By the time of his great victory at the Battle of Ahrbahkootchee, of all Pahvlos’ onetime family only one daughter remained alive. This had been Pehtra, wed to the Thoheeks of Kahlkos, with a young son and an infant girl by him. After her husband’s death, certain occurrences had led the widowed Pehtra to believe that some of the late thoheeks’ advisers were inimical to her and the children, so she and a coterie of still-faithful servants and retainers had, of a night, carried out a carefully planned escape from the city and the duchy that had for so long been her home and fled to the haven offered by her birthplace.
There they had stayed until a wasting fever had carried off both mother and daughter within the space of a bare fortnight, sparing the son, however. By then, Pahvlos had been living in quiet and cautious retirement, having been dismissed from the army he had for so long commanded through triumph after glorious triumph. After wedding the widow of a city-lord, a sometime vassal, he and his new wife had taken over the proper rearing and education of his grandson, Ahramos.
When, some seven months before, his middle-aged “bride” had died suddenly of apoplexy, he had decided that with the new Council of Thoheeksee having established at least a modicum of order to the land, the time had arrived when Ahramos should return to the city of his father and claim the lands and the title that were his patrimony.
Yes, the old nobleman knew well loss and its attendant pain, but these were not what troubled his sleeping and waking thoughts, day after day, night after night. No, it was his open, imaginative and creative mind—that flexible mind the easily adjustable thinking patterns of which had given birth to so many stunning strategies and tactics, often on the very spur of the moment and usually resulting in smashing victories over a host of enemies over the long years.
Now faced with things he had for all of his previous life—some seventy years of it—considered ridiculous, impossible tales, he was being forced to admit to himself that these things not might be but must be possible realities.
From the very beginning, he had scoffed at the Horseclanners’ oft-vaunted supposed abilities to read minds, communicate silently with each other and communicate with certain dumb beasts—their horses, their great war-cats and elephants. His certainties had first begun to crumble, however, even before the army had marched, when he had been confronted with the uncanny ability of the barbarian Horseclanner feelahksee to put their three pachyderms through intricate maneuvers that he had never before seen even the best-trained and best-controlled war-elephants perform in either drill or actual combat.
He had not objected overmuch to the horse-archers bringing their war-cats along, even though they had flatly refused to either cage or chain them on the march, for certain of the barbarian tribes of the northern mountains trained and used huge, fearsome war-dogs in battle, so he recognized that could the cats be as well controlled, they just might be a definite advantage. Besides, he truly treasured the Horseclanner barbarians’ rare combination of military values, and as they had refused to march without the cats, he had acquiesced as gracefully as he could. Nor had he had any slightest cause to regret that acquiescence since, for there had been not even one attack by the felines against men or beast in camp, column, remuda or ration herd. The huge, toothy beasts had seemed quite content to feast on the lights of slaughtered beeves or, sometimes, hunt their own wild meat, never to his knowledge having harmed domestic stock in the lands through which they had passed on the march.
With more than enough plans and problems and worries to occupy his mind, he had let the business of telepathy with beasts slip far, far down into the depths of his consciousness . . . until that queer business at the ruined hold of Ippohskeera had brought it all bubbling up to the surface again and at a full, rolling boil.
There simply was no earthly way that Chief Pawl Vawn could have known that poor Vahrohnos Iahnos had a crippled leg, a missing eye and a hideously scarred face and was quite mad. Pahvlos knew for fact that the captain of the barbarian horse-archers had not left the camp that night, not even for minutes, much less for the length of time it would have taken a man to cover the distance between camp and hold and do it twice at that. Nor was there any possible way that the barbarian auxiliary could have known, there upon those winding stairs, exactly what lay ahead, that the wounded, dying man’s only weapon was a rusted sword with a broken blade.
Therefore, Pahvlos could not but begin to fully accept the patent impossible as existing fact: these Horseclanner barbarians somehow had developed and fully mastered an eerie talent to join their minds with those of animals and each other. Once his mind had accepted it all fully, Pahvlos enjoyed a refreshing, night-long sleep, and when he awakened, resolved to question Chief Pawl, Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz, and selected others in some depth, then begin to determine just how these new gifts could be made of use to him and to the army and to the state.
At last, after long weeks on the march, the army crossed the Lootrah River and were within the Thoheekseeahn of Kahlkos, though still a couple of days’ march from the ducal seat, Kahlkopolis. Because they took the time to reduce two holds along the way, however, it took them a full week to reach the capital. Neither of the holds had been strongly held, but Pahvlos held a belief that bypassed foes could often present unexpected dangers at very untoward moments. The reductions had cost him very little, only a bare handful ofcasualties, and a certain amount of welcome information had been obtained from the survivors of the garrisons before they had been executed. Pahvlos had never had a reputation for cruelty in warfare, but he could see no point in burdening himself with a gaggle of captive banditti; most had likely owned necks long overdue for the short, sharp acquaintance with a broadaxe, anyway, that or the tight, lingering embrace of a hempen rope.
With his rear and flanks swept clear of potential attackers, old Pahvlos marched his army up to within sight of the walls of the city held by the usurper and began to erect a strong mounded and ditched camp near the banks of a swift-flowing brook. The pioneers and artificiers had just felled and dragged in from a nearby forest a sufficiency of treetrunks to provide lumber for assembling the larger engines when a herald was seen riding toward them from Kahlkopolis. The Grand Strahteegos immediately dispatched his own herald to meet this visitor from the enemy.
After a few minutes, the army’s herald—avahrohnos, one Djehros of Kahktohskeera—rode back at a brisk amble to salute and report, “My lord Strahteegos, a gentleman-officer named Stehrgiahnos desires to come here to the camp and meet with you—he, the herald yonder, and a small attending party.”
Pahvlos shrugged and said, “Certainly, I’ll meet with him here, just so long as he does not expect me or one of my own officers to return the visit, that is.”
As Vahrohnos Djehros rode back out onto the broad, rolling, grassy plain, Pahvlos summoned his staff and ordered, “Throw out strong, wide-ranging mounted patrols all around us and hold every fighting man at the ready, full armed. Something about all of this stinks, andam I to be surprised, I want to be ready for it.”
The Grand Strahteegos treated Stehrgiahnos with every ounce of the contempt that he felt the renegade nobleman deserved, and then some more for good measure. No wine was proffered, not even a chair or a stool. Pahvlos and an assortment of his officers sat behind a table—armed, wearing at least half-armor, their sheathed swords all lying on the tabletop near to hand.