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ground, and their rear legs were shorter and thicker than those of a man who walks upright. Their nails were sharp hard claws, glinting evilly. Their hair was brushed and combed upward into a cock-fighting crest, and streamed out in a loose mane, like that of a horse, from the stiff crest.
    They wore brave red jackets, cut like a dog’s jacket. They wore gray breechclouts. Around their necks were strapped leather collars, studded with metals.
    They were hunting dogs.
    But they were men.
    The Manhounds of Antares, the jiklos of Faol.
    Pressed up against the lenken bars Lilah still held my arm. She had not shrunk from touching me, from pulling me away. Just beyond her I could see Tulema and the Khamorro. Now I understood a little why Tulema, for all the promises of the guides, hung back from escaping, was so terrified of the manhunt.
    “Yes, Dray Prescot,” said Princess Lilah of Hyrklana. “They are men.”
    Men. They were not halflings, even, men-beasts for beast-men with a weird mutation of head or body to mark them out from true men — and who, on Kregen, is to say who is a true man and who is not? Gloag was a man for all his bristle-hide and bullet-head. Inch, too, was a man. But these — things? These Manhounds of Scorpio? Were they truly men?
    The answer could not be denied.
    Some agency had so guided their development, over the seasons, as to transform them from ordinary men into jiklos. I could with revulsion imagine some of the training. They must have been strapped into iron cages from birth, made to walk always on all fours, taught to run and hunt, and by evolving senses regained man’s lost capacities of smell and hearing. They might be unable to stand upright at all, now.
    And the final blasphemy, at least in my eyes, was to dress them in red coats, to sully the image I held of my own old scarlet, the scarlet of Strombor!
    Shadows moved in the jungle clearing beyond the bars. The slaves huddled, waiting to be picked as quarry. Tulema hung back and the Khamorro, arguing with her, at last slapped her across the face and pushed her back. He moved toward the bars with arrogance, and other slaves shrank back from him.
    Lilah said, “Here they come now . . .”
    Into the cleared area before the barred rows of cages, rather like a shopping arcade, stepped Nalgre, the slave-master, with his guards, and his customers. I ignored all that, started to push my way toward the Khamorro. Tulema was sobbing, now. She had lost this Khamorro and she must have assumed she had already lost me, absorbed as I had been with Lilah. Tulema could not know that it was by the Star Lords’ command that I must rescue Lilah.
    “No, Dray Prescot,” said Lilah. I recognized the tone. She was a princess, I felt no doubt. “You will be killed.”
    Again she put her hand on my arm. I could feel the softness of it, and yet the firmness, too, as she gripped me.
    What might have happened then, Zair knows, for a Fristle nearby, whose fur was much bedraggled, said quickly, “Here is Nath the Guide.”
    The guide pushed through to the bars, and I left off trying to reach the Khamorro. This guide was much like the first one I had seen — lithe, well built, fleet of limb, as I judged, with a handsome head and a mass of dark hair. Nath the Guide . . .
    Well, there are many Naths on Kregen.
    Around him perhaps a dozen people clustered. They were eager. They had been able to arrange deals with the guide to be taken out. And all the time Lilah’s hand gripped my arm.
    Nalgre the slave-master cracked his whip. The customers with him jumped, and then laughed, and pointed out to one another choice specimens of slaves within the cages. It was all a part of the show Nalgre put on.
    These nobles and wealthy men and women who hunted human beings for sport were little different from the bunch I had seen before. A quick check showed me that Berran was not with them. The Notor who, by his appearance and gestures, considered himself the most important