Swords of the Horseclans

13

It was almost a week before Milo made it across the river. The wall had to be dismantled, of course, but that alone would not have detained him, for Lord Alexandras had left a couple of biremes and crews for his use. However, when certain of the Middle Kingdoms’ nobles were apprised that there would be no battle, after all, they split into two factions at the cores of-which were the contingents, from Harzburk and Pitzburk. Armed to the teeth, the factions mounted and rode into the fields west of the camp. And the resulting melee was only the first and largest. It was a very hectic period for the High-Lord.

At length, he had all the northern troops and their battered nobles on the march, their units separated and shepherded by strong bodies of Confederation regulars and Confederation-contracted Freefighters.

Dressed in his best clothing and finest armor, Milo strode out of his pavilion and had already ordered a charger when he felt a familiar touch on the back of his neck. Behind him stood the elephant.

Sunshine—she had chosen the name herself as her mindspeak improved with usage—was noticeably sleeker, as she well should have been, thought Milo, considering the fantastic amounts of food she had consumed. From all over the camp, men had come not just to see her, but to watch her eat. And “hungry as the elephant” had become a common expression to Milo’s army.

When Milo turned, Sunshine moved closer and placed her trunk tip on his shoulder so that its appendage might caress his skin. “Please God-Milo,” she begged, “do not send Sunshine away from you today. Take her with you.”

“Sunshine,” Milo gently and patiently mindspoke, “we have been through all this before. Where I live is cold for much of the year, colder than the land from which you came. You would quickly die there. You must go back south, Sunshine, but Gil will be with you all the way. He will see that you eat all you want and that no man harms you. And when I come to your land, I will visit you. Will not that make Sunshine happy?”

Her answer surprised him. “Let Sunshine bear God-Milo across the river, then, please. You will ride safer on Sunshine than on that skinny-legged little creature.” She pointed her trunk at where Milo’s groom stood waiting with a seventeen-hand war horse. “If you fight, how can that one protect you? Sunshine has slain many two-legs.”

“There will be no fight, Sunshine,” Milo assured her. “Those who were my enemies are now my friends, and you must promise not to hurt the few of them who remain beyond the river; you and Gil will be traveling with them.”

“Sunshine will not hurt any creatures Gil does not tell her to hurt,” she spoke. Then, “But … please ride Sunshine … ?”

“Why, Sunshine,” Milo asked, “is it so important to you that you carry me across the bridge?”

Sunshine came closer, tenderly wrapping him about with her trunk. “God-Milo is the first two-leg who was ever good to Sunshine, who spoke to her and treated her like … like a two-leg. Sunshine cannot stay with God-Milo to serve him all her days, as she should. Will not God-Milo allow her to serve him once… ?”

What the hell, thought Milo, how much more impressive an appearance could I make than arriving on an elephant?

“Gil!” he farspoke. “Have you rigged any sort of saddle for Sunshine?”

Gil stepped from behind the elephant, a sheepish grin on his face and his arms filled with an altered saddle and an assortment of odd harness.

“Damn it!” exclaimed Milo aloud. “You two planned this in advance! Admit it, kinsman!”

“Yes, God-Milo, Sunshine and I planned,” Gil mind-spoke. “But, God-Milo, she is very grateful to you … and she loves you. Often has our Clanbard said that nothing is so unkind as to force a man or woman to swallow honest gratitude unexpressed.”

Milo mindcalled the groom and the three of them saddled Sunshine. The saddle perfectly fitted the area just behind her head.

That done, Milo addressed Gil. “All right, you ride my charger and get a pack animal for your gear.” He turned back to his huge mount “Very well, my dear, you may help me aboard.”

“So the guard,” Thoheeks Mahvros continued, “hearing her shout in some unknown tongue, came into the tent and found her crouching before this device. Exactly what happened then, no one knows, not even the guard, who can only say that he fended her off with the butt of bis spear, then ran. He thought her a witch, you see.”

“And he may not have been too far off the mark,” thought Milo. “Not if she was what I suspect.”

“When Lord Grahvos and I and the rest came in, she was stretched on the floor here.” Mahvros indicated a spot on the carpet, stiff and crusty with dried blood.

-“The left side of her skull was cracked, just above and behind the ear, and she no longer was breathing.

“The device spoke in a man’s voice, but none of us could understand the words, though some later said they thought to have once heard a similar language. None could recall where or when or what it was called. The voice but spoke a short time, then Lord Grahvos examined it and persuaded others of us to do so. It made various noises for a while. Then suddenly they ended and it has not been touched since.”

Milo squatted before the odd chest and lifted the mike, then studied the various dials and knobs and switches adorning the exposed face. Turning to King Zenos, Thoheeks Grimnos, and the rest, he said, “This, gentlemen, is what the people who lived seven hundred years ago called a ‘radio.’ It was used to transmit spoken messages long distances. There is nothing of witchcraft about it, although I think that the purposes of the men and women who constructed this one and used it are as sinister as any wizard and warlock who ever took breath.”

A closer examination revealed why the noises had so suddenly ceased. The cord that had been connected to a second chest had been somehow disconnected. Milo reconnected it and the resultant spark brought starts to the other men. As the instrument warmed up, it first emitted a low hum, then a faint static.

“Is anyone receiving my transmission?” Milo spoke into the mike. He said it again, then grinned ruefully and switched from Ehleenokos to what he hoped, after all these years, was twentieth-century American usage.

There was a louder crackling, then a voice answered in the same language. “Yes, your transmission is being received. Who are you? Where is Lily … uh, Dr. Lillian Landor?”

“If you mean the woman who last used this radio, she’s dead,” answered Milo shortly. “As for me, I’m Milo Morai, High-Lord of Kehnooryos Ehlahs. With whom am I speaking?”

The voice became agitated. “Yon … you’re the mutant, the one who’s lived in a single body since the war?”

“Okay, you know who I am!” snapped Milo. “Now, who the hell are you?”

But a second voice cut in to answer him, a smooth, polished, unruffled voice. “Mr. Morai, I am Dr. Sternheimer, the Senior Director of the J. & R. Kennedy Memorial Center. We would very much like to meet with you, at your convenience, of course. We can pick you up and fly you down from anywhere within a two-hundred mile radius of the Center.”

Milo’s laugh was harsh and humorless. “Oh, yes, I’ll just bet you types would very much like to get your claws into me. And I can imagine why, too! So you can dig out of my flesh whatever it is that makes us more or less immortal. No, thank you, Dr. Sternheimer. I don’t care to be the subject in a vivisection!”

“Please, wait, you don’t understand, Mr. Morai …” Sternheimer began.

But Milo cut him off. “No, I don’t understand, Doctor; I don’t understand why you creeps continue to embroil yourselves in the affairs of the Ehleens. What can you hope to gain? Are you running low on bodies?”

He was answered with a question. “Mr. Morai, are you an American citizen?”

“I was,” replied Milo. “But what has that to do with my previous question, Doctor?”

Sternheimer’s tones became fervid. “We, Mr. Morai, are attempting to re-establish The United States of America.”

This time Milo’s laughter was real. “Doctor, if you’re not pulling my leg, I advise you to have a long chat with one of your shrinks. Have you lost track of time? Doctor, this is, I believe, the twenty-seventh century A.D. The United States, as you and I knew it, has been dead a long time. Why not let it rest in peace?”

“Because, Mr. Morai, I am a patriot!” announced Sternheimer.

Milo laughed again. “So patriotic are you—or were you—that you disregarded the orders of the Congress and your superiors in H.E.W. to discontinue your vampiric experiments and destroy all notes and records of them.”

“But I knew that our work was terribly important, Mr. Morai, and events bear out my belief!” Sternheimer exclaimed. “Besides, who were those damned, ignorant politicians to dictate to me?”

“They were the elected congressmen of the citizens whose taxes paid for your experiments, Doctor,” said Milo coolly.

This time, it was Sternheimer who expelled a snort of hard laughter. “The Great Unwashed Masses? Oh, come now, Mr. Morai, you know as well as I do that those congressional fools simply overreacted to a few letters from religious fanatics and the tripe churned out by a handful of newsmongering simpletons calling themselves ‘journalists’! When we re-establish our nation, there will be no such aggregation of august fools. The people will be governed sensibly, scientifically.”

“Forget it, Sternheimer.” Milo’s voice was become glacial. “I remind you again; this is not the world we knew, long ago. Today’s people need you and your plans of a scientific dictatorship as much as they need a hole in the head. And I serve you fair warnirfg: keep your damned vampires out of my lands—which now include the Southern Kingdom as well as Karaleenos and Kehnooryos Ehlahs, incidentally. I’ll scotch every one of your people I can lay my hands on, Sternheimer, and don’t you forget it!”

Sternheimer abruptly turned on the charm once more. “My dear Mr. Morai, you do misunderstand. How I wish we could speak face to face, man to man, so that I might convince you of …”

“Sternheimer, you couldn’t convince me that dung stinks! So don’t waste your breath trying psychology on me. Just remember what I said, what I promised to do to any of your parasites I catch, and keep them out of my Confederation. I expect I’ll have my work cut out for me during the next couple of centuries, and I’ll have no mercy on any of your ghouls who traipse about stirring things up.” Milo hurled the mike to the floor.

“Wait a minute, Mr. Morai.” Sternheimer’s next words remained unheard, for Milo spun the frequency knob, losing the nasal voice in a welter of static.

The High-Lord disconnected the power source, then ordered his guards that the two chests be carried to the center of the bridge and dumped into the river.

Nothing that was done to Zastros’ body could evoke even the fluttering of an eyelid—shaking him did no good, nor did slaps or blows or dagger points pushed into the most sensitive spots on his body, not even torch flames applied to his fingertips and toes.

“And he has been just so, Lord Milo, since the night we came to depose him,” asserted Mahvros. “He swallows liquids if we open his jaws and dribble them into his mouth, but he cannot eat.”

Milo gazed down on the inert body, now bruised and burned and bleeding. He attempted to enter the mind, but he found it shielded. He then surmised the actual fact, though he never knew it for such.

“Gentlemen, I imagine that Zastros’ wife, who was the agent of a very evil man far south of here, drugged her husband. She probably wished him unconscious while she used that radio to contact her lord. We’ll never know the antidote that might restore him to consciousness until we know what drugs she used, and she took that knowledge with her to her grave. His body would starve to death ere we might chance upon that antidote. The kindest thing to do now is to grant him a clean, quick death.”

So saying, he drew his dirk.

Lillian heard it all, heard both sides of the mutant’s conversation with the Senior Director, heard the order to destroy her transceiver—her only possible link with the Center—heard all their attempts to arouse Zastros’ body; though she felt each and every excruciating agony and screamed almost incessantly, no single sound emerged from the body’s lips. Then she heard Milo’s last words, heard his weapon snick from its case.

She felt fingertips move on the chest, locate the spot and lift away, to be replaced by the knife point. Then she was silently screaming out the unbearable anguish of the cold, sharp blade entering the body’s heart; unmoving, she writhed in pain as he jerked the double-edged weapon, slicing the organ to speed death.

Frantically, Lillian cast about, seeking a sleeping or unconscious body—any body, human or otherwise—fruitlessly. Faintly, she heard voices and the clumping of heavy boots. Then there was silence.

Thus, did Dr. Lillian Landor (holder of four degrees), who had hated all male humans for most of the seven hundred years of her life, at last meet death … in a man’s body.