Next morning Nalgre, with his admiring customers in attendance, went through his little routine with his pet jiklo. The female creature frisked about, lolling her red tongue, rubbing her flanks against his legs, sniffing us. Then we set out through the jungle. The other two parties went north and east. We struck south. As Anko said: “We do not wish to draw too many hunters down upon us, no, by Hito the Hunter. We cross the great plain, and then we will be safe across the river.”
This Anko was much like Nath, and I hoped no untoward accident would befall him, also. He found his cache of clothes and food and shoes and knives, and cheerful at the prospect of liberty before us, we set off. The jungle was left far in the rear and we tramped across a wide plain where palies and that deer-like animal of such grace and beauty, the lople, ran and grazed in herds. We might run across leem here, too, and I kept my hand on the hilt of the cheap knife Anko had passed out from the cache.
The palies were the easiest to catch of the plains deer, and we caught, cooked, and ate one before settling down for the night. I own I felt the tiredness on me. I had suggested we march on by the light of She of the Veils, but Anko had laughed and said the high and mighty hunters did not relish hunting by night. He added, losing his smile: “They like to see their quarry.”
Faol, as I was to learn, is mostly jungle in its northern half, nearer the equator, but a shift in the land height and the more southerly aspect give this part of the island a more open terrain. The plain over which we now trod curved around to merge with that over which I had marched previously, right across to the river. Now I felt an unease I put into words to Anko the Guide before sleep.
“We are exposed here, Anko. Would not the jungle have afforded us more cover?”
“There is some truth in what you say. But to the north the chances of complete escape are more limited.”
Well, he ought to know. Once more I was struck by the bravery and self-sacrifice of the guides. Anko told me a little more of their philosophy, which was not based, as I had thought, on the twin-principle so common on Kregen, in which the Invisible Twins and Opaz figure so prominently. The guides came from a people of Faol who believed in absolute evil as a principle of life, unarguable and factual, and they were therefore dedicated in opposition to this force. He would not speak of the manhounds. I took this as a wise precaution, for the fears that had destroyed the courage of Tulema were rife among all the slaves. Only the presence of a guide gave them the courage to run. When a bunch of slaves were chosen to be hunted without having arranged for a guide to be among them their chances were nil. Luckily, so Anko said, the guides usually contrived to be with a party due to be hunted.
When I said to him, “And what do you guides seek in this work?” some of my old uncouth sailor ways slipped out. But he smiled.
“For every successful party guided to safety, we receive great honor in our own land, which is on the southern coast. Our young men regard this as a duty laid on them for the honor of their forefathers. Also, the more runs a young man makes, the prettier are the girls from whom he may choose his bride.”
You couldn’t argue with that.
Yes, he had heard that the Kov of Faol’s name was Encar Capela, that his greatest pride was his packs of manhounds, but beyond that he knew nothing of him.
We slept.
In the morning, Anko the Guide was gone.
Zair forgive me if I had slept too long or too heavily.
There were tracks in the short grass of the plains, and blood spots, and signs of a struggle. I could not tell the others with me of Nath the Guide’s disappearance, but here the tragedy was too obvious and too unnerving for them to take much in except for the need of instant flight.
It seemed clear to me, then, that the guides were being murdered. Someone had discovered the work they were doing. Probably Nalgre, with that confounded female jiklo of his, had been told by one of the tame slaves — and I instantly suspected that the old Miglish witch was the one. She nauseated me, I confess, with her twisted face like a gnome’s, all bulbous hooked nose and rubbery thin lips, and bright agate eyes that saw so much, and her foully breathing mouth that told the secrets of the slaves and the guides.
Perhaps, just perhaps, I thought, if Golan was not the right target and I was thrown back into the slave pens I would take the old crone and shake the truth out of her.
The horror of it made me angry. The guides, fine upstanding young men, were risking everything to bring the slaves to safety, and the dark and devious ways of spies were bringing them to their deaths.
Golan wanted to run with the others. I managed to hang on to him and convince him he should eat something. Then, munching roast paly, we set off marching after the others.
We were on our own now. If we went due south we should reach the land of the guides, where we might look for shelter. I angled our march, striking a little to the west in the southerly direction, and soon we were able to see the other fugitives as dots, jerkily rising and falling over the small undulations of the plain away on our left front.
There was in me no desire to sing, and I kept a weather eye cocked aloft for Gdoinye or flier. A voller arrived first and the damned thorn-ivy bush into which I pitched Golan and myself was deucedly hard and prickly and sharp. We cursed as we crawled out. That was only the first. All morning as Far and Havil wheeled across the sky in their mingled lights, we had to dive and burrow our way into bush or crevice or rock shadow.
Golan had completely accepted me as his mentor, and, in truth, he was almost witless with fear. We pressed on and I made him keep up a good pace. From a thicket I cut a stout cudgel for him and a length that might serve as a wooden longsword. I swung it about. Wood it might be, it still felt good in my fists.
Maintaining a straight line of direction is often difficult, although to me, an old sailorman, navigation is an old habit and I knew we had not circled around when I heard the voices off to our left. I said to Golan, viciously: “Keep quiet!”
He did not say a word. His big, fallen-in face showed the horrors that rode him.
We crept forward carefully.
Through a screen of bushes I looked down and saw half a dozen of our fellow-fugitives running and stumbling, falling and picking themselves up, to run wildly on again. Then I saw the reason for that mindless fear.
Bounding in long loping leaps after the slaves raced the outriders of a pack of manhounds. I have seen the work of William Blake, here on Earth, and muchly admired it. And who is there who does not inwardly shiver at the terrifying images of “Tyger, tyger burning bright!”?
There is a picture by William Blake, a print, now, I believe, in the Tate Gallery in London, depicting Nebuchadnezzar. The king of Babylon was stricken, and became as an animal, and crawled away into exile. Blake’s picture shows him crawling, with long beard, and hairs, as it were, growing into eagle’s feathers. There is on his face a look of such inward horror, and pain, despair, and terrifying madness as would drive pity into the heart of any man.
There is about the picture much orange and brown and somber ocher. There is a static quality about it.
For all that the Manhounds of Antares are vicious and filled with a febrile energy, slavering, quick, and deadly, there is about them, too, something of that awful quality of uncomprehending doom.
So they ran and howled and the thick saliva slobbered from their mouths from which the red tongues lolled.
I saw the leader leap full upon the back of the last straggling fugitive.
The wretch emitted a despairing shriek and fell. He was a Rapa. And then a strange thing happened. The manhound did not kill him, for all their fangs can rip the reeking flesh from their living victims. He lifted the Rapa up in his arms, squatting back, and so waited.
His companions poured on in wild hue and cry.
A bunch of zorca riders galloped up — and the manhound released the Rapa, who shrieked and fled.
And now I saw the great Jikai.
The zorca hunters emitted wild whoo
ps and spurred their mounts, and charged after the crazily running Rapa. He ran and ran, in a dead straight line, without the wit to dodge, although I do not think that would have done him the slightest good. The crossbows winked in the streaming mingled light of the Suns of Scorpio. The bolts loosed. The hunters were poor shots. Many missed. Three or four bolts struck the Rapa, all aquiver, and he stumbled, fell, and then tried to struggle on.
Their crossbows discharged, the zorca riders bore on. They hefted their spears and they cast and only one pierced the Rapa. This was clumsy butchery. The hunters unsheathed their swords, and now they reined in around the Rapa and I saw the blades rising and falling.
Golan was being sick.
“Keep quiet, calsany!” I said.
I took notice of the youth who had flung the only spear to strike. He had a rosy laughing face, very merry, and he was now red with exertion. But his face was no redder than the sword he waved wildly above his head and with a shrill yell plunged downward yet again.
“Well done, Ortyg! Well done!” his companions called.
Then — I went stiff with rage and passion.
For these miserable cramphs, these misbegotten of Grodno, shouted out the words, the great words, “Hai! Jikai!”
Almost, I rose up and flung myself upon them.
But Golan, who once had been a Pallan, was being sick in the grass, and the Star Lords had commanded me to rescue him.
I watched, trembling, hating the poltroon I had become, as the zorca riders spurred away. The flanks of the zorcas showed the blood-red weals. Spurs and zorcas are not a fit combination for a true rider!
A single manhound, sniffing after the rest, trailed up toward us.
Maybe he caught our scent on a vagrant breeze; maybe he was the rogue of the pack. But he came straight for us, head down, rump high, his hair blowing in a mane behind him, his crested topknot stiff and arrogant, his jagged teeth exposed.
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.
Chapter Nine
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.”
Manhounds of Antares Page 9
