Beasts of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  The Khibil staggered away, his shield falling uselessly, his sword dropping. His foxy face was a mere mask of blood.

  The remaining guards howled and flung themselves on. It was all a flurry of blows, and the quick scrape and ring of steel on steel, the screech of steel on bronze. How they fought, those schrepims! Superb in their reptilian strength and speed they danced on their massively muscled legs, balancing on those thick tails, striking and avoiding, chunking into the guards and slashing and hacking, and withdrawing with bewildering rapidity.

  Yes, oh, yes, I remembered their style of fighting!

  Four guards were down, then three more, their throats slashed, their unshielded sides cut through. Blood smoked on the silver sand. The uproar deafened. Three more guards staggered away, their legs unable to support them, sinking to the sand. Three more — and yet three more. The four remaining waited no longer. They cast down their shields and ran.

  With long reptilian strides the schrepims chased them.

  Swords lifted and blurred down in savage blows.

  The last man, the single survivor, screamed and ran blindly.

  One of the schrepims tossed his sword into the air. He caught it by the forte. His arm went back and he hurled, a vicious, cunning, superlatively destructive cast. The running man staggered on for four paces, lurching, before he fell with the sword burst through heart and lungs.

  “By Havil!” Noran was on his feet, one hand to his chest. His face was flushed. “By Glem! They were superb, superb!”

  “Money well spent!” declared Callimark.

  I looked at these two with interest. None so blind...

  Unmok nudged me.

  “Jak! They’ll—!”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Rich blood puddled the silver sand.

  Vad Noran was suffused with pride. This villa was a palace and a fortress. Within its walls his will was law. My early impression had convinced me that it would take far too much time to break an entrance in my own old swashbuckling way. The trick with the werstings to gain us entry had been essential, and had worked. But, also, that very impregnability of his villa meant Noran, standing now flushed with the excitement of the combat, had no fear of the three schrepims. He looked down at them as they walked alertly back toward his box.

  “Well done, Slacamen,” he shouted, giving them a nickname common among diffs and apims, a name, incidentally, I had heard the Schrepims often chafed under. “There will be much gold for you, aye, and rich foods and fine clothes.”

  Still the three advanced, silently, across the sand. The blood glimmered most evilly upon their blades.

  Unmok the Nets choked out some unintelligible comment. He started to scrabble over the back of his chair.

  Noran did not turn.

  “Sit quietly, Och! These Slacamen cannot climb up here.”

  Unmok collapsed onto his seat. He was quivering.

  “You are sure? Notor — you are sure they cannot get at us?”

  “Of course. Why should they?” Noran’s contempt seemed to me to reveal a sudden and unwelcome thought — the kind of thought he would not allow himself to think.

  The scaled men couldn’t climb up here, could they?

  From my own experience I fancied they could — and would.

  I said, “Van Noran! There are three down there. Were not there four in the cage?”

  Callimark let out a squeal of pure terror.

  “By Flem! He is right!”

  “They will not harm me!” Noran bellowed it out. He put a beringed hand to the hilt of his sword. “I am Vad Noran! I bought them to fight for me! I pay them and feed them — they owe their lives to me.”

  “I do not think they see things that way.” I looked along the seating, left and right. There was a fourth, and I did not think he would have run off and left his fellows.

  The throaty sound of breathing, hoarse and rasping, came from Callimark trying to nerve himself. Unmok crouched in his seat. Noran yelled down, “I am Vad Noran! I pay you gold to fight for me, Slacamen!”

  Left and right, along the seating, and up to the lip of the arena wall, along the trees, and down again, to the ornate entrance. My gaze flicked about. No sign... No sign, yet...!

  Very quick and sudden, schrepims, very fast and deadly.

  But although Vad Noran’s guards were not, in the judgment of a hard old fighting man, worthy of their hire, some, at least, of that score who had died in the arena had struck shrewd blows before they perished. Two of the schrepims bore wounds, from which a green ichor leached. Hard to kill, these reptilian humans, but die they could, given courage and strength and skill and the effort of willpower to pit against them.

  Around the arena I looked, carefully, seeking a glimmer of greenish scales along the seatings or up among the overarching trees. Callimark continued to breathe noisily. Unmok sat up straight and hauled out his sword.

  “I am not in the habit of doubting the word of a noble,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice. “But it seems to me the schrepims will climb up here and we will die. I will strike a blow first, by the golden jeweled cup of the Och Kings!”

  “Nulsh!” said Noran. But his voice faltered.

  Around and around, searching, searching...

  The three walking toward us across the blood-puddled silver sand gave off that aura of menace that breathes from reptilian things. They walked easily and their thick tails were lifted high. You did not cut off the tail of a Slacaman as easily as that of a Kataki. Although the contest between Kataki and scaled man is instructive — in a gruesome way — and conducive to many serious lessons, it remains for all that a spectacle I would not cross the road to witness. All the time as these three advanced and Noran began to gnaw his lip and Callimark tried to get himself under control and Unmok quietly whistled his sword about to get his eye in, I twisted my neck and stared about, up and down, along and around, searching, searching...

  “Perhaps, vad, we had best depart,” said Callimark, and his voice pitched up and down the scale alarmingly.

  Give Vad Noran his due — he just could not understand why men he had bought to fight for him, men recommended to him as hyr-kaidurs, should want to slay him. That was too personal. He delighted in the atmosphere of the Jikhorkdun, living its thrills and glorying in its valor and blood. But he hadn’t considered that his own blood would be risked in any valorous combat. He would enter the ring to a challenge from an equal, he would fence with a professional kaidur, but that would not be for real, not for blood and guts real.

  Just when he realized the schrepims would — damned well would! — climb that barrier and leap on him with lifted swords, with fang and claw, I do not know.

  But, in the instant I spotted a staggering group of slaves boil out of the entranceway and totter, sprawling, shrieking, groveling, scrambling any-old-how along the seating, Noran’s nerve broke.

  Blindly, drawing his sword and thrashing about with it as though he slashed weeds, he bolted.

  I said to Unmok, “Time we were leaving.” The little Och came up out of his chair like a gazelle. “As Ochenshum is my witness you speak sense.” He joined me as we moved back from the ornate seating. The uproar farther along grew. “But, Jak,” said Unmok, and the avaricious old devil looked green. “This great noble, Vad Noran, has not yet paid me for the werstings!”

  The slaves had scattered, shrieking, and Noran was rampaging along toward the exit with its curious carved nymphs upholding torches that were, at this time of day, as yet unlit.

  “I think, Unmok, my friend, we will not get paid at all from that one.” And I started to run.

  Unmok let out a screech. Callimark took to his heels and ran the other way. Noran staggered back from the exit. He waved his sword about drunkenly. The schrepim who moved out of the opening between the torch-bearing nymphs looked no different from his three brethren in the arena. The same reptilian-snouted face, the heavily hooded eyes, the snaggle of sharp teeth, the same grayish-greenish scales with their bor
dering of orange. His clawed hand grasped a thraxter. His left arm was concealed by a shield. That, as I judged it, was the only difference.

  Unmok screeched again. “Jak! They climb the barrier!”

  Time for a single swift glance back. It was all there, the picture I remember and hate to recall. Callimark was flung across an ornate chair, his body slashed almost in two. The three schrepims leaped like lizards over the seating. Unmok was running toward me. Ahead Vad Noran, screaming in a paroxysm of fear, blundered back. The fourth scaled man followed him purposefully.

  No doubt now remained that the schrepims would kill and go on killing until they were stopped.

  I stopped running toward Noran. Unmok was my first concern. Noran would have to take his chances.

  And then — and then, by Zair!

  As I stared at the three scaled men in one direction, and was aware of the fourth in the other, I experienced for a fleeting moment of horror an image, scorched on my brain, of a splendid golden Kildoi, four-armed, tail-handed, brushing aside with superior swordsmanship all my efforts at swordplay.

  Damn Prince Mefto the Kazzur!

  But, with a little crippled Och to save, there was no time to blither-blather about the past and what was dead.

  Not that Mefto the Kazzur was dead...

  Noran was screaming in a crackling voice for the cadade. I did not know if the cadade was dead or not, but he wouldn’t be turning up here.

  “Out of the way, Noran!” I said. My voice must have penetrated the scarlet fear cloaking his senses, for he jumped, shivering, and then fell over the backs of the row of seating, tumbling among the bright cushions.

  The schrepim didn’t mind whom he killed first. Just so long as he could get his sword into someone, just so long as he could vent the frustrations of being taken up and forced to fight as a kaidur in the arena, chained, caged, whipped, sent out to fight like a wild beast — and he a man! — and then caged again if he lived, and dragged off with a hook through his heel if he died.

  He came at me with the flashing speed of a reptile.

  Whatever happened with him must happen fast. His comrades were breathing down the back of my neck.

  He used his shield with skill, for he was a hyr-kaidur, and I had to skip and leap and parry for longer than I liked before my thraxter managed to loop inside his. I shoved the shield up and the rim took him under that ferociously toothed snout. He grunted. His squamous body was like a wriggling eel. But the thraxter went in, punching through scale, sliding on, cutting. I withdrew at once, green ichor sliming the blade, kicked him as he went down and then jinked sideways without looking back. I leaped over the chair upward from the rank, landing and spinning about.

  That dramatic exercise had been necessary.

  The leading schrepim’s blow chunked stuffing from the chair seat.

  I leaned forward to strike down on that sleek scaly head, but with lizard-like swiftness he recoiled.

  For an instant we glared, eye to eye.

  The fourth tooth along each side of his lower jaw protruded up at an angle. Larger than the other teeth, it slotted into a groove outside the upper jaw. The jagged line his jaws made as they clicked together gave him a ferocious aspect, almost as though he grinned at sight of his prey. The scales hooding his eyes looked like monk’s hoods. Just below and closer together than the eyes the two deep pits of his heat-sensing organs were no doubt picking up my sweaty radiations and helping him to locate me even more exactly. Although his eyes were dark, the pigment, rhodopsin, in them which gave him good night vision would appear to glow an eerie red-orange at night from any reflected light. To see the eyes of schrepims glowing at night, the Kregish saying runs, is to look on the watchfires of hell.

  His thick tail thumped the ground between the seats. I did not wait but leaped to the side. Using his tail as a lever, he soared up, his sword flashing out at me. I landed first. With solid ground under my feet I was able to roar forward and slash him while he was still in the air. Green ichor gushed from his side. He fell awkwardly.

  Now he uttered sounds, a spine-chilling hissing, a spluttering rush of words and a ferocious shrilling.

  Schrepims mostly speak their own language, their forked tongues giving a sibilant quality to their words; but they are well able to speak the universal Kregish language. By reason of that genetic language pill given to me by the Savanti I am able to understand tongues. Even as he fell, he was shrieking, “You will be caught up in the coils of Ratishling the Sinuous and crushed until your bowels smoke, apim, for the indignities you heap on me.”

  Oh, yes, I could feel sorry for him. But his two fellows were leaping like lizards along the seating toward me, and I knew their rage was such they’d prefer to use their fangs and claws on me rather than the swords they wielded. The wound in this one’s side leaked green; but that wouldn’t kill him. I aimed a delicate cut along his neck, where the scales smoothed and were more tightly fitted and of a lighter hue, just above the black scales of his harness. The thraxter bit and drew, cutting cleanly.

  I leaped away.

  Noran was shrieking and blubbering, and that old devil Unmok the Nets, his sword gripped in his two right, upper and middle, hands was struggling up from the tier of chairs below to get in the way of the charging scaled fighters.

  “Get out of it, Unmok, you fambly!”

  “Jak — if we are to die—”

  “We’re not!”

  And I fairly hurled myself forward. Just in time I got the sword before Unmok and swept away the first blow from the leading schrepim. They were so damned quick! He came back, screeching, and there was no time to play him, for the first and fourth were rampaging up, and now they, too, were shrilling. They filled the air with fearsome promises of what Ratishling the Sinuous would do to me and all non-schrepims.

  Well — you couldn’t really blame them, could you? But I do not like to stand still while someone tries to kill me, never have and, by Krun, never will, I daresay. So I fought.

  That was a fight of which the details remain hazy to this day.

  Instinct, pure primeval instinct, and skill and utter dedication to the Disciplines alone could aid me now.

  The swords clanged and chirred, and one schrepim was down and his dark green blood flowed from a mangled neck.

  The other two bore wounds, as did I, and I’d falter and grow weak long before they’d even realize their scaly hides had been punctured.

  One of them swept in and tried to fasten that rat trap of a mouth on my left arm. I got away just in time, with a long shredding of skin hanging from between his ugly fangs.

  I leaped sideways and his thick tail swept around like a barn door closing and slogged into me and I went end over end down among the seats. How I didn’t crack my head open I don’t know. He scuttled after me and with a long, low lunge I kept down and so, left hand pressed against the floor by the seats, stuck the thraxter up into him. He sailed on and over me, as though pole-vaulting in just about the most uncomfortable position for the pole you could imagine, and he did not drag the sword from my grip. It came out with a wet slurshing sound. No time to watch him writhing in agony, no time, no time!

  The last one jumped the seating to get at me.

  To dream he was the last would have been a mistake on my part, and one I did not make. He was the last one to come into action, but the others were not out of it. Oh, no! Slit throats, deeply punctured wounds, impalements, that kind of punishment does not stop your schrepim. Their dark, insensate energy, the vigorousness of their attack, the febrile swiftness of them — they have to be killed and then killed again before they are dead.

  Our swords crossed, I used, as I recall, a middling clever passage and hit him clean across the snout.

  My thraxter broke across.

  Instantly, I raced away, drawing him with me away from Unmok.

  The thraxter had been my only weapon. Never laugh at or decry the great old Kregan custom of carrying an arsenal into battle! If ever I’d needed a selectio
n of weaponry, it was now...

  I ran.

  The Sorzarts of the inner sea, the Eye of the World, do not compare with schrepims. The Phokaym do, of course; but they are of a world apart, there by that noxious cleft in the earth called the Klackadrin. Cousins in the realm of reptiles, Phokaym and schrepims. I ran and Unmok let out a screech and I half turned as I ran. The pursing scaled fighter was almost on me. Unmok’s sword arched in the air, spinning, sailing up and over the schrepim’s scaly head. It spun down toward me.

  That was a tricky catch.

  The sword hilt thumped into my fist and I failed to grasp it cleanly the first time and the schrepim slashed. I ducked, felt my sword that had been Unmok’s slipping away, and grasped again. I put my foot into a scaled belly, thrusting, and then jerking instantly to left and then surging right.

  His wicked tail lashed where I would have been.

  The sword snugged into my fist. I thrust.

  The blade squished in deeply. I drove it on, grinding it around, sawing on it, and I smashed my fist across his snout, driving back those wicked fangs.

  He screamed and struggled to get at me past that steel tooth. I got a grip around his throat with my left hand and squeezed. I spat in his eye. If I’d had fangs I’d have ripped his throat out.

  I kicked him, and we hopped about, locked together.

  Somewhere out of the scarlet haze Unmok’s yell: “Behind you!”

  With a supreme effort I managed to spin us about. The blow hit the schrepim on the back of the head. If he noticed it, I do not know. It was a blow that would have split an apim’s skull.

  The fellow who had struck the blow drew back, setting himself for another try. His scaly body was slimed green with his own blood. He moved at a speed a normal eye could follow. He was dying. He didn’t know that, or, knowing, pushed it aside in his insensate desire to kill me.

  I shoved my man back, drawing out the sword with a loud sucking noise. The two schrepims staggered together. I was just about done for now. As the two collided I jumped. The sword went around in an arc of greened silver.

  Two blows, two blows delivered with the failing dregs of my strength. Two reptilian heads popped off to roll thumping down the stairs. I turned wearily and saw the other two, who should be dead, advancing on me. I noticed the red blood on their swords, and gazed stupidly at the green ichor fouling my blade.