The traders from the caravans had remarked among themselves over the past spring and summer on the remarkable number of “new” clans—clans that had come up from the southern and down from the higher, western plains. But few had thought deeply upon such movement, for it was the way of the nomad clans to wander wherever graze and inclination took them. The traders had simply thanked their luck or stars or gods and accepted the enhanced trading possibilities presented by these new customers.
But the newly arrived clans were not, as the traders surmised, simply following their herds; no, they had been summoned. In an expanse of prairie where in recent centuries a season might have seen three or possibly four clans gathered now were camped more than six-and-thirty of the principal clans of the Kindred. Nor had their chiefs chosen the sites of this coming winter’s encampment, toward which they now were slowly moving. The sites had been chosen and clearly marked out by a man whom few had met but of whom almost all had heard—a war chief of all the Kindred clans, elected by the Grand Council of Chiefs empaneled at a special summer tribe camp three summers ago, a chief named Milo of Morai.
5
A true scion of the Tidewater or “Old” Ehleen nobility, Lord Urbahnos went to great lengths to avoid forking a horse, bred to his firm belief that carriage or war cart was the only acceptable transport for a refined gentleman. Only in direst necessity would he chafe and bruise his flesh, painfully strain muscles of thighs and buttocks and chance injury to his privates upon the back of some sweating, smelly beast, and never whilst wheeled transport was available. But Duke Tcharlz’s roads, especially the stretches between Twocityport and Pahdookahport, were deliberately a very bane of light-wheeled vehicles—although trader wagons and army vehicles, with their heavy construction, high road clearance and large, powerful teams regularly navigated the miles of ruts and mud and sinkholes. Since Lady Ann too detested riding horseback, this road was another barrier against her undesired presence in the duke’s sumptuous new residence.
Therefore, the Ehleen had left Pahdookahport in the next best thing, to his mind: a spacious, well-padded, covered horse litter slung—at fore and aft—between a pair of rented Northorses. The monstrous iron-gray geldings were rare and hellishly expensive to buy, coming as they did from some land far north of the great inland sea; but the breed were all gentle, smooth-gaited, stronger than draft oxen and, standing an average of twenty-two hands at the withers, perfect for easily bearing a weighty horse litter above the virtual river of mire which autumnal rains and heavy traffic had made of the road to the east. In the wallet attached to Urbahnos’ swordbelt reposed three drafts upon his account at the Ducal Bank of Pahdookahport, all requiring only his signature and seal to render them negotiable, and he hoped to use one or more of these to buy the two valuable slave boys. However, knowing full well the preference of the plains traders for hard, ringing specie, he wore under his clothing a weighty leathern money belt, abrim with ducal gold and Ehleen silver coins. And this was why Nahseer and six other well-armed bodyguards trotted on surefooted riding mules before, behind and on either flank of his litter, hunched and miserable in the chill, drizzling rain despite their oilskins. Protected from the wet by the canvas roof and sidecurtains, from the chill by paddings, pillows and a thick, winter bearskin, the onetime Lord of Kostanispolis sipped delicately from a commodious flask of strong honey wine and mused silently.
“Even if I have to part with every ounce of metal in my belt… and one of the drafts besides… my profit on just one of the little darlings will more than reimburse me… or should. Hmmm… let’s see… perhaps… perhaps, if I sell the less pretty one… say, to a buyer in Kehnooryos Ehlas, and then present the prettier as an outright gift to Lord Tkoheeks Nikos, King Zenos’ principal adviser. Or should I gift the little bastard to the king himself? No, that’s right”—he sighed gustily and shook his head of oiled ringlets—“like his father before him—God grant that that old scumsucker is burning in the deepest pit of Hell!—the young king is said to care only for women. Must be the barbarian blood, for he seems a cultured, civilized man in all other respects, from what I’ve heard. But not to take a pretty little boy now and again? Remarkably uncouth, to say the least!
“So! Then the boy must go to Nikos of Sahpahntispolis, who is at least gentleman enough to appreciate—to properly appreciate—the rarity and value of the gift. Why, this pah-are the first Horseclans boys through these parts in years. “As I recall him, Thoheeks Nikos is—for all his other failings—a true Ehleen gentleman of the old school, and if he gives value due to value received… and he must! I… I’m dying in this barbarian pesthole!” Feeling tears starting to well up from his eyes, Urbahnos rumbled for a soft cloth and dabbed lightly at his eye corners, taking great care not to smudge the cosmetics on upper and lower lids or to disarrange his long, curling false eyelashes. Restowing the cloth, he took a long, burning pull at his flask before settling back again to his musings. “So, then, the prettier… probably the younger will be prettier… the prettier will go to Nikos, and he must be untried, too, for the tastes of so refined a gentleman, so I had best send him east with Nahseer. Yes, that’s perfect.” He smiled. “That Zahrtohgahn bastard will butcher anyone who even touches the little sweetling, and, lacking himself any man parts, there’ll be no chance of the guardian’s being tempted.”
Urbahnos had never had cause to regret his purchase of the hulking Nahseer, years before, when the Zahrtohgahn was placed upon the riverside slave block in Pahdookahport. It had been upon the first occasion that the huge man had saved his life and purse from a band of footpads—taking wounds in the process, since, prior to that time, his master had been loath to arm him—that the Ehleen had considered manumitting him… but he had yet to do so, for all that he frequently used the brown-skinned man to convey and guard especially valuable merchandise to the eastern coastal areas—furs, jewels, young and beautiful virgins and the like.
Now in his mid- to late-thirties, Nahseer claimed to have been of a high-caste family of the Kaliphate of Zahrtohgah, a mighty warrior of high rank in the armies of that land and possessed of wealth and power. His downfall, he went on to claim, was his intemperate lust for a girl who chanced to catch the eye of the kahleefah and be taken into his hahreenu Such had been Nahseer’s bemusement that he had plotted to take the girl from hahreem, palace and city by a combination of stealth, force and bribery and bear her off to his own faraway city—aware that once her flower was taken, the kahleefah would have no interest in her and would, eventually, forgive him, since, in his almost constant state of war, he had far more need of competent captains than of just one among his hundreds of women.
However, as the Fates would have it, someone had betrayed the bold scheme and Nahseer Had been set upon by a host of the kahleefah’s guardsmen the moment he dropped from the top of the inner wall to the springy turf of the hahreem garden. Knowing full well his fate if taken alive, the mighty man had drawn both yahtahgahn and long dagger and fought with awesome effect With strictest orders to take the intruder alive, the guardsmen had suffered terribly, taking crippling wounds and death thrusts and deliberately foregoing many opportunities to slay Nahseer in combat. Finally overcome by force of numbers and sheer exhaustion, Nahseer had been dragged before his ruler. In a foaming rage at the numbers of warriors the prisoner had cost him, as well as at the attempted violation of his hahreem, Kahleefah Yusuf had had Nahseer severely flogged, gelded and sold for a slave to a party of traders from Ohyoh.
Despite the loss of his manhood, Nahseer had proved most intractable. Few of his early masters had owned him long, and all had been glad to see him go, often selling at a hefty loss to speed his departure. Finally, having become infamous and unsellable in all the Kingdom of Ohyoh, a river trader had bought the mass of brown-skinned muscle and bone for a pitiful sum on the speculation that he might bring a decent price in Pahdookahport or Twocityport, where strong male slaves were usually in demand for the oar barges. Urbahnos surmised that the big man’s loyalty to him was the result of his boundless thanks at being spared the long, hideous, drawn-out death sentence that was the lot of slaves and felons doomed to the oar barges. Had anyone told him that in the heart buried within that massive chest the Zahrtohgahn slave to whom he regularly entrusted both life and property hated and despised him, Lord Urbahnos of Kostanispolis would have openly scoffed and forever after have considered that person an idiot and utter fool. “The lord thoheeks knows what I want, of course,” Urbahnos mused on within the swaying litter. “He knows what an injustice was done me by old Zenos, that barbarian-loving, moon-blood-lapping dog turd. After all, I only pinked the ahrkeethoheeks’ son. It wasn’t my fault he died of black rot, was it? Of course not! And to accuse me of using a poisoned blade…” Urbahnos almost always conveniently forgot how, on his way to that eleven-years-done duel, he had several times run the full length of his blade into the stinking, well-rotted carcass of a dead pig. “So, the sooner I get the boy slave to Karaleenos, the sooner I may expect a pardon and a royal recall to my lands and city. Let’s see… perhaps Pehtros will buy my house slaves; God knows he needs them. Why he’s not long since died of some loathsome disease living in that pigsty is more than I can fathom. I suppose that I really should free Nahseer, but I’ll surely need money to reestablish myself in the proper style, and if I can find a buyer willing to pay a really good price for him… but I won’t sell him to the barge owners… no, not unless the other slaves and the house bring less than they should.