“In a voice pitched so low that even I could but barely hear, he growled, ‘Keep down, damn fool boy! Keep down, Isay, else I’ll have to slay you.’
“Then he shouted to his troopers who were riding nearer, ‘You men search that thick brush up there where the creek is narrow and murky. This pool here is clear as fine crystal; nothing to be seen in it save fish and crayfish. I’ll give my stallion a drink of it, then ride up and join you.’
“Then thekomees deliberately set his horse to roiling the bed of that pool with its hooves, while he did the same with the butt of his lance, stirring up sediments and clouding the water. He dropped upon me a sheathed, bejeweled sword, and when I once more brought my face up to where I could see, he dropped a small, heavy bag with a crest embossed in the soft leather.
“He said then, ‘Your late father was my battle companion of yore, young Vikos, and after this sad day, you may well be the last living man of his loins. So there is a bit of gold and a good sword taken off the body of a dead man. Stop moving about blindly and go to ground untilit’s full dark, then head northwest. What’s left of Zastros’ rebel army is withdrawing southeast, and we’ll be pursuing them. If you can make it up to Iron Mountain, you’ll be safe with your cousins there. And the next time you choose a warleader, try to choose one who owns at least a fighting chance to win, eh? God keep you now, my boy.’ Then he rode through the pool and led his men away through the swamp.”
Thoheeks Grahvos nodded. “Yes, Vikos, it sounds exactly of a piece with all else I know of the man. For all of his personal ferocity and his expertise in the leading of armies and the waging of wars for the three kings he served during his lengthy career, still was he ever noted to be just and, when it was possible, merciful to his defeated enemies.
“Strange, I’d just assumed him to be dead, legally murdered by Fahrkos or Zastros, as were the most of his peers. It is indeed good to know that at least one of the better sort survived the long bloodletting. Who was his overlord, anyway? Does anyone here recall? If he’ll take the oaths, I can’t think of anybody who would make us a better thoheeks then Strahteegos Pahvlos the Warlike.”
“And so,” concluded old Komees Pahvlos, “when it was become clear to me that these usurping scum, these bareborn squatters, were all determined to not only deny young Ahramos here his lawful patrimony, but to take his very life as well, were they granted the opportunity, I knew that far stronger measures were required, my lords.”
He sighed and shook his show-white head. “Could but a single man do it alone, it were done already. Old I assuredly am—close on to seventy years old—but still am I a warrior fit for the battleline, and my good sword is yet to become a stranger to my hand. But only a strong, disciplined, well-led force will be able to dislodge that foul kakistocracy that presently holds Ahramos’ principal city and controls his rightful lands, and due to reverses, I no longer own the wherewithal to hire on men, to equip and mount and supply them with even the bare necessities of warfare.
“The two of us, Ahramos and I, were able to fight our way out of both the palace and the city, but far more than a mere two swordsmen will be required to hack a way back in and see justice done the now-dispossessed son and heir of the late thoheeks. This is why I come.”
“I would wager pure gold, Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos,” said Thoheeks Grahvos thoughtfully, pinching his chin between his thumb and forefinger, “that nothing—neither adversity nor your venerable age—has robbed you of a whit of your old and rare abilities to lead armies, plan winning battles and improvise stunning tactics on the spur of the moment any more than those same forces have taken away your skills of swinging sharp steel hard and true.
“I’ll be candid: I had meant to hear you out, then ask you to take oaths to the Council and the Confederation and then confirm you the lord of one of the still-vacant thoheekseeahnee, for I trow you’d make a better thoheeks than many another candidate for that rank. I still mean to see you so installed, too.
“But now, fully aware of how vital you still are and how great is our need, I have in mind a better, far more useful task for you, at present.”
Pawl Vawn, Chief of Vawn, sat at a table in the camp quarters of Sub-strahteegos Tomos Gonsalos; with them around the scraps of the just-eaten meal sat Captain Guhsz Hehluh and Captain Thoheeks Portos.
As he filled his cup with the honey wine and passed the decanter on to Portos, the Horseclans commander demanded, “If this Pahvlos is such a slambang strahteegos and all, Portos, how come he didn’t tromp you all proper for his king and end it all before it got started?”
“Oh, he did, he assuredly did, my good Pawl,” replied Portos in his grave voice, “in the beginning, years ago. I was there, I was a part of that rebel army then, I and my first squadron of horse, and I am here to tell you that he thoroughly trounced us. He nibbled off all the cavalry and the light troops, then smashed the main force with a charge of his war-elephants and his heavy horse, crushed it like a beetle, virtually extirpated a force that had begun the day a third again larger than his own and had drawn itself up on the best stretch of ground with the most natural assets available in that part of the country.
“It required years of effort, after that, and the then-unknown help of the Witchmen to reassemble an army for Zastros to lead against Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos Feelohpohlehmos. That, in the end, we did not have to face him again was an inestimable relief to many a one of us, believe me, my friend.”
“Well, why didn’t you?” asked Pawl Vawn.
Portos shrugged, toying with his winecup. “By that time, all of the ancient royal line was become extinct and Thoheeks Fahrkos, who seized the crown and the capital, had dismissed the strahteegohee, as they all were hostile toward him. Most of the royal army as then remained had chosen that point to march away with their officers, so that all Fahrkos had when we brought him to bay was his own skimpy personal warband.”
“Well, even so,” put in Freefighter Captain Guhsz Hehluh, as he doodled with the tip of a calloused forefinger in and around a pool of spilled wine, “before I’m going to put me and my Keebai boys under the orders of some white-bearded doddard, I’ll know a bit more about him, if you please . . . and even if you don’t, comes to that.
“You Kindred and Ehleenee, you can do what you wants, but if I mislike the sound or the smell of thishere Count Pahvlos, why me and mine, we’ll just shoulder our pikes and hike back up north to Kehnooryos Atheenahs and I’ll tell High Lord Milo to find us some other fights or sell us our contract back.”
But within the space of bare days, Captain Guhsz Hehluh was trumpeting the praises of the newly appointed Grand Strahteegos of the Confederated Thoheekseeahnee of Southern Ehleenohee. Komees Pahvlos and his entourage had ridden out and found the Freefighter pikemen at drill. For almost an hour, he sat his stamping, tail-swishing horse beside Hehluh’s in the hot sun, swatting at flies and knowledgeably discussing the inherent strengths and weaknesses of pike formations and the proper marshaling of infantry. At length, Pahvlos had actually dismounted and hunkered down in the dust of the drill field to sketch with a horny finger the initial positions and movements of an intricate maneuver.
“I’d been led to believe he was lots older than he actually is,” Hehluh declared to his officers. “He’s really not that much older than me, and he’s not one of these hidebound bastards that so many Ehleenees are, either. He flat knows the art of war, by damn! Hell, after only the one meeting, I’ve already learned things from that man.”