Horseclans Odyssey

by Robert Adams

  Sir Huhmfree gulped audibly. His face had gone white as curds under the campaign tan, and his dark-blue eyes were dilated with shock. But his voice was firm.

  “My lord count, will you but repeat the message once more, I shall deliver it word for word. But I pray, my lord, reconsider, for much as his grace respects and cares for you, you must know that he will not and cannot tolerate rebellion in any form. If I deliver such a message, he will certainly march on you with force, seize these two boys, and relieve you of your command and rank, if not of your life.”

  Martuhn nodded wearily. “Thank you for your kind concern, Sir Huhmfree. I’ve known his grace for ten years and I know as well as do you what his certain reaction will be, but, you see, I cannot do other than what my conscience dictates.

  “But wait, sit you down and partake of that ewer of wine. I’ll summon Bahb Steevuhnz to tell you of what occurred on the night this Urbahnos bought him.”

  * * *

  “. . . and so,” Bahb concluded the tale unabashedly, having recounted it so many times, “when the black-haired pig tried to tear off my breeches, I stabbed him in the crotch, just to one side of his yard, with one dagger; and when he clapped both hands to himself, I used the other blade to open his ugly face.

  “When Nahseer came in, fully armed, he was ordered to take me alive for torture and promised torture and the loss of his eyes should he chance to slay me. Instead, he gave me a better weapon, his dirk. Then he tied the dog, spread-eagled, gagged him and cut out his nuts and threw the things onto the coals of the brazier.

  “Then Nahseer thrust a chunk of hot charcoal into the swine’s emptied scrotum. You should have seen him then, chiefs son — I thought his little pig eyes were going to pop out of his head and roll onto the floor!”

  Sir Huhmfree, who had tried to evince disinterest to begin, had clearly been moved by the lad’s sorry tale. His mobile features were a study in ill-suppressed rage, his lip line thin as a whetted blade and his eyes slitted, while a tic jerked at one cheek and his right hand clenched and reclenched around the hilt of his dagger.

  “Mere deballing were far too good for such an unspeakable and depraved animal. The Zahrtohgahn should have had of? his damned yard, as well, and his two kneecaps. It had been hoped that his grace had either eradicated all such unnatural creatures from his lands years ago, or at least made them understand that his duchy was a most unsalubrious climate for such subhumans as they.

  “My lord count, due in part to the well-known fact of my paternity and to my personal efforts over the last few years, I own some small power and I am become influential in some circles. Now you know as well as do I that his grace is as stubborn as are you and will not back down or appear to change his mind on this or any other matter without good and clearly spelled-out reason. Mayhap I and my resources can supply that reason, can his grace but be kept mollified for the time it may take.

  “Will you not now rephrase your reply?”

  Martuhn tried, but his mind refused to conjure up lies and he could not bring himself to write down the suggestions of Sir Huhmfree, Wolf or Nahseer. Finally, Sir Djaimz Stylz, who had been one of the duchess’ scribes, penned a letter composed by himself, Wolf, Nahseer and Sir Huhmfree. Then they all badgered Count Martuhn until he signed it, and the next day Sir Huhmfree bore it back to Pirates’ Folly.

  It was the first of many such over the next few weeks, citing illnesses of varying, but believable, sorts as the reason why the boys could not travel — first they were said to be suffering a bout of the bloody flux, then a mild case of camp fever, then a siege of large, painful boils in highly sensitive areas of their bodies.

  The young knight was too shrewd to openly name the fictitious maladies. Rather did he describe the symptoms with an almost clinical accuracy — this achieved with the clandestine aid of Martuhn’s Zahrtohgahn garrison surgeon, Medical Sergeant Hahseem ibn Sooleemahn — leaving the duke to draw his own conclusions. Nor did Sir Djaimz further compromise Martuhn in this most dangerous game. He took to signing his own name over the official seal of the county, adding below, “Chief Scribe to the Most Honorable Sir Martuhn, Count of Twocityport.”

  Sir Huhmfree made no more appearances at the citadel during this period of subterfuge, but rather sent messages by way of one or the other of his squires.

  “My lord Martuhn,” he wrote, “there is a ‘place’ along an alleyway just off Shippers’ Row in Pahdookahport. You may know of it, for its open activities are legally licensed; it is called the Three Doors, and is ostensibly owned and operated by an old harridan who calls herself Lady Yohahna. The first door leads to a big hwiskee house and inn for sailors and other riffraff, the second door to a mean and dangerous gambling den, the third, of course, to the bordello. But I have determined that there is a fourth door and another and most shameful operation housed therein.

  “At this point, all that I write is mere hearsay and my own suppositions, for some very powerful person (or persons) seems to be protecting this ‘place’ and so difficult is firsthand information to obtain that I have determined to have the so-called owner seized and brought to a place whereat I can have the truth wrung out of her, at leisure.

  “What little I have thus far learned points not only to this Ehleen, but to certain of his grace’s most trusted officials and at least one of his advisers. But perhaps, when the ‘owner’ feels her bones leaving their sockets and sees the irons heating, she will give me and my witnesses some names and solid facts.

  “Your servant and admirer, Sir Huhmfree Gawlin.”

  But it could not last for long. The duke was not a stupid or unperceptive man, else he never would have risen to his present power. Near to the nooning of a day, it all came to a head.

  Baron Hahrvee Sheeld, commander of the duke’s personal guard, arrived before the citadel with half a troop of the black-cloaked and -plumed horseguards. The baron had served the duke as long as had Martuhn, and though each respected the courage, prowess and accomplishments of the other, they had had their differences and had never been friends.

  With his troopers in formation a few paces from the end of the drawbridge, the baron rode into the citadel alone. In Martuhn’s ground-floor command office, the grim-visaged visitor removed his helmet and cradled it in his arm, but brusquely refused offers of a drink or a chair.

  “Count Martuhn, you have rendered his grace most wroth by your refusal to accede to his requests. I have here his warrant” — he reached under his breastplate and withdrew a folded document bearing the ducal seal —”to bear to him at his castle the persons of the two boys, Bahb Steevuhnz and Djoh Steevuhnz, be they sick or well, living or dead.

  “You may accompany us back, if you wish. But my candid advice would be to shun the duke’s proximity for a while.

  “I presume that you have mounts for these boys. If not, they can double up with a brace of my troopers as far as the Upper Town and the palace stables.

  “Please have them fetched at once. I am due back at Pirates’ Folly by dark.”

  “I’ll see the warrant first, if you please, Baron Hahrvee.” Martuhn spoke with as much cool formality as had the baron.

  “Of course, that is your right, Count Martuhn.” The black-cloaked nobleman proffered the document.

  Martuhn broke the seals and read. The warrant was cold, impersonal and brief. It simply empowered any officer of the duchy to seize the boys by any means necessary and to convey them to the duke. However, there was one thing wrong with it, and Martuhn grasped at this single straw.

  “Baron Hahrvee, I would be bound to honor this warrant, save for one detail.”

  “And what, pray tell, is that, sir?” demanded the short, thickset, powerful-looking man.

  “It is not signed by his grace,” answered Martuhn.

  “Now, by my stallion’s balls, sir,” swore the baron hotly. “Yon’s a legal document, drawn up by the clerk of the Court of Pahdookahport and signed by the Honorable Baron Yzik, judge of that court. Baron Yzik is also his
grace’s deputy and voice in Pahdookahport, just as you are — so far — in Twocityport.”

  Martuhn shook his head, knowing that his very words were damning him, but desperate to buy time, no matter the cost. “Not good enough. Baron Hahrvee. Baron Yzik, whatever else he may be or not be, is my inferior in rank, and I cannot be legally bound by his decrees or warrants. Present me a warrant signed by his grace and we’ll go further into the matter.”

  The officer shook back his shock of black hair, grinned and relaxed a bit. “I had hoped that your answer to this warrant would be something similar to what you just said. Count Martuhn. I, and some others at Pirates’ Folly, are deriving a measure of true amusement and no little satisfaction in watching you destroy yourself in the eyes of his grace.

  “We all saw you rise above your betters, too fast and too far. Your imminent fall will be interesting to observe.

  “You well know how his grace deals with rebels. I just hope that I am on hand to view your execution, Count Martuhn.”

  Redonning his plumed helmet, the baron spun on his heel and, with a jingling of spur chains and a clanking of his saber scabbard, stalked out to his waiting horse.

  A week later, the duke himself arrived before the citadel with a full brigade of his army and a siege train.

  Chapter XIII

  Even before the last clumps of snow had melted from under the shrubs and around the rocks, Stehfahnah had begun to exercise herself, the mare and the ass — toning and toughening muscles, preparing for the long trek ahead. She pulled the nails and removed the shoes from both of them, carefully trimmed and filed down the winter growth of hoof, then reshod them as best she could. Some of the poorer clans rode their mounts unshod or, in rocky country, wearing close-fitting ‘horse boots’ of rawhide and leather; but Clan Steevuhnz was one of the larger, wealthier clans, and the girl had seen horses shod since she had been a toddler and knew well all the intricacies of that art.

  The nights she spent in constructing two travoises — a set of two long trailing poles of hardwood with a net of woven strips of rawhide between, one of customary size for the mare to draw and a smaller one for the ass; for, in addition to her weapons, equipment and supplies for her journey, she intended to bear away with her all the furs and hides, all the metal tools and every single one of the steel traps with their chains. No single tiny scrap of metal went to waste among the thrifty Horseclans, and the girl could already picture the delight on the face of Dan Ohshai of Steevuhnz when he saw and hefted the weight of the cluster of traps she would bear into camp.

  She fashioned two more water skins, larger than those she had inherited from the man, sewing the seams as tightly as she could with wet sinew — which would shrink as it dried — then smearing all surfaces, inside and out, with a compound of beeswax and pine resin. She had to make sure they would last, for it was sometimes far between springs or watercourses on the vast stretches of the prairie.

  She dug a long, narrow pit in the clearing, constructed a rack of green wood with forked posts to hold it, then built a low, smoky fire and began the curing of strips of flesh from the carcass of a lean springtime deer and fillets of fish brought ashore by the three otters.

  At long last, as the flowers began to drop off the dogwoods along the riverbank, Stehfahnah led out mare and ass, saddled them and lashed the pole ends of the loaded travoises in place. As a parting gift for the otters who had done so much for her, she left the carcass of a small-horn buck anchored in fairly deep water near the underwater entrance to the den of the mustelids to make it difficult for other predators to rob her friends. She had taken only the needle-tipped, six-inch horns and the liver, which she munched raw as she rode west toward Sacred Sun’s resting place.

  Despite her lack of a saber or any armor worthy of the name, Stehfahnah considered herself well enough armed to deal with any contingency. Over the winter, she had strengthened the wooden dirtman bow of the man with strips from the long, thick horns of the shaggy-bull she had taken on the night the man had captured her. Carefully, patiently, she had carved and smoothed the edges of the horn strips, affixed them with fish glue and tightly bound them with fresh deer sinew. The result was, while not a true Horseclans horn-bow, considerably better than the bow had been to start with. She also had a deerhide, water-repellent case for the bow and two others to hold the thirty-two arrows she had made, fletched and tipped with fire-hardened bone.

  She had shortened the shafts of her pair of horn-tipped spears and balanced them for darts, then made a case for them and for the throwing stick. The man’s belt axe she had fitted with a longer shaft, and it now hung in its rawhide case at the mare’s withers. The handsome silver-mounted dirk with its S monogram was at her belt, as were a couple of other knives from the cabin in the woods.

  She had considered reshafting the steel spear as well, to make it longer and more like a horseman’s lance. But with no time to properly cure the wood, even if she could find an unflawed sapling of the proper species, size and length, she had wisely reconsidered.

  Horseclans-fashion, her long hair had been braided and the two thick braids lapped over the crown of her head, secured in place with thorns and some thin slivers of bone. Atop her coiffure, she wore the only piece of armor the man had owned — a plain steel helmet, lacking both nape and face guards, pitted with age and lack of care, dented here and there and with only a backed-off stub of metal where the spike should have been.

  Aside from the hide-and-horn bracer on her left arm, the girl’s only body protection was a double-thick deerhide jerkin, into which she had quilted strips of horn and antler and, over the most vulnerable areas, the few odd strips of metal from the kit the man had kept to repair his traps.

  Through all of the first day of travel, the mare had incessantly mindspoken complaints to Stehfahnah about the weight of the load she must bear and draw. Meanwhile the patient little ass trotted along at the end of his lead rope, having to take two steps to the mare’s one, and bearing a proportionately heavier load without pause or complaint.

  The petulant equine was even more indignant when, at that night’s camp, Stehfahnah hobbled and picketed her, while only picketing the friendly, good-natured ass.

  “Horse sister,” the exasperated girl finally told her, “when we reach the camp of my clan, you will be unsaddled and may then run to the high plains, to be eaten alive by wolves, for all I care. But for now, you are the only one big enough for me to ride, and for your size and strength you are far less burdened than is sweet Brother Long-Ears. You are staked and hobbled for the very good reason that, despite the fact that I kept you alive all winter and have delivered you up out of bondage to a dirtman, I simply do not trust you not to run away in the night and leave me afoot. If you don’t stop your complaining, I’ll give you no grain this night.”

  On the afternoon of the third day, now well into prairie country, with the riverside expanse of forest far behind, extreme good fortune favored Stehfahnah. She cut the trail of a clan on the march. The hoof-trampled and wheel-rutted expanse was a good half mile wide, nowhere straight and probably a month old. New grass sprouted up all over it, but the girl could easily recognize it for what it was. There was no way to tell which clan it had been, of course, but it could be none other than a Kindred clan, all non-Kindred clans having been driven out of this part of the prairie or exterminated long years past. Moreover, it was headed in the direction Stehfahnah had selected as her best bet, northwest, so she followed it the rest of that day and camped on it that night.

  She had been sleeping. Suddenly the little ass began to bray loudly, his uncertain mindspeak projecting incomplete message-images which told only of a horrendous danger out in the man-high grasses a hundred yards distant.

  The hairs prickling on her nape, the girl shucked off her blankets and crouched, her back against the load of the larger travois and her steel-headed spear clutched in both her grubby hands. When there was no immediate attack, she lit her small fire of cattle chips and some splintered wa
gon spokes she had collected during her day’s ride.

  In the sudden flare, she saw a pair of eyes reflecting the firelight, just at the edge of the higher grasses beyond the new growth in the clan trail. And the eyes were large, set as high as her waist above the ground. Wolf? Not likely. Bear? They were fairly common on the high plains to the west but rare on the eastern reaches of the prairie. Then what . . . ?

  Hesitantly, she sent out a mental beam. “Cat brother? Cat sister?”

  The answer was immediate and beamed with the well-remembered power of a mature prairiecat. “You were sleeping soundly, twolegs sister, so I have been conversing with our horse sister. She tells me that you are of the Kindred and are riding to seek out and rejoin your clan. She also tells me that you have been most cruel to her and that you are uncaringly overworking her.” There was an undercurrent of dry amusement in the cat’s mindspeak as he related the mare’s complaints of Stehfahnah’s misuse of her.

  “That miserable mare is lazy, treacherous and rough-gaited, and nothing would please me more than to get a decent mount between my legs again. But why does not my cat brother or sister come into my camp?”

  “Cat brother, it is, Kindred sister; I am called Steelclaws and I was cat chief of the cat sept of Clan Danyulz last spring; now I am a subchief of the tribe’s Cat Clan. I will come in if that strange, woolly, horselike beast with the ears of a desert rabbit will stop making those terrible noises.”

  * * *

  The campaign that Duke Alex had tried to wage against the nomads had been even more of a disaster than had been his ill-starred incursion into the lands of Duke Tcharlz.