Swords of the Horseclans

by Robert Adams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  So saying, he drew his dirk.

  * * *

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

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

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

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

  14

  Early in that month called Thekembrios, Milo and Mara lay reclined upon a mound of cushions, sipping cordials and gazing into the heart of a crackling, popping wood fire. The evening had been one of those rare occasions on which they had been able to dine alone, in their suite, and the remains of the meal littered a table nearby.

  He tried to enter her mind, failed, and said aloud, “What are you thinking of that you must shield your thoughts?”

  She smiled ruefully. “Sorry, Milo. We must shield our thoughts so much of our days, you know. But I didn’t mean to shut you out.

  “No, I was thinking of you . . . in a way. I was thinking of the first winter I spent with you in that damned drafty tent at Ehlai. God, it was horrible: that arctic wind knifing in off the ocean, fleas hopping on every living creature in the camp, and the smells, ugh — the atmosphere inside those tents was enough to sicken a hog or a goat, smoke and sour milk and wet wool and filthy, unwashed human bodies. You should have warned me beforehand what a winter camp was going to be like. Nothing even resembling a real bath for months; Milo, I thought I’d never be able to get the stink off and be clean again!”

  Milo took a sip of his cordial. “I don’t recall any complaints from you then, Mara.”

  She laughed throatily. “Of course not, silly. I was in love with you — violently, passionately in love with you. Then, the cold and the stink and the fleas and the filth still added up to paradise . . . just so long as you were there. We women are like that in the first flush of love.”

  “And now, Mara?” He rolled onto his side to face her.

  “That was forty years ago. How much do you love me now?”

  “Not that much, Milo. That kind of love can never last very long; it’s too intense, too demanding, too abrasive on the emotions of both parties. But I do love you still, Milo. Ours has become a . . . a comfortable relationship for me. And what of you, my lord?”

  Before he answered, he drained the cordial and tossed the silver goblet in the general direction of the table, then rolled onto his back, pillowing his head on his crossed arms, but with his face still toward his wife.

  “I didn’t love you, Mara, not then, and I think you knew.”

  She nodded her head slowly, and the fire threw highlights from the blue-black tresses that rippled about her shoulders.

  “I knew. But it didn’t matter, not then.”

  “For a long while, Mara, I didn’t know if I could ever love you. Not that you were hard to love, that wasn’t it. But I feared that my ability to love might have atrophied. I’d been afraid to love any woman for so long, you see.

  “It’s bad enough with a woman you simply like and respect — watching her, day by day, year by year, grow old and infirm and finally die. When you love that woman, it’s the crudest of tortures. After having suffered that torment a couple of times, Mara, I willed myself not to love.

  “But, over the years, I have come to love you, my lady. Not a fiery, passionate love, but a love that has come slowly into being. It is nurtured by my respect for you and my admiration of you, by my faith in your honesty and by the pleasure that your dear companionship has given me. Our relationship is, as you said, a most comfortable one. I am comfortable, Mara, and I am very happy. You made me happy, darling, and I love you.”

  Resting her hand on his cheek, she whispered, “I’m glad you remembered how to love, my Milo, and now that the southern Ehleenoee are all reunited and there will be peace . . .”

  “Hah!” he exclaimed, sitting up. “Peace, is it, my lady? Such peace as we have now will last until spring, possibly. Let us hope it’s not an early spring, for Greemos and I have much to do.”

  Mara arched her brows. “Greemos? But he is King Zenos’ Strahteegos.”

  “So he is,” agreed Milo, “but only until the first day of Martios. On that day, I will take his formal oath as the Confederation’s new Strahteegos of Strahteegoee. Then he and I will ride north and look over the ground on which the army will probably be campaigning.”

  “But Gabos . . .” she began. “He has served us well, and when he hears . . .”

  “Gabos was among the first to know, Mara, and he heartily endorses the move. He’d never admit openly to the fact, of course, but he, of all men, is fully aware that he’s getting too old for long campaigns. I’m kicking him upstairs. Week after next, at the Feast of the Sun, I’m investing the old war horse with his new title — Thoheeks of the Great Valley.

  “That’s the only way that well ever really secure it, you know. It must be settled and cultivated. I plan one large city and two smaller ones and the majority of their citizens will be, like Gabos, retired soldiers. If they’re unmarried, they’ll be encouraged to take wives from among the mountain tribes. It worked for the Romans; it should work for me.”

  “Romans?” repeated Mara puzzledly.

  “A very warlike people who flourished roughly twenty-four centuries ago, Mara. When they had a difficult frontier to defend, they settled it with old soldiers wed to barbarian girls, which proved quite an effective means of gradually amalgamating their enemies into their empire, as well as providing a certain source of tax revenues rather than expenditures and, at the same time, a virtual breeding ground for the next generation of soldiers.”

  Suddenly, Mara gurgled with laughter. “Oh, Milo, I just pictured the Lady Ioanna as a country thoheekeesa, milking goats instead of coupling with them! Why, she can’t even ride; she’ll be lost outside a city.”

  “Which is probably why,” announced Milo, “she has been begging Gabos to divorce her, offering him fantastic sums to do so. I advised him to hold out for the highest figure he can get from her, and then to grant her wish. I’ve already arranged for Gabos to marry Grand Chief Shoomait’s youngest daughter. I’m reliably informed that the girl is a nubile fourteen, attractive, intelligent, and personable, and Gabos is not of such an age that he can’t beget a few heirs. It’s said the girl is the apple of old Shoomait’s eye — and God knows she cost the Confederation a high enough bride price. So I think’ the old bastard will keep his own brigands and the other tribes in check; he’s not going to raid his own daughter’s lands or try to destroy the inheritance of his grandchildren.”

  “My, my, husband,” teased Mara, “you were certainly a busy little High Lord during those six weeks I spent in the country — creating a new duchy, planning new cities, abetting in the blackmail of an heiress, raiding the Confederation treasury to buy a fourteen-year-old bride for a fifty-year-old man, and arranging to get a new Strahteegos just in time for your new war. Tell me, dear heart, who are we fighting this time?”

  Frowning, Milo toyed with his signet. “Probably Harzburk, before it’s done.”

  “Harzburk?” she exclaimed. “But the king is your friend, your ally. He sent the second largest body of troops that came from the Middle Kingdoms.”

  “The King of Harzburk was never my ally, Mara, and I don’t think he has ever had a friend,” stated Milo. “The only reason he sent me troops was because of his overweening pride and his hereditary enmity toward the Kingdom of Pitzburk, by whom he could not bear to be publicly outdone!

  “His goddamned nobles are the reason for it all. They outnumbered the band of Pitzburk nobles and I had to place them at opposite ends of the camp to prevent trouble, even before Zastros’ host arrived. Then, when the Southern Council and I had arranged for the withdrawal of their army, those damned fool Middle Kingdoms’ fire-eaters rode a little way out of camp and commenced a goddamned pitched bat
tle! If I’d let them, they’d have merrily chopped each other into blood pudding.”

  “But that’s childish,” Mara observed. “Why would hundreds of grown men fight for no reason?”

  Milo’s shoulders rose and fell. “Their kingdoms are hereditary enemies, Mara. I suppose it’s in their blood. Why do dogs and cats always fight?”

  “Because they’re both predators,” answered Mara.

  “Well, you’ll search long and hard to find two more predatory principalities than those two, Mara. I brought their melee to a stop by surrounding them with ten thousand mounted and fully armed dragoons, mostly Freefighters with some Kuhmbuhluhners mixed in, arrowing a few of them to get their attention, then threatening to slaughter every manjack of them if they didn’t put up their steel.

  “The next morning, I set the Pitzburkers on the march, wounded and all. I sent along Captain Mai and three thousand Freefighter dragoons to ‘guide’ them and see to it that they switched over to the western trade road at Klahkspolis.

  “Hardly were they out of camp than those damned Harzburkers had provoked a skirmish with the Eeree nobility. I was out of the castra at the time, riding a few miles with Mai and the Pitzburkers, so Greemos and Duke Djefree did the same thing I’d done the day before, except they weren’t as careful. They didn’t just put arrows into legs and targets and horses — they shot to kill. One of the men they killed was one of King Kahl’s many bastards.”

  Mara groaned. “So now you feel Harzburk will declare war on the Confederation?”

  Milo shook his head. “Oh, no, not that sly old buzzard. He’s called The Fox King’ for good reason, though he doesn’t quite understand how our Confederation works.

  “As you know, Kuhmbuhluhn and Tchaimbuhsburk have boundary disputes that go back decades, but Kuhmbuhluhn’s had very little trouble with Getzburk and no one can remember any with Yorkburk; yet all three principalities — well-known satellites of Harzburk — have sent heralds to the Duke at Haiguhsburk declaring war, to commence in the spring, as do most Middle Kingdoms’ wars.