Horseclans Odyssey

by Robert Adams

  Nahseer tore down the carpet that had been hung over the single small window, wrenched out the entire frame, then sliced one of the large floor carpets into strips, tied them together, passed one end under Bahb’s arms and knotted it around his chest.

  Lifting the slender boy easily, the Zahrtohgahn put him through the opening feet foremost, then stepped up on the massive table he had pushed into place and lowered him to the muddy yard below. When he had lowered all the items he had decided would be helpful to them, he drew back the improvised rope, rehung the carpet and stepped down from the table.

  In the bedchamber, he found that his sometime master had once more swooned. With the lord’s own jewel-encrusted dagger, he sliced the man’s bonds loose from the bed, then, wrinkling his nose and holding his breath against the thick reek of spilled blood, loose dung and burned meat, he pulled off the gag. Stepping into the corner, he lifted the tub full of cold water, turned back to the bed and flung the entire contents onto the unconscious man thereon.

  Urbahnos woke moaning, opened his mouth to scream. But the palm of Nahseer’s big hand pressed tightly over it, and the other hand held the slender dagger so that the Ehleen had no trouble seeing the keen edges and glittering point.

  “If you make one sound or try to leave this room, Lord Steer, I’ll return and complete the job; I’ll slice off your prick and stuff it down your throat!” So saying, he sheathed the dagger, thrust it in his sash and stalked out of the suite, then down the stairs. The smell of smoke was now very thick in the upper level, and Nahseer noted that the exposed rafters were all but obscured by layers of smoke.

  What with stopping here and there for a word or two of light chatter with the tables of friendly drunks, now and then pretending to take drafts from proffered cups and mugs and leathern jacks, it took the Zahrtohgahn a good quarter hour to reach the vicinity of the big outer door. And there he was confronted with his first real danger.

  Ehdee-Djoh Cawl, one of the bravos hired on for the trip by Lord Urbahnos, and far less besotted than most of the men in the main room, had followed Nahseer and confronted him in the relative dimness near the door.

  In his native, nasal twang, he said, “That thar knife in yore sayash, thet be yore massa’s. I seed it a-hangin’ fum oft his belt. He know yew got ’er?”

  For all that where they stood was in almost utter darkness to those in the well-lighted room, Nahseer glanced pointedly back the way he bad come, and Cawl, too, turned his head. And that was when the Zahrtohgahn’s big fist struck the smaller man, knocking him senseless.

  In the middle of the yard stood four small and one large saddled equines, two of them with riders. Nahseer pulled up the tops of his jackboots, checked the girths and stirrup leathers of the biggest horse — a silver-gray gelding that had been the prized possession of the trader, Custuh — then swung into the saddle.

  Guided by the road, which they kept in sight, they rode eastward toward the Great River. But getting back across it would be another matter entirely.

  * * *

  Wolf and his patrol had crossed the barrier of the bluffs and carefully picked their way along the rocky summits until they stood high over the beach — a real, shelving sand beach some eight hundred yards in length, but with real width for only something less than a hundred yards.

  All along the way, Wolf had noted and marked on the maps favorably placed natural positions or places that might be easily and quickly improved upon to provide cover and concealment for units of archers and slingers to harry the advance of an enemy force marching inland from the river. Also, he had noted that a much narrower and precipitous track ran along the inland side of the bluffs, averaging twelve feet below the summit.

  When the maps had all been marked and annotated to his satisfaction, he left the patrol to build a fire and warm their rations, while he clambered down the landward side to the track below.

  He found a small, low-ceilinged cave and mentally noted it as a good cache for supplies for men manning the bluffs. Proceeding on toward the higher, thicker stretch of bluffs, he kept his eyes peeled for more caves . . . and he found one, a much larger one, with its entrance almost concealed by replaced undergrowth and even sapling trees.

  Thinking, as he pushed through the shrubbery concealing the entrance, that he might have chanced upon a smugglers’ hidey-hole, he loosened in its scabbard the broad-bladed infantry shortsword he favored and was about to do the same with his dirk when the cave mouth loomed before him, almost blocked by the bulk of a man of the Black Kingdoms, in helm and steel cuirass, armed with bared broadsword and dagger.

  Chapter IX

  In the dimness to either side of the big swordsman, Wolf saw two very short bowmen — either dwarfs or young boys, and plains nomads by their appearance — each with a nocked arrow in a drawn hornbow. Somewhere behind the trio he could smell horses. Keeping his hands well away from his weapons, the scarred old soldier grinned.

  “Comrades, a good day to yer. Now, looky here, I ain’t one of Duke Tcharlz’s civil marshals, if thet be what yer thinkin’. I be just a ol’ soldier, sent out a-scoutin’ fer his captain, back t’ Twocityport, an’ I never had me nuthin’ but r’spec’ fer smugglers. I swan, wasn’t fer smugglers, damn few o’ us poor fellers could get us nary a taste o’ good likker, whut with these here sky-high taxes ever’ mucketymuck an’ his friggin’ brother slaps awn it.”

  The swordsman shook his head, the unlaced face plates slapping against his cheeks. “We are not smugglers, soldier. We are escaped slaves who maimed our master, killed freemen, stole horses, weapons and supplies and fired a serai. We now seek a way to cross the Great River, that these youngsters may return to the Horseclan from which they were kidnapped by evil men who sold them into servitude to one of those debauched eastern Ehleenee.

  “We know ourselves to be pursued, soldier. That is why I must kill you, lest you betray our biding place. I am sorry, for you seem a good, blunt, honest warrior.”

  Wolf saw the brawny, brown-skinned arm go back, readying for the thrust, and the swordsman asked solemnly, “So how would you rather have it, soldier, heart or throat?”

  Wolf grinned again, disarmingly, “Of exertion, to be true, Zahrtohgahn” — his keen hearing had sorted out the accent —”after a night with a brace of sixteen-year-old doxies.

  “But hold up fore yew murders me. It’s a full p’trol, up there ’top of the bluffs, an’ they knows I’m down here. I don’t come up soon . . . ’less yew thinks one sword and two bows be a match fer a dozen well-armed veterans.”

  Seeing with relief the muscles of the sword arm relax just a bit, Wolf added, “’Sides, I think I got me a ideer will help us all out a little.”

  Wolf sank down to a squat, removed his helmet and placed it under his flat buttocks. After a brief pause, Nahseer, too, squatted, laying the blade of his sword across his knees, but keeping the dirk in hand. Neither of the nomad boys stirred, other than to lower the aim of their hornbows to keep Wolf covered.

  On a hunch, Wolf tried telepathy. “Do you mindspeak, little comrade?” he asked Bahb Steevuhnz.

  He was a bit taken aback when not only the nomad boys — whose people were widely known to have this power — but the Zahrtohgahn, as well, silently replied, “Yes, all of us do, the horses back there as well.”

  Wolf’s grin broadened. This would make things quicker and easier. “I be no enemy to smugglers and I’m no slave taker neither, comrades, an ’least two of them men up on the bluff was escaped slaves when we enlisted them back east. My captain, he ain’t too picky about no man’s past, just so long’s he fights and heeds discipline in garrison or camp.

  “Now, being on the run and all, none of you may know it, but this duchy is already at war. Duke Alex, ’crost the river, has got real cozy with the King of Mehmfiz, downriver a ways, and they’s both getting ready to hit one of the duke’s allies down south of here. Naturally, hell have to march down and help out his buddies, and the mosta his troops with him.

  “Wh
en he’s too far away to do no good, it’s a sure thing that Duke Alex is gonna invade this duchy and try to take Twocityport, so’s he can hold both ends of the barge cables. My captain’s job is to hold the new citadel at Twocityport until the duke be done down south. My captain’s been promised a hundred score of soldiers, but I ain’t gonna believe them till I comes to see them marching in the gate.

  “So part of the mission of my patrol was to bring back any likely-looking recruits we could lay hand to, and to my mind, you three is the best I seen all this week past. It don’t matter none what size the boys is, long’s they can shoot straight, and I never heerd tell of a Horseclansman what couldn’t. As for you, Zahrtohgahn, you got you that look. I’d say you’re the same as me, you been soldiering mosta your life. Ain’t I right, now?”

  “Yes,” agreed Nahseer, without pause, “before I was sold into servitude by a powerful man I had wronged, I was an officer in the armies of my native state, a noble-born officer, commanding a mixed brigade, as had my father and his father before him.”

  Wolf nodded. “I thought so, and I ain’t often wrong about men. If my captain was to get the duke to give you three freedom and amnesty, would you fight for him against his foes?”

  “Could such only be so,” replied Nahseer, “it would be a true godsend, a sweet gift of Ahláh. But our former master is a rich and powerful merchant of Pahdookahport; not only did we attack him and rob him, but I maimed his body beyond any hope of forgiveness.”

  “Nahseer gelded the bastard,” put in Bahb gleefully. “Then he put a live coal inside his scrotum. But I was the first to blood him. I laid open his cheek and stabbed him in the crotch when he would have stuck his yard up my arse.”

  “No matter how rich and how powerful your master be, there be strong laws against sodomy — especially when such nastiness takes the form of forcible rape of either free man or slave — and it is my understanding that Duke Tcharlz, for all his other faults, detests sodomites and sees the laws he has enacted against them enforced to the last jot and tittle,” Wolf assured them.

  “But that matter aside, the duke is even now going through the duchy with a fine-toothed comb, seeking out able-bodied slaves and apprentices and offering them freedom, pay, keep and, perhaps, loot, will they serve in his army. As the senior sergeant of the Twocityport citadel, I’ve the power to make you three that same offer and to enlist you on this spot if you all be so inclined.

  “Understand me, please, comrades, it be your decision, and yours alone, to make, but there is only death or recapture for you here. You and your beasts could never get across the river without help, and if you stay in this place and the slave takers don’t chance upon you, then you’ll assuredly be slain or taken when Duke Alex lands his army on that beach beyond this bluff — for that is where my captain thinks he will land, and my captain is seldom wrong on matters of a military nature.”

  “How do we know,” Nahseer inquired bluntly, “that you will not get us to your citadel and disarm us or take us in a drugged sleep, and chain us and send us back to him from whom we fled?”

  Wolf shrugged. “You have only my word, of course, but no living man has ever questioned it.”

  It was, to Nahseer’s way of thinking, a good answer, and he already was beginning to like and trust this bluff, scarred old soldier. But he felt that he must be as sure as possible before putting himself and the boys in a jeopardy which could prove fatal. “But what of your captain? He may have bigger fish to fry, so his thinking may be different from your own. Understand, old warrior, the fiend from whom we escaped will not simply stripe us, he will have us all slowly tortured to death.”

  “As I have soldiered with my captain for almost thirty years, I can speak as truly for him as for myself. He detests sodomites as much as does the duke, and he detests the vile institution of slavery even more, wherever and by whomever it is practiced. This be why he has never been loath to enlist runaway slaves or apprentices in his companies. He and I have fought off slave takers to protect men who had freely enlisted . . . and I can say that he and I would gladly do such again.”

  * * *

  The clouds which had been scudding westward over the valley of the Ohyoh River banked lower, denser and dirty-gray as the afternoon progressed and, in the premature darkness of what should have been sunset, began to let loose blinding sheets of water, along with crackling stabs of blue-white lightning and shuddering rolls of thunder.

  But all of the patrol, horse and man, abided warm and dry in the commodious bluffside cave, along with Wolfs three newest recruits, sharing food and drink and swapping tales. The storm passed in the night, and in the bright sunshine of the next morning, all set out for Twocityport by way of a tiny, rural hamlet, where they were to pick up a brace of husky farm boys who had promised to meet them there. Wolf had taken their enlistment oaths on the way out from the citadel.

  The broken, hilly area just south of the bluffs was brushy and alive with small game, and Bahb and Djoh Steevuhnz strung their bows and impressed Wolf and the soldiers to a high degree by arrowing, seemingly without aim or effort, above two dozen running rabbits.

  Wolf set a slow and easy pace, and, just shy of the sun’s zenith, the patrol arrived in the minuscule square of the farming hamlet. Only a few hours’ ride from Twocityport, the community boasted no inn, only a hwiskee house — which sold mostly ale, beer, cider and a cheap, sour wine, despite its announced purpose — which stood on one side of the square, adjacent to the smithy.

  At an outside table sat Wolfs two farm boys, passing the time with a checkerboard, coarse bread, pickled pork and mugs of cool cider. Between them and the square, at the long rail, nearly a score of horses were hitched, and anyone could see that the beasts had been ridden hard and long. Yet the sweaty, huffing equines had not been unsaddled, nor had the girths been loosened, and no one was walking the mounts to allow them to gradually cool after exertion.

  Wolf shook his helmeted head, sneering to himself at the stupidity and cruelty of whoever led this pack of halfwits.

  Spotting him, the two farm boys folded and stowed their game, wolfed the last crumbs of their food and upended the cider mugs, their throats working, then came trotting to the head of the column — blanket rolls slanting across chest and back, war bags in hand and one with an old, worn dagger under his belt.

  At Wolfs query about the ill-served line of horseflesh and the loud hubbub of men’s voices from within the hwiskee house, one of the boys replied, “Ahh, them varmints be but a passel of plains traders and Crooked Portuh’s men from the big serai on the Pahdookahport road and a few hired bravos, out a-lookin’ fer three runaway slaves. This be the second time they been through here, cain’t seem to find ’em, and we folks hopes to God they never does neither.”

  To his patrol archers, Wolf gave the hand signal to string bows and nock arrows. At the same time, he mindspoke Bahb and Djoh to do likewise. Then, hoping to the last to avoid a confrontation or a fight, he urged the two farm boys to mount a brace of the led horses at once.

  But it was already too late. A pair of men came out of the hwiskee house, their arms linked, holding foamy mugs and bawling a lusty song. And then the song died on their lips. One man dropped his mug and ran back inside, shouting, “It’s them, Mistuh Custuh, sir. They all three out inna square. A passel of sojers done took ’em.”

  There was a brief delay as both Portuh and Custuh tried to make use of the narrow egress at the same time. The heavier Portuh won that contest, but Custuh was hard on his heels, followed by the big, rawboned bravo Djahnbil — representing the Lord Urbahnos on the hunt — and his sidekick, Buhbuhtchuhk, trailed by the other trader, Hwahruhn, and then most of the other hunters, most of them bearing mugs or jacks and still chewing.

  Wolf warily eyed the mob of men, judging their potential, and felt somewhat reassured. All bore arms of one kind or another, but only five were fully armed and armored — Custuh and Hwahruhn wore the boiled-leather armor of the plains nomads, with swords and dir
ks; the two bravos’ bodies were protected by steel scale shirts, their shoulders, arms and thighs by steel plates, and their heads by steel helmets; Portuh was encased from neck to knees in a fine and very expensive ensemble of Pitzburk plate armor topped off with an old leather cap which had been split to fit over the dirty, greasy bandages swathing his head from the ears up.

  Portuh, recognizing Wolf as the adjutant of Duke Tcharlz’s favorite condottiere, Captain Martuhn, approached him, followed by Hwahruhn and the two bravos. But the other trader, Custuh — basically hotheaded, in addition to being hot, tired, dirty, saddlesore and, after a week of fruitlessly crisscrossing the sector of the duchy between Pahdookahport and Twocityport, frustrated to the point of tears or murder — rushed up to Nahseer’s place in the column and grabbed the gray’s bridle, snarling, “Git t’ hell offn m’ hoss, yew no-good, thievin’ shit-faced bastid, yew!”

  Before Nahseer could even start to free boot from stirrup and kick the man away, the war-trained gelding reared, lashing out with deadly steel-shod hooves. One of those hooves took Custuh just above the eyes, cracking his skull like an eggshell and smashing on into the brain. Custuh’s lifeless body spun off to flop into the dust of the square, blood and gray-pink brain tissue contrasting with splintered shards of white bone in the place where his forehead had been.

  Hwahruhn shuddered and moaned softly. This was just the way he had seen his partner die many times over in his fevered dreams of weeks past.

  Custuh might have been the only casualty, had rational men been vouchsafed the time to take charge, but such was not fated to pass. Hwahruhn’s nightmares of blood and death for the men of the caravan of kidnappers was swiftly to become reality.