Manhounds of Antares dp-6

by Alan Burt Akers

  We had a long distance to travel and, accustomed as I was to employing the free winds to blow my vessels along, or the oar when occasion was right, I could afford to think with some scorn of the clumsy steamships appearing on Earth’s oceans and their dependence on limited supplies of coal. The vollers, by reason of that mechanism of the two silver boxes, needed no refueling and would fly as long as was necessary. For food and wine we would have to descend sometime, and I counted us fortunate that the mighty hunters after their fashion had a goodly quantity of golden deldys among their clothing. These coins were of various mintings, from a variety of Havilfarese countries, but as a rule the golden unit of coinage in Havilfar is the deldy.

  Gold and silver, with bronze also, seem always to be the noble metals for coinage; men and halflings alike hewed to the style. I have come across other systems of monetary exchange on Kregen and these all will be told in their time.

  There occurred one fright that made us realize we were not on some holiday jaunt with picnic baskets and thoughts of pleasure.

  Emerging from a low-lying cloud bank the voller soared on into the suns-shine and I saw a cloud of what at first I took to be birds winging up from a broad-leaved and brilliant forest below. By this time Turko was able to walk about without discomfort, although still fragile, and it was he who shouted the alarm.

  “Volleem! Volleem!”

  He needed to say no more. Shrieks arose from the girls and curses from the men. The leems, those feral beasts of Kregen, eight-legged, furred, feline, and vicious, with wedge-shaped heads armed with fangs that can strike through lenk, are to be found all over the planet in a variety of forms and all suitably camouflaged. There are sea-leem, snow-leem, marsh-leem, desert, and mountain-leem. These specimens were volleem.

  They flew on wide membranous wings extending from their second and third pairs of legs, very conveniently, and like the flying foxes they could really fly. Their colors were not the velvety green I might have expected, seeing that their camouflage might seek to ape the fluttrell; they were all a startling crimson as to back, toning to a brick-red underbelly. The wings shone in the light, the elongated fingerlike claws black webs against the gleam.

  “Inside the cabin!” yelled Turko, and bundling the old Xaffer before him, he pushed us into safety. Turko might know these parts and be aware of the vicious nature of the volleem, but skulking in a cabin was not my style. I know I am headstrong and foolish, but also I feared lest the volleem damage the airboat.

  “Their fangs will rip us to pieces,” I said.

  “We are on a rising course,” said Turko. “They will not follow us far from their forest treetops.”

  He was proved right.

  Even then, as I looked at this superbly muscled Khamorro, I wondered why I had listened to him instead of doing what I had felt right, of rushing out, sword in hand, to battle the volleem. One reason for his action was clear: unarmed combat against a leem usually results in a verdict of suicide. Because of this the Xaffer and the other two halflings decided they would get off at the next stop. I had to quell my reaction, thinking that, once again, I was doing nothing more than running a coach or an omnibus line. Gynor the Brokelsh said he would alight, also, so we divided up the remaining deldys fairly, not without some rancorous comment from Saenda and Quaesa, and we bid Remberee to our departing comrades.

  Rapechak looked thoughtful when the voller swung to the southeast, over the land toward the Shrouded Sea.

  “My home is down there, Dray Prescot, not over far from Turko’s Herrell. It is cold, but I think of it often.”

  “I will be pleased to visit, Rapechak,” I said. “After Mog is unhung from around our necks.”

  “Perhaps.” He said that the southernmost part of the continent was called Thothangir. I thought of the redheaded Nath, and was more than ever sure that he had never come from Thothangir. So we sped on southeastward across the neck of Havilfar and after a lapse of time, for the voller was swift, we saw the clouds rising ahead and then the intermittent gleam of water. The temperate regions were very welcome after the heat and sweat of Faol. Mog roused herself and gave her instructions. I was reminded of that arrival with Tulema at Dorval Aymlo’s home. Well, this time we would land among friends.

  “You must go in at the darkest portion of the night, you great onker. The bloody Canops have patrols and soldiers and guards and mercenaries and spies everywhere.”

  “We will do that, Mog, and we will keep a watch.”

  Yaman was situated a little inland up from the broad sluggish river that ran down to the second of the large bays separating the three promontories. We waited until Far and Havil had sunk and only She of the Veils rode the sky, for this night she would be joined later by the Maiden with the Many Smiles and by the Twins and then it would be almost as light as a misty day in the Northern parts of Earth, although the shifting pinkish radiance from the moons always created that eerie hushed feeling of mystery inseparable from shadowed moonlight.

  Mog insisted we hide the voller in a grove of trees on the outskirts. She said the trees were sacred to Sidraarga. Then, hitching our clothing and weapons about us, we set off for the home of one Planath the Wine, who owned a tavern that one might take a newly wedded bride to, as Mog put it with a cackle. Coming home had brightened and invigorated her. If we ran across a Canop patrol I felt she would not be the one to run screaming in fear.

  Once again I trod the streets of a strange city in a continent of Kregen new to me. The houses reared to either hand, strange shapes against the starshot darkness, with She of the Veils riding low in the clouds, and very few lighted windows there were to see, and only a few hurrying pedestrians who avoided us with as much fervor as we avoided them. An air of mystery, of an eerie horror no one would mention aloud, hung over the city of Yaman.

  As we hurried along in so strange a fashion I could feel the excitement rising and rising in me. Only a few short steps to go and then Mog the Migla witch would be in the hands of her friends, and I would be free! By this time I felt convinced Mog must be the one whom the Star Lords had sent me to Faol to rescue. I had felt this about Tulema, and been proved a fool. That could not happen again, by Vox, no!

  But, all the time, I kept expecting at any moment to see that hated blue radiance and the enormous insubstantial shape of a scorpion dropping upon me from the pink-lit shadows. The cobbled streets of Yaman passed by, and the darkened fronts of houses and shops, the ghostly emptiness of squares and plazas. I saw the moon-sheen upon the sluggish waters of the River Magan and the black blots of islands riding like stranded whales, the fretting of river boats against stone quays and wharves. In my ears the night sounds of a city ghosted in thinly. We pressed on and Mog led us down past the narrow entrances to alleyways, past wide flights of steps leading to the quays, down and through even narrower alleyways, and across slimed steps where, below, barges sucked in the mud. At last we reached the tavern of Planath the Wine.

  This was, I thought, a strange place to find a remnant of an outlawed and proscribed religion. A gnarled tree hung over the crazy roof of the tavern. All the windows leered at us, dark ovals pallidly reflecting a pink sheen of moonlight. Around to the rear padded Mog, with many a cunning glance about, and so she rapped upon the door, a complicated series of rhythms, like a drum-dance. The door was snatched open and a hoarse breathy voice whispered: “Get in! Get in, in the name of Migshaanu the Virtuous, before we are all taken!”

  In we all bundled, with Mog cursing away at barking her skinny shins against the jamb, and so came into a dark, breathing space where I knew people stood about waiting for the door to close so they might turn up the lamp.

  And now, to give you who listen to this tape an understanding of what then happened, there in the back room of The Loyal Canoptic as a concealed taper relit the samphron-oil lamp, it is necessary to tell you a number of things all at the same time.

  The first thing I noticed, something I had been wondering about ever since my interest in Mog had been so brut
ally forced on me, was the physical appearance of these halfling Miglas. They were not apim.

  The people gathered here, about a score, sitting on benches along the walls so that the central floor area of polished lenk remained clear, all possessed two arms and two legs, and one head with features. But those features could never be mistaken for human features — always bearing in mind what I have said about that prickly word, “human.” The old women looked a little like Mog, although nowhere so bent or vicious or cunning. The old men looked like nothing so much as those thick-legged, thick-armed, stumpy-bodied, and idiot-headed plastic toys the children on Earth nowadays play with. Gnomes, if you like, thick-heads, bodies as squat as boilers, dummies, grinners, with ears that swung like batwing doors, they all stared at Mog with looks of reverence and shock and holy awe — and vast surprise. The younger men and girls, although far more prepossessing in the manner of bodily proportions, all wore that idiot grin, that flap-eared dog-hanging look of bumbling good humor that masks a cranial cavity filled with vacuum.

  They all wore ankle-length smocks with scooped-out necks and no sleeves. The color was a uniform rusty crimson, as though the dye used, probably from a local berry or earth, had not taken properly in the coarsely weaved stuff. Their hair was dark and vivid and cropped, even the girls’. I stood behind Saenda and Quaesa as the lamp flared up and Mog stepped forward. Turko moved at my side, and Rapechak moved out from the other side.

  Insane shrieks burst from the Miglas. The women clawed the children to them, the girls flying to crowd around the old folk at the far end of the room. The noise burst inside my head with the unexpected force of a magazine explosion. The Migla men rummaged frantically behind the benches. They swung around to face us, pushing past Mog, who yelled at them.

  “Do you not know who I am? I am Mog, your high priestess!” She used a number of those special words and phrases that meant a great deal in the religion.

  The men — eight of them — stood resolutely before us, their womenfolk and children screaming behind them.

  The eight looked highly comical, their flap-eared faces slobbering with fury and fear. They held the spears they had snatched up from behind the benches in grips that — I guessed Rapechak would have seen and Turko never failed to miss — were amateur in the extreme.

  “Do you not hear, migladorn? These are my friends. They are the friends of the high priestess of Migshaanu!”

  The heftiest man, with a fuzz of side-whiskers, spat out: “You are the Mighty Mog! But these cannot be your friends! They have tricked you! Two are apim warriors, one is a Rapa warrior, and two are shishis!

  They must all die!”

  From the lighting of the lamp to the utterance of that word — “die!” — scarce a handful of heartbeats had passed.

  The eight spear points leveled. Then, with sudden and astonishing speed, a ferociously lethal and completely unexpected reaction, the front three Migla men hurled their spears. And — there was nothing amateurish about that spear throwing. With terrifying accuracy the deadly shafts flew toward us.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Saenda and Quaesa exert themselves

  Three spears flashed toward us.

  We were: one, a Rapa mercenary; two, a Khamorro; and, three, an Earthman who had made Kregen his home.

  We reacted in three different ways.

  With a fluid litheness of movement so fast no untrained eye could follow him, Turko slid the spear and it thunked solidly into the lenken door.

  With the least amount of physical effort, Rapechak let his body lean to the side, and as a precaution, thrust up his forearm, so that the spear hissed past, to thunk into the door alongside the other. I, Dray Prescot, had to show off — and yet, in truth, my way had been proved in the past and was to prove in the future by far the superior — and I had not needed the Krozairs of Zy to teach me this. I took the spear out of the air, my hand closing around the shaft with that familiar solid-soft chunking of wood against flesh, and so I reversed it and hefted it and said, “I will let you have your spear back, if you wish.”

  Over the women’s screaming Mog lifted her voice and, there in that bedlam in the back room of The Loyal Canoptic, I heard for the first time the high priestess.

  “Put down your spears! I am Mog the Mighty, high priestess of Migshaanu! Put down your stuxes or risk my certain wrath! These apim and this Rapa have aided me and brought me here.”

  Then old Mog the witch glared at me as she ducked her head as the spears went down. And I knew!

  Oh, I knew! She was saying to me: “Well, Dray Prescot. You brought me here, why I know not, so now what to do, hey, onker?” And, also: “And you put your spear down, too, idiot, or they’ll cast for sure and spit you like a paly!”

  I lowered the spear.

  A moment of natural tension was heightened as both Rapechak and Turko turned and jerked the spears from the lenk. Even then, I had time to say, just so that they could hear: “What, friend Turko? A spear?”

  To which Turko the Khamorro replied: “I thought you might need another if your first missed.”

  I chuckled. Oh, yes, that seemed a worthwhile moment to chuckle.

  After that, with Mog the witch acting very much as Mog the Mighty — by Makki-Grodno’s worm-eaten liver! Old Mog, called Mog the Mighty! Incredible and laughable and hugely enjoyable! -

  after that, as I say, we all sat down to eat and drink and for Mog to tell her news and to catch up on what had been happening in Yaman in the land of Migla in her absence. Somehow or other Saenda had seated herself on one side and Quaesa on the other, and they were both holding my arms and snuggling up against me, pouting their lips and trying to claim all my attention, and I couldn’t be too hard on them. By Vox! But they’d had a scare!

  Even then, Saenda said to Quaesa, “Did you hear what that awful one with the ridiculous side-whiskers said?”

  “That’s Planath the Wine-”

  “He called me a shishi! I’ll give it to him when I get a chance. Nobody calls me a shishi and gets away with it.”

  “Nor me!”

  “What will you give him, Saenda?” I hoped I was stirring things up.

  “Humph!” she said, with her nose in the air, and so disposed of my question. I didn’t care. Mog was home with her people. These Migla were gathered in secret to celebrate a rite of Migshaanu and so the news of the high priestess’ return would that more quickly spread over the city. I had done my work. Now I would go home.

  Yes, I had decided. There would be time in the future to find out about the airboats and to question the scarlet-roped Todalpheme on the whereabouts of Aphrasoe. Do not think I had dismissed the importance of either of these projects, but I hungered to see Delia again, and to hold little Drak and little Lela in my arms, and tell Delia of my undying love.

  Momentarily, I shuddered at the prospect of that blue radiance dropping about me with the great presentation of a scorpion, but I thought I knew, now, that I had done the Star Lords’ bidding. The two girls prattled on, one in each ear. Although only half listening to them, being far more interested in what Mog and Planath were saying of conditions in Migla, I could not fail to become aware that the girls’

  intentions were becoming far more serious by the mur. Each wished me to take her to her own home, the idea that one should go to the other’s as an honored guest having, apparently, been abandoned. They waxed warm.

  “My father’s totrixes are renowned over all southeast Havilfar.”

  “My father’s merchant house has agencies far beyond southeast Havilfar.”

  “The Migshaanu-cursed Canops took Mackili, only last week, and impaled him over by the ruins of the temple.”

  “The ruins are infested by rasts.”

  “Methydrin is a wonderful country, with riches to spare!”

  “In Dap-Tentyra we could be so happy. It is more of a city these days than a smot.”

  “We starve if we do not work and work is only given to those who worship Lem, the silver leem.”<
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  “And, dear Dray, you would not find me unappreciative.”

  “And, my Dray, I would be kind to you.”

  “It is death, slow and horrible and certain, to be found on the streets with a weapon.”

  I leaned forward, to ask a question about the spears, which had been restowed beneath the benches. These spears were ash-shafted, with heads wide yet short, exceedingly sharp, and fairly heavy in the hand so that a cast from them would spit a target with most ferocious thoroughness. So I leaned forward and the soft breathy whispers in my ears sharpened.

  “Dray! You’re not listening!”

  “Dray! You haven’t heard a word I’ve said!”

  “On the contrary, appreciation and kindness are fine. But they are not for me. I am not going your way.”

  Their soft bodies, pressed so suggestively close to me, stiffened, and moved away, and bright color mantled their cheeks. Their competition remained as fervent as ever; for neither would give an inch and almost immediately I felt them approach to engage yet again in this allurement for their own ends. Standing up, I left them whispering sweet nothings to each other across six inches of empty air, and went across to Planath the Wine. He cocked his eyes up at me, somewhat apprehensively, I thought, so I sat down and did what I could about making my face less the unholy figure-head lump exposed to wind and weather it is.

  “Tell me, Horter Planath. These spears of yours. You may not carry them openly on the streets?”

  Turko butted in, mockingly. “They would be difficult, by the Muscle, to carry concealed.”

  I ignored him.

  “That is so, Horter Prescot. The casting spear, the stux, is our weapon — for we are a peaceful people and know little of swords and bows — and hitherto we have kept ourselves to ourselves. We hunt the vosk with the stux, for they roam in their millions among the back hills and forests.”

  “A goodly weapon. And the Canops?”

  Mog worked herself up into a denunciation, to which all the Miglas listened with profound attention. When she had finished, Planath the Wine said with grave politeness, “They are fierce and vicious and horrendous. They crushed us with ease. But we would have fought, despite that we would certainly have lost, but for-” Here he paused, in some distress, until Mog jumped up, swinging her arms, and finished for him.