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They can’t make ’em, can’t even do repairs. When they break they throw them away. They tart them up with feathers and skins and hair. But they can shoot well with them.”
    Seg loosed and flipped a fresh arrow into place and loosed again, all in a smooth twinkling motion, before he spoke.
    “That’s one crossbow fellow who won’t shoot again.”
    And Jaezila laughed. “Two shafts, Uncle Seg, for one crossbow man?”
    “I’ll pay you the gold talen, Lela, don’t fret.”
    The ten flyers were whittled down to four before they reached the voller. Seg shot and took out a moorkrim with his hair black and greasy braided into a fantastic halo. Jaezila’s shot merely transfixed the wildman’s arm; that wouldn’t stop the savage from advancing.
    “Swords!”
    As the three wildmen flung their tyryvols at the airboat in a welter of thrashing wings, we drew our blades. That churning of the air, a favorite trick of men who fight astride saddle flyers, prevented accurate shooting. The three hit the deck and came for us. Their stink preceded them.
    When fighting on foot wildmen employ shields, usually of wicker and skins, and spears or swords if they can come by them, for they find the metallurgy of swords a little above their capacities. These three screeched war cries. They snatched their shields up and into place. One had a sword, a Hamalian army thraxter, and he pressed on boldly. The one Jaezila had wounded didn’t seem to know he had been hit. The arrow transfixed his arm and with a petty gesture he broke it off, fore and aft, and then slapped his shield back across again.
    You had to admire the fortitude of the wildmen, if nothing else.
    Not caring to waste time, for the fellows below kept up their pressure on the stranded voller, I whipped out the Krozair longsword and cocked it between spread fists.
    “Let me have ’em,” I shouted at Seg and Jaezila. “You see off those fellows in the rocks.”
    Giving my comrade and my daughter no time to argue I pushed past to the front, faced the small deck space where the wildmen ran on as only warriors at home in the air can run, and met the first onslaught.
    A Krozair longsword does not take a deal of notice of a wicker shield.
    The first man sank to the deck with a cleft skull.
    The next two, rushing up together on bandy legs bent like springs, leaped for me. The Krozair brand switched left and as I rolled my wrists flailed back right. Two swift and unmerciful blows, and the two moorkrim toppled aside. Both fell, slipped and, shrieking, pitched over into space. I put my foot against the first one, whose blood and brains oozed out, and pushed him over the side.
    The smell of the wildmen, which comes as much from themselves as from the muck they smear on their greased and braided hair, hung about the voller. It would persist.
    Seg bellowed, “They are rushing the airboat!”
    “Down!” Jaezila sprang for the controls. She slammed the levers hard over and our flier pitched down as though the bottom of the world had fallen out.
    She brought us in with superb piloting. We flashed over the boulders. Seg leaned over, very thoughtfully, and sent two flashing shafts into billets as we passed. It is my unalterable opinion that there is no greater bowman in all Kregen than Seg Segutorio.
    We landed slap bang in the middle of the rest of them as they rushed the flier. The ensuing dust up was interesting, for Seg and Jaezila can handle blade as well as bow.
    The tyryvols fluttered their wings but could not rise as the wildmen had tethered them with rocks for the final foot charge. Our blades glittered and fouled with blood. We fought fiercely for a space and then there were no more moorkrim to fight.
    Seg had a small nick along his right wrist, a nothing, and Jaezila a score along her side. I frowned.
    “Damned careless of you, my girl. Let me look.”
    “It’s nothing, Jak!”
    It was nothing, really, but we dug out the first aid which consisted of a gel in a bandage, and