Seg the Bowman by Alan Burt Akers Page A

vessel ran her gangway out and the spiked end went thunk into the mud, and men marched down, alert and watchful.
     
    “What?” said Milsi, suddenly. “What does this mean?”
    For the men were armed and carried weapons, and they fanned out as they touched the shore and presented a formidable front. There were ten of them, and they looked rough and tough, paktuns with blue and yellow feathers in their helmets. Then a wispy Xaffer walked ashore, his blue robes trailing, his dreamy face giving him the look of a man who lived in a private fantasy world of his own. He carried a scrip, and his right temple was ink-stained.
    “Forgive the welcome,” he said, holding up his hand in greeting. “I give you the Llahal. But there have been reports of pirates on the river.”
    “That Pandrite-forsaken Ortyg,” someone to the rear of the party said with great venom.
    Hundle the Design stepped forward and, as the most experienced traveler among them upon the river, explained their situation. His story sounded convincing. They were travelers whose craft had sunk. Seg felt a vicious anger at the explanation of the absence of paddlers, but he kept a calm face. Now was not the time. The paddlers, being slaves, and being chained to their benches, had, of course, sunk with the boat...
    Not all of them had reached this island. This handful were the only survivors. Seg agreed with that. They wanted nothing to do with the depredations of Ortyg the Undlefar and his band of cutthroats.
    “You are fortunate indeed to have survived the jaws of the river. My master will be interested in your story. You are welcome to come aboard.”
    They all carefully observed the fantamyrrh as they stepped into the boat. Long and narrow, with her paddlers chained to their benches at each side, she offered only adequate accommodation right aft where the master lived in state, and right forrard where the paktun guards were quartered. The rescued folk could, for the journey, sleep upon the central gangway. There were no masts. Along the gangway prowled the Whip-Deldars ensuring that the paddlers kept time and rhythm and dug deeply with all their strength.
    The master turned out to be a jolly, perspiring, multi-chinned apim called Obolya Metromin. As a merchant specializing in the buying and selling of saddle animals, he liked to be called Obolya the Zorcanim. This was, to Seg, pitching it a little high; but he was in no case to argue the finer points of nomenclature.
    Obolya sat upon a handsome chair, strewn with expensive silks and furs, beaming away upon the new arrivals. At his back his pavilion-like cabin rose, the flags fluttering. His personal guards flanked him, distinct from the boat-guards. Two charming girls saw to his needs, their pale bodies partially concealed by artfully draped gauzes, decorated with strings of pearls in the age-old custom. Obolya himself, in robes of some magnificence, exuded an air of benediction; but Seg was not the only one to see and realize that this fat, happy, charming man was a merchant of consummate shrewdness.
    “Payment?” he exclaimed, and held up a fat beringed hand in horror. “Never could I exact payment for performing a good deed. Why, by Pandrite the All-Powerful! Is it not the Law of the River to aid our unfortunate brothers and sisters? You will take wine, of course. I have a middling-fine Markable which clears the throat most effectively.”
    So they all took wine.
    This fine fat animal-trader was on his way upriver to buy what saddle-animals he could from traders out on the plains. Milsi looked at him carefully, and smiled, and intimated that if horter Obolya was going to Mewsansmot—
    “Why, yes! I have business contacts there. All this is new to me, this is my first journey so far upriver. I trade normally in North Pandahem; but things political up there are parlous, most parlous. I am confident that if I can secure good cargoes of saddle animals I can sell every last one back in North