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close to the cliff. She eased her along. Like a ghost we slithered with our starboard flank against the rock striations. Ahead and below, the ledge and the voller there and the swirling forms of the wildmen stood out in suns shine.
    I picked up a longbow. Seg nodded. “A good choice, Dray. That stave I built when I was Kov in Falinur.”
    “You never stop making bows, Seg; how you keep track of ’em all is the mystery.”
    But, of course, that was no mystery...
    “Each bow is different,” said Seg, selecting the first arrow from the quiver strapped to the voller’s rail. “Each one has character. You know that.”
    “Yes. And there are no bows in all Kregen to match the ones built by Seg Segutorio.”
    “That,” said Jaezila, bringing the airboat to a halt in midair and relinquishing the controls, “is true.”
    “How many d’you make ’em, Dray?”
    There were eight moorkrim flying like the crazy savages they were in the air space before the ledge, rising and falling, swinging in to loose and diving or zooming away.
    “The young braves of the tribe,” I said. “You know the kind of pecking order they’re likely to have and the necessity of gaining credit among their peer group. The more mature warriors will be on the ledge, under cover.”
    “Yes. I make seven saddle flyers this side—”
    “And ten on the other end,” said Jaezila. She took up her longbow. Like the others, this was a Lohvian longbow built by Seg. If you have to have a hobby on Kregen it is useful if it is connected with survival.
    “Twenty-five,” said Seg. “We’ve shafted more than that before breakfast.”
    “Maybe so, Seg. And each time we do it, it could be the last. So, my old dom, watch it!”
    He laughed, throwing back his head. His black hair waved wildly and his fey blue eyes looked now with the steady regard of the bowman — wild and impulsive and shrewd and practical are the folk of Erthyrdrin, and Seg showed all that blend now as he fitted nock to string.
    “Father!” Jaezila looked at me, the arrow in her fingers as long and lethal as those held by Seg and me. I felt surprise that she thus called me.
    “Lela?”
    “You told me, I seem to remember, when I was little, that you and Uncle Seg used to wager when you shot.”
    Again Seg laughed, lifting the bow. His russet tunic hid what was going on among the muscles of his back and arms, but they would have made a sculptor weep for joy.
    “So we did, Lela, my love, so we did! What is it to be, then, a gold talen a hit?”
    Macabre, gruesome, unfeeling? Wagering on killing other people? Of course. Once we began to shoot, the wildmen would not bother about anything as decadently sophisticated as gambling on how they slew us. They would simply whoop in with the one blood-red desire to chew us up and hurl the refuse into the gulf. That is the way of wildmen.
    Perhaps, if you thought about it, that was more savagely honest? All I knew was that I was on Kregen, my comrade and my daughter were about to face deadly peril, and a man I admired was about to die unless we stopped his killers.
    We shot.
    Three of the eight pirouetting in midair before the ledge were shafted, and then three more. The remaining two swung away, the wings of their tyryvols beating madly and Seg and Jaezila saw to them as I switched my aim.
    The targets among the boulders proved more tricky, and I know two of my shafts missed. Return shots started to come up; but we were a small and protected target in the voller among the clustered shadows.
    We three worked together sweetly in the shooting.
    When the wildmen at the far end of the ledge broke from their boulders and, leaping astride their saddle flyers, shot up into the air and headed for us, Seg and Jaezila went methodically to work on them while I remained winkling out the fellows in the rocks this end.
    A crossbow bolt punched clean up through the skin of the voller.
    Seg said, “That looks nasty.”
    “They capture crossbows from time to time.