Kenneth Bulmer - Keys to the Dimensions 05 by The Hunters of Jundagai

Author:The Hunters of Jundagai
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-02-10T13:14:48+00:00

IX

The first safari on which Beater Cy Yancey had a chance to show he had absorbed the quick training given him by Olan had as its object the quemlash.

Olan led out a section of fifty men, all tramping stolidly behind his quorn, along the dusty road southward. Ahead, the mountains lofted against a sky burning with heat. In those vegetation-choked foothills, among the gullies and riverbeds, the small ridgelike hills in their serried ranks, the quemlash was to be found. When found, the beaters would do their work and risk their lives, and the quemlash would seek to escape and the hunters, led by the Hunters of Tov Burka, would find their fun. Cy Yancey put all that firmly into the foreground of his mind. He refused to think any more of what it was really all about. He would get back to Earth one day. As of now, if he wished to stay alive and healthy he had a job to do and he’d damn well do that job as though all the Hounds of Red Hakim’s Pit were after him. Reflectively, he sighed at thoughts that brought up— and stifled them as Olan signaled to his men, turning in the saddle, hard and authoritative.

The men scattered to the sides of the dusty road.

A cavalcade trotted past them. Yancey gaped. First came a bodyguard mounted on quorns, tough compact men in hauberks, all wearing the blazon of Tov Burka and carrying lances and shields, swords and ex-U.S. issue semi-automatic M-l carbines thrust down open scabbards. The hum of motors at low speed followed and two khaki-painted Land Rovers trundled through the dust. Men crowded the first, their rifles slanting upward. In the second the man sitting next to the driver attracted all Yancey’s attention.

Sunburned of face, with white even teeth, this man lolled with the air of habitual authority clearly evident. He wore a white shirt, open at the neck to reveal a strong throat. His strongly bearded face held a composed alertness that aroused a measure of respect in rebellious Cy Yancey, so that he recognized in this man elements of character very valuable to survival under any conditions. A floppy-brimmed hat with a scarlet and emerald feather had been pushed back on his long dark hair.

Yancey’s companion nudged him in the ditch.

“Taj Burka. Tov Burka’s eldest son! It is an important hunt we are on, then.”

Yancey didn’t reply. He stared at the lilac-colored Pontiac that idled by, at the flashily dressed men and women lolling inside, at the whitewall tires, at the sheer incongruity of it all. He caught a glimpse of white laughing faces, of bright eyes, of silks and satins and the gleam of jewels. Then more quornmen trotted past in their armor and weaponry, to be followed by the camp attendants in General Motors trucks piled with baggage. The dust took some minutes to settle.

Olan roused his men and set them on the march again.

“We must hurry,” he shouted back over the ranks. “Tomorrow they will be ready for the quemlash.

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