“Thank you, Sword Brother Hohguhn. But I repeat, what is it you want of me? Safe passage out of Morguhn, or employment?”
A note of ill-concealed eagerness entered the officer’s voice. “You … you’d hire us on, then, Sword Brother?”
“Of course,” Bili replied shortly. “Unless you’ve some compunction against drawing steel in my cause. I’ll confirm you as sublieutenant and pay you as such, but you’ll be under the command of Captain Raikuh, who leads my dragoons.”
Hohguhn’s bushy brows rose. “Pawl Raikuh, what useta be a gate sergeant at Morguhnpolis?”
Bill’s helmeted head bobbed once. “The same. You see, Brother Hohguhn, men of proven loyalty rise fast in my service.”
Hohguhn beamed a gap-toothed smile. “Then Bohreegahd Hohguhn’s your man, and no mistake! B’sides, I weren’t no officer till I signed on with Captain Manos, anyhow. Highest I’d ever been afore that ‘uz troop sergeant for Captain Feeliks Kahtruhl.”
Now Bili looked amazed. “You mean that some of you Freefighters actually got out of Behreezburk alive? With our lines drawn so tightly it seems hard to believe that anything larger than a rat could have wormed through them.”
All at once, Hohguhn’s mouth dropped open, his seamed and weathered face mirroring surprise. When, at length, he again spoke, his tone was less of respect than of utter awe. “By my Steel, you … you be Bili the Axe! It wuz you what slew the earl and two of his bodyguards in that fight under the north wall. I seen it!
“And now you be duke here? Well, my lord, me and my men, what’s left of us, we’d be purely honored to fight under your banner, we would!”
While Lieutenant Krahndahl conducted Hohguhn and his men up to the hall to get them outfitted and decently mounted, Bili and the warband picked through what was left of the string of camps, dispatching any wounded they came across, making certain that the dead really were deceased and earmarking usable spoils for later collection by the hall garrison.
Then Krahndahl and Hohguhn were cantering down the hill at the head of the reinforcements and, at Bili’s word, Raikuh’s bugler sounded the recall while the thoheeks and Milo mindcalled the rest. And the larger-by-a-third column reformed and negotiated the ford and set off in pursuit of the quarry, the great prairiecats—Whitetip, Lover-of-Water and Steelclaws—bounding well in the lead.
The road beyond the ford was muddy for several hundred yards, deeply indented with impressions of hoof and wheel, of bootsole and sandal and bare foot. Even after the mud had given way to choking dust, the discarded weapons and equipment gave clear evidence of retreat bordering upon rout.
Then, from the far side of a small patch of woods around which the road curved, came the rippling snarls of the huge cats, immediately followed by a veritable chorus of screams and wails of terror.
When Bili galloped around the turn, Mahvros had to make a quick, jarring jump, lest he trample Steelclaws and the writhing, black-bearded man into whose shoulder the cat had sunk his long fangs. Whitetip and Lover-of-Water had corraled the other four-and-twenty priests into a tight, shrieking bunch as neatly as might a pair of veteran herd dogs with an equal number of sheep.
A glance back at the blood-spurting man under the youngest cat told Bili that he could not live out the hour bearing such terrible wounds, so he mindspoke Steelclaws, “You may kill him, Cat Brother. But wait until all the horses are past you; then do it messily. Well put fear of Sun and Wind into these bastards!”
Bili had his warriors ring the knot of clerics, but made certain that all the prisoners had an unobstructed view of Steel-claws and his still-flopping victim. At his silent command, the huge cat rolled onto his back, the claws and teeth sunk into the gory flesh, bringing the priest over atop him. Then muscles rippled and bunched under dusty fur as the powerful hind legs were flexed, their needle-sharp talons sinking deep, grating on the hapless man’s lowest ribs. The preceding shrieks had been as nothing to the ear-shattering scream of ultimate agony emitted by the dying man when the cat abruptly thrust backward, tearing eight great, ragged wounds from chest to crotch and then flipping the eviscerated creature three yards up the road, trailing gouts of dark blood and coils of pinkish-white guts.
The packhorses were relieved of enough manacles to secure each of the living priests to a tree, and Steelclaws, his coat soaked and clotted with blood, was left to guard them while the grim little band rode on.
Out of the wooded patch, they cantered between fields of burgeoning oats, maize and rye, billowing like green lakes in the morning breeze. Between fields of flax and tobacco, they spotted the first of the rebel pikemen where he sat on the edge of the ditch, repairing a sandal strap. But when, alerted by the pounding hooves, he spotted the body of horsemen and identified the Morguhn banner, he forsook sandal, pike and shield and ran for his life. A couple of the clansmen uncased bows and hastily nocked arrows, but Bili mindspoke.
“No, save the shafts. Let our Cat Sister take this one.”
In a flash of gray-brown fur, Lover-of-Water’s big, sleek body hurdled the ditch and coursed through the flax, bringing down her quarry before he had run two hundred yards. The man screamed just once, when the razor-edged steel fang-spurs—originally designed for hamstringing horses or large game—sliced the tendons behind a knee. Before he could get out another utterance, he was dead. His killer effortlessly loped back through the flax, feeling that she had certainly demonstrated her age and expertise at the art of slaying two-legs to this nice young chief.
In a high-walled cut, they found grisly evidence of the recklessly rapid passage of several wheeled vehicles, or, rather, of those unfortunate pikemen too slow to get out of the way. Broad, iron-tired wheels had severed limbs and mangled bodies and crushed skulls, grinding shreds of flesh and bits of shattered bone into the blood-muddy dust. In a buzzing black-and-blue-green cloud, the flies rose up from their feasting before the advance of the Morguhn column, while a mouse-gray opossum scurried up a bank and into the low brush, dragging his scaly tail and a chunk of mangled forearm.
A few hundred yards farther on, a heavy coach lay canted drunkenly, partially blocking the road. An exposed boulder had bent the iron tire and splintered the hardwood felly beneath. Some few of the cargo of wounded men had attempted to drag themselves in the wake of the driver and the three wounded officers he bad mounted on the horses before he cut them loose. But the arrival of Bill’s column ended their sufferings—permanently.
They had been on the road for most of an hour before they at last closed with the rearmost gaggle of infantry, completely leader!ess and most of them lacking armor or weapons of any description. And it was then, just as Lieutenant Hohguhn had foretold, a butchery, the horsemen riding down and spearing or sabering or axing their fleeing, screaming prey, until horses were foam-flecked and blowing, until men’s arms ached with deadly effort
And then they rode on.
The broad blades of Bill’s huge axe were no longer shiny, being dimmed with clotted blood and dust, like every other bared weapon in the column. But the steel was soon rinsed with fresher blood, as they overhauled another few hundred rebels. This time, however, perhaps half of their victims made good an escape, for men and cats and horses, all were tired, and Bili still insisted that the arrows and darts be husbanded against more pressing need.
The notes of the recall still were sounding when the High Lord led his weary mount through the trampled cornfield toward the limply fluttering Morguhn banner. He carried his bare saber, not wishing to befoul its case with the gory steel. While walking, tugging at the plodding horse, he was in telepathic contact with Aldora, whose troops had finally reached Morguhn Hall.
“Sorry, dear, to have had you put your men to a needless forced march, but none of us—I, least of all—had any idea that things would work out so well or so quickly.”