“You feel then that he and his troop of hired bravos will not be back to openly harass the duchy, Lord Grahvos?” asked Klaios, looking a bit worried.
The thoheeks chuckled and shook his head again. “No, I don’t. They didn’t leave together, you know. When Lieutenant Bralos slew their captain, then dragged their employer off almost naked and at the points of spears, they at once elected a new captain, looted everything that could be speedily grabbed up, then rode off headed northeast, while Rahb Vawn tells me that Hahkmukos’ trail veers almost due west. So far as the troop are concerned, I’ll not be surprised at all are they in the camp under the walls of Mehseepolis trying to enlist in our army . . . and I’ll probably recommend taking them on, for they seem to be good, experienced fighters, survivors, and such types Council can always use.”
“How goes it with the young officer?” inquired Klaios, with patent and sincere concern. “When last I set eyes to him, he looked as if a herd of cattle had run over him.”
Grahvos smiled. “Yes, he was a mess when he staggered back to the pavilion—all mud and blood and bruises, and barely able to talk coherently or even see where he was going. He almost brought the roof down atop us all when he walked into that main post.
“But he’ll live. His nose was broken, of course, and a few teeth loosened, but the swelling has subsided enough for him to be able to see and drink broth and wine easily now.”
Klaios nodded. “Good. However, I feel that I owe him suffering-price, since he was, in effect, injured in service to me and to the Duchy of Ahndros.”
Grahvos reached over and gripped the komees’ shoulder firmly and said in a grave tone, “You, Lord Klaios, are a true gentleman of the old school, and I thank the good God that He sent us such as you to rule these lands.
“But worry yourself not in this matter. Lieutenant Bralos has been paid in full for his injuries. I awarded him Hahkmukos’ tent, baggage and furnishings, plus some of the pack mules that the bravos didn’t lift to bear his new possessions back to Mehseepolis. I also gave him to understand that his name is now high on my personal list of young officers deserving preferment.”
Sub-strahteegos Tomos Gonsalos greeted Thoheeks Grahvos warmly when he rode into camp with Captain Sub-chief Rahb Vawn’s clansmen. The older man staggered up the steps and through the anterooms, then virtually collapsed into a chair in Tomos’ office, looking to be utterly drained, thoroughly exhausted.
Deep concern on his face and in his tone, Gonsalos filled a mug with watered brandy and asked, as he proffered it, “Are you quite well, my lord Grahvos?”
“Oh, I’m not ill, Tomos, not really,” groaned Grahvos. “But one more week of hell-riding with those Horseclanners would have seen me dead. Man, those little bastards ride day and night, they stop only long enough to unsaddle their mounts, slap the saddles onto remounts from the remuda, perhaps have a quick piss, then they’re mounted and off again, both eating and sleeping in the saddle—at a fast amble, most often, at that.”
He grinned tiredly. “But by Christ I kept up with the bastards. It became a point of personal and racial honor to me that they not be able to boast that they rode an Ehleen nobleman into the ground.”
Tomos shook his head. “My lord, you are perhaps the most valuable man the Confederation has, our strongest and most faithful supporter in these southern lands, and you are no longer a young man. You could have burst your heart, killed yourself, at such foolishness. Please say that you’ll not again be so stubbornly ...”
Grahvos waved his hand. “Oh, never you fear, my good Tomos, I’ve had a crawful and more of cavalry marching for a good long while. But I also now have even deeper respect for those damned Horseclanners of yours. Lord God, what a weapon they make for our arms. Give them enough of a remuda and I don’t doubt but that they could cover the full distance from east coast to west of this onetime kingdom within three or four weeks . . . and like as not fight and win a battle when they got there.”
The older man drained off his mug of brandy-water and, while his host refilled it, inquired, “Have you seen anything of a stray troop of Ehleenoee mercenary horsemen about in the last few days, Tomos?” Then he recounted all that had transpired with the wretched and craven Hahkmukos in Ahndropolis, ending with the admonition, “So, if they do ride into camp, I’d accept their enlistments, but I’d also break them up, spread them out as far as possible among existing units of our cavalry; otherwise they just might decide to bolt in a tight place, and leave us with a gap in our battle line when and where we least can afford one.”
As he stood to leave for the city, he remarked, “By the way, I have hired away one of your officers, Captain Rahb Vawn, to be my personal bodyguard; he’s even now explaining his decision to Chief Pawl of Vawn. I pay well for service; besides, I’m hoping that Rahb will learn to like it well enough to stay here, marry and breed more of his kind among us. There are still rich lands lacking lords within my and many another demesne . . . which is something that all of you northerners might take into consideration when you plan for your futures.
“Now, I’m off for the palace, a hot bath and a soft, warm bed.”
Four days later, Captain Thoheeks Portos marched the rest of the cavalry, the infantry, the elephants and the trains into the permanent camp below Mehseepolis—men, animals and vehicles all mud-caked, half frozen and miserable. Even the sturdy, uncomplaining elephants were showing irritability bred of the exhaustion of pushing and pulling wagon after wagon out of mudhole after mudhole day after day in icy rain or clammy mist.
“That abortion of a so-called road,” Portos told Tomos after the troops had been formed up and dismissed, “has got to go to the top of the repair list. All the logs are rotted out; the only bridge that is still there, even, is the old, narrow stone one over Yahlee River ; to cross the rest of the streams we had to send out patrols to seek fords. In one place there was no ford to be found, so the artificers and pioneers had to swim a treacherous and powerful current with lines in their teeth, haul over and set cables, then set the elephants to stand upstream in six feet of rushing water to partially break its force while men and horses were swum and wagons were floated across. That had to be done twice—once on the march down there, once on the march back—and that is what cost us our only deaths—nine men, two horses and two mules.
“If I hadn’t believed fully that those barbarians can really talk to those elephants, Tomos, I’d have to, after this campaign. They can get those beasts to do things that I’ve never before seen either a draught elephant or a war-elephant perform, not in all my years of warring with and against armies that utilized them.
“And the efforts of those three elephants is all that got our trains back up here over those quagmire roads, too. Without them, we’d have been putting down draught animals right and left; as it was, when a wagon mired too deeply for the animals and the men to drag and pry it out, one of the elephants would put her forehead against the back of it and pop it out like the stopper from a bottle, then the team would be rehitched and so proceed to the next impassable stretch of slimy road.
“We didn’t get to better roads and slightly drier weather until yesterday. Did the barbarian cavalry and Thoheeks Grahvos make it back yet?”
Tomos nodded, smiling. “Four days ago.”
Portos hissed between his teeth. “And how many horses did they kill and founder?”
“None,” the sub-strahteegos replied, adding, “I know, I know, it sounds impossible, but it’s true, nonetheless. Their secret, so Thoheeks Grahvos avers, is that they never push any one mount too hard for too long. That’s what their oversized remuda is for, you see. They change horses several times each day; they seldom ride really fast, but they stay in the saddle and moving for eighteen and twenty hours a day, every day, until they get where they’re headed.”