Fliers of Antares

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Although Esme appeared paralyzed and unable to cry out, lying there on her blood-spattered carpets with the collar and chains and manacles of nohnam upon her, the previous screaming must soon bring guards. They would not be big, bloated hunks of female-tamers like Bagor. And Bagor was an honorable name in most parts of Kregen.

I picked up the curved dagger he wore in a cheap brass scabbard and held it in my left hand. The thraxter in my right, my old shirt and ragged pair of trousers cut off at the knees, and I was as fully armed and accoutered as I could be, for Bagor carried no shield for this duty of chastising female slaves in chains and of cutting down slaves or guls if they displeased his mistress. What of the laws of Hamal here?

As I did this, Merle snatched up the thin tuffa rod and started hitting Esme. She swung wildly, her body heaving with each blow, her gasps sounding painfully loud. The black girl, Xasha, laughed. I took Merle’s arm.

“Do you wish to remain here, Merle?”

She looked at me with deep shock in her eyes, very pitiful to see. She drew in a deep breath and threw the switch away.

“I cannot remain here, Jikai, and live!”

“That is true,” said Xasha. “And if we do not leave at once the guards will take us all. Then, after the beatings it will be the Jikhorkdun for us all.”

I moved to the door. I heard a soft click from the direction of the couch, and turning to call the girls, I saw the Fristle, Floy, take a long thin dagger from the tray which had slid out from its concealment in the side of the sofa. She lifted the dagger high and the samphron-oil lamps gleamed off the blade and sparkled off the gems set in the hilt.

With a triumphant shriek the Fristle girl buried the dagger in Esme’s throat. Esme choked, coughed, vomited blood, kicked her legs, and then rolled slowly over onto her face. There was nothing anyone could do for her.

Floy, the Fristle girl, stood, her legs apart, her diaphanous scrap of silk quivering with her own excited body-movements. She whispered, to herself, really, unaware for the moment of any other person.

“Hai,” she whispered. “Hai, Jikai!”

Not unmoved, I turned away and with a harsh and intemperate gesture and a few uncouth words bade the girls follow me.

Xasha said, “We would do well to take what jewels and money we can carry, dom. Also, we will need clothes.”

I nodded. “Very well. I will stand by the door.”

Still panting, her bosom in tumult, Floy circled the contorted body of the Kovneva. She spat upon the corpse. She would have stuck the dagger again and again into that hated form; but I held the dagger and the blood dripped, drop by drop, upon the carpet.

We collected jewels, mostly from the dead person of the Kovneva, and the girls threw clothes about themselves, breechclouts of silk, mashcere blouses, and long cloaks of checkered green and crimson and blue. Out of a habit that I would not break if I could I seized up a scarlet length and wound it around my middle. Bagor’s belt held it up, and his scabbard of risslaca scale would be useful if there was climbing to be done.

“This way,” said Merle.

We went out past the sliding screen — which was of ivory not from Chem, but from the northern jungles of Havilfar, as one might notice from the whiter color and coarser texture — and down the passageways up which I had been brought, and down to the outer door. Here Merle paused, her finger to her lips in the dwindling light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles. Soon the Twins, the two second moons of Kregen eternally orbiting each other, would be up and throwing down enough light by which to see comfortably. Merle beckoned and we hurried from the door, which we closed, and down a shadowed arcaded way to the first garden of the pools.

“The stables are beyond the Pagoda of the Green Smile,” she whispered. “Can you ride a saddle-flyer?”

“Yes.”

“So can we all. It is something our mistress thought proper in her girl slaves, her Chail Sheom.” She spoke with a bitter savagery, a masochistic anger. The Chail Sheom is the name on Kregen given to these beautiful girl slaves who wear fine silks and pearls and who minister intimately to their mistresses.

“You shall be free, Merle,” I said. “You and Xasha and Floy.”

We crept toward the aerial stables. Before we crossed the second garden of the pools where the intricately pierced stonework of the Pagoda of the Green Smile stood against the rising of the Twins, we could hear the birds. They rustled and stirred and fluttered their wings. We approached cautiously. At the barred gate the guards, sleepy, not caring to catch this boring duty, talking desultorily between them, had no notion of our presence. They still could not have known what it was that sent Notor Zan’s cavernous paunch encircling them in darkness. I did not kill them. I stepped over their unconscious bodies and called the girls. They ran up, lissome forms in the moons-light.

“You have homes to go to? Places where you will be safe?”

They were surprised, and even though they were still in shock, they were dismayed that I meant what I did.

“You will not desert us now, Jikai?”

Shouts resounded and torches flared in the gardens, beyond the pools, toward the villa.

“If you fly now they will never find you. Go. I have tasks I must do here before I may leave.”

Floy in her drugged way said, “If you plan to kill the Kov I will stand with you. Give me back the dagger.”

“I do not wish to kill the Kov. He is an onker and a rast. But I have more important work to do.” I pushed the gate open and started to untether the nearest fluttrell. He banged his wings and pretended he was asleep; but I woke him up smartly enough and with a whimper he was dragged out.

“Chaadur,” said Merle, again. “Will you not fly with us?”

I brought out two more fluttrells before I answered.

“You must fly fast and far, Merle. If you are sure you know where you may go, I will trust in that. And you, Floy, for you are of Havilfar, also, I think.” I turned to the beautiful black girl. “But you, Xasha, are from Xuntal, I believe. Where will you fly?”

Her cool appraising eyes rested on me. She put out a finger and touched my upper arm. “I have friends beyond the Mountains of the West, where I lived as a small girl. I shall fly there.”

“And I to Hyrklana,” said Merle, “for I do not think I can live more in Hamal.”

The shouts and the torches passed away beyond the Pagoda of the Green Smile. In a few more murs the searchers would reach the aerial stables. “Floy?” I said.

The Fristle fifi smiled lazily. “Ifilion,” she said. “Which is yet a kingdom with its own soul.”

Where the River Os marking the southern boundary of Hamal proper bifurcates, so that one arm runs around toward the north and the other arm runs around toward the south, the land between the arms right up to the sea has over the centuries been extended outward in a smooth rounded promontory which faces northwestern Hyrklana. This is the land of Ifilion. Its kingdom has remained independent, and there are whispers that sorcery and magic account for this integrity in the face of Hamalian aggrandizement and empire-building.

“Ifilion is small,” I said. “You will do it much honor.”

The girls mounted up. They saw I meant what I said. I clapped the birds on their tails and stood back. As they rose into the night sky with that streaming pink moons-shine gleaming upon their pinions, I thought I heard three separate words ghost down from the wind-rush. “Remberee,” and, “Remberee,”

and, yet again for the last time, “Remberee.”

“Remberee,” I said, but I spoke to myself.

Already I crouched and ran into the shadows beyond the aerial stable wall. Guards were running and torches flared and the shouts were strong and confident now.

“The stables! The cramphs make for the stables!”

The wing-beats of the three fluttrells dwindled and died. The guards burst out past the Pagoda of the Green Smile.

“They fly! See — they fly!”

A Hikdar ran up, waving his thraxter, untidy in shadowed pink light.

“After them, you onkers! Mount up and fly!”

In the shadows I gripped the hilt of Bagor’s thraxter and I cursed. Women! Forever talking! And now they had talked so long and so late they had allowed the guards to see them winging away.

Silly girls! Stupid onkerish women!

I had a task to do here for Vallia and for Valka. No longer, if I was successful, would our Air Service have to make do with fractious fliers that broke down at the most inconvenient moments. No longer would I tremble every time Delia or the twins took to the air in a voller. No, by Vox! My job was here, to break into the fitting shed, to find out everything hidden there, everything there was to know about how to build fliers.

And then I must hurry back to the Shrouded Sea and meet the airboat with my friends and clasp Delia in my arms again. That was my duty. But I am grown soft and a weakling, even on Kregen, which is death to weaklings.

Holding the thraxter easily I stepped out into the moons-light and I shouted, high and hard, at the running guards.

“Hold! The first man to try to enter the stables is a dead man! This I promise you, by Havil the Green, whose name be eternally damned!”

Well, it created a stir. I’ll say that.

At the time I did not like the Hamalese, as you know. I had not forgotten the way, through their laws, they had tortured young Doyden, and then hanged him, or their underhanded tricks, their dishonest dealings in fliers. They had tried to kill me many times, and failed, and I wanted to be gone from here.[6]

They had not been kind to me in the Heavenly Mines, either.

The guards took little stock of a lone man, armed with a thraxter, without a shield. They charged, a bunch of them, hotly, furiously, instantly. Their very reaction betrayed them. As they converged on me over the trimmed grass of the garden of the pools outside the aerial stables I slipped into a fighting crouch. That crouch was a little exaggerated, for I wished to fool them. The first, the fleetest, simply held his shield before him and thrust with his thraxter. I slid the blow, pulled the shield down, and stabbed him in the throat over the top band of his lorica. He fell away, choking, splattering gouts of blood, dark in the moons-light.

The next two came in together and I ran at them, leaped between them and chopped the right one’s face off, landed, sprang back, and without compunction sliced the other’s neck beneath the back helmet rim. A stux flew past. I deflected a second stux with the thraxter. I dodged about. If I was badly wounded now I’d be done for, for they’d swamp me with numbers.

The stars twinkled above, and the twin moons shone down, in their three-quarter phase so that they shed light enough. I ducked and weaved and shifted, to seize a stux with my left hand as it whistled past and so return it. The Hikdar bellowed. I had not thrown wildly.

“By Krun!” yelled a soldier. “The cramph is a devil!”

“Stand back and shoot him down, comrades!” advised another. This being sound advice the soldiers moved back and I saw men trotting up with crossbows. Time had passed, enough time, I hoped, to give the three girls the opportunity to lose their pursuers in the wide wastes of the night sky of Kregen. The shadows on the far side of the stables looked inviting. I did not wait but ran instantly for them. As I vanished into the shadows of the trees so the first bolts whickered about my heels. Running away might become addictive. But I had work to do. .

If any of those thickheaded guards wondered why I had not myself taken to the air they perhaps believed I did not have the skill or knack of riding a saddle-flyer. Most Havilfarese peoples can fly a bird or a flying animal. But they also employ guards and buy slaves from countries where flying on the back of a monstrous bird smacks of the devil himself.

I ran. They might think of a number of places where I might go. I did not think they would guess I would make for the fitting shed. Whatever story they had pieced together, they would know from Hikdar Covell that it was the gul Chaadur who had caused this trouble, slain the Kovneva, and was now on the run from justice and the laws of Hamal.

The parking areas for fliers which regularly brought in supplies and stores had to be given a wide berth. Most of our food and timber came by quoffa cart, but the fliers which brought in specialized equipment for the yards lay neatly parked and it would be childish to suppose they would not be regarded as my target. So I avoided their dark bulks as they lay, neatly aligned, in their parks. Guards paced before them, weapons glinting.

Then I heard the first fierce howls.

I knew.

Werstings!

They would pick up my scent at the stables. That was certain sure. The black-and-white-striped devilish forms would come bounding through the pink moons-light, tongues lolling, eyes bright, panting in their eagerness to sink their fangs into me. They were friendly enough to a friend; to the quarry they were death.

Well, I had escaped from the Manhounds of Faol. They were a scary enough bunch, Zair knows. So I ran on swiftly through the shadows and skirted the parked fliers and the cargo carts. Slaves did all this manual labor of unloading and loading and carting. I knew little of it, here in Sumbakir. The fitting shed lifted against the star glitter.

Already the ridge showed a pink icing as the Twins rose higher in the sky. Soon their light would flood down and the shadows would lessen. And shadows were my best friends this night. The guard had been alerted. The Hamalese with their laws are assured that their lower officers obey their orders and post their sentries, and I have noticed that guards are a mark of a lawful country as well as a lawless; whether one influences the other is hard to say. He peered about, and I caught the gleam of his eyes beneath the rim of his helmet. His thraxter lay in its scabbard. His shield hung over his left shoulder and he grasped his stux as though ready to slay the ghastly minions of Hanitcha the Harrower in the next moment.

Well, he did not have phantom devils of the imagination to face. He faced me, although he did not realize it, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy.

I treated him gently. A distracting noise, a quiet leap, and he fell unconscious at my feet. I dragged him in through the double-doors and shut them as quietly as I could. High grilled and fretted skylights in the roof admitted a faint pink glow, enough to make my way between the dark bulks of the waiting fliers. I felt the ghostly atmosphere of this place. Soon with the morning suns the workers would open the doors and begin their daily labors; for the moment the whole space lay silent and deserted and strange. In the black-walled room I found benches strewn with soldering apparatus, with the fires banked and aglow, piles of empty tins with their lids, and piles of dirt — sand, gravel, grit. I sifted it in my fingers. This was packed tightly into the tins and the lids were fastened. Where from this common dirt could come the magical lifting power of the voller?

I suppose, in all honesty, you who listen to these tapes spinning through the heads must have already guessed. And I too, I confess, shared a premonitory breeze of understanding, and with understanding -

rejection.

For — how could it be?

Fliers of the deep-hold, square build called binhoys in Hamal arrived here regularly. The bottom doors were opened and the dirt poured out to form the jealously guarded piles. I had seen binhoys like these flying from the Heavenly Mines. They had been loaded with the broken, crushed, and refined rock the poor devils of slaves had dug from the mountain quarries. As I sifted the dirt in my fingers I think I understood that this dirt had been mixed with the refined rock from the Heavenly Mines; I understood but I did not believe.

Just to make sure I slid the chisel down from my sleeve and forced open the lid of a freshly soldered tin. It was as I expected filled with the dirt from the piles about me; but, also, there glittered among the grit and sand and dirt the tiny chips of rock that, I was sure, had come from the Heavenly Mines. The shadows seemed to move as I padded out of the black-walled room and crossed the fitting shed and entered the red-walled room. Here, except for the absence of the piles of dirt, the scene was the same as the one I had left. This time when I opened a box it was empty. Delia’s father knew this. He had not lied. I opened another and then another. All were empty. A small door opened off the red-walled room and I pushed it open and went into the storeroom beyond. The entire space was filled with pottery amphorae, large jars with their pointed ends sunk into the earth. They were stoppered and waxed and sealed and secured with wires.

I smashed the thraxter against one rotund jar and the amphora collapsed and fell in shards. It was empty. But — it couldn’t be empty! No one was going to go to all the trouble of so securely sealing and wiring the stoppers on empty jars!

A faint sickly sweet odor tasted foul on my tongue, as though some careless onker had left a slice of malsidge to go rotten in the room. I looked about, and there was nothing more I could do. Silver boxes of dirt and silver boxes of air!

Dirt and air!

About to curse a foul Makki-Grodno oath I halted, my hand reaching for my thraxter hilt. A sound, a slithery, scratchy, furtive sound from the closed double-doors brought me out into the shadows of the shed between the benches. At first I thought the sentry was recovering his senses, although I had thought he would remain unconscious longer than this, for I know to a nicety the value of my blows. Again that scratching and then the left-hand leaf of the doors groaned against its hinges — and I knew.

They can make the most devilish row when they are hunting, the werstings, ululating and shrieking and pounding down the trail after their prey. They can also move silently and swiftly and seize their quarry without warning. The nurdling cramphs almost had me.

The door eased back and the low lean shape of a wersting padded in. His head was down, his ears erect, his tail a bar like a sword. He saw me, standing there in the light from the moons, and he halted, and his companion of the pair sidled in through the half-open door.

Even then, in that moment, I noticed how two instinctive reactions battled to find first expression. Both werstings had found their quarry and now they wished to fling back their heads and howl their success to the night air, and so summon their hunting companions and their masters the Deldars of the Wersting Pack. The other instinct, the one that overcame them, was to put their heads down even lower, bare their fangs, and let their hackles bristle. Yellowy-white those fangs, cruel and sharp. Red the mouth and purplish-red the tongue. Greenish-yellow the eyes, with black pupils rounded and concentrated into complete attention upon me.

Perhaps those two werstings recognized more in me than a soldier of Hamal ever could. I gave them no chance. Vicious, deadly, cunning, feral, are werstings. A man does ill to run from them. Without a sound I leaped full at them with the brand in my fist upraised. They reacted with breathy snarls, lifting so as to slash me with their claws as well as attempt to hamstring me and then seize me by the throat. The thraxter slashed into the neck of the right-hand one, a controlled stroke. I followed on without a pause, ducking and avoiding the second’s lunge. Now he was howling, shrill ululations that would bring the guards running. I flicked the thraxter at him and he avoided it and sprang. I barely managed to dive flat and roll over and kick him mercilessly in the belly as he flew past. We both sprang up to renew the attack, but I was that fraction faster, and I buried the thraxter in his muscular chest as he scrabbled for me. I had to thrust with massive force to penetrate the plate of gristle beneath the skin; but, shrieking and foaming and attempting to claw at the blade, he died. I dragged the thraxter free, one foot on the black-and-white-striped corpse. I ran for the double-doors, closed them with a thump, and slotted the thick lenken beam into place in its iron staples. Now let a wersting try to sneak in!

Fresh yells broke from outside. They quieted and I heard a voice, a harsh, intemperate, hectoring voice, the foul-mouthed bellowing voice of Ornol ham Feoste, Kov of Apulad.

“You, Chaadur! We know you are in there! Come out quietly, you kleesh, and obey the law! Or, by Hanitcha the Harrower, we’ll break in and tear the beating heart out of you and feed it to the werstings!”