Bili the Axe

10

The lid of the simple stone sarcophagus was engraved with but five words: MARTIN—KING OF NEW KVMBRLAND. Behind the coffin, on stone pedestal, stood a lifesize figure that Bili at first took, in the dimness, to be a living man. Carved of well-seasoned hardwood by a past master, then enameled meticulously in fleshtones and finally clothed and equipped and bejeweled, the stunning effigy of King Mahrtuhn I stood in eternal vigil in the splendid crypt which now held his dust and that of his sons, and of his wives and theirs.

From where he stood beside Bili, the voice of King Mahrtuhn II of New Kuhmbuhluhn boomed softly. “Even whilst the Teenéhdjooks and Kleesahks were boring the passages and storerooms through the lower reaches of the mountain, using the blocks of stone thus quarried to build the city and walls, were certain of the most skillful of them all preparing this for the eventuality of my grandfather’s death. Until die he did, no true-man knew of the existence of this crypt.”

The king gestured upward, up into the dark vault above the wavery light of the lamps. “It is fifty feet from where our feet rest to the ceiling of this crypt, and only thirty feet above that is the windswept summit of King’s Rest Mountain, yet so cunningly did those creatures who so loved my royal grandfather carve and handle the stones of this mountain that no earth tremor ever has had the force to damage this, their work. Even the terrible shocks of last year, though they sent boulders plunging down every flank of the mountain and tumbled some of the buildings within the city and even shifted a few of the massive stones of the walls, not a pebble or a grain fell in the crypt. Such was the invaluable skill of the Teenéhdjook.”

The royal tomb was the first of the wonders Bili was shown within King’s Rest Mountain, but far from the last. He saw the ebon sheet of water which was the spring-fed lake, and the catchments and holding basins and dams and copper-lined aqueducts that provided citadel and city with abundant, clear, cold water.

He saw the storerooms and stables carved from the living rock within the mountain and reached by ramps wide enough for the largest wains or wagons to negotiate. Packed with dried, pickled, candied and otherwise preserved foods for man and beast, these siege larders were all protected from rodents by a resident colony of stoats. Semidomesticated, the long, slender, furry brown mustelids with their white, pointed, gleaming teeth showed no fear of either man or Kleesahk. A tentative mental probe told Bili that although they possessed at least marginal mindspeak abilities, they were none of them very interested in communicating with a two-leg creature.

Other huge rooms contained ceiling-high stacks of cord-wood and sacks of charcoal or blue-black chunks of mountain coal. Nor were the armories less well stocked, although by modern, Middle Kingdoms standards, the armor in particular was all of archaic design and construction.

But the centuries had not seen so much innovation in weapons as in body defenses. The baskets of arrows and darts, the bundles of spears, the various sizes and powers of the crossbows, the racks of different-sized axes—from short-handled franciscas to two-handed poleaxes—and the buckets of stone or leaden shot for sling or arbalest vastly impressed the young thoheeks.

With walls so stout, with such abundant provender and water, with such a quantity of arms, New Kuhmbuhluhnburk was in need of only a stout and determined garrison to be as close as might be to impregnable. A besieging force could break as many teeth as it cared to lose upon such a nut without even approaching the cracking of it; and the more prudent, patient course would likely prove but another form of futility.

With such a large, roomy bastion, Bili could see no reason at all to further risk the already decimated forces of the kingdom against a numerous foe armed with an apparently devastating new tactic, and he said so in council.

“Your majesty, my lords, as satisfying as is an open, honest combat to an experienced warrior, there be times when such enjoyments are not the best cour.se from a strategical point of view. It would seem to me from all I have seen and heard that this is just such a time.

“You have here an admirably situated and designed burk, one which could be held passively by no larger or better-trained a force than those nobles and commoners presently resident within it. Moreover, you have enough room to bring in most if not all of the folk of the surrounding farming areas and much of their livestock and goods, as well. Few threatened cities are ever so fortunate in any respect as is New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, I can assure you… and I am not a tyro, not inexperienced in any phase of modern warfare.

“Therefore, in the light of your severe losses of heavy cavalry last year, I would advise that you and all other Kuhmbuhluhners withdraw into the city or the safe-glens and leave these Skohshuns to tramp at will around a burned, barren countryside until starvation brings them to the suicidal folly of attacking this burk. As for the safe-glens, if they are anywhere near as well fortified as Sandee’s Cot, I see short shrift for the invaders at each of them, as well.

“Your majesty requested my thoughts and advice, and I have dutifully rendered it.”

The king regarded Bili down the length of the polished table for a long, frowning moment, then he finally smiled with his lips and said, “And we thank you for your candor, young cousin. Perhaps what you advise is truly the wisest course, perhaps it is what an eastern monarch or prince would do in like case, perhaps it is even what our honored grandsire might have done, but it is not our way.

“We could not feel our honor served by burning our croplands and squatting behind walls of stone, whilst stopping our ears to the honorable challenges of our foemen. We deem it far better that our mortal flesh be deprived of life than that our souls be bereft of honor.

“No, we will gather all the folk of the plateau into the city, right enough, and the more distant folk will be urged to seek the safety of the fortified glens. But when once the foe comes into view, we shall assemble all our remaining host and ride out to meet him in honorable combat. “Such is our toyal will, gentlemen.”

The brigadier’s fierce mustachios bristled like a hedge of pikes and his eyes sparkled his righteous rage at the earl’s patent stupidity and obstinacy in the light of this new intelligence, but long practice gave him control of his voice.

“Your grace, it was given to me to understand at our late-autumn conference last year that should it become obvious that these Kuhmbuhluhners had somehow made good their losses of heavy-armed horse, we’d not try again to fight them, but first offer to treat with them as equals. Another such ‘victory’ as we squeezed out and squeaked through at that last battle would spell our undoing.”

As the earl remained silent, regarding his senior officer blandly over the tips of his steepled fingers, the old man drew a deep breath and went on. “Now we have heard no less than three experienced and trustworthy scouts attest that a large party—at least two hundred, possibly more—horsemen have ridden up from the south, braved both rain and unseasonal cold in the high mountains, to reach the plateau whereon sits the capital of New Kuhmbuhluhn. They—”

“They were none of them armored,” interrupted the earl mildly. “The scouts saw no more than a helmet or two and a handful of scaleshirts -among them all. We all honor you and your many achievements, brigadier, but I think—and I’d not say this were we two not alone—that that near thing last autumn has gone far to becloud your judgment so that you see fresh Kuhmbuhluhn heavy-armed horse where none exist. Belike, that column was but another train of supplies and remounts.

“No, our costly victory of last year has given us an undeniable edge, and we’d be fools not to use that edge for cutting, for further whittling down these Kuhmbuhluhners to a point at which they will treat on our terms.

“Thanks to that last long, hard freeze that made the river firm and solid enough for even wagons, we now have all of our people over here, and immediately the last regiments are refitted and in order, I mean to advance on the attack. And I’ll hear no more words at variance with that decision, Brigadier… even from you.”

The old man did what he must do, having no option; he bowed his head in submission to his overlord. He still was not in agreement. He knew in his heart that the young earl’s plan was wrong, ill advised, precipitate, but he was servant, not master, and he knew his place.

While ostensibly engaged in playing or watching the play of the game of battles, Bili, Rahksahnah, Captain Fil Tyluh and Lieutenant Kahndoot were actually engaged in a council of their own, a silent one, by mindspeak. The young war leader had first told them of all which had transpired in the king’s council, then had awaited comments; nor were such long in coming.

“Typical male foolishness!” beamed the broad, solid axewoman, Kahndoot. “Your counsel was good, Duke Bili; this fool of a king would have been wise to follow it. What can he hope to accomplish by losing still more of the few fighters he yet has?”

“But foolish as it seems to us,” put in Tyluh, “I am certain that it is anything but foolish to King Mahrtuhn. I have noticed that these Kuhmbuhluhners live by very old-fashioned precepts and principles, many of which have not been carried to such extreme lengths in the Middle Kingdoms in a hundred or two hundred years. To such archaic thinking, an honorable suicide is far preferable to a victory that smacks in any slightest way of cowardice or dishonor.”

“If he wants to kill himself, let him fall on his sword,” commented Rahksahnah coldly. “But why must he try to drag us, our squadron, down to his death with him?”

“He won’t,” Bili attested. “He and his fire-eaters can impale themselves and such of their horses as they can force to it on the Skohshun pike hedge if they must, but this unit will not be beside them.

“Fil, d’you recall the tale of how one of my maternal ancestors, a duke of Zunburki devised a way to deal with the supposedly invincible Klahrksburk pikemen?”

The captain’s face suddenly split in a broad grin. “That’s it, lord duke! The dim recollection of that tactic has been nibbling at my memory since first we all heard of these Skohshuns and their way of war. Such was always the inherent weakness of overlong polearms—they’re worse than useless in a really close encounter with dismounted opponents, while they weigh so much that your average pikeman simply cannot bear the added weight of decent armor. Few of them will wear more than some kind of helmet, maybe some variety of metal reinforcement on the backs of their leather gauntlets and perhaps a skimpy breastplate.”

“Just so,” agreed the young thoheeks. When he had explained the winning tactic of his ancestor to the two women, Kahndoot asked a question.

“But why our squadron alone, Duke Bili? Why not go to this king we now serve and tell him what you have just told the Brahbehrnuh and me? It makes good sense, if fight he must.”

Bili sighed and beamed back, even while using his knight to bring Rahksahnah’s king into check, “It is as Fil and I have said, Kahndoot—the king and all of his court are very old-fashioned in their outlook. They will allow us to do something new, innovative, but they would not do such themselves. In their blind, senseless pursuit of that which they deem to be honor, only riding out, cap a pie, to try to come breast to breast with this enemy whose leadership is obviously more modern and practical than archaically honorable is all that will apparently suit him and the court.

“My present position considered, I have said all that I can as regards the king’s overall strategy. I like him and his heir—they are bluff, hearty warriors—and I will hot like to watch them die, but I fear me much that that is just what I’ll have to do, unless…”

He paused for a long moment, his mindshield erected as he thought hard. “Unless… ? Unless I can somehow persuade his majesty to allow us to charge first. Perhaps I can convince him that he owes us this “signal honor” as a boon for our service against those poor primitive farmers, last year.

“Can we go first, using the Zunburk attack, mayhap we can sufficiently roil the pike hedge to give the heavy horse an aiming point, a broken spot in the hedge through which they can ride and attack these Skohshuns at such close range that those overgrown pikes will prove a hindrance rather than a defense or a weapon.”

Erica and her Ganiks stayed in the area around the low cave in which they had wintered far longer than any of them would have preferred to do. As Ganiks had always done, they had not cared for or sheltered the horses through the long months of cold, but had simply left the mountain ponies to their own devices to live or die or stray far away. In the more southerly area from which she and the bullies had ridden, there were numerous large and small herds of semidomesticated ponies roaming hill and vale, and they were easily caught by even an unmounted man, were he good with a rawhide lariat—and few bunch-Ganiks but were proficient.

But such feral herds were obviously not a feature of these northern reaches, as they quickly discovered. The only ponies sighted and run down by the roving horsemen were easily recognized to be animals brought into the area by themselves last autumn. Wary of the large and murderous hunt that had driven them all out of the settled farming lands of their “relatives,” the Kuhmbuhluhnized Ganiks, they were loath to raid there for the needed mounts.

However, it soon became obvious to all that if the entire party was to be mounted as they traveled on, such a raid was a necessity. But they took no chances on this raid. They set no fires, they murdered every man, woman and child quickly, then stole only small, valuable, easily transportable loot— foodstuffs, weapons, jewelry, clothing, blankets and the like— along with the horses, ponies, mules and few head of cattle the two neighboring farmsteads had afforded them. Reunited with those who had stayed behind for lack of a mount, the whole party immediately moved on westward, angling toward the north, traveling very fast for the first week or so.

Of course, they had no way of knowing that the bulk of the men of fighting age were not in the least likely to pursue them this time, being already on the march toward New Kuhmbuhluhnburk in obedience to the summons of King Mahrtuhn. Nor had they any means of being aware that their present course was leading them directly and inexorably into the very midst of a hot little war which would include another meeting with the very condotta that had destroyed the power of the Ganik outlaw bunches during the preceding year and thus set these few surviving leaders on the run.

Two weeks of travel brought the small party into a region profusely covered with huge-boled, high-thrusting oak trees, almost grassless for long stretches due to the acid quality of the tannin-laden leaf mulch underfoot. Scattered, overgrown stumps showed that once, long ago, someone had harvested oaks as large as or even larger than the biggest of the presently existing forest giants, but there was no recent sign of mankind. Not even when they chanced across a once-wide trail leading southwest did they espy any tracks but those of the beasts of the wildwood.

Therefore, since pursuit had not materialized this time, since game seemed abundant hereabouts and their plundered stores were almost expended, the Ganiks scattered to seek out a grassy area, if possible, near to a source of water. It was Horseface Charley’s group that found an almost ideal spot.

Invisible from the disused trail, at some long-ago time the woodland glade had obviously been the abode of sentient beings. All that now remained of their shelters was the oval or circular pits—all eroded and fallen in, true, but too regular in outline to have been the work of nature—the rotted stumps of the posts and the deep beds of ancient charcoal between now-mossy stones. An icy-clear spring and the burbling brooklet it fed lay nearby.

The flatter portion of the glade grew thickly with what Horseface had reported to be grass. Erica, however, was quick to note that the growth was, rather, wild grain—oats, from the look of the still-green ears. And a partial excavation of one of the larger of the old dwelling sites in preparation for readying it for new occupancy brought to light a sickle wrought of decayed bone but still mounting a few teeth of flint and jasper, all sharp as the day they had been knapped.

There were a few other stone tools, mostly broken, and a vast quantity of chips near to one end of the former shelter, but not a single scrap of metal.

None of the Ganik bullies displayed even a smidgen of curiosity, simply accepting the partially prepared site and quickly adapting it to their uses, and in answer to Erica’s deluge of questions about the previous occupants of this latter-day neolithic site, Bowley replied shortly.

“Hell, Ehrkah, I don’ know! Could been Ganiks, mebbe. Lotsa real religious Ganiks won’ use no metal of eny kin’,

‘count of Plooshun. But it don’ matter none, enyhaow; whoevuh it wuz, they been done gone a lowng tahm.”

They stayed over for the best part of two more weeks, feasting on elk and deer and shaggy-bull, smoking more meat to take with them and rough-curing the hides to patch boots and jerkins and to fashion, according to Erica’s instructions, bandoliers for loaded magazines and stripper clips of rounds for the rifles, as well as a belt and holster for her pistol.

Then they all set out again, riding the old trail, since it angled rather more south—the direction they wanted to go— than west at this point. After a couple of days of traveling, they began to flank a chain of high, tree-grown hills on their right, with the trail now leading almost due south but, disturbingly to them, showing signs of fairly recent use by men, beasts and wheeled conveyances. Visible signs of logging lined the trail, too, none of the stumps dating from any earlier than last autumn or early winter.

But they doggedly stuck to the trail, for all that most of the Ganiks loudly and often decried the folly of so small a bunch moving in the open in obviously settled Kuhmbuhluhner lands. Through Bowley, Horseface and Counter, Erica forced her will in this matter. While the Ganiks might consider a score of riders a small bunch, she realized the considerable edge given them by the four rifles and the pistol. She also knew that to take to the woods would be to cut their rate of speed down to a virtual crawl, and she was most anxious to get out of this provenly hostile land and on the road toward first Broomtown and then the Center… and a moment of reckoning with Dr. Harry Braun.

Nonetheless, they always took pains to camp well out of sight or sound of the trail, to maintain smokeless fires and to carefully scout out the trail in both directions before again setting out upon it of mornings. It was one of these scouts who first brought word of strange men on the trail, moving up from the south.

Ensign James Justis was given his orders for the morrow by his company commander, Lieutenant MacNeill. “Jimmy lad, a woodcutter party’s to go out at dawn to fetch back some of the trees they girdled and left to cure last year. I doubt me there’ll be any whiff of trouble, for we’ve seen not one of the Kuhmbuhluhn folk since the last battle, but you know the colonel—he insists on security, naetheless.

“So, put a couple dozen of our pikemen on ponies and you and them ride along out and back with the cutters and their wagons. Draw rations from regiment for you and ours. It’s up to the cutters to bring their own. See how many boar spears you can ferret out—scarce as decent pikeshafts are become, I want none of ours broken or warped in those damp forests.

“You might choose a couple of good shots and give them a prod or two and maybe a crossbow. Some fresh game for the mess would warm my heart, 1 vow.”

Ensign Justis had experienced scant difficulty in finding two dozen volunteers from the company of pikemen. The entire company would have come with him, so bored were they with the unceasing day-in, day-out pike drill, with the shouts and snarls and profane curses of glowering, red-faced sergeants and corporals, while the mounted officers watched critically from a distance.

The ensign had had only to choose men he knew to be good riders, plus a trio of keen-eyed and experienced hunters, plus a Corporal Gregory to convey his orders to the other ranks.

They rode out in the chill and damp of the dawning, all close-wrapped in thick, warm cloaks. The ponies moved out placidly, when once the ponderous gates of the captured safe-glen had been gaped, but Justis’ horse showed his fine, hot blood and his joy to be out of the confines of the glen in an attempt or two at misconduct the curbing of which required a tight hand on the reins. Behind the ensign and the first dozen pikemen, the cutters and their rumbling wagons proceeded, they being followed by the corporal and the second dozen pony-mounted, spear-armed pikemen.

As the column issued out from the fortified gap that led into the glen-approach, the three hunters with their missile weapons peeled off from the column and set out at the best gallop the mountain ponies could muster under the weight of the big, solid humans. When they had gained something over a quarter mile on the van of the column, they reined up, spread across the width of the trail into the verges of the forest and so proceeded at a fast walk, their weapons cocked and ready for whatever game might pass near enough for a shot.

When the scouts came breathlessly back with the news of the strangers on the trail, both Bowley and Horseface Charley went back with them to see for themselves. Before long, Bowley returned to the night camp, having left Horseface with the scouts to mark the progress of the strangers.

“More Kuhmbuhluhners?” Erica was quick to ask.

Wrinkling his forehead, Bowley shook his shaggy head slowly. “Naw, Ehrkah, leas’ wise I don’ thank so. It’s a whole passel of littul thangs makes me thank they ain’ Kuhmbuhluhners. Boots, fer one thang. I ain’ nevuh seed no Kuhmbuhluhner in no boot lank thet. They belt knifes is made funny, too, V so’s they hats. The closes’ one to me said some words, low-lahk, when his pony come to stumble; it ‘uz Mehrikan, raht enuff, but it ‘uz a kind Mehrikan I ain’ nevuh heerd afore.”

Erica’s hopes leaped suddenly. Broomtown trqopersl Could it be? Could it possibly be? But she kept her voice calm as she asked the necessary question.

“How are they armed, Merle?”

He shrugged. “Knifes, shortswords, crossbows—one of ‘em a reg’lar one and two whut shoots rocks; prods, they cawls ‘em, I thank. They looks lahk hunters, acks lank it, too, but I done lef Charley and them boys back ther fer to see if eny more is a-comin’.”

Erica sighed softly. No, not Broomtown men. They’d have been armed with sabers and axes and rifles, not crossbows and shortswords. They were most probably Kuhmbuhluhners after all, despite Bowley’s assurances to the contrary; likely they were just a northern type he had never before seen.

As for the oddly inflected language, she and others at the Center had never ceased to be amazed at how quickly so many, vastly differing, frequently all but incomprehensible dialects had sprung into being in various portions of what had once been the United States of America—all of them based on the one language of that vanished nation, Standard American English. The only people anywhere who still spoke the original language were occupants of the Center and its bases, plus that evil, murderous mutant, Milo Morai.

She went on to reflect that the present commercial tongue used by the traveling traders—most of them now hailing from the Aristocratic Republic of Eeree, though a hundred years ago, before a succession of long, bloody wars had completely disrupted formerly stable governments, the majority of the traders had been spawned by the various kingdoms of the Ohio River Valley—was about as close to the original language as any of the dialects came. But even this so-called Trade Mehrikan was tinged with numerous loan words, phrases, pronunciations and inflections from the disparate areas they touched in the years-long rounds of commerce.

Erica’s reflections on language were violently interrupted by the sudden, crashing report of a rifle.

Out of the huge, hundreds-strong raiding party he had led into the Ahrmehnee lands, something less than thirty bullies rode out behind Abner. And those who did escape only did so because they were all horse-mounted and their fresh mounts’ strength and longer legs allowed them to outdistance those grim pursuers who rode down and slew every one of the pony-mounted Ganiks, few of whom had been armed anyway.

Throughout the first leg of their flight, Gouger Haney had unceasingly and profanely railed at him for keeping the common Ganiks disarmed, although the decision had been as much his as it had been Abner’s or Leeroy’s. Abner had known with a cold chill of certainty that the older, deadlier man would force him into a death duel for full leadership immediately they were out of harm’s way. It was far from pleasant to ride with the firm conviction that certain death lay both behind and ahead.

Fully aware of the sensitivity of Sir Geros, but also fully aware of what must now be done in the ruined village, Captain Pawl Raikuh slyly worked it so that it was the young knight who led out the pursuit of the knot of armed Ganiks who had broken through a weak point in the cordon of fighters that surrounded them. With the mixed force of Freefighters, Moon Maidens and Ahrmehnee well underway behind a sizable pack of the big, savage hunting hounds bred by the tribes of the stahn, Raikuh and Dehrehbeh Ahrszin set the bulk of their force to the work which must be done were they to forever rid these lands of the Ganik threat.

It was incredibly brutal work. Into the open space between the wrecked buildings which once had been the village square, the Freefighters would drag screaming, pleading, sobbing, struggling Ganiks. When the scale-armored men had forced the victims to their knees, one would grasp a handful of matted, verminous hair to hold the head as still as was possible while one of the Ahrmehnee warriors hacked through the neck of the ancient and detested enemy with sword or axe.

Before very long, the spaces between the standing walls were fast filling with stiffening, headless bodies, stacked like so much cordwood, while the pile of grisly trophies at one end of the square was growing faster than the Ahrmehnee could pack them into the sacks brought for the purpose.

The entire square, it seemed to Pawl Raikuh, streamed and steamed and stank of spilled blood, and even with above thirty years of soldiering and hard fighting behind him, the veteran officer still felt more than a little queasy as his boots sank almost ankle-deep in bloody mud. But he swallowed his rising gorge and kept his face blank. Necessity must be served, duty must be done.

Moreover, that duty must be completed before Sir Geros returned from the pursuit. Pawl knew his young, ennobled commander well—fierce as a scalded treecat in battle, still did this knight of the Confederation deeply detest all which smacked of violence and bloodshed, and he would never have condoned this cold-blooded execution of hundreds of completely unarmed, helpless men, even cannibal shaggies.

That they had not enough strength to take and guard so many prisoners would not have mattered to Sir Geros. Nor would the fact that were the shaggies to be freed and escorted out of the stahn, they would assuredly have been back immediately they were rearmed. Not even the certainty that the Ahrmehnee would never have sat still in the face of such foolishness would have persuaded Sir Geros that what Raikuh had here ordered performed was necessary.

“Hohguhn,” the tight-lipped captain called to one of his Freefighter lieutenants, “it took Ahdohm there three hacks to do for that last shaggy. See he has a sharper sword, eh? Let’s us git this butcher business over with.”

Well before the last shrieking Ganik had been shortened, the best of the captured ponies had been loaded with bulging bags of still-dripping, freshly severed heads, bundles of the rough, crude weapons the metal of which could be reworked by the skilled Ahrmehnee smiths and craftsmen, and such other usable items as the shelters and the piles of decapitated corpses had yielded to searching Ahrmehnee and Freefighters. The rest of the scrubby, thick-coated little equines were stripped of any gear and driven out of the environs of the blood-soaked village.

But disposal of the heaps of headless bodies was not so easily accomplished. Despite the recent thaw of the snow and ice which had for so many months blanketed the land, the earth below the top inch or so was still more or less frozen for some distance down. It was of dense, heavy consistency and studded with rocks of varying sizes at the best of times, winter frosts bringing them up from lower levels each year. Furthermore, the only shovels available were the few crude wooden ones of the now-dead shaggies, and while they had worked well enough in wet snow, they soon proved no match for hard ground.

At length, Pawl had all the corpses dragged to the nearest patch of thick woods and dumped in the heavy brush. Then he had his part of the force mount up and head back for the main village.