Robert Adams - Horseclans' Odyssey

“Now just what,” mused Martuhn to himself, “is that feckless bastard up to now?” His answer was not long in coming… in the person of Duke Tcharlz, who approached the outer works the next morning, just after it had become light enough to recognize men’s faces at a distance.

The duke rode almost to the verge of the moat, opposite the main gate, in the middle of the south wall. He looked up at the works just above that gate for a moment, then roared, “Martuhn! Are you up there, lad? Let me in, we must talk.” Martuhn was: so too were Wolf and Nahseer.

Wolf muttered, “What the hell is that sly old fox up to now, milord count?” “I have no idea, Sir Wolf,” Martuhn replied. “But he’s alone and unarmored and…” He peered harder. “I don’t think he even has his sword on. Scant harm he could do.”

To the soldiers inside the tower that housed the machinery controlling gate, portcullis and drawbridge, he snapped, “Lower away, soldiers, and raise the grille, but don’t raise the bar until Sir Wolf says to. “Wolf, wait until he’s at least halfway across the bridge, then, if no assault party has come into view, open the right valve only, and close it the minute he’s through it. Hear?”

Martuhn and Tcharlz met in the grim, spartan little ground-floor office, and the older man came directly to the point. “Martuhn, son, I need your help.” “Your grace needs my help?” Martuhn sounded his incredulity, but his voice quickly acquired an undertone of cynicism. “The siege is become too expensive to maintain, your grace? I fear I’ve very little to lend, but…” The old duke seated himself without invitation. “Martuhn, my boy, I don’t blame you a bit, but you of all people know just how murderously violent I become when I’m thwarted. It’s not a thing I enjoy admitting, for it’s a serious weakness in my character, but, hell, man, I can’t help or control myself. “Have you got a few quarts of beer left? I’ve been up all night with Alex and my staff—talking, talking, talking, all of us, when we weren’t scheming and planning and weighing possibilities—and I’m dry as a salt fish.” While a pikeman went to fetch beer, the tall captain planted the sole of a booted foot on his desktop and, leaning over, snapped, “All right, your grace, what do you want from me? It is, you will admit, most singular for the commander of the investing force to come to ask the help of the very man he’s besieging. But I suppose you have your reasons and I also suppose they mean something… at least, to you.”

The duke shook his head. “Not just to me, my boy, but to you and to Alex and to every man, woman and child in both duchies, these two threatened duchies.

“But, you were speaking of investments and sieges; well,

,there is no longer a siege. My men are packing their gear and breaking camp at this very minute. There never should’ve been a siege to begin with, Martuhn, I can see that now, though I couldn’t then, of course. “You are my chosen son, the best of the best, my heir presumptive, the strong right arm of an old and very tired man, and I should’ve remembered that before I tried to bend you to my will against your own. What matters it what some alien merchant wants or does not want, really, eh? I am the real law, not that doddering, maundering old fool Lapkin.

“And I say that the boys are yours, Martuhn, now and forever. I beg you, my son, please forget or at least forgive my harsh words and harsher actions against you and them. Ill not reinstate you in your rank and lands and title, for to my mind, you never were disenfranchised, all right?” And what, your grace, am I expected to do in return for all the largess of My Lord Sir Tcharlz, Duke of the East Bank?” asked Martuhn in tones of mock humility.

“Why, simply resume your rank of senior captain of all my infantry, Martuhn, my dear boy. Leave only enough of them here to maintain civil order and ferry the bulk of them over to Traderstown, then assume command of the town and all the troops therein.”

Martuhn strove not to show his surprise and total bafflement at the request. “And what h Duke Alex going to think when one of your officers takes over his capital? Or has your grace managed to cozen him out of his duchy?” The duke chuckled. “Not quite that much, Martuhn… not yet, anyway, though that too may well come in time. No, Alex is in complete accord that you—a man, I might add,. whom he deeply respects, despite and likely because of the drubbing you gave him last fall—take command of the city and hold it against the Horseclans nomads while he and I with our cavalry try to get those Satan-spawn into a real battle on open ground, whereon our heavy horse can fight to best advantage.

“As soon as heavy barges can be brought across and loaded, Count Bart is taking over all my lancers and dragoons. I’ll be following with the heavy horse as soon as I’ve handled some of the more pressing affairs at Pirates’ Folly. I’ll be at my castle ten days, at most; that should give you time to marshal the footmen hereabouts, assign temporary duties within this duchy to ones you consider least effective for combat, and ready the rest to embark immediately my horse is landed over yonder.

“But, Martuhn, I cannot allow you to take those boys over the river. Now, hold, hold! I have a very good reason for it, and please believe me, my son, there are no hidden reasons, only the one, open one.

“Martuhn, those boys are nomads’, Horseclan nomads, and those people hang together more firmly than ticks on a hound. You know the boys and love them and respect them and trust them. I do not trust them and I’ll not have them placed in a position from which they might do our arms considerable damage, were they to find themselves torn between old loyalties and new. “Leave them here, Martuhn, in this fortress, and if you’re still worried that I may be acting in bad faith, leave Wolf or Nahseer to guard them. I’m no mean swordsman myself, but I’d think twice before I drew steel to go against either of those two.”

Arrived back at Pirates’ Folly, Tcharlz threw himself into a whirl of activities. Ensconced in his private office, he kept messengers scurrying in and out, while five or six scribes hunched over their portable tables, trying hard to keep up with his staccato dictations of messages, and the chief scribe sat at another table with a goodly supply of melted sealing wax, ribbons and the weighty ducal seal.

Noblemen, gentry officers and their retainers only just sent home upon Duke Alex’s precipitate cessation of hostilities and withdrawal to his own, now hotly embattled lands needs must be recalled with haste; supplies and transport must be arranged for; small, speedy ships must be dispatched up both rivers to try to seek out unemployed mercenaries (if, with a civil war in Mehmfiz and another war building up between the traditional rivals, Ehvinzburk and Tehrawt, there were any to be found, at any price).

He knew that he also must find time to arrange a meeting with the council of merchants and the council of shipowners. For to pay whatever mercenaries his agents might scrape up, he would have to float a loan on next year’s taxes, and he well knew that those two packs of skinflints were the only ones who could quickly raise the sum he had in mind. But he did not relish the thought of asking the rich, supercilious commoner-bastards and arrogant foreigners for anything; he had avoided doing so in the campaigns against Mehmfiz and Traderstown, but this new calamity found a treasury virtually drained of fluid resources.

Such was Tcharlz’s dislike of what he knew he must do that he briefly flirted with the idea—actually, it was his prerogative to do so, if in his opinion (and who else’s?) the good of the duchy required so radical a step being taken—of marching into Pahdookahport with all the armed men he could quickly gather and seizing the members of the two councils. Then he could either squeeze the monies out of them with threats of torture, mutilation and death, or hold them for ransom to be scraped up by their peers.