I saw the leader leap full upon the back of the last straggling fugitive. The wretch emitted a despairing shriek and fell. He was a Rapa. And then a strange thing happened. The manhound did not kill him, for all their fangs can rip the reeking flesh from their living victims. He lifted the Rapa up in his arms, squatting back, and so waited.
His companions poured on in wild hue and cry.
A bunch of zorca riders galloped up — and the manhound released the Rapa, who shrieked and fled. And now I saw the great Jikai.
The zorca hunters emitted wild whoops and spurred their mounts, and charged after the crazily running Rapa. He ran and ran, in a dead straight line, without the wit to dodge, although I do not think that would have done him the slightest good. The crossbows winked in the streaming mingled light of the Suns of Scorpio. The bolts loosed. The hunters were poor shots. Many missed. Three or four bolts struck the Rapa, all aquiver, and he stumbled, fell, and then tried to struggle on. Their crossbows discharged, the zorca riders bore on. They hefted their spears and they cast and only one pierced the Rapa. This was clumsy butchery. The hunters unsheathed their swords, and now they reined in around the Rapa and I saw the blades rising and falling.
Golan was being sick.
“Keep quiet, calsany!” I said.
I took notice of the youth who had flung the only spear to strike. He had a rosy laughing face, very merry, and he was now red with exertion. But his face was no redder than the sword he waved wildly above his head and with a shrill yell plunged downward yet again.
“Well done, Ortyg! Well done!” his companions called.
Then — I went stiff with rage and passion.
For these miserable cramphs, these misbegotten of Grodno, shouted out the words, the great words,
“Hai! Jikai!”
Almost, I rose up and flung myself upon them.
But Golan, who once had been a Pallan, was being sick in the grass, and the Star Lords had commanded me to rescue him.
I watched, trembling, hating the poltroon I had become, as the zorca riders spurred away. The flanks of the zorcas showed the blood-red weals. Spurs and zorcas are not a fit combination for a true rider!
A single manhound, sniffing after the rest, trailed up toward us.
Maybe he caught our scent on a vagrant breeze; maybe he was the rogue of the pack. But he came straight for us, head down, rump high, his hair blowing in a mane behind him, his crested topknot stiff and arrogant, his jagged teeth exposed.
Golan’s sick spasm had passed. The other fugitives were almost out of sight beyond a grassy clump, the manhounds well up to them, and the great and puissant hunters spurring madly after. One turned, and shouted, and I guessed he was calling the manhound who doggedly climbed toward us. This man, in his leaf-green tunic and small round helmet, was a guard, probably the packmaster, in charge of the jiklos. Then I had to concentrate on the manhound. He was a big fellow, very vicious, and had he possessed a tail it would have been lashing angrily. He had seen us now and he let out a slavering screech and charged for us.
For just an instant I saw the guard wheel his zorca, and then I leaped up, the wooden longsword cocked in that special Krozair grip. The manhound leaped. I saw his teeth, jagged and sharp, the saliva flecking from his thin lips, and his eyes all bloodshot and mad with hunting lust. His clawed hands reached for my throat, and his teeth sought to rip out my jugular, for with the intelligence I knew these fearsome beasts still retained, he had recognized I was not a meek victim, but stood there with a club to meet him and bash out his brains.
In that he was mistaken.
This length of wood cut from a thicket was no clumsy bludgeon. It stood in lieu of a deadly Krozair longsword, second only to the great Savanti sword itself.
I took my grips, brought the wood around and back, and so, with a chopped “Hai,” drove the splintered end full in the manhound’s savage face. He tried to swerve, but he was too slow. He bundled over, screeching, splinters mantling his cheeks and one eye gone and then — and only then — did I bring the wooden longsword down in a blow that caved in his rib cage. Two more blows finished him. The soft plop of zorca hooves on the grass brought me around.
The guard was a fool.
The first rule of a crossbowman is always: “Reload!”
He came at me with his sword.
He was angry, annoyed that a valuable jiklo had been slain, and he did not even have the same sense as that jiklo to recognize I was not an ordinary fugitive slave run as quarry. He slashed violently down and I slid the blow and smashed him across the thigh — a favorite stroke, that, with the Krozair longsword — and had the weapon been edged steel he would have been less one leg. As it was he screamed in pain and I was able to reach up, inside the curve of the zorca’s neck, and take him and so hold him and drag him down. When I stood up, grasping the zorca’s reins, Golan staggered across.
“By Opaz! I have never seen the like.”
“Mount up, Pallan, and let us ride. Otherwise you will not have the chance to see the like again.”
And so, mounted up, forward and aft, and damned close together, too, on so short-coupled a mount as a zorca, we rode hard for the south.
Chapter Nine
The Pallan Golan was not the man the Star Lords wished me to rescue from the Manhunters of Faol. Once more I found myself hurled disdainfully back to the slave pens cut from the rocks fronting the jungles, once more the stink of slaves filled my nostrils, and the stentors’ brazen notes called us all to push and herd like vosks to the feeding cave. I had taken Golan safely through to a village where the headman, who knew nothing of the guides and so convinced me we had strayed from our course, promised to care for the Pallan. We had passed over a wide river by means of a raft I had fashioned, and we learned we were in another country on the southern shore. Clearly the villages and land from which the guides came lay farther to the east. The headman of the village knew little of what went on in what he called North Faol. The Trylon of South Faol had long ago refused to bend the knee to the Kov of Faol, and the headman kept himself aloof from what went on across the river. After a good meal and a bit of a sing-song with the girls of the village dancing in the firelight — for I had foolishly thought my mission for the Star Lords accomplished — I was whipped up by the blue radiance and. . well, here I was again, and all to do over.
If you think I was growing mightily annoyed by this time — you are right. Although enough time had elapsed for my hair and beard and moustache to grow somewhat shaggy, still Tulema recognized me.
This time my original excuse would not satisfy her, and so before she could follow on her first quick exclamation of surprise, I said: “Yes, Tulema. I have come back. Like the guides, I feel it important to do so. Perhaps this time you will come out with me.”
“Oh, Dray — the manhounds!”
“I am here, am I not? And I have been out — there!”
She was still as absolutely terrified as ever.
Something would have to be done about Tulema. I knew the person I was supposed to rescue was still in the caves. Unless, of course, he or she had been killed and the Star Lords were punishing me for failing. I would not contemplate that. Some of the original group in the pen when I had first arrived here had gone out; some were left. I could not explain to Tulema, but I managed to get her to identify them for me. I still could not bring myself to believe that Tulema herself was the right one. I had had experience then of the way in which the Star Lords worked. I did not know what their plans for Kregen were, but I had previously rescued people for them who I could see would be important in the scheme of things. Much as I respected the tough hardness of Tulema, and her pitiful fears of the jiklos, I could not envision her as a mover of politics, a maker of nations.