Champion of the Last Battle

XI

Undaunted, in the strength of his vastly superior weapons, by the two reserve regiments—actually, in practice, training commands—of pikemen and the half-troop of light cavalry, Jay Corbett finally set up his headquarters in the spacious, stone-built house of Earl Devernee, bringing in a couple of heavily armed squads to garrison it and leaving Gumpner in charge of the camp and their hostages.

In the absence of the hostage earl, Corbett quickly noted, Lady Pamela Grey—Earl Devernee’s half sister—seemed to rule over the glen rather competently, in his stead. He was impressed with his less-than-willing hostess, mightily impressed. He found her to be intelligent, quick-witted and, when she wished to be so, charming. She also was very strong-willed, with a keen and deeply embedded sense of justice and morality—of what was right and what wrong, by her standards.

Her son, who served as Corbett’s guide and companion as the officer searched the nooks and crannies of the glen for any sign of Erica and her Ganiks, shared her strict senses of justice and honor, of responsibility and duty. The grave, one-legged, fourteen-year-old combat veteran was, in Corbett’s mind, a thoroughly admirable young man, a credit to his mother, his dead father and his people; but he could not but wonder if Ensign Thomas Grey would ever come to rue and regret so early a loss of childhood, so sudden a transition into the responsibilities of maturity. He sincerely hoped not.

A week of searching and of questioning Skohshuns of all stations and ages, civilian and military, of both sexes, at last convinced him that Earl Devernee had indeed spoken the full truth at their initial meeting—Dr. Erica Arenstein and the Ganiks she now led had departed the glen long weeks ago, bound for the field army. Now he must march fast in the wake of the wagon train that had borne them southeast, but he wanted to arrive unannounced, without the large and powerful Skohshun army being apprised that he was bound toward them.

This matter could have been simply enough handled by the shooting of every horse in the glen, but to do so he and his two squads would have been obliged to penetrate some of the narrow, twisting defiles quite deeply and would likely have had to fight their way back, killing or wounding a sizable number of theoutraged Skohshuns in the process, so he chose an easier method of achieving the same end ... or so he then thought.

During the night before the departure of him and his two squads from the house of which Lady Pamela Grey was the temporary chatelaine, he tried several times to mentally frame the words he would say to her in parting, telling her of just what he must do to protect his command, to provide security on the coming march; but each new speech rang lamer than the one preceding it in his mind, and when at last the morning came, he simply thanked her for her courtesies and bade her farewell.

When he released Earl Devernee, however, he laid it flat on the line to the nobleman. “Mr. Devernee, I’m now going after Dr. Arenstein and her party.”

“Do you know the road, General Corbett?” the earl blandly asked. “If not, I can supply you with a few guides.”

“Thank you, but no,” Corbett grinned in reply. “You have already supplied me with a fine map from the office in your house. My compliments to your military cartographers—they do first-class work with primitive equipment.”

The earl nodded once. “Thank you, sir. You are, of course, more than welcome to the map. I know well that you could easily have taken much more, had you so desired, slaying anyone, everyone who might have opposed you.”

“I’m a soldier, Mr. Devernee, not a bandit,” said Jay Corbett. “And while killing is often my job, it seldom if ever has been my pleasure. But I have my command to protect, too, Mr. Devernee, and so I am serving you fair warning that any messengers you try to send on ahead of me to give your Brigadier Maklarin word of my approach will be most harshly, most fatally, dealt with—not of my desire, for I admire you and your people, but of my necessity.

“Further, because I know that you will try to send gallopers, and my warning here be damned, I’m going to make it as difficult as I can for you and for them. I have seen every inch of the glen and the steeps that surround it, and while it might be just barely possible for a skilled rider on a very surefooted mount to get over those steeps in a very few places, it would take a drooling lunatic to try it to begin, and when he reached the outside, he would have lost a goodly bit of time, for I would be well on my way.”

“You mean to leave a force, then, to hold this entryway to Skohshun Glen, general?” inquired the earl, with a worried frown.

“No, Mr. Devernee,” replied Corbett. “I have already made my preparations and I will shortly blow down the cliffs on either side of that narrowest section of the entryway. By the time you and your people have cleared it sufficiently to ride a horse through it, my business with your field army should be over and done and I should be marching back south with Dr. Arenstein.

“I reiterate, sir, I greatly admire you and your people and I wish you and them success in all endeavors—save those that bear upon me and mine—so please do not consider the thing I now must do as a hostile act, for it is not; rather, it is a military expedient, a necessary act of bloodless destruction. Do you understand me, Mr. Devernee?”

The earl sighed and smiled wanly. “Yes, General Corbett, I do; I truly do understand you, more, I think, than you understand me. I have learned much of you, you know, in conversations with your officers, notably Colonel Gumpner. I deeply regret that we two are not, cannot be, allies, for I think we were cut of the selfsame bolt of the cloth of honor.

“You have done and will do that which you feel you must for the welfare of those you rule. I have done and will assuredly do exactly the same, as God wills me the strength to do it. I am not and have never been a soldier, a fighter, and precious few of my forefathers have been, for we are the civil rulers of the Skohshun people. But I have lived with and among soldiers for all my days. I have seen the good and the bad, the brave and the cowardly, the competent and the incompetent, the careful plodders and the glory-hunters, and I have learned—I pray God—to winnow the grain from the chaff.

“I judge you to be a superlative officer, general, an officer who demands much from his subordinates, but even more from himself. You probably get everything you ask from your officers and other ranks, too, general, for one and all they love and worship you to a degree that is almost sacrilegious. They will allow you to drive them cruel hard, but only because they know that you drive yourself even harder, that you return their love and that their individual and collective welfare is paramount in your mind and your decisions.

“My late brother-in-law, Sir Edmund Grey—God keep his gallant soul!—was a man much like you, and his loss was a bitter cruel one to endure. But at least poof Ed left a fine son who has already, at the age of only a bit over fourteen years, brought added luster to his distinguished name and house.”

“Yes,” Corbett nodded, “Ensign Grey served as my guide in my search of the glen. He is indeed a fine young man, and any parent would be proud of him.

“But, now, Mr. Devernee, we must be on our way, shortly. You and your retainers please exercise due haste in getting back, well back, into the glen. Get those soldiers off the lines of cliffs, for I well know just how tricky rockslides can be, and the slide that my devices precipitate may well result in sympathetic slides all along those cliffs. Also, you’d be well advised to keep your people out of that entryway for at least a day, for rocks may continue to fall at odd intervals for some time.”

As young Thoheeks Bili of Morguhn sat planning out his sally against the Skohshuns, great, dark-gray banks of rainclouds were blowing down from the north. There were severe downpours three or four times that night and misty sprinkles in between, and the beefed-up patrols on the city streets and the members of the enlarged wall watches all cursed the chilly, unpleasant weather and scoffed at the reasons for their being forced to bide out in it.

But, for whatever reason or reasons, the monster wolf was not seen, nor did it kill or feed within the burk of New Kuhmbuhluhn that night. Bright and early on the next morning, armed, armored search parties of men and Kleesahks led by Bili, Captain Fil Tyluh, Acting Captain Frehd Brakit, Vlahkos Kahmruhn, the Vahrohneeskos Gneedos Kahmruhn, Sir Yoo Folsom, Lieutenants Roopuht and Kahndoot—both gritty-eyed from lack of sleep but keen still to help put paid to the account of the bestial trespasser—Mikos of Eeahnopolis, Tsimbos of Ahnpolis and several Kuhmbuhluhn noble officers all fanned out through the multileveled galleries and chambers and winding corridors of the honeycombed mountain behind the palace and keep, lighting the way with torches and lamps and bull’s-eye lanthorns.

But they found no wolf, nor any sign of one, old or recent. They found a few stoats, semidomesticated ones whose ancestors had been deliberately released there to retard the proliferation of rats, mice and similar vermin among the stores in the magazines. They chanced across a long-forgotten chamber packed with pipes and casks and kegs of very old and very potent wines. They found other antique artifacts, some of them as old as the kingdom, or so the Kleesahks attested. But they could not discover even so much as the bare scent of their quarry, so with the sally scheduled for the night of this day, Bili called off the search and the various parties made their respective ways back to the palace.

It was not until on their return they reached the spot where keep abutted palace that Whitetip mindspoke Bili. “The creature was here, cat brother, perhaps a day ago, He left his scent there, on the angle of the wall, as any dog or jackal or wolf would do.”

Bending close to the indicated section of stonework, even Bili’s far less sensitive nose could detect the rank odor of animal urine ... and he resisted the impulse to rub at his flesh to lay the goosebumps, for just here the narrow stairway led upward into the wing of the Kleesahks and the chamber wherin lay the helpless, comatose King Byruhn; downward, three flights of stairs would deliver the person or the thing which descended them only bare yards from the suite which now housed him, the infant twins and Rahksahnah.

“You are certain that this mark is that old, brother?” he beamed to his big, furry companion. “It was not done last night?”

The cat’s beaming bore a touch of impatience. “You sniffed at it yourself—did that smell like a recent marking to you?”

Bili sighed. “Brother, you have again misremembered, we twolegs do not have such keen noses as do you and the Kleesahks.* I can smell that the spot has been pissed upon, but that is all that my nose tells me of it.”

“I am sorry, cat brother,” apologized the prairiecat, “but so well developed is your mind that I sometimes forget how retarded are others of your senses. Yes, I am indeed certain that this is not fresh scent. It is at least one day old, maybe even two.”

Bili nodded to himself. “Then it surely must be denning up back there in the caverns, whether we found traces of it or not.”

The cat wrinkled his nose, then suddenly dropped onto his haunches and began to scratch vigorously at his neck with one hind paw, mindspeaking all the while, “Unless it is denning here, in the keep or the palace, cat brother.”

“Then why have you not smelled it out long ago?” Bili beamed inquiringly.

Reversing paws, Whitetip went savagely at the other side of his thick, muscular neck, eyes closed to mere slits. “For a very good reason, cat brother: Before it began to kill in the town, I never before had sniffed a scent like this one, so if I had chanced across it here in the palace, I would most likely have dismissed it as just an unpleasant variant of the usual twoleg stench. For, as I have said before, there is a tone of twoleg stench to this scent although the cleanlier, animal scent predominates, Sacred Sun be thanked.”

“Well, after tonight’s sally,” decided Bili, “I mean to set you and some of the younger Kleesahks to prowl these corridors and stairways every night until the creature is apprehended, or tracked down and scotched for good and all.”

The cat’s reply bore a tinge of sulkiness. “But cat brother, Whitetip enjoys spying upon the camp of the men-of—the-long-long-spears. Besides, their cattle are most tasty. Why cannot he continue at that which he does best?”

Bili rubbed a hand across the top of the cat’s big head, between his ears, and kneaded the neck muscles, eliciting a deep, deep purr in response. “Brother, you will be continuing to keep track of what the Skohshuns are up to on most nights. Only on a couple of nights in each six-day will you be here.

“Understand, please, brother, there will be times when I must be absent from my suite for long periods and I need to know that a strong, fierce and dedicated brother will be about to competently protect my female and our cubs.”

“My brother-chief need not fear,” replied the huge feline. “His female and his cubs will be as safe as any cat could keep them.”

Bili kept his sally force small, for their principal aim was not to kill large numbers of Skohshuns, but to reach and destroy the assault devices and regain to the burk with as little wasted time and effort as would be possible. Pah-Elmuh and Oodehn were the two Kleesahks he finally had chosen, for their mighty thews mould be necessary to silently remove the cyclopean stones blocking the particular hidden sallyport he had decided was best situated for this excursion. Immediately the stones were removed and the way cleared, Bili mindspoke Fil Tyluh and Frehd Brakit, each of whom was, for this night exercise, commanding two of the oversized engines constructed under the supervision of Brakit; too large to be mounted on the walls, they squatted in cleared areas just behind the front wall.

In receipt of Bili’s telepathic command, the two officers issued their own orders and triggering devices were released, almost as one. There were four tooth-jarring, contrabasso thumps of massive beams against equally massive, thickly padded crossbars, and four fiercely blazing pitchballs—each bigger than a bushel basket—sailed up and out in a parabolic flight that came finally to ground in the highly flammable canvas—and-wood camp of the Skohshuns.

Assisted by teams of draft animals, as well as several of the preternaturally powerful Kleesahks, the crews of the engines quickly recocked and reloaded their throwers, this time with bushels of fist- to head-sized stones, of which a goodly supply was ready to hand, each load premeasured out in strong wicker containers.

When Bili, standing in the now-open mouth of the previously concealed tunnel, saw the first tongues of yellow-red flame spring up, high overtopping the wooden palisades of the Skohshun camp, he took a fresh grip on the steel haft of his axe and mindspoke his score and a half of fighters; “All right, let’s go.”

Instead of keeping watch into the darkness which was the west, Pikeman Edgar Makellahr was, naturally, watching the blazing camp and scurrying dark figures, thanking God that he was not over there this night and keeping a wary eye out for the sergeant of the guard or a wandering officer. Therefore, the sixteen-year-old junior pikeman’s very first intimation that anything might be amiss closer to his post than the camp was when, all at once, a hard hand—big and stinking of garlic—clamped over his mouth, a rocklike knee slammed into the small of his back and something traced a line of agonizing fire across his throat. Abruptly the hand was removed and Edgar tried to scream, but he could not, nor could he draw in the air for which his lungs were clamoring. Then infinite blackness closed about him.

Vahk Soormehlyuhn carefully eased the still-twitching body of the big blond boy to the rocky ground, taking pains that no portion of his victim’s equipment clang or rattle. The soot-blackened Ahrmehnee warrior briefly regretted that so fine a head would have to be left to go to waste, then he moved on in a cautious stalk of his next victim, this one also observing the ongoing fires rather than keeping the watch to which he had been assigned.

The sentry killer reflected that Dook Bili had again been proved correct. When old Vahrtahn, among others, had questioned the wisdom of alerting any portion of the Skohshuns by loosings of fire and boulders upon the sleeping camp, the young leader had said, “Look you, gentlemen, precious few humans possess really decent night vision under even the best of circumstances. But all of us twolegs—even the Kleesahks—are cursed with an abiding curiosity. Now if their main camp is all ablaze and the garrison is milling about and taking casualties and screaming shouts and curses, just how many of the sentries guarding that work area do you imagine are going to be able to resist the natural, normal human impulse to steal at least a glance or three in that direction, eh? And each time they look at the blazes, they are going to weaken what little night vision they may normally possess, lessening the likelihood of our small sally party’s being apprehended until we are ready to be seen.”

When the last sentry was down, his lifeblood pouring out to soak the ground beneath him, Sergeant Eethah led her eight Moon Maidens toward the spot beneath the overhang of rock: where the carpenters and joiners lay rolled in their blankets, while Tsimbos of Ahnpolis and his largest contingent—all of them save him laden with huge, bulging, heavy skins of oil—raced to the long contraptions of wood, wicker and hides.

Most of the carpenters and relief sentries were dispatched while still asleep by the dripping dirks and shortswords of the grim Maidens. One only of them escaped, to run naked and shrieking in the direction of the distant, fiery camp; that is, he ran for the few steps he was able to take before Sir Yoo Folsom’s spinning, hard-flung francisca took him betwixt his shoulderblades and split his spine, at the same moment that an Ahrmehnee knife sank hilt-deep between two ribs.

Satisfied that no noise that they might make, no matter how loud or sharp, could be heard above the furious pandemonium emanating from the Skohshun camp, Bili set most of his band to work with the enemy’s own tools hewing and splitting and smashing what they could of the long, weighty devices before soaking them well with oil, throwing among them those tools and weapons they themselves were not taking back into the burk, then heaving the earthenware pot of live coals that Tsimbos of Ahnpolis had carried onto the site.

Bili held them until he was certain that the fire was well on the way to becoming an uncontrollable conflagration, then led them all back around the cliffline and into the tunnel. All helped the patiently waiting Kleesahks to replace the huge stones, the outer faces of which were so cunningly disguised as to make detection of their true purpose most unlikely.

Red-eyed and grouchy with lack of sleep, his hair, eyebrows and even his flaring mustaches fire-singed, Brigadier Sir Ahrthur Maklarin assessed the reports littering the top of the partially charred table before him. Occasionally, he squirmed in another attempt to find a really comfortable seat on the section of sawn log which now was the best that still existed in the near-ruined camp to serve him for a chair. At length, he summoned old Sir Djahn Makadahm, the herald.

“Sit down, Djahn,” the brigadier growled, indicating another sawn section of treetrunk, the bark still on. “If you brought anything to drink, I’ll have a bit of it.”

Unbuttoning his tunic, the herald drew forth a flat silver flask and proffered it, not speaking until after the brigadier had uncorked, upended, then recorked the flask and passed it back.

“I know it was a very bad night, Ahrthur, but just how bad was it?”

Maklarin huffed once or twice, demanding, “What the hell is that stuff you’re passing out, anyway? It’s as rough as a frozen corncob, I trow!

“Bad enough, old friend, and worse than that. Every single regiment lost men last night, killed or wounded. The surgeons and Dr. Arenstein are clearly like to drop of exhaustion, so long and hard have they been at it. At least we still have the most of our supplies, and we can thank the Kuhmbuhluhner who cast the load of stones on the supply tents, early on, for that fact; the barrels at the tiptops of the stacks were holed, and with everything soaked with beer and vinegar and brine, the fires never had a chance to get at anything more substantial than the tents.

“Am I rambling? It seems that I am, old friend. Blame it on lack of sleep and overmuch care. Whilst the Kuhmbuhluhner engines were wreaking their worst—or should I say their best?—on us, here, it seems that a sally was made from somewhere—though not out of the main gate and down the slopes, for the Ganik rifleman still was in his hole and he swears that no single man came out from the city in the normal way. I’ve had the idea all along that there must be two or three other means of egress from New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, and if only we could find even one of them ... But that’s neither here nor there and I’m rambling again. The bastards slit the throats of all the pikemen on sentry duty, then went on to murder the poor carpenters and the others, before hacking the ladder-bridges apart, then soaking them with oil and setting them alight. This morning, there is nothing more left of them than there is of our new batteries of catapults and spearthrowers, alas.

“And there will be damnall fresh beef for a while, too, Djahn, The herd is scattered to hell and gone, and if I could blame that on the bloody Kuhmbuhluhners, I surely would; but eyewitnesses aver that that huge mountain cat that has been plaguing us periodically spooked them on last night of all possible nights. Moreover, four of our herders were killed trying to turn that stampede, too.

“As of about an hour agone, there were one thousand, one hundred and fifty-two other-ranks casualties, twenty-three officer casualties—of course, that figure includes the dead, the missing and all classes of wounded.

“In addition, three entire battalions lost all their polearms—long pikes, short pikes, axes, hammers, everything. We are going to have to find a new way to stack our weapons, possibly stack them in company lots or smaller, for battalion stacks are simply too large and dense to allow for saving many if any once they are well afire. All the pike carts were lost, too, damn it, burned to the axles and beyond.

“And in the confusion of getting the draft stock out the rear gate last night, no less than four of our good lady doctor’s wildmen disappeared, along with two mules and two good horses, one of them my riding horse, True. One of the bastards was that fellow Tremain.

“Let me have another taste of that foul rotgut, Djahn, then I’ll touch on why I sent for you this morning.”

The brigadier again upended the flask and took a long pull. A shudder shook his whole body. “Saints preserve us all, Djahn, that is truly devil’s brew. Where did it come from, pray tell?”

Sir Djahn shrugged. “I’m sure I have no idea, Ahrthur. My batman bought a half gallon of it—at a whopping price, I might add!—from one of that fellow Potter’s people. I usually have brandy, as you know, but my keg blew up when my tent burned last night, and all that was available this morning was this ... this decoction. Sorry, old man. Can’t say that I’m overfond of the stuff m’self, but it’s better than water.”

“All right, Djahn, back to business. It’s thankful we should all be that there are no more of those New Kuhmbuhluhnburkers than there are up there, for had they had the force available to attack this camp last night on the heels of that hellish bombardment, the siege would’ve been broken then and there and no doubt the most of us would be dead this morning. We might not be so fortunate a second time around. In fact, if there weren’t so many wounded to transport, I’d move the camp, now, this morning, lay out a new one out of range of those damned Kuhmbuhluhn engines ... if that’s possible. I never heard of engines that could throw such weights of missiles so far, ere this—why, that boulder that came down atop my own tent must weigh a good four hundred pounds or more.”

“You intend to lift the siege, Ahrthur? It might not be a bad idea, considering all the losses, and it’s purely your decision to make,” said Sir Djahn.

The brigadier shook his singed head. “Oh, no, Djahn, not yet. Even with our losses of men and materiel, we still outnumber the enemy by a goodly edge. I mean to make good use of that fact, and that’s where you and your good offices enter upon the matter.

“We’ll give it a few days. I don’t want them to have any inkling of just how badly they hurt us last night—such knowledge might give them ideas which could breed further unpleasantnesses for us. Maybe, the first of next week, I want you to ride back up there and shame that king and that duke to march out of that city and meet us in open battle here on this plain.”

Sir Djahn shook his head slowly. “I cannot credit it that I heard you say what you said, Ahrthur. Those men are not fools, you know, none of them. They can count as well as can you or I, and you can be certain that they know their only edge is those unassailable walls.”

“But you did it once before—shamed the late king into leaving this abomination of an invulnerable city to meet us in open battle at a place of our choosing,” said the brigadier stubbornly. “You did it after the autumn battle, last year.”

“That was then and this is now, Ahrthur,” Sir Djahn replied, tiredly but patiently, to his old friend. “I was able to nose out the hidden weakness of an old monarch who was verging on senility and use it against him and the best interests of his people ... and I can’t say that I’m proud of what I then did, Ahrthur.

“But, be that as it may, this King Byruhn is purely a practical man. No old-fashioned ideals to trip him up with—he would most likely laugh in my face, if he even deigned to take me seriously, to commence. He strikes me as the kind of man who probably talks much of honor, but honors that honor more in the breach than in the observance ... unless, of course, he can see possible advancement of his various schemes in such an observance.”

“Well,” the brigadier went on doggedly, “perhaps this condottiere, this Duke Bili, could influence his patron?”

Sir Djahn shook his head again. “Not bloody likely, Ahrthur, not bloody likely at all. As I said after my last visit to New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, Sir Bili, Duke Morguhn, is a vastly experienced mercenary officer and, although a thoroughgoing gentleman to his fingertips, as practical and hard-boiled a professional warrior as any I’ve ever come across.”

The brigadier’s shoulders sagged. “You refuse to go, then, old friend?”

“Oh, no, Ahrthur, I’ll go.” Sir Djahn grinned. “If for no other reason, to enjoy a few decent, well-cooked meals and an enjoyable tipple, though I think weedwine would likely be a distinct improvement on Potter’s rattlesnake venom here.”

“Thank you, sincerely, Djahn,” said the brigadier humbly. “This cast of the dice I am planning will be for all or for nothing. I am sending back to Skohshun Glen for the two reserve regiments and all of the light cavalry, along with every gentleman who can still sit a horse and swing steel. It will probably take them two weeks to get here, so take your time in talking the New Kuhmbuhluhners around and make that allowance in setting a date for the battle.”

When he arrived at last back in his suite in the palace, half a dozen servants divested Bili of his arms, armor, pourpoint and outer clothing, while yet another bore away his huge axe to be cleaned, rehoned and oiled. He sent one of them down to the palace kitchens to fetch back hot water that he might lave off the soot from his face and the sweat from his body.

The man returned, white-faced, with an empty bucket and a stuttered story that set Bili to rearming far faster than he had disarmed, all the while mindcalling certain of his officers and Whitetip, the prairiecat.

The palace kitchens were at ground level and, because of the ever-present danger of fires, were not really a part of the palace structure, being connected to the serving rooms and the commodious pantry below the great hall by stone-built tunnels, all of which could be easily and completely closed off to prevent the spread of flames but were usually left wide open to facilitate the comings and goings of the various staffs of meat cooks, bread bakers, pastry cooks, confectioners and such.

There was work of some sort in progress in the kitchens from sunrise to sunrise, and Bili had often remarked, only half jokingly, to his own staff that the senior palace chef, Master Blakmuhn, could probably give them all needed lessons in proper divisions of labor and available resources, so smoothly and effortlessly did his kitchens seem to operate.

But the kitchens into which Bili and his trailing, half-armed and -clothed staff stalked that night were a very study in disorganization, rather, a howling chaos, with Master Blakmuhn howling as loud as or louder than any. It required most ungentle shakings and slappings of the howling staff to obtain some quiet and a report, and, at last, Master Blakmuhn led them to a space between an outer wall and one of the immense ovens, where lay what was left of a baker’s apprentice.

Keeping his eyes averted from the incomplete body of the once-rotund young man, the chef told the horrifying tale to Bili and the rest. “Young Nehd had done been sent in here for to sweep up from the last bakin’. He be ... he was almightily afeered of eny kinda snake, so when he screamed thet oncet, we all jest laughed, thinkin’ he’d done seen one the big black rat snakes we keeps in the kitchens. But he dint come a-runnin’ out, he jest stayed and stayed and stayed, so I sent one of my journeymen, Hwil Dukhwai, to hurry him up. Then Hwil, he yells and comes a-runnin’ back to say it’s a big critter has kilt Nehd and is eatin’ him.

“Hwil has been knowed to joke and josh around a lot, but you could look at him and tell he was scairt plumb shitless of sumthin’. So I grabbed up a steel boar spit—there it lays, right there.” The chef gestured at a six-foot shaft of sharp-pointed steel smeared with blood for a good third of its length.

“And told everbody elst to git them a knife or a hatchet or suthin, and we all went back here and ... and, m’lord duke, it wuz plumb awful! I never seed any critter big as thet one. He jest layed there a-lookin’ at us, and a-snarlin’, even while he still was a-tearin’ off chunks of pore young Nehd and a-swallerin’ them. Them eyes was terrible, jest like fiery coals, they wuz.

“Then sumbody behint of me chucked a cleaver at the critter, hit it, too; the edge went deep and stuck in its neck. But the critter jest jumped up, shook the cleaver out and come dead straight at us ... at me! Well, in my time I done dressed out a plentynuff beasts for to know where you spose to spear them, so I crouchted down and jammed my spit square betwixt the critter’s front legs and he run right up on it. Well, I could tell he’d be right at me in a blinkin’, so I let go of the spit and jumpted back and slammed the door and shot the bolt, then we all went a-runnin’ like everythin. And that be all I knows, m’lord duke.”

With Whitetip still not returned from his part of the evening exercise, Bili and his armed gentlemen took up the hunt, but the bloodtrail ended halfway through the stone corridorway leading into the palace. More men were summoned and the ground level searched thoroughly, but the seriously wounded beast had again vanished.