“Where’s the next?” raved Nodgen.
The flutsmen circled. We shot, a rolling flighting of steel birds that wreaked cruel damage on the flesh-and-blood birds aloft. Spears sliced down to rattle against the rocks. But, as so often happens when a man afoot shoots it out with a man aloft, the man on the ground has all the advantages. A barbed spear grazed past Tyfar’s arm, and he cursed, and shook his axe.
We kept low, cocking our bows up steeply, using the rocks as cover, keeping in the shadows of the thorn-ivy. The fluttrells would not come near that, for they are canny birds when it comes to self-preservation.
A flung stux whipped in toward me and I flicked it away with an outthrust arm. The men up there must have loosed their crossbows against the jutmen out on the flat, and thinking to finish the thing quickly, had not reloaded. In this they were poor quality flutsmen, quite unlike the band in which I had served. The dust smothered across the fight out on the flat and only a thin and attenuated yelling told us that men were still left to battle it out. We had taken the major part of the force attacking the vakkas and they would have to fend for themselves until we had seen off the reivers attempting to slay us. So — we fought.
Now your true-blue mercenary of the skies knows when to fight from his natural perch, astride the back of a bird or flying animal, or when to alight and get on with handstrokes on the ground. We had seen off a sizeable gang of this bunch; now the rest forced their fluttrells in to haphazard landings and leaped off their backs, swords and spears brandished. They leaped toward us over the dust between the rocks. Nath the Shaft calmly shot two of them out even as they cocked their legs over the wicker saddles and the sheening feathers.
The rest of us shot methodically, and then we were at the tinker’s work. The flutsmen they were close to proved to be a surprise. They were the usual mixture of diffs and apims, a Rapa, a Fristle, a Brokelsh. They were clearly still unaware quite of their losses. They ran in and started to fight bravely enough. But when half their number fell, screaming, with not one of us so much as scratched, they abruptly came to a realization of the situation. As I said, they were of poor quality. They were, if you will pardon the conceit, masichieri of the skies.
When this raggle-taggle band broke back for their birds, I shouted the orders it was necessary to give and see obeyed instantly.
The Pachaks raced forward first. They were, after all, hyr-paktuns, with the golden pakzhan at their throats. They were more used to what goes on in the aftermath of battles than Tyfar’s two retainers, or the Tryfant Hunch. But Nodgen, who had been a mercenary in his time — almost made paktun -
understood swiftly, and was out of the rocks and running after the two Pachaks. Tyfar yelled to me. “The people out there!”
“Let us go over, by all means.”
So the rest of us ran past the end of the thorn-ivy and quitted the shelter of the rocks. We ran toward the boil of dust marking the fight. Long before we reached it, the flutsmen were lifting away, the birds’
wings flapping with vigorous downstrokes to gain takeoff speed.
Then I let out a roar.
“The famblys! Come back! Come back-”
But the jutmen, freed of the horror of the flutsmen all around them, simply clapped in their spurs and went haring away across the flats. They galloped in a string and they had their heads down and I do not doubt that most of them had their eyes shut, also.
So we stopped running, and stood and watched the folk we had rescued simply flee in panic.
“The stupid onkers!” said Tyfar. He breathed in, and then made a grimace of distaste, and spat. The dust drifted in, clogging our mouths, flat and unpleasant on the tongue. Among the drift of detritus of the fight — dead animals, dead birds, dead flutsmen, dead jutmen, and a scatter of weapons — an arm lifted.
“One of them,” I said, “at least is alive.”
We ran across.
He had been a strong fighting man, clad in bronze-bound leather, with a neat trim of silver to the rim of his helmet. His face, heavily bearded, was waxen now, all the high color fled. His lips were ricked back. Near him lay a young man, dressed in clothes and armor of exceeding richness, and this young man’s neck was twisted and ripped, and he could have looked down his own shoulder blades, had his eyes still possessed the gift of sight.
“He — is dead — the young lord,” gasped the bearded, dying man. “So — best — I die, too…”
“Who was he?” said Tyfar. He spoke in a hard, contained voice.
The bearded lips opened but only a gargle sounded.
I bent closer.
“Rest easy, dom. You are safe now-”
“Flutsmen — lord, my lord — you must-” His head fell sideways, and those craggy, bearded lips gusted a last breath.
I stood up.
“I,” said Tyfar, “wonder who they were.”
“It does not matter. They are dead or fled.”
We stared about on that unpleasant scene.
Presently, Hunch said, “Can we go back to the rocks now, please?”
“Not before you and Barkindrar and Nath have collected what is useful to us. And be quick about it. There may be other flutsmen about.”
Hunch looked sick.
“Do we have to?”
“Assuredly you do. Now — jump!”
Tyfar nodded. “Nath, Barkindrar, set to it.”
I ploughed in to help select anything we thought would be of use to us. But, as a prince, Tyfar moved a little way off. He did not help us strip the dead of the rich armor, or rake through the satchels, or lift up the blood-caked weapons. But he did not walk away. He stood nearby, and if any further flutsmen showed up, why, then he would show what being a prince involved.
The bulky, bearded man bothered me. He had given his life, and that had not been enough. His young lord was dead. I surmised they were part of an expedition out to venture down a Moder after treasure and magic, and had been separated from the main body by the Muzzard vakkas. Then the flutsmen, ever avid to pick up morsels like that, had attacked.
Twisted under a fine zorca that had been shafted — I took a single look and then looked away. The vile things that happen to faithful saddle animals at the hands of men is a sore subject with me, as with many other men on two worlds. Twisted under this poor dead zorca, as I say, lay the body of a large man who had been pitched from the saddle. His neck had broken.
I studied his face, calm, lined, filled with the remnants of a vigor that had sustained him in life and was now deserting him in death. He wore magnificent armor. It had not stopped his neck from being smashed. I sucked in my breath and went to work.
He was not the bearded servitor’s young lord, and I guessed he was a lord in his own right, gone adventuring on his own account. The expedition of which we nine were the last to escape from Moderdrin had contained nine separate expeditions within our ranks. The armor came off easily, for it had been well cared for. I hoisted it on my back and took his weapons and then trailed off after the others who were hurrying back to the rocks.