“Now go, you stupid, sireless curdog! Get out of Meeree’s sight before you feel the bite of her axe!”
With a deep sigh and a wordless shake of his head, Gy stepped through the doorway and closed the wooden portal behind him. But before he could lift his hand from the iron ring, the rough boards shuddered as if struck by a ram and, slicing its way completely through the tough, age-seasoned old oak, the bright, glittering edge of Meeree’s crescent axe burst out to reflect the flames of the torch in the nearby wall sconce.
Below, in the stables that took up the entire ground floor of the massive old tower keep, Gy and the two assistant-orderlies—like him, both Middle Kingdoms Freefighters, Ooehl Abuht and Zanbehm Kawluh—joined forces to rapidly saddle and equip their own mounts, then do the like for first the riding mounts, then the warhorses of Duke Bili and his lady.
While the mounted assistants held the bridles of the four saddled horses, Gy entered the area wherein the pack ponies were picketed, paced down the long rows with his torch held high and selected three of the larger, stronger-looking ones, then waited while hostlers removed his selections from the lines, bridled them and fitted on the special pack saddles used to transport armor and weapons. Then he, too, mounted and led the way up to Sandee’s Cot, its environs now cluttered with traveling gear, carefully wrapped items of armor and spare weapons.
The sprawling residence blazed with light and a hubbub of voices emanated from the main hall, wherein the noblemen and officers were enjoying a predawn breakfast.
After setting his assistants to the job of packing the three big ponies, Gy entered the building to seek Duke Bili.
Even at this, the eleventh hour, Count Steev of Sandee still was fuming. Not that said fuming did or could accomplish anything other than to serve as a vent for his feelings, for such a man as he neither could nor would disobey a royal order, the will of his sovran.
“Now, dammit, Bili, if I’m truly the Count of Sandee, it’s me should have the right to say who rides out of here for the north and who doesn’t. Don’t you possess that right on your own lands, back east?”
Having been hard by the old count for most of a year— riding knee to knee and often fighting beside him on the Ganik campaign of last year, as well as using his glen and his home as base and headquarters for the lowland squadron— Bili and all of his officers had come to like, admire and deeply respect the gruff, bluff, outspoken old warrior. Although he admitted to over sixty winters, he had campaigned as hard as any man or woman of a third his years. He knew the lay of the lands surrounding his glen as thoroughly as he knew the scar-seamed, liver-spotted backs of his hard, square hands, and that deep knowledge had right often been of immeasurable aid in flushing out the rabid packs of outlaw Ganik raiders.
But Bili and his officers all also knew and admitted to themselves and each other that which the elderly count either did not realize or, more likely, refused to admit to himself— his very age and the exceedingly hard life he had led for almost all of those sixty-odd years were at long last beginning to catch up to him, a fact which the keen-eyed and -eared Prince Byruhn had noted during his brief midwinter visit.
There had been many, many days during the winter just past when the old count’s knee joints had been so stiff and swollen that he barely could hobble about, all the while grinding his worn, yellow teeth in agony. Even the simple act of mounting a horse had been an impossibility. It had been for this reason, principally, that the decree had come down from King’s Rest Mountain that, in this time of dire crisis for the kingdom, the king felt that Count Steev could better serve him and the interests of the kingdom by remaining in his glen and holding it securely for the Crown of New Kuhmbuhluhn. Although the bearer of the message had been one of Prince Byruhn’s noblemen, the beribboned document itself had been signed in the bold scrawl of his father, the king, and impressed with the royal cipher.
Nonetheless, old Count Steev had taken it hard. Like an aged warhorse, he heard the trumpet blare and he longed to gallop out to its brazen summons. But for all that he felt himself to be unjustly hobbled and penned, he was a loyal New Kuhmbuhluhner from top to bottom and the habit of firm obedience was too strong a fetter to break. He obeyed… but no one had ever called grumbling disloyalty.
The question he now put to Bili was the same that he had asked of every man of hereditary rank in the lowland squadron one or more times since the unsavory directive had first arrived, so Bili was just as glad, upon seeing Gy approach the dais from the direction of the outer door, to forestall the need to again carefully frame an answer.
“Your pardon, Sir Steev, but I needs must have immediate words with my hornman yonder.”
Count Sandee nodded. “Name’s Gy, isn’t it? Yes, Gy. He’s a singularly brave lad, as I recall. Were he one of mine own, his spurs would be gilt, long since. You’re sure to take losses in the north, losses of all ranks and standings; yon’s a fine replacement, say I.”
As Bili pushed back his chair and arose from the board, the old man turned to one of the Ahrmehnee lieutenants, saying, “Vahk, good friend, you were there that day last summer when, with my good sword, I clove that Ganik bastard to the very teeth, right through his brass helm. So what say you—is a man who still can do such too old to ride to war?”
In her place beside Bili’s now-empty chair, Rahksahnah was glad that Count Sandee had chosen Vahk Soormehlyuhn as his sounding board upon Bili’s departure. Like the others, the warrior part of her respected the old man’s ferocity in close combat, his sagacity in command, but there was more than this. There was the infant son, Djef Morguhn, she had borne to Bili and must so shortly leave behind in this glen for who knew how long.
Steev, Count Sandee, had been full with pride to entertain, to serve beside, a duke through the Ganik campaign; but his pride could only be described as fierce that that same duke’s firstborn son had first seen light in Sandee’s Cot. He had showered all sorts of valuable and sometimes ridiculous gifts upon the small morsel of humanity—everything from a bigboned colt out of his own destrier’s get to a tiny but very sharp bejeweled dagger in a sheath of purest gold.
Therefore, although she grieved for and with him, the war leader of the Maidens of the Moon was at the same time very glad that Sir Steev would remain in command of the glen. Anyone or anything that threatened her little son would have first to pass the savage old warrior, and even she, at less than a third of his age, knew that she would think twice before she set herself against the old but still deadly fighting machine that was Sir Steev of Sandee.
Besides, she knew from personal experience that there was no answer to the posed questions really satisfactory to the old nobleman. When, some weeks back, the other Ahrmehnee lieutenant, Vahrtahn Panosyuhn—who was almost ten years the count’s elder—remarked in answer to the perennial query that the king showed a distinct dearth of judgment to force an old and wise and valiant warrior into an unwanted and unwonted retirement from active campaigning, Sir Steev immediately rose to the defense of his sovran.
“Der Vahrtahn, had a New Kuhmbuhluhner or even one of the lowlanders so impugned the sagacity of my king, Steel be with him, that man would shortly be facing me at swords’ points. But you, you are an Ahrmehnee; I know that your customs differ vastly and that you never have had a king or any real nobles.
“But know you now, it is the sworn—nay, the inborn— duty of an honest and honorable subject of whatever rank to obey the dictates of his sovran and of those placed in positions of authority by his sovran. While I do not feel my sovran to be right in this instance, right or wrong, he still is my liege lord and I will obey, will see to it that those under me obey his decrees so long as breath remains within me.”