Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

“Well, dammit, man, this is no time to quibble in regard to legal niceties,” snapped Bili peevishly. “If the main line be done, surely there are cousins, cousins-german, bastards—any degree of kinship will do at this point in time. You are going to need a single, strong authority in the wake of this Skohshun business and in getting the kingdom reorganized, are you to escape rebellions and civil war.”

“There be no way we’ll get that or eke anything approaching it,” remarked young Count Mak Kahnuh, “not out of the remaining kin of the House of Mahrloh, lord duke. With the sole exceptions of you and Pah-Elmuh, everyone in this room is of some distant blood kinship to the former royal house, but we’re none of us of close enough kin to lodge the claim of one above that of the others. That would be the surest road to unrest within the kingdom, to the very real possibility of a full-scale rebellion right here in this still-beleaguered city, Skohshuns or no Skohshuns. As regards bastards, there are none, in fact.”

“Oh, come, come, now, Count Mak,” said Bili, “Prince—rather, King—Byruhn was a very lusty man. He had at least one mistress he kept at Sandee’s Cot—that was common knowledge, there. Surely, he had many more over the years, here, there and elsewhere throughout the kingdom.”

Archcount Sir Daifid sighed. “At least a score and a half that come to my mind immediately, both of common and of noble antecedents; young Prince Byruhn was intensely masculine and he remained so throughout his life. But, your grace, he never, ever sired offspring; no single one of his many and legion bedmates was ever known to conceive of his seed, and that is fact.”

“Well, then,” Bili pressed on, “what about his nephew, Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht? Surely the old king, King Mahrtuhn, had seen to it that his chosen heir had wed and bred.”

The old archcount sighed once again, even more deeply. “Oh, yes, the young prince had been wed, twice, in fact. His first wife—my own little granddaughter, Mahrsha—died of a broken neck when her horse fell on a hunt, only six months a bride. His second wife—a younger sister of Sir Yoo Folsom—lived for nine years without ever conceiving of him.”

“She still lives, then?” inquired Bili hopefully.

“No,” replied the archcount in a low, embarrassed tone. “Her majesty died by her own hand some years agone.”

“And as well for everyone that she did, too,” snapped the eldest of the councilors, Duke Klyv Wahrtuhn. “That would’ve been a sticky, stinking business, helpful to none and exceeding hurtful to full many, had she not belatedly recalled the constraints of honor and duty to her house and her class.”

“Now just a minute, your grace!” a red-faced and obviously riled Count Djohsehf Brahk, Sir Yoo Folsom’s overlord, stood and almost shouted. “Adultery was never proven, and you know it! Both poor little Dahna and your ne’er-do-well nephew were dead before any of us knew anything had occurred. But I’m more than inclined to believe the letter she penned before she used the dagger. She was always an honorable woman—I’d known her from very infancy.”

Archcount Sir Daifid, virtually radiating hostility and bloodlust, shoved back his own chair to stand leaning across the broad table and shaking a bony fist at the younger man. “Son of a shit-eating bitch,” he snarled, “you’ve accused my late, lamented nephew of the foul crime of rape over and over again. I’d have long since had your wormy guts for garters, had I thought for one minute that any sane nobleman of this kingdom would believe, could believe you or your false and utterly baseless calumnies of the dead. But everyone who is anyone in New Kuhmbuhluhn knows the truth—your poor little Dahna was precious little less than an arrant whore!”

Three other councilors had arisen and were adding their shouted threats and insults to the cacophony when Bili grasped the hilt of the sword of state and brought the flat of the blade crashing down upon the tabletop—once, twice, thrice. “ Sit down, and shut up, ” he barked, when he had gained their attention, adding, in a tone that dripped sarcasm, “Gentlemen!

“Please understand me and do not think for one minute that I am but voicing a false threat. There are deadly-serious matters to be here considered, now, this day, this hour, this minute, and it is we—all of us—who must consider and decide. For long weeks now I’ve sat in on your so-called meetings and I’ve seen far too many of them devolve into name-calling, insults of the basest orders and threats of maimings, death and blood feuds, as you all dredged up—for little cause or none at all—disagreements dating back years or generations. In the current crisis, I’ll no longer tolerate such childish, selfish conduct from you, be clear on that point!

“Now, I am not your ruler, thanks be to Sun, Wind and Sacred Steel; were I, I much fear me that I would be inclined to clap you all in irons and incarcerate you somewhere back in that warren carved out of King’s Rest Mountain, then choose me a set of royal councilors who were more serious about their responsibilities toward me and the good of the kingdom.

“I have said that I will remain here with my squadron until the Skohshuns be put to flight, but if there is only one more outbreak of the disgraceful sort I’ve just witnessed here, I shall mount my people and ride out under a flag of truce. The Skohshuns are aware that me and mine are mercenaries, not Kuhmbuhluhners, and I have the word of their herald, Sir Djahn Makadahm, that our passage out of the city, the burk and the kingdom will not be in any degree disputed or hindered by their army.

“Now, whilst you gentlemen calmly and politely discuss the available options and alternatives of this matter of a new king, I shall be mindspeaking with Pah-Elmuh, and if you all lapse into yet another spate of threats and name-calling, you can figure upon working out your surrender to the Skohshuns alone.”

Abashed, never doubting for a single minute that the young commander meant every word he had spoken, that he and his squadron could and would ride out and leave the city and the kingdom to the will of fickle fate, all of the councilors resumed their seats and began to converse in low tones, one with the other.

“Now, Pah-Elmuh,” Bili mindspoke, “I will have the truth of this matter. From what you said upstairs, when we found your son, Oodehn, dead, I would imagine that you knew more of the probable identity of our night killer than you chose to tell me. I was obviously wrong—I had thought that I had your trust and your loyalty.”

“You had and you have, both, Lord Champion,” the Kleesahk beamed forcefully. “But ... ”

“Then why, Pah-Elmuh? Why did you not even so much as suggest to me the possibility of what we now know was fact?” Bili demanded, the gaze of his blue eyes boring relentlessly into the ovoid-pupiled, unhuman eyes of the hominid.

Pah-Elmuh sighed resignedly. “Because of loyalties that far antedated any other, newer ones, Lord Champion. Loyalties to the House of Mahrloh, the first true-men who treated my forebears as men, as equals, and did not hunt us or consider us to be just another variety of beast. Now that revered house is extinct and I much fear that ere too many more years go by, we Kleesahks will be extinct, as well.

“Know you now, Lord Champion, that poor King Byruhn was not the first of his house to be so grievously afflicted; it was a blight which surfaced in almost every generation at least once, but in the last two generations it seemed almost a universal plague of the blood of Mahrloh. King Mahrtuhn himself had it, but it was in far milder form, and with the help of my instructions to his brain he was able to successfully fight it to a life-long standstill quite early in his young manhood, it being an affliction that does not manifest itself until the victim becomes pubescent.