Rebel of Antares by Alan Burt Akers Page B

Froshak came up to say the chavonth had been taken and placed back in his cage. We all breathed easier.
    Froshak looked tensed up with excitement, and he spoke at a rate that, for him, was loquacious. “Come and have a look at this. It is remarkable. Come and see.”
    Unmok regarded the big Fristle with his eyebrows drawn down. “Come and look at what? You’re being very mysterious.”
    “Come and look!”
    “Do I, Froshak, or do I not, employ you and treat you well and pay you out of all proportion? I do, indeed I do. So no more of this mysterious nonsense. Tell me!”
    But Froshak’s fierce cat’s face wrinkled up, his whiskers quivered, his bald membrane glistened, and he just nodded his head and started off, beckoning to us to follow along the line of cages. Unmok looked helplessly at me, and I set off after Froshak, so Unmok trailed on, loudly lamenting the evil days and the way loyal retainers had fallen away in the duty they owed their kind employers.
    Halting before a large cage, Froshak pointed. He had all the air of a proud proprietor showing off his choicest wares.
    We looked into the cage.
    Well.
    Unmok swallowed. He swelled. Tears stood in his eyes.
    “Poor Ungarvitch the Whip!” That was his thought. “To have secured such a prize, and then to be killed! How he must have regretted not being able to go into Huringa as he died!”
    Froshak beamed, as though the proud proprietor had pleased his clientele. “She is a magnificent churmod, such a churmod as I have never seen before, and I have handled three in my time in the trade.”
    I looked at Froshak in genuine amusement. This savage and malevolent wild beast had roused him and loosened his tongue. Unmok continued to stare into the cage. He shook his head slowly, and I could see he could hardly credit his good fortune.
    “Look at the way she puts her eight legs down, and the size of her, and the talons! She could rip a boloth to shreds! And those jaws — she will fetch a fortune.” He glanced up at me. “A word of caution, Jak. Churmods are unpleasant beasts, surly and sadistic and vicious. Never trust one. Never take your eyes off one unless strong bars protect you.”
    “Aye,” amplified Froshak. “Churmods are beasts from the depths of Cottmer’s Caverns. Nasty.”
    “And valuable,” I said.
    “Queen Fahia. She, alone, must be offered this churmod. To do aught else would be foolish.” Unmok waved his stump about, letting the excitement out. This ferocious and malignant wild beast would make a man’s fortune. The lawyers Avec Parlin found on our behalf would fight hard for this prize.
    The churmod turned her head and stared at us. She did not rise, but her eight sets of claws extended, curved and shining, and she stretched with arrogant laziness. Her hide was all a silky slatey-blue, uniform, without patterning, and she looked like a silent silvery-blue ghost there in the center of the cage.
    Her eyes were mere slits of lambent crimson in the blunt head. She looked magnificent and, at the same time, profoundly repellent. She was larger than a well-grown leem; but much as I detest leems I found another altogether more pungent feeling of distaste for this churmod rising in me and, displeased on that account, as though it demeaned my own sense of fair play, I turned away abruptly.
    “Yes, Jak,” said Froshak in this new loquacious way, “they do work on a fellow. Just watch yourself with her, all the time.”
    Fascinating though this splendid and vicious wild animal might be, we all felt that repugnance, and soon we moved away and Unmok and Froshak fell into a one-sided conversation about the running of the caravan and camp while Unmok was away in Huringa. He suggested we ride in together, and fake our quarrel there before witnesses. This was agreeable to me. If we could draw off Vad Noran’s antipathy from Unmok onto me, that suited me. Unmok, to give him credit, did not see it like that. He saw the practical side of being able to