Bili the Axe

2

Brigadier Sir Ahrthur Maklarin, after easing his healing but still aching leg to a more comfortable position on the padded stool before his chair, took a swig from his jack of beer, then brushed the foam off his thick, drooping, gray mustache with a gnarled, callused and very hairy hand.

Showing worn teeth in a grimace of pain, he remarked, “Call it a great victory if you want to, Earl Devernee, but another such ‘victory’ could well be our ruination. Have you any idea how close, how damnably close, those feisty bastards came to hacking through, breaking our pike hedge? It just may be that we’ve finally met our match in these Kuhmbuhluhners. Perhaps it would be better to parley in the spring, rather than to go on fighting; they seem to be civilized and basically decent folk. Were the old earl, your father, still alive, I think that’s what he’d do.”

The young man to whom he had addressed his remarks did not answer; rather did he turn to the three other men, saying, “We’ve heard one opinion. Are there others?” He arched his thick brows and looked expectantly around. When a movement indicated a desire to speak, he nodded and said, “Colonel Sir Djaimz, what is your feeling on this matter?”

The man who nodded and began to speak looked to be a good ten years younger than the injured brigadier, but in all else they appeared as alike as two peas in a pod—average height, solid and powerful bodies with thick and rolling muscles covering big bones. Though only beginning to stipple with errant strands of silver, the colonel’s mustache was no less thick and worn in the same, drooping fashion. “Earl Devernee, I cannot but agree with much of what our wise and experienced brigadier has here said. It is long since our Skohshun pikes have been pressed so hard or stung so bitterly by so small a force of riders. Are we confronted, come spring, with anything approaching the size or composition of that stout band of warriors who stung us so badly in the most recent engagement, my voice will be unequivocally added to that of the brigadier.

“However, Earl Devernee, there is this additional matter to consider: Badly as they hurt us, I’m of the considered opinion that they were hurt worse… far and away worse. And such as I have squeezed out of the prisoners taken on that field tends to bear out my assumptions. These Kuhmbuhluhners have been here but a few generations; they were not very many who arrived and they are not many more now. Almost all of their nobility were among the heavy-armed horse who fought us so tenaciously, so splendidly, last autumn, and we all know how few of that force rode or hobbled or crawled off that bloody field.

“Therefore, I seriously doubt that we need even think of facing another such battle, for, brave and daring and stubborn and altogether worthy as these foemen have proved themselves to be, I surmise that their strength now is so sapped that they no longer can offer any dangerous sort of open battle.”

The old brigadier cleared his throat explosively.’ ‘Haarrmph.’”

The colonel immediately fell silent and, after a moment, the earl nodded his permission for the senior officer to speak.

“I have seen more than sixty springs, and 1 have been on campaign for nearly fifty of those war seasons, and I am here to tell you all that no formation, no tactic, no folk are ever unbeatable, least of all us Skohshuns; we’ve been routed in the past—although no one of you is old enough to remember it—and in just such a situation as this. The folk who broke the hedge that time were much like our present opponents— stark, brave warriors whom we had sapped and bled and pushed to the very wall over a period of years just as we have done here with these Kuhmbuhluhners.”

The young earl nodded. “Yes, brigadier, I think I recall my late father speaking of that disaster. Kleetuhners, weren’t they, those who routed us?”

The old officer had another swig of beer, then shook his head. “No, Earl Devernee… but yes, too. Yes, we were defeated once by the Kleetuhners, but that was many years ere even I was born and they are not the folk of whom I’m here talking; it was subsequent to our eventual merger with the Kleetuhners that our current tactics were developed and perfected.

“No, it was over forty years ago, this time of which I speak. I was then an ensign of foot and I came damned bloody close to dying that day, so I remember it full well. There was never a merger with those valiant folk possible. So long and hard and unstintingly did they oppose us that, in the end, we found it necessary to slay every adult male and female and many of the young’uns, even. The empty lands and a very few children was all we secured in the end.

“Those admirable folk called themselves Sinsnatyers, and almost every one of the couple of score boy children we adopted of them has become a fighter of note in Skohshun ranks. I greatly fear that if we push these Kuhmbuhluhners too hard, too far, we may well end with a similar situation or a worse one, mayhap. We now know their mettle and they ours, so should we now offer to treat… ?”

All of the other officers made to speak, but Earl Devemee forestalled them, raising his hand and saying, “Allright, brigadier, nothing can be lost by trying your idea; we can’t fight for some months, yet, anyway. You choose three heralds, send them to me, and I’ll draw up a set of demands and concessions—a great many of the former and a very few of the latter, of course.”

But the brigadier frowned. “I had been thinking along lines more of negotiation between more or less equals, Earl Devernee, but we can try it your way, to start. Don’t any of you be surprised, however, if these feisty bastards send back both heralds and list with detailed instructions as to where we can insert said list!”

General James Hiram Corbett, U.S.A., returned the saber flourish with a hand salute and acknowledged the crisp report of his subordinate, Major Gumpner, with a nod of the head. Then he smiled. “Okay, Gump, let’s get this show on the road. I’ll join the column after I’ve had a few last words with Dr. Sternheimer.”

As the major trotted off toward the formation of men and their beasts, Corbett reined his big riding mule around and toed it over to the communications building. There he dismounted, hitched the mule and strode inside. After returning the salute and greeting of the duty sergeant, he said, “Get the Center for me, please. Dr. Stemheimer, of course.”

The young radio operator seated himself at his console, threw several switches, turned some knobs, then began to intone, “Broomtown Base calling J&R Kennedy Research Center.”

“Center, here,” the reply presently came. “Who are you calling?”

The general strode over to the console and picked up a mike. “This is General Corbett. Get me Dr. Stemheimer, stat!”

“I’m already here, Jay,” a smooth, deep voice replied. “I had an idea that you’d call just before you left. Have you thought of something else we can supply?”

“No, David, we’re as well equipped as it’s possible for us to be, now. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I’ll be in contact with you or the Broomtown Base once every day, most likely when we halt for the night. Is that a suitable arrangement?”

“Of course it is, Jay—whatever is easiest for you and your party. Your mission is vital to us, here at the Center, so you’ll get all the cooperation we can afford you. How soon do you think you’ll need the copters?”

Wrinkling his forehead, the officer answered, “We’d best just play that one by ear, David. At this stage, I simply am incapable of estimating a date. My intel sources lead me to believe that there is a great deal of movement up north, so much that it sounds like a migration of some people or other. Since they’re said to be heading west and south and east, we are certain to come face to face with them no matter where we angle our route of march, which most likely means fighting at least part of our way.”

“Then perhaps you should have more troops, Jay—and I think there are some machine guns in the Center armory, too.”

Corbett sighed. “David, David, you mean so well, I know, but you simply don’t understand the logistics here. If these four troops of dragoons can’t do the job, then a damned full-strength regiment couldn’t accomplish it. And supplying more than the two hundred and fifty-odd now in this force would be a real nightmare; the preparations alone would probably keep us from starting before this time next year, if that early.”

“Well, then, Jay, how about those machine guns? I can have them up there in only a few hours… ?”

Another sigh from Corbett. “David, thank you; most sincerely, I thank you for your obvious concern, but no thank you on the machine guns. For one thing, only I and a very few of my current officers have ever fired one. For another, I’ve no faintest idea where I’d be able to round up the additional pack mules I’d need to carry God alone knows how many more thousands of rounds of ammo for the damned things. Besides, we’re well enough armed, in my considered judgment, without any fully automatic weapons.

“Each trooper has a rifle and fifty-five rounds of ammo for it, plus four grenades, a bayonet, a saber and a dirk. Each of the officers and senior noncoms has a carbine, pistol, saber and dirk, plus grenades if they want them; they carry fifty-five rounds for their carbines and at least fourteen for their pistols. I’ve also seen to it that every one of my packers is armed with and qualified with a carbine or rifle. The ammo carried by the men plus the spare ammo in the mule packs gives us something over thirty-two thousand rounds for the shoulder weapons, alone. I am convinced that we cannot possibly need more than we have.”

“Allright, Jay, allright,” said Sternheimer. “I make no pretense of knowing the best ways of handling a military situation, never having had any training or experience along those lines. I simply wish no stone unturned in seeing to it that we at the Center provide you everything and anything you need or might need to accomplish your ends, up there. We lost poor Erica, last time, we certainly don’t want to lose you, too.”

Corbett noted silently that the Director made no mention of Dr. Harry Braun, Dr. Erica Arenstein’s former husband and her murderer. Because he had been suffering from a severe infection in a broken leg, Braun had been sent ahead along with an escort of three men when a sudden and unexplained malady had struck down most of Corbett’s then command.

But instead of proceeding as ordered and then sending back aid from Broomtown Base, Braun had coldly murdered again, then informed all at Broomtown and the Center that he was the only survivor of the party, that Corbett and all of the others were long since dead.

Of course, when Corbett and his reduced party arrived to put the lie to Braun’s fanciful tales, the murderer’s rising star had abruptly plunged to absolute nadir. Unwilling to kill one of his peers—one of the few twentieth-century scientists and specialists who made up the hierarchy of the Center—Sternheimer had given some thought to the murders, misdeeds and assorted lies of Harry Braun, then arrived at a truly fiendish punishment just short of a richly deserved execution.

After being openly stripped of all his offices and the privileges he had had, he was assigned to a demeaning and most tedious job. But that had not been the extent of Sternheimer’s savage retribution, and Jay Corbett could not.repress a cold shudder when he thought of what else had been done to Braun.

Braun had been drugged, and taken to the transfer laboratories and his mind had been transferred from its young, healthy body into another one—an older one, which was slowly dying of an exceedingly painful and very unpleasant variety of cancer. Each time Corbett had visited the Center since then and had chanced to see the bent, shuffling, unwell body in which Braun was now imprisoned, he had been nauseated, wishing that he had shot Braun when he had had the opportunity, for any death would have been far more merciful than this form of lingering torture.

When he had finally bidden the director goodbye and gone back out to where his mule was patiently waiting at the hitchbar, he could see that Major Gumpner had already started the long column moving out of the town precincts, headed due north, up the trail that wound through the mountains toward the centuries-old treasure they were seeking to reclaim.

Here, in the southerly reaches, where the northbound track was almost as wide as a road, the column could proceed four to six abreast and thus make better time, but the general knew that all too soon they would be out of Broomtown lands and the trail would narrow till no more than two or, right often, only one rider at a time could travel it; then the column would string out.

There would be no danger in this—he hoped—for the first few days or weeks, perhaps, of travel, for the mountain folk hereabouts knew the Broomtown men of old and respected them. Rather, they respected the rifles and pistols that the Broomtowners carried and used to deadly effect, when such proved necessary.

But farther north, in the long, broad stretch of mountains which were home to the savage, marauding Ganiks, the column might very well need every rifle, carbine, pistol and edge weapon, every last grenade and round of ammunition to accomplish its mission and return safely to Broomtown Base. Corbett had had to fight large packs of the degenerate aborigines twice on his previous, disastrous expedition, and he was not anxious to repeat the experience this time around.

But, he thought, what will be, will be. At least this time we’ll be closer to full-strength, I hope, without a damned earthquake or forest fires to contend with. Then, too, we’ll have Old Johnny on our side from the beginning, and, in his element, he’s worth at least another full troop of men. He chuckled to himself. It was a damned lucky day for me and for quite a few others when I smashed Johnny’s shoulder and then took him prisoner instead of killing him the way we did the rest of those wounded Ganiks.

As a platoon of dragoons approached, their officer called them to attention in their saddles and then, as they came closer, drew his gleaming saber and saluted Corbett with a practiced flourish, while, on the command of a brazen-voiced noncom, the troopers executed an eyes left.

Corbett drew himself erect and uncased his own saber to return the courtesy. Recognizing the face of the young officer, he thought, Vance Cabell, if he liyes long enough, will be as good a leader as was his uncle.

Corbett still experienced a twinge of guilt whenever he thought of the elder, now-deceased Cabell and of how it had been his orders that had sent the Broomtown noncom off to his death at the hands of the murderous Dr. Harry Braun. He was ruminating on his guilt, his eyes following the young officer and his platoon, when a familiar voice nearby gave him a start.

“The younker do put a body’t’ mind of ol’ Sarge Cabell, don’t he, generl—way’he moves an’ sets his mule?”

Corbett turned in his saddle to behold the speaker—a bald but bushy-bearded man, wrinkled and graying with late middle age, but still erect of carriage, muscular and clearly strong. Skinhead Johnny Kilgore forked his mount of preference—one of the small horses the Broomtowners had bred up from the wild mountain ponies—and he had so schooled the little equine that it now could move almost as silently as the woods-wise man himself.

Mock-seriously, Corbett demanded, “What the hell is my chief scout doing back here? You should be up ahead of the column, by rights.”

The old cannibal’s wide grin caused his bushy eyebrows to hump up like a pair of fuzzy caterpillars, “Aw, generl, hain’t no need fer OF Johnny up ther yet awhile. Them Purvis Tribe fellers’ll do yawl jest fine till we comes to git inta Ganik ter’tory. And I’d a heap rather ride lowng of you an Gump an’ fellers whut I knows.”

Corbett could see the man’s point, and, even had he not, he would have found it difficult to be truly angry at Johnny, who had saved his life and those of many other Broomtown men for all that he had been—technically—a prisoner-of-war at the time.

Responding to the gapped grin of the sometime-Ganik with a smile of his own, the officer said, “You’re more than welcome, Johnny. I can think of no man I’d rather have beside me on a dangerous trail.” His grin widening and a note of banter entering his voice, he then added, “But only so long as you continue bathing and washing your clothes.”

The Ganik barbarians never bathed or washed their rags and often went clothed in green, uncured hides and pelts. The stench of Old Johnny when first he had been captured had—as Corbett recalled—been enough to turn a hog’s stomach; moreover, he had been crawling with fat lice and had harbored more fleas than a sick dog.

But his months with the Broomtowners had altered his overall appearance and personal habits drastically. He was now clothed decently in a mixture of military and civilian garb—dragoon boots and leather-faced trousers, a dark-green cotton shirt with flaring sleeves, a snakehide waistbelt with a buckle of chiseled silver and a broad-brimmed dragoon hat bouncing on his back by its cord.

Corbett noted that both his shirt and the scarf occasionally visible through the beard showed the precise and highly decorative embroidery of Old Johnny’s new woman—Sergeant Cabell’s widow, already gravid of Johnny Kilgore’s seed.

As the rearguard platoon departed the marshaling area, General Jay Corbett set his big mule to a ground-eating canter toward the head of the column, with Old Johnny in his wake. As they went, Corbett gave quick but careful visual inspection to each man, each animal, each packload they passed, silently acknowledging the formal greetings of officers and the less formal ones of civilian packers with an abbreviated cavalry hand salute.

When at last he and Kilgore joined the head of the column, the squat, powerful, thick-limbed Major Gumpner smilingly saluted. “Is it the general’s opinion that the column is in proper order, sir?”

Frowning, Corbett grunted, “As proper as it’s ever going to be, Gump. I just pray God we’ve foreseen and provided against every possible contingency, this time out. I don’t want the blood of any more Broomtown men on my hands.”

The major shrugged. “The general ought to know better. He’s been soldiering for what, a thousand years? Even if through some freak or miracle we don’t have to fight going up or coming back, we’ll still lose men—accidents, disease, snakebite, maybe drownings, things that are or will be nobody’s fault. The general taught me that himself, more than twenty years ago, when I was just a younker.”

“I know, I know.” Corbett sighed. “I’m being irrational, unrealistic, but that tragedy up north, when the train was mashed to death under that landslide, still haunts me. I think that after this mission is completed, I’m going to turn all field operations over to you and your staff and hie me back to the Center.”

Gumpner smiled once more and shook his head chidingly. “The general knows he will never do anything of the sort. He is just not the type to willingly trade his saddle for a chair.”

Jay Corbett chuckled, his good humor restored. “You know me well, don’t you, Gump? Know me better, probably, than I know myself. Your father knew me that well, too, though, and you’re almost him all over again.”

Gumpner’s tone became one of deep humility. “Thank you, sir, thank you sincerely. That was the highest compliment I could have been paid.”

“IFn yawl twd” lovebirds be done a-billin’ and a-cooin’,” remarked Old Johnny, who had kneed his mount up on Corbett’s right side, “yawl might remark thet one them Purvis boys is a-comin’ back hell fer leather.”

Rahksahnah’s warm, moist, even breath bathed Bili’s shoulder as she slept, snuggled against him in the deep, warm feather bed, walled in by the thick woolen curtains from the damp, chilly drafts of the night. With the arm that held her, he could feel the hard muscles underlying her warm, soft skin; no tender, fluttery maid was this woman of Bili the Axe, Chief and Thoheeks of Clan Morguhn, but as stark and proven a warrior as one might find, capable of taking hard blows and returning buffets no less hard. And Bili could have asked no better mate.

But although his body was utterly spent with lovemaking, he did not sleep this night. For all his solemn words to the contrary, Prince Byruhn had no slightest intention of allowing a single one of Bili’s squadron to depart eastward, of this Bili was certain. The young war leader was certain, too, that the crafty royal personage was even now weaving some arcane plot to ensnare them all in his service until these Skohshuns were either driven back whence they had come or extirpated.

Bili felt the need to counsel with some other officer, but Rahksahnah would, he knew, have to arise all too soon in order to give suck to their son, so he sent his questing mind out in search of Lieutenant Kahndoot, whose keen intellect he respected every bit as much as he did her personal battle prowess and her tactical abilities.

The woman’s mind was sleeping, however, and try as he might, he could not enter it or rouse her. So he cast out for the equally familiar mind of Captain Fil Tyluh… only to meet with an identical situation. Nor, it developed, could he reach Lieutenant Frehd Brakit or any one of the mindspeaking noblemen of the Confederation. He knew the impossibility of all of his officers and nobles being in sleep so deep at one and the same moment of any night. Not natural sleep, at least.

A drunken revel in trie tower, perhaps? He thought not; in Kahndoot’s case, certainly not, for she had been on duty until moonrise. Some drug introduced into the food? Not likely, for united as his force seemed, still were they of several disparate elements with differing cuisines and messes when in garrison here. That left only some form of mental control, and control by an exceedingly powerful mind. But whose?

He knew of experience that there was no point in probing at the mind of the prince, for, although not himself a mindspeaker, that personage had been taught how to erect and maintain an impervious mindshield by the Kleesahk, Pah-Elmuh.

Pah-Elmuh! Of course! What other creature in all this glen or in any of the surrounding lands could boast so powerful a mind? But could even the accomplished Kleesahk cozen so many minds at once? Probably not, but Bili knew that the Kleesahks could and often did mesh their minds with others of their species in order to increase or enhance their mental abilities. And all of the Kleesahks slept tonight in the tower keep.

Bili thought hard. It seemed vital that he know what was going on this night, whether or not his suspicions of Prince Byruhn and his motives were justified. But he could not penetrate the shield of the prince, and he was totally unfamiliar with the minds of the two gentlemen who had ridden in with his temporary overlord. However, there was another Kuhmbuhluhner mind with which he had, during the recent campaigning against the Ganiks, become most familiar.

Old Count Steev Sandee had never so much as suspected himself to possess mindspeak ability until Bili had, in a battlefield emergency, attempted to mindspeak the Kuhmbuhluhn nobleman… and succeeded, after a fashion. At the very best, Count Steev’s mindspeak was marginal, and his mindshield was correspondingly weak, but this would make the task to which Bili had set himself that much easier of accomplishment. Not that the young thoheeks did not feel a twinge of conscience in the contemplation of thus violating the sleeping mind of a fine old man he had come to consider a friend—to the exceedingly talented mind of Bili, such a thing smacked much of a variety of mental rape—but he managed to set conscience at a distance in this instance through the rationalization that this praying was, after all, for the good of those men and women who depended upon him and whose very lives would be the forfeit should he fail them or make an erroneous decision.

Therefore, he sent his mental beam out again into the night, seeking, questing after the well-known mind of Count Steev. Found, the shield of that mind was no barrier to him and he was able to slip into the old nobleman’s mind without awakening his victim, as easily as a sleek otter slips into water. And, in that terribly troubled mind, he found the answers to most of his questions, a full confirmation of his long-standing suspicions of Prince Byruhn’s motives and methods.

Bili of Morguhn had thought it deuced odd when, last year, all of the members of his mixed group—even the Confederation nobles, who had never before been known to easily agree upon anything amongst themselves—had bespoken him of their unanimous decision to serve the needs of Prince Byruhn for as long as it took to rid Southern New Kuhmbuhluhn of the foul Ganiks. Now he knew that that had been no miracle but an example of Kleesahk mind manipulation done at the behest of the prince. And this night another such mass cozening was being perpetrated against or upon all who lay in their unnaturally deep slumber in the massive tower keep.

“Allright,” he silently told himself, “now I know; it’s no longer mere possibly unwarranted suspicion of Byruhn. But, now that I do truly know, what is there for me to do? How can I undo this infamy, free my folk from this bondage into which a dishonorable man has had them cozened, tricked, deluded?”

•He made a wry face in the darkness. More likely than not, there was nothing he could do, not really. By morning, the now sleeping Kindred, Ehleenee, Freefighters, Maidens and Ahrmehnee would all be fully cozened into the firm belief that their unanimous decision to help fight yet another of Byruhn’s wars was assuredly their own decision, arrived at rationally and individually. Now was the time to put a stop to the insidious trickery being wrought by the Kleesahks at Byruhn’s command, but before even so strong and adaptable a mind as Bili’s could wreak or attempt to wreak such, he would have to know far more than he now did about the methods of the Kleesahks.

And such was very unlikely, only possible if Pah-Elmuh or another of the hominids should suddenly make him privy to the secret; and maybe not even then, for the minds of the Kleesahks were extremely different from the minds of men, being capable of powers, feats, abilities which no human mind could match or copy.

So, what then? Openly accuse Prince Byruhn of treachery? Bili lacked any scintilla of real proof, and he could, moreover, be certain that the slavishly loyal Count Sandee’s conscious mind would never permit him to reveal aught that might compromise his overlord. Nor was it to be conceived that Pah-Elmuh or any other Kleesahk would betray the very dishonorable secret of their prince.

Bili simply had to absorb and digest the unpalatable fact that, in this instance, he was helpless. On the morrow, when his folk announced to him their group decision, his only options were to either take Rahksahnah and his new little son, Djef, and ride east into the Ahrmehnee lands and, thence, into Vawn and Morguhn, or to resume command and leadership of the squadron he had led for the past year.

Young as he was—not yet twenty summers—Bili knew himself and he knew that he never could coldly turn his back on his people, his proven battle comrades, thus leaving them to the caprice of this cold and calculating prince. And surely, too, the serpent-shrewd Byruhn had well known that fact himself, had included that sure and certain knowledge of the character of Bili of Morguhn in his schemings.

And the young war leader felt dirty, used, violated, though he reflected that he never truly had trusted this Prince Byruhn or his motives, had always sensed without- really knowing that the dark waters ran far deeper than Byruhn’s outward demeanor indicated.

“Yes, Lord Champion, you are right.” The immensely strong mindspeak crashed into Bili’s consciousness, not through his shield, but… somehow, someway, around or over or under it. “Prince Byruhn’s treatment of you and yours has been less than what you—and he—would consider honorable from the very start. What he has done, has charged me and the other Kleesahks to do to the minds of your followers, is neither fair nor just. But, please, Lord Champion, try to not judge us or him too harshly, for he feels that he could do no other.”

“I would not have used him so deceitfully, Pah-Elmuh, as he has used me and mine,” Bili beamed silently to the mind of the senior Kleesahk, where he lay with his fellows in the tower keep.

“Ah, Lord Champion, say not such until you have worn for a while Prince Byruhn’s crown, borne the weight of his cares and troubles. Long years ago, a faulty judgment on the part of a man of his house lost one kingdom; now recent events have rendered him frantic that he will be responsible for the loss of yet another kingdom, this land of New Kuhmbuhluhn. It has been my unhappy experience in my long life that desperate men—true men, that is, not Kleesahks or Teenéhdjooks—will often do devious, dastardly, despicable deeds in defense of their own. We Kleesahks do not value mere lands and material things so highly.”

“Then why,” demanded Bili, “did you, do you, lend yourselves and your talents to such dishonorable purposes, Pah-Elmuh?”

“That I would do such was decided long long ago, before first my eyes saw light, Lord Champion. I have told you of the Prophecy, told you of the Last Battle of which you will be Champion and final victor. That battle looms ever nearer to us now, and it were necessary that I did and do the bidding of the prince; otherwise, you might have departed this Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn and all might have then been lost, nor would your own illustrious deeds have been done. Can you not see, Lord Champion?”

“No,” Bili replied bluntly, “I cannot. I see naught but treachery by wizardry, or its near counterpart. Over the last year, you have done many good deeds for me and my folk and I had reckoned you friend. Will you not now reverse the evil you have wrought this night, erase from the minds of my warriors there the counterfeit wishes and aspirations you and the other Kleesahks have implanted therein? A true friend could do, would do no less, Pah-Elmuh.”

Bili could almost hear a deep sigh from the Kleesahk. “I could wish now that my father had seen fit to get me upon a Teenéhdjook, so that I were pure, with nothing of your race within me, Lord Champion. For I find it increasingly hard to behave as a true-man, where duty must be placed above friends and friendship, where necessities of the moment must take precedence to the rightness of actions.

“No, Bili of Morguhn, for all that you have been, are now and will be in time to come, despite the deep affection I bear for you, your brave mate and your fine cub, what has been done will remain done so that what has been foretold will take place when and as foretold. That this must be so, I deeply regret, but so it must be.”