Seg the Bowman (2 page)

Seg caught the eye of the Pachak, Kalu Na-Fre. Kalu walked over carrying a morning cup of tea in his tail hand, his upper left hand holding an enormous slice of bread, his lower left hand a pot of preserves.

His single right hand dipped a knife into the pot and smeared the golden-yellow preserve upon the bread.

He wore his full harness and carried an assortment of weapons. Even taking breakfast upon Kregen, especially in a Kregan jungle, a fellow did not wander about defenseless.

“Toilcas?” He sounded pleased.

“Aye. And, Kalu, you and I know that Exandu here will swing his sword lustily enough if the time comes.”

“Do you not think, masters,” put in Shanli, still spooning the potion into Exandu, “that we should pack up and depart at once?”

“The question is one upon which a fine argument might be built,” observed Kalu the Pachak. His straw-yellow hair swirled as he turned to regard Shanli. Short, Pachaks stood in general, but fierce and ferocious warriors with one of the strongest honor codes in all the world.

“Argument, argument?” cried Master Exandu. He was a man who enjoyed the good things of life.

Normally his face was rubicund and merry, with fat scarlet cheeks and eyes almost hidden in cheerful folds of flesh. And his nose! Ripe, protuberant, of a size awesome and a color glowing like the finest plumtree fruit. “There is no argument. We must leave before the monsters are upon us and devour us limb from limb.”

“Oh,” said Kalu, casually. “I believe they’re more inclined to swallow you whole, and make you last a whole sennight. Although,” and in his Pachak way he looked meaningfully at Exandu. “Although, Master Exandu, they might make you last a pair of weeks; they’d not take you down whole.”

Mistress Shanli decided that her poor dear master could stand no more of this, and she urged him off between the campfires to a resting place more seemly. She was not slave, for the comb in her long dark hair glittered, and although, like the others in the party, she had been at pain to strip away her old clothes and contrive fresh, she still wore her bronze-link belt.

There were six principals in this party adventuring after treasure in the mountain of the Coup Blag. Each principal took along his retainers, all except Seg, who had now lost his comrade.

The sixth member of the party, Skort the Clawsang, had been lost within the depths of the maze in the mountain. Now Fregeff, the Fristle Sorcerer, walked calmly across to Kalu, Seg and the Lady Milsi.

“Toilcas are merely corporeal,” said the catman in his hissing way. He brushed his whiskers with the bronzen links of his flail. Fregeff was an Adept of the Doxology of San Destinakon. The lozenges of brown and black patterning his gown bewildered the ordinary eye with their subtle shifts of alignment, suggesting awful superstitious fears to believers. The bronze chain about his waist led up to the necklet of the small winged reptile that perched upon the peak of his left shoulder. Now Fregeff put up a hand and stroked the volschrin.

“And, also, my Rik Razortooth would tear out their eyes — as you know.”

Hop, about to follow Exandu, said in his bluff way: “We do know, San Fregeff. But the monsters hunt in packs. There will be many of them.”

“And if I shake my bronzen flail at them?”

Hop shivered.

“That is not for mere mortal man to say, master.”

The hissing sound from the catman might have been a laugh of satisfaction, if anyone there believed the sorcerer could take satisfaction from so small a point.

“All the same...” said Seg, and looked around. A man of parts, this strange wild archer from Erthyrdrin, and a gallant man in important matters. “Mayhap we had best move on smartly. If not for poor old Exandu’s sake then for the sake of the ladies and the slaves.”

The Lady Milsi’s beautiful eyebrows convoluted themselves again at this. “Ladies, Seg — commingled with slaves?”

Seg remained quite unabashed.

“Certainly. I lump them together because they are unable to defend themselves—”

“Seg the Horkandur!” Now Milsi really looked annoyed. “A woman is perfectly capable of taking on and beating a craggy idiot of a man any day—”

“Some women, some men, and some days,” said Seg. He spoke gently.

“Your point admits of further extension to its basic parameters,” said Kalu, twitching up his tail hand but pausing to speak before he drank. “All the same, I am of the same opinion as Seg.”

“Good, Kalu. I wonder if we will receive the usual tiresome contrariness from Strom Ornol?”

“Here,” said Fregeff, with an indicatory jerk of his flail that did not stir the bronzen links, “he comes now.”

A strom, although a little below the middle of the table of precedence, was still a rank of the higher nobility. Stroms were folk of consequence. This Strom Ornol never forgot that fact, and made sure that those around him were not forgetful, either.

The catman moved a few paces away, a small and apparently meaningless movement; but Seg was well aware that the sorcerer by that gesture was indicating that he wished to take no part in the inevitable quarrel Strom Ornol would bring with him. Fregeff, as an Adept of San Destinakon, was quite capable of taking care of himself in unpleasant circumstances, and it seemed that here and now the onrush of a pack of maddened toilcas was not an occurrence to make him worry overmuch. Let, he seemed to be saying, let you lesser mortals decide for the best for yourselves.

Strom Ornol, pale-faced as always, high of temper, a blot in the eyes of others beside Seg, came striding up in his usual furious temper.

“What is all this blathering? Toilcas? Who says so?”

Seg had really just about had enough of this insufferable young dandy. He knew that Ornol, as a younger son, had been kicked out by his noble father. He’d been into mischief from the day he could toddle, more than likely. Because he was a lord, Ornol had assumed that he was in command of the expedition.

Seg had acquiesced in that. It went down well or ill with the other members; but only now and again had they shown open revolt. After all, they were equal members in the treasure hunting party.

“Well? Am I to receive no answer?”

Ornol fidgeted with the hilt of his rapier. The matching left-hand dagger swung over his right hip. This fashion of using rapier and main gauche was still new in the island of Pandahem, although well established in other parts of Kregen. Now Ornol glared about, his face with its pallid sheen of sweat working as though he had constipation.

“I saw one,” said the Lady Milsi.

Seg said, very quickly: “Yes, pantor, that is correct.’”

He glanced at Milsi. She returned his look, and then glanced away. She sometimes forgot that one addressed lords properly, and here in Pandahem called them pantor, lord.

Kalu spoke up. “Well, strom. We have taken some treasure out of the mountain and are still here and alive. Unless you intend to return we may begin our return journey in all honor.”

“Return? Into that hellhole?”

“That’s settled, then,” said Seg. He made it brisk. “Let us pack up and move out.”

“I shall give the orders,” started Strom Ornol.

Fregeff called in his hissing catman way: “Evil approaches.”

Everybody jumped.

The Fristle sorcerer had powers, that was undeniable. If he said evil was on the way — evil was on the way.

They all looked about, and hands gripped onto sword hilts, and Seg slid his great bow off his shoulder.

“There!” yelped a Gon guard, and in the same instant they all saw the apparition floating in over the tops of the trees.

A throne-like chair hung unsupported in thin air. Its outlines were not clearly defined; it shimmered with power drawn from a source far beyond the confines of the normal. Seg blinked. He could make out the throne and the trailing silks that did not blow in the wind of the chair’s passage, he could see the chavonth pelts and ling furs scattered luxuriously upon the seat and the arms, see the mantling canopy rearing out above the throne. That canopy was fashioned into the likeness of a dinosaur’s wedge-shaped head, jaws agape, fangs glittering silver. The eyes were hooded ruby lights. Anyone approaching the throne must perforce stand in awe and terror of that demoniacal head above.

And — all these awesome appurtenances were as nothing beside the woman who sat on the throne.

Clad in black and green, picked out in gold, with much ornamentation and embroidery, she sat stiffly erect. Her pallor of countenance made Strom Ornol look as flushed as Master Exandu. Her eyes were green, sliding luminous slits of jade. Her hair, dark, swept in long black tresses about her shoulders and descended into a widow’s peak over her forehead. She wore a jeweled band about that sleek black hair, and a smaller representation of the horrific dinosaur wedge-shaped head jutted from the center.

A guard lifted his bow. He was a Brokelsh, a member of that race of diffs who are coarse of body hair and coarse of manner. He loosed. Everyone saw. The arrow struck cleanly into the woman’s breast. It passed on, transfixing that glowing phantasm, shot on and curved out and down to plunge into the jungle.

Somebody screamed.

As though nothing had happened the woman peered down from her throne. Her mouth was painted into a ripe bud shape of invitation. There was not a single line or crease upon that pallid countenance. Gold leaf decorated her eyelids. She looked down upon the mortals below.

Each one felt the force of her gaze pass over, a psychic probe, questing and passing on.

Fregeff the sorcerer stood supremely still. His bronzen flail did not quiver.

With a gesture that even in so simple a movement was all seduction, the woman lifted her left hand.

Diamonds glittered. She made a sign, her forefinger pointed down at the camp in the clearing.

Among them all, Seg devoutly believed that lightning, fire and destruction would pour from that condemning finger.

Instead, the apparition wavered, the outlines flowed like gold within the smelting pot. The throne lifted away, turned, vanished beyond the tops of the trees.

In the next instant a horde of flying creatures swept out over the trees, the men astride them brandishing weapons. In an avalanche of fury, the flying warriors swept down upon the camp, lusting for the kill.

Seg’s instincts clashed.

His first instinct was to loose as many shafts as he could, skewer a clump of these damned flyers, and then rip out his sword and go plunging into the fight.

But, also, his first instinct was to grasp the Lady Milsi about the waist and, honoring his sworn promise to protect her, hurry her into the problematical safety of the jungle.

He could follow either course.

Where lay the course of honor?

His old dom, whom these people called the Bogandur, used to say that honor didn’t bring in the bread and butter. Despite that, he was the most honorable of men that Seg knew, his concept of honor not being of the rigid kind. Rather, it adhered to seeking the best solution to any problem that arose.

Without turning, Seg rapped out: “Milsi! Run to the edge of the jungle! Hide! Do not go too far in—”

As he spoke he lifted the bow, drew, released and had another shaft across the stave, nocked, and the bow lifting for the second shot, all in a twinkling.

Milsi said: “If you think I’m going to run off and leave you—”

“I do not want you to be killed.” He loosed again, and again with that incredible speed slapped up another shaft and loosed. “Run, Milsi —
please
!”

“No.”

“Then I must take you.”

“You would not dare!”

His three arrows had knocked over three of the flyers. They were not all apims like him, some were diffs, for he saw Rapas, Brokelsh, a Gon, a couple of malkos.

The saddle birds they flew were brunnelleys, large and powerful, wide-winged, gaudy of coloration in blues and mauves and browns, yellow beaks and clawed scarlet feet. Plates of wafer-thin beaten gold adorned the birds. They swept in over the clearing, and their bandit riders did not bother to shoot down but landed their birds in great wing-ruffling swirls. The men leaped off, screeching, swirling their swords about their heads.

Seg sniffed and shot a fellow through the breastplate, instantly nocked and drew again and shafted his comrade.

Milsi said, “I am not frightened while I am with you, Seg. If—”

“Yes, yes. I can stand here and shoot the rasts. I suppose—”

“That is best.”

“Until they come to handstrokes!”

The fighting broke into clumps as the bandits rushed in. Each member of the expedition fought as custom dictated. Strom Ornol, being at least in this wiser than one might have expected, disdained his rapier and used a hefty cut and thrust sword, swishing the thraxter about with powerful contemptuous blows. Kalu and his Pachaks simply tore into the bandits, ripping them apart whenever they made contact.

Master Exandu, as Seg had rightly observed, hauled out his single-edged sword and hit anybody who came near him. All the time he complained in his loud hectoring whine, but he kept Shanli safely tucked in behind him. Hop became most intemperate, and raged into a whirlwind, knocking bandits over and trompling them in his eagerness to get to the next.

But these were professional bandits — drikingers — and they were used to overcoming opposition.

They lived by terrorizing the neighborhood, and stealing what they wanted. The expedition had in their turn taken the treasures away from the mountain hideout. Located by that gruesome apparition of a beautiful evil woman on her throne, the expedition was now about to pay a price for their audacity.

Master Exandu sliced a fellow’s arm nearly off, and stumbled back, shrieking: “San Fregeff! For the sweet sake of Beng Sbodine the Mender of Men! Cast a spell! Reduce these cramphs to jelly!”

Fregeff replied in a somber voice, clearly heard through the tumult as a bell tolls through the lowing of cattle.

“The Witch of Loh has negated all spells here save my own self-preservation.”

Exandu let out a yell of utter despair, and sloshed a Rapa over the head so that the Rapa’s vulturine beak hung all askew and a gouting puff of brown and gray feathers spurted into the air.