Free Seg the Bowman by Alan Burt Akers

from flour brought down the river, was gritty and coarse and would wear a person’s teeth out well within two hundred years.
    The two dinkus lapped up everything new with an appetite at once greedy and charming.
    From the caverns of the Coup Blag Seg had brought his pouch-full of gold coins. He used these sparingly. He noticed that Milsi, also, had a pouch of coins, and he surmised that these had come from the same source as his own, or, perhaps, were leftovers of those she would habitually carry as handmaid to the queen.
    When the reckoning was paid, and the word was mentioned, Diomb said, “What is money?”
    “Ah, now,” said Seg, wisely, scratching his nose. “Now there you pose a question that has bedeviled men and women for thousands of seasons. Money! If we did not need it, why, then—”
    “We have none in the forest,” pointed out Bamba.
    “I will tell you this. Money is hard to obtain and easy to lose. With it you can buy — that is, get hold of
    — many things. But if you think only of money, you’re done for.”
    Milsi gave a more reasoned explanation, so that the dinkus, naturally, said: “Then how will we obtain this money if it is necessary to live in the outside world?”
    “Work.”
    “What is work?”
    As Milsi explained Seg looked out of the window. He pointed to the three stakes set up side by side against the larger house with mud cladding to its wooden walls. Each stake was crowned with a human head. Two were men, one was female; two were Fristles, one was an Och.
    “See those heads out there? They are there because their owners instead of working stole goods or money from other honest folk.”
    Milsi said: “Oh, Seg — the penalty here for thievery is to have the hand cut off. I don’t think—”
    Seg looked meaningfully upon the two dinkus.
    “And the hands cut off!”
    Then, sotto voce to Milsi, “I don’t want them up to their usual common-possession habits. If we scare
    ’em enough they won’t get into trouble.”
    “Yes, well. I suppose you are right.”
    Bamba and Diomb were suitably impressed.
    “The outside world is indeed a strange place. Far more strange than ever the elders told us.”
    “There is,” said Seg, helpfully, “a whole lot more.”
    A movement in the mud square took his attention. He pointed again. “Look there! See that fellow with the yellow skin and the blue pigtail? His hair hanging down like a rope, like a twisted vine?”
    They all looked out. The small coffle of slaves, trudging from the large mud-walled house, were in a poor state. The fellow Seg pointed out with the shaven yellow skull and the blue pigtail had tusks reaching up each side of his jaw. His eyes were bloodshot. His body was robustly strong and fit, endowed with muscle.
    “It is uncommon strange to see a Chulik as slave. They are mercenaries, fighting men trained up from birth. They are first-class warriors and they are not cheap to hire. I wonder what he did to get himself in this fix?”
     
    Chained before the Chulik a little Och slumped along, his six limbs giving him some assistance, for Ochs, although only around four feet tall, use their middle limbs as hands or feet as circumstances dictate. His puffy face and lemon-shaped head looked thoroughly hangdog.
    Following the Chulik a beaked Rapa, hawklike in appearance, his orange and blue feathers bedraggled, stumped along, careful not to drag the bight of chain tight.
    Other diffs and apims trudged along in the miserable slave column, and the Katakis lashed them with thick whips, or buffeted them with the flats of the steel strapped to their tails.
    “If they don’t cut off your hands and head,” said Seg, heavily, “they’ll take you up as slaves. So — do not take anything that is not yours. That is stealing.”
    “We will remember,” said Diomb, most chastened.
    The pygmies aroused considerable interest in the fisherfolk of Lasindle. A group of them in the opposite window corner kept shooting looks toward Diomb and