But they doggedly stuck to the trail, for all that most of the Ganiks loudly and often decried the folly of so small a bunch moving in the open in obviously settled Kuhmbuhluhner lands. Through Bowley, Horseface and Counter, Erica forced her will in this matter. While the Ganiks might consider a score of riders a small bunch, she realized the considerable edge given them by the four rifles and the pistol. She also knew that to take to the woods would be to cut their rate of speed down to a virtual crawl, and she was most anxious to get out of this provenly hostile land and on the road toward first Broomtown and then the Center… and a moment of reckoning with Dr. Harry Braun.
Nonetheless, they always took pains to camp well out of sight or sound of the trail, to maintain smokeless fires and to carefully scout out the trail in both directions before again setting out upon it of mornings. It was one of these scouts who first brought word of strange men on the trail, moving up from the south.
Ensign James Justis was given his orders for the morrow by his company commander, Lieutenant MacNeill. “Jimmy lad, a woodcutter party’s to go out at dawn to fetch back some of the trees they girdled and left to cure last year. I doubt me there’ll be any whiff of trouble, for we’ve seen not one of the Kuhmbuhluhn folk since the last battle, but you know the colonel—he insists on security, naetheless.
“So, put a couple dozen of our pikemen on ponies and you and them ride along out and back with the cutters and their wagons. Draw rations from regiment for you and ours. It’s up to the cutters to bring their own. See how many boar spears you can ferret out—scarce as decent pikeshafts are become, I want none of ours broken or warped in those damp forests.
“You might choose a couple of good shots and give them a prod or two and maybe a crossbow. Some fresh game for the mess would warm my heart, 1 vow.”
Ensign Justis had experienced scant difficulty in finding two dozen volunteers from the company of pikemen. The entire company would have come with him, so bored were they with the unceasing day-in, day-out pike drill, with the shouts and snarls and profane curses of glowering, red-faced sergeants and corporals, while the mounted officers watched critically from a distance.
The ensign had had only to choose men he knew to be good riders, plus a trio of keen-eyed and experienced hunters, plus a Corporal Gregory to convey his orders to the other ranks.
They rode out in the chill and damp of the dawning, all close-wrapped in thick, warm cloaks. The ponies moved out placidly, when once the ponderous gates of the captured safe-glen had been gaped, but Justis’ horse showed his fine, hot blood and his joy to be out of the confines of the glen in an attempt or two at misconduct the curbing of which required a tight hand on the reins. Behind the ensign and the first dozen pikemen, the cutters and their rumbling wagons proceeded, they being followed by the corporal and the second dozen pony-mounted, spear-armed pikemen.
As the column issued out from the fortified gap that led into the glen-approach, the three hunters with their missile weapons peeled off from the column and set out at the best gallop the mountain ponies could muster under the weight of the big, solid humans. When they had gained something over a quarter mile on the van of the column, they reined up, spread across the width of the trail into the verges of the forest and so proceeded at a fast walk, their weapons cocked and ready for whatever game might pass near enough for a shot.
When the scouts came breathlessly back with the news of the strangers on the trail, both Bowley and Horseface Charley went back with them to see for themselves. Before long, Bowley returned to the night camp, having left Horseface with the scouts to mark the progress of the strangers.
“More Kuhmbuhluhners?” Erica was quick to ask.
Wrinkling his forehead, Bowley shook his shaggy head slowly. “Naw, Ehrkah, leas’ wise I don’ thank so. It’s a whole passel of littul thangs makes me thank they ain’ Kuhmbuhluhners. Boots, fer one thang. I ain’ nevuh seed no Kuhmbuhluhner in no boot lank thet. They belt knifes is made funny, too, V so’s they hats. The closes’ one to me said some words, low-lahk, when his pony come to stumble; it ‘uz Mehrikan, raht enuff, but it ‘uz a kind Mehrikan I ain’ nevuh heerd afore.”
Erica’s hopes leaped suddenly. Broomtown trqopersl Could it be? Could it possibly be? But she kept her voice calm as she asked the necessary question.
“How are they armed, Merle?”
He shrugged. “Knifes, shortswords, crossbows—one of ‘em a reg’lar one and two whut shoots rocks; prods, they cawls ‘em, I thank. They looks lahk hunters, acks lank it, too, but I done lef Charley and them boys back ther fer to see if eny more is a-comin’.”
Erica sighed softly. No, not Broomtown men. They’d have been armed with sabers and axes and rifles, not crossbows and shortswords. They were most probably Kuhmbuhluhners after all, despite Bowley’s assurances to the contrary; likely they were just a northern type he had never before seen.
As for the oddly inflected language, she and others at the Center had never ceased to be amazed at how quickly so many, vastly differing, frequently all but incomprehensible dialects had sprung into being in various portions of what had once been the United States of America—all of them based on the one language of that vanished nation, Standard American English. The only people anywhere who still spoke the original language were occupants of the Center and its bases, plus that evil, murderous mutant, Milo Morai.
She went on to reflect that the present commercial tongue used by the traveling traders—most of them now hailing from the Aristocratic Republic of Eeree, though a hundred years ago, before a succession of long, bloody wars had completely disrupted formerly stable governments, the majority of the traders had been spawned by the various kingdoms of the Ohio River Valley—was about as close to the original language as any of the dialects came. But even this so-called Trade Mehrikan was tinged with numerous loan words, phrases, pronunciations and inflections from the disparate areas they touched in the years-long rounds of commerce.
Erica’s reflections on language were violently interrupted by the sudden, crashing report of a rifle.
Out of the huge, hundreds-strong raiding party he had led into the Ahrmehnee lands, something less than thirty bullies rode out behind Abner. And those who did escape only did so because they were all horse-mounted and their fresh mounts’ strength and longer legs allowed them to outdistance those grim pursuers who rode down and slew every one of the pony-mounted Ganiks, few of whom had been armed anyway.
Throughout the first leg of their flight, Gouger Haney had unceasingly and profanely railed at him for keeping the common Ganiks disarmed, although the decision had been as much his as it had been Abner’s or Leeroy’s. Abner had known with a cold chill of certainty that the older, deadlier man would force him into a death duel for full leadership immediately they were out of harm’s way. It was far from pleasant to ride with the firm conviction that certain death lay both behind and ahead.
Fully aware of the sensitivity of Sir Geros, but also fully aware of what must now be done in the ruined village, Captain Pawl Raikuh slyly worked it so that it was the young knight who led out the pursuit of the knot of armed Ganiks who had broken through a weak point in the cordon of fighters that surrounded them. With the mixed force of Freefighters, Moon Maidens and Ahrmehnee well underway behind a sizable pack of the big, savage hunting hounds bred by the tribes of the stahn, Raikuh and Dehrehbeh Ahrszin set the bulk of their force to the work which must be done were they to forever rid these lands of the Ganik threat.