Robert Adams - Horseclans' Odyssey

But despite all the rich jewelry and clothing, at close range her perfumery failed to cover the stench of a human body long unwashed. The few teeth remaining behind the carmine-painted lips were stinking and rotted brown, and under the dazzling brilliance of the cut stones, her clawlike hands were dirt-streaked and grubby.

Her manner, when Martuhn had outlined his needs, was blunt to the point of discourtesy. “Cap’n, this here ain’t my affair nor my fancy’s. Wouldn’t be no fighting atall, if our pigheaded duke had done what the commoners’ council had tol’ him to do first off. He should oughta pay off them nomads, alia them savages don’ want nothin but loot and hwiskee and a few good-lookin slave girls to screw.”

Martuhn had not heard earlier of this conference. “You mean that you and the rest of the citizens were willing to pay a ransom to the nomads to prevent hostilities?”

The old woman drew a goodly breath into her bony, near-breastless chest and exploded, “Hell no, cap’n! That young fool of a duke is richer than anybody elst in this whole fucking duchy. Let him pay the frigging ransom, him and his hoity-toity nobles.

“We all tolt him we’d give him good prices awn the stuff the nomads was gonna want, but aw, naw, he hadda start a-buying up hosses and mules and hired fighters and all.”

Hatee suddenly thrust the four fingers of her right hand between two buttons securing the front of her silken dress and scratched vigorously, the huge ruby of her thumb ring flashing the light from its surfaces. The stone itself was obviously hundreds of years old and had probably been scavenged from a dead city of the Ancients, for no one today was capable of cutting and finishing stones in that fashion.

After examining the fresh layers of dirt now under her fingernails, she went on, “Cap’n, I know you means well and all, but ain’ nobody here in Traderstown gonna empty no warehouses and get the flo’s all dirtied up with blood and piss and shit and puke and I don’ know whatall, like them docks is right now. You gotchew any idear what it cos’ to buy and feed and put clo’s awn good, strowng slaves, these days? And I reckon it’d turn out to be our slaves had to shift all the stock and then clean up, after Duke Alex either comes to his senses or gits hisself kilt out yonder.

“But ni tell you what I will do for you, cap’n. I’ll lease you some tarps and poles I got me, cheap. And, ‘sides’ that, I’ll let you use some of my older slaves inta the bargain— they ain’t none of ’em got what it takes to work awn no wawls, no mo’, but they could all shuffle ‘round enough to fetch water and chase ‘way rats and all.”

“And what, pray tell,” replied Martuhn dryly, carefully holding himself back from the violence he longed to wreak upon the stinking flesh of this vile, vulgar, parsimonious and self-centered bitch, “would be the cost of your generosity?”

She steepled her stained fingers and eyed him over their apex, “Well, them tarps is almos’ new and soma the poles is new, but sincet you’ll be a-feeding the slaves while they’s a-working for you, let’s us just say a round one ounce of gol’ the day, eh? Now ain’ that a good pricet, cap’n?” Martuhn heaved himself out of his chair, his face gone white as fresh curds; he kept his hands tightly clenched and a vein was throbbing in his temple. “Mistress Gairee, I have been a soldier for the most of my life, living in camps and garrisons. But not even among the whores who follow the armies have I ever met a woman as filthy, foul-mouthed, deceitful, callous of suffering and coldly mercenary as are you.”

“Well, I just love you to pieces, too, you foreigner cock-sucker!” snapped Hatee, her brown eyes blazing. “You just as dumb as our asshole duke and them shitheaded gents of his’n, think you kin git anythin’ you wawntst for free. Well, well learn you fuckheads diffrunt yet!”

“Enough, woman!” Martuhn slammed the callused palm of his hand down on the desktop so hard that several items were bounced off onto the floor. His other hand came down less violently, and he leaned across the desk to meet her hot glare with a murderous look that set her innards to quaking. “Had His Grace Duke Alex empowered me to arrest citizens of my own warrant and for my own reasons, you and your overpretentious finery would presently be immured in the deepest, darkest, dankest cell I could find for you, but my powers here are limited, alas, so I must release you. However, you have well earned and you fully deserve punishment, and I think I know of one that will hurt such a stinking bitch as are you more than fetters and whips and hot irons. “I am fully empowered to commandeer to the duchy all riding or draft horses and mules, as well as all wheeled conveyances which might be of use to the army. Therefore, as of this moment, your coach-and-six and the mounts of your outriders are become the property of His Grace Duke Alex of Traderstown. Upon the victory of our arms or a cessation of hostilities, your property will be returned to you, if then living or intact. Dead or destroyed beasts or items will be replaced either in kind or in Specie.”

Leaping to her feet, the skinny old woman clenched both bony fists, raised her arms above her head and shrieked at the top of her lungs. But neither her screams nor her protests nor the incredibly obscene names she called him nor the tears to which she finally resorted altered Martuhn’s decision. And, in the end, all of it was for nothing. The superhuman labors on the crumbling walls, the constant feuding with the merchants and the bankers, the shipowners, the artisans, the factors and the landlords; all were for nought in the final analysis.

Their numbers reduced in the steady attrition of indecisive skirmishes with the innumerable bands’ of raiders, in ones and twos to hidden bowmen and in larger numbers to wily ambushers, the two dukes at long last got the “advantage” toward which they had been manuevering.

Martuhn saw it all, from start to sanguinary finish, under the ancient, inadequate walls of Traderstown itself. At the very end, when both ducal banners had gone down and the few pitiful survivors of the two duchies’ cavalry were fighting desperately, their backs to the city walls, against the waves of screaming, blood-mad nomads on their ugly little horses, Martuhn used his few engines and his massed archers and crossbowmen to drive back the foe long enough to allow a regiment of pikemen to march out, form to repel cavalry and slowly withdraw, still in formation, when the last of the battered and bleeding cavalrymen were through the gates.

Several of the surviving horsemen had seen Duke Alex and his bodyguards go down under a wave of nomads, while others told almost identical tales of how Duke Tcharlz, beset on all sides, had finally rallied a couple of hundred still-mounted men and personally led a charge deep into a huge knot of the massed Horseclanners… never to be seen again. All of which tended to leave the reins of power in both duchies clearly within the grasp of only one man, Captain Count Martuhn.

As he had been certain they would, the nomads attacked a stretch of low, incomplete wall shortly after dawn on the day after the defeat of die cavalry;

Martuhn’s spirited defense threw them back, all four waves of them. But he also took casualties, more than he would have liked, and mostly the direct result of the inadequate defensive works. And that night he made his decision. When the last of the wounded and ill men were across the river, when all supplies and extra weapons had been landed on the east bank and when the last of the families and personal effects of the original garrison of Traderstown had been evacuated, Martuhn commenced the taking off of his troops, beginning with the now nearly-useless remnants of cavalry and their few remaining mounts. After them he sent his service troops, then the pikemen and dartmen, saving his archers and crossbowmen until last.