Champion of the Last Battle

IX

Counter Tremain swallowed as much of Horseface Charley’s boastful bragging as he could stomach, then burst out, “Shitfahr, Horseface, awl you sayin’ is you’s up thar awl the fuckin’ day and you dint kill but three of them Kuhmbuhluhn bugtits, fer shore! By Plooshuhn, I could do thet good, I swanee, and I ain’ nowhars near’s good with a ryfuhl as you is.”

And that, thought Counter morosely, was how he now came to be making his slow, careful way up the mountain to the spot that Horseface had described to take the Ganik marksman’s place on the morrow, to lie almost motionless through all the hours of daylight in a hole scooped out of the rocky soil and shoot at any Kuhmbuhluhner foolish enough after the preceding day to show his head or body as a target.

In answer to Counter’s rebuttal of Horseface’s braggadocio, Erica had answered calmly, “No, he only killed three, but his killing of them served the purpose for which he was there. Even from down here in the camp, we could see that very few figures were visible on the walls, towers or barbican for longer than mere fleeting instants of time after those three were downed. And that is just what the brigadier wants—fewer and less vigilant watchers in those areas.

“As for your suggestion, Counter,” she had smiled, “I do think that one day at a time up there is enough for any of you. Charley has blazed the way now, so you will go up tonight and take the position for tomorrow. If anyone does offer a good target, by all means do your damnedest to hit him, of course. But I doubt if more than one will, probably early on in the day, and when once they learn you’re still shooting at them, they’ll doubtless do a repeat of today—staying low and out of sight as much as possible.

“As I told Charley last night, if you move as little as possible, there’s no way that you can be spotted, not with that silencer-flash-hider on the rifle. When we found that rig back at the landslide, I couldn’t imagine what we’d ever use it for or when, but I’m very glad now that I brought it along anyway.”

“But Ehrkah,” Counter had protested, not in the least relishing the thought of a day lying motionless in a hot, cramped hole under a pile of rocks, “I ain’ nowhars near as good a ryfuhl shooter as ole Horseface is. Chances is, evun if I’s to shoot atairy one them Kuhmbuhluhners, I ain’ gonna hit ’em. Naw, Ehrkah, I thanks Horseface, he awta go back up thar t’naht, not me.”

She had shaken her head of black, glossy hair and replied, “Counter, shooting, hitting, killing the men on those walls and fortifications is unimportant, really. The thing that is of importance is to keep them down and off the higher points altogether, if possible, so it’s of little moment whether you hit them or not. No, you go up tonight and come back after dark tomorrow. Then Charley can do it again.”

And so, with the woods-wise stalking ability of the outlaw Ganik he had been for most of his life, Counter Tremain was making his cautious way up the slope, flitting from rock shadow into shallow depression and back to rock shadow, himself only a shadow in the wan moonlight. For most of the way the going was merely difficult, but in places it was so precipitous as to be almost impossible—several times he had to shuck off his new pair of Skohshun pikeman’s boots, sling them around his neck and use his freed toes as well as his strong fingers to seek, find and use tiny cracks and crevices and invisible ledges to negotiate an advance over and up the smooth-seeming rockfaces.

But finally he was there, in the proper area. Booted feet first, Counter slid into the long, narrow hole and, after settling himself into the most comfortable position he could manage, began to pile up reachable rocks to form a rest for the barrel of his rifle. That done and the camouflaged weapon resting in place, the Ganik bully—still panting and copiously sweating from the exertions of ascent to this spot—rolled over on his back and unslung the waterskin with intent to refresh himself.

And that was when the thick, weighty slab of rock which overlay and covered his burrow seemed to float of its own volition upward, then huge-feeling but unseen hands grasped Counter’s body, jerked it out of the hole and shook it as a dog would shake a rat, until all the world and all time roared about him in a barely seen black-red roaring and consciousness departed him all in a rush.

Nature had not endowed Paget’s Glen as well as she had Sandee’s Cot, so it had been necessary for the long-dead men, Teenehdjooks and Kleesahks who had designed and constructed its defenses to carve off the outer faces of many of the hills. The stone thus quarried had been utilized for the walls to span the gaps between the hills, their towers and the approach fortifications, as well as the thick, lofty main keep within the glen.

Like the ancestors of Count Sandee, those of Marques Paget had, as soon as a more comfortable habitation was built, used the tower keep as a combination armory, stables and temporary guest-housing. Even so, it was not big enough by half to house the multiracial force now led by Count Sandee and Sir Geros. So only the Middle Kingdoms Freefighters inhabited it, while the Ahrmehnee and Moon Maidens camped by preference in the wooded hills just beyond the glen’s outer defenses, spending most of their time in hunting, feasting on their kills, drinking the copious quantities of beer provided by their hosts and dancing around their fires far into each night to the wild, rhythmic music that was an integral part of the heritage of their race.

They stayed a week, then took to the trails again, reinforced by the hundred or so fighters of Paget’s Mark. They then rode toward the second destination in their winding, roundabout advance—the safe glen ruled over by Count Rik Nalliss. Then, stronger by some seventy warriors—many of these a bit long in the tooth, but scarred by many a hard-fought campaign and more than willing to undertake another for their new king against the alien invaders—the column angled on northwestward in the direction of the next safe glen.

But Count Nalliss’ contingent was the last large one; all of the latterly joined ones were of fifty men or less, usually less. Not even these trickles were refused a place in the slowly swelling ranks, however, Count Sandee and his fellow nobles being willing to accept any Kuhmbuhluhner who could fork horse and swing steel on behalf of King Byruhn.

So as the relief column began to toil up the southerly reaches of the range separating them from northern Kuhmbuhluhn and the besieged capital, almost fourteen hundred fighters followed the massed banners along the mountain track that Duke Bili and his condotta had traversed earlier that year.

For most of the way through that range, they found it easy to subsist on the flesh of wild ponies, deer and other game, along with roots and herbs, greens and wild fruits, while still maintaining a decent rate of march. But one and all they longed to reach the plain where, they hoped, there would be something other than rock-ale—water—and fresh breads.

Although many or most of the New Kuhmbuhluhn noblemen maintained the customs and usages of their rank on the march—being cooked for, served and otherwise waited upon by servants all had brought along—the lowlanders, both noble and common, were far less formal, so the scene and conversation that took place one night was not uncommon at all.

At a spot a little apart from the Freefighters and the Ahrmehnee warriors, old Sir Djim Bohluh and Captain Djeri Guhntuh sat facing each other across a cookfire and watched a sizable hare spitted on a green stick broiling over the coals wherein several wild potatoes baked in rock-hard clay jackets. The while, they slaked their thirst with an Ahrmehnee decoction—twice-baked journey bread ground into powder, stirred into hot water and flavored with crushed, dried herbs and juniper berries—that bore as much resemblance to decent beer or ale as did the hare to suckling pig.

Sir Djim turned the spit a trifle on the forked sticks that supported it and prodded at the hot flesh with one horny forefinger, remarking, “Should be done enuf to eat ’er, soon. Mebbe the hare’ll git the taste of thishere horsepiss outen my mouf. Don’t them Ahrmehnees know nuthin ’bout beer-makin’?”

The Freefighter officer grimaced at the taste of the contents of his own cup and nodded. “Oh, yes, Sir Djim, the Ahrmehnee brew excellent beer, ale, too, even small quantities of mead and fruit wines. The Archduke Hahfos is of the opinion that some of their meads and herb ales will eventually become a profitable trade item with the Confederation. Perhaps so, mayhap not; I’m a simple soldier and know damnall about trade.”

Djim Bohluh set aside his cup, took out his pipe and the bladder of tobacco and set about the filling of the one from the contents of the other. “Djeri, it’s suthin’ I been wonderin’ ’bout the ahrkeethoheeks fer some time, naow. He’s from a good fambly, a noble, Kindred fambly, but he nevuh wuz rich; mostly he lived awn his ofser’s pay, whilst he’s in the Confederation Army, leastways ... plus loot and gamblin’ winnin’s, o’ course.

“But, lo and behold, there he be up in wild Ahrmehneeland, livin’ like unto a black Zahrtohguhn prince. He wears silks an’ satins an’ the fines’ leathers an’ gol’ an’ jewl’ry, he lives in a house thet wouldn’ be outa place in the bestes’ parts of Kehnooryos Atheenahs or Theesispolis, eatin’ the bestes’ food awf silvuh plates an’ awl, with a whole friggin’ pl’toon of servunts to do fer ’im.”

Guhntuh raised his eyebrows quizzically. “You two seemed to be old friends, when he introduced us, Sir Djim. Did you not ask the archduke himself how he came into such wealth?”

“I did jes thet,” averred Sir Djim glumly. “But whutawl he “said, it dint mek no sense, not neethuh time. Fust awf, he said as how it wuz his wife’s dowry. An’ thet whin ever’body knows bow pisspoor them Ahrmehnees be. Then he come to tell me ’nothuh time, thet awl whut he had wuz give to him by a bar!” Guhntuh chuckled. “What the archduke told you was nothing less than the unvarnished truth, Sir Djim. Both versions. Have you, perchance, heard the tale of how he first met his wife, the Archduchess Pehroosz Djohnz of the Bahrohnyuhn Tribe?”

Old Djim grinned appreciatively. “I met ’er—she be a raht toothsome bit, noble or not, an’ thet’s a fine, sturdy-lookin’ lil colt she’s done th’owed him, too. But how he met ’er? Naw. I’d figgered the High Lord, he’d done got close with them Ahrmehnee chiefs an’ got one their get to hitch up with the Ahrkeethoheeks to mix the blood an’ cut down the chancet of a rebellion, like. Thet’s usual in settlin’ conquered lands.”

Guhntuh shook his head and, while taking out his own pipe and tobacco, said, “No, there is nothing at all usual about the tale concerning the archduke and her ladyship.

“You were not on that campaign against the Ahrmehnee stahn, Sir Djim, but you surely know of it? Whilst this duke you seek now had led his force to attack the Ahrmehnee from the south and the High Lord was driving straight up toward the village of the nahkhahrah from the east, the High Lady Aldora was leading a cavalry onslaught down from the north, and me and my boys, we was a part of her force.

“It was no real fighting for the early part of that ride, Sir Djim, because most of the Ahrmehnee warriors was all down south in and around the place that the nahkhahrah lived, all getting set to attack the Confederation. So we all rode through them tribal lands like a dose of salts. We robbed, we raped, we burned whole villages, butchered every head of stock we come onto, even them we couldn’t eat. Them folks we didn’t kill, we drove into the hills—legal bandits, we was. I could come to like that kind of warfare a whole lot.

“But, by Steel, we plumb paid for all of it, afore it was done! One morning early, right at false dawn, when we all was camped in a big clearing, the Ahrmehnees come to hit us—it was thousands of them, Sir Djim, all warriors, all screeching and screaming and howling like wolves, they was. I won’t no captain, then, you understand, I was a lieutenant of a hundred of Captain Watsuhn’s Freefighter squadron. But by sunup of that day, the old captain was dead, along with all the other officers except me and more than four hundred of our six hundred troopers.

“Of course, what was left of the High Lady’s force did manage to beat them screeching devils off, elst I wouldn’t be here, ’cause I’d took a dart through my thigh early on and I couldn’t even stand up. But we didn’t do no more marching or riding or raiding for a while, I can tell you that!

“Since it was a good, dependable water source there, the High Lady had some rough fortifications put up on that same campsite and set about reorganizing, and before she was set to move on in the campaign, the word come from the High Lord that it wasn’t to be no more campaign, that the Confederation was at peace with them Ahrmehnees.

“Well, the High Lady seemed damned anxious for to get to where the High Lord was, for some reason, her and that reformed rebel, Baronet Drehkos. She took a force a little bigger nor our present one—mebbe, sixteen hundreds, and including me and my company—and we rode hard till we reached the Taishyuhns’ main village.”

Redstone pipe packed to his critical satisfaction, the captain lit a splinter of pine in the coals and began to puff the tobacco to life, continuing to talk around the stem of yellowed bone.

“Well, us Freefighters, we went into camp on that big shelf down below the Taishyuhn village, where Fort Kogh is, you know; the High Lady, she knew that us Freefighters weren’t about to put up with none of that make-work, spit—and-polish shit like the Confederation Regulars, so she kept my company and the others separate from them.

“Anyhow, her that was to become her ladyship, Pehroosz, had come a-riding in with that Ahrmehnee Witchwoman what come to marry up with the nahkhahrah, Kogh Taishyuhn. While every Ahrmehnee around abouts was getting things ready for the big blowout wedding feast of the nahkhahrah, thishere Witchwoman, she sent her ladyship out into the hills for to dig up some special roots and an old boar bear chased her up a tree and was just set to go up after her when the archduke, who was out a-hunting deers, come by.

“I hear tell it was a near thing, that day. That damn bear chewed the haft in two right behind of the blade and the archduke had to meet bruin breast to breast and put paid to him with a damn hanger. And that was a flat, big-assed bear, too, Sir Djim—I seen the skin!

“Well, just before the bear had come at her, her ladyship had dug up a real old, corroded-up strongbox from the little hollow where she was digging roots for the Witchwoman, and she brung it back with her. I hear tell the thing was dang heavy, and for good reason, because when the old lock was forced and broke, it come about that that damn box was full up to the tiptop with little bars of solid, pure gold! Every one of them weighed a little over three ounces and they was all stamped with words in some language couldn’t nobody—Kindred, Ehleen, burker or Ahrmehnee—read. Anyhow, it was near forty pounds of gold in that box, Sir Djim!

“Well, being the kind of man he is, the archduke first tried to turn the newfound treasure over to the High Lord, but Lord Milo opined that it was found on Ahrmehnee land, therefore it was rightly the property of the nahkhahrah. But old Kogh said that according to the customs of his people, whoever found things like that was owner of them, but that as the archduke had saved her ladyship from the bear, he thought that the two of them should ought to split the gold between them. Well, that’s just what they done, but as his lordship had already took a shine to her ladyship, them two was married on the same day the nahkhahrah was.

“That might’ve been the end of it all, too, but Archduke Hahfos come to wonder if it might’ve been more than the one box of gold up there in the hills, so he went back with a bunch of men with shovels and pickaxes and all. And the very first swing of a pick hit metal, Sir Djim. Won’t nobody ever know, probably, the whens and wheres and hows of it all, but it was hundreds of them same kinda boxes, some of them not a full foot under the ground.”

“All of them full of gold?” queried Djim Bohluh.

“Aw, no,” replied Guhntuh with a shake of his head. “No, lots and lots of them had nothing inside but kinds of paper with writing and funny-looking pictures and all on them. But there was more gold—some in bars, some in gold coins and a whole lot in jewelry, jewelry like you never seen afore, too. And there was boxes full of smaller boxes and bags of cut jewels, unmounted, and pearls and opals. There was boxes of silver bars and coins, too, as well as some bigger boxes plumb full of old books from more’n a thousand years ago. At least, that’s what the High Lord said—he wrote back in a letter to the archduke, after he’d done boxed up all them books and papers and sent them all up to Kehnooryos Atheenahs. He said too a lots of them papers was a kind of money they used back then in place of gold and silver, that or pieces of paper that said the fellers that had it owned part of manufactories and trading companies and suchlike.

“The High Lord Milo, he went on to say that some them books had been real rare and hard to come by even way back then, and he thanked the archduke over and over for getting them all up to him.”

“The ahrkeethoheeks kept it awl, aside from whut he sent up to Kehnooryos Atheenahs?” asked Bohluh. “No friggin’ wonduh he can live like he does!”

“No such thing!” snorted Guhntuh. “I doubt me if Archduke Hahfos kept a tenth part of whatall he found, valuewise. That palace he had built and lives in now, that ain’t his, Sir Djim. In time that’ll be the palace of Kogh Taishyuhn and the other nahkhahrahs after him. Then the archduke, he’ll move up to a smaller place—the House of the Golden Bear—he has up in the hills, built on the spot where he met her ladyship and kilt the bear and found the treasure buried.

“A whole lots of that treasure has gone into the Ahrmehnee stahn—rebuilding villages, replacing livestock, dowering gals, enlarging and modernizing the Ahrmehnee forges what make that fine, light, strong mail, not to mention improving the few roads that was there to start and building new ones place of the tracks and trails, and all of it means work and hard-money wages for every swingin’ dick in the whole stahn who’d rather work than fight. Them few fire-eaters was left is a-ridin’ with us, you know.”

The officer paused long enough to rake one of the lumps of clay out from the bed of coals, crack it off the potato with a sharp rap of his knife pommel, then slice the tuber open to steam and cool enough to eat, while he continued his discourse.

“You can believe it won’t none of his lordship’s doing, way he’s come to live and dress and eat and all, not a bit of it. It was her ladyship won him over to acting the part of the rich, powerful, respected man what he is. I was there through it all and I can tell you the archduke, he was as damned discomforted as a hog in a scaleshirt for some little time, but her ladyship got her way, like she allus does, mostly. And talk in the villages is his lordship’ll be the next nahkhahrah, once old Kogh Taishyuhn dies.”

“But the Ahrkeethoheeks is of a Kindred house. He’s no damn Ahrmehnee,” stated Djim Bohluh flatly.

Guhntuh just nodded. “Yes, but the Ahrmehnee say anybody marries a Ahrmehnee is a Ahrmehnee because of it, you see, and that means his lordship is a Bahrohnyuhn. Then, too, he was formally adopted into the Taishyuhns by the nahkhahrah on account of saving her ladyship by killing that bear, see? So come down to it, he’s more of a Ahrmehnee than most borned Ahrmehnees, being of two tribes and all. All the dehrehbehs likes him, so he’ll likely be the next nahkhahrah, for sure. Steel keep him, he’s some kinda first-class gent, he is!”

“The bastard carries himself well,” thought General Jay Corbett, as he sat his mule facing Earl Devernee on his horse, “for all he’s clearly scared shitless of our weapons. Hell, in his place I’d be jelly-kneed, too—after all, what chance have even the best-armed, best-trained schiltron of pikemen against rifles and hand grenades, not to even mention machine guns and mortars? Few as we are, he seems to know that we could go through his glen like Sherman went through Georgia.”

Aloud, he said, “Mr. Devernee, I have no designs upon you, your people or your lands; all that I want is the unharmed persons of Dr. Erica Arenstein and her party delivered to my camp. So why didn’t you just bring her and them out here with you? That would have been the simplest thing to do.”

Earl Devernee was indeed terrified, as Corbett had sensed, but for his people, not for himself. Sight of what the aliens’ horrifying weapons of war had done to that massive gate, to those sturdy, stonework towers flanking it, in a bare eyeblink of elapsed time had sent cold sweat trickling the length of his spine, set his nape hairs all a-prickle. That sinister sight had confirmed in his mind the uselessness of trying to fight with two understrength reserve regiments of pikemen and a bare handful of light cavalrymen.

He had been of a mind to insist that the woman and her minions stay imprisoned in the glen instead of sending them on to the brigadier, and now he wished he had done just that. He would have too, had he not still felt guilty for his act of family favoritism and the bloody, expensive carnage that that act had engendered at the battle.

“You might have sent that message with a herald, sir, before you destroyed my gate and one of my towers,” he said to Corbett in reply. “Even in warfare, there are certain courtesies should be observed and honored.”

“Would you have delivered up those prisoners had I done as you suggest, Mr. Devernee?” demanded Corbett.

The earl shrugged. “Not immediately, probably, but the way would have been opened for some sort of negotiations. Nor would there now be dead and wounded men to care for or bury.”

“The way is opened now for far more than negotiation,” Jay Corbett stated with the cold grin of a winter wolf. “And if Dr. Arenstein and the others aren’t in my camp, alive and well, by sunup tomorrow, Mr. Devernee, my men and I are going to come in there and take them, and if that means the killing of every fighting man you own, we’ll do that too. Am I understood, Mr. Devernee?”

“Your intentions could not be more clearly stated, sir,” affirmed the earl solemnly. “But if these men in evidence hereabouts are all that you number, then you might have a care, lest you and they bite off a bit more than all of you can easily chew. Besides, the prisoners are no longer in the glen.”

“If you’ve killed them ...” began Corbett, menacingly.

But the earl raised a hand, saying, “Please, sir, we are not brutal barbarians, but civilized folk. Whilst they bided within the glen, the woman and her men were well treated, for all that they had most cruelly ambushed first an ill-armed party of woodcutters, then a patrol of dragoons, killing and wounding many men with their deadly, firespitting weapons.

“Brigadier Ahrthur Maklarin, who commands our field army, sent for them, that they might use those selfsame weapons to aid his men in the taking of a fortress-city to the southeast of here. So I am certain that they are now no less well kept than they were here, especially so if they are truly become our allies.”

But Corbett shook his head. “Frankly, Mr. Devernee, I don’t believe you. I reiterate: Have them all in my camp by dawn tomorrow, or what I do and order done to your people and that glen will be solely on your head.”

“But I speak the full, honest truth, sir!” the earl expostulated. “How can you be convinced? Please, sir, tell me.”

Lady Pamela Grey read the short letter conveyed to her by the leader of the aliens, then looked up from it at the dark-haired, black-eyed stranger. “A well-built man,” she thought. “Strong and fast, from his looks. Thick as his wrists are, he could probably cleave a man from pate to belly with that saber he wears. And he’s certainly gentle-born and -bred, for his air of command is entirely too natural for him to be else. Now, if only he were friend rather than foe ... ?”

“Sir,” she said coolly, “this is assuredly Earl Devernee’s mark and seal. If you wish to truly search this glen, I shall see to it that you are in no way hindered, that all buildings or enclosures are gaped open to you at your pleasure. But I should think that the fact that the earl, our hereditary leader, was willing to voluntarily place himself a hostage in your camp might convince you that he is an honorable, a just and a truthful man.”

“Were I in his place,” said Corbett in a tone no less cool, stiff and formal, “were I the hereditary leader of a people, I certainly would prevaricate to protect those people; I could do no less for those who depended upon me, however much such a deed might compromise my personal sense of honor, madam. I think that your Mr. Devernee and I are much alike in that and in other ways, so, yes, I do intend to search this glen... and not only for living bodies, but for fresh graves, as well.”

But she shook her head with a swirl of dark-blond hair. “You will find nothing recognizable in any grave in this glen, not a recent one, one dug since we conquered it. Only upon the field of battle, where large numbers of corpses are involved, do we practice inhumation; in usual practice, we cremate our dead, burying the ashes in pots or small caskets.”

Corbett thought fast and lied glibly. “Even so, there will be proof if you people have murdered Dr. Arenstein, for a section of bone in one of her arms had been replaced with a silver one ... unless it is your custom to rob the dead.”

Fire blazed from her blue eyes. “Sir, must I say it again that we are not barbarians? We have enlarged a natural cavern to make a common crypt, and I shall be more than pleased to show you to it; you may open every casket, unseal every pot and sift ashes to your heart’s content, if that is your desire. But I state here to you the fact that that woman and all of her companions departed this glen as part of a reinforcement and supply train bound for our army nearly two months agone. If you seek her and them, you must do such beneath the walls of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, not here.”

Bili of Morguhn handled the dusty, dirty device of wood and metal gingerly, so recently having seen the evidence of its deadly capabilities. Carefully, he laid it on the floor beside his armchair and regarded the enemy captive—now weighed down with heavy fetters—before him.

At last, after a searching appraisal, he said, “You’re a Ganik, aren’t you? What’s your name?”

Counter spat on the floor at the feet of the seated man and sneered. “Go fuck yersef, yew skinhaidid cocksuckuh, yew!”

Bili sighed. “I would have preferred to keep this simple and civil, but obviously you Ganiks have no concept of civility.

“Master Oodehn,” he bespoke the Kleesahk who had captured and brought back the prisoner, “put me a rope over that beam up there, then fetter this man’s wrists behind him, tie one end of the rope to the center of the connecting chain and hoist him up by it. I want his feet about my height off the floor. I learned long ago, at the court of Harzburk, how to obtain cooperation from recalcitrant prisoners.”

Counter, who had over the years taken such savage delight in sadistically torturing hundreds of men, women and children, proved, however, to have a very low personal pain threshold. His feet were not a foot off the floor when he began to scream, as his own body weight began to strain the muscles and ligaments of his shoulder joints to the tearing point.

Bili mindspoke the Kleesahk to lower the captive, but only to just where his toes could take a part of his weight. Then he said grimly, “Now you know that I mean business, Ganik, and that I have no intention of enduring either stubborn silence or insult from you.

“Now, once again, what is your name? Where did you get this weapon and how does it work? How many of them do the Skohshuns have?”

When, by dint of alternate demands and threats, plus a bit of reading of the contents of the prisoner’s completely nonshielded mind, Bili felt that he had all of the information that Counter Tremain could give him, he mindspoke the Kleesahk, Oodehn.

“Can you wipe any memory of all this, from capture on, from this Ganik’s mind, Master Oodehn?”

The huge hominid wrinkled his hairless brows in a very human way, beaming back, “No, Lord Champion, I doubt that I can. But I am certain that Pah-Elmuh could.”

Pah-Elmuh had but just withdrawn the tube from the throat of the comatose King Byruhn, after having forced a small measure of a milk—and-brandy mixture into his stomach, when Bili’s mindcall reached him. After beaming an affirmative response, he carefully cleansed the unconscious monarch’s beard and mustaches, drew up the sheet and blanket and the silken coverlet over the nude body against a possible night chill, then made his way toward the chamber from which Bili had called him. As the entire chamber was bathed in the soft, silver radiance of the moonlight, the Kleesahk blew out the flame of the lamp as he exited the sickroom.