by Robert Adams
Under the overall supervision of the Grand Strahteegos and his new quartermaster, vast mountains of supplies began to be amassed and needed to be placed under guard in such manner as to prevent or retard possible spoilage or damage or pilferage. But there was no trace or word regarding elephants from the west.
A vast herd of cattle—rations on the hoof—now grazed around and about the forming army of the permanent camp, along with steadily increasing numbers of horses and mules. When the treasury ran low, Thoheeks Sitheeros and Thoheeks Grahvos contributed more ounces of gold for the common weal. But not even then did more elephants arrive, nor would Sitheeros part with any more of his own small herd.
The army drilled, drilled and drilled some more. Long, hot, sweaty route marches shook down the units and accustomed them to reforming at a moment's notice from the column to a whole plethora of line-of-battle formations. Under the Grand Strahteegos' critical eye and patient dedication, the infantry—the three regiments of pikemen and the two of light foot—and the cavalry—the reinforced squadron of heavy horse, the medium-heavy horse-archers and the half-squadron of light horse lancers—began to coalesce and behave and appear to be a whole rather than several parts. But even still, the three elephant cows, astounding as their performances of intricate maneuvers were, were the only probiscideans available for the army's use.
At last, feeling that he had waited and had kept his army waiting quite long enough for the pachyderms, Pahvlos sought audience with the Council of Thoheeksee and announced that he intended to start the campaign immediately, with only the three cow elephants.
"Look you, my lords," he had said, "the city that is our objective does not lie any short distance away from Mehseepolis, so the army is going to be on the march for some weeks, and I would much prefer a march in dust to a march in rain and mud. The weather at this time of year has always been rather dry, but if we delay for much longer, the autumn rains will commence. In all other ways than war-elephants, our army is ready, honed to a fine edge, as it sits. We possess enough supplies, weapons, transport and mounts for about three months of campaigning, which should be enough, in my considered judgment."
"Not if you get tied down besieging the place, it won't!" growled Thoheeks Bahos, in his contrabass rumble. "What will you do then? Forage, live off the land and despoil young Ahramos' heritage? Or send back to us for more supplies to be bought with money we don't have?"
"I have very strong doubts that it will ever come to a siege, my lord Thoheeks," replied Pahvlos. "That precious pack are squatting on the lands and in the city, at best, holding them by brute force, with little popular support, if any; they would not dare to shut themselves up within a city filled with citizens who all hate and fear them. No, they'll come to battle, most likely, quite soon after I arrive with the army, of that I am certain."
Thoheeks Penendos of Makopolis, barely twenty years of age, spoke up. "In your considered judgment you believe," he said in a cold, mocking tone. "In other words, Strahteegos, what you are saying is that you want us to approvingly seal your traipsing off with the bulk of our effectives and thousands of thrahkmehee worth of supplies and equipment on your unsupported, unsubstantiated word, isn't that it?"
Before Pahvlos could frame an answer, Thoheeks Vikos burst out, "Wipe the mother's milk off your mouth before you so bespeak and question a man who was marshaling armies and leading them to victories while your father still was shitting his swaddlings! What manner of supercilious young puppy has Council raised up in you, Lord Penendos?"
"Puppy, am I? Dog, am I?" shouted the offended man, pulling a hideaway dagger from someplace in his clothing and lunging across the breadth of the table at Lord Vikos. "I'll make worm meat of you, you pooeesos of turd-eating boar hogs!"
It did not go far, of course, for the most of Council were warriors, first and foremost. Vikos tumbled back from the slender, winking blade, regained his feet and secured a good grip on the younger man's wrist with one hand, applying painful pressure to force him to drop the weapon. Meanwhile, Thoheeks Bahos hurled his
massive bulk atop the would-be killer's lighter and more slender body, effectively pinning him in place to the tabletop. Gasping foul curses, Penendos used his free hand to draw out another hidden dagger, only to have that wrist secured by Thoheeks Sitheeros well before he could bring it into any dangerous proximity to either Vikos or Bahos.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, GENTLEMEN!" roared Thoheeks Grahvos with a volume that rattled the goblets and crystal decanters on the sideboard. "Stop it this instant! Stop it, I say, else I'll call for the guards and give you all pause to cool off and reflect the error of your ways in a dank, dark cell down belowstairs.
"Bahos, get off that fool's back before you collapse the table. You and Sitheeros search him thoroughly and take any more sharp toys you find on his person, then put him back in his chair. And if he makes to rise again, you'll both know just what to do, eh?"
"My lords," he said finally in a harsh voice, "are we all here an aggregation of civilized, orderly inheritors of our ancient Ehleen culture? After the last few minutes, a non-Ehleen would doubt such, deeming us but another lot of brawling, blood-mad barbarians or overgrown and ill-reared children, which is the same thing, really."
Turning to Pahvlos, who still was seated, he bowed low and said, "My lord Strahteegos Komees, please accept my apology and that of the Council of the Confederated Thoheekseeahnee. Please believe me when I say that such regrettable behavior as that to which you have just, unfortunately, been witness is not the usual way in which Council meets and conducts business."
Sensing that an answer might be embarrassing to Grahvos and certain of the others and was not expected, anyway, Pahvlos gravely and slowly nodded his head, once, in acknowledgment of Grahvos' formal courtesy.
Then, addressed again the men ranged along the sides of the table, Grahvos' voice lost any hint of warmth. "Lord Penendos, you are come of good stock, out of loins of decent, honorable noblemen. You've dishonored both yourself and the memory of your forebears, this day, here. One might think from your disregard of Council's rule that all weapons must be deposited upon that table there by the door before business commences and from your willful weaponed attack upon the person of a peer you knew to be unarmed that you were bred in the mountain hut of some barbarian or in a tent out on the Sea of Grass.
"You owe apologies both to the lord strahteegos and to Thoheeks Vikos. Since all your misdeeds were said and done before Council, then these apologies must be delivered before Council, also. Let us see if you can speak more like a gentleman than you act."
He maintained his fixed stare until Thoheeks Penendos dropped his gaze to his shaking hands held in his lap. Then the elder man turned to stare just as hard at Vikos. "Lord Vikos, you owe an apology to Lord Penendos. You should not have named him dog or spoken so harshly to him. Remember, he is too young to personally recall much of the exploits of Strahteegos Komees Pahvios. And although his manner was most assuredly and needlessly insulting, his question was quite proper from one whose memories hold no knowledge of the reputation, the many victories of Lord Pahvios. We will expect that apology to be delivered before Council, too.
"But before we get to those matters, I think that we should vote on the quite reasonable request of the lord strahteegos. I vote yes."
Chapter VI
Mainahkos Klehpteekos and Ahreekos Krehohpoleeos had risen fast and high from their origin as common irregular troopers in the first, almost extirpated army of then-Thoheeks Zastros. That both men were incredibly savage and completely unprincipled had helped them to so rise, that they owned an ability to organize and lead men like themselves and were often inordinately lucky had helped even more.
During the long years of howling chaos in the Kingdom of the Southern Ehleenohee, they and their heterogeneous packs of deserters, banditti, unhung criminals, shanghaied peasants, city gutter scum and stray psychopaths had signed on as mercenary forces to quite a few warbands of the battling lords. Occasionally, t
hey had actually given the services for which they had been paid, but more often they either had deserted en masse or had turned their coats at a crucial point of a battle, especially so if such ongoing conflict showed signs of being a close contest.
At length, so odious had their well-earned reputation become that no lord or city—no matter how desperate— throughout the length and breadth of the sundered realm would even consider hiring them on in any capacity. At that point, they proceeded to follow their natural inclinations, becoming out-and-out predatory ruffians, the leaders and their lawless followers at war against all the world.
Then, at long last, Thoheeks Zastros returned from his lengthy period of exile in the demon-haunted depths of the deadly swamps that surrounded and guarded the sinister Witch Kingdom. He brought with him a witch-wife from that land of dragons, magicians and sorcerers and marched back and forth across the lands, raising as he went an army much larger than the one he had led to defeat, years before, on the bloodsoaked field of Ahrbahkootchee.
With King Fahrkos and all his family dead in their gore in his blazing palace, the returned Zastros had had himself declared High King—a new title for the Kingdom of the Southern Ehleenohee—and crowned, then his forces had begun to scour the lands for warriors and men of the proper ages and degrees of soundness to serve in the huge army he was forming for the invasion of the Kingdom of Karaleenos and points farther north. At length, he led out his half-million and more on a path of supposed glory that would lead finally to a muddy, unmarked grave on the banks of the Lumbuh River for him and no grave at all for the bodies of the untold thousands of men and animals the bones of which would litter his line of march.
With the new High King, all of the nobility of warring age and a large percentage of both city and rural commoners on the road of conquest behind the Green Dragon Banner, Captains Mainahkos and Ahreekos had found themselves in a pigs' paradise. Now they were able to prey not only on travelers and villages, unwalled towns and isolated holds, but on walled towns and smaller cities, as well.
They descended upon these now all but defenseless smaller cities like a pack of starving winter wolves upon so many sheepfolds; they behaved in their usual fashion—conduct that might have been called bestial, save that it would have shamed any wild beast. With all the onetime garrisons gone north with High King Zastros, the old men, women, boys and assorted cripples seldom held out behind their walls and gates for long, and when scaled by the forces of the bandit warlords, those walls shortly enclosed a slice of veriest hell on earth for all who had dwelt therein.
No female above the age of six was safe from the lusts of the marauders, nor did the perverts spare boys. The elderly and the very youngest were generally cut down at the beginning of an intaking with callous strokes of blades and stabbings of spears, and thus were they the luckier citizens, for it was after the first flush of bloodthirst was sated that the true horrors commenced.
After all visible wealth and goods had been plundered, then were the luckless inhabitants savagely tortured to extract possible hiding places of more loot, and torture for definite purpose often led to torture, maimings and indescribable mutilations for no purpose at all save the satisfaction of causing agony and hearing screams and pleas. Some of the pack delighted in such atrocious obscenities as forcing hapless sufferers to imbibe of unholy broths seethed of portions of their own bodies or those of spouses and children. Brutal men would gouge out eyes, rip out tongues, slice off breasts and sexual organs, noses and ears and lips, smash out teeth, sever leg tendons, then leave the bloody, croaking, flopping things to roast in the blazing ruins of their homes.
Of a day, however, a broken nobleman who had joined the bandit army to avoid starvation had words with Mainahkos and Ahreekos and slowly convinced them of the sagacity of those words. For all that they and most of their followers were now become wealthy beyond their former wildest dreams of avarice, each succeeding victory had cost and was costing them at least a few men, while men of fighting age or strength or inclination were become almost as precious as emeralds or rubies in this land stripped of warrior stock by High King Zastros' strenuous impressments and recruitings atop the civil war and its years of carnage. Moreover, the few scattered survivors of witnesses to the intakings and occupations and burnings of the stinking charnel houses that the two warlords and their band had made of every city that had fallen to them had moved fast and spread the terrible word far and wide. Now, every walled enclosure within weeks of marching time had been forewarned and was doing everything possible to strengthen its existing defenses and had resolutely put aside any previous thoughts of trying to deal with the marauders on any near-peaceful basis.
So, although it went hard against the grain, the two warlords had begun to rein in their savages and even resist their own natural impulses and inclinations somewhat. They began to deal gently—gently by their personal lights, of course—with the inhabitants of any place that opened the gates without a Fight or showed a willingness to treat.
Mainahkos and Ahreekos even took it upon themselves to move against and either recruit or wipe out numerous smaller bands of their own ilk lurking about the countrysides. Then they began to recruit from the tiny garrisons remaining in a few of the larger walled towns and the smaller cities. Slowly, their howling pack of human predators began to metamorphose into a real, more or less organized, savagely disciplined army.
Therefore, by that day, now three years in the past, that they had appeared under the walls of the ducal city of Kahlkopolis—the one-time seat of the Thoheeksee of Kahlkos—the few straggling hundreds of ill-equipped, sketchily armed bandits that they had been in the beginning were become an impressive and very threatening sight indeed.
All classes of infantry marched in the ranks, fully armed and equipped. Heavy cavalry rode at head and tail of that column, with light cavalry on the flanks and van and riding close guard on the baggage train and the awesome siege engines, the large remuda and the beef herd. Only elephants were lacking, and this deficiency was partially alleviated through the use of old-fashioned war-carts as shock weapons and archery platforms—the
stout, reinforced cart bodies with scythe blades set in the wheel hubs, the big mules all hung with mail, the postillions fully armored having proved quite effective at the tasks of harrying and smashing in infantry lines for long years before the elephants had been trained for warfare.
The last Thoheeks of Kahlkos, one Klawdos, was by then nearly a decade dead, a casualty of the civil war. His wife and young son had disappeared during disturbances shortly after his demise, and the ducal city was just then being held by a distant cousin of the mostly extinct ancient line. The man was a bastard, with scant claim to any scintilla of noble heritage and even less to military experience.
Therefore, when this poseur ordered the gates of the city to be slammed shut and barred, the walls to be manned by the pitifully few men he owned to defend them, those still living of the ducal council of advisers did the only reasonable thing—they murdered him and left the city open to the overwhelming force outside.
Since then, Mainahkos had been thoheeks in all save only name; he had seen to it that that ducal council had all quickly followed their victim into death, by one means or another. He had been teetering upon the very verge of declaring himself Thoheeks Mainahkos Klehftikos of the Duchy of Klehftikos and the City of Klehftikopolis (for, as he and his men had become at least marginally "respectable," he had adopted the new surname, and now no man who did not desire a messy, agonizing and brutally protracted demise ever recalled aloud the powerful warlord's original cognomen, Klehpteekos—"the Thief", and riding to Mehseepolis to demand legal confirmation of his title and lands of the council of the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee.
He and Ahreekos had both chanced to be out of the city when the boy, son he claimed of Thoheeks Klawdos, came nosing around, in company with some tall, arrogant dotard. But they had both been gone beyond recall by the time the would-be thoheeks had returned, and he had had t
he fools who had allowed their escape to be flayed alive and then rolled in salt for their inordinate stupidity; those tanned skins still hung in prominent places on the walls of his hall of audience, a silent, savage, ever-present warning to his followers.
On a summer's day, Mainahkos sat at meat with his principal officer-advisers and his longtime partner. Ahreekos had never bothered to change his cognomen, still reveling in being known as "The Butcher," although he was become so fat that he no longer did or could do much fighting of any nature. The topic of the discussion around that table was that army which they had been warned was marching upon them from Mehseepolis, in the east-southeast.
In answer to a query directed at him by Mainahkos, the heavy cavalry commander, one Stehrgiahnos—who had been born and reared the heir of a vahrohnos, though his father had fallen at Ahrbahkootchee and Stehrgiahnos himself had forfeited title, lands and nearly life itself in an ill-timed rebellion against King Fahrkos, the failure of which had seen him declared outlaw and a distant cousin confirmed to all that which had been his—set down his goblet and patted dry his lips, moustaches and beard before saying somewhat cautiously, "My lord, it might be as well to at least essay a meeting with the senior officers of this army. After all, my lord's claim to this city and thoheekseeahn should be as good as that any other might make, for he has been a good lord since he has held the city and lands, and, although not related to the ancient but now probably extinct house, he does own the support of at least some of the people of Kahlk—ahh, that is to say, of Klehftikos."
