Manhounds of Antares (14 page)

“I didn’t ask to be brought to Kregen! But now that I’m here I have found my own destiny! If you want my help you’ll have to—”

But the Gdoinye had heard enough of my puling roaring, for he winged up and away, a golden and scarlet messenger of glory, from a bunch of Star Lords I’d as lief squeeze between my fingers and let drip through in a red mush. He soared up, shining in the mingled light of the twin suns.

His last harsh cry streamed down with that opaline light.

“You are a fool, Dray Prescot!”

Then he was a mere black dot against the suns-glow.

I cursed.

Oh, I cursed!

But, of course, there was nothing for me to do but go back and do as the Star Lords ordered and get Tulema out to a place of safety. After that . . . and then I knew that after that, before I could investigate the scarlet-roped Todalpheme, before I could spend pleasant days discovering more about the vollers, before, even, I could return to Vallia and Delia, I would have to return to the barred slave pens of Faol and warn the slaves. I would have to defeat the Kov of Faol and Nalgre and put paid to this foul and despicable game they played with their two-faced treacherous guides.

When I turned back to the cleft in the river bank with its camouflage of trees the slaves were out of the airboat and clamoring their wonder like a pack of jackdaws. Of them all, apart from Tulema and myself, only one was a human being, the rest being halflings of one sort and another. This young man, who had fed himself well in the caves, kept much to himself and spoke little. He said his name was Nath, but I did not believe him. He had red hair, and so might be a Lohvian. When a Brokelsh had pressed him, this Nath had said he came from Thothangir, and, again, I did not believe him.

This Nath na Thothangir walked toward me swinging one of the guide’s swords. I eyed him meanly.

“Where are we, Dray Prescot? How did we come here?”

I gathered the rest of the slaves about and told them what had happened. They were, as was to be expected, exceedingly enraged, and a Relt, ordinarily one of the kindest of peoples, began threatening to have the guides tossed into a neighbor’s pit back home. The neighbor, he informed us, was a Rapa of some wealth and power. We all agreed. The guides deserved such a terrible fate, for their duplicity and heartlessness as much as for their cruelty.

After that, with a flier at their disposal, the slaves began a volatile and acrimonious wrangling as to our destination.

I said to Tulema: “Where in all of Kregen do you wish to go, Tulema? Where is your home?”

She laughed, and the tears stood in her eyes.

“I have no home since I was abducted from Herrell, and I have no wish to return there. Where you go, Dray Prescot, there will I go, also!”

“Where you go, Dray Prescot, there will I go also!”

This was a right leem’s-nest.

I stood gawping at Tulema who had once been of Herrell.

She said it again, stamping her foot.

“Where you go, Dray Prescot, there will I go, also!”

She meant it; that was perfectly plain.

She could not go with me; that, too, was perfectly plain.

What had the Gdoinye meant, that I was playing games here in Faol, that my antics amused them? If I was to rescue Tulema for the Star Lords’ devious purposes, did that mean I had to take her back to Vallia?

What, then, would Delia say?

As to that, I had no doubts. No other woman in two worlds means anything beside Delia. But I still had a duty to perform, and Tulema, because of that — and because she was young and frightened and alone — must be cared for.

Deciding that the most prudent course was to say nothing more of our destination to her — and seeing that that, too, was the cowardly way and thereby, as may surprise you, feeling a gust of amusement rather than of anger — I set about sorting out the halflings. They had to be told what I intended to do. If left to themselves they would have begun fighting bitterly over the different places they insisted on reaching immediately.

The only justification I can offer for my decision was that these halflings, escaped slaves, did not have the Star Lords breathing down their necks.

Those that had necks, that was.

Sammly, from distant Quennohch, for instance, only with extreme kindness could be said to have a neck, his head, as it did, sprouting from between his two upper limbs. But he was a good-hearted fellow, and said he wouldn’t mind being set down somewhere convenient in Havilfar. He could work his passage home aboard any of the regular voller lines. His left center limb scratched at his carapace as he spoke.

“Does anyone,” I said over the hubbub, and quieting them by the rasp in my voice, “know the way to Hyrklana?”

“I do,” said the youth who said he was Nath na Thothangir.

“Then that is where we shall fly.” I silenced the immediate babble of protest. “If anyone wishes to alight earlier, they will of course be allowed to do so.”

By Zim-Zair, I said to myself, with another uncharacteristic chuckle, I was running a coach service!

Tulema grabbed hold of me and started in slapping. I fended her off, astonished.

“What, Tulema? What the blue blazes is the matter with you?”

“The matter, indeed! I know! You lust after that yellow-haired Lilah, that calls herself a princess!”

“By the Black Chunkrah! What other friends do we have in Havilfar if you won’t damn well go home?”

Also, although I did not tell her so, I wanted to make sure Lilah had indeed reached safety.

None of them seemed to consider my warning about the guides; they refused to face up to the fact that those people they had seen leave the slave pens in such high hopes were all dead. Tulema simply assumed that Lilah was free. I devoutly hoped that was so, remembering those vicious men and the pen of fluttrells waiting to be mounted and sent in whooping pursuit of the golden-haired princess.

Without arguing further I went up to the flier and we ate what little food there was and drank from the river and then I shouted: “I am leaving now. All aboard who’s coming aboard.” That was enough to make them pack themselves in as best they might. They settled down with a considerable amount of flutter and argument as I inched the voller out over the river, turned her, and sent her streaking skyward.

The direction we needed to travel was southeast, according to this Nath na Thothangir, who sat up at the controls with me. We had to strike due east for some way before risking turning south. We had no wish to fly directly over the slave pens, for we knew other fliers would rise to challenge us.

“Hyrklana is on the east coast of Havilfar. It is a large and powerful kingdom.” Nath spoke with a bitterness in his voice I had no explanation for, and I had no inclination to find the reasons. Then, with a fleeting sideways look at me, he said: “That dopa-den dancing girl. She mentioned a name—”

About to snub him for speaking in such a way about Tulema, for I did not miss the scorn in his voice, I paused for two reasons. One was that I was surprised he should reach the same conclusions about Tulema as myself; the other that, after a pause, as it were, to gather his breath, he went on: “She mentioned the name of the Princess Lilah.”

“And if she did?”

“You know her? That is why you wish to travel to Hyrklana?”

“Perhaps.”

I did not believe in giving away information.

“You will be sorry if you venture into Hyrklana uninvited. As in Hamal, the arenas there are ever hungry for fresh fodder.”

“As to that, we shall see what we shall see.”

And with that pompous reply this redheaded young man who claimed he was Nath na Thothangir had to rest content.

We crossed a stretch of sea and left Faol to our rear, at which, I confess, I felt much relief. New land spread out before us, and this youth Nath told me it was Hennardrin. We turned and flew south, along the coastline. Presently, with much of the day gone, and a smooth eight-point turn to starboard we flew over the White Rock of Gilmoy. So, if Lilah had not been caught this was the way she would have flown.

We went on and Nath began to fidget as our southerly course swung us inland. Below unrolled a massive forest, with clearings here and there in which towns had been built. No one so far wished to get off this aerial excursion. We were all hungry and thirsty by now, and so I said we would descend and hunt for our supper.

One of the halflings pushed his way through the jumbled passengers at my back and, puffing a little, smoothed down the yellow fur around his eyes and mouth and polished up the laypom-colored fur beneath his chin.

“If you will continue for another four or five dwaburs, on this course,” he said in his smooth honeylike voice, “you will come to a fine city built by a great orange river. That is Ordsmot. There, I believe, you will find all the food and wine you may require. You see,” he finished, and I detected a huge relief and happiness in him, “I am Dorval Aymlo of Ordsmot”

Over the chorus of voices declaring that this was splendid news, I considered. This Dorval Aymlo was a member of the halfling race sometimes called Lamniarese — the Lamnias — of whom at that time I knew little. You must understand that, in accordance with my original plan, although surrounded by many different kinds of half-men I introduce them to you only when they come upon the stage of my story. I believed this Aymlo of Ordsmot to speak the truth.
Ord,
as you know, is the Kregish for “eight,” and a
smot
is a large town, large enough, at times, to be considered as a city. I guessed why it had been given the name of “Eight-town” — it would be divided up into eight sections, each occupied by a different race.

“Done,” I said. “And many thanks to you, Horter Aymlo.”

Horter is, of course, the Havilfar equivalent to the Vallian Koter, or Mister.

The airboat sped onward in the gathering darkness with only two of the lesser moons hurtling close by above.

We had traveled a considerable distance since leaving Faol — thanks be! — and I fancied this voller was a far speedier craft than any I had flown in before. Also, I had the hunch that the confounded thing would not break down as frequently as those the Havilfarese sold to Vallia and Zenicce and their other overseas customers.

Tulema was looking ahead and she saw the great bend of the river, shining faintly in the growing light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles rising away to our left, and she cried out in delight. A mass of twinkling lights in an immense circle, crisscrossed by the four main boulevards in a huge wagon-wheel demarcating the eight precincts, showed us without mistake where lay Ordsmot upon the orange river. I sent the airboat slanting down to an enclave near the river at Aymlo’s directions. The lights spread out around us. The dark masses of trees rushed past and I slowed our descent. Buildings flashed past beneath.

“There!” said Dorval Aymlo, pointing over my shoulder. “Where that tower rises, beside those warehouses and the beautiful godown!”

By his words and his tone of voice I knew he was pointing to his home.

We landed in a courtyard with buildings on three sides and the river on the fourth. Doors opened and lights flared. The Maiden with the Many Smiles was hidden for a space by buildings and trees, and it was unusually dark upon Kregen where we were in Aymlo’s home in Ordsmot.

He cried out in a great voice: “It is me! Dorval Aymlo! I am home, my children!
I am home!”

I know how I felt, and I am sure that everyone aboard felt just the same. How we longed to be able to shout the same words, filled with joy and happiness!

I climbed out and Aymlo, who would have alighted next, was pushed aside by Tulema. She hated to let me out of her sight. I stood on the hard-packed earth of the courtyard and I smelled the wonderful sweet scent of the night flowers, and I saw the people from the house running toward us, bearing torches that flared their glowing hair upon the night.

“It is me, Dorval Aymlo!” the Lamnia called again.

He started to run forward.

The youth Nath, who said he was from Thothangir, stood at my side. In his hand the guide sword gleamed from the torchlight. I had kept the other sword. Nath swore.

“The old fool! Cannot he see they bear weapons?”

Truly, in the torchlight the flicker of spears showed bright in the forefront of those men toward whom Dorval Aymlo ran with his arms up, crying aloud in his joy.

And a voice lifted, a harsh, brutal voice.

“Aye! We know you are Dorval Aymlo! This house and this business are yours no longer! Know that I am Rafer Aymlo, your nephew, and these are my men, and this house and this business is mine! And know, also, old fool, that you and all those with you are dead, dead, dead!”

How Dorval Aymlo the merchant of Ordsmot came home

Even as Dorval Aymlo shouted in a high and shocked scream of utter disbelief and despair, I jumped forward, the sword low. This was no business of mine. But the old Lamnia had been so happy — he had been so overjoyed and he was a kindly old soul — and now, this!

So I jumped forward, like a headstrong fool, and Nath of Thothangir leaped at my side, his red hair black in the torchlight.

Aymlo screeched and stumbled and fell — and that for a surety saved his life, for the spear thrust passed above his prostrate body. In a twinkling I had thrust in my turn, and recovered from the lunge, and taken the next spear and so, twisting, hacked down the furry face of the Lamnia attacking me.

Nath fought with a series of clever but overly vigorous cut and thrusts. I smashed into the other Lamnias, for I knew that they would in truth kill us all if they were not stopped, and that would not please the Star Lords. Among the Lamnias were Rapas and humans and these fought, on the whole, with more skill and viciousness than the Lamniarese, which was only natural. Very quickly I found three Rapas at my side wielding fallen spears, and these were released slaves, my fellows. We fought and for a space the compound resounded to the shrill of battling men, the slide and scrape of steel, the shrieks of the wounded, and the bubbling groans of the dying.