The Witch Goddess

  The Witch Goddess

  The Horseclans

  Book IX

  Robert Adams

  Content

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Sir Bili of Morguhn lay dying in his palace. Fifty years before, after lengthy and strenuous persuasion, he had assumed the title and duties of Prince of Karaleenos, and he had served that office well and faithfully, it and the farming Confederation of which the principality was a sizable part. Early in his long life he had become a legend, but now he was an old man, a very old man, dying as all old men must, soon or late.

  But the legend would not die with his ancient, suppurating flesh; he knew this as well as did all those powerful notables who had hurriedly gathered to attend his passing. The deeds that the younger Sir Bili had wreaked with his huge and famous axe, with his prowess and courage, with his matchless mental attributes, would continue to be recounted as long as there were Eastern Kindred, mountain Ahrmehnee, Ehleenee, or a Confederation.

  "Aye," the dying old man thought, chuckling to himself despite the slowly increasing agony of his infected wounds, "and those damned Witchmen will have cause to remember Bili the Axe, too! Between us, Lord Milo and I scotched more than one of their hellish schemes, over the years.

  "They never seem to give up, those unnatural monsters. At least once in every generation of normal men, they're out to foment trouble somewhere in or around our Confederation. Twelve… no, fourteen or fifteen years back, it was that vicious bastard Gardmann. Before him, it was that phony Freefighter. What did he call himself, anyway? I forget, now, after so long… Close onto forty years; but I remember the name—his real name—that he gave under our tortures, Morton Flachs. It's too bad he managed to chew through his wrist veins, that night after he finally broke; we might've gotten more out of the bastard the next session.

  "Then there was that man who tried to kill Lord Milo and Aldora and me that time in Kehnooryos Atheenahs. We never knew for sure if he was really a Witchman, but Lord Milo assumed that he was because of his weapon—that booming, fire-spitting thing Lord Milo called a pisztuhl. He struck all three of us and killed two guards, outright, but the missiles did no permanent harm to the two Undying, of course. The one that sped toward me failed to strike me solidly, thank Sun and Wind, it just tore through my shirt and furrowed my arm before killing the guard behind me. Before Lord Milo could make himself heard, the living guardsmen had made a blood pudding out of the man… but they couldn't be blamed for it, they knew their duty and they did it despite the terror they all must have felt of that witchy weapon.

  "Of course, I'd seen and heard one like it before that—a bigger, much longer one. She called that one a ryfuhl, that damned Witchwoman who'd set herself up as 'goddess' of those outlaw Ganiks, the ones we fought for Prince Byruhn.

  "Hmmm, what was her name, now? In nigh eighty years, a man can forget so much."

  As old Bili's mind, cloudy now with drugs and age and suffering, sought recall of the name of that Witchwoman who had so many years before, led the savage, cannibal Ganiks in the then-unknown mountains to the west and south of the Ahrmehnee lands, he began once again to relive those exciting times. It had been those times which had given birth to the legend of Bili the Axe.

  Born to one of the two wives—sisters, they had been, and daughters of a Middle Kingdoms duke—of Hwahruhn, the hereditary chief of Clan Morguhn, Bili and all of his younger brothers had been sent in childhood to foster at various royal or archducal courts of Middle Kingdoms maternal relatives. Then, in Bili's eighteenth year, the chief, his father, lay ill unto death and he had been summoned back from the north by his mothers.

  Although barely eighteen, the Bili who had ridden back south had been a full man and a proven warrior, already knighted into the Order of the Blue Bear of Harzburk by the king who had fostered him. Nor had that knighthood been a meaningless gesture; Bili, the king's distant kinsman, had earned the honor with his strength, arms skills, and stark ferocity, axing down a full-grown nobleman in a single combat, and then the two men-at-arms who treacherously attacked him in defense of their foresworn lord.

  And young Bili's prowess, coupled with his qualities of natural leadership, quick and accurate judgment of men and situations, and some highly unusual mental attributes, had served him, the duchy and the Confederation well in the very hard and fearsome times that immediately followed his return, his father's death and his accession to the chieftaincy and title. For rebellion had long been brewing among certain elements of the Ehleenee—whose distant ancestors had ruled over most of the lands of the Confederation prior to the coming of the Kindred Horseclans. Incited, aided and abetted by a murderous gaggle of priests of the Old Ehleenee Church and by two spurious bishops of that church, both of whom proved to be actually agents of the Witch Kingdom—that realm located among the swamps of the far south—the situation had exploded bare days after he had come back to the lands of his birth.

  The young warrior's initial encounter with the rebels had very narrowly missed being his last. While riding back to Morguhn Hall after a visit to the hall of a kinsman-vassal, Komees Hari Daiviz of Morguhn, he and his small party had been viciously attacked on a forest road by more than a score of sketchily armed but coldly murderous rabble.

  "What a night that was," ruminated the dying Bill. "And what a glorious fight!"

  Then, suddenly, in his mind he was there again.

  The young Bili would have taken the lead into the place of lurking danger had not his companions—Vahrohneeskos Ahndee, Bard Klairuhnz and the two Freefighters on loan from Komees Djeen Morguhn—argued him down. So when the mounted column trotted in a single file toward the bridge, Bili was third in the line, with Ahndee ahead of him and one of the Freefighters, Dzhool, at point. Behind Bili rode the bard, Klairuhnz, with Ahndee's servingman, Geros, between him and the other Freefighter, Shahrl.

  The closer the little party came to the forest, looming darkly just beyond the bridge, the stronger grew Bili's apprehension. Now he knew for certain that they were riding into a battle, and he so mindspoke Ahndee and Klairuhnz.

  Awed, Ahndee silently asked, "You can far-gather, then, Bili? That's a rare and a precious ability. We were told of it at the Confederation Mindspeak Academy, of course; but not one of the instructors had ever met a man or woman or cat that actually possessed it. Can you sense how many foes? Or how far ahead they be?"

  "No," Bili readily admitted, "never have I been able to judge numbers, but we are near to danger and drawing ever nearer."

  The thick, old planks of the bridge boomed hollowly under the impact of the ironshod hooves, then they were into the forest. Bili found the forest proper far less dark a place than it had appeared from without. Except for the oak-grown fringes, the growth appeared to be principally tall old pines, unbranching for many feet above road level, and the wan moonlight filtered through the needled branches high above, making for dim visibility.

  The road ran straight for a few dozen yards, then began a gradual ascent and a slight curvature to the right, following the lower reaches of a brush-grown hillock. They splashed through a tiny rill which fed down into a small swamp before joining the larger stream. Beyond the rill, the road commenced another slow curve, this one downward and to the left. As they descended this reverse slope, the moon dove for cover and Bili's hackles rose. The still-unseen d
anger was now looming terribly near!

  "Soon!" he urgently mindspoke Ahndee and Klairuhnz, while bringing his axe up so that its fearsome double-bitted head rested against the steel plates covering his right shoulder. He dropped his reins over the pommel-knob, for, in battle, he guided Mahvros solely by mindspeak and knee pressure, not that the battlewise and faithful stallion required a great deal of guidance. Then he lowered and carefully locked into place the slitted half-visor which served to protect eyes and nose. By that time, the peril lay so very near, pressed so heavily upon his senses, that he could hardly bear it.

  "Now!" he beamed with mind-blasting intensity. "It is all around us!"

  Ahndee and the bard drew their blades, and the sibilant zweeep of steel leaving scabbards alerted the two troopers, who bared their own weapons. The servant, Geros, awkwardly gripped and regripped the haft of his boar spear in a sweaty hand.

  Up the slope, to their left, the trees abruptly thinned out… and the fickle moon chose that moment to again start a slow emergence from the clouds.

  There was a scuffling noise at the head of the column, a strangled grunt, followed almost immediately by a horse's shrill scream of agony and terror, then came the unmistakable clash-clanking of an armored body falling to the ground… and the moon came fully out.

  Bili could see the trooper, Dzhool, twitching on the roadway. A stocky, black-bearded man had a foot on the dying Freefighter's chest and was frantically striving to jerk the point of his spear from the body.

  The rebel bushwhacker never got the weapon free, however, for Bard Klairuhnz kneed his mount past Bili and Ahndee, and his heavy, cursive saber swept up and then blurred down. The bearded head, still wearing its old-fashioned helmet and a look of utter surprise, clattered across the road and into the weeds. The headless body stood erect for a brief moment more, geysering great, ropy spouts of dark-red blood, then collapsed atop the still body of its victim.

  From around the far side of the screaming, hamstrung lead horse charged another of the rebel ambushers, lacking either helm or body armor, but swinging up a short, broad-bladed infantry sword. This man was as short and stocky as the first, but beardless, with thinning gray hair. His lips were pulled back in a grimace, revealing his rotten and discolored teeth. There was fresh blood showing blackly on his swordblade, and he ran directly at Bili, shouting something in Old Ehleeneekos.

  Ahndee watched Bili—seemingly effortlessly handling his long, massive weapon with but one hand-catch the sword-slash on the steel shaft of his axe and allow the blade's own momentum to propel it into the deep notch between shaft and head. Then a single twist of Bili's thick wrist tore the hilt from the old rebel's grip and sent his sole weapon spinning off to clatter into the roadside weeds near his companion's severed head. But the spike surmounting the twin axebits was jammed deeply into the oldster's chest well before the sword came to ground.

  Dead Dzhool's crippled mount was still screaming. Then the servant, Geros, began* to scream, too; no warrior, he, he was frightened beyond words and could only scream and point his spear up the brushy slope. There, a line of riders— at least a dozen of them, the moonlight reflecting from their arms and armor—was issuing out from amongst the trees which had concealed them.

  "Back!" roared Klairuhnz. "There're too many of them to fight here; back to the bridge!" Suiting action to words, he reined his mount about and set off in the wake of Geros, Sharl and Ahndee.

  Bili lingered long enough to split the skull of the suffering horse, then he set off toward the narrow bridge just as the line of mounted ambushers came tilting down the rise. This granted Bili a closer look, and his battlewise eyes informed him that though numerous—nearer a score than a dozen—the charging horsemen were not nearly so well armed as they had at first seemed to be.

  All of them had swords of one kind or another and a few even bore the weapons as if they understood them and their proper use, but the uniformity ended there. The big man in the lead had a full panoply of longsword, shield and suit of three-quarter armor that looked to be decent-quality plate.

  But all of the men he led might have been outfitted from a hundred years' worth of battlefield pickings. Their helms were of every description, from true antique to almost new. One man's body armor was naught save a dented breastplate, another had squeezed into a shirt of rusty scalemail, two or three went in ancient jazerans, one in a cuirass of boiled and lacquered leather and another in an old, threadbare brigandine. Bili thought that the ruffianly crew certainly looked the part of the brigands they probably were.

  Mahvros' powerful body responded to Bili's urgings, and the big, steel-shod hooves struck firelight from the pebbly roadbed. The black stallion splashed through the little rill, and then they were descending back along the road's first curve.

  Suddenly, twenty yards ahead, riders emerged from among the treetrunks to block the way back to the bridge. A shaft of moonlight silvered their bared blades.

  Bili mindspoke Mahvros, "Faster, brother mine; be ready to fight."

  The huge ebon horse increased his speed and beamed his approval and impatient anticipation of the coming conflict, one of his principal joys in life being the stamping unto death of anything or anyone he was set against. Raising his head, he pealed a shrill, equine challenge, then bore down upon his promised victims.

  "Good old Mahvros," thought the ancient Bili. "I've forked many a strong, faithful, pugnacious horse in the years since he went to Wind, but never has there been another that was his equal in any way. Sacred Sun shine ever upon his brave spirit."

  One horse and rider went down in a squealing, screaming, hoof-flailing tangle, while Bili took a ringing swordswipe against the side of his helmet in passing. Still shrilling his challenge, Mahvros came to a rearing halt, pivoted and returned to savage the downed horse and man, while Bili axed the second rider out of the saddle with a single businesslike stroke. The stallion knew the brief elation of feeling man-ribs splinter under his hooves before Bili urged him back along the road to the bridge.

  Scores of hooves were pounding close behind them as Mahvros cleared the last of the trees to see Ahndee and Klairuhnz, their blades gleaming, sitting their mounts knee to knee a few paces out onto the span. Three yards behind them, the trooper had uncased and strung his short hornbow and nocked an arrow and was calmly awaiting the appearance of a target for that arrow.

  "Bili!" Ahndee shouted exuberantly. "Sun and Wind be thanked. We'd thought you slain back there." He began to back his big gelding that Bili might have his place.

  But Bili signed him to stay, positioning Mahvros a little ahead of the two warriors. "This will be better," he stated shortly, adding, "An axeman needs room." He did not see the smile that Ahndee and Klairuhnz exchanged at his automatic assumption of command over them.

  The trooper proved himself an expert archer, putting his shaft cleanly into the eye of the first pursuer to gallop out of the dark forest. His second arrow pinned an unarmored thigh to the saddletree beneath it. He nocked a third, quickly drew… and the bowstring snapped. Cursing sulphurously and most feelingly in four languages, he cast away the now useless bow, drew his saber and ranged up close behind Klairuhnz and Ahndee.

  The next four attackers took a brief moment to form themselves up, then launched a charge, apparently expecting their prey to remain in place and await their pleasure. They none of them lived long enough to repent their error or to recover from the counter-charge.

  The leading man held up his shield to fend off Bili's axe, while he aimed a hacking cut at Mahvros' thick neck. But the stout target crumpled like wet paper and the axeblade bit completely through, deep into the arm which had held it, the force of the buffet hurling the man down to a singularly messy death beneath the stamping hooves.

  Mahvros roughly shouldered the riderless horse aside, while Bili glanced around, seeking another opponent. At that very moment, Ahndee was thrusting the watered-steel blade of his longsword deep into the vitals of his adversary and Bard Klairuhnz looked to be more
than a match for his shaggy foe. But the hapless Freefighter trooper had troubles aplenty. First his bowstring had broken, and now his saber blade, leaving him but a bare foot of pointless steel jutting up from the hilt. With this stub, he was fighting a desperate defensive action.

  In a single, mighty leap, Mahvros was alongside the mount of the ruffian. Shortening his grip on his axehaft, Bili jammed the terminal spike deeply into a side made vulnerable by a wide gap between the back and breast plates of an ill-fitting cuirass. Shrieking curses in both Old and Modern Ehleeneekos, the wounded man turned in his saddle to rain a swift succession of swordblows on Bili's head and shoulders. Although the stout Pitzburk plate turned every blow, Bili was unable to retaliate, for at such close quarters, his long-hafted axe was all but useless.

  Unexpectedly, the swordsman hunched his body and began to gag and then retch, spewing up quantities of frothy blood. At this juncture, the Freefighter reined in closer, used his piece of saber to sever the man's swordknot, then virtually decapitated his late opponent with the man's own antique blade.

  They had almost regained the bridge when the main body of attackers caught up to them. First to fall was the rearmed Freefighter, his scaleshirt unable to protect his spine from the crushing blow of a nail-studded club.

  Bili's better armor turned a determined spearthrust before he axed the arm from the spearman. Then he turned Mahvros full about and, straightening his arms, swung his bloody axe in several wide arcs before him; he struck nothing and no one, but did achieve his desired effect of momentarily halting the van of the oncoming force and granting Ahndee and Klairuhnz a few precious moments to regain the bridge.

  Bili's vision, somewhat restricted by the bars of his visor, failed to record the man who galloped in from his left… but Mahvros saw him. With the speed of a striking serpent, the mighty horse spun about and sank big yellow teeth into the flesh of the smaller equine.

  The mare thus assaulted was not a warhorse, not even a hunter, and she harbored no slightest intention of remaining in proximity to this huge, maddened stallion. Taking the bit firmly between her own teeth, she raced back into the forest, bearing her shouting, cursing, rein-sawing rider only as far as the low-hanging branch which swept him from her back and stretched him senseless among the dead leaves and mosses.