“Lord Hari,” he began.
“Now stop that, Bili!” admonished his host. “You’ve clearly been too long away from home, among those stiffnecked northerners. We of the Kindred call each other by name, reserving formality for superiors, strangers, and known enemies. I’m Hari and my son is Vaskos.”
“All right, Hari,” Bili started over. “I’ll be candid. I want something of you, and you want something of Council. Pledge me support in my aims, and I, in turn, will pledge you my support and my best efforts at gaining the support of others in attaining your aspiration for Vaskos.”
And so, we sing a proud song,
Of Pitzburk, where the siege was long,
Of Pitzburk, where our rivers ran with blood.
The last note died. Klairuhnz, the traveling bard, lowered his instrument and slowly bowed.
Bili’s fingers sought his purse and selected a silver thrahkmeh. The singer deserved it, for he had certainly rendered an excellent performance, what with ancient tellingsongs of the exploits of Morguhn and Daiviz chiefs and clansmen now hundreds of years dead; a couple of Ehleen loveballads which had even brought a few brief smiles to the jowly, perpetually frowning face of the Lady Hehrah, Lord Hari’s short, immensely fat wife; a Freefighter song, much laundered, which nonetheless had every man in the room roaring, since the words replacing the bawdy ones did not rhyme, making the original lyrics easy to guess; and ending with the famous Song of Pride, a venerable favorite in the Middle Kingdoms, though not so well known this far south.
Allowing his host and Vaskos to throw their coins first, Bili then tossed his thrahkmeh. The bard caught the three silver pieces in flight, juggled them for a few moments, then lined them on his open left palm. Closing that hand, he made a gesture or two above it with his right hand and, when he reopened the left, all three coins were gone.
The two youngest of Lord Hari’s three daughters oohed and ahhed their amazement, but the older, Eeyohahnah, never changed expression, since she did not see the sleight-of-hand. Her dark, brooding, slightly slanted eyes had never left Bili since first they were introduced; they had followed his every movement or gesture throughout the dinner. However, on each of the several occasions he had attempted to meet her stare, she had looked down with a show of modesty and the barest flicker of a sly smile. Her activities were beginning to irk Bili, but it would be undignified and most impolitic to allow his discomfiture to become noticeable.
Bili was far from a novice in the ways of women. Since first his voice had deepened and his shoulders commenced to broaden, women and girls had made no secret of the fact that they found him handsome to look upon. He had been but fourteen when be had pleasurably spent his virginity within the young widow of the Earl of Dawfuhnburk, then living at King Gilbuht’s court. After her, he had tumbled countless serving girls and had paid court to and bedded other idle noblewomen.
He had been introduced to rapine at the ghastly intaking of Indersburk and again, more recently, had renewed his acquaintance when Behreesburk fell. But this girl, this Eeyohahnah, was no spoil of war, to be stripped and enjoyed at his leisure. Nor was she a lustful servingwench or a promiscuous northern grasswidow, free to take the bed-partner of her choice.
That the ravenhaired girl was nubile was more than apparent, even through the folds of her old-fashioned Ehleen himation, especially since she had, seemingly by accident, pulled the garment tight over her firmly swelling breasts. But the very fact that the girls and their mother were all dressed so anachronistically attested that Eeyohahnah had been reared in the Ehleen manner, and Bili knew that Ehleenoee nobles placed an absurdly high value on virgin brides. All rational men agreed that the crucified god of the Ehleenoee alone knew why they clove to so stupid a custom.
So it angered Bili that she would thus flaunt herself and taunt him with what she knew he could not take the pleasure of without so deeply offending Lord Hari that he would probably end up having to kill the old man in a death match … either that or marry the brazen chit. And, it came to him, maybe that was at the core of the matter. She knew that he would be Thoheeks sooner or later, and fancied herself a fair candidate for Thoheekeesa of Morguhn.
Well, she was no such thing! When Thoheeks Bili wed, he had no intention of taking an unproven heifer, not for his senior wife anyway. The woman he would take for that would have proven couchskills and would also have a proven ability to conceive.
But Lord Hari was speaking, commanding, “A chair and wine for Bard Klairuhnz.” Then, to the bard, “You are, I am informed, lately come from the Southern Duchies. Tell us the news, when you have had of the wine.”
The blackhaired singer sat on the chair and carefully lowered his harp to the floor, then accepted the mug of wine. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he downed half the mug. Leaning back, he smiled contentedly as the warmth the spirit spread through his vitals.
“Another of the ancient horseclans,” he began, “has crossed the southern mountains and has been recognized as True Kindred by Ahrkeethoheeks Djaimz. The clan is that of Sanderz and they live according to the tenets of the Couplets of the Law. Even now, their chief, Hwahltuh by name, journeys to Kehnooryos Atheenahs to pledge his Kindred Oath to the High Lord.”
“Do you believe them truly of our Kindred, Bard Klairuhnz?” inquired the Komees. “In times past, I hear, there have been bands of nomads who so claimed, in order to be granted lands …”
The bard nodded vigorously. “Oh, these are genuine Kindred, Lord Komees, I’ve no doubt of that. Lord Djaimz had me seek out the Sanderz bard, and he knows the Law-all of the Law! Also, he sung me the entire Song of Sanderz, which took most of a day. They are most certainly of the Children of Ehiai, the original Kindred. Their Old Mehreekuhn is the purest I have heard in years, and those who can tell say that almost all of the Sanderz can mindspeak.”
This last was a telling point. Mindspeak-telepathic ability was once an ages-old inherent talent of eighty percent of the Kindred. On the Plains which the Kindred had roamed for hundreds of years, before forty-odd of the clans had first invaded the Ehleen lands, mindspeak talents had constituted a definite survival factor, as well as the only way of communicating with Prairie Cat and horse. Even with the blood of those original forty odd clans much thinned by generations of intermarriage with other peoples, many of the modern Kindred still possessed mindspeak, to a greater or lesser degree. Bili had it, as did both the Komees and Vaskos, and so though he was damned careful of who knew did Bard Klairuhnz.
“The sea-” the bard continued his news, the transmission of which between farflung duchies was one of the most valuable and welcome functions of the traveling bards “-still is rising along the coasts and more farmland is being lost each year, as the salt fens widen. Sea creatures venture ever farther up the rivers as well, and the talk in the Southern Duchies has been of the huge white shark-a full dozen meters long and far thicker and heavier than most of that ilk, with teeth half as long as a man’s finger-slain in the pleasure lake of the Ahrkeethoheeks. It overturned three boats and slew or drowned near a score of boatmen and soldiers ere all its monstrous body abristle with arrows and darts and spears it was finally driven into shallows and clubbed and axed to death.