Champion of the Last Battle

XIII

Between mouthfuls of venison steak and baked wild sweet potatoes, Counter Tremain had been telling of all that had happened with Erica Arenstein and the rest of them since Merle Bowley had left Skohshun Glen in search of more ammunition for the rifles. He had progressed to near the present time.

“I nevuh thought I’d come to whar I’d cheer fer a damn Kuhmbuhluhner, but them bastids is flat beatin’ the evuh-lovin’ shit out’n them Skohshun pricks! And they doin’ ’er ’thout evuh so much as comin’ out’n the dang city, too. And thet thar tears the assholes of them damn Skohshuns up suthin fierce, ’count of they knows they got mo’ mens then the Kuhmbuhluhners and they jest dyin’ fer to get ’em to come out an’ fight or to git in thet city after ’em, and the bugtits cain’ do neethuh one.

“Merle, you recolleck them thangs the fuckin’ Kuhmbuhluhners had whut would throw great big ole rocks awn to the main bunch camp fum three ridges away? Well, looks like them bastids is done dragged them friggin’ thangs clear up here, ’cause they got ’em a-hint the wall of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk and, night I lefted, they’d throwed fireballs big as a warhoss’s ass inta the Skohshun camp, set purt’ near the whole thang to fahr, then cuminceted a-throwin’ bunches of rocks awl ovuh the fuckin’ place so it looked like it wuz flat rainin’ rocks! So miny of the hosses and awl wuz eethuh gettin’ hurtid by them rocks or a-frahted by the fires, some Skohshun ossifuh, he grabbed him ever swinging dick he could find and set us to a-leadin’ the critters out’n the back gate. Well, I had mah ryfuhl crost of my back, ’cause we’d awl grabbed ’em and awl the othuh stuff of ours we could whin owuh tent cominceted to burn, so soon’s me and thet nice hoss was out’n thet friggin’ camp good, I jest jumped in thet saddle sumbody’d done not took awf’n him yet and then I made tracks ’crost thet plain, you bettuh b’lieve.

“It’uz two, three othuh bullies lawng of me to start out, but mah hoss wuz a lot faster’n they mules and I cain’ say whut happund to ’em.

“Well, I rid souf fer near a week, a-ridin’ by nahts and a-layin’ up in the days, but I had to move slow, ’count of the bugtit Skohshuns out lookin’ fer they cows whut awl stampeded the same naht I skeedaddled, but I fin’ly got to the dang mountins.But them mountins is plumb full of mo’ damn sojuhs—Kuhmbuhluhners, Ahrm’nees, eevuhn Moon Maiduhns. Aftuh the secun’ tahm they damn near caught me, this ole boy, he come back down awn the fuckin’ plain. Counter Tremain don’ wawnt no dang Ahrm’nee a-drankin’ beeuh out’n whu useta be his haid bones, thank you kin’ly.”

The riddle of the three missing Ganik bullies was solved a couple of days later, when Johnny Kilgore and Counter chanced across them camped in the woods and trying to decide what to do with their new-won freedom, where to go now that all of the Ganik outlaw bunches had been dispersed or driven out of New Kuhmbuhluhn.

Corbett simply added them to his command as scouts, under the command of Skinhead Johnny Kilgore and Merle Bowley.

Ravenous as he was, the creature was distracted by the excited voices of men, the poundings of fists and pike butts on the door—which the wet nurse had, as instructed, carefully bolted, after lighting her splint from the wall sconce. Then there was another shriek of a twoleg female from close behind him, whereupon the attacks on the door redoubled, intensified.

Rahksahnah had been awakened from a light sleep by the single scream of the wet nurse. Scrambling across the width of the great-bed, she padded over the thick carpets to the door between the chambers. She opened it and took but a single step into the smaller room.

The wet nurse, nude to the waist, her brown hair disordered, was crouched far back in the bed alcove, her dimpled arms pressing the nursing twins tightly against her body, her brown eyes wide and bulging in an excess of terror, her mouth wide, too, but only a rasping whine emanating from it.

Rahksahnah screamed, even while her mind beamed out a frantic message, “Bili, it is here, the killer wolf is here, in our suite, stalking the nurse and our children!”

Bili had been meditating yet another of those increasingly common, increasingly petty disputes in the royal council, when the telepathic summons reached him. His face suddenly went as white as curds. Springing to his feet so violently that he sent the heavy canopied armchair crashing over backward, his big hand grasped the only available weapon—the heavy, ancient, Royal Kuhmbuhluhn sword of state, which always lay before the king’s chair on the council table during any meeting, whether or not the monarch himself was present.

The sword had once, long, long ago, been the battle brand of a king, but now the blade was devoid of any edges and had, moreover, been inletted for the most of the blade length with designs and lettering inset in gold and silver. But to Bili it was simply a weapon there in a time of need, and it did at least have a good point.

As he half-ran toward the door, he shouted to the councilors, “Gentleman, the killer wolf has somehow got into my suite and is threatening my wife and children. Those of you with arms and the guts, follow me.”

Unlike the peasant wet nurse, Rahksahnah was not the sort of woman to scream once and freeze, shuddering and staring in the face of impending doom. Scioness of a warrior race, a stark, veteran warrior, herself, she backed into the larger chamber. There she found by memory and feel the rack whereon hung her panoply and drew her oiled and gleaming saber from its scabbard with the one hand, while shaking a long, wide-bladed dirk out of its case with the other. Then the still-naked but now well-armed young mother raced back to the defense of her young and the helpless peasant girl.

The creature had been distracted but momentarily—his stomach brought his attention back to his waiting meal—but then there was sudden movement on his right rear and something sharp and hurtful sank deep into his chest, between his jutting ribs, just behind his right shoulder. Snarling his pain and rage, he turned his huge head, snapping toothy jaws at the source of his agony. By happenstance, his second snap closed on something solid, and he furiously wrenched at it. It came free with more pain and a wet, sucking sound, whereupon he let it drop from his jaws and turned back purposefully toward his victims, only to find that now another twoleg female stood between him and them, a long, shiny, curved thing of steel clenched in one of her forepaws.

Bili of Morguhn, bearing the bared sword of state in one big hand, trailed by some two thirds of the Royal Council, armed haphazardly with everything from dress hangers to ancient, rusty, dusty weapons wrenched from wall displays, pounded down corridors and up flights of stairs.

As the party approached the wing that housed the sprawling suite, the noises of the guardsmen furiously attacking the stout door became audible—shouts, grunts, poundings, all so far unavailing. Arrived upon the scene, Bili motioned the men all away and threw his own powerful young body against the unyielding portal; it groaned protestingly, but held firm. Again he hurled himself at the old iron-bound door, but still it stood solid. He wasted no more time or effort so fruitlessly.

“Sergeant,” he snapped to the leader of the guards, “that oaken bench down the corridor there—fetch it back up here at the double. With three of you on each side of it, only a few swings should have that door down or at least open.”

Rahksahnah was horrified when the massive wolf not only did not seem hurt unto death as it should have been by the accurately cast dirk that must surely have pierced its heart but, with seeming sentience, took the hilt of the weapon between its slavering jaws and pulled it out of its chest. Nonetheless, she had gotten to where she knew she must be, where she would make her life—or-death stand, between the hellish beast and her babes.

Snatching a thick, heavy woolen shawl from the nearby crib, she flung it over the head of the charging wolf, then sidestepped and chopped down with all her might, feeling in her very marrow the solid impact of her saber against the dense bone of the beast’s skull ... but still he came on, shaking his head to try to rid it of the blinding, heavy cloth.

Again she struck, but with no more apparent effect. She could feel the edge of the bedstead against the backs of her legs; there could be no more retreat.

She was, in her deadly concentration, unaware of the fact that the thick door had at last been battered in until Bili suddenly was looming there before her, with the lamplight glittering along the length of an old-fashioned longsword, and the room behind him seemingly crowded from wall to wall with armed men.

“ ... dirk through his heart, Bili,” she gasped, forgetting her mindspeak, “... didn’t stop him, he ... jaws, pulled it out! Full arm swing across head, should’ve cracked his skull ... I think ... be demon, witch-beast ... can’t be killed! Beware!”

Huge and unnaturally powerful as the wolf assuredly was, Bili’s mighty two-handed swing of the heavy old sword still drove him belly-down onto the floor, though it failed to crack his spine, as it would have that of any more mundane beast. His head now free of the woolen shawl, his fiery eyes fixed upon this new antagonist, the wolf furiously scrabbled his clawed paws for purchase, making to rise. That was when Bili drove the ancient blade completely through the furry body, pinning it to the floor.

The howl that the beast then voiced was unearthly, ghastly, sounding far less like the death howl of an animal than the dying scream of a man. A terrible shudder rippled the length of the massive beast’s body, it let go its dung and its urine, vomited a great gush of blood, then it’s fearsome head fell into the blood, the eyes lost their fire and began to glaze over.

Bili bore the mercifully unconscious wet nurse into the main bedchamber, while Rahksahnah followed with the fed and now-sleeping twins. He was just striking flint on steel to light the lamps when shouts and cries of depthless horror smote his ears.

“The ... the wolf, Bili. It must be, I told you, can’t be killed!” stuttered Rahksahnah.

“Now, damn it, the beast is dead!” snapped Bili. “You saw it die, we all did.” Nonetheless, he lifted his great double axe down from the wall hooks before hurrying back into the smaller chamber.

In the wavery light of the dim and flaring, flickering lamp, Bili did not at first recognize what the men all were staring upon with such fascinated horror. The great sword still stood up from the hairy body it pinioned, lamplight setting the golden hilt and crossguard, the jewels of the pommel and the gold and silver insets of the exposed portions of the wide blade to flashing like bits of fire.

But then Bili moved to where he could better see the focus of the others’ attention ... and the mighty axe dropped from a suddenly nerveless hand, while his bemused mind whirled with a chaos of half-formed thoughts.

That body pierced through with the royal sword of state of the Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn, that huge, big-boned body, covered almost entirely with thick, curly, dark-red hair, that body lying dead in its own dung and blood, pinned to the floor by Bili of Morguhn’s single, powerful thrust, that body was not the body of the monstrous wolf Bili had slain. That body was the dead body of Byruhn, King of New Kuhmbuhluhn!

Two hours later, the sword of state had been cleaned and once more lay in its accustomed place, but now serving as the surrogate for a monarchy permanently extinct in the original line of succession, representing a dead dynasty. Thoheeks Sir Bili of Morguhn sat once more in the tall, canopied armchair, and the still-shaken councilors, white-faced and dumb, for this once, ranged both sides of the long walnut table. At the opposite end of the table, occupying a specially crafted, outsized seat, towered the hairy bulk of Pah-Elmuh, the Kleesahk.

“The ... the body,” Bili informed the council members, “is back on its couch in the chamber above. None saw what was borne from my suite, and as the guardsmen who did it are all Freefighters of my own squadron, none will ever know.

“Up in that chamber, the guardsmen and I found the corpse of poor Oodehn, the Kleesahk whose turn it was this night to bide with the late king. Oodehn still lay upon his pallet—his throat had been torn out, apparently, whilst he slept, for there was no slightest sign of any struggle or combat.

“New Kuhmbuhluhn is not my land and people, New Kuhmbuhluhnburk not my city, yet I feel strongly that those outside this chamber be told only that King Byruhn, after lying long near to death, finally succumbed of his fearsome head injury, on this night. Then let us get the body encrypted as soon as is decently possible.

“Insofar as the war and the siege and the impending set battle are concerned, since both of the monarchs to whom I swore my oaths now are deceased, I could—both legally and morally—march out with my squadron. But I shall not. I shall continue in my present capacities, if that is agreeable to all of you gentlemen, until the battle be won by our combined arms, the siege be broken and the Skohshuns put to flight.

“Meanwhile, I strongly urge that you all forget, forgo your rivalries and senseless grievances long enough to choose a successor to King Byruhn. Well, have not one of you a suitable candidate in mind?”

Archcount Sir Daifid Howuh cleared his stringy throat. “Actually ... no, your grace. With the ... the, ahhh, demise this eve of our lamented King Byruhn, the House of Mahrloh, the ancient, royal house of New Kuhmbuhluhn, be extinct.”

“Well, dammit, man, this is no time to quibble in regard to legal niceties,” snapped Bili peevishly. “If the main line be done, surely there are cousins, cousins-german, bastards—any degree of kinship will do at this point in time. You are going to need a single, strong authority in the wake of this Skohshun business and in getting the kingdom reorganized, are you to escape rebellions and civil war.”

“There be no way we’ll get that or eke anything approaching it,” remarked young Count Mak Kahnuh, “not out of the remaining kin of the House of Mahrloh, lord duke. With the sole exceptions of you and Pah-Elmuh, everyone in this room is of some distant blood kinship to the former royal house, but we’re none of us of close enough kin to lodge the claim of one above that of the others. That would be the surest road to unrest within the kingdom, to the very real possibility of a full-scale rebellion right here in this still-beleaguered city, Skohshuns or no Skohshuns. As regards bastards, there are none, in fact.”

“Oh, come, come, now, Count Mak,” said Bili, “Prince—rather, King—Byruhn was a very lusty man. He had at least one mistress he kept at Sandee’s Cot—that was common knowledge, there. Surely, he had many more over the years, here, there and elsewhere throughout the kingdom.”

Archcount Sir Daifid sighed. “At least a score and a half that come to my mind immediately, both of common and of noble antecedents; young Prince Byruhn was intensely masculine and he remained so throughout his life. But, your grace, he never, ever sired offspring; no single one of his many and legion bedmates was ever known to conceive of his seed, and that is fact.”

“Well, then,” Bili pressed on, “what about his nephew, Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht? Surely the old king, King Mahrtuhn, had seen to it that his chosen heir had wed and bred.”

The old archcount sighed once again, even more deeply. “Oh, yes, the young prince had been wed, twice, in fact. His first wife—my own little granddaughter, Mahrsha—died of a broken neck when her horse fell on a hunt, only six months a bride. His second wife—a younger sister of Sir Yoo Folsom—lived for nine years without ever conceiving of him.”

“She still lives, then?” inquired Bili hopefully.

“No,” replied the archcount in a low, embarrassed tone. “Her majesty died by her own hand some years agone.”

“And as well for everyone that she did, too,” snapped the eldest of the councilors, Duke Klyv Wahrtuhn. “That would’ve been a sticky, stinking business, helpful to none and exceeding hurtful to full many, had she not belatedly recalled the constraints of honor and duty to her house and her class.”

“Now just a minute, your grace!” a red-faced and obviously riled Count Djohsehf Brahk, Sir Yoo Folsom’s overlord, stood and almost shouted. “Adultery was never proven, and you know it! Both poor little Dahna and your ne’er-do-well nephew were dead before any of us knew anything had occurred. But I’m more than inclined to believe the letter she penned before she used the dagger. She was always an honorable woman—I’d known her from very infancy.”

Archcount Sir Daifid, virtually radiating hostility and bloodlust, shoved back his own chair to stand leaning across the broad table and shaking a bony fist at the younger man. “Son of a shit-eating bitch,” he snarled, “you’ve accused my late, lamented nephew of the foul crime of rape over and over again. I’d have long since had your wormy guts for garters, had I thought for one minute that any sane nobleman of this kingdom would believe, could believe you or your false and utterly baseless calumnies of the dead. But everyone who is anyone in New Kuhmbuhluhn knows the truth—your poor little Dahna was precious little less than an arrant whore!”

Three other councilors had arisen and were adding their shouted threats and insults to the cacophony when Bili grasped the hilt of the sword of state and brought the flat of the blade crashing down upon the tabletop—once, twice, thrice. “Sit down, and shut up,” he barked, when he had gained their attention, adding, in a tone that dripped sarcasm, “Gentlemen!

“Please understand me and do not think for one minute that I am but voicing a false threat. There are deadly-serious matters to be here considered, now, this day, this hour, this minute, and it is we—all of us—who must consider and decide. For long weeks now I’ve sat in on your so-called meetings and I’ve seen far too many of them devolve into name-calling, insults of the basest orders and threats of maimings, death and blood feuds, as you all dredged up—for little cause or none at all—disagreements dating back years or generations. In the current crisis, I’ll no longer tolerate such childish, selfish conduct from you, be clear on that point!

“Now, I am not your ruler, thanks be to Sun, Wind and Sacred Steel; were I, I much fear me that I would be inclined to clap you all in irons and incarcerate you somewhere back in that warren carved out of King’s Rest Mountain, then choose me a set of royal councilors who were more serious about their responsibilities toward me and the good of the kingdom.

“I have said that I will remain here with my squadron until the Skohshuns be put to flight, but if there is only one more outbreak of the disgraceful sort I’ve just witnessed here, I shall mount my people and ride out under a flag of truce. The Skohshuns are aware that me and mine are mercenaries, not Kuhmbuhluhners, and I have the word of their herald, Sir Djahn Makadahm, that our passage out of the city, the burk and the kingdom will not be in any degree disputed or hindered by their army.

“Now, whilst you gentlemen calmly and politely discuss the available options and alternatives of this matter of a new king, I shall be mindspeaking with Pah-Elmuh, and if you all lapse into yet another spate of threats and name-calling, you can figure upon working out your surrender to the Skohshuns alone.”

Abashed, never doubting for a single minute that the young commander meant every word he had spoken, that he and his squadron could and would ride out and leave the city and the kingdom to the will of fickle fate, all of the councilors resumed their seats and began to converse in low tones, one with the other.

“Now, Pah-Elmuh,” Bili mindspoke, “I will have the truth of this matter. From what you said upstairs, when we found your son, Oodehn, dead, I would imagine that you knew more of the probable identity of our night killer than you chose to tell me. I was obviously wrong—I had thought that I had your trust and your loyalty.”

“You had and you have, both, Lord Champion,” the Kleesahk beamed forcefully. “But ... ”

“Then why, Pah-Elmuh? Why did you not even so much as suggest to me the possibility of what we now know was fact?” Bili demanded, the gaze of his blue eyes boring relentlessly into the ovoid-pupiled, unhuman eyes of the hominid.

Pah-Elmuh sighed resignedly. “Because of loyalties that far antedated any other, newer ones, Lord Champion. Loyalties to the House of Mahrloh, the first true-men who treated my forebears as men, as equals, and did not hunt us or consider us to be just another variety of beast. Now that revered house is extinct and I much fear that ere too many more years go by, we Kleesahks will be extinct, as well.

“Know you now, Lord Champion, that poor King Byruhn was not the first of his house to be so grievously afflicted; it was a blight which surfaced in almost every generation at least once, but in the last two generations it seemed almost a universal plague of the blood of Mahrloh. King Mahrtuhn himself had it, but it was in far milder form, and with the help of my instructions to his brain he was able to successfully fight it to a life-long standstill quite early in his young manhood, it being an affliction that does not manifest itself until the victim becomes pubescent.

“Prince Gilbuht, King Byruhn’s younger brother and the sire of Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht, also had this milder form, as too did his only son, and we Kleesahks had long since given the same help to them.

“But the more serious form of the affliction was the legacy of the unfortunate King Byruhn, though the severity was not at first apparent. When it did become evident—in the form of a couple of full-scale seizures, complete transformations into the beast shape along with its terrible appetite—I at once devoted long years to slowly helping him erect a mental control over that regrettable tendency. By the time he had attained his twenty-fifth year, he had the ability not only to recognize the incipient onset of an attack of the affliction but that of competently coping with it, staving it off, with mental powers alone.

“Of course, although I doubt seriously that either of them ever told of it abroad, this hereditary affliction is also the real reason why neither of the last two princes—young Mahrtuhn Gilbuht and King Byruhn—ever sired offspring on any of their wives or women. Byruhn wished to take no slightest chance of passing so heavy and loathsome a burden on to any son he might sire—for some reason, females do not seem to be afflicted—and so he years ago prevailed upon me to perform a certain surgical procedure that rendered him completely sterile, but without affecting in any manner or means his performance as a whole man.

“Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht, although he bore but the milder variety of the affliction, also sought me out for this same procedure and I accommodated him, for it did much to ease his gentle nature and troubled mind. Upon his accession to the throne of New Kuhmbuhluhn, or right soon thereafter, it had been his intent to formally adopt an heir who might not be of so close a relationship as to carry the same intensity of the beastly affliction of his house. But as you know, Lord Champion, poor young Mahrtuhn Gilbuht died most gallantly before he ever had the chance to carry out aught of his plans.

“What King Byruhn would have done, I know not, but there on the road from that dreadful battle, when I told him that his royal father’s spark of life had winked out, he remarked to me that he and I both knew that he must be the very last king of the House of Mahrloh and why. Perhaps he too intended to adopt a distant cousin as his heir—I know not.”

“But, Pah-Elmuh,” probed Bili, “you say that you had long ago taught Byruhn how to suppress these changes into wolf form. Then why did he suddenly lose his control and begin to stalk by night, killing and rending and devouring innocent folk? Why would he have slain Oodehn, yet not even try to eat him?”

“As to the sad death of my Oodehn, Lord Champion, I know not why he was slain—perhaps mere bloodlusting ferocity of the shameful thing King Byruhn had, through no fault of his own, become. As to why he did not then eat of my son, because none of these men who become beasts in this affliction ever will eat, in the beast shape, of any save human flesh.

“Why King Byruhn lost his carefully nurtured control, well, Ican but speculate that perhaps the injury to his head had a detrimental effect on that part of his brain that housed his control. It also could be that as his man body lay slowly dying of lack of proper nourishment, the basic survival instinct awakened the beast in him and sent it out in search of the food needed to, sustain them both. But now we never will know the real truth.”