Robert Adams - The Witch Goddess

“Yes, the Ahrmehnee and the Confederation nobles are already discussing, planning their return east, all they’re going to do when they get home. But I, for one, am not deluding myself. From all that I’ve heard, all that I know of matters, this Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn is hard pressed in the north by a strong and warlike folk moving down from the Ohyoh country or somewhere beyond. For all his grace and courtesies and sincere-sounding promises regarding this matter and that, Prince Byruhn is as shrewd and devious and slippery a character as ever I’ve run onto—his personal device should be a fox, not a wolf—and, in his straits up north, I hardly think he’s going to just allow a couple of hundred well-armed, well-trained, seasoned and proven veteran warriors to ride out of his little kingdom until he no longer feels so threatened.

“Then there’s that weird prophecy—so-called—of Pah-Elmuh. His mind is very different from human minds and he does possess talents, powers that I’ve never heard of, or even imagined in a human mind. It’s possible, therefore, that he could have delved deeply enough into my mind without my knowledge that he was so doing to have dredged up all of the needed information concerning my antecedents to flesh out his prophecy—which prophecy is very convenient to Prince Byruhn’s goals and objectives, just now.

“But could it be true? Could Blind Hari of Krooguh, the tribal bard who they say was over a hundred and fifty years old when he came east with the Kindred and was fifty or more years older than that—for all that he was not an Undying—when he returned westward with those prairiecats who wanted to get back onto the plains, have really been the so-called ‘Eyeless Wise One’ who made this prophecy among others to Pah-Elmuh’s forebears, so long ago?

“And what of this ‘Last Battle’? Yesterday was the last battle—if that stinking means of executions and mercy killing could or should be dignified with the name ‘battle’—of this Ganik campaign. Yet Pah-Elmuh attested last night that the true ‘Last Battle’ at which I will be ‘Champion’ lies in the future, so that is bound to mean we, or at least I, will fight in the north of New Kuhmbuhluhn.”

He had not been shielding his mind and his thoughts, and now he received a silent beaming. “If you fight in the north, then so do I, my Bili, my dear love. Remember, I am not one of your soft, eastern women. I, too, am a proven warrior.”

“Of course you are, my dear,” he mindspoke Rahksahnah. “But fear you not, I doubt me that Prince Byruhn will allow even one of us to freely depart his lands until the king, his father, and he have come to some sort of terms with these invaders from Ohyoh, however long that takes.”

The precautions of the young commander proved unnecessary, of course. Aside from the waiting Kleesahks and cats, only the wandering ponies, the fish and frogs in the lake and the clan of stoats in the cave remained of all the living creatures that had for so long occupied the shelf. But the human invaders had been preceded by dark, flapping clouds of carrion birds—ravens, crows, starlings, buzzards, hawks, even a pair of eagles—all now working assiduously at nature’s recycling of the scattered corpses of Ganiks and ponies. Bili and his column temporarily interrupted several such grisly feasts on their route up to the cavemouth, much to the loudly voiced displeasure of the avian feasters.

There were two horses left in the cave stable. Both proved capable of mindspeak, and when once Bili had determined from their expressed thoughts that they would be happy with such an arrangement, he took them into his own squadron as remounts. Both geldings were big, clearly well-bred mounts and the previous Kuhmbuhluhn or Ahrmehnee owners were most likely long-dead.

He and his officers helped themselves to the piles of loot, then invited all the others to do the like. Those items that they either did not want or could not carry were left behind for the garrison and, eventually, for farmers who would come soon or late to take over the shelf and caves.

Hornman Gy Ynstyn spotted something gleaming in the light of a torch and stooped to pick up a brace of small brass cylinders, no larger or longer than his smallest finger, each closed at one end by a brass disk in which was centered a smaller disk of red copper with a small depression in its center. Shrugging, he dropped them into his belt-pouch. They might prove useful if he should again need to patch his brass bugle.

They had missed the Witch Goddess of the Ganiks by some hours, but still the future of them all lay ahead… waiting.