Allies of Antares Read Online Free PDF Page A

her goblet and the wine shone on her lips.
    “Jak — would you think it weak of me if I said I wished Shara was here?”
    “Not in the least,” I said at once. “I always feel more at ease when Melow the Supple goes with your mother, and Kardo with Drak.”
    Melow the Supple and her twins were safely out of Faol. They were Manhounds, horrific beings genetically structured to run on all fours and to rip and rend and destroy, more fearsome than hunting cats. Yet they were as essentially apim as I was. Chance had given Melow the opportunity to win free of her malign masters, and now she, and Kardo and Shara, were our friends. And the truth was that with a Manhound at your side you could wish for very few better comrades in a fight.
    The voller proved a swift craft and we took turns to sleep, and before dawn threw ruby and jade sparks onto the lesser heights we closed with the Mountains of the West.
    Not as lofty or awe-inspiring a range as the Stratemsk, but the Western Mountains of Hamal present a solemn and splendid spectacle. Probably not every hidden valley has been trodden by the foot of man. There are secrets in those interleaved folds of crag and scarp still. We aimed our flight for Hammansax where Tyfar had said he could be reached.
    Color throbbed in the early morning. The air held a tang. Seg knuckled his eyes and stared all around and stretched, elbows back, spine arched, chest expanded, all the physique of a master bowman eloquent of his strength and skill, I clapped him on the back.
    “Hai! Seg! A day for deeds!”
    “Since our dip in that magical pool I feel like a youngster. May Opaz witness that it is good to be alive!”
    Jaezila called from the side, turning to face us, still half leaning over. “There is a stream down there. I’m for a swim.”
    So, down we went in that dawn light and stripped off and plunged in, our daggers belted around our waists. Had there been any of the wonderful gallery of nasty creatures of Kregen swimming around hungry for breakfast he, she or it would have had short shrift from us three.
    Dripping wet, we shouted and laughed and threw handfuls of water about and generally acted in a way that might have made Drak dub us undignified. I had a shrewd idea he’d join in...
    By the time we’d dried off and cooked up some breakfast and stuffed ourselves to repletion with vosk rashers and loloo’s eggs and masses of tea and palines, we felt in remarkable spirits.
    Hammansax lay over the next ridge, far enough from the main mass of the mountain chain to afford it warning when the wild men attacked. As I told Seg, “It’s not a question of if the wild men attack. It’s always when.”
    Seg looked up, squinting against the morning light.
    “Like now?”
    We whirled.
    They were there, flying in long skeins, sharp and dark against the brightness. The wings of their saddlebirds beating up and down, up and down, and the wink and glitter of weapons and armor, the flare of feathered decorations driving home with force their power and contempt for opposition. Not one of the civilized races, these moorkrim, these wild men.
    “They haven’t seen us.” Jaezila threw her cape onto our little fire and the few last wisps of smoke died. “That was a nice cape. I particularly liked the zhantil-motif edging.”
    Still staring into the sky at those distant malefic figures, I said, “You can pick out the edging and stitch it back onto a new cape.”
    “They’re flying away,” said Seg.
    “Aye.”
    “They’ve been up to mischief, then, if they’re like any reivers I’ve known.”
    “Aye.”
    Jaezila bent for the cape and bashed it on the ground. Seg and I turned our heads to watch her, and I felt the quick spurt of love for her as she banged the cape on the dusty ground. The wild men up there, so like flutsmen and yet not civilized to any degree that would enable easy parleys to be held, undulating on beating wings, flew away, far away to the west.
    “So we’d better go and