hacking away to my heart’s content. Thrusting is a chancy business in these circumstances, for obvious reasons.
The voller clanged as the wooden hull gonged to repeated blows. But she won free. We sprung through the giant saddle birds and up into the suns shine — save for one. One fluttrell rose abruptly directly before me.
There was no chance to swerve the flier. Bird and boat crashed together with an almighty smash. Staggering, I kept my feet, braced, wrathful, the wicked Krozair brand slanted up and forward. The bird was entangled with the stem of the boat, where the fancy gilding was all scraped away. The stout leather harness did not break. Its wings thrashed. The rider, freeing himself from his clerketer, leaped right nimbly down onto the tiny deck, superbly balanced on supple legs, and came for me directly. His green feathers flaunted in the light.
“Die, onker!” he shouted, and cast his stux.
The spear flew. The Krozair longsword flicked and the spear, ringing like a gong, caromed away into the blue.
Nothing daunted, the flutsman came on, drawing his thraxter. He presented the sword, point first, the Havilfarese cut-and-thruster held in skilled firm grip, and leaped down with a wild panache. Powerful, he was, limber in his strength, supremely at home in the air. The longsword flicked left, halted, surged back, twisting. The thraxter spun up in the air, end over end, sparkling. The sharp steel point of the Krozair brand held without a tremble on the throat of the flutsman, just above the green collar of his lorica. He glared at me, panting, disbelieving. He was a strong well-built Brokelsh. His bristle body hair bristled even more. A strong, virile race, the Brokelsh, and many people consider them coarse and uncouth. Not apims, of course, the Brokelsh. Had this fellow been wearing a silver or gold trim to the collar of his lorica I might have had a little more exercise in twitching his sword away. He gaped down at the sword. His expression was one of enormous surprise, as though he awoke from a dream of midnight houris and wine to find himself in this predicament. His goggle-eyed amazement amused me.
“Why should I not slay you now, dom?”
He shook his massive head and licked his lips. His mannerisms were those of a man, diff or apim, both.
“I am a flutsman, apim.”
“Aye! A reiving mercenary of the skies who owes no allegiance to any save his own band, despite the hire fees you take. Well, many of your band have gone down to the Ice Floes this day. What say you, Flutsman?”
His blunt chin went up. Uncouth they may be, the Brokelsh, exceedingly hairy with a coarse black body hair; but they are men.
“I am Hakko Bolg ti Bregal, known as Hakko Volrokjid. Perhaps I deserve to die. I do not think so. I have a great hatred for all you Hamalese — and mayhap that will serve.”
“In that case, by the disgusting tripes of Makki-Grodno! I shall not slay you. I do not want your blood on my blade.”
I said this, you will perceive, to conceal the truth.
He squinted his eyes down, this Hakko Volrokjid. I, too had had trouble with volroks, those winged flying men of Havilfar. “And this blade,” he said. “I have not seen its like before.”
“And I’ve not heard of Bregal.”
“A small town, in Ystilbur of the Dawn Lands.”
“I have heard of Ystilbur. An ancient land.”
“And razed with fire and swords by you rasts. By Barflut the Razor Feathered! I would dearly love to slay you all!”
“Seize your fluttrell, before the onkerish thing strangles himself on his own harness. Get you gone. I am not a Hamalese. And, dom, if you meet me again, remember, and tread small.”
He glared for a heartbeat at me, his bristly face working, then he scrambled back and grappled his bird, who would have bit at him had he not clouted it over the head. I spoke big, like that, to conceal deeps I did not want this Brokelsh flutsman, Hakko Volrokjid, to see revealed in me. He freed the bird and vaulted up into the saddle, doing all this with the practiced ease of your true flutsman. He buckled up the clerketer. His bristly face lowered down on me.
“I shall not forget you, apim. Be very sure of that, by the Golden Feathered Aegis!” He drew up the reins, handled most cunningly in one fist. Then he shouted down words that surprised me, although they should not have. Many a paktun — although he was far too callow to have earned the coveted mortilhead — would not thank a man for giving life. They might feel shame, depression, humiliation, the outrage of their professional ethics, depending on their beliefs. But this young flutsman bellowed down: “I thank you for my life. May the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh have you in his keeping. Remberee!”
And with a great beating of wings the fluttrell swooped away and this singular flutsman was gone. I poked my head over the side of the voller.
The flutsmen toiled along after me, all in formation, the wings of their flyers going up and down, up and down. Hakko Volrokjid spun away through the level wastes to join them. Then, all in formation, they swung away and strung out in a beeline for the coast to the west. Hakko flew strongly after them. So, guessing what was afoot — or, rather, in the air — I looked ahead and there were the fliers lifting from the scattering of cays and bearing up for me.
A single look reassured me.
They were not vollers of the Hamalian Air Service.
My friends, waiting at the rendezvous, had witnessed the little aerial affray and were no doubt thirsting to get into the fight.
This was true — deplorably so.
The moment my voller touched gunwales with Seg’s impressive craft he yelled across: “One missed, Dray — the blue flash of feathers was not to be mistaken.”
“My finger slipped on the string.”
“Aye!” he roared, joyously. “You always had slippery fingers.”
Inch bellowed across from his flier. “A good long axe, Dray — that’s what you need up here in the sky.”
Other greetings rose from the other fliers. We formed a little fleet, a tiny armada, there off the coast of a hostile empire. But we wanted nothing of Hamal on this trip.
I landed the little voller across the deck of the large flier Delia had provided for us. She waited for me, alight with joy at my safe return. All my comrades and their families were here, in good spirits, although chafing to have missed that little spat of a fight. So I knew the emperor was not yet dead. Delia smiled at me, her face pale.
“He still lives. But he is weak, so very weak. We must hurry.”
I shouted out the course to Vangar.
“Southwest! Southwest at top speed.”
We were on our way to Bet-Aqsa and the men who might tell us where away lay Aphrasoe, the Swinging City of the Savanti.
Chapter Nine
The encounter between the ranked Pachak swods and the Rapa Deldars had been sanguinary in the extreme. Two Chulik Jiktars, powerful, had been swept away in the bloody rout, and an apim Paktun and a Brokelsh Hikdar were thrown with the others regretfully back into the velvet-lined box.
“Do you yield?” demanded Delia, most fierce.
“Aye,” I said. I did not tip my king over in the terrestrial way of chess but I pushed back in the chair and, looking on the ruin of my forces, said: “Aye, I bare the throat.”
Jikaida is a game where women can be so damned deceitful it amazes mere mortal men. But I could not help adding: “I notice you are using as your Pallan a female figure. I still do not recognize the representation.”
“You are not meant to.”
I glanced out through a port. The airboat fled on through the level wastes of air, speeding towards Bet-Aqsa. We had slept and eaten and I had thought to occupy the mind of Delia by Jikaida, that absorbing game that
