Beasts of Antares (16 page)
Pearl of Klanadun
held a smell, a wild-animal smell that wafted up through the gratings in her wide decks. Down below in her capacious holds the owners of that wild-beast smell were caged in iron bars.
“Yes, Horter Jak,” said the captain, bluff and genial, rotund of belly and purple of nose. “This is what I am reduced to.” A vein throbbed alongside his nose. “I cannot lay the blame at the feet of Havil the Green, for I am a religious man, and mindful of the obligations a sea master must never forget. But, all the same—” And he gestured in a manner at once helpless and comical at the gratings. “A mere freighter of wild animals for the Jikhorkdun! Is this my reward for a hundred years of sea apprenticeship?”
“But, Captain Nath,” I said, “there are many men engaged in this work. The Jikhorkduns of Hyrklana are never satisfied.”
“True, true. My brother, who commanded our late father’s ship, was gored to death by an Ilurndil — the second horn went clean through here.” And Captain Nath the Bows jabbed a thumb into the side of his stomach.
I didn’t much care for Ilurndils, six-footed battering rams with leather hides you could make roof tiles out of — that roof tiles were made out of — and a pair of horns superimposed between piggy eyes. As for Nath the Bows, as he said, his father’s name was Nath and what was good enough for him was good enough for his boys. They were twins, Nath the Bows and Nath the Stern. It wasn’t new.
Pearl of Klanadun
was a natty enough argenter. Her topmen were Hobolings, among the best in the business. She had a lot of Brokelsh in the deck hands. Her marine guard consisted of half a dozen Undurkers with their canine faces and snooty looks and smart bows and notched arrows. We sailed along as soon as the storm abated enough to make passageway comfortable for the wild beast cargo.
Down in the saloon I met the owner of the cargo. I was fully prepared to dislike him on sight. After all, running animals in for the arena, where they would first of all chomp up criminals and condemned slaves, and then be cut to bits by kaidurs who knew how to handle weapons, is not the kind of occupation guaranteed to endear any man to me.
But it was extraordinarily difficult to dislike Unmok the Nets. He was an Och. He did not, however, have six limbs like Ochs are supposed to have. As he said, “There was I, minding my own business — I was in selling beads and bangles at the time, not much but a living — and this chavonth came at me. Chewed out my middle left. Still feel it twinge come rainy days. Took sinews outta my lower left, too. Dratted chavonth. All teeth and claws and that mess of blue-gray and black hexes.”
Unmok the Nets limped. As an Och he stood shorter than Hunch, who as a Tryfant had to stand on tiptoe to look over the big guy’s bar. His Och head was the usual lemon shape, with puffy jaws and lolling chops, although he favored a kind of heavy woolen muffler.
“Since that danged chavonth got me I feel the cold.”
We were only a few degrees south of the equator here.
He liked to talk. I cannot repeat most of it, all small talk larded with dollops of Och wisdom, which might suit a small race of diffs with six limbs; it’s only marginally applicable to an apim with only four limbs. I tried to remember some to tell my Djang friends.
He started to tell me how he’d got into the wild-beast catching business when we went down to the dinner table to eat, and he went right on, interrupting himself and going off into unrelated subjects and getting back to the point. He never did finish. I gathered, more as a matter of guesswork, that after his mauling by a savage big cat he rather wanted to get his own back. For a little crippled Och, well, that took some doing, petty and vindictive though some folk might take it.
There was always a demand for wild animals in the arena. And for human fodder. We sailed on down south toward Hyrklana and, despite some of my chaotic feelings, Unmok the Nets and I got along famously.
And he told me about the animals.
He had a team of harum-scarum diffs and apims to assist. Some knew how to handle the beasts; others simply used the whip and the torch and lived scared half to death most of the time.
“Get rid of them as soon as I can, Jak,” he told me. “Poor trash. You have to know how a beast feels to trap it, and then how to keep it alive. Some just curl over and die if you don’t treat ’em right.”
“You’re making for Huringa, of course—”
“Gotta pick up a consignment of thomplods first. Had ’em shipped in to Hyrklana South. They’ll fetch a fortune.”
He said thomplod, which is the vernacular for the animal I always think of as a haystack on feet. Twelve feet, six a side. And the smell — well, I can’t smell it, not many men can. But other animals — well, now. That dung cart of the son of Strom Nevius that ran away with the band and the son of Trylon Lofoinen and the solemn procession of adherents of Mev-ira-Halviren, that didn’t create half the stir among the neighborhood that a single thomplod could churn up among the animals of a sizeable town. No, sir!
Not all the animals. Mostly saddle animals. Some riding animals seemed to be immune to the smell; most are not. Unmok was going to have to arrange transportation for his menagerie. The carts would be pulled by Quoffas, and those huge-faced shambling hearthrugs would patiently haul and not care a fig for the thomplods. But no one was going to ride a totrix or a marlque or a hirvel, not with a thomplod within sniffing range.
Well, Unmok and I got along and pretty soon he was suggesting I might like to throw in with him. This often happens to me, on Earth and on Kregen. Delia and I had taken a few handfuls of golden deldys, one of the more usual currencies of Havilfar, and I had a walletful. I thumped a purseful on the table and Unmok sniffed and allowed that Havil the Green or some divine spirit had answered his prayers. He was a little short, did I see, and we were partners. We shook on it, in the Kregan way. As I say, I was surprised myself.
I was to be a working partner.
Captain Nath the Bows kept well out to the east giving the coast of Hamal a wide berth. Sailing direct to Hyrklana South was not so much out of our way, after all.
“Those devils of Hamal can’t pay for animals for their Jikhorkduns now,” observed Unmok. “That stupid war they’ve got themselves involved in. Oh, they have plenty of prisoners. But they’re short of prime cargoes of animals.”
A few days later a voller passed high overhead, traveling fast toward the south. Unmok screwed his chops up and stared aloft, tense, hopping on his one good foot. Then he relaxed. A single glance had told us the flier was Hyrklanian and not Hamalese.
“Thought it might have been a cage voller.” Unmok visibly relaxed, and the breeze blew the feather in his cap askew. “That’d mean tough competition.” He admitted, seeing I was now his partner, that he had been a trifle strapped. He had planned on selling a few beasts at the wharf side, and damn poor prices, too, to pay for the passage. “One day,” he said darkly, “I’ll have me my own cage voller. Then you’ll see!”
As soon as we reached a stylor, he said, the bokkertu could all be written up in due legal form.
“And if that was Maglo the Ears, why, I’ll — I’ll—”
“Who’s he?”
“The biggest rogue unhanged since Queen Fahia grew her moustache.” Then he looked about swiftly, to see if anyone had overheard this flagrant example of lèse majesté, as they say.
“Maglo the Ears preys on honest traders like me. He is welcome in the Jikhorkdun because he can sell at cut prices. Of course he can, the yetch! He steals what honest men have worked for.”
No matter what trade or profession you go in for, it seems on two worlds, there are always the fly-boys, the get-rich-quick merchants, the unscrupulous to twist a profit out of villainy. Unmok heaved up a sigh and cut phlegm.
“And the Jikhorkduns can afford to pay. Hyrklana has never been richer. Hamal pours out her treasure for war and we profit. Mind you, they drive a hard bargain when it comes to selling a few hundred people for the arena. They have a good supply, as I said, and we still have to send out parties and scratch and scrape to find men suitable—”
I started to interrupt, harshly, unpleasantly, and forced myself to calm down. But for his trade and its singularity, Unmok the Nets was a simple ordinary trader, wasn’t he? Hyrklana needed men like Unmok. Others like him, probably much more unpleasant in their habits, would be out now scouring foreign countries for arena fodder.
Korero and I had been talking up in the prow of the voller when she smashed and I could only hope the others had been able to stick together. Certainly, if some slaving rast from the arena tried to capture my hundred lads, he’d be eating his teeth, and digesting a length of steel through his guts.
If there exists a demand men will be found to supply it.
That is no excuse, never has been. But Unmok cared for the splendid wild animals in his charge, mindful of not only their physical comfort but seeking ways of easing their rages at confinement. He disliked the whip. He checked a shaven-pated Gon who slashed a strigicaw, and the Gon sulked. Unmok heaved up one of his feather-whiffling sighs, and promised me he’d discharge the useless lumber, as he called them, and hire fresh beast handlers in Fanahal, the chief port of Hyrklana South.
Unmok’s chief assistant, a strong-bodied Fristle, whose cat’s face was missing a sizeable portion of fur so that the membrane glistened pinkly, provided the strong arm necessary. This Fristle spoke little, spat often, and was called Froshak the Shine.
Froshak saw my sailor knife in its sheath snugged at the back of my right hip, and asked to examine it. I let him hold the knife, and he turned it over, and felt the heft. Then he handed it back and whipped out his own blade. The knives were very similar.
“Good,” said Froshak. “Good for slicing guts.” I agreed. Out of politeness.
He gave no trouble that I had been taken in as a partner. As I say, I was a working partner. Unmok’s system was simple and neat. One empty cage at the end was cleaned and swabbed out and provided with fresh litter. The gate to the adjoining cage was opened and the occupant of the second cage enticed, cajoled — whipped — into entering the first. Then with the gates shut the second cage was cleaned out. The process was repeated until the end of the line, when on the following day the end cage was prepared and the process repeated in reverse.
I took my share. I cannot say I came to be overly familiar with the wild animals; but the education was formidable. Mostly I’d been on the receiving end, with a sword in my fists.
Unmok had three leems. He was proud of them. No one else relished the idea; but they were valuable, and we needed to eat.
Pens up on deck held tame livestock. Preparing them for the beasts’ dinners was not a pleasant job. On a long sea voyage rations were tightly arranged, anyway. Unmok had lost only two of his stock, as he told me sorrowfully, a fine graint and a chag, which had been weak anyway. He took particular care of the four splendid specimens of neemus. These black, vicious, treacherous beasts with their round heads and flat ears and slanting slits of lambent golden flame for eyes were to be sold to Queen Fahia. Unmok was confident of that. I could just imagine them, scented, pampered, chained with silver links, sprawled on the steps of her throne.
And I must mention the werstings. These white and black four-legged hunting dogs were just about trained. They remained savage. Unmok owned five couples, collared with bronze, bearing his mark. I doubted if even a wersting would be able to check these wild animals if they broke free, but Unmok informed me that these werstings, toward whom he held an ambivalent attitude, were as much for his own protection against grasping rogues like Maglo the Ears as against escaped stock.
He had no Manhounds, and I was not sorry for that, I can tell you!
The Suns of Scorpio blazed down, the breeze blew, we made a good passage and came up beautifully to our landfall, making boards in to Fanahal, and we saw not a sign of another craft until we were in the coastal sea-lanes.
The port gleamed pink and green over white in the blaze. The water glittered. A busy confusion of ships and boats congested the roadway. We were hauled in by a ten-oared tug manned by Brokelsh, and the local dignitaries came aboard to the ritual wine, bribes, and signing of papers. The noise of the wharves and the smells had to be adjusted to after the long windblown reaches of the ocean.
I had arrived in Hyrklana.
A Shot at a Swordship
One thing you could say for Unmok the Nets — he was a businessman. He discharged the useless lumber — the shaven-headed Gon would have been a nuisance, but Froshak the Shine clicked his sailor knife up and down in the sheath. The Gon departed. Unmok worked at a high pressure. The thomplods were loaded into a second vessel, little more than a sailing steerable raft for coastal navigation, fees were paid, bribes were distributed, stores taken aboard, and we set off northward around the west coast of Hyrklana.
Everyone was jumpy.
Hyrklana is a large island shaped rather like a pear, or a flint arrowhead. From north to south it measures around thirteen hundred miles and across the broadest part just over eight hundred. The coast of Havilfar to the west curves in a bow shaped to fit the bulge of Hyrklana. The Hyrklese Channel is approximately three hundred miles across.
These waters, wide though they were, were infested with pirates. Renders from the coastal countries of the Dawn Lands, ships searching for plunder, attacking and looting anything else that sailed the seas, the brethren were an odiferous bunch. A deal of policing had been done; but the current wars had made supervision too costly. It was every ship for herself.
So we had taken aboard Unmok’s hired guards at Fanahal to reinforce Captain Nath’s Undurker marines. We made as fast a passage as we could, giving the contrariness of Whetti Orbium who under Opaz’s beneficent hand runs the weather on Kregen. Propitiations were made, of course, and the low-domed temple with the ships’ figureheads set up outside in ranks and rows took in another tidy little heap of gold coins to the old-age pensions of the priests.
