Seg the Bowman Read Online Free PDF

mere beginner in the league of self-lovers and worshippers of their own importance.
    Like a painted and caricatured devil, popping up through a trapdoor in one of the knockabout farces they loved in Vondium, the capital of Vallia, Strom Ornol came storming back down the line of marching men and women. He let his whip lick about, stinging a buttock here, striping a back there. He saw Seg.
    By this time they were all aware of Ornol’s penchant for quarreling. He thrived on it. No one reacted to his goading these latter days of the expedition, and this infuriated him the more. But the Lady Milsi was a newcomer, brought out of capture within the mountain.
    “The drikingers did not fight particularly well, did they, Pantor Seg?”
    Seg became cautious on the instant. “Perhaps they were out of practice, Strom Ornol. Mayhap they had not met real fighting men for some time.”
    Ornol had him in his verbal trap now. Seg’s caution came from the way Ornol addressed him as pantor.
    Both he and the Bogandur had been recognized as lords out for adventure; their particular titles and claims to lands were left vague. Now Seg realized he had opened the way for Ornol to release the venom troubling him.
    “Real fighting men? Oh, yes, of course. I, personally, slew four of them. I saw the Pachaks fighting well, as Pachaks always do. Even Master Exandu managed to knock two of the bandits over. But I was not aware of your presence, Pantor Seg, until the very end. I believe you managed two, did you not, when it was all over?”
    Seg did not laugh in the popinjay’s face.
    He was thinking that a quiet, easy reply would be best. In the old days, he’d have just given the idiot a slap around the face and dared him to carry the matter further. These days, his recklessness had been much tempered by hard-won experience.
    So that he was completely unprepared for Milsi’s outburst.
    “Four, you slew, did you, Ornol? Four of them! A great total! Why, Pantor Seg the Horkandur here slew four of them before anybody turned around. And then he shafted four more. Aye! And slew the last two you spoke of and the only two you happened to see.”
    Ornol’s pallid face froze.
    Seg did not bother to sigh. He didn’t think with any regrets of the loss of companionship on the march back to civilization. He just dumped down Exandu’s burden, took Milsi’s bundle from her and threw that down.
    As he was doing this, Milsi went on in a voice that cut like best Valkan steel.
    “Why, you great bloated buffoon! Don’t you understand anything? You’re just a barrel of lard rendered down fine and dribbling over the pantry floor! Onker! Idiot! You owe your lives to Pantor Seg!”
    Seg grabbed her around the waist, using his left hand. Ornol was ripping out his rapier in such an access of anger he fouled the draw, and struggled and cursed with his baldric. What he would have done had he drawn the rapier Seg did not dare to contemplate by reason of his own reply.
    He just stuck his knobby fist into Ornol’s jaw.
    The dandy lord fell down, his mouth half-open and gargling. Seg didn’t bother to hit him again. Guards were running up, yelling. No doubt he’d manage to kill a lot of them before they did for him; that was merely a foolish path. With Milsi to protect, he had to be clever and cunning, rather than brainless and muscle-bound.
    Without a word he bundled Milsi up, carrying her bodily with his left arm around her waist.
    He wanted to take a wager with himself that he’d reach the jungle edge before they shafted him.
    He ran. He nipped between the tree trunks, using their gigantic boles to give him cover against the cruel iron birds. Suns light glowed above and the undergrowth of the rain forest opened up. Thankfully, Seg plunged into the choking green thickness, forcing his way past bushes and scrub, fending off thorned vines, smelling new stinks, feeling his feet squelching into mud, battling on.
    Milsi hit him over the head.
    “Put me down, you great