Horseclans Odyssey

by Robert Adams

  Thet dang Zahrtohgan bugtit done kilt Mistuh Custuh!” shouted the bravo Djahnbil, drawing sword from sheath with a sibilant zweeeep. “Let’s us git ’im!”

  “No!” yelled Hwahruhn, turning and starting toward the bravo. “It was the horse killed him, an accident . . .”

  But it was too late for words in the tense confrontation of the two groups of irritable and nervous men. The two sword-holding bravos had taken no more than three steps in Nahseer’s direction when, with a twanng and a thunnk, Bahb and Djoh Steevuhnz had each sent a bone-headed hunting arrow through the left eye and into the brain of each of the mercenaries.

  As the two dropped with a clashing of their scale shirts, the mob before the hwiskee house began to mill and move forward, with the nooning sun glinting on bared blades. A ripple passed through the double column of soldiers as the bowmen presented and drew, awaiting only Wolfs signal to loose.

  Wolf had been watching the mob when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Portuh grasp the hilt of his longsword. Wolfs short, broad, heavy model was out first, and with the flat he cudgeled Portuh’s bandaged head; the serai keeper dropped to his knees, holding his head and groaning.

  Wolf reined about to the right flank and raised his sword above his head, roaring, “Archers, one volley, target to right flank, fifteen yards. Loose!”

  To the accompaniment of screams of pain and fear, six war arrows and two more hunting arrows of Horseclans make thudded through clothing and into the vulnerable flesh of those men unlucky enough to have been in the forefront of the mob of would-be slave catchers. Several of the men in the rear faded back into the hwiskee house. Running down three slaves, and two of them little boys at that, was one thing; taking on a fully armed and mounted squad of the duke’s dragoons was another thing entirely.

  Automatically, the veteran archers nocked a second arrow and awaited orders, the non-archers loosened swords in the scabbards and wheeled their mounts about to face the foe, gleefully awaiting an order, for men who could afford to frequent a hwiskee house must perforce have money, and once they had been hacked to death they would have no further need for money or anything else.

  The surviving trader, Hwahruhn, stood aghast between the mob and the column. All of his worst presentiments and forebodings were come to terrifying life.

  Second Oxman Bailee sat spraddle-legged in the dust, both his hands lying limply between his thighs, the gray-fletched shaft of an arrow protruding from his front while the blood-dripping point and more of the shaft stuck out of his back. Bailee said not a word, he just rocked to and fro, whining and coughing, deep coughs that brought up frothy blood to spray onto his legs and dribble down his chin.

  Wagoner Sawl Krohnin had a black-shafted nomad arrow in his eye, and so too did one of the apprentice traders, Bahbee Gyuh. One man — Hwahruhn could not see his face — was stumbling into the door of the hwiskee house, the steel point of a war arrow winking out just below his left shoulderblade. And First Wagoner Tahm Gaitz had driven his last team across the prairie, having taken an arrow squarely between his eyes. The other three downed men were Portuh’s, and Hwahruhn could not recall their names.

  Slowly, the trader raised his hands, palms open placatingly. To the remaining slave catchers, he said, “Put up your steel, men. More than enough blood has been shed here over something that was none of our business to begin with.

  “The slaves are all the property of that Ehleen, and no reward he could offer would be enough to pay for your lives or your suffering. These men are soldiers of Duke Tcharlz. They have the slaves, and I am sure that all will be made right in time. Take your friends back into the hwiskee house and see to their hurts; I’ll deal with these gentlemen.”

  Most of the mob gladly took this excuse — the voice of authority — to put stout log walls between their unprotected skins and those sharp-biting arrows, but a knot of three or four of the caravan men stood their ground, grumbling. At length, Tahm Lantz stepped a few feet forward and said, “But Mistuh Hwahruhn, is we jest gonna let them bash mah cousin’s haid in an’ git away with it?”

  Hwahruhn sighed. “In the first place, Tahm, the horse killed Mistuh Custuh, not the rider. In the second place, there is not and never was any reason, any excuse, for us to have picked a fight with these soldiers. But certain of us did so, and you can see and hear the consequences. If you, personally, and your friends there want to commit suicide, speak to the sergeant here. I’m certain that some of his troopers will accommodate you.”

  Then Hwahruhn turned his back on the late Trader Custuh’s cousin and bespoke Wolf. “Sergeant, there has been a terrible misunderstanding this day. We are peaceable men and had been about a lawful, civic duty: the recapture of three slaves. I see that you have taken them, but you were wise to disarm them, as well, for they are directly responsible for the shameful maiming of their master and indirectly responsible for the deaths of several men, the partial destruction of the serai on the road from Twocityport to Pahdookahport, the burning of most of our caravan’s best goods from this last trip and the theft of five horses and other items.”

  Wolf shrugged. “You should oughta have tol’ all o’ thet to them firs’ two buggers drawed steel and come a-runnin’ at my column, mistuh. Hell, my men and me had us no way to know who or what your outfit was,” Wolf lied, blank-faced. “First off, some loonatick comes a-runnin’ up and grabs the bridle of Trooper Nahseer’s hoss and the hoss gits hisself spooked and kicks that crazy’s head in.”

  “It was Custuh’s gelding,” said Hwahruhn. “The Zahrtohgahn slave stole it out of the serai stables. But you’re right, of course, he should’ve gone about things differently. He always was a hothead.”

  Wolf smiled grimly. “Wal, he’s a busted-open head now. But why’n hell did them other two have t’ draw steel and come at my column? That’s what really touched the thing off, Y’ know, Mistuh.”

  Hwahruhn sighed again. “They were hired men in the service of Lord Urbahnos of Pahdookahport, the master of the three slaves, the man who wanted them back. He had offered a huge reward for their recapture, alive.”

  “Wal . . .” Wolf leaned forward in his saddle and spoke slowly and distinctly. “He ain’t a-gonna git them, mistuh, nor nobody elst, f’r that matter. All three of ’em’s enlisted in the comp’ny of Captain Count Martuhn of Twocityport f’r the rest o’ the war, and then — by the orders o’ His Grace Duke Tcharlz — they gets their freedom!”

  * * *

  Knowing that he had precious little time to spare, Duke Tcharlz and his columns descended on the phony war downriver with frightening speed, marching something over a hundred miles — cavalry and infantry, and much of it crosscountry — in a few hours less than five days. The young King of Mehmfiz and his three marshals, one of them an actual nobleman of his court, the other two mercenary captains, strove to fight delaying actions in keeping with the king’s promises to the Duke of Traders to townport; therefore, to that planned end, they separated . . . and this was their downfall. One after the other, the wily duke forced them into open battle and decimated them, pursuing the shattered ranks far southward across the border and deep into the Kingdom of Mehmfiz itself.

  Nor did he and his troops simply war on fellow soldiers as his columns returned northward. They razed and raped, looted and burned and slew; no structure of less strength than a walled and well-defended town was safe from their savage depredations.

  And, as Tcharlz had known full well they would, the court of Mehmfiz was quickly agitated by the grumblings of the nobles whose northern lands were being hardest hit by this large-scale raiding, even while the streets and alleys of the young king’s largest city were becoming clogged with lowborn refugees, each of them with grisly and horrifying tales to recount.

  There was now but a single army left free and unpummeled in the north. It was the personal force of King Uyr, and, despite himself, Duke Tcharlz was beginning to develop a degree of respect for the young man, who seemed able to avoid trap after trap, to wriggle his
force out of situations instinctively. Nor could this military expertise be that of mere experience, for the royal ruler of Mehmfiz was not that old and he had never before personally warred so far as the duke and his informants were aware.

  The manuevering had now crossed the border and was taking place over the battered northern provinces of Mehmfiz itself. Save for the two armies, these provinces — formerly among the richest of the kingdom — were become virtual deserts, empty of man. The fine crops not yet harvested had been either burned or trampled into the earth by hooves and booted feet. Harvested crops had been either looted or burned while the structures that had held them, fine halls and hovels alike, were become roofless ruins, their former occupants either fled southward or lying — their scavenger-picked bones scattered and bleaching on the ground — in or nearby those ruins.

  Knowing that King Uyr’s intemperate alliance had already cost him and his kingdom dearly, and certain that — with but the single, small army to back him — the kinglet would be unable to further menace the states to his north, Duke Tcharlz was upon the verge of breaking off and marching his force back to Twocityport. Then into his camp came riding a delegation under a flag of truce.

  The meeting between the two leaders took place within the open parkland of a ruin that Tcharlz well remembered. It had been here that he had almost lost an eye to the toothsome, red-haired noblewoman he had been raping. Such had been his admiration of her spunk and spirit that when he was done with her he had, rather than turn her over to his officers and troopers, gifted her with a good horse and a purse of gold and even allowed her to keep her jewels.

  King Uyr seemed anything other than the utter fop that northern rumor named him to be. He was very short, but such was his dynamism that the duke found himself forgetting the difference in height There was an intense vitality in every movement of the young king’s wiry frame, and intelligence of a high order glinted from the depths of his gray blue eyes.

  When wine had been sipped — each had brought his own — and after the opening amenities, King Uyr had leaned back in his scorched chair — both chairs and the heavy table having been dragged from out of the nearby ruins for the meeting — and, smiling ruefully, commented, “Well, my esteemed Cousin Tcharlz, you’ve played merry hell in these my northern counties, have you not?”

  Tcharlz shrugged. “There is only one way to conduct warfare, lord, and that is to fight to win; the harder and bloodier you make it for your enemy, the quicker you win.”

  The king nodded. “You have made it hard for me, cousin, damned hard indeed. Half a dozen of my richest, most powerful and most influential counts are constantly badgering me and would likely be fomenting a rebellion, had I not had the foresight to summon them all to my army, where I can keep an eye on them. It is partially at their behest that I meet you here.”

  The young monarch leaned forward. “What would you say if I asked that you and yours return north and I and mine return south, eh? You were wise to agree, cousin, for by this time Duke Alex has already at least invested your capital, if it has not indeed fallen to his arms.”

  Tcharlz smiled lazily, catlike. “The town proper may be in that arrogant popinjay’s hands, King Uyr, but not my new citadel, I’ll wager you; and unless or until he holds that fortress, hell have no use of the port or of much of the town.”

  “A half-finished fort won’t delay his army long, cousin,” said the king.

  “Oh, ho, ho,” laughed Tcharlz. “I’ve stolen a march on you, lord king, that I have. The fortress is completed, completed and garrisoned and in command of a veteran captain, Martuhn of Geerzburk. He’s a born nobleman of the eastern kingdoms, driven from his patrimonial estates by a greedy overlord. Now I’ve invested him with another county, and it is to his own interest to hold that citadel for me; and he can if any man can. The merchants of Pahdookahport have hired on their own mercenary troops, and quite a strong contingent of them, too. So have the rulers of my client states to the north of the Ohyoh. They’re none of them strong enough to go on the offensive, but if that dung-eating hound Alex should be fool enough to attack either of them, he’ll be badly singed.

  “So, my dear enemy, I can see no reason to curtail my romp here in the rich lands of Mehmfiz. Over the years of late, I’ve been vegetating, growing old and fat, while attending to affairs of state and letting hirelings do my fighting for me. After these last few weeks, though, lord king, living again the hard, strenuous, spartan life of a soldier on campaign, I feel and — so my gentlemen attest often — look at least twenty years younger than my actual years.

  “Since this raiding and riding and fighting so well agrees with me, and since, as I have told you, there is nothing of an urgent nature to summon me back to mine own lands, and since I have no lines of supply to hamper my movements or disturb my sleep — this, because my forces and I are living well off your lands, lord king — I can see no reason to desist just yet.

  “Perhaps after I have razed a few more of your counties and have finally chivvied you and your remaining forces to panting, bleeding tatters you will truly regret your and Duke Alex’s little scheme to forcibly divest me of that which is lawfully mine.

  “Now” — Tcharlz shoved back his chair and stood, hitching Ws sword back around for easier walking —”unless my lord king of Mehmfiz wishes to begin discussion of the terms of his surrender, I’ve matters to attend to in my camp.”

  The young king’s eyes flashed the cold fires of outraged anger for a moment, even as his knot of retainers snarled and grumbled curses at the impudence of this mere duke, but Uyr’s anger dissipated as quickly as it had appeared.

  “As you wish, Cousin Tcharlz, as you wish. I have little need and no intention of surrendering to you. Rather, I came this day to suggest that we call it a draw and retire to our respective capitals.

  “As you are well aware, you have left me insufficient strength to risk an open battle with you. However, because I am operating in lands I know well and because our two minds seem to function similarly, I seem to have scant difficulty in escaping your envelopments.

  “As for the damages you are doing to these counties, perhaps the injured counts will, upon your eventual departure, have sufficient to occupy them at home that they will bide there for a few years and stay out of my hair in Mehmfizport.”

  * * *

  Duke Alex had made his landfall on a stretch of beach just below the bluffs to the north of Tworivercity — he insisted on calling it by the name it had had prior to the coming of his hated rival, Tcharlz — but the invasion had been a disaster almost from the moment the ships and towed barges had left the waters of the Great River.

  His plan had been to send a bevy of shallow-draft sail-and-row galleys ahead to run up on the shelving beach and discharge enough men to hold the landing area against possible attack until the big, clumsy barges could be towed out of the channel and rowed in to land horses and men to scour the immediate area and make it safe for himself, his staff and the mountains of supplies, stores, weapons and transport to be put ashore.

  In theory it had been a good plan, but it had reckoned without the keen mind of Count Martuhn and his staff.

  First, a lucky long-range shot from one of a pair of medium-light war engines which had been concealed atop the bluffs over the beach holed and sank one of a string of overloaded barges in midchannel. The barge ahead cut the sinking craft loose, but before the trailing barge could do so, the weight on the connecting cable had pulled its bow so low that it began to ship water and founder as well.

  Then, without awaiting orders, the masters of the galleys began to make for shore at flank speed, rather than with the slow caution Duke Alex had intended, said masters knowing that on the beach they and their ships would be out of either sight or danger from the deadly engines atop the bluffs.

  Some half of the ships beached safely. Of the unlucky ones, two were holed by sixty-pound boulders hurled by the engines, and yet another was set afire by a pitchball from the same source. The rest,
within but a few yards of the beach, ripped out or seriously damaged their bottoms on underwater obstructions unmarked on even the latest charts.

  The loss of life was not really heavy, not even among the slave rowers, for the water was too shallow for any of the ripped galleys to sink deeply. But the hulks made the subsequent landings of men and horses much more difficult and far longer in accomplishment . . . and, all the while, boulders and pitchballs continued a constant hazard to the ships and barges from near shore to the center of the channel.

  At the duke’s command, his larger warships, at anchor in the channel, had attempted a counter-battery offensive with their own deck-mounted engines. But, as the ship masters and army officers could have told him, the range was just too great for these lighter engines, and most of their shots fell among the already hard beset shorebound vessels, while the few that actually struck the face of the bluffs did sore hurt to the troops gathered at the foot of those bluffs to escape the showers of arrows and slingstones with which they had been greeted upon landing.

  Raging at the dashing of his plan, Duke Alex ordered that the warships cease fire until they had upped anchor and sailed closer inshore. However, when the bowsprit of his flagship was neatly sheared off by a stone from the bluff-top battery, new signals fluttered aloft: “Return to channel anchorage.”

  Only the fall of night saw the eventual landing of the entire force, less casualties, for the lanterns which the barges and lighters had perforce to mount to avoid rammings provided winking, blinking targets for the engines, bowmen and stingers high on the bluffs.

  In the gray light of dawn, a hundred picked marines from the galleys scaled the towering, mist-slippery rocks of the precipitous face of the bluffs. But they found nothing atop the bluffs save piles of stones for engine or sling and a single broken hornbow. They also found tragedy, however, for when a dozen or so of them congregated on a spot near the edge, the lip of rock suddenly collapsed, hurling them all to a quick if messy death on the beach far below and crushing or injuring men and horses on that same beach. One of the chunks of rock — a stone of more than the weight of two armored men — bounced once, then splintered its way through the fore-deck of a beached galley to smash the keel and exit from the side planks.