Manhounds of Antares (17 page)

Back in the slave barracks I flung the uniform back on the guard, kicked the Deldar, who was moaning, and scampered up the stairs. Up there all was quiet. I crept to my corner and lay down. A shadow moved. A man eased gently up to me.

A voice said: “You tried to escape, dom. You came back. Why?”

I recognized the voice of the third Khamorro, a light, pleasant voice, to come from such a deadly kind of man.

“If you wish to know,” I said, “go down and see.”

He chuckled. “I am going to escape tomorrow. I would not wish anyone to spoil that for me. I hope you have not done so.”

“Go to sleep.”

I was perfectly ready in case he leaped on me. But he did not. I heard him ease himself back to his pallet. His voice trickled through the darkness. “You are a strange man. Tomorrow, we will see.”

With the morning there would be the final nonsense with Nalgre, and his female manhound, and then we would set off through the jungle. I hoped this Khamorro would welcome what he then discovered.

All followed exactly as before.

The only difference that a dead guard had made, and an open cage door, was a strong body of guards marching into the slave caves and beating about, aimlessly, and then marching out having found nothing and accomplished nothing. The slaves ready for the run today were counted, and then counted again. The Deldar, who had awoken first, must have said nothing of the inexplicable sleep he and his men had indulged in. But, as none of the slaves had escaped, there was no harm done. If anyone noticed the absence of old Mog, they would scarcely credit that she had slain a guard and taken off into the jungle, witch or no witch.

The Khamorro who had spoken to me, whose name was Turko, gave me a meaningful glance. I ignored him. Strange, how to look back on that day I can so clearly recall how I wished this Turko the Khamorro to hell and gone! Strange, indeed, is the way of fate.

With which not particularly original reflection we all began our march into the jungle, hunted men and women and halflings, sport for the great Jikai.

Nath the Guide led off very smartly, acting his part as the guide and mentor of this little band of fugitives. He had decided we should strike north, and his words were the selfsame words that Inachos had used. They learned their duplicity by parts, these treacherous guides!

When we came to where I had left Mog I sprinted ahead, and with the dead guard’s thraxter cut her down.

She came all asprawl into my arms and I caught her odor and I gagged.

“You nulsh! Migshaanu the All-Glorious will fry your brains and frizzle your eyeballs and rip out your tongue and—”

I said: “If you do not still that wagging tongue of yours, Mog, I will probably rip it out, instead of Migshaanu.” I was bending forward, glaring at her, mightily wroth. She looked up with those bright agate eyes, and saw my face, and she stopped talking. I have noticed that effect I have on people. It is not something I am proud of. But it is, nevertheless, mightily useful at times!

Nath shouldered up, flustered, shouting: “What is this! What is she doing here? Mog — Dray Prescot — what—?”

One of the Khamorros, the largest of the three and a thumping ugly great fellow, bellowed out in anger:

“The old crone cannot march! She cannot come with us — you must leave her, cramph.”

“I will carry her, if need be.”

For I had felt a surprising strength in that thin figure when she had tumbled out of the tree upon me.

“We shall not wait—”

Turko walked up with a lithe swing, his dark hair tumbled about his face, his features bronzed and clear, and, as I noticed for the first time, a look about him at once reckless and contained. With all this his build, all muscle and sliding roped power, advertised his enormous physical development, and, if that were not enough, he was damned handsome too, into the bargain.

“Leave it, Chimche,” he said. “This nul Dray Prescot will carry the crone, as he says, or be left behind.”

The bulky form of Chimche started to quiver and Nath said quickly: “We had best press on. There are shoes and food and wine ahead — and knives.”

I had to keep my fingers still. I knew that wine.

So we hurried on along the trail, with Chimche turning often to give me a glare. But I had given him no further cause of offense, and I was carefully watching Mog. Having seen how matters stood, and at her first immediate rush back down the trail being firmly stopped by me, she screeched and waved her arms but trudged along. Every now and then I had to give her a push. I watched her, as I say, very carefully; the impression had formed that she play-acted rather more than she cared folk to perceive. And her walk, once the shuffling scuttle she habitually adopted in the caves proved troublesome swinging along the trail, changed imperceptibly into a much firmer and longer tread. She would not be the first woman to make herself look old and hideous in captivity.

Still, she was a halfling and, by Zair, she was hideous in reality!

When we reached the cache of food and clothing Mog was more than happy to rest. We donned the gray tattered tunics and took the knives and put on the shoes, and all this petty finery was designed to make us feel we had outwitted the manhunters, to give us hope, to make us run!

Mog wouldn’t wear the shoes Nath offered.

Toward the end of the march I had to carry her, slung over a shoulder, and every now and then a filthy dangling leg would give me a sly kick, just to remind me.

When we made our camp up a tree, erecting a palisade of thorns, and Nath prepared his lower aerie, I knew the time approached. Nath hefted up the wine bottles, their leather bulging. I was looking at Mog. She was tied in place. I knew she had the willpower and the courage to march back through the jungle. Now, as Nath offered her the wine, she cowered back, trembling.

“No, no, Nath. I do not want the wine.”

Chimche bellowed at this, his dark florid face flushed.

“Then give it here, you crone!”

“Why will you not drink the wine?” persisted Nath. He upended the spout over Mog’s mouth, trying to force her, letting the wine drop through in that frugal way Kregans have.

“No!” She was terrified now. “No, the wine is drugged! We will all sleep and the monsters of the forests will eat us!”

Turko laughed at this, but Nath backhanded Mog across her rubbery lips. “Drugged!” he shouted, in a fury. “You lie, old crone! You lie!” And he hit her again.

I took Nath the Guide’s arm and bent it back.

“She does not lie, Nath. The wine is drugged so that you may creep off in the night, and leave us prey to the man-hounds.”

He stared at me, his arm bent back, and a sickly smile distorted that frank and manly face. We all saw. We all saw the guilt that glazed on that face.

“By the Muscle!” bellowed Chimche, shoving forward. “It is true!”

The other Khamorro, Janich, elbowed up, pushing me out of the way, reaching for Nath the Guide.

“The wine is drugged and the guides are false!” screeched Mog. Her agate eyes glared up in the terror of the moment.

Janich’s hefty push and Nath’s convulsive effort broke my hold on his arm and he scuttled back up the tree branch. He stared down on us, and saw the murder in our eyes, and he screamed at us.

“It is true! It is true! The wine is drugged and you creeping yetches will be dead tomorrow when the Manhounds of Faol tear your limbs apart and splash your blood into the jungle.”

Shouts and calls broke out as the slaves tried to get up the tree at Nath. He lifted his knife. I think, then, he knew he was doomed, for the Khamorros are frightful fighters, and he with all his forest experience knew he would not elude them among the trees. But he would make the effort. You could feel sorry for him, as you might feel sorry for a risslaca — about to kill and eat a dainty lople — being suddenly caught in a snare and feathered with barbed arrows.

“You are all doomed!” Nath the Guide screeched it down at us. “And the witch shall die first!”

The whole reason I was here, in this hideous situation, was to rescue Mog the Migla and take her to safety. And now, with the speed of a striking leem, Nath hurled his knife at the old Miglish crone.

The knife flew, a darting sliver of steel in the forest gloom, full at Mog’s unprotected throat.

Turko the Khamorro

Straight for that stringy defenseless throat the knife flashed. The movement of the knife struck everything else into a paralysis, a stasis wherein Nath’s throwing arm remained outflung, Mog recoiled against the bonds, Turko and the other Khamorros stood caught in the passions of the moment, the halflings below stilled in their clamor.

The sword I had taken from the guard rasped as it cleared the scabbard.

That old Krozair trick of striking away flying arrows with the superb Krozair longsword must serve me now — and before I had time to finish the thought, everything happening so fast events blurred, the thraxter flicked out and the knife struck the blade with a high ringing pinging and spun away into the gloom of the forest.

Nath the Guide galvanized into motion, screaming, clawing back up the tree.

From below a Rapa — one I had noted as of that fierce, predatory, arrogant kind that meant he had once been a mercenary — threw his own knife. It flew true. Nath the Guide stood, arms spread, transfixed, his face twisted with the defiant-fear — and he fell. Nath the Guide, son of treachery, fell full-length down the tree and so into the greenery to smash face-first into the mud and detritus of the jungle floor.

“Let his foul Hito the Hunter aid him now!” quoth the Rapa, and went down very agilely to retrieve his knife.

This Rapa was one Rapechak, and I remember that he must have been less offensive to smell than most, or I was growing accustomed to the typical Rapa stink. Those Rapas who had fought with me in Dorval Aymlo’s courtyard, too, I recalled, had been in nowise as offensive as other Rapas I had known.

“Now what do we do?” demanded the big Khamorro, Chimche.

Mog remained petrified and dumb. The halflings were raising a great hullabaloo. Janich was yelling at them to cease their noise or, by the Muscle, he’d break their bones to powder.

Turko said: “This nul Dray Prescot knew the guide was false. So did the old witch. What is fitting that we should do with them, khamsters?”

“Did you know, witch?” shouted Chimche, thrusting his nose at Mog. She cowered back, blinking.

“Only stories!” Her shrill voice poured words out in a torrent. “May Migshaanu the Ever-Radiant stand as my witness! Rumors — we heard stories — the wine was a sleep potion — the shoes were baited — the tame slaves were frightened. Enil was found dead in his den, and Yolan went for water and never returned.” She shook as she screamed. “We dare not speak! The guides murdered us! By Magoshno and Sidraarga, I swear it!”

Janich went to strike her, so wrought up was he; but Turko took his arm, saying: “Leave the old nul, Janich. She is harmless and in fear for her life.”

“Aye.” Janich looked down at Turko’s hand on his arm. “She should be. And so should you be, nul-syple!”

Turko took his hand away.

He removed that hand from Janich’s arm neither too quickly nor yet too slowly. I admired that coolness. I could guess what had transmogrified the situation. The syples were the different kinds of Khamorro training and belief, and a nul, clearly, was anyone not a Khamorro. So that for Janich to call Turko a nul-syple was a great insult. Yet Turko did not instantly retaliate. He had put his hand on a man who was not a syple-brother. The answer must be given.

I said: “If you wish to yammer and quarrel here all night, you may do so. As for me, I am going to take a flier off these Makki-Grodno guides.”

I still held the thraxter naked in my fist. I reached across to Mog, and with my left hand wrenched her bindings free, lifted her up, and slung her over my shoulder. She screamed and then tried to bite me, whereat I thwacked her narrow bottom with the flat of the blade. The thraxter is a medium-long straight sword, with a blade heavier and wider than a rapier, a vertical blade, and it smacked with a satisfactory smack. Mog yelped.

Down the tree I went, slipping and sliding most of the way. At the bottom the Rapa, Rapechak, straightened up with his knife freshly cleaned on Nath’s breechclout. “You mentioned a flier.”

“Aye. This way. And keep silent.”

So I set off with the halfling Mog draped over my shoulder and a rout of halflings following me through the forest. I found the clearing and thumped Mog down and said: “Stay there, old witch. If you try to run I’ll draw your guts out for a knitted vest.”

Without knowledge of any signal the flier up there might be awaiting I could only wait patiently for him to descend. Inachos had stood out and waved; I could not do that. The Twins were up, the two second moons of Kregen eternally revolving one about the other, casting down a pinkish sheen of light in which details stood out clearly. A rustle on the back trail heralded the three Khamorros.

“You, Turko,” I said. “If you stand in the clearing and wave up, and then scamper back here, and look lively about it, we might see the flier this Zair-forsaken night.”

Again Turko favored me with that long, almost quizzical look. I turned away and went to stand by Mog.

Turko walked into the clearing, looked up, waved his arms, and then walked back. As a performance it would not have done for Drury Lane, but it worked.

The flier ghosted down, shimmering in the pink moonlight, drifting gently to the clearing’s mass of rotting vegetation, fallen trees, and creeping shoots. A guide looked out and shouted something about Hito the Hunter and the stupid yetches of slaves to be run in the morning and needing a drink . . . and Rapechak the Rapa’s knife buried itself in his neck so that he pitched over the lenken side of the flier, choking and writhing in convulsions, before Chimche reached him and twisted his head in a single savage crunching action.

I was working with fearsome allies, now, but they did not have the unwanted responsibility of Mog the Migla on their hands.

Janich said with great satisfaction, “I can fly a voller.”