Without looking up, she answered him just as soundlessly. “If properly wielded, axe or saber or sword can shear through or penetrate armors of metal, against which your claws and your fangs are useless, Chief Whitetip. Have you now any more opinions to state? Have you eaten this day, or would you care for some cheese?”
The cat gaped his jaws sufficiently to allow a vast expanse of red-pink tongue to emerge and glide raspingly over his thin lips and their furry peripheries. Closing his eyes to mere slits, he sighed audibly in a surfeit of happy gustatory memory. “Thank you, but no, mate-of-my-brother. I found a tasty young goat wandering on the other side of the stream. He was juicy and tender and just the right size for a fine meal.”
As her hands moved the saber to concentrate the strokes of the stone on another section of the blade, Rahksahnah asked, “And what of these folk we go to fight, these Skohshuns—what saw you of them? How near are they to this place?”
The big cat slid forward onto his belly and rested his chin upon his forepaws. “A short march the other side of this stream is a low ridge, and beyond it is a small valley that angles toward the north; this valley is flanked by other ridges and in its center runs a smaller stream that joins this larger one a mile or so to the eastward. The road of treetrunks goes over the nearer ridge and through that valley, along the east bank of the smaller stream. The Skohshuns are camped on and about the two flanking ridges, and I think they mean to block that little valley with their army, when next Sacred Sun shines.”
It stood to reason, thought Rahksahnah. The Skohshuns had been able to field very little heavy-armed cavalry to start with, and last autumn’s battles had almost extirpated those few. That meant that the Skohshun pike hedge would have little if any horse to guard against a flank attack, so throwing the pike line across a narrow vale and anchoring the vulnerable flanks on ground too rough or precipitous or wooded to allow for passage of mounted men was a sensible idea.
“How many watchers have they on the ridge closest to the larger stream?” she beamed to the cat. “And are there any troops making ready to block the ford in the morning?”
“No,” the cat replied, “none of these twolegs-with-the-overlong-spears are any closer to this place than the north side of the first ridge ... at least, they were not when I left to come here.”
“Just so,” Rahksahnah nodded, while silently beaming her thoughts to the feline. “They could easily have moved to new and more threatening positions whilst you were not there to observe them. So go back across the stream and watch for any change in their ranks, any movements out of their camps. But don’t come back here to let us know; farspeak us the message.”
“I cannot farspeak your mind, mate-of-my-brother,” said Whitetip. “Yours is simply one of those twoleg minds that I cannot range.”
“No, I know you can’t,” she replied. “But you can farspeak Bili or Captain Fil Tyluh or Lieutenant Kahndoot, and all of them are here in camp. But you must go back, for this mad king has not and will not send out twoleg scouts or even post a decent camp guard for the night, so the squadron must have the benefit of your observation of the enemy to be certain that we are not surprised by a sudden attack by dark or dawn.”
Not bothering to shield a mind seething with most unflattering opinions regarding King Mahrtuhn’s probable antecedents, personal traits, usual practices and present lack of foresight, the huge feline flowed effortlessly back onto his big feet and stalked out of the pavilion, his white-tipped tail swishing his displeasure. Not only must he swim back over that icy-cold stream, but the scent of the night air presaged at least a splattering of rain before the dawn, and he had anticipated sleeping it out in the dry comfort of a tent, not under the dripping leaves of some misbegotten tree.
But he was a cat of Clan Morguhn by free choice, not by a mere accident of birth, and Bili of Morguhn was his chief as well as his cat brother. The black-haired mate of his chosen chief and brother spoke for the Morguhn in his absence; this, Whitetip knew, and so—knowing well the duties and obligations of an obedient clans cat, for he was, himself, a sept chief—the prairiecat obeyed.
Upon Bili’s return from the royal pavilion, Rahksahnah recounted the information brought by the cat, whereupon the young commander mindcalled his principal lieutenants, those of them as were mindspeakers. He sent his two guards in search of the others.
First to arrive was Lieutenant Kahndoot of the Moon Maidens. Though but of average height, the woman was chunky and powerful and the only other person in the squadron, male or female, who had proved able to handle Bili’s big axe as well as did he ... or almost as well. Alone of the contingent of surviving Moon Maidens who had followed their hereditary leader—the brahbehrnuh, now called Rahksahnah by all—into this savage, often hostile land, Kahndoot had not yet done the announced will of the Silver Lady, the Moon Goddess, and taken a man as mate and battle companion, for all that she had given up the ways of the irrevocably lost Hold of the Maidens of the Moon and no longer had a woman as lover and battle mate, either. When anyone presumed to ask her, she would simply smile and shrug and state that she had not as yet found a male who suited her and was uncommitted to another Maiden.
Hard upon Kahndoot’s heels came Captain Fil Tyluh and Lieutenant Frehd Brakit, both Freefighter officers, both younger sons of Middle Kingdoms nobility and, perforce, making their way in the world by hiring out their swords and fighting skills to those in need of a few bravos or a temporary army.
Bili’s maternal heritage was of a Middle Kingdoms noble house, and he had, moreover, fostered and had his arms training and experienced his first few years of warfare at the violent court of the Iron King of Harzburk, so he frequently understood Freefighters better than he did his part-Ehleen paternal relatives, and he always had felt more at home with the burker mercenary soldiers than with either Horseclans Kindred or Ehleen aristocracy.
The last three subordinate officers to arrive crowded in at the same time. One was a distant cousin of Bili’s in the paternal line. Like Bili, he was of mixed blood—part Horseclans Kindred, part Ehleen, although he and most of his peers considered themselves to be Kindred, nothing else, nothing less—and like Bili, he was holder of a hereditary title in the Confederation, whence most of them had originally come. He was Vahrohneeskos—he was called “baronet” by the Freefighters—Gneedos Kahmruhn of Skaht.
Vahk Soormehlyuhn and Vahrtahn Panosyuhn bore a clear racial similarity to each other and a less striking one to Rahksahnah and Kahndoot. The two were Ahrmehnee warriors, and they shared command of the contingent of their tribesmen who made up a part of Bili’s squadron.
Bili nodded curt greetings and said, “Don’t bother to get comfortable, any of you; this won’t take long. Then you must all go back and spread the word, but quietly, amongst those you directly command, bidding them do the same amongst their own subordinates. I want no big, loud-spoken, easily overheard meetings, you see. What I have had done for me—for us, rather—would be considered strictly dishonorable by the sovran we now serve.
“Whitetip, the prairiecat, left New Kuhmbuhluhnburk well before our own departure and has been scouting out our line-of-march, with orders to mindspeak me from afar only in the event of his discovery of an ambush site, ready-manned and awaiting our column.
“When it became clear that King Mahrtuhn intended to halt and camp here for the night, I farspoke Whitetip and sent him on across the stream to try to find trace of the Skohshuns and possibly determine their distance from us. That he did, and more. He brought the report to Rahksahnah whilst I was still at the royal pavilion, this night.
“By Whitetip’s witness, these Skohshuns are about as demented or, at the least, as strategically unschooled as the royal personage we now serve. They have gone into camp a good hour or more of marching time from yonder ford, and although they too have thrown out a few pickets, they are clearly not preparing emplacements for engines with which to harass those making use of the ford, have not even occupied the crest of the ridge that lies between the ford and their camp and, indeed, have a campsite every bit as ill defended as is this one.”