But there was really no choice for Carse. Half-dazed as he still was he was of no mind to face the eruption of those mailed soldiers and the Jekkaran rabble. He followed Boghaz Hoi.
The Valkisian chuckled as he squeezed his bulk through a small open window at the rear of the room.
“I know every rathole in this harbor quarter. That’s why, when I saw you backed against old Taras Thur’s door, I simply went around through and let you in. Snatched you from under their noses.”
“But why?” Carse asked again.
“I told you—I have a sympathy for Khonds. They’re men enough to snap their fingers at Sark and the damned Serpent. I help one when I can.”
It didn’t make sense to Carse. But how could it? How could he know anything of the hates and passions of this Mars of the remote past?
He was trapped in this strange Mars of long ago and he had to grope his way in it like an ignorant child. It was certain that the mob out there had tried to kill him.
They had taken him for a Khond. Not the Jekkaran rabble alone but those strange slaves—the semi-humans with the broken wings, the furred sleek chained creatures who had cheered him from the galleys.
Carse shivered. Until now, he had been too dazed to think of the strangeness of those not-quite-human slaves.
And who were the Khonds?