Trumpets of War

VII

When the dyingvahrohnos had imbibed of a stoup of brandy-water and had been propped up more comfortably on the old, blotched, moldy mattress, he spoke marginally clearer and in a slightly stronger voice. Ignoring both the old stains and the fresh blood, Grand Strahteego Pahvlos sat on the edge, beside this onetime subordinate, and was recounted a tale of pure horror, told of events that plumbed the very depths of human cruelty.

“As you no doubt recall, my lord Komees,” said Iahnos of Ippohskeera, “my leg never healed properly from that injury I took at your great victory at Ahrbahkootchee, and so—as I was unable to sit a horse easily or securely anymore at speeds beyond a slow walk—it were an impossibility for me to go a-warring as did my overlord and right many of my peers in the hellish years of the interregnum; no, rather did I bide here, at home, and oversee the working of my lands, but rarely even visiting my small city, which task fell to my eldest son, also named Pehtros, in memory of the man I so loved, my wife’s first husband, your son.

“It was hard on the boy to just sit out all the campaigning and the glory-seeking that so many of the nobility were just then doing, and so when Zastros returned from his exile and marched through here with his great host, I made no slightest demur to Pehtros taking half the garrison and quite a few boys and young men from the hold and the hold village to sally forth as spearmen for Zastros. The true king was dead, by that time, and I felt then that Zastros would make probably as good a monarch as Fahrkos. But poor Pehtros never reaped any glory; alas, he died of camp fever before Zastros ever was coronated, while still he and his swelling host were marching to and fro about the kingdom. Some few of my boy’s men came back here to bring me the sad word and his ashes, the rest were pressed into another nobleman’s following. His young widow—a daughter of Opokomees Deeahneesos Likeenos of Ehlahkahnooskeera—moved with his infant son and her household out here from the city, that we might the better share our grief, I suppose.

“Then Zastros made himself king and, almost immediately, his officers and their recruiting parties were marching about the lands, taking men for the army he was forming at very swordpoint, leaving behind only the old, the young and the crippled men. They stripped the villages and the city and even this hold, leaving me only some six old or infirm men.

“And so when that great host of bandits swept down on my barony, we were all as a tree ripe for plucking, with precious few to guard. They must have come in from the north or the west, for they fell upon the city, first; we could see the smoke from its burning. It was then that I brought the folk and kine of the nearer village behind these walls here, but it was all for naught, in the end. This pack, my lord, they are not your usual run of bandit hordes, you see, they have all classes of troops and even a siege train.

“They first came marching up the road as bold as brass and called upon me to surrender the hold; well, I gave the baseborn scum the only answer they deserved for such impudence. Next they assaulted the hold in force, but slender and ill-trained as were my own forces, we sent them reeling back with heavy casualties; the wounded cried under the walls for the rest of that day and into the night that followed.

“The second day, they again assaulted us and were again driven off. Then they brought up their engines and began to hurl stones at the walls and pitchballs over them, and me with only two small engines with which to make reply. They so weakened two sections of the front wall as to make them untenable, then three shrewdly aimed engine stones burst in the main gates. That was when they launched their third and final assault, the bastards.

“Mine fought well and stubbornly, to my pride and their glorious memory, my lord. My skimpy garrison, my few servants, the men and women and even the children of the village. Mehleena and my daughter-in-law fitted themselves into armor and fought upon the walls from the very first day, as too did my younger children. We resisted every bit of ground, even when theenemy were within the walls, and we cost them a dear price for what was by then left of the hold.

“But it could not last, there were simply too few of us and too many of them. All too soon, there were only a handful of us left, and I tried to repair with them up here, into the old keep, but the hall was still burning here and there, and the access was therefore blocked. We made our last stand, such as it was, in the northeast tower, and when it became obvious that we must be overrun by them, brave Dohra, my daughter-in-law, knew what to do. She took her babe in her steel-clad arms, climbed to the very apex of the tower, threw him off, then jumped herself, too proud to live as a slave.

“We fought them from the walltop level of the tower up through its height, but so much climbing had weakened my bad leg, and in the midst of cutting down my last opponent, it collapsed beneath me and the subsequent fall deprived me of consciousness, so I did not see the end.

“When my wits returned, my lord, I was lying, tightly bound, in the courtyard down there. It was the screams had brought me around. My wife, Mehleena, had been stripped and was being held down while bandit after bandit took his turn at ravishing her.”

Old Pahvlos gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, but did not interrupt the recountal of the dying nobleman.

“Nor was she the only victim, my lord,” thevahrohnos went on in a gradually weakening voice. “The beasts had brought in the pitiful, broken dead body of Dohra and were defiling it as well, along with the still-living bodies of two ancient withered crones and three little girl-children from the village. The beasts also defiled the dead bodies of some of the men and boys who had died in battle.

“But rapine was not their only activity there; numbers of them were looting the smoldering wreck of the hall and were stripping armor and weapons from the dead that lay scattered about. Then twomen, both fully armored and mounted on decent horseflesh, rode into the courtyard. They had me dragged up before them and demanded to know where I kept my gold. I answered truthfully that I was a country vahrohnos and so owned precious little of value save my lands, but of course I was not believed and was put to the strenuous question.

“Under torture, hours of one’s agony seem to pass, but I know that it was not so long. At one point, they gave over mutilating me and offered me a place in their ranks, whereupon I spit on them and they had at me again. At length, I suppose they just decided thateither I had told the truth in the beginning and there was no gold hidden in what was left of the hold or that they might torment me unto death without forcing the location of any secret hoard from me.

“The merciless swine had me dragged to a spot near the inner gate where an iron ring was affixed into the stonework, and they chained me to that ring. They had pulled down one of the two great iron hooks that raised and lowered thekrehmahoti and ground and filed a sharp point on it. Poor Mehleena lay as one dead, still splayed as they had left her, only the slight rise and fall of her mangled breasts noting that life still remained in her savaged body.

“The human animals dragged her over to a point that was just beyond my farthest reach, chained as I was, and there they—with many callous jests and jokes—ran that sharp point through her lower bowels from back to front, then hoisted her up to hang on that cruel hook from one of the timbers that supported the wall walk.

“That enormitycommitted, everything that they coveted or could use having been borne away, they hacked the heads off all those other poor women still showing any trace of life and impaled them on the points of spears. Then they all departed, leaving me to watch and listen to my dear wife die in unspeakable agony and me unable to do aught to aid her. By the time two good commoner men—who had happened to be out from the village hunting for a lost ewe and seeing what was taking place had wisely lain low until they were certain it was over and the last of the bandit horde were well away—came and released me from my chains, God had at last granted Mehleena the boon of death, may He rest her soul.

“They released me . . . but they did not stay, for some reason. They cannot have gotten far, however, for they were afoot ... I think. And that was only a week ago . . . no, maybe as much as two weeks, but surely no longer, surely not.”

All at once, Iahnos’ eyes brightened and he showed his broken, blood-slimed teeth in a smile, looking at the door and saying, “Why, there you are, Mehleena, love. Look who has come to visit us. Go and fetch the children that little Pehtros may greet his godfather, the illustrious Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos, he has marched all the way from . . . from Thrah ...”

Choking, then, he coughed upa great gout of blood and shuddered strongly for his entire length. A groping hand found Pahvlos’ and he gripped it weakly, his one eye open but obviously unseeing any living person. His gory lips moved, but Pahvlos had to lean very close to hear the words spoken.

“Ah, Pehtros, my dear friend, how handsome you are, you . . .”

And then the life went out of his withered, mutilated body.

Once a pyre had been laid and the husk of Captain of Heavy Horse Vahrohnos Iahnos Kahtohahros of Ippohskeera placed upon it, Pahvlos and the rest combed the weedy courtyard until they found the huge, rusted portcullis hook where it had finally fallen when the rope had rotted through and collected all of the human bones left on the ground around it. These, the skulls from off the spears and all the other bones they had found here and there were spread out around the body of him who had been lord here.

As he and the army recommenced their interrupted march westward, the smoke from the pyre still was rising into the clear blue summer sky above the ruined hall.

Another day brought them to the environs of the City of Ippohspolis, and although patent evidences of attack, sack and burnings still were to be seen by the practiced, experienced military eye, it also was clear that folk still dwelt therein. The walls and gates had been repaired; the wink of burnished metal atop that circuit of walls announced that they were defended, and numerous plumes of smoke ascended from within.

When the army’s herald announced just who led this force, the gates were opened and, presently, a mounted cavalcade of some dozen men issued forth to greet the Grand Strahteegos. Their leader was a one-armed man in battered but sound three-quarter armor.

“My lord Strahteegos, I am Gabreeos Pehrkohlis, deputy lord of this city. My lord, you cannot believe just how joyous are we all to see you and a real, legal army in this long-troubled land. Does this mean that the warrings all are done? Do we once more have a king? The few traders who have braved the roads have spoken of one Thoheeks Grahvos, who rules not from the ancient crown-city, but from a ducal city named Mehteepolis, or something like that. Is my lord this king’s strahteegos! Is this his army, then?”

The man’s manner was respectful enough, but his speech came out all in a rush that indicated the gnawing hunger for sound news that griped at him and the other city folk of this provincial backwater.

“Lord Gabreeos,” replied Pahvlos, “there is no king, nor will there everbe another in these lands of ours. Rather are we to be ruled by a confederation of thirty-three thoheeksee, ruling from Mehseepolis, in the east. Thoheeks Grahvos claims no crown; he is but the chosen spokesman of all the others of his peers in civil rank.

“Yes, I have the great honor to here lead the larger part of the army of the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee of Southern Ehleenohee and I am marching west to eject a usurper and his pack of robbers from a distant thoheekseeahn and place the rightful thoheeks in the place of his fathers.

“The wars between the nobles are done, God grant that such turmoil never again beset our lands and people.”

A chorus of “Ahmeen!” came from the riders behind the deputy lord.

“Who appointed you deputy lord of this city, Lord Gabreeos?” asked Pahvlos bluntly.

“My lord Strahteegos,” that worthy replied readily, “I was given the rank in a public ceremony by poor young Lord Pehtros before he rode off to his death with the host of High King Zastros, and I have held it ever since that dark day, doing the best I could with what I had. The city fell once, years back, to a huge bandit army, but even as they stormed in through the breaches their engines had battered in our walls, I was herding most of the still-living people down into the old, secret ways burrowed under parts of the city, so more lived to rebuild the city than might.”

“And your landlord, the Vahrohnos Iahnos, what of him?” asked old Pahvlos blandly.

Lord Gabreeos sighed and shook his head. “After the bandit army had done with our city, my lord, they marched on the villages to the east and the hold of thevahrohnos. We saw the smoke from the directions of the villages, of course, but our circumstances then were simply too straitened to go to aid them or the vahrohnos, alas. Then the bandits all marched north, out of the barony, and after some week or so, a brace of shepherds came walking to the city to say that the hold had fallen, been sacked and partly burned, and that the only soul left in it when they had overcome their terror and gone in had been Vahrohnos Iahnos himself, chained to a wall. They went on to say that he had been tortured terribly and one of his eyes had been torn out. They had released him, done what little they could for him—ignorant, unskilled herders that they admittedly were, knowing sheep and dogs better than folk—then had decided to come here and seek more and better help.

“I was just then abed, having lost an arm to the black rot, but there then was an old soldier still alive in the city and he took our physician and a surgeon along with his party and made haste over to the hold. But they could never find the poor Vahrohnos, search the stinking charnel house the hold was become as they might, from top to bottom and wall to wall. Finally, having seen a distant column of riders from atop one of the towers and understandably fearing a return of the bandits, they quitted the place and came back here as fast as their legs would bear them. In the years since, several parties have gone there, but no living man ever has been found within it. Recently, certain superstitious persons have noised it about that the ruined hold is haunted by the shades of those there slain.”

When Pahvlos had told the sad story to the deputy lord of the city, he asked, “Lord Gabreeos, you clearly are of noble blood. What was your relation to the House of Kahtohahros, now, sadly, extinct in the main branch?”

The deputy lord smiled and shrugged, self-deprecatingly. “Not very close, my lord Strahteegos, a distant cousin. And I only am half a noble, for my mother was the daughter of a merchant of this city.”

“Well, Lord Gabreeos,” growled Pahvlos, “you, distant cousin or no, are about as close to the ancient stock as we’re like to get, this late in the game. I think you’d better start getting used to calling yourself Vahrohn os-designate Gabreeos Kahtohahros. Deliver up to me written oaths to support the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee of the Southern Ehleenohee, and when I get back to Mehseepolis I will see that the documents confirming you to that title and the lands and city are forwarded to you.”

He turned to the rest of the citizens making up the cavalcade, saying, “What of you all? You know you need and must someday have another lord of this barony. Would you rather have a strange, alien nobleman chosen by the council of Thoheeksee or one of your own, Lord Gabreeos here?”

Their near-hysterical cheers were all that he needed to know that he had chosen aright, in this case. And, after all, Thoheeks Grahvoshad granted him such authority to fill vacant titles.

After receiving the written oaths required and promising that on his return march he would leave a few dozen pikemen and some lancers on loan to the barony, Grand Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos and his army marched on in the direction of Kahlkopolis.

In the week that it took them to finally cross the Lootrah River and so come into the lands of Ahramos’ patrimony at last, Pahvlos’ mind was very troubled, and its boiling thoughts cost him several nights of precious sleep.

It was not the tragedies of Ippohskeera, really, although they had a part in it all. No, old Pahvlos was accustomed—if not really ever inured—to personal loss; his wives, his lovers, his sons and his daughters, all had died in their primes, as had full many a one of his dearest friends, while he lived on to mourn them. Ahramos, his grandson out of his youngest daughter, Pehtra, twin sister of Pehtros, was now the only male of his line left to say the rites over his husk when finally he went to join in death all of those others who had been so dear to him.

His first, young, much-loved wife had died in trying to bear the first child of his loins, and now, after all the years, he still could hear in his mind her voice, though he could barely recall exactly what she had looked like. His second wife had died of a great fever that had swept the capital one summer long ago; she had left him with two sons and a daughter, but the pox had taken off the girl and had left both of the boys badly marked with “the devil’s kiss.” That had been when he had resolved that his next wife would remain in the more salubrious, rural environs of hiskomeeseeahn, and so it had been, though he often had been lonely for them, despite the lovers he had enjoyed in the capital and on campaigns.

Ehlveera, his third wife, had lived and produced a child per year for eleven years, though of course only four of them had lived to adulthood; she had succumbed to a terrible bout of colic while he had been on that long, hellish campaign in the northern mountains, against the indigenous barbarians. That particular campaign had also cost the dear life of his much-loved eldest son, who had suffered a deathwound while serving as an ensign with one of three companies that had held a pass against the foe until the rest of the army could come up and crushingly defeat them. The lad’s body had still been warm when Pahvlos had arrived and been informed, but he had only had enough time to clasp it to his armored breast once and kiss the pock-marked, so-pale cheeks before he needs must dash the tears from his eyes and go on to lead his regiments against the howling barbarians.

His second son had died some years later during a sea fight against pirates; he had been a lieutenant of fleet soldiers and had been thrown into the sea from a catapult platform when his ship was suddenly rammed by a pirate bireme. Both his third and his fourth sons had died in one battle against northern barbarians. The fifth, Pehtros, had died gloriously during the battle that had put paid to one of the earlier rebellions against King Hyamos’ senile despotism.

Pahvlos’ fourth wife, although she had lived long, and been congenial and an excellent stepmother to his children and wards, had proved barren. As she had matured, she had run heavily to fat, as did many an Ehleen woman, but she still never had failed to be loving and jolly with her family and the husband whose press of duties allowed him to visit her and his bucolic domain so infrequently. At last, bedridden after suffering a seizure that had left her partially paralyzed, she had begun to cough up blood and had died a week later.

By the time of his great victory at the Battle of Ahrbahkootchee, of all Pahvlos’ onetime family only one daughter remained alive. This had been Pehtra, wed to the Thoheeks of Kahlkos, with a young son and an infant girl by him. After her husband’s death, certain occurrences had led the widowed Pehtra to believe that some of the late thoheeks’ advisers were inimical to her and the children, so she and a coterie of still-faithful servants and retainers had, of a night, carried out a carefully planned escape from the city and the duchy that had for so long been her home and fled to the haven offered by her birthplace.

There they had stayed until a wasting fever had carried off both mother and daughter within the space of a bare fortnight, sparing the son, however. By then, Pahvlos had been living in quiet and cautious retirement, having been dismissed from the army he had for so long commanded through triumph after glorious triumph. After wedding the widow of a city-lord, a sometime vassal, he and his new wife had taken over the proper rearing and education of his grandson, Ahramos.

When, some seven months before, his middle-aged “bride” had died suddenly of apoplexy, he had decided that with the new Council of Thoheeksee having established at least a modicum of order to the land, the time had arrived when Ahramos should return to the city of his father and claim the lands and the title that were his patrimony.

Yes, the old nobleman knew well loss and its attendant pain, but these were not what troubled his sleeping and waking thoughts, day after day, night after night. No, it was his open, imaginative and creative mind—that flexible mind the easily adjustable thinking patterns of which had given birth to so many stunning strategies and tactics, often on the very spur of the moment and usually resulting in smashing victories over a host of enemies over the long years.

Now faced with things he had for all of his previous life—some seventy years of it—considered ridiculous, impossible tales, he was being forced to admit to himself that these things not might be but must be possible realities.

From the very beginning, he had scoffed at the Horseclanners’ oft-vaunted supposed abilities to read minds, communicate silently with each other and communicate with certain dumb beasts—their horses, their great war-cats and elephants. His certainties had first begun to crumble, however, even before the army had marched, when he had been confronted with the uncanny ability of the barbarian Horseclanner feelahksee to put their three pachyderms through intricate maneuvers that he had never before seen even the best-trained and best-controlled war-elephants perform in either drill or actual combat.

He had not objected overmuch to the horse-archers bringing their war-cats along, even though they had flatly refused to either cage or chain them on the march, for certain of the barbarian tribes of the northern mountains trained and used huge, fearsome war-dogs in battle, so he recognized that could the cats be as well controlled, they just might be a definite advantage. Besides, he truly treasured the Horseclanner barbarians’ rare combination of military values, and as they had refused to march without the cats, he had acquiesced as gracefully as he could. Nor had he had any slightest cause to regret that acquiescence since, for there had been not even one attack by the felines against men or beast in camp, column, remuda or ration herd. The huge, toothy beasts had seemed quite content to feast on the lights of slaughtered beeves or, sometimes, hunt their own wild meat, never to his knowledge having harmed domestic stock in the lands through which they had passed on the march.

With more than enough plans and problems and worries to occupy his mind, he had let the business of telepathy with beasts slip far, far down into the depths of his consciousness . . . until that queer business at the ruined hold of Ippohskeera had brought it all bubbling up to the surface again and at a full, rolling boil.

There simply was no earthly way that Chief Pawl Vawn could have known that poor Vahrohnos Iahnos had a crippled leg, a missing eye and a hideously scarred face and was quite mad. Pahvlos knew for fact that the captain of the barbarian horse-archers had not left the camp that night, not even for minutes, much less for the length of time it would have taken a man to cover the distance between camp and hold and do it twice at that. Nor was there any possible way that the barbarian auxiliary could have known, there upon those winding stairs, exactly what lay ahead, that the wounded, dying man’s only weapon was a rusted sword with a broken blade.

Therefore, Pahvlos could not but begin to fully accept the patent impossible as existing fact: these Horseclanner barbarians somehow had developed and fully mastered an eerie talent to join their minds with those of animals and each other. Once his mind had accepted it all fully, Pahvlos enjoyed a refreshing, night-long sleep, and when he awakened, resolved to question Chief Pawl, Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz, and selected others in some depth, then begin to determine just how these new gifts could be made of use to him and to the army and to the state.

At last, after long weeks on the march, the army crossed the Lootrah River and were within the Thoheekseeahn of Kahlkos, though still a couple of days’ march from the ducal seat, Kahlkopolis. Because they took the time to reduce two holds along the way, however, it took them a full week to reach the capital. Neither of the holds had been strongly held, but Pahvlos held a belief that bypassed foes could often present unexpected dangers at very untoward moments. The reductions had cost him very little, only a bare handful ofcasualties, and a certain amount of welcome information had been obtained from the survivors of the garrisons before they had been executed. Pahvlos had never had a reputation for cruelty in warfare, but he could see no point in burdening himself with a gaggle of captive banditti; most had likely owned necks long overdue for the short, sharp acquaintance with a broadaxe, anyway, that or the tight, lingering embrace of a hempen rope.

With his rear and flanks swept clear of potential attackers, old Pahvlos marched his army up to within sight of the walls of the city held by the usurper and began to erect a strong mounded and ditched camp near the banks of a swift-flowing brook. The pioneers and artificiers had just felled and dragged in from a nearby forest a sufficiency of treetrunks to provide lumber for assembling the larger engines when a herald was seen riding toward them from Kahlkopolis. The Grand Strahteegos immediately dispatched his own herald to meet this visitor from the enemy.

After a few minutes, the army’s herald—avahrohnos, one Djehros of Kahktohskeera—rode back at a brisk amble to salute and report, “My lord Strahteegos, a gentleman-officer named Stehrgiahnos desires to come here to the camp and meet with you—he, the herald yonder, and a small attending party.”

Pahvlos shrugged and said, “Certainly, I’ll meet with him here, just so long as he does not expect me or one of my own officers to return the visit, that is.”

As Vahrohnos Djehros rode back out onto the broad, rolling, grassy plain, Pahvlos summoned his staff and ordered, “Throw out strong, wide-ranging mounted patrols all around us and hold every fighting man at the ready, full armed. Something about all of this stinks, andam I to be surprised, I want to be ready for it.”

The Grand Strahteegos treated Stehrgiahnos with every ounce of the contempt that he felt the renegade nobleman deserved, and then some more for good measure. No wine was proffered, not even a chair or a stool. Pahvlos and an assortment of his officers sat behind a table—armed, wearing at least half-armor, their sheathed swords all lying on the tabletop near to hand.

“Look you, my lords,” began the enemy officer, “this Mainahkos holds the duchy and city and has held them now for years, with no opposition or even a hint of dissatisfaction amongst the people. He has been a good lord and has been fair in all his dealings with his subjects, you see.

“Now it is widely known that this Council of Thoheeksee sitting in Mehseepolisare confirming some unrelated claimants to titles if the original house is extinct, as this one of Kahlkos seems to be. So why should not the Council of Thoheeksee simply list this duchy as Klehpteekos—I mean Klehftikos—rather than Kahlkos and confirm the present overlord-in-fact as the legal overlord?

“My lords, I believe that this solution would be far the simplest, least painful and least costly one, for all concerned. Yes, you lead a fine, large, fully equipped army here; pains were taken to show me its strengths as I was conducted through the camp to this pavilion. Nonetheless, I am of the opinion that our army is from a third to a half again bigger than this one, and although you have more cavalry, we have more infantry, which will serve us far better in the event of a siege than will your cavalry serve you then. Nor would such a siege be short, for the city is well provisioned, well armed with a plethora of engines of all sizes and types, and blessed with more than enough uninterdictible sources of pure water in the forms of natural springs and deep wells.

“So, then, my lords, why not send fast riders to Mehseepolis and have our puissant Lord Mainahkos confirmed new thoheeks! True, he is baseborn, but then I suspect that the progenitors of more than one of our most noble houses were just such, did we but know the truth.”

“I take note that you have not named the patronymic of your own house of origin, Lord Stehrgiahnos,” said Pahvlos scathingly, “nor can I say that I blame you, for your shameful service to an honorless bandit chief has dishonored you and degraded your house irrevocably. Indeed, did I suspect us two to be even distantly related, I think that I should fall on my sword in pure shame.

“But as regards your proposal, were the House of Kahlkos indeed extinct, there might possibly be a bare nugget of sense in what you have said. But the house is not extinct; here, at this very table, sits the rightful heir, the thoheeks by birth.” He nodded his white head down the table in the direction of his grandson, who sat stiffly and blankfaced in his dusty armor and helm.

“Young Ahramos there is the last living son of the late last Thoheeks of Kahlkos and is my own grandson. His just claim far outweighs that of any ruffianly usurper, no matter where he squats, aping his betters and aspiring to their place, nor how long he has been there.”

From where he stood before the table, Stehrgiahnos eyed the tall, husky heir critically, then said, “Well, there still is a way in which we might avoid a general bloodletting, my lords, a most ancient and an honorable way. That expedient is to arrange a simple, old-fashioned session in arms between Lord Mainahkos and the pretender to the title you present here.”

“Cow flop!” snorted Pahvlos scornfully. “In addition to being an arrant traitor to your class, a disgrace to your house, and personally without enough real honor to make an end to your miserable life, you clearly also lack the wits of a braying jackass or even a slimy corpse worm . . . and I warn you, sirrah, if you make the cardinal mistake of actually trying to draw that blade, I’ll see you—truce-breaker that you then will have become—lose that hand at the rate of one joint per hour before you leave my camp!

“To begin, now, Thoheeks-designate Ahramos, far from being some pretender claimant, is the rightful overlord of the Thoheekseeahn of Kahlkos, thoheeks by his birth and lineage. As such, he deserves and is being afforded the firm support of every loyal, right-thinking nobleman of this new Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee, which is precisely why my army and I are here, since upon the occasion of his first visit to his patrimonial lands and city, he barely escaped with his life from the minions of your precious bandit chief.

“The sort of resolution which you have suggested never applied, even in ancient times, to a situation of this sort. It was thought to be legal and binding only for cases wherein both contenders owned an equal birthright or wherein neither owned such.

“Besides which, no gentleman—notrue gentleman—of my army is going forth to meet a common, baseborn criminal to fight an honorable duel on terms of a nonexistent equality. I find it indicative of just how far you have descended into the slime that you would even suggest so completely dishonorable a course before me and these gentleman-officers.

“Now, unless you wish to discuss terms of surrender of the city, leave my camp at once and hie you back to your kennelmates; the very sight, sound and stench of you are an affront of my senses. If I should want to see you again, I’ll whistle you up as I would any mongrel hound.”