The hunters drew their thraxters to face me. There were five of them and I must draw a veil, as they say, over what followed. I did not kill them all. Three of them were unarmed and then my halflings had reached me, and before there was anything further I could do, there were no hunters left alive. Truth to tell, apart from not really being able to blame the fugitives for their ready justice, I could only have left the hunters there in the jungle. That would have been a more prolonged end, if they were not picked up in time.
This time I said to Rapechak: “Keep an eye on the voller, good Rapechak. We are all comrades, now, in adversity, and this flier is our means of escape.”
He took my meaning clearly enough.
Before I went back for Turko and Mog I respanned the bow, the most handsome of them all, I took from the dead hunter who lay so messily among the rotting detritus of the clearing. With Mog, Turko, the two girls, and the Xaffer I returned to the airboat. We went some time stripping the dead and cleaning their clothes and putting them on. I could not find a tunic to fit and so had to content myself with fashioning a breechclout out of the only scarlet length of material there, and of slinging a short scarlet cape over my left shoulder. Then we all climbed in and, with a feeling of some relief, I sent the voller up into the clean blue sky of Kregen, where the twin Suns of Scorpio blazed down with a light so much more genial than before.
Chapter Seventeen
“You are a get-onker, Dray Prescot! You’re a fool, you nulsh! I wouldn’t go back to Yaman for all the ivory in Chem!”
So spoke Mog, the Migla witch, as we flew out over the sea from the manhunters’ island of Faol. This voller was a larger and more handsome craft than that in which I had escaped before, and in the comfortable cabin aft Turko could lie on a settee and drink the wine we found aboard and make sarcastic remarks about Mog. The girls had recovered, and chattered about what stories they would tell at all the marvelous parties to which they would be invited on the strength of their marvelous adventures. When they heard Mog shriek at me that she would never set foot in her city of Yaman again, the girls looked up.
“We are agreed, Dray Prescot,” said Saenda, somewhat sharply. “Quaesa and I are going to Dap-Tentyrasmot, my own city, where she will be received with all ceremony. Then the halflings may return to their homes, if they wish.”
The effrontery of the girl was amazing only because she had recovered so rapidly from being slave; and was sad because these halflings were her comrades of captivity.
I said, “We go to Mog’s city, Saenda.”
Quaesa said, with a fluting sideways glance from her dark eyes, “If you wish, Dray Prescot, we shall fly to my homeland of Methydria, the land of Havil-Faril, where my father owns many kools of rich grazing and where you will be most welcome.”
By Havil-Faril she meant beloved of Havil, that is, beloved of the green sun. That was not, in those days, calculated to make me, a Krozair of Zy, amenable to her suggestion.
“Yaman,” I said. “Let there be no more argument.”
Of course, I was being selfish. I recognized that. I could have taken all these people home and then gone to Yaman. But I was tired of Mog the witch, and I wanted to get to my home, which was in Valka, or Vallia, depending on where Delia might be, and the quickest way to do that was to dump Mog where the Everoinye wished her. We could drop off a number of the halflings on our way, as we had planned to do before. Turko said, flatly, that he could not return to Herrelldrin. I did not press him. This might be because he had broken some of his syple vows with the slaves, or he might be a wanted man there. A more likely explanation, however, lay in the argument I had had when I had pointed out that a people learned unarmed combat when they were subject to another, and could not afford or were not allowed real weapons. Tulema had not wished to return home, either. I would find out soon enough; now I had to find out what the hell was up with Mog.
“My people have been enslaved, you nulsh,” she said.
I spoke quietly. “I do not believe I am a nulsh, Mog. I do not call you rast or cramph — or not very often. I own I am an onker — a get-onker, as you will. But watch your tongue or I’ll see what your Migshaanu the Odoriferous can do about it.”
Turko laughed. He was much better, and that was a relief.
Mog took a deep breath. She still wore her stinking slave breechclout hanging down, and she smelled. I promised myself to give her a damned good wash at the first opportunity. Now she explained, remarkably lucidly, all things considered, and with a refreshing absence of insults, just what was wrong with her city of Yaman in the land of Migla.
Her story interested me only to the extent that I was always eager to learn about Kregen, my adopted planet. There was much I knew already, but I have not as yet related it for it does not fit in with my narrative. I hope I am managing to keep unentangled all the various skeins of fate and destiny that both manipulated me and which I, in my own way, attempted to manipulate, to the confounding of the Star Lords.
The Miglas had been a quiet, contemplative, peaceful race, much given to religion. Mog said she was the high priestess of the Miglish religion, using many strange expressions I will tell you of when necessary. But they had been overthrown and subjugated by a fierce and warlike race who invaded from the island of Canopdrin in the Shrouded Sea in Havilfar where terrifying earthquakes had destroyed cities and flooded fertile valleys and laid the land waste.
“They were few, the bloody Canops, but they were clever. They destroyed my religion. They took me and chained me and defamed me before the eyes of my people. They slaughtered all the royal family. But it was our religion, our love of Migshaanu the All-Glorious through which they enslaved us.” She looked shrunken and miserable, and my feelings toward Mog the witch were forced to undergo a change. “My people believed their lies. They worshiped their false images. They made sacrifices, where we of Migla have not sacrificed for a thousand seasons — more! They made of Migshaanu a mockery. And if I return, Dray Prescot, they will surely slay me before all the people of Yaman.”
So, I said to myself, what of the Star Lords’ orders now?
“Not sacrifice, Mog?” I said. “But you are continually threatening me with what this Migshaanu will do to me.”
She stared up, her bright agate eyes hard on me, her witch’s face slobbered with tears, her hooked nose running. She looked a horrible object, but she also looked pathetic, and I suppose, for the first time, I really thought of Mog the witch as a person.
“Migshaanu the All-Glorious is peaceful and calm and gentle, and her love shines upon all, twin rays from the suns, in glory and beauty! It is the foul nulshes of Canops who do the things I threaten! I merely put them in my mouth as from my Migshaanu the Ever-Virtuous to — to-”
She had no need to go on.
“I have heard that no religion can be crushed utterly. There will be people who would welcome you back, the high priestess?”
“Yes. There are a few. Scattered, weak, feeble, hiding their adherence to the true beliefs under a mask, bowing to the bloody Canops in the full incline with despair in their hearts.”
“Well, it is settled. I will take you to your friends.”
All the fight seemed to have been knocked out of her. She just squatted down in the aft cabin, and presently she started rocking back and forth and crooning. Saenda shouted at her crossly to keep quiet, but the old crone hardly heard and went on rocking and crooning. I heard her say, between a clear change of musical pattern in the crooning dirge: “Oh, Mag, Mag! Where are you now?” And then she went on with her crooning and her rocking, and Saenda cursed her and came up to sit by me at the controls.