They were flutsmen up there.
Flutsmen!
By this time I knew a little of their nefarious ways. Later, I was to learn more. But now, these mercenaries of the skies, flying their fluttrells with sure confident skill, out for plunder and lopped heads, bore down screeching on me. To them, I represented loot, easy pickings, a lone flier in a voller. If they could take me before I rose and speeded enough to elude them, why, then they’d toss me over the side into the sea, and pilot the voller back to their base. They’d sell her and her contents and get drunk on the proceeds. Then they’d go reiving off for more easy plunder. Usually, the flutsmen work for hire, bands of professional mercenaries, paktuns of a sort. I’d hardly demean them to the low quality of masichieri, those scoundrels who are more employable bandits than honest mercenaries, but often enough they came close, by Zair. I fancied this band were freelancing, tazll, harrying for themselves. There were about thirty of them, too long odds for me to want to tangle with them, in view of the urgency of the task before me, unless I had to.
The emperor must come first. A fight could wait. There is always opportunity for a fight on Kregen. . The voller lifted. Slowly. Too slowly.
The fluttrells turned their big heads with those large ridiculous vanes into the wind and opened their jaws and lanced down.
I glared up savagely. By Krun! I wanted no fight. But if these haughty, vicious flutsmen wanted to come to handstrokes, then I’d accommodate them. With a juicy Makki-Grodno oath, having to do with the putrescent diseased innards of Makki-Grodno’s disgusting liver, I snatched up the great Lohvian longbow. If I couldn’t shaft a few of the yetches before they reached me I hadn’t been trained by Seg Segutorio, the master bowman of Erthyrdrin!
Down they swooped, their green-feathered harness tight about them, their closely-fitting green-feathered caps with the flaring knotted clumps of ribbon streaming out in the wind of their passage. Flutsmen on the rampage present a brave spectacle. Completely confident of themselves they swooped down, each man ready with crossbow, volstux or long whippy sword.
Before they could start shooting I cast the first shaft.
Clean through the feather-adorned armored body of the leading flutsman the clothyard shaft punched. The brilliant blue feathers of the shaft’s notching came from the crested korf of the Blue Mountains of Vallia. Always, Seg would say that the king korfs blue feathers were just that fraction superior to those of a crested korf; but he would affirm that the beautiful bird, the korf of Kregen, provided the best feathers for the shafts cast from a Lohvian longbow. I thought about this as I loosed again. Before the leading flutsman had time to slide from his high saddle and dangle from the leather straps of his clerketer, the second shaft took his wingmate. The third shaft took the third man in the vee. Shouts of rage battered down. .
“Cramph! You should know better! To slay a flutsman is to die!”
I didn’t bother to reply in words but sped another shaft that parted the teeth of a yelling flutsman and did nasty things to the back of his skull. His saddle flyer spun past, spraying bits of the flutsman’s bone and gobbets of brain.
Yes, the korf provides the best fletchings. We’d been experimenting in Valka with the rose-colored feathers of the zim-korf. I’d had a few shafts made up and the warmly-glowing red feathers dyed a brilliant blue. Seg, when I’d tried him, had expressed himself as perfectly satisfied with the shafts, and why was I making such a thing out of it. When we washed the dye away, letting the blue color leach out to reveal the brave old red, Seg’s face was a picture.
But, as the other flutsmen closed in, I had time to loose twice more — loose the blazing blue feathered shafts in deadly true arcs. Each time the arrow punched cleanly; then I took to my sword. The Krozair longsword felt good in my fists.
Ah, me! How often I have thought that. But now, with an emperor sick and near to dying, was no time to consider my new image, the quiet, conciliatory, peace-loving Dray Prescot. With the Krozair longsword in my fists, my hands spread in that cunning Krozair grip, I went to work. Mind you, the first and chief use of the sword at the moment was to ward off the shafts that sliced toward me with the artful two-handed flicking taught in the Krozair disciplines. I battered the bolts away joyfully. I own it. The blood thumped around my veins. The voller shot up now as the speed increased vertically and we went slap bang through the middle of the fluttrell formation. In a clashing smother of flapping wings and raking talons the voller shot up and broke through. For an instant I was slashing and 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.