Legions of Antares [Dray Prescot #25]

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Leave it, Zaydo. I will mend. But the Everoinye will not be pleased if I fail them. You must get us all out of here."

  “What happened?"

  He glared up at me, the water shining among the cracks of his lips.

  “You call me master, Zaydo, and speak with civility and humility, else it is the flogging triangle. I am a great lord, and you are my body slave, sent by the Everoinye. Remember this."

  A strom, which is roughly equivalent to an Earthly count, is indeed a title of great nobility in some lands, if of a lesser stature in others. The notion grew in me like a moon-bloom opening to the kiss of the suns’ rays after a night of Notor Zan when no moons shine in Kregen's sky. Just why this affair amused me is difficult to say. I knew I would not act the poltroon in Hamal. But looking at this blowhard numim strom as he lay there, gasping, the bloody bandage incongruous on his head, I suppose I half-reasoned out that no good would come of browbeating him now. We had a job to do. If he labored under the delusion I was his body slave Zaydo, what difference would that make? I wanted to finish this thing off, and then get about wrecking Empress Thyllis's crazy ambitions. And, into the bargain, I could do with a good laugh, and this numim appeared to me to be able to furnish mirth aplenty.

  So ... “Yes, master, no master, very good master, and what has happened here that you are in such poor case and Zaydo is crushed to death?"

  He blew his whiskers out and glared up at me.

  “You are an onker! The roof fell in, that's what. And when I led these people out through the old mining tunnels, the earthquake brought more down, and so trapped us all again and knocked a damned great hole in my head. Vosk skull!"

  “Mayhap, master, a vosk skull, being exceedingly thick, is a good thing to have down here."

  “Do you mock me, ingrate?"

  “Mock you, master? Why should a humble body slave do that?"

  “I labor mightily for the good of the Everoinye. Why they should burden me with an imbecile like you I cannot imagine."

  Now this Strom Irvil was only the second kregoinye I had so far met. The first, Pompino, was no doubt either safely at home in Pandahem with his wife, or jaunting about Kregen derring-doing on an errand for the Everoinye. I'd have preferred Pompino here with me now. But as I set about finding a way out for the trapped people, I had to put up with Strom Irvil breathing down my neck.

  The truth of our predicament was brought home to me quickly and its brutality made me ponder. We were trapped. We were trapped. These people, representatives of the weaker races of Kregen, had crept here secretly to hold a meeting and listen to the wise words of a wandering preacher. This man, this Pundhri the Serene, sat on a rock higher than the rest, his fist supporting his bearded chin, his face bent down, talking quietly to a group of people gathered about him. His voice came to me as a mellifluous burble whose individual words were lost. He was a diff of that race of ahlnims whose members have for century after century produced mystics and wise men. He looked the part, for his hair, like a Gon's, was chalk white. He did not, like a Gon, shave his head bald and polish it up with butter. His face bore that intent, concentrated look of a man absorbed with the import of what he was saying, determined to make his listeners understand and share his vision. He wore a simple dark-blue tunic, and he held a thick staff, unadorned, although with a stout knob at each end.

  Strom Irvil said, “Yes, Zaydo. He is the man the Everoinye wish saved. He is our charge—and me with a damned great hole in my head and a stupid thick-skulled onker of a body slave! It is enough to make a man turn to drink."

  “We are trapped—master—but mayhap we can dig a way out. If—"

  “We! You mean you will dig a way out, Zaydo! And there are monsters in the tunnels. The old mine workings were abandoned seasons ago. The shrine where the meeting was held has not been used in the memory of living man. But Pundhri the Serene called the meeting there out of the prying eyes of those who would destroy him and his work."

  “And what work is that? Master."

  He glared and winced. “You see what a miserable band these folk are. Not a fighting man among them..."

  “The ahlnims fight, on occasion—"

  “Aye! And by thus doing break the tenets of their faith."

  I eyed Pundhri's knobbed stick. They call that kind of dual-skull-basher a dwablatter. I surmised that Pundhri had used it often enough before he was dubbed the Serene.

  “And you say there are monsters, master?” I almost mocked, beginning to feel the need of opening my shoulders. “I suppose there are flame-spouting risslacas, and giant spiders, and—"

  “The giant spiders are as big as two dinner plates and they can snap your leg off like a rotten twig."

  That sobered me, I can tell you.

  He threw the broken sword at me.

  “Get on with it, get on with it, then, Zaydo, you useless lazy hound!"

  “Yes, master.” I stared about, a trifle vacantly. “Where shall I begin?” After all, if he was the master and I the slave then let him sort out the brainwork.

  “Over there where the first tunnel starts, onker!"

  The stone chipped away fairly easily at first as I dug the broken blade in and twisted and scraped. A couple of jolly Sybli girls held torches. They had a fair supply of these, being cautious folk. But they would not last forever. There were lanterns, cheap mineral-oil lamps, and these were being saved. Then, after about two arms’ lengths, the rock firmed up into mother bedrock. The steel chimed.

  I crawled back and stood up, my head and chest covered with rock dust.

  “What are you stopping for?” The lion-man roar burst out. “Get on with it."

  “No way through here. Master."

  “Fool! Then try somewhere else."

  “Yes, master.” I didn't bother about any more fun and frolic. A careful look around in the uncertain illumination revealed the way the cavern sloped down at one end, with arching rockfalls fanning out from ancient subsidences. One or two of the dark slots looked promising. I marched across to the nearest. I passed near the group listening respectfully to Pundhri the Serene. At the rock face the slot proved too narrow for my shoulders and I turned, intending to go on to the next.

  A small ahlnim woman approached, carrying a length of brown cloth. Her hair was pinned neatly at the nape of her neck, as I saw as she bowed her head. Her robe was torn and smeared with dust, and I fancied that was unusual for her. She looked calm and competent and capable of running a household.

  “The master offers you this, and all his prayers are for your success."

  I took the cloth. “Thank you, hortera,” I said, giving her the courtesy title of lady.

  She ducked her head and went back to sit comfortably on a flat rock just to the side and rear of Pundhri. I wound the brown cloth about my nakedness and, spitting on my hands, set to work with the broken sword.

  At that, I did not fail to complain that the Star Lords habitually sent me off to do their dirty work for them stark naked and weaponless. For this high and mighty Strom Irvil, they supplied clothes and weapons—and a personal body slave!

  Some of the Dunders came across and began helping to shift the chips and chunks of rock I flaked off. Squat knots of muscle, short in stubby leg, thick of arm, the Dunders have been blessed—or cursed—by nature or the meddling hand of genetic manipulation with heads as flat across the top as billiard tables. Do not imagine they can be brilliantly intellectual; but they do think, they do suffer from emotions and they are men. Carriers of burdens, the Dunders, and there had been a number of them with us down the Moder before the monsters finished their work forever.

  Pausing for a breather, I said to the nearest flat-headed Dunder: “Is the San a healer, dom?"

  He shook that strange head. “No, dom, no. I do not think so.” Then he added in perfect explanation of his race's outlook: “No one told me he is a healer."

  San Pundhri the Serene continued to talk. The title of san, which means master, dominie, sage, was accorded him
as by right. He held a magnetic attraction for these poor folk. Not many were slaves, and this, presumably, because slaves of other slave-owners would have been unable to get away to the meeting, and the free folk here could afford few slaves. I went back to rock bashing.

  The way opened after considerable effort and a torch, thrust through the first chink to appear onto the rocks tumbled into the tunnel, revealed an empty openness.

  “A cavern,” I said. “Once we're into that we'll be well away."

  The rocky fall was cleared and it was time to try to rouse these people to movement. With a barrage of groans and snorts and burstings of bad temper, Strom Irvil got himself up. He swayed on those dark-furred legs. I gave him an arm for support and he brushed it away, pettishly.

  “I can stand, Zaydo, you onker!"

  I went across to Pundhri.

  “San,” I said with due formality. “Will you help to move the people? They are frightened—"

  He stared at me and I saw his eyes resting on me with calculation. He grasped his knobbed stick and stood up.

  “They have reason to be frightened. You are Zaydo?"

  In for a zorca, in for a vove. “Yes, San."

  “We have no weapons against the monsters."

  I shook rock dust off the broken sword.

  He moved off his flat rock. “I will help these people, of course. You need not have asked. But I do not think your broken sword will avail us here."

  “It has opened the way. It may yet serve."

  He stopped and bent his brows on me. “And you are slave?"

  I did not answer but went bashing back to a group of silly Xaffers who wanted to go the wrong way in the confusing torchlit darkness. When we were sorted out and moving through the gap broken in the fall and into the next cavern, I fancied Pundhri might have other things to occupy him besides the character of the slave called Zaydo.

  The next cavern echoed hollowly to our voices. The torches, held high, showed the craggy rock at our backs and an empty darkness ahead. Everyone stopped. There was no doubt at all that this place held an eerie atmosphere that worked on the susceptibilities. People spoke in low tones. A subdued apprehension made movements awkward. At any moment horror could burst upon us from the darkness.

  “Zaydo!” brayed the lion voice. “Get on, get on! And give me my sword. Slaves do not carry swords."

  “There are some countries where slaves carry swords, master."

  “If I had my strength I'd knock you flat on your back! Impudent tapo! Insolent yetch!"

  Handing the broken sword across, I said: “You will not stripe me, master?"

  “I don't see why I should not. My head! You are an ingrate and I am too kind to my slaves. Now get on, and go that way, for I feel a draught there."

  There was a draught, a tiny current of air, and so this Strom Irvil wasn't as incapacitated as he wanted to think. Off we went, stumbling and clattering over the uneven floor. The torches lost the rocky wall at our backs, and showed nothing ahead. In darkness, rock underfoot, the torches flaring their orange hair, we staggered on.

  Eventually we reached the far wall and squeezed through a crack where air flowed, and came into another cavern, and crossed that. We might spend a dozen lifetimes down there, creeping through the tunnels and struggling across caverns.

  “Up!” growled Strom Irvil. “We must go up!"

  San Pundhri glanced up, not squinting. Irvil bellowed.

  “Zaydo, you useless yetch! Find a way up! By Havil the Green, what a straw scarecrow I'm lumbered with in you, brainless onker!"

  I was about to let out a fluent torrent of abuse, when Pundhri cut in quickly.

  “You use hard words on your slave, strom. He has done well so far. Can we not—"

  “No! Not until we are out of this infernal hellhole."

  I walked across to the wall and a Sybli maiden carried a torch, which was near to expiring, and we looked at the fissures within the rock. One or two looked promising. Once we had broken our way back into the mine workings we ought to find it easier going. I reached back for the torch. The Sybli handed it to me, smiling her silly, naïve, endearing Sybli smile, and I eased sideways along the gray stone, the torch picking out veins and spiracles of crystal. Along I went, the torch thrust ahead. The flames flickered, so there was some kind of draught here. The rock pressed against my back. There was barely room before my chest to move my arms. The way tended up.

  The ground shook.

  The walls moved.

  The solid rock groaned as though the very stone labored in agony from unimaginable pressure. Chips of stone flaked off and fell, unheard in that world-shaking rumble. The walls closed together. Arm up holding the torch, arm down levering on, one leg flexed, the other contorted awkwardly, I stopped moving, pinned. Fast fixed within the vise of stone, I could not budge. The jaws of the world snapped on me, closer and closer. I felt my ribcage bending. The torch glared full upon a single glittering drop of green. The drop of poison at the tip of a thin proboscis oozed from the slot beside my head. The yenalk showed as a flat outline, the dust glittering upon his shell. It inched forward along its fissure, aiming at me, aiming that poison-tipped sword straight at my eye.

  * * *

  Chapter two

  Strom Irvil Berates Zaydo

  The pantheons of Kregen contain many and many an imp and devil, ghastly each in its own fashion. In that moment trapped in the slot, with the world collapsing around me, unable to move, and with a poison-tipped sting hovering before my eye, I fancy I felt more than a few of those devils gibbering and clawing at me.

  “By Makki-Grodno's disgusting diseased left eyeball!” I said. I did not move. I dare not move. I could not move. And I, Dray Prescot, was like to have my own personal disgusting diseased left eyeball, and damned quick, at that.

  The rumbling subterranean convulsions of the earthquake persisted. The strongest desire to run obsessed me, and I could not move. All around me the stone trembled. I daresay it did not tremble as much as did I.

  Sweat rolled off me. I blinked. That single blink might be enough to trigger the yenalk into an attack, into a savage lunged thrust of his sting clear through my eyeball...

  He did not move.

  I felt the sweat chill on me. The damned thing was as jammed fast as was I!

  The world convulsed again and the rock squeezed.

  The yenalk squashed. His two soup-plate shells crunched together. His insides squeezed out.

  I could not turn my head fully away, and I did not shut my eyes. The disgusting mess slipped and slithered over the face of the wall trapping me. The yenalk was squashed as flat as a bug under a boot heel. Was it my turn next?

  The stink in there, highly unpleasant, was no worse than that of some of the slave bagnios I've inhabited from time to time.

  Whatever seismological disturbance was going on, whatever planetary gut-rumbling encompassed me, I could not know; its effects I could know and experience. The rock's slipping movement pressed on me. I felt my ribs crunching. My eyes must have been standing out on stalks. I felt all the blood in me clashing and colliding, and I breathed small, and there came one last pressure which pressed the last gasp from me—and the walls folded back. A hand's-breadth, they moved away, shrieking as rock splintered. Dust and debris rained on me. A chunk of sharp-edged stone cracked against my shoulder. And then I was free.

  I felt my knees giving way.

  The torch shook and orange lights quivered, shadows pirouetted like the encroaching demons of darkness.

  By Zair! That had been a narrow one!

  A narrow one ... No, believe me, I didn't laugh; not just then, anyway.

  After that a few more crashings and hangings, with the passageway splitting asunder with a shriek of a banshee, all came as anticlimaxes. I hauled myself around to go back to the others and bumped into Strom Irvil.

  His bandage hung all lopsided. He was panting and his lion face was flushed with high blood pressure and consummate anger.

 
“What are you coming back for, you rascal! Running for it, are you! Get on. The ceiling nearly fell on us out there while you were safe in here."

  There was nothing to say. I'd have my laugh later.

  Creeping along and following the heaven-sent draught of air, we wormed our way through the passageways and so came out into the ancient mine workings. Here many thick pillars upheld the roof. The lanterns were lit and we pressed on as fast as we could. The people babbled away, scenting escape from these dolorous caverns. Two more earth tremors hit; but they caused us no damage, only alarm that the pillars might collapse and the ceiling fall in. Nothing like that happened and, passing a toppled statue of Havil the Green, smothered in dust and gouged by falling rocks, we began the ascent to the surface.

  “I do not think that shrine will ever be used again,” observed Pundhri, toiling along near me.

  Much as this sage interested me, because the Star Lords wished him preserved, this was not the time or place to prosecute inquiries. So I just said: “There are many shrines on the surface of the world better suited than those stuffed away in dark holes in the ground."

  We jostled along, climbing, and Pundhri looked back as Strom Irvil bellowed in his impatient way for me to give him assistance over a patch of splintered rocks. His bandage was unwinding. Putting a hand under his left armpit I hoisted him up. His booted feet scrabbled on rocks. He pitched forward and I held him from falling. The bandage slid down over an ear and eye.

  He roared.

  “Fool! Onker! Useless ninny! Oh, why am I plagued with rubbish like you? May Numi-Hyrjiv the Golden Splendor look down in mercy upon me. Onker!"

  Pundhri started to say, “The slave Zaydo does not merit—"

  Strom Irvil thrashed around, trying to shove the black and yellow bandage straight, trying to shrug away from my grip, trying to get his boots onto a flat space in the splinters. “I know what he merits! I know! By all the Devils of the Pines! And I'll give it to him when we're out of this infernal hellhole!"

  When I let him go he did not fall down. In truth, I had assisted him, as was patently obvious. I said nothing.