But they had neither forgotten nor forgiven. Their descendants crouched now in their mountains, laired up like savage beasts; seldom did they raid in force, but in winter—especially in hard ones—bands of lanky, bearded, ragged men would drift down from the high fastnesses to butcher a cow or horse or steal a few sheep. And the Vawnee simply wrote off such small depredations, and even some of the larger, for they had learned that attempts to pursue into those mountains were infinitely costly in time, effort and lives.
Only the addled or suicidal ventured near to the line of mostly deserted forts now, for the mountain men were wary, watchful and always athirst for lowland blood. When the Yawn Kindred had made their last, doomed stand at one of the forts, countless of the besieging Crusaders had wakened of a morning to find a comrade’s head severed and propped before him, while several men had disappeared completely from within tents full of sleeping men—days later, the savagely mutilated bodies of these same unfortunates would just as mysteriously reappear close by the points from which they had been snatched, the marks of the hideous agony in which they had died clearly stamped on what was left of their faces.
That Vahrohneeskos Drehkos had led his column into these dreaded mountains, and had, more astoundingly, led more than two-thirds of his original force out, was considered something of a miracle by the Vawnpolitan nobles. The feat heartened their flagging spirits, briefly cheered them with the belief that, blessed with the resourcefulness and courage of such a paladin, there still might be some way of wriggling out of the straits into which greed, envy and an excess of religious zeal had led them.
Drehkos, on the other hand, never so deluded himself. He knew that all the noblemen and priests and most of the commoners were surely doomed, but a hitherto hidden pride compelled him to prepare for and deliver the fiercest battle of which he and the others were capable. For himself, he had no fear of death. It would be the last, deferred sharing with his dear Rehbehkah. But, naturally, no one else knew this, so his followers mistook the evidences of his longing for final surcease from the heartsickness he had suffered since his wife’s death as but another Indication of his matchless bravery.
Through purest happenstance, Drehkos discovered in an unused room of the labyrinthine Citadel a small library of treatises on various aspects of land warfare, penned by such diverse authorities as Strahteegos Thoheeks Gabos, who had commanded the armies of the Confederation a good hundred years agone; Strahteegos Ahrkeethoheeks Greemnos, legendary general to the last King of Karaleenos; the Undying High Lady Aldora’s work on cavalry tactics; and, most important to Drehkos’ present problem, two encyclopedic discourses on the defense of walled cities, one by Ahnbahr Nahseerah, eighth Caliph of Zahrtohgah, the other by Buhk Headsplitter, first King of the ancient dynasty of Pitzburk, he who had defended his city against the combined armies of Harzburk and Eeree for nearly three years until dissension in the besiegers’ ranks broke the siege. And Drehkos shared with the never-to-be-known collector of these masterpieces the ability to read the various archaic languages. He lost no time in doing so, fully aware of his own deficiencies in the military arts.
So it was that soon Drehkos was the very brains of the defense efforts, the Vawnpolitan noblemen cheerfully deferring to a man who at least gave an appearance of knowing what he was about. And soon it was far more than appearance as Drehkos’ quick mind absorbed and digested the contents of the tomes, and just as quickly fitted these new skills to the existing problems. Though he kept to a large extent the patient humility which had won him the love and respect of the men he had led on that terrible march, he had never before either merited or received the awe and adulation which his peers and retainers now afforded him, and he privately reveled in it. Therefore, he kept his finds a secret, kept the books locked in a campaign chest in his quarters and perused them during—the night hours, when most of the garrison lay sleeping.
But as more and more tasks devolved upon his shoulders and the days lengthened into weeks, he admitted to himself the utter impossibility of essaying so many different tasks and doing them all as well as they must be done. Consequently, he one day sought out Vahrohnos Myros, finding the down-fallen nobleman earning his daily ration as did all the other citizens and refugees—laboring upon a new salient; one of a pair being constructed at a very weak point in the defenses of stones and bricks taken from demolished structures.
Drehkos himself found it hard to recognize in this gaunt, bearded, sun-darkened figure in dusty rags the effete, fashionably pale-faced, spike-bearded, masterful man who had plotted and led the rebellion in Morguhn, and he was shocked to see that the remembered raven’s-wing curls of the former Lord of Deskahti were almost uniformly dirty white. Straining to propel a granite boulder with a thick crowbar clenched in work-roughened hands, he seemed unaware of Drehkos’ presence until the vahrohneeskos spoke.
“Myros, if you please, I would have words with you.”
Slowly the hunched noble straightened his body, allowing the boulder to ease back. Then his dull black eyes briefly met Drehkos’ gaze before he dispiritedly mumbled, “I have known, my lord vahrohneeskos, that sooner or later you would come to gloat. Were our positions reversed, I would have done so much sooner.”
Drehkos shook his helmeted head. “Not so, Myros, not so. I am come to ask your help.”
Myros’ answer was a harsh cackle. “My help? You have stones to be moved at the Citadel? Or, perhaps, a privy to be cleaned?”
“You there, lordy boy!” came a hoarse shout from behind Drehkos, along with the snapping of a whip. “You ain’t here to chat with passersby. Or mayhap you wants no rations this night”
Drehkos turned his head and the stocky overseer almost dropped his whip and crimsoned under his tan, stuttering. “Y-your p-pardon, my l-lord. I-truly—I did not kn-know who ’twas.”
Drehkos’ warm smile came with his reassurance. “Never fear, good Klawdos, you were but doing your job, and I’d not fault you for such. But you’d best find another pair of hands for this task; this gentleman will be leaving with me.”
In Drehkos’ office-sitting room, Myros’ cracked lips sipped delicately at his third brass cup of watered wine. “Let me see if I truly understand you, Drehkos. You want me, a man who foolishly did his damnedest to undermine your leadership, to help and advise in preparing this city to stand off what is coming? How could you trust me, eh? You know me well enough to be aware that my life has been but one betrayal after another.”
Drehkos’ powerful hands cracked a couple of nuts, a helmetful of which had been the shy gift of a recently returned scouting party. Separating the shells, he pushed half the meats over to his guest, chuckling ruefully, “If we are to bring up the bones of the past, Myros, my deeds, too, will exude the stench of offal. I can take damn-all pride in most of my accomplishments. But today is not yesterday, Yawn is not Morguhn, and I, for one, mean to die more honorably than I lived.
“What you said of me in those wretched mountains, Myros, much of it was true.”
Myros colored and dropped his gaze, his hands clenching until the cracked broken nails dug into his newly callused palms. In a low voice, he husked, “I … I don’t really know why, Drehkos. Don’t know what came over me. But for some reason nothing was of more importance than discrediting you, supplanting you in those men’s eyes. And, what’s worse, I can’t say that I’d not do it again, not knowing what prompted it.”
“As I said, Myros, yesterday is not today.” Drehkos cracked two more nuts. “And again I say, much of it was fact. Prior to that march, I was unskilled in aught save folly and debauchery. I am still painfully aware of my own shortcomings, especially as regards the arts of strategy, tactics and fortification.”