Manhounds of Antares (7 page)

The Khamorro, after taking my measure, as he must have supposed, and seeing that hesitation on my part, thereafter ignored me and fell into conversation with Tulema. I looked at them both and, for the sake of an honor that has often been a sore trial to me, as you know, vowed that if he troubled her I would break his neck for him, despite his secret knowledge.

If I simply walked up to the golden-haired girl and began to talk to her, she might think my intentions were the same as the Khamorro’s toward Tulema. I was saved a solution to that dilemma by the entry of another girl, beautiful and lithe, but with a yellow hair that in its dustiness and lack of shine could in nowise compare with the golden glory of the first girl, who stood now so sadly at the lenken bars.

“A princess!” said this second girl, in a high and mocking voice. “The proud Lilah says she is a princess! Is not this a great joke?”

Slaves can relish a joke, if it suits their somber moods, as well as anyone else. And, too, most of these slaves knew that with the help of the guides they would win free of the chase and so escape with their lives and liberty. So they were in nowise as downcast a mood as are slaves who see before them only another day’s toil as hard and agonizing as today’s, and after that another, and another, and the only surcease in death.

The beautiful girl with the golden hair did not turn around. She spoke in a low musical voice that gave full expression to the beauty of language universal Kregish undeniably possesses.

“I am a princess, Tosie, in all truth. But what good that will do me I cannot say.”

“You cunning liar!” This Tosie was furious, now, her head thrown back, her hands on hips, her whole stance indicative of intense personal anger and frustration. “You promise the guides much money and great rewards if they will guide you out, pretending to be a princess. Well, then!” Tosie’s face took on a triumphant look as she screamed: “If you are the Princess Lilah, then I am the Queen Tosie! You should bow and scrape to me! I’ll promise the guides anything to take me away from this awful place!”

Tosie was no queen, that appeared certain. But if this Lilah was a princess, then she was the one the Star Lords wished me to rescue. What their ends might be I did not know, but the rescue of this glorious Princess Lilah was a task to which they had set my hands. I would not fail them; I must not, for until I had completed their mission I would not be allowed to return to Vallia and my Delia, my Delia of Delphond.

“It is because I am Princess of Hyrklana that I may not do as you intend, Tosie. I can only offer rewards to the guides when I return home to my father’s palace.”

“And I shall offer rewards, too! Money! Lands! Zorcas! Totrixes! Women — and money again! Whatever you offer I will double. If you think you will escape and leave me here to be hunted, alone and without a guide, you think wrongly!”

A blast on the stentors’ horns cut into the argument. The sound was different from the call that had driven everyone in such great panic out of the feeding hall and into the cells to crowd up against the lenken bars. The slaves began that surging movement, shouting and pushing, and all rushed off toward the feeding cave. By this time I fancied a juicy chunk of vosk would not come amiss, so I started off, too.

I looked back.

Tosie, who called herself a queen and was probably a dancing girl in a dopa den like Tulema, had gone. Tulema herself was just running out, assisted by the Khamorro. I would find her again, if necessary, but now, with the knowledge that it was the Princess Lilah I must rescue, I could let Tulema go.

Lilah turned listlessly from the bars.

“Come, Princess,” I said. “If you would eat we must hurry to the feeding cave.”

She looked at me.

Her eyes were blue, and though I could guess they would normally be bright and clear and frank, now they were clouded with suspicion.

Before she could say what so clearly lay in her mind, I said swiftly, “There will be a struggle for the food, Princess. We must hurry.”

She stood there, drooping and defenseless, and the thought occurred to me that if ever my Delia found herself in this position again — which Zair forbid! — there would be a man ready to protect her without thought of reward.

“You — call me
princess—”

“I see you are. Now, come.”

She went with me through the barred cells and passageways and so into the feeding cave. We were too late. Most of the other slaves had already taken what they could snatch and the remainder were clustered about the dilse tureens.

My instincts were to knock down the nearest person eating a hunk of vosk and chewing on onions and snatch the food away. Perhaps I was growing weak and feeble, but I did not. I said, “We must eat dilse today, Princess. At the next feeding time you must run very swiftly.”

She made a small dismissive gesture with her hand. I noticed her fingers, very long and slender, and I tried to imagine them plunging into the heaped food on the floor and bunching into tiny fists to strike away those who would snatch the food first. She would not starve, but she would grow lean of face and listless on dilse.

We were fed at regular intervals, I guessed every five burs or so — something like three and a half hours — and the reason for this lavish expenditure of food was quite clear. Whoever owned this island of Faol, where slaves were run and hunted as quarry, had to please his customers; and these came from many islands and lands even from beyond Havilfar, so the slaves must be well fed and active to furnish good sport.

I would relish a short interview with this fellow.

At the next feeding call, when the stentor horns boomed and clamored through the passageways and cells cut in the rocks, I grabbed Lilah’s hand and fairly dragged her along. Many slaves clustered about the entrance to the feeding hall, of course, just before they guessed the call would come, and these rushed in first. I plowed my way through them and halfway to the mess of food let Lilah go and lunged on.

How had my pride been humbled!

Here I was, a naked slave grubbing and fighting for food scattered on a filthy floor, when only a day ago I had eaten all the delicacies my heart could desire — and then I shut all self-pity from my mind. I hardened — and I am only too prone to being a soft man in many things, as you know.

Lilah accepted the food. She might have thought to stand on her dignity, but when she saw the dripping hunk of vosk I snatched up, and felt the firm lusciousness of the onions, smelled the cheese — it was a dreadful smell, in truth, but it was food — she could not hold back. She ate with a strange pathetic mixture of ravenous hunger and a finicky set of table manners. I just wolfed the stuff down.

And then, again, that clamoring of stentor horns broke out afresh and with wild cries all the slaves ran out of the feeding cave to press themselves against the lenken bars.

But I had not quite finished the chunk of hard bread, for in my lazy, wealthy way back in Vallia I had grown used to the finest food, and so was slow with this lenklike loaf.

Lilah said, “Dray — we must run! It is the call for the jiklos! Hurry!”

She might know what in hell a jiklo was; I did not, and I wanted to finish this confounded chunk of iron-hard bread. Lilah was terrified. She did not catch my arm, as Tulema would have done, to drag me away. She started for the exit, and turned, her golden hair swirling, and cried, “Hurry, Dray! Hurry!”

Chewing on the bread I walked after her.

Truly, pride is a foolish item in a man’s baggage!

I heard the jiklos, then.

I heard an eerie, spine-chilling, frightful, and obscene hissing and howling, a scrabbling of claws, the rush of bodies. Lilah screamed and ran. I turned to look back.

A glimpse, I had, a glimpse back through a freshly opened entrance to the cave. Ruby light spilled out from the space beyond.

Through that bloody radiance dreadful forms ran on all fours over the filthy floor. I saw matted hair crested into upswept combs, and trailing out to the rear. I saw flashing eyes. Teeth glinted like rows of daggers. Hands and feet pounded the dust and filth of the floor. Red tongues lolled. The jiklos howled at sight of me — and then Lilah was there, pulling me on. We stumbled back through the entrance to the feeding cave and iron bars clashed down, almost crushing us.

The leading jiklo threw himself against those bars, slavering. His eyes regarded me with the utmost malevolence.

I looked at him.

And I saw what he was.

I felt the sick nausea welling up.

So I first made the acquaintance of the Manhounds of Antares.

Manhounds

“But they’re
men!”

I have seen many and many a sight that might drive any normal man insane. I have never considered myself a normal man, and for that hubris I have suffered. But I do believe that the Manhounds of Antares made as strong an impression of decadence and evil and horror upon me as anything I have seen on Earth or on Kregen.

They were men.

But they ran on all fours. Their faces were human faces. But they had fierce sharply serrated teeth, they had pricked ears, pointed and mobile, they had squashed pug noses that could wrinkle up and sniff and follow a scent that might baffle bloodhounds. They had the bodies of men. But their hands padded against the ground, and their rear legs were shorter and thicker than those of a man who walks upright. Their nails were sharp hard claws, glinting evilly. Their hair was brushed and combed upward into a cock-fighting crest, and streamed out in a loose mane, like that of a horse, from the stiff crest.

They wore brave red jackets, cut like a dog’s jacket. They wore gray breechclouts. Around their necks were strapped leather collars, studded with metals.

They were hunting dogs.

But they were men.

The Manhounds of Antares, the jiklos of Faol.

Pressed up against the lenken bars Lilah still held my arm. She had not shrunk from touching me, from pulling me away. Just beyond her I could see Tulema and the Khamorro. Now I understood a little why Tulema, for all the promises of the guides, hung back from escaping, was so terrified of the manhunt.

“Yes, Dray Prescot,” said Princess Lilah of Hyrklana. “They are men.”

Men. They were not halflings, even, men-beasts for beast-men with a weird mutation of head or body to mark them out from true men — and who, on Kregen, is to say who is a true man and who is not? Gloag was a man for all his bristle-hide and bullet-head. Inch, too, was a man. But these — things? These Manhounds of Scorpio? Were they truly men?

The answer could not be denied.

Some agency had so guided their development, over the seasons, as to transform them from ordinary men into jiklos. I could with revulsion imagine some of the training. They must have been strapped into iron cages from birth, made to walk always on all fours, taught to run and hunt, and by evolving senses regained man’s lost capacities of smell and hearing. They might be unable to stand upright at all, now.

And the final blasphemy, at least in my eyes, was to dress them in red coats, to sully the image I held of my own old scarlet, the scarlet of Strombor!

Shadows moved in the jungle clearing beyond the bars. The slaves huddled, waiting to be picked as quarry. Tulema hung back and the Khamorro, arguing with her, at last slapped her across the face and pushed her back. He moved toward the bars with arrogance, and other slaves shrank back from him.

Lilah said, “Here they come now . . .”

Into the cleared area before the barred rows of cages, rather like a shopping arcade, stepped Nalgre, the slave-master, with his guards, and his customers. I ignored all that, started to push my way toward the Khamorro. Tulema was sobbing, now. She had lost this Khamorro and she must have assumed she had already lost me, absorbed as I had been with Lilah. Tulema could not know that it was by the Star Lords’ command that I must rescue Lilah.

“No, Dray Prescot,” said Lilah. I recognized the tone. She was a princess, I felt no doubt. “You will be killed.”

Again she put her hand on my arm. I could feel the softness of it, and yet the firmness, too, as she gripped me.

What might have happened then, Zair knows, for a Fristle nearby, whose fur was much bedraggled, said quickly, “Here is Nath the Guide.”

The guide pushed through to the bars, and I left off trying to reach the Khamorro. This guide was much like the first one I had seen — lithe, well built, fleet of limb, as I judged, with a handsome head and a mass of dark hair. Nath the Guide . . .

Well, there are many Naths on Kregen.

Around him perhaps a dozen people clustered. They were eager. They had been able to arrange deals with the guide to be taken out. And all the time Lilah’s hand gripped my arm.

Nalgre the slave-master cracked his whip. The customers with him jumped, and then laughed, and pointed out to one another choice specimens of slaves within the cages. It was all a part of the show Nalgre put on.

These nobles and wealthy men and women who hunted human beings for sport were little different from the bunch I had seen before. A quick check showed me that Berran was not with them. The Notor who, by his appearance and gestures, considered himself the most important personage there was a heavily built man, with brown hair, a face pudgy from too many inspections of the bottoms of glasses, too many vosk-pies, and smothered in a mass of jewels and silks and feathers.

He was pointing now and Nalgre was nodding.

Nath the Guide whispered: “It will be all right. He will choose us. Now remember! Act as slaves, for the sake of Hito the Hunter!”

This Notor fancied himself as a great Jikai, it was clear, for the guards swung open the lenken-barred gate and began to herd out more than a dozen of the slaves. One fragile Xaffer was rejected, and I guessed the poor devil had been subsisting on dilse and nothing else for too long. In the heat and dust of the compound, with the smells of sweat and fear all about us, we were prodded out. Lilah clung to me. I caught a glimpse of Tulema hanging back, her face agonized, tear-streaked, and then the lenken bars smashed shut against the slaves who remained unselected.