Robert Adams - The Savage Mountains

When he had given Vaskos command of the city and the attached base of operations for the mountain campaign, the High Lord had covered the case of Danos in his verbal orders.

“Vaskos, you’re now a sub-strahteegos, but a responsibility such as I am placing in your hands is—or, rightfully, should be—that of a full strahteegos. Therefore, I am breveting you to that rank. Do a good job in Vawnpolis, and the end of this campaign will see the brevet rank a permanent rank.”

Then, while the officer glowed with the promise of unexpected promotion, the High Lord had elucidated, where necessary, the written orders and added certain others. Lastly, he had added, “And, regarding this business which you and Lord Hari spoke with me about, this Captain Danos may well be everything of which you two accused him, and more. But he also was a brave and resourceful soldier, and his former commander, Lord Drehkos, has only the highest praise for him. Too, he is presently fulfilling a most valuable function in the city. I feel that he should continue in that function and in his current rank, at least until we’ve scotched these Ahnnehnee and Witchmen.

“As commander of Vawnpolis, you will find yourself working with and for the former rebels, and I expect you to get along well with them, all of them, including Captain Danos. Do I make myself clear, Strahteegos Daiviz?”

There had been no option and Vaskos had given the expected answer. Nonetheless, he had found it most difficult to be barely civil to this hated subordinate. He still did.

Not that he was too stiff-necked to give the devil his due. No man in the garrison or the city envied the captain his job. Vahrohnos Myros” madness was unpredictable and he could be extremely dangerous. Indeed, in one of his ragings, the lunatic had virtually torn limb from limb the sergeant who had originally been assigned to assist Danos.

At one moment, Myros would be the very epitome of the old-fashioned Ehleen gentleman—cool, poised, a bit arrogant, conversing in cultured accents—then, in a twinkling, he could become a ravening, blood-hungry beast with the strength of a wild bull and the murderous cunning of a treecat Or, just as quickly, he could lapse into a coma from which he might not awaken for days or even a week. In his day, the madman had been justly renowned as a master swordsman, and his keepers had early learned the folly of allowing their charge access to steel, no matter how pacific his mood might seem. No less than two men ever attended him, and they always carried long, leather, sausage-shaped cudgels rather than swords or dirks. Nor were they reticent in the use of their weapons when it became necessary to subdue the unfortunate nobleman. And Myros’ battered physiognomy bore mute witness to his warders’ self-protective impulses.

Soon after the close of Vaskos’ meeting, Captain Danos sauntered down a hallway of the Citadel toward a thick, ironbound door, before which squatted a brace of armored men. Their helms laid aside, both were peering intently at the dice one had just cast.

The officer began to speak before he was well up to the pair. “Still at it, eh? Tell me, Sawl, how much does Geedos owe you by now?”

Fingering the place where his right ear—bitten off by Myros—had once sprouted, the brawny, thick-bodied man squinted his eyes and answered, “Well, cap’n, near as I can figure, ’bout twenty-three million thrahkmehee, give ’r take a couple of million.” He added a gaptoothed grin.

Halting before the still-squatting men, Danos removed the sword from his baldric and the dirk from his belt and stooped to lay them by the two helms. Casually, he helped himself to one of the heavy, loaded cudgels, tightening its thong on his right wrist. Leaning over the gamesters, he slid back a brass panel and gazed through a grilled aperture into the chamber beyond, then slid the panel shut and stepped back.

“Open the door, Sawl. Geedos, make sure his lordship is on short chain. I wish to talk privately with him for a while.”

When the officer entered his cell, Myros laid aside the book he had been reading by light of the two wall lamps which were kept constantly burning, well out of his reach.

A sneer twisted his lips as he suffered the guard to lift his feet onto the bed and shorten the chain which secured his left ankle to a finger-thick iron eyebolt let into the granite-block wall.

Few of the noble rebels now rotting in the prison at Morguhnpolis would have recognized the prisoner as the carefully groomed, satanically handsome man who had masterminded and led the rebellion in Morguhn. Black-nailed, filthy, clawlike hands poked from the sleeves of his stained and tattered shirt. The trimmed and oiled black mustachios and chinbeard of old now were merged and lost forever within the matted, gray tangle of whiskers which hung almost to his waist. His hair was almost totally white, as full and filth-matted as the beard. Even his fine, patrician nose had been knocked askew in one of the murderous set-tos with his “guards.”

Only his glittering black eyes were unchanged, and from them his madness shone clearly. And something else peeked out as well, now and again; something which smacked to Danos, each time he chanced to see it, of dark, sinister, eldritch evil, which could see to the very core of his soul.

When the guard had adjusted the chain and left, closing the door behind him, Danos waited unspeaking until the muted clatter of the dice came from the hallway. Only then did he draw nearer and speak in hushed tones.

“My lord, I’ll not be bringing you any more ‘delicacies’ for a while … possibly, a great while. The streets are going to be swarming with men every night for some time to come and it’ll be just too risky to chance.”

The vahrohnos showed his stained and broken teeth in a lazy smile. “You are lying, you whoreson. Vaskos-the-bastard hasnt enough of a garrison to mount a really effective guard, and I doubt me, with the sweet smell of strahteegos in his swinish nose, that hell appeal for more men. So don’t attempt to hoodwink me, you lowborn lout.

“How would you like me to start screaming for you, you personally, one night when you’re out about your rather peculiar diversions, eh? How would you like for me to tell them exactly where to find you, under those ruins at the northeast corner of … I That shook you, didn’t it, captain?”

Pale and trembling, his quaking legs scarcely able to support him, Danos had backed as far from his demonic charge as he could. He leaned weakly against the wall, his nape prickling, while drops of cold fear oozed from his every pore.

The madman went on. “Oh, no, Danos, you’ll continue to supply me my wants, for you are my prisoner as surely as I am yours. You’ll bring me a quart of fresh blood at least twice each week, and I care not where or how you get it. Woman’s blood or man’s blood, it matters not. But you will bring me blood!”

Using the mind of Whitetip, his prairiecat, to boost his farspeak range, Bili bespoke those few minds with which he was familiar to alert four of his farflung squadrons to the High Lord’s new orders. For the others, he sent out dispatch riders at dawn. Also at dawn, he divided his personal command, sending the four reserve squadrons back to the trade road in company with the mule-and-pony train of booty, the dozen or so wounded Freefighters and most of the supply train. When he spurred westward, it was at the head of a full squadron, made up of the best of five.

Noble and Freefighter, officer and man, they were, in appearance, a rather unprepossessing lot that chill morning. Nearly a month of unrelieved campaigning up through the inhospitable mountains had given them the look of ruffians—mostly unwashed, untrimmed and unshaven, showy with gaudy bits of looted Ahrmehnee finery, acrawl with vermin. Albeit, there were few glum faces among them, and for two principal reasons: first, they had encountered few warriors and had consequently suffered few casualties; second, the pickings of the villages had been good, better than most had expected of mountain barbarians, and every rider who arrived back below the walls of Vawnpolis was assured of a jingling share of the loot now being packed south on the long trains of mules and asses and “liberated” mountain ponies.