Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

“You mean to leave a force, then, to hold this entryway to Skohshun Glen, general?” inquired the earl, with a worried frown.

“No, Mr. Devernee,” replied Corbett. “I have already made my preparations and I will shortly blow down the cliffs on either side of that narrowest section of the entryway. By the time you and your people have cleared it sufficiently to ride a horse through it, my business with your field army should be over and done and I should be marching back south with Dr. Arenstein.

“I reiterate, sir, I greatly admire you and your people and I wish you and them success in all endeavors—save those that bear upon me and mine—so please do not consider the thing I now must do as a hostile act, for it is not; rather, it is a military expedient, a necessary act of bloodless destruction. Do you understand me, Mr. Devernee?”

The earl sighed and smiled wanly. “Yes, General Corbett, I do; I truly do understand you, more, I think, than you understand me. I have learned much of you, you know, in conversations with your officers, notably Colonel Gumpner. I deeply regret that we two are not, cannot be, allies, for I think we were cut of the selfsame bolt of the cloth of honor.

“You have done and will do that which you feel you must for the welfare of those you rule. I have done and will assuredly do exactly the same, as God wills me the strength to do it. I am not and have never been a soldier, a fighter, and precious few of my forefathers have been, for we are the civil rulers of the Skohshun people. But I have lived with and among soldiers for all my days. I have seen the good and the bad, the brave and the cowardly, the competent and the incompetent, the careful plodders and the glory-hunters, and I have learned—I pray God—to winnow the grain from the chaff.

“I judge you to be a superlative officer, general, an officer who demands much from his subordinates, but even more from himself. You probably get everything you ask from your officers and other ranks, too, general, for one and all they love and worship you to a degree that is almost sacrilegious. They will allow you to drive them cruel hard, but only because they know that you drive yourself even harder, that you return their love and that their individual and collective welfare is paramount in your mind and your decisions.

“My late brother-in-law, Sir Edmund Grey—God keep his gallant soul!—was a man much like you, and his loss was a bitter cruel one to endure. But at least poof Ed left a fine son who has already, at the age of only a bit over fourteen years, brought added luster to his distinguished name and house.”

“Yes,” Corbett nodded, “Ensign Grey served as my guide in my search of the glen. He is indeed a fine young man, and any parent would be proud of him.

“But, now, Mr. Devernee, we must be on our way, shortly. You and your retainers please exercise due haste in getting back, well back, into the glen. Get those soldiers off the lines of cliffs, for I well know just how tricky rockslides can be, and the slide that my devices precipitate may well result in sympathetic slides all along those cliffs. Also, you’d be well advised to keep your people out of that entryway for at least a day, for rocks may continue to fall at odd intervals for some time.”

As young Thoheeks Bili of Morguhn sat planning out his sally against the Skohshuns, great, dark-gray banks of rainclouds were blowing down from the north. There were severe downpours three or four times that night and misty sprinkles in between, and the beefed-up patrols on the city streets and the members of the enlarged wall watches all cursed the chilly, unpleasant weather and scoffed at the reasons for their being forced to bide out in it.

But, for whatever reason or reasons, the monster wolf was not seen, nor did it kill or feed within the burk of New Kuhmbuhluhn that night. Bright and early on the next morning, armed, armored search parties of men and Kleesahks led by Bili, Captain Fil Tyluh, Acting Captain Frehd Brakit, Vlahkos Kahmruhn, the Vahrohneeskos Gneedos Kahmruhn, Sir Yoo Folsom, Lieutenants Roopuht and Kahndoot—both gritty-eyed from lack of sleep but keen still to help put paid to the account of the bestial trespasser—Mikos of Eeahnopolis, Tsimbos of Ahnpolis and several Kuhmbuhluhn noble officers all fanned out through the multileveled galleries and chambers and winding corridors of the honeycombed mountain behind the palace and keep, lighting the way with torches and lamps and bull’s-eye lanthorns.

But they found no wolf, nor any sign of one, old or recent. They found a few stoats, semidomesticated ones whose ancestors had been deliberately released there to retard the proliferation of rats, mice and similar vermin among the stores in the magazines. They chanced across a long-forgotten chamber packed with pipes and casks and kegs of very old and very potent wines. They found other antique artifacts, some of them as old as the kingdom, or so the Kleesahks attested. But they could not discover even so much as the bare scent of their quarry, so with the sally scheduled for the night of this day, Bili called off the search and the various parties made their respective ways back to the palace.

It was not until on their return they reached the spot where keep abutted palace that Whitetip mindspoke Bili. “The creature was here, cat brother, perhaps a day ago, He left his scent there, on the angle of the wall, as any dog or jackal or wolf would do.”

Bending close to the indicated section of stonework, even Bili’s far less sensitive nose could detect the rank odor of animal urine ... and he resisted the impulse to rub at his flesh to lay the goosebumps, for just here the narrow stairway led upward into the wing of the Kleesahks and the chamber wherin lay the helpless, comatose King Byruhn; downward, three flights of stairs would deliver the person or the thing which descended them only bare yards from the suite which now housed him, the infant twins and Rahksahnah.

“You are certain that this mark is that old, brother?” he beamed to his big, furry companion. “It was not done last night?”

The cat’s beaming bore a touch of impatience. “You sniffed at it yourself—did that smell like a recent marking to you?”

Bili sighed. “Brother, you have again misremembered, we twolegs do not have such keen noses as do you and the Kleesahks.* I can smell that the spot has been pissed upon, but that is all that my nose tells me of it.”

“I am sorry, cat brother,” apologized the prairiecat, “but so well developed is your mind that I sometimes forget how retarded are others of your senses. Yes, I am indeed certain that this is not fresh scent. It is at least one day old, maybe even two.”

Bili nodded to himself. “Then it surely must be denning up back there in the caverns, whether we found traces of it or not.”

The cat wrinkled his nose, then suddenly dropped onto his haunches and began to scratch vigorously at his neck with one hind paw, mindspeaking all the while, “Unless it is denning here, in the keep or the palace, cat brother.”

“Then why have you not smelled it out long ago?” Bili beamed inquiringly.

Reversing paws, Whitetip went savagely at the other side of his thick, muscular neck, eyes closed to mere slits. “For a very good reason, cat brother: Before it began to kill in the town, I never before had sniffed a scent like this one, so if I had chanced across it here in the palace, I would most likely have dismissed it as just an unpleasant variant of the usual twoleg stench. For, as I have said before, there is a tone of twoleg stench to this scent although the cleanlier, animal scent predominates, Sacred Sun be thanked.”

“Well, after tonight’s sally,” decided Bili, “I mean to set you and some of the younger Kleesahks to prowl these corridors and stairways every night until the creature is apprehended, or tracked down and scotched for good and all.”