Revenge of the Horseclans

VI

Bili mindspoke Mahvros, “Faster, brother! Be ready to fight.”

The huge, black horse quickened his gait and beamed his approval, one of his principal joys being the stamping of the life from anything that got in his way. Raising his head, he voiced a shrill, equine challenge, then bore down on his promised victims.

One man and horse went down in a squealing, screaming, hoof-flailing tangle, while Bili took a ringing swordcut on the side of his helm in passing. Still shrilling his challenge, Mahvros came to a rearing halt, pivoted, and returned to savage the downed horse and rider, while Bili axed the other man out of the saddle with a single, businesslike stroke. The stallion was able to experience the brief elation of feeling manribs splinter under his hooves, before Bili urged him back toward the bridge.

Scores of hooves were pounding close behind him, when he cleared the last of the trees to see Ahndee and Klairuhnz, their blades gleaming, sitting their mounts knee-to-knee, a few paces onto the span. Three yards behind them, the trooper had uncased and strung his short bow, nocked an arrow, and calmly awaited the appearance of a target.

“Bili!” shouted Ahndee exuberantly. “Sun and Wind be thanked! We’d thought you slain.” He started to back his gelding, that Bili might have his place.

But Bili signed him to stay, positioning Mahvros a little ahead of the others. “This will be better,” he stated shortly, not seeing the smile they exchanged at his automatic assumption of command.

The trooper proved himself an expert archer, putting his shaft cleanly into the eye of the first pursuer to gallop out of the forest. His second arrow pinned an unarmored thigh to a saddletree. He nocked a third, drew … and his bowstring snapped! Cursing sulfurously in several languages, he cast away the now useless hornbow, drew his saber, and ranged up close behind Ahndee.

The next four attackers took a brief moment to form up, then launched a charge, apparently expecting their prey to remain in place and wait their pleasure. They did not live long enough to recover from the countercharge!

The leading attacker held up his shield to fend off Bili’s axe, while he aimed a hacking cut at Mahvros’s thick neck. The stout target crumpled like wet paper and the axeblade bit completely through, deep into the arm beneath, the force of the buffet hurling the man down to a singularly messy death, amid the stamping hooves.

Mahvros roughly shouldered the riderless horse aside, while Bili glanced around, seeking another opponent. At that very moment Ahndee was thrusting the watered-steel blade of his broadsword deep into the vitals of his adversary and Klairuhnz was obviously more than a match for his shaggy opponent. But the Freefighter had troubles aplenty. First his bowstring, and now his saber had broken, leaving him but a bare foot of pointless blade. With this stub, he was fighting a desperate defensive action.

In one mighty leap, Mahvros was alongside the ruffian’s mount. Shortening his grip on his axe, Bili jammed the spike into a side made vulnerable by a wide gap between the breast and back plates of an ill-fitting cuirass. Shrieking a curse, the mortally wounded man turned in his saddle to rain a swift succession of swordcuts on Bili’s helm and shoulders. While the Pitzburk turned every blow, Bili was unable to retaliate, his axe being almost useless at such breast-to-breast encounters.

Unexpectedly, the man hunched and began to gag and retch, spewing up quantities of frothy-pink blood. At this, the Freefighter reined closer, used his piece of saber to slash the dying man’s swordknot, then neatly decapitated the brigand with his own antique blade.

They had almost regained the bridge when the van of the main force caught up to them. First to fall was the rearmed Freefighter, his scaleshirt unable to protect bis back from a nailstudded club.

Bili’s better armor turned a determined spearthurst, before he axed an arm from his spearman. Then he turned Mahvros and, straightening his arms, swung his bloody axe in several wide arcs before him. He struck nothing, but did achieve the desired effect of momentarily halting most of the oncoming force and granting Ahndee and Klairuhnz a few precious moments to regain the bridge.

Bili failed to see the man who galloped in from his left, but Mahvros did not.

With the speed of a striking serpent, he swung about and sank his big teeth into the flesh of the smaller horse. The little mare was not a warhorse, and she had no slightest intention of remaining in proximity to a huge, maddened stallion. Taking the bit firmly in her teeth, she raced back into the forest, bearing her shouting, cursing, reinsawing rider only as far as the low-hanging branch, which swept him from her back and stretched him senseless on the sward.

Mahvros’s forehooves were already booming on the bridgetimbers when a hardflung throwingaxe caromed off Bili’s helm, nearly deafening him and filling his head with a tight red-blackness shot with dazzling-white stars. Only instinct kept him in the saddle; Mahvros, well-trained and intelligent animal that he was, continued on to the proper place, then wheeled about just ahead of Ahndee and Klairuhnz.

Reaching forward, Ahndee grabbed Bill’s limp arm and shook him. “Are you all right, Bili? Are you hurt?” he shouted anxiously.

Then he turned to Klairuhnz. “Your help, My Lord, he’s all but unconscious. Let’s get him behind us, ere those bastards cut him down.”

Bili could hear all and could feel movements on either side of him, but neither his lips nor his limbs would obey him. Fuzzily, he pondered on why Vahrohneeskos Ahndee would have addressed a mere roving bard as his lord.

Holding at the bridge where a flank attack was impossible had been a good idea. The blades of Ahndee and Klairuhnz wove a deadly pattern, effectively barring their foemen access to the dazed and helpless Bili, now drooping in his saddle. Thanks to the narrowness of the span, only two men at a time could attack the defenders, thus nullifying their numerical superiority. On a man-to-man basis, the ill-armed crew were no match for experienced warriors. The length of the bridge, from the forest side to the center, was soon goreslimed and littered with dropped weapons and hacked, hoofmarked corpses.

But the repeated assaults had taken other toll. Ahndee sat in agony, his left arm uselessly dangling at his side. He had used its armored surface to ward off a direct blow from a huge and weighty club, while he slashed the clubman’s unprotected throat. He was certain that the concussion of that blow had broken the arm. Klairuhnz’s horse now lay dead and the Bard stood astride the body. He had hopefully mindspoken Mahvros, but the stallion’s refusal had been final. He had been promised dire consequences should he attempt to either unseat Mahvros’s hurt brother or take his place on the big black.

Bili regained his senses just in time to see Klairuhnz sustain a vicious cut on the side of his neck and fall, blood spurting over his shoulderplates. Roaring “UP HARZBURK!” through force of habit, Bili kneed Mahvros forward and plugged the gap, admonishing the horse not to step on the fallen man. A swing of his axe crushed both the helmet and the skull of Klairuhnz’s killer. As the man pitched from his saddle, Bili belatedly recognized the face. It was that of Hofos, Komees Hari’s majordomo!

Then there were two more enemy horsemen on the bridge before him. But this time it was Ahndee who was reeling on his kak, unable to do more than offer a rapidly weakening defense. Bili disliked attacking a horse, but the circumstances left him no option. He rammed his axe spike into the rolling eye of his opponent’s mount, and in the brief respite afforded him while the death-agonized beast proceeded to buck its rider over the low railing and into the cold creek, he swung his axe into the unarmored chest of Ahndee’s adversary. Deep went that fearsome blade, biting through hide jerkin and shirt and skin and flesh and bone and into the quivering heart itself!

Someone in the decreasing group between the bridge and the forest cast a javelin and Mahvros took it in the thick muscles of his off shoulder. He screamed his pain and shock and would have reared, had Bill’s mindspeak not restrained him. Grimly, the young man dismounted and gently withdrew the blessedly unbarbed head. Backing the big horse, he turned him, beaming, “Go back to the hall, Mahvros.”

“Mahvros still can fight, Brother!” the black balked stubbornly.

“I know that my brother can still fight.” Bili mindspoke with as much patience as he could show. “But that wound is deep. If I stayed on your back, you might be permanently crippled.” Thinking quickly, he added, “Besides, the other man can fight no longer and must be returned to the hall. A horse of your intelligence is needed to keep this stupid gelding moving, yet see that it does not move too fast so that the man falls off.”

Bili was not exaggerating. Ahndee had dropped both sword and reins, and nothing save the high cantle and pommel of his war kak were keeping his limp, unconscious body on his horse. Bili grasped the grey’s bridle, faced him about, slapped his rump, and shouted. Even so, the grey made to stop at the end of the bridge, but a sharp nip of Mahvros’s yellow teeth changed his mind.

Laying down both axe and javelin, Bili grasped Klairuhnz under the arms and dragged him back from the windrow of the dead men and horses, propping him against the rail. Odd, he thought vaguely, I think he’s still alive. He should be well dead, by now, considering where the sword caught him….

Striding back, he picked up the short, heavy dart, drew back his brawny arm, then chose a target and made a running cast. One of the men with only a breastplate was adjusting his stirrup when the missile took him in the small of the back, tearing through his guts and far enough out from his belly to prick his horse when he stumbled against its flank. Scream of horse almost drowned out scream of man. The riderless mount galloped for the forest and most of the remaining ruffians made move to follow.

But a big, spikebearded man headed them off and, beating at them with the flat of a broadsword, drove them back and commenced to harangue them. Bili, leaning on his gory axe amid the dead men whom he expected to soon join, could pick out words or detached phrases of the angrily shouted monologue, despite the fact that he had not heard Old Ehleeneekos spoken in ten years.

“… cowards … to fear only one, dismounted man … creatures of filth … gotten on filtheating sows by spineless cur dogs … gain your freedom? … lead all men to the True Faith? … treasure and women? … Salvation… killing heathens…”

Bili shook his head, hoping to clear it of the remaining dizziness. A true product of his race and upbringing, he had no fear of death. He was a bit sorry that it was to come so early in his life, but then every warrior faced his last battle sooner or later. He would have liked to have seen his father and his sweet mothers just once more, but it would rejoice them when they learned that he had fallen in honor, his foemen’s blood clotting his axe from spikepoint to butt. And his brother Djehf, six months his junior, would certainly make a good Chief and Thoheeks of Morguhn, maybe even a better one than he would have made.

“DIRTMEN!” He shouted derisively at the band of ruffians. “Rapists of ewes and she-goats! Your fellow bastards here are lonely. Are you going to come join them, or are you going home to bugger your own infant sons? That’s an old Ehleen custom, isn’t it? Along with eating dung?”

He carried on in the same vein, each succeeding insult more repugnant and offensive than its predecessor. Their leader wisely held his tongue, hoping that Bill’s sneering contumely would arouse an aggressive spark in his battered band where his own oration had failed.

At length, one of the tatterdemalions was stung to the quick. Shouting maniacally, waving his aged saber, he spurred his horse at the lone figure on the bridge. Bili stood his ground; to the watching men it appeared that he was certain to be ridden down. But Bili had positioned himself cunningly, and he judged the oncoming rider to be something less than an accomplished horseman.

The horse had to jump in order to clear the two dead horses blocking the direct route to the axeman. Before the rider could recover enough of his balance to use his sword, Bili had let his axe go to swing by its wrist thong, grabbed a sandaled foot and a thick, hairy leg, and heaved him over the other side of his mount!

Dropping his sword and squalling in terror, the Ehleen clawed frantically for a grip on the bridgerail. He missed and commenced a despairing howl which was abruptly terminated when his hurtling body struck the swiftflowing water. He had been one of the “lucky ones,” arrayed in an almost complete set of threequarter plate. Since he could not swim anyway, he sank like a stone.

But Bili had not watched. No sooner was the man out of the saddle, than he who had unseated him was in it, trying to turn the unsettled and unfamiliar annual in tune to meet the fresh attackers he could hear pounding up. Hear … but not see, for once more the sick, tight dizziness was attempting to claim his senses. When at last he got the skittish horse facing the forest, it was to dimly perceive the backs of the motley pack of skulkers pound-ing toward the forest, a small shower of arrows falling amongst them, the shafts glinting as they crossed a vagrant beam of moonlight.

Bili’s brain told his arm to lift the axe, his legs to urge the new horse on in pursuit of the fleeing ruffians … vainly. His legs might have ceased to exist, while his axe now seemed to weigh tons. The weight was just too much and he let it go, then pitched out of the lowcut saddle to land on the narrow railing above the deep, icy water.

Hari and Drehkos caught the senseless body just in time to prevent Bili from joining his latest victim on the bed of the stream. While Komees Djeen led his men on the trail of the fleeing force, the brothers bore the Thoheek’s son to where Vaskos and his orderly, Frahnkos, were tending Ahndee. When Bili’s battered helmet was removed, it was found to be filled with both old and fresh blood from a nasty scalp wound. Nor was that the extent of his hurts. Once his body lay prone, a stream of blood crept from the top of his left boot, and examination revealed a deep stab in the side of the calf. Also, as was usual for a man who had fought for any length of time in plate, the skin surfaces of his muscular body from shoulders to knees were one vast bruise, while his clothing dripped of sweat.

Vaskos’s gentle probing had early established that Ahndee’s left radius was broken. It was a clean break, however, and had been more or less immobilized by the tight-fitting armguard which had encased it. The broken arm did not disturb the Keeleeohstos and his orderly. What did was not visible until more armor was stripped off. Both the left elbow and shoulder had been sprung from their sockets! So employing rough-and-ready battle-field expedients between them, the officer and the soldier snapped the two joints back into place, then set and splintered the forearm.

Poor Ahndee recovered brief, screaming consciousness, but quickly and mercifully lapsed back into insensibility.

Upon Komees Djeen’s return, it was decided that since a physician was known to be in residence to attend the ailing Thoheeks, the wounded men would be borne to Morguhn Hall, guarded by him and his troopers, while the remainder of the party returned to Horse Hall with the captured weapons, gear, and horses, most of which Hari recognized as his anyway. The broken, bloody corpses would be fetched in after sunrise.

None of Komees Djeen’s faithful Freefighters made mention of the armored man they had found wandering the forest in a daze, nor did the old Strahteegos for he had recognized his prisoner as Komees Hari’s valet, Kreestofohros.

It was a long, slow journey, for horse litters could not move so rapidly as riders. Dawn was paling the sky ere the van pounded their saberpommels on the thick, barred gates of Morguhn Hall.

At about the same time, in the town of Morguhnpolis, another nobleman was hearing the report of a spikebearded visitor. The visitor knelt before the lord, still in his hacked and dented armor, a bloodcrusty rag wrapped around his head and another around his right hand.

When he had mumbled the last word of his summary, the nobleman hissed, “You clumsy, witless, bungling fool!”

Jerkily, the armored man crawled a few feet closer and, raising his hands in supplication, stuttered, “Please … if it please my Lord … we did all that mortal flesh…”

A chopping motion of the nobleman’s head silenced the supplicant. Leaning far back in his chair, he jerked a dark red rose from a silver vase on the table beside him and pressed it to his nostrils, snarling around the stem, “Get away, you pig! Your mortal flesh stinks, and nothing you have done or countenanced this cursed night pleases me!

“What made you think we wanted the Thoheek’s son killed, you witless ape? Who gave you leave to think, anyway? Better, far better, for you had you heeded the good Lady’s advice!”

“But … but, the men …” the spikebearded one started.

“Damn you!” growled the nobleman. “You were represented to me as a veteran soldier, who had command experience. If you truly commanded soldiers, why can you not handle a pack of oafish servants and stupid peasants and city gutterscum? Never mind. I don’t wish to hear any more of your excuses. You answer my questions, no more!

“Succinctly, then, thanks to your ill-conceived and amateurishly staged little skirmish, the Staheerforeeah has at least twelve members dead and as many more missing or unaccounted for, not to mention the losses of painfully collected arms and equipment. And what did this blood sacrifice buy our Holy Cause? Hah! Two barbarian mercenaries and possibly a traveling bard slain; and two nobles wounded! And one of these nobles is a Kath’ahrohs, to all intents and purposes, whom we still have reason to think we can convert to the True Faith. As for the other … what in God’s name did you dimwits expect to accomplish in the death of Thoheek’s son, Bili?”

Eagerly, the soldier grasped at this straw which might possibly redeem him. “It has worked very well, Lord, in other places. Slay the heir and you put question to the lawful succession, and…”

The nobleman’s fleshy lips curled back to expose his even teeth-amazingly white for a man of his middle years. “You ambulatory dungheapl This is not ‘other places’!” he snarled. “True, the present Thoheeks is in ill health and, I have been reliably informed, is partially paralyzed and assuredly dying, though slowly. But-and of this matter you might have inquired before you did the irrevocable, the Lady could have told you every bit as easily as I—the death of Bili would lawfully throw the succession to Djehf, his junior by about six months. The death of Djehf would lawfully make Thoheeks of Tchahrlee, Bili’s younger by roughly a year. The death of Tchahrlee would see the accession of Gilbuht, and the death of Gilbuht would give the title to Djaikuhb; and so on. Dammit, the Thoheeks has nine living sons! How many do you think the Staheerforeeah could assassinate, ere we all had a Confederation expeditionary force breathing down our necks, eh? You and those fools you presumably lead may have suicidal tendencies, but I, for one, have no wish to adorn a damned cross!

“Not only have you wasted good men on a fool’s errand, but this bit of stupidity may well have jeopardized the entire structure of the Staheerforees in this duchy, especially if any of those missing have been taken alive!”

“But … but, My Lord,” stuttered Spikebeard. “None of … they are all … all have taken the Sacred Oaths, they would never betray…”

The noble leaned forward and hissed scornfully. “Have you never heard of torture, then? Oaths, sacred or otherwise, mean nothing to a man whose pain is sufficiently unbearable! Oh, damn you to the lowest reaches. If they have one of ours we may have to strike ere our time is truly ripe, ere our western brothers have done their own work and can join us!”

Spikebeard raised his bloody head, squared his shoulders, fanaticism gleaming from his eyes. “Nonetheless, My Lord, you must know that we will triumph, for God, the one True God, is on our side!”

The noble sighed. “Oh, yes, we’ll triumph. But lacking surprise, truly overwhelming forces, and more professionals than this Duchy can presently count, the butcher’s bill will be high, very high. One look at your sorry state would tell anyone that!

“Speaking of which, one would hope that you came into the city unseen? Did you scale the wall, come through our tunnel?”

The kneeling soldier crimsoned and fidgeted. Through trembling lips, he at last managed to mumble. “I … I rode through the … the gate, My Lord. But … but I … I had my cloak so arranged that … that none could possibly have seen my armor and…”

The noble clenched his fists and his dark eyes flashed fire. “What in hell kind of soldier are you, or were you ever really a soldier at all? Don’t you think the mercenaries at the east gate could tell you were wearing armor, cloak or no cloak, you idiot? A man carries his body differently in armor, any fool knows that!

“So you rode through the east gate, bleeding, in armor, and wearing a sword, and, fool that you are, you came directly to my house, eh? Damn your eyes, I should have your life … would, were you not so highly connected elsewhere!”

The kneeling man’s face had faded from crimson to pasty white, his lord’s reputation for cruelty being well known and equally well earned. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it with a snap when the noble added, “And still may, if I hear one more odious yap from your dog’s mouth!”

He struck a small gong on the table at his side. Two brawny, olive-skinned guards opened the door and entered, bowing.

Vahrohnos Myros waved a graceful, manicured hand at Spikebeard. “Take him to your barracks and strip off his armor, every scrap of it, mind you. You, Ahngehlos, bundle them well, I want no one to suspect what you’re carrying. Bear the armor to Paulos, the smith. Tell him to immediately break up the plates, burn off the leather, and dip the metal in acid, before he scatters it throughout his scrap heap.

“As for Captain Manos here, humm. Feelos, send a man for a physician to tend a man injured in a barracks brawl. By the time the doctor arrives, I will expect his patient to look the part. Take him away!”