“My lord Milo… .“A horseman, one of Kuk’s men, galloped up to him. “Lord Milo, please … Hwil requests you come to the fort… it… it’s horrible. … He wants you should see it….”
The three bloodstreaked little bodies hung by the ankles. Before leaving that morning, Manos had gouged out their eyes, raggedly emasculated them, and left them to bleed to death. Two of the little chests bore the wide mark of a saber thrust. Hwil Kuk’s ashen face was tear-tracked, and there was precious little sanity in his eyes.
“I … I was searching … anything that had been little Hwili’s … remember him by … heard something in here. Oh gods! Two of them were still alive … begged me to kill them. I… I…” His quivering hand fumbled at his sword-hilt. Abruptly, he began to claw at his face, and mouth wide open, the tortured man began to scream mindlessly.
Milo grasped Kuk’s shoulder, spun him half-around, and slammed the side of one hard fist behind the screamer’s ear. In mid-scream, the ex-mercenary slumped to the floor. Two of his men tenderly carried him out of the chamber of horrors.
Milo mindcalled and Horsekiller responded. Soon he was at the fort and, working together, he and Milo did what they could to ease the mind of Hwil Kuk, tormented almost beyond endurance. When they had finished, they carried him out to a resting place in one of the officer’s tents. Awakening in that fort might have undone their therapy, too many memories, good and bad, lodged within its sooty walls.
On the morning of the sixth day after the massacre of the Ehleenoee army, as the last wagons of the tribe were toiling up the western grade of the now-cleared Gap, Milo sat Steeltooth, watching the eight hundred-odd survivors of the spear-levy disappear in the distance, trudging the Trade road toward Theesispolis. Milo had promised these men their freedom at the completion of the hard horrible labor he required of them: clearing the Gap of the debris—mineral, human, animal, and unidentifiable—which clogged it. He had more than kept his word, giving each of the peasants clothing, a knife, a scrip of food for the journey, a waterbag, and either a silver com or a handful of bronze ones, in addition to his freedom. In council, some of the chiefs had grumbled, but Milo had won them over. His reasons were many and sound. The peasants, who had contemplated death or a life of slavery, grasped eagerly at the promise of freedom. Considering the size of the undertaking, they performed the grisly, hideous work quickly and then went to work on the rockslide. Milo was amazed that they could do it at all, for after a couple of hot sunny days, few of the nomads could bear to ride within a mile of the carnal-reek. Aside from this easy method of disposing of the Gap’s highly odiferous blockage was the fact that Milo could see and fear what the nomad chiefs, in the beginning at least, could not: the terrible dangers involved in marching so large a number of able-bodied male slaves through their native country. Also to be considered was the propaganda effect. The returning peasants would spread news of the army’s disastrous defeat far and wide. Considering mankind’s penchant for exaggeration, each of the tribe’s hundreds of warriors would, in the telling, become thousands and untold thousands, each man would be eight feet tall, mounted on a Northorse, and cleaving a dozen men at a time with a six-foot saber. Lastly, if the tribe was to conquer and hold this land, they would need to win the confidence and support of the humbler Dirtmen. Cattle and horses could wax fat on grass alone, and the cats could do the same on meat, but men needed a more varied diet which called for farmers and these peasants were farmers. They would remember the generosity of the nomads—the clothing and food and money, especially the money. They would remember it and speak of it often and each tune they or those they told were abused by the Ehleenoee master, they would ponder the thought that some masters might prove less harsh than others.
8
The tribe had remained at the eastern outlet of the Gap only for one sleep. The next morning, the tribe—wood-thrifty from their years on the prairies—had laid all their dead on one pyre and, as the Wind bore the souls of their kindred back to His home, the wagons commenced to creak eastward, along the Trade road to Theesispolis.
A migrating tribe does not move fast. It took them five days to come under the walls of that unhappy city, already in dire straits.
It had been well before dark on the day they had been freed that most of the anxious-to-get-home peasants had poured through the outer city. Their richly embroidered accounts of the huge army’s annihilation at the hands of the stupendous horde of grim (but just) nomads precipitated such a panic that many families of the outer town had fled east, so many that Simos, Governor and Commander of the city, had all the remaining citizens herded willy nilly within the walls and barred the gates behind them. Next, he drafted and dispatched a message to the High Lord. He informed the suzerain of the disaster which had befallen the army and gave the names of the only three noblemen to survive the massacre: Lord Manos, Theodores of Petropolis, and Herakles of Theesispolis—all captives of the barbarians, if not by now slain (though he didn’t say so, Simos sincerely hoped the barbarians had killed Herakles, slowly; he’d had no use for the arrogant young swine since he’d outbid him for a truly stunning young slave-boy two years before). He gave the facts as he knew them: The barbarian horde numbered in the neighborhood of forty thousand, at least twelve thousand of whom were warriors or maiden-archers, and was moving east along the Trade road. He went on to point out that Lord Manos had ordered out the Theesispolis Kahtahphraktoee, and that squadron had fallen with the army—as too had above thirty Theesispolis aristocrats and their hundred or so retainers. He prayed the High Lord to send reinforcements for his tiny garrison as the levy was ill-trained, ill-armed and unreliable, and the four hundred dependable troups were far too few to adequately defend the citadel, much less the walls of the city.
Demetrios’ answer was prompt. He assured Simos that a relief army would soon be up to him—a patent lie, but Simos had no way of knowing it—and that the city was to be held at all costs, pending its arrival. He gently chided Simos’ lack of faith in his citizen-levy, pointing out that the levy had been the strong spine of Ehleenoee arms. With the Theesispolis levy, beefed up by the civic guard and the remaining nobility, he went on, he could not imagine so well-situated and fortified a city falling to a band of mere barbarian marauders in the short tune it would require a field army to march from the capital. He closed with an order. Since all that befell men lay in the lap of the gods, hi the final analysis, the Theesispolis city treasury was to be rushed to Kehnooryohs Atheenahs, along with the valuables of the temples, to be held in trust until the crisis was ended and Theesispolis was safe again. Such private citizens as wished were to be allowed to send their own valuables along and Simos was to give them receipts in return. Because the road might be unsafe, considering the present emergency and the massing of troops, the treasure should be well guarded; three hundred mercenaries should be sufficient. He closed the letter with lavish promises of honors and rewards upon the victory of their arms. The moment the letter was sealed, Demetrios dismissed from his mind all thought of the lost city and the walking dead men who commanded it and concentrated upon devising ways to raise money to raise troops to secure his capital.