Horseclans' Odyssey

15

“Wolf, you will be in overall command of the citadel,” Martuhn stated at a last conference in his towertop home on the eve of his departure for Traderstown. “I’m leaving you a score of pikemen along with Corporal Hailee, a couple of cooks, plus Quartermaster Sergeant Lestuh and his men. His mission is to ferry over supplies in the proper order, as we come in need of them, as well as to receive and stow and record any late-arriving consignments for the garrison of Traderstown.

“Neither he nor you will be troubled with remounts or supplies for the various contingents of horse. All those are to be handled by and through the big cavalry camp just north of the upper city; Chief Quartermaster Sergeant Renuhlz bean that onerous responsibility. I believe you two are acquainted, of old.” “Aye,” Wolf mindspoke to save rime, “it’s many a quart I’ve downed with him. He be a good man, for all he’s a damned lazy horse soldier.” Martuhn continued, ‘The citadel will also be host to a dozen ducal messengers and a selection of mounts for them, as well as hostlers to care for them and a farrier and his boy to keep them properly shod; principally because he can both read and write, and also because I trust him in all ways, Sir Djaimz will be in charge of the messenger service.”

The senior captain turned next to the hulking Zahrtohgahn. “Nahseer, your responsibility—and your only one until my return—will be the boys, Bahb and Djoh. For all that this Urbahnos has been declared ‘outlaw’ by his grace and is being hunted the length and breadth of the duchy, I still fear for their safety from him. Don’t ever stray far from them. And both you and Wolf be damned careful of who is let into the citadel and of how many they number.”

To Bahb and Djoh, he beamed, “Obey Nahseer and Wolf, lads, they’ll have your best interests in mind.”

Then, back to Nahseer, “I think it would be best if the three of you lodge up here in my chambers, for there are certain built-in safeguards, as well as a long climb, for any interlopers who might come seeking you. I’ll demonstrate them all to you before I’m done. There’re foods and various potables up here, and this chamber and Wolfs offer the only routes of access to the roof and its cistern.”

A week earlier, Baron Hahrvee Sheeld had ridden into Pahdookahport, his belt pouch bulging with ducal warrants, and ordered the commander of the city guard to bar all gates immediately, no man or woman to enter or exit until he gave leave that they do so. Next, he had visited the office of the harbormaster and served notice that until further orders were forthcoming, no ship, barge or boat of any size or description was to leave wharf or dock or mooring. All with whom he spoke knew his status, and none offered arguments. When his two troops of household guards were inside the city and the last of the lumbering, ox-drawn prison wagons had rumbled through the north gate, he set about his mission.

The tough, tactiurn horseguards went through Pahdookahport in a manner akin to the proverbial dose of salts. Most of those men arrested were long-resident aliens, but not all.

The high bishop of the Most Ancient and Most Holy Church of Remembered Glory (who was also the brother-in-law of Baron Lapkin) was dragged from his palatial residence screaming at the top of his lungs, “Never would I attend or frequent such a sinkhole of inequity, I assure you. The stock that I hold was simply a good investment for church monies!” His protestations gained him nothing, however; the guards tossed him most ungently into one of the wheeled cages… after an iron “scolds’ bridle” had been locked securely around his head and under his jaws to prevent him conversing with his fellow prisoners.

Right soon was he joined in the wagon by four of the other “investors.” Ten, in all, of the eleven warrants were executed that day; five of the malefactors were lodged in each of two of the wagons, while the third was the repository of every ounce of gold and silver, every piece of coinage or of jewelry that the troopers could uncover in meticulous searches of the homes and/or businesses of the prisoners. These seizures, too, were performed by authority of ducal warrants, Tcharlz holding that such specie or gems or ingots would effect partial payments of the years of taxes of which he had been cheated, since no one of the men had ever reported this large hidden income. Baron Hahrvee saw to it that all buildings in which the prisoners had holdings were closed, locked and sealed, the families and employees of those men he had seized being driven, willy-nilly, into the streets. Port guards were posted on the ships owned by the prisoners, and the grim baron ordered the steering gear chained into immobility, the crews cast out, the holds sealed. Lastly, although he bore no warrants to that effect, the baron seized every sound horse and mule occupying the mews of the soon-to-be defendants, as he knew that the duke would soon have need of every mount and pack animal upon which he could lay hands.

He and his men did not quit the now roiling city until well after dark, sweeping it from top to bottom and from end to end in an unfruitful search for the subject of the eleventh warrant; but they could find no trace of the person of Urbahnos of Karaleenos, hunt as they might Captain Martuhn, Count of Twocityport, felt an uncomfortable sense of gathering doom from the moment he set eyes upon the city of Traderstown at close range. The ancient walls had apparently never been higher than twelve or fifteen feet, with towers hopelessly small and placed too far apart to give each other any meaningful support in an assault. Moreover, it appeared to have been at least a century since those walls had been afforded any repairs to speak of, and in places, mostly along the now critical western face, half the previously existing height had tumbled inward or outward, while elsewhere the stones were so loose as to rock underfoot In a conference with the two dukes shortly after the last contingents of eastern troops had been set ashore from the barges, he said as much, in his usual, blunt speech.

“Your graces, we can only hope that the cavalry wins a crushing victory against the nomads, for the city of Traders-town will prove indefensible against determined or prolonged -assault.”

He went on to detail the many faults—the walls, the towers, the dearth of effective emplacements for modern engines and of convenient rallying points for the defenders.

Then he asked, “My Lord Alex, whatever possessed you to fill in that fine, broad moat? The city might have had a fair chance, properly manned of course, did the moat remain, along with a few outer defenses.”

Alex sighed and shrugged. “I allowed myself to be swayed by the thrice-damned merchants and factors, who wanted land under the walls whereon the returning caravans could camp; they hoped that thus the caravaners would tend to stay longer and spend more money in the city and possibly have to Sell more of their goods in Traderstown, rather than barging them across to the east bank. It was greed, pure and simple, Captain Martuhn, theirs… and mine, too.” “Then, too, Martuhn,” put in Duke Tcharlz, “you must understand that Traderstown has not been attacked on the landward side for—what, Alex, a century or more?—well, at least for a considerable period of time.” “As for those nomads,” the other duke added, “they never have gathered in such stupendous numbers’ before; nor has anyone ever heard of any nomad or group of nomads penetrating this far east other than in peaceful ways.” “Then why do you think they’re here now, My Lord Alex?” inquired Martuhn. “Well, my good captain,” Duke Alex answered, “the tales of wounded and captured nomads lead me to believe that this invasion in such force is the doing of a new element, a sort of ‘chief of chiefs.’ He is said to be a big, tall, black-haired man from the south—which could make him a renegade Ehleen from their Southern Kingdom, but I don’t think so. His name is not Ehleen, for one thing; he is called Maylo Morró and is most probably one of those troublemaking, warmongering Mehkskuhns.”

“And, be this supposition of Alex’s true,” added Duke Tcharlz, “we have us the answer to where these Horseclanners learn how to maneuver and fight so cannily. The accursed Emperador would not have sent just anyone north to disrupt our trade; no, this Morró is most likely a trained and veteran noble officer, and we’re going to have to start opposing his savage horde differently, are we to win. Poor Alex here and his horsemen did not dream that they were come face-to-face with a professional, to begin, and they sustained very heavy losses as a result “But now we both know. Therefore, we must utilize the textbook tactics, with an overriding strategy of getting the howling little bastards into a position in which our heavy horse can get a good crack at them—a goodly stretch of flat, level ground, firm and free of brush or trees. Then well give them a fatal taste of civilized steel, I trow.”

During the ensuing weeks, while the two dukes and their horsemen maneuvered over and through the farmlands and woodlands of the Duchy of Traderstown, parrying the thrust of nomad raids, even as they sought a means of persuading the foe to commit the bulk of his force at one time and place, Martuhn drove his men fiendishly and himself much harder in a vain attempt to ready the city to withstand the prairie horde, just in case.

For all his exalted title, he quickly found that his real authority held only over his own infantry and that of Duke Alex. The city merchants and shippers and factors refused repeatedly to tender him and his hard-working forces aid of any nature; further, they right often impeded the nonstop work by complaining formally of the incessant noise or of the occasional drunken soldier, by refusing to allow the use of needed docking facilities to galleys and sailers when the slaves manning the row-barges had been formed into chain gangs by Martuhn to work on the walls, and they kept their warehouses solidly locked, forcing all supplies for their defenders to either be shipped over from the east bank or to be purchased—sometimes sight unseen—for scandalous prices. Martuhn finally decided that he thoroughly despised the entire pack of venal skinflints after his first meeting with Hatee Gairee, a merchant-banker whose family owned several of the large warehouses near the docks. There were no men to spare to care for the wounded men who kept trickling in from the skirmishing cavalry, and with the available medicines obtainable in Traderstown only at outrageously inflated prices, Martuhn had continued to send any injured or wounded across to the east bank, where the palace complex and several of the larger Upper Town buildings had been converted into hospitals. The river sailers and Duke Tcharlz’s and Duke Alex’s war galleys—which brought supplies on the western leg and took back the pitiful debris of conflict—were nowhere as capacious as the cable barges had been, and so a wounded man might lie moaning on a wharf, ill tended, robbed by city scum or nibbled at by rats, until a bottom was available to bear him to the eastern shore. One short visit to one of those docks, become in his mind a slice of veriest hell, was enough to convince Martuhn that he must find a place near the docks wherein all wounded could await the ships and galleys in safety if not comfort with at least enough attendants to drive off the rats and the human scavengers. He thought that one of the warehouses near the wharves would be ideal, but when he had the men whose goods therein resided approached, it was to discover that they only leased the buildings from various members of the Gairee family, commoners but extremely wealthy.

The family was, he found out, headed by a fiftyish woman, who made all decisions affecting income or outlay of any size. And she arrived at his headquarters in the style of a high noblewoman—a large, ornate and luxuriously furnished coach, uniformed coachmen, postilions and outriders astride finely bred, sleek, well-groomed horses, and two little slave girls to attend her. She was a tall, very slender woman, with a wealth of gray hair, streaked here and there with strands of the dark-brown color it once had been. Her every finger bore at least one ring of gold; from her small ears depended weights of gold and gems that Martuhn was certain must be uncomfortable. The additions of the golden neck chain and pendant, gold bracelets and armlets and brooches, as well as a headpiece of golden wire set with a profusion of tiny pearls and other gems, caused the captain to reflect that the woman was no doubt wise to have armed her male attendants and riders.

Her clothing was in keeping with her ostentatious display of gold and gems, being all silks and satins and tooled, dyed leathers and—regardless of the enervating combination of thick humidity and blistering heat—fur-trimmed velvets. And she was soaked with some heavy, hellishly expensive scent.

But despite all the rich jewelry and clothing, at close range her perfumery failed to cover the stench of a human body long unwashed. The few teeth remaining behind the carmine-painted lips were stinking and rotted brown, and under the dazzling brilliance of the cut stones, her clawlike hands were dirt-streaked and grubby.

Her manner, when Martuhn had outlined his needs, was blunt to the point of discourtesy. “Cap’n, this here ain’t my affair nor my fancy’s. Wouldn’t be no fighting atall, if our pigheaded duke had done what the commoners’ council had tol’ him to do first off. He should oughta pay off them nomads, alia them savages don’ want nothin but loot and hwiskee and a few good-lookin slave girls to screw.”

Martuhn had not heard earlier of this conference. “You mean that you and the rest of the citizens were willing to pay a ransom to the nomads to prevent hostilities?”

The old woman drew a goodly breath into her bony, near-breastless chest and exploded, “Hell no, cap’n! That young fool of a duke is richer than anybody elst in this whole fucking duchy. Let him pay the frigging ransom, him and his hoity-toity nobles.

“We all tolt him we’d give him good prices awn the stuff the nomads was gonna want, but aw, naw, he hadda start a-buying up hosses and mules and hired fighters and all.”

Hatee suddenly thrust the four fingers of her right hand between two buttons securing the front of her silken dress and scratched vigorously, the huge ruby of her thumb ring flashing the light from its surfaces. The stone itself was obviously hundreds of years old and had probably been scavenged from a dead city of the Ancients, for no one today was capable of cutting and finishing stones in that fashion.

After examining the fresh layers of dirt now under her fingernails, she went on, “Cap’n, I know you means well and all, but ain’ nobody here in Traderstown gonna empty no warehouses and get the flo’s all dirtied up with blood and piss and shit and puke and I don’ know whatall, like them docks is right now. You gotchew any idear what it cos’ to buy and feed and put clo’s awn good, strowng slaves, these days? And I reckon it’d turn out to be our slaves had to shift all the stock and then clean up, after Duke Alex either comes to his senses or gits hisself kilt out yonder.

“But ni tell you what I will do for you, cap’n. I’ll lease you some tarps and poles I got me, cheap. And, ‘sides’ that, I’ll let you use some of my older slaves inta the bargain— they ain’t none of ’em got what it takes to work awn no wawls, no mo’, but they could all shuffle ‘round enough to fetch water and chase ‘way rats and all.”

“And what, pray tell,” replied Martuhn dryly, carefully holding himself back from the violence he longed to wreak upon the stinking flesh of this vile, vulgar, parsimonious and self-centered bitch, “would be the cost of your generosity?”

She steepled her stained fingers and eyed him over their apex, “Well, them tarps is almos’ new and soma the poles is new, but sincet you’ll be a-feeding the slaves while they’s a-working for you, let’s us just say a round one ounce of gol’ the day, eh? Now ain’ that a good pricet, cap’n?” Martuhn heaved himself out of his chair, his face gone white as fresh curds; he kept his hands tightly clenched and a vein was throbbing in his temple. “Mistress Gairee, I have been a soldier for the most of my life, living in camps and garrisons. But not even among the whores who follow the armies have I ever met a woman as filthy, foul-mouthed, deceitful, callous of suffering and coldly mercenary as are you.”

“Well, I just love you to pieces, too, you foreigner cock-sucker!” snapped Hatee, her brown eyes blazing. “You just as dumb as our asshole duke and them shitheaded gents of his’n, think you kin git anythin’ you wawntst for free. Well, well learn you fuckheads diffrunt yet!”

“Enough, woman!” Martuhn slammed the callused palm of his hand down on the desktop so hard that several items were bounced off onto the floor. His other hand came down less violently, and he leaned across the desk to meet her hot glare with a murderous look that set her innards to quaking. “Had His Grace Duke Alex empowered me to arrest citizens of my own warrant and for my own reasons, you and your overpretentious finery would presently be immured in the deepest, darkest, dankest cell I could find for you, but my powers here are limited, alas, so I must release you. However, you have well earned and you fully deserve punishment, and I think I know of one that will hurt such a stinking bitch as are you more than fetters and whips and hot irons. “I am fully empowered to commandeer to the duchy all riding or draft horses and mules, as well as all wheeled conveyances which might be of use to the army. Therefore, as of this moment, your coach-and-six and the mounts of your outriders are become the property of His Grace Duke Alex of Traderstown. Upon the victory of our arms or a cessation of hostilities, your property will be returned to you, if then living or intact. Dead or destroyed beasts or items will be replaced either in kind or in Specie.”

Leaping to her feet, the skinny old woman clenched both bony fists, raised her arms above her head and shrieked at the top of her lungs. But neither her screams nor her protests nor the incredibly obscene names she called him nor the tears to which she finally resorted altered Martuhn’s decision. And, in the end, all of it was for nothing. The superhuman labors on the crumbling walls, the constant feuding with the merchants and the bankers, the shipowners, the artisans, the factors and the landlords; all were for nought in the final analysis.

Their numbers reduced in the steady attrition of indecisive skirmishes with the innumerable bands’ of raiders, in ones and twos to hidden bowmen and in larger numbers to wily ambushers, the two dukes at long last got the “advantage” toward which they had been manuevering.

Martuhn saw it all, from start to sanguinary finish, under the ancient, inadequate walls of Traderstown itself. At the very end, when both ducal banners had gone down and the few pitiful survivors of the two duchies’ cavalry were fighting desperately, their backs to the city walls, against the waves of screaming, blood-mad nomads on their ugly little horses, Martuhn used his few engines and his massed archers and crossbowmen to drive back the foe long enough to allow a regiment of pikemen to march out, form to repel cavalry and slowly withdraw, still in formation, when the last of the battered and bleeding cavalrymen were through the gates.

Several of the surviving horsemen had seen Duke Alex and his bodyguards go down under a wave of nomads, while others told almost identical tales of how Duke Tcharlz, beset on all sides, had finally rallied a couple of hundred still-mounted men and personally led a charge deep into a huge knot of the massed Horseclanners… never to be seen again. All of which tended to leave the reins of power in both duchies clearly within the grasp of only one man, Captain Count Martuhn.

As he had been certain they would, the nomads attacked a stretch of low, incomplete wall shortly after dawn on the day after the defeat of die cavalry;

Martuhn’s spirited defense threw them back, all four waves of them. But he also took casualties, more than he would have liked, and mostly the direct result of the inadequate defensive works. And that night he made his decision. When the last of the wounded and ill men were across the river, when all supplies and extra weapons had been landed on the east bank and when the last of the families and personal effects of the original garrison of Traderstown had been evacuated, Martuhn commenced the taking off of his troops, beginning with the now nearly-useless remnants of cavalry and their few remaining mounts. After them he sent his service troops, then the pikemen and dartmen, saving his archers and crossbowmen until last.

Early on, in the military exodus, his orders had seen all Sailing ships and galleys not already in his hands seized at glittering swordpoint, and those few unusable—for whatever reason—had been scuttled or set afire and adrift to deny their use to the nomads who would certainly come swarming over the soon-to-be-undefended walls.

It was while he was supervising the loading of the last units of archers onto the three huge cable barges, his own fast war galley awaiting him on the other side of the long cable-barge dock, that he became aware of the clop-clopping of hooves and the rumbling of heavy transport proceeding along the streets of the city and drawing ever nearer the dockside.

Presently, the head of a long procession of assorted wains, wagons and other wheeled vehicles wound into view. Perched on the bow of the leading wain—a huge one, drawn heavily by two span of hefty oxen and laden high with chests, trunks, cases and bales—was Hatee Gairee; her two little slave girls trotted alongside. On or about the vehicles behind, Martuhn recognized numerous other merchants, bankers and an assortment of the wealthier commoners of Traderstown. When her repeated summonses effected nothing, the tall, flashily garbed old woman finally climbed down from her seat and strode out onto the dock, ill-concealed rage in her every movement. Without pleasantries or preamble, she snarled at Martuhn, “Whut’s this here ‘bout you a-seizing fo’ of my ships, then setting’t’others afire and letting ’em drift down t’river? Just how d”you think me an’ these here other folks is gonna git ‘crost the damn river ‘fore them fucking nomads is in’t’city?” Martuhn grinned like a wolf at a crippled hare, but his voice was soft and his tone mock surprised. “Why, Mistress Gairee, why would you and these others wish to flee the nomads? I thought you knew them and their simple wants so well? You surely will have no trouble dealing with them, will you? A few pretty slave girls? A few pounds of silver? Jewelry and some bales of cloth?” “You damned bastid, you!” hissed the old woman. “You knows damn well the sitchayshun’s done changed, what with the duke daid and the dang cavalry, too. And now you done sent alia the pikes and archers crost the river; it won’t be no-dealing with them damn Horseclanners now. They’ll just come in and take what they wants, all they wants, and likely kill halft the folks in’t’city. “And now you done took or burnt up alia our ships, you gotta take us ‘crost in yore cable barges… and soon, too.”

“I believe firmly in repaying my old debts, Mistress Gairee,” said Martuhn slowly. “Therefore, I shall give you and your kind all the willing aid that you have given me these last weeks. When the last of my troops are safely landed over yonder, if there are no nomads in sight from midstream, I shall allow three—and only three—barges to dock. They will remain on this side only as long as it is safe for them to do so, but no longer than half an hour, in any case. All not aboard at that time will stay behind or swim. Is that clear, Mistress Gairee?”

Leaving Hatee Gairee spluttering in wordless rage, the tall captain returned to his supervisory duties.

But the barges did not return that day. For when Martuhn had his small galley rowed back to midstream a few hours later, it was clear that the nomads were swarming through the streets of the city, and he was completely unwilling to risk the loss of more of his men on the chance of rescuing such undeserving types as Hatee Gairee and her ilk.

It was well after dark before the overworked Captain Count Martuhn of Twocityport was able to ride down into the Lower Town and walk his weary horse slowly over the bridge through the open main gate of the deserted citadel, followed by his staff and a few mercenary dragoons who had survived the carnage under the walls of Traderstown and whom he had summarily adopted as bodyguards. Les, the quartermaster sergeant—identifiable only by a pair of bronze arm rings, the flesh of his face picked down to bare bone by crows or ravens—lay dead in the main courtyard, with two of his assistants and a cook nearby. It was evident that all had gone down fighting, and the bodies of two strangers testified to the effectiveness of their efforts.

Without the need for orders, the veteran dragoons dismounted and strung their hornbows, while Martuhn and the rest unslung targets and loosened swords in scabbards. But a hurried search of the headquarters complex and the nearer barrack rooms revealed them to be deserted and undisturbed, although another dead cook was found in the kitchens. It was also clear that he had taken his death-wound elsewhere and dragged himself into familiar surroundings to die. With a burden of deep, dark foreboding, Martuhn at last led his small contingent to the central tower… only to find its outer door closed and secured firmly from within. When repeated shouts’ elicited no response audible to him and the others, Martuhn sent his mind questing the height of the winding stairs to the topmost rooms. Beamings from Nahseer and Bahb Steevuhnz immediately answered. “Lord Urbahnos and a gang of waterfront scum from Pahdookahport came into the citadel hidden in a supply wagon, three days since, Martuhn. We fought them as long as we could out there, but when Les was slain and Wolf wounded, I brought him and the lads up here. They have been besieging us since.” “How is Wolf?” beamed Martuhn.

“Dying,” said Nahseer, simply and bluntly. “But he swears that he will live until the lads are once more delivered into your hands.” At Martuhn’s terse directions, a heavy timber was fetched and soon brawny arms were regularly crashing it against the ironbound door to the tower. It took time, for the tower had been designed and built as a last, strong refuge against an at-tacker who had overrun the outer defenses. But first one hinge gave way, then another, then the bars began to crack and the triple panels to sunder. Then, suddenly, what was left of the reinforced portal crashed inward and a knife thrown from the darkness within dropped one of the troopers who had been swinging the ram.

Martuhn had the dragoons drop the timber, draw back a few paces and loose a blind volley through the yawning doorway; two very satisfying screams of agony resulted. Then he, his staff and the dragoons charged through the portal, blades bare and shields up.

The fight in the large ground floor chamber was short, brutal and very messy, but the common toughs were no real challenge to veteran armored mercenaries, most of the bravos being armed only with knives and cudgels or the occasional hanger. Soon all the living murderers had been driven up the stairs toward the topmost levels, followed closely by the coldly raging count and his merciless professionals.

The next-highest level was’ lit with lamps and cressets. The invaders had apparently been using it as siege headquarters for the last few days, and it was here that they made their last, doomed stand.

Martuhn took the ringing hack of a thick-bladed hanger on the face of his target, angling the attack to the left and downward, while he drove the point of his sword into the man’s bearded and unprotected face. Another blade clanged onto the visor of his helmet and flashed momentarily before his eyes, then his peripheral vision recorded the sweep of a dragoon saber and his ears the gurgling shriek coming hard on the heels of a meaty tchunk. And then it was done. Five of the bravos lay dead or dying about the room and a big, black-haired man in half-armor stood with his back pressed against a wall. The crest had been raggedly shorn from atop his open-faced helm of eastern pattern, and he was just in the act of dropping a broken shortsword. Martuhn dropped his target, tossed his bloody sword to a trooper, then unbuckled and removed his helm. “What’s your name, bastard? Urbahnos, perchance?” The dark man drew himself erect. “Lord Urbahnos of Karaleenos, barbarian. What are you waiting for? Kill me.”

Martuhn shook his head. “My steel were too easy and far too honorable a death for the likes of you, pervert. Before he went to his death. Duke Tcharlz proclaimed you outlaw, and there awaits for you a short, wide, blunt stake, in Pirates’ Folly; that should tickle your buggering bum until you scream your rapture.”

Urbahnos paled to true ashiness. “Duke Tcharlz… d… dead? Then who… who rules?” Martuhn shrugged. “I suppose that I do, since all his retainers save me went down with him under the walls of Traderstown.” The Ehleen cleared his throat. “Then we should be able to come to a mutually profitable agreement, you and L You will be in immediate need of funds, of course, and I will be more than willing to pay a most handsome sum for my freedom and a passage up the Ohyoh. Five pounds of gold? Ten?” Martuhn spat at the Ehleen’s feet. “You are an outlaw, you pig, and as such everything you once owned is mine anyway. I loathe you and all you stand for. Moreover, you and your pack of hired dogs have here slain a number of my men, several of them friends—old and very dear friends, two of them. “Now, there are a number of cells below us that are dank, ever cold, slimy, and dark and constantly at least a foot deep in muddy water, so that the rats have to swim to get at you.”

Urbahnos had again paled; he gulped wordlessly, his fleshy lips trembling. “But,” Martuhn went on, “I think me I have a better place for you to bide until I’m ready to put you to death. I have it on reliable authority that you are a castrate. You are obviously strong, and such wounds as you’ve suffered this day are but mere scratches.”

Turning to a short, wiry, blood-splashed dragoon sergeant, the count said, “Byuhz, take this prisoner down to the docks, strip him to the buff, then turn him over to the overseer of one of the cable barges. It will do my heart good to think of the bastard pulling an oar for his keep.”

“B… but… but you cannot!” Urbahnos wailed. “I… I’m not a slave!” Martuhn shrugged.

“You are whatever I say you are, dog, and I say you’re a barge slave… until I’m ready to make you a corpse, that is.”