by Robert Adams
His three-quarter armor clanking, the grizzled nobleman stalked up to a group of fledgling engineers being put through a crash course in catapult service. "You!" he barked at a tall Freefighter who was lowering a fifty-pound stone into the basket. "Don't you know better than to wear a crested helm when you're serving an engine? If the lip of that basket hooks that crest, it'll take the empty head off your shoulders. I've seen it happen, soldier!"
Not awaiting an answer, he swung off to confront an archer seated in a crenel. "Behind a merlon, fool! Keep sitting between them and you'll have an arrow up your arse or in your back! And replace that bowstring immediately. It's beginning to fray at the lower curve."
"If Bili's not back soon," muttered Spiros to Bard Klairuhnz, "we'll have to give Djeen a horse and let him go searching for that patrol, ere he rides these men into mutiny! Next, he'll be ordering them to polish all the fornicating spearpoints, or having them down there aligning all the cattle by height, sex, and age!"
"There'll be no mutiny here, my Lord," stated Captain Raikuh, who was standing with them near the gate tower. "As is Duke Bili, so is Count Djeen. Both are born warleaders, and all the professionals can sense the fact. His words may ring harsh, but his criticisms are both sound and constructive, and we all know it."
A thousand yards from the west wall on the creek bank, wagons and wains were unloading tents and gear amid a twinkling of torches and new-kindled fires. At long last, the priests and nobles had despaired of whipping their cowed aggregation of commoners into mounting another assault . . . not this night, at least. Even to those at the hall it was clear that the rebels had had enough for one day and were going into camp.
Spiros was still worried and annoyed by Djeen's ceaseless nitpicking at the men, so he sought to distract the old soldier, calling, "Komees Djeen, if you please? Djeen, come over here and tell us, do you think they'll come for us again tonight?"
Yellow teeth glinting, the old man cackled harshly. "I only wish that they would, Kinsman! You would then see what disastrous effects flaming pitch balls and fire arrows have on the morale of undisciplined troops at night. Heh, heh. That piss-poor excuse for an army wouldn't stop running until they reached the Sea of Grass, most likely. But no, Spiros, they'll not attack tonight, for men who lack the grit to fight in broad day will murder their officers before they'll mount a night offensive."
His lobster-tail neck guard grated on his back-plate as he slowly shook his head. "That damned boy-lover Myros . . . d'you know, he was a middling-good officer, once upon a time? But did you see the inexcusable way he marshaled that abortion of an assault? Clear it is, he's long since forgot every principle of tactics he ever learned!"
Winking slyly at Raikuh and Klairuhnz, Spiros innocently asked, "Your pardon, Djeen, but I thought they came up that hill in pretty fair form . . . of course, I'm no professional soldier . . ."
"True enough, Kinsman!" snapped the Komees. "Were you, you'd have been painfully aware of the glaring errors of judgment of which the Vahrohnos of Pederasty was guilty. He'd no need to lose either his engine or half the men we slew, you know? Here, let me show you what I mean . . ."
Drawing a short dagger from the top of his boot, he stumped over to a section of tower wall between two torches, and commenced to scratch a rough sketch on the surface of the stones, talking all the while. Spiros, his purpose now achieved, was careful to ape meticulous attention to each detail of the aged Strahteegos' discourse. Raikuh on the other hand hung on every word, feeling personal instruction from so famous and respected a strategist and tactician to be a rare privilege.
Klairuhnz wandered away from the absorbed nobleman and his little audience to stand beside young Djehf, who leaned between a pair of merlons, staring at the bright, bustling camp of the besiegers.
"Didn't you hear Komees Djeen's admonition to that archer, Kinsman?"
Half turning, the Tahneest clanked the side of his gauntlet against his breastplate. "This be good, honest Pitzburk plate, and prince-grade, at that! Good Bard, the bowman's unspawned who can put a shaft through such metal."
Klairuhnz smiled thinly. "Be not too sure, Kinsman. I've seen Horseclansmen stipple an armored man until he looked like a porcupine! Why, on the Prairie, once . . ."
A note of eagerness entered the young warrior's voice, and out of that eagerness peeped the small boy of recent memory. "You've really ridden with real Horseclansmen then, Kinsman? On the Prairie? The Sea of Grass? Truly? Tell me, please, tell me of them."
"Yes," stated the Bard. "Yes, I rode the Prairie with Horseclansmen, Kinsman Djehf, but it was long, long years ago, and I . . ."
His voice stopped as the unexpected and quite powerful mindspeak burst in. "I know your mind, Cat-brother-of-Cat-brothers, who these men know as Bard Klairuhnz. This one is Whitetip, Subchief of the Cat Sept of Sanderz. We mindspoke in the south, in the hot land."
——«»——«»——«»——
In the rear courtyard of Morguhn Hall, Bili lifted his cased axe from his weary mount, before an armed servant led the gelding away. Silent but for the clank of his armor, he paced over to Mother Behrnees and kissed her freckled forehead, then took her hand, saying, "Come, Mother, I wish you to meet our new friends."
He led her over to the knot of curiously staring clansmen and halted before Gil and the Chief. "Chief Hwahltuh of Sanderz, allow me to present one of my Lady Mothers. This is my Lady Behrnees of Morguhn, widow of my late father, Hwahruhn Morguhn of Morguhn, and presently co-chatelaine of Morguhn Hall."
Hwahltuh immediately knew that this tall, blond beauty was the loveliest woman he had ever before seen. Everything about her was perfect, he thought, and no dream that he could recall had produced even a vision like to that now before him. He knew that he should speak, acknowledge the introduction, introduce Gil and the others, but with his mind awhirl with thoughts totally removed from the torch-lit courtyard, he was experiencing difficulty in framing words.
Before he could regain his control, Behrnees stepped forward, took his callused, grubby hand, and bore it to her seemingly perfect pink lips, saying gravely, "My sincere thanks, Lord Hwahltuh, for bringing my son safely back to us. We all are in your debt. Come, you and your Kinsmen must sup with us ere you leave. But leave you must, for this hall lies invested by a great host, with no hope of reinforcement or aid."
When the clan had decided to leave the high plains and rejoin their Kindred who had trekked east, Hwahltuh had had three wives. But over the course of the long, difficult, dangerous journey, all these had gone to Wind, one by one. For three years now had he relied on the widows of his sons to see to the Chief's lodge, taking such pleasures as he desired of borrowed concubines, for the Couplets of the Law forbade marriage within the clan and custom forbade an unmarried man to hold ownership of concubines. And he was a lonely man. Until that moment, he had not realized just how lonely.
"I'll be more than happy to share milk and meat with you, Kinswoman, and so too will my Kindred. But why this talk of leaving, before we've even bloodied our sabers? My Clan brothers and I, we were promised a good fight by your son, Chief Bili, and . . . What is this, Kinswoman? Are you ill?"
Behrnees had dropped to her knees before him, once more pressing her shell-pink lips to his scarred, filthy knuckles.
Bili enlightened the mystified, and more than a little perturbed Chief. "In my Lady Mother's homeland, homage is so rendered, Hwahltuh."
Behrnees, taller and with bigger bones, probably weighed as much as did the Sanderz, but the little man grasped her shoulders and lifted her slowly and without apparent strain, saying gruffly, "It is I who am guesting in your lodge, Kinswoman. Nor am I your Chief. You owe me no homage."
Behrnees met his eyes with her limpid blue ones and he felt his heart beating very fast under his cuirass, felt his weather-browned face flushing, found his breath as short as if he had been fighting all day . . . and found his hands very loath to release those well-muscled but so pleasant-to-hold shoulders.
Humbly Beh
rnees said, "I would do homage to your courage, my Lord. Your wives and your sons know much pride in so strong and valiant a husband and father."
Now Gil had been slyly prying into the unshielded minds of both his chief and the woman. He recognized the utter sincerity of her admiration of Hwahltuh, as well as the Sanderz's quite different admiration of her. She certainly was not an old woman—he estimated her age at no more than thirty-four summers—was a more than handsome female, threw good get if Chief Bili was any indication, and was the widow of a Chief. He thought that the Clan might go far and far without finding any better wife for their Chief. So he stepped forward.
"Chief's mother, I am Gil, Clan Bard of Sanderz, and I am indeed proud of my Chief, as are all his Clan Brothers. But as you are a widow, so is he a widower. He has had no wife for near three summers, and all his strong sons went to Wind in honor and to the glory of their Clan."
Behrnees' eyes misted. She drew closer to Hwahltuh, and when he tilted back his head to keep sight of her face, she laid a hand alongside one of his stubbled, dust-grimy cheeks and softly lip-brushed the other, saying gently, "I grieve with and for you, Kinsman. When time and the enemy allow, we must try to comfort each other."
And from that moment, Hwahltuh Sanderz of Sanderz was hers, heart and soul! With her by his side, he moved as in a blissful dream, greeting Chief Bili's brother and his father's other widow and the remaining notables. Her delicate, subtly feminine odor was, he knew, the sweetest scent to which his keen nose had ever attained.
Even when he was conducted to another of those cursed washing places and the herbed and spiced bathwater—steaming like a bucket of fresh milk on a whiter morning—enveloped him and the servants began to scrub him, did he keep his peace, his mind too filled with Behrnees to even think the curses and threats which he had heretofore blasted at bathservants. For the first time in his nearly fifty years of life, Hwahltuh was in love.
——«»——«»——«»——
Only one good had come out of the day, so far as Myros was concerned. Thoroughly trounced and resultantly cowed as they were, his ill-disciplined mob at least obeyed orders and followed instructions with unaccustomed alacrity. Therefore, as soon as the tents were up and the rabble fed on jerked meat, hard bread, strong cheese, and weak, vinegary wine, he had them set to assembling the six big catapults, making pitch balls and scaling ladders and collecting stones from up and down the streambed. He had hoped to capture Morguhn Hall without too much structural damage to the place with that loudmouthed fool, Paulos, choked to death on his own blood and teeth back in the Council Chamber, there would now be no questions concerning the new ownership of the hall. He felt a slight gratitude to the hulking Djehf Morguhn—but now realized that he would probably have to burn or batter down a fair stretch of those walls, ere he could use his large but unwieldy and very undependable force to any advantage.
While whip-snapping overseers kept the commoners at their assigned tasks, Myros retired to his spacious pavilion, there to dine and confer with his fellow councilmen, his military subordinates, and the higher-ranking clergy. Of the Council, there were but three remaining to sit with him—Drehkos, Djaimos, and Nathos Evrehos, now recovered from his morning funk and hysterics and prating loudly of bloody deeds to be wreaked upon the persons of any Kindred taken alive.
As each of his guests came under his roof of golden silk, Myros' servants helped them out of their hot armor and sweat-soaked clothing, sponged their sweaty bodies, and proffered soft tunics and big mugs of chilled wine, a soothing balm to shouted-raw throats and a strong soporific for jangled nerves. By the time the viands—juicy roasts, savory vegetables, crisp salads, breads, and delicate pastries—were served, most of the guests were at least a bit tiddly.
Half through the meal, Myros was called to his headquarters tent that he might receive a messenger. He returned wreathed in smiles, to announce: "Gentlemen, three days ago did the True Faith triumph in what the heathens call the Duchy of Vawn!" He allowed the drunken cheering and hubbub to continue for a few minutes, then raised a hand for silence. "Wait, Brothers-in-God, there is more. The Army of the Faithful saw a miracle in Vawn. As our brethren held the cities and countryside, the sinful pagans fled to a very strong hall built into the side of a steep cliff. Only one side could be attacked, and it was protected by a wall so high and thick than an entire week of hurling stones against it did no real damage. Then did the men of weak faith talk most shamefully of forsaking the Holy Cause."
"But the Most Holy Kooreeos Marios did pray mightily that our loving Father might deliver into his hands the cursed heathens. And the Lord answered the Blessed Marios, sending an Angel to instruct him. Then were certain Sacred objects placed in a casket of iron, laid in the basket of the largest engine and hurled against that unholy wall. The very moment that the hallowed missile touched the wall of the place of sinfulness, did all the land tremble to God's awful Voice. Though the Lord allowed no man to see the bolt, His lightning did shatter the wall of the unbelievers, did rend stone from huge stone and crumble them to dust. And all of those heathen within were slain in a moment, most with no wound upon their bodies, yet with blood having gushed from every orifice."
"And that victorious army, led by the Most Blessed Kooreeos Marios, is marching to our aid. Even now is the bulk of their force crossing our western border, while the Holy Marios and their cavalry will be amongst us within the hour!"
——«»——«»——«»——
Within Morguhn Hall, however, the evening meal was a most subdued one. At the lengthened high table were most of the loyal Kindred still alive in the Duchy. Bili, in the center chair, was flanked by his mothers. Djehf was on the walls, along with old Komees Djeen, Feelahks Sami, and Lieutenant Krahndahl. Beyond Mother Behrnees, who sat at the young Thoheeks' right, Chief Hwahltuh happily applied himself to a shoulder of mutton and a brimming flagon of fresh, creamy milk. At his right, Eeyohahnah Daiviz sipped watered wine, toyed with her food, and pouted, since the handsome young Rik Sanderz seemed more interested in his disgusting dish of chopped meat and curds than he did in her. Actually, Hwahltuh's nephew was mindspeaking with Spiros and Pawl Raikuh, regaling them with gory anecdotes of the trek from the high plains.
On Rik's right were the other Daivizes—Komees Hari, the two younger girls, and the heavily bandaged Vaskos, on whom all three were lavishing so much attention that the Keeleeohstos was embarrassed.
At Mother Mahrnee's left was Vahrohnos Spiros, and beside him the Lady Ahnah Morguhn. Between her and her daughter, Sairuh, sat Clan Bard Gil Sanderz, patiently answering questions of mother and child, both evincing interest in every facet of the lives of the females of his clan. On the left of the girl, Captain Raikuh wolfed roast mutton and pickled cabbage, gulped wine, and occasionally chuckled at young Rik's stories.
Dark, dour Komos Morguhn, Bili's second cousin and though Kindred not really a nobleman, hulked between Bard Klairuhnz and Master Ahlee. That day, Komos had seen a pack of his neighbors, some of them related to him, senselessly butcher his wife, his children, and his aged, crippled father. Only the fortuitous arrival of Clan Bard Hail and his two troopers in the village had saved the farmer; and the fact that he had been able to get to his grandfather's sword and fight off his attackers until his rescue. He had spoken to no one throughout the meal, nor had aught save wine passed his lips. He sat staring at his wine cup, clenching and unclenching his big, work-roughened hands.
Trestle tables had been arranged around the walls of the large chamber and thereon dined the off-duty troops, serving themselves as did the very nobles, since all the servants were either in armor among them or chained in the cellars. So because the surroundings were so noisy, Bili attempted to mindspeak his scarcely known cousin.
But Bard Klairuhnz beamed. "Apparently, Kinsman Komos is not a mindspeaker, Thoheeks Bili. However, I took the liberty of scanning his mind earlier, and he knows not one whit more than he has recounted. He and the trooper who escorted him rode directly here; Hail
and the other trooper rode for the hall of Lord Bahr Morguhn."
"My Lord, Clan Bard Hail is presently either dead, captured, or safe. In any case, there's nothing that you or any of us can do for him, and Wind knows, you've more than sufficient worry material, without taking on that as well!"
"But it was my order sent him out, Kinsman," Bili silently replied. "Perhaps I should have sent a younger man . . . or gone myself."
"Nonsense, Lord Thoheeks! It was your duty to command and his duty to obey." Bard Klairuhnz seemed about to add more when he was interrupted.
Lieutenant Krahndahl had hurried into the room, helm under his arm and unease wrinkling his seamed face. The scales of his plain hauberk clashed as he rapidly rounded the high table and first bowed to Bili, then bent and whispered a brief message into the young lord's ear. His message spoken, he stepped back and assumed the posture of attention.
Bili did not need to call for silence, for all noise had ceased upon the appearance of the officer. He stood and announced, "My people, Komees Djeen reports a spate of activity within the lines of the enemy. Such could presage an attack, so we had best to the walls."
An immediate clatter and bustle ensued at the high and lower tables, a metallic din that commenced as armor doffed for the meal was redonned and adjusted, sword cases were snapped to belt or baldric, and helms were dragged from beneath the tables.
