“No. And look downcast, slave.”
He gulped. “Yes. Yes, that is right.”
We were taken to the slave barracks, where all went as before, except that there was no pathetic brave and foolish Lart the Khamorro to throw away his life so uselessly.
In the slave barracks this time there were two other parties of slaves ready for the great Jikai. We had some conversation, but I knew none of them, and now was more convinced than ever that Golan was my man.
Next morning Nalgre, with his admiring customers in attendance, went through his little routine with his pet jiklo. The female creature frisked about, lolling her red tongue, rubbing her flanks against his legs, sniffing us. Then we set out through the jungle. The other two parties went north and east. We struck south. As Anko said: “We do not wish to draw too many hunters down upon us, no, by Hito the Hunter. We cross the great plain, and then we will be safe across the river.”
This Anko was much like Nath, and I hoped no untoward accident would befall him, also. He found his cache of clothes and food and shoes and knives, and cheerful at the prospect of liberty before us, we set off. The jungle was left far in the rear and we tramped across a wide plain where palies and that deer-like animal of such grace and beauty, the lople, ran and grazed in herds. We might run across leem here, too, and I kept my hand on the hilt of the cheap knife Anko had passed out from the cache. The palies were the easiest to catch of the plains deer, and we caught, cooked, and ate one before settling down for the night. I own I felt the tiredness on me. I had suggested we march on by the light of She of the Veils, but Anko had laughed and said the high and mighty hunters did not relish hunting by night. He added, losing his smile: “They like to see their quarry.”
Faol, as I was to learn, is mostly jungle in its northern half, nearer the equator, but a shift in the land height and the more southerly aspect give this part of the island a more open terrain. The plain over which we now trod curved around to merge with that over which I had marched previously, right across to the river. Now I felt an unease I put into words to Anko the Guide before sleep.
“We are exposed here, Anko. Would not the jungle have afforded us more cover?”
“There is some truth in what you say. But to the north the chances of complete escape are more limited.”
Well, he ought to know. Once more I was struck by the bravery and self-sacrifice of the guides. Anko told me a little more of their philosophy, which was not based, as I had thought, on the twin-principle so common on Kregen, in which the Invisible Twins and Opaz figure so prominently. The guides came from a people of Faol who believed in absolute evil as a principle of life, unarguable and factual, and they were therefore dedicated in opposition to this force. He would not speak of the manhounds. I took this as a wise precaution, for the fears that had destroyed the courage of Tulema were rife among all the slaves. Only the presence of a guide gave them the courage to run. When a bunch of slaves were chosen to be hunted without having arranged for a guide to be among them their chances were nil. Luckily, so Anko said, the guides usually contrived to be with a party due to be hunted. When I said to him, “And what do you guides seek in this work?” some of my old uncouth sailor ways slipped out. But he smiled.
“For every successful party guided to safety, we receive great honor in our own land, which is on the southern coast. Our young men regard this as a duty laid on them for the honor of their forefathers. Also, the more runs a young man makes, the prettier are the girls from whom he may choose his bride.”
You couldn’t argue with that.
Yes, he had heard that the Kov of Faol’s name was Encar Capela, that his greatest pride was his packs of manhounds, but beyond that he knew nothing of him.
We slept.
In the morning, Anko the Guide was gone.
Zair forgive me if I had slept too long or too heavily.
There were tracks in the short grass of the plains, and blood spots, and signs of a struggle. I could not tell the others with me of Nath the Guide’s disappearance, but here the tragedy was too obvious and too unnerving for them to take much in except for the need of instant flight. It seemed clear to me, then, that the guides were being murdered. Someone had discovered the work they were doing. Probably Nalgre, with that confounded female jiklo of his, had been told by one of the tame slaves — and I instantly suspected that the old Miglish witch was the one. She nauseated me, I confess, with her twisted face like a gnome’s, all bulbous hooked nose and rubbery thin lips, and bright agate eyes that saw so much, and her foully breathing mouth that told the secrets of the slaves and the guides.
Perhaps, just perhaps, I thought, if Golan was not the right target and I was thrown back into the slave pens I would take the old crone and shake the truth out of her.
The horror of it made me angry. The guides, fine upstanding young men, were risking everything to bring the slaves to safety, and the dark and devious ways of spies were bringing them to their deaths. Golan wanted to run with the others. I managed to hang on to him and convince him he should eat something. Then, munching roast paly, we set off marching after the others. We were on our own now. If we went due south we should reach the land of the guides, where we might look for shelter. I angled our march, striking a little to the west in the southerly direction, and soon we were able to see the other fugitives as dots, jerkily rising and falling over the small undulations of the plain away on our left front.
There was in me no desire to sing, and I kept a weather eye cocked aloft for Gdoinye or flier. A voller arrived first and the damned thorn-ivy bush into which I pitched Golan and myself was deucedly hard and prickly and sharp. We cursed as we crawled out. That was only the first. All morning as Far and Havil wheeled across the sky in their mingled lights, we had to dive and burrow our way into bush or crevice or rock shadow.
Golan had completely accepted me as his mentor, and, in truth, he was almost witless with fear. We pressed on and I made him keep up a good pace. From a thicket I cut a stout cudgel for him and a length that might serve as a wooden longsword. I swung it about. Wood it might be, it still felt good in my fists. Maintaining a straight line of direction is often difficult, although to me, an old sailorman, navigation is an old habit and I knew we had not circled around when I heard the voices off to our left. I said to Golan, viciously: “Keep quiet!”
He did not say a word. His big, fallen-in face showed the horrors that rode him. We crept forward carefully.
Through a screen of bushes I looked down and saw half a dozen of our fellow-fugitives running and stumbling, falling and picking themselves up, to run wildly on again. Then I saw the reason for that mindless fear.
Bounding in long loping leaps after the slaves raced the outriders of a pack of manhounds. I have seen the work of William Blake, here on Earth, and muchly admired it. And who is there who does not inwardly shiver at the terrifying images of “Tyger, tyger burning bright!”?
There is a picture by William Blake, a print, now, I believe, in the Tate Gallery in London, depicting Nebuchadnezzar. The king of Babylon was stricken, and became as an animal, and crawled away into exile. Blake’s picture shows him crawling, with long beard, and hairs, as it were, growing into eagle’s feathers. There is on his face a look of such inward horror, and pain, despair, and terrifying madness as would drive pity into the heart of any man.
There is about the picture much orange and brown and somber ocher. There is a static quality about it. For all that the Manhounds of Antares are vicious and filled with a febrile energy, slavering, quick, and deadly, there is about them, too, something of that awful quality of uncomprehending doom. So they ran and howled and the thick saliva slobbered from their mouths from which the red tongues lolled.