The Death Of A Legend

by Robert Adams

  At long last, the head of the column negotiated a final hairpin turn to come to a halt before a massive, double-valved gate, which gave every appearance of having been crafted by and for the use of a race of giants. The weathered, metal-shod portals soared more than thirty feet up between the sheer walls of rock — gray granite which had been polished far smoother than nature often accomplished unaided. The tops of the gates were crowned with a hedge of long, down-pointing bladespikes, and above the gales, a broad arch of stone, set with merlons and another set of flagstaffs on which the same three banners snapped in the wind, spanned the gap; which gap was, at this point, only a bare score of feet in width.

  At sight of Prince Byruhn’s bared face, a half-armored man atop the fortified arch turned about and shouted something. At once there came the cracking of a whip and the bray of a mule, then, with a hideous, damned-soul screeching of pivots, the massive gates swung slowly open. Bili whistled softly through his teeth when be saw just how truly titanic those gates really were — the uprights at least two feet in thickness, battened with foot-thick timbers and clinched with iron spikes, the least of which was at least four feet long and as thick as a spear shaft.

  As the van passed under the arch, the beam which had barred those portals became visible — the squared trunk of what had assuredly been the very grandfather of all oak trees, its tremendous weight lifted from niches cut in the living rock by a system of cables and pulleys.

  Noting the direction of the young lowlander’s gaze, the prince chuckled. “How like you Count Sandee’s door, young cousin? Think you it might withstand a few hard raps?”

  Bili shook his helmeted bead slowly and said gravely, “My lord prince, I’ve never seen or even heard tell of the like of such gates. Methinks the ram to crack them is yet to be wrought, and I would doubt that even the largest of the High Lord’s stonethrowers could easily breach them, even were there a position within range on which to mount a large engine. But what of fire?”

  The prince shrugged. “Well, wet green hides are hung, of course. But there’s another defense against fire, and I’ll show you it . . . when and if you decide to follow my banner.”

  The roadway proved level, though winding still, for a little distance beyond the gate. But then the pitch of the incline abruptly steepened until it became necessary for the riders all to dismount and lead their weary, dusty horses up the long flight of broad steps cut out of the stone of the mountain.

  On the left hand reared the flank of another man-smoothed hill, while on the right, beyond a low wall of roughly dressed stones, icy water rushed in a white froth over an uneven bed of rounded rocks.

  As the prince and Bili and Rahksahnah reached the wide crest, the last great blaze of the setting sun beamed over their shoulders to illumine the heart of this place that the prince and his men called the Safe Glen. But it was now obvious to the newcomers that they were within what was much more than a mere mountain glen.

  A network of long, narrow vales let into each other, and finally several larger ones opened into the farther end of a central, open area which gently inclined on all sides toward the very middle, where lay a sheen of lake perhaps a hundred yards in diameter. From their perch, the van could see stubbled fields and winter-sere pasturelands in the flatter areas of all the vales visible; the upper and narrower parts appeared to be given over mostly to brushy expanses or to small stands of timber.

  Neat stone cottages were scattered here and there, their architecture reminding Bili more of Ahrmehnee habitations than of anything else, their chimneys now uniformly smoking with the evening cookfires. Somewhere within that veritable maze of tiny and larger vales, a cow could be heard bawling loudly, while elsewhere a dog yapped insistently. Human figures, dim with the distance and the hurrying darkness, could be seen up beyond the glinting lake, chivvying sheep or goats into a stone pen or fold.

  On the near side of the spreading lake, a huge and lofty tower soared up into the darkening sky, its battlements higher even than the tops of the mountains that ringed the Safe Glen. it reared up at least a hundred feet, Bili reckoned, maybe a third again more; and, high as it was, it still was no slender structure web as those Bili had seen in the Middle Kingdoms, rather was it squat and incredibly massive, some sixty feet or more on each of the two sides he could see.

  Between his eyrie and that tower sprawled a commodious stone-and-timber palace. It could be called nothing else, being far and away too large to be designated house. Light was now commencing to pour from windows that looked to be glazed, and a host of figure, were to be seen scurrying hither and yon between the main structure and its semi-connected outbuildings.

  The prince waved down at the brightly lit building. “Sandee’s Cot, young cousin, our destination. You and I, your lady, nobles and officers will bide there this night. The Teenéhdjook and your troopers, Ahrmehnee and common Moon Maidens will find comfort in you tower, along with the bulk of my own men. Those few from here will be seeking out their own home; of course.”

  As the prince told it on their slow walk down to the cot, the late Count Sandee had fallen in a battle against the outlaws a few months back. He had died without issue — legitimate or otherwise — and so his mark and county were being held for the crown by the grizzled old warrior who had been seneschal, Sir Steev Stanlee — severely, hideously scarred, missing most of his front teeth, all of the right and part of the left ear, as well as all or part of several thick fingers. The old fighter bustled about his multitudinous duties with a stiff-legged limp which told the experienced eye the tale of a once-smashed knee, but for all his old scars and maimings, be was friendly, jolly and virtually abrim with a hearty gallows humor which instantly attracted Bili.

  The central chamber of Sandee’s Cot was not so long as that of Morguhn Hall — Bili’s birthplace and home in the Duchy of Morguhn, far to the east — nor so wide, nor were its furnishings and hangings so rich or so varied, but it was nonetheless at least comfortable, warmed and partially lit as it was by the wide and high fireplaces at either end.

  Smoky tallow lamps were set in highly polished wall sconces and in man-high standing holders the length and breadth of the room imparting along with their dim and flaring light a persistent burned-meat odor. But on the dais which supported the high table, tapers of fine beeswax in candelabra of chiseled copper gave illumination for the prince, Bili, Rahksahnah, Vahrtahn Panosyuhn, Vahk Soormehlyuhn, Vahrohneeskos Gneedos Kahmruhn of Skaht, Senior Lieutenant of Freefighters Frehd Brakit and old Sir Steev.

  Those at the high table commenced their meal with a clear meat broth, pungent with dried onions, garlic and herbs, then went on to succulent little fishes, each coated with meal and fried to crispness; fresh-baked breads and roasted potatoes and mounds of pickled cabbage, turnips and parsnips accompanied the roasted and boiled meats — mutton and pork for the lower tables, lamb and kid and larded venison for the high. Then they were served salty, double-baked breads and various cheeses, along with cellar-hung apples, strawbarrel pears and assorted nuts for the distinguished guests.

  Cracking nuts for himself and Rahksahnah in his powerful hands, Bili felt that he had not dined so well since last he had left Morguhn Hall, months agone. When he had washed down the sweet nutmeats with a swallow of honey ale, he addressed himself to the prince.

  “Prince Byruhn, your vassal sets a truly noble table. It has been long since I feasted so well and fully.”

  Byruhn chuckled good-naturedly. “Do not expect any better than that we all just enjoyed even at my father’s court, Duke Bili. It ever is a great pleasure to me, being a man who admittedly takes an abiding joy in his victuals, to visit Sandee’s Cot, for the meals if nothing else.

  “The vales herein are rich and well watered, the black loam lies deep over the bones of the mountains, and Sandee’s folk are consummate farmers and stockmen, fishponders and hunters. Were all my father’s lands so productive and well tended . . .” He sighed, and a look of dark sadness crossed his face. “It be enough to m
ake a strong man weep in pure frustration, noble cousin; for all or, at the least, full many of the vales and glens hereabouts could produce similarly, were we but able to at last extirpate these damned renegade outlaws, so that full-time farming and stockraising would be not only possible but worthwhile.

  “As matters now lie in this part of the realm, the miserable folk outside the few safe glens, such as this one, are sore afeared of giving any appearance over that of bare subsistence, lest the damnable raiders come and strip bare their lands and barns and homes and fields. And I, alas, have never been able to number enough skilled fighters to smash these outlaws . . . ere now.”

  Bili wrinkled his brow in puzzlement. “Were our two positions reversed, my lord prince, I’d simply drum up the spear levy, put pikes in the hands of every man I owned between the ages of fifteen and forty-five, and set my retainers to drilling them. I’d use my mounted force to harry the outlaws, nip the bastards so shrewdly and so often that they’d have to finally come to me and stand at bay. Then I’d use my seasoned fighters to hold them in place, like a good pack of veteran boarhounds, until the levy could be force-marched up to butcher the scoundrels. My lord is a wise and war-canny man — I am much surprised that either he or his royal sire has not done such as I just detailed, long since.”

  Old Sir Steev snorted, his scarred face twisted in utter disgust. “Oh, aye, and in my lord duke’s own lands, wherein I doubt me not that such a commoner levy would have man-parts a-swinging betwixt their two legs, such a strategy would doubtless work . . . and often has, in times agone. But not here, my lord duke, assuredly not in these lands, and most assuredly not with these eternally cursed Ganiks!

  “Not in a land mainly peopled by mealy-mouthed, addlepated, god-haunted buggers who’ll scream blue murder if they be raped or robbed and some few of our poor overworked garrison not be near about to prevent it or, at least, avenge it, but who’ll not themselves raise a hand to aid themselves or even keep a steel dirk or a spear on their farms!”

  With a heavy sigh, the prince responded to Bili’s look of consternation. “If you are thinking, my young cousin, that such as Sir Steev has described be most unlike the breed of burkers, you be assuredly right, it is not. But then, outside the safe glens, very few of the landworkers be descended of Kuhmbuhluhners. Most of the folk over whom my house holds tenuous sway are an exceeding strange people who had drifted into this stretch of mountains only a few years earlier than did my forebears and their few thousands loyalist supporters.

  These non-Kuhmbuhluhners cannot be called a tribe, for they are not — they none of them recognize any central chief or any council of elders. Each family group is, rather, ruled by the eldest able-bodied male member. Few of these families are more than very distantly related, blood-wise, for they almost always cleave strictly to their own, all manner of incest being their way of life for generations if not centuries. Only their common religion, their most unusual customs and singular habits mark them as similar.”

  Bili sought through his recent memory for a moment, and at last he located that endless word used by the two Ahrmehnee headmen. “These, then, these non-Kuhmbuhluhners, would be what the Ahrmehnee call Orgahnikahnsehrvaishuhnee, lord prince?”

  Prince Byruhn nodded. “Aye, that’s one of their names for themselves, though in practice it’s usually shortened to Ganik. They are a stiff-necked, self-righteous people who boldly claim direct descent from the very Earth Gods themselves. They prate on endlessly of the beauty and the purity of their bare, drab, deprived and religion-dominated life-style. They never cease to proselytize among any folk who are happier than they are, and they have even been heard to solemnly attest that had the Earth Clods, the folk who ruled these lands of old, adopted their own narrow and cheerless beliefs, the War of the Gods might never have occurred!”

  Once more the prince sighed gustily. “We all, even our Elmuh and his gentle ilk, have come at last to the hard conclusion that the only sure way to rid these mountains of ours of these deliberately primitive, deliberately backward, fanatically hidebound and stubborn cannibals will be to extirpate them with steel and fire wherever and whenever we find them.

  “There is no reasoning with the vast majority of them. My father and his father tried that tack for long, frustrating years. These Ganiks have no honor, sworn oaths mean nothing to them, and all are mentally unstable to one degree or another. Furthermore, without the replacement pool formed by these scattered but numerous families, the raider bands of outlaws soon could be wiped out — completely and for all time.”

  “The ‘Ganeek’ women and the children, too, you would slay, Prince Byruhn?” demanded Rahksahnah, the gaze of her black eyes burning intensely into his blue-green ones.

  The big man shrugged. “Nits make lice, my lady. Those children are weaned on human flesh, you know; as for the Ganik womenfolk, they are even more vicious and fanatic than their menfolk. Those harpies it is who do the inhuman torturing of any helpless wight captured by the men; they are the ones who roast the quivering flesh of the living bodies of prisoners and then force the poor wretches to eat of themselves.”

  Bili noted that both Vahrohneeskos Gneedos and the hard-bitten Lieutenant Brakit looked a mite greenish, and be felt a trifle queasy himself; but the Ahrmehnee headmen and Rahksahnah just looked grim, with jaws firmly set and eyes hard — they had heard rumors of such horrors for all their lives.

  Alter a long draft of the ale to settle his stomach, Bili asked bluntly, “And this is what you want me and my force for, Prince Byruhn? To help you to wipe out these Orgahnikahnsehrvaishuhnee.”

  Byruhn nodded shortly. “Partially, young sir, partially; but we’ll not really need to kill too many of them. When once they know that we mean business and that we at last have sufficient force to carry out my will, they’ll move on — move farther south or west, but out of my lands, at least. Their doleful songs tell of many such moves over the years; it would appear that no normal folk will tolerate their presence for any long time. Nor can anyone blame those who drive out or eject such a mad and maddening people, I trow!

  “But there is a second reason, a reason far more important than helping to rid our lands of these Ganiks, cousin Bili. You and your disciplined, well-armed veterans are of immense value here in the southeast, but of even more in the northwest, round and about New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, where sits my father, in great jeopardy.

  “Know you, young cousin, that we are gravely threatened in the northwest of the kingdom by a migrating tribe of folk from across the northern river, from the mountains of Ohyoh. Although suffering immense losses in so doing, they overran the northernmost of our safe glens some years agone, and now are they using it as an advance base against us, raiding deep and ever deeper into our lands. Their announced goal — or so say their heralds, for unlike these accursed Ganiks, they at least follow civilized modes of daily affairs and war — is to drive out my house and all our folk and to then take over for themselves all of our lands and places. They seem to know of the Ganiks of old, say that it was their own forebears who drove them south, and have solemnly promised to exterminate them this time around, then push on eastward and drive the Ahrmehnee, too, from their lands. They are a most martial and determined people; were they not so deadly a threat to me and mine, I could easily find much reason to admire them.”

  A deep, menacing growl rumbled from the two Ahrmehnee headmen, and Rahksahnah fingered her dagger hilt. But the prince seemed neither to hear nor see and continued on.

  “If I could have drawn support from the cannibals — who are no less threatened by these invaders than are mine and me — or if I could have depended upon them and the raiders they breed and harbor to have not precipitated a border war or to have not laid siege to this or other safe glens, the northerners might have been thrown back before they were become so powerful. But with the ever constant need to guard my back with my slim forces, I dared not meet large bodies of them in open battle, and so I lost the initiative, and lands to boot.

&
nbsp; “Further, there has been and still is much turmoil in the lands north of the Ohyoh, the lands whence these invaders came, so each six-month sees them reinforced with more fighters — good fighters, too.”

  The massive warrior brooded for a moment, rolling a ball of bread between his horny thumb and finger. Then he spoke again.

  “A third reason for your value to us all, Cousin Bili, is the Prophecy of the Kleesahk — of the Teenéhdjook, rather, since they had it before they came south and began to breed with the northern Ganiks. It . . . but, wait, let Elmuh tell it, he can do it far better than can I.”

  In a booming voice which rose even above the hubbub from the lower tables, a voice that, indeed, shut off all noise in the hall as a driven bung halts the flow of wine from a pipe, he roared, “Elmuh! Come up here and tell these guests of the Prophecy given your race of old.”

  Chapter XI

  Hari of Krooguh idly stroked the down-soft fur of the prairiecat cub snoozing in his lap. He sat on a flat-topped rock near the mouth of that same mountain cave which had sheltered him and his hosts throughout the long, bitter months of the winter just past.

  Far, far below his perch, the tiny stream of autumn days was become a rushing, turbulent flood of snow-melt waters from off the higher elevations and mountains. Beyond that stream, on a small plateau, the horses grazed avidly on fresh, tender green shoots of grass, guarded from depredation of lean wolf or hungry bear or prowling treecat by several of the adult prairiecats, whose lounging gray or brownish forms Hari could see here and there.

  He could see them. With his own pale-blue eyes could the old man see them, and he could but consider this fact to be a true miracle. Nearly two hundred yearn old — as true men reckon time — Hari of Krooguh had been stark blind for more than one hundred and fifty of those years. Yet slowly, during the long months that he had wintered here with these strange but gentle giants, these Teenéhdjook, his sight had returned to him.