“He is the Supreme Being,” Seg told her. “Well, of Erthyrdrin, that is. You believe in Pandrite, of course, being of Pandahem?”
“Of course. I do not call myself an overly religious woman. But I know of the power religion can afford.
Pandrite is the most powerful god in Pandahem, as Armipand is the most powerful devil. But there are many other gods and many other pantheons. I have heard you speak of Vox, and of Opaz—”
“Aye.”
She half-lifted one eyebrow at him; he did not elaborate.
They walked a little apart from the others, for Seg carried everything he possessed with him. Like him, Milsi had no retainers. What they could not carry they could not have.
In the end the adventurers sorted out their bundles.
Slaves carried more than slaves cared to carry. The guards, with a deal of haggling over increased rates of pay, agreed to carry bundles. The threat of the pack of toilcas remained with everyone. If that eerie witch woman in her throne could detect them and direct the bandits to them, surely she might do the same for the toilcas?
“She looked at each one of us,” said Fregeff. Rik Razortooth upon his shoulder stirred a membranous wing and crept forth from the sorcerer’s voluminous hood. “She searched for someone, that is clear.”
“Well, we’re all here,” pointed out Kalu. He and his men were loaded with loot. That was their profession, venturing into tombs for treasure. They were good at their chosen task in life.
“Perhaps she looked for someone she knew, a friend, or something,” said Exandu, a trifle querulously.
“And when she saw us she didn’t like us hanging about here.”
“And we are not hanging about for long!” Ornol had unearthed a whip from his baggage, and now he cracked this with a fearsome bang.
“March! We put a long distance between us and this devilish Coup Blag before nightfall. March!”
Idly, Seg wondered what might happen if the strom accidentally flicked one of the principals with that whip. Or, come to that, if in his arrogant way he mistook a guard under a bundle for a porter and tickled him up...
That should prove amusing, at the least, by Orestorio with the Broken String!
During the fight the Lady Ilsa, Strom Ornol’s traveling companion, had hidden beneath a heaped-up pile of baggage. Her corn-colored hair had never recovered from her experiences, along with the others of the expedition, in the Coup Blag, and was now a fluffy yellow mass badly in need of the attentions of a first-class hairdresser. The neatness of Milsi’s hair, the severe smartness of Shanli’s, were in marked contrast.
Shanli carried her accustomed burdens. Milsi had taken a part of Exandu’s baggage, after a sidelong look at Seg, who humped along with a massive chest on his shoulder, out of the way of his bowstave.
That chest was Exandu’s. They owed the merchant nothing, of course; they carried these things out of comradeship.
The Lady Ilsa walked along freely, the new clothes she had discovered in the bandits’ hideout flowing about her, her head up, unencumbered.
Well, Seg reflected not a little sourly, the silly girl fancied she was a great lady, and the very first time he’d met her she’d treated him like a slave, like dirt.
The memory cheered him up and he smiled. Milsi observed this. She did not sigh. She did realize that this craggy man with the smooth suppleness of a superb athlete had a past, just as she had. She felt for him sensations new and strange to her. She might not be frightened — too much — by a ferocious onslaught of drikingers out to slay the men and capture the women; she was deeply disturbed by her own fascination with Seg and by the turmoil of her feelings. She consciously used the word turmoil, for that word was often quoted by the poets, and used in the many plays she loved, to denote a woman’s perplexities.
A turmoil of emotions had never meant much to her before, rather, she had experienced anger and resentment, for her life had not been easy. Now she was beginning to grasp a little at what the poets meant.
For a woman in her position to fall in love — actually to commit that gross folly! — would be disastrous.
And to fall in love with a wild, reckless, headstrong warrior of fortune would be the stupidest act of all.
So the expedition set off and left the horrors of the Coup Blag and struck boldly down into the Snarly Hills.
Chapter three
Milsi expresses a considered opinion
The bold expedition had set off, full of high hopes, from the tavern called The Dragon’s Roost in Selsmot.
That was a small place, a stockaded area of thatched huts and houses, open and free to the air, rather grand, all things considered, to aspire to the title of town. The smot in the name might cause offense or ridicule in other folk more used to the smots of civilized places out of the jungle.
“I do not particularly wish to go to Selsmot,” said Milsi quietly to Seg as they traipsed along a vague trail through the jungle.
“Oh? Well, everyone else started from The Dragon’s Roost, and naturally they wish to return there.
From Selsmot I suppose they’ll all go off home.”
“Or to more adventuring. The Pachaks, for whom I have a high regard, are indeed a most interesting party. Fancy! They make their living going around and robbing tombs—”
Seg cleared his throat.
“I’m not sure they’d appreciate your dubbing their profession a robbery. They don’t just dig up graves and take away the grave-goods. Far from it. They venture into dungeons and caverns and perils where the owners set traps, both physical and sorcerous, to slay them. I’d say they earn their living. And, anyway, the whole business is a kind of game.”
The trail wended past immense trees, each one isolated by its own capacity to discourage rival growths, and the way was relatively easy. Milsi looked up at Seg, and shook her head, and tut-tutted.
“When someone is out to kill me, I hardly call that a game!”
“It’s not an unreasonable way of looking at it, though. At least, it helps to take the edge off the horror.”
“All the same. They are stealing treasure which is not theirs.”
“As I just said, my lady, if they merely robbed graves then I would agree with you. But the owners of the dungeons and tombs the Pachaks visit agree to a kind of compact with the intruders. It goes something like this: ‘If you venture in here after treasure, then I will try to trap you. If you win through, you are welcome to what you have found.’ In my reckoning, a great many parties of adventurers never do get out alive.”
She lifted her shoulder at this.
“I suppose you are right.”
“I have heard of a place called Moderdrin, where the land is studded with mounds covering immense dungeons. There the wagers go on all the time. It is well known that parties fly in from all over Paz.”
“Paz?”
Seg looked at her in astonishment.
“What, my lady?”
“Paz. What is Paz?”
Seg almost groaned aloud. If his old dom were to be here and listen to this!
He explained.
“The grouping of continents and islands on this side of Kregen is called Paz. It includes this island of Pandahem, and the island of Vallia—”
She fired up at once.
“Don’t talk to me of Vallia! A vile lot! They’re worse pirates than those drikingers from whom we’ve just won free. Vallia, indeed!”
“Well, my lady, that is as may be. Paz contains the three continents of Havilfar, Segesthes and Turismond, and also the continent of Loh, which is barely regarded these days after the collapse of the ancient Empire of Loh.”
“You surprise me, Seg. How do you come to know all this, or are you merely amusing yourself at my expense?”
He didn’t even bother to deny the charge.
“I know, my lady, because the union of all the countries and peoples of Paz is essential if we are to face the dangers of those who raid us all.”
“You speak of the Sch
turgins?”
“If you mean the fish-headed reivers who sail up from the other side of the world and slay and burn all our peoples and places, yes. They are variously called Shants, Shtarkins, Shanks. Usually, they are killed whenever the opportunity offers. But they are very hard to slay.”
“I have heard of them only. As I said, I do not wish to go to Selsmot or this Dragon’s Roost, which sounds a most deplorable tavern. I am from farther inland, upriver, where the jungle no longer chokes everything, and the plains are free...”
She stopped abruptly.
Seg could guess she was homesick for the superior climate farther north, nearer to the massive mountain chain that bisected Pandahem in an east-west direction.
He said, bending to her as they walked along: “I have nothing to detain me in Selsmot. Do you know the way to wherever it is you wish to go?”
“No questions, Seg?”
“Are questions necessary?”
“No. I find myself hardly believing in you.”
He wrinkled up his eyebrows at this. He was not fool enough, after what had passed between them in the unspoken way of growing confidence, to think she meant she did not believe what he said. But he shied away from the idea of thinking that her disbelief stemmed from what she obviously meant, that he was her perfect jikai.
Seg had seen the folly of boasting. He had seen the idiocy of bloated self-esteem. This idiot Strom Ornol, for all his high-handed ways, was a mere beginner in the league of self-lovers and worshippers of their own importance.
Like a painted and caricatured devil, popping up through a trapdoor in one of the knockabout farces they loved in Vondium, the capital of Vallia, Strom Ornol came storming back down the line of marching men and women. He let his whip lick about, stinging a buttock here, striping a back there. He saw Seg.
By this time they were all aware of Ornol’s penchant for quarreling. He thrived on it. No one reacted to his goading these latter days of the expedition, and this infuriated him the more. But the Lady Milsi was a newcomer, brought out of capture within the mountain.
“The drikingers did not fight particularly well, did they, Pantor Seg?”
Seg became cautious on the instant. “Perhaps they were out of practice, Strom Ornol. Mayhap they had not met real fighting men for some time.”
Ornol had him in his verbal trap now. Seg’s caution came from the way Ornol addressed him as pantor.
Both he and the Bogandur had been recognized as lords out for adventure; their particular titles and claims to lands were left vague. Now Seg realized he had opened the way for Ornol to release the venom troubling him.
“Real fighting men? Oh, yes, of course. I, personally, slew four of them. I saw the Pachaks fighting well, as Pachaks always do. Even Master Exandu managed to knock two of the bandits over. But I was not aware of your presence, Pantor Seg, until the very end. I believe you managed two, did you not, when it was all over?”
Seg did not laugh in the popinjay’s face.
He was thinking that a quiet, easy reply would be best. In the old days, he’d have just given the idiot a slap around the face and dared him to carry the matter further. These days, his recklessness had been much tempered by hard-won experience.
So that he was completely unprepared for Milsi’s outburst.
“Four, you slew, did you, Ornol? Four of them! A great total! Why, Pantor Seg the Horkandur here slew four of them before anybody turned around. And then he shafted four more. Aye! And slew the last two you spoke of and the only two you happened to see.”
Ornol’s pallid face froze.
Seg did not bother to sigh. He didn’t think with any regrets of the loss of companionship on the march back to civilization. He just dumped down Exandu’s burden, took Milsi’s bundle from her and threw that down.
As he was doing this, Milsi went on in a voice that cut like best Valkan steel.
“Why, you great bloated buffoon! Don’t you understand anything? You’re just a barrel of lard rendered down fine and dribbling over the pantry floor! Onker! Idiot! You owe your lives to Pantor Seg!”
Seg grabbed her around the waist, using his left hand. Ornol was ripping out his rapier in such an access of anger he fouled the draw, and struggled and cursed with his baldric. What he would have done had he drawn the rapier Seg did not dare to contemplate by reason of his own reply.
He just stuck his knobby fist into Ornol’s jaw.
The dandy lord fell down, his mouth half-open and gargling. Seg didn’t bother to hit him again. Guards were running up, yelling. No doubt he’d manage to kill a lot of them before they did for him; that was merely a foolish path. With Milsi to protect, he had to be clever and cunning, rather than brainless and muscle-bound.
Without a word he bundled Milsi up, carrying her bodily with his left arm around her waist.
He wanted to take a wager with himself that he’d reach the jungle edge before they shafted him.
He ran. He nipped between the tree trunks, using their gigantic boles to give him cover against the cruel iron birds. Suns light glowed above and the undergrowth of the rain forest opened up. Thankfully, Seg plunged into the choking green thickness, forcing his way past bushes and scrub, fending off thorned vines, smelling new stinks, feeling his feet squelching into mud, battling on.
Milsi hit him over the head.
“Put me down, you great lummox! We can get on more swiftly if I run too.”
He plunked her down onto her feet so that her moccasins slurped deep into the mud.
“All right. Keep moving on, and don’t talk.”
“Yes, certainly—”
“Shastum!”
At that harsh command to keep silence she bit her lip. Then she started off to follow him.
Seg was not at all surprised to feel her hand grip round inside his belt as she hung on as he forged ahead.
The nature of the forest changed. Gone were the tall solemn trees with each giant isolated and denying life to lesser growths. Now the deciduous trees clustered, tangled and thickly growing, admitting light here and there and each fighting a long-drawn struggle for existence. Epiphytes twined about everywhere, sucking sustenance from the trees, and vines depended, looping, sensile, as ravenous to eat as any predator.
Over the centuries the trees shed their leaves into a deep congestion upon the floor of the forest. The leaves took time to rot down. The smell rose high, thick, cloying, a stench that gagged. Seg and Milsi moved on more through than over a giant compost heap.
The way grew hard and more hard.
Presently Seg halted.
He found a niche where a many-rooted tree left a space beneath the out-branching roots. Dampness cloyed. They were both sweating. Their clothes clung unpleasantly to them. Seg was not at all sure that the space beneath the roots was safe. A vine looped down inquisitively and he lopped the end with a slash from his sword. Milsi jerked back.
“Keep still, do not speak, and keep your eyes open.”
Dumbly, she nodded.
She had known this warrior to be sudden and quick; now she was seeing a new side to his character.
Seg peered about. He felt confident that any pursuit would have given up by now, especially when the pursuers hit the choking, dense, almost impenetrable forested area. The heat was stifling. Insects buzzed and pirouetted everywhere. Pin-heads clustered and started to suck blood. Seg and Milsi, cautiously, kept on slapping them away.
As for Milsi, she could barely comprehend how she had contrived to find herself in such a terrible predicament.
What would her people say if they could see her now!
She had to persevere. She could tell this warrior Seg the Horkandur much; she knew she could not bring herself to tell him all. Not yet, at least...
A monster, all teeth and scales and spikes, blundered past, forcing his way through the tangle by bulk and power. Even he had to pick a path that avoided the worst of the natural obstructions. Seg and Milsi were quite content to let him pass without comment.
“Very well, Seg.”
So meek, her answer! She surprised herself!
The sounds of the forest rose and fell with the ceaseless activities of life and death. The heat sweltered.
The great red sun, Zim, and the smaller green sun, Genodras, cast down a muted, entangled radiance among the fronds and branches. The pin-heads stung and were slapped away with increasing irritation.
Presently, Milsi said, “You mentioned something about eating and drinking, Seg.”
“Aye.”
“Well?”
Her question was not so much tart as resignedly amused, as though she was waiting expectantly for a miracle.
Patiently, keeping a continuing observation along the backtrail and all about the tangled root mass, Seg told her: “Food is no problem. As for drink, we must boil every drop of water we touch.”
“I see.”
She waited, sharing his patience.
Then: “Do we eat and drink now?”
“Wait.”
“But—”
Still he did not look at her. He sat comfortably, relaxed and yet, as she could clearly see, immensely alert.
He was so still as to appear graven from stone, the only movement the occasional impatient flick of a finger to ward off the pestering pinheads.
“Listen, Lady Milsi. In the jungle — or anywhere else, come to that — patience equals life. Impatience equals death.”
“I do understand—”
“I think not.”
She bit her lip in vexation. What a crude barbarian warrior he was! And yet, well, this was a part of his life she had not shared, could not have shared. The idea that this way of living might be hers from now on gave her a shudder that was not entirely delicious with romantic terror; but was not too far removed from that silly notion.
If she told him the truth about herself, he might react in a wild and unpredictable way that would spoil everything. No. Far better to get back home to safety and then sort things out.
She had no doubts whatsoever that with Seg the Horkandur to protect her she would see her home. She would arrive in the end safely; the trouble was the journey at this rate was going to take an unconscionable amount of time.
Seg the Bowman Page 3