Legions of Antares Read Free Page B

dark-furred legs. I gave him an arm for support and he brushed it away, pettishly.
    “I can stand, Zaydo, you onker!”
    I went across to Pundhri.
    “San,” I said with due formality. “Will you help to move the people? They are frightened—”
    He stared at me and I saw his eyes resting on me with calculation. He grasped his knobbed stick and stood up.
    “They have reason to be frightened. You are Zaydo?”
    In for a zorca, in for a vove. “Yes, San.”
    “We have no weapons against the monsters.”
    I shook rock dust off the broken sword.
    He moved off his flat rock. “I will help these people, of course. You need not have asked. But I do not think your broken sword will avail us here.”
    “It has opened the way. It may yet serve.”
    He stopped and bent his brows on me. “And you are slave?”
    I did not answer but went bashing back to a group of silly Xaffers who wanted to go the wrong way in the confusing torchlit darkness. When we were sorted out and moving through the gap broken in the fall and into the next cavern, I fancied Pundhri might have other things to occupy him besides the character of the slave called Zaydo.
    The next cavern echoed hollowly to our voices. The torches, held high, showed the craggy rock at our backs and an empty darkness ahead. Everyone stopped. There was no doubt at all that this place held an eerie atmosphere that worked on the susceptibilities. People spoke in low tones. A subdued apprehension made movements awkward. At any moment horror could burst upon us from the darkness.
    “Zaydo!” brayed the lion voice. “Get on, get on! And give me my sword. Slaves do not carry swords.”
    “There are some countries where slaves carry swords, master.”
    “If I had my strength I’d knock you flat on your back! Impudent tapo! Insolent yetch!”
    Handing the broken sword across, I said: “You will not stripe me, master?”
    “I don’t see why I should not. My head! You are an ingrate and I am too kind to my slaves. Now get on, and go that way, for I feel a draught there.”
    There was a draught, a tiny current of air, and so this Strom Irvil wasn’t as incapacitated as he wanted to think. Off we went, stumbling and clattering over the uneven floor. The torches lost the rocky wall at our backs, and showed nothing ahead. In darkness, rock underfoot, the torches flaring their orange hair, we staggered on.
    Eventually we reached the far wall and squeezed through a crack where air flowed, and came into another cavern, and crossed that. We might spend a dozen lifetimes down there, creeping through the tunnels and struggling across caverns.
    “Up!” growled Strom Irvil. “We must go up!”
    San Pundhri glanced up, not squinting. Irvil bellowed.
    “Zaydo, you useless yetch! Find a way up! By Havil the Green, what a straw scarecrow I’m lumbered with in you, brainless onker!”
    I was about to let out a fluent torrent of abuse, when Pundhri cut in quickly.
    “You use hard words on your slave, strom. He has done well so far. Can we not—”
    “No! Not until we are out of this infernal hellhole.”
    I walked across to the wall and a Sybli maiden carried a torch, which was near to expiring, and we looked at the fissures within the rock. One or two looked promising. Once we had broken our way back into the mine workings we ought to find it easier going. I reached back for the torch. The Sybli handed it to me, smiling her silly, naïve, endearing Sybli smile, and I eased sideways along the gray stone, the torch picking out veins and spiracles of crystal. Along I went, the torch thrust ahead. The flames flickered, so there was some kind of draught here. The rock pressed against my back. There was barely room before my chest to move my arms. The way tended up.
    The ground shook.
    The walls moved.
    The solid rock groaned as though the very stone labored in agony from unimaginable pressure. Chips of stone flaked off and fell, unheard in that world-shaking rumble. The walls closed together.