The continental grouping in which, so far, all my adventuring had taken place, is called Paz. From the other continents and islands around the curve of the world sailed the fearsome Fish-Heads — call them shanks, shants, shtarkins, shkanes, it makes no difference to their viciousness — to plague and harry us. Every so often their marvelous fleet ships would sail upon an unsuspecting shore and there would follow horror and desolation. I had fought the shanks before the Jikai with the Kroveres on Drayzm, and would fight them again. Always, like any sailor of Paz, one eye was always roving the far horizons to catch the first glimpse of those tall wing-like sails of the shank ships.
And then, as I plunged on through the thin air toward that brave company of friends awaiting me at the Risshamal Keys, I looked up and saw a giant scarlet and golden bird, flying high, circling, watching me with bright black beady eyes.
I swore.
I shook my fist.
By Zair! Not now, not now!
The great hunting bird circled. The raptor was a familiar sight, a hateful sight. This was the Gdoinye, the spy and messenger of the Everoinye, the Star Lords.
Through their malign agency I had been flung about space between worlds like a yo-yo. When I had so intemperately refused to obey their orders I had been chucked back to Earth to rot for twenty-one infernal years. If the Gdoinye was spying on me, all well and good, for I knew the Star Lords kept an eye on me from time to time. But if the Opaz-forsaken bird was warning me that I would be required to perform again for the Star Lords. . .
I sweated. I clenched my teeth and stopped myself from shouting up insults, as I usually did when the golden and scarlet raptor hove into sight.
If the bird did swoop down and speak to me I would try to be conciliatory, be the new Dray Prescot, refrain from hurling abuse and calling the thing a cramph, a rast, a kleesh. But it swung about up there, glinting magnificently in the opaz radiance, and then calmly flew away.
I let out a great gusty breath of relief.
What a time to be dragged away from Kregen!
A Brush with Flutsmen
Thinking that, with the appearance of the Gdoinye, the Savanti might have sent their white dove to spy on me, I cast a good look around. I could see no sign of the dove. Well, that meant little, although, to be sure, it made more sense for the Savanti to spy on me now, seeing that my intended destination was their secret island.
The long low straggle of islands of the southern fingering of the Risshamal Keys showed as an extended yellowish grey stain upon the water ahead. The Yuccamots inhabited many of the little islands and gained a precarious living fishing and trading, in communication with the local sailing craft. I had no fear of them, for they were a simple folk and had shown us kindness before. They are, I am glad to say, enormously proud of their broad thick tails, and of their webbed feet.
The Hamalian Air Service was another matter. They maintained a string of stations along the Keys, and it behooved me to avoid those.
What did happen, with the blinding speed of precipitate action upon Kregen, whipped up a nice little froth to send the blood thumping through the veins and open the pores, a trifle.
Out of the roseate glow of the red sun Zim, shot the dark forms of riders urging on their saddle flyers.
With my fingers up against my eyes I peered into the dazzlement even as I thrust the control levers hard over and up.
They were flutsmen up there.
Flutsmen!
By this time I knew a little of their nefarious ways. Later, I was to learn more. But now, these mercenaries of the skies, flying their fluttrells with sure confident skill, out for plunder and lopped heads, bore down screeching on me. To them, I represented loot, easy pickings, a lone flier in a voller.
If they could take me before I rose and speeded enough to elude them, why, then they’d toss me over the side into the sea, and pilot the voller back to their base. They’d sell her and her contents and get drunk on the proceeds. Then they’d go reiving off for more easy plunder.
Usually, the flutsmen work for hire, bands of professional mercenaries, paktuns of a sort. I’d hardly demean them to the low quality of masichieri, those scoundrels who are more employable bandits than honest mercenaries, but often enough they came close, by Zair. I fancied this band were freelancing, tazll, harrying for themselves. There were about thirty of them, too long odds for me to want to tangle with them, in view of the urgency of the task before me, unless I had to.
The emperor must come first. A fight could wait. There is always opportunity for a fight on Kregen. . .
The voller lifted. Slowly. Too slowly.
The fluttrells turned their big heads with those large ridiculous vanes into the wind and opened their jaws and lanced down.
I glared up savagely. By Krun! I wanted no fight. But if these haughty, vicious flutsmen wanted to come to handstrokes, then I’d accommodate them. With a juicy Makki-Grodno oath, having to do with the putrescent diseased innards of Makki-Grodno’s disgusting liver, I snatched up the great Lohvian longbow. If I couldn’t shaft a few of the yetches before they reached me I hadn’t been trained by Seg Segutorio, the master bowman of Erthyrdrin!
Down they swooped, their green-feathered harness tight about them, their closely-fitting green-feathered caps with the flaring knotted clumps of ribbon streaming out in the wind of their passage. Flutsmen on the rampage present a brave spectacle. Completely confident of themselves they swooped down, each man ready with crossbow, volstux or long whippy sword.
Before they could start shooting I cast the first shaft.
Clean through the feather-adorned armored body of the leading flutsman the clothyard shaft punched. The brilliant blue feathers of the shaft’s notching came from the crested korf of the Blue Mountains of Vallia. Always, Seg would say that the king korfs blue feathers were just that fraction superior to those of a crested korf; but he would affirm that the beautiful bird, the korf of Kregen, provided the best feathers for the shafts cast from a Lohvian longbow. I thought about this as I loosed again.
Before the leading flutsman had time to slide from his high saddle and dangle from the leather straps of his clerketer, the second shaft took his wingmate. The third shaft took the third man in the vee.
Shouts of rage battered down . . .
“Cramph! You should know better! To slay a flutsman is to die!”
I didn’t bother to reply in words but sped another shaft that parted the teeth of a yelling flutsman and did nasty things to the back of his skull. His saddle flyer spun past, spraying bits of the flutsman’s bone and gobbets of brain.
Yes, the korf provides the best fletchings. We’d been experimenting in Valka with the rose-colored feathers of the zim-korf. I’d had a few shafts made up and the warmly-glowing red feathers dyed a brilliant blue. Seg, when I’d tried him, had expressed himself as perfectly satisfied with the shafts, and why was I making such a thing out of it. When we washed the dye away, letting the blue color leach out to reveal the brave old red, Seg’s face was a picture.
But, as the other flutsmen closed in, I had time to loose twice more — loose the blazing blue feathered shafts in deadly true arcs. Each time the arrow punched cleanly; then I took to my sword.
The Krozair longsword felt good in my fists.
Ah, me! How often I have thought that. But now, with an emperor sick and near to dying, was no time to consider my new image, the quiet, conciliatory, peace-loving Dray Prescot. With the Krozair longsword in my fists, my hands spread in that cunning Krozair grip, I went to work.
Mind you, the first and chief use of the sword at the moment was to ward off the shafts that sliced toward me with the artful two-handed flicking taught in the Krozair disciplines. I battered the bolts away joyfully. I own it. The blood thumped around my veins. The voller shot up now as the speed increased vertically and we went slap bang through the middle of the fluttrell formation. In a clashing smother of flapping wings and raking talons the voller shot up and broke through. For an instant I was slashing and hacking away to my heart’s content. Thrusting is a chancy business in these circumstances, for obvious reasons.
The voller clanged as the wooden hull gonged to repeated blows. But she won free. We sprung through the giant saddle birds and up into the suns shine — save for one. One fluttrell rose abruptly directly before me.
There was no chance to swerve the flier. Bird and boat crashed together with an almighty smash.
Staggering, I kept my feet, braced, wrathful, the wicked Krozair brand slanted up and forward. The bird was entangled with the stem of the boat, where the fancy gilding was all scraped away. The stout leather harness did not break. Its wings thrashed. The rider, freeing himself from his clerketer, leaped right nimbly down onto the tiny deck, superbly balanced on supple legs, and came for me directly. His green feathers flaunted in the light.
“Die, onker!” he shouted, and cast his stux.
The spear flew. The Krozair longsword flicked and the spear, ringing like a gong, caromed away into the blue.
Nothing daunted, the flutsman came on, drawing his thraxter. He presented the sword, point first, the Havilfarese cut-and-thruster held in skilled firm grip, and leaped down with a wild panache. Powerful, he was, limber in his strength, supremely at home in the air. The longsword flicked left, halted, surged back, twisting. The thraxter spun up in the air, end over end, sparkling. The sharp steel point of the Krozair brand held without a tremble on the throat of the flutsman, just above the green collar of his lorica.
He glared at me, panting, disbelieving. He was a strong well-built Brokelsh. His bristle body hair bristled even more. A strong, virile race, the Brokelsh, and many people consider them coarse and uncouth. Not apims, of course, the Brokelsh. Had this fellow been wearing a silver or gold trim to the collar of his lorica I might have had a little more exercise in twitching his sword away.
He gaped down at the sword. His expression was one of enormous surprise, as though he awoke from a dream of midnight houris and wine to find himself in this predicament.
His goggle-eyed amazement amused me.
“Why should I not slay you now, dom?”
He shook his massive head and licked his lips. His mannerisms were those of a man, diff or apim, both. “I am a flutsman, apim.”
“Aye! A reiving mercenary of the skies who owes no allegiance to any save his own band, despite the hire fees you take. Well, many of your band have gone down to the Ice Floes this day. What say you, Flutsman?”
His blunt chin went up. Uncouth they may be, the Brokelsh, exceedingly hairy with a coarse black body hair; but they are men.
“I am Hakko Bolg ti Bregal, known as Hakko Volrokjid. Perhaps I deserve to die. I do not think so. I have a great hatred for all you Hamalese — and mayhap that will serve.”
“In that case, by the disgusting tripes of Makki-Grodno! I shall not slay you. I do not want your blood on my blade.”
I said this, you will perceive, to conceal the truth.
He squinted his eyes down, this Hakko Volrokjid. I, too had had trouble with volroks, those winged flying men of Havilfar. “And this blade,” he said. “I have not seen its like before.”
“And I’ve not heard of Bregal.”
“A small town, in Ystilbur of the Dawn Lands.”
“I have heard of Ystilbur. An ancient land.”
“And razed with fire and swords by you rasts. By Barflut the Razor Feathered! I would dearly love to slay you all!”
“Seize your fluttrell, before the onkerish thing strangles himself on his own harness. Get you gone. I am not a Hamalese. And, dom, if you meet me again, remember, and tread small.”
He glared for a heartbeat at me, his bristly face working, then he scrambled back and grappled his bird, who would have bit at him had he not clouted it over the head. I spoke big, like that, to conceal deeps I did not want this Brokelsh flutsman, Hakko Volrokjid, to see revealed in me.
He freed the bird and vaulted up into the saddle, doing all this with the practiced ease of your true flutsman. He buckled up the clerketer. His bristly face lowered down on me.
“I shall not forget you, apim. Be very sure of that, by the Golden Feathered Aegis!” He drew up the reins, handled most cunningly in one fist. Then he shouted down words that surprised me, although they should not have. Many a paktun — although he was far too callow to have earned the coveted mortilhead — would not thank a man for giving life. They might feel shame, depression, humiliation, the outrage of their professional ethics, depending on their beliefs. But this young flutsman bellowed down: “I thank you for my life. May the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh have you in his keeping. Remberee!”
And with a great beating of wings the fluttrell swooped away and this singular flutsman was gone.
I poked my head over the side of the voller.
The flutsmen toiled along after me, all in formation, the wings of their flyers going up and down, up and down. Hakko Volrokjid spun away through the level wastes to join them. Then, all in formation, they swung away and strung out in a beeline for the coast to the west. Hakko flew strongly after them. So, guessing what was afoot — or, rather, in the air — I looked ahead and there were the fliers lifting from the scattering of cays and bearing up for me.
A single look reassured me.
They were not vollers of the Hamalian Air Service.
My friends, waiting at the rendezvous, had witnessed the little aerial affray and were no doubt thirsting to get into the fight.
This was true — deplorably so.
The moment my voller touched gunwales with Seg’s impressive craft he yelled across: “One missed, Dray — the blue flash of feathers was not to be mistaken.”
“My finger slipped on the string.”
“Aye!” he roared, joyously. “You always had slippery fingers.”
Inch bellowed across from his flier. “A good long axe, Dray — that’s what you need up here in the sky.”
Other greetings rose from the other fliers. We formed a little fleet, a tiny armada, there off the coast of a hostile empire. But we wanted nothing of Hamal on this trip.