Manhounds of Antares

Chapter Eight

The stink of slaves lay in my nostrils with that thick choking odor so familiar to me. A voice said: “I can guide you out, Golan, by Hito the Hunter! But you must run-”

“I can run, Anko! And I will reward you, liberally, magnificently! I am a Pallan-”

“And me! And me!” other voices lifted, beseeching, begging, pleading to be led to freedom. I opened my eyes.

I had failed the Star Lords.

The brazen notes of a stentor’s horn filled the caves and passageways and like swirling weeds at the turn of the tide all the slaves raced madly off to the feeding hall. I stood up. By the Black Chunkrah! I’d go down to the feeding cave and take my food if I had to snatch it from all the Khamorros in Havilfar and all the guides in Faol!

So the Princess Lilah of Hyrklana with the golden hair and the beautiful form had not been the one I had been sent here to rescue.

There was but one thing I could do.

I must find the correct slave to be rescued and take him or her out to safety. Guide or no guide. Down in the feeding cave I saw a lithe and limber young man with dark hair, very alert in carriage now he was alone with only slaves about him, talking earnestly with a bulky man who had once been plump. His face, much sunken in, still contained traces of the habitual power of command he had once wielded. This was Golan, and he had been a Pallan, and had been betrayed, and so sold into slavery and found himself dispatched to Faol, where slaves brought a high price.

Golan?

I lifted my chunk of vosk — a Rapa who had thought to dispute with me its possession lay on the floor unconscious — and shook it at the rocky ceiling. “You stupid Star Lords!” I said, but I did not speak aloud, for I did not wish to attract unwelcome attention to myself, and although insanity was common enough among slaves, it was still regarded with a leery suspicion. “Idiot Everoinye! How am I supposed to know whom to rescue out of this mad crowd?”

I received no answer, and expected none, and so sank my teeth into the vosk and stared sullenly at my fellow slaves.

My beard had grown and my hair, too, making me look even more wild and uncouth and slavelike. All the same, Tulema recognized me instantly.

“Dray! I thought — how did you-? Have you crawled back through the caves?”

“No, Tulema. I didn’t go.” Then, to allay her suspicions, I said: “Here, finish this vosk for me. I am heartily sick of this place, for I thought I was safely away, and then I was not.”

Instead of saying, as one would, “Tell me about it,” she seized the remaining chunk of vosk with my teethmarks sharp upon it and wolfed it down. No one, it was clear, had been looking out for Tulema. Could my target be this girl, with her lithe body and dark hair, all matted with dirt, her savage ways, this girl who had been a dancer in a dopa den? I did not think so. It was, in truth and given the circumstances of my return, far more likely to be this Golan, who had been a Pallan. A Pallan, as you know, is a minister of state, a high official, and if he had been disgraced and sold as a slave, it might be my duty to return him and thus affect some great design in the political structure of Kregen. Lacking any other clues, I decided it must be Golan.

Of one thing I could be sure. If it was not Golan then I would be seized by the blue radiance and hurled back into the slave pens tunneled into the caves.

Then again — if it came to the worst, I might not be. I might be flung back to the Earth of my birth.

“Listen, Tulema. I mean to go again and this time I mean to break through to freedom. Will you come with me?”

“I dare not, Dray! You know why — the manhounds. .”

“They are most fearsome beasts — no — fearsome men. But I will look out for you.”

As you will instantly perceive, I was trying to copper-bottom my bet. If by chance Golan was not the target, and Tulema was, then I would be safe.

“You will, Dray! I think — I believe-”

Then this rough tough dancing girl from a dopa den turned away, and I saw her smooth shoulder with the dirt marks upon it quivering as she sobbed.

I felt pity for her — of course I did. But she was just one in exactly the same situation as all of us. I started to work at once. I took her shaking shoulder, and shook it, and her, so that she quivered, and I said: “This Golan, who was once a Pallan. Was he there when you and I first met?”

“Yes, he was.” She sniffed and sniveled, and I brushed the tears from her eyes.

“There is no need for tears, Tulema. We will go out together from here, you and I, in safety.”

She eyed me from under her long lashes where the teardrops trembled. “Lart the Khamorro. Did he?”

About to say, “He is dead,” I paused. I lied. I said: “I do not know, Tulema. I told you, I was thrown back unwanted.”

“Oh.”

That evening after the meal I fixed up with Anko the Guide that he would include me in his party. He looked at me with approval.

“You look as though you can run.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I can run.”

The tame slaves were let in and they swept out the refuse and muck. Most of them were sly, inventive, cunning creatures. The old Miglish woman whacked her broom about crossly, swearing at everyone in her vile way, threatening them with all manner of horrendous fates at the hands of Migshaanu the All-Glorious. Tulema squeaked and caught my arm and we moved into another cave. I kept my eyes open for any other Khamorros. They would be useful on the hunt if only they would learn to rein and bridle their arrogance and contempt for other people.

The following sequence of events was much the same as before. Nalgre came with his whip and his customers and guards, and the bunch of slaves who clustered most urgently against the lenken bars were chosen. Anko the Guide gathered his little group about him — fourteen of us — and the barred gates were open.

I looked about for Tulema.

She was not visible.

Golan was about to be herded through. I seized him by the arm intending to haul him back and go find Tulema, for I did not wish to split my options, but a hefty guard seized Golan by the other arm and pulled.

Golan yelled.

“Let me go! Let me go, you hairy yetch!”

The guard hit me and I put my hand up and another guard hit me, and Golan was gone and two guards lay on the floor, unconscious, and then I was bundled out with the rest. At once I shoved my way into the middle of the crowd of slaves blinking in the sunshine. Tulema would have to take her chances, now, and I must not miss Golan. She had evidently allowed her fears to overwhelm her at the end. Anko the Guide looked at me in some surprise as I shuffled along with the slaves.

Nalgre and his guards were dragging out the two unconscious guards in their leaf-green tunics — their helmets had rolled and were instantly snatched back into the crowd of slaves, as is the slave way with all unattached objects — and were yelling and banging their whips and looking for whoever had done this heinous crime.

“You are not a Khamorro,” said Anko the Guide.

“No. And look downcast, slave.”

He gulped. “Yes. Yes, that is right.”

We were taken to the slave barracks, where all went as before, except that there was no pathetic brave and foolish Lart the Khamorro to throw away his life so uselessly.

In the slave barracks this time there were two other parties of slaves ready for the great Jikai. We had some conversation, but I knew none of them, and now was more convinced than ever that Golan was my man.

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 whoops 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.