At this camp I took the opportunity of making a bow. Oh, it was a poor thing, vine-strung, and of a pitiful throw; but with the fire-hardened points of the arrows, quickly fletched with feathers from a bird brought down by a flung stone, I fancied it would give us just that little edge of time. We might have to buy the time we needed dearly.
“Weapons,” said Turko. He lifted his hands, and turned them about in the screened fire-glow in its crook of tree-trunk, for the trees hereabouts were powerful and large of bole. “I have been taught all my life that a man’s hands — and his feet and head — are more potent than artificial weapons.”
“Sometimes, Turko. What I told Janich is true. I know you boast you can dodge and deflect arrows; and certainly you may outwit a swordsman if he is not reasonably good with his blade, but-”
“Aye, Dray Prescot. But.”
“Now sleep, friend Turko. Tomorrow we will show these Opaz-forsaken cramphs of manhunters the error of their ways.”
“Tomorrow?”
“They will find us tomorrow.”
There was no answer to that, and with watches set, we slept.
Turko had a bad night. He awoke with a groan he could not still and I fetched water and bathed his forehead, which felt feverish, and gave him a little to sip, for I feared internal injuries. Mog woke up and swore at me. By this time she must have realized there was some special interest in her for me, and she would have been thinking very carefully on what her future would be. She could have no knowledge of the Star Lords, or so I believed. That I looked out for her was clear — the other halflings looked out for themselves, and the two girls, Saenda and Quaesa, had already shown signs of anger at my concern over old Mog — and so she must be racking her evil old brains for the explanation. That she could never find one that would make sense was obvious. I had no idea why the Star Lords should bedevil me with the old witch.
Now she swore at me, vilely. “Get your rest, you great nulsh, Dray Prescot! Why waste your strength on the Khamorro? He will die tomorrow. I can see that, for I have great powers in healing, and he is done for.”
Turko looked at me and I saw his lips rick down. The hand holding the roughly fashioned leaf-cup shook. That was from weakness and pain, I guessed, never from fear.
With Turko looking at me I went down to old Mog.
I took her by the neck and I glared into her eyes.
“You say Turko will die tomorrow? You are sure?”
I let her breathe and she gobbled: “I know!”
“You have skill in medicine?”
She started off to boast of her secrets and her mysteries, and of how Migshaanu the Great Healer would aid her — and then she stopped, aghast, glaring at me, a hand to her mouth. She saw, at last, what the situation was.
I nodded. I have given orders in my life that I dreaded to give. One demand must be measured against another, and there is no certainty when it comes to command. Hesitation is a sin the fates punish by destruction.
“You will be able to gather plants from the forest, herbs, leaves, fungi — you will be able to fashion needles from the thorns — you will cure my friend Turko. If you do not, Mog the Migla, I shall certainly leave you for the manhounds.”
She tried, shrewd enough to have read much of my intentions, for, after all, they were very patent.
“You took me from the slave pens, Dray Prescot. You saved me for some great purpose of your own
— or your masters. You will not kill me or leave me to the monsters.”
“Cure Turko, or you will be turned off into the jungle.”
By this time for her to return to the caves was beyond her strength, wiry and whipcordlike though it might be. She gibbered and mewed, but I remained adamant. Just why I did this I can see quite clearly, now, was to make the Star Lords pay. Oh, poor old Mog was the instrument to suffer — although she had had an easy ride compared with the others — but the Star Lords would, I hoped, suffer a little along with her.
With many imprecations and mutterings Mog gathered what she would need and soon was concocting potions. She stuck thorns into Turko, and watching her, I saw the sureness with which her gnarled fingers worked, and knew she had the skill of Doctor Nath the Needle, back in Vallia. She felt him all over and pronounced nothing irremediably broken, and gave him the draft to drink. He lost his pain the moment the last needle had been inserted, so powerfully beneficent is the art and science of acupuncture upon Kregen. Presently he slept and Mog crept back to her place, pronouncing him as well as could be expected, that she had done all she could, and now it all lay in the merciful hands of Migshaanu the Great Healer.
A gram of Earthly comfort I took was that Turko had not bled from his nose or mouth or ears. He had tried to save me, charging Chimche, who must be of a higher kham and thus almost certain to defeat Turko. He had sustained these injuries trying to help me. I could do nothing less than use every effort I could to save his life.
From the time when I had flown over the jungle escaping with Tulema and Dorval Aymlo and the others, I could only estimate the distances to be traversed to the coast. Once there I had no doubt we would steal a boat well enough. Had Turko not been injured we might have made it, and he realized this and said nothing, and looked at me speculatively.
We were, in truth, a sorry-looking bunch. When we creaked our way down out of our tree in the morning, and shivered, and stretched, and looked about on the dim vastness of the jungle, pressing us in to a narrow circle of hostile greenery all about, I realized we could not go on. The two girls’ feet were lacerated and torn despite the muffling clumsy rags they wore. Some of the halflings were in a worse case, although many were holding up reasonably well; but with that stupid prickly pride, I had, without any conscious volition on my part, decided we would all get out together. By this time I was heartily sick of the jungle. I know we spent a weary time in the green fastness, and I contrasted it with others of my marches upon the hostile, terrifying, beautiful face of Kregen, but it was a chore laid on me and it was something I had to do.
I said, with that harsh intolerant rasp in my voice, “Stay here. I will return.”
Most of them simply sank down, thankful not to have once more to plunge into that steaming hell. I left them and walked carefully along what was left of the trail. All about me, almost unheard, rustled the vicious life of the forest. Soon I came to a clearing — not large — but I fancied it would do. To bring everyone there and safely sheltered up trees, with palisades, took a frightening long time. But, at last, we were ready.
Turko opened his eyes and stared at me and I could have sworn amusement curved his pallid lips as I spoke to cheer him.
“Now, friend Turko! Let the manhounds come! We’ll make ’em sorry they sniffed us out!”
“Yes, Dray Prescot. I really think you will.”
Chapter Sixteen
The fight for the voller
Almost immediately half a dozen fluttrells bearing armed warriors passed in a skein over the clearing. I remained still. I hungered for a voller.
As the morning wore on and Far and Havil crawled across the sky and the temperature rose and we sweated and steamed, more fluttrells pirouetted above us until I began to think we would have to decoy them down, enough for all fourteen of us, for we had lost three and gained one. In the end I saw what must be the truth of the matter and cursed; but having deliberately walked all this way through jungle in order to decoy a suitably proud hunting party, the loss of a few more burs hardly counted. When the next skein of fluttrells was sighted I stepped out into the clearing and waved.
“Have a care, Dray Prescot,” called Turko. “Remember, they will have real steel weapons, also.”
His light voice sounded stronger, which cheered me, and I did not miss that underlying mockery. Truly, he counted me a nul, never a true khamster, and this was inevitable and right. The fluttrells slanted down. There were five of them, and they looked bright and brave against the glow of the suns.
This was just another o
f those occasions on Kregen when I faced odds. I hoped the fluttrells would wing away after an inspection to report to the manhunters that they had discovered our whereabouts. The mighty hunters on the great Jikai were almost certainly sitting with their feet up, sipping the best wines of Havilfar — or possibly, if they could afford it, a fine Jholaix — and waiting until a sighting report had been brought back by their aerial scouts.
My hope was vain.
The first four fluttrells continued their descent; the fifth winged up in a flash of velvety green over the beige-white, his streamlined head-vane turning. He disappeared over the jungle roof before his comrades alighted. The men astride the fluttrells, although new to me then, were of a type, if not a nation, with which I was perfectly familiar. I had seen their like strutting the boulevards and enclaves of Zenicce, lording it over the slaves in the warrens of Magdag, supervising the Emperor’s haulers along the canals of Vallia. Hard, tough, professional, man-managers and slave-masters they were, like the aragorn I had bested in Valka. They jumped down with cheerful cries, one to another. They unstrapped their clerketers, and their weapons clicked up into position, the crossbows spanned, the moment their feet hit the tangled ground of the clearing.
They wore flying leathers, and braided cloaks cunningly fashioned from the velvet-green feathers of the fluttrells themselves. Their feathered flying caps fitted closely to their mahogany-brown faces, and streamed a clotted and flaring mass of multicolored ribbons, very brave to see in the slipstream of their passage across the sky. They advanced without any caution whatsoever. My bow felt the ill-made thing it was in my fist. I could have no hesitation here. The Star Lords’
commands impelled me.
The first arrow took the first flyer in the throat. The second arrow, a fraction too late, struck the second flyer in the face as he ducked to the side. I had read his ducking and his direction but the clumsy arrow loosed not as accurately as a clothyard shaft fletched with the brilliant blue feathers of the king korf of Erthyrdrin would have done. By the time the third arrow was on its way crossbow bolts were thunking about me.
They had difficulty seeing me against the gloom of the jungle and the third arrow pitched into the third flyer’s throat above the leather flying tunic. The fourth flyer looked dazedly at his companions, at what must have seemed to him to be a deadly wall of jungle sprouting arrows — and he turned and ran for his fluttrell.
Much as I dislike shooting men in the back this was a thing very necessary to be done. When it was all over Mog crackled out: “A great Jikai, Dray Prescot! You shoot well from ambush. Hai, Jikai!”
Which displeased me most savagely, so that I cursed the old witch in the name of the putrescent right eyeball of Makki-Grodno.
“They are flutsmen, Dray Prescot,” Rapechak called. He walked across, carefully cut out the arrow from the nearest body, turned it over with his foot, and bending lithely, took up the man’s thraxter. “I have served with them, in the long ago. They are good soldiers, although avaricious and without mercy. Because they ride their fluttrells through the windy wastes of the sky they consider themselves far better than the ordinary footman. They are disliked. But they earn their pay.” He waved the thraxter about a little, and I saw the feelings strong upon him as he once more grasped a weapon in his Rapa fist. The flutsmen, so I gathered, were not in any sense a race or a nation. Rather, they recruited from strong, fierce, vicious young men of similar natures to themselves, forming a kind of freemasonry of the skies, owing allegiance to no one unless paid and paid well. True mercenaries, they were, giving their first thought to their own band, then to the flutsmen, and, after that, to their current paymaster. Men from all over Havilfar, aye, and from over the seas, served in their winged ranks. Gynor the Brokelsh approached. He looked determined. “There are four fluttrells, Dray Prescot. Will you four apims take them and fly away and leave us halflings?”
Apim, as you know, is the slang and somewhat contemptuous term used by halflings for ordinary human beings — for, of course, to any halfling he is ordinary and the apims are strange.
“You have put an idea into my head, Gynor, for, by Vox, I hadn’t thought of it.”
He eyed me again. “You may speak truth. You are a strange man, Dray Prescot. If not that, then, what?”
“We must capture a voller-” I began, but with a rush of long naked legs and a hysterical series of screams, the two girls were upon me, panting, breathing in gulps, their hair all over their faces — very distracting and pretty, no doubt, but quite out of place in the serious work to hand.
“You must take us, Dray!” they both wailed. “Fly with us to safety in Havilfar!”
I pushed them aside, and they clung to me, sobbing, pleading to be taken away instantly from this horrible jungle.
“I want to get out of this Opaz-forsaken jungle more than you do!” I blared at them, outraged. “Now for the sweet sake of Blessed Mother Zinzu — shut up!”
They had no idea who Mother Zinzu the Blessed was — of course, the patron saint of the drinking classes of Sanurkazz — but everyone swore by their own gods, and so everyone was used to outlandish names in the way of oaths. They recoiled from my face.
“Look!” I said, pointing to a couple of Lamnias and the Fristle couple, all of whom were far gone. I marched over. “You, Doriclish,” I said to the Lamnia, who was making an effort to smooth his laypom-yellow fur down. “Can you ride a fluttrell?”
“I have not done so since my youth, when the sport was a passion-”
“Then you can. And you? And you?” to the others.
It turned out that when it came to it, most everyone in Havilfar was quite at home in the air, whether aboard a voller or astride a fluttrell or other flying saddle bird or animal, and so I could shovel out another load of responsibility. “Very well. You may take the four fluttrells and make a flight for it.”
If I had expected argument from the other halflings, I did not receive it. Only Saenda and Quaesa reacted, and they had to be told, pretty sharply, to behave themselves.
“Your feet are well enough,” I said. “And there will be a voller before long.”
“I shan’t forget this, Dray Prescot!” shouted Saenda.
“You’ll be sorry, Dray Prescot!” screeched Quaesa.
I saw the four halflings safely strapped into their clerketers, the straps buckled up tightly, and then with a final word of caution, sent the four great birds into the air. They flew over the jungle, going strongly, until they were out of sight. I thought they had a very good chance, for no other fluttrell patrols came by until, sometime later, the voller arrived. No doubt the mighty hunters had stopped for a final drink before setting off.
Between us we now disposed of four crossbows and five thraxters. I was disappointed there were no aerial spears, like the toonons used by the Ullars, but Rapechak snorted and said the flutsmen were kitted out for light patrol, not for battle. Then, he said, they were flying armories. Some people have talked and even written of aerial combat with shortswords from the backs of flying birds; it is doubtful if they have ever tried it. But, as is the way of Kregen no less than that of Earth, there are to be found people who believe nonsense of this sort. I looked at the crossbows. They were beautifully made instruments of death. Not as shiny or as flamboyant as the hunters’ bows, they were weapons of professionals. I felt very satisfied with them. I changed the guard’s thraxter for one of the flutsmen’s swords; the one I chose was nicely balanced, firm in the grip, with a blade very reminiscent of the cutlass blade of my youth, although not quite as broad and strengthened with a single groove. The grip, of red-dyed fish-skin, and the guard, reasonably elaborate, of a kind of open half-basket pattern, pleased me well enough. Oh, the sword was no great Krozair longsword or that superb Savanti weapon, but I would use it to good purpose in the service of the Star Lords, for my sins. The flutsmen employed a novel form of goat’s-foot lever to span their crossbows, and although I knew it was perfectly possible to span an arbalest with cranequin or w
indlass when flying by use of adapted equipment and if one was skilled, I appreciated this goat’s-foot lever of the flutsmen. Gynor said he could handle a crossbow. Rapechak, of course, was an old mercenary. Two other halflings came forward saying they wished for nothing better than to sink a bolt into the guts of the manhunters. So we waited, rather like leems, I confess, as the voller came in. Instead of an eager hunting party of untrained and amateurish nobles jumping down from the voller to slaughter, there leaped with vicious howls four couples of manhounds. The change in our fortunes rattled in so subtly, so quickly, so disastrously.
“Do not miss, my friends!” I called in a voice I made firm, driving, intolerant. I do not think that was necessary, now, looking back, but then I felt the precipice edge of disaster at my feet. The jiklos picked up our scent at once and with fearsome howls bounded toward us. They looked their hideous selves. If any nobility exists in beasts, as I believe it does, then these men-beasts had lost all. Jagged teeth glinting in the suns-light streaming into the clearing, leaping fallen trees and tangled undergrowth, blood-crazy, they bounded for us.
Four crossbow bolts sped true, driven by brains and eyes trained in hatred and loathing. My bow loosed, and loosed again. That was six down and the seventh took a shaft along his flank and was on me. My thraxter rasped as it drew from the scabbard and I went over backward with the manhound all bloody and messy upon me, screeching, his teeth clicking together in rage and pain, seeking my throat. The sword was deeply buried in him somewhere low, and my left hand gripped his neck and forced those clashing jaws away. Blood and spittle fouled me. His mad blood-crazed eyes glared on me, and his thin lips worked, his tongue lolled out, and then to my infinite relief the light of intelligence faded in those crazed eyes and he slumped. I stood up carefully, throwing the carcass away so that my right hand could drag the thraxter free.
Manhounds of Antares dp-6 Page 15
