by Robert Adams
It would have been most impolitic for the duke to openly watch the encounter he had arranged — as much as he would have loved to do so — but he had ensconced himself in the room immediately adjoining, where he could make use of the cleverly concealed peepholes and earholes.
* * *
Far, far to the west of the river, out upon that limitless prairieland which men now called a sea — the Sea of Grass — there was unaccustomed movement in the face of the fast-encroaching winter. There, where mosses, grasses and black earth all but covered the broken fragments of the cities and towns, the hamlets and farms, deserted by man and dead for more than half a millennium, were now more men, women, children and their animals than had lodged upon the land in one body for long centuries.
The traders from the caravans had remarked among themselves over the past spring and summer on the remarkable number of “new” clans — clans that had come up from the southern and down from the higher, western plains. But few had thought deeply upon such movement, for it was the way of the nomad clans to wander wherever graze and inclination took them. The traders had simply thanked their luck or stars or gods and accepted the enhanced trading possibilities presented by these new customers.
But the newly arrived clans were not, as the traders surmised, simply following their herds; no, they had been summoned. In an expanse of prairie where in recent centuries a season might have seen three or possibly four clans gathered now were camped more than six-and-thirty of the principal clans of the Kindred. Nor had their chiefs chosen the sites of this coming winter’s encampment, toward which they now were slowly moving. The sites had been chosen and clearly marked out by a man whom few had met but of whom almost all had heard — a war chief of all the Kindred clans, elected by the Grand Council of Chiefs empaneled at a special summer tribe camp three summers ago, a chief named Milo of Morai.
Chapter V
A true scion of the Tidewater or “Old” Ehleen nobility, Lord Urbahnos went to great lengths to avoid forking a horse, bred to his firm belief that carriage or war cart was the only acceptable transport for a refined gentleman. Only in direst necessity would he chafe and bruise his flesh, painfully strain muscles of thighs and buttocks and chance injury to his privates upon the back of some sweating, smelly beast, and never whilst wheeled transport was available.
But Duke Tcharlz’s roads, especially the stretches between Twocityport and Pahdookahport, were deliberately a very bane of light-wheeled vehicles — although trader wagons and army vehicles, with their heavy construction, high road clearance and large, powerful teams regularly navigated the miles of ruts and mud and sinkholes. Since Lady Ann too detested riding horseback, this road was another barrier against her undesired presence in the duke’s sumptuous new residence.
Therefore, the Ehleen had left Pahdookahport in the next best thing, to his mind: a spacious, well-padded, covered horse litter slung — at fore and aft — between a pair of rented Northorses. The monstrous iron-gray geldings were rare and hellishly expensive to buy, coming as they did from some land far north of the great inland sea; but the breed were all gentle, smooth-gaited, stronger than draft oxen and, standing an average of twenty-two hands at the withers, perfect for easily bearing a weighty horse litter above the virtual river of mire which autumnal rains and heavy traffic had made of the road to the east.
In the wallet attached to Urbahnos’ swordbelt reposed three drafts upon his account at the Ducal Bank of Pahdookahport, all requiring only his signature and seal to render them negotiable, and he hoped to use one or more of these to buy the two valuable slave boys. However, knowing full well the preference of the plains traders for hard, ringing specie, he wore under his clothing a weighty leathern money belt, abrim with ducal gold and Ehleen silver coins. And this was why Nahseer and six other well-armed bodyguards trotted on surefooted riding mules before, behind and on either flank of his litter, hunched and miserable in the chill, drizzling rain despite their oilskins.
Protected from the wet by the canvas roof and sidecurtains, from the chill by paddings, pillows and a thick, winter bearskin, the onetime Lord of Kostanispolis sipped delicately from a commodious flask of strong honey wine and mused silently.
“Even if I have to part with every ounce of metal in my belt . . . and one of the drafts besides . . . my profit on just one of the little darlings will more than reimburse me . . . or should. Hmmm . . . let’s see . . . perhaps . . . perhaps, if I sell the less pretty one . . . say, to a buyer in Kehnooryos Ehlas, and then present the prettier as an outright gift to Lord Thoheeks Nikos, King Zenos’ principal adviser. Or should I gift the little bastard to the king himself? No, that’s right” — he sighed gustily and shook his head of oiled ringlets —”like his father before him — God grant that that old scumsucker is burning in the deepest pit of Hell! — the young king is said to care only for women. Must be the barbarian blood, for he seems a cultured, civilized man in all other respects, from what I’ve heard. But not to take a pretty little boy now and again? Remarkably uncouth, to say the least!
“So! Then the boy must go to Nikos of Sahpahntispolis, who is at least gentleman enough to appreciate — to properly appreciate — the rarity and value of the gift. Why, this pair are the first Horseclans boys through these parts in years.
“As I recall him, Thoheeks Nikos is — for all his other failings — a true Ehleen gentleman of the old school, and if he gives value due to value received . . . and he must! I . . . I’m dying in this barbarian pesthole!”
Feeling tears starting to well up from his eyes, Urbahnos rumbled for a soft cloth and dabbed lightly at his eye corners, taking great care not to smudge the cosmetics on upper and lower lids or to disarrange his long, curling false eyelashes. Restowing the cloth, he took a long, burning pull at his flask before settling back again to his musings.
“So, then, the prettier . . . probably the younger will be prettier . . . the prettier will go to Nikos, and he must be untried, too, for the tastes of so refined a gentleman, so I had best send him east with Nahseer. Yes, that’s perfect.” He smiled. “That Zahrtohgahn bastard will butcher anyone who even touches the little sweetling, and, lacking himself any man parts, there’ll be no chance of the guardian’s being tempted.”
Urbahnos had never had cause to regret his purchase of the hulking Nahseer, years before, when the Zahrtohgahn was placed upon the riverside slave block in Pahdookahport. It had been upon the first occasion that the huge man had saved his life and purse from a band of footpads — taking wounds in the process, since, prior to that time, his master had been loath to arm him — that the Ehleen had considered manumitting him . . . but he had yet to do so, for all that he frequently used the brown-skinned man to convey and guard especially valuable merchandise to the eastern coastal areas — furs, jewels, young and beautiful virgins and the like.
Now in his mid- to late-thirties, Nahseer claimed to have been of a high-caste family of the Kaliphate of Zahrtohgah, a mighty warrior of high rank in the armies of that land and possessed of wealth and power. His downfall, he went on to claim, was his intemperate lust for a girl who chanced to catch the eye of the kahleefah and be taken into his hahreem. Such had been Nahseer’s bemusement that he had plotted to take the girl from hahreem, palace and city by a combination of stealth, force and bribery and bear her off to his own faraway city — aware that once her flower was taken, the kahleefah would have no interest in her and would, eventually, forgive him, since, in his almost constant state of war, he had far more need of competent captains than of just one among his hundreds of women.
However, as the Fates would have it, someone had betrayed the bold scheme and Nahseer had been set upon by a host of the kahleefah’s guardsmen the moment he dropped from the top of the inner wall to the springy turf of the hahreem garden. Knowing full well his fate if taken alive, the mighty man had drawn both yahtahgahn and long dagger and fought with awesome effect. With strictest orders to take the intruder alive, the guardsmen had suffered terribly, taking cri
ppling wounds and death thrusts and deliberately foregoing many opportunities to slay Nahseer in combat.
Finally overcome by force of numbers and sheer exhaustion, Nahseer had been dragged before his ruler. In a foaming rage at the numbers of warriors the prisoner had cost him, as well as at the attempted violation of his hahreem, Kahleefah Yusuf had had Nahseer severely flogged, gelded and sold for a slave to a party of traders from Ohyoh.
Despite the loss of his manhood, Nahseer had proved most intractable. Few of his early masters had owned him long, and all had been glad to see him go, often selling at a hefty loss to speed his departure. Finally, having become infamous and unsellable in all the Kingdom of Ohyoh, a river trader had bought the mass of brown-skinned muscle and bone for a pitiful sum on the speculation that he might bring a decent price in Pahdookahport or Twocityport, where strong male slaves were usually in demand for the oar barges.
Urbahnos surmised that the big man’s loyalty to him was the result of his boundless thanks at being spared the long, hideous, drawn-out death sentence that was the lot of slaves and felons doomed to the oar barges. Had anyone told him that in the heart buried within that massive chest the Zahrtohgahn slave to whom he regularly entrusted both life and property hated and despised him, Lord Urbahnos of Kostanispolis would have openly scoffed and forever after have considered that person an idiot and utter fool.
“The lord thoheeks knows what I want, of course,” Urbahnos mused on within the swaying litter. “He knows what an injustice was done me by old Zenos, that barbarian-loving, moon-blood-lapping dog turd. After all, I only pinked the ahrkeethoheeks’ son. It wasn’t my fault he died of black rot, was it? Of course not! And to accuse me of using a poisoned blade . . .”
Urbahnos almost always conveniently forgot how, on his way to that eleven-years-done duel, he had several times run the full length of his blade into the stinking, well-rotted carcass of a dead pig.
“So, the sooner I get the boy slave to Karaleenos, the sooner I may expect a pardon and a royal recall to my lands and city. Let’s see . . . perhaps Pehtros will buy my house slaves; God knows he needs them. Why he’s not long since died of some loathsome disease living in that pigsty is more than I can fathom. I suppose that I really should free Nahseer, but I’ll surely need money to reestablish myself in the proper style, and if I can find a buyer willing to pay a really good price for him . . . but I won’t sell him to the barge owners . . . no, not unless the other slaves and the house bring less than they should.
“As for Lylah, I might as well not go back home if I drag along a barbarian wife; no true Ehleen would even spit at me were I to do so monstrous a thing. Besides, we’re not really married; barbarian rites aren’t legal in any civilized, Ehleen principality that I know of. I’d sell her for a slave, her and the brats, too, if I thought I could get away with it. But she’s freeborn and her parents were citizens of one of those little southern counties, and if the duke found out . . .”
He shuddered, seeing himself overtaken on the trip upriver by one of Duke Tcharlz’s fleet of sail-and-oar warships, dragged off the passenger barge and brought in chains back to Pahdookahport, where — his diplomatic immunity be damned — the old pirate would likely rob him of every thrahkmeh he owned in fines, then send him to his death on the benches of a row-barge. No, it would be far better to forgo possible profit and simply throw Lylah — his once-pretty wife of seven years — and their six children out of the house once it and the furnishings and slaves were all sold and he was ready to start his journey back east to the land of culture and light.
Often Urbahnos wondered just why he had wedded the chit, for what with her producing a child a year and her bouts of moon sickness between brats, his manly needs drove him to spend about as much time and money at the bordellos as he had before he wed. Nor were his forays into the higher-class brothels in any way cheap. The girls were expensive enough, but such few as would even deign to cater to men of cultured tastes and provide boys were astronomical, especially when one took into account the fact that the proffered boys were invariably passive, spiritless and a bit older than he preferred . . . not to mention often ugly and whip-wealed.
Urbahnos still gagged when he thought of that morning, some years back, when he had awakened after an hours-long bout with an almost-new slave boy to find that the little bitch had used a knotted sheet to hang himself from an iron wall sconce. Recalling the contorted face, protruding eyes and bulging, blackened tongue had brought up everything Urbahnos ate or drank for days on end.
After having been for so very long denied a really prime, young, untried love boy, it was perhaps natural for Lord Urbahnos to drift into fantasies of breaking in the other Horseclans boy, the elder one, of course, not the younger, prettier one — that one must go, untouched, to Karaleenos. So, lost in this pleasurable fantasy, warmed by the honey wine and the bearskin, lulled alike by the swaying of the litter and the patter of the rain, he fell asleep.
* * *
For all that the road was in abominable condition and not quite straight in places, mounted men with decent horseflesh between their legs could traverse the full distance between the two cities in under a day, but as the ox-drawn trader wagons never moved fast enough over dry, level ground, it was closer to a two-day journey for them. In the days of the old duke, traders had camped overnight a bit off the road in a sheltered area that had an unfailing spring.
Duke Tcharlz, however, early in his reign, had recognized the possibilities, located a proved entrepreneur and entered into a silent partnership with him, advancing monies from the ducal purse to build, stock and man a sizable, well-built and reasonably comfortable serai in the area around that spring.
The duke had been astute in his choice of a partner. Portuh Frank had proved himself unprincipled and larcenous enough to reap handsome profits from the operation, yet sufficiently intelligent to realize that he was surely being closely watched by one or more of his employees and that to attempt to cheat the duke would be suicidal.
The main structure of the serai was the counterpart of countless others the length and breadth of the land — a large, rectangular building of stone and timber, rising two and a half stories over a full cellar and capped with a roof of hand-cut shingles; floored with planks of pine, the serai’s main room was fifty feet long and thirty wide, with a huge fieldstone fireplace at either end for heating, all cooking being done in a nearby outbuilding, while the small private rooms on the second floor were heated by individual braziers.
In addition to the cookhouse, there were a score of other structures, all necessary for the proper hosting of guests, their animals and running stock — huge, commodious stables for horses and mules; a sizable corral for oxen, partially roofed over to protect the beasts from the weather; a big smokehouse for cured meats and a springhouse of equal size for keeping butter, fresh cheeses, milk and suchlike. The smithy adjoined the shop of a wagonwright, with the fabulous six-holer privy being situated hard by the spacious pigpens. For easier egg collection, the hens were kept confined to the environs of their roosting house by a tall fence of woven reeds. Nonetheless, the roosters and some of the more adventurous hens were always roaming the innyard to be chased and occasionally caught by the hounds whose presence was thought to discourage the inroads of fox, skunk, weasel and other vermin.
Another covered pen usually held a few blatting sheep, for mutton was a favored fare among the inn’s clientele, while a small herd of milk goats were rapidly converting a growth of young trees a few hundred yards behind the inn into a stubbly field. Portuh Frank and his current woman dwelt in a small, snug cottage near the inn, and the remainder of the staff bunked in one of the three structures designed for the purpose.
The commodious cellars beneath the main structure held the bulk of the serai’s provender — barrels of flour and meal, dried beans, peas and lentils, cured and aged cheeses, casks of lard and honey and oil, dried fruits and vegetables — apples, peaches, pears, plums, raisins, garlic, onions, pumpkin, he
rbs, mushrooms — kegs of beer, pipes of various wines, barrels of hwiskees and stone jugs of cordials and brandies. In the darker, cooler reaches, wooden bins held root vegetables and fresh cabbages with casks and barrels of pickled foodstuffs stacked between. The cellars also gave lodging to a trio of brown ferrets — a hob and two fitches — the very presence of which guaranteed an utter dearth of resident rats and mice. The only entrance to these magazines lay without the main building, and the only two keys to its massive iron lock were never out of the sight of Portuh and his master cook, one Dik Tchertch.
Being by their very nature parsimonious, few traders of any class would pay the slightly exorbitant prices Portuh demanded for lodgings within the private, lockable rooms on the second floor, usually either sleeping with their men — rolled in skins and blankets and quilts — on or under the tables and benches which furnished the first floor — or in the familiar discomfort of their huge wagons. Therefore, few of the upper-floor rooms were any longer furnished, those that were being but crudely so, since their most frequent use was to lock up for the night either slaves or especially valuable merchandise.
So, when the slightly drunk and overbearing Urbahnos and his party of bravos descended upon the serai in the deepening dusk of the wet, gloomy day, demanding a suite of well-heated rooms, a hot bath, food, wines, brandy and cordials, Portuh found both himself and his staff hard pressed to accommodate this unusual and scathing-tongued guest in less than the best part of an hour. Never before had he, either in this place or in his former locale — far to the northeast, whence he had fled by night only a skip and a jump ahead of the grim and hard-eyed retainers of a certain earl — had had as a guest one of these eastern Ehleenee, and if all were as impossible to please as this one, he thought that he could just as easily live out the remainder of his life without the custom of another of the insultingly supercilious bastards.