Robert Adams - Horseclans' Odyssey

Stehfahnah stood in readiness, her own desperate plan worked out in her mind, and when her ravisher was a few paces beyond the doorway, the girl slammed the door and clapped the heavy bar back into place. “Why… yew lil bitch, yew! Eely tol’ yew he’d kill yew!” Momentarily forgetful in his rage at his slave girl of the menace lurking somewhere out of sight, the man spun about and jammed his spear through the door at its midpoint, his powerful thrust easily penetrating the deeply scored wood. Through sheerest good fortune, the sharp blade missed Stehfahnah, but in dancing back from it, her foot struck upon the round faggot she had earlier used to hammer up the bar, and she fell heavily, her head striking the raised hearth and her consciousness suddenly reduced to a red-black, flame-shot, whirling tightness… and far, far away, she thought that she could hear screaming… and roaring. Then there was nothing.

The morning parade and inspection of his new company done, Captain of Foot Count Martuhn of Geerzburk scraped and stamped sticky mud from his patched boots and climbed the narrow, winding stairs up to the towertop chambers he had chosen as his own in the spanking new fortress the duke had erected in the center of Twocityport, much to the loudly voiced disgust and rage of his wife and her coterie’of sycophants.

When Martuhn had set sail up the Ohyoh to recruit this new company, the land on which the fortress presently squatted had been an expanse of stone-built warehouses. Now the stones and massy timbers had been “rearranged” into a fine, small, eminently defensible fortification, its foundations going all the way down to bedrock. The rapacious duke had impressed every able-bodied man—slave, soldier or free—on whom he could lay heavy hand. He had commuted jail time to labor and even taken to shanghaüng drunken rivermen. The wealthier or more powerful men of the duchy had been allowed to buy out of the construction crews with gold or foodstuffs, stone or timber, or the loan of boats and wagons and teams. And the seemingly impossible had been accomplished, the fortress completed and ready to serve as garrison for the new company upon their arrival.

For all its newness, this citadel of Twocityport felt homey to Martuhn, as it should, for his own big, scarred hands had rendered the plans for the complex, faithfully drawing an exact duplicate of the citadel of faraway Geerzburk. For all his and Wolfs earlier misgivings, the garrison was shaping up nicely, blending in well with the survivors of his earlier companies with a minimum of friction. Few floggings had been needed to establish and maintain the strict discipline he demanded of subordinates.

Including the “cargo” he had brought downriver, he now commanded a force of tenscore pikemen and fourscore archers’. With the lieutenants, sergeants, weapons masters, cooks, wagoners, farriers, smiths and other service personnel, over four hundred men (plus a few women, camp whores, mostly) now called the new fortress home.

As he climbed the stairs to his commodious tower apartments in the chill of the early morning, Martuhn’s thoughts strayed back to the sumptuous little private dinner he had shared with his overlord and employer. Duke Tcharlz, on the evening following his morning duel—if the outright butchery of an arrogant but unskilled effeminate could be called such—with Duchess Ann’s spy, Sir Djaimz. His strong yellow teeth having stripped most of the meat from the shank of a roasted lamb, the duke had wrenched it from the larger bone and tossed it to the waiting wolfhounds. Then, raising his voice above the racket of the dogs’ snarls and argumentative snappings, he remarked with eyes a-twinkle, “You know, of course, Martuhn, that you were under my eyes from the very moment you entered the outer chamber yesterday morning?”

The lean, scar-faced former count laid aside knife and joint, took a sip from his wine cup and replied, “Aye, my lord, I sensed that you had arranged that little farce. No need to ask why, of course.” He frowned then. “But, with all, I’d not have taken the miserable creature’s life.” The duke chuckled, his florid face turning even redder. Absently, his guest noted that the noble host was beginning to add a second chin and that his jowls were starting to droop somewhat.

“Martuhn, Martuhn, my good friend, when you had down that bastard’s breeks, I thought surely I’d burst with laughter. To think that such things as that strut about with belted weapons and call themselves men!” Weary unkempt, with fresh mud overlaying old dirt, the captain and Wolf had paced into the outer chamber and come to a halt before the table and the Seated Sir Djaimz.

The young man wore his dark-brown hair at shoulder length, the ends curled. The dark lashes over his pale-blue eyes were long and thick, but his lips were pale and thin, with a cruel twist at the corners. His narrow face was pale and unmarked by any of the scars and calluses that most men had acquired by the time they were knighted. His white-skinned, soft-looking, long-fingered hands looked as if they would find the hilt of the light sword lying on the table before him most unfamiliar.

Neither Martuhn nor Wolf knew the fop. He had arrived from Twocityport more than a month after their departure… but both knew his type of old. Nonetheless, Martuhn tried to be polite.

He nodded stiffly. “I am Captain Martuhn of Geerzburk, just returned from upriver with Freeflghters. Duke Tcharlz will be expecting me.” Then he turned to the left and started around the table, his secret telepathic ability telling him that the duke was quite nearby, likely in the next room. “Just one moment, sirrahf” Sir Djaimz shrilled, in a tenor so high that it verged on falsetto. “No one can see the duke without my leave. You hear? Least of all a filthy, smelly, seedy ragamuffin I’ve never before seen. Likely, the pair of you are nothing more than mean mountebanks hired by my enemies to humiliate me. How do I know you are what you say you are and not just another ill-born liar?”

Martuhn heard the faithful Wolf growl, but sent a telepathic command for peace… for the nonce. Turning again to the doorkeeper, he placed the palms of his big hands on the tabletop and leaned until his head was on a level with that of the fop. In a flat, cold, emotionless voice, he said, “Young sir, I have striven to be courteous. I have given you my name and my rank and imparted a modicum of my business with his grace. If you truly require warranty of all I have told you, why simply inquire of any one of the guardsmen here abouts; they all know me of old. Be warned of a few facts, however, young sir. I am at the least as nobly born as you; moreover, I am a full man. I have fought more battles than you have hairs in those girlish lashes, and there are precious few living men who ever have named me inborn or a liar!”

But a single glance into the frigid depths of the eyes of the big-boned, but rapier-thin, stranger gave Sir Djaimz an immediate feeling of looseness in the guts and a raging urge to urinate. However, knowing how little real respect he commanded among either nobles or base in this savage domicile of the duke he had been dispatched to watch, he stubbornly refused to retrench and let the matter lie.

He curled his lips into a sneer, tilting his carefully coiffeured head to keep his eyes on the big man, who once more stood erect. But when he made to speak, his voice at first declined to obey the dictate of his will; it cracked, soaring high up into the treble.

“You …” To a chorus of sly chuckles from the guardsmen, Sir Djaimz cleared his throat and started afresh in his normal speaking tone. “You may be who and what you say you are, but if so, surely you would know better than to seek an audience with Duke Tcharlz while in so disreputable a state of both person and attire. Why not seek your home, if you have one, and bathe, if you know how, and don cleaner, if not better, clothing.