Manhounds of Antares

Chapter Seven

In a babblement and confusion the slaves ran about looking for Nath the Guide. They shouted along the stream and broke through thickets, and looked behind clumps of rocks. I studied where the guide had slept. His gear still lay where he had left it — blanket, shoes, knife, a leaf with a few palines — and as he had slept a little apart from us, whatever had taken him in the night had rested content with the one meal. Lilah shivered. “Poor Nath!”

“Leem, by Hanitcha the Harrower!” Naghan said fiercely.

“We are on our own now.” The squat-bodied Brokelsh rubbed his black body hairs as he spoke. “We had best move now!”

“We will eat first,” I said. “And then we will march.”

I did not anticipate an argument, and broke bread and gave some to Sosie and Lilah. We shared out what we had. In truth, it was little enough, and I fancied I must hunt our meat before the suns sank beyond the western horizon. “Also,” I said, “we will set watches through the night.”

I took up the knife left by Nath. It was of the same cheap manufacture as our own, but it was steel, for which I was thankful. His shoes, too, would be useful. Like ours they were cheap, crudely made from a single piece of cattle hide, pierced for thongs all around and then drawn up on a slip-string, like moccasins. There hung about them an odd little odor, as though they had not been perfectly cured. We set off, striking due east by the suns, walking smartly.

After a time, thinking to put a little heart into the slaves, for they were mightily downcast by the savage and inexplicable disappearance of Nath the Guide, I struck up a song. I took the first one that jumped into my head. It was Morgash and Sinkle, all about a man and a maid and the laughable plight of their marriage, and was known all over Kregen. These Havilfarese knew the song, and some of them joined in with me, and so, singing, we marched on across the undulating ground. I kept that old warrior’s eye of mine well open.

This night, I vowed, we would not sprawl out and sleep like a bunch of schoolchildren on an outing; we would march on by stages under the light of Kregen’s moons. She of the Veils and the Twins would be up early, and the maiden with the many Smiles would follow later, to make the land almost as bright as an Earth day.

Despite the horror I knew slavered at our heels, the march would have been pleasant had I been in certain company. Had Seg Segutorio been with me, or Inch of Ng’groga, or Gloag, Hap Loder, Varden, or Vomanus. Delia — well, I was not foolish enough to wish my Delia here in this situation. But she would have responded with her marvelous spirit and enjoyment of life, her brave smile and her untiring love. This Princess Lilah was a fine girl, but I could understand the air of strain, her distrait appearance of barely suppressed terror. I wondered how that other Lilah, that Queen Lilah of Hiclantung, the notorious Queen of Pain, was faring now.

And so, marching across that gardenlike plain, I fell to maundering in my thoughts about Nath and Zolta

— and Zorg, my oar comrade, who was now dead. I missed my two rascals, Nath and Zolta. I remembered many a fine carouse and singing session we had indulged ourselves in, back in Sanurkazz. There was Pur Zenkiren, too, Grand Archbold elect of the Krozairs of Zy. One day the great summons would come and I must return to the Eye of the World so that all the forces of the Zairians of the southern shore might go up against the Grodnim of the hostile northern shore of the inner sea. That day would come.

If Nath and Zolta were with me now — there’d be some wild goings-on, by Zim-Zair!

Twice during that long march we saw fliers crisscrossing above. We hid. I felt an invisible net was closing about us.

Some of the shoes we wore were thinner in the sole than others, and a Relt, one of those more gentle cousins of the ferocious Rapas, soon complained that his bare foot was hurting. We inspected the hole, and pursed our lips, and I gave him one of Nath the Guide’s shoes. The other shoe went in similar fashion to Sosie. We slogged on. In my usual fashion — a cross laid on me I do not seem able to be free of — I had taken charge of this little fugitive band in the absence of the guide. They looked to me — Zair knows why people always look to me in moments of crisis — and so I had to respond with due propriety. I told them when to rest, and I caught one of the little six-legged rabbitlike animals of the plains called xikks and we cooked and ate the poor creature. Presently I roused them and we set off again, and now, ahead of us and spreading to encompass both north and south, a massive and darkly brooding forest spread its waiting wings.

Everyone looked ahead, pointing and chattering.

A harsh and demoniac croaking blattered down from above.

I looked up.

Up there, circling in wide planing hunting circles, rising and falling on the air, flew a giant scarlet and golden-feathered hunting bird. A magnificent raptor, the Gdoinye, the messenger and spy of the Star Lords, who had snatched me from Vallia and dumped me down in a stinking slave pen. I shook my fist.

The raptor circled, its head cocked and no doubt one beady eye regarding us and relaying what it saw back to its masters, the Everoinye. I wondered, for a moment, if the blue radiance would engulf me -

but the raptor emitted another raucous squawk and flew off. I did not see the white dove of the Savanti.

“What in the name of the Twins was that?” said Lilah.

“A bird,” I said. “Had I a bow-”

“You would not shoot so wonderful a creature, surely?” said Sosie, shocked. I knew what I knew, and so I did not reply.

I looked back.

Dark against the ground the dreadful shapes of jiklos pressed hard on our trail. At once all was confusion and the slaves began a mad run for the forest. I kept close to Lilah. One of my shoes loosened, the slipstring slipping, and I kicked the thing off. I could run more fleetly in my bare feet than clogged down with these clumsy shoes, and so I loosened the other and kicked that off, too. We all ran.

We neared the trees, and I could see rocks and gullies in which the trees grew at crazy angles. Lilah was panting and gasping, her golden hair blowing.

I picked her up and ran.

Naghan had picked up Sosie, too, as the Fristle man had picked up the Fristle woman. We were all hunted slaves, no longer simply men or halflings.

I flung a glance back.

The manhounds were terribly close. Beyond them rode zorca-mounted hunters, yelling, waving their weapons, having a fine old time. I ran.

We plunged into the first outlying trees and I picked a gully and ran up it, dodging tree branches, hurdling fallen trunks. Naghan, carrying Sosie, ran with me. We plunged on into the thicker trees, clambering over rocky patches, diving into underbrush, scratched and torn, plunging on and on. Of course, my every instinct impelled me to dump Lilah down and, knives in fists, turn and battle these filthy manhounds, these high and mighty hunters. But I quelled that primeval instinct. My mission was to rescue Lilah, not to get myself killed in however enjoyable a way slaying manhounds and devilish hunters astride their zorcas.

Now we could hear the high excited keening of the jiklos. They were men! Men! Yet they were more fiercely predatory hunters than any bloodhound, any wersting, and to fall into their clutches would mean a hideous death.

We struggled and scrambled on, and came to a wall of rock.

“Put me down, Dray. We must climb.”

“Get started, Lilah. When you are at the top, I will follow.”

Sosie was already climbing, and Naghan following. Of the others I could see or hear nothing. Lilah sprang at the rocks, began to haul herself up by ridge and crevice, her long golden hair very bright in the waning light of the twin suns.

I waited.

After what seemed a very long time I heard Lilah call, and about to wheel about and follow her, I caught the feral movement in the greenery opposite, the dagger-bright flash of jagged teeth. A manhound sprang out from the trees, hurtled straight toward me.

And then — something for which I had not been prepared, the jiklo shouted to me, shouted words of a thick local language that, through the gene-manipulative pill of Maspero’s in far Aphrasoe, I was able to understand.

The manhound spoke in a thick rasping whine, a hoarse and bloodthirsty howl.

“You are done for, you two-legged yetch!”

He bounded straight for me. The long mane streamed back from the central crest. His nails glittered. His eyes were bloodshot. And his teeth — could they ever have been the teeth of normal man? Sharp and jagged, serrated, as he opened his mouth to snarl at me those teeth looked like the teeth of risslaca honed to rip hot flesh and blood!

I poised, let fly one of my knives.

He tried to duck, but he was not quick enough.

The knife buried itself in one eye.

The jiklo let out an insane scream.

He was bounding into the air, rearing, his face a demoniac mask of hate and blood-lust. He pawed up at the knife hilt.

He twisted, he toppled, he fell.

There was no time to recover the knife.

Up those rocks I went like a grundal.

From the open space the fresh sounds of a second jiklo struck over the slobbering shrieking of the first. Lilah screamed something incoherent. If that had been my Delia up there she wouldn’t have been screaming, telling me something I already knew; my Delia would have been hurling rocks down to protect the back of her man.

Without looking back I lashed out with my foot and felt my heel jar into something hairy and hard, and the howling changed key into a yowling. I scrambled up the last few yards of the rock face and swung about at the top, on all fours like a damned jiklo myself, and so peered over the lip. The bounding demoniac shapes of more manhounds ferreted through the trees and sprang into the space before the rocks.

“Sink me!” I said. I stood up and grabbed Lilah’s wrist. “The rock won’t stop them. By the Black Chunkrah, woman, stop that blabbering and run!”

Oh, yes, I, Dray Prescot, ran.

We fled through the rock gullies with the overhanging trees making the way alternately dark and light, shot through with the last rays of the sinking suns, so that all the world turned an angry viridian blood color, most unsettling.

Farther on I caught up with Naghan and Sosie, who ran, gasping and panting, in a way distressing to me. We paused for a quick breather and in that space of hard-drawn breaths we heard the click and patter of jiklo claws following us. Sosie screamed again, and Naghan clapped a hand across her face — but gently.

“If we split up we will stand a better chance,” said Naghan, the young man who claimed with so much pride to come from Hamal.

“Agreed,” I said. Then: “I wish you well, Naghan, and you, Sosie. May Zair go with you.”

Of course they had no idea what or who Zair was, that was quite clear, but they understood, and commended me to the care of Opaz.

“Remberee!” we shouted, and then ran as fast as we might over the rocks and splinters up separate gullies.

After only a short time I hoisted Lilah to my shoulder and was able to progress at a faster rate. Only a short time after that we heard the most horrendous screams and shrieks, the snuffling howling of jiklos, the blood-crazed shrieking, and we knew that Naghan and Sosie would never return home to Hamal. There was nothing I could do about that, and I thrust all thoughts of the despicable way I had been acting lately out of my mind. I had to free this Princess Lilah, otherwise the Star Lords would hurl me back to Earth.

This I knew.

She of the Veils rose into the sky and very quickly the Twins added their combined pink light so that we could press on without fear of falling into a crevasse or pitching over the precipice of a river bank. The trees thinned away and we had to decelerate our rapid onward march as the land trended downward. We skidded and rolled in a great sliding whoosh down a sheer scree-clad slope — highly dangerous, is scree, to one without experience — and at the bottom we found rocky inclines which led us out onto the hard banks of a river. Perforce, we had to turn south and follow the river, seeing its waters slide and gleam below us in the encompassing pink light. Occasional rocks and falls interrupted the river’s flow, but I made Lilah walk on all night, with stops to rest now and then, and in the end carried her, fast asleep on my shoulder.

There was no question of my being tired.

By morning the river banks had sunk to a nice level meadow-like embankment. Through the early morning mists I could see the supple sheen and glide of the river, smooth and unmarred, and presently, after a little rise and a few gorse-like bushes, we came to the sea. The sea.

Well, I wondered if that harsh interdiction of the Star Lords against my venturing out onto the sea still prevented me from doing what I had for so long missed.

As to that, ever since my cruel transition here to the manhounds’ island of Faol I had not been acting as Dray Prescot would ordinarily act, and I had rationalized that out. I was most dissatisfied. Lilah let out a cry of joy.

“Look, Dray! Across the strait! The White Rock of Gilmoy!”

I looked across the sea. Over there the dark bar of land penned in a strait which was, so I judged, in flood. Standing proudly forth, like a sentinel finger, was a tremendous pillar of rock on that opposite shore, white and blinding on its eastern edge where the light struck it, shadowed on the west.

“You know where we are, Lilah?”

“Yes! That white rock is famed throughout Havilfar. It stands on the northern shore of Gilmoy and I have flown over it many times. I had no idea Faol was close.” She shivered at this.

“Then we must find a boat.”

The notion struck my fancy. The Star Lords had forbidden me to journey by sea; they had also bidden me rescue Princess Lilah, and to do that I must take to a boat. Now let the Star Lords unravel that knot

— I cared not a fig for them. We walked along the beach. I could see no boats at once, and in that I felt disappointment.

A house, set back against the line of gorse-covered hills backing the beach, showed a thread of smoke from its chimney. In a pen at the side two dozen or so flying beasts flapped their wings and shrilled. They were sitting on lenken bars into which their claws sank, and they were chained by iron. They looked to be not as large as the impiters, those coal-black flying animals of The Stratemsk, but larger than the corths. Their coloring varied, tending generally to a beige-white and a velvet-green, and their heads were marked by large vanes after the fashion of pteranodons. They looked to be nasty brutes, well enough. Lilah took an eager step forward.

“Fluttrells!” she exclaimed. “We are in luck, Dray. The wind-eaters will carry us swiftly over the strait to Gilmoy, and from thence home to Hyrklana!”

Before I could answer the door of the house burst open and a ragged mob of men wielding weapons sprang out. They did not stop or pause in their rush but came on with an intent I have fronted many times. The pen was to hand. There was only one thing I could do. I grabbed Lilah and fairly ran her across to the sturm-wood bars of the pen. I selected the nearest fluttrell, and gave it a great thumping flat-handed smack around its snouted face to tell it who was master — I had no shame in this brutalization, for death ran very close to our heels — and hoisted Lilah onto the bird’s back.

“Can you fly one without stirrup, clerketer, rein?”

“I am perfectly at home in or on anything that flies in the air.”

The feel of the flying beast between her legs had changed Lilah — either that, or she was scenting her homeland. She looked at me with a triumphant expression.

“Mount up, Dray! Let us be off!”

“Not so, Princess.” Swiftly I released the locks of the chains holding the fluttrell. “You must fly for your home. If I take off with you these men will follow and we will surely be caught. You must go — I will hold them off until you are well clear.”

“But, Dray! They will slay you!”

“I do not think so, Lilah.”

I gave the fluttrell an almighty thwack and with a bad-tempered squawk it fluttered its wings and rose into the air. Lilah had to cling to its neck, ducking her head beneath the great balancing vane. She looked down on me. I snatched up a length of timber from the pen and with this cocked in my fists — and my fists spread in the old Krozair longsword way as I had done aboard Viridia the Render’s flagship when I fought her Womoxes — I awaited the onslaught of the men from the house.

“You will be slain, Dray Prescot!” she called down.

“You are safe, Lilah! Now go!”

She kicked the sides of the magnificent flying animal. “I shall not forget you, Dray Prescot!” And then, faintly as she rose into the limpid morning sky: “Remberee, Dray Prescot!”

I admit it now — I can look back and see and understand my feelings then — I welcomed the coming fight. I had run and crawled and pulled my forelock long enough. These men might be justified in their instant attack upon us — although I doubted that — but they would rue the day they tangled with me. No doubt the Star Lords thought that a good joke, too.

As I held that length of lumber prepared to show these yokels a little sword-practice, I felt, suddenly, treacherously, the shifting sensations and the blue radiance close about me, and I could no longer feel the wooden longsword — and I was slipping and sliding into the radiant blue void.