Robert Adams - Horseclans' Odyssey

After a brief silence he widened his smile and added, “And tell the minds outside to saddle and bridle a good, big horse for me. I admire the spirit of your plains stock but they are just too small for a man of my size.” Bahb’s eyes widened in surprise. He beamed, “You mind-speak, man with brown skin? You are that thing’s sworn man, are you not? If you knew of my planning, why did you not tell him? For what purpose do you wish to help me? If you try to do to me what he would have done, I warn you, I will serve you even as I served him.”

Nahseer shook his hairless head. “Brother mine, even when still I had my man-parts, I utilized them only in the ways that Ahlah intended, not in the unnatural nastinesses in which some infidels debase themselves.” He sighed deeply and aloud, then went on silently.

“And I am no one’s sworn man, my brother. I am the pig’s chattel, as much a slave as are you. And yes, I can converse mind-to-mind, sense the mind conversations of others and even sense the surface thoughts of those with whom I cannot converse. This talent I was born with; it is not uncommon among the upper castes of my people.

“Why did I not betray your conversations with those outside, why did I fail to inform yon black-haired pig that you bore the two little daggers in your boots? The answers are many and complex, my brother, and if Ahlah so wills it, we will have time and leisure to speak on these matters. But for now, I believe I smell smoke. I imagine that your former cell is blazing merrily by this time, and so I suggest that we put an end to affairs here and depart… quickly.” Warily, unsure whether or not to believe, Bahb took both of his little knives in his left hand and snatched the dirk from its profferer, then gingerly laid one of the blood-sticky short blades in the pink palm of the brown-skinned man.

Nahseer withdrew his sword from its case and leaned it against the wall near the boy, then turned and walked to the bedside of his sometime master. Because mindspeak took far less time than did oral communication, bare seconds had passed since Urbahnos had given the order to stun and capture his newest slave. “What are you doing, you dung-hued cretin?” the Ehleen rasped. “I’ll have you flayed and rolled in salt. I’ll—” Nahseer interrupted him. The big man’s voice was soft, but the undertone froze Urbahnos to his innermost being. “The only thing you will do now, sweet master, is to hold your flapping tongue… unless you had rather lose it, that is. You promised me my freedom whenever you returned to the east, you depraved beast of a liar, yet your true intent all the while was to sell me to the slow, living death of the row-barges.”

His teary eyes once more wide with terror, his thick lips atremble, the Lord Urbahnos shook his head wildly from side to side, sending a spray of bright blood from his slashed cheek in all directions. “No, Nahseer! No, no, no! You are to be freed, I swear it… my word of sacred honor… no, I…” The Zahrtohgahn sneered. “Dear master, we both know that your word is of less worth than a half dram of rat’s piss. The only thing in all the world that you hold sacred is profit As for honor, it surprises me that you even know and can pronounce the word in any language, since you so obviously have never possessed a scintilla of it.”

While speaking, Nahseer had used the little knife to cut down most of the bedside bell rope, then divide it into two equal lengths. After tucking the knife into the folds of his sash, he grabbed Urbahnos and jerked him suddenly onto his back on the rumpled, bloody bed. He seized first one arm, then the other and used the ropes to bind the Ehteen’s wrists to the bedhead, knotting them cruelly tight. Then he did the same for the ankles, lashing each to a bedpost with strips torn from the linen sheets. Several shorter strips went into a crude but effective gag. Then Nahseer stood back and surveyed his handiwork, while testing the edge of the boot knife on the callused ball of his thumb. To Bahb, he said, “Bring me the other little knife, please, my brother. That rope is tough and this one has lost the best of its cutting edge. And bring my sword, as well; this thing cannot grab at it now.” “What are you going to do to him?” asked Bahb curiously. “I mean to geld him,” stated Nahseer bluntly and aloud, his words setting Urbahnos to squinning and vainly jerking at his bonds, trying to force words and strangled screams through the fabric of his gag, his features almost livid and his eyes starting from their sockets.

Bahb handed back the Zahrtohgahn’s sword. Though he kept the dirk in his right hand and ready, he sheathed the dulled dagger. This will be the first time I’ve ever seen a man gelded. Is it the same as gelding a bull calf?” Nahseer nodded. “Much the same, my brother, much the same.” To Urbahnos, he said, “Master, think you back on how many times you have chided me because I have been deprived of the very man-parts you daily dishonor. Recall how often you have spoken to me and of me in public as ‘your Zahrtohgahn steer’ or ‘a creature of uncertain sex.’

“Now, I advise that you lie still, master, for this little knife is razor-sharp. The hilt is small and already slippery with your blood, and if you wiggle too much I might slip and take off your yard, as well. You wouldn’t like that, would you, my master?”

Nahseer did not believe in torture, and the movements of hand and knife were quick and sure. Presently he laid aside the blade, grasped a handful of Urbahnos’ black hair and raised his head that he might better see what the Zahrtohgahn’s other palm held—two bloody, kidney-shaped objects, the Ehleen’s testicles. Urbahnos stared, goggle-eyed, then the pupils rolled up and he fainted.

The big man tossed the testicles onto the coals of one of the braziers, stooped and rinsed his hands in the tub of cold bathwater still sitting in a corner, then turned back to the brazier. With the iron tongs that hung beneath the bowl, he poked around until he found a coal to his liking. Gripping this coal between the jaws of the tongs, he lifted it and carefully blew away as much as he could of the white ash, exposing the glowing, red-orange surface of the charcoal. Returning to the side of his unconscious victim, Nahseer used the fingers of his free hand to hold open the Ehleen’s scrotum—now empty of all save the taacked-off stumps of the vesicles and a large amount of blood—then dropped the red-hot, glowing coal directly into the sac. Lord Urbahnos revived, screaming through his gag, jerking and thrashing to the limits of his bonds, tears jetting from his eyes and mucus from his nostrils, fouling himself and the bed beneath him with the discharges of both bladder and rectum.

“Why didn’t you just let him lie there and bleed?” asked Bahb Steevuhnz. “He might have bled so much that he died, my brother,” said Nahseer. “And dead he would have robbed me of my vengeance, you see. No, I want him to live, to live in almost the same condition as have I for so many years. “Now, let us go into the outer room and gather such things as may aid us in our flight.”

The big man wrenched both lock and hasp from off his former master’s strongbox, scooped all the coins into the money belt and stowed it inside the breastplate of his cuirass. That done, he stuffed bread, cheese, cooked meats and dried fruits into one set of saddlebags, then filled another set with the metal flasks of brandies and cordials. For want of water, he filled a travel skin with the contents of two jugs of pear cider.

Nahseer knew that no matter how befuddled were those on the floor below, there would be questions were he to try to pass through laden with saddlebags, blankets, waterskins and cloaks and with the boy in his torn and blood-splashed garments.