Seg the Bowman (17 page)

“The Lady Milsi! If you don’t answer,
now
, I’ll slit your gizzard up, down and across! Where is the Lady Milsi?”

The man looked nonplussed at this. He licked his lips. “I heard that the king is dead, and all the people with them. The Lady Milsi died, too, in the Coup Blag. Only Queen Mab returned safely, and she has gone to the trylon.”

Seg heard this and did not understand it. It was not the same degree of non-understanding he had experienced with the Krozair. He shook his head to stop the ringing and said, “You are mistaken. The queen died in the Maze. We brought the Lady Milsi out safely. Now, you rogue, tell me—”

“I’ve told you!” The Deldar’s eyes widened. It was clear he was dealing with a madman. “The queen was brought ashore with you and your band of cutthroats and rode out immediately in a great cavalcade to see Trylon Muryan.”

“Trylon Muryan,” growled the Dorvenhork, “is the man who put us down the sinkhole.”

“And who threatened to throw us into the river.” Khardun wouldn’t forget that in a hurry.

Seg would not admit that ice flowed in his veins. He would not admit that a clutching hand gripped his heart with crushing force. He found it damned difficult to catch his breath. And his legs were shaking, he had to admit that, curse his stupid betraying legs though he might.

Lady Milsi — Milsi — was the queen. No doubt of it.

“So they mewed her up in chains and dragged her off to be thrown down before this damned trylon?

HEY?”

“No, no. It was not like that. She was received with great honor and joy that she was still alive.”

There was no doubt, no doubt at all, that Seg felt as though some gigantic oaf had kicked him in the guts.

“We will have to get moving,” said Khardun. Then, in his Khibil way, he added: “I own I am disappointed in the Lady Milsi. But, queens are queens and have their own ways of dealing with us ordinary folk.”

The Chulik thumbed up a tusk. “Ordinary folk, Khardun? And you a Khibil?”

“You know that I am not a king, not even a noble, Dorvenhork. But I think our friend Seg has been shrewdly struck.”

“Aye. So let us get out of here, by Likshu the Treacherous!”

“What shall be done with this Deldar?” demanded Rafikhan.

“Oh — just thump him gently behind the ear.”

This was done. Seg took no notice. Surrounded by the others, who now included the Krozair, Zarado, among their number, he was more conveyed along the passageway than going as an understanding member of the escaping party.

They encountered no more guards, of either blue and white or brown and white allegiance, and so burst forth into the starry night of Kregen, out under the golden roseate light of the moon sailing above the town and the treetops — She of the Veils.

Just for the moment, Seg Segutorio, known as the Horkandur, didn’t much care about anything at all.

“By Mother Zinzu the Blessed,” exclaimed Zarado. “I needed that!”

He wiped the froth from his lips with a scrap of once-yellow linen. Seg’s heart warmed to the Krozair.

How many times he had heard that heartfelt expression!

Khardun and the Dorvenhork were still on speaking terms, and were sharing a bottle companionably.

The others had their bottles and tankards on the sturmwood table, and the slaking of thirsts went on at a prodigious rate.

About them the noise of the taproom of The Aeilssa and the Risslaca flowed on in a muted fashion, for it was late and most of the fisherfolk had already left. The few farmers had gone long ago and only the merchants and the mewsany handlers seemed to have time to spend to sit and drink past the hour of dim.

“This is all very well,” said the Fristle, Naghan the Slippy. “But surely we cannot stay here long? The guards will be—”

“Of course they will,” Khardun said with his expansive cocksure attitude. “But they have to find out that we are flown. Then they will set up a hue and cry. By then we’ll be well out of it.”

“If I may venture to ask,” said the Relt stylor, Caphlander, in his usual nervous and apologetic manner.

“Where we will go to be out of it?”

“Ah,” said the Dorvenhork. He did not polish up a tusk, but his small piggy eyes glanced about the taproom. “That is the question.”

“If you think,” Hundle the Design lowered his tankard, “that we can march over the Mountains and reach North Pandahem — forget it. It’ll be down the river for us.”

“And you would steer us?”

“If we find a boat, doms, why, yes, of course.”

Sitting with his nose in a tankard, Seg took little interest in all this. He was not going to allow himself to become maudlin over a woman. That the woman used to be Milsi, and was now the queen — this famous Queen Mab — merely made his resolve the stronger. These women looked to him. Quite apart from the gold he’d paid out, they sensed in him the qualities necessary for leadership. Well, by the Veiled Froyvil! he’d lead them down the river and out of this hell hole.

And yet — and yet!

He had really believed there was a future with Milsi. They had both been shafted by the same bolt of lightning. He was sure of that. He had known it with all his consciousness, known it unfailingly. Because she was a queen she had betrayed him, left him, consigned him to the dungeons. She had used him, had gained her ends, and then she had abandoned him.

No. He did not feel a happy man at that moment.

“One thing is sure,” he said, his voice heavy and leaden. “We are all wanted men. There is a price on our heads, mark me on that.”

“Aye. So we defy these rasts, and sail. We go downriver with Hundle the Design as our boat master—”

“That is true, Khardun,” interrupted Rafikhan. “But Seg the Horkandur is our Jiktar.”

No one argued that.

None of them offered much information about past lives. They did not volunteer information on their homes, what they had done, what seen, where adventured. Only Hundle and the Och thief appeared to own the Kazzchun River as home. What Umtig had done to land up in prison was obvious; the Relt stylor offered no information. The Fristle once mumbled a few words about a broken bronze plate and a death of a ninny; but that passed without comment. Truth to tell, Seg no more worried about the past misdeeds of this happy little band of fugitives than he fretted over the future mayhem they might cause. Nothing much made sense or reason or was of interest to him right now.

The supposed racial enmity between Rapas, Fristles and Chuliks did not seem to affect these representatives of their races, and Seg could feel a tiny twinge of relief that he had no worries of that tiresome nature. He wouldn’t have cared had they flown at each other’s throats as they might well have done in other circumstances. He felt the most important step he could take now would be to get himself well out of this stupid Kazzchun River business, get back home to Valka and Vallia. He’d find his old dom, and then they could set about putting the country straight for the last and final time. Then there were his Kroveres of Iztar to concern him. They had been abominably neglected of late, what with other priorities like Spikatur Hunting Sword. No, get out of this the quickest way he could and get off back home.

These new comrades of his might be rough paktuns or dubious characters along the river; they were sensible of the blow he had received, and while in no way expressing maudlin comfort, did not — as they would have done to a fellow sufferer — make mock of his affliction.

Seg stood up. “Let us go down to the riverbank and find ourselves a boat.”

Hundle stood up, looking troubled.

“I mind me that the Law of the River does not take kindly to folk who steal boats.”

Seg looked at him.

“The Law of S.O.N. takes precedence, Hundle.”

Kregans love abbreviations and initials. Hundle lifted one eyebrow.

“The Law of Saving Our Necks. Right — wenda!”

Under the light of She of the Veils they crept down to the riverbank, and, by that streaming roseate golden light they witnessed a horrific scene.

A Schinkitree had just pushed off, the long narrow boat laden with bales. The loadmaster had either not known his job or had botched it. The boat was sinking.

The paddlers chained to the benches screamed. They flailed their paddles at what reared at them as the water closed in. Horrible, macabre, disgusting... The monsters roared from the brown water, churning it into suds, and those suds tinged ominously red-black under the light. Huge jaws crunched down. The boat slipped beneath the water, dragging with her the doomed slaves. The free men might just as well have been chained up. They flailed and splashed and tried to swim, and were engulfed. The noise of chomping jaws reached across the water clearly to the bank. Seg half-lifted his new bow, and then lowered it. Any help was impossible. The men tipped into the Kazzchun River were already dead men.

“We do not let that happen to us,” he said.

Hundle let out a queasy breath. “The nightmare,” he said, and he shook. “The nightmare!”

This distraction, gruesome though it was, gave them the opportunity to find a boat at the downriver end of the wharf, to untie her and climb in unseen. They let her drift gently off downstream for a time before taking up the paddles and driving her fast and true through the treacherous water.

There was no pursuit they could see.

Fishing in the Kazzchun River was an occupation of an entirely different order from fishing in other parts of the globe. You didn’t just hang a line and hook, suitably baited, over the side and merrily haul in when you had a bite. Nor did you spread out nets and haul them in, beautifully freighted with the shining catch.

If you did the latter, you’d haul in mere shreds and rags. And if the former — idiot! — you’d go headfirst over the side.

One system involved placing two or three, even four or five, boats alongside one another and decking them in. Then, secure behind barriers, the fisher folk hurled long fish-spears. They had to watch for their targets, and select the edible from the predators. A flashing cast, the cruel barbs, fashioned probably from the fangs of the very monsters who lurked in the water, biting in and the quick hauling in of the line.

If you hung about during that stage you’d most probably haul in only half of your catch.

A river can support many different species, and the fish and plants sustain each other. A rain forest is a finely balanced biosphere, fragile, and living things learn to live together and contribute their part to the existence of the forest. Nalvinlad, being situated near the end of the forest proper, partook of the jungle and a little of the plains to the north. Hundle expressed grave doubts that they’d escape easily through the capital city without questions being asked.

The Dorvenhork said in his growly way: “Let us go ashore and walk, then. I am famished!”

They were all hungry.

“It would be best, if we are captured, not to be found in possession of a stolen boat,” counseled Hundle.

Caphlander expressed the pious hope that all would come well in the end.

In any event, the end appeared immediate and sudden. A number of other boats and fishing craft mingled along a broad reach, and from the tangle of boats a paddler appeared thrusting along with the brown water broken into cream-colored foam at her prow. Seg looked and let rip with an exclamation of so profound a disgust no one else had the heart to comment.

There followed a repetition of what had previously occurred. Their boat was forced to the bank under pain of being instantly sunk. In what seemed no time at all they were chained up and on their way to Kov Llipton’s dungeons in the city. The speed of it all impinged only faintly on Seg. His thoughts were not with him at the moment, not fully, not so as to make him the Seg Segutorio who would have put up a fight in his mad feckless way — and probably got himself killed for his foolhardy pains.

The boat that had captured them had been sailing downriver, going along at a foaming pace, her paddlers urged on by Whip-Deldars. She flew the blue and white treshes, and the flags fluttered brilliantly in the streaming radiance of Zim and Genodras.

Kov Llipton looked down on his miserable band of prisoners from his high deck aft. Cloth of gold hangings framed his seat. His feet rested on a balass and ivory stool. Watchful guards stood at his back, waving long yellow feather-fans to cool the Kov’s brow.

Seg, chained up, looked at his own feet on the deck.

“You are culprits, miscreants who have slain soldiers in the execution of their duty. You are drikingers.

Therefore it is meet you should die with the customs of the river.”

Hundle said in an oddly dignified way in these fraught circumstances: “No, pantor, no! We merely protected defenseless women. We have done nothing to bring the Laws of the River upon us.” It was clear that Llipton’s mention of these famous laws had sparked Hundle the Design.

“Do not banter words with me!” The lion bellow roared about the prisoners. “I have judged. Now you swim.”

Seg looked up.

Kov Llipton was a numim, a lion-man, with fierce whiskers and ferocious, lowering lion face. His mane gleamed brilliantly under the light of the suns. Robed in war harness, strong and robust like most members of his race, he glowered down, the lord, the arbiter, the final dispenser of justice along the Kazzchun River.

Seg’s tongue crept out and wet his lips. He could deal with lion-men. He lifted his head, and his shock of unruly dark hair bristled.

“Listen to me, kov!” he bellowed out, and with every word his passion grew, his feelings of wrongness, his realization that good men should not have to die for sins they had not committed. “Listen to me, you great fambly, and learn the truth!”

Llipton hunched forward, suddenly. His massive paw-like hand gripped onto his sword hilt. He frowned.

“You speak to me—”

“Aye, you great ninny! I speak the truth!” Rapidly, not wasting a word, he shouted out what had happened in Master Jezbellandur the Iarvin’s armory. At each sentence his comrades, with great venom, shouted out: “Aye!” and: “That is the truth!” and: “That was the way of it!”