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The Manhounds of Antares, the jiklos of Faol.
Pressed up against the lenken bars Lilah still held my arm. She had not shrunk from touching me, from
pulling me away. Just beyond her I could see Tulema and the Khamorro. Now I understood a little why
Tulema, for all the promises of the guides, hung back from escaping, was so terrified of the manhunt.
Yes, Dray Prescot, said Princess Lilah of Hyrklana. They are men.
Men. They were not halflings, even, men-beasts for beast-men with a weird mutation of head or body to
mark them out from true men and who, on Kregen, is to say who is a true man and who is not? Gloag
was a man for all his bristle-hide and bullet-head. Inch, too, was a man. But these things? These
Manhounds of Scorpio? Were they truly men?
The answer could not be denied.
Some agency had so guided their development, over the seasons, as to transform them from ordinary
men into jiklos. I could with revulsion imagine some of the training. They must have been strapped into
iron cages from birth, made to walk always on all fours, taught to run and hunt, and by evolving senses
regained man s lost capacities of smell and hearing. They might be unable to stand upright at all, now.
And the final blasphemy, at least in my eyes, was to dress them in red coats, to sully the image I held of
my own old scarlet, the scarlet of Strombor!
Shadows moved in the jungle clearing beyond the bars. The slaves huddled, waiting to be picked as
quarry. Tulema hung back and the Khamorro, arguing with her, at last slapped her across the face and
pushed her back. He moved toward the bars with arrogance, and other slaves shrank back from him.
Lilah said, Here they come now . . .
Into the cleared area before the barred rows of cages, rather like a shopping arcade, stepped Nalgre,
the slave-master, with his guards, and his customers. I ignored all that, started to push my way toward
the Khamorro. Tulema was sobbing, now. She had lost this Khamorro and she must have assumed she
had already lost me, absorbed as I had been with Lilah. Tulema could not know that it was by the Star
Lords command that I must rescue Lilah.
No, Dray Prescot, said Lilah. I recognized the tone. She was a princess, I felt no doubt. You will be
killed.
Again she put her hand on my arm. I could feel the softness of it, and yet the firmness, too, as she
gripped me.
What might have happened then, Zair knows, for a Fristle nearby, whose fur was much bedraggled, said
quickly, Here is Nath the Guide.
The guide pushed through to the bars, and I left off trying to reach the Khamorro. This guide was much
like the first one I had seen lithe, well built, fleet of limb, as I judged, with a handsome head and a
mass of dark hair. Nath the Guide . . .
Well, there are many Naths on Kregen.
Around him perhaps a dozen people clustered. They were eager. They had been able to arrange deals
with the guide to be taken out. And all the time Lilah s hand gripped my arm.
Nalgre the slave-master cracked his whip. The customers with him jumped, and then laughed, and
pointed out to one another choice specimens of slaves within the cages. It was all a part of the show
Nalgre put on.
These nobles and wealthy men and women who hunted human beings for sport were little different from
the bunch I had seen before. A quick check showed me that Berran was not with them. The Notor who,
by his appearance and gestures, considered himself the most important personage there was a heavily
built man, with brown hair, a face pudgy from too many inspections of the bottoms of glasses, too many
vosk-pies, and smothered in a mass of jewels and silks and feathers.
He was pointing now and Nalgre was nodding.
Nath the Guide whispered: It will be all right. He will choose us. Now remember! Act as slaves, for the
sake of Hito the Hunter!
This Notor fancied himself as a great Jikai, it was clear, for the guards swung open the lenken-barred
gate and began to herd out more than a dozen of the slaves. One fragile Xaffer was rejected, and I
guessed the poor devil had been subsisting on dilse and nothing else for too long. In the heat and dust of
the compound, with the smells of sweat and fear all about us, we were prodded out. Lilah clung to me. I
caught a glimpse of Tulema hanging back, her face agonized, tear-streaked, and then the lenken bars
smashed shut against the slaves who remained unselected.
We re in for it now, Lilah, I said. We ll soon be free.
I pray it be so, Dray Prescot.
With guards around us, their spears everywhere ready to prod mercilessly, we were taken through the
clearing to the slave barracks. Here we would be prepared for the next day s hunt.
You will already have realized that the Dray Prescot who walked so docilely with the slaves, prodded
by spears, was a very different person from the Dray Prescot who had so witlessly and violently resisted
any slave attempt upon him as when, for instance, I was captured and flung down before the Princess
Natema, and had thrown Galna at her, for good measure. I was trying to calculate out if escaping now,
this instant, would serve our ends better than waiting. Once I had taken this lovely girl Princess Lilah of
Hyrklana back home, I would then strike at once for Vallia. I did not wish to make a leem s-nest of it.
I have been hunted as quarry for sport since this occasion on Faol notably by the debased
Ry-ufraisors, who sacrifice to the green sun, calling Genodras by the name of Ry-ufraison. That was
many seasons later, of course many years ago, now, too and I wander in my tale. It is worth noting
that here on Faol I found the people referring to the red and green suns, the Suns of Scorpio, not as Zim
and Genodras but as Far and Havil.
While I had no doubts that I could survive in the jungle, and this without boasting, which is a fool s trade,
I had doubts about Lilah. Nath the Guide told us we would be given clothes, and boots, and a knife
apiece. Also food. Almost decided in my mind to consign these trinkets to the Ice Floes of Sicce and
make a break for it right away, I witnessed an event that changed my mind.
The arrogant Khamorro would have nothing of waiting. He had chosen his time, and now, by Morro the
Muscle, he would break a few backbones and escape into the jungles. His name was Lart. I had had
trouble with a Lart very early on during my second visit to Kregen, and so I watched with great care.
Lart the Khamorro flexed his muscles in the slave barracks. Other men walked small when a Khamorro
passed. We were given fresh food, although the promised clothes were denied us, and the food was
good thick vosk and taylyne soup, beef roasted to a prime, fresh roandals, the bread of Kregen in
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