Recalling that the High Lord had said prairiecats were but a mutation of tree cats and that many specimens of the latter could mindspeak, Bili attempted to range the fleeing feline but encountered only a jumble of inchoate terror.
Bili allowed his instinct to command him. “MOUNT!” he roared to those behind. “Mount and form column!” Following his own order, his weariness clean forgotten, he flung himself astride Mahvros, slapping his gambeson hood and helm back in place.
He had but barely forked his steed when the very earth shuddered strongly. Horses screamed; so, too, did some of the humans. The brahbehrnuh stumbled against the side of the dancing stallion, frantically grasping Bill’s stirrup leather for the support her feet could not find on the rippling ground. With no time or care for niceties, Bili grabbed the woman’s swordbelt and, lifting her effortlessly, placed her belly-down on his crupper.
Komees Hari came alongside, his big gray tight-reined. “It can only be an earthquake, Bili. I thought there was something odd about this damned plateau. We’ve got to get off it”
“THAT WAY!” Bili shouted, pointing to where the animals had disappeared, a hundred yards to his right. Mahvros was too submerged in terror to respond to mind-speak, so Bili reined him over. His booted heels beat a tattoo on the destrier’s barrel and evoked a willing response; exhaustion forgotten, the big black raced flat out in the track of the fleeing game beasts.
The column followed, while trees crashed around them and boulders shifted, slid and tumbled. After their lord they went, heedlessly putting their mounts at the impossibly narrow descent down the precipitous face of the plateau. Had the plateau been higher, none would have survived. Since it was much lower than in the northern reaches, all save the very tail of the line were galloping hard toward the south when, with a horrible, grinding roar, the entire rocky face dissolved and slid down upon itself.
Not until they were a bird-flight mile from what had been the foot of the plateau did Bili bring his command to a walk, then a halt on the brushy slope of a long, serpentine ridge. Not even there was the earth completely still, but the occasional tremors were quickly forgotten, erased from their minds by the terrible wonder on the northern horizon.
So huge that it looked close enough to touch, a boiling cloud of dense, multicolored smoke loomed, shot through with flame for all its immense and increasing height. Then with a clap of such magnitude that horses screamed and reared, while men and women slapped hands to abused ears and rolled on the heaving hillside in agony, some force shredded the cloud, leaving only tumbling, smoking black shapes of irregular conformation, rising, rising and whirling, then falling swiftly. And where, within sight, those shapes grounded, smoke and leaping flames burst up. One of the shapes fell, bouncing heavily, in the tiny vale betwixt the ridge and the hill beyond. It came finally to rest in an almost-dry streambed and, when the last tendrils of stream had died, Bili and the others could clearly see that it was simply a boulder. But what a boulder! A boulder big enough for two destriers to have stood upon, uncrowded.
And upon his broad face, certain cryptic carvings were plainly visible. At sight of them, the brahbehrnuh uttered a single, piercing shriek. Then her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she collapsed, bonelessly, at Bili’s feet.
Regardless of the gruesome task he had so recently completed, Master Ahlee’s garments and person were spotless when he came to render his report to Strahteegos Vaskos Daiviz of Morguhn. He had commanded the medical contingent of the High Lord’s force and, as soon as it had become apparent that the battle with the Ahrmehnee was over, he had returned to Vawnpolis, where many folk were still suffering from the aftereffects of the long, hard siege.
Vaskos had been more than glad to have the erudite, skillful Zahrtohgahn physician, and not only because of the good his ministrations could do the Vawnpolisee who were the responsibility of the conscientious officer. For these two men had been friends for nearly a year, since the brown-skinned master had successfully treated the grievous wounds Vaskos had suffered when he had fought his way out of rebel-held Horse Hall, in the first days of the short-lived rebellion in Morguhn. That friendship had ripened during the protracted siege of Vawnpolis as they met whenever their various duties had permitted to share an ewer of wine and engage in the Game of Battles, at which both excelled, or exchange anecdotes of travels and combat.
Utterly stymied by the seemingly insoluble problem of the frequent murders, all his own efforts and those of his staff having failed, Vaskos had finally discussed the matter with Ahlee. And that was why, this day, the master had just completed the autopsy of the seventh young woman murdered in as many weeks.
Shoving aside a mound of papers and flexing his ink-stained fingers, Vaskos pushed himself back from his desk and, smiling, waved the master toward a chair.
“You are overtired, Vaskos,” chided Ahlee gently. “Of what use will you be to the High Lord if you break your health? Your staff is both large and competent, yet you put them in armor on city patrols and then try to do their work yourself. Promise an old man that you will promptly mend your ways.”
Vaskos sighed, frowning. “Master, I have armed all the ex-rebels I dare to. Too, I have begged all the troops I can reasonably expect from Strahteegos Demosthenes, out at the base camp. My staff noncoms were all the men I had left, with the exceptions of Danes’ crew, and those poor bastards have been standing watch on watch for months. I couldn’t bring myself to ask more of them … or him, either, much as I hate him. I doubt me if the Ehleen god could fabricate a worse punishment than he is living in.”
Ahlee shook his scarred, brown head—hairless, like the rest of his body, for reasons of cleanliness. “Vaskos, my friend, my order is dedicated to the saving of life in accordance with Ahlah’s Holy Will. I have served that order for the larger part of my life. Consequently, it pains me to suggest that you have the Vahrohnos Myros Deskati … ahhh, put out of his misery. The man is, in my humble opinion, incurable and is just too dangerous to maintain longer in the existing manner. He has a record of having already slain one member of Captain Danos’ detachment, and that man he attacked last week will be crippled for the rest of his days.”
“I’d dearly love to do it,” grunted Vaskos. “Personally. Were it my decision to make, I’d hump myself down to that level and put my sword in the bastard in an eyetwinkling. But he be the prisoner of my overlord … well, my father’s overlord, anyhow. And I don’t think Thoheeks Bill would be too happy were he denied hearing Myros’ death screams, considering all the merry hob the whoreson raised in Morguhn.”
At the last word, Vaskos rose and stumped over to a heavy tapestry. Pulling it back, he took from the arrowslit window it covered a jar of wine, now cooled by the frigid outdoor temperature. Setting the jar on his desk, he crossed to the hearth and poked up the fire, then returned to his seat and poured two mugs full.
When Ahlee had sipped, the strahteegos said, “Well, did you learn anything new from this latest victim, master?”
The white-robed physician shrugged. “In point of fact, Vaskos, no. Her injuries were almost identical to those of all the other poor women; I can attest that all were even mutilated with the same instruments.”
“And what of the monster who wielded them, master? Any inkling of who we’re looking for?”
“As I said often before, Vaskos, you are looking for a madman who, with all the cunning of his madness, has thus far eluded you. Could you but take me to the place wherein he does his savageries, I could perhaps tell you more concerning him. But then, if you knew where he takes his victims, you would need nothing save patience in order to apprehend him.”