Seg the Bowman Read online

  “And you have nothing to say on the conduct of your officers and men?”

  He saw his mistake.

  “It is an outrage, majestrix! Of course — I shall have the matter thoroughly examined. Rest your mind.

  As for your paktuns, I feel sure Kov Llipton will pardon them.”

  She stared at him for a moment, not much caring for what she saw, yet knowing she had to use this man, for her own resources in this strange land where she had been made a queen in the game of power politics were parlous slender.

  “You are frightened of the kov, Trylon Muryan?”

  He blustered. “Frightened? Assuredly not, majestrix. Yet he is the man your husband gave the overlordship of the country to when he went away. His death grieves us all; also, it leaves Kov Llipton in a position of great power.”

  “That I see.”

  For the moment there was no more that could be accomplished. Muryan issued the necessary instructions.

  She sat down. She put a hand to her forehead, and then, firmly, said, “Now I will take a glass of parclear, if you please, trylon.”

  Chapter fourteen

  Concerning Seg the Horkandur’s discovery

  Executions carried out in the provinces along the Kazzchun River were matters of elegant if bloody simplicity.

  There was, quite obviously, no need to keep an executioner with an axe on the payroll. Prisoners due for the chop were merely invited to take a little swim in the river.

  Reflecting on this, Nath the Keys shoved his bent back more comfortably against the straw-filled sack against the guardhouse wall, scratched under an armpit, flicked away a couple of pesky flies, and then took a chunky bite out of his cheese pie. As he was an apim with only two hands, these actions had to be performed in sequence, unlike those diffs with usefully more than two hands who’d do the whole lot in one go, and wipe their noses into the bargain.

  The new prisoners stuffed down into the sinkhole under iron bars were very quiet. They, too, must be reflecting on the manner of executions along the river. Down the passageway with its barred cells at either side where less important prisoners were confined, a dolorous series of wails and cries, pleas — and singing — broke the stillness of the night.

  “Shaddap!” yelled Nath the Keys, spraying bits of cheese and pastry. The noises did not diminish. He had a party of drunks in there, a couple of fellows who’d robbed a Lamnia of his purse and been taken up by the trylon’s guards, a fellow who had commented unfavorably on the trylon’s personal habits in a too-public place, and an idiot boy and girl who’d stupefied themselves on caff and staggered doped and dazed into the temple.

  Much as Nath regarded Trylon Muryan as an out-and-out bastard, there was still no call for Kov Llipton to come raging up here with his own men to take charge of the prisoners. The queen had said, quite distinctly, that the paktuns were not to be imprisoned, that the deaths of the two Hikdars and the men could be explained. Jiktar Harmo ti Pallseray was a bit of a ninny; but he could obey orders. And then Kov Llipton had arrived like a monster from the brown river itself, and changed everything.

  On a board fastened to the wall the keys to all the cells and dungeons hung on rings. Nath the Keys, sitting against his sack, did not notice the tiny spidery hand reaching out from the shadows. Not a single key chingled. He took another bite from his cheese pie, beginning to worry if his ladylove, Nardia the Yellow, really was, or if she was just trying to play him along for more cash. If she was and she wanted to, she could go along to Kov Llipton and... A drop of sweat rolled down Nath’s nose and dropped onto his cheese pie.

  A tiny grating noise came from the bars of the dungeons. Nath half-smiled. Poor devils. They were going for a swim. Once Kov Llipton got his teeth into you, you were as good as dead.

  As this thought flitted through his head, one of the kov’s soldiers walked in, a hairy Brokelsh with his blue and white feathers flaunting about him. Nath looked up.

  “We’re off for a wet, Nath. Nothing more doing tonight, and, by the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh, this place would make a fish thirsty.”

  Nath eyed him a trifle warily.

  “If that’s all right with Deldar Stroikan. All I have to do is lock ’em up and feed and water ’em — if they’re here long enough.”

  The Brokelsh did not take this too well. He put a hairy hand to the silver mortil head at his throat. Among the string of trophy rings in his pakai gleamed no less than two gold rings. A man of some repute, then, this Bandlar the Spear. He had slain two hyrpaktuns in personal combat, and taken from them their golden pakzhan rings to add to his pakai collection. Still, slaying a hyrpaktun did not automatically make you a hyrpaktun. That high honor was far more hardly won. Bandlar the Spear was an ord-Deldar.

  “I’ve given Deldar Stroikan his instructions. If he and his audo cannot do the job for a bur or two while we clear our throats, then what is the world coming to?”

  Nath was far too canny — and, if the truth be told, more than a little frightened — to make any scathing remarks about the white and blues coming up here and lording it over the brown and whites who were the inhabitants.

  A clatter of iron on stone heralded the entrance of Deldar Stroikan. He showed in his flushed face the anger Nath had contained. His left fist gripped onto the hilt of his sword. As a so-Deldar, he was five steps below Bandlar the Spear in the grade structure within the Deldar rank. His pakai showed all silver; it was lacking gold, and it was shorter, a lot shorter, than the pakai dangling so insolently from Bandlar’s shoulder.

  “Yes, Deldar?” Bandlar’s coarse Brokelsh voice conveyed insultingly his position.

  As Nath could see, clearly for the sake of explaining his arrival, Stroikan jerked his right thumb at the pile of weapons stacked into a corner.

  “The Jiktar will want every one o’ those weapons strictly accounted for.”

  Bandlar simply swept aside the opening gambit in a positional tussle. “Make it so. And, I’ve looked.

  Most of the stuff is Krasny work. Those paktuns we’ve got stuffed down the sinkhole had better crafted kits. But, as for that great bar of iron one of the onkers carried — what paktun in his right mind would lug that about?”

  “It’s supposed to be a sword.”

  Nath ventured to chip in.

  “I believe it’s ceremonial. He probably stole it from the retinue of some noble, maybe even some king in his wanderings.”

  “Then he’s a worse onker than I thought.”

  Bandlar the Spear stalked off, and after Stroikan so far forgot himself as to make a face at Nath the Keys, he, too, went off to the guard positions to check his men. Nath was left alone to get on with his cheese pie.

  So he thought.

  A slithering grating sound from the sinkhole again made him give that half-smile through a mouthful of cheese pie. He could feel sorry for those poor devils. He did catch just the one astonishing glimpse of a shadow where the tallow dip could throw no shadow from anything he knew of in the guardroom, then the black cloak of Notor Zan fell on him.

  Khardun said: “You needn’t have knocked him cold, Dorvenhork. Now we cannot question him.”

  “Better safe than have him screaming his fool head off.”

  The others crowded in silently. Umtig felt bloated with pride. He glowed. Lord Clinglin had carried off his part with meticulous and wonderful skill, returning with the keys and making only a single tiny chingle of noise. Now Umtig and the spinlikl wrapped around his neck could let the big hairy fighting men get on with their parts.

  Seg found their weaponry piled in the corner.

  Each man took up his kit, some with a little grunt of pleasure, some with a feeling of relief. Seg turned the pile of other prisoners’ weapons over, picked up the great Krozair longsword, and could not find his Lohvian longbow.

  Probably that was still pushed safely under the landing plank in Obolya’s boat.

  He contented himself with one of the compound reflex bows, and took up two quivers of the shorter ar
rows. He looked around.

  “Right, fanshos. Shaft anybody who tries to stop us. Go more silently than the White Wind that glides across Wistith Waste.”

  On their way here they had been blindfolded. Now they crept silently along the passageway and heard the drunken discordant songs foaming from the cells. Other voices joined in, yelling for the drunks to shaddap, and so Seg, without a smile, nodded his men on, confident they would not be heard.

  The passageway was ill-lit, the barred cells pools of darkness. Seg discarded the idea of releasing the drunks, for although they would create a fine disorder, they would alert the guards far too early. He passed the iron bars of a cell and a voice, hoarse and raspy with wonder, said: “By Zim-Zair! How came you by that sword?”

  Instantly, so fast his feet seemed barely to touch the stone floor, Seg leaped at the bars. He peered into the darkness. He said, “Is that you, my old dom?”

  A man clad in a tunic that had once been white moved toward the bars of his cell so that a single vagrant gleam from the tallow dip on the opposite side caught and etched his face. He had black hair, very curly, and ferocious black moustaches brushed arrogantly upward. He looked a wild and raffish fellow, and he stared at the sword across Seg’s back with a hunger that tautened all the ridges of his face.

  He spoke. Some of the words he said were ordinary understandable words, but what he was saying was completely unintelligible to Seg.

  At last, the leaden feeling banished from his limbs and the dryness from his throat, the sawdust from his brains — for he’d thought it was, he’d really thought it was! — Seg said, “I am sorry to disappoint you. I am not a Krozair. This sword belongs to a friend of mine and I keep it in trust for him.”

  “By the disgusting diseased liver and lights of Makki-Grodno! This is, indeed, a marvel. I had not thought to find a single soul in this heathen place who knew of the Eye of the World.”

  Seg well understood how the people of the Eye of the World, the inner sea in the far continent of Turismond, believed themselves to be the center of the world, and all the enormous oceans and continents about them merely the frame.

  “I am well enough acquainted with the Krozairs to believe that if I release you from this cell, I may entrust the safety of this longsword to you, as a Krozair brother.”

  “You may. I am called Zarado. Llahal—”

  “I am called Seg. Llahal. Now let us get you out of it and bash a few skulls and so escape free.”

  Khardun called back on a whisper: “Someone comes.”

  The drunks made enough noise to cover what followed.

  Ten men, led by their Deldar, marched down the passageway, a full audo of soldiers. Their brown and white feathers frilled above their bronze helmets. These were the men who would hurl Seg and his comrades into the Kazzchun River. Shafts flew. Blades rose and fell, punched past corselet rim and withdrew, darkly stained.

  The Deldar went down with all the famous Bells of Beng Kishi ringing in his head. When he recovered he was pinioned, and his men were mostly dead or unconscious. Seg glowered down, hands on hips, his face like a thundercloud.

  “You, Deldar. You will answer a few questions.”

  Deldar Stroikan said: “You’re all dead men.”

  “I think not. Not yet. But you do understand that you will be? Very good. Now, Deldar — where are the ladies who were taken up with us, and the dinkus?”

  “This will not do you any good, you rast. You have slain too many of the trylon’s men to—”

  Seg put his face close into the Deldar’s face. He could smell the man’s wine-soaked breath, and, no doubt, his own onion-smell was spreading nicely in return.

  “The Lady Milsi! If you don’t answer, now, I’ll slit your gizzard up, down and across! Where is the Lady Milsi?”

  The man looked nonplussed at this. He licked his lips. “I heard that the king is dead, and all the people with them. The Lady Milsi died, too, in the Coup Blag. Only Queen Mab returned safely, and she has gone to the trylon.”

  Seg heard this and did not understand it. It was not the same degree of non-understanding he had experienced with the Krozair. He shook his head to stop the ringing and said, “You are mistaken. The queen died in the Maze. We brought the Lady Milsi out safely. Now, you rogue, tell me—”

  “I’ve told you!” The Deldar’s eyes widened. It was clear he was dealing with a madman. “The queen was brought ashore with you and your band of cutthroats and rode out immediately in a great cavalcade to see Trylon Muryan.”

  “Trylon Muryan,” growled the Dorvenhork, “is the man who put us down the sinkhole.”

  “And who threatened to throw us into the river.” Khardun wouldn’t forget that in a hurry.

  Seg would not admit that ice flowed in his veins. He would not admit that a clutching hand gripped his heart with crushing force. He found it damned difficult to catch his breath. And his legs were shaking, he had to admit that, curse his stupid betraying legs though he might.

  Lady Milsi — Milsi — was the queen. No doubt of it.

  “So they mewed her up in chains and dragged her off to be thrown down before this damned trylon?

  HEY?”

  “No, no. It was not like that. She was received with great honor and joy that she was still alive.”

  There was no doubt, no doubt at all, that Seg felt as though some gigantic oaf had kicked him in the guts.

  “We will have to get moving,” said Khardun. Then, in his Khibil way, he added: “I own I am disappointed in the Lady Milsi. But, queens are queens and have their own ways of dealing with us ordinary folk.”

  The Chulik thumbed up a tusk. “Ordinary folk, Khardun? And you a Khibil?”

  “You know that I am not a king, not even a noble, Dorvenhork. But I think our friend Seg has been shrewdly struck.”

  “Aye. So let us get out of here, by Likshu the Treacherous!”

  “What shall be done with this Deldar?” demanded Rafikhan.

  “Oh — just thump him gently behind the ear.”

  This was done. Seg took no notice. Surrounded by the others, who now included the Krozair, Zarado, among their number, he was more conveyed along the passageway than going as an understanding member of the escaping party.

  They encountered no more guards, of either blue and white or brown and white allegiance, and so burst forth into the starry night of Kregen, out under the golden roseate light of the moon sailing above the town and the treetops — She of the Veils.

  Just for the moment, Seg Segutorio, known as the Horkandur, didn’t much care about anything at all.

  Chapter fifteen

  Kov Llipton

  “By Mother Zinzu the Blessed,” exclaimed Zarado. “I needed that!”

  He wiped the froth from his lips with a scrap of once-yellow linen. Seg’s heart warmed to the Krozair.

  How many times he had heard that heartfelt expression!

  Khardun and the Dorvenhork were still on speaking terms, and were sharing a bottle companionably.

  The others had their bottles and tankards on the sturmwood table, and the slaking of thirsts went on at a prodigious rate.

  About them the noise of the taproom of The Aeilssa and the Risslaca flowed on in a muted fashion, for it was late and most of the fisherfolk had already left. The few farmers had gone long ago and only the merchants and the mewsany handlers seemed to have time to spend to sit and drink past the hour of dim.

  “This is all very well,” said the Fristle, Naghan the Slippy. “But surely we cannot stay here long? The guards will be—”

  “Of course they will,” Khardun said with his expansive cocksure attitude. “But they have to find out that we are flown. Then they will set up a hue and cry. By then we’ll be well out of it.”

  “If I may venture to ask,” said the Relt stylor, Caphlander, in his usual nervous and apologetic manner.

  “Where we will go to be out of it?”

  “Ah,” said the Dorvenhork. He did not polish up a tusk, but his small pigg
y eyes glanced about the taproom. “That is the question.”

  “If you think,” Hundle the Design lowered his tankard, “that we can march over the Mountains and reach North Pandahem — forget it. It’ll be down the river for us.”

  “And you would steer us?”

  “If we find a boat, doms, why, yes, of course.”

  Sitting with his nose in a tankard, Seg took little interest in all this. He was not going to allow himself to become maudlin over a woman. That the woman used to be Milsi, and was now the queen — this famous Queen Mab — merely made his resolve the stronger. These women looked to him. Quite apart from the gold he’d paid out, they sensed in him the qualities necessary for leadership. Well, by the Veiled Froyvil! he’d lead them down the river and out of this hell hole.

  And yet — and yet!

  He had really believed there was a future with Milsi. They had both been shafted by the same bolt of lightning. He was sure of that. He had known it with all his consciousness, known it unfailingly. Because she was a queen she had betrayed him, left him, consigned him to the dungeons. She had used him, had gained her ends, and then she had abandoned him.

  No. He did not feel a happy man at that moment.

  “One thing is sure,” he said, his voice heavy and leaden. “We are all wanted men. There is a price on our heads, mark me on that.”

  “Aye. So we defy these rasts, and sail. We go downriver with Hundle the Design as our boat master—”

  “That is true, Khardun,” interrupted Rafikhan. “But Seg the Horkandur is our Jiktar.”

  No one argued that.

  None of them offered much information about past lives. They did not volunteer information on their homes, what they had done, what seen, where adventured. Only Hundle and the Och thief appeared to own the Kazzchun River as home. What Umtig had done to land up in prison was obvious; the Relt stylor offered no information. The Fristle once mumbled a few words about a broken bronze plate and a death of a ninny; but that passed without comment. Truth to tell, Seg no more worried about the past misdeeds of this happy little band of fugitives than he fretted over the future mayhem they might cause. Nothing much made sense or reason or was of interest to him right now.