High Lord Demetrios had been delighted, an entire tribe of them! Since all slaves were automatically the property of the High Lord, if captured by his troops, he quickly dispatched an army under command of his cousin, Manos, Lord of the West. (After all, being the nominal capital of the Western Lord’s lands, Theesispolis was Manos’ responsibility, though Demetrios privately doubted that the man had visited the primitive little place more than a dozen times in his entire life; and why should he when everything which made life worth the living lie in the city of the High Lord?)
So Lord Manos marched west at the head of some eight thousand men, and High Lord Demetrios sat back and waited for the thousands of slaves whose prices would lift all his financial burdens. “But I’ll not glut the market,” he thought. “I’ll pen them here and only dribble them out a few at the tune. That way, I should be able to have a new boy every day for a long, long while, break the little dears in for the brothel-keepers.” Closing his bloodshot eyes, he sat back and began to fantasize, smacking his thick lips. Already his hairy hands seemed to be gripping the smooth-skinned body of an untried darling of a blond boy, who screamed and struggled, deliriously… . The High Lord shuddered in anticipation.
Lord Manos’ army was light on cavalry, so when he marched past Theesispolis, he dragooned the entire Kahtahphraktoee squadron. Thirty-two of the wealthier citizens, who could afford to maintain chariots and a full panoply, drove out to his column and requested they be allowed a place in his array and a consequent share in the sure rewards of his venture. As all were his theoretical equals—pure Ehleenoee of noble lineage—he graciously consented (though he could not, for the life of him, understand why any civilized man would deliberately seek the all but unbearable discomfort of a war-camp without direct orders). So he marched on west. The Trade Gap was the only feasible route for the large wagons, so Manos camped his army at its eastern mouth and waited, appropriating the Gap-fort for his headquarters and residence and adding its small garrison to his army.
6
The commander of the Gap-fort was a mercenary with a barbarian name—Hwil Kuk. Manos did not feel that the man was properly subservient and would not have him around the place, insisting he camp with his men. Kuk was a widower and his 12-year-old son shared his life. When first he laid eyes on the towheaded, blue-eyed boy, Manos lusted for him. He suggested to Kuk that he take the boy; back with the army as his page, rear and educate him in the city of the High Lord, make a gentleman of him. Kuk understood; he had served some years in the capital and knew only too well of the unnatural passions of many of the Ehleenoee, wealthy ones in particular. Kuk refused politely, saying he had promised the boy’s dead mother that they would stay together.
Manos ordered the noncom from his presence and sulked and brooded for three days. On the morning of the fourth, Hwil Kuk—who knew the country and spoke Old Merikan fluently—was ordered to take half his command through the Gap. He was to enter the nomads’ camp and attempt to estimate their numbers, telling the chiefs that their approach had alarmed the Ehleenoee and that was why the army had been sent; but, if the tribe came in peace, they were more than welcome to come through the Gap, so long as they continued north or south and did not tarry in Kehnooryohs Ehlahs. He was to take along gifts for the chiefs and spend as much time as was required to lull them into the trap Manos’ men were preparing.
The night of the fourth day, a detachment of Manos’ bodyguard entered the main camp, seized Kuk’s son, and bore him back to the Gap-fort.
Kuk and his party were well received by the Council of Chiefs, were honored and gifted and assured that, once through the Gap, the tribe would be bearing south. It had been prophesied that they would return to the Great Water whence they had come, but it was unnecessary to proceed in a straight line. Raids were one thing, but none of the chiefs was especially keen to come up against an army nearly as large as the entire tribe.
Feeling a bit like a Judas-goat—for he had truly liked his hosts and had been made to feel truly at home with them—Hwil Kuk led his men back into the Gap after two days. Halfway through, he was met by his second-in-command and the remainder of the Gap-fort garrison, who were mounted on stolen horses. When the first, wild rage of his grief over his son had spent itself, Kuk realized the sure consequences of returning into the clutches of his son’s murderer. He decided to seek again the nomad camp. Once there, he would tell the chiefs the truth and, if allowed to do so, join with them. He absolved his men of their oaths to him, bidding them follow or not, as they wished. All forty followed. Their pay was far in arrears and they owed the Ehleenoee and the High Lord no service as they were all mercenaries, indigenous to the mountains of the Middle Domain, Karaleenos. While they served the Ehleenoee for gold, they neither liked nor respected them (for one thing, they felt dispossessed; the rich piedmont having once belonged to their race). They all respected Hwil Kuk and they had—to a man—loved little Hwili, Kuk’s shamefully murdered son.
Before the Council of Chiefs, Kuk bared his breast. He freely confessed his duplicity hi his earlier dealings with them, carefully detailing the strengths of the Ehleenoee host—and its weaknesses, chief among which was its inexperienced, hotheaded commander, the monster Manos. He told, too, of the preparations for ambushing the tribe as soon as most of it was through the Gap and massacring its warriors.
“Then,” Kuk concluded, “it will be with you as it has been before with other Horseclans. After all the men are dead, your women will be raped to death or sold over the sea to brothels; your maidens will be enslaved as well, to receive the tainted seed of the devilish Ehleenoee; and your young boys… .” He broke off sharply, tears streaming down his cheeks. Then, clenching his big fists and squaring his shoulders, he forced himself to continue. “Your dear littls sons will be sold to brothels, too; but brothels of a different sort, where their immature bodies will sate the dark lusts of the unclean, unnatural beasts who call themselves Ehleenoee. I speak of certain knowledge, honorable chieftains—my oath to Sun and Wind and Sword, on it My own little boy—my Hwili—lies dead on the other side of the Gap, murdered by this same Lord Manos. When Ij would not give my son to his keeping—knowing him for what he is—he first sent me to lie to you, then had his men to seize the child.”
Hwil Kuk hung his head and sunk teeth into lip; blood trickled down his stubbled chin. When he raised his head again, his eyes were screwed shut. His quavering voice was
low but penetrating, and his facial muscles twitched with emotion.
“I have been told that my child’s screams could be heard through all the camp. Then they suddenly ceased. The next morning, certain of my followers found Hwili’s pitiful little corpse, flung onto the fort midden. They washed it and clothed it and … and buried it. Things had been done to my boy’s body, terrible things. His … flesh had been torn, and my followers think that Lord Manos, uncaring after his hellish lusts were satisfied, allowed my Hwili to bleed to death.”
Then Hwil Kuk’s eyes opened and the fire of bloodlust-ing madness blazed from them. “Chieftains, if you would to the sea—your great water—you must fight long and hard. It is that or return to the plains, for, in all the Ehleenoee lands, you will meet with the same. You owe me nothing, yet would I ask this of you: If it is your intent to fight, allow me and my followers to swing our swords beside you.”