Robert Adams - Horseclans' Odyssey

One of the other cloaked figures, not sounding anywhere near as aged as the first, remarked, “The fat bitch sounds considerably different from when last I spoke with her about that matter some years back of kidnapped girls. This exercise in chastisement has obviously purged her of her unseemly arrogance. She now has recalled how to properly address her betters.” The aged man said rebukingly, “You say too much. She is of scant use to us dead, so it is imperative that she be given no clue to our identities… yet.” Then, to another of the hooded ones, “Are you ready, then? Take down every word from now on spoken in this room. Identify us and yourself as numbers one through five, counting from left to right. Her, you’ll list by the letter Y, but note the full names and ranks or offices of anyone she mentions; there must be no mistakes or omissions to legally trip us up.”

“All right, Yohahna,” said the man at the far right, “you will now repeat for these gentlemen what you told me earlier. First, who are the actual owners of the Three Doors?”

There followed a chorus of gasps and exclamations of incredulity as the tortured woman whisperingly stuttered the list of more than a dozen names—nobles, gentry and commoner-merchants of the duchy.

The man on the right spoke again. “And how, Yohahna, do you usually recruit your whores?”

“I buys me purty slaves, if I can,” she gasped. “But I got me this gang of fellas, goes outa the town and tries to get farm and village gals to run away with ’em. If the gals won’ the mens ushly knocks ’em inna haid and brings ’em back to me. Then I gentles ’em down till they is broke proper.”

“These girls you have kidnapped, Yohahna—are they all the daughters of citizens of this duchy?”

“Yessuh, far’s I knows they is. None the slaves is,” she replied. “I buys them, leegul and proper, I does.”

“And these partners you have named, do they all know just how you obtain your girls? Of your highly illegal methods?”

“Sure they does,” she affirmed. “Lak I done tol’ you, suh, oncet the baron hisse’f tol’ me which gal he wawnted took up and brought to mah place. It ’uz the daughter of some piss-poor gentleman, and the baron, he’d offered her a dang good living to be his mistress and the crazy lil wench’d turned him down flat, and he had the itch, bad, had to get in ’er, he did.”

He of the aged voice growled, “And did you kidnap this gentle-born girl, then, you piece of filth?”

“I got ’er inna place, a’right,” the dangling woman replied. “Bat it won’ no gentling ‘er, and me and my mens tried near everything we knows, short of flat-out raping her—and we couldn’ do thet ‘cause the baron was set on being the firstest man in ’er.

“Fin’ly, the itch got to ‘im so awful bad, he come down and took ‘er by main force. But after he’d done had her, she come to git holt of his dagger and come at him and afore he could git it away from ’er, he’d done kilt ’er.” The man with the aged voice snarled behind his mask like some beast of prey and started up from his chair, his heavy dirk half out of its sheath. But hands on either side gently restrained him, murmuring to him until he had regained his composure and sheathed his weapon.

The man on the right then asked, “And the Ehleen merchant factor, Urbahnos of Karaleenos, Yohahna—is he, too, one of your partners?”

“He useta be, suh, but he just up and sol’ out his shares to me’n the baron, ’cause he ’uz going back eas’, he said, as soon’s he’d done got him back them two lil slaves what had got ’way from him.”

“You mean his sons? The two nomad boys he’d adopted?” her main questioner prodded.

“Aw, naw, suh. That there adopshun was jus’ a way him and the baron come up with to keep from him having to pay part of what-all they costed him to whoever caught ’em. The lil’es’ one he was gonna give to some Ehleen mucketymuck in the place he come from what likes te bugger lil boys as much as Urbahnos does; then this other Ehleen was’s’posed to make it right enough that Urbahnos could go back home.

“He offered to sell me his wife afore he left, but I figgered she’s a mite too old, and b’sides, her paw was to find out she’d done been sol’ to me, that’ll be a purty mess. So I tolt ’im to wait till he got upriver, somewheres pas’ Ehvinzburkport, and then sell her and his kids.”

They went on, the hooded gentlemen, until the scribe had run out of materials. Twice the woman fainted and had to be revived by the application of hot irons to her vulnerable flesh.

At length, the man of the aged voice said, “All right, we have what we need, more by far than was really needed to achieve our aims. Confine the hag closely, but see to it that she is well fed and nursed back to health and strength. For at the conclusion of this, I want to see her last a long time, a very long and painful time, impaled on a thick stake. Then and only then will justice be truly served.”

Count Martuhn had been performing one of his periodic inspections of the magazines wherein were kept the garrison’s food and supply stores when Wolf’s messenger found him. As the citadel had been victualed and supplied for the needs of two thousand men—and Martuhn’s command had never numbered more than fifteen hundred, including noncombatants—for a year-long siege, he figured that it would be months still before there was any dearth to consider. But he still checked the magazines every ten days on general principles: it kept the quartermaster sergeant and his staff on their toes. The pikeman Wolf had sent found the count still chewing a chunk of the pickled pork from a cask he had had sprung at random.

“My lord, Sir Wolf bids me report that a barge is starting across the river on the south cable. It soon will be within range of the engines, and he asks if he should sink it.”

“Only the single barge, soldier?” Martuhn asked around the pork.

“Yes, my lord, only one. And it one of the smaller ones.” “Wait, I’ll return with you, soldier.” Martuhn turned to the quartermaster sergeant, “Aye, Les, that’s good old-fashioned campaign pork. Have your lads reseal it and bear it up to my tower. I often want something solid to chew on in the night.”

By the time Martuhn stood beside Wolf, the small barge was well out into the river and, for all the efforts of the unseen men pulling the heavy oars in steady, even strokes, was making very slow progress and straining against the thick cable high above. It was now within easy range of the wail engines, and Wolfs shift of engineers were all standing ready at the stone hurlers and spear throwers, awaiting but the word of command to release the triggers of their deadly devices.

Martuhn used one hand to shade his eyes against the bright noon sun. He spied the reflections of sunlight on a bit of polished steel, but could discern little at that distance through the glare.

“What do you make of it, Martuhn?” Wolf mindspoke.

The count shrugged and beamed. “No reinforcements for Duke Tcharlz, certainly. Even if the men on the benches below were soldiers too—which I tend to doubt, for the tempo is too strong and regular to be aught but trained slaves—still they could not get more than a bare hundred men on that cockleshell. Could be a messenger from old Alex, so leave it be, let them land: that man brings trouble if not doom to everything and everyone he touches. His grace has surely seen the barge, too, or his men have, so don’t fire on any party he sends down to the dock.”

As the greeting party and the westerners rode past the citadel, it could be seen that one of them was Duke Alex himself, accompanied by a bare handful of his gentry and noblemen.