by Robert Adams
Manos had waited a week for Kuk to return, then had sent out a dozen cavalrymen under command of a minor noble of Theesispolis, one Herakles, to search and inquire his whereabouts. Lord Herakles possessed a working knowledge of Trade Mehrikan, and he and his men were well received by the nomads. He was informed that Kuk and his men had come, lived with the nomads a few days, and then — after having been joined by another party of equal size — had ridden away south, saying nothing to anyone. Herakles and his men saw but few adult warriors about the camp and, when they asked, were informed that most of the fighters had ridden north on a raid-in-force some three weeks before; there had been no word from the fifteen hundred or so men, but no one seemed alarmed, not really expecting them back for at least another moon. The camp and herds were watched over by old men and young boys — and the grace and beauty of these nomad boys sent the hot blood pounding in Lord Herakles’ temples.
His report was pleasing to Lord Manos, who was relieved that the barbarian Kuk would not be back. Head over heels in debt, as were most of the libertine nobles of the capital, Manos had no money for a bloodprice and would have had to have executed Kuk on some contrived charge. Besides, it was not his fault anyway! Had the silly little swine not resisted so stubbornly, he’d not have been rent so seriously; he would not have been torn to such an extent that not even the physician and his cauteries could halt the bleeding. Manos did not blame himself. It was the will of the gods, and what was one barbarian boy, more or less. There would always be more of his kind; they tended to breed like rabbits.
During the time of waiting, he amused himself with a trio of peasant boys, kidnapped by his bodyguard which was experienced and skilled at such abductions. None of the three chunky-bodied lads had an iota of the beauty that had attracted him to darling Hwili, but there were compensations.
A mere touch of the whip put an end to their resistance, and once broken in, they proved enjoyable and not one of them had the effrontery to die.
But as the month wore on and Demetrios’ messages became more vicious and the grumbling of mercenaries, spearmen and officers became louder, Manos’ minions, with their dark hair and coarse features, began to bore him. Their never-ending whining and pleading for their parents, and their bodies’ limp acceptance of his usage got on his nerves. He could think only of the wild, spirited, blond and red-haired beauties that Herakles had described in such glowing terms.
The last message Manos received from the High Lord left him shuddering. It described in sickening details what was to be done to him should he delay any longer in securing the slaves, animals and loot for which he and his huge, expensive army had been dispatched. When Manos regained his composure, he sent for Herakles.
That officer’s news, upon his return from his second visit to the camp of the nomads, cheered Manos considerably. The warriors were still absent, and furthermore, most of the older men had gone into the western mountains to hunt, expecting to be away for at least three days. The nomads had been made to feel secure, and the rich, sprawling camp was all but defenseless.
That settled it in Manos’ mind. At the next dawn, mercenary trumpets brayed and the drums of the Ehleenee rolled. Manos formed his army in the usual Ehleenee march column—kahtahfrahktoee in the van, then nobles and officers in their chariots, and then the massed spearmen on an eight-man front in the rear eating dust, their iron-soled sandals squishing the horse-droppings into the interstices of the logs which paved the steep Traderoad of the Gap. Manos took far more men than he felt he’d have need of, leaving a mere six hundred of his least effective spearmen and sixty cavalry to guard camp and fort from the thieving peasants of the area.
Nearly a thousand horsemen, seventy-three chariots, and close to seven thousand spearmen pantingly negotiated the eastern half of the winding Traderoad. The route was incredibly ancient — said to have been used by the creatures who trod these mountains before the gods. At noon, the column drew to a halt in a brushy but sparsely wooded area near the crest. Here and there, bits of weathered masonry poked through the sparse soil. One of the mercenary noncoms claimed that they stood atop the ruins of one of the Cities of the Gods. The site, he went on, was called Hwainzbroh by the indigenous peoples.
When the officers had completed their meal, the column again took to the road and started down the western face to the Gap. So cocksure was Manos of the invincibility of his army, that he had vetoed a mercenary leader’s suggestion that outriders be posted at van, flanks and rear. It would have required more time to see to such unnecessary details, and Manos was in a hurry. Therefore, when the first fours of the Theesispolis kahtahfrahktoee rounded the last curve of a winding cut and came up against a high, road-filling rock slide, disaster set in. Because the officers could not signal with bugles or drums — for fear of causing more rock slides — by the time they got the snakelike column halted, fully nine-tenths of it were solidly jammed into the cut. At the site of the obstruction the troopers were so wedged together that not a single man could dismount, much less go about clearing the road. Screaming threats, shouting imprecations, promising horrible punishments, making vicious use of whips and sword-flats, Manos and the other Ehleenee officers began trying to force the mass of spearmen back; but their efforts were unavailing. The bulk of flesh and bone behind them stopped the infantry’s withdrawal as surely as the bulk of rock and earth before had stopped the cavalry’s advance.
7
Kindred, list’ while I sing of the slaughter, At the Gap-of-Burning-Men, ere we marched to the Water. . . .
—From the Telling-harp of Blind Hari
With his head and face wrapped in bandages, Milo had received Lord Herakles on both visits, and had attended to his guests’s accommodations and entertainment. The bandages supposedly covered the terrible injuries he had sustained in an unexpected encounter with a gigantic Tree Cat. Not only did the “injuries” explain why he was not in the north with the tribe’s warriors, but Milo felt that Manos’ emissary would probably be less attentive to facial expressions and the thoughts which bred them when in conversation with a “blind” man. This proved true, and — through Horsekiller, who, despite repeated rebuffs, was constantly fawning over the foppish Ehleen in order to maintain bodily contact, which made mind-entering easier — Milo was able to glean much useful information from Lord Herakles. Both he and the cat had to force themselves to their work, however, for entering the mind of the perverted man was as nauseating as a swim in a cesspool.
After the departure of the Ehleen and his party, Milo rode Steeltooth up the Traderoad. He took only Horsekiller with him and was gone for three days. When he returned, he informed the chiefs that the Wind, which had guided them, eastward, had spoken to him on the mountain and had told him how the horde of Ehleenee might be exterminated at but little cost to His people. The Wind had further informed him that He had blown His people, here for a purpose: In regaining their homeland by the Great Water, they were to free this land from the evil sway of the Ehleenee who were an abomination in the sight of the gods. They were to purge the land of these human monsters and fulfill the ancient prophecy by rebuilding the paradisical city of their origin, Ehlai, on the site to which He would guide them.
Milo drew Hwil Kuk aside and explained what he had in mind, then he and Kuk rode north with a score of Kuk’s followers. The pass to which Kuk guided Milo lay about fifteen miles north of the Gap and Traderoad. Sometime in the dim past, the path might have been paved, but today it was little more than a game trail, partially blocked here and there by old tree-covered rock slides, but Milo, Kuk, and the others found it passable, and they came down about eleven miles north of Lord Manos’ camp. Milo was satisfied and, on his return, set every able-bodied member of the tribe to work on his plan.
* * *
After all the officers were hoarse from shouting, their arms aching from vainly wielding their whips and swords and lance butts, Manos disgustedly suggested that the spearmen be instructed to relay back the order to withdraw from the impassable
pass. The embarrassed and exasperated officers jumped at the suggestion, and a score of dusty spearmen were given the command simultaneously. It soon sounded as if every one of the thousands of sweaty, iron-clad levymen was shouting over and over again, “Rock slide ahead. Move back. The Lord Manos commands to move back!”
Because of this highly dangerous noise, few were surprised to see rocks fall from the mountains; it was natural that rocks should fall from the frowning cliffs above the compact mass of the column. But then these rocks were followed by more and yet more rocks, and by pots of flaming oil and resin, and by blazing logs, and by sheet after deadly sheet of hissing arrows. What followed could not by any stretch of the term be called a battle — it was a slaughter, a butchery, pure and simple. In the press, few men were able to move their arms even to clutch at the wounds which killed them. They could but scream or croak and die, and even when dead, they could not fall. The din was indescribable, and none who heard it ever forgot the unbelievable sounds of men and horses as their flesh, covered with flaming oil or pitch, crisped and crackled; the shrieks of those men who, while not afire themselves, were suffering unguessable agonies as their bodies slowly roasted in white-hot armor. Some made frantic attempts to climb the smooth rock walls, only to fall back to a comparatively merciful death, impaled on the carpet of spear-points below. Their cut-off screams but blended with the hellish a cappella and, above it all, crowing exultantly, skirled the warpipes of the Horseclans.
At the outset of the bombardment, those cavalrymen nearest the rock slide pulled themselves onto the barrier, climbed to the top, and dropped from sight. Seeing this, hundreds tried to follow, some dozens made it including a few of the Ehleenee officers — Lord Manos among them — by sliding and crawling and skipping over the packed mass of burning men, over blazing saddles and sizzling horseflesh, dodging the snapping teeth of pain-maddened horses, through the unceasing rain of death. Few of the fugitives bore any sort of weapon when they fell to the far side of the rockslide. Those who did were quickly relieved of them by a detachment of leather-armored women, who soon had all those men fortunate enough to escape the blazing carnage stripped of armor, wrist-bound, yoked in coffles of twenty head and jogging campward, spurred by judicious pricks of saber or wolf-spear.
Twenty mercenary cavalry commanded by a half-Ehleenee junior officer had brought up the rear of the long column of spearmen, acting as file-closers. They and the five or six hundred spearmen who had not been able to wedge into the pass had not known what to make of the confused shouting. But a trained warrior is not necessary to fathom the unmistakable. It was not necessary to see the blazing, arrow-quilled men clawing their way out of the pass in order to know what was happening.
Apparently overlooking the fact that the road was impassable, Petros, a half-breed ensign, drew his sword and waved it. “Forward, men! The column’s been attacked.”
The horsemen didn’t even look at him. Realizing that twenty men would not make a particle of difference to the eventual outcome even if they could force a way into the pass, and remembering that their pay was long overdue, they whirled their mounts and galloped back uphill. After a moment of indecision, Petros shrugged, sheathed his sword, and clattered after his command. Behind him — throwing away spears, shields, swords and helmets — raced the remaining few hundreds of the spearlevy. None of them felt that the service due the High Lord included or should include broiling to death for him.
By the time Petros managed to spur his foaming, staggering horse onto the plateau on which rested the site of the ancient city, the twenty mercenaries had already given their God Oaths and were walking their heated horses behind the five hundred hard-eyed, battle-ready Horseclansmen. Petros died well, everyone said so.
When the first fours of the kahtahfrahktoee set hoof to the Traderoad, Milo was informed of it by the cats who were scattered at even intervals all along the road leading to the army’s encampment area. Then he and Kuk and Kuk’s followers guided fifteen hundred nomad warriors over the pass they had scouted. While Manos sat among the ruins of Hwainzbroh, sipping warm wine and cursing everyone and everything in sight, maddened by the discomfort of dust and flies, Milo was pacing Steeltooth among the bodies and wreckage of the Ehleenee camp.
“My lord Milo. . . .” A horseman, one of Ruk’s men, galloped up to him. “Lord Milo, please . . . Hwil requests you come to the fort . . . it . . . it’s horrible. . . . He wants you should see it. . . .”
The three bloodstreaked little bodies hung by the ankles. Before leaving that morning, Manos had gouged out their eyes, raggedly emasculated them, and left them to bleed to death. Two of the little chests bore the wide mark of a saber thrust. Hwil Kuk’s ashen face was tear-tracked, and there was precious little sanity in his eyes.
“I . . . I was searching . . . anything that had been little Hwili’s . . . remember him by . . . heard something in here. Oh gods! Two of them were still alive . . . begged me to kill them. I . . . I . . .” His quivering hand fumbled at his sword-hilt. Abruptly, he began to claw at his face, and mouth wide open, the tortured man began to scream mindlessly.
Milo grasped Kuk’s shoulder, spun him half-around, and slammed the side of one hard fist behind the screamer’s ear. In mid-scream, the ex-mercenary slumped to the floor.
Two of his men tenderly carried him out of the chamber of horrors.
Milo mindcalled and Horsekiller responded. Soon he was at the fort and, working together, he and Milo did what they could to ease the mind of Hwil Kuk, tormented almost beyond endurance. When they had finished, they carried him out to a resting place in one of the officer’s tents. Awakening in that fort might have undone their therapy, too many memories, good and bad, lodged within its sooty walls.
* * *
On the morning of the sixth day after the massacre of the Ehleenee army, as the last wagons of the tribe were toiling up the western grade of the now-cleared Gap, Milo sat Steeltooth, watching the eight hundred-odd survivors of the spear-levy disappear in the distance, trudging the Traderoad toward Theesispolis. Milo had promised these men their freedom at the completion of the hard horrible labor he required of them: clearing the Gap of the debris — mineral, human, animal, and unidentifiable — which clogged it. He had more than kept his word, giving each of the peasants clothing, a knife, a scrip of food for the journey, a waterbag and either a silver coin or a handful of bronze ones, in addition to his freedom. In council, some of the chiefs had grumbled, but Milo had won them over. His reasons were many and sound. The peasants, who had contemplated death or a life of slavery, grasped eagerly at the promise of freedom. Considering the size of the undertaking, they performed the grisly, hideous work quickly and then went to work on the rock slide. Milo was amazed that they could do it at all, for after a couple of hot sunny days, few of the nomads could bear to ride within a mile of the carnal-reek. Aside from this easy method of disposing of the Gap’s highly odiferous blockage was the fact that Milo could see and fear what the nomad chiefs, in the beginning at least, could not: the terrible dangers involved in marching so large a number of able-bodied male slaves through their native country. Also to be considered was the propaganda effect. The returning peasants would spread news of the army’s disastrous defeat far and wide. Considering mankind’s penchant for exaggeration, each of the tribe’s hundreds of warriors would, in the telling, become thousands and untold thousands, each man would be eight feet tall, mounted on a Northorse, and cleaving a dozen men at a time with a six-foot saber. Lastly, if the tribe was to conquer and hold this land, they would need to win the confidence and support of the humbler Dirtmen. Cattle and horses could wax fat on grass alone, and the cats could do the same on meat, but men needed a more varied diet which called for farmers and these peasants were farmers. They would remember the generosity of the nomads — the clothing and food and money, especially the money. They would remember it and speak of it often and each time they or those they told were abused by the Ehleenee master, they would ponder the thought that some m
asters might prove less harsh than others.
8
The blood in the streets ran fetlock-deep. And the flashing sabers did sweep and weep, Red tears for the Kindred who in death did sleep. Torn and maimed by the treacherous foe— Dirtmen, without honor, who reap and who sow And who fell beneath arrow and hard-swung blow.
—From “Revenge at Green-Walls”
The tribe had remained at the eastern outlet of the Gap only for one sleep. The next morning, the tribe — wood-thrifty from their years on the prairies — had laid all their dead on one pyre and, as the Wind bore the souls of their kindred back to His home, the wagons commenced to creak eastward, along the Traderoad to Theesispolis. A migrating tribe does not move fast. It took them five days to come under the walls of that unhappy city, already in dire straits.
It had been well before dark on the day they had been freed that most of the anxious-to-get-home peasants had poured through the outer city. Their richly embroidered accounts of the huge army’s annihilation at the hands of the stupendous horde of grim (but just) nomads precipitated such a panic that many families of the outer town had fled east, so many that Simos, governor and commander of the city, had all the remaining citizens herded willy nilly within the walls and barred the gates behind them. Next, he drafted and dispatched a message to the High Lord. He informed the suzerain of the disaster which had befallen the army and gave the names of the only three noblemen to survive the massacre: Lord Manos, Theodores of Petropolis, and Herakles of Theesispolis — all captives of the barbarians, if not by now slain (though he didn’t say so, Simos sincerely hoped the barbarians had killed Herakles, slowly; he’d had no use for the arrogant young swine since he’d outbid him for a truly stunning young slave-boy two years before). He gave the facts as he knew them: The barbarian horde numbered in the neighborhood of forty thousand, at least twelve thousand of whom were warriors or maiden-archers, and was moving east along the Traderoad. He went on to point out that Lord Manos had ordered out the Theesispolis kahtahfrahktoee, and that squadron had fallen with the army — as too had above thirty Theesispolis aristocrats and their hundred or so retainers. He prayed the High Lord to send reinforcements for his tiny garrison as the levy was ill-trained, ill-armed and unreliable, and the four hundred dependable troops were far too few to adequately defend the Citadel, much less the walls of the city.