Robert Adams - Bili the Axe

At the hour that should have been sunset at this season of the year, but was now but a deepening of the darkness, yet another meeting was convened in the main room of the house in which Sir Geros resided.

Looking much less akin to walking, frozen corpses thanks to having eaten, thawed out in the sweat house, then slept for most of the night and a great part of the day, Pawl Raikuh, Tohla and Mahrzbehd Behdrozyuhn were there. So, too, were the other leader of the Moon Maidens, Klahra; Dehrehbeh Ahrszin and his cousin and sxxb-dehrehbeh , Hyk; the old man, Behdros; Lieutenant Bohreegahd Hohguhn; and, of course, Sir Geros.

In answer to a question, Pawl Raikuh was answering in his usual blunt way. “Lord Ahrszin, for all they was borned here and all, your men suffered just as much as the rest of us did out on that patrol yesterday, and if you don’t believe me, just ask old Mahrzbehd here. So it won’t be no attacking of them shaggies out yonder till the weather eases her up a mite.

“Sure, we could set the squadron on the march; we might even make it down there to that village by midday, was we to leave afore dawn. But I warrant that nobody—Ahrmehnee, Moon Maiden, Freefighter, horse or pony—would be in any fair shape to fight when they did get there. It was all we could do to just watch the shaggies for a while, then turn round and ride back here. That cold saps a man worse than a four-week drunk.”

Absently rubbing at his great beak of a nose, the headman, Mahrzbehd, agreed. “It is true, dehrehbeh; all that Pawl says is fact. Almost forty winters have I lived through, and never have I seen the like of this terrible storm.

“But this there is, as well: The accursed Muhkohee are in no sense better off than we are; in many ways, they are worse. No game is about, so they must either be starving or, more likely, eating up each other. And each one that a cannibal dish becomes is one less that face we must when at last the time does arrive for fighting.”

When the headman had fallen silent and applied himself to his jack of mulled wine, the woman, Klahra, her prickly Moon Maiden pride surfacing, demanded, “The men have spoken, but what say you, Tohla? Could Maidens of the Silver Lady march down there and fight, think you?”

The young woman thus addressed gave off for the moment cracking nuts in her powerful callused hands, to reply no less bluntly than had Raikuh. “In a word, Klahra, no. A question of fighting skills or courage, it is not. Rather is it the true and pure fact that the flesh and the blood of woman or man or beast not equal is to such a task. It is as Pawl said; wait we all must until not so deep is the snow and clearer is the weather, with less wind. To attempt to now attack will death be for many even before is struck the first blow at the Muhkohee.”

So Geros, Ahrszin and old Behdros decided to wait for better weather, and wait they did. They all knew that they had insufficient force as matters stood, and to rashly risk any of that force would have constituted rankest folly.

The last few days of the blizzard were the very worst, and the raiding party of Ganiks huddled in their crowded, inadequate shelters did not fare nearly so well as they had earlier. All of the Ganiks in one of the smaller cottages—some score and a half of them—froze to death one night when the gusting winds tore the roof off their sleeping place. Although the bullies saw the corpses dragged out and the cottage reroofed, none of the superstitious Ganiks would reoccupy it, so it was thenceforth used to stable some of the ponies, affording slightly more room in others of the packed shelters.

The only other good thing that the tragedy accomplished was to provide a ready source of food without the fuss and bother of clubbing down a living man. Now all that was necessary was to choose a stiff cadaver, drag it into one of the cottages and leave it near the fire until it thawed out enough to be skinned and butchered. There followed, of course, an ebbing of the deep distrust each man had felt of every other during their stay here, and there were, consequently, fewer fights. Had it been entirely up to Abner, he would then have given the men back their weapons, but Gouger, overcautious, disagreed and dissuaded him.

But no storm can last forever. One dawn, two weeks and two days after the first gusts of the blizzard had driven them to this place for shelter, the day arrived bright and clear and warmed sufficiently as it progressed to send showers of half-melted ice cascading down off the trunks and branches of the trees, while the ice-sheathed stone walls of the village began to drip and dribble water.

Naturally for the time of year, when the sun set, the temperature dropped and standing water or slushy snow froze. But the next day was just as warm if not actually warmer— opinions were mixed on this—and with all the ponies pawing through the wet snow covering the fields surrounding the village, the bullies began to think of moving on in a day or two, did the weather remain so warm.

As it developed, however, the usually canny Ganiks waited one day too long. Intermittent showers throughout the next two days persuaded them to delay while the water amplified the melting of the accumulated ice and snow, the process aided by the fact that on neither of those two nights did the temperature dip to the freezing mark.

But with the rising of the bright sun of the dawn following that second, wanner night, grim death came to call.

The shaggy, filthy, verminous-looking man had woven leaves into his disheveled mop of dull, dirty hair and his scraggly beard. Streaks of a claylike mud now adorned the highlights of his already dusty, dirty face. Even while flies explored his ears and nostrils, even while tiny, maddening no-see-ums swarmed and whined about his head, he remained absolutely motionless, his gaze locked upon the firestick-armed man who stood alertly some few yards ahead of him.

The unkempt warrior had left his two ponies tethered a quarter mile back in the woods, most of his weapons and equipment with them, retaining only his dozen or so knives. The largest of these—both sides of its fourteen-inch single-edged blade liberally smeared with greasy soot and dust to prevent a telltale reflection of light along its length—was now grasped in his right hand, ready for slash or stab or throw, whatever the occasion might demand. This man had had years of experience at bushwhacking the unwary.

Almost imperceptibly, the shaggy man moved closer to his quarry. Not even a rustling leaf or the crackling ‘of a single tiny fallen branchlet bespoke his passage, however. Soon, now. Very soon he would be close enough to arise for that last, lightning-quick and viper-deadly rush; then a knee in the small of the sentry’s back, left hand clamped over the mouth and pulling the head back to bare the throat for its brief, sharp acquaintance with the edge of the blade, and it would all be over save the stripping of the victim of his weapons and any other desired loot, then a safe withdrawal to where the ponies waited, browsing the tender, green new growth of the springy underbrush.

Closer. The wind was right, blowing gently from the hunted down to the hunter, bearing on it the mixed scents of man sweat, mule sweat, gun oil and tobacco, all registered by the flaring nostrils of the shaggy man. Closer. The shaggy man stopped in midmovement, froze like a statue, for the man with the firestick seemed to be staring directly at him.

But then the searching gaze wandered on and, ever so slowly, the shaggy man smoothly recommenced his interrupted stalking of his soon-to-be victim. Closer still. The keen eyes of the man with the long knife locked onto his quarry. He was come close enough; now he only need wait for the moment when the standing man turned his back.