by Robert Adams
On the day before the festivities, Zehpoor called Pehroosz to her. Showing her some dried tubers, the older woman sketched the appearance of the plant whose roots they were and told Pehroosz the growing conditions favored by the plant. Then she gave Pehroosz a small wickerwork basket and a broad-bladed digging knife and sent her off into the wooded hills.
And after the girl was safely out of sight, Zehpoor surrendered to her tears. She had come to love the patient and cheerful, albeit sad-eyed, Pehroosz, and now she anguished at the terror the child would suffer this day. But she consoled herself: terror there would assuredly be, but no harm to Pehroosz, and much lasting good would come of that brief terror; and, besides, it was the Lady’s will.
* * *
“It will do you good!” the High Lord had firmly stated, when he had ordered Senior Strahteegos Hahfos Djohnz to take part in at least the last day of the hunting. “You work too hard, Hahfos, and for too long at a time.”
Hahfos thought it an example of the pot defaming the kettle, since there was seldom a night when the High Lord’s pavilion wasn’t brightly lit until well after the midnight hour. But when the High Lord finally lost patience and framed it as an order, Hahfos gave up and set about preparations.
Unlike the civilian noblemen, Hahfos had never been able to afford to maintain two or three horses. His destrier was a fine, well-trained warhorse, but a hunter he was not, so the officer rode up to the village and borrowed a shaggy, bony, piebald pony. He set out early in the day in company with a half-dozen middle-aged Ahrmehnee who thought they had seen signs of wild pigs within easy ride of the main village.
By midafternoon, the men were still sending their big hounds fanning out widely and vainly. But though they had flushed nary a porker, a shrewd cast of barbed dart had netted Hahfos a large, solitary stag. After his hunting companions had exclaimed over the size of the creature and the length and trickiness of the cast and had Hahfos red-faced in embarrassment at their blunt, jovial compliments, they all joined to speedily gut and bleed and clean the trophy and lash it across the back of the piebald gelding.
He rode the straining, overburdened little horse only until he was out of sight of his hosts, then dismounted and began to backtrail the earlier course at a brisk walk. While the pony sucked up water from an icy streamlet, Hahfos stood just downstream in the narrow, twisting defile and, with a wetted neckcloth, did what he could to remove dried sweat and deer’s blood from his skin and clothing. It was then that the scream smote his ears, bouncing from wall to wall of the tiny vale, startling the drinking pony, who threw up his outsize head, snorting through wide-flared nostrils, though he was too tired and heavy-laden to bolt.
* * *
The women in the Taishyuhn villages had been in a whirl of activity since the announcement of the nahkhahrah’s wedding date. Bread ovens glowed around the clock, while the flesh of butchered cattle, game and fowl needed immediate attention lest it begin to spoil. The hoards of charcoal were quickly exhausted, so a steady supply of wood was vital and the sound of the axe was almost constant in every village. No pair of hands could stay idle in such surroundings, nor had Pehroosz’s. But the work was repetitious and she had been more than glad when Mother Zehpoor had sent her out of the village on her errand.
But a location of the sort described by the wise woman proved difficult to find, and her pony, too small and fine-boned to be taken for hunting, was frisky to the point of fractiousness; so that, when finally she chanced across a likely-looking spot, she was worn out with battling the strong-willed little horse.
She dismounted and tightly tied the reins to the trunk of a young maple, then took her basket and knife and proceeded to where a few mossy stones projected barely above the surface of an almost-circular deposit of deep loam, knelt and began to dig at the bases of a clump of the plants drawn by Mother Zehpoor.
When she had shaken the dark earth from the fleshy, finger-sized roots and put them in her basket, she probed the disturbed soil to be certain she had missed none of the tubers, since there appeared to be no more of the plants in the small area. But her knife sank only a bare inch into the loam when it was halted . . . and by something which did not feel like a stone or a tree root.
Wondering, she cleared away the shallow deposit to expose a dull, grayish surface, obviously metal, but unrusted and unlike any metal she ever had seen. Shoving aside the basket, she widened the excavation until she had the object free of dirt and roots. Then she squatted back on her heels and studied her discovery.
It was surely man-made; its even surfaces and sharp-angled corners were evidence of that fact Pehroosz still could not identify the metal, for all that her mother’s sister’s husband had been the village smith and Pehroosz had had some little exposure to the sight of iron, various kinds of steel, brass, bronze, copper and even gold, silver and that mixture of the two called Ehleen-metal. Though this artifact bore a vague resemblance to silver, especially where her knife had cut through the dirt and oxidation, she was certain that it was not.
In size, it was about four spans of her hand across in either direction and half that in thickness. A couple of lines of what looked like some kind of lettering-though not in the Ahrmehnee language, Pehroosz knew, since she could write her name — were stamped across one side of the object, and another side sported what looked like a handle.
Leaning forward, Pehroosz sought to lift the artifact by that handle . . . and almost tumbled atop it. After long, hard effort, she at last managed to drag the weighty thing onto level ground. It seemed incredible that so small an item could be so heavy.
On the side which had rested on the bottom of the hole, she found yet another curiosity-a perfect circle of verdigris which, when carved away by her knife, revealed a disc of pitted bronze with a jagged slit, so narrow that her fingernail could barely enter it, centered in a round depression. Above this circle, a hair-fine seam ran from edge to edge across the face of the oddity. It was then that she concluded that she had found a chest of some kind, rather than simply a piece of old metal.
She decided to see if she could pry it open with her knife, but first arose to walk down to where she had tied her pony. The exertions had left her thirsty and a water bottle was tied onto the saddle. But her exertions had done more; the noise had awakened a nearby sleeper and, once awake, this sleeper was hungry, ravenously hungry.
* * *
Hahfos had left his fine, well-balanced darts with the Ahrmehnee hunters, but his wide-bladed boarspear was lashed to the pony’s saddle. It was his only real weapon, since he had seen no need to burden himself with sword or dirk, replacing them with more practical saw-backed hanger and skinning knife. As a second terrified scream came hard on the heels of the first, this time blended with the scream of a pony or horse as well, he quieted his own mount enough to cast loose the lashings of the deer carcass. Throwing himself into the saddle, he drummed his heels on the little mount’s barrel.
The defile twisted and turned and narrowed even more until, at its end, Hahfos was urging the pony through the stream itself. At the base of a small knoll, the water plunged into a dark hole, and the scream came yet again, from somewhere on the other side of that knoll. Hahfos put the game little piebald to the slope, leaning forward, his keen eyes searching the trees and underbrush above and his boarspear couched and ready.
Then he was among the trees at the summit and was almost unseated when his mount reared in terror at the edge of a tiny glade. Just across the open space, an Ahrmehnee girl clung ten feet up an ancient oak, splitting the air with her shrieks as a lean, cinnamon bear began to climb toward her.
The pony would go not one step closer, so Hahfos jumped from its back and ran to the base of the tree. Intent on filling his belly, the boar bear ignored the noises behind and below until several inches of sharp steel in his flesh made him aware that he was no longer necessarily the master of the situation.
Roaring his pain and fury, the big bear dropped from the trunk, spinning in midair to land faci
ng his tormentor, who stood half-crouched, his bloody spear point held before him. Baring a mouthful of white teeth, the red bear charged.
Hahfos briefly regretted leaving his darts with the Ahrmehnee, as his dry tongue flickered over drier lips. He would have preferred the bear be at least crippled at rather a longer distance than five bare feet of spearshaft But more than two decades of soldiering had taught him to accept those things impossible to change. Gritting his teeth, he set his feet solidly and braced himself for the coming trial of strength.
His arrival had been most fortuitous for Pehroosz. No sooner had her attacker ceased his stalking of her to do battle than the slender limb which had been supporting most of her weight snapped and her wails broke off abruptly when her soft rump smote the ground with sufficient force to drive the air from her lungs and set stars dancing in her head.
This bear was no cub; he had faced hunters before. He recognized the spear and its danger and dimly recalled the burning agony of suppurating spearwounds. Dropping to four feet, he came in low, presenting as little target as possible.
Hahfos’s clenched jaws ached with strain, but he was unaware of the fact. All that now troubled him was the recollection of how Rehdjee, one of his older brothers, had died of the awesome wounds inflicted by a bear which had come in under his spear, as this one seemed intent upon doing. Taking a fearsome chance, the officer lowered his point, slashing its sharp edges at the animal’s forelegs in the hope of forcing it erect so that he might have a chance at the heart.
The bear’s roar changed timbre and gained volume as the keen steel bit into his off foreleg, just above the splayed, long-clawed paw. Lightning-fast, massive jaws closed upon the spearshaft, jerked so powerfully that Hahfos was certain his arms would be rent apart at the joints, then clamped down, splintering the two-inch hardwood shaft beneath the iron straps and so mangling the straps themselves that the head hung at a useless angle.
“How silly.” thought Hahfos then, “to have survived so many years of war only to die under the claws and teeth of a dumb beast, while trying to protect a girl who, until a few weeks ago, was my enemy!”
For a few moments, the bear mauled the broken spear, attacking it so savagely that the head completely separated from the shaft Hahfos had dropped. In the space of those moments, the hard-pressed officer drew his single-edged hanger — better suited for dispatching and butchering beasts than for defending one’s life — and set his back against the wide bole of a tall old tree.
To the girl, who looked to be just sitting on the ground across the clearing, he shouted, “Run, you witless little baggage! It’ll not be long till he’s done with me. Run to your pony, damn you, and ride like Sacred Wind!”
Then the bear was at him, all gnashing teeth and foul breath and raging fury. In his left hand, Hahfos grasped his cursive, pointless but razor-edged skinning knife. Choosing his moment shrewdly, he jammed the wide blade betwist the gaping jaws, hoping against hope that he might slice through enough muscles to render less effective those jaws and the fangs which were the bear’s principal weapons. But a snapping of the jaws immobilized the knife before it had done more than deeply gash the tongue, and a jerk of the furry monster’s head tore the hilt from Hahfos’s grasp.
Pehroosz had not understood her savior’s words, spoken in another language than her own, though his meaning had been unmistakable. But she was of a race of tough and hardy warriors and, seeing the stranger at bay against a treetrunk, his spear broken, facing a full-grown bear with only a clumsy-looking knife, she could not but try to aid him, even if her own life be forfeit The beast had reared onto his hind legs, which made him nearly Hahfos’s full height. His furry chest was pressed tight against the man’s leather jerkin, and only the hand gripping the throat under the slavering jaws and the straining muscles of the left arm had kept the blood-dripping teeth out of man flesh. The proximity of the antagonists, plus the protection afforded Hahfos by the tree-trunk, made it impossible for the bear to make much use of his curving, needle-tipped claws, but this same proximity rendered the eighteen-inch hanger almost useless . . . and Hahfos could feel his straining thews weakening. He doubted he could hold back those jaws much longer.
Pehroosz staggeringly ran across the clearing, snatched up the four-foot remnant of spearshaft and began to belabor the beast’s back and head and shoulders with the iron ferrule, but, though the concussions of her buffets increased her own dizziness, the bear took no notice of them. She finally stood back, panting. Her eyes, casting back and forth in search of a more effective weapon, lit upon the spearhead.
The boarspear is a weapon designed to the needs of a specific purpose — that of impaling a large, dangerous animal on a long and wide steel point, while a strong metal crossbar just behind the head prevents the wounded animal from impaling himself so far that he can get teeth or tuskes or claws to the hunter. Unlike the lance, which is used for the much easier task of killing mere men, both edges of the spearhead are carefully honed to a razor keenness, so that slight movements of his shaft by an experienced hunter will slice away at the animal’s internal organs, increasing hemorrhage and hastening death.
Pitting all her wiry strength to the task, Pehroosz drove the foot-long hand’s-breadth of steel into the closest part of the bear’s body. In the berserk rage of combat to the death, it is possible for man or beast to not even feel small injuries, but a leaf-shaped blade in the kidney is difficult to ignore. Tearing out of Hahfos’s grasp, the bear whirled to face this new tormentor, and his heavy-muscled shoulder struck Pehroosz, sending her tumbling head over heels, consciousness leaving her in a great flash of blinding light.
But the respite, slight though it had been, was enough. Hahfos danced a half step to the side and, ere the roaring beast could turn back to him, the hanger had found and burst the mighty heart. When the stricken bear dropped to all fours, the roars suddenly replaced by pitiful, snuffling whimpers, Hahfos raised the heavy hanger high above his head and brought it whistling down to cleanly sever the spine, between shoulders and head, almost decapitating the dying bear.
Once sure that all life had fled the bloody carcass, the officer turned his attentions to the senseless girl, now bruised and bleeding from her violent contacts with mossy rocks and gnarled tree roots. Untying his still-damp neckcloth, he knelt beside her and, cradling her rounded shoulders in the crook of his thick arm, wiped away what he could of the dirt and blood from her scraped and purpling cheeks and forehead. Then be gingerly began to feel and probe her limbs and body, searching for broken bones.
Half-conscious, Pehroosz’s mind registered the cool moisture on her abraded face, but also the warmth of Hahfos’s breath. Then hard hands were rubbing and kneading her body and, through slitted lids, a scarred, bristly face loomed waveringly above her. And she snapped into full consciousness. Screaming, sobbing in terror, she writhed to free herself from the man’s grasp, her broken nails clawing at his eyes and cheeks, her small fists beating at his head and shoulders.
Thinking, naturally enough, that he was dealing with a simple case of post-combat hysterics, Hahfos deftly pinioned her lashing arms in one big hand and, rumbling calm, soothing, meaningless sounds, sought to enter her mind as he would have entered that of a frightened horse.
He entered Pehroosz’s mind, entered as cleanly as a swimmer dives into still water, and what he found in her roiling, half-formed thoughts and in the murky depths of her memory shook the sensitive man to his innermost core. For Hahfos was a deeply sensitive man, feeling the sufferings of others even more keenly than he might his own, unswervingly believing in the innate goodness and dignity of men . . . and women. Not even a lifetime spent among scenes of harsh discipline, suffering and violent death had coarsened his basically gentle soul. The agonies and horrors the girl in his arms had endured tore at him, now, bred full-grown within him the resolve to shield her from further fright or pain so long as Sacred Sun continued to shine on his living body.
It was nearing dusk when Hahfos led the
two ponies — Pehroosz and her strange casket on the one, the other tottering under the combined weights of the deer and the bear — into the square of the main village. Willing hands took the piebald’s reins and set about unloading the carcasses, treating the officer to polite, but heartfelt, exclamations of joy at the sizes of the beasts, all couched in broken trade Mehrikan. Hahfos pleased them by using his steadily improving Ahrmehnee to thank them, then led Pehroosz’s mount to the house she had indicated, in the doorway of which stood the sorceress who had saved Captain Raikuh.
The moon rode high when he delivered his charger to the horse handlers and strode the distance to his small pavilion. Fil, his orderly of many years, was there to take his commander’s cloak, even while he eyed askance the bark-scraped jerkin under it
“My lord had good hunting?” he inquired, draping the cloak over one arm, before reaching around Hahfos’s trim waist to unbuckle the weapons belt. “Where are my lord’s darts and spear? They will be in need of honing and greasing.”
“Yes, Fil, the hunting was good. I bagged a deer and a bear. The darts I loaned to an Ahrmehnee gentleman. I’ll bring them back tomorrow, after the wedding. The spear I left up in the hills — the bear chewed it to pieces.”
Hahfos hurriedly unlaced his jerkin and, while pulling it over his head, mouthed a string of muffled orders. “Knowing you, old friend, you’ve had a great kettle of water seething since the last of day. Set up the trough, if you haven’t already, and, while I’m bathing, you can lay out my second-best uniform, and the cat-helm, too. And send a guard to request an audience with the High Lord one half hour hence. Well, what are you waiting for, man? Let’s hear those creaky bones moving!”
The High Lord left his place to stride over and wring Hahfos’s hand, grinning merrily. “Of course you have my leave, Hahfos! And I wish you every happiness. Intermarriage has proven the only way to weld bonds between new lands and old. I had felt certain that some of the soldiers I’m going to leave to garrison this fort would wed Ahrmehnee girls, but that you, one of my best officers . . .” He suddenly smote fist in palm, exclaiming, “And I’ll gift you a wedding present, son Hahfos. You may have personal choice of the men who make up the two battalions I’m leaving here. You’ll command them, this fort and the stahn as Lord Warden of the Ahrmehnee Marches.”
