Seg the Bowman Read online

  “Here,” said Fregeff, with an indicatory jerk of his flail that did not stir the bronzen links, “he comes now.”

  A strom, although a little below the middle of the table of precedence, was still a rank of the higher nobility. Stroms were folk of consequence. This Strom Ornol never forgot that fact, and made sure that those around him were not forgetful, either.

  The catman moved a few paces away, a small and apparently meaningless movement; but Seg was well aware that the sorcerer by that gesture was indicating that he wished to take no part in the inevitable quarrel Strom Ornol would bring with him. Fregeff, as an Adept of San Destinakon, was quite capable of taking care of himself in unpleasant circumstances, and it seemed that here and now the onrush of a pack of maddened toilcas was not an occurrence to make him worry overmuch. Let, he seemed to be saying, let you lesser mortals decide for the best for yourselves.

  Strom Ornol, pale-faced as always, high of temper, a blot in the eyes of others beside Seg, came striding up in his usual furious temper.

  “What is all this blathering? Toilcas? Who says so?”

  Seg had really just about had enough of this insufferable young dandy. He knew that Ornol, as a younger son, had been kicked out by his noble father. He’d been into mischief from the day he could toddle, more than likely. Because he was a lord, Ornol had assumed that he was in command of the expedition.

  Seg had acquiesced in that. It went down well or ill with the other members; but only now and again had they shown open revolt. After all, they were equal members in the treasure hunting party.

  “Well? Am I to receive no answer?”

  Ornol fidgeted with the hilt of his rapier. The matching left-hand dagger swung over his right hip. This fashion of using rapier and main gauche was still new in the island of Pandahem, although well established in other parts of Kregen. Now Ornol glared about, his face with its pallid sheen of sweat working as though he had constipation.

  “I saw one,” said the Lady Milsi.

  Seg said, very quickly: “Yes, pantor, that is correct.’”

  He glanced at Milsi. She returned his look, and then glanced away. She sometimes forgot that one addressed lords properly, and here in Pandahem called them pantor, lord.

  Kalu spoke up. “Well, strom. We have taken some treasure out of the mountain and are still here and alive. Unless you intend to return we may begin our return journey in all honor.”

  “Return? Into that hellhole?”

  “That’s settled, then,” said Seg. He made it brisk. “Let us pack up and move out.”

  “I shall give the orders,” started Strom Ornol.

  Fregeff called in his hissing catman way: “Evil approaches.”

  Everybody jumped.

  The Fristle sorcerer had powers, that was undeniable. If he said evil was on the way — evil was on the way.

  They all looked about, and hands gripped onto sword hilts, and Seg slid his great bow off his shoulder.

  “There!” yelped a Gon guard, and in the same instant they all saw the apparition floating in over the tops of the trees.

  A throne-like chair hung unsupported in thin air. Its outlines were not clearly defined; it shimmered with power drawn from a source far beyond the confines of the normal. Seg blinked. He could make out the throne and the trailing silks that did not blow in the wind of the chair’s passage, he could see the chavonth pelts and ling furs scattered luxuriously upon the seat and the arms, see the mantling canopy rearing out above the throne. That canopy was fashioned into the likeness of a dinosaur’s wedge-shaped head, jaws agape, fangs glittering silver. The eyes were hooded ruby lights. Anyone approaching the throne must perforce stand in awe and terror of that demoniacal head above.

  And — all these awesome appurtenances were as nothing beside the woman who sat on the throne.

  Clad in black and green, picked out in gold, with much ornamentation and embroidery, she sat stiffly erect. Her pallor of countenance made Strom Ornol look as flushed as Master Exandu. Her eyes were green, sliding luminous slits of jade. Her hair, dark, swept in long black tresses about her shoulders and descended into a widow’s peak over her forehead. She wore a jeweled band about that sleek black hair, and a smaller representation of the horrific dinosaur wedge-shaped head jutted from the center.

  A guard lifted his bow. He was a Brokelsh, a member of that race of diffs who are coarse of body hair and coarse of manner. He loosed. Everyone saw. The arrow struck cleanly into the woman’s breast. It passed on, transfixing that glowing phantasm, shot on and curved out and down to plunge into the jungle.

  Somebody screamed.

  As though nothing had happened the woman peered down from her throne. Her mouth was painted into a ripe bud shape of invitation. There was not a single line or crease upon that pallid countenance. Gold leaf decorated her eyelids. She looked down upon the mortals below.

  Each one felt the force of her gaze pass over, a psychic probe, questing and passing on.

  Fregeff the sorcerer stood supremely still. His bronzen flail did not quiver.

  With a gesture that even in so simple a movement was all seduction, the woman lifted her left hand.

  Diamonds glittered. She made a sign, her forefinger pointed down at the camp in the clearing.

  Among them all, Seg devoutly believed that lightning, fire and destruction would pour from that condemning finger.

  Instead, the apparition wavered, the outlines flowed like gold within the smelting pot. The throne lifted away, turned, vanished beyond the tops of the trees.

  In the next instant a horde of flying creatures swept out over the trees, the men astride them brandishing weapons. In an avalanche of fury, the flying warriors swept down upon the camp, lusting for the kill.

  Chapter two

  Seg the Horkandur collects arrows

  Seg’s instincts clashed.

  His first instinct was to loose as many shafts as he could, skewer a clump of these damned flyers, and then rip out his sword and go plunging into the fight.

  But, also, his first instinct was to grasp the Lady Milsi about the waist and, honoring his sworn promise to protect her, hurry her into the problematical safety of the jungle.

  He could follow either course.

  Where lay the course of honor?

  His old dom, whom these people called the Bogandur, used to say that honor didn’t bring in the bread and butter. Despite that, he was the most honorable of men that Seg knew, his concept of honor not being of the rigid kind. Rather, it adhered to seeking the best solution to any problem that arose.

  Without turning, Seg rapped out: “Milsi! Run to the edge of the jungle! Hide! Do not go too far in—”

  As he spoke he lifted the bow, drew, released and had another shaft across the stave, nocked, and the bow lifting for the second shot, all in a twinkling.

  Milsi said: “If you think I’m going to run off and leave you—”

  “I do not want you to be killed.” He loosed again, and again with that incredible speed slapped up another shaft and loosed. “Run, Milsi — please!”

  “No.”

  “Then I must take you.”

  “You would not dare!”

  His three arrows had knocked over three of the flyers. They were not all apims like him, some were diffs, for he saw Rapas, Brokelsh, a Gon, a couple of malkos.

  The saddle birds they flew were brunnelleys, large and powerful, wide-winged, gaudy of coloration in blues and mauves and browns, yellow beaks and clawed scarlet feet. Plates of wafer-thin beaten gold adorned the birds. They swept in over the clearing, and their bandit riders did not bother to shoot down but landed their birds in great wing-ruffling swirls. The men leaped off, screeching, swirling their swords about their heads.

  Seg sniffed and shot a fellow through the breastplate, instantly nocked and drew again and shafted his comrade.

  Milsi said, “I am not frightened while I am with you, Seg. If—”

  “Yes, yes. I can stand here and shoot the rasts. I suppose
—”

  “That is best.”

  “Until they come to handstrokes!”

  The fighting broke into clumps as the bandits rushed in. Each member of the expedition fought as custom dictated. Strom Ornol, being at least in this wiser than one might have expected, disdained his rapier and used a hefty cut and thrust sword, swishing the thraxter about with powerful contemptuous blows. Kalu and his Pachaks simply tore into the bandits, ripping them apart whenever they made contact.

  Master Exandu, as Seg had rightly observed, hauled out his single-edged sword and hit anybody who came near him. All the time he complained in his loud hectoring whine, but he kept Shanli safely tucked in behind him. Hop became most intemperate, and raged into a whirlwind, knocking bandits over and trompling them in his eagerness to get to the next.

  But these were professional bandits — drikingers — and they were used to overcoming opposition.

  They lived by terrorizing the neighborhood, and stealing what they wanted. The expedition had in their turn taken the treasures away from the mountain hideout. Located by that gruesome apparition of a beautiful evil woman on her throne, the expedition was now about to pay a price for their audacity.

  Master Exandu sliced a fellow’s arm nearly off, and stumbled back, shrieking: “San Fregeff! For the sweet sake of Beng Sbodine the Mender of Men! Cast a spell! Reduce these cramphs to jelly!”

  Fregeff replied in a somber voice, clearly heard through the tumult as a bell tolls through the lowing of cattle.

  “The Witch of Loh has negated all spells here save my own self-preservation.”

  Exandu let out a yell of utter despair, and sloshed a Rapa over the head so that the Rapa’s vulturine beak hung all askew and a gouting puff of brown and gray feathers spurted into the air.

  The aerial onslaught of the drikingers pressed on. Seg found more and more difficulty in selecting a target who was not involved in handstrokes.

  “I can’t just stand here, Milsi. You constrain me.”

  “Look, Seg,” her voice remained firm, the quaver bravely concealed. “Here come three of them to kill us.”

  “Three,” grumped Seg, and shot, flick, flick, flick. “Now, Milsi, please. Either go into the jungle or—”

  “I think,” and there was a comfortableness in her tone. “I think the jungle is much more dangerous. You will not be there.”

  “Women,” said Seg, and sought a target.

  He reached up to his quiver, and groped, and brought out a rose-fletched arrow. After nocking it, he reached up and felt, carefully. There was but the one shaft left, and he knew that was a blue-fletched one of the supply with which he’d begun.

  He saw Exandu, swishing and swashing, and complaining away. With a quick snap-shot, Seg disposed of the bandit about to jump on Shanli, dropping him a mere foot short of his target. The blood in Seg demanded a more direct participation... He did not nock the blue-fletched arrow. He slid the bow up his left shoulder. He half-turned.

  “Milsi! I must go to Exandu’s aid. The time for shooting is past. Now, you must—”

  “I must go with you, Seg!”

  There was no time for anything further. The sounds of combat boiled menacingly in the jungle clearing.

  The raw harsh stink of spilled blood broke through the jungle scents and the aromas of cooking. Shrieks and yells, the tinker-hammer of steel upon steel, the puddling of blood in the trampled mud beneath... Seg ripped out his sword and flung himself forward. Milsi followed hard in his footsteps.

  He was barely in time.

  Exandu, for all his moaning and groaning, could handle his heavy single-edged blade. But he was not in the same class as the guards, or the bandits.

  Seg reached him in time to chop a man down, jump over him and skewer another as he was in the act of bringing an axe down on Exandu’s undefended head.

  For a brief instant, the fight ebbed away as the two dropped. Seg looked about, glaring, worked up.

  Exandu emitted a groaning laugh, a weak splutter.

  “I think they run.”

  And it was so.

  Milsi did not seem to see the corpses strewn everywhere about the clearing. She possessed a serenity in moments of crisis that warmed Seg. He knew practically nothing of her, of her life, her history, and it was most positively certain that she knew nothing of his. Yet, as Kregans say, they had been shafted by the same bolt of lightning at the moment of their meeting. If fate was to be held responsible, then fate would rejoice in their meeting. In the great circle of vaol-paol, the infinite circle of existence, they had met and the circle was complete.

  The remaining bandits scrambled into their saddles. The brunnelleys fluttered and scooped wingfuls of air, soared flapping aloft. The birds whose riders had been slain joined in the departure.

  “By Vox!” said Seg. He leaped for the nearest bird.

  His clutching fingers almost reached the dangling clerketer, the harness which held the rider securely upon the saddle. The bird twitched a beady eye on him, reared away, flapped his wings madly. With a gouting of broken stems and leaves and detritus, the bird was airborne. He lifted away and as he went he let rip a squawk that, to Seg at least, came as a mocking screech of triumph.

  “Bad cess to it!” shouted Seg. He stood, hands on hips, head upflung, staring as the birds bore away through the radiance of the twin suns.

  Walking across to him, Milsi also looked up.

  “You know about these wonderful birds, Seg?”

  “Something.”

  “They are very strange to us here in Pandahem. Yet I have heard of them, of birds and animals that carry people through the sky. And now I have seen them. I wonder where they could have come from?”

  “From Cottmer’s Caverns, that’s where, the damned unnatural things.” Hop the Intemperate looked up, and in his face the look was one of bafflement. “What could you have done with one, Pantor Seg, had you caught it?”

  “Why,” said Seg, surprised. “Flown the thing, of course. What else?”

  “You can fly a bird?”

  Seg sobered. He made himself hum and haw.

  “We-ell — I could have tried!”

  “You’d have fallen off. A copper ob to a golden crox, you’d have toppled head over heels.”

  “Aye,” agreed Seg, routine caution at last returning to him. “Aye, Hop. Probably.”

  The fact that the jungle clearing lay encumbered with corpses had different effects upon each of the people there. Most were inured by terrors to a dour acceptance of what might befall. They gave thanks to their various gods that they were not numbered among the slain.

  As for clearing up—

  “Leave them all,” ordered Strom Ornol, striding about, still wrought up, brilliant and commanding. “Pack everything we need at once. We are leaving now.”

  “Strom Ornol!” Exandu waddled up. Shanli was busily cleaning his single-edged sword. “We cannot leave our poor fellows unburied, unhallowed.”

  “We can. The jungle will bury them for us. You know that.”

  “I know that. But it is not right—”

  “Then you may remain here and perform your religious observances, while we march through the Snarly Hills and out of here.”

  “As to that—”

  Seg took no part in this altercation. Like any professional warrior, any Bowman of Loh, he went about the clearing seeking his targets. He drew his knife. Cutting the arrows out had to be done carefully. He might hack a chunk of flesh away, all bloody and dripping; he had to harden himself against that. The most important item was not to damage the arrow.

  Milsi did not join him during this proceeding.

  During this recovery process, Seg took automatic reckoning of his shots, their effect, the accuracy of his aim.

  He realized as he worked that he missed the wagers he and his old dom would have as they shot in the midst of combat. That was not a cruel or insensitive habit. They understood perhaps a little more of what possessed a man in a battle than most. There was ab
solutely no doubt in Seg’s mind, no doubt whatsoever, that he sorely missed his blade comrade, the man these people called the Bogandur.

  Kalu and his Pachaks did what any sensible mercenary would do, and helped themselves to the best of their fallen enemy’s weaponry.

  “Although, Seg, these drikingers use parlous poor weapons. All Krasny work. Look at this spear! The point wouldn’t puncture a maiden—”

  “Aye, Kalu. And their bows, which to our untold advantage they did not use, are crossbows.”

  Kalu laughed his Pachak laugh.

  “You are not a crossbowman, Seg.”

  “Oh,” sniffed Seg. “I have been known to use a crossbow.”

  The expedition had lost a number of guards in this fight. The slaves had run screaming, and now some of them returned. Some appeared to have run too far into the jungle, for they did not return. Ornol expressed his great distaste. “If they are a monster’s breakfast, that is what serves them right. But it leaves us short of porters.”

  Seg could not stop himself.

  “We’re only carrying treasure, after all.”

  Ornol’s pallid face turned on him like the head of a dinosaur above the swampy vegetation, seeking prey.

  “You are above taking treasure, are you? You can joke about so important a matter? Perhaps you can afford to be disdainful of gold and gems, Seg the Horkandur!”

  Milsi put a hand neatly on Seg’s arm.

  “Oh, no, pantor. It is not that. Seg but thinks of the provisions we must carry to take us safely through the perils of the Snarly Hills.”

  “As for me,” quoth Exandu, scarlet, puffing, “I can barely drag my poor old bones along. Oh, how my joints ache! They are on fire — Shanli—”

  “I am here, master, with a potion of Mistress Cliomin’s Marrow Virtue — you will be eased in no time.”

  “Oh, Shanli — you are my treasure!”

  “And that,” said Seg, sotto voce to Milsi, “is Erthyr’s sweet truth!”

  The slaves set to to pack up the camp.

  “Erthyr?” said Milsi. “That is—”