A Cat Of Silvery Hue (12 page)

So it was this night. His lips left hers to first nuzzle at her soft throat, then kiss their way downward to end suckling one red-brown nipple, while a big hand crept from beneath her back to gently roll the other nipple between thumb and forefinger. When the uncommitted hand glided over her flat belly, she moaned, then softly gasped as his hard but tender fingers continued on into the damp tangle beyond. And even as that hand moved slowly, engulfing all of her being in joy-drenched agony, his lips forsook her nipple and returned to her throat. But now it was his even white teeth which served, inflicting tiny, stinging bites from the hollow of that throat around to the nape, then back up the slender column of her neck to her ear.

And the palms which had caressed his back were short-nailed claws which dug deep into his shoulders, tore oozing scratches in that freckled skin. Long shudders racked Aldora’s olive-tan body, her head lay thrown back, the eyelids tight closed and her lips skinned back from her teeth, while from her half-opened mouth issued an endless moan, interspersed with little whimpers of unbearable pleasure.

At last she began to gasp, “Oh, Bili…Bili…oh, Bili, love…Oh, please,
please
, Bili…oh, dear, sweet Bili, enter now…I beg of you, Bili, as you love Sacred Sun…Please, Bili, please…Bili…
Bili
…”

And much, much later, as they lay side by side, his hand clasping hers, a balmy nightwind flickering the lamp flames and soothing their bodies, his mind touched her own.

“Aldora, I am ignorant of many things, but horses and riding I know well. It is ten days’
hard
riding from Morguhn to the nearest of the Middle Kingdoms, so it is just not possible that any galloper could have covered that distance and let it be known that there was a market here for Freefighters in time for them to start arriving in Morguhn only two weeks after I remarked the need for them. What sorcery do you practice, Aldora?”

“Not sorcery, Bili, farspeak.”

“No!” He shook his shaven head, speaking aloud in his vehemence. “I know something of farspeak, Aldora. Most talented is the farspeaker who can range more than a score and ten miles, and even then he must know well the mind to which he speaks!”

A smile flitted across her face. “Oh, darling Bili, there is truly much you now know not But you will. I doubt you could believe now the multitude of new skills you’ll learn, the abilities you’ll learn you possess and can develop once we get this devilish rebellion scotched and—but that is future, my love.”

“As for farspeak, generally speaking, you’re right, though training and practice can sometimes extend the range of one with minimal ability. Certain exceptional people, however, are born with fantastic range. I am one such, love. We have never had a way of determining just how great is my range. And the vast majority of farspeakers, who are normally limited to five or ten or twenty or forty miles, can still range far, far out if they take the time or are given the opportunity to acquire the skills of melding their minds with others in order to transmit with the combined force.”

“The Undying High Lady Mara and Milo—she is almost devoid of farspeak, and he, with Sun and Wind know how many centuries of practice, can, under ideal conditions, range all of fifteen miles!—this is how they range distances, by drawing on the added power of another mind. But the mind must be willing to be so used, and it must be conscious and rational.”

Bili interrupted. “Yes, Aldora, I know a little of this, come to think of it. One of the Sanderz prairiecats, Whitetip, told me that the High Lord had contacted you through his mind on the night my brother was…slain. But he mentioned it sometime during that first, wild, hectic day of pursuit and, quite honestly, I’d forgotten it until now.”

She did not return to her discussion, but asked, “How many…on how many levels of mindspeak can you operate, Bili?”

“Uhhhh…lets see. Well, personal, of course, and broadbeam, farspeak…within limits, of course. That’s about it, unless my, uhhh…
ability
to foresense danger be considered a part of mindspeak.”

She shrugged. “Some would say yes, some no, but the fact that you can is not really important in itself. What is important, Bili, is what your possession of that rare ability reveals to those who can recognize its hidden meanings.”

“I don’t follow, Aldora.”

She sat up and crossed her shapely legs, running a fingertip along the scar of an old swordcut slanted across his chest. “Your formative years were spent either in warfare or in preparation for it, and is not your foresensing a very valuable ability for a warrior?”

“Yes, Aldora, it’s saved my skin on numerous occasions.”

Nodding, she then asked, “How many of your peers in Harzburk possessed mindspeak ability?”

Reaching out, he brought her hand to his lips, kissing the fingertip which had brushed his chest. “Well, it’s not really rare in the Middle Kingdoms, though it’s not customarily used as much as it is in the Confederation for some reason. I’d say maybe three burkers out of five have it to a greater or lesser degree. Why?”

“And,” she inquired, arching her brows, “how many of your peers possessed the ability to foresense danger as accurately as you do, love?”

“None,” he answered flatly. “I’ve never met anyone here or there who could actually
sense
as I do. Oh, many men have premonitions; I have those too, but it’s not at all the same.”

“No,” Aldora nodded slowly, “it’s not. It’s as a lampflame to Sacred Sun. But as I said, the ability itself, while valuable to one who is practically a professional warrior, means less than what your development of it means.”

“Sun and Wind, woman,” he snapped, “will you stop speaking in ciphers? After all, I’m a poor, short-lived man. I lack the wisdom of an Undying.”

She threw back her head and pealed her silvery laughter at the high, frescoed ceiling. “If I knew a way to make you such, my young stallion, you would be, and less for your mattress prowess than for your wit.”

“But more seriously, what your rare talent indicates is an equally rare mind, Bili; a mind which not only recognized and fulfilled the need for a definite survival trait, but was
capable
of such fulfillment! For, if your mind is sufficiently versatile and adaptable without proper training, what stupendous feats might you accomplish when provided with the skills to consciously call forth who knows what from within yourself?”

“And, apropos hidden abilities, I spoke with a merchant in Kehnooryos Atheenahs who told me a very interesting tale. It seems that he and some of his associates were journeying from the Kaliphate to the Confederation by way of the Eastern Trade Road, their wagons loaded with rich goods. At some spring camp in the County of Getzburk they and their Freefighters were set upon by a large and determined pack of brigands, and though they fought with stern resolution, it seemed certain that they must all soon be slain.”

“Then, from the hill behind them came the unmistakable tumult of a full troop of
kahtahfrahktoee
or dragoons at the charge. Not only the merchants and their servants and Freefighters heard this troop, the robbers did too, and they consequently beat a quick, if disorganized, retreat—though because of rain and fog and ground mist, none could see the patrol.”

“Yet, when the brigands were all fled and the rescued would have thanked their rescuers, what did they discover but that there was no troop, only a single armored axeman and his black warhorse. Yet
all
had
heard
the shouted commands, the chorus of war cries, the clanking and clashing of arms and equipment; they’d
felt
the drumming of scores of hooves and
seen
brief glimpses of a
full patrol
!”

“And that merchant told me the name of his rescuer, as well. And do you know, love, the name he gave was yours, Sir Bili Morguhn?”

Bili’s mindshield snapped into place like a steel visor, and so his answer was, perforce, spoken aloud. “It’s as I told the merchant, Yahseer—it was just a case of fog and mist and, on the part of the brigands, fear, and, on the part of the others, wishful thinking, that let them imagine my sortie was the charge of a patrol…though, naturally, I did shout the orders and tell my horse to make lots of noise, but…”

She only grinned, her disbelief obvious, then went on, “And I recently spoke with another man who told me of a grim little set-to under the walls of besieged Behreezburk. He told me of a young axeman who rode out as surrogate for his king to meet the lord of that burk in personal combat. He told me of how that burk lord had, most dishonorably, concealed two armed, armored and mounted members of his bodyguard and how, when it became clear to him that his strength and weapons skills could not prevail against his opponent, he basely whistled up his dogs to cut down a man who had met him with the understanding that theirs was to be a single combat.”

“This man told me of how the two guards charged in on their lord’s flanks, yet suddenly threw up their shields and commenced to flail their swords
at empty air
, as if engaging enemies no one else could see! Then he told of how this young axeman cut down first the treacherous burk lord—who would, he said, have been slain by his own men had he survived, since he had so dishonored a sacred Swordoath—then the two bodyguards, who until their very deaths continued to flail away at nonexistent foemen.”

“This man said that throughout the rest of that siege all in both armies called that valiant fighter ‘Bili the Axe’ and that, as a result of his prowess in that encounter, the King of Harzburk knighted him who slew the burk lord. This man attests that this same Bili the Axe is now called
thoheeks
and Chief of Morguhn. Those are your titles, are they not, beloved?”

“You know damned well they are!” Bili growled from betwixt clenched teeth.

“Then,” she asked lightly, “is there not another talent of which you wish to tell me, sweetling?”

He glowered at her, snarling, “Damn that Hohguhn’s wormy guts! He’s Swordoathed to
me
, dammit. When he gets back from Horse County, I’ll—”

Her demeanor and tone became serious, then. “
Thoheeks
Bili will do nothing of a foolish or hostile nature to Free fighter Bohreegahd Hohguhn…not if he be truly the shrewd and sagacious chief that all believe him, that I would hope the man I have honored with my love to be.”

“Besides, Hohguhn has no faintest germ of an idea that you had aught to do with bemusing those two would-be murderers. He thinks they must have been drunk or had mixed hemp juice with their tobacco. And this seems to have been the consensus of those who watched the combat from within Behreezburk.”

“I can understand and appreciate your desire to keep the way you really triumphed a secret, since in Harzburk the knowledge that you had so slain three men might have seen you haled up before a Swordcouncil on charges of dishonorable conduct and witchcraft; nor would the owner of such unheard-of powers be either knighted or invested with the Order of the Bear of Harzbruk.

“But, sweetheart, if ever again you return to the Middle Kingdoms, it will be as but a visiting nobleman from another realm. Nor will you, if ever that day comes, wish to display your bear, since, at the conclusion of this present unpleasantness, Milo means to see you wear a cat.”

At his stunned expression, her laughter pealed once more. “Oh, poor Bili, you look as if smitten with your own great axe.” She sobered and her voice softened perceptibly. “But if anyone in this duchy deserves a cat, it is you, my love; so says the Undying High Lord Milo of Morai. Though bemused by a blow on the helm toward the end, he was conscious during the whole of that fight you commanded at what-do-you-call-it Bridge, and he avows that seldom in all his centuries of life has he witnessed such feats of prowess and selfless valor as you displayed, Bili.”

She moved closer and, taking his big hand in both her smaller ones, said softly, “And the Undying Lady Aldora will be both happy and deeply honored to take part in your investiture, my own
thoheeks
, and she will feel fierce pride when all the capital sees you ride your great horse forward to salute your High Lord, hear him recount your glorious exploits to the assembled Holders of the Cat, then receive from his hands the jeweled symbol of the Confederation’s gratitude. But I alone will know that there be far more to this newest member of the Order of the Cat than only courage and expertise at war. I will know that your stark ferocity be tempered with tenderness, your bravery with love. My only regret will be then, as it now is, that all the wonders we share must so soon end…” Her voice broke then, trailed off, her shoulders and head drooped.

“But why,” he demanded brusquely, “why must our…our love end, Aldora? I can let my brother, Tcharlee, rule Morguhn, can have him declared
thoheeks
and chief, can come to Kehnooryos Atheenahs and be with you as long as I live!”

“Yes, my Bili, as long as you live.” She raised her head, brushing her long black hair away from her heart-shaped, now tear-streaked, face, fixed his hurt and angry blue eyes with the gaze of her black, swimming eyes. “And each new day would see my love for you grow in depth and intensity, and each new day would see you one day older, one day closer to death. And as advancing age set hateful teeth to gnawing painfully at that splendid body, I would be the same as I am now. And you could not but resent such an injustice, my love, and so even as my love for you increased, your love would be souring from resentment to dislike to hate and—no, be still, let me finish.”

“I know what you were going to say, the denials you were about to make, but please believe me, love, I know the truth of what I have said, for I have seen and experienced it…many times. If we Undying be truly cursed, as the Ehleen priests avow, this be the curse: an endless time of loneliness with but brief, tantalizing snatches of real happiness or love.”

“Then there is this, Bili. You are a rare man, a rare and wonderful combination of assets. It would be the most terrible of misdeeds not to bend every effort of will in persuading you to breed soon and often, that your precious strain may be carried on to the enrichment and glory of the Confederation in coming generations. Nothing would give me more joy than to be able to bear your sons and daughters, sweet love, but we Undying can neither sire nor conceive, even among ourselves.”