from it dangled an assortment of objects that, at the time, meant nothing to me. He was obsequious to the soldiers, and ready to do their bidding, and I guessed he stood in their employment as Turko had suggested the Khamorros would be employed — not as slaves but as special and highly prized body servants.

The Hikdar had already sent word of my capture up through the underground ways to the nobles above, and they would soon want me dragged before them, if they did not save the trouble and come down here themselves to witness my punishment. I guessed Hikdar Markman ti Coyton would be in their forefront. I just hoped his guts still hurt.

Unlike the guards of Prince Glycas of Magdag, these Canops had not heard of me. They tied me up with thongs and bundled me into a corner to await the chaining and the questioning when the city commandant and his retinue arrived. So there was time.

The thongs came free with a series of wrist movements and a final bursting surge. I stood up. The soldiers turned, gaping, and I knew they might all die but that the Khamorro, without a weapon in his fist, must be the man I must consider most. So after I kicked the first guard and broke the neck of the second, the thraxter I snatched up and flung took the Khamorro between the ribs. The second thraxter I scooped up did not last much longer, breaking as it wrenched free of the fourth guard. The Hikdar was raving, swirling his sword, urging his men on to attack me and at the same time yelling for them to span a bow and shoot me in the legs. By the time he had sorted out his priorities he had run out of men. The seven of them and the Khamorro lay where they had dropped.

But this Hikdar of Canopdrin was not without courage and he came at me with his thraxter held most neatly — but he fought without a shield, for there had been no time for him to snatch one up from the arms racks along the wall. This was a tremendous disadvantage for him, and he went down, still trying to fight. Now I would have to hurry. No time, therefore, then, to feel sorry for these Canops — vile reavers though they were.

I took two crossbows and two thraxters, the finest I could find. I did not stop for shields or armor but padded out and very quickly ran across a guard party marching back off guard duty. The three soldiers went down with ruthless speed. The dwa-Deldar I showed the point of a thraxter and then jammed it into his throat just enough to draw blood.

“Where are the prisoners, kleesh? The Khamorro, the Rapa, and the two apim girls?”

He told me. I hit him over the head, for that had been our unspoken compact, and ran off down the tunnelway indicated. The dungeon was barred by an iron grille. The guard there was most happy to open it for me. Beyond that lay another grille and this guard — large, surly, and evidently in a foul temper for rating this duty, wanted to contest it with me. I cut him up — I had to — and passed on. Inside the dungeon only my four companions waited to greet me.

They had been stripped stark naked and hung against the wall in chains.

The two girls glared at me with mad eyes, not believing this half-naked apparition with the scarlet breechclout and the red blood splashed all over him could be me, the Dray Prescot they had been trying to cozen.

Rapechak said, “You are welcome, Dray Prescot.”

I placed the crossbows and the quivers of bolts down and turned my face up to look at Turko. He looked in bad shape, clearly he had not fully recovered from that experience in the jungle of Faol. He looked at me and then his eyes flicked in a sharp gaze over my head.

“Lahal, Dray Prescot,” he said. “Yes, you are most welcome. But you will have need of your weapons, I think.”

I turned swiftly.

Ten paces from me stood two Khamorros. Both were large, superbly muscled, fit and tough, and both stood with hands on hips regarding me as they might a plate of palines.

Around their heads both wore wide bands of soft risslaca-leather and again a mixed assortment of objects hung down.

“They are only Khamorros, Turko,” I said, prodding. I wanted to get his spirit back.

“The reed-syples,” said Turko, in a strangled voice. “The headbands,” he added, for my benefit. “These are great khams, both. Without your weapons, Dray Prescot, you are a doomed man.”

Perhaps there was no mocking taunt in his voice. Perhaps I read into his words what my own guilty conscience put there. I do not know, but I acted as the most callow and vainglorious onker of a boaster could act.

“Great khams, Turko? I do not believe I need mere steel weapons to deal with them.”

And I pitched the two swords onto the stone floor, where they rang like tocsin bells, and swung to face the two Khamorros, my hands empty.

The Hai Hikai creates a shield

“You great nurdling fool!”

Turko’s anguished cry racked up from the foundations of his being. Now he gave himself up for lost.

Rapechak the Rapa shouted: “Now by Rhapaporgolam the Reaver of Souls! You are a dead man, Dray Prescot!”

Saenda screamed almost incoherently: “You horrible onker, Dray! I’ll never forgive you for this!”

And Quaesa simply burst into a long howling shriek.

The two Khamorros stared as though they could not believe their eyes. One of them, the slightly smaller of the two, even went through a quick routine of flexing his muscles and rippling his strength at me. He looked up at the naked bodies of the girls and, again letting that stupid bravado overwhelm me, I clapped my hands.