The Coming of the Horseclans

8

The tribe had remained at the eastern outlet of the Gap only for one sleep. The next morning, the tribe—wood-thrifty from their years on the prairies—had laid all their dead on one pyre and, as the Wind bore the souls of their kindred back to His home, the wagons commenced to creak eastward, along the Trade road to Theesispolis.

A migrating tribe does not move fast. It took them five days to come under the walls of that unhappy city, already in dire straits.

It had been well before dark on the day they had been freed that most of the anxious-to-get-home peasants had poured through the outer city. Their richly embroidered accounts of the huge army’s annihilation at the hands of the stupendous horde of grim (but just) nomads precipitated such a panic that many families of the outer town had fled east, so many that Simos, Governor and Commander of the city, had all the remaining citizens herded willy nilly within the walls and barred the gates behind them. Next, he drafted and dispatched a message to the High Lord. He informed the suzerain of the disaster which had befallen the army and gave the names of the only three noblemen to survive the massacre: Lord Manos, Theodores of Petropolis, and Herakles of Theesispolis—all captives of the barbarians, if not by now slain (though he didn’t say so, Simos sincerely hoped the barbarians had killed Herakles, slowly; he’d had no use for the arrogant young swine since he’d outbid him for a truly stunning young slave-boy two years before). He gave the facts as he knew them: The barbarian horde numbered in the neighborhood of forty thousand, at least twelve thousand of whom were warriors or maiden-archers, and was moving east along the Trade road. He went on to point out that Lord Manos had ordered out the Theesispolis Kahtahphraktoee, and that squadron had fallen with the army—as too had above thirty Theesispolis aristocrats and their hundred or so retainers. He prayed the High Lord to send reinforcements for his tiny garrison as the levy was ill-trained, ill-armed and unreliable, and the four hundred dependable troups were far too few to adequately defend the citadel, much less the walls of the city.

Demetrios’ answer was prompt. He assured Simos that a relief army would soon be up to him—a patent lie, but Simos had no way of knowing it—and that the city was to be held at all costs, pending its arrival. He gently chided Simos’ lack of faith in his citizen-levy, pointing out that the levy had been the strong spine of Ehleenoee arms. With the Theesispolis levy, beefed up by the civic guard and the remaining nobility, he went on, he could not imagine so well-situated and fortified a city falling to a band of mere barbarian marauders in the short tune it would require a field army to march from the capital. He closed with an order. Since all that befell men lay in the lap of the gods, hi the final analysis, the Theesispolis city treasury was to be rushed to Kehnooryohs Atheenahs, along with the valuables of the temples, to be held in trust until the crisis was ended and Theesispolis was safe again. Such private citizens as wished were to be allowed to send their own valuables along and Simos was to give them receipts in return. Because the road might be unsafe, considering the present emergency and the massing of troops, the treasure should be well guarded; three hundred mercenaries should be sufficient. He closed the letter with lavish promises of honors and rewards upon the victory of their arms. The moment the letter was sealed, Demetrios dismissed from his mind all thought of the lost city and the walking dead men who commanded it and concentrated upon devising ways to raise money to raise troops to secure his capital.

As soon as the tribe was encamped around the city, Mi-lo sent two nomads to escort Lord Herakles back to the city of his birth. The Ehleenoee nobleman was to deliver a message from Milo to the governor; and the nomads, both chiefs’ sons, were to return with the answer. Milo’s offer was quite generous, all things being considered. All soldiers, nobility, and their families were to evacuate the city; where they went was up to them. All slaves of Horseclan stock and all weapons and armor must be left behind; all other possessions were theirs, if they wished to and could transport them. Any other citizens who wished to leave the city were welcome to do so and the tribe guaranteed their safety as far as a day’s ride from the capital, as did it guarantee the safety and possessions of those who chose to remain in Theesispolis. As proof of his and the tribe’s good will, Herakles bore a bag containing the family signets of the thirty-one Theesispolis nobles slain with the army of Lord Manos. At Lord Herakles’ word, the city gates opened and the Ehleen trotted his horse through them, followed by the two chiefs sons, who sat their horses proudly, fully aware of the gravity and honor of their mission, brave in their best lacquered armor.

Some hours later, one of the gates was gapped sufficiently for the two barefoot, near-nude nomads to be thrust through it, to make their way back to the tribe as best they could. The once-handsome men had been hideously mutilated, one of them had been left his tongue, to deliver Lord Sunos’ reply.

Brought to the council tent, the suffering man relayed what he had been told. Lord Sunos did not treat with barbarians. Were the tribe’s leaders wise, they would pack their putrid tents, gather their wormy children, and haste as fast as their bow legs or spavined horses would take them back to the mountains and swamps where they and all other animals belonged. The High Lord and all his forces were, Simos said, only a short day’s march from Theesispolis and would make bloody hash of any barbarians in evidence upon their arrival. As for the city, it was heavily garrisoned and well supplied, and the nomads would attack it at their peril.

“But War Chief,” said the senselessly savaged man, “the Ehleenoee chief lies. The walls are thinly manned by ones who are not soldiers. Most have no armor and seem unused to the weapons they hold. Those who seized us and did these things to us were true soldiers, but there are very few of them. From what I saw when still I possessed eyes, it did not seem to me that there were more than six hundred fighters in all the city.

“And now, War Chief, we suffer greatly, Hermun and I. Please allow our chiefs to put an end to suffering.”

At Milo’s nod, the fathers of the two stepped forward, drew sabers and with tears of grief and rage on their cheeks, heart-thrust their agonized sons.

And so the blood-mad tribesmen swept against the city.

They burst open the gates and then- axes and sabers slashed a bloody course through the screaming mobs of helpless non-combatants. The levymen died under or ran from the arrow-rain which fell upon the walls, so those who scaled them were unopposed. Horseclansmen did not normally slay strong or pretty women or young children, but Theesispolis was a sanguinary exception! On their ride out of the camp, all the nomads had been led past the biers on which rested the bloody, mangled, incomplete remains of the tribe’s heralds. Once within the walls, they showed no mercy, regardless of age, sex, or station.

While the bulk of the nomads butchered the bulk of the population, Milo rode with his eight score mercenaries—a total of one hundred twenty troopers who had survived the massacre. Having no love for the Ehleenoee and an understandable aversion to slavery as well as a yearning for loot and/or hard money after months of being paid in Ehleenoee promises, they had signed on with Milo and were now being commanded by Hwil Kuk. With Horsekiller and a score or so of his clan, they all rode toward the citadel, to which had fled most of the nobility and the fleetest “fighters.” Atop the flat roof of the central portion, Lord Simos, Lord Herakles, and four other officers shrieked a sextet series of orders and counter-orders at soldiers who were straining and fumbling at something.

Even as Milo turned to inquire, one of Kuk’s squadron, a former noncom of Theesispolis’ Kahtahphraktoee, muttered, “Dung! Greedy and cruel, Lord Simos certainly is, but not stupid; he should know better than that. Those catapults were useless fifty years ago! All they are now is wormy wood and rotted ropes and rusted iron, covered with gilt paint. In the condition those fornicating abortions are in, even if they put fresh ropes on them and get them to working, they’ll be more dangerous to the crews than they’ll be to any fornicating thing they are aimed at!”

A moment later the man’s words were vindicated, as one of the war-engine’s half-wound ropes snapped and the gilded iron basket’s edge virtually decapitated one unfortunate soldier who happened to be leaning over it. As for the other, it was wound, loaded with a sixty-pound stone, aimed at the largest visible group of nomads, and fired. The arm shot up to slam into gilt-flakes and splinters and dust against its stop-timbers; the stone-laden basket never budged! The half-hysterical officers were screaming invective at the hapless soldiers when, preceded by a trio of huge blood-dripping cats, Hwil Kuk and half his squadron poured up the stairs.

But that had been over five weeks before and, aside from the empty and frequently charred houses or the all but deserted streets, the city through which Mara had ridden had given little indication of the bloodbath which had attended the end of its Ehleenoee phase. The citadel showed none, as little fighting had taken place there. The soldiers of the civic guard, offered a choice between pain and death or freedom and honorable employment—the promisors being men known to them, fellow mercenaries—had surrendered almost to a man and they now served with Hwil Kuk’s squadron. The only significant fight had taken place in the wing housing the households of the Ehleenoee nobility. There, driven to the wall, the hastily armed Ehleenoee men and boys belied their effete appearance by fighting with the reckless courage which had earned their ancestors this land centuries before. Though they all died well, die they certainly did, under the businesslike cuts and thrusts of their own former mercenaries. The noble ladies of the ruling race—young, pretty ones, at least—were the only survivors of the taking of Theesispolis (as well as several hundred former slaves who emerged from hiding after the blood-lusting madness had abated and now constituted the first citizens and only full-time occupants of the city). Old or ugly or very young Ehleenoee were stripped of their valuables and, along with half a hundred disarmed levymen, hurled out of the citadel to the tender mercies of the berserk nomads. The mercenaries took full enjoyment of their captives for a week or so, then got good prices for them from the cooled-down nomads.

Keenly aware of how the father of the two dead young nomads must feel, Hwil Kuk saw to it that Lord Simos and the treacherous Herakles were taken alive. At Milo’s order, Kulk personally delivered them to the clans of their victims. The chiefs and kinsmen received the two Ehleenoee gravely, thanked Kuk graciously, then gave the nobles to the young men’s mothers and wives and kinswomen. It was four days before Lord Simos, no longer capable of screaming, croaked bis last; the younger and stronger Herakles lived an amazing day and a half longer!