“Now, I am not your ruler, thanks be to Sun, Wind and Sacred Steel; were I, I much fear me that I would be inclined to clap you all in irons and incarcerate you somewhere back in that warren carved out of King’s Rest Mountain, then choose me a set of royal councilors who were more serious about their responsibilities toward me and the good of the kingdom.
“I have said that I will remain here with my squadron until the Skohshuns be put to flight, but if there is only one more outbreak of the disgraceful sort I’ve just witnessed here, I shall mount my people and ride out under a flag of truce. The Skohshuns are aware that me and mine are mercenaries, not Kuhmbuhluhners, and I have the word of their herald, Sir Djahn Makadahm, that our passage out of the city, the burk and the kingdom will not be in any degree disputed or hindered by their army.
“Now, whilst you gentlemen calmly and politely discuss the available options and alternatives of this matter of a new king, I shall be mindspeaking with Pah-Elmuh, and if you all lapse into yet another spate of threats and name-calling, you can figure upon working out your surrender to the Skohshuns alone.”
Abashed, never doubting for a single minute that the young commander meant every word he had spoken, that he and his squadron could and would ride out and leave the city and the kingdom to the will of fickle fate, all of the councilors resumed their seats and began to converse in low tones, one with the other.
“Now, Pah-Elmuh,” Bili mindspoke, “I will have the truth of this matter. From what you said upstairs, when we found your son, Oodehn, dead, I would imagine that you knew more of the probable identity of our night killer than you chose to tell me. I was obviously wrong—I had thought that I had your trust and your loyalty.”
“You had and you have, both, Lord Champion,” the Kleesahk beamed forcefully. “But ... ”
“Then why, Pah-Elmuh? Why did you not even so much as suggest to me the possibility of what we now know was fact?” Bili demanded, the gaze of his blue eyes boring relentlessly into the ovoid-pupiled, unhuman eyes of the hominid.
Pah-Elmuh sighed resignedly. “Because of loyalties that far antedated any other, newer ones, Lord Champion. Loyalties to the House of Mahrloh, the first true-men who treated my forebears as men, as equals, and did not hunt us or consider us to be just another variety of beast. Now that revered house is extinct and I much fear that ere too many more years go by, we Kleesahks will be extinct, as well.
“Know you now, Lord Champion, that poor King Byruhn was not the first of his house to be so grievously afflicted; it was a blight which surfaced in almost every generation at least once, but in the last two generations it seemed almost a universal plague of the blood of Mahrloh. King Mahrtuhn himself had it, but it was in far milder form, and with the help of my instructions to his brain he was able to successfully fight it to a life-long standstill quite early in his young manhood, it being an affliction that does not manifest itself until the victim becomes pubescent.
“Prince Gilbuht, King Byruhn’s younger brother and the sire of Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht, also had this milder form, as too did his only son, and we Kleesahks had long since given the same help to them.
“But the more serious form of the affliction was the legacy of the unfortunate King Byruhn, though the severity was not at first apparent. When it did become evident—in the form of a couple of full-scale seizures, complete transformations into the beast shape along with its terrible appetite—I at once devoted long years to slowly helping him erect a mental control over that regrettable tendency. By the time he had attained his twenty-fifth year, he had the ability not only to recognize the incipient onset of an attack of the affliction but that of competently coping with it, staving it off, with mental powers alone.
“Of course, although I doubt seriously that either of them ever told of it abroad, this hereditary affliction is also the real reason why neither of the last two princes—young Mahrtuhn Gilbuht and King Byruhn—ever sired offspring on any of their wives or women. Byruhn wished to take no slightest chance of passing so heavy and loathsome a burden on to any son he might sire—for some reason, females do not seem to be afflicted—and so he years ago prevailed upon me to perform a certain surgical procedure that rendered him completely sterile, but without affecting in any manner or means his performance as a whole man.
“Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht, although he bore but the milder variety of the affliction, also sought me out for this same procedure and I accommodated him, for it did much to ease his gentle nature and troubled mind. Upon his accession to the throne of New Kuhmbuhluhn, or right soon thereafter, it had been his intent to formally adopt an heir who might not be of so close a relationship as to carry the same intensity of the beastly affliction of his house. But as you know, Lord Champion, poor young Mahrtuhn Gilbuht died most gallantly before he ever had the chance to carry out aught of his plans.
“What King Byruhn would have done, I know not, but there on the road from that dreadful battle, when I told him that his royal father’s spark of life had winked out, he remarked to me that he and I both knew that he must be the very last king of the House of Mahrloh and why. Perhaps he too intended to adopt a distant cousin as his heir—I know not.”
“But, Pah-Elmuh,” probed Bili, “you say that you had long ago taught Byruhn how to suppress these changes into wolf form. Then why did he suddenly lose his control and begin to stalk by night, killing and rending and devouring innocent folk? Why would he have slain Oodehn, yet not even try to eat him?”
“As to the sad death of my Oodehn, Lord Champion, I know not why he was slain—perhaps mere bloodlusting ferocity of the shameful thing King Byruhn had, through no fault of his own, become. As to why he did not then eat of my son, because none of these men who become beasts in this affliction ever will eat, in the beast shape, of any save human flesh.
“Why King Byruhn lost his carefully nurtured control, well, Ican but speculate that perhaps the injury to his head had a detrimental effect on that part of his brain that housed his control. It also could be that as his man body lay slowly dying of lack of proper nourishment, the basic survival instinct awakened the beast in him and sent it out in search of the food needed to, sustain them both. But now we never will know the real truth.”
XIV
The morning of the set battle dawned with a bright glare of sunlight, presaging a hot day to come. Cottony islands of white cloud floated here and there in the pale-blue skies, peacefully sailing the high, airy oceans far above the bloody affairs of men.
But on this particular area of the earth, below that serene, celestial calm and stillness, drums had begun to roll even before the dawning, bugles to peal their imperative notes, men to shout orders, while horses stamped and neighed and snorted, metal rattled and clanked, leather creaked. There was neither quiet nor calm anywhere in the camp below or the city above, as two groups of warriors prepared to do again that which they did best—fight and maim and kill other warriors.
As prearranged, Sir Djahn Makadahm was the first man to ride out from the stockaded camp onto the space between camp and mountain that had been agreed upon as the site of the coming passage-at-arms. Almost immediately, he was joined there by the chosen herald of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, Freefighter Captain Sir Fil Tyluh.
They two had met before, whilst Sir Djahn was being entertained in the city. Now both shucked gauntlets and clasped hands. “When will his grace of Morguhn arrive?” asked the Skohshun.
“Shortly, Sir Djahn,” Fil Tyluh replied. “What of your own command party?”
“As soon as they see enough of your officers and nobles down here to reassure them that none of your long-range engines are likely to cast a wainload of rock upon them.”