Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

Hornman Gy Ynstyn was sitting with a group of old Freefighter cronies around the fire before the tent of Sir Geros Lahvoheetos when oncoming hoofbeats were felt by them all long before they could hear them above the noise of the camp. Then there were shouts across on the northern bank of the brook, followed closely by splashings, and a dusty rider on a foam-flecked horse guided that stumbling beast close to the group of Freefighters.

Despite the mask of mud that copious sweat and trail dust had placed over his features, Gy still could recognize the drawn face of one of the squires of Count Yoo Folsom, so the hornman arose from his place and bore the wineskin they had been circulating over to the newcomer.

“Welcome, Master Pahrkuh. Here, take you a pull at this—you look like a wornout boot.”

Without a word, the horseman accepted the skin and poured a good pint down his working throat before stoppering it and gasping out, “Please, Hornman Ynstyn, I must speak with Duke Bili ... quickly ! After your column was well on the march, a patient of Pah-Elmuh’s, a Moon Maiden gone mad, escaped from his care, slew two hostlers, stole a horse and lied her way past the gate guards. Pah-Elmuh fears she means to harm his grace.”

All in a single movement, Bili rose to his knees, threw back the blankets and heaved a pillow at the assassin, shouting, “ Hold, now! ”

The trespasser ducked barely in time, but so close came the hard-flung cushion that it tore back the hood of the cloak to reveal the dusty-dirty face, dulled hair and wild eyes of Meeree, her lips twisted into a feral snarl. Even as Bili made to quit the bed, the lunatic hurled herself at him, her blade raised high for the stab.

Gy Ynstyn, running toward Bili’s pavilion, with the New Kuhmbuhluhn messenger at a fast walk behind him, heard Bili’s shout and increased his pace, at the same time drawing his long dirk and cursing himself for leaving his saber off this night. Bursting through the flaps of the ducal pavilion and then through the inner flaps that led into the bedchamber, he was unwilling witness to the climax of the tragedy.

Meeree, in her haste to flesh her blade, failed to watch her footing and tripped on an uneven spot in the carpet, and before she could regain her balance enough to strike at the naked, unarmed man on the bed, Rahksahnah had arisen to block her way, pity on her face and one hand extended toward the murderous madwoman.

“Meeree, my Meeree!” Rahksahnah forced her voice to calmness and low, soothing tones. “Meeree, give me the knife, please.”

“No!” snapped Meeree. “He must be killed. He has taken you from me, led you into dark, evil practices. He would prevent us from a new beginning, a proper, natural beginning, a new hold, so I must kill him!”

“Then you must kill me first, Meeree,” said Rahksahnah, softly and simply.

“Then die, you faithless, perverted bitch!” shrieked Meeree, plunging her blade to the very hilt into the full breast of her once lover. “You— gaaarrrgghh! ” She shrieked once more and flinched forward across the body of her victim, as her battlemate, Hornman Gy Ynstyn—his face bathed with his rueful tears—buried his sharp dirk in her back.

Furiously, Bili pushed and shoved the cloaked figure from off Rahksahnah and the bed, but Meeree was not yet dead, and she held the hilt of her weapon tight-clenched, so the blade came out from her victim with an ugly, sucking sound, followed by a gush of blood, almost black in the dim lamplight.

Gy Ynstyn held Meeree’s body in his arms, weeping, sobbing unashamedly. “Oh, my poor, dear Meeree, I’m sorry, my love, but ... but I had to. Can’t you see that? I truly love you, but I am Duke Bili’s sworn man.”

“Man-Gy ... Gy?” The voice was little better than a whisper, and a trickle of blood began to trace through the dust from onecorner of Meeree’s mouth. She made as if to snuggle against his body, murmuring almost imperceptibly, “Good man ... Man-Gy. You please ... Meeree, much please Meeree. But tired ... sleep now.”

Meeree’s body became limp, heavy, the knife slipped from her hand, the last breath left her body along with her life. Gy crouched there, still hugging her body to his chest, still sobbing out his explanations for killing her.

The pavilion was fast filling up with men and women, but neither Bili nor Gy noticed any of them. Rahksahnah had spoken but briefly before she died. “My Bili, my poor Bili. Be good I would tell you to our little ones, but no need is, you could not be other ... always good, kind, patient, loving. Send me to Home of Wind, your chosen god ... will wait for you there ...” And she was gone.

The eastern Karaleenos sky was a bright, deep red with dawn—Sacred Sun-birth—bare minutes away. Old Prince Bili Morguhn of Karaleenos opened his eyes to see the also elderly Zahrtohgahn physician, Master Ahkmehd, seated on the edge of the great-bed, his back curved and his chin with its wispy, white beard sunk onto his bony chest.

“Ahkmehd ... old friend?” Bili’s voice croaked, sounding strange and unreal to his ears.

With a start, the dark-brown-skinned man raised his head. “My lord Bili ... you are in pain?”

Bili chuckled humorlessly. “When have I not been in pain, of one sort or another? But I mean to be shortly shut of all of it. Where is the Undying High Lord Milo?”

“I am here, Bili.” The deep voice came from a dark corner of the large chamber, then a chair squeaked and Bili’s overlord moved into the light.

“My lord, tell me true,” croaked Bili. “How long until sunrise?”

The dark-haired man paced to the window and twitched aside one edge of the heavy draperies, then said, “Two, maybe three minutes, Bili. Why?”

“I was born with the birth of Sacred Sun, my lord. I would die then, too. Please, open the drapes. And where ... where is my axe? Please, my lord, put it in my hands.”

With his blotched and sinewy old right hand once more gripping—but most feebly, now—the worn, familiar haft of the ancient, dusty axe, Bili closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again and fixed his gaze upon the High Lord, this man whose appearance had never changed in the eighty years that Bili Morguhn had known him and served him.

“I ... I have always striven to serve you ... Confederation ... well, my lord ... best of my abilities ...” The waves of agony from his terribly infected wounds now were breaking through the narcotic dikes and racking his dying body.

“None, no one, man or woman or horse or prairiecat or Ork, ever has served me and our Confederation so long and well and faithfully as did you, Bili of Morguhn,” stated Milo. “I know not when or where or how I ever can find your like. You often have been the very salvation of all for which I have worked over the long centuries.”

“When you and Con ... federation need ... look for Bili ... Bili the Axe ... be there.

“Now, please, my ... lord,” Bili gasped as the rising of Sacred Sun bathed his pain-twisted face in its holy, golden rays, “Pain too ... too much, now. Your ... dirk. Use it!”

Milo turned to the physician, who stood by weeping in his helpless frustration, and the other man who had come out of the shadowed corner of the room, “You both heard?”

At their nods, Milo drew his centuries-old Horseclans dirk, leaned over Bili’s body and placed the point carefully, then, with a single, powerful thrust, drove it through the old man’s heart.

Bili hardly noticed the pain of the stab, so great was the other, older pain. He was aware, briefly, of a dim mutter of voices, growing ever dimmer. The bright sunlight, too, was growing dimmer, darkening, darkening. Dark.

A sound wakened him, a sound much like the snort of a horse. He did not open his eyes, fearing lest any movement no matter how slight bring back the nauseating waves of agony, but when something, some force, strongly nudged at his right side, almost rolling him over onto the infected arm and leg. his eyes snapped open. Then his mouth gaped.