by Robert Adams
To fall or even stumble would presage a messy death, so Geros backed cautiously, his knees flexed and his booted feet feeling a way across the uneven footing of blood-slick paving, dropped weapons and still or twitching bodies. The young sergeant was suffused with a cold, crawling terror, for he well knew that no sane man would so stalk an armed and armored opponent while lacking any sort of weapons but bare hands . . . and but the one of those.
His every instinct told him run, turn and run! And he knew that he should, but he could not, for the giant was now between him and Thoheeks Bili, still lying stunned where he had fallen. So, despite it all, despite the fear that was almost unmanning him, Geros could not willingly desert his young lord.
It was the monster though, who stumbled over a dead body and would have fallen on his face, had he not slammed the wide palm of his only good hand on the slimy ground. And Geros spied his opportunity and danced in, his point quick as a striking viper, sinking deep, deep into the left eye of that upraised face.
The shudder that racked the gargantuan body all but wrenched the broadsword from Geros’ grasp. Then the tree-thick left arm flexed and the dead giant’s huge head thumped the paving stones.
* * *
“I’ve known, lived with, warriors for the best part of my life,” thought Bili, still, wakeful in the chill mountain night, “and Sir Geros Lahvoheetos is unquestionably one of the bravest men it has ever been my honor to meet or soldier with. But just try convincing him of the fact! He’s absorbed too many sagas of matchless, unblemished heroes and is firmly convinced that because his bladder fails him in action. he must be a coward.
“Yet his second and greatest feat, that day, was the very stuff of sagas. It was an impossibility; only a madman would have believed it could happen. Yet I saw it, and so did at least three dozen other men.”
* * *
Old Pyk, the Freefighter weaponmaster, clucked concernedly while he wrapped bandage about Bili’s thigh. “It’s stopped bleeding, my lord. Still, I think it should be properly burnt, else you run the risk of losing the leg to the black stink.” He finished lapping the bandage and neatly tied the ends, adding. “And a wound-burning be much easier, my lord, if you’ve no long time to think on it.”
Bili lowered the big canteen of brandy-water from his lips and smiled. “Thank you. Master Pyk, but no. When we be back in camp, I’ll have the Zahrtohgahn physician, Master Ahlee, see to the wound. I’ve had wounds burnt ere this, and I much prefer the soft words of his mode of healing to your old-fashioned red-hot spearhead.”
The young thoheeks leaned back against the merlon, refusing to allow his face to mirror his pain, while his orderly folded the slit leg of the blood-caked breeches over the bulk of the bandage, then pulled the boottop back up and secured its straps.
A nearby Freefighter remarked. “My lord, Captain Raikuh is coming back.”
Bili opened his eyes and levered himself into a sitting posture on the parapet of the inner works and took one more pull at the canteen, then resolutely corked it; it would not do to have fuzzy wits if push came to shove and he was forced to have another shouting match with Sub-strahteegos Kahzos Kahlinz, now senior Confederation officer in the conquered salient.
Pawl Raikuh strode across the carnage he had helped to make, stepping around the bodies, where possible. All at once he stopped, bent to peer closely, then drew out his dirk and sank to squat beside a dead rebel; after he had wiped his blade on the dead man’s clothing, he sheathed it, dropped something shiny into his belt purse, arose and continued on his way.
When he had climbed the ladder, he paced deliberately over to Bili’s place, removed his helmet and saluted. The padded hood which still covered most of his head was sweat-soaked, and there was a crust of old blood on his upper lip and around his nostrils; his scarred face was drawn with fatigue.
Bili waved to the stretch of parapet on his right, saying, “Pawl, sit down before you fall down. And here, try some of this brandy-water; most refreshing, it is.”
After the briefest of hesitations, the captain sank with a sigh onto the proffered seat and gratefully accepted the canteen. He took one mouthful, swished it about in his mouth and spit the pink-tinged fluid downhill, then threw back his head and upended the bottle, his throat working.
“What,” asked BilL “did our esteemed colleague have to say when you transmitted my message that his troops could now begin clearing the field, Pawl?”
Raikuh grinned. “Very little of a respectable nature, Duke Bili. His remarks tend to leave the distinct impression that he has little use for Freefighters and even less for Middle Kingdoms-trained country noblemen who fail to give him and his pack of brainless pikepushers the full degree of respect he feels they and he deserve.”
Bili snorted. “The bastard is mad, must be. Brought in his companies on the tag end of the battle — most of them never even blooded their steel, except to dispatch some rebel wounded — and then expected us to bow low and give him and his the first pick, the top cream of the loot! If he’s a fair example of the kind of officers the High lord is raising up these days then Sun and Wind help our Confederation, is all I can say.”
Extending his hand, he poked at a bejeweled hilt peeking out from under Raikuh’s boottop. “Found some goodies yourself, did you, Pawl?”
His grin broadening, Raikuh rubbed his hand along the bulge. “It be a genuine Ynibz, my lord, with a real gold hilt, but it’s not mine. It’s equal shares in my company; whatever the lads and I find goes into a common pot, and the proceed, will be evenly split.”
Bili nodded gravely. “There’s a good decision, Pawl. Too many companies end up hacking each other over scraps of loot.” He smiled teasingly. “But we’ve the intaking of a city ahead of us. How are you going to apply your rule to female loot?”
“Share and share, I suppose, my lord . . . within reason, of course. But we’ll just have to ford that particular river when we come to it.”
Raikuh took another deep pull at the dwindling contents of the canteen, then said, “My lord, we took the time to measure that man who knocked you down; that bugger was over eight foot tall, and I’d not be surprised if he weighed more than six hundred Harzburk pounds! He must have had the thews of a destrier, too, for it took three men to even lift that log that he was swinging like a staff. I wonder he didn’t break your back with it, my lord, cuirass or no cuirass.”
Gingerly, Bili shifted his position. “I’m still not sure be didn’t. Pawl. But you mean that our Geros slew such an ogre single-handed, with only his sword?”
“No, my lord,” Raikuh shook his head. “First be tickled the big bastard’s guts with the point of the standard staff — to the full length of that brass blade, and just below the navel. My own belly aches just to think of such a wounding.”
“And where is Geros now, Pawl?”
“I sent him and a detail back to our camp to fetch horse litters for our wounded. And pack mules for our dead.”
“BILI!” Milo’s powerful mindspeak burst within the skull of the young thoheeks suddenly and with terrifying intensity. “You and every other living man must get off that hill at once — you’re all in the deadliest danger!”
Chapter V
The assault on the other salient, headed by the High Lord, had proved almost a textbook exercise in how such a maneuver should be done, and, where Bili’s experience on the left had been an exposition of the weaknesses of the Confederation Army, that on the right had been a strong testament to that army’s positive qualities.
Honored to have their supreme sovereign in their van, men and officers alike had gone about their prescribed actions in a strict, regulation manner — archers and engineers taking excruciating care in providing maximum cover for the advance up to and through and past the widely gapped abattis, the attacking units quickly and precisely forming their hill-encircling front behind their cat banners, with the High Lord and his plate-armored guards in the interval between two units.
At the roll of the mass
ed drums, the engines had switched over to high-angle fire directly into the stone-walled fort atop the salient and the archers had confined their efforts to well-aimed loosings at clearly defined targets well ahead of the serried ranks of infantry.
On the second drumroll, every heavy shield came up to battle-carry, every spear sloped across right shoulder at an identical angle, all performed under the critical eyes of halberd-armed sergeants and officers with their bared broad-swords at the shoulder-carry.
With the third roll of the drums, a deep-throated cheer was raised and the lines started forward, up the slope and into the hail of death hurled down by the rebel defenders, dressing their lines at the jogtrot as missiles took their inevitable toll.
Leery of appearing cowardly in the eyes of the High Lord, the commander of the second wave kept his men close upon the heels of the first — as Sub-strahteegos Kahzos Kahlinz had not — so that relatively fresh units were always on hand to replace those rendered ineffective through losses. Thus stiffened, the ranks simply swept over the outer ramparts, leaving precious few of those rebels alive to retreat to the main fort atop the hill.
Ten yards from the bristling stone walls, under the fiercest of the rain of stones and darts and arrows, Milo’s mindspeak to the surviving senior officers gave the order which proved to make the final assault far easier and less costly to the Confederation troops.
Halting, still in aligned and ordered formations, the fore ranks knelt behind the secure protection of their big shields. As one man, the rank behind them grounded their spears and employed the small tool carried for just such a purpose to extract the removable pins securing the heads of their dual-purpose spears. Then, to the timing of the drumroll, their brawny anus drew back and hurled the heavy missiles with a much-practiced accuracy which was not really necessary, for so very thick was the press up on the walls that even a tyro could scarcely have helped fleshing his spear.
While the men of the first volley drew their wide-bladed shortswords and knelt, in turn, the line in front of them rose as one man and hurled their own spears. Then the drums once more rolled their bass thunder, and, cheering, the companies swept forward, their living wavecrest breaking over and then engulfing the little fortification before the defenders could recover from the bloody shock of the two spear volleys.
So sudden, complete and — to the rebels — unexpected was the victory of the High Lord’s force that the suicide garrison had no time either to seal or even to conceal the huge oval chamber thoroughly undermining the fortifications the tunnel through which they had been garrisoned and supplied, and the oil- and pitch-soaked timbers supporting all.
“It’s a stratagem which can be hellishly effective, Bili,” the High Lord urgently mindspoke. “Something similar once cost me most of two regiments when we were conquering the Kingdom of Karaleenos, more than a century ago. Since this hill is mined, it stand, to reason that that one you’re all on is, too. For some reason, I’ve been unable to lock onto the minds of Ahrtos or any of his senior officers, so you must get word to him that all troops are to quit that hilltop, Immediately!”
Bili was blunt. “Strahteegos Ahrtos is dead, along with most of the other officers of the first wave. A sub-strahteegos called Kahzos Kahlinz presently commands the few infantrymen who survived the actual fighting, as well as his own slow-footed companies. He thought that he commanded me and my Freefighters, as well, until we had some . . . ahhh, words on the matter.”
“All right, Bili. Everything will be set aright once this danger is past. For now, I’ll mindspeak Kahlinz. You see to getting your own company off that hilltop. Down as far as the abattis, you should be safe. Get your wounded off, but don’t bother with your dead; there may not be time.”
Sub-strahteegos Kahzos — the thirty-five-year-old third son of Thoheeks Hwilkz Kahlinz of Kahlinz — whose twenty years under the cat banners had earned him the command of a line regiment and a second-class silver cat, was coldly furious.
First, that old arsehole Ahrtos had relegated him to the inferior and honorless command of the second wave, while taking his two best battalions away from him for the initial assault and “replacing” them with two understrength units of irregular light infantry from some godforsaken backwater in the northwestern mountains.
Then a noble bumpkin — and it was difficult, despite his title and his powerful mindspeak, to credit that the young swine was even Kindred, what with his damned harsh, nasal Middle Kingdoms accent and his scalp shaven like some barbarian mercenary — had defied him, had denied the authority of a Confederation sub-strahteegos, obscenely and loud enough for every regular on the hill to hear.
Blatantly lacking respect for either Kahzos’ rank or his age, the young savage had not only profanely and flatly refused to place himself and his mercenary scum under Kahzos’ rightful authority, but he had insisted that his outlaw company of northern barbarians be given leave to loot the salient before the Confederation gatherers were allowed to set about their accustomed task of scavenging valuable or usable items.
And Kahzos had seen scant choice but to accede to the most unreasonable demands, despite the flagrant breach of the sacrosanct regulations of the Army of the Confederation. For the arrogant young cur had made it abundantly clear that, should the sub-strahteegos demur, he and his mercenaries would assuredly fight — turn their swords on Confederation troops — to achieve their larcenous ends.
At that juncture, Kahzos could only think of that wholly disgraceful business some years back, of the ruined career and public cashiering of an officer who had set his battalion on mercenary “allies” when they had refused to fight. Of course, the man in question had been a damned kath-ahrohs Ehleen — which automatically, in Kahzos’ opinion, meant a stubborn fool and a born thief and liar — and had hoped that by butchering the mercenaries, he could conceal the fact that he had embezzled their wages.
But, still, with such an unsettling precedent and with his honorable retirement not too far distant, Kahzos had stuck at issuing the order that might ensure an armed and all-round disastrous confrontation between him and his regulars and that puling pup of a thoheeks and the mercenaries.
However, his innate prejudice, towering ego and hidebound insistence on rules and regulations aside, Kahzos Kahlinz was basically a good officer and an intelligent man. When the High Lord mindspoke him, be immediately grasped the dire possibilities, the deadly danger to every living man within the new-conquered salient.
After snapping a spoken order to his staff drummer, he beamed his reply to his sovereign. “My lord, because of some unforeseen difficulties with the barbari . . . ahh, with Thoheeks Bili and his company, the gather squads have but just dispersed about the area. The musicians and the company drummers are all handling litters, of course, but I have ordered my own drummer to roll the ‘Recall’ and I will immediately dispatch a runner to warn the thoheeks and the mercena . . . ahh, the Freefighters.”
“Never mind Thoheeks Bili, Kahlinz,” beamed Milo. “He was warned before you were. Just get your units from off that damned hill as rapidly as may be. We’ve taken much loss for damned little gain this day as it is.”
Bili supervised the lowering of the wounded Freefghters down the outer face of the stone wall before he allowed himself to be eased down to the ground below, leaving Pawl Raikuh and a few men still on the wall to see to the dead and the bundles of loot and equipment.
Unless they were noble-born, deceased Freefighters were usually just stripped of any armor, weapons or other usable effects and left wherever they fell on the field; so, after getting the hard-won loot down, Raikuh simply had the near-nude, stiffening corpses shoved off the inner edge of the wallwalk to join the hacked husks of their recent opponents on the pavement of the inner court.
As the captain set his feet to the first rung of the rope ladder his men had jury-rigged, mostly from battlefield debris, he could but grunt his disgust at the foolhardy idiocy of that supercilious turd of a sub-strahteegos who should have been shooing h
is troops out of the elaborate deathtrap, but was instead ordering them into painfully dressed formations as fast as they reported to the roll of the drum.
Sergeant Geros and his detail returned just as Bili hobbled down to the place where the wounded had been gently laid. The young thoheeks took the opportunity to appropriate the sergeant’s mare but found, to his chagrin, that he had to be helped into her saddle.
Increasingly thick and dense tendrils of smoke were arising from between the paving stones of the inner court before the rearguard of the infantry column gained to the top of the stone wall and dropped down its outer face, and that company still were trotting toward the perimeter defenses of the doomed salient when a flame-shot pillar of smoke and dust mounted high into the air from behind the walls of the fort. To those on the slope below, it was as if some gigantic monster out of legend had roared with hellish din and fiery breath; the doomed infantrymen on the quaking ramparts were half obscured, and their terrified screams, curses and prayers were heard only by themselves.
First, a wedge of rampart collapsed into itself, but few saw it, for just then and with an even more awesome noise, the entire stone fort and much of the hillside between it and the ramparts simply dropped straight down, its place taken by high-leaping flames so hot that even those down near the abattis felt uncomfortable heat.
Then another and wider slice of rampart gave way, and suddenly the entire remaining stretches of rampart slid, roaring and crashing, into the huge, blazing pit, sending an unbelievable shower of scintillating sparks up and through and even high above the solid-looking entity compounded alike of dust and roiling smoke.
Bili urged the mare, Ahnah, as close as he dared to the still-crumbling verges of the deep crater; other men crowded up in his wake, despite the waves of enervating heat, the clouds of choking smoke and the nauseating stench of burning flesh which assailed them all.