Avenger of Antares (20 page)

Melow the Supple said, “I cannot stay here now. There are certain signs by which it is known that a jiklo has killed.”

“I see.”

“We can’t take this beast with us!” said Bartak. He licked his lips and gripped his spear.

“This is Melow the Supple,” I said. And then I astonished myself. “And she is no beast. Rather, a beast has treated her as a beast. Very well. We will take you away from here, and then you may depart safely wherever you wish to go.”

Melow the Supple said nothing to that. Had she not previously thanked me I would have supposed manhounds incapable of gratitude.

How wrong I was, you shall hear . . .

The weather aloft was bright and hot, but I tossed back one of Nalgre’s flying furs; for such had been the vehemence of our escape none of us had stopped to snatch up clothes. The furs were superb, glossy and black, having at least twenty-four skins to each flying fur. The skins were from foburfs, the small four-legged mammals living in the taiga, those vast coniferous forests of South Havilfar. The skins were matched superbly, and sewn by mistresses of the needle. The pity of it is, of course, that twenty-four little foburfs apiece no longer lived in their sprawling coniferous domain.

We took off with a savage upward acceleration and an equally violent downward swoop beyond the palisade. I guided the flier low above the treetops. As was becoming a habit — and a bad one — with me, I hammered the speed lever over to full. This voller was of the kind which do not move independently of the air currents, and so the slipstream battered back above the tiny forward screen. Bartak looked back and I looked back with him, amused by his studious avoidance of the female jiklo. We could see no sign of pursuit, although I fancied I detected little dots of flyers heading due south away from us.

Incidentally, a female jiklo should in all accuracy be called a jikla. I found the word odd on the tongue, and Melow, herself, often referred to herself as a female jiklo. They were not called, for whatever liberated reasoning I do not know, womanhounds. There were other creatures on Kregen I was yet to meet who merited that title of horror.

With the gorgeous black furs wrapped about us we were most comfortable. In truth, the weather system of Kregen differs much from this Earth’s. Here in the north of Havilfar the rising warm air of the equator takes up with it moisture from the oceans. When the air cools and sinks in the long meteorological rhythm it is not dry, like the air that scorches the Sahara on our Earth. Great Sahara-like deserts are found in Loh. Havilfar has wastelands, badlands, to the south of where we were but they are not true, ever-shifting, sand deserts.

The flier screamed through the air and I turned to look forward to keep a lookout for the first glimpse of the promised fortress-city of Smerdislad.

It is possible by fast flier to travel from the southern point of Faol to the northern in under three burs. This voller of Nalgre’s was nowise as fine or fast as Rees’s, as was natural, but we made good time. I kept a close lookout for flutsmen. If any of the reiving yetches crossed my path again I’d shoot first and ask questions later — or, rather, hurl a stux or three and yell derision after. As it turned out the flutsmen did not run across us. It was only too clear they were out chasing runaway slaves. I heartily wished the flutsmen bad luck, with a curse.

Bartak the Hyrshiv, a man who spoke when he felt words were necessary, said, “This Numim maid, Dray Prescot, is she of great value?”

“She is.” I felt it expedient to add: “But that is not why I seek her.”

That, evidently, did not call for a reply in Bartak’s view. He went back to contemplating the sky, his black foburf fur no blacker than his own bristles.

Over the bluster of the slipstream, Melow the Supple shouted, her hoarse voice harsh and muffled.

“I have been to Smerdislad, Dray Prescot. They will not treat you kindly there if you arrive naked in a voller.”

“My thanks, Melow the Supple.” I pointed down. “There are our clothes and our credentials.”

With that I slammed the levers over and sent the voller hurtling down toward the startled party of zorcamen riding out into the clearing below.

Melow the Supple

What followed, although it worked exactly as I had planned it to work, happened in what was to me such an extraordinary atmosphere of elation and inflated good humor I have ever after pondered the possibility that some subtle drug wafted from that Faolese jungle and addled our senses.

The party of zorcamen must have flinched back at their very first sight of us. And, indeed, we must have made an alarming spectacle.

From a voller that swooped from the sky like a pouncing volleem sprang three black-furred creatures who suddenly threw off their glistening black furs and charged, naked and brandishing weapons. One of these apparitions was a Brokelsh with a singularly pugnacious way with him. The second was an uncouth, ugly-faced desperado of a fellow, the very sort to steer well clear of down a dark alleyway at night. And the third was a vicious manhound, her red lolling tongue and sharp jagged teeth calculated to strike terror into the hearts of these fine, fancy courtiers.

Incontinently they put spurs to their zorcas and tried to flee and as impetuously we were upon them and had thrown them to the ground. There were seven of them. While Bartak the Hyrshiv stood over two, describing in the most pungent tones what he intended to do to them if they so much as blinked, and while I glared at my two and let them listen, Melow merely walked around and around her three. The three wights huddled together, clinging to one another, their eyes huge and rolling as they watched the horrific form of the jikla as she paced around and around them, her claws glistening in the light of the suns.

Round about then, I think, I saw the funny side of all this. I started to laugh. Bartak cast a single frozen look at me, turned to glare at Melow, and then he too started to rumble like an earthquake in the Shrouded Sea.

Melow said in her raspy voice, “Why do you not slay them all?”

But I would have none of that. Dead men tell no tales, that is true, but I wanted them to tell
me
tales.

Yes, Notor, they babbled, we will tell you all you wish to know. The Numim girl is why we are here and why all the other great crippled ones are gathered. We are Vad Quarnach’s men. Yes, Notor, he is Quarnach Algarond, the Vad of the Dudinter District of the great city of Ba-Marish. He is a most wealthy man and will pay much if you spare our miserable lives. Yes, Notor, his marvelous airboat is parked beside the stream. We will gladly tell you how many men he has and maidens also.

I swear I saw the glimmer of a smile rick up the thin lips of the manhound.

The whole episode passed off rather like a fever-dream.

We took their clothes. Fancy clothing, these young popinjays wore, parti-colored, so that I found myself wearing half orange and half yellow, and Bartak wore half blue and half silver. I had to slit the tunic up the back to get it over my shoulders, but I slung a jacket with the coloring reversed over my left shoulder and drew it up with dudinter cords.
[6]
Their weapons were those of the mighty hunters who go upon the Great Jikai with the Manhounds of Faol, hunting human beings.

As I say, everything proceeded as in a dream. We found the airboat and a marvel she was, too: massively decorated, lavish as to cabins and awnings and promenades, and yet with a fair arsenal of varters disposed advantageously. I think we laughed every time we tripped up a wight, or gently bashed a skull. We laid them out alongside each other, bound and gagged in their own clothing. The maidens took one look at Melow and, clanking their dudinter chains, collapsed in faints that were the genuine ground-thunking article. We laid out these poor Chail Sheom, too, but I did spare a fraction of a mur to strike off their pretty and vile chains.

I had the feeling these folk from Ba-Marish were not so much decadent as merely self-indulgent. Loving pretty things, scented and powdered, wearing fine silks and linens, overeating the finest foods and guzzling the best vintages of Havilfar, they clearly set the highest store by the good things of life — the good things in their view — and were determined to live and die hedonists.

“Ba-Marish, Bartak,” I said. We stood by the airboat looking at the last fellow who slumbered with a bruise on his skull, wrapped in brilliant blue silks. “I know of the city, of course, about a hundred and fifty dwaburs south of Ba-Fela, on the west coast, opposite Ng’groga. But I have not visited the place. Can you tell me of it?”

Bartak grunted and bit into a juicy chunk of beef so that the juices dribbled. He chewed mightily for a space. Then he said, “All those free port-cities consider themselves the saviors of Havilfar. From the old days. When they fought and resisted the Lohvians and their Bridzilkelsh-forsaken invasions.”

“They appear sadly fallen away from their old ways, then.”

“They live in the past. Their pastimes are gorging, drinking, and wenching — and making money.”

“Reasonable objectives in life, I’d say — if there were not others.”

Melow padded across. I had told her to take what clothing pleased her, and added that she need never wear the gray slave breechclout again, as far as I was concerned. Now she had decked her plump body in a gaudy array of sensils, silks, and linens of the brightest colors, a confusing glittering mass of jewels and dudinter about her. Her hair was cropped so that it fluffed about her head, the massive matting of crest-hair all shorn away. She looked different. I can safely say that. It is an old story.

“Why care about the past, Dray Prescot? What is this Ba-Marish to you?”

“A great deal, Melow. You have your freedom. Take whatever you desire from these possessions. These evil people who hunt humans for sport will seek protection at my hands in vain. They forfeit their pretty things as they have already forfeited their rights of humanity.”

For a moment I thought I had been clumsy in my speech, exposing a subject on which the jikla would be sore; but she gave again that yowling hiss and that ricking grimace to her lips, from which I surmised she laughed and smiled.

“These people told us the hunt will begin on tomorrow, Dray Prescot, so your precious Numim maiden is safe for one more night.”

‘True. And we use that night to our advantage.”

Then I paused.

I had been instrumental in rescuing both Bartak and Melow, but there was no reason on Kregen why either should go with me to Smerdislad. And — did I want them with me?

“I shall go into the city,” I said. “I would wish you, Bartak, and you, Melow, to do as you desire. There is much wealth here. You could be rich.”

Melow said, her voice as harsh as ever, “I shall go with you, Dray Prescot.”

I sighed. I had heard that before, in other places. Bartak hesitated. He had finished the beef and now he took up a dudinter bowl of gregarians and began to munch. I did not press him. The two of them would present problems the next day. But they had been of the utmost use so far.

But this brief interlude of solemnity, in a situation that remained both dreamlike and hilarious could not last. We prodded the Vad into consciousness again and sat him in his great ivory chair, with the sensil cushions stuffed with down from the breasts of baby zhyans, and the dudinter supports and canopy, and we stood before him, glaring. Quarnach Algarond, the Vad of the Dudinter District, could not walk. He must be transported everywhere by slaves carrying his luxurious palanquin. He sat nervously, for he was a cowed man. Naturally, he was fat, with a silly, fat vosk face, dripping with sweat, and a fuzz of blond hair slicked back beneath his dudinter coronet. We glared at him, and he sat back, and his pudgy hands, ringed on every finger, plucked at his thick purple lips.

“You may take all you see, if you do not slay me.”

Bartak, being a Brokelsh and therefore somewhat coarse of manner and mind, said, “We may slay you and take all we will.”

The Vad couldn’t answer that. He sat, plucking his thick, shining lips, and his obese body shook.

“Vad Quarnach,” I said, putting the old devilish bite into my words, “are you known in Smerdislad?”

“No. No one there knows me. You may rely on that. I would not betray you if you release me.”

He had mistaken the reason for my inquiry. I pressed him further, and learned all I wished to know. The Kov of Faol occasionally arranged extra special hunts for extra special guests. One such hunt began the next day and was designed for those would-be mighty hunters who could no longer stalk through the jungles on foot after their quarry, or who were too fragile to bestride fluttrell or mirvol, or to shoot from a speeding airboat. Truly, this was the cripples’ Jikai.

The carrying poles for Vad Quarnach’s palanquin, much decorated with spiral carvings and embossed plaques of this dudinter of which he was so proud, were so arranged that sixteen slaves or four preysanys might convey him. This fanciful airboat of his, something of the style of a pagoda of the air, contained stables with half-doors along its lower sides. Here his men’s zorcas were kept, and half a dozen preysanys for the palanquin. I eyed the gorgeous finery of the palanquin with a lively interest.

The men we had surprised in the jungle had gone riding off after a slave who had thrown herself overboard. She had been observed to strike the heavily foliaged branches of the trees, and because the airboat was flying at a low altitude, escape serious injury. When I asked why she had not been brought back, my face hardened at the answer. She had sought to escape, knowing the fate in store for her, and the brilliant courtiers had soon found her, naked and running, and tripped her by her dudinter chains. But, in subduing her and bringing her back to her master, she had forced them to overcome her struggles, and, as they said, shrugging, she had died of it.

This girl had been intended as Vad Quarnach’s offering for the Jikai. Each member of the hunt brought a beautiful girl for the pool. Now Quarnach had lost his.

Bartak the Hyrshiv spat.

“I say take off his head now, Dray Prescot, and have done.”