Seg the Bowman Read online

  “Oh, each great lord of the land recruits his own forces and allocates a certain number under Kov Llipton to the proper policing of the city. The blue and whites, they are Kov Llipton’s men.”

  “I see.”

  They all trooped into Master Jezbellandur’s bazaar, and gawped around at the splendid display of weaponry upon the walls and in open-fronted cases about the wooden floor.

  Master Jezbellandur himself, nick-named the Iarvin, came forward rubbing his hands together. He clearly was a man of substance, a man who knew himself to be smart, clever, supreme master of his trade, and, at the same time, he managed to express a devoted attention to the wants of his clients.

  He summed up this sorry band in no time at all. “Not a pair of copper obs to rub together between them,” he said to himself. But he bowed. If they did have a pair of copper obs, he’d have them off them, that he promised.

  Khardun, like the other paktuns, had patronized places like this many times before. He was brisk.

  “We need first quality knives, horter. And we would like to test them in your salle.”

  “Knives. Well, I have the finest selection—”

  “Good. That is settled. Lead on.”

  So it was that they were ushered into the salle, a large, square, bare room at the rear of the premises.

  The floor, although gleamingly clean, was not polished. Sand stood ready in buckets to be strewn. No one else at the moment was in the place. Khardun nodded at the targets, stuffed with grasses.

  “Knives that cut, stab, and throw.”

  “At once, horters.”

  The cases were produced by a bent-backed Och who contrived to balance two cases at a time. The knives were duly inspected and then test-hurled at the targets.

  Seg wandered across to a corner and sat on a chair. Business must be poor for the weapons-trader to concede so much time to men merely buying knives. The racks of swords and axes and spears, of armor and helmets, remained unopened.

  The door crashed open and a madwoman rushed in, shrieking.

  “The guards are coming! We must run, hide — quick, oh, quick!”

  Seg leaped up. He stared. The woman wore a brand new dress hiked up to her knees, mud-splashed and stained. He choked.

  “Milsi!”

  “They think we are pirates! The guards are coming!”

  Umtig the Lock, clasping his spinlikl, sidled in after Milsi. That, then, explained how she had found them.

  The little Och thief would follow their trail with no trouble. Malindi and Bamba ran in, crying, and Diomb rushed across to them.

  “Hurry!” Milsi called, agonized, and whirled, her eyes enormous, her hands leaving the hem of her dress and going in horror to her mouth.

  The guards clumped in, hard, spears leveled, the brown and white feathers in their helmets lowering as they bent ready to thrust. Milsi exclaimed in despair that her attempt to warn Seg had proved futile. Seg put a brown hand up to his bow.

  “Do not attempt to resist, rast!” The Hikdar, brave in his armor, stepped forward. Milsi could see that he had reinforced his original audo, and now a rank of bowmen bent their bows upon Seg and his comrades. “You are charged with being renders. Your heads will adorn the stakes at the city walls!”

  Seg took his hand away. He stepped forward.

  “There is a mistake, Hikdar. We are peaceable men, stranded in the river. We are not pirates—”

  “Shastum! Silence, you yetch.”

  “But we can explain it all!”

  The bowmen were commanded by a second Hikdar, corpulent, sweating in his armor, his brown and white feathers far grander than the first Hikdar’s. He stepped up to the side of the first Hikdar and whispered in his ear.

  Seg just stood, poised, alert, watching. He and the comrades with him were at a clear disadvantage.

  They had no real weapons. These soldiers, despite the finery, were well-armed. He noticed that the bowmen had spurs fixed to their tall brown boots. This puzzled him. How would cavalry be employed along the river to make the expense of the arm worthwhile? Rafikhan had mentioned that there were swarths available for riders farther north. These were the so-called two-legged swarths of Pandahem.

  The true swarth had four legs, a powerful, humped reptilian saddle animal with a heavy wedge-shaped head. The Pandahem two-legged variety possessed four limbs, of course; the forelimbs were nowhere as well developed as the afterlimbs, giving the swarths a faint resemblance to sleeths.

  These silly fragile thoughts flowed through his head as he watched what went on.

  The porcine Hikdar laughed. Seg did not care for that laugh.

  “Well, Northag? What do you say?”

  “I — you’re confident nothing would come out, Pafnut?”

  “Of course not. A bit of fun. Then, afterwards, well — who’s going to ask questions? Trylon Muryan?”

  “The Trylon? He wouldn’t care — no, you’re right.” This unpleasant Hikdar Northag licked his lips.

  Then: “My swods. I’m not sure about them—”

  “It’s my lads who’ll be into it, never fear. Send yours out into the bazaar.” Sweat showed in the wrinkles on Hikdar Pafnut’s fat cheeks.

  Seg braced himself. He detested the so-called soldiers who harassed the weak folk of the world. Vicious cowards like that gave soldiers a bad name. The kind of soldier Seg understood was devoted to protecting others from those who would kill or enslave or rob. It was quite clear this unhealthy bunch were going to have some fun with their victims in the salle. Leeming, they called it, a rough, nasty knock-about that could turn ugly.

  Khardun knew. He said, “I judge this Northag offal to be lily-livered, and easily led by this thing called Pafnut.” He spoke so that the soldiers could not hear him. “Brace yourselves, fanshos, brassud!”

  “Aye,” growled the Dorvenhork. “I mark me this Pafnut and will deliver his tripes to Likshu the Treacherous, personally.’”

  Hikdar Northag rapped out a command and his Deldar, poker-faced, marched out the spearmen. The leveled bows of Pafnut’s command remained spanned on the party at the other side of the salle. Seg put an arm around Milsi. The gesture was completely unaffected.

  “The men over here!” shouted Pafnut. He looked bloated. “Bratch!”

  Obediently, the men bratched. They walked smartly across the unpolished floor, covered all the way by the bent bows and the steel-tipped arrows, expecting to feel fists, or boots, or the flats of swords beating on them as the swods had their fun.

  “Outside!” Pafnut’s thick lips glistened, foam flew.

  Instantly, Seg and the others saw what was afoot.

  Only Diomb failed to grasp what was intended.

  Now the Dorvenhork was an archer. He was as well aware as Seg of the menace of those drawn bows.

  “Outside!” shrieked Pafnut. His Deldar lowered his bow, let the arrow slide down the shaft to grip it left-handed, and drew his sword with his right hand. He moved up to take command of the party.

  He picked on Seg. Over the noise of heavy breathing, the chink of metal, the sudden uproar, Seg heard Milsi’s voice from the far side of the salle. “Oh, Seg!”

  Seg yelled. “Knives!”

  He kicked the Deldar in the guts, swiveled, smashed the nearest bowman across the bridge of his nose, feeling the string smart. His own knife whipped up in a blur of speed and flew to stand out full in Pafnut’s porcine face.

  Other knives flew. In the instant between Seg’s call and the hurling of the knives, the soldiers had failed to respond. When they did loose, they were dead men loosing at shadows.

  Milsi and Bamba ran across instantly, and Malindi followed. The men were already hard at work snatching up bows, swords, quivers of arrows.

  “We came here to buy weapons,” exulted Khardun. “And these onkers gave us theirs free!”

  Milsi said, a hard note in her voice: “Does anyone claim this dead Pafnut’s rapier and main gauche?”

  No one appeared to know much of the outlandi
sh weapons. Seg said: “They are yours, my lady. But I would that you do not go too froward when we blatter those outside.”

  “Our best plan, Seg the Horkandur, will be to leave this evil place by the back door.”

  Seg looked around. He saw the lads of his party plundering what each required of armor and weapons.

  He saw the dead men. He saw the way Diomb and Bamba still had not understood what was intended.

  “Evil place? No, my lady. Not the place, the kleeshes who came in for sport.”

  “You are right, quibble though you must at a time like this! Come on! Let us escape.”

  “The lady Milsi is right,” said Khardun. “They will think, those with the squeamish stomachs outside in the bazaar, that we are being beaten in a little leeming. Let us go now, and take our revenge later.”

  And Seg laughed.

  “Revenge, good Khardun! Look around you!”

  “Oh, aye, well, by Horato the Potent! I shall not forget these rasts who wear brown and white.”

  “Nor I!” said the Chulik with great menace.

  “Are we all ready, then, fanshos?”

  “Aye, ready.”

  Seg cast a gloomy eye on the bows still lying upon the floor. They were dorven bows, compound reflex, good enough for a first class archer. Their arrows were too short for his own Lohvian longbow. Still, he was running short of shafts. Philosophically, he retrieved a bow that looked as though it had been cared for, and with it two quivers of arrows. These he slung on his back, then turned and faced his comrades.

  “Wenda! Let’s go!”

  When they had all vanished out of the rear door, along that clean and unpolished floor lay a scattering trail of ripped off brown and white feathers.

  Chapter twelve

  The Law of the River

  It is said overmuch of Kregen, and is widely believed, that Chuliks have no sense of humanity. Trained from birth as they are to the military art, they possess a strict sense of order, of the need for rules and regulations, for the necessity of ladders of command to avoid confusion. Their codes of conduct are different from those of many other races. They have nothing of the fanatical dedication to honor, to their nikobi, of the Pachaks. They have nothing to do with the races who change colors upon the battlefield as the swing and sway of conflict brings victory or defeat.

  Over the seasons Seg had been nurturing a growing conviction that the Chuliks were misjudged. Their own harsh upbringing and sense of values denied them the outgoing frankness that might have changed general opinion. They could not readily accept a proffered hand of friendship.

  When Nath Chandarl the Dorvenhork said, “I would not have witnessed the outrage to the little dinko, Bamba,” Seg could see what the Chulik meant. He was not, in these later seasons of greater wisdom, surprised, as he would have been even a few short seasons ago.

  For the Rapa, Rafikhan, a different set of mores had to be applied. Given the license, it was common knowledge what would happen to a woman of another race if she was thrown into the Rapa court. But Rafikhan had joined in the fight with relish, his flung knife extinguishing a brown and white feathered soldier, his ferocious hands and beak destroying another.

  As for the Khibil, Khardun the Franch, his innate sense of superiority had motivated him to protect his friends. Amnesty for wrongdoers was very foreign to a Khibil’s philosophy.

  The Fristle, Naghan the Slippy, although not a mercenary, had played his part. He said he was a metalworker, and detested the river, and Seg believed him, willy-nilly.

  Now they sailed up the Kazzchun River in Obolya’s boat, paying their way in solid silver Dhems, and kept a watchful lookout for pursuit. The brown and white feathered soldiery of Trylon Muryan would be after them if no other lord felt inclined to send his paktuns in pursuit.

  Obolya the Zorcanim, of course, remained in total ignorance of the malefactions of the ne’er-do-wells who took passage in his boat. He labored under the impression that he had hired on the Chulik and the Khibil. No one disabused him of the notion.

  As Seg said, “I give you thanks, friends, for your courage and help. You earned your hire, to speak in base commercial paktunish terms, exceedingly well. But, for now, why not take a holiday from my service and serve Obolya?”

  This could be done in honor and so was done.

  That it might have unforeseen consequences did not escape Seg, but he felt it to be the best way of making sure of Obolya’s friendship.

  A mercenary does not leave a dead body lying around abandoned when time and circumstance give him the opportunity to make sure the poor dead fellow has no more assistance to offer.

  Seg insisted that the money taken from the dead soldiers should be shared equally.

  Khardun laughed. “That is as it should be. Then we are all equally implicated.”

  The Relt, Caphlander, quivered at this. But he said: “I cannot strike a blow. But, doms, I stand implicated and although I want none of the cash, I am your comrade still.”

  They made him take his share.

  This little band were fugitives from the law as administered by Kov Llipton. Seg expressed himself as mightily dissatisfied with the famous Law of the River.

  Milsi corrected him.

  “The Law of the River is unwritten. It is a common bond between all who sail the brown waters. We help one another. But the law of the land, as given by King Crox and now administered by Kov Llipton, is another matter. In that, I think you err also, my Horkandur.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “Those evil men were from the retinue of Trylon Muryan. He hates the Kov, as the Kov hates the Trylon.” Then she passed a hand across her forehead. “I wish I knew if Llipton could be trusted.”

  “You said you had no reason to distrust him. And, anyway, Milsi — by the Veiled Froyvil! — you are the queen’s lady in waiting. Surely you should tell this Kov what has happened to the king and queen?”

  “And then?”

  “H’m. I see.”

  In this part of Paz on this side of Kregen the highest noble rank was a High Kov. Then came a Kov followed by a Vad. After that rank came a Trylon and then a Strom. There were three more ranks in the higher nobility, Rango, Elten and Amak. As for the lesser nobility, that varied widely, names and positions changing, it seemed, with every individual country.

  Seg had had his fill of nobility. He’d willingly forsaken his overlordship on the question of slavery, and his good comrade, Turko the Shield, had taken over and was no doubt bringing a harsher hand to bear on forcing the dissidents into line with imperial policy.

  There was no doubt about it. Even though he joyed in the company of Milsi and made the most of every moment of this journey, he sorely missed the companionship of his comrades. Inch, whose taboos made him do extraordinary things, Turko the Shield, Korero the Shield, Oby, Balass the Hawk, Naghan the Gnat, young tearaway Vomanus of Vindelka, all his blade comrades, and, of course, most of all his old dom, the Bogandur himself.

  Well, he’d see Milsi safely home, and then find out what the fates held for him. He noticed that the nearer they sailed to Mewsansmot the more edgy and nervous she became.

  He was well aware that he had been indulging himself in this knight-errantry. Unsure though he might be about what would happen, he was sufficiently aware of himself and his wants to know that he needed Milsi. There was no use disguising that. Since he had lost Thelda, grieving for her on her long last journey to the Ice Floes of Sicce, he had grown emotionally callous. He’d taken a sneaking amusement from the speculations of acquaintances that he might marry Jilian Sweet-Tooth. That had never been in his plan of life.

  No. No, he could find happiness with Milsi. Yet the secret she clearly harbored troubled him. Was it merely the existence of her daughter? That had no possible influence on him; he would love to meet Milsi’s daughter, be a new father to her, bring her into the family of Drayseg, and Valin and Silda. And, by the same token, no doubt he and they would be engulfed in the relations Milsi must have somewhere
in Kregen.

  Just as they reached the last stretch before Mewsansmot, Milsi found Seg right forrard in the bows where the gangplank lay stowed. He watched the brown water and the ripples, spotting the swift slither of great bodies below the surface, the gape of fangs. The capital of Croxdrin, Nalvinlad, was built where the forest ended and the plains began. The Schinkitree paddled now between the banks, low and bushy, and beyond them extended the plains out to the distant horizons.

  “Seg. We shall soon be home.”

  “Home? Your home, Milsi, not mine.”

  “And not mine, really, either. You must have guessed I wish to see my daughter, Mishti. You are a parent; you understand how our heart trembles for our children.”

  “I do.”

  “I left her with friends — Clawsangs — and yet I worry and worry—”

  “Do not fret so, Milsi. Clawsangs are bonny fighters. We had a group with us in the Coup Blag. Skort the Clawsang and his people. They were trapped behind a falling stone. I trust they escaped as did we, for the Bogandur mentioned them as being in the jungle.”

  “So do I!”

  The brown water slid by and the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, poured down their mingled streaming lights. Seg drew a breath.

  “When you have assured yourself that your daughter, the lady Mishti, is safe, then what will you do?”

  “I do not know!”

  “Ah! Then—” Seg swallowed. He started again, and again trailed off. He wet his lips. Then, remembering he was supposed to be a bold brave paktun wandering Bowman warrior, he said: “My lady Milsi. I think you know of my affection for you. Well, that affection is grown—”

  “No, Seg! No! Stop.”

  “But—”

  “Do not say anything. I cannot answer. I cannot!”

  He felt the granite falling onto his heart.

  “Perhaps you love another?”

  “Oh, you fool, Seg Segutorio! Cheap words from a cheap farce out of the theater souk!”

  “Maybe. I thought you could—”

  “I could, I could... But it is — no, Seg, no. Say no more on this, I beg you.”