Omens of Kregen Read Online Free PDF Page B

out before us, hefting two enormous shields and a sword distributed between his five hands.
    “Hai, Korero!” I said.
    “This won’t last long,” he said, and circled his shields to loosen up his muscles.
    I confess I felt that “Hai!” a trifle overdone. I felt dull and wooden, not so much apathetic as resigned to frustration. I had no interest whatsoever in fighting bloody-minded flutsmen. They would be men and women from many nations come flying into Vallia to feast, as they imagined, on the bleeding corpse of the old empire. Some news of the new empire had traveled overseas together with startling information on the new emperor and the new armies of Vallia. This new lot of mercenaries could have come from anywhere; I had the idea they came from a long way away.
    “You look,” said Korero, “as though you’ve lost a zorca and found a calsany.”
    “Aye, and I must use up good shafts on these rasts.”
    The great Lohvian longbow gripped in my left hand, the cunning draw as perfected by Seg Segutorio imparting immense energy into the bow, I drew and let fly. The rose-fletched shaft took a rider from the air and I didn’t bother to see where he went, but drew and loosed against the next.
    That first attempt by the flutsmen to land on our decks proved a dismal and costly failure to them.
    Quite apart from the varters that simply blew the riders from the air, the massed ranks of bowmen picked them off with precision and finicky accuracy. As I say, it does not do to meddle with the kampeons of ESW or EYJ.
    Still, as I had sourly predicted, there were enough flutsmen for some to break through and touch down on the decks of
Heart of Imrien
.
    The Lohvian longbow went down on the deck and the great Krozair longsword went smack into my fists. Well, now...
    “Dray—” called Delia.
    “Yes, my heart,” I said, without turning.
    The leading bunch of flutsmen tumbling from their birds leaped into action with the remarkable poise and agility of true fighting men of the air. A pity they were such a pack of desperadoes of the unholy kind fit only to be sent down to the Ice Floes of Sicce. Given a better chance in life — well who knew what they might have become?
    As it was we had to chop them, and chop them fast.
    Now I refer to the Lohvian longbow and the Krozair longsword as “great” more often than not. This is because they are great. There are longbows and longswords on Kregen that are not great.
    The Krozair brand snicked this way and that, thrust and withdrew, and as I belted into the lead elements of the fliers on our deck I left a wake of slaughter abaft. There were others with me. In a fighting frenzy of action we belted the flutsmen across the deck and those that were not cut down just fell overside.
    The vollers were not flying all that high in the air, but the fall was enough to pancake anyone foolish or unfortunate enough to try the drop.
    “There are still plenty of them left,” observed Targon the Tapster. He was smeared with blood not his own.
    “Flutsmen like easy pickings.”
    We stared out into the brightness of the day where the black dots of saddle flyers curved and pirouetted as their riders summoned the nerve for a secondonslaught. The other vollers in our little squadron had all fared as well as we had done. There was a little pause in the proceedings.
    Then the lookouts perched aloft bellowed down.
    “Airboats!”
    “So this unpleasant King of North Vallia has a proper fleet now, has he?” remarked Delia, with an endearing tilt to her chin.
    “How many?”
    A pause for counting, and then: “More than twenty.”
    “H’mm,” I said.
    Once contemptuous of the silly remark, I now saw its value in covering up the absence of thought.
    The lookouts shouted down again.
    “More than thirty.”
    “Ah,” I said.
    Delia threw me a suspicious look. Casually and with what I hoped was an insouciant air, I strolled over to the bulwarks and leaning out peered ahead. Well, yes, I could see the