He shook his head vehemently, started to speak, then remembered to gape the visor he had automatically closed in the first moments of the attack. “I commend your nerve, corporal, but no, we’ll not attack them and, were they going to attack us, they’d have certainly done so by now. I doubt me not that having so well accomplished their purpose, they’ve gone from up there, anyhow. So have your men see what they can do for the wounded cavalrymen and collect all the sound mounts. We’re going back down to the road and then into the glen. What’s your name, anyway, corporal?”
“If it please the ensign, sir, I be no corporal, only a common pikeman, Phillip Simpson.”
Justis just nodded. “Well, so far as I’m concerned, you’re a corporal as of this minute, and you’ll be so in fact as soon as I speak to Lieutenant MacNeill and the captain. / didn’t form up those men so quickly and neatly, you did, and a man possessing such quick wits and proven qualities of leadership not only deserves promotion within the ranks but will do the army far more good in a position of authority.
“Now, let’s to it, Corporal Simpson. The sooner we’re out of these accursed hills, the better.”
12
Captain Pawl Raikuh walked on invisible eggs when duty took him into the company of Sir Geros for almost a week after the affair at the Ganik-occupied village. But he was a blunt, honest man, and finally it all became just too much to bear.
“Sir Geros… son,” he began one night at table, “what Chief Ahrszin and I did, had done, up in that shell of a village, whilst you and the Maidens were chasing down the bastards what got away…”
Sighing, the young knight shoved back his dish of braised raccoon meat and interrupted in a regretful tone. “Had to be done, Pawl, I know, not that that knowledge makes it all sit any better in my craw. I deeply appreciate what you did for me, taking the decision and the onus off my conscience. It’s damned hard to be a savage, bloodthirsty warrior when you just weren’t cast in that mold. I’m just glad that the horrible business is all over. Perhaps now, if the weather stays good, we can get back to looking for Thoheeks Bili and the Moon Maidens’ brahbehrnuh.”
Raikuh squirmed uncomfortably. “I fear me it’s not quite done, yet awhile, Sir Geros, nor will it be until we have put paid to the very last of those damned shaggies. And that means taking the fight to them, attacking their camp in full force and killing every one of the buggers we can get steel into.”
Geros looked pained. “But why, Pawl? I doubt if more than a bare score got out of the stahn alive. How dangerous could so few be to the Behdrozyuhns?”
The spare captain ticked off his points on his fingers, one by one. “First off, Sir Geros, many of them as rode into here to start, I doubt me if it was all of them; they’d’ve surely left a couple hundred or so to guard their camp, I figger. Second, the reason those what got away did get away was ‘cause they was the leaders and the onliest ones armed.”
At Geros’ incredulous look, he nodded. “That’s right, Sir Geros. Every weapon in that village, even the knives, was all stacked up in the shelter the leaders had been in. I reckon those crazy bugtits had took to killing each other off at such a lick that the top dogs was afeared they’d weaken the force too bad to fight us.”
The captain made a moue of disgust, then corrected himself. “Were afraid they’d weaken their force too badly to fight us, dammit. If I keep living under the same roof with Bohreegahd, I’m going to ride out of here speaking like, hell, probably thinking like a damned hillman myself!
“Anyhow, Sir Geros, I feel it to be imperative that we strike, strike hard, as soon as possible, and Ahrszin agrees with me completely.”
It was on the tip of Geros’ tongue to point out that that particular Ahrmehnee headhunter never failed to be completely in favor of any stratagem or tactic that would see a few new skulls added to the gruesome display that adorned the rafters of the warriors’ cult house. But he thought it might be better to be a bit diplomatic and keep such thoughts to himself, for the two Ahrmehnee girls who looked after this house and his needs understood, he suspected, more Trade Mehrikan than they let on, and he still hoped to persuade some of the fierce Ahrmehnee of the Behdrozyuhn Tribe to ride with him when finally he was able to get back to the real reason he and Raikuh and the rest were here—to search for Thoheeks Bili and his lost command. So he simply held his peace and allowed Raikuh to continue.
And the captain did go on at some length, advising from his vast experience in strategy, tactics and logistics, oblivious of course of the fact that there was no longer an enemy resident in that camp just beyond the stahn border.
Somewhere in the confused few moments it had taken them all to dash out through the weak point of the tightening lines of the Ahrmehnee and the Freefighters they had thought were Kuhmbuhluhners, an Ahrmehnee wardart had thunked into the high cantle of Abner’s saddle. Thrown with all the force of a brawny arm, the missile was still there when, several hours later, Abner reined in his lathered, steaming horse just long enough to doff some of the heavier portions of his armor to ease the animal’s burden and perhaps increase its speed.
Leeroy halted beside his brother/lover and commenced to follow his example in shedding helm, plates and mail. The rest of the small knot of bullies had not halted, casting off what they could while still pushing on, for the border was not far ahead now and the relative freshness of their mounts had, they hoped, given them enough of a lead on their pursuers to get them out of the Ahrmehnee lands alive.
It was Leeroy who noticed the waggling butt of the dart, but Abner who half turned in his saddle and worked the point free. He was on the verge of tossing it, too, away when he noted how finely balanced it was, so he dropped it into his dart quiver, which hung on the offside withers of his mount.
Brutal use of spur and whip got their almost foundered horses moving again, and they both were almost at the unmarked border when they suddenly came into a little glade wherein another rider had halted. Plates and helm lay in the slushy snow on either side of the trembling gray horse as it stood with its fine head hung low, panting, its chest working like a smithy bellows.
The head of the rider was hidden in the oily steel folds of the hauberk he was working up over his head, but the horse and the bits of discarded plate identified him immediately to Abner and Leeroy. It was the fearsome Gouger Haney.
Almost without conscious thought, Abner’s hand went to his dart quiver, sought out the Ahrmehnee dart, and sent it winging to sink its sharp, needle-tipped steel point and a good half of its length of shaft into the helpless bully’s back, just a bit below the left shoulder blade.
Then, in dire fear that some one of their victim’s own bullies might have witnessed the treacherous act, the two rode on, not sparing Gouger Haney so much as a backward glance.
As earlier agreed in their shouted, in-saddle, in-flight council, the first bullies to arrive in the camp had set those lucky enough to have not, for varying reasons, taken part in the disastrous raid to preparing to repel imminently arriving foemen-^foemen who, as matters developed, never appeared, since Sir Geros halted his pursuit just shy of the border.
A few, a very few, other Ganiks trickled in after Abner and Leeroy, their journeys slowed by the thickness of the forest to which they had taken. But it was not until almost midnight that a weary horse plodded in, a gray horse, baring on its back a stiffening corpse with a hauberk bunched up around its shoulders and an Ahrmehnee wardart jutting out of its back.