But there were those nagging other things haunting the honor and the honest soul of Martuhn, and not solely because of the fevered accusations of the dying duchess. Despite the wholly admirable system of laws, law courts and judges instituted by Tcharlz to replace the ancient hodgepodge he had inherited, the captain had heard rumors as long as he had been a resident of the duchy that—were a large enough sum paid to a high enough authority—favorable judgment in duchy courts could always be purchased.
The recent apprehension and incarceration of the sly and treacherous Judge Baron Lapkin of Pahdookahport had, he had thought, put an end to it all. But now, in the light of the information given him by the duchess, he was no longer so certain. Some of the most flagrant examples of bought judgments had, it seemed, well predated the ill-starred appointment of Baron Lapkin to the bench. Possibly, he mused as he rode toward the citadel, that very appointment had been effected for the same reason a skilled captain would readjust his pike line behind a screen of manuevering cavalry… and the late Duke Tcharlz had been, if nothing more, a superlative field captain; no mistake about that. He and his entourage were recognized long before they rode onto the bridge, but still the wall commander—knowing damned well that Martuhn’s instructions were never issued lightly—insisted that all the riders bare their heads and faces and that the proper word be given before he would order the grille raised and the gates unbarred and swung open. Before the main building, Martuhn swung down from the saddle of his big white riding mule and surrendered the reins to his waiting groom. Then he strode up the steps and into the dim coolness, slapping dust from his boots with his shucked elbow gloves.
But gone forever was the near-empty building he had loved and remembered. As the seat of the now supreme power in the duchy, the corridors and rooms swarmed with the necessary staff of clerks and scribes and petty officials, with messengers and suppliants thronging so thickly about that his bodyguards and a double brace of pikemen from the entry had all that they could do to force through a clear path to the larger and far more elaborate offices his staff had had to occupy. Awaiting him in the antechamber were Nahseer, Dragoon Sergeant Lee Byuhz and a tall, black-haired man he did not know. Ignoring the stranger and the sergeant for the moment, Martuhn questioned Nahseer.
“How is Wolf? He still lives?”
Nahseer sighed, nodded. “Yes, my lord count, the noble Wolf still breathes, but be dies a little more with each passing day. The physician, my countryman, can do nothing more for him, save to administer the drugs that keep him free of pain.
“But is my lord to see him, it had best be soon, for I think that he now craves death.”
Martuhn nodded wearily. “Immediately I’m done here, I’ll come, Nahseer.
“Now, my good Byuhz, what have we here?”
Once the stranger was seated with him in his private office, with brandied wine poured for them both, Martuhn stated, “I’m glad that your command of Trade-Mehrikan is so good, Senor Morró, for yours is one language I’ve never learned, since I never soldiered for or even near to the empire. I truly regret that you were left behind when we withdrew from Traderstown—I had thought that I had gathered together and brought safely out all of the nonresidents, but obviously I erred.
“But that aside, tell me, why did the nomads Send you over here to me?” Senor Don Maylo Morró, merchant and noble ambassador of His Imperial Majesty Benito IV, Emperor of all the Mexicos, sipped delicately at his goblet before answering. And in that moment of waiting, Martuhn essayed to read the surface thoughts of his guest’s mind; he failed miserably. He never before had contacted so powerful a mindshield, and he reflected that such a contact was akin to butting one’s bare head against a stone wall.
Setting down the goblet, Morró answered, “Don Conde, the Horseclansmen now hold some hundreds of caballeros and mercenarios as prisoners, a few of them sound, but the most wounded to greater or lesser degrees.” Martuhn’s face darkened. “And the barbarian bastards want to sell them back to me, eh? All right, I always try to stick by my warriors. How much gold do they want? But I warn you in advance, gold is all they’ll get from me—no horses, no women.”
But when the foreign nobleman put the ransom demanded by the nomads into his halting, heavily accented Mehrikan, Martuhn looked every bit of his amazement. “They what? Those plains rovers must think me bereft of any wits at all. Such would be akin to not only opening the door to the wolf, but courteously helping him over the sill, as well. I saw what your noble savages did to the lands of Duke Alex, and I’ll not abet them in visiting the same on the lands and cities of this duchy.”
“There were good reasons why the Duchy of Traderstown Was so despoiled,” began Morró mildly.
“There are always ‘good reasons’ why invaders rape and pillage,” snorted Martuhn derisively. “I’ve been a soldier for most of my life, and I know them all. A man hungers or thirsts or covets or lusts, and where no law is enforced, it is always far easier to take one’s wants at the point of a sword than it is to haggle a sale.”
“If the illustrious my host will please to allow for me to finish… ?” Morró inquired politely.
Wolfs mind, still sharp and quick despite the wounds from which he was slowly dying and the drugs administered for the hellish pain, immediately sensed the matters troubling Martuhn. Mind to mind was presently the only way in which the grizzled man could converse, so smashed and damaged were his face and jaws. “If you doubt this Morró’s true motives and identity, my lord, why not hustle him down to the cellars and put him to the stringent question?” “No, old friend.” Martuhn, too, beamed silently. “He sailed over under a white flag, so his person is as sacrosanct as is that of a herald, and my suspicions may be entirely ungrounded—he may well be just what he claims, a captured Mehkskuhn merchant sent over by the nomad chiefs. “But, Wolf, although he is clearly not of the Horseclanner breed—he’s too big-boned and tall and dark to be one of them—his name is very close to the name given by that wounded nomad the late duke captured across the river as the so-called war chief, or overall commander, of that tribe’s warriors—Milo of Morai. I know, I have the transcript of that interrogation; the spelling is different, of course, but I would bet that the two names are pronounced the same in speech.”
“Nonetheless,” stated the dying Wolf, “you sense him to be an honor-bound man and you will sail back across the Great River with him. I will not be there to guard your back, as of old, Martuhn, so I pray you, take Nahseer with you. He is a doughty fighter, that one, and is now as faithfully your man as ever I was.” Count Martuhn, surrogate Duke of the East, stood in th© blunt prow of the small row-barge and watched the citadel— gleaming almost white in the westering sun—grow larger with each ordered stroke of the oars. The dark-skinned, heavy-thewed Nahseer stood just behind him, conversing softly with Daiv Ghyp, master of the barge. On every other square foot of the deck lay or sat wounded cavalrymen, mostly mercenary dragoons or lancers, but with a sprinkling of gentry and petty nobility from both duchies. And on the docks of Traderstown, more survivors awaited the arrival of another, larger cable barge. After that, a number of mounted chiefs and older clansmen would be barged over to scout out an easy, short and, with luck, frictionless route for the tribe’s passage through the duchy. His agreement with the Council of Chiefs had been that the crossing of the river by the horde would be delayed until all the duchy’s crops were harvested. Further, the chiefs had given their sworn word that no folk of the duchy would be harmed, no villages or farms looted or burned, no lands deliberately ravaged in their passing, and Martuhn believed them. Now all he had to do was convince his staff and the folk of the duchy. Once landed upon the western bank, a bare week since, the count’s suspicions of Monk’s true identity had been fully confirmed, but he could not fault the war chief for the subterfuge. It had been a necessary, military expedient and had really wrought much good.