Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

Accompanied by Sir Yoo Folsom, Captain Fil Tyluh and two guardsmen, Bili strode the length of the west wall and was just putting foot to the stairs that would take him up onto the top of the corner tower, when Kahndoot’s mindspeak came again. “Brother, two more have been slain in the same manner as was the first. Take care when you come not to expose yourself anywhere on the front wall. Both of these others died there.”

Bili briefly recounted what he had been told by Kahndoot’s telepathy, then he and the other four men entered the door to the low-ceilinged tower room, squeezed their way between the piles of catapult boulders, commodious siege quivers of darts, arrows and quarrels, racks of assorted polearms, bags of slingstones, forked shafts for pushing over scaling ladders and other impedimenta, to emerge at the similar doorway that opened onto the front or south wall. At a crouching run, they crossed to the open door to the gate tower and the waiting Lieutenant Kahndoot.

After Bili had carefully examined the three still-warm corpses, he shrugged, looking up at Kahndoot and his other subordinates. “I would think that we can safely assume that this is the foul work of the Skohshuns, who clearly are up to something down there and so want us to keep our heads down, be less alert than usual. As to precisely what weapon did the actual killing, I can’t say, not without delving into that mess inside those helmets, but I imagine, since no one seems to have seen a slinger, that it was a prod—one of those crossbows that throws stones or leaden pellets. Now, true, I’ve never heard of or seen one of them powerful enough that its projectiles were capable of striking, penetrating with such power as this, but that is not to say that such weapons don’t exist, for upgrading the effect of weapons is—as all of us know—a constant, ongoing process.”

He arose, wiping his hands on the thighs of his trousers. “Lieutenant Kahndoot,” he said aloud for the benefit of Sir Yoo Folsom and those others present who were not mindspeakers, “alert your people to keep as close a watch as possible on all approaches without unnecessarily exposing themselves to that prod or whatever. Come nightfall, I’ll send a couple of the Kleesahks down there to try to find the hiding places of whoever is picking our men off this wall.

“Now, the barbican is, of course, the most vulnerable of all our defenses. Who is the mindspeaker there, this watch?”

“There is not one there, Dook Bili,” said Kahndoot, who was always much more formal orally than telepathically.

“Damn!” His big, bony fist made a sharp crack in the palm of his other hand. “All right, for now, but in future there must always be at least one easily ranged mindspeaker in that barbican, and on every other watch detail, for that matter. For all our obvious advantages, this city still could fall, you know, do we conduct a sloppy, cocksure defense of it.

“Lieutenant Kahndoot, send an order to gap the main gates enough for one man to get through them. Send a runner—a mindspeaker, with orders to stay at that post for the rest of this watch—over to the barbican. He’ll be safe enough on the drawbridge; it’s not exposed. He’s to pass on to the barbican commander just what I’ve told you. Be wary, but keep low enough to not make a good target for those prod men, and at the first sign of a looming assault, mindcall me, directly.”

The broad-shouldered, thick-bodied woman saluted as Bili and his entourage departed, even while her mind was instructing a telepathic Moon Maiden runner.

After a late planning session with certain of his staff and of the royal council, Bili was just drifting off into much-needed sleep when one of the Kleesahks, Oodehn, mindspoke him.

“Lord Champion, we found the spot where the man lay who slew those upon the wall yesterday. What should we do?”

Bili pondered briefly. “If it appears that he might return, Master Oodehn, erect a cairn nearby as an aiming point for our archers and engineers. I’d liefer have the bastard alive, him and his new-fangled, extra-hard-hitting weapon, but he must be put out of action are we to maintain an effective wall watch.”

The mindlink was broken by the Kleesahk, but before Bili’s own mind could close, there came another beaming, this one from Pah-Elmuh. “Lord Champion, it will please you to know that King Byruhn’s condition seems to have improved a little. His color is better and he seems to at last be taking more benefit from the milk, wine and broths we keep forcing into his belly. But still his mind is closed to me, alas.”

Once again, old Count Sandee was entertaining strange lowlander noblemen at his hall and high table. One of his daily patrols from out the safe glen of Sandee’s Cot had run across this column of invaders from the east, and the leader of the patrol, Phryah the Moon Maiden, had shown herself to them after recognizing sisters she knew among their ranks. When he had heard that this strange Maiden knew the present whereabouts of Thoheeks Bili, the brahbehrnuh and the two missing Ahrmehnee headmen, Sir Geros had not been at all loath to follow her and her patrol back to Sandee’s Cot.

But at the first, Count Steev Sandee had been most loath to allow so large a force of armed invaders within his safe glen and had kept the most of them camped outside the Cot, just beyond its outermost defenses. But as it became clear to him that these men and women harbored no designs upon the glen or any other possession of New Kuhmbuhluhn, he had at last allowed them all entry and lodged the most of them in the huge, commodious tower keep down by the lake, for the Cot itself had room only for the nobles and the captains.

The old Kuhmbuhluhn nobleman spoke his mind bluntly, as had ever been his wont. “Sir knights, you and your force are well come into Kuhmbuhluhn at this time. For at this very moment, our good King Mahrtuhn, his chosen successor, Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht, and many another brave warrior of our beleaguered little kingdom lie dead, killed in battle against the northern invaders, the Skohshuns. Our capital, New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, is straitly besieged by this alien host, and King Byruhn, but recently crowned, lies gravely wounded within the city, while its defenses are commanded by that same stark young warrior-duke whom you came to find—Bili of Morguhn, him and all those others you seek after.

“Bare days before my patrol found you all, had I been in contact with the counts of certain other safe glens in these parts of our so-threatened kingdom, that we might form up such forces as we could scrape together to ride over the mountains to try to succor New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, to so sorely hurt the Skohshuns as to break their siege ... or die trying.

“But, stripped as we were months agone to send arms, men, horses and supplies to the north, we could have raised no more than a scant two hundred swords, and too many of those with only mountain ponies to fork. However, now, with you and your hundreds of well-armed and -mounted fighters ... ?”

Sir Geros answered the question readily. “My lord count, since it appears that Thoheeks Morguhn has felt your cause against these northern invaders sufficient to freely pledge him and his to the furtherance of the Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn, how can I—the most humble of his followers—do less? I and my force are your men as of this moment ... uhh, men and women, that is.”

“Me and mine, too,” Sir Djim Bohluh nodded.

Within the hour, Count Sandee had sent messengers galloping to all six of the other, southerly safe glens with the glorious news of the unexpected and most fortuitous reinforcements.

Led by Skinhead Johnny Kilgore and the other Ganik, Merle Bowley, General Corbett’s column marched long and hard and made good time, coming to the environs of the glen wherein Bowley had said Erica and the rest were being held in under two weeks. Then, Corbett took over.