Robert Adams - Horseclans' Odyssey

Urbahnos still gagged when he thought of that morning, some years back, when he had awakened after an hours-long bout with an almost-new slave boy to find that the little bitch had used a knotted sheet to hang himself from an iron wall sconce. Recalling the contorted face, protruding eyes and bulging, blackened tongue had brought up everything Urbahnos ate or drank for days on end.

After having been for so very long denied a really prime, young, untried love boy, it was perhaps natural for Lord Urbahnos to drift into fantasies of breaking in the other Horse-clans boy, the elder one, of course, not the younger, prettier one—that one must go, untouched, to Karaleenos. So, lost in this pleasurable fantasy, warmed by the honey wine and the bearskin, lulled alike by the swaying of the litter and the patter of the rain, he fell asleep. For all that the road was in abominable condition and not quite straight in places, mounted men with decent horseflesh between their legs could traverse the full distance between the two cities in under a day, but as the ox-drawn trader wagons never moved fast enough over dry, level ground, it was closer to a two-day journey for them. In the days of the old duke, traders had camped overnight a bit off the road in a sheltered area that had an unfailing spring. Duke Tcharlz, however, early in his reign, had recognized the possibilities, located a proved entrepreneur and entered into a silent partnership with him, advancing monies from the ducal purse to build, stock and man a sizable, well-built and reasonably comfortable serai in the area around that spring. The duke had been astute in his choice of a partner. Portuh Frank had proved himself unprincipled and larcenous enough to reap handsome profits from the operation, yet sufficiently intelligent to realize that he was surely being closely watched by one or more of his Employees and that to attempt to cheat the duke would be suicidal.

The main structure of the serai was the counterpart of countless others the length and breadth of the land—a large, rectangular building of stone and timber, rising two and a half stories over a full cellar and capped with a roof of hand-cut shingles; floored with planks of pine, the serai’s main room was fifty feet long and thirty wide, with a huge fieldstone fireplace at either end for heating, all cooking being done in a nearby outbuilding, while the small private rooms on the second floor were heated by individual braziers.

In addition to the cookhouse, there were a score of other structures, all necessary for the proper hosting of guests, their animals and running stock—huge, commodious stables for horses and mules; a sizable corral for oxen, partially roofed over to protect the beasts from the weather; a big smokehouse for cured meats and a springhouse of equal size for keeping butter, fresh cheeses, milk and suchlike. The smithy adjoined the shop of a wagonwright, with the fabulous six-holer privy being situated hard by the spacious pigpens. For easier egg collection, the hens were kept confined to the environs of their roosting house by a tall fence of woven reeds. Nonetheless, the roosters and some of the more adventurous hens were always roaming the innyard to be chased and occasionally caught by the hounds whose presence was thought to discourage the inroads of fox, skunk, weasel and other vermin. Another covered pen usually held a few Watting sheep, for mutton was a favored fare among the inn’s clientele, while a small herd of milk goats were rapidly converting a growth of young trees a few hundred yards behind the inn into a stubbly field. Portuh Frank and his current woman dwelt in a small, snug cottage near the inn, and the remainder of the staff bunked in one of the three structures designed for the purpose.

The commodious cellars beneath the main structure held the bulk of the serai’s provender—barrels of flour and meal, dried beans, peas and lentils, cured and aged cheeses, casks of lard and honey and oil, dried fruits and vegetables— apples, peaches, pears, plums, raisins, garlic, onions, pumpkin, herbs, mushrooms—kegs of beer, pipes of various wines, barrels of hwiskees and stone jugs of cordials and brandies. In the darker, cooler reaches, wooden bins held root vegetables and fresh cabbages with casks and barrels of pickled foodstuffs stacked between. The cellars also gave lodging to a trio of brown ferrets—a hob and two fitches—the very presence of which guaranteed an utter dearth of resident rats and mice. The only entrance to these magazines lay without the main building, and the only two keys to its massive iron lock were never out of the sight of Portuh and his master cook, one Dik Tchertch. Being by their very nature parsimonious, few traders of any class would pay the slightly exorbitant prices Portuh demanded for lodgings within the private, lockable rooms on the second floor, usually either sleeping with their men—rolled in skins and blankets and quilts—on or under the tables and benches which furnished the first floor—or in the familiar discomfort of their huge wagons. Therefore, few of the upper-floor rooms were any longer furnished, those that were being but crudely so, since their most frequent use was to lock up for the night either slaves or especially valuable merchandise. So, when the slightly drunk and overbearing Urbahnos and his party of bravos descended upon the serai in the deepening dusk of the wet, gloomy day, demanding a suite of well-heated rooms, a hot bath, food, wines, brandy and cordials, Portuh found both himself and his staff hard pressed to accommodate this unusual and scathing-tongued guest in less than the best part of an hour. Never before had he, either in this place or in his former locale—far to the northeast, whence he had fled by night only a skip and a jump ahead of the grim and hard-eyed retainers of a certain earl—had had as a guest one of these eastern Ehleenee, and if all were as impossible to please as this one, he thought that he could just as easily live out the remainder of his life without the custom of another of the insultingly supercilious bastards. But Portuh was nothing if not capable and unstintingly patient wherever money was involved, and in time the suite of rooms was cleaned, furnished and brightly lit to the Ehleen’s. grudging approval. The drafts of cold, wet air which would certainly have entered through the small, high window holes had been forestalled by stuffing the openings with rags and covering these plugs with small, bright hangings. Then the fine charcoal in the braziers’ was started with red embers brought from the blazing hearths below.

Portuh himself sprinkled the aromatic herbs and gums atop the started charcoal and supervised the setting up of a long copper bathing trough and its filling with many steaming bucketsful of fresh-boiled spring water. The arrangements of what would be the Ehleen’s sleeping and bathing chamber once completed, Portuh set himself and his staff to the larger, outer chamber. With the final meal of the day still cooking, the only hot foods available were mutton broth and hwiskee punch, but Portuh had a large pot of each placed in the center of the table, with a heaping platter of cold smoked ham, several full loaves of crusty bread, crocks of relishes, pickles and fruits preserved in honey, a cold joint of veal, a brace of cold boiled hens and decanters of various wines, cider and brandy. Then, with bows” far lower than his girth would seem to permit, he ushered the ill-tempered Urbahnos up the stairs to inspect The first few days after the flamboyant escape of their older sister, Bahb and Djoh had been kicked and cuffed by their angered, frustrated captors. But the boys had borne this abuse as stoically as the long captivity, snarling curses at the men who struck them, saving any tears for times when they were alone and unobserved. And this behavior had won them the grudging respect of most members of the trader caravan.