Experience told him that he could not get the long, heavy sword up quickly enough to effectively parry the attack. To duck would only make him more vulnerable, and to hop back off the small mound would be to give Ahndros the advantage of high ground. Dropping the sword, he threw himself forward, his meaty shoulder striking the center of Ahndros’ breastplate, his left hand closing on his adversary’s right wrist with bone-crushing force.
Ahndros crashed over backward, his cuirass striking sparks from the rocky ground. They rolled over and over, the gathered men scattering from their path. The fall had sent Ahndros’ helm spinning, but Bili could not spare a fist to batter the exposed head or fingers to gouge the eyes or ram up the nostrils, for he needs must use both hands to protect himself from Ahndros’ strength.
Cursing in all the languages or dialects he had ever heard, Komees Hari danced about as close to the combatants as their unpredictable writhings would permit, his blade bared, seeking a safe opening through which to thrust or slice some unarmored portion of Ahndros’ anatomy.
As for Ahndros, he knew that to release his grip on his hilt was sure death, yet he also knew that he could not retain it much longer. Bili had actually bent the fine steel cuff of his right gauntlet and his relentless pressure was collapsing the high-grade plate more and more, slowly crushing the wrist beneath. Then, while their bodies gasped and thrashed and strained, Bili mindspoke him.
“Ahndee, I don’t want to kill you or to see you killed on my account. My mother loves you and I once thought you my friend. What’s made you so unreasonable in these last months? Simply that I felt constrained to bring Count Djeen to heel? Why, the High Lord himself averred that the old man had asked for just what be got, and many times over, too.”
Ahndros answered telephathically. “You expect me to take your unadorned word on that, do you?”
“If my word isn’t sufficient, Ahndee, than why not ask Lord Milo? You have farspeak, he told me, and Whitetip will be happy to assist you.”
“I doubt the High Lord would receive my transmission, since I left Vawnpolis without his august leave, lord thoheeks. And, even if he did, I’m certain he’d lie to back anything you chose to say. It must have been quite a strain to keep up with the demands of both of them—swiving that slut, Aldora-the-Undying-Whore, then being poheestos to Milo.”
For a moment, Bill’s shock at the accusations sent his mind whirling, then he beamed back, albeit sadly. “You are surely mad, Ahndee, mad as Vahrohnos Myros, back in Vawnpolis, gibbering in his cell. I had been warned that there was madness in your house, that too much inbreeding had rendered your strain rotten. Drop your sword, man, stop fighting me, and I’ll send you back in honor. Mayhap Master Ahlee can help you return to normalcy.”
For a few heartbeats longer, Ahndros maintained the struggle, then he went suddenly limp and his sword clattered from his grasp.
Bili slowly regained his feet, then helped his late opponent to stand. But he missed the feral gleam in Ahndros’ black eyes. As the thoheeks half-turned to speak to his brother, now standing fully armed at the forefront of the circle of watchers, the vahrohneeskos drew his heavy dirk and, screaming, lunged at the hated foe.
Komees Hari’s powerful thrust entered the temple, spitting Ahndros’s head like an apple on a stick. The black eyes bulged out of their sockets, then a torrent of blood gushed from eyes, ears, nostrils and mouth. The body stiffened, then collapsed bonelessly, the head pulling free of the swordblade with a sucking, popping sound.
During the next few days, Bili took each nobleman and officer aside, separately, and swore them to silence. He loved his mothers and meant to make sure that neither ever would know of how dishonorably Vahrohneeskos Ahndros Theftehros of Morguhn had died. To that end, he knew that the late Ahndros’s servants would have to be permanently silenced, but to slay all five so close to the death of their master might cause comment amongst the Freefighters, so he simply dragooned them to his own service, where he and his striker could keep tabs on them.
Late the next morning, the vanguard came up to an old battleground, obviously the site of an Ahrmehnee victory, since most of the hacked corpses had been stripped, beheaded and sickeningly mutilated. Due to the almost total absence of artifacts, no one could say for certain just who the more than five score dead men had been; Bili and the others could only assume that they had found a part of Pawl Raikuh’s still missing squadron.
In addition to the man-made disfigurements, annuals had been at the bodies, and at least a week of sundrenched days in the open had the dead flesh well on the way to putrefaction, despite the freezing nights. Nonetheless, Bili had troopers examine each cadaver in hopes of establishing his assumption. That was how the odd point was found.
The man who found it, under a reeking corpse, brought it to his captain, and the Freefighter officer immediately rode to the center of the clearing, where Bili and a knot of nobles sat their horses amid the stench.
Captain Krawzmyuh had to almost shout to make himself heard above the angry cawings of the crows and ravens, the flapping of the wings of low-flying buzzards anxious to return to their grisly feasting.
“Duke Bili, Trooper Hwehlbehk found this underneath a body, he did. All the years I been a-soldierin”, I ain’t seen the like. She ‘pears too big and long to be no dart point, but nobody’s fool enough to forge barbs on the point of a stabbin’ spear.”
Bili accepted the piece of metal and scrutinized it. It was about as long as his hand, as the captain had said, too long and heavy to have tipped a hand dart. The steel seemed of poor quality and the forging was rough and sloppy, the hammer marks jaggedly positioned on the faces. Down each edge ran a row of curved barbs, and a couple of inches of sourwood shaft still remained in the band-socket, held by an iron pin. He decided that, whatever had been its use, it was a crude, savage weapon.
While the nobles passed it about amongst themselves, Bili thought aloud. “Barring evidence to the contrary, gentlemen, I think we are safe to assume that these poor bastards were of Captain Raikuh’s squadron. But that missel point, if such it actually is, gives one to wonder if their nemesis was really the Ahrmehnee. I find myself doubting it for a number of reasons.
“First, though Ahrmehnee are known to take weapons and armor, horses and their equipage from slain foemen, as well as heads, I’ve yet to hear of any tribe stripping bodies of clothing and boots. Any nonmetallic item—one which cannot be purified by fire—which was worn touching the skin of a dead enemy is taboo to them, since they much fear the spirits of vengeful victims.”
“Yet, my lord,” mused Airuhn Mahkai of Duhnkin, “they do take heads … ?”
“Which they keep in special, spell-locked houses. And their very real fear is one reason they take heads, Lord Airuhn.” Bili had, at the first mention of this campaign, put his keen mind to the task of learning all he could of Ahrmehnee and their ways, so he now spoke with some authority. “Their shamans are of the mind that, so long as they are not unduly angered, maleficent spirits can be kept trapped within their skulls, which never leave the spell-house. But were a spirit to see an Ahrmehnee wearing clothing which once had been worn on that spirit’s corporeal body, such would be its anger that it could overcome the spells and wreak terrible vengeance on those who took its life.
“But back to the point, gentlemen. We all are by now aware of the excellence of Ahrmehnee metalworking. They have a passionate love of fine artifacts and are masters at fabricating them. If the High Lord can bring them into the Confederation, give them steady and plentiful sources of raw materials, they’ll soon be a very wealthy people, without doubt. Therefore, can any of you imagine an Ahrmehnee warrior willingly entering battle against well-armed men with so ill-wrought and clumsy a weapon? I cannot.”