The flyer swooped down on me, the lance lashed past my side, and I sprang upward. My fingers clenched around the dangling wind-driven straps of the clerketer. I took a firm grasp and hauled up.
The fluttrell felt the extra weight come on, but a fluttrell can carry two as easily as one. His powerful talons opened for a moment where they were tucked up beneath his velvety-green body, and then, click, back they went, and with a strong beat of his beige-white wings he surged aloft. The flutsman looked down.
He was not a member of Homo sapiens. I had not previously met the particular race of diffs of which he was a member, and there was no time now to concern myself over that. Although I did have some slight interest to see if he would bleed red blood.
I started to hand myself up, straining on the straps.
The fluttrell’s large head-vane turned and the flutsman put his own head down in a perfectly instinctive way to avoid the vane, and so I got my feet into the straps and took another purchase for my fist. Again the flutsman looked over the side. From the streamlined helmet covered with velvety-green feathers the flaring, clotted mass of multicolored ribbons flicked and fluttered most bravely. He had stowed his lance-sword into its bucket and had drawn his thraxter. This was a wise move on his part, for the straight cut-and-thrust sword would be of more use to him now. I inched up another hold.
Against the wind-stream clatter he shouted down: “Apim! Crawl up to die, rast!”
I am apim, a member of Homo sapiens. A rast, as you know, is a disgusting six-legged rodent infesting dunghills. I have been called a rast many times on Kregen, and no doubt will be so called for a goodly number of times yet; so that the word meant nothing.
Since I didn’t know from what race of diffs he owed his parentage, I could not goad him with a racially pointed insult. It is my custom not to tell a foeman what I am going to do unless some good end is served. He was clearly expecting me to lift myself up to get at him, when he would incontinently take a slash at my face, hoping to finish me with one blow.
The longsword in my left fist whirled around, flat against the slipstream. The blow was judged to a nicety. The keen blade sliced his leg, cut through the bone, sliced the flesh on the other side and did not so much as touch a feather of the fluttrell.
The flutsman yelled.
While he was caterwauling away I hefted up again, took my last grip around his waist and, with a thrust from my feet, toppled him over on the opposite side.
He hung dangling, screeching. The thraxter whirled wildly from its thong to his wrist. I slashed the clerketer and watched the slaver fall to the ground.
At a much later stage of my career they had no need to tell me: “Don’t sit and watch your man flame to the ground; keep your head turning! Watch up sun!”
I kept my head turning then as I had learned long ago on Kregen. I clamped my knees to the fluttrell and urged him sideways and aloft, and I kept my head down. The flashing glimpse of mirror-bright steel whickered past as a lance-sword missed.
The longsword glimmered with blood. Without compunction I wiped it on the velvety-green feathers of the flying mount before I thrust it into the scabbard. Delia had supervised the stitching of that scabbard; I would not willingly foul her work with gore.
The situation had now taken a piquant turn.
The fluttrell with that awkward head-vane is not a favorite flying mount, in my view; but I had put my hand to a task and so must go on. The great Lohvian longbow had taken its toll of slavers. The longsword had taken more. Now I went to work with an aerial weapon, the long lance-sword of the flutsmen, so like the toonon of the Ullars of Northern Turismond. We battled there in the sky, and now I made it my business to swoop down low and so chop the flutsmen in the act of barbing potential slaves. There is a saying on Kregen that a flutsman would not walk across the road to pick up a purse of gold. Of course not; he would fly across, just as a zorcaman would ride across. But, even so, a number of these aragorn-hired mercenaries had landed and leaped off their birds to round up the slaves. Angling my wind-eater down toward them, and spearing a flutsman as he tried to stop me, I dived on them. There was no subtlety in my handling of the bird; he recognized the hands and knees and feet of a rider who knew what he wanted and knew also unpleasant ways — as well as pleasant ones — of obtaining the desired result. The fluttrell gave no trouble and I was able to wheel and guide him about the sky as though we had been in partnership for seasons of fighting.
The slavers below saw me coming and lifted their weapons.
I guided the wind-eater directly at them, swinging him low, forcing him down. And as I did so I leaned over and bellowed close alongside his head so that he could hear.
“Tchik!” I yelled at the bird. “Tchik!”
At that command the fluttrell went wild.
Down came his talons that could sink into oak.
Out they stretched, clawing, sharp, ferocious, deadly.
The flutsmen yelled and some scattered, some stood their ground, and these either died under the diabolical claws of the bird or were slashed by the lance-sword. Up and up we swooped at the end of the run. The fluttrell needed no order from me to bank on a wing and come sliding around for another pass.
When a flutsman gives that dread order to his wind-eater, “Tchik,” the monstrous bird becomes a killer. The problem, as I knew, is to bring the bird back under control again. Seldom can that be achieved while still in the air. I did not attempt it. I forced the bird down to where a group of flutsmen clustered, caught in the open and unable to run for their own mounts. Flutsmen, caught afoot!
What a moment!
They screeched as those vicious claws sank into their bodies. The lance-sword scythed into them. Back and forth my mount flew, raging, mad with killing frenzy. I kept a sharp eye aloft at the few remaining flutsmen, for I was puzzled by the fact they had not used their crossbows. Truth to tell, I had not seen any crossbows strapped to their saddles. As you know, there are crossbows and crossbows in Havilfar, and flutsmen boast of the quality of theirs. (In later seasons I experienced a whole band of these mercenaries of the skies who refused to use crossbows because they were not of the very finest manufacture. Other flutsmen disown the crossbow because of its difficulty in spanning while airborne, although you who have listened to these tapes[1]will know it is a trick that can be learned speedily enough.) Around me in the air the flutsmen raged to strike the single blow that would free them from my encumbrance, and thus allow them to get on with their rapacious plundering of human flesh. For the people shrieking in such mortal fear below were apim, were Homo sapiens. While I fought to keep the slavers away I saw something of the victims below, and I formed an idea why they had not fought back. They all seemed to be either old men and young boys, or women and children. I heard some of them yelling as I swooped over their heads: “Jikai!”
“Hai Jikai!” they were yelling, some in feeble croaks from narrow lips. “Jikai. .”
In this stupid affray against these devils of slavers that was the first time any idea of calling it a Jikai had crossed my mind. Was it a Jikai? To dub any feat of arms a Jikai meant it was a superb example of honor and glory and nobility, as well as a crafty use of downright cunning where necessary. You will know how I regard the use of the word
And so, thus boasting to myself, I came to grief.
A stux transfixed the throat of the fluttrell. The broad and heavy head of the flung javelin jutted through, clotted with blood. The fluttrell would have been hard to manage, anyway, after his ferocious primeval instincts had been allowed full play in tchik, and so that stux was one way of settling the matter. I half fell, half leaped off, sprawling head over heels onto the dust. There was no time to lie winded. How different the scene when viewed from the ground than the view aloft!
A pack of people were already chained. Slavers were strutting past them, some flicking whips, some beating them with the flats of their thraxters. The lance-sword was much too unhandy a weapon down here.
I took the longsword into my fists again, and charged.
This time the flutsmen must have decided to get rid of me as the first priority. I had been hampering their operations and they had so far not killed me. They had tipped me out of my voller, they had brought down my wind-eater; now they would cut my legs from under me, and see how I liked that. A bird with widespread wings dived for me, skimming the ground, his legs tucked up. The flutsmen with slaves to carry back to whatever hell-hole
