“So part of the mission of my patrol was to bring back any likely-looking recruits we could lay hand to, and to my mind, you three is the best I seen all this week past. It don’t matter none what size the boys is, long’s they can shoot straight, and I never heerd tell of a Horseclansman what couldn’t. As for you, Zahrtohgahn, you got you that look. I’d say you’re the same as me, you been soldiering mosta your life. Ain’t I right, now?” “Yes,” agreed Nahseer, without pause, “before I was sold into servitude by a powerful man I had wronged, I was an officer in the armies of my native state, a noble-born officer, commanding a mixed brigade, as had my father and his father before him.”
Wolf nodded. “I thought so, and I ain’t often wrong about men. If my captain was to get the duke to give you three freedom and amnesty, would you fight for him against his foes?”
“Could such only be so,” replied Nahseer, “it would be a true godsend, a sweet gift of Ahlah. But our former master is a rich and powerful merchant of Pahdookahport; not only did we attack him and rob him, but I maimed his body beyond any hope of forgiveness.”
“Nahseer gelded the bastard,” put in Bahb gleefully. “Then he put a live coal inside his scrotum. But I was the first to blood him. I laid open his cheek and stabbed him in the crotch when he would have stuck his yard up my arse.” “No matter how rich and how powerful your master be, there be strong laws against sodomy—especially when such nastiness takes the form of forcible rape of either free man or slave—and it is my understanding that Duke Tcharlz, for all his other faults, detests sodomites and sees the laws he has enacted against them enforced to the last jot and tittle,” Wolf assured them. “But that matter aside, the duke is even now going through the duchy with a fine-toothed comb, seeking out able-bodied slaves and apprentices and offering them freedom, pay, keep and, perhaps, loot, will they serve in his army. As the senior sergeant of the Twocityport citadel, I’ve the power to make you three that same offer and to enlist you on this spot if you all be so inclined. “Understand me, please, comrades, it be your decision, and yours alone, to make, but there is only death or recapture for you here. You and your beasts could never get across the river without help, and if you stay in this place and the slave takers don’t chance upon you, then you’ll assuredly be slain or taken when Duke Alex lands his army on that beach beyond this bluff—for that is where my captain thinks he will land, and my captain is seldom wrong on matters of a military nature.”
“How do we know,” Nahseer inquired bluntly, “that you will not get us to your citadel and disarm us or take us in a drugged sleep, and chain us and send us back to him from whom we fled?”
Wolf shrugged. “You have only my word, of course, but no living man has ever questioned it.”
It was, to Nahseer’s way of thinking, a good answer, and he already was beginning to like and trust this bluff, scarred old soldier. But he felt that he must be as sure as possible before putting himself and the boys in a jeopardy which could prove fatal. “But what of your captain? He may have bigger fish to fry, so his thinking may be different from your own. Understand, old warrior, the fiend from whom we escaped will not simply stripe us, he will have us all slowly tortured to death.”
“As I have soldiered with my captain for almost thirty years, I can speak as truly for him as for myself. He detests sodomites as much as does the duke, and he detests the vile institution of slavery even more, wherever and by whomever it is practiced. This be why he has never been loath to enlist runaway slaves or apprentices in his companies. He and I have fought off slave takers to protect men who had freely enlisted… and I can say that he and I would gladly do such again.”
The clouds which had been scudding westward over the valley of the Ohyoh River banked lower, denser and dirty-gray as the afternoon progressed and, in the premature darkness of what should have been sunset, began to let loose blinding sheets of water, along with crackling stabs of blue-white lightning and shuddering rolls of thunder.
But all of the patrol, horse and man, abided warm and dry in the commodious bluffside cave, along with Wolfs three newest recruits, sharing food and drink and swapping tales. The storm passed in the night, and in the bright sunshine of the next morning, all set out for Twocityport by way of a tiny, rural hamlet, where they were to pick up a brace of husky farm boys who had promised to meet them there. Wolf had taken their enlistment oaths on the way out from the citadel. The broken, hilly area just south of the bluffs was brushy and alive with small game, and Bahb and Djoh Steevuhnz strung their bows and impressed Won and the soldiers to a high degree by arrowing, seemingly without aim or effort, above two dozen running rabbits.
Wolf set a slow and easy pace, and, just shy of the sun’s zenith, the patrol arrived in the minuscule square of the farming hamlet. Only a few hours’ ride from Twocityport, the community boasted no inn, only a hwiskee house—which sold mostly ale, beer, cider and a cheap, sour wine, despite its announced purpose—which stood on one side of the square, adjacent to the smithy. At an outside table sat Wolfs two farm boys, passing the time with a checkerboard, coarse bread, pickled pork and mugs of cool cider. Between them and the square, at the long rail, nearly a score of horses were hitched, and anyone could see that the beasts had been ridden hard and long. Yet the sweaty, huffing equines had not been unsaddled, nor had the girths been loosened, and no one was walking the mounts to allow them to gradually cool after exertion. Wolf shook his helmeted head, sneering to himself at the stupidity and cruelty of whoever led this pack of halfwits.
Spotting him, the two farm boys folded and stowed their game, wolfed the last crumbs of their food and upended the cider mugs, their throats working, then came trotting to the head of the column—blanket rolls slanting across chest and back, war bags in hand and one with an old, worn dagger under his belt At Wolfs query about the ill-served line of horseflesh and the loud hubbub of men’s voices from within the hwiskee house, one of the boys replied, “Ahh, them varmints be but a passel of plains traders and Crooked Portuh’s men from the big serai on the Pahdookahport road and a few hired bravos, out a-lookin’ fer three runaway slaves. This be the second time they been th’ough here, cain’t seem to find ’em, and we folks hopes to God they never does neither.”
To his patrol archers, Wolf gave the hand signal to string bows and nock arrows. At the same time, he mindspoke Bahb and Djoh to do likewise. Then, hoping to the last to avoid a confrontation or a fight, he urged the two farm boys to mount a brace of the led horses at once.
But it was already too late. A pair of men came out of the hwiskee house, their arms linked, holding foamy mugs and bawling a lusty song. And then the song died on their lips. One man dropped his mug and ran back inside, shouting, “It’s them, Mistuh Custuh, sir. They all three out inna square. A passel of sojers done took ’em.”
There was a brief delay as both Portuh and Custuh tried to make use of the narrow egress at the same time. The heavier Portuh won that contest, but Custuh was hard on his heels, followed by the big, rawboned bravo Djahnbil—representing the Lord Urbahnos on the hunt—and his sidekick, Buhbuhtchuhk, trailed by the other trader, Hwahruhn, and then most of the other hunters, most of them bearing mugs or jacks and still chewing.