Seg the Bowman by Alan Burt Akers Read Free Book Online Page B

suggest you toddle along and ask.”
    Seg stopped beside the bush and looked down on Diomb. He quite expected the pygmy to stop, also.
    Then there would be a crestfallen explanation. For, of course, there were no happy drinkers up ahead celebrating. The clinking sounds, the murmurous voices, were produced by a killer plant known to civilized men as the Cabaret Plant. What the dinkus called it Seg didn’t know, and was not just at the moment particularly interested to find out.
    Instead, boldly, Diomb marched out past the bush and into the clearing.
    Seg watched.
    Out there in its cleared area the Cabaret Plant carried on its audio-pantomime. The sounds were remarkably realistic. To a forest-dwelling dinko who hadn’t even seen a bottle or glass, the sounds must come as mysterious and evocative. The plant itself was a fine full-grown specimen.
    The gourd-shaped main body was capacious enough to hold three or four people. The sounds of voices trilling and laughing and the clink of bottle against glass increased in intensity. From the top of the gourd rose a tall stem crowned with an orange flower. Seg’s lips drew tightly together.
    He drew his sword.
    Diomb carried a large leaf plucked from a greenish-blue low-growing bush and as he stepped out he bent his legs, his knees like springs, and he moved gently from side to side.
    The orange flower lashed.
    It swept viciously down toward the pygmy. As it struck it opened wide to reveal its flower-petalled head encrusted with spines.
    The deadly orange flower slashed at Diomb. He waited, then sprang swiftly to the side, trailing the leaf which was smashed full out of his hand. He darted back, and his face blazed with pride and prowess.
    “Hai!” cried Bamba, glowing with reciprocal pride.
    “Huh,” grunted Seg, sourly. “Some of the tribal fun and games, is it? Proving you’re a man among men?”
    “More than that, Seg.” Diomb waited, judged his moment exactly, and darted in, snatched up the leaf and withdrew. The orange flower lashed about in baffled frenzy.
    “I have never done that before,” remarked Diomb. “I have practiced, of course, with my friends slashing at me and pretending to be the Naree-Giver.”
    “It was well-done, Diomb,” declared Milsi, with a glance at Seg that put him in his place.
    “All right, Diomb,” said Seg, almost growling. “I knew what was what the moment we heard the Cabaret Plant. What you call a Naree-Giver.” He looked at the leaf which Diomb was now most carefully inspecting. “Narees, is it? This is how you come by the poisoned darts for your blowpipes?”
    “This is one way, yes.”
     
    The leaf was struck through by the poisoned spines from the plant. There must have been thirty of them.
    Now Diomb began a painstaking removal of each spine, putting them into a bark pouch in his apron.
    “We splice the spine to the main shaft of the naree. These will make very good weapons, you will see.”
    “I daresay.”
    Seg decided not to feel chastened. He’d had a nasty experience with a Cabaret Plant before, and he’d been classing them as among the more hideous of the horrors of the jungle. And here this little pygmy lad trotted along and baited the ferocious plant and took from it its spines to use as his blow-pipe darts —
    and had the effrontery to give the thing a name that indicated the esteem in which he held it! Enough to make a bluff tough fighting man spit.
    The last Cabaret Plant Seg had encountered had cost him ten gold pieces...
    Milsi broke into his thoughts with a pert suggestion that it was high time they stopped for something to eat.
    Diomb’s skills as a forest hunter provided ample food. Water continued to be boiled. They selected a good campsite and settled down. By the signs within the forest they hoped to reach the river on the morrow, or the next day.
    Seg inquired if Diomb shot his dinner with his poisoned naree and then ate it, poison and all.
    “We usually snare our food, as I have done since we met.