Seg the Bowman (22 page)

“By Zim-Zair! As Zogo the Hyr-Whip is my judge! Not me!”

That evening Seg was just preparing to turn in in the room allotted to him high in the Chungi Tower. Milsi entered without knocking. She looked splendid. Her hair was coif fed and sheened with health, her cheeks glowed, her eyes — well, Seg could lose everything in those eyes of hers. She wore a pale blue gown, loose and flowing, girded by a thin golden chain from which hung a jeweled dagger. Seg swallowed.

“Majestrix—”

“The intelligence is that Muryan will reach the spot chosen for the battle in two days. You, Seg Segutorio the Horkandur, will lead my army in the fight.”

“But—”

“Do you truly love me?”

“Yes.”

“Then that is settled.” And she stepped forward into the clasp of his Bowman’s arms.

At the queen’s express command Kapt Seg wore a bronze harness garnished with golden rosettes. His bronze helmet fitted close, and the blue and white and yellow feathers flew high above on their golden spike. His tunic was of red velvet, lustrous and cunningly changing in hue and tone with the angle of the lights. He strapped on his own drexer, and a plethora of other weapons also. He looked a fitting figure to command an army.

At Kapt Seg’s express wish and desire the queen wore a bronze harness, garnished with golden rosettes.

Her helmet with its feathers framed her face glowing with passion and conviction in the right and in victory. She wore the Kregan arsenal of weaponry, and Seg’s heart joyed in her.

Above them lofted the flag the queen had commanded to be made and embroidered specially for Seg.

This was his own tresh. Tall and narrow, it was of red silk. In careful fine stitching in golden thread her handmaidens had represented a bow in the lower portion, bent to shoot upward. Instead of an arrow, a jagged bolt of lightning, lethal and overpowering, skewered skyward.

“Do you then expect me to challenge the heavens themselves?”

“If any man dared—”

Seg looked at her. He could see only Milsi, sitting erect and supple in the saddle, see her gorgeousness.

He smiled. He had no need to prattle on about daring anything for her. By the Veiled Froyvil! She knew that!

The army marched out.

Vad Olmengo, quivering, had exuded an enormous sigh of satisfaction and relief when the queen told him that Kapt Seg would take command. Had the chief place been thrust upon him...!

Seg had a plan.

“It is not a great plan, Milsi, not a mind-shattering exhibition of military genius. But a plan we must have.”

“I believe in you, Seg, as you know. Therefore your plan is good.”

“Ridiculous!”

On the day before the battle Skort had taken Seg out to survey the field of the forthcoming conflict. They fought to protocol here along the Kazzchun River. He recalled the fracas between the dinkus, and he half-smiled. These armored and mounted warriors with their bronze and leather armor and their steel weapons had not progressed very far along the path of military skills...

He gave the Chulik, Nath Chandarl the Dorvenhork, his instructions. The Chulik nodded, cunning in the ways of battle.

“It shall be as you say, Seg the Horkandur. There may not be many of us, but I will make them fight like demons from the Pits of Gundarlo!”

“And,” put in the Khibil, Khardun the Franch, “my lads will hit them with such elan they will all turn tail and run.”

“Make it so, and may Likshu the Treacherous and Horato the Potent look down with benediction upon you.”

When he spoke to the Rapa, Rafikhan, Seg called down the benediction of Rhapaporgolam the Reiver of Souls.

“I have my task, set to my hands, Seg. It shall be done.”

The Jiktars and the three Chuktars of the little army did not demur when Kapt Seg set his own men thus in positions of vital importance. Seg spoke to them. They saw they were dealing with a man who commanded, who had commanded, who knew how to command. They saw his strength, of will and determination as well as of body. He had much of the yrium, that mystical aura of power, charisma, that made men and women follow him willy-nilly. Seg himself made no pretense to the yrium. He was not aware of the charismatic presence he conveyed when he wanted something done...

Two of the Chuktars commanded each his wing of the infantry. This was chiefly composed of half-naked men, many of them fishermen with bundles of their long and cruelly-barbed fishspears. These they would hurl with deadly accuracy. Long before they came within range the Bowmen of Loh would have destroyed them. The infantry carried shields, large, pointed at top and bottom, fashioned of withies or wood, a few with leather, and if there was one in fifty with a bronze rim that was overstating the case.

The remaining Chuktar commanded the cavalry, mewsany-mounted men who were a trifle better armored than the infantry. They carried lances, small shields, and some had javelins. Each regiment was separated out as to type under its Jiktar, and, perforce, owing to training, Seg had to continue with this arrangement.

Skort, well armed and armored, rode close with his Clawsangs. He said: “I now believe this Jiktar Nag-So-Spangchin, known as the Horkandur, commands a regiment of three hundred to three hundred and fifty Bowmen of Loh.”

“A formidable force.” Seg knew damn well how truly formidable a force that was. “The Dorvenhork will play his part, Skort. Chuliks detest being beaten.”

“Who does not?”

“True. But there is something in a soulless Chulik that cannot abide defeat. And I do not believe the Dorvenhork to be soulless, contrary to received opinion.”

“There are few who would agree with you.”

“There must be Chuliks and Chuliks, as there are apims and apims, and, doubtless, Clawsangs and Clawsangs.”

“Aye. But not Katakis and Katakis.”

“How many?”

Skort could not pull his lip, but his lipless mouth gleamed blue. “We believe no more than two hundred and fifty.”

“Then they must be put down.”

“Oh, aye.”

Caphlander the Relt rode up on a zorca. Seg gaped at him. He wore a leather jerkin, belted in very tightly, very tightly indeed. His feathered head was covered by a leather cap, in which flourished further feathers — clearly these were not his own. He gave a hesitant salute.

“Well, Caphlander. What does this mean?”

“Why, Seg the Horkandur, merely that I may not fight, but I am a trained stylor. I can carry messages.”

The queen smiled graciously. “You are right welcome, master Caphlander. If every man and woman play their parts as well as you, then victory will smile upon our banners this day.”

As to that, grumped Seg to himself, there were altogether too many damned banners and flags and standards. If each one prevented its bearer from striking a blow he’d see the lot consigned to Cottmer’s Caverns.

He glanced up at the standard Milsi had given him. It really was rather splendid. Its bearer, a horrific-looking Clawsang called Tskarin, would have to be carefully watched, for if that banner fell the warriors and the men who had come to swell the ranks might very well run off.

His trumpeter, another corpselike Clawsang called Ksandic, had proved he knew the calls regulations laid down in the army of Croxdrin — trouble was, did all the people in the ranks know them as well?

Diomb had gone off with the Dorvenhork, beside himself with glee that he was seeing more of the outside world — this time how they got on when they had a real big fight. Seg had had to let him go. Bamba had not cried; in fact Bamba was not about when Diomb marched off. Clearly — Seg knew about and understood these things — quite clearly Bamba had equipped herself and had skulked off to join Diomb.

Oh, well... As for Malindi, she had wailed when Milsi rode off; but a single stern injunction had stilled the pretty infant-like features. A battlefield was no place for a Sybli — well, to be truthful, it was no place at all for anyone with a scrap of sense in their heads.

Military organization must, of course, vary over the wide world of Kregen; in these parts the old methods of the defunct Empire of Walfarg persisted. Usually there were ten men in an audo, eight or ten audos in a pastang, and six pastangs to a regiment. Milsi’s army, as Seg watched them marching out to war, were on the low side in regimental strengths. The men raised by King Crox into regular regiments and with whom he had carved out his kingdom, were well enough armed and equipped and trained. Their regiments usually totaled around the four hundred mark. The half-naked fisherfolk and townsmen and riff-raff from the streets, although prettily organized, could muster few regiments above the three hundred and fifty or sixty mark.

This would have to suffice. It was pretty certain that the regiments marching under Trylon Muryan’s brown and white banners would muster roughly equal numbers to those with the queen. It was those confounded Bowmen of Loh...

The moment the priests from the various temples had ceased their chantings and incantations and the sacrifices had been made, Seg breathed more freely. The bands started up, blowing and banging lustily.

A little breeze got up and blew the banners bravely. The army presented a fine sight, swinging along with the bands playing and the standards flying, and the men singing. Seg humped along on his zorca and tried not to feel too angry at the waste of it all.

The bands played “The Jaws that Bite, the Teeth that Rend.” Then they went into “The Forest Stands from Dawn to Dusk.” With a fine flush of fury, Seg supposed that cramph Muryan would have his bands playing “The Bowman of Loh.”

His mind obsessed with the plan for the battle oddly enough rejected further worry. He found himself thinking of what Milsi had told him of her childhood. Her mother had been born in Jholaix, daughter of one of the wealthy Wine Families. Her grandmother had been born in Nalvindrin, second daughter of the king and queen of the time. Uprisings and revolutions had found, in the end, her grand aunt married and the queen — and her daughter had brought King Crox to the throne — and her grandmother safely hidden in Jholaix. But descent came down through the female line, and Milsi was the one and only legitimate Queen Mab. Thus had all the problems arisen.

All the girls of the family were called Mab as well as their given name. If Milsi happened to be slain, either in this battle or at the hands of Muryan’s hired assassins led by Strom Ornol, then the lady Mishti Mab would inherit the legal descent. No doubt that was what Muryan, having lost Milsi, now planned.

The thought that if it came to it Seg would slay the cramph Muryan without mercy gave him no comfort whatsoever.

The idea that he had engineered the deaths of the Bowmen of Loh — or would have done if his primitive plan succeeded — gave him so much less comfort as to make him feel that he bore the sins of the world upon his shoulders. Oh, they weren’t his own countrymen. They had red hair, therefore they came from Walfarg. His land of Erthyrdrin, in the northernmost tip of Loh, had been ravaged and attacked by Walfarg over the centuries. Erthyrdrin provided the very cream of the Bowmen of Loh. All the same, it went sore to him to do this thing, and he just wanted this stupid battle over and out of the way so that the future could be entered into sooner rather than later — or at all...

The army reached the area selected for the fight.

To the right flank stretched the river, masked off by a screen of closely growing vegetation. The ground lay open, dotted with a few trees, scattered outposts of the forest, and most of the left flank was open and rolling, ideal country for cavalry maneuver.

As this was what amounted to a north-south confrontation along the Kazzchun River the northern forces must have a marked preponderance of cavalry. They were the people who tended the vast herds of mewsanys and provided them to the southerners, after all. Chuktar Ortyg Lloton na Mismot, who was a trylon, commanding Milsi’s cavalry, had a stern task ahead. He had most of the nobility riding in his ranks.

With all the cavalry available to the enemy, Seg calculated that Muryan would attempt to work the old door hinge ploy on him. He’d use some of his cavalry to shoulder the mewsany riders of Milsi’s army aside, and then just ride around from his right flank, using his anchored left infantry as the hinge, and roll Seg and all his people up and crush them against the river. If they all went swimming, well, that would put a little extra zest in Trylon Muryan’s day.

Inquiries of his infantry commanders elicited the information that soldiers always fought by regiment, and the regiments in their higher groupings always fought together, as was proper.

Chuktar Moldo Nirgra na Chefensmot, who was a strom, wrinkled up his forehead when Seg gave him his orders.

“We need to hold, Chuktar Moldo. This you will do.”

“My regulars will stand, Kapt Seg. We are skilled with the strangchi. But — the scum you foist on me—”

“Not scum, Chuktar! Men like you or me. They may be fishermen or laborers but they can fight. You will need the fishspears, believe me.” Then Seg went more deeply into just what these ill-disciplined bands of half-naked men throwing cruelly barbed spears might do when allied with the solid ranks of the regulars.

The strangchi, long-hafted, topped by spear-point, axe-head and hook, was not the strangdja of Chem, that holly-leafed lethality; in these circumstances it ought to prove superior. If it failed, Seg’s army would go splashing into the brown waters.

Chuktar Moldo loosed the collar of his tunic under the rim of his corselet, the kax gilded and brave with engravings of stirring battle scenes.

“It is these Bowmen of Loh, Kapt, that—”

Seg lowered a baleful glance on the infantry commander. “I have seen mercenaries refuse their hire and run when they heard they were to face Bowmen of Loh. But you are not mercenaries. You fight for your queen! And our mercenary archers are Undurkers, who have a great contempt for Bowmen of Loh.”

With that Seg finished off his instructions, and he thought with his own professional arrogance that he’d always considered these condescending Undurkers a bunch of idiots. Still, they would have to serve this day...