Bili the Axe

3

Ahrszin Behdrozyuhn, newly chosen dehrehbeh and war-leader of the Behdrozyuhn Tribe of the Ahrmehnee stahn, lay in the snow just below the brow of a hill. On his right lay two of the leaders of the lowlander force which had been engaged in helping his tribe stem the tide of Muhkohee that had begun to attempt invasions from the west some months before; on his left lay a brawny Moon Maiden and, beyond her, his cousin, Hyk Behdrozyuhn.

Down the slope of snow-covered shale and frozen rocks, some quarter-mile distant, an elongated mob of shaggy, pony-mounted Muhkohee were moving up the valley along both sides of the frozen brook. The savages were proceeding directly into the wind that whipped down the twisting, narrowing valley laden with flecks of ice and the firm promise of more snow yet to come. The cannibal war party rode hunched and miserable-looking, huddled into their furs and ill-cured hides, but with most of their primitive armament clearly in evidence to even the most casual eye.

Then the lowlander farthest right, the one known as Raikuh, spoke in a low tone, for all that the distant foes could not have heard him easily unless he had shouted, and probably not even then.

“There’re a lot of the stinking swine, aren’t there, Son-Geros? Five, six hundred, anyway. They’re no better armed and mounted than any of the others were, but still our numbers are just too small to throw against them openly. So, what do we do? Pull the helpless villagers trick again?”

The man to whom Raikuh spoke might, Ahrszin thought, have been an Ahrmehnee himself, what with his wavy, blue-black hair, dark eyes, deep-olive skin tone and reckless cour-age in battle, save that his nose was too small and his body was not hairy enough. Nonetheless, despite his alienness, Sir Geros Lahvoheetos had won the respect and admiration of all the Behdrozyuhn Tribe many months ago and was accorded the deference that Ahrszin himself received; and the fact that he continued to be modest, unassuming and self-effacing only added to their deep respect and near love for him. The new young dehrehbeh reflected, a bit ruefully, that did this born-lowlander desire it—and he had several times made it clear that he did not—the elders of the tribe would depose him, Ahrszin, in a twinkling and name Sir Geros dehrehbeh in his stead; and Ahrszin was honest enough to admit to himself that such a move would be good for the tribe.

And the tribe needed some good luck. Hardly had they been able to reorganize themselves after the twin disasters of the invasion and pillage by first lowlanders, then a monstrous raiding party of Muhkohee, when earthquake and forest fires wreaked destruction all over the mountains. Then wave after wave of Muhkohee—both family groups and savage war parties—had begun to surge across the western border.

Ahrszin’s father, his uncle Tank—then the dehrehbeh—and many another brave Ahrmehnee warrior had fallen while defending the tribal lands against the inroads of these stinking savages. The Soormehlyuhn Tribe had sent some early aid, but when their border, too, was threatened by the Muhkohee, it had had to be withdrawn, precipitately.

The truly hard times had started at that juncture. Some of the less-defendable villages had had to be abandoned. Livestock that could not be driven or carted in quickly had had to be butchered and the meat left to rot. Standing crops had had to be burned. And despite these painful sacrifices, the tribe had stilt been hard pressed by the seemingly numberless Muhkohee.

Then, on a day of happy memory, Sir Geros and his column had come riding down from the north. A heterogeneous lot they had been—some two score Moon Maidens and a handful of Ahrmehnee warriors from far-northern tribes, mostly Taishyuhns, but with most of the near ten score total consisting of those very same scale-shirted mercenaries who had so savaged and ravaged and raped and burned their gory, charred path through Ahrmehnee lands not very long ago.

The distinctive armor and the nasal dialects of Mehrikan had set Behdrozyuhn teeth edge to edge, and Ahrszin’s eldest cousin, Knahtcho, had to exercise extreme force to prevent incidents of retribution until the bulk of the tribesfolk learned just how great a blessing these grim, steel-sheathed lowlanders were for Behdrozyuhn interests.

Sir Geros and his lowlanders had come seeking some trace of a great lowlander dehrehbeh, who had been separated from the others during the period of earthquakes and forest fires and, in company with a similarly mixed lot of Ahrmehnee, Moon Maidens, mercenaries and Confederation nobility, had disappeared in the mountainous area south of what had once been the Tongue of Soormehlyuhn; with him had been the hereditary war leader of the Moon Maidens, the brahbehrnuh and at least two Ahrmehnee headmen.

Those Soormehlyuhns who had come south to help the tribe before their own lands were threatened had, of course, told the tale of the force of lowlanders that had miraculously appeared when all seemed irrevocably lost to save a mixed force of Ahrmehnee and Moon Maidens from a thousands-strong mob of Muhkohee raiders. They had then joined with those they had saved to drive the surviving Muhkohee off the Tongue of Soormehlyuhn, only to be themselves scattered if not killed when the massive shifting of the earth had shaken down the Tongue and altered the very shape of the land. Upon learning that these newcome lowlanders were mostly of that party and that those they had ridden so far to seek were also, they became much more acceptable to the previously hostile tribesmen.

The campaign which had followed had been hard-striking and brutal, with no quarter asked or given by either side, but no sooner had the victorious Behdrozyuhns and their new, stark allies seen the backs of one batch of Muhkohee invaders, it seemed, than did yet another come trotting or plodding over the western horizon.

Had all of the encroaching barbarians been in large parties or had significant numbers of them been armed fighters, not even Sir Geros and his force would have been of much help to the beleaguered Behdrozyuhns, save perhaps to cover the tribe’s evacuation of their homelands. But most of these Muhkohee seemed to be spiritless aggregations of less than a dozen to perhaps a score of men, women and children—some on foot, some in carts or wagons along with pigs and chickens or a few sheep or goats, with an occasional milk cow hitched behind. It was the rare one of these who bore anything even vaguely like a weapon, and those who did not immediately rum tail at the mere sight of a party of the steel-sheathed men on the big, lowland-bred horses were absurdly easy to direct back south and west, though some were heard to grumble that they wished the Plooshuhn-damned Kuhmbuhluhners would make up their minds. Such grumblings made no sense to the defenders, for there was not among Sir Geros’ force a single man from the Principality of Kuhmbuhluhn!

The savage bands of pony-mounted Muhkohee were, of course, another thing entirely, few wearing any sort of armor, but each and every one of them armed to the teeth with a wide variety of weapons—most homemade and primitive, but there wore a few rusty captured swords, spears, axes and dirks or knives.

Had it not been for the fact that the sole defensive items these tatterdemalions wore or bore were the occasional old and battered helmet, leathern caps sewn with bone or horn and crude shields of woven wicker and rawhide, Sir Geros and his force might have sustained far heavier losses than they had. But he and his well-armored and -armed veterans had been able to ride into the smaller mobs of Muhkohee and slay virtually at will the vicious but untrained, undisciplined, unarmored and ill-armed barbarians.

Nor was Sir Geros slow to take note of the reason for the bulk of such casualties as he did sustain; even if a fighter was not pinned or injured when his big horse went down, he had lost a part of his edge over his numerous opponents. Therefore, he had set every available hand to stitching padding between double thicknesses of strong cloth or leather, then sewing or riveting the resultant makeshift horse armor with disks of metal or hom, with scraps of Ahrmehnee chainmail or spare steel scales from the gear of his Freefighters—anything which might turn a blade or help to absorb and spread out the shock of a club or a dull-bladed axe. Furthermore, he saw lighter versions of this makeshift armor fitted to the mounts of the Ahrmehnee as well, and since then there had been fewer battle hurts and fewer still combat deaths, despite the quantity of heavy fighting in which he and the Behdrozyuhns had, perforce, engaged.

The Muhkohee survivors of these frays, however, seemed only to flee as far as they felt was necessary to continued survival; then, as soon as their depleted ranks had been somewhat filled back out by new arrivals trickling in from the north and northwest, they would launch another bloody incursion into Behdrozyuhn lands and the hard-fighting little composite force would find itself once more campaigning in that same once-fertile, now-barren and fought-over area in which they—the leaders—lay this very day, spying out the influx of another and even larger mob of Muhkohee.

In reply to Captain Raikuh, Sir Geros began to slide carefully backward, down from the crest, still upon his belly, muttering, “No, Pawl, some of those stinking bastards down there look very familiar, so I don’t think that the village routine will work a third time—for all they’re savage barbarians, the leaders at least don’t seem to be stupid; they catch on fast, I’ve found.

“Anyhow, I’d liefer discuss these matters when I’m not wet and freezing and hungry, and I’d imagine that most of you are of a like mind, eh?”

On the long, circuitous ride back to the large village that was the base of the force, the sky to the northeast rapidly became an even darker gray, and, with the wind now almost a live and fiercely biting thing, only a fool would have failed to guess that one of the fearsome midwinter blizzards was charging down upon the lands of Behdrozyuhn at full gallop.

Huddled like his companions into the voluminous, thick, hooded cloak which, being of bleached wool, had been camouflage as well as protection from the elements back there on the hillcrest, Captain-of-Freefighters Pawl Raikuh rode deep in thoughts of the last year or so.

“Who would’ve thought it two years ago, that I, Pawl Raikuh, trained to arms since my seventh year and soldiering for close to thirty-five years, would be cheerfully taking orders from a man half my age who had spent the best part of his life as a servant to noblemen—a mere valet and minstrel? Yet I foresaw some of all this… when?… sometime back during the siege of Vawnpolis, I think. Or was it earlier than that, on the march into Vawn? Hell, I can’t recall! Damn this chancy second sight, anyway.

“Oh, yes, our Geros has come far indeed from his humble beginnings, for all that he fights against and complains of advancement every step of the way. He’s going to make a great captain, if he decides to go that way. This past year’s campaigning has been proof of that if nothing else.

“Not that he’ll ever have the real need to swing steel for a living, what with holding rich lands in two duchies of the Confederation, with powerful noblemen his friends and debtors and practically falling over each other to heap more honors upon him. And for holding that Silver Cat the damned Confederation will pay him thirty ounces of silver a year for as long as he lives; no measly annual income, that, even for a belted knight.

“And he’s a rare way of winning people over, that Geros. When first we rode down here, the Ahrmehnee hatred of us was so thick in the air you could’ve spread it on ice with a cold knifeblade, yet now they all love him like a brother.” Raikuh chuckled softly to himself. “And from the looks they give him, not a few of those fine, high-breasted Ahrmehnee wenches would love him as anything but a brother, had they the chance. Hell, for all I know some of them already have. Geros can be damned secretive, comes to his personal life, and he’s got the rank now to make it stick.

“And it’s not just that Geros is a good warrior and very adaptable to new peoples and situations that will stand to make him a superlative Freefighter captain. He’s the ability to quickly see both problems and solutions to those problems at one and the same time whether those problems be of a strategic or tactical or logistic nature. For all his soft voice and disarming manner—or, maybe, because of them—he is damnably adept at getting his own way, at winning sometime opponents over to his side. Turn a man of his talents loose in the Middle Kingdoms with a decent company at his back and he’d likely finish his life as a duke or, at least, a royal count.

“But for all his undeniable genius at it, I fear me that our Geros really detests wars and fighting, as he has right often claimed. When and if we ever find Duke Bili or at least find out what happened to him and the others, Geros is far more likely to hie him back to Vawn or Morguhn or Lehzlee and plump him down on a patch of land to set about siring a family and raising livestock and crops, and a criminal waste of a good captain that will be, too, for all that he’ll likely be far happier at such than he would have been at marshaling troops and laying the groundwork for great, crashing battles for some grand duke or king or other. But such a waste, such a pure and unadulterated waste of a soldier.”

And while old Pawl Raikuh rode on into the gathering storm mumbling and grumbling to himself, the man who was the hub of his thoughts was himself thinking.

“It is beginning to seem that these Muhkohee will never stop coming. I know mat the Lady Nahrda and her Moon Maidens are as anxious to push on and try to find some trace of her brahbehrnuh as am I to find Thoheeks Bili, but we can’t just desert these brave Behdrozyuhns; without the weight of our arms, they’d stand no chance at all against so many. They never were one of the larger, more powerful tribes, apparently, and over the last two years their numbers and strength have been even further reduced… and it doesn’t add to my own peace of mind to recall that I and most of these good men who are down here with me had a bloody hand in the decimation of these Behdrozyuhns, albeit under orders of our suzerain, Milo, the High Lord.

“Therefore, I feel strongly that both Lord Milo and Thoheeks Bili would be the first to agree that we owe far more to these poor, valiant folk than ever we can repay and that the small service we render this one, weakened tribe will possibly go far to strengthen the alliance that the High Lord and the nahkhahrah, Kogh Taishyuhn, are hoping to effect.

“Not that I enjoyed frightening away those poor, peaceable families of farmers, but it is clear that they are of the very same race as these savage raiders, so I can understand why the Behdrozyuhns insist that they, too, be driven hence.

“This latest mob of shaggies is the largest we’ve ever had to face down here, the largest aggregation of them I’ve seen since those thousands that Thoheeks Bili led us against just before the earthquake and the fires separated us… Was it only a year agone, and not quite that? It seems like several years.

“Of course, Thoheeks Bili may be long dead, gone to Wind in the fiery aftermath of that volcanic eruption that caused the earthquake, but Pawldoesn’t think so and everyone knows that Pawl has second sight. And the nahkhahrah’s new wife, the witch woman, Mother Zehpoor, averred before we left the lands of the Taishyuhn Tribe that both Thoheeks Bili and the brahbehrnuh still lived and that I would find them, though the way would be long and dangerous.

“Well, it’s assuredly been long and these damned Muhkohee have made it dangerous enough, true. But withal, it has been good to experience these Ahrmehnee as friends and allies after having known them for so long a time as victims or as enemies.

“These Behdrozyuhns are a remarkable folk—hardworking, but jolly and caring and generous to a fault with their own or with those they call friends, even former enemies like me. I’m not any part Ahrmehnee, yet the elders keep hinting that when once I find Thoheeks Bili, nothing would please them more than that I return here and become their dehrehbeh. And, oddly enough, I think I could be very happy here, among them.

“But, of course, I’d be happy anywhere that I didn’t have to swing steel—to hurt and maim and kill, to shed the blood of other men day in and day out.

“Yet that is just what Pawl wants me to do, expects me to do for a good part of the rest of my life. He’s already hard at the planning of a condotta for me to captain with him as my principal lieutenant, when once Thoheeks Bili is found and our commitment to him and the Confederation is at an end. Old Pawl has done much for me these last years, and I would hate to disappoint him, but…

“Oh, dammit! I just don’t enjoy my life anymore. Why couldn’t they just have left me the servant that I was? Why did they have to start ruining my prospects for happiness? After all, I did nothing that any other man of the Morguhn Troop wouldn’t have done in like circumstances. If they had to foist titles and lands off on someone, why not Pawl instead of me? He’s noblebom and a professional soldier, to boot; he’d have taken to these added burdens like a stoat kit to fresh blood. When I was just a sergeant, I could have easily slipped back into my servant’s life after the rebels were scotched and the duchy was again at peace. Komees Hari Daiviz of Morguhn would’ve hired me; he said so, once.

“But now, even if I don’t feel constrained to give in to Pawl and become a Freefighter captain, even if I don’t come back here to the Behdrozyuhns and let them make me a chief, still will there be little peace and quiet for me in Morguhn. Holding title to lands in two widely separated duchies, as I do, Sir Geros Lahvoheetos of Morguhn and of Lehzlee will most likely spend half of every year in a saddle rather than a chair, even if the Confederation doesn’t exercise its option to force me to serve a few years as an officer in the western armies.

“And even if I sold the damned baronetcies, both of them, no nobleman would hire on a belted knight as anything but the one I’m trying to avoid—a soldier or bodyguard or castellan. So what am I to do? Perhaps, when once I’ve found him, Thoheeks Bili will have an answer to my problem.”

Then he wrinkled his brows over the more immediate, more pressing problem—that large band of Muhkohee raiders. “Hmmm. There’re two hundred and twelve of us, at least there were as of this dawning, but twenty-nine are recovering from wounds or are too sick to sit a horse in this abominable weather, which leaves me with a total of one hundred and eighty-three. The Behdrozyuhns number one hundred and thirty-four prime warriors, and if I could take all of mine and all of theirs, there’d be no question of making a quick bloodpudding of those raiders.

“But, unfortunately, we can’t be sure that that mob is all of the buggers; they’re prone to splitting off smaller groups for any reason or none, and we’ve had a few near things when we were unexpectedly flanked by returning units. And so, young Ahrszin will insist—and I will concur; I’d order it even if he didn’t, in fact—that at least a good third of our effectives be left behind to guard the village.

“Consequently, any way you hack it, we’ll be riding against at least three times our numbers, and likely in snow of such a depth as will slow down our mounts and largely nullify the shock value of a full-blown charge. Of course, one saving factor is that those shorter-legged ponies of theirs will be more hampered by deep snow than our taller mounts. The same might be said for the ponies of the Ahrmehnee, except that these Ahrmehnee warriors prefer to fight on foot and usually use their ponies only to get them to where the fighting will take place.”

The dusk came early, and it was full dark before the five riders came within sight of the stockade with the lights of the watchfires glinting between the interstices of the tall, perpendicular logs. Keenly aware of the numerical insufficiency of his force even when combined with the Behdrozyuhn warriors, Sir Geros had had the village perimeter ditched and palisaded last summer, adding refinements to the defenses as time and manpower presented themselves.

At first, the Behdrozyuhns’ response to his plans had been at best scathing—stout Ahrmehnee fighters needed no walls to hide behind like womanish lowlanders, thank you! But after the dawn attack of a large band of Muhkohee was beaten off, in large part because of the ditch, mound and uncompleted palisade, the village elders had changed their minds and had set the entire, refugee-swollen community to helping Sir Geros’ followers at the task.

Now, this winter evening, there was a wallwalk of sorts a few feet below the irregular top of the palisade and a fine defensive platform beside the main gate as well as at each of the corners, with yet another not yet completed beside the smaller gate. The defenses were nowhere near as strong and complete as Sir Geros would have preferred and, being all perforce of wood, were terribly vulnerable to the threat of fire—-either accidental or deliberate—but he still could not resist a sense of pride whenever he looked upon his new accomplishment, and the existence of even this much wooden security served to free a significant number of warriors for inclusion in his field force.

Immediately a keen-eyed gate guard sighted the five riders emerging from the forest two hundred yards away, a Freefighter hornman began to wind his bugle, while a file of archers hastily uncased and strung their hornbows, then took their assigned places, arrows at the nock.

Proceeding at a fast walk, Sir Geros, Raikuh and the others threw off the cloak hoods, peeled back mail coifs or removed helmets that their faces might be more clearly visible to the tense watchers atop the gatehouse—hungry as they all were, none of them wished to try digesting a steel arrowhead this night.

The keen wind quickly sucked all trace of warmth from their exposed noses, cheeks and ears, so that every one of the five was more than happy to hear the raspy voice of Lieutenant Bohreegahd Hohguhn exasperatedly ordering, “Opun the plaguey gate, dammitawl! Cain’t you nitwits see it’s Sir Geros’ party out thar? Unstring them damn bows and git ‘em back inside afore they’s mint, heanh, and lemme git back to mah damn suppuh afore the fuckin’ mutton gits col’!”

As the ponderous bar was raised, Geros shook his head in silence. Bohreegahd should not berate the watch for doing their duty by the book for all that it took him from his meal. But he would wait a few days, then find a distant, quiet place to tell the lieutenant his thoughts privately, so as to not shame him before his peers or undermine his authority over his subordinates.

Bohreegahd Hohguhn, old Djim Bohluh and the bulk of the two Morguhn Troops of Freefighters had been absent from the huge Confederation camp when Sir Geros and Captain Raikuh had decided to desert that camp and ride west in search of their missing employer, Thoheeks Bili of Morguhn. But when Hohguhn returned and learned of the desertions, he and the others had remained only long enough to properly outfit themselves before setting out on Sir Geros’ trail. Ostensibly, Hohguhn and the rest were riding “in pursuit,” to bring the “miscreants” back; but everyone—from the High Lord on down—knew that these pursuers were actually reinforcements and that none of either party would be back until they found Bili the Axe or proof of his death.

Initially, over one hundred and fifty riders had followed westward behind Sir Geros’ banneret—twoscore Freefighters, four and thirty Moon Maidens and in excess of fourscore Ahrmehnee warriors, mostly of the Soormehlyuhn Tribe. But most of the Soormehlyuhns, upon arriving in their lands to find their kinfolk hard pressed by invading Muhkohee, had left with Geros’ regretful blessing and a promise to rejoin him whenever they could feel their lands and folk once more safe from the encroachments of the cannibals.

With the departure of the black-haired, big-nosed warriors he had come to respect, Geros and his reduced following had ridden on, feeling most vulnerable. Therefore, it had been a distinct and pleasurable relief to be reinforced by Hohguhn, and his more than fivescore Freefighters.

The few Ahrmehnee still riding with him when at last he had entered the territory of the Behdrozyuhns, most southerly of the Ahrmehnee tribes, had been mostly Panosyuhns with a sprinkling of Taishyuhns and two lone Soormehlyuhns.

And thank Sun and Wind and Steel for all twenty-five of them, too! Behdrozyuhn lands had been thoroughly ravaged by Freefighter reavers early in the short but brutal Ahrmehnee campaign, and Geros was certain that had he and his force ridden in without representatives of neighboring tribes in their midst, he and the Freefighters might have found it the price of simple survival to have extirpated the few sound warriors that the beleaguered little tribe had remaining then.

Not that the sensitive young knight would have blamed the Behdrozyuhn men a bit for a violent reaction. For all that the deeds had been ordered and then thought necessary for the good of the Confederation, his soul still cringed at thought of some of the outrages which had been perpetrated upon the near-defenseless Ahrmehnee villagers by the huge force of Confederation nobility, their retainers and their hired mercenaries, the Freefighters.

But he was, nonetheless, vastly relieved that a further confrontation with the combat and massacre that would surely have ensued had not been necessary. It suited both his aims and those of the distant Confederation far better that he and his force were fighting beside these Ahrmehnee against a common foe. And from what he had seen of them, Geros felt secure in his belief that these ruthless, savage, barbaric Muhkohee raiders were the implacable foemen of any civilized race.

Despite the overcrowding within the expanded confines of the village, the elders had insisted that Sir Geros take for his use a snug two-room stone house. It was before this structure that be dismounted. After relinquishing the reins of his mare, Ahnah, to a brace of his retainers, he trudged wearily and carefully up the icy steps onto the covered stoop, where he shed his sodden cloak and kicked the worst of the ice from off his jackboots before entering the large main room of his home. But within, a surprise awaited him.