The Coming of the Horseclans

24

Count Normun was seething with suppressed anger and felt himself to be much put-upon. It was most unfair, he felt, for his cousin, King Mahrtuhn, to go galloping off and leave him in nominal command of the foot-troops and baggage-train. Realizing that anything vaguely resembling honor or glory or loot would be over and done long before he and his “command” came up, and sulking in consequence, he had allowed the interval—originally about a day’s march—between the head of his column and the tail of the bulk of the cavalry to nearly double. The heads of the drums were covered and the troops sauntered along the roadway at whatever pace suited them. Their pikes were carried slanted at every angle and, as the weather was quite warm, many had removed their helmets and unlaced their brigandines. The lack of any semblance of discipline or order was contagious and was even beginning to spread into the ranks of Captain Looisz Klahrk’s twelve hundred mercenary heavy infantry.

Count Normun sat slouched in his saddle, one knee crooked around the pommel. He was discussing various aspects of the hunting of deer with Captain Klahrk, who—though the younger son of a younger son and, consequently, landless—was nobly-born and spoke the same “language” as his titular commander.

Although his own hard-bitten troops—despite the best efforts of their brutal but effective non-coms—were commencing to break ranks and straggle in emulation of the light infantry, Klahrk felt little cause for worry. The two columns of cavalry, which had preceded this one, were sure to have gone through this country like a dose of salts and any living human beings left in their wake were probably still running. Seasoned campaigner that he was, he had taken certain precautions, ordering three tens of the hundred dragoons, originally detailed as baggage-wagon guards, to position at point and flanks, and yet another ten to remain several hundred yards behind the last of the lumbering wagons and the gaggle of camp-followers.

Captain Klahrk was in the process of regaling Count Normun with the story of an exceptionally exciting shaggy-bull hunt in which he had taken part some years before in the Principality of Redn. All at once, both his horse and the count’s screamed and reared. Klahrk managed to retain his seat, but the count was hurled onto the stones of the roadbed and only his helmet saved him from a fractured skull.

As Klahrk fought to control his maddened mount, the woods on both sides of the column began to resound the deadly thruuummm of bowstrings and the ah- was abruptly thick with hard-driven arrows. Twenty-five yards back, a pair of huge-boled trees crashed down on the already-disordered infantry, squashing them like bugs. And the arrows continued to ssiisshh their song of death, coming in on a flat trajectory and—seemingly of their own volition—cunningly seeking out every gap of unlaced brigandine, every helmetless head or unprotected throat, skewering arms and legs and faces. No sooner had Klahrk brought his arrowed horse under control, than the poor beast was struck again. At that point, Klahrk gave up, slipped his feet from the stirrups and leaped onto the roadway. There, he drew his sword and, seemingly heedless of the feathered death hissing around him, commenced to try to whip his troops into a formation of sorts, to repel the cavalry charge which was sure to follow the arrow-storm.

Impelled by his valiant example, those of his sergeants still on their feet emulated him, and soon the familiar curses and threats lulled the men’s panic somewhat Shortly, his condotta had begun to form—their twelve-: foot pikes properly slanted and faced toward the south, the only feasible route for an attack of cavalry. As the fire of the arrows abated to some degree, the kneeling front rank announced that they could feel the vibration of many hoofs, transmitted by the road-stones; Klahrk and his non-coms redoubled their efforts, for the more depth the formation possessed, the better then- chances were of stopping the horsemen.

Soon everyone could feel the thud-thudding of the approaching attackers. Then, war cries became audible and the veteran pikemen braced themselves, their earlier panic dissipated. The horses and then” shouting, screaming, cursing riders drew closer and closer and, at any moment, Klahrk and his condotta expected to see the first fours come galloping around the bend in the road. They waited, every man’s nerves drawn tight as a bowstring. Then came an unfamiliar bugle call.

It was the crackling and crashing in the dark, roadside woods that first announced to Klahrk that he was about to be flanked.

“Porkypine!” he roared to his underlings. “Column one, right, FACE, Column ten, left, FACE. Columns one and ten, KNEEL! Columns one and ten, low slant, PIKES!”

And the discipline of drill-field and battlefield did the rest. In short order, the survivors of Klahrk’s condotta presented a facade of bristling pike-points, very reminiscent of the animal the formation emulated. But it was all in vain, for—when at last delivered—the charge was not against Klahrk’s dangerous veterans, but, rather, against the milling, all but helpless light infantry, who clogged the road behind them.

The heavy-armed Grey Horse Squadron wreaked truly fearful casualties among the already-terrified amateur soldiers. Hundreds went down under the dripping swords (and those who did not ran squalling in every direction—pursued relentlessly by the grim, iron-scale-armored men Jon the big grey horses. Discarding everything which might, in any way, retard them, the fugitives ran northward toward the comparative safety of the baggage-train. Some reached it, only to discover that they had fled the fangs of the wolf and escaped into the jaws of the panther! For, by then, the nomads had already slain the wagoneers and their guards and most of the camp followers, had looted what they could carry, and were commencing to set fire to what they could not transport. They fell on the light infantrymen with gusto!

Pinned down as he was by the recommenced arrow-fire, Captain Klahrk had made no attempt to go to the aid of the light infantry. Besides, he had rationalized, what good would it have done, anyway? Who ever heard of infantry attacking mounted cavalry? He had—at great personal risk—strapped a body-shield to his back, run out, and dragged the semi-conscious Count Normun back—only to have an arrow kill the nobleman as he was lifting him over the forwardmost file of pikemen. Doggedly, he held his impregnable formation, even as the rising billows of smoke announced the firing of the wagons.

Then, all around his porkypine, bone-whistles shrilled and the arrows ceased to fly. Down from the north, trotted a column of disciplined—if somewhat blood-splashed cavalry—dragoons on grey horses. They halted at a hundred yards’ distance. More of the ominous crashing indicated that additional cavalry were within the cover of the woods. Around the bend of the road, from the south, appeared the vanguard of what seemed to be a sizable number of light cavalry—western nomads, from the look of them.

Klahrk was of the opinion that he was about to fight his last battle and was mentally framing a stirring address to his doomed command when, out of the dragoons’ ranks, a vaguely familiar man rode forth, to rein up just beyond the pike-points.

The rider—by dress, obviously an officer—lowered his beavor and shouted, “By God, you bastards are professionals or I’m a bit of mule’s dungl Whose fornicating j company is this?”

Klahrk shouldered his way through the ranks of his men. “Mine!” he shouted. “Looisz Klahrk’s. Who wants to know?”

Then he saw the horseman’s face at close range. “Djeen!” He grinned, hugely. “Djeen Mai! Why you old boar, you! I’d have thought that the law-keepers, somewhere, would have caught and hung you long since; if a jealous husband or vengeful father hadn’t beaten them to it. If you engineered this ambuscade, my compliments, it was beautifully designed and executed. King Mahrtuhn’ll be excreting red-hot pokers when he hears of it. You cost me a good three hundred killed and wounded. But I’ve still enough to take a fair toll of …”

Djeen raised his hand. “Hold on, hold on, old friend. I’ve no desire to fight you! Tell me, has King Mahrtuhn paid you?” At Klahrk’s nod, he went on.

“I’m in service to Lord Alexandras of Pahpahs, who means to make himself High Lord of Kehnooryohs Ehlahs—all of it, as it was three hundred years ago, if I know My Lord—and think of the pickings of that!”

Klahrk frowned and shook his head. “Djeen, if you’re hinting that I change sides—foreswear my oath to save my hide—forget it. I swore King Mahrtuhn three months service and took his gold and I’ll not go back on my word to him. As well as we know each other, in fact, I’m surprised that you would suggest such a thing to me!”

“Well,” Djeen sighed, “it was just a thought. But there are different ways to serve an employer, Looisz. For instance, there’re a goodly number, I doubt me not, of wounded back there.” He hooked his thumb northward. “They’re in serious need of attention. They really should be gotten back to Kuhmbrulun. What of your stores we didn’t lift, will be burned to the axles by the time you get to them, and you’re going to play pure hell, trying to march on without them through a countryside the dragoons have already picked clean! Then, too, I’d not be at all surprised but what the Prince of Fredrik was very interested when our messengers informed him that damned near every mother’s-son in Kuhmbrulun was deep in the heart of Kehnooryohs Ehlahs. Yes, Looisz, there’re many, many different ways of serving one’s employer.” Djeen reined half around and extended his right hand to grip that of his old friend. “I lost half a dozen troopers,” he said in parting. “I’ll leave their mounts for you and your sergeants. You needn’t fear for the safety of any messengers you should decide to send south—if you do so decide; they’ll be passed, never you worry.”

While they had been conversing, the nomads had clattered off, headed south and west. When Djeen rejoined his command, the squadron left the littered, blood-splotched road and were soon lost to sight, in the forest.

By the time Klahrk’s men had done what they could for the wounded and salvaged what little they were able to salvage of the stores in the merrily blazing wagons, the mercenary captain had come to a decision. He carefully drilled one of his sergeants, until the man could repeat the message word for word three times running. Then he gave him one of the grey horses and sent him southward at a gallop to seek out Duke Herbut, commander of the main contingent of dragoons.

The nomads had driven off most of the horses and oxen and mules, but a few had been unavoidably slain; these, Klahrk had his men flay and butcher; then set them to cooking the meat, ere it began to spoil.

Remembering the topography of the country they had traversed, he and his condotta—bearing with them the wounded and such supplies and equipment as they possessed—withdrew a half-mile up the road. There, on a meadow which was near to an adequate source of water, they ditched and mounded the outline of a castra in which to spend the night Early in the morning, they set about palisading it with logs, hewed in the nearby forest and snaked out by men and the five horses.

When, nearly three days later, Duke Herbut and some six thousand cavalry arrived, it was before a stout little emergency fort. After he and captain Klahrk had conferred briefly, the duke detached two squadrons to escort infantry and wounded on their trek north, then he and the other four squadrons spurred hard for Kuhmbrulun.

When word was brought to the council, the chiefs roared and hugged each other and danced joyfully. Djeen Mai and Sam Tchahrtuhz beat their thighs and howled their merriment. Even undemonstrative old Lord Alexandros allowed himself a broad smile of satisfaction at this unqualified success of his brain-child.

“So,” commented Milo, when the hubbub had died down, “they swallowed it, hook, line, and bloody sinker! Well, deduct six thousand Kahtahphraktoee and deduct the thousand or so who survived the ambush and deduct the four thousand casualties that Djeen estimates we inflicted, and your remainder is about five thousand cavalry. They’re completely unsupported and they’ve lost the bulk of their supplies; they’re nearly forty leagues deep in basically hostile territory with a ravaged countryside behind them. I shouldn’t think they’d present any appreciable danger to us, not unless the others come to realize the deception when they arrive in Kuhmbrulun, and hotfoot it back to reinforce. Barring that, we should be able to crush or scatter this kinglet’s troops at will.”

But Lord Alexandras shook his white head. “I beg pardon, my lord Milos, but I must disagree with you; furthermore, I implore you not to underestimate King Mahrtuhn’s abilities, for he is quite an able strahteegohs. He rode ahead with the bulk of the nobility, not for personal glory, but because they are the most effective and formidable men that he has. Like your nomads, these men are, from the very cradle, bred to war and most are masters of every conceivable weapon. They are courageous and hard fighters, possess a strict and highly complex code of honor, and are altogether worthy and dangerous foemen. Djeen, here, is nobly-born, being a nephew of the Duke of Pahtzburk; so, too, is Sam Tchahrtuhz, the natural son of the former Count of Zunburk.

“Noblemen, generally speaking, sire huge broods, and this is very necessary, for they tend to kill each other off at a prodigious rate. Their states are small, inherently hostile to each other, and voraciously land-hungry. It is probable that, within the last three hundred years, there have been but few twelve-months that did not see a conflict—of greater or lesser magnitude—somewhere within the north-barbarian states!

“As the land has been warred over for so many years, it is nowhere near as productive—in the senses of agriculture or husbandry—as even the border themes of the Ehleenoee lands; but, for all that, most of the so-called barbarian states are well-off, if not wealthy. The reason for this is that every city and, frequently, town has its shops and manufactories. Prior to the arrival of the tribe, I would, for instance, have felt it safe to say that fully eighty of every hundred swords swung from the South Ehleen lands to the North Ehleen Republic had blades produced in the Kingdom of Harzburk, or the Kingdom of Pitzburk or the Grand Duchy of Bethlemburk! Those three and their neighbors also produce a plethora of metal products—tools and utensils as well as weapons, not to mention the best and most modern of armor—not this heavy, clumsy, old-fashioned loricate or jazeran, mind you; but brigandines and cuirasses very similar to those of your people. But where yours are of leather, theirs are of steel! Also, the statelets produce glass, work gold and silver and fabricate jewelry.

“All in all, they are truly a gifted people and little deserve the appellation of ‘barbarian.’ Considering their technical skills and their military abilities, if they could stop fighting amongst themselves and present a united front, they could soon be the masters of all the Ehleenoee lands and the Black Kingdoms as well.

“No, Lord Milos, do not underestimate the danger that King Mahrtuhn and his nobility represent. I thank God that our ambush and the trick which followed it were successful. For, had they not been, we’d have been wiped out, had we been sufficiently stupid to stand and fight!”

But as it developed, the confrontation Lord Alexandras so dreaded did not come to pass, not that year. On receipt of certain information, King Mahrtuhn and nobles and men cut cross-country to the Trade road; spurred for Kuhmbrulun as fast as horseflesh could bear them, not even taking time to loot the areas through which they passed. Mahrtuhn could no longer afford to interfere in an Ehleenoee civil war, as he and his retinue now had one of their own to attend. His informants had brought the sad news that his brother, Duke Herbut, had gathered what few nobles remained in the kingdom and overawed or bought them. However it had been accomplished, he had usurped Mahrtuhn’s throne, declared Mahrtuhn and his chief supporters outlaw, and was busily hiring troops and fortifying the capital city. It seemed that Mahrtuhn had not only lost his stakes, but the dice as well!