Champion of the Last Battle

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Counter Tremain started and looked warily about him, but he could discern nothing anywhere near to the rifle pit that was to be feared. Shaking his head, he muttered under his breath.

“Dadgummit! Thet climbin’ musta plumb wore this ole boy out fer to put me to sleep lahk thet. Gonna hev to be some carefuler awn the way back down, too, cawse both my dang ole shoulders is sorer ’n a dang boil. Hell, I’m sore awl ovuh!”

He checked his rifle once again, made certain that a round was chambered, that the magazine was full, the safety engaged and the calibrated rear sight set properly—all the things that Erica had taught him and the other rifle-armed bullies last year, far to the southeast when they had dug the weapons out from among the clean-picked bones beneath the rockslide.

That done, Counter rolled back onto his back, took a long pull at his waterskin, then settled himself to sleep the rest of the night away. His mission did not start until sunup.

At breakfast on the morning after the capture, mindwiping and release of the Ganik, Counter Tremain, Thoheeks Bili was apprised by the commander of the night watch that the huge killer wolf had once more penetrated the lower city and, this time, made its way into a house to seize, kill and partially devour its human victim. There were firm paw prints in a tiny garden plot near to the house, and, moreover, a neighbor had gotten a fleeting glimpse of the beast in the bright moonlight, his testimony confirming that it was indeed a rusty-roan wolf, though by size the grandsire of all wolves—past, present and future.

Eschewing his normal wall rounds, Bili went directly to the scene of this fresh outrage, and this time he took the big prairiecat Whitetip along at the start, for all that the feline was sleepy and lethargic after a night of prowling the environs of the Skohshun camp, spooking their livestock into near hysteria and otherwise making himself useful.

In the loose, damp loam of the garden patch were two clear paw prints—one of the near forepaw, one of the near hindpaw. Bili squatted and held his broad palm over the forepaw print, with one edge at the heel of that print. He whistled softly; an arc of toe print and three of the claw marks were visible beyond the other edge of his palm.

Moreover, the prints went deep, perhaps some half-inch, and these prints were headed toward the house, not returning with a belly load of human flesh. Nor had they been imprinted after a jump from some height—these were the even tracks of a walking beast. So that meant that the skulking killer was larger still than Bili had thought from the first killing—two hundred pounds at the very least, probably more—and the questioning of the man who had caught brief sight of the departing creature confirmed this estimate.

The off-duty pikeman had arisen early, principally to determine why his goats were so restless and noisy. As he had closed the house door and strode toward the pen where the two nannies, the young buck goat and the nursing kid milled and loudly bleated, he had seen a huge shape come sidling out of the doorway of the house next door to him.

“M’lord duke,” he said to Bili, “I thought t’first ’twas one them ponies t’ countryfolk brought into t’ city; thet’s how big ’twas. ’Twas shaggy, too, like a mountain pony, but when it cumminceted to trot up t’ street, ’twas for sure ’twas no pony. I thought me then of y’r worship’s cat, yonder, but no cat never moved like t’ beast did, none what I ever seed.”

“Could it have been a bear, soldier?” queried Sir Yoo Folsom, who stood at Bili’s side. “True, they’re somewhat rare down on the plain, but I’ve hunted and slain more than a few in the mountains. A couple of them were even reddish-brown, too.”

The commoner just shook his close-cropped head. “No, m’ lord, not lessen bears is starting for to grow curved, bushy tails, of late, and t’ trot like t’ big dawgs.”

Bili nodded. “No, Sir Yoo, it’s a wolf, right enough. No bear ever left prints like those in that garden mold. I too have hunted both species of beast.”

Then, to the pikeman, “You’re the only living man, so far, who’s set eyes to that wolf, soldier. You’ve stated that such was its size that at first you took it for a small pony. Well what would you estimate was its actual height at the withers? As tall as this prairiecat, eh?”

“Aye, m’lord duke.” The man’s head bobbed, “Likely a tad more’n t’ cat. But not so thick in t’ body or laigs. T’ wolf, it ain’t been eating over-good, ’twould seem. I could see near ever rib and t’ humps of t’ backbone, too, in places.”

Once again, Whitetip was set to the scent of the strange, huge, deadly beast. The trail ran straight up the street along which the pikeman had seen the creature. The street debouched into one of the fountain squares, and the beast had apparently paused todrink at the circular stone splash basin, like any other thirsty animal. But the watches had but recently been changed, this fountain square was commonly used to form up the guard reliefs, and, because the clean-swept stone pavement did not hold scent very well to start, the coming and going and tramping about of so many men had obliterated the trail at that point, much to the chagrin of the frustrated feline.

That afternoon, at the conclusion of their dinner, Bili discussed the matter with Rahksahnah and his officers at the high table, asking, in preface, “Sir Yoo, I saw one or two wolves when we marched through the southern range, last spring, but there were none on the plain, as I recall. How common are they hereabouts?”

The Kuhmbuhluhn nobleman shrugged and gave over cracking nuts in his powerful hands to answer, “They’re seldom seen in even the foothills. Each time I’ve hunted them, or bears, either, we had to ride up into the true mountains to find them. Now,. true, my old pappy used to tell often of certain severe winters when packs come down onto the plain, even howled under and round about the walls of this very city, but Mama alius told us younguns that he’d heard them same stories from his pappy and just tailored them to fit, sort of, to make him some good tales to tell us of nights.

“No, Duke Bili, wild critters is smart. Us Kuhmbuhluhners has been killing off wolves and bears and treecats since first we come to this here New Kuhmbuhluhnburk. They knows it and they sure ain’t going to come close enough to get a arrow or a dart or spear run into them unless they is flat starving to death ... like that pikeman said this great big wolf looked to be.”

“Precisely.” Bili nodded. “But why is this one huge wolf a rack of skin and bones? Think you on that, Sir Yoo, and you other gentlemen and officers. The mountains are aswarm with deer and small game; this is not a bad winter, hereabouts, it’s a fine summer—a little dry, but no real drought. And even if there is little game on the plain, the Skohshuns are grazing a goodly-sized herd of beef cattle outside their camp, and, lacking any herd dogs, there’s simply no way that they could keep a smart wolf from taking a steer or a heifer or two almost at his leisure. For that matter, there are ill-guarded or utterly unguarded pens and stables of animals within these very walls, so why does a starving wolf take the time to seek out humans for his meals, eh? Riddle me that, please.”

“Duke Bili?” It was Freefighter Captain Fil Tyluh who now spoke. At Bili’s nod, he went on, asking, “Does my lord recall the tales of those long-ago wars that wrenched the old Middle Kingdom into the present three? How it was said that wolves fed so well and so often on battlefields and in slighted towns that they took to following armies on the march, even cutting out and pulling down stragglers or wounded soldiers? I’ve heard that they would completely ignore a side of fresh, bloody beef and the mule that carried it to attack and kill and eat the peasant who led that mule.

“Now there’ve been a spate of battles hereabouts, last year, as well as this latest one where the old king died. Mayhap some corpse-fed wolf followed us back here?”

“It’s possible, Fil,” Bili nodded slowly, adding, “but if such were the case, why did he wait so long to strike us?”

“Perhaps,” put in Rahksahnah, “this wolf followed not our army but the enemy army, these Skohshuns, my Bili.”

He shook his shaven head. “No, love, that makes no sense, either. If he followed their march, fed off them the length of it, then why does he not now do so still? After all, it were far easier for a cunning animal, such as him or Whitetip, to enter their camp of nights than this city, to reach which he must negotiate cliffs and walls.

“And, speaking of Whitetip, he knows well the proper scents of wild creatures, men and Kleesahks, and he avers that this thing that has twice now killed and eaten New Kuhmbuhluhnburk townsfolk smells unlike any beast he ever before has encountered. We called it a wolf, at the first, from the very wolflike paw prints; now a sighting has assured us that the creature does indeed resemble a wolf, albeit a very monster of a wolf.”

“But who ever before saw a roan wolf, Duke Bili?” asked Sir Yoo Folsom. “Every one I ever saw or hunted or killed was mouse-brown or some shade of gray.”

“That may be true of the local race of wolves, Sir Yoo,” replied Bili, “but off-color sports seem to abound among most wolf packs I’ve encountered in the Middle Kingdoms and the western marches of the Confederation. I’ve been in at the kills of at least two reddish wolves in Harzburk’s royal wilds, and I saw the pelt of a fine black wolf killed in the Duchy of Vawn, whilst we were besieging Vawnpolis. No, I find it far easier to credit a wolf of a roan color than I do a wolf of a size of two hundred to three hundred pounds weight and near on to ten hands height at the shoulders.

“Nor can I really persuade myself to credit even the biggest wolf’s being able to jump high enough to get onto our walls, even at their lowest points. Much less can I persuade myself to credit that this huge creature has been able to transverse those heavily guarded, torchlit walls four times in two nights unseen by any officer or sentry of the wall watches.”

Sir Yoo Folsom’s face had suddenly become as white as curds. “You mean ... Duke Bili, you don’t think that critter is denning up right here among us, do you?”

“Yes, that is just what I do mean, Sir Yoo,” said Bili solemnly. “It makes more sense in my mind than does the thought of a four-legged predator—be it wolf, bear, cat or whatever—that can scale sheer rock cliffs and jump up onto thirty-foot walls without being seen by multitudes of alert, keen-eyed men.”

“But, dammit, Duke Bili,” Fil Tyluh burst out, “where, pray tell? With the influx of fighters and dependents, every single habitation in all the lower town is occupied. As. for this palace and the citadel, there’s at least one noble officer in every room, suite, nook or cranny and ... Oho, your grace is thinking of the magazines, back in the core of the mountain, I take it?”

“Just so,” Bili agreed. “We two think much alike, Fil. It’s late in this day to do much, and this night I want large, well-armed patrols walking every street and alleyway of the lower town from dusk to dawn. Reinforce the usual wall watch—I want every running foot of those battlements within sight of someone throughout every hour of every watch.

“Whitetip will have to forgo his customary nightly meal of Skohshun beef. I want him to stay in the palace and sleep well, this night, for tomorrow morning, he and any available Kleesahks will accompany me and several strong search parties back into the unused parts of the tunnels and chambers within the mountain. I mean to not only find and slay that strange man-eating beast, I mean to find just how it got into King’s Rest Mountain, lest it be followed and succeeded by another of its unsavory ilk.

“And strengthen the guards within the palace and the keep, too, Fil, except for the Kleesahks’ section, for I doubt one of them would have any trouble barehandedly dispatching even a beast of this size. Which means that we need not waste men guarding the king, for those Kleesahks would never allow him to be harmed by anything or anyone.”

The young commander turned to Sir Szidnee Gawn, the royal castellan. “Sir Szidnee, have your folk see to it that every single door that lets into the mountain passages from palace, keep or stables is closed and solidly secured before nightfall. Also, every door connecting the various wings and those letting onto the walls or the outer courtyards. Understood?”

Before Bili could issue further orders to those present, however, he was recipient of a far-beaming from one of the younger Kleesahks, Lehnduhn. “Lord Champion, I am just above the area that cannot easily be seen from the walls or the keep, just below the first stretch of the ascending roadway, and I think I know why the man with that strange, long-distance killing thing was sent to where he is.”

With that, the Kleesahk opened his mind that Bili might see through his hominid eyes. Some fifty or sixty feet below the watcher, on the last level stretch of the plain before the precipitous cliff, scores of Skohshun artisans were hard at work at siege carpentry. Obviously, one or more buildings out somewhere upon the plain had been wholly or partially demolished and the long, thick, strong, well-seasoned beam timbers from that destruction were being worked and joined end to end—slotted, dovetailed, augered and tree-nailed. At regular intervals, shorter timbers were being used to connect each of the three pair of uprights, with wooden latticework meshes lashed across the spans and wetted green hides stretched atop all. One of the giant devices lay almost complete, and the two others were nearing completion.

Seated at table in the hall of the palace, Bili felt his nape hairs all a-prickle. Those Skohshun leaders were clearly no fools, tyros or incompetents. Faced with a fortress-city so cunningly designed and situated, so massively constructed and stubbornly defended as to render frontal attacks so hideously expensive in terms of casualties as to not bear repetition, a city so well supplied and watered as to be capable of outwaiting even the most determined armies, a city that could not even be undermined, they had rightly concluded that new and extreme tactics were required.

Every officer in the city was aware that the Skohshun army vastly outnumbered their own trained fighters, but secure in their stonewalled, well-supplied and elevated fortress, they still could have probably held the foe at bay with half their present numbers. Since the very inception of the siege, no single Skohshun foot had ever rested for even a moment upon any portion of the walls, and damned few had ever achieved so far as within spear cast of them.

But this advantage rested upon the sole fact that the city could be approached and, therefore, attacked by any numbers only from the front. Of the two sides, one was at the edge of a high, sheer cliff made even more treacherous by being almost constantly wet and slimy due to the fact that all the city drains exited at the base of that stretch of wall; the opposite side overlooked some hundred and fifty yards’ expanse of a steep, shaly slope, broken by another, lower cliff, then extending on for several hundred more yards of loose, treacherous footing beyond. The rear of the fortress-city was unwalled—there was no need for any other defense than the mountain into which it had been built. So the front wall and its gates, alone, were vulnerable to the attack of enemies unable to fly.

“Those damned Skohshuns have a running mile of guts,” Bili thought, “I have to give them that!”

Early on, the besiegers had essayed not just one but two full-scale frontal assaults, with their thousands running up the inclined roadways and scrambling up the exposed slopes and taking dreadful losses from the accurate loosings of engines, bows, crossbows and, as the few survivors got closer, staff slings and darts. Only the luckiest or the hardiest had gotten close enough to die under the walls of the barbican, and Bili and his officers had seriously doubted that the aliens would try such suicidal bravery again.

But they had! Only a week later, the Skohshuns had marched out of their camp, bearing short polearms and long scaling hooks and clumsy, two-men-abreast ladders. The parties carrying the heavy ladders had headed up the roadway and the rest had poured up the flanking slopes to face the large and small stones, the pitchballs and pots of flaming oil, the arrows and bolts and engine spears which were capable of piercing through three or four men in a row, steel breastplates and all.

Also, on that ill-fated day for Skohshuns, a stray splash of burning oil from one of the pots flung by the wall engines had ignited the pitch-soaked, oakum-stuffed wooden corduroy of the roadway. It had not been intentional, for the garrison was holding the attackers off, executing terrible amounts of death and maimings within their ranks, without it. But when the highly flammable stretches once were fired, there had been no stopping the ensuing fires, and all of the environs had stunk unto the very skies of charred, overdone meat for long days, and then of the sickly-sweet stench of rotting flesh until at last the carrion birds and beasts and insects had accomplished their grisly but necessary purposes.

The Skohshuns had seemed to have learned their lesson, a hard, very bloody lesson. After that second attack they had limped, hobbled, crawled or been carried or dragged back within their stockaded camp; there had been no more attempts on the front wall and barbican. The third attack had come boiling up the slippery, uneven and terribly exposed shale slopes to the east of the city-fortress. But such had been the losses on the lower slope that the assault had been wisely aborted before a single man had reached the upper slope.

In recent weeks, the Skohshuns had given every outward appearance of having settled in for a long, passive, interdictive siege. But Bili knew them for the stark fighters that they were and had been dead certain that they were but resting, licking their wounds and planning new and different means of striking again at the walls and the city within them.

Stealthy nighttime patrols by Whitetip and various of the Kleesahks had verified that the Skohshuns were hard at work in constructing stone- and spear-throwing engines of several varieties and sizes. But as both the prairiecat and the huge hirsute hominids had had, perforce, to take a roundabout way to and from the camp, they had never spotted the construction site at the very foot of the front slope or what was being built there ... until today. That was why the Skohshuns had sent up the Ganiks with their Witchman weapons: fear that the watchers upon the front walls and towers might espy the work going on below.

Now the certain tactics of the coming assault—the third, against the front wall, it would be—were crystal-clear to Bili’s quick, perceptive mind.

The Skohshuns would drag their engines into place on a dark night, setting them, their crews and the projectiles for them somewhere just out of easy bowshot, probably in preselected and prepared positions. A chosen group of shock troops would be massed just below the front bulge of the mountain—that up which the roadway snaked its way—and there they would wait, protected from any but high-arching, indirect loosings by that same, rocky bulge. Possibly they would also send all three of the Ganiks armed with the Witchman weapons, these “ryfuhls,” up the slopes during the hours of the dark to, with the first light, aid the engines in making the walls and the tower-engine positions most unsalubrious places for humans or Kleesahks.

Then, when it seemed that the time was ripe, those long, long, immensely long lengths of timber would be somehow set up on end. Then, probably guided by ropes, their other ends would be lowered to span the roadway cuts and the difficult slopes to finally come to rest—if they were long enough, and the parapet of the front wall was actually less than a hundred feet above the level of the plain when measured in a straight line—on the very walls of the city.

The Skohshun engines would be able to continue their workup to and until only bare moments before the first Skohshun was close enough to come onto the wall of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk. With a few score or more Skohshuns upon the front wall, the engines would probably either increase their range and begin dropping boulders and flammables within the city itself, or change direction to support the other attack, most likely one against the east wall. And, all things considered, the scenario Bili’s mind conjured up might very well succeed where earlier, less well-planned ones had failed.

That was not a chance that Bili, feeling keenly the crushing weight of his undesired responsibilities, was willing to take. Several optional plans for the destruction of these oversize scaling ladders crowded the young thoheeks’ mind. Whether or not the guards and craftsmen were slain, the devices and raw materials must be fired, burned to ashes. But how best to accomplish this aim?

He could have Lehnduhn the Kleesahk retrace his way back up the forward slope to the riflepit and there either slay or incapacitate Counter Tremain, the Ganik; then man the wall engines and the six larger ones positioned just inside the forward wall, load them with oil pots and pitchballs and loose at a high angle designed to drop them directly at the base of the slope, possibly accompanied by a few volleys of fire arrows for insurance that there would be fires and casualties, as well.

But careful as these Skohshuns seemed to be in most other matters, he reflected, they were certain-sure to have made some provisions against this kind of attack on their cliffside site. Moreover, there was a slight overhang of rock down there, and a seepage pool of water beneath it, as he recalled—ill-smelling water, true, unpalatable to either man or beast, but wet enough to help retard fires, nonetheless, were there men still about who had the time and ability to so use it.

Of course, he could send a number of the Kleesahks down by night—despite their height and size, they could move as silently as cats and, also like cats, they could see well in almost no light at all—to set the devices afire, but these Kleesahks, because of their size, strength and other talents, were too valuable a resource to encourage Bili to risk them on so chancy a venture. Now if all of them were capable of the mindcloudings that Pah-Elmuh, Oodehn and some few others of the strange hominids had mastered ... but then, if warhorses had wings warfare would be fought significantly differently.

Dismissing most of the officers and nobles still at table, the Thoheeks and Chief of Morguhn began to plan the sortie that he would lead out of the mountain fortress in a few hours. He would need men and women upon whom he knew he could depend in a pinch, yet he also could not, dared not, take all of these, and for various reasons there were certain individuals who had to be stricken from the list, automatically.

The Freefighter officers, Captain Fil Tyluh and Acting Captain Frehd Brakit, could not be spared from the garrison under any but the most extreme circumstances, for they were the most experienced—indeed, the only truly and long experienced—siege engineers in the city. It was likewise out of the question to risk the loss of Pah-Elmuh and his Kleesahk surgical and medical assistants. And most of the members of Bili’s staff were too important to the ongoing defense to chance losing them in the course of a risky and highly dangerous, though very necessary, midnight sally forth against opposition of unknown quality and quantity.

This would tend to strike Lieutenant Kahndoot, the very levelheaded and most competent of the Moon Maidens, Vlahkos Kahmruhn of Skaht, Mikos of Eeahnopolis, Hornman Gy Ynstyn, Sir Yoo Folsom and old Vahrtahn Panosyuhn, the Ahrmehnee, and of course Rahksahnah, who was giving suck to their twin infants.

“Hmmm,” he pondered. “This is going to take more than a mere couple of hours of thought, so it might be better to plan it all for tomorrow night. It didn’t appear that those Skohshuns had enough materials to finish those other two immediately, so we should have at least that little amount of time yet to go.”

Shoving it all into a corner of his mind, he beamed a farcall to Kahndoot on the forward wall. “How many of our special troops has that tame Ganik of ours shot, so far, little sister?”

Her return mindspeak came: “So many that we’re almost out of sawdust to stuff them afresh, Bili. Those projectiles his thing throws burst with enough force to near’ tear the heads off these dummies, or to rip huge, well-nigh unrepairable holes in the fabric if they chance to strike farther down.

“Moreover, one of the Maidens who was holding up a dummy, earlier this morning, had a tiny bit of what looks like lead driven completely through her left cheek and into her tongue. She was far from pleased by the happenstance, has been heard to say some rather uncomplimentary things about this plan of yours and about you, personally, big brother—mostly some speculations upon your ancestry, appearance, daily habits and preferences, general level of intelligence and suchlike.”

Bili chuckled to himself and beamed, “And does my little sister agree with this aggrieved Maiden?”

“In some of her observations, oversized brother,” Kahndoot replied, “but not in all, not in all. However, I would like to know how much longer we are going to play this game with that Ganik yonder.”

“The remainder of this day and all of tomorrow, Kahndoot. After that, you have my permission to drop a few hundred-pound pebbles on him, quill him with arrows, pepper him with slingstones or whatever you wish. So send for some more sawdust and canvas, and tell those who support these dummies to either not stand so close or to borrow a helm with both visor and beaver. If there are none easily available, have a few fetched from the keep armory.”

“How many rounds, Counter?” growled Erica Arenstein in a rage. “Twenty-seven, you say? Dammit, you fool, that’s more than a quarter of our entire remaining stock of ammunition! And how many of those were clean misses? Hell, I knew I should have sent Horseface Charley back up, that or gone myself. At least he and I can hit what we aim at with consistency.”

“Wal dang it, I hits ’em, too, Ehrkah!” Counter asserted heatedly. “I swan, I seen ever man jack of them Kuhmbuhnuhs go down, evun heerd one the bugguhs scream oncet, kinda real garglylike scream, too.”

Erica reflected on that. She had never before known Counter to lie to her, so he should not be starting now. But if only three shots from Horseface had kept the Kuhmbuhluhner garrison down off the walls and towers all of the day before yesterday, why should Counter Tremain have to shoot more than a score of them yesterday? Unless ... unless they had begun to suspect that something was going on below that bluff.

But when she broached her suspicions to Brigadier Maklarin, suggesting that the work be expedited, he just shook his snowy head. “Doctor, there is no way to do it faster. We own a limited number of artisans, for the one thing; for another, latticework of the strength and quantity we require is not quickly woven. This is Tuesday; the attack date chosen is this Friday. If they have not already found us out, I doubt that they will within the next two days.

“No, my dear doctor, just give each of your riflemen one more tour of duty up there, then you all will be free to go south or wherever you wish with my blessing and that of all the Skohshun nation.”

“I cannot truly attest that he is improving in any way, Lord Champion,” said Pah-Elmuh, “for still I cannot contact any portion of his mind, I only can report of observations. For one thing, he no longer seems to be losing flesh as he did for so long. For another, I am certain that his body must move itself at times when I am not there or not awake to see it done, for his muscles now seem to have regained a bit of tone, and twice now I have returned from nighttime errands or calls to find him in different positions on his couch and with his coverlets all disarrayed or even thrown from off him. This all bends me to the belief that King Byruhn may yet recover of his injuries and reign on the throne of his fathers.”

The Kleesahk had been mindspeaking, but Bili’s grunted reply was spoken aloud. “The sooner the better, say I, Pah-Elmuh. It can’t be soon enough for me. I like not this extra work piled upon me, willy-nilly. New Kuhmbuhluhn, New Kuhmbuhluhnburk and New Kuhmbuhluhners should all be ruled over by one of their own, and I give you fair warning, when once the siege is broken and these damned Skohshuns hied back to their northern glen, Chief Bili of Morguhn is gone, too, whether or no King Byruhn be recovered. Let the royal council elect a New Kuhmbuhluhn nobleman to be regent ... or the new king. I, my wife, my children, my stallion and all my condotta who wish to do so will be headed first for Sandee’s Cot, then east, toward our various homelands. I have seen me enough mountains to last a lifetime long, or more.”