Moreover, the monarch had deliberately left every one of the Kleesahks—those huge, hybrid, part-human creatures whose preternatural senses might have partially at least replaced the missing security forces on the march—to be part of the garrison of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, remarking that since the enemy Skohshuns lacked Kleesahk allies, he felt that it would be less than honorable to set out with a detachment of them.
In the light of so royal a degree of utter stupidity—which was how Bili saw it, then and ever after—he had sent the prairiecat Whitetip out on the night before the column left the fortified city. The big feline had first performed a reconnaissance of the proposed route-of-march for a bit over a day’s ride from New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, telepathically beamed his discoveries back to Bili, then found a safe, dry, comfortable place to lie up until the march actually began.
Soon after the tail end of the column had quitted the lower approaches to New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, a young New Kuhmbuhluhn knight had ridden back down the files to the head of Bili’s squadron of lowlanders. Following an old-fashioned, intricately formal salute, the youth had stiltedly conveyed his message: The esteemed and courageous Duke Bili of Morguhn was summoned to ride at the side of King Mahrtuhn for the nonce. Leaving his force under the capable command of Freefighter Captain Fil Tyluh, Bili had urged his big black stallion in the wake of the returning galloper.
Like Bili, King Mahrtuhn was an axeman, using that weapon by preference in battle, rather than the more usual sword or saber or lance; his was only slightly less massive than Bili’s own double-bitted axe, being single-bitted, but with the usual finial spike and another, cursive one behind the blade. Both axemen carried their fearsome weapons cased between pommel and knee on the off side of their horse housings and so within easy reach in an emergency.
Although nearly fifty years Bili’s senior, the only hints of advanced years about King Mahrtuhn were his white hair and wrinkle-furrowed face. He rode tall and erect in his saddle, his broad-hipped and -shouldered, thick-waisted body all big bones and rolling muscles. At his left side rode a younger, carbon copy of him, his chosen heir, Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht of New Kuhmbuhluhn.
Both royal personages smiled cheery greeting to Bili and opened the space betwixt their warhorses that he might ride between and so converse easily with either or both.
But King Mahrtuhn’s warm smile metamorphosed into a frown as he said, “Cousin, we are informed that you have developed and schooled your squadron in a maneuver designed to gap the Skohshun’s pike hedge. We hope that your means are honorable. We cannot and will not countenance the use of bows or darts or slings or such other cowardly, dishonorable methods aimed at the murders of brave fighting men. You have heard our views on that distasteful subject.”
“No, your majesty,” Bili replied, “this tactic makes no slightest use of missile weapons. Of horses either, for that matter, save only to bear us up to the points of the pikes. Then will we all go in afoot, in half-armor.”
The younger prince—younger than the king, but still a good ten years Bili’s senior in age—raised a dark-red eyebrow. “It sounds a bit like suicide, to me, Duke Bili. If mounted men in full armor can’t hack a way through that hedge, what possible chance has a contingent of warriors in half-armor and on foot? Many a trick that looks good on a sand board or the practice field proves worse than useless when push comes to shove with steel points. How can you be certain that his majesty is not just allowing you to fritter away the strength of your squadron?”
Bili nodded. “I appreciate your sincere concern for my command, lord prince, but this will not be the first use of this tactic on a hard-fought field. It was first developed by one of my maternal ancestors, a certain Duke of Zuhnburk, and with it he defeated numerically superior forces on more than one occasion. Others in the Middle Kingdoms have, over the years, emulated him with equal success. I have drilled my folk hard and well, and I expect equal success against these Skohshuns.”
King Mahrtuhn bobbed his head, his plumes nodding. “We were assured by our nephew, Prince Byruhn, that your new mode of fighting was honorable and, if performed bravely, had a good chance of succeeding to its purpose, but we wished to hear the same from your lips, cousin.”
“Uncle Byruhn,” said the younger Mahrtuhn with a grin, “while he is purely honorable, has been known to stretch the truth a bit when certain of his personal stratagems were involved ... and to wax most wroth upon being put to questions a second time. And he is angry enough, just now, because his majesty and I decided to leave the bowmen and the slingers upon whom Byruhn dotes back in New Kuhmbuhluhnburk.”
Bili silently reflected that in Prince Byruhn’s place he, too, would be angry. The mountainous man had fairly quivered with rage as he had detailed the monumental folly of his father and nephew to Bili on the evening before.
“My royal sire is not a stupid man, Cousin Bili, nor is my nephew, so I can but assume that they both have taken temporary leave of their senses. I was at that meeting whereat the heralds of the Skohshuns were heard, and if the chief herald had been a wizard, then surely his spells would have affected me, as well, not just the king and young Mahrtuhn. And their strategy, if such ill-conceived plans can be truly called such, smacks unmistakably of either witchcraft or insanity.
“Hark you, because these trespassing foreigners own no bowmen or slingers in their own host, the king has come to fee! that it would be an act of dishonor to include such in our own array, for all that it was those same missilemen who enabled me and what was by then left of our last year’s army to win back to the safety of these stout walls after the autumn disaster; had they not nibbled and pecked at the Skohshun pursuit, none of us would be here today to fight again.
“Moreover, his majesty is of the opinion that use of our traditional allies, the Kleesahks, would also be unfair and therefore dishonorable. I’ve never before heard such gross foolishness from my father, Cousin Bili, and I’d suspect encroaching senility, save that my nephew is of exactly the same idiotic bent in this matter.”
“Could it not be, Lord Byruhn,” suggested Bili, “that the prince your nephew’s voiced opinion is but a reflection of that of the king your father? You know as do I that the old often influence the young both for good and for ill.”
The prince gusted a sigh, his big hands absently clenching and releasing only to reclench the chiseled-silver goblet which was still half full of wine. “Yes, I, too, had thought of that, of course, cousin; but such is not the case, here. My nephew and my father have always been like to but one mind in two bodies—one younger, one older—almost from the birth of the young prince. That is one of the reasons that I declined to become heir upon the demise of my elder brother, the present heir’s sire, years agone.
“As you are by now surely aware, my royal sire and I differ in many a way, both in thought and in actions. The royal councilors of that time recognized and feared the possible strife and discontent that might be caused should the kingship pass from my father to me, and with the good of our kingdom in mind, I could not but agree with them.
“It is not mere flattery that he is called King Mahrtuhn the Good, you know; my royal father is a good king, a very good king to his people ... up until now, at least, when he seems firm bent on dragging a number of the best men in all the kingdom down to bloody death with him.