Robert Adams - Horseclans' Odyssey

The messenger returned with an oral message from the captain that neither he nor the boys would come out. However, the duke was welcome at any time to come inside, alone.

“ Tcharlz then sent in another messenger bearing an order for all troops within the citadel to come out with their arms and beasts and join the siege brigade in bringing the rebel. Captain Martuhn, to the duke’s justice. After a wait of several hours, the messenger returned… with a scant dozen common soldiers and two shame-faced officers. At this, Tcharlz rode into the citadel alone, as invited by his rebellious officer.

Stiffly, formally, he explained his purposes to Captain Martuhn, who then had all of the citadel’s garrison assembled in the forecourt to hear the duke. Duke Tcharlz made no threats, he simply reminded them that they were his troops— either natives of his duchy or client states, or mercenaries hired by his order and paid by his gold—and that their loyalty belonged to him, not to any of his officers, and especially not to a former officer now in open rebellion against the duchy. Then he asked that all men and officers who would accompany him out of the citadel and help in the overthrow of Sir Martuhn—formerly Captain of Ducal Infantry and Count” of Twocityport—take two paces forward. Not one man or officer moved from his place in ranks, and the duke’s face reddened, while his jaws worked and his left hand tightened on the hilt of his broadsword until the scarred knuckles stood out as white as snow. At long last, one officer left his place and approached the livid duke, who growled with the beginning of a grudging smile, “Well, Baronet Fahster, you took long enough to make up your mind. At least one of you assholes knows which side his bread is buttered on.”

The tall, blond man shook his head forcefully. “Your grace, I’ll not be leaving with you, but in fairness to you, I felt you should know why. Have I the permission of your grace to speak?”

‘Talk away, rebel bastard,” snarled Tcharlz, all hint of the smile fled from his lips. “I trow your next speech to me will be from the gallows at Pirates’ Folly… just before you swing for your treason.” “Lord duke,” began the baronet, “I have served your arms long and faithfully. I have taken agonizing wounds in your service, but you rewarded me graciously and you have been a generous patron.”

“Then why do you now turn on me, Baronet Fahster… Hal?” For a fraction of a second, the deep, hidden pain tinged the old nobleman’s voice, glittered from out his eyes. “You and I, lad, we’re natives of the same county. Your father was one of my dearest friends, a staunch supporter whose courage and strong right arm did much to put me where I am today. When he died in my arms, he committed you to my care, and I reared you and sponsored you as if you had been my own flesh and blood.

“So, why, Hal? What have I now done to you that you would forsake me?” The young man’s own inner turmoil was patent; tears coursed down his cheeks and his voice shook with emotion. “Your grace has ever been good to me, to all my house, and is loved for his goodness. But, your grace, I now must follow the dictates of my conscience, which tells me and all these other soldiers and officers that your grace—who is, after all, but a mortal man like us—has been ill-advised and misled by those men closest to him and that he is, therefore, in the wrong to so persecute one of his best, bravest and most loyal officers in an attempt to force him to turn over two of our young comrades to an alien and unnatural creature who has already offered one of them shameful abuse. “It will hurt me more than anyone can know to draw my sword against your grace, but I—on my honor—can do no other unless your grace relent in his purpose.” The duke whirled on Martuhn. “What have you done, damn you? Bewitched them all?” “Your grace,” answered Martuhn in a quiet, controlled voice, “I simply told them all your side, my side and my decision. Then I allowed the boys to tell of what had befallen them and Lieutenant Nahseer to speak of what he knew from his years of slavery about this Urbahnos’ true nature. What the men and officers then decided was of their own choice.”

Turning back to the assembled troops, the duke roared,

“You’ll live to regret this defiance of the law, of the duchy and of me, every man jack of you!” Then he jumped down from the platform, found his stirrup and hurled himself into the saddle of his dancing stallion. Jerking the reins from the horse holder, he almost rode over the man -as he spur-raked the big horse into a fast canter toward the gate.

A few miles to the southwest of Pahdookahport lay the ruins of a long-deserted hall, one of the victims of Duke Tcharlz’s land reforms, two decades and more agone. Although the complex appeared to have been slighted, it actually had not. Rather, two generations of the new breed of yeoman farmers and stockbreeders had used it as a quarry— carrying away brick and cut stone, roofing tiles and even massive timbers, when and as they felt the need. The larger, less easily manageable stones of its outer walls had been carted away by the duke’s men and were now incorporated into the fabric of Pirates’ Folly, while nearby smiths and countless vagabonds had torn or prised away all reusable metal of any description.

But though the half-picked skeleton of the once gracious home lay with most of its interior exposed to the effects of wind and weather, now only providing permanent lodging to birds and bats and the small, scuttling creatures of the fields, the deep, roomy, extensive cellars were almost intact. And of a late, stormy night, they were used by Sir Huhmfree Gawlin and certain of his retainers.

Within the large, earthen-floored subcellar room once used as a winecellar, a small slice of hell had been constructed and was in use. Brightly lit in its center by torches and lamps, and thick with their smoke and the commingled stenches of sweat, spilled blood, charred flesh, dung and heated metal, there were chairs to make some of the observers comfortable and devilish devices to inflict varying degrees of discomfort upon the flesh and bones of the one female in the room.

Despite the oppressive heat, all five of the men seated in the chairs were voluminously cloaked, with hoods and masks that made identification impossible. The woman, on the other hand, was naked. Her gross, corpulent body hung by its wrists from a rope threaded through a big iron pulley spiked to a ceiling beam. All parts of her fat body showed the marks of whip or sharp knife or heated iron or pincers.

Her name was Yohahna and she had for many years operated and claimed to own a Pahdookahport “business,” the Three Doors. Her swollen and discolored feet and nailless, charred toes hung a few inches above the floor, and blood from various parts of her battered, horribly disfigured body had dripped down to form a clotting pool on the hard-packed earth.

Her hands had been tied behind her back before she had been hoisted up; her immense weight had long since dislocated her shoulders and she now hung, panting hoarsely in agony, her one remaining eye bulging and bloodshot. “Would it not be better to lower the wretch while she ticks off her silent partners for us?” inquired one of the cloaked men, aged by the sound of his voice.

The cloaked man on the far right shrugged. “She’s as comfortable where she is as she could be. She can no longer stand or sit, you see. I suppose that we could put her on the rack again…” The woman’s hoarse panting was suddenly replaced by a low, bubbling whine, and the blood trickling from her burned and mutilated pudenda was briefly diluted with urine. “Aw, don’ hurt me no mo’,” she whimpered huskily. “Pleez don’ hurt me no mo’, mistuh. I’ll tell yawl enythin”, everthin’. Yawl wawn’ gol’? I c’n show yawl where two hunnerd pounds is bur’ed. Jest, pleez, pleez Gawd, don’ hurt me no mo’!”