Free Mazes of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers Page B

said. “I don’t know that part of the world, Seg.”
    “I know nothing definite, either. There was a fellow I knew — a paktun with one ear missing and a ferocious squint, old Frandor the Schturmin — told me he’d once served a king or prince down in the southeast. Stinking jungles, he said. Potty as notors, the lot of ’em, so Frandor said.”
    “I can believe it.”
    Then Seg let rip his chuckling grunt of good humor.
    “I agreed with him, too. That was before you made me a damned notor, a jen, and dumped me in it. All lords are stark staring bonkers. It is a law of nature.”
    “That,” I said, and I spoke mildly, “I do not believe.”
    “No? Well, maybe. All I will say is that if the jungle is our destination, we’ll sweat a trifle.”
    The dwaburs passed away, and as we had anticipated, the food ran out.
    I eyed Seg.
    He saw me looking at him.
    I licked my lips.
    “You look fat and healthy, Seg,” I said. “I wonder how much seasoning you will need.”
    “You could put all the salt on my tail you liked, my old dom. I’d still be too damned stringy.”
    “As to that, that I do believe.”
    We almost lost our quarry in a build-up of clouds over the coast.
    The voller ahead darted into a white canyon of billowing cloud. We followed, and we had the speed lever notched over past its rightful halting place. We held on; but it was a near thing.
    Thunderstorms raged among the clouds.
    Twice we were hurled end over end, and twice we righted ourselves, clinging on with gripping fingers, to hurl our voller on in pursuit.
    The storms held us both up, pursuer and pursued alike, and presently the flier carrying Pancresta began a series of maneuvers which, apart from wasting time, gained them not a palm in distance upon us.
    At last we broke free of the storms and the darkness and sailed on over jungle, steaming in the new radiance.
    A wide river rolled along below, brown and smooth, carving its path through the forest.
    “If you can believe what old Frandor the Schturmin told me, and if I’m right, that’ll be the River of Bloody Jaws.”
    I nodded. There was no need to enlarge on who owned the jaws in the Kazzchun River.
    “She flows down from the Central Mountains all the way to the Sea of Chem.” Seg gestured over the coaming. “There is a fair amount of traffic.”
    On the broad brown surface boats moved, mostly propelled by long sweeps all working in unison. There were a few more rakish craft tacking along. We saw a few small habitations in clearings along the banks. Whoever lived down there made what they could out of their surroundings.
    We flew on, deeper into the island. Pandahem, like Vallia, in size is on the order of the size of Australia; there was a lot of it. Hereabouts, quite clearly, the river formed the main and best, possibly the only, means of communication.
    Scraps of cloud drifted by. We saw flocks of waterfowl, wide-winged and long-necked, rising in multitudes from the waters. Brown mudflats gleamed. On those banks the ominous forms of risslaca showed. No one was going swimming in the River of Bloody Jaws without regretting the notion.
    “I don’t expect to see any fliers here in Pandahem,” said Seg. “But they must be known. The folk down there do not pay as much attention.”
    “Hamal and Hyrklana never would sell vollers to Loh or Pandahem, among others. Now we have these damned Shanks to fight I think the Pandaheem will get their vollers.”
    “They’re surely needed in this part of the world.”
    We flew so grandly over the tops of the trees. What it would be like down there, trudging along, was something I did not wish to find out. Even the river for travel would be a headache.
    Up ahead the forest lifted to a shallow range of hills. They were not mountains. But there were a lot of them, serried ranks of rounded slopes, one after another, and every one crammed with the ferocious vegetation of the jungle. The rain forest swarmed up over the rounded hills.
    “The river