Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

The Undying High Lord Milo Morai—one of the group of near-immortal mutants who had first formed the Confederation and now ruled it—had opted to strike the Ahrmehnee before they could strike him and his lands. He had launched the forces at his disposal—Confederation regulars, both horsemen and infantry, Confederation noblemen, their retainers and the numerous Freefighters or mercenaries many of them had hired to flesh out the followings behind their various banners.

Bili, a natural commander and leader of men, as well as the owner of rare and infinitely precious extrasensory gifts, had impressed the High Lord early on in the Morguhn rebellion, and so, despite his youth, the Thoheeks and Chief of Morguhn had been entrusted the leadership of the southern tine of the fork on which the High Lord meant to impale the always troublesome Ahrmehnee for good and all.

Bili’s force had been all cavalry, including most of the Freefighters—all of whom practically worshiped him because, having fostered for so long in Harzburk, he seemed more like one of them, more like what they all innately expected a fighting nobleman to be than did the pampered, effete-seeming, luxury-loving Confederation nobles.

He had split his available forces into squadrons, balancing as far as possible the numbers of well-equipped and -mounted but often less than war-wise Confederation nobles with an equal quantity of the hard, lean, scarred Middle Kingdoms mercenaries whose profession was war. Then he had sent these squadrons to reave and despoil their way north and east, through the very heart of the richest, most densely populated of all of the Ahrmehnee tribal areas.

And those squadrons had gone through the hills and dales and vales and villages like the proverbial dose of salts! With few adult males about to oppose them—most of the hale men of fighting age being assembled in the north, ready to invade the Confederation—the squadrons had burned and killed, raped and robbed, butchered livestock and ruined those foodstores they had not the pack animals to steal and bear away. They had despoiled their gory paths about halfway to their northern goal—the village of the nahkhahrah —when Bili was recipient of a telepathic order from the High Lord which halted the depredations and sent most of the force back whence they had come.

Bili had felt the long-familiar tingling and had automatically relaxed his mind to enable easier reception of the farspeak.

“Bili, our war with the Ahrmehnee is ended,” the High Lord had beamed. “Get word to all your columns immediately to retire back on the Trade Road and return to Vawnpolis through the thoheekahtohn of Baikuh. You are to take a squadron and ride northwest. You are seeking a largish mule train which is led by three of the Witchmen ... well, one of them is a woman. And, speaking of females, if you intercept a force of armored, horse-mounted Ahrmehnee women, do not be surprised—they are after the same quarry as are you.

“While I’d like to have at least one of the Witchfolk alive, don’t you take unnecessary chances; remember all I’ve told you of them and their wiles and their exceedingly deadly weapons, weapons which can punch right through even the best grades of plate armor from a thousand or more yards away.

“Now the treasures they carry on their pack beasts are rightfully the property of the Ahrmehnee female warriors of whom I just told you. I understand that they are all virgins, but forgiving them that, the man who’s seeking a rich wife could scarcely do better, to my way of thinking.

“And by the bye, Bili, the brahbehrnuh, their hereditary leader, is reputed to be a proud, handsome, long-legged creature named Rahksahnah. She is of a long-lived, vastly gifted race, and she should throw good colts and fillies, many of them. Think you on that matter, my boy.

“As for the machines and unfamiliar, long-range weapons the Witchfolk carry, I would prefer that they all be smashed, then dumped in a river or a deep lake.

“You’ll be far, far west, Bili, so it’s possible that you’ll chance across Mehrikan-speaking barbarians called the Muhkohee. They are reputed to be sly, treacherous, savage eaters of human flesh. Even these wild Ahrmehnee fear them, lad, so beware.

“Sun and Wind keep you all, Bili, Come back first to the nahkhahrah ’s village when you are done.”

Since mindspeak—telepathy—was a rather common talent among the Kindred nobles, Bili had had scant difficulty in reining in and turning about his packs of wardogs, all save one, an all-Freefighter squadron containing no mindspeakers; to this one he sent gallopers.

Choosing only the very best of his reserve squadron—the warriors, the best horses, the best armor and weapons for them, with a very abbreviated pack train—Bili set off in the indicated direction but on a course designed deliberately to intercept a maximum number of the retiring squadrons. From these, as he met them, he chose again the best of the best, frequently intimidating Confederation noblemen into “loaning” their better-quality harness and weapons, their finely bred, extensively trained and highly intelligent warhorses to less well equipped and mounted Freefighter officers and troopers. These actions in no way endeared him to said noblemen, but then, they would not be riding west with him, either.

They moved as fast as the limitations of horseflesh would allow and they were many days’ march into the unknown far western mountains when one of the advance-scouting prairiecats found a few hundreds of Moon Maidens and Ahrmehnee war-sage she imparted in the few moments before she finally died of her grievous wounds alerted Bili that his allies-to-be stood hard pressed by the barbarians called Muhkohee not far ahead.

They had increased their pace, backtracking the dead Maiden’s course, and had finally ascended onto that plateau that the Ahrmehnee called the Tongue of Soormehlyuhn. There they found a few hundreds of Moon Maidens and Ahrmehnee warriors standing at bay and beset by a horde of thousands of the shaggy, stinking, ill-armed, pony-mounted Muhkohee.

After sending his archers to take up positions on the top of that cliff against which the battered defenders were ranged, Bili led his squadron of heavy horse down a steep, shaly, treacherous slope in a charge that crashed squarely into the right flank and rear of the smelly primitives. A second charge, from the other side, this one reinforced with some hundreds of mounted Moon Maidens and Ahrmehnee, along with the now-shaftless archers, utterly broke the mob of barbarians and sent them fleeing as fast as their ponies could bear them down the length of the plateau with Bili’s now heterogeneous command in hot and bloody pursuit.

Then, as the exhausted men and women and cats and horses were wending a weary way back from the western edge of the plateau over which the surviving Muhkohee had escaped the gory and vengeful swords, sabers, spears and axes, Bili’s extrasensory abilities alerted him to fast-encroaching danger in time for him to see the squadron mounted and off the southern end of the Tongue of Soormehlyuhn scant minutes before a tremendous earthquake shook it into rubble.

The young Thoheeks of Morguhn had endeavored to keep his command together despite the horror and terror of the natural catastrophes. But in the zigzagging race to escape the hot, crackling, intensely smoky forest fires engendered by a fall of hot ashes and superheated boulders from the skies, the group had become sundered into two or more smaller groups. When, at long last, they had left the fires behind them, Bili had found himself in alien and most likely hostile territory in company with a mixed contingent of Ahrmehnee, Freefighters, Moon Maidens and a sprinkling of fellow nobles of the Confederation, both Kindred and Ehleenee. A day later, two of the prairiecats and a trio of Ahrmehnee ponies had joined them, but that had been all, nor could he seem to make farspeak contact with any of his missing friends or relatives.