A Cat of Silvery Hue

V

Briefly Vaskos showed himself, trying to spot the positions of the ambushers, and a subdued humming launched a ragged volley toward him. But the range was too great and only one or two stones bounced off the first treetrunks, most falling in the deserted clearing.

“That be a warnin’ and a sample of more to come, y’ child-stealin’ bastards!” snarled a deep voice from the trees and brush which hid the slingers. “We’uns owe yer mistress nothin’, y’ hear? Make a Ehleenee church out’n ever’ house we left, but you come after us ‘n’ our women ’n’ our kids ’n’ we’ll kill ever’ last one of you priest-bound boy-buggers!”

“That,” whispered the komees amazedly, “was Ehrik Ooontehros, the village headman! What in the world could that witless bitch have done to inflame so even-tempered a man to ambush and murder?”

Before Vaskos or Hohguhn, who were continuing to watch the source of both stones and voice, could divine his intent, Komees Hari was already swinging up onto Steelsheen and mindspeaking the stallion out into the campsite, even while he stripped off his gauntlets and commenced to unbuckle his helm.

Hohguhn would never have suspected that big, burly Vaskos could move so fast. At a weaving, crouching run, he reached his father’s side just before the older man cleared the last of the screening brush. Gripping the near stirrup leathers, he frantically remonstrated.

“Is my father a fool? They’ve already downed three good men—they’ll not stick at yet another. Wait until Gaib and his men are up to us, at least. A few patterns of shafts will clear that brush in record time.”

The old nobleman lifted off the helm and thrust it down at Vaskos, patting his son’s weather-browned cheek with the other hand. “You need not fear for me, lad. Those poor men yonder are my people. They’ll not harm me—not if they can see who I am. Hehrah has obviously wronged them in some way, else they’d be in Horse Hall village, not faring like wild beasts here in the forest Without doubt, some more of her damned perversion of a religion. You caught what Ehrik said about churches, didn’t you?”

Then the big gray was into the clearing, and Vaskos was left clutching his father’s helm and nursing his apprehensions. He watched the stallion come to a halt, then commence a slow, stately walk across the width of the campsite, tail held high and neck arched in pride. Then came again the sound he had so feared: the humming of a whirling sling. •

“Father?’ he shouted. “My lord, beware!” But when he would have run after his sire, many hands restrained him.

And Captain Linstahk was there before him, saying, “You cannot aid him now, Vaskos. And would your death make his any more meaningful?”

With the abrupt end of the humming, a whistling stone narrowly missed Hari’s head, caroming off his shoulderpiece. But the old nobleman might have been an image, carved of one of those stone outcrops which dotted his lands. He never so much as flinched at the loud clang of stone on steel. He sat his mount easily, erect in his high-bowed warkak, loosely handling his reins, his bare swordhand resting on his armored thigh.

His clear baritone rang out in a merry laugh, followed by the chiding comment, “A bad cast, Ehrik! You missed the mark by at least a handsbreadth. Sun and Wind, man, have we then grown so old and decrepit, you and I? Why, I’ve seen you bring down a stooping hawk with that sling!”

The vicious humming had recommenced. Again it ceased, and Vaskos gritted his teeth, for his father was now closer and, with the westering sun to his back, would provide an unmissable target. But no stone came.

“Ha … Hari … ? My lord? Be it really you?” rumbled the hidden basso.

“Aye, Ehrik. Half-deafened by the last loud note of your slingsong, but it’s me. But man, you know my financial state! How in hell am I going to pay the thoheeks bloodprice on those three Freefighters of his you just slew?” the komees said.

There was a deep whoop of joy from the underbrush, and a black-bearded man of about Vaskos’ age arose from his hiding place, a gap-toothed grin splitting a battered face capped by a handful of blood-caked, dirty bandages. Looking into the brush about him, he crowed, “You see! You see! I told you all that that woman-stealing, child-stealing, ewe-raping dog of a Danos lied in his mossy teeth! He swore Komees Hari lay slain, yet there he sits, you gullible fools. There sits our dear lord! Why bide we here?”

Then they were all about him. The empty-appearing brush poured forth men, women, children, dogs and even a few goats. And Ehrik’s thick arms were lifting up the youngest child of his dead first wife that he might see that this rider was truly the old lord, always the protector of his people. And the others clustered as close as possible, laughing, weeping, chattering, reaching forth dirty, broken-nailed hands to touch a dusty boot or a bit of armor, their tears of happiness almost laying the dust raised by their bare feet.

Watching, Vaskos felt both awe and fierce pride. Awe of a man so uncompromisingly good that he could command such love and devotion from his people, pride that he was the son—even the bastard son—of so just and loyal a man.

As it developed, only one of the Freefighters was dead, the stone having taken him in the eye and smashed a splintering path into the brain. The second had a dented helm and a lump the size of a turkey egg on the side of his head. The last had suffered a broken collarbone—but was conscious and jokingly asserting to have suffered worse injuries from hungry mosquitoes.

While villagers and hidden archers guarded a farflung perimeter, Gaib’s troopers lined up to water their horses at the small spring, then hunkered down to share their rations with the ravenous villagers.

Pain and anger in his swollen eyes, Ehrik took another long pull at Hari’s commodious brandy flask, wincing as the strong spirit bit into the raw sockets of knocked-out teeth. Then he went on, “So, when I recovered sommats from that beatin’ they give me an’ got my wits ‘bout me agin, I got ever’body together an’ led ‘em inta the woods. I flggered was the bastards to come in here a-horse, they’d make us damn good targets what couldn’ move fast in the brush. An’ I “uz jest hopin’ to Wind the boy-buggers ‘ud come in a-foot!

“But we didn’t light no fires, cause it ‘uz men with Danes hadn’ none of us seed afore, an’ I couldn’ be sure jest how many men he did have … an’ I didn’ wanta lead a whole pack of ‘em to us, an’ us with nothin’ but slings an’ knives an’ a few homemade spears.”

Hari nodded gravely. “You did very well, Ehrik. Your father would be proud of you. It takes real guts to stand off armored men—and Wind alone knew how many of them—with nought save slings.”

Then his face clouded. “But you and your folk must be equally as brave when I tell you what now I must, Ehrik. Do you recall my valet, Kristohfohros? Well, he was one of that pack of cutthroats who attacked the young thoheeks, that night at the Forest Bridge. Komees Djeen’s men captured him and bore him to Morguhn Hall, where the komees and the Undying High Lord and others put the pig to the torture. What he revealed to them has since been detailed to me and my son, and it bodes ill for your missing children.”

A deep moan swelled up from the folk massed about, but Hari went on. “The Ehleen priests have taken to slaying children on their altars, draining them of blood, which is then mixed with wine and herbs and drunk by those swine.

“As for your dear wife, Ehrik, I think we can be more hopeful. I well know my wife’s unnatural traits … and her tastes. Shell not have done aught to mar her beauty, for such is as important to Hehrah as it would be to a man. With any luck, she should be back with you by this time tomorrow, dear friend.”

Mairee Goontehros lay sleepless near the edge of the broad bed, her azure eyes fixed upon the blue-white flicker of a winking star. She wished, prayed, that Wind might whisk her through the narrow window to that faraway star. To anywhere rather than here—naked in her shame, beside the gross , hulk of the Lady Hehrah, who having yet again sated her sickening depravity on Mairee’s passive flesh was once more snoring. But it was not the unlovely rasp of the fat woman’s snores which kept the slender girl wakeful; rather was it the pain and the self-loathing that she had so cravenly sacrificed her honor to gain surcease of pain … that and sorrow.

“Poor dear brave Ehrik.” The words were shaped soundlessly and she stifled her sobs, that she might not waken her bloated captor to wreak fresh horrors upon her, but the silent tears coursed from her eyes to trickle amongst the strands of her cornsilk hair.

That day, that cursed day that Captain Danos and his henchmen had come and demanded that she accompany them back to Horse Hall, she had been so very proud of her strong, black-bearded husband. His arguments and questions ignored by the arrogant guardsmen, he had still attempted to be reasonable—until the first Ehleen had grasped her arm to pull her out the door. Then he had exploded into furious action. Ehrik’s first mighty buffet had knocked him who held her sliding, rump foremost, into the cookfire, whence he quickly emerged to run howling from the house, his leathern breeches ablaze.

When the captain made a pass at him with a stabbing sword, Ehrik’s nimble sidestep sent the blade past him, while his big, hard fist actually dented the brass breastplate, driving the breath from the captain’s chest and setting him stumbling backward into the wall. Another guardsman had been lifted bodily and thrown headfirst into the next two to rush through the doorway. He had broken the arm of another swordsman; despite the stamping and shouting and Ehrik’s roaring, she had distinctively heard the bones snap.

But of course it could not last; one lone man, no mattef what his strength or his rage, is just no match for a score of bravos. A knot of them forced in and bore him down amid the smashed furniture and two of them held her tightly while, with fists, feet, swordhilts and whipbutts, a dozen of their fellows bludgeoned the life from her husband. And when they at last stepped back from their inert victim, Mairee could not recognize even one feature of the bloody deathmask which was all that remained of Ehrik’s smiling face.

They had borne her into the square, screaming and vainly clawing at her captors. After roughly binding her hands and feet, they tossed her across the withers of the guardsman’s horse. Since hard hands explored and fondled her body all the way to the hall, she expected to be raped by them all, to be their plaything … until she could gain access to a knife and send herself to Wind.

Once more, the pale lips moved. “Better their rapes … an of them, one after the other. Far better than this … this abomination! It is natural that men should lust after a woman, but that a woman should …”

A strong shudder of horrified loathing coursed the length of her, then she lay trembling, for a long moment, praying that the movement had not wakened Lady Hehrah.

But at the hall, Mairee had found herself delivered up to the lady’s women. Numbly, she had allowed herself to be led to a bathing chamber and stripped of her torn and dusty garments. While the deep basin was being filled with warm and sweet-scented water, the laughing but hard-eyed women had turned her round and round, squeezing her firm young breasts, running their hands over the slender hips and small buttocks and flat belly, conversing in whispers she could not hear, then sharing gales of raucous laughter. When she had been laved from foot to crown and her fine hair had been dried and arranged, they clad her in a single short garment made of stuff so sheer as to be almost transparent, then conducted her to the suite of the lady.

When she had wed poor Ehrik, three months agone, dear old Lord Hari had generously feasted them in the hall and gifted them and presented them to his king stallion, his daughters and his lady. But on that joyous day, Mairee had been too full of the giddy happiness of the events and awe of the sumptuous surroundings and the old nobleman’s preferential treatment of her and Ehrik to note aught but that the lady was stout, black-haired and aloof, seeming displeased with her noble spouse.

But the lady of the initial phase of her second meeting was all solicitude, tenderly embracing Mairee and kissing her cheek in a motherly greeting, drawing her down to sit beside her on a soft-cushioned settle, insisting she eat of the rare dainties and drink of the strong, brandied wine. The lady’s plump, beringed fingers gently brushed the bruises left on Mairee’s fair skin by the cruel manhandling of Danos and his men, lifting the hem of her sole garment and pulling the low-cut neck even lower that she might see and touch the entireties of the discolored areas, all the while clucking sympathy and promising dire punishments for the guardsmen responsible.

And the combination of soothing words and strong drink had had their effect Mairee had forgotten her fears enough to weep, thinking of poor Ehrik lying dead in his blood on the floor of their home amid the smashed wreckage which had been its furnishings, and the lady’s pudgy arms had immediately enfolded her.

“Do not weep, little Mairee,” she had crooned. There is naught to be feared, for never again will any dirty, lustful man lay his hairy hands upon your sweet flesh. Never, so long as I live. My word upon it.”

And Mairee had sobbed, “Oh, my lady, they … those men slew my husband. Murdered my dear Ehrik. He … he is dead, all bloody and dead.”

“My husband, too, is dead, fair Mairee,” the lady breathed. “But what need have we two of husbands, when we now have each other? Little one, I will be husband and more, so much more, to you. I shall provide for you and care for you … and please you as no base man has ever pleased you … or could.”

It was not until Lady Hehrah’s strength and immense weight had borne Mairee back, pinned her under that mountain of musk-scented flesh, that the girl realized, remembered the half-comprehended remarks made by her captors on that terrible ride from village to hall, recalled the sly whispers of women of the village when word was passed to be on the lookout for the girl Ehlaina, who was missing from the hall.

Then the mists cleared and she heard again the words of the man whose horse had carried her, the words he had spoken while his hands squeezed and groped at her: “Enjoy me while you can, you little slut, for once you’re old Hehrah’s glohsah-athehlfee, you’ll never again be allowed near a man!”

Glohsah-athehlfee! Tongue-sister! That whispered-about vice of Komeesa Hehrah. The thought alone was enough to sicken Mairee. But when she opened her mouth to protest, the older woman’s thick, blubbery lips pasted themselves over hers while the hot, winy tongue forced between her teeth in search of her own.

Mairee struggled to wrench free, to sit up, but Lady Hehrah’s layers of fat concealed other layers of muscle, and she held the slender girl easily enough to free one bejeweled hand.

And when Mairee felt that hot, damp hand slip betwixt her slim thighs, she reacted frantically, sinking her sharp white teeth into that alien tongue thrusting between them, while punching at the head and face above her, tearing at the coiffed black hair. And when at last she had felt some of the weight shift, had made to get to her feet, the lady’s buffet had set her almost to swooning. And she had thus understood only snatches of the things the lady said to the women who had come to her screams.

“Ahtheena, Khohee, Ntohrees … skoola … ahkahreestosha … Ktoopeemaptehrnas! … eeahkoopohgnohmohsoonee…”

Though the language was archaic Old Ehleenohkos, it was sufficiently similar to Confederation Ehleenohkos for Mairee to understand that she was being called an “ungrateful bitch” along with something about “stubborness”; the term Ktoopeemaptehmas she did not know… not then.

Mairee had never imagined the existence of such pain as that which brought her fully, screamingly conscious. She shrieked her throat raw, she pled, begged a stop to the torment, her fine-boned body arching and writhing in the grasps of the serving women who held her down and immobilized her tiny feet under the brutal bite of the bastinado. But it went on… and on. Finally she fainted again.

The bright rays of that distant star twinkled, till her tears blurred the sight of it. She shifted her still-aching feet, trying not to rattle the long chain which secured her slender ankle to the massive bedstead. But rattle it did, sounding like the clanging thunder of a smithy to the girl’s ears.

Beside her, Lady Hehrah snorted, groaned and threw a fat arm across the quaking Mairee’s small breasts. She lay so for a moment, then, muttering something incomprehensible, rolled onto her side and recommenced her resounding snores.

And then Mairee could again draw breath. “It cannot last,” she wordlessly told that friendly, unreachable star. “No woman can long live with this torture, not without going mad. And she even denies me means of honorably ending my life. Oh, what am I to do?”

The guardsman, Ruhmos, also watched that flashing star, as he lifted his leathern kilt to piss down the outer face of the wall. He heard the chorus of snores from the barrack below with envy. He knew that there was no damned excuse for robbing him and so many others of sleep, when a single man or at most two could have kept adequate watch. For did not the rolling leas stretch away on every side, treeless for most of their extent? And who was there to keep watch against anyway? That unarmed, spineless scum of villagers? A few homicidal horses?

Nonetheless, he had his orders from that arrogant, posturing ape his old roistering companion Danos was become since the stallions killed that bastard Gaios and Danos the archer was proclaimed Danos the captain. He let his eyes sweep carelessly over the expanses of moon-silvered pasture to the north and west, before he shook his yard, dropped his kilt and made to turn about

Then a hard, rough hand clamped down over his mouth, jerking back his head and preventing him from voicing his agony at the sharp bite of steel which bit in under the angle of his jaw and traced fire across the front of his straining throat And the hand was taken away, being no longer needed, for Ruhmos’ windpipe was filled now with a thick, hot liquid which he realized, as the crushing blackness engulfed him, must be his own blood.

For many long years, Komees Hari had utilized the barrack space above the hall stables for the practical purpose of storing grain and hay. Only since he rode out to his supposed death had the Lady Hehrah restored it to its original function, feeling that with the men so far from the hall, there would be less likelihood of them attempting to seduce the female servants into the filthy sin of fornication … and, of course, her scheme worked no better than equally puritanical plans ever do.

This night, at least a quarter of the sleeping guardsmen shared their straw-filled pallets with companions. But like the now deceased Ruhmos, the soot-smeared apparitions who invaded the long, darkened room had their orders. They obeyed those orders to the very letter. Working south from the tower through which they had entered, they made brief stops at each sleeping couch, and when they passed on to the next, no one—man or woman or painted love boy—remained alive behind them.

Their sanguinous task silently completed, most of the dark men descended to the courtyard, and, rumbling and stumbling in the inky entrance passage, they began to unbar the main gate. Two sought the hall stable, where they quietly strangled the man found there. One retraced his steps to the tower, took an arrow from dead Ruhmos’ case and wound its shaft with strips of oil-impregnated cloth.

In deference both to his new rank and to her high regard for him, Lady Hehrah had granted Captain Danes quarters in the hall itself. Which, he often thought to himself, was a fair step upward in the world for a young man whose father had been beaten to death by old Komees Djeen Morguhn’s herdsmen when caught stealing sheep.

Thanks to several extra measures of wine, Danos had slept well and deeply earlier in the night, but a full bladder had wakened him soon after midnight. He had piddled in his chamberpot, then returned to his bed, only to find that sleep evaded him. He turned over and over on the sweat-damp bedclothes, vainly seeking a position which would once more vouchsafe him sleep. At length, he surrendered to wakefulness and, with a groan of anger, lowered his feet to the tiles and sat up on the edge of the bed.

Without conscious volition, his hand dropped into his crotch and, before he knew he had done so, he had stroked his sex several times. Frantically, he snatched the hand away before he could do anything really sinful, breathing a short prayer for protection against temptation.

Clasping his hands firmly behind his head, he lay back across the width of the bed, and his thoughts strayed back to his triumphs of that first week of his captaincy. Nearly every time he and his troop had gone down to the village for another child, they had been able to catch women and girls in the fields, ride the shrieking sows down and rope them and strip them and swive them properly. That had indeed been fun. And no need to worry about the wrath of the old heathern komees, as on Danos’ necessarily rare previous forays.

Sex, such as he knew the guardsmen were presently enjoying in their barrack, had been denied Danous for much of his life, his rare attempts always having the same tiring, Inconclusive, infinitely frustrating end. Then one early autumn day, the chief huntsman had been ill and Danos had been sent out to bag small game for the table. Deep in the forest, he had chanced upon a village girl gathering nuts, and on a never-understood impulse, he had savagely beaten her with his dog-whip, then shredded her homespun smock and brutally raped her.

And it had been nothing less than wonderful! Her screams and pleas and agonized whimperings had spurred him on to his complete pleasure as had never the moans and gasps and contortions of the slack-lipped tarts he had tried to bed. He could not even remember rolling off her quivering, bleeding, sob-wracked body. And how long he had lain on the crackling leaves, lost in a private nirvana of delight, he knew not.

But when at last he returned to the world, he had realized that the girl must assuredly be slain, else what had happened would get to the ears of the komees, and the certain consequences of that mischance were too horrible to bear contemplation. For, while the old lord had always been known as a lusty man, he would not countenance rape in his domain any more than he would murder or maiming or thievery.

It was with a chill of apprehension that Danos thought of that roving chapman who, nighting at Horse Hall, had accosted a serving wench on her way to the privy, punched her into unconsciousness, and been caught while having his will of her senseless body. The peddler had been haled before the komees at dawn, and since unlike most of his peers Lord Hari maintained no mercenary soldiers, the senior hunter and Danos had been set to guarding the prisoner, who had claimed drunkenness to be the cause of his attack.

But the old lord would have none of it, saying, “You be a well-built man and not unhandsome, so you might have had that woman, and many another here, for but a bit of frippery from your pack or even a few winning words; but you felt you must steal not buy, for a rapist be nothing less than a thief and a maimer.

“Well, master chapman, you chose the wrong county in which to commit your crime! Some lords might well let you off with a striping or the payment of a suffering price, but Hari Daiviz values his people more highly than that.

“In the Middle Kingdoms, where I soldiered years agone, they know how to deal with scum such as you. So rape be unknown, except in time of war or intakings.”

Danos well recalled how that husky chapman’s face had paled under his tan and dirt, how be had fallen to his knees on the flags, groveling and wringing his raised hands in supplication, his terror having frozen his power of speech.

And the komees had continued in the same tone. “Master chapman, you have dishonored your manhood. Were I a burk-lord, I’d have it off your body, leave you a hollow reed to piss through and seal the stump with hot pitch. But I think me IT! have done enough for the women of this world if I make certain that you’ll breed no more of your contemptible ilk.”

The nobleman then addressed the senior hunter. “Rai, you and young Danos drag this piece of filth into the courtyard, have off his breeches and lash him to the whipping frame. I’ll be along presently.”

They had obeyed their orders. The komees, the raped woman and all the men of the hall and the village had assembled in the courtyard, where Lord Hari had recounted the crime, his judgment and sentence, then had called forth the horse master. And Danos’ blood ran cold when he remembered the hideous cries of the hapless chapman when old Vintz stepped forward with his hooked knife and commenced the gelding.

So Danos had buried his hunter’s blade in the girl’s whip-wealed breast, dragged the corpse far into the forest and secreted it near to where he recalled having seen bear tracks. And when her pitiful remains at last were found, the komees, his neighbor, Komees Djeen, and several other nobles, with their hunters and retainers, rode out on a week-long hunt that bagged three bears and a host of other animals.

With his duties to offer excuse for frequent and prolonged absences, to explain bloodstains on his weapons and clothing, and with the wide-spreading forest to conceal his movements, Danes’ rape—murders had gone almost unremarked—since he had been careful never to strike the same domain twice in a row and had ranged over most of the Duchy of Morguhn and parts of the two duchies to the south and east—and his murderous role had never been suspected. Throughout the intervening years, many a bear or treecat or boar or wolf had been slain as bloodprice for Danos’ twisted sex drives.

The thoughts of those pleasurable deeds aroused Danos to an unbearable pitch of passion, so that when once more he found his traitorous hand straying toward commission of unforgiveable sin, he sat up, laced on a pair of sandals and donned a soft doeskin kilt. Leaving his door ajar, he crept past the rooms of the upper servants and ascended the narrow stairs to the roof, then headed along the wall walk toward the barrack, thinking to borrow a woman from one of the guardsmen, take her someplace apart and hurt her enough to gain such reaction as he knew he required for his sexual release.

But he had taken only a few steps along the wall when there was the twanging of a bowstring somewhere near the barrack and a blazing arrow arched high into the starry sky. What in hell, he pondered, are those drunken whoresons up to now? Aren’t dice enough to gamble with that they must waste good arrows? And they could fire the corn or the hay, as well!

Lips set grimly, Danos strode purposefully toward the south tower. Dawn would see those thoughtless, wasteful rogues well striped for this night’s lark. But in the shadow of the tower, only a few steps from the door, his foot struck something which sent him sprawling, all but tumbling into the courtyard twelve feet below.

On his knees, he made out the dim shape of a helmeted guardsman, stretched motionless across the walk, legs dangling over the edge. Snarling, he grasped the obviously drunken man’s shoulders and shook him mercilessly … without result. Then he became conscious of warm, sticky wetness on the miscreant’s tunic. He thought at first that, in his drunken stupor, the sentry had puked down his front But some atavistic sense sent his hands exploring.

His nape bristled as his trembling fingers penetrated the still-warm gash gaping under the guardsman’s chin. Leaping up, his blood-gummy hand sought the hilt of the sword he had left in his room and his mouth was opened, his lungs filling to shout an alarm.

Then came the creaking protest of the gate’s hinges, whereupon a dozen or more shadowy, wraithlike figures poured from the entry passage and trotted across the deserted courtyard toward the hall. And Danes’ throat choked off that shout. Shakily, he stepped over the dead man and tiptoed through the tower, thence into the deathly still barrack.

What he found there imbued him with such panic that he only took time to arm himself with belt and dagger, bow and case of arrows, ere he stole back through the tower, dropped from the wall and ran for the forest like a bunted beast.