From the time when I had flown over the jungle escaping with Tulema and Dorval Aymlo and the others, I could only estimate the distances to be traversed to the coast. Once there I had no doubt we would steal a boat well enough. Had Turko not been injured we might have made it, and he realized this and said nothing, and looked at me speculatively.
We were, in truth, a sorry-looking bunch. When we creaked our way down out of our tree in the morning, and shivered, and stretched, and looked about on the dim vastness of the jungle, pressing us in to a narrow circle of hostile greenery all about, I realized we could not go on. The two girls’ feet were lacerated and torn despite the muffling clumsy rags they wore. Some of the halflings were in a worse case, although many were holding up reasonably well; but with that stupid prickly pride, I had, without any conscious volition on my part, decided we would all get out together. By this time I was heartily sick of the jungle. I know we spent a weary time in the green fastness, and I contrasted it with others of my marches upon the hostile, terrifying, beautiful face of Kregen, but it was a chore laid on me and it was something I had to do.
I said, with that harsh intolerant rasp in my voice, “Stay here. I will return.”
Most of them simply sank down, thankful not to have once more to plunge into that steaming hell. I left them and walked carefully along what was left of the trail. All about me, almost unheard, rustled the vicious life of the forest. Soon I came to a clearing — not large — but I fancied it would do. To bring everyone there and safely sheltered up trees, with palisades, took a frightening long time. But, at last, we were ready.
Turko opened his eyes and stared at me and I could have sworn amusement curved his pallid lips as I spoke to cheer him.
“Now, friend Turko! Let the manhounds come! We’ll make ’em sorry they sniffed us out!”
“Yes, Dray Prescot. I really think you will.”
Chapter Sixteen
Almost immediately half a dozen fluttrells bearing armed warriors passed in a skein over the clearing. I remained still. I hungered for a voller.
As the morning wore on and Far and Havil crawled across the sky and the temperature rose and we sweated and steamed, more fluttrells pirouetted above us until I began to think we would have to decoy them down, enough for all fourteen of us, for we had lost three and gained one. In the end I saw what must be the truth of the matter and cursed; but having deliberately walked all this way through jungle in order to decoy a suitably proud hunting party, the loss of a few more burs hardly counted. When the next skein of fluttrells was sighted I stepped out into the clearing and waved.
“Have a care, Dray Prescot,” called Turko. “Remember, they will have real steel weapons, also.”
His light voice sounded stronger, which cheered me, and I did not miss that underlying mockery. Truly, he counted me a nul, never a true khamster, and this was inevitable and right. The fluttrells slanted down. There were five of them, and they looked bright and brave against the glow of the suns.
This was just another of those occasions on Kregen when I faced odds. I hoped the fluttrells would wing away after an inspection to report to the manhunters that they had discovered our whereabouts. The mighty hunters on the great Jikai were almost certainly sitting with their feet up, sipping the best wines of Havilfar — or possibly, if they could afford it, a fine Jholaix — and waiting until a sighting report had been brought back by their aerial scouts.
My hope was vain.
The first four fluttrells continued their descent; the fifth winged up in a flash of velvety green over the beige-white, his streamlined head-vane turning. He disappeared over the jungle roof before his comrades alighted. The men astride the fluttrells, although new to me then, were of a type, if not a nation, with which I was perfectly familiar. I had seen their like strutting the boulevards and enclaves of Zenicce, lording it over the slaves in the warrens of Magdag, supervising the Emperor’s haulers along the canals of Vallia. Hard, tough, professional, man-managers and slave-masters they were, like the aragorn I had bested in Valka. They jumped down with cheerful cries, one to another. They unstrapped their clerketers, and their weapons clicked up into position, the crossbows spanned, the moment their feet hit the tangled ground of the clearing.
They wore flying leathers, and braided cloaks cunningly fashioned from the velvet-green feathers of the fluttrells themselves. Their feathered flying caps fitted closely to their mahogany-brown faces, and streamed a clotted and flaring mass of multicolored ribbons, very brave to see in the slipstream of their passage across the sky. They advanced without any caution whatsoever. My bow felt the ill-made thing it was in my fist. I could have no hesitation here. The Star Lords’
commands impelled me.
The first arrow took the first flyer in the throat. The second arrow, a fraction too late, struck the second flyer in the face as he ducked to the side. I had read his ducking and his direction but the clumsy arrow loosed not as accurately as a clothyard shaft fletched with the brilliant blue feathers of the king korf of Erthyrdrin would have done. By the time the third arrow was on its way crossbow bolts were thunking about me.
They had difficulty seeing me against the gloom of the jungle and the third arrow pitched into the third flyer’s throat above the leather flying tunic. The fourth flyer looked dazedly at his companions, at what must have seemed to him to be a deadly wall of jungle sprouting arrows — and he turned and ran for his fluttrell.
Much as I dislike shooting men in the back this was a thing very necessary to be done. When it was all over Mog crackled out: “A great Jikai, Dray Prescot! You shoot well from ambush. Hai, Jikai!”
Which displeased me most savagely, so that I cursed the old witch in the name of the putrescent right eyeball of Makki-Grodno.
“They are flutsmen, Dray Prescot,” Rapechak called. He walked across, carefully cut out the arrow from the nearest body, turned it over with his foot, and bending lithely, took up the man’s thraxter. “I have served with them, in the long ago. They are good soldiers, although avaricious and without mercy. Because they ride their fluttrells through the windy wastes of the sky they consider themselves far better than the ordinary footman. They are disliked. But they earn their pay.” He waved the thraxter about a little, and I saw the feelings strong upon him as he once more grasped a weapon in his Rapa fist. The flutsmen, so I gathered, were not in any sense a race or a nation. Rather, they recruited from strong, fierce, vicious young men of similar natures to themselves, forming a kind of freemasonry of the skies, owing allegiance to no one unless paid and paid well. True mercenaries, they were, giving their first thought to their own band, then to the flutsmen, and, after that, to their current paymaster. Men from all over Havilfar, aye, and from over the seas, served in their winged ranks. Gynor the Brokelsh approached. He looked determined. “There are four fluttrells, Dray Prescot. Will you four apims take them and fly away and leave us halflings?”
Apim, as you know, is the slang and somewhat contemptuous term used by halflings for ordinary human beings — for, of course, to any halfling he is ordinary and the apims are strange.
“You have put an idea into my head, Gynor, for, by Vox, I hadn’t thought of it.”
He eyed me again. “You may speak truth. You are a strange man, Dray Prescot. If not that, then, what?”
“We must capture a voller-” I began, but with a rush of long naked legs and a hysterical series of screams, the two girls were upon me, panting, breathing in gulps, their hair all over their faces — very distracting and pretty, no doubt, but quite out of place in the serious work to hand.