"What are you doing?" said the aggrieved bald one just before Rukkh slugged him on the chin with a strong right and dropped him. The monkeys stared, then put up their weapons.
Rukkh turned back to the others. "All of you shut up and stand back!"
Neaps and some of the others were carrying Fidibi away.
The fallen mot was being tended to, but it didn't look good. He'd been stabbed in the belly.
More newcomers charged the monkeys. One was knocked headlong by a brilby with an ax handle. The others swung in, cut and hewed, and then jumped back when the monkeys turned on them with a hedge of spear points. The monkeys could have killed the one who was down, but they stepped over him and left him behind.
"Stop it!" Rukkh shoved more men back, knocked down their swords, and cursed them to hell and back.
Still the mass of men edged forward. Their eyes were bulging with hate. They were just itching to let go. After all the disappointments from the fighting of the previous few years, it was impossible not to want to settle old scores.
Rukkh could see with sudden, terrible clarity that he was losing control of the situation. It was all going to dissolve into fresh violence.
Then everything was transformed in the most inexplicable manner. A slim figure, wearing only a singlet and trousers in some monkey-made material, thrust itself into the middle of the fight. When it turned to face him, arms raised, firm breasts jutting out from the chest, Rukkh felt his jaw drop. It was a monkey woman.
The men began to guffaw but were silenced when she spoke in loud and commanding Shashti. "Stop fighting! It is forbidden by the order of your Emperor."
Every man stood rooted to the spot, scarcely able to believe his ears.
"It spoke!" said one in amazement.
"I don't believe it," said another grizzled veteran.
"Believe!" replied the monkey woman. "I speak your language. I learned it while I was held captive in your homeland."
"By the great purple ass," said someone in a stunned voice.
With an effort, Rukkh pulled himself together. Intense, confused whispering was going on among the men who were trying to come to grips with this astonishing new development.
Rukkh pushed forward to meet the mor. "Begging your pardon, uh, miss."
"My name is Nuza. You are an officer?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes," said Rukkh, taken aback by her commanding tone of voice.
"Good, then I hope you can make these men back off. The mots here are very angry. It looks as if poor Jelli will die."
Even as she said this, several mots turned toward Rukkh with rage in their eyes. They pointed down to the fallen mot, still lying in a pool of blood while friends tried to staunch the bleeding.
"They ask why your men do this thing."
"I don't know. I wasn't here." Rukkh felt uncomfortable and defensive.
"They ask why they shouldn't kill all of you."
Rukkh ground his teeth. Damn, it was hard keeping the peace with these monkeys. But he was saved from having to answer by the arrival of a second female figure, this time a human, her head bare, wearing a robe of imperial purple, marking her as Aeswiren's own. That purple required respect from them, though a woman without head covering was a shocking sight.
"What is the meaning of this?" she said in a voice crackling with anger.
Rukkh looked past the purple and realized with a start that it was Simona of the Gsekk. His confusion grew. Her bare head and voice of command aroused all his prejudices against women acting outside the protection of purdah. His first urge was to damn her to hell and tell her to go back inside and stay there. But that imperial purple checked him. She was Aeswiren's confidante, probably his courtesan.
Meanwhile, to his amazement, the monkey woman and Simona had fallen into a lively conversation in the monkey tongue. They embraced, hugging like old friends.
Simona turned back to him. "Sergeant Rukkh, you have done well. I shall report so to the Emperor himself. This is Nuza, personal envoy of General Toshak."
A lifetime of military habits carried Rukkh to safety. He swallowed his first angry reply and made a stiff salute. "Honored to meet you," Rukkh said to the mor, while part of his brain continued to be astonished by the whole mad business—talking to monkeys!
"One thing, Sergeant Rukkh." Simona leaned closer. "We must get this wounded mot to my father's surgery. Perhaps he can be saved; if so, it would be a great help. The Emperor would want this."
Rukkh looked her in the eye. As at their previous meeting, there wasn't a shadow of recognition of their old relationship to be seen there. Still, he knew that she spoke the truth. The Emperor would indeed want this wounded monkey seen to.
"Right!" Rukkh saluted her crisply and spun around.
"You, Peglek, and you, Muhub, get some others and help carry the wounded monkey to the imperial surgery. Improvise a stretcher. Two spears and two cloaks ought to do it, just like on the battlefield. If you're lucky and he survives, I'll recommend you get twenty lashes less than the others are gonna get."
The men leaped into action. In short order, spears and cloaks were lashed together. They stepped forward and laid them on the ground beside the wounded one.
The other mots were listening intently while Nuza explained what was happening. Some were plainly unhappy. They shot angry looks toward the men and held their swords and axes at the ready. But other men bent down and lifted the wounded Jelli onto the improvised stretcher. They lifted it, one at each corner, and bore it away toward the camp.
Some of the monkeys cried out at this, but Nuza shouted to them in their own tongue and they quietened.
Suddenly the men parted as if by a knife. Coming through were three new figures. Rukkh saw men snapping to attention and throwing up the imperial salute. Aeswiren was in the middle of the three.
"At ease, Sergeant Rukkh," said the Emperor in a quiet voice that still carried enough for the men to hear. The Emperor knew who Rukkh was, which was enough to impress some.
"Tell me, Sergeant," said the Emperor, drawing him aside slightly and speaking in a lower tone. "What happened here?"
"As far as I've been able to ascertain, sir, some of our men came here to cut firewood. They took the wrong direction. Started cutting outside the area designated for us. These, er, allies came over to stop them, and it brewed up into a fight."
"As simple as that, eh?" The Emperor was clearly angry.
"I'm afraid so, Your Majesty. I haven't had time to find out who the hell got it wrong, but when I do, someone will pay."
"Yes, I'm afraid they must. We can't have this, Sergeant. We just can't have it."
They looked up to see they had been joined by yet another small group, this time five mots, all in that effective wicker armor they made. At their head was General Toshak himself.
Aeswiren turned to Toshak and extended a hand. "General, my apologies for this mess. The men strayed over the line. I don't know how or why, but believe me, I intend to find out."
Toshak took Aeswiren's hand. "They have taken the wounded mot, Jelli. Where are they taking him?"
"To the surgery. It was thought that Filek Biswas could save him, if anyone could."
Toshak nodded thoughtfully then issued a stream of orders to the mots on either side. Runners were dispatched at once, bearing messages.
"I have acted to inform all units about this. It is the best way of stopping the spread of stupid rumors."
Aeswiren thanked the gods that he had someone as sensible as Toshak as his ally in command of the native forces.
"That is an excellent idea. I will do the same."
In his surgery, Filek Biswas was surprised by the sudden arrival of the wounded mot. He was also intrigued. As he pulled out the tools of his trade and swabbed them with alcohol to sterilize them, he wondered what he was going to find out about mots.
Surgery was such an interesting exercise sometimes!
For a day and a half they continued downstream, making good speed most of the time. Thru rowed as much as he could, with help from the chooks, and Iallia took her turn at the oars as well.
After the sun set, they kept going as long as they dared. Thru worried about striking a snag or floating log, so eventually they tied up on the southern shore of the river. Thru was concerned that riders might still be pursuing them down the river road on the far side, so they kept a watch.
Of course, they had nothing to eat, and they were very hungry. In the early morning the chooks foraged in the nearby woods and returned with some wild grapes and some plump beetles in their beaks.
Iallia ate the grapes but spurned the beetles. Thru accepted both gladly. Dunni wept at times for his poor Pikka, and when he could, Thru sat by the crestfallen chook and did his best to comfort him. Thru also saw that Iallia did the same while Thru worked the oars. The bereaved rooster was a forlorn sight, hunched down in the bow of the boat, feathers ungroomed, comb deflated.
They passed down a long reach of the river amid dense forest and reached the abandoned village of Groote Humly. They stopped briefly and foraged for scraps of food. They found some bushpod and some dried curd, and they ate this as they rowed on.
In the afternoon, they endured a brief shower that drenched them and then left them floating in a thick mist. Thru noticed that the current's pace was slackening, and after a while, as the mist burned off, they found themselves drifting through a wild-water swamp.
Humly water was the largest area of wilderness on the middle Dristen, ten miles of meanders, bogs, and pools where waterfowl in vast numbers lived and bred. The woods receded on either side and were replaced by huge stands of reeds and bullrushes. The clean smell of the river was replaced by the dank odor of the swamp, and, wherever trees grew, they were thickly festooned with the huge nests of ospreys, fish eagles, and herons.
"If we get through this today, we'll get into the reach of the river above the Cleansdale. After that we'll be in the lower Dristen."
"And then we'll be home," said Iallia happily.
Thru said nothing to dampen her spirits. Whether they had homes to ever return to was still in doubt.
Iallia took over the oars then, and Thru curled up to sleep in the back of the boat. In his exhausted state he slept longer than he should have, and when he awoke, he found that Iallia had lost the main channel and taken them off into a backwater.
They turned around at once but were confronted by a swarm of small islands with no clear route to the main channel. They struggled through narrow, twisting channels, oxbows, and dead water. Before long, they managed to ground the boat on a snag in quicksand. It took the best part of an hour to free themselves and to work the boat back out of the dead water.
By then the sun was halfway down the western sky. Thru took stock and then used its position to guide them back toward the main channel. Keeping their course to the east as much as possible, they wound their way through the reeds. Huge flocks of geese and ducks rose from the quiet backwaters as they pushed along. For an hour or more, they worked their way in and out of narrow, snaking streams, hidden beneath great stands of reeds and bullrushes, each time recoiling in frustration from another dead end, and then, at last, they found a wider channel that gave onto a lake. From that they found another channel that eventually rejoined the main river. With the sun sinking toward the treetops, they hurried west once more, having lost half a day in the wild water.
Darkness was falling as they came around a bend and discerned a bridge across the river a mile downstream.
"What village must this be?" wondered Thru, trying to recall where in the middle Dristen they were.
The chooks had no idea, for they were from an upland village far to the east and had never ventured this far from home before. Iallia thought it must be Meadow Mill, and she pointed to a large building, visible by its square bulk against the sky on the southern side of the river.
"That must be the mill."
Most of the village was on the northern side, where the river road ran, and Thru recalled that he had found food in this village on his trek upriver to the mountains.
If it was indeed Meadow Mill, they were close to the top of the Cleansdale. Past that they would enter the lower Dristen.
As they drew closer, Thru studied the huddle of houses, dimly visible in the darkness. Not a light showed, nor could he detect any smoke. The inhabitants had yet to return.
He kept the boat moving straight for the bridge, which had two arches and a central pillar of stone. He chose the western channel and let the current take them down the last stretch before it.
The bulk of the mill rose up beside them, its waterwheel turning slowly, with moonlit spillage scattering down its side. Thru was so taken with this beauty that he didn't see the movement above them on the bridge. Suddenly Mukka screamed. Arrows flashed down into the boat and the water at their side.
Thru looked up, saw the gleam of teeth, heard the hiss of arrows. The right-side oar was knocked from his hand and a shaft sprouted there instead. Without missing a beat, he took the other oar and poled the boat away from the central pillar and under the cover of the bridge.
Mukka was hurt, and Chenk was crying in alarm. Iallia almost fell out of the boat when she stood up. Then a second boat appeared, swinging in from downstream, with men aboard and a faint gleam of steel in the dark.
Thru ducked instinctively and felt the whisper of an arrow past his head. As he came back up he pulled the oar from the water and swung it from the hips and felt it slam home, knocking the archer in the other boat off his feet.
A moment later, the two boats rammed into each other hard, and everyone still standing fell down.
Thru pulled himself up. The chooks were crying, and Iallia was still struggling to right herself. He found the oar, seized it, and poled the boat toward the mill wheel. The men were cursing; one of them had fallen in and was splashing furiously.