Manhounds of Antares (26 page)

“Excellent, nulsh,” I said. “A great performance. I hope you do as well when your head rolls into the north corner and your body rolls into the south.”

Oh, yes. It shames me now when I look back at that long-gone day, and seeing the whole scene as though brightly lit upon a stage, recognize my own youthful headstrong passions and my own stupidity! I was a bit of a maniac in my younger days, and here I’d been boasting to myself that I had been conquering that hasty arrogance of mine, that harsh intolerance, that desperate desire to kick and smash anyone and anything that smacked of authority and sadism and attempts to put me down. I had bowed the knee and kowtowed and done the full-incline — and here it had all ended with as foolhardy an act of onkerishness as any two worlds witnessed.

For these were great khams. They had reached enormously elevated heights in the hierarchy of the Khamorros, their khams sky-high. They were of a different syple from Turko — had they been of his own syple they might have rescued him — and they were as contemptuous of him as of me.

They thought to make of it a sport, and, not without a certain charming politeness, debated one with the other who should have first crack at me. Remembering the sage counsel of old Zinki during those painful sessions of combat on the island of Zy in the Eye of the World, I was content to let them come to me.

The shorter, the one who had gone through the quick exercise drill, stepped forward. He had yielded because he was that much fractionally the lesser of the two, as he admitted. “I am Boro, and I am a great kham.” He went on then to describe himself and his renown, his attainments and his exploits. At each word poor Turko moaned, and I heard him say: “By the Muscle! You have picked the wrong men to demonstrate to me, Dray! They are masters! Great khams!”

When this Boro had finished he stood waiting.

So, to humor him, and because if I did not end this farce soon guards with real weapons would burst in, I said, “I am Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy.”

If he didn’t understand, as I didn’t understand all his titles and accomplishments, that was his loss.

Then, very swift and deadly, he was upon me.

I did what I had planned to do . . . almost . . .

He was quick, and he was strong and he was very, very good. I felt his blows. I could feel it when he hit me. I slid his rush, for, of course, it was no blind-chunkrah rush, and he laid a hand on my arm and I had to do a quick double-twist and near break his fingers before he would let go. He stepped back and a great pleased smile lit his face.

“So you know the arts, Dray Prescot! I shall enjoy this!”

This time I managed to deflect his attack, and for a short space we twisted, body to body, doing all the things I had no desire to do. Everything he did I matched, but I was in defense all the time except for a single opportunity and that ended with Boro going up in the air and landing on his shoulder blades. He roared as I jumped on him, and rolled away, so that I missed and gouged the stone floor instead. Like a leem he was on his feet, and now his face was dark and congested with anger, which proved that his kham was a trifle shaky.

“I shall tear your limbs off and—” he started.

“Save it, Boro the Boaster! There’s no time!”

We set to again, and again he used all his skill and avoided the grips and blows that would have flattened a lesser man. I could feel my anger at his strong obstinacy boiling up and I had to keep it down. I’d gone into this childish exhibition and now I had to pay the reckoning.

He circled, came in from the side, and I bent and took him and he took me. We rolled on the floor and he tried to break my arm, as he had threatened, and I cross-checked him so that he cried out, shocked at the sudden pain, and managed to break and leap clear. My parting blow hissed past his ear.

His comrade, the bigger Khamorro, said, “It seems, Boro, that he bests you.” At which Boro roared his anger. “I am Morgo. I am a greater kham than Boro. You will not escape so easily from me.”

I circled them both, warily, for they were both after me now. I shouted up to Turko, high: “Are all these Khamorros such braggart boasters and such spineless fighters?”

Turko said something, I know not what, and Boro and Morgo charged. I backed swiftly and in a succession of flurries of dodges and weavings, of arm blocks and of kicks, I won free. This could not be allowed to go on. The next time I would have to do something drastic. Old Zinki had laughed, one time, telling us of what Pur Zenkiren had done to a couple of Magdaggian overlords. I had a great affection for the austere Pur Zenkiren, who was Archbold-Elect. If I could pay him the compliment of imitating him, I would do so.

Boro and Morgo split me between them and came in from both sides. I backed again, circling, and my foot hit against a sword where I had tossed it down so contemptuously.

“Pick up your sword, Dray! For the sake of the Muscle, man! Use the weapon you understand! They have only been playing with you!”

If that was true, of course, life would become exceedingly complicated and remarkably interesting in the next mur.

Deliberately, I kicked the sword aside.

Turko moaned.

The two Khamorros flexed their muscles. The sweat stood out on their skins like liquid gold. Working as a team they rushed me again and in a flurry of chops and grips that failed and hooks that barely missed, Boro wrenched away the bandage around my head so that blood flowed down over my face and left eye. I blinked and cursed.

“By the Black Chunkrah! You fight foul!”

They did not answer; they were both panting, their magnificent chests heaving and glistening with sweat.

This time, I saw, they meant to finish it. Boro came in a little ahead of Morgo, and he designed, I saw instantly, to feint an attack and then roll under me so that I would fall into the arms of Morgo. When Boro rushed I sidestepped. He came with me and our forearms smashed together and I stepped back.

For an instant he had an opportunity, for the distance I had gone seemed to him to be overlarge, giving him the chance of taking two skipping steps and putting in the jagger. This is that blow delivered by the feet with the body wholly off the ground. He chose the double jagger, with both feet. He did it superbly well, and for any ordinary wrestler it would have been the end, for those iron-hard soles of his would have crushed into the chest and knocked all the wind out and smashed the fellow over, to be gripped and thrust facedown into the dirt, finished, if his ribs weren’t all cracked to Kingdom Come.

Turko’s scream ripped into the stink of the dungeon.

Morgo’s bellow of “Hai Hikai!” passed unheeded.

Everything happened in a fluidity of motion beautiful to behold, making me wish I’d been there when Pur Zenkiren did this to those overlords of Magdag. I took Boro’s ankles in both fists and I leaned back, as a hammer-thrower leans in the circle, and spun. He carried all that forward momentum into a sideways rotation, with my body leaning back, muscles ridged, acting as the hub. Around me he spun, parallel to the ground. I lifted a little higher as his head flew around and aimed him, and, as though wielding a great Krozair long-sword, I laid his head smack alongside Morgo’s head.

I let go.

Both Khamorros collapsed. Blood and brains gushed from their nostrils and their ears.

“By the Muscle!” I heard Turko whisper.

Quaesa wouldn’t stop screaming. Saenda had done things she afterward would never remember. Rapechak said, “I believe the correct term is Hai Hikai, Dray Prescot! Hai Hikai!”

He was right. The unarmed combat masters, like the Khamorros, like old Zinki, do not use the swordsman’s great Hai Jikai — instead, they say: “Hai Hikai.”

Turko the Khamorro looked at me. His face held a frozen look of horror. Then he spoke, in a husky whisper.

“Hai Hikai, Dray Prescot! Hai Hikai!”

Freeing the four prisoners was simple enough, for the keys had been in the keeping of Morgo the Khamorro, who was now no doubt practicing his art somewhere under the alert eye of Morro the Muscle himself. They were stiff and sore and the two girls collapsed, moaning, for Quaesa had stopped screaming the instant she felt my hands on her, unlocking the chains. Turko picked up the blood-soaked bandage and rewound it around my head. He looked at it, his dark eyes filled with a pain he did not believe.

“As a reed-syple, Dray Prescot, that bloody bandage is extraordinarily fitting.”

As you know I make it a rule never to apologize; I would have apologized to Turko, then, for acting in such a stupid way, when Rapechak, picking up a crossbow and quiver of bolts, said with an evil chuckle: “I think we may fight our way out now, Dray Prescot.”

I handed him one of the swords. I made up my mind. I said, “Turko, you called me Dray, back there. I would — like — it if you and Rapechak dropped the Prescot.”

This was no trifle.

We said no more, but I know Rapechak, the Rapa, at least, was pleased. At the iron grilles we took clothes from the guards and sketchily gave the girls a breechclout each and a few rags for the men. Turko stopped. He looked down at the guard’s thraxter, still in his fist. The shield lay to one side. Turko’s face was completely expressionless.

I watched him. He bent and picked up the sword. He held it for a space, the guard’s open hand like some mute testament below. Then he tossed the sword down. I started to turn away and then halted. Turko picked up the shield. He hefted it, looked at the straps inside, turned it around, slid it up his left arm, swung it about. Then, turning to face me, holding the shield up, he said, “I am ready to follow you, Dray.”

“Good, Turko. We march now to freedom.”

But we both knew we meant much more than merely escaping from this fortress-prison of Mungul Sidrath.

With both crossbows spanned and ready, with Turko at my back with his shield, and the girls following on, we padded on away from the dungeon and on toward the cavern of the waters.

Halfway across the bridge I halted. In the noise and confusion of water spouting, great wheels creaking, and slaves screaming as whips whistled down, we could not fail to attract attention. But the danger lay ahead. On the far side of the bridge a body of men appeared and instantly they were revealed as the nobles and officers come down to question their prisoners, and, perhaps, to have a little sport with them.

In the forefront, as I had cynically expected, stood Hikdar Markman ti Coyton.

He screamed and pointed and dragged out his sword, his words unheard in the din of rushing water, creaking wood, and other screams so much more brutally dragged forth.

At Markman’s side stood a man who blazed with the stiff regalia of pride and authority. This Canop had to be the commandant of Yaman. For good measure I put the first shaft into him. I saw his mouth open as he fell, but did not hear his dying scream. Rapechak let fly and slew a Chuktar directly to Markman’s rear. Markman turned and tried to push back through the officers. Being officers and having come on a sporting occasion they had no bowmen handy, but very quickly bowmen could be deployed and then we’d be skewered, there on the open bridge with the roaring water beneath.

I put my face close to Turko’s ear.

“Over with you, Turko! And breathe deeply!”

I said the same to Rapechak.

They both wanted to argue and Rapechak, bending his great beaked face close to mine, barely avoided the quarrel that sizzled past to thunk into the wooden railing in a showering of yellow chips. They were arguing about the girls. There was no time to reload. Turko moved forward, and in a twinkling crossbow bolts stood in his shield like angry bristles. He screened us. I was not sure of the Rapa’s capabilities as a swimmer, and Turko was in no real condition to look after anyone but himself.

I pushed them both over and grabbed the girls about their waists and leaped. Half a dozen crossbow bolts ripped the wood of the bridge as we hurtled down. We hit the water in a fountain that vanished almost instantly in that smooth, heavy flow and the current swept us frighteningly fast down and into the arched opening leading onto darkness.

Sword and crossbow had gone and I now had armfuls only of wet and terrified girls. I lunged up, my head above the surface, and dragged them up. There was no sign of the others. “Breathe!” I yelled, and then took a frantic quick breath, as deeply as I could in the time left, and then we were over and falling in the midst of the cascade, with only darkness, and water, and noise all about us.

Accounted a superb swimmer and able to dive for long periods I may be, but that gulp of air had not been enough. I felt the pains in my chest, the flecks of fire before my eyes that were wide open and staring blindly into the roaring darkness. On and on we were tumbled, turning and twisting like chips in a drainage ditch. I felt then that for a surety I was done for. This was the end. This was where they tossed the broken and bleeding corpses of the dead slaves after they had worked until they died, this was where they disposed of the prisoners they had questioned beyond the limits of tolerance. Down and down we went and on and on and then I knew I had finished and there was nothing else to do but end this agonizing pain and open my mouth.

But, being Dray Prescot, a stupid onker, I kept my mouth shut and I fought the pain and we swirled along like refuse. I felt a sudden rising shock as lights stung my dazzled eyes, and cool night air laved my face and we were afloat on the surface of the River Magan.

Turko waved an arm and yelled. I did not see Rapechak.

We swam into the bank and on the oozing mud a severe session of arm-pumping and kissing brought the girls around. They were shattered by their experiences and unable fully to comprehend that we had escaped. I felt that we would have little time. Finding a boat was easy enough and I selected a craft typical of river work, with sharply flared bows and a broad beam, shallow-drafted and with a sail and awning. At the oars — at the oars! How eerie and strange a feeling that was to be sure! — we pulled around in circles, calling as loudly as we dared for Rapechak. But we did not find the Rapa. I would not think of that. At last, and with regret, I set the bows downriver and pulled steadily away in the dying light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles.