The Savage Mountains

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And once more, Geres’ clear tenor voice pealed like a trumpet above the uproar, while Bili gripped the brass-shod ferrule in both his big hands, raised the banner high above his head and waggled the shaft For a long, breathless moment, it seemed that none could or would respond to the summons, but a pair of blood-splashed Freefighters hacked their way from out of the near edge of the press, then a half-dozen more appeared behind a destrier-mounted nobleman. Slowly, by dribbles and drops, the squadron’s ranks again filled and formed up behind the Red Eagle.

Not all those who had made that first charge returned, of course. Some were just too hard pressed to win free; some would never return. Bili took a position a good two hundred yards off the left flank of the milling mob, the absolute minimum distance cavalry needed to achieve the proper impetus in a charge. He had just gotten the under strength troops into squadron-front-shortened squadron-front—when the beat of hundreds of hooves sounded from somewhere within the narrow defile at his own left flank. The veteran troopers were already preparing to wheel in order to meet the self-announced menace, when the riders swept from the mouth of that precipitous gap. In the lead rode Ehrbuhn Duhnkin-recognizable because of his clean, unmarred armor—followed by the bowmasters he had commanded to such good effect. But now bows were all unstrung and cased, sabers were out and flashing in the sunlight.

While the Freefighters took their accustomed places in the shrunken ranks, Ehrbuhn rode up to the young ihoheeks, mindspeaking, “We had to miss first blood, Lord Bili, but I mean to be in at the kill. So do some others, incidentally. They it was who showed us the way here. In all courtesy, my lord, I think we should not begin the dance until the ladies arrive.”

With the Maidens riding in a place of honor on the exposed right flank and the grim-faced brahbehrnuh just behind Bili in the knot of heavily armed nobles at the center, the reformed and reinforced squadron struck the confused and reeling barbarians almost as hard as they had the first time. And human flesh could take no more. The savages broke, scattered before the big horses and armored warriors and streamed down the narrow vale in full flight.

Some escaped, but not many. The destriers and troop horses were tired, true, but so too were the ponies. Superior breeding and carefully nurtured top condition told in the end, at a cost of the ultimate price to most of the barbarians. The shaggy men were pursued to the very end of the long plateau, ridden down and slain. Then Bili forced a halt and rallied his force before commencing the slow, weary march back to the battlefield below the cliff.

Bili trudged beside Mahvros at the head of the exhausted squadron, having allowed none save the wounded to remain mounted. The black stallion was spent; he seemed barely able to place one hoof before the other and his proud head hung low, his shiny hide now befouled with dried lather and old sweat, with horse blood and man blood and dust Nor were the other horses of the battered squadron in better shape; many were, in fact, in worse.

The brahbehrnuh helped a reeling Freefighter onto the back of her relatively fresh charger and then strode up to pace beside Bili. After a moment, she addressed him in accented but passable trade Mehrikan.

“What is the polite form of address for my lord?” Still plodding, Bili turned his shaven head and looked into her bloodshot eyes, smiling tiredly.

“The Ehleenee say ‘thoheeks,’ my Freefighters say ‘duke’ and my friends call me simply ‘Bili.’ You are free to use whichever comes easiest to your lips, my lady.”

With a brusque nod of her helmeted head, she asked bluntly, “You and your folk are the born enemies of the Ahrmehnee and, indirectly, of me and my sisters. So then why do you fight and bleed and die for us? Was there not enough loot in the vales for both you and the cursed Muhkohee? Think you that even this will earn you Ahnnehnee forgiveness for your many and heinous crimes, Dookh Bili?”

A woman of spirit, thought Bili—no polite, meaningless words for her; she spits it right out and be damned to you if you don’t like it. “Because, my lady, me and mine no longer are the enemies of the Ahnnehnee. Even now does their great chief treat with our High Lord, and, soon, all these Ahnnehnee mountains and vales will be one with our mighty Federation of Peoples, your folk too, probably.”

“Never!” she spat. “Since the Time of the Earth-Gods have the Moon Maidens been sensibly ruled by women. Never will we submit to the utter debasement of the rule of mere men!”

Then did Bili Morguhn show a spark of that genius which was to win him a place high in the councils of his homeland. “But, my lady, did you not know?”

“Know what, lowlander?”

“Why this, my lady—the true rulers of the Confederation are women, the Undying High Ladies, Mara Morai and Aldora Linszee Treeah-Pohtohmas Pahpahs.”

Her jaw dropped open in wonderment, but she quickly recovered. “Then what of your infamous Undying Devil, this Milo.

“Lord Milo commands the Confederation armies, especially in the field on campaign,” Bili answered glibly. “You see, our armies are all of men.”

Her high brow wrinkled. “But, Dookh Bili, how can these High Ladies trust this Milo to not treacherously bring the armies against them, slay them and usurp their rightful place? The men of my own folk foolishly tried such many times over the centuries until, finally, we forbade mere men to carry weapons or know their use.” She smiled grimly. “That was in the time of my mother’s mother’s grandmother, and the Wise Women have ruled, unquestioned and unopposed, since.”

Bili shook his head. “Such harsh measures are generally unneeded in the lands of the Confederation, my lady. For one thing, the Undying High Ladies cannot be slain with weapons, but, more importantly, the High Lord would never do aught which might harm the Confederation. Moreover, he loves the Lady Mara and has great respect for the Lady Aldora. Thus has it been for six generations and more.”

They walked on in silence for a quarter-hour. At last, the brahbehrnuh announced, “When and where and how can I meet with one of these High Ladies, Doohk Bili? With our hold destroyed, we are cast adrift in a hostile world, with naught save the little we bear and wear. But I must be certain that my sisters and I—who are the last, pitiful remnant of our race, now—will receive land in return for our allegiances and service to your Lady rulers and that we will be allowed to practice our ancient rites and customs unmolested. These things must your Ladies avow to us who serve the Supreme Lady.”

Bili mused, trying to guess just what to say to this strange, handsome young woman, but, abruptly, the conversation became unimportant.

Many leagues to the north and west, in what had been the Hold of the Maidens, a defective timing device at last fulfilled its long-overdue function. A small charge exploded, hurling a barrel-size charge over the lip of the smoking fissure which was known as the Sacred Hoofprint. Far it fell, deeper and deeper into the very bowels of the uneasy mountain, into hotter and hotter regions, falling within bare seconds from degrees of hundreds into degrees of thousands. And, still falling free, its metal casing began to melt, dripping away, and its insulation burst into brief flame and then the immense charge exploded, its sound unheard by living ear.

A feeling of unbearable unease suddenly gripped Bili. His every nerve ending seemed to be screaming, “DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!”

Tired as they were, all the horses were uneasy, too, snorting and nodding, their nostrils dilated and eyes rolling, dancing with nervousness. As for Mahvros, the big black suddenly half-reared and almost bolted when three deer broke cover, dashing out of a dark copse to rocket downslope and over the edge of the plateau. Hard on their heels came a living carpet of small, scuttling beasts and, up ahead, a pair of mountain wolves and a tree cat loped along in the same direction, almost side by side.

Recalling that the High Lord had said prairiecats were but a mutation of tree cats and that many specimens of the latter could mindspeak, Bili attempted to range the fleeing feline but encountered only a jumble of inchoate terror.

Bili allowed his instinct to command him. “MOUNT!” he roared to those behind. “Mount and form column!” Following his own order, his weariness clean forgotten, he flung himself astride Mahvros, slapping his gambeson hood and helm back in place.

He had but barely forked his steed when the very earth shuddered strongly. Horses screamed; so, too, did some of the humans. The brahbehrnuh stumbled against the side of the dancing stallion, frantically grasping Bill’s stirrup leather for the support her feet could not find on the rippling ground. With no time or care for niceties, Bili grabbed the woman’s swordbelt and, lifting her effortlessly, placed her belly-down on his crupper.

Komees Hari came alongside, his big gray tight-reined. “It can only be an earthquake, Bili. I thought there was something odd about this damned plateau. We’ve got to get off it”

“THAT WAY!” Bili shouted, pointing to where the animals had disappeared, a hundred yards to his right. Mahvros was too submerged in terror to respond to mind-speak, so Bili reined him over. His booted heels beat a tattoo on the destrier’s barrel and evoked a willing response; exhaustion forgotten, the big black raced flat out in the track of the fleeing game beasts.

The column followed, while trees crashed around them and boulders shifted, slid and tumbled. After their lord they went, heedlessly putting their mounts at the impossibly narrow descent down the precipitous face of the plateau. Had the plateau been higher, none would have survived. Since it was much lower than in the northern reaches, all save the very tail of the line were galloping hard toward the south when, with a horrible, grinding roar, the entire rocky face dissolved and slid down upon itself.

Not until they were a bird-flight mile from what had been the foot of the plateau did Bili bring his command to a walk, then a halt on the brushy slope of a long, serpentine ridge. Not even there was the earth completely still, but the occasional tremors were quickly forgotten, erased from their minds by the terrible wonder on the northern horizon.

So huge that it looked close enough to touch, a boiling cloud of dense, multicolored smoke loomed, shot through with flame for all its immense and increasing height. Then with a clap of such magnitude that horses screamed and reared, while men and women slapped hands to abused ears and rolled on the heaving hillside in agony, some force shredded the cloud, leaving only tumbling, smoking black shapes of irregular conformation, rising, rising and whirling, then falling swiftly. And where, within sight, those shapes grounded, smoke and leaping flames burst up. One of the shapes fell, bouncing heavily, in the tiny vale betwixt the ridge and the hill beyond. It came finally to rest in an almost-dry streambed and, when the last tendrils of stream had died, Bili and the others could clearly see that it was simply a boulder. But what a boulder! A boulder big enough for two destriers to have stood upon, uncrowded.

And upon his broad face, certain cryptic carvings were plainly visible. At sight of them, the brahbehrnuh uttered a single, piercing shriek. Then her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she collapsed, bonelessly, at Bili’s feet.

Regardless of the gruesome task he had so recently completed, Master Ahlee’s garments and person were spotless when he came to render his report to Strahteegos Vaskos Daiviz of Morguhn. He had commanded the medical contingent of the High Lord’s force and, as soon as it had become apparent that the battle with the Ahrmehnee was over, he had returned to Vawnpolis, where many folk were still suffering from the aftereffects of the long, hard siege.

Vaskos had been more than glad to have the erudite, skillful Zahrtohgahn physician, and not only because of the good his ministrations could do the Vawnpolisee who were the responsibility of the conscientious officer. For these two men had been friends for nearly a year, since the brown-skinned master had successfully treated the grievous wounds Vaskos had suffered when he had fought his way out of rebel-held Horse Hall, in the first days of the short-lived rebellion in Morguhn. That friendship had ripened during the protracted siege of Vawnpolis as they met whenever their various duties had permitted to share an ewer of wine and engage in the Game of Battles, at which both excelled, or exchange anecdotes of travels and combat.

Utterly stymied by the seemingly insoluble problem of the frequent murders, all his own efforts and those of his staff having failed, Vaskos had finally discussed the matter with Ahlee. And that was why, this day, the master had just completed the autopsy of the seventh young woman murdered in as many weeks.

Shoving aside a mound of papers and flexing his ink-stained fingers, Vaskos pushed himself back from his desk and, smiling, waved the master toward a chair.

“You are overtired, Vaskos,” chided Ahlee gently. “Of what use will you be to the High Lord if you break your health? Your staff is both large and competent, yet you put them in armor on city patrols and then try to do their work yourself. Promise an old man that you will promptly mend your ways.”

Vaskos sighed, frowning. “Master, I have armed all the ex-rebels I dare to. Too, I have begged all the troops I can reasonably expect from Strahteegos Demosthenes, out at the base camp. My staff noncoms were all the men I had left, with the exceptions of Danes’ crew, and those poor bastards have been standing watch on watch for months. I couldn’t bring myself to ask more of them … or him, either, much as I hate him. I doubt me if the Ehleen god could fabricate a worse punishment than he is living in.”

Ahlee shook his scarred, brown head—hairless, like the rest of his body, for reasons of cleanliness. “Vaskos, my friend, my order is dedicated to the saving of life in accordance with Ahlah’s Holy Will. I have served that order for the larger part of my life. Consequently, it pains me to suggest that you have the Vahrohnos Myros Deskati … ahhh, put out of his misery. The man is, in my humble opinion, incurable and is just too dangerous to maintain longer in the existing manner. He has a record of having already slain one member of Captain Danos’ detachment, and that man he attacked last week will be crippled for the rest of his days.”

“I’d dearly love to do it,” grunted Vaskos. “Personally. Were it my decision to make, I’d hump myself down to that level and put my sword in the bastard in an eyetwinkling. But he be the prisoner of my overlord … well, my father’s overlord, anyhow. And I don’t think Thoheeks Bill would be too happy were he denied hearing Myros’ death screams, considering all the merry hob the whoreson raised in Morguhn.”

At the last word, Vaskos rose and stumped over to a heavy tapestry. Pulling it back, he took from the arrowslit window it covered a jar of wine, now cooled by the frigid outdoor temperature. Setting the jar on his desk, he crossed to the hearth and poked up the fire, then returned to his seat and poured two mugs full.

When Ahlee had sipped, the strahteegos said, “Well, did you learn anything new from this latest victim, master?”

The white-robed physician shrugged. “In point of fact, Vaskos, no. Her injuries were almost identical to those of all the other poor women; I can attest that all were even mutilated with the same instruments.”

“And what of the monster who wielded them, master? Any inkling of who we’re looking for?”

“As I said often before, Vaskos, you are looking for a madman who, with all the cunning of his madness, has thus far eluded you. Could you but take me to the place wherein he does his savageries, I could perhaps tell you more concerning him. But then, if you knew where he takes his victims, you would need nothing save patience in order to apprehend him.”

“If! If! If!” Vaskos’ bloodshot eyes blazed his ill-controlled wrath and he slammed his callused palm onto the desktop. “Meanwhile, this rebel bastard of a woman killer goes his merry, bloody way making fools out of me and the entire Confederation garrison. Sun blast the swine! Why can’t we catch him?”

They very nearly had on two occasions, and Captain Danos still became pale and weak-kneed whenever he thought of how narrow had been his two escapes. And what made the terrible chances he was daring so meaningless was the awful fact that he no longer even enjoyed himself. Had not since the devil-spawn vahrohnos had demonstrated that, though he might be Danos’ prisoner, still was he the captain’s master.

Always had it been the cries of his victims—the moans, the whimpering pleas for mercy and, especially, the screams of agony—which had aroused Danos’ sexual lusts. But now, with the streets above his well-concealed cellar aswarm with armed and alert men, he was afraid to allow any avoidable noise from his victims. And victims were becoming harder and harder to come by. Only his thorough knowledge of Vawnpolis and its secret ways had provided him with the last half-dozen women and with a means of getting them onto that bloodstained cellar floor under the ruined mansion. And he knew with utter certainty that it was but a matter of time—possibly a rather short time—until one of the roving parties chanced upon an arm of that warren of ancient tunnels.

Quite by accident, he had stumbled into the subterranean ways during the siege when an overshot catapult stone had demolished some of the charred timbers and fire-blackened bricks of the once splendid mansion above his chamber of horrors. These were quite unlike the great tunnels under Morguhnpolis, being no more than six feet high and five wide, unpaved and shored up by old, rotting timbers. The main passage ran from east to south on a gradual curve, ending at each extremity against the damp stones of the city walls, and it was unblocked from one end to the other. Such was not true of many of the branch passages. Danos had found that many had collapsed and others seemed so close to collapse that he had feared to enter them.

But that had been before the increasing security within the city and the steady pressure from the satanic vahrohnos had so complicated his existence. Now he regularly trod fearfully beneath sagging, wormy timbers and even wriggled through partially blocked passages in search of access to fresh prey. The arm leading to the Citadel, though not paved, was at least walled and shored with granite, probably because of the immense weight of masonry above it. It debouched into a disused subcellar room, only four levels below the prison corridor off which was located the vahrohnos” cell, which fact was the sole reason, aside from inordinate amounts of pure luck, that Danos had not long since been apprehended.

Both of his close escapes had occurred when Danos was returning to the Citadel in the early morning. If, as in the old days, he had come back smeared from head to foot with the blood of his night’s victim, the jig would have been up. But Danos had begun to take precautions to minimize the possibility of discovery and, having come across a small, spring-fed cistern in the main passage, he always thoroughly cleansed himself, his armor and his clothing after each of his forays.

No, what had most frightened him about the encounters with Citadel guards had been that, on each occasion, he had been carrying back the “delicacies” demanded by the vahrohnos. And had the guards ever chosen to examine the two sealed jars, there would have been no possible way that Captain Danos could have explained why one was brimful of fresh blood, while the other contained a whole human liver, still warm.

It had been after that second episode in the lower corridors that he had finally convinced the mad vahrohnos that he could no longer take the risk of carrying the “delicacies” into the Citadel.

After an impossibly long moment of glowering at his warder from eyes deep-sunk in his ruined face, Myros of Deskati had smiled, albeit wolfishly. “It is in moments of extreme danger that breeding becomes apparent, and you have no trace of breeding, you lowborn swine. But I had been expecting this funk of yours, soon or late, and I have devised an alternate plan, one which will give you far less to fear… well, from the guards, anyway.”

Since Vaskos had refused to alter or lessen his long, work-filled hours, Ahlee had done what he felt to be both professional duty and the duty of a friend; he had been helping the harried commander with the paperwork, of nights. Nor was this a difficult undertaking for the Zahrtohguhn, for, combined with a high degree of intelligence and both a written and verbal command of most dialects of Mehrikan, Ahlee had a natural talent for and formal training in mindspeak so that he could resolve any questions by dipping into Vaskos’ deliberately unshielded mind.

So it was, on an evening six days after his last autopsy, that a breathless, red-faced sergeant found them both together in Vaskos’ bright-lit office a couple of hours after midnight.

The sergeant was not an ex-rebel but rather a grizzled Confederation Regular, and he behaved accordingly despite his agitation—this quite obvious to Ahlee’s trained eye. Upon being bidden to enter, he stalked stiffly across the room, his well-oiled armor clanking, his helm cradled in the crook of his shield arm. At the halt, he wheeled precisely to face the desk and, standing rigid as a post, slammed fist against breast in formal military salute.

Glancing up from under his bushy salt-and-pepper brows, Vaskos returned the salute. “Yes, sergeant? You have a report?”

In a firm, emotionless voice, the noncom replied, “My lord strahteegos, I be Company Sergeant Dahbzuhn of Number Three Company, Fourteenth Regiment, seconded to your lordship’s command and now serving under Lieutenant Gahloopohlos. The noble lieutenant bids me request your lordship’s presence in the north quarter of the city. And it please your lordship, immediately.”

The lieutenant was tall but slender, his dark hair and olive complexion attesting to his Ehleen antecedents. His were no rolling, bulging muscles, but he moved with an assurance and grace which Ahlee suspected emanated from considerable wiry strength. The young man was soft-voiced and respectful to his superior but with no trace of fawning.

“My lord strahteegos, knowing how intense be your interest in these murders, I took the liberty of sending for you. This may well be a discovery of importance.”

The one-eyed man, summoned from a small knot of fellow civilians, completed his tale a few minutes later. “So, like I a’ready done told the lieutenant, Lord Vaskos, after I seen the man knock Moynah in the head and put her over his shoulder, I follered him, ‘th out him seeing me, o’course; I ain’t brave, ‘specially as I seen he had a big dirk.

“I seen him carry her into this here empty house, then I run back and got these here other fellers together and while one feller went to look for the p’trol, we got us some torches and clubs and a few knives and went to save her. But, when we got to the house, won’t nary a sign of either one of ‘em, ‘cept just a little bit of blood just inside the door and a little more on the steps going down to the basement, was all. Then, ‘bout that time, the lieutenant and the p’trol got here.”

With a brusque nod of thanks to the old man, Vaskos turned on the junior officer. “It comes to my mind that the killer, if such it was, knew that he was being followed and ducked into the house until he was certain that the observer had gone. Could that be possible, lieutenant?”

With a typically Ehleenic shrug, Gahloopohlos answered, “Highly possible, lord strahteegos. And I considered it, too, especially when my men found no living creature in the house … and we searched it from top to bottom. But that was before we chanced across what I wish to now show your lordship.”

The cellar was old, obviously much older than the house above, larger, too, walled and floored with dressed stone, like the worn stairs which led down to it Droplets of blood were at the head of those stairs, a few more were at the bottom, and yet another sprinkling was at a spot near the east wall of the cellar, along with a faded scrap of fine woolen cloth.

“When first I came down here, my lord, this bit of cloth was protruding from between two of the wall stones. I thought it odd and examined the wall more closely. As my lord may know, my father is lord architect of Kehnooryos Atheenahs. My brothers and I often accompanied him in his duties in that and other cities, so I have some small knowledge of things which might not occur to the thinking of your average officer.

“Look around you, my lord. This cellar is clearly of older and finer construction than the structure upstairs, and it’s at least half again bigger. The original structure was no doubt stone as well, stone and timber, and it burned. If my lord will look up there, near the ceiling, he still can see the fire marks. That structure was never rebuilt, but its foundation, including this cellar, was used for the brickwork house still standing.”

“What,” demanded Vakos, “has all this to do with our elusive murderer, lieutenant?”

With a languid, assured smile, the officer replied, “Please bear with me, my lord. Now, when these frontier cities were built, often the citadels and walled mansions were completed before the city walls even were commenced. So, since the residents and garrisons were often in constant danger of barbarian attack, they frequently devised ways of communicating one with the other, of getting supplies or reinforcements to hard-pressed areas quickly and safely, of—”

Vaskos’ big fist smacked into his horny palm and his black eyes flashed. “Tunnels! Of course! That’s why we’ve never caught the bastard, or even seen him, despite streets crowded with patrols. I must be getting senile, lieutenant I should have thought of it ere this.”

Young Gahloopohlos showed a rueful grin. “Then I fear I must share my lord’s senility, for even with my experience, I gave no thought to the matter until it slapped me in the face.”

Vaskos nodded brusquely. “Well, we know now, good Gahloopohlos. It sounds reasonable to me. Let us get a squad down here with sledges and bars, get these stones down and see if we’re right.”

The officer shook his head. “Such measures are unnecessary, my lord. You see?” Sidling to a section of wall which looked no different from many other sections about the cellar, he placed both hands flat upon it and, bunching his body behind his shoulders, heaved. His feet slid back on the rough flooring as the wall section briefly resisted his strength, but then, with a ponderous grinding and a shriek of seldom-used metal, a man-length of wall swiveled to reveal a stygian-black rectangle from which emanated the cold, dank smell of sunless earth.

Vaskos waited for the arrival of additional men before he, Ahlee, the lieutenant and a squad of soldiers filed into the narrow tunnel. Only a few steps did they proceed, however, for the way was blocked by a mound of earth and chunks of soft, rotten timber. An aperture no more than two feet wide or high had been dug through the blockage, and there they found more blood and another shred of the same fine, woolen.

There was another wait, for not liking the look of the extant shoring, Vaskos had some of the soldiers repair the areas above and return with odds and ends to strengthen the worm-eaten boards and columns. Then, one at a time, holding their torches before them, the officers, the physician and a dozen men wriggled through the ten terrible suffocating feet of crumbling earth.

Beyond, the narrow tunnel continued for a few more paces, then entered at a right angle into a wider and better-shored tunnel which seemed to stretch infinitely away in two directions.

“Sun and Wind!” swore Vaskos, softly. “The bastard could have taken that poor woman in either direction.

There’s nothing else for it but to split up. Gahloopohlos, you take six men and head that way. The master and I will take five and head the other. Sergeant Dahbzuhn, go back to the cellar and get the other squad, less two men to stand guard. You bring five after me and send five after the lieutenant. And sergeant, all of you, make no unnecessary noise until the quarry’s in plain sight and, let’s hope, at bay. He surely knows these tunnels better than we do, and we can’t afford to miss him yet again.”

Arrived in his cellar, Danos had gone through the joyless motions—stripping and gagging the half-conscious woman, then securing her ankles and wrists to a large rectangle of strong wooden construction. He had fabricated the rectangle many long months before, during the early days of the siege. With a victim’s hands and feet lashed to its corners, the tenderest and most sensitive portions of the body were easily accessible to whip or knife, fingers or teeth, pincers or licking flame.

That detail attended to, he had employed the whip, pulping first the back, then turning the rectangle and its moaning, fainting occupant to lay open the tender breasts with the blood-wet lash. By this time, he should have been used to an audience, but he still was somewhat inhibited in his reactions by those darkly mad eyes staring from the corner; consequently, even when white ribs were showing through the lacerated, bleeding flesh of the woman’s chest, he still felt no pleasant, stirring warmth in his loins. Not until he had leaned the rectangle against a wall and commenced to rain whistling blows on inner thighs and on the pudenda itself did he experience the tardy tumescence.

When he arose from the ravaged body, his loins now slack, he privately suspected the woman to be already dead or so near death as to make no difference, but warily he made no mention of the fact. After adjusting his clothing, the slick, black leather facings all wet and red-sticky, he drew his military dirk and expertly opened the upper abdomen. Leaving the dirk by the body, he stood up and stepped back.

“Dinner is served, my lord.” He addressed the lurker in the shadowy corner. “I’m going above to watch for the patrol, as usual. Please signal when you’ve done, sir.”

On his way up the littered stairs, Danos tried hard not to hear the slurping noises.

Ahlee had lost count of the numbers of small side tunnels his party had explored. Their original torches had already guttered out and, had the practical sergeant not thought to have the reinforcements carry extras, they would all now be fumbling about in utter darkness. The physician’s jaws ached from the effort of keeping them clamped against the chattering of his teeth, for he like the rest found the dank chill of these passages harder to bear than the icy weather aboveground.

They had slowly proceeded up the left-hand side of the large tunnel, come at length to a blank wall of rough-hewn granite which Vaskos had opined to be probably the foundation of part of the city walls. Now they were working back down the other side. As Ahlee, moving just behind Vaskos and the sergeant, came abreast of yet another side tunnel, he became unpleasantly conscious of a palpable emanation of purest evil radiating from the depths of that narrow passage, its uncleanness and power making him sick and dizzy.

“Vaskos!” he whispered, croakingly, pulling at the burly officer’s sleeve. “In there, I think. If not what we seek, at least something… something of terrible wrongness.”

All the still-unblocked side tunnels were very similar in construction—twenty to thirty feet long, about six feet high and three wide—but the differences in this one were quickly apparent. The shoring was all new, the upper areas of it stained with torch soot, and they trod not bare earth but paving tiles … splotched here and there with dark brownish stains which clearly were not soot. A small chamber always lay at the cellar end of these side tunnels. This one contained a pile of fresh torches and a heap of torn and gore-stiffened rags which, on closer examination, proved to all be various articles of women’s clothing.

Ahlee hoped that he would never again see such a look on his friend’s face as Vaskos dropped a ripped, crusty shift, drew his sword and motioned for two soldiers to open the wall section which led to the cellar.

Some of these sections had been completely immovable, some had yielded only after long and difficult labor, but this one swung easily and noiselessly open … laying before their eyes a scene of unrelieved ghastliness.

The cellar was brightly lit by a couple of torches and several lamps. Warmth was provided by a pair of large braziers. His back to the newcomers, a man’s figure crouched over the spread-eagled body of a gagged woman. Her wide-open eyes were death-glazed and set in a reflection of agony beyond endurance, horror beyond belief. What could be seen of her body and legs brought the sour bile bubbling up into Ahlee’s throat, for all that he had closely examined so many cadavers with identical savageries imprinted in their cold flesh.

A red-smeared dirk was held loosely in the crouching man’s right hand, while his left held what appeared to be a lump of fresh organ meat. While they watched-battle-hardened soldiers shocked into stillness and silence by the unnatural spectacle before them—the man drove the dirk into a timber of the blood-encrusted torture frame to which the dead woman’s stiffening limbs were still bound, laid the piece of meat upon the pulpy red ruin which had been her breasts, did something with his freed hands, then bent his neck and lowered his head. The terrible sound which then smote their ears was that of beast, not of mankind. Of beast busily lapping!

Vaskos, too, sounded then like a beast, growling deep in his throat. He stalked forward, cat-light, his swordblade at low guard, ready for stab or slash. The sergeant and other soldiers advanced behind him, filling the width of the cellar from wall to wall with an inexorably moving wall of armored, steel-tipped bodies.

But the feeding beast heard the growls and shufflings as they neared him and whirled about, his pallid face and graying beard a single nauseous mask of clotting blood, madness glinting its evil from out his bloodshot black eyes, his broken and rotting red-stained teeth bared in a bestial snarl of rage. Jerking the dirk from the timber, he hurled himself at Vaskos, the foremost of these intruders.

His own lips skinned back in a grimace of savage joy, the officer set himself for a thrust. With a habitual stamp and shout, the long blade swept up and the muscular arm extended, but the sharp steel met empty air and Vaskos almost fell on his face on the blood-slick floor, whereon lay the suddenly senseless hulk of Vahrohnos Myros Deskati of Morguhn, but bare feet from the ravaged corpse whose liver he had torn out, whose blood he had been drinking.

Some two hours after these events, with the madman once more securely manacled in his cell and guarded by grim Regulars, Vaskos again sat behind his desk, glowering at Captain Danos. The former rebel officer’s baldric draped loosely, the cased sword it had held now hand-carried by one of the husky guardsmen who flanked him. On a cloth on the desk lay the partially cleaned dirk which had been taken from the vahrohnos in that cellar of terrors.

They had had the captain’s story. Now Vaskos bluntly spake his mind. “Captain, you are either a careless, feckless fool or a cunning, glib-tongued monster. I confess that I know not which, at this point. I’d like to think you the latter, but that’s because I hate you for reasons that you well know.

“The fact that this dirk fits your empty case really proves nothing, since both are Confederation Army issue. Your charge lies comatose in his cell, so it will be days ere we can question him. Not that that exercise will prove anything either, for I’d not convict even such as you on the unsupported word of a madman.

“You were found sleeping in your room here at the Citadel, and were nowhere seen on the streets tonight, but neither fact absolves you, since I now am aware that there exists a true warren of tunnels connecting the Citadel and various quarters of the city.

“However, I have put my staff to checking the presumed dates of the recent series of murders and questioning your men as to which nights you took the watch over the vahrohnos. If the two lists coincide, captain, I will assume that you are guilty, if not of duplicity, at least of dereliction of your sworn duties. And that will make me very happy, captain. My father, Lord Hari, and I were denied our just vengeance on your flesh because you were an amnestied officer fulfilling what the High Lord felt to be a valuable function. You cannot be punished for the crimes done in Morguhn, but damn you, I can damned well court-martial you for those things you’ve done or not done whilst under my command.”

Then, to a guards officer who stood stiffly by the door, “Captain Nahks, the prisoner’s quarters are to be thoroughly searched and all weapons are to be removed from them. Then he will be there confined, with the door bolted and two men to guard it around the clock. Nor is anyone save myself or Master Ahlee to be allowed through his door. See that he is provided a jug of wine and a few rounds of barracks bread; that should serve him until I have enough information to issue you further orders. Now, take him away.”