by Robert Adams
Vahrtahn again took up his tale. “And so we all fought on. Fortunately, two springs there were in the cave, so lack for water we did not; and, as the Soormehlyuhns had considered it to be a place of final refuge and an emergency citadel, weapons and food and horse fodder stored there were. But by the third attack of the second day, all our darts and arrows gone were and reduced to throwing chunks of rock and spare axes we all were.
“The next attack was delayed while the Muhkohee vainly for the upper entrance to the cave did search. That time we used to add to the low wall we had built across the mouth of the cave and to slay all of the seriously wounded of us, that the fiendish Muhkohee might not them alive take.” A tic began to jerk in the Ahrmehnee’s cheek, and his two hands were clenched so tightly together that the big knuckles stood out as white as virgin snow.
“Then did the monstrous leader and his search party from the upper areas come back, and shortly the Muhkohee began to mill about and shout and wave their weapons as always they just before attacking us had done. And then they charged. And we awaiting our certain deaths, stood with our arms to hand.
“But then, when still the barbarians were more than five score yards distant, ponies began to go down and men as well, many, many of them, for no apparent reason. Not until the mob had rolled closer did we, could we, see a drizzle of black-shafted arrows was falling among our foes, seemingly from out of the clear skies — not enough to halt the Muhkohee, by any means, but enough to slow and confuse them.
“Next, on that day of miracles, hundreds of steel-sheathed men on big lowlander horses came charging down the eastern flank of the cliff line and slammed full-tilt into the damned savages! What a splendid sight that was for us all to see, Der Byruhn! Near ten hundreds of the sons of filth went down, it seemed, when first the Lowlanders struck.
“We wanted to join the fight at once, but decided did we that longer would it take to open our wall enough to get out the horses than would it take to go back up and out the back entrance, then circle around through the open pass. Atop the cliff we found the lowlander archers, with all their shafts spent; they were preparing to go back to whence they had come and thence down that steep, shaley slope to join the battle, below. But we persuaded them to come with us the longer but safer way.
“On the plain we arrived just as Dook Bili rallying his fighters was for another charge and with him we joined our own swords and spears and axes. What a day that was, Der Byruhn! The murderous pack broke at the second charge and chased and slew we did them for far and far until off the Tongue of Soormehlyuhn they fled, those who could still, and Dook Bili halted us did. Coming back we were when the earth shook.”
“Thank you, Dehrehbeh Vahrtahn,” said the prince, gravely.
“Der Byrubn,” the Ahnnehnee protested, “I am not a dehrehbeh, only a simple village headman. The dehrehbeh of the Panosyuhn Tribe is —”
The prince shook his head forcefully. “If you lead and speak for those Ahrmehnee warriors here present, you’re a dehrehbeh as far as I’m concerned, young man, but I’ll call you whatever you wish.
“So, then, Pahrohn Vahrtahn, how many of these accursed Ganik outlaws would you say were slain in all — by both your force over the full period and by Duke Bili’s at the end?”
The swarthy young man scratched his head and squinted for a moment. “If not twenty hundreds, Der Byruhn, close on it.”
The prince turned back to Bili. “And you, young cousin, would you concur with that figure?”
Bili nodded once. “There were some hundreds of dead shaggies all around the mouth of that cave, my lord, and more of them scattered on the plain. The first charge I led was devastatingly effective — though the horses counted for more than us men in that particular instance, that and the impetus of coming down that almost-sheer slope. I’d put the total shaggy casualties of all the actions at more in the neighborhood of twenty-five hundred.”
Smiling like a winter wolf, Byruhn said, “Coming off the plateau where they did, the bastards would’ve almost surely had to come through the eastern forest to reach their base by the quickest route. That would mean that the earthquake and, more important, the fires would have caught them there. And that’s one of the better pieces of news I’ve heard in years.
“Buhbuh led about six thousand outlaws, total. If your estimate is correct, cousin, and if as few as five hundred more were lost when the forest burned, that strength will be halved, anyway. With so many men of fighting age lost — and I’m not even thinking about those too badly wounded to offer resistance, mind you — such forces as only I command here in the southerly reaches of the kingdom might be able to . . . ahhh . . . persuade the small Ganiks hereabouts to move on and harass somebody else’s stretch of mountains.
“But with your fine force here to help us . . . you do intend to join with us for the duration of our campaign, do you not, cousin Bili? My poor old father needs every sword he can raise in the north, and I can spare not a one of these in the south until the devilspawn Ganiks be driven out.”
“My lord prince,” Bili answered slowly, carefully choosing his words, “I — we all — greatly appreciate your kind aid and this lavish hospitality to utter strangers, trespassing armed on your lands. But what you now ask is not my decision to make — not to make alone, that is. Before I can answer yea or nay, I must council with my captains, my lady and my allies, for their lives and well-being will be as much in jeopardy as mine own in these actions you contemplate. You will have my answer when I have heard and weighed the views of all.”
“Spoken honestly and openly,” said Byruhn. “So be it.”
Chapter XIII
When once the prince had completed his ablutions, Bili and Rahksahnah made use of the welcome bath house, which occupied one end of the outbuilding housing the kitchens for Sandee’s Cot and was warmed by its fires and ovens. The dust and dirt and dried sweat of the long, wearisome day laved away, they then made their way back into the main building and the bedchamber they had been assigned, wrapped against the chill air of the mountain night in yards of unbleached and scratchy woolen cloth, carrying their clothing and weapons.
At the door of the bedehamber, Gy Ynstyn and Meeree waited to take the boots and other leather gear for cleaning and burnishing. just before following Rahksahnah into the small room, Bili gave Gy an order to transmit: All hale members of the mixed force were to assemble around the foot of the lofty tower keep in the third hour after tomorrow’s dawning.
In the chamber, Bili found Meeree talking softly to Rahksahnah in Ahrmehnee, but the woman broke off when he entered, cast him a long, bard look and stalked from the room, with a rattling of spur chains and saber sheath.
“Poor Meeree,” said Rahksahnah, sadly, while Bili was arranging his bared sword and cased dirk within easy reach of the feather bed, “she knows that the Will of the Lady it is, but still cannot reconcile herself that the ways of the Hold dead are, in fact. Your man, Gy Furface, she chose as battle companion that she might remain near to me; but if refuses she does to change, to adapt to this strange, new order of living! better it would have been if another man she taken had, I fear.”
Bili chuckled. “Yes, I know, she had the brass to . . . shall we say, threaten me, this morning, when I was on my way to you. But don’t worry about her, dear. I don’t.”
Rahksahnah, however, still looked deeply troubled, and there was much concern in her voice. “Underestimate Meeree do not, my Bili. Stronger she is than she appears, and quick as a snake with blade or spear, nor so proficient are most with thrown knife or axe or dart?”
“Which only means,” said Bili good-naturedly, “that she is a fine trooper for this mixed squadron of mine. And no matter if she still loves you, she must be doing right by Gy, for I cannot recall ever seeing him smile so much. Besides, with the two of us now to care for and see to, Gy would’ve needed help anyway. Now, come to bed, my dear, there is much we must discuss before the morning.”
But serious as were the matters press
ing upon Bili’s mind, they did not talk at once. For both were young — Bili almost nineteen and Rahksahnah some few months his junior — they had found and shared their first blissful pleasure earlier in the past day and, although their minds were aroil with other, more worldly concerns, their vibrant young bodies, pressed closely together for warmth, speedily aroused insistent demands for fresh delights.
Firm with purpose, Bili strove mightily to master these demands of his flesh, to reaffirm that iron self-discipline with which he always had ordered his life, only to find his oft-vaunted self-control leaking away like so much water from a sundered pot; and when his tentatively probing mindspeak found the surface of Rahksahnah’s consciousness seething with equal passion, he gave up the struggle, lightened his strong arms about her body and covered her mouth with his own.
That first kiss lengthened, deepened, as tongue found seeking, maddening tongue in a flurry of impassioned activity. Still crushing her firm, pliant warmth hard against his own body with his left arm, her hardening nipples branding desire deep within him, he stroked his callused right palm down the length of her back to cup one flat buttock — tenderly at the first, then harder, his fingers digging into the elastic flesh as his passions mounted.
Somewhere in the far recesses of her mind, Rahksahnah knew that she should feet guilt for so quickly forsaking even the memory of Meeree, the love and the years they had shared, but never once in all those years had Meeree’s touch, Meerec’s kiss, aroused her one half so much as did the touches, the kisses, the mere close proximity of the huge and different and now-dear lowlander man, this Bili of Morguhn.
“Perhaps,” she thought without thinking, really, her consciousness fully involved in the unbearable pleasure that the massive man was inflicting upon her more than willing flesh, “perhaps it is the Lady’s doing; perhaps She has willed that my mind cast out memories of the past, of the old ways of the Hold, that I may more easily accept this man I have chosen as a true equal, in all ways. If this be true, I pray that She do the like for poor, suffering Meeree, that she may soon find real happiness with her bearded man, Gy, and forget the old, dead ways. And I must ask my Bili why this one man has a bushy beard when none of the others, save the Ahrmehnee, do. . . .”
And then even that last stronghold of coherent thought was submerged, drowned in the relentless tide of passion sweeping through every fiber of her being. Rahksahnah surrendered to it, utterly and without pause, let it carry her, unresisting, to the inevitable heights of bliss.
Neither Rahksahnah nor Bili had any way of knowing that Meeree, full-armed, stood in the darkened hallway just beyond the door, having chosen the first watch of the night as her lot, leaving the other three watches to Bili’s Freefighter bodyguards.
For all the thickness of the stone walls and the stout, iron-bound portal, Meeree’s keen ears still could clearly hear the sounds of lovemaking emanating from the chamber she guarded — the sighs the gasps, the moans, the wet-slithering-slapping sounds. When the mattress ropes and the bedframe commenced a rhythmic squeaking-creaking, Meeree’s even white teeth met in the flesh of her lower lip.
So hard did her hands grip the spear haft and the hilt of her sheathed saber that her two arms trembled and ached with the strain. But that pain was no more noticed than was the sharper one from her tooth-torn lip; the only pain that she could truly feel was from deep within her, and it would, she knew, never be assuaged until . . . unless the brahbehrnuh again became hers, body and soul, as before, as was right and proper and ordained. But, no, it no longer was ordained by Her, the Silver Goddess.
Through the dense fabric of the oaken door came the high-pitched, breathless cry, of ultimate pleasure, rising above the deep-throated — and, to Meeree, hideous — love groan of the man, to be followed by gasps and pantings and low murmurs.
Letting go the spear with her right hand to let the left take over its support, Meeree dug furiously under her shirt and breastplate until she found that for which she sought. Her sinewy fingers, hardened by long years of gripping hilt and haft, easily snapped the fine silver chain. Then she withdrew her hand to cast both chain and crescent pendant forcefully down the pitch-black hallway to tinkle first against the wall stones, then clank onto the hardwood floor.
Alone, there in the full-darkness, where none could see, Meeree did that which she had not done since early childhood. She swallowed the sobs, but allowed the tears of frustration and rage and loss to flow freely down her callused cheeks, to drip from her chin.
* * *
The watcher outside heard no further sounds from the bed-chamber, for Bili and Rahksahnah, their passions temporarily slaked, were communicating by mindspeak.
“What think you, lover’ asked Bili. “Should I . . . we . . . do that which Prince Byruhn wants us to do? Should we help hin, to drive these Ganiks from out his lands, then, for all we now know, get ourselves embroiled in his war with these invaders from the north? It is not a decision to be made lightly or by me alone, as I told Lord Byruhn earlier. You and your force, the Ahrmehnee, the Freefighters and my Confederation nobles all must have a part in the choice, are they to lay their lives on the line at the behest of me and the prince.”
“These Ganiks, Bili, have long been a sore menace to us and to the Ahrmehnee, so I feel certain that both of the headmen and all of their warriors will want to take a part in their extirpation or expulsion from lands so near to their own. As for the Moon Maidens, they will go where I lead . . . and I go wherever you go.
“But most of the war band is Freefighters, my Bili. What think you they will choose to do?”
Bili shrugged his broad shoulders. “They’ll do whatever I and their officers tell them to do. Rahksahnah, They’re all professional soldiers, and one fight is as much as another to them; they fight for loot, not glory, and they’ll freely follow any strong captain who has a name for victories, as do I.
“Now, the Confederation noblemen are something entirely different. They all have homes and lands to go back to and so have little reason to seek out a fight that really is none of their affair. They were with me in the Ahrmehnee lands only by reason of the orders of him who is overlord of us all — the High Lord Milo of Morai.
“Here and now, I cannot say that I speak for the High Lord, and I truly have no idea just what he would either do or advise doing in this situation. For all his reiterated longings for peace within and along his borders, this Byruhn could be lying in his teeth, and an internally secure New Kumbuhluhn could pose a serious threat to the Ahrmehnee Stahn and to the Confederation lands, beyond. Nor does his house, from what he has told us, have any reason to love our Confederation, the Kindred or the Ehleenee.
“I would like to know him better and to know much more of his aspirations and goals, but I think he has told and had us told all he intends for us to know until and unless we swear our oaths and our swords to his service.”
* * *
Immediately the prince bad given the diners leave to depart the hall of Sandee’s Cot, Master Elmuh and the other Kleesahk had made for the tarn-side tower. After he had seen to the wounded, rebandaged where necessary and reinforced the mental instructions for the knitting of bones and muscles and flesh, he clouded out pain from their consciousnesses that they might sink easily into restful, healing sleep throughout the coming night. Then he and his two Kleesahk assistants returned to the ground level of the towering keep.
Soon, all ten of the huge humanoids were stretched out on their low beds and, draped in quilted coverlets of gigantic proportions, seemingly asleep. But the appearance was deceiving. No one of them slept, not yet, for they all had had their instructions from the prince, passed on to them by Pah-Elmuh.
Therefore, the powerful minds of the ten Kleesahk were meshed, as they all lay supine, first willing all true-men and true-women within the upper levels of the tower to sleep a deep sleep, then implanting within all those human minds the thoughts and beliefs that were necessary to prepare them for the coming day.
*
* *
While Bili and Rahksahnah lay abed, while Meeree wept in the darkness, while the faithful Kleesahk joined minds to weave their invisible web of what some there would have called wizardry, the prince and old Sir Steev sat closeted together within a small, secure office just off the great hall of Sandee’s Cot. An ewer of brandied wine sat between them on the small, sturdy table, and a brass goblet was before each of them. The two men’s pipes and the thick tallow taper had combined to thicken the atmosphere in the windowless room, but neither seemed to notice.
Sir Steev’s lined and scarred face looked worried, and the same disquietude was clear in his voice. “Lord prince, you have given me leave to speak freely, so I’ll say this: whatall you are doing with these lowlanders may not be truly wrong, but it’s not right, either, not by a long shot. Count Sandee would not’ve —”
“Pah!” Prince Byruhn waved a band through the smoke he had just expelled. “Old Sandee was a senile, doddering fool, and he’s well dead, so far as the kingdom’s interests are concerned.
“And that, old friend, is all that should be of importance to either of us, just now — the good of the kingdom. You know and I know that my father must have more troops, a stronger force in the north . . . and soon. Yet there is, or has been, no way that we could strip the garrisons from the safe glens here in the south.
“Oh, not because of fear for our own; the damned Ganiks know better than to try to take one of the glens. But without patrols to sting them now and again, those damned outlaws and their ‘peaceable’ kin would long since have so incited the Ahrmehnee that we would’ve found ourselves with an invasion from the southeast as well as from the northwest, and in such a sorry pass, you could kiss the kingdom goodbye. New Kuhmbuhluhn would be ground between the two like grist, and the only sure winners would likely be these contemptible Ganiks.
“What I am doing, what I am having the Kleesahk do for me — for us, all of us, really — is eminently practical and vitally necessary . . . but it is clearly not honorable, and no doubt my overactive conscience will see to it that I suffer long and hard for it, in times to come.
