“So then,” mused Tomos, “it might be entirely possible that this young-appearing very elderly man is really an Undying. Hmmm. I think that I must send a galloper to the High Lord at Kehnooryos Atheenahs at tomorrow’s dawn; I’d be remiss in my responsibility to both my king and his overlord did I do less.”
Portos squinted under his brows at Gonsalos. “You truly believe, then, that this High Lord Milos is what he and his aver?”
“You do not?” asked the sub-strahteegos.
“Look you, Tomos,” replied Portos evenly, “the man is a fine ruler, an honorable and a generous man, he is a superlative military leader—warrior, tactician and strategist, all rolled into one—and I am much beholden to him personally, but I cannot bring myself to believe him to be an Undying, some seven centuries old, no. His clans all firmly believe in him, yes, but then they are not at all a very sophisticated lot, I think you’ll admit.”
“Then what do you think him to be, Portos?” demanded Tomos.
“I’ve yet to make up my mind,” said Portos flatly, but added, “Physically, he looks very much like one of us, and his Ehleenokos is almost accentless, but what accent remains is that of Pahlahyos Ehlahs—the homeland of our ancestors—or of Kehnooryos Mahkedohnya, whose speech most resembles the archaic patterns and usages. He was clearly born and bred a nobleman and trained to war, whatever his actual place of origin.”
“Think hard before you answer this question, Portos,” said Tomos in warning. “Will your doubts, your distrust of the High Lord’s age and point of origin, affect your military or civil service to the Council and the Confederation?”
Portos snorted. “Of course not! As I said earlier, be he what he is said to be or be he something else entirely, he still is probably the best ruler between here and the Great Northern Sea, and, also, I am beholden to him. I swore him and the Council oaths, and I mean to keep my word and my honor.”
Tomos Gonsalos smiled and nodded. “Fine. Here, have some more of the brandy.”
Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz, although he had been constrained to give the appearance of being a “good officer,” still harbored an abysmally low opinion of military routine. Taking full advantage of the special status of his war-elephant command, he simply peeled his unit off from the returning column and headed for the river shallows whereat it had become customary to wash his huge beasts in garrison.
By the time that he and the other two feelahksee had laved their charges, their mounts, their dear friends, of an estimated ton of the sticky, gooey red-clay mud and had arrived back at the lofty building that housed both them and the elephants, it was almost dark and the three cow-elephants were yet to be fed, which would entail Gil organizing enough elephant-barn hands to make certain that he and the other two did not get stuck with doing it all.
It was for this reason that he was shocked to the point of utter speechlessness to find the full staff, even the ones who had been on the march with him and had returned here while the elephants were being bathed and whom he fully expected to have decamped to the Kindred horse lines in the interval, waiting and ready to unharness the three massive beasts and lay their food before them. Stunned, it was only on her third attempt that he realized that Newgrass was trying to range him mentally.
“Yes, sister of my sister,” he finally beamed in response.
“The master of elephants from home, he is here, brother of my sister, I can smell him,” she announced.
Peer as he might into the deepening gloom which was only partially dispelled by the light of the wind-blown torches, Gil could not spy a strange Ehleen. Deciding that the long-awaited Master Laskos must be somewhere inside the cavernous barn, the Horseclansman slid easily down to the ground and began to work at loosening the buckles of Sunshine’s harness, his lead being at once followed by the other two feelahksee, the waiting men moving forward to lend a hand at the tasks.
He was approached by a stranger, but he noted that this one was assuredly no Ehleen, either. Though darkly weathered, his skin tone was as fair as that of a Horseclansman, his lips were thin, his close-cropped hair was either blond or white, and in the tricky light of the torches his eyes looked light, too. His clothes were more of an Ehleen cut than Horseclans, but the frame that they swathed was in no way Ehleen-like, being slender, flat-muscled and wiry, no more than a finger or so higher than Gil’s own height.
Gil said, “You can get the buckles on her off side.”
But the stranger just stood looking at Sunshine for a moment; he made no move to help with the work. Finally, he spoke, his Ehleenokos sounding almost pure to Gil, to whom it was not a native language. “Very good, young man, very good. You keep her clean, and that is a something of great importance as regards the proper management of elephants. However, you do not really need a heavy, clumsy, bulky war-saddle like that; a simple pad of folded wool would suffice.”
“Not that it’s any of youraffair ,” blurted out Gil, a bit peeved that the man still had made no move to help him unharness Sunshine, “but I prefer a saddle, and she doesn’t mind. Why should you? Who the hell are you, anyway, and what are you doing here? You obviously are not come to work, to care for my elephants.”
A fleeting smile creased the stranger’s thin lips. “Oh, but you are wrong in that assumption, Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz. I am come here for precisely that purpose and, I am given to understand, at your expressed request. I am Rikos Laskos, summoned from Iron Mountain by my patron, Thoheeks Sitheeros. I arrived while still you were out on campaign.
“This is your personal elephant, then, the cow called Sunshine? Yes. Well then, will she allow others to do for her? Fine. Then let us go to a place wherein we can converse privately, eh?”
In the cluttered tack room where Gil maintained a sometime office, Laskos seated himself upon a folded barding, such as was draped over war-elephants before mail and plate armor was attached. He flexed a leg, clasped his hands on the knee and leaned back. “Now, tell me the complete truth—what is this business about you being able to talk to elephants and horses, man?” All at once, he mindspoke, very powerfully, “Are you a telepath, then?”
“Yes,” beamed Gil, “and so are you. So why cannot you mindspeak elephants and horses, too?”
“I can mentally communicate with equines, mules, dogs and, to some extent, camels and a number of other animals. But, for some reason, I have never been able to reset my telepathic patterns to those of elephants . . . and I have been trying for more years than you could imagine,” replied Laskos. “How did you learn, Gil Djohnz? Did someone teach you?”
Gil frowned. “Well, not exactly. On the day that Sunshine came out of the river, God Milo approached her and mindspoke her. I and a fellow clansman were with him and helped him and her to take off the armor that was hurting her. I don’t clearly remember just when I started mindspeaking her, but I did. Then, God Milo had me ride her back to our great camp and feed her all of the hay and other foods that she could eat, and after that day, he had my chief free me from all other tasks to allow me to devote all of my time to feeding and otherwise caring for her.
“But I have taught several other Horseclans mindspeakers how to mindspeak elephants, so I can easily show you how, if that is what you and Thoheeks Sitheeros want of me. But what I want of you, in return, is to teach me and the elephants and the other men how to do the things it is necessary for elephants to do in war. Newgrass, the cow that the thoheeks brought down from Iron Mountain, has imparted to us all of her own war training, but she says that there is more that she was never taught or that she now does not recall.