Robert Adams - Bili the Axe

Old Johnny Kilgore opined that “suthin’ dang funny has done gone awn up heanh las’ year,” and Corbett and the rest could only agree. In all of the mountains and valleys there did not seem to be a single Ganik left resident. Nonetheless, the perimeter guards were maintained and the patrol-hunts went on, though the last three days were spent in ranging up the projected line-of-march, locating and marking favorable campsites and suchlike.

It began to rain again during the night before they broke camp and again marched northeast, but it was only a light drizzle and the winds that bore it were seasonally warm and gentle. By midday, it had ceased completely and the sun was beginning to dry up what little moisture had not soaked into the ground or run off into the little streams along the way.

At that time unaware of the network of smaller tracks connecting the three larger north-south traces, Corbett had led those of his last year’s force who had survived the landslide on a grueling cross-country trek from the easternmost track to this one, but with Old Johnny as a guide, such a hellish journey was not necessary this time. A couple of hours into the second day’s march after leaving the valley camp, the bald Ganik had set the column onto a narrow, overgrown track—little more than a game trail in the best of times, from the look of it—meandering eastward.

Due to the condition of the long-unused track and the bulk of some of the pack loads, some work with axe and saber was necessary on the part of the vanguard, but Corbett was quick to note that this clearance did not in any way approach the brutal labor of hacking out a passage where none had previously existed as he and his party had been compelled to do in last year’s cross-country journey. Nor did this year’s passage take the long days that that one had required. They were on the main, easternmost track before dark of the same day they had left the western one.

They camped that night at the junction of the smaller and larger tracks and resumed the march with the dawning of the new day. The midday halt was made just north of a place where a wide but shallow stream crossed the track. A small, brushy island flanked by deeper channels lay just downstream of the ford, and both Corbett and Gumpner were quick to recognize and remember the spot.

“It was here,” Corbett informed Johnny and his officers, “on the island, yonder, that the bulk of what was left of the column found Sergeant Vance with the men and animals he’d led out of the forest fires and the Ganik he’d captured, one Jim-Beau Carter.”

Old Johnny sniffed. “I knowed thet bastid, too. Won’t none them Carters worth a moldy possum turd or a han’ful of rottun peanuts, not fer nuthin’, they won’t.”

“Be that as it may,” Corbett went on, “I know the trail now, from here on, and so does Gumpner. So, Johnny, you and Vance take a squad on ahead and find us a good, well-watered campsite, one near to plenty of graze, if you can. I want to be fairly close to the areas in which we’ll be working, but not too close; there’s no certain way to tell in advance which direction these explosives may throw rocks, and I’d prefer that said rocks not land in our camp.

“All right, then. As soon as the men have finished their coffee and whatall, let’s get cracking. I’d like to excavate what’s still worth it and get back down to Broomtown before autumn makes these mountains really miserable to travel through.”

The lid of the simple stone sarcophagus was engraved with but five words: MARTIN—KING OF NEW KVMBRLAND . Behind the coffin, on stone pedestal, stood a lifesize figure that Bili at first took, in the dimness, to be a living man. Carved of well-seasoned hardwood by a past master, then enameled meticulously in fleshtones and finally clothed and equipped and bejeweled, the stunning effigy of King Mahrtuhn I stood in eternal vigil in the splendid crypt which now held his dust and that of his sons, and of his wives and theirs.

From where he stood beside Bili, the voice of King Mahrtuhn II of New Kuhmbuhluhn boomed softly. “Even whilst the Teenéhdjooks and Kleesahks were boring the passages and storerooms through the lower reaches of the mountain, using the blocks of stone thus quarried to build the city and walls, were certain of the most skillful of them all preparing this for the eventuality of my grandfather’s death. Until die he did, no true-man knew of the existence of this crypt.”

The king gestured upward, up into the dark vault above the wavery light of the lamps. “It is fifty feet from where our feet rest to the ceiling of this crypt, and only thirty feet above that is the windswept summit of King’s Rest Mountain, yet so cunningly did those creatures who so loved my royal grandfather carve and handle the stones of this mountain that no earth tremor ever has had the force to damage this, their work. Even the terrible shocks of last year, though they sent boulders plunging down every flank of the mountain and tumbled some of the buildings within the city and even shifted a few of the massive stones of the walls, not a pebble or a grain fell in the crypt. Such was the invaluable skill of the Teenéhdjook.”

The royal tomb was the first of the wonders Bili was shown within King’s Rest Mountain, but far from the last. He saw the ebon sheet of water which was the spring-fed lake, and the catchments and holding basins and dams and copper-lined aqueducts that provided citadel and city with abundant, clear, cold water.

He saw the storerooms and stables carved from the living rock within the mountain and reached by ramps wide enough for the largest wains or wagons to negotiate. Packed with dried, pickled, candied and otherwise preserved foods for man and beast, these siege larders were all protected from rodents by a resident colony of stoats. Semidomesticated, the long, slender, furry brown mustelids with their white, pointed, gleaming teeth showed no fear of either man or Kleesahk. A tentative mental probe told Bili that although they possessed at least marginal mindspeak abilities, they were none of them very interested in communicating with a two-leg creature.

Other huge rooms contained ceiling-high stacks of cord-wood and sacks of charcoal or blue-black chunks of mountain coal. Nor were the armories less well stocked, although by modern, Middle Kingdoms standards, the armor in particular was all of archaic design and construction.

But the centuries had not seen so much innovation in weapons as in body defenses. The baskets of arrows and darts, the bundles of spears, the various sizes and powers of the crossbows, the racks of different-sized axes—from short-handled franciscas to two-handed poleaxes—and the buckets of stone or leaden shot for sling or arbalest vastly impressed the young thoheeks .

With walls so stout, with such abundant provender and water, with such a quantity of arms, New Kuhmbuhluhnburk was in need of only a stout and determined garrison to be as close as might be to impregnable. A besieging force could break as many teeth as it cared to lose upon such a nut without even approaching the cracking of it; and the more prudent, patient course would likely prove but another form of futility.

With such a large, roomy bastion, Bili could see no reason at all to further risk the already decimated forces of the kingdom against a numerous foe armed with an apparently devastating new tactic, and he said so in council.

“Your majesty, my lords, as satisfying as is an open, honest combat to an experienced warrior, there be times when such enjoyments are not the best cour.se from a strategical point of view. It would seem to me from all I have seen and heard that this is just such a time.

“You have here an admirably situated and designed burk, one which could be held passively by no larger or better-trained a force than those nobles and commoners presently resident within it. Moreover, you have enough room to bring in most if not all of the folk of the surrounding farming areas and much of their livestock and goods, as well. Few threatened cities are ever so fortunate in any respect as is New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, I can assure you… and I am not a tyro, not inexperienced in any phase of modern warfare.