Omens of Kregen (12 page)

I saw that awful flame-spitting mass hurtling down on us. There was absolutely no time to drag our ship out of the way.

Wearing their aerial safety belts, men and women threw themselves overboard.

Seg hitched his bow up his back and yelled to me: “Overboard with you!”

Pride of Vondium
, enveloped in flame, was falling headlong through the air. The flames had burned through some control ropes, and the silver boxes must have been jolted apart. We were dropping at a frightful speed, and the flames and heat blew blisteringly about us.

I saw Ortyg Thingol sprawled on the deck in the line of the advancing flames. Blood smeared his brown curls. Seg yelled again, leaping forward: “I’ll grab young Ortyg! Over with you, Dray!”

Flames spouted up from the deck around our feet.

“And leave you!” I jumped forward to assist Seg with our young cadet.

A wall of fire burgeoned directly before me. Beyond that hellish heat Seg and the lad must be trying to fight their way back to the bulwarks. I put my head down and an arm over my face and, thus looking down through slitted eyes, half-blinded, I saw a shiny scorpion clicking his feelers on that flame-reeking deck.

Through the infernal racket of the fire, his voice reached me thinly and clearly.

“We always said you were an onker, Dray Prescot. You must jump and save yourself. The Star Lords wish it.”

“To hell with the Star Lords! I’m not leaving Seg—”

“Jump, Dray Prescot, or risk the wrath of the Everoinye!”

Cunning entered my soul.

“You need me, Star Lords. You have said as much. I will not leave without Seg and the boy. If you can — save us all!”

The blueness whirled up so smartly I had no time to gasp. The Everoinye could strike with appalling swiftness when they had to.

I was hanging upside down in the branches of a spiny tree and all about me squeaked and chirruped and screamed the noises of the jungle.

I shook my head and it stayed on my shoulders. With a convulsive twist I was right side up and ready to confront whatever grisly predator of the jungle might regard me as an afternoon snack.

Seg’s voice called: “Ortyg’s safe, Dray. What happened?”

He might well ask!

Looking carefully around, I spotted Seg on a lower branch of the tree with Ortyg in his arms.

“We must have fallen through the burned deck,” I said with some caution.

“Yes. I suppose. It was hot, my old dom, deuced hot. There was a flash of blue — curious.”

“Well, we made it safely down. We’ll have to try to signal the fleet. They must have won the victory by now.”

“Sure to.”

“So it’s up rather than down?”

“You recall this jungle? Up, I’d say.”

“What about the boy?”

Ortyg’s high voice rang out. “I’m no boy, majister. I am a full-grown man. I can manage to climb a tree!”

“By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom, we have a leemcub here!”

So we started to climb up. The trees were stout enough to afford us ample support until we could reach along one of the lower laterals of the crown and so gaze up through a gap at the brilliance of the sky above.

There was not a single airboat in sight.

“This,” said Seg, digesting this new information, “alters things somewhat.”

“Aye.”

A black dot floated into view over the trees.

“Hai!” roared Seg. “Down here!”

The man suspended in air on his belt looked down and then he slowly pulled the control levers apart so that the silver boxes lowered him gently. He would, we saw, land in the next tree along. There was no way he could gain forward motion from the belt.

“So,” I said. “It’s down, now.”

“Aye, my old dom. Down it is.”

“Meet us at the tree here!” I bellowed.

The man hollered back: “Quidang!”

“A swod, is my guess,” offered Seg. “Anyway, you have a damned intemperate way with you. He recognized—”

“The voice of command? And thank you!”

“Well, it’s true, as Erthyr the Bowis my witness.”

Clinging to the branch, I said: “Let’s have a look at that cut in your head, Ortyg.”

“Yes, majister.”

I gave him a hard look, and his brown eyes widened. “Not majister, Ortyg. Not majis; not even jis. You call me Jak. Is that clear? Jak!”

“Yes, majis — Jak. Clear.”

“And if you forget, Ortyg,” said Seg with deep menace, “you will be left here in this jungle alone to fend for yourself.”

“Your head’s all right,” I said. “We’ll dress it when we reach the ground.”

The climb down was arduous enough, Krun knew; but we touched the mould of the jungle floor at last.

Then we saw to Ortyg’s head with the medicaments in our belt pouches. I gave Seg an inquiring look.

“You’re known around these parts. King of Croxdrin. Might Seg not be a little, well—”

“I’m not that well known. But I won’t be Seg the Horkandur. And—” here he fixed me with a baleful stare. “And not the Fearless, either, or any other of your so-called funny names.”

“All right. We’ll think of Seg the Something.”

“Tell me, please,” put in Ortyg, a hand to his head. “Why are you not to be called majister, Jak?”

“Because there are plenty of evil folk around only too ready to take advantage of ransom.”

Seg bore down on the lad. “That’s why. We are simple koters, us.”

“Very well, Seg, Jak.”

A man’s hoarse voice reached us. “That you, doms?”

“Hai, dom. Over here.”

He joined us as we stepped away from the twined bole of our tree. His uniform was a shredded black mess, his hair was singed, his face was a scarlet blot. But that hair was good Vallian brown, and those ferocious eyes were level and Vallian brown. He looked to be an old kampeon, tough as old boots, in service for seasons.

Smoothly, Seg said, “Lahal. I am Seg, this is Jak and this is Ortyg. We are lucky to be alive.”

“Lahal. I am Nath.”

There are very many Naths on Kregen, seeing that the legendary Nath equates with the terrestrial Hercules, more or less. I sighed, and this Nath, seeing that reaction, managed a ferocious grimace and said, “Nath, called the Impenitent.”

“Nobody else?” inquired Seg.

“Not that I saw. A chunk of rock from one of those fishy devils knocked me off
Shango Lady
. They were all going off to the west like stink when I fell.”

“Did you see the flagship burn?”

“Aye, a grisly sight. Some ships dropped down for survivors. But that happened a long time ago.”

“Do what?”

He was not taken aback. “Aye. We drove to the west in pursuit of the devils, west and north.
Pride of Vondium
burned a long ways back.”

Seg would not understand how we’d contrived to get here, that seemed certain. The Everoinye, for their own inscrutable purposes, had dropped us down a long way from where we’d begun, and this Nath the Intemperate had been knocked off by chance to join our little band.

All about us lay the jungle of South Pandahem.

The rank stink of rotting vegetation, throat-choking, filled the miasmic air. The light was poor. Blotched whitenesses disfigured the tree boles. Vines looped everywhere. And through this labyrinth prowled the predators.

Nath the Intemperate retained his sword, a drexer. Ortyg had a Vallian dagger. Seg’s longbow was not in his hand, although a quiver half-filled with rose-fletched arrows remained strapped across his back. Well, he’d built a bow before in these parts.

Seg also had a drexer. I — stupidly, stupidly — did not have my superb Savanti sword. I had no bow, no drexer, no rapier or main gauche. I had my old sailor knife scabbarded over my right hip. And I did have a Krozair longsword strapped to my back, and that was not stupid at all. Not stupid at all, by Zair!

The drexer is a superior weapon, a straight cut and thruster developed from the Hamalian thraxter and Vallian clanxer and with our attempt at the Savanti sword. I wished I had the sword I’d worn at Drak and Silda’s wedding.

“We’d best make tracks,” said Seg. “Find a clearing or some civilization.”

“I hear it’s all jungle for hundreds of ulms,” said Nath the Impenitent. “Little villages, though, I suppose?”

“Some not so little. We’ll have to go tsleetha-tsleethi for some time.”

“And,” said Seg with sincere seriousness, “beware traps.”

Now I have made it sound as though we’d all tumbled down out of a battle into a jungle and were all taking it as a mere matter of course. This is not so. But there was no good making a song and dance over the dangers. Our main concern, Seg and mine, was what had happened to Milsi and Delia.

We had to deal with the current situation, get clear of that, and then we’d find out.

Walking along softly and cautiously we heard from up ahead the sound of people talking, and then the cheerful clink of bottles and glasses. Ortyg started forward.

“We are saved, praise be to Opaz!”

“Hold it, young ’un,” and Seg’s broad hand fastened on Ortyg’s shoulder. “I told you. Beware traps.”

We parted the leaves carefully and looked out into a clearing at the center of which stood a plant with a bulbous stem and waving tendrils.

“A Cabaret Plant,” said Seg. “That’ll spine you and gulp you down like a jelly.”

We bypassed the plant with great respect.

After that, Ortyg stuck close to Seg. I was glad. I’d seen the way Seg had welcomed his two sons, Drayseg and Valin. He had not seen them for season upon season. Emotions aroused anew in him then must be working to make Ortyg recognize the affection Seg was bursting to display.

The Cabaret Plant with its deadly orange flower on that lashing stalk was not the only danger. There were man-made traps to catch some of the more tasty animals living here. We struck a trail. Well, now...

“Thank Opaz,” said Ortyg. “At least we can walk a little easier now.”

“You, my lad,” Seg told him, “will not be walking along that trail — unless you want to wind up down a pit with stakes stuck through you, or hanging upside down in the air, or—”

“Quite,” I said, and Seg laughed and punched Ortyg lightly on the shoulder. Nath the Impenitent said nothing, but his ruby-red face squeezed into a smile.

Later on he told us that he’d been in the army but, being bored out of his skull and the wars more or less finishing, he’d transferred to the Air Service. He was an ordinary voswod, an aerial soldier; but he was training to become a more proficient crewman. He saw a future in the air he had never expected, had given up as lost.

“Wonderful things, the airboats. Never thought I’d live to see the day I served in one.”

Seg said sharply: “You were unconscious in the back of a cart. But I’ve a funny feeling we’ve been this way before.”

“If you say so,” I said equably.

“By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom! I do say so. And I’ll wager a month’s pay that just ahead of us lies the town of Selsmot. And, therein, the tavern of jungle delights, The Dragon’s Roost!”

Chapter eleven

Of two kovs at The Dragon’s Roost

“So you did come back,” said Mistress Tlima, wiping her floury hands on her blue-striped apron. “I always said you would return, Dray the Bogandur — although you call yourself Jak now.”

“If it please you, Mistress Tlima. It was Jak Dray, anyway.”

“Oh, it is no concern of mine.”

“Named for that pig of an emperor, I suppose,” said Nath the Impenitent. I turned sharply. He spoke quite mildly; yet there was no mistaking the heartfelt anger in his words.

“Pantor Seg,” called Tlima, taking no notice of Nath’s outburst. “Help yourself to some of our local ale. We have palines just collected.”

Seg smiled that winning smile of his. “As ever, you are kind to wandering travelers, Mistress Tlima. And here is this imp Ortyg to plague us further.”

“You will not, I trust, pantor, take him when you go along to The Dragon’s Roost.”

“He is no callow coy; he is a man with a man’s spirit.”

Ortyg, very sensibly, remained silent, although I admit this was partially caused by a mouthful of palines.

While all this pleasant byplay went on, I found myself brooding savagely on the greatest fresh problem presented to us in Paz. We had airboats. We had always believed we held this advantage, a kind of ace in the hole. And now — the Shanks — or Shtarkins or Shants or any one of a hundred different names for the evil Fish Heads who came reiving from over the curve of the world — also flew airboats to our mighty discomfort.

I thought to myself, stranded there in an insignificant little town lost in the jungles of South Pandahem, I thought most violently that I needed a word with the Star Lords.

That they would send for me in their own sweet time I did not doubt. By Vox! They had a deal of explaining to do.

Once again the question of priorities forced itself on me. Csitra must be dealt with. There was no question about that. The Shanks must also be dealt with, and, equally, there was no doubt about that. What the blue blazing hell were Shanks doing flying over Pandahem when all my intelligence said they were miles and miles away over in Mehzta?

The only obvious explanation was that this was a new and different bunch of the Fish Heads.

Mistress Tlima said, “We saw a boat that flew through the air yesterday. It came down just outside the town. The people in it — just ordinary diffs, mind — went to The Dragon’s Roost.”

“Ah!”

“Why, Pantor Seg! And do you really mean to go again?”

“I do, Mistress Tlima.”

“Well, may the good Pandrite watch over you, that is all I can say.”

From The Dragon’s Roost inn, expeditions had been formed to go up into the Snarly Hills to the Coup Blag in search of the rumored hoards of treasure buried there. Seg and I had traveled with just such an exploration party. Now it seemed another was forming, and this bunch had their own voller. Capital!

“If they take us,” said Seg, as we walked through the dusty main street just before the rain fell.

“Oh,” I said, sounding mighty cheerful, almost cocky in my stupid arrogance. “Oh, yes, they will. We’ve been there before.”

“True, my old dom, true.”

“I’m coming, too,” said Ortyg.

“Oh?”