Bili the Axe

12

Captain Pawl Raikuh walked on invisible eggs when duty took him into the company of Sir Geros for almost a week after the affair at the Ganik-occupied village. But he was a blunt, honest man, and finally it all became just too much to bear.

“Sir Geros… son,” he began one night at table, “what Chief Ahrszin and I did, had done, up in that shell of a village, whilst you and the Maidens were chasing down the bastards what got away…”

Sighing, the young knight shoved back his dish of braised raccoon meat and interrupted in a regretful tone. “Had to be done, Pawl, I know, not that that knowledge makes it all sit any better in my craw. I deeply appreciate what you did for me, taking the decision and the onus off my conscience. It’s damned hard to be a savage, bloodthirsty warrior when you just weren’t cast in that mold. I’m just glad that the horrible business is all over. Perhaps now, if the weather stays good, we can get back to looking for Thoheeks Bili and the Moon Maidens’ brahbehrnuh.”

Raikuh squirmed uncomfortably. “I fear me it’s not quite done, yet awhile, Sir Geros, nor will it be until we have put paid to the very last of those damned shaggies. And that means taking the fight to them, attacking their camp in full force and killing every one of the buggers we can get steel into.”

Geros looked pained. “But why, Pawl? I doubt if more than a bare score got out of the stahn alive. How dangerous could so few be to the Behdrozyuhns?”

The spare captain ticked off his points on his fingers, one by one. “First off, Sir Geros, many of them as rode into here to start, I doubt me if it was all of them; they’d’ve surely left a couple hundred or so to guard their camp, I figger. Second, the reason those what got away did get away was ‘cause they was the leaders and the onliest ones armed.”

At Geros’ incredulous look, he nodded. “That’s right, Sir Geros. Every weapon in that village, even the knives, was all stacked up in the shelter the leaders had been in. I reckon those crazy bugtits had took to killing each other off at such a lick that the top dogs was afeared they’d weaken the force too bad to fight us.”

The captain made a moue of disgust, then corrected himself. “Were afraid they’d weaken their force too badly to fight us, dammit. If I keep living under the same roof with Bohreegahd, I’m going to ride out of here speaking like, hell, probably thinking like a damned hillman myself!

“Anyhow, Sir Geros, I feel it to be imperative that we strike, strike hard, as soon as possible, and Ahrszin agrees with me completely.”

It was on the tip of Geros’ tongue to point out that that particular Ahrmehnee headhunter never failed to be completely in favor of any stratagem or tactic that would see a few new skulls added to the gruesome display that adorned the rafters of the warriors’ cult house. But he thought it might be better to be a bit diplomatic and keep such thoughts to himself, for the two Ahrmehnee girls who looked after this house and his needs understood, he suspected, more Trade Mehrikan than they let on, and he still hoped to persuade some of the fierce Ahrmehnee of the Behdrozyuhn Tribe to ride with him when finally he was able to get back to the real reason he and Raikuh and the rest were here—to search for Thoheeks Bili and his lost command. So he simply held his peace and allowed Raikuh to continue.

And the captain did go on at some length, advising from his vast experience in strategy, tactics and logistics, oblivious of course of the fact that there was no longer an enemy resident in that camp just beyond the stahn border.

Somewhere in the confused few moments it had taken them all to dash out through the weak point of the tightening lines of the Ahrmehnee and the Freefighters they had thought were Kuhmbuhluhners, an Ahrmehnee wardart had thunked into the high cantle of Abner’s saddle. Thrown with all the force of a brawny arm, the missile was still there when, several hours later, Abner reined in his lathered, steaming horse just long enough to doff some of the heavier portions of his armor to ease the animal’s burden and perhaps increase its speed.

Leeroy halted beside his brother/lover and commenced to follow his example in shedding helm, plates and mail. The rest of the small knot of bullies had not halted, casting off what they could while still pushing on, for the border was not far ahead now and the relative freshness of their mounts had, they hoped, given them enough of a lead on their pursuers to get them out of the Ahrmehnee lands alive.

It was Leeroy who noticed the waggling butt of the dart, but Abner who half turned in his saddle and worked the point free. He was on the verge of tossing it, too, away when he noted how finely balanced it was, so he dropped it into his dart quiver, which hung on the offside withers of his mount.

Brutal use of spur and whip got their almost foundered horses moving again, and they both were almost at the unmarked border when they suddenly came into a little glade wherein another rider had halted. Plates and helm lay in the slushy snow on either side of the trembling gray horse as it stood with its fine head hung low, panting, its chest working like a smithy bellows.

The head of the rider was hidden in the oily steel folds of the hauberk he was working up over his head, but the horse and the bits of discarded plate identified him immediately to Abner and Leeroy. It was the fearsome Gouger Haney.

Almost without conscious thought, Abner’s hand went to his dart quiver, sought out the Ahrmehnee dart, and sent it winging to sink its sharp, needle-tipped steel point and a good half of its length of shaft into the helpless bully’s back, just a bit below the left shoulder blade.

Then, in dire fear that some one of their victim’s own bullies might have witnessed the treacherous act, the two rode on, not sparing Gouger Haney so much as a backward glance.

As earlier agreed in their shouted, in-saddle, in-flight council, the first bullies to arrive in the camp had set those lucky enough to have not, for varying reasons, taken part in the disastrous raid to preparing to repel imminently arriving foemen-^foemen who, as matters developed, never appeared, since Sir Geros halted his pursuit just shy of the border.

A few, a very few, other Ganiks trickled in after Abner and Leeroy, their journeys slowed by the thickness of the forest to which they had taken. But it was not until almost midnight that a weary horse plodded in, a gray horse, baring on its back a stiffening corpse with a hauberk bunched up around its shoulders and an Ahrmehnee wardart jutting out of its back.

The next day—with the best parts of the late Gouger Haney in various stewpots about the camp and his late rival’s fine hauberk now weighting his own shoulders—Abner gave orders to the remaining bullies to strike camp.

“It jes’ ain’ uhnuff of us lef fer to faht them Ahrm’nees and Kuhmbuhluhners and awl, and they shore fer to hit us, heanh, raht soon. So we’ll move awn south a ways and wait till we gits mo’ fellers in.”

Accustomed to obedience to a senior bully, not even the Gouger’s onetime bullies stopped to wonder why the Ahrmehnee whose dart had slain their leader had not, as Ahrmehnee always tried to do, taken his head, horse and weapons.

Once he had cleaned it, Abner put the Ahrmehnee dart back in his dart quiver. It had brought him luck, he felt.

Rahksahnah looked up into the oval-pupiled orange eyes of the bulky, hairy Kleesahk who knelt before her. “You are certain, then, Pah-Elmuh? Two of them?” she mindspoke.

“Yes, Lady of the Champion,” came back his powerful beam. “There are two little living ones forming within your body. Their birthing should be before the first autumn snows, doe& some tragic mishap not occur, so it might be wise of my lady to not go a-warring, this year.”

Wavy, blue-black hair swirled about her square shoulders as she shook her head forcefully. “But I must, babes within me or no, Pah-Elmuh. I must fight at my Bili’s side, must be with him every moment that I can… while still I can.”

“What means my lady?” asked the Kleesahk.

“Only this,” she replied. “I have… have had and still have a presentiment. Such is neither rare nor even unusual to women of my race and stock—my mother foresaw and foretold the exact circumstances and almost the exact day of her death. So too did her grandmother and many another brave woman of revered memory amongst the Maidens of the Silver Lady.

“I know that I must stay by Bili, for my time of living with him is short now, and growing ever shorter. So, yes, I will fight beside him for as long as the Goddess allows it.”

The huge being’s not quite human facial features twisted in what Rahksahnah had learned to recognize as a frown. “It could well be, my lady, that ill-advised, strenuous activity carried on for too long could result in a miscarriage. And such might well kill you were I or another skilled Kleesahk not near to prevent what nearly happened to you last winter, at Sandee’s Cot.”

But she shook her head again. “No, Pah-Elmuh, I know how I will die—it will be of the bite of steel. It is in most ways very cloudy, this scene I presense. Bili is there, but I do not think it happens in a battle, though there are… will be… three deaths, in all—me, another woman and a man, but not Bili. My Bili will live on and on, a very long life for a human man.”

“Yes,” the Kleesahk agreed, “I have seen this, too, in the Lord Champion. He will live nearly eighty more summers— long and long for you short-lived true-men—and fully many will be the high and the mighty who-will mourn his passing.”

“That last, that is more than I could scry out.” Her sloe-black eyes narrowed. “If you could read so much of Bili, then how much have you read of me, Pah-Elmuh? How much time is now left to me? Tell me!”

The massive, furry shoulders rose and fell once, a thoroughly human gesture of the hybrid humanoid. “Not even I can be certain of exact times, my lady,” he hedged, breaking off eye contact with her.

“Please tell me, Pah-Elmuh.” There was no mistaking the sincerity and firm resolve in her silent beaming. “I’ve got to know—can’t you see?—for… for my Bili.”

Still he kept his eyes averted, shaking his craggy head and beaming, “No, my lady, please, some things it… it is not good for true-men to know, it… it does things, terrible things sometimes, to their minds.”

Mindspeaking still was a new way of communicating to Rahksahnah and now, in her rage, she forgot it completely.

“Tell me!” she hissed aloud from between clenched teeth. “Damn you, tell me!” The knuckles of her right hand shone out white as snow, so fiercely did she grip the wire-wound hilt of the dirk that hung from her belt.

Once more the Kleesahk looked into her blazing, angry eyes with his own infinitely sad ones. “Very well, my lady. No more than another year from today… perhaps not even that long. There are… reasons? things?… which prevent me from being more certain. Does my lady understand?”

Rahksahnah shuddered strongly and was very glad that she had learned to mindspeak, for she did not think that she could just then have forced cooperation from her lips and tongue.

She beamed, “Yes, yes, I think so, Pah-Elmuh. It… I think it—the whatever that beclouds your ability to see exactness and detail—must be akin to the… to this thick, misty, smoky something that hinders my own foreseeing of my death. Surely it is all but the mysterious Will of Her, the Lady, and who among us is fit to question the ways of the Goddess?

“Yes, I understand, Pah-Elmuh, and I thank you for that which you were able to reveal to me. The sum of your scrying and mine own will guide me in the scant time I have remaining.

“And Pah-Elmuh… please.” She stepped closer and laid her hard, callused palm on his enormous, furry arm, tilting her head far, far back to maintain eye contact with the humanoid. “Bili, the Lord Champion, is to know none of this—not of the two babes within me, but especially not of… of this other. Please.”

His massive chest expanded and contracted in a last, deep sigh. “Very well, my lady, it shall be as you wish. For my part, I shall reveal naught of these matters here discussed to the Lord Champion.”

“It’s because I know of your interest in odd animals that I mention this, David. We’ve run into two specimens of the oddest I’ve ever seen or heard of.”

The transceiver crackled briefly, then Sternheimer’s voice was asking, “Do they seem to be mutations of some preexisting species, Jay?”

“It’s possible,” Corbett agreed. “I just don’t know all that much about reptiles and the lower orders to tell with anything approaching certainty. What we really need is Mike Schiepficker or one of your other zoology types up here. If you could have him coptered up from Broomtown Base, I could have a party there waiting for him at prearranged coordinates in a few days.”

“Is it worth the expense and the difficulties, Jay?” the Director asked. “Do you, in your considered judgment, think so?” The doctor paused, then added, “At least give me some idea what these things look like, eh?”

There was a wondering tone in Corbett’s answer. “As best I can describe them, David, like a cross between a snake and some humongous earthworm. The biggest of the two we’ve thus far had to kill—and damned devilish hard they are to kill, too, even with the best part of their bodies blown away or apart with explosive bullets; the only sure way you can be certain the bastards won’t take a sizable plug out of you is to cut off their heads—was around three and a half meters long and about sixteen or seventeen centimeters thick.

“There was very little tapering at either end, although there was a definite point on the tail. The head—I have one on the table before me right now—is broad and flattish with a rounded snout; it looks fairly reptilian, David, separated from the body, except that it has two rows of teeth.

“What about its skin?” asked Sternheimer. “How are the scales arranged?”

“It had no scales, David,” was Corbett’s reply. “As I said, it looked like a huge earthworm. Except for the head, the epidermis consisted of rings, just like a worm, but it was no worm. It had a bony spine, ribs, the works, including what looked like vestigial legs front and back. Another thing, David, every millimeter of the thing apparently secreted a sticky, viscous, mucuslike substance. Everywhere the damned thing crawled, it left a trail of slime like some gigantic garden slug or a snail. So, do you want to send me up an expert or not? Does this beastie sound worth it?”

“I’ll let you know by tomorrow night, Jay, after I’ve had a chance to get together with O’Hare and Schiepficker. Do you need any additional supplies or personnel up there, for the primary mission? Arms, munitions, explosives or whatnot?”

“Not really, David,” replied Corbett. “If anything, we have an overabundance of ammo just now, since the only use we’ve made of our weapons is killing animals for food… plus, of course, one bear and those two whatchamacallits we had to kill in self-defense. There’ve been no contacts of any sort with living humans, Ganiks or otherwise, since Johnny found that dead one back down the track.

“He and I took a patrol over as far west as what used to be—or so he avers—the camp of the overall leader of the Ganik raiders, and the only living things we found up there were a herd of scrubby ponies.

“However… look, David, if you do decide to send Mike up here, why not have the copter bring as much extra fuel as it can and still get decent range? I’ll have the party I send down there pack spades and picks and dig a hole big enough to cache the fuel. I have a feeling that if we do suddenly need resupply or reinforcement, we’re going to need it in one hell of a hurry and may not be able to spare the men to send down to pack them back up here. Okay?”

Erica’s party of Ganik bullies worked northward into the range of steep, forested hills from the site of the successful ambush of the pursuing cavalrymen. They moved as fast as the terrain and the animals would allow, bearing a little westward and essaying to traverse the roughest and most thickly grown areas until, at last, they came down into a tiny, grassy vale watered by a burbling, icy-cold little streamlet barely a foot in width. There they made a cold camp, dining on their packed rations while the horses and other mounts grazed the new, tender shoots of grass. No fires were built, and after eating, all but the guards rolled up in their blankets and plunged into deep, exhausted sleep.

When they awoke out of that deep, deep slumber, in the dawning light of the new day, it was to find themselves completely surrounded by hundreds or thousands of big, burly men armed with immensely long pikes, shortswords and dirks.

“B’god, but you’re a scruffy-looking lot!” remarked the brigadier, with the bare trace of a sneer. “Are you and your detachment the best that King Mahrtuhn can do? If he’s scraped the barrel so deeply, perhaps we can march at once.”

Erica could not place the mustachioed old man’s accent, it or the less precise version spoken by the pikemen and most of their officers. Some of the pronunciations and usages of certain words reminded her a bit of the speech still affected by a fellow member of the Board of Science—Dr. Bertram Underwood Deverell Crawley, called Bud Craw ley by his few friends, Creepy Crawley by the majority at the Center. The doctor had never—not in nearly a thousand years, despite the scores of different bodies his consciousness and intellect had inhabited in that amount of time—forgotten or allowed anyone else to forget his “Hahvahd” education or the additional bits of ersatz British speech patterns he had acquired during a two-year stint at Cambridge University.

Nonetheless, the language of the old man was far closer to educated twentieth-century English than anything she had heard at any place not controlled by the Center in a long, long while, and that ancient tongue that his so resembled was the one in which she answered him.

“You mean you think we are Kuhmbuhluhners, troops of King Mahrtuhn of Kuhmbuhluhn? Sir, we had thought that you were Kuhmbuhluhners. If you’re not, then what are you?”

“Hummph!” snorted the brigadier. “No irregular or spy ever admits to his or her true status, of course. But I could almost believe you, woman, for you certainly don’t talk like any other Kuhmbuhluhners I’ve ever heard. So I’ll give you your question back: If you and your riders are not Kuhmbuhluhners, then what, pray tell, are you, and why did you find it necessary to murder so many of my cavalrymen?”

Erica shrugged. “As to what we are, we’re all that’s left of the Southern Ganiks. The rest were all, in their thousands, driven out of Kuhmbuhluhn or butchered by King Mahrtuhn’s heavy cavalry, last summer. So we are no friends of that red-handed king or his people, needless to say.

“As regards your own troops: The first one, the hunter on the road, was killed because he loosed at one of us first, with a stone from his prod; as regards our ambuscade of the cavalry, well, they were hard on our trail with bared steel and the obvious intention of using it when they caught up to us, so we could hardly be expected not to try to turn the tables on them. What would you have done in our position, sir?”

“Probably just what you did, woman,” said the brigadier bluntly, shrugging. “It was sound tactics, that, and you’d like to have gotten away from us clean, had you stayed up in those hills and not come down into the glen, as you did. But we were expecting you to do just that, you see. It is just what a party of Kuhmbuhluhners out to foment a guerrilla movement amongst the conquered Kuhmbuhluhners still living here, in the glen, would do.”

She shook her tousled head ruefully. “The joke’s on us, sir, grim joke that it is. We had no idea where we were, as we had no knowledge of this area, having but just come down from the northwest where we wintered. We thought that that little vale was just what it seemed to be—a good place to camp and rest and breathe the beasts before pushing on on the morrow.”

“Then why,” the brigadier snapped, “did you build not one fire? Were you as innocent as you’d have me to believe, you’d at least have set a watchfire to burning.”

“And be spotted by the surviving pursuers?” replied Erica. “We’re not fools… and we’ve been hunted before, by Kuhmbuhluhners, last autumn. Furthermore, we knew that we had not gotten all of that cavalry; yes, we dropped most of the heavy-armed, horse-mounted forward elements, but there were close to a score of spearmen on ponies coming up behind them when we withdrew. In our place, under such circumstances, would you have built a fire and slept sound beside such a beacon?”

He shrugged again, sipped at his flagon of beer, belched loudly twice, then said, “Probably I would have done just as you did, woman. You make sense. All right, let us imagine for the nonce that I truly believe your cover story. Just what are you Ganiks? I’ve heard the term from some of our enemies, along with some very disgusting supposed habits and practices allegedly common to Ganiks, but I’ve discounted the most of said stories, for similar garbage and slander has been attributed to us Skohshuns at various times and in varying places by our enemies, too.

“Now, tell me, woman, just why did King Mahrtuhn set his army against your people? Were you, perhaps, in rebellion against established authority?”

Erica thought hard before she framed an answer. In all truth, the Ganiks had been in rebellion against the Kuhmbuhluhners—an ongoing rebellion of scores pf years’ standing. That was all that the outlaw bunches could have been called, for all that the bunch Ganiks had preyed as much upon their own people, the fanner Ganiks, and the Ahrmehnee as they had upon the Kuhmbuhluhners. Furthermore, she was certain that most if not all of the “disgusting” facts that this old man had heard of the Ganiks were probably pure, unvarnished truth, but it would do no one any good just now to tell him so. But she also sensed him to be a shrewd, intuitive man, who would quickly sense a fabrication if she spread it on too thickly, gave more than a bare outline. The more closely the lie skirted the actual truth, the better, she felt, in this case.

“Not rebellion, sir, not really,” she replied. “Ganiks, you see, were settled here for years before the Kuhmbuhluhners arrived. King Mahrtuhn’s ancestors took over the north, here, where there had never been very many Ganiks, but they grew in numbers and aggressiveness and, over the years, encroached steadily upon Ganik lands. Most of the Ganiks were a peaceable folk to begin, but the dispossessed joined with the naturally warlike and as the resultant bands grew in size they began to openly resist further Kuhmbuhluhner encroachments. If you choose to call the defense of one’s ancestral lands rebellion, then, yes, the Ganiks were indeed rebels.”

The brigadier nodded. “Yes, land, that is always at the bottom of most wars. That’s the reason we Skohshuns find ourselves in Kuhmbuhluhn, you know. Donkey’s years back, we fought our way through the northern reaches of the Ohyoh country and settled in the southerly parts, then fought as much as two or three times a year to hold what we’d won at such a bloody price. But to the natives there we always were strangers, interlopers. Finally, three years or so back, the various principalities settled their differences and united to push us out or exterminate us. We fought for a while, resisted until it became obvious that we could not win against so many determined foemen.

“We sent scouts in various directions, seeking a land to which we could withdraw. Those who came into Kuhmbuhluhn brought back reports that it was sparsely settled in its north-western’ parts, but held promise of richness when once put under the plow. So we developed one of our small river ports into a large, strong embarkation point and began a gradual, fighting withdrawal from our Ohyoh lands. We ferried over a small but powerful force, first, then began to send noncombatants a few at the time.

“The Kuhmbuhluhners began to attack us savagely, and when we determined that they were using this glen as a base of operations against us, we brought over enough pikemen to take it from them. Not that that was an easy task, mind you, not in any way. Many a brave man lost his life in that undertaking, you may be sure. But it was done! We Skohshuns are nothing if not a stubborn lot.

“We have fought the Kuhmbuhluhners often since then, even before we had all of our folk over the river as we now do, thanks in no small part to that fortuitous hard freeze of last winter which allowed us to cross the river without the use of boats or barges. We came very close to utterly routing their heavy-armed cavalry last autumn, for all that a good third of our forces still were engaged across the river, holding off the allied army of the Ohyohers. Now that we have all of our host here, I see no reason why we cannot conquer the best part of Kuhmbuhluhn this summer.”

The old man paused for another draft of beer, then regarded Erica and Bowley for a moment before saying, “Despite the near certain triumph of our arms, native auxiliaries who know the country better than do we could likely be most helpful to us in this final year of our conquest. I feel entirely confident that the earl would be most generous to willing allies against these Kuhmbuhluhners.

“Now if I decided to free one or two of you to ride south, how many Ganiks do you think could be brought back here to join us, fight with us against the common enemy?”

Erica felt like pinching herself to be certain that she was not dreaming it all. It sounded just too good to be true. The two of them alone, well mounted, with Bowley’s proven skills at keeping out of sight in hostile country, should have little if any difficulty in passing through the thinly settled Kuhmbuhluhn lands, and thence down one of the tracks to Broomtown Base, and so to the Center.

But then Merle Bowley proceeded to blow it!

“Ganiks, you wawnts?” he snorted. “Wai, you jes’ too late, mistuh! It ain’t no Ganiks lef in awl Kuhmbuhluhn, ‘ceptin’ of us’uns, it ain’t. Them whut din’ run awt is daid, an’ by Plooshun, thet be the trufe!”

Had she still had her pistol, Erica would likely have shot him, so coldly furious was she.

Banners and pennons snapping in a fresh mountain breeze, armor and weapons flashing in a warming sun, King Mahrtuhn, his son and his grandson, his personal staff and his officers filed out of the citadel and rode through the brightly bedecked streets of the lower city, between rows of cheering citizens.

Thoheeks Bili of Morguhn sat his glossy-black warhorse in the procession beside one of the other officers. While Mahvros—his mount and faithful horse brother—joyously flexed his pasterns in his own parade strut, Bili mindspoke Rahksahnah, who rode farther back in the procession.

“I sense no good in this insanity, my dear. I wonder how loudly these poor fools would cheer and applaud could they sense what Pah-Elmuh and I can in the king. Mahrtuhn and his grandson, too, seem walking, talking, breathing corpses to me and have for weeks, increasingly. The look, the feel, even the sweet-sick smell of death is in them, about them, and I know that Pah-Elmuh has sensed it too, else he’d not have tried to persuade Mahrtuhn not to ride out himself or at least to leave his grandson here, if go to fight he must.”

“Do you think, Bili,” she beamed, “that he will actually allow us, give us the time, to try your ancestor’s tactic against the pike hedge before he and his gentry charge? And, even if he does, how many of us do you think will survive it?”

“Yes,” he silently replied, “if our Byruhn has anything to say on the matter, we’ll get our chance to soften up the formation, chop an opening for the heavy-armed horse to aim for. And if everyone remembers the drill, it will work, Rahksahnah; I’m not the first to copy my many-times-great-grandsire, you know—it’s worked for others too, over the years.”

Slowly, the mounted column passed through the city, Filed out of the gates and down the path flanking the massive walls, to’finally join the bulk of the army massed upon the plain.

As he took his place at the head of his squadron, Bili looked back at the city and its fluttering decorations. He hoped that he and Rahksahnah and all of the other men and women who rode behind his Red Eagle Banner would see that city again.