Manhounds of Antares (15 page)

The very savagery of the ex-slaves’ rush, the sudden reversal of their own weapons, the blood spouting from gaping wounds, unnerved our opponents. One of our Brokelsh was down, with a spear in his guts, but that was the extent of our casualties. Our opponents fled. Dorval Aymlo stood up, holding his hands in the air in horror. The Maiden with the Many Smiles floated serenely above the rooftops with their notched outlines and upflung gable ends, and her pink radiance streamed out upon that scene of destruction.

“By Opaz the All-Merciful!” exclaimed Aymlo, scarcely able to speak. “What devil’s work is this?”

A Rapa laughed nastily, wiping his spear on the clothing of a dead Rapa he had slain. “It is very simple, old fool. This bastard nephew of yours stole your house and your goods and he would have slain you to keep them!”

“Well,” said Dorval Aymlo, in a voice of pain, “the deed has brought him nothing but sorrow. For, see, here lies the body of Rafee Aymlo, all dead and bloody.”

And, indeed there lay the nephew, with the laypom-colored fur beneath his chin dabbled with blood and bisected by a great swiping gash. I knew that was not my handiwork. The redheaded youth who said he was Nath of Thothangir was more than a little of a hacker with a sword.

We all went into the great house, on the alert, and found a frenzied attempt on the part of female Lamnias to pack up the stolen wealth of Dorval Aymlo and to depart. We stopped them, Aymlo wanted nothing of revenge. We discovered his wife and six children, still alive, penned in a filthy basement, and we released them to hysterical scenes of sobbing and laughter, to which we slaves left them and so found ourselves food and drink. The business as merchant carried on by Dorval Aymlo was extensive and he was a relatively wealthy halfling. His nephew had trapped him and sold him into slavery, and he had wound up on Faol, sport for the great Jikai. Now he was home, and he could not do enough for us.

The next day we had to consider what to do. From Ordsmot many of the released slaves could find their way home to various parts of Havilfar, and Aymlo was only too happy to give them, freely and without interest or thought of return, sufficient gold to get them comfortably home, broad gold deldys, the Havilfar coin corresponding to the Vallian talen.

Aymlo’s next-door neighbor, and others, crowded in to congratulate him, for he was a kindly man and well thought of. Among those whom the news brought hurrying to Aymlo’s house was a man. He was, in the Kregan way, tall and well built, with a handsome open face with a fine pair of black moustaches, and it would be difficult to say how old he was between, say twenty and a hundred-and-twenty — as is the Kregan way.

His name was Tom Dorand ti Ordsmot, and he took an instant shine to Tulema. This Dorand did a considerable business with Aymlo, and all the time, between congratulating the old Lamnia on his remarkable escape and bargaining over new deals, his bold eyes kept straying toward Tulema. She knew, at once. She did all the things that, I suppose, most women have done since the very first Delia of Kregen captivated the very first Drak of Kregen, many thousands of years ago, as the old legends have it, when Kregen itself first emerged from the sea-cloud to receive the light of Zim and Genodras and be blessed by the dance of the seven moons.

She was talking to me, most animatedly, and she kept tossing her hair back and laughing, and arching her back the better to reach for a glass of wine, or a miscil, or stretch for the platter of palines on the sturm-wood table. We had all been through the baths of nine, and were sweet and clean, and, truly, Tulema looked very desirable, with the lamplight shining on her hair and sparkling in her eyes. I often think that the light from a samphron-oil lamp is particularly kind to a woman.

I felt a great relief, and took myself off, and let Dame Nature, who operates as successfully on Kregen as she does on this Earth, get to work.

Come to that, I took the trouble — which was no real trouble and was, in any case, a duty of friendship — to find out what I could of this Tom Dorand. He was a solid upstanding citizen of Ordsmot, respected in all the eight precincts. He carried on a lighter business, ferrying goods up and down the orange river from Ordsmot, the entrepôt hereabouts. Between them, he and Aymlo had a good thing going with regular contracts.

With all the halflings rescued from the manhunters taken care of, with Tulema almost certainly off my hands, there remained only Nath.

“I care not where I go, Dray Prescot. Do not worry your head about me, although I give you thanks for my life.”

“As to that,” I said, “so be it.”

Later Tulema spoke to me. She was very serious. Her dark eyes regarded me solemnly.

“You may think it strange, Dray. But I have not been a dancing girl in a dopa pen for nothing. I know men. I know your heart is somewhere I can never reach.”

It may have been flowery — Kregans love a fine phrase — but it was true.

“I hope you will be happy, Tulema. Tom is a fine man.”

She flushed at that. “Oh, so you noticed!”

I didn’t chuckle, but my lips ricked up a trifle.

“I did not wish to hurt you,” she went on. “But I am hard enough in this world to know a chance when one comes my way. You do not love me — and—” here she flared up, and spoke with a great show of bravura contempt— “and I do not love you! I shall marry Tom. I think, though, I shall choose a lesser contract, just to be safe. I shall be happy. He owns many lighters, and will soon go into the voller business. And Dorval Aymlo is rich and is our friend.”

“May Opaz bless you, Tulema.”

It seemed to me, then, that I had fulfilled the wishes of the Star Lords. I tried to imagine how a lighter owner, and a man who might go into the voller business, might have some effect on Kregen that had drawn him to the attention of the Star Lords. I knew they did nothing without good cause. They had wanted Tulema rescued — and she now was engaged to marry Tom Dorand ti Ordsmot and no doubt they would have children, possibly twins, and it would be these children in whose interest the Star Lords operated. I guessed the Star Lords worked with an eye cocked very far into the future.

My task appeared, as I say, to be finished. Truly, I was a simple onker in those far-off days!

Prevailed on to remain as a guest with Dorval Aymlo, and then specifically invited to the coming nuptials, I agreed to wait twelve days, two Kregen weeks. Then — Vallia!

Halfway through the first week, dressed up in a fine dark red tunic, with white trousers, and a turban of white silk upon my head — very fashionable gear in Ordsmot, then, the turban — I wandered about the town. One could walk quite freely in any of the eight precincts, only taking a little care not to be too far from the area of one’s own race by nightfall — and then only if none of the greater moons were in the sky — for skirmishes and clashes between the races were relatively rare. There was no Chulik sector, and I saw none of those fierce yellow-skinned tusked halflings in Ordsmot at that time.

Coming in one evening I was halted by Aymlo, who was in a high old state of excitement. He was dressed up in the most profuse and lavish clothes, with jewels smothering his turban, and a golden belt, and curled slippers of foofray satin. The house blazed with many lights and the expenditure of samphron oil must have been prodigious.

“Dray!” he said, clutching me by the arm, his yellow fur glowing. “Dray — the Vad of Tungar visits me!”

I congratulated him.

Tungar, I knew, was a large and prosperous province of the country whose boundaries ran ward and ward with those of Ordsmot. Ordsmot, of course, was a free city, with her own elected council and Kodifex, chosen by rote, a term at a time, from each of the eight precincts.

“He has large ideas, Dray! He owns much land, dwabur after dwabur, and wishes to develop. If my old business head will aid me now, he and I will strike a pretty bargain or two!”

“May Opaz shine on you, Dorval, my friend.”

“And but for you, Dray Prescot, I should be bait for the Manhounds of Antares!”

“Don’t think of such things, Dorval. They are of the past.”

A commotion began outside, with the sound of zorca hooves, the tinkle of bells, and the soft silver sound of trumpets. These were not the famous silver trumpets of Loh, but they made a brave welcoming sound. Aymlo darted outside to greet his guest by the light of flaring torches.

I strolled after.

The conviction grew on me that I should not push myself forward here. This was business — and, Zair knew, I had done enough of business during my time as Strom of Valka, and later as Prince Majister of Vallia, when I had worked hard with the Companies of Friends — and my instincts were that Aymlo would want to prosecute his plans to his own fashioning. So I wandered out to stand in the shadows of the entranceway as the Vad of Tungar alighted from his zorca.

He made an impressive sight.

Clad all in crimson silk, with a lavish display of gold and jewels about his person, the straight sword of Havilfar they call a thraxter swinging at his side on a silken baldric heavily embellished with jewels and gold thread, he ran up the steps, hand outstretched, calling: “Lahal, Dorval! Lahal! Your happy return brings joy to my heart.”

It was Aymlo’s business, but this man was a Vad, a rank below that of a Kov, though a high rank, nonetheless. I felt an itch of apprehension, and then every other thought was banished from my head as I saw Tulema move forward into the torchlight. Tom Dorand moved, a vague shadow, at her back. Tulema looked radiant. She wore a sheer gown all of white silk, with crimson embroidery at throat and hem, cunningly slit so that her long legs showed in a gleam of warm flesh. The baths of nine and much scented oils and costly perfumes had transformed Tulema, the one-time dancing girl from a dopa den. Now she was the great lady.

I saw her face. She stared at the Vad of Tungar as risslaca stare at a loloo’s egg.

And — he halted in his impetuous greeting of Aymlo, and stared up at Tulema there in the torchlight, and his business was done for him.

So they stared at each other, and I looked at them, and a hateful croaking voice sounded in my ears, coming from no earthbound denizen of Kregen.

“Truly, Dray Prescot, you are a prince of onkers!”

And the blue radiance took me, and swirled me up, and twisted me, and so departed . . . I felt stinking rock beneath my naked body and the stench of slaves in my nostrils and I knew I had been thrust brutally back once again into the barred slave pens of the Manhunters of Faol.

Concerning the purposes of the Star Lords

I didn’t believe it.

I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it.

How could I, again, have brought out the wrong person from under the slavering fangs of the Manhounds of Antares?

It was all a cruel jest of the Star Lords, to punish me for being a prince of onkers.

Surely, after taking Tulema safely out, and spending so much time in her company, after she was safe, in Ordsmot, she had to be the right one! I lay there in the stink and gloom of the barred caves and I confess I came as near as I ever allow myself to despair.

Then I roused myself.

There had to be an explanation, and I was too stupid to see what must so clearly be dangling in front of my nose.

Princess Lilah. The Pallan Golan. Latimer the voller magnate. And Tulema the dancing girl.

Well, none of these four was the one I had been sent here to seek.

Then an awful thought struck me.

Tulema had said, distinctly, that she was the last of those who had been with me in the cave when I arrived.

There was no one left for me to rescue — apart, that was, from a milling mass of a hundred or more filthy, unwashed, clamoring slaves.

So that must be the answer. I was to release them all.

I pondered on this carefully, for as I have indicated, the rash freeing of slaves, no matter how desirable that may be, is not wisely undertaken without much forethought. If these miserable creatures were released they would rush screaming into the jungle, and the Manhounds of Antares would lope after them, red tongues lolling in human imitation of hunting dogs, and devour them all. They would perish in the jungle. They would die on the plains. How many, if any at all, would reach safety?

I had vowed with my Delia to end the abomination of slavery on Kregen, thinking that a part of what the Savanti wished. But how would that vow help me now?

“By Hito the Hunter!” said a voice in my ear, a startled voice. “I thought you were dead for sure!”

I looked up from the floor and there was Nath the Guide, bending over me, wearing a mightily puzzled frown. Of course he could recognize me, for I had gone through the baths of the nine, and had my hair and beard trimmed, and so looked something like the Dray Prescot who had first arrived here. And, also, something else I should have observed much earlier then struck me. These so-called guides who claimed to guide people out to safety would hardly swear by the name of a mighty hunter. No, I should have seen that earlier.

“And I thought you dead, also, Nath.”

I refrained from immediately leaping up and dealing with him as he had left us to be dealt with by the great Jikai. It was through no help of his that Princess Lilah and I had escaped. “You disappeared, and we feared a leem had taken you.”

He cobbled a story together swiftly, and, truth to tell, he was more concerned with his lies than he was to find fault with my story of running and walking until strange beast-men had taken me and so, eventually, sold me back here.

Nath talked on, very volubly, about his concern for the slaves and how he sorrowed that he had been snatched away by wild beasts, and fought them, and so won free. In truth, there in the barred caves cut into the rocks, we had a high old time swapping lies, and this brought me back to something of a better humor.

“I would like to go out again, Nath, and this time escape clear away.”

“Of course! A party is due tomorrow. You must be with us.” Then, meaningfully, he added: “There are three Khamorros among us, and they are very fierce men.”