Horseclans Odyssey

by Robert Adams

  “Sir Benedikt Railz, what in the world brings you from your lovely hall? Oh, of course, the duke’s muster. And that would, of course, account for your presence, too, Sir Leeoh. But, Sir Clai, have you then recovered enough of that smashed kneecap to once more ride to war?”

  Before any of them could even start to frame answers, the duke said, “Lapkin, we’re about to issue up some arrest warrants for certain malefactors. Sit you down there at the end of the table. I’d have you read a copy of the testimony before the scribes arrive, that all may be in proper order.”

  “Of course, your grace,” said the baron, adding, in a condescending tone addressed to the knights, “you see, wise as is our lord, he is ever ready to seek out expert and loyal counsel.”

  But he had read no more than two pages when all of the blood drained from his face, the hands that began to rip and tear at the statement were seen to tremble and the voice that he finally found had developed a quaver. “Your . . . your grace must not, cannot believe a . . . a single word of . . . of this! The . . . the woman has obviously gone mad and . . . and besides, look at what she is. Harlots and madams, they . . . they’re all liars, everyone knows that! Does my dear lord suppose that I . . . that for one moment I . . . no, my lord, mayhap these others named are truly guilty of . . . but not me, my lord, not me?

  “No, Lapkin,” said Tcharlz, a hint of sadness in his voice, “I am inclined to think you guilty of all those charges, of them, and probably of much, much more which the woman, Yohahna, was unaware of or did not mention.”

  The baron slid out of his chair onto his knees and crawled abjectly to the duke’s side. Raising his tremulous hands beseechingly, he stuttered, “N . . . no, my l . . . lord, no!”

  Tcharlz looked sternly down at the groveling man. “Yes, Lapkin, yes! It stand to reason, man. There is no way that bitch and her minions could have engaged in all but open smuggling, kidnapping and extortion and all the sorry rest without protection of them and their activities by a very powerful man. And who more powerful than a man who was, at once, my deputy and the high judge?”

  “My . . . my lord has already convicted me!” wailed the baron. “Perjured test . . . testimony . . . a trial . . . right to face my . . .”

  The duke’s voice was become warm honey flowing over steel. “Oh, yes, Lapkin, you’ll get a trial, an open trial, just as soon as I get back from Traderstownport. Meanwhile, because I suspect that you and your criminal cohorts just might take it upon yourselves to take a voyage for reasons of health, you will be availing yourself of the hospitality of Pirates’ Folly. My good Master Kahks is already preparing a private room for your occupancy — a cool, dark, quiet one, wherein you may have the peace to reflect upon your treachery to me and my folk.”

  Tcharlz raised his voice a few notches. “Guard!”

  Chapter XV

  “Wolf, you will be in overall command of the citadel,” Martuhn stated at a last conference in his towertop home on the eve of his departure for Traderstown. “I’m leaving you a score of pikemen along with Corporal Hailee, a couple of cooks, plus Quartermaster Sergeant Lestuh and his men. His mission is to ferry over supplies in the proper order, as we come in need of them, as well as to receive and stow and record any late-arriving consignments for the garrison of Traderstown.

  “Neither he nor you will be troubled with remounts or supplies for the various contingents of horse. All those are to be handled by and through the big cavalry camp just north of the upper city; Chief Quartermaster Sergeant Renuhlz bears that onerous responsibility. I believe you two are acquainted, of old.”

  “Aye,” Wolf mindspoke to save rime, “it’s many a quart I’ve downed with him. He be a good man, for all he’s a damned lazy horse soldier.”

  Martuhn continued, “The citadel will also be host to a dozen ducal messengers and a selection of mounts for them, as well as hostlers to care for them and a farrier and his boy to keep them properly shod; principally because he can both read and write, and also because I trust him in all ways, Sir Djaimz will be in charge of the messenger service.”

  The senior captain turned next to the hulking Zahrtohgahn. “Nahseer, your responsibility — and your only one until my return — will be the boys, Bahb and Djoh. For all that this Urbahnos has been declared ‘outlaw’ by his grace and is being hunted the length and breadth of the duchy, I still fear for their safety from him. Don’t ever stray far from them. And both you and Wolf be damned careful of who is let into the citadel and of how many they number.”

  To Bahb and Djoh, he beamed, “Obey Nahseer and Wolf, lads, they’ll have your best interests in mind.”

  Then, back to Nahseer, “I think it would be best if the three of you lodge up here in my chambers, for there are certain built-in safeguards, as well as a long climb, for any interlopers who might come seeking you. I’ll demonstrate them all to you before I’m done. There’re foods and various potables up here, and this chamber and Wolf’s offer the only routes of access to the roof and its cistern.”

  * * *

  A week earlier, Baron Hahrvee Sheeld had ridden into Pahdookahport, his belt pouch bulging with ducal warrants, and ordered the commander of the city guard to bar all gates immediately, no man or woman to enter or exit until he gave leave that they do so. Next, he had visited the office of the harbormaster and served notice that until further orders were forthcoming, no ship, barge or boat of any size or description was to leave wharf or dock or mooring. All with whom he spoke knew his status, and none offered arguments.

  When his two troops of household guards were inside the city and the last of the lumbering, ox-drawn prison wagons had rumbled through the north gate, he set about his mission.

  The tough, taciturn horseguards went through Pahdookahport in a manner akin to the proverbial dose of salts. Most of those men arrested were long-resident aliens, but not all.

  The high bishop of the Most Ancient and Most Holy Church of Remembered Glory (who was also the brother-in-law of Baron Lapkin) was dragged from his palatial residence screaming at the top of his lungs, “Never would I attend or frequent such a sinkhole of inequity, I assure you. The stock that I hold was simply a good investment for church monies!” His protestations gained him nothing, however; the guards tossed him most ungently into one of the wheeled cages . . . after an iron “scolds’ bridle” had been locked securely around his head and under his jaws to prevent him conversing with his fellow prisoners.

  Right soon was he joined in the wagon by four of the other “investors.” Ten, in all, of the eleven warrants were executed that day; five of the malefactors were lodged in each of two of the wagons, while the third was the repository of every ounce of gold and silver, every piece of coinage or of jewelry that the troopers could uncover in meticulous searches of the homes and/or businesses of the prisoners. These seizures, too, were performed by authority of ducal warrants, Tcharlz holding that such specie or gems or ingots would effect partial payments of the years of taxes of which he had been cheated, since no one of the men had ever reported this large hidden income.

  Baron Hahrvee saw to it that all buildings in which the prisoners had holdings were closed, locked and sealed, the families and employees of those men he had seized being driven, willy-nilly, into the streets. Port guards were posted on the ships owned by the prisoners, and the grim baron ordered the steering gear chained into immobility, the crews cast out, the holds sealed.

  Lastly, although he bore no warrants to that effect, the baron seized every sound horse and mule occupying the mews of the soon-to-be defendants, as he knew that the duke would soon have need of every mount and pack animal upon which he could lay hands.

  He and his men did not quit the now roiling city until well after dark, sweeping it from top to bottom and from end to end in an unfruitful search for the subject of the eleventh warrant; but they could find no trace of the person of Urbahnos of Karaleenos, hunt as they might.

  * * *

  Captain Martuhn, Count of Twocityport, felt an uncomfor
table sense of gathering doom from the moment he set eyes upon the city of Traderstown at close range. The ancient walls had apparently never been higher than twelve or fifteen feet, with towers hopelessly small and placed too far apart to give each other any meaningful support in an assault. Moreover, it appeared to have been at least a century since those walls had been afforded any repairs to speak of, and in places, mostly along the now critical western face, half the previously existing height had tumbled inward or outward, while elsewhere the stones were so loose as to rock underfoot

  In a conference with the two dukes shortly after the last contingents of eastern troops had been set ashore from the barges, he said as much, in his usual, blunt speech.

  “Your graces, we can only hope that the cavalry wins a crushing victory against the nomads, for the city of Traderstown will prove indefensible against determined or prolonged assault.”

  He went on to detail the many faults — the walls, the towers, the dearth of effective emplacements for modern engines and of convenient rallying points for the defenders.

  Then he asked, “My Lord Alex, whatever possessed you to fill in that fine, broad moat? The city might have had a fair chance, properly manned of course, did the moat remain, along with a few outer defenses.”

  Alex sighed and shrugged. “I allowed myself to be swayed by the thrice-damned merchants and factors, who wanted land under the walls whereon the returning caravans could camp; they hoped that thus the caravaners would tend to stay longer and spend more money in the city and possibly have to sell more of their goods in Traderstown, rather than barging them across to the east bank. It was greed, pure and simple, Captain Martuhn, theirs . . . and mine, too.”

  “Then, too, Martuhn,” put in Duke Tcharlz, “you must understand that Traderstown has not been attacked on the landward side for — what, Alex, a century or more? — well, at least for a considerable period of time.”

  “As for those nomads,” the other duke added, “they never have gathered in such stupendous numbers before; nor has anyone ever heard of any nomad or group of nomads penetrating this far east other than in peaceful ways.”

  “Then why do you think they’re here now, My Lord Alex?” inquired Martuhn.

  “Well, my good captain,” Duke Alex answered, “the tales of wounded and captured nomads lead me to believe that this invasion in such force is the doing of a new element, a sort of ‘chief of chiefs.’ He is said to be a big, tall, black-haired man from the south — which could make him a renegade Ehleen from their Southern Kingdom, but I don’t think so. His name is not Ehleen, for one thing; he is called Maylo Morré and is most probably one of those troublemaking, warmongering Mehkskuhns.”

  “And, be this supposition of Alex’s true,” added Duke Tcharlz, “we have us the answer to where these Horseclanners learn how to maneuver and fight so cannily. The accursed Emperador would not have sent just anyone north to disrupt our trade; no, this Morré is most likely a trained and veteran noble officer, and we’re going to have to start opposing his savage horde differently, are we to win. Poor Alex here and his horsemen did not dream that they were come face-to-face with a professional, to begin, and they sustained very heavy losses as a result.

  “But now we both know. Therefore, we must utilize the textbook tactics, with an overriding strategy of getting the howling little bastards into a position in which our heavy horse can get a good crack at them — a goodly stretch of flat, level ground, firm and free of brush or trees. Then well give them a fatal taste of civilized steel, I trow.”

  During the ensuing weeks, while the two dukes and their horsemen maneuvered over and through the farmlands and woodlands of the Duchy of Traderstown, parrying the thrust of nomad raids, even as they sought a means of persuading the foe to commit the bulk of his force at one time and place, Martuhn drove his men fiendishly and himself much harder in a vain attempt to ready the city to withstand the prairie horde, just in case.

  For all his exalted title, he quickly found that his real authority held only over his own infantry and that of Duke Alex. The city merchants and shippers and factors refused repeatedly to tender him and his hard-working forces aid of any nature; further, they right often impeded the nonstop work by complaining formally of the incessant noise or of the occasional drunken soldier, by refusing to allow the use of needed docking facilities to galleys and sailers when the slaves manning the row-barges had been formed into chain gangs by Martuhn to work on the walls, and they kept their warehouses solidly locked, forcing all supplies for their defenders to either be shipped over from the east bank or to be purchased — sometimes sight unseen — for scandalous prices.

  Martuhn finally decided that he thoroughly despised the entire pack of venal skinflints after his first meeting with Hatee Gairee, a merchant-banker whose family owned several of the large warehouses near the docks.

  There were no men to spare to care for the wounded men who kept trickling in from the skirmishing cavalry, and with the available medicines obtainable in Traderstown only at outrageously inflated prices, Martuhn had continued to send any injured or wounded across to the east bank, where the palace complex and several of the larger Upper Town buildings had been converted into hospitals.

  The river sailers and Duke Tcharlz’s and Duke Alex’s war galleys — which brought supplies on the western leg and took back the pitiful debris of conflict — were nowhere as capacious as the cable barges had been, and so a wounded man might lie moaning on a wharf, ill tended, robbed by city scum or nibbled at by rats, until a bottom was available to bear him to the eastern shore.

  One short visit to one of those docks, become in his mind a slice of veriest hell, was enough to convince Martuhn that he must find a place near the docks wherein all wounded could await the ships and galleys in safety if not comfort with at least enough attendants to drive off the rats and the human scavengers. He thought that one of the warehouses near the wharves would be ideal, but when he had the men whose goods therein resided approached, it was to discover that they only leased the buildings from various members of the Gairee family, commoners but extremely wealthy.

  The family was, he found out, headed by a fiftyish woman, who made all decisions affecting income or outlay of any size. And she arrived at his headquarters in the style of a high noblewoman — a large, ornate and luxuriously furnished coach, uniformed coachmen, postilions and outriders astride finely bred, sleek, well-groomed horses, and two little slave girls to attend her.

  She was a tall, very slender woman, with a wealth of gray hair, streaked here and there with strands of the dark-brown color it once had been. Her every finger bore at least one ring of gold; from her small ears depended weights of gold and gems that Martuhn was certain must be uncomfortable. The additions of the golden neck chain and pendant, gold bracelets and armlets and brooches, as well as a headpiece of golden wire set with a profusion of tiny pearls and other gems, caused the captain to reflect that the woman was no doubt wise to have armed her male attendants and riders.

  Her clothing was in keeping with her ostentatious display of gold and gems, being all silks and satins and tooled, dyed leathers and — regardless of the enervating combination of thick humidity and blistering heat — fur-trimmed velvets. And she was soaked with some heavy, hellishly expensive scent.

  But despite all the rich jewelry and clothing, at close range her perfumery failed to cover the stench of a human body long unwashed. The few teeth remaining behind the carmine-painted lips were stinking and rotted brown, and under the dazzling brilliance of the cut stones, her clawlike hands were dirt-streaked and grubby.

  Her manner, when Martuhn had outlined his needs, was blunt to the point of discourtesy. “Cap’n, this here ain’t my affair nor my fam’ly’s. Wouldn’t be no fighting atall, if our pigheaded duke had done what the commoners’ council had tol’ him to do first off. He should oughta pay off them nomads, alla them savages don’ want nothin but loot and hwiskee and a few good-lookin slave girls to screw.”

  Ma
rtuhn had not heard earlier of this conference. “You mean that you and the rest of the citizens were willing to pay a ransom to the nomads to prevent hostilities?”

  The old woman drew a goodly breath into her bony, near-breastless chest and exploded, “Hell no, cap’n! That young fool of a duke is richer than anybody elst in this whole fucking duchy. Let him pay the frigging ransom, him and his hoity-toity nobles.

  “We all tolt him we’d give him good prices awn the stuff the nomads was gonna want, but aw, naw, he hadda start a-buying up hosses and mules and hired fighters and all.”

  Hatee suddenly thrust the four fingers of her right hand between two buttons securing the front of her silken dress and scratched vigorously, the huge ruby of her thumb ring flashing the light from its surfaces. The stone itself was obviously hundreds of years old and had probably been scavenged from a dead city of the Ancients, for no one today was capable of cutting and finishing stones in that fashion.

  After examining the fresh layers of dirt now under her fingernails, she went on, “Cap’n, I know you means well and all, but ain’ nobody here in Traderstown gonna empty no warehouses and get the flo’s all dirtied up with blood and piss and shit and puke and I don’ know whatall, like them docks is right now. You gotchew any idear what it cos’ to buy and feed and put clo’s awn good, strowng slaves, these days? And I reckon it’d turn out to be our slaves had to shift all the stock and then clean up, after Duke Alex either comes to his senses or gits hisself kilt out yonder.

  “But now tell you what I will do for you, cap’n. I’ll lease you some tarps and poles I got me, cheap. And, ’sides’ that, I’ll let you use some of my older slaves inta the bargain — they ain’t none of ’em got what it takes to work awn no wawls, no mo’, but they could all shuffle ’round enough to fetch water and chase ’way rats and all.”