A Cat Of Silvery Hue (25 page)

Old Pyk, the Freefighter weapons master, clucked concernedly while he wrapped bandage about Bili’s thigh. “It’s stopped bleeding, my lord. Still, I think it should be burnt, else you might lose the leg to the black stink.” He finished the lapping and neatly tied the ends, adding, “And a burning be much easier, my lord, an’ you’ve no long time to think on it.”

Bili lowered the canteen of brandy-and-water from his lips and smiled. “Thank you, Master Pyk, but no. When we be back in camp, I’ll have Master Ahlee see to the wound. I’ve had such burnt ere this, and I much prefer the soft words of his mode of healing to your red-hot spearhead.”

The young nobleman leaned back, refusing to allow his face to reveal his pain, while his orderly, Makz Bineht, folded the slit leg of the blood-caked breeches over the bulk of bandage, then pulled the boottop back up and secured its straps. Then he stood, remarking, “My lord, Captain Raikuh is coming back.”

Bili opened his eyes and levered himself into a sitting posture on the parapet of the outer works, took another pull at the canteen and resolutely corked it. It would not do to have fuzzy wits if push came to shove and he had another shouting match with sub-
strahteegos
Kahzos Kahlinz, now commanding the Confederation troops in the conquered salient.

Pawl Raikuh strode across the carnage he had helped to cause, stepping around bodies where possible. All at once he stopped, bent to look, then drew his dirk and squatted beside a dead rebel. After wiping his blade on the dead man’s clothing, he sheathed it, dropped something shiny in his belt purse and continued on his way. When he had climbed the ladder to the outer works, he paced deliberately over to Bili’s place and, after removing his helm, saluted. The padded hood which covered most of his head was sweat-soaked, there was a crust of old blood around his nostrils and on his upper lip, his scarred face was drawn with fatigue.

Bili waved to the stretch of parapet on his right, saying, “Pawl, sit down ere you fall down. Here, try some of this brandy-water—most refreshing.”

After the briefest of hesitations, the captain sank with a sigh onto the proffered seat and gratefully accepted the canteen. He took one mouthful, spit it downhill, then threw back his head and upended the bottle, his throat working.

“What,” asked Bili, “did our esteemed colleague say when you told him that his troops could now begin clearing the field?”

Raikuh grinned. “Very little of a repeatable nature, Duke Bili. His remarks tend to leave the impression that he has little use for Freefighters and even less for Middle Kingdoms-trained country nobles who fail to give him and his pack of pikepushers the respect that he feels they deserve.”

Bili snorted. “The bastard is mad, must be. Brought in his companies on the tag-end of the battle—most of them never even blooded steel except to dispatch some rebel wounded—and then expected me to bow low and give him and his first pick, the top cream of the loot! If he’s a fair example of the kind of officers the High Lord is raising up these days, Sun and Wind help our Confederation!”

Extending his hand, he poked at a bejeweled hilt peeking from under Raikuh’s boottop. “Found some goodies yourself, did you, captain?”

Grin broadening, Raikuh rubbed his hand along the bulge. “It be a genuine Yvuhz, my lord, but it’s not mine. It’s equal shares in my company. Whatever the lads find will go into a common pot, and whatever they bring will be split.”

Bili nodded gravely. “It be a good decision, Pawl. Too many companies end up hacking each other over bits of loot.” Then he smiled, asking teasingly, “But we’ve an intaking ahead of us. How are you going to apply your rule to female loot?”

The grin returned. “Share and share, I suppose, my lord—within reason, of course. But we’ll just have to ford that river when we come to it.”

The captain imbibed once more of the canteen’s dwindling contents. “My lord, we took the time to measure that man who knocked you down. That bugger was over
eight
foot tall, and I’d be unsurprised if he weighed more than six hundred Harzburk pounds! He must of had the thews of a destrier, too, for it took three men to even lift that timber he was swinging like a staff. Wonder it didn’t break your back, my lord, cuirass or no cuirass.”

Gingerly, Bili shifted his position. “I’m still not sure it didn’t, Pawl. But you mean our Geros slew such an ogre, alone, with but his sword?”

“No, my lord,” Raikuh shook his head. “First he tickled the pig’s guts with the point on the standard staff. If he’d taken time then to draw his steel, well…” He shook his head again.

“And where is Geros now, Pawl?”

“I sent him and a detail back to camp to fetch horse litters for our wounded and packmules for our dead, my lord.”

“
Bili
!” Milo’s powerful mindspeak burst inside his skull.

The assault on the other salient, headed by the High Lord, had been almost a textbook exercise in how such a maneuver should be done. Honored to have their supreme sovereign in their van, officers and men alike had gone about their prescribed actions in strict, regulation manner—archers and engineers taking excruciating care in providing cover for the advance up to and through the gapped abatis; the units quickly and precisely forming their battalion front behind their two Cat Banners, with the High Lord and his plate-armored guard between the battalions.

At the roll of the drums, the engines had ceased their work, the archers had confined themselves to well-aimed loosings at clearly visible targets and had quickly ceased even that. At the second drumroll, every heavy shield came up to battle-carry, every spear sloped across right shoulder at a precise angle, all performed under the critical eyes of halberd-armed sergeants and officers with broadswords at the shoulder-carry. At the third roll of the drums, a deep-throated cheer was raised and the lines started forward, up the slope and into the hail of death hurled by the defenders, dressing their lines at the jogtrot as missiles took inevitable toll.

Ten yards from the bristling ramparts, under the rain of stones and darts and arrows, Milo’s mindspeak to the surviving senior officers gave the order which made the final assault fur easier. Halting, still in ordered formations, the fore ranks knelt behind their big shields. As one man, the rearmost rank employed the tool carried for the purpose to knock out the steel pin securing the heads of their dual-purpose spears. Then, to the drumroll, their brawny arms hurled the heavy missiles with a practiced accuracy which was not necessary, for so thick was the press atop the rampart that even a tyro could not have missed fleshing the spear.

As the men of the first volley drew their wide-bladed shortswords and knelt, the line in front of them arose and threw their own spears. Then the drums once more rolled and, cheering, the companies swept forward, their crest breaking over, then engulfing the rampart before the rebels could recover from the shock of the two spear volleys.

So sudden, unexpected and complete was the victory of the High Lord’s force that the suicide garrison had no time either to seal or even conceal the huge oval chamber undermining the hilltop fortifications, the tunnel through which they had been supplied and. reinforced, and the oil- and pitch-soaked timbers supporting them.

“It’s a stratagem which can be hellishly effective, Bili,” Milo urgently farspoke. “Something similar once cost me nearly two regiments when we were conquering the Kingdom of Karaleenos, more than a century ago. Since this hill be mined, it stands to reason that the one you’re on is too. I’ve been unable to lock into Ahrtos’ mind. You must get word to him that the troops are to quit that hilltop
immediately
!”

Bili was blunt. “
Strahteegos
Ahrtos is dead. So, too, are most of the other officers of the first assault force. A sub-
strahteegos
called Kahzos Kahlinz presently commands what be left of the men who did the actual fighting, as well as his own slow-footed companies. He thought that he commanded me and mine, as well, until we had some…ahhh, ‘words’ on the matter.”

“All right, Bili,” Milo quickly ordered. “I’ll mindspeak Kahlinz. You see to getting your own Freefighters off that hilltop. You should be safe down as far as the abatis. Get off your wounded but don’t bother with your dead; there may not be time.”

Kahzos—thirty-five-year-old third son of
Thoheeks
Hwilkz Kahlinz—whose twenty years under the Cat Banners had earned him command of a line regiment and a second-class silver cat, was coldly furious. First, that old ass Ahrtos had relegated him to the inferior command of the second wave while taking his two best battalions away from him for the initial assault and “replacing” them with a single battalion of irregular light infantry from some godforsaken backwater in the northwestern mountains. Then a noble bumpkin—and it was hard, despite his title and mindspeak, to credit that the boy was even Kindred, what with his damned harsh Middle Kingdoms accent and his shaven scalp—had
defied
him before his own troops! Blatantly lacking respect either for Kahzos’ rank or age, the young pig had not only profanely refused to put himself and his mercenaries under Kahzos’ rightful authority, but had insisted that his northern barbarians be given leave to loot the salient
before
Kahzos’ Confederation gatherers were allowed to scavenge valuable or usable items.

And Kahzos had seen no choice but to accede to the unreasonable demand, despite the flagrant breach of army regulations. For the arrogant young pup had made it abundantly clear that should the Confederation commander demur he and his mercenaries would fight—turn their swords on Confederation troops—to achieve their larcenous ends. And Kahzos could only think of that disgraceful business some years back, of the ruined career and cashiering of an officer who had set his battalions on mercenary “allies” when they refused to fight.

Of course, the man had been a damned
kath-ahrohs
Ehleen—which automatically meant a fool and a thief—and had hoped that by butchering the mercenaries he could conceal the fact that he had embezzled their wages. But still, with such a precedent and his honorable retirement not far distant, Kahzos had stuck at an armed confrontation with that puling bastard of a
thoheeks
.

But for all his inborn prejudices and his towering ego, Kahzos Kahlinz was a good officer and an intelligent man. He immediately grasped the dire possibilities, the danger to every man within the new-conquered salient, when the High Lord mindspoke him. After snapping an order to his staff drummer, he replied.

“My lord, because of some unforeseen difficulties with the barbari—ahhh, with
Thoheeks
Morguhn and his company, the gatherer squads have but just dispersed about the area. Most of the drummers are handling litters, but I have ordered my own drummer to roll the ‘Recall’ and I will immediately send a runner to the
thoheeks
, whose Freefighters are occupying the redoubt nearest to the city.”

“Never mind
Thoheeks
Bili,” beamed Milo. “He has already been warned. Just get your units out of there as rapidly as may be. We’ve suffered much loss for damned little gain this day as it is.”

Bili supervised the handling of the wounded Freefighters down the outer face of the rampart. Only when the last of them was resting far down the hillock would he allow himself to be lowered from his place, leaving Pawl Raikuh to see to the dead Freefighters and bundles of loot.

The captain had the stiffening corpses dumped unceremoniously off the rampart. Unless they were noble-born, dead Freefighters were normally simply stripped of their usable effects and left wherever they chanced to fall. As he set his feet to the first rung of the rope ladder his men had jury-rigged, he could but grunt his disgust at the foolhardy idiocy of that arrogant bastard of a sub-
strahteegos
, who should have been shooing his troops out of the doomed salient but was instead ordering them in painfully dressed formations as fast as they reported to the roll of the drum.

Sergeant Geros’ detail returned just as Bili hobbled down to the place where the wounded had been laid. The young
thoheeks
took the opportunity to appropriate the sergeant’s mare but found, to his shame, that he had to be helped into the saddle.

Increasingly thick tendrils of smoke were rising from between the paving stones ere the rearguard of the infantry column attained the rampart, and before the last company could even start their descent, a flame-shot pillar of smoke and dust mounted high into the air from the court behind them. To those on the slope, it was as if some gigantic monster had roared with hellish din and fiery breath. The doomed men on the quaking rampart were half obscured and their terrified screams were heard only by themselves.

First a wedge of rampart collapsed back into the inferno, then an arc several yards in length, next another longer one. And suddenly the pillar of dust and smoke became higher and denser as the entire remaining stretch of ramparts slid crashing into the huge, blazing pit, sending unbelievable showers of sparks scintillating upward.

Bili’s mindspeak halted the mare, Ahnah, at the lip of the deep crater. Other men crowded up in his wake, despite the waves of enervating heat, the clouds of choking smoke and the nauseating stench of burning flesh which assailed them.

At first, the young
thoheeks
could spot no trace of the hundred-odd men who had been atop the rampart when it went down. It was with a shock that he realized that one of them lay almost at his feet. By his armor, the man appeared to be an officer—and condemned to an agonizing, singularly unpleasant death.

A massive timber—probably one of those which had pillared the huge, elaborate trap—lay across the unfortunate’s legs. The farther end of the timber was already blazing, and several feet more had commenced to smoke and smolder.

Pawl Raikuh touched his lord’s arm. “Duke Bili, I could take two or three men and try to get him out…?

“Bili shook his head sadly. “No, Pawl, that would do no good. Look at that timber, man! There must be a full Harzburk ton of hardwood there. It would take a score of men to raise it and a couple more to pull the officer free.”