Seg the Bowman

by Alan Burt Akers

  The supposed racial enmity between Rapas, Fristles and Chuliks did not seem to affect these representatives of their races, and Seg could feel a tiny twinge of relief that he had no worries of that tiresome nature. He wouldn’t have cared had they flown at each other’s throats as they might well have done in other circumstances. He felt the most important step he could take now would be to get himself well out of this stupid Kazzchun River business, get back home to Valka and Vallia. He’d find his old dom, and then they could set about putting the country straight for the last and final time. Then there were his Kroveres of Iztar to concern him. They had been abominably neglected of late, what with other priorities like Spikatur Hunting Sword. No, get out of this the quickest way he could and get off back home.

  These new comrades of his might be rough paktuns or dubious characters along the river; they were sensible of the blow he had received, and while in no way expressing maudlin comfort, did not — as they would have done to a fellow sufferer — make mock of his affliction.

  Seg stood up. “Let us go down to the riverbank and find ourselves a boat.”

  Hundle stood up, looking troubled.

  “I mind me that the Law of the River does not take kindly to folk who steal boats.”

  Seg looked at him.

  “The Law of S.O.N. takes precedence, Hundle.”

  Kregans love abbreviations and initials. Hundle lifted one eyebrow.

  “The Law of Saving Our Necks. Right — wenda!”

  Under the light of She of the Veils they crept down to the riverbank, and, by that streaming roseate golden light they witnessed a horrific scene.

  A Schinkitree had just pushed off, the long narrow boat laden with bales. The loadmaster had either not known his job or had botched it. The boat was sinking.

  The paddlers chained to the benches screamed. They flailed their paddles at what reared at them as the water closed in. Horrible, macabre, disgusting... The monsters roared from the brown water, churning it into suds, and those suds tinged ominously red-black under the light. Huge jaws crunched down. The boat slipped beneath the water, dragging with her the doomed slaves. The free men might just as well have been chained up. They flailed and splashed and tried to swim, and were engulfed. The noise of chomping jaws reached across the water clearly to the bank. Seg half-lifted his new bow, and then lowered it. Any help was impossible. The men tipped into the Kazzchun River were already dead men.

  “We do not let that happen to us,” he said.

  Hundle let out a queasy breath. “The nightmare,” he said, and he shook. “The nightmare!”

  This distraction, gruesome though it was, gave them the opportunity to find a boat at the downriver end of the wharf, to untie her and climb in unseen. They let her drift gently off downstream for a time before taking up the paddles and driving her fast and true through the treacherous water.

  There was no pursuit they could see.

  Fishing in the Kazzchun River was an occupation of an entirely different order from fishing in other parts of the globe. You didn’t just hang a line and hook, suitably baited, over the side and merrily haul in when you had a bite. Nor did you spread out nets and haul them in, beautifully freighted with the shining catch.

  If you did the latter, you’d haul in mere shreds and rags. And if the former — idiot! — you’d go headfirst over the side.

  One system involved placing two or three, even four or five, boats alongside one another and decking them in. Then, secure behind barriers, the fisher folk hurled long fish-spears. They had to watch for their targets, and select the edible from the predators. A flashing cast, the cruel barbs, fashioned probably from the fangs of the very monsters who lurked in the water, biting in and the quick hauling in of the line.

  If you hung about during that stage you’d most probably haul in only half of your catch.

  A river can support many different species, and the fish and plants sustain each other. A rain forest is a finely balanced biosphere, fragile, and living things learn to live together and contribute their part to the existence of the forest. Nalvinlad, being situated near the end of the forest proper, partook of the jungle and a little of the plains to the north. Hundle expressed grave doubts that they’d escape easily through the capital city without questions being asked.

  The Dorvenhork said in his growly way: “Let us go ashore and walk, then. I am famished!”

  They were all hungry.

  “It would be best, if we are captured, not to be found in possession of a stolen boat,” counseled Hundle.

  Caphlander expressed the pious hope that all would come well in the end.

  In any event, the end appeared immediate and sudden. A number of other boats and fishing craft mingled along a broad reach, and from the tangle of boats a paddler appeared thrusting along with the brown water broken into cream-colored foam at her prow. Seg looked and let rip with an exclamation of so profound a disgust no one else had the heart to comment.

  There followed a repetition of what had previously occurred. Their boat was forced to the bank under pain of being instantly sunk. In what seemed no time at all they were chained up and on their way to Kov Llipton’s dungeons in the city. The speed of it all impinged only faintly on Seg. His thoughts were not with him at the moment, not fully, not so as to make him the Seg Segutorio who would have put up a fight in his mad feckless way — and probably got himself killed for his foolhardy pains.

  The boat that had captured them had been sailing downriver, going along at a foaming pace, her paddlers urged on by Whip-Deldars. She flew the blue and white treshes, and the flags fluttered brilliantly in the streaming radiance of Zim and Genodras.

  Kov Llipton looked down on his miserable band of prisoners from his high deck aft. Cloth of gold hangings framed his seat. His feet rested on a balass and ivory stool. Watchful guards stood at his back, waving long yellow feather-fans to cool the Kov’s brow.

  Seg, chained up, looked at his own feet on the deck.

  “You are culprits, miscreants who have slain soldiers in the execution of their duty. You are drikingers.

  Therefore it is meet you should die with the customs of the river.”

  Hundle said in an oddly dignified way in these fraught circumstances: “No, pantor, no! We merely protected defenseless women. We have done nothing to bring the Laws of the River upon us.” It was clear that Llipton’s mention of these famous laws had sparked Hundle the Design.

  “Do not banter words with me!” The lion bellow roared about the prisoners. “I have judged. Now you swim.”

  Seg looked up.

  Kov Llipton was a numim, a lion-man, with fierce whiskers and ferocious, lowering lion face. His mane gleamed brilliantly under the light of the suns. Robed in war harness, strong and robust like most members of his race, he glowered down, the lord, the arbiter, the final dispenser of justice along the Kazzchun River.

  Seg’s tongue crept out and wet his lips. He could deal with lion-men. He lifted his head, and his shock of unruly dark hair bristled.

  “Listen to me, kov!” he bellowed out, and with every word his passion grew, his feelings of wrongness, his realization that good men should not have to die for sins they had not committed. “Listen to me, you great fambly, and learn the truth!”

  Llipton hunched forward, suddenly. His massive paw-like hand gripped onto his sword hilt. He frowned.

  “You speak to me—”

  “Aye, you great ninny! I speak the truth!” Rapidly, not wasting a word, he shouted out what had happened in Master Jezbellandur the Iarvin’s armory. At each sentence his comrades, with great venom, shouted out: “Aye!” and: “That is the truth!” and: “That was the way of it!”

  During this, the Krozair, Pur Zarado, joined in fervently. He knew a chance, slender though it might be, when he saw one.

  Kov Llipton listened intently, waving away a guard who would have laid Seg senseless with a blow from his spear butt. Llipton’s goldenyellow fur gleamed, his armor shone, his fierce lion-face
bent frowningly down. Seg roared on, worked up, determined that he must do all he could to save the lives of his comrades. He forgot about the Lady Milsi as the woman who might have shared his life; she became the object in whose protection they had done what they had done and were now being persecuted.

  “And so, Kov Llipton, you have the right of it now. If you condemn men for going to the assistance of ladies, of slaying rasts who attempt a lady and a queen, then your famous Laws of the River, aye! and of King Crox, are a blasphemy and a mockery in the eyes of honest men!”

  The kov pointed.

  “Bring that man up here to me!”

  Seg was dragged forward and dumped down at the foot of the ivory and balass stool. He glared up and the malevolence in his face made the kov’s eyelids twitch.

  “If what you say is true—”

  “If! I thought I spoke to a man of honor, who might recognize another such. Perhaps I was mistaken—”

  “You are too proud and insolent, or too mad—”

  “I am not proud, I hope I am not mad, and I am insolent only to a few people who deserve it.”

  Llipton brushed a beringed hand across his whiskers.

  “I bear hardly on malefactors, yet I dispense a just justice. If your story can be proved...”

  “Ask Master Jezbellandur. Ask the queen.”

  “Believe me, that I will do.” Llipton looked over the side. In a musing tone, he added: “That will not avail you, for by then you will have gone swimming.”

  “Justice!” screeched Seg. He staggered up, his chains dangling about him. “What kind of justice do they teach you here in this Opaz-forsaken blot called Croxdrin?”

  Llipton’s hand stilled above his whiskers.

  Seg saw that he had to bring this matter to a head by introducing an entirely new aspect to the situation.

  He drew a breath. He glared; but he got out what he had to say reasonably enough. “Let me speak to you, man to man, kov, or pantor, whatever they call nobles hereabouts. Maybe I can prevent a great misfortune falling upon you and all you love and value.”

  “What are you babbling about now? Guards!”

  Seg tried for the last time.

  “You are all doomed, kov, you great fambly, if you do not listen to me!”

  Llipton’s hand resumed that stroking of his whiskers, and the rings flamed in the jade and ruby radiance.

  Then: “Drag him up to me. I will hear what he has to say further to condemn himself. Then he swims.”

  Rough hands grasped Seg and hauled him up closer so that he stood swaying before the noble. Seg’s face composed itself, the mad fey glare faded from those piercingly brilliant blue eyes. Even his shock of black hair seemed to settle and grow smooth. He drew himself up. He looked the kov straight in the eye.

  “Listen to me, kov. You are a great noble here, and yet your poor barbarian people and your primitive river civilization are laughable. Know this! I am a kov. I am a Kov of Vallia! We in Vallia do not take kindly to anyone who insults one of us. I have an army at my command. Listen, I have already swum in your famous River of Bloody Jaws! I brought a voller down into the water — if you in your benighted ignorance know what a voller, a flier, is — and we swam to the shore and no monsters stopped us. My name is Seg Segutorio. These men with me are innocent of the vile charges brought — rather, you should send for a swim the perpetrators of the crime, if our justice had not already struck. If these men are not released then you must answer for the consequences when the might of Vallia is arrayed against you!

  Woe, indeed, on that day to all of Croxdrin along the Kazzchun River!”

  For a space of time that stretched intolerably, Kov Llipton sat, gripping his sword hilt, brushing his whiskers, saying nothing.

  In a voice soft as the kiss of steel, at last he said: “You claim much, Seg Segutorio. A kov? We shall see.

  Innocent? We shall find out. Insolent — ah, yes, you are that!”

  Seg said nothing.

  “One thing you claim, that you have already swum the river. That is the most difficult of all to believe—”

  “And the least important. I am who I say I am. You may never have heard of Vallia—”

  “Oh, yes. I know of Vallia.”

  Well, that explained the abruptly cautious attitude of the numim, then...

  “Take these men to the dungeons of the Langarl Paraido. Do not mistreat them. I will ponder the story, and have inquiries pursued. Until then, you tremble upon the brink of death.”

  “That,” said Seg Segutorio, a Kov of Vallia, “is no new experience.”

  Suddenly, Llipton leaned forward. “I am prideful of my trust. I keep the Law for the king. You did not say, Seg Segutorio, of what lands you are kov?”

  Seg didn’t bat an eye or split a second. “Of Falinur. I have given the charge of my kovnate over to my comrade, Turko the Shield, while I visit heathen parts.”

  “Of Falinur — if it exists — I do not know. But I shall. Have a care, lest you—”

  “What do you think can be worse, in your mind, than taking a swim in your river?”

  “Ah!” said Kov Llipton, and waved his guards to take Seg back to his comrades. They had not been privy to what went forward upon the high dais; they were agog to know what the hell was going to happen next. All that Seg could do was to assure them that, at least for now, they weren’t going for a swim.

  With a treacherous feeling of pleasure, Seg realized he was feeling amused. These poor benighted folk in their jungly river! This proud puffed numim — who were a great race of folk, to be sure — and his bewilderment. Vallia! Ah, well, perhaps there had been a grain of truth in the tale Seg had spun. Enough, perhaps, to delay their swim by a few days...

  Chapter sixteen

  In which Strom Ornol takes cover

  The amusement Seg felt increased when the ruling came down from Kov Llipton regarding the due payment required. Whether the story was true or not, they had indubitably taken knives from Master Jezbellandur the Iarvin. Ergo — those knives must be paid for. From each member of the group was, therefore, scrupulously removed the price of one knife. Seg almost laughed.

  “This has to mean our story is believed,” declared Khardun. He gave his whiskers the first proper tweaking they had received in too long a time. “We shall soon be free.”

  “Before that we should escape,” growled the Dorvenhork in his Chulik way. “By Likshu the Treacherous! Let us break a few skulls and make off.”

  “I am with you, Dorvenhork,” quoth Rafikhan.

  “Oh, and I, of course,” said Khardun in his offhand Khibil manner. “Naturally.”

  They were immured in the dungeons of the Langarl Paraido. The iron bars here were measurably thicker than those of the sinkhole in Mewsansmot. Also, they had a nice interesting habit here of sending condemned prisoners for their final swim wrapped in nets so that something could be hauled back and, if the head happened to be among the bits and pieces salvaged, then the heads of prisoners finished off by swimming could be impaled and exhibited along the city walls.

  Of them all, Umtig would not be consoled.

  He looked shrunken, his little puffed Och face miserable, his whole demeanor eloquent of the Thieves’

  own description — like a pickpocket with no fingers.

  Lord Clinglin, amid much boisterous jocularity, had swung nimbly out through the bars, and Umtig had confidently predicted his speedy return with the keys.

  Lord Clinglin had not returned.

  Caphlander in his mild Relt way attempted to comfort Umtig. “Nothing harmful can have happened,” he said, giving his beak a twitch. “And when we are released we will prosecute inquiries—”

  “When? If!”

  “So that,” rumbled the dangerous Chulik growl, “is why we should break a few skulls and escape!”

  “Yet,” said Zarado, speaking up forcefully and yet in a smooth even tone, “there are other aspects. They are feeding us. They are not ill-treating us. And we believe they are send
ing to search out the truth of our story. We can escape now and look foolish — and once again be subject to the Law — if we are found innocent. Or we can bide a few days and see.”

  “Lull the rasts into a false sense of security,” offered Rafikhan. “Aye, that is a good scheme.”

  The rest of them went at the argument and Zarado moved off to leave them to it. The cell was capacious and reasonably dry, and equipped with a few foliage-stuffed bags on which to sleep. The Krozair plumped down beside Seg, saying: “I owe you a deep apology, Seg—”

  “Not so, Pur Zarado. It is I—”

  “Listen. You gave into my charge the longsword. I no longer have the brand. So, you see how it is.”

  “The blade will return to its proper owner, never worry.”

  Zarado twisted up his ferocious moustaches, one side at a time. “I studied the blade. There were certain things upon it. And there were the letters DPKrzy. I knew a man once — Jak the Drang — who owned sword and letters similar—”

  Without thinking through the implications, for the situation had clearly changed, and still embedded in the usual caution, Seg rapped out: “Oh that was old Duruk Pazjik.”

  “Of Pur Duruk Pazjik I do not know.”

  Fascinated by the past history suddenly opened out by Zarado’s words, Seg had to say: “And this man, Jak the Drang?”

  “Oh, he turned out to be the Emperor of Vallia. My comrade Zunder and I hired out for a time, then we drifted off, meaning to sail back to Sanurkazz.” Here the Krozair heaved up a sigh. “I miss Zunder. We were parted in some heathen place called Molambo, and I was hired on to serve in swordships and so assisted in guarding boats up this Zair-forsaken river. I wish I’d never seen the place or this Grodno-Gasta of a Kov Llipton.”

  “The Eye of the World is perhaps not so far as we think. The Chulik asked for huliper pie in a tavern—”

  “Did he! The sailors of Magdag love that pie—”