Seg the Bowman (18 page)

During this, the Krozair, Pur Zarado, joined in fervently. He knew a chance, slender though it might be, when he saw one.

Kov Llipton listened intently, waving away a guard who would have laid Seg senseless with a blow from his spear butt. Llipton’s goldenyellow fur gleamed, his armor shone, his fierce lion-face bent frowningly down. Seg roared on, worked up, determined that he must do all he could to save the lives of his comrades. He forgot about the Lady Milsi as the woman who might have shared his life; she became the object in whose protection they had done what they had done and were now being persecuted.

“And so, Kov Llipton, you have the right of it now. If you condemn men for going to the assistance of ladies, of slaying rasts who attempt a lady and a queen, then your famous Laws of the River, aye! and of King Crox, are a blasphemy and a mockery in the eyes of honest men!”

The kov pointed.

“Bring that man up here to me!”

Seg was dragged forward and dumped down at the foot of the ivory and balass stool. He glared up and the malevolence in his face made the kov’s eyelids twitch.

“If what you say is true—”

“If! I thought I spoke to a man of honor, who might recognize another such. Perhaps I was mistaken—”

“You are too proud and insolent, or too mad—”

“I am not proud, I hope I am not mad, and I am insolent only to a few people who deserve it.”

Llipton brushed a beringed hand across his whiskers.

“I bear hardly on malefactors, yet I dispense a just justice. If your story can be proved...”

“Ask Master Jezbellandur. Ask the queen.”

“Believe me, that I will do.” Llipton looked over the side. In a musing tone, he added: “That will not avail you, for by then you will have gone swimming.”

“Justice!” screeched Seg. He staggered up, his chains dangling about him. “What kind of justice do they teach you here in this Opaz-forsaken blot called Croxdrin?”

Llipton’s hand stilled above his whiskers.

Seg saw that he had to bring this matter to a head by introducing an entirely new aspect to the situation.

He drew a breath. He glared; but he got out what he had to say reasonably enough. “Let me speak to you, man to man, kov, or pantor, whatever they call nobles hereabouts. Maybe I can prevent a great misfortune falling upon you and all you love and value.”

“What are you babbling about now? Guards!”

Seg tried for the last time.

“You are all doomed, kov, you great fambly, if you do not listen to me!”

Llipton’s hand resumed that stroking of his whiskers, and the rings flamed in the jade and ruby radiance.

Then: “Drag him up to me. I will hear what he has to say further to condemn himself. Then he swims.”

Rough hands grasped Seg and hauled him up closer so that he stood swaying before the noble. Seg’s face composed itself, the mad fey glare faded from those piercingly brilliant blue eyes. Even his shock of black hair seemed to settle and grow smooth. He drew himself up. He looked the kov straight in the eye.

“Listen to me, kov. You are a great noble here, and yet your poor barbarian people and your primitive river civilization are laughable. Know this! I am a kov. I am a Kov of Vallia! We in Vallia do not take kindly to anyone who insults one of us. I have an army at my command. Listen, I have already swum in your famous River of Bloody Jaws! I brought a voller down into the water — if you in your benighted ignorance know what a voller, a flier, is — and we swam to the shore and no monsters stopped us. My name is Seg Segutorio. These men with me are innocent of the vile charges brought — rather, you should send for a swim the perpetrators of the crime, if our justice had not already struck. If these men are not released then you must answer for the consequences when the might of Vallia is arrayed against you!

Woe, indeed, on that day to all of Croxdrin along the Kazzchun River!”

For a space of time that stretched intolerably, Kov Llipton sat, gripping his sword hilt, brushing his whiskers, saying nothing.

In a voice soft as the kiss of steel, at last he said: “You claim much, Seg Segutorio. A kov? We shall see.

Innocent? We shall find out. Insolent — ah, yes, you are that!”

Seg said nothing.

“One thing you claim, that you have already swum the river. That is the most difficult of all to believe—”

“And the least important. I am who I say I am. You may never have heard of Vallia—”

“Oh, yes. I know of Vallia.”

Well, that explained the abruptly cautious attitude of the numim, then...

“Take these men to the dungeons of the Langarl Paraido. Do not mistreat them. I will ponder the story, and have inquiries pursued. Until then, you tremble upon the brink of death.”

“That,” said Seg Segutorio, a Kov of Vallia, “is no new experience.”

Suddenly, Llipton leaned forward. “I am prideful of my trust. I keep the Law for the king. You did not say, Seg Segutorio, of what lands you are kov?”

Seg didn’t bat an eye or split a second. “Of Falinur. I have given the charge of my kovnate over to my comrade, Turko the Shield, while I visit heathen parts.”

“Of Falinur — if it exists — I do not know. But I shall. Have a care, lest you—”

“What do you think can be worse, in your mind, than taking a swim in your river?”

“Ah!” said Kov Llipton, and waved his guards to take Seg back to his comrades. They had not been privy to what went forward upon the high dais; they were agog to know what the hell was going to happen next. All that Seg could do was to assure them that, at least for now, they weren’t going for a swim.

With a treacherous feeling of pleasure, Seg realized he was feeling amused. These poor benighted folk in their jungly river! This proud puffed numim — who were a great race of folk, to be sure — and his bewilderment. Vallia! Ah, well, perhaps there had been a grain of truth in the tale Seg had spun. Enough, perhaps, to delay their swim by a few days...

The amusement Seg felt increased when the ruling came down from Kov Llipton regarding the due payment required. Whether the story was true or not, they had indubitably taken knives from Master Jezbellandur the Iarvin. Ergo — those knives must be paid for. From each member of the group was, therefore, scrupulously removed the price of one knife. Seg almost laughed.

“This has to mean our story is believed,” declared Khardun. He gave his whiskers the first proper tweaking they had received in too long a time. “We shall soon be free.”

“Before that we should escape,” growled the Dorvenhork in his Chulik way. “By Likshu the Treacherous! Let us break a few skulls and make off.”

“I am with you, Dorvenhork,” quoth Rafikhan.

“Oh, and I, of course,” said Khardun in his offhand Khibil manner. “Naturally.”

They were immured in the dungeons of the Langarl Paraido. The iron bars here were measurably thicker than those of the sinkhole in Mewsansmot. Also, they had a nice interesting habit here of sending condemned prisoners for their final swim wrapped in nets so that something could be hauled back and, if the head happened to be among the bits and pieces salvaged, then the heads of prisoners finished off by swimming could be impaled and exhibited along the city walls.

Of them all, Umtig would not be consoled.

He looked shrunken, his little puffed Och face miserable, his whole demeanor eloquent of the Thieves’

own description — like a pickpocket with no fingers.

Lord Clinglin, amid much boisterous jocularity, had swung nimbly out through the bars, and Umtig had confidently predicted his speedy return with the keys.

Lord Clinglin had not returned.

Caphlander in his mild Relt way attempted to comfort Umtig. “Nothing harmful can have happened,” he said, giving his beak a twitch. “And when we are released we will prosecute inquiries—”

“When? If!”

“So that,” rumbled the dangerous Chulik growl, “is why we should break a few skulls and escape!”

“Yet,” said Zarado, speaking up forcefully and yet in a smooth even tone, “there are other aspects. They are feeding us. They are not ill-treating us. And we believe they are sending to search out the truth of our story. We can escape now and look foolish — and once again be subject to the Law — if we are found innocent. Or we can bide a few days and see.”

“Lull the rasts into a false sense of security,” offered Rafikhan. “Aye, that is a good scheme.”

The rest of them went at the argument and Zarado moved off to leave them to it. The cell was capacious and reasonably dry, and equipped with a few foliage-stuffed bags on which to sleep. The Krozair plumped down beside Seg, saying: “I owe you a deep apology, Seg—”

“Not so, Pur Zarado. It is I—”

“Listen. You gave into my charge the longsword. I no longer have the brand. So, you see how it is.”

“The blade will return to its proper owner, never worry.”

Zarado twisted up his ferocious moustaches, one side at a time. “I studied the blade. There were certain things upon it. And there were the letters DPKrzy. I knew a man once — Jak the Drang — who owned sword and letters similar—”

Without thinking through the implications, for the situation had clearly changed, and still embedded in the usual caution, Seg rapped out: “Oh that was old Duruk Pazjik.”

“Of Pur Duruk Pazjik I do not know.”

Fascinated by the past history suddenly opened out by Zarado’s words, Seg had to say: “And this man, Jak the Drang?”

“Oh, he turned out to be the Emperor of Vallia. My comrade Zunder and I hired out for a time, then we drifted off, meaning to sail back to Sanurkazz.” Here the Krozair heaved up a sigh. “I miss Zunder. We were parted in some heathen place called Molambo, and I was hired on to serve in swordships and so assisted in guarding boats up this Zair-forsaken river. I wish I’d never seen the place or this Grodno-Gasta of a Kov Llipton.”

“The Eye of the World is perhaps not so far as we think. The Chulik asked for huliper pie in a tavern—”

“Did he! The sailors of Magdag love that pie—”

“And he was accused of being in the army for it. Items of food and drink, recipes, fashions, travel widely.”

“Humph — that does not bring back our weapons or gain us our freedom, by the disgusting suppurating armpits of Makki Grodno!”

Seg shook his head, devoutly wishing that he could hear another Krozair brother saying these delicious oaths.

Shortly after that the guards came by and removed Seg from the cell. He was pushed along the corridors and into a room where guards wearing green and white waited. He squinted in the lamplight, for dawn was a few burs off yet.

“So it is the Seg the Horkandur I thought! Well met, comrade of the Maze!”

Strom Ornol, for it was he, strode forward with outstretched hand. His handsome, weak, aristocratic face did not look at all as Seg remembered it. Its habitual blot-like pallor was replaced by a crimson flush. A trimmed beard concealed the jaw. In fact, Seg had to look twice to reassure himself that this was the rast Ornol himself. The most astonishing thing was the broad smile on Strom Ornol’s face.

Seg grasped the outstretched hand.

“I, Vad Olmengo, am come strictly charged with Kov Llipton’s orders to bring you to him straightaway.

Now, not a word! Not a word. Hurry!”

The guards with Ornol — or Olmengo as he had newly dubbed himself — closed up around Seg and casually, and yet with purpose, pushing the dungeon guards aside, swiftly escorted him outside. They pattered through the corridors, ascended to the surface, and mounted up on mewsanys waiting ready. In the first pale fingers of apple green and vermeil radiance they rode swiftly for the southern gate. No one spoke. The guards at the gate allowed them through when a Hikdar leaned from the saddle and rattled off orders from Kov Llipton. They cantered through and so entered onto the jungle trackway beside the river. The smells of forest and river mingled. The sound of the mewsanys, the clink of bit and bridle, the feel of leather and the ungainly clip-clop-clip of the six-legged riding animals might in other circumstances have lulled Seg Segutorio.

He remained quiveringly alert.

The weird friendliness of this blot, Strom Ornol, came as distinctly unsettling.

The circumstances of their parting, when the Lady Milsi — who was really this famous Queen Mab! —

had told a few home truths and Ornol had reacted in his stupidly vicious way, forcing Seg to stick a knobby fist into his mouth, could hardly cause any friendly feelings. Ornol would in the normal way of the blot have him strung up or sent swimming. So...?

The track reached the riverbank with the massed trees receding to leave a small open space. Here a hut of rotting branches and tattered papishin leaves sagged over a wooden jetty. A boat was tied up, silent and waiting, with the boat master in his typical leaf hat standing shading his eyes. The cavalcade rode up and the guards dismounted.

“Can we talk now, strom?”

“Dismount, Seg the Horkandur. We go aboard the boat.”

The guards in their green and white tied their mounts to leaning posts and began to board. Seg dismounted. Ornol — or Olmengo — drew his rapier. Four guards stood by him with bared swords.

Ornol’s smile changed.

“Step aboard, Seg—”

“What is this about, strom?”

“You call me pantor!”

The vicious haughtiness of the words was more in keeping with the Ornol Seg knew. The noble’s expression changed. He was enjoying himself. He put up a beringed hand and ripped the false beard free.

He rubbed a kerchief over his cheeks, and it came away reddened, and, lo! his face was the face of Strom Ornol, pallid, like the underbelly of a fish.

“Everyone will believe you escaped with the assistance of Vad Olmengo, who is a stupid adherent of Llipton’s.” The guards, too, were enjoying the farce. They ripped off their green and white feathers and replaced them. Seg saw the colors of the feathers they placed in their helmets.

Brown and white.

“You are a fool, Segutorio, and an insolent cramph! You are going swimming. Then we shall deal with Jezbellandur. There will be no proof against Trylon Muryan’s men — and you will be dead and out of the way. As for your comrades, they are fish food as soon as your escape proves your guilt!”