Implementing pipe in C

This does virtually no error checking, but why so complicated?

int main (int argc, char ** argv) {
    int i;

    for( i=1; i<argc-1; i++)
    {
        int pd[2];
        pipe(pd);

        if (!fork()) {
            dup2(pd[1], 1); // remap output back to parent
            execlp(argv[i], argv[i], NULL);
            perror("exec");
            abort();
        }

        // remap output from previous child to input
        dup2(pd[0], 0);
        close(pd[1]);
    }

    execlp(argv[i], argv[i], NULL);
    perror("exec");
    abort();
}