The Coming of the Horseclans

7

With his head and face wrapped in bandages, Milo had received Lord Herakles on both visits, and had attended to his guests’s accommodations and entertainment. The bandages supposedly covered the terrible injuries he had sustained in an unexpected encounter with a gigantic Tree Cat. Not only did the “injuries” explain why he was not in the north with the tribe’s warriors, but Milo felt that Manos’ emissary would probably be less attentive to facial expressions and the thoughts which bred them when in conversation with a “blind” man. This proved true, and—through Horsekiller, who, despite repeated rebuffs, was constantly fawning over the foppish Ehleen in order to maintain bodily contact, which made mind-entering easier—Milo was able to glean much useful information from Lord Herakles. Both he and the cat had to force themselves to their work, however, for entering the mind of the perverted man was as nauseating as a swim in a cesspool.

After the departure of the Ehleen and his party, Milo rode Steeltooth up the Trade road. He took only Horse-killer with him and was gone for three days. When he returned, he informed the chiefs that the Wind, which had guided them eastward, had spoken to him on the mountain and had told him how the horde of Ehleenoee might be exterminated at but little cost to His people. The Wind had further informed him that He had blown His people here for a purpose: In regaining their homeland by the Great Water, they were to free this land from the evil sway of the Ehleenoee who were an abomination in the sight of the gods. They were to purge the land of these human monsters and fulfill the ancient prophecy by rebuilding the paradisical city of their origin, Ehlai, on the site to which He would guide them.

Milo drew Hwil Kuk aside and explained what he had in mind, then he and Kuk rode north with a score of Kuk’s followers. The pass to which Kuk guided Milo lay about fifteen miles north of the Gap and Trade road. Sometime in the dim past, the path might have been paved, but today it was little more than a game trail, partially blocked here and there by old tree-covered rock slides: but Milo, Kuk, and the others found it passable, and they came down about eleven miles north of Lord Manos’ camp. Milo was satisfied and, on his return, set every able-bodied member of the tribe to “work on his plan.

After all the officers were hoarse from shouting, their arms aching from vainly wielding their whips and swords and lance butts, Manos disgustedly suggested that the spearmen be instructed to relay back the order to withdraw from the impassable pass. The embarrassed and exasperated officers jumped at the suggestion, and a score of dusty spearmen were given the command simultaneously. It soon sounded as if every one of the thousands of sweaty, iron-clad levymen was shouting over and over again, “Rock slide ahead. Move back. The Lord Manos commands to move back!”

Because of this highly dangerous noise, few were surprised to see rocks fall from the mountains; it was natural that rocks should fall from the frowning cliffs above the compact mass of the column. But then these rocks were followed by more and yet more rocks, and by pots of flaming oil and resin, and by blazing logs, and by sheet after deadly sheet of hissing arrows. What followed could not by any stretch of the term be called a battle—it was a slaughter, a butchery, pure and simple. In the press, few men were able to move their arms even to clutch at the wounds which killed them. They could but scream or croak and die, and even when dead, they could not fall. The din was indescribable, and none who heard it ever forgot the unbelievable sounds of men and horses as their flesh, covered with flaming oil or pitch, crisped and crackled; the shrieks of those men who, while not afire themselves, were suffering unguessable agonies as their bodies slowly roasted in white-hot armor. Some made frantic attempts to climb the smooth rock walls, only to fall back to a comparatively merciful death, impaled on the carpet of spearpoints below. Their cut-off screams but blended with the hellish a capella and, above it all,

crowing exultantly, skirled the war-pipes of the Horse-clans.

At the outset of the bombardment, those cavalrymen nearest the rockslide pulled themselves onto the barrier, climbed to the top, and dropped from sight. Seeing this, hundreds tried to follow, some dozens made it including a few of the Ehleenoee officers—Lord Manos among them—by sliding and crawling and skipping over the packed mass of burning men, over blazing saddles and sizzling horseflesh, dodging the snapping teeth of pain-maddened horses, through the unceasing rain of death. Few of the fugitives bore any sort of weapon when they fell to the far side of the rockslide. Those who did were quickly relieved of them by a detachment of leather-armored women, who soon had all those men fortunate enough to escape the blazing carnage stripped of armor, wrist-bound, yoked in coffles of twenty head and jogging campward, spurred by judicious pricks of saber or wolf-spear.

Twenty mercenary cavalry commanded by a half-Ehleenoee junior officer had brought up the rear of the long column of spearmen, acting as file-closers. They and the five or six hundred spearmen who had not been able to wedge into the pass had not known what to make of the confused shouting. But a trained ear is not necessary to fathom the unmistakable. It was not necessary to see the blazing, arrow-quilled men clawing their way out of the pass in order to know what was happening.

Apparently overlooking the fact that the road was impassable, Petros, a half-breed ensign, drew his sword and waved it. “Forward, men! The column’s been attacked.” The horsemen didn’t even look at him. Realizing that twenty men would not make a particle of difference to the eventual outcome even if they could force a way into the pass, and remembering that their pay was long overdue, they whirled their mounts and galloped back uphill. After a moment of indecision, Petros shrugged, sheathed his sword, and clattered after his command. Behind him—throwing away spears, shields, swords, and helmets—raced the remaining few hundreds of the spear-levy. None of them felt that the service due the High Lord included or should include broiling to death for him. By the time Petros managed to spur his foaming, staggering horse onto the plateau on which rested the site of the ancient city, the twenty mercenaries had already given their god-oaths and were walking their heated horses behind the five hundred hard-eyed, battle-ready Horse-clansmen. Petros died well, everyone said so.

When the first fours of the Kahtahphraktoee set hoof to the Trade road, Milo was informed of it by the cats who were scattered at even intervals all along the road leading to the army’s encampment area. Then he and Kuk and Kuk’s followers guided fifteen hundred nomad warriors over the pass they had scouted. While Manos sat among the ruins of Hwainzbroh, sipping warm wine and cursing everyone and everything in sight, maddened by the discomfort of dust and flies, Milo was pacing Steel-tooth among the bodies and wreckage of the Ehleenoee camp.

“My lord Milo… .“A horseman, one of Kuk’s men, galloped up to him. “Lord Milo, please … Hwil requests you come to the fort… it… it’s horrible. … He wants you should see it….”

The three bloodstreaked little bodies hung by the ankles. Before leaving that morning, Manos had gouged out their eyes, raggedly emasculated them, and left them to bleed to death. Two of the little chests bore the wide mark of a saber thrust. Hwil Kuk’s ashen face was tear-tracked, and there was precious little sanity in his eyes.

“I … I was searching … anything that had been little Hwili’s … remember him by … heard something in here. Oh gods! Two of them were still alive … begged me to kill them. I… I…” His quivering hand fumbled at his sword-hilt. Abruptly, he began to claw at his face, and mouth wide open, the tortured man began to scream mindlessly.

Milo grasped Kuk’s shoulder, spun him half-around, and slammed the side of one hard fist behind the screamer’s ear. In mid-scream, the ex-mercenary slumped to the floor. Two of his men tenderly carried him out of the chamber of horrors.

Milo mindcalled and Horsekiller responded. Soon he was at the fort and, working together, he and Milo did what they could to ease the mind of Hwil Kuk, tormented almost beyond endurance. When they had finished, they carried him out to a resting place in one of the officer’s tents. Awakening in that fort might have undone their therapy, too many memories, good and bad, lodged within its sooty walls.

On the morning of the sixth day after the massacre of the Ehleenoee army, as the last wagons of the tribe were toiling up the western grade of the now-cleared Gap, Milo sat Steeltooth, watching the eight hundred-odd survivors of the spear-levy disappear in the distance, trudging the Trade road toward Theesispolis. Milo had promised these men their freedom at the completion of the hard horrible labor he required of them: clearing the Gap of the debris—mineral, human, animal, and unidentifiable—which clogged it. He had more than kept his word, giving each of the peasants clothing, a knife, a scrip of food for the journey, a waterbag, and either a silver com or a handful of bronze ones, in addition to his freedom. In council, some of the chiefs had grumbled, but Milo had won them over. His reasons were many and sound. The peasants, who had contemplated death or a life of slavery, grasped eagerly at the promise of freedom. Considering the size of the undertaking, they performed the grisly, hideous work quickly and then went to work on the rockslide. Milo was amazed that they could do it at all, for after a couple of hot sunny days, few of the nomads could bear to ride within a mile of the carnal-reek. Aside from this easy method of disposing of the Gap’s highly odiferous blockage was the fact that Milo could see and fear what the nomad chiefs, in the beginning at least, could not: the terrible dangers involved in marching so large a number of able-bodied male slaves through their native country. Also to be considered was the propaganda effect. The returning peasants would spread news of the army’s disastrous defeat far and wide. Considering mankind’s penchant for exaggeration, each of the tribe’s hundreds of warriors would, in the telling, become thousands and untold thousands, each man would be eight feet tall, mounted on a Northorse, and cleaving a dozen men at a time with a six-foot saber. Lastly, if the tribe was to conquer and hold this land, they would need to win the confidence and support of the humbler Dirtmen. Cattle and horses could wax fat on grass alone, and the cats could do the same on meat, but men needed a more varied diet which called for farmers and these peasants were farmers. They would remember the generosity of the nomads—the clothing and food and money, especially the money. They would remember it and speak of it often and each tune they or those they told were abused by the Ehleenoee master, they would ponder the thought that some masters might prove less harsh than others.