by Robert Adams
"None of that first King Hyamos' successors ever forgot, and all of them openly persecuted the Church and the kooreeohsee, encouraging all other folk of all classes to emulate them. King Fahrkos, however, was far too busy most of his short reign trying to keep the crown from wobbling off his head, the lands under his control and the life in his body to worry about the Church, but the disturbances of the period between the defeat of the first great rebellion and Zastros' return from exile affected and afflicted the Church as much as they did all other people of the kingdom.
"We thoheeksee of the Council are not in any manner of means persecuting the Church and the kooreeohsee . . . but, then, we're not going out of our way to help them or give them power, either. We're making certain that lands and cities and wealth and power rest in the hands of lay nobility of the proper mindset; if some of them want to give lands or wealth to the Church, that's their personal business. That's the way most of us feel about it, though there are a few old-fashioned types—Thoheeks Bahos is an example—who would grind the Church down much farther and far finer.
"But back to Master Laskos. I would be surprised to hear that he ever was put to that brutal, painful, degrading test, not whilst he dwelt here, for under the last dynasty and since, the Church has consistently maintained a very low profile and the kooreeohsee have run scared; they would no more have suggested the testing of a man in service to the king or a powerful thoheeks than they would have suggested testing the king himself."
"So then," mused Tomos, "it might be entirely possible that this young-appearing very elderly man is really an Undying. Hmmm. I think that I must send a galloper to the High Lord at Kehnooryos Atheenahs at tomorrow's dawn; I'd be remiss in my responsibility to both my king and his overlord did I do less."
Portos squinted under his brows at Gonsalos. "You truly believe, then, that this High Lord Milos is what he and his aver?"
"You do not?" asked the sub-strahteegos.
"Look you, Tomos," replied Portos evenly, "the man is a fine ruler, an honorable and a generous man, he is a superlative military leader—warrior, tactician and strategist, all rolled into one—and I am much beholden to him personally, but I cannot bring myself to believe him to be an Undying, some seven centuries old, no. His clans all firmly believe in him, yes, but then they are not at all a very sophisticated lot, I think you'll admit."
"Then what do you think him to be, Portos?" demanded Tomos.
"I've yet to make up my mind," said Portos flatly, but added, "Physically, he looks very much like one of us, and his Ehleenokos is almost accentless, but what accent remains is that of Pahlahyos Ehlahs—the homeland of our ancestors—or of Kehnooryos Mahke-dohnya, whose speech most resembles the archaic patterns and usages. He was clearly born and bred a nobleman and trained to war, whatever his actual place of origin."
"Think hard before you answer this question, Portos," said Tomos in warning. "Will your doubts, your distrust of the High Lord's age and point of origin, affect your military or civil service to the Council and the Confederation?"
Portos snorted. "Of course not! As I said earlier, be he what he is said to be or be he something else entirely, he still is probably the best ruler between here and the Great Northern Sea, and, also, I am beholden to him. I swore him and the Council oaths, and 1 mean to keep my word and my honor."
Tomos Gonsalos smiled and nodded. "Fine. Here, have some more of the brandy."
Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz, although he had been constrained to give the appearance of being a "good officer," still harbored an abysmally low opinion of military routine. Taking full advantage of the special status of his war-elephant command, he simply peeled his unit off from the returning column and headed for the river shallows whereat it had become customary to wash his huge beasts in garrison.
By the time that he and the other two feelahksee had laved their charges, their mounts, their dear friends, of an estimated ton of the sticky, gooey red-clay mud and had arrived back at the lofty building that housed both them and the elephants, it was almost dark and the three cow-elephants were yet to be fed, which would entail Gil organizing enough elephant-barn hands to make certain that he and the other two did not get stuck with doing it all.
It was for this reason that he was shocked to the point of utter speechlessness to find the full staff, even the ones who had been on the march with him and had returned here while the elephants were being bathed and whom he fully expected to have decamped to the Kindred horse lines in the interval, waiting and ready to unharness the three massive beasts and lay their food before them. Stunned, it was only on her third attempt that he realized that Newgrass was trying to range him mentally.
"Yes, sister of my sister," he finally beamed in response.
"The master of elephants from home, he is here, brother of my sister, I can smell him," she announced.
Peer as he might into the deepening gloom which was only partially dispelled by the light of the wind-blown torches, Gil could not spy a strange Ehleen. Deciding that the long-awaited Master Laskos must be somewhere inside the cavernous barn, the Horseclansman slid easily down to the ground and began to work at loosening the buckles of Sunshine's harness, his lead being at once followed by the other two feelahksee, the waiting men moving forward to lend a hand at the tasks.
He was approached by a stranger, but he noted that this one was assuredly no Ehleen, either. Though darkly weathered, his skin tone was as fair as that of a Horse-clansman, his lips were thin, his close-cropped hair was either blond or white, and in the tricky light of the torches his eyes looked light, too. His clothes were more of an Ehleen cut than Horseclans, but the frame that they swathed was in no way Ehleen-like, being slender, flat-muscled and wiry, no more than a finger or so higher than Gil's own height.
Gil said, "You can get the buckles on her off side."
But the stranger just stood looking at Sunshine for a moment; he made no move to help with the work. Finally, he spoke, his Ehleenokos sounding almost pure to Gil, to whom it was not a native language. "Very good, young man, very good. You keep her clean, and that is a something of great importance as regards the proper management of elephants. However, you do not really need a heavy, clumsy, bulky war-saddle like that; a simple pad of folded wool would suffice."
"Not that it's any of your affair," blurted out Gil, a bit peeved that the man still had made no move to help him unharness Sunshine, "but I prefer a saddle, and she doesn't mind. Why should you? Who the hell are you, anyway, and what are you doing here? You obviously are not come to work, to care for my elephants."
A fleeting smile creased the stranger's thin lips. "Oh, but you are wrong in that assumption, Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz. I am come here for precisely that purpose and, I am given to understand, at your expressed request. I am Rikos Laskos, summoned from Iron Mountain by my patron, Thoheeks Sitheeros. I arrived while still you were out on campaign.
"This is your personal elephant, then, the cow called Sunshine? Yes. Well then, will she allow others to do for her? Fine. Then let us go to a place wherein we can converse privately, eh?"
In the cluttered tack room where Gil maintained a sometime office, Laskos seated himself upon a folded barding, such as was draped over war-elephants before mail and plate armor was attached. He flexed a leg, clasped his hands on the knee and leaned back. "Now, tell me the complete truth—what is this business about you being able to talk to elephants and horses, man?" All at once, he mindspoke, very powerfully, "Are you a telepath, then?"
"Yes," beamed Gil, "and so are you. So why cannot you mindspeak elephants and horses, too?"
"I can mentally communicate with equines, mules, dogs and, to some extent, camels and a number of other animals. But, for some reason, I have never been able to reset my telepathic patterns to those of elephants . . . and I have been trying for more years than you could imagine," replied Laskos. "How did you learn, Gil Djohnz? Did someone teach you?"
Gil frowned. "Well, not exactly. On the day that Sunshine c
ame out of the river, God Milo approached her and mindspoke her. I and a fellow clansman were with him and helped him and her to take off the armor that was hurting her. I don't clearly remember just when I started mindspeaking her, but I did. Then, God Milo had me ride her back to our great camp and feed her all of the hay and other foods that she could eat, and after that day, he had my chief free me from all other tasks to allow me to devote all of my time to feeding and otherwise caring for her.
"But I have taught several other Horseclans mindspeakers how to mindspeak elephants, so I can easily show you how, if that is what you and Thoheeks Sitheeros want of me. But what I want of you, in return, is to teach me and the elephants and the other men how to do the things it is necessary for elephants to do in war. Newgrass, the cow that the thoheeks brought down from Iron Mountain, has imparted to us all of her own war training, but she says that there is more that she was never taught or that she now does not recall.
"For instance, she has told us of elephants she has seen hurl spear-sized darts and boulders the size of a man's head, and wield swords with six-foot blades."
Laskos flitted another smile, shrugging. "It's true, some few elephants can be taught to throw oversized darts and big rocks with a fair degree of consistent accuracy, but most cannot, and it is an utter waste of time—yours and theirs—to try to teach them the knack. As for the massive sword business, I suppose that it would work in battle, for a while, though as you've no doubt noted, it is the natural inclination of elephants to roll up and safeguard their precious and sensitive and vulnerable trunks in any time of danger.
"Gil Djohnz, there are two major purposes for elephants in warfare, if we disregard their frequent and most sensible roles as draught animals. One use of the two is to armor them heavily and use them to smash through formations of pikemen, spearmen or shield-walls; the other is to use them as moving platforms for dartmen or archers or slingers—fast-walk them along the enemy's front that the missile-men may bleed the enemy a bit and so soften them up just prior to one's own lines moving forward in the attack. All other maneuvers of elephants on the field of battle are but variants of these two basics.
"I'll willingly teach you and the others elephant warfare, but you must understand from the very onset that these beasts have some very definite limitations and a host of weaknesses and vulnerable points; in some ways, indeed, they're more delicate than horses.
"But first"—he abruptly stood up—"let us go outside and talk to your elephants, you and I."
Chapter V
The Mehseepolis to which Thoheeks Grahvos returned from his brief campaign was a crowded, bustling swirl of activity. More than merely adequate in size to have for long and long been the capital and the principal city of a double duchy, the ancient city was proving to be simply too small to house and to office the needs of a Council of noblemen ruling a vast, sprawling land which was becoming known as the Consolidated Duchies of Southern Ehleenoee. Everything and every place within the grim circuit of walls was become or becoming overcrowded, packed to the bursting seams, with the heterogeneous host necessary to administrate and to serve.
So heavy was the traffic wending up into and down out of the city become that the tall, thick gates seldom were closed anymore and the repairs and restrengthenings of the drawbridge that spanned the deep gorge that had for so long so protected the principal approach to the ancient city had rendered it too weighty to anymore be raised by the chains and windlasses, so it was now permanently lowered.
That gorge, which had received the drainage of the hilly city's sewers and drains since first the present city had been built where once, in ancient times, had stood only a stronghold, had with the present overpopulation been metamorphosed into a stinking mess, an ever-constant affront to eyes and nose, wherein vermin of every sort fed and bred among the faeces, garbage and slimy pools of wastewater and above which clouds of noxious insects as thick as the nauseating miasma rose up to greet everyone who crossed the bridge or walked the walltops. Grahvos longed for the spring cloudbursts that would flush the foetid cesspit down into the plain and river.
The hordes of workmen—carpenters, joiners, stonemasons and the like—added to the overcrowding but were every bit as necessary as the thoheeksee themselves. The palace complex had been quickly outgrown, and now the workmen were hard at work converting and connecting onetime private homes and other nearby buildings into a spreading, mazelike complex. In order to render the space of the old citadel free of other pressing uses, all activities and offices of a military nature had been transferred out onto the lower plain and into tents and thrown-together temporary buildings making up an enclave between the spreading camps of the army and the foot of the steep road that led up to the city.
Of a day when the plants and shrubs of the palace garden were showing off their first green leaf and flower buds, in Nature's eons-old announcement of the new growing season, called by men the spring, two men sought an audience with the Council of Thoheeksee. There was a vast disparity between these two—one being a graybeard and the other a far younger man, almost a stripling—but at one and the same time, it was obvious to any who saw them that they were very closely related by blood. The old man was the tallest of the pair—about six feet from soles to pate; his physique was big-boned and still looked very powerful, with the scars indicative of a proven, veteran warrior. A few of these scars looked to be fairly new.
Lord Eraldos of Elsahpolis, one of the assistant chamberlains and harried to distraction that day, knew that he had seen the old man or someone very much like him before, but he could not just then place the who or
the where or the when, and the petitioner flatly refused to state his name or his rank, only stating that he was a nobleman who had been most unjustly treated and he was, therefore, seeking redress of this new government, the Council of Thoheeksee. The only other words he deigned to send in to Council were exceedingly cryptic, to Eraldos' way of thinking.
"Ask the present lord of Hwailehpolis if he now recalls aught of a stallion, a dead man's sword and a bag of gold."
But then code words and phrases were fairly common (though less so at this than at certain other courts Lord Eraldos had served in his lifetime, he was happy to say), so he dutifully jotted it down on the prompting pad he kept in his mind and then continued with seemingly endless routines. With one occurrence and another, however, it was not for some two hours that he remembered to pad around the table to the mentioned thoheeks and diffidently put to him this singularly odd question, to then be scared nearly out of his wits.
Thoheeks Vikos of Hwailehpolis sent his heavy chair crashing over as he leaped to his feet and clamped his big, hard hands on both the startled assistant chamberlain's shoulders with crushing force.
"Where is this man, Eraldos?" he demanded. "What would you estimate his age? Did he come alone of his own will or did others bring him?"
When he did not get an immediate answer, Thoheeks Vikos' eyes flashed fire and he shook the chamberlain as a terrier shakes a rat. "Well? Well, man, will you answer me?"
Lord Eraldos' lips moved but no sounds emerged. As Vikos set himself to another round of shaking, Thoheeks Portos gripped his forearm, admonishing, "Have done, Vikos, have done! Between shaking and terror, you've rendered the poor man dumb with fright."
When the trembling functionary had scuttled out of the chamber to fetch back the petitioner, Vikos made to explain his atypical actions to his peers at the council table. "It was after that gory debacle at Ahrbahkootchee, in the early days of the war against Hyamos' son, Prince Rahndos. I had fought through all of that black day as an ensign in my late elder brother's troop of heavy horse, and in the wake of the main army's rout by the war-elephants, I and full many another poor nobleman found myself unhorsed, disarmed and hunted like some wild and desperate beast through the swamps of the bottomlands.
"Near to dusk, I was wading across a broad pool when I heard yet again the crashing of brush and the shouts of horsemen. They sounded almost atop me
, so I broke off a long, hollow reed and went under the water, as I had had to do right many times that terrifying day. But this time I knew that if they came at all close, I was done for; unlike all the other pools that had hidden me, the water of this one was clear to the sandy bottom, nor was its deepest part very deep, perhaps three feet, perhaps less.
"All at once, as I fought to hold myself underwater, I became aware that a man had ridden into that pool; the legs of his horse loomed close to my body, and, not liking the idea of a lance pinning me to the bottom to gasp out my life there, I resignedly surfaced, that I might at least die with air in my lungs. I looked up into the eyes of none other than Komees Pahvlos Feelohpohlehmos himself!
"In a voice pitched so low that even I could but barely hear, he growled, 'Keep down, damn fool boy! Keep down, I say, else I'll have to slay you.'
"Then he shouted to his troopers who were riding nearer, 'You men search that thick brush up there where the creek is narrow and murky. This pool here is clear as fine crystal; nothing to be seen in it save fish and crayfish. I'll give my stallion a drink of it, then ride up and join you.'
"Then the komees deliberately set his horse to roiling the bed of that pool with its hooves, while he did the same with the butt of his lance, stirring up sediments and clouding the water. He dropped upon me a sheathed, bejeweled sword, and when I once more brought my face up to where I could see, he dropped a small, heavy bag with a crest embossed in the soft leather.
"He said then, 'Your late father was my battle companion of yore, young Vikos, and after this sad day, you may well be the last living man of his loins. So there is a bit of gold and a good sword taken off the body of a dead man. Stop moving about blindly and go to ground until it's full dark, then head northwest. What's left of Zastros' rebel army is withdrawing southeast, and we'll be pursuing them. If you can make it up to Iron Mountain, you'll be safe with your cousins there. And the next time you choose a warleader, try to choose one who owns at least a fighting chance to win, eh? God keep you now, my boy.' Then he rode through the pool and led his men away through the swamp."
