Fliers of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  “What happens now, Fanal?”

  “We will be taken to Sorah — an evil place!” And he shivered — for the night breeze blew a trifle chill, I admit. “From there we will be sold to whoever will pay the Katakis’ price.”

  There was the thwarted businessman’s acumen in that.

  The stars now showed through the tattered cloud wrack, brilliant constellations that had become familiar to me over the seasons of my life on Kregen. The Zhantil and Sword; the Leem and Shishi; Onglolo; the Headless Risslaca; many more, twinkling away up there with a fine disregard of me and my problems. Of them all, the Zhantil and Sword meant the most, for I was as sure as I could be — and still I am quite certain — that in this fabulous constellation glittered the star that is the sun of my planet of birth, our old Earth.

  Perhaps old Sol is not visible at all from Kregen. But I prefer to believe it is, and that it twinkles there at the tip of the sword in the claws of the Zhantil’s right paw.

  The Shrouded Sea is named not out of mere fancy, and the horizon mist was enough to blot out a great part of the constellation of the Zhantil and Sword, for it is visible north and south, according to season. And so, looking up, I glimpsed the bulk of an airboat drifting among the stars, a tiny mobile constellation of its own.

  Instantly every nerve in my body told me that aloft there, in that voller, flew Delia and my friends. They had to be there! I gazed up and the little grouping of lights swung lower. Others had seen the flier, and with harsh orders the Katakis beat us back to the treeline. I mused on this even as I ran in my chains. So the Katakis were wary enough of fliers to take these precautions!

  My immediate reaction of resistance was speedily overcome as the chains were hauled up, I tripped and, helpless, fell off balance, to be dragged through the sand and shells and scrub and gorse into the trees.

  With a curse I clawed my way up and stared into the sky.

  The flier dropped lower, swinging toward us, so that the lines of her illuminated ports disappeared and only the fore lights showed. She dipped. The breeze had now sunk to a mere whisper in the leaves. I could hear the hoarse breathing of men and women all about me — men and women! — even if I was the only apim there.

  “Absolute quiet!” The voice of the Notor cut into the silence, like a risslaca hiss.

  At my side I felt Fanal go rigid with fear of the lash.

  The flier swung down. I stood up. I shouted.

  “Delia! Seg! Inch! Down here! There are foemen—”

  That nurdling cramph Reterhan hit me then. He laid the flat of his tail-blade against my head and, although I broke most of its force with my arm, the thing smashed into my temple with force enough to admit the near presence of the Notor Zan and his blackness. I had been so intent on putting a quarterdeck bellow into my voice, as I would hail the fore-top of a squally night, that I had broken one of my own cardinal rules. It nearly broke my arm, too. I went over sideways and lay for a moment on the sandy grass, cursing my own folly.

  By the time they dragged me to my feet and the procession of slaves started up again, the flier had gone.

  Either she had not been the flier with Delia aboard, or my people had not heard me.

  I was as sure as I could be about anything that had she been our flier, my people could not have heard me, for if they had they would have been here by now, with longbows flashing and swords chunking.

  For the rest of that miserable night we lay confined in the next fishing village. Its inhabitants had been turned out for us. They were apim, but small and meek; their fishing boats were simple open affairs, the fishing grounds no more than a league offshore, and I felt — with no emotions I could feel ashamed of — that they would have difficulty in actually killing their catch. The Katakis took a few slaves from here, a few of the young girls; the rest were sent to spend the night as best they might on the beach. This, to me, exemplified the aragorn’s contempt for them.

  The crockery of the villagers was pressed into use and we were fed a thin fish gruel. As you know, I am not enamored of fish, but I forced myself to eat the revolting stuff, for like any sensible fighting-man I eat when I can against the certain privations in store in the future. There were no palines, which was an affront, but we got the word that there might be squishes in the morning — if we behaved ourselves.

  The morning came with the twin Suns of Scorpio rising out of the Shrouded Sea wreathed in a flamboyant mantle of green, gold, and orange. We sat upon the packed dirt of the village square, yawning and knuckling our eyes. Everyone was thonged up, one to another; I wore the iron chains. More fish gruel was followed by a muttering clamor among the slaves.

  “Where are the squishes? Where is some bread?” The new slaves were distinctly upset and, this early in their slave careers, annoyed. “We cannot live on this fish—”

  The Katakis went about with their whips, right merrily, and soon no one was asking where the promised squishes were.

  I confess I looked on my fellow prisoners with not a little superiority — foolish, I know, but understandable. They were just beginning the life of slaves. I had been a slave many and many a time, high and low, pampered and flogged, as stylor and as miner. They would find out. Slavery is an evil, and I grew every season more and more sure that the reason I had been brought to Kregen was to stamp out that evil. I was only partly right in that, as you shall hear if these tapes last out . . .

  An aragorn ran into the square yelling and waving his arms. Instantly the square was filled with the sounds of blows and yells as the Katakis whipped and bludgeoned the slaves out of sight. A string of calsanys was prodded beneath the long verandah of the headman’s house, and, being calsanys, they did what calsanys always do when upset.

  It was now clear with the daylight that there were more Katakis than those who had brought us in, and there were more slaves. This miserable village had been taken over and was being used as an entrepôt for slaves, a barracoon on a grand scale. Katakis armed with crossbows ran across the square. Reterhan came rushing toward us, his tail high, its curved blade glinting in the suns. He carried a long strip of cloth.

  In all the hustle and bustle I saw what was being done.

  The village was being returned to its original innocent state. Not a Kataki in sight. Not a calsany that would look out of place. Not a weapon. All the fish-gruel bowls were collected and dumped into the nearest hut. Soon — in mere murs only — the village lay under the rising suns looking like just another poverty-stricken fishing village.

  I looked up.

  A flier cruised into sight.

  I recognized her. I had seen her first in the arena of the Jikhorkdun in Huringa, when I had fought the boloth. Her decks were crowded with people. I would have known who those people were anywhere. And I would have known the flags that fluttered from her masts — every flag the scarlet field with the yellow cross. Old Superb! My flag! Oh, yes, my heart leaped when I saw that voller come flying so serenely over the fishing village.

  Then Reterhan and a comrade wrapped the length of cloth about my mouth, ramming a chunk of wood between my lips so that my teeth grated, and knotted it tightly behind my head.

  They did not wish to knock me out, for we would be marching soon. I thought that — fool that I was!

  “Silence!” The Kataki Notor waved his tail-blade to impress on us the seriousness of the moment. “Absolute silence, all you rasts! I’ll hang and jerk the first of you who cries out!”

  I wondered if he would do that, for a slave with crippled arms is scarcely a salable commodity. But it impressed the cowed Lamnias, and Ochs, and Rapas.

  Reterhan leered at me, his face filled with an evil I now recognized as being a true reflection of his evil mind.

  “Lem rot you, apim! You may watch and suffer, but you cannot cry out!”

  Now I understood exactly what ghastly scene was to be enacted here. Lines of Kataki crossbowmen leveled their weapons. They knelt under the cover of houses, in fishing-net sheds, behind walls. They would b
e invisible from the air. The voller ghosted down, her flags brilliant in the morning suns-glow, and descended to a landing in the village where the hard-packed dust made a descent inviting. Delia, Inch, Seg, and the others were looking for me, and they were searching here.

  But when they touched down they would be deluged with a sudden, treacherous sleeting of crossbow bolts. Those who survived would be swept up as slaves. All my friends — so soon to be murdered or enslaved!

  And I was bound and helpless in iron chains, gagged so that I could not cry out a warning!

  CHAPTER THREE

  Of the pulling of a Kataki tail

  The flier was in truth a magnificent vessel. She moved with a sure steady grace over the village huts, and her people were hanging overside and staring down, and some of them waving . . .

  The iron chains about me bit into my flesh as my muscles bulged. Futile! I tried to gnaw through the wooden chunk in my mouth; but the wood was balass and I merely bit down with teeth-crunching agony. I writhed about in the violence of my movements and the iron chains clanked.

  Reterhan looked most evilly upon me, and placed his foot on my neck, and pressed. Sparks darted and flashed before my eyes; but they were clear enough to see the flier turning, the scarlet and yellow flags dropping to their flagstaffs now as way came off. I stared. Then I dragged my gaze away.

  The flier had to be warned.

  Vangar ti Valkanium, as the flier Hikdar, was bringing her in smoothly and gently, a perfect landing approach. Those people up there would see below them merely a sleepy, poor and innocent fishing village, with precious few people about at this time of morning.

  They would not expect serried lines of crossbowmen.

  Here in the continent of Havilfar, south of the equator, we were far from our homes in Vallia and Valka. But Havilfar was accounted the most progressive, the most modern, of the four continents that made up this grouping upon the face of the planet. Around the shores of the Shrouded Sea men had settled here first, long ago, and in the tumbled ruins of long-forgotten empires, in the artificial features of the landscape, in the admixtures of blood within the different species and races, were to be seen clear evidence of that long history of civilization here.

  Seg, that wild and reckless bowman of Erthyrdrin, was up there in the flier. He and I had fought our way through the Hostile Territories. He would never in ordinary circumstances be taken unawares in ambush. Likewise Inch, that seven-foot-tall ax-man from Ng’groga so obsessed with his taboos, and I had battled through adventures. He, too, was a seasoned campaigner.

  And — and up there on the high quarterdeck stood Delia, my Delia of Delphond!

  At any moment now the voller would touch down. And then the cruel steel-tipped bolts would flash in a raining cloud of destruction.

  Reterhan’s foot pressed with jovial power upon my neck.

  Up in the flier was Korf Aighos, the leader of the rascally but loyal Blue Mountain Boys. Up there was Turko the Shield, that superbly muscled Khamorro of the magical murdering hands; but I felt his great shield would offer some protection, and I prayed Zair he would slap it across before Delia when the bolts whickered in. Tom ti Vulheim and his Valkan Archers were there, ready to be cut down before they could draw bow. Obquam of Tajkent, the flying Strom, would be there, and I longed for his slender powerful form to flash out on his narrow wings to scout this innocent-seeming deathtrap.

  Also, up there in the voller, were those new friends who had saved me in the arena by their selfless devotion: Naghan the Gnat, armorer superb; Balass the Hawk, who had earned the distinction of becoming a hyr-kaidur, Tilly, my little golden-furred Fristle fifi; and Oby, that young rascal who had aspired to greatness in the arena, but had had his dreams shattered, to be replaced by a vision of a greater future — and who must, I suspected, figure in the shadowy schemes of the Star Lords.

  All of them might in the next few murs be lying dead, pierced through and through with arbalest quarrels. Or they might be staggering up to be chained as was I and be carried off into slavery.

  Oh, Delia, my Delia!

  I rolled my eyes at the Lamnia youth, Fanal. He saw me looking at him. I could not cry out. But he could. He could warn the airboat. Across my face that old evil look of power and arrogance passed, and my eyes glared with a mad berserker brilliance, so that he flinched away. But he turned his head, and would not look at me, and he did not cry out a warning.

  No one would shout voluntarily.

  So I must do something horrible.

  Reterhan’s foot slid from my neck as I squirmed. I got my linked chains up and swung the small bight they had allowed me, and so snared that curved blade mounted at the end of his whiplike tail.

  Metal splines ran down from the blade to give stiffening and protection to the end two feet of tail.

  The chains snagged beneath the blade where it curved from its socket I rolled and lurched and staggered up and I pulled.

  I pulled Reterhan’s tail.

  It was not a gentle pull. It was a savage, barbaric sinew-and-muscle-bursting jerk.

  Reterhan yelled.

  He could not stop himself.

  The Kataki opened his mouth and yelled blue bloody murder.

  His shout of agony bellowed across the open space.

  I was not content.

  Circling, I twisted the tail about me and jerked again with utmost vicious force. The Kataki leaped and toppled toward me, and I truly think had he not done so I would have wrenched his tail out all bloody by its roots.

  His agonized screaming knifed through the air where the mingled streaming light of the Suns of Scorpio threw twin shadows of the flier across the packed dirt.

  The chains so cunningly bighted around by ankles and knees would not allow me to walk, let alone run, and that stumbling circle was the only progress I could make. I fell to the dirt and tried to roll myself like a barrel of cheap dopa out into the cleared area. A warning! My brain blazed with the single desire to warn my comrades in the voller.

  The rolling did not get me far, but it saved my life, for two crossbow bolts sizzled into the earth, gouting clods, where I had been.

  Covered in sweat and caked dirt I dragged in a lungful of breath and glared at Reterhan, who was crouching up, his left hand clamped bone-white across his mouth, his right hand feeling his injured tail. He was in no position to hit me again for some time.

  The flier halted its descent. It hovered a dozen feet above the open space.

  The rows of heads that had been showing over the bulwarks had all vanished, and I heaved a great gasp of relief. Those men of mine up there were alerted! They would not know what was going on down here, but now they would not come down meekly to be massacred and enslaved.

  I had expected a sheeting storm of crossbow bolts to rise toward the flier, and I was confident enough in her armoring to know it would take more than a hand-held arbalest to drive through. A good-sized varter would be needed, and the Katakis, as far as I knew, did not dispose of varters here.

  But this Kataki Notor was a cunning lord. He also held his men under a strong controlling rein, for he had not given the order to shoot, and so no one loosed.

  No one shot at me, either, so I guessed the Notor had a scheme afoot.

  I saw him giving swift orders; then he divested himself of his war-gear. Off came the scaled tunic, the greaves, the close-fitting helmet. His thraxter and stuxes were grasped by an attendant. Two more worked rapidly on his tail and soon they unstrapped that wicked curved blade.

  The Notor snatched up a net-needle and its spool of thread from a draping net by a wall. Clad only in his breechclout — that scarlet kilt! — he walked slowly, bent over and shuffling, into the central plaza. He shaded his eyes and looked up.

  “You are most welcome, whoever you are!” he called up. “We are but a small village and poor. We have nothing for aragorn to plunder or for slave-masters to covet, for all our strong young men and beautiful girls are gone in the plague.”

  Reterha
n was still totally absorbed in his concern for his tail, but his comrade stifled a little gust of merriment at his Notor’s words.

  I felt the chill of despair.

  Vangar ti Valkanium leaned over the quarterdeck rail and bellowed.

  “We wish you no harm, old man. The plague, you say?”

  “The dropping sickness and the purple buboes. It is a visitation from Chezra-gon-Kranak for our sins, though we know not how we have offended the Great Ones.”

  I’ll give this evil Kataki lord his due; he made a convincing liar.

  “We will come and assist you, old man,” yelled down Vangar. “We have medicines—”

  I was on tenterhooks.

  The Notor waved his tail, all innocent and naked as it was.

  “I thank you, Notor, but we are few and the sickness passes.”

  Some further conception came to me then of the way these Kataki aragorn operated. The Notor could see the crowded decks and the glitter of weapons, he could see the varters ranked along the broadsides, all fully manned. He could not fail to understand that this flier and these men were a most formidable opposition. All surprise had been lost. A shower of crossbow bolts now would do little damage, and then the varters would loose and the return arrows would come in . . .

  To give him his due, he preferred to go around terrorizing the villages and taking plunder and slaves without trouble. Much though the Katakis liked a fight, they would not fight if the odds were against them. There was no profit in tangling with this powerful adversary — or so I read his thoughts.

  “You’re sure you do not require assistance?”

  That was Seg Segutorio, leaning over the rail, his black hair brilliant in the suns-glow.

  “We do not, Notor.”

  An incredibly tall figure with waist-length yellow hair stood beside Seg. Inch lifted his battle-ax.

  “You have food? Wine? Can we not help you, old man?”