“Nobody else?” inquired Seg.
“Not that I saw. A chunk of rock from one of those fishy devils knocked me off Shango Lady. They were all going off to the west like stink when I fell.”
“Did you see the flagship burn?”
“Aye, a grisly sight. Some ships dropped down for survivors. But that happened a long time ago.”
“Do what?”
He was not taken aback. “Aye. We drove to the west in pursuit of the devils, west and north. Pride of Vondium burned a long ways back.”
Seg would not understand how we’d contrived to get here, that seemed certain. The Everoinye, for their own inscrutable purposes, had dropped us down a long way from where we’d begun, and this Nath the Intemperate had been knocked off by chance to join our little band.
All about us lay the jungle of South Pandahem.
The rank stink of rotting vegetation, throat-choking, filled the miasmic air. The light was poor. Blotched whitenesses disfigured the tree boles. Vines looped everywhere. And through this labyrinth prowled the predators.
Nath the Intemperate retained his sword, a drexer. Ortyg had a Vallian dagger. Seg’s longbow was not in his hand, although a quiver half-filled with rose-fletched arrows remained strapped across his back. Well, he’d built a bow before in these parts.
Seg also had a drexer. I — stupidly, stupidly — did not have my superb Savanti sword. I had no bow, no drexer, no rapier or main gauche. I had my old sailor knife scabbarded over my right hip. And I did have a Krozair longsword strapped to my back, and that was not stupid at all. Not stupid at all, by Zair!
The drexer is a superior weapon, a straight cut and thruster developed from the Hamalian thraxter and Vallian clanxer and with our attempt at the Savanti sword. I wished I had the sword I’d worn at Drak and Silda’s wedding.
“We’d best make tracks,” said Seg. “Find a clearing or some civilization.”
“I hear it’s all jungle for hundreds of ulms,” said Nath the Impenitent. “Little villages, though, I suppose?”
“Some not so little. We’ll have to go tsleetha-tsleethi for some time.”
“And,” said Seg with sincere seriousness, “beware traps.”
Now I have made it sound as though we’d all tumbled down out of a battle into a jungle and were all taking it as a mere matter of course. This is not so. But there was no good making a song and dance over the dangers. Our main concern, Seg and mine, was what had happened to Milsi and Delia.
We had to deal with the current situation, get clear of that, and then we’d find out.
Walking along softly and cautiously we heard from up ahead the sound of people talking, and then the cheerful clink of bottles and glasses. Ortyg started forward.
“We are saved, praise be to Opaz!”
“Hold it, young ’un,” and Seg’s broad hand fastened on Ortyg’s shoulder. “I told you. Beware traps.”
We parted the leaves carefully and looked out into a clearing at the center of which stood a plant with a bulbous stem and waving tendrils.
“A Cabaret Plant,” said Seg. “That’ll spine you and gulp you down like a jelly.”
We bypassed the plant with great respect.
After that, Ortyg stuck close to Seg. I was glad. I’d seen the way Seg had welcomed his two sons, Drayseg and Valin. He had not seen them for season upon season. Emotions aroused anew in him then must be working to make Ortyg recognize the affection Seg was bursting to display.
The Cabaret Plant with its deadly orange flower on that lashing stalk was not the only danger. There were man-made traps to catch some of the more tasty animals living here. We struck a trail. Well, now...
“Thank Opaz,” said Ortyg. “At least we can walk a little easier now.”
“You, my lad,” Seg told him, “will not be walking along that trail — unless you want to wind up down a pit with stakes stuck through you, or hanging upside down in the air, or—”
“Quite,” I said, and Seg laughed and punched Ortyg lightly on the shoulder. Nath the Impenitent said nothing, but his ruby-red face squeezed into a smile.
Later on he told us that he’d been in the army but, being bored out of his skull and the wars more or less finishing, he’d transferred to the Air Service. He was an ordinary voswod, an aerial soldier; but he was training to become a more proficient crewman. He saw a future in the air he had never expected, had given up as lost.
“Wonderful things, the airboats. Never thought I’d live to see the day I served in one.”
Seg said sharply: “You were unconscious in the back of a cart. But I’ve a funny feeling we’ve been this way before.”
“If you say so,” I said equably.
“By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom! I do say so. And I’ll wager a month’s pay that just ahead of us lies the town of Selsmot. And, therein, the tavern of jungle delights, The Dragon’s Roost!”
Chapter eleven
Of two kovs at The Dragon’s Roost
“So you did come back,” said Mistress Tlima, wiping her floury hands on her blue-striped apron. “I always said you would return, Dray the Bogandur — although you call yourself Jak now.”
“If it please you, Mistress Tlima. It was Jak Dray, anyway.”
“Oh, it is no concern of mine.”
“Named for that pig of an emperor, I suppose,” said Nath the Impenitent. I turned sharply. He spoke quite mildly; yet there was no mistaking the heartfelt anger in his words.
“Pantor Seg,” called Tlima, taking no notice of Nath’s outburst. “Help yourself to some of our local ale. We have palines just collected.”
Seg smiled that winning smile of his. “As ever, you are kind to wandering travelers, Mistress Tlima. And here is this imp Ortyg to plague us further.”
“You will not, I trust, pantor, take him when you go along to The Dragon’s Roost.”
“He is no callow coy; he is a man with a man’s spirit.”
Ortyg, very sensibly, remained silent, although I admit this was partially caused by a mouthful of palines.
While all this pleasant byplay went on, I found myself brooding savagely on the greatest fresh problem presented to us in Paz. We had airboats. We had always believed we held this advantage, a kind of ace in the hole. And now — the Shanks — or Shtarkins or Shants or any one of a hundred different names for the evil Fish Heads who came reiving from over the curve of the world — also flew airboats to our mighty discomfort.
I thought to myself, stranded there in an insignificant little town lost in the jungles of South Pandahem, I thought most violently that I needed a word with the Star Lords.
That they would send for me in their own sweet time I did not doubt. By Vox! They had a deal of explaining to do.
Once again the question of priorities forced itself on me. Csitra must be dealt with. There was no question about that. The Shanks must also be dealt with, and, equally, there was no doubt about that. What the blue blazing hell were Shanks doing flying over Pandahem when all my intelligence said they were miles and miles away over in Mehzta?
The only obvious explanation was that this was a new and different bunch of the Fish Heads.
Mistress Tlima said, “We saw a boat that flew through the air yesterday. It came down just outside the town. The people in it — just ordinary diffs, mind — went to The Dragon’s Roost.”
“Ah!”
“Why, Pantor Seg! And do you really mean to go again?”
“I do, Mistress Tlima.”
“Well, may the good Pandrite watch over you, that is all I can say.”
From The Dragon’s Roost inn, expeditions had been formed to go up into the Snarly Hills to the Coup Blag in search of the rumored hoards of treasure buried there. Seg and I had traveled with just such an exploration party. Now it seemed another was forming, and this bunch had their own voller. Capital!
“If they take us,” said Seg, as we walked through the dusty main street just before the rain fell.
“Oh,” I said, sounding mi
ghty cheerful, almost cocky in my stupid arrogance. “Oh, yes, they will. We’ve been there before.”
“True, my old dom, true.”
“I’m coming, too,” said Ortyg.
“Oh?”
“Certainly, Jak. Without a doubt.”
“If I’d had you to train up,” said Nath the Impenitent, “you’d have been a Hikdar in no time, and a kampeon to boot.”
Once again Mistress Tlima had furnished us with the simple clothes of these people to replace our own burned and ruined garments. We had paid her, and this time in Vallian gold. She had made no comment. We approached that famous stoop leading up to The Dragon’s Roost.
“Leave,” I told the other two, “the talking to Seg.”
“Aye, Jak,” and: “Aye, Jak.”
“Remember, we are not from Vallia. Oh, we hail from North Pandahem. They don’t much care for those folk down here; but they don’t hate them as much as they do Vallians or Hamalese.”
“It’s all Pandrite here, remember. And Armipand if you want to throw a curse at someone.” Seg sniffed and said: “Squish pie.”
“Excellent. Now if—”
“But he isn’t, and we are, and here is the inn.”
So into The Dragon’s Roost we trooped.
At the far end of the wooden stoop, bowered in greenery against the heat of the suns and the hiss of the rains, loud voices raised in argument. Two men, big and burly, stood there slanging each other rotten.
“By Krun!” in a high nasal whine. “You call yourself a lord! You’re nothing better than a clodhopper with his nose forever in the mud.”
“You are a kov,” came the answer in thick and impassioned tones that cut through like whetted steel. “And I, too, am a kov. That you are from Hamal causes me wonder.”
“Wonder, clod-hopper? Wonder that a noble of so great a nation should set foot upon this stinking island?”
“No, Kov Hurngal ham Hortang. Wonder that my rapier has not already sought your backbone through your guts.”
“You presume too much.” The nasal whine thickened. “I shall have to teach you a lesson, you Pandaheem yetch.”
We stood quietly, waiting and watching. If these two idiots slew each other, what did that matter to us?
I’d be interested to see how this Hamalese kov, named Hurngal ham Hortang, acquitted himself against Kov Loriman the Hunter.
For, that was who it was, standing bulky and impassioned, wrangling with a hated noble from Hamal.
Their right hands crossed their bodies, swathed only in light clothing for the weather, and fastened on rapier hilts. Their left hands gripped the hilts of their main gauches. If Kov Loriman was killed, should I bother? He had been one of the leading lights of our trip down into the horrors of the Moder in the Humped Land where we had found monsters and magic, and some fabulous treasures that evaporated in the clear light of day. His passion was hunting. He sought out locations where he might test himself and his swordarm against monsters. That, I thought then, was why he was here about to go up against the terrors of the Coup Blag. I was wrong.
I wondered with little interest if he would recognize me, let alone remember me. What did I care? He was here, so therefore why should not I be also? I could brazen out a story.
A rich, silken-smooth golden voice called: “Why, notors! I do declare you quarrel just to spite me.”
The woman stepped lithely and with a voluptuous swing of her hips out onto the stoop. She was clad in a sheer gown of sliding green silk, clinging to her body, and her form was amply rewarding to anyone with an eye for plastic female beauty. Her face remained in shadow. Her hair sheened, caught up in a net of pearls.
She addressed these two nobles as notor, the term for noble in Hamal and Havilfar. Here in Pandahem the word was pantor, as in Vallia it is jen. I watched fascinated as she set her arts of coquetry to chasten these two blowhards.
Kov Loriman did not put her down as I had seen him insultingly dismiss another fine lady. He turned and bowed.
“My Lady Hebe. I maintain my honor—”
“Of course, and I admire you so much for it, notor. But, then, so does Kov Hurngal, does he not?”
“What does he know of—”
She stepped to Loriman’s side and put her hand, surprisingly brown in so fine a lady, upon his arm.
“Now, now, kov! This quarrel is over a nothing, and does credit to — well—” and here she laughed that throaty delicious laugh. “Credit to what, I ask you?”
Simmering like a volcano about to blow, Loriman glared upon the Hamalese. For his part, Hurngal glared malevolently upon Loriman. I admired the way this Lady Hebe handled the situation, for very soon she had both of them eating out of her hand. Whatever the cause of this quarrel, though, I fancied the animosity in these two ran so deep that it would not be slaked until they fought the duel they both so manifestly craved.
Well, it was no business of mine. Seg stepped up.
“Llahal, pantors!” he cried in his open cheery way. “Llahal, my lady.”
They swung about as though one of Csitra’s plagues had stung them up their rears.
“Who the hell are you?” demanded Kov Hurngal. “We have a private party here.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Seg in that soft way which could send shivers down the backs of those who knew him. “We have come to guide you to the Coup Blag.”
Well, after that it was a matter of the Llahals and then the Lahals, and we were invited in and so we sat down in that corner alcove window seat with the polished sturmwood tables loaded with jugs and flagons. We ignored all the insults. Loriman did not recognize me. We explained that we had been to the Coup Blag and wished to return to bring away more treasure.
“Gambling, you see,” said Seg, “is a vice.”
They guffawed at this and relaxed and were agog to hear all we could tell them. We attenuated the true story. I fancied if they knew it all they’d think on about going and then turn tail and run as far and as fast from this place as they could.
The voller, inevitably, belonged to Kov Hurngal.
He had ridden roughshod over the locals’ detestation of Hamalese, and had distributed much gold, so that he was tolerated.
That toleration might end with a knife between his ribs if the balance of the party did not soon arrive so that we might depart.
He and Loriman treated us with the casual, unthinking near-contempt of one kind of noble. We were pantors, and vouched for by the people of the town; we were not in their class and therefore were of value only as tools.
That we had been accepted as nobles was perfectly understandable to young Ortyg Thingol. Nath the Impenitent merely assumed we were a couple of young lords with the Vallian expedition. He appeared completely adjusted to his position in the situation. I summed him up as a doughty fighting man, one of Vallia’s finest. More than once I had to nudge him to halt the habitual: “By Vox!”
“By Pandrite,” I said. And then, out of deviltry, I added: “Or ‘By Chusto!’ or, even, ‘By Chozputz.’ Brave oaths, both.”
These were oaths I had invented when Dayra, Ros the Claw, and I had adventured together with Pompino in North Pandahem.
“Very well, Jak. Outlandish place, this.”
“Aye. It’ll get more outlandish.”
Trying how the new oaths rolled on his tongue, Nath the Impenitent burped out: “By Chusto, Jak! I look forward to it to enliven the tedium of the days.”
Any expedition of delvers exploring ancient ruins where they suspect treasure is buried, any expedition with plain common sense, come to that, must include in its company some form of wizard or witch. That goes without saying.
Seg and I decided that we four should stay at Mistress Tlima’s rather than The Dragon’s Roost. This we felt would ease friction. Mistress Tlima’s husband, a quiet, obliging man, was far better company than the bunch at the grander inn.
Seg was creating merry hell that there was not a decent longbow in the town. He bought a short bow and lo
oked at it with his mobile lips twisted up, so that I had to smile.
“The thing is, Seg, we know that Csitra took over Spikatur Hunting Sword.” SHS had been a mysterious organization dedicated to the destruction of Hamal. Well, all that was over; but now the adherents of Spikatur simply assassinated anybody who took their fancy, or so it seemed, and burned property that did not please them. Csitra had assumed control of the SHS and was using it for her own dark ends.
“My guess,” said Seg, “is that Spikatur has served its purpose for the witch.”
“I tend to agree.”
Now I’d regaled my comrades with tales of the Moder when we’d spend roistering evenings in that wonderful fortress palace I called home, Esser Rarioch in Valka. They’d listened fascinated to Deb-Lu and my scary adventures down the Moder of the Moder-lord Ungovich. The Humped Land, Moderdrin, the Land of the Fifth Note, lay far away in the center of Havilfar.
“So,” I said. “Is Loriman here solely for that hunting? He was of Spikatur. There is no doubt of that.”
Seg gave me a look as he went on carefully polishing up that little bow.
“You mean, is Loriman a tool of the witch’s?”
“Aye.”
“Instead of coming here as a member of Spikatur Hunting Sword?”
“Aye.”
“Either way a shaft in his guts might solve the problem.”
“He’s a useful man in a tight corner. I think I’ll test him out and gauge his reaction.”
Soon after that, having brought in supplies and prepared ourselves as best we could, and with the rest of the expedition joining, we all observed the fantamyrrh as we stepped into Kov Hurngal’s voller. Up from that small speck of civilization in the wilderness of the jungle we flew, slanting up into the mingled streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio.
With the speed lever hard over we pelted full speed ahead for the Coup Blag.
Chapter twelve
Over the Snarly Hills
Over the Snarly Hills we flew swift and straight as a lance stroke.
Below us the rain forest and the jungle reeled past. Those frightful hills up which we had toiled and then struggled down only to clamber up again, passed like models in a child’s playroom. High above those clearings we soared where the pools of water, oily with poison, reflected light in a queasy way. The last pool in its clearing also carried that betraying sheen of evil. The Slaptra, the plant that struck lethally at sound, flattening the ground around the pool and gouging deep spadelike depressions in the mud — the Slaptra was gone.
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