For that miraculous escape he was known as Nath the Flounder. “Oh, aye, Tyr Naghan Shor. By the Bloody Jaws of the Brown River Herself, I think we know foreigners better than you.”
Not allowing his natural numim authority to exert itself over a matter so petty, Naghan took himself off.
He walked through the muddy street with a swing, judging that he would just get indoors before the rain fell down like a solid blow on everyone and everything. He passed the inns with a cock of his head at the sign of the Mermaid’s Ankle, walked with the Xaffer at his side and rear, into a wider thoroughfare where a raised wooden sidewalk indicated the higher status of the neighborhood.
“There it is,” he said, and strode on, turning up wooden steps to a bronze gate. A large house walled off stood beyond the bronze gate. At his ring a man answered the bell with a cheery remark and a genial presence. This man wore a buff jerkin over a tunic whose sleeves were banded in red and yellow. He wore two swords.
“Come on, come in, horter. I shall announce you at once.”
Tyr Naghan grunted in a noncommittal way. As he entered, another man was just going out, walking fast to reach the nearest inn before the rains came. He wore a buff jerkin and buff breeches, and his hat possessed a wide rolled brim with a jaunty feather curling at the side. He gave the numim a cheerful
“Llahal, horter,” before trotting off toward the taverns.
Tyr Naghan Shor, followed by his Xaffer slave secretary, went into the building. As the doors closed and the first drops of rain fell splat onto the mud, he said: “A waste of time. Just a waste of time.”
* * * *
The so-called “big” plains of northern Croxdrin were extensive; but in no way could they be compared to the enormous areas of Segesthes where the wild clansmen rode on and on for week after week and still there was no end to the plains. Herds of animals grazed here, and the predators had their fill during feeding time in the age-old way. Seg rode a mewsany at breakneck speed, two more tailing on the leading ropes, and he no longer carried a sword.
Three quarters of the blade lay far back down the trail embedded in the side of a wersting, and the hilt rested a few dwaburs farther on, shoved well and truly down the sharp-fanged gullet of the leader of the wersting pack.
Diomb’s directions had been precise. Seg knew how much farther he had to go when he saw the brown and yellow tents clustered about a stand of trees breaking the level of the plain. He slowed. The werstings were vicious hunting dogs, black and white striped killers; but he had outrun them now for the loss of his sword and two mewsanys. What lay up ahead in those tents could be far worse trouble.
He felt damned naked without a bow, by Vox!
He was tired, hungry and thirsty. None of that mattered until he had taken Milsi and the others safely out of the clutches of Trylon Muryan. He’d eaten all the provisions in the mewsany’s saddlebags. He kept religiously intact the last bottle of wine, a mediocre red stuff. The girls might need a refresher when he found them.
When the Maiden with the Many Smiles shone down refulgently in a pink wash of moonlight Seg scouted the camp and the Warvol Tower beyond. As for the tents, they housed simple herdsmen of the plains, who could ride their mewsanys with consummate skill, hurl a rope, cut and slash with their heavy halberd-like strangchis to drive off the werstings. Of bows they appeared to have only tiny self bows that wouldn’t stick a woflo’s hide.
As for the tower...
The thing brought back vivid memories to Seg Segutorio of Erthyrdrin. Like a Peel Tower, it soared up, stark and brutal against the stars. There were no outworks. Set here to guard a long-forgotten frontier, it was now kept in use by Trylon Muryan to immure his prisoners. Similar towers, stark, simple, separate, had dominated the skylines of Seg’s youth. Erthyrdrin might be vastly different from these plains, being a land of valleys and fey folk whose characters were yet shrewdly practical, yet it shared the architecture.
The Warvol Tower lofted, tall, unpierced by any window or arrow slot for the first hundred feet. Above that the slits leered down. Near the top there were even trellised arcades supported on slender pillars.
Here in Pandahem no thought was given to the defense against aerial attack. These people did not expect a host of saddle flyers to burst upon them from the clouds. They had not witnessed airboats swooping in to disgorge fighting men.
Seg had no saddle flyer. He had no voller.
All he had was a knife.
Diomb had said: “They are kept in the chambers with columns of blue and yellow. The columns of green and yellow are where the quarters for the guards are situated.”
Staring up, Seg cautiously circumnavigated the tower. He assured himself that those columns up there were blue and yellow. If that blue was really green... Well, that lay in the hands of the all-seeing Erthyr of the Bow.
A ramp curled up from the ground three quarters of the way around the tower before reaching the main door. This was set at a cunning oblique angle in the masonry so that no room was afforded for the swing of a ram.
There was no way, Seg had to face the truth, that he was going to force his way in through that door and then up all the interminable stairs within to the prisoners’ quarters at the summit.
He took himself off to the herdsmen’s camp like a gray wraith, skulking like a lurfing of the plains.
He kept his saddle animals well away from those of the herders. He did first things first. Instead of stealing some food, he went off to the thickest part of the stand of trees away from the tents, and settled down to work.
Had he not had the fortune to be favored with the knife, he considered gravely, he’d have chewed the damned wood off with his teeth...
To say that he could not remember when he had built his first bow was correct, for he seemed to have been building bows all his life; but he could well recall the very first adult bow. And, of course, there was the stave of the green Yerthyr wood he had cut from Kak Kakutorio’s tree. The trees growing here in Pandahem now were not Yerthyr — most certainly not. The Yerthyr, of a green so dark as almost to be black, was lethally poisonous to animals without the special second stomach such as the thyrrixes of Erthyrdrin had. Well, even had these trees been Yerthyr there would be no time to fashion a real longbow in a single night. A longbow took four years or so...
Around him within the trees of this wood lay staves and billets waiting to be released and freed into longbows. All he wanted was one decent stave, for he would not contemplate jointing two billets.
Eventually he selected a limb in which the grain appeared to run straight and which had the slightest of curves so that he could compensate for the string-follow. His knife went swish-swish through the wood, smooth and gentle strokes that slivered the heartwood away with full respect to the lay of the grain. He found places where the grain forced itself up in a curve and so he left that curve there, rightly contemptuous of any stupid attempt to cut the sapwood to conform.
Above him the Maiden with the Many Smiles wheeled through the stars, and the Twins shed down their mingled pinkish light, streaming shadows between the trunks. Seg worked on, head bent, concentrated into a single organism that could do this thing superbly well.
Bowyers there might be in this world of Kregen; there were no finer builders of bows than those of Erthyrdrin. He carefully thinned the limbs of the bow, constantly checking with finger and thumb, with eyes that could judge to a whisker. A lifetime’s experience was now coalesced into this one task, to make a bow that would cast aright.
Gradually the rough limb torn from the tree assumed a section something like a thimble. Stout in the handle, cunningly tapering to the tips. He would just have to cut string notches there, no horn or ivory nocks in this bow. Only two pins bothered him, and these he left with plenty of spare wood to be on the safe side. He was working at a pace that, to an observer, would appear cautious and steady and even slow. In reality he prepared and trued the bow with prodigious speed.
Every now and then Seg cocked an
eye at the Moons. He checked the time, aware of the passing moments.
When he first tested the bow he used a bowstring from his pouch. At least that was proper, a real silken string from his own longbow. The bow bent sweetly and he held it up, muscles bulging, to see better the way the two limbs curved and to judge the arc. The sapwood on the back and the shaped heartwood on the belly worked together. He made a tiny clicking sound of satisfaction. The fistmele, the clenched fist and upright thumb, that measured the proper distance between string and handle was right. The bow felt right. The handle was a bit of a mess; no time to fix a real handle. Now for the shafts...
In the end he had to settle for the heart of three leaves, cut down to long and narrow flights. He fastened the fletchings with a length of scarlet thread ripped from the edge of his loincloth. There was no need for a head.
He might simply have taken a suitable springy branch and fitted the bowstring and tried that. But he felt that the cast ahead would demand length — or, rather, height — strength and accuracy. For a Bowman of Loh there was really only one way to secure those requirements.
“Now,” he said, speaking softly and with great solemnity, “may Erthanfydd the Meticulous approve of this work and bless this newborn bow.”
The final flourish remained. Dutifully, he cut his sign neatly into the wood without marring the finish. That sign he felt might help...
The feel of the bow in his hand was odd, of course, for very many reasons. The lack of seasoning would mean that the bow could never, in the opinion of a Bowman of Loh, be a proper longbow. As for the arrow, all his skill and judgment had to serve in getting the spine right, in seeing that the shaft was not too stiff or too weak for the weight of the bowstave.
He’d been forced to tighten everything up in this devil of a rush. And he was famished. Scouting around the herdsmen’s tents he came across an abandoned bowl of cheese which, when he dipped his fingers in and sucked, tasted like King Golanfroi’s Nosedrops — and every child knew what they tasted like. Still, he sucked down and didn’t breathe in too hard through his nose. Then he reconnoitered the piquet lines and discovered the coil of rope he was after. The ropes were used between posts for temporary corralling purposes. With his booty over his shoulder he went back to his clump of trees.
Unraveling a fine strand took time. He’d made the distance judgment with the experienced eye of a shooter. He wouldn’t be out more than the length of a man’s body. When he had his fine long strand he coiled it with exquisite care and fastened one end to the arrow.
Then he picked up a splinter of wood, whittled the end to a needle point, and set off for the Warvol Tower.
The guards were not foolish or masochistic enough to stand a watch out on the open plain when no one was going to get into the tower but through the one doorway. Seg circled twice, checking, and then stationed himself under the spot where, high above and seeming to reel sickeningly against the stars, the blue and yellow arcade showed.
If that wasn’t blue up there...
Now was the time.
Quickly, he pricked the ball of his left thumb with the needle-sharp splinter and a drop of blood, black and shining, oozed out. With the other end of the splinter and in his own blood, he wrote on the leaf fletchings: “Haul in.”
Sucking his thumb took no time. He gripped the bow. He held it familiarly, and yet with the tentativeness of fresh acquaintance. The bow felt good. Had he been using one of his own bows he would simply have lifted the stave, drawn and let fly. As it was, he felt his way into the shot, sniffing the faint night-breeze, feeling the waft of air on his cheek. He looked up and the bow followed him.
Seg shot in his bow. He felt the draw, the brace, the loose. The shaft sped upward. The fine twine unraveled at lightning speed.
The arrow soared up and up against the stars. It curved. It hovered. The twine whirled away aft, seeming to vanish where it neared the arrow. With the suddenness of all shafts in flight, the arrow vanished between two of the blue and yellow columns.
No lights showed through the slits above him, and only dimly seen a wash of radiance seeped around the columns. He waited. He held the slender thread in his hand. In only a few moments that stretched like the last day before paynight, the thread jerked in his hand. He jerked it gently three times and then watched as it began to draw away upward.
The check when the heavy rope came on amused him. Then whoever it was hauling in took a fresh purchase and the rope whistled up the sheer side of the tower.
He had judged well. There were perhaps five man-lengths left when the rope quivered and hung still. He waited for them to tie it off above, and pulled. An answering quiver reassured him. He put the bow down, laid both hands on the rope, and hauled hard. He pulled with determination to dislodge any shoddy knots up there. The rope held.
With that, like the little spinlikl Lord Clinglin, up he went. He climbed using his arms alone, hand over hand, only occasionally having to use his feet to fend off. Just below the arcade he paused. He was breathing deeply and evenly. Now was the time for a guard to smash him across the head with his sword, or more simply just to cut the rope...
He struck his head over the edge.
Malindi, Bamba and Milsi stared at him as though he were a magician popping out of an empty chest.
“Seg!”
“Quiet.”
He hauled himself in over the edge. There was no time to talk, to do anything but haul in the rope. When he had the end he grabbed Bamba, wrapped a bowline about her and pushed her off with a fierce: “Do not cry out, Bamba!” in her tiny ear.
She lowered down without a squeak.
“If Bamba can make no sound, neither will I,” quoth Malindi, bravely. She was scared stiff.
The rope slackened off and then wriggled. Bamba had slipped out of the bowline on a bight and Seg hauled in. Malindi went down with her eyes fast shut, her heart in her mouth, damply — and without a sound.
“She is a brave girl,” whispered Milsi. “I prayed you would come to rescue us, Seg, my jikai.”
“Quiet.”
He hadn’t got over his feelings of abandonment just yet, unworthy though they were. He felt awkward in Milsi’s presence, almost embarrassed.
Each woman had taken a few clothes and necessaries gathered up from the toiletry table. Milsi glanced about the room beyond the blue and yellow columns, and then, very firmly, slipped the rope about her.
Seg payed out and down she went. Presently the signal rattled up and he had the reassuring knowledge that the three women were safely down. He took his sole arrow, stuck through his belt. He went over the side like a lizard sliding over a rock. Down and down and his feet hit the grass with a thump.
“Oh, Seg!”
“Talk when we are away.”
Had the rope been dry enough he’d have set it alight to confuse those rasts up there. But it held dampness and so, with a feral look around that boded ill for anyone foolish enough to cross his path, he led off. The women followed silently, holding each other in mutual comfort.
They reached his three mewsanys. Here, immediately, a fresh problem presented itself.
“I could not ride, my lady!” Malindi clutched her thin tunic to her breast. “A saddle animal like the great ladies! Oh, no, my lady!”
Bamba said: “Perch on that great beast!”
Milsi said, with a sigh: “We were brought here in a carriage, Seg.”
“I will take Malindi up on my saddle. You take Bamba. And be sharp about it. We must be well clear by dawn.”
They jumped at his tone.
They did as they were bid and after a time they changed around and brought the third mewsany in to relieve the extra load. They rode silently, as Seg had enjoined.
The awkwardness persisted, exacerbated by his awareness that Milsi was not aware of it or its cause.
He rode abaft her mewsany on purpose, and kept a watchful look out to the rear. The peril sprouted from the front, suddenly, in a long line of riders breasting a hill a
nd racing down with wild war whoops upon them.
Their own mounts were tired and dispirited. With two riders up, they could never outrun this cavalry that pounded down now, glittering in the first light of the suns. Armor winked in ruby and jade fire.
Lanceheads glittered. Feathers waved. Dust spurted back in a long line. The riders bore on and opened out into a circle, ringing the fugitives.
Seg slid his bow forward and nocked his single shaft.
They’d done well and come a long way — and now they’d come to the end of their flight.
He looked into the faces of these warriors.
Skull faces... Blunt-featured, with a tightly drawn skin of pebbly gray-green, with the roots of the teeth exposed, with bony brow ridges overhanging smoky crimson eyes, these faces looked the decomposing features of nightmare newly risen from the grave. Bamba let out a shriek of horror. Malindi fainted clean away. The ghastly riders ringed their quarry.
Milsi urged her mount a little forward. She held up her hand.
“Lahal and Lahal! Well met!”
“Lahal, majestrix!” said the leader, his gruesome features writhing with an emotion that might indicate pleasure. “Thank the Good Pandrite we have found you safe at last!”
Chapter eighteen
The queen calls: “Hai, Jikai!”
“I,” said Skort the Clawsang, “was told you were dead, majestrix, in that confounded Coup Blag.” He used the teeth that appeared to be decomposing to bite firmly into a slice of succulent roast vosk. They were sitting around the camp fire and they were eating and drinking until they burst.
“It was poor Milsi who died. She had the same name as me, as you know, and I grieve for her.”
“Aye.” Skort wiped his lipless mouth, daintily. “But, majestrix, it is not all good news. That foul cramph Muryan has not released your daughter, the divine Princess Mishti—”
“What!” The regal anger that blazed from Milsi made Seg realize that, by Vox, she was a queen.
Seg the Bowman Page 16