Robert Adams - Horseclans' Odyssey

“Brother warrior Bahb, speak you with your brother below, and ask if the yard between this place and the stables be still empty.” Aware that Djoh was ever difficult to range, Bahb instead bespoke the mare, Windswift, then replied, “All is well outside. One man came into the stables, but he was no warrior, and besides was so dizzy that he could hardly stand. My brother, Djoh, tripped him, jumped astride him and slipped a dirk blade between his ribs. Windswift says that no grown warrior could have done it more smoothly and effectively.”

Nahseer tore down the carpet that had been hung over the single small window, wrenched out the entire frame, then sliced one of the large floor carpets into strips, tied them to-gether, passed one end under Bahb’s arms and knotted it around his chest. Lifting the slender boy easily, the Zahrtohgahn put him through the opening feet foremost, then stepped up on the massive table he had pushed into place and lowered him to the muddy yard below. When he had lowered all the items he had decided would be helpful to them, he drew back the improvised rope, rehung the carpet and stepped down from the table.

In the bedchamber, he found that his sometime master had once more swooned. With the lord’s own jewel-encrusted dagger, he sliced the man’s bonds loose from the bed, then, wrinkling his nose and holding his breath against the thick reek of spilled blood, loose dung and burned meat, he pulled off the gag. Stepping into the corner, he lifted the tub full of cold water, turned back to the bed and flung the entire contents onto the unconscious man thereon. Urbahnos woke moaning, opened his mouth to scream. But the palm of Nahseer’s big hand pressed tightly over it, and the other hand held the slender dagger so that the Ehleen had no trouble seeing the keen edges and glittering point. “If you make one sound or try to leave this room, Lord Steer, I’ll return and complete the job; I’ll slice off your prick and stuff it down your throat!” So saying, he sheathed the dagger, thrust it in his sash and stalked out of the suite, then down the stairs. The smell of smoke was now very thick in the upper level, and Nahseer noted that the exposed rafters were all but obscured by layers of smoke.

What with stopping here and there for a word or two of light chatter with die tables of friendly drunks, now and then pretending to take drafts from proffered cups and mugs and leathern jacks, it took the Zahrtohgahn a good quarter hour to reach the vicinity of the big outer door. And there he was confronted with his first real danger.

Ehdee-Djoh Cawl, one of the bravos hired on for the trip by Lord Urbahnos, and far less besotted than most of the men in the main room, had followed Nahseer and confronted him in the relative dimness near the door. In his native, nasal twang, he said, “That thar knife in yore sayash, thet be yore massa’s. I seed it a-hangin’ fum oft his belt. He know yew got ‘er?” For all that where they stood was in almost utter darkness to those in the well-lighted room, Nahseer glanced pointedly back the way he bad come, and Cawl, too, turned his head. And that was when the Zahrtohgahn’s big fist struck the smaller man, knocking him senseless. In the middle of the yard stood four small and one large saddled equines, two of them with riders. Nahseer pulled up the tops of his jackboots, checked the girths and stirrup leathers of the biggest horse—a silver-gray gelding that had been the prized possession of the trader, Custuh—then swung into the saddle. Guided by the road, which they kept in sight, they rode eastward toward the Great River. But getting back across it would be another matter entirely. Wolf and his patrol had crossed the barrier of the bluffs and carefully picked their way along the rocky summits until they stood high over the beach—a real, shelving sand beach some eight hundred yards in length, but with real width for only something less than a hundred yards.

All along the way, Wolf had noted and marked on the maps favorably placed natural positions or places that might be easily and quickly improved upon to provide cover and concealment for units of archers and slingers to harry the advance of an enemy force marching inland from the river. Also, he had noted that a much narrower and precipitous track ran along the inland side of the bluffs, averaging twelve feet below the summit. When the maps had all been marked and annotated to his satisfaction, he left the patrol to build a fire and warm their rations, while he clambered down the landward side to the track below.

He found a small, low-ceilinged cave and mentally noted it as a good cache for supplies for men manning the bluffs. Proceeding on toward the higher, thicker stretch of bluffs, he kept his eyes peeled for more caves… and he found one, a much larger one, with its entrance almost concealed by replaced undergrowth and even sapling trees.

Thinking, as he pushed through the shrubbery concealing the entrance, that he might have chanced upon a smugglers’ hidey-hole, he loosened in its scabbard the broad-bladed infantry shortsword he favored and was about to do the same with his dirk when the cave mouth loomed before him, almost blocked by the bulk of a man of the Black Kingdoms, in helm and steel cuirass, armed with bared broadsword and dagger.

In the dimness to either side of the big swordsman, Wolf saw two very short bowmen—either dwarfs or young boys, and plains nomads by their appearance—each with a nocked arrow in a drawn hornbow. Somewhere behind the trio he could smell horses. Keeping his hands well away from his weapons, the scarred old soldier grinned.

“Comrades, a good day to yer. Now, looky here, I ain’t one of Duke Tcharlz’s civil marshals, if thet be what yer thinkin’. I be just a ol’ soldier, sent out a-scoutin’ fer his captain, back’t’ Twocityport, an’ I never had me nuthin’ but r’spec’ fer smugglers. I swan, wasn’t fer smugglers, damn few o’ us poor fellers could get us nary a taste o’ good likker, whut with these here sky-high taxes ever’ mucketymuck an’ his friggin’ brother slaps awn it.” The swordsman shook his head, the unlaced face plates slapping against his cheeks. “We are not smugglers, soldier. We are escaped slaves who maimed our master, killed freemen, stole horses, weapons and supplies and fired a serai. We now seek a way to cross the Great River, that these youngsters may return to the Horseclan from which they were kidnapped by evil men who sold them into servitude to one of those debauched eastern Ehleenee. “We know ourselves to be pursued, soldier. That is why I must kill you, lest you betray our biding place. I am sorry, for you seem a good, blunt, honest warrior.”

Wolf saw the brawny, brown-skinned arm go back, readying for the thrust, and the swordsman asked solemnly, “So how would you rather have it, soldier, heart or throat?”

Wolf grinned again, disarmingly, “Of exertion, to be true, Zahrtohgahn”—his keen hearing had sorted out the accent— “after a night with a brace of sixteen-year-old doxies.

“But hold up fore yew murders me. It’s a full p’trol, up there ‘top of the bluffs, an’ they knows I’m down here. I don’t come up soon… ‘less yew thinks one sword and two bows be a match fer a dozen well-armed veterans.” Seeing with relief the muscles of the sword arm relax just a bit, Wolf added, ‘”Sides, I think I got me a ideer will help us all out a little.” Wolf sank down to a squat, removed his helmet and placed it under his flat buttocks. After a brief pause, Nahseer, too, squatted, laying the blade of his sword across his knees, but keeping the dirk in hand. Neither of the nomad boys stirred, other than to lower the aim of their hornbows to keep Wolf covered. On a hunch, Wolf tried telepathy. “Do you mindspeak, little comrade?” he asked Bahb Steevuhnz.