Manhounds of Antares

Chapter Fourteen

Straight for that stringy defenseless throat the knife flashed. The movement of the knife struck everything else into a paralysis, a stasis wherein Nath’s throwing arm remained outflung, Mog recoiled against the bonds, Turko and the other Khamorros stood caught in the passions of the moment, the halflings below stilled in their clamor.

The sword I had taken from the guard rasped as it cleared the scabbard. That old Krozair trick of striking away flying arrows with the superb Krozair longsword must serve me now — and before I had time to finish the thought, everything happening so fast events blurred, the thraxter flicked out and the knife struck the blade with a high ringing pinging and spun away into the gloom of the forest.

Nath the Guide galvanized into motion, screaming, clawing back up the tree. From below a Rapa — one I had noted as of that fierce, predatory, arrogant kind that meant he had once been a mercenary — threw his own knife. It flew true. Nath the Guide stood, arms spread, transfixed, his face twisted with the defiant-fear — and he fell. Nath the Guide, son of treachery, fell full-length down the tree and so into the greenery to smash face-first into the mud and detritus of the jungle floor.

“Let his foul Hito the Hunter aid him now!” quoth the Rapa, and went down very agilely to retrieve his knife.

This Rapa was one Rapechak, and I remember that he must have been less offensive to smell than most, or I was growing accustomed to the typical Rapa stink. Those Rapas who had fought with me in Dorval Aymlo’s courtyard, too, I recalled, had been in nowise as offensive as other Rapas I had known.

“Now what do we do?” demanded the big Khamorro, Chimche.

Mog remained petrified and dumb. The halflings were raising a great hullabaloo. Janich was yelling at them to cease their noise or, by the Muscle, he’d break their bones to powder. Turko said: “This nul Dray Prescot knew the guide was false. So did the old witch. What is fitting that we should do with them, khamsters?”

“Did you know, witch?” shouted Chimche, thrusting his nose at Mog. She cowered back, blinking.

“Only stories!” Her shrill voice poured words out in a torrent. “May Migshaanu the Ever-Radiant stand as my witness! Rumors — we heard stories — the wine was a sleep potion — the shoes were baited -

the tame slaves were frightened. Enil was found dead in his den, and Yolan went for water and never returned.” She shook as she screamed. “We dare not speak! The guides murdered us! By Magoshno and Sidraarga, I swear it!”

Janich went to strike her, so wrought up was he; but Turko took his arm, saying: “Leave the old nul, Janich. She is harmless and in fear for her life.”

“Aye.” Janich looked down at Turko’s hand on his arm. “She should be. And so should you be, nul-syple!”

Turko took his hand away.

He removed that hand from Janich’s arm neither too quickly nor yet too slowly. I admired that coolness. I could guess what had transmogrified the situation. The syples were the different kinds of Khamorro training and belief, and a nul, clearly, was anyone not a Khamorro. So that for Janich to call Turko a nul-syple was a great insult. Yet Turko did not instantly retaliate. He had put his hand on a man who was not a syple-brother. The answer must be given.

I said: “If you wish to yammer and quarrel here all night, you may do so. As for me, I am going to take a flier off these Makki-Grodno guides.”

I still held the thraxter naked in my fist. I reached across to Mog, and with my left hand wrenched her bindings free, lifted her up, and slung her over my shoulder. She screamed and then tried to bite me, whereat I thwacked her narrow bottom with the flat of the blade. The thraxter is a medium-long straight sword, with a blade heavier and wider than a rapier, a vertical blade, and it smacked with a satisfactory smack. Mog yelped.

Down the tree I went, slipping and sliding most of the way. At the bottom the Rapa, Rapechak, straightened up with his knife freshly cleaned on Nath’s breechclout. “You mentioned a flier.”

“Aye. This way. And keep silent.”

So I set off with the halfling Mog draped over my shoulder and a rout of halflings following me through the forest. I found the clearing and thumped Mog down and said: “Stay there, old witch. If you try to run I’ll draw your guts out for a knitted vest.”

Without knowledge of any signal the flier up there might be awaiting I could only wait patiently for him to descend. Inachos had stood out and waved; I could not do that. The Twins were up, the two second moons of Kregen eternally revolving one about the other, casting down a pinkish sheen of light in which details stood out clearly. A rustle on the back trail heralded the three Khamorros.

“You, Turko,” I said. “If you stand in the clearing and wave up, and then scamper back here, and look lively about it, we might see the flier this Zair-forsaken night.”

Again Turko favored me with that long, almost quizzical look. I turned away and went to stand by Mog. Turko walked into the clearing, looked up, waved his arms, and then walked back. As a performance it would not have done for Drury Lane, but it worked.

The flier ghosted down, shimmering in the pink moonlight, drifting gently to the clearing’s mass of rotting vegetation, fallen trees, and creeping shoots. A guide looked out and shouted something about Hito the Hunter and the stupid yetches of slaves to be run in the morning and needing a drink. . and Rapechak the Rapa’s knife buried itself in his neck so that he pitched over the lenken side of the flier, choking and writhing in convulsions, before Chimche reached him and twisted his head in a single savage crunching action.

I was working with fearsome allies, now, but they did not have the unwanted responsibility of Mog the Migla on their hands.

Janich said with great satisfaction, “I can fly a voller.”

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.