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.I spotted a cloud of flutsmen, and after my first instinctive tensing, relaxed.They would be fresh recruits, hired by Hamal, being prepared to be sent out against the empire’s enemies.I watched the birds and their riders and saw them diving down onto what was evidently a small but extremely rich villa by the river.The place was laid out as a pleasure garden.I frowned.Something was amiss.Two other airboats flew past without halting.I suppose the flutsmen were confident, knowing they would be mistaken for allies, hired by Hamal, as I had mistaken them.But I could recognize a flutsman raid when I saw one.Why should they descend on this small and lonely villa, a pleasure palace in miniature?Wheeling the flier and buckling up my weapons, I headed down to the villa of pleasure.The scene below revealed in horrid clarity just what was going on.The Flutsmen had now all landed and were busily engaged in their furious and reckless way with the guards.The reivers kept a ring before a tiny folly, perched on a spit of land jutting into the river, where skiffs and sailboats were moored.The scene was idyllic, bowered in sweet-smelling trees.The struggle below smeared that fresh brightness in horror.A small group of reivers, their backs for the moment secured from attack by the guards as their comrades battled on, burst into the folly.My voller landed beside the folly, a little white-painted rococo pavilion.Women were screaming.I saw guards stretched upon the green turf.The guards were apims, Rapas, Numims, Brokelsh, mercenaries very quick with the sword.The flutsmen had not had it all their own way, and there were flutsmen corpses lying there, the brave clotted streamers bedraggled.I leaped out, tearing free my rapier and dagger, and ran for the pavilion.A Numim staggered out, his fierce lion-face anguished.He tried to speak, gurgled, and fell.The stux had penetrated deep into his back.I leaped up the steps and burst into the pavilion.Cool shadows fell about me.The scene jumped into instant clarity and focus.Three beautiful girls lay dead on silken cushions, their blood staining the mosaic floor among the soft rugs.Someone had blundered there, for the girls were Chail Sheom, courtesans, garlanded with golden chains, extraordinarily beautiful and worth a fortune each.The woman who sat on a cushion, her face a mask of horror, surprised me.She wore all black: the short pleated and flared skirt of Hamal; a frilled, lacy blouse; a cummerbund around a tiny waist; and a turban-like cloth wound about her head — all black.She was beautiful, oh yes, in a hard feral way, with intense passion in her eyes, and a mouth that could firm to instant command.Her eyes were green, slanting, commanding.She sat, motionless, watching the six flutsmen who had come to take her.They were arguing among themselves, as is the flutsman’s way.The three who had slain the girls were being reviled by the other three.That made sense.They had a large dark blue bag, and one was pulling the drawstring open, clearly intending to stuff this woman, at least, into the bag, even if they’d missed the girls.“For the sake of Barflut the Razor Feathered!” boomed one.“Nath, get your fumbling fingers out of it, you onker!”“Hurry and stuff the she-leem in the sack!” rapped back Nath, furious.“The other guards will be here soon!”They wrestled with the sack, which opened a fraction before the drawstring stuck again.“Pick the she-leem up, throw her over your shoulder! By Gish! Have I to tell you everything?”The woman saw me.The chill of horror in her eyes warmed, it seemed to me, much as a samphron-oil lamp might glow in the Ice Floes of Sicce.She saw me looking at her and the flutsmen, and a strange calculating look drove the horror from her green eyes.She seemed to grow taller, more lithe, sensuous, utterly commanding and demanding.“May Milah Bateh bless you with the brains of a calsany!” The flutsmen were wrangling away, swearing their convoluted flutsmen’s oaths, still tearing at the drawstring of the sack while two of them busied themselves stripping the gems from the bodies of the slain Chail Sheom.This big fellow Nath backhanded his companion away and started for the woman in black seated immobile on her cushion.“You are rancid brained yourself, Nalgre! Go see if the guards are—” He broke off as this Nalgre turned, saw me, and let out a shriek of anger and joy.“A ponsho come for the shearing! By Gish! I need the sight of bubbling blood to drown your babbling, oh Nath, father of onkers!”“Father and mother of vosks, Nalgre of the clipped wings! Stick him and end your silly chattering.”Well, as I knew, flutsmen are deadly fighters.They scour the skies seeking prey.They are a foul pest, it is true, but they have given me much enjoyment in my time.As now.Nalgre whipped up his thraxter and came at me.Despite the stories that a flutsman would never walk across a street to pick up a golden deldy but would fly, they are marvelous fighters afoot.We engaged, and from the back Nath bellowed: “I’ll take the she-leem.Rondas, Naghan, go and show Nalgre the Vosk how a flutsman fights!”With cheery shouts two flutsmen bore down on me.For a few moments I was beset; then I dropped one — whether Rondas or Naghan I did not know — and cut Nalgre’s face with a slash that only his superb speed turned from a fatal to an injurious blow.He yelled — in anger — and forced himself back again.The other one — either Rondas or Naghan — screeched and staggered away holding his guts.The rapier does its work neatly and with dispatch there, and they wore only light flying leathers without armor.Nalgre began to boil.The other two bellowed multifarious flutsmen’s oaths and rushed at me, and in a blur of twinkling steel I fended them off.Another went down — we had not been introduced — and I saw Nath hoisting the black-clad woman up over his shoulder.She made no movement or struggle.Her stony self-possession after that first frozen horror intrigued me.I dealt with another — and still Nalgre, streaming blood, eluded me.I swung back, stuck out a foot, and tripped him.There was no time to stab into his unprotected back as he went down, for Nath, bellowing like a chunkrah in labor, bore down on me, immense, his feathers flaming with color, those clotted streamers whirling from his leather flying helmet [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]