But she had gone with the officer.
Drehkos Daiviz of Morguhn was sitting, leaning weakly against a pile of stiffening corpses, his shirtfront stiff and tacky with drying gore. As she dismounted and started wonderingly toward him, one of the ring of guardsmen handed him a canteen from which he drank greedily.
Closing her memory, Aldora recommenced mindspeak. “Milo, I still have that spear. It’s got a ten-inch blade, honed as sharp as a sword op both edges. Though they’re fading fast, you can still see the two scars on Drehkos’ body, one on his back, just under the right shoulderblade, and one on his chest, bisecting his right nipple.
“When I asked him what had happened, he seemed as stunned as any of us, but quite candidly said that he had fallen face downward and that the fall had pushed the blade back into his body. He just lay there for a while, expecting to die shortly. But he didn’t. So, finally, because it was so agonizing, he managed to reach behind him and pull the spear the rest of the way out of him. By the time my guards got to him, he’d stopped bleeding, though the wounds still were gaping when I arrived.”
“Who, besides you and them—and him, of course—know of this, Aldora?”
“No one, Milo. I’ve learned at least that much from you in two hundred years or so.”
Milo nodded. “Keep it that way until we’re down at the castra. Yes, dear, you’re learning. It was most wise to keep him by you … whatever it develops he is.”
“Bili,” Hari mindspoke back from the van, “Whitetip just told me he’s found a horse wandering. There’s a woman on it, an armored woman, wounded and unconscious. He wants to know if he should lead the horse here or wait for us to come up to him.”
“Wait, Hari,” Bili replied; then, on farspeak-level, “Cat-brother, do you think the female two-leg will fall off the horse if you try to bring her to us?”
“Her kak is like yours, Chief Bili,” answered the prairiecat promptly. “She will not fall.”
“Then lead the horse to our brother, Hari, catbrother. I will join you there.” Then, to Hari, “Watch for Whitetip, he’s bringing his find to you. I’ll be there as quickly as Mahvros can bear me.”
When the black stallion pounded up to the van, Hari and some of his men had removed the rider from her spent, lathered, shuddering horse and laid her out on a cloak. Another cloak had been folded and placed under her head, from which they had removed the dented helm. Using a piece of rag dipped in a waterbag, the old komees was gently sponging away the dirt and sweat and blood from her pasty-white face.
Bili had been a warrior for all his adult life and had seen his share of wounds, fatal and otherwise. He shook his head as he strode toward her, thinking that she would not live much longer and that it was a shame, for her features were regular and fair to look upon and her tresses, those not befouled with blood and dirt, were the ruddy black of his stallion’s mane, though far finer in texture.
“Isn’t she lovely, my lord?” said the husky, red-haired nobleman who strode beside the young thoheeks.
Bili didn’t answer, for they had reached the wounded woman’s side. “Has she said anything, Hari?”
Shaking his head, the old man stood up jerkily, his joints popping and creaking protest. “There’s damned little life left in her. She can’t even swallow. I tried to give her some brandy and it just ran out of her throat through that wound under her chin. Even if she were conscious, lad, I don’t think she’d be able to speak. I tried a scan of her mind, too, but …” He shrugged his shoulders and turned up his palms.
Sinking down beside the dying woman, Bili raised one of her eyelids, then straightened and slapped her wan cheeks, hard. His thick, horny hand, hardened by axehaft and swordhilt, with the strength of his brawny arm behind it, cracked cruelly against the chill flesh, right cheek and left, back and palm, in a blur of motion.
Komees Hari was aghast. He stepped forward. “Now, damnit, Bili … Sun and Wind, man, what are you doing? You’ve no call to so abuse her!” he remonstrated, heatedly.
But Bili had stopped. The sooty-lashed eyelids had fluttered ever so faintly and the colorless lips trembled, then passed a croaking moan. After a moment, the lids opened to disclose bloodshot eyes, already beginning to glaze. Roughly, Bili grasped the small head, raised it, and stared hard into those sloe-black pupils.
IX
“Who are you girl?” he hurriedly mindspoke, sensing that life was almost sped. “Are you of the Moon Maidens? Who wounded you? How far ahead of this place are your sisters?”
Slowly, wonderingly, “But you’re a lowlander. How can you speak Ahrmehnee? Please … my throat hurts … hurts so terribly. And I’m so cold. But, no, Moon Maidens must be strong, must serve Our Lady with stoicism.”
Bluntly, “You’re dying, sister, you’ll not suffer much longer.”
A sigh brought dark-pink froth bubbling from her lips and the hole in her throat. Her mind said, “Yes, dying. Soon be one with … Lady.”
“Who slew you, sister? Was it Muhkohee?”
“Muhkohee, yes, thousands … never heard of so many together. Must reach nahkhahrah, tell Ahrmehnee, raise all warriors in stahn. Brahbehrnuh says…”
And she was gone.
“Catbrother?” Bili silently called the crouching prairiecat. “Take another and backtrack the horse, but cautiously, for those who slew this female still may watch or follow. I am easier to range than is our brother, Hari, so I will ride with him. Go now, and go quickly.”
“Whitetip hears his brother-chief.” In one fluid movement, the big, tawny-gray feline rose from his crouch and yawned hugely, his wide pink tongue lolling out between the three-inch-long upper fangs which were a characteristic feature of his species. Whirling, he started off at a distance-eating lope, his thick-thewed legs carrying his several hundred pounds easily over the rock-strewn, steep-graded track. The last Bili saw of him was his bobbing, white-tipped tail, sinking below the crest of the hill ahead.
Remounted, the van continued on, but with intervals of several yards between each four or six riders. They rode fully alert, the nobles—all save Bili and Hari—with beavers raised and visors lowered and locked. Bili rode with his huge double-bitted axe resting across his flaring pommel, the others with swords bared and targes strapped onto left arms. The archers—every fourth trooper—had all strung their short, powerful hornbows and nocked the steel-shod arrows, gripping two or three more shafts in the fingers of the bowhand, their sabers rattling loose in their cases.
A quarter mile behind, but closing, the main column came, led by Djaik Morguhn and equally ready for battle. Obedient to his older brother’s mindspoken command, the deputy quickened the pace until he was within sight of the tail of the van, then slowed to maintain that interval.
One mile they traversed, two, and still the track climbed. Higher, and the footing became treacherous, loose stones atop crumbling rock, all interspersed with had been covered in the Time of the Gods. At one place, shards of that black pebbly substance with which all roads had been covered in the Time of the Gods. At one place, they rode between a double row of ancient columns, cracked and deeply weathered, with rust stains showing through the moss.
Soon after that eerie passage, the footing became firmer and the ascent began to ease, still climbing, but at a more gradual rate. Then the way became level and, around the shoulder of a precipitous hill, they spied a long, wide plateau, beyond which rose another range of dark-green mountains. At that point, Bili halted the column, wary of proceeding into the unknown without foreknowledge of what dangers might lurk there. The word was passed back by mindspeak for the men of the units to dismount but to remain in ranks within easy reach of their mounts.