Robert Adams - The Witch Goddess

Sir Bili of Morguhn lay dying in his palace. Fifty years before, after lengthy and strenuous persuasion, he had assumed the title and duties of Prince of Karaleenos, and he had served that office well and faithfully, it and the farming Confederation of which the principality was a sizable part. Early in his long life he had become a legend, but now he was an old man, a very old man, dying as all old men must, soon or late.

But the legend would not die with his ancient, suppurating flesh; he knew this as well as did all those powerful notables who had hurriedly gathered to attend his passing. The deeds that the younger Sir Bili had wreaked with his huge and famous axe, with his prowess and courage, with his matchless mental attributes, would continue to be recounted as long as there were Eastern Kindred, mountain Ahrmehnee, Ehleenee, or a Confederation.

“Aye,” the dying old man thought, chuckling to himself despite the slowly increasing agony of his infected wounds, “and those damned Witchmen will have cause to remember Bili the Axe, too! Between us, Lord Milo and I scotched more than one of their hellish schemes, over the years.

“They never seem to give up, those unnatural monsters. At least once in every generation of normal men, they’re out to foment trouble somewhere in or around our Confederation. Twelve… no, fourteen or fifteen years back, it was that vicious bastard Gardmann. Before him, it was that phony Freefighter. What did he call himself, anyway? I forget, now, after so long… Close onto forty years; but I remember the name—his real name—that he gave under our tortures, Morton Flachs. It’s too bad he managed to chew through his wrist veins, that night after he finally broke; we might’ve gotten more out of the bastard the next session.

“Then there was that man who tried to kill Lord Milo and Aldora and me that time in Kehnooryos Atheenahs. We never knew for sure if he was really a Witchman, but Lord Milo assumed that he was because of his weapon—that booming, fire-spitting thing Lord Milo called a pisztuhl . He struck all three of us and killed two guards, outright, but the missiles did no permanent harm to the two Undying, of course. The one that sped toward me failed to strike me solidly, thank Sun and Wind, it just tore through my shirt and furrowed my arm before killing the guard behind me. Before Lord Milo could make himself heard, the living guardsmen had made a blood pudding out of the man… but they couldn’t be blamed for it, they knew their duty and they did it despite the terror they all must have felt of that witchy weapon.

“Of course, I’d seen and heard one like it before that—a bigger, much longer one. She called that one a ryfuhl , that damned Witchwoman who’d set herself up as ‘goddess’ of those outlaw Ganiks, the ones we fought for Prince Byruhn.

“Hmmm, what was her name, now? In nigh eighty years, a man can forget so much.”

As old Bili’s mind, cloudy now with drugs and age and suffering, sought recall of the name of that Witchwoman who had so many years before, led the savage, cannibal Ganiks in the then-unknown mountains to the west and south of the Ahrmehnee lands, he began once again to relive those exciting times. It had been those times which had given birth to the legend of Bili the Axe.

Born to one of the two wives—sisters, they had been, and daughters of a Middle Kingdoms duke—of Hwahruhn, the hereditary chief of Clan Morguhn, Bili and all of his younger brothers had been sent in childhood to foster at various royal or archducal courts of Middle Kingdoms maternal relatives. Then, in Bili’s eighteenth year, the chief, his father, lay ill unto death and he had been summoned back from the north by his mothers.

Although barely eighteen, the Bili who had ridden back south had been a full man and a proven warrior, already knighted into the Order of the Blue Bear of Harzburk by the king who had fostered him. Nor had that knighthood been a meaningless gesture; Bili, the king’s distant kinsman, had earned the honor with his strength, arms skills, and stark ferocity, axing down a full-grown nobleman in a single combat, and then the two men-at-arms who treacherously attacked him in defense of their foresworn lord.

And young Bili’s prowess, coupled with his qualities of natural leadership, quick and accurate judgment of men and situations, and some highly unusual mental attributes, had served him, the duchy and the Confederation well in the very hard and fearsome times that immediately followed his return, his father’s death and his accession to the chieftaincy and title. For rebellion had long been brewing among certain elements of the Ehleenee—whose distant ancestors had ruled over most of the lands of the Confederation prior to the coming of the Kindred Horseclans. Incited, aided and abetted by a murderous gaggle of priests of the Old Ehleenee Church and by two spurious bishops of that church, both of whom proved to be actually agents of the Witch Kingdom—that realm located among the swamps of the far south—the situation had exploded bare days after he had come back to the lands of his birth.

The young warrior’s initial encounter with the rebels had very narrowly missed being his last. While riding back to Morguhn Hall after a visit to the hall of a kinsman-vassal, Komees Hari Daiviz of Morguhn, he and his small party had been viciously attacked on a forest road by more than a score of sketchily armed but coldly murderous rabble.

“What a night that was,” ruminated the dying Bill. “And what a glorious fight!”

Then, suddenly, in his mind he was there again.

The young Bili would have taken the lead into the place of lurking danger had not his companions— Vahrohneeskos Ahndee, Bard Klairuhnz and the two Freefighters on loan from Komees Djeen Morguhn—argued him down. So when the mounted column trotted in a single file toward the bridge, Bili was third in the line, with Ahndee ahead of him and one of the Freefighters, Dzhool, at point. Behind Bili rode the bard, Klairuhnz, with Ahndee’s servingman, Geros, between him and the other Freefighter, Shahrl.

The closer the little party came to the forest, looming darkly just beyond the bridge, the stronger grew Bili’s apprehension. Now he knew for certain that they were riding into a battle, and he so mindspoke Ahndee and Klairuhnz.

Awed, Ahndee silently asked, “You can far-gather , then, Bili? That’s a rare and a precious ability. We were told of it at the Confederation Mindspeak Academy, of course; but not one of the instructors had ever met a man or woman or cat that actually possessed it. Can you sense how many foes? Or how far ahead they be?”

“No,” Bili readily admitted, “never have I been able to judge numbers, but we are near to danger and drawing ever nearer.”

The thick, old planks of the bridge boomed hollowly under the impact of the ironshod hooves, then they were into the forest. Bili found the forest proper far less dark a place than it had appeared from without. Except for the oak-grown fringes, the growth appeared to be principally tall old pines, unbranching for many feet above road level, and the wan moonlight filtered through the needled branches high above, making for dim visibility.

The road ran straight for a few dozen yards, then began a gradual ascent and a slight curvature to the right, following the lower reaches of a brush-grown hillock. They splashed through a tiny rill which fed down into a small swamp before joining the larger stream. Beyond the rill, the road commenced another slow curve, this one downward and to the left. As they descended this reverse slope, the moon dove for cover and Bili’s hackles rose. The still-unseen danger was now looming terribly near!