Robert Adams - Trumpets of War

Gil Djohnz had taken and gripped his hand firmly and said soberly, “We felt you needed a woman to care for your needs here, my friend. It is not good for a man to live for too long alone, you know.” He grinned and chuckled. “It is said to lead to such afflictions as a permanently stiff . . . ahh, neck.”

Thoheeks Sitheeros had slapped him again on the back and crowed, “Now it is time to commence the drinking that must always precede the wedding feast. Come, take the hand of your bride and come. You must not allow your loving guests to perish of thirst, man.”

While Tomos was carefully watering the wine—he recalled how very intoxicated he had gotten at his last wedding feast, so befuddled that it had been impossible to consummate the marriage properly for three days, and although he still was at least half convinced that this all was an elaborate joke of some nature or description, he intended to take no chances—the burly thoheeks was worrying the stopper from out the neck of a huge stone jug. At length, the obstruction popped free, and, hooking a thumb through the ring handle and resting the heavy container on his arm, the thoheeks splashed a generous dollop of a clear, slightly yellowish liquid into each of three small winecups, filling the room with a strong, sharp odor.

Having looked over his shoulder at just what his guests were up to, Tomos wrinkled his nose at the stink and commented, “If that’s a jug of fermented fish sauce, I think the stuff has spoiled; smells that way to me.”

When the wine was diluted to his satisfaction, Tomos took his seat and left the dispensing of it to the servants. It was then that Gil Djohnz shoved a cup of the liquid from the stone jug before him. “It’s a wedding gift from Chief Ritchud’s private hwiskee stock, Tomos—it’s something he calls ‘danyuhlz,’ though it tastes just like any other corn hwiskee to me. The chief swears that it’s a special kind of hwiskee distilled carefully to a recipe and methods that are an ancient and an exclusive secret passed down for hundreds of years amongst the Tenzsee Tribes.”

Holding his breath against the rotten stench of the stuff, Tomos took a tentative swallow of it. After he could once more breathe and, with eyes still streaming from his strangled coughing, was wondering if the buffets of Sitheeros’ big, hard hands had really sundered his backbone and shattered his ribs or if they just felt that way, he was able to gasp, “Off the decomposing hides of what dead animals do they scrape the fungi out of which they make that?”

After a while, when Tomos was feeling more his usual self and when his two guests had ceased to laugh at his discomfiture, he inquired, “All right, now, how much of this is real and how much just one of your elaborate, infamous practical jokes, my lord Sitheeros? Am I really married to that child? Or is she just some new slave girl you two bought and coached and dolled up to cozen me? I’ll have a straight answer, and it please you, my lord. To akath’ahrohs, such as yourself, barbarian rites and customs may seem droll, but to me, whose mother was a barbarian princess, they are far less so.”

Gil answered first, saying solemnly, “Tomos, me ’n Sitheeros, we rode clear up to Chief Ritchud’s hold at a place called Kleevluhnd, smack dab in the middle of the ruins of a big city of the old times. We went up for a different reason, of course; Sitheeros owed the old chief a visit and he thought I might like to go along and see the place and the people, and it was an education, I can say that much. We wagoned up a couple pipes of wine and some other things Sitheeros knew his old pal fancied, and we both were treated top-notch by all Chief Ritchud’s folk.

“Then one night, after a feast, when we all of us were drinking and talking in the hall of Chief Ritchud’s hold, the old chief had little Brandee brought out and asked Sitheeros couldn’t he find some rich Ehleen husband for her. I think he expected old Sitheeros to take and marry her himself, is what I figure he had in mind, and”—he glanced over slyly at the thoheeks to ascertain if his barb sank home—“the way old Sitheeros was panting and drooling and all, his tongue just hanging down into his cup and his eyes fit to burst clear out of his head and all, I was just then of the mind that he might, then and there.”

Sitheeros stared, unwinking, at the captain of elephants, and remarked in a soft voice, “There are definite ways to deal with your kind of prevaricator, Captain Djohnz . . . and I am a past master at the most of them, and those that I misremember my torturer-executioner, Master Peeos, does recall. Remember this gentle warning in future, captain; it will be to your best interests to so do.” Then, unable to longer hold his very convincing pretense of cold rage, the thoheeks burst into laughter and threw the contents of his cup of watered wine at his friend become tease, and took up the recountal himself .

“Oh, Tomos, I admit, I freely, even joyfully admit, to the fact that that child’s very, very female shape and bearing and appearance moved me . . . well, moved certain parts of me; she is assuredly toothsome. But I then was forced to recall that I have a wife, that the Ehleen Church and customs allow but one legal wife at the time, that my old friend, Chief Ritchud Bohldjoh, wanted honorable marriage for his child and would certainly look askance at mere concubinage of her, and that he could field thousands of mountain warriors did he choose to so do; therefore I drew tight rein on my admittedly libidinous impulses, which, God be praised, I am not as yet too aged to feel to their fullest extent on occasion.

“And then, as if we had shared but the single, solicitous mind, both Gil and I bethought: our dear friend Tomos Gonsalos would not—as, you must admit, would most Ehleen nobles and gentlemen—be at all offended were he to find himself wed to so delightful a young woman. Besides which, he really needs a willing, young, strong, healthy and truly ravishing wife and helpmeet, if anyone does. In his own lands, he is as high a noble as am I in mine, possibly more so, since he is the cousin of a reigning king.

“When once Gil and I had described you—your high civil and military ranks, your charm and gentility, the numbers of warriors under your command, your fierce valor in battle, your handsome good looks, all the simple traits of the simple man you are”—Sitheeros grinned slyly—“Chief Ritchud fairly watered at his mouth and we began the dowry negotiations then and there. He is one of the wealthiest of the Tenzsee chiefs and I knew it and he knew that I knew it, so Gil and I were able—after a few days of haggling and feasting and entertainments and really serious, professional-style drinking—to wring a settlement of truly royal proportions out of the rich old bastard for you, enough to give you good cause to remember this anniversary of your thirtieth year of life. We hope too that you will remember your two good, loving, caring friends who brought it all about for you.”

“And should I decide I don’t like the girl and the arrangement, that I’d rather have an Ehleen to wife?” demanded Tomos. “What then, my good, loving, caring, practical-joking, near-alcoholic friends?”

Sitheeros squirmed as if he had unknowingly seated himself on an anthill, frowned and replied, “Hopefully, you won’t, Tomos. Man, you could go far toward starting a border war that would make the last one look like a field exercise, that way! Why do you think that the border up above Iron Mountain has been so quiet for so many years, man? It’s because Chief Ritchud and I have been friends for just that long. A very fierce, bloodthirsty tribe from somewhere up north and east of him, called the Ahrmehnee, raided his lands in force years back, burned the nearly ripe crops through a wide swath of his tribe’s lands and drove off quantities of his kine, killing those they couldn’t take and leaving the carcasses to rot or using them to pollute springs and wells. They are truly demons from hell, that tribe.”