A Cat Of Silvery Hue (17 page)

So no one in camp thought it odd that Geros should spend the most of every evening absorbing the rudiments of swordplay and spearfence, gaining increasing accuracy with cast weapons, learning unarmed rough-and-tumble and even borrowing a hornbow on occasion. The shy, timid valet and musician who, in an agony of terror, had accidentally speared two rebels on a darkened Horse County road while fleeing a battle had become in the few short months since a capable, self-assured fighter, who could deliver hard, true blows. Though polite and soft-spoken as ever, there was that in his eyes and bearing which discouraged patronization or the taking of undue liberties even on the part of those newer men who had not yet heard of his deeds and courage. Captain of Freefighters Raikuh, recognizing the potential value of Geros’ clear tenor voice in transmitting orders amid the din of battle, had named him a sergeant, a move approved by all his comrades.

And Sergeant Geros could not recall ever having been so happy as he now was, bathed in the respect of both his peers and his superiors, secure in the knowledge that while his fears would always be with him he could now control them, which is all that true bravery really is.

A few hundred yards away, Geros’ former employer,
Vahrohneeskos
Ahndros, sat at wine in the tent of
Komees
Djeen Morguhn, retired
strahteegos
of the Confederation Army. Wounded in the ambush and battle at Forest Bridge—which midnight affray most men now considered to have been the initial engagement of the rebellion—he had lain invalided and then recuperating at Morguhn Hall until recently and had just ridden into camp with his contingent.

Standing or squatting within the same tent were most of the noblemen and Freefighter officers of the duchy, and Geros was the present topic of their conversation.

The saturnine young Ahndros shook his head, his dark hair swaying across his neck and shoulders. “I simply cannot credit it, Uncle Djeen. Personable, affable and obedient Geros had been since first I took him in, and his former employer’s letter attested the same. But he’s only the son of upper servants and has never had even minimal war training. I sent him back that night because I knew he could not fight and I feared for his safety. And besides, he’s a gentle person and shy almost to the point of timorousness.”

Captain Pawl Raikuh guffawed freely, his military rank combined with his noble birth giving him a near equality with these relatives of Duke Bili, his employer, while the dangers and battles he had shared with most of them had forged bonds of friendship. “Timorous, my lord baronet? Gentle? We cannot be thinking or speaking of the same man. Why not two hours gone, Sergeant Geros was tongue-lashing a Lainzburker near twice his size for having rust specks on his sword and dirk! And the language he was using would’ve burned the ears of a muleskinner! Hardly my interpretation of gentle and shy, my lord.”

“Again I say, “this cannot be
my
Geros, Uncle Djeen. And you say he speared
two
rebels that night? It must have been pure luck then, for I doubt he knew one end of that wolf-spear from the other.”

“Oh, aye,” grunted the tall, spare, sixtyish nobleman. “
Once
could have been chance, but when we routed the buggers, your shy Geros took the lead, riding alone and at a full gallop along that damned dark, dangerous road, and sabered every damned rebel he could catch. Scythed them from out their saddles like ripe grain, he did. And he’d no doubt have chased them clear back to whatever rock they crawled from under, had he not lost his seat when his mount took a big fallen treetrunk. But soon as he’d his wind and senses back, he was in the saddle and on the move again. Oh, he’s a gentle and retiring
manner
, sure enough, Ahndee, which fooled even me, in the beginning, but young Geros is a stout and trusty fighter for all his meekness. And yet you didn’t know? And here I was complimenting myself on how well I’d trained you, Ahndee.”

The road to Vawnpolis wound a serpentine track among the hilly grasslands of Vawn, and in the dry heat of late afternoon the dust haze raised by hooves and wheels and marching feet overlaid every twist and turn of that road from column head to the eastern horizon. It had been a long day’s march, commencing at first light, and men and beasts alike were bone-weary. Horses’ heads drooped and hooves plodded, while their riders slouched, canting weapons to the least tiring angle, many riding with their helms off so their streaming faces might benefit from the hint of cool breeze blowing off the wooded slopes of the western mountains.

Some time earlier, the left flankers had sent word of locating a suitable site for the night’s camp, and now the vanguards, most of the advance flankers and a party of sappers were up ahead, engaged in marking out the cantonment areas of the various units, locating sources of water and preparing for the thousand and one other details which officers and men must perform ere they had earned a few hours’ sleep, wrapped in their scratchy blankets on the hard, stony ground.

Sergeant Geros Lahvoheetos, riding just behind Captain Raikuh and the Freefighter who bore the Red Eagle Banner of the House of Morguhn, felt as though his aching body was being slowly broiled on a spit, but as the captain retained his helm and kept his armor tight-buckled, so too did Geros, and, despite their profane pleas and protests, he saw to it that his two files of troopers did likewise.

Farther back in the Clan Morguhn troop, Lieutenant of Freefighters Krandahl observed the actions of the intense new noncom, deriving no little merriment from the exchanges betwixt Geros and his squad. That one, he chuckled to himself, will be a captain someday, Sword willing!

Between the first and second Freefighter troops led by Bili and two other
thoheeksee
was a knot of some score and a half of noblemen, some chatting or monotonously cursing, a few smoking their pipes, most rolling pebbles in dry mouths, their shirts and small clothes one soggy mass under their thick, leathern gambesons and three-quarter suits of Pitzburk.

For the umpteenth time, Senior Lieutenant of Freefighters Bohreegahd Hohguhn, leading, under the snarling Blackfoot of the House of Daiviz of Morguhn, the second troop of the Morguhn nobles’ private cavalry, thanked Sword that he had courteously refused the suit of plate that old
Komees
Hari would have gifted him with at the completion of that business in Horse County. Far better a bit of gold in my belt, he thought, than Miz Hohguhn’s lil’ boy a-meltin’ to death in a damn Pitzburk Steamer, thank y’ kindly.

As the van of the column strung out the length of a relatively straight stretch of road, the brush-drowned slope to either side erupted a deadly sleet of arrows and darts. And while men shouted and died or fought to control wounded, frenzied horses, a yelling double rank of armored horsemen, presenting lances and spears or waving swords and axes, careered down the steep grades to strike both flanks in a ringing flurry of steel and death.

It was obvious that the noblemen were the principal targets of the shrewdly effected ambush, for most of the leading troop had been allowed to pass between the hillsides unscathed and now were milling on the narrow roadway in an attempt to wheel about. Nor was the Freefighters’ broil improved when the enemy archers, who now dared not loose at the center for fear of striking down their own, commenced to range the Red Eagle Troop. The seemingly sentient shafts sought out every bared head, sunk into vitals ill protected by loosened jazerans, pricked horses into a rearing, bucking, screaming chaos. Then the rain of feathered agonies slackened as the bowmen turned their weapons toward the second troop, now rounding the hill at the gallop, steel out, the rampant Golden Blackfoot Banner snapping above the heads of the first files.

With no time to uncase his famous axe, Bili had drawn his broadsword and snapped down his visor in one practiced movement, dropping his riding reins over the knob atop his saddle’s flaring pommel. His stallion, Mahvros, screamed with the joy of challenge and his fine head darted snake-quick to sink big yellow teeth into the neck of the first Vawn steed to come within range. The bitten horse had had no war training and, sidling, bucked its rider off just in time for the man to be ridden down by the second line of attackers.

Roaring from force of long habit, “
Up! Up Harzburk
!” and, belatedly, “
Morguhn! A Morguhn
!” Bili rose to stand in his stirrups, gripping the long hilt of his sword in both hands so that its heavy blade cut the head from a lance and then removed the head of its wielder in one figure-eight stroke. For a brief moment he wondered how so large a force had remained undiscovered by both van and flank guards, then his every thought was of dealing and avoiding death and all the world for him became the familiar tumult and kaleidoscope of battle—the earsplitting clash of steel on steel, shock of blows struck and received, blinking cascades of stinging sweat from eyes, trading hacks and parries with briefly appearing and quickly disappearing opponents, screams and shrieks and shouted war cries and the stink of spilled blood combining with those of horse and man sweat, of instinctively shifting his weight to help Mahvros retain his balance on the body-littered road.

Sergeant Geros and Captain Raikuh, closely followed by the standard-bearer and Geros’ squad—not a man of whom was even wounded, thanks to their fastened jazerans and tight-buckled helms—had forced a path to the tail of the chaotic jumble their troop had become, collecting more troopers along the way. Pawl Raikuh, seasoned veteran that he was, took the time to form his survivors up into road-spanning files of six behind him, with Krahndahl, Geros and the big Lainzburker standard-bearer before. Then waving his sword and shouting “
Morguhn! Up Morguhn
!” he led a crashing charge into the melee broiling ahead.

Twenty yards out, the standard-bearer uttered a single sharp cry and reeled back against his cantle, the thick shaft of a war dart wobbling out of an eyesocket. Both Geros and Krahndahl snatched at the dipping banner, but it was Geros’ hand which closed on the ashwood shaft and jerked it free of the dead man’s grasp. And then they were upon the enemy, and Geros could never after recall more than bits and pieces of that gory mosaic. But when someone commenced to furiously shake his left arm and pound a mailed fist on his jazeran, he was shocked to see that his carefully honed sword-edge was now hacked and dulled and running fresh blood, which had splashed his entire right side and even his horse housing.

“…
and rally!”
That voice, Captain Raikuh’s it was, shouting in his ear. “Damn you, man, raise the banner! Raise the fornicating thing and shout, ‘Up Morguhn!’ and ‘Rally to the Red Eagle!’
Do it
, you sonofabitch or I’ll put steel in you!”

Shaking his ringing head, Geros dropped his gory sword to dangle by the knot and, gripping the shaft in both hands, stuck it up above his head, his high tenor piercing through the din.

“Up Morguhn! Up Morguhn! Thoheeks Bili! Rally! Rally to the Red Eagle! Up Morghun!”

A sword smashed against his jazeran, but he continued to wobble the heavy banner and shout, the corner of his eye catching the flash of Raikuh’s steel as the captain cut down the reckless Vawnee. And, at first in slow dribbles, then in an increasing, steel-sheathed flood, the scattered noblemen and Freefighters gathered around the upraised Red Eagle Banner, an ever-widening circle whose edges hacked and slashed at the surrounding Vawnee. Beside him, he saw
Thoheeks
Bili throw down a broken sword and hurriedly uncase his great axe.

“Raikuh, Krahndahl!” he shouted. “Guard the standard. We’re going to run those bastards back to their kennels!”

But when they came to a rough, broken expanse of gullies and dry creekbeds, Bili wisely halted the pursuit, and the mixed band picked a wary, weary course back to the littered blood-muddy road.

Bili paced his exhausted stallion alongside Geros’ limping chestnut mare and, to the sergeant’s vast surprise and utter embarrassment, placed a steel-cased arm across his bowed shoulders and gave a powerful hug. Teeth shining whitely against the sun-darkened face, now made even darker by the sweaty, dusty mud thickly coating it, he growled hoarsely, “That’s a Wind-given gift, trooper, that voice of yours. Why there were no less than two of the bastards beating Ehleen dance steps on my helm, and
still
I heard your rally cry! You’ve saved this day, man. But wait…”

Raising his visor for better visibility, he stared at Geros’ filthy face, then his grin widened. “I know you, man! You be no Freefighter. You’re
Vahrohneeskos
Ahndee’s man, his valet, Geros. But I thought me I’d sent you to…where was it, eh?”

Raikuh, who had been riding behind, overheard and came up on Geros’ other side. “Horse County, my lord duke. You sent Sergeant Geros to Horse County with Hohguhn’s force, and he so impressed Bohreegahd that when they came back to rejoin the army, I was”—he grinned slyly—”somewhat loath to let such a natural talent be wasted.”

Bili roared and slapped the plate covering his thigh. “So you made him a sergeant and a standard-bearer, you larcenous bastard. Yes, captain, I judged you aright that day in Morguhnpolis, you’ve got just the touch of thievish ruthlessness to make a fine Freefighter officer.”

“Yes,” agreed the captain, “I made him a sergeant because I like the lad and he’s fast becoming a weapon master. However, he made himself standard-bearer during the charge up the roadway, when he saved it from falling after Trooper Hahluhnt took a dart in the eye.”

“And, standard or no standard, my lord, he fought like a treecat. I had all I could do to shake the battlelust out of him long enough to make him lift the standard and sound that rally. But once he’d got my meaning, he kept waggling the Red Eagle and pealing that call, even with two or three Vawnee hacking at him!”

Bili regarded Geros, who couldn’t have spoken had he tried, for a long moment. Then he brusquely nodded. “I presume others witnessed these acts, captain? Good. I’ll visit your camp sometime this night.” Snapping down his visor, the
thoheeks
sent Mahvros plodding a little faster toward several dismounted men kneeling and standing around an armored form stretched on the rocky ground.