Horseclans Odyssey

by Robert Adams

  “And what, pray tell,” replied Martuhn dryly, carefully holding himself back from the violence he longed to wreak upon the stinking flesh of this vile, vulgar, parsimonious and self-centered bitch, “would be the cost of your generosity?”

  She steepled her stained fingers and eyed him over their apex, “Well, them tarps is almos’ new and soma the poles is new, but sincet you’ll be a-feeding the slaves while they’s a-working for you, let’s us just say a round one ounce of gol’ the day, eh? Now ain’ that a good price, cap’n?”

  Martuhn heaved himself out of his chair, his face gone white as fresh curds; he kept his hands tightly clenched and a vein was throbbing in his temple. “Mistress Gairee, I have been a soldier for the most of my life, living in camps and garrisons. But not even among the whores who follow the armies have I ever met a woman as filthy, foul-mouthed, deceitful, callous of suffering and coldly mercenary as are you.”

  “Well, I just love you to pieces, too, you foreigner cock-sucker!” snapped Hatee, her brown eyes blazing. “You just as dumb as our asshole duke and them shitheaded gents of his’n, think you kin git anythin’ you wawntst for free. Well, well learn you fuckheads diffrunt yet!”

  “Enough, woman!” Martuhn slammed the callused palm of his hand down on the desktop so hard that several items were bounced off onto the floor. His other hand came down less violently, and he leaned across the desk to meet her hot glare with a murderous look that set her innards to quaking.

  “Had His Grace Duke Alex empowered me to arrest citizens of my own warrant and for my own reasons, you and your overpretentious finery would presently be immured in the deepest, darkest, dankest cell I could find for you, but my powers here are limited, alas, so I must release you. However, you have well earned and you fully deserve punishment, and I think I know of one that will hurt such a stinking bitch as are you more than fetters and whips and hot irons.

  “I am fully empowered to commandeer to the duchy all riding or draft horses and mules, as well as all wheeled conveyances which might be of use to the army. Therefore, as of this moment, your coach-and-six and the mounts of your outriders are become the property of His Grace Duke Alex of Traderstown. Upon the victory of our arms or a cessation of hostilities, your property will be returned to you, if then living or intact. Dead or destroyed beasts or items will be replaced either in kind or in Specie.”

  Leaping to her feet, the skinny old woman clenched both bony fists, raised her arms above her head and shrieked at the top of her lungs. But neither her screams nor her protests nor the incredibly obscene names she called him nor the tears to which she finally resorted altered Martuhn’s decision.

  * * *

  And, in the end, all of it was for nothing. The superhuman labors on the crumbling walls, the constant feuding with the merchants and the bankers, the shipowners, the artisans, the factors and the landlords; all were for nought in the final analysis.

  Their numbers reduced in the steady attrition of indecisive skirmishes with the innumerable bands’ of raiders, in ones and twos to hidden bowmen and in larger numbers to wily ambushers, the two dukes at long last got the “advantage” toward which they had been manuevering.

  Martuhn saw it all, from start to sanguinary finish, under the ancient, inadequate walls of Traderstown itself. At the very end, when both ducal banners had gone down and the few pitiful survivors of the two duchies’ cavalry were fighting desperately, their backs to the city walls, against the waves of screaming, blood-mad nomads on their ugly little horses, Martuhn used his few engines and his massed archers and crossbowmen to drive back the foe long enough to allow a regiment of pikemen to march out, form to repel cavalry and slowly withdraw, still in formation, when the last of the battered and bleeding cavalrymen were through the gates.

  Several of the surviving horsemen had seen Duke Alex and his bodyguards go down under a wave of nomads, while others told almost identical tales of how Duke Tcharlz, beset on all sides, had finally rallied a couple of hundred still-mounted men and personally led a charge deep into a huge knot of the massed Horseclanners . . . never to be seen again. All of which tended to leave the reins of power in both duchies clearly within the grasp of only one man, Captain Count Martuhn.

  As he had been certain they would, the nomads attacked a stretch of low, incomplete wall shortly after dawn on the day after the defeat of the cavalry; Martuhn’s spirited defense threw them back, all four waves of them. But he also took casualties, more than he would have liked, and mostly the direct result of the inadequate defensive works. And that night he made his decision.

  When the last of the wounded and ill men were across the river, when all supplies and extra weapons had been landed on the east bank and when the last of the families and personal effects of the original garrison of Traderstown had been evacuated, Martuhn commenced the taking off of his troops, beginning with the now nearly-useless remnants of cavalry and their few remaining mounts. After them he sent his service troops, then the pikemen and dartmen, saving his archers and crossbowmen until last.

  Early on, in the military exodus, his orders had seen all Sailing ships and galleys not already in his hands seized at glittering swordpoint, and those few unusable — for whatever reason — had been scuttled or set afire and adrift to deny their use to the nomads who would certainly come swarming over the soon-to-be-undefended walls.

  It was while he was supervising the loading of the last units of archers onto the three huge cable barges, his own fast war galley awaiting him on the other side of the long cable-barge dock, that he became aware of the clop-clopping of hooves and the rumbling of heavy transport proceeding along the streets of the city and drawing ever nearer the dockside.

  Presently, the head of a long procession of assorted wains, wagons and other wheeled vehicles wound into view. Perched on the bow of the leading wain — a huge one, drawn heavily by two span of hefty oxen and laden high with chests, trunks, cases and bales — was Hatee Gairee; her two little slave girls trotted alongside. On or about the vehicles behind, Martuhn recognized numerous other merchants, bankers and an assortment of the wealthier commoners of Traderstown.

  When her repeated summonses effected nothing, the tall, flashily garbed old woman finally climbed down from her seat and strode out onto the dock, ill-concealed rage in her every movement.

  Without pleasantries or preamble, she snarled at Martuhn, “Whut’s this here ’bout you a-seizing fo’ of my ships, then setting t’ others afire and letting ’em drift down river? Just how d’ you think me an’ these here other folks is gonna git ’crost the damn river ’fore them fucking nomads is in t’ city?”

  Martuhn grinned like a wolf at a crippled hare, but his voice was soft and his tone mock surprised. “Why, Mistress Gairee, why would you and these others wish to flee the nomads? I thought you knew them and their simple wants so well? You surely will have no trouble dealing with them, will you? A few pretty slave girls? A few pounds of silver? Jewelry and some bales of cloth?”

  “You damned bastid, you!” hissed the old woman. “You knows damn well the sitchayshun’s done changed, what with the duke daid and the dang cavalry, too. And now you done sent alla the pikes and archers crost the river; it won’t be no-dealing with them damn Horseclanners now. They’ll just come in and take what they wants, all they wants, and likely kill halft the folks in t’ city.

  “And now you done took or burnt up alla our ships, you gotta take us ’crost in yore cable barges . . . and soon, too.”

  “I believe firmly in repaying my old debts, Mistress Gairee,” said Martuhn slowly. “Therefore, I shall give you and your kind all the willing aid that you have given me these last weeks. When the last of my troops are safely landed over yonder, if there are no nomads in sight from midstream, I shall allow three — and only three — barges to dock. They will remain on this side only as long as it is safe for them to do so, but no longer than half an hour, in any case. All not aboard at that time will stay behind or swim. Is that clear, Mistress Gairee
?”

  Leaving Hatee Gairee spluttering in wordless rage, the tall captain returned to his supervisory duties.

  But the barges did not return that day. For when Martuhn had his small galley rowed back to midstream a few hours later, it was clear that the nomads were swarming through the streets of the city, and he was completely unwilling to risk the loss of more of his men on the chance of rescuing such undeserving types as Hatee Gairee and her ilk.

  It was well after dark before the overworked Captain Count Martuhn of Twocityport was able to ride down into the Lower Town and walk his weary horse slowly over the bridge through the open main gate of the deserted citadel, followed by his staff and a few mercenary dragoons who had survived the carnage under the walls of Traderstown and whom he had summarily adopted as bodyguards.

  Les, the quartermaster sergeant — identifiable only by a pair of bronze arm rings, the flesh of his face picked down to bare bone by crows or ravens — lay dead in the main courtyard, with two of his assistants and a cook nearby. It was evident that all had gone down fighting, and the bodies of two strangers testified to the effectiveness of their efforts.

  Without the need for orders, the veteran dragoons dismounted and strung their hornbows, while Martuhn and the rest unslung targets and loosened swords in scabbards. But a hurried search of the headquarters complex and the nearer barrack rooms revealed them to be deserted and undisturbed, although another dead cook was found in the kitchens. It was also clear that he had taken his death-wound elsewhere and dragged himself into familiar surroundings to die.

  With a burden of deep, dark foreboding, Martuhn at last led his small contingent to the central tower . . . only to find its outer door closed and secured firmly from within. When repeated shouts’ elicited no response audible to him and the others, Martuhn sent his mind questing the height of the winding stairs to the topmost rooms. Beamings from Nahseer and Bahb Steevuhnz immediately answered.

  “Lord Urbahnos and a gang of waterfront scum from Pahdookahport came into the citadel hidden in a supply wagon, three days since, Martuhn. We fought them as long as we could out there, but when Les was slain and Wolf wounded, I brought him and the lads up here. They have been besieging us since.”

  “How is Wolf?” beamed Martuhn.

  “Dying,” said Nahseer, simply and bluntly. “But he swears that he will live until the lads are once more delivered into your hands.”

  At Martuhn’s terse directions, a heavy timber was fetched and soon brawny arms were regularly crashing it against the ironbound door to the tower. It took time, for the tower had been designed and built as a last, strong refuge against an attacker who had overrun the outer defenses. But first one hinge gave way, then another, then the bars began to crack and the triple panels to sunder. Then, suddenly, what was left of the reinforced portal crashed inward and a knife thrown from the darkness within dropped one of the troopers who had been swinging the ram.

  Martuhn had the dragoons drop the timber, draw back a few paces and loose a blind volley through the yawning doorway; two very satisfying screams of agony resulted. Then he, his staff and the dragoons charged through the portal, blades bare and shields up.

  The fight in the large ground floor chamber was short, brutal and very messy, but the common toughs were no real challenge to veteran armored mercenaries, most of the bravos being armed only with knives and cudgels or the occasional hanger. Soon all the living murderers had been driven up the stairs toward the topmost levels, followed closely by the coldly raging count and his merciless professionals.

  The next-highest level was’ lit with lamps and cressets. The invaders had apparently been using it as siege headquarters for the last few days, and it was here that they made their last, doomed stand.

  Martuhn took the ringing hack of a thick-bladed hanger on the face of his target, angling the attack to the left and downward, while he drove the point of his sword into the man’s bearded and unprotected face. Another blade clanged onto the visor of his helmet and flashed momentarily before his eyes, then his peripheral vision recorded the sweep of a dragoon saber and his ears the gurgling shriek coming hard on the heels of a meaty tchunk.

  And then it was done. Five of the bravos lay dead or dying about the room and a big, black-haired man in half-armor stood with his back pressed against a wall. The crest had been raggedly shorn from atop his open-faced helm of eastern pattern, and he was just in the act of dropping a broken shortsword.

  Martuhn dropped his target, tossed his bloody sword to a trooper, then unbuckled and removed his helm. “What’s your name, bastard? Urbahnos, perchance?”

  The dark man drew himself erect. “Lord Urbahnos of Karaleenos, barbarian. What are you waiting for? Kill me.”

  Martuhn shook his head. “My steel were too easy and far too honorable a death for the likes of you, pervert. Before he went to his death. Duke Tcharlz proclaimed you outlaw, and there awaits for you a short, wide, blunt stake, in Pirates’ Folly; that should tickle your buggering bum until you scream your rapture.”

  Urbahnos paled to true ashiness. “Duke Tcharlz . . . d . . . dead? Then who . . . who rules?”

  Martuhn shrugged. “I suppose that I do, since all his retainers save me went down with him under the walls of Traderstown.”

  The Ehleen cleared his throat. “Then we should be able to come to a mutually profitable agreement, you and L You will be in immediate need of funds, of course, and I will be more than willing to pay a most handsome sum for my freedom and a passage up the Ohyoh. Five pounds of gold? Ten?”

  Martuhn spat at the Ehleen’s feet. “You are an outlaw, you pig, and as such everything you once owned is mine anyway. I loathe you and all you stand for. Moreover, you and your pack of hired dogs have here slain a number of my men, several of them friends — old and very dear friends, two of them.

  “Now, there are a number of cells below us that are dank, ever cold, slimy, and dark and constantly at least a foot deep in muddy water, so that the rats have to swim to get at you.”

  Urbahnos had again paled; he gulped wordlessly, his fleshy lips trembling.

  “But,” Martuhn went on, “I think me I have a better place for you to bide until I’m ready to put you to death. I have it on reliable authority that you are a castrate. You are obviously strong, and such wounds as you’ve suffered this day are but mere scratches.”

  Turning to a short, wiry, blood-splashed dragoon sergeant, the count said, “Byuhz, take this prisoner down to the docks, strip him to the buff, then turn him over to the overseer of one of the cable barges. It will do my heart good to think of the bastard pulling an oar for his keep.”

  “B . . . but . . . but you cannot! Urbahnos wailed. “I . . . I’m not a slave!”

  Martuhn shrugged. “You are whatever I say you are, dog, and I say you’re a barge slave . . . until I’m ready to make you a corpse, that is.”

  Chapter XVI

  Empty of human life, save for occasional parties of mounted nomads clattering through the streets, Traderstown lay sacked and smoldering. The clans had taken such slaves as they wished of the conquered, then driven the rest out into the countryside beyond the camps and herds. The loot of the city had been incredibly large, rich and diversified, and no clansman or woman was not happy in the sharing-out.

  But the war chief, Milo of Morai, was anything but happy. It had never been his intent to take and sack the city. He had only wished to use the threat of such to force from the townsfolk use of the cable barges to transport the tribe and its herds across the otherwise impassable stretch of muddy brown water.

  Now there were no longer any folk with whom to treat in the city. All the cable barges were on the eastern bank of the river — which meant that, in effect, they might as well have been on the moon — and so, too, he assumed, was every other bottom of any usable size.

  True, some had been sunk at the docks or close inshore and he and the nomads might be able to raise a few and refloat them, but there were nowhere near enough to ferry many folk
and their herds. Besides, not one of the nomads knew aught of sailing, so such boats as did set out without the firm support of the transriverine cables might well be swept clear down to the Inland Sea, if not to destruction on some sandbar or mudbank.

  The tall, saturnine man thought hard on his possible alternatives, twisting idly on his finger the fine, ruby-set, golden ring which had been a part of his share of the city’s loot. At length he decided upon a plan that might work, were the commander who had headed the city garrison the kind of man he reckoned by available evidence. At least six centuries of weighing human actions and human nature backed his judgment.

  * * *

  Duchess Ann had never recovered her health after the cold and deprivations of the siege of Twocityport. During her hated husband’s hurried embarkations, she had come down with what her physicians had at first diagnosed a bloody flux, but it had worsened, despite their nostrums and purges. Moreover, an infection of her lungs had also set in, complicating the matter.

  On his first, last and only audience with the hereditary duchess, Count Martuhn could feel Death in the chamber; he could smell it in the close, too warm air, could see it in the deep-sunk but fever-bright eyes of the woman. He dutifully knelt and kissed the trembling hand she held out to him from her place on the huge bed.

  Her ladies had washed her and dressed her and arranged her hair and done the little that they could to impart healthy color to her face. They had even anointed her bed, body and clothing with rich scents and strewn the floor with a deep layer of flower petals, but still the mingled stenches of illness and medicines were more than evident.

  Her first attempt to speak suddenly became a racking fit of coughing which bent her body almost double before it was done. When the attending ladies had wiped the bloody mucus from her lips and chin, she spoke in a husky whisper.

  “He is truly dead, Count Martuhn? You saw him die?”

  Still on one knee, Martuhn shrugged. “As good as, your grace; I saw Duke Tcharlz gather his surviving nobles and bodyguards and launch a charge into the very thickest of the nomad hosts. Very few of them came back, but he did not . . . and the nomads were taking no captives. And a sergeant of dragoons, Lee Byuhz, saw a nomad on a horse that he is certain was the duke’s charger that day.