branch. He stared down on us, and saw the murder in our eyes, and he screamed at us.
“It is true! It is true! The wine is drugged and you creeping yetches will be dead tomorrow when the Manhounds of Faol tear your limbs apart and splash your blood into the jungle.”
Shouts and calls broke out as the slaves tried to get up the tree at Nath. He lifted his knife. I think, then, he knew he was doomed, for the Khamorros are frightful fighters, and he with all his forest experience knew he would not elude them among the trees. But he would make the effort. You could feel sorry for him, as you might feel sorry for a risslaca — about to kill and eat a dainty lople — being suddenly caught in a snare and feathered with barbed arrows.
“You are all doomed!” Nath the Guide screeched it down at us. “And the witch shall die first!”
The whole reason I was here, in this hideous situation, was to rescue Mog the Migla and take her to safety. And now, with the speed of a striking leem, Nath hurled his knife at the old Miglish crone. The knife flew, a darting sliver of steel in the forest gloom, full at Mog’s unprotected throat.
Chapter Fourteen
Straight for that stringy defenseless throat the knife flashed. The movement of the knife struck everything else into a paralysis, a stasis wherein Nath’s throwing arm remained outflung, Mog recoiled against the bonds, Turko and the other Khamorros stood caught in the passions of the moment, the halflings below stilled in their clamor.
The sword I had taken from the guard rasped as it cleared the scabbard. That old Krozair trick of striking away flying arrows with the superb Krozair longsword must serve me now — and before I had time to finish the thought, everything happening so fast events blurred, the thraxter flicked out and the knife struck the blade with a high ringing pinging and spun away into the gloom of the forest.
Nath the Guide galvanized into motion, screaming, clawing back up the tree. From below a Rapa — one I had noted as of that fierce, predatory, arrogant kind that meant he had once been a mercenary — threw his own knife. It flew true. Nath the Guide stood, arms spread, transfixed, his face twisted with the defiant-fear — and he fell. Nath the Guide, son of treachery, fell full-length down the tree and so into the greenery to smash face-first into the mud and detritus of the jungle floor.
“Let his foul Hito the Hunter aid him now!” quoth the Rapa, and went down very agilely to retrieve his knife.
This Rapa was one Rapechak, and I remember that he must have been less offensive to smell than most, or I was growing accustomed to the typical Rapa stink. Those Rapas who had fought with me in Dorval Aymlo’s courtyard, too, I recalled, had been in nowise as offensive as other Rapas I had known.
“Now what do we do?” demanded the big Khamorro, Chimche.
Mog remained petrified and dumb. The halflings were raising a great hullabaloo. Janich was yelling at them to cease their noise or, by the Muscle, he’d break their bones to powder. Turko said: “This nul Dray Prescot knew the guide was false. So did the old witch. What is fitting that we should do with them, khamsters?”
“Did you know, witch?” shouted Chimche, thrusting his nose at Mog. She cowered back, blinking.
“Only stories!” Her shrill voice poured words out in a torrent. “May Migshaanu the Ever-Radiant stand as my witness! Rumors — we heard stories — the wine was a sleep potion — the shoes were baited -
the tame slaves were frightened. Enil was found dead in his den, and Yolan went for water and never returned.” She shook as she screamed. “We dare not speak! The guides murdered us! By Magoshno and Sidraarga, I swear it!”
Janich went to strike her, so wrought up was he; but Turko took his arm, saying: “Leave the old nul, Janich. She is harmless and in fear for her life.”
“Aye.” Janich looked down at Turko’s hand on his arm. “She should be. And so should you be, nul- syple!”
Turko took his hand away.
He removed that hand from Janich’s arm neither too quickly nor yet too slowly. I admired that coolness. I could guess what had transmogrified the situation. The syples were the different kinds of Khamorro training and belief, and a nul, clearly, was anyone not a Khamorro. So that for Janich to call Turko a nul-syple was a great insult. Yet Turko did not instantly retaliate. He had put his hand on a man who was not a syple-brother. The answer must be given.
I said: “If you wish to yammer and quarrel here all night, you may do so. As for me, I am going to take a flier off these Makki-Grodno guides.”
I still held the thraxter naked in my fist. I reached across to Mog, and with my left hand wrenched her bindings free, lifted her up, and slung her over my shoulder. She screamed and then tried to bite me, whereat I thwacked her narrow bottom with the flat of the blade. The thraxter is a medium-long straight sword, with a blade heavier and wider than a rapier, a vertical blade, and it smacked with a satisfactory smack. Mog yelped.
Down the tree I went, slipping and sliding most of the way. At the bottom the Rapa, Rapechak, straightened up with his knife freshly cleaned on Nath’s breechclout. “You mentioned a flier.”
“Aye. This way. And keep silent.”
So I set off with the halfling Mog draped over my shoulder and a rout of halflings following me through the forest. I found the clearing and thumped Mog down and said: “Stay there, old witch. If you try to run I’ll draw your guts out for a knitted vest.”
Without knowledge of any signal the flier up there might be awaiting I could only wait patiently for him to descend. Inachos had stood out and waved; I could not do that. The Twins were up, the two second moons of Kregen eternally revolving one about the other, casting down a pinkish sheen of light in which details stood out clearly. A rustle on the back trail heralded the three Khamorros.
“You, Turko,” I said. “If you stand in the clearing and wave up, and then scamper back here, and look lively about it, we might see the flier this Zair-forsaken night.”
Again Turko favored me with that long, almost quizzical look. I turned away and went to stand by Mog. Turko walked into the clearing, looked up, waved his arms, and then walked back. As a performance it would not have done for Drury Lane, but it worked.
The flier ghosted down, shimmering in the pink moonlight, drifting gently to the clearing’s mass of rotting vegetation, fallen trees, and creeping shoots. A guide looked out and shouted something about Hito the Hunter and the stupid yetches of slaves to be run in the morning and needing a drink. . and Rapechak the Rapa’s knife buried itself in his neck so that he pitched over the lenken side of the flier, choking and writhing in convulsions, before Chimche reached him and twisted his head in a single savage crunching action.
I was working with fearsome allies, now, but they did not have the unwanted responsibility of Mog the Migla on their hands.
Janich said with great satisfaction, “I can fly a voller.”
I said, “We will have to squeeze everyone in most carefully. There is not too much room-”
But Chimche and Janich both stared at me, as though I were mad, and then they laughed, and Chimche said: “You? A stinking nul? We do not take you aboard our voller.”
And Janich chuckled and added: “But we will take the two shishis. They will make brave sport!”
The two girls, the fair and the dark, screamed at this and cowered back from the forefront of the group of halflings. Truth to tell, I had taken no notice of the girls, for I had had Mog to concern myself with. Now Turko said in a quiet, even, leaden voice: “And me?”
“You?” Janich threw back his head and laughed aloud. “You nul-syple! You will be left with these others, for the yetches of manhounds to gobble up! I am only sorry I cannot be here to see it.”
I moved forward. The sword glimmered pinkly in my hand.
“I do not think you will take off and leave us, Janich. The airboat belongs to us all. We are all slaves together.”
If I had expected an argument from a Khamorro I was a fool.
