Manhounds of Antares (18 page)

I said, “We will have to squeeze everyone in most carefully. There is not too much room—”

But Chimche and Janich both stared at me, as though I were mad, and then they laughed, and Chimche said: “You? A stinking nul? We do not take you aboard our voller.”

And Janich chuckled and added: “But we will take the two shishis. They will make brave sport!”

The two girls, the fair and the dark, screamed at this and cowered back from the forefront of the group of halflings. Truth to tell, I had taken no notice of the girls, for I had had Mog to concern myself with. Now Turko said in a quiet, even, leaden voice: “And me?”

“You?” Janich threw back his head and laughed aloud. “You nul-syple! You will be left with these others, for the yetches of manhounds to gobble up! I am only sorry I cannot be here to see it.”

I moved forward. The sword glimmered pinkly in my hand.

“I do not think you will take off and leave us, Janich. The airboat belongs to us all. We are all slaves together.”

If I had expected an argument from a Khamorro I was a fool.

All I had heard about these fearsome men flashed through my mind. Tulema came from the same land, from Herrelldrin. She knew. “Terrible in their cunning, Dray! They practice devilish arts that let them crush a man’s bones, that make the strongest man as a straw in summer in their hands! They do not fear the sword or the spear, for they know arts to outwit swordsmen. Come away, Dray, from a Khamorro, if you value your life!” And, I had seen Lart the Khamorro die and so I knew that all Tulema said was true — at least, the results of her observation if not the causes of the Khamorros’ skills.

Janich rushed across the tangled floor of the jungle clearing.

He came at me with the intention of taking me in a grip that would snap my neck. I was familiar with the trick from long training and discipline with the Krozairs of Zy, of whom these Khamorros would never have heard.

I sidestepped and at the same time slid into an instinctive avoidance routine. Also, I slashed the thraxter down Janich’s side. He slipped most of the blow and elbowed away the flat of the sword. He roared in enjoyment.

“See, Chimche! The stupid nul believes himself a man with a sword!”

“I seldom slay unarmed men, Janich.”

At this Turko called out: “A Khamorro is never unarmed, Dray Prescot.”

If it was a warning it could not help; if it indicated Turko would not interfere, it was useful. I did not know how deeply ran the animosities between syple and syple in Herrelldrin.

Janich circled, like a leem. In the clear pinkish light of the Twins I could see the shadowy interplay of his muscles. Beautifully built are the men of the Khamorro! He circled me and he was not in the least afraid of the sword, and I saw with great sorrow that this could only end one way — I would be forced to slay this Janich the Khamorro.

As we circled I saw Turko standing immediately to the rear of Rapechak. The Rapa’s arm was twisted up and there was no knife stuck down his breechclout.

Then I had to concentrate on Janich. I admit my sorrow at what followed, for all that Janich had proved himself a mean-spirited man, but, as Turko had said, he was not unarmed.

He taunted me.

“I shall break your arm off, Prescot, and drive your own fingernails into your eyes! I shall twist your head so you may view your shoulder blades! A Khamorro cannot be mastered.”

Why I said what I did, I do not know for sure; perhaps I was sick of the whole stupid affair already. We should be flying to safety in the voller instead of brawling!

“Unarmed combat, Janich, is very wonderful and brave. But people who develop it are slaves and without liberty, men kept down by a superior people who have weapons, real weapons, of their own. A man fights with his hands, or a stick, if he is subservient and not allowed a steel weapon.”

By this time Janich was really annoyed and yet he did not lose his temper. He came in, weaving and ducking, very quickly, to take me in another grip I recognized. I eluded him and again I found that reluctance in my sword arm to plunge the blade home.

“You are done for, Dray Prescot,” shouted Turko.

Well, it is all a long time ago, now, and Turko’s voice spurred me in a way I did not then understand.

Janich kept on taunting me, and I replied once more.

“A man with a sword is not to be bested, Janich, even by so marvelous a hand-fighter as you. I would not slay you—”

He let loose a torrent of invective, foul words and many of them incomprehensible to me then, although I grew well-enough acquainted with them in later days. I could see he was puzzled and annoyed that he had not slipped my blade and taken me and gripped me and so broken my neck or my back. He bored in again, and he used a trick the Krozairs of Zy would never practice on one another — although only too happy to employ against an overload of Magdag — and he nearly got me so that I had to furiously twist aside and let his iron-hard toes go whistling past. My body did what it has been trained to do, released at last from compunction of my reason, and the blade slashed down. Janich the Khamorro staggered back with a ruined face and blood everywhere, ghastly in that streaming pink radiance. Then Turko yelled and I went flying as Chimche smashed into me from the side.

Somehow I clung onto the thraxter and shoved up and saw Chimche and Turko locked, and Turko flipped into the air to land with a smash. Chimche glanced at Janich, who was dead, and at me, and he roared mightily.

“Stinking nul of a sworder! You will die now!”

He rushed. I staggered up, for a fallen branch had not rotted enough and a jagged splinter of wood had sorely bruised me and taken my wind. I circled the blade, sliced at his wrist, drew blood, and made him stagger back, roaring.

“You have not learned, Chimche,” I got out. “A sword will settle for you, you cramph.” And I started after him.

Turko leaned up on an elbow, gasping, his face drawn with pain. I circled the thraxter again and then, and I suppose for the first time, Chimche got a clear look at my face.

He turned, bolted for the voller, clambered in, and the next instant the flier rose above the treetops, fleeing into the pink moonlight flooding down over Kregen.

I admit, then, I shouted a few uncomplimentary things after Chimche the Khamorro, comprehensively anatomizing his ancestry and his lineage and his personal habits and his eventual fate and where I would like to see him. Oh, yes, I was annoyed!

I had handled the whole affair like a green onker straight out of nursery school!

Where, I said to myself, is the Dray Prescot of the Clansmen of Felschraung, of the bravo-fighters of Zenicce, of the Krozairs of Zy, not to mention that puffed-up Drak of Valka? Had the Star Lords and their bedeviling demands completely addled my brain?

I swung back to Turko and helped him get up, for he had been thrown heavily and had been struck a shrewd blow.

“And don’t prate to me, Turko, about not laying hands on a Khamorro. You have seen how I deal with Khamorros. And now, by Makki-Grodno’s diseased left armpit, we have to deal with the manhounds and those perfumed idiots who think they are on a great Jikai. We’re all in this together, now.”

Turko stared at me, his eyes half-closed, rubbing his bruised side.

“We march with the moons!” I shouted to the beast-men. “We take the trail away from the slave pens. And, first—” And here, at the mouth of the trail we must take, I cut a long stake and pointed it and thrust it at an angle into the ground, camouflaging it with leaves. “May a manhound degut himself on that, to the glory of Opaz!”

Then, with Mog the Migla witch slung over my shoulder and my other arm around Turko supporting him and helping him along and followed by a jabbering crowd of halflings and two pretty girls, I, Dray Prescot, set off to outrun the Man-hounds of Antares.

Of mantraps and medicine

Along the jungle trail we left a fine old collection of traps.

There was no time I would spare to dig pits, but whenever we came across a natural hole that a few murs of labor might turn into a mantrap we happily spent that time, barbing the bottom with spikes, laying thin branches and many leaves across the top and sprinkling about the stinking detritus of the rain forest to camouflage the trap.

We constructed deadfalls, of a variety of patterns to make their discernment less easy. Rapechak entered into this work with great gusto. Turko had been badly knocked by the fall and although I had prodded his ribs, to his silent suffering, and found nothing broken, I was not happy that he did not have a broken bone in that magnificent body of his somewhere. I would not listen when he wanted to help with the trap making, and snarled at him to lie down and rest. “If you must show how brave and noble a Khamorro you are, Turko, keep your eyes on Mog. I don’t want her to run off.”

She had moaned and shrieked, but now she was silent, except to say, now and then: “No one escapes the manhounds, Dray Prescot, you nulsh. We are all dead.”

Whereat I shouted across: “Keep the old witch quiet, Turko, or, by thunder, I’ll gag her in her own foul breechclout!”

We left many pointed and cunningly positioned stakes along the trail. I hoped a manhound, loping after us, sniffing the scent from our baited shoes, would leap full onto the sharp point of the stake and so wriggle with the dark blood dropping down until he died.

I’d far rather see, I own, one of the hunters in that position, but I knew them. They used the manhounds to track and corral the quarry; then they stepped in with their beautiful and expensive crossbows, their swords and their spears.

Once, Mog shrieked at me, “You ninny, Dray Prescot! The shoes the guides give us are baited. The manhounds can pick up the scent a dwabur off! Why do you not kick off the shoes?”

“Quiet, you old crone!”

Rapechak took his shoes off and was about to hurl them into the jungle when I stopped him. His fierce beaked face swung down to look at me, and his eyes glared, ready for an instant quarrel. I had suffered much from Rapas in the past. But I was prepared to explain to this Rapechak.

“Later. Later we will dispose of the shoes. Not now.”

He would have argued, but I swung away, shouting about a tree trunk the halflings were trying to angle as a deadfall, and threatening to crush their own stupid brains out in the process. Rapechak put his shoes back on.

We could march for some distance yet. There was plenty of light from the Twins and later from She of the Veils; the enemy would be fatigued. Already, as seemed to be their custom, a Fristle man carried a Fristle woman. I didn’t want to have to help the two human girls, for I had Mog to worry about and, to a different degree, Turko. He was in great pain, but not a murmur of complaint passed his lips. And, to me a strange fact, he still looked handsome. Suffering sometimes ennobles and makes one look radiant; not often.

When I calculated that we would exhaust our strength without adequate return by pressing on, I told everyone to take off their shoes. We found a great tree and climbed into its lower branches and there with the rammed-in thorns formed our palisade and made camp. We ate the rest of the food, and water was found in a nearby stream. I looked at this bedraggled band.

“Rapechak,” I said. And, to a Brokelsh, “You, too, Gynor. Are you done yet, or are you for a little sport?”

They didn’t understand. When I explained, both Rapa and Brokelsh gave expressions of pleasure in their respective halfling ways.

We three, then, struck off along the trail where it turned along by a river. We had prepared stakes which we used to make of that trail a death trap, unless one went cautiously, and inspected every fold of leaf. Presently, after a bur or so, we came to a gorge into which the stream fell. We threw the shoes down, having rubbed them well along the brink.

“May all the manhounds go to the Ice Floes of Sicce!” said Gynor, the Brokelsh. He was strong and his black body-bristles sprouted fiercely.

We went back to the camp and Turko looked up and said, “Mog is still here, Dray Prescot,” to which I replied, “Good,” and so we all rested. We set watches, for that was prudent, here in the rain forests of Northern Faol.

In the morning, by first light, a mingling of opaline radiance, we set off again along the small trail leading off from the other side of the tree. Here we set no traps but pressed on as far and as fast as we might. Those of the slaves whose feet were in the worst condition had rags wrapped about them, and we all struggled and slipped through terrible country, half-naked, gleaming with sweat, for it was very hot, panting and plunging on. We looked very much like fugitives then.

At a resting place, when it was time to move on, for I would not stop to catch food and eat, Turko looked up as I lifted him.

“Leave me, Dray Prescot. I cannot go farther. I am done for.”

I ignored him and got him on my back.

Mog cackled as Rapechak, who understood I meant what I said, prodded her on.

“He is a fool, that Khamorro!” The old witch spat out the words. “Migshaanu the Pitiless witnessed it! He attacked the great kham Chimche when Chimche would have broken you like a reed, Prescot! And now look at him, his guts caved in.”

I said to Turko: “I believe you attacked Chimche, Turko, and for this I thank you. Now do not prattle like a baby onker. I will not leave you for the manhounds.”

“So be it, Dray Prescot.”

I could not tell him that great kham or not, Chimche would have been a dead man if he had fought me, without Turko’s assistance which, truth to tell, had thrown me off balance. A fighting-man, used to the melee, as it is known among my fighting clansmen, keeps the eyes in the back of his head well open all the time. As witness poor Alex Hunter, back there on a beach in Valka. And that seemed a long time ago, by Zair!

That day we hurried on rapidly, and turn and turn about the stronger helped the weaker. I noticed the two girls, who claimed to be rich merchant’s daughters, kept close to me. Beyond learning that their names were Saenda — the fair one — and Quaesa — the dark one — and that they came from different parts of Havilfar and already were putting on airs, one claiming superiority over the other, only to have some other remarkable fact brought to life in opposition, I took no notice of them except to see they kept up with the party.