Free HARM by Brian W. Aldiss Page A

awoke superstitious dread in local hearts, and not in Astaroth’s alone.
    They hurried into a side street heading away from the Center. Cats scurried off at their approach. Four men were accompanying Fremant—Essanits and three younger men.
    “Steady!” Essanits ordered. They slowed their pace.
    A thickset man was waiting for them in the street ahead. He emerged from a doorway, where he had been lounging against the doorpost, to beckon them in. They were led along a narrow passageway and through another door, where the air was heavy with the smell of hay and horses and the noise of clawed hooves restless on tile.
    This stranger shook Fremant’s hand with his leathery one. “I’m the stablekeeper,” he said in a deep voice. “I help Essanits against my better judgment, see?”
    Fremant could barely speak in reply.
    A lantern hung from a beam in the stable. Fremant was able to see his rescuers. Essanits he recognized immediately—the tall, well-shaped man with a large, square, clean-shaven face and deep-set eyes. His mouth, with its pale lips, seemed to spread across his face. The younger men in his company looked much alike, all stressed and anxious, differing most clearly in hairstyles: One had plentiful locks, one had fair hair cut almost to stubble, and the third was prematurely bald.
    “All right,” said Essanits, “we’re going to make for the hills. I know a place where you’ll be safe, a little township called Haven. Some religion prevails there. The sooner we leave here, the better.”
    Under the stablekeeper’s supervision, certain of the best horses were in the process of being saddled.
    These insects bore little resemblance to ordinary horses. However, they were sturdy creatures, with pronounced hind legs, and fully capable of carrying a human burden. They had been bred for strength. Since their lives were comparatively short, breeding had rapidly taken place. They had been bred for distinctive colors as well as strength. Fremant couldn’t help viewing them with suspicion.
    The beasts fought against saddling, as if well aware of the cold outside and the hardship to come. Kicking and rearing, they managed to fill the air with fragments of straw; so much so that one of Essanits’s youths, the frailest one, by name Hazelmarr, went into a sneezing fit.
    Recovering slightly, he spoke pleadingly, “Essanits, sir, I’m not up to this adventure, I fear. You must do without me, as I am sure you can well manage.”
    Essanits stared hard at him, while the other two young men tried to argue Hazelmarr out of his decision. “Very well,” said Essanits. “If you have no faith or stomach, then go. Speak to no one of this, you understand?”
    Hazelmarr nodded dumbly, shaking his head of hair, but as he turned to leave, the stablekeeper grabbed him by the arm. “You can’t let this little snot go, just like that,” he told Essanits. “He’ll tell on you for sure. I know his kind—you can’t trust ’em. A real snake, he is!”
    “So you plan to kill him?” said Essanits coldly.
    “That’s the way to make sure he stays silent, ain’t it?”
    “Let him go, man, will you? He may be a coward, but he doesn’t deserve to die.”
    With that, Hazelmarr was allowed to sneak away into the night, assisted by the stablekeeper’s boot.
    Fremant, Essanits, and the two remaining youths mounted their selected horses. Fremant was on a skewbald called Snowflake. Its vestigial wings creaked as he settled himself in the saddle.
    After Essanits had given the stablekeeper a bag of stigs, they made their way out to the street in single file.
    “I must stop by to pay Bellamia,” Fremant told Essanits. “I owe her for my room.”
    “Forget about that,” said the fair-haired Oniversin. “We need to get out of town fast.”
    Essanits reined his horse. “Fremant is good and honest. All men should pay their debts. To Bellamia’s house, then. It will take but a minute extra.”
    Bellamia was asleep. It took a good deal