Trumpets of War

X

Over the years, Stehrgiahnos had done what little he could to influence his commanders as to the merits of treating the inhabitants of places they did not have to take by storm and force with less than their inbred savagery. This did not, however, apply to Church-owned communities; on the evidences of what horror had taken place at a rural school for the training of priests, its farms and walled town, the renegade nobleman had been afforded evident respect and a generous degree of comradery by Mainahkos and Ahreekos, certain from the bloody signs that he could be naught save one of them, a true brother of the soul if not of birth or background.

His military training and vast experience had proved of inestimable value to the two warlords; the strict discipline that he and some few other once-noble officers and veteran sergeants had enacted and very harshly enforced had rendered the heterogeneous mob with which they had begun into a relatively more reliable and dependable force of troops.

Stehrgiahnos’ strong, compact, wide-ranging corps of dedicated sadists had marched from place to place, deliberately seeking out only Church properties, towns and cities, storming them without offering to treat, and visiting upon the miserable survivors of the stormings the ultimate in depraved atrocities. Then, after all of value or interest had been plundered, they invariably burned the places to the ground, with such few of their human victims as by then still lived left helpless to roast alive.

So many Church places fell to Stehrgiahnos’ corps that all of the as yet untouched places felt constrained to desert their smaller, less defensible habitations and join together in a few larger and stronger if less comfortable spots, not beginning to return to their holdings until the authority of the Council had begun to make its steel-clad presence felt throughout the former kingdom.

But when he had marched against the city that once had been his, the broken komees had been keenly disappointed, finding both it, his natal hold and the ducal city and hold to have fallen to some other band at some earlier time and become but sacked, smoke-blackened, ghost-haunted ruins.

When he had heard the entirety of the sorry tale from the lips of his newest slave, Thoheeks Grahvos had sat in silence, staring hard at Stehrgiahnos for a long while. Finally speaking with a gruff gentleness, he had said, “There’s an ewer over there on that commode, along with a brace of goblets, Stehrgiahnos. Pour for both of us, then take the chair yonder. I had thought that I had ferreted out everything about you and your past; I was wrong and I freely admit to the fact. You’ve had a hard, bitter time of it, haven’t you, lad?

“A man of your military antecedents would be of some great value to our army, but of course that’s out of the question so long as our Grand Strahteegos and Thoheeks Portos remain fixtures of it. Our old Pahvlos was bitterly disappointed that you weren’t at the least hung up on a cross; Portos would’ve had you crucified with an iron pot of starving mice strapped to your belly.

“However my feelings toward you have altered now, Stehrgiahnos, little else of what I earlier told you has; some of it cannot, like it or not. You still are a slave; I cannot free you, that was part of my purchase agreement, you see, nor can I sell you, though I may give you to anyone I wish if no money or goods or services are bartered for you. I’ll not be having you branded, but there will be a mark cut into your flesh; however, it will be so shaped and placed that it will pass as an old wound scar to the scrutiny of any who don’t know exactly what to look for and where to look for it.

“I’ll still be using you as my clandestine agent in certain matters for me and, through me, for Council. Between such assignments, I think you’ll be a body servant and bodyguard; in such a capacity you’ll not only be able to dress like the gentleborn man that you are, you’ll also be able—indeed, expected—to go armed. Anent that, before you leave this room, choose a sword that suits you from that rack over there; the dirks and daggers are in the drawer above. When you’ve regained your energy and strength, I’ll expect you to start exercising regularly with the palace guards, both ahorse and afoot, with and without armor. As I’m certain you know, you won’t be the first slave bodyguard; indeed, some noblemen will have no other kind.”

The Stehrgiahnos who responded to his master’s summons on a certain blustery winter day looked the part of a gentleman-retainer to the hilt. His ease of movement warned knowledgeable observers that he had worn a sword for many a year and presumably, therefore, could be expected to know well its use.

Stitched between the layers of his suede-trimmed, half-sleeved, satin-brocade gambeson was a shirt of fine, light, very expensive mail, and his soft-looking felt cap incorporated a steel skullcap. Like these items, none of the other bits and pieces of protective armor scattered about his body in vulnerable or sensitive spots were openly displayed, nor were the highly visible sword and short dirk the only weapons on his person, or even the most incipiently deadly ones.

He had burnished his service bracelet until it gleamed like the gold-and-garnet finger ring that had been presented to him after the first occasion on which he had saved his master’s life through the expedient of forcing a would-be assassin to take some inches of blued steel to heart. The other, more massive, ring was of chiseled silver and set with a piece of dark-blue kiahnos-stone; that one he had won dicing in the barracks of the Council Guards.

Upon hearing the words of his master, Stehrgiahnos had frowned briefly, stared into his goblet of mulled wine, then brightened and declared, “A begging monk, my lord! They’re under the control of no one, really, not their order, not any kooreeohsee, yet any Church facility will welcome one, for right many commoners consider such to be far more holy than any other stripe of churchmen. They’re allowed to wander about, poke into just about anything, and other Church folk behave and converse as if the begging monks were inanimate objects or livestock.”

Thoheeks Grahvos pursed his lips and nodded. “It sounds good, yes. But could you carry it off? Remember, it could be your very life if you’re found out, my boy.”

A grim smile lingered momentarily on Stehrgianos’ scar-seamed face. “I’ve done such before, my lord, back when I was scouting out ahead of my corps of bandits, determining the richest, least-protected places to attack. The first few times, I went in with and under the tutelage of a real begging monk who was also a bandit, but after he was killed in combat, I did it alone for some time with never a bit of trouble.

“You see, my lord, all that is required is a fluency in Pahlahyos Ehleeneekos—the ancient tongue of our forefathers, which I happen to own, since my own sire was something of a scholar—appalling personal hygiene, a fair knowledge of Church ritual and the ability to give the impression that one is more or less mad.

“The man from whom I learned all of this was indeed mad, mad as mad could be. He was like three entirely different men inhabiting but a single body. The begging monk, Ahthelfos Djooleeos, was a meek, gentle toper who was never quite sober. There was also a noble priest of exquisite manners and gentility, a most devout and caring man, but he was never much seen, and then only briefly; he was called Pahtir Leeros. Then there was Rawnos the Blood-drinker, a true berserker in battle, murderer, rapist, sadist, arsonist; he was vicious, grasping, a bully and braggart, a user of hemp paste and leaves, callous and greedy to unbelievable limits; he would never have been tolerated in any aggregation of men other than the bandit army. But there was many a madman and sociopath in that army.”

“What exactly will you need to prepare yourself for this mission?” inquired Grahvos.

Stehrgiahnos shrugged. “Not much, my lord—a hooded robe of unbleached wool with a length of rope to girdle it, a traveler’s wallet and brogans of hide, a wooden alms bowl, a stout staff of ash or oak, flint and steel, a couple of knives, a brimmer hat. None of these things should be new, if possible; the more signs of long, hard use they show the better.”

“When can you depart?” asked Grahvos.

“Not for at least four to six weeks,” was the reply of his slave. “I must stop bathing, let my beard grow out and myhair lengthen ; I should acquire a modest colony of parasites, too. But, my lord, it were far better that I prepare in some private place well away from the city, where I can weather my skin naturally, hike about and let the brogans and robe and hat acquire stains, dirt and filth enough to be convincing. Can my lord trust his slave beyond supervision?”

Sub-strahteegos Tomos Gonsalos had been more than willing to stay on longer with this army he had had the largest part in forming for the Council of Thoheeksee, in large part because all that he had to which to return in Karaleenos was lands and cities; his father, mother and siblings all were dead, and his young wife had died of fever while he was on campaign with his cousin King Zenos, against the then foe High Lord Milo Morai, and her still carrying his unborn child in her belly.

For years, this army had been both wife and child to him. Around a nucleus of the troops loaned by the High Lord—a regiment of Freefighter pikemen, a squadron of heavy cavalry and one of Horseclansmen—he and Thoheeks Grahvos had gathered first the private warbands of the earliest members of the Council, then the flotsam and jetsam of units and individuals streaming back south from Zastros’ disaster in Karaleenos. As a blacksmith drives impurities from the iron by way of heating and hammering, reheating and hammering harder, so did Tomos and his cadre slowly rid their battalions and squadrons of the unfit, the undersirable, the criminal elements that had permeated the ranks of Zastros’ host, so that when finally Council had found a Grand Strahteegos to their liking, Tomos had been able to deliver into his thoroughly experienced hands virtually a finished product, needing but to be slightly altered, custom-fitted to the personal lights of the new commander.

Tomos had gone on more than one campaign in the capacity of a subordinate officer to Pahvlos, but he had spent most of his time since the old warhorse had assumed command of the field armies in the sprawling, permanent encampment below Mehseepolis, supervising the training of new units and replacement personnel for existing ones, as well as commanding the permanent garrison of the Military District of Mehseepolis, plus overseeing the supply and remount commands.

It had been more than enough work for any one man, and he had been far too busy to be able to find much time to be lonely. He received many more invitations to private homes and public fuctions within the city than he could ever make the time to accept, and he generally used the excuse of the press of his duties to decline almost all of them as a matter of course—the public bashes ran from dull to tedious, and the private dinners too often devolved into drunken orgies that left a man too shaky of the following mornings to get any work done.

The private dinner parties he liked most, which he tried very hard to not miss, were those of Thoheeks Grahvos’ Council faction—Thoheeksee Bahos, Mahvros, Sitheeros, and a few others. At these, the food was from good to superb, the wine was well watered, the conversation was stimulating, the entertainments were subdued; sex—in the form of well-trained slaves of both genders—was available for any guest so inclined, but said guests were expected to enjoy themselves in privacy in the guest chambers provided for the purpose.

He and his servants had lived quite comfortably in the oversized house that had been constructed along with two others for the higher-ranking commanders of the army who did not choose to live in crowded Mehseepolis or the settlements building up just outside the city walls. Occasionally, Thoheeks Sitheeros would come to stay for a couple of days, bringing quantities of foods, wines, spirits, cooks, servants and two or three young women, the number dependent on whether or not Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz was off on campaign with the Grand Strahteegos and his hard-worked army.

So it was on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Tomos’ birth, Sitheeros and Gil Djohnz having but days before returned from a month at Iron Mountain . While the servants were unpacking a wainload of comestibles, a half-pipe of wine, a keg of brandy and other items, Sitheeros and Gil kept Tomos outside his home in spirited conversation. When, at last, the newcome guests moved on into the house, Tomos’ surprise had been arranged by carefully instructed servants.

In the middle of the first room they entered stood a girl Tomos knew he had never before seen, and he knew that he would have remembered this one had he seen her before, for her beauty was striking—long, long blond tresses from which the sunbeams picked out hints of red, a face as freckled as his own, but heart-shaped, holding almond-shaped blue-green eyes, a narrow nose and the reddest lips he had ever seen. She was clearly nervous, and the tip of a red-pink tongue darted out a couple of times to wet those lips. Her clothing, though obviously in the barbarian mode, was elegant and richly embroidered, and the jewelry, if it was real, looked to be worth a good part of the ransom expected of a Vahrohneeskos, anyway.

When the three men entered the room, the girl hesitated momentarily, then, with downcast eyes, she made her way to the trio and sank to her knees before Tomos. As she raised her head and looked into his dark-blue eyes with her own—which, he noted, were swimming in unshed tears, which fact he found most unsettling for reasons he could not explain to himself—she also lifted her two hands, revealing that her wrists were encircled by brass cuffs connected by a length of gilded-brass chain.

Wetting her lips yet again, she parted them and spoke haltingly in an obscure dialect of Mehreekan, one he had never heard before, but close enough to that of his mountain-born mother’s to be understandable to him.

“Wilt not my master remove these fetters and free his handmaiden? She comes to thee a pure maiden; wilt my master not deign to render her a woman?” Her voice was soft and a little throaty; the words were a bit slurred, in the manner of the indigenous barbarians of the western mountains.

The wristbands, he saw, were fitted with catches, and the girl could have easily unsnapped and removed them herself, so he decided that this must be some variety of barbarian ritual, of which they seemed to have more than did the Ehleenohee.

With a smile and a shrug, he unfastened the bands and then glanced at Sitheeros. “Well? What’s the proper form now, my lord?”

The thoheeks grinned. “Take both her hands in both of yours, raise her to her feet, then bend and kiss her lips. Difficult, what?”

Tomos did as instructed, then started back from the girl, for it had felt when his lips touched upon hers as if some force of power had passed from her being to his. Had these jokers brought down from those mountains some ditch-witch to play tricks, then?

Before she could speak, however, Sitheeros had embraced him and was slapping his back and kissing his cheeks. “My heartiest and most sincere congratulations and felicitations, my old friend. You now are, by barbarian rites, wed to the daughter of one of the most powerful chiefs among all of the barbarian tribes, Chief Ritchud Bohldjoh, of the Tchatnooga Tribe. May you both live long and have many children.”

Gil Djohnz had taken and gripped his hand firmly and said soberly, “We felt you needed a woman to care for your needs here, my friend. It is not good for a man to live for too long alone, you know.” He grinned and chuckled. “It is said to lead to such afflictions as a permanently stiff . . . ahh, neck.”

Thoheeks Sitheeros had slapped him again on the back and crowed, “Now it is time to commence the drinking that must always precede the wedding feast. Come, take the hand of your bride and come. You must not allow your loving guests to perish of thirst, man.”

While Tomos was carefully watering the wine—he recalled how very intoxicated he had gotten at his last wedding feast, so befuddled that it had been impossible to consummate the marriage properly for three days, and although he still was at least half convinced that this all was an elaborate joke of some nature or description, he intended to take no chances—the burly thoheeks was worrying the stopper from out the neck of a huge stone jug. At length, the obstruction popped free, and, hooking a thumb through the ring handle and resting the heavy container on his arm, the thoheeks splashed a generous dollop of a clear, slightly yellowish liquid into each of three small winecups, filling the room with a strong, sharp odor.

Having looked over his shoulder at just what his guests were up to, Tomos wrinkled his nose at the stink and commented, “If that’s a jug of fermented fish sauce, I think the stuff has spoiled; smells that way to me.”

When the wine was diluted to his satisfaction, Tomos took his seat and left the dispensing of it to the servants. It was then that Gil Djohnz shoved a cup of the liquid from the stone jug before him. “It’s a wedding gift from Chief Ritchud’s private hwiskee stock, Tomos—it’s something he calls ‘danyuhlz,’ though it tastes just like any other corn hwiskee to me. The chief swears that it’s a special kind of hwiskee distilled carefully to a recipe and methods that are an ancient and an exclusive secret passed down for hundreds of years amongst the Tenzsee Tribes.”

Holding his breath against the rotten stench of the stuff, Tomos took a tentative swallow of it. After he could once more breathe and, with eyes still streaming from his strangled coughing, was wondering if the buffets of Sitheeros’ big, hard hands had really sundered his backbone and shattered his ribs or if they just felt that way, he was able to gasp, “Off the decomposing hides of what dead animals do they scrape the fungi out of which they make that?”

After a while, when Tomos was feeling more his usual self and when his two guests had ceased to laugh at his discomfiture, he inquired, “All right, now, how much of this is real and how much just one of your elaborate, infamous practical jokes, my lord Sitheeros? Am I really married to that child? Or is she just some new slave girl you two bought and coached and dolled up to cozen me? I’ll have a straight answer, and it please you, my lord. To akath’ahrohs, such as yourself, barbarian rites and customs may seem droll, but to me, whose mother was a barbarian princess, they are far less so.”

Gil answered first, saying solemnly, “Tomos, me ’n Sitheeros, we rode clear up to Chief Ritchud’s hold at a place called Kleevluhnd, smack dab in the middle of the ruins of a big city of the old times. We went up for a different reason, of course; Sitheeros owed the old chief a visit and he thought I might like to go along and see the place and the people, and it was an education, I can say that much. We wagoned up a couple pipes of wine and some other things Sitheeros knew his old pal fancied, and we both were treated top-notch by all Chief Ritchud’s folk.

“Then one night, after a feast, when we all of us were drinking and talking in the hall of Chief Ritchud’s hold, the old chief had little Brandee brought out and asked Sitheeros couldn’t he find some rich Ehleen husband for her. I think he expected old Sitheeros to take and marry her himself, is what I figure he had in mind, and”—he glanced over slyly at the thoheeks to ascertain if his barb sank home—“the way old Sitheeros was panting and drooling and all, his tongue just hanging down into his cup and his eyes fit to burst clear out of his head and all, I was just then of the mind that he might, then and there.”

Sitheeros stared, unwinking, at the captain of elephants, and remarked in a soft voice, “There are definite ways to deal with your kind of prevaricator, Captain Djohnz . . . and I am a past master at the most of them, and those that I misremember my torturer-executioner, Master Peeos, does recall. Remember this gentle warning in future, captain; it will be to your best interests to so do.” Then, unable to longer hold his very convincing pretense of cold rage, the thoheeks burst into laughter and threw the contents of his cup of watered wine at his friend become tease, and took up the recountal himself .

“Oh, Tomos, I admit, I freely, even joyfully admit, to the fact that that child’s very, very female shape and bearing and appearance moved me . . . well, moved certain parts of me; she is assuredly toothsome. But I then was forced to recall that I have a wife, that the Ehleen Church and customs allow but one legal wife at the time, that my old friend, Chief Ritchud Bohldjoh, wanted honorable marriage for his child and would certainly look askance at mere concubinage of her, and that he could field thousands of mountain warriors did he choose to so do; therefore I drew tight rein on my admittedly libidinous impulses, which, God be praised, I am not as yet too aged to feel to their fullest extent on occasion.

“And then, as if we had shared but the single, solicitous mind, both Gil and I bethought: our dear friend Tomos Gonsalos would not—as, you must admit, would most Ehleen nobles and gentlemen—be at all offended were he to find himself wed to so delightful a young woman. Besides which, he really needs a willing, young, strong, healthy and truly ravishing wife and helpmeet, if anyone does. In his own lands, he is as high a noble as am I in mine, possibly more so, since he is the cousin of a reigning king.

“When once Gil and I had described you—your high civil and military ranks, your charm and gentility, the numbers of warriors under your command, your fierce valor in battle, your handsome good looks, all the simple traits of the simple man you are”—Sitheeros grinned slyly—“Chief Ritchud fairly watered at his mouth and we began the dowry negotiations then and there. He is one of the wealthiest of the Tenzsee chiefs and I knew it and he knew that I knew it, so Gil and I were able—after a few days of haggling and feasting and entertainments and really serious, professional-style drinking—to wring a settlement of truly royal proportions out of the rich old bastard for you, enough to give you good cause to remember this anniversary of your thirtieth year of life. We hope too that you will remember your two good, loving, caring friends who brought it all about for you.”

“And should I decide I don’t like the girl and the arrangement, that I’d rather have an Ehleen to wife?” demanded Tomos. “What then, my good, loving, caring, practical-joking, near-alcoholic friends?”

Sitheeros squirmed as if he had unknowingly seated himself on an anthill, frowned and replied, “Hopefully, you won’t, Tomos. Man, you could go far toward starting a border war that would make the last one look like a field exercise, that way! Why do you think that the border up above Iron Mountain has been so quiet for so many years, man? It’s because Chief Ritchud and I have been friends for just that long. A very fierce, bloodthirsty tribe from somewhere up north and east of him, called the Ahrmehnee, raided his lands in force years back, burned the nearly ripe crops through a wide swath of his tribe’s lands and drove off quantities of his kine, killing those they couldn’t take and leaving the carcasses to rot or using them to pollute springs and wells. They are truly demons from hell, that tribe.”

Tomos nodded knowledgeably. “Yes, I know, Sitheeros. We of western Karaleenos have been troubled by that same tribe of barbarians for as long as we have been in the foothills, hundreds of years now.”

“Yes, well, anyway,” Sitheeros continued, “I knew that rather than see their folk starve that winter, the Tchatnoogas were certain to mount large-scale raids against my lands and any other border duchies within range, so I counciled with my peers and we collected surplus grain, winnowed through our herds and sent the first of quite a few wagon trains up to Kleevluhnd—that first one under strong guard, of course—where I personally gave its contents to Chief Ritchud, who was a young man then, about of an age with me, and but recently having succeeded to the chieftaincy of the Tchatnooga Tribe.

“That was the beginning, Tomos. There was not a single raid that year; moreover, when the old king heard what we had done up there, he allowed us to credit part of our gifts against our yearly taxes—you see, Hyamos was not always a bad king; only as he aged and his mind began to slip did his son begin to influence him to his and the kingdom’s detriment. Eight years later, when a severe, localized flood ravaged part of my domains and those of Thoheeks Djordjeeos Lahmdos of Yoyooliahn-skeera in the early spring after a very bad winter, Chief Ritchud himself came down with above two thousand of his warriors to help us drain the lands in time for putting in the year’s crops. Many would’ve gone hungry that next winter but for the help of those good barbarians.

“Twenty years, almost to the day, after we were become friends, the accursed Ahrmehnee again invaded. That time, three other thoheeksee and I gathered our warbands and as much of our spear levies as could be spared from working the lands, took six of my war-elephants and marched up into Tchatnooga lands. Our force combined with that of the Tchatnoogas, and their barbarian allies managed to finally bring those Ahrmehnee to battle and trounce them so thoroughly that, to the best of my knowledge, they never have raided in any force again, not against the Tchatnooga tribal lands, anyway.

“Since the sundering of the old Kingdom of Mehmfiz, years back, there are three paramount chiefs in all of the lands of Tenzsee, and the sire of that girl you just married is one of them, so please, I sincerely beg of you—even if she snores, stinks, wolfs her food and guzzles her wine, spits on the carpets, pisses the bed or burns down the house, please try to like her, for a border war of the proportions that Chief Ritchud could bring about might very well end our new and hopefully better rule of Council rather than of kings before it has hardly commenced.”

When the feasting finally was done and the last healths had been drunk, when Sitheeros and Gil, both far too drunk to safely fork a horse, had been tumbled into the wain to be driven back into the city by Sitheeros’ servants and cooks, then Tomos—still almost sober—ordered the sunken tub in the bathroom of the kitchen house filled and relaxed in the steaming, blood-warm water while his body servant laved him, oiled his dark-auburn hair and reddish beard, then lightly scented his body.

Wrapped in yards of thick linen sheeting, he walked back over to the house and, in his attiring room, exchanged the sheeting for a soft knee-length tunic, a pair of felt shoes and a quilted cotton robe of dark green. While chewing at a couple of dried cardamom pods, he gave orders to his guards and the house servants that he was to be disturbed only in the event of a full scale alien invasion or the outbreak of a serious rebellion; any and all other matters could and must just await his pleasure.

Then he visited the dining room long enough to place a decanter of watered wine, one of honey wine and a smaller one of brandy in a basket with two silver goblets, and, thus laden, he padded in to his new bride.

When he opened the door of his bedchamber, three girls ran, all grinning and giggling, out. Two of them he recognized as slaves of Sitheeros; the other was a stranger, though marked by her clothing as a mountain barbarian, for all that she was as dark as anykath’ahrohs Ehleen, with black wavy hair and flashing dark-brown eyes.

He stopped dead when he took a step inside. His bedchamber had been drastically altered; gone were his own, narrow bed, his campaign chests and his small desk, and in their places was a large, clearly expensive bed adorned with feather mattresses, satin coverings and bolsters, and semi-enclosed in a tentlike affair of gauzy silken draperies. Low carven tables flanked the massive piece of furniture, and where his plain iron watch-lantern had hung there now was an elaborate lamp of hammered, gilded brass with insets of crystal-clear glass. Tomos could not imagine just when and how Sitheeros’ servants and slaves had managed to get the room first emptied and then refurnished without his knowledge of their activities.

In the two outer corners of the chamber, braziers glowed, sending up tendrils of fragrant smoke from the rich nuggets of incense that had been scattered in generous handsful over the coals. His head awhirl, Tomos estimated the total cost of these new furnishings to be at least a thousand thrakmehee, if not more. Sitheeros was a more than wealthy man, but . . .

A soft, throaty voice intruded upon his thoughts. “Mah lord husband, Ah feared that Ah would sleep before you came to me.” Her Ehleeneekos was slow, stilted and most ungrammatical.

Tomos, smiling, strode over to the bedside and deposited the basket on one of the carven tables, then said in Mehreekan, “My dear, given time, I’ll see that you learn our language properly, but for now, let us speak in yours, for I do own a dialect or two of it. My mother was, you see, a daughter of King Rahdnee III of Briztuhl.”

She wrinkled her brows. “But . . . but mah daddy said that you were . . . that mah husband would be an Ehleenee duke . . . ?”

Tomos laughed. “I’m that, too, my dear. I’m a hereditary thoheeks of the Kingdom of Karaleenos, a land up to the northeast of here, but I’m only half Ehleen, nonetheless. I’m down here to command troops that my king’s new overlord has loaned to these Ehleenohee until their own army is strong enough to defend their lands without aid.”

Although he conversed gaily, Tomos was become painfully aware of just how Sitheeros had felt when first he had seen this child-woman. She lay propped against one of the bolsters, her flaxen hair now loose and framing her small head and lightly freckled face. Her body was sheathed from throat to below her small feet in a nightgown so sheer that he could easily discern through the fabric the bright red-pink nipples of her proud, pointed breasts and the red-blond tangle of curling hair between her upper thighs. Once more, he wondered fleetingly if Sitheeros’ back-poundings earlier in the evening had damaged his back, for his chest felt suddenly tight and his breathing was become difficult.

Licking dry lips, he poured measures of the watered wine into each of the goblets, added a dollop of the thick honey wine, then proffered one to his bride, before taking a long swallow of his own. Seating himself stiffly on the edge of the luxuriously soft bed, he stretched forth a hesitant and, he noted with a still rational part of his mind, slightly tremulous hand and gently clasped it on one of those enticing breasts. All at once, he was become feverishly hot, he could feel the salt sweat oozing out his pores and trickling down his face and his body under the quilted robe, and he knew that the robe must come off and quickly.

When he stood up to remove it, the girl untied something behind her neck and sat up long enough to pull her wispy nightgown over her head, at which point Tomos’ breathing seemed to become even more constrained, so that he found himself to be panting shallowly like a spent coursing hound at the end of a brisk hunt.

Kicking off the felt shoes, he pulled his own tunic over his head, not even hearing the gasp that issued from between the red, red lips of the nude girl. But when he lay beside her, first placed his arms around her, he felt her stiff, tensed muscles, felt her slender form all a tremble, heard the ghost of a whimper, a sound of hopeless terror.

Restraining the insistent demands of his body, he released her and drew a little away from her, though leaving one hand in contact with her flesh. “Brandee,” he said in a voice that quavered only slightly, “you should have no fear of me. I am your husband, child; I mean you no harm, now or ever. If you so wish it, for tonight I’ll just seek out the bed that was previously here and sleep in that, that you may rest and sleep and compose yourself for the morrow. I have no kin here, nor either have you, so what we two do or do not do in this chamber and this bed tonight is no one’s business but ours. Come now, speak your thoughts to me, Brandee, tell me your wishes.”

A shudder rippled the length of her body, she sobbed one time, then she began to speak. “Ah . . . Ah’m truly sorry, mah lord husband . . . but . . . but when Ah . . . Ah saw it, Ah . . . It’s just so ... so huge, so much bigger than Ah’d thought it would be. Ah don’t think Ah can . . . that you can ... Ah know I should be, must be brave, that’s what my mothuh and aunts told me, but . . . but ...” Then she began to cry.

Tomos took her, enfolded her slender body in his arms and held her against his hairy chest, patting her back gently as she cried out her fears and her terrors. At some length, when the sobs had first muted, then ceased, he released her, and, propping himself upon an elbow so that he could the easier look into her swimming, blue-green eyes, he said, “Brandee, bravery is only necessary in the face of danger or of pain. I pose no danger to you and I will not willfully hurt you, so save your bravery for some time when it is needed. Because you still have your flower, there will no doubt be some pain, but no more than you can bear, and soon there will be none at all.

“My first wife, who died years ago of a summer fever, was smaller even than are you—only fourteen hands from soles to pate, and slender—yet we two experienced scant difficulty in doing the things that men and women do together, not after the first few days. Indeed, when she died, she was carrying our child in her womb.

“But look you, my ladywife, you have had a full measure of excitement this day just past, as too have I.

Let us sleep now. We two have the rest of our lives in which to learn to enjoy each other and breed me an heir or three. You must be the one to choose the time for a beginning of lovemaking. For now, sleep you well; 1 know that I shall.”

Brandee thought, as she felt the scarred, muscular, hairybody lying beside her slowly relax, heard his breathing become deep and regular, “This stranger to whom they have married me, he is so very kind, so thoughtful of me, of my feelings, he is so wise and so caring. Could Daddy have been aware of this? He never met my lord husband ... I don’t think; perhaps the Lord Duke Sitheeros told him. But I am so very glad that they married me to this man and not to that old, fat, toothlessly leering Chief Rahbin of the Nahkszfil Tribe, who is always undressing girls with his eyes and dribbling porridge down his chins and the fronts of his shirts. My lord husband keeps himself so very clean and smells so pretty, while I don’t think old Chief Rahbin has had a wash since he left his cradle.

“Yes, I think I could be very, very happy with this man to whom they have married me, this Duke Tomos Gonsalos.”