Manhounds of Antares (9 page)

The time for the slaves to leave was now.

With the whips cracking about our heads, and words of advice from Nalgre, we set off. His advice amounted to: “Run and run, cramphs. If you do not afford good sport and are taken without a good chase, you will be more sorry than you may imagine!” He snickered as he said this, and fondled the female jiklo, who crooned in pleasure at the touch of her master’s hand.

We set off due east.

The jungle closed above our heads and strange noises rose from the depths of the greenery. The brilliant light of the twin suns muted to a long lazy green-gold radiance, and here and there mingled shafts of ruby and jade struck down through interstices in the leafy cover. The trail was hard-packed for the first dwabur. Five miles was a fair distance to travel, and when we came out to a little clearing the slaves were happy to flop down, panting, to rest.

Nath the Guide crossed to a heap of lichened stones and lifted one to the side. I looked over his shoulder.

In the hollow between the stones lay clothing, food — and knives! Also there were clumsy-looking shoes. The halflings pounced on the shoes first. Well, that made sense. I have been accustomed all my life to going barefoot, and I had walked across the Hostile Territories, and the Owlarh Waste without footwear. The journey across the Klackadrin, too, was not without a lively memory or two, and then I had been barefoot.

I said I did not want a pair of shoes.

At this Nath the Guide protested, saying I would slow the others up. They were putting on the clothes, simple gray tunics and floppy hats, and Lilah, too, implored me to don a pair of shoes. In the end I did so, to quiet her noise.

We ate and rested and then set off again.

“When will they catch up with us, Nath?”

“Not until the suns have passed the zenith.” He chuckled. “And if we press on boldly they may never catch up with us at all. There are secret ways.”

He kept us going east. The jungle looked like many another jungle through which I have traveled, with trees and growths familiar to Earth as well as Kregen. Lilah was holding up well. If we could keep going and get well ahead, we might clear right out for good.

Toward early evening we left the edge of the jungle, which had thinned considerably, and came to an immense ravine cut through the earth athwart our path. A light rope bridge hung above the abyss. We crossed, not without a deal of swaying about and a few screams, and after we had reached the other side Naghan from Hamal said: “Let us destroy the bridge.”

That seemed a sensible idea.

“No,” said Nath the Guide. “If the bridge is gone the Jikai will surely know which way we have gone.”

Well, that seemed sensible, too.

In the end, bowing to Nath’s superior knowledge of the problems of the manhunters, we left the bridge intact.

For a space I walked along with Nath, while Lilah walked with Naghan and his girl, Sosie. The guide intrigued me. I questioned him, casually, about his life.

“We are of Faol, too,” he said. “I live in a village on the southern shore, and the young men are dedicated to helping the slaves. The manhunters are very terrible masters.”

I congratulated him, thinking of the dangers he and his comrades faced. “I think,” he said to me, glancing sideways as we walked, “you have been on many great Jikais yourself.”

“Aye,” I said, thinking of the great days when my clansmen had hunted across the Great Plains of Segesthes. “But I have never hunted humans for sport.”

“Humans?” He looked at me oddly. “But only Naghan and Sosie, Lilah, and yourself are humans.”

The Fristle man was at that moment helping the Fristle woman along, putting his furry arm about her waist and half carrying her. I was about to make what I considered a fitting reply when Nath broke away from me, looking up, shouting a warning.

“Vollers! Quick! Into the bushes — and remain still, for the sake of Hito the Hunter!”

From the shelter of the bushes we looked up as a flier passed overhead, traveling slowly due east. Well, that answered one question I had intended to put to Nath — how the manhunters would know in which direction we had gone. He had been right about the bridge.

When the voller had gone we stood up, breathing our relief, and set off again. The country was opening out now. From the edge of the jungle beyond the ravine at our back the sky filled with the quick darting shapes of flying foxes, hereabouts called inklevols, black against the dying suns-glow.

Nath the Guide pointed ahead across the open land, dotted here and there with clumps of trees, gently rolling and gradually undulating away to a distant horizon.

“Tomorrow we cross the plain and then—”

“Then we are free!” exclaimed a Brokelsh, rubbing his black bristle body-hair in his excitement.

We made our little camp in a hollow, surrounded by trees, in the bend of a small river. Nath showed the usual skills of the hunter in preparing a smokeless fire and of shielding the flame-glare by a palisade of twisted rushes. The knives he had provided were poor things, it was true, but they did enable us to cut wood and leaves and so fabricate a softer bed than the ground. We ate and drank water from the stream, and Nath had been able to provide a little wine for us. Truth to tell, freedom was the wine we all craved.

We sat for a short space, talking, Nath and I. I had said to Naghan earlier: “Sosie and Lilah will sleep side by side, and you and I will sleep outside them.” And he had replied: “It is a good plan.”

Now I said to Nath: “And is manhunting the chief occupation of the high ones of Faol?”

“Yes. It is their ruling passion. Nobles come from all over Havilfar, and the lands beyond, to go on a Faol Jikai.”

He sounded proud of that, which was strange, but he added: “They bring in money, which helps my people, and we arrange for the escape of the slaves.”

“The hunters did not reach us, as you suggested they might.”

“No. Tomorrow will be a day of careful marching.”

I was itching to ask about Lilah who, as a princess, would in the societies I had previously known on Kregen be far more valuable as a subject for ransom than as a subject for a hunt. I put the point to Nath the Guide, who yawned, and said carelessly: “Oh, there are many girls who claim to be princesses and queens, and, mayhap, some of them are. But then — if a customer knew he was hunting a princess, and with all that would follow at the end of the hunt, think how much more the pleasure!”

“I see,” I said.

It did make sense, of a kind that sickened me anew. I rolled over and pushed up against Lilah where she lay asleep, one arm outflung across Sosie, and so let my eyelids close.

Tomorrow we would cross the plain and reach safety and then I could deliver the Princess Lilah of Hyrklana to her friends and take off for Vallia. As sleep overcame me, I wondered vaguely if I might not prosecute two of my obsessions on Kregen as I was so near Havilfar. For on Havilfar lived the scarlet-robed Todalpheme who had taken Delia to Aphrasöe and who might therefore tell me where that marvelous Swinging City was situated on the face of Kregen. And the other obsession was to discover more of the fliers, the vollers, and their manufacture.

So I slept and with the first rays of Far and Havil striking low over the plain I awoke, sat up and rubbed my eyes, and reached for the cheap knife and stood up — and Nath the Guide was gone.

Princess Lilah of Hyrklana rides a fluttrell

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.