by Robert Adams
Demetrios’ answer was prompt. He assured Simos that a relief army would soon be up to him — a patent lie, but Simos had no way of knowing it — and that the city was to be held at all costs, pending its arrival. He gently chided Simos’ lack of faith in his citizen-levy, pointing out that the levy had been the strong spine of Ehleenee arms. With the Theesispolis levy, beefed up by the civic guard and the remaining nobility, he went on, he could not imagine so well-situated and fortified a city falling to a band of mere barbarian marauders in the short time it would require a field army to march from the capital. He closed with an order. Since all that befell men lay in the lap of the gods, in the final analysis, the Theesispolis city treasury was to be rushed to Kehnooryos Atheenahs, along with the valuables of the temples, to be held in trust until the crisis was ended and Theesispolis was safe again. Such private citizens as wished were to be allowed to send their own valuables along and Simos was to give them receipts in return. Because the road might be unsafe, considering the present emergency and the massing of troops, the treasure should be well guarded; three hundred mercenaries should be sufficient. He closed the letter with lavish promises of honors and rewards upon the victory of their arms. The moment the letter was sealed, Demetrios dismissed from his mind all thought of the lost city and the walking dead men who commanded it and concentrated upon devising ways to raise money to raise troops to secure his capital.
As soon as the tribe was encamped around the city, Milo sent two nomads to escort Lord Herakles back to the city of his birth. The Ehleenee nobleman was to deliver a message from Milo to the governor; and the nomads, both chiefs’ sons, were to return with the answer. Milo’s offer was quite generous, all things being considered. All soldiers, nobility and their families were to evacuate the city; where they went was up to them. All slaves of Horseclan stock and all weapons and armor must be left behind; all other possessions were theirs, if they wished to and could transport them. Any other citizens who wished to leave the city were welcome to do so and the tribe guaranteed their safety as far as a day’s ride from the capital, as did it guarantee the safety and possessions of those who chose to remain in Theesispolis. As proof of his and the tribe’s good will, Herakles bore a bag containing the family signets of the thirty-one Theesispolis nobles slain with the army of Lord Manos. At Lord Herakles’ word, the city gates opened and the Ehleen trotted his horse through them, followed by the two chiefs’ sons, who sat their horses proudly, fully aware of the gravity and honor of their mission, brave in their best lacquered armor.
Some hours later, one of the gates was gapped sufficiently for the two barefoot, near-nude nomads to be thrust through it, to make their way back to the tribe as best they could. The once-handsome men had been hideously mutilated; one of them had been left his tongue to deliver Lord Simos’ reply.
Brought to the council tent, the suffering man relayed what he had been told. Lord Simos did not treat with barbarians. Were the tribe’s leaders wise, they would pack their putrid tents, gather their wormy children and haste as fast as their bow legs or spavined horses would take them back to the mountains and swamps where they and all other animals belonged. The High Lord and all his forces were, Simos said, only a short day’s march from Theesispolis and would make bloody hash of any barbarians in evidence upon their arrival. As for the city, it was heavily garrisoned and well supplied, and the nomads would attack it at their peril.
“But War Chief,” said the senselessly savaged man, “the Ehleenee chief lies. The walls are thinly manned by ones who are not soldiers. Most have no armor and seem unused to the weapons they hold. Those who seized us and did these things to us were true soldiers, but there are very few of them. From what I saw when still I possessed eyes, it did not seem to me that there were more than six hundred fighters in all the city.
“And now, War Chief, we suffer greatly, Hermun and I. Please allow our chiefs to put an end to suffering.”
At Milo’s nod, the fathers of the two stepped forward, drew sabers and with tears of grief and rage on their cheeks, heart-thrust their agonized sons.
And so the blood-mad tribesmen swept against the city. They burst open the gates and their axes and sabers slashed a bloody course through the screaming mobs of helpless non-combatants. The levymen died under or ran from the arrow-rain which fell upon the walls, so those who scaled them were unopposed. Horseclansmen did not normally slay strong or pretty women or young children, but Theesispolis was a sanguinary exception! On their ride out of the camp, all the nomads had been led past the biers on which rested the bloody, mangled, incomplete remains of the tribe’s heralds. Once within the walls, they showed no mercy, regardless of age, sex or station. While the bulk of the nomads butchered the bulk of the population, Milo rode with his eight score mercenaries — a total of one hundred twenty troopers who had survived the massacre at the Gap. Having no love for the Ehleenee and an understandable aversion to slavery as well as a yearning for loot and/or hard money after months of being paid in Ehleenee promises, they had signed on with Milo and were now being commanded by Hwil Kuk. With Horsekiller and a score or so of his clan, they all rode toward the Citadel, to which had fled most of the nobility and the fleetest “fighters.” Atop the flat roof of the central portion, Lord Simos, Lord Herakles and four other officers shrieked a sextet series of orders and counter-orders at soldiers who were straining and fumbling at something.
Even as Milo turned to inquire, one of Kuk’s squadron, a former noncom of Theesispolis kahtahfrahktoee, muttered, “Dung! Greedy and cruel, Lord Simos certainly is, but not stupid; he should know better than that. Those catapults were useless fifty years ago! All they are now is wormy wood and rotted ropes and rusted iron, covered with gilt paint. In the condition those fornicating abortions are in, even if they put fresh ropes on them and get them to working, they’ll be more dangerous to the crews than they’ll be to any fornicating thing they are aimed at!”
A moment later the man’s words were vindicated, as one of the war-engine’s half-wound ropes snapped and the gilded iron basket’s edge virtually decapitated one unfortunate soldier who happened to be leaning over it. As for the other, it was wound, loaded with a sixty-pound stone, aimed at the largest visible group of nomads and fired. The arm shot up to slam into gilt-flakes and splinters and dust against its stop-timbers; the stone-laden basket never budged! The half-hysterical officers were screaming invective at the hapless soldiers when, preceded by a trio of huge blood-dripping cats, Hwil Kuk and half his squadron poured up the stairs.
* * *
But that had been over five weeks before and, aside from the empty and frequently charred houses or the all but deserted streets, the city through which Mara had ridden had given little indication of the bloodbath which had attended the end of its Ehleenee phase. The Citadel showed none, as little fighting had taken place there. The soldiers of the civic guard, offered a choice between pain and death or freedom and honorable employment — the promisers being men known to them, fellow mercenaries — had surrendered almost to a man and they now served with Hwil Kuk’s squadron. The only significant fight had taken place in the wing housing the households of the Ehleenee nobility. There, driven to the wall, the hastily armed Ehleenee men and boys belied their effete appearance by fighting with the reckless courage which had earned their ancestors this land centuries before. Though they all died well, die they certainly did, under the businesslike cuts and thrusts of their own former mercenaries. The noble ladies of the ruling race — young, pretty ones, at least — were the only survivors of the taking of Theesispolis (as well as several hundred former slaves who emerged from hiding after the blood-lusting madness had abated and now constituted the first citizens and only full-time occupants of the city). Old or ugly or very young Ehleenee were stripped of their valuables and, along with half a hundred disarmed levymen, hurled out of the Citadel to the tender mercies of the berserk nomads. The mercenaries took full enjoyment of their captives for a week or so, then got good prices for them
from the cooled-down nomads.
Keenly aware of how the father of the two dead young nomads must feel, Hwil Kuk saw to it that Lord Simos and the treacherous Herakles were taken alive. At Milo’s order, Kuk personally delivered them to the clans of their victims. The chiefs and kinsmen received the two Ehleenee gravely, thanked Kuk graciously, then gave the nobles to the young men’s mothers and wives and kinswomen. It was four days before Lord Simos, no longer capable of screaming, croaked his last; the younger and stronger Herakles lived an amazing day and a half longer!
9
In level circle, shall sit the Chiefs,
None the highest, none the least,
For all are equal, Kindred one,
And thus it shall be, till time is done.
—From “The Couplets of the Law”
Before the assembled chiefs, in the spacious, lofty chamber which had been the Citadel’s reception and banquet hall, Milo and Bili recounted the events and tremendous profits of the village raid and the subsequent battle. They detailed the names and clans of men killed or maimed so that blood-price or suffering-price might be properly allotted prior to the equal division of the spoils among all the clans. Toward the end of the barrage of comments and questions which marked the conclusion of the reports of the war chief and Chief Bili, old Chief Djeri Hahfmun addressed Milo.
“Most-successful-of-all-war-chiefs-in-the-memory-of-all-the clans-of-men, I will give two hundred cows, two bulls and a jeweled Ehleenee sword for your slave, yonder.”
Milo grasped Mara’s arm and drew her forward and told of the girl’s bravery in her first attempt on him, attacking an armed and armored and mounted man, and her with only a dagger. The chiefs nodded and muttered approval; they could understand and appreciate that kind of courage. Then he told how she, a slave-prisoner, had risked death or injury to ride back and fight for the tribe, emphasizing her matchless skill with bow and saber on the hilltop. And the chiefs wondered aloud if she might not be of Horseclan stock. Then he rendered a vivid account of how she had saved his life, cleaving a mercenary from crown to chin. And he heard the first of the comments he had been waiting for.
“If she is not a woman of the Horseclans,” announced Chuk, Chief of Djahnsun, “she should be. I say free her!”
But one was not enough, so Milo told of how — armed and well mounted and with an excellent chance to escape-she had galloped to add the weight of her sword to Clan Esmith’s hard-fought battle against thrice their numbers of kahtahfrahktoee, and had come close to losing her life in that undertaking.
“Kindred,” Milo addressed them. “It is the law that a slave may not be freed but with approval of all men of the clan. As it is also the law that the war chief is clanless, but the kinsman of all the tribe, I must have the approval of you all to grant this brave woman the freedom she has earned with courage and with the giving and taking of hard blows for the good of the tribe. What say you, my Kindred?”
“Free her!” All around the circle of chiefs it was the same.
Milo dropped to one knee before Mara — she still clad in the Kahrtr-crested cuirass and baldric, from which hung the well-used saber — and, taking her foot upon his other knee, he slowly removed the silver ring from her trim ankle.
He arose and looked down into her eyes. “You are free, Mara.”
Djeri, Chief of Hahfmun, rose from his place and, hitching his gaudy new Ehleenee sword around to make for easier walking, strode smiling to the center of the chamber.
“I for one, Kindred, am glad the woman is a free woman. A man who owned a concubine of such courage and weapons-skill might wake up with a foot of steel in his gullet!” He chuckled good-naturedly. “Djeri of Hahfmun doesn’t fancy an end like that, thank you. Since the chit is clanless, I must leave it to the rest of you to set the bride-price. Set it not too low; such a woman has immense value. By my steel, can you imagine the strength and spirit of the colts she’ll throw to the honor of Clan Hahfmun?”
Suddenly, Bili of Esmith leaped between Mara and the older chieftain.
“Hold on, kinsman! I have prior claim and besides, you already have three wives. I have only two!”
“Prior claim?” yelped the older chief. “Why I spoke for her before she was freed!”
“Yes, you old goat,” affirmed Bili, “prior claim! She has shed blood for the honor of my clan on the field of battle.”
“Goat, am I?” snarled Chief Djeri, clapping hand to hilt “You rapist of ewes, gotten by a boar-hog on a dimwitted Dirtwoman slave, if you continue to contest my just claim, you will be shedding your blood — every worthless drop of the stuff — here on these stones!”
The tempers of Horseclansmen were ever quick, but before either Djeri or Bili could free his blade, Chief Sami of Kahrtuh placed himself between them. To Chief Djeri, he exclaimed, “Sun and Wind and Sword have claim above any other, cannot you see that They have chosen? Look at the crest on her baldric, the style of her armor, the pommel of her saber — all Kahrtuh. Besides, she’s a youngish woman and fair, what good would two old jackasses like you do her?
She’ll be married to my third son, who will be chief after me.”
As one, the weapons of the two original contestants cleared scabbards. Bili aimed a wicked diagonal slash at Sami, who leaped back fumbling for his own hilt, and the heavy blade struck sparks from the polished floor, the well-tempered steel ringing like a bell. Bili’s recovery was lightning-quick, but his vicious upthrust was struck aside by Chief Djeri’s blade.
“How dare you try to kill Chief Sami!” the Hahfmun roared. “I have prior claim to his blood! He was looking at me when he spoke his blasphemous lies. Of course, perhaps he meant nought by it; to a Kahrtuh, lying is inborn.”
No man, unfamiliar with the life-long fighting-trim of the Horseclansmen, would have believed that men of the ages of Chiefs Sami and Djeri could have moved so fast. Sami’s yard of keen steel lashed horizontally from left to right — the classic backhand decapitation stroke — hissing bare millimeters above Djeri’s shaven poll and then looping down and across to counter his opponent’s disemboweling attempt with such force that both blades were slammed up against the breastplate of Bili’s cuirass.
“Enough, children! Enough!” Milo’s voice, pitched to battle volume, preceded him as he sprang from the dais. “The tribe is not in sufficient danger, does not have more than enough fighting before it, but that three supposedly wise chieftains . . . pardon, ‘brawling brats’ . . . must precipitate a three-way blood-feud between clans?”
“But . . .” chorused the three chiefs.
Blind Hari set down his telling-harp, rose from his place, and slowly made his way toward the sounds of rasping breath. He was the oldest tribesman — some said as much as one and one-half hundreds of years had passed since his birth into a clan of which he was the last living member, and the most respected. Genealogist, chronicler, sage and bard he was, and the closest thing to a priest the tribe had. In his day, he had been a mighty warrior, as his scars attested. When Blind Hari spoke — an infrequent occurrence — all men humbly attended him. He spoke now, his old voice firm and grave.
“The war chief is right, my sons, there can be no argument. The Sword’s curse lies on men who use Him to draw the blood of Kindred, unasked. My dear sons — Djeri Hahfmun, Sami Kahrtuh, Bili Esmith — each of you is well proven a brave and honorable man, otherwise you would not be chiefs, your birth notwithstanding. This is Law, all know, it needs not retelling. There cannot be cause for any of you to establish your bravery upon the flesh and bone of your Kindred or to wash out thoughtless insults in blood. You have shown all the people the bravery and honor of chieftains-born, now show the equally necessary wisdom and greatness of heart. Let each recall his words and show his love for his Kindred.”
The transition was abrupt. Tears appeared on Djeri’s scarred and weathered cheeks. He sheathed his sword and opened his arms, extending a hand to each of the other two men. Within seconds, all steel was cased and the three late-combatan
ts were hand-locked, sobbing tearful apologies and renewing vows of brotherhood as they went back to their places in the council circle. All the chiefs were moved; there were few dry eyes among them.
Milo shook his head. The very real powers of this old man had been amazing him for years.
With eerie precision, Blind Hari turned and “gazed” directly into Mara’s eyes. To Milo he said, “Go to your accustomed place, War Chief.”
Milo did so, shivering despite himself at the force of Blind Hari’s will.
Sightless eyes still locked on Mara, the ancient extended one withered hand. “Come here, my child,” he commanded gently.
When she stood before him, Blind Hari placed a hand on each side of her face and tilting it, pressed his dry lips to her smooth brow. He was seen to start once, but he held the kiss for a moment longer, then turned back toward the chieftains.
“My sons, it is the Law that a woman of the tribe be not unmarried by her twentieth year and this is right and proper. It is man who chooses her who he will marry; but, though this practice bears the patina of years, it is not Law, it is custom and not truly binding. Right often, in the times of your grandfathers — as I rode from clan to clan — have I seen woman choose man and it is done today. Though her wiles leave him convinced that it was he who chose.” He showed his worn teeth in a smile.