A Cat of Silvery Hue

by Robert Adams

  Roaring his pain and rage, Bili's left hand let go the axehaft to pinion the wrist of that sword arm in an armor-crushing grip, and, heedless of the searing agony of the steel, he pivoted half around, slid his hand up the axehaft and ferociously rammed the thick central spike betwixt the gilded bars of his adversary's visor.

  With a gurgling, gasping scream, the swordsman stumbled back, his big shield dragging, his broadsword hanging by its knot. Bili disengaged his axe, whirled it up in both hands and swung a crashing blow against the side of that black-plumed helm. The swordsman was hurled to the pavement, where he lay, motionless and soundless, immense quantities of blood pouring from the slits of his visor.

  And Bili strode on to his next encounter.

  Geros, well protected by his two Freefighter guards and the big old infantryman, Djim, had trailed the thoheeks and Pawl Raikuh as closely as was possible amid the chaos of shove, thrust, slash and cut. Leaden slingshot and various other missiles had holed and rent the Red Eagle Banner during that ghastly ascent of the hill, but Djim's big infantry shield had sheltered Geros himself from all harm.

  In the swirling court, both Pawl Raikuh and old Djim were swept out of the narrow view afforded Geros by his closed visor. Nonetheless, he kept doggedly on his lord's heels, watching that gore-slimy axe down rebel after rebel—shattering shields, crumpling armor, severing limbs, smashing heads and chests. Behind Geros, wielding sabers and broadswords and a miscellany of pole arms, came twoscore Freefighters of the Morguhn Company and, after them, the battered remnants of the Confederation infantry, mostly spearless now but no less deadly with shortsword and shield.

  The rebels fought bard, vicious as cornered rats, holding every inch of ground with a suicidal tenacity. But slowly they were driven back and back, their thinning line constricting around a central brick-and-stone platform mounting two large engines. Twice they tried to form a shield ring, but each time Bill's terrible axe lopped off spearheads and beat down shields and the Freefighters poured, ravening, through the gaps, their blood-dimmed blades sending dozens more rebels down to gasp out their lives on the red-running ground.

  Then the battle was boiling about the catapult platform and old Djim was once more at Geros' side, only to disappear again a moment later. A sustained roar of cheering arose in the rear, loud enough that the sergeant could hear it even over the incredible, ear-splitting din engulfing him. He turned to see fresh companies of infantry, wave after wave of them, clamber atop the wall and jump down into the court.

  He turned back just in time to see Thoheeks Bili, engaging a pair of swordsmen, beaten to earth by a giant of a man swinging a massive timber. Not noticing the blades beating on his cuirass, Geros hurled himself forward, ducked under the swing of the giant's log, and jammed the ornamental brass point of the standard shaft deep into the monstrous man's belly, just below the hornbuckled belt With a high, soprano scream, the stricken rebel dropped the log, grabbed the shaft and pulled it free from his body with an ugly sucking sound. Then, whining, his face contorted, he lumbered toward the man who had hurt him, his ham-sized hands extended before him.

  Geros instinctively realized that it would be his very life to chance within reach of those hands. Wedging the ferrule of the standard into a wide crack between the paves, he wasted precious moments fumbling at his belt before recalling that his broadsword hung now on his back. The giant was perilously close as the blade came free of the scabbard and Geros danced back out of reach as lightly as his tired, trembling legs would move.

  Assuming a point fighter's crouch, he awaited his huge foe's slow advance, then aimed a wicked thrust at the unarmored chest… and almost fell into those deadly clutches, ere he noticed that those arms were as long as his arm and swordblade combined. As it was, the right hand locked about Geros' blade and sought to jerk him closer to his death. Frantically, the sergeant pulled back with all his might. After a heart-stopping moment of resistance, the sharp edges sliced through callus and skin and flesh to grate on massy bone and slide free, its passage lubricated with hot red blood.

  Raising his ruined, useless hand to eye level, the hulking creature rent the air with another of those shrill, womanish screams, then pressed the bleeding palm and fingers against his torn belly, from which a pinkish-purple loop of gut was working. But he did not halt his shuffling advance.

  To fall or even stumble would presage a messy death. Geros backed cautiously, his knees flexed, his feet feeling a way across the uneven footing of blood-slick pavement, dropped weapons and still or twitching bodies. The sergeant was suffused with cold, crawling terror, for well he knew that no sane man would so stalk an armed and armored opponent, while lacking any sort of weapon but bare hands. And he would have run, save that the giant now stood between him and Thoheeks Bili, still lying stunned where he had fallen. And, despite his all but unmanning fear, he could not willingly desert his young lord.

  The monster, though, was the one who stumbled and would have fallen on his face had he not slammed his wide palm on the slimy ground. And Geros danced in, his point quick as a striking viper, sinking deep, deep into the left eye of that upraised face. The shudder that racked the gargantuan body almost wrenched the broadsword from his grasp. Then the tree-thick left arm bent and the dead man's huge head thumped the paving stones.

  Old Pyk, the Freefighter weapons master, clucked concernedly while he wrapped bandage about Bill's thigh. "It's stopped bleeding, my lord. Still, I think it should be burnt, else you might lose the leg to the black stink." He finished the lapping and neatly tied .the ends, adding, "And a burning be much easier, my lord, an' you've no long time to think on it."

  Bill lowered the canteen of brandy-and-water from his lips and smiled. "Thank you, Master Pyk, but no. When we be back in camp, I'll have Master Ahlee see to the wound. I've had such burnt ere this, and I much prefer the soft words of his mode of healing to your red-hot spearhead."

  The young nobleman leaned back, refusing to allow his face to reveal his pain, while his orderly, Makz Bineht, folded the slit leg of the blood-caked breeches over the bulk of bandage, then pulled the boottop back up and secured its straps. Then he stood, remarking, "My lord, Captain Raikuh is coming back."

  Bili opened his eyes and levered himself into a sitting posture on the parapet of the outer works, took another pull at the canteen and resolutely corked it. It would not do to have fuzzy wits if push came to shove and he had another shouting match with sub-strahteegos Kahzos Kahlinz, now commanding the Confederation troops in the conquered salient.

  Pawl Raikuh strode across the carnage he had helped to cause, stepping around bodies where possible. All at once he stopped, bent to look, then drew his dirk and squatted beside a dead rebel. After wiping his blade on the dead man's clothing, he sheathed it, dropped something shiny in his belt purse and continued on his way. When he had climbed the ladder to the outer works, he paced deliberately over to Bili's place and, after removing his helm, saluted. The padded hood which covered most of his head was sweat-soaked, there was a crust of old blood around his nostrils and on his upper lip, his scarred face was drawn with fatigue.

  Bili waved to the stretch of parapet on his right, saying, "Pawl, sit down ere you fall down. Here, try some of this brandy-water—most refreshing."

  After the briefest of hesitations, the captain sank with a sigh onto the proffered seat and gratefully accepted the canteen. He took one mouthful, spit it downhill, then threw back his head and upended the bottle, his throat working.

  "What," asked Bili, "did our esteemed colleague say when you told him that his troops could now begin clearing the field?"

  Raikuh grinned. "Very little of a repeatable nature, Duke Bili. His remarks tend to leave the impression that he has little use for Freefighters and even less for Middle Kingdoms-trained country nobles who fail to give him and his pack of pikepushers the respect that he feels they deserve."

  Bili snorted. "The bastard is mad, must be. Brought in his companies on the tag-end of the battle—most of them
never even blooded steel except to dispatch some rebel wounded— and then expected me to bow low and give him and his first pick, the top cream of the loot! If he's a fair example of the kind of officers the High Lord is raising up these days, Sun and Wind help our Confederation!"

  Extending his hand, he poked at a bejeweled hilt peeking from under Raikuh's boottop. "Found some goodies yourself, did you, captain?"

  Grin broadening, Raikuh rubbed his hand along the bulge. "It be a genuine Yvuhz, my lord, but it's not mine. It's equal shares in my company. Whatever the lads find will go into a common pot, and whatever they bring will be split."

  Bili nodded gravely. "It be a good decision, Pawl. Too many companies end up hacking each other over bits of loot." Then he smiled, asking teasingly, "But we've an intaking ahead of us. How are you going to apply your rule to female loot?"

  The grin returned. "Share and share, I suppose, my lord— within reason, of course. But we'll just have to ford that river when we come to it."

  The captain imbibed once more of the canteen's dwindling contents. "My lord, we took the time to measure that man who knocked you down. That bugger was over eight foot tall, and I'd be unsurprised if he weighed more than six hundred Harzburk pounds! He must of had the thews of a destrier, too, for it took three men to even lift that timber he was swinging like a staff. Wonder it didn't break your back, my lord, cuirass or no cuirass."

  Gingerly, Bili shifted his position. "I'm still not sure it didn't, Pawl. But you mean our Geros slew such an ogre, alone, with but his sword?"

  "No, my lord," Raikuh shook his head. "First he tickled the pig's guts with the point on the standard staff. If he'd taken time then to draw his steel, well…" He shook his head again.

  "And where is Geros now, Pawl?"

  "I sent him and a detail back to camp to fetch horse litters for our wounded and packmules for our dead, my lord."

  "Bili!" Milo's powerful mindspeak burst inside his skull.

  The assault on the other salient, headed by the High Lord, had been almost a textbook exercise in how such a maneuver should be done. Honored to have their supreme sovereign in their van, officers and men alike had gone about their prescribed actions 'in strict, regulation manner—archers and engineers taking excruciating care in providing cover for the advance up to and through the gapped abattis; the units quickly and precisely forming their battalion front behind their two Cat Banners, with the High Lord and his plate-armored guard between the battalions.

  At the roll of the drums, the engines had ceased their work, the archers had confined themselves to well-aimed loosings at clearly visible targets and had quickly ceased even that. At the second drumroll, every heavy shield came up to battle-carry, every spear sloped across right shoulder at a precise angle, all performed under the critical eyes of halberd-armed sergeants and officers with broadswords at the shoulder-carry. At the third roll of the drums, a deep-throated-cheer was raised and the lines started forward, up the slope and into the hail of death hurled by the defenders, dressing their lines at the jogtrot as missiles took inevitable toll.

  Ten yards from the bristling ramparts, under the rain of stones and darts and arrows, Milo's mindspeak to the surviving senior officers gave the order which made the final assault fur easier. Halting, still in ordered formations, the fore ranks knelt behind their big shields. As one man, the rearmost rank employed the tool carried for the purpose to knock out the steel pin securing the heads of their dual-purpose spears. Then, to the drumroll, their brawny arms "hurled the heavy missiles with a practiced accuracy which was not necessary, for so thick was the press atop the rampart that even a tyro could not have missed fleshing the spear.

  As the men of the first volley drew their wide-bladed short-swords and knelt, the line in front of them arose and threw their own spears. Then the drums once more rolled and, cheering, the companies swept forward, their crest breaking over, then engulfing the rampart before the rebels could recover from the shock of the two spear volleys.

  So sudden, unexpected and complete was the victory of the High Lord's force that the suicide garrison had no time either to seal or even conceal the huge oval chamber undermining the hilltop fortifications, the tunnel through which they had been supplied and. reinforced, and the oil and pitch-soaked timbers supporting them.

  "It's a stratagem which can be hellishly effective, Bili," Milo urgently farspoke. "Something similar once cost me nearly two regiments when we were conquering the Kingdom of Karaleenos, more than a century ago. Since this hill be mined, it stands to reason that the one you're on is too. I've been unable to lock into Ahrtos' mind. You must get word to him that the troops are to quit that hilltop immediately!"

  Bili was blunt. "Strahteegos Ahrtos is dead. So, too, are most of the other officers of the first assault force. A sub-strahteegos called Kahzos Kahlinz presently commands what be left of the men who did the actual fighting, as well as his own slow-footed companies. He thought that he commanded me and mine, as well, until we had some… ahhh, 'words' on the matter."

  "All right, Bili," Milo quickly ordered. "I'll mindspeak Kahlinz. You see to getting your own Freefighters off that hilltop. You should be safe down as far as the abattis. Get off your wounded but don't bother with your dead; there may not be time."

  Kahzos—thirty-five-year-old third son of Thoheeks Hwilkz Kahlinz—whose "twenty years under the Cat Banners had earned him command of a line regiment and a second-class silver cat, was coldly furious. First, that old ass Ahrtos had relegated him to the inferior command of the second wave while taking his two best battalions away from him for the initial assault and "replacing" them with a single battalion of irregular light infantry from some godforsaken backwater in the northwestern mountains. Then a noble bumpkin—and it was hard, despite his title and mindspeak, to credit that the boy was even Kindred, what with his damned harsh Middle Kingdoms accent and his shaven scalp—had defied him before his own troops! Blatantly lacking respect either for Kahzos' rank or age, the young pig had not only profanely refused to put himself and his mercenaries under Kahzos' rightful authority, but had insisted that his northern barbarians be given leave to loot the salient before Kahzos' Confederation gatherers were allowed to scavenge valuable or usable items.

  And Kahzos had seen no choice but to accede to the unreasonable demand, despite the flagrant breach of army regulations. For the arrogant young pup had made it abundantly clear that should the Confederation commander demur he and his mercenaries would fight—turn their swords on Confederation troops—to achieve their larcenous ends. And Kahzos could only think of that disgraceful business some years, back, of the ruined career and cashiering of an officer who had set his battalions on mercenary "allies" when they refused to fight.

  Of course, the man had been a damned kath-ahrohs Ehleen—which automatically meant a fool and a thief—and had hoped that by butchering the mercenaries he could conceal the fact that he had embezzled their wages. But still, with such a precedent and his honorable retirement not far distant. Kahzos had stuck at an armed confrontation with that puling bastard of a thoheeks.

  But for all his inborn prejudices and his towering ego, Kahzos Kahlinz was a good officer and an intelligent man. He immediately grasped the dire possibilities, the danger to every man within the new-conquered salient, when the High Lord mindspoke him. After snapping an order to his staff drummer, he replied.

  "My lord, because of some unforeseen difficulties with the barbari—ahhh, with Thoheeks Morguhn and his company, the gatherer squads have but just dispersed about the area. Most of the drummers are handling litters, but I have ordered my own drummer to roll the 'Recall' and I will immediately send a runner to the thoheeks, whose Freefighters are occupying the redoubt nearest to the city."

  "Never mind Thoheeks Bili," beamed Milo. "He has already been warned. Just get your units out of there as rapidly as may be. We've suffered much loss for damned little gain this day as it is."

  Bili supervised the handling of the wounded Freefighters dow
n the outer face of the rampart. Only when the last of them was resting far down the hillock would he allow himself to be lowered from his place, leaving Pawl Raikuh to see to the dead Freefighters and bundles of loot.

  The captain had the stiffening corpses dumped unceremoniously off the rampart. Unless they were noble-born, dead Freefighters were normally simply stripped of their usable effects and left wherever they chanced to fall. As he set his feet to the first rung of the rope ladder his men had jury-rigged, he could but grunt his disgust at the foolhardy idiocy of that arrogant bastard of a sub-strahteegos, who should have been shooing his troops out of the doomed salient but was instead ordering them in painfully dressed formations as fast as they reported to the roll of the drum.

  Sergeant Geros' detail returned just as Bili hobbled down to the place where the wounded had been laid. The young thoheeks took the opportunity to appropriate the sergeant's mare but found, to his shame, that he had to be helped into the saddle.

  Increasingly thick tendrils of smoke were rising from between the paving stones ere the rearguard of the infantry column attained the rampart, and before the last company could even start their descent, a flame-shot pillar of smoke and dust mounted high into the air from the court behind them. To those on the slope, it was as if some gigantic monster had roared with hellish din and fiery breath. The doomed men on the quaking rampart were half obscured and their terrified screams were heard only by themselves.

  First a wedge of rampart collapsed back into the inferno, then an arc several yards in length, next another longer one. And suddenly the pillar of dust and smoke became higher and denser as the entire remaining stretch of ramparts slid crashing into the huge, blazing pit, sending unbelievable showers of sparks scintillating upward.