by Robert Adams
Where not covered by a nearly white and filth-clotted beard, the face of the man could be seen to bear hideous scars, looking less like battle scars than the evidences of brutal torture. One eyesocket gaped empty, and the constant ooze from it was thickly caked on the cheek below it. The arms and legs seen through the verminous rags were pipestick-thin and also festooned with scars.
one of the legs showing that it had been mangled and had healed crookedly and a bit shorter than the other.
Pahvlos gazed down at the man lying there with the half of a black arrow shaft jutting out beside his neck, just behind his right clavicle, his breath coming raggedly, noisily, his lips and bearded chin all shiny with frothy blood, gobs of the stuff bubbling up from his skewered lung to ooze out between his broken, rotted teeth. The strahteegos thought that the man looked to be about of an age with himself. "Poor old bastard," he muttered aloud, "you've really had a rough time of it, haven't you? But you'll not suffer much longer, now."
He was startled, then, for the lid of the remaining eye quivered, then opened to reveal a pupil as dark as his own. The lips moved, but only a gargling, choking noise came forth. With obvious effort, the bony arms got the torso up far enough for the dying man to clear his throat and mouth of the gory mess that clotted it, but he was too weak to spit and therefore had to let it just run from out his mouth and down into his beard.
Fixing his single eye upon the old officer beside his bed, he slowly nodded, saying in the cultured patois of the Southern Ehleen nobility, "Thank God you have come, my lord Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos. I'm dying, and it is not good to have to die alone, without family. My family—Mehleena, all the children, even my infant grandchild—all are dead now, no more pain for them. But it is good that you, at least, are here now. You were always as much a father to me as you were to our Pehtros, may God rest his gallant soul and let me see him soon in His heaven."
"Oh, Christ!" Pahvlos gasped, clenching a thick bedpost for support, the names that had issued together from that bloody mouth having told him who, against the witness of his eyes, this must be. "But . . . but you cannot be him! Old man, are you trying to tell me that you are Iahnos Kahtohahros, Vahrohnos of Ippoh-skeera, he who was my youngest son's battlemate and who wed my Pehtros' widowed bride? No, you cannot be!"
Chapter VII
When the dying vahrohnos had imbibed of a stoup of brandy-water and had been propped up more comfortably on the old, blotched, moldy mattress, he spoke marginally clearer and in a slightly stronger voice. Ignoring both the old stains and the fresh blood, Grand Strahteego Pahvlos sat on the edge, beside this onetime subordinate, and was recounted a tale of pure horror, told of events that plumbed the very depths of human cruelty.
"As you no doubt recall, my lord Komees," said Iahnos of Ippohskeera, "my leg never healed properly from that injury I took at your great victory at Ahrbahkootchee, and so—as I was unable to sit a horse easily or securely anymore at speeds beyond a slow walk—it were an impossibility for me to go a-warring as did my overlord and right many of my peers in the hellish years of the interregnum; no, rather did I bide here, at home, and oversee the working of my lands, but rarely even visiting my small city, which task fell to my eldest son, also named Pehtros, in memory of the man I so loved, my wife's first husband, your son.
"It was hard on the boy to just sit out all the campaigning and the glory-seeking that so many of the nobility were just then doing, and so when Zastros returned from his exile and marched through here with his great host, I made no slightest demur to Pehtros taking half the garrison and quite a few boys and young men from the hold and the hold village to sally forth as spearmen for Zastros. The true king was dead, by that time, and I felt then that Zastros would make probably as good a monarch as Fahrkos. But poor Pehtros never reaped any glory; alas, he died of camp fever before Zastros ever was coronated, while still he and his swelling host were marching to and fro about the kingdom. Some few of my boy's men came back here to bring me the sad word and his ashes, the rest were pressed into another nobleman's following. His young widow—a daughter of Opokomees Deeahneesos Likeenos of Ehlahkahnooskeera—moved with his infant son and her household out here from the city, that we might the better share our grief, I suppose.
"Then Zastros made himself king and, almost immediately, his officers and their recruiting parties were marching about the lands, taking men for the army he was forming at very swordpoint, leaving behind only the old, the young and the crippled men. They stripped the villages and the city and even this hold, leaving me only some six old or infirm men.
"And so when that great host of bandits swept down on my barony, we were all as a tree ripe for plucking, with precious few to guard. They must have come in from the north or the west, for they fell upon the city, first; we could see the smoke from its burning. It was then that I brought the folk and kine of the nearer village behind these walls here, but it was all for naught, in the end. This pack, my lord, they are not your usual run of bandit hordes, you see, they have all classes of troops and even a siege train.
"They first came marching up the road as bold as brass and called upon me to surrender the hold; well, I gave the baseborn scum the only answer they deserved for such impudence. Next they assaulted the hold in force, but slender and ill-trained as were my own forces, we sent them reeling back with heavy casualties; the wounded cried under the walls for the rest of that day and into the night that followed.
"The second day, they again assaulted us and were again driven off. Then they brought up their engines and began to hurl stones at the walls and pitchballs over them, and me with only two small engines with which to make reply. They so weakened two sections of the front wall as to make them untenable, then three shrewdly aimed engine stones burst in the main gates. That was when they launched their third and final assault, the bastards.
"Mine fought well and stubbornly, to my pride and their glorious memory, my lord. My skimpy garrison, my few servants, the men and women and even the children of the village. Mehleena and my daughter-in-law fitted themselves into armor and fought upon the walls from the very first day, as too did my younger children. We resisted every bit of ground, even when the enemy were within the walls, and we cost them a dear price for what was by then left of the hold.
"But it could not last, there were simply too few of us and too many of them. All too soon, there were only a handful of us left, and I tried to repair with them up here, into the old keep, but the hall was still burning here and there, and the access was therefore blocked. We made our last stand, such as it was, in the northeast tower, and when it became obvious that we must be overrun by them, brave Dohra, my daughter-in-law, knew what to do. She took her babe in her steel-clad arms, climbed to the very apex of the tower, threw him off, then jumped herself, too proud to live as a slave.
"We fought them from the walltop level of the tower up through its height, but so much climbing had weakened my bad leg, and in the midst of cutting down my last opponent, it collapsed beneath me and the subsequent fall deprived me of consciousness, so I did not see the end.
"When my wits returned, my lord, I was lying, tightly bound, in the courtyard down there. It was the screams had brought me around. My wife, Mehleena, had been stripped and was being held down while bandit after bandit took his turn at ravishing her."
Old Pahvlos gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, but did not interrupt the recountal of the dying nobleman.
"Nor was she the only victim, my lord," the vahrohnos went on in a gradually weakening voice. "The beasts had brought in the pitiful, broken dead body of Dohra and were defiling it as well, along with the still-living bodies of two ancient withered crones and three little girl-children from the village. The beasts also defiled the dead bodies of some of the men and boys who had died in battle.
"But rapine was not their only activity there; numbers of them were looting the smoldering wreck of the hall and were stripping armor and weapons from the dead that lay scattered about. Then two
men, both fully armored and mounted on decent horseflesh, rode into the courtyard. They had me dragged up before them and demanded to know where I kept my gold. I answered truthfully that I was a country vahrohnos and so owned precious little of value save my lands, but of course I was not believed and was put to the strenuous question.
"Under torture, hours of one's agony seem to pass, but I know that it was not so long. At one point, they gave over mutilating me and offered me a place in their ranks, whereupon I spit on them and they had at me again. At length, I suppose they just decided that either I had told the truth in the beginning and there was no gold hidden in what was left of the hold or that they might torment me unto death without forcing the location of any secret hoard from me.
"The merciless swine had me dragged to a spot near the inner gate where an iron ring was affixed into the stonework, and they chained me to that ring. They had pulled down one of the two great iron hooks that raised and lowered the krehmahoti and ground and filed a sharp point on it. Poor Mehleena lay as one dead, still splayed as they had left her, only the slight rise and fall of her mangled breasts noting that life still remained in her savaged body.
"The human animals dragged her over to a point that was just beyond my farthest reach, chained as I was, and there they—with many callous jests and jokes—ran that sharp point through her lower bowels from back to front, then hoisted her up to hang on that cruel hook from one of the timbers that supported the wall walk.
"That enormity committed, everything that they coveted or could use having been borne away, they hacked the heads off all those other poor women still showing any trace of life and impaled them on the points of spears. Then they all departed, leaving me to watch and listen to my dear wife die in unspeakable agony and me unable to do aught to aid her. By the time two good commoner men—who had happened to be out from the village hunting for a lost ewe and seeing what was taking place had wisely lain low until they were certain it was over and the last of the bandit horde were well away—came and released me from my chains, God had at last granted Mehleena the boon of death, may He rest her soul.
"They released me . . . but they did not stay, for some reason. They cannot have gotten far, however, for they were afoot ... I think. And that was only a week ago . . . no, maybe as much as two weeks, but surely no longer, surely not."
All at once, Iahnos' eyes brightened and he showed his broken, blood-slimed teeth in a smile, looking at the door and saying, "Why, there you are, Mehleena, love. Look who has come to visit us. Go and fetch the children that little Pehtros may greet his godfather, the illustrious Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos, he has marched all the way from . . . from Thrah ..."
Choking, then, he coughed up a great gout of blood and shuddered strongly for his entire length. A groping hand found Pahvlos' and he gripped it weakly, his one eye open but obviously unseeing any living person. His gory lips moved, but Pahvlos had to lean very close to hear the words spoken.
"Ah, Pehtros, my dear friend, how handsome you are, you . . ."
And then the life went out of his withered, mutilated body.
Once a pyre had been laid and the husk of Captain of Heavy Horse Vahrohnos Iahnos Kahtohahros of Ippoh-skeera placed upon it, Pahvlos and the rest combed the weedy courtyard until they found the huge, rusted portcullis hook where it had finally fallen when the rope had rotted through and collected all of the human bones left on the ground around it. These, the skulls from off the spears and all the other bones they had found here and there were spread out around the body of him who had been lord here.
As he and the army recommenced their interrupted march westward, the smoke from the pyre still was rising into the clear blue summer sky above the ruined hall.
Another day brought them to the environs of the City of Ippohspolis, and although patent evidences of attack, sack and burnings still were to be seen by the practiced, experienced military eye, it also was clear that folk still dwelt therein. The walls and gates had been repaired; the wink of burnished metal atop that circuit of walls announced that they were defended, and numerous plumes of smoke ascended from within.
When the army's herald announced just who led this force, the gates were opened and, presently, a mounted cavalcade of some dozen men issued forth to greet the Grand Strahteegos. Their leader was a one-armed man in battered but sound three-quarter armor.
"My lord Strahteegos, I am Gabreeos Pehrkohlis, deputy lord of this city. My lord, you cannot believe just how joyous are we all to see you and a real, legal army in this long-troubled land. Does this mean that the warrings all are done? Do we once more have a king? The few traders who have braved the roads have spoken of one Thoheeks Grahvos, who rules not from the ancient crown-city, but from a ducal city named Mehteepolis, or something like that. Is my lord this king's strahteegos! Is this his army, then?"
The man's manner was respectful enough, but his speech came out all in a rush that indicated the gnawing hunger for sound news that griped at him and the other city folk of this provincial backwater.
"Lord Gabreeos," replied Pahvlos, "there is no king, nor will there ever be another in these lands of ours. Rather are we to be ruled by a confederation of thirty-three thoheeksee, ruling from Mehseepolis, in the east. Thoheeks Grahvos claims no crown; he is but the chosen spokesman of all the others of his peers in civil rank.
"Yes, I have the great honor to here lead the larger part of the army of the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee of Southern Ehleenohee and I am marching west to eject a usurper and his pack of robbers from a distant thoheekseeahn and place the rightful thoheeks in the place of his fathers.
"The wars between the nobles are done, God grant that such turmoil never again beset our lands and people."
A chorus of "Ahmeen!" came from the riders behind the deputy lord.
"Who appointed you deputy lord of this city, Lord Gabreeos?" asked Pahvlos bluntly.
"My lord Strahteegos," that worthy replied readily, "I was given the rank in a public ceremony by poor young Lord Pehtros before he rode off to his death with the host of High King Zastros, and I have held it ever since that dark day, doing the best I could with what I had. The city fell once, years back, to a huge bandit army, but even as they stormed in through the breaches their engines had battered in our walls, I was herding most of the still-living people down into the old, secret ways burrowed under parts of the city, so more lived to rebuild the city than might."
"And your landlord, the Vahrohnos Iahnos, what of him?" asked old Pahvlos blandly.
Lord Gabreeos sighed and shook his head. "After the bandit army had done with our city, my lord, they marched on the villages to the east and the hold of the vahrohnos. We saw the smoke from the directions of the villages, of course, but our circumstances then were simply too straitened to go to aid them or the vahrohnos, alas. Then the bandits all marched north, out of the barony, and after some week or so, a brace of shepherds came walking to the city to say that the hold had fallen, been sacked and partly burned, and that the only soul left in it when they had overcome their terror and gone in had been Vahrohnos Iahnos himself, chained to a wall. They went on to say that he had been tortured terribly and one of his eyes had been torn out. They had released him, done what little they could for him—ignorant, unskilled herders that they admittedly were, knowing sheep and dogs better than folk—then had decided to come here and seek more and better help.
"I was just then abed, having lost an arm to the black rot, but there then was an old soldier still alive in the city and he took our physician and a surgeon along with his party and made haste over to the hold. But they could never find the poor Vahrohnos, search the stinking charnel house the hold was become as they might, from top to bottom and wall to wall. Finally, having seen a distant column of riders from atop one of the towers and understandably fearing a return of the bandits, they quitted the place and came back here as fast as their legs would bear them. In the years since, several parties have gone there, but no living man ever has been found wit
hin it. Recently, certain superstitious persons have noised it about that the ruined hold is haunted by the shades of those there slain."
When Pahvlos had told the sad story to the deputy lord of the city, he asked, "Lord Gabreeos, you clearly are of noble blood. What was your relation to the House of Kahtohahros, now, sadly, extinct in the main branch?"
The deputy lord smiled and shrugged, self-deprecatingly. "Not very close, my lord Strahteegos, a distant cousin. And I only am half a noble, for my mother was the daughter of a merchant of this city."
"Well, Lord Gabreeos," growled Pahvlos, "you, distant cousin or no, are about as close to the ancient stock as we're like to get, this late in the game. I think you'd better start getting used to calling yourself Vahrohnos-designate Gabreeos Kahtohahros. Deliver up to me written oaths to support the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee of the Southern Ehleenohee, and when I get back to Mehseepolis I will see that the documents confirming you to that title and the lands and city are forwarded to you."
He turned to the rest of the citizens making up the cavalcade, saying, "What of you all? You know you need and must someday have another lord of this barony. Would you rather have a strange, alien nobleman chosen by the council of Thoheeksee or one of your own, Lord Gabreeos here?"
Their near-hysterical cheers were all that he needed to know that he had chosen aright, in this case. And, after all, Thoheeks Grahvos had granted him such authority to fill vacant titles.
After receiving the written oaths required and promising that on his return march he would leave a few dozen pikemen and some lancers on loan to the barony, Grand Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos and his army marched on in the direction of Kahlkopolis.
