Klahrk was of the opinion that he was about to fight his last battle and was mentally framing a stirring address to his doomed command when, out of the dragoons’ ranks, a vaguely familiar man rode forth, to rein up just beyond the pike-points.
The rider—by dress, obviously an officer—lowered his beavor and shouted, “By God, you bastards are professionals or I’m a bit of mule’s dungl Whose fornicating j company is this?”
Klahrk shouldered his way through the ranks of his men. “Mine!” he shouted. “Looisz Klahrk’s. Who wants to know?”
Then he saw the horseman’s face at close range. “Djeen!” He grinned, hugely. “Djeen Mai! Why you old boar, you! I’d have thought that the law-keepers, somewhere, would have caught and hung you long since; if a jealous husband or vengeful father hadn’t beaten them to it. If you engineered this ambuscade, my compliments, it was beautifully designed and executed. King Mahrtuhn’ll be excreting red-hot pokers when he hears of it. You cost me a good three hundred killed and wounded. But I’ve still enough to take a fair toll of …”
Djeen raised his hand. “Hold on, hold on, old friend. I’ve no desire to fight you! Tell me, has King Mahrtuhn paid you?” At Klahrk’s nod, he went on.
“I’m in service to Lord Alexandras of Pahpahs, who means to make himself High Lord of Kehnooryohs Ehlahs—all of it, as it was three hundred years ago, if I know My Lord—and think of the pickings of that!”
Klahrk frowned and shook his head. “Djeen, if you’re hinting that I change sides—foreswear my oath to save my hide—forget it. I swore King Mahrtuhn three months service and took his gold and I’ll not go back on my word to him. As well as we know each other, in fact, I’m surprised that you would suggest such a thing to me!”
“Well,” Djeen sighed, “it was just a thought. But there are different ways to serve an employer, Looisz. For instance, there’re a goodly number, I doubt me not, of wounded back there.” He hooked his thumb northward. “They’re in serious need of attention. They really should be gotten back to Kuhmbrulun. What of your stores we didn’t lift, will be burned to the axles by the time you get to them, and you’re going to play pure hell, trying to march on without them through a countryside the dragoons have already picked clean! Then, too, I’d not be at all surprised but what the Prince of Fredrik was very interested when our messengers informed him that damned near every mother’s-son in Kuhmbrulun was deep in the heart of Kehnooryohs Ehlahs. Yes, Looisz, there’re many, many different ways of serving one’s employer.” Djeen reined half around and extended his right hand to grip that of his old friend. “I lost half a dozen troopers,” he said in parting. “I’ll leave their mounts for you and your sergeants. You needn’t fear for the safety of any messengers you should decide to send south—if you do so decide; they’ll be passed, never you worry.”
While they had been conversing, the nomads had clattered off, headed south and west. When Djeen rejoined his command, the squadron left the littered, blood-splotched road and were soon lost to sight, in the forest.
By the time Klahrk’s men had done what they could for the wounded and salvaged what little they were able to salvage of the stores in the merrily blazing wagons, the mercenary captain had come to a decision. He carefully drilled one of his sergeants, until the man could repeat the message word for word three times running. Then he gave him one of the grey horses and sent him southward at a gallop to seek out Duke Herbut, commander of the main contingent of dragoons.
The nomads had driven off most of the horses and oxen and mules, but a few had been unavoidably slain; these, Klahrk had his men flay and butcher; then set them to cooking the meat, ere it began to spoil.
Remembering the topography of the country they had traversed, he and his condotta—bearing with them the wounded and such supplies and equipment as they possessed—withdrew a half-mile up the road. There, on a meadow which was near to an adequate source of water, they ditched and mounded the outline of a castra in which to spend the night Early in the morning, they set about palisading it with logs, hewed in the nearby forest and snaked out by men and the five horses.
When, nearly three days later, Duke Herbut and some six thousand cavalry arrived, it was before a stout little emergency fort. After he and captain Klahrk had conferred briefly, the duke detached two squadrons to escort infantry and wounded on their trek north, then he and the other four squadrons spurred hard for Kuhmbrulun.
When word was brought to the council, the chiefs roared and hugged each other and danced joyfully. Djeen Mai and Sam Tchahrtuhz beat their thighs and howled their merriment. Even undemonstrative old Lord Alexandros allowed himself a broad smile of satisfaction at this unqualified success of his brain-child.
“So,” commented Milo, when the hubbub had died down, “they swallowed it, hook, line, and bloody sinker! Well, deduct six thousand Kahtahphraktoee and deduct the thousand or so who survived the ambush and deduct the four thousand casualties that Djeen estimates we inflicted, and your remainder is about five thousand cavalry. They’re completely unsupported and they’ve lost the bulk of their supplies; they’re nearly forty leagues deep in basically hostile territory with a ravaged countryside behind them. I shouldn’t think they’d present any appreciable danger to us, not unless the others come to realize the deception when they arrive in Kuhmbrulun, and hotfoot it back to reinforce. Barring that, we should be able to crush or scatter this kinglet’s troops at will.”
But Lord Alexandras shook his white head. “I beg pardon, my lord Milos, but I must disagree with you; furthermore, I implore you not to underestimate King Mahrtuhn’s abilities, for he is quite an able strahteegohs. He rode ahead with the bulk of the nobility, not for personal glory, but because they are the most effective and formidable men that he has. Like your nomads, these men are, from the very cradle, bred to war and most are masters of every conceivable weapon. They are courageous and hard fighters, possess a strict and highly complex code of honor, and are altogether worthy and dangerous foemen. Djeen, here, is nobly-born, being a nephew of the Duke of Pahtzburk; so, too, is Sam Tchahrtuhz, the natural son of the former Count of Zunburk.
“Noblemen, generally speaking, sire huge broods, and this is very necessary, for they tend to kill each other off at a prodigious rate. Their states are small, inherently hostile to each other, and voraciously land-hungry. It is probable that, within the last three hundred years, there have been but few twelve-months that did not see a conflict—of greater or lesser magnitude—somewhere within the north-barbarian states!
“As the land has been warred over for so many years, it is nowhere near as productive—in the senses of agriculture or husbandry—as even the border themes of the Ehleenoee lands; but, for all that, most of the so-called barbarian states are well-off, if not wealthy. The reason for this is that every city and, frequently, town has its shops and manufactories. Prior to the arrival of the tribe, I would, for instance, have felt it safe to say that fully eighty of every hundred swords swung from the South Ehleen lands to the North Ehleen Republic had blades produced in the Kingdom of Harzburk, or the Kingdom of Pitzburk or the Grand Duchy of Bethlemburk! Those three and their neighbors also produce a plethora of metal products—tools and utensils as well as weapons, not to mention the best and most modern of armor—not this heavy, clumsy, old-fashioned loricate or jazeran, mind you; but brigandines and cuirasses very similar to those of your people. But where yours are of leather, theirs are of steel! Also, the statelets produce glass, work gold and silver and fabricate jewelry.