Gangs of Antares — Alan Burt Akers

Lit by the ruby and emerald fires of Antares, the planet Kregen, four hundred light years away from Earth, is a world harsh yet beautiful, terrible yet alluring. There any man or woman may achieve what the heart desires if they plan and struggle and keep faith with their innate purpose. Kregen has its share of weaklings and the faint of heart; but their names are not writ large in the footnotes to the Sagas to be found under the Suns of Scorpio. Dray Prescot has adventured widely over Kregen both at the behest of the Star Lords and to further his own vision. Now he is in the subcontinent of Balintol, where strangeness unlike any that he has previously encountered awaits him.