Seg the Bowman (9 page)

A sennight later and well up the river the fugitives found it expedient to make a camp for a few days on one of the islands dotting the Kazzchun River hereabouts. The river rolled along, redolent of brown mud and damp growing things, choked with wildfowl, the mudflats always shimmering with the flash of wings.

The denizens of the water fought and thrived, and, all in all, there was food a plenty.

The histories of the freed slaves were interesting and shared a common thread. Folk who are born to slavery are born to slavery, as the saying went. Others, caught in petty crimes, found themselves chained and trudging along in the coffle, punished enough and more for their sins.

The little Och, Umtig the Lock, more than once exclaimed when he spoke: “By Diproo the Nimble-Fingered!” By this men knew him to be a thief.

The Chulik had formed an odd kind of respect for Seg. He had asked to inspect the Lohvian longbow, and made a stupid mewling whistle of admiration as he bent it.

“I am used to the dorven bow, the crossbow, or even the weak flat bow; this round longbow is indeed a marvel.”

Seg had never had much time for Chuliks. Raised from birth as they were to be mercenaries, and highly paid ones at that, they knew little of humanity. They were ruthless in their exactment of debts. But, in these latter days, he found that human converse was possible with specimens of the race. He simply handled each eventuality as it arose, and felt distinct relief that Nath the Dorvenhork had desisted from that first desire to shaft him.

Diomb brought up an interesting question, that made Seg roar with laughter, and then sober, and then —

lamely — try to explain.

“You stole this boat, Seg. You are a thief. They will cut off your hands, and your head—”

“They have to catch me first.”

“Yes — but, you said—”

“I know, Diomb, and mark me! What I said was right. But you saw the situation. All honest men abhor Katakis as slavers, even though they condone slavery. Katakis are anti-human in a way that—” Here Seg looked around the campsite on the river island. The Chulik was nowhere in sight. “In a way even that Chuliks are not. But I do not seek to pretend I did not steal the boat or that stealing is a crime. Just, that—”

“Thievery is an honest profession like any other!” protested the Och, Umtig the Lock, most heated.

“There are degrees, dom, and well you know it.”

They wrangled amicably for a space, and then Seg said to Umtig: “And mind you do not lead Diomb into bad habits, you rogue. I cherish your outlook in some things, not all.”

The traffic on the river thinned past the last town through which they had paddled at dead of night. Local produce traveled up and down, and the massive rafts carried stone and building materials to the south, as the slender schinkitrees carried wood upstream to the great plains.

“Let us paddle out and seize one of these craft laden with treasure, slit all their throats, and take the gold!” counseled a hulking great apim called Ortyg the Undlefar.

“We are not pirates, not renders!” said Seg, shocked at the uncouthness of it all.

“Why not? We have a boat, we have fighting men, we have—”

“And we have no weapons, apart from those of the four who rescued us,” said a Fristle, Naghan the Slippy.

“We descend on them unheard and unseen! We will soon have weapons!” Ortyg the Undlefar showed his contempt for those who did not understand the render’s trade.

A Sybli, a girl with the delectable body of a mature woman and the face of an innocent child in the way of her race of diffs, spoke up. “I would like to go home.”

Others took up this call. A lath-thin apim, known as Hundle the Design, said: “I agree we would like to go home. But I, for one, would prefer to return with a pocket full of gold. But, doms, I would not like to gain the gold through piracy or thievery.”

A Khibil whose haughty, fox-featured face showed that, like all Khibils, he considered himself a cut above everyone else — known as Khardun the Franch — said in his lofty way: “I am a hyr-paktun. Let us find a great lord and hire out our services as fighting men. We will soon make our fortunes.”

A mild-mannered Relt stylor, Caphlander the Quill, ventured to say that not all present had the skills of mercenary fighting men, paktuns.

Seg felt the twinge hearing that name. There had been just such a mild-mannered Relt when he’d first met his old dom, far and far away from here, and that Relt’s name had been Caphlander. Relts were distant cousins of the ferocious Rapas, and usually they were employed as domestics, stylors, clerical help, accountants.

“We stick together,” Seg declared. “We are going to reach the town of Mewsansmot. After that, with full bellies, you may go your own separate ways. There may also be gold in it, too.” He cocked a cautious eye at Milsi.

She took the point at once.

“I believe there will be gold for all of you if you help to bring us safely to Mewsansmot.”

The only serious opposition to this plan came from the hulking apim, Ortyg the Undlefar. Seg told him that he was at perfect liberty to leave the party. He would be put onto the riverbank of his choosing and from thence go where he willed. Ortyg chilled considerably in his own plans and oppositions to others after that.

The plain fact was that these one-time slaves had been taken up for a variety of reasons. Ortyg, now, was a real villain. The beautiful Sybli was a slave because members of her race were usually slaves. She had been there to be sold to a new master. Some were petty criminals, some were debtors, some had been snatched from their homes.

Seg sorted them out in his mind, allotting them places in his table of possible uses.

He took the opportunity to have a word with the Khibil, Khardun the Franch.

“I salute you, Khardun, as a hyrpaktun. How is it, if you care to tell me, that you became slave?”

Seg knew how to handle Khibils. So long as they believed they were the greatest, then things ran smoothly.

“How I became slave, dom? I will tell you. I am a hyrpaktun, I am a mercenary who hires out only for top rates, who commands, who orders. I served King Crox well. I had a detachment to take downriver, and this I did. When I returned, the king had gone to some heathenish place called the Coup Blag. The lady Mab, who was married to him in a ceremony, so I am told, of the utmost shortness, followed. The Kov Llipton—”

“Ah!” said Seg. “Now I have heard of him. He is the regent, is he not, and rules in the king’s place?”

“That is so. I do not know how I offended him. But whatever I did, it was wrong, and I was stripped, my pakzhan taken from me, my sword broken, and I was shipped out as slave.” Here the Khibil’s savage and resentful look did not surprise Seg. The pakzhan, a golden head of a zhantil, perhaps the most splendid of all Kregen’s wild animals that he knew of, strung on a silken thread and looped in a top buttonhole or over a shoulder knot, was the highest award conferred by hyrpaktuns upon members of their trade. It was hard to come by. A pakzhan glittering gold at the throat of a hyrpaktun marked him as a soldier of fortune of the highest renown.

Seg did not think it opportune to mention that he, too, had won the pakzhan and was a hyrpaktun. He had been a noble lord long enough for his more reckless days as a mercenary warrior to recede into the past for him.

“Tell me of Kov Llipton.”

“He is like any other great lord, I suppose. He runs the country now. I think that he was mightily displeased that Queen Mab followed the king to the Coup Blag.”

Ah! said Seg to himself. That did not take a deal of worming out. If this Llipton fellow wanted to be king, and King Crox dead, then he’d have to marry the queen.

“You saw Queen Mab?”

“No. She came from Jholaix—”

“From Jholaix!”

“Aye, Seg. She brought a dowry of wine so splendid that, well, I swear it was enough to make all of the kingdom drunk for three seasons.”

“And no hangovers.”

“No. Never! Not with the wines of Jholaix!”

They paddled upriver. No one of the passing craft offered to molest them. Milsi judged that pursuit had, indeed, hared off downriver.

Diomb came up to Seg as they paddled past one of the many islands dotting the broad river here, and said: “I am astonished by what that girl, the Sybli Malindi, says. She wants to go home. That is understandable. But, by Clomb of the Ompion Never-Miss! If she does that she will be slave again. That is what home means to her.”

“There are different sorts of slaves, Diomb. Oh, some folk who keep slaves treat them well, almost as part of the family. Syblies and Relts aspire to that condition. It is in the fields, the mines, the terrible places where men and women work until they drop, that slavery at its worst may be found.”

“And, another thing. There are mercenaries, paktuns, among us. They take — money — from other people to fight for them. That is, indeed, most strange.”

Seg laughed.

“If I do not like fighting and do not wish to risk my precious skin in a battle, then I will pay someone else to go out and fight for me. It is simple.”

“Well, I suppose so. But all mercenaries are not paktuns—”

“No. A paktun is a mercenary who has gained some fame. A hyrpaktun is a most famous paktun. Yet lots of mercenaries are dubbed paktuns these days. The custom is new. Just about only the young ones, the coys, are not called paktuns in general usage these days.”

“Well,” said Diomb. “I think that if I have to work to gain this money, then I will be a paktun.”

Seg was not surprised.

“You could. You would do well with your dratted blowpipe — your ompion. That would tickle ’em up on a battlefield, by the Veiled Froyvil, yes!”

The Chulik, Nath the Dorvenhork, in the general way of Chuliks, did not laugh or smile when he made his comment. But for a Chulik it was revealing enough.

“I agree. The little fellow would earn his hire!”

There was, Seg could see, a strange kind of brotherhood developing between the exponents of missile weapons.

He’d always been a feckless sort of scamp and so he’d never thought overmuch of the way he ought to treat diffs. Diffs were diffs; that was all there was to it. In these later seasons he had seen a deal of the world and had picked up new ways of handling exceptional members of odd races. But he’d never bothered his head much over Chuliks; they went their cold, mercenary way, and he went his.

Still, if the Dorvenhork wanted to secure allies, that would be no bad thing.

The political map had changed with the coming of age of King Crox, and he now controlled the length of the river from past Mewsansmot in the north to a new shanty town he’d erected ten or so dwaburs from the coast. King Crox did not control the mouth of the river and Mattamlad. But, then, it was highly unlikely that King Crox controlled anything at all in the fabulous world of Kregen, being no doubt stuffed down in the intestines of some horrendous monster in the maze of the Coup Blag.

A little Ift, Twober the So, went past with a long look at Seg’s bow. Twober’s ears stuck up in two shapely points almost past the crown of his head. His eyebrows slanted up, and his eyes slanted up.

Woodsfolk, the Ifts, not jungle folk, and Twober had wandered down here to South Pandahem from his home over the massive central mountains in North Pandahem.

Various plans were discussed by groups of the escaped slaves. All well understood their peril, and the punishments that would be their lot if they were recaptured. Any slave-owning society is hard on runaways.

Ortyg the Undlefar, although chastened, kept on a monotonous series of suggestions. All boiled down to paddling out and capturing a rich merchant raft, boat or Schinkitree, massacring all the occupants, and disappearing with the gold and jewels.

The evening light, all a glorious mingling of jade and ruby, threw mazy shadows upon the sliding water.

Waterfowl sprawled on the mudflats or turned in a glinting pinioned array in the last flights before nightfall.

The two second Moons of Kregen were due early tonight, the Twins would cast down a pinkish radiance that would light up the world in a strange and ghostly reflection of the twin suns, Zim and Genodras. The warm muddy scents rose.

The fires were set well back from the banks of the island in secure places so as not to be observed by craft passing along the river. Food there was in plenty. Palines grew in lush profusion. A slothfulness could easily overtake these people but for the ever-present fear of discovery and the terrors that would follow.

Guards were set. Diomb and Bamba disappeared farther back into the interior of the island where the vegetation, although it might not rival in any way the riot of the jungle, gave them a sense of home. Seg settled down, with Milsi and the Sybli girl, Malindi, sleeping not too far off and within call. He placed the Bogandur’s long sword at his side, with his own Lohvian longbow. The drexer he placed near to his right hand as he slept.

He had the last watch and would be called when Kregen’s fourth moon, She of the Veils, rose four glasses before dawn.

With the habits of a lifetime he awoke a few moments before he expected to be called. He yawned and stretched. He’d never wondered overmuch about the oddity of his own body, which must have some kind of blood-filled clepsydra somewhere inside. He and the Bogandur were old campaigners in matters of this nature.

He stood up and went toward the bank with its screen of bushes where the lookout was kept expecting to find Rafikhan, the Rapa with the orange and blue feathers, just setting off to wake him.

Perhaps he was a little early. The Twins were wheeling away to the west and the new roseate-golden tinge flushing the eastern sky was She of the Veils about to pour her glory upon the face of the world. He reached the lookout post without meeting a soul.

Rafikhan was just sitting up holding his head.

About to let fly with a torrent of abuse, Seg paused. Between the Rapa’s fingers a dark liquid thread shone greasily, staining down his facial feathers.

“Rafikhan! What’s amiss?”

The Rapa hissed his pain, rocking backwards and forwards. Beside him the body of the little Ift, Twober the So, lay in an ungainly and lax posture. Seg bent.