Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

The man returned, white-faced, with an empty bucket and a stuttered story that set Bili to rearming far faster than he had disarmed, all the while mindcalling certain of his officers and Whitetip, the prairiecat.

The palace kitchens were at ground level and, because of the ever-present danger of fires, were not really a part of the palace structure, being connected to the serving rooms and the commodious pantry below the great hall by stone-built tunnels, all of which could be easily and completely closed off to prevent the spread of flames but were usually left wide open to facilitate the comings and goings of the various staffs of meat cooks, bread bakers, pastry cooks, confectioners and such.

There was work of some sort in progress in the kitchens from sunrise to sunrise, and Bili had often remarked, only half jokingly, to his own staff that the senior palace chef, Master Blakmuhn, could probably give them all needed lessons in proper divisions of labor and available resources, so smoothly and effortlessly did his kitchens seem to operate.

But the kitchens into which Bili and his trailing, half-armed and -clothed staff stalked that night were a very study in disorganization, rather, a howling chaos, with Master Blakmuhn howling as loud as or louder than any. It required most ungentle shakings and slappings of the howling staff to obtain some quiet and a report, and, at last, Master Blakmuhn led them to a space between an outer wall and one of the immense ovens, where lay what was left of a baker’s apprentice.

Keeping his eyes averted from the incomplete body of the once-rotund young man, the chef told the horrifying tale to Bili and the rest. “Young Nehd had done been sent in here for to sweep up from the last bakin’. He be ... he was almightily afeered of eny kinda snake, so when he screamed thet oncet, we all jest laughed, thinkin’ he’d done seen one the big black rat snakes we keeps in the kitchens. But he dint come a-runnin’ out, he jest stayed and stayed and stayed, so I sent one of my journeymen, Hwil Dukhwai, to hurry him up. Then Hwil, he yells and comes a-runnin’ back to say it’s a big critter has kilt Nehd and is eatin’ him.

“Hwil has been knowed to joke and josh around a lot, but you could look at him and tell he was scairt plumb shitless of sumthin’. So I grabbed up a steel boar spit—there it lays, right there.” The chef gestured at a six-foot shaft of sharp-pointed steel smeared with blood for a good third of its length.

“And told everbody elst to git them a knife or a hatchet or suthin, and we all went back here and ... and, m’lord duke, it wuz plumb awful! I never seed any critter big as thet one. He jest layed there a-lookin’ at us, and a-snarlin’, even while he still was a-tearin’ off chunks of pore young Nehd and a-swallerin’ them. Them eyes was terrible, jest like fiery coals, they wuz.

“Then sumbody behint of me chucked a cleaver at the critter, hit it, too; the edge went deep and stuck in its neck. But the critter jest jumped up, shook the cleaver out and come dead straight at us ... at me! Well, in my time I done dressed out a plentynuff beasts for to know where you spose to spear them, so I crouchted down and jammed my spit square betwixt the critter’s front legs and he run right up on it. Well, I could tell he’d be right at me in a blinkin’, so I let go of the spit and jumpted back and slammed the door and shot the bolt, then we all went a-runnin’ like everythin. And that be all I knows, m’lord duke.”

With Whitetip still not returned from his part of the evening exercise, Bili and his armed gentlemen took up the hunt, but the bloodtrail ended halfway through the stone corridorway leading into the palace. More men were summoned and the ground level searched thoroughly, but the seriously wounded beast had again vanished.

Whitetip did not return for three full days. When at last he did, he was not alone. With him was a female of his species, this cat some half his weight and less than two thirds his height; her coloring was that of the native treecats and her cuspids were not much larger than theirs, mere shadows of the huge, cursive dentition of the male prairiecat.

“Chief Bili,” beamed Whitetip formally, “this retarded, deformed number-cat cannot remember simple orders for long, it would seem. She was told to remain with her cubs at the den of Count Sandee, yet I found her wandering the plain near to the mountains, trying to find a way to sneak past the Skohshuns.”

“We’ll get to Stealth in a minute,” Bili replied sternly. “Chief Whitetip mentions the obeying of orders, yet he chose to be gone for three days in utter disobedience of his orders. I had feared him slain by the long-long-spear-men.”

Leaving the big cat to squirm and stew for the nonce, Bili beamed to the newcomer, “Greet the Sacred Sun, Stealth. How is my cub, and your own?”

Her delight was obvious; she paced to Bili’s side and laid her neat head against his knee, purring her joy while beaming, “Greet the Scared Sun, chief of cat brothers. Your cub is well, though not yet ready to join mine own in hunting lizards and voles. As for your orders, all the other fighters you left at the den of Count Sandee were marching north to join you, so I asked the advice of Count Sandee himself, and that of my wise twoleg cat sister, Zainehp, and they both assured me that you would assuredly welcome even one more proven fighter, beset as you were by enemies. Were they wrong in their counsel, cat brother? Should I have stayed behind and let them ride to aid you without me?”

Bili ruffled the cat’s neck fur reassuringly. “No, my sister, they were not wrong; when the horn is winded, all charge as one. How many horsemen and Maidens ride with Count Sandee?”

“Almost as many hundreds as I have claws on all my paws, cat brother,” she replied.

“Sun, Wind and Sacred Steel!” beamed Bili in consternation. “Where did old Sir Steev come up with almost two thousand men?”

“Those of Count Sandee and the others of Kuhmbuhluhn are but half or less, cat brother. The others are strange Moon Maidens and strange Ahrmehnee, many, many of them, along with certain of your fighters I remember from the long march and the battle before the earth moved and the burning rocks set the forests all ablaze. They are led by a twoleg called Sir Geros.”

“Geros! Sir Geros Lahvoheetos? Here, in New Kuhmbuhluhn? But how? Why? No, no need for you to try to answer, Stealth. I think I know the answers to those questions, though what I ever did to deserve such a degree of loyalty ... I wonder just how many long months that brave, faithful man has ridden these mountains in search of me.”

He beamed again to Whitetip. “This will teach you, I hope, brother chief, not to jump to erroneous conclusions ... if that’s what you did, this time. Nor shall I inquire further as to the reason for your lengthy absence from your assigned duties. For now, your assignment is to see Stealth here well fed and furnished a comfortable place to rest until I am ready to again meet with you two. A Skohshun herald is due this day, and I must welcome him and entertain him. When I am free to do so, I’ll mindcall you. Dismiss.”

Thoheeks Bili’s mindcall, however, came far sooner than either the sulking Whitetip or Bili himself had expected. It was issued hard on the heels of the young commander’s initial meeting with the Skohshun herald, Sir Djahn Makadahm.

“Chief Whitetip,” Bili beamed urgently, “immediately it is dark enough to hide you, hie you down to the Skohshun camp and bring me back a report on the following: how badly the camp was damaged, if there are significantly fewer twolegs, and how many of those twolegs seem to be seriously hurt—that is, unable to easily stand or walk about without help.