Robert Adams: The Savage Mountains

Milo looked grim. “No, Lord Drehkos, they but set others to do their dirty work for them; consciously aiding and abetting the evil designs of their devilish kooreeoee, they worked upon the minds of their followers, inflamed them with fiery oratory, and cleverly administered drugs when the time was ripe, and set them on a course of murder and destruction which was completely against the best interests of those poor, deluded followers.

“No, Lord Drehkos, I’ll not suffer such conscienceless, merciless cowards to roam at large in my domains. As for the Initiates, I … Tell me, what know you of their rites?”

Drehkos shrugged. “Very little, I fear, my lord. After all, had the rites not been kept secret, there would have been no Mysteries, would there?”

“Quite true,” smiled the High Lord, then became once more serious of mien, deadly serious. “Know you then, Lord Drehkos, that these Mysteries were a debauched, depraved, hideously perverted distortion of true Christianity. In the foul rites of the Inner Mysteries, men and women were tortured and mutilated, innocent little children—babes, even—were hacked apart and the hot blood of their living, screaming bodies mixed with wine and other substances to be greedily guzzled by these same Initiates.”

Captain Pehtros had paled visibly. Captain Djaimz looked greenish and ill; Drehkos sat, rigid, in his chair, his big hands clenched together so that the scarred knuckles shone white as new snow. He had, secretly, long suspected that some awful practices were part and parcel of the Inner Mysteries, but it had been simply a gut feeling with no real grounds for its existence. Nonetheless, he found the High Lord’s words, terrible as they were, easy to believe.

“Such was the worst,” Milo continued to his abashed audience, “but it was far from all. Sexual orgies frequently were the climax to their ‘services,’ and, since a child to sacrifice was not always available, they also filled their communion cup with animal blood, human urine and even women’s moonblood.”

Captain Djaimz’s chair crashed over and the young officer stumbled hurriedly from the chamber, both hands pressed to his lips.

“But … but, my lord, why?” Drehkos shook his head in wonderment. “Such practices are no part of any religion I’ve ever heard of, and I’ve read of many, both modern and ancient”

Mile’s wide shoulders rose and fell. “There are some similarities to the old Ehleen monster cults which flourished in the last few years before the coming of the Horse-clans, a hundred and fifty years ago. But, beyond those, I can but surmise that the witchmen—kooreeoee extemporaneously concocted their ceremonies, since there were significant differences between those described by Spiros and those described by Mahreeos.

“As to why? Principally, because they are evil men to whom the sufferings and debasements of others mean absolutely nothing. In order to draw one foot closer to their goals, they would cheerfully bring about the deaths of half the population of the Confederation. And such is about what would have happened had their nefarious scheme come to full fruition.”

Drehkos looked his puzzlement. “I … I don’t understand …” he began, but Milo cut him off.

“Nor will you, vahrohneeskos, until yon city is once more in Confederation hands and I have your oaths of fealty. Officially, you’re still a rebel, an enemy, and I’m too old a dog to willingly give you an edge.”

The rebel commander drained off the last of his wine and stared for a long minute into the empty cup. At length, he set it on the table before him, rose from his chair, unhooked his cased sword from his baldric and laid it on the board, its worn hilt near the High Lord’s hand. Following his lead, Captain Pehtros did the same. Captain Djaimz, his face and armor splashed with water, reentered just in time to add his own weapon to the formal surrender.

Vahk Vratnyuhn watched his runty mountain pony crop at the few spears of dead grass poking through the snow, and shivered, his teeth chattering. But it was neither the biting cold nor the bitter wind which had so set Dehrehbeh Vahk, a mountain warrior born and inured to cold, to trembling. No, it was the proximity to the sinister Valley of the Maidens.

Looking back to the fire, around which his score of warriors were quietly finishing their meal of venison and mush, Vahk could feel their fear, as well. Only their inborn loyalty to him, their hereditary dehrehbeh, had kept them camped three months in this place of waking-sleeping dread; just as only his own unquestioning obedience to the will of the great chief, the nahkhahrah, had sent him and them as escort to the Woman-of-Powers, who had entered the Pass of the Maidens moon-before-last, bidding them await her return.

Vahk and his warriors were not men easily frightened. Weak or craven Ahrmehnee children did not survive to adulthood, and these were picked fighters, the very cream of the Vratnyuhn tribe; not a one but had trophies racked in the House of Skulls. As for Vahk himself, he had, when a herdboy of less than one hundred seventy moons, slain a prowling bear-sow, first driving her off the goat she had slain, then receiving her ferocious charge on his spear; firm, he had held, heedless of the claws which savaged arms and shoulders and face, until the wide blade found and burst her fierce heart. Too, he had taken men’s heads, many heads, his first when he was but something less than two hundred moons.

The Ahrmehnee tribes were much feared by all their neighbors, mountaineer and lowlander alike, and with good and sufficient cause. They had dwelt in the mountain valleys—and, formerly, in the foothills, as well—since the World Death ended the Time of the Gods, were themselves the descendants of gods. The Ehleenee, strive as they might for near six thousand moons, had come away well bloodied, leaving behind many heads, on each occasion they had tried to lessen the constant menace of Ahrmehnee raids. Only a Confederation army of more than one hundred thousand men had finally driven them from their foothills, and then they had fled only because there were too few warriors left to effectively fight in open country.

Ten times thirteen moons later, the surviving elder warriors led the next generation of black-haired, hook-nosed young headhunters in an attempt to reclaim their stolen foothills; but they met their match for reckless courage and fierce bloodthirstiness in the hard-fighting horse archers of Clans Baikuh, Vawn and Skaht. Even so, they might have conquered through sheer weight of numbers, had not the Undying Devil of the Confederation returned and, with another huge army, crushed them at the Battle of Bloody Ford.

So few men had come back to the mountains after that defeat that nearly thirty times thirteen moons had elapsed ere the tribes had regained near to their former strength. And by then, the stahn was being severely pressed from both west and northwest by numerous, though primitive, non-Ahrmehnee peoples.

The Thirteen Tribes had stopped the newcomers, of course, but not decisively. The Muhkohee, as they were called after the name of one of their principal tribes, had settled on the fringes of Ahrmehnee lands, and the fight was now of many hundreds of moons duration, each new generation blooding itself on the ancient foe, race raiding race for goats and food in hard winters, for women and heads anytime. Quarter was neither asked nor given, the few warriors taken alive were invariably tortured to death … very, very slowly, sight and smell and sound of their agonies being always most pleasing to their captors.

Naturally, the Ahrmehnee still raided their former lands, bringing back fat cattle and sheep, fine, tall horses, choice, high-spirited women, heads and much rare booty. But these raids were small, hit-and-run affairs, and the nahkhahrah always forbade any tribe’s raiders to penetrate far into the border duchies. For another decimation like Bloody Ford would, today, spell the certain extirpation of the entire Ahrmehnee stahn under the ravening spears and knives of the barbaric Muhkohee: nought but justified fear of the thousands of grim warriors the Thirteen Tribes could muster held their enemies in any sort of check.