Beasts of Antares [Dray Prescot #23]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Our ten thomplods lumbered along, thomp, thomp, thomp, their twelve legs apiece shaking the ground. The carts groaned, the wild beasts screeched and yowled and spat. We walked on, weapons in hand, staring every which way. In the Forest of the Departed are many grassy rides and wide open spaces lined with long-abandoned tombs. The shadows dropped confusingly down. The leaves rustled, a tiny hot wind blew, the smell of the forest fought the stinks of the caravan. We plodded on.

  Looking at Unmok the Nets as he limped along, occasionally agreeing to ride aboard a cart, I reflected that this was one way to earn a living that was not for me. But we neared Huringa and the Jikhorkdun and the reason for all this.

  The bandits hit us just as we were thinking about making camp.

  We were crossing a wide grassy expanse where there was no hope of our seeking shelter among the trees, and the drikingers came howling and yelling along a ride at right angles. They carried spears and swords and axes, and they urged their totrixes along with spurs. They would have cut us into little pieces, gone slap-bang through us and then turned, pirouetting, to finish us off at their leisure.

  Instead, they went careering madly across our front, swerving away. Men struggled to stay in their saddles. Spears fell to the grass. Men fell, too, to be trampled in the stampede of maddened totrixes, their six hooves battering helmet and breastplate and pulping out the red ooze.

  “The thomplods!” screamed Unmok. He danced in ecstasy. “I hope that's Maglo the Ears, may his guts dissolve into green slime!"

  The bandits could not control their mounts. The attack was a fiasco. Perking up, our guards loosed off a few shafts and this finished the business. Yelling and swearing, the drikingers vanished among the trees.

  “If they come back,” I said loudly, “we will serve them steel stew!"

  “Aye!” shouted the mercenaries. They were almighty puffed with the victory. But not one had the temerity or stupidity to mention a Jikai. There are limits...

  Although our hired guards had not yet been offered the opportunity to display their quality as fighting men for us, they were not slow in behaving as any good paktun will and doubling across to loot the corpses. This is a mere part of life and death on Kregen, a facet of the economy.

  The idea of perfectly good swords and armor being allowed to rust uselessly away goes against the grain.

  Wandering across, I found myself a useful-looking thraxter, the straight cut and thrust sword of Halivar. The grip was plain, the hilt unadorned, and the blade not too heavy. One needs something a little more robust than a rapier in a nasty little fracas of this kind. As for armor, two kaxes I looked at were both pierced through by arrows. I retrieved the arrows from the corselets; one was broken and the other I stuffed back into the quiver I had kept after being dubbed Jak the Shot. In the end I found a leather jerkin with bronze studding. It clothed a dead apim and by letting the thongs out to their fullest extent I was able to get it around my shoulders. Had it been the slightest tight on me I'd have not touched it with a bargepole. But the dead man was of a goodly breadth across the shoulders. He had died of a totrix hoof in the head.

  The mercenaries were busily hacking off fingers and ears to get at rings. I wasn't particularly interested in that. In the normal course I wouldn't have bothered any further, but Unmok and my partnership was a trifle strapped. A Rapa lay pitched onto his vulturine nose, and the gleam of a fine scarron necklace attracted me. I went across and turned him over and nodded. The gems were valuable, loot, no doubt, from some unfortunate woman trapped in a destroyed caravan. I started to unhook them.

  A Fristle wanted to dispute my claim. I pointed to the arrow through the Rapa's eye. The feathers were yellow from a Hulfoo bird, that Hyrklanian goose. “Mine, I think."

  The Fristle spat a little, ruffled up his fur and then went off farther into the trees after easier pickings.

  Unmok was delighted with the scarron necklace.

  “You could make a play about that,” I said, and I found my ugly old beak head itching, almost as though I smiled at a jest.

  Shadows now cloaked the clearing and occasionally the last of the twin suns shafted a smoky twinkle between the trees. Myriad insects whirled and gyrated, chips of flickering light in the rays. We set about pitching camp and came alert again, quivering with fresh alarm, as the jingle of harness and the clip-clop of hooves heralded more jutmen. But they were zorcamen, a regiment out from Huringa and not caring overmuch for the duty of bandit-chasing. They'd be back inside the city long before midnight.

  Unmok spoke to their Jiktar, graphically describing the bandits’ attack. The soldiers poked around among the remains. They took a few of the bodies with them, so as to look good on their report, I judged. I kept away from them. They were smart and could march with lances all aligned; but I didn't trust them.

  What had been going on in Hyrklana that bandits could exist, and with impunity so close to the capital city? Even in a dense and gloomy place like the Forest of the Departed?

  The ominous growls from the big cats and that whiffling, snorting, bubbly hullabaloo from the thomplods cut short my theories of political upheavals. Dripping hunks of meat were served out, and the growls changed to grunts and snarls and digesting noises of pleasure. Thomplods eat a good deal, naturally, giving their size. Luckily they eat almost anything and we shepherded them under suitable trees where they quickly ripped and stuffed, ripped and stuffed, until the tree was as bare of leaves as high as the muzzles could reach. Then on to the next tree. As for grass, that went down by the mawful.

  Unmok, like most folk standing in those parts of Kregen not so far converted, kept a slave or three. His camp chief, Nobi, was a little Och with a villainous face and no teeth. He kept a little mincer on a string around his neck. Now Nobi pushed and harassed the other two slaves into serving the evening meal. Fragrant scents wafted. The wine was poured. After a hard day we could relax.

  Then a dratted strigicaw broke free.

  Absolute bedlam. Pandemonium. We all ran this way and that, banging gongs and old brass trays, yelling and screeching, and scared right down to our toenails.

  One thing about hunting-big-cats in captivity is that being fed by chunks of meat flung at them, they are half tame and half wild, and will eat meat they haven't killed themselves. We found the strigicaw with his head buried in the intestines of one of the Rapa casualties of the bandits’ attack.

  His brown and red hide glimmered splendidly by the light of our campfires and the scattering light of She of the Veils, pink and golden among the trees. Striped in the foreparts and double-spotted in the rear, with six pumping legs shading to black at the clawed paws, the strigicaw is a powerful and fast-running carnivore. We lassoed him from a respectful distance, and hauled, pushed and prodded him back to his cage. He kept his talons fast sunk into the remains of the Rapa.

  “Still hungry,” commented Froshak the Shine. “Meat no good."

  “Then lucky we are it's all gone,” said Unmok. “Tomorrow we'll be asked to pay good money for supplies. And if I know that camp manager, he'll cheat us rigid."

  Froshak touched his knife. “Let me talk to him."

  Unmok laughed, and then winced, and cradled the stump of his left middle. “What, Froshak, you leem hunter! And have the queen's guards lock us all up on that pretext, and drive us out into the arena to be gobbled up by our own stock?"

  “She would too,” said Froshak. “She-leem."

  And he didn't even bother to cast a guilty glance over his shoulder.

  Next day a bur or so after the hour of mid we rolled up to the gates of the transit camp. A slope of a hill ahead cut off any view of Huringa. I should have expected this. But I had been firm in the belief that we'd just drive the stock up to the Jikhorkdun and be let in. Easy.

  The formalities were formidable. Paperwork threatened to bog us all down. Certificates had to be produced. The medical men checked the animals thoroughly. Some were put to one side as being second-class specimens, and these would find the
ir way to other Jikhorkduns. Only the best were good enough for Huringa.

  Perforce, I sweated it out as Unmok drove the hardest bargains he could. The managers and the inspectors insisted on everything being done correctly, which meant being done their way. An attempt at bribery was met with an impossible demand. There were other wild-beast purveyors to be thought about. There were a few of the inevitable fights. I stayed well and truly clear.

  But, slowly, we and our stock were processed.

  We received permission to take the thomplods in to Huringa. Enough nobles were interested. Money was paid over. Unmok was able to discharge the mercenaries, who would soon find fresh employment. Froshak was left in charge at the camp. Unmok looked me over.

  “Best foot forward, Jak the Shot. Best clothes. We have to create an impression."

  “My wardrobe consists of the tunic in which you found me, after I was washed overboard, as I told you. And a jerkin from a dead drikinger."

  Unmok guffawed. “We'll outfit you, Jak."

  “One thing puzzles me. What happens to the totrixes and the other juts when these thomplods enter the city?"

  He winked, in that foolish yet extraordinarily knowing way Ochs have. “The managers of the Jikhorkdun know all about thomplods, and all the other animals you care to name. They will give us a phial or two at the city gate."

  So, and with an excitement I did not bother to mask, I went with these meandering haystacks down toward Huringa, which is the capital city of Hyrklana, where they joy in the Jikhorkdun.

  * * *

  Chapter twelve

  Beasts for Huringa

  Huringa had grown another enceinte since I had last seen the place. The outer lines of walls were not, to my perhaps too-critical eye, quite tall enough. We thomplodded along the dusty road and left everything smothered in the white dust as we passed. The new walls stretched out of sight on either hand. Built of a gray-white stone, they looked impressive, curtains relieved by towers in a long sweeping curve to north and south out of sight. Beyond these walls rose the older walls. Beyond them the remains of the old walls were visible here and there. The city jumbled. Dominating it all, of course, the high fortress of Hakal.

  Rearing from the solid rock, tall, dominating, the high fortress of Hakal brought back a host, a flood, a tempest of memories. The lip of the Jikhorkdun was visible, and a hint of the many walls separating off the practice courts, the smaller arenas, the secluded gardens, the ball areas.

  During the day the gas jets along the four main boulevards would be extinguished. Vollers crisscrossed through the air above the rooftops. The sense of bustle and urgency, of people about their daily business, of life being lived, gave a zest to the scene—a spurious zest in my view.

  Slightly offset from the old Boloth Gate in the inner walls—what were now the inner walls—the gate giving ingress through the new walls lofted immensely. Massively serrated architecture allowed many arrow slits to frown down and murdering holes to dominate the gate's main tunnel. The thomplods passed through the opening with room for two more at each side and above and to spare.

  “The Gate of The Trompipluns,” said Unmok. He sniffed.

  I gathered that though he valued his thomplods, he would dearly love to have brought a dozen trompipluns into Huringa.

  Officials, backed by blank-faced guards, halted us. The arrangements were made and a boskskin bag containing golden deldys changed hands. The phials, buckets and water were brought.

  Then we emptied the phials into the water and sloshed the resulting mixture all over our perambulating haystacks.

  A few casual inquiries, a coarse joke or two, and the chingle of deldys brought me the information that the phials contained jutblood mixed with a variety of herbs. I let my memory jot down the names and descriptions. Unmok's tame slaves jabbered and scurried and the buckets were emptied. I could smell nothing fresh, but when we went on, a string of calsanys and a group of totrixes took no notice of us at all.

  Unmok had brought just one couple of werstings with him, two dogs he particularly favored, and they stalked along, black and white terrors from which people automatically shrank to allow their sharp white teeth plenty of passageway.

  The noble with an interest in the thomplods turned out to be Noran. A strom no longer because his father had died, he was now Vad Noran. He did not recognize me. Why should he? He had seen me for perhaps a couple of burs many seasons ago.

  Noran had lost that first bright flush of youth. Lines indented his forehead. He was thicker in the gut. But still he retained the awareness of his position as the leader of his particular set.

  “By Gaji's bowels! And these are the famous beasts I have waited to see! They are a mangy lot."

  The thomplods stood with drooping heads in the walled courtyard of Vad Noran's villa. Missal trees lent a merciful shade. The sanded area was neatly raked. Watchful guards, mostly blegs and Rhaclaws, stood at the gates. Noran was bright and contemptuous and he did not deceive Unmok.

  “The queen...” said Unmok, and paused, artfully.

  “Yes, yes, I shall buy them. But the price—"

  Casually, I eased away and walked a little space as though to examine the ornate well in one corner. A slave—she was a Fristle woman much bent over—hauled up the gleaming copper bucket and poured water into a copper bowl for me.

  I placed an ob on the stone coping. The small coin vanished into her ragged slave breechclout like a fly on a lizard's tongue.

  The haggling could be left to Unmok. That was his trade. As a beast purveyor he had no real need to wear one of the colors of arena allegiance. Just about everyone in Huringa wore a favor. A man sauntered across to me. He wore fancy clothes and his thraxter in an embroidered scabbard thumped his thigh. His face was over-red, filled out and petulant. But he was still Callimark. Again, I had absolutely no fears that he could possibly remember me, a man seen for a few burs one evening seasons ago.

  “You wear no favor, horter.” His own red cockade shone.

  “Lahal,” I addressed him, and by omitting the double L indicated his lack of politeness. His eyebrows drew down, but I went on smoothly, “I have had my red so long its stitching has quite worn through. It lies somewhere now, no doubt being trampled upon by a green, or a blue or—"

  “By Clem! That is not to be borne!"

  Instantly, by reason of this exchange, we were on friendly terms. He rummaged around in his scrip and produced a red favor, small, crumpled, but wearable.

  “You would do me the honor—” he began.

  I found that grizzly old smile and nodded, and took the red favor.

  “I am in your debt, Horter...?"

  “Callimark."

  “Jak."

  Unmok had completed the preliminaries, and Callimark, looking across, called out cheerily. Noran and Unmok joined us and there was mention of sazz or parclear, depending on one's preference for white or colored sherbet drinks, and palines, and perhaps banber sandwiches. Unmok winked at me. The atmosphere was genial, and that augured well for our partnership's financial well-being.

  Here in Hyrklana we were somewhat closer to the equator than we would be in Vallia, but because of the enormous spread of Kregen's temperate zone the temperature remained comfortable. Noran's villa proved to be the sumptuous palace one would expect. We sat in cane chairs in one of his refectories and drank our sazz and talked. The conversation quickly turned on the execution—in the arena, of course—of the criminal lunatics who had attempted to burn one of Noran's voller factories.

  I perked up.

  “By Gaji's slimy intestines!” exclaimed Noran, flushed, vindictive. “They may not like the queen, but that does not mean they have to destroy my livelihood!"

  “No, indeed, Noran,” said Callimark, sipping parclear.

  Now, seasons ago I had told these people I was Varko ti Hakkinostoling. The name was mouthful enough, the land far to the south had been ravaged; no one was going to bother overmuch about it. I had learned enough to pass muster, and
indeed, had told Unmok that I was from Hakkinostoling.

  So it was that I could venture an informed opinion.

  I said, “Surely they do this, vad, as much in resentment of Hamal as of the queen—"

  “Yes. You have it right, Horter Jak. But it is I who suffers!"

  “The vad is constrained to sell to Hamal,” put in Callimark, acting perfectly the part of the confidant to one in high position. “The Empress Thyllis is quite mad, of course, quite unlike our own dear queen. We must stay out of the insane war she wages."

  “Yes.” Noran exerted his own authority, overriding his friend. “We profit by her stupidities. But the thought of Hamalese skyships over Huringa—no. Better to sell to Hamal."

  Now a vad is a very high rank of nobility, and Noran was being very gracious and condescending in his manner. This, I judged, was to impress Unmok and to bring down the price. So I risked another shaft...

  “I agree with you absolutely, notor.” I spoke in a soft, almost philosophical voice and trusted he would take no offense. “This, I am told, is the queen's wish. The only trouble is that this makes Hamal stronger."

  Noran nodded. He didn't like it, but it was the truth.

  “If only—” he said, and stopped.

  I went on, “If we could sell to other countries we would benefit Hyrklana immensely."

  “I know that! By Flem! It is enough to make a man take up sword himself!"

  “Perhaps one day you will be afforded that opportunity."

  Both Noran and Callimark looked sharply at me. I saw their reactions, transparently reflected in their faces. The next moment might see a little hop, skip and jumping...

  Unmok was a mere beast purveyor, but he had standing.

  Slowly, Noran worked his way around to what he fancied might be an answer to my manner.

  “You speak as though—” he started, and then: “You do not talk like a beast handler, Horter Jak."

  “The queen—"