Champion of the Last Battle

Epilogue

The eastern Karaleenos sky was a bright, deep red with dawn—Sacred Sun-birth—bare minutes away. Old Prince Bili Morguhn of Karaleenos opened his eyes to see the also elderly Zahrtohgahn physician, Master Ahkmehd, seated on the edge of the great-bed, his back curved and his chin with its wispy, white beard sunk onto his bony chest.

“Ahkmehd ... old friend?” Bili’s voice croaked, sounding strange and unreal to his ears.

With a start, the dark-brown-skinned man raised his head. “My lord Bili ... you are in pain?”

Bili chuckled humorlessly. “When have I not been in pain, of one sort or another? But I mean to be shortly shut of all of it. Where is the Undying High Lord Milo?”

“I am here, Bili.” The deep voice came from a dark corner of the large chamber, then a chair squeaked and Bili’s overlord moved into the light.

“My lord, tell me true,” croaked Bili. “How long until sunrise?”

The dark-haired man paced to the window and twitched aside one edge of the heavy draperies, then said, “Two, maybe three minutes, Bili. Why?”

“I was born with the birth of Sacred Sun, my lord. I would die then, too. Please, open the drapes. And where ... where is my axe? Please, my lord, put it in my hands.”

With his blotched and sinewy old right hand once more gripping—but most feebly, now—the worn, familiar haft of the ancient, dusty axe, Bili closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again and fixed his gaze upon the High Lord, this man whose appearance had never changed in the eighty years that Bili Morguhn had known him and served him.

“I ... I have always striven to serve you ... Confederation ... well, my lord ... best of my abilities ...” The waves of agony from his terribly infected wounds now were breaking through the narcotic dikes and racking his dying body.

“None, no one, man or woman or horse or prairiecat or Ork, ever has served me and our Confederation so long and well and faithfully as did you, Bili of Morguhn,” stated Milo. “I know not when or where or how I ever can find your like. You often have been the very salvation of all for which I have worked over the long centuries.”

“When you and Con ... federation need ... look for Bili ... Bili the Axe ... be there.

“Now, please, my ... lord,” Bili gasped as the rising of Sacred Sun bathed his pain-twisted face in its holy, golden rays, “Pain too ... too much, now. Your ... dirk. Use it!”

Milo turned to the physician, who stood by weeping in his helpless frustration, and the other man who had come out of the shadowed corner of the room, “You both heard?”

At their nods, Milo drew his centuries-old Horseclans dirk, leaned over Bili’s body and placed the point carefully, then, with a single, powerful thrust, drove it through the old man’s heart.

Bili hardly noticed the pain of the stab, so great was the other, older pain. He was aware, briefly, of a dim mutter of voices, growing ever dimmer. The bright sunlight, too, was growing dimmer, darkening, darkening. Dark.

A sound wakened him, a sound much like the snort of a horse. He did not open his eyes, fearing lest any movement no matter how slight bring back the nauseating waves of agony, but when something, some force, strongly nudged at his right side, almost rolling him over onto the infected arm and leg. his eyes snapped open. Then his mouth gaped.

Standing almost atop his recumbent body was a huge black stallion. The glossy horse was the very’ spit and image of good old long-years-with-Wind Mahvros. There was a bridle buckled to the head of the horse; its reins dropped loosely over the pommel-knob of an old-fashioned warkak.

The horse lowered his head and nudged Bili once more, this time mindspeaking, “Will my brother then sleep all the day through? They are waiting for us, for you were overlong in coming and we have far to gallop.”

The mindspeak was unmistakable; there had never been another like it. “Mahvros ... ?” Bili beamed incredulously. “But. .. but you are long ago gone to Wind!”

“Of course I am, my brother,” Mahvros easily agreed. “And now my dear brother has joined me. Come, rise up and mount me. The others are waiting for us.”

“But ... but I cannot rise, my brother. A bear clawed and bit me badly, and. . . .”

“I’d have done worse than that, brother or no brother,” beamed Mahvros, stamping, “had your men shot me full of arrows and then you made to run a spear through me. And all because of a few silly sheep. Yes, I spoke with that poor bear a short time back.

“But come, brother, get up, they’re waiting.”

“Who’s waiting?” asked Bili dazedly, wondering when this strange dream would end and death would come.

Then a wide, rough, damp something scraped up his face, from chin to pate, while another, so-familiar mindspeak, said, “Me, for one, brother chief. Brainless twolegs right often slander us cats as being lazy. What then should be said of you?”

Slowly, gingerly, taking extreme care, Bili pushed down with his right hand, braced his right heel against the rather solid surface on which he lay and gradually came partially erect. A prairiecat sat on his left, tail curled about his big forepaws, tongue protruding slightly from between his fearsome fangs. The last three inches of that tail were white.

“Whitetip? Cat brother? Brother chief? Is it truly you?” Bili beamed hesitantly.

“No,” came a sarcastic answer, “I’m really only four gray foxes inside an old prairiecat hide. Of course it is me.”

Then Bili chanced to look down at his own limbs and body and could not believe his eyes. Although clad in shirt, trousers and boots, the body, the limbs, the hands, were not those of any old man of near a century in age. They were the strong, muscular body and limbs of a man in his prime. And when he experimentally flexed legs and arms, there was no slightest hint of pain. Still wondering, his mind whirling madly, he stood up ... easily, and looked at his surroundings.

He seemed to have been lying on the grassy sward of a near-circular depression, in the center of which burbled a tiny spring. Striding over to it, he sank onto a knee and scooped up a handful of the cold water, drank deeply, splashed a copious amount of the bracing liquid onto his face, then turned back to find the horse and the huge cat still there. . . . But not alone, now!

A slender, dark-haired and dark-eyed human female stood beside Mahvros. She was clad, like Bili, in low boots, tucked-in trousers and an embroidered shirt, the proud swell of her breasts pushing hard against the fabric. Close by her side stood a well-bred red-bay mare, saddled, like the black stallion.

“Rahksahnah ... ?” he croaked as he had on his deathbed. “No. It’s all ... none of this is possible! You all are dead, gone to Wind. You died in my arms, Rahksahnah. I lit your pyre with my own hand! I know you are dead.”

She smiled, that so-dear, never-forgotten smile, then said softly, “Yes, I am no longer alive on earth, but then neither are you, my Bili, my love. I, we, have been waiting for you. Now you are here.

“But come, love, let us mount and ride. It is far and we can talk on the journey.”

“Journey? What journey? Where must I ride?” asked Bili.

“Why, to the palace of the Silver Lady, of course, my Bili. She is desirous of knowing you. So come.”

When once Bili had swung up into the saddle of the tall horse, he could see beyond the limits of the depression. He could see a limitless expanse of billowing, silver-white grasses in every direction, yet so soft-appearing were they that they might have been clouds, tiny clouds scudding at ground level.

The red mare’s haunches tensed, and then she was on her way up the sloping side of the dip, Mahvros moving easily at her side, with the huge, tawny prairiecat racing out ahead of the two horses. Then suddenly there were two prairiecats, one but half the size of the other.

“Come,” beamed Stealth. “Come—She awaits you.”