Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

Moreover, the milk was twoleg milk, and that meant the availability of at least one young or infant twoleg, even easier, more vulnerable prey than a female. And its nose told it that all of this hot, tender flesh was just beyond the brightly lit place where stood the males with the long, sharp-pointed things of steel and wood. There were just too many of them to chance a rush at them.

But then, somewhere deep, deep down in a near-forgotten portion of its mind, there emerged the memory of another way, a secret way to safely pass those dangerous male twolegs and attain to the presence of its foreordained victims, its night’s kill and its much-needed meal. Turning about, it slunk back up the corridor, head and tail lowered, bound for a certain dimly remembered spot. Its stomach gnawed and growled and gurgled on, but the creature now knew that soon the organ would be stilled while digesting a full filling of tender, bloody flesh.

At the first sounds from the twins, the wet nurse had arisen, padded over to the hall door, lit a splinter from the wall torch outside that door, then closed it again, padded back over to light the lamp and taken up the infants. Sitting upon the sinfully soft bed that was hers so long as her milk lasted, she gave each little pale-pink mouth one of her brown, hair-fringed nipples and sat contentedly, rocking slightly on her ample rump and humming softly the strains of a folk dance of New Kuhmbuhluhn, while the babes filled their little bellies, sucking avidly at her engorged breasts.

A squeal of metal on long-unused metal startled her, and she looked in the direction of the sound in time to see a section of the old polished oaken paneling swing open and a huge, horrible, shaggy-furred beast stalk snarling from out the very wall of the chamber, the lamplight making hellish red coals of its eyes, deadly menace in its every movement.

In the brief moment before stark terror paralyzed her, she uttered a single, piercing scream, clutched her innocent charges close to her breast and stared helplessly at the slavering predator, now bare yards distant.

Between mouthfuls of venison steak and baked wild sweet potatoes, Counter Tremain had been telling of all that had happened with Erica Arenstein and the rest of them since Merle Bowley had left Skohshun Glen in search of more ammunition for the rifles. He had progressed to near the present time.

“I nevuh thought I’d come to whar I’d cheer fer a damn Kuhmbuhluhner, but them bastids is flat beatin’ the evuh-lovin’ shit out’n them Skohshun pricks! And they doin’ ’er ’thout evuh so much as comin’ out’n the dang city, too. And thet thar tears the assholes of them damn Skohshuns up suthin fierce, ’count of they knows they got mo’ mens then the Kuhmbuhluhners and they jest dyin’ fer to get ’em to come out an’ fight or to git in thet city after ’em, and the bugtits cain’ do neethuh one.

“Merle, you recolleck them thangs the fuckin’ Kuhmbuhluhners had whut would throw great big ole rocks awn to the main bunch camp fum three ridges away? Well, looks like them bastids is done dragged them friggin’ thangs clear up here, ’cause they got ’em a-hint the wall of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk and, night I lefted, they’d throwed fireballs big as a warhoss’s ass inta the Skohshun camp, set purt’ near the whole thang to fahr, then cuminceted a-throwin’ bunches of rocks awl ovuh the fuckin’ place so it looked like it wuz flat rainin’ rocks! So miny of the hosses and awl wuz eethuh gettin’ hurtid by them rocks or a-frahted by the fires, some Skohshun ossifuh, he grabbed him ever swinging dick he could find and set us to a-leadin’ the critters out’n the back gate. Well, I had mah ryfuhl crost of my back, ’cause we’d awl grabbed ’em and awl the othuh stuff of ours we could whin owuh tent cominceted to burn, so soon’s me and thet nice hoss was out’n thet friggin’ camp good, I jest jumped in thet saddle sumbody’d done not took awf’n him yet and then I made tracks ’crost thet plain, you bettuh b’lieve.

“It’uz two, three othuh bullies lawng of me to start out, but mah hoss wuz a lot faster’n they mules and I cain’ say whut happund to ’em.

“Well, I rid souf fer near a week, a-ridin’ by nahts and a-layin’ up in the days, but I had to move slow, ’count of the bugtit Skohshuns out lookin’ fer they cows whut awl stampeded the same naht I skeedaddled, but I fin’ly got to the dang mountins.But them mountins is plumb full of mo’ damn sojuhs—Kuhmbuhluhners, Ahrm’nees, eevuhn Moon Maiduhns. Aftuh the secun’ tahm they damn near caught me, this ole boy, he come back down awn the fuckin’ plain. Counter Tremain don’ wawnt no dang Ahrm’nee a-drankin’ beeuh out’n whu useta be his haid bones, thank you kin’ly.”

The riddle of the three missing Ganik bullies was solved a couple of days later, when Johnny Kilgore and Counter chanced across them camped in the woods and trying to decide what to do with their new-won freedom, where to go now that all of the Ganik outlaw bunches had been dispersed or driven out of New Kuhmbuhluhn.

Corbett simply added them to his command as scouts, under the command of Skinhead Johnny Kilgore and Merle Bowley.

Ravenous as he was, the creature was distracted by the excited voices of men, the poundings of fists and pike butts on the door—which the wet nurse had, as instructed, carefully bolted, after lighting her splint from the wall sconce. Then there was another shriek of a twoleg female from close behind him, whereupon the attacks on the door redoubled, intensified.

Rahksahnah had been awakened from a light sleep by the single scream of the wet nurse. Scrambling across the width of the great-bed, she padded over the thick carpets to the door between the chambers. She opened it and took but a single step into the smaller room.

The wet nurse, nude to the waist, her brown hair disordered, was crouched far back in the bed alcove, her dimpled arms pressing the nursing twins tightly against her body, her brown eyes wide and bulging in an excess of terror, her mouth wide, too, but only a rasping whine emanating from it.

Rahksahnah screamed, even while her mind beamed out a frantic message, “ Bili, it is here, the killer wolf is here, in our suite, stalking the nurse and our children!”

Bili had been meditating yet another of those increasingly common, increasingly petty disputes in the royal council, when the telepathic summons reached him. His face suddenly went as white as curds. Springing to his feet so violently that he sent the heavy canopied armchair crashing over backward, his big hand grasped the only available weapon—the heavy, ancient, Royal Kuhmbuhluhn sword of state, which always lay before the king’s chair on the council table during any meeting, whether or not the monarch himself was present.

The sword had once, long, long ago, been the battle brand of a king, but now the blade was devoid of any edges and had, moreover, been inletted for the most of the blade length with designs and lettering inset in gold and silver. But to Bili it was simply a weapon there in a time of need, and it did at least have a good point.

As he half-ran toward the door, he shouted to the councilors, “Gentleman, the killer wolf has somehow got into my suite and is threatening my wife and children. Those of you with arms and the guts, follow me.”

Unlike the peasant wet nurse, Rahksahnah was not the sort of woman to scream once and freeze, shuddering and staring in the face of impending doom. Scioness of a warrior race, a stark, veteran warrior, herself, she backed into the larger chamber. There she found by memory and feel the rack whereon hung her panoply and drew her oiled and gleaming saber from its scabbard with the one hand, while shaking a long, wide-bladed dirk out of its case with the other. Then the still-naked but now well-armed young mother raced back to the defense of her young and the helpless peasant girl.