“Hai! Seg! A day for deeds!”
“Since our dip in that magical pool I feel like a youngster. May Opaz witness that it is good to be alive!”
Jaezila called from the side, turning to face us, still half leaning over. “There is a stream down there. I’m for a swim.”
So, down we went in that dawn light and stripped off and plunged in, our daggers belted around our waists. Had there been any of the wonderful gallery of nasty creatures of Kregen swimming around hungry for breakfast he, she or it would have had short shrift from us three.
Dripping wet, we shouted and laughed and threw handfuls of water about and generally acted in a way that might have made Drak dub us undignified. I had a shrewd idea he’d join in...
By the time we’d dried off and cooked up some breakfast and stuffed ourselves to repletion with vosk rashers and loloo’s eggs and masses of tea and palines, we felt in remarkable spirits.
Hammansax lay over the next ridge, far enough from the main mass of the mountain chain to afford it warning when the wild men attacked. As I told Seg, “It’s not a question of if the wild men attack. It’s always when.”
Seg looked up, squinting against the morning light.
“Like now?”
We whirled.
They were there, flying in long skeins, sharp and dark against the brightness. The wings of their saddlebirds beating up and down, up and down, and the wink and glitter of weapons and armor, the flare of feathered decorations driving home with force their power and contempt for opposition. Not one of the civilized races, these moorkrim, these wild men.
“They haven’t seen us.” Jaezila threw her cape onto our little fire and the few last wisps of smoke died. “That was a nice cape. I particularly liked the zhantil-motif edging.”
Still staring into the sky at those distant malefic figures, I said, “You can pick out the edging and stitch it back onto a new cape.”
“They’re flying away,” said Seg.
“Aye.”
“They’ve been up to mischief, then, if they’re like any reivers I’ve known.”
“Aye.”
Jaezila bent for the cape and bashed it on the ground. Seg and I turned our heads to watch her, and I felt the quick spurt of love for her as she banged the cape on the dusty ground. The wild men up there, so like flutsmen and yet not civilized to any degree that would enable easy parleys to be held, undulating on beating wings, flew away, far away to the west.
“So we’d better go and see.”
“If—” said Jaezila, and she held the burned rag between her fists. “If Tyfar is—”
“Let us go and see.”
Like any sensible Kregan in unfamiliar territory with a voller to consider, we’d concealed the airboat in the trees. The wild-men had not spotted her. We scuffed the fire out and Jaezila marched off to the voller. She let the cape fall to the ground. It was of a russet color, with a high velvet collar and those golden zhantils entwined and leaping as edging. Seg started after Jaezila.
I picked up the burned cape. I rolled it up. I shoved it under my arm. I started for the airboat. Jaezila was damned upset and I didn’t like that.
She took the controls and sent the little craft up in a violent surge. We swung over the trees and pelted for the ridge. The gray rock and the trees whipped away below and we looked over the ridge into the valley folded between the mountain arms.
Fire, smoke, destruction...
Hammansax burned.
“Tyfar—”
“He’ll be all right, Jaezila. You know how resourceful he is.”
“That’s the trouble. He’s likely to go rushing out and get himself killed.”
We did not speak much as the voller shot down toward burning Hammansax.
The town had been a small prosperous frontier post — the sax in the name indicated that — and the raiders had failed to destroy the character of the place. Walls still stood, a few roofs remained unfallen. But smoke choked everywhere and people ran and yelled among the flames. They had come out of hiding after the wildmen flew off and now strove to save their town from further destruction.
In a flierdrome to one side, the wreck of a green-painted Courier voller lay twisted grotesquely, the flames little blue devils amid the smoke along her frame. Beyond her the flierdrome was empty.
“No one here when the wildmen struck,” said Seg.
“Perhaps Tyfar wasn’t here.” Jaezila hurled the airboat down into the principal square. Only two sides burned, the other two containing stalls remained intact. People looked up and shouted as we landed on the beaten earth of the square.
We soon discovered the story. Prince Tyfar had not been in Hammansax for a time. The stink of raw ashes, hot and shiny, got up our nostrils. Whirls of black cinders swept into the air from the burning houses. The people were dazed. This was a disaster which, although always a possibility in their imaginations, had really arrived and with it — horror. No matter these folk lived on the frontier and expected trouble; when that trouble came it was always fresh and terrible and so much greater than the anticipation could prepare. Yet we could not stop and help.
“We have sent off messengers,” one of the chief men of the town told us. “The army will follow the moorkrim and try to get our people back; but the wildmen will fly far, far.” He wiped black soot around his eyes, which were red and inflamed. “May Havil rot their wings.”
Despite all the ridiculous toughness I am supposed to have, be and represent, despite all the aloof power and authority vested in me, despite all this flummery, I felt the keen dagger of guilt. This was my fault. By invading Hamal we had drawn off vitally needed men to guard these frontier posts against the wildmen. Oh, yes, the burdens hanging on the shoulders of men and women foolish enough to rule empires crush their victims unless resisted with other weapons than simple brute force.
If you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs, then one innocent person will save a city of guilty people.
We did what we could to help the people, but that was little enough, Zair help us.
They were aware that their empire had been defeated in a battle in the capital city. But that was a long way away. Cultivation and husbandry and constant vigilance against the wild-men from over the mountains was the reality, was the here and now.
They’d go on living this way, living their lives, and whoever ruled in Ruathytu would demand taxes and would send not enough forces to help in defense. We had done little for Hammansax. Prince Tyfar, we were told by the landlord of what had been The Jolly Vodrin — now a pile of rubble and burned timbers — had taken what the Empress Thyllis had left him of his army to a high pass in the mountains called the Jaws of Laca.
“How do you know that for certain?” demanded Jaezila.
She looked splendid, fierce and radiant and burning with anger and anxiety.
The landlord, half of whose hair had burned away, wiped blistered hands gently on an ointment rag. He was Hamdal the Measure.
Seg said, very gently, “He will know, Lela.”
What Seg did not say, what I did not say, was that Jaezila would also know why a landlord of an inn popular with the soldiers would be aware of their orders. This is a fact of military life in certain quarters. Cautious generals must legislate against it by counter-cunning.
“Where is the Lacachun?” asked Jaezila.
Hamdal the Measure held up one blistered hand, pointing to the southwest. “Between the two tallest peaks within view from that peak, the Ivory Cone. You can’t miss it.”
I said, “How many men did Prince Tyfar take?”
Hamdal made a face, and winced. “Two regiments? I do not know. Perhaps more. A lord came asking these questions just before the wildmen attacked—”
“Another lord?”
“Aye, notor. Another great lord. He sought Prince Tyfar with great urgency — just as you do.”
Seg looked across at me, questioning.
“Thank you, Hamdal the Measure,” I said. “We must leave you. But help will reach you soon—”
“Aye,” said the landlord. “Aye — too late, as usual.”
We went back to our flier.
“Another lord—” said Seg.
“Prince Nedfar,” said Jaezila. “It must have been.”
“Yes.” The coaming of the voller struck warm under my hands. “Probably.” The twin suns burned down. “Possibly. Let us hope that it was Prince Nedfar.”
Concerning Shooting Wagers
From the Ivory Cone the two distant peaks looked very much like the jaws of a dinosaur, head upturned, gaping at the sky. That was why they were called the Lacachun.
“If they’ve crunched down on Ty—” Jaezila gripped the rail and her voice was unsteady. I did not touch her.
“You know Tyfar.”
“As I said — I do!”
The Ivory Cone passed away to the side, sleek and pointed and shining white, with long gray falls between the snow slopes. We all wore thick flying furs. Our faces glowed, nipped by the chill. On we drove and we looked keenly ahead, ready to sight whatever of peril lay before us.
This airboat — she had no name, only in the Hamalian way a number — carried us over the snow sheets and down past the saddle. We corkscrewed between sheer rock faces. A fear that we were entering a massif took hold of us and had to be resisted. We sped along over gulfs and soared up over slopes of scree and so whirled out again into space. We three were old campaigners. Not one of us even considered rising into the higher levels and simply flying over the top.
We wished to arrive unseen and unheralded.
The wildmen who had trapped the voller below were not so careful. These were their mountains and here they ruled.
The situation was laid out for us as we hovered in the rock of a striated rock cliff. A ledge protruded from the crumbled rock face, perhaps halfway up from the stream below, a mere silver thread. The lip high above threw shadows over us. The wildmen circled and shot at the stranded airboat on the ledge. Others had alighted and crept up between boulders tumbled on the ledge. They approached from each end, yet they hesitated, and we saw shafts lifting from the airboat and the stones about her.
“It is just a matter of time,” said Seg. He reached for the longbow that was never absent for long from his side.
Jaezila had the controls.
“Can you—?” Seg started to say, and then stopped. Jaezila deftly brought the voller in among the shadows close to the cliff. She eased her along. Like a ghost we slithered with our starboard flank against the rock striations. Ahead and below, the ledge and the voller there and the swirling forms of the wildmen stood out in suns shine.
I picked up a longbow. Seg nodded. “A good choice, Dray. That stave I built when I was Kov in Falinur.”
“You never stop making bows, Seg; how you keep track of ’em all is the mystery.”
But, of course, that was no mystery...
“Each bow is different,” said Seg, selecting the first arrow from the quiver strapped to the voller’s rail. “Each one has character. You know that.”
“Yes. And there are no bows in all Kregen to match the ones built by Seg Segutorio.”
“That,” said Jaezila, bringing the airboat to a halt in midair and relinquishing the controls, “is true.”
“How many d’you make ’em, Dray?”
There were eight moorkrim flying like the crazy savages they were in the air space before the ledge, rising and falling, swinging in to loose and diving or zooming away.
“The young braves of the tribe,” I said. “You know the kind of pecking order they’re likely to have and the necessity of gaining credit among their peer group. The more mature warriors will be on the ledge, under cover.”
“Yes. I make seven saddle flyers this side—”
“And ten on the other end,” said Jaezila. She took up her longbow. Like the others, this was a Lohvian longbow built by Seg. If you have to have a hobby on Kregen it is useful if it is connected with survival.
“Twenty-five,” said Seg. “We’ve shafted more than that before breakfast.”
“Maybe so, Seg. And each time we do it, it could be the last. So, my old dom, watch it!”
He laughed, throwing back his head. His black hair waved wildly and his fey blue eyes looked now with the steady regard of the bowman — wild and impulsive and shrewd and practical are the folk of Erthyrdrin, and Seg showed all that blend now as he fitted nock to string.
“Father!” Jaezila looked at me, the arrow in her fingers as long and lethal as those held by Seg and me. I felt surprise that she thus called me.
“Lela?”
“You told me, I seem to remember, when I was little, that you and Uncle Seg used to wager when you shot.”
Again Seg laughed, lifting the bow. His russet tunic hid what was going on among the muscles of his back and arms, but they would have made a sculptor weep for joy.
“So we did, Lela, my love, so we did! What is it to be, then, a gold talen a hit?”
Macabre, gruesome, unfeeling? Wagering on killing other people? Of course. Once we began to shoot, the wildmen would not bother about anything as decadently sophisticated as gambling on how they slew us. They would simply whoop in with the one blood-red desire to chew us up and hurl the refuse into the gulf. That is the way of wildmen.
Perhaps, if you thought about it, that was more savagely honest? All I knew was that I was on Kregen, my comrade and my daughter were about to face deadly peril, and a man I admired was about to die unless we stopped his killers.
We shot.
Three of the eight pirouetting in midair before the ledge were shafted, and then three more. The remaining two swung away, the wings of their tyryvols beating madly and Seg and Jaezila saw to them as I switched my aim.
The targets among the boulders proved more tricky, and I know two of my shafts missed. Return shots started to come up; but we were a small and protected target in the voller among the clustered shadows.
We three worked together sweetly in the shooting.
When the wildmen at the far end of the ledge broke from their boulders and, leaping astride their saddle flyers, shot up into the air and headed for us, Seg and Jaezila went methodically to work on them while I remained winkling out the fellows in the rocks this end.
A crossbow bolt punched clean up through the skin of the voller.