Manhounds of Antares Read Online Free PDF

girls of Esser Rarioch, the high fortress overlooking Valkanium, had unavailingly badgered and teased him into revealing its words and melodies. He might sing that song now. If he did, this would be another historical mark to go down beside the other great songs he had made that would live forever.
    He saw me looking at him, and lifting his head, he said: “No, Prince Majister. I will sing the marriage song of Prince Dray and Princess Delia only when both are there to hear it together.”
    Someone — I do not know who it was to this day — roared out: “Then you won’t sing it this night, Erithor!”
    They all shouted at this, and Erithor struck a chord, and broke into
Naghan the Wily,
which tells how Naghan, a rich and ugly silversmith of Vandayha, was trapped into marriage by the saucy Hefi, daughter of the local bosk herder.
    Everyone roared. Kregans have a warped sense of humor, it seems to me, at times.
    How wonderful it was to be here, in this comfortable room, drinking and singing with my friends! I am a man who does not make friends easily. I can always rouse men to follow me, to do as I order, and joy in the doing of it . . . but friendship. That, to me, is a rare and precious thing I seek without even acknowledging I seek it, except in moments of weakness like this.
    Seg’s Thelda would be busily clucking about Delia now, and knowing Thelda, I knew she would be full of her own importance as a married woman with a fine young son — called Dray — and with all the good will in the world exasperating by her own importance and knowledge of the marriage state.
    It was time I rescued Delia.
    I stood up.
    Everyone fell silent.
    Erithor had been singing on — the time passes incredibly quickly when a skald of such power sings — and now he finished up an episode from
The Canticles of the Rose City
wherein the half-man, half-god Drak sought for his divine mistress through perils that made the listeners grip the edges of their chairs. The thrumming strings fell silent.
    I cleared my throat.
    “I thank you all, my friends. I cannot say more.”
    I believe they understood.
    They escorted me up the marble stairs where the torchlight threw orange and ruby colors across the walls and the tapestries and the silks, where the shadows all fled from us.
    Delia was waiting.
    Thelda bobbed her head and Seg put his arm around her and everyone carried out the prescribed gestures and spoke the words that would ensure long and happy life to Delia and me. Then, already laughing and singing and feeling thirsty again, they all trooped downstairs and left Delia and me alone.
    The bedchamber was hung with costly tapestries and tall candles burned unwaveringly. Refreshments had been tastefully laid out on a side table. Delia sat up in the bed with that outrageous hair combed out by Thelda gleaming upon her shoulders. I confess I was gawping at her.
    “Oh, Dray! You look as though you’ve eaten too much bosk and taylyne soup!”
    “Delia—” I whispered. “I—”
    I took an unsteady step forward. I felt my sword swinging at my side, that wonderful Savanti sword, and I reached down to take it out and throw it upon the table, out of the way — and so, with the sword in my hand, I saw the tapestries at the side of the bed rustle. There was no wind in the bedchamber.
    They must have waited until they heard everyone else depart, and only Delia’s voice — and then my voice. That had been the signal.
    Six of them there were.
    Six men clad all in black with black face-masks and hoods, and wielding daggers.
    They leaped for the bed in so silent and feral a charge from their concealed passage behind the arras that almost they slew my Delia before I could reach them.
    With a cry so bestial, so vile, so vicious, so horrible they flinched back from me, I hurled myself full upon them.
    Their six daggers could not meet that brand.
    The Savanti sword is a terrible weapon of destruction.
    Had they been wearing plate armor and wielding Krozair