Golden Scorpio (15 page)

“No — no!” shouted some. They were growing warm. “It is not that at all,” shouted others. They were all struggling with preconceived notions. Ordinary citizens just didn’t go out and fight as common soldiers. Foul-mouthed mercenaries did that, and got paid to do it.

I pointed at Targon. “If you stood in your house and saw your wife and child about to be murdered—” I thought a subtle or not so subtle notion might enhance my argument here, and so I said: “Assuming any girl has been misguided enough to wed you—” which brought a few guffaws out. “And you had that cudgel you’ve been trying to brain these Hawkwas with — would you not strike down the assassin?”

“Well,” flared out Targon, mightily angry. “Of course!”

“So when the Iron Riders get here — will you hit their iron with a wooden club?”

I was surprised to hear a few guffaws at this, and realized I was making headway.

“Give me your sword, jen, and you would see!”

I let out a sigh. About to speak, perhaps to come to the crux, I halted as a man yelled and pointed up.

“There are the flutsmen,” he shouted. “What do they want? Have they seen the Iron Riders?”

The mercenaries of the skies, self-centered, wheeled on their wing-fluttering birds, circling the village. Then they descended steeply through the bright air. I saw the way they handled their weapons. I knew flutsmen of old.

“Take cover!” I bellowed, furious, seething. “They are true devils. They will slay us all for mere sport!”

Eleven

Sport for Flutsmen

“No, no, jen,” quoth Targon, easy, assuming a superior attitude at my ignorance. “They have not troubled us so far — or, at least, no more than any rasts of mercenaries trouble honest men.”

“They’ll have you all as slaves—”

The other men of Therminsax made little attempt to conceal their amusement at my agitation. What a fuss I was making, and all over a patrol of flutsmen out scouting. It was clear enough that, detest the Hamalese and the treachery of Aduimbrev though they might, they had adapted and come to terms with the new order.

The flutsmen steepled down through the thin air, seven of them, the clotted clumps of feathers streaming back from their leather flying helmets, their long toonon-like weapons slanting down. They did not intend to shaft us with their crossbows, then. Sport — that was what they were after, sport...

Then I remembered just why I was here. The narrowboats! I was supposed to be scouting for Kutven Rordam and the canalfolk.

Naghan ti Lodkwara pushed up from the wall. He stared up and scratched that black beard. “Flutsmen. They are very devils—”

“Get your Hawkwas into the houses, at least, Naghan. I must back to the cut—”

I started off running, waving my arms, haring along the towpath. The narrowboats were just in view. There were two parties of people and both claimed my attention.

“Get inside and bolt the doors!” I bellowed. “Hurry!
Flutsmen!”

The haulers eased up and the tows slacked. Kutven Rordam appeared shouting questions. I bellowed over the uproar. “Bolt the doors. If you have weapons, use them,” Then I went pounding back up the towpath again past the concealing clumps of bushes toward that stretch of greensward.

On the edge of the village I skidded to a halt. The flutsmen had landed. Naghan must have shuffled his men into the houses, for the colors in badge and favor of the men huddled into an apprehensive and gesticulating ring were all crimson and brown. The flutsmen prodded them with their long polearms, cunningly adapted to aerial work, the narrow blade and curved axe on a shaft that might be anything from seven to fifteen feet in length, the infamous ukra cowed these men of Therminsax.

I had faced the toonons of the Ullars in Turismond and the ukras of flutsmen in Havilfar and I was in no mood to be cowed by these rasts before me now.

Two of the flutsmen carried volstuxes, the aerial throwing spear. They were not all apim, there being a Rapa and a Brokelsh in their number.

Reiving mercenaries of the skies, flutsmen, and they accept any man into their bands, apim, diff, it does not matter providing he swears allegiance to the flutsman band, and obeys their harsh protocol and discipline which, despite their savage ways, control their wild and barbaric way of life. I stepped out into the open and I did not draw my thraxter.

“By Barflut the Razor Feathered!” shouted the nearest flutsman, an apim, with a volstux poised. “Here is one who gapes like an onker! Rast! Get with the others, whilst we decide how you shall die. Bratch!”

“Barflut?” I said, not moving. “A cramph of cramphs, so I am told. A nulsh.”

They went mad at this, their enjoyable conversation on just how these onkerish prisoners were to die so rudely interrupted. Some had wanted to tie ropes to the wrists and ankles of a man and then fly aloft with him attached to two fluttrells. How long, the game went, how long would he last before he was torn asunder. Now they heard the name of one of their sacred patron spirits defiled. They foamed with rage.

The apim cast his volstux. I stepped aside. The shaft flew and no doubt stuck somewhere into the ground. I did not turn around to look.

The other one with a volstux, the Rapa, cast also, and again I moved.

Leaving three of their number to guard the prisoners, the other four rushed on me. Two ukras and two thraxters whipped toward me. I drew the thraxter. The swordsmen first, for I slid past the long polearms and crossed steel with the Rapa. He came at me in fine fettle with his sword; but, somehow, his thraxter was not where it should have been, and mine was through his throat above the feather-adorned corselet. Withdrawing, I grabbed an ukra in my left hand and swung its owner around into his comrade. The other swordsman died as he tried to degut me and then I could turn my attention to the last two. One had the sense to drop his ukra and go for his sword; but he was too late and too slow. The other one tried to run and I had to do as I dislike and chop him from the rear. But, then, even as he went down, he would understand that if a fighting man runs then his back becomes the target.

The remaining three shrilled their rage and raced for their fluttrells. They were going for their crossbows; they were not intending to fly away.

And then — and then an arm reached out from the mass of prisoners and fastened on the neck of a flutsman. Targon the Tapster lifted him and shook him and the ukra fell, to be immediately snatched up by another Therminsaxer. The two flutsmen reached their birds. The crossbows came out of their boots with twinkling speed and the next instant they were leveled at me. The two bolts sped.

Because flutsmen habitually shoot from flying birds their crossbow bolts are short and heavy. I had no Krozair longsword. So, not wishing to take any chances, I hurled myself forward and hit the ground. The bolts hissed past overhead. When I sprang to my feet again the two flutsmen were whipping out their thraxters, determined to finish me once and for all.

A chunk of rock flew and hit the Brokelsh in the stomach. He grunted. Quite apart from his armor, his Brokelsh guts were strong enough to withstand a blow twice as hard. With his companion he charged for me, ignoring the rabble who were now throwing rocks with abandon.

I bellowed, high and hard. “Targon the Tapster! Tell your men to capture the fluttrells — the flying birds — before they fly away! Hurry!”

Then the two flutsmen were on me and it was a fine old skip and dance before I thunked them both down. I swirled away to the fluttrells and let out a yell of disappointment. Six great saddle birds winged high into the air, disdainful of the half-scared, ineffectual attempts of the Therminsaxers to arrest them. Only one remained, and he fluttered his wide wings and kicked up an enormous stink, tugging at his clerketer which was held by half a dozen of the men, all hauling as though they dragged a narrow boat up a vertical cut. I laughed.

“By Vox! A single fluttrell, and you act as though you would chain a city down.”

“We know nothing of these outlandish beasts!” And, and I swear, one of them, a little squiffy-eyed fellow with a broken nose, snapped out furiously: “If Opaz had meant us to fly he’d have given us wings when we’re born.”

In the end, more laughing than anything else, I got the fluttrell under control, and then an arrow winged in past my shoulder and buried its steel head in the fluttrell’s breast.

Outraged, I swung about. What my face looked like I do not know. But the canalfolk, running up, abruptly fell back. A tall limber lad, a good hauler, lowered his bow. He looked perplexed. Kutven Rordam, wielding an axe, strode up.

“We saved you in time, Jak the Drang! By Vaosh, it was close.”

So, I couldn’t flare out at them for onkers, for idiots, for hulus — I needed the fluttrell, and now the poor bird was dead, and these canalfolk thought they had saved my life. I shook my head. I would tell them the truth, by Krun, yes! But not right now...

But Targon the Tapster had no such inhibitions. Panting, disheveled, with a raking claw scratch on his arm, he pushed up to Rordam. “You stupid calsany! We risk our lives to capture the bird — and you strut up and kill it! Onker!”

I pass over the next few murs in painful silence.

In the end they were sorted out, and their ruffled feathers soothed. I’d lost the fluttrell. But we had gained a small arsenal. And, more importantly, these people understood a little more of what was asked of them in the future, of what I would demand of them.

Three different cultures were represented here. The canalfolk, fiercely independent, with a way of life peculiarly their own, reserved, withdrawn from the hurly burly of the political life of Vallia, doing their job and proud of that and their heritage and traditions, the canalfolk formed, as it were, the powerful skeleton of Vallia.

The Hawkwas, wilder than the general run of Vallian — if you excepted those howling Blue Mountain Boys of Delia’s — driven from their lands just when they believed they had struck a blow for freedom, the Hawkwas harbored a savage sense of repression and injustice.

And the Therminsaxers, townsfolk, for many years accustomed to city ways and an ordered existence, habituated to a way of life centered around their city and its trade, their guilds and societies, the full living of the good life in a wealthy imperial province of Vallia, these citizens were bemused by the catastrophe that had befallen them.

When I had first come to Therminsax, flying in an ice voller, the place had been ranked as a market town. Now it was a city, the dignity conferred by the emperor in recognition of the place’s growing size and importance and wealth.

“Gather up all the weapons. You—” and I singled out the man I had first dragged out of the fight, Yulo the Boots — “go and find the volstux that went into the bushes. You—” and I gestured to the Hawkwa I had first questioned, he who swore over-abundantly, Foke the Waso, for he was the fifth child — “go and retrieve the two bolts.” They caught the urgency I felt, and all obeyed without question — at least, for the moment. This dominance, this habit of taking command and giving orders, is often hateful; but in the present circumstances a lead had to be given and I am, as you know, blessed or cursed with the yrium, that charismatic power that bedazzles men into total acceptance and loyal following — well, some men and some of the time, as you will have learned.

“Naghan ti Lodkwara,” I said. “Targon the Tapster. Stand before me.” In the busy bustle of men scouting around finding the fallen weapons and collecting the gear from the dead flutsmen the two leaders did as I bid. “Now,” I said. “These ponshos.”

They both started in a-yelling and I quieted them and glared at Naghan. He scraped a foot. “We are hungry. My people have marched many dwaburs without provender. Anyway, the ponshos were wandering—”

“That,” pointed out Targon, breathing deeply, “is why we are out here looking for them.”

“They are safe,” said Naghan. He looked up, half-defiant, half-abashed. “In yonder broken-down house.”

So we went to look. The ponshos were tied up with cloths around their heads. When we loosened the bindings the poor beasts set up a great baaing and bleating. Targon beamed, pleased to see his ponshos still alive and not eaten.

“Your people?” I said to Naghan.

“Aye, jen. We heard what the radvakkas mischiefed in the south and we came north. Some would have asked the burghers of Therminsax for food and help; but others preferred to take what we could and press on.”

By south he meant the southern borders of Hawkwa country. And by some who preferred to take what they wanted, he meant himself, I did not doubt.

“You lead them?”

“Aye, jen. They wait for the ponshos we would have brought a few ulms off—”

There was no doubt in my mind of the correct course. So, in the fullness of time and loaded down with the gear stripped from the flutsmen, we set off for the city. It was not far; and, indeed, Therminsax looked mightily refreshing with its red and white houses sheltered behind the long walls. Those walls were in poor shape now, and suburbs had sprung up outside.

“They will not welcome us, jen,” said Naghan.

“Leave that to me,” I said.

He and Targon, both, looked at me oddly.

Foke the Waso had been sent off to fetch in the rest of the Hawkwas. The Hawkwas I had run across, down in Gelkwa, had been a tough wild raffish lot. I did not doubt that those living in Sakwara were just as hard-bitten. Their reduced circumstances spoke volumes for the impetuous overawing effect of the Iron Riders.

When Udo, Trylon of Gelkwa, subsidized by Phu-si-Yantong with Hamalese money and arms, had set off to attack Vondium, the High Kov of Sakwara had sat still, biding his time. Now he was the acknowledged leader of the Hawkwas, in fact as well as by rank. So Naghan ti Lodkwara had not been involved in the earlier fighting. That, I admit, afforded me a little pleasure.

In Therminsax I anticipated making the first real opposition to the radvakkas, as I was commanded by the Star Lords. There might only be a handful of Hamalese there; but there were many mercenaries, paid by that damned Wizard of Loh. His wealth would be colossal, seeing he controlled all of Pandahem as well as much of Hamal and what other lands besides Opaz alone knew. So the reality of what had happened hit me shrewdly. I felt the shock. We had all seen the dust clouds to the south and west, and marked their progress as we came into the city, wondering what they portended.