Henri, chief of Clan Kashul, was first to speak. “You claim that you lied before; perhaps you are lying now. What think you, War Chief?”
Knowing the Ehleenoee, as he did, Milo believed the man, but only a dramatic vindication would please and convince these chiefs. He arose and advanced to stand before Hwil Kuk. He looked into the ex-mercenary’s eyes; they met his unwaveringly.
“Hwil Kuk,” said Milo. “Will you submit to the Test of the Cat?”
Kuk cleared his throat. “I will!” he replied in a firm voice.
Horsekiller, who, as Cat Chief, missed but few meetings of the council, padded across the tent. On Milo’s instructions, Kuk knelt and placed his head in Horsekiller’s widespread jaws.
“You understand, Hwil Kuk, the cat has the power to read your thoughts. If this you have said is truth, you have nothing to fear. If not, his jaws will slowly crush your skull.” But even as he spoke, he knew. Through Horse-killer, he too could enter the grief-stricken man’s mind, endure with the cat the half-madness of Kuk’s tortured thoughts. “Enough!” He mindspoke to Horsekiller.
The big cat gently released his grip and licked Kuk’s face in sympathy. Losing one’s kittens was never easy to bear.
Milo took Kuk’s arm and raised him to his feet. “Kindred, this man has spoken truth. He has suffered much and it is right that he should shed the blood of those who helped to bring about that suffering. When we fight the Ehleenoee, as we must, he and his men will ride with me. As I am clanless, so too are they.”
“How can we fight?” inquired Gil, Chief of Clan Marshul. “This man has told us the Ehleenoee lord leads between eighty and ninety hundreds of soldiers. We are forty-two clans, but our warriors number less than twenty-five hundreds. If we were able to surprise them, we would have a chance, but having to fight them at the place of their choosing • • .”
“But we won’t,” replied Milo.
Throughout the course of the next month, Lord Manos was harassed in every quarter. Demetrios’ riders came almost every day with inquiries commands, and, as the month passed the halfway point, thinly veiled threats. The Theesispolis Kahtahphraktoee were grumbling; they wanted to get back to their garrison with its wine shops and bordellos. The army’s mercenaries were grumbling, many of the units not having been paid for four months. His officers were grumbling, anxious to return to the comforts and civilized delights of the capital. The bulk of his army was heavy infantry—levied from the areas lying east and south of the capital, and called out, equipped, and armed by the High Lord—and they were grumbling. Most were peasant farmers and harvest time was near; there was much to do. The barbarians just sat on the other side of the Gap. They grazed their herds on the thick luxuriant grass of the mountain valley, and it seemed as if they never intended to move on, into the fidgeting jaws of Manos’ trap.
Manos had waited a week for Kuk to return, then had sent out a dozen cavalrymen under command of a minor noble of Theesispolis, one Herakles, to search and inquire his whereabouts. Lord Herakles possessed a working knowledge of Trade Merikan, and he and his men were well received by the nomads. He was informed that Kuk and his men had come, lived with the nomads a few days, and then—after having been joined by another party of equal size—had ridden away south, saying nothing to anyone. Herakles and his men saw but few adult warriors about the camp and, when they asked, were informed that most of the fighters had ridden north on a raid-in-force some three weeks before; there had been no word from the fifteen hundred or so men, but no one seemed alarmed, not really expecting them back for at least another moon. The camp and herds were watched over by old men and young boys—and the grace and beauty of these nomad boys sent the hot blood pounding in Lord Herakles’ temples.
His report was pleasing to Lord Manos, who was relieved that the barbarian Kuk would not be back. Head over heels in debt, as were most of the libertine nobles of the capital, Manos had no money for a blood-price and would have had to have executed Kuk on some contrived charge. Besides, it was not his fault anyway! Had the silly little swine not resisted so stubbornly, he’d not have been rent so seriously; he would not have been torn to such an extent that not even the physician and his cauteries could halt the bleeding. Manos did not blame himself. It was the will of the gods, and what was one barbarian boy, more or less. There would always be more to his kind; they tended to breed like rabbits.
During the time of waiting, he amused himself with a trio of peasant boys, kidnapped by his bodyguard which was experienced and skilled at such abductions. None of the three chunky-bodied lads had an iota of the beauty that had attracted him to darling Hwili, but there were compensations. A mere touch of the whip put an end to their resistance, and once broken in, they proved enjoyable and not one of them had the effrontery to die.
But as the month wore on and Demetrios’ messages became more vicious and the grumbling of mercenaries, spearmen, and officers became louder, Manos’ minions, with their dark hair and coarse features, began to bore him. Their never-ending whining and pleading for their parents, and their bodies’ limp acceptance of his usage got on his nerves. He could think only of the wild, spirited, blond and red-haired beauties that Herakles had described in such glowing terms.
The last message Manos received from the High Lord left him shuddering. It described in sickening detail what was to be done to him should he delay any longer in securing the slaves, animals, and loot for which he and his huge, expensive army had been dispatched. When Manos regained his composure, he sent for Herakles.
That officer’s news, upon his return from his second visit to the camp of the nomads, cheered Manos considerably. The warriors were still absent, and furthermore, most of the older men had gone into the western mountains to hunt, expecting to be away for at least three days. The nomads had been made to feel secure, and the rich, sprawling camp was all but defenseless.
That settled it in Manos’ mind. At the next dawn, mercenary trumpets brayed and the drums of the Ehleenoee rolled. Manos formed his army La the usual Ehleenoee march column—Kahtahphraktoee in the van, then nobles and officers in their chariots, and then the massed spearmen on an eight-man front in the rear eating dust, their iron-soled sandals squishing the horse-droppings into the interstices of the logs which paved the steep Trade road of the Gap. Manos took far more men than he felt he’d have need of, leaving a mere six hundred of his least effective spearmen and sixty cavalry to guard camp and fort from the thieving peasants of the area.
Nearly a thousand horsemen, seventy-three chariots, and close to seven thousand spearmen pantingly negotiated the eastern half of the winding Trade road. The route was incredibly ancient—said to have been used by the creatures who trod these mountains before the gods. At noon, the column drew to a halt in a brushy but sparsely wooded area near the crest. Here and there, bits of weathered masonry poked through the sparse soil. One of the mercenary non-coms claimed that they stood atop the ruins of one of the Cities of the Gods. The site, he went on, was called Hwainzbroh by the indigenous peoples.
When the officers had completed their meal, the column again took to the road and started down the western face to the Gap. So cocksure was Manos of the invincibility of his army, that he had vetoed a mercenary leader’s suggestion that outriders be posted at van, flanks, and rear. It would have required more time to see to such unnecessary details, and Manos was in a hurry. Therefore, when the first fours of the Theesispolis Kahtahphraktoee rounded the last curve of a winding cut and came up against a high, road-filling rock slide, disaster set in. Because the officers could not signal with bugles or drums—for fear of causing more rock slides—by the time they got the snakelike column halted, fully nine-tenths of it were solidly jammed into the cut. At the site of the obstruction the troopers were so wedged together that not a single man could dismount, much less go about clearing the road. Screaming threats, shouting imprecations, promising horrible punishments, making vicious use of whips and sword-flats, Manos and the other Ehleenoee officers began trying to force the mass of spearmen back; but their efforts were unavailing. The bulk of flesh and bone behind them stopped the infantry’s withdrawal as surely as the bulk of rock and earth before had stopped the cavalry’s advance.