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where leafy roofs rose beyond a thin screen of jungle. I frowned. Was that man a false guide, luring them
on?
Bartak the Hyrshiv answered the question on my mind.  That is Nath Palton, a guard who was broken
and condemned as slave.
 Aye! I said.  And he leads to the fliers or the fluttrells, I ll wager!
 Yes.
I admit that I felt a great wave of relief. I had been torn between following the slaves, and my own task.
I was certain the dread forms of the manhounds would soon sniff upon their trails. Now, I realized, the
slaves would never have attempted to run, knowing the jiklos would destroy them, if they had not trusted
Nath Palton. They did not need my help, then.
 Why do you not run with them, Bartak?
 You said you had a plan, Dray Prescot.
 I did not think the slaves would run out, with the jiklos 
 You did not know Nath Palton.
 True.
With that I felt I could leave this ex-guard Palton to see to the escaped slaves. Without another word I
ran on in the shadows of the huts.
As far as I had known from my previous experiences here no fliers or saddle-birds had been kept near
the slave pens. Now that a whole mass of slaves bore down to steal aerial steeds the way was effectively
barred. So I must pursue my original intention. We came out past the last of the huts, past the slave
barracks where the quarries were prepared for the hunt. Beyond, at a short distance, lay the Jikai villas,
where the mighty hunters lived in style pending their hunts. Bartak looked about. We were alone. He
nodded to a substantial house halfway along, and he smiled that typical pugnacious Brokelsh smile.
 Nalgre the slave-master, he said. He spoke with great satisfaction.
 Aye, Bartak. Nalgre.
We began to walk carefully toward this fine house belonging to that same Nalgre who so enjoyed to
torture the slaves he prepared for the hunt. The suns beat down and there was a sweet, sickly taint of
rotting jungle in our nostrils.
 He has been sick of late, said Bartak.  His belly troubles him. Then he laughed.  Also his pet jiklo
died. She was poisoned. It was said one of the tame slaves did it out of spite.
 And was Nalgre s revenge ?
 Horrible.
The house boasted a verandah, but the reclining chairs and hammocks were empty. We padded up the
wooden steps and went into the coolness within. At once I sensed the oppressive atmosphere of the
place. Solidly built, the house would have been a comfortable home. But the place looked dusty and
unkempt, with corners of carpets turned up, a table on its side, glasses with crushed rims still clustering
on a silver tray. We heard the yowls and shrieks from the back of the house as we went in by the front
door. We saw no servants or slaves. Bartak held his spear at the ready as we pushed through a bead
curtain into a long, low room at the back. The screaming intensified. I had not heard its like before 
save, perhaps, on those occasions I had slain a manhound.
We gazed at that scene. We stood silently, watching.
Long windows let angled patterns of emerald and ruby light splash upon a floor that, once polished, was
now scuffed and marked everywhere by the scratch of taloned claws. No furniture cluttered that room.
In the center stood Nalgre. He looked much as I remembered him, arrogant, hard, slashing his whip
about, but his face had yellowed and grown gaunt, and there was a droop to the set of his shoulders. A
real slave-master, this Nalgre, running the hunt for his master, the Kov of Faol; yet his sickness had taken
a toll of him. Now he stood in boots and brown trousers, naked to the waist, his body yellowish and yet
still full fleshed and thick with muscle. His whip snapped again and again, mercilessly. The manhound he
flogged shrieked and hissed and tried to dodge, but she could not draw away for the thick iron chains
that bound her by iron staples to the wooden floor.
 His new pet, Dray Prescot, whispered Bartak.  He is training her.
 Torturing her, I think.
 Yes. It is much the same to Nalgre. He whips and tortures her so that she will fawn on him and lick his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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