Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

Bili of Morguhn and his entourage did not go their usual route on the morning after the birth of his twins; rather did they follow the city guardsmen through the streets to the spot whereon what was left of a body had been discovered. And there was not much of it left—the partially defleshed and tooth-gouged skull, a few vertebrae, the pelvis, the still-shod feet, a gnawed and incomplete femur and the scattered, shredded, blood-soaked clothing.

Although many guardsmen and curious citizens had tracked about the area since the grisly discovery just after dawn, some few of the presumed killer’s paw prints, stamped on the smooth stone in dried blood, still were in evidence. Bili and two of his officers squatted around one of these.

“Wolf, right enough,” said the young thoheeks . “But did ever you see wolf spoor so large? I’ve hunted the most of my life and I’ve never seen such. Why, that beast’s feet are more than a hand in length!”

Freefighter Captain Fil Tyluh nodded agreement with his leader. “But how does my lord suppose the thing got over the walls, and them both lit and patrolled, then out again without someone seeing it?”

“I don’t know ... yet,” said Bili grimly. “But I mean to find out, and that soon. Send a runner up to the palace and fetch back a brace of the late king’s tracking hounds. We’ll find out what part of the walls that damned wolf went out over, at least.”

But he did not. The veteran hounds refused to track. After a brief, tentative sniff or two of the ensanguined area, they both tucked tails between legs and huddled close together, their sleek bodies trembling, hackles raised, whining in clear terror.

“What the hell kind of mongrels did you bring me?” Bili demanded of the royal hunter who had fetched the canines to the scene.

The grizzled hunter shook his head in obvious puzzlement. “M’lord Champion, Bearbiter and Bruindeath, here, they be King Mahrtuhn’s favoritest bear dogs. It’s many a big bear—six-hunnerd-, seven-hunnerd-pounders, too—they’s held till the hunt could come up to them. Afore this here today, I’d’ve laid my life that they wasn’t no critter in all these mountains neither one of them hounds was afeered of.”

Bili shrugged his armored shoulders. “Well, take them back to their kennels. They’re no good for my purposes.” Then he mindcalled, “Whitetip, cat brother?”

The powerful mindspeak of the prairiecat responded. “I have just seen and mindspoken your new kittens, brother. If they had the proper amount of fur, I could possibly admire them, for they are assuredly big enough. The Lady Rahksahnah is learning, at least. This time she had only the two, but that still is better than one. Maybe next time she will throw you a respectable litter—three, four, perhaps five.”

“Whitetip, a very large wolf got into the city last night and killed and ate a young woman. The hounds seem afraid to try to track the wolf from the place where it slew and ate. How is your nose this morning? I need to know just where it came across the walls.”

“I come, brother,” beamed the cat.

But when the monstrous feline had sniffed at the place whereon the killer had obviously lain—this fact attested by the presence of several coarse, reddish-brown hairs stuck in a thin smear of dried blood—he wrinkled his nose and beamed, “Are you certain this was done by a wolf, brother chief? It smells like no wolf I’ve ever scented. Like no other animal, for that matter.”

“Could it have been a man, cat brother, laying false paw prints, perhaps?” In Harzburk, Bili recalled, a man had once tried to conceal a murder by dumping the body in a forest, then stamping around and about the corpse while wearing a pair of wooden-soled boots cunningly carved to resemble the feet of a bear. But that malefactor had been apprehended before he could burn the telltale boots, had confessed under torture and was then impaled in the central square of the burk.

“No, brother,” the big cat demurred. “While there is the vague hint of man smell to it, there is mostly something else, not really twoleg, not Kleesahk at all, but not really an animal smell, either. It is simply beyond my experience.”

“Well, can you at least follow it, cat brother?” asked the young commander. “Scent it to where it left the city?”

“I think I can,” agreed the cat, “unless there is more than the single trail to follow.”

But the prairiecat did lose the trail at a point near the palace kitchens where some scullions had recently dumped pails of inedible slops and soapy water to allow them to run out the drain that pierced the corner of the curtain wall.

Bili gazed up at the nearly nine feet of smooth wall critically. “Well, I suppose it’s possible—just barely possible—that the beast, whatever it is, could have jumped that high, gotten onto the battlements. But where could it have gone from there? Nowhere, unless it has wings. That’s a good hundred-foot drop, and the cliffs too sheer for anything bigger than a lizard or maybe a mouse to find purchase.”

Once again, there was no answer.

The big Ganik bully, Horseface Charley, had crept into the spot earlier decided upon just before dawn. Now he lay well concealed beneath an overhang of rock, his hands, face, hair, beard and clothing all oiled, then heavily sprinkled with rock dust and streaked with soot, his rifle similarly dulled. With him in his burrow under the overhang were a skin of watered wine, a quantity of Skohshun hard bread and jerked beef, a handful of dried fruit and a plug of chewing tobacco. But aside from his rifle and forty rounds of ammunition, he had brought along only its hanger-like bayonet and his belt knife—he was not there to fight, only to kill.

The slope on which he was situated was steep and the rocks he had piled before him not only helped to conceal him and his burrow but provided a rest for the rifle that was rock-steady in every sense of that phrase. As the sun rose, those piled rocks and the overhang combined to keep the burrow relatively dim and cool for the big man who lay on his belly, the rifle stock cradled against his right shoulder, sighting up the length of the barrel at one of the armored figures standing on the battlements of the main wall some five hundred meters distant up the steep hill.

The upper part of a body clad in cuirass and open-faced helmet leaned out in the crenel between two massive merlons, apparently to shout something to someone of the garrison of the barbican, then lingered as if awaiting an answer. In the interval, Horseface Charley settled the rifle’s buttplate solidly against his clavicle, pressed his bearded cheek to the dusty stock sighted carefully and slowly squeezed the trigger. The rifle roared and slammed the butt into his shoulder with considerable force. Horseface kept his keen eyes fixed on his target while he rapidly operated the bolt of the rifle, ejecting the smoking brass case and jacking a live round into the chamber of the piece. For a long moment, it seemed that his shot might have missed, but then the distant figure disappeared from the crenel far more quickly than it had appeared, as if jerked by a hidden rope.

Horseface Charley smiled contentedly to himself, worked his wad of tobacco around into another spot and began to sight up at another target.

Bili had barely returned to his palace office when the frantic mindcall came from Lieutenant Kahndoot. “Brother, one of the engineers, here on the top of the gate tower, has been killed. There is a smallish hole over one of his eyes and it seems that his head for some reason flew into pieces inside his helmet.”

Half out of the sweat-soggy canvas pourpoint, Bili worked his arms back into the sleeves and thrust his head through the neck opening, called back the serving men to help him back into the just-removed armor. Two mysterious deaths in one morning, he thought wryly, were more than he cared for.