The Savage Mountains

VII

Afterward, she could only recall a long period of waking slumber, wherein a formless blob of face flitted in to briefly float before her while hands pressed a bowl rim to her mouth and a half-heard voice urged her to drink substances ranging from nauseous and bitter to sweet and soothing. But, mostly, she simply floated, weightless, feeling nothing save comforting warmth.

At last, she opened her eyes unbidden. Above her, a ceiling of polished hardwood was almost obscured under untold layers of soot; beneath her body, she felt the warm softness of a feather mattress and, dimly, the feel of the rope supports. It was purest luxury. In the village, only her father’s greatbed boasted so fine and thick a mattress.

“So,” chuckled a remembered voice from her right, “my little chicken awakes at last.”

The turning of her head brought to her eyes the sight of Mother Zehpoor. The crone sat in a carven chair before a heavy table, on which was a huge stone mortar, surrounded by bunches and bundles of dried herbs and roots. Gently dropping the pestle back into the mortar, she arose from her place and padded lightly over to plump herself down on the edge of the bed.

Seeing her at close range, Pehroosz was shocked. The Mother Zehpoor of the rites—less than sixty moons agone—had been ancient and withered, while this woman, though very slender, looked to be little older than Pehroosz’s mother.

The woman’s lip and eye corners crinkled. “Oh, but I am that same Mother Zehpoor, child. You and the others, you saw what you saw because I willed that you see it. My reasons for deceiving your sight rest between me and Her I serve.

“But come, let us see your hands, Pehroosz.” Tenderly, she commenced to unwrap the linen bandages. “The Lady grant they are at last healed, for we must soon begin our journey, if we are to fulfill Her will.” She sighed. “It is almost a moon’s ride to the place wherein fates will be cast.”

“Journey?” Pehroosz interjected, wide-eyed. “Forgive me, Mother Zehpoor, but I don’t think my own mother would … how long have I been here? Surely, I have been missed by now. Have none come to seek me?

The woman’s face became grave and sympathy shone from her sloe-black eyes. “Pehroosz Bahrohnyuhn, you are descended of brave warriors and wise chiefs; you are descended, moreover, of a proud and most ancient race. Much have the Ahrmehnee suffered, child, yet have their pride and their valor ever sustained them. As you well know, this is not our original stahn. The Horse-devils and the Enleenee now squat upon the fertile lands which once were ours. But—and this you may not know, Pehroosz—there were still other stahns from which we were driven, long, long ago, in the time of the Earth-Gods. Many moons’ sail away, they lie, far across the Great Sea.

“Mighty were those stahns, large and powerful and very rich. But, corrupted by wealth, those ancient Ahrmehnee turned from adoration of the Lady to worship of other gods, false gods. From that moment did fortune depart from our race, Pehroosz. Race after race did harry and hound our ancestors, driving us from our lands and cities and villages, stealing our kine and our goods and our maidens. But, even in those dark times, did our inborn courage and pride bear us up.

“Your blood is as their blood, Pehroosz Bahrohnyuhn. You have suffered most cruelly. Now must I relate that which will cause you still more anguish, yet must you bear your woes as stoically as did your suffering ancestors, down through the ages.”

Drawing a deep breath, she stared levelly into the girl’s wide eyes. “Pehroosz, those men, the ones who attacked you, who butchered the goats and slew your brothers, were but part of a far larger raiding party. Only an hour after you were ravished, child, more than five hundred men assaulted the village. Those who escaped their cruelty fled northward. Those who did not lie dead among the ashes and rumbled stones.

“You may be as proud of your mother’s memory as you are of young Toorkohm’s. She directed what pitiful defense could be made and fought as bravely as any warrior could’ve until she was cut down.”

Abruptly, Pehroosz sat up and made to lower her feet to the floor. “Please, Mother Zehpoor. Please, we must bury my mother’s body.”

Firmly, the woman pushed her back down on the bed. “Pehroosz, you must not go to the place that was the village. It has been a long, hard winter, child, and game has been scarce. In the four days since the village was burned, the bears and the wolves, the treecats and smaller animals will have left very little of those folk slain there.”

“But … but it cannot have been so long,” protested Pehroosz. “I came to you only this morning.”

The woman shook her head of tightly coiled, iron-gray hair. “Not so, child. In less than an hour, the sun will rise on the fourth morning you have been with me. I thought it best that you remain asleep while your body’s hurts healed, that your mind not be forced to dwell upon the horrors you endured. But now you are once more hale and we must leave.”

“But why, Mother Zehpoor? Why must we leave? This is my home and soon my father will return and rebuild the village. And … and Hahkeeg, too—we are to be married soon.”

“Child,” said the woman, patiently, “we must leave because it is the Lady’s will. Whilst you slept, I did scry the future. To remain here is death. Far from here, far to the west, lies your fortune, Pehroosz—a fabulous dowry of long-hidden wealth, a strong and brave and gentle husband of another race who will give you a life of ease and comfort and will receive of you fine sons to bring fresh honors to his house and tribe. But we must leave soon and travel cautiously, for the mountains swarm with bands of low-lander raiders.”

The woman arose and smoothed down her skirt. “So, come you, child. You must eat now. I have fawn seethed in goat’s milk and oatcakes and honey wine. Then you must help me prepare for our journey. It is commanded that I go, too, for, somehow, my future is tied up to yours.”

Quite early in his westward dash, Bili found it necessary to place his command on meager field rations, since they were no longer assured of the superfluity of supplies which raiding brought. There was some grumbling, but most recognized the need to reserve the grain for the horses, who could not maintain their best form on the scant subsistence of the half-feral mountain ponies; not so, some of the young thoheeks’s more vocal, noble critics, however.

As he had progressed, as his path had crossed those of the fanned-out columns of raiders, Bili had rendezvoused with almost all of his Morguhn nobles and the survivors of the original Morguhn troop of Freefighters who had marched into Vawn under his banner. The majority, he had been glad to see again—his brothers, Djaik and Gilbuht, Komees Hari, Freefighter lieutenants Krahndahl and Hohguhn—others he would have been as happy to not see. Or hear.

They were, by now, within a few days’ ride of their objective, the area wherein the High Lord had thought they should intercept the Witchmen and the booty train. Therefore, Bili had assembled most of the officers and nobles, that the High Lord’s instructions be detailed to all. Along the twisting length of a narrow, steep-sided vale, the Freefighters were laying watchfires, setting up picket lines and caring for their horses; after nearly a week of sunrise-to-sunset forced marches, they were reveling in the unaccustomed luxury of having natural light by which to set up camp.

A cursory glance at his subordinates showed all the Morguhn nobles present with the sole exception of Vahrohneeskos Ahndros. Then, from the summit of the small mound on which he stood, Bili recognized the baronet’s big gray gelding coming rapidly down the length of the vale. For all that the beast was already at full gallop, its rider could be seen to spur-rake the sweaty barrel, while lashing furiously with his crop.

Only good fortune prevented Ahndros’ steed from tramping the soldiers in his path. Even as Bili watched, grim-faced, the rocketing destrier’s shoulder took a Free-fighter in the back, sending him spinning to the rocky ground with a mighty clashing of scale armor.

At the periphery of the gathering, the gelding was savagely reined to a shuddering halt. Stiff-legged, the vahrohneeskos stalked through the throng, directly toward the thoheeks. His saturnine countenance bespoke ill-concealed rage, his dark eyes smoldered, his right hand continually clenched and unclenched and the knuckles of his left hand gleamed white on his swordhilt. Shouldering through the front rank, he came to a halt and stood, spraddle-legged, before his suzerain.

Although he had not been with the column twenty-four hours, Ahndros had already found occasion to be publicly insubordinate, first to Komees Hari, then to Bili. Even a half-blind dolt could have seen another such outburst here aborning, and Bili was more perceptive than most. His eyes like blue ice and his voice as cold, he broke off his conversation with a Freefighter captain to ask: “You have yet another complaint, baronet?” ‘ In tones every bit as glacial, the newcomer replied, “My title is ‘vahrohneeskos,’ my lord thoheeks. I am not one your precious unwashed burk-lords! And I want to know why your damned barbarian baggage master refused to issue my cook a few pounds of grain to make flour for my bread. And what right did the lowborn swine have to jettison three packloads of my personal baggage and drive the ponies away from the march route? Who, just who do you think you are, you immature jackanapes? How much more of your supercilious contumely do you think I and the other Kindred gentlemen are going to tolerate? Only my love for your mother has restrained me ere this, but it’s high time someone took you and your insufferable arrogance to task!”

Ahndros’s face, blood-dark when he first began, had now become pallid with rage, and a patch of froth quivered at his lips’ corners, while a tic twitched his cheek and eye.

Unmoving, grim-faced Bili heard out the enraged man. Those about the two perceptibly moved back, sensing an imminent combat. At Ahndros’s last word, Bili broke his silence, sneering.

“Don’t hide behind your supposed regard for one of my mothers, little man. If anyone’s arrogance has made him insufferable since first he joined the siege forces, it is you, Ahndros Theftehros of—Sun and Wind help us all—Morguhn. I have never fully understood why you joined us at all, since you found my judgment, the High Lord’s judgment, Aldora’s judgment, all wanting. I have never given you an order that you didn’t take exception to some part of, when you didn’t disregard it altogether.

“So little actual combat did you take part in, at Vawnpolis, that I’d have had adequate reason to question your courage—as did certain of your peers—did I not know better. You fought with and for me against heavy odds last year, took grievous wounds in my service, and I am grateful. Because of that gratitude, I have been more than lenient, more than tolerant of your flagrant improprieties. But, no more, sirrah!

“I am not yours to command, rather you are mine. I am your hereditary lord, Ehleen. Moreover, I am in command of this column. We are on campaign in the midst of hostile country and I cannot—dare not—tolerate anything, man, cat, horse or object, that impedes our progress or endangers us or sows dissension amongst us. Therefore, I’ll give you three choices: you can take the five servants you saw fit to bring, along with a small escort, and make your way back to your former posting, then lead them back to Vawnpolis; you can recognize your proper place and station and stay in it, physically and verbally; you can continue to comport yourself as previously and I’ll have you executed as the troublemaker you are.

“Make your choice, Ahndros Theftehros. Now!”

Ahndros’s full lips curled his scorn. “Even such a thing as you would not dare to slay me without a legal hearing before my peers of Morguhn. The High Lord would have your hairless head for such highhandedness, and you know it. Command your stinking barbarians, if you wish and can—you should be able to do that, anyway, since you’re a savage, unlettered burk-lord in all save name, yourself!—but we noblemen, Kindred and Ehleenee, are your puppets only so long as we allow you to pull our strings. I, for one, have no intention of slavishly following your stupid whims, of allowing you to further humiliate me and deny me my lawful rights, nor will I allow you to degrade me by chasing me out of camp.

“So, since I flatly refuse two of your magnanimous offers and since we both know that you dare not carry out the third and, since you seem averse to meeting me honorably, as a gentleman should …” He allowed his voice to trail away, smiling lazily. Ahndros was easily the second-best swordsman in either Morguhn or Vawn—only Djaik Morguhn possessed superior talent and skill with broadsword or saber—so he was absolutely sure of his ground. Either Bili—hated Bili—would rise to the bait and become a corpse or he would not and lose the respect of all and the command of the column, which latter Ahndros himself craved.

While an officer in the Confederation Army, Ahndros had been lover to Aldora and an honored favorite of the High Lord. Even after he had succeeded to his father’s title and lands and resigned his commission, he had been a person whom the High Lord contacted frequently, and he had been the only soul in all of Morguhn who had known that Milo would visit the duchy in the guise of a traveling bard. Consequently, it had come as an especially bitter pill to find, upon his recovery from wounds and joining of the army before Vawnpolis, that Thoheeks Bili had replaced him in both capacities.

Early on, he had found his relative lack of status unbearable and had tried to rewin his former place with both High Lord and High Lady. He had failed miserably. To Aldora, unashamedly in love with Bili, Ahndros was just one more in the scores of former bedmates she had had over the century and a half she had lived. Milo, for his part, had come to admire, respect and love Bili in his own way; Bili’s astounding mental abilities—not yet fully explored or completely understood—his natural leadership and aptitude for inspiring his followers, his quick and accurate assessments of situations and problems, his personal valor and cleanly habits and blunt candor, all had impressed the High Lord.

Deep within himself, Ahndros had been able to understand, for he too had had an instant liking for the stark young warrior who had ridden down from the north to assume his patrimonial duties. Moreover, there was the link of shared combat and dangers, for he and Bili and the High Lord had held a bridge for almost an hour against a horde of mounted rebels. In that springtime skirmish had he taken the wounds which for so long had invalided him. Lastly, he lusted after one of Bili’s mothers, the late Thoheeks Hwahruhn’s eldest widow.

Even so, his sickening envy for the stations once his and now held by Bili soon blossomed into hate. Assiduous nitpicking produced no dearth of fuel for stoking the fires of that hate. Also, he found a willing fire tender in the person of old Komees Djeen Morguhn, whose earlier, overbearing efforts to browbeat Bili had ultimately resulted in his own public humiliation, an act for which he could never forgive his young overlord. Throughout the siege, these two had been able to cause Bili and Aldora—the High Lady having been left in charge of the besieging forces during the High Lord’s lengthy absence—considerable annoyance and not a little real trouble.

Nonetheless, the habitual caution of the elderly komees had in some measure restrained Ahndros’ less calculating nature from open and violent defiance. But Komees Djeen had been in command of the farthest-eastward squadron, and so was presently withdrawing with his force to the south. Ahndros was now completely on his incautious own.

Though Bili answered the barb as calmly as possible, it was from betwixt tightly clenched jaws, above which his eyes blazed blue fire. “When once more we are our own men, Lord Ahndros, without mission and orders and responsibilities for those we lead, you will find me more than happy to let Steel decide our differences. For the nonce, however, we are all under the High Lord’s command to fulfill his behests, and, as I have before told you, we are far from the Confederation and in the midst of a hostile land. It was the High Lord’s express wish that I captain this special enterprise, and I will not surrender that captaincy to you or anyone else without the Lord Milo’s order.

“My farspeak summons to you instructed you to join this column at the specified rendezvous with a half-dozen troopers or officers and a bare minimum of equipment. Since we were to move far and fast, I said nothing about bodyservants, yet you appeared with five, plus a half-troop and a packtrain near as long as this entire squadron’s. Tents and scents and oils and fine clothing have no place in the High Lord’s plans, Lord Ahndros, nor in mine; this is why the baggagemaster dumped your three packloads, and I had intended to so inform you, though, for your pride’s sake, I’d not have done so in public.

“The grain and dried beans are being retained to keep our warhorses in proper flesh, since, unlike the ponies, they cannot thrive on dry grass and treebark. Even the lowliest trooper seems to understand this, Lord Ahndros. Why can’t you?”

During Dili’s long reply, Ahndros’ blood had cooled enough to allow his brain to register a few very important facts: Bili was not wearing a sword; it hung, along with his axe and helm, on the saddle of Mahvros, his black stallion, some paces to his rear. His sneer intensified and he hitched his swordbelt forward and closed his right hand about the wire-wound hilt.

“I don’t think these noble gentlemen and northern officers are willing to follow the lead or orders of a craven, no matter his hereditary rank or who misplaced him in command.” He raised his voice and glanced about him. “What say you, gentlemen? The thoheeks of Morguhn has done me injury, yet he refuses to meet me in honorable combat, and such refusal brands him craven. Do you now follow him or me?”

Lord Hari, his face fire-red, made to step forward, but Djaik Morguhn was there before him. “Lord Ahndros, I know not the customs and usages of the Confederation Army, but I had assumed it at least as civilized and well ordered a force as the armies of the Middle Kingdoms. In the Army of Eeree, now, a nobleman—no matter how high his birth—who saw fit to insult his commander, openly question that commander’s judgment and tender a challenge which he knew the commander’s oaths would not let him take up would be brought before a drumhead court-martial and, most probably, a Steel Cult Council, as well.

“The Order would likely bid him do combat with a weapons master in full plate and him with but a sword and his bare skin. If, by wildest chance, he survived that encounter—”

“Fagh!” Ahndros burst out. “Your barbarian practices would sicken a hog. Find someone else to yap at, puppy, I have business with grown men.”

Grave-faced, the younger Morguhn turned to Bili. “Brother, I ask Sword-leave. Be it your will?”

At Bili’s mindcall, Mahvros gave over his browsing and paced to Bili’s side, his harness jingling. Feeling the supercharged emotional atmosphere, the sensitive horse mind-spoke with rising eagerness. “Do we fight soon, brother?”

“Not me, Mahvros, but possibly you with my brother, Djaik, astride you. Will you serve him as you would me?”

“My brother’s brother is my brother,” the horse answered simply.

Bili lifted his baldric from off the pommel, uncased the sword and dropped baldric and sheath to the ground. Turning back to Djaik and the assemblage, he raised the broadsword to his lips, kissing the blade just below the guard.

Djaik drew his own sword and did likewise, then he extended his hilt to Bili, accepting Bill’s sword in return.

“No, not Sword-leave, my brother,” stated Bili formally. “Rather, this. You are me, until my Steel runs lifeblood.”

Stiffly, Djaik nodded. “I will serve your honor well, lord brother. Honor to Steel.” Once more, the two men kissed their blades.

“What are you two yammering about?” shouted Ahndros, peevishly. “Is the craven thoheeks going to fight me or not?

Still gripping Djaik’s bare blade, Bili stalked forward, saying, “Count Hari, I beg you and Sir Geros attend and advise Lord Ahndros, as I doubt me he knows aught of Sword Cult usages.”

Once again confronting Ahndros, Bili grounded the point of his brother’s sword, crossing his big, scarred hands upon its pommel-ball. “You were insistent on a duel, eh? Well, a duel you are to have, sirrah. Were I free to do so, I’d meet you myself, on horseback, with axes. But I’m not, as you well know.

“However, Lord Ahndros, you have challenged and my surrogate has taken up that challenge. You will meet my brother, Djaik Morguhn, as soon as he has fully armed. It will be a combat conducted by Sword Cult customs, in which Count Hari and Sir Geros Lahvoheetos of Morguhn will presently instruct you.

“You have been most provocative, Lord Ahndros, but, even so, I would prefer reconciliation and comradeship to combat. Therefore, I offer you the opportunity to withdraw your challenge, apologize for your insults and rejoin us as a loyal and obedient Kinsman.”

It was not working out as Ahndros had hoped. He did not really fear Djaik, though he respected the boy’s unquestioned expertise, but he had no desire to fight him, nothing to gain in wounding or killing him, save the enmity of all of Clan Morguhn. He would have been happy to live with that enmity, could he only have hacked the life out of the thoheeks, but, once again, circumstances had conspired to cheat him of his rightful deserts. Utter frustration was compounded with his rage and the mixture suddenly bubbled over, completely out of control.

His sword sang clear of its scabbard, flashing blindingly in the westering sun. “Christ damn you, you heathen bastard! It’s not your brother’s blood I want, it’s yours. You’ve got a sword. Use it!” And with that he stamped forward, his forehand slash aimed at Bill’s helmless head.