Manhounds of Antares by Alan Burt Akers Page A

Prescot!” she called down.
    “You are safe, Lilah! Now go!”
    She kicked the sides of the magnificent flying animal. “I shall not forget you, Dray Prescot!” And then, faintly as she rose into the limpid morning sky: “Remberee, Dray Prescot!”
    I admit it now — I can look back and see and understand my feelings then — I welcomed the coming fight. I had run and crawled and pulled my forelock long enough. These men might be justified in their instant attack upon us — although I doubted that — but they would rue the day they tangled with me.
    No doubt the Star Lords thought that a good joke, too.
    As I held that length of lumber prepared to show these yokels a little sword-practice, I felt, suddenly, treacherously, the shifting sensations and the blue radiance close about me, and I could no longer feel the wooden longsword — and I was slipping and sliding into the radiant blue void.

Chapter Eight
    Prey of the Manhounds of Antares
    The stink of slaves lay in my nostrils with that thick choking odor so familiar to me.
    A voice said: “I can guide you out, Golan, by Hito the Hunter! But you must run—”
    “I can run, Anko! And I will reward you, liberally, magnificently! I am a Pallan—”
    “And me! And me!” other voices lifted, beseeching, begging, pleading to be led to freedom.
    I opened my eyes.
    I had failed the Star Lords.
    The brazen notes of a stentor’s horn filled the caves and passageways and like swirling weeds at the turn of the tide all the slaves raced madly off to the feeding hall. I stood up. By the Black Chunkrah! I’d go down to the feeding cave and take my food if I had to snatch it from all the Khamorros in Havilfar and all the guides in Faol!
    So the Princess Lilah of Hyrklana with the golden hair and the beautiful form had not been the one I had been sent here to rescue.
    There was but one thing I could do.
    I must find the correct slave to be rescued and take him or her out to safety. Guide or no guide.
    Down in the feeding cave I saw a lithe and limber young man with dark hair, very alert in carriage now he was alone with only slaves about him, talking earnestly with a bulky man who had once been plump. His face, much sunken in, still contained traces of the habitual power of command he had once wielded. This was Golan, and he had been a Pallan, and had been betrayed, and so sold into slavery and found himself dispatched to Faol, where slaves brought a high price.
    Golan?
    I lifted my chunk of vosk — a Rapa who had thought to dispute with me its possession lay on the floor unconscious — and shook it at the rocky ceiling. “You stupid Star Lords!” I said, but I did not speak aloud, for I did not wish to attract unwelcome attention to myself, and although insanity was common enough among slaves, it was still regarded with a leery suspicion. “Idiot Everoinye! How am I supposed to know whom to rescue out of this mad crowd?”
    I received no answer, and expected none, and so sank my teeth into the vosk and stared sullenly at my fellow slaves.
    My beard had grown and my hair, too, making me look even more wild and uncouth and slavelike. All the same, Tulema recognized me instantly.
    “Dray! I thought — how did you—? Have you crawled back through the caves?”
    “No, Tulema. I didn’t go.” Then, to allay her suspicions, I said: “Here, finish this vosk for me. I am heartily sick of this place, for I thought I was safely away, and then I was not.”
    Instead of saying, as one would, “Tell me about it,” she seized the remaining chunk of vosk with my teethmarks sharp upon it and wolfed it down. No one, it was clear, had been looking out for Tulema.
    Could my target be this girl, with her lithe body and dark hair, all matted with dirt, her savage ways, this girl who had been a dancer in a dopa den? I did not think so. It was, in truth and given the circumstances of my return, far more likely to be this Golan, who had been a Pallan. A Pallan, as you know, is a