Robert Adams - Horseclans' Odyssey

When Urbahnos had announced his satisfaction with the sale, he departed the strongroom, followed by the two traders. Custuh took the lamp he had held with him, but Hwahruhn hung his on a hook let into the wall over the door. “Now, you lads be careful not to knock this down, hear? I’ve seen bales of furs and hides flare up like so much oil, and with that rout going on belowstairs, nobody would likely hear your screams until you were both burned to flinders.” Then he just stood for a moment, eying the two naked boys. He seemed to want to say more, but then he snapped his mouth shut, turned on his heel and walked out, shaking his head between bowed shoulders.

When he could no longer hear footsteps beyond the locked door, Bahb once more turned to the now openable chest. He slowly raised the lid and expressed his delight in a single grunt. The lower section was filled with hornbows, each of them wrapped in waxed vellum sheets and packed into a horn-and-leather quiver along with a dozen arrows. Most of the bows were the plainer variety made by all the Horseclans for trade purposes, but the four topmost sets were finely carved and decorated in tooled leather cases marked with the totem animals of Clan Steevuhnz—the bows taken from them, their sister and their dead half-brother upon the day of their capture.

Nor was this all. The two Clan Steevuhnz sabers lay beside the hornbow sets, and in the tray hinged to the lid of the chest reposed the four Steevuhnz dirks and even the boot knives. Bahb immediately seized one of the latter and filled the empty sheath inside his right boot with it, then he began to dress himself, mindspeaking his younger brother the while.

“Don’t ask questions, my brother, just heed me. The black-hair who has bought us is like no man I have ever heard of. He cares nothing for females, but rather means to use me as an ordinary man would use a woman. And he means to send for me as soon as he is done with the traders, whom he despises for some reason. So I will not be here to help, though I will let you know what passes by mindspeak. “With this,”—the wiry boy slapped at his boottop—“I have no fear of the black-haired man, for he is clumsy and more than a little fat, nor does he seem to be overly strong, for all his size and height. So unless he has help, I doubt he can harm me.

Take a dirk and start cutting one of your blankets into Strips; spread the other out flat and I’ll roll the sabers and bows in it—that way you can lower them to the ground without damage to them or any noise. I’ll take another boot knife and you can take the other two. Then secure all four dirks to your belt. Here, I’ll put my belt and the saber slings in with the bows. “Just before you go out that window, after the roll of weapons is safe below, drag something to stand on to the door, take that lamp down and set fire to everything that will bum in this room. No, wait—drag everything you can manage in front of the door before you fire it. That way, maybe they won’t know so soon that we’re gone.”

Barely had the two boys dressed, tied and hidden the blanket full of weapons and gotten the chest closed and relocked than a big, tall, bald man with skin the color of an old saddle opened the door, pointed at Bahb and crooked a finger thrice.

“Our master summons you, boy. Come, or I’ll drag you.” Nahseer had been aware of Urbahnos’ unnatural vices as long as the Ehleen had owned him, and he secretly felt that, for all the fact he had been gelded, he still was more of a man than his owner had ever been. He had been revolted at the order to bring the boy to Urbahnos’ bedchamber, but it had been a matter of either obeying or hurrying the day When the devious Ehleen would sell him to the bargers… and he would seek his death, hoping to take as many other men as he could with him into that state.

In the great room below, seated across the dining table from the exultant Custuh, the trader, Hwahruhn, watched the big Zahrtohgahn warrior—still fully armed and obviously cold sober, a fact unusual in this serai full of drunken men—proceed along the upper walkway to the strongroom. unbar the door, lead forth the eldest boy and return with him to the suite of the Ehleen. Then Hwahruhn tore his gaze away, lifted his wine cup and drained it, hurriedly refilled and drained the second just as fast, then refilled again. Custuh looked up from his calculations and said, with a rotten-toothed grin, “Buddyroll, keep a-drinkin’ like thet an’ yew won’ be in no shape fer’t’ spin’ yore gol’,’t’morra in Pahdookahport.”

Hwahruhn felt the deathly danger so strongly now that it almost eclipsed his own soul-sickness and self-loathing. In that warm, noisy room, cold sweat trickled down his spine and hairs prickled wherever they grew on his body. Near madness glared from his eyes, and he bespoke Custuh in a voice pitched just loud enough for him alone to hear.

“You won’t be spending any of that blood money, Custuh, nor journeying to Pahdookahport. You’ll be dead by sunup. I’ve seen your body lying in its blood… with the head caved in.”

Custuh stared back at his partner and gulped. Then his ire rose above his sudden fear. He slammed a horny palm down on the tabletop, snarling, “Now, damn yew fer a big-mouthed fool, Hwahruhn. Yew knows how superstitious alia these here bastids is. Whut if some o’ ’em heered yew, huh? Ah knows it’s mosly yer likker a-talkin’, but they won’t. Iffen they all ups an’ meks tracks, come’t’middle o”t’night, whut we gon’ use fer wagoners come daybreak? ’Sides, ’t’bugtits’d likely steal us blin’, fboot.”

Urbahnos stood waiting impatiently by the door to his bedchamber, temples and groin throbbing with desire bred from his visual and tactile examinations of the two little boys. When, after what seemed centuries, Nahseer entered with die elder lad and stooped to examine him for weapons, his master snapped, “Enough, you dung-colored ape! I’ve just seen him bare and there are no weapons in that room he could have gotten at. Just bring him here to me. But don’t leave this room, you hear? Those rascally traders know that I have gold and jewels, and I don’t want my throat cut in my sleep.”

As his master took the slave boy’s arm and propelled him into the inner chamber, then closed and locked the door, Nahseer settled himself into the large, padded chair which Urbahnos himself had occupied during his dealings with the plains traders, awaiting developments.

The boy moved lightly and could probably be fast as a scalded cat if need be. Another might think the boy’s thinness to be all skin and bone, but Nahseer recognized the flat musculature and the wiry strength it portended. Even unarmed, that lad was likely a healthy fight for the master, for even sober he was fat, clumsy of movements and possessed of muscles near to the point of atrophy from lack of exercise. And the master was well into his second drunk of the day, the effects of the first still not fully dissipated. Nahseer smiled, thinking of the two little knives his sure fingers had detected beneath the felt of the lad’s boottops.

“Yes,” he whispered softly in his native tongue, “these next few minutes should prove most assuredly interesting.”

Within the great room of the serai, the riotous tumult raged at full fury as the wagoners and apprentice traders and the other men of the caravan celebrated the conclusion of yet another summer among the nomads. Several of the serai women had trooped in to sell their shopworn favors in alcoves about the room, the serai musicians—two fiddlers, a banjo, a guitar and a grizzled oldster who performed with hand drum or tambourine, as required—aided willingly (if somewhat off-key) by a drunken wagoner and his reedpipes played loud and lively runes, but were heard only by those closest to them in the general uproar. Portuh strolled through from time to time, seeing that the beer, ale and cider flowed freely and without stint, collecting his half from the serai whores and now and then stopping by to share a sip of wine with the morose Hwahruhn and the loud, perpetually grinning Custuh. Before long, Portuh, too, was grinning, for the traders and their men were putting down stupendous quantities of the various potables and his profit from the bill he would present ere they departed on the morrow would be most satisfying, even after the duke’s cut was removed. There had been one killing so far, a fair fight with foot-long dirks between two wagoners. But these things had a habit of occurring when lusty, violent men got drunk, so no one was surprised or upset, least of all Portuh. He just hoped that the sometime mates of the corpse, now lying out in one of the sheds, would decide to burn rather than simply bury him, for his profit would be higher on wood for a pyre than on the digging of a grave. Suddenly, above the raucous disorder, a shrill, womanish scream rang out from the direction of the Ehleen gentleman’s suite. Few of the men gave it any heed, but Trader Hwahruhn came to his unsteady feet so quickly and with such force that he overturned the solid hardwood bench and even set the heavy table teetering onto two legs, sending ewers, cups and mugs crashing to the floor. Turning, he staggered on unsteady legs toward the stairs, one hand clenched around the wire-wound hilt of his long, wide-bladed dirk. Custuh rushed after his partner, his every step making squishing noises from the liquor that had poured into his rolled-down boottops. Hwahruhn shook off the first hold that Custuh took on him, but then Custuh threw both brawny arms about the other trader’s body, pinning the arms, while shouting over a shoulder to the serai keeper.