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fall, stricken in mid-leap.
Span your bows! I spoke as I used to speak in the smoke and thunder of the broadsides, when the
old wooden walls drifted down to bloody battle, and I must see my battery of thirty-two-pounders kept
on firing until only myself, perhaps, was left to sponge, load, ram, and pull the lock string.
The people from the voller were uncertain. One called in a loud, hectoring voice: Gumchee! Tulishi!
That would be the female manhound, I guessed. Colicoli! Hapang! They could call until the Ice Floes of
Sicce went up in steam but they d get no answer from those four couples of manhounds.
Rapechak said, We are ready, Dray Prescot. May your Opaz go with you.
Turko shouted. He spoke loudly, angry, raging, shoving up from his bed of leaves. His face lost its look
of pain and took on the semblance of superior anger more habitual to it.
And is no one of you stinking half-men going with Dray?
Of the nine halflings who had started with the party, only five were left now, and four were ready to do
damage with the crossbows. The last, a little Xaffer, would be of no help in a fight.
Mog started to cackle something and the two girls were sobbing, clutching each other. I shouted back:
I will have to go alone. Now,cover me!
Even then Turko tried to get up, to stand and to rush out with me, but his legs buckled and gave way
and he fell. Then I waited for no more but started a mad dash for the voller.
I say mad dash, for I was mad, clean through, and I dashed, for the mighty hunters of the great Jikai had
their crossbows ready.
I lived only because they were such lousy shots.
The only one from whom I expected real danger would be their guide, a man similar to the one I had
snatched from his zorca on the plain with the Pallan Golan. Rapechak knew this, also. By the time I
reached the voller three of the hunters lay with bolts skewering them. I had dodged and weaved in the
last few yards. Up there and peering over the voller s side the guide looked down. His face showed
contempt and rage and only a tinge of fear and I fancied that was for his dead clients. He lifted himself
to get a good shot at me and the last crossbow quarrel, loosed by Rapechak the Rapa, penetrated his
face and knocked him back.
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
Of Havilfar, volleem and stuxes
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.
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