Some distance along the trail the fugitives took to leave the compound I found a nice comfortable spot partway up a tree bole, and with movements very rapid and barely seen in the gloom, lashed Mog safely to the trunk. Her tattered blanket provided gag and bindings. Her eyes glared at me and I saw no terror in them, only a mindless and shaking sense of outrage and feral hatred. I slammed in a palisade of thorns that, although skimpy, would serve, and then dashed back. If you ask why I did not at once flee with Mog through the night jungle, you have not yet rightly understood me. I knew the fliers were kept nowhere near the caves. Where they were kept I did not know. The Jikai villas were some way off and would be guarded. If I aroused the compound now there scarcely would be a hunt the next day. I had left the barred cage door open. The dead guard lay sprawled just outside. That would cause commotion enough.
Back in the slave barracks I flung the uniform back on the guard, kicked the Deldar, who was moaning, and scampered up the stairs. Up there all was quiet. I crept to my corner and lay down. A shadow moved. A man eased gently up to me.
A voice said: “You tried to escape, dom. You came back. Why?”
I recognized the voice of the third Khamorro, a light, pleasant voice, to come from such a deadly kind of man.
“If you wish to know,” I said, “go down and see.”
He chuckled. “I am going to escape tomorrow. I would not wish anyone to spoil that for me. I hope you have not done so.”
“Go to sleep.”
I was perfectly ready in case he leaped on me. But he did not. I heard him ease himself back to his pallet. His voice trickled through the darkness. “You are a strange man. Tomorrow, we will see.”
With the morning there would be the final nonsense with Nalgre, and his female manhound, and then we would set off through the jungle. I hoped this Khamorro would welcome what he then discovered. All followed exactly as before.
The only difference that a dead guard had made, and an open cage door, was a strong body of guards marching into the slave caves and beating about, aimlessly, and then marching out having found nothing and accomplished nothing. The slaves ready for the run today were counted, and then counted again. The Deldar, who had awoken first, must have said nothing of the inexplicable sleep he and his men had indulged in. But, as none of the slaves had escaped, there was no harm done. If anyone noticed the absence of old Mog, they would scarcely credit that she had slain a guard and taken off into the jungle, witch or no witch.
The Khamorro who had spoken to me, whose name was Turko, gave me a meaningful glance. I ignored him. Strange, how to look back on that day I can so clearly recall how I wished this Turko the Khamorro to hell and gone! Strange, indeed, is the way of fate.
With which not particularly original reflection we all began our march into the jungle, hunted men and women and halflings, sport for the great Jikai.
Nath the Guide led off very smartly, acting his part as the guide and mentor of this little band of fugitives. He had decided we should strike north, and his words were the selfsame words that Inachos had used. They learned their duplicity by parts, these treacherous guides!
When we came to where I had left Mog I sprinted ahead, and with the dead guard’s thraxter cut her down.
She came all asprawl into my arms and I caught her odor and I gagged.
“You nulsh! Migshaanu the All-Glorious will fry your brains and frizzle your eyeballs and rip out your tongue and-”
I said: “If you do not still that wagging tongue of yours, Mog, I will probably rip it out, instead of Migshaanu.” I was bending forward, glaring at her, mightily wroth. She looked up with those bright agate eyes, and saw my face, and she stopped talking. I have noticed that effect I have on people. It is not something I am proud of. But it is, nevertheless, mightily useful at times!
Nath shouldered up, flustered, shouting: “What is this! What is she doing here? Mog — Dray Prescot
— what-?”
One of the Khamorros, the largest of the three and a thumping ugly great fellow, bellowed out in anger:
“The old crone cannot march! She cannot come with us — you must leave her, cramph.”
“I will carry her, if need be.”
For I had felt a surprising strength in that thin figure when she had tumbled out of the tree upon me.
“We shall not wait-”
Turko walked up with a lithe swing, his dark hair tumbled about his face, his features bronzed and clear, and, as I noticed for the first time, a look about him at once reckless and contained. With all this his build, all muscle and sliding roped power, advertised his enormous physical development, and, if that were not enough, he was damned handsome too, into the bargain.
“Leave it, Chimche,” he said. “This nul Dray Prescot will carry the crone, as he says, or be left behind.”
The bulky form of Chimche started to quiver and Nath said quickly: “We had best press on. There are shoes and food and wine ahead — and knives.”
I had to keep my fingers still. I knew that wine.
So we hurried on along the trail, with Chimche turning often to give me a glare. But I had given him no further cause of offense, and I was carefully watching Mog. Having seen how matters stood, and at her first immediate rush back down the trail being firmly stopped by me, she screeched and waved her arms but trudged along. Every now and then I had to give her a push. I watched her, as I say, very carefully; the impression had formed that she play-acted rather more than she cared folk to perceive. And her walk, once the shuffling scuttle she habitually adopted in the caves proved troublesome swinging along the trail, changed imperceptibly into a much firmer and longer tread. She would not be the first woman to make herself look old and hideous in captivity.
Still, she was a halfling and, by Zair, she was hideous in reality!
When we reached the cache of food and clothing Mog was more than happy to rest. We donned the gray tattered tunics and took the knives and put on the shoes, and all this petty finery was designed to make us feel we had outwitted the manhunters, to give us hope, to make us run!
Mog wouldn’t wear the shoes Nath offered.
Toward the end of the march I had to carry her, slung over a shoulder, and every now and then a filthy dangling leg would give me a sly kick, just to remind me.
When we made our camp up a tree, erecting a palisade of thorns, and Nath prepared his lower aerie, I knew the time approached. Nath hefted up the wine bottles, their leather bulging. I was looking at Mog. She was tied in place. I knew she had the willpower and the courage to march back through the jungle. Now, as Nath offered her the wine, she cowered back, trembling.
“No, no, Nath. I do not want the wine.”
Chimche bellowed at this, his dark florid face flushed.
“Then give it here, you crone!”
“Why will you not drink the wine?” persisted Nath. He upended the spout over Mog’s mouth, trying to force her, letting the wine drop through in that frugal way Kregans have.
“No!” She was terrified now. “No, the wine is drugged! We will all sleep and the monsters of the forests will eat us!”
Turko laughed at this, but Nath backhanded Mog across her rubbery lips. “Drugged!” he shouted, in a fury. “You lie, old crone! You lie!” And he hit her again.
I took Nath the Guide’s arm and bent it back.
“She does not lie, Nath. The wine is drugged so that you may creep off in the night, and leave us prey to the man-hounds.”
He stared at me, his arm bent back, and a sickly smile distorted that frank and manly face. We all saw. We all saw the guilt that glazed on that face.
“By the Muscle!” bellowed Chimche, shoving forward. “It is true!”
The other Khamorro, Janich, elbowed up, pushing me out of the way, reaching for Nath the Guide.
“The wine is drugged and the guides are false!” screeched Mog. Her agate eyes glared up in the terror of the moment.
Janich’s hefty push and Nath’s convulsive effort broke my hold on his arm and he scuttled back up the tree
