Seg the Bowman Read online

  That was very nice for them — now.

  Seg scowled a bit, and looked loweringly on Milsi, who, for her part, disdained to notice.

  When they heard up ahead the clink and clatter of bottles and glasses, the apparent murmur of happy human voices, Diomb brightened up.

  He was a mischievous fellow. He glanced up sideways at Seg, half-laughing.

  “Ah, Seg, do you hear that? Friends are waiting for us.”

  Seg had enough human tolerance to wait awhile before believing the dinko meant what he said. The sounds reached them from beyond a screen of vegetation, for the forest appeared more open here and they knew by this that they must be nearing the river. The trackways criss-crossed, and not by man but by the increasing number of animals living here.

  “Friends?” said Seg. He decided to play along with Diomb for a time. “They sound as though they are having a good time. And I could do with a wet.”

  “A wet?”

  Seg smiled in his turn. There were so many things these pygmies did not know. Their life was primitive.

  They had a lot to learn.

  “Yes. A drink of something other than water. It sounds as though up there they have plenty of bottles.”

  Diomb caught the inflexion in Seg’s voice.

  “Yes, Seg. Bottles. I know of them but have never seen one. They must have some over there.”

  “Well, then, I suggest you toddle along and ask.”

  Seg stopped beside the bush and looked down on Diomb. He quite expected the pygmy to stop, also.

  Then there would be a crestfallen explanation. For, of course, there were no happy drinkers up ahead celebrating. The clinking sounds, the murmurous voices, were produced by a killer plant known to civilized men as the Cabaret Plant. What the dinkus called it Seg didn’t know, and was not just at the moment particularly interested to find out.

  Instead, boldly, Diomb marched out past the bush and into the clearing.

  Seg watched.

  Out there in its cleared area the Cabaret Plant carried on its audio-pantomime. The sounds were remarkably realistic. To a forest-dwelling dinko who hadn’t even seen a bottle or glass, the sounds must come as mysterious and evocative. The plant itself was a fine full-grown specimen.

  The gourd-shaped main body was capacious enough to hold three or four people. The sounds of voices trilling and laughing and the clink of bottle against glass increased in intensity. From the top of the gourd rose a tall stem crowned with an orange flower. Seg’s lips drew tightly together.

  He drew his sword.

  Diomb carried a large leaf plucked from a greenish-blue low-growing bush and as he stepped out he bent his legs, his knees like springs, and he moved gently from side to side.

  The orange flower lashed.

  It swept viciously down toward the pygmy. As it struck it opened wide to reveal its flower-petalled head encrusted with spines.

  The deadly orange flower slashed at Diomb. He waited, then sprang swiftly to the side, trailing the leaf which was smashed full out of his hand. He darted back, and his face blazed with pride and prowess.

  “Hai!” cried Bamba, glowing with reciprocal pride.

  “Huh,” grunted Seg, sourly. “Some of the tribal fun and games, is it? Proving you’re a man among men?”

  “More than that, Seg.” Diomb waited, judged his moment exactly, and darted in, snatched up the leaf and withdrew. The orange flower lashed about in baffled frenzy.

  “I have never done that before,” remarked Diomb. “I have practiced, of course, with my friends slashing at me and pretending to be the Naree-Giver.”

  “It was well-done, Diomb,” declared Milsi, with a glance at Seg that put him in his place.

  “All right, Diomb,” said Seg, almost growling. “I knew what was what the moment we heard the Cabaret Plant. What you call a Naree-Giver.” He looked at the leaf which Diomb was now most carefully inspecting. “Narees, is it? This is how you come by the poisoned darts for your blowpipes?”

  “This is one way, yes.”

  The leaf was struck through by the poisoned spines from the plant. There must have been thirty of them.

  Now Diomb began a painstaking removal of each spine, putting them into a bark pouch in his apron.

  “We splice the spine to the main shaft of the naree. These will make very good weapons, you will see.”

  “I daresay.”

  Seg decided not to feel chastened. He’d had a nasty experience with a Cabaret Plant before, and he’d been classing them as among the more hideous of the horrors of the jungle. And here this little pygmy lad trotted along and baited the ferocious plant and took from it its spines to use as his blow-pipe darts —

  and had the effrontery to give the thing a name that indicated the esteem in which he held it! Enough to make a bluff tough fighting man spit.

  The last Cabaret Plant Seg had encountered had cost him ten gold pieces...

  Milsi broke into his thoughts with a pert suggestion that it was high time they stopped for something to eat.

  Diomb’s skills as a forest hunter provided ample food. Water continued to be boiled. They selected a good campsite and settled down. By the signs within the forest they hoped to reach the river on the morrow, or the next day.

  Seg inquired if Diomb shot his dinner with his poisoned naree and then ate it, poison and all.

  “We usually snare our food, as I have done since we met. But if we have to shoot with a poisoned naree there are ways of boiling or baking the poison out. I can bring a small quarry down with an unpoisoned dart, of course.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  Milsi gave him a look.

  When they had eaten, Seg felt that a small rest would be in order. He wanted to know more of Milsi’s life story; yet he was reluctant to press too hard. He did not wish to reveal very much about his own life, for that would take a clever man to explain and a trusting woman to believe, by Vox!

  “Seg,” she said as they lay side by side, some way apart from the two dinkus who were out of sight together. “Why are you so hard on Diomb?”

  “Hard? Me, hard on the little fellow?”

  “Perhaps you are jealous of him?”

  The torrent of images, desires, passions that flared into Seg’s brain made him almost gasp aloud. He rolled over and stared off into the forest, away from Milsi. He was vividly aware of her presence at his side. Jealous? He was conscious of all that he was missing, that until his meeting with Milsi he had banished from his life. Well, now was the time to tell her a few home truths that might explain a little more...

  “I told you I was once married.”

  “Yes.”

  “My wife was called Thelda. She was a — a funny woman. She always meant well. I could see how she tried. Yet—”

  Milsi could not see his face. She said: “You need not explain, Seg, if it is painful. I think I understand.

  One meets these people in life who mean so well, and yet whose every effort turns to disaster.”

  He rolled over to look at her.

  “Well — it wasn’t disaster all the time! No. I won’t have that. I loved Thelda. I truly did. We had a good life together, and there were the children, and our friends, and life to be lived.”

  “And she died. I am sorry, truly sorry.”

  “I thought she had died.”

  “Oh?”

  “There was a difficult period. We called it the Time of Troubles. We were separated. I was sore wounded. I searched for Thelda, searched for her where I knew she would be, and then in our home. I could not find her. I was made slave—”

  “Oh, Seg!”

  “It was not pleasant. My old dom hoicked me out of that and I had to spend time recovering from my wound and, well, everyone said Thelda was dead. So I believed it, too.”

  “And she wasn’t?”

  “I got over Thelda. I said I could not continue to love a ghost, a person broken from the ib. I put her out of my mind. But I did not look at another woman. I was a husk, you
see, until...” He stopped, and plucked a thin twig from the bush by which they lay and stuck it between his teeth. He chewed reflectively.

  Milsi said nothing.

  “Only recently my old dom told me that Thelda was alive. She believed me to be dead, as I believed her.

  She had found a man, a man I knew slightly, an honest, upright man. They loved and were married and there was a child. This was done in all honor.”

  “Oh, Seg!”

  “Yes, well, that is all ancient history now.”

  She felt perplexed.

  “You did not say how old your son — Drayseg — was.”

  While the people of Kregen could live to well beyond two hundred years — if they did not get themselves killed off before then — they did not alter a great deal in appearance from the time they reached maturity to a few years before they died. Despite this there were small signs by which one person could estimate the age of another with fair accuracy. Without this subtle judgment unfortunate liaisons might occur; a passionate romance between a young person of twenty-five with another who looked just the same but was a hundred and twenty-five, might be acceptable to them, might be warmingly wonderful an example of human faith and love; it was also a cruel trick to play on frail humanity by fate.

  Milsi wrinkled up her eyebrows at Seg. He was clearly a mature man, strong and craggy, and a man she found undeniably handsome and attractive. He was a few years older than she was. But he talked as though these events had taken place seasons and seasons ago.

  “How old Dray is means nothing,” he said at last. “The twins are a bit younger. They’re all off in the great wide world adventuring and having fun, I hope, and all my prayers to Erthyr go to protect them from the perils of life.”

  This was the difficulty, Seg knew, that his old dom had had to face many times. They’d both bathed in the Sacred Pool of Baptism in far Aphrasöe, in the River Zelph, along with their families and good friends. This assured them of a thousand years of life, together with the capacity to recover from wounds with an amazing rapidity. Seg judged Milsi to be a few years younger than he appeared to be, the age he’d been when he and the riotous crew had all flown off to Aphrasöe, the Swinging City. He had grown considerably in judgment and wisdom since then, although, naturally, he was still your wild reckless warrior kind of fellow, to be sure.

  He found himself wondering how Thelda would handle the odd circumstances that she did not appear to age as her husband, Lol Polisto, aged. For Thelda, as far as he knew, was not aware that she would live for a thousand years. That was cruel. He would have to rectify that, and, if possible, make arrangements for Lol, also, to take that miraculous baptism. Again and again they’d discussed, in all the various places of Kregen they’d adventured together, he and the Bogandur, just how you dealt with this unexpected gift of a thousand years of life — if gift it was.

  There had to be a limit; how to apply that cruel limiting judgment?

  Milsi, now...

  He was about to attempt some blundering pack of lies to explain away this surprising lack of knowledge of his children’s ages, when Bamba popped out from the bush pushing her bark apron straight, followed at once by Diomb.

  “Seg! We must—”

  “Now by all the Shattered Targes in Mount Hlabro!” burst out Seg. “What is it now?”

  “We must hide. A party of boltim approach, and they may not be friendly.”

  Seg grunted. “Won’t be, more likely.”

  Keeping low into the bushes, silent, watchful, the little party watched as the newcomers stalked and staggered past.

  The Katakis stalked, strutting in heavy boots, flicking their whips and flicking their tails at the coffle of slaves who staggered, struggling on, naked and chained.

  Seg counted the Katakis. Twenty of the diffs, twenty fierce, voracious, unpleasant and highly lethal slavers, twenty packets of sudden death. Flared of nostrils, the Katakis, low of frowning forehead, with black hair wild and tangled, with jagged teeth and hungry jaws. They were half-armored and carried spears and swords and bows. They urged on the slaves, who were of many races, without mercy, shouting the ugly word to force on dead-tired muscles and aching limbs.

  “Grak, you yetches! Grak!”

  Seg thought of Milsi. He thought, also, of Diomb and Bamba. Well, he could shaft half a dozen and then they’d be on him and slay him. That would not help either the poor devils in the coffle or Milsi and the dinkus.

  So, then. He must perforce crouch here like any coward and wait until the slavers had passed.

  He did not think it necessary to advise Milsi of his decision. For her part, she stared unseeingly upon the slaves, shuddered at the predatory Katakis, kept very silent and fervently prayed that her great jikai, this warrior bowman Seg Segutorio, would not conceive his honor demanded he rush out to fight and die.

  That this illogical behavior might be expected from Seg was to her the greatest proof of her irrationality in finding herself in this position. No sensible person would interfere with slavers about their business, and most certainly not Katakis. The bladed steel strapped to their tails whickered like summer lightning, the flats belaboring the slaves in vicious spanking buffetings. If those steel blades turned edge on...

  When the miserable coffle had struggled on and was out of sight and sound, Diomb stretched and said:

  “Now, Seg, tell me what that was all about. I am most anxious to find out about the outside world. But I own I do not understand what I saw.”

  “Those ugly brutes were Katakis, what we call Whiptails. Steer clear of ’em unless you want trouble.

  The slaves were—”

  “Slaves?”

  Seg tried to explain. Diomb interrupted.

  “I know that a person may own certain items — my blowpipe and darts, my apron. But nothing much else. The elders have explained much of the outside world to us, for we are not ignorant savages. I thought I understood the principle of possession. But owning people—”

  “There’s a lot in the world you have to learn about,” said Milsi. “And I shall be happy to show you and Bamba.”

  The trouble with a lot of this wonderful world of Kregen could be summed up in the one word —

  slavery. Seg had had his run-ins with the diabolical custom and so he could, while deploring Milsi’s attitude, understand it. He did not look forward with any pleasure to what the future held when he began the process of correcting her attitude. He was long past the stage when he consulted his conscience on the matter. He was long past the stage when he worried over the problem of whether or not he had the right to change people’s minds on the question of slavery. He had seen enough. He had lost a great deal over the slavery business, quite happily, and he was prepared to go to great lengths to do what he could to stamp out the evil.

  He did not doubt that his explanation of slavery would be somewhat different from Milsi’s.

  A few dwaburs farther on they ran into a marshy area.

  “We have the Malar Marshes in Erthyrdrin,” said Seg. “I am not enamored of them. We had best find another way around.”

  That being agreed, they cut inland a trifle to circumvent the noxious areas.

  Milsi chattered away to Diomb and Bamba. Seg strode on silently, biding his time.

  When he had an opportunity at the next halt to tell Milsi a thing or three, he found himself instead attempting to explain the nomenclature customs of Erthyrdrin.

  “My children may call themselves Segutorio, or Segutoria, as a kind of surname when out of the country.

  That is, if it fits in with the country’s customs. But the Torio is reserved for the eldest, and the first syllables are always the same. The girl child will take her mother’s name as a second name, and when she marries may attach her husband’s name if she wishes.”

  He picked a scrap of meat from between his teeth with a sliver of clean-stripped wood and not his finger.

  He was finicky with the operation. Milsi noticed this.

  He went o
n, “My lad Valin, Silda’s twin, is called Valin Segutorio at home; but that is not really correct and we would not do so in Erthyrdrin. He—”

  “But, Seg. I thought your home was Erthyrdrin? Where is it you call home, then?”

  No good for Seg to castigate his loose tongue.

  He replied easily enough, and with enough truth to ease his conscience.

  “Oh, we have a fine home in Valka. But, as I was saying—”

  “Valka? I have not heard of it.”

  “North of here. But, as I was saying—”

  “North?”

  Seg sighed. Women were the very devil for sticking to a point you didn’t want explored, and likewise the very devil for being loose-minded and scatty when it pleased them. Damned clever, women, usually.

  “It’s a small island in the Sea of Opaz.”

  “H’m. It must be a very small island, then, for I know most of the more important ones along the north coast of Pandahem in the Sea of Opaz. Although, Seg, we Pandaheem more often call the sea the Ocean of Panda.”

  “Oh, yes, that shows how cut off we are there.”

  He did not dare to look at her in case she saw the unease in him. The devil Chanko-taroth take it! He did not wish to lie to Milsi; but he didn’t want too much of his past to be revealed until he was ready to do the revealing.

  Milsi ran swiftly over the major islands whose names she knew up there off the north coast of the main island. Valka? There was a ring in the name, a faint memory of hearing it, spoken in great passion by her father. But the memory would not coalesce.

  Around almost all the coasts of Kregen the islands clustered as thickly as bubbles on the surface of boiling milk. There were far too many for all to be recalled at will.

  “You were saying?”

  “Oh, yes. Valin will never be Valin Valintorio unless he gains great renown, is recognized, can persuade the elders and the secret ones to grant him the torio. Then he will have a family, and lands, and may call himself Valin Valintorio. I look forward to the day.”