Seg the Bowman (5 page)

His respect was genuine and extended universally — save in one thing.

Seg had no respect for anything that interfered with his procurement of the finest bowstaves he could cut.

A vine studded with short hard spikes lashed in from nowhere. A shiny brown spine caught in Milsi’s tunic just to the side of her navel and whipped back, tearing the blue cloth around to the small of her back. She yelped, and Seg’s single slash dropped the vine onto the forest floor, wriggling and squirming.

“Did it—?”

“No, thank the good Pandrite.”

The skin had not been punctured, no blood had been drawn. Very seriously, his face expressionless, Seg shifted the ripped blue cloth aside and inspected Milsi’s stomach, side and back. He could see no lacerations in that tanned pink skin. He breathed out a relieved sigh.

“That is one problem of walking down a trail made by the monsters.”

“It is still far preferable to struggling through that awful jungle.”

As they went on it occurred to Seg to wonder how Milsi’s skin under her tunic was so smoothly tanned.

Since he had known her she had always had clothes, of some sort or another, rags mostly until the last chamber of the Coup Blag, to cover her. The suns would give you a wonderful tan if you stayed out for a responsible length of time.

Well, when the time was opportune he’d mention it to her. Her answer would probably involve carefree days of sunbathing at home. Her home, he gathered, was situated not in the capital of this land of Croxdrin but, as she had indicated, farther north out in the open plains in Mewsansmot.

There was no chance of conversation as they walked along the monster-opened trail so that much as he would have liked to find out more about her and her history, as any wandering fellow lusted after details of people and places and things, Seg was constrained to follow his own dictum of patience.

He had the map of the area fairly well embedded in his skull. The river, known as the River of Bloody Jaws, looped in an enormous arc around the Snarly Hills. Traffic went by river. The teeth and jaws ferociously at work in the Kazzchun River were not as fearful as the terrors of the forest.

From where they now were any direction other than a heading with west in it would bring them to the river.

North with a touch of easting, he decided, would be best. If the distance to the river was the same no matter in which direction they went, then by going north the distance to cover on the river would be shortened. When they stopped for one of the periodic rests he insisted on, mindful of the husbanding of marching men’s — and women’s! — strengths, Milsi began prying in order to open up a little more of the story of this fearsome warrior bowman.

“For a start, Seg, how did you come by your cognomen?”

At that Seg laughed out loud.

“Horkandur?” He was clearly delighted by his own thoughts. Milsi smiled in response. She enjoyed being with Seg, and for this space of time at least forgot her own problems in their shared perils.

“I know it means you have gained renown as a great archer—”

“In that, the sobriquet does not lie overmuch, although I detest braggarts. No, my old dom, he whom you know as the Bogandur, gave it to me, when I gave him his nickname. This was when we met up with the expedition at The Dragon’s Roost—”

She showed her astonishment.

“But that defies honor! You give each other resounding titles, just like that? Really, Seg, you amaze me.”

“We did not wish to give our true names.”

“On the run?”

Again he laughed.

“In a fashion; but not from any just pursuit. We felt it more prudent. My name is Seg Segutorio.”

Very gravely she inclined her head, and said: “Lahal, Seg Segutorio.”

“Lahal, my Lady Milsi. And the rest of your name?”

Her smile faltered.

A flutter seized her, so that she looked up, and exclaimed at the sight of two bright red eyes staring down at them from a branch of a nearby tree. Seg looked and saw the little furry body, the tail wrapped about a thinner twig, and said: “Another little colo. Perhaps we will have to eat his cousin tonight. For now, he is safe.”

The pathetic interlude gave her time to decide what to say.

“My father’s name was Javed Erithor the Good. My mother’s name was Natema Parlaix. I may use either name, as I wish.”

“I know of the custom. In Erthyrdrin we have a different system of naming of names. I was able to assume the honor of the torio when my father died. He, too, was a good man, if a trifle reckless—”

“Like his son?”

“Oh, aye. But I learn. When I die my son, my eldest son, Drayseg, will become Seg Segutorio.”

She felt a distinct stab at her heart.

“You have children? You are married?”

Seg’s face abruptly took on the look of a sky at nightfall, before a thunderstorm. She did not flinch back; had she done so no one watching would have been surprised.

“I am blessed with a family of three, and, yes, I was married.”

“Oh — I am sorry.”

“I will tell you. But we have rested enough. We must push on.”

“Of course.”

Only when they were once more marching along the blundering monster’s trail did she think to wonder just where his family might be now, what place in all of Kregen they called home. Seg — who was Seg Segutorio — had taken on a new dimension. He remained a wild and reckless wandering warrior; but he had roots.

As for Seg he was trying to puzzle out the inner meaning of the names of Milsi’s family. They did not sound like Pandahemic names.

A clattering commotion broke out ahead along the trail. A trilling noise as of a cage full of parakeets all shrilling away and fluttering their wings against the bars of the cage mingled with sharper shrieks of rage and pain.

Seg put out a hand to halt Milsi and she walked on for a moment so that her stomach pressed against Seg’s sinewy palm. She was highly conscious of the contact; Seg did not notice.

He stared evilly along the trail, tensed ready for action and yet perfectly relaxed. When he had sized up the situation out there his brain would tell his muscles what to do. They would respond instantly. That was the secret, albeit a simple one, of readiness for action.

Presently, as the uproar continued unabated, without gaining or losing volume, he padded cautiously forward. He kept to the side of the trail, and he whispered so that no one more than two or three paces away could overhear.

“Watch for those dratted killer vines, Milsi.”

“Oh — yes!”

The trail bent here as the monster who had made it failed to break through a tree all of five hundred seasons old. With his side against the tree, Seg peered cautiously around, and along the farther extent of the trail.

What he saw filled him with astonishment. Milsi joined him, and sucked in her breath, and said: “They are dinkus. Savage. They used poisoned darts.”

“So I see.”

The dinkus appeared to be caught up in a situation at once horrific and comic. They were pygmies. Each dinko stood about one meter tall, built like an apim, with the exception that from the cunningly fashioned shoulder blades swung four arms instead of two. Each man was stark naked apart from a bark apron.

They did use poisoned darts, which they shot from blowpipes.

They were engaged in a fight between two different tribes, as was evident from the colors of the feathers they wore in their clay-matted hair, and their private fight had been interrupted by a toilca. Therein lay the comic aspect of the horror. To a dinko a toilca was a monstrous beast.

“I really do think this is no concern of ours, Milsi.”

“You are right. Yet they are so — and they cannot shoot their darts at the toilca’s scales and hope to penetrate.”

Looking out, Seg saw that the toilca had already ripped up or squashed half a dozen of the dinkus. The two opposing parties had, perforce, joined forces to fight the monster. Seg made up his mind.

He stepped out into the center of the trail.

“Hai!”

So wrapped up in the combat were most of the pygmies that they did not hear him. Some did. They swiveled to stare down the trail, and the long blowpipes switched up most evilly.

“Hai!”

And Seg loosed twice, swift accurate shots that punched clean through the eyes of the toilca under the horny protecting scales. The monster lashed about, writhing, and the pygmies leaped for their lives.

With bow ready, arrow nocked and the shaft half drawn, held by his left hand, Seg walked forward. He lifted his right hand.

“Llahal! I trust I have helped you, friends.”

They chattered out, parakeets flinging their wings at a cage. Their voices chittered.

Then one with the most feathers in his matted hair stepped forward. Instantly another stepped up alongside the first. He wore just about as many feathers, but they were red as the first’s were blue.

“Hai! Llahal. Are you friend?”

The blue-feathered pygmy was not to be left in the shade.

“Hai! Answer me quickly, or you die!”

“Now hold on,” shouted Seg. “Just hold on a minute. I’ve shot the poor dratted toilca for you. I do not expect much in the way of thanks, but I do expect a little friendship—”

“No boltim is a friend to any dinko.”

“Boltim?”

“That means big man,” whispered Milsi.

“I know that — oh, I see. Yes.” Seg retained that cunning archer’s left-handed grip on bow and shaft.

“I may be a boltim. I bear you no ill will. By the Veiled Froyvil! I could have passed by and you’d all be dead, chomped up by that monster!”

The fellow with the red feathers said: “That is true, by Clomb of the Ompion Never-Miss.”

“Whoever he and it may be,” said Seg — to himself.

Blue feathers wasn’t so sure.

“You speak with a false tongue,” he started.

“And if I had not spoke you’d be quietly digesting in that toilca’s insides. Why, man, he could eat all of you and look around for more!”

“Seg!”

Assuredly, that had not been a politic thing to say.

Seg blustered on.

“We are just taking a little stroll along here, doing no harm to anyone, least of all you, noble dinkus. We have helped you. Now we will go on our way and give you the remberees.”

A chattering gobble of argument among the pygmies followed. They spoke the universal Kregish that had been imposed on the world, heavily adulterated by accent and local dialect words. They began to form up into two separate bands. Beside the long blowpipes and the quivers of darts slung over their shoulders by straps they carried cudgels. These were, by ordinary standards, puny. If one was laid alongside the head of one dinko, powered by the angry muscles of another, the results could be fatal.

Seg did not speak again.

He slowly withdrew to the tree, and stood, silently, watching. Before very long, tribal hatreds flared up.

The red feathers and the blue feathers started off, bashing at one another. And Seg noticed a curious fact.

They did not puff out their cheeks into twin balloons and blow darts tipped with poison at one another.

They slung the blowpipes down or over their backs and started in a-slugging one another with the cudgels. He understood what he was seeing. This was survival of the species, survival of the dinkus, against the perils of their home in the jungle.

Presently the fight was of such an intensity that he and Milsi could edge along on the fringe of the trail and pass by without any one of the battling pygmies bothering his head about them.

They reached the far side of the conflict and turned to rejoin the trail out of sight of the dinkus.

Seg fell over a couple of naked bodies entwined beside a bush. He staggered and regained his balance with the litheness of a cat. The blowpipe quivered three inches from his chest, the lad’s cheeks distended like twin red apples.

Without hesitation Seg’s left hand holding bow and arrow swished around, deflecting the blowpipe. The lad expelled his breath in a mighty gasp and the dart shot off into the jungle. At once a shrill squawk sounded.

Seg said, “I hear you hit your target then, my lad. For, of course, you were not shooting at me, were you?”

His gaze beat down on the pygmy lad. He was a young dinko, and he was cuddling up to a younger dinka, who still lay by the bush, rigid with terror.

“No,” said the lad. He swallowed. He looked up and up to this monstrous boltim who towered like an ancient tree of the forest. “No.”

“That is wise.”

“Oh, the poor things!” exclaimed Milsi. She came forward in a rush and gathered the girl up and cradled her as she might a child. The girl was crying.

“So that’s the way of it, then,” observed Seg.

He sighed. Sex and passion and tribal taboos had played tricks with Kregen’s past, and no doubt would continue to do so into the future.

The lad wore red feathers.

The girl wore blue feathers.

“They will surely part us if they find us,” said the boy. He spoke up bravely. “If they do not kill us.”

“I do not think they would kill you. Life has to be precious to anyone living in the forest and fighting its perils.”

“You don’t know them — they are rigid as a petrified tree. Blood lines, inheritance, taboos — and I love Bamba.”

The girl Bamba, cradled in Milsi’s arms, sniffled out: “And I love Diomb.”

Seg released the arrow grip and stowed the shaft. He was not about to allow himself to become embroiled in the half-comical, half-tragical affairs of these little people of the forest.

“Well,” he said with some brutality. “I don’t know what you two were doing. But if you can’t go home to your tribes you’ll have to run away. I wish you well.”

“We were running away and they caught us. Then the toilca came along, and—”

“The toilca is dead and your respective tribes are trying to bash each other’s brains out. You’d better cut along sharpish.”

“Oh,” wailed the girl. “Would that Clomba of the Fruit Tree Eternal would aid us now!”

The pygmy lad, naked save for a bark apron, clutching his blowpipe, stared up at Seg. His face was formed pleasingly, with regular features, and his dark eyes showed a bright intelligence. Just as Seg was telling himself that any eyeball can shine up nicely, that does not mean its owner has any brains at all, Diomb rapped out as though a bottle-cork burst from the neck: “We were running away. We were going to cross the river and seek our fortune. We can come with you. That is excellent.”