Robert Adams - A Cat of Silvery Hue

“Bili?” Milo’s powerful mindspeak burst inside his skull.

The assault on the other salient, headed by the High Lord, had been almost a textbook exercise in how such a maneuver should be done. Honored to have their supreme sovereign in their van, officers and men alike bad gone about their prescribed actions ‘in strict, regulation manner—archers and engineers taking excruciating care in providing cover for the advance up to and through the gapped abattis; the units quickly and precisely forming their battalion front behind their two Cat Banners, with the High Lord and his plate-armored guard between the battalions.

At the roil of the drums, the engines had ceased their work, the archers had confined themselves to well-aimed loosings at clearly visible targets and had quickly ceased even that At the second drumroll, every heavy shield came up to battle-carry, every spear sloped across right shoulder at a precise angle, all performed under the critical eyes of halberd-armed sergeants and officers with broadswords at the shoulder-carry. At the third roll of the drums, a deep-throated cheer was raised and the lines started forward, up the slope and into the hail of death hurled by the defenders, dressing their lines at the jogtrot as missiles took inevitable toll.

Ten yards from the bristling ramparts, under the rain of stones and darts and arrows, Milo’s mindspeak to the surviving senior officers gave the order which made the final assault far easier. Halting, still in ordered formations, the fore ranks knelt behind their big shields. As one man, the rearmost rank employed the tool carried for the purpose to knock out the steel pin securing the heads of their dual-purpose spears. Then, to ths drumroll, their brawny arms “hurled the heavy missiles with a practiced accuracy which was not necessary, for so thick was the press atop the rampart that even a tyro could not have missed fleshing the spear.

As the men of the first volley drew their wide-bladed short-swords and knelt, the line in front of them arose and threw their own spears. Then the drums once more rolled and, cheering, the companies swept forward, their crest breaking over, then engulfing the rampart before the rebels could recover from the shock of the two spear volleys.

So sudden, unexpected and complete was the victory of the High Lord’s force that the suicide garrison had no time either to seal or even conceal the huge oval chamber undermining the hilltop fortifications, the tunnel through which they had been supplied and. reinforced, and the oil- and pitch-soaked timbers supporting them.

“It’s a stratagem which can be hellishly effective, Bili,” Milo urgently farspoke. “Something similar once cost me nearly two regiments when we were conquering the Kingdom of Karaleenos, more than a century ago. Since this hill be mined, it stands to reason that the one you’re on is too. I’ve been unable to lock into Ahrtos’ mind. You must get word to him that the troops are to quit that hilltop immediately!”

Bili was blunt. “Strahteegos Ahrtos is dead. So, too, are most of the other officers of the first assault force. A sub-strahteegos called Kahzos Kahlinz presently commands what be left of the men who did the actual fighting, as well as his own slow-footed companies. He thought that he commanded me and mine, as well, until we had some … ahhh, ‘words’ on the matter.”

“All right, Bili,” Milo quickly ordered. “I’ll mindspeak Kahlinz. You see to getting your own Freefighters off that hilltop. You should be safe down as far as the abattis. Get off your wounded but don’t bother with your dead; there may not be time.”

Kahzos-thirty-five-year-old third son of Thoheeks Hwflkz Kahlinz—whose twenty years under the Cat Banners had earned him command of a line regiment and a second-class silver cat, was coldly furious. First, that old ass Ahrtos had relegated him to the inferior command of the second wave while taking his two best battalions away from him for the initial assault and “replacing” them with a single battalion of irregular light infantry from some godforsaken backwater in the northwestern mountains. Then a noble bumpkin—and it was hard, despite his title and mindspeak, to credit that the boy was even Kindred, what with his damned harsh Middle Kingdoms accent and his shaven scalp—had defied him before his own troops! Blatantly lacking respect either for Kahzos’ rank or age, the young pig had not only profanely refused to put himself and his mercenaries under Kahzos’ rightful authority, but had insisted that his northern barbarians be given leave to loot the salient before Kahzos’ Confederation gatherers were allowed to scavenge valuable or usable items.

And Kahzos had seen no choice but to accede to the unreasonable demand, despite the flagrant breach of army regulations. For the arrogant young pup had made it abundantly clear that should the Confederation commander demur he and his mercenaries would fight-turn their swords on Confederation troops—to achieve their larcenous ends. And Kahzos could only think of that disgraceful business some years back, of the ruined career and cashiering of an officer who had set his battalions on mercenary “allies” when they refused to fight.

Of course, the man had been a damned kathahrohs Ehleen—which automatically meant a fool and a thief—and had hoped that by butchering the mercenaries he could conceal the fact that he had embezzled their wages. But still, with such a precedent and his honorable retirement not far distant, Kahzos had stuck at an armed confrontation with that puling bastard of a thoheeks.

But for all his inborn prejudices and his towering ego, Kahzos Kahlinz was a good officer and an intelligent man. He immediately grasped the dire possibilities, the danger to every man within the new-conquered salient, when the High Lord mindspoke him. After snapping an order to his staff drummer, he replied.

“My lord, because of some unforeseen difficulties with the barbari—ahhh, with Thoheeks Morguhn and his company, the gatherer squads have but just dispersed about the area. Most of the drummers are handling litters, but I have ordered my own drummer to roll the ‘Recall’ and I will immediately send a runner to the thoheeks, whose Freefighters are occupying the redoubt nearest to the city.”

“Never mind Thoheeks Bili,” beamed Milo. “He has already been warned. Just get your units out of there as rapidly as may be. We’ve suffered much loss for damned little gain this day as it is.”

Bill supervised the handling of the wounded Freefighters down the outer face of the rampart. Only when the last of them was resting far down the hillock would he allow himself to be lowered from his place, leaving Pawl Raikuh to see to the dead Freefighters and bundles of loot.

The captain had the stiffening corpses dumped unceremoniously off the rampart. Unless they were noble-born, dead Freefighters were normally simply stripped of their usable effects and left wherever they chanced to fall. As he set his feet to the first rung of the rope ladder his men had jury-rigged, he could but grunt his disgust at the foolhardy idiocy of that arrogant bastard of a sub-strahteegos, who should have been shooing his troops out of the doomed salient but was instead ordering them in painfully dressed formations as fast as they reported to the roll of the drum.

Sergeant Geros’ detail returned just as Bili hobbled down to the place where the wounded had been laid. The young thoheeks took the opportunity to appropriate the sergeant’s mare but found, to his shame, that he had to be helped into the saddle.

Increasingly thick tendrils of smoke were rising from between the paving stones ere the rearguard of the infantry column attained the rampart, and before the last company could even start their descent, a flame-shot pillar of smoke and dust mounted high into the air from the court behind them. To those on the slope, it was as if some gigantic monster had roared with hellish din and fiery breath. The doomed men on the quaking rampart were half obscured and their terrified screams were heard only by themselves.