Horseclans Odyssey

by Robert Adams

  “The Stylz townhouse, the last single piece of real property left to me and my brothers, was one of the row of buildings Duke Alex chose to raze to provide him material for that wretched little useless wall of his. But, to add insult to injury, he and his officers trooped through my house and all the others just prior to the demolition and had them stripped of anything that caught their eyes or fancies.

  “When, they would have forcibly prevented such blatant thievery, both my younger brothers were cut down, coldly butchered. I was in attendance on the duchess at the time, but neighbors and servants apprised me of these atrocities. By the time a messenger fetched me and I got back to what had been my home, it was fast on the way to becoming a heap of rubble.

  “My just complaint to the duchess brought from her the answer that I and every other soul in her cities and lands were hers to do with as she wished, and that my poor brothers had been criminals for attempting to save our possessions from Duke Alex. That night, trying to sleep in the mean quarters assigned me by the palace majordomo, I began to compare the two dukes — Tcharlz and Alex — and to sift through the lies and distortions that had been my daily fare for most of my life.

  “After some week or more of soul-searching, I thought upon you and your offer to one who had treated you with naught save contumely. I thought me that I had wasted enough of my life in service to a blind hatred of a man who had truly done much good for the duchy and who, even at his worst, was far and away a better man, a more just and honorable man, a more noble man in all senses than his rival will ever be.

  “Had his grace been at Pirates’ Folly, I should have hied me there to humbly beg that I be allowed to enter his service in any capacity he might deem fitting. But he is on campaign downriver, so I came to you, my lord. Will you have me?”

  Sir Djaimz’s mind, because he possessed no scintilla of telepathic ability, was as an open book to Martuhn, and nowhere in the roil of confused thoughts could the captain sense that the young knight was trying to delude him. He decided to add this former foe to his staff for a while. When he had proved himself, he could be trained for duties of a military nature.

  * * *

  In his final instructions to Captain Count Martuhn, Duke Tcharlz had bluntly granted his surrogate much latitude in defense of the citadel. “Martuhn, as matters sit that city is not worth a pinch of cow shit to me; most of its residents cleave to that fat bitch and hate my guts, despite all I’ve done and tried to do for them. So don’t be afraid to bombard or even fire the city, if it comes to that. You’ll hear no complaints from me. The damned palace, too, for all I care!

  “I would prefer that the cables and the docks remain more or less intact, but if push comes to shove, cut the frigging cables and render the docks to gravel and splinters. If you wish I’ll put all this in writing, legally witnessed and sealed, that there be no misunderstanding.”

  Martuhn had taken his overlord up on that last offer and the written, witnessed and sealed orders now reposed in his strongbox, in the hollow under a certain stone in the floor of his tower room. And for this reason, he had no compunction in ordering the engines to return fire against the cleverly concealed enemy engines at the edge of the bluff.

  After a day of being too busy dodging stone shards or bouncing boulders or the collapses of battered-down house walls to get many missiles launched at the citadel, the engineers of Duke Alex elected to recommence by night. After all, they knew the distance and direction, so there was scant need to actually see the target.

  Their first boulder produced Martuhn’s first casualty of the siege when it knocked down a merlon which, in falling, broke the leg and crushed to paste the foot of a sentry. It was then that Martuhn decided to teach the enemy not to repeat this night’s work.

  Fifteen minutes after their initial loosings, the engineers atop the bluff heard the long-drawn-out creakings, then the basso thuummpps, and cringed despite themselves, recalling the carnage and destruction of the past day. But no single stone fell among them. Rather a hail of red-glowing, hissing, spluttering, fire-tailed pitchballs passed high over them to fall onto and around the palace. After the first volley of pitch-balls came a second, a third and then a fourth.

  No more missiles were thrown at the citadel that night or on the day following. The engineers and every other man, woman and child, slave or free, were far too busy trying to prevent the city from burning to the ground.

  * * *

  Two months to the day after he had landed with his army on the beach north of Tworivercity, Alex, Duke of Traders-town, sat alone in a room of the south wing of the singed and charred palace chewing at his thumb in a high dudgeon. He and the army were in serious trouble, and well he knew it. His support within the city was fading away like morning dew under a hot sun, and even Duchess Ann was beginning to whine at him.

  “No wonder,” he thought, “that Tcharlz keeps so far away from her. Were the fat slug my wife, had I wed her instead of her sister, I’d likely have slit her damned gullet by now, and shut her yapping mouth for good. Tcharlz must have far more patience than have I.”

  Absently, Alex chose a strip of jerked meat from a plate before him and gnawed at the hard, stringy stuff. It was about all the victuals that he or anyone else in the city would have until supplies from Traderstown could be gotten to him. The supplies he had brought with him and those received shortly thereafter had mostly gone up in the same smoke that had taken almost all the stores of the city on the night the engines of that accursed citadel had fired so many buildings.

  When his big yellow teeth had worried off a chewable piece of the jerky, he masticated for a while, then sipped from a goblet of honey wine to dilute the salt and mask the abominable flavor of the meat And his mood was as foul as his repast; servants and retainers tiptoed past the open doors to the room, for he had already injured one man with a thrown dagger.

  Duke Alex was by now convinced that all the world had turned against him. The damned little fort down yonder refused to surrender, refused to face the fact that Duke Alex held the city. Due to the high level of the groundwater in the Lower Town, the fortification could not be properly invested. None of his many and varied attempts to pound down the walls of this thorn in his side had been successful, and now he and his staff were loath to even try, again; should they, they feared that the satanic bastard who commanded might very well finish the burning down of the upper city.

  Even his ally the King of Mehmfiz, that craven little fart Uyr, was turning against him, reneging on his sworn word. The plan had been for him to leave behind sufficient force to hold Tcharlz and his forces in the south, then to sail upriver with the bulk of his men and. attack from the dock area, while Alex attacked from the landward side. But the puling bastard had never sailed upriver, and each succeeding message from the forsworn scoundrel was more evasive than the last.

  Nor had the coward even been able to hold Tcharlz in the south as he had promised to do. Tcharlz himself had been identified leading the strong force of dragoons, lancers and irregulars that had captured or destroyed three of the last five supply trains bound for the city, had eradicated smaller patrols of Duke Alex’s cavalry and had fought pitched battles with larger bodies.

  The weather had become frightful, freezing cold long before its time, with little cordwood and less charcoal and no way to secure more. So many officers and men of his army had been assaulted or murdered in the streets recently that they were now forbidden to venture abroad in lesser numbers than a full squad, by day or by night, nor had salutary executions of suspects or hostages picked at random seemed to do any good.

  It was become very difficult to feed the horses properly, and the beasts were, moreover, beginning to disappear. His own favorite stallion had been taken from a guarded stable; later the animal’s glossy hide and a few of the larger bones had been found on a midden pile. Watching the stable guards die slowly had done little to assuage his grief.

  So sorely beset, Alex was no longer sleeping well. He was drinking
more than had been his wont, which meant that when sleep he did, he invariably wakened red-eyed, with throbbing head and queasy stomach and nerves taut as the ropes of a catapult. The rough and paltry food available even to him had so addled his belly that he alternated between painful constipation and debilitating diarrhea.

  Why would not that damned little fort surrender? He had offered generous and handsome terms, all refused.

  A few hours later, Duke Alex watched in impotent rage as Duke Tcharlz and his horsemen swept down upon the southbound supply train, butchered guards and drivers alike, then drove off the wagons and carts in triumph. And still later that dreadful day, he gazed dejectedly from a window of the palace to the square below, where citizens and his own soldiers fought like starveling dogs for the basketloads of offal and refuse hurled into the city by the engines of the citadel.

  For the sake of his slipping hold on sanity, it was perhaps as well that Alex, Duke of Traderstown, was not aware that his real troubles had not yet begun.

  Chapter XII

  The winter was as hard as any that Milo of Morai could recall. It came early, howling in from the far north, and it necessitated a measured scattering of the painfully gathered clans in order to provide graze and to preserve as much livestock as possible. He and Blind Hari of Krooguh could but hope that the clans would reassemble at the appointed place if spring ever arrived.

  Nor was the winter any whit easier on Duke Alex, his army or the folk of the Upper Town. What remained of the invading force was now all foot soldiers with no transport, all oxen and horses and even the mules having either been slaughtered by the troops, with or without orders, or stolen by groups of ravenous civilians.

  The besieged besiegers had scoured and rescoured the Upper Town, completely ridding it of pigs, goats, dogs, cats and even rats. Now rawhides and leather were being boiled up over fires fueled by chopped furniture, while mixed bands of soldiers and citizens willingly risked the deadly attentions of archers and crossbowmen on the walls of the citadel in order to secure one or two of the huge wharf rats on the streets and in the alleys of the old town.

  Duke Tcharlz, who was in actuality nowhere near as hard, uncompromising and unfeeling a man as he would have had the world believe, permitted an early exodus of nursing mothers and young children. At length he began to allow supply trains to reach the city, and finally when unusually heavy icing brought river traffic to a standstill, he and his men delivered dozens of wagonloads of cordwood, charcoal and nonperishable foodstuffs to just beyond bow range of the city’s low walls.

  By then his infantry had marched back up from the south, and he well knew that come spring, those scarecrow-defended walls would present little obstacle to his army. Nor would King Uyr of Mehmfiz present a problem any time soon, for, was the intelligence correct, that unhappy young man and what was left of his hired army was hotly engaged in putting down scattered rebellions on his northern marches.

  Messengers passed with the greatest of ease between the duke’s field army and the “beleaguered” citadel in the Lower Town. Tcharlz was inordinately pleased with and proud of his selection of Captain Martuhn, nor did he hesitate to express his good nature toward him and his garrison in every way possible.

  “I think, Sir Wolf,” Martuhn chuckled, “that his grace would adopt me, name me his heir and gift me half his duchy, did I but drop the word that such would please me.”

  “Then why don’t you, my lord count?” Wolf mindspoke. “I think I’d enjoy serving a duke’s heir.”

  Martuhn just shook his head. “No you wouldn’t, old friend, you’d have to guard not only my back but taste all of my victuals, as well, and eventually you’d get a fatal bellyache of it. Too much politics of a poisonous nature goes on among the higher nobility to suit me. Count is as high as I will ever aspire, thank you.

  “But if you’d rather enter Duke Tcharlz’s service, I could easily arrange . . .”

  Sir Wolf looked wounded. “My lord should know that I’d never leave him, in good times or foul.”

  Aware that his barb had penetrated more deeply than he had intended, Martuhn laid a hand on his old retainer’s shoulder. “Oh, Wolf, I was but jesting. You’re ever so serious.”

  Lolling in a chair, Nahseer had been observing while sipping at hot, spiced cider. Now he said, “Whilst your overlord be in a good mood, Martuhn, would it be too much to ask that you get my freedom and that of the boys in writing? You could get your adoptions of them legally attested at the same time, you know.”

  “Oh, aye,” responded Martuhn, “and my last messenger to Pirates’ Folly requests those very things, among others. But he has not yet returned with answers.”

  “But you sent the last messenger over a week agone,” Nahseer said worriedly. “He should be back, long since.”

  “Why so perturbed, friend Nahseer?” smiled Martuhn. “Likely the fellow was trapped somewhere for a few days by last week’s blizzard, or his horse could’ve turned up lame, or he could’ve reached Pirates’ Folly only to find the duke in the field with his cavalry. He’ll be back, soon or late.”

  Nahseer squirmed in his chair, his features revealing real concern. “You’re most likely right, Martuhn. Nonetheless, I’ll not feel even marginally secure until I can hold in my hand the legal documents that declare Bahb Steevuhnz, Djoh Steevuhnz and one Nahseer ibn Wahleed al-Asraf Ahkbahr to be free and unindentured or apprenticed.

  “And I warn you, my good friends Martuhn and Wolf, do not ever make the error of underestimating Lord Urbahnos of Karaleenos. He is shrewd and cunning. But then, most successful merchants are so; such traits are needful in their work. But in addition, the Ehleen is stubborn as a cur with a bone when he truly wants something. He has vast wealth and influence in high places, and he is utterly without morals or scruples.

  “Urbahnos desperately needs little Djoh to gift to some-high-ranking pervert in Karaleenos, hoping that in return that man will see to the reversal of the order of exile that sent Urbahnos hence, years agone. Bahb he will probably torment until his spirit breaks or he dies. Me he means to torture to death, very slowly.

  “Had matters progressed his way, he meant to sell me into the hellish living death of the barges. But, too, he meant to take his family upriver just far enough to be out of Duke Tcharlz’s sphere of influence, then sell them, his own wife and children, into slavery!”

  Few men had ever seen the peculiar cold light that then beamed from Martuhn’s eyes . . . not and lived to tell of it. “You’re not describing a man, Nahseer, but rather a beast, a loathsome monster. I wonder if his grace knows the truth, knows that his duchy holds so debauched and terrible a thing?”

  “If he did not before, he will as soon as my messenger gains his ear,” said Martuhn grimly. “And then I would not care to be in this Lord Urbahnos’ shoes, my friend.”

  However, although Martuhn was not to know of it for some time, that messenger never reached Pirates’ Folly or Duke Tcharlz, and no trace of him was ever found until, with the final melting of the deep snows, his remains and those of his horse were discovered in a deep gully . . . and by then it was too late.

  * * *

  Milo of Morai and Blind Hari of Krooguh had worried needlessly. With the spring thaw, all the clans of autumn plus a few new arrivals, began to converge at the chosen location. At the first full meeting of the Council of Chiefs, Chief Rahn, the Patrik of Patrik, arose, cleared his throat and said, “War chief, revered bard of the tribe, brother chiefs of the Holy Kindred, we all have waited patiently through a long winter, but now it is time. Let us gather our warriors and our maiden archers and help our brother, Henree of Steevuhnz, avenge himself upon these despicable dirtmen. How says the war chief?”

  Milo’s head inclined. “Yes, my brothers, it is time. But I have had word that three other clans are on the march and nearing this place. Let us delay for two weeks, that their warriors and chiefs be not cheated of a chance to share in this mission of honor.

  “But, although we delay the war r
idings, yet will the tribe continue eastward, for all must be across the Great River ere next winter’s snows overtake us.

  “Plan to divide your fighters into three war parties, for there are three of those little forts along the border in our line of march, and if we strike but the one, the others will try to come to its aid.

  “Chief of the cats,” Milo mindspoke the huge, gray brown, winter-shaggy prairiecat that sat in the circle, thick tail lapped over its big forepaws, red-pink tonguetip slightly protruding from between its three-inch incisors.

  “Yes, war chief?” replied the immense feline, Elksdeath.

  “Choose six of your best to accompany the twolegs scouts. It will be the mission of the twolegs to observe everything about the forts and the mission of your cats to see that no dirtmen live to tell that the scouts are about.”

  “The cat chief hears and will obey, war chief.”

  * * *

  Stehfahnah, the mare and the ass had wintered well. She had had time to clean the cabin, rechink its walls with new clay, chop and stack a decent amount of firewood and mow a good supply of wild hay grasses before the really bad weather commenced.

  Soon after the first, deep snows, she located a deeryard not far from her cabin, and so seldom lacked for fresh meat to eat herself or trade to her otter friends for fish or smaller game. Her only moment of real danger came when a big, solitary male wolf began to openly stalk her as she bore home parts of a butchered doe, but two quick-loosed arrows crippled him enough for her to be able to finish him with the man’s fine, heavy spear.

  She still used her low-topped felt boots inside the cabin, but for outside wear, she had fashioned for herself a pair of thigh-high boots such as she had seen on some of the traders. Drawing liberally upon the man’s store of cured hides, pelts, skins and hanks of dried sinew, and adding her own expertise at felting and compounding fish glue, she whiled away the long hours within the cabin working by firelight.