But, he thought, what will be, will be. At least this time we’ll be closer to full-strength, I hope, without a damned earthquake or forest fires to contend with. Then, too, we’ll have Old Johnny on our side from the beginning, and, in his element, he’s worth at least another full troop of men. He chuckled to himself. It was a damned lucky day for me and for quite a few others when I smashed Johnny’s shoulder and then took him prisoner instead of killing him the way we did the rest of those wounded Ganiks.
As a platoon of dragoons approached, their officer called them to attention in their saddles and then, as they came closer, drew his gleaming saber and saluted Corbett with a practiced flourish, while, on the command of a brazen-voiced noncom, the troopers executed an eyes left.
Corbett drew himself erect and uncased his own saber to return the courtesy. Recognizing the face of the young officer, he thought, Vance Cabell, if he liyes long enough, will be as good a leader as was his uncle.
Corbett still experienced a twinge of guilt whenever he thought of the elder, now-deceased Cabell and of how it had been his orders that had sent the Broomtown noncom off to his death at the hands of the murderous Dr. Harry Braun. He was ruminating on his guilt, his eyes following the young officer and his platoon, when a familiar voice nearby gave him a start.
“The younker do put a body’t’ mind of ol’ Sarge Cabell, don’t he, generl—way’he moves an’ sets his mule?”
Corbett turned in his saddle to behold the speaker—a bald but bushy-bearded man, wrinkled and graying with late middle age, but still erect of carriage, muscular and clearly strong. Skinhead Johnny Kilgore forked his mount of preference—one of the small horses the Broomtowners had bred up from the wild mountain ponies—and he had so schooled the little equine that it now could move almost as silently as the woods-wise man himself.
Mock-seriously, Corbett demanded, “What the hell is my chief scout doing back here? You should be up ahead of the column, by rights.”
The old cannibal’s wide grin caused his bushy eyebrows to hump up like a pair of fuzzy caterpillars, “Aw, generl, hain’t no need fer OF Johnny up ther yet awhile. Them Purvis Tribe fellers’ll do yawl jest fine till we comes to git inta Ganik ter’tory. And I’d a heap rather ride lowng of you an Gump an’ fellers whut I knows.”
Corbett could see the man’s point, and, even had he not, he would have found it difficult to be truly angry at Johnny, who had saved his life and those of many other Broomtown men for all that he had been—technically—a prisoner-of-war at the time.
Responding to the gapped grin of the sometime-Ganik with a smile of his own, the officer said, “You’re more than welcome, Johnny. I can think of no man I’d rather have beside me on a dangerous trail.” His grin widening and a note of banter entering his voice, he then added, “But only so long as you continue bathing and washing your clothes.”
The Ganik barbarians never bathed or washed their rags and often went clothed in green, uncured hides and pelts. The stench of Old Johnny when first he had been captured had—as Corbett recalled—been enough to turn a hog’s stomach; moreover, he had been crawling with fat lice and had harbored more fleas than a sick dog.
But his months with the Broomtowners had altered his overall appearance and personal habits drastically. He was now clothed decently in a mixture of military and civilian garb—dragoon boots and leather-faced trousers, a dark-green cotton shirt with flaring sleeves, a snakehide waistbelt with a buckle of chiseled silver and a broad-brimmed dragoon hat bouncing on his back by its cord.
Corbett noted that both his shirt and the scarf occasionally visible through the beard showed the precise and highly decorative embroidery of Old Johnny’s new woman—Sergeant Cabell’s widow, already gravid of Johnny Kilgore’s seed.
As the rearguard platoon departed the marshaling area, General Jay Corbett set his big mule to a ground-eating canter toward the head of the column, with Old Johnny in his wake. As they went, Corbett gave quick but careful visual inspection to each man, each animal, each packload they passed, silently acknowledging the formal greetings of officers and the less formal ones of civilian packers with an abbreviated cavalry hand salute.
When at last he and Kilgore joined the head of the column, the squat, powerful, thick-limbed Major Gumpner smilingly saluted. “Is it the general’s opinion that the column is in proper order, sir?”
Frowning, Corbett grunted, “As proper as it’s ever going to be, Gump. I just pray God we’ve foreseen and provided against every possible contingency, this time out. I don’t want the blood of any more Broomtown men on my hands.”
The major shrugged. “The general ought to know better. He’s been soldiering for what, a thousand years? Even if through some freak or miracle we don’t have to fight going up or coming back, we’ll still lose men—accidents, disease, snakebite, maybe drownings, things that are or will be nobody’s fault. The general taught me that himself, more than twenty years ago, when I was just a younker.”
“I know, I know.” Corbett sighed. “I’m being irrational, unrealistic, but that tragedy up north, when the train was mashed to death under that landslide, still haunts me. I think that after this mission is completed, I’m going to turn all field operations over to you and your staff and hie me back to the Center.”
Gumpner smiled once more and shook his head chidingly. “The general knows he will never do anything of the sort. He is just not the type to willingly trade his saddle for a chair.”
Jay Corbett chuckled, his good humor restored. “You know me well, don’t you, Gump? Know me better, probably, than I know myself. Your father knew me that well, too, though, and you’re almost him all over again.”
Gumpner’s tone became one of deep humility. “Thank you, sir, thank you sincerely. That was the highest compliment I could have been paid.”
“IFn yawl twd” lovebirds be done a-billin’ and a-cooin’,” remarked Old Johnny, who had kneed his mount up on Corbett’s right side, “yawl might remark thet one them Purvis boys is a-comin’ back hell fer leather.”
Rahksahnah’s warm, moist, even breath bathed Bili’s shoulder as she slept, snuggled against him in the deep, warm feather bed, walled in by the thick woolen curtains from the damp, chilly drafts of the night. With the arm that held her, he could feel the hard muscles underlying her warm, soft skin; no tender, fluttery maid was this woman of Bili the Axe, Chief and Thoheeks of Clan Morguhn, but as stark and proven a warrior as one might find, capable of taking hard blows and returning buffets no less hard. And Bili could have asked no better mate.
But although his body was utterly spent with lovemaking, he did not sleep this night. For all his solemn words to the contrary, Prince Byruhn had no slightest intention of allowing a single one of Bili’s squadron to depart eastward, of this Bili was certain. The young war leader was certain, too, that the crafty royal personage was even now weaving some arcane plot to ensnare them all in his service until these Skohshuns were either driven back whence they had come or extirpated.
Bili felt the need to counsel with some other officer, but Rahksahnah would, he knew, have to arise all too soon in order to give suck to their son, so he sent his questing mind out in search of Lieutenant Kahndoot, whose keen intellect he respected every bit as much as he did her personal battle prowess and her tactical abilities.
The woman’s mind was sleeping, however, and try as he might, he could not enter it or rouse her. So he cast out for the equally familiar mind of Captain Fil Tyluh… only to meet with an identical situation. Nor, it developed, could he reach Lieutenant Frehd Brakit or any one of the mindspeaking noblemen of the Confederation. He knew the impossibility of all of his officers and nobles being in sleep so deep at one and the same moment of any night. Not natural sleep, at least.