A Cat Of Silvery Hue (19 page)

Trailed by his bugler, the squadron colors and a couple of supernumerary junior noncoms, Gaib was leading his charger, which appeared on the verge of throwing a shoe, toward a still-unpacked traveling forge, his lips moving in curses at wellbred bumpkins who carried their feelings ill balanced on their armguards and gave not one damn for his military rank, rendering him what little deference they did only because he was heir to a Kindred
vahrohnos
.

A mindspoken warning from one of the lancer noncoms caused him to glance back the way they had come yesterday, at the body of mounted men now approaching, a bedraggled-looking lot from what he could see of them. More volunteer irregulars from Morguhn and other duchies, no doubt, though in a larger contingent than usual. And doubtless commanded by still another noble arsehole, who’d marched them all through the rainy night, and—and then he heard the first shouts of fear and alarm, saw the first flight of shafted death arcing upward from the nearest cover, heard—or thought he heard—that never-to-be-forgotten, ominous hissing hum.

Swinging up on his mount, loose shoe or no loose shoe, he roared, “Bugler, sound ‘To the Colors’!” Then he snapped, “Follow me!” to the color bearer and noncoms. Adding, when he realized they had not seen what he had, “Sun and Wind, lower your visors and clear your steel; we’re under attack!”

Promising himself to have that thrice-damned fool of a Danos hanged,
Vahrohneeskos
Drehkos presented his twelve-foot lance and clapped heels to his charger, shouting a snarled, “
Charge
, damn it,
charge
! The goddam archers have loosed too soon!”

Up the road which the camp had straddled they surged, all winking lancepoints and flashing blades, fanning out as the roadsides became clear enough to strike on a broader front. Drehkos had schooled them well.

All the miserable night they had hidden in a steep, brush-grown ravine, shivering and hungry, but trusting utterly in their valiant commander. With the departure of most of the invaders and the concurrent cessation of roving patrols, the archers and dartmen had padded forth, under command of Senior Sergeant Danos, bound for predetermined positions within range of the invader camp and with strict orders to hold their shaft until the van of the attack column was abreast of them, that the shock of the charge might strike upon the very heels of the shock of the arrowstorm.

Bracing his buttocks against the high, strong cantle of his war kak and taking a fresh grip on the ashwood shaft of his lance, Drehkos felt an arrow strike the backplate of his cuirass and heard behind him the scream of a horse, saw the
kahtahfrahktoee
archers—fortunately but a bare handful of the bastards!—loose a second, then a third volley before wheeling their mounts and trying to force a way through the boiling confusion of the camp to where their colors waved and a bugle pealed the call, over and over.

Drehkos’ own precipitate archers still were loosing into the chaotic mess the camp had become, but he knew that they could not long continue to so cover his advance. Not only would they run the risk of cutting down his riders, but with resources being husbanded toward the eventual defense of the city, arrows and darts were in short supply and had been allotted in limited quantities; just enough to take out most of the mounted escort so that the bulk of the forces might devote their efforts not to fighting but to packing the mules they were trailing and any captured animals with such supplies as might be easily available and firing anything they could not take with them, ere they faded back into the sheltering hills.

The maneuver outlined in the High Lady’s book had been patterned for use in flatter, more heavily wooded country, but Drehkos’ quick, flexible mind had immediately visualized a way to adapt it to the somewhat different conditions. The advance of the striking force should have been concealed by forest or fold of ground, but since none was available within practical range of the objective, and since latecomers had been hastening to join the army since first it entered Vawn,
Komees
Hari’s brother had decided to gamble on simply riding up the road, bold as brass, until he reached striking distance.

And it would’ve worked, too, he thought, as his big spotted stallion bore him nearer and nearer to the line of heavily armed nobles drawing up to take the brunt of his charge. Fighting armored, determined men differed radically from riding down disorganized and/or dismounted survivors of an arrow rain. He gritted his teeth, thinking, I’ll lose men today, maybe as many as I lost day before yesterday. As the war cries commenced to sound both behind and before, Drehkos roared out his own, original, perhaps, but very very feeling.

“Oh, goddam you, Danos! Damn you,
damn you
,
DAMN
YOU
,
DAMN
YOU
!”

Danos had not been happy of late, despite his promotion to senior sergeant. Lord Drehkos’ complete regimentation of all the inhabitants of Vawnpolis had made Danos’ sex life highly dangerous, while the virtual eradication of the dog packs and feral cats and the deep inroads recently made on the rat population had made disposal of his few victims’ bodies a chancy business at best. And that was while he still was in the city, before he had “volunteered” for this insane and uncomfortable method of slow suicide.

Nor would he have come riding out on this madness but for the certain knowledge that to remain behind was to place himself in undesired proximity to Lord Myros, Lord Drehkos’ deputy for the fortifications. And such was simply not to be borne!

Though the dark, gray-haired, brooding
vahrohnos
had seldom spoken to him, and then only in line of duty, since Lord Drehkos had literally dragged him from the gutter and restored him to the thin ranks of the gentry, yet Danos feared Myros instinctively, as he would fear a viper. And he did not even know why. Unless…unless it was those
eyes
.

Black, they were, the blackest that ever Danos had seen, yet with a shiny, shimmering bluish glint like chunks of mountain coal. But Danos could see something else lurking behind those eyes, sometimes peering slyly from their depths, and it was that…that indefinable menace which set Danos’ skin prickling. And when it peeked out in Danos’ presence, while the debased nobleman bared his unnaturally white teeth in one of his mirthless grimaces, then Danos knew terror. He was convinced that that nameless thing harboring behind those eyes could see to the very depths of his soul, knew his every misdeed and was waiting but a favored time and place to reveal all—or…And then Danos would tremble like a trapped rabbit, his mind unable to retain the thought of what horrors the loathsome Lord Myros and the satanic being which dwelt within him might demand in payment for continued silence.

So he had ridden out with Lord Drehkos, who had bluntly praised his unswerving loyalty and dauntless courage, then placed him in command of the archers. At least they had been eating more and better since leaving the city, that much Danos could say in truth, what with game and wandering livestock and supplies from several small parties who had ridden in to join the army only to be bushwhacked by Drehkos’ scouts. Of course, conscientious Lord Drehkos always insisted that the bulk of any nonperishables be packed to the city, but still the raiders ate well and frequently.

Furthermore, and to Danos’ vast relief, the lord saw to it that the lightly armored archers and dartmen were called upon to do no hand-to-hand combat, covering their withdrawal if necessary with his mounted irregulars. So even the perpetual grousers had to admit that things were not as bad as they might have been.

But none of the blessings could do aught to relieve Danos’ principal problem. During those few short halcyon weeks when he had been able to indulge his tastes on a victim every night, his body had become accustomed to the regular, glorious release. Now it was all that he could do on far too many nights to prevent Satan from beguiling his hands into pollution of his own flesh. He had so far resisted all the Evil One’s blandishments—God be praised—but the need for release was becoming more and more pressing with each succeeding day.

That was why, when from his hiding place he first sighted a
woman
—slender and lovely, with long, black hair—he thought his head would surely burst of the blood thundering in it, and he was not even aware of having released his whistling signal shaft until he saw men going down in the camp and the tumult swelled even louder than the roaring in his ears. If he was aware that he had just dashed Lord Drehkos’ careful plans, it was of less moment to him than the urgency of his drive
to have that woman
—to see her blood, taste its warm saltiness; to hear her pleas, screams, whimpers and, finally, rattling gasps as the life left her torn body. Uncontrollable shudders shook his body so strongly that he dropped his bow and nearly fell on his face when he bent to retrieve it.

But with it once more in his hand, he pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocked, drew, loosed; then another, nock, draw, loose, one after another, mechanically, almost unaware of his actions, mind floating in a daydream of blood and female flesh. But he was a master archer and accustomed to the stalk and the chase and to dropping faster and smaller and far more elusive targets than the men and horses less than a hundred yards distant. His years of training and experience took over, aiming and allowing for wind, distance and movements of the slow quarries. And every shaft thudded home in flesh.

Then his questing hand could find no more arrows. Carefully he laid aside his bow and, smiling, drew his short, heavy sword. At a fast trot, he set out toward the milling turmoil of the campsite, swinging wide to avoid the cavalry engagement broiling on his right. And the other archers and dartmen drew their own steel and followed him, not for love of him as they would have followed Lord Drehkos, but simply because he was their assigned leader and seemed to know what he was doing.

But once within the corpse-littered camp, Danos halted. His sword dangling, he stood dumbfounded, wondering if all had been but a dream born of wishful thinking. Not only could he spy no woman, but even that huge wagon was nowhere to be seen. The space he could have sworn that wagon had occupied held only a dead horse archer and a swaying, badly wounded horse.

“
Ayaaargh
!” The shout burst almost in Danos’ ear, and only his instinctive flinch kept the cook’s long iron spit from the archer’s unarmored body. But the cook was middle-aged, stout and clumsy, and before he could stop his forward rush, Danos had recovered enough to jam his shortsword to the very guard into the fat, bulging belly. Eyes bugging, mouth opening and closing and opening like a beached sunfish, the man dropped his makeshift weapon and clapped both hands to the fatal wound so closely that when Danos withdrew his steel, the sharp edges gashed palms and fingers to the bone. He just stood there, staring down at his mangled hands, which could not seem to keep the white-and-red-and-purple-pink coils of gut where they belonged.

Danos had no time to finish the cook, for he was fully occupied in ducking the furious swings of a big, balding man’s big, wooden maul. But then Danos’ attacker screamed and dropped his maul, his mouth and nose pouring out a torrent of blood; he fell to his knees and then onto his face, the haft and part of the blade of a throwing axe standing out of his back. Danos looked about for the man who had thrown the axe—and saw a sight which froze the blood in his veins.

Captain Gaib Linstahk’s first reaction was to reach a central point of the camp and rally his
kahtahfrahktoee
. Better armed and armored than the lancers, they and the nobles should be able to charge right into the damned sniping archers, flush the bastards out and ride them down like the dogs they were. But that was before it became obvious that those rapidly advancing horsemen were not thundering up the road to reinforce the camp, but rather to attack it.

He mindspoke the commander of lancers over on the other side, nearer to the road. “Captain Rahdjuhz, rally your troops and draw them up behind the nobles who will presently form athwart the road. If those pigs aren’t slowed down, they’ll ride over the camp before I can form my squadron to counterattack.”

Gaib thought he could actually hear the yelp of the lancer officer. “Sun and Wind, man!” the reply came beaming. “Have you taken leave of your senses? A good half of those Vawnee look to be heavily armed. They’ll go through my two troops like—”

With seconds as precious as emeralds, Gaib furiously cut off his subordinate. “Wind take you for a coward, Ahl! Follow my orders or give over your command to a man with more guts! I said you’ll be the
second
line, dammit; those heavy-armed fire-eaters of ours will take the brunt of it.”

Then he sought the mind of
Thoheeks
Kehn Kahr. “If you please, my lord, has your group taken many casualties?”

He could almost see the steaming, red face—
Thoheeks
Kahr had gained years and much flesh since last he had actively campaigned or worn armor in summer heat—but there was ill-concealed eagerness in the return the nobleman beamed. “
Vahrohneeskos
Behrklee’s son, Steev, has a broken leg…I think. His horse took a dart and fell ere he could clear leather. And we’ve lost a few more horses, but no gentlemen, praise be to Wind and Pitzburk. But we await your orders, Captain
Vahrohnos’-son
. When do you want us to fight? Where?”

Gaib breathed a silent sigh of relief. The
thoheeks
and his half-troop were only technically under his command. They could all see the charging Vawnee from their present position and must be aware that the odds against them were something over ten to one. Had Kahr opted for flight rather than fight, Gaib would have been powerless to do aught save curse him.

“If it please my lord, form a single rank to block the road. Place your left flank at that deep gully and your right at the perimeter ditch. The lancers will be forming behind you. You
must
hold them until the High Lady is safely away and my squadron be formed. My bugles sounding ‘The Charge’ will be your signal to disengage. Does it please my lord to understand?”