by Robert Adams
Impelled by his valiant example, those of his sergeants still on their feet emulated him, and soon the familiar curses and threats lulled the men’s panic somewhat. Shortly, his condotta had begun to form — their twelve-foot pikes properly slanted and faced toward the south, the only feasible route for an attack of cavalry. As the fire of the arrows abated to some degree, the kneeling front rank announced that they could feel the vibration of many hoofs, transmitted by the road-stones; Klahrk and his non-coms redoubled their efforts, for the more depth the formation possessed, the better their chances were of stopping the horsemen.
Soon everyone could feel the thud-thudding of the approaching attackers. Then, war cries became audible and the veteran pikemen braced themselves, their earlier panic dissipated. The horses and their shouting, screaming, cursing riders drew closer and closer and, at any moment, Klahrk and his condotta expected to see the first fours come galloping around the bend in the road. They waited, every man’s nerves drawn tight as a bowstring. Then came an unfamiliar bugle call.
It was the crackling and crashing in the dark, roadside woods that first announced to Klahrk that he was about to be flanked.
“Porkypine!” he roared to his underlings. “Column one, right, FACE. Column ten, left, FACE. Columns one and ten, KNEEL! Columns one and ten, low slant, PIKES!”
And the discipline of drill-field and battlefield did the rest In short order, the survivors of Klahrk’s condotta presented a facade of bristling pike-points, very reminiscent of the animal the formation emulated. But it was all in vain, for — when at last delivered — the charge was not against Klahrk’s dangerous veterans, but, rather, against the milling, all but helpless light infantry, who clogged the road behind them.
The heavy-armed Grey Horse Squadron wreaked truly fearful casualties among the already terrified amateur soldiers. Hundreds went down under the dripping swords and those who did not ran squalling in every direction-pursued relentlessly by the grim, iron-scale-armored men on the big gray horses. Discarding everything which might, in any way, retard them, the fugitives ran northward toward the comparative safety of the baggage-train.
Some reached it, only to discover that they had fled the fangs of the wolf and escaped into the jaws of the panther! For, by then, the nomads had already slain the wagoneers and their guards and most of the camp followers, had looted what they could carry, and were commencing to set fire to what they could not transport. They fell on the light infantrymen with gusto!
Pinned down as he was by the recommenced arrow-fire, Captain Klahrk had made no attempt to go to the aid of the light infantry. Besides, he had rationalized, what good would it have done, anyway? Who ever heard of infantry attacking mounted cavalry? He had — at great personal risk — strapped a body-shield to his back, run out, and dragged the semi-conscious Count Normun back — only to have an arrow kill the nobleman as he was lifting him over the forwardmost file of pikemen. Doggedly, he held his impregnable formation, even as the rising billows of smoke announced the firing of the wagons.
Then, all around his porkypine, bone-whistles shrilled and the arrows ceased to fly. Down from the north, trotted a column of disciplined — if somewhat blood-splashed cavalry — dragoons on gray horses. They halted at a hundred yards’ distance. More of the ominous crashing indicated that additional cavalry were within the cover of the woods. Around the bend of the road, from the south, appeared the vanguard of what seemed to be a sizable number of light cavalry — western nomads, from the look of them.
Klahrk was of the opinion that he was about to fight his last battle and was mentally framing a stirring address to his doomed command when, out of the dragoons’ ranks, a vaguely familiar man rode forth, to rein up just beyond the pike-points.
The rider — by dress, obviously an officer — lowered his beavor and shouted, “By God, you bastards are professionals or I’m a bit of mule’s dung! Whose fornicating company is this?”
Klahrk shouldered his way through the ranks of his men. “Mine!” he shouted. “Looisz Klahrk’s. Who wants to know?”
Then he saw the horseman’s face at close range. “Djeen!” He grinned, hugely. “Djeen Mai! Why you old boar, you! I’d have thought that the law-keepers, somewhere, would have caught and hung you long since; if a jealous husband or vengeful father hadn’t beaten them to it. If you engineered this ambuscade, my compliments, it was beautifully designed and executed. King Mahrtuhn’ll be excreting red-hot pokers when he hears of it. You cost me a good three hundred killed and wounded. But I’ve still enough to take a fair toll of . . .”
Djeen raised his hand. “Hold on, hold on, old friend. I’ve no desire to fight you! Tell me, has King Mahrtuhn paid you?” At Klahrk’s nod, he went on.
“I’m in service to Lord Alexandros of Pahpahs, who means to make himself High Lord of Kehnooryos Ehlas — all of it, as it was three hundred years ago, if I know my lord — and think of the pickings of that!”
Klahrk frowned and shook his head. “Djeen, if you’re hinting that I change sides — foreswear my oath to save my hide — forget it. I swore King Mahrtuhn three months service and took his gold and I’ll not go back on my word to him. As well as we know each other, in fact, I’m surprised that you would suggest such a thing to me!”
“Well,” Djeen sighed, “it was just a thought. But there are different ways to serve an employer, Looisz. For instance, there’re a goodly number, I doubt me not, of wounded back there.” He hooked his thumb northward. “They’re in serious need of attention. They really should be gotten back to Kuhmbrulun. What of your stores we didn’t lift, will be burned to the axles by the time you get to them, and you’re going to play pure hell, trying to march on without them through a countryside the dragoons have already picked clean! Then, too, I’d not be at all surprised but what the Prince of Fredrik was very interested when our messengers informed him that damned near every mother’s-son in Kuhmbrulun was deep in the heart of Kehnooryos Ehlas. Yes, Looisz, there’re many, many different ways of serving one’s employer.”
Djeen reined half around and extended his right hand to grip that of his old friend. “I lost half a dozen troopers,” he said in parting. “I’ll leave their mounts for you and your sergeants. You needn’t fear for the safety of any messengers you should decide to send south — if you do so decide; they’ll be passed, never you worry.”
While they had been conversing, the nomads had clattered off, headed south and west. When Djeen rejoined his command, the squadron left the littered, blood-splotched road and were soon lost to sight, in the forest.
By the time Klahrk’s men had done what they could for the wounded and salvaged what little they were able to salvage of the stores in the merrily blazing wagons, the mercenary captain had come to a decision. He carefully drilled one of his sergeants, until the man could repeat the message word for word three times running. Then he gave him one of the gray horses and sent him southward at a gallop to seek out Duke Herbut, commander of the main contingent of dragoons.
The nomads had driven off most of the horses and oxen and mules, but a few had been unavoidably slain; these, Klahrk had his men flay and butcher; then set them to cooking the meat, ere it began to spoil.
Remembering the topography of the country they had traversed, he and his condotta — bearing with them the wounded and such supplies and equipment as they possessed — withdrew a half-mile up the road. There, on a meadow which was near to an adequate source of water, they ditched and mounded the outline of a castra in which to spend the night. Early in the morning, they set about palisading it with logs, hewed in the nearby forest and snaked out by men and the five horses.
When, nearly three days later, Duke Herbut and some six thousand cavalry arrived, it was before a stout little emergency fort. After he and captain Klahrk had conferred briefly, the duke detached two squadrons to escort infantry and wounded on their trek north, then he and the other four squadrons spurred hard for Kuhmbrulun.
When word was brought to the council, the
chiefs roared and hugged each other and danced joyfully. Djeen Mai and Sam Tchahrtuhz beat their thighs and howled their merriment. Even undemonstrative old Lord Alexandros allowed himself a broad smile of satisfaction at this unqualified success of his brain-child.
“So,” commented Milo, when the hubbub had died down, “they swallowed it, hook, line, and bloody sinker! Well, deduct six thousand kahtahfrahktoee and deduct the thousand or so who survived the ambush and deduct the four thousand casualties that Djeen estimates we inflicted, and your remainder is about five thousand cavalry. They’re completely unsupported and they’ve lost the bulk of their supplies; they’re nearly forty leagues deep in basically hostile territory with a ravaged countryside behind them. I shouldn’t think they’d present any appreciable danger to us, not unless the others come to realize the deception when they arrive in Kuhmbrulun, and hotfoot it back to reinforce. Barring that, we should be able to crush or scatter this kinglet’s troops at will.”
But Lord Alexandros shook his white head. “I beg pardon, my Lord Milos, but I must disagree with you; furthermore, I implore you not to underestimate King Mahrtuhn’s abilities, for he is quite an able strahteegos. He rode ahead with the bulk of the nobility, not for personal glory, but because they are the most effective and formidable men that he has. Like your nomads, these men are, from the very cradle, bred to war and most are masters of every conceivable weapon. They are courageous and hard fighters, possess a strict and highly complex code of honor, and are altogether worthy and dangerous foemen. Djeen, here, is nobly born, being a nephew of the Duke of Pahtzburk; so, too, is Sam Tchahrtuhz, the natural son of the former Count of Zunburk.
“Noblemen, generally speaking, sire huge broods and this is very necessary, for they tend to kill each other off at a prodigious rate. Their states are small, inherently hostile to each other, and voraciously land-hungry. It is probable that, within the last three hundred years, there have been but few twelvemonths that did not see a conflict — of greater or lesser magnitude — somewhere within the north-barbarian states!
“As the land has been warred over for so many years, it is nowhere near as productive — in the senses of agriculture or husbandry — as even the border themes of the Ehleenee lands; but, for all that, most of the so-called barbarian states are well-off, if not wealthy. The reason for this is that every city and, frequently, town has its shops and manufactories. Prior to the arrival of the tribe, I would, for instance, have felt it safe to say that fully eighty of every hundred swords swung from the South Ehleen lands to the North Ehleen Republic had blades produced in the Kingdom of Harzburk, or the Kingdom of Pitzburk or the Grand Duchy of Bethlemburk! Those three and their neighbors also produce a plethora of metal products — tools and utensils as well as weapons, not to mention the best and most modern of armor — not this heavy, clumsy, old-fashioned loricate, or jazeran, mind you; but brigandines and cuirasses very similar to those of your people. But where yours are of leather, theirs are of steel! Also, the statelets produce glass, work gold and silver and fabricate jewelry.
“All in all, they are truly a gifted people and little deserve the appellation of ‘barbarian.’ Considering their technical skills and their military abilities, if they could stop fighting amongst themselves and present a united front, they could soon be the masters of all the Ehleenee lands and the Black Kingdoms as well.
“No, Lord Milos, do not underestimate the danger that King Mahrtuhn and his nobility represent. I thank God that our ambush and the trick which followed it were successful. For, had they not been, we’d have been wiped out, had we been sufficiently stupid to stand and fight!”
But as it developed, the confrontation Lord Alexandros so dreaded did not come to pass, not that year. On the receipt of certain information, King Mahrtuhn and his nobles and men cut cross-country to the Traderoad and spurred for Kuhmbrulun as fast as horseflesh could bear them, not even taking time to loot the areas through which they passed. Mahrtuhn could no longer afford to interfere in an Ehleenee civil war, as he and his retinue now had one of their own to attend. His informants had brought the sad news that his brother, Duke Herbut, had gathered what few nobles remained in the kingdom and overawed or bought them. However it had been accomplished, he had usurped Mahrtuhn’s throne, declared Mahrtuhn and his chief supporters outlaw, and was busily hiring troops and fortifying the capital city. It seemed that Mahrtuhn had not only lost his stakes, but the dice as well!
25
From village and from cabin,
Rushed those loyal to our Lord,
And, fitting scythe to pike-shaft,
Joined our column, at his word.
And the High Lord’s spies did tremble,
As our numbers swelled and soared.
When we marched east from Theesispolis.
—Ehleenee Marching Song
Something less than two weeks after Demetrios’ tantrum, his understrength navy boarded its three best ships, scuttled the others, and beat their way downriver, bound for the sea. With them went the High Lord’s last hope of escape.
His retinue of former sycophants took to avoiding his company as much as possible, for all who knew him expected the knowledge that he was trapped to drive him over the edge into true madness. But it did not. Oddly enough, the realization that he was doomed did what his father and the strahteegoee had never been able to do — it made a real man of him. At the eleventh hour, the Demetrios-who-should-have-been belatedly emerged from the gross, debauched cocoon which had held him for so many years. And that perverted, self-seeking coterie who had influenced and guided him were stunned to discover that no longer had his High Lord need or use for them, no longer could they control or even predict his actions.
The first to meet — to his sorrow-this new High Lord, was Teeaigos, Lord High Strahteegos of Kehnooryos Atheenahs, a languid creature a couple of years older than the High Lord. He had attained the position by flattery, and “performance” of “duties” had made of him a fabulously wealthy man. On the day of his downfall, he was impatiently listening to the justifiable complaints of Sergeant-Major Mahrk Hailee, commander of the White Horse Squadron, concerning the all-time low quality of the rations just issued his troops — weevil-crawling flour, three-quarters rotted vegetables and stinking, overaged meat, and not one ounce of oil or wine.
When the non-com’s flow of heated words had ceased, Teeaigos waved his white, gilded-nailed hands negligently. Though his painted lips smiled, his eyes were cold and uncaring. “If your barbarian swine don’t like the good food — really, far too good, for the likes of them — that my quartermaster issues, let them eat their horses; after all, what good are the smelly beasts, pray tell.”
The occupants of the headquarters included Teeaigos, his two secretary-clerks, Sergeant-Major Hailee and his adjutant, and two representatives of the civil guard who were awaiting a hearing. None of them had noticed the quiet entrance of another figure. The newcomer was half-armored — helmet of ancient-Ehleenee design, breast-and-back and articulated pauldrons of finest Harzburk steelplate, scale-back gauntlets secured to tight-fitting vambraces of watered steel; the kilt was of blue-dyed canvas brigandine and fell to the knee; and on his left hip was belted a heavy, cut-and-thrust sword, while a dagger with wide, leaf-shaped blade jutted its hilt over his right hip. Not one trace of cosmetic remained on his face and, under the cheek-plates, his beard had been shaved, its last remnant being a blue-black spike, which jutted from his chin.
Even when the figure strode across to stand before the Lord High Strahteegos, he went unrecognized until he spoke. In a deceptively soft tone, he said, “Teeaigos, do you no longer arise when your superiors enter; or has this office, which I stupidly gave you, so swelled your head, that you feel yourself to have no superiors?”
Teeaigos lumbered to his feet. “My . . . my lord!” he stammered, nonplussed by sight of an armed and armored Demetrios. “I . . . I did not know, my lord. Pardon, but . . . but as sensitive as is my lord’s skin, isn’t he terribly uncomf
ortable in such barbaric attire?”
Not one whit so uncomfortable as you soon will be, my false friend, thought the High Lord. But he said, “Discomfort is of little consequence, when the city and its people lie in such danger. Tell me, Teeaigos, if the White Horse Squadron are to help defend this city, why were they served up with such shoddy fare?”
Teeaigos squirmed uneasily; then, putting on a bold front, said, “My lord must know, the war chest is all but empty. The quartermaster purchased what he could afford, I am sure. Food prices are astronomically high in the city and country. Furthermore, most merchants and farmers are insisting that they be paid in gold, and we have only silver.”
Demetrios extended a gauntleted hand to lift and weigh the heavy, golden chain whose flat links rested across Teeaigos’ narrow shoulders. “There was gold in the war chest, Teeaigos. Gold from Theesispolis. What happened to it? Did it go into your new chain and armlets, perhaps?”
“Why . . . why . . . why, of course not, my lord,” Teeaigos spluttered, his face chalky under the rouge and paint. “My personal fortune . . .”
“Was dissipated,” Demetrios cut him off, “long years before you wheedled this sinecure out of me! Here.” He brought up his other hand and, with both of them, lifted the chain over Teeaigos’ head. Then he turned and handed it to Sergeant-Major Hailee.
“Perhaps, with the value of this useless bauble, you can procure decent food for your squadron.” He smiled. Hailee was too shocked to answer and, as he continued silent, Demetrios frowned. “Not enough, eh? Well, take his armlets, too, then. I’ll find replacements for them.”
Demetrios beckoned to the elder of the two civil guards.
When the man stood before him, he asked, “What is your name and rank, sir?”
Standing at stiff attention, the fiftyish guardsman snapped his answer. “Szamyul Thorntun, Senior-Sergeant of the southeastern quarter, and it please my lord!”