Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

“Well, being the kind of man he is, the archduke first tried to turn the newfound treasure over to the High Lord, but Lord Milo opined that it was found on Ahrmehnee land, therefore it was rightly the property of the nahkhahrah . But old Kogh said that according to the customs of his people, whoever found things like that was owner of them, but that as the archduke had saved her ladyship from the bear, he thought that the two of them should ought to split the gold between them. Well, that’s just what they done, but as his lordship had already took a shine to her ladyship, them two was married on the same day the nahkhahrah was.

“That might’ve been the end of it all, too, but Archduke Hahfos come to wonder if it might’ve been more than the one box of gold up there in the hills, so he went back with a bunch of men with shovels and pickaxes and all. And the very first swing of a pick hit metal, Sir Djim. Won’t nobody ever know, probably, the whens and wheres and hows of it all, but it was hundreds of them same kinda boxes, some of them not a full foot under the ground.”

“All of them full of gold?” queried Djim Bohluh.

“Aw, no,” replied Guhntuh with a shake of his head. “No, lots and lots of them had nothing inside but kinds of paper with writing and funny-looking pictures and all on them. But there was more gold—some in bars, some in gold coins and a whole lot in jewelry, jewelry like you never seen afore, too. And there was boxes full of smaller boxes and bags of cut jewels, unmounted, and pearls and opals. There was boxes of silver bars and coins, too, as well as some bigger boxes plumb full of old books from more’n a thousand years ago. At least, that’s what the High Lord said—he wrote back in a letter to the archduke, after he’d done boxed up all them books and papers and sent them all up to Kehnooryos Atheenahs. He said too a lots of them papers was a kind of money they used back then in place of gold and silver, that or pieces of paper that said the fellers that had it owned part of manufactories and trading companies and suchlike.

“The High Lord Milo, he went on to say that some them books had been real rare and hard to come by even way back then, and he thanked the archduke over and over for getting them all up to him.”

“The ahrkeethoheeks kept it awl, aside from whut he sent up to Kehnooryos Atheenahs?” asked Bohluh. “No friggin’ wonduh he can live like he does!”

“No such thing!” snorted Guhntuh. “I doubt me if Archduke Hahfos kept a tenth part of whatall he found, valuewise. That palace he had built and lives in now, that ain’t his, Sir Djim. In time that’ll be the palace of Kogh Taishyuhn and the other nahkhahrahs after him. Then the archduke, he’ll move up to a smaller place—the House of the Golden Bear—he has up in the hills, built on the spot where he met her ladyship and kilt the bear and found the treasure buried.

“A whole lots of that treasure has gone into the Ahrmehnee stahn —rebuilding villages, replacing livestock, dowering gals, enlarging and modernizing the Ahrmehnee forges what make that fine, light, strong mail, not to mention improving the few roads that was there to start and building new ones place of the tracks and trails, and all of it means work and hard-money wages for every swingin’ dick in the whole stahn who’d rather work than fight. Them few fire-eaters was left is a-ridin’ with us, you know.”

The officer paused long enough to rake one of the lumps of clay out from the bed of coals, crack it off the potato with a sharp rap of his knife pommel, then slice the tuber open to steam and cool enough to eat, while he continued his discourse.

“You can believe it won’t none of his lordship’s doing, way he’s come to live and dress and eat and all, not a bit of it. It was her ladyship won him over to acting the part of the rich, powerful, respected man what he is. I was there through it all and I can tell you the archduke, he was as damned discomforted as a hog in a scaleshirt for some little time, but her ladyship got her way, like she allus does, mostly. And talk in the villages is his lordship’ll be the next nahkhahrah, once old Kogh Taishyuhn dies.”

“But the Ahrkeethoheeks is of a Kindred house. He’s no damn Ahrmehnee,” stated Djim Bohluh flatly.

Guhntuh just nodded. “Yes, but the Ahrmehnee say anybody marries a Ahrmehnee is a Ahrmehnee because of it, you see, and that means his lordship is a Bahrohnyuhn. Then, too, he was formally adopted into the Taishyuhns by the nahkhahrah on account of saving her ladyship by killing that bear, see? So come down to it, he’s more of a Ahrmehnee than most borned Ahrmehnees, being of two tribes and all. All the dehrehbehs likes him, so he’ll likely be the next nahkhahrah, for sure. Steel keep him, he’s some kinda first-class gent, he is!”

“The bastard carries himself well,” thought General Jay Corbett, as he sat his mule facing Earl Devernee on his horse, “for all he’s clearly scared shitless of our weapons. Hell, in his place I’d be jelly-kneed, too—after all, what chance have even the best-armed, best-trained schiltron of pikemen against rifles and hand grenades, not to even mention machine guns and mortars? Few as we are, he seems to know that we could go through his glen like Sherman went through Georgia.”

Aloud, he said, “Mr. Devernee, I have no designs upon you, your people or your lands; all that I want is the unharmed persons of Dr. Erica Arenstein and her party delivered to my camp. So why didn’t you just bring her and them out here with you? That would have been the simplest thing to do.”

Earl Devernee was indeed terrified, as Corbett had sensed, but for his people, not for himself. Sight of what the aliens’ horrifying weapons of war had done to that massive gate, to those sturdy, stonework towers flanking it, in a bare eyeblink of elapsed time had sent cold sweat trickling the length of his spine, set his nape hairs all a-prickle. That sinister sight had confirmed in his mind the uselessness of trying to fight with two understrength reserve regiments of pikemen and a bare handful of light cavalrymen.

He had been of a mind to insist that the woman and her minions stay imprisoned in the glen instead of sending them on to the brigadier, and now he wished he had done just that. He would have too, had he not still felt guilty for his act of family favoritism and the bloody, expensive carnage that that act had engendered at the battle.

“You might have sent that message with a herald, sir, before you destroyed my gate and one of my towers,” he said to Corbett in reply. “Even in warfare, there are certain courtesies should be observed and honored.”

“Would you have delivered up those prisoners had I done as you suggest, Mr. Devernee?” demanded Corbett.

The earl shrugged. “Not immediately, probably, but the way would have been opened for some sort of negotiations. Nor would there now be dead and wounded men to care for or bury.”

“The way is opened now for far more than negotiation,” Jay Corbett stated with the cold grin of a winter wolf. “And if Dr. Arenstein and the others aren’t in my camp, alive and well, by sunup tomorrow, Mr. Devernee, my men and I are going to come in there and take them, and if that means the killing of every fighting man you own, we’ll do that too. Am I understood, Mr. Devernee?”

“Your intentions could not be more clearly stated, sir,” affirmed the earl solemnly. “But if these men in evidence hereabouts are all that you number, then you might have a care, lest you and they bite off a bit more than all of you can easily chew. Besides, the prisoners are no longer in the glen.”

“If you’ve killed them ...” began Corbett, menacingly.