Thick black smoke roiled up from within the walls and the lowing of cattle could be plainly heard, along with the creaking of ropes and groaning of timbers as a catapult was wound and set. After a brief pause, there was a wheee-WHUNNK and a headsized blob of burning pitch traced a high, smoketrailing parabola across the darken-ing sky, to fall squarely into the milling midst of the rebel ‘formation’! It was all that the priests and nobles could then do to prevent an outright rout. Wisely, they elected to form several hundred yards farther away.
Bili, Hwahltuh, Gil, and one of the Freefighters slid down from their observation point at the brushy summit of a hill. The Sanderz snorted his disgust at the quality of the men opposing them.
“Kinsman Bili, a stand of prairiegrass would slow us more than cowards like those. Let us ride through them now.”
But Bili shook his shaven head. “No, we are too many to just ride up to the walls, especially since it is now almost dark. My clansmen and Freefighters are expecting no more than seven riders. When they spied a party of this size, they surely would bring us under their bows. We must find a way to let them know that we are friends. Are any of your clansmen far-speakers, by chance?”
“Ask anything but that, Kinsman,” groaned Hwahltuh. “I heard that that talent is common amongst the folk of some clans, but our last far-speaker went to Wind when I was yet a lad. Whitetip can farspeak, to a limited extent, but only, alas, if he knows the mind to which he is to beam.”
Gil spoke up. “If there are mindspeakers in the stone-lodge, why not wait until full dark and let a Cat-brother go close enough to range them?”
Atop the front wall, amidst the archers and catapult crews, old Komees Djeen limped stiffly up and down, snapping and snarling at all and sundry out of his worry over the fate of Thoheeks Bili. The wagons were long since returned before even the van of the rebel host had appeared. Since Vaskos was the last man to have clapped eyes on Bili, he had suffered questioning and requestioning by the retired Strahteegos, until at length the Keeleeohstos—grumpy anyway at being bedridden by order of Master Ahlee—had bluntly inquired as to which his questioner was actually losing, his hearing or his memory. And the Lady Ahnah and Komees Hari had had to be fetched, ere the shouting and insults were done, to persuade the two officers to keep their steel cased!
His threequarter armor clanking, the grizzled nobleman stalked up to a group of fledgling engineers being put through a crash course in catapult service. “You!” he barked at a tall Freefighter who was lowering a fifty-pound stone into the basket. “Don’t you know better than to wear a crested helm when you’re serving an engine? If the lip of that basket hooks that crest, it’ll take the empty head off your shoulders. I’ve seen it happen, soldier!”
Not awaiting an answer, he swung off to confront an archer seated in a crenel. “Behind a merlon, fool! Keep sitting between them and you’ll have an arrow up your arse or in your back! And replace that bowstring immediately. It’s beginning to fray at the lower curve.”
“If Bili’s not back soon,” muttered Spiros to Bard Klairuhnz, “we’ll have to give Djeen a horse and let him go searching for that patrol, ere he rides these men into mutiny! Next, he’ll be ordering them to polish all the fornicating spearpoints, or having them down there aligning all the cattle by height, sex, and age!”
“There’ll be no mutiny here, My Lord,” stated Captain Raikuh, who was standing with them near the gate tower. “As is Duke Bili, so is Count Djeen. Both are born war-leaders, and all the professionals can sense the fact. His words may ring harsh, but his criticisms are both sound and constructive, and we all know it.”
A thousand yards from the west wall on the creekbank, wagons and wains were unloading tents and gear amid a twinkling of torches and new-kindled fires. At long last, the priests and nobles had despaired of whipping their cowed aggregation of commoners into mounting another assault… not this night, at least. Even to those at the hall it was clear that the rebels had had enough for one day and were going into camp.
Spiros was still worried and annoyed by Djeen’s ceaseless nitpicking at the men, so he sought to distract the old soldier, calling, “Komees Djeen, if you please? Djeen, come over here and tell us, do you think they’ll come for us again tonight?”
Yellow teeth glinting, the old man cackled harshly. “I only wish that they would, Kinsman! You would then see what disastrous effects flaming pitchballs and firearrows have on the morale of undisciplined troops at night. Heh, heh. That piss-poor excuse for an army wouldn’t stop running until they reached the Sea of Grass, most likely. But no, Spiros, they’ll not attack tonight, for men who lack the grit to fight in broad day will murder their officers before they’ll mount a night offensive.”
His lobstertail neckguard grated on his backplate as he slowly shook his head. “That damned boylover Myros … d’you know, he was a middling-good officer, once upon a time? But did you see the inexcusable way he marshaled that abortion of an assault? Clear it is, he’s long since forgot every principle of tactics he ever learned!”
Winking slyly at Raikuh and Klairuhnz, Spiros innocently asked, “Your pardon, Djeen, but I thought they came up that hill in pretty fair form … of course, I’m no professional soldier …”
“True enough, Kinsman!” snapped the Komees. “Were you, you’d have been painfully aware of the glaring errors of judgment of which the Vahrohnos of Pederasty was guilty. He’d no need to lose either his engine or half the men we slew, you know? Here, let me show you what I mean…”
Drawing a short dagger from the top of his boot, he stumped over to a section of tower wall between two torches, and commenced to scratch a rough sketch on the surface of the stones, talking all the while. Spiros, his purpose now achieved, was careful to ape meticulous attention to each detail of the aged Strahteegos’s discourse. Raikuh on the other hand hung on every word, feeling personal instruction from so famous and respected a strategist and tactician to be a rare privilege.
Klairuhnz wandered away from the absorbed nobleman and bis little audience to stand beside young Djehf, who leaned between a pair of merlons, staring at the bright, bustling camp of the besiegers.
“Didn’t you hear Komees Djeen’s admonition to that archer, Kinsman?”
Half turning, the Tahneest clanked the side of his gauntlet against his breastplate. “This be good, honest Pitzburk plate, and princegrade, at that! Good Bard, the bowman’s unspawned who can put a shaft through such metal.”
Klairuhnz smiled thinly. “Be not too sure, Kinsman. I’ve seen Horseclansmen stipple an armored man until he looked like a porcupine! Why, on the Prairie, once …”
.A note of eagerness entered the young warrior’s voice, and out of that eagerness peeped the small boy of recent memory. “You’ve really ridden with real Horseclansmen then, Kinsman? On the Prairie? The Sea of Grass? Truly? Tell me, please, tell me of them.”
“Yes,” stated the Bard. “Yes, I rode the Prairie with Horseclansmen, Kinsman Djehf, but it was long, long years ago, and I…”
His voice stopped as the unexpected and quite powerful mindspeak burst in. “I know your mind, Cat-brother-of-Cat-brothers, who these men know as Bard Klairuhnz. This one is Whitetip, Subchief of the Cat Sept of Sanderz. We mindspoke in the south, in the hot land.”
In the rear courtyard of Morguhn Hall, Bili lifted his cased axe from his weary mount, before an armed servant led the gelding away. Silent but for the clank of his armor, he paced over to Mother Behrnees and kissed her freckled forehead, then took her hand, saying, “Come, Mother, I wish you to meet our new friends.”