Seg the Bowman (11 page)

They all carefully observed the fantamyrrh as they stepped into the boat. Long and narrow, with her paddlers chained to their benches at each side, she offered only adequate accommodation right aft where the master lived in state, and right forrard where the paktun guards were quartered. The rescued folk could, for the journey, sleep upon the central gangway. There were no masts. Along the gangway prowled the Whip-Deldars ensuring that the paddlers kept time and rhythm and dug deeply with all their strength.

The master turned out to be a jolly, perspiring, multi-chinned apim called Obolya Metromin. As a merchant specializing in the buying and selling of saddle animals, he liked to be called Obolya the Zorcanim. This was, to Seg, pitching it a little high; but he was in no case to argue the finer points of nomenclature.

Obolya sat upon a handsome chair, strewn with expensive silks and furs, beaming away upon the new arrivals. At his back his pavilion-like cabin rose, the flags fluttering. His personal guards flanked him, distinct from the boat-guards. Two charming girls saw to his needs, their pale bodies partially concealed by artfully draped gauzes, decorated with strings of pearls in the age-old custom. Obolya himself, in robes of some magnificence, exuded an air of benediction; but Seg was not the only one to see and realize that this fat, happy, charming man was a merchant of consummate shrewdness.

“Payment?” he exclaimed, and held up a fat beringed hand in horror. “Never could I exact payment for performing a good deed. Why, by Pandrite the All-Powerful! Is it not the Law of the River to aid our unfortunate brothers and sisters? You will take wine, of course. I have a middling-fine Markable which clears the throat most effectively.”

So they all took wine.

This fine fat animal-trader was on his way upriver to buy what saddle-animals he could from traders out on the plains. Milsi looked at him carefully, and smiled, and intimated that if horter Obolya was going to Mewsansmot—

“Why, yes! I have business contacts there. All this is new to me, this is my first journey so far upriver. I trade normally in North Pandahem; but things political up there are parlous, most parlous. I am confident that if I can secure good cargoes of saddle animals I can sell every last one back in North Pandahem.”

Incautiously, Seg said: “Then the journey around the island by sea is less dangerous than crossing the mountains?”

Obolya lowered his wine cup, of polished silver, studded with gems.

“Of course — as everyone knows. My business associate, a fine brave fellow, Naghan Loppelyer, just managed to stagger back home after an attempt to cross the mountains. He lost his caravan, his guards, his girls, his money, his clothes and escaped only with his life.”

“You are then from Tomboram?” Milsi looked up.

“Yes. And a pretty pickle we are in up there, I can tell you.”

“Yes,” said Milsi. Then, quickly, to Obolya: “If you’d kindly take us to Mewsansmot I have friends there.

I am sure I could arrange a number of profitable introductions.”

“My dear young lady! That is splendid! It is a bargain, as Pandrite is my witness!”

When he had the chance of a private word, Seg said to Milsi: “Look, my lady. You are the lady in waiting to the queen. Why don’t we go straight to the capital? Surely your—”

“The king and queen are dead. We know that. The whole country is not sure, but suspects. I want to see my friends first, Seg. You’ll just have to trust me in this.”

“Oh, I trust you all right. Perhaps you do not trust this Kov Llipton who is the regent?”

“I have no reason not to trust him. Anyway, he will do what he wants to do. I am only a handmaiden.”

There was something else troubling Milsi, Seg could sense that with a sympathy that aroused his own guilt that he had not fully confided in her. Yes, they might have been shafted by the same bolt of lightning; but he felt sure that when Milsi did at last confide the more important parts of her history he would discover facts that, just perhaps, might better be left undiscovered.

He considered the interesting notion that she might be Queen Mab herself. He dismissed the idea because he and his old dom had seen the queen dead in the next cell to Milsi’s. And it was certain the queen would be recognized somewhere along the river. If Queen Mab was Milsi and she trusted Kov Llipton — and, it seemed sure that so far there was no reason to distrust him apart from the cynical natures possessed by wandering paktuns — then there would be no need to continue with the masquerade. She could just sail grandly up to her palace in the capital city of Nalvinlad and take over from the regent.

Maybe, just maybe, if the handmaiden Milsi was really Queen Mab, she might not wish to marry Kov Llipton if that was his intention. She might have another in mind. If that was the case, Seg couldn’t see that other fortunate man being a wandering warrior Bowman of Loh.

He brushed all this nonsense aside.

The facts were that the lady Milsi had asked him to be her jikai and to escort her safely to her friends in Mewsansmot.

This he intended to do to the best of his ability or die trying.

Milsi joined him as he sat on the central gangway trying to keep his stupid thoughts well away from the continuous hypnotic rhythm of the paddlers to either side, and, equally, away from the fantasy scenarios thronging his stupid old vosk skull of a head.

She wore a yellow blouse fastened with bone rosettes through loops of crimson thread. The blouse was almost a bolero jacket, its hem reaching to a point just above her navel. She still wore the scrap of blue loincloth. Her hair had been wound up and fastened with an overlarge stickpin whose head was fashioned into the likeness of a spinyfish, one of the delicacies of the river.

“Well, my Horkandur! You look mighty pensive!”

“Just wondering how all this will end.”

“Do not fret. We are well on our way. Look at my new clothes. Obolya is most kind. Why don’t you go aft and ransack his wardrobe?”

“Yes, yes, in a mur or two.”

“You are grumpy, Seg!”

“I crave your pardon, my lady. It is just — just that — oh! I do not know! I know so little of you, and I was just puzzling if I wanted to know more. There. I’m honest with you.”

She looked clearly at him, a long and level gaze to which he responded with his own fey blue gaze just as level and straight.

“Yes, Seg. I also have a family. A single child, not yet full-grown. And I hunger to see her again!”

The boat drew into the wooden piers of the wharfside in Nalvinlad. Many craft dotted the brown water, paddles flashed and the shouts of stentors as they guided their vessels joined in the clamor of birds above the fish quays. The slaves from Obolya’s Schinkitree were herded out, chained two and two, and taken off to the slave barracks for the night.

The city was not overlarge, girded with a stout wooden palisade strengthened with mudbrick. Here and there, particularly at the river gates and the few gates facing inland, the defenses were strengthened with blocks of masonry. Crowds surged about the business of a city, yet as he went ashore Seg noticed that same apathy that afflicted all the folk of the river since the disappearance of their king.

The palace, built of wood and mud brick, was encircled by its own separate stone wall. The cost of that must have been enormous. King Crox, since he came of age, had bustled about and transformed his kingdom, extending its boundaries up and down the river. He had done nothing about any lateral extension. Kingdoms in this part of South Pandahem stretched along rivers. They were, as Seg put it, as wide as you could reach with your outspread arms, and as long as you could fight your way and win and take territory.

King Crox, already given the name of the gold piece in customary use around here, had changed the name of his new kingdom. When he’d ascended the throne the realm had been called Nalvindrin. His conquests enlarged his domains enough for him to call the whole lot Croxdrin.

When the bandits from the Snarly Hills had caused interruption in the regular flow of commerce along his river, King Crox had taken his expedition in to quell them for good.

Already he had put down piracy on the river, now he wasn’t going to stand still for a miserable bunch of drikingers. Well, he’d run into far more than he could handle in the Coup Blag. Still, the regent carried on the good work of keeping the river free from pirates.

Seg and the folk rescued with him stood by the Peral Gate and looked up.

A row of stakes lifted into the brilliance of the suns’ radiance.

Each stake was crowned with a head.

“There’s Ortyg the Undlefar,” said Khardun, scornfully.

“And there and there!” exclaimed others, staring up and recognizing the heads of the people who had escaped with them and who had gone off on the render’s trail with Ortyg.

“Kov Llipton moves fast,” said Obolya, comfortably. “The moment these rasts were taken, swift boats flew up and down the river, warning us. That is why I hired on extra guards.”

“The danger is over, I would think,” said Milsi.

“Probably, my lady Milsi. But I will check with the authorities first, before I discharge my brave paktuns.”

Khardun turned with his supercilious Khibil nose high.

“That is bad news for me, then, horter Obolya.”

“Do not rush upon a leem’s nest, horter Khardun! You are a hyrpaktun. Keep close. I may have great use for a kampeon such as yourself, and Nath the Dorvenhork.”

Seg had not offered to hire out as a mercenary.

By rescuing them and landing them safely in civilization, Obolya the Zorcanim had discharged the duty laid on him by the Laws of the River. He had contracted to take Milsi on to Mewsansmot; nobody else.

If Seg accompanied Milsi, he’d have to pay his passage, always assuming Obolya cared to find room for him.

As for the rest of them, they would have to fend for themselves. They were penniless, with the scraps of clothing found for them from Obolya’s wardrobe chests, without occupations. They could easily be taken up again as slaves — vagrants, no-goods, people without visible means of support. This Kov Llipton sounded like your stiff and upright guardian of the laws, such as many Kovs when assuming the regency became in a twinkling.

Cautiously, Seg inspected the condition of his purse. The gold he’d taken from the Coup Blag had been in his estimate enough to last him a long time, given that copper and silver were the more common metals of currency. He could hand out three gold pieces per person, and leave himself with ten. H’m... Once you’d been a noble yourself you tended to forget about a lot of the more unpleasant aspects of money, as he’d explained to the two dinkus.

He still would not think too hard of what Milsi had told him of her child. Well, of course she had a child!

Didn’t that make sense? She was a married woman. Of course she was. She had said that her husband was dead; she did not specify how or the circumstances.

Seg didn’t want to know. Nothing had changed in his estimation. He still determined to carry on with what he had sworn.

The mercenaries hired by Obolya congregated in a group under the staring eyeless heads on their stakes.

They wrangled with one another, and their talk was hard and bitter. Most were local lads, trying to get into the mercenary trade; there was just the one paktun with the silver mortil-head at his throat. He had assumed command.

The burden of their complaints could be summed up by: “Since King Crox cleaned up the river there is little employment for us. It is hard to find work for an honest mercenary.”

The paktun, Norolger the Arm, said: “Since the great wars finished all paktuns have seen lean times.

There must be work for us up in the plains. I heard from my twin recently who is in North Pandahem. He said there was plenty of work there, although he did not or could not say whose army was recruiting.”

“Then let us go there! You will lead us, Norolger the Arm, and be our Deldar!”

“And who will pay our passage?”

The Chulik Nath the Dorvenhork interrupted to say: “If you wish to sail around Pandahem to the north, you will sail render-infested seas. You will find ready hire among the masters of the merchant ships, or even in the swordships if you are very skilled.”

Two of the mercenaries, little more than coys, said they were going home, and although they gave the reason as a longing to taste once more the delights of their mothers’ cooking, Seg, for one, suspected other motives. Being a paktun on Kregen, an honest profession, was not an easy life to lead.

The other mercenaries wandered off still wrangling about what best to do.

Seg looked hard at Khardun. The Khibil would be the toughest. Once he had accepted, the others would follow. Khardun the Franch, as his cognomen suggested, was a very bright spark indeed who thought a great deal of himself.

“Khardun! What is your hire fee these days?”

Khardun had no need to explain that while Chuliks might be trained up from birth to be exemplary fighting men, any Khibil was worth at least as much, if not more. By reason of his smartness, of course ...

This was not a generally held opinion. Chuliks and Pachaks looked to be paid at least a third more than a Khibil. This general opinion was stated, with a firmness that held severe protocol in the address, by the Dorvenhork.

Seg kept the exasperation out of his face and voice. He’d thought he’d handled this giving of gold to the dratted Khibil cleverly, and instead had raised a howling argument.

“When mercenaries are hiring on in times of short supply,” Khardun snapped out, intemperately, “many cherished opinions are shattered.”

“Here there is an oversupply of mercenaries.”

Seg butted in. “Dratted good pay for a mercenary is a silver piece a day. You’d get a lot less here. A Chulik can look, as Nath well knows, for twelve a week. A Khibil will take nine.”

“And an apim will take seven!” flared Khardun.

“Oh,” said Seg. “I’d stand out for eight.”

The Rapa, Rafikhan, fluffed up his feathers and said morosely: “We Rapas are paid the standard one silver piece a day, six a week. I have been paid nine, once, when I went for a varterman and — well, never mind that.”