Robert Adams - Bili the Axe

Nonetheless, old Count Steev had taken it hard. Like an aged warhorse, he heard the trumpet blare and he longed to gallop out to its brazen summons. But for all that he felt himself to be unjustly hobbled and penned, he was a loyal New Kuhmbuhluhner from top to bottom and the habit of firm obedience was too strong a fetter to break. He obeyed… but no one had ever called grumbling disloyalty.

The question he now put to Bili was the same that he had asked of every man of hereditary rank in the lowland squadron one or more times since the unsavory directive had first arrived, so Bili was just as glad, upon seeing Gy approach the dais from the direction of the outer door, to forestall the need to again carefully frame an answer.

“Your pardon, Sir Steev, but I needs must have immediate words with my hornman yonder.”

Count Sandee nodded. “Name’s Gy, isn’t it? Yes, Gy. He’s a singularly brave lad, as I recall. Were he one of mine own, his spurs would be gilt, long since. You’re sure to take losses in the north, losses of all ranks and standings; yon’s a fine replacement, say I.”

As Bili pushed back his chair and arose from the board, the old man turned to one of the Ahrmehnee lieutenants, saying, “Vahk, good friend, you were there that day last summer when, with my good sword, I clove that Ganik bastard to the very teeth, right through his brass helm. So what say you—is a man who still can do such too old to ride to war?”

In her place beside Bili’s now-empty chair, Rahksahnah was glad that Count Sandee had chosen Vahk Soormehlyuhn as his sounding board upon Bili’s departure. Like the others, the warrior part of her respected the old man’s ferocity in close combat, his sagacity in command, but there was more than this. There was the infant son, Djef Morguhn, she had borne to Bili and must so shortly leave behind in this glen for who knew how long.

Steev, Count Sandee, had been full with pride to entertain, to serve beside, a duke through the Ganik campaign; but his pride could only be described as fierce that that same duke’s firstborn son had first seen light in Sandee’s Cot. He had showered all sorts of valuable and sometimes ridiculous gifts upon the small morsel of humanity—everything from a bigboned colt out of his own destrier’s get to a tiny but very sharp bejeweled dagger in a sheath of purest gold.

Therefore, although she grieved for and with him, the war leader of the Maidens of the Moon was at the same time very glad that Sir Steev would remain in command of the glen. Anyone or anything that threatened her little son would have first to pass the savage old warrior, and even she, at less than a third of his age, knew that she would think twice before she set herself against the old but still deadly fighting machine that was Sir Steev of Sandee.

Besides, she knew from personal experience that there was no answer to the posed questions really satisfactory to the old nobleman. When, some weeks back, the other Ahrmehnee lieutenant, Vahrtahn Panosyuhn—who was almost ten years the count’s elder—remarked in answer to the perennial query that the king showed a distinct dearth of judgment to force an old and wise and valiant warrior into an unwanted and unwonted retirement from active campaigning, Sir Steev immediately rose to the defense of his sovran.

“ Der Vahrtahn, had a New Kuhmbuhluhner or even one of the lowlanders so impugned the sagacity of my king, Steel be with him, that man would shortly be facing me at swords’ points. But you, you are an Ahrmehnee; I know that your customs differ vastly and that you never have had a king or any real nobles.

“But know you now, it is the sworn—nay, the inborn— duty of an honest and honorable subject of whatever rank to obey the dictates of his sovran and of those placed in positions of authority by his sovran. While I do not feel my sovran to be right in this instance, right or wrong, he still is my liege lord and I will obey, will see to it that those under me obey his decrees so long as breath remains within me.”

Rahksahnah had, that day, seen old Vahrtahn walk away shaking his white-haired head in bewilderment. Blind obedience to the will of any mortal man was not a survival trait and thus was utterly foreign to the nature of the Ahrmehnee, who individually and racially were nothing if not survivors.

* * *

The light drizzle which had commenced at about midnight continued on, and because of it dawn was very late in its appearance, though then it was only a bare lightening of the misty gray. And regardless of this natural respite, still was the column more than two more hours late in having the ponderous gate gapped enough for the vanguard to commence a negotiation of the narrow, twisting defile that led out of the safe-glen called Sandee’s Cot.

The big man of twenty winters called Bili the Axe—Bili, Thoheeks and Chief of Clan Morguhn, Knight of the Blue Bear of Harzburk, commander of the two hundred-odd men and women making up the Lowlander Squadron of the Army of the King of New Kuhmbuhluhn—cursed and snarled and fretted at the delays—one or two of them major, but mostly minor and all completely unavoidable, in any case—even while he reflected that he had never in all his six or seven years of soldiering known or heard of a movement of a body of troops that proceeded on time and in the order preplanned, not that such rationalizations helped his temper.

Even ahead of the vanguards, the huge prairiecat Whitetip had leaped easily to the ground from the stone archway over the gates and now was at the place where the trailside fortifications ended, mindspeaking back to all of those whose minds could range him his personal reassurance that the way was clear, with no foemen to contest it.

Where two cats had served through the Ganik campaign, only the big male would accompany the march to the north. There were wet nurses in the glen for human babies, but none for kittens of such size as the litter that the female, Stealth, had so recently thrown. Therefore, she would stay behind to nurse and care for them through their weaning. But Bili had promised the bitterly disappointed young cat that should this present campaign spill over into another year, Stealth and her brood could certainly make their way north and join him and the rest of the squadron. He and Rahksahnah also had set the nursing queen a task within the glen—she was to guard the infant, Djef Morguhn, as zealously as she guarded her own get, being especially wary of the crippled Moon Maiden, Meeree.

Rahksahnah rode out with Bill’s staff in the main column, but Bili himself stood beside Sir Steev until the last of the lengthy pack train had exited the glen and Lieutenant Kahndoot was beginning to mount her rearguard troops to follow. Then he turned to bid a last farewell to that doughty old nobleman who had for so long been his host, his friend and his ofttimes adviser.

“Sir Steev, thank you again for all your host of kindnesses to me and to mine. I hope that when next I stand here, it will be that we have come back for our babes and our companions that we may ride back eastward. But should this Skohshuns matter be too tough a nut to crack in one season, will you allow us yet another winter here with you in Sandee’s Cot?”

The count showed every worn tooth in a warm smile. “Aye, Sir Bili, and right gladly. Unless I hear aught otherwise, I shall watch for your banner in the autumn. And fear you not, none of you, for the safety of your babes, for so long as I can draw breath and swing sharp steel, they are safe.”

The boar bear burst from out a trailside copse and charged down the trail, moving as fast as a running man, his muzzle and bared teeth covered in bloody foam as red as his deep-sunk eyes. The point man’s mule, however, did not need the snarls of mindless fury to give warning, for the wind brought the dilated nostrils the deadly scent and the animal first reared, screaming, then bolted, unseating its rider and leaving him, stunned and helpless, directly in the path of the oncoming ursine fury.