Horseclans Odyssey

by Robert Adams

  “So, why, Hal? What have I now done to you that you would forsake me?”

  The young man’s own inner turmoil was patent; tears coursed down his cheeks and his voice shook with emotion. “Your grace has ever been good to me, to all my house, and is loved for his goodness. But, your grace, I now must follow the dictates of my conscience, which tells me and all these other soldiers and officers that your grace — who is, after all, but a mortal man like us — has been ill-advised and misled by those men closest to him and that he is, therefore, in the wrong to so persecute one of his best, bravest and most loyal officers in an attempt to force him to turn over two of our young comrades to an alien and unnatural creature who has already offered one of them shameful abuse.

  “It will hurt me more than anyone can know to draw my sword against your grace, but I — on my honor — can do no other unless your grace relent in his purpose.”

  The duke whirled on Martuhn. “What have you done, damn you? Bewitched them all?”

  “Your grace,” answered Martuhn in a quiet, controlled voice, “I simply told them all your side, my side and my decision. Then I allowed the boys to tell of what had befallen them and Lieutenant Nahseer to speak of what he knew from his years of slavery about this Urbahnos’ true nature. What the men and officers then decided was of their own choice.”

  Turning back to the assembled troops, the duke roared, “You’ll live to regret this defiance of the law, of the duchy and of me, every man jack of you!” Then he jumped down from the platform, found his stirrup and hurled himself into the saddle of his dancing stallion. Jerking the reins from the horse holder, he almost rode over the man as he spur-raked the big horse into a fast canter toward the gate.

  * * *

  A few miles to the southwest of Pahdookahport lay the ruins of a long-deserted hall, one of the victims of Duke Tcharlz’s land reforms, two decades and more agone. Although the complex appeared to have been slighted, it actually had not. Rather, two generations of the new breed of yeoman farmers and stockbreeders had used it as a quarry — carrying away brick and cut stone, roofing tiles and even massive timbers, when and as they felt the need.

  The larger, less easily manageable stones of its outer walls had been carted away by the duke’s men and were now incorporated into the fabric of Pirates’ Folly, while nearby smiths and countless vagabonds had torn or prised away all reusable metal of any description.

  But though the half-picked skeleton of the once gracious home lay with most of its interior exposed to the effects of wind and weather, now only providing permanent lodging to birds and bats and the small, scuttling creatures of the fields, the deep, roomy, extensive cellars were almost intact. And of a late, stormy night, they were used by Sir Huhmfree Gawlin and certain of his retainers.

  Within the large, earthen-floored subcellar room once used as a winecellar, a small slice of hell had been constructed and was in use. Brightly lit in its center by torches and lamps, and thick with their smoke and the commingled stenches of sweat, spilled blood, charred flesh, dung and heated metal, there were chairs to make some of the observers comfortable and devilish devices to inflict varying degrees of discomfort upon the flesh and bones of the one female in the room.

  Despite the oppressive heat, all five of the men seated in the chairs were voluminously cloaked, with hoods and masks that made identification impossible.

  The woman, on the other hand, was naked. Her gross, corpulent body hung by its wrists from a rope threaded through a big iron pulley spiked to a ceiling beam. All parts of her fat body showed the marks of whip or sharp knife or heated iron or pincers.

  Her name was Yohahna and she had for many years operated and claimed to own a Pahdookahport “business,” the Three Doors. Her swollen and discolored feet and nailless, charred toes hung a few inches above the floor, and blood from various parts of her battered, horribly disfigured body had dripped down to form a clotting pool on the hard-packed earth.

  Her hands had been tied behind her back before she had been hoisted up; her immense weight had long since dislocated her shoulders and she now hung, panting hoarsely in agony, her one remaining eye bulging and bloodshot.

  “Would it not be better to lower the wretch while she ticks off her silent partners for us?” inquired one of the cloaked men, aged by the sound of his voice.

  The cloaked man on the far right shrugged. “She’s as comfortable where she is as she could be. She can no longer stand or sit, you see. I suppose that we could put her on the rack again . . .”

  The woman’s hoarse panting was suddenly replaced by a low, bubbling whine, and the blood trickling from her burned and mutilated pudenda was briefly diluted with urine. “Aw, don’ hurt me no mo’,” she whimpered huskily. “Pleez don’ hurt me no mo’, mistuh. I’ll tell yawl enythin“, everthin’. Yawl wawn’ gol’? I c’n show yawl where two hunnerd pounds is bur’ed. Jest, pleez, pleez Gawd, don’ hurt me no mo’!”

  One of the other cloaked figures, not sounding anywhere near as aged as the first, remarked, “The fat bitch sounds considerably different from when last I spoke with her about that matter some years back of kidnapped girls. This exercise In chastisement has obviously purged her of her unseemly arrogance. She now has recalled how to properly address her betters.”

  The aged man said rebukingly, “You say too much. She is of scant use to us dead, so it is imperative that she be given no clue to our identities . . . yet.” Then, to another of the hooded ones, “Are you ready, then? Take down every word from now on spoken in this room. Identify us and yourself as numbers one through five, counting from left to right. Her, you’ll list by the letter Y, but note the full names and ranks or offices of anyone she mentions; there must be no mistakes or omissions to legally trip us up.”

  “All right, Yohahna,” said the man at the far right, “you will now repeat for these gentlemen what you told me earlier. First, who are the actual owners of the Three Doors?”

  There followed a chorus of gasps and exclamations of incredulity as the tortured woman whisperingly stuttered the list of more than a dozen names — nobles, gentry and commoner-merchants of the duchy.

  The man on the right spoke again. “And how, Yohahna, do you usually recruit your whores?”

  “I buys me purty slaves, if I can,” she gasped. “But I got me this gang of fellas, goes outa the town and tries to get farm and village gals to run away with ’em. If the gals won’ the mens ushly knocks ’em inna haid and brings ’em back to me. Then I gentles ’em down till they is broke proper.”

  “These girls you have kidnapped, Yohahna — are they all the daughters of citizens of this duchy?”

  “Yessuh, far’s I knows they is. None the slaves is,” she replied. “I buys them, leegul and proper, I does.”

  “And these partners you have named, do they all know just how you obtain your girls? Of your highly illegal methods?”

  “Sure they does,” she affirmed. “Lak I done tol’ you, suh, oncet the baron hisse’f tol’ me which gal he wawnted took up and brought to mah place. It’uz the daughter of some piss-poor gentleman, and the baron, he’d offered her a dang good living to be his mistress and the crazy lil wench’d turned him down flat, and he had the itch, bad, had to get in ’er, he did.”

  He of the aged voice growled, “And did you kidnap this gentle-born girl, then, you piece of filth?”

  “I got ’er inna place, a’right,” the dangling woman replied. “Bat it won’ no gentling ’er, and me and my mens tried near everything we knows, short of flat-out raping her — and we couldn’ do thet ’cause the baron was set on being the firstest man in ’er.

  “Fin’ly, the itch got to ’im so awful bad, he come down and took ’er by main force. But after he’d done had her, she come to git holt of his dagger and come at him and afore he could git it away from ’er, he’d done kilt ’er.”

  The man with the aged voice snarled behind his mask like some beast of prey and started up from his chair, his heavy dirk half out of its sheat
h. But hands on either side gently restrained him, murmuring to him until he had regained his composure and sheathed his weapon.

  The man on the right then asked, “And the Ehleen merchant factor, Urbahnos of Karaleenos, Yohahna — is he, too, one of your partners?”

  “He useta be, suh, but he just up and sol’ out his shares to me’n the baron, ’cause he ’uz going back eas’, he said, as soon’s he’d done got him back them two lil slaves what had got ’way from him.”

  “You mean his sons? The two nomad boys he’d adopted?” her main questioner prodded.

  “Aw, naw, suh. That there adopshun was jus’ a way him and the baron come up with to keep from him having to pay part of what-all they costed him to whoever caught ’em. The lil’es’ one he was gonna give to some Ehleen mucketymuck in the place he come from what likes te bugger lil boys as much as Urbahnos does; then this other Ehleen was s’posed to make it right enough that Urbahnos could go back home.

  “He offered to sell me his wife afore he left, but I figgered she’s a mite too old, and b’sides, her paw was to find out she’d done been sol’ to me, that’d be a purty mess. So I tolt ’im to wait till he got upriver, somewheres pas’ Ehvinzburkport, and then sell her and his kids.”

  They went on, the hooded gentlemen, until the scribe had run out of materials. Twice the woman fainted and had to be revived by the application of hot irons to her vulnerable flesh.

  At length, the man of the aged voice said, “All right, we have what we need, more by far than was really needed to achieve our aims. Confine the hag closely, but see to it that she is well fed and nursed back to health and strength. For at the conclusion of this, I want to see her last a long time, a very long and painful time, impaled on a thick stake. Then and only then will justice be truly served.”

  Chapter XIV

  Count Martuhn had been performing one of his periodic inspections of the magazines wherein were kept the garrison’s food and supply stores when Wolf’s messenger found him. As the citadel had been victualed and supplied for the needs of two thousand men — and Martuhn’s command had never numbered more than fifteen hundred, including noncombatants — for a year-long siege, he figured that it would be months still before there was any dearth to consider. But he still checked the magazines every ten days on general principles: it kept the quartermaster sergeant and his staff on their toes.

  The pikeman Wolf had sent found the count still chewing a chunk of the pickled pork from a cask he had had sprung at random.

  “My lord, Sir Wolf bids me report that a barge is starting across the river on the south cable. It soon will be within range of the engines, and he asks if he should sink it.”

  “Only the single barge, soldier?” Martuhn asked around the pork.

  “Yes, my lord, only one. And it one of the smaller ones.”

  “Wait, I’ll return with you, soldier.” Martuhn turned to the quartermaster sergeant, “Aye, Les, that’s good old-fashioned campaign pork. Have your lads reseal it and bear it up to my tower. I often want something solid to chew on in the night.”

  By the time Martuhn stood beside Wolf, the small barge was well out into the river and, for all the efforts of the unseen men pulling the heavy oars in steady, even strokes, was making very slow progress and straining against the thick cable high above. It was now within easy range of the wail engines, and Wolfs shift of engineers were all standing ready at the stone hurlers and spear throwers, awaiting but the word of command to release the triggers of their deadly devices.

  Martuhn used one hand to shade his eyes against the bright noon sun. He spied the reflections of sunlight on a bit of polished steel, but could discern little at that distance through the glare.

  “What do you make of it, Martuhn?” Wolf mindspoke.

  The count shrugged and beamed. “No reinforcements for Duke Tcharlz, certainly. Even if the men on the benches below were soldiers too — which I tend to doubt, for the tempo is too strong and regular to be aught but trained slaves — still they could not get more than a bare hundred men on that cockleshell. Could be a messenger from old Alex, so leave it be, let them land: that man brings trouble if not doom to everything and everyone he touches. His grace has surely seen the barge, too, or his men have, so don’t fire on any party he sends down to the dock.”

  As the greeting party and the westerners rode past the citadel, it could be seen that one of them was Duke Alex himself, accompanied by a bare handful of his gentry and noblemen.

  “Now just what,” mused Martuhn to himself, “is that feckless bastard up to now?”

  His answer was not long in coming . . . in the person of Duke Tcharlz, who approached the outer works the next morning, just after it had become light enough to recognize men’s faces at a distance.

  The duke rode almost to the verge of the moat, opposite the main gate, in the middle of the south wall. He looked up at the works just above that gate for a moment, then roared, “Martuhn! Are you up there, lad? Let me in, we must talk.”

  Martuhn was: so too were Wolf and Nahseer.

  Wolf muttered, “What the hell is that sly old fox up to now, milord count?”

  “I have no idea, Sir Wolf,” Martuhn replied. “But he’s alone and unarmored and . . .” He peered harder. “I don’t think he even has his sword on. Scant harm he could do.”

  To the soldiers inside the tower that housed the machinery controlling gate, portcullis and drawbridge, he snapped, “Lower away, soldiers, and raise the grille, but don’t raise the bar until Sir Wolf says to.

  “Wolf, wait until he’s at least halfway across the bridge, then, if no assault party has come into view, open the right valve only, and close it the minute he’s through it. Hear?”

  Martuhn and Tcharlz met in the grim, spartan little ground-floor office, and the older man came directly to the point. “Martuhn, son, I need your help.”

  “Your grace needs my help?” Martuhn sounded his incredulity, but his voice quickly acquired an undertone of cynicism. “The siege is become too expensive to maintain, your grace? I fear I’ve very little to lend, but . . .”

  The old duke seated himself without invitation. “Martuhn, my boy, I don’t blame you a bit, but you of all people know just how murderously violent I become when I’m thwarted. It’s not a thing I enjoy admitting, for it’s a serious weakness in my character, but, hell, man, I can’t help or control myself.

  “Have you got a few quarts of beer left? I’ve been up all night with Alex and my staff — talking, talking, talking, all of us, when we weren’t scheming and planning and weighing possibilities — and I’m dry as a salt fish.”

  While a pikeman went to fetch beer, the tall captain planted the sole of a booted foot on his desktop and, leaning over, snapped, “All right, your grace, what do you want from me? It is, you will admit, most singular for the commander of the investing force to come to ask the help of the very man he’s besieging. But I suppose you have your reasons and I also suppose they mean something . . . at least, to you.”

  The duke shook his head. “Not just to me, my boy, but to you and to Alex and to every man, woman and child in both duchies, these two threatened duchies.

  “But, you were speaking of investments and sieges; well, there is no longer a siege. My men are packing their gear and breaking camp at this very minute. There never should’ve been a siege to begin with, Martuhn, I can see that now, though I couldn’t then, of course.

  “You are my chosen son, the best of the best, my heir presumptive, the strong right arm of an old and very tired man, and I should’ve remembered that before I tried to bend you to my will against your own. What matters it what some alien merchant wants or does not want, really, eh? I am the real law, not that doddering, maundering old fool Lapkin.

  “And I say that the boys are yours, Martuhn, now and forever. I beg you, my son, please forget or at least forgive my harsh words and harsher actions against you and them. I’ll not reinstate you in your rank and lands and title, for to my mind, you neve
r were disenfranchised, all right?”

  And what, your grace, am I expected to do in return for all the largess of My Lord Sir Tcharlz, Duke of the East Bank?” asked Martuhn in tones of mock humility.

  “Why, simply resume your rank of senior captain of all my infantry, Martuhn, my dear boy. Leave only enough of them here to maintain civil order and ferry the bulk of them over to Traderstown, then assume command of the town and all the troops therein.”

  Martuhn strove not to show his surprise and total bafflement at the request. “And what is Duke Alex going to think when one of your officers takes over his capital? Or has your grace managed to cozen him out of his duchy?”

  The duke chuckled. “Not quite that much, Martuhn . . . not yet, anyway, though that too may well come in time. No, Alex is in complete accord that you — a man, I might add, whom he deeply respects, despite and likely because of the drubbing you gave him last fall — take command of the city and hold it against the Horseclans nomads while he and I with our cavalry try to get those Satan-spawn into a real battle on open ground, whereon our heavy horse can fight to best advantage.

  “As soon as heavy barges can be brought across and loaded, Count Bart is taking over all my lancers and dragoons. I’ll be following with the heavy horse as soon as I’ve handled some of the more pressing affairs at Pirates’ Folly. I’ll be at my castle ten days, at most; that should give you time to marshal the footmen hereabouts, assign temporary duties within this duchy to ones you consider least effective for combat, and ready the rest to embark immediately my horse is landed over yonder.

  “But, Martuhn, I cannot allow you to take those boys over the river. Now, hold, hold! I have a very good reason for it, and please believe me, my son, there are no hidden reasons, only the one, open one.

  “Martuhn, those boys are nomads, Horseclan nomads, and those people hang together more firmly than ticks on a hound. You know the boys and love them and respect them and trust them. I do not trust them and I’ll not have them placed in a position from which they might do our arms considerable damage, were they to find themselves torn between old loyalties and new.