Legions of Antares Read Free Page A

get on with it, then, Zaydo, you useless lazy hound!”
    “Yes, master.” I stared about, a trifle vacantly. “Where shall I begin?” After all, if he was the master and I the slave then let him sort out the brainwork.
    “Over there where the first tunnel starts, onker!”
    The stone chipped away fairly easily at first as I dug the broken blade in and twisted and scraped. A couple of jolly Sybli girls held torches. They had a fair supply of these, being cautious folk. But they would not last forever. There were lanterns, cheap mineral-oil lamps, and these were being saved. Then, after about two arms’ lengths, the rock firmed up into mother bedrock. The steel chimed.
    I crawled back and stood up, my head and chest covered with rock dust.
    “What are you stopping for?” The lion-man roar burst out. “Get on with it.”
    “No way through here. Master.”
    “Fool! Then try somewhere else.”
    “Yes, master.” I didn’t bother about any more fun and frolic. A careful look around in the uncertain illumination revealed the way the cavern sloped down at one end, with arching rockfalls fanning out from ancient subsidences. One or two of the dark slots looked promising. I marched across to the nearest. I passed near the group listening respectfully to Pundhri the Serene. At the rock face the slot proved too narrow for my shoulders and I turned, intending to go on to the next.
    A small ahlnim woman approached, carrying a length of brown cloth. Her hair was pinned neatly at the nape of her neck, as I saw as she bowed her head. Her robe was torn and smeared with dust, and I fancied that was unusual for her. She looked calm and competent and capable of running a household.
    “The master offers you this, and all his prayers are for your success.”
    I took the cloth. “Thank you, hortera,” I said, giving her the courtesy title of lady.
    She ducked her head and went back to sit comfortably on a flat rock just to the side and rear of Pundhri. I wound the brown cloth about my nakedness and, spitting on my hands, set to work with the broken sword.
    At that, I did not fail to complain that the Star Lords habitually sent me off to do their dirty work for them stark naked and weaponless. For this high and mighty Strom Irvil, they supplied clothes and weapons — and a personal body slave!
    Some of the Dunders came across and began helping to shift the chips and chunks of rock I flaked off. Squat knots of muscle, short in stubby leg, thick of arm, the Dunders have been blessed — or cursed — by nature or the meddling hand of genetic manipulation with heads as flat across the top as billiard tables. Do not imagine they can be brilliantly intellectual; but they do think, they do suffer from emotions and they are men. Carriers of burdens, the Dunders, and there had been a number of them with us down the Moder before the monsters finished their work forever.
    Pausing for a breather, I said to the nearest flat-headed Dunder: “Is the San a healer, dom?”
    He shook that strange head. “No, dom, no. I do not think so.” Then he added in perfect explanation of his race’s outlook: “No one told me he is a healer.”
    San Pundhri the Serene continued to talk. The title of san, which means master, dominie, sage, was accorded him as by right. He held a magnetic attraction for these poor folk. Not many were slaves, and this, presumably, because slaves of other slave-owners would have been unable to get away to the meeting, and the free folk here could afford few slaves. I went back to rock bashing.
    The way opened after considerable effort and a torch, thrust through the first chink to appear onto the rocks tumbled into the tunnel, revealed an empty openness.
    “A cavern,” I said. “Once we’re into that we’ll be well away.”
    The rocky fall was cleared and it was time to try to rouse these people to movement. With a barrage of groans and snorts and burstings of bad temper, Strom Irvil got himself up. He swayed on those