Manhounds of Antares dp-6

by Alan Burt Akers

  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.

  “We’re in for it now, Lilah,” I said. “We’ll soon be free.”

  “I pray it be so, Dray Prescot.”

  With guards around us, their spears everywhere ready to prod mercilessly, we were taken through the clearing to the slave barracks. Here we would be prepared for the next day’s hunt. You will already have realized that the Dray Prescot who walked so docilely with the slaves, prodded by spears, was a very different person from the Dray Prescot who had so witlessly and violently resisted any slave attempt upon him — as when, for instance, I was captured and flung down before the Princess Natema, and had thrown Galna at her, for good measure. I was trying to calculate out if escaping now, this instant, would serve our ends better than waiting. Once I had taken this lovely girl Princess Lilah of Hyrklana back home, I would then strike at once for Vallia. I did not wish to make a leem’s-nest of it. I have been hunted as quarry for sport since this occasion on Faol — notably by the debased Ry-ufraisors, who sacrifice to the green sun, calling Genodras by the name of Ry-ufraison. That was many seasons later, of course — many years ago, now, too — and I wander in my tale. It is worth noting that here on Faol I found the people referring to the red and green suns, the Suns of Scorpio, not as Zim and Genodras but as Far and Havil.

  While I had no doubts that I could survive in the jungle, and this without boasting, which is a fool’s trade, I had doubts about Lilah. Nath the Guide told us we would be given clothes, and boots, and a knife apiece. Also food. Almost decided in my mind to consign these trinkets to the Ice Floes of Sicce and make a break for it right away, I witnessed an event that changed my mind. The arrogant Khamorro would have nothing of waiting. He had chosen his time, and now, by Morro the Muscle, he would break a few backbones and escape into the jungles. His name was Lart. I had had trouble with a Lart very early on during my second visit to Kregen, and so I watched with great care. Lart the Khamorro flexed his muscles in the slave barracks. Other men walked small when a Khamorro passed. We were given fresh food, although the promised clothes were denied us, and the food was good — thick vosk and taylyne soup, beef roasted to a prime, fresh roandals, the bread of Kregen in long loaves and done in the bols fashion as well, and, lastly, palines. We were packed off to the first floor of the building, leaving the hard-packed earth below empty. By leaning out over the sturm-wood balustrade we could see the guards patrolling down there. One test of the walls showed they would resist bare hands. The only way out was down the stairs, past the guards, and through the doors.

  Lart the Khamorro flexed his muscles and started down the stairs.

  Three guards stood up, alert, and their spears twitched down into line.

  “Get back, cramph!”

  Lart laughed. He jeered at them.

  “If we kill you, rast, the cost of your worthless hide will be deductible.” One of the guards, with a thin black goatee, swung his spear so that the point glittered in the light falling through the windows at his back. “But I would willingly pay that to degut you!”<
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  Lart laughed again and then he moved and that guard lay on the ground with a broken neck. The other two cursed and swiveled their spears. Lart the Khamorro swerved very lithely and ducked and another guard was caught and, for an instant, held in a terrible grip. He catapulted over Lart’s back and when he hit the ground his little round helmet rolled away from what was left of his skull. The third guard shouted, high and filled with terror.

  “Hai! Guards! A madman is loose!”

  “The fools!” whispered Lilah, at my side. “Don’t they know he is a Khamorro?”

  “Evidently not, Lilah.” I watched, fascinated. I saw how Lart worked, the smooth play of his muscles, the cunning tricks of body-contact, all the skills I had absorbed under the pitiless tuition of the Krozairs of Zy were here being put into action, under my nose, and me skulking on a stair!

  But I knew what I was doing.

  The main doors were fast bolted by a massive beam of lenk.

  Lart rushed for them and began to lift the beam. The third guard, still yelling, made the mistake of trying to thrust his spear into Lart’s back. The muscles rippled on that sinewy back. Lart slid the spear — and that was neatly done, by Zair! — and cut the guard under the chin with the edge of his palm. The guard choked and writhed and died. The trick was an old one but reliable if you were quick enough to hit the target.

  Again Lart began to lift the lenken beam that took two men to place. He got one end up and was about to slide it down when with a rush and a volley of oaths three more guards raced into the dirt-floored chamber. Up on the stairs we all yelled in warning.

  If Lilah expected me to run down to help Lart, she was mistaken. Anyway, I had the hunch that if I did so a haze of blue radiance would engulf me, and a giant scorpion would enfold me in its pincers and I would be flung — where? Back to Earth, probably. Then I would have to languish how many years before the Star Lords once more thought to employ me about their mysterious business on Kregen?

  For the sake of Delia, not for Lilah, I remained where I was.

  Anyway, even as Lart, in a sudden and destructive flurry of blows, chops, stabs of finger and knuckle, body-swerves and cunning lifts and back-breaking holds, disposed of the three guards, what I knew must happen came to pass with the furious advent of a Deldar. He came in through the side door, waving his sword, and with him came three crossbow-men.

  “You stupid, dopa-sodden cramphs!” The Deldar was bellowing. “Have you no sense in your onker-thick skulls?”

  I perfectly agreed with him.

  “Feather me this rast!” screamed the Deldar. The three crossbows leveled. Even then, even then Lart the Khamorro with his marvelous skills in unarmed combat almost got them. He dodged the first bolt, almost missed the second, taking it high in his left shoulder. But this slowed him a fraction, jerking him off balance, and he took the last quarrel clear through his belly. He coughed and doubled up.

  Still, he moved on, lifting his hands. And now, because he was mortally wounded, he moved slowly enough for that cunning hand-pattern to be clearly visible. I recalled the burs of training spent with the Krozairs on the island of Zy in the Eye of the World. My body responded to the remembered thump and smash of fist, and hand-edge, and knuckle, the way Zinki could always throw me until I learned the secret ways of counterbalance, and weight-shift, the poise, the blows, the whole mystic art of body-fighting I had learned as I had learned how to wield a Krozair longsword. Well, give me a sword anytime, but without a metal weapon — or a wooden one, come to that — a man may do terrible damage with his bare hands.

  But Lart had been slowed too much.

  The guard Deldar could bring his sword down in a vicious blow and so finish Lart the Khamorro. Lilah gasped and turned away.

  I admit, I felt queasy about leaving a fellow human being to fight alone, like that. But — and however brutal and selfish this sounds, I do not care — what was Lart to me beside my mission for the Star Lords that must not fail, my concern for Lilah — my love for Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains?

  “The stupid rancid-brained onkers!” the Deldar was shouting. He kicked Lart’s dead body. “They didn’t know to keep away from a Khamorro. You!” He swung violently on his three crossbowmen.

  “Never get within reach of a Khamorro! Never! It is certain death.” He fumed on, and as the bodies were cleared away he shouted up at us, gawping from the balustrade. “Get back up there and rest! Aye, rest! Tomorrow you run and will need all your strength. And if any cramph among you wants to break out of the door — he’ll taste my steel!”

  There was one furious Deldar. No doubt, Lart would be deductible.

  There were palliasses and thin blankets, and before we went to sleep, Lilah said, “Lart fought well, Dray. He was very skilled, a high kham, I have no doubt. And he was very brave.”

  “Aye, Lilah,” I said, turning over and pulling the blanket up. “Very brave and very stupid.”

  Chapter Six

  How Nath the Guide aided us

  The morning broke fresh and glorious with the twin Suns of Scorpio bursting up over the jungle levels and casting down their streaming mingled jade and ruby light. The air smelled clean and invigorating, and however dank it might become in the jungle, as we ate a huge breakfast, I own we slaves felt happier than any of us had any right to be.

  Lilah had told me that she had been on a visit of state with an uncle to a neighboring country of Havilfar when her airboat had been attacked and captured. She called the fliers vollers, and when I mentioned that they always seemed to be breaking down, she turned a puzzled frown my way, and said, “Not reliable, Dray? You do an injustice to the voller builders! Why, our vollers can outfly the fastest saddle-birds in all Havilfar!”

  I let the matter go, but I did not forget it.

  She was not completely sure how she had come to be brought to Faol. She knew the island, of course, off northern Havilfar; and she had heard casual tales of great hunts to be had there. She had no idea that this Jikai was the hunting of people, and she had met the jiklos with utter horror. Like all the continents and the nine islands of Kregen — with the exception of Vallia — Havilfar is divided up into different countries. I set myself to learn their geography and histories, as well as Lilah could inform me, and when it is necessary for you to know any part of these, then that is when I shall introduce it.

  In the circle of vaol-paol all things may come to pass.

  Nath the Guide winked at us as we shuffled outside and into the cleared area before the slave barracks. Waiting for us and backed by a strong guard contingent stood Nalgre and his customers. Today the great hunters were dressed in leathers, with tall boots, wide hats, and a massive armory hung about them. The chief weapon of the hunt would be the crossbow. As always, I studied the weapons of those who were my foemen and who sought to slay me.

  The fashion in swords here was for the short straight blade, perhaps not quite as robust a brand as the shortswords of my clansmen, but a useful and all-purpose cut-and-thrust weapon that would do its work efficiently and without fuss. The crossbows were beautiful artifacts, the wood a close-grained hurm — a close relative of the ubiquitous sturm-wood — and the butts and stocks shone in the mingled rays of the suns. The bows themselves were of tempered steel. Most of these crossbows were spanned by cranequins, one or two by goat’s-foot lever. I did not see a single windlass. The bolts were notched in leather. In addition these infamous hunters had loaded themselves with various bloodthirsty weapons. It infuriated me to see, for instance, a plump and laughing woman, her hair looped up in a net of priceless pearls, leaning on her crossbow and talking to her companion, who kept digging the point of his vosk-spear into the ground. They all looked a little self-conscious in their hunting leathers and they handled their weapons rather as tourists handle implements with which they are not totally familiar. All this spending of money and time and effort — to hunt a raggle-tail bunch of half-naked slaves through the jungles!

  Half-naked: we were issued with g
ray slave breechclouts which we put on, out there, on the ground, in sight of everyone. Lilah acted as though the hunters did not exist.

  I waited for the clothes and the knives, but Nath the Guide whispered fiercely and at his words I forbore to inquire, sensing a part of the secret the guides kept against the man-hunters of Faol. In this little group of slaves — sixteen of us — only Lilah and I and two others, a man and woman, were humans. All the rest were halflings. I couldn’t equate Nath as a slave. Despite the air of docility and fear he assumed there was about him the unmistakable sense of the free man, the man who fought against odds, and expected to win.

  This fine morning Nalgre had his little pet with him.

  He clicked his fingers and a jiklo ran across the clearing toward him, tongue lolling, eyes bright, frisking about him. I watched, sickened. This jiklo was a woman. She panted about her master on all fours, pricking her ears, emitting little gobbles of pleasure at his notice of her, and at the dribble of ground vosk he let fall, which she lapped up greedily. She wore a red bolero jacket, and a gray breechclout, and she ran on all fours, and she was a manhound of Antares, and she was a woman. The studs and plaques on her leather collar were all of gold. Her brown hair frizzed up into that angry matted crest, and blonde streamers of hair fell back in a tail from the central mass. Her naked rump frisked about Nalgre, and had a tail sprouted there, I suppose, one might have accepted the picture more.

  Lilah’s supple figure quivered at sight of the jiklo, then she controlled herself. The halflings were whispering to one another, and a couple of Fristles unashamedly clasped each other in their furry arms. I had no doubt why Nalgre played with his pet before us. “Look,” he was saying. “This is a manhound. These are the creatures who will chase you and hunt you and pull you down.”

  The jiklo trotted over to us. The halflings went rigid with fear. I looked down as the red bolero swung past. The thing emitted little gasps and wheezes, and the pug nose wrinkled up. The thing was smelling us! She was taking our scent!