Robert Adams - Bili the Axe

“My lady… ?” breathed Gy hesitantly.

A smile flitted across her dark-red lips. “Fear you not to speak, to interrupt me if your words have bearing. Man-Gy. We, the Maidens of the Silver Lady, never knew or practiced very much of rank; all proven warriors were with us of equal standing, none inherently greater or lesser. Amongst the host of other differing newnesses, I have found such servility by stark fighters most difficult to understand and accept. But Dook Bili attests that such is necessary to the maintenance of discipline and order, so I give the appearance of adherence… in public, at least.

“But we two are not in public, now, Man-Gy. You are a well-proven warrior; I have seen you fight more than once. Too, we have much in common, so speak.”.

“My lady, Pah-Elmuh told me several times that something deep within Meeree’s mind was… was nullifying the effects of his healing of her arm. Could… could hate do such a thing?”

Rahksahnah sighed. “Possibly, Man-Gy. No, probably. Hate can be very powerful, and it is a sword of two edges and no hilt—it cuts the wielder as deeply, often, as it wounds her at whom it is wielded, or so said the Wise Women of the Hold. Yes, her soul-deep hate it probably was that obstructed the healing of Pah-Elmuh from poor Meerec’s arm.

“Her hate is truly a sickness, for she hates not just Dook Bili and me, but every sound woman and man in the entire squadron, in the glen, in all this world. She hates even our Silver Lady, the Goddess, hurls terrible blasphemies against Her and Her sacred Will. She swears that the day will come when she will see Dook Bili’s blood, and mine, and will impale our little babe on her spear before our dying eyes.”

Gy shook his head forcefully. “No man or woman will harm you or the duke or your noble son, my lady, not even Meeree, not while still Gy Ynstyr lives and breathes! I do now forswear.”

With his blanket roll firmly lashed and the ends tied for carrying down to the stables, Gy similarly rolled and secured his fine cloak, then slipped his padded jerkin over his head and rapidly did up the points along each side. They would all ride forth armed, but most of the armor for men, women and horses would remain on the pack saddles until and if it should be found needful to don the hot, uncomfortable stuff.

Around his slim waist he clasped his dagger belt, then slipped his sheathed dirk into the frog and shrugged into his wide baldric. When his saber was securely buckled on, slung high, for walking, he looped the braided, red-dyed lanyard of his bugle over his left shoulder so that the instrument hung within easy reach of his right hand.

Throughout all of his packing, Meeree had breathed not a single word to him, had grunted curses only when the chancy grip of her left hand had caused the honestone to slip and so interrupt the established rhythm of her task.

When Gy had shouldered his packed saddlebags and the rolls, he picked up his helmet from the strawtick mattress that had been his bed and, turning, spoke his first words of this day of departure to Meeree.

“I must leave now, Meeree. Soon it will be dawn. I wish… may you bide well until we meet again.”

She dropped the stone from the fingers—now suddenly all aquiver—of her left hand, but clenched the haft of the axe so fiercely that the knuckles of her right hand stood out as white as virgin snow. The dark eyes that looked up at him were no longer dull with sullenness, but were become bright and sparkling with purest malice.

“You fear to tell me what you truly wish, eh, cowardly man-thing? Well, Meeree fears not any woman or man and so says as she wishes to say always. Meeree wishes you a slow and exceedingly painful death in the north, you and all of the rest… but, no, not all. Meeree wants the killing of your precious, woman-stealing Dook Bili and his new brood mare, that fickle sow Rahksahnah, all to herself.

“Now go, you stupid, sireless curdog! Get out of Meeree’s sight before you feel the bite of her axe!”

With a deep sigh and a wordless shake of his head, Gy stepped through the doorway and closed the wooden portal behind him. But before he could lift his hand from the iron ring, the rough boards shuddered as if struck by a ram and, slicing its way completely through the tough, age-seasoned old oak, the bright, glittering edge of Meeree’s crescent axe burst out to reflect the flames of the torch in the nearby wall sconce.

Below, in the stables that took up the entire ground floor of the massive old tower keep, Gy and the two assistant-orderlies—like him, both Middle Kingdoms Freefighters, Ooehl Abuht and Zanbehm Kawluh—joined forces to rapidly saddle and equip their own mounts, then do the like for first the riding mounts, then the warhorses of Duke Bili and his lady.

While the mounted assistants held the bridles of the four saddled horses, Gy entered the area wherein the pack ponies were picketed, paced down the long rows with his torch held high and selected three of the larger, stronger-looking ones, then waited while hostlers removed his selections from the lines, bridled them and fitted on the special pack saddles used to transport armor and weapons. Then he, too, mounted and led the way up to Sandee’s Cot, its environs now cluttered with traveling gear, carefully wrapped items of armor and spare weapons.

The sprawling residence blazed with light and a hubbub of voices emanated from the main hall, wherein the noblemen and officers were enjoying a predawn breakfast.

After setting his assistants to the job of packing the three big ponies, Gy entered the building to seek Duke Bili.

Even at this, the eleventh hour, Count Steev of Sandee still was fuming. Not that said fuming did or could accomplish anything other than to serve as a vent for his feelings, for such a man as he neither could nor would disobey a royal order, the will of his sovran.

“Now, dammit, Bili, if I’m truly the Count of Sandee, it’s me should have the right to say who rides out of here for the north and who doesn’t. Don’t you possess that right on your own lands, back east?”

Having been hard by the old count for most of a year— riding knee to knee and often fighting beside him on the Ganik campaign of last year, as well as using his glen and his home as base and headquarters for the lowland squadron— Bili and all of his officers had come to like, admire and deeply respect the gruff, bluff, outspoken old warrior. Although he admitted to over sixty winters, he had campaigned as hard as any man or woman of a third his years. He knew the lay of the lands surrounding his glen as thoroughly as he knew the scar-seamed, liver-spotted backs of his hard, square hands, and that deep knowledge had right often been of immeasurable aid in flushing out the rabid packs of outlaw Ganik raiders.

But Bili and his officers all also knew and admitted to themselves and each other that which the elderly count either did not realize or, more likely, refused to admit to himself— his very age and the exceedingly hard life he had led for almost all of those sixty-odd years were at long last beginning to catch up to him, a fact which the keen-eyed and -eared Prince Byruhn had noted during his brief midwinter visit.

There had been many, many days during the winter just past when the old count’s knee joints had been so stiff and swollen that he barely could hobble about, all the while grinding his worn, yellow teeth in agony. Even the simple act of mounting a horse had been an impossibility. It had been for this reason, principally, that the decree had come down from King’s Rest Mountain that, in this time of dire crisis for the kingdom, the king felt that Count Steev could better serve him and the interests of the kingdom by remaining in his glen and holding it securely for the Crown of New Kuhmbuhluhn. Although the bearer of the message had been one of Prince Byruhn’s noblemen, the beribboned document itself had been signed in the bold scrawl of his father, the king, and impressed with the royal cipher.