Warlord of Antares Read Online Free PDF

purposes other than theirs. They’d twice now hoicked me up out of it when I’d tried to pull first Seg and young Ortyg, then Loriman, out of danger. But, and I felt a sudden coolness down my spine at this, they told me a thing I should have realized.
    “We understand you to be reckless and a daredevil and an onker of onkers, Dray Prescot. We suppose you to continue thus. Maybe, one day, we shall not require you, and your usefulness to us will be at an end.”
    “Come the day!” I bellowed up. “Come the day!”
    “You forget—”
    “I don’t forget! Those two times are the only times you’ve lifted a finger to help me. You’ve never worried yourselves over my skin. I’d have been dead a thousand times by now for all you care.”
    The silence this time seemed to be charged with that insufferable pressure that clamps down just before a thunderstorm.
    “We are sending you back now, Dray Prescot, to rejoin your comrades.”
    “I see. Tell me. All this trudging about mazes and underground corridors. Can you give me something to help me see a trifle better in the dark? Is that beyond your powers?”
    “Not at all. A trifle.”
    “Well?”
    “You were ever ungracious in your ways.”
    “I’m gracious to those who are polite to me.”
    Let them suck on that one, the high and mighty bunch of onkers!
    From the white rectangle hanging blankly on the wall a shaft of pure white light hit me in the face so that I blinked, and cursed, and flung up a hand. If this was their idea of a joke it hurt.
    This might not be a joke. This might be a new form of punishment for insubordination.
    “Remember your tasks, Dray Prescot. You have reunited Vallia. Now your task is to unite Paz—”
    “That’s easier said than done, despite all our grand talk. The task is greater than I imagined.”
    “Of course.”
    I fumed away and saw I’d get no farther. At least, I’d given the Star Lords a piece of my mind, not that they needed much in the way of extra brains. Maybe their powers were fading; they were still so immeasurably stronger than any other force I knew of on Kregen, they remained superhuman and all-powerful.
    The transition rustled in on wings of blueness and I was up and away again, like a scarecrow blown headlong in a gale. Just as I went I reflected bitterly that they’d not given me a magic torch or something to light up the darkness, the stingy taskmasters.
    Whirling around I went thump down on my feet. Rock scraped underfoot and the orange flare of torches burned into my eyes. The passage was rough hewn and the light shone in brilliantly from the corner. A man stepped around the edge of stone into view.
    “Hai, my old dom. I knew you’d be around here somewhere.”

Chapter four
    Horrors in the Coup Blag
    Our greetings were necessarily brief, for, as Seg said: “There’s an unfriendly monster fellow with a horrendous set of gnashers chasing us. I’ve shafted two of his eyes; but we need to find a little space to tackle him properly.”
    Nath the Impenitent, bulking hugely in the passage, roared on half-dragging the suddenly unimposing form of Kov Loriman the Hunter.
    The Hunting Kov was a husk of his former self. Gone were the bluster and arrogance. Gone was his imperious look. He appeared shrunken. Since his lady had been slain and swallowed up in the earth, he had scarcely moved under his own volition.
    “Hai, Jak,” rasped out Nath the Impenitent, fiery-faced, spiky with contained anger. “We must get on. The beast is snapping at my heels.”
    There was no time or need for me to argue.
    If these two said run, then I’d run. If Seg, who is the finest bowman in two worlds, had shafted the beast twice, and the thing still lived, then running was clearly and eminently the most sensible course of action.
    Nath held up a torch in his left hand. His right dragged on Loriman. Seg held a torch in his left hand, and his right grasped his bow with the arrow nocked in that old and cunning bowman’s fashion.
    I