The Lord Urbahnos, stark naked save for his finger and arm rings, crouched—trembling, whimpering and drooling in terror—at the head of the bed, seemingly unaware of a deep and earnestly bleeding slash down his left cheek. Both his hands were clutching frantically at his crotch. Dark-red blood poured between and over the beringed fingers to soak into the pillow beneath him. Bahb was still fully clad, although both shirt and trousers were torn and both sun-browned cheeks showed prints left by the fingers and rings of the hand that had slapped him. A short-bladed knife in each grubby hand, the fine steel of both blades clouded with blood, he had been engaged in stalking Urbahnos, even while he mindspoke both his brother and the mare in the serai stables. Upon Nahseer’s entrance, however, he leaped backward to place his back hard to the outer wall. “Brown man,” he hissed, holding one blade ready for defense and placing the point of the other just under the hinge of his jaw, “if you try to take me again for him, I’ll send myself to Wind… but I’ll take you with me, if I can. Beware I” Nahseer knew of a certainty that the spindly boy meant every word of it, and he loved him from that moment for his courage in the face of impossible odds—a barely pubescent boy pitted against an armored swordsman four times his size, and the lad with only two little knives.
“Take him alive!” shrieked Urbahnos. “When I’ve had my will of him, I want him tortured to death, slowly. He hurt me, Nahseer, the little bitch has injured me terribly.
“Well? Move on him, you ape, draw your sword, but hit him only with the flat or I’ll have out your eyes. Call the hired guards if you’re afraid of him, but take him.”
Nahseer gazed deeply into the bloodshot, teary, hate-filled eyes of his master. Rage lay in their black depths, rage compounded with pain and the still-fresh memory of cold, crawling terror. He knew that now his master would never sell him, not unless he had his tongue removed first More likely, the Ehleen would have him murdered soon after they returned to Pahdookahport so that the only living witnesses to Lord Urbahnos’ humiliation might be permanently silenced. Turning his gaze back to the boy, the sometime warrior of far-off Zahrtohgah saw a fellow warrior, for all his lack of size and his tender years. There was no hate in those blue-gray eyes, only a grim determination. The lad stood stock-still, his wiry body seemingly relaxed, but both daggers held steady and unwavering.
With a deep sigh, Nahseer drew his heavy dirk and advanced on Bahb. Behind him, Urbahnos shrilled, “If you kill him, I’ll have your wormy guts nailed to a post and you marched around it until you bleed to death, you whoreson!”
Drawn by the lights and the noise, all the caravansers who had been assigned to stable duty flitted through the misty drizzle into the warmth and clamorous hilarity of the great hall. All but two of the serai stablehands had soon joined them, “just for one or two pots of beer.”
Of the two regular hands remaining, the younger was suffering a griping of the guts, and the stables lay nearer to the jakes than did the main building. The other, a much older man, had shed his threadbare breeches and was trying to ease the pains of his arthritic knees by the tried-and-true method of covering the joints with piles of fresh, hot horse manure.
The younger man had just left on his third or fourth run toward the privy when one of the small, ugly prairie-bred mares began to move agitatedly in her shared stall, kicking and snorting. The-oldster, the pains just beginning to ease a bit, tried manfully to ignore the equine uproar. But when one, then another of the horses began to emulate the mare, he sighed and, grumbling curses, pulled himself to his feet and stumbled stiffly down the aisle between the rows of stalls.
“Dang half-broke ill ol’ nomad critter. Probly spooked by a goldurned rat, is all.”
He lifted down a hanging lantern and in the other hand took a grip on a yard-long billet of wood, good for either crushing a rat or dealing with an aggressive equine. At the mare’s stall—shared with another of her kind—he held the lantem high and leaned into the cubicle, his old eyes vainly searching the corners for sight of a scuttling rodent “Shitfire, anyhow!” he mumbled. “Thet dadgummed boy should oughta be here, a-doin’ this—his eyes is a hell of a sight sharper nor mine is.” Taking the stick under his lantern arm, he unlatched the lower half of the gate and swung it outward, but before he could take a single step or even re-grasp his protective club, Windswift was on him with flashing hooves and savaging teeth. Within seconds, he was forever freed of the aches of his arthritis. Nor, when he returned, did the younger hand live much longer. Windswift was a trained and veteran warhorse, and these were not the first twolegs she had slain. The dropped lantern, which had bounced into the stall, had eaten its own oiled-vellum covering, and little flames were beginning to lick out at the straw. Windswift quickly kicked and nudged fresh dung onto the device until she could sense no more flame and little heat It was not yet time for the stable to take fire.
She mindspoke Bahb Steevuhnz that her job was accomplished, then she and the other, younger mare set about freeing the other two Horseclans mares. Shortly, little Djoh Steevuhnz trotted in, four dirks at his belt and the bulky roll of the other weapons on his shoulder. There was scant need for actual speech; physical contact enhanced even his marginal telepathic abilities to the point that he could easily communicate with all four of the mares. He and Bahb had watched from their window as the various wagons were parked for the night, and so he had no trouble in finding those in which the richly decorated Clan Steevuhnz saddles had been stored. The kaks were too heavy for even a strong ten-year-old to lug back to the stables, but the yard lay empty of all humans save him and the rain and mist made visibility poor at best, so he simply bade the mares to come to him, dragged the gear onto the tailgate and from there heaved it onto the low backs of the small beasts, hopping down into the mud to cinch the straps.
Back in the dryness of the stable, the boy squeezed and wrung the water from his dripping hair, then unrolled the blanket and attached bowcase-quivers and sabers in their customary places on the saddles. The blanket he rerolled and lashed behind the saddle of his own mount, Mousebrown. Horseclansfolk seldom used bridles, except on untrained young stallions, for usually mindspeak and pressure of knee or hand were all that was necessary to guide this breed of equines, who were the partners rather than the chattels of the nomads. When all was in readiness, Windswift once more mind-spoke Bahb Steevuhnz. His reply was a surprise to them all, mares and boy alike. Within arm’s length of the crouching nomad boy, Nahseer flipped the dirk, grasping the broad blade between thumb and a knuckle. Smiling gently, he said, ‘Take this, my little brother—it will make for you a far better weapon. But give me in exchange one of the little knives you have used to such good advantage this night, for I too have a few old scores to wash out in the diseased blood of yonder perverted pig.”
After a brief silence he widened his smile and added, “And tell the minds outside to saddle and bridle a good, big horse for me. I admire the spirit of your plains stock but they are just too small for a man of my size.” Bahb’s eyes widened in surprise. He beamed, “You mind-speak, man with brown skin? You are that thing’s sworn man, are you not? If you knew of my planning, why did you not tell him? For what purpose do you wish to help me? If you try to do to me what he would have done, I warn you, I will serve you even as I served him.”