Seg the Bowman (12 page)

During this conversation Diomb stood, first on one leg, then on the other, listening avidly. He had slung his blowpipe over his back, broken down into four pieces.

“Listen to me,” said Seg, and at his tone they all swiveled to regard him, silently. “I intend to give three gold pieces to each of the party with us. That will help them on their way home.” He glared at the fighting men in the party, well-knowing that the rest would accept his offer gladly and with thanks. “As for you paktuns, I need to hire on a bodyguard. I shall pay you each three gold pieces. I leave it a paktun’s honor for each of you to decide just how long you will serve for that amount. Is that understood? Then
Queyd-arn-tung!”
[1]

They goggled at him for a bit, surprised — yet the Chulik, remembering their first meeting and the ominous steadiness of Seg’s bow on him in the boat, gave a salute with due punctilio.

“So be it, by Likshu the Treacherous.”

“By Horato the Potent! So be it!”

“By Rhapaporgolam the Reiver of Souls! So be it!”

Seg nodded, brusquely.

The others in the party crowded round, jabbering away, excited, filling the air with clamor, all thanking horter Seg for his munificence. Seg felt around for his belt pouch and the purse within. The latch was already undone and he hauled out the purse, heavy with gold.

Umtig stepped a little forward, the eight-armed spinlikl, Lord Clinglin, draped around his neck and shoulders. The Och smirked pridefully.

“I thank you most sincerely for your most generous gesture in presenting me with three gold pieces, horter Seg. I shall, of course, repay you.” He laughed that high, almost giggling Och laugh. “Oh, and horter Seg, you have already paid me.” In his supple fingers three gold croxes glowed.

“What!” Seg looked into his purse, looked at the Och, saw the gold — and he laughed. He laughed with his head thrown back and his huge chest expanded, his shock of black hair dancing.

“You hulu!”

“Aye!”

Khardun looked down his foxy nose at the Och.

“And if you were a mercenary, Umtig, you would receive a mere three or four silver pieces a week.”

“Four or five!” spluttered Umtig, cackling with his own ingenuity at his trade. Seg hadn’t felt a thing.

Now Diomb stepped forward, bright and expectant.

Seg sighed.

“I do not know, good Diomb. I really do not know.”

“But, Seg, I wish to earn my hire. If I need money so that Bamba and I may eat, well, then—”

“You will not go short while I still have gold.”

“That is not the same thing, as I now understand.”

The Khibil laughed. “A copper ob a day, doms?”

The Chulik polished up his tusk with his thumb.

“Mayhap. It is no concern of mine.”

“Now,” said Seg, lifting his voice, “as we all have gold in our pockets let us go out and put some wine and meat into our bellies.”

“Aye!”

He felt disappointment when Milsi indicated that she and Malindi would be staying within the accommodation offered in the wharf area for paying guests. She offered no explanation apart from a disinclination to venture into the city away from Obolya’s boat. He caught the impression that she imagined the rapscallion section of the party with Seg would riot all their money away in a low-class tavern and be thrown out, arrested for drunken and disorderly, or in some way offend the laws. The shadow of Kov Llipton hovered unseen over them.

Many of the main streets possessed wooden sidewalks raised on stilts, and some had decorative arcades and papishin-leaved roofs. When the rains came, it appeared, the good folk of Nalvinlad took care of themselves.

As his comrades started off out of the wharf area, some of them danced little jigs upon the boardwalk.

Seg stared after them and turned back to Milsi. “Truly is it said by San Blarnoi, my lady, that a human person is like an onion, layer of secrets wrapped within layer. I shall, of course, not accompany those rogues—”

“Oh, do not be silly, Seg! Go if you want to.”

Diomb looked back, waving farewell to Bamba, for the first time since they had left their homes in the forest. Bamba stood with Malindi. Milsi looked cross.

“I do not want you saying that I kept you from all your enjoyments.”

“It will not be much of an enjoyment if you are not there to share it.”

“A noisy tavern, no doubt a foul dopa den, dancing girls, caff, all manner of spectacles put on called entertainment?”

“I am not in the habit of frequenting dopa dens. Dopa is a liquor so fiery as to make anyone a fighting fool, and, I think you imagine I am enough of that already — my lady.”

The movement of her chin would have, in a less composed woman, been a toss of the head. She bit her lip and looked away.

“Go, Seg. Your friends will leave without you.”

“They are all our friends, surely?”

“After you have paid them gold — most surely!”

“I only did—”

“Quite! Now Malindi and I are off to the little clothing arcade just over there, where we will outfit ourselves, and Bamba, too. Remberee, Seg.”

And she turned with Malindi and Bamba following and walked off with that superb lithe swing of her hips.

Seg did not swear aloud. But, to himself, using one of the Bogandur’s favorites, he said: “By the disgusting diseased liver and lights of Makki Grodno! — What a woman!”

The Rokveil’s Ank was not quite as bad as Milsi had predicted the tavern would be; not quite.

It was situated on a side turning from the Street of Anchor Stones, where the sidewalks were fallen away here and there. When the rains came the roadway became a quagmire so tenacious that even a Quoffa, hauling with might and main, would never shift his cart harnessed to him by chains. The papishin leaf roof resounded to the uproar. Inside the tavern the wooden walls seeped water. No one appeared to care.

No dopa was served here.

Seg would not have entered had dopa been served, not because he was too prudish ever to enter a dopa den but because the almost inevitable fights tended to a sad and messy conclusion. Dopa dens, as he had come to know, could yield secrets and offer fine plucked rascals to be used as unwitting tools in intrigues.

The tables were scrubbed clean, the pots and jugs of a similar cleanly style, and the various brews far superior to anything so far encountered along the Kazzchun River. This was only a small unpretentious tavern a stone’s throw from the waterfront; but this was the capital city.

A Sylvie came in swirling gauzes and clanging bangles and danced erotically, and a performing animal with heavy chains was prodded by red-hot irons into dancing, and a troupe of jugglers threw balls and hoops and firebrands about and... Seg sat slumped into the corner of a settle and moped about the words he’d had with Milsi.

In all the uproar among the fumes of wine and ale and the blue smells of cooking from the kitchen, the hot fat sizzling in pans as food was hurried by serving wenches to the tables, Seg gradually found himself listening to the different conversations going on.

Naturally, one of the main topics was the capture and summary execution of the renders. Kov Llipton had acted very smartly there, the news flying up and down the river in no time. But, it was clear, even amid all this bustle and the titillation of fresh gossip, everyone’s mind dwelt upon the absence of the king and queen. The river was not the same without the guiding hand of King Crox, no matter how smartly the regent, Kov Llipton, acted.

No one knew much about conditions in the Snarly Hills, and a variety of opinions were expressed. That the place was infested with bandits was certain sure, and the king had stopped that, may the good Pandrite be praised. But how drikingers within their forest fastnesses could interfere with river traffic remained a puzzle, and the few land routes were hazardous enough at the best of times. Seg sat, drinking carefully, and he noticed that for all their big talk, Khardun, Rafikhan and the Dorvenhork also drank sparingly. They did, however, eat hugely.

Seg felt it would be less than politic — at the very least! — to mention that a Witch of Loh sat like an evil spider at the center of the Snarly Hills in the Coup Blag.

Nath the Dorvenhork caught the attention of a serving wench and asked if The Rokveil’s Ank served huliper pie.

“No, master. Squish pie, celene flan, jooshas—” She would have rattled out the menu, but the Dorvenhork nodded in his dour Chulik way and said, “Squish.”

“Huliper Pie,” said Rafikhan, leaning forward. “You have been in the army, horter Nath.”

“It is no secret. A Chulik follows the guiding hand of Shum of the Four Tusks into whatever fortune brings.”

Diomb was agog to taste all the varied delights of civilized cooking.

“Squish pie,” said Seg. “I have a comrade, a very great comrade, who dotes on squish pie. Yet his taboos deny him the pleasure without penance, so that he spends bur after bur standing on his head.”

Diomb laughed delightedly. He had proved an object of interest to the denizens of the tavern for only a short time. Most of them had seen dinkus before, captured and brought in as curiosities. Times changed, and no doubt the little people of the forest would soon be setting up in business in Nalvinlad. If good King Crox were here, now...

When Seg’s roast ponsho and momolams arrived at the table he looked at the platter, frowning.

“What is it, Seg?” demanded Diomb.

“A strange fashion this, to be sure.”

Diomb summoned the serving wench by the simple expedient of showing her a copper ob between his nimble fingers. He was learning the ways of civilization. The girl, she was apim with smudgy cheeks, ample bosom, stringy hair, dressed in a simple gray tunic, and she could carry a tray with ten jugs of ale one-handed, came over at once.

“What is this food?” demanded Diomb.

“It is Weeping Ponsho, master.”

Seg said: “How is the dish cooked?”

“Why, master, I know that, although I am but a serving girl. You slash the ponsho and stuff the cuts with herbs. You cut the momolams into slices and then you roast the meat above the vegetables on a rack so that all the fats and goodness drip down.” She looked proud in her own knowledge.

“No doubt, one day, you will be the cook here.” Seg stirred the mess with his knife. “I will eat this. But I prefer ponsho roast whole, or quartered respectably, with the momolams halved lengthways and arranged around the meat.”

“I have heard of that, master. We think it—” Then she stopped, clearly frightened at her willfulness in what she was about to say. You did not contradict a patron. The landlord had a hard and heavy switch hanging at the back of the kitchen door.

All this time she had not taken her eyes off the ob in Diomb’s fingers, going flickety-flick up and down in the way he’d copied, the coin a dazzle.

He flicked it to her and, with the unerring aim of a forest marksman he shied it into the cleavage of her gray tunic. She wiggled, laughed in an affected way, and said, “Thank you, master, may the good Pandrite reward you.”

Khardun the Franch looked at Diomb, and Seg, watching, saw that the Khibil smiled a genuine smile, albeit a foxy one.

“You want to be more careful with your money, young Diomb. Not all gold comes as easily as that from horter Seg.”

“Oh?”

“Why, yes. Didn’t you see the look on that girl’s face? She never gets more than a toc as a tip, and you get six tocs for one copper ob.”

Diomb shoved his blowpipe up his shoulder out of the way, and leaned back against the settle. “I thank you, horter Khardun, for your information. A toc is one of these, then?” And he held up the tiny coin to inspect it more closely.

Somewhat morosely, Seg struck into his meal. A Fristle fifi came in to sing a song and the taproom more or less quieted down to listen. In her melodious meowling way she sang through: “The Lay of Faerly the Ponsho Farmer’s Daughter.” Then she warbled, “Black is White and White is Black,” concerning the doings of the miller’s and the sweep’s wives. She finished up with a little ditty about a girl who so loved a boy on the opposite bank of the Kazzchun River that she essayed to swim and risk the perils of the jaws in the water. Her courage and love so impressed the goddess Pavishkeemi that she came down from her house in Panachreem, the home of the deities of Pandahem, and spread her shush-chiff across the waters. This elegant flowing garment provided a safe way for the love-sick girl, whose name, in the fashion of Kregen, changed from region to region.

This song was known as “The Shush-chiff of Pavishkeemi the Beloved.”

The Fristle fifi sang well and the applause that followed was genuine. Coins showered about her feet. The Fristle with the party, Naghan the Slippy, was so carried away he joyfully threw the fifi a whole shining silver Dhem. Diomb did not notice this. Mindful of Khardun’s words, he threw over the little copper toc.

The girl saw. She bent down with a single graceful motion, picked the toc from the floor, and with a scornful gesture, flung it back at Diomb.

“What—?” exclaimed the dinko, bemused.

Khardun blew out his reddish whiskers. “There are degrees of recompense within the world, young Diomb, and you have just demonstrated two of them — in the wrong order.”

“I suppose I will understand this silly world, one day?”

The young mercenaries who had served as boat guards for the short trip upriver now came in. They looked disgusted. Deeming the rest of his river journey safe, Obolya had paid them off. They had money which they proceeded to squander.

“Onkers,” said Khardun. “They will learn.”

The paktun, Norolger the Arm, whom they had elected as their Deldar to command them, made a half-hearted attempt to restrain the lavish spending. But his heart was not in it.

“By the Blade of Kurin!” he said, wiping the froth from his mouth. “Life is hard, doms, exceeding hard.”

A man wearing a coat of sewn skins sitting just along the wall hitched his cudgel forward and lifted his jug.

“If you seek work, paktuns, the wolves are out along the plains up past Mewsansmot.”