Horseclans Odyssey

by Robert Adams

  Once landed upon the western bank, a bare week since, the count’s suspicions of Morré’s true identity had been fully confirmed, but he could not fault the war chief for the subterfuge. It had been a necessary, military expedient and had really wrought much good.

  Neither he nor Nahseer had been required to surrender their weapons or doff their armor, but they, the two boys and Milo of Morai had been escorted at a polite distance by fifty or more well-armed clansmen with strung bows, as they rode through the shattered city of Traderstown.

  In the Clan Steevuhnz enclave, after Count Martuhn had formally returned the boys to their sire along with vociferous praises of their bravery, cunning and war skills, and when Bahb and Djoh had opened wide their minds and memories that their father might know of all the striving and scheming that the count had performed in order to keep them out of the perverted clutches of Lord Urbahnos, the Steevuhnz of Steevuhnz flatly refused to allow the two easterners to leave his camp.

  So Martuhn and Nahseer had, perforce, bided the two nights and a day it took Milo to assemble the council in the camp of Clan Steevuhnz, as deeply honored guests. There he first met a prairiecat and was thoroughly impressed at the high intelligence of the beast, as compared to horses, which were the only other animals with which he had mentally communicated.

  Nor were the human clansfolk quite what he had expected. For all the grim, blank-faced taciturnity they showed the world, among themselves they were a merry, active people, living by a strict code of honor — both personal and clan — bound together by loyalty to their clan and duty to their chief.

  As for the myth of “stinking savages,” he had found it to be a patent falsehood. No member of the clan but washed or was washed at least once each day in the waters of the largish creek that separated their camp from that of Clan Makloor — often in large, mixed parties of young and old, male and female, and always with much horseplay and laughter — and most seemed good, if unorthodox, swimmers. Clothing and most of the horses’ were washed by slaves. A few of the cats swam on occasion, but most avoided the water except when thirsty.

  From the first hours in the Steevuhnz camp, Martuhn felt oddly as if he had returned home after a long campaign. He could not recall feeling so much that he was in his rightful place since his exile from Geerzburk.

  “I could live with these good folk,” he thought. “I could be truly one of them and happily live out the rest of my days as a nomad. I wonder . . . ?” Then he sighed, as reality once more confronted him, dashing hopes and daydreams alike. “I could, oh, aye, were it not for these damned duchies and my cursed responsibilities, my sworn word to a dead man.”

  Martuhn’s flexible mind had quickly accepted the differing customs of the clansfolk, even the unabashed nudity and the frequent and openly sexual fondling of couples, young and old. But when, just as he was settling into his bed in the chiefs yurt on that first night, none other than the chiefs nubile daughter slipped from the surrounding darkness to press her warm, naked body close to his and nibble at his ear while her hand groped downward toward his manhood, he was appalled. The very last thing he needed or wanted was a row with these folk over the matter of a debauched maiden.

  Stehfahnah read his surface thoughts, inchoate though they were, and mindspoke him matter-of-factly, “Maiden? Oh, you mean untried. You’ll find none such in this camp. Chief Martuhn, and fear you not my father. What I do is as fitting as it will be — I believe — enjoyable. Both his younger wives are too near to their foaling to receive your seed safely; one of his new concubines has her time of the moon and the other is with him. So my sisters and I cast the bones for you — I won.”

  “But, my dear child,” Martuhn began in a whisper, “I am more than old enough to myself be your fathmmmp!”

  She stifled his words by pasting her hot, wet mouth firmly over his own, her little pointed tongue thrusting deeply into his mouth, there to twist and writhe like a maddened serpent. One of her little hands clasped the back of his thick neck, kneading at the corded muscles under the skin; the other crept to his crotch and began to knead that which it found there.

  “Oh ho,” she mindspoke him amusedly. “You misled me, Chief Martuhn; you are not so aged as you would have me believe. But as the proof of a stew is in the eating, so the proof of a new horse is in the riding. We must try your gaits and stamina, my stallion.”

  Neither Martuhn nor Stehfahnah slept very much that night . . . nor the night following.

  * * *

  In the end, his staff proved harder to convince than did either of the duchy councils, noble or common, but all came around eventually.

  A balding, sun-browned yeoman-farmer hailing from somewhere down in the late duke’s home county stood in the commoner council and stated their reasoning bluntly and succinctly.

  “We’uns all would hev his worship fer our new duke, an’ if thet means a-herdin’ five hunnert winter wolfs th’ough the dang duchy, we’uns’ll do thet too!”

  In the much-shrunken council of nobles — which numbered a few graybeards, but was mostly filled by the fresh young faces of younger brothers or distant cousins of those men who had followed Duke Tcharlz’s banner to their deaths — Sir Manfred, Baron Kehrbee, had the last words prior to the oral vote.

  “My lords. I do not stomach the idea of a horde of nomads traipsing across the duchy any better than I would a dish of rotten stockfish, but Count Martuhn believes their assurances of a peaceful passage, and I believe him. And I’ll speak true, far better them, who only wish to pass through and then be gone forever, than the incursions of foreign armies who mean to stay . . . and well have just that unless we immediately unite behind Count Martuhn and acclaim him publicly as our new overlord.

  “You all, even you younger lords, know what usually occurs when the overlord of one of our neighboring states dies with no legal heir — the countless assassinations, the chaos and, like as not, outright civil war, with three or four or more factions jockeying back and forth. One always wins eventually, of course, but by then the land has lain idle for too long, the humbler folk have been butchered or driven into hiding, the treasury has been scraped clean and the flower of the nobility either hacked to death or hanging from gibbets in chains. Over the years, Duke Tcharlz took advantage of more than one such debacle to enlarge our duchy.

  “Well, now Tcharlz is dead and precious few of his male issue — legitimate or otherwise — survived him. But our duchy is fortunate in that he legally adopted and named as his heir none other than his long-faithful captain, Count Martuhn of Twocityport. I mean to tender Count Martuhn my fullest support, and I shall expect all true noblemen of this duchy to do no less.

  “Moreover, before She died, Duchess Ann authorized a long and deep investigation of Count Martuhn, received him and spoke with him in private for several hours, then exacted the solemn oaths of all her followers to support him as their new overlord.

  “You younger men will not recall, of course, but I was a man grown when old Duke Myk died. The duchy was neither so large nor so rich then, but it was strong; and it was strong because it was united — every man of breeding or substance was solidly behind his overlord. It is a very good feeling to live in such a state . . . and we can have it again in this homeland of ours, do we but give our unqualified support to Duke Tcharlz’s chosen heir, Count Martuhn.”

  However, despite the unanimous support of the councils, despite the open-handed hospitality of the gentry and nobility, the unrestrained cheers of the common folk who ran out to see him whenever his cavalcade rode through a city or village, Martuhn could not make the final and irrevocable decision to allow himself to be invested with the rank and the privileges, the duties and the responsibilities, he had long since shouldered.

  And the busy months passed into history. The early harvests were in and the farmfolk were assiduously sharpening scythes and sickles and corn knives for the long, weary labor which lay just ahead.

  And in the bright, hot afternoon of a day just like the one be
fore, a small band of horsemen clattered through the Upper Town, to draw reins before the palace into which Martuhn had recently had to move his headquarters, though he still returned to his citadel quarters most nights when he was in Twocityport.

  The leader of the horsemen stiffly dismounted, shucked the billowing road shirt which had protected his rich attire from the dust of miles, then unwrapped some yards of sweaty, dust-caked cotton cloth from his head and face, donned a battered but polished helmet and stalked toward the guarded doorway.

  Duke Tcharlz had come home.

  Chapter XVII

  The Great River lay many long leagues behind even the miles per day, the tribe had been more than a month on their slowest of the herds now, and at the average of four or five eastward trek. A few of the intervening statelets had been crossed in peace, after overawing or negotiating with the owners; most had not been entirely peaceful and some had had to be hacked through with twanging bowstrings and dripping blades.

  The season was growing older, and although the days still were stifling, the nights were cool to nippy. As soon as he had stripped, given his dirty, sweat-tacky clothes to the waiting slave girl and washed in a barrel of water still tepid from the hot sun of the day just past, Senior Subchief Martuhn Geer of Steevuhnz made haste to his bed of hides and blankets and the warm young wife who awaited him therein.

  Much later, when both were near to exhausted sleep, lying a little apart that their two sweaty bodies might more quickly cool, Martuhn thought back to other times, far less happy times, such as the return from supposed death of the duke.

  * * *

  Tcharlz had embraced him warmly and even brushed lips to his cheek, though speaking in tones of stiff formality. In the privacy of the office, however, the worn old nobleman had drained off a half-dozen jacks of beer, belched loudly, farted even louder, then begun to speak, familiarly.

  “You’ve obviously kept the reins firmly in hand, my boy, and by my steel, that’s a relief. Those stinking savages hunted and harried us for days, drove us far downriver, and then we had to travel even farther down, ere we could find a way to cross to the east bank.

  “I knew, though, all along, that if you survived you’d do the right thing; you’d hold my duchy for me. But until barely a month ago, I had no idea what had happened to you, the fort or Traderstown itself.

  “I finally got back across with over a hundred mounted men, yet the bare dozen I rode in here with and a few wounded men I left in the south, in my home county, are all that are left of that force. We first landed in Ehleen territory, and it was either fight our way out or be enslaved by the blackhearted, boy-buggering bastards.

  “The folk who bide between the Ehleenee and the southern marches of the Kingdom of Mehmfiz are a primitive, savage and most inhospitable breed. And more men were lost to long-range sniping and ambuscades.

  “In Mehmfiz, our troubles should have been over for a bit, but we had the bad luck to ride directly into an ongoing battle and had to fight to survive. I merged my force with what looked to be the larger, stronger, better-led group, only to flee with them when the other side was overwhelmingly reinforced.”

  With a rueful look, the trailworn old duke added, “And, as Fate would have it, we had not even wound up on the side of the right and the king, but allied with a group of noble rebels and in support of a would-be usurper, one Count Djoolyuhn. Since I could fathom no way to set the matter aright — get us safely over to the royal side — I threw in our lot with the rebels, arranged an audience with this Djoolyuhn whereat I revealed my true identity and took over full command of the sorry agglomeration he called an army.

  “To be succinct, my boy, once I had gotten his troops properly organized and distributed, trained his officers to drill and handle them and imparted to him and them a modicum of theoretical strategy and tactics, I undertook a campaign that virtually cleared his county of royalists and the county to his westward, as well.

  “Then I turned his army back over to him and told him to clear the county to his north. He is a quick study, that lad, and he did just that, with scant delay and little loss of troops. So I put him against the next county north, then the next and so on, until I and my survivors could safely cross over into friendly lands.

  “Thanks to me and my military genius, Martuhn, Count Djoolyuhn now has more than quintupled the size of his original army and has effectively split Mehmfiz — holding as he now does a succession ’of counties stretching from the southernmost border to the northernmost. He may very well actually become the next king, and, as such, he will make me a splendid ally. Though lacking my genius at war and statecraft, Djoolyuhn is much akin to me and I understand him.

  “So, anyway, we rode north through the client states in short, easy stages, resting frequently at this little town or that country hall, putting it out only that we were a handful of survivors of the cavalry battle at Traderstown, riding up here to seek the last of our pay. And so, my dear boy, here we are, home safely at last. And thanks entirely to you and your loyalty, it’s still home.”

  * * *

  Stehfahnah’s hand came to rest softly upon his chest, and her mindspeak gently probed. “Are you sleeping, my husband?”

  Martuhn snapped back from the past to the present, from the tile-walled office in the Twocityport palace to the felt yurt so many miles and weeks away. “No, my dear, not yet.”

  She raised herself to rest on an elbow and let her fingers trace along the numerous furrowed scars on his chest and shoulders. “I saw you today, my husband, when you led your money fighters to the in-saddle council that the war chief had convened.

  “I watched you from a distance. You sitting your fine, big stallion among the chiefs, with Sacred Sun making your armor gleam and sparkle like pure, polished silver.

  “You towered over them all, even the war chief, and when you had listened for long and you finally spoke, their respect for your wisdom and valor held them all silent until you were done.

  “And I said to myself, That is my man there, so tall and handsome. He is mine and I am his and one of the sons he will get on me will be the chief of Clan Steevuhnz.”

  “And, oh, my dear, dear husband, I felt so full with my pride that I thought I should surely burst of it.”

  The girl sighed. “So very, very proud.” She leaned to brush his lips lightly with her own, then snuggled herself against his side, pillowing her tousled head on his shoulder. Presently, her regular breathing told Martuhn that his young wife lay asleep.

  * * *

  Upon being apprised of the death of Duchess Ann, the duke had elected to take over the urban palace complex and Martuhn had more than willingly removed himself and his military staff back to the familiar, homier environs of the citadel. It had been a real relief to the captain to leave the self-seeking, ever-scheming bureaucrats to the man who had first chosen them and trained them to the ungentle art of power-mongering.

  A few days after his arrival, the old duke had had every soul in the entire city assembled in the palace square and had then publicly announced that, henceforth, Captain Martuhn, his good and faithful liegeman and the count of their city, was his legally adopted son and the heir of all his lands, titles and goods. The cheering and joyous shouts of the throng was deafening, and the old man seemed quite pleased with the effect his words had wrought.

  But his pleasure did not last. For one thing, the old nobility, the folk of the court of his late wife, were as unremittingly hostile to him as ever they had been when yet she lived. However, they seemed to honestly like Martuhn, and this phenomenon did not long escape the notice of the duke, quickly planting and nurturing in his ever-suspicious mind a seed whose evil flower was soon to almost plunge the duchy into civil war.

  Because his public announcement had gone over so well in Twocityport, Tcharlz decided to repeat the performance at Pahdookahport and set about organizing a suitable cavalcade of nobles, gentry, soldiers and servants. He ordered Martuhn to have Urbahnos brought up from his cable-barg
e row bench, as he intended to join him with his co-criminals in the other port city and there execute them all as part of the celebration.

  Had he not been aware who the fettered man plodding barefoot behind the troopers’ horses was, Martuhn would never have recognized him for the once dapper, arrogant and evil Ehleen.

  Urbahnos’ few bare months in the fetid near-darkness of the row-deck had drastically altered his appearance and bearing. His long, matted beard and hair were almost uniformly gray. His nose was mashed and canted far to the right, so that he now breathed noisely through his mouth and the gap where his front teeth had once been. He seemed oblivious to the flies which swarmed and buzzed about him, feeding in avid clusters on the open, crusty-edged sores of his whip whealed back and shoulders. The gleaming, hate-filled eyes Martuhn remembered now were bloodshot, dull and uncaring, as blank of expression as those of a weary plow ox. Martuhn could almost feel sorry for the broken wreck of a man.

  The captain did retain the prisoner in the citadel overnight — long enough to have him completely shaved and deloused, soaked and thoroughly scrubbed, his sores treated, his body clothed and shod and then given a quantity of decent food. The next morning, Martuhn’s smith fitted the prisoner with fetters, and he was mounted on a mule and borne up to the duke and the palace dungeons, and throughout it all, he had spoken no single word to either guards or benefactors.

  The cavalcade took the best part of a week to reach the city on the Ohyoh, cheered in every village and hamlet and greeted with an overwhelming reception in Pahdookahport itself. But hardly had they arrived, when the duke abruptly announced an indefinite postponement of the celebration, took his guards and his prisoner and rode north in an obvious rage. He left Martuhn and the rest of the party lodged in the palace — only slightly smaller than the ducal one at Twocityport — which had formerly been the property of Baron Lapkin.