Presently, Tyfar called, “Barkindrar, Nath. We camp here.”
I nodded to myself.
That was the way it ought to be done. Confidence. The two Pachaks said nothing; silently they got on with cutting thorn-ivy and fashioning a form of boma around the open angle of the kink in the runnel. Old campaigners, these two Pachak hyr-paktuns, capital fellows to have along with you in a chancy business.
“I am quite fond of bright-leaved hagli around the door,” said Quienyin. “But this stuff is murderous.”
We hauled the thorn-ivy around, using sticks and weapons and not touching the stuff, and so fashioned the boma. I spied the land in the first flush of light. Jumping out, I walked a way off, turned to check the look of our hide.
It looked innocent enough.
Going back along the runnel I felt a burst of confidence.
We could hole up there all day and never be spotted unless some damned rider fell on top of us. If that was what was in Tyfar’s mind, it most certainly was not in mine. Hunch was in no doubt.
“We can hole up here all day,” he said to Nodgen. “We’ve water to last us and we can march on to the next stream tonight.” He yawned. “I think I shall sleep all day.”
“The dawn wind will blow our tracks away,” said Nodgen. “But you’ll stand your watch like the rest of us, you skulking Tryfant.”
“At least I don’t always need a shave-”
“Quiet, you two,” I said.
They froze.
“All of you — still!”
As the light brightened with the rising of the red sun, Zim, and the green sun, Genodras, and the shadows fleeted across the sere land, specks drifted high against the radiance. We squinted our eyes. Yes -
Flutsmen. They were flutsmen up there, sky flyers sweeping across the land on the lookout for prey. True mercenaries of the skies, the flutsmen serve for pay in various armies; but they mostly enjoy reiving on their own account. And no man is safe from them.
We remained perfectly still.
High and menacing, the wings of their flyers lifting and falling in rhythm, the flutsmen circled twice, rising and falling, and then lined out and headed north.
“May the leather of their clerketers rot so they fall off and break their evil necks,” said Hunch. He shut his eyes tightly. “Have they gone?”
“They’ve gone, you fambly — you can stop shaking.”
“The trouble is,” said Hunch the Tryfant, opening his eyes and looking serious. “I couldn’t run away then, and you know how it upsets me not to have a clear run.”
There spoke your true Tryfant. But Hunch had proved a good comrade, despite his avowed intention of running off if the going got too tough.
We composed ourselves for the day. I positioned myself so that my head was just under the lowest prickly branch of a thorn-ivy bush, where I had to be careful. The view afforded lowered down — the dusty surface, ocher and dun, blowing a little with the dawn wind, and the prospects of the Moders, massive artificial mounds that gave the Humped Land its name of Moderdrin, spotting the landscape for as far as I could see. Slowly, the Suns of Scorpio crawled across the heavens. And we waited and sweated.
The first sign came, as so often, in a patch of lifting dust.
I narrowed my eyes against the glare. The dust plumed white streamers and grew closer. A body of men rode out there. Logu Fre-Da, who was on watch, called down gently, “Swarths.”
We remained still. The dust neared.
Dark shapes, fragmentary, appearing and disappearing, thickened beneath the dust. We waited.
“How many, Logu?”
An appreciable pause ensued before he replied.
“At least a dozen, notor — perhaps as many as twenty.”
“They will ride nearer.”
“Yes.”
Perhaps twenty — twenty of those hard dark riders who had hounded our caravan toward one particular Moder. Their swarths, agile, scaled risslacas with wedged-shaped heads, fanged, terrible, would carry them in a thumping rash if they spotted us. They would have no mercy, seeing we were not an expedition but merely victims for their sport — or so it was easy to believe. For very many of the mysterious races of Kregen that is just how it is, no matter that there are many splendid races on Kregen who regard that kind of bestial behavior with abhorrence. There was no mistake with this little lot. If they spotted us they’d seek to have sport with us before they slew us.
“Not a squeak out of you,” said Prince Tyfar. “Or you’ll be down among the Ice Floes of Sicce before you’ve finished yammering.”
Not one of these men crouching with noses in the dust would make so much as a bleat. Now we could hear the soft shurr and stomp of the swarths. From their angle of approach they were making for the nearest Moder. They would pass within three hundred paces of our little thorn boma. They’d never see us. Not from where they would pass, avoiding the line of thorn-ivy. All we had to do was remain perfectly still and silent and we’d be safe.
Gently, making no fuss over it, I stood up.
I climbed out past the edge of the thorn-ivy.
“Jak!” screeched Tyfar. I heard the others cursing.
I walked a few paces forward, toward the swarth riders. I lifted my arms high. I shouted.
“Hai! Rasts! Over here! You zigging bunch of cramphs — what are you waiting for?”
Chapter two
Hunch’s agonized wail floated up at my back.
“He’s mad! Oh, may the good Tryflor save me now!”
The ground felt hard and rocky underfoot. The air tasted sweet. The brightness of the day fell about me.
“Hai! Rasts of the dunghill! Why do you tarry?”
Sharp-edged, brittle, black against the radiance, the swarth riders crowded forward. They saw me, standing clear of the thorn boma. I stood alone. The runnel led directly toward me. The vicious heads of the swarths jerked around, dragged by reins in equally vicious fists. White dust drifted away downwind. The smell of tiny violet flowers crowning spiky bushes, shyly hiding in crevices along the crumbly sides of the runnel, reached me. The suns shone, the wind blew, the flowers blossomed — and I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, challenged this glorious world of Kregen to do what it could against me…
As Hunch the Tryfant had said, shocked, I must be mad. Well, he was not above four foot six tall, and a Tryfant, and so there were excuses for him. I took a step forward, seeking a secure purchase for my gripping toes, and I drew forth the Lohvian longbow.
The saddle dinosaurs were coated in that white dust, but as they moved and jostled the sheen of their purply-green scales glittered against the thorn-ivy. They began to move, urged on by the riders perched on their backs. All those long, thin lances descended from the vertical, slotting into the horizontal, and lethal steel point was aimed for my heart.
Four abreast — that was all the runnel would allow. There was some jostling and cavorting for positions. Each swarth-man was determined to be in the front rank of four, knowing that those following on would have only tattered rags and blood to take as an aiming point.
I banished my comrades from my mind.
Now the Lohvian longbow mattered — the great longbow was the only thing that mattered, that and the
