Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

At a spot a little apart from the Freefighters and the Ahrmehnee warriors, old Sir Djim Bohluh and Captain Djeri Guhntuh sat facing each other across a cookfire and watched a sizable hare spitted on a green stick broiling over the coals wherein several wild potatoes baked in rock-hard clay jackets. The while, they slaked their thirst with an Ahrmehnee decoction—twice-baked journey bread ground into powder, stirred into hot water and flavored with crushed, dried herbs and juniper berries—that bore as much resemblance to decent beer or ale as did the hare to suckling pig.

Sir Djim turned the spit a trifle on the forked sticks that supported it and prodded at the hot flesh with one horny forefinger, remarking, “Should be done enuf to eat ’er, soon. Mebbe the hare’ll git the taste of thishere horsepiss outen my mouf. Don’t them Ahrmehnees know nuthin ’bout beer-makin’?”

The Freefighter officer grimaced at the taste of the contents of his own cup and nodded. “Oh, yes, Sir Djim, the Ahrmehnee brew excellent beer, ale, too, even small quantities of mead and fruit wines. The Archduke Hahfos is of the opinion that some of their meads and herb ales will eventually become a profitable trade item with the Confederation. Perhaps so, mayhap not; I’m a simple soldier and know damnall about trade.”

Djim Bohluh set aside his cup, took out his pipe and the bladder of tobacco and set about the filling of the one from the contents of the other. “Djeri, it’s suthin’ I been wonderin’ ’bout the ahrkeethoheeks fer some time, naow. He’s from a good fambly, a noble, Kindred fambly, but he nevuh wuz rich; mostly he lived awn his ofser’s pay, whilst he’s in the Confederation Army, leastways ... plus loot and gamblin’ winnin’s, o’ course.

“But, lo and behold, there he be up in wild Ahrmehneeland, livin’ like unto a black Zahrtohguhn prince. He wears silks an’ satins an’ the fines’ leathers an’ gol’ an’ jewl’ry, he lives in a house thet wouldn’ be outa place in the bestes’ parts of Kehnooryos Atheenahs or Theesispolis, eatin’ the bestes’ food awf silvuh plates an’ awl, with a whole friggin’ pl’toon of servunts to do fer ’im.”

Guhntuh raised his eyebrows quizzically. “You two seemed to be old friends, when he introduced us, Sir Djim. Did you not ask the archduke himself how he came into such wealth?”

“I did jes thet,” averred Sir Djim glumly. “But whutawl he “said, it dint mek no sense, not neethuh time. Fust awf, he said as how it wuz his wife’s dowry. An’ thet whin ever’body knows bow pisspoor them Ahrmehnees be. Then he come to tell me ’nothuh time, thet awl whut he had wuz give to him by a bar!” Guhntuh chuckled. “What the archduke told you was nothing less than the unvarnished truth, Sir Djim. Both versions. Have you, perchance, heard the tale of how he first met his wife, the Archduchess Pehroosz Djohnz of the Bahrohnyuhn Tribe?”

Old Djim grinned appreciatively. “I met ’er—she be a raht toothsome bit, noble or not, an’ thet’s a fine, sturdy-lookin’ lil colt she’s done th’owed him, too. But how he met ’er? Naw. I’d figgered the High Lord, he’d done got close with them Ahrmehnee chiefs an’ got one their get to hitch up with the Ahrkeethoheeks to mix the blood an’ cut down the chancet of a rebellion, like. Thet’s usual in settlin’ conquered lands.”

Guhntuh shook his head and, while taking out his own pipe and tobacco, said, “No, there is nothing at all usual about the tale concerning the archduke and her ladyship.

“You were not on that campaign against the Ahrmehnee stahn, Sir Djim, but you surely know of it? Whilst this duke you seek now had led his force to attack the Ahrmehnee from the south and the High Lord was driving straight up toward the village of the nahkhahrah from the east, the High Lady Aldora was leading a cavalry onslaught down from the north, and me and my boys, we was a part of her force.

“It was no real fighting for the early part of that ride, Sir Djim, because most of the Ahrmehnee warriors was all down south in and around the place that the nahkhahrah lived, all getting set to attack the Confederation. So we all rode through them tribal lands like a dose of salts. We robbed, we raped, we burned whole villages, butchered every head of stock we come onto, even them we couldn’t eat. Them folks we didn’t kill, we drove into the hills—legal bandits, we was. I could come to like that kind of warfare a whole lot.

“But, by Steel, we plumb paid for all of it, afore it was done! One morning early, right at false dawn, when we all was camped in a big clearing, the Ahrmehnees come to hit us—it was thousands of them, Sir Djim, all warriors, all screeching and screaming and howling like wolves, they was. I won’t no captain, then, you understand, I was a lieutenant of a hundred of Captain Watsuhn’s Freefighter squadron. But by sunup of that day, the old captain was dead, along with all the other officers except me and more than four hundred of our six hundred troopers.

“Of course, what was left of the High Lady’s force did manage to beat them screeching devils off, elst I wouldn’t be here, ’cause I’d took a dart through my thigh early on and I couldn’t even stand up. But we didn’t do no more marching or riding or raiding for a while, I can tell you that!

“Since it was a good, dependable water source there, the High Lady had some rough fortifications put up on that same campsite and set about reorganizing, and before she was set to move on in the campaign, the word come from the High Lord that it wasn’t to be no more campaign, that the Confederation was at peace with them Ahrmehnees.

“Well, the High Lady seemed damned anxious for to get to where the High Lord was, for some reason, her and that reformed rebel, Baronet Drehkos. She took a force a little bigger nor our present one—mebbe, sixteen hundreds, and including me and my company—and we rode hard till we reached the Taishyuhns’ main village.”

Redstone pipe packed to his critical satisfaction, the captain lit a splinter of pine in the coals and began to puff the tobacco to life, continuing to talk around the stem of yellowed bone.

“Well, us Freefighters, we went into camp on that big shelf down below the Taishyuhn village, where Fort Kogh is, you know; the High Lady, she knew that us Freefighters weren’t about to put up with none of that make-work, spit—and-polish shit like the Confederation Regulars, so she kept my company and the others separate from them.

“Anyhow, her that was to become her ladyship, Pehroosz, had come a-riding in with that Ahrmehnee Witchwoman what come to marry up with the nahkhahrah, Kogh Taishyuhn. While every Ahrmehnee around abouts was getting things ready for the big blowout wedding feast of the nahkhahrah, thishere Witchwoman, she sent her ladyship out into the hills for to dig up some special roots and an old boar bear chased her up a tree and was just set to go up after her when the archduke, who was out a-hunting deers, come by.

“I hear tell it was a near thing, that day. That damn bear chewed the haft in two right behind of the blade and the archduke had to meet bruin breast to breast and put paid to him with a damn hanger. And that was a flat, big-assed bear, too, Sir Djim—I seen the skin!

“Well, just before the bear had come at her, her ladyship had dug up a real old, corroded-up strongbox from the little hollow where she was digging roots for the Witchwoman, and she brung it back with her. I hear tell the thing was dang heavy, and for good reason, because when the old lock was forced and broke, it come about that that damn box was full up to the tiptop with little bars of solid, pure gold! Every one of them weighed a little over three ounces and they was all stamped with words in some language couldn’t nobody—Kindred, Ehleen, burker or Ahrmehnee—read. Anyhow, it was near forty pounds of gold in that box, Sir Djim!