Legions of Antares Read Free

If he labored under the delusion I was his body slave Zaydo, what difference would that make? I wanted to finish this thing off, and then get about wrecking Empress Thyllis’s crazy ambitions. And, into the bargain, I could do with a good laugh, and this numim appeared to me to be able to furnish mirth aplenty.
    So... “Yes, master, no master, very good master, and what has happened here that you are in such poor case and Zaydo is crushed to death?”
    He blew his whiskers out and glared up at me.
    “You are an onker! The roof fell in, that’s what. And when I led these people out through the old mining tunnels, the earthquake brought more down, and so trapped us all again and knocked a damned great hole in my head. Vosk skull!”
    “Mayhap, master, a vosk skull, being exceedingly thick, is a good thing to have down here.”
    “Do you mock me, ingrate?”
    “Mock you, master? Why should a humble body slave do that?”
    “I labor mightily for the good of the Everoinye. Why they should burden me with an imbecile like you I cannot imagine.”
    Now this Strom Irvil was only the second kregoinye I had so far met. The first, Pompino, was no doubt either safely at home in Pandahem with his wife, or jaunting about Kregen derring-doing on an errand for the Everoinye. I’d have preferred Pompino here with me now. But as I set about finding a way out for the trapped people, I had to put up with Strom Irvil breathing down my neck.
    The truth of our predicament was brought home to me quickly and its brutality made me ponder. We were trapped. We
were
trapped. These people, representatives of the weaker races of Kregen, had crept here secretly to hold a meeting and listen to the wise words of a wandering preacher. This man, this Pundhri the Serene, sat on a rock higher than the rest, his fist supporting his bearded chin, his face bent down, talking quietly to a group of people gathered about him. His voice came to me as a mellifluous burble whose individual words were lost. He was a diff of that race of ahlnims whose members have for century after century produced mystics and wise men. He looked the part, for his hair, like a Gon’s, was chalk white. He did not, like a Gon, shave his head bald and polish it up with butter. His face bore that intent, concentrated look of a man absorbed with the import of what he was saying, determined to make his listeners understand and share his vision. He wore a simple dark-blue tunic, and he held a thick staff, unadorned, although with a stout knob at each end.
    Strom Irvil said, “Yes, Zaydo. He is the man the Everoinye wish saved. He is our charge — and me with a damned great hole in my head and a stupid thick-skulled onker of a body slave! It is enough to make a man turn to drink.”
    “We are trapped — master — but mayhap we can dig a way out. If—”
    “We! You mean you will dig a way out, Zaydo! And there are monsters in the tunnels. The old mine workings were abandoned seasons ago. The shrine where the meeting was held has not been used in the memory of living man. But Pundhri the Serene called the meeting there out of the prying eyes of those who would destroy him and his work.”
    “And what work is that? Master.”
    He glared and winced. “You see what a miserable band these folk are. Not a fighting man among them...”
    “The ahlnims fight, on occasion—”
    “Aye! And by thus doing break the tenets of their faith.”
    I eyed Pundhri’s knobbed stick. They call that kind of dual-skull-basher a dwablatter. I surmised that Pundhri had used it often enough before he was dubbed the Serene.
    “And you say there are monsters, master?” I almost mocked, beginning to feel the need of opening my shoulders. “I suppose there are flame-spouting risslacas, and giant spiders, and—”
    “The giant spiders are as big as two dinner plates and they can snap your leg off like a rotten twig.”
    That sobered me, I can tell you.
    He threw the broken sword at me.
    “Get on with it,