by Robert Adams
The eyes of the old soldier filled, then spilled over to send salt tears coursing down his lined, scarred, weathered cheeks and into his snow-white beard. He sobbed twice, then shook his head and said in a whining voice, "I am an old man. I've devoted almost all of my life to my armies and my kings and their kingdom. So why am I used so cruelly by you I have tried so hard to serve well? You choose to believe a whoreson barbarian Karaleen rather than me." He snuffled loudly. "It's not fair, it's just not fair, none of it is fair." He then began to sob rackingly, and to moan, his head sunk onto his chest and his hands visibly straining against his bonds.
With looks of pity, the two thoheeksee flanking him, Portos and Vahsilios, set to work on the restraints, freeing first the arms, then the rest of the straps and knotted ropes. With the freed hands, Pahvlos covered his face. But immediately he was completely free and his two benefactors had reseated themselves, he leaped up and ran to the weapons rack. Armed with his sword and a stout dirk, he turned and crowed in triumph.
"Now I've got the edge on you bastards, and a sharp-honed edge it is, too. Those of you who are mine or favor my cause, come down here and arm yourselves, that we may get to the butchering of the swine who sold our kingdom out to the northern aliens. Let's have done with this silly governing of ourselves for some foreign lord and crown a real king to rule over us, say I."
Grahvos could only stand and stare when tall, saturnine Thoheeks Portos arose, smiling and nodding agreement to the ravings of the old strahteegos. Striding down the room, he plucked his saber from where it hung and fitted its case to his belt-hook before drawing the cursive blade with a sibilant hiss from its sheath. He plucked a dagger at random from the smaller weapons on the table and shook off its scabbard, one-handed, then took his place to the left of Pahvlos and slightly behind him.
Others, following Portos' lead, had begun to push back their chairs now, and things were looking rather tight and sticky for the unarmed Grahvos, Mahvros and Tomos Gonsalos. Mahvros thought it high time to pull the bell-rope, but his hand hardly had touched it when Pahvlos' hard-flung dirk sank deeply into his shoulder.
It was while the old strahteegos was fumbling on the table behind him for another weapon that he suddenly stiffened, rising onto his toes, his eyes wide and bulging, his mouth wide as well, but no sound other than an odd gurgle emerging. Then, abruptly, he collapsed all in a heap, with the hilt of a dagger jutting up from just under his left shoulderblade.
Thoheeks Portos picked up the saber he had quietly laid aside and sheathed it, saying to the room at large, "It had to be done—you all know that for fact if you'll just think on it. He was no longer the man we all once loved and respected. I know that he would have chosen this sort of quick death by steel. It's the only way for any warrior to die. We must give him a really fine funeral; the Pahvlos of old earned at least that much many times over."
The End