Seg the Bowman (4 page)

“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 Schturgins?”

“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.

“We will wait here until I am sure no one is following us. Then we will think about a drink and some food.”

“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.

At last — at long last — Seg said, “They did not follow us this far. Now we find our meal.”

A single shaft brought down a small creature of large ears and thin tail and orange and green furriness.

Thankfully, as far as Milsi was concerned, it was a mammal and not a reptile. Brusquely, as Seg set about preparing the poor creature, he instructed Milsi to collect wood and break open the crumbly interior from the outer bark.

He produced his tinderbox from the soft leather pouch attached to his belt and the janul worked splendidly. In a secure cover of a mass of roots affording spying eyes no flicker of flame, Seg got the fire going. The small prepared animal, a forest colo, went on a spit over the fire.

Milsi watched fascinated as Seg’s powerful hands molded and worked a chunk of the mud. He fashioned a pot and made it watertight. Water was at the moment no problem for the rains left puddles here and there — which Seg ignored. He climbed a tree alert for any unpleasant denizens with prior rights of habitation, and fetched down a cup-shaped leaf filled with liquid.

This he emptied into his pot and boiled up. It was a messy process, and twice the pot split so that he had to start afresh. But, eventually, Milsi drank water of a brackish and vegetation-tasting quality. It tasted fine.

The little colo went down well.

“Now we march.”

“The way is dreadfully hard.”

“We follow where these blundering great monsters open a way for us. We go quietly. We listen, and we smell. We will see them before they see us.”

“I hope to Pandrite you are not mistaken.”

“You can only die once.”

“Oh, I agree. But that is one time too many for me.”

He smiled, did not answer, and set off.

Although, of course, with the fiendish cunning of some wizards to command unholy skills it might be perfectly possible to die and be resurrected and so die all over again... This prospect was one which displeased Seg enormously. His upbringing, wild and free though it had been, had inculcated in him a respect for the processes of nature.