“And he was accused of being in the army for it. Items of food and drink, recipes, fashions, travel widely.”
“Humph — that does not bring back our weapons or gain us our freedom, by the disgusting suppurating armpits of Makki Grodno!”
Seg shook his head, devoutly wishing that he could hear another Krozair brother saying these delicious oaths.
Shortly after that the guards came by and removed Seg from the cell. He was pushed along the corridors and into a room where guards wearing green and white waited. He squinted in the lamplight, for dawn was a few burs off yet.
“So it is the Seg the Horkandur I thought! Well met, comrade of the Maze!”
Strom Ornol, for it was he, strode forward with outstretched hand. His handsome, weak, aristocratic face did not look at all as Seg remembered it. Its habitual blot-like pallor was replaced by a crimson flush. A trimmed beard concealed the jaw. In fact, Seg had to look twice to reassure himself that this was the rast Ornol himself. The most astonishing thing was the broad smile on Strom Ornol’s face.
Seg grasped the outstretched hand.
“I, Vad Olmengo, am come strictly charged with Kov Llipton’s orders to bring you to him straightaway.
Now, not a word! Not a word. Hurry!”
The guards with Ornol — or Olmengo as he had newly dubbed himself — closed up around Seg and casually, and yet with purpose, pushing the dungeon guards aside, swiftly escorted him outside. They pattered through the corridors, ascended to the surface, and mounted up on mewsanys waiting ready. In the first pale fingers of apple green and vermeil radiance they rode swiftly for the southern gate. No one spoke. The guards at the gate allowed them through when a Hikdar leaned from the saddle and rattled off orders from Kov Llipton. They cantered through and so entered onto the jungle trackway beside the river. The smells of forest and river mingled. The sound of the mewsanys, the clink of bit and bridle, the feel of leather and the ungainly clip-clop-clip of the six-legged riding animals might in other circumstances have lulled Seg Segutorio.
He remained quiveringly alert.
The weird friendliness of this blot, Strom Ornol, came as distinctly unsettling.
The circumstances of their parting, when the Lady Milsi — who was really this famous Queen Mab! —
had told a few home truths and Ornol had reacted in his stupidly vicious way, forcing Seg to stick a knobby fist into his mouth, could hardly cause any friendly feelings. Ornol would in the normal way of the blot have him strung up or sent swimming. So...?
The track reached the riverbank with the massed trees receding to leave a small open space. Here a hut of rotting branches and tattered papishin leaves sagged over a wooden jetty. A boat was tied up, silent and waiting, with the boat master in his typical leaf hat standing shading his eyes. The cavalcade rode up and the guards dismounted.
“Can we talk now, strom?”
“Dismount, Seg the Horkandur. We go aboard the boat.”
The guards in their green and white tied their mounts to leaning posts and began to board. Seg dismounted. Ornol — or Olmengo — drew his rapier. Four guards stood by him with bared swords.
Ornol’s smile changed.
“Step aboard, Seg—”
“What is this about, strom?”
“You call me pantor!”
The vicious haughtiness of the words was more in keeping with the Ornol Seg knew. The noble’s expression changed. He was enjoying himself. He put up a beringed hand and ripped the false beard free.
He rubbed a kerchief over his cheeks, and it came away reddened, and, lo! his face was the face of Strom Ornol, pallid, like the underbelly of a fish.
“Everyone will believe you escaped with the assistance of Vad Olmengo, who is a stupid adherent of Llipton’s.” The guards, too, were enjoying the farce. They ripped off their green and white feathers and replaced them. Seg saw the colors of the feathers they placed in their helmets.
Brown and white.
“You are a fool, Segutorio, and an insolent cramph! You are going swimming. Then we shall deal with Jezbellandur. There will be no proof against Trylon Muryan’s men — and you will be dead and out of the way. As for your comrades, they are fish food as soon as your escape proves your guilt!”
Seg did not feel in the least horrified. He saw the boatmen had already cast off the rope at the prow of the boat and were holding her steady. Ornol motioned with his rapier.
“Step aboard, you rast.”
Obediently, Seg moved forward. They thought they were clever, yet they had not bound him. That wouldn’t be necessary when he was threatened by so many swords. They’d just sail out into midstream and push him overboard.
Very well...
“So you work for this fellow Muryan, Ornol?” Seg talked casually, moving toward the guards and their swords, watching the strom.
When he moved he moved like a leem.
He hit the first two guards inside their swords. They toppled backwards, arms flailing. They screamed in mortal terror long before they hit the water...
Ornol skipped backwards, yelling. Seg swiveled, sloshed the next guard so that he dropped, stunned. He ducked without a thought, turning again and sticking out his foot so that the fourth guard, rushing on and yelling in bold fury, tripped. That guard, screeching horribly, staggered on, off balance, and went splash into the murky waters.
“A madman!” screamed Ornol. He jumped for the boat and scrambled over the gunwale anyoldhow, already screeching for his archers to loose.
The bowmen in the boat were not numerous; there were enough to feather Seg before he could reach cover! Seg had a deep respect for the power of bows. He saw the composite bows bending, saw five at least shafts aimed at him. He had the skill to deflect arrows, arduously taught him by the Bogandur, and could weave his way through an arrow storm — but he had no weapon with which to make the deflections.
Very well — he’d run for it, and dodge, and win free.
In that instant one of the bowmen jumped as though stung and clapped a hand to his eye. His bow clattered uselessly to the deck. Another archer whirled around a full circle, dropping his bow. When he faced Seg again there was something odd about his eye.
Seg put his head down and ran for the trees, jinking like a hunted animal, which he was.
A voice ripped from the trees.
“Seg! Over here! Run!”
Seg ran.
Two arrows plunked into the mud of the track before he reached shelter — then he was hurling himself head over heels into the trees and, already, was alert to the dangers of the forest.
He saw a small, lithe form, clad in an astounding rig of scarlet and gold, with green feathers waving, and a long tube at its mouth. Cheeks swelled to enormous balloons, and puffed — and the next dart sped.
“Diomb!”
The dinko did not bother to reply. Seg watched his amazing performance. As a bowman of some repute, Seg could judge and admire superb shooting.
Diomb’s two upper hands held the long blowpipe in a brace. His other two hands withdrew darts from his magazine pouch and fed them in a steady stream into the mouthpiece of the ompion.
He drew, placed, and blew, drew, placed and blew. He sucked in his breath with whooshing open-mouthed gusto. Darts sped.
Seg tumbled down among the muck of the forest and turned, at last, to stare out onto the river-bank and see just what this dustrectium [2] was accomplishing.
Panic-stricken, the boatmen had cut the stern rope. The boat drifted out and downstream. Sundry splashings and churnings in the water indicated where the river was living up to its name with respect to those unfortunate wights who had fallen in. There was no sign of Strom Ornol. If Seg knew him, he was cowering well out of it, head down.
At last Diomb stopped shooting. The range opened out past the effective reach of the blowpipe.
“Seg!”
“I give you my thanks, Diomb, and the jikai!”
“I enjoyed that. It proves I have learned the ompion and can earn my hire as
a paktun.”
“You have and you may, may Erthyr be praised!”
Presently, when the boat, still without a paddler in sight, had drifted off, they stood up and walked out onto the wooden jetty. The guard whom Seg had stunned was about to recover his senses, groaning.
Diomb put his little foot against the fellow’s gut and started to push him into the water.
“Hold on, Diomb. We can’t just kill the silly bastard like that—”
“Why not?”
“We-ell—”
“He would have killed you, and laughed doing it.”
“All the same, he is just a guard, earning his hire.” Here Seg, admitting of no further argument, clouted the guard over the head again with his picked-up sword, and glared straight at Diomb, head down and jutting.
“I shall understand the ways of this preposterous outside world one day, I suppose, by Clomb of the Ompion Never-Miss!”
Seg looked around. “He has this sword and a knife, and that is all. Oh, well, that is better than being empty-handed. Now, Diomb, tell me all about it.”
Abruptly the dinko suffused with passion.
“Of course! I was so enjoying this little fight I forgot. Seg! The Lady Milsi—”
“You mean Queen Mab.” Seg’s voice grated in a surly unfriendly rasp.
“Why, yes. I do not understand it all. Her name is Milsi. And it is Mab. But, Seg, that great rogue Trylon Muryan has her a prisoner! In a monstrous tower!”
“And I suppose the cramph plans to marry her and make himself king?”
“Seg! You do not sound as though you are Milsi’s friend.” Diomb stared up, his little face creased into a scowl of incomprehension. “Are you not feeling well? Perhaps you have an ache in the guts...?”
“I’ve an ache, all right. If Milsi wants to marry this Muryan fellow, then that is her business. I must get back to my comrades, and Jezbellandur. If he is slain then a key witness vanishes. There is no time to waste—”
“There is no time to waste, true, Seg the Horkandur! I do not understand you, after all that you and the Lady Milsi were together! What ails you?”
Seg was already turning away and reaching for the best of the mewsanys. He grasped the reins looped around the standing post. “Look, Diomb. Bamba is well? Good. Then you are all right. As for me, I am alone.”
Diomb scuttled across and his upper left hand reached up to fasten on Seg’s muscle-corded arm.
“Listen to me, Seg! Milsi is imprisoned, with Bamba and Malindi. She sent me — I escaped, and a pretty piece of trickery that was, too — and she sent me to ask you. I followed this Strom Ornol, who takes his orders from Muryan, and crept through the jungle after you, and—”
“And you saved me, Diomb. I do not forget that.”
“But you must go to the Warvol Tower leading our comrades and rescue the ladies!”
“So Milsi turns to me when she is in trouble again, imagining I will come running like a little mili-milu when she rings her golden bell and wheedles and puts out a bowl of milk? Well, Diomb, my comrade, I have finished with that foolishness. When she marries Muryan it is sure that Malindi and Bamba will not be harmed, will be richly rewarded in the wedding party. As for me, time presses, and my comrades fester in a dungeon—”
“There is no time to bring your comrades if they cannot go at once! The wedding is planned—”
“Do not tell me! I do not care!”
Diomb stood there, face a single stricken question mark. He shook his head. He swallowed. He tried again.
“Lady Milsi is Queen Mab, and she holds you in high honor and tender loving care, Seg. This is so—”
“This is feathers from a zorca!”
Diomb let go Seg’s arm. He jumped up and down with frustrated rage. He started to yell.
“I don’t know what is the matter with you, Seg the Horkandur! You are no jakai! We thought, all of us, only of you when misfortune fell on us!”
“Oh, aye, typical!”
“You are an ingrate! You are not deserving of the Lady Milsi’s esteem or affection, still less of her love!
After all she has done for you—”
“By the Veiled Froyvil, Diomb! You try me hard!”
Then Seg paused. He took a trencher of a breath. His chest swelled as only an archer’s chest can. He was not just an ordinary man, was Seg Segutorio. He could feel the dinko’s words like lashes upon his spirit. But, there had to be more to this, there had to be some spark of what he had felt still left to him...
He let the enormous breath out and he said: “Diomb, my friend. Maybe I have the wrong of it. Maybe —
you spoke of Milsi’s love. I have received no sign of it, save for a foolish passing moment soon forgotten.
But, mayhap there was a reason for the queen using us warriors to escort her safely home, and then to have us dumped down into a sinkhole and ready to go swimming in the River of Bloody Jaws. Maybe this reason was not the obvious one we believed—”
Diomb looked horrified. Then he jumped up and down and almost fell over himself trying to sputter his words out.
“I see! I see! You blame Milsi for putting you in the dungeon!”
Still wrought up, Seg shook his head, his impatience wanting to brush aside stupid matters of logic. “Well, not exactly. She did not put us in the dungeon. But we were chucked down the sinkhole because we defended her, and she rode off as a great queen and left us to fester!”
The look that crossed Diomb’s face would have made Bamba hug him with delight.
“You said, Seg the Horkandur, that mayhap you did not have the right of this sorry business.” Diomb spoke in a light, easy way, a tone not nonchalant or casual, but airy and rippling with hidden amusement.
He could be a little devil at times, could Diomb the dinko.
“I said this. Go on.”
“Then I have to tell you that you are an onker with a head full of the fungus that sprouts on the forest floor. Why do you think Ornol was sent by Muryan to pick you out of the dungeons and throw you in for a swim? Hey?”
“We-ell—”
“I suppose you imagined it was because you were the leader, the most important, the high and mighty puffed up pantor among us? Confess it, I challenge you!”
“If I had been thought to have escaped, the others would have received short shrift—”
Diomb gave a curt cutting gesture with his upper left hand. “I will tell you. This piece of festering dung called Muryan wishes to marry Milsi and thus hold title to the kingship — I have learned all this. He knows Milsi loves you and he will have you dead!”
“Do what?”
“You heard me, Seg the Horkandur!”
“You mean Muryan wants me dead, not Milsi?”
“Cretin!”
“Then — then what you say is true — there is danger for her—”
“She did not abandon you. She rode to seek her daughter and gave strict instructions you and our comrades were to be well-treated.”
Seg glared around on the brown waters of the river, on the bank and the sagging shed, at the mewsanys, around to look unseeingly at the ranked dark green masses of the trees. Again he shook his head. He felt bloated, and yet shrunken. One thing he did know, without a moment’s hesitation.
“I shall ride to the Warvol Tower. You must see to Jezbellandur and our comrades. One thing I know, Diomb — if Muryan does wed Milsi against her will, then it will be he who will be the dead man!”
Chapter seventeen
Seg Segutorio builds a bow
A slim paddler skimmed down the Kazzchun River passing without hindrance where any other boat would be forced to halt and declare occupants and contents. The Schinkitree flew the flags of Croxdrin; but the tresh that gained this imperious passage flew from a taller mast than any other banner. This was the personal flag of Kov Llipton allied to the kingdom’s messenger service.
Sitting on his comfortable chair in the stern, Tyr Naghan Shor brushed up his fierce whiskers and the streamin
g radiance of the suns glinted from his golden mane. Kov Llipton trusted folk of his own race to carry secret messages and discover intelligence of the river. The vague form of the Xaffer, squatting to one side, offended no one, for the Xaffers are a race strange and remote, and employed usually as secretaries and domestics. This Xaffer, Ninshurl the Seal, wore a decent blue robe girt with a silver chain, yet he was slave.
“A fool’s errand, Ninshurl, I warrant you, by Numi-Hyrjiv the Golden Splendor!”
“Yet the kov was most insistent, master.”
“Oh, one does not quarrel with Kov Llipton, not unless they wish to take a little swim. All the same, if the hulus of Mattamlad are mindful to be awkward...”
“We fly the flag of truce, master. They will listen to what we have to say.”
“You are right, of course. All the same, I have left a most gorgeous numim maiden for this arduous duty, and I shall not waste too much time, believe you me.”
The boat sped on downriver, driven powerfully by the hardened muscles of specially selected paddlers, slaves every one, chained to their benches.
Mattamlad at the mouth of the river slumbered under the suns. Here mud stank into the air, and the heat rotted everything. Tyr Naghan Shor under his flag of truce was allowed passage past the guard boats, for Mattamlad was an independent port town, and owed no allegiance to King Crox or his country to the north.
Reporting in at the bureau for foreigners, Tyr Naghan saw the tall masts of ships lying in the port area. He sniffed. He regarded the folk of Mattamlad with contempt; yet there was no doubt they were in more direct contact with other nations. Still, one day, all in Pandrite’s good time, Kov Llipton would sweep down the river and annex all here.
“Your flag of truce and your letters will be honored, Tyr,” the port official informed Naghan. “But I think it wise if you concluded your business within the space of a single day.”
“I will if I can. But you know foreigners—”
“Oh, aye,” said the official, a wizened marcer whose comb and side-brushes were much bedraggled, and whose curved body showed the effects of a long-ago swim — a quite inadvertent swim — in the river.
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