Horseclans Odyssey

by Robert Adams

  “So, yes, your grace, all the evidence points in the direction of the duke’s death. But he died bravely, in honor, and he —”

  He was cut off by the duchess’ cackling laughter, which was in its turn ended by another of those terrible fits of coughing. When once more her ladies had wiped away the red-and-yellow residues, she breathed. “Then I’ve outlived that evil monster, I’ve truly, truly outlived him; not by much, alas, for I’ll be dead meat inside a week myself. But I can now die content that that terrible man is burning in hell while vermin gorge on his rotting cadaver.

  “Count Martuhn, never speak the word of honor in the same breath with the accursed name of my late and unlamented husband. Although he fancied to use the word often in public, he never really comprehended its meaning, nor did he ever harbor in his body or his soul a scintilla of it. He possessed much, it is true, of one quality that you men put great store by: great physical bravery. Otherwise, he was base, treacherous, deceitful, murderous, lustful and rapacious.

  “My poor old papa, frantic that his lands not be ravaged and sundered upon his demise, had me wedded to the man, despite my pleas and against the good advices of all his councilors. Papa gave Count Tcharlz his daughter and his trust, then the back-biting bastard had papa poisoned; I have always been more than certain of it.

  “The shameful practices to which he literally forced me in the privacy of our chambers aside, he was the very soul of kindness and courtesy to me in public . . . so long as papa still lived. But with papa laid to rest down in the crypt, he took over Papa’s suite and banished me to the far end of the north wing, while he filled the palace with his cronies and his whores, and the very air with the rotten reek of his open adulteries. And not a one of my own ladies and maids but suffered sore at his callous hands — those he could not seduce, he forcibly raped, then often as not turned them over to the evil men of his coterie for further abuse. At least three of my ladies slew themselves out of shame after being so used.”

  Martuhn had heard many of these same tales before, during the more than ten years he had served Duke Tcharlz, but had heretofore tended to dismiss them as the highly exaggerated maunderings of the duke’s political opponents. A death bed statement, however, recounted by the duke’s wife, and he already dead, was difficult to dismiss as mere fable. He began to see the bluff, supposedly uncomplicated nobleman who had for so long retained him in a new and different and decidedly sinister light.

  After another bout of coughing — which portended ill, producing as it did not threads but rather great gouts of blood — the dying duchess continued her narrative.

  “In dear Papa’s day and for generations before it, the duchy had been ruled by the duke and the ducal council — membership in which had once been purely hereditary but had become appointive in the time of Papa’s grandpa.

  “They, the council, to the eternal honor of their gallant souls, tried to oppose the malicious machinations and Schemes of my husband” — the duchess spat the word — “whereupon they began to die — the younger ones in clearly provoked duels with certain of the duke’s clique; some were found dead in their beds of no clear cause; a few were done to death on the benighted streets, presumably by footpads.

  “With more than half the old councilors dead, the rest quickly retired to their estates outside the city, the wisest and most perspicacious pausing only long enough to convert assets into gold, gather their families and pack their transportable goods and flee the duchy entirely.

  “Those unable or unwilling to flee their ancestral homes and lands finally organized most of the country nobles and gentry and mounted an armed rebellion against the murderous usurper, but it was doomed from its inception; for while almost all of the nobles’ and gentry were well-mounted, well-armed veterans, the bulk of their force was a vast mob of untrained peasantry, all afoot and armed with a miscellany of agricultural implements. Crushed as they were under the heavy taxes levied by the new duke, they could afford but few mercenaries, and those few chose to go over to the duke at a crucial point in the decisive battle on the land northeast of the city.

  “Beset with such treachery, the rebels were defeated with terrible losses, Count Martuhn, leaving the very flower of the duchy dead or dying on the field . . . and much of the precious rootstock, as well, alas.

  “Tcharlz and his southern ruffians and forsworn mercenaries pursued the broken columns of survivors for miles, ruthlessly murdering any they caught of gentry or noble houses. But the wretched peasants he simply disarmed, dispersed and sent home, unharmed for the most part.”

  Martuhn could detect perspicacity in such a move. After all, hands were needed to work the land, else the whole duchy would starve, and the peasants had likely been forcibly impressed into the rebel army anyway. Under the old system, their mean, dehumanized status would have remained the same no matter who won the rebellion.

  The duchess had begun to cough again, even more violently than previously; the spasms went on and on for long minutes and were followed by more minutes of choking and gagging. A white-bearded and stooped physician left his place at the foot of the bed and motioned Martuhn to arise and depart, but the old duchess would have none of his attempt to exercise authority.

  The deathly-ill woman flopped weakly back against the piled mound of cushions, but — though she perforce must speak through a mouthful of blood and mucus which dribbled the while down her chin to drip onto her bodice — her voice was as strong as ever.

  “Count Martuhn, keep you your place. And you, you blathering old imbecile, get out of here! See you now how much good was done me by all the nauseous doses you made me swallow? By the unholy messes of oils and herbs you made me endure? If you must be active at something, fetch me that Zahrtohgahn, Master Ahkmehd. His drugs can at least render my death easier.”

  “Hush, your grace, hush,” murmured the lady who bent to wipe the duchess’ lips and chin. “You are very ill, true, but you are not . . . are not dying.”

  “Nonsense, Mahrtha!” The duchess patted the freckled hand of the red-haired woman tending her. “I know it and so do you; I’m dying, all right. But my consolations are that the ravening beast who dishonored us both and most of the duchy as well is dead before me and most of his jackals with him, and that this birthright of mine will finally pass into the strong, capable hands of the kind of man Papa should have found for me to marry — this man, Count Martuhn — and I mean to live until I can tell him what he needs to know if he to rule long and wisely over my people.”

  When Martuhn finally left the chamber of the dying duchess, he was of two minds about the late duke. He did not doubt that the non-bereaved widow was telling the whole and unvarnished truth . . . as she had perceived it. But still he felt admiration for much that Tcharlz had done for the duchy — however he had come to the ascendancy — and was he, Martuhn, to rule here, he could discern little or no reason to go back to the old order and ways, which was what the duchess had been advising in a roundabout way.

  Insofar as Duke Tcharlz’s personal habits were concerned, the duchess, who obviously had been reared in a sheltered and insulated environment by an adoring and overly indulgent sire, might be shocked to her innermost core, but Martuhn had known or known of far worse lechers than her dead husband. His hereditary overlord, Duke Lin of York, for example, had set aside his wife to take up the violent rape of three or four young virgins a week; and as he had gotten older, the victims he chose were younger, with many of the prepubescent children dying as a direct result of his abuse of their immature bodies. At length the monster had been overthrown and slain by some thoroughly disgusted nobles, and Martuhn had lost his patrimony in the ensuing dynastic struggles.

  That the late duke had poisoned (or smothered; there was more than one tale of old Duke Myk’s demise abroad) his father-in-law, long years agone, did not sound at all like the man Martuhn had known and respected, even while opposing him in the matter of Bahb and Djoh Steevuhnz. Besides, it had never been aught save suspicions mouthed by
men and women who actively and openly hated and despised Tcharlz on other grounds; no one, not even her grace, had ever possessed a shred of hard evidence.

  The deaths of so many of the councilors of the preceeding duke were another matter, of course, but here again the personal, straightforward stamp of Tcharlz just would not adhere, in Martuhn’s mind, to poisonings or garrotes and envenomed daggers in the dark. So what really had happened in those distant days was anybody’s guess. Most likely, Martuhn reasoned, some or all of them had been slain by Tcharlz’s then retainers, but probably not on his direct orders.

  The way that Tcharlz had summarily broken the power of the nobles and gentry — seizing their hereditary lands and thereby so impoverishing them that their only options were to cleave to him, flee the duchy or slowly starve — had, in Martuhn’s opinion, been a stroke of rare genius; and that Tcharlz had not then — as many a high noble would have done — parceled out the seized lands to supposedly loyal new landlords, but had rather freed the peasantry and redistributed the land to them to own and work had without question immeasurably richened and strengthened the duchy. And that he had done precisely the same to those lands he formerly had ruled as a count had proved that it was not simply a punitive action but part of a carefully conceived plan.

  Of course, the actions and the suddenness with which they had been taken were very hard on the affected landlords — upon whose sufferings, admittedly pitiable, the stricken duchess had dwelt at length. But the overall outcome had been good and more than good. The lands were now more productive than ever they had been. The majority of the nobles and the gentry were unswervingly loyal to the overlord (so loyal, in fact, that the vast proportion of those of fighting age had gone down to death behind Tcharlz’s banner at Traderstown) and the peasants-cum-yeoman-farmers had proved time and again where lay their allegiances.

  But there were those nagging other things haunting the honor and the honest soul of Martuhn, and not solely because of the fevered accusations of the dying duchess. Despite the wholly admirable system of laws, law courts and judges instituted by Tcharlz to replace the ancient hodgepodge he had inherited, the captain had heard rumors as long as he had been a resident of the duchy that — were a large enough sum paid to a high enough authority — favorable judgment in duchy courts could always be purchased.

  The recent apprehension and incarceration of the sly and treacherous Judge Baron Lapkin of Pahdookahport had, he had thought, put an end to it all. But now, in the light of the information given him by the duchess, he was no longer so certain. Some of the most flagrant examples of bought judgments had, it seemed, well predated the ill-starred appointment of Baron Lapkin to the bench. Possibly, he mused as he rode toward the citadel, that very appointment had been effected for the same reason a skilled captain would readjust his pike line behind a screen of manuevering cavalry . . . and the late Duke Tcharlz had been, if nothing more, a superlative field captain; no mistake about that.

  He and his entourage were recognized long before they rode onto the bridge, but still the wall commander — knowing damned well that Martuhn’s instructions were never issued lightly — insisted that all the riders bare their heads and faces and that the proper word be given before he would order the grille raised and the gates unbarred and swung open.

  Before the main building, Martuhn swung down from the saddle of his big white riding mule and surrendered the reins to his waiting groom. Then he strode up the steps and into the dim coolness, slapping dust from his boots with his shucked elbow gloves.

  But gone forever was the near-empty building he had loved and remembered. As the seat of the now supreme power in the duchy, the corridors and rooms swarmed with the necessary staff of clerks and scribes and petty officials, with messengers and suppliants thronging so thickly about that his bodyguards and a double brace of pikemen from the entry had all that they could do to force through a clear path to the larger and far more elaborate offices his staff had had to occupy.

  Awaiting him in the antechamber were Nahseer, Dragoon Sergeant Lee Byuhz and a tall, black-haired man he did not know. Ignoring the stranger and the sergeant for the moment, Martuhn questioned Nahseer.

  “How is Wolf? He still lives?

  Nahseer sighed, nodded. “Yes, my lord count, the noble Wolf still breathes, but be dies a little more with each passing day. The physician, my countryman, can do nothing more for him, save to administer the drugs that keep him free of pain.

  “But is my lord to see him, it had best be soon, for I think that he now craves death.”

  Martuhn nodded wearily. “Immediately I’m done here, I’ll come, Nahseer.

  “Now, my good Byuhz, what have we here?”

  Once the stranger was seated with him in his private office, with brandied wine poured for them both, Martuhn stated, “I’m glad that your command of Trade-Mehrikan is so good, Señor Morré, for yours is one language I’ve never learned, since I never soldiered for or even near to the empire. I truly regret that you were left behind when we withdrew from Traderstown — I had thought that I had gathered together and brought safely out all of the nonresidents, but obviously I erred.

  “But that aside, tell me, why did the nomads send you over here to me?”

  Senor Don Maylo Morré, merchant and noble ambassador of His Imperial Majesty Benito IV, Emperor of all the Mexicos, sipped delicately at his goblet before answering. And in that moment of waiting, Martuhn essayed to read the surface thoughts of his guest’s mind; he failed miserably. He never before had contacted so powerful a mindshield, and he reflected that such a contact was akin to butting one’s bare head against a stone wall.

  Setting down the goblet, Morre answered, “Don Conde, the Horseclansmen now hold some hundreds of caballeros and mercenarios as prisoners, a few of them sound, but the most wounded to greater or lesser degrees.”

  Martuhn’s face darkened. “And the barbarian bastards want to sell them back to me, eh? All right, I always try to stick by my warriors. How much gold do they want? But I warn you in advance, gold is all they’ll get from me — no horses, no women.”

  But when the foreign nobleman put the ransom demanded by the nomads into his halting, heavily accented Mehrikan, Martuhn looked every bit of his amazement.

  “They what? Those plains rovers must think me bereft of any wits at all. Such would be akin to not only opening the door to the wolf, but courteously helping him over the sill, as well. I saw what your noble savages did to the lands of Duke Alex, and I’ll not abet them in visiting the same on the lands and cities of this duchy.”

  “There were good reasons why the Duchy of Traderstown was so despoiled,” began Morré mildly.

  “There are always ‘good reasons’ why invaders rape and pillage,” snorted Martuhn derisively. “I’ve been a soldier for most of my life, and I know them all. A man hungers or thirsts or covets or lusts, and where no law is enforced, it is always far easier to take one’s wants at the point of a sword than it is to haggle a sale.”

  “If the illustrious my host will please to allow for me to finish . . . ?” Morré inquired politely.

  * * *

  Wolfs mind, still sharp and quick despite the wounds from which he was slowly dying and the drugs administered for the hellish pain, immediately sensed the matters troubling Martuhn. Mind to mind was presently the only way in which the grizzled man could converse, so smashed and damaged were his face and jaws.

  “If you doubt this Morré’s true motives and identity, my lord, why not hustle him down to the cellars and put him to the stringent question?”

  “No, old friend.” Martuhn, too, beamed silently. “He sailed over under a white flag, so his person is as sacrosanct as is that of a herald, and my suspicions may be entirely ungrounded — he may well be just what he claims, a captured Mehkskuhn merchant sent over by the nomad chiefs.

  “But, Wolf, although he is clearly not of the Horseclanner breed — he’s too big-boned and tall and dark to be one of them — his name is very close to
the name given by that wounded nomad the late duke captured across the river as the so-called war chief, or overall commander, of that tribe’s warriors — Milo of Morai. I know, I have the transcript of that interrogation; the spelling is different, of course, but I would bet that the two names are pronounced the same in speech.”

  “Nonetheless,” stated the dying Wolf, “you sense him to be an honor-bound man and you will sail back across the Great River with him. I will not be there to guard your back, as of old, Martuhn, so I pray you, take Nahseer with you. He is a doughty fighter, that one, and is now as faithfully your man as ever I was.”

  * * *

  Count Martuhn, surrogate Duke of the East, stood in the blunt prow of the small row-barge and watched the citadel — gleaming almost white in the westering sun — grow larger with each ordered stroke of the oars. The dark-skinned, heavy-thewed Nahseer stood just behind him, conversing softly with Daiv Ghyp, master of the barge. On every other square foot of the deck lay or sat wounded cavalrymen, mostly mercenary dragoons or lancers, but with a sprinkling of gentry and petty nobility from both duchies. And on the docks of Traderstown, more survivors awaited the arrival of another, larger cable barge.

  After that, a number of mounted chiefs and older clansmen would be barged over to scout out an easy, short and, with luck, frictionless route for the tribe’s passage through the duchy. His agreement with the Council of Chiefs had been that the crossing of the river by the horde would be delayed until all the duchy’s crops were harvested. Further, the chiefs had given their sworn word that no folk of the duchy would be harmed, no villages or farms looted or burned, no lands deliberately ravaged in their passing, and Martuhn believed them. Now all he had to do was convince his staff and the folk of the duchy.