Bili the Axe

8

Despite the singular oddities of their personal habits, Abner and Leeroy were as brave as any Ganik—just so long as they were faced with corporeal foemen—not to mention tough, resourceful, aggressive and utterly ruthless. These sterling qualities, coupled with the untarnished glamour of having been the personal bullies of the second leader of the main bunch of outlaw raiders, fitted them admirably as the leaders of the mob of stragglers from the bunches now based just beyond the southwest borders of Ahrmehnee lands.

When first they had arrived in company with some threescore other deserters from what had been the stronghold of the main bunch, nothing so mundane as physical cowardice had led them and their followers to desert the besieged camp, but rather the creeping, crawling, unnatural and unbearable dread of the unknown—ghosts, specters and maleficent demons.

Scores, possibly, hundreds, of the deserters had seen—with their own two bulging, horrified eyes—the huge ghost of their long-dead Kleesahk leader, Buhbuh, appear from out of a cloud of mist at various times and places to warn them that their Kuhmbuhluhner foes had enlisted the aid of a vast horde of the murderous specters of dead Ahrmehnee and Moon Maidens; had summoned up another horde of terrible demons to kill sleeping Ganiks in the very midst of tightly guarded camps or to bear them, living, away for an eternity of endless, hellish torture.

Therefore, when monstrous boulders and living fire began to rain down on the camps out of the empty skies of night, the former trickle of desertions became a torrent, with Abner and Leeroy and many another lesser bully riding in the lead, like as not.

With access to the western trails and the interior of New Kuhmbuhluhn blocked by the force of Kuhmbuhluhners and their supernatural minions, each group of deserters had, perforce, hied itself onto the easternmost, southbound trail and thence, naturally, into the Ahrmehnee lands where they had ridden on raids for long years.

At first, they had met with considerable success—loot, a few women, ponies and the like—the particular tribe they faced being weak, with few warriors to face their raiding hundreds. But then, quite suddenly, raiding party after large raiding party were butchered, routed and sent fleeing back across the ill-defined border as fast as their legs or those of their runty ponies would bear them, all swearing most forcefully and profanely that they had been attacked by a mixed agglomeration of Ahrmehnee warriors, Moon Maidens and Kuhmbuhluhners’t Some of the smaller parties never came back at all.

Ganiks, both outlaw and farmer type, continued to trickle in from the north and west, and so the senior bully of this new, composite bunch, Crookedcock Calder, waited a few weeks until this trickle had once more filled out his ranks, then led a huge force of raiders in a fast-riding incursion ending in a dawn attack against the largest Ahrmehnee village. The assault should by all rights have succeeded. Instead, the Ganiks were thrown back after a savage encounter that left a good third of their number dead or dying in and around the partially palisaded village and saw nearly a third more of the defeated men slain during a furious pursuit that was pressed up to and even a bit beyond the border of the Ahrmehnee lands.

Due principally to the fact that they all forked real horses rather than ponies, Crookedcock, Abner, Leeroy and most of the bullies survived the disaster, but once again they had had to wait until more new-come Ganiks had straggled in to give them enough force to make another try. And this they did.

That time, they were careful to choose a smaller village, one with no palisades of any sort, and with only old men and striplings moving about amongst the toothsome women. After splitting off enough Ganiks to throw out strong guards along the several trails that converged on the village, they attacked at dawn—as was their wont—and then it seemed as if the very ground suddenly vomited up armed and armored warriors, while the same toothsome women after whom the Ganiks had lusted as they reconnoitered the village threw off cloaks and outer coverings to reveal the gleaming armor and weapons of Moon Maidens and threw themselves into the fray.

And despite even more meticulous precautions and lengthy observance of another and smaller village, the same lethal subterfuge had been perpetrated only a few weeks later on yet another party of Ganik raiders.

Following the pursuit of the Ganiks after this second ambush of the raiders, the hard-riding and murderous force of harriers had come far enough over the border to attack the very bunch camp itself, panicking large numbers of the excitable Ganiks. In this surprise engagement, Crookedcock Calder, while trying to organize a defense, had his luck finally run out in the form of a spear that transfixed his unarmored chest and a blade that severed head from torso.

During the six weeks that followed the fresh disaster, the Ganiks had first spent considerable time and effort in rounding up the vast pony herd scattered by the attackers. Then had come a round of bully councils, each usually ending in one or more fights to the death between contenders for the vacant post of senior bully left by the violent demise of Crookedcock Calder. The hulking Abner had wisely refrained from voicing claims. Waiting until the preliminary battles were concluded and a single man remained, Abner challenged him, fought him and slew him, messily.

With the best parts of Abner’s late opponent become a comfortable weight within their bellies, while the remainder of the butchered carcass simmered in stewpots about the camp, Abner chose several lieutenants, with his brother-cum-lover, Leeroy, as the chief one, then outlined to the bully council his plans for dealing with the Ahrmehnee and these strange eastern Kuhmbuhluhners.

Abner had both liked and admired Crookedcock Calder, and the plan he outlined was but a rehash of the plans of the deceased (and long since eaten) leader. They would mount no raids of a large enough size to invite any more of these calamitous attacks by the heavy-armed and well-mounted foe, not until they once more possessed numbers large enough to stand a chance of defeating the foe in open combat. They were to see that their small raiding parties left villages strictly alone, preying rather upon herders and charcoal burners and any isolated farms they could find still tenanted.

If they came across far-inferior forces of warriors, they might attack, but under no circumstances were they to do so if said forces were even half their numbers, and should more warriors come up after a fight had commenced, they were to break off, scatter and flee. Abner wanted live Ganiks, not dead ones, and he said so in no uncertain terms.

But the wait for reinforcements turned out to be a very long one, far longer than it ever had been when Crookedcock had still been alive and leading. It seemed that most of the farmer Ganiks who were coming east had already come and that the bulk of them had trekked south or southwest. And such few outlaw Ganiks as did ride in were mostly weary survivors of the final, bloody defeat of the old main bunch, back in New Kuhmbuhluhn; nor were there many of them.

It was full, frigid winter before a group of some two hundred Ganiks trotted their ponies into the environs of Abner’s camp. The leader of this small bunch, one Gouger Haney, had been a bully appointed by Buhbuh the Kleesahk to head up one of the satellite bunches. When his bunch camp had been attacked and burned the preceding spring by the Kuhmbuhluhners, he had quickly recognized the futility of trying to stand and fight the large number of warriors with their superior arms and big horses, and so had led some three hundred of his followers in a breakout to the west.

Although they had won free of Kuhmbuhluhn, they had not ridden far into the completely unknown far west before they had found themselves being preyed upon by a very numerous and unremittingly savage race of people. After many vicissitudes, he and those who now followed him had won back into western Kuhmbuhluhn and headed for the camp of the main bunch, only to find it firmly in the hands of the very foemen who had burned their camp and massacred so many of them long months before.

And so, after a couple of near things which very nearly led to discovery by the superior Kuhmbuhluhner force, they had sought out the easternmost trail and proceeded southward until they encountered the Ganik markers showing the way to Abner’s camp.

Abner freely and warmly accepted the newcomer bully as one of his principal lieutenants, second only to Leeroy, for he shied away from any set of circumstances that might lead to a leadership fight with the older man, some sixth sense assuring him that there could be but one sure outcome and that it would be Abner, not Gouger, who went to the stewpots.

But this arrangement seemed not to please Haney in any way. After hearing all that Abner and the others had to say of their unbroken string of reverses and bloody defeats, he still mocked and derided the cautious strategy and tactics of Abner and his predecessor, siding with every hothead already resident in the camp and casting so many aspersions upon the leadership ability (or lack, thereof) and personal courage of Abner, Leeroy and the rest that it soon became crystal-clear to Abner that he either must take his chances in a death match with this Gouger or include all the newcomers in a full-scale reinvasion of the Ahrmehnee lands, come what might.

Even with the addition of Gouger’s Ganiks, there were still only a little over six hundred raiders. Abner had desired not to enter the Ahrmehnee lands again until he led a good ten hundred outlaws, nor did he particularly like the idea of having to force the stubby-legged ponies through the deep snows that now shrouded all the routes of access with the ever-present danger of being caught in the open by one of the fierce blizzards which had been so numerous this winter… but, faced with Gouger Haney, he felt he had no option.

Once across the nebulous border, the large party proceeded northeastward up a very familiar valley; many of them had fled several times down this very valley with the Ahrmehnee and the Moon Maidens and those strange, out-of-place Kuhmbuhluhners snapping at their heels. When last Abner had had a brief, running glimpse of the length of this valley, it had been littered with dead and dying Ganiks, all lying amid the scattered bones which were a well-gnawed testament to earlier Ganik defeats and flights; he wished that the deep snow might suddenly disappear long enough for the posturing Gouger Haney to see in advance the full extent of the folly into which he had forced Abner and his veterans.

A number of times during the ride up that valley, Abner’s well-developed senses had told him that they were all under the gaze of hostile eyes, but no move was made to attack them and the men and ponies were having enough trouble breaking trail through the relatively shallow depths of snow on the banks of the hard-frozen creek. Floundering in the deeper blanket of snow that waited on each flank, they would be virtually helpless, so he forbore even mentioning his firm suspicions that they and their slow progress were being constantly observed by those who could be naught save foemen. But as that day lengthened, it became obvious to anyone that an irresistible and implacable foe would soon attack them head on. The increasingly keen winds and the ominous-ness of the northern skies gave certain promise of yet another of those murderous blizzards in the offing. Shelter of some sort was a dire necessity, for to be caught in the open would be the quick death of most of them; therefore, the blackened stone walls of a burned-out village near the head of the valley was a most heartwarming sight to the raiders, for all that many of the cottages were lacking all or most of the thatched roofs. Indeed, not even the Ganiks’ usual fear of the spectral inhabitants which might be encountered in such a place served to deter them. Their justifiable terror of the fast-coming blizzard submerged even this primitive fear.

As the pitiless wind howled like a damned soul in torment about and through the enlarged and palisaded village of the dehrehbeh of the Behdrozyuhn Tribe of the Ahrmehnee stahn, Sir Geros Lahvoheetos sat comfortably in the warm, snug main room of the stone house that was his headquarters and personal quarters. Despite the freezing temperature outside, the combined efforts of the fire and the body heat of the half-score of men and women packed into the room to sip mulled wine and confer over how best to deal with this latest Ganik menace had served to so raise the inside temperature as to cause the young knight and many another to loosen the neck and front and sleeves of shirts and jerkins.

“Perhaps,” mused Geros, occupying—at Pawl Raikuh’s firm insistence—the only real chair in the room, “long and furious as this blizzard has proved to be, it will do all or a part of our fighting for us… ?”

“Not likely!” snorted Raikuh. “Those canny bastards have lived all their lives at a primitive, savage level. They’ll have found a place to hole up and wait out this howler, depend on it, Geros lad.”

“Yes, I too think so,” agreed Tohla, one of the two leaders of the contingent of the Moon Maidens which rode and fought as a part of Geros’ force against the mutual enemy. “These Muhkohee accustomed to hard living are, like the wild beasts they wear the raw skins of. But where? Close enough could the pigs be to under the cover of the storm attack us here?”

The dehrehbeh shrugged. “This all is hereabouts flat land— well, as flat as in these southern mountains likely you are to find. Only croplands or pastures or forest here nearby is, nor thick is the growth of the forest; the few tiny herder huts or dugout shelters scant help to a force so large would be, none at all, unless scatter widely they did. No caves there are for the ride of many days in any direction, and even these small are. Perhaps to be of lightness Sir Geros is, perhaps they even now are dying of cold and exposure. The Silver Lady grant that true it be!”

“Ahem’t Your pardon, please, honored Dehrehbeh Ahrszin,” said an elderly Ahrmehnee crouched near the hearth, speaking slowly and with deference.

Behdros Behdrozyuhn had been a mighty warrior in his long-ago day, adding many Muhkohee and lowlander heads to the impressive collection in the tribe lodge. Now, for all that he was aged, infirm and almost blind, he still was valued for his wisdom and had attended this meeting as the ears and the voice of the Council of Elders.

Now, at his utterance, all gazes turned onto the place where he squatted with his big-boned but withered body wrapped thoroughly in a thick woolen cloak lined with rabbit fur, his two eyes—one still dark and piercing, the other covered over with a thick film the color of thin milk—fixed on Ahrszin.

The dehrehbeh was, if anything, even more deferential in his reply to the old man. “Of what would my honored father speak?” He spoke, however, in stilted, accented Mehrikan, as too had the old man, that all present might understand.

Straightening his body a bit under its wrappings, old Behdros said gently, “With so many weighty cares upon your shoulders, Der Ahrszin, I fear you have forgotten the one place the Muhkohee raiders were certain to find, did they come up that valley. It is of the village of the headman Mahrzbehd I speak; it lies at the very top of that valley, with enough buildings to shelter most of a force that size even if not all. True, the distance is too great for them to easily attack this village from there, but that is where they should be sought first, say I.”

No less gently, the young dehrehbeh replied, “Honored father, that village was burned while still my honored uncle lived, along with the croplands surrounding it. All of its folk and most of their kine are now here, with us in this village. Of what protection are roofless walls even for the Muhkohee?”

The wrinkled lips of Behdros parted to reveal teeth wom down almost to the gum line. After the brief smile, he said, “Der Ahrszin, you have not fought over, raided in, alien lands earlier despoiled. I have. Even a roofless wall gives protection from most of the wind, and, with desperation and time, a roof of a sort can be fashioned from saplings, pine branches and hides, for that matter. Far better that than to try to backtrack, to-run long miles before the storm back to the camp beyond the border; I doubt any Muhkohee would be so stupid… and I know that breed well; I fought them the most of my life.”

Raikuh nodded, asking no leave to speak. “He’s right, you know. In the Middle Kingdoms wars, 1 and my mates have seen ruined villages and hamlets with jerry-rigged roofs just like those he describes, have done some of it our own selves at various times. They ain’t palaces, mind you, but they sure beat sleeping cold and wet. And that many Muhkohee working together for their common good could likely do a heap of work, fast.

“Yes, son Geros, I think that there village is a good bet for us to check out as soon as this weather lets up enough for patrols to ride again.”

When once they had gotten fires going on the hearths of the ruined cottages and the few larger houses, the snow that the heat had melted on the makeshift roofs of interlaced conifer branches and long sapling-rafters had frozen to a film of ice and, when once more snow had accumulated on the surfaces, the rude coverings became almost windproof, though inclined to drip steadily in the warmer interiors.

Nonetheless, Abner and Gouger and their Ganiks were damned glad to be out of the deadly storm that surrounded the rude shelters wherein they crowded with their ponies. During the few, short spells of windlessness when there was a modicum of light, the hobbled and guarded ponies were allowed to forage under the snow blanket in the woods and burned-over fields, while as much of the accumulated dung—animal and human—as could be easily reached was tossed out the doors and other groups of Ganiks cut down and fetched in firewood from the nearest growth of woodland.

Food for the mob of Ganiks was, of course, no problem, not when there were so many other Ganiks about to be murdered and butchered and cooked and eaten. Abner hated to see this loss of fighting strength, but he knew that without food they would all be too weak to fight even did they survive. Besides, his stomach growled as loud as any man’s when empty. So, as had ever been the Ganik way, the weaker and sickly went to feed the stronger and healthier.

There was no thought of killing and eating the ponies, of course. Not only did the little beasts constitute the only means of transportation, but Gouger and his crew and many another of the other lesser Ganiks were strict adherents of the old-time religion, and one of that creed’s most powerful gods—Ndaindjerd—forbade the consumption of the flesh of any furred or feathered animal.

Abner, Leeroy and a minority of others were not so strict in observance of traditional Ganik dietary laws—or of any other aspects of the singular religion of the Ganiks, for that matter—but there was no denying that human flesh was tenderer, sweeter and more succulent than the stringy, tough and sinewy pony flesh would likely have been.

Aware that there existed a terrible need to keep the raiders busy at something in this crowded and enforced confinement, Abner, Gouger, Leeroy and the other bullies set the lesser Ganiks to scrounging, even digging up floors in a search for any bits and pieces of metal to be honed and made into dart points; any hard metal would do—steel, iron, brass, bronze, pewter, even hardened copper—the Ganiks were not and had never been picky in that regard. Because another of their ancient gods—Plooshuhn—forbade them the smelting or casting of metals, they always had had to take any worked metal objects from their neighbors, cold-hammering and reshaping their acquisitions to their needs, where necessary, by any method that did not entail fire-heating of the metals, which would surely have called down upon them the awful wrath of the gods.

Pieces too large for dart tips were fashioned expertly into knife or dagger blades, for no Ganik outlaw ever felt himself to have enough knives, the bullies often carrying a dozen or more, large and small, scattered about their persons.

Not that the thrifty Ahrmehnee had actually left that much valuable metal when they hurriedly abandoned the site, but the search’ alone was an effective means of keeping the minds—far too many of which were, at best, ill balanced—of the lesser Ganiks occupied with something basically constructive.

The lesser Ganiks did not need to be actually driven to the hunt for and work upon metal. But they certainly did need to be so driven to and constantly supervised at other most necessary chores, such as the procurement of and the fetching back of food for the penned ponies.

For this was hard, cold work. It required digging beneath the icy snow with makeshift wooden spades to find grasses or herbaceous plants or even small bushes—mountain ponies were far less fastidious in their choices of food than were true horses—then hacking off armloads and bearing them back to the places wherein the snorting, stamping animals waited in ravenous impatience. And, like as not, the vicious winds or a loss of footing would see the hard-garnered loads torn from the grasps of the freezing Ganiks long before they reached their destinations.

But Abner and Gouger and the other bullies kept them at it as long as there was light enough every day, dealing a swift and brutal and very public corporal punishment to any shirker or laggard, trying hard to ensure that the lesser Ganiks would all be too exhausted through the long, dark, windy nights to do more than sip a few drafts of hot broth and then sleep.

But it did not always work out that way, of course. These outlaw Ganiks were hard, hardy, vital men, else they would never have survived long the savage, primitive life they had chosen to lead. In the cramped quarters, there were fights, many of them, night and day, for any reason or none. At last, alarmed at the number of fatal encounters, the bullies stripped the lesser Ganiks of all their weapons, even their assortments of knives. They collected all of this vast agglomeration of hardware in the largest, most complete house—wherein dwelt Abner, Gouger and Leeroy, among others—issuing only what was needed for immediate foraging tasks, then taking it back before the Ganiks were allowed to return to their quarters for the night. There were still fights, of course, but fewer of them now ended in deaths or serious injuries. Nonetheless, some of the bullies and lesser Ganiks would live to rue and regret this universal disarmament.

At the first hint of a partial slackening of the ferocity of the ten-day-long blizzard, a strong patrol rode out of the palisaded village of Ahrszin Behdrozyuhn—four Freefighters under Captain Pawl Raikuh, Tohla and three other Moon Maidens, and a baker’s dozen of Ahrmehnee led by Mahrzbehd Behdrozyuhn, the headman of the burned-out village they now thought the Muhkohee raiders to be occupying.

They set out in the gray light of false dawn, moving very slowly in the deep snows, exhalations of both humans and mounts smoking whitely out through the thick swaths of woolen cloth wrapping their faces against the sharp-toothed cold.

Observing just how slowly they advanced and with what difficulty, Geros did not expect them back soon. Nor was he wrong in his estimate. It was full dark before the near-frozen patrol, weaving and stumbling with utter exhaustion, plodded through the gate.

When once Pawl Raikuh had unwound enough of the frozen lengths of woolens to disclose his deep-sunken eyes and stubbly cheeks, he croaked, “They’re there, Sir Geros. The Muhkohee and their ponies, all of the stinking bastards, I’d reckon. Been there since the start of the blizzard, from the looks of the place, with makeshift roofing on all the standing walls and every chimney smoking. They must be packed in like herring in a barrel, but they’re all there.

“Now, by your leave, is there anything hot to drink abouts?”

But the blizzard had only been resting, marshaling its frigid resources for yet another fresh assault on the folk and beasts and lands it held in its pitiless grip. The winds howled their song of death through the most of that night and much of the following day, turning that day into a twilight of icy discomfort for those unfortunates who had to be out of doors for whatever reason.

At the hour that should have been sunset at this season of the year, but was now but a deepening of the darkness, yet another meeting was convened in the main room of the house in which Sir Geros resided.

Looking much less akin to walking, frozen corpses thanks to having eaten, thawed out in the sweat house, then slept for most of the night and a great part of the day, Pawl Raikuh, Tohla and Mahrzbehd Behdrozyuhn were there. So, too, were the other leader of the Moon Maidens, Klahra; Dehrehbeh Ahrszin and his cousin and sxxb-dehrehbeh, Hyk; the old man, Behdros; Lieutenant Bohreegahd Hohguhn; and, of course, Sir Geros.

In answer to a question, Pawl Raikuh was answering in his usual blunt way. “Lord Ahrszin, for all they was borned here and all, your men suffered just as much as the rest of us did out on that patrol yesterday, and if you don’t believe me, just ask old Mahrzbehd here. So it won’t be no attacking of them shaggies out yonder till the weather eases her up a mite.

“Sure, we could set the squadron on the march; we might even make it down there to that village by midday, was we to leave afore dawn. But I warrant that nobody—Ahrmehnee, Moon Maiden, Freefighter, horse or pony—would be in any fair shape to fight when they did get there. It was all we could do to just watch the shaggies for a while, then turn round and ride back here. That cold saps a man worse than a four-week drunk.”

Absently rubbing at his great beak of a nose, the headman, Mahrzbehd, agreed. “It is true, dehrehbeh; all that Pawl says is fact. Almost forty winters have I lived through, and never have I seen the like of this terrible storm.

“But this there is, as well: The accursed Muhkohee are in no sense better off than we are; in many ways, they are worse. No game is about, so they must either be starving or, more likely, eating up each other. And each one that a cannibal dish becomes is one less that face we must when at last the time does arrive for fighting.”

When the headman had fallen silent and applied himself to his jack of mulled wine, the woman, Klahra, her prickly Moon Maiden pride surfacing, demanded, “The men have spoken, but what say you, Tohla? Could Maidens of the Silver Lady march down there and fight, think you?”

The young woman thus addressed gave off for the moment cracking nuts in her powerful callused hands, to reply no less bluntly than had Raikuh. “In a word, Klahra, no. A question of fighting skills or courage, it is not. Rather is it the true and pure fact that the flesh and the blood of woman or man or beast not equal is to such a task. It is as Pawl said; wait we all must until not so deep is the snow and clearer is the weather, with less wind. To attempt to now attack will death be for many even before is struck the first blow at the Muhkohee.”

So Geros, Ahrszin and old Behdros decided to wait for better weather, and wait they did. They all knew that they had insufficient force as matters stood, and to rashly risk any of that force would have constituted rankest folly.

The last few days of the blizzard were the very worst, and the raiding party of Ganiks huddled in their crowded, inadequate shelters did not fare nearly so well as they had earlier. All of the Ganiks in one of the smaller cottages—some score and a half of them—froze to death one night when the gusting winds tore the roof off their sleeping place. Although the bullies saw the corpses dragged out and the cottage reroofed, none of the superstitious Ganiks would reoccupy it, so it was thenceforth used to stable some of the ponies, affording slightly more room in others of the packed shelters.

The only other good thing that the tragedy accomplished was to provide a ready source of food without the fuss and bother of clubbing down a living man. Now all that was necessary was to choose a stiff cadaver, drag it into one of the cottages and leave it near the fire until it thawed out enough to be skinned and butchered. There followed, of course, an ebbing of the deep distrust each man had felt of every other during their stay here, and there were, consequently, fewer fights. Had it been entirely up to Abner, he would then have given the men back their weapons, but Gouger, overcautious, disagreed and dissuaded him.

But no storm can last forever. One dawn, two weeks and two days after the first gusts of the blizzard had driven them to this place for shelter, the day arrived bright and clear and warmed sufficiently as it progressed to send showers of half-melted ice cascading down off the trunks and branches of the trees, while the ice-sheathed stone walls of the village began to drip and dribble water.

Naturally for the time of year, when the sun set, the temperature dropped and standing water or slushy snow froze. But the next day was just as warm if not actually warmer— opinions were mixed on this—and with all the ponies pawing through the wet snow covering the fields surrounding the village, the bullies began to think of moving on in a day or two, did the weather remain so warm.

As it developed, however, the usually canny Ganiks waited one day too long. Intermittent showers throughout the next two days persuaded them to delay while the water amplified the melting of the accumulated ice and snow, the process aided by the fact that on neither of those two nights did the temperature dip to the freezing mark.

But with the rising of the bright sun of the dawn following that second, wanner night, grim death came to call.