Straight for the rocky outcrop and running running at lung-bursting speed, the forlorn party rode on.  They were making for shelter we had chosen.  There it was clear, they hoped to make a stand against the reining sky mercenaries.  Now the sound of the hooves beat a  rattling tattoo against the hard ground.

"They'll never make it."  Tyfar stared hotly through the thorn-ivy.

If that young prince decided to stand up and run out to assist those doomed jutmen, I, for one would seek to stop him.  He was become precious to me, now, as a comrade.  I would not relish his death.  I had seen too much of death.

"Jak -" whispered Quienyin.

"Yes?"

"I have sought out -"

"See!  They shoot!" Tyfar was panting now, and his lithe body humped as though about to leap out.

I said, "We cannot allow Tyfar to throw his life away.  We will do what we can, but -"

Quienyin looked vaguely through a chink in the thorns.

"Those poor people will never reach here alive."  He looked back at me.  "There is much we must talk about."

"I agree.  But, I think, it will have to wait the outcome of this mess out here."

"You are right. But I will say I am - am shattered -"

"So you descried a little, then, and understand more?"

"Indeed!  Indeed!"

"Nath the Shaft!" called Tyfar in a low, penetrating voice.

"My Prince!"

"Shaft 'em, you onker!  Shaft 'em!"

"Nath," I said.  My voice jerked his head around, and his as the touched the feathers of the reaching fingers stilled the shaft in his quiver.

"Jak, Jak!" said Tyfar.  "What?  You cannot abandon them!"

"No.  No, I suppose not.  But they are done for - there are ten of them and twenty-five or thirty flutsmen.  We can -"

"We can shaft them from cover - and we must hurry!"

His face blazed eagerness at me.  I sighed.  What can one do with these high and mighty princelings whose honor code rules them to death and destruction?  And yet - Tyfar was a man of better mettle than mere unthinking bludgeoning.

"You don't have to let those flutsmen know we are here, do you?" said Hunch.  His voice quavered.

Nodgen hefted his spear.  He could throw that with skill and power, even though it was not a stux, the stout throwing spear of Havilfar.  "I have four spears," he said.  His voice growled.  "That's four of the cramphs."

"They are too far away for you, Nodgen, you onkerl"

"They'll come nearer, once the arrows fly."

"That," I said, "is true."

"I will not wait any longer."  Tyfar shouted it.  He started to stand up.  I moved forward.  What I was going to do Opaz alone knows.  I was confused, knowing I ought to help those poor folk out there against those casts of flutsmen, and knowing, also, that my responsibilities were wider by far than this mere stupid little fracas in the Humped Land.

The flutsmen swooped down.

The great Lohvian longbow snugged into my grip.  The blue-fletched arrow nocked home sweetly.  I lifted the bow and stood up.  By Zair!  The stupid things I have done in my time on Kregen!  But - Kregen is a world where anything may happen and frequently does.

Together, Nath the Shaft, Barkindrar the Bullet, and I, Dray Prescot, prince of onkers, let fly.

Three flutsmen sagged and dropped from their clerketers, the leather flying thongs holding their bodies dangling from the big birds as they struggled to stay aloft with the limp, dragging weight frightening them and hauling them down.

Again we shot, and again.  Someone of us missed the third time: who it was I do not know.

Now the flutsmen were veering like gale-tossed spindrift, swirling over toward our rocky outcrop.  The rear ten or. so fell straight down, the fluttrells settling with a flurrying uproar and undriven billows of dust about the galloping jutmen.  The fight sprawled over there across the flat.