Seg the Bowman

by Alan Burt Akers

  He glanced up at the standard Milsi had given him. It really was rather splendid. Its bearer, a horrific-looking Clawsang called Tskarin, would have to be carefully watched, for if that banner fell the warriors and the men who had come to swell the ranks might very well run off.

  His trumpeter, another corpselike Clawsang called Ksandic, had proved he knew the calls regulations laid down in the army of Croxdrin — trouble was, did all the people in the ranks know them as well?

  Diomb had gone off with the Dorvenhork, beside himself with glee that he was seeing more of the outside world — this time how they got on when they had a real big fight. Seg had had to let him go. Bamba had not cried; in fact Bamba was not about when Diomb marched off. Clearly — Seg knew about and understood these things — quite clearly Bamba had equipped herself and had skulked off to join Diomb.

  Oh, well... As for Malindi, she had wailed when Milsi rode off; but a single stern injunction had stilled the pretty infant-like features. A battlefield was no place for a Sybli — well, to be truthful, it was no place at all for anyone with a scrap of sense in their heads.

  Military organization must, of course, vary over the wide world of Kregen; in these parts the old methods of the defunct Empire of Walfarg persisted. Usually there were ten men in an audo, eight or ten audos in a pastang, and six pastangs to a regiment. Milsi’s army, as Seg watched them marching out to war, were on the low side in regimental strengths. The men raised by King Crox into regular regiments and with whom he had carved out his kingdom, were well enough armed and equipped and trained. Their regiments usually totaled around the four hundred mark. The half-naked fisherfolk and townsmen and riff-raff from the streets, although prettily organized, could muster few regiments above the three hundred and fifty or sixty mark.

  This would have to suffice. It was pretty certain that the regiments marching under Trylon Muryan’s brown and white banners would muster roughly equal numbers to those with the queen. It was those confounded Bowmen of Loh...

  The moment the priests from the various temples had ceased their chantings and incantations and the sacrifices had been made, Seg breathed more freely. The bands started up, blowing and banging lustily.

  A little breeze got up and blew the banners bravely. The army presented a fine sight, swinging along with the bands playing and the standards flying, and the men singing. Seg humped along on his zorca and tried not to feel too angry at the waste of it all.

  The bands played “The Jaws that Bite, the Teeth that Rend.” Then they went into “The Forest Stands from Dawn to Dusk.” With a fine flush of fury, Seg supposed that cramph Muryan would have his bands playing “The Bowman of Loh.”

  His mind obsessed with the plan for the battle oddly enough rejected further worry. He found himself thinking of what Milsi had told him of her childhood. Her mother had been born in Jholaix, daughter of one of the wealthy Wine Families. Her grandmother had been born in Nalvindrin, second daughter of the king and queen of the time. Uprisings and revolutions had found, in the end, her grand aunt married and the queen — and her daughter had brought King Crox to the throne — and her grandmother safely hidden in Jholaix. But descent came down through the female line, and Milsi was the one and only legitimate Queen Mab. Thus had all the problems arisen.

  All the girls of the family were called Mab as well as their given name. If Milsi happened to be slain, either in this battle or at the hands of Muryan’s hired assassins led by Strom Ornol, then the lady Mishti Mab would inherit the legal descent. No doubt that was what Muryan, having lost Milsi, now planned.

  The thought that if it came to it Seg would slay the cramph Muryan without mercy gave him no comfort whatsoever.

  The idea that he had engineered the deaths of the Bowmen of Loh — or would have done if his primitive plan succeeded — gave him so much less comfort as to make him feel that he bore the sins of the world upon his shoulders. Oh, they weren’t his own countrymen. They had red hair, therefore they came from Walfarg. His land of Erthyrdrin, in the northernmost tip of Loh, had been ravaged and attacked by Walfarg over the centuries. Erthyrdrin provided the very cream of the Bowmen of Loh. All the same, it went sore to him to do this thing, and he just wanted this stupid battle over and out of the way so that the future could be entered into sooner rather than later — or at all...

  The army reached the area selected for the fight.

  To the right flank stretched the river, masked off by a screen of closely growing vegetation. The ground lay open, dotted with a few trees, scattered outposts of the forest, and most of the left flank was open and rolling, ideal country for cavalry maneuver.

  As this was what amounted to a north-south confrontation along the Kazzchun River the northern forces must have a marked preponderance of cavalry. They were the people who tended the vast herds of mewsanys and provided them to the southerners, after all. Chuktar Ortyg Lloton na Mismot, who was a trylon, commanding Milsi’s cavalry, had a stern task ahead. He had most of the nobility riding in his ranks.

  With all the cavalry available to the enemy, Seg calculated that Muryan would attempt to work the old door hinge ploy on him. He’d use some of his cavalry to shoulder the mewsany riders of Milsi’s army aside, and then just ride around from his right flank, using his anchored left infantry as the hinge, and roll Seg and all his people up and crush them against the river. If they all went swimming, well, that would put a little extra zest in Trylon Muryan’s day.

  Inquiries of his infantry commanders elicited the information that soldiers always fought by regiment, and the regiments in their higher groupings always fought together, as was proper.

  Chuktar Moldo Nirgra na Chefensmot, who was a strom, wrinkled up his forehead when Seg gave him his orders.

  “We need to hold, Chuktar Moldo. This you will do.”

  “My regulars will stand, Kapt Seg. We are skilled with the strangchi. But — the scum you foist on me—”

  “Not scum, Chuktar! Men like you or me. They may be fishermen or laborers but they can fight. You will need the fishspears, believe me.” Then Seg went more deeply into just what these ill-disciplined bands of half-naked men throwing cruelly barbed spears might do when allied with the solid ranks of the regulars.

  The strangchi, long-hafted, topped by spear-point, axe-head and hook, was not the strangdja of Chem, that holly-leafed lethality; in these circumstances it ought to prove superior. If it failed, Seg’s army would go splashing into the brown waters.

  Chuktar Moldo loosed the collar of his tunic under the rim of his corselet, the kax gilded and brave with engravings of stirring battle scenes.

  “It is these Bowmen of Loh, Kapt, that—”

  Seg lowered a baleful glance on the infantry commander. “I have seen mercenaries refuse their hire and run when they heard they were to face Bowmen of Loh. But you are not mercenaries. You fight for your queen! And our mercenary archers are Undurkers, who have a great contempt for Bowmen of Loh.”

  With that Seg finished off his instructions, and he thought with his own professional arrogance that he’d always considered these condescending Undurkers a bunch of idiots. Still, they would have to serve this day...

  Mixing his light troops, his kreutzin, with his regulars in the right wing, under Chuktar Nath Roynlair na Strainsmot, who also was a strom, he gave similar orders. The difference here was that, Chuktar Nath being a numim, he said: “And on the signal you will charge and let nothing stand in your way. Is that clear?”

  “As the streets clear when the rains come, Kapt Seg.”

  Trust a lion-man for that way of expressing it!

  Milsi looked radiant when Seg trotted across to her. The army moved out ahead, deploying to orders.

  The suns streamed their mingled brilliance upon the field. Away ahead the long serried masses of the enemy came into view, dark and ominous. Seg began checking off numbers, and Milsi watched him, her face expressing as it were in reflection every nuance of Seg’s as he counted and calculated.

  “Well,�
� he said, and turned to Milsi. “He has more cavalry, as we expected. But he is deficient in infantry.

  And that is mostly mercenary, and some rascally low-class masichieri among ’em, I’ll warrant, no better than brigands.”

  “He does not really need foot soldiers, does he? He simply puts his Bowmen of Loh to the fore, they shoot and shoot and we are pinned, and his cavalry ride around and — oh, Seg! What have we done!”

  “You simply have a slight case of the twitches before battle, nothing to worry about. Everybody has

  ’em.”

  “Seg!”

  “D’you see, Milsi? We are not deploying out to our left. See? All his gorgeous and famous cavalry are facing empty ground.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Now watch!”

  Trumpets, pealing high and shrill into the clear air, banners, floating and fluttering over the hosts, the dull surf-roar of hundreds of men, the clink and clash of iron and bronze, the excited shrilling of mewsanys and the harsh breath of dust clogging mouths and nostrils...

  “They move!”

  The Bowmen of Loh trotted out ahead, smart, their bows curves of glitter in the light. By reason of Seg’s clumped formations close to his right flank, the archers perforce had to move to their left flank. “They must be licking their lips over there to see such massed targets,” said Seg. He looked to the screen of trees following the line of the river.

  Out from that concealment ran men, archers, haughty canine faces slanted sideways as they raised their composite bows. Leading them roared on the Dorvenhork. They flanked the Bowmen of Loh. They were well within their shorter range. They began to play on the famed Bowmen of Loh, shooting with flat trajectories that worked down the line like a meat slicer.

  Seg smiled. “Very nice. I sent them there in boats before dawn. And, see! There goes Khardun with our paktuns! Oh, he has them by the short and curlies! And Rafikhan!”

  Left out on a limb, the cavalry commanded by Muryan started to charge into the left flank of Milsi’s army. And, of course, they were met by a hedge of steel and by a multitude of showered fishspears that discomposed them mightily. When Chuktar Ortyg brought Seg’s cavalry into action they charged slap bang into the flank of the enemy jutmen and knocked them over, sent them reeling, all jammed up in a tightly wedged mass of frightened and ungovernable animals and men.

  Chuktar Nath Roynlair, being a numim, wasn’t going to delay when a fight was promised and he simply led his people in a blood-crazed charge dead ahead. This finished Muryan’s left wing. His right wing was in process of taking itself off as fast as the mewsanys could gallop. That left the center. Here Chuktar Moldo, having held the charge of hostile jutmen, having seen them repulsed and routed, was feeling mightily puffed up. His trumpeter blew “Charge!” and it was all over.

  “Very satisfactory,” said Seg Segutorio. “By the Veiled Froyvil, yes!”

  “Seg!” said Milsi, staring at him as though she could never bear to tear her gaze away. “My Jikai!”

  Chapter twenty

  Seg casts a reasonable shaft

  “Now let us get after the rast!”

  As they spurred ahead, Seg reflected that Milsi was a romantic soul. Well, she had every right to be, seeing what her life had been and what she had been through. Her feelings and expression left him in no doubt. When she dubbed him her Jikai — she meant it with a full heart.

  With Skort and his Clawsangs riding in attendance and with Seg’s comrades joining with a few of the Undurker archers, they caught up with the fleeing Muryan in not too long a time. He had a small party of adherents still with him, including the red-headed Bowman of Loh, Nag-So-Spangchin.

  The configuration of the ground here, a series of shallow depressions and low rounded hills, channeled pursued and pursuers into the valley to the right ahead, which looked broader and easier than the left.

  The flight hullabalooed along, with the dust kicking and the mewsanys stretching their necks, clumsily thumping on in their six-legged gait.

  At the far end of the valley the ground leveled off and stretched off to the next horizon. A clump of trees to the left showed up clearly, with an overturned carriage nearby.

  Muryan’s party halted.

  Seg saw men gesticulating up there and arms raised in anger. Just to the left an uncrossable ravine split the ground. Instantly, Seg saw it all.

  So did Milsi!

  “Mishti!” she screamed, rising in her stirrups, staring wildly at the small white form trapped beneath one of the shafts of the overturned carriage. A tiny arm waved.

  The Dorvenhork in his Chulik way growled to his archers; “Shaft ’em all!”

  The canine-faced archers loosed, uselessly. Seg’s hand reached around for his apology for a longbow.

  He had but the one arrow, which he had brought out of comfort, for, as he was the first to say, he felt naked without a good Lohvian longbow and a quiver of clothyard shafts.

  Milsi urged her mount toward the ravine; but the beast, sensible in his mewsany way, refused to descend.

  Abruptly, the paktuns about Muryan leveled their lances, helmets came down, and they charged pell-mell upon Milsi’s party. Skort bellowed and leveled his lance.

  Milsi saw what followed. Everyone saw. Nag-so-Spangchin jumped off his mount. He stood proud from the few men still with Muryan. He lifted his bow. The arrow head glittered sharply in the lights of Zim and Genodras. He loosed.

  The shaft spat from the bow, soaring up and up. No trained eye was needed to tell where that steel-tipped bird would fall.

  “Mishti!” screamed Milsi, frantic, panting, wild-eyed.

  Useless to shaft the Bowman of Loh. Too late for that. The charging cavalry with their leveled lances were almost on Seg’s people, who rode out to front that wild and desperate last onslaught.

  The bow was in Seg’s hand. The bow he had knocked up with a knife, working hurriedly, an unseasoned bow, which he had shot in once, a poor apology for a bow, and yet the only bow here that was of any use whatsoever. The silly leaf-fletched shaft was nocked in a twinkling. He could feel the blood, he could feel his heart, he could feel his muscles. He stopped breathing. He laid himself into his bow, holding him just so, every single fiber of his being wrapped up in the shot. Left and right hands drawing together, right hand to the ear and left arm thrusting out with sure power and purpose. The loose, clean, clean! The shaft, speeding away, like a hunting bird, like a gleaming raptor of the skies swooping upon some poor fluttering prey.

  High and high against the blue soared the shaft.

  It curved. It dipped. Unheard through the thundering oncoming racket of the deadly cavalry charge, arrow struck arrow.

  Both shafts tumbled to the ground.

  And a damned great mewsany lumbered full into Seg and knocked him all sprawling, and a razor-edged lance point sliced all along his side. The animal fell on him, a bulky sweaty body clad in bronze fell on him and all the lights went out for Seg and he was gathered up into the all-enveloping cloak of Notor Zan.

  When he regained his senses the famous Bells of Beng Kishi so rang and clamored in his head that he dare not so much as move that poor abused cranium of his.

  They carted him back to Nalvinlad, first in a creaking two-wheeled conveyance drawn by a couple of mytzers and then in a Schinkitree. His head still jumped about loosely upon his shoulders. They put him in a fine expensive bed in a splendid bedroom and the doctors with their needles stuck him and took away the pain, and so he slept.

  Milsi kept watch and ward over him. He came to, at last, for Seg had bathed in the Sacred Pool of Baptism in the River Zelph in far Aphrasöe, the Swinging City. He supposed, logically, that he would take Milsi to Aphrasöe very soon. Then she too, besides partaking of this miraculous recovery from injuries, would also live a thousand years.

  “Muryan?” he said when Milsi came in, smiling.

  “Oh, don’t worry your head about him. He never was a good swimmer.”

  “The lady Mishti?”
r />   Milsi frowned.

  “I own I do not understand her. She is still a child yet she is grown into womanhood — and, yet, Seg, she sometimes acts as though she were my mother. It is strange.”

  “That’s children for you.”

  “You must mend soon. We are being married in six days.”

  “If you say so, my heart. If you are sure.”

  “I am certain positive! Do you not wish to be king?”

  Seg did not answer but picked a paline from the gold dish at the bedside and chewed comfortably. Truth to tell, he didn’t know about this kingship business. He’d been a kov, and kind-heartedness had got him nowhere. Perhaps being a king where they sent people off for a little swim might also prove untenable as a way of life.

  “My love!” she cried, and plumped down on the bed and took him in her arms. “I want for you only what is best!”

  “I want to marry you, Milsi. You know my past. I own I feel for you so much that — well—”

  “We were both shafted by the same bolt of lightning.” She laughed, joyful at her own cleverness. “That is the lightning bolt upon your flag, Seg, my dearest heart!”

  Holding her close, drawing in the sweet perfume of her hair and shoulders, feeling her firm softness against him, Seg fell into a dizzy state of contentment that overpowered him with its freshness and delight.

  That this could be! He gave thanks to all the gods and spirits of Kregen that he should be so favored, so fortunate, so blessed.

  Preparations for the wedding went ahead and a couple of days later the lady Mishti slipped in to see him.

  She surprised Seg. Milsi had been quite right. This slip of a girl, half woman, half child, knew exactly what she wanted, and was unsure only of the best way to gain her ends. She did not look at all like Milsi, and her hair was dark, her nose thin, and her mouth rather too full. Still, she would grow out of imperfections and become a dazzling beauty.

  She said: “Kov Llipton mends, pantor Seg. You are to be my new father. Well, mother is old. One day I shall be queen, and very soon, I think. Then, I am almost decided, I shall marry Kov Llipton. He is a numim, of course; but then he will die and I shall marry whomever I choose and have a great deal of money — lots and lots...”