by Robert Adams
“Of course, what was left of the High Lady’s force did manage to beat them screeching devils off, elst I wouldn’t be here, ’cause I’d took a dart through my thigh early on and I couldn’t even stand up. But we didn’t do no more marching or riding or raiding for a while, I can tell you that!
“Since it was a good, dependable water source there, the High Lady had some rough fortifications put up on that same campsite and set about reorganizing, and before she was set to move on in the campaign, the word come from the High Lord that it wasn’t to be no more campaign, that the Confederation was at peace with them Ahrmehnees.
“Well, the High Lady seemed damned anxious for to get to where the High Lord was, for some reason, her and that reformed rebel, Baronet Drehkos. She took a force a little bigger nor our present one — mebbe, sixteen hundreds, and including me and my company — and we rode hard till we reached the Taishyuhns’ main village.”
Redstone pipe packed to his critical satisfaction, the captain lit a splinter of pine in the coals and began to puff the tobacco to life, continuing to talk around the stem of yellowed bone.
“Well, us Freefighters, we went into camp on that big shelf down below the Taishyuhn village, where Fort Kogh is, you know; the High Lady, she knew that us Freefighters weren’t about to put up with none of that make-work, spit-and-polish shit like the Confederation Regulars, so she kept my company and the others separate from them.
“Anyhow, her that was to become her ladyship, Pehroosz, had come a-riding in with that Ahrmehnee Witchwoman what come to marry up with the nahkhahrah, Kogh Taishyuhn. While every Ahrmehnee around abouts was getting things ready for the big blowout wedding feast of the nahkhahrah, thishere Witchwoman, she sent her ladyship out into the hills for to dig up some special roots and an old boar bear chased her up a tree and was just set to go up after her when the archduke, who was out a-hunting deers, come by.
“I hear tell it was a near thing, that day. That damn bear chewed the haft in two right behind of the blade and the archduke had to meet bruin breast to breast and put paid to him with a damn hanger. And that was a flat, big-assed bear, too, Sir Djim — l seen the skin!
“Well, just before the bear had come at her, her ladyship had dug up a real old, corroded-up strongbox from the little hollow where she was digging roots for the Witchwoman, and she brung it back with her. I hear tell the thing was dang heavy, and for good reason, because when the old lock was forced and broke, it come about that that damn box was full up to the tiptop with little bars of solid, pure gold! Every one of them weighed a little over three ounces and they was all stamped with words in some language couldn’t nobody — Kindred, Ehleen, burker or Ahrmehnee — read. Anyhow, it was near forty pounds of gold in that box, Sir Djim!
“Well, being the kind of man he is, the archduke first tried to turn the newfound treasure over to the High Lord, but Lord Milo opined that it was found on Ahrmehnee land, therefore it was rightly the property of the nahkhahrah. But old Kogh said that according to the customs of his people, whoever found things like that was owner of them, but that as the archduke had saved her ladyship from the bear, he thought that the two of them should ought to split the gold between them. Well, that’s just what they done, but as his lordship, had already took a shine to her ladyship, them two was married on the same day the nahkhahrah was.
“That might’ve been the end of it all, too, but Archduke Hahfos come to wonder if it might’ve been more than the one box of gold up there in the hills, so he went back with a bunch of men with shovels and pickaxes and all. And the very first swing of a pick hit metal, Sir Djim. Won’t nobody ever know, probably, the whens and wheres and hows of it all, but it was hundreds of them same kinda boxes, some of them not a full foot under the ground.”
“All of them full of gold?” queried Djim Bohluh.
“Aw, no,” replied Guhntuh with a shake of his head. “No lots and lots of them had nothing inside but kinds of paper with writing and funny-looking pictures and all on them. But there was more gold — some in bars, some in gold coins and a whole lot in jewelry, jewelry like you never seen afore, too. And there was boxes full of smaller boxes and bags of cut jewels, unmounted, and pearls and opals. There was boxes of silver bars and coins, too, as well as some bigger boxes plumb full of old books from more’n a thousand years ago. At least, that’s what the High Lord said — he wrote back in a letter to the archduke, after he’d done boxed up all them books and papers and sent them all up to Kehnooryos Atheenahs. He said too a lots of them papers was a kind of money they used back then in place of gold and silver, that or pieces of paper that said the fellers that had it owned part of manufactories and trading companies and suchlike.
“The High Lord Milo, he went on to say that some them books had been real rare and hard to come by even way back then, and he thanked the archduke over and over for getting them all up to him,”
“The ahrkeethoheeks kept it awl, aside from what he sent up to Kehnooryos Atheenahs?” asked Bohluh. “No friggin’ wonduh he can live like he does!”
“No such thing!” snorted Guhntuh. “I doubt me if Archduke Hahfos kept a tenth part of whatall he found, valuewise. That palace he had built and lives in now, that ain’t his, Sir Djim. In time that’ll be the palace of Kogh Taishyuhn and the other nahkhahrahs after him. Then the archduke, he’ll move up to a smaller place — the House of the Golden Bear — he has up in the hills, built on the spot where he met her ladyship and kilt the bear and found the treasure buried.
“A whole lots of that treasure has gone into the Ahrmehnee stahn — rebuilding villages, replacing livestock, dowering gals, enlarging and modernizing the Ahrmehnee forges what make that fine, light, strong mail, not to mention improving the few roads that was there to start and building new ones place of the tracks and trails, and all of it means work and hard-money wages for every swingin’ dick in the whole stahn who’d rather work than fight. Them few fire-eaters was left is a-ridin’ with us, you know.”
The officer paused long enough to rake one of the lumps of clay out from the bed of coals, crack it off the potato with a sharp rap of his knife pommel, then slice the tuber open to steam and cool enough to eat, while he continued his discourse.
“You can believe it won’t none of his lordship’s doing, way he’s come to live and dress and eat and all, not a bit of it. It was her ladyship won him over to acting the part of the rich, powerful, respected man what he is. I was there through it all and I can tell you the archduke, he was as damned discomforted as a hog in a scaleshirt for some little time, but her ladyship got her way, like she allus does, mostly. And talk in the villages is his lordship’ll be the next nahkhahrah, once old Kogh Taishyuhn dies.”
“But the Ahrkeethoheeks is of a Kindred house. He’s no damn Ahrmehnee,” stated Djim Bohluh flatly.
Guhntuh just nodded. “Yes, but the Ahrmehnee say anybody marries a Ahrmehnee is a Ahrmehnee because of it, you see, and that means his lordship is a Bahrohnyuhn. Then, too, he was formally adopted into the Taishyuhns by the nahkhahrah on account of saving her ladyship by killing that bear, see? So come down to it, he’s more of a Ahrmehnee than most borned Ahrmehnees, being of two tribes and all. All the dehrehbehs likes him, so he’ll likely be the next nahkhahrah for sure. Steel keep him, he’s some kinda first-class gent, he is!”
* * *
“The bastard carries himself well,” thought General Jay Corbett, as he sat his mule facing Earl Devernee on his horse, “for all he’s clearly scared shitless of our weapons. Hell, in his place I’d be jelly-kneed, too — after all, what chance have even the best-armed, best-trained schiltron of pikemen against rifles and hand grenades, not to even mention machine guns and mortars! Few as we are, he seems to know that we could go through his glen like Sherman went through Georgia.”
Aloud, he said, “Mr Devernee, I have no designs upon you, your people or your lands; all that I want is the unharmed persons of Dr. Erica Arenstein and her party delivered to my camp. So why didn’t you just bring
her and them out here with you? That would have been the simplest thing to do.”
Earl Devernee was indeed terrified, as Corbett had sensed, but for his people, not for himself. Sight of what the aliens horrifying weapons of war had done to that massive gate, to those sturdy, stonework towers flanking it, in a bare eyeblink of elapsed time had sent cold sweat trickling the length of his spine, set his nape hairs all a-prickle. That sinister sight had confirmed in his mind the uselessness of trying to fight with two understrength reserve regiments of pikemen and a bare handful of light cavalrymen.
He had been of a mind to insist that the woman and her minions stay imprisoned in the glen instead of sending them on to the brigadier, and now he wished he had done just that. He would have too had he not still felt guilty for his act of family favoritism and the bloody, expensive carnage that that act had engendered at the battle.
“You might have sent that message with a herald, sir, before you destroyed my gate and one of my towers,” he said to Corbett in reply. “Even in warfare, there are certain courtesies should be observed and honored.”
“Would you have delivered up those prisoners had I done as you suggest. Mr. Devernee?” demanded Corbett.
The earl shrugged. “Not immediately, probably, but the way would have been opened for some sort of negotiations. Nor would there now be dead and wounded men to care for or bury.”
“The way is opened now for far more than negotiation,” Jay Corbett stated with the cold grin of a winter wolf. “And if Dr. Arenstein and the others aren’t in my camp, alive and well, by sunup tomorrow, Mr. Devernee, my men and I are going to come in there and take them, and if that means the killing of every fighting man you own, we’ll do that too. Am I understood, Mr. Devernee?”
“Your intentions could not be more clearly stated, sir,” affirmed the earl solemnly. “But if these men in evidence hereabouts are all that you number, then you might have a care, lest you and they bite off a bit more than all of you can easily chew. Besides, the prisoners are no longer in the glen.”
“If you’ve killed them . . .” began Corbett, menacingly.
But the earl raised a hand, saying, “Please, sir, we are not brutal barbarians, but civilized folk. Whilst they bided within the glen, the woman and her men were well treated, for all that they had most cruelly ambushed first an ill-armed party of woodcutters, then a patrol of dragoons, killing and wounding many men with their deadly, firespitting weapons.
“Brigadier Ahrthur Maklarin. who commands our field army, sent for them, that they might use those selfsame weapons to aid his men in the taking of a fortress-city to the southeast of here. So I am certain that they are now no less well kept than they were here, especially so if they are truly become our allies.”
But Corbett shook his head. “Frankly, Mr. Devernee, I don’t believe you. I reiterate: Have them all in my camp by dawn tomorrow, or what I do and order done to your people and that glen will be solely on your head.”
“But I speak the full, honest truth, sir!” the earl expostulated. “How can you be convinced? Please, sir, tell me.”
* * *
Lady Pamela Grey read the short letter conveyed to her by the leader of the aliens, then looked up from it at the dark-haired, black-eyed stranger. “A well-built man,” she thought. “Strong and fast, from his looks. Thick as his wrists are, he could probably cleave a man from pate to belly with that saber he wears. And he’s certainly gentle-born and -bred, for his air of command is entirely too natural for him to be else. Now, if only he were friend rather than foe . . . ?”
“Sir,” she said coolly, “this is assuredly Earl Devernee’s mark and seal. If you wish to truly search this glen, I shall see to it that you are in no way hindered, that all buildings or enclosures are gaped open to you at your pleasure. But I should think that the fact that the earl, our hereditary leader, was willing to voluntarily place himself a hostage in your camp might convince you that he is an honorable, a just and a truthful man.”
“Were I in his place,” said Corbett in a tone no less cool, stiff and formal. “were I the hereditary leader of a people, I certainly would prevaricate to protect those people; I could do no less for those who depended upon me, however much such a deed might compromise my personal sense of honor, madam. I think that your Mr. Devernee and I are much alike in that and in other ways, so, yes, I do intend to search this glen . . . and not only for living bodies, but for fresh graves, as well.”
But she shook her head with a swirl of dark-blond hair. “You will find nothing recognizable in any grave in this glen, not a recent one, one dug since we conquered it. Only upon the field of battle, where large numbers of corpses are involved, do we practice inhumation in usual practice, we cremate our dead, burying the ashes in pots or small caskets.”
Corbett thought fast and lied glibly. “Even so, there will be proof if you people have murdered Dr. Arenstein, for a section of bone in one of her arm’s had been replaced with a silver one . . . unless it’s your custom to rob the dead.”
Fire blazed from her blue eyes. “Sir, must I say it again that we are not barbarians? We have enlarged a natural cavern to make a common crypt, and I shall be more than pleased to show you to it: you may open every casket, unseal every pot and sift ashes to your hearts content, if that is your desire. But I state here to you the fact that that woman and all of her companions departed this glen as part of a reinforcement and supply train bound for our army nearly two months agone. If you seek her and them, you must do such beneath the walls of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, not here.”
* * *
Bili of Morguhn handled the dusty, dirty device of wood and metal gingerly, so recently having seen the evidence of its deadly capabilities. Carefully, he laid it on the floor beside his armchair and regarded the enemy captive — now weighed down with heavy fetters — before him.
At last, after a searching appraisal, he said, “You’re a Ganik, aren’t you? What’s your name?”
Counter spat on the floor at the feet of the seated man and sneered. “Go fuck yersef, yew skinhaidid cocksuckuh, yew!”
Bili sighed “I would have preferred to keep this simple and civil, but obviously you Ganiks have no concept of civility.
“Master Oodehn,” he bespoke the Kleesahk who had captured and brought back the prisoner, “put me a rope over that beam up there, then fetter this man’s wrists behind him, tie one end of the rope to the center of the connecting chain and hoist him up by it. I want his feet about my height off the floor. I learned long ago, at the court of Harzburk, how to obtain cooperation from recalcitrant prisoners.”
Counter, who had over the years taken such savage delight in sadistically torturing hundreds of men, women and children, proved, however, to have a very low personal pain threshold. His feet were not a foot off the floor when he began to scream, as his own body weight began to strain the muscles and ligaments of his shoulder joints to the tearing point.
Bili mindspoke the Kleesahk to lower the captive, but only to just where his toes could take a part of his weight. Then he said grimly, “Now you know that I mean business, Ganik, and that I have no intention of enduring either stubborn silence or insult from you.
“Now, once again, what is your name? Where did you get this weapon and how does it work? How many of them do the Skohshuns have?”
When, by dint of alternate demands and threats, plus a bit of reading of the contents of the prisoners completely nonshielded mind, Bili felt that he had all of the information that Counter Tremain could give him, he mindspoke the Kleesahk, Oodehn.
“Can you wipe any memory of all this, from capture on, from this Ganik’s mind, Master Oodehn?”
The huge hominid wrinkled his hairless brows in a very human way, beaming back, “No, Lord Champion, I doubt that I can. But I am certain that Pah-Elmuh could.”
* * *
Pah-Elmuh had but just withdrawn the tube from the throat of the comatose King Byruhn, after having forced a small measure of a milk-and-brandy mixture in
to his stomach, when Bili’s mindcall reached him. After beaming an affirmative response, he carefully cleansed the unconscious monarch’s beard and mustaches, drew up the sheet and blanket and the silken coverlet over the nude body against a possible night chill, then made his way toward the chamber from which Bili had called him. As the entire chamber was bathed in the soft, silver radiance of the moonlight, the Kleesahk blew out the flame of the lamp as he exited the sickroom.
Chapter X
Counter Tremain started and looked warily about him, but he could discern nothing anywhere near to the rifle pit that was to he feared. Shaking his head, he muttered under his breath.
“Dadgummit! Thet climbin’ musta plumb wore this ole boy out fer to put me to sleep lahk thet, Gonna hev to be some carefuler awn the way back down, too, cawse both my dang ole shoulders is sorer ’n a dang boil. Hell, I’m sore awl ovuh!”
He checked his rifle once again, made certain that a round was chambered, that the magazine was full, the safety engaged and the calibrated rear sight set properly — all the things that Erica had taught him and the other rifle-armed bullies last year, far to the southeast when they had dug the weapons out from among the clean-picked bones beneath the rockslide.
That done, Counter rolled back onto his back, took a long pull at his waterskin, then settled himself to sleep the rest of the night away. His mission did not start until sunup.
* * *
At breakfast on the morning after the capture, mindwiping and release of the Ganik, Counter Tremain, Thoheeks Bili was apprised by the commander of the night watch that the huge killer wolf had once more penetrated the lower city and, this time, made its way into a house to seize, kill and partially devour its human victim. There were firm paw prints in a tiny garden plot near to the house, and, moreover, a neighbor had gotten a fleeting glimpse of the beast in the bright moonlight, his testimony confirming that it was indeed a rusty-roan wolf, though by size the grandsire of all wolves — past, present and future.