Gangs of Antares (eBook)

Chapter one

They climbed up before dawn. Twelve of them, twelve young rascals clambering over the fallen boulders at the foot of the Hill of Dancing Ghosts. They slipped like wraiths into the hidden opening in the cliff face. Here torches were handed out. Young Dimpy grasped the rough wood of the handle, Big Balla lit the end from her torch half-blinding Dimpy, and he stumbled up the steps after the others feeling his heart thumping like a manic janzi pecker.

“Get on! Get on!” Sleed gave Dimpy a vicious push which sent him staggering up the steps. The stink of Sleed’s greased hair cut acridly through the smells of damp earth and burning torches and sweat. Sleed was bigger than the others and unpleasant with it. He was known as Sleed the Slick and was in command of this section of novices in the Hellraisers. “You’ll have to shape up if you wanna join us, you useless tanzy.”

Dimpy struggled on up the slippery ascent. He didn’t much mind being called a tanzy, for he knew he wasn’t. He didn’t care to be called Young Dimpy. Oh, sure, he was young all right, not as green as these scared novices, but younger than Sleed or Big Balla. Since the slide and the death of his father and brothers he’d matured in caring for his mother and sisters. The slide had knocked the heart out of his old gang, the Roaring Fifties, so that the Hellraisers had moved into the territory without serious opposition. Now, like it or not, he had to prove himself as a gang member all over again.

Screams splintered up from ahead and a couple of novices tumbled down the steps almost knocking Dimpy over. Confusion broke all along the line. Weird shadows fled across the stairway. Big Balla was already thrusting her way up and Sleed, with his customary vicious shove, pushed past Dimpy and started after her.

“If’n it’s them stinking Screaming Leems I’ll—” What Sleed intended to do to the rival gang was lost as his words drowned in the uproar. The Screaming Leems, considered Dimpy, had to be way out of their territory if they were mounting a raid here. He could feel the closeness of the walls, the slime underfoot, the dark stench of the place. The novices were caterwauling away, terrified out of their wits. Dimpy dragged in a gagging breath and started after Sleed. He was thinking of Big Balla.

Pushing novices out of his way Dimpy reached the top of the steps where the uncertain light revealed Big Balla and Sleed desperately using their torches to hold off a half-grown praxul whose three stalked eyes glinted red above the fanged slot between his jaws.

Dimpy knew about praxuls. Nasty beasts, squamous and scuttling, they inhabited the honeycombed interiors of the hills along with a whole horrendous slew of fellow monsters. Much of the hill’s interior was illuminated by a fungus which gave light enough for the praxul’s three eyes. He didn’t much like the orange glare of the torches.

“Get his eyes!” shouted Dimpy. He darted in, thrust and skipped back. He missed. Luckily for him, the praxul’s sweep of claw also missed.

“I know! I know!” snarled Sleed. “Get outta my way, tanzy.” He jumped in, slashed his torch, missed and stumbled back.

The thing stood about waist high, warty of scaled hide, and its claws’ reach made it difficult to get at. Like most denizens of the caverns the praxul could use other senses than sight to focus on its prey; taking out his sight was the priority. The stink of its ooze sickened in Dimpy’s nostrils, used as he was to the aromas of the warrens in the runnels between the lordly hills of Oxonium.

Big Balla lunged. Dimpy’s reaction was instantaneous. In a single sweep his left fist gripped Big Balla’s belt and a supple twisting turn span her away from the lethal slice of claw. A rip of cloth jagged off the girl’s tunic caught in the claw. Big Balla yelped. In the same twisting motion Dimpy swirled his torch before them, blazing sparks in a fiery fountain. The praxul crouched back, weaving from side to side, hungrily seeking a way past the flame to his dinner.

“Let me at him!” Sleed tried to sidestep and slash his brand in at an angle. The beast weaved back and sliced and Sleed just managed to topple back, falling to a knee as the girl used her torch to cover him.

That tiny interruption in the flow of jump, thrust and retreat gave Dimpy the opportunity he needed. His actions were fast — very fast. His torch connected with one stalked eye. The eye sizzled. The praxul’s claw flashed past his thigh. The thing screeched. The stench grew worse with the sour taste of frizzled eye.

The praxul was not unintelligent, with the instincts of his kind. He valued his sight, despite his other senses. He backed off further, hissing, weaving from side to side, claws waving. He was in pain. Despite all, Dimpy felt a stab of pity for the praxul. Then, clearly deciding his dinner was not to be found beyond the flare of the torches, he turned and scuttled off into the dimness.

Dimpy and Big Balla let out simultaneous whoops of relief. Sleed glared malevolently after the disappearing monster. He shook his torch. “I’d a done him good, by Ferzakl. Yeah — if he hadn’t run off.”

The girl touched Dimpy lightly on the shoulder. Her face became suddenly different, grave with the seriousness of sudden realization of just what had happened. “Thanks, Dimpy. He’d have had me, for sure.” She tossed her hair back. “You were quick, by Ferzakl, mighty quick.”

Dimpy felt it unnecessary to mention that he had acquired a reputation in the Roaring Fifties for the speed of his reflexes. He just let a small smile curve his lips. “Yes,” he said.

Sleed swung about at the top of the steps. “Well, what are you tanzies waiting for? Come on! Come!”

The huddled novices with their torches quivering began to climb the last of the steps and venture along the uneven footing of the twisting, claustrophobic tunnel that lay ahead.

Noises echoed. The jagged roof lowered down over the scrambling party and splashes of torchlight glittered from condensation streaking the walls. Now Sleed the Slick had taken it upon his unlovely person to climb immediately abaft of Dimpy with Big Balla up front leading the way. She was no novice, being in training for the position of leader on a par with Sleed. At too frequent intervals Sleed prodded Dimpy on painfully. One of these days, said Dimpy to himself, controlling his anger with an almost physical shudder, one of these days I’ll cut out this cramph’s liver and lights and fricassee ’em in samphron oil and then feed ’em to the dogs — so help me!

The upward way turned into a level passage which opened out into a gallery. One side was slimed wall, the other was black emptiness. Noises seemed to be sucked out and down. Nobody spoke. The torches’ orange hair shrank against the darkness.

The way eased when they left the galleried cavern and passed into an ordinary tunnel. A little further on they came to a blocked up side entrance with a Rapa skull gleaming ruddily yellow nailed into a crevice. Dimpy felt a pang. Somewhere through the maze of tunnels beyond that skull were the old ways of the Roaring Fifties. The slide had brought down tons of rubble and solid rock which besides squashing Fat Nath and Lora the Leemkin had sealed off the secret ways.

The next junction did not need to be marked off in so sinister a fashion. The distorted opening in the wall reeked of sulphur. The hell-spawned stink gushed out to be sucked up into a crevice in the roof.

“Bad jangles, that,” remarked Big Balla, who stood passing the novices along.

“I’m in charge here, girl, and don’t you forget it.” Sleed the Slick was a Khibil and although as a race they considered themselves vastly superior to all other diffs, even Khibils might have checked at this specimen. “I’ll tell these tanzies what’s what.”

Big Balla opened her mouth; then she closed it with a snap and jerked her jut of chin up. As a Hytak she knew her worth in the society of the gangs. But, also as a Hytak, she understood order and discipline even in so unruly a mob as the Hellraisers. And, as the second in command training to be a leader, she must, guessed Dimpy, feel ferocious distaste that she’d been stuck with this rast Sleed. The way up turned and twisted along treacherous tunnels. Dimpy had no difficulty in committing the tortuous passages to memory. Darkness partially pierced by the flare of the torches, dankness, the sense of pressure, of a closing in and suffocating weight, oppressed the party. They stumbled and hurried along, the novice gang members new to this experience, Sleed viciously impatient, Balla containing her emotions, and Dimpy clambering agilely along with them. Those first trepidations as he’d entered the hidden opening at the foot of the Hill of Dancing Ghosts that had so pumped up his heart rate he put down in his youthful arrogance to mere nostalgia — to the last time he’d gone up a Hill and all those painful memories.

That had been the day before the slide. He’d lost good friends then and more in the last futile resistance of the Roaring Fifties to the Hellraisers. The odd thing was, Dimpy wasn’t at all sure that he did have a burning desire to prove himself to these Hellraisers. His desires had always been straightforward — to do everything for his family and comrades, and to the Red Hot Gullet of Karbonar the Inevitable with any and everyone else. And, said young Dimpy resolutely to himself, if you condemned him for that then to the Red Hot Gullet of Karbonar the Inevitable with you, too, dom.

Upwards the party climbed, following the ways marked with the secret signs of the Hellraisers. Dimpy committed all...