can-”
“We can shaft them from cover — and we must hurry!”
His face blazed eagerness at me. I sighed. What can one do with these high and mighty princelings whose honor code rules them to death and destruction? And yet — Tyfar was a man of better mettle than mere unthinking bludgeoning.
“You don’t have to let those flutsmen know we are here, do you?” said Hunch. His voice quavered. Nodgen hefted his spear. He could throw that with skill and power, even though it was not a stux, the stout throwing spear of Havilfar. “I have four spears,” he said. His voice growled. “That’s four of the cramphs.”
“They are too far away for you, Nodgen, you onker!”
“They’ll come nearer, once the arrows fly.”
“That,” I said, “is true.”
“I will not wait any longer.” Tyfar shouted it. He started to stand up. I moved forward. What I was going to do Opaz alone knows. I was confused, knowing I ought to help those poor folk out there against those rasts of flutsmen, and knowing, also, that my responsibilities were wider by far than this mere stupid little fracas in the Humped Land.
The flutsmen swooped down.
The great Lohvian longbow snugged into my grip. The blue-fletched arrow nocked home sweetly. I lifted the bow and stood up. By Zair! The stupid things I have done in my time on Kregen! But — Kregen is a world where anything may happen and frequently does.
Together, Nath the Shaft, Barkindrar the Bullet, and I, Dray Prescot, prince of onkers, let fly. Three flutsmen sagged and dropped from their clerketers, the leather flying thongs holding their bodies dangling from the big birds as they struggled to stay aloft with the limp, dragging weight frightening them and hauling them down.
Again we shot, and again. Someone of us missed the third time; who it was I do not know. Now the flutsmen were veering like gale-tossed spindrift, swirling over toward our rocky outcrop. The rear ten or so fell straight down, the fluttrells settling with a flurrying uproar and updriven billows of dust about the galloping jutmen. The fight sprawled over there across the flat. We shot again as the leading flyers chuted down toward us. The two Pachaks and Hunch brought the short bows taken from the Muzzards into action. Those damned flutsmen astride their fluttrells, all a mass of glitter and waving clumped feathers and brandished weapons, looked massive and indomitable. They looked as though they could fly right through us. That is the impression they seek to convey. The leading flyers were close enough for Nodgen to hurl his spear. The thick shaft burst through the leather and feathered flying gear of his target, and the flutsman screeched, a thin, high wail of despair cutting through the din. He went smashing back against his wicker saddle, slipped sideways, making despairing, jerking grippings with his hands, which slid off to dangle.
“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?”
