Often and often has the understanding been brought home to me that this kind of situation is what life on Kregen is all about: This continual headlong advance into danger; this confrontation with the unknown. These beings might turn out to be friends, attracted by the commotion on the river and waiting to see what manner of men or beasts emerged from the reed beds. They might choose to be hostile, and so demand all Turko’s skills and a measure of hefty thwacks from my boat hook. They would act according to their natures, and, of a surety, Turko and I would act according to ours.
“Llahal!” I called, using the nonfamiliar form of the universal Kregish greeting.
“Llahal,” responded the leader, a being who stepped a little in advance of the others. There were ten of them, and I saw the gleam of weapons; but I fancied that if Turko and I were quick we might see them off. Certainly I would not tamely submit. I had been trying, as you can bear witness, to quell that hasty and violent streak of mine that will not tolerate oppression in any form. I had been trying, you might say, to talk first and then strike, rather than the vice versa method to which I had been accustomed.
“We come in peace,” I said.
I know this does not sound like the Dray Prescot you may think you have understood, listening to these tapes spinning through the recorder; and I know I told a blatant lie if we were not received in peace; but I meant it. I had more important concerns than a brawl on a muddy path in the light of the moons. The being advanced cautiously. He looked not unlike a volrok, having long narrow wings, neatly folded, but there was about him a difference that marked him out. Those differences could best be described, perhaps, by saying that if a volrok was equated with a Latin of our Earth, this being would be equated with a man of Nordic stock. But the same eight-limbed original body-form was there, with the upper limbs extended into wide narrow wings, the two arms forward — and holding weapons! — the two legs and feet on which there were no scimitar blades, and the rear pair of limbs fused into a tail fan.
“We, too, seek peace. You have been fighting the volroks?”
Turko laughed and started to say “By the Muscle! We’ve fought the-” when I kicked him in the shins. He said, instead, “-The whole wide world in our time. Do you, then, fight the volroks?”
Another flying man pushed up from the pack. In that light it was difficult to tell them apart. But there is one curious fact that I own to with a certain silly pride, and that is with every successive season I spent on Kregen I was able to pick out more clearly and with greater certainty one halfling from another. Men of one race on Earth will say that all men of another race look alike to them; this is natural if regrettable. Rapechak, for instance, the Rapa mercenary with whom we had fought in Mungul Sidrath and whom we had lost when we escaped into the River Magan, had looked like Rapechak to me, and not like any other Rapa.
This second flying man said: “They are apim. I say we do not trust them.”
“And I say,” said the leader, in a fashion I admired, “that I will stick you if you do not keep quiet, Quarda.”
“We are apim,” I said. “But we are not Canops.”
The leader laughed. It was a good belly-laugh, rich and round and boiling up from a well-filled stomach.
“We know that, dom. Had you been Canops you would have stepped upon the road as dead men.”
“That’s comforting to know.”
He thought I meant it was comforting to know we had not been killed. What he did not know was that I scented allies here in the straggle to come against the iron men from Canopdrin. One of the other flying men in the pack shouted: “The Miglas will be here soon. There was enough noise and torches on the river — let us kill them and be gone.”
The leader did not turn.
He said, “Quincher — hit that onker Quilly for me.”
There came the sound of a blow and a yelp from the dark mass of flying men. The leader nodded, as though satisfied. I rather liked his style.
“You tell me who you are, dom,” he said. “And then we will decide to kill you — or not.”
I am not given to idle boasts. “Tell me who you are.”
He spoke in a very reasonable tone. “You are unarmed. We have weapons, of bronze and of steel. Surely, you must see it is in your own interests to tell us first. After, I will be happy to tell you, and, by the Golden Feathers of Father Qua, it would sadden me to slay a man without weapons in his hands.”
I glanced at Turko. He did not betray his thoughts, but they were clear enough.
“What you say is indeed reasonable, dom. This is Turko, a Great Kham, and these are two foolish girls, Saenda and Quaesa, who live on the opposite shore of the Shrouded Sea.”
“And you?”
The dark eyes regarded me with a closer intent.
“My name is Dray Prescot.”
A buzz of conversation from the flying men, which told me they had not heard of me or of Turko, was followed by the leader bellowing for order. He took a few steps forward, his tail high and arrogant in that pink moonlight.
“I am Obquam of Tajkent. I seek for a certain cramph of a volrok called Rakker — Largan Rakker of the Triple Peaks. Know you of this vile reaver and his whereabouts?”
“No, Horter Obquam,” I said at once. There was no sense in beating about the bush here. “We were attacked by the whole pack of volroks and escaped only because they attacked the Canops in the galleys. This Rakker — he has done you an injury?”
“Aye! And more, may the black talons of Deevi Quruk rip out his entrails and strip his wings so that he falls into the Ice Floes of Sicce!”
For the moment I had learned all I needed to know. Local detail could be filled in later. At any moment the commotion which had attracted so much unwelcome attention would bring a patrol of Canops to the scene. There was light enough still to see the wheeling flock of volroks above the galleys, although they were hidden from direct view. I fancied there were fewer flying men over there. I put it to this Obquam of Tajkent.
“If the one you seek flies with that pack there, why do you not wing over and discover the truth for yourself?”
He drew himself up, not so much with hauteur as with offended pride. I had suggested blatantly enough that Turko shook his hands and arms, loosening up, readying for the fight he thought must be imminent.
“Look there, apim!” Obquam pointed.
Out over the river the volroks were in turmoil. Their thin screeching reached us blown on the wind. Now among them appeared the larger and bulkier shapes of men astride flying beasts and birds, flutsmen astride fluttrells, as I thought then. The gleam of weapons turned to a bright glittering. I saw volroks falling, and fluttrells, too, with their riders pitching off to dangle by their clerketers all the way into the water.
The aerial battle raged and drifted away from us.
“The Canops from the galleys will be ashore now,” I said. “If you seek this Rakker you had best follow, Horter Obquam.”
He gestured. “I am a Strom, Horter Prescot. You really should address me as Strom of Tajkent.”
“If it pleases you. But as for me and my friends, we are for Yaman, and the streets will not be friendly at this time of night, so we will take our leave now.”
I could feel Turko’s brisk brightening at my words.
The girls, whose mouths were now free of our hands, let out gasps of surprise and annoyance and, as was inevitable, fear.
“I am not going back there, Dray Prescot!” yelped Saenda.
“Not for all the ivory in Chem!” snapped Quaesa.
“Then you are perfectly willing to stay with this Strom and his flying men?”
Their outrage was both pitiful and painful. If this Strom Obquam of Tajkent tried to stop me I was fully prepared to deal with him and his flying band. As for the girls, I knew I would have to devise a scheme to get them back to their homes on the other side of the Shrouded Sea, and a good scheme at that. But Turko surprised me. I did not then understand why he wanted to go back to Yaman, the city of eerie buildings where Migshaanu had been contemptuously ousted as the Great Goddess by the Canops. He had no particular love for Mog, the old witch who had so surprisingly become Mog the Mighty, the high priestess, for all that she had doctored him and healed him of his hurts back there in the jungles of Faol. So it was that I turned to walk off, and said rather sharply: “You
