Manhounds of Antares dp-6

by Alan Burt Akers

  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. Tulema whispered: “There is a guide here, Dray-”

  “Good.” At once I looked about for the lithe young man with the dark hair who was risking his life for us. I saw him with a group and pushed my way across with Tulema. Whether the guide might be persuaded to take us or not, he would listen to me when I told him the disastrous news.

  Chapter Ten

  Of the two faces of Hito the Hunter

  Of course the guide would not believe me. He scoffed. His name was Inachos and he was as young and athletic as the other guides. Also he was a little impatient.

  There had been no time to tell him in the barred caves, for the guards had thrust through and taken out the slaves Notor Trelth selected, and in the resultant confusion Tulema and I had been pushed out with the rest. There were eighteen of us, this time, a large party, and only when we had settled down for the night in the slave barracks had I been afforded the opportunity of talking privately with Inachos.

  “What you are saying is lunacy. By Hito the Hunter! No guide would be taken unawares.”

  “So I had thought. But it has happened, three times to my certain knowledge.”

  “And you have told no one else?”

  “To alarm the slaves would not have been wise. Their fate rests in the hands of the guides. You must take the news back to your villages and warn them.”

  He looked at me, his head on one side, looking very alert and handsome. “I cannot believe what you say. But a warning must be taken, just in case.”

  “I shall stay awake all night,” I said.

  “If it pleases you.”

  A cocky youngster, I thought to myself, one who believes no secret party of assassins can creep upon him in the pink moonlight.

  Inachos the Guide must act his part as a cowed slave the next morning as we went through those ghastly preliminaries Nalgre the slave-master carried out with such relish. With Tulema near me, generally held by my left hand, I kept very close to Inachos. If he refused to take me seriously, I knew that tonight his eyes would be opened.

  Nalgre approached us and Inachos stiffened up, but the slave-master flicked his whip lightly over me -

  I bore it! I, Dray Prescot, bore it! — and then turned away as Notor Trelth called. Inachos relaxed, breathing hard through pinched nostrils, looking frustrated. I felt sorry for him. Very soon thereafter we were trotting away. Inachos said we could strike north through the jungle and find the coast easily where we might pick up a vessel from the island of Outer Faol whose people, simple fishermen, he called them, would call for the sake of the alligators in the mud-swamps. Faol was not really close enough to the equator or well-watered enough to possess a really dense rain forest. The jungle was capable of being traversed by many trails, although, of course, not being a pleasant place. I thought of what had previously been said about the northern jungle offering no real safety, but Inachos knew his business, and fisherfolk and a boat so close to hand sounded more tempting than another long slog over the plains.

  Just over half a dwabur along the trail through the dim green and russet twilight of the forest, Inachos halted us to produce his cache of clothing, food, and knives. I put the shoes on, with a grimace, and took the cheap knife with the thought that around me there was literally a forest of wooden longswords. The longswords existed literally within the tree branches, as the greatest statues of two worlds already existed within the stones from which they were carved.

  From my previous experience I did not believe the hunters would tackle us before the next day. That night Inachos found a comfortable dell by a small and somewhat marshy stream and we set up camp. He handed us the wine and my fellow slaves upended the leather bottles with great gusto. Tulema was exhausted. She sat with her back against the bole of a tree, licking the last of the paline juice from her fingers. I took a wine bottle over and she drank greedily. Inachos called: “Have some wine yourself, Dray Prescot. You will have need of it.”

  “I like wine,” I said casually. “But I prefer tea.”

  “Drink,” he said.

  Tulema had left a few dregs swilling in the leather bag, but to please Inachos, for he had risked much stowing the wine away in the cache, I lifted the leather and drank what there was and went on drinking thereafter, miming. Inachos chuckled.

  “Tomorrow we will be through the jungle. We will find a boat. And tonight, nothing will disturb our rest.”

  We took precautions against the nocturnal denizens of the jungle. There are but a few snakes on Kregen, and these poor and miserable of spirit — with the exception of a breed of horrors of which I will speak later — but there were other perils and we twined vines about ourselves on the branches of trees, and rammed hard and thorny spikes in the wood to make a palisade. Already the slaves were yawning. Tulema was fast asleep. I fancied a conversation with Inachos, but he grunted and took himself off to a branch lower than those on which we slaves perched, saying that we must rise early. A Gon moaned uneasily in his sleep. His chalk-white hair glowed an eerie color in the light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles striking pallidly through the leaves. Even in the warrens of Magdag the Gons had been able to shave that white hair of which they are so ashamed. I kept my weather eye open for Inachos, who lay, a darker blot, against his tree lower down.

  My eyes closed.

  How long I sat there, wedged against a branch springing from the main trunk I do not know. I remember I recollected there was some powerful and compelling reason why I must keep awake this night. I had slept well on those other nights when we slaves had been run as quarry for sport, and the last time, with the voller merchant, Latimer, I had kept awake most of the night, or so I believed. I opened my eyes, blearily, gummily. I looked down.

  Inachos no longer sat in his tree perch.

  Instantly I was wide awake.

  I picked out h
is form, creeping down the tree, going carefully, and as he went dropping dark drops down onto the wood from a wooden vial he had unstoppered, a wooden vial I had taken to be a stick. He was going carefully so as to make the dark drops splatter effectively, and so as not to lose his handand foothold; he was not, I judged, going carefully so as not to awaken the slaves. Quietly — and when I wish to be quiet it takes a very sharp ear indeed to hear me — I unlashed the vines and crept down the tree after him. He jumped very lithely to the packed leaf-droppings of the forest floor and ran swiftly along the trail ahead. Quietly, I followed.

  After a few moments we reached a clearing, and on the brink I paused. Inachos stood in the center of the clearing, bathed in the radiant pink light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles, with She of the Veils adding her own luster to the scene. He reached up his arms.

  Silently, a flier ghosted down into the clearing.

  No further evidence was needed.

  The man in the flier had no need to lean out and shout cheerfully to Inachos: “Ho, there, Inachos. By Hito the Hunter! I shall sink much wine this night.”

  And Inachos the Guide had no need to reply: “And I, also! This work makes a man thirsty! The yetches stink so!”

  No, there was no need for them to say these words to convince me, to make me see what a credulous fool I had been.

  Everything fell into place.

  With a shout full of bestial hatred I charged into the clearing, bounded across the open space, struck Inachos senseless with a smashing blow to the nape of his neck, and reached in my hands and hauled his companion all tumbling onto the jungle floor.

  Even then, I swear, I did not mean both of them to die, for I wished to question them. But Inachos must have had a weak skull, or my blow must have been too hasty and impetuous. As for the flier pilot who had come to pick the guide up — when I turned him over I saw the hilt of his knife thrusting up from his chest. As he tumbled out of the flier the knife had sliced whicker-sharp between his ribs. I wrenched it out with a foul Makki-Grodno oath.

  What a credulous idiot I had been!

  The guides were not being murdered by assassins sent by Nalgre. Oh, no! Nalgre hired the guides. They came into the caves and told the slaves they would take them out to safety, and the poor deluded fools went out, gaily, expectantly, filled with hope. They thought they were being taken to safety, and then, every first night, the guide would disappear and the slaves were on their own. They would be ripe fodder for the great Jikai! How much more cunning this system was to get the slaves out and running. Without hope, they might run, but they would not give sport.

  The quarry were given a reason to run by the guides. They thought that with a whole day’s start they stood a chance. And, too, I saw another sound reason for this dastardly plot. The different parties of slaves could be channeled into different parts of the island. Then different hunts would not become entangled and Nalgre would not have to face irate customers whose quarry had been snapped up by neighboring hunters.

  And — that doughy-faced Notor Trelth had agreed to hunt through the jungle and the guide, Inachos, had directed us northward so as to keep within the confines of the jungle!

  The more I considered the foul scheme the more I saw its elegance and simplicity — and its horror. Maybe there were no real rear entrances to the caves.

  Certainly, the manhounds had entrances there, to herd the slaves out for selection. All the time I thus reviewed the diabolical schemes of the Kov of Faol and his slave-master, Nalgre, I paced back and forth in the moonlight.

  Then I went back to the tree where my companions slept and tried to rouse them. Every last one was fast asleep in a drugged stupor.

  That provided the last evidence. The wine so thoughtfully provided by the guides, which they did not drink through care for their charges, was drugged. The guides simply got up and walked away and were picked up by flier.

  If I bashed a length of timber against the tree in my anger, I feel that needs no explanation. In the end I had to unlash all the slaves, every one, and Tulema first, and carry them, snoring, over to the airboat. The flier would just take all the eighteen of us, although we were jammed in — no novelty to slaves accustomed to being jammed in hard together in barred prisons. Delia had given me instructions in the management of airboats. I took the flier up quickly, savagely, sped low over the jungle in the streaming light from the moons of Kregen. The flight had to be undertaken right away; it would have been madness to have waited until the morning. Come the morning, though — and here I believe my lips ricked back over my teeth in a most ungentlemanly fashion — the great hunters on their manhunt would find no quarry for the manhounds to drag down, for them to loose at with their gleaming beautiful crossbows, for them to chop down with sword and spear.

  When, at last, Zim and Genodras — or, as here in Havilfar, Far and Havil — dawned over the jungle levels I brought the airboat down into a cleft in the trees. Below, a river ran, a broad sluggish ocher-colored river, with mud-banks and the scaled and agile forms of water-risslaca active about their own form of hunting. At least, much as I was wary of risslaca and with horrific memories of the Phokaym, they, at least, hunted for food.

  I took the airboat low along the dun water and at last found what I sought, a place where the banks had eroded and fallen and the jungle had voraciously grown over the tumbled earth and so created a roofed space beneath. Management of the voller was a tricky business, but I got her neatly inserted under the overarching leaves. She was a craft built along somewhat different lines from those I had been accustomed to in Vallia and Zenicce, being altogether sturdier of construction, with lenken planking and bronze supports, although still of that swift and beautiful leaf-shape. The Gon rolled over, snorting, and pushed into Lenki, a Brokelsh whose black bristles were the thickest I had seen on one of his kind, and Lenki snorted in his turn, and turned over, and struck a Fristle, and so, with much groaning and blowing and yawning, the whole pack of slaves woke up. Leaving them to sort themselves out I swung down beneath the trees to the water’s edge. Certainly there is much beauty in the greenery of Kregen. A profusion of gorgeous flowers was opening to the first rays of the twin suns, and I stood on the ledge of soggy earth watching as moon-blooms opened wide their second, outer, ring of petals, and as scarlet and indigo and yellow and orange flowers of a myriad convoluted shapes prepared themselves for the day. A swim, which I would sorely have welcomed, filthy as I was, was not to be recommended. Many risslaca had woken up and were prowling. I scooped a handful of the water and splashed my face and body and heard a harsh and malevolent croaking in the air above my head.

  I looked up.

  The Gdoinye hung there, his pinions beating against the dawn breeze down the river, his head cocked. In the streaming mingled light of the suns he looked glorious, shining, refulgent. I shook my fist at him.

  “You are an idiot, Dray Prescot!”

  “You told me that before, on a beach in Valka!”

  “An onker of onkers, Dray Prescot, a get-onker!”

  “So I know!” I shouted back as the accipiter swung there, squawking hoarsely at me. Without a thought I knew those in the airboat could not be a witness to this astounding confrontation.

  “You will be allowed a little more time to play your games. We trust they amuse you. There is yet time.”

  “Time for what? I play no games with you. Why do you force me against my wishes-”

  But, with a hoarse cry, the raptor interrupted.

  “We do what we do for reasons beyond your understanding, Dray Prescot. When you grow up, you may then grow a brain to comprehend the simple facts of life on this planet. Now you are as a suckling baby, as your antics here in Faol have shown.”

  “Antics!” I roared. “Antics! I’ve been trying to do what I thought was right — and no damned help from you! How do I know who-”

  “When you reach Yaman you may discover answers you will never find in Aphrasoe.”

  “I didn’t ask to be brought to Kr
egen! But now that I’m here I have found my own destiny! If you want my help you’ll have to-”

  But the Gdoinye had heard enough of my puling roaring, for he winged up and away, a golden and scarlet messenger of glory, from a bunch of Star Lords I’d as lief squeeze between my fingers and let drip through in a red mush. He soared up, shining in the mingled light of the twin suns. His last harsh cry streamed down with that opaline light.

  “You are a fool, Dray Prescot!”

  Then he was a mere black dot against the suns-glow.

  I cursed.

  Oh, I cursed!

  But, of course, there was nothing for me to do but go back and do as the Star Lords ordered and get Tulema out to a place of safety. After that. . and then I knew that after that, before I could investigate the scarlet-roped Todalpheme, before I could spend pleasant days discovering more about the vollers, before, even, I could return to Vallia and Delia, I would have to return to the barred slave pens of Faol and warn the slaves. I would have to defeat the Kov of Faol and Nalgre and put paid to this foul and despicable game they played with their two-faced treacherous guides. When I turned back to the cleft in the river bank with its camouflage of trees the slaves were out of the airboat and clamoring their wonder like a pack of jackdaws. Of them all, apart from Tulema and myself, only one was a human being, the rest being halflings of one sort and another. This young man, who had fed himself well in the caves, kept much to himself and spoke little. He said his name was Nath, but I did not believe him. He had red hair, and so might be a Lohvian. When a Brokelsh had pressed him, this Nath had said he came from Thothangir, and, again, I did not believe him. This Nath na Thothangir walked toward me swinging one of the guide’s swords. I eyed him meanly.